I’m sure that the title to this lesson has left many readers puzzled – questioning if it is not redundant to have a chapter on meaning following the chapter on understanding. Perhaps the best way to address the issue is with a story.
Daniel chapter five records the account of how the king of Babylon was enjoying a feast with all his top officials when suddenly the festivities were interrupted by a personal memo from God, written on the wall of the banquet hall. When he called for all his advisors, counselors, astrologers, sorcerers, magicians, and Chaldeans to explain the message to him, none of them had a problem reading the words that God’s finger had etched on the wall since it was simply a list of the coins in circulation in their empire: mene, tekel, pharsin. In fact, the men probably had those very coins in their pockets as they stared helplessly at the mysterious message engraved in the plaster. However, it was impossible for them to go beyond the surface understanding of the names of their coinage. Only Daniel – with his ability to see what everyone else was simply looking at – was able to see that the name of each coin also had a second meaning. Mene meant “to measure” in addition to naming their currency: tekel had the second meaning of “to weigh”; U was a conjunction meaning “and”; and pharsin meant “to divide.” Adding to this the fact that mene sounded like “Mede” and pharsin sounded like “Persian,” Daniel was able to see what was hidden in plain sight. All this revelation was “as plain as the handwriting on the wall,” but the magicians were blind to it.
This story illustrates the point that it is possible that we can fail to see the meaning of words on a page – or, in this case, on the wall – even when we totally understand what they say. This phenoxenium is because understanding has to do with mental comprehension; while meaning is about heart perception. Although there is only a sixteen-inch separation between the head and heart; there is a world of difference between understanding and meaning! I have already “let the cat out of the bag” concerning how understanding can be turned into meaning when I mentioned the fact that only Daniel could see what all the soothsayers were looking at. This development is what the Apostle Paul described as having the eyes of our understanding enlightened (Ephesians 1:18) – a process that he explained was possible only through the spirit of wisdom and revelation (Ephesians 1:17). Interestingly, in the story of Daniel, even those who didn’t comprehend the difference between their pantheon of pagan deities and the one true living God were able to identify the source of Daniel’s ability to discern the meaning of things that were mysteries to others – the spirit of the “holy gods,” which they defined as an excellent spirit of knowledge, understanding, interpreting of dreams, revealing of enigmas, and dissolving of doubts. (Daniel 5:11-12)
Paul further explained the work of the Holy Spirit in revealing meaning when he paraphrased and then expanded upon the words of Isaiah 64:4 by saying, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him, but added that God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. (I Corinthians 2:9-10) However, to comprehend the full import of this statement, we must back up one verse to include the apostle’s reference to the devil, his demonic forces, and all the humans who were influenced by them to crucify Jesus, Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Had the princes of this world been able to comprehend in advance the meaning of the cross, they would never have gone through with the crucifixion. Even the entire Jewish sacrificial system is a symbolic representation depicting every aspect of the crucifixion and there are astonishingly accurate prophecies – such as Isaiah chapter fifty-three and the twenty-second psalm – that portray the crucifixion in detail, none of the demonic forces that control our planet were able to decipher the meaning of the passages. Certainly, they all understood the Hebrew words on the page; yet, they simply could not receive their meaning because they did not have the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit – the only way they would have ever been able to comprehend how such a gory and gruesome execution could be the thing that God had prepared for those who love Him.
The devil – who does not have a relationship to the Holy Spirit – is actually a great example of how an individual can understand the words of the Bible without grasping their meaning. He knows the Bible “backward and forward” – well, at least, backward – as was demonstrated in the temptation when he quoted scripture to Jesus. (Matthew 4:6) However, there is a little adage that we can remember at this point, “When you take a text out of context, all you have left is a con” – exactly what Satan tried to do to Jesus when he dug into his repertoire of Bible verses. In fact, the devil and his followers are experts at orderly study of the Scripture, The word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little (Isaiah 28:13); yet, the rest of that verse explains that, rather than bringing them spirit and life, their interpretations were their destruction because they were unable to grasp meaning from the Bible, That they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.
Let’s revisit the story of the temptation to gain a bit of insight into the mechanism that catalyzes meaning. Satan’s final attempt to destroy Jesus’ mission to the human race was based on getting Him to worship him (Matthew 4:9, Luke 4:7) – a challenge that Jesus countered with the directive that we must only worship God (Matthew 4:10, Luke 4:8). The one thing that Lucifer refused to do and that culminated in his expulsion from heaven and his being banished to earth was his desire to be worshiped in the place of God – a rebellion which is graphically recounted in Isaiah chapter fourteen and Ezekiel chapter twenty-eight. There is one easy-to-overlook detail in this story that I’d like to point out – Ezekiel 28:4-6 stresses that Lucifer had understanding as he entered into his mutiny against the Almighty. Upon being exiled to Planet Earth, the fallen cherub established himself as the god of this world and set out to blind the minds of men so that they could not believe and receive the light of the glorious gospel of Christ (II Corinthians 4:4) – with the result that their understanding was darkened through the blindness of their hearts (Ephesians 4:18).
When Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman at the well, He gave her a simple formula as the solution to the perplexing questions that she asked Him, God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24) Although I have previously made a “big deal” over the distinction between instances where “spirit” should be written with a capital “S” and times when it should be denoted with a small “s,” this statement leaves us with no proper context to understand whether Jesus was saying that we must worship God through the Holy Spirit or through our human spirits. However, the truth is that, in worship, the Holy Spirit and the human spirit are drawn together into a relationship that blurs the margins between the “s”s. Allow me to illustrate this point by using two tuning forks. If you strike one tuning fork and hold it close to a second one of the same pitch – even though the first tuning fork does not physically touch the second one – the second tuning fork will begin to resonate with the same sound as the first. The same thing happens when our human spirits are attuned to the Holy Spirit in worship – it becomes impossible to tell the difference between them. We can see how this works by examining one New Testament act of worship – speaking in tongues. Clearly, this spiritual gift is an act of worship in that it is associated with declaring the wonderful works of God (Acts 2:11) and magnifying God (Acts 10:46). It is in the actual operation of this gift that we see the confluence of the human spirit and the Holy Spirit. In the record of the first occurrence of this gift, we see that the believers in the Upper Room spoke as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:4); yet, when Paul described the gift, he said that it is the human spirit that is speaking when we pray in tongues (I Corinthians 14:14) – the result of the Holy Spirit’s tuning fork resonating with the tuning fork in the believer’s human spirit.
There is one significant point that we must examine before we move on. In his discussion of the gift of tongues, Paul made reference to the only Old Testament prophecy that speaks of this gift – a passage that we have already visited. In I Corinthians 14:22, Paul quoted Isaiah 28:11, For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. As you scratch your head, wondering when we have referred to this verse previously, let me confess that we didn’t actually look at this verse itself; however, we did look at the passage in which it appears. In discussing how the devil and his followers could do all the proper line-upon-line and precept-upon-precept study of the Word of God yet not comprehend its meaning, Isaiah actually confirmed the validity of such orderly study of the Scripture in verse ten and coupled it with the necessity of this spiritual gift in verses eleven and twelve before making the contradiction in verse thirteen. His point is that even the best and most proper study of the Word – if taken on an intellectual level only – can be not only fruitless, but even destructive.
The avenue for that sixteen-inch journey from mental comprehension to heart perception is worshipful study. The Apostle Paul was a great example of man who needed to go from understanding to meaning. I wish to begin this explanation by begging your indulgence because I want to speculate on some concepts that are not specifically spelled out in the scriptures; however, I believe that we can “connect the dots” without any real violation of reason or the sanctity of the text. We know that Saul was an excellent student of the Word of God in that he studied under the most notable rabbi of his day. (Acts 22:3) His experience on the Road to Damascus threw him into a total “tailspin” in that this encounter totally contradicted everything that he understood and believed. In his brain, Saul was totally convinced that Jesus was the greatest blasphemer, heretic, and charlatan that ever lived; however, his heart yelled out that Jesus was Lord even before he knew who it was that he had encountered in that blinding light. (Acts 9:5) We also know that, once he was converted on the Road to Damascus and then baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit under the ministry of Ananias (Acts 9:17), he spent the following three years in Arabia without any further contact with Christians, especially those who could have taught him the truth of the gospel (Galatians 1:16-17). He went into the desert with the head knowledge that the Old Testament itself was holy, just, and good (Romans 7:12) but that he had been seeing it through the lens of rabbinic interpretations – ideas that he eventually came to define as dung (Philippians 3:8). However, he also had the heart knowledge that the Scriptures had to somehow confirm his revelation that Jesus is Lord – revelations that he defined as mysteries that had been hidden for all of history (Romans 16:25, I Corinthians 2:7, Colossians 1:26)
Since we weren’t in the Arabian desert with him, we can only speculate as to how he came by such revolutionary illuminations; however, it seems likely that these mysteries were unraveled through the worshipful practice of speaking in tongues and prophecy. (I Corinthians 4:1, 13:2, 14:2) The explanation of this concept is too lengthy to include here but is fully spelled out in my book, Maximum Impact; let me simply say that, in I Corinthians 14:15, Paul made the determination that he would purposely pray in the Spirit as well as with the understanding. It is likely this is a reference to the practice of praying mysteries to God in tongues and prophesying the revelations back in an understandable language – the practice that changed him from Saul of Tarsus to Paul the apostle and the practice that can take us from the mental level of understanding as we read the Word of God to the heart level of knowing the meaning of His Word. Through this worshipful contemplation, Paul had experienced the same thing that happened to Daniel when he stood before the enigmatic message on the wall of the Babylonian banquet hall – he was able to see the meaning of passages that all the rabbis before him had not been able to unravel as the “tuning fork” of his human spirit resonated with the Holy Spirit.
Worshipfully reading the scriptures means that you come to each encounter with an open spirit not just an open mind. I suggest that you set the stage with music, prayer, and a quiet place. It is also best to pick a time that is at the peak of your metabolic pattern. If you are a morning person, you will have difficultly forcing your way through the physical fatigue late at night to get spiritually attune enough to worshipfully study late at night. The reverse is true for those who might be “night owls.” This sort of opening of our human spirits to the presence of the Holy Spirit enables us to, as Paul expressed it, compare spiritual things with spiritual and tap into the meaning of the passage that the Holy Spirit teaches rather than just the understanding that comes through human wisdom.
