Sense Knowledge
The Limits of the Five Senses
Theme: The five senses are faithful servants in the physical realm, but they become a deadly hindrance when allowed to rule over spiritual reality. Main Text: 1 Corinthians 2:14
Introduction
Imagine a skilled servant who has served a household faithfully for many years. He knows every room, every schedule, every need of the physical household. He can tell you the temperature of the rooms, the condition of the furniture, the contents of the pantry. He is reliable within the sphere of his assignment.
But suppose that same servant begins to insist that nothing exists beyond the walls of the house. Suppose he declares that the master’s voice from another room is imaginary because he cannot see the master, or that the master’s written instructions are unreliable because they contradict what his eyes and ears currently report. The servant has not become evil. He has simply stepped outside the limits of his calling and begun to rule where he was meant only to serve.
This is the story of sense knowledge.
I. The Five Senses as Faithful Servants
A. God’s Design God designed the five senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell—as faithful servants of the physical body. Through them the human brain receives a continuous stream of information about the material world.
B. Their Proper Sphere
- Every scientific discovery, medical advance, engineering achievement, and work of art that depends on form and color has been built upon the data these five servants supply.
- Sense knowledge is not evil. It is necessary.
- The farmer needs to see the soil. The physician needs to examine the body. The parent needs to hear the cry of a child.
C. The Strength of Hebrew Thought Ancient Hebrew thought is deeply concrete and sensory. Words are rooted in what can be seen, touched, heard, tasted, or smelled. This sensory rootedness keeps truth connected to lived reality and is one of the strengths of the Hebrew mind.
Key Truth: In the realm for which they were given, the senses are gifts of God’s wisdom.
II. The Achievements and the Hard Limits of Sense Knowledge
A. Remarkable Achievements Within Its Sphere Sense knowledge has mapped the stars, split the atom, and extended the average human lifespan. It can describe the intricate design of a cell or the precise orbit of a planet. It can even recognize that the universe appears ordered.
B. Silence at the Boundary of the Spiritual
- It can observe the order of creation, but it cannot discover the Creator.
- It can measure the body, but it cannot explain the spirit that animates it.
- It can report pain, but it cannot declare the finished work that has already purchased healing.
- It can record an empty bank account, but it cannot see the provision already released through the cross.
- It can catalog the gifts of the Spirit as historical phenomena, but it cannot experience them as present-tense inheritance.
C. When Sense Knowledge Turns to Philosophy When it reaches the end of what the five senses can detect, sense knowledge turns to philosophy and begins to guess. It constructs systems of thought to answer questions only revelation can answer: Why are we here? What is the source of life? What happens after death? Who is God?
Scripture (full text): “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.” —Hosea 4:6
The knowledge missing was not technical information. It was the intimate, relational knowledge of God Himself.
III. When the Servant Becomes the Master
A. The Greatest Danger The greatest danger is not the existence of sense knowledge. The greatest danger is when sense knowledge is allowed to govern matters that belong to the spirit. This is what Kenyon called “the greatest hindrance to the faith life.”
B. Practical Examples in the Believer’s Life
- A medical report arrives. The five senses register the symptoms. Sense knowledge concludes, “This is the final reality.” Prayer turns into pleading instead of thanksgiving for the finished work.
- The bank balance is examined. Sense knowledge announces lack. The heart tightens. Faith begins to bargain with circumstances.
- The gifts of the Spirit are read about. Sense knowledge replies, “I have never felt anything like that; therefore it cannot be for me.” The supernatural is reduced to the occasional and the exceptional.
C. The Closed System of the Natural Man Scripture (full text): “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.” —1 Corinthians 2:14
The natural man is locked inside a closed system. His only instruments of knowledge are the five senses, and those instruments have no access to the things of the Spirit. Even after the new birth, many believers continue to operate largely within that closed system.
IV. A Pastoral Warning
A. The Critical Difference This is not a minor adjustment. It is the difference between living as a natural man with Christian vocabulary and living as a new creation who walks by the revelation of what Christ has already finished.
B. Two Opposite Approaches
- Sense knowledge will always demand evidence before it believes.
- Revelation knowledge believes the Word and then watches the evidence follow.
- Sense knowledge says, “Seeing is believing.”
- Revelation knowledge answers, “Believing is seeing.”
C. The Proper Place of the Senses We do not despise the five senses or pretend they do not exist. We thank God for the information they supply about the physical world, and then we turn to the higher report—the report of the finished work of Christ, unveiled to the recreated spirit by the Holy Spirit through the living Word.
Conclusion and Call to Response
This is the first great step across the divide.
The servants have their place. The Master has spoken. It is time to let the Master’s voice be the final authority.
Closing Challenge: Refuse to let the five senses cast the deciding vote on matters of faith. Thank them for their service in the physical realm, and then deliberately submit every report they bring to the higher authority of the finished work of Christ.
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