The Secret
Bible Study Time 9-2-07
Bible Study Time 9-2-07
Last week we looked at the fact that Daniel was given special information concerning the time when the kingdom would be restored to Israel. Daniel had been hoping and praying for a return to the glory of David’s kingdom or the glory of Solomon’s kingdom, but God gave Daniel a vision of Israel’s future kingdom which was nothing short of astonishing. Daniel could see that the ultimate restoration of Israel’s kingdom would also mean the restoration of all things.
When the Lord Jesus began His public ministry, He and His disciples went out preaching that the kingdom of heaven was a hand. The kingdom and the restoration of all things did depend upon the coming of the Messiah, and since Jesus was the Messiah, the kingdom was at hand. All Israel had to do was believe that Jesus was the Christ.
However, the Lord Jesus came unto His own, but His own received Him not. He was despised and rejected, and He was crucified upon the cross. After His resurrection and ascension, the Holy Spirit came upon His disciples who did many miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit. God caused these miracles to prove that Jesus had been raised from the dead and to prove that if the Jews would believe in Jesus, He would return to the earth from heaven to establish the kingdom and restore all of the creation. In Acts, Chapter 3, Peter challenged his fellow countrymen, saying:
Acts 3:19-21 NKJV
19 Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord,
20 and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before,*
21 whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.
Peter said, if you guys will just repent and believe what I’m telling you, Jesus will come back to set up the kingdom, and Peter reminded them that this hope of the kingdom was not something new, but it was something that all of God’s holy prophets had talked about since the world began. Indeed, this was nothing new.
When John the Baptist was born, Zechariah’s tongue was loosed and he exclaimed:
Luke 1:68-70 NKJV
68 "Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited and redeemed His people,
69 And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of His servant David,
70 As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, Who have been since the world began,
We don’t know exactly how much the earliest of the prophets knew about God’s plan for the future, but it’s clear that they knew more than what is recorded in the Old Testament scriptures. Take Abraham for example. From the book of Hebrews, we know that Abraham was looking for a heavenly city. That means that He knew about the New Jerusalem which will come down out of heaven. Moses said nothing about that in the book of Genesis.
Just how much did the other early prophets know? We know that God told the devil, in the presence of Adam and Eve, that a person would come in the future who would be the Seed of the woman. God said that Satan would do battle with this Seed of the woman and that Satan would bruise His heel. But God also said that the Seed of the woman would bruise the head of Satan.
From this Adam and Eve new about the man who would someday come into the world as the great deliverer, the one who would defeat the devil, redeem mankind and deliver the creation from the curse of sin.
Jude tells us that Enoch was also a great prophet of God. He said:
Jude 14-15 NKJV
14 Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about (certain men), saying, "Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints,
15 to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him."
So Enoch was a great prophet, and he knew about the coming of the Lord and the fact that the Lord would judge the ungodly at His coming. But how much more did Enoch know about the future?
Enoch lived on the earth until his son, Methuselah, was 300 years old. Even Adam lived until Methuselah was 243 years old. Therefore, it would appear that many great prophesies were given and past down all through the years between the time of Adam and the great flood of Noah’s day.
When we look at these facts, it becomes clear that the great flood was an act of God’s grace. The other alternative would have been for the Lord to come to the earth before the flood for the final judgment of mankind. Just think of all the men, women and children who have lived since that time who have had a chance to be saved simply because God did not decided to end it all at that time.
Zechariah knew that his son, John, was to be the forerunner of the Messiah, and he rejoiced to see the fulfillment of promises which had been spoken by the prophets since the world began. Peter said that if his fellow countrymen would repent and believe in the Lord Jesus, God would send Jesus back to fulfill all of the promises which God had spoken by the mouth of the holy prophets since the world began.
We don’t know exactly how much the earliest of the prophets knew about the future, but we know that they have been talking about the coming Messiah and the restoration of all things in some form or fashion since the world began.
With the calling out of Abraham, however, the prophesies started to get much more specific, at least as far as the written record is concerned. God told Abraham:
Genesis 22:18 NKJV
18 In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice."
Abraham knew that the Seed of the woman would be the Messiah who would deliver the earth out of the hands of the devil, and he knew that this Messiah would make it possible for the New Jerusalem to come down out of heaven to the earth. The writer of Hebrews says:
Hebrews 11:9-10 NKJV
9 By faith (Abraham) dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise;
10 for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
About a thousand years after Abraham, God gave more information concerning the Messiah to David. God told David that the Messiah would come not only through Abraham, but He would come through David as well. God told David:
2 Samuel 7:12-14 NKJV
12 "When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
13 He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
14 I will be his Father, and he shall be My son . . .
After David’s kingdom, the children of Israel started drifting away from the Lord, and prophets such as Isaiah came on the scene. These prophets warned the people of the coming judgment, but they also gave more information about the coming Messiah. Isaiah said:
Isaiah 7:14 NKJV
14 . . . Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.*
From this the faithful Jews knew that the Messiah would not have a human father. They also knew that the Messiah would be God in the flesh because one of His names would be Immanuel, which means: God with us. Isaiah also gave a prophesy about David’s father, Jesse, saying:
Isaiah 11:1-5 NKJV
1There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.
2 The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.
3 His delight is in the fear of the LORD, And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, Nor decide by the hearing of His ears;
4 But with righteousness He shall judge the poor, And decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness shall be the belt of His loins, And faithfulness the belt of His waist.
Finally Isaiah said:
Isaiah 9:6-7 NKJV
6 For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of His government and peace, There will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, To order it and establish it with judgment and justice From that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
So as we go through time in the Old Testament, we see that the focus of the Messianic prophesies gets narrower. At first the Messiah was simply pictured as someone who would be born of a woman. Then He was to be a descendant of Abraham and also a descendant of David. He was to be born of a virgin, and the Spirit of the Lord was to be upon Him.
Isaiah spoke as a member of the nation of Israel when he said, unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given. And certainly, when the Lord Jesus did come to the earth, He came to the Jews. He came unto His own and His own received Him not. At one point, the Lord Jesus said:
Matthew 15:24 NKJV
24 . . . "I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
As Jesus sent His disciples out, He said:
Matthew 10:5-7 NKJV
5 . . . "Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans.
6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
7 And as you go, preach, saying,'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.'
The kingdom of God, which had existed in heaven since before the beginning, was ready to come to the earth, bringing all of its glory and splendor to the earth. Indeed, it would have come to the earth if the nation of Israel had been willing to receive it.
The nation of Israel stood on the banks of the Jordan River at Kadesh Barnea and on the word of ten spies, they decided that the giants of the land were too big, too fierce to conquer, so they turned their backs on the kingdom that God was offering them. And as Jesus and the disciples went out preaching the gospel of the kingdom, the Jews were standing at the threshold of the greatest kingdom the world could ever imagine, but once again, they refused to go in. This time it was a simple matter of refusing to believe that Jesus was their promised Messiah.
If only the Jews had believed, the entire earth would have enjoyed the Kingdom of God on earth. They would have enjoyed all of the blessings of heaven while living on the earth, but the Jews refused God’s invitation to believe.
Today, that offer of the kingdom is no longer on the table. Regardless of how many Jews believe and regardless of how many Gentiles believe, that kingdom will not come to the earth. And it doesn’t matter how many people accept Christ today, Jesus will not return to the earth to rule and reign until after all believers have been taken up into heaven to be with the Lord. Even after that event, there will be seven years of tribulation before the Lord Jesus returns to set up the kingdom.
Well, how do we know all these things? We know them because when Israel rejected the message of the kingdom during the Acts period, God gave a special revelation to the Apostle Paul to explain what was going to happen next. None of the prophets had foreseen the rejection of the resurrected Christ. So what was God going to do?
As it turned out, God decided to do what He had always known He would do. He decided to start a new church. He decided to start the Church which is the Body of Christ, and this is the church to which all believers belong today.
In this church, the Jews have no special privilege or position. Now, that doesn’t mean that the Jews have been demoted. It simply means that Jews and Gentiles alike, when they believe in Jesus Christ, are promoted into a church which has a heavenly calling and is blessed with all spiritual blessings.
The message of the Messiah, who would come to deliver the earth and restore all things, was a message which had been given by the mouth of all the prophets since the world began. But this message concerning the Church which is the Body of Christ is a message which God kept secret since before the world began. God chose the Apostle Paul to reveal this great truth to the world.
Paul said that as members of this Church, believers today were actually chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Paul called this truth the truth of the mystery because until it was revealed to him, it had been hidden in God from the beginning of the ages.
Well, I see our time is gone. 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:
http://www.peacechurch-ok.org/
http://www.eleventhavenuechurch.com/
http://gracebiblechurch-fw.com/
When the Lord Jesus began His public ministry, He and His disciples went out preaching that the kingdom of heaven was a hand. The kingdom and the restoration of all things did depend upon the coming of the Messiah, and since Jesus was the Messiah, the kingdom was at hand. All Israel had to do was believe that Jesus was the Christ.
However, the Lord Jesus came unto His own, but His own received Him not. He was despised and rejected, and He was crucified upon the cross. After His resurrection and ascension, the Holy Spirit came upon His disciples who did many miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit. God caused these miracles to prove that Jesus had been raised from the dead and to prove that if the Jews would believe in Jesus, He would return to the earth from heaven to establish the kingdom and restore all of the creation. In Acts, Chapter 3, Peter challenged his fellow countrymen, saying:
Acts 3:19-21 NKJV
19 Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord,
20 and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before,*
21 whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.
Peter said, if you guys will just repent and believe what I’m telling you, Jesus will come back to set up the kingdom, and Peter reminded them that this hope of the kingdom was not something new, but it was something that all of God’s holy prophets had talked about since the world began. Indeed, this was nothing new.
When John the Baptist was born, Zechariah’s tongue was loosed and he exclaimed:
Luke 1:68-70 NKJV
68 "Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited and redeemed His people,
69 And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of His servant David,
70 As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, Who have been since the world began,
We don’t know exactly how much the earliest of the prophets knew about God’s plan for the future, but it’s clear that they knew more than what is recorded in the Old Testament scriptures. Take Abraham for example. From the book of Hebrews, we know that Abraham was looking for a heavenly city. That means that He knew about the New Jerusalem which will come down out of heaven. Moses said nothing about that in the book of Genesis.
Just how much did the other early prophets know? We know that God told the devil, in the presence of Adam and Eve, that a person would come in the future who would be the Seed of the woman. God said that Satan would do battle with this Seed of the woman and that Satan would bruise His heel. But God also said that the Seed of the woman would bruise the head of Satan.
From this Adam and Eve new about the man who would someday come into the world as the great deliverer, the one who would defeat the devil, redeem mankind and deliver the creation from the curse of sin.
Jude tells us that Enoch was also a great prophet of God. He said:
Jude 14-15 NKJV
14 Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about (certain men), saying, "Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints,
15 to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him."
So Enoch was a great prophet, and he knew about the coming of the Lord and the fact that the Lord would judge the ungodly at His coming. But how much more did Enoch know about the future?
Enoch lived on the earth until his son, Methuselah, was 300 years old. Even Adam lived until Methuselah was 243 years old. Therefore, it would appear that many great prophesies were given and past down all through the years between the time of Adam and the great flood of Noah’s day.
When we look at these facts, it becomes clear that the great flood was an act of God’s grace. The other alternative would have been for the Lord to come to the earth before the flood for the final judgment of mankind. Just think of all the men, women and children who have lived since that time who have had a chance to be saved simply because God did not decided to end it all at that time.
Zechariah knew that his son, John, was to be the forerunner of the Messiah, and he rejoiced to see the fulfillment of promises which had been spoken by the prophets since the world began. Peter said that if his fellow countrymen would repent and believe in the Lord Jesus, God would send Jesus back to fulfill all of the promises which God had spoken by the mouth of the holy prophets since the world began.
We don’t know exactly how much the earliest of the prophets knew about the future, but we know that they have been talking about the coming Messiah and the restoration of all things in some form or fashion since the world began.
With the calling out of Abraham, however, the prophesies started to get much more specific, at least as far as the written record is concerned. God told Abraham:
Genesis 22:18 NKJV
18 In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice."
Abraham knew that the Seed of the woman would be the Messiah who would deliver the earth out of the hands of the devil, and he knew that this Messiah would make it possible for the New Jerusalem to come down out of heaven to the earth. The writer of Hebrews says:
Hebrews 11:9-10 NKJV
9 By faith (Abraham) dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise;
10 for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
About a thousand years after Abraham, God gave more information concerning the Messiah to David. God told David that the Messiah would come not only through Abraham, but He would come through David as well. God told David:
2 Samuel 7:12-14 NKJV
12 "When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
13 He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
14 I will be his Father, and he shall be My son . . .
After David’s kingdom, the children of Israel started drifting away from the Lord, and prophets such as Isaiah came on the scene. These prophets warned the people of the coming judgment, but they also gave more information about the coming Messiah. Isaiah said:
Isaiah 7:14 NKJV
14 . . . Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.*
From this the faithful Jews knew that the Messiah would not have a human father. They also knew that the Messiah would be God in the flesh because one of His names would be Immanuel, which means: God with us. Isaiah also gave a prophesy about David’s father, Jesse, saying:
Isaiah 11:1-5 NKJV
1There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.
2 The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.
3 His delight is in the fear of the LORD, And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, Nor decide by the hearing of His ears;
4 But with righteousness He shall judge the poor, And decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked.
5 Righteousness shall be the belt of His loins, And faithfulness the belt of His waist.
Finally Isaiah said:
Isaiah 9:6-7 NKJV
6 For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of His government and peace, There will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, To order it and establish it with judgment and justice From that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
So as we go through time in the Old Testament, we see that the focus of the Messianic prophesies gets narrower. At first the Messiah was simply pictured as someone who would be born of a woman. Then He was to be a descendant of Abraham and also a descendant of David. He was to be born of a virgin, and the Spirit of the Lord was to be upon Him.
Isaiah spoke as a member of the nation of Israel when he said, unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given. And certainly, when the Lord Jesus did come to the earth, He came to the Jews. He came unto His own and His own received Him not. At one point, the Lord Jesus said:
Matthew 15:24 NKJV
24 . . . "I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
As Jesus sent His disciples out, He said:
Matthew 10:5-7 NKJV
5 . . . "Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans.
6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
7 And as you go, preach, saying,'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.'
The kingdom of God, which had existed in heaven since before the beginning, was ready to come to the earth, bringing all of its glory and splendor to the earth. Indeed, it would have come to the earth if the nation of Israel had been willing to receive it.
The nation of Israel stood on the banks of the Jordan River at Kadesh Barnea and on the word of ten spies, they decided that the giants of the land were too big, too fierce to conquer, so they turned their backs on the kingdom that God was offering them. And as Jesus and the disciples went out preaching the gospel of the kingdom, the Jews were standing at the threshold of the greatest kingdom the world could ever imagine, but once again, they refused to go in. This time it was a simple matter of refusing to believe that Jesus was their promised Messiah.
If only the Jews had believed, the entire earth would have enjoyed the Kingdom of God on earth. They would have enjoyed all of the blessings of heaven while living on the earth, but the Jews refused God’s invitation to believe.
Today, that offer of the kingdom is no longer on the table. Regardless of how many Jews believe and regardless of how many Gentiles believe, that kingdom will not come to the earth. And it doesn’t matter how many people accept Christ today, Jesus will not return to the earth to rule and reign until after all believers have been taken up into heaven to be with the Lord. Even after that event, there will be seven years of tribulation before the Lord Jesus returns to set up the kingdom.
Well, how do we know all these things? We know them because when Israel rejected the message of the kingdom during the Acts period, God gave a special revelation to the Apostle Paul to explain what was going to happen next. None of the prophets had foreseen the rejection of the resurrected Christ. So what was God going to do?
As it turned out, God decided to do what He had always known He would do. He decided to start a new church. He decided to start the Church which is the Body of Christ, and this is the church to which all believers belong today.
In this church, the Jews have no special privilege or position. Now, that doesn’t mean that the Jews have been demoted. It simply means that Jews and Gentiles alike, when they believe in Jesus Christ, are promoted into a church which has a heavenly calling and is blessed with all spiritual blessings.
The message of the Messiah, who would come to deliver the earth and restore all things, was a message which had been given by the mouth of all the prophets since the world began. But this message concerning the Church which is the Body of Christ is a message which God kept secret since before the world began. God chose the Apostle Paul to reveal this great truth to the world.
Paul said that as members of this Church, believers today were actually chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Paul called this truth the truth of the mystery because until it was revealed to him, it had been hidden in God from the beginning of the ages.
Well, I see our time is gone. 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:
http://www.peacechurch-ok.org/
http://www.eleventhavenuechurch.com/
http://gracebiblechurch-fw.com/
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