Luke 24:44-45

But notice here that Jesus shows that the mind of His disciples must be opened. They must be opened to the true meaning of God's Word. Now we know from elsewhere in the Bible, specifically Isaiah 6, where this concept is put originally, and also Matthew 13, where Jesus Christ quotes this, but those texts say that people see and hear, they read what God says, but do not understand. It is gobbledygook to them in many cases. Isaiah 28:9-13 says, To those without spiritual help to understand, God seems to speak with a stammer or in a foreign language. They cannot understand what He is saying. And He guides us there by saying that the bits of knowledge we need to understand, those things that God has revealed to us are scattered here a little, there a little, and must be built precept upon precept, line upon line.

So the Bible does interpret itself. But the true meaning is scattered here, there, and everywhere. It is like a big puzzle that you have to put together. It is only the revelation through the Holy Spirit that these things can be put together and understood by His people. The apostle Paul, of course, writes in I Corinthians 2:10-16, that God's Spirit helps us understand spiritual things. These spiritual things the human mind cannot fathom. A person with just the human spirit using the human mind can look at God's Word and read it for a lifetime and never really come to understand what it is all about and where it is all leading. These people normally just take the word of their preacher that this is what things mean and this is the way things are going to go, but they themselves do not understand it very deeply.

But a person with God's Spirit, who may not have a very long experience with God's Word, can understand what these people who have been reading the Bible for decades cannot understand. It is that application of the Holy Spirit that makes their understanding suddenly brighten and everything starts making sense.

In His final Passover message in John 14:26, Jesus says that He gives us, His disciples, His Spirit to teach us all things and to bring the things that He said into our remembrance. So, as you realize, God's people can see things in the text and make connections that others cannot. The difference is the Holy Spirit, a gift of God that He of His own accord gives us. It is all part of the grace of God that works to bring us toward His Kingdom, His great providence.

It is those last two words that are of import today for this message. He opened their understanding of the Old Testament about all the things there that were about Him, that were about Jesus Christ. Now we know this is true from the standpoint of the 300 or so prophecies of the Old Testament that He fulfilled in His lifetime. And He did fulfill them all, and there are many others that He will fulfill when He comes back and in the time thereafter. And we also in the Old Testament find many pre-incarnate appearances by Him. Oftentimes, He is not even identified necessarily as the God of the Old Testament. He is just called the Angel of the Lord. Or you know, it just said that God was there talking to people like Abraham and Moses and Joshua and Daniel. To those men He appeared, they had visions of Him, or they saw Him. Abraham ate with him. And how long was He there talking to Abraham over that time when He was telling him about that he would have a son? He met with Moses face to face. He appeared as the Angel of the Lord to Joshua. And to Daniel, He appeared in the visions that he saw—and I just ran out of time to investigate any of the others.