Christ's Prophetic Ministry of Inward Illumination

Introduction: The Father Says, Hear Him

0:00 In the very familiar account of the Transfiguration given to us in several of the Gospel accounts, we have those words of the Father spoken with reference to the Son. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him. In this passage, as in many others, the Word of God sets Christ before us as God's great and final prophet to men.

0:37 The Father says of the Son, hear Him. and in the unfolding of a series of studies in which we are contemplating Christ in the majesty of his offices not only as priest and eventually as king but presently as prophet it should concern us to remember that he is prophet in his great and supreme office as the redeemer of his people. as we've so often emphasized in this series of studies Christ is not a priest, a prophet or a king in a sense that we're simply to admire him from a distance

1:25 but he is prophet, priest and king in pursuit of and in the accomplishment of the salvation of his people and he is those things because that is precisely what we need as sinners because of our guilt and pollution we need a priest who can forgive and cleanse us because we are ignorant we need a prophet to teach us and because we are rebellious and helpless we need a king to subdue us and then to guide and to defend us and we are presently concerned with drawing to a close our studies with respect to Christ in his office as the prophet of his people. Having examined the scriptures which set forth the reality of his prophetic office,

2:16 some of the implications of that prophetic office both for the individual and also for the church as church, we come today to consider another dimension of the prophetic office of Christ which hitherto, as I've already hinted, has not been emphasized. And I have deliberately avoided emphasizing that aspect for two reasons. Number one, it was not convenient to emphasize it in the other aspects of the teaching. And number two, because I feel it is the note that ought to be sounded as the final note and sort of the capstone of the entire teaching with respect to his prophetic office. Up till now we have considered Christ as the great prophet of the church, administering

3:07 that prophetic office primarily and essentially by the giving of an infallible word. It was the spirit of Christ who spoke through the prophets of the Old Testament. It was Christ in the days of his flesh speaking as the authoritative prophet. It was Christ speaking through the apostolic tradition. It was Christ speaking through the embodiment of his mind and will in the scriptures of the New Testament. And again and again we have made that emphasis that we look for no exercise of the prophetic office of Christ apart from the written word of God. And without in any way seeking to erode any of that emphasis, but building upon it and moving on from it, I want us to consider this morning this other dimension of the prophetic

3:58 office of Christ, namely the powerful internal illumination of the mind and heart which enable men and women savingly to perceive and to receive the truth of God. You see, it is perfectly possible to confront the prophetic office and ministry of Christ in the written scriptures, in the preaching of those scriptures through those whom he has equipped and sent into his church, and to see and hear only the form and the external appearance of the truth. But when Christ ministers not only to the outer ear as the prophet who brings the word to us,

4:48 but to the inner ear of the soul, we will see not only the form and the structure of the truth, but we will perceive the beauty and experience the power of the truth. Hearing Christ as our prophet with the outer ear may amaze, intrigue, or even fascinate. But hearing Christ as our prophet with the inner ear will humble, sanctify, and draw forth faith, love, and obedience to Christ. And so our concern this morning is to see from the Scriptures that Jesus Christ, as the great prophet of His church, is not only a prophet to the outer ear, but He is a prophet who ministers powerfully to the ear of the heart.

Luke 24: Christ Opens the Disciples' Understanding

5:40 And in opening up the subject, we shall first of all demonstrate the validity of this assertion, and then we shall consider some of the very, very practical implications of this doctrine. First of all, then, to demonstrate the validity of this aspect of Christ's prophetic ministry. And I've chosen a passage from the Gospels, one from the book of Acts, and one from the epistles. And I've done this purposely to demonstrate that this is a teaching that is to be found throughout the Word of God and in particular in the New Testament.

6:18 Now the passage in the Gospels is found in Luke, Luke's Gospel, chapter 24.

6:28 Luke's Gospel, chapter 24, verses 44 and 45. And he said unto them, that is to his disciples, These are my words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their mind that they might understand the Scriptures. Now our Lord says in this passage, these are my words which I spake unto you.

7:11 In other words, he says, I am repeating something that you have heard before. Now where did they hear these words before? Well, Luke records several instances prior to this, but I direct your attention to the most full statement of that prior hearing as recorded in Luke's Gospel, chapter 18. Will you turn please to Luke's Gospel chapter 18 and verse 31 and following.

7:39 Luke 18, 31. And he took unto him the twelve and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written through the prophet shall be accomplished unto the Son of Man. For he shall be delivered up unto the Gentiles And shall be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon And they shall scourge and kill him And the third day he shall rise again Hear our Lord in language that is simple In language that is clear In language that has a form of chronological arrangement in language that has the assertions of his own authority,

8:25 our Lord outlines the coming events of rejection, suffering, death, and resurrection. Now, we hear those words and say, well, that's very simple. But will you notice, please, verse 34, And they understood none of these things. And this saying was hid from them, and they perceived not the things that were said.

8:55 Now to us that seems almost unbelievable. In simple, unmistakable, non-cryptic language, he's not speaking in parables, he's not speaking in comparisons, he's stating simple, plain facts by way of prediction. We go to Jerusalem. Who's the we?

9:15 I and the disciples. Jerusalem, they know where that is. Everything is going to be fulfilled that was written in the prophets. He shall be delivered up, shamefully treated, spat upon, spurged, killed, raised from the dead.

9:31 But concerning those simple words, Luke says, they understood none of these things. Furthermore, the saying was hid from them. The word in the original is the one from which we get our word cryptic, a cryptic saying, one that only the initiate can see. This saying was hid from them and they perceived not.

9:55 Understood not, it was hid and they perceived not. Now what happened? The outer ear received the form and the substance of the words. It registered on the auditory nerve.

10:09 It made an impress on the brain. if two minutes later you said to these people, what did the Lord just tell you? They would have turned and said, well, he told us we're going to Jerusalem. Fine.

10:19 What's going to happen at Jerusalem? Well, he said, he's going to be shamefully treated, spat upon, killed, and he's going to rise again from the dead the third day. They could have given back from their own lips what went in at their ears. Yet Luke says they understood none of this.

10:36 The saying was hid from them. They perceived it not. What is he saying? He is saying though Christ their prophet exercised his prophetic ministry here even predicting the future with regard to his redemptive work.

10:53 They were able surely to receive the form and substance of the words and to repeat them. But Christ had not yet ministered to them as the prophet to the ears of the heart. And what our Lord does in Luke 24 is to exercise this other dimension of His prophetic ministry. And I want you to notice how careful Luke is in the description of that ministry.

11:22 He goes back over the same ground, Luke 24, 44. All things had to be fulfilled, written in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms concerning me. What are those all things? Verse 46 Christ should suffer Rise from the dead the third day Repentance and remission of sins be preached in His name But now something new happened They did not get a new set of words They did not get a new wrinkle as it were Upon the substance of what our Lord says But rather according to verse 45 The Lord who had spoken the words previously as the great prophet of the church, now opens their minds that they might understand the Scriptures.

12:14 And here, without going into the psychology of it, because the Scriptures do not give us the materials, without trying to dissect and to analyze all of the strands of divine influence and how they operated upon the mind, Here is a simple statement of Luke that our Lord exerted upon the minds of these people a powerful, efficient spiritual energy which gave spiritual insight to the words of their great prophet. He opened their minds And of course the mind there is not used simply as the organ of intelligence but the mind as one faculty of the soul

13:02 Our Lord, as it were, pulled the blinds away from the eyes of the soul. And what they had been looking upon like dumb animals, they now saw as rational beings. And when the truth was seen in this way, the subsequent history reveals, It was believed, it was received with delight, it had an influence upon their entire inner and outward life. For no longer do these things bring them sadness and grief, but the chapter closes with them in the temple, continually praising and blessing God.

The Emmaus Road as Parallel Picture

13:41 So here you have in Luke's Gospel a wonderful, a beautiful account of the great prophet of the church fulfilling his function as the prophet of his people, not only bringing the authoritative word of God to the physical ear, but bringing that word to the ears of the soul with power. Now there is a wonderful parallel in this very chapter that may help to illustrate, help to enforce this aspect of our Lord's prophetic ministry. It's in the physical realm or the realm of physical recognition, but it is a beautiful parallel. You remember the incident recorded in verses 13 to 34 of Luke 24?

14:28 the incident of these two discouraged disciples who are on the road to Emmaus. And these fellows are really down in the dumps, utterly discouraged. Jesus draws near. We read in verse 15, And it came to pass, while they communed and questioned together, that Jesus himself drew near and went with him.

14:53 So get the picture. Two men are walking along the road. Suddenly a third is found with them. That third is Jesus Christ in all the reality of his physical form.

15:04 Granted, he has a resurrected body. We do not understand many of the properties and faculties of that body, but one thing we know, it had material substance. It could be touched, it could be felt, it could assimilate food. It was also a body that apparently could appear in a room without coming through the proper door.

15:23 We don't understand that, but we do know it was not a phantom body. He could say, look, see me, feel me, touch me. A spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see me have. The color of Jesus' eyes was no doubt the same before and after the resurrection.

15:40 The shape of his nose. All of the peculiar elements of his physiognomy was, as far as we can understand from the biblical record, entirely unchanged after the resurrection. Whatever changes came, he was the Jesus whom they could recognize. But now as he draws near to these two, we read in verse 16, But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

16:09 Now what happened? Did God strike them with blindness so that when they looked upon that form, there was no passage of light through the cornea registering on the retina? No, no. There was nothing wrong with their vision.

16:22 And it was 20-20 vision as to its physical capacities. They saw man draw near. They welcomed him. Said, hello stranger, come along and walk with us.

16:32 They could see him, but it says their eyes were held that they should not know him. They beheld his external form, but they did not perceive who it was in that form. and so we read in the narrative and I'm not going to go through the details because it's not applicable or necessary for our purposes this morning that that was all changed for we read in verse 30 it came to pass when he had sat down with them to meet that they took bread and blessed and breaking it he gave to them now notice and their eyes were opened does that mean they were given back physical sight? no, there's not any indication that they were struck with blindness,

17:19 as Saul of Tarsus was upon the road to Damascus. No, the eye was opened in that the thing that they saw as to its outward form and substance, they suddenly recognized for what it was, yea, for who it was. This was none other than their Lord, so we read. Their eyes were opened, and they knew Him, and He vanished out of their sight.

17:46 Now that to me, whether the Spirit of God has put it there as a parallel to help us to understand what Luke later says, I don't know. But I find it very helpful. Here they see the external form. When the eye is open, they behold who it is within that form.

18:06 Now the same was true with the Scriptures. Christ, their prophet, had brought the Word to them in its external authoritative form. He says everything must be fulfilled which is written. Law of Moses, Psalms, Prophets.

18:21 He gives them a distillation of it. They look upon it. They see it. But yet they don't see.

Acts 16: The Lord Opens Lydia's Heart

18:27 And then the Lord then opens the eyes of the heart and of the mind. And they no longer simply see and hear the form of the truth. They perceive the rightness, the beauty, the inherent glory of that. truth, and they embrace it in the love of it and in the power of it. Christ becomes the prophet not only to the ear, but the prophet to the heart. Now there is a second passage to which I direct your attention. We're just establishing the doctrine now. And this one is in the book of Acts.

19:06 Acts chapter 16. Some of you have already anticipated this passage, I'm sure. Acts chapter 16 Now remember what's happened The Lord is no longer here in the flesh Acts 1 begins with the record of his ascension Back to the right hand of the Father Does that mean he is no longer active Because he is no longer physically present Luke is very careful to say no The absent Lord Absent as to his physical presence Is very active as to the presence and power of His Spirit. We read in Acts 16, beginning with verse 11,

19:48 the Apostle's response to the vision given by God concerning the next sphere of His missionary endeavor. Setting sail, therefore, from Troas, we made a straight course to Samothrace and the day following to Neapolis, and from thence to Philippi, which is a city of Macedonia, the first of the district, a Roman colony, and we were there in this city tarrying certain days. And on the Sabbath day we went forth without the gate by a riverside where we suppose there was a place of prayer. We sat down and spake unto the women that were come together.

20:26 Now here is the apostle, convinced that God has sent him into this geographical area, God using that vision, the man of Macedonia saying, come over and help us. He comes convinced that he is to preach the gospel, the last words of verse 10, concluding that God called us to preach the gospel. Now here is the apostle, as it were, an extension of the prophetic ministry of Christ, as we saw several weeks ago. He that receives you, receives me. He that hears you, hears me.

20:59 Here comes Saul, now Paul the Apostle. Here he comes as an expression of the prophetic ministry of Christ to proclaim the gospel. Now what happens? Well, while he is giving out the gospel in the form and substance of its words, the Lord who is the central theme of that gospel is present doing something Paul could never do.

21:24 Verse 14. And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of Thyatira, one that worshipped God, heard us, whose heart the Lord opened to give heed unto the things which were spoken by Paul. Now you have two agents in this passage. She heard us.

21:53 She gave heed to the things spoken by Paul. But there is another agent who is at work doing what Paul could never do. Paul could and must of necessity bring the gospel to the outer ear. Jesus Christ as the great prophet of the church is now extending His prophetic ministry through the Apostle Paul, summoning this woman to faith and to repentance, opening up the great truths concerning His salvation.

22:29 But there is something Paul cannot do, which Christ alone can do, but blessed be God, which He does do, And it is the Lord Himself who opens the heart of this woman, who performs that powerful, efficient, internal work that enables her not only to see the truth in the form of it, but to perceive the truth in the beauty of it. not only to know that Christ is held forth in the gospel, but to see the perfect suitableness of Christ to the need of her own heart, so that beholding the truth in the beauty of it,

23:18 beholding the truth in its suitableness, what does she do? She embraces the truth in its power, and she submits herself to the truth in its demands and implications. For the next verses say, When she was baptized, the first step of obedience, and her household, she besought a saying, If ye judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there. And she constrained us.

23:53 The word in the original for this act of opening is precisely the same word as we have in Luke 24. Matthew Henry in his quaint way has commented on this passage saying, The understanding is opened to receive the divine light. The will is opened to receive the divine law. The affections are opened to receive the divine love.

24:22 Further, he goes on to say, when the heart is thus open to Christ, the ear is open to His Word, the lips are opened in prayer, the hand is opened in charity, and the steps enlarged in all manner of gospel obedience.

1 John 5: The Son of God Has Given Us Understanding

24:39 You see what happened to Lydia? Paul brought the Word to the outer ear. The Lord brought the Word to the inner ear. Doing that work is a profit which no other can accomplish.

24:53 And then the third passage is in the epistles. It's in 1 John. 1 John, the first letter of John, chapter 5, and verse 20. The apostle drawing his epistle to a close, sort of as it were, recapitulating some of the main strands of truth that he has opened up.

25:27 This is the Johannine pattern in this epistle. He doesn't set things out in the logical way as you find the book of Romans, but it's more a cyclical or spiral form of reasoning and development of his thought. Verse 18, We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not. That is he does not make a practice of sin But he that was begotten of God keepeth himself and the evil one toucheth him not We know that we are of God and the whole world lieth in the evil one And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding.

26:08 And here you have the noun form of the verb that was used in the two previous passages. He has given us an opening. He has given us an understanding that we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son, Jesus Christ. You see what John brings together?

26:32 The Son of God is come. And the Gospel is, as it were, but an explication of that statement. The Son of God is come. Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.

26:47 The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And that message went out in John's day as it goes out in our day. But it does not in all cases bring people into this embrace of Christ in faith and love and obedience.

27:07 But it had in the case of these believers. Why? Now notice, it is the same Son of God who is come, who has given an understanding. He doesn't say the Son of God is come and some other agent has given an understanding.

27:25 It's the same Son of God who is come, who has given an understanding. And what is that understanding? You have the parallel in John 17, 3. This is life eternal, that they may know thee, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

27:42 You see what it is? It is such an understanding that takes the objective message of the gospel, in which God and Christ and the Spirit are set before us in the form of sound words, but it becomes more to us than propositions, statements albeit true and accurate and maybe even wonderful and glorious, those statements of Christ become by the ministry of Christ the things that bring us into the experimental acquaintance with and knowledge of the living God. And we know Him who is true. And in the language of 2 Corinthians, we behold the very glory of God

Implication 1: A Spirit of Dependence and Prayerfulness

28:30 in the face of Jesus Christ. And so I say, there is taught in the Scriptures this doctrine, that Christ is the great prophet of His church, not only in bringing externally and authoritatively that Word from God, but He is the prophet of the heart, who enables poor blind sinners to perceive the truth in its beauty, in its suitableness, in its loveliness, and causes them to yield themselves up to its power. Now, if that be a doctrine taught in the Word of God, and I don't know how I could understand these passages and be honest with them if I rejected that teaching,

29:22 it has some very powerful and pointed implications and applications, and I want to touch upon two or three as time permits this morning. First of all, if this doctrine is true, then it ought to produce among those who understand it a spirit of dependence.

29:46 A spirit of dependence. If all men can do is bring the word to the outer ear, even a man like the Apostle Paul, who had known Christ by way of direct revelation, God spoke from heaven, he saw the risen Christ, if all he can do is come by a riverside and speak the words of the gospel but cannot penetrate the heart,

30:22 what hope is there for just ordinary preachers who claim to have seen no visions of Christ, who make no wild fanatical claims to direct revelation, whose whole task is to bring to their hearers the form of sound words? Oh, listen, dear Christian friend, it matters not how careful and studious the preacher or teacher may be. It matters not how careful he may be in seeking to lay out the truth logically and clearly and simply, and to buttress it with sound reasoning, and to illustrate it with clear analogies, and to seek to make it beautiful with vigorous and pictorial language.

31:08 Dear child of God, all the human instrument can do is bring the word to the outer ear. That's all.

31:19 And if Christ is not present to bring it to the heart, you will know nothing of the beauty of truth or the power of truth. You may be taken up and fascinated with the inherent beauty in its structure and in its form or in the manner of its presentation, but you will never see its beauty so as to yield yourself to its power.

31:54 Now, if that's true, Do you see how a spirit of dependence upon the living God ought to characterize all of our interactions with the word of truth?

32:11 And I want to go on to say under this heading, the most accurate barometer of the spirit of dependence is the measure of our prayerfulness. Prayerfulness in terms of disciplines and dispositions A prayerful disposition and attitude As well as the disciplines necessary for specific seasons of prayer Prayerfulness in that two-fold manner Is the most accurate barometer of our dependence The great Apostle Paul When he would seek to write glorious things to the Ephesians He lets them know at the outset Ephesians 1.15 He says I bow my knees

32:59 And I pray that the Father would give you The spirit of wisdom and revelation In the knowledge of himself If he doesn't do it All that I write to you will be of no avail And then he repeats something similar in chapter 3 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ that He would grant unto you. And he prays again that the Spirit would be given. The psalmist understood this when he prayed, Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.

33:35 Oh, dear people gathered here this morning, if your prayerfulness in terms of the disciplines of prayer and the general disposition of prayer is an accurate index of how dependent you are upon the Spirit. How dependent are you?

33:57 This is why my heart rejoices to see that Saturday morning prayer meeting not only increase numerically, but increase in its level of fervency and in its scope of entreaty for the services of the Lord's Day. I am not preaching this doctrine to excuse those of us who labor publicly in the word and in teaching From all of the disciplines incumbent upon us To be clear and simple and to illustrate and all the rest But when all is said and done If the Lord is not present as our great prophet by the Spirit To open the eyes of the understanding The most ravishing, glorious truths will pass by us, and our eyes will be held, and we will see nothing in them intrinsically beautiful.

34:53 This is why I long that we as a congregation exercise greater discipline with respect to our bedtime Saturday night. what a difference there would be in this place week by week if the majority of you spent so much as even five minutes, five minutes on your face before God, before you ever ventured forth to Sunday school, pleading with God, O God, may the great prophet who alone can teach the heart, may he be present today to teach me. And I say to you who are impenitent and unbelieving, this is your great need. This is your great need.

35:38 There are truths that have been placarded before you that if you ever saw but the edges of their intrinsic worth and beauty, you would latch on to them as to life itself. But you can sit here and have them, as it were, float by your eyes and your ears week after week after week after week. Listen to me, my friend. If Jesus Christ does not come and be the prophet of your heart, you'll be damned.

36:13 You'll be damned.

36:17 And recognizing your impotence, you ought to cry to Him, Lord Jesus, like that poor blind beggar who had physically blind eyes and knew that there was no hope in himself or others, but hearing that Jesus of Nazareth passed by, cried out, Son of David, have mercy upon me. There was opposition to his cry. People said, shut up, you old blind beggar, got no time for you. And I love the words.

36:46 It says he cried the louder. He cried the louder. Son of David, have mercy upon me. And some of the most beautiful words in all of the Bible, it says, And Jesus stood still.

37:03 Stood still. A desperate cry arrests the Son of God. And the Scripture tells us that Jesus said, What do you want me to do for you? And He said, Lord, that I may receive my sight.

37:19 Oh, dear unconverted man, woman, boy, or girl, do you wonder why some of us get so excited when we speak of our Lord? Why Christ and the gospel and the blood of the everlasting covenant And all of the things that surround the Christian life Are our meat and our drink Why? Because we see things you don't see We've not had visions We've not heard the flutter of angels' wings But the Lord Jesus has opened the eyes of our heart And when we say Christ That's not just C-H-R-I-S-T a six-letter word. He's our living Lord, whose head is crowned with glory, whose person is filled with majesty,

Implication 2: A Spirit of Fear Against Detaching Spirit From Word

38:09 whose cross, though ugly when viewed from the perspective of the sin that brings Him under the judgment of God, is glorious with attractiveness, because we see in it our only hope of salvation. And it is only because the Lord has opened the eyes of our understanding. Oh, cry to him, unconverted man, woman, boy, girl, pray that you may see and come to the one who is the great prophet to open the ears not only here but here Well secondly we understand this doctrine of Christ inward prophetic ministry It will not only create or ought to create a spirit of dependence

38:57 but it ought to create a spirit of fear.

39:02 Oh, you say, Pastor, fear has no place in the mature Christian life. Oh, yes, it does. We're commanded again and again to fear. with a fear that is rooted in the realities of the Christian life.

39:15 For you see, in the history of the church and in the history of many individual believers, there have been two great dangers. One is that of fanaticism and that that we might call presumption. The fanaticism that says we don't really need the written, the objective, the eternal external Word of God. And people want Christ to be an internal prophet in a way that bypasses careful, precise analysis of the words of Scripture.

39:52 Now that can only lead to the worst kind of fanaticism. Christ will never be a prophet to the heart in any other context but that in which He is a prophet to the ear by the written Word. it's when Paul came to speak the truths of the written word that the Lord opened the ears of the heart. Jesus didn't give them some new wrinkle on things.

40:17 He says, the words I spoke to you before, I'm not going to change them. Same words, but now I'm going to give you something you never had before. I'm going to give you eyes to really see what they mean. Now you see, we ought to have a spirit of holy fear.

40:30 Lest we take this element of the inner, subjective, powerful ministry of Christ our prophet and ever hope to see it accomplished or exercised, divorced from the most careful, the most unswerving allegiance to this holy book. But on the other hand We ought to fear that presumption Which thinks That we by our sheer effort Can maintain loyalty To the truth of scripture Simply by dealing with the words of scripture And forgetting that Christ alone Can open the eyes of the soul That was one of the great curses of the Pharisees

41:17 Jesus says, you search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, but He says, you are missing Me, but you will not come to Me.

41:28 A man of God from the past century, speaking to this very issue, says, and these words have haunted me since I read them several weeks ago, No human wisdom can enable us to hold fast divine and saving truth. No human wisdom can enable us to hold fast divine and saving truth. Follow. It, saving truth, can never be held by the head alone.

41:59 The heart alone can keep it. and it can keep it only as it works it into and assimilates it with the whole spiritual being. You see what he's saying? You cannot maintain loyalty to the Bible if it simply finds entrance to the mind by the outer ear.

42:22 All the professed loyalty will fail us. He says, no, the truth must be held by the heart. And the only way it can be held by the heart is when the heart assimilates it into the entire spiritual being. Nothing but the indwelling Spirit of God, the Spirit of life, can give even the heart this power.

42:45 Only that divine Spirit that searches all things, yea, the deep things of God, can keep the soul from sinking into those depths of Satan, depths of boastful wisdom, of sophisticated reasoning and satanic cunning. In these matters of truth and duty, we need not that any man teach us, John says. It is not science or learning or logic that we lack. Valuable as these are, they can never even tell us what God is, what He requires or what He will bestow, much less can they make us like Him.

43:24 God Himself must be our teacher, first in His inspired words showing us what is the truth, and then by the enlightening Spirit renewing the heart and purifying the spiritual vision. Isn't that what we confessed when we sang together this morning? All our knowledge, sense, and sight lie in deepest darkness shrouded, till Thy Spirit breaks our night with the beams of truth uncloughed. May God give us holy fear Fear on the one hand of a fanaticism

44:10 That will seek some understanding of God Some experience of God Detached from and materially separate from the written word I don't want to be tedious and insult your intelligence by needless repetition But in this day of confusion, of charismatic nonsense of all forms of excesses. May God help us as a people to plant our feet so firmly on this principle that we'll never be enticed away. We look for no experience, no knowledge, no flights, no ecstasies apart from those that are to be rooted in the written Word of God.

Implication 3: A Spirit of Gratitude

44:58 Oh, that God will fill us with an equally deep conviction and with an equally pervasive jealousy that we should ever think that we can maintain that posture if we grieve and quench the Spirit, if we become cocky and carnal in our confidence, either in ourselves or in those who minister the Word to us. May there be that spirit of dread lest Christ should not be present in our public seasons of teaching and preaching lest He should not be present in our devotional lives and in our family worship opening the eyes of our understanding.

45:45 And then finally, if we understand this truth it will not only be productive of a spirit of dependence a spirit of fear but a spirit of gratitude. when the Lord is pleased to be prophet to the ears of the heart it is the part of wisdom to acknowledge that that is his ministry and his alone there is a proper sense in which gratitude to the servants of God should be both felt and expressed those who bring us this first dimension of Christ's prophetic ministry The scripture says we're to honor those who labor in the word and in doctrine. And there's nothing wrong with that honor and the expressions of that honor and gratitude.

46:34 Frankly, I find it impossible, impossible to have a fellow mortal ever open up to me one new thought from the scriptures without expressing my gratitude to him. I find it morally and ethically impossible to be silent when someone has been an instrument of God to open up the truth of God to my outer ear and in so doing become the instrument in Christ's hands through which he opens up the inner ear. But you see, gratitude for that must be directed to the only one who can accomplish it. In the language of Paul in 1 Corinthians, one soils, another waters.

47:23 God gives the increase. So then neither is he that planteth nor he that watereth anything but God that giveth the increase. Oh, I trust we shall have a spirit of gratitude. really to understand that no matter who or what the circumstances were of our being brought within the orbit of the external objective proclamation of the Gospel, we could have listened to the Apostle Paul himself.

47:51 But if the Lord had not opened our hearts, we would have listened in vain. Oh may we have and never Never never lose That sense of overwhelming Gratitude to Christ That he's been a prophet Not only to the outer ear But to the inner ear And if any Lord's day comes and goes And you come to its close And God has enabled you to see The truth not only in its external Form and substance But in its internal beauty And loveliness and suitableness to your need so that the heart has embraced it in the love of it, in the beauty of it, in the power of it. Before you pillow your head, you give thanks to Him who is your great prophet,

Closing Prayer

48:38 who once again has drawn near to nurture His church as its great prophet. Oh, may God help us never to detach the edification of preaching from the activity of the prophetic ministry of Christ, ministering internally and efficaciously as well as externally in the preaching of the Word. May God grant them that our worship of our Redeemer as our prophet may take on new dimensions of biblical intelligence. May it be permeated with new measures of fervency and abandonment as we worship Him who in pursuit of our salvation has become our great prophet.

49:27 Let us pray.

49:40 Our Lord Jesus Christ, we thank You that You are our prophet. and we thank you that you continue to open the eyes of the understanding of men. We thank you that you continue to open the hearts of those Libyans upon whom you have set your love. We pray that you would forgive us when we have ignored this dimension of your prophetic ministry, when we have not cultivated the spirit of dependence, giving expression to that spirit in earnest and fervent prayerfulness, when we have in any way robbed you of glory that was due to you for your work,

50:31 O Lord, forgive us.

50:34 Teach us how to praise you, how to be filled with gratitude to you for being such a prophet to your people. We pray for those whose eyes have never seen any beauty In all the truth that they've heard Who may even subscribe to that truth Who may even in some way claim allegiance to it But whose hearts have never been captured by the beauty of Christ O Lord Jesus Will you not come and do what you did by that riverside? Will you not come and do what you did for those disciples? Will you not come and open the eyes of the understanding that they may see,

51:22 and that seeing their hearts may run out to you in faith, in love, and devotion? Hear the prayer that we offer and seal your word to our hearts. we ask for the praise of your name and to the end that you may be glorified by us not only as our great high priest but as our ever blessed prophet Amen