Worship has nothing to do with entertainment

“For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.”

Those who can only feed on milk are still babies. Then he goes on to say,

“But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, or who are mature, that is, those who by reason of use”—but the margin says ‘practice’—“have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”

In other words, discernment is not something we can take for granted. It only comes by practice, and it only comes when we take in the whole counsel of God through His Word. If we are living like babies on milk, we do not have the ability to discern. If we have grown beyond that, we still cannot discern unless we practice.

I would like to challenge you and ask you, are you practicing discernment? I think I can say of myself that in a certain measure, I do practice discernment. When I walk into a situation, I put up my spiritual antennae, and I ask myself, what are the spiritual forces at work in this situation? When I listen to a sermon, I not only listen to the words, I try to discern the spirit that is coming through the words. But this only comes by practice. If you just walk around carelessly and casually, you will not have the ability to discern.

I believe we need to practice discernment in every situation. I believe discernment should be as regular a part of our spiritual life as prayer. Otherwise, we’ll be in trouble.

Now, I want to talk about the difference between the spiritual and the soulish, which I will illustrate from the diagram which you have available to you, that’s in your outline. This diagram illustrates the use of two Greek words: the word for spirit and the word for soul. And if you look at the diagram, you’ll see in it we have the Greek and then the English, the Greek and then the English. We have the noun and then the adjective. When you see them in writing, the relationship is obvious.

Now, the Greek word for spirit is *pneuma*, from which we get the English word ‘pneumatic,’ that is, a drill which is operated by air. This is because *pneuma* means breath, wind, and spirit. Now, the adjectives—and you should be looking at your diagram—the adjective from *pneuma* is *pneumatikos*. How do we translate that into English? We know that *pneuma* is spirit. Obviously, the English adjective from *pneuma* is what? Spiritual. That’s right. There’s no choice.

Now, we come down to the Greek word for soul, and here is the problem. The Greek word for soul is *psuche*, from which we get countless different words like ‘psychological’ or ‘psychiatric’ or ‘psychosomatic.’ A psychiatrist is a doctor of the soul, because *iatros* is the Greek word for doctor. All right, we have *psuche*, and the adjective, the Greek adjective, is *psuchikos*. Now, there’s no hesitation about the translation of the noun, it’s ‘soul.’ But what about the adjective?

The problem is that English does not have a word ‘soulish.’ I believe, therefore, that we have to create a word to translate the Bible correctly. According to my understanding, in German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, in all those languages, there is a word for ‘soulish.’ But English is limping along without the necessary word to convey this very important distinction.

Now, I’ll take all the places in the New Testament where the word *psuchikos*, or ‘soulish,’ is used, and I’ll try to draw out the difference between spiritual and soulish. First of all, we will take three cases where the word ‘soulish’ is applied to the physical body, which is perhaps a little hard to understand. I looked at five translations, and I found various different words that are used in different versions to translate this word *psuchikos*. In the original King James, they use ‘natural’ or ‘sensual.’ In the New King James, they also use ‘natural’ or ‘sensual.’ But in the margin, in the last case, they use ‘worldly.’ In the New American Standard, they use ‘natural,’ and in the margin, ‘unspiritual,’ and finally, ‘worldly-minded.’ In the New International Version, they used ‘without the Spirit,’ ‘natural,’ ‘unspiritual,’ and then they use the phrase ‘follow their natural instincts.’ You see then that unless we get behind the English translations, we really cannot grasp this vital distinction between that which is spiritual and that which is soulish.