Wednesday 12 February 2014

The mystery cleared up

For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles—if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), - Ephesians 3.1-4

I used to love to read mystery novels. I still do on occasion. Of course, Agatha Christie was and is one of my favourite mystery writers. I loved at the end when Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple would gather all the characters into a room and solve the mystery. To do so they would peel off all the layers and slowly uncover truths that had been there all along, but that we, along with the characters had missed.  There were there to uncover a mystery. 

Here Paul plays the detective as he unfolds a great mystery. It is a mystery which existed all through the Old Testament to be revealed at the last day. All the truths of God's plan were there in the Old Testament, but it was not clear until Christ. 

But now the mystery has been unraveled. All those little truths are cleared up. God has revealed it to Paul and he wrote it down so that we can know it. 

Let's not skip over that too quickly. God revealed the mystery to Paul though the Holy Spirit, then Paul wrote it down to the Ephesians could understand, and not only that, we have those words written down today so that we can understand it too!!

I had never noticed till a recent message in church. Here is a perfect example of the importance of the written word of God. God showed it to Paul. Paul wrote it down for us. We have it just as surely as Paul did. 

Praise God that we know the end of the book. We have already seen mystery revealed though the revelation of God's truth written down for us. 

I love to see a good mystery solved, don't you? 

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