GOD’S ECONOMY
SERIES THIRTEEN
GOD’S ECONOMY IN ALL THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE
God’s Economy as Revealed in the Old Testament
Message Twenty-four
God’s Economy as Revealed in Joel
Scripture Reading: Joel 1:4, 3:11, Dan. 2:31-45, Eph. 1:3-6, Micah 5:2, John 3:6, Rev. 19:7-9, 22:17a
I. In this universe there are two histories: the history of man, the human history, and the history of God, the divine history; the former is like an outward shell, and the latter, like the kernel within the shell—Joel 1:4, 2:28-29, 3:11-21 the church as the Bride and as the warrior: (2012 ST, msg. 5)
A. In the Minor Prophets the human history is clearly defined and is signified by the four kinds of locusts in Joel 1:4, and the divine history is with Christ and His mighty ones, the overcomers, in 3:11—9:16-17, 42:5, 36:15: (2012 ST, msg. 5)
B. The divine history within the human history is also revealed in the Bible in considerable detail; God’s history is our history because He is in union with us—Eph. 3:9-10, 1:10, Acts 2:23, 2 Thes. 2:2-8, 1 Cor. 6:17. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
C. We need to see God’s history in eternity past as a preparation for His move to be in union with man—Gen. 1:26-27: (2012 ST, msg. 5)
1. The divine history began with the eternal God and His economy—Eph. 3:9-10, 1:10.
2. God in His Divine Trinity held a council in eternity to make the determination concerning the crucial death of Christ for the carrying out of God’s eternal economy—Acts 2:23. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
3. The second of the Divine Trinity was preparing to carry out His “goings forth” from eternity into time to be born in Bethlehem as a man—Micah 5:2. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
4. God blessed the believers in Christ with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies before the foundation of the world—Eph. 1:3. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
II. Before Christ’s incarnation God moved with men and among men; this was not His direct move to carry out His eternal economy for Christ and the church but His indirect move in His old creation for the preparation of His direct move in His new creation for His eternal economy—John 1:1, 3, 32, 42, 1 Cor. 15:45b: (2012 ST, msg. 5)
A. God’s history is of two portions—the history of God with man, found in the Old testament, and the history of God in man, found in the New Testament—1 Tim. 3:15-16, John 1:14. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
B. God’s history in man began with the incarnation and continued with His processes of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension; Hosea 11:4 says that these are the cords of a man, the bands of love—Matt. 1:23. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
III. The divine history, God’s move in man, continued with the processed Christ, the God-man, as the prototype, unto the New Jerusalem, the great God-man, the ultimate fulfillment of God’s eternal economy—Acts 13:33, 1 Pet. 1:3: (2012 ST, msg. 5)
A. Thus, the church also is part of the divine history, the intrinsic history of the divine mystery within the outward, human history; this part of God’s history has lasted for more than nineteen hundred years and is still going on—Rev. 22:3, Acts 28:31. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
B. At the end of this part of the divine history, Christ will come back, descending with His overcomers as His army to defeat Antichrist and his army—Joel 3:11. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
C. Following this, the thousand-year kingdom will come; eventually, this kingdom will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth; the New Jerusalem will be the ultimate the consummate, step of God’s history—Rev. 19:20, 21:2. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
IV. We need to have a clear view of these two histories—the physical, human history represented mainly by the four kinds of locusts (Joel 1:4), which are the four sections of the great human image in Daniel 2, and the mysterious, divine history represented mainly by the history of the great crushing stone (Christ with His overcomers), which will crush the great human image, the totality of human government, and become the eternal kingdom of God, which will fill the whole earth forever—Joel 1:4, Dan. 10:31-45: (2012 ST, msg. 5)
A. The corporate Christ, Christ with His overcoming bride, will come as a stone to crush the aggregate of human government to bring in God’s kingdom—v. 34-35, Joel 3:11, Rev. 19:11-21, cf. Gen. 1:26. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
B. Whereas Daniel 2 speaks of Christ coming as a stone cut out without hands, Revelation 19 speaks of Christ coming as the One who has His bride as His army. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
C. In Ephesians 5 and 6 we see the church as the bride and the warrior; in Revelation 19 we also have these two aspects of the church—Eph. 5: 25-27, 6:10-20: (2012 ST, msg. 5)
1. On the day of His wedding, Christ will marry His bride, the overcomers, who have been fighting the battle against God’s enemy for years—cf. Dan. 7:25, 6:10, Eph. 6:12. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
2. Before Christ descends to earth to deal with Antichrist and the totality of human government, He will have a wedding, uniting His overcomers to Himself as one entity—Rev. 19:7-9. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
3. After His wedding He will come with His newly married bride to destroy Antichrist, who with his army will fight against God directly—v. 11, 14. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
4. After crushing the human government, God will have cleared up the entire universe; then the corporate Christ, Christ with His overcomers, will become a great mountain to fill the whole earth, making the whole earth God’s kingdom—Dan. 2:35, 44, Rev. 11:15. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
5. To be the bride in the divine history, we need the beautifying word of God, and to be the warrior in the divine history, we need the slaying word of God—Eph. 5:26, 6:17-18, cf. 2 Tim. 3:16. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
V. We all were born in the human history, but we have been reborn, regenerated, in the divine history—John 3:3, 5-6, 1:1: (2012 ST, msg. 5)
A. The divine history, the history of God in man, was from Christ’s incarnation through His ascension to become the life-giving Spirit and then continues with His indwelling us through God’s organic salvation of regeneration, sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification to make us the glorious bride of Christ—Rom. 5:10, Eph. 5:27, Rev. 19:7-9. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
B. The culminates in Christ as the Spirit, the processed and consummated Triune God, marrying the church as the bride, the processed and transformed tripartite man—22:17a, 20. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
C. Now we need to ask ourselves this question: Are we living in the divine history or are we living merely in the human history?—1:11, 20, 12:11, 14:4b, 19:7: (2012 ST, msg. 5)
1. If our living is in the world, we are living in the human history—Rom. 12:1-2, 1 John 2:15-17. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
2. But if we are living in the church, we are living in the divine history; in the church life God’s history is our history; now two parties—God and we—have one history, the divine history—1 Cor. 1:2. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
3. With the divine history there is the new creation—the new man with a new heart, a new spirit, a new life, a new nature, a new history, and a new consummation—Hymn #16, Ezek. 36:26, 1 Cor. 3:16, Matt. 5:8, Titus 3:5, Eph. 5:26, 6:17-18. (2012 ST, msg. 5)
4. We praise the Lord that we are in the divine history, experiencing and enjoying the mysterious, divine things for our organic salvation so that we may become His overcoming bride—1 Cor. 6:17, Rom. 5:10, Eph. 5:27, Rev. 19:7-9, 22:17a. (2012 ST, msg. 5)