Monday, August 5, 2013

Ephesians Lesson 24 of 39 part 1

1Corinthians 2:13
"Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches; (and how does the Holy Spirit teach?) comparing spiritual things with spiritual."
We have to constantly compare these various concepts of scripture with other concepts and then we will see how they all fit. They fit just like a jigsaw puzzle. But when the church and it's miss guides pastors can not get them to work as they suppose they should they will cut corners and make the pieces fit when in actuality they do not. We know it has been a long time since we have put a jigsaw puzzle together, but how would you like to put one together if somebody had taken out a few of the pieces and put in a few from another puzzle, and had no picture to go by? What would that be like? Oh it would be pandemonium, it would drive you up the wall. Because number one, you would have no frame of reference, you would have no idea where this color is on the edge unless you have the picture. And number two, after you get a lot of it together you have pieces that do not belong in the puzzle. No matter how hard you try to fit them in they simply won’t fit! From my own past experiences, of over forty years, this is what most denominational and non-denominational preaching does, it leaves one thirsting and hungry for more but we do not know what. We just know almost instinctively that there is something missing, or that the message fell short, it just did not hit the bulls-eye.

Listen, that is what too many Bible studies do. It does not take us very long to recognize, "Hey this doesn’t fit." Of course it does not, because it is not supposed to. But when we keep the scripture with scripture, and not just a word search only kind of thing but rather comparing scripture with scriptures and keeping Law and Grace separated. Then it all falls into place so beautifully from cover to cover with no contradictions. Remember God changes His programs but God never changes like we have said earlier here in Ephesians. Of course the Dispensation of Grace that was given to the Apostle Paul is a whole different economy than the Dispensation of Law and the accompanying Jewish economy. For Jesus was the promised one to come who would bring an end to that dispensational economy. Remember several lessons ago we showed how ridiculous it is when people say, "But I go by the whole Bible, and not what Paul teaches?" And we took you to the book of Leviticus chapter 5, where if anybody touches something that is dead, then he has to bring a particular sacrifice to the priest. That is what the Bible says! But when people say things like that they put their foot in their own mouth. Because they are simply repeating what they have heard someone else say, in ignorance, because they are repeating the phrase they had heard as well. In other words it has no foundation of scripture to back it up.

It is the same way with the teachings of Jesus’ earthly ministry. He was teaching directly to the Nation of Israel, and not to the church. As it had not come onto the scene until after His ascension and the revealing of the secrets through the opening of the seals of the small book. In Matthew chapter 21, He is teaching one of His parables. This just says it all.

Matthew 21:45
"And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them."
Not to us in the Church Age, but them, the Nation of Israel. It was to them that it was appropriate, not to us. A lot of His teachings are applicable, do not get us wrong. Jesus never taught anything that was completely out in left field, but He is constantly driving His teaching home to the Nation of Israel. In all of His parables, the only true meaning was that they spoke to the Nation of Israel and even more pointedly to the priesthood of that wayward nation. Because for the most part the people were not free thinkers but were rather followers. Now there are a few that have a double and deeper meaning but they are few. When we take those things out of the four synoptic gospels and try to bring it into Paul’s teachings we have got some puzzle pieces that just do not belong, and they will not fit, although preachers and teachers try to make them fit. Here is the secret to why they will not fit.

Matthew 21:45
"And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them."
This is what the book says. Now coming back to 1Corinthians chapter 2, and finish the study on the deep things of God, in verse 13. This is all part and parcel of what Paul is enlarging on in Ephesians chapter 3, when he prays, "That we have the might and the power of the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of spiritual discernment."        

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