03 How does the Holy Spirit Speak? Revelation vs. Understanding

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for joining me today for Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. On today's podcast, we're gonna be looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 2. This is the third talk in my series called Who is the Holy Spirit? Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, and you can also find them on the website. Just go to wednesdayintheword.com slash Holy Spirit 3. Thanks so much for listening. Well, my goal in this series is to understand what Scripture says about the Holy Spirit. I'm trying to build an understanding from the bottom up. That means I'm not approaching the passages with specific questions. So I don't have specific questions in my mind ahead of time and I'm looking for answers to those questions. Rather, my goal is to see what picture the passages paint. So in the first podcast, I introduced you to two themes that we're going to see over and over in this series. First, we saw that the Holy Spirit is God's agent of change. He is the one who makes changes in creation to accomplish God's purposes. And second, one of his most crucial works is the inner transformation of the hearts of believers. Without that change we cannot be saved. Then in the second podcast, I made a distinction between what I'm calling the universal work of the Holy Spirit and the individual works of the Holy Spirit. The universal work of the Spirit is the work that the Holy Spirit does in each and every believer to give us faith. It is that inner transformation of our hearts. Paul says that the mark of the Holy Spirit working in our lives is that we can say and believe in a profound way that Jesus is Lord. The individual works of the Spirit are the things that the Spirit does in one believer's life, but not necessarily in another's. So the Spirit gives different believers different roles to play in the body of Christ, and these different roles or opportunities or gifts are meant for the common good. They are meant to accomplish God's purposes here in this life. For example, the Spirit made Paul an apostle, he did not make me an apostle, and I should not expect to be one just because Paul was one. That's an individual work of the Spirit that He did in Paul's life and a few other apostles. This distinction between the universal and the individual works of the Spirit is crucial to understand. It's going to help us see the importance of the spiritual renewal that the Holy Spirit is doing in every believer. It helps us understand our own lives and what God is doing in them. And it helps us to see the importance of the miraculous works that God did in certain chosen individuals like the prophets and the apostles, and that can give us confidence and trusting their message. And it helps us understand the diversity in the body of Christ. It's important that we understand what God has promised to do in every believer and what he has not promised to do. That distinction is going to help us understand some of the passages we're going to deal with in this series, including today's passage. Today we're going to look at 1 Corinthians 2. I'm not going to be covering this passage in detail. I have a series on 1 Corinthians on my website where I think I have three or four podcasts just on chapter 2. So if you want more detail on the chapter, I'd invite you to go back to that series and listen to those podcasts. Today I just want to go over the main themes of this chapter and then highlight how that helps us understand the work of the Holy Spirit. I'm probably not going to answer all the questions you have about this chapter, and that's not my intent today. So let me set up the passage for you. The Apostle Paul wrote this letter to the church in Corinth, it's a church he founded. And in the first four chapters of this letter of 1 Corinthians, Paul is speaking to divisions and factions which have arisen in the church. Now the divisions are a symptom of a deeper issue. Some of the Corinthians have rejected the gospel because they want a gospel that is more appealing to their sophisticated intellectual town. And they have rejected Paul's authority as an apostle because they want a more eloquent teacher like Apollos. Apollos is another teacher who worked in Corinth after Paul left. Paul's main concern in these chapters is not that the folks in Corinth start getting along. He's not concerned that different people prefer different teachers. The problem is deeper than that. The problem is the reason these factions have developed. The problem is not that some prefer the teaching style of Apollos, the problem is that some in the church have rejected Paul and his authority as an apostle. They find Paul and his message embarrassing, especially to the intellectual elite of their town, and they want a gospel that is less offensive to their culture. Paul ended chapter one contrasting the wisdom of the gospel with the wisdom of the world. So a number of folks in the Corinthian church find Paul inadequate as a teacher because he lacks this quality that they would call wisdom. And Paul responded, Well, the gospel is offensive because the cross is offensive. The cross and a crucified Messiah appears to be a foolish message to the world, but it is in fact truth and wisdom. Paul's not going to change his message or his gospel to make it less offensive because then it wouldn't be the gospel at all. So now in chapter two, Paul turns directly to the issue of how he speaks and how he spoke to them when he was with them. In the first five verses of chapter two, he says basically that when he was in Corinth, he taught them the complete and accurate gospel. God confirmed his authority as an apostle with miraculous signs so that they would have confidence in the message he taught. He says, I didn't come to teach you and impress you with my own worldly wisdom, I came to teach you wisdom from God. Let me read those verses. This is first Corinthians chapter two verses one through seven. And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified, and I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. So in this section, Paul says, Look, I didn't come to impress you with my own worldly wisdom, I came to teach you wisdom from God. Notice that the topic is the way Paul spoke and what he taught when he was with them. And he argues that he didn't speak to them in cleverness of speech, he told them the straightforward gospel. In two one, that phrase lofty speech or wisdom, you could translate that preeminence of speech or wisdom. Paul is talking about a teaching style that is more than just flowery speech. The issue is not that the Corinthians want Paul to speak with a little more style and panache, they want him to speak in a way that the world would consider wise. They want him to win the admiration of the powerful and the important people in their town, and they don't want to be embarrassed by him. So they want him to speak in such a way that the elite, sophisticated people of the town will say, Now there's a great speaker, that's a great guy. At this point in Greek culture, the Greeks admired people who could debate on any side of an issue and win. Rhetoric was in, and those who could professionally argue were admired. There was a very influential group called the Sophist. Their name comes from the Greek word for wisdom, which is Sophia. The Sophists were around a long time in Greece. They were the philosophers and teachers of the day who were skilled in rhetoric and debate, and they prided themselves on their ability to take any side of an argument and win the debate. You could compare them to our modern lawyers. They were hired by others to argue their case, so they were a kind of a lawyer, but they were more debaters, and they boasted that they could make the worse appear to be better. Now many people looked on the sophist with contempt because they had this kind of have mouth will argue mentality. And like lawyers, at various times in history they were regarded with favor, and at other times in history they were regarded with contempt. At the point where Paul is writing this letter, they were in favor. Their skilled style of rhetoric and debate was the fashion. And what people liked about them was their skill in speaking and their ability to persuade others. When Paul says he's not seeking a kind of preeminence of speech or wisdom, his point is I'm not like the sophist. That's not my goal. I am not trying to just win the debate. I came to teach you the gospel. Now to this point in the letter, Paul's been using the word wisdom in the way the Corinthians used it. They were looking for this particular kind of rhetorical flair that was popular among the sophists and the debaters of their day, and Paul has renounced that idea. He says he's not interested in that kind of wisdom or cleverness of speech. So after rejecting wisdom as the Corinthians defined it, he now embraces the word and redefines it. He says I do in fact speak wisdom, but he means something else by it. Look again at two four and five. And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. When Paul speaks, God confirms that he is behind Paul's message with miraculous signs. So God confirmed that what Paul is saying is true, that Paul is an authoritative spokesman for God and for Jesus by the miracles that Paul performed. Why should you find Paul's message persuasive? Not because of his worldly wisdom, not because of his sophistry or his charisma, not because he has a PhD or he's an intellectual giant. You should believe his message because God demonstrated the truth of his message through signs, the miraculous works he performed by the power of the Holy Spirit. The miracles he performed were intended as testimony from God that Paul is speaking with authority. That's what miracles did in the ministry of Jesus and the other apostles, and Paul is claiming the same thing for himself. And this is one of the individual works of the Spirit in Paul's life. The Spirit was doing miracles through Paul to authenticate his message. And even more importantly, the Spirit of God revealed that message to Paul. Look again at six and seven. Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. Now in two six Paul says yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature, and we want to ask who is we? I would argue that very, very often when Paul uses we, he means himself. Sometimes he means he himself alone, sometimes he means he himself and the other apostles, as opposed to Christians in general, sometimes he means we Jews, as opposed to Gentiles, and only very, very rarely does he mean we as in all believers. Frequently we can figure out who the we is by looking at the context, and particularly by looking at who is contrasted with the we. So if there's a we and a you or an us and them kind of situation, looking at who the them is clues us in to who the we is. And I think Paul is using we in this section to mean himself. Maybe the other apostles, but most importantly himself, because the subject is how he spoke when he was with the Corinthians. I don't want to get into the debate over how we know he means himself here, even though he's using the plural. I do cover that in a little more detail in my series on 1 Corinthians. But let me just give you one example. This is from 2 Corinthians 10, and it's probably the clearest example of Paul referring to himself in the plural. I'm going to read you 2 Corinthians chapter ten verses eight through eleven, but notice as I read verse eight that in that one verse alone, Paul switches between the first person singular and the first person plural, and he clearly means himself. So this is first Corinthians ten eight. For even if I boast somewhat further about our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I will not be put to shame, for I do not wish to seem as if I would terrify you by my letters. For they say his letters are weighty and strong, but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible. Let such a person consider this, that what we are in present by letters when absent, such persons we are also indeed when present. So he quotes in ten ten what they're saying the Corinthians are saying about his letters versus his personal presence, and he responds saying, Well, what we are in person is the same as what we are in letters, and he's clearly talking about himself. They say my letters are impressive, but my presence is contemptible. Well, consider that I am the same person in both cases, yet he switches to we, and then in ten eight in that one verse he switches back and forth. Paul uses the plural pronoun to refer to himself a lot in his letters, and once you're aware of it, you begin to notice how frequent it is. Sometimes it's really clear, it's even in the same sentence, and sometimes you have to just look at the context. So in our text, back in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, it is Paul's speech that has been in view throughout this discussion. He's been talking about himself in the first person in the early verses of the chapter. Then he says, You Corinthians in 2.5 and in 2.6 he talks about we, but he is still referring to himself because the topic of discussion has not changed. The topic of discussion is still is Paul an authoritative spokesman for Jesus Christ. Is Paul an apostle? How did he speak when he was in Corinth? Whose speech has he been talking about up to this point? His own, and now all of a sudden he says we do speak wisdom, but he has not changed the discussion. He is talking about himself as an apostle, saying, I do in fact speak wisdom. Let's pick up the argument in two six. Yet among the mature, we do, and that is we, I, Paul, impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Paul's basic assertion is look, I am not interested in the kind of wisdom that you Corinthians are interested in. I am not interested in the kind of wisdom that the movers and the shakers of the world will stand up and notice with awe and excitement. But in fact, I do speak wisdom among the mature. What is that wisdom? It is the gospel itself. The truth about Christ crucified that God revealed to Paul is true wisdom. The gospel that Paul preaches is true wisdom from God and the spiritually mature are his intended audience. The spiritually mature will see the gospel for the wisdom that it is. It won't be seen as wisdom by the beautiful people of the world, but in fact it is wisdom. That's the point he's making. His message is in fact wisdom, even though powerful people reject it, because it is a revelation straight from God. Let's go on and look at nine through thirteen. 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. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. So in this section, Paul is speaking about himself and he's defending his point that he received his message supernaturally from God. He says the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified is not a message that we can figure out on our own. The gospel is a message that if we are to understand it, it must be revealed by God and the Holy Spirit must teach it to us as he taught Paul and others. So he's saying this is not a message that the world would sit down and the great philosophers and thinkers and intellectuals would come up with. This is something God devised and we can only know it if God tells it to us. So you Corinthians judge me, Paul, because the movers and shakers of the world think I'm boring and offensive, but you don't get it. My message comes straight from God. It was revealed to me and taught to me by the Holy Spirit. It doesn't get any more wise than that. And I would argue that Paul is talking about an individual work of the Holy Spirit. Paul is talking about the work that the Holy Spirit did in his life to give him accurate, complete understanding of the gospel such that he would be equipped to be an apostle. So God gave Paul understanding through his spirit, and Paul is speaking out of that understanding, and that's how the Corinthians ought to view his wisdom. His wisdom is not deficient because he lacks rhetorical flair and eloquence. His wisdom is wisdom because it is a revelation from God through his spirit to Paul, and that's why you ought to listen to him. Let's look again at 2 eleven. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the spirit of God. By far the most common work of the Spirit in Scripture is the Spirit as agent of revelation. The Spirit comes upon a prophet and gives the prophet words and a revelation and understanding such that the prophet can then say, Thus says the Lord. So the vast majority of references to the Holy Spirit in Scripture are the Holy Spirit making God's message known to God's chosen messengers. The Spirit of God gives David his understanding, the Spirit gave Moses his understanding, and the Spirit of God gave Paul his apostolic understanding of the world. That's what Paul's getting at here. The Spirit of God has made known to him the message that he is passing on to them. Now, how are we to understand the contrast between spirit of God and spirit of man, this phrase he uses in 211? Well, the Greek word spirit literally means breath or wind. This is true both in Hebrew and in Greek. If you've seen a dead body, you could immediately see this connection between spirit and breath. A dead body has no breath. Something is clearly missing from a dead body, and the lack of breathing instantly clues us in that something is wrong. People who are in a coma have breath, but when breath leaves the body, the body is no longer alive. And given that association between breathing and living, you can see how equating the inner person, the animating life force or spirit came to be associated with breath. The inner invisible thing that keeps the breath moving in and out is the spirit. So spirit and breath are naturally associated. With people that makes sense, but God doesn't have a visible body with invisible spirit and visible breath. So why talk about the spirit of God? Because we have a visible world where the invisible spirit of God is at work. Just like breath animates a body, the invisible spirit of God accomplishes God's purposes in the world. Like breath tells me there's life in a body, the spirit of God is revealed by the changes He makes in the world, the changes he brings about in people such that our eyes are opened, and we now have understanding and embrace the gospel. Virtually always the Spirit of God is mentioned in connection with some work that God is doing in the world. The Spirit acts as the invisible hand of God. We experience the invisible God in visible ways through the changes that his spirit brings about in the world. So like breath reveals that the body is alive and at work, the changes we see in the world reveal that the Spirit of God is at work. Now his point here is each of us have our own private thoughts that are known only to our inner selves. A person's innermost thoughts are hidden from everyone else. The only way you could know my private thoughts is if I tell them to you, and the same is true of God. If we are to know God's innermost thoughts, if we are to know what God thinks and what God values, the Spirit has to communicate to us what God is thinking, and that's what the Spirit did. He told Paul and he told the other apostles, and they have told us. Nobody knows what you're thinking because it's in your head. Similarly, no one knows what God is thinking unless he communicates it, and that is what he has done. God's Spirit has revealed God's thoughts. God's Spirit spoke to Paul so that Paul had an understanding of the gospel that was not revealed until now. That is Paul's amazing claim. He is saying in these verses, the Spirit of God made known to me Paul the thoughts that God alone knows, the things that no one could know unless God revealed it, and God revealed it to his chosen messengers through his spirit, and I am one of those messengers. That's what Paul is saying. So we have this progression. Paul received the Spirit of God, which caused Paul to know and understand the message of God, and then Paul is speaking that message to us, and that's why it is true wisdom. And he adds this interesting phrase at the end of 213, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. That phrase is really hard to translate. The ESB does a pretty good job interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. If you have the NSB, you'll notice that the word thoughts and the word words are grayed out. That means they're not in the text. Literally, we have the verb combining and then spirituals spirituals. That's our phrase. We have combining but what? Something spiritual but what? The New American Standard has combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. The New International has explaining spiritual realities with the spirit taught words. And the English Standard Version has interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. Those are three very different translations. All of them are valid. And anytime you see that kind of difference among the English translations, you know you're dealing with a phrase that's really difficult to translate, and you probably ought to spend some time studying it. Well, how do we decide what's going on in this phrase? And the answer is context. Up till now, Paul has been talking about the work of the Spirit imparting spiritual truth to him as an apostle. He is about to change that subject slightly. He's been talking about himself and his message, and he is about to talk about his listeners, those who hear and understand him. And he's going to go on to contrast the natural versus the spiritual man and to focus on those who receive the message. As I understand it, verse 13 is the transition between those two thoughts. And so I would go with the ESV translation, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual, or interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people. He's telling the thoughts of God to those who are prepared by the Spirit of God to hear and understand them. So Paul's job as an apostle is to take the things that God has made known to him and explain it to those whom God gives understanding through his spirit. These are two very different works of the Spirit, and this is one of the reasons I wanted to put this passage in our series. One work is the particular understanding that the Spirit has given to Paul and the other apostles. The second work is the understanding of Paul's message or the other apostles' message that the Spirit gives to their listeners. So in the first, the Spirit is making known the thoughts of God to God's chosen messengers who then speak out of their inspired understanding to teach everyone else. In the second, the spirit is granting understanding or softening the hearts, opening the ears of those listening, so that they receive the truth with humility and understanding. And that second action is what he's going to go on to discuss in the next verses. Look at fourteen through sixteen. The natural man 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. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. In this context, I think the natural man is everything we are apart from God, everything we are before God does any work in our lives. So the natural man is what we are by nature, right out of the box, so to speak. By nature, we would all reject the message of the apostles. Apart from God granting us understanding through his spirit, each and every one of us would scoff and mock and reject the wisdom of God as foolish. By nature, we are the sort of people who reject the gospel. The spiritual man is the one who embraces the gospel because the Spirit of God has been at work in him. The spiritual man gets it, he understands it, he sees the wisdom in the gospel because the Spirit of God has given him that understanding. So the spiritual man is the one who hears the gospel and recognizes it as wisdom and truth. Why is the spiritual man receptive to the truth? Because God has granted him understanding. Not because he or she is smarter or quicker or more intellectual. By nature we're all rebels at heart. All of us know someone who rejects the truth no matter what. Because in all belief there's an element of will. We believe what we want to believe, and if we don't want to believe something, we will find a way to reject it. The gospel is rational, logical, and persuasive, but we don't want to believe it. And apart from the work of God in our lives, all of us would reject the truth. The natural person cannot judge rightly and will scoff at the wisdom of God. The spiritual person has a broken heart who recognizes sin for sin, who recognizes his or her need for a savior and responds to the truth of the gospel with joy and humility and acceptance. Paul's last statement in 216 wraps up this section. He says, Who has true wisdom? Who has understood the thoughts of God? Those to whom God has revealed his thoughts by his spirit. And he quotes from Isaiah here to emphasize, I think, the unique and powerful claim he is making about himself as an apostle. Who knows the mind of the Lord? Those to whom God has communicated his mind, and that is his chosen messengers, Jesus, the apostles, and the prophets, and that includes Paul. So when he says we have the mind of Christ in two sixteen, I believe he is talking about himself. He might include the other apostles, as we apostles are the ones to whom God has revealed his message, and we apostles are the ones you should listen to. I, Paul, am trustworthy, not because I'm so smart or intellectual, but because God has chosen to reveal himself to me, Paul. So the thoughts of God are not knowable to mankind as a whole, but they have been made known to Paul and the other apostles. I think it's a misunderstanding to think that this verse teaches that all Christians in general carry the mind of Christ around with them. And I've heard people argue we have all the wisdom we'll ever need, we just lack the faith to appropriate it, and they cite this verse. Well, I would argue that the we here is Paul and perhaps the other apostles, but it is not all Christians, because Paul is arguing for the wisdom of his message as an apostle. Paul is saying, When you read what I tell you in my letters, I'm speaking for Jesus, and I can tell you because he has told me, I, Paul, as an apostle, have the mind of Christ. Okay, so what do we learn from this chapter about the Holy Spirit? In this chapter, we see two of the most important individual works of the Spirit. The Spirit reveals the thoughts of God to his chosen messengers such that they can understand it and teach it to the rest of us. And the Spirit authenticates and testifies to the authority of those chosen messengers through the miracles that they perform. Now, if we were to count all the verses that mention the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, the vast majority of them are about this. Most all of them are about the revelation that is given to the apostles and the authenticating of their message through miraculous signs. The vast majority of places that the New Testament mentions the Holy Spirit are about this revelation to God's messengers and that their authority and their message is confirmed and verified by the miracles they perform. I think that fact ought to mean more to us Christians today than it does. We believers invest our lives on the truth that we find in the Bible, and that ought to give us confidence. Paul is not saying, look, I'm a smart guy with a PhD who's figured out all this stuff and made up a philosophy. He's saying the Spirit of God revealed his truth to me and I'm telling it to you, and I am proving the veracity of my message by the miracles I'm performing. That ought to inspire our confidence in what we believe. Paul is a messenger. He brings with him the king's stamp of approval, and both the message and the stamp of approval are the work of the Holy Spirit. That is an individual work of the Spirit. That kind of revelation and authenticating is something that the Spirit does in some people's lives and not others. He does this in the lives of the prophets and the apostles, but not in every believer. But we also see in this chapter, I think the most important universal work of the Spirit. The spiritual man embraces the gospel because the Spirit of God has been at work in him or her, as opposed to the natural man who thinks the gospel is foolish. The spiritual person gets it, gets the gospel, embraces the gospel because the Spirit of God has given us understanding. The spiritual person is the one who sees the wisdom of the gospel, who sees the truth in it, and recognizes it and embraces it. This is similar to what we talked about in the last podcast. No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the power of the Holy Spirit working in them. By contrast, the natural man, those in whom the Spirit has not been at work, will not grasp and understand the gospel. The natural person cannot rightly evaluate the message of the gospel and they will not recognize it as wisdom. It is only when the Spirit of God removes the obstacles that we have placed between ourselves and the truth that we can rightly understand and embrace the wisdom and truth of the gospel. That's the difference between the natural and the spiritual person. That difference is the willingness to recognize the truth of the gospel, and that willingness comes about because of the work of the Spirit. So to wrap this up, I think it's crucial to understand the difference between revelation and understanding. Somehow Christians today have gotten the idea that we live by personal revelation, and we tend to see the Holy Spirit as a kind of force like Star Wars that we need to channel to get direction and guidance. We sometimes act as if the Holy Spirit has a direct one-to-one calm link right into our minds, and we just have to figure out how to isolate that calm link and listen to it. Now, we would of course still say the Bible's the Word of God and we ought to live by it, but in practice we tend to ignore the Bible and we put this one-to-one kind of direct internal revelation in its place. And it's easy to see why. Bible study takes work, it takes time, I have to figure out how to apply it to whatever situation I'm in, and it would be so much easier to just have God tell me, talk to me in the first place. But this is where we have to understand the difference between revelation and understanding. God gives his prophets and apostles revelation. He reveals his words, he reveals his plans, he reveals his thoughts to particular chosen individuals, and he charges them with telling the rest of us. To the rest of us, he gives understanding. Now revelation is something no one has understood up until the time God chooses to reveal it to the messenger. Understanding is the receptivity to receive God's message as wisdom. God reveals his wisdom to his messengers, his apostles, and his prophets, and that's where we learn it. Our job is to listen to the Word of God as revealed in His Word and to learn from it, to gain wisdom from it, and to apply that wisdom to our lives. Now it takes work. Bible study is not quick and easy, but it's the way God designed things. And it is true that the Holy Spirit does open our eyes and give us understanding as we study the Bible, but he doesn't do it in a vacuum. He does it as we come to the scriptures to read the words and study them. So I read and I study and meditate on the words of Scripture, and the Holy Spirit works on my hard heart and grants me wisdom and understanding. That's why we read Paul's letters. That's why we study the Old Testament and the New Testament. Because Paul and the biblical authors claimed that they have the words of life. They are the ones to whom God has revealed his purposes and his ways. So God gives both of us understanding but in a different way. God's apostles and prophets learned their understanding directly from God or speaking directly to Christ incarnate, or as a direct revelation of the Spirit. The rest of us typically learn through the understanding that God has given his messengers. The Spirit of God is still at work in us, but in a different way. If you want to know what God thinks, you have to look at what God thinks as He communicated it to His apostles and prophets and they wrote it down. It will only be in your head to the extent that you have read and studied and understood the Scriptures. God gives His chosen messengers revelation. That's an individual work of the Spirit. It is something He does in certain chosen individuals. To the rest of us, God gives understanding. That is a universal work of the Spirit, something that God does through His Spirit in all of us who believe. Revelation is something no one has understood up until the time God chose to reveal it to His Messenger. Understanding is the receptivity to receive God's message as wisdom. Both of those are works of the Spirit, but they are different. One is the individual work of the Spirit, that's revelation, and one is the universal work of the Spirit, that's understanding. Please subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you'd like to listen to your podcast. You can also find hundreds of past episodes on my website, so you can perhaps for any topic you're interested in here. Heartfame Music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite musician, Reggie Coates of Heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I hope you'll join me again at Wednesday in the Word.