THE GREAT REVELATION

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Here is the great mystery of our religion:

Christ came as a human.

The Spirit proved that He pleased God, and He was seen by angels.

Christ was preached to the nations. People in this world put their faith in Him, and He was taken up to glory.

1 Timothy 3:16 CEV

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

This world offers a lot of different belief systems and at the moment, they can fall into seven different categories. All profess to be superior over the others but there is only one religion, Christianity, who can hold claim to absolute truth or as we looked at in yesterday’s message, the pillar of truth. And if that wasn’t enough, the Christian faith is the only One who offers salvation through a Savior, Jesus Christ.

Yet, Christianity is often misunderstood by the world who look at it on the surface and from a distance. This is why God, through His world, has revealed things that were formally hidden. He has fully explained the core of the Christian belief system and done so in a very abridged fashion in our scripture passage for today, the final verse of 1 Timothy, chapter 3.

Here is the great mystery of our religion:

Christ came as a human.

The Spirit proved that He pleased God, and He was seen by angels.

Christ was preached to the nations. People in this world put their faith in Him, and He was taken up to glory. v. 16

Of interest, the Greek word that is translated as “mystery” is the word musterion. Literally, it means that the solution to the mystery at hand can only be provided by God and God alone. With that, here’s what we find revealed about Jesus in the final verse of 1 Timothy 3, the One who is Truth (John 14:6), the Head of the Christian church, and in complete authority over all things in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18).

First, Jesus came as a human. One with God in every way (John 10:30), He was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:26-38), a divine impregnation within the virgin Mary which led to the birth of God’s one and only Son. After His birth, Jesus would walk the earth, initiating and installing His Father’s new covenant with mankind, a new covenant that would offer salvation to all people, whether Jew or Gentile.

Second, the Spirit proved that He pleased God.

We know that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit but it wasn’t until He was baptized that He gained the power of the Holy Spirit within.

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?”

Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.

As soon as Jesus was baptized, He went up out of the water. At that moment, Heaven was opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on Him. And a voice from Heaven said, “This is My Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.” Matthew 3:13-17

Just as Jesus had ordered His disciples to not enter into ministry in His name until they received the Holy Spirit (an act that happened at Pentecost – Acts 1:4, 2:1-12), here we find Jesus receiving the Holy Spirit before He starts to go forth to fulfill the will of His Father and become the Lamb who came to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

As Jesus received the Holy Spirit, we find God’s validation that Jesus was indeed His Son who He was pleased with.

3. Jesus was seen by angels and was taken up to Heaven in glory.

Going back to Mary’s divine conception, we see where the angel Gabriel was present, briefing Mary on what was going to happen to her and the impact her child would have on the world.

After Jesus was baptized, Matthew’s Gospel tells us that He was led into the wilderness where he fasted forty days and night (Matthew 4:1-2). Hungry and yearning for food, we find Satan coming at Jesus with three different attempts of temptation. In each instance, Jesus fought off the enemy, even in His weakened state, by using the scriptures (4:3-10) and after Satan left, the scriptures tell us this:

...angels came and attended Him. 4:11

Here, the angels fully saw Jesus as they provided care to Him.

Then there was the resurrection.

After Jesus’ crucifixion just two days earlier, Mary Magdalene, Mary, and the other women went to Jesus’ tomb at dawn to anoint His body only to experience an earthquake as an angel of the Lord went to the tomb and rolled the stone away.

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from Heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; He has risen, just as He said. Come and see the place where He lay. Then go quickly and tell His disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see Him.’ Now I have told you.” Matthew 28:1-7

The angel had to have seen Jesus resurrected because he knew He was no longer in the tomb but risen in resurrection, no longer dead but very much alive. Forty days later, Jesus would ascend in glory to sit at His Father God’s right hand, and who was there to witness it along with the disciples?

You got it. The angels.

After He said this, He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid Him from their sight.

They were looking intently up into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into Heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into Heaven.” Acts 1:9-11

From the very moment He was conceived, coming from Heaven and earth to bring salvation to a lost and doomed world, until He ascended to Heaven after completing the mission His Father had sent Him on, we find the angels intimately involved in Jesus’ life.

4. Christ was preached to the nations and people in the world put their faith in Him.

Jesus introduced and established the Gospel of salvation, that anyone who would simply believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). He then passed the disciple making responsibility onto His believers in what we know as The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). This good news was to first be taken to Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, and finally to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).

And that’s exactly how things went.

The Christian faith movement began in Jerusalem and after the execution of Stephen, one of the seven selected servants who would assist the Twelve, the scriptures tell us that “a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1). Then after his conversion, the Apostle Paul and other missionaries fulfilled the past part of Jesus’ call for the Gospel to be taken to the “ends of the earth”. As a result, the good news of salvation only found in Christ was “preached to the nations”, leading to people putting their faith in Him as Savior.

Friends, this call to make disciples is still in play today and we get to carry on the work of Paul and others who have dedicated themselves to the cause of the Gospel, fully obedient to Jesus’ call. The mystery of Christianity is no mystery at all, thanks to the full revelation of God pertaining to His saving work established through His Son, who was, is, and will always be the only true hope for the world.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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