SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/16/2019
9:34 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
“The Mystery Revealed”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 3:1-13
Message of the verses: “1 For this reason
I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles- 2 if indeed
you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace which was given to me for you; 3 that by revelation there was made
known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. 4 By referring to
this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5
which in other
generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed
to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; 6 to be specific, that
the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow
partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, 7 of which I was made a
minister, according to the gift of God’s grace which was given to me according to the working of
His power. 8 To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach
to the Gentiles the
unfathomable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light what is the administration of
the mystery which
for ages has been hidden in God who created all things; 10 so that the manifold
wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the
authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was in accordance
with the eternal purpose which
He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and confident
access through faith in Him. 13 Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my
tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory.”
To begin with I want to say that I
borrowed the title for this SD from John MacArthur’s commentary on this portion
of Ephesians chapter three. We will be
looking at an introduction, a short introduction for these verses today. I have noticed that the word “which” is used
five times in this section, so it must be of some significance.
If
you look closely at our text for today you will notice a “-“at the beginning of
verse two and this indicates that from verse two to verse thirteen it is
included in a parenthesis. We see here
the beginnings of a prayer that Paul is praying for believers to help them
understand their resources as on in Christ, but then he decides to reemphasize
and expand some of the truths he has formerly mentioned. His prayer for the believers picks up in
verse fourteen where he repeats the phrase “For this reason” in order to pick
up the thought which was originally introduced in verse one. John MacArthur writes “He seems to have felt
that the Ephesians were not ready to hear his prayer in their behalf until they
better understood—and were therefore better able to apply—the truths he wanted
to pray about. And it seemed essential
for Paul to affirm his authority for teaching such a new and far-reaching truth
as the oneness of Jew and Gentile in Christ, which he does by saying that God Himself
gave him the truth and the commission to proclaim it (vv. 2-7).”
We
have mentioned earlier that the Gentiles and the Jews for the most part hated
each other and so all of a sudden we see that God saves Gentiles was very
difficult for the Jews to handle, and not only does God save Gentiles, but once
both Jews and Gentiles are saved that they are all on in Christ. I suppose that this is true of different
Gentile believers too. If one looks back
at the history of our country when there were slaves and then the slaves became
believers it was difficult for the slave owners to think that they were one
with the slaves, but that is what Christ does, He makes us all one in Him.
MacArthur
writes the following as a sort of outline to this section: “The revelation of the mystery is discussed
in vv. 1-3, the explanation of it in vv. 4-6, the proclamation of it in vv.
7-9, and finally the intention of it in vv. 10-13. ‘To be specific,’ he says in verse 6, the
sacred secret never before revealed is that ‘the Gentiles are fellow heirs and
fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus
through the gospel.’ That verse is
essentially a summary of 2:11-22.
“In
3:1-13 the apostle leads us to focus on five aspects of this divine
mystery: its prisoner, its plan, its
preaching, its purpose, and its privileges.”
Lord willing we will begin to look at “The prisoner of the Mystery” in
our next SD, and to let you know that will take a few days to get through.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “He wept bitterly” (Luke 22:62).
Today’s Bible question: “Who said ‘God your way at this time; when I
have a convenient season, I will call for you’?”
Answer in our nest SD.
1/16/2019 10:11 AM
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