THE PURPOSE & EFFECT OF REVELATION
PART FIVE (Continued)
Revealing the Knowledge of God and Making Known the Heart of Man (Continued)
When Paul prayed for the church of Ephesus in Ephesians 1:17-19, he asked that the Father would grant them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation:
Ephesians 1:17-19 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, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power.
This Spirit of wisdom and revelation seems germane to prophecy when, later in Ephesians, Paul states that prophets would reveal the mystery of Christ by the Spirit:
Ephesians 3:4-5 When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.
Paul’s prayer gives us two distinct functions of the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, and both those functions are seen in prophetic ministry: to reveal God (the knowledge of him, Christ made known by the prophets) and to reveal mankind (eyes of your heart enlightened). True prophetic ministry always has these two core facets as the center point of prophecy: the revelation of the heart of God and the revelation of the heart of man.
Furthermore, the enlightenment Paul speaks of comes not from understanding the nature of man but from understanding the greatness of God. We are to have the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God, and then what flows from that is a revealing of three distinct characteristics of mankind: the hope of your calling, the glorious inheritance, and the immeasurable greatness of the power of God.
Revelation encompasses coming to the knowledge of God, and when the knowledge of God is given, you begin to know yourself. The bigger your view of him the greater the enlightenment. All things pertaining to enlightenment are a revelation of Him.
In relation to the spiritual gifts, this describes their function. The wisdom and revelation is designed to bring you to experiential knowledge, filling you with light, instilling hope, calling you to inheritance and sonship, to move in his power.
The hope of His calling
One purpose of prophetic ministry as seen through the lens of Ephesians 1 is to reveal hope. What is this hope? It is the hope of His call, not the hope of your call. Prophetic ministry will often have this as its end: what is the Father’s heart and desire for that person? This call is established by God:
Romans 11:29 For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
The only way the call is irrevocable is if God establishes the call. His call is both general and specific, and it must be responded to in order to be entered into:
Matthew 22:14 For many are called, but few are chosen.
Many are called but few are chosen, why are few chosen? Because few humble themselves. You could almost say it like this: many are called but fail to humble themselves, so they are not chosen. If we fail to respond to the call, then we fail to find our place in the bride of Christ.
The call is the invitation to participate in the benefits of the Gospel:
Hebrews 3:1 Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.
The call is also the specific way of making God known in your life, take Paul for instance:
Galatians 1:15-16a But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles…
At a gathering of prophets and teachers, Paul (then called Saul) and Barnabas are called and commissioned:
Acts 13:1-3 Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
Which prophet gave utterance to the words of the Holy Spirit we do not know, but that someone said something we can be certain. Prophetic ministry will both call people to turn their hearts and participate in the Gospel, and will bring to light the call God has on their life.
The glory of his inheritance in the saints - I will be your God and you will be my people, the adoptions as sons.
The inheritance is established early on in the Biblical narrative, it is directly tied into the covenant promise of God to Abraham:
Genesis 17:7 And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.
The promise is this: “to be God to you and to your offspring.” This covenant is ultimately fulfilled when the Spirit enters into our hearts:
Galatians 4:6-7 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
The covenant inheritance is that we would become sons and daughters of God and know him. Prophetic ministry will thus help you to know who you are and that you belong to God the Father.
The exceeding greatness of his power - His immensity
I have a good friend who is fond of saying, “God is bigger than previously thought.” This statement will never not be true.
Paul describes the greatness of God’s power as exceeding, or immeasurable. If his power is immeasurable then, as finite human beings, how could we possibly come to know him? Think of it in this way: if something is eternal we may try and say it is a billion years old. But no, it is eternal, it has no measurement in time. Even the way our finite minds think about God reduces God to a logical expression and he is a being that is illogical to human logic. You may try and say that an immeasurable distance is is a million miles or a billion kilometers. But that is still a measurement.
You cannot measure eternity and you cannot measure immeasurability. There is no quantifiable measurement for his power. That’s because of this: we see his power only in the aftereffects of the operation of his power. It is the same with his goodness. we see his goodness as the after effect of his goodness, or the benefit that we have derived from it. No one has ever seen the essence of his goodness, that would be akin to seeing his face (which no man can do and live). His essence is higher than our thoughts, it is above our ways. He is immeasurable, inconceivable, and unknowable. We cannot quantify his being by any type of human dimension or thought.
But we also know he said that he was Immanuel, God with us. From the beginning, God made a representation in the tabernacle where his glory would dwell and he would be seen by his people. God is immeasurable and unknowable, yet in his nature he desires to be known. He states no one can see his face and live yet embodies a human and says that human is the exact image of God.
This is where prophecy comes alive. God sends his Spirit into our hearts that we would cry out to know him. That Spirit then enables us to perceive aspects of his being. Then that Spirit gives us language to declare who that being is.
I Corinthians 2:13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
Thus, prophecy is to be an aid to the heart of man to know the infinite, unknowable God. The Spirit of wisdom and revelation will cause you to know the immeasurable. That is a paradox if I have ever heard one.
““Illumine our hearts, O Master who loves mankind, with the pure light of your divine knowledge.””
To bring freedom
Following from what we have just said, prophecy when rightly understood and practiced brings freedom.
2 Corinthians 3:17-18 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
Prophecy is a manifestation of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:6), and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. It should follow that where prophecy occurs freedom ought to happen. Why? Because prophecy helps you to see the personhood of God and what you could become. The Spirit helps you to see what you could become in Christ and thus we are being transformed by the Spirit. Transformation is the business of the Spirit and prophecy as a manifestation of the Spirit is an incredible aid in that transformation. The Spirit continually points us back to the Father and the deep transformative work of his nature being formed in us can happen one prophetic word at a time.
This freedom is not license to do whatever you want to do. Rather, it is the freedom to become the image and likeness of God. It is the freedom to find it within yourself to lay our life down as Christ laid his life down.
““God has given me the gift of my freedom for no other reason than that I should return it to Him. But if I seek instead to retain my freedom in a selfish, egotistical way, I shall become a slave of mindless impulse and desire.””