My God and My Country

Word of God

Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God

Matthew 4:4

The Gospel According to Luke 24:45 

45 Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures

Brethren:

He not only opened their hearts, to attend to what he said, and the proofs he gave of his resurrection from the dead in a true body; but he removed the veil from the eyes of their minds and gave them an understanding of the sacred writings, respecting this matter, concerning his sufferings, death, and resurrection, which they were very ignorant of before, and which were as a sealed book unto them, (see John 20:9 ) though they had been from their infancy brought up to the reading of the Scriptures, and had had the advantage of Christ's ministry for some years; which shows the necessity of the special illumination of the Spirit, and the influence of his grace to remove the darkness of the mind, and give the true sense of the sacred writings.

In his discourse with the two disciples he took the veil from off the text, by opening the scriptures; here he took the veil from off the heart, by opening the mind. 

That Jesus Christ by his Spirit operates on the minds of men, on the minds of all that are his. He has access to our spirits, and can immediately influence them. It is observable how he did now after his resurrection give a specimen of those two great operations of his Spirit upon the spirits of men, his enlightening the intellectual faculties with a divine light, when he opened the understandings of his disciples, and his invigorating the active powers with a divine heat, when he made their hearts burn within them. 

Even good men need to have their understandings opened; for though they are not darkness, as they were by nature, yet in many things they are in the dark. David prays, Open mine eyes (See Psalm 119:18). Give me understanding. And Paul, who knows so much of Christ, sees his need to learn more. 

Christ’s way of working faith in the soul, and gaining the throne there, is by opening the understanding to discern the evidence of those things that are to be believed (See Romans 16:25-26). Thus he comes into the soul by the door (see Revelation 3:19), while Satan, as a thief and a robber(see John 10:1), climbs up some other way. 

The design of opening the understanding is that we may understand the scriptures; not that we may be wise above what is written, but that we may be wiser in what is written, and may be made wise to salvation by it. The Spirit in the word and the Spirit in the heart say the same thing. Christ’s scholars never learn above their bibles in this world; but they need to be learning still more and more out of their bibles, and to grow more ready and mighty in the scriptures. That we may have right thoughts of Christ, and have our mistakes concerning him rectified, there needs no more than to be made to understand the scriptures.