We're picking back up with our thought on dispensation, where we left it.
But without using the word, you can do this as well as I can, you just go back to these people that almost detest dispensational teaching, which is rightly dividing the Word of Truth, and say, "Now look. Do you mean to tell me that when Adam and Eve came out of the Garden of Eden after the fall, and everything was the same as it was before?" "No." "Well, you agree that everything had changed?" "Yeah." "Alright, let’s go a little further. When Noah and his families came off the ark, are you going to stand there and tell me that nothing had changed? Everything was the same? Is it? No!" Everything was different. Now they can kill food and eat meat. They now have to institute capital punishment. They now have a whole change in weather. Everything is different. But what has remained the same? God. God doesn’t change. He’s immutable. He’s the same, yesterday, today and forever. But He changes the modus operandi of His dealings with mankind. And His way of dealing is what is meant by the term dispensation. Its like going to a Doctor and getting a prescription and taking that prescription to a druggist to be filled and the druggist then dispenses to you your drugs per that prescription. His dispensing is the same as God's dealings with humanity and is called a dispensation. For it lasts for a determined amount of time set by God and known usually only to Him. That is why Jesus was able to say that no man knows the day or the hour of His return (paraphrased). Though He was able to allude to events that would happen in the future of a not yet event. Like both Daniel and John in Revelation reveal. And has been termed the enigma of the interim by some theologians or Bible students or disciples of Christ.
In other words, when Adam and Eve were in the garden, they didn’t have to worry about dealing with sin. It hadn’t been committed yet. They didn’t have to worry about death. They hadn’t faced it yet. But as soon as they came out of the garden, now God has to make provision for what? For their sin problem. For their now being separated from Him, their receptivity of His glory has ceased to flow between Him and them. And how does He do that? He introduces the blood sacrifice. He gives them clothing to wear made from the skin of the animal sacrificed. And though it does not name the animal we can surmise that it was a lamb (Revelation 5:12) through other scriptures that state such. Well the same way after the flood. Now God makes provision for a whole new economy that they knew nothing of. What is that? It’s a change in dispensation. It’s a change in administration, stewardship or economy.
Now we come up through world history. Here comes Abraham - and any student of Scripture has to admit that now, all of a sudden, you’ve got things totally different. What is it? You’ve got the appearance of a whole new race, ethnic grouping and nation of people through which God is going to send both the Word of God, through which the Redeemer would come, as promised (Genesis 3:15). The nations for the most part are not within His dealings with this new nation. That’s never been heard of before. And oh, I could just go on and on. You come out of the Old Testament and into the New in the book of Acts, and Israel is still under the Levitical Law, Temple worship, and they’re under the sacrifices. Until the appointed time of the end of their dispensation and God does something new. He had the Romans destroy both the Temple and the city of Jerusalem. He told them that they had broken His Covenants, ordinances and statutes ie...their word to Him and His word to them. They did it! Just as Deuteronomy said they would. He exacts His judgment, His wrath, anger due to their idolatry just as foretold by His prophets but not understood until now. As we're nearing the end of this dispensation of the Church Age, the Age of Grace in which the promised New Covenant came about. Through which He has been about building His Body of faithful believers, the righteous ones ie...saints.
And here we come; and here comes the Apostle Paul going to the Gentile world now, after the work of the cross, and he says, "You’re no longer under the Levitical Law!" You’re going to tell me nothing has changed? Everything has changed. The Hebrews are no longer under the Levitical Law. They don’t have to go to the Temple. They don’t have to have a priesthood. We’re all now under Grace. You see, that’s all dispensationalism so far as I’m concerned. It’s just simply breaking the Scriptures down to realize that God’s immutable, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He never changes! But He changes His way of dealing with mankind, according to the circumstances that have come about on the planet. So now we are in what we call the dispensation of the Grace of God, the promised New Covenant based on the power of an Endless Life. And God's infilling of those who become His willing subjects, His house wherein He by the ontological essence of the resurrected Christ indwells us as promised. Wherein He goes about doing what only He is about doing, developing His character within us, and restored to us. It’s never been this way before. Mankind never had full access to the Father of spirits like we have.
Unheard of! Because the Hebrews had to approach Him through sacrifice and priesthood and so forth. So that’s all dispensation means. You will hear somebody throw that word out at you, and say, "Don’t listen to any one who talks about, dispensationalism." And listen, it’s happening. Don’t think we don’t know that. It doesn’t bother me a bit, because, we can just blow them out of the water with what we’ve just said. How can you tell us that things have never changed when we know everybody realizes it has. And every change is just a change in administration in the way God chooses to deal with man. So don’t let that disturb you when someone says, "Oh don’t listen to that fellow, He’s dispensationalist." To me it’s almost laughable. For me it is a sad thing for people not to want to know God or His Christ in the way that He has required of us all. Yes! It requires faith, for the just and the righteous ones are to walk by His Faith until the end....this end maybe in the term of our lifespan or His second coming...don't know when or the day or hour. He may require His Spirit and our breath this day, if so we'll be instantly with the LORD of spirits.
Alright, the part that got me started here is that even though all these changes have come upon the human race, God never changed. He’s the same, yesterday, today and forever. Which is what? His character. His character never changes though His way of dealing with humanity does and will at His discretion. Now then verse 9. The people who think we're teaching strange doctrines are the ones to whom we’ll have to say, "Hey, wait a minute. Let’s put the shoe on the other foot." we’ll come back and say, "Don’t you follow strange doctrines, cause that’s what the Scripture says." It says that, We're too "Rightly divide the Word of God." We're to delineate it properly that simply means to draw a straight line such a using a plumb-bob (vertically) for building a square wall with the use of a framing square (for right angles). Now Paul is reaching his ending of this letter and reenforces his warnings which it contains.
Hebrews 13:9
"Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein."
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