Ephesians, 3:1-5
Bradley W. Maston · Mar 29, 2009
Ephesians (2009), No. 13
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926128322952

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Ephesians 3, 1 through 5. Someone want to volunteer to read that off for us? Sure. All right. For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, surely you have heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to man in other generations, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets.

Fantastic. Alright, so we get to start another section. I feel like every week I get up, we get to start a new section, which is kind of exciting. For me, Ephesians was the first serious exegetical study I ever did of the Bible. So it's kind of got a special place in my heart that way, and I was coached along by Vern quite a lot. But it was also the first book that I realized why there's outlines in the front of study Bibles.

Up until then, I just kind of always assumed that the outline was there to flip over quickly. Like, why would you need an outline? I'm just going to search through from my little golden nugget of the day so I could take it out of context and misapply it to my life. What good is an outline? And then in doing this study, I figured out that maybe, wow, maybe there's some power of some credence. So let's roll through our outline in our heads.

What is 1, 1 through 2, or 1 through 3, depending on how you want to slice it and dice it, about in Ephesians 1, 1 through 3? How would you title that in your own personal outline? Salutation. Salutation, good. And then chapter 1, 3 through 14? Any handle will do. What do you say about that? Awesome. The really good stuff. Or to quote another Bible verse, Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us. Awesome. Very good. Okay. I like that. We'll keep that as the inspired title. I mean, I always thought the outline in my Bibles were inspired, but that one sounds more inspired. Um, good, and then 15 through, I want to say 23. 22, yeah, 15 through 22.

Chapter 1? Of chapter 1. Last week. You could totally cheat. You're looking at the beginning of the book. Oh yeah, we're going all the way back. Going all the way back. Greatness of God's power. Greatness of God's power. I like that. Oh, the question.

We're just kind of going through some of the more typical outlines of the book and kind of titling the sections for ourselves. So Ephesians 1, 15 through 22. Okay, Winnie and I will cheat. It says united in one body. Good. Wait a minute, did I go too far? I think maybe. I'm sorry. You have two. That's two. One. One fifty.

The outline didn't break that up. Shame on that outline. It's a scandal. Mine actually says blessings of redemption. Blessings of redemption. Oh, for the whole chapter. Brilliant. That works. I've always... Chosen and sealed. Chosen and sealed. I always kind of characterize 15 through 22 as Paul's prayer for the Ephesians. That was kind of my dog year for it. Although so much is contained in it, you could give it more than a dozen names. We filled out quick.

What happened? So, let me see. So then we're going to chapter 2, 1 through 10. What's the chief matter of that one? Why he wanted to save his people and show his grace and his love. There we go. I almost call that the mystery of individual salvation. Paul's explaining what didn't quite get spelled out in the Old Testament but was real clear after Christ. How about 11 through 22 in chapter 2?

That's the one we just finished. That's the one we're at. That's united in one body. United in one body. So to me that's the mystery of the church or our corporate spiritual life, which is really cool. And now we get to start a new section, which is really cool.

So now I'll cheat. The outline that I had, or was reading from at the time, called this section, The Revelation of God's Wisdom Through the Church. Which we'll decide as we go along if that's a totally appropriate title or not. I'd say it's probably pretty fair. Sorry.

So, awesome. So we're starting our new section, which is really cool. Paul starts this off with the words, For this reason. So, for what reason do you suppose? Isn't that amazing? So it kind of doubled in the program to reconsider the outline. Because that's probably, that is the reason, right? Paul actually used this term before. Does someone want to open, or read for us? It's probably on the same page.

Ephesians 1, 15. Chapter 1 and 15. Outstanding. So what, what did we say that, or what did I say that, uh, what did we say that the chapter 15 was all about? Chapter 15? Chapter 15, boy, that'd be a long book of Ephesians. Uh, verse 15. What is verse 15? What section does verse 15 start? You said prayer. Yeah.

Prayer actually starts at 15. I mean, his prayer proper kind of starts there. So this is his introduction into prayer, and he's actually going to do it again. For this reason, I, Paul, and then move into prayer. So he's doing it again here, but as you'll see, when we read it, he doesn't shoot right into prayer. In fact, he kind of takes a little parenthetical break. which is kind of cool. So he takes this parenthetical break, he's about to break into prayer, and then he's like, whoa, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Something else to tell you. Before we go to prayer, I have something else to mention.

And so that's the whole tenor of this section that goes all the way to verse 12, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. It'll take us all the way into chapter 3 and verse, I'm sorry, 13. All the way through 13.

And that's when he begins, picks up again with I'll bow my knees and starts talking about his prayer again. So this is kind of a pattern or a structural pattern that Paul has adopted to tell us where he's going, and for this reason I also." So he gives some amazing revelation, and then he prays. And then he gives some amazing revelation, and then he prays. And he's going to do it yet one more time, which is kind of cool.

The next thing, so the start of this parenthesis, the beginning of this parenthesis, starts with the prisoner of Christ Jesus. I found two major interpretations of this phrase, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, and I actually spent quite a bit of my time kind of digging that out. One interpretation is that he's not referencing his physical chains at all, but highlighting the fact that the word prisoner can be, or the Greek word used here, could be brought across in English as bound to. So the bound one, the one bound of Christ Jesus, and he's highlighting his relationship with God.

Some, like Hodge, said he was highlighting his special relationship with God. He was highlighting his apostleship. Others just said that, like when he said he's the doulos, the bondservant with God, that he was doing the same thing that he was doing there. And that divorces it from his physical situation. and just suggest that it's part of his relationship with God.

And it is a pretty cool image, isn't it, to think that we're bound to Christ, that we're bound to Him without the power to free ourselves, if you like. It is a very beautiful image, for certain. Other commentators and This was probably the way that I lean a little bit, but I leave you completely up to your own choice.

Suggested that this prisoner of Christ Jesus was talking about his physical imprisonment, because we know he wrote this epistle from prison, right? Talking about his physical imprisonment in Rome or Caesarea, I think is the two places we think he might be in. So, talking about his physical imprisonment, his physical bonds, but was he in chains? Was it Jesus Christ who was the jailer, who had him in chains?

No. So I would put forth that maybe this is Paul's amazing perspective on his tribulations. I'm not a prisoner because Nero said so. I'm not a prisoner because Caesar said so. I'm not a prisoner because the Jews said so. I'm a prisoner for the glory of Christ. For the glory of Jesus Christ.

What a cool way to look at our tribulations. Yeah. Good point. Good work. Oh, I sometimes wonder how much writing he would have gotten done if he hadn't been in prison. Still up. Right. Prison. Maybe the Lord had something. And am I wrong to say that Paul seemed kind of like a type A guy who wouldn't sit down if you didn't make him? So I think that's probably right. The Lord knew Paul well enough to know. Yeah, and as Vern pointed out in his series on Ephesians, Paul is most likely chained to a praetorian guard, which other accounts of that experience have been related, saying it's been, it's like, or it's akin to being chained to a live animal. So just being, can you imagine being chained to a boar or a large, smelly creature of some kind. And the wild thing about it is that the Praetorian Guard, right, this is his job.

He's not there for fun. No one's volunteering for babysitting pall time. So if he wants to stand up, you stand up. If he wants to sit down, you sit down. In fact, it might be kind of amazing that he did get as much writing done as he wanted because it implies that They had the mercy to let him sit.

But Paul didn't see it the way I would see it. What a pain. Oh, this is horrible. I don't like this at all. Paul saw it as being the prisoner of Christ Jesus. Paul saw it and said, no, I'm here for reasons that are way bigger. than any of that. And I'm here for a purpose that's way, way more important for that.

And I imagine he looked on that as kind of a nice little captive audience. I wouldn't be surprised to know, although history doesn't reveal it to us, wouldn't be surprised to hear that more than one Praetorian guard wound up knowing the Lord through that experience. I mean, eight hours is a long time to sit with somebody, especially somebody as loquacious as Paul. Alright, so the textual backup I'd give for that, besides the fact that the primary definition of that word is prisoner, is that this section he is fleshing out his tribulations and how he's dealing with his tribulations in Rome. And for whose sake is all this happening?

But for the Gentiles, now we're kind of off your off your outline. So that's another reason that I think he's probably talking about his physical chains, is that he was very clear that his physical bonds were so that he could bring the gospel to Gentiles.

And he was happy to do it. And he's going to go on later and say, hey, don't let this stress you out. Don't let this burden you or get you down. I'm happy to do this. I'm happy to do this to bring more Gentiles to the Lord. who bring the gospel to more Gentiles, to more people. So it's really cool. Cool, cool stuff. All right. Yes? And that kind of goes along with one of the main themes of Ephesians. The corporate growth of the body. We sometimes think of just our individual growth.

And a lot of times we go through trials and it's just for our individual benefit. We don't see it often for the benefit of the body. But he's clearly saying here, whatever circumstances regarding his imprisonment, it's for the sake of others. It's not just, oh, that I can know God better, but that the body may grow. And, you know, that's part of maturity, I think, is understanding that perspective. What God does in our life is often not just for our sake, it's for the sake of the body. And that helps us look to other people as well and think, you know, God's doing this in their life, but That's as important for me in our corporate growth as just for him individually. Isn't that fantastic? Amen. Thank you. That is outstanding. All right.

So let's move on to verse two. Unless there's any other comments about verse one. Just so you know, we're two minutes behind schedule. So we'll be... That was for you, Jack. I've got a clock now. I think it keeps good time. Randy, we don't know. Calling out like a race horse. Come on, number seven. Come on. OK. We're there. Verse two. I'm a few minutes behind. So verse two. Randy, would you please read verse two for us?

Surely you have heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you. Outstanding. Administration, which in older, or many translations, tells us what? Boy, we like that word. Oikonomia, right? We talked about it last week. Every dispensation, or probably I prefer the word stewardship, needs three things. We talked about this last week, or I'm sorry, last time we hit the word dispensation. Does anyone remember what the three things needed for a dispensation are, or a stewardship? I think it's a domain. Domain. That's good. That's it. That's one. A steward. A steward. There you go. And a task. And a task. There you go. We did it. Give yourselves a big hand. Good.

So this stewardship that Paul's talking about here is what? What's the stewardship that Paul's talking about here? Read forward, read backward, read around it. The church. Presenting the gospel to the Gentiles. Yeah, so Paul has a special stewardship, a special household rule to share the gospel with the Gentiles. So the domain is? The Gentiles. The Gentiles. Good. The steward is Paul, right? And what's the task? The gospel. The gospel. Sharing the gospel. golly, stuff all just falls into line when you, you know, when we have the tools we need to open up the words.

So, yeah, it's cool that Paul had this stewardship given to him and he took it very seriously. Just kind of as a quasi-rabbit trail, what stewardships are given to you, to us, to me, commonly? I personally don't think that I've been given the stewardship of sharing the gospel with the Gentiles as an apostle of God. But I think there are some stewardships that are given to us, here and now. What might they be? What might some of your stewardships be that God's given you? You've been given spiritual gifts for the purpose of, like Jeremy was talking about, right? Building up the body.

And none of us here are auxiliary. I was actually talking to a teaching about spiritual gifts and their importance to a friend in the Korean church that I teach at. He was convinced that some believers were made for common use, devoid of any spiritual gifts, and that he would never be any use to the church. He would be just an attendee, just someone to show up to.

Where do you get that? But, no, so that's one of our stewardships, right? You have a spiritual gift. You're walking in Christ and using your spiritual gift to build up the body. You're not. Any other domains or stewardships? Or actually, stewardships? Do you husbands have a stewardship over your families? There you go. Families. It's huge, right? Worth considering. Alright.

He's kind of the... He's speaking for Christ here. Christ is speaking through him to his people. So I think that's the main point about that. That's the main stewardship that he's... Yeah, I could agree with that. He's the mouthpiece for the Lord to bring the gospel to Gentiles? I mean, yeah. And to bring this message to... The Lord bought and paid for him, and now he's using him.

Yeah, so Paul had, I mean, Paul just as an apostle, right, had a stewardship. He was the apostle of the Gentiles, but just purely as an apostle had a stewardship that involved writing scripture by the power of the Holy Spirit, right? So, yeah, it's good stuff. All right, God's grace. Paul had been given a special mission, or a special task to bring the news of God's grace to the Gentiles. It was his mission from God, and he's saying here that he did not fail in his mission. He told them about this new administration of God's grace, that is the church. What experience would these Gentiles have had of grace?

None. None. What's the closest, maybe, I mean, where would they have heard the word before? It wasn't a greeting. A common greeting amongst people. It was a no-strings-attached gift. We've studied on Roth. A no-strings-attached gift, usually given from a father to a child, to a son, bequeathed, and it wasn't expected that anything would be paid back. But it wasn't ever thought that God would give a no-strings-attached gift to people, right?

That'd be ridiculous. the gods of their culture always, or they were always thinking they had to do something to the gods so that they could get something from the goddess. And if the god even cared enough about what you gave him to do it, because the gods, if you've read the Iliad, the Odyssey, they're immoral. They're not bound by any higher code of ethics. I mean, you read the Iliad and you've got the gods running around like a divine soap opera.

I want to protect him, and I want to protect him, and they're cheating each other and stealing. Wow, what a hopeless view of the world that there's these superhuman forces that are controlling everything, but they're not even nice. They're not even fair. So then, all of a sudden, what's that? No comment.

So then Paul comes with this great message of God's grace to these Gentiles who'd never heard anything about it. I mean, I think it was Philip Yancey's book, What's So Amazing About Grace. He said at the end, one of the quotes I really enjoyed, he said, Oh, Finn, my own son already talking back.

He said, if you're not going to be a Christian, be a Christian for the right reason. Be a Christian because it's too good to be true. Be a Christian because grace is too amazing to believe in. Be a Christian because you can't trust that anything that good exists. Don't not be a Christian because Christians are mean, or because of legalism, or because you couldn't be good enough to be a Christian, because those are the wrong reasons. Be a Christian because grace is too great to be believed.

Does that translate to our experience? Have you ever tried to share grace with someone? And what responses do you get often times? Oftentimes, right? When you describe grace as being infinite, people don't want to believe in that infinite grace because they find it offensive that grace could cover every sin. Because they can think of sins that they themselves would not want to forgive. Or they want to think that they can do something to be good enough to merit it. Huge. Or they're not ever good enough. Yeah.

It's weird to me that this message of grace has been around, going out into the world, because obviously grace was present in the Old Testament, as Jeremy pointed out quite a while ago. Very present in the Old Testament. But this has been going out to the world for at least the last 2,000 years, and still people are shocked to hear it. Still, I mean, I don't find that it's, granted I wasn't there when Paul was sharing the gospel of grace with all these people, so I don't know, but it sounds like it could, when I share about grace, even to people in churches, I teach at a couple churches, even when I share grace with them, it seems no less foreign to them, kids who've been in church their entire lives, than it is to people now. than it was to people in Paul's day. They're just as bound by their own views of God, legalism, all that.

We've got really good news. I guess that's what I'm kind of getting down to. And if we're really sharing it, maybe people should hesitate to believe it, because it's just such good news. We did an exercise with some of my students last week, and looked through the paper to find good news, and the only good news they could find was the advertisements. That was as close as we got to good news. Good news just doesn't sell, right? But even then there's just not as much good news around it would seem. Amen. I couldn't agree more.

That's fantastic. I agree. It's great. It's so cool. It's really exciting. And that's really all that we have to offer, right? I mean, we get caught up, or at least I get caught up thinking about how I could help people, what I could do, what I can offer, what I can offer the world. Jesus. That's what I have to offer. The gospel. That's it. So in a sense. So. Cool.

Let's move on to verse three. Can I please interrupt real quick? One of the things I think is interesting is that even though Paul was given a stewardship to go to the Gentiles in Romans 1 16, he says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. when paul would go into the towns he did the synagogue first reached the jews they usually almost always rejected but i don't know what we're talking about the messiah we don't understand the messiah that way and then he'd go to the gentiles but uh... it is an interesting thing to know that even though his stewardship was to the gentiles he still was reaching out to Israel. So, anyways, go ahead. Fantastic. Absolutely. Most certainly. Cool. So, verse 3. We're to the mystery. Do we all remember the Moose? I don't have a picture of him. So this is Moose Stereon.

So how do we How do we define this word mystery? Or let's start from our current definition. When you hear the word mystery, it's a mystery. What do you generally think of now? Something hidden or unknown. Yeah, like a mystery story is one where the killer or the perpetrator is unknown, right? Yeah, that tends to be it.

What about when you start hearing in Christian circles, how do we often hear the word mystery, especially in mystical Christian circles? How do we hear the word mystery termed? Something you don't know, something you can't understand. I've read a number of books by certain Catholic and mystical authors, what are sometimes called, or what Hodge calls I think Hodge would classify as false mysticism. Nevertheless, who use this word mystery as kind of like an escape button or a catch-all. Like, oh, you can't understand it, it's a mystery.

Stop trying. Stop trying to understand. Stop trying to have a relationship with God, it's mysterious. Stop trying to pursue the Lord and His Word. It's all a mystery. Just let it all be fuzzy. It's a mystery, let it be a mystery. God wants it to be a mystery. God wants it to be a mystery. If He'd want to make it clear, He'd be clear by writing us a book or something. Okay, he did do that, but he used the word mystery in the book.

So, anyway, never mind. So, anyway, so how, biblically speaking, if you remember back to, we've defined this word at least once before in our course, and many times throughout the Ephesian study, the Ephesians-Colossians study. How does the word mystery define as Paul used it, or Mysterion?

There it is. Very simply put. It wasn't revealed in the Old Testament. Oh, that it was a truth not before known. Did I get that right? So, something that was not revealed in the Old Testament, something God had not revealed in the Old Testament, but He has revealed now. So there's obviously the Church Well, as much as some people want to try to read the church back into the Old Testament, was the church there?

No. We just finished a whole section where Paul's saying, hey, it's a new body. We're taking some of Israel, we're taking some of the Gentiles, everyone who believes, everyone in this body is saved, whereas everyone in Israel was not saved, just purely by being in Israel, just by being in Christ, not by coming to the building. Just by being in Christ. you are saved. This body, this new body, is the thing we've got to know about. But you can't go to any Old Testament passage and just look and say, oh, church explained.

Who would have thought, right? So that's That's the key thing, and I've done this Ephesian study with a number of people from the Reformed tradition, from other traditions, and boy, this passage is the bane of their existence. They have to go absolutely haywire, or chapter 2, on their hermeneutics. Because they can't allow that this is a new body. They can't allow that there's a distinction between Israel and the Church. can't be done.

It's a clear distinction, scriptural distinction, but you have to completely short-circuit everything you understand about reading human language in order to make that conclusion. And you have to do it again in Romans 9 through 11, so get used to it, right?

So, this is a fairly to incredibly important point about what God's revealed to us here through Paul. about this revelation. So Paul's also clear about how he got this, this mystery, how this mystery was explained to him. What does it say at the middle of verse 3 there? Revelation?

Yeah, that's right. Paul sat down with a pen and pencil and just figured it all out. He graphed it out and figured it all out for himself and then once he figured it out... No. God told him, right? God revealed it to him. He didn't make it up. He didn't figure it out. He didn't go to the Old Testament and find all the types of the church and then put them all together and go, hey, this is what it is. I figured it out. Read my systematic theology. I figured it out. No. God told him what was going on. God let him know, right? And so he's not taking a bunch of credit for this, right? He's just saying, hey, the Lord told me. I'm telling you. Part of my stewardship.

Like it? Hate it? Throw it out the window? And if you're Reformed, you will. But I'm still saying it. It's right here. So, this is another really cool, clear claim by Paul as to what Scripture, what our New Testament Scripture is. It's not, right? It's not just, you know, someone's good ideas about God. You know, if you've studied theories of inspiration, some people think the Bible's inspired like Beethoven's inspired. Is it? Well, not if it's to be believed. Because Paul very clearly says, no, I'm giving you the revelation of God.

These are the words that the Holy Spirit wants to convey to the rest of the church forever. This is an exciting book when you think about it. Think about the fact that the Holy Spirit brought it through Paul and James and Peter and John and conveyed it and protected it down through 2,000 years of really rocky history and then finally brought it to you and me. Thank you Mr. Gutenberg and everyone else who followed.

Then the Holy Spirit in us is working in us to enlighten our hearts and to enlighten our minds and to bring us to this place. Often enough, right, this book just kind of sits over there in the corner. This huge miracle of the Holy Spirit in action, of the work of God in action, kind of just sits in the corner of most people's houses. Many people's houses.

It's interesting, I don't know if there's other religions, or I should say, not other religions, if there's religions that have this much certainty. I mean, all the gospel writers are certain what comes from God, and there's consistency throughout. You know, if you go to the Eastern mysticism, this is somebody trying to figure out this divine mystery, and it's just their thoughts on it.

There's nothing conclusive there. If you, you know, Muhammad, you know, wrote, had this inspiration from Allah, but then it turns out, oh, maybe it wasn't Allah, it was Satan tricking me, so I didn't have to go back and change what he said. You see, there's never a certainty. You don't see any other book where are absolutely certain this is coming directly from God. There's total consistency throughout in the message. And that to me is amazing.

You know, Jeremy, I would just add to that that it is so amazing to me the consistency from one author to the next and how, in fact, if you were to listen to the other Sunday School classes today and the message that Broome will give later today, you will see all of them sending the same message. It's like every week, wow, really, that same thing was said here. And why? Because it's consistent. It's amazing. Sometimes it doesn't matter which one of the electives you've chosen because you're going to get the same thing every week. No matter what. So fantastic. Well, the same spirit's at work in all of us, right? I mean, fantastic news. Moving on. All right.

So I've written briefly. Some people, I'll take this as a minor point because there's really not an application for it. Not that that makes it worthless. I've written briefly. Some people want to say or want to dig or look for another letter, saying it's a missing Ephesian letter that he'd written previously and that was his brief. That's what he's alluding to here. I don't see why that's necessary, because he's already written briefly. And golly gee, what he wrote briefly about in the last chapter was this whole mystery of the church.

So that kind of makes sense to me. So unless anyone has a question, we can just move forward. Sweet. That's outstanding. All right. Verse 4. Laban, would you mind reading verse 4 for us? Sure. Thanks. By referring to this, when you read, you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ. Outstanding, outstanding.

So what I've got here is in reading this, but the same thing. So we talked about Sorry whenever I talk whenever I refer to like last week or forward in the outline. This is the study that I wrote And have been revising for quite some time and you can get it all on the internet if you wanted to but I'm sorry because we didn't talk about this last week, and that's quite alright It's just that might be a little confusing if you didn't know so this is part of a larger work, and I apologize I So, reading is referring to the letter that has been written thus far, specifically the revelation of the Jews and Gentiles having been made together into a new body. So, the purpose of making this stuff known is so that, what?

God's making this known by the Holy Spirit through Paul, so that they can understand! It's amazing! There's another knock on that whole, like, it's all a mystery thing, because God wants us to understand. We have to assume that if God created language, right, Torah, Bible, all that, He created it with the ability to fulfill His purpose, which is to communicate with man.

So in other words, whenever you get someone preaching at you about how it's a mystery and just stop trying to understand it and words just can't convey it. You're essentially kind of spitting on God's shoes and saying the tool that you used to send the message that you wanted to send was not sufficient. I'm sorry. Try again, Lord. Give me a mystical, an aesthetic experience.

Give me something that can help me understand it because this is way beyond words. If you think about any other relationship that you have communication is critical. I mean, even here in this room, we're listening to the lesson because you have an intended purpose for us to understand. And we listen to it that way and we understand it that way.

But can you imagine being in a marriage, for example, or a relationship like that where, you know, the words that you say are constantly confusing? I mean, on occasion... How's that not like marriage? Where there's just never a known and understood intent where you can't discern with any certainty what is trying to be said. And that leads to people walking on eggshells all the time. And really confused, right? That comes into the danger.

If God wants us to understand the Word, do you think He made it all to be interpreted by strange spiritual interpretations? By something that's revealed to me as I was reading it? Or can we just take it for what it says? I'm not saying that'll always be easy. But if God meant to convey something through language, His own tool, then we have to, one, assume that he was capable of conveying it, and two, we have to assume that we're capable of understanding what he wants us to understand.

Jeremy? I think it's important to note that in reading this, that would have been a corporate reading of the church. This was a manuscript that was sent to the church. They didn't have individual access. We think of it as, okay, I'm having my personal Bible study time reading, although this is, again, the corporate body coming together to study what has been written there. Individual study, I think, is important, but once again, I think we need to emphasize the fact that it's the group coming together to understand this. And how cool is that? How fantastic is that? So many times Paul says, so that you may know. You know. It's not... And John, you may understand, you may know. It's not secret. It's not secret.

And what really stands out is if you go over Each one of us bringing in, whether we intended to or not, we bring in baggage from the past week and it gets in the way. That's why it's so important for us to get together and cast that garbage aside and be able to see what the Lord and Spirit has to say to each one of us.

Isn't it fantastic? It's like the Lord designed it that way. Oh wait, he did. It's pretty cool. Yeah, so once again that we're going for that we might understand his insight. I just Corporately together fantastic It's fantastic It's part of our it's part of God's plan to bring us all corporately and individually to maturity in Christ It's really worthwhile What we're doing here is not just ho-hum. It's not just what we do every Sunday. It's not just a great chance to eat delicious cookies and coffee, which are always provided by some magical, graceful person who never asks for thanks, because I never see him bringing them.

They're just there when I show up. It's fantastic. But that's not the reason to come, right? When our kids were small, Sunday mornings, as all of you who are parents probably know, is the worst time. No time to get everybody ready and out the door. There's always fights. There's always tribulation. Great tribulation. And great wrath on the part of the parents.

One Sunday morning, I remember going to church and it's just been awful thinking, I am such a hypocrite. Why am I even going to church? This is ridiculous." And then I went, oh wait, I'm not going because I'm perfect. I'm going because I'm me. Amen. Isn't that it? Fantastic. Cool. And then we get the mystery of Christ. So this is the insight that Paul is sharing.

Mystery in this sense means something that was not revealed in the Old Testament that has been revealed in the New Testament once again. So this is the mystery of the whole plan of the Christ. Because as Randy pointed out, Paul would go and the gospel was presented first to the Jews in most cases, in every case we know of, I guess what I'd say. And more often than not, their response was, you know, that's not quite the understanding we were looking for, for Messiah. We kind of wanted that warrior Messiah who would come in and put us back on top. And Paul pretty clearly in Acts says, not yet, don't worry, that's coming, but this first, okay?

So yeah, so there it is, the mystery of Christ. Very cool. Any other comments on four before we move to five? We are so gonna make it, so give yourselves a big round of applause. Or give me a round of applause, I'll take credit for that. No other comments on 4? Awesome. Alright, verse 5. Jeremy, would you mind? Which is not made known to men and other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets. Excellent.

So he's kind of defining mystery here. And he's also putting together a really kind of, seemed to me, putting forth a really tough argument for anyone who would want to read the church all the way back to Abraham, usually? Seen it read back to Abraham? I've never seen it read back to Adam. Does that happen occasionally? Yeah. I mean, well, basically they just... Lump any...

Saint. Yeah, saint. You say saint to anybody who believed, and that's... first church. Boom. Done. First church of A&E. It's good stuff. Not arts and entertainment. Adam and Eve. Okay. Excellent. So once again, it was not main known before. It's kind of wild to think that we know for a fact that all men, all men, all people of all times were saved by grace through faith, right? No one was ever saved by making a sacrifice, right? Right. Easy. No one was ever saved by keeping any set of rules. No one was ever saved by da-da-da-da-da.

Always by grace through faith through the blood of Christ. But they didn't know that then. Right? They couldn't put their faith in Christ. They couldn't put their faith in someone who was going to come in as called Jesus or Yeshua and da-da-da-da-da. They didn't know him personally. They knew he was coming, right? The Jews did. And really, only the Jews.

Well, they knew a Messiah was coming, since Genesis 3.15. They knew someone was coming to do it. But their faith was in God and His provision. God just had His provision. Excellent. So there it is.

We're blessed in this time period. We're blessed in this phase in God's plan for all of earth to get to know all this. To have the complete revelation. Or maybe the finished revelation. We're blessed to have this relationship with Christ and understand it.

And understand more about it than any saint before understood. and be a part of a body of a totally different character than any body that has ever been it's kind of exciting or it should be kind of exciting when we wake up every morning when we come here every day that we're a part of this body that never existed before and will never exist again after and there will not be another re-instituted church once we're raptured right? it's really cool we exist for the glory of God God is showing His grace through us. Other passages talk about angels and how many powers are looking at us to learn about God and learn about God's grace. How amazing. That's enough to get me out of bed most mornings if I just be smart enough to think about it. It's really fantastic news. So, holy apostles and prophets.

Yep, so once again, I just want to draw your eye to the fact that we're still dealing with Revelation. Holy Apostles and Prophets here, I think, by necessity, is talking about New Testament Prophets and New Testament Apostles. Right? Because the Old Testament Prophets did not do anything to reveal to us the Church. Just as we talked about, it's a mystery. It wasn't revealed in the Old Testament. But the New Testament Prophets, so how would we define Apostle? What's an apostle? Sorry? He's a fourth teller. Fourth teller?

That's a prophet. That'd be a prophet, okay. Seen the Risen Lord. Okay, so those are the qualifications for apostleship. Someone has to have seen the Risen Lord, or the second class, right? But what does the word apostle or apostolo, apostolos mean? Sent messenger. Very good. Okay. It's a sent, ordained messenger. And the word apostolos was not a terribly commonly used word for messenger. In fact, angolos was really more common. But this is because the word apostolos had a bigger sense. It was someone who was sent with the authority to complete his mission.

So a messenger, you know, comes out and gives the message. You could beat him up, send him away. He can't do anything about it. He just has a message to give. But an apostle has the authority to actually do it, has the authority to actually see the task out. He's given the authority by the person who sent him or who commissioned him. So these people are apostles.

That's why we kind of develop the criterion for what it takes to be an apostle. having beheld the Lord Jesus. Actually, I think it was Fruchtemann talks about it great length, the two classes of apostles. The first class of apostles are the original 12, minus 111, plus 1 in X1, right? So, the original 12, who they decided that it had to be someone who was with us from the beginning, someone who walked with Jesus from the beginning, and so on and so forth.

Paul in Corinthians, when he's defending his apostleship, says, Apostles can do miracles at will. Maybe not at will, that's not the right word, but apostles do miracles regularly. It's a super gift, if you like, a super spiritual gift. Apostles are able to endure great tribulation with a great deal of grace.

How about that? Without batting an eye. They're specially sent. So there's a number of requirements. How many of these requirements would be filled by someone claiming to be an apostle today? You mean the Pope? I wasn't going to name any names. How many apostles are walking around today? By the criterion that scripture gave us. That'd be a goose egg, right? Well, and perhaps one of the greatest ones of those is that they must have seen the Lord Jesus Christ. And, you know, face to face. Yeah.

And also, to claim to be an apostle or a prophet is to claim that scripture is not fulfilled, not done. To claim that God is still doling out revelation bit by bit sounds a little Mormon, maybe Catholic to me, but Well they don't tend to, like the Apostolic Succession Church and the Catholic Church, well the Catholic Church is different, but the Apostolic Succession Church tends to make it a lot more personal and you know it's like well the Lord is telling you Brad or telling me to tell you Brad that you know you need to x y and z or whatever it is and so it's not adding to scripture directly it's always this personal thing and that's the way they tend to wing around with that they kind of sidestep the issue of well I'm not adding to scripture because that would be stonings but nevertheless to assume the title apostle on a Biblical level. So what happens, what winds up happening in most of those churches, both Apostles and Prophets, when people claim to be Apostles and Prophets nowadays, is they completely redefine it to mean something else. And usually it's something innocuous. Usually it's like, hey, I want to give you some counsel and I really feel like it's the Holy Spirit.

But that's not enough. It's way more fun to say, I'm an apostle. Obey me. I'm so cool. I'm a prophet. Obey me. It's really kind of really fun for your flesh, for your pride to say, to identify yourself. I'm just like Paul. No, you're not. Be quiet. And get over it. But it still brings up the fact that he mentions the prophets.

So, briefly, because we're about to run out of time, what were the New Testament prophets? What do we know about them? John the Baptist. John the Baptist. So, he was kind of not quite a New Testament prophet yet, right, because he was pre-cross, but definitely was, he was actually, right, more akin to Elijah, as it were.

But nevertheless, that's our first example, right? As we turn through that uninspired page that divides the Old Testament from the New. In the wrong place, because it really should have been put after John, or maybe just before John. That's where I put it. Anyway, never mind.

The point is, what do we know about the New Testament prophets? Did they help explain the scriptures and both probably Old Testament and the new epistles that were coming from the apostles. Yeah, so how many Bibles were there around, not Old Testament, but New Testament? How many New Testaments with Psalms and Proverbs in the back? We're sitting around in the time that Paul was writing this. Zero, right? Why zero? Because it hadn't been written yet.

But Paul made a provision for his church, a supernatural provision for his church. He had the apostles, but only a specific number of those, right? Because he, it was his plan to only have a specific number of those. And he had prophets all over the place as these super teachers who were empowered by God.

But then as the ink dries on Revelation, they go, Oh, I can't do that anymore. It was gone. It was not needed anymore because the Revelation was there. God provided for his church. with these New Testament Apostles and Prophets. And when the provision was ended, or when the need was ended, the provision ended. The bell rang. We all need to go get coffee and run to the main service. But does anyone have any other comments, applications, questions? We do have a question. Yes.

In verse 5, it says, at the end, revealed to His holy Apostles and Prophets New American Standard says, in the spirit, and you have on your handout, by the spirit. Is there a difference? Does it matter? I mean, it doesn't seem to matter to me, but... Well, I mean, they're two different prepositions.

Truthfully, this is NIV. I wrote it for an ESL audience, and NIV seemed easier at the time. Well, the by the spirit means to me that it was revealed by the spirit. in the Spirit means that the prophets already had, they were in the Spirit. So to me, there's... I mean, they kind of work together. Yeah, I understand that. But they're different. Yeah. Yeah. The vehicle by which it came. Not having an interlinear in front of me right now, I would always err on the side of the New American Standard Bible.

They're going to be more literal, whereas the new NIV is going to tend to try to use dynamic equivalence and some other things to try to make it easier to understand. I'll have to check when we go into the main service. Yeah, so by the Spirit, and probably more appropriately, been revealed in the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets, who, I think it would be a fair assessment, the prophets could only prophesy when they were abiding in Christ. Yeah, just like you can only use your spiritual gifts when you're abiding in Christ.

So how's that for something? We're all late now. Does anyone have another comment or question? It's so important that you're going to make us even more late! Okay, cool, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you and thank you for this wonderful time, Lord, for your amazing word.

Lord, for the amazing things that you've revealed to us, because you want us to understand. And you don't want us to understand so that we could be the smartest or the best or the, Lord, whatever it is that we may want. You want us to understand so we can see Jesus, so we can be conformed to your Son's image. You want us to understand so that we can know how amazing you are and what you've done. And Lord, you've given us the capability to understand.

And you've given us a wonderful body, Lord, your church, to gather around your scriptures together and to behold your son together and be conformed both corporately and individually. Lord, we worship you. Because you're so good and have given us every provision. You've provided for the New Testament church through your apostles and prophets. You've provided through us, through your word, through elders, through the many gifts that you've given the church. And we can't be grateful enough. And we'll spend eternity singing your praises. So that works out well. In Jesus' name, Amen.