In this sermon, the speaker discusses the story of the Israelites who were delivered from bondage in Egypt by Moses. The majority of the Israelites were filled with fear and doubt when they heard the report of the ten men who saw walled cities and giants in the promised land. They forgot that God had promised to give them the land and instead focused on their fears. As a result, they wandered in the desert for forty years, missing out on the abundant blessings God had prepared for them. The speaker emphasizes the importance of trusting in God's promises and not allowing fear and doubt to hinder us from entering into the fullness of the spiritual life.

In the second and third chapters of 1 Corinthians, beginning with verse 13, maybe verse 9 would be better. As it is written, I hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man but the spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God, which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk and not with meat, for hitherto you were not able to bear it. Neither yet now are ye able, for ye are yet carnal. That is part of 1 Corinthians 2 and 3. And this is the second in a series of talks on the deeper life. What is the deeper life and how can I enter into it? And we have as our general text that one in the Hebrews, the 6th chapter, which says simply, Leaving the first principles, or the principles, let us go on unto perfection. And I'll be talking over the next Sunday mornings on the deeper spiritual life. Now, there are three kinds of persons mentioned here in Paul's description in 1 Corinthians 2 and 3. They are the natural, the carnal, and the spiritual. The natural man simply means the unregenerate man, the man who is simply of body and intellect and his appetites and temperament and all that is natural in a man, that every human being has that's born into the world. That's the natural man. And it's said about him that he receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. You may test the quality of religious teaching by the enthusiastic reception given it by unsaved men. If it is received enthusiastically by a natural man, it is not of the Spirit of God, because Paul says plainly that spiritual things cannot be known by unregenerate man, and that they are plain foolishness unto them. There is a type of religious teaching which is understood by and received by and seems perfectly logical to the natural man. But that which is of the Spirit of God is not known to the natural man. He has not the faculty to receive it. Now, that's here plainly. Then in verse 15, there is what is called the spiritual man. He that is spiritual judgeth all things. And he says that I have talked to you not as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. And thus he spots and describes another type of man, the spiritual man. First, I think I ought to say a little more about the natural man. The natural man is the man who is in a state of nature. He may be in perfect health, he may have an I.Q. of 180, he may be as handsome as a Greek statue, or if it's a woman, she may be at the top and be a perfect example of fine womanhood, or youth, a perfect example of young American youth, we would say here. And the natural man, though he is in this state, he is in a state of nature, he is unblessed and he is out of grace. Then there is the spiritual man, that is, the Christian who is mature and who is led and taught and controlled by the Holy Spirit, to whom the Spirit of God can speak and who is led by the Spirit. Then there is the carnal man that Paul talks about here. The carnal man is the immature Christian. He is not a natural man in that he has been renewed by the grace of God and is in a state of grace, but he is not spiritual. He is halfway in between. He is immature and thus carnal. That is, he is regenerated, but he is not advanced, he is retarded in his spiritual life. He is not influenced by nor led by the Holy Spirit, but is controlled by his lower nature. Now, here we have these three. And in the Old Testament, incidentally, the spiritual man is the man that I would say is living the deeper spiritual life. He is enjoyed by, led by, taught by, influenced by, and controlled by the Holy Spirit. Now, in the Old Testament we have a prototype of these three. That is, in the story of Israel. Israel at Kadesh Barnea is a perfect example of the immature Christian who is not advanced and will not advance, who will not go on with God, though he is not unsaved, he is not in a state of nature but in a state of grace, and is blessed and does know God as his Savior. Here was the Old Testament picture that, corresponding to the natural man who is not in a state of grace, was Israel in Egypt. They were in a state of bondage there. You know the story well. Four hundred and some years they had been in Egypt, and a good part of that time they had been in bondage to Pharaoh. Then came Moses with blood and atonement and power, and he brought the children Israel out of Egypt, and the Red Sea closed between Israel and Egypt. Now, that is corresponding to the new birth, the regeneration which makes the natural man a Christian, which takes him out of nature and puts him in a state of grace. Israel came out of Egypt and went across the river, and the river crossed the sea, and the sea closed behind them, and the enemy died on the shore, and Israel was for the first time in four hundred years a free nation, redeemed by blood and by power. Now, there you have the Christian. He has been all his lifetime subject to bondage. Bondages of various kinds, chains and shackles and manacles have been upon his spirit. But now, through the blood of the Lamb and the power of the Spirit, he is brought out of Egypt, and the Red Sea closes after him. We used to sing, I've crossed the Red Sea of his blood and left the world behind me. And that's exactly what has happened. Well, then there is the spiritual man. That's Israel in Canaan. This was God's benevolent intention, that those who had been natural men in bondage in Egypt should come out of Egypt and go straight eleven-day journey to the holy land, to that land offered to Abraham by God in covenant, the holy land, the land of promise, Canaan variously called. And that was to be the homeland of Israel. That was to be their spiritual homeland. And there they were not only to be out of Egypt, but they were to be in the holy land. He brought them out that he might bring them in. This is what is lost, the note that is lost so much in our teaching. He brings us out, not that we may be out. He brings us out that we may be in. God saves a gangster, not that he might tell about it once a year for the next forty years. He saves him from being a gangster that he might become a saint. He takes him out that he might lead him in. And the further in the man goes, the less he will have to say about where he used to be. It is not the mark of spirituality when I talk at length about what I used to be. Israel wanted to forget what she used to be and remembered it only occasionally to thank God. But we magnify what we used to be and write books to tell the world what we used to be. Paul said those things ought not even to be mentioned among the people of God. They are not even to be mentioned in conversation what you used to be. What you used to be, God brought you out of. But he didn't bring you out to leave you in a vacuum. He brought you out that he might bring you in. And it was the will of God that after he had brought Israel out of Egypt, he should then in eleven short days march, they tell us, they could have been in the land. The enemy could have been driven out and they could have had the holy land of promise which God had given to them centuries before. They were not stealing it, they were occupying it as their proper possession. God who owned it had given it to Abraham and his seed after him. But Abraham's seed had been driven out there and driven to Egypt. Now God brings them back to put them in the land, not, I say, to be usurpers and to take the land, but to occupy the land which was properly theirs by a gift of the one who owned it, namely God. So God brings us out of sin that he might bring us into the spiritual life. And he never has a vacuum in between anywhere, unless you would count that short five, eleven days march a vacuum. But it was to be a God-blessed, hovered over and Chicana-enlightened march straight through to the holy land. And when they got in the land of the homeland of their spirits, back into the land from which Abraham had come centuries before Jacob, then they were to be spiritual men. And they corresponded to the spiritual men. But now what about the carnal man? The carnal man is the immature Christian who does not go on, he is not advanced, he is retarded, he is not influenced nor controlled by the Spirit, but by his lower nature. Now when Israel came to Kadesh Barnea, after they had marched a little while in the direction of the spiritual promised land, they stopped at a town sometimes called Kadesh and sometimes called Kadesh Barnea. And there at Kadesh Barnea they stopped. And Moses said to them in effect, Well, you are about to enter into the land which is the object of your hope toward which God started to lead you when he brought you out of Egypt. But they said, We are a little afraid. Let us send out twelve men. So they sent twelve men up into Canaan. And those twelve men went up to examine the land and report back to see whether they could take it or not. And when they came back, all of them, they reported that it was an exceeding good land. They said there were brooks there. One of them was called Eshkol, brooks of water. Well, to a people in that country, in that land, water was water. It was riches untold. It was more valuable than silver and gold and diamonds. And to come back and say it is an exceeding good land in which there is much water was equivalent to saying that it was Atlantis, or the paradise. They found their grapes so large that they took one bunch and carried them between two men. They found figs, and those figs would be their sugar and their candy and their preserves and would be to them what you and I have by way of marmalade and jellies and candies and sodas and all the people liked their sweet tooth, they had their figs. And figs and dates meant almost altogether the sweet element in their diet. Then there was pomegranates. I don't think pomegranate would be classified among the citrus fruit, but it is near to it, very near to it. And of course, if you've ever eaten a pomegranate, sometimes go to a fruit store and ask for a pomegranate. They may have them. And cut it loose, cut it through, and eat this pomegranate. It's all full of seeds, but it has a tart, pungent taste to it, and very, very juicy. You could squeeze them and get good juice. And I don't know for sure, but knowing that they grow in the sunshine, and knowing where they grow, and knowing how they taste, I think I'm not too far away when I say that they would literally be packed with what we now call vitamins. They would be well worth their having. Then there was milk and honey. And the scripture says that the milk and honey flowed. Now, when it said milk and honey flowing, it literally wasn't using careless language. Why, there were those great bee trees back in the state where I come from, Pennsylvania. Men would find bee trees where they put so much honey in that it wouldn't hold, and it was dribbling. The honey was literally dripping down. And so the great rocks where they made honey literally dripped with honey, and there was milk abundant. Now, that was the land so different from Egypt from which they had come only a little while before. Now, ten of these men came back and they said, that's what the country is like, but nevertheless we advise you do not go up into the land because though it is an exceeding good land with brooks of water, grapes and figs and pomegranates and milk and honey, yet the people are large and strong, and there are giants there, and their cities are great and walled up to heaven. They were excited. Walled here up to heaven, they said, and the land eateth up its inhabitants. Now, a land that had brooks of water and grapes and figs and pomegranates and honey and milk didn't sound to me as if it was in busy eating up inhabitants. Beside that, they hadn't stayed there long enough to watch the land eat up anything. They were simply frightened and filled with unbelief. And they said, we advise against going up. Let's stay here in the wilderness. We're out of Egypt, thank God, the slavery is behind us and we're not slaves anymore. We're in the wilderness and it isn't the best, but we'll settle for it, rather than go up among those giants in that wonderful homeland called Palestine. But Caleb and Joshua appeared and stepped to the head of the line and said to Moses, that we urge you to go in and pay no attention to these pessimists. We can easily take the land. They'll be bred for us. It belongs to us. Our father God gave it to us and gave it to Abraham, our father, and it's ours. Let's go take it. Let's go up. They saw the rich advantages in the land and they were unwilling to allow the large, strong, giant and walled cities to keep them out. Well, now the effect on the people. It's always that way, brethren. It has been down the years, all of this modern teaching about the Church being a perfect democracy and that there should be no leaders. It's just plain poppycock and there's nothing in either Old Testament or New Testament that gives support to it. The leaders were sent up to spy out the land and the people were more or less dependent upon what the leaders said, just as you and I are dependent in this democracy upon what our leaders do in Washington to a large extent. And in the Church of Christ, it's the same. And the people, when they heard the unfavorable report of the ten men, that is, the majority report had been read, Caleb and Joshua gave a minority report, but there were only two against ten. And so the people wept and fell down in front of their tent doors and wept and wished they had not come out of Egypt and said, would God we were back in Egypt. And they pleaded the presence of their women and children. All they could see was walled cities and giants. They couldn't see grapes and great cattle with their great udders dripping with milk and great rocks and trees drooling sweet honey down onto the grass. Couldn't see that. They couldn't see the rolling lawns and the brooks and rivers. They couldn't see that. All they could see would be the great giants in the land. They forgot that God had said, go up now, I'll give it to you. And so they said, oh, you'll kill our poor women. You'll kill our children. And this always is this unspiritual man's argument. His argument always is, I've got to think about my family. I've got a family after all, brother. And God wants us to be wise. And I can't push this too far. I can't become too spiritual because I've got to think about my family. I can't subject my wives and children to difficulties. I can't lay burdens on them. Always pleading their wives and families, forgetting that the best heritage you can leave your family is the memory of being a good man. You'll forget that, sir. You'll forget that, mother, that if you become a spiritual woman, your family may fight you and they may burn you with hot language and scald you with sarcastic speech and oppose you and make you feel like an idiot. But when you're gone, they'll walk quietly away wiser and sadder and will admit that the best heritage you left them was that you were a good man. I said here two weeks ago, I can leave nothing to my family. I can leave them nothing except a few books. But if my boys scattered all around everywhere, all of them but one in church, all of them some kind of Christians, singing in choirs and all that sort of thing around here and there among the Baptist and Presbyterian churches, all some kind of Christians except one. But I don't know what they think of the old man, but I do know this. If I can have lived so that when I'm finished, my family will have to say, he said in an example that I could safely follow, and the memory of a man who lived for God in a bad world is more to me than all the riches of LaSalle Street. Then I will have left them a heritage the like of which no rich man can leave to his son. And if these had only known, they could have taken those wives and women and families of children of theirs up into the Holy Land within a few hours, and they would have had all that land. But for 14 years they wandered in the desert, in a desert land, and those poor wives and children that they had been so afraid were going to get killed if they went up into the land, the spiritual land. Those same wives and children walked on their feet for 14 years, aimlessly round and round and round and round in the desert, now circling back near to Egypt where they had been, now in a wide loop circling back close to the promised land where they should be, back around again to Egypt where they were, and then round again in a wide loop again near to where they ought to be, 40 years until those children were grown to middle age, and those old ladies were dead, and the young were old, or at least middle-aged. Forty years of it, because they had whimpered and said, we can't go up, it's costing us too much, we can't mistreat our families. I've got to be with my family Sunday nights and Wednesday nights and all during missionary convention. I've got to be with my family. I can't make juvenile delinquents. You won't make juvenile delinquents out of your family. The best way to save them from delinquency is to show them an example of a man who loves God uncompromisingly and who seeks to be spiritual if it costs him his blood. I don't know whether you saw the Alliance Weekly or not some weeks ago when there appeared an article in it called They Hang Their Prophet. Friedrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran who lived at the time of Hitler. Friedrich Bonhoeffer was a man of remarkable spiritual insight, and I have a certain marginal delight that the people are reading him and talking about him now, because of my little art. But anyway, he saw Hitler rise and knew what Hitler would be, and he'd get up to a microphone and told Germany, look out for this man. And then he began to preach Jesus Christ, preach Jesus Christ as the Savior of men, and preach what he called costly grace. He said, the grace of God will cost you everything you have. Don't try to get into the heaven cheaply. The grace of God is costly because it costs Christ his blood, and it costs us everything, and maybe it costs us our lives. So they caught him and they put him in prison. They oscillated him back and forth and shuttled him from one concentration camp to another, and everywhere he went he was preaching Jesus and comforting people wherever he could. He was engaged to a lovely young woman. He had a sister, I believe a father if I recall, and another one or two other relatives. And they pulled their old trick, the old totalitarian trick. They pulled it in Red China, in Russia, Czechoslovakia, in Poland, and pulled in Germany when Hitler was alive. It was this. You better buckle down to me and shut up. I've got your children. I've got your wife. I have your sweetheart. I have your mother as a hostage, and if you don't do what I ask you to do, woe be to them. That was their technique and their trick. They said, You surrender and shut up about costly grace and freedom and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Stop warning against Hitler and the Nazis, or we'll kill your woman you're engaged to marry. We'll destroy your family. The young man, still in his thirties, said, My family, or to an effect, My family belongs to God, and you'll never get me to surrender by threatening to kill my family. When God calls a man, he calls him to come and die. Do your worst. So they hanged him, and along with him, the same time or nearer to the same time, they destroyed the woman he was to marry. They destroyed his sister, I think, and the father, if I have it straight, for I'm speaking from memory. You say, What kind of a beast was he? He's the kind of beast John saw in heaven. The beast and the four and twenty elders fell down before the throne and said, Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty. He was a man you couldn't threaten a family. You couldn't say, I'll get your family. That's the devil's trick. It's always been the devil's trick. You give more than you should to the Lord's work. If you seek to become a spiritual man, you'll harm your family. That's the devil's trick. Well, they wandered forty years to God's judgment. God said, Doubtless ye shall not come into the land. Their fear of death and their doubts and their complaining displeased God, because God said, You've slandered the land. And every man who stands out in the shadows and slanders the deeper spiritual life is slandering the sunshine. Every man who refuses to enter into the holy life is, in the wilderness, slandering the homeland of the soul. So for forty years they wandered aimlessly about. Just wandering. God was with them, kept them with them, didn't destroy them. He let them die one at a time. Occasionally he would punish them. You know those stories. But he didn't destroy them as a nation. And what's the meaning for us? The meaning for us is that if you're a natural man, no matter how learned, how talented, how handsome, how desirable, a natural woman, no matter how beautiful, you don't know a thing about God. And you don't know a thing about the spiritual life. You haven't the faculties to know it. If there was a man post-death, stone-death, sitting, and there was a Mozart symphony on playing, you wouldn't blame the man who was deaf because he would rather read than listen. He couldn't hear. He hasn't got the faculty that can enjoy the music. Or if you were in an art gallery looking at pictures, and there was a man completely blind that could not even see light sitting on the bench, you wouldn't say, what's that Philistine doing sitting there? Why doesn't he get up and look at pictures? He doesn't have the faculty to look at pictures. The thing you look at pictures with is dead in him. And the deaf man, that which you listen to symphonies with, is dead in him. So you, my friend, no matter who you are, nor how learned, nor how religious, if you have not been regenerated, renewed, made over, brought to life by the quickening of the Holy Ghost, you can't know God, you can't know Christ, you can't know spiritual things at all. You can only know the history of it. And all your enthusiasm for religion is a delusion. For the Holy Ghost says you don't have the faculty to know spiritual things well. Then what else does God say to us through this? He says that we Christians who are quickened to life, who are his children, who are not in a state of nature anymore but in a state of grace, to continue without progress year after year, as some of us are doing, is to wander spiritually, wander, walk in circles instead of straight ahead, round and round and round in circles. Sometimes a little closer to Egypt than to the Holy Land, but again a little closer to the Holy Land than to Egypt. So we oscillate in our circlings, round and round. Occasionally we can look over the sea and see where we used to be slaves, that's getting pretty close to sin. Then again in a prayer meeting or in some revival, we put our arms so close we can almost look over into the Holy Land. But we're not going either place. We're not going back into the world and we're not going to push on into the spiritual life. So round and round we go, oscillating between nearness to the old world where we came from and nearness to the new world where we ought to be in our spirits. I say to continue without progress year after year is to acquire a chronic habit, harder to break as time passes. The best time in the world to plunge into the deeper spiritual life is when you're a young Christian. When you're young, you've got enthusiasm and you have informed the habits. Now for instance, suppose that I were to learn or try to learn, say, Japanese. At my age, I couldn't learn Japanese. I'm positive I could learn to read it and write it. I can learn anything men can print, I think, and you can too. But I could never speak it so as to be understood. Why? Because I've been around too long and the muscles of my tongue and lips and palate, if palates have muscles, I don't know whether they do, but anyhow, I guess they do. That whole structure that forms words has been formed to English, to English. All the little twists and turns and slurs of the English tongue, they fit my mouth. And the older I get, the harder it will be for me to learn a new language. But little Joy here, when they go to wherever they're going, she doesn't know yet, she'll be able in years' time to be rattling in the language of their heel with perfect fluency, picking up from the other little kids around, because her little mouth hasn't really learned English yet. And the younger you are, the easier it is to learn and speak a new language, because habits harden you. And I know there are Christians, and to me it's a very, very heavy burden. I don't say it discourages me, because I refuse to be ever discouraged about anything, but I do say it gives me a heavy heart to be forced, as I do much of the time, to walk among Christians, not only here but all over where I go. Even old people who have wandered for 40 long years in the wilderness, not going back to sin but not going on into the holy life, wandering around in the aimless circle, sometimes a little warmer and sometimes a little colder, sometimes a little holier and sometimes very unholy, but never going on in. Habits have been acquired, and it's hard to break. And it makes it almost certain that they will live and die a spiritual failure. To me, this is a terrible thing, brother, a terrible thing. A man decides to be a lawyer, and he spends years learning to be a lawyer, and he puts out his shame. But he finds that there's something in his temperament that makes it impossible for him to make good as a lawyer. He's a failure, a complete failure. Now here he is, 50 years old, and he was admitted to the bar when he was 30. He's had 20 years, and he hasn't been able to make a living. He's a failure as a lawyer. He's a businessman who buys a business, tries to operate it. He does everything he knows, but he just can't make it go. Year after year after year, the ledger shows red. He's not making a profit. He borrows where he can. He has a little spurt and has hope. That spurt soon dies down, and he's back again. Finally, he settles out, hopelessly in debt, a failure in the business world. Here's a teacher who trains in the schools to be a teacher, but just can't get along as a teacher. Something in the constitutional or temperamental structure that just won't allow her to get on with children or young people. So after being shuttled from one place to another, and out and out toward the margin, finally have to give up, go somewhere and run a stapling machine. He said, I just can't teach. A failure. I've known ministers who thought they were called a priest, and they trained and studied, learned Greek and Hebrew, and what have you, but they just somehow can't make the public feel they want to hear them. They just can't do it. A failure. Now, it's possible to be a Christian and yet be a failure. By that I mean, just as Israel in the desert wandering, they were Israelites, they were God's people, they were protected and fed, but they were failures. They weren't where God meant them to be. They were compromising. Halfway between where they used to be and where they ought to be. And that describes so many of the Lord's people. Live and die spiritual failures. I'm awfully glad God's good in times when poor failures crawl into God's arms, but alas, to say, Father, I made a mess of it. I just couldn't get free from the tugging and the dominance of my flesh. I wanted to, and often I wept, you know, and wished I could. But Father, you know, I just couldn't make it. I'm a spiritual failure. I haven't been out doing evil things exactly. Certainly I've not been where I know I could be. So here I am, Father, and I'm old and ready to go, and I'm a failure. You know what? Our kind, gracious, heavenly Father will take us in. And he won't say to us, depart from me, I never knew you. Because that person has and believes and does believe in Jesus Christ. That person has been renewed and the seed and root of the matter is in him. But oh, what a failure he's been all his life. What a failure. Unready for death and unready for heaven. I wonder if that's what the man of God meant when he said, For other foundations can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Have any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, haze, Every man's work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so is my fire. I think that's what it means, all right. We ought to be the kind of Christians that can live not only to save our souls, but save all our lives. When Lot went out of Sodom, he had nothing but the garment that covered him. He got out all right, dressed alone in the garment he had on. Thank God he got out. But how much better if he could have had a farewell at the gate, with candles and donkey trains loaded with his goods. He could have gone out, head up, chin up, saying good-bye to old Sodom, been changed, transformed. He could have marched away from there with his family, heads up. How much better Paul says, or Peter it is, see that you have an abundant entrance. Thank God we're going to make it. But are you satisfied to make it the way you've been, wandering, wandering, roaming aimlessly, when there is a place where Jesus sheds the oil of gladness on our heads, a place in all the world more sweet, it is the blood-bought mercy seat. And it's the will of God that you should enter and live under the shadow of that mercy seat, and go out from there, and circle and come back there, always being renewed and recharged and refed back there by the mercy seat, living a separated, clean, holy, sacrificial life, a life of continual spiritual victory. Wouldn't that be better than the way we're doing? I want to talk again next Sunday morning further about the deeper spiritual life and what it means and how to enter in. Heavenly Father, we pray that thou wilt single us out as though there weren't any others, in lonely singleness, and speak to us. Lord, it isn't thy will that we should fail in our Christian progress. Lead us, Lord. Thou hast spoken this morning, of that we are quite certain. Continue to speak. Save us, we pray thee, from the result of our own foolishness. Save us from the traits of our own nature. Save us, we pray thee, from our own laziness. And make this afternoon, for some, a time of crossing over. And now may grace, and mercy, and peace, and the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost be with us forever.