SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/15/2018
9:55 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 Intro
to the book of Ephesians
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ephesians
Message of the
verses: We continue looking at the
introduction to the book of Ephesians, and we continue looking at the theme “The
Mystery of the Church” in today’s SD.
John MacArthur writes the following in his introductory
comments on the book of Ephesians: “God’s
disclosure of His truth may be divided into three categories. In the first category are the truths He
reveals to no one, ‘the secret things [that] belong to the Lord our God’ (Deut.
29:29). His limitless truth is far
beyond man’s finite mind to fathom or comprehend. In His wisdom and sovereignty God has chosen
not to disclose certain truths to any man at any time.
“In the second category are those truths God has chosen
to reveal to special people throughout history.
All men can know something of God’s nature, ‘because that which is known
about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His
invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly
seen, being understood through what has been made’ (Rom. 1:19-20). But the deeper and fuller truths of His
nature and will are unknown and incomprehensible to unbelievers.
“The special people to whom God reveals His will and plan
are not an elite group of seers or prophets but are believers. The revelation He has given through His
prophets and apostles is for all of His people, for every person who belongs to
Him by faith. ‘The secret of the Lord is
for those who fear Him, and He will make them know His covenant’ (Ps.
25:14). The Lord ‘is intimate with the
upright’ (Prov. 2:32). ‘Surely the Lord
God does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel to His servants the
prophets’ (Amos 3:7). Those who received
revelation directly from the Lord made it known to the people.
“The third category are those truths that God kept secret
for a period of time but finally disclosed to His people in the New
Testament. Here God gives new truth for
a new age, truth about which even the godliest of Old Testament saints were
unaware. These new truths are the
mysteries (musteria), the once-hidden
but now revealed truths God gives in His New Covenant.
“This is the category of truth Paul reveals to such a
great extent in Ephesians—especially in the truth about the church of Jesus
Christ, which God eternally designed to include both Jews and Gentile. Knowledge of that mystery is one of the great
riches that only believers of this present age possess.”
It
was a very long time ago when I heard a Pastor speaking on the book of Matthew,
and what he said has stuck with me, and that was that there was a division in
Matthew between chapters 12 and 13. When
the Jewish leaders stated that Jesus was able to do miracles through the power
of Satan (Beelzebul) that Jesus told them that they
had committed the unpardonable sin, that is attributing the power of the Holy
Spirit to Satan. So when we come to the
13th chapter of Matthew’s gospel we see Jesus speaking in parables
for when He has spoken truth to the people of Israel, especially their
religious leaders they not only did not believe it, but attributed it to Satan,
and so it was time to speak in parables:
“34 All these things Jesus spoke
to the crowds in parables, and He did not speak to them without a parable. 35
This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: "I WILL
OPEN MY MOUTH IN PARABLES; I WILL UTTER THINGS HIDDEN SINCE THE FOUNDATION OF
THE WORLD."” After He began to
speak to the crowds in parables His disciples ask Him why He was doing
this. Jesus explained “"To you it
has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it
has not been granted (Matt. 13:11).” Let
us also look at Matthew 11:25 “At that time Jesus said, "I praise You,
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the
wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.” Paul writes the following in 1 Corinthians
2:14 “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for
they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are
spiritually appraised.” I have often
said that there is a difference between a believer reading the Word of God and
an unbeliever reading the Word of God, and that difference is that the believer
has the Holy Spirit living in him to illuminate the Word while the unbeliever
is actually reading someone else’s mail. This too is a part of the mystery of
the church.
We
have written in earlier SD’s that there are many different prophecies of the
coming Messiah found in the Old Testament, and many of them speak of the
Messiah’s rule in the coming kingdom, the kingdom that the NT book of
Revelation calls the “Millennial Kingdom” for it will last for 1000 years, but
the OT prophets also speak of the Messiah’s coming the first time in places
like Isaiah 52-53 where Isaiah speaks of the “suffering servant” who comes to
die on the cross as Psalm 22 describes in order to provide salvation. There was a problem when the Messiah came the
first time and that was that most of the Jews forgot about the prophecies of
the suffering servant and were looking for the ruling servant and this is one
of the reasons that they killed Him, and I believe it is the number one reason
that Judas betrayed Him. Most of the
Jews missed out on their Messiah, and that is not only true of the majority of
Jews today, but also a great many Gentiles today. This too is a part of the mystery of the
church.
John
MacArthur writes some things about what we have been writing about: “Meanwhile the King is absent from
earth. Yet, from heaven Christ now rules
His earthly-kingdom. Whereas He will
rule the entire world externally during the Millennium, He not rules
internally, in the lives of those who belong to Him. The present form of the kingdom is the sphere
of salvation by grace through faith. He
is King over those who have confessed Him as sovereign Lord. The blessings that will be externally
dispensed during the Millennium are now internally dispensed to believers. Just as Christ will outwardly enthroned in
Jerusalem during the Millennium, He now is inwardly enthroned in the hearts of
His saints. As in the future kingdom He will
dispense grace, so He does even now to those who trust in Him. As He then will bring external peace to the
whole world, He now brings internal peace in the lives of believers. As He will then bestow joy and happiness
externally, He now internally bestows those blessings upon His own people.” This kingdom which is called the interim,
internal kingdom the OT prophets knew nothing about. You can look at it like a person looking at a
scene where he sees two very high mountains from afar off yet does not realize
that there is a great valley between the two mountains, and that valley is this
interim, internal kingdom, a parenthesis if you would.
We
have just spent 16 months studying the growth of the church as we studied the
book of Acts and now we begin, what I believe will be a longs study of what
Paul writes is how the church is to operate as he wrote to the Ephesians, a
church that he spent much time at, I think three years, and this was like his
headquarters while in Asia Minor, and from that headquarters the Word of God
went out throughout all of Asia Minor, so now as he writes to this church I
have to believe that this letter was kind of a circuit letter that also went to
all the churches in that area, and now we can read and study it.
One
more quote on the mystery of the church from the pen of John MacArthur and we
will end this SD. “Within the central
mystery of the kingdom are other revealed mysteries (see Matt. 13:11). One is the mystery of the indwelling Christ, ‘the
mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations; but has now
been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the
riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you,
the hope of glory’ (Col. 1:26-27). Other
mysteries are that of God in flesh, the incarnation of the Son of God, a truth
not fully revealed in the Old Testament (Col. 2:2-3); the mystery of Israel’s
unbelief and rejection of the Messiah (Rom. 11:25); the mystery of iniquity (2
Thess. 2:7); the mystery of Babylon—the terrible, vile, economic and religious
system of the end times (Rev. 17); the mystery of the unity of believers (Eph.
3:3-6); the mystery of the church as Christ’s bride (Eph. 5:24-32); and the
mystery of the rapture (1 Cor. 15:51-52).
The mystery age will be completed when Christ returns in glory (Rev.
10:7).”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I can say that some of these mysteries will be
a review, but a welcome review as I, along with those who follow my blog will
get to continue to learn more about the mysteries listed above. I look forward to this exciting mysterious
adventure, and hope you do too.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I trust that the Lord through His Spirit will
help me to understand these mysteries and be able to communicate them onto my
Spiritual Diaries.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Malta” (Acts 28:3-4).
Today’s Bible question: “What man, born in Alexandria, was described
as ‘an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures’?”
Answer in our next SD.
10/15/2018 11:01 AM
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