The Spirit's Illumination
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· 17 viewsThis lesson is about communicating with God through God's Word.
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If you have a phone and you have it with you tonight. This one time, take it out and look or just tell me of an embarrassing or confusing typo.
How careful are you when you send a text message or post something online?
Do you ever send follow-up edits to correct your mistakes? why or why not?
Today we are going to talk about communicating with God through His Word. We have already learned that God Inspired His Word so that the message was recorded perfectly, unlike many of our text messages. the question is, can we successfully comprehend God’s message to us? God’ Word helps us answer that question. We will examine the evidence in this lesson.
Want to know when someone is perhaps not telling the truth? watch their feet. When under stress, people will increasingly move their feet since they are not concentrating on them. Instead, they are concentrating on their facial expressions and arm movement to convince you they are telling the truth. So when you see someone’s feet fidgeting, shuffling, winding around a chair, or eve making quick moves as if they are ready to run, then you have a good reason to question whether the person is being honest.
While feet might be indicators of a person’s honesty, they are by no means a sure test of truthfulness. At best they would only raise questions. Some people approach the Word of God with the same level of uncertainty. They think that we can’t be exactly sure what the Bible teaches. Tonight we will address God’s plan to communicate His truth to believers today.
God’s Purpose Inculdes Commuication
God’s Purpose Inculdes Commuication
God made people in His Image
God made people in His Image
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have always communicated with One another because it is apart of their nature. It is impossible for the members of the Godhead to miscommunicate.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
What did the persons of the Godhead talk about in this verse?
When Jesus came to earth, He continued to communicate with the Father. The Gospels gives us some examples of this.
And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.
And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.
God desired to also interact with His creation, so He purposefully designed Adam in His image. Being in the image of God meant in part that Adam had the ability to communicate effectively, especially before the fall. Adam could comprehend what God said to him and then respond in the way that God fully understood. God provided the means for humanity to know the truth about Him so they could fulfill their ultimate purpose of actually glorifying Him.
God gave people His Word
God gave people His Word
Appatently God was in the habit of walking and talking with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before Adam sinned. For after the fall, Adam and Eve hid from God in a attempt to avoid Him. That God cummunicated with Adam and Eve before and after the fall is clear from the creation account. The Fall did dramatically affect Adam and Eve’s relationship with God. They were no longer in fellowship with Him. they became sinners whose hearts and minds were darkened.
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.
As a result, they had to leave the Garden, the place of their sweet communion with God.
So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Man needed God’s direction for life even before the fall, so God revealed truth to them. and although it would be centuries before the Bible was writen, God continued to reval Himself and truth to humanity after the fall.
God made His Word accessible. Those who hear or read the gospel message can understand its truth and respond to it by putting their faith in God.
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;
Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
Once saved, the Word of God becomes a catalyst for the believer’s spiriual growth.
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
But how can a believer ever really know that he is making proper sense of God’s Word?
How does he know when he has come to the right conclusions and understanding for applying God’s Word to his life?
God’s Process for Communication
God’s Process for Communication
God has designed a process to help us understand His Word. He has not left us on our own in hope that we might stumble onto truth every once and a while. We can know the truth of God’s Word. but knowing God’s truth is not something that just happens to us. It takes action on out part.
The believer’s Job
The believer’s Job
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Paul fully expected Timothy, a young preacher, to study the Word to the point of having his work acceptable to God. In fact, he phrased it a a command.
Timothy was to be a workman in the things of God, rightly dividing the Word of truth. Rightly divide means to cut a straight line.
The workman of God is to cut straight when handling the Word of God. That is, he is to interpret it correctly, understanding its various doctrines and seeing one Scripture in the light of other Scriptures so that all fits into one harmonious whole.
Today, the baseball is a perfect is a perfect example of the importance of making sure two pieces of leather are lined up next to each other with no holes or overlaps. A pitcher must have a perfectly aligned baseball if his curve and slider are going to be effective. in the same way, a pastor needs to align the Scriptures as God intended if the Scriptures are going to be effective in his hands.
In order to rightly divide the Scriptures, Timothy needed to study. The word study means to have diligence. we ought to study it with diligence, not just when it happens to be convenient. not rushing through it like some of us do homework.
So is accuracy in presenting God’s Word based solely on the effort the teacher or preacher puts into the study?
is there another essential element in the process?
The Spirit’s Job
The Spirit’s Job
Diligent study of God’s Word is only profitable because of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s job is to illuminate the Scriptures so the one diligently study them can understand them properly. As mentioned before, the fall left humanity with mind darkened by sin. The Bible calls the sinner the narual man.
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.
The Bible essentially makes no sense to the unsaved person. the scientific method cannot uncover its truths. higher education cannot fathom it. nor can the human senses grasp it.
But as it is written, Eye 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.
it is not that the natural man is stupid. he simply lacks the ministry of the Spirit to enlighten his mind to understand the things of the Spirit of God.
All believers have the Spirit in them and therefore have the potential to study and understand God’s Word.
Our prayer when beginning to study God’s Word should be :
Open thou mine eyes,
That I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.
The person who studies God’s Word will experience the Spirit’s illumination so long as his heart is prepard properly. The believer who is living with known, unconfessed sin or who simply going through the motions of Bible reading out of the sense of duty will not gain from the spirit’s illumination ministry.
Nor will those who do not have the Spirit in them.