PART – #03 of “Dispensation Under Attack”
“Dispensing and Stewardship both, has everything to with that word ‘dispensation’.”
‘Dispensing’ talks about an instructional ‘giving out’, making it a ‘dispensation’.
And ‘Stewardship’, speaks of a committed faithfulness, in carrying out that dispensation.
We saw this mentioned in the previous Crumb 0317.
Stewardship is something that applies to us all in just about every walk of our lives in one way or another.
The apostle Paul talks about this in [1st Corinthians 9:16-17].
In verse 16, he tells that he has nothing to boast of or glory in.
Because a burden or necessity was laid upon him by the Ascended Lord Jesus Christ.
He can ‘NEVER’ forget or get over the Amazing Grace of God after Damascus Road [Acts 9:1-16].
A fanatical religious zealot and murderer turned saint, and committed with something that God kept hidden for four thousand years.
God’s Grace! It’s beyond human comprehension.
Paul is now totally sold on Christ Jesus, lock, stock and barrel, without any reservation whatsoever.
Then in verse 17, he says:
“For if I do this thing (preach the Gospel of Grace) willingly, I have a reward:…….
And setting aside his own thoughts, opinions, feelings and will, he continues:
……but if against my will, a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me.”
God had now revealed to this man, Paul, how He was going to save people individually, and was going to trust him with this stewardship.
And HE was going to do so ‘without’ the Law of Moses and ‘without Israel’.
HE was now going to do so via the ‘finished work’ of the shed blood on the cross.
A Judicial ‘ACT OF GOD’
The cross was a judicial Act of God, with mankind’s sin debt legally paid in full.
“How that Jesus Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose again for our justification or acquittal.”
Scripture, without confusion, graphically and undebatably lays this out in [1 Corinthians 15:1-4] and [Romans 4:25].
And hence the salvation of men was now to be “Grace through faith” + NOTHING! [Ephesians 2:8].
This salvation of men, referred to as ‘the dispensation of Grace’ in [Ephesians 3:2-3], had now begun.
And GOD, in His Sovereign purpose and plan, revealed it only to this man, Paul.
Scripture, which never lies, confirmed this beyond any shadow of doubt in [Galatians 1:11-12].
Up until this point, it was kept secret in the mind of God [Romans 16:25].
The apostle Paul tells us it was mystery or secret, “which had been hid from the ages and from generations….”
“But now is made manifest”, that is, ‘now unveiled’, brought out in the open and into the spotlight.
And now the apostle Paul was called to faithful stewardship in dispensing this good news.
The eternal destinies of billions of men and women, for at least the next two thousand years were at stake.
And it would solely hinge on the faithful dispensing and stewardship of this man Paul.
“Dispensing and Stewardship”, we cannot have one without the other in a dispensation.
They go hand-in-hand.
Dispensation In The Old Testament
Let’s see how ‘dispensation’ was used in the Old Testament.
God had approached Abraham about beginning a nation through him in [Genesis 12:1-3].
Two thousand had gone by since creation.
The dispensational instruction God left with Adam got lost in the dust over time, as men went their own way.
There was no written Law or any formal form of temple worship in place at that time.
So, God was dealing with men ‘according to’ their ‘conscience’, whenever they committed any acts of sin.
In so many words, the ‘dispensational instruction’ from God in those days, at that time, ‘according to’ their conscience was👇🏾:
“Whenever your conscience, convicts you of a wrong doing, bring Me an animal blood sacrifice ‘by faith’.
And I will accept your sacrifice and forgive your sin”.
God had instituted and introduced this instruction for the first time in [Genesis 3:21].
It was when HE was dealing with Adam and Eve ‘after’ their fall.
Before The Fall
Before the fall, this particular instruction wasn’t required, because sin, as a fallen nature in man, did not exist.
They were truly and completely innocent.
So, the only dispensational instruction in place for them was according to their innocence, which also came with a warning.
And we that find in [Genesis 2:17].
“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it:….”
That was the first ever ‘dispensational instruction’ which was ‘according to’ their innocence.
So we can call that the ‘dispensation of innocence’.
Now, the warning which came with it too.
….for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die……”
Sin And Death Make Their Entry
We know from Scripture that both Adam and his wife Eve did eat of it.
And as per the warning, sin entered, and along with it, death entered too.
This death for man, was going to be both physical and spiritual.
Death, from now on, was to be the portion of every living thing and creature as well.
And it would manifest itself in the ugliest of ways, in human beings, and in both the animal and plant kingdom.
For the curse had set in.
And now all of creation, in every form, was going to suffer from that point on.
How do we know that?
Scripture brings that point out clearly and graphically in [Romans 8:19-23 AMP].
Do check it out!
And of course, we see the graphical evidence of that just about every which way we turn and look.
What God Spoke
Ezekiel brings up what God spoke after the fall in [Ezekiel 18:20].
“The soul that sinneth, it shall die”
And the apostle Paul explains this so well in [Romans 5:12].
“Wherefore, as by one man (speaking of Adam) sin entered into the world, and death by (Adam’s) sin;……..
The result?
…….and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
So, when sin entered because of Adam’s fall, the ‘dispensational instruction’ changed.
And the ‘blood sacrifice’ was now introduced.
But God never changed!
HE never does, His attributes of Grace, mercy, love, compassion, longsuffering have always been consistent, constant, and without boundaries.
It was His amazing ‘attribute of Grace’ that caused Him to reach down to this fallen man and his wife.
And then, to introduce the first-ever blood sacrifice in order to restore them back to fellowship with Himself.
So, His mode of operation changed, it had to!
Things could not carry on now as they were before!
Sin had now entered!
Now this instruction was passed on to their sons Caine and Abel.
And we know that from the Scriptures in [Genesis 4:3-8] and [Hebrews 11:4].
It’s laid out in plain and simple daylight.
It’s where we find that Abel heeded the instruction, while Cain disobeyed and rationalized.
And the end result was that Abel was accepted while Cain was not.
A Hopeless Race
So now we find a hopeless race of humanity coming out of Adam, and then getting destroyed in the flood.
Noah and his family were the only ones spared, because they were the only ones still heeding that ‘dispensational instruction’.
“Bring Me a blood sacrifice ‘by faith’ and I will accept your sacrifice and forgive your sin”.
Then, God began afresh through Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth.
But it wasn’t long before their offspring went right back into idolatrous paganism at the Tower of Babel.
It was less than 200 years and they were back to square one!
And we’re still the same today! Nothing has changed!
The well-known German philosopher of the 17th century, Georg Hegel, once famously said:
“The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn ‘NOTHING’ from history.”
And how true that is.
It’s probably why the well-known quotation, ‘history always repeats itself’ came into existence.
Because men do not and cannot change, history has undoubtedly proved so.
That’s the ‘sin nature’ for you and me!
No More Flood
Even though mankind was right back to where he was before, God wasn’t going to use the flood anymore.
For He had promised He wouldn’t in [Genesis 9:11-16].
And HE set up the rainbow as a reminder both for Himself and mankind.
But we see today, how that colourful reminder has been defiled.
This defiling took place at the Whitehouse in Washington D.C. under Obama’s presidency on the 26th of June 2005.
That beautiful and colourful symbol of God’s promise, faithfulness and mercy in the sky, is now today, a symbol of homosexuality.
This is what we fallen men have done!
Don’t tell me that God doesn’t have a case against me, as HE has against anyone else.
HE has every case against us all, and it’s as clear as daylight in [Romans 3:23].
And ‘guilty’ is the verdict [Romans 3:19].
It’s amazing how we then have the audacity to point our finger and fist towards heaven, when catastrophe strikes.
And all because we can’t have our cake and eat it too!
A Greater Catastrophe
But here’s the thing, there is a far greater catastrophe coming soon, and it’s well on its way.
And it’s going make the great flood of Genesis look like a Sunday morning picnic in comparison.
It’s going make the Hitler of the holocaust look like a ‘church choir boy’, as one preacher aptly put it.
Jesus Christ spoke of this Himself in, [Matthew 24:21].
The flood was really an ‘Act of God’s Great Mercy’ [CRUMB 0129].
The destruction of every living creature was quick and instant, it was over in a flash.
What is coming is going to be God’s judgemental wrath!
And this catastrophe, will not be instant, but will drag over a period of seven years.
Physical And Mental
The horrors of the Tribulation are not only going to be physical, but also mental.
And it’s going to test men’s ability to keep their sanity, because of these horrors that are coming on the earth.
It’s going to be God’s Wrath on mankind vs what was His Mercy in the flood.
And the world will graphically see the difference.
However, for the moment we are yet in the dispensation of the ‘Age of Grace’.
But it will not last for long, though it may have been going on for the last two thousand years.
It is imminent, that is, it can happen any moment, and that’s how it’s been for those two thousand years.
Coming Back To Abraham
SO, by the time we get to Abraham, there was not a single believer left on the planet.
Then God does something new, as HE called out Abraham, and sets him out with a promise.
A nation would come forth from his loins, which we know as the nation of Israel today.
However, time went by, and Abraham hadn’t yet had a son.
And so, what did Abraham say to God in [Genesis 15:2]?
“…..what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the ‘steward’ of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?”
What was Abraham saying?
The man Eliezer was the ‘steward’ who managed all of Abraham’s wealth, he’s a good example of stewardship in the Old Testament.
Not only did Eliezer ‘dispense’ orders to the servants, but he also ‘dispensed’ when to sell and when to buy.
So Eliezer was called to be faithful in both dispensing and stewardship in all things that belonged to Abraham.
We want to remember Abraham was wealthy.
Now why are we saying all of this?
Because ‘this’ is what Paul the apostle claims to be concerning the Grace of God in [1 Corinthians 4:1].
“Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and….
Watch what the next word is!
……..‘stewards’ of the mysteries of God.”
How clearly the responsibility of stewardship comes out in this portion of Scripture.
Paul is always referring to the ‘mysteries’ that were revealed to him.
And what are mysteries?
Secrets!
And Who kept them secret until revealed to this man?
God did.
Out Of Judaism
And so, when God called Paul out of the religion of Judaism, and saved him on the road to Damascus……
…….He sent him down to Mount Sinai and poured out on him for 3 years, all the revelations of the mysteries.
There are all kinds of mysteries that Paul speaks of in his writings.
And since they were revealed to him, ‘he’ (Paul), then became the ‘steward’ of those mysteries.
And if he was the steward of them, then he also was the dispenser or administrator of them.
Stewardship and dispensing, they can never be separated.
When we understand that, then this glorious Book, THE BIBLE, becomes crystal clear and ‘as plain as daylight’!
It just lays right out in front of us, that this is a whole new administration or dispensation.
Click [HERE] for PART – #04 –“JESUS CHRIST IS ‘DISPENSATIONAL’”
(Please note, all that is written in the ORANGE COLOUR, are connecting links, so do refer to them. You will find them very useful.)
