Turning Point

David Michael Jeremiah: If you've ever fumbled around in a dark room, then you know light is needed to see things clearly. And no one brings it better than the Holy Spirit. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah shares how the Spirit can help you overcome darkness and confusion and light your way with truth and clarity. Listen now as David introduces today's eye-opening message, The Illumination of the Spirit.

Dr. David Jeremiah: So what does the word illuminate mean? It means to throw light on something. What does it mean when the Bible says the Holy Spirit is the illuminator? He is the one who throws light and helps us to understand the Word of God. We're going to talk about that from 1st Corinthians chapter 2, verses 6 through 14, so find your place there.

If you have a copy of the study guide, you can find your section in the study guide and follow along with bullet points. All of the scriptures and outlines are there. We also have a book that's built around the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It's called The Holy Spirit You May Not Know, and it is available to you this month as a resource. Which means when you send a gift of any size to help us with the cost of broadcasting, airtime, and production, we'll send this book to you as our way of saying thank you. It's a beautiful book with beautiful truth to help you live a beautiful life.

I'd love for you to have your copy of it. Help us if you can. Do the best you can. But whatever you send, simply say, please send me the book on the Holy Spirit, and this 250-page book will be on its way to you right away. The illumination of the Spirit is a very interesting subject. It answers a lot of questions that people ask about how we know that the Bible is truly the Word of God. Let's find some answers as we open our scriptures together today.

It was the fall of 1940 in a small village in Southern France. Four teenage friends and their dog whose name was Robot were trotting along a countryside road. As they wandered near a hillside, Robot scampered toward a hole in the ground near a fallen tree. The boys, bold and adventurous, followed after him.

The opening was barely wide enough for a person to squeeze through. Curious, they tossed stones into the hole to test its depth, and then, one by one, they wiggled through and slid nearly 50 feet down into the earth. It was dark. It was damp and silent, like a basement no one had entered in a long time.

For a moment they couldn't see anything. Then they lit their oil lamp, and in that instant the walls around them sprang to life. On the stone walls were massive bulls, powerful horses, and deer with branching antlers. The animals seemed alive, frozen and their shapes leaping and galloping across the rock. Vibrant colors of red, brown, and black were glowing in the flickering light, and the boys just stood there in awe.

Without meaning to, they had stumbled upon one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. They had found the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux. That's what light does. It shows us what's been hidden. Before they turned on the lamp, they didn't know where they were, and they just saw darkness. And that's exactly what the Holy Spirit wants to do for us, to shine a light on God's Word so that we can understand it.

The Holy Spirit has always been connected to the Word of God. There in the inspiration of the scripture, guiding the writers as they wrote it. But today I want to talk to you not about inspiration, but about illumination. What is the difference? Inspiration is how the Bible was written. Illumination is how we understand what was written today. Inspiration happened in the past when the Spirit of God guided people like Moses and David and Paul to record God's truth without error. Illumination is what happens in us when the Holy Spirit opens our eyes and our hearts to see what God is saying to us through his precious Word.

Let's take a closer look at this. First of all, why this is so important: the mandate for spiritual illumination. The Bible tells us that without the Spirit of God shining in our hearts, we can never understand what the Bible says. There are a number of reasons for that. If you're an unbeliever here, if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, if you don't consider yourself to be a Christian because you're not one, you can read the Bible, you can memorize it, you can diagram it, you can take apart its Hebrew and Greek meanings, and it will still never mean anything to you. It will be just like a book full of words.

Paul says it this way in 2nd Corinthians chapter 4: "But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them." Paul says that before we become Christians, our eyes are blinded to the Word of God. We don't have any equipment to understand it. Before you invite Christ into your life, you have spiritual scales on your eyes. You can read it for all you're worth, and it's just a bunch of words. It's like trying to read a book in a language you don't know.

First Corinthians 2:14, we're told that "the natural man," that's the person who doesn't know the Lord, "the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God." Why doesn't he? Well, here's what it says in 2:14: "For they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." If I ask for testimonies here today, many of you could say, "You know, before I knew Christ, Pastor, I tried to read the Bible some, maybe in a hotel room when you pull the Gideon Bible out. You tried to read it, but it felt like foolishness. I couldn't understand why people love this book so much, because to me it was just a bunch of words on a page."

But when the Spirit of God comes to live within you, when you become a Christian and the Holy Spirit enters your life, he begins to open the Word of God so that you begin to understand it. He directs his light on its pages. He highlights verses that apply to your situation. He brings clarity and conviction to your mind. That's what we call the illuminating of the Spirit. It's the Spirit of God casting light on the Word of God and shining in our hearts so that the Word begins to come off the page and make sense in our lives.

You can't have spiritual illumination unless you're a Christian. The Bible says that very clearly. I know people who have become Christians, and they have told me that they tried to read the Bible before they became Christians and it made no sense. And when they got saved, it was like somebody had rewritten the Bible, because all of a sudden it now made sense.

The Bible says there's a mandate for spiritual illumination, but it's also a mystery. 1st Corinthians 2 says, "We speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this world. We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for if they had known this wisdom, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory." He says if the people of Jesus' age had known the wisdom of God, they never would have put him to death. They would have understood that God had a plan for his son.

Paul is writing about the wisdom of God that is concealed from the people of this age. The princes of this world, the rulers of this age, the aristocrats, the political leaders, the intellectuals, many of them don't know the wisdom of God, and when you listen to them talk and you hear them speak, you realize they do not have a clue about who God is or what his Word is or what his purpose is.

Their money can't buy this wisdom. Their power can't demand it. Their influence can't obtain it. They can't download it from the internet. They can't acquire it from the world's finest universities. To that, I say amen. They can't discover it from some guru sitting in a hut in the Himalayas. They can't get it anywhere because the only place you get the wisdom of God is from the Spirit of God. And you get the Spirit of God when you get the Son of God in your life through salvation.

I've often said that someone with no formal education, someone who knows Jesus and reads their Bible, has more lasting wisdom than a brilliant scholar with a PhD. You know, there are some people that have so many degrees they have no temperature. Did you know that? They don't have the Spirit. The wisdom of the believer will carry them further than the knowledge of the unbeliever. I know some little old ladies like that, some people who've lived in the Word of God their whole life. I would trust them with my question about the spiritual things of this world far more than I would trust them with somebody with a PhD from a secular university. Because one is from God and the other is from the world.

So if you want the wisdom of the world, you don't need the Holy Spirit. You can get that wisdom anywhere you want. Any of the state institutions, universities and colleges, correspondence schools, they'll be more than happy to relieve you of your time and your money. But if you want the wisdom of God, you have to have the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit. 1st Corinthians 2:7 says, "But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory."

The wisdom of God is a mystery. That doesn't mean it's a riddle. It means it's something that has been in existence but has not been understood. Now it's being understood because the Bible tells us what this mystery is. That same word is used to describe the church. The church, according to the Bible, is a mystery. What does that mean? It didn't exist in the minds of the Old Testament people, but in the New Testament it was revealed. And now that mystery is no longer a mystery. Now it's revealed.

It was a mystery that the Bible says is the Spirit of God in this way. The Bible tells us that when we're trying to get into spiritual truth, we're dealing with God's mysteries, his hidden wisdom. We can't comprehend it if we don't know the Lord, and that will never be able to be comprehended apart from God's Holy Spirit. You know, there are times when God in his common grace allows us to benefit from the wisdom and skill of people who don't know him. Doctors, teachers, counselors who aren't Christians can still be a blessing. They have good things to say.

But when it comes to the issues of the heart, when it comes to the issues of God, we need the wisdom of God, and that's why we look to people who know the Lord and are filled with his Spirit. Let me pause here and get myself in a little trouble. I have a lot of friends who are Christians who go to unbelieving counselors. They're to counselors who don't know God, and they'll be able to help you to a certain extent. But when it comes to the spiritual part of your life, they don't have a clue, and they might even give you bad information.

I'm not saying they don't have any value. In fact, there's a story about my having cancer and going to see my doctor for the first time. I didn't walk into his office and say, "The first thing I want to know about you is are you a Christian?" No, the first thing I wanted to know from him was does he know anything about cancer because I don't want to have this for the rest of my life. I think that's important.

But when it comes to the issues of the heart, you can't get the counsel you need from somebody who doesn't know God. How are they going to help you know God better if they don't know God themselves? So I'm not trying to offend anybody, and if you happen to be a counselor who's not a Christian, I'm sure God has given you a great clientele. But I'm just talking to the people of God. If you want to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord, you have to grow in grace and the knowledge of the Lord from people who also know the Lord.

The mandate for spiritual illumination and the mystery of it. Now, let's talk about how this works. What is the ministry of the Holy Spirit's illumination? First of all, he brings us spiritual discernment. One of the last promises of the Savior that was made to his disciples before his crucifixion concerned the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Here's what Jesus said in John 16: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when he, the Spirit of Truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth; for he will not speak of his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will tell you things to come. And he will glorify me, for he will take of what is mine and declare it to you."

What Jesus told his disciples was this. He said, "I'm going back to heaven. I'm going to go back to heaven, but don't worry, I'm going to send you another Comforter, the Holy Spirit. And when he comes, he will live within you, and he will guide you into all truth. He won't speak of his own words or pursue his own agenda. He will speak of my words because remember we learned one of the purposes of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Jesus Christ and to lift him up."

Have you ever had anybody come up and say, "You know, Pastor Jeremiah, I know what you're thinking"? No, you don't. You don't know what I'm thinking. How could you know what I'm thinking? You're not inside me. You don't know what I'm thinking. But the truth is when they say that, they're just saying something that's meaningless. And what Jesus is saying is this: When the Spirit of God comes, he will take what he knows from God, and as God himself, he will reveal these things to you, and then you will really be thinking the right things. You'll be thinking God things.

You really can't know God, you can't know his Word unless the Spirit of God is in the process. You say, "Well, Pastor, I don't know very much about the Holy Spirit." You don't have to know very much about him except he is the third person of the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And the Bible says that when Jesus Christ becomes your Savior, the third person of the Godhead comes to live within you.

You literally become the temple of the Holy Spirit. He lives within your heart, and he is there not just to occupy space or, as he sometimes does, make you uncomfortable when you're doing the wrong thing. He's there to help you, and most of all, he's there to help you understand the scripture so that the Word of God makes sense to you, so you understand what it says, you understand what it means, and you understand what it means to you.

So if you want to know the things of God, the Spirit of God has to be a part of that transaction. And guess what, you guys? He wants to be. He wants to be your helper. He wants to give you discernment. He wants to give you the ability to understand the Word of God. And James says that if we don't know that wisdom, all we have to do is ask for it. "If any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God," says James, and he will give it to you. And the Bible says he will do it liberally and without reproach. That means he'll give you all that you need, and he won't scold you for coming for it.

The great desire of the Spirit's heart is to flood the light of scripture into your mind and help you to know more and more and more about your Heavenly Father and your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And the Holy Spirit is like a lighthouse keeper who just loves to send that powerful beam out and help you get through the fog and the darkness of where you live.

How many of you know we're living in some fog and darkness right now? Hard to see our way through it. Sometimes we get up and say, "What in the world is going to happen today?" How many of you know sometimes you just get a verse and you hang onto that verse and you live off of that verse for two or three days because God has given you a verse of scripture to give you direction and hone in on what's happening in your life?

In general, the content of the Spirit's ministry is all the truth. The truth is the Bible, the written Word of God. Sometimes people come to me and maybe they're living with each other out of marriage. I've had that happen several times. And they want to talk to me about this. And I say, "You know, you guys, what you're doing is not right. You shouldn't be doing that. The Bible doesn't allow that. The Word of God doesn't allow that."

And I've had them say to me, "You know what, Pastor? I know that's what the Bible says, but we prayed about it, and we've got real peace from God that this is okay." I'm not going to tell you all the things I say when that happens, but what I want to tell them is whatever you got is not peace from God. And I know that to be true because listen to me, this is what you need to understand. The Holy Spirit will never contradict what the Word of God says. Not ever, ever, ever. You can count on it.

You won't read something in the Bible and the next day get some vision from God that contradicts what the Bible says. It's not going to happen. Your standard for what is truth and what is right and wrong is the scripture, and you don't have to doubt about it because God wrote it down for you. It's called the Bible. So when somebody tells me the Spirit of God told them to do something that is not from the Word of God, it may be a spirit all right, but it's not the Spirit of God.

So when we talk about spiritual illumination, we're not talking about dreams or private messages. We're talking about God's Word coming alive as he uses his Spirit to open the understanding and apply the Word of God to our hearts. So the parameters of spiritual discernment are found between the covers of this book. You want to know where the wisdom of God is? It's right here. You don't have to go to grad school to get it. You just get a Bible and start reading it, and little by little, God's Word will start to penetrate your life.

So how does the process work? Well, there's a wonderful passage of scripture in the little book of 1st John. Here's what it says: "But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. The anointing which you have received from him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you." Sometimes after a service here at Shadow Mountain, someone will come up to me and say, "Pastor, that was really an anointed message." And I take that as a compliment.

But what I want to say to you is that John says we all have an anointing, an anointing from God. "You have this anointing from the Holy One," says John. I take that to mean that each of us has a special gift from God. It says here you do not need that anyone teach you. I know some students have made that their life verse, but that's not where it goes. It doesn't mean we don't need teachers, because John himself was a teacher. It means we don't need worldly teachers to teach us the things we need to know about God.

What he means is this: You don't need teachers who speak from a non-Christian perspective. You don't need horoscopes. You don't need psychic hotlines. You don't need advice columns to figure out life. You have the Spirit of the living God within you. He is your anointing, and when you allow that to happen, you can ask him to help you, and he will. And often he will do it through the Word of God.

This isn't about feelings or whims. It's about the Spirit taking the Word of God and applying it to your mind and heart, guiding you in truth and keeping you alert. So the parameters and the process. Now, the power. The Bible says in John 14:26, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you."

If you were a Christian in high school or college, maybe even if you weren't and you were getting ready for a big test, you may have prayed, "Oh, Lord, help me remember the things I've studied." My prayer was always, "Help me to remember the things I haven't studied." I wanted not inspiration, I wanted revelation. Sometimes you'll hear the Word of God preached, and you walk away saying, "That didn't touch me. I'm not sure what he was talking about." And you may not think about it again for weeks.

But if you keep coming back, nurturing your spiritual life, little by little you'll store truth in your spirit. And then at the right moment, the Bible says God's Spirit will bring it to your remembrance. He will bring it to your mind. Most crises may come to us, but all of them have one thing in common. You don't get time to do homework on them. If there's a crisis and you're facing this crisis, you don't get to say, "I'll come back in two weeks after I've had a chance to study this a little bit more."

What I'm saying, folks, is this: How are you going to remember something you don't have? You all got to give the Spirit of God something to work with. You've got to put some Word in your heart. You say, "How do I do that?" Well, there's a lot of ways. You can memorize the scripture. I know that's a foreign term to some of you. You can read the scripture. You can listen to the scripture. There are so many ways to listen to the scripture today, so many good readers of the scripture.

I believe that many worship songs are built around scripture. You can play them in your heart. What I'm saying is if you don't fill your mind and your spirit with godly things, then when the Spirit of God wants to bring something to your remembrance, he goes to your hard drive and there's nothing there. You have to give him something to work with. That's the part we play in the disciplines of our life.

We study and we listen and we take notes. I'm so honored when I see some of you taking notes. Every piece of spiritual information that you make as an input into your life becomes fodder for the Holy Spirit to use when the time comes. The Holy Spirit will use what is in you and bring it out at the right time, at the right moment, when you need the answer. But if you don't put anything in your spirit for the Holy Spirit to work with, he won't have anything for you to say. So the point is you don't have to go around begging the Holy Spirit to help you, just keep filling up the tank with godly things, and when the moment comes, the Holy Spirit will be there to give you the wisdom that you need.

And thank you so much for joining us today. We will finish up our discussion of the illumination of the Holy Spirit tomorrow. You know, we are very excited about what God is doing here at Turning Point. And every year, as you know, we take a few moments in June and in December to remind all of you of your importance to what we do here. We need your help. We need you to stand with us as we reach out with the gospel. And it is my prayer that you will do that. I'm asking you to consider a special fiscal year-end gift to Turning Point and get it to us before the end of this month to help us as we conclude this year together.

If this program has been a blessing to you, now is a perfect time to make an extra special gift of support. And when you send your gift, all you're going to do is ask and we'll send you the book on the Holy Spirit as our way of saying thank you. See you tomorrow right here. I'm David Jeremiah. I am so grateful for this privilege. Thanks for listening on this good station.

David Michael Jeremiah: Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor Dr. David Jeremiah. Drop us a note to let us know how God is using this ministry in your life. Write to Turning Point, PO Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. Visit our website at davidjeremiah.org/radio or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's new book, The Holy Spirit You May Not Know, a valuable resource that's yours for a gift of any amount. The prayerful support we receive from listeners like you makes this program possible. Thank you for partnering with us to deliver the unchanging Word of God to an ever-changing world. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue The Holy Spirit You May Not Know on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.