God’s Revelation
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2025 · 25 May 2025
Now we have always believed, and the evangelical church and the faithful church, has always believed that the truth is outside of us, that divine revelation is outside of us, that the Word of God is outside of us. And that it is objective and that it is contained in 66 books of the Bible. And there are no guesses necessary as to whether or not we have the Word of God, the message from heaven.
It is the mark of a true Christian to love the Word of God, to love the truth. That’s just what it means to be a believer. Psalm 119 says it’s sweeter than honey in the honeycomb and it’s more precious than gold, yes than much fine gold. In Psalm 119:97 it says, “O how I love Your Law.” The work of God in the life of the believer is to generate a love for Scripture. Salvation requires a love for Christ.
To motivate the believer internally toward the Scripture to understand it, to obey it, and to proclaim it. Where true conversion takes place, there will be a love for the Word of God. There will be a hunger and thirst for the Scripture. Peter says in John 6, when Jesus said, “You won’t also go away, will you?” And Peter says on behalf of the rest, “To whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life.”
One of the components of salvation is a desire for the Word of God. When you’re human you have a desire for natural food, bread, if you will in the biblical sense, and if you’re spiritually reborn, you have a desire for spiritual food which is contained in Scripture. So it is incidental to the Christian’s life and experience to have a hunger for the Word of God. That’s part and parcel of the new creation. Okay?
When you become a believer the Holy Spirit takes up residence in you and makes the Scripture come alive. He becomes your teacher. The truth isn’t in you, the Spirit is in you, and the truth is outside of you. The Spirit who is in you gives you the ability to understand the truth. 1 John 2:24 says, “What you have heard from the beginning is to remain in you, then you will remain in the Son and in the Father.
If you follow your own intuition and your own imaginary experiences and impulses, it will inevitably lead you away from the Word of God. It will lead you away from the Word of God because it seems more dynamic, more relevant, and more personal and it’s always going to be tied to your own desires in some way because it’s being cultivated in your own mind. It is going to lead you away from the truth.
We have to trust the Word of God. We have to trust the fullness, sufficiency and completeness of the Word of God. Now there are Charismatics today, who as scholarly as they get, who are denying the sufficiency of Scripture. But that would not be Scripture’s own testimony. 1 Corinthians 2 is a chapter to understand this. God’s power comes through God’s wisdom and God’s wisdom comes through Scripture.
The Bible is the Holy Spirit speaking. It is through the Bible that He now speaks. That’s really important for you to understand. The Holy Spirit spoke when Scripture was written, but the Holy Spirit speaks when Scripture is read and Scripture is understood. So He continues to speak through His Word. And we know that this is the Word of God, and we know this is the Word of the Holy Spirit. We are hearing the Spirit speak through His Word.
It isn’t about the power of the orator. My preaching was not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power so that your faith wouldn’t rest on the wisdom of men but on the power of God. At the time Paul was writing, of course, the Old Testament had been brought together, those 39 books had been completed, while the books of the New Testament were in process.
So the unbelievers and their top leaders and the elite are not going to ever be a source for spiritual wisdom. We are responsible to know the Bible and believe it. We are responsible to live it, obey it, proclaim it, therefore it must be available and clear to us and it in fact is. Verse 7, “On the contrary, we speak God’s hidden wisdom in a mystery, a wisdom God predestined before the ages for our glory.”
Verse 8, “None of the rulers of this age knew this wisdom, because if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” Paul says we know people don’t understand it. We know the Jews didn’t understand it or they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory. The Gentiles didn’t understand it or they wouldn’t have actually carried out the execution. We’re speaking mystery. What does mystery mean?
God is now showing us the gospel which has been unknown to the world and even unknown to the angels of heaven. The secrets are known only to God and revealed when God chooses to reveal them and to whom He chooses to reveal them. Romans 16:25 says, “Now to Him who is able to strengthen you according to the proclamation about Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept silent for long ages.”
We’re talking about truth that cannot be known, is not attainable, is not available, and is not discernable to the natural man. It does not rise from their thinking, it is alien to them, it is the wisdom that is from God, it is the testimony, it is the wisdom that comes down from above. It is the mystery now unfolded. The mystery referring to the New Testament revelation which had been hidden until Christ and until the Apostles.
So let me sum up. From eternity past, God in His sovereign decree and electing grace planned for us who believe in Christ eternal blessing. That eternal blessing would come to us when we believe the truth, the wisdom of God revealed in the New Testament which is the mystery unfolded. This is unavailable to man. Scripture is understandable only to those who have the resident truth teacher, the Holy Spirit.
Verse 9, “But as it is written, “What no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has conceived— God has prepared these things for those who love Him.” This is taken from Isaiah. All that God has prepared is unavailable by empirical research, it is unavailable by intuition. You can’t see it and can’t hear it, that’s empirical. You can’t feel it, as if it were in your heart, it’s unavailable for mankind.
For those of us who are believers, however, the truth teacher has been placed inside of us. Now we see three aspects of this divine wisdom being deposited in our lives. Aspect number one, let’s call it revelation. Let me give you now three new terms, revelation, inspiration and illumination. Aspect number one is revelation. And that word is actually used, at least in a verb form there in the next verse.
Verse 10-11, “Now God has revealed these things to us by the Spirit, since the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except his spirit within him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” I mean that which is revealed from God. To us is emphatic, not to the world’s philosophers. It is the work of the Spirit to give us the divine mystery.
And by revelation, I don’t mean the book of revelation. I mean that which is revealed from God. That’s the content, the truth itself. This is emphatic “For to us,” that’s emphatic position, not to the world’s philosophers, not to the elite of the world. God’s revelation is given to us. It is the work of the Spirit to give us the divine mystery. Why? Because He says, “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.”
Romans 8:26 - 27 talks about the Spirit making intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered and that God knows the mind of the Spirit because He always prays according to the will of the Father. So the Trinity is perfect in its knowledge, so the Spirit is the agent who makes the truth of God known to us. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. He alone is competent to reveal God to us.
He knows the inmost perfections and purposes fully because He Himself is God. He knows the will of God because He is God and wills what the Father wills and what the Son wills. The Holy Spirit, as true of any member of the Trinity, is omniscient about Himself and also omniscient about God. He compares it in to a person who has self-consciousness, that’s what distinguishes us from vegetables and animals.
The Spirit of God then is the one who knows the deep realities, purposes, plans of God who knows perfectly the wisdom of God. And so He is the one searching all the depth of the true wisdom of God who then reveals them to us. The book of Revelation comes from that. It means to unveil something that has been hidden. Revelation is the act of God by which He makes known to us what was otherwise unknown.
Verses 12-13, “Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God. 13 We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people.” The second is inspiration. Paul says, “We have received the Holy Spirit so that we may know the things taught by God.”
So what is inspiration? It is the Holy Spirit giving the Apostles. It is taking the revelation and putting it in words. This is the vehicle that conveys the secret things of God, the depths of God known only to the Spirit of God. We have received the influence of the Holy Spirit in the process of inspiration, Jesus says in John 14:26, “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send to us in My name.”
The Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, “He will testify about Me and you will testify also because you’ve been with Me from the beginning.” The Holy Spirit is going to come upon you and He is going to reveal to you the truth and you are going to remember it and recall it and you’re going to write it down and give testimony to Me in that way. He will not speak on His own initiative but whatever He hears He will speak.
The Holy Spirit will not only tell you what you will remember in the past, He will reveal to you what is coming in the future. This is the work of inspiration. The Apostles and those associated with them will be the instruments the Holy Spirit will use to write down truth that we have contained in Scripture. Things that apostles not only know, but we communicate. We speak in words taught by the Holy Spirit.
That’s why we say Scripture is God-breathed. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture,” meaning Old and New, “is God-breathed.” This refers to the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiring the writers. Verse 17 provides all that a man of God needs to be equipped for every good work. 2 Peter 1:21 says, “No prophecy of Scripture was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”
Scripture is authoritative. It is without error and it is comprehensive. It is infallible and sufficient. Spiritual truths set forth in Spirit-given words. Listen, you who are committed to the Scripture are not out of touch with the Holy Spirit, you’re never more in communion with the Holy Spirit than when you’re reading Scripture. That leads to a third and final aspect of the Spirit’s ministry, illumination.
Verses 14-16 says, “But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually. 15 The spiritual person, however, can evaluate everything, and yet he himself cannot be evaluated by anyone. 16 For who has known the Lord’s mind, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”
Illumination is the work of the Holy Spirit to make its meaning known, to make Scripture understandable. Even if we have a Bible, even if we have revelation bought down to us through inspiration, verse 14 reminds us, “A natural man doesn’t accept the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to him and he can’t understand them.” But verse 15 says, he who is spiritual evaluate all things.
People who show distain to the Scripture are just acting natural. This is how natural people act. They may have a certain respect for the Bible which they don’t understand, they may even try to live up to some of its sort of normal sort of well-known moral laws or principles of honesty and decency. But they have no respect for it. They don’t comprehend it. Even the best of men can’t make a true judgment of Scripture.
And it becomes even more dramatic how lost they are, the higher up you go. What does that mean? What that simply means is the world, even the elite of the world, are so unable to understand the Word of God that they can’t value us the way we need to be valued. They can’t even assess us. They don’t understand this so they don’t understand us. This is a blow to the wise men of the world.
Verse 16, “For who has known the mind of the Lord that He will instruct Him?” Isaiah 40:13. They don’t’ know God’s mind. Why? Because the only way you can know God’s mind is to know what God has revealed about His mind in Scripture. And if you are a natural person, and do not have life in Christ, and do not possess the Holy Spirit, you can’t understand the Scripture and you can’t understand the Christians.
This is the fulfillment of Psalm 119:18, “Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Your Law.” The revelation is the truth that the Spirit of God has determined to reveal, inspiration is the means by which it is transmitted to print. Illumination is the work of the Holy Spirit to make its meaning known. We’re reminded that even though we have the deep things of God, in a natural condition it turns into foolishness.
We have the mind of Christ. It’s all so clear to us, isn’t it? You misjudge us, you’ve misjudged Christ. No one can instruct the Lord, but we have the mind of the Lord, therefore no one in the world can instruct us. You can’t bring an unbeliever before me who can in one small way change how I view the world. He has nothing to offer to me. I have a complete understanding as revealed in Scripture.
The mind of God, its vastness is unfathomable. But there is truth that has been gathered by the Holy Spirit from the depth of the nature of God. It has been revealed and it has been written down through the process of inspiration as the Bible writers wrote the very words the Spirit of God prompted them to write. We have those words in a book and we have the resident truth teacher that teaches us all things. Let us pray.