The Standards of Revelation
Ephesians 2:6–7
Ephesians Lesson #088
October 25, 2020
Dr. Robert L. Dean, Jr.
deanbibleministries.org
Opening Prayer
“Father, we’re thankful so much that we have You to come to, that You have revealed Yourself to us as we will study today. That by the Holy Spirit You have worked through the prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles of the New Testament, and You have revealed Yourself to us and guaranteed its accuracy, its veracity—that it is without error.
“You have also overseen its preservation down through the centuries, so we can be confident and thankful that we have Your Word. Father, we pray that as we listen to Your Word, that we will submit to that which is being taught, come to understand the truth of Your Word that we might not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. And we pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”
Slide 2
Open your Bibles with me this morning to Ephesians 3, continuing where we finished last time talking about the standards of revelation. First, we need to review a little bit and understand this context.
Slide 3
Previously we noted that Paul starts Ephesians 3:1 with a statement that is related to who he is and the fact that he is in the circumstances of being a prisoner in Rome. That brings to his mind something that he knows about the Ephesian believers, so he interrupts himself to go into a different direction in order to talk about what God is doing in and through him.
The fact that he is imprisoned isn’t something that they should consider to be a hindrance to God’s plan or to the ministry, but that it is indeed God’s plan to continue to enhance and expand the Apostle Paul’s ministry.
We find this interrupted thought in Ephesians 3:2–11, the focus of which is the gift that God has given Paul as an apostle, the mission that goes with that, and the message. And part of that message is teaching this new information, this new revelation from God, about what God is doing in this new man, this new body, and this new temple called the body of Christ, the Church.
Slide 4
He ends Ephesians 3:13 by coming back to where he was in Ephesians 3:1, “Therefore I ask that you do not lose heart—that you do not become discouraged, that you do not become distracted—at my tribulations—or my afflictions or my suffering—for you which is your glory.”
Slide 5
This reminds us that no matter what happens, no matter what detours our life appears to take, they’re not necessarily detours in God’s plan for He has a plan and a purpose, and no matter what negative things may come along, no matter what suffering or difficulty, persecution or adversity we may face, that is God’s plan for you.
We don’t see what that endgame is, but we have promises like Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called—the term that refers to those who have responded to the gospel invitation to trust in Jesus Christ as Savior—to those who are the called according to His purpose.”
Looking at this issue, I want us to go to Genesis 50:15 and following. This is a great illustration of what Paul is encouraging the believers within Ephesians 3. It’s an Old Testament counterpart, just one of many, but it is one of those tremendous episodes that teaches us that we have no idea what God is taking us through, why He’s taking us through it, where He is leading us, and what the endgame is going to be. This is the story of Joseph.
When we think back to this story, Joseph is one of the sons of Jacob, the second to youngest. He and his youngest brother Benjamin were the sons of Jacob’s true love Rachel who died in childbirth with Benjamin. Joseph is somewhat precocious. He may even have a sense of how God is going to use him. Sometimes when people have that sense, they seem to be a little arrogant.
But he has a couple of dreams when he is young, and these dreams indicate that his father and his brothers and all will bow down to him. They don’t like that idea and become very jealous of him. He is his father’s favorite; of course, we know the story about the coat of many colors. So they get mad at him and they decide to kill him.
They dig a pit and throw him in it, and one of the brothers says, “This isn’t really good idea. Let’s just sell him into slavery. They thought about it and thought that was best, so they sold him to some Ishmaelites who were coming through the area, who took him to Egypt.
There they sold him as a slave, and he was bought under the unseen sovereign hand of God by an official in the court of Pharaoh named Potiphar. Potiphar is an officer, an official in the court of Pharaoh.
Initially, this young man has this new position in the household. He would’ve been the newest slave, so they’re trying to orient him, give him understanding. He has to learn all the different things that are going on within the houseful of this extremely wealthy powerful aristocrat in the government of Egypt.
As he learns his responsibilities, he masters them in a magnificent way. It’s so interesting to read through this story of Joseph because his talent, skill and ability to manage and administer affairs and to improve whatever the situation is, immediately becomes clear to whoever is over him in authority.
We don’t know how long this took, but eventually he is promoted and promoted and promoted until he is so well trusted by Potiphar that he is placed over the entire household.
When we talk about dispensationalism and administration, OIKONOMOS, the terminology in Ephesians 3:2, has the idea of a steward or overseer or administrator. That’s exactly what Joseph was. We don’t know how long this time is, but he reaches this trusted position where Potiphar trusts him so completely that he doesn’t even look at the books anymore. He lets Joseph take care of everything.
Year after year things go well, except Potiphar’s wife gets the hots for Joseph and wants to seduce him. One day she works it out so all of the household servants and everybody else are gone. She calls Joseph to come to her and then she baits the trap wanting to seduce him.
He will not break his oath of service to Potiphar; he is honest, he has great integrity. She grabs him and he flees, but she gets his coat. When Potiphar came home later in the day, she is so angry and vindictive toward Joseph that she tells Potiphar that Joseph tried to rape her and uses the coat as evidence that he was there, resulting in Joseph being put into prison.
You had dreams as a young boy that God was going to do something through you, and the first thing that happens is you’re sold as a slave. Next, things look pretty good; you get promoted over and over again. Then you get thrown in prison, and you’re in prison for a while.
While he was in prison, the same thing happened. The captain of the guard who is the overseer of the prison sees the skilled account, the ability of Joseph, and he gets given this responsibility, then those responsibilities, and before long he is the prisoner who is basically running the prison, again, in a trustworthy position. All of that gives us evidence of Joseph’s character.
Then there are two officials in the court of the Pharaoh who do something that offends the Pharaoh, the butler and the baker who are thrown into prison. After some time has gone by, we don’t know how long, they both have a bad night and have dreams, but they just don’t know what these dreams mean. Joseph says, “Well, tell me the dream and I’ll tell you what it means.”
The dreams have to do with what’s immediately going to happen to these two. He rightly interprets the dream of the butler, and that the butler will be called for by the Pharaoh, and he will be taken to the court, and he will be reinstated. But it’s not good news for the baker because the baker’s going to be called to the court, and he’s going to lose his head, literally.
When the butler goes to court, the butler has been asked by Joseph, “Remember me to Pharaoh and put in a good word.” Well, the butler is reinstated, forgets all about Joseph, and two more years go by where Joseph is left in prison.
Seems like God has forgotten him. Seems like things are chaotic and out of control, and then the Pharaoh has a dream. What’s interesting is we’re talking about a similar type situation with Paul in the New Testament, how revelation plays just as much a key role in the story of Joseph as what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 3.
And so there’s this dream that God gives the Pharaoh, and this is, of course, the dream of the future where there will be seven years of plenty and then seven years of famine. But he has no idea what this means because he just sees seven fat cows and seven lean cows. He can’t sleep and is restless.
He calls for all the magicians and everybody to interpret it, and nobody can, and then the butler comes forth and says, “You know, I just remembered there’s this guy in prison, and he interpreted the dream I had, and that’s exactly what happened.” So Pharaoh calls for Joseph. We know the story. Joseph comes to Pharaoh, tells him the interpretation of the dream, so the Pharaoh elevates Joseph now to the second highest position in the land.
Now it’s taken, we don’t know how many years, maybe 20 or 30 years of some pretty significant suffering, adversity in Joseph’s life for God to get Joseph to exactly the place where he wanted him, so that he could be the blessing that God intended him to be.
Then they go through seven more years of prosperity, the years of the fat cows, and several years of the lean cows. Because now the famine’s so bad in Canaan that Jacob has to send some of the brothers down to Egypt to buy grain. You are familiar with the story, they come down, buy grain, go back, and then they bring Benjamin back with them.
Eventually, God brings Jacob and all the Jews, there’s about 75 at the time, to Egypt, and this is where God wants them to protect them from assimilation into the pagan cultures around them. Joseph is the one who makes that happen. We see the hand of God through the whole thing, but Joseph never did until he gets towards the end.
As we come to the end of the story of Joseph, Jacob dies, they grieve, then take his body back to Hebron to bury him there in the cave of Machpelah. Then when they head back the brothers started getting really worried. They had had a guilty conscience all along that they sold Joseph into slavery, and now that Jacob is gone he will take his vengeance on us, and they’re scared to death.
Genesis 50:15–17, “When Joseph’s brothers saw that their Father was dead, they said, ‘Perhaps Joseph will hate us, and may actually repay us for all the evil which we did to him.’ So they sent messengers to Joseph and said, ‘before your father died he commanded, saying, “Thus you shall say to Joseph: ‘I beg you, please forgive the trespass of your brothers and their sin; for they did evil to you.’ ” ’ Now please forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of your father.’ ”
There’s no indication that Jacob actually said that. They could’ve just been making that up. Knowing those brothers, they probably did. But that didn’t matter to Joseph. He wept and his brothers went to him and fell down before his face.
Joseph said to them in Genesis 50:19–20, “Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God?—am I the one you’re answerable to? No.—But as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, in order to bring about as it is this day, to save many people alive.”
That’s the same point being made here by Paul: he’s in prison; it doesn’t look like this is advantageous to the expansion of the gospel. The people back in Ephesus that heard of this are downhearted, they’re discouraged and they’re disheartened.
But Paul is telling them, “This is where God wants me. This is what’s necessary for the expansion of the gospel. This is my mission. Wherever God takes me I need to adapt to that and not get caught up with my own plans and agenda and my own ideas, and I need to focus on where God’s putting me because that’s where He wants me to exercise my gift and my mission.”
That is the point for us, Romans 8:28, all things work together for good. It doesn’t say, as so many people misunderstand it and misread it, that all things are good, but that God works them together “for good to those who love God, to those who are the called—the ‘called’ is every Church Age believer.”
In the Old Testament, it was Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the brothers: they were all called according to God’s purpose for the mission of establishing the Israelite people. We have to think always in our minds of that endgame.
Paul is teaching them that God has, as part of his mission, revealed to Paul, and also to the other apostles, this thing he calls “the mystery.”
Slide 6
Ephesians 3:3, “that by revelation he made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already).”
Slide 7
I’ve paraphrased Ephesians 3:3–5 here because what this does is helps us check the train of thought. I’ve rearranged the phrases, so in English it makes a little more sense, but in the Greek it’s important to keep the translation “that by revelation He made known.”
The first thing that’s mentioned is “according to revelation.” That’s in the front of the sentence to emphasize that what Paul is told is according to the standards of revelations.
In English we would say, “God made known—that’s the main subject. God revealed something, God made known. He revealed it to Paul, and what He revealed is—according to the standard—that Greek preposition KATA means according to a standard, and the standard is revelation; that is, divine revelation—God made known to me according to the standard of divine revelation the mystery”—and that term “mystery,” refers to previously unknown information.
It’s a term that is taken from the pagan religions in the Greek world called “mystery religions,” and in those mystery religions the secret was something that was held tight by those who are the initiates. It’s like being part of the Masonic Lodge or some other organization where you’re initiated and told certain secrets that you are not tell anybody that’s not in the club.
That’s how it is with the mystery religions; the mystery was a secret that was kept. But the mystery as Paul re-defines the term is new revelation that is supposed to be told to everyone. That is the essence of the proclamation of the gospel, and what God is doing in the Church Age.
The essence—boiling down what he says in Ephesians 3:3–5, “God made known to me, according to the standard of divine revelation the mystery, which was not made known to the human race.”
That is so important because what is said sometimes and in some commentaries about this is that this is new information. You can see hints of it in the Old Testament. No! There are no hints of it; that’s what this is saying. There are no hints of it; there’s no suggestion of this. It was kept as a tightly guarded secret within the counsels of God. Nobody had a clue. There was nothing in the Old Testament that indicated that there would be this new entity following the resurrection of Christ.
It “was not made known to the human race as it has only now been revealed—that’s such a clear statement. It has only now been revealed—by the Holy Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets.”
Slide 8
What we learn:
1. God made something known to Paul.
God is the author of divine revelation. “He made something known,” meaning it is directed to the intellect, to the mind, not to the emotions. It is not something that Paul felt. It is not some sort of intuitive hot flash, but it is specific information that is given to the apostle; it is given to his mind.
You can’t know with your physical heart. It just pumps blood. When see the word “heart” used in Scripture, it’s usually metaphorical for that which is at the center of a person which is our soul. What should drive the soul is our thinking, our thought process. We can’t think with our emotions; we can only respond. We can’t think with anything other than our brain, the intellect that God gave us.
God gives intellectual information in that sense to Paul. He reveals something previously not known.
2. What was made known is a “mystery,” something never ever revealed before. It was God’s closely guarded secret.
Now it is being made known and is to be proclaimed throughout the world.
3. Paul says, “the way that it was made known was according to the standard of revelation.”
There are standards in the Bible to qualify the giving of revelation.
In Deuteronomy 13, and Deuteronomy 18, there are two different tests that are given for a prophet. The first test is that whatever a prophet says must conform to previous revelation. He can’t disagree with it; he can’t change it.
When we have people like Mohammed in the seventh century claiming that an angel has appeared to him and given this new revelation and that revelation contradicts the revelation of the Old Testament or the revelation of the New Testament, we know it’s a false revelation.
You can look to the 19th century, an almost identical scenario with Joseph Smith up in Palmyra, New York. He goes to the hill Cumorah outside of town where the angel Moroni appears to him and does the same kind of thing.
He gives him these books and these magic glasses that he can put on, so he can interpret the writing there. Again, it doesn’t conform to the revelation that’s been given in the Old Testament or New Testament. It contradicts it, so we know it’s a false revelation.
Deuteronomy 13 talks about that and Deuteronomy 8:18 talks about the fact that whatever a prophet says must come true. That’s what validates it, is that it will come true exactly as the prophet says.
Prophets would say things about the future, some of which would take place within a short time —that’s to validate their office and validate their gift and their authority—so that when they gave other information that would not be fulfilled in their lifetime, you would know it was valid because it was given by a prophet.
Slide 9
There’s a standard for revelation, and God follows that same standard in revealing this new information to the Apostle Paul, “by means of revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I briefly written already)—he’s just referring back to that section in Ephesians 2:11–22.”
Slide 10
Last time we started to look at what the Bible teaches about divine revelation.
Slide 11
1. Keywords
It is important to be reminded what they mean. One of the nouns for “revelation” is
- APOKALUPSIS, meaning to reveal or to disclose, from the verb meaning to reveal or disclose. APOKALUPSIS means revelation.
When you come to the first verse in the final book of the New Testament, that is Revelation, not Revelations. It’s one revelation, and it is The APOKALUPSIS. That’s where we get this term “Apocalyptic.”
The problem with the term “apocalyptic” is in the intervening period between the Old Testament and New Testament, there were certain things that were written that were never accepted as canonical, having to do with all of the bizarre scenarios talking about the future and this or that thing happening, which would be called the apocalypse of this person or that person.
Same thing happens after the closing of the Canon in the New Testament, there are these various things that mimic or sound somewhat similar to the prophecies of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, or John.
In modern times, they have taken this as a genre, as a category, as a style of literature called apocalyptic literature. When one of these subtle attacks happen with interpretation and on the Church they say, “See we have this whole class of literature called apocalyptic,” then they take that and read that back into the Bible.
But the biblical Books of prophetic revelation: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation are not like those at all. That’s an important distinction to be aware of. You’ll hear people say, “Oh, this is such an apocalyptic year.”
That’s where they get the term, but it’s picked up a separate meaning from that which is in the Bible, which talks about just some great judgment that comes or great catastrophes or worldwide calamities.
But APOKALUPSIS just means revelation, disclosure, the giving of information. It’s the opposite of the words that mean to cover up or to conceal.
Ø The verb GNORIZO, as in our passage, “He made known to Paul.” GNORIZO means to make known. “He made known to Paul by revelation.” God’s revelation gives information so that something is known.
Ø Revelation discloses information which is necessary to correctly understand and interpret the events of our lives.
Slide 12
We see this in a couple of passages like Luke 2:15, where the multitude of angels appear to the shepherds after the birth of Jesus. When the angels had announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, the shepherds said, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.”
It’s information that wouldn’t be discovered immediately in this case without God disclosing it.
Slide 13
- PHANEROO, making something known, revealing something. Sometimes it’s translated as making something manifest. Its cognate noun is PHANEROSIS, meaning a revelation or manifestation or a disclosure.
Slide 14
Romans 16:25, “Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began.”
The idea: it’s kept secret. Nobody knew it from the time of the original creation.
Slide 15
2. God the Father uses God the Holy Spirit to reveal His Word to the Old Testament prophets, and then in this dispensation, in the Church Age, it is revealed to the New Testament apostles and prophets.
Notice the word order in Ephesians 3:5, “apostles and prophets.” That word order is important because if, in Ephesians 2:20 and in this passage, it was in the order of “prophets and apostles,” then the prophets would be Old Testament prophets: it would be chronological—Old Testament prophets and the apostles for the New Testament. But it’s “apostles and prophets.”
This is talking about New Testament gifts related to revelation. There’s a New Testament gift of prophecy that was similar to but a little bit different from that in the Old Testament.
Because in the Old Testament they were all related to the Mosaic Law and confronting Israel with their disobedience to the Law, so within their confrontations, they also made statements that refer to the future.
But in the New Testament era, prophets wrote Scripture. They weren’t apostles. Luke was not one of the apostles; he had the New Testament gift of prophet, as did the writer of Hebrews. We don’t know who wrote the book of Hebrews. It wasn’t the Apostle Paul.
That’s pretty clear because of several statements made in the book of Hebrews that indicate that he was told about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul would never say that because Paul saw the resurrected Jesus Christ. There are clear statements in Hebrews that excluded Paul from being the author. So there’s someone.
Mark was closely associated with Peter; Mark was not an apostle, but he wrote the Gospel of Mark. So there were those authors in the New Testament that had the New Testament gift of prophet.
“His holy apostles and prophets” in Ephesians 3:5 is talking about those who had the authorization to communicate Scripture.
2 Peter 1:20–21, “… knowing this first that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation. For prophecy never came by will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”
Several times the Old Testament attributes this to the Holy Spirit and so does the New Testament.
3. This is not something that can be learned by the use of either reason or empiricism. We can’t think our way to this conclusion or have something to discover in the laboratory based on our knowledge or experience.
Slide 16
The importance of Revelation is that this primarily—not exclusively but primarily—is giving information to us that we could not learn on our own, that we could not learn no matter how many books we read, no matter how well we thought through all of the issues with the cognitive abilities that God gives us.
We could never figure this out no matter what the experience was. We could never work it through in a laboratory, we can never come to this information.
The classic example is in the Garden of Eden. God gave Adam and Eve a lot of information. They could discover a lot of things through empiricism by observing what was going on in the garden, observing the animals so they could be named, observing all the trees, all the fruit. They could’ve figured out that they could eat all of it.
But there’s one thing they would never know unless God told them, and that was there was one tree that was different, and if you ate that fruit, you would die spiritually, not physically. It wasn’t poison. The issue was obedience or disobedience to God, and by disobeying God they were separated from the life of God.
The issue in revelation is this gives us that information, just one little bit of information. There may be a thousand pieces of information, but there’s one that when it is known, re-shapes our understanding of the other 999 pieces of information. That’s why we have to always start with the Word of God. It’s going to give us that one clue as to how to interpret everything else.
Of all the things that you could say about Christ: His work on the cross, about the resurrection, the ascension, and about the activities that occurred on the Day of Pentecost, never in a million years would you ever come to the conclusion that God was creating a new man, a new body, a new temple that would be comprised equally of Jew and Gentile where there would be no difference between them.
You could never figure that out on your own. This reminds us how important it is for us to know the Word. The Word of God is the foundation of everything that we think.
Slide 17
To look at this principle, go to 1 Corinthians 2 to understand the significance and the importance of God’s revelation. I’ve gone through this in detail. It is one the most important passages in Scripture related to revelation and the importance of Scripture, which I will summarize quickly.
Paul is reminding the Corinthian believers of the importance of knowing Scripture, and that this is a spiritual process that involves the Holy Spirit as the author and the overseer of revelation, and the one who enables us to understand God’s revelation.
In 1 Corinthians 2:9 we read the start of Paul’s argument; he goes to Scripture, “But as it is written—and this is not stated in one particular place, but he has cobbled parts of this together from different verses out of Isaiah—Eye has not seen …”
In empiricism the view is that we’re born basically with an empty mind. Tabula rasa was Aristotle’s idea—an empty slate. And we put content on that by what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we touch, what we smell—through empiricism, through our experience. Through the scientific method we categorize, classify everything, we categorize all the animals like Adam started to do. That is empiricism.
“There are things that “Eye has not seen—that’s not ever going to be available empirically—nor ear heard—again empiricism—nor have entered into the heart—heart refers to the thinking of a man—nor have entered into the thinking of man—rationalism.”
No matter how much you pursue reason, you can’t get the answers that are only available through the study of God’s Word. He’s not saying it’s irrational, he’s saying reason can only get you so far, but at some point you have to have some key information that only God knows, that God tells you, and then the rest of it can make sense.
“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things—referring to the content of revelation—the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
“Things,” he repeats it four or five times throughout this chapter, and it always refers back to that information which is given uniquely in the Bible.
1 Corinthians 2:10, “But God has revealed those things—‘the things prepared for those who love Him,’ the information in Scripture—But God has revealed those things to us through His Holy Spirit.”
Note: The word “Spirit” is used in about three or four different ways in this passage, so you have to be careful; it’s not capitalized.
The Greeks didn’t capitalize words like we do, so to distinguish between lowercase spirit, like “human spirit” or “thinking” or “wind” or “breath” for the other meanings of PNEUMA, the translators capitalize it. But they have to interpret the passage to decide where to capitalize, and sometimes they don’t do it right.
“But God has revealed those things to us through—so this is the Holy Spirit, the superintendent of revelation—through His Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit again searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.”
1 Corinthians 2:11, “For what man knows the things of a man except the—correctly translated lowercase spirit. It’s not talking about the Holy Spirit, but the—spirit of man.”
PNEUMA can refer to the man’s thinking. “Spirit” can refer to an attitude, like somebody has the spirit of bitterness, or they have a spirit of anger—an attitude, a mindset.
If you look at a Greek lexicon, there’s about nine or 10 different definitions for PNEUMA. Here it’s talking about the fact that in the thinking of a man, he knows his own thoughts.
“For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?—his own thinking—even so no one knows the things of God except the Holy Spirit of God.”
Because the Holy Spirit is fully God. He is omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent. As omniscient He knows everything that the Father is thinking, everything the Son is thinking. All three members of the Trinity are fully aware and knowledgeable about the other two members of the Trinity.
Slide 18
1 Corinthians 2:12, “Now we—as believers—have received, not the spirit of the world.” Here’s another usage, the thinking of the world, the mindset of the world, the philosophies, the religious systems of the “cosmic system,” from the Greek KOSMOS for “world.”
“Now we have received, not the spirit—or the thinking—of the world—you have the contrast: the world’s thinking, then the thinking of God, the thinking of the Holy Spirit. Human viewpoint versus divine viewpoint—but the Holy Spirit who is from God—for the purpose of something—that we might know—not that we might feel, not that we might have an experience, but that we can know, cognitive action, intellectual reflection—that we might know the things—there’s that word again, used twice already, ‘the things’ refers to the content of God’s revelation, what’s in the Word of God—that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.”
It’s very clear: we’re given the Holy Spirit so that we might understand the Word of God. That doesn’t mean that you can just read a verse and you have it. I’ve had some people say, “Well, you have the gift a pastor-teacher. You can just pick up the Bible and know what it means.” [Dr. Dean replies,] “You’re just a mystic and you’re as pagan as you can be.”
That’s not what the gift is. It’s a gift of communication, and how God uses that in the lives of people is the gift aspect, the miraculous aspect of it.
You have to study, you have to go through and learn Bible study methods. You have to learn Greek and Hebrew, you have to learn how to exegete, you have to spend years crafting and developing and practicing those skills, and then you’ll be able to do it. But it takes time.
When you come out of seminary, you’ve mastered some basic skills. The average student that graduates from Dallas Theological Seminary back in like the 60s or 70s didn’t even come close to somebody who graduated from seminary in the early 19th century or the 18th century. Why? Because those men had been studying Greek and Latin and Hebrew since they were in grade school.
When they started seminary they knew more about Greek and Latin and Hebrew than most Masters of Theology from any seminary in the US knows at the end of four years of study, because he’s just had four years of study.
It takes time, but God the Holy Spirit is the One who works in all of that, so that we can come to understand the content of God’s revelation.
1 Corinthians 2:13, “These things—that is, the content of revelation—we also speak—we as the apostles speak, we teach it, we communicate it—not in words which human wisdom teaches—it’s not human viewpoint systems of methodology—but which the Holy Spirit teaches—again this contrast between human viewpoint and divine viewpoint —comparing spiritual concepts with spiritual words.”
We learn basic things, then we learn more, and we put those things together under the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and we continue to grow and advance.
1 Corinthians 2:14, “But the soulish—the spiritually dead—man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God—what’s that? That is revelation, the Word of God. He doesn’t receive the things of the Spirit of God—for those things are foolishness to him, nor can he know those things, because they are spiritually discerned.”
This relates to having a human spirit—being regenerate, being born-again. They are spiritually discerned. If you make it the Holy Spirit, you’ve got a problem. What’s the problem?
Well, what about all those people in the Old Testament that didn’t have the Holy Spirit? You’ve got to think, is going to be the human spirit which is what you have as a possession in regeneration and now enables you to think the things of God, or is it the Holy Spirit?
If it’s the Holy Spirit you’ve got a problem because nobody up until the Day of Pentecost in 33 AD had the Holy Spirit to help them understand the Word. This has to relate to the human spirit and the result of regeneration.
1 Corinthians 2:15, “But he who is spiritual—that is, the one who is regenerate with the knowledge of these things—evaluates all things, yet he himself is evaluated by no one.”
God the Holy Spirit is necessary to truly understand the things of God in the New Testament but is predicated upon the fact that he’s been regenerated. That’s what initially gives him the ability to read Scripture and it begins to mean something because he’s a regenerate. That applied to the Old Testament.
In the New Testament you get really technical language and you get really technical doctrine. The Old Testament is not written that way; it is mostly stories and examples of things of that nature.
The reason is if you’re just regenerate you can understand that, but to get into Paul, to get into Peter, to get in the more advanced revelation of the New Testament, you have to have the Holy Spirit.
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4. The Old Testament testifies that Scripture was given through the Holy Spirit.
Zechariah 7:12 says, “Yes, they made their hearts like flint—they hardened their hearts—refusing to hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets.”
The Holy Spirit was clearly working through the Old Testament prophets.
2 Samuel 23:3, “The God of Israel said, ‘the Rock of Israel spoke to me: He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.’ ”
God is the One who speaks here. He is not specifying, he’s just saying the Elohim of Israel—not identifying a specific Person of the Trinity—but God is the One Who speaks and reveals. We know from Zechariah 7:12 and 2 Peter 1:20–21 that this is the Holy Spirit.
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5. In the New Testament new information was revealed by the Holy Spirit to those who had the New Testament gift of apostle and prophecy.
Previously unrevealed truth is expressed through the terminology of “mystery.”
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We see this language in Ephesians 3 times.
Ephesians 1:9, “having made known to us the mystery of His will.” “Us” being the apostles. It’s not just given to Paul.
Ephesians 6:19, “and for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel.”
The gospel in a broad sense isn’t just what you need to know to get into heaven, what you need to believe you get into heaven. But once you are saved, you need to understand who you are as this new creature in Christ. That’s part of the mystery, this previously unrevealed part of the gospel.
Ephesians 3:10, “to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church.”
It’s for the purpose that God’s wisdom be known to the Church. It’s not a secret doctrine that only a few people know. It’s for everyone. It is to be proclaimed to everyone.
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In Colossians 1:27 we have a parallel statement, “To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles.”
God wants the uniqueness of the Church known by all the Gentiles.
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Romans 11:25, “For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery—we have to know this and study it—lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part is happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.”
The context: God’s not through with Israel, but right now because they have hardened their hearts, God is calling up a new people and a new entity—this mystery that is a combination of Jew and Gentile until the fullness of time comes. Then He will go back to working with Israel.
Romans 16:25, “Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began.”
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1 Corinthians 2:1, “And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the mystery of God.”
All through Corinthians, Colossians, Ephesians, Paul is proclaiming the mystery.
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Colossians 1:26, “the mystery that has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints.”
Colossians 2:2, “that their hearts may be encouraged.”
People say, “You teach so much doctrine over there. You do so much exegesis!” That’s what Scripture does! How else are we going to make known what the Scripture says so that we can be encouraged? The purpose of this is to keep us from becoming disheartened and discouraged.
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Colossians 4:3, “meanwhile praying also for us, that God would open to us a door for the word, to speak—or to proclaim—the mystery of Christ …”
That’s related to the gospel; all of the mystery doctrine.
1 Timothy 3:9, “… holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience.”
1 Timothy 3:16, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness …”
“Mystery” relates to godliness, to our spiritual life, our spiritual growth. In 1 Timothy 3:9, it’s the “mystery of the faith,” understanding what we believe. “The mystery of the faith” is the body of doctrine, the body of knowledge that has been revealed to us.
It is extremely practical because, as Paul is saying here, this is what gives us as Christians our identity. When things go wrong as we perceive them, when things are tough, when we face opposition, persecution, antagonism for the faith, when the culture around us collapses, we don’t collapse, we don’t fall apart.
Because we know that God still has a mission and a ministry for us, and that this is part of His plan and His purpose so that we can be strong, we can have courage, and we can be faithful even in the midst of cultural crisis.
Closing Prayer
“Father, we thank You for this opportunity to come together to study Your Word today and to be reminded of who we are in the body of Christ. That we are part of this new man, new body, this new temple. That God the Holy Spirit indwells us individually, as well as corporately, and that we have this great privilege and this great purpose.
“You’ve given us a ministry like the Apostle Paul, related to our spiritual gift, related to edifying one another, encouraging and strengthening one another within the body of Christ, and that no matter what happens—we face our mental attitude so much on whether things go the way we like them to go or what we want to do, we just want to be in control instead of recognizing You’re in control.
“Father, we pray that You’d help us to relax and trust You and pursue the mission You’ve given us, that we might truly fulfill that testimony that You have given to us to be a witness to the angels and those around us of Your grace and Your goodness and of the power of the gospel.
“Father, we pray that if there’s any listening, anyone watching, anyone who is here that has never trusted Christ as Savior, they may be wanting to know how they can have peace in their life, how they can have stability in their life. The way to truly have it, not just a semblance of it, is to become a new creature in Christ, which comes simply by trusting in Jesus and all He did at the cross. Believing on Him, believing He died for our sins to accepting that full forgiveness that we have from You, and that we now have peace.
“We have peace with You because of what Christ did on the Cross. Because of that we can face anything, we can handle anything; we can surmount any challenge. We get the right orientation to life into our purpose and that enables us to face all the challenges and vicissitudes of life.
“Father, we pray that You would strengthen us with that knowledge and that any who needs to trust in Christ would understand that that’s all that’s needed, is to believe that Jesus died for their sins, and that they have eternal life, that they trust in Him and Him alone. Father, we pray these things in Christ’s name, amen.”