Address—Josh Stewart
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Welcome to the meeting tonight. It's so great to see so many here. Let's begin, uh, tonight with him 330.
330.
What raised the wondrous thought all the day?
No problem. And if I love lifetime love counselor.
May fall as long as I'm gone now. It's not. It's gonna rain. Crimes and time.
Umm, I wonder if I'm happy?
To bring Friday.
I'll just read one verse before we pray. You don't have to turn there, but it's Psalm 119, verse 18. Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Let's pray. A loving God and our Father, we just pray.
This evening, that our eyes might be opened, that we might behold wondrous things out of thy law, as we have our Bibles open that we might.
Learn that which is thy desire for us.
And that the glory might go back to Thee, our God.
As we have been singing, what raised the wondrous thought or who did it suggest? And we know that the thoughts were thine our Father and our God. And so we just pray tonight that as a result of this meeting and as a result of the scriptures that we have before us, that more glory and honor might be brought to our Lord Jesus Christ. And we ask this in his worthy and precious name, Amen.
Well.
I've had a line of things on my heart for the past, umm, few weeks, maybe even months, and I would like to umm, unburden myself tonight. Umm.
The, uh, the line of things that's been before me has to do with the Word of God, and it has to do with how the Word of God is all connected together.
And.
Umm, the Word of God is like a puzzle, and So what I wanna do tonight is work on a puzzle together. So how many of you here like puzzles?
There's a lot of people that like puzzles and that's, that's great. And umm, you know, sometimes we do a puzzle and there's a lot of pieces to the puzzle.
Who, who, Who said they really like puzzles?
Tim, how What was the biggest puzzle have you ever done?
00:05:05
3000 pieces. That's fantastic. Well, I have a puzzle tonight and we're going to, with the Lord's help, walk through the puzzle and I'd like to use it as an illustration to show how the word of God all fits together and it works together. You know, there are, there's a thought and I've I've heard it and I perhaps I don't. I sensed it in myself.
That, umm.
I can dispense, I can do away with this part of the word of God, that this particular truth, I can set it aside and I don't have to worry about it. It's not going to affect me.
One of the things I'd like to show is that we can't do that. It's all the word of God. It's all connected together. And as you know, when you're doing a puzzle, if you lose one piece, what happens? You cannot finish the puzzle properly. So I'd like to show you that with God's help tonight. And, uh, I'd like to speak to you tonight about how.
Man's wisdom can come into.
Our thinking and affect our thoughts and get us off track.
This book is the word of God.
And umm, if there's, if there's nothing else that you get from this meeting, I hope that you understand that this is God's word that God has spoken to us and our place is to accept what he said. We may not understand it, we may not be able to logically reason it out, but we need to accept it because it's God's word. He is the Creator after all, and we are his creatures.
And So what can happen sometimes as human wisdom can come in?
To our understanding and we can get off track and it can cause us to set aside one of those puzzle pieces. Well, the word of God is it's, uh, it's not limited to four puzzle pieces. Tonight I'm just going to take up four things in the word of God that are connected together. But really the whole word of God is like a huge puzzle. More than 3000 pieces, OK.
And they're all connected together and umm, So what I wanna do tonight, with the Lord's help?
Is to take up four pieces that are, you might say, overarching themes. Umm, it's, it's in a line of things that we sometimes call dispensational truth. And that's, that's very, very important. I'm not going to talk tonight about dispensations exactly and exactly what a dispensation is and how many there are and when they start and end. I don't want to get into that, but I want to.
Speak to you briefly in a general way of some of the great themes.
In Scripture pertaining to God's purpose and the ways that God is going to go about to accomplish that purpose. And So what I'd like to do without any further delay is start with our first puzzle piece and umm, I was able to.
If I turn this on.
Put the puzzle pieces up on the screen in case you can't see.
I've used this puzzle one other time, and so it's been across the country and back, and it doesn't fit together quite as nicely as it once did. But I have some clips that I may need to rely on if it doesn't quite stay together. Umm. But we'll start with this puzzle piece, The testing of man.
And umm, let's turn to ververse to 1St Corinthians chapter 15 now.
There are so many verses that we could read to do with these truths that I would like to speak on tonight. And, umm.
We could never go through all of them. In fact, each one of these four puzzle pieces that I'd like to talk about tonight you could spend a week of meetings on. OK. And, and I'm gonna try to discipline myself to maybe 5 minutes for each piece. So I'm probably just gonna read one verse for each one and just give a brief summary. Umm. And so the testing of man, umm, what I'd like to do just just first of all do, is just run over in our minds for all of us.
What do we mean by the testing of man? Well, Adam was the first man, and he was placed in the Garden of Eden. And God gave Adam a simple test. He told Adam you could eat from every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat thereof, for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. That was his test, obedience. Would he obey God?
00:10:09
Did Adam obey God? No, he did not obey God. Well, Adam was.
Expelled from the Garden of Eden and uh, God allowed man to go on for 1700 years almost with nothing but his conscience to uh, remind him of what is good and what is evil.
And during that 1700 years, did man get better or did he get worse?
Silas, he got worse. That's right. In fact, the the world was filled with violence and corruption such that God said the end of all flesh has come before me. And he said that he would judge men with the earth, and he would destroy men from off the face of the earth. Well, after the flood, when Noah came off the ark, God gave something to Noah.
He gave him a number of instructions, Genesis Chapter 9, but one of the things he gave.
To NOAA was government, and he told NOAA, if somebody commits murder, you're responsible to put that man to death.
And he committed the principle of government to NOAA. Whoso shutteth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. You can look that up in Genesis Chapter 9. I'm gonna try to quote these verses instead of turning to them.
And government was given to restrain evil. And man continued. And on through the course of time God began. God continued to give various principles to man.
And each of those principles was a test for man.
He gave to Abraham the principal of calling and promise. Later on he gave to Moses the principle of law, and then priesthood, and then judges, and then kings, and then prophets. Each one of those things was for man, for his blessing, if he would take it from God.
But each of those proved to be a test that man failed, and he just continued to fail over and over and over again. And that's what we have in the Old Testament, a history of the failure of man. God chose a nation called the nation of Israel, and they're just like a sample of all of mankind. And Israel failed over and over and over again.
And then God had one final Test for man.
The final Test for Mann? Does anyone know what the final Test was for man?
And the greatest test, I might say.
Does anyone wanna volunteer, Dave?
Very good. You quoted a very important verse. Umm, let me just try to quote it. It's from, I believe it's from Mark chapter 12, the parable of the vineyard. I'm gonna recommend you read that for homework. The husbandmen, uh, the owner of the vineyard said.
Having therefore one son his well beloved, he sent him unto them, saying, Surely they will reverence my son.
But they said, come, this is the error, let us kill him and seize upon his inheritance. The greatest test that God ever gave to man was the sending of the sun into this world, because the Law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. When the Lord Jesus Christ was here on this earth, right before man was the full heart and character of God displayed.
Light and love, grace and truth. And it was right there under man's nose. What did he do?
What did he do with the Son of God, with the Messiah of Israel, with the Lord of glory? What did man do with him? He nailed Him to a cross. That is the last Test. God is done now. Pencils down. OK, the test is over. The Lord Jesus said in John chapter 12. Now is the judgment of this world.
It's done.
And God is no longer testing man in the flesh. He's done with it. That test sealed the deal. Man is irrecoverable. He can do nothing to recover himself. He can do nothing to please God. That man is what scripture calls the 1St man, So First Corinthians 15.
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And, uh, jumping down to the end of the chapter.
1St Corinthians 15.
And I would like to read.
Verse 46 and 47.
It says, howbeit that was not first, which is spiritual.
But that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual. The 1St man is of the earth earthy. The 2nd man is the Lord from heaven, as is the earthy. Such are they also that are earthy. And that's, that's really where I wanted to stop.
Well, there's not just one man, there's two. Praise be to God. There's not just the first man, but there's a second man. The 1St man was tested and it and we read throughout the Old Testament and into the Gospels and even the book of Acts.
The fact that man, the 1St man, is a failure. But what we find is that God doesn't just have one man, he has two. He has a second man and that man is the Lord from heaven. The 1St man is natural and he is earthy and he fails over and over and over again. But God has another man, it's the Lord Jesus Christ. The Son of God came into this world and became a man. He is the second man, He is spiritual, He is heavenly.
And he is perfect.
And one of the things I believe we have in the Word of God, running all through the Word of God.
Is the fact that the 1St man fails and everything God gives to him.
But the second man succeeds perfectly in everything. The 1St man has failed it.
Umm, JN Darby was, was asked to write an introduction to the Bible and uh, his opening comment was what a task to write an introduction to the Bible. But one of the comments he made in that, uh, in that introduction was that the Bible is a history of two men, a history of the first man and the history of the 2nd man. And so we see these two things running all through the word of God.
But the first man fails, the 2nd man succeeds perfectly.
And so we find that all those dispensations that were given to the first man, whether it is.
The priesthood, whether it was the judges, whether it was kings, whether it was prophets, we see these things all fulfilled perfectly in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And some of them in the future day, I said that, uh, God dispensed priesthood to know that when the Lord Jesus ascended into heaven after completing the work of the cross, God told him, the Father told him, sit thou at my right hand until I make them any thine enemies thy footstool. And he also said to him, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. So you see how man failed in priesthood, but the Lord Jesus is the perfect.
Priest after the Order of Melchizedek.
Man failed under the judges, but the Lord Jesus Christ is the Judge of Israel.
We know as King he is not only the King of the Jews, but he's the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
As as a prophet, he is that prophet that Moses spoke of in the book of Deuteronomy, to whom all his people will one day listen.
And here and so the second man has, has and will succeed in all that the 1St man has failed. OK.
The next piece that I want to talk about.
Is the mystery OK?
The mystery, OK. And it's not a mystery as to what this mystery is. Alright, we're gonna talk about this. This is probably one of the most important things to study in the Word of God. What is the mystery? OK, so we're gonna turn to a verse in a minute that tells us what the mystery is. But first of all, the Word of God is God's revelation to us. It's God's mind revealed to us and he.
Saw fit to write down some of those revelations for us, so we have them today. God did not give all of those revelations at once. He didn't reveal everything to Adam and Eve. Later on He revealed more like to Moses and others throughout history. But when we come to the New Testament, we find that there was a revelation which God kept hidden throughout all the ages of time.
00:20:12
All through the Old Testament scriptures he kept this thing hidden.
And that thing is called the mystery and.
He kept it hidden until the testing of the first man was completed. He kept that hidden.
And umm, he kept it hidden. But then after the cross was the work of the cross was complete, he came out and he told us about this mystery that had been kept secret since the beginning of the world.
Let's turn to Colossians chapter 2. I just want to read a verse to emphasize the importance of this Colossians chapter 2.
And.
Well, we'll pick up in the middle of verse umm 2.
It says being knit together in love, and then to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God. The next words really shouldn't be there, and of the Father and of Christ.
In whom again, a poor translation, it really should say, in which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So I know that might be a little hard to follow, but if you look in critical translations, you'll see that what this is saying is that in the mystery, again, I we haven't talked about what the mystery is yet, but I want to emphasize the importance of it in the mystery our hid.
All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
I'm just gonna say this to you young people, children trying to learn the word of God. You need to learn what the mystery is. In the mystery are hit all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. When you understand what this mystery is, it will open up the rest of the word of God to you. OK, So what is the mystery? I wanna lead lead you on too long.
Let's turn over to Ephesians 3. Very thankful to God that He gave us a verse that tells us exactly what the mystery is. OK, Ephesians 3 and verse.
Well, it's just, umm, start with verse.
Too, if you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God, which has given me to Ewart, how that by revelation he bade known unto me the mystery, as I wrote a four and few words, whereby when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. And here verse six is tell what is telling us exactly what the mystery is.
That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs and of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel. What is the mystery? The mystery is the wonderful truth that now, after the cross, God was going to bring some from among the Gentiles and some from among the Jews into something brand new that did not exist before.
That is the church, he says here, the same body, the body of Christ. The mystery is the truth that God was gonna bring some from the among the Gentiles and some from among the Jews into something brand new, the Church of God, which is the body of Christ. It did not exist before there was. It was not revealed beforehand in the Old Testament.
For 4000 years nothing about it. But now God is doing something brand new. OK.
And we find that God has a wonderful purpose for this church that he formed from Jewish Gentile. They are fellow heirs. What does that mean? Well, we find that the Lord Jesus Christ, the 2nd man, has an inheritance. He is the Creator of all things. He is the Redeemer of all things. He's the heir of all things.
He has inherited everything.
He's inherited the entire universe. It belongs to him.
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And he has a bride, and that bride is the church that's you and me. We're part of this Church of God, the body of Christ.
God wanted his Son to have a companion, to have a bride, to share all that he possesses, to have her with him and share everything that he has. And that is what the church is. The church is that bride, that companion, that body that is his. We are the closest people to Christ. We are bone of His bone.
Flesh of his flesh.
We are the bride and body of Christ. That is the truth of the mystery. It is incredible.
You know something, if we didn't have this truth of the mystery, I think I don't. I don't know. It's hard to say where we would be. But wouldn't there be something missing? Did God having his purpose to pick, to take up with the nation of Israel and deal with this obscure people over on the side of the Mediterranean and, and deal with them and test them and see them fail over and over again?
Was that really his end goal? Is that what he's been getting at this whole time? No, no, no, no, no. Instead, the Apostle Paul reveals. The Spirit of God reveals through the Apostle Paul the truth that God has something so much farther beyond all of that. He had from a past eternity the purpose to give His Son a bride.
To share with him all that he possesses, well, that is what the mystery is, and there's much, much more that could be said about it.
So again, I'm just going right over the surface of things at 30,000 feet and we're just giving a high level overview. Well, how does the mystery fit with the testing of Man? So I have my two puzzle pieces here and I would like to show you how they fit together.
OK, can everyone see now how these two pieces fit together?
Well, how do they fit together?
Well, as I said before, the mystery was revealed after the testing of the first man was complete.
God finished that testing. God do all along what the outcome would be. He's omniscient of course, but for men and angels, he allowed that testing to roll on. And now it's complete and the conclusion is final that the 1St man, the natural man, the earthly man, can do nothing for God.
And then he formed the church, and he began to build the church.
From Pentecost onward and that companion for Christ is associated with the 2nd man.
That, I believe, is the great connection. All of our hopes, all of our promises, all of our blessings, our destiny is all in heaven with the heavenly man, with Christ. We are not an earthly people. We are a heavenly people because we are united to a heavenly man, the 2nd man, the Lord from heaven.
And for us, I might just add to go back.
To the first man to go back to the law, to go back to the things of this earth is really to miss Our Calling, to really to miss our true identity as the Church of God. OK, so that's how those pieces connect together. And there's more ways that they connect together, but we've got to keep moving. So let's talk about our next piece.
The next piece is.
Prophetic events.
Prophetic events, OK.
Now there might be some people smiling here.
There's no way we're going to cover prophetic events in 5 minutes, OK? That would take a week, two weeks, 3 weeks to even begin to scratch the surface.
Let's just reverse.
Again, what I'm trying to do is not so much.
Expound these various truths, but it's just to show you how they're connected together and to remind you of what they are. Let's turn to Revelation. Revelation chapter 19 for a verse.
Let's read part of verse 10.
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It says the last part of the verse.
Worship God.
For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
What I wanted to start with in talking about prophetic events is the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ himself is the theme of all prophecy.
What is prophecy? What are prophetic events? Well, I believe prophetic events. Prophecy in the sense that we're talking about today. There's a broader sense of what prophecy is, but in the sense we're talking about today is the revelation beforehand of future events Co in connection with God's interest in the earth.
The revelation beforehand of future events in connection with God's interests in the earth.
And in the Word of God, a great portion of of the Word of God is connected with prophecy. A great portion of it is prophetic. The major profits, the minor profits, there's many types and pictures in the Old Testament that are prophetic. Even in the New Testament there's a great deal that's prophetic. What is prophecy and what are prophetic events?
As I as I read here the testimony of Jesus.
Is the spirit of prophecy. And so we've we find in the Word of God that prophetic events are what are going to begin to unfold after the church is taken out of this world.
And they prophetic events describe the steps that God is going to take to glorify His Son. The Lord Jesus Christ is the theme of prophecy and umm, God is going to take steps to vindicate and to glorify His Son here in the earth. The Lord Jesus Christ was rejected and he was cast out.
2000 years ago and God has not forgotten there is going to be judgment on this world. His son will be glorified here in this world. He's not gonna start over on Mars or some planet somewhere out in the.
Solar system.
He's going to come back here and he's going to be glorified here and every eye shall see him and he is going to be glorified.
And judgment is going to come on this world, and prophecy describes those judgments that are going to fall. Are we going to be here for those judgments? Is the Church going to be here for those judgments? No. The Lord Jesus says in Revelation chapter 3 that He will keep the Church out of the hour, out of the time of tribulation which is coming upon the world to try them, which dwell upon the earth. We are going to be taken.
Before those events begin. But judgment is coming and evil is going to grow worse and worse in the earth, and men are going to apostatize and God is going to bring his judgments. Christianity is going to continue after the church is taken out. It won't be the true believers. It will be false. Profession is gonna continue and it's gonna grow worse and worse and worse. And it's described in the Book of Revelation. Read chapter 17 and 18.
As Babylon the Great.
The mother of harlots, she is. Drunken with the blood of the Saints she is.
Controlling the governments of the earth. And she is laughing in the face of God. This is the church, this is the false church. This is what's left after the true have been taken out. And God is going to judge her, he says.
Their recompense unto her, even as she has recompensed and double unto her double. And so she is going to be, she is going to be judged. The false church. Judaism is going to apostatize as well.
Jews are gonna come back to their homeland and they're gonna be there, many of them in unbelief, and they're going. A king is going to rise up among them, and they're going to receive that king. That king is called Antichrist, and they're going to receive him. And rather than protect them, that false king is going to lead them headlong into destruction.
God is going to raise up the ancient enemies of Israel surrounding the land who are going to threaten them. And finally, at the end, God is going to allow the great enemy of Israel, the Assyrian. I don't think it's the.
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Same ethnic group, but answering to the what the Assyrian was in the Old Testament. A great enemy to sweep down through the land of Israel, and it's gonna put an end to apostate Judaism.
Governments are going to apostatize. Satan, through his energy, is going to gather all the peoples of the world into great confederacies. There's going to be a Western confederacy. Sometimes we call it the revived Roman Empire or the Beast.
Probably some of those that you know.
Who are who are rejecting the gospel, who don't, do not die through some of the natural disasters that occur. I shouldn't call them natural. Unnatural disasters that occur in the tribulation period will perhaps find themselves aligned with the beast in the West. There's gonna be an eastern confederacy under someone called the Assyrian, the king of the North, the Little Horn.
Many Arab nations and Muslim nations are going to align themselves under the Eastern Confederacy. There's gonna be a Southern confederacy, Egypt and Ethiopia and her allies. There's gonna be a northern Great Northern Confederacy. Gog and Magog and many nations confederate with her.
This is going to happen very, very soon.
And God is going to bring judgment down. Those confederacies are going to smash themselves against the stone of Israel, against the rock of Zion. They are going to be met by the Lord when he comes out of heaven in judgment on all his enemies. And when all his enemies are put down, that he is going to set up a Kingdom.
And he is going to reign here in this world for 1000 years.
And that is going to be a reign of peace.
And here's why. It's a reign of peace, because it's a reign of righteousness.
And he is going to reign for 1000 years and he is going to be king over all the earth.
And umm, at the end of the thousand years, then God is going to bring in a new heavens and a new earth wherein righteousness dwell, sin will be no longer, and that's going to be the eternal state of the universe.
Well, there's a lot more than that, but.
That's a little bit of what's going to happen in prophecy.
But the goal of it all is the glorification of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it is.
A huge part of the Word of God prophecy. How does it fit?
How does?
This is where I might need my clips. How does prophecy fit with the mystery and the testing of man? You better just get those.
Thank you.
OK, I'll put these together and then we'll talk briefly about how these pieces fit.
OK.
Prophetic events fitting in with our other two puzzle pieces. OK, last time I uh.
I did this the the pieces held together better but.
All right, I think that's going to fall apart, but in reality, the pieces fit together perfectly.
OK, here's how they fit together.
Prophetic events is running on a timeline in God's word and I won't have you turn there, but for further study I suggest you look at Daniel Chapter 9 in which we find that God's timeline to bring in the Millennium thousand year reign of Christ is running on a timeline of 70 weeks of years or 490 years.
And that that timeline has been cut short at the 69th week and there is one week or seven years of that timeline remaining.
That seven-year period is the tribulation in which those judgments that I already talked about are going to take place.
And in between the 69th week which was concluded by the Lord Jesus the Messiah. You can look it up for yourself being cut off.
At the cross.
And these remaining seven years is a huge span of time that has opened up between the 69th and the 70th week of Daniel.
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And the church, the mystery unfolds in that parenthesis in that period of time. So do you know what a parenthesis is? You use it in your sentences, a parenthesis.
Use these little symbols.
And you put something in the parenthesis that helps you to understand what's around it. But you could just take the parenthesis out and reread over it.
OK, that's what a parenthesis paren parentheses are. The mystery unfolds in a parenthesis in time, in a prophetic timeline.
And we live in that period, and there's going to come a time when that prophetic clock, if you will, is going to resume and Daniel's 70th week will begin to unfold. But we live in a parenthesis in that. And the prophetic events have primarily to do with Israel and the nations on the earth. But we live in a parenthesis.
That is heavenly.
And so everything in this parenthesis has to do with the Church of God deals with us as a heavenly people.
And the events that will take place after we are gone, God is gonna direct His attention back down to the earth and to deal with Israel again on the earth. So I bring this out to show you that these things fit together. If you don't see what the mystery is, if you don't see that it is something distinct, that it is not Israel, it is something brand new that never existed before.
Something that is heavenly and disconnected with the earth if you don't see that.
You're not gonna understand prophecy.
And we're gonna talk about that a little bit at the end of the meeting. OK? I need to keep moving our next piece.
Is.
I lost it.
Our next piece here it is.
Is the glory of Christ the glory of Christ? If I could say there's one theme to the whole word of God, it's this. It's the glory of Christ. OK, there it is.
And for this, we're gonna turn to a well known verse. But first, before we do, we've talked about the testing of men that's passed. We've talked about the mystery that's currently going on as God is building the church. We've talked about prophetic events future. Now we're gonna talk about something.
That's eternal, and it's the eternal purpose of God.
And this is one of my favorite verses in the Word of God. So turn to Ephesians chapter one.
Ephesians, chapter one.
And we'll read.
Umm, Let's just start with verse 9. Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth.
Even in him. We're gonna pause there, but don't lose your place.
OK, let me just read that again, just first. Ten. In the dispensation of the fullness of times, he or God might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. Even in Him. The truth that I have just read, God, Spirit of God calls the mystery of God's will.
You know, there are people in this world today that are seeking, that are looking for the purpose of everything. They're doing their PhD thesis on the purpose of human existence. God tells us the purpose of everything right here in this verse. He tells us the purpose.
The God of the universe.
Have a purpose in His heart from a past eternity, and He has come alongside you and alongside me, and He has whispered, if you will, that secret in your ear, and that this is His purpose. He's gonna glorify Christ. That is what He's going to do. That is what He is after, to glorify His Son.
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And here's how he's going to do it. He's going to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. God is going to bring all things under the headship of the 2nd man.
And prophecy describes how he's going to do that in earth, but it also says in heaven. And the church is going to be headed up, is headed up by Christ. He is the head of the church. And Israel is going to be headed up by Christ as the Messiah. And so the entire world, heaven and earth, is going to be placed under the headship of Christ. He is the glorified head of it all.
All the glory is going to be brought to him. That's God's purpose. That's what he's been getting at.
Why create man in the 1St place? Why suffer? Why allow all of the things that have come into this world? Why test man?
Why do all that he has done?
To glorify Christ, That's what it says. That is the mystery of his will.
Isn't that amazing? This is what God has said. He's revealed it to us.
Well, how does it fit well?
It fits wonderfully.
Umm, let's let's put this piece.
OK.
The glory of Christ fits together with the testing of man, because everything that the 1St man failed, every test he failed, the Lord Jesus Christ is gonna take up that and himself, and he's gonna do it perfectly.
And all of the prophecies all are made in Christ.
All the promises of God.
Are yay and in him Amen to the glory of God the Father. The Lord Jesus Christ is going to be glorified. How does it fit with the mystery? Because the Lord Jesus Christ is going to have a companion with him. I'm going to read that in a minute. The next verse. How does it fit with prophecy? Because prophecy, prophetic events are the steps God is going to take to glorify his Son here in the earth.
It fits with all of these pieces.
And it's.
God's eternal purpose. I forgot to read the next verse and I need to do it because it's the second part of God's eternal purpose, verse 11.
In whom we, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the council of his own will.
God is going to place Christ as the glorified head of all things.
And then if that wasn't enough to make you a worshiper, to make me a worshiper, it says here we have obtained an inheritance, God has given Christ a companion to inherit that all with. And there in that glorified state, as head over all things, as the one before whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess.
We are going to be alongside him, sharing and all that he is.
And in all that he has, we have obtained an inheritance in Christ.
Isn't that amazing? That's you and that's me. Old Testament Saints didn't have a hope.
Didn't have a clue, didn't have a inkling of blessing like this. This is reserved for those who are part of the Church of God, the bride of Christ. Well.
What I wanted to do next was to take our puzzle.
And I wanted to show what happens at the close of this meeting when we bring in human wisdom into the things of God. What's gonna happen to this beautiful puzzle?
And I wanted to just read one verse before we demonstrate this to you.
In First Corinthians chapter four First Corinthians is a book that takes up.
At the beginning especially human wisdom coming into the things of God.
It's been my experience that so much of the trouble that has come into Christianity has come in from bringing human wisdom into the things of God.
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Human wisdom basically says this. I know better than God. That's a pretty serious thing to say. Who here would say that? Well, we don't necessarily think that way, but we might be unconscious that our thought processes are actually putting us in a position like that.
We need to understand that this is God's Word and it is up here and we are creatures and we are down here. We are blessed creatures. Oh, we are infinitely blessed creatures, but we are still His creatures. This is God's revelation and we need to get down on our knees and accept it as His word. We are subject to it.
It's the only way we can be blessed is really to be dependent on Him. But what happens when human wisdom comes into the things of God?
As man gets to reasoning and he takes this book and he makes it down here and he makes it the subject of his own thoughts, something comes up in the word he doesn't understand. And what he does is he, he, he subjects it to his own logical reasoning. You take man, uh, God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. Can you logically put those two things together, Evan?
Can you put? No, you can't. What happens when human reasoning comes in? As we say, this has got to be understandable and rational to my human logic.
And, and, and then we twist the word of God, or we deny some part of it. We set something aside this morning. We talked about the eternal sonship of Christ. We talked about how there are some who want to deny that blessed truth.
You know, it's been interesting to me that with that particular error that that comes in, most of the time, denials of the eternal sonship of Christ come whence when certain individuals take what we experience in the relationship of human fathers to human sons and they impose that on the relationships of God the Father and God the Son like this.
Is.
Tim, you have a son.
You bigot Kyle, you therefore must have existed before Kyle and they imposed that on God the Father and God the Son and say therefore.
The sun and the sonship of Christ must not be eternal, you see. That's human wisdom coming into the things of God.
Another thing is he that begets is greater than he that is begotten. That's something that's true. A Father is greater in a certain sense than his Son.
It's called the sunship inferiority theory, and it's that sunship is is connected with inferiority that the Lord Jesus, when he became, as they say, the Son, that he took a lower place. The Scripture never presents sonship as having to do with inferiority. Again, see, it's taking human reasoning and bringing it into the things of God. And what does it do? It wreaks havoc.
So what I want to encourage you young people and children, is to take this book and read it for yourself. And when God says something, just believe it. Just believe it. It's God's word. You may not understand how all the pieces fit together, but just receive it. So First Corinthians 4, verse 6, just the last part of the verse.
There's a phrase in here that is not in the best manuscripts that is.
Of men middle of the the verse. So I'll just read it without that. That gene might learn in us not to think or not to let your thoughts go above what is written.
Not to let your thoughts go above what is written.
And I believe this is what we need to do. We need to think when we read the Bible, but we need to not let our thoughts go above what is written. So if you if you get nothing else out of this, I hope you can learn that great lesson.
OK, let's see what happens. First thing we're gonna do is we're gonna see what happens when we bring in natural wisdom. And I wanna show what happens when we look at the testing of man and we bring in human reasoning. OK, What we're gonna do is find the puzzle piece.
Right here.
I gotta do this very quickly.
We're going to bring in this piece here that says deny the failure of the first man. Now, there are some that teach, you know, man really isn't a failure. The 1St man, in fact, he's gradually improving himself over time. And yeah, Israel may have failed in the Old Testament, but in the church period, we're gonna get it right. And that man is slowly improving himself. And in fact, Jesus, some actually teach us not all. Some teach that Jesus just came here to be the perfect role model.
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Of what a good human ought to be and we just need to imitate him. That's human wisdom coming into the things of God. I don't want to admit that the 1St man is a failure. OK, let's see what happens.
You know this is gonna be better on the screen, but what I wanted to show is that it doesn't fit with the pieces we have.
OK.
It doesn't fit.
Did everyone see that these two pieces don't fit together?
Alright, what happens when you're building a puzzle and two pieces don't fit?
You want them to fit, but they don't fit. What do you do?
What do you do? Someone just say it.
You can force them together. That's one option. Get out the hammer.
Get out the glue. You've thought of it, I've thought of it. Where is that piece where you find another piece? This is what happens when we try to force human wisdom into the things of God as we end up not just denying one thing we have to say, take the next piece out. We've got to do something with that. And what do we come up with?
We come up with a piece that does fit, but it's also.
Runs contrary to the word of God.
And instead of the mystery, we, we will embrace replacement theology. OK. Each of these is a contrast to the one that it replaced. It fits with this erroneous piece, but it denies the word of God. What's replacement theology? Replacement theology is the teaching that the church is the replacement of Israel, that the church is the spiritual continuator of Israel.
And, umm.
That basically, there's no such thing as a heavenly.
People of God, the church today that we are just a continuation of Israel and they go through they go through hoops to show that try to show that from the word of God. It's an awful thing what they do. They basically deny that there's an earthly people of God and they say that the church has a role in this earth. The church is not heavenly merely, it is earthly as well. We have a responsibility to influence the governments of.
Earth and uh, it's, it leads to that because if we refuse to realize that God has passed judgment on the 1St man, then we don't see what he has done after the cross and he's opened up something brand new connected with the 2nd man. OK, So what happens next?
We find that replacement theology. Uh oh. That doesn't fit with prophetic events. Now, you know what happens when you put the wrong piece in. Let's say you were to get out that hammer, OK, and force it. The next piece isn't gonna fit any better. So what do we do?
You throw it aside.
And we replace it.
With another piece.
This one holds together better actually.
The literal We deny the literal fulfillment of prophecy.
OK, so how does that work? Well, we've, we've already, uh, embraced replacement theology, which says that the church is the replacement, the conspiratorial continuator of Israel. So then what's, what's to become of the nation of Israel? Are they going to be restored in the Millennium under Christ?
No, because we've already said the church has replaced them. So what about all those prophecies that said that Israel was going to be restored? What are we going to do with them? They said that the city was going to be rebuilt, that Israel was going to be established in their land. Jeremiah 31, Jeremiah 32. Read those prophecies. What are we going to do with this? We're going to deny that those prophecies are literal, and instead we're going to say they're all spiritual or they're all.
You see how these one thing leads to another?
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OK, one final step.
I know our time is gone, but.
Just for the sake of completion.
The final step.
And they need to, uh, advance the.
Is to detract from the glory of Christ. Final step.
You might say, oh you know, I never intended to do that. I just started out by denying the failure of the 1St man.
But I ended up detracting from the glory of Christ. Well, how does that work? Well, a number of ways #1 If the 1St man wasn't ruined, then why did Christ need to come? Why did he need to die on the cross #2?
Does God keep his promises? Our brother Bernie spoke on God's faithfulness. Does God keep his promises?
We said no, he doesn't.
We're gonna, we're gonna spiritualize, we're gonna allegorize them. And God isn't faithful and it robs Christ of his glory. And there's many other ways, too. Again, I'm speeding.
And So what we have here.
Is not just one error, but a whole system of errors. Does anyone know of a verse it talks about a system of errors?
Joe, can you think of 1?
Yes, Ephesians 4 verse 14 I believe talks about systematized error.
And let's just quickly.
Look at that.
And then we'll close.
Ephesians 4. Sorry, I'm having a hard time turning to it. Ephesians 4 and verse 14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of man, and in cunning craftiness. And this should be translated onto the systematizing of error.
And so you see the dangerous thing about this.
Is that it's a system of error that all fits together. It all works, and you talk to someone who holds these errors and they've got an answer for everything.
But it's all wrong, and it's so dangerous because once we start by bringing human wisdom into the things of God, it doesn't stop until we fall down into a system like this. Now, can someone tell me, roughly speaking?
The system of error that I have shown here is that there's a term for it that we've used before. Does anyone know what it's what I'm what I'm getting at here?
Covenant theology, I don't know who said that. It's exactly right. So we talked about covenant theology. We wonder how did we, how does someone get into that? How does someone fall into that?
Step by step, that's the answer. Step by step. And it starts with insisting on our own will and our own thinking rather than simply submitting to the mind and will of God. Well, that's a warning, but I think.
Something that the Lord put on my heart to say to you young people and children, and I guess adults as well.
Think of the first puzzle that we showed the.
The true puzzle and think of this false puzzle. Does anyone see a difference between this puzzle and the other?
Mark, bullet holes. OK, I didn't wanna give you the impression that this puzzle truly fits together as well as the old There's holes in it, and if you push on Covenant theology, you find that there are holes in it.
But the true puzzle, as God presents it to us in His Word, glorifies Christ, brings blessing to man, and is true for the Word of God.
Well, I trust that we'll be preserved from error and we can do that by believing what God has said. Let's, uh, let's close in prayer, loving God and our Father. We give thanks for the opportunity this, uh, this evening to have thy word open to.
Talk about some of these themes of Scripture. We think of that eternal purpose from a past eternity to glorify my beloved Son in heaven and in earth. We think of the privilege that we have to be part of that companion, the Bride of Christ, to share with Him all of his glory and to share His inheritance for all eternity.
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What a privilege may we be encouraged to open up our Bibles and to read and to believe.
And to accept.
What God has said. So we just pray this and give thanks in the name of our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.