LEARNING DAILY

1 Corinthians 2:14, But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.

The “natural man” is one who does not have the Spirit of God in him/her because he/she has not accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. In other words, he/she is still in their original (sinful) state; he/she is led by their natural instincts rather than the Holy Spirit and will choose sin over righteousness. God’s desire is to change the natural person into a spiritual person where he/she walks with the desire to please God and walk a narrow way in righteousness.

To the “natural man” God’s righteousness and to walk in righteousness is foolishness; what God does and requires of His faith followers is not understood. Wednesday night my wife and I watched two churches prayer services on television. At the NorthRock Church a guest pastor preached a sermon on Gideon. He made the statement that God called Gideon to fight against a Midian army (135,000 strong according to Judges 8:10). Gideon gathered an army of 32,000 men and God said it was too many. Eventually 22,000 went home, but that was still many. Eventually the number of men to fight the great Midian army was 300 men. To the natural man that does not make any sense at all. But this small army defeated this great army due to their obedience to God.

I began to think about other times God gave directions that might not make sense to the natural mind. One incident that came to my mind was God’s instruction for the army of Joshua to walk around the city of Jericho each day for six days. Then on the seventh day, they were to walk around the city seven times. To the natural man this is foolishness. Yet, again, obedience by the people to God’s command, the walls tumbled to the ground.

I thought of the explanation of God as Creator of all things, Abraham being told by God to sacrifice his son, the son of promise, actually most of the book of Genesis, is to the natural man all foolishness. I thought of a donkey used to speak to Baalam, and Jonah swallowed by a whale as he ran from God only to be spit out on the shore of where God wanted him to go. All foolishness to the unsaved person. Consider the beliefs today about abortion, homosexuality, gender identification; all is foolishness to the natural person, the person who does not have the Holy Spirit of God living in them.

Nonbelievers cannot be expected to believe as Believers do. It is not a moral issue; it is a spiritual issue. Without the Holy Spirit one cannot have God’s perspective on issues. God uses the Holy Spirit to communicate truth to His people. Gideon’s defeat of the Midianites is to show us the need to depend on God to fight our battles in this life. We need to be obedient to truth as He reveals it to us. In the other examples, God showed He will get our attention one way or another in order for us to understand His direction, His truth.

The natural person is going to reject as foolishness anything that comes from the Spirit of God! The natural person will never be able to comprehend God’s truth about sin, salvation, or about Jesus Christ because they do not process spiritual issues the same way as Believers.