The Spirit Illumines

Big Idea: The Holy Spirit enables believers to understand God's truth by illuminating spiritual realities beyond what our natural minds can grasp.

I've been encouraged these past few weeks as I've been thinking about the Holy Spirit. When we become Christians, the Holy Spirit enters us and begins to transform us into saints. He fills, convicts, and purifies us.

But there's one issue. We're not very smart and struggle to understand what we need to live a spiritual life.

I have a smart pet dog, but she struggles to understand the complexities of human thought. When I talk to her, she only responds when I use her name or one of the few words she knows, like "walk" or "food." Otherwise, she just looks blankly at me.

God's mind is far beyond our understanding, as the Bible states.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
(Isaiah 55:8-9)

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

"For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?"
"Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?"
(Romans 11:33-34)

We cannot begin to grasp the mind of God. As humans, we have limits on what we can understand. Have you noticed how often people were confused by Jesus' words in the Gospels?

The solution to our lack of understanding isn't more intelligence, but a better teacher. God has given us His Spirit, which teaches and illuminates us.

The Holy Spirit acts as a bridge between God and us, making His truths real in our lives and bringing our prayers to the Father. The Spirit acts as the ultimate translator, revealing God’s deep mysteries that we couldn't understand on our own.

That's why Jesus could say in Matthew 11:

At that time Jesus declared, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will." (Matthew 11:25-26)

The Spirit's Illuminating Power

This morning I would like to describe three aspects of this ministry of the Holy Spirit. The ministry is called illumination, which means awakening our souls to perceive spiritual matters. These three aspects of the illuminating or teaching work of the Spirit make a tremendous difference in our lives.

Understanding

The first way in which the Spirit illuminates us is by giving us spiritual understanding.

Read 1 Corinthians 2:14:

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

This verse depicts a person lacking the Spirit. Jude 19 characterizes such individuals as those who follow natural instincts alone, devoid of the Spirit's presence. The spiritually empty person—the non-Christian—lives confined to the physical realm. Their existence is bounded by what they can perceive through their five senses. Nothing more. Without the Holy Spirit dwelling within, they remain unable to grasp or receive spiritual truth.

Before you become a Christian, you're missing out on a whole other world.

But, as it is written,

"What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him"—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. (1 Corinthians 2:9-12)

Verse 9 talks about the great things God has planned for us, and then verse 10 tells us that God has revealed these things to us by his Spirit. You see, without the Spirit, there is no revelation. Without the Spirit, we are unable to grasp the wonderful things that God has planned for us as believers. Paul goes on to explain this in verse 11.

Who knows you best? No one knows you better than you. No one knows your private thoughts and your inner struggles better than you do. There are things about you that no one else could ever know unless you revealed it to them. What Paul says in verse 11 is similar. No one can know God's thoughts except for the Spirit of God. But God, verse 12 says, is pleased to freely reveal these thoughts to us. God has chosen, through his Spirit, to reveal himself to us as believers.

Through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we can understand the heart and mind of God. Someone has said that the Spirit of God is like a scuba diver who goes down to the depths and finds out what's down there. The Spirit does "deep thought fishing" to connect us to the mind of God. But the unbeliever does not have access to the mind of God.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

You see, the things of God are silliness to the lost person. They have no apparatus to receive the truths of God. You see, what happened when we became believers was that the Spirit allowed us to comprehend the things of God. They made no sense to us before. But all of a sudden, we were no longer limited to what we could pick up from our five senses. In a sense, we were given access to the very mind of God.

Now, let's think about this. When we share the Gospel with someone, it's going to be silliness to them. But it's not our job to convince them; that's the Spirit's job. When we present the Gospel to someone, your job isn't to lead them to Christ. Only the Spirit can do that. Your job is to be an instrument that the Spirit can use. If this morning you have not received Christ as Savior, you need to come to Christ and pray that he would open your mind to spiritual things.

The Spirit illuminates by granting us understanding. But his work doesn't end there.

Teaching

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 that I have said to you. (John 14:26)

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. (John 16:13).

We're prone to forgetting, aren't we? Even after studying Scripture and Jesus' words, we need the Spirit's teaching to refresh our memory. When Jesus spoke the words in John 14, the Gospels hadn't yet been written. Some biblical texts were written four decades after Christ's death. How did everyday fishermen, tax collectors, and laborers manage to accurately retain and transmit Jesus' teachings years after his time? The Holy Spirit empowered them. Jesus promised the Spirit would remind them what he said, ensuring his teachings were perfectly remembered for future recording.

But even today the Spirit teaches us and opens up the Scriptures for us. The Spirit is involved in teaching us, through the Scriptures, the mind of God. Every believer has the Spirit as a teacher, a teacher who puts us on heaven's frequency. A pastor can't do that. No human teacher can do that. But the Spirit can.

But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. (1 John 2:20)

But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him. (1 John 2:27).

It's easy to misunderstand this last verse. John isn't disparaging human teachers, since he himself was one. John was writing at a time when Gnostic teachers claimed to have "higher knowledge" that only they possessed. And John's point was this: you don't need any higher knowledge. You already have the anointing of the Spirit, and he is teaching you everything you need to know.

Now let's get practical. D.L. Moody said, "The Bible without the Holy Spirit is a sundial by moonlight." When we read the Scriptures, we need the Spirit to teach us. Sometimes I'm reading a book, and I can't understand what the author is saying. I sometimes wish I could talk directly to the author and say, "What did you mean by this?" When we read the Bible, we can talk directly to the author! We should pray that the Holy Spirit gives us his illumination as we study Scripture. We don't need any additional spiritual knowledge other than what the Spirit reveals to us as we study the Scriptures.

You see, Christian living requires a continual openness to the Spirit and his communication to us, not about strange mysteries, but about what Christians have in the gospel and about its significance for life. We continually need insight into the faith, because we have a darkness that needs enlightening. The teaching ministry of the Spirit does not involve the revelation of new truth. But it does give us a capacity to appreciate and appropriate God's truth already revealed. Have you ever read a familiar passage of Scripture and found new insights from the Spirit? As we read the Holy Word of God, we need to request the Holy Spirit to lead us into the truth. We need to ask the Spirit to teach us.

Some time ago, a young man became a Christian. This man was a soldier, and not long after his conversion, he was sent to North Africa. There was no way for his Christian friends to help him take his first baby steps in the faith. And his Christian friends became worried for him. Some months later, his friends heard that he was organizing a Bible study in his North African quarters. And not only were his peers were coming, but also his higher-ups in the army. This man learned without a human teacher, relying on the Spirit of Christ and the Scriptures to grow in knowledge and spirituality. This is the great teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit illuminates by granting us understanding and teaching us. Yet his ministry extends even further.

Giving Confidence

"For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control" (2 Timothy 1:7).

You know, the road God has chosen for us as Christians is not always easy. But we don't have to be timid as Christians. Through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, we know where we're going, and we therefore have confidence. The Holy Spirit gives us confidence because he reveals to us things that other people don't see. When other people look at a situation, they see what is visible. But when Christians look at an event, they see God's power and purpose behind it.

I love the story of Elisha in 2 Kings 6. Elisha and his servant woke up one day and were surrounded by the Arameans. The servant panicked after looking outside. He said, "Oh, my lord, what shall we do?" But Elisha said, "Don't worry – we've got them outnumbered." I think his servant probably thought Elisha had lost it. But then listen to what happened:

Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. (2 Kings 6:17).

When God opens our eyes, we can see beyond our circumstances and recognize the abundant resources we have in him. When God gives us illumination, everyone else is panicking around us. But God opens our eyes and we see the mountain full of God's chariots and horses providing protection and deliverance. We see what can only be spiritually discerned, and as a result we have confidence.

One of my favorite stories is about the church's first martyr, Stephen. In Acts 7, Stephen had just been charged with blasphemy and was about to be killed for his faith. The religious leaders were furious with him. But listen to Acts 7:55: "But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God" (Acts 7:55).

Stephen witnessed what others couldn't see, and rather than cowering in fear, he stood with remarkable courage. When we fixate on our circumstances, fear follows. But like Stephen, if we turn our gaze toward Jesus at God's right hand, our focus shifts from earthly troubles to divine glory. This perspective transforms anxiety into unshakable confidence.

Think about the travelers to Emmaus in Luke 24. Grief-stricken after the crucifixion, they walked in despair until a stranger joined them. As he departed, "their eyes were opened," and their sorrow gave way to joy. This spiritual awakening—this illumination—is the Spirit's transformative work in our hearts.

Will you settle for perceiving only what your five senses reveal, or will you seek to know the mind of God? Do you desire the Spirit of revelation to deepen your knowledge of God? Would you welcome the confidence that comes when God reveals spiritual truths to you?

The gospel reminds us that the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives is rooted in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Jesus' death and resurrection secured our salvation and sent the Spirit to guide, teach, and empower us to live for God's glory. Our confidence comes not from our own understanding or abilities, but from the Spirit’s power to reveal God's truth, transform our hearts, and equip us to fulfill his purposes.

When we feel inadequate or overwhelmed, the gospel assures us that we are not left to navigate life alone. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead now lives in us, helping us overcome our limitations and circumstances. He opens our eyes to the riches of God’s grace, strengthens us with divine power, and fills us with the confidence to walk boldly in faith. This is the beauty of the gospel: God not only saves us but also sustains and empowers us every step of the way.

Let me pray Paul's prayer from Ephesians 1:15-19 over you now. Please close your eyes as I pray this for you.

For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might... (Ephesians 1:15-19)