Message 7: A Believing Intellect
MESSAGE SEVEN:
Turn to John 5:37
God desires for you to BELIEVE Him in every area of your life. God is thorough. He desires for you to be a BELIEVER in every area of your life. Your body is to be the body of a believer. Your soul is the be the soul of a believer – which means you need a believing will, a believing psyche and a believing MIND or INTELLECT.
Today I want to talk about having a believing intellect, specifically, I want to identify some of the blocks of the intellect that hinder a true Spirit-filled life.
During Jesus’ earthly ministry He dealt with all kinds of people. One particular group that He dealt with time and time again were the Pharisee’s. The Pharisee’s were a small sect of Jews who were super-self-righteous and thought that they had everything figured out.
And to put it mildly – Jesus didn’t fit their mold of what the Messiah was ‘supposed’ to look like.
In John 5:37 we read of one of the many encounters Jesus had with these religious rascals:
Jesus says:
“And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:37-40, NIV.
Do you see the problem these boys had?
• In spite of their knowledge of scripture – they didn’t know God!
• In spite of their careful study of the words of life – they didn’t possess life!
• In spite of the obvious testimony of the Old Testament Scripture – they didn’t recognize Christ for who He is.
And their problem isn’t a lack of knowledge. Their problem isn’t that they were stupid – their problem was ‘you do not believe…. You refuse to come to me to have life…’.
They were using their intellect to block faith. The amassed great scholarly knowledge, and took such pride in their intellectual ability that they missed the very One they said they were looking for.
The same is true in our era. We are a people of education, of reason, of logic and of intellect. Through knowledge we’ve conquered polio, we’ve taken man to the Moon and back, we’ve studied the ocean floors, and the distant galaxies. At some level, we believe that all of man’s problems can be solved – eventually, through the hard work of the intellect.
And, praise God for this. These advances have made life better for everyone on the planet.
BUT – we must be careful, for our INTELLECT can become a major source of doubt and disbelief in the God who is not measured by physics, not the result of DNA, not able to be weighed, tested or examined in the laboratory.
Jesus says:
“God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.” John 4:24
The nature of God is spiritual, and as believers we are to relate to Him first and foremost through the Presence of His Holy Spirit in our human spirit.
The intellect becomes a block to the Spirit of God when it seeks to require God to give it complete understanding of everything, including the works of the Holy Spirit. Our intellect can easily say: “I’m not going to do anything or accept anything that I cannot understand or reason out.”
The intellect needs to submit itself to the authority of the Holy Spirit and willingly acknowledge it’s limitations. God is calling us as believers to have a Spirit-filled Intellect.
Turn to John 6:63
“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no-one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.” John 6:63-65
When Christ speaks to us from the pages of the Bible, God’s Holy Spirit living within, speaks to our human spirits and says, in effect: “This is life – hear it! Receive it! Do it!”
You see, the Holy Spirit can speak directly to your human spirit, without having to explain things to your intellect. God’s Presence is greater than your ability to reason.
Earlier we looked at John 4:24 –
“God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.” John 4:24
When we hear Christ’s words, our spirit responds to the Holy Spirit who grants us an inner-knowing of the truth. You cannot experience God’s truth without God’s Spirit empowering you.
In Mark 1 we read of the response of the ordinary people of Jerusalem:
“Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.” Mark 1:21, 22
What was the ‘authority’? He was teaching in the power of the Spirit, not only by the intellect!
Now – let’s look at some specific BLOCKS OF THE INTELLECT to the things of God:
1. Biblical Intellectualism
You can know the Bible through and through – just like the Pharisee’s of old – without ever coming to know the Person of Christ!
The Apostle James tells us to…
“…humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.” James 1:21
James does not speak here of the Scripture – He speaks of Jesus, the Word, whose life is implanted into our spirits by our being joined by faith to the Holy Spirit! It isn’t the Bible that ‘saves our soul’ – the Holy Spirit uses the words of the Bible to speak directly to us about Jesus.
In the past couple of hundred years, the ability to study and know the Bible has increased exponentially. This is a good thing. But some – and in fact, in the western world, MANY, have developed a ‘biblical intellectualism’ whereby they study the Bible like you’d study chemistry or Shakespeare – and in doing so the Bible has become just another book of antiquity – antiquated and out of date. Or other Christians in the more fundamentalist camp have in their defense of the Bible have created a kind of ‘book-worship’ that can be just as dead and cold as the Pharisee’s of Jesus’ day.
Jesus had great respect for Scripture, but He didn’t hesitate to point out that HE, not the book, is the source of life. Again – look at John 5…
“You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:38-40,
A second block of the INTELLECT IS…
2. Intellectual Pride.
Intellectual pride can take on two opposite forms: Up-Tight Pride and Out-of-Sight Pride
Up-Tight Pride leads a person to hang on to what they know, even in the face of contrary facts.
Pretty much everyone accepts the fact that the earth is basically a round globe and that it rotates around the Sun. However, several hundred years ago had you espoused those ideas, it would have got you killed. Why? Because regardless of the facts – the people in power couldn’t and wouldn’t accept that they were wrong about the earth being both flat and the center of the universe.
Once the intellect has grasped something, it is very difficult to be humble enough to let go.
Out-of-Sight Pride says: “I don’t want to bother with doctrinal or theological teaching, I’ll just follow the Lord where He leads.” This is pride in NOT USING YOUR HEAD. Some people are so open-minded that their brains have leaked out.
The human intellect is going to find answers – the trick it to recognize the limitations of the intellect in the world of the Holy Spirit.
A third blockage is…
3. Doubtful Intellect
Doubt is a good thing when it comes to science – a scientist doubts everything until they can examine it carefully and even better reproduce it in the lab.
Spiritual life, on the other hand, of necessity must begin with absolute confidence, not in a set of facts, but in a Person. Then it moves on from there. Faith begins with commitment – and doubt is precisely the opposite of faith.
The great Saint Augustine said: “I believe in order that I many understand.”
Faith in Christ leads to understanding. Start there. Place your confidence in Christ.
The Apostle Paul wrote that we are to…
“be confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6
Living in intellect doubt leads to a messy Christian life. Listen to what Scripture says about this:
“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.” James 1:5-8
“I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:23, 24
I don’t have full answers concerning these two verses – but one thing I do know: God calls me to be a believer not a doubter.
There’s a fourth block of the intellect:
4. Misinformed Intellect
Someone has said: “A little learning is a dangerous thing…” Why? Because a ‘little learning’ leads to…
- BAD information.
- PARTIAL information.
- MISUNDERSTOOD information.
I had a ‘misinformed’ intellect when it came to the Holy Spirit.
I had BAD information – I was taught not to expect the Holy Spirit to speak, not to expect the Holy Spirit to empower and not to expect the Holy Spirit to work miracles. I was taught that that stuff only happened in the days of the Apostle’s. It was BAD INFORMATION.
I had PARTIAL information – Since I had BAD info, I didn’t dig in deep to study about the Holy Spirit myself. I only knew a little – and what I knew told me that I didn’t need to dig any further.
I also had MISUNDERSTOOD information that to encounter the Holy Spirit would be a scary, frightening experience. That if I ever met the Holy Spirit in a personal encounter, I would come out on the losing end of the deal.
But God loves me. So how could an encounter with Him not work out in my own best interests? So when I came to the end of my soulish rope last Summer – I dug in and begin to revisit the Holy Spirit. I’ve read and studied, and prayed and sought – and God has blessed me for it. I now KNOW more about the Holy Spirit than I ever did before, but even more important, I now KNOW the Holy Spirit personally like never before!
As Spirit-Filled Christians we must cooperate with the Holy Spirit in
REMOVING THE INTELLECTUAL BLOCKAGES.
1. We must SUBJECT our soulish intellect to the authority of the Holy Spirit.
Which means that we stop expecting – or even – demanding – that the Holy Spirit answer all of our questions before we will take steps of faith.
2. Don’t reject your God-given intellect, but avoid the idolatry of taking it too seriously.
We cannot expect to have all of the answers. God isn’t required to jump through your hoops. So relax. Recognize that some questions won’t get answered this side of eternity.
3. Allow the Holy Spirit to speak directly to your spirit without involving the intellect.
Paul wrote: “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.” 1 Corinthians 14:14.
In other words, when we pray in the Spirit – it doesn’t require your mind to formulate and determine your prayers. When you pray in the Spirit, God is enabling your spirit to pray directly to Him though His Holy Spirit given language. What a joy this brings – for once I don’t have to know how to pray….
“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” Romans 8:26
If you don’t have a prayer language – ask God. Allow Him to empower you if and when He sees fit.
Lastly, in removing the INTELLECTUAL blockages…
4. Allow God to retrain your intellect in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 12:2 says: “…be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2
Let the Holy Spirit take you into the Scripture and reshape your intellect to God’s original design for you – free from the stain of sin – free to think in the power of the Holy Spirit!
CONCLUSION:
The Pharisee’s missed out on the blessing of Christ – because they REFUSED TO BELIEVE. They held Jesus up to their preconceived intellectual notions – and they missed Him! Let’s not be like those guys.
Let’s be BELIEVERS who are serious and thoughtful Christians who have willingly subjected our intellects to the authority of Christ!
Turn to John 5:37
God desires for you to BELIEVE Him in every area of your life. God is thorough. He desires for you to be a BELIEVER in every area of your life. Your body is to be the body of a believer. Your soul is the be the soul of a believer – which means you need a believing will, a believing psyche and a believing MIND or INTELLECT.
Today I want to talk about having a believing intellect, specifically, I want to identify some of the blocks of the intellect that hinder a true Spirit-filled life.
During Jesus’ earthly ministry He dealt with all kinds of people. One particular group that He dealt with time and time again were the Pharisee’s. The Pharisee’s were a small sect of Jews who were super-self-righteous and thought that they had everything figured out.
And to put it mildly – Jesus didn’t fit their mold of what the Messiah was ‘supposed’ to look like.
In John 5:37 we read of one of the many encounters Jesus had with these religious rascals:
Jesus says:
“And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:37-40, NIV.
Do you see the problem these boys had?
• In spite of their knowledge of scripture – they didn’t know God!
• In spite of their careful study of the words of life – they didn’t possess life!
• In spite of the obvious testimony of the Old Testament Scripture – they didn’t recognize Christ for who He is.
And their problem isn’t a lack of knowledge. Their problem isn’t that they were stupid – their problem was ‘you do not believe…. You refuse to come to me to have life…’.
They were using their intellect to block faith. The amassed great scholarly knowledge, and took such pride in their intellectual ability that they missed the very One they said they were looking for.
The same is true in our era. We are a people of education, of reason, of logic and of intellect. Through knowledge we’ve conquered polio, we’ve taken man to the Moon and back, we’ve studied the ocean floors, and the distant galaxies. At some level, we believe that all of man’s problems can be solved – eventually, through the hard work of the intellect.
And, praise God for this. These advances have made life better for everyone on the planet.
BUT – we must be careful, for our INTELLECT can become a major source of doubt and disbelief in the God who is not measured by physics, not the result of DNA, not able to be weighed, tested or examined in the laboratory.
Jesus says:
“God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.” John 4:24
The nature of God is spiritual, and as believers we are to relate to Him first and foremost through the Presence of His Holy Spirit in our human spirit.
The intellect becomes a block to the Spirit of God when it seeks to require God to give it complete understanding of everything, including the works of the Holy Spirit. Our intellect can easily say: “I’m not going to do anything or accept anything that I cannot understand or reason out.”
The intellect needs to submit itself to the authority of the Holy Spirit and willingly acknowledge it’s limitations. God is calling us as believers to have a Spirit-filled Intellect.
Turn to John 6:63
“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no-one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.” John 6:63-65
When Christ speaks to us from the pages of the Bible, God’s Holy Spirit living within, speaks to our human spirits and says, in effect: “This is life – hear it! Receive it! Do it!”
You see, the Holy Spirit can speak directly to your human spirit, without having to explain things to your intellect. God’s Presence is greater than your ability to reason.
Earlier we looked at John 4:24 –
“God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.” John 4:24
When we hear Christ’s words, our spirit responds to the Holy Spirit who grants us an inner-knowing of the truth. You cannot experience God’s truth without God’s Spirit empowering you.
In Mark 1 we read of the response of the ordinary people of Jerusalem:
“Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.” Mark 1:21, 22
What was the ‘authority’? He was teaching in the power of the Spirit, not only by the intellect!
Now – let’s look at some specific BLOCKS OF THE INTELLECT to the things of God:
1. Biblical Intellectualism
You can know the Bible through and through – just like the Pharisee’s of old – without ever coming to know the Person of Christ!
The Apostle James tells us to…
“…humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.” James 1:21
James does not speak here of the Scripture – He speaks of Jesus, the Word, whose life is implanted into our spirits by our being joined by faith to the Holy Spirit! It isn’t the Bible that ‘saves our soul’ – the Holy Spirit uses the words of the Bible to speak directly to us about Jesus.
In the past couple of hundred years, the ability to study and know the Bible has increased exponentially. This is a good thing. But some – and in fact, in the western world, MANY, have developed a ‘biblical intellectualism’ whereby they study the Bible like you’d study chemistry or Shakespeare – and in doing so the Bible has become just another book of antiquity – antiquated and out of date. Or other Christians in the more fundamentalist camp have in their defense of the Bible have created a kind of ‘book-worship’ that can be just as dead and cold as the Pharisee’s of Jesus’ day.
Jesus had great respect for Scripture, but He didn’t hesitate to point out that HE, not the book, is the source of life. Again – look at John 5…
“You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” John 5:38-40,
A second block of the INTELLECT IS…
2. Intellectual Pride.
Intellectual pride can take on two opposite forms: Up-Tight Pride and Out-of-Sight Pride
Up-Tight Pride leads a person to hang on to what they know, even in the face of contrary facts.
Pretty much everyone accepts the fact that the earth is basically a round globe and that it rotates around the Sun. However, several hundred years ago had you espoused those ideas, it would have got you killed. Why? Because regardless of the facts – the people in power couldn’t and wouldn’t accept that they were wrong about the earth being both flat and the center of the universe.
Once the intellect has grasped something, it is very difficult to be humble enough to let go.
Out-of-Sight Pride says: “I don’t want to bother with doctrinal or theological teaching, I’ll just follow the Lord where He leads.” This is pride in NOT USING YOUR HEAD. Some people are so open-minded that their brains have leaked out.
The human intellect is going to find answers – the trick it to recognize the limitations of the intellect in the world of the Holy Spirit.
A third blockage is…
3. Doubtful Intellect
Doubt is a good thing when it comes to science – a scientist doubts everything until they can examine it carefully and even better reproduce it in the lab.
Spiritual life, on the other hand, of necessity must begin with absolute confidence, not in a set of facts, but in a Person. Then it moves on from there. Faith begins with commitment – and doubt is precisely the opposite of faith.
The great Saint Augustine said: “I believe in order that I many understand.”
Faith in Christ leads to understanding. Start there. Place your confidence in Christ.
The Apostle Paul wrote that we are to…
“be confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6
Living in intellect doubt leads to a messy Christian life. Listen to what Scripture says about this:
“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.” James 1:5-8
“I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:23, 24
I don’t have full answers concerning these two verses – but one thing I do know: God calls me to be a believer not a doubter.
There’s a fourth block of the intellect:
4. Misinformed Intellect
Someone has said: “A little learning is a dangerous thing…” Why? Because a ‘little learning’ leads to…
- BAD information.
- PARTIAL information.
- MISUNDERSTOOD information.
I had a ‘misinformed’ intellect when it came to the Holy Spirit.
I had BAD information – I was taught not to expect the Holy Spirit to speak, not to expect the Holy Spirit to empower and not to expect the Holy Spirit to work miracles. I was taught that that stuff only happened in the days of the Apostle’s. It was BAD INFORMATION.
I had PARTIAL information – Since I had BAD info, I didn’t dig in deep to study about the Holy Spirit myself. I only knew a little – and what I knew told me that I didn’t need to dig any further.
I also had MISUNDERSTOOD information that to encounter the Holy Spirit would be a scary, frightening experience. That if I ever met the Holy Spirit in a personal encounter, I would come out on the losing end of the deal.
But God loves me. So how could an encounter with Him not work out in my own best interests? So when I came to the end of my soulish rope last Summer – I dug in and begin to revisit the Holy Spirit. I’ve read and studied, and prayed and sought – and God has blessed me for it. I now KNOW more about the Holy Spirit than I ever did before, but even more important, I now KNOW the Holy Spirit personally like never before!
As Spirit-Filled Christians we must cooperate with the Holy Spirit in
REMOVING THE INTELLECTUAL BLOCKAGES.
1. We must SUBJECT our soulish intellect to the authority of the Holy Spirit.
Which means that we stop expecting – or even – demanding – that the Holy Spirit answer all of our questions before we will take steps of faith.
2. Don’t reject your God-given intellect, but avoid the idolatry of taking it too seriously.
We cannot expect to have all of the answers. God isn’t required to jump through your hoops. So relax. Recognize that some questions won’t get answered this side of eternity.
3. Allow the Holy Spirit to speak directly to your spirit without involving the intellect.
Paul wrote: “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.” 1 Corinthians 14:14.
In other words, when we pray in the Spirit – it doesn’t require your mind to formulate and determine your prayers. When you pray in the Spirit, God is enabling your spirit to pray directly to Him though His Holy Spirit given language. What a joy this brings – for once I don’t have to know how to pray….
“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” Romans 8:26
If you don’t have a prayer language – ask God. Allow Him to empower you if and when He sees fit.
Lastly, in removing the INTELLECTUAL blockages…
4. Allow God to retrain your intellect in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 12:2 says: “…be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2
Let the Holy Spirit take you into the Scripture and reshape your intellect to God’s original design for you – free from the stain of sin – free to think in the power of the Holy Spirit!
CONCLUSION:
The Pharisee’s missed out on the blessing of Christ – because they REFUSED TO BELIEVE. They held Jesus up to their preconceived intellectual notions – and they missed Him! Let’s not be like those guys.
Let’s be BELIEVERS who are serious and thoughtful Christians who have willingly subjected our intellects to the authority of Christ!
posted by Doug Love at 10:11 AM
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