To Encourage You

John 16:13 “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”

It is impossible to understand the Bible without the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  It doesn’t matter if one has the mind of Einstein, they are hopelessly lost with respect to understanding the Scriptures without the Holy Spirit living within them.  Put another way, a little child with Christ in his or her life will understand the things of God while the most educated person, even if that person is theologically trained, will not understand the things of God if they have never put their faith in Christ. The things of the Spirit are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14).  No wonder that many seemingly brilliant atheists mock the Word of God. Jesus referred to those who taught things about God when they were without the resident teacher from God living within them as “blind leaders of the blind” (Matthew 15:14). 

It is fascinating how the Holy Spirit doesn’t speak on His own authority, but only speaks what he hears from Christ, for that’s what Jesus is telling us in the verse above from John 16. How foolish is it for any “teacher” or anyone else who speaks about spiritual things to give others their own opinion or personal ideas about God and the things of God?  And how does the Spirit give this guidance into all truth?  By opening the spiritual eyes of those once spiritually blind as they study and obey the Word of God. And he does it through Spirit-filled teachers of the Word who have been gifted by Him and Him to teach. 

An excellent example of this is found in Acts 8:26-40 where we read this: “Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over and join this chariot.’ So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ And he said, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: ‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth.  In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.’  And the eunuch said to Philip, ‘About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, ‘See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?’ And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through he preached the gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.”

Just as in this case, God has infinite ways of bringing the person who really wants to understand His Word together with the means of acquiring that understanding. 

So are you such a person?  Like the Ethiopian eunuch, do you really want to understand the Scriptures?  Do you want to know the joy of the Lord?  If so, know that God has promised that “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).    

On the other hand, Jesus is under no obligation to “give dogs what is holy (or) . . . throw (His) pearls before pigs” (Matthew 7:6). In other words, if we have no longing for the holy treasures of God’s Word, why should we think that the infinitely wise God would share them with us?