The Church Revealed (Introduction)
Bible Study Time 7-1-07
Bible Study Time 7-1-07
It was 3500 years ago at the foot of Mt. Sinai that God told the nation of Israel:
Exodus 19:5-6 (NKJ)
5 'Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine.
6 'And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' . . .
They were called to be God’s special treasure above all of the nations of earth. All of the other nations had turned their backs on God. It was as David described it, saying:
Psalms 14:2-3 (NKJ)
2 The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God.
3 They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one.
But the children of Israel were called to be God’s peculiar people. Holy. Sanctified. Set apart for the work of God. So there at Mt. Sinai, the children of Israel said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do.”
They thought that they could do all that God had told them to do by simply putting their fleshly mind to the task. I guess they instinctively believed in the power of positive thinking. If it’s going to be, it’s up to me. But the children of Israel were in for a rude awakening. Over the next 1500 years, they would prove themselves to be woefully inadequate for this task.
In fact, they broke their vow to God even while Moses was up on the mountain receiving the documents of the Law. The people went to Aaron and said, we know not what has become of this man Moses. He may never come down off that mountain. Therefore, make us gods that shall go before us.
So, Aaron gathered up their gold, made a golden calf and said:
Exodus 32:4 (NKJ)
4 . . . “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!"
Then all the people brought sacrifices and worshiped the golden calf. In so doing, they were breaking the Law of God even before the documents of the Law could be drawn up.
This rebellious heart of self-will continued in the children of Israel all through the years, and God tolerated their pride until finally some 900 years later, God sent Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to conquer them and carry them away into captivity. There in captivity, the prophet Ezekiel said:
Ezekiel 5:5-9 (NKJ)
5 "Thus says the Lord GOD: 'This is Jerusalem; I have set her in the midst of the nations and the countries all around her.
6 'She has rebelled against My judgments by doing wickedness more than the nations, and against My statutes more than the countries that are all around her; for they have refused My judgments, and they have not walked in My statutes.'
7 "Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: 'Because you have multiplied disobedience more than the nations that are all around you, have not walked in My statutes nor kept My judgments, nor even done according to the judgments of the nations that are all around you'--
8 "therefore thus says the Lord GOD: 'Indeed I, even I, am against you and will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations.
9 'And I will do among you what I have never done, and the like of which I will never do again, because of all your abominations.
The nation of Israel had been called to be a nation of priests, the nation that would serve as the mediator between God and the Gentile nations. They were to live before the Gentile nations as a testimony to the holiness of God. They were to reveal not only God’s righteousness but His grace and His love as well. However, the nation of Israel failed miserably in there efforts to live for the Lord. They rebelled against the statutes of God and became even more wicked than the Gentile nations.
However, while Ezekiel was there in Babylon, God spoke through him to the nation of Israel, saying:
Ezekiel 16:60, 62, 63 (NKJ)
60 " . . . I will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, (in other words, when you were just a young nation coming up out of Egypt) and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you.
62 "And I will establish My covenant with you. Then you shall know that I am the LORD,
63 "that you may remember and be ashamed, and never open your mouth anymore because of your shame, when I provide you an atonement for all you have done," says the Lord GOD.'"
God had a plan in mind to provide an atonement for Israel’s sin. His plan would provide the means by which God would be able to forgive their sins and wipe the slate clean. According to this New Covenant, God was not only going to obliterate Israel’s sins, but He was going to obliterate their sin. He was planning to actually do away with their sin nature by filling them with the Holy Spirit of God. Ezekiel 37 says:
Ezekiel 37:26 (NKJ)
26 "Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them, and it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; I will establish them and multiply them, and I will set My sanctuary in their midst forevermore.
Ezekiel 37:13-14 (NKJ)
13 "Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up from your graves.
14 "I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken it and performed it," says the LORD.'"
Here we have the promise of the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection from the dead, and the everlasting kingdom. When Jesus came to the earth from heaven, He was the Son of God who became the Son of Man. He spoke to Martha and said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
Jesus came to establish everything that had been promised in connection with the New Covenant. He came to provide atonement for sin, the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection from the dead, and the everlasting kingdom. Just before Jesus was crucified, He took His disciples to the upper room where they ate the Passover meal. Matthew says that:
Matthew 26:26-29 (NKJ)
26 . . . as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is My body."
27 Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.
28 "For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
29 "But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom."
Jesus had come to die, but He also came to be raised from the dead. His resurrection from the dead would be the final nail in Satan’s coffin. By means of His resurrection from the dead, Jesus humiliated Satan and all of his heavenly armies. Jesus said, when I come back from the dead, I will drink of this fruit of the vine with you in My Father’s kingdom, but I will not drink it with you until then.
By means of His own shed blood, Jesus provided the atonement for sin, and by means of His resurrection from the dead, His atonement for sin was declared to be effective. All provisions had been made for the blessings of the New Covenant.
The sins of the Apostles and all believers were blotted out the second that Christ arose from the dead. The atonement had been provided, but the Apostles would have to wait for the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit and for the kingdom of the New Covenant.
Fifty days after Christ died, the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost, and Peter being filled with the Holy Spirit declared to the nation of Israel that the very Jesus whom they had crucified had been raised from the dead. He told them that if they would repent and be baptized, Jesus would return to sit upon the throne of David to rule over the earth forever.
Peter apparently did not understand the message of the New Covenant per se. If he did, he never mentioned it specifically. Peter simply preached the resurrection of Christ and coming kingdom. In fact, the doctrine of the New Covenant was not specifically revealed until it was revealed by the Apostle Paul.
It was apparently while Paul was in Arabia for three years after his conversion that he saw in the Old Testament scriptures the message of the New Covenant. He saw that atonement for sin would be based on the shed blood of the Christ. He saw the doctrine of the indwelling Holy Spirit. He saw the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, and he was given further revelation concerning the rapture of those who are alive at the time of Christ’s second coming. He said that this was a mystery which had never been revealed in the Old Testament scriptures.
Paul was the Apostle who revealed all of these things and taught them as a part of the New Covenant message. He fully explored these doctrines in his Acts-period epistles to the Thessalonians, the Corinthians, the Galatians, and the Romans.
However, when Paul arrived in Rome as a prisoner, he called for a meeting with the Jews who lived in Rome. He explained the message of the New Covenant, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that He was buried and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures. He explained that all of the promises for which the Jews had longed were dependent upon the shed blood of Jesus which was the blood of the New Covenant.
When the Jews in Rome refused to believe Paul’s message, he pronounced the final judgment upon the Jews of that generation. He said:
Acts 28:25-28 (NKJ)
25 . . . "The Holy Spirit spoke rightly through Isaiah the prophet to our fathers,
26 "saying, 'Go to this people and say: "Hearing you will hear, and shall not understand; and seeing you will see, and not perceive;
27 For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them." '
28 "Therefore let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it!"
It was shortly after this that the Apostle Paul revealed the mystery concerning the Church which is the Body of Christ. This mystery was specifically revealed in his letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians. To the Ephesians, Paul said that God has now put all things under Christ’s feet and has given Him to be head over all things to the Church which is His Body.
To the Colossians, Paul wrote that:
Colossians 1:18 (NKJ)
18 (Christ) is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.
Then, he said:
Colossians 1:24-27 (NKJ)
24 I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church,
25 of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God,
26 the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints.
27 To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
We are in Christ, and Christ is in us. We are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones, according to Ephesians, Chapter 5. Christ has given gifts to each member of His body.
Ephesians 4:11-13 (NKJ)
11 (For) He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,
12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,
13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;
When the last member of the Church which is the Body of Christ is saved and added to the body, that’s when Christ will appear in the glory of heaven, and then we shall appear with Him. The Church of our present age will be taken up into heaven, and then God will resume His dealings with the nation of Israel. The two prophets and the believing remnant of Israel will preach the message of the New Covenant once again.
Thank you for listening to Bible Study Time this morning. It’s been a pleasure studying with you, and I’ll look forward to studying with you again next week at this same time.
Church links:
Exodus 19:5-6 (NKJ)
5 'Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine.
6 'And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' . . .
They were called to be God’s special treasure above all of the nations of earth. All of the other nations had turned their backs on God. It was as David described it, saying:
Psalms 14:2-3 (NKJ)
2 The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God.
3 They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one.
But the children of Israel were called to be God’s peculiar people. Holy. Sanctified. Set apart for the work of God. So there at Mt. Sinai, the children of Israel said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do.”
They thought that they could do all that God had told them to do by simply putting their fleshly mind to the task. I guess they instinctively believed in the power of positive thinking. If it’s going to be, it’s up to me. But the children of Israel were in for a rude awakening. Over the next 1500 years, they would prove themselves to be woefully inadequate for this task.
In fact, they broke their vow to God even while Moses was up on the mountain receiving the documents of the Law. The people went to Aaron and said, we know not what has become of this man Moses. He may never come down off that mountain. Therefore, make us gods that shall go before us.
So, Aaron gathered up their gold, made a golden calf and said:
Exodus 32:4 (NKJ)
4 . . . “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!"
Then all the people brought sacrifices and worshiped the golden calf. In so doing, they were breaking the Law of God even before the documents of the Law could be drawn up.
This rebellious heart of self-will continued in the children of Israel all through the years, and God tolerated their pride until finally some 900 years later, God sent Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to conquer them and carry them away into captivity. There in captivity, the prophet Ezekiel said:
Ezekiel 5:5-9 (NKJ)
5 "Thus says the Lord GOD: 'This is Jerusalem; I have set her in the midst of the nations and the countries all around her.
6 'She has rebelled against My judgments by doing wickedness more than the nations, and against My statutes more than the countries that are all around her; for they have refused My judgments, and they have not walked in My statutes.'
7 "Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: 'Because you have multiplied disobedience more than the nations that are all around you, have not walked in My statutes nor kept My judgments, nor even done according to the judgments of the nations that are all around you'--
8 "therefore thus says the Lord GOD: 'Indeed I, even I, am against you and will execute judgments in your midst in the sight of the nations.
9 'And I will do among you what I have never done, and the like of which I will never do again, because of all your abominations.
The nation of Israel had been called to be a nation of priests, the nation that would serve as the mediator between God and the Gentile nations. They were to live before the Gentile nations as a testimony to the holiness of God. They were to reveal not only God’s righteousness but His grace and His love as well. However, the nation of Israel failed miserably in there efforts to live for the Lord. They rebelled against the statutes of God and became even more wicked than the Gentile nations.
However, while Ezekiel was there in Babylon, God spoke through him to the nation of Israel, saying:
Ezekiel 16:60, 62, 63 (NKJ)
60 " . . . I will remember My covenant with you in the days of your youth, (in other words, when you were just a young nation coming up out of Egypt) and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you.
62 "And I will establish My covenant with you. Then you shall know that I am the LORD,
63 "that you may remember and be ashamed, and never open your mouth anymore because of your shame, when I provide you an atonement for all you have done," says the Lord GOD.'"
God had a plan in mind to provide an atonement for Israel’s sin. His plan would provide the means by which God would be able to forgive their sins and wipe the slate clean. According to this New Covenant, God was not only going to obliterate Israel’s sins, but He was going to obliterate their sin. He was planning to actually do away with their sin nature by filling them with the Holy Spirit of God. Ezekiel 37 says:
Ezekiel 37:26 (NKJ)
26 "Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them, and it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; I will establish them and multiply them, and I will set My sanctuary in their midst forevermore.
Ezekiel 37:13-14 (NKJ)
13 "Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up from your graves.
14 "I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken it and performed it," says the LORD.'"
Here we have the promise of the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection from the dead, and the everlasting kingdom. When Jesus came to the earth from heaven, He was the Son of God who became the Son of Man. He spoke to Martha and said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
Jesus came to establish everything that had been promised in connection with the New Covenant. He came to provide atonement for sin, the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection from the dead, and the everlasting kingdom. Just before Jesus was crucified, He took His disciples to the upper room where they ate the Passover meal. Matthew says that:
Matthew 26:26-29 (NKJ)
26 . . . as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is My body."
27 Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you.
28 "For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
29 "But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom."
Jesus had come to die, but He also came to be raised from the dead. His resurrection from the dead would be the final nail in Satan’s coffin. By means of His resurrection from the dead, Jesus humiliated Satan and all of his heavenly armies. Jesus said, when I come back from the dead, I will drink of this fruit of the vine with you in My Father’s kingdom, but I will not drink it with you until then.
By means of His own shed blood, Jesus provided the atonement for sin, and by means of His resurrection from the dead, His atonement for sin was declared to be effective. All provisions had been made for the blessings of the New Covenant.
The sins of the Apostles and all believers were blotted out the second that Christ arose from the dead. The atonement had been provided, but the Apostles would have to wait for the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit and for the kingdom of the New Covenant.
Fifty days after Christ died, the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost, and Peter being filled with the Holy Spirit declared to the nation of Israel that the very Jesus whom they had crucified had been raised from the dead. He told them that if they would repent and be baptized, Jesus would return to sit upon the throne of David to rule over the earth forever.
Peter apparently did not understand the message of the New Covenant per se. If he did, he never mentioned it specifically. Peter simply preached the resurrection of Christ and coming kingdom. In fact, the doctrine of the New Covenant was not specifically revealed until it was revealed by the Apostle Paul.
It was apparently while Paul was in Arabia for three years after his conversion that he saw in the Old Testament scriptures the message of the New Covenant. He saw that atonement for sin would be based on the shed blood of the Christ. He saw the doctrine of the indwelling Holy Spirit. He saw the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, and he was given further revelation concerning the rapture of those who are alive at the time of Christ’s second coming. He said that this was a mystery which had never been revealed in the Old Testament scriptures.
Paul was the Apostle who revealed all of these things and taught them as a part of the New Covenant message. He fully explored these doctrines in his Acts-period epistles to the Thessalonians, the Corinthians, the Galatians, and the Romans.
However, when Paul arrived in Rome as a prisoner, he called for a meeting with the Jews who lived in Rome. He explained the message of the New Covenant, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that He was buried and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures. He explained that all of the promises for which the Jews had longed were dependent upon the shed blood of Jesus which was the blood of the New Covenant.
When the Jews in Rome refused to believe Paul’s message, he pronounced the final judgment upon the Jews of that generation. He said:
Acts 28:25-28 (NKJ)
25 . . . "The Holy Spirit spoke rightly through Isaiah the prophet to our fathers,
26 "saying, 'Go to this people and say: "Hearing you will hear, and shall not understand; and seeing you will see, and not perceive;
27 For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them." '
28 "Therefore let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it!"
It was shortly after this that the Apostle Paul revealed the mystery concerning the Church which is the Body of Christ. This mystery was specifically revealed in his letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians. To the Ephesians, Paul said that God has now put all things under Christ’s feet and has given Him to be head over all things to the Church which is His Body.
To the Colossians, Paul wrote that:
Colossians 1:18 (NKJ)
18 (Christ) is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.
Then, he said:
Colossians 1:24-27 (NKJ)
24 I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church,
25 of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God,
26 the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints.
27 To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
We are in Christ, and Christ is in us. We are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones, according to Ephesians, Chapter 5. Christ has given gifts to each member of His body.
Ephesians 4:11-13 (NKJ)
11 (For) He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,
12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,
13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;
When the last member of the Church which is the Body of Christ is saved and added to the body, that’s when Christ will appear in the glory of heaven, and then we shall appear with Him. The Church of our present age will be taken up into heaven, and then God will resume His dealings with the nation of Israel. The two prophets and the believing remnant of Israel will preach the message of the New Covenant once again.
Thank you for listening to Bible Study Time this morning. It’s been a pleasure studying with you, and I’ll look forward to studying with you again next week at this same time.
Church links:
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