Dispensations

Ephesians 3:1-5

We live in the church age, the “Dispensation of Grace.”  What is a dispensation?  It is a time period.  In the Bible it is a specific period of time during which God administers His rule over the world in a certain way.  And over the years God has dealt with man differently in different time periods.

“But I thought God was the same yesterday, today, and forever?”  Yes, but that is not talking about the way God deals with man.  It is talking about His character and nature.  For instance, God is holy, righteous, and just ... He always has been and always will be.  But He deals w/ man in different ways over the ages.  His message has always been the same, but His methods change ... and so should ours, by the way.

A big danger in Bible interpretation is that of lifting out of Scripture a verse where God does something and saying, there, that’s how God always handles that.  He does not, necessarily.  For instance, contrast these 2 texts:

Luke 10:2-4
² Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest. ³ Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves. ⁴ Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes: and salute no man by the way.

Luke 22:35-36
³⁵ And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing. ³⁶ Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

Another example:  4 times in the book of Acts you see speaking in tongues.  That’s over a 30 year period.  But is that the normal Christian experience?  That was a specific dispensation, and God worked in a certain way at that time.  In this case, we’re in the book of Acts, which was a transitional time period...a bridge to the church age, but not the way the church age would be.  It is not a basis for NT church doctrine.

But there is one thing that all dispensations have in common:

God gives man a responsibility, man fails to fulfill his responsibility, and God’s judgment comes.

1^st dispensation:  innocence.  [Garden of Eden] 

What was man’s responsibility?  To abstain from the forbidden fruit.  Man failed, and judgment came.

2^nd dispensation:  conscience.

Man was to follow God by the dictates of his God given conscience.

Man failed, and the world was filled w/ wickedness and Noah’s flood came.

3^rd dispensation:  human government.

Man was to establish human government according to the righteous standards of God.  He was to scatter about on the earth.

Man failed, built the tower of Babel, and God judged that humanistic one world culture w/ confusion and dispersion.

4^th dispensation:  promise.

God said, I’m no longer going to deal with the world as a whole.  I’m going to reach the world thru one nation, Israel.  God made Abraham some promises.  Man’s only responsibility was to stay in the Promised Land. 

Man failed, famine came, they went to Goshen in Egypt and stayed there, and were eventually enslaved.

Do you see a pattern yet?

Israel was again to be the light of the world.  It’s not that God had given up on the world, but that He chose to reach the world thru Israel.

Genesis 12:3
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

Israel failed to be the light of the world, and that brings us to this message.

God wanted Israel to reach the Gentiles.  But Israel rebelled and even adopted other gods of the world.  Then they rejected Jesus as their Messiah.  They should have known from all the prophecies about Him, but they were way out of tune with God.  They sinned against a flood of light.

And we can know God’s will.  We could know and we should know, but we are out of tune and don’t walk in the light.

5^th dispensation:  Law.

It began with the giving of the 10 commandments, the moral law, as well as the civil and ceremonial laws.  It ended at the cross.

When Israel fails God will move on to another plan, which is the church.  [6^th dispensation] Let’s see what happens...

In Acts 7 it’s Israel’s last chance in this dispensation to do what God has said to do.  A guy named Stephen preaches to the Jews on this subject:

Acts 7:35
This Moses whom they refused...

Acts 7:39-43
³⁹ To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt, ⁴⁰ Saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. ⁴¹ And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. ⁴² Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? ⁴³ Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon.

Acts 7:51-52
⁵¹ Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. ⁵² Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers:

Stephen holds them accountable, and then they stoned him.  Now that dispensation is come to a close.  Game over.  Time’s up!

Ill.—God is a Trinity.  And when Israel beheaded John the Baptist they were rejecting God the Father because He sent John.  They rejected God the Son when they crucified Him, and they rejected God the Holy Spirit when they stoned Stephen.  3 strikes and you’re out!

Now it really gets interesting.  It was prophesied that at this time God would pour out His judgment upon Israel.  [Ps. 2; 110]

But now in Acts 7 we move right from Israel to the church age, and there doesn’t appear to be a judgment against Israel.  Why not?  Because the dispensation of Israel isn’t over, yet.  Their judgment is yet to come.  The tribulation isn’t a judgment of believers, but of Israel...the time of Jacob’s trouble.

“But aren’t we in the age of grace, the church age?”  Yes.  “Are both dispensations running at the same time, Israel and the church?”  No.

God hit the pause button and will come back to Israel at a later time. 

Ephesians 3:1-3
¹ For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, ² If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward: ³ How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery...that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel:

The Bible calls the church age a mystery that no one knew about.  God stuck in this extra dispensation in-between Israel’s failure and their coming judgment.  It was like a valley in between distant mountain peaks and the OT prophets couldn’t see it.  But we ARE it!

In the tribulation God will get Israel’s attention and they will turn to Him and this will lead them into the millennium.  [The 7^th and final dispensation]

In the meanwhile, aren’t you glad for the dispensation of grace?  Would you be saved without it?  Don’t we live in a great time period?  Jesus could come at any time.  It’s been 2,000 years already.  If you are not saved you’d better get saved while God’s grace is still at work in this world.  Everything is working in your favor right now, but in the tribulation of judgment everything will be working against you if you are still here and not raptured away w/ believers.  Right now the Spirit of God is speaking to you, people are praying for you, the doors of heaven are open wide, but in the next time period which could start at any moment, it will cost you your life.

How did the church age begin?  God whispered it into the ears of the apostle Paul.  Both Jew and Gentile will be able to be saved, whosoever will may come!

Ill.—a young couple has heard the good news that they are expecting, and they don’t want to tell many people just yet as it is early.  They tell just a close friend who screams, “AAAhhhhh!  You’re gonna have a baby!”  And everyone now knows!  Good news spreads like feathers in the wind.

God whispered it to Paul, who spent the rest of his life proclaiming it from the housetops, and we should to, while time remains!

This is my main beef with secret societies.  The Masons and other lodges have all these secrets...secret names and codes, and you can’t know the secrets unless you are one of them.  Well if you have such a wonderful secret why would you want to keep it to yourself?

We not only should want to spread the Word, but we have a mandate and a command to do so!  That’s why we support missionaries around the world.  That’s why we share our materials w/ thousands of ministers everywhere.  That’s why we preach and proclaim locally.  That’s why we reach out as a church, and challenge you to reach out as an individual to the lost!