In this chapter, we're talking about the grace of God. You know, the Apostle Paul was kind of like a... He stood between the wrath of God and the Gentiles, and that's us. He stood between the wrath of God and the Gentiles. Christ is our Savior if we look to Him as such. I'm going to read a few verses here from the Amplified Bible first before we go on to the Greek New Testament. For this reason, because I preach that you and the believing Jews are joint heirs, the Jews have nothing on the Gentiles today at all. am the prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles. Assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that He was entrusted to me to share with you for your benefit, and that by divine revelation the mystery was made known to me, as I have already written in brief, by referring to this when you read if you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not disclosed to mankind as it is now, been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit of God. It is this that the Gentiles are now joint heirs with the Jews, the members of the same body, joint partakers sharing in the same divine promise in Christ Jesus, through their faith, the good news of salvation. Of this gospel I was made a minister by the gift of God's grace given to me through the working of His power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, God's people, this grace, which is undeserved, was graciously given to proclaim to the Gentiles the good news of the incomprehensible riches of Christ, that spiritual wealth which no one can fully understand, and to make plain to everyone the plan of the mystery regarding to the uniting of believing Jews and the Gentiles into one body. which until now was kept hidden and secret through the ages in the mind of God who created all things." Boy, what a statement. What a statement. This is inspired Word of God we're talking here. We're going to go into the Greek, which is the way the Bible was originally written. Every translation is a translation. It's not the original. We try to explain what's in the original language, and I try to do my best in doing that. I give you the grammar and everything else, the action of the verbs, the tenses, the modes, the voices, the cases, and all of this. This language that the Bible was written in is the most perfect language I believe that's ever been written. It had eight cases, nominative, genitive, violative, locative, instrumental, dative, accusative, and evocative, and in English we got two. Subject, object, that's all. In Greek, when it says something in the Greek language, you know what it says. There's no doubt about that. There's no guessing. No guessing who's talking, no guessing who's talking to, what the subject is, the time element, all of that, who bought what, when, and why. I've got so many notes written in here. All these verses, I'll show it to you. By the way, if you want one of these in PDF form, if you're out there, just let me know and I'll have to have your email to mail it to you. But that's what it looks like. By the way, originally I wrote everything in red letters in the Greek and then I translated it in English in blue and sometimes in black and whatever for all the grammar. I wrote down the page numbers of the lexicons and some of the word studies, what they meant, the roots of them in every way. This is the church chapter of the Bible, by the way, the church chapter. And we, members of New Testament churches, we're all in the family of God if you've been born again, but each New Testament church is a singular, local, visible body of believers. You can see it. You can touch it. We're here. We have a very small church here, but we're really a church. We make up this church, and this church belongs to Christ. Paul's mission to the Gentiles. He uses many, many figures of speech here. Let's read this in Greek. This, for this reason, this cause, this grace, this grace, this gift, this unmerited favor, I, Paul, ego, nominative singular first person pronoun, Paulos. Paulos means someone small. Saul meant one asked for. That was his other name, but God gave him this name here. Paulos. By the way, it's nominative singular masculine. Paulos, ho, desmois. Ho is the nominative singular masculine definite article there, and desmois is the same thing. is a slave, one that is bound, a servant, a prisoner. It comes from Dale, that means to bind. A person that has no rights. You know, a person that is a bond servant, a slave, has no rights. You are property. Now, Slavery all over the world has been a plague to mankind from olden times until the very present time. And many of the Muslim nations are still slaves there, in many of those nations. All what we call civilized nations, the barbaric nations like Islam, they say, they still practice slavery. A slave does not have any rights for anything. They don't have a right to marry. unless they're given that permission. Maybe they don't even give them. Maybe they might have a right to procreate, but not really to live with someone. And their children are not their own either. When they have children, they're not their own children. They're slaves also. They're born in slavery. The 14th Amendment in the United States gives the slaves, after the Civil War, The children that were born to slaves were born free. And they were born citizens of the United States. Illegal aliens have used this right. When you're born in this country, you got an anchor baby there. That's not what it's all about. It meant that the slaves, when they had children, that they were free citizens. That's what it meant. Free citizens. Had nothing to do with sleeping in here and having a child and it becoming a citizen of the United States. That's not the way it worked. They had many court cases after that period of time. People come in here that were legally here and their children were born. They were not citizens. And so part of this rubbed off on all of that. That's how it all began until it became totally perverted now. The bond slaves, the servant slaves, the ones bound. No rights. Now, when we're a slave in Christ Jesus, when the Lord Jesus Christ became our slave first, didn't He? He came here basically for about 33 and a half years, and He lived as a slave for us to bring us salvation. He was the vehicle of grace. The Lord's Supper is not a vehicle of grace. Baptism is not a vehicle of grace. The blood of Jesus Christ is the vehicle of grace. That's the only vehicle of grace there is. Now, the Lord suffered. Baptism is what you do when you follow the Lord. That's how you seal your... You say, I'm saved and I'm baptized now and I want to follow the Lord. I'm going to become a voluntary slave. You die to your old self, burial and baptism. Baptism is by immersion only. That's the only kind of baptism there is in the Bible. By being dipped, you die to your old self and then you're raised anew. as a creature belonging to the Lord Jesus Christ. Belonging to the Lord. Slaves in Christ. But volunteer servants. Once you know that you have been rescued out of the flames of hell forevermore, it's easy to be a slave to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's easy. Because you realize what He did for you. We follow Him. See, we're Christians. We are a little Christ. We follow Him. As He slaved for us, we do this for Him voluntarily. The slave of Christ Jesus to Christo Esu. To Christo Esu, all of that is a genitive singular masculine. And that means we belong to Him. It's genitive case, that's the case of possession. The slaves belonging to Christ Jesus. Now look at the word Christo. 2 there is Genitive, Singular, Masculine, Definitive Article, and Christo is Genitive, Singular, Masculine. Christo means the Anointed One, HaMashiach. HaMashiach. Ha, the, Mashiach. Ha, the Messiah, the Anointed One. The Anointed One, Jesus. And then we have the word Haper here. It's a preposition for the benefit of, for the sake of, for the protection of. Of you all. That's Genitive, Plural, Second Person Pronoun, you all. And that's us. Of the nations. To ethnon. Of the nations. The nations of Gentiles, the aliens. You know, when somebody slips into this country, they're what they call an illegal alien. They don't belong here. They didn't come here correctly, rightly, legally, or anything like that. And America, except for my people, which are Native Americans, everybody is an immigrant here. But we should come here legally. You shouldn't slip in like an outlaw. Now, when we slip into Jesus Christ, we are outlaws already. We are outlaws already. It says that we were aliens. We were outlaws. Outlaws. Alienated from the grace of God. No hope. No God. Godless. And Christ came and he sent Paul to preach the gospel to us, especially us. The Adam in the Bible, you know, that's the head of all mankind, and the promises to Zeth and through Abraham, through Isaac and Jacob were all to the Jews, not the Gentiles, to the Jews. Now, as we see, we see Gentiles grafted in down through there. We see Rahab. We see these different people in the lineage of Christ. And they're grafted in by mercy, by grace always. By the way, Adam was saved by grace. Noah was saved by grace. Joel was saved by grace. Abraham was saved by grace. Moses was saved by grace. Jacob was saved by grace. All of these were saved by grace. That's it. They believed. Now, God called out Abraham. If you look at this map over here, this is where it happened right here. The language is divided, and the earth was divided. We have Abraham over there, and Ur, the Chaldees, in a very educated, highly sophisticated land. But they were godless. They had a lot of gods, but they were godless from God. So God called him out of there. He went up to Iran and stayed up there in Iran for quite a while, and then God called him out. It took him a while to get rid of everything that was holding him back. You know, his brother was one of the first people that ever died before his father did. He died before his father. God called him out. He went into the land of promise, but he never owned it, except for a burial ground. Now God gave him the deed to the land, but he never possessed it. The only thing he possessed was the cave of Mephilem. That's up there in Hebron. I've been there. It's a fabulous place. It was very scary and bullets flying all over when I was there, but it was a very To me, a sacred place, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, they're all buried there. Sarah's buried there. They're all there. You can, they're down in the cave below is where they're buried, but you go up above and up in this, it was a church at one time and then a mosque. You'll see above, you'll see these caskets above where they're buried. They all died without the promise. But they believe in the promise. We will die without ever having the total, what we might call complete, promise of our salvation. Because our salvation is not complete until, I mean we are saved forever when we are born again, but it is not a completed act until we are resurrected. God is going to resurrect us triunely, like He is triune. Body, soul, and spirit. Body, soul, and spirit. The Apostle Paul is the administrator that was put over the Gentile people. God called him out to be administrator. Now in this period of time, what we call the church age, the churches are the administrators of God's kingdom. They are the administrators of God's kingdom on this earth. Let's look at 3 in verse 2 now. That little, what we call an idiom here to begin with, ege, that says here Now, you translate this into English, it's an if, but it's not an if. Did you hear that? There are four ifs, four conditional particles in Greek. Four ifs, four different kinds of ifs. This if here is not really an if, at all. It says, since indeed. Now, the condition here is a condition determined as fulfilled. It's not an if at all. You know, you have your 2nd class, your 3rd class, your 4th class conditionals. And there are stages of completion in them, and they're all in the subjunctive mode. The 1st class conditional here is in the indicative mode. Indicative mode means something is a fact. Since indeed ye have heard you all, 2nd person plural, 1st term is indicative active. since you have heard. They've been saved. They're born again, aren't they? They're saved. Their salvation is not completely complete until they have either been martyred and the Lord resurrects them. And the resurrection takes place over here. There was a partial resurrection when Jesus rose from the dead. He showed us what it was like. But it says here in 1 Thessalonians 4, 16 and 17 that we will be all caught up The dead in Christ will be raptured first and then, and I think why that happens is that God wants His living saints to see what the resurrection looks like. Caught up. They're snatched up, caught up. And there is a resurrection too, by the way. The word rapere is in Greek, or in Latin that is. And it comes from the Greek word which means to snatch away. We got a word rapture out of it. Rapture is an animal that has claws to snatch something away. They reach down and they snatch something away. Rapture. For indeed ye heard, ye have heard. That's a completed action, ye have heard. First Iris is a punctiliar, really. You know, salvation in spirit and soul is punctiliar knife blade action. Knife blade action. The stewardship, the okonomion, ten okonomion. That's accused of singular feminine, accused of singular feminine, definite article and noun. That literally means house law. It means stewardship. Now, we got a word steward from an old English word which means stye. We down on the farm, we had a pig stye, didn't we Marilyn? We had a pig pen. And in the old English world, when they had princes and paupers, the princes would put somebody over his pens of his animals. And that's what we call a stye ward, and it came down in English as steward. So he was over the animals, he was over the horses, the cattle, whatever, or the pigs. The stewardship, the house law, of the grace, now this is the Genitive Singular Family, a definite article there, teis and caritos, Genitive Singular, of the grace belonging to God. All salvation belongs to God and all grace belongs to God. Almost everybody in the religion in the world is working his way to God. Or you're going to go to heaven because of all the good things you did. But the Bible says that our good works are as trash, or as fling, garbage, rags, in the sight of God. You're only saved by one way and it's not by works. Ephesians 2 and 8 and 2 and 10 said that. For in grace ye are having been saved through faith, and the faith didn't come out of you either. It's a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. The grace belonging to God, of the having been given, to me, the grace, taste, that's genitive singular feminine, that's like grace over here, genitive singular feminine. Having been given, first air is participle, passive, voice. Denative singular feminine. Disgrace is having been given to me. Moi, to me, dative singular, first person pronoun. Given to me. And then we have the word ace. Extension and limitation of the vowel of verbal action. That little preposition on page 119. It means The word Ace is kind of like the word Eth in Hebrew. Eth in Hebrew. Something coming after that is going to get action. The grace have been given to me unto you all. The word Ace means here you have an object. Extension or limitation of authoritative verbal action. Here comes the action. Right there. And we have Hyper above, we got Hippo above, we have Epsilon Nu N inside. Kata down, behind, and the word Ace just means incompassible. It can mean everything. Acts 2 38, for in grace, you've been saved. Ephesians 2 and 8 says. But Acts 2.38, let me go there and read that to you from the Greek. The best work matters. Acts 2.38. Here I'll show you what it does. Acts 2.38 Petros, Dei, Pros, Altus, Meta, Nesate, Cai, Baptiste, Icathos, Hymon, Epi, Ton, Otto, Jesus Christus, Ace, Iphasen, Ton, Amartion, Himon, Kai, Lepseste, Tein, hard for me to read this, Dureyon, Tu, Agio, Nematos. Peter, Moaber Peter, toward them saying, you all repent, every one of you repent, all of you repent, everybody needs to repent. And, and are also here, Kai also, Those that have repented, and this is singular, isn't it, in plural now? He didn't tell all of them to get baptized, just the ones that repented. He said, those that have repented, each one of you, upon the name of Christ Jesus, or Jesus Christ, it says, it doesn't say for the remission of sins here. That's what it says in King James, because they believed in baptism over a generation. They believed baptism was a vehicle of grace. It is not. But it says here, in the name of Jesus Christ, because Your sins have been sent away, and then you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit comes in salvation. But after you've been baptized, the Holy Spirit watches over the church, which you're part of then. You're part of that church that baptized you then. And to you is the promise. to the children of you, and all the wands, ace, macron, far away, as many as have, may call upon him, call upon the Lord, the God of us." Beautiful, beautiful verses, showing the grace of God, showing the calling of God. because of you, for you, because of you, for your sake, for the benefit of you. Paul was a caretaker, a manager of the property of the grace of God. We as preachers are in a responsibility to tell others about the grace of God. We as church members, we have a responsibility to tell others about the grace of God. Galatians, Paul writing the book of Galatians, Galatians 4 and 4 says, When the fullness of time hath come, God sent forth his Son, made him a woman, made him the law, that he might redeem those that are under the curse of the law. All of us are under the curse of the law. To reject God's Son is a hell-bent act. There's only one way of salvation, and that's to come to Jesus Christ. That's Savior. 3 in 3, in brackets here it says Hotei. Now that Hotei is not really there. But a lot of people later on wrote Hotei in there. Because it's what we call a practical substance. It's understood there. But it really isn't there. But it's understood to be there. Hotei cata apocalipsin egnos reste moi to misterio. kathos tro eg grofza in oligo. Because, according to the Revelation, this is where the book of Revelation comes from, it's apokalipsa, tukresu esu. The unveiling, the revelation, the uncovering, that's accusative, singular, feminine, And then we have the word kata, page 213, an analytical lexicon, by the way. The unveiling of the revelation. And then we have the agnol seriste, third person singular, first person singular, indignant, passive voice, was made known, was made known to the, we got a word knowledge out of this. The word knowledge comes right out of Greek. It's agnosko, or gnosko, in Greek, and we have the word knowledge, and it starts with a K. K-N and it's kind of like that in Greek. We have a G-N. Was made known to me, dative, singular, second person, pronoun, or first person, pronoun, that is, the mysterion. The mystery. Let's talk about a mysterion. We have a lot of people out there that are magicians, don't we? You got up there and you see Somebody do something, they'll make somebody levitate in the air and they'll pass things underneath them. How in the world did they do it? It's a secret how they did it. I watched a movie here, Marilyn and I did, about a magician. And a magician made all kinds of miraculous things. He made people appear and did all kinds of stuff. And this was way back when. He was in love with this woman, and he had made her a little trinket, this little heart-shaped wooden heart, put around her neck with a little pendant. And both of them kept these pendants all their lives. And then she was going to marry this here emperor, prince, except he wasn't a good guy. Well, they saw each other, and they fell in love again. And they finally got to be married. They ran off together. But all the things that he did was secrets, mysteries, mysteries. You see people making things appear and disappear. They make the Eiffel Tower disappear, the Empire State Building disappear, all these types of things. These are secrets how they do this. It's an illusion. Illusionist. But you know what? Salvation is not an illusion. It's real. This bestiary here, the mystery is only to the uninitiated. In different secret societies they have secrets. The Masonic Lodge, they have a lot of secrets. They do things in secret. They have secret handshakes and all this kind of stuff. It's a mystery. It's only a mystery or a secret to the uninitiated. And the secret of the grace of God is only a secret to those that are not initiated, having made known to me the secret mystery. Just as, Kathos, et cum sulcata in hos, just as, page 314, by the way, in Thayer's, I wrote beforehand to you, first person singular, first pairs, indicative, active, I wrote beforehand. Now that word here, it comes from grapho. We get a word graph out of that. And this word pro in there, that means before, prose. Before writing. I wrote to you beforehand in preposition, page 137, in oligo. Oligo means a brief space. It is a brief space. He wrote a brief letter to them before. This letter could have been lost, but it's a brief letter that he says. The mystery of the Jews and the Gentiles becoming one in Christ was something that the Jews did not want to understand. The first obstacle to the Nord churches were the Jewish people themselves. The obstacle to the kingdom of God when Christ came, he was the absolute heir to the kingdom of God. The king was heir. This is Him, the King of God. And Jesus gave many parables about this, how that the landowner put out sharecroppers there to take care of it. And then he sent his servants, and they went to him, and they killed the servants and beat them, and all this kind of stuff, and abused them. And he said, well, I'll send my son, my only son, and surely they will respect him. And they murdered him. They said, let's murder him and take his inheritance. They did, but it wasn't theirs to take. They lost it all. Remember, when Jesus formed Pontius Pilate, Pontius Pilate said, shall I give you this criminal man that has killed some of your people, that has raped your wives and your daughters, and has stolen your property, will I give you Barabbas, this criminal, this Saqqari, this Zelot, or shall I give you Jesus? The innocent one. They said, give us Barabbas. What shall I do with Jesus? He said, crucify him, crucify him, crucify him. Shall I crucify your king? And then when he wrote in his own hand, and in Greek, and in Hebrew, and in Latin, when he wrote with his own hand on that cross, Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews. They said, say that he said he was King of the Jews. He said, what I have written, I have written. He knew that he was the King of the Jews. They did too. But they murdered him because they didn't want to turn loose the power. They didn't want to turn loose the power and the authority. And they sure weren't going to share it with the Son of God. Even though he was the one that came to die for them and to give them the real kingdom of God. We will see that kingdom of God over here in the millennium. Ezekiel 36, 25-38. They will have it. Because of the Abrahamic promise and the Davidic promise, Israel will be back in the land and they will rule for 1,000 years upon this earth. Epictetus Geis. El haaretz. Pros ha deneste agno anagenoscantes noese Tein sinasin mu anto misterio tu chrisu. 3 in verse 4, prose. Preface 18, page 346. Prose. To which ye are able. Your cause to be able. To which your cause to be able to up-know. That's what it says, up-know. Maryland, you're looking at a book, aren't you? Sharon, you're looking at a book. All of us, and in the book we have letters, and we can up-know those letters because we know how to read it. That's what you call anagnosco, up-know. Reading is up-knowing. You're able, you're called to be able to read. Nomine plural masculine, present participle active. You are up-knowing, you're called to reading. To realize, no eisei, That comes to know you, or noose. That's 1st Aries infinitive active, to realize, to know, to grasp with your mind, the, tein, senesin, that word there, it means to, able to put together, sen and eso, to get hold, right in the middle of it. You can catch something by the tail, you can catch something by the head, but if you catch Him in the middle, you're going to hold Him. To understand Him, to gather together of me, with me, Gentile singular, first person pronoun, in preposition, page 137, in the mystery, the secret mystery of Christ. The mystery belonging to Christ. The mystery, what is it? That God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn it, because the world was already condemned. But it might have life, though we believe. But it says that some live in darkness and they want to stay in darkness. Because they're afraid of the light, they don't want to see the light. And the light was the Son of God. Grab a hold of in the middle. I remember something a long time ago. You know, I've been in the woods a lot of my life, out in the wilds. And I stayed in the wilds a lot. And one time I took a friend of mine out there, Gary Harwell. We were lifelong friends from the time we were in diapers together. We went up in the mountains, up on Glenville, up Rattlesnake Grade. And we were down there basically on Maven Ranch, right there by the cattle guard. The creek was running down through there. And a deer ran out there. It was a little spike deer. He was a little buck deer. I said, Gary, I'm going to go jump out, and I'm going to catch that deer. And I had a dog with me, my dog, Brandy, a golden retriever. And that deer was running out in the air, and I said, Brandy, bring him back. He got up there and brought that deer back. I grabbed ahold of that deer. I grabbed him by the head and Gary grabbed him by the feet. And he kicked loose and got loose from us. And then we grabbed him again and I took a clothesline rope and tied him up and threw him on the floorboard of the pickup. And we were on down the road a little like that. I said, what are we going to do with this deer? We caught it. Isn't this neat? Wasn't this neat? We caught this deer, a live deer by hand. And that's not easy to do. I said, let's take him and turn him loose, take him back up there and turn him loose. We took him back up there and turned him loose. Patted him on the head and said, get away, boy. We watched him for years. Because you really couldn't hunt in that area that was a non-hunting area. It's private property. And we watched him be a forked horn, and a three-point, and a four-point, and all that for years. He hung around that one place there all that time. And I looked at him as I come along, and I said, that's the one I caught in the middle. That's what it says right here. I caught him in the middle. And we are today, we can catch and know what the grace of God is. The mystery of Christ. The mystery of Christ that God sent his son into the world in the fullness of time. God sent forth his son, made of a woman. He's related to us, made under the law, that he might redeem us from the curse of the law. The mystery of Christ. A.T. Robertson said one time, if a preacher has no insight into the cry, into the grace of God, he has no call to preach. If you can't preach Christ, there's no reason to be preaching. Preach Christ. I remember one time going to CMBI down there, California Missionary Baptist Institute in Belfire, California. Brother Hoyt Chastain, Dr. Chastain, was a was a wonderful teacher, preacher. And I, by the way, if you want to see him preaching a set of messages, debating with the Church of Christ, a man, it's on the website, both of them, Church of Christ, Hoyt Chastain debating the Church of Christ. But he told the preachers there in that assembly, he said, you know, how do you build churches? How do you build churches? You preach, you preach, you preach Jesus Christ, you preach and you preach and you preach and people come. You preach that Jesus Christ and Him crucified and His saving grace and that builds salvation for people first of all and then it builds churches. The mystery of Christ. The Christian possesses a knowledge of that mystery. The world does not. Christians possess the knowledge of that mystery. The world does not. They look upon it as foolishness. God's grace is not foolishness. It's God's way of saving you and adding you into His kingdom forevermore. Our Father, we send this message out for your honor and glory. I hope I have glorified you in it. Please forgive me where I failed you. Use your word wherever it goes in the world. In Jesus name I pray.