Tuesday, January 22, 2019

PT-2 "The Plan for the Mystery" (Eph. 3:5-6)


SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/22/2019 9:45 AM



My Worship Time                                                           Focus:  PT-2 “The Plan for the Ministry”



Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Ephesians 3:5-6



            Message of the verses:  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,”



            We were talking about some of the clues that are found in the OT that speak of the church age, and yet these clues were never enough for any of the prophets or the priests to understand that there would be a church age.  I have heard it said that if you look at the mystery of the church age it would be like looking at two great mountains, the first could be looked at as the Old Testament and then the second could be looked at as the coming kingdom of Israel.  However when you get to the top of the first mountain you will see a great valley between the two mountains, and that valley is the church age.  I suppose that when the church age began in Acts chapter two that the Jews, including Peter, did not even at that time see that God was going to include Gentiles to be a part of the church.  It took a great miracle from the Lord to get Peter to go and to talk to Cornelius to tell he and his family how they can be saved.  I suppose that it is difficult for us to understand the prejudice that went on between the Jews and Gentiles of that day.  However as we look at similar prejudices today we can probably get an idea of how this was going in back then.



            John MacArthur writes “That truth ‘has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the spirit.  The Greek behind ‘has…been revealed’ is in the aorist tense, which refers to specific acts or events.  Coupled with ‘now,’ it here indicates the present immediacy of the revelation, which was given exclusively to New Testament holy ‘apostles and prophets,’ and not to any other persons before or after them.  These men were the instruments of writing Scripture, and 1 John 1:1-3 describes their unique function.  The last time they met was at the Jerusalem Council, and the man who officiated there (James, the half brother of Jesus; see Acts 15:13) was not an apostle.  They were soon scattered and died, but not before the revelation was complete.  They are referred to in Ephesians 2:20 and 4:11, but only here are they called ‘holy,’ to affirm that they were fit for such revelation and were authentic.”



            There is one more quote needed to help us understand things from these verses:  “Some have noted that the personal pronoun (autou, ‘His’) is linked with ‘apostles’ and that there is no such pronoun with ‘prophets.’  This would be an emphasis on both the primacy and chronological priority of the ‘apostles’ over the ‘prophets’ who followed them.  The distinction will be treated in connection with the discussion of 4:11.”  (I hope that I will remember all of this when we get to Ephesians 4:11.)



            Paul then gets specific as he writes “that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”  Notice in the NASB that the words “be specific” are in italics showing that these words were not in the original text but were added to make the text more understandable.  



            I suppose that if we were Jews in the first century and became a part of the early church such as was seen in Acts chapters 2-9 that we would also have a hard time understanding that Gentiles were brought into the church solely by the grace of God.  We have gone over some of the verses found in the Old Testament showing that God was going to bless the Gentiles, and I have to say something that I have said before and that is that the children of Israel missed the mark when it came to evangelism as they were suppose to tell Gentiles that they too needed to have faith in the God of Israel.  A couple of examples where Gentile women became believers in God are Rahab, and also Ruth, and Ruth is in the blood line of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I have to also say that there are people today who are a part of the church who want nothing to do with evangelizing the Jews, and this is just as wrong as the Jews did in OT times. 

           

            John MacArthur speaks of having both Jews and Gentiles in one body as was the spiritual “equivalent saying that lepers were no longer to be isolated, that they were now perfectly free to intermingle and associate with everyone else as normal members of society.  In the minds of most Jews, their spiritual separation from Gentiles was so absolute and so right that the thought of total equality before God was inconceivable and little short of blasphemy.”



            We will talk more about this in our next SD.



            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  It is my desire to not have any problem in sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with any people group, to tell them that God loves them and desires for them to be saved.



My Steps of Faith for Today:  To trust the Lord to teach me the truths of Romans 12:3, and to remember that truth does not always go along with emotions, but truth is always truth.



Quote from E. M. Bounds today and see if you can figure out the Scripture that goes along with the quote.



“God regards the personal purity of the man more than He regards any sacrifice or any ceremony.”



Scripture given in our next SD



1/22/2019 10:37 AM   

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