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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