Oracles of God

It was on the cross for a while, then it was in the grave. Where was he? You ever wonder about that? Well, I’ll tell you where he was. He was descending. He was descending. You say, how do you know that? Verse 19, his spirit, by which, and by which modifies spirit, he went and preached unto the spirits in prison. He descended down to the prison of spirits. You say, what’s that? Alright, now watch. I’ll give you a little picture. In the Old Testament time, the place of the dead, if we can just draw a circle in your mind, the place of the dead was known as Hades or Sheol.

Okay? It’s not really, hell is not the proper word. That’s strictly a New Testament concept. But Hades, now Hades had two compartments, or two parts. Draw a line across the middle of your circle. The upper part was the part where the righteous dead were their spirits. The lower part, the unrighteous, and the bound demons. Okay? So there’s this place called Hades, or the grave sometimes it’s called, or Sheol. It’s not really defined in the Old Testament any more than that. And this is where dead people’s spirits go. The righteous to the upper half, which is good.

It’s bliss, it’s happiness, and it’s the righteous people, the people who believe God. The bottom category, the unrighteous, the evil. And also in that category were bound demons. Now there are really two kinds of demons. There are the loose ones and the bound ones, right? The loose ones are running around doing their thing. The bound ones are in that pit. You know how they got there? They’re the ones in Genesis 6 who came down and cohabitated with the daughters of men and produced giants in the earth. It was a whole bunch of rosemary babies is what it was.

A whole generation of them. And that’s why God destroyed the world by water to flood out that terrible conglomerate demon-man race that would have messed up the whole concept of the God-man Christ’s redemption. And so he flooded them and destroyed that whole civilization. He took those demons that did that and he put them in everlasting chains, says Peter. In everlasting chains he says it in 2 Peter and Jude says it also, and he kept them there. So in that lower part of Sheol, it’s even called Tartarus, the pit, the place of the dead ungodly, the place of the demons, not the final hell yet.

But it’s a place of torment, a place of unrighteousness, a place of evil. Christ descended then into that place, verse 19, in the prison he went. And to the spirits, who by the way are fallen angels. It even tells you in verse 22, angels, authorities, powers being made subject to him. And there it tells us clearly that they were angels. And what did he do there? It says he preached, but it is not the word euagolizo. It is not the word to preach the gospel. It is karaso, which is the typical Greek word to make a proclamation.

He went there and he proclaimed something. I could tell you what he proclaimed. He went down there and proclaimed that what looked like defeat was victory. And that is clear from Colossians, where Paul talks about the same thing. In chapter 2 and verse 15, he says, when Christ was on the cross, he spoiled the principalities and powers. Those are the fallen angels, the demons in the pit. He made a show of them openly triumphing over them. In other words, while his body was in the grave, his spirit descended into the lower part of Hades, and there he made a proclamation of triumph.

In spite of what it looked like, he was the victor. He had triumph. It says in Colossians 2.15, he made a show of them openly right before them so that they could see that he had triumphed. On his way out of the bottom part, he went through the top part of the righteous people, and that’s where we come to our text Ephesians. It says he led captivity captive. You know who the captives were? You know who were kept in that place called Sheol, even though they were righteous? All the Old Testament, what? Saints.

And they could never be resurrected. They could never be taken to glory until Christ had purchased their redemption on the cross. They had to wait for the triumph of Calvary. They had to wait for the victory that he would win that day. But when he won that victory and he died for them, and their sins were washed away, and as Hebrews says, he perfected forever by one offering them that are sanctified when he did it. Then after his announcement, he just opened the doors of the upper part of Hades, and he released the captives.

And it was at that point, beloved, that the spirits of the Old Testament saints left whatever place that is, and I can’t define it any more than that, and they ascended to be with God in his place. He led captivity captive. You see the beauty of the picture. And so here comes the conquering hero Jesus Christ. He’s got the demons, his enemies, bound on the one side. They are bound on the one side, and on the other side, he’s got the people of his own that he has set free in his conquering, and he releases them to the liberty and the freedom of the sons of God.

That’s what it means. Now beloved, listen, it was Jesus Christ’s act on the cross that allowed him to be the one who could give us the gifts he gave us. And what I’m saying is this. You cannot treat the spiritual gift that you have lightly when you contemplate what price it cost for Christ to grant you that privilege. You see, it was by his victory there that he gained the right to rule his own church, to be the one who gave it to you. From the bottom of Sheol to the top of heaven, he fills it all, and the right he gained at the cross, and it was there when he gained that right at the cross that he had the right to also give you the gift.

Listen, it isn’t just that you can accept salvation at his hand because he died for it. You can accept that spiritual enablement to serve him at his hand because he died to gain the right to give you that. That’s how important it is to him. Jesus Christ died on the cross for you to save you. Secondly, he died on the cross to enable you to serve him, and he gives you a gift of love that was purchased at the same price that your redemption was purchased at. For it’s a corollary. Having done that, he then, Paul closes with a final word.

He says, I want you to know that he not only gave gifts to individual Christians, but he gave gifts to the total body. And I love this. Oh, this is so good. When Christ went to the cross, he captured a whole bunch of people, didn’t he? And he delivered them out of Satan’s domain. All the Old Testament saints, well, all of us who would believe too. Right? He won us that day, even though we weren’t saved yet. He won us on that day. And I want you to look back at verse eight. Now watch this.

At the end of verse eight, he gave gifts to men. Like any good conqueror, when he conquered the nation, he passed out the spoils. Christ did the same. And what were these gifts? Not the same as verse seven. He gave gifts unto men. Now skip the parentheses in verses nine and ten, which is Paul’s exegesis, Jesus there. Skip that. He gave gifts unto men. What were they? Verse 11. Here they come and he gave. Here are the gifts he gave. Some prophets or some apostles, rather. Some prophets, some evangelists, and some teaching shepherds.

Stop right there. Beloved, Christ has given the individual believer the gift, the divine enablement, so you can function in the church. And he’s given to the total body what I call gifted men. Some apostles, are you indebted to the apostles? You better believe it. Do you know something? You wouldn’t have a New Testament without them. They’re the ones that wrote the New Testament. When the early church met in Acts 2 42, it says that they studied the apostles. What? Doctrine. We’re indebted to the apostles. And some prophets, oh the New Testament prophets, those men of God who spoke for God the word of God, who were so strategic in the founding and the crystallization of the infant church, we’re so indebted to them.

And even though the apostles and the prophets have faded away, and they passed off the scene as Ephesians 2 20 tells us, they were for the foundation of the church, and there are no apostles and prophets today. We are indebted to them. They gave us the treasure of the word of God. They founded for us the basis of the church. And in the continuing legacy of God, giving us gifted men, it says he’s given us evangelists and teaching shepherds. You know something? It’s hard to realize this, I guess, in my own life.

But I see myself as I look at this text as a trophy that Christ won at the cross and chooses to give back to his church to be a teaching shepherd. We have other people in our church staff that are trophies won at the cross that God gives back to his church as evangelists. We have other teaching shepherds. People, this is the legacy of Jesus Christ to his church. And what Paul is saying in all of chapter four, five, and six of Ephesians is this. You know, you’ve got to live to the life.

Now, I’ve told you what the life is in ones to three. Now, in four to six, you’ve got to live it. And in order to live it, number one, you start out with humility, right? The first six verses we saw that, didn’t we? Humility. And secondly, he says here, in order to live it, you’ve got to realize where the resources are. They’re in your spiritual gifts, and they’re in the gifted men God has given his church. I don’t know about you, but I’m really indebted to God’s gifted men. Gifted men throughout the years who have been evangelists and teaching shepherds, some of whom have preached, and my heart has been blessed.

Some of whom have taught me, such as my own father. Others that I’ve read their books and studied their writings and listened to their tapes, and gifted men that have affected the church. Listen, these are gifts from Jesus Christ to his church. No wonder it tells us in First Timothy that we’re to give double honor to such men. No wonder it tells us in Thessalonians that we are to give them due respect. No wonder it tells us in Hebrews 13 that we’re to follow them, we’re to pattern our lives after them, we’re to accept them and to live behind them as it were in almost a mimicry, because they are the gifts of Christ to his church.

It’s a great responsibility for you to follow those men. It’s a great responsibility for those men to fulfill their accountability to God. But listen, Christ has given us wonderful gifts. I don’t know what else you can say about a text like this. The Apostle Paul is saying, hey, you want to walk the worthy walk. It’s a walk of humility, it’s a walk of unity, and it’s a walk where you recognize the resources are in your own spiritual gifts and the ministries of gifted men. Are you submitting the gifted men? Are you coming on to the leadership of godly evangelists and teaching shepherds? Have you submitted yourself to them? And of course to us, boy it speaks volumes, are you being faithful to be the kind of a godly man that somebody could submit to? Listen, don’t view Christianity as something you do for God.

It’s really something he’s done for you. And all he says to you is this, look, I set the pace I gave myself to you. You know he’s even given himself to us in the gifts we have. Do you know something? Do you know that every spiritual gift category is perfectly illustrated in Christ? If ever there was a preacher, it was Christ. If ever there was a teacher, it was Christ. If ever there was a ruler, it’s Christ. If ever there was an administrator, it’s Christ. If ever there was a servant, it’s Christ.

If ever there was a helper, it’s Christ. If ever there was a giver, it was Christ. If ever there was a man of faith, it’s Christ. Christ is the perfect illustration of every spiritual gift. Now listen, so that when Christ gives you spiritual gift, he is giving you himself. It is another self-donation, and that’s why Peter says when you speak, speak the oracles of God. When you serve, do it as unto God. Why? Because it is God’s gift to you that operates only in his own energy. It is a self-donation. And when God gives to the church gifted men, like those of us who lead you and other pastors and evangelists around the world, when God gives these gifted men to the church, the only way they can ever function properly is to function in the divine energy and resource that God alone supplies.

Again, it’s a self-donation. It’s a self-giving of God. And when I stop to think, beloved, of all Jesus Christ has given me, that he has enabled me to serve him in this manner, and that he has equipped all of us in such a wonderful way and given us these gracious gifts, then my response of obedience to him is not something legalistic. It’s something that springs out of a heart filled with loving gratitude. I trust that’s your heart too. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the oracles of God. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world.

To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].