The Word from Paul (Part 1)
Bible Study Time 5-20-07
Bible Study Time 5-20-07
Recently we have been looking at the ministry of the word of God. From the beginning, God has had a desire to communicate with man. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were apparently accustomed to walking and talking with the Lord. The Bible says that after Adam and Eve sinned, their eyes:
Genesis 3:7-8 (NKJ)
7 . . . were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day . . .
This appears to have been a routine thing for the Lord. It wasn’t at all uncommon for the Lord to come strolling through the garden to talk with Adam and Eve. But on this occasion:
Genesis 3:8-10 (NKJ)
8 . . . Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
9 Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, "Where are you?"
10 So (Adam) said, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself."
Adam recognized the voice of the Lord. Why? Because Adam was used to talking with God. He was used to the sound of God’s voice.
Sadly, this beautiful fellowship was broken when Adam and Eve sinned. God could no longer communicate freely with Adam and Eve. They had passed from the realm of life into the realm of death. They had passed from the realm of light into the realm of darkness, and God can have no fellowship with darkness. John said:
I John 1:5-6 (NKJ)
5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
This separation between God and man was graphically illustrated at Mt. Sinai. When God was preparing to appear to the nation of Israel, He told Moses:
Exodus 19:10-12 (NKJ)
10 . . . "Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes.
11 "And let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day the LORD will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.
12 "You shall set bounds for the people all around, saying, 'Take heed to yourselves that you do not go up to the mountain or touch its base. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.
It was here at Mt. Sinai that God gave His first great revelation of Himself to man. It was in the Law that God revealed His perfect righteousness.
After the time of Moses, God spoke to the children of Israel through the prophets. When God called a man to proclaim the word of the Lord, that man would stand up in public and say, “Thus says the Lord.” And then that prophet would speak the very words that God gave him to speak. Peter said:
2 Peter 1:19-21 (NKJ)
19 And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts;
20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation,
21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
God could not speak directly to the children of Israel. God could have no fellowship with them because they lived in the realm of sin and death, but who were these holy men of God who were moved by the Holy Spirit to speak on God’s behalf. These were men who had come to God through faith and had met with God at the mercyseat where the blood of atonement is applied. At the time that Isaiah was called as a prophet, he said:
Isaiah 6:1 (NKJ)
1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.
Isaiah met with the Lord in the Holy of Holies in the temple, and when Isaiah saw the Lord, he said:
Isaiah 6:5 (NKJ)
5 . . . "Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."
Then one of the seraphim which stood above the throne touched Isaiah’s mouth with a live coal from the altar and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.”
Then the Lord said, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?"
Isaiah said, “Here am I! Send me.”
So the Lord said, “Go, and tell this people: 'Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.'”
There at the mercyseat in front of the altar, Isaiah’s iniquity was taken away and by this means he was made righteous and holy so that God could speak to him and he could speak for God.
When Jesus came into the world, He did not speak in the same manner as the prophets who preceded Him. He did not stand up and say, “Thus says the Lord.” No, Jesus simply spoke, as a member of the Godhead. The writer to the Hebrews said:
Hebrews 1:1-2 (NKJ)
1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,
2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;
Jesus Christ is in and of Himself the greatest revelation that God has given of Himself. John said:
John 1:14 (NKJ)
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Jesus didn’t say, “Thus says the Lord.” He just spoke, and His words pierced the hearts of the people. Four times in the book of Matthew we read that the people were astonished at His teachings. The teachings and the miracles of Jesus were given to the children of Israel as proof of the fact that Jesus was their promised Messiah.
After the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Christ, God sent out the apostles to once again speak to the people for God, but the message of the apostles was quite different from that of the Old Testament prophets. The apostles spent most of their time teaching and interpreting the prophecies of the Old Testament. By doing this, the teaching of the written word became the central focus of Christian ministry.
Starting with the Day of Pentecost, the Apostle Peter taught that David was talking about the resurrection of Jesus when he said, “You will not leave my soul in hell, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.”
Peter said that David was actually talking about the ultimate exaltation of Jesus Christ when he said,
Psalms 110:1 (NKJ)
1 The LORD said to my Lord, "Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool."
Peter told the Jewish religious leaders that they had fulfilled the word of God when they crucified Jesus, but he warned them that according to David:
Psalms 118:22 (NKJ)
22 The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
Peter was saying that the Jewish leaders were the builders who had rejected Jesus, but he warned them that this stone which they rejected had become the chief cornerstone in God’s plan and purpose for the nation of Israel and for the world.
So the apostles were given the task of speaking to man on God’s behalf, but their emphasis was placed on properly interpreting the scriptures of the Old Testament.
Now, the Apostle Paul was not one of the twelve apostles, but he was an apostle. Paul’s epistle to the Galatians is one of his earliest writings, and in the first verse of that epistle he said:
Galatians 1:1 (NKJ)
1 Paul, an apostle (not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead),
Paul affirmed that he had been called to be an apostle by Jesus Christ just like the other apostles had been called by Jesus Christ. The twelve were called while Jesus was still living upon the earth, but Paul had been called after the Lord’s ascension into heaven. As we all know, it was on the road to Damascus that the Lord appeared to Paul and called him to be an apostle.
Paul’s early ministry was very similar to that of the other twelve apostles. Acts, Chapter 9, says that after Paul was saved:
Acts 9:20-22 (NKJ)
20 Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God.
21 Then all who heard were amazed, and said, "Is this not he who destroyed those who called on this name in Jerusalem, and has come here for that purpose, so that he might bring them bound to the chief priests?"
22 But (Paul) increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Christ.
Now, what do you suppose Paul used to prove that Jesus was the Christ? He used the Old Testament prophecies, just like the other apostles did. Since Paul was a Pharisee, he knew the Old Testament scriptures as well as anyone, and God put that knowledge to good use. Paul started his letter to the Romans by saying:
Romans 1:1-4 (NKJ)
1 Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God
2 which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,
3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,
4 and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
Though Paul was called to be a great apostle, he viewed himself as a bondservant. He followed Christ’s example of humility. As Paul went out as the bondservant-apostle, he went out preaching the gospel of God which God had promised through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures.
It’s noteworthy that this statement by Paul was written in his letter to the Romans. It’s noteworthy because Romans is one of Paul’s Acts-period epistles. During the Acts period, Paul revealed truths which were in fact hidden in the Old Testament scriptures.
Like Peter, Paul taught that Jesus had been raised from the dead and exalted in heaven in accordance with Messianic prophecy. However, Paul went on beyond this message to reveal that the blood of Jesus was actually the blood of atonement which secures the salvation of all those who believe in Jesus. In other words, Paul revealed the mechanism by which God is able to forgive the sin of all those who believe.
Paul said that when Jesus went into the temple in heaven to place His blood on the mercyseat, God accepted that blood as the payment for all sin, and he said that any person who puts his faith in that blood is automatically justified in the sight of God.
This is the third great revelation that God has given to mankind. The first was the Law which was given through Moses. The second was the very person of Jesus Christ, and the third is that which was given to Paul regarding the grace of God.
This message of God’s willingness to save on the basis of faith was the basis for Paul’s ministry among the Gentiles. Paul could see that it would make no difference to God if a person was a Jew or a Gentile. He could see that it would make no difference to God if a person was circumcised or uncircumcised. Paul could see that God was willing to save all those who come by faith to meet Him at the mercyseat. When God sees a person’s faith in the shed blood of Jesus, He gives them eternal life.
Because this was such a controversial doctrine among the believing Jews as well as the unbelieving Jews, Paul used passage after passage from the Old Testament to prove his doctrine. In the book of Romans alone Paul referred to over seventy passages of scripture from the Old Testament. That’s an average of over four passages per chapter.
Paul’s extensive dependence upon the Old Testament to defend his doctrine was pretty much the case all the way through his Acts-period ministry. However, in the letters that Paul wrote after the Acts period, you may be surprised to know that he hardly used the Old Testament at all. In Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I and II Timothy and Titus, Paul referred to a total of six Old Testament passages. Four in Ephesians and two in his first letter to Timothy.
So what’s the point? The point is that at the end of the Acts period, God gave Paul the freedom to reveal things that had never been revealed or even hinted at in the Old Testament. Paul couldn’t use Old Testament passages to prove these points because these truths were hidden from the prophets. In Ephesians, Chapter 3, Paul said:
Ephesians 3:1-3 (NKJ)
1 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles--
2 if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you,
3 how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery . . .
The word dispensation means a stewardship, and this was a stewardship of truth which was given to the Apostle Paul. This stewardship was given to Paul by the grace of God, and it was given to reveal the grace of God. It was the mystery concerning the Church of our present age in which anybody, anywhere, under any circumstance can come to God through faith and meet God at the mercyseat to be cleansed from all of their sin. This is the super-abounding grace of God.
Next week, we’ll compare Paul’s Acts-period ministry with his ministry after the Acts period so be sure to join us again next week at this same time. Thank you for being with us this morning for another broadcast of Bible Study Time.
Church links:
Genesis 3:7-8 (NKJ)
7 . . . were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day . . .
This appears to have been a routine thing for the Lord. It wasn’t at all uncommon for the Lord to come strolling through the garden to talk with Adam and Eve. But on this occasion:
Genesis 3:8-10 (NKJ)
8 . . . Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
9 Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, "Where are you?"
10 So (Adam) said, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself."
Adam recognized the voice of the Lord. Why? Because Adam was used to talking with God. He was used to the sound of God’s voice.
Sadly, this beautiful fellowship was broken when Adam and Eve sinned. God could no longer communicate freely with Adam and Eve. They had passed from the realm of life into the realm of death. They had passed from the realm of light into the realm of darkness, and God can have no fellowship with darkness. John said:
I John 1:5-6 (NKJ)
5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
This separation between God and man was graphically illustrated at Mt. Sinai. When God was preparing to appear to the nation of Israel, He told Moses:
Exodus 19:10-12 (NKJ)
10 . . . "Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes.
11 "And let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day the LORD will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.
12 "You shall set bounds for the people all around, saying, 'Take heed to yourselves that you do not go up to the mountain or touch its base. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.
It was here at Mt. Sinai that God gave His first great revelation of Himself to man. It was in the Law that God revealed His perfect righteousness.
After the time of Moses, God spoke to the children of Israel through the prophets. When God called a man to proclaim the word of the Lord, that man would stand up in public and say, “Thus says the Lord.” And then that prophet would speak the very words that God gave him to speak. Peter said:
2 Peter 1:19-21 (NKJ)
19 And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts;
20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation,
21 for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
God could not speak directly to the children of Israel. God could have no fellowship with them because they lived in the realm of sin and death, but who were these holy men of God who were moved by the Holy Spirit to speak on God’s behalf. These were men who had come to God through faith and had met with God at the mercyseat where the blood of atonement is applied. At the time that Isaiah was called as a prophet, he said:
Isaiah 6:1 (NKJ)
1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.
Isaiah met with the Lord in the Holy of Holies in the temple, and when Isaiah saw the Lord, he said:
Isaiah 6:5 (NKJ)
5 . . . "Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."
Then one of the seraphim which stood above the throne touched Isaiah’s mouth with a live coal from the altar and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.”
Then the Lord said, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?"
Isaiah said, “Here am I! Send me.”
So the Lord said, “Go, and tell this people: 'Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.'”
There at the mercyseat in front of the altar, Isaiah’s iniquity was taken away and by this means he was made righteous and holy so that God could speak to him and he could speak for God.
When Jesus came into the world, He did not speak in the same manner as the prophets who preceded Him. He did not stand up and say, “Thus says the Lord.” No, Jesus simply spoke, as a member of the Godhead. The writer to the Hebrews said:
Hebrews 1:1-2 (NKJ)
1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,
2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;
Jesus Christ is in and of Himself the greatest revelation that God has given of Himself. John said:
John 1:14 (NKJ)
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Jesus didn’t say, “Thus says the Lord.” He just spoke, and His words pierced the hearts of the people. Four times in the book of Matthew we read that the people were astonished at His teachings. The teachings and the miracles of Jesus were given to the children of Israel as proof of the fact that Jesus was their promised Messiah.
After the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Christ, God sent out the apostles to once again speak to the people for God, but the message of the apostles was quite different from that of the Old Testament prophets. The apostles spent most of their time teaching and interpreting the prophecies of the Old Testament. By doing this, the teaching of the written word became the central focus of Christian ministry.
Starting with the Day of Pentecost, the Apostle Peter taught that David was talking about the resurrection of Jesus when he said, “You will not leave my soul in hell, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.”
Peter said that David was actually talking about the ultimate exaltation of Jesus Christ when he said,
Psalms 110:1 (NKJ)
1 The LORD said to my Lord, "Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool."
Peter told the Jewish religious leaders that they had fulfilled the word of God when they crucified Jesus, but he warned them that according to David:
Psalms 118:22 (NKJ)
22 The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
Peter was saying that the Jewish leaders were the builders who had rejected Jesus, but he warned them that this stone which they rejected had become the chief cornerstone in God’s plan and purpose for the nation of Israel and for the world.
So the apostles were given the task of speaking to man on God’s behalf, but their emphasis was placed on properly interpreting the scriptures of the Old Testament.
Now, the Apostle Paul was not one of the twelve apostles, but he was an apostle. Paul’s epistle to the Galatians is one of his earliest writings, and in the first verse of that epistle he said:
Galatians 1:1 (NKJ)
1 Paul, an apostle (not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead),
Paul affirmed that he had been called to be an apostle by Jesus Christ just like the other apostles had been called by Jesus Christ. The twelve were called while Jesus was still living upon the earth, but Paul had been called after the Lord’s ascension into heaven. As we all know, it was on the road to Damascus that the Lord appeared to Paul and called him to be an apostle.
Paul’s early ministry was very similar to that of the other twelve apostles. Acts, Chapter 9, says that after Paul was saved:
Acts 9:20-22 (NKJ)
20 Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God.
21 Then all who heard were amazed, and said, "Is this not he who destroyed those who called on this name in Jerusalem, and has come here for that purpose, so that he might bring them bound to the chief priests?"
22 But (Paul) increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Christ.
Now, what do you suppose Paul used to prove that Jesus was the Christ? He used the Old Testament prophecies, just like the other apostles did. Since Paul was a Pharisee, he knew the Old Testament scriptures as well as anyone, and God put that knowledge to good use. Paul started his letter to the Romans by saying:
Romans 1:1-4 (NKJ)
1 Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God
2 which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,
3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,
4 and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
Though Paul was called to be a great apostle, he viewed himself as a bondservant. He followed Christ’s example of humility. As Paul went out as the bondservant-apostle, he went out preaching the gospel of God which God had promised through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures.
It’s noteworthy that this statement by Paul was written in his letter to the Romans. It’s noteworthy because Romans is one of Paul’s Acts-period epistles. During the Acts period, Paul revealed truths which were in fact hidden in the Old Testament scriptures.
Like Peter, Paul taught that Jesus had been raised from the dead and exalted in heaven in accordance with Messianic prophecy. However, Paul went on beyond this message to reveal that the blood of Jesus was actually the blood of atonement which secures the salvation of all those who believe in Jesus. In other words, Paul revealed the mechanism by which God is able to forgive the sin of all those who believe.
Paul said that when Jesus went into the temple in heaven to place His blood on the mercyseat, God accepted that blood as the payment for all sin, and he said that any person who puts his faith in that blood is automatically justified in the sight of God.
This is the third great revelation that God has given to mankind. The first was the Law which was given through Moses. The second was the very person of Jesus Christ, and the third is that which was given to Paul regarding the grace of God.
This message of God’s willingness to save on the basis of faith was the basis for Paul’s ministry among the Gentiles. Paul could see that it would make no difference to God if a person was a Jew or a Gentile. He could see that it would make no difference to God if a person was circumcised or uncircumcised. Paul could see that God was willing to save all those who come by faith to meet Him at the mercyseat. When God sees a person’s faith in the shed blood of Jesus, He gives them eternal life.
Because this was such a controversial doctrine among the believing Jews as well as the unbelieving Jews, Paul used passage after passage from the Old Testament to prove his doctrine. In the book of Romans alone Paul referred to over seventy passages of scripture from the Old Testament. That’s an average of over four passages per chapter.
Paul’s extensive dependence upon the Old Testament to defend his doctrine was pretty much the case all the way through his Acts-period ministry. However, in the letters that Paul wrote after the Acts period, you may be surprised to know that he hardly used the Old Testament at all. In Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I and II Timothy and Titus, Paul referred to a total of six Old Testament passages. Four in Ephesians and two in his first letter to Timothy.
So what’s the point? The point is that at the end of the Acts period, God gave Paul the freedom to reveal things that had never been revealed or even hinted at in the Old Testament. Paul couldn’t use Old Testament passages to prove these points because these truths were hidden from the prophets. In Ephesians, Chapter 3, Paul said:
Ephesians 3:1-3 (NKJ)
1 For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles--
2 if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you,
3 how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery . . .
The word dispensation means a stewardship, and this was a stewardship of truth which was given to the Apostle Paul. This stewardship was given to Paul by the grace of God, and it was given to reveal the grace of God. It was the mystery concerning the Church of our present age in which anybody, anywhere, under any circumstance can come to God through faith and meet God at the mercyseat to be cleansed from all of their sin. This is the super-abounding grace of God.
Next week, we’ll compare Paul’s Acts-period ministry with his ministry after the Acts period so be sure to join us again next week at this same time. Thank you for being with us this morning for another broadcast of Bible Study Time.
Church links:
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