When we've learned how to hear what He told Israel through Moses, as a Prophet, this being found in Deuteronomy 6:5-7 "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up."
“We should have accomplished nothing by the purgation of the understanding in order to ground it in the virtue of faith, and by the purgation of the memory in order to ground it in hope, if we purged not the will also according to the third virtue, which is charity, whereby the works that are done in faith live and have great merit, and without it are of no worth. For, as James says in chapter 2 verse 20: ‘Without works of charity, faith is dead.’ And, now that we have to treat of the active detachment and night of this faculty, in order to form it and make it perfect in this virtue of the charity of God, I find no more fitting authority than that which is written in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, where Moses says in verse 5: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole strength.’ and Jesus repeats in Matthew 22:37. And Paul says this in Romans chapter 12 verses 1 through 3: 'I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.' Herein is contained all that the spiritual man ought to do, and all that I have here to teach him, so that he may truly attain to God, through union of the will, by means of charity. For herein man is commanded to employ all the faculties and desires and operations and affections of his soul in God, so that all the ability and strength of his soul may serve for no more than this, according to that which David says, in these words from Psalm 57 verse 10: 'For thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds.'
The strength of the soul consists in its faculties, passions and desires, all of which are governed by the will. Now when these faculties, passions and desires are directed by the will toward God, and turned away from all that is not God (the earthy, worldly things or creature pleasures and beasts of mans passions), then the strength of the soul is kept for God, and thus the soul is not able to love God with all its strength.” (quoted from the writing of St. John of the Cross, from his book titled “The Ascent of Mt. Carmel” book 3 chapter 16 passages 1 and 2 page 282. With limited editation by me.) In this last book within the “The Ascent of Mt. Carmel” St. John of the Cross progresses deeper from the purely earthy man to the purely spiritual man and how he the spiritual man can stay the course. Now picking up where we left off:
Acts 9:12-15a
"And hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight. Then Ananias answered, `Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem: (the believing Christian-Hebrews) And here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name. But...'"
But is one of our favorite words in Scripture. That may all be true Ananias, but the flip side is -
Acts 9:15
"But the Lord said unto him, `Go thy way: for he (Saul) is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles,...'"
All of a sudden God is going to do something that He had not done before. Or at least during the five hundred years before John the Baptist and Jesus came on the scene, when there had been NO prophets in the land and during the time of the Maccabees when God was silent or in darkness of God's revelation. You've not seen anything like this. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 10?
Matthew 10:5
"These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them saying, `Go not into the way of the Gentiles,...'"
And all the way up through His earthly ministry we have seen that He ignored the Gentiles, for the most part and as late as the Passover Feast, and the Greeks wanted to see Jesus, but He didn't respond to them. He didn't tell His disciples, "Well bring them in to me." All He told Andrew and Philip was to tell those Greeks that the hour comes, speaking of His death, burial, and resurrection. Gentiles would have to wait until that finished work not only of the Cross but He allotted Last Supper and ascension. Before He could present this saving Gospel, Himself, for them and us as Paul reveals in I Corinthians 15:1-4 and elsewhere. Now reading on in verse 16, here in Acts chapter 9.
Acts 9:16
"For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name sake."
From here then of course we know that the Apostle Paul from this point on goes out a year or so to seminary training at Mt. Sinai, where he receives the revealed mysteries, the revelation of Christ. And one of those mysteries was this Gospel of the Grace of God by which Gentiles are saved. It's not limited to Gentiles, but as much as it was Hebrews only back there when God was dealing primarily with Israel, with a few exceptions. Now we have something totally different happening, God is now pulling out another group of people for His name which we call the Church, or the Body of Christ. It is mainly made up of Gentiles, with the exceptions of a few Hebrews. So we have two comparisons. Here we have Hebrews only with a few Gentile exceptions, and now we have predominately Gentiles, but with some Jewish exceptions. And the two we might say just cross over. But the Hebrew has to totally renounce his Judaism, and all his birth right. Because of the traditions and custom.
Israel goes out into the nations of the world into a dispersion even to our own present day. The Body of Christ on the other hand is pulled out from among all peoples and becomes a unique group of people, and they are waiting for their period of human history which will be the out-calling or the departure. After we're taken out of the way, then at that time once again God will pick up and deal with Israel for the seven years of Tribulation along with all other unbelieving people, and then we'll have the Second visible Coming when Christ will stand once again on the earth. We'll look at that if we can a later on. Now let's look at some of the heavenly aspects of Ephesians 1:10. Go back and look at some Scriptures concerning Paul's ministry. Let's stop at Romans 16:25. This verse uses language that we're afraid very few people, if they read it, don't comprehend it. But we're afraid most people don't even read it. Very few people understand what Paul is saying in this tremendous verse.
Remember that we're looking at the heavenly section of our "DOCTRINE, REPROOF, CORRECTION, INSTRUCTION IN RIGHTEOUSNESS" - of the Epistles written by Paul as they are a revelation of Christ and His New Covenant of Grace. Wherein when it is received as darkness of night in Faith, through Love and receptivity of Graces activity in Hope and Joy with charity. For as we've said in Christ is Christianity and that Christianity is Christ in Truth and harmony and one accord with God who in the fulness of the Godhead filled Jesus as the Son of man. Which is to say, "the secret of Christ in me".
Romans 16:25
"Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to (not the prophets, not the Old Testament, not the Abrahamic Covenant, not the teaching of Jesus in His earthly ministry, not the teaching by Peter in the Book of Acts, but) the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world begin."
This Paul's Gospel had been kept secret in the mind and heart of God since time began. Now that's what the Bible says, that's not something we made up. This is what the Scriptures reveals, that this Gospel that Paul is now going to start presenting to the Gentile world has been kept secret. Maybe we should have used this verse first, come back to Acts chapter 15. Because here in Acts 15 is more or less the introduction to it. We're sure that when James, when he spoke, had no real comprehension of what he was saying. He couldn't have, because nothing like that had ever been revealed before. We think he was just inspired to say what he said without really understanding the ramification of it all. But here in Acts 15 after they've had this big run in with Paul and Barnabas, that Paul and Barnabas could not be preaching redemption or salvation to Gentiles without adhering to circumcision and Law keeping, they finally are convinced that yes, Paul's on the right track, and so James makes this tremendous statement.
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