This is part two of last week’s episode from the sermon “Lack of Knowledge” in Pastor Joe McIntyre’s 16-part Finished Work of Christ audio series.

We don’t so much need more knowledge as we need a deeper and fuller knowledge and understanding of what we’ve heard for years, but has not yet impacted our lifestyle.

Increased revelation brings divine wisdom to know how to apply the Truth to our lives practically. But how much revelation can we as believers expect and contend for before Jesus returns? According to the Bible, quite a lot.

But there is cause for confusion. For example, some Bible commentators interpret passages like 1 Peter 1:13 (“Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ,” NKJV) to refer to a future act of divine favor when Christ returns, while Pastor Joe unveils interpretations exhorting believers to trust in the grace of God being revealed progressively, day by day, here and now.

Let’s set our focus on looking to God for the revelation of His Son to be increased in us and to us. Continual revelation is God’s means to build the church. The Holy Spirit is the mechanism. Listen to this episode here.

Additional Resources

Free PDF Outline

The Finished Work of Christ – Full Series Audio

The Finished Work of Christ – Book

Robert Mounts’ Living Hope book

Full Transcript

Alright, Peter learned to set his his hope, on the grace that was being brought to him in the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Now, on the backside of your notes, I have that verse first Peter 1:13. In most of our translations, says, “Therefore, having girded up the loins of your mind, being sober, set your hope fully under grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Now, what most commentators do, is they acknowledge that the verb is not a future, “will be brought to you”, but is a present “is being brought to you.” But because they’re fixated on the idea that the revelation of Jesus Christ can only mean the second coming, they actually change the tense of the Greek verb to fit their understanding of the word there.

I’ve known for a long time, I’ve quoted this from Young’s Literal Translation, which I have here, “wherefore having girded up the loins of your mind, being sober, hope perfectly upon the grace that’s being brought to you in the Revelation of Jesus Christ.” I also have it here from Greek scholar Lenski, “Wherefore having girded up the loins of your mind as being sober, set your hope completely on the grace being brought to you in connection with Jesus Christ’s Revelation.” Now, I have a little comment from Robert Mounts here from his commentary on First and Second Peter, and he says, “Most commentators understand this as a gracious act of divine favor given when Christ returns, and so they change the verb tense to fit that understanding. Others call the attention to the present participle in the phrase grace that is being brought to you and interpret the exhortation to mean that believers are to trust without reserve in the grace of God that is now being revealed day by day. There exists a progressive revelation of God’s grace to all who live in fellowship with him.”

Well, I think Peter is telling us that he learned that Christ is unveiled to us in a progressive manner, and that we should set our focus on looking to God for the revelation of His Son to be increased in us and to us. And it was interesting because I had looked up that verse in a couple of commentaries before, but I felt impressed that there was at least one commentary that would recognize the inadequacy of translating this as a future when it’s supposed to be a present and progressive unveiling of Christ. And I found this in one of my one of my commentaries that I found this quote.

But here’s the thing, “gird up the loins of your mind”, that means get focused, and be sober, don’t be distracted by all the distractions of life, and hope perfectly, or set your hope completely on the grace that’s being brought to you in the Revelation of Jesus Christ. I don’t think God’s ever going to be offended if you say, “Father, I want you to reveal your son to me in a greater measure. I want to know him more intimately. I want to know His character more. I want to understand His finished work more.” Father’s never going to be offended at that, because that’s what builds his church, men and women who are delivered from the compromise of this present age, and they’re filled with the knowledge of Christ. And that’s what we’re really after.

All right, so our third point is that the Holy Spirit brings revelation. And we as a church, (most of you who regularly attend know this, but we have some folks with us that aren’t here on Sunday mornings) we’ve called our church to pray the two prayers in Ephesians, and the prayer in Colossians, for our church. So those of you who have been part of that, will recognize that this prayer in Ephesians, chapter one, verse 15, “Wherefore after we heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.”

So here’s Ephesus, this church that’s birthed in miracles. You remember that Paul came down to Ephesus in Acts 19, and he found certain disciples there. And he said, “Have you received the Holy Spirit?” And they said, “We didn’t even know there was a Holy Spirit.” And he said, “Well, what were you baptized into?” And they said, “Well in John’s baptism.” So he preached Christ to them, they were baptized in water, and then they were filled with the Holy Spirit. And it says they spoke in tongues and prophesied. So the church, of course, was birthed in this supernatural manifestation of the Spirit.

And then a few verses later, in the 11th verse, it says, And God worked special miracles by the hand of Paul, there in Ephesus. And you remember that at Ephesus, there was a group of Jewish exorcists who saw Paul casting out demons by the name of Jesus. And they tried to cast out the demons in the name of the Jesus that Paul preached, and the demon beat them up and they ran out naked and wounded. Well, it says that great fear fell on the city as a result of that. So this was not done in a corner. This was done publicly. And this is where they took the the garments from the Apostle Paul and and miracles were done.

And so this was not a church unfamiliar with the supernatural. This was a powerful church. And and yet, Paul says, as he labors for them in prayer, what he prays for them, he doesn’t pray for revival. He doesn’t pray, even for Christian maturity. He prays for a greater revelation of God, His heart toward his people, and his work in His son. That they would know the hope to which they’re called, the riches of the glory of God’s inheritance in them, and the exceeding greatness of His power in them as believers. So he prays for revelation for them. And that’s how he believes God is going to be most effective in maturing them is by additional revelation.

Now, if I were to ask you, what was the carnal church? What would you say? Not a very difficult question. It’s the one where he said, “I could not write to you as unto spiritual but as unto carnal. Corinthians. And so in Corinthians chapter two. First Corinthians chapter two verse six, and this is really a section of the of the Scriptures worth chewing on, because it’s so dramatic in what it tells us about God’s intention for us.

Now this is the apostle Paul, a man whose revelation…if you think about it, it’s Paul’s revelation of Jesus. Oh, let me just express this. All of the 12 minus Judas plus Matthias walked with Jesus in His earthly ministry. Therefore there would be a tendency for natural human beings to think “Well, these men walked with Jesus, and I could never be like them, because I never walked with Jesus in the flesh.” You see, you can disqualify yourself. In fact, we do it today. Many in the church would say, “Well, it’s so great to walk with Jesus in His earth walk, wouldn’t that be great?” But the interesting thing is, He said, “It’s better for you if I go away, because if I go away, the Holy Spirit will come, and he’ll dwell in you.” And you see, they didn’t have the Holy Spirit in them. They had the anointing that would come upon them as they walk with Jesus, but they didn’t have the indwelling Holy Spirit. They weren’t a new creation.

And so Jesus said it would be better, yet we in our unrenewed minds think wouldn’t it be great to have walked then? It would have been much easier to believe we think. Yet what did Jesus constantly rebuke His disciples for? Unbelief. You see, it wasn’t advantageous. But people could make that claim, except for the apostles, who were what we would call post resurrection apostles. And that’s a depth, that’s a fairly large company of people, just the ones we know about in Scripture. That would be Paul, Barnabas, Silas, Timothy, Titus, Apollos. Those are all post resurrection apostles who never walked with Jesus in His earth walk. And they demonstrated the kingdom with power. And the apostle Paul, I think, an aspect that we can consider in this is God chose Paul precisely because he never walked with Jesus in the earth.

So we could look at Paul and say, “Here’s a man who who knew Jesus in a deeper reality than most of the apostles who walked with Christ in the earth, and had a greater unfolding and revelation of what Christ did at the Cross than the other disciples, and he did it by revelation of the spirit, rather than by sight.” Do you know that the disciples after Jesus rose from the dead and some of the disciples saw him…when they reported it, and when the women saw Him and went and reported it to the disciples, they didn’t even believe them. They thought it was idle talk, they didn’t even believe the report.

Now think about this, when you report that God raised Jesus from the dead, what spirit is activated? Holy Spirit, right? That’s the testimony, He confirms that God raised Jesus from the dead. Well, when these women reported that God raised Jesus from the dead to the disciples, wasn’t the Holy Spirit in that report? And yet, their hearts are so hardened, and their grief is so heavy, they can’t receive the report and realize that this is the truth that was destined to turn the world upside down.

I only say that to say, we are far more privileged than we sometimes understand. The Holy Spirit lives in us, you see. And one of the things I think happens when we begin to pray these prayers for revelation is that we begin to realize who’s living in us, and that he has been given to us (as we’ll read here in just a moment) to show us the things freely given to us by God. In verse six of First Corinthians two, Paul writes, “However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.”

Now, do you remember last week when I distinguished between how as a New Covenant believer we’re partaking of the age to come? Well, know here Paul says that the wisdom that God is giving us is not the wisdom of this age. You see, it’s the kingdom wisdom. It’s the Age of the Kingdom, and the wisdom of that kingdom that we are now receiving in this life. And he says, “not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, which are coming to nothing.”

Something that we probably need to hear preached more is the inevitable doom and destruction of the powers of darkness. Paul saw them as coming to nothing in the process of being overthrown completely. Christ in His resurrection overthrew them, but now the church is to rise up in His authority, and overthrow them as well. So he says, “Which none of the rulers of this age knew, the hidden wisdom, which,” oh, excuse me, let me read verse seven first, “but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages, for our glory.” Now, that’s one of those verses where we should stop and say, “Selah”.

God has ordained wisdom before the ages for us, to result in our glory. In other words, our participation in His glory. And “which none of the rulers of this age knew for had they known, they never would have, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” You know, it’s an interesting thing to think about how Satan and the kingdom of darkness must have felt as they were being successful, to have Christ crucified. And then when he’s on the cross, I’m sure they didn’t understand what was happening, but when the father forsook Him, and He cried out, My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me? I mean, they must have been filled with glee. They must have been so excited. And then when His spirit left his body and they took him to Hades, they must have thought this is the greatest day in the universe for the kingdom of darkness. But three days later, something awfully traumatic happened.

Romans chapter six, verse four says, that “we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” So there He is, and He says in Psalm 16, “You will not leave my soul in Hades.” And the glory of the Father invades Hades, destroys the yoke of our sin that Jesus had born there, drove it into the darkness, and brought Him forth and raised Him up, and utterly overthrew Satan and all his kingdom forever. And I guess, if they had known, they never would have crucified the Lord of Glory.

But it was a mystery hidden in God. “But as it is written, eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” But now notice the next verse, “But God has revealed them to us by His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him, even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.” Now, here’s the punch line. “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit Who is from God, that we might know, the things that have been freely given to us by God.”

Now, I want you to think with me about this. All of us can read our Bibles and know the story and the facts. But only the Holy Spirit can really teach us the realities of these things in such a way that it reshapes our inner consciousness, and forms Christ in us. And of course, you ask any believer what the desire of their heart would be, would be the fullness of Christ to be formed in that. Well, Paul says, The Spirit of Truth is the only one who can do this. And that’s His assignment.

Now, I’m a Pentecostal, charismatic believer, I speak in tongues, and I like to speak in tongues. I do it every day. I like to operate in the gifts of the Spirit. But the Holy Spirit’s primary ministry is not to anoint us for service. It’s to reveal the Son of God in us, and to form Him in us, so that both in character and in ministry we’re like Jesus. You know, it’s a tragic thing, when well known charismatic leaders have moral failures, and thousands of people are stumbled by their failures. But it’s because to a certain degree, we’re more enamored of the manifestations of the Spirit than we are the character of Christ. And we really need a healthy balance in the two.

I have two…I’ve probably tons of spiritual heroes…but two men that have greatly influenced my life and have shaped to a large degree, my understanding of the things of God are E.W. Kenyon, and John G Lake. Well, both of these men were men of the Word. But Lake, if you read Lake, he quotes a scripture and tells five stories. If you read Kenyon, he quotes five verses and makes one observation. It’s heavy Word, and with Lake it’s heavy anointing and spirit. Both of them love the Word. Both of them had profound healing ministries. But what Smith Wigglesworth prophesied years before the charismatic movement was that there would come a move of the Spirit that would be powerful. And then there would come a move of the Word that would be powerful. But then there would come a movement that combined Word and Spirit, and that would usher in the coming of the Lord. Now I’m highly paraphrasing what he said, but that’s the essence of it.

Well, we want our revelation…see, you can get…see one of the criticisms that the evangelical church has made of the charismatic church is that if their gifts were true…well, let me put it this way, they say that if God were giving the same gifts today we’d get them because our character is better than the Charismatics character. Now Wimber pointed out the mistake being an evangelical himself, he pointed out the mistake of that reasoning. It assumes that gifts are a reward for character instead of a reward for faith. A baby believer who hears about the gifts can believe God and begin to operate in them. It isn’t a question of character. And sometimes people can take the gifts and build a ministry on that,And because they experience a certain amount of success based on the gifts, they don’t bother to deal with their character, or they ignore what the Spirit of God’s trying to tell them about character. Because as someone is said, what you build with your gifts you can destroy with your character.

And what we want to do is be Christ-like in character, but also Christ-like in anointing for ministry. We want the balance between the two, spirit and truth. Another popular saying is if you have all words, you dry up, if you have all spirit, you blow up. So we want both Word and Spirit working together. We want the revelation of the Word, and we want the Word made flesh in us. We want the anointing on our lives, so the gifts of the Spirit flow. We want that healthy, godly balance between the two.

Some of you may have seen the, the Jesus movie, I think it’s the Gospel of Matthew, I think it’s what it’s called. Andit’s one of the most refreshing portraits of Jesus in any of the Jesus movies I’ve ever seen. Because he’s not weird and strange and odd. He’s playful. And laughs. And on the Sermon on the Mount, he’s bringing this, he’s bringing this heavy teaching, and he’s picking somebody’s water bottle up and pouring water on some of the kids and they’re laughing, and it’s just, they’re having this fun time. And I’m saying to myself, that’s got to be more like Jesus than any other Jesus movie I’ve ever seen. Not religious and weird, but full of life and truth, and moving in the power of God.

I was talking with someone recently, who was…basically they needed to take some time off and relax. And I was telling them about a message I once heard by a famous preacher who pastored a huge church. And he thought he was having a nervous breakdown, and he couldn’t figure out why. He was a very meticulous, kind of a man. He exercised daily, watched his diet, he had a men’s accountability group, his marriage was healthy, His relationship with his kids was good, his Church was doing amazing, and he felt like he was having a nervous breakdown. And he couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

So he went away for a few days, and his elders said, take all these books on the deeper life and read them and pray and seek God. And so he did that for a couple of days. And he he’d wake up in the morning saying, “Well, do I feel any better?” And he’d say, “No, I don’t feel any better.” Well, the guy that lent him the cabin to get away was an unbeliever friend of his from before his conversion. And he showed up, I think, on the third day, and he said, “You feelin’ any better? And he said, “Well, not really.” He said, “Well Come with me.” And so they went out and they looked at a truck. And they went out and did some business with him. And he hung out with him, had lunch with him, brought him back late that evening after doing totally unspiritual stuff all day. And he went to bed, just tired. He didn’t pray, just went to bed. Well, the next day he got up and he said, “Well, do I feel any better?” And he said, “I do feel a little better.”

Well, the guy shows up again the second day, and he says, “Come with me.” And he went out and they looked at a boat and they looked and they played some golf and they did a whole bunch of totally carnal stuff. And he got back that night, went to bed, woke up the next morning said, you know, “I feel a lot better.” And that the message was called Gifts, Gauges and Games. And he said, part of the reason that he was about to have a nervous breakdown was he was working in an area in that church outside of his giftedness that was wearing him out. And then he didn’t realize that he had a gauge called his emotional gauge. And he said when people draw on us in ministry or in relationships, they can draw on us so much that they they wear down our emotional gauge, and it isn’t replenished by spiritual activities. And he said he had to learn that to replenish this emotional gauge, he had to play games. He had to do stuff that wasn’t spiritual that he enjoyed, and that would bring healing to that part of his being. So now every year he takes a couple of weeks and found out he liked to go sailing and he would go sailing a couple of weeks a year. Wouldn’t do anything spiritual. Probably didn’t even read his Bible. Can you believe that? What a pagan? No, but he got away and he realized…he found out he wasn’t just a spirit. Now I teach and believe we’re primarily a spiritual being. But we’re a spiritual being that’s eternally destined to live in a body. And the body part of us is still important in this life. And you got to take care of it. And and it needs to play to be happy. And so does your soul life. Anyway, I don’t know how I got on that. It’s part of it’s part of the revelation that we need for healthy Christianity. Amen.