Phenomenal experience of rest

“There’s a fascinating little prologue in Leviticus 12 that I want you to think about. Ephesians 1:9-11 says, ‘Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself:
[10] That in the dispensation of the fulness 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:
[11] In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.’

“There again is the inheritance issue. God has this plan and purpose He’s working out in His universe and you and I are going to have an inheritance. What is that inheritance? Verse 19-21 says it’s an inheritance in the government of the heavenly places up there.

“What’s He going to do? It’s going to be His inheritance (verse18). He’s going to inherit the heavenly places and you and I are going to inherit it in Him. So we get the inheritance in Christ when He gets His heavenly inheritance, we share in that. He’s admired in all them that believe; we’re glorified in Him and He’s glorified in us.

“That happens ‘in the dispensation of the fulness of times’ when He gathers together all things in heaven and earth. Now time is a reference to the functioning of creation. There’s a great deal of terminology that, as you think it through, it kind of gets a little confusing.

“I’ve often talked about time and eternity, and that’s a term you hear constantly. Sometimes we talk about how Jesus Christ left eternity and stepped into time. What you mean by that is He stepped out of the domain where God is, the dimension where He is, into creation. But the reality is there is time where God is when He’s just God.

“Time is the measure that you give to sequential events. If you have no time it would be like . . . time is really where there’s a sense in which it always exists or you can’t have any phenomenon of life.

“Well, the godhead have an eternity (a constant, never-ending existence) where there are things happening, so there’s a technical sense in which you would say, ‘It isn’t true to say there’s no time in heaven or eternity because how do you measure whatever you measure in the nanoseconds of eternity?’ You’re not trying to deny there’s a sequence of events.

“But when you start talking about creation, time takes on the dimension of events in creation and the difference between time and eternity is eternity has no beginning and no ending; it’s infinite. Time in creation, while it may not have an ending, it certainly had a beginning; a point at which, in the beginning, before which there weren’t any of whatever was after the beginning began.

“Philosophers just get it all wound up because, you know, Plato had ideas about this and reality and . . . there’s St. Augustine . . . and pretty soon you go, ‘Oh, man, I think I’ll just get a Dr. Pepper and eat a Moon Pie and go to bed!’

“ln Scripture time is associated with creation. The fullness is associated with bringing it to its ultimate conclusion. What is the phenomenal experience of creation ultimately for? Ultimately, why did God create a universe in which people would experience that universe? What’s the ultimate purpose of time?

“Isaiah is very clear. Psalms is very clear. Proverbs is very clear. God created the universe to have a place for Him to manifest Himself and dwell among a creation who would enter into His life; think like He thought and live for one another spontaneously like He lives and like the members of the godhead live for one another (in which He could share the glory of His life; experience it, rejoice in it, and glory in it).

“Well, that’s what happens out there when Christ becomes ‘the head of all things.’ We now know that the way He’s going to do that, the mystery of it, is He had the plan to do it in the heavens—the whole of creation and not just the earth.

“It’s the ‘dispensation of the fulness of time.’ So there’s a time element associated with all of this. In my mind I say, ‘I wonder what that time element is? How long is that supposed to be?’

“And you hear people say, ‘Well, He created the heaven and the earth in seven days.’ So why did He create it in seven days? Well, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day.

“The seventh day of creation is the day of rest in which He enjoys His rest; that is He worked for six days to accomplish this and the Sabbath day is the day in which the Lord enjoys His dwelling in His creation. When does He do that? He does that in the Millennium.

“So preachers have pointed out for millenniums that there’s six days of labor and then there’s that seventh day of rest and Hebrews 3 and 4 use the Sabbath in four very unique ways. One is the weekly Sabbath. One is the Sabbath in Canaan, which is described as ‘rest’ back in Psalms.

“One is the resting in the salvation that the Hebrews had, and one is using it to refer to the kingdom. Even Hebrews 4 picks up on the terminology that the kingdom, that 7,000th year, is that day of rest.

“Okay, now we see there are these 7,000 years of history in time. The seventh one will be that millennial kingdom and so you get all the people counting from the year 2,000 but that’s all nonsense because you got no idea where you are in the calendar! But in Scripture you see these patterns.

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“There’s a principle when you study prophecy, especially studying the Old Testament, one of the most important ways to describe dispensational Bible study to people is to point out the issue of progressive revelation.

“When you study dispensationalism, you’re studying a time line. As the time line goes on, people know more than they did before.

“The covenant Calvinist view is, for example, that all men in time past looked forward in faith to the Cross of Christ and they knew everything about the Crosswork that you and I know. They say Abel and Moses understood Jesus was going to die on the Cross for him. And you say, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not what the New Testament tells you! The 12 Apostles didn’t even know He was going to die! Well, if they didn’t know, how come these birds back yonder, 4,000 years before, knew it?! Somebody forget in the meantime?’

“In I Peter I, it says that the angels looked, when they made these prophecies like Isaiah 53, and it says they wrote it down and said, ‘Lord, what is that talking about?!’ and they didn’t know! ‘What’s He mean?!’ So you know they weren’t looking forward with an understanding of what now we look back and understand.

“You see, the idea that everybody’s saved exactly the same way--by looking forward or backward in faith to the same thing, believing Jesus is going to die on the Cross--is a denial of progressive revelation.

“Progressive revelation says there’s things back there they didn’t know that now we do know. The basis of dispensational truth is understanding the differences between that. Well, when you understand that principle, then the idea of typology becomes a fascinating subject to you.

“What happens with typology is you have things happen that you get over here, and you begin to understand something, and you’re able to look back at history back here and see how God did things, said things and taught things that at the time, you didn’t know what they meant but now you do know what they mean and can look back and see, ‘Oh, look! There’s a picture of this reality PRE-WRITTEN in the text!’

“In modern terminology we talk about prototypes. It’s a pre-picture of the reality that comes over here. A prototype demonstrates to you that whoever is writing this and organizing this, knows the future so when the reality comes, and it tells you what it is, He can say, ‘See, I had this planned all along. Look how I did that and look how I did this.’

“When you begin to think about it that way, you begin to look back into places like the book of Leviticus and the ceremonies that are performed. Colossians 2 says these things back here are a shadow of things to come.

“These things aren’t in the Bible just to fill up space. So there’s a fascinating one here in Leviticus 12 that is a prototype of a time schedule . . .”

(Editor’s note: To be continued tomorrow . . .)