Ephesians Lesson 19 of 39 part 1 cont.

Ephesians 3:2

"If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward."

Dispensation is a word that we've refrained from using purposely, simply because too many people have heard nothing but bad things or for it's been given bad press about the word, even though they don’t have any real idea why. So we’ve known from day one that we had to be careful how we use this word, because we would turn people off because of the ignorance of others. And natural man being what he is judges without the truth first then tries to pick up the pieces later to restore the puzzle for clear observation, before they would give us a minute to listen. But we think by now we've built enough credibility with people and won’t get turned off when we use the word dispensation. Remember Paul uses this word even in chapter 1 verse 10, so it’s very scriptural.

Ephesians 1:10

"That in the dispensation of the fulness of time..."

We dealt with that back there, but now in chapter 3 he deals with the dispensation of the Grace of God. Well to quality a dispensation, it’s just a simple word from which we get the word stewardship, economy or dispensing. If we go to a pharmacy and give him our prescription, he then dispenses what the doctor has ordered, but along with dispensing the product he also gives you explicit instructions. We don’t just take the medicine haphazardly, but rather we follow the instructions that came with the dispensing. Now bringing it back into the scriptures, a dispensation is a period of time during which God laid particular dispensational instructions to the human race. Christ as the Spiritual Head of all who would choose renewed spiritual Life has done the same to sustain that spiritual Life within us.

The best way we can illustrate dispensation for the secular and Orthodox religious world is our own presidential administration. And the one we like to use it is the administration of Jimmy Carter and the one followed by Ronald Reagan. These were men with two totally different ideologies, but yet they both led the country under the same constitution. For a moment let’s go back to the Carter years, as he builds his own administration. He appoints his own cabinet, he appoints men who have the same ideology that he does concerning how the country should be administered to. It wasn’t so much the 4 years he was in the White House that made his administration, but rather what made the Carter administration was the ideology that he promoted by whatever he suggested to congress or how he handled foreign affairs, that’s what marked the Carter administration, but it ended.

Then there was a transitional period, and from that dispensation of the Carter years we went to someone with a totally different view and that was Ronald Reagan. He too was under the same constitution, and his term of office also came to the place where it ended. Whether he served 4 or 8 years is moot. What counted was the kind of ideology that his administration promoted for the country. So in short what makes an administration is, "What were they're dispensing?" Now you can bring that into scripture and we think you have a beautiful analogy.

 Before I say what is the obvious allow me to say that Moses first and foremost revealed Genesis 3:15 and 21 to the sons of Jacob, but they like so many after Christ's ascension refused to listen and therefore God calls him (Hebrews 3). When God called Moses and the Nation of Israel out of Egypt, he brought them around Mt. Sinai. He called Moses up into the mountain. What did He give to Moses? Law. And Law was a dispensation. It was a dispensing to the Nation of Israel, God’s demands upon the Nation as to how they were to worship, how they were to live; and all those things were part of that dispensation of Law. Whether it went 500 years or 1500 years is moot. What’s important is, what did God give Moses to tell the children of Israel? The Law. Why, because they refused the revelation of the spirit renewal first.