Music. Never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. Music. That's from 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 8 through 10. This is the Essential Bible Studies Podcast. I'm Jay Mayock. And my name is Tim Young. And we're going to talk today about the ages of the Spirit. The ages of the Spirit, that's right.
The idea behind this is that the Spirit of God has worked all the way through history, but in specific times, the Spirit of God and the work, the activity of the Spirit comes across in very miraculous ways at times in the biblical record. There's an apostle who speaks about this in Hebrews chapter 6 and describes what all of this was about at that particular time. Because you'll remember that when the Lord Jesus Christ came and sent the apostles. There were a lot of miracles that took place.
And sometimes we can think things are so different today. And in many ways, they were different back then. I guess that's the question because there's a lot of people who would say that those gifts, those same things are still available today. There's still people who say they're prophets, people who say they speak in tongues, people who say they can do miracles. And we have to kind of look at them and say, well, is that right?
Because the Bible also tells us there's false prophets that will go out, right? There's false signs and wonders that will take place. So, is it something for us to expect during our day and age? And I think we have to look to the Bible to give us answers and see those examples, kind of look at the bigger picture, right? Yes. And I think a real powerful passage is this one in Hebrews chapter six that helps describe for us the work of the spirit in the first century.
And if we read carefully, we can see that there are a number of different expressions that are given here that describe how it was that the spirit was working in the first century. So in verse four, it says that those who have been enlightened have tasted of the heavenly gift. And that they have shared in the Holy Spirit. And we see that. That's exactly what happened in the first century with the believers when they received the Holy Spirit. And it says that they have tasted
the goodness of the word of God and the powers. This is my favorite one. And it ties into the podcast really well. The ages of the spirit. It describes the spirit in the first century as the powers of the age to come. That's a future age. That's kingdom stuff. That's the kingdom of God when Jesus Christ returned. Which they had a taste of in the first century. So not the full meal. Not the full meal.
It was just a taste. Just a taste. Okay. So all four of these things you read through here are equal. He's saying the same thing in different words. Yes. Heavenly gift. They're sharing in the Holy Spirit, tasting the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come. Yeah. That was the work of the spirit in the first century. Right. Right. So, if it's something that's going to come, these powers that are going to come, what we're seeing that happens in the first century is the taste.
When we're talking about these miraculous gifts, we're talking about being able to prophesy of future things and be able to predict the future through the power of God. We're talking about the ability to heal people, miraculous gifts in that sense. We're talking about the ability to speak in tongues. And the very first time that happened in the New Testament was in Acts chapter 2. So, that's a good chapter to read. We're not going to read the whole thing, but just understand that this just came.
It wasn't something that was normal. It came at this time. And the question we're asking is, was it to be expected from the first century to continue this way all the way up to our time period? Or was it just for that time, for the apostles' time? It's a huge question because many Christians today will say that unless you have all of the witness of the miracles that you have described, unless you have those things, you don't really have the true gospel.
Right. Right. In some ways, they say you're not saved. That's right. You don't have that. So it's really important for our understanding to get this right. So I didn't want to read all of Acts chapter 2. What I really wanted to focus in on is when the Holy Spirit rushes in and they start speaking in tongues and all these people from these foreign countries start hearing them in their own languages. Right.
It means that speaking in tongues is the ability to speak a foreign language, like instantaneously, and people could comprehend it. That's pretty miraculous. I have a really hard time. I only know English, so. I took three years of Spanish, and I'm not any better for it today. But what he does is he says, this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. And he quotes from an Old Testament prophet to say, this was prophesied long ago. And he does this in Acts chapter 2 in verses 17 through 21.
There's actually five verses here, but I'm going to read the first part of it. It says, In the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. So it's this very aspect that he's going to pour out of his spirit, God says, in the last days. Now, this is the last days of Israel at that time, I believe.
Absolutely. So this is an age. That's exactly right. The end of that age. And this pouring out of the spirit, you might think of pouring out of a cup, which would be very biblical. But we also talk about when it's raining outside that it's pouring. And I think that's what Joel has in mind. Because when you go back to Joel, and I recommend this anytime you run across an Old Testament as it is written, you want to go back to that Old Testament passage and just look in the context.
It blossoms out and becomes very interesting. We've seen that in the podcast time and time again. And this is no exception. When you go back to where that's quoted from and start reading into it, in verse 23, we're keying in on this word poured. It's used here. Now, Peter didn't quote this, but it's in the context and it applies. It says, Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given the early rain for your vindication.
He has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the latter rain as before. So there's two rains. You have to understand a little bit about rain as it happens in the land of Israel. This is where like a Bible dictionary or encyclopedia becomes helpful. You can look up the word rain, and they actually had two periods of rain that were very essential for their harvest.
So the early rain that he's talking about here started in October, time frame around there, when they were just beginning to plant. And it was important for that rain to rain down on the dry ground that had been all summer, and so that they could break up their fallow ground and plant seed. And it could take root. And then the rains would taper off through the winter months. And then there would be another rain period in the springtime at the end of harvest called the latter rain.
And that was an even more important rain because it's bringing in the harvest, the final harvest of the wheat grain. So you can read all about that. It's very interesting. He's talking about that kind of blessing here. But as you read on and you get into that section that Peter quotes, you realize he's not just talking about physical rain. He's talking about something spiritual. He says, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.
And so there's two reigns. That's interesting, isn't it? So he says the early reign, and this is the ESV translation is very interesting. It says the early reign is for your vindication. It is for the witness. Now, in the first part, it's the witness that God is good.
Yes. That he provides that. But it's interesting in terms of the Acts of the Apostles, it was for them to be a witness that the miracles that they did, that they were of God, and that they should listen to the word that the apostles were speaking. So that was the early reign that the prophet Joel is talking about. But he also says there's going to be a latter reign, and that's the age to come. That's good. That's the reign to come. Exactly.
Right? It's exactly what we just read in Hebrews, isn't it? Yeah. You've got a taste of the powers of the age to come. The taste, the early reign, the age to come, the latter reign in the kingdom, in the age to come. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know what, you're just saying that, and I'm thinking about the context of Hebrews 6, and it goes on to talk about plants and planting and whether we're going to be bringing fruit to God or whether we're going to be thorns and thistles.
It's perfect. It's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. So, we have then these time periods, these ages in the Bible where we just get these, explosions of the power of God, where the miracles of God go off the charts, right? Yes. Yep. One of the most significant ones, if you go through the history of the Old Testament. You just pick up one of the most significant from the national sense has got to be the birth of the nation. It's the children of Israel coming up out of Egypt. The book of Exodus.
Oh, in the book of Exodus. I mean, there is a wonderful example of what we would call the visible hand of God, where God reveals his arm and his strength is seen in the presence of all nations around, including Israel. I mean, like the Exodus, you think about the 10 plagues, right? Yeah. And all the sustaining of the children of Israel through the wilderness. Yeah. The defeat of the Egyptians and Pharaoh at the Red Sea.
Yeah. Like these were events that were known by not only Israel, not only experienced by the Egyptians, but also known by the nations around them. Yes, yeah. So, just as the spirit gifts were a witness for the actual teaching and the authenticity, a kind of vindicating of the word of God that was spoken by the apostles and by the men and women who were prophesying at that time, so it was in the Exodus as well. Like, this was God witnessing himself, and he was speaking through prophets as well.
Actually, it was right at the Red Sea where Pharaoh is prophesying. He's trapped the children of Israel, and they don't know where to go. And God says, listen, I'm going to make it so that they're going to believe you forever. Because they're going to listen to you as you're going to tell them to go through the Red Sea. And that would vindicate Moses' words from there on out. And the law that Moses gave, all the way through it, it says, look, remember that I am Yahweh.
I'm the God that brought you out of the land of Egypt to come into the land of promise. Teach your kids this, because it doesn't happen all the time. Right. This was a moment in history. It was a singular moment when God would work with the nation in this particular way. Yeah. That would reverberate throughout the generations. Yeah.
I think we should have that same aspect about the day of Pentecost and the New Testament because that is the establishment of the ecclesia of which we are a part, even though we similarly don't, I don't think we have those same gifts or same powers that we see, but we have that history and that connection. Exactly. We believe the words of the apostles. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what we're talking about here.
God, when he's working through specific people like Moses and Aaron, and then I think the next time period really where we see go off the charts is with the prophets Elijah and Elisha. When you're reading through the history of the kings of Israel, you get to this period where Elijah and Elisha, they're just doing miracles left and right? They're raising the dead. They're making pots of oil to multiply. They are making axe heads float. Even Elisha gets a double portion of the spirit
that was on Elijah. He seems to do twice as much. Now, it might not be so obvious as it is in Exodus about why that would be, but it just seems to be a time period where God is really trying to work with the children of of israel to rejuvenate them and to make them realize that they should turn from their ways evil ways and when it didn't have that effect on the children of israel or on a king of israel with whom they were dealing sometimes it had an effect on a woman from a different country,
because and that's the beautiful thing because there was a miracle performed for one woman in in particular, and she says, "'Now I know that you're a prophet.'" Because just as the apostles would do later on, and as God had done in the past, it was a witness to the fact that the words that he was speaking were actually really the words of God. And that's the most important thing, really.
So as I'm just kind of working through the Old Testament, this is really where it helps to read your Bible every day and just think about the overview of Scripture. I don't think there's any other time period until we get up to the New Testament, right? And things change there with John the Baptist, don't they? Yeah. With a prophet who was so charged with the Spirit, he was filled with it before he was born.
That's what it's written of him. And yet, what's the almost surprising thing about the fullness of John the Baptist's experience with the Holy Spirit? He did no miracles. He did no miracles. It's like, what in the world? But we had talked about how the purpose of miracles was to really bring them to an appreciation of the power of the Word of God in their lives. And in that, John was very powerful.
He was appealing to people all over Israel. But his main job, if you can say that, was to reveal Jesus to the rest of the nation, right? Yeah, so we see a time and an age during Jesus and the apostles, which kind of parallels the Exodus. There's the new Israel being established here, the Ecclesia, and there's this time period where the Holy Spirit gifts were needed. But we don't always see that in scriptures. When you look at it, there are periods where there's no miracles.
That's right. There's nothing happening. And as an example of this... So think about this. Micah actually talks about this. Micah the prophet. This is Micah chapter 3, starting at verse 5. Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry peace when they have something to eat, but declare war against him who puts nothing into their mouths. Therefore, it shall be night to you without vision, and darkness to you without divination. The sun.
So, this is speaking about a drought, like a blackness coming over the prophets that God is going to introduce because they're leading the people astray. But Micah says in verse 8, the very next verse, he says, He says, but as for me, I am filled with power with the Spirit of the Lord. So there's that connection between the Spirit and power. Yes. We talked about it in an earlier podcast. But he's prophesying of a drought to come. And he's not the only one. We talked, Amos has a similar prophecy.
So there's time periods where there's great rain, abundance, right? Right. Coming down, and then there's time periods where there's drought and dryness and no miraculous gifts given. That's right. So I guess, what time period are we living in? Are we living in a period of much rain or a drought condition? Yeah, it's almost the question for some Christians. Yeah. And it's one that the Bible answers very clearly.
And the beautiful thing about this, we're just so impressed with the symmetry of the apostles and how they speak about these things, that they're all teaching the same thing and they're very consistent about what was going to happen to the gifts. The miraculous gifts that you're talking about, the prophesying, the miraculous miracle working. There's a whole list of them in different parts of the Bible. It's given in the book of Romans, it's given in Ephesians.
And the one that maybe we'll take a look at first is in 1 Corinthians. So we just take a look at chapter 12 and really this whole section, it's kind of one of those, sandwich sections in the Bible because you've got chapter 12 and chapter 14 that are talking about all these different gifts that were given at the time. And in the middle, in between that, there was something that they were supposed to be aiming for. That's what's right in the middle.
So if you look at 1 Corinthians chapter 12, there's a whole list of these different gifts. Early on in the chapter, it says in verse 8, 4 to 1. Oh, we could go back here. Look at verse 7, come on. Verse 7 says, to each, that is to each member at the Corinthian ecclesia at this particular time, there were given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the spirit, the utterance of wisdom and to another,
the utterance of knowledge according to the same spirit. To another, faith. To another, gifts of healing. To other, working of miracles. To another, prophecy. That's to speak the word of God. And to another, the ability to distinguish between spirits, different kinds of tongues, interpretation, that it's all the same It's the same spirit, it says. It's given out individually as God wills. So that is a list of all the different gifts there.
But the incredible thing is that these particular gifts at the end of chapter 13 are actually described as being a part of something that would be going away. These gifts were to cease. It says that very clearly in chapter 13, looking at verse 8, it says there, and this is exactly what we read at the very beginning. It's why we have it as our theme verse. It says that love never ends. That was the aim that the spirit was driving at through all the different things,
because you can be like the best miracle worker. You can speak in all the tongues you want. You can interpret them at the same time. You'd be amazing. if that did not affect you in the way that you live your life according to Christ following in his footsteps, it wasn't going to do anything for you. If it did not transform you or recreate you morally, that gift wouldn't do anything for you. What good is it going to do if you're going to raise the dead if you have no love?
That's the point. The Corinthians had these special gifts, but they were arguing with one another about who had the better one. Talking over each other all the time. So just because you might have a gift doesn't mean that anything really, if you don't have love. And that's the whole point of this beautiful passage. The love of Christ in particular. I mean, this is not the Beatles version. This is not the 2023.
This is learning the love of God following in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ, right? And that's why in verse 8 there you've got love never ends, but as for prophecies, look at this, they will pass away. Tongues, the gift of tongues, they will cease. knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, we prophesy in part, but when that which is perfect has come, the partial will...
Pass away. So, all of those gifts were connected to a movement of the Spirit that was to pass away at a particular time. Yeah. When he says partial, it's reminding me again of the taste that we talked about earlier, right? That this is only partial, it's only a small part of it. And he says there's going to cease. So, this is where we get this word, the cessation of the Holy Spirit gifts. Yes. This is the real question is, okay, you're saying they're going to cease.
When is that? He tells us when the perfect comes. Yeah. In verse 10, when the perfect comes. It sounds like it could almost mean anything. You know what I mean? It's like, well, what is? Well, my first inclination when I read that is to say, well, that's Jesus. Jesus is going to come. And we have that promise throughout the whole New Testament. Right. Jesus Christ is coming back again. And Jesus never sinned. He's the perfect one.
And that's the way a lot of people take that. Does that make any sense? Well, not if we're going to read the context all the way through. Because if that's the case, if that is the case that that which is perfect is coming is the second coming of Christ, what that means is that when he comes, the spirit gifts will pass away. Now that can't be. Because we just read it's the powers of the age to come. So when Jesus Christ comes back, that's when the full power of the Holy Spirit will be manifest.
They had a taste of the powers of the age to come. Right. In the first century. So when Christ comes, that's going to be the big deal. So when we talk about a cessation. Yeah. There really has to be a time period before then where they cease. Exactly. Otherwise, that doesn't make too much sense. We've got a big contradiction. From partial to full throttle. Exactly. In fact, some people think that maybe that's talking about the Bible.
Like when the New Testament is finished, when the perfect comes. That too, I think that's true, I guess. It's true, but it's one of those things where, you know when – If it is, it has to be clearly stated. Yeah. If it's important, it's got to be so clear and you read it, okay, it fits. It's got to fit with other passages. I mean, this is a huge moment here in the first century, right? Yeah. So that would take me to say, let's look at other passages and see how that word perfect is used. Yes.
Especially in the context. If you could find it somewhere around there and lo and behold, it is in the context, but it's not translated as perfect. Ah. There goes those translators again, right? They're being helpful, but not being helpful for us, right? It's actually in the next chapter. Yes. Yeah. Right in chapter 14, right? Chapter 14 and verse 20. He says, brothers, do not be children in your thinking, be infants in evil, but in your thinking, be mature.
So I wonder if anybody listening, now that you've read that, and they're thinking like, what is the word that we're reading in English that's the same Greek word as the word perfect in 1 Corinthians 13, the chapter before? It's like, hmm. It's actually the word mature. Mature. The Greek word is teleos, really interesting word. And I'm not sure perfect is really usually a good translation because in English we think of perfect
as being 100% guiltless or something like that, right? And it doesn't really have that sense. It has the sense of being mature, of being an adult, of being complete in that way, right? Yeah. Being grown up. Yeah. And that fits in the context, doesn't it? Like perfectly. So he's saying, you've got these Holy Spirit gifts. You're arguing over which one's better. You're acting like children. Right. You're not mature to really handle these things.
But when you become mature and you become mature in your love, you're going to understand that these gifts are partial. Yeah. They're not the important thing. They're not going to stay forever. Right. So that to me is really helpful. Yeah. And you might listen to that and maybe you've never seen that in 1 Corinthians 14 before and you think like, is that really what's being said here? And I got to tell you, when I was working through this, this was very challenging for me.
And it was not until I started to see the pattern in other places where the Apostle Paul, inspired by the Spirit, he says the same thing to the Ephesians. Yes. Chapter 4, Ephesians 4. Yeah, that's the one. You can almost put Ephesians chapter 4 right on top of 1 Corinthians chapters 12 to 14 with those themes because they're explained by the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians in a very similar way that he explained it to the Corinthians.
So here, Ephesians chapter 4, we read about the gifts there in verse 11. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers, that's who was given. And right before that, it talks about how it was that grace has been given through the one spirit. That's all part of the context here of Ephesians chapter 4. Yeah, it's right there. It's all part of that same context. Yeah, I think that's important, verse 7. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.
Exactly. And what was that given in? It was given in the spirit. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's what he's talking about here. So when he gets to verse 11, he said, these are the examples of the gifts. There are apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. Yep. He doesn't name all of the exact same ones. No, there's overlap. There's overlap. Exactly, yeah. And the purpose of that is in verse 12. It's to equip the saints for the work of the ministry for building up the body of Christ.
So, all of that was given for a particular purpose, to build up the body of Christ. And you know what it says after that? Until. Until. Those gifts were given until something would happen. Now, what was it that Paul said was going to happen where the gifts would be taken away in 1 Corinthians 13? It was when- The perfect. That which was perfect has come, right? Right. Well, look what he says here. Or that which is mature. Mature, exactly. Yep.
He says, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to, wait for it. Mature manhood now that mature right there yeah same word it's the same word it's teleos yeah it's just absolutely incredible to the measure of the stature of the fullness of christ so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by human cunning by craftiness and deceitful schemes so that's it that is it It right there.
It's beautiful. So he's contrasting again, their children. Children. And adults mature manhood as ESV puts it, right? Yeah. That's the idea of perfection. And it's really the ecclesia, the church, that was to come to a perfect place. And they couldn't do that without the Holy Spirit gifts at that time to bear witness to God working through them, through the prophets who brought the word. But it's all these things that build it up to become perfect so that they're
not tossed around by all these different doctrines or teachings of humankind. Yeah. I'd like to summarize. Paul knew and communicated that a time was coming where what they were experiencing in the miraculous, in those manifestations of the Spirit of God, those things weren't going to be around forever. And there was a time coming in the future where they would grow up and they would mature, and then those gifts would pass away.
And then there was going to be a time period before they were poured out again in the future, in the age to come. Yeah. Now, just before we leave Ephesians there, though, like you were saying, you can almost overlap it with Corinthians. If you keep reading, he says in verse 15, rather, speaking the truth in love. There it is. 1 Corinthians 13. 1 Corinthians 13 and Ephesians 4.
We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Yeah. Like you're saying. Same message. So it's like the body grows up into the head, it seems. Which is Christ. Which is Christ. And then there's a unity that works together. Yeah.
We are not now tossed around with every doctrine. We have maturity. In all of this, to be able to withstand any of these false winds of doctrine, we have the pure word of God. And in that way, it relates to the word. Yes. Right, exactly. And by that essence, those gifts were really no longer needed because now we are perfected in love. That's what God is calling us to, the greater calling, right? That's exactly right. Right.
So, when we look at this overall picture, kind of going back, we talk about these ages. We're looking forward to the kingdom of God, the age to come, where the powers of the Holy Spirit will be given again. There'll be this outpouring at that time when Jesus Christ comes back. But when we look back through the Bible, we can see time periods where we have a taste of that.
We We can see that in sort of this little vignette of time in the days of the apostles, in the days of Elijah and Elisha, in the days of Moses and the Exodus. But I mean, to answer the question, I guess, in our day and age, we don't really see that as a time period now, as something that's happening now, something to be expected, right? Exactly. When we talk about the sensation of the gifts, let's be clear, the Holy Spirit is still at work. We can still pray to God and he does things.
He does miracles. But when it comes to God working specifically through people to bring these miracles and those kind of things, we don't see that today. Right. But we do have a great hope of it coming. Exactly. Yeah. In the age to come. Right. Well, thanks, Jay. Jay, hopefully that clarifies it all. I think it's wonderful. I'm very excited about this topic and I think it's really enlightening. Pleasure. Really appreciate it. All right. Thanks, Jay. Music.
It's been great having you along in our studies of the Spirit. Jay and I pray that they have been a blessing for you. Hopefully looking at how God works through different ages of time was helpful because we are going to do it all over again in our next episode when Ted Hodge joins me to talk about the Sabbath. There's a lot to consider about this day of rest established by God.
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