STUDYING GOD’S
WORD
Dispensational studies are the key to
receiving a thorough understanding of the Bible.1
As we mentioned earlier, believers should always ask questions when studying
the Bible to know whom a particular Scripture is speaking. We need to know if
Gentiles are in the group of people being spoken to or if the passage is
speaking to the Jews.
Asking
questions make studying the Bible
easier to understand. The truth is the
Bible is written to all men, but the entire Bible is not written
specifically to Jews or the Body of
Christ who are Gentiles. The entire Bible is written:
Ø
For
our learning
Ø
Information
Ø
Correction,
and
Ø
Instruction,
not every word is for our application
Not all of it is addressed to
Gentiles; more of it is addressed to the Jewish nation.2
When God gave the Law to the people of Israel through
Moses in 1500 BC, one of the Laws was to not work on the Sabbath Day. The Sabbath Day lasts from sundown on
Friday to sundown on Saturday. When a man was found doing any work on the
Sabbath Day, God’s command was death by stoning.3
This does not apply to believers today,
when we work around our homes on Saturday morning we are not guilty of sin
crimes that result in our neighbors rounding up a posse to stone us to death.
We recognize that this is Law,
and that the Law was given to
the children of Israel and that
the children of Israel were not
Christians. Their time for Salvation was before the Cross and the opportunity for them to
have Salvation now is by believing in the Gospel or the
opportunity of Salvation will be picked up again for them sometime after the
Rapture.
Gentiles are not bound to the Law of Moses, not only because the Law was given to the Nation of Israel, but also because
their Covenant was given to
them in a different dispensation from
the dispensation that we live in today. The word dispensation comes from the word dispense. So a dispensation is an administration or dispensing
of God's will over a certain period to a certain group of people. A dispensation is God’s way of dealing with a
group of people during a particular time. To properly understand a passage in
the Bible, it is important to
know the time that passage is referring to, and the group of people to which it
applies. This way, we can determine which dispensation applies to each passage.
God has always had different rules for different groups of people in different
dispensations.
Not only may the rules be different,
but also the punishment for not keeping the rules can be different. The way God
interacts with man may be different, and sometimes the environment man lived in
is different. When God put Adam
in the Garden of Eden, capital
punishment was not an established law for murder. If it had been Cain would
have been put to death for killing his brother Abel. It was after Adam and Eve were expelled from the
Garden that sin and death prevailed. It was after that time when their son Cain
murdered his brother Abel.4 Cain was
not stoned to death for this crime because there was no capital punishment law
in place. God had not yet allowed capital punishment, but what God did was put
a mark on Cain so that no one would kill him.5
After the Great Flood, God
instituted capital punishment for murder and when God instituted the Law of Moses, capital punishment was
administered for working on the Sabbath
Day.6
Other
offenses that could result in death by stoning were:
Ø Worship of idols
Ø Adultery
Ø Homosexual acts, and
Ø Consulting spirit mediums7
Each of these sets of rules regarding capital punishment all happened in
different dispensations. This is why asking questions are very important to
understanding Law and Grace.
Having an understanding of the dispensations will clear up any confusion that
is experience by believers. God provided another Adam; this was the Son
of God taking on a human nature in addition to His full Divinity, He became the perfect God-man.8
In His humanity, Christ was a descendant of Adam through Noah, Abraham, and
David becoming the believer’s next of kin. He is called the Last Adam because he took the place
of the first Adam.9
He became the new Head because he was sinless and able
to pay the penalty for man’s sin.10 In the
course of time, Adam had another son Seth, at the age of 130. Eve saw this son
as a replacement for Abel.11
Therefore, the period from Cain’s birth to Abel’s death may have been 100 years
or more. This time between the births of these two sons allowed plenty of time
for other children of Adam and Eve to marry and have children and grandchildren
of their own. By the time Abel was killed by Cain, there were a considerable
number of descendants of Adam and Eve circulating around the earth that may
have consisted of several generations.
Cain had to marry a distant relative,
maybe a sister or niece. Insestial marriages were legal during that time. Cain
married 2500 years before God instituted the statute against marrying near
relatives, but in his dispensation when he married her, there were no other
women available to marry but relatives. People who do not study dispensations
find themselves mixing the dispensations of Law with the dispensation of Grace.
The results of mixing the dispensations cause confusion and hinder spiritual
growth. This practice gets in the way of rightly understanding the Scriptures;
it also delays God’s will for our lives because of our lack of understanding
and comprehending His Word. We have seen
that dispensational times can overlap as we talked about previously in the
chapter, Overlapping Dispensations.
Two different dispensations applying to two different groups of people can
overlap. For instance:
Ø
The
whole time that Israel was under the Law Dispensation, all of the Gentile
nations during that time were under the Human Government Dispensation.
Ø
A
similar overlapping occurred from about 37 A.D. until 70 A.D., during this time
the Jews in Israel were still under the Law, which ended when the Romans
destroyed Jerusalem and their Temple in 70 A.D., but the Gentiles and Jews
living outside of the land of Israel were already under Grace. 12
The dispensation of Grace was
and is committed to the Apostle Paul,
the chosen Apostle of the Gentiles.13 Paul called the Gospel of Grace, My Gospel because our Ascended Lord Christ Jesus revealed
the mysteries of the Gospel of Grace
to Him alone.14 The truth of a mystery
means that the information that was given was known to no man before. The
Gospel of Grace had been a secret that was hid in God from the beginning of
time.15 The Gospel of the Kingdom was the
Gospel that:
Ø
John
the Baptist
Ø
Jesus,
and
Ø
The
twelve Apostles preached only to Israel
Their good news was that the Kingdom promised in the Old Testament
by the prophets was ready to come in. Their Kingdom Gospel required the repentance of the entire nation of Israel. The Kingdom Gospel message was, repent,
for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.16
Even after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ Jesus, the offer of the
Kingdom was still available to Israel. Peter offered the Kingdom to Israel
again if they would only repent as a nation but all of Israel would not commit
to it.17 This caused God to turn to the
Gentiles, calling out of them a people for His name.
To preach, and deliver the Gospel message of Grace required a special person. God
called Paul a man who was dedicated, devoted, and motivated to move on his
convictions. For this reason God made him the minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles.18 God
gave Paul information that no one knew before.19
It was a new Gospel for a new dispensation of people. Paul called
it the Gospel of Grace. The
Gospel of Grace is all about Christ
the Son of God freely giving His Life
as the perfect sacrifice
to pay for man’s sin.20 Judas
betrayed Christ this led up to His crucifixion; He was buried, and rose from
the dead on the third day.21 In the
early parts of Acts the twelve Apostles were not speaking on Christ’s redeeming
Blood, they knew nothing about
it.
His death, burial, and resurrection
were mentioned, only as a great
miracle to prove to Israel that Christ was alive, and could return to be
their King as the Old Testament prophesied. The Apostles of Christ Jesus
doesn’t tell the Jews that Christ gave His life as a sacrifice for all men, but
reminds them that they were the ones who murdered Him.22 The Disciples never associated
Christ’s death with the forgiveness of sins. The Truth that Christ death and
forgiveness were related was still a mystery at that point; and was later
revealed to Paul.23 God,
knowing the future before He created the world, had to keep the plan of our
redemption a secret; a mystery that He would not reveal until after He had
called the Apostle Paul.24 God
had a Kingdom program under the Law
for the nation of Israel; you
can read all about it in the Old Testament and the Books of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and the early chapters of Acts.
After Israel refused to repent as a
nation, God began His Grace Age program for the Gentiles with some Jewish
exceptions. The differences in Law and Grace was in their teachings; Christ
Jesus, taught the Jews, for if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly
Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses,
neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.25 You could only be forgiven under the
Law and the Gospel of the Kingdom, if you first forgave others. The Apostle
Paul teaches believers to “become useful and helpful and kind to one another,
tenderhearted (compassionate, understanding, loving-hearted), forgiving one
another [readily and freely], as God in Christ forgave you”.26
Paul teaches that if you are a Born-Again believer, God has already
forgiven our sins. Not some of our sins, but He has forgiven all the sins we
will ever commit.27 We are
not to forgive others so that we can be forgiven under Grace that was Law.
We are already forgiven! We forgive because God has graciously forgiven us.
Paul received his messages for the Church
of Christ from our risen and Ascended Lord Christ Jesus. The
messages in the Bible are not contradictory; they address different people in
different dispensations. Christ Jesus, in his earthly ministry was teaching Jews who were under the Law of Moses. We are still in the Dispensation
of Grace today, which will
continue until the Rapture when
the Body of Christ will be
taken out of this earth in the great catching away of the saints.
1(II Timothy 2: 15)
2(II Timothy 3: 16)
3(Numbers 15: 32-36)
4(Genesis 4: 8-15)
5(Genesis 4: 15)
6(Genesis 9: 6)
10(I Corinthians 15: 21-22)
11(Genesis 5: 3, 4: 25)
12(Acts 21: 20-21)
13(Ephesians 3: 2; Romans 1: 1, 11: 13)
14(II Timothy 2: 8; Galatians 1: 1-12)
15(Ephesians 3: 9)
16(Matthew 3: 2, 4: 17, 10: 7)
17(Acts 3: 19-21)
18(Romans 15: 16, 11: 11-15)
19(I Corinthians 1: 30)
20(I Corinthians 15: 1-4)
21(Matthew 26: 2, 10: 4)
22(Acts 4: 10)
23(I Corinthians 2: 7-8)
24(Romans 16: 25)
25(Matthew 6: 14-15)
26(Ephesians 4: 32)
27(Colossians 2: 13)
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