Rightly Dividing (Part 2)
Bible Study Time 7-9-06
Church links:
Bible Study Time 7-9-06
The Apostle Paul told Timothy that:
2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NKJ)
16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,
17 that the man of God may be complete, (and) thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Oh how we as believers need the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives so that we can apply the word of God to the specific situations we face. That’s what reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness is all about. The other day I was reading in the scriptures about the time that Jesus asked his disciples who they thought He was. After Peter boldly declared, “Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God.”, the Lord took Peter, James and John up the Mt. of Transfiguration where they were allowed to see the Lord Jesus in all of the glory of His kingdom.
As I read that, the Holy Spirit took those verses and applied them to my heart. He said, “If you come to God in simple faith, believing what He says, God will be able to show you the glory of Jesus Christ.” Now that’s a simple application, but the Holy Spirit is so good at using the simplest things to touch our hearts. My heart was rejoicing that God wants to reveal His glory to me. I was reminded of the verse in Jeremiah where God says:
Jeremiah 33:3 (KJV)
3 Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.
It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to apply the word of God to our lives and give us reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. But when we look at II Timothy 3:15, we see that the first thing on the list of profitable things is not reproof, correction or instruction in righteousness. The first thing is doctrine, and I think that the reason for this is that if we don’t have a good doctrinal foundation, the Holy Spirit will be limited in His ability to properly apply the word of God to our hearts.
For instance, when Peter made his profession of faith, the Lord told Peter that He would give Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven and that whatever he bound on earth would be bound in heaven, and whatever he loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven.
When I read that, I wasn’t tempted to think that if I believe the word of God, I will have the power to control everything that happens on the earth. Praise the Lord, if we have a good doctrinal foundation, the Holy Spirit will be able to properly apply the word of God to our hearts.
And that brings me back to the point that I was making last week, that we need to understand the 3 basic programs of the Bible if we are going to rightly divide the word of truth and approach the Bible on the basis of good, sound doctrine.
Last week we looked at these three main programs of the Bible which are the Law of Moses, the New Covenant and the Church which is the Body of Christ. The Law of Moses, of coarse, was given at Mt. Sinai and continued until the death of Christ. The New Covenant had to be ratified by the blood of the Lord Jesus and so it follows that the New Covenant could not begin until after the cross.
When the nation of Israel’s rejection of Christ was complete at the end of the Acts period, God temporarily set aside Israel’s New Covenant program and called the Apostle Paul to reveal the church of our present age, the Church which is the Body of Christ.
At some point in the future, and it may not be too far away, God will catch up the Church, the Body of Christ, to be with Him in heaven, and then He will resume His New Covenant program with the nation of Israel. That will be the time of the great tribulation period when Israel will be purified through the fires of persecution and suffering. Then after that believing Israel will enter into the blessings of the New Covenant Kingdom.
As I mentioned earlier, the New Covenant per se could not begin until after the death of Christ, but both John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus had ministries that were based on the New Covenant. They went out preaching the blessings of the New Covenant Kingdom and warning about the tribulation that will most certainly precede that kingdom. In Matthew, Chapter 3, when John the Baptist:
Matthew 3:7 (NKJ)
7 . . . saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
John knew that the kingdom was coming, but he also knew that before the kingdom could come, there had to be a tremendous purging of the nation of Israel, and that’s exactly what the tribulation period will be. It will be a time when the fiery judgment of God will purge Israel of her rebellion and unbelief. So John said:
Matthew 3:11,12 (NKJ)
11 "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
12 "His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
The baptism of the Holy Spirit is one of the outstanding features of the New Covenant. As the Lord said through Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 36:26-28 (NKJ)
26 "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you . . .
27 "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.
28 "Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God.
So the Holy Spirit will use the fires of the tribulation period to purify and cleanse the believing Jews, but those who steadfastly refuse to believe in the Lord Jesus will be consumed by the fire. Jesus Christ will gather his believing bride into the kingdom while unbelieving Israel will be burned up with unquenchable fire.
Another hallmark of the New Covenant is the manifestation of miracles, wonders and signs. When the Lord Jesus and his disciples went out preaching the message of the kingdom, they did many miracles. The purpose of these miracles was to confirm the message and the messengers. When Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, he said:
John 3:2 (NKJ)
2 . . . "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him."
After the blood of the New Covenant was shed, the spiritual power of New Covenant was poured out upon the nation of Israel on the Day of Pentecost. The day of the New Covenant had finally come. Acts, Chapter 2, and verse 1 says:
Acts 2:1-4 (NKJ)
1 Now when the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
3 Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.
4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
The people who gathered around were amazed and perplexed as Peter stood up to say:
Acts 2:16-21 (NKJ)
16 " . . . this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 'And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams.
18 And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; and they shall prophesy.
19 I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath: blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.
21 And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'
This is the message of the New Covenant which stands in anticipation of the great and awesome day of the Lord. This is the day of judgment which will immediately precede the setting up of the kingdom. This is the day when God will pour out his wrath upon the earth and the creation itself will erupt with a violent display of God’s power. But Peter holds out to his listeners the hope of Joel, Chapter 2, saying that all those who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved from the wrath of God and enter into the kingdom.
The Bible says that on that Day of Pentecost three thousand people humbled themselves before the Lord. They repented and were baptized. Then they sold their possessions and lived together as they waited for the return of Christ and the glory of the New Covenant Kingdom.
God continued doing many miracles, wonders and signs as the Apostles continued to preach the message of the New Covenant. Now, as I mentioned last week, this was the message of the New Covenant, but as far as we know, the Apostles there in Jerusalem were never able to articulate that fact in their minds or in their sermons. They seemed to think that these things were all just an outworking of the Old Covenant Law, an extension of the Old Covenant Law.
But when God called the Apostle Paul, He personally revealed to Paul that the time had come to set aside the Old Covenant Law because through the power of the cross God had established a better covenant, with a better sacrifice, and a better priesthood and a better hope. Paul could see that the New Covenant was a totally different program than the Old Covenant Law, and as a result he was set free to go in a totally different direction. He could see that the confines of the Old Covenant no longer applied.
So Paul was sent to the Gentiles, and when the Gentiles put their faith in Jesus Christ, they were saved without the deeds of the Law. Paul was still a minister of the New Covenant, however, maybe more so than the other Apostles. And because Paul was a minister of the New Covenant during the Acts period, there were many miracles, wonders and signs which were associated with his ministry. This is made very evident in the book of Acts.
I have heard some people say that we should never look to the book of Acts for doctrine, but Paul told Timothy that all scripture is profitable for doctrine as well as for reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness. It is perfectly consistent and logical that miracles, wonders and signs would follow the Apostle Paul throughout the Acts period because he was serving as a minister of the New Covenant.
Paul’s Acts-period epistles also give clear evidence of his New Covenant ministry. Of coarse, in II Corinthians 3, Paul specifically stated that he was a minister of the New Covenant, but besides that, we see in I Corinthians 6 that he told the Corinthians that they would someday rule the world. And then in I Corinthians 7, Paul said:
1 Corinthians 7:29-31 (NKJ)
29 . . . this I say, brethren, (that) the time is short, so that from now on even those who have wives should be as though they had none,
30 . . . (and) those who buy as though they did not possess,
31 . . . For the form of this world is passing away.
At the end of the Acts period, Israel’s rejection of Jesus as the Christ was complete, and God set aside the New Covenant program. God called the Apostle Paul to once again reveal something that no one else understood, only this time it was not something like the New Covenant which was simply overlooked in the Old Testament scriptures. This time it was something that had been hidden in God from the beginning of the ages.
God gave Paul the great revelation concerning the Church which is the Body of Christ. In his post Acts-period epistles to the Ephesians, the Philippians and the Colossians, as well as his pastoral epistles to Timothy and Titus, we see no evidence of the New Covenant. We see no evidence of outward miracles, wonders and signs. We see no evidence of physical circumcision, or water baptism, or the communion service. We see no discussion of the antichrist or the tribulation period.
Instead, we see only the miracle of the new creation which comes through our spiritual baptism into the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. We see only the hope that someday, when Christ appears, we will appear with him in glory.
When we study the Bible, and we see, as we have this morning, that some passages have to be seen in the light of the Law of Moses, while others have to be seen in the light of the New Covenant, while still others have to be seen in the light of the Church which is the Body of Christ, then we can come to the word of God and open our hearts to the Holy Spirit completely yielding our hearts to Him as we trust Him to lead us and guide us and instruct us.
I see that our time is gone for this morning. Thank you for listening to Bible Study Time. I’ll look forward to being with you again next week at this same time.
Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com
2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NKJ)
16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,
17 that the man of God may be complete, (and) thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Oh how we as believers need the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives so that we can apply the word of God to the specific situations we face. That’s what reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness is all about. The other day I was reading in the scriptures about the time that Jesus asked his disciples who they thought He was. After Peter boldly declared, “Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God.”, the Lord took Peter, James and John up the Mt. of Transfiguration where they were allowed to see the Lord Jesus in all of the glory of His kingdom.
As I read that, the Holy Spirit took those verses and applied them to my heart. He said, “If you come to God in simple faith, believing what He says, God will be able to show you the glory of Jesus Christ.” Now that’s a simple application, but the Holy Spirit is so good at using the simplest things to touch our hearts. My heart was rejoicing that God wants to reveal His glory to me. I was reminded of the verse in Jeremiah where God says:
Jeremiah 33:3 (KJV)
3 Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.
It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to apply the word of God to our lives and give us reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. But when we look at II Timothy 3:15, we see that the first thing on the list of profitable things is not reproof, correction or instruction in righteousness. The first thing is doctrine, and I think that the reason for this is that if we don’t have a good doctrinal foundation, the Holy Spirit will be limited in His ability to properly apply the word of God to our hearts.
For instance, when Peter made his profession of faith, the Lord told Peter that He would give Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven and that whatever he bound on earth would be bound in heaven, and whatever he loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven.
When I read that, I wasn’t tempted to think that if I believe the word of God, I will have the power to control everything that happens on the earth. Praise the Lord, if we have a good doctrinal foundation, the Holy Spirit will be able to properly apply the word of God to our hearts.
And that brings me back to the point that I was making last week, that we need to understand the 3 basic programs of the Bible if we are going to rightly divide the word of truth and approach the Bible on the basis of good, sound doctrine.
Last week we looked at these three main programs of the Bible which are the Law of Moses, the New Covenant and the Church which is the Body of Christ. The Law of Moses, of coarse, was given at Mt. Sinai and continued until the death of Christ. The New Covenant had to be ratified by the blood of the Lord Jesus and so it follows that the New Covenant could not begin until after the cross.
When the nation of Israel’s rejection of Christ was complete at the end of the Acts period, God temporarily set aside Israel’s New Covenant program and called the Apostle Paul to reveal the church of our present age, the Church which is the Body of Christ.
At some point in the future, and it may not be too far away, God will catch up the Church, the Body of Christ, to be with Him in heaven, and then He will resume His New Covenant program with the nation of Israel. That will be the time of the great tribulation period when Israel will be purified through the fires of persecution and suffering. Then after that believing Israel will enter into the blessings of the New Covenant Kingdom.
As I mentioned earlier, the New Covenant per se could not begin until after the death of Christ, but both John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus had ministries that were based on the New Covenant. They went out preaching the blessings of the New Covenant Kingdom and warning about the tribulation that will most certainly precede that kingdom. In Matthew, Chapter 3, when John the Baptist:
Matthew 3:7 (NKJ)
7 . . . saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
John knew that the kingdom was coming, but he also knew that before the kingdom could come, there had to be a tremendous purging of the nation of Israel, and that’s exactly what the tribulation period will be. It will be a time when the fiery judgment of God will purge Israel of her rebellion and unbelief. So John said:
Matthew 3:11,12 (NKJ)
11 "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
12 "His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
The baptism of the Holy Spirit is one of the outstanding features of the New Covenant. As the Lord said through Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 36:26-28 (NKJ)
26 "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you . . .
27 "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.
28 "Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people, and I will be your God.
So the Holy Spirit will use the fires of the tribulation period to purify and cleanse the believing Jews, but those who steadfastly refuse to believe in the Lord Jesus will be consumed by the fire. Jesus Christ will gather his believing bride into the kingdom while unbelieving Israel will be burned up with unquenchable fire.
Another hallmark of the New Covenant is the manifestation of miracles, wonders and signs. When the Lord Jesus and his disciples went out preaching the message of the kingdom, they did many miracles. The purpose of these miracles was to confirm the message and the messengers. When Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, he said:
John 3:2 (NKJ)
2 . . . "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him."
After the blood of the New Covenant was shed, the spiritual power of New Covenant was poured out upon the nation of Israel on the Day of Pentecost. The day of the New Covenant had finally come. Acts, Chapter 2, and verse 1 says:
Acts 2:1-4 (NKJ)
1 Now when the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
3 Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.
4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
The people who gathered around were amazed and perplexed as Peter stood up to say:
Acts 2:16-21 (NKJ)
16 " . . . this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:
17 'And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams.
18 And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; and they shall prophesy.
19 I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath: blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord.
21 And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'
This is the message of the New Covenant which stands in anticipation of the great and awesome day of the Lord. This is the day of judgment which will immediately precede the setting up of the kingdom. This is the day when God will pour out his wrath upon the earth and the creation itself will erupt with a violent display of God’s power. But Peter holds out to his listeners the hope of Joel, Chapter 2, saying that all those who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved from the wrath of God and enter into the kingdom.
The Bible says that on that Day of Pentecost three thousand people humbled themselves before the Lord. They repented and were baptized. Then they sold their possessions and lived together as they waited for the return of Christ and the glory of the New Covenant Kingdom.
God continued doing many miracles, wonders and signs as the Apostles continued to preach the message of the New Covenant. Now, as I mentioned last week, this was the message of the New Covenant, but as far as we know, the Apostles there in Jerusalem were never able to articulate that fact in their minds or in their sermons. They seemed to think that these things were all just an outworking of the Old Covenant Law, an extension of the Old Covenant Law.
But when God called the Apostle Paul, He personally revealed to Paul that the time had come to set aside the Old Covenant Law because through the power of the cross God had established a better covenant, with a better sacrifice, and a better priesthood and a better hope. Paul could see that the New Covenant was a totally different program than the Old Covenant Law, and as a result he was set free to go in a totally different direction. He could see that the confines of the Old Covenant no longer applied.
So Paul was sent to the Gentiles, and when the Gentiles put their faith in Jesus Christ, they were saved without the deeds of the Law. Paul was still a minister of the New Covenant, however, maybe more so than the other Apostles. And because Paul was a minister of the New Covenant during the Acts period, there were many miracles, wonders and signs which were associated with his ministry. This is made very evident in the book of Acts.
I have heard some people say that we should never look to the book of Acts for doctrine, but Paul told Timothy that all scripture is profitable for doctrine as well as for reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness. It is perfectly consistent and logical that miracles, wonders and signs would follow the Apostle Paul throughout the Acts period because he was serving as a minister of the New Covenant.
Paul’s Acts-period epistles also give clear evidence of his New Covenant ministry. Of coarse, in II Corinthians 3, Paul specifically stated that he was a minister of the New Covenant, but besides that, we see in I Corinthians 6 that he told the Corinthians that they would someday rule the world. And then in I Corinthians 7, Paul said:
1 Corinthians 7:29-31 (NKJ)
29 . . . this I say, brethren, (that) the time is short, so that from now on even those who have wives should be as though they had none,
30 . . . (and) those who buy as though they did not possess,
31 . . . For the form of this world is passing away.
At the end of the Acts period, Israel’s rejection of Jesus as the Christ was complete, and God set aside the New Covenant program. God called the Apostle Paul to once again reveal something that no one else understood, only this time it was not something like the New Covenant which was simply overlooked in the Old Testament scriptures. This time it was something that had been hidden in God from the beginning of the ages.
God gave Paul the great revelation concerning the Church which is the Body of Christ. In his post Acts-period epistles to the Ephesians, the Philippians and the Colossians, as well as his pastoral epistles to Timothy and Titus, we see no evidence of the New Covenant. We see no evidence of outward miracles, wonders and signs. We see no evidence of physical circumcision, or water baptism, or the communion service. We see no discussion of the antichrist or the tribulation period.
Instead, we see only the miracle of the new creation which comes through our spiritual baptism into the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. We see only the hope that someday, when Christ appears, we will appear with him in glory.
When we study the Bible, and we see, as we have this morning, that some passages have to be seen in the light of the Law of Moses, while others have to be seen in the light of the New Covenant, while still others have to be seen in the light of the Church which is the Body of Christ, then we can come to the word of God and open our hearts to the Holy Spirit completely yielding our hearts to Him as we trust Him to lead us and guide us and instruct us.
I see that our time is gone for this morning. Thank you for listening to Bible Study Time. I’ll look forward to being with you again next week at this same time.
Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com
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