Q&A 32: Covenants, stewardships & ages (continued)

We've been working on this topic of covenants and stewardships and ages for several weeks just to kind of recap. We've talked about the covenants that are specifically mentioned in the Bible. One of the things, I was just talking with a fellow at length, not from Holly Hills, but a fellow from down in Texas that's been a friend of ours and a friend of Randy and Jessica's. about these stewardships and how they're something that are of much greater significance, I believe, than many people recognize. Stewardships are a big biblical import and sometimes small.

Think of this. Here's Adam in the garden. Did he have a stewardship? Yeah. He had a stewardship. The domain of his stewardship was there in the garden. He had principles of stewardship. Eat of all these things. Be fruitful. Multiply. Just don't eat of that tree. So what did he do? That's what he did, right?

You have stewardships of that sort. We mentioned asking the question, and people got the picture pretty quickly that all of us have stewardships, probably several of them, almost at a minimum, because the various things for which we have some kind of a responsibility, or the other way to look at it, the various things with which we've been entrusted, those are our stewardships. And God has a stewardship over all of creation, right? It's a self-appointed stewardship over all of creation.

We talked about that. One of the places we're at now, let's look at page five. And that's the talk about ages. There is a lot more that we could say about stewardships and ages, but just to kind of be a little more concise and not take up the rest of the year, we will limit it here. I'll start at the top of page 5.

Every relevant period of time and every single biblically identified stewardship could be called an age. But by New Testament times there was a concise pattern of terminology used among the Jews as reflected in the New Testament. Both Jesus and Paul used this terminology and it was commonly understood at least among the Jews. There was the present evil age and the age to come, which was the age of the Messiah. to Jews here, whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

Now, what I just read was not just something about ages, but you know, what does that mean, right? I can't go into it in detail, we don't have time, but let me give you the quick summary and hopefully that'll suffice And if it doesn't, that's another Q&A, right? Right? Okay.

Basically, whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him. The Holy Spirit is the one who convicts hearts. He is the one who persuades those who would otherwise not be able to believe at all. So the Holy Spirit is the one who persuades hearts and convicts. If someone can speak against the Son and that can be changed, but if they resist and kind of cut themselves off from the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is their only hope for having conviction.

There is also the perspective on this one, And that is that this is in the context of Jesus performing miracles, things of that sort. And so one possibility that's been put forth on this is that the ability to carry out this sin has been limited since Christ is no longer there and you can't attribute things to Him.

Okay, now Mark 10, 28-30. Again, Peter began to say to him, Behold, we have left everything and followed you. Jesus said, Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms for my sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers, children, farms, along with the persecutions and in the age to come eternal life. So in the perspective, there's the present age, which is an evil age, and the age to come, which is the age of the Messiah.

You see that repeated in Galatians. Galatians 1, 3 through 5. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins so that he might rescue us from this present evil age according to the will of God our Father to whom be the glory forever and ever, excuse me, forevermore. Amen.

Ephesians 1, 18 through 23, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of his might, which he brought about in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and seated him in his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come." So this age and the one to come is the perspective that was there by New Testament times. Now, having said that, what are particular spans of time or ages that the Bible talks about, aside from being in this present age and then millennial age? Are there other spans of time that the Bible talks about?

Okay, yeah, it'll talk about in the day of a certain patriarch or something like that. Yeah, there's that. Yes? Well, Yeah, in other words, that would be another thing. If you look at it, there are a number of different spans of time. Even though the present time might be generalized as the present evil age, there are certain spans of time within it.

And yeah, we live in a time that specifically grace is the principle of stewardship, is one way we could put it. Grace is our present principle of stewardship. Moses had a principle of stewardship of law with reference to Israel, right? So there have been and are and will be specific spans of time.

Now aside from spans of time, we've got one other thing to talk about, specific points in time. Specific points in time, aside from the six days of creation, a specific point in time was a time when Adam sinned. That was a specific point in time. There was a specific point in time that was pivotal of the time of the flood.

But you also have passages that talk about at the right time God sent his son. Now, this is a curious thing. Why was it just the right time for God to send his son? Was it because it was really convenient for the Pharisees? Why was it the right time? Ah, yes.

One of the things I've been telling Hassan, and that was one of the points, there are three things that were a setup for spreading the gospel as it is in the New Testament and you pointed to one of them. Alexander the Great had come in and he had unified the Greek language. Previously there were a bunch of Greek dialects and he came in and said, you will have one Greek language and that spread from the eastern Mediterranean on into, at least at that time, into what was now Iraq and Iran. So he made this uniform Greek language when there previously were a bunch of dialects. That was a setup so that when you wrote out the New Testament, a great many people could read it and understand it. So that was one. There are two other points.

One is the Romans built roads like crazy. You know, the Romans built roads and they built them very well. Some of them are still in use. They built roads from England over to the eastern Mediterranean. Enough roads that if you put them all end to end, it would go two times around the globe. And you imagine, what they would do is they would dig down several feet and put down layers of sand and then coarser sand and then gravel and then rock and then large chunks of rock for the surface. They did that all by hand.

And they did it enough to build two times around the globe, over 50,000 miles of roads all that way. Yeah? Yeah, the Roman Empire not only had the road system, but it had a system that allowed people to be going about and carrying the gospel about that was spectacular. I mean, it was phenomenal. Yeah.

Was that the Appian Way? The Appian Way was one of the Roman roads. The Appian Way was the Roman road that went from the coast into Rome itself. So it was one of those Roman roads, and in fact what's interesting is while it's a notable one, it's actually a fairly short piece compared to the whole length that they had. It was a dramatic point in time where Paul went from the coast into Rome.

There was one other thing I want to mention that made it the right time, at the right time, and that is two-thirds of the Jews lived outside of Israel. They had gone into these other areas where the Greek language was spoken and some other areas as well. And so what happened was it was not only did you have the Greek language spread around and uniformly, you had the Roman roads and the Roman governmental system that allowed people to travel and to go into different places. But thirdly, most of the Jews were now outside of Israel.

And so the Jewish Old Testament was something that the Pharisees particularly were missionary about. They went around telling all these Gentiles things about the Old Testament. So that's why when you see Paul writing about Old Testament accounts, why it would mean something is because the Jews had already gone about and told these Old Testament stories, so many of the Gentiles had heard them already. So the combination of those things put together says, at the right time, God sent his Son, that the message of the gospel could be spread very quickly, very efficiently, and even with all the right language and Bible story, Old Testament Bible story background for Paul and the other apostles to spread the message.

Okay. God didn't need the internet. Yeah, it is astounding. Yes. I don't know at the moment, but they are still good today. Oh yes, they're... Yeah. Our highways today, you're right, our highways today don't last long and they have to be redone and chewed up. You've driven on them and they rotomill them. They rotomill them and they're all rough and everything and they have to grind them up and put them back in.

Roman roads today, many of them are still in use. Many of them are still as good as they were 2,000 years ago. And some of them, all they've done in order to make them accommodate higher speeds is just pave them. They just put paving right over the top of the Roman road because it just can't be improved upon.

OK. You can take a look at, we have an appendix C on page 10 that also goes a little bit more into the terms times and epochs. It's interesting. There are specific points of time. There are spans of time. There are ages. We won't go into that right now, but I'll leave that to you.

We have on page 6, identifying aspects of a stewardship. And as I was talking to my friend who was visiting from Texas, I was telling him about these stewardships. And that's Hebrews 3, 1 through 6 passages, one I particularly made note of. There are actually three stewardships that are described, given, in that one passage.

In each case, God is the one doing the entrusting, and there are three ones receiving that entrusting or stewardship. Moses is one of those, and then Christ over the church, and then God who is the builder of all things. The picture there was a term given for for each of the stewards.

One is Moses is called a servant. Now, before we just say, okay, servant, that's fine, there's something very interesting I put in here. Moses specifically in this verse is called, or in this passage, is called a therapon. It's the only place in the New Testament that this word shows up.

It's not the usual word for servant, which is doulos, And by the way, if you want a nice little memory thing, a servant, if he's doing what he's supposed to, should do lots. Okay? And so, just take the T out of there, and do lots as a servant, right? Okay, this therapon is particularly focused upon a voluntary servant.

Moses was called a therapon, and what's interesting is the description of Moses in Hebrews 3, 1 through 6, comes right out of Numbers 12, 7. And not so with my servant Moses, he is faithful in all my household. Those words are the words that are used down to the Greek words in the Greek Old Testament. Those words are the words used in Hebrews 3, 1 through 6. The author just quoted right out of the Greek Old Testament. So you have Christ then called an apostle and high priest and the Son and God who is called a builder, the builder of all things. The other aspect of a steward is required of stewards, Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 4, that they be faithful. What's the need for faithfulness? Why be faithful? Why is that required of stewards? They be faithful. Yeah, you can count on them.

If you ever have somebody that you're counting on and it doesn't work out, that's a real pain. You're counting on them to do this or that. That's tough. Nancy and I, while I was going to engineering school, were assistant managers at an apartment building. That was tough because you're counting on people. Essentially, they have a stewardship over the apartment that they're in, right?

Oh wow. During the time I was there, I mean here I was supposed to be studying engineering and oh man, the stories I could tell. I filled lots of bullet holes and that's just the beginning. Yeah, I had no idea that the job description would include reconstruction.

So anyway, enough said. So Moses was faithful, which is, as Paul said, is a requirement for a steward. Christ is described in this Hebrews 3, 1 through 6 passage as faithful and worthy of more glory than Moses. Worthy of more glory than Moses. Let's ask the question. What did Moses' glory look like? Fading. Excellent. This is out of 2 Corinthians chapter 3. There was a glory to the law, but it was a fading glory. But the glory of Christ is a growing glory, an increasing glory. Worthy of more glory than Moses. Glory of a different kind.

There are other aspects of the stewardship that are not described in this passage. We could probably look to other passages to describe them. Those include the work of the one being entrusted. We know from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy the kinds of things that were involved with Moses' work with the Israelites.

It must have driven him nuts, you know? These people, you know, here they're out in the middle of nowhere. God miraculously gives them food every day. He brings a huge flock of quail. Twice Moses has to break open, you know, rocks to get water coming out. And they gripe and grouse and complain.

You imagine, if you're not into style, this would be perfect because you put your shoes on, they don't wear out for 40 years. You know, you got the same shoes. I hope you like them because that's what you got, right? Nothing wore out as long as they were out there in the desert.

And that may have been one of those blessings and curses combined. The arrangement or the assignment of entrusting, the principles of entrusting, the principle The principle of entrusting that Moses was given was the law. He was the one who brought and introduced the law, so it's called the Law of Moses. The objective of the one entrusted. Hmm, okay. So at any rate, these are some that aren't mentioned.

The domain under the one being entrusted His house is the term that's used for Moses. What was specifically Moses' domain? What was he responsible for? With what was he entrusted? He was entrusted with the law, yeah. But what specifically, who was he working with? The people of Israel, right? So that was his domain of responsibility.

And so then of Christ, interestingly, it says, holy brethren, partakers of a holy calling, his house we are. Christ was the one who was given a stewardship over us here in the church. And then God, who is called the builder of all things, has a house and that is all of the created world, both visible and invisible. God is the one who is over all these things. And finally, the call of those in the domain. And what's interesting is our confession and rest is the call for us under Christ. So that's where we can go through passages that talk about these stewardships and look at what are the things that are said.

And in some cases, it won't address every single point. In fact, it would be unusual, I think, to find a passage that addresses every single point in the passage. But notice in the above example, the compound Greek word oikonomia is not used, which is the usual word for, it's often translated a dispensation or a stewardship, but rather the word oikos is used more than once, house, simple as that, house. Even the word stewardship is not used in the context, but the aspects of the stewardship are revealed and are quite clear. While there's not enough revealed in Hebrews 3, 1 through 6 to fill each box of all three of the stewardships, we could do so from the rest of Scripture. We could go through the rest of Scripture and fill in the information that isn't included in this passage. Information is like, what did Moses do? What was his work? What did Christ do? What did Christ accomplish? And what is God doing? What's God's accomplishment?

And the above passage focuses on the founding or originating of a stewardship rather than on subsequent stewards maintaining the house under the continuing principle. For Moses, the continuing principle of stewardship was law. For Christ, the continuing principle of stewardship was grace.

Let's ask this question. For Moses, here's Moses, okay? He had 80 years of training. How was he trained? Forty years in Egypt, forty years out in the desert with the sheep, and then forty years taking the Israelites through the desert up to the edge of the Promised Land. Finally, Moses gives the law, but while he gets to see it, he never gets to go into the Promised Land.

Who does? Joshua is the one who goes next. Interesting, Joshua was the one to carry on the stewardship, but he also had a particular thing to accomplish himself. What was it that Joshua accomplished that was a special part of his stewardship? Yeah, conquer the land. Moses brought them up to it and gave them the law. But Joshua was the one who was to take them actually into the land and conquer it.

Here's the amazing thing. When Moses was leading them through the desert, God provided all the food they needed and all the water, and their clothes didn't wear out. Once they entered the land, that all stopped. All of a sudden, the shoes did wear out. All of a sudden, the manna wasn't there.

So when Joshua went in, there was a whole different set of conditions, and he had to carry on the law, but his main focus was going in and conquering the land and driving out the nations. Driving out the nations. Okay, let's think of that. After Joshua, who were the stewards in Israel? Who are the people who have stewardship responsibilities? Yeah. The judges, for a period of cycles of these judges, yep, there was a stewardship responsibility. And here's the interesting thing. The stewardship responsibility ended up being, after the period of the judges, between kings and prophets and priests. Those three had a kind of a trio of stewardship responsibilities in Israel. How'd they do? Yeah, not so good in the final analysis, okay? Not so good.

Now, Christ comes and the point, although Christ spent his earthly ministry primarily focused on Israel, and even sent the disciples initially into Israel only. In Matthew chapter 10 where he sent the disciples out two by two, he sent them out, he says, go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and do not even go on a road that leads to the Gentiles. Don't even go there, go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But he actually was the one who then commissioned the disciples for responsibility the disciples for responsibility in the church, whose house we are.

Now, what stewardship is here in the body of Christ? The Great Commission. Let's think about, and you're quite correct, let's think about the situation we have here in the body of Christ. Do we have stewardships here in the body of Christ? Yeah. And how many? How many of us have stewardships? Every single one of us has a stewardship in the body of Christ. Every single one. Is it all the same stewardship? No. It's not the same stewardship. And as a matter of fact, it varies from one person to the next. What's the principle of stewardship among us?

Serving one another. That's certainly going to be part of it. Yeah? Edifying. Serving one another. Building up the body of Christ. Serving one another. That easily comes out of Galatians. Edifying. Ephesians 4. What else? What's the principle of stewardship among us in the church? If the principle of stewardship under Moses was law, what's the principle of stewardship for us? Grace. A grace principle. A grace principle of stewardship.

And this is key. This is really important. A great many churches don't understand that. And so that's something that we could certainly be praying for the body of Christ at large, that people would understand the difference. Moses had one principle of stewardship that he established. We, with Christ, have another. It is grace, a grace principle of stewardship.

Okay, let's take a look at page 7. Page 7 has Ephesians 3, 1-13, and it starts off with, For this reason I, Paul, prisoner of Jesus Christ for the sake of the Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you, that by revelation it was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. So is Paul writing mysteries? Is he writing mystery novels? No. What does he mean by mystery? Pardon?

Something not revealed, but now revealed, right? Something previously not revealed, but now revealed. And he goes on to talk about this stewardship, this commissioning that was given to him. And what's interesting is this is one of those passages where all the aspects of the stewardship are actually given and addressed, at least to some degree. The first one there in the chart, the one entrusting is God through Christ. So here's God entrusted something to Christ as a stewardship and Christ entrusted it to the apostles, including specifically Paul. Then there is the title of the one being entrusted.

He calls himself a minister, a prisoner of Christ. What also does Paul get called? Pardon? A bondservant, that's correct. He calls himself a bondservant. Good. What else? What else does Paul call himself? Yeah, he calls himself an apostle. So there are several different titles or at least descriptions of his functions.

The character of the one being entrusted, although he writes in 1 Corinthians 4 about being faithful, here in this passage, boldness and confidence through faith. Now let's ask this question. Why is boldness and confidence important? You must not be bold and confident because you're not answering.

Yeah? Yeah. Hello? To be effective. To be effective. Alright. Right. To talk with authority. To proclaim the truth. Yeah. To talk with authority. To proclaim the truth. Yes. To keep from throwing in the towel. Ah. To keep from throwing in the towel. All right? Yeah, a boldness that accompanies persistence. It's not, I'm suddenly bold and then I'm suddenly not, but rather a persistence with it. Yeah? It's also to be in the image of the one who sent you. Ah, yes.

God is bold and courageous in all those characteristics. I can't expect those of His servants or His disciples. The boldness conveys clarity and certainty of commission. It's not like Paul saying, you know, I kind of get the feeling God wants me to sort of do this best I can tell. It wasn't anything tenuous like that. It was instead, he very clearly knew the commissioning that he had. He very clearly knew exactly what he was supposed to be saying and doing. The work of the one being entrusted is as a minister and as a steward, so it's a stewardship. The arrangement or the assignment was the steward of God's grace to the Gentiles.

Now here's something interesting. Paul writes several times in the first couple chapters of Romans talking about to the Jew first and then to the Greek, is the way he put it, the Greek being a synonym for Gentile. Why would Paul be the apostle to the Gentiles, and the first thing he does is go to the Jewish people in the Gentile lands. Yeah? For two reasons for sure. One, he was Jewish. Yes, okay. And second of all, the Jewish people, as you said earlier, were sent into the world, and so they were Jewish people as part of the Gentiles. Yes.

One of the terms that comes out of the book of Isaiah that we saw is that Jews were to be a light to the Gentiles. And so the very best opportunity is if the Jewish people in each town and community would be the ones to spread the gospel. As much as they would respond, that would be a good idea.

The principles of responsibility, the principle of grace and God's eternal purpose, shows up in this passage, and then the objective of the one being entrusted, conveying the grace truths and that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and members. Finally, the domain of the entrusting is the Gentiles, or you could almost say it in the Gentile lands, because he did approach the Jews who were there first, right?

And finally, the call of those in the domain to understand Paul's insight. Paul didn't want to just come on and just do what he was supposed to do. He actually wanted the people to understand why he was doing what he was doing, and why he would do it with such boldness.

He says, Jesus Christ Himself has revealed these things to me. And so he would go into these Gentile lands with great boldness, not having some sort of a, you know, I get this feeling like I'm supposed to go, It's nothing foggy like that. Here's Jesus Christ, the resurrected, ascended Christ, standing right in front of him, teaching him. That kind of gets your attention, right? Alright. So here's this passage.

It does have this word, oikonomia, or sometimes translated, dispensation. but also includes other words explaining that. God's grace which was given to me for you. The gift of God's grace which was given to me. By the way, how come Paul didn't have to buy God's grace? Huh? It's the character of grace, right? And so Paul is emphatic. He doesn't just say, you know, I happen to have this grace thing. You know, I had to put some money down for it. No. Grace is by definition free. Grace is exactly that. God doesn't give us grace and then send us a bill. That's not grace.

Alright, next bullet. At least some information is provided in the passage regarding aspects of the stewardship and some aspects have abundant information even before going to other passages to supplement what is in this passage. The most significant detail about time provided in the passage is that the specific gospel with which Paul has been entrusted, and entrusted is another significant word indicating stewardship, was not previously revealed in Old Testament times. We don't have time to go into the next one, 1 Peter 5, 1-4, or to look at the last one talking about times and epochs. I would like us to take a look at page 9, God the Ultimate Steward. God is the ultimate steward. God actually appoints himself as the steward over all creation. And it actually uses that word steward or stewardship for that purpose. Here is Ephesians 1, 9, and 10.

It says there, He made known to us the mystery of His will, that's a truth previously not revealed but now revealed, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him. Who's Him? In Christ, okay? He purposed in Christ. with a view to an administration being God's administration, God's administering all things, suitable to the fullness of the times. That is the summing up of all things in Christ. Anakephaleos astai. Weird, huh? That's a big Greek word. It means to sum everything up, to pull everything together.

God has determined, has managed all of history. He has been a steward of all of history in order to sum up everything in Christ. The entire world, visible and invisible, will be under Christ. That's this coming millennial kingdom and then ultimately on into eternity in the new heavens and new earth. Everything will be summed up in Christ. Everything. That's what this verse is talking about. And then Hebrews 3, 4, For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.

You know, we have an election coming up here in not too long. In fact, we have a primary election supposed to be headed up here by this Tuesday. And there may be various anxieties and concerns you have about how that election is turning out. But you know what?

God, regardless of what human beings do, God will sum up everything in Christ. It will not be thwarted. There is nothing about the outcome of this next election that will thwart God's ultimate intent and purpose to sum up everything in Christ. It's going to happen. Absolutely. Because God is the one who is the ultimate steward. He is the one who is in charge of everything. He is the builder of all things. Everything will absolutely be summed up in Christ. And we can take great confidence in that.

And what this verse Ephesians 1, 9, and 10 is telling us is you're included in that. And to the Old Testament, that's a surprise. And that's just fine. It's been said, I think mistakenly, God likes surprises. God doesn't like surprises. He knows all things for all time. He can't be surprised. But He doesn't mind if we're pleasantly surprised. to be included, right?

And that's different. Let's pray because we've run out of time. Lord, we thank you as we look at this. You've used stewardships. You've used covenants. You've worked through spans of time. You've worked at specific points in time. And even as man has failed and made one error after another, Yet you will not be thwarted in your management, your administration of all history to sum up everything in Christ. And this is something that is wonderful to contemplate and to rest in and depend upon. And we thank you for that certain hope, not an I hope so hope, not a it would be nice if hope, but an absolutely certain fixed hope. We are people of ultimate, total hope because of what you've done and what you intend to do. We thank you in Jesus name. Amen.