The State of Illumination
The sermon emphasizes the importance of divine illumination for believers, highlighting the need for a heavenly-minded life and the role of the Holy Spirit in understanding God's Word.
Andrew Murray emphasizes the necessity of divine illumination for believers, asserting that while they are born again and sealed with the Holy Spirit, they still require ongoing education and guidance from God to fully understand His Word and grace. He points out that just as a child needs external help to develop their faculties, Christians must depend on divine teaching to grow in their faith and become heavenly-minded. Murray highlights Paul's prayer in Ephesians 1:15-23, which underscores the importance of the Holy Spirit's role in revealing spiritual truths that believers cannot grasp on their own.
Text
It is not enough that a child be born into the world in the possession of all the wonderful faculties with which God has endowed man. In addition to this, he needs an education, an outside help, to draw out and guide and develop the faculties he possesses. Even the believer, sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, to know that he is God's child, needs for his education and growth to know his dependence upon divine enlightening of the heart, to enable him to know God and his Word, Christ and his grace aright.
The increasing dependence upon a divine teaching from heaven, as alone sufficient to reveal heavenly things and to make heavenly-minded Christians, has not the place in the teaching of the church that it has in that of the Epistle (Ephesians). The very first thing Paul does, after speaking about them having believed and received the Holy Spirit, and before entering, in chapter 2, on the exposition of the new life they had received, is in his wonderful prayer, Eph. 1:15-23, to tell the wonderful things which without the divine Spirit of enlightenment they could not possibly know or possess.
(Excepted from The Coming Revival, by Andrew Murray, pg. 115)
Sermon Outline
- The Need for Divine Illumination
- The Church's Lack of Emphasis
- The Importance of Divine Illumination
- Without the Holy Spirit, we cannot know heavenly things
- Divine illumination is necessary for a heavenly-minded life
Key Quotes
“Even the believer, sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, to know that he is God's child, needs for his education and growth to know his dependence upon divine enlightening of the heart,” — Andrew Murray
Application Points
- Recognize your dependence on divine enlightening for growth and understanding.
- Prioritize seeking a heavenly-minded life through divine illumination.
- Emphasize the importance of the Holy Spirit in understanding God's Word in your own life and in the church.