DISPENSATIONS

TEEN TREE OF LIFE
THE DISPENSATIONS
October 28, 2018

BEFORE we begin, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, take a moment to name your sins to God The Father. This will allow you to be filled with the power of The Holy Spirit as you read this booklet (EPH 5:18 & 1JO 1:9). IF YOU HAVE never believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have that opportunity right now. Simply tell God The Father that you are believing on His Son Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you make that decision, you are now a believer and will always be a child of God! When you die, you will spend eternity with Him forever in heaven! (JOH 3:16 & ACT 16:31).

Where is the god who can compare with you—wiping the slate clean of guilt, Turning a blind eye, a deaf ear, to the past sins of your purged and precious people? You don’t nurse your anger and don’t stay angry long, for mercy is your specialty. That’s what you love most. And compassion is on its way to us. You’ll stamp out our wrongdoing. You’ll sink our sins to the bottom of the ocean. You’ll stay true to your word to Father Jacob and continue the compassion you showed Grandfather Abraham—Everything you promised our ancestors from a long time ago. (MIC 7:18-20 The Message Bible) We are now at the Dispensation of Government which is the third one in our study. In this Dispensation, God is once again giving mankind a brand new start!

As with all of the Dispensations, this one also has an opening event – Noah worshiping God: Noah built an altar to God. He selected clean animals and birds from every species and offered them as burnt offerings on the altar. God smelled the sweet fragrance and thought to himself, “I’ll never again curse the ground because of people. I know they have this bent toward evil from an early age, but I’ll never again kill off everything living as I’ve just done. For as long as Earth lasts, planting and harvest, cold and heat, Summer and winter, day and night will never stop.” (GEN 8:20-22 The Message Bible) As we learned last week, Noah received a covenant – a promise from God: ...never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow [rainbow] is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." And God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth." (GEN 9:11-17)

The Dispensation of Government extended from Noah’s flood – to the call of Abraham, which is found in GEN 12:1-3: Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
As we learned last week, Cain was the first murderer on earth. God determined that never again would He allow murderers to infect the rest of humanity with their rebelliousness. And that’s how Capital Punishment came to be: “But your own lifeblood I will avenge; I will avenge it against both animals and other humans. Whoever sheds human blood, by humans let his blood be shed, Because God made humans in his image reflecting God’s very nature. You’re here to bear fruit, reproduce, lavish life on the Earth, live bountifully!” (GEN 9:5-7 The Message Bible)

With Capital Punishment, a governmental agency is needed to administer sentences of execution and to restrain evil. When God ordained Capital Punishment, He instituted human government as a further restraint against the lawless rebellion of man. The apostle Paul teaches us that governmental authority comes directly from God: Be a good citizen. All governments are under God. Insofar as there is peace and order, it’s God’s order. So live responsibly as a citizen. If you’re irresponsible to the state, then you’re irresponsible with God, and God will hold you responsible. Duly constituted authorities are only a threat if you’re trying to get by with something. Decent citizens should have nothing to fear. Do you want to be on good terms with the government? Be a responsible citizen and you’ll get on just fine, the government working to your advantage. But if you’re breaking the rules right and left, watch out. The police aren’t there just to be admired in their uniforms. God also has an interest in keeping order, and he uses them to do it. That’s why you must live responsibly—not just to avoid punishment but also because it’s the right way to live. That’s also why you pay taxes—so that an orderly way of life can be maintained. Fulfill your obligations as a citizen. Pay your taxes, pay your bills, respect your leaders. (ROM 13:1-7 The Message Bible) What we have in this Dispensation is an attempt to allow mankind to live together under the rules and laws of government.

Look at what Paul wrote to the Church at Thessalonica: Now, friends, read these next words carefully. Slow down and don’t go jumping to conclusions regarding the day when our Master, Jesus Christ, will come back and we assemble to welcome him. Don’t let anyone shake you up or get you excited over some breathless report or rumored letter from me that the day of the Master’s arrival has come and gone. Don’t fall for any line like that. Before that day comes, a couple of things have to happen. First, the Apostasy. Second, the debut of the Anarchist, a real dog of Satan. He’ll defy and then take over every so-called god or altar. Having cleared away the opposition, he’ll then set himself up in God’s Temple as “God Almighty.” Don’t you remember me going over all this in detail when I was with you? Are your memories that short? You’ll also remember that I told you the Anarchist is being held back until just the right time. That doesn’t mean that the spirit of anarchy is not now at work. It is, secretly and underground. But the time will come when the Anarchist will no longer be held back, but will be let loose. But don’t worry. The Master Jesus will be right on his heels and blow him away. The Master appears and—puff!—the Anarchist is out of there. (2THE 2:1-7 The Message Bible) The Thessalonians had been told that the Rapture had already taken place and that they had been left behind. As you might imagine, they freaked out! So, Paul wrote to them to explain the truth about the sequence of events which will lead up to the Rapture. Paul says something else that is significant in 2THE. He informs the Thessalonians that, although the spirit of iniquity is already at work, the man of sin will not step forward until The Holy Spirit, who is restraining evil, has been removed.

The Holy Spirit restrains evil by the power of government. As Church-Age believers, we are here to be a restraining force against evil through the Power of The Holy Spirit. When the Church leaves the earth in the Rapture, The Holy Spirit will be taken out of the way. His Unique Lawlessness-Restraining Ministry will be removed.

Noah’s descendants settled in a land named Shinar which was located very close to the Garden of Eden. After one hundred years, the population remained one clan, one tribe, one language, one nation, and one family. Sadly, they had hopelessly sunk into rebellion and sin. The inhabitants of Shinar decided to build a tower that would reach to the heavens. They named it The Tower of Babel. They became very arrogant and thought they could outdo anyone. But never forget that, when what man desires to achieve is self-glory and self-fulfillment, what God does is show man how helpless we are. Look at what the apostle Paul wrote in ROM 12:3 (The Message Bible): I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

In the flood, God’s Judgment was destruction. With the Tower of Babel, God’s Judgment was to scatter mankind around the world. First, it was just Adam and the woman thrown out of Eden. With Noah’s descendants, it was the entire population of the world thrown out of Shinar! For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. (GAL 6:3) Noah’s family had tried their best to achieve their greatest anti-God act. And BANG! God stepped in and did what He had to do. Both Noah’s descendants and, Adam and the woman, had an attitude of wanting to live apart from God, driven by personal ambition and pride. And interestingly enough the Garden of Eden and Shinar are right around the corner from each other!

Nations and languages came into existence through one act of God: At one time, the whole Earth spoke the same language. It so happened that as they moved out of the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled down. They said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and fire them well.” They used brick for stone and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower that reaches Heaven. Let’s make ourselves famous so we won’t be scattered here and there across the Earth.” God came down to look over the city and the tower those people had built. God took one look and said, “One people, one language; why, this is only a first step. No telling what they’ll come up with next—they’ll stop at nothing! Come, we’ll go down and garble their speech so they won’t understand each other.” Then God scattered them from there all over the world. And they had to quit building the city. That’s how it came to be called Babel, because there God turned their language into “babble.” From there God scattered them all over the world. (GEN 11:1-9 The Message Bible) This is a very simple and straightforward explanation of how nations and languages developed all over the world. It’s also a horrible tragedy, in a way, because mankind is separated and scattered all over the world. They rebelled against God (like we all do); and because of this, they developed a negative relationship with God.

Sociologists and anthropologists and language theorists imagine a slow, long evolutionary process socializing man. They theorize that somehow, we evolved into different nations with different languages……NOT!!

Man’s failure in the Dispensation of Government included personal disorder. They weren’t embarrassed about how they looked or what they did. In GEN 9:20-23, Moses wrote: Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness. Man also failed with respect to social disorder which we learned in GEN 11:1-4.

Man’s responsibility, in every Dispensation, is to believe in and obey God. From Adam in the Garden to you, that is the resounding message: Children, do what your parents tell you. This is only right. “Honor your father and mother” is the first commandment that has a promise attached to it, namely, “so you will live well and have a long life.” (EPH 6:1-3 The Message Bible) The apostle John wrote: And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. (2JOHN 1:6 NIV)