Hebrews Lesson 99
NKJ
Philippians 4:6 Be anxious
for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving,
let your requests be made known to God;
We are in Hebrews
and we’re not going to spend much time in Hebrews, but just to remind you (if I
can get there) where we are. Hebrews
In verse 12 we read
this sentence.
NKJ
Hebrews
Methatithemi
indicating a change of place or condition.
of necessity there is also a
change of the law.
The word therefore
– we have another word for change metathesis which is a cognate of the
verb.
That is, out of the
compelling force or logical fact that the priesthood is changing; there is also
a change of the law. Now that is a really great verse that has an
embedded doctrine in it that is extremely important and probably overlooked a
lot just because you tend to read passed it very quickly. That is that there is
a change of law and a change of priesthood. The priesthood relates to the
administration of the spiritual life among the Jews in
Now last time I
introduced the doctrine which is related to dispensationalism
trying to answer the question in a somewhat abbreviated sense. (I have a longer
series out there on dispensations and covenants. I think it is called
God’s Plan for the Ages.) But here I am just trying to give us a little
bird’s eye view of what is involved in dispensations so you will know what we
are talking about.
A lot of people
don’t really know the technical terminology here even though some people have
heard dispensational teaching in relationship to perhaps the rapture or they
are pro-Israel. They believe that God still has a future plan for
On the other hand
you also have a lot of groups, a lot of denominations attack against dispensationalism. Part of that is funneled by ignorance. Several years ago there was a
critique written of dispensationalism written by a
reformed theologian who had a lot of respect by the name of John Gershner. He basically set up a series of straw men
arguments and then knocked them down. (A straw man argument is when you
misrepresent the opponents view and then it is real easy to discredit
it.) Here is this world class scholar, a recognized world class
theologian who could have his honest disagreements with dispensational
theology, but he distorted and misrepresented it. Unfortunately a lot of
people have that view of what dispensationalism
is. So I thought was important to take a little time to go through and
explain exactly what dispensationalism is.
Dr. Louis Sperry
Chafer was the founder and professor of theology at Dallas Theological Seminary
for many years. He used to comment that if you were not going to
So this is a good
place to stop and do this brief overview of dispensationalism
because dispensationalism isn’t saying that God
changes everything. We believe that there are certain things that
continue the same. Salvation is always by faith alone in Christ
alone. However in the Old Testament the understanding of just exactly who
Christ is, is not as clear as it is today. For
example from Adam to Abraham, the Messiah would have been thought of in terms
of the seed of the woman (Genesis
Then with Abraham
there is a little more clarification that the seed is going to come and the one
who will bring worldwide blessing will come through the line of Abraham, Isaac
and then Jacob. Then you come to the Davidic Covenant in II Samuel 7 and
you get clarification that the Messiah is going to come through the line of David.
So as the centuries went by people in the Old Testament people got a clearer
and clearer understanding of things about the Messiah until finally come to
passages like Isaiah 7:14 that:
NKJ
Isaiah
Behold “the” virgin
(it says in the Hebrew), not “a” virgin as most English translations have it.
The definite article there indicates that it is talking about an understood
virgin, going back to the seed of the woman.
shall conceive and bear a Son, and
shall call His name Immanuel.
Immanuel, God with
us.
You have a real
tight understanding that this is going to be the incarnate God just because His
name indicates that. So there is a tighter and tighter understanding in
this progress of revelation. So that is very important in dispensationalism.
Last time I pointed
out by way of review a couple of things. Dispensations deal with time and
ages. We talked about some of the key words that you find in the Bible
such as “seasons” based on the Greek word kairos
which indicates a broad expanse of time as opposed to a narrower expanse of
time. I think that you have ages which are broad and dispensations which
are narrow. That’ll be clear by the time we finish this evening. We
also have the term aion for age. And you
have an Age of Gentiles between Adam and Abraham, no Jews.
It is all- but you
have 3 dispensations because there are modifications of the original Creation
Covenant first in Genesis 3 then again with the Noahic
Covenant. Then there is a major shift that takes place with the call of
Abraham in Genesis 12. So you have ages and you have dispensations.
The concept of
dispensation comes from the noun oikonomos
which is where we get our word economy. You can hear how they sound very
similar and it emphasizes the idea of stewardship or administration and the
idea that God administers His plan differently in different ages. There
are certain things that stay the same, but there are other things that are
different. It is important to indicate that. That’s part of
dispensations.
So we define
dispensations as:
A distinct and identifiable (that means that each dispensation has
specific characteristics. We will get into that later on; this is just
upfront.) administration in the development of God’s
plan and purpose for human history.
There is
progress. Everything is not the same.
As part of this we
recognize three key elements as I pointed out last time.
That’s really
important to understand that distinction between
People come along
and they think, “Well, the Ten Commandments are still for today.”
No, you are reading
somebody else’s mail. That’s a contract with somebody else, not a
contract with the church - not a covenant with the church is the biblical
terminology. So it is important to understand those distinctions when
interpreting Scripture.
So from there I
pointed out that in the English the word “dispensation” means to weigh out or
dispense. Once again it is part of the idea of administration. It
is the act of administering or ordering something, dealing out or distributing
something or the act of dispensing with some requirement. So at the core
of a semantic meaning (that is technical language for basically what this word
means) is that there is a requirement. It includes within its meaning
some sort of obligation, responsibility or expectation from someone. It’s
management, but there is responsibility and accountability in relationship to
something. So that is all bound up in the idea of a dispensation.
We see in Scripture
that there are certain passages that make reference to these things. For example, Ephesians
NKJ
Ephesians 1:10 that in the
dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all
things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth -- in Him.
That’s not
now. It’s not in the past; it’s in the future. So that indicates
one division of human history. Then in Ephesians 3:8-9 Paul talks about
his responsibility, that he was given the grace to preach to the Gentiles the
unfathomable riches of Christ. That shows a difference because in the Old
Testament their focus wasn’t to go out to the Gentiles, but to be a light or a
beacon that the Gentiles would come to. So there is a definite shift or
distinction. Paul goes on to say:
NAS
Ephesians 3:9 and to
bring to light what is the administration
Oikonomia – that’s our word for dispensation. In fact the
Old King James translated it dispensation.
of the mystery which for ages
has been hidden in God, who created all things;
So that’s a
reference to the present Church Age. It has been a mystery in the Old
Testament. But now it is being brought to light.
Then in Ephesians
3:2 talks about the fact that:
NKJ
Ephesians 3:2 if indeed
you have heard of the dispensation
There is our word
again, okonomia.
of the grace of God which was
given to me for you,
That is a reference
to the present Church Age.
NKJ
Colossians
NKJ
Colossians
All of this
indicates that within the Scripture itself there is a
recognition of these different administrations that God administers
history with a little bit different obligations, responsibilities at different
times.
Then we began to
look at definitions. I think we stopped about right here if I am not
mistaken.
C. I. Scofield who edited the Scofield
Reference Bible was one of the great Bible teachers that came out of the
late 19th century. He was a decorated Confederate war
hero. After the war he decided the find the solutions to life in a bottle
rather than somewhere else. He was a drunk for a number of years and then he
was a lawyer as well – not that those two go together. I am not making -
no lawyer jokes here. He was a lawyer.
It is interesting
how many theologians were lawyers. Darby who was the first to organize
and categorize Scripture began as a lawyer. Others began as
lawyers. Calvin was a lawyer. Many theologians down through history
have come out of the legal profession. It is that same kind of analysis
that appeals to them.
But Scofield was part of that whole Bible teaching milieu – the
prophecy Bible conferences, Niagara Bible Conferences, the North Hampton Bible
Conference that Dwight Moody had up in
His protégé was a
young musical evangelist by the name of Louis Sperry Chafer.
One day he told
Chafer (he said), “Louis you might make a pastoral teacher someday if you just
had something to say.”
So from that point
on Chafer began to study at his mentor’s knee. Eventually Scofield became pastor of a congregational church
Another
dispensationalist from the early 20th century…I didn’t read the
quote did I?
Scofield said:
A dispensation is a period of time during which man is tested in respect
of obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God.
That is a good
tight definition. It indicates that there is a period of time, although
as I pointed out last time a dispensation indicates the administration, in
other words a timeframe. It is a period of time during which man is
tested. That is accountability for something. That something is
given by way of a specific revelation. So there is specific change of
information that takes place. That’s very important. A dispensation
isn’t based on other factors of history or theology. There is revelation
from God that God is going to function a little differently toward people and
require them to do things a little differently. So you look for those
times when God is revealing something new in how He is going to work with the
human race.
Graham Scroggie defined dispensation this way. He said:
The word okonomia bears one
significance and means an administration whether the house or a property of the
state or of a nation or as in the present study the administration of the human
race or any part of it at any given time just as a parent would govern his
house solely in different ways.
Now the reason he
uses that illustration is because the word okonomia
comes from two Greek words, oikos meaning
house and nomos meaning law. So house
law. When you were three years old your parents had different rules for
running the house and how you would obey them than when you were 13 and when
you were 18. So the fact that a household - and some of
those rules stay the same. The fact that a household changes the
way that it administers those in the household doesn’t imply inconsistency or
that you are saying God changes or any other silly notions that people accuse
dispensationalists of. He goes on to say:
Just as a parent would govern his household in different ways according
to varying necessity yet ever for one good end so God has at different times
dealt with men in different ways according to the necessity of the case but
throughout the one grand end.
I pointed out last
time that the overall purpose of God within dispensational theology is the
glory of God.
Dispensationalism is usually
juxtaposed to what is called today replacement theology. By replacement
they mean that Israel is replaced by the church in God’s plan so that the
promises and covenants that were originally given by God to the Jews in the Old
Testament are now given to the church and the church becomes the heir of the
promises to Israel and national ethnic Israel is no longer relevant - no longer
significant for the plan of God. While that doesn’t necessitate saying
that they are anti-Semitic, it does provide the soil within which anti-Semitism
has often sprung, especially during the Middle Ages
when a-millennialism dominated the church. The Jews were no longer
important. God has no plan or future for
Charles Ryrie, who
was the head of the Theology Department at Dallas Seminary when I was there,
has written a classic work, a good work that is basic in some senses but very
good analysis in other senses called Dispensationalism.
He defines a dispensation as:
A distinguishable economy in the outworking of God’s
purposes.
So he puts less of
an emphasis on time which is what the word dispensation really does emphasize -
the administration aspect more than the time aspect. But, it emphasizes
that it is the outworking of God’s purpose. And, it is
distinguishable. That means there are distinguishing marks or
characteristics so you can definitely tell when one begins and the other
ends.
Around 2000 I was
asked to write that article for The Tim LaHaye
Prophecy Study Bible on dispensationalism.
I tried to pull several different ideas together. I wrote:
A dispensation is a distinct and identifiable administration (I picked
that up from Dr. Ryrie.) in the development of
God’s purposes for human history. A closely connected but not
interchangeable word is age. They are not identical. They are not
synonymous. An age can be broader than a dispensation which introduces
the time element. God manages the entirety of human history as a
household, moving humanity through sequential stages.
That is a key word
sequential. They are related and one builds on the other so that there is
advance in knowledge, there is advance in information, and there is advance in
revelation.
of His administration, determined by the level of
revelation He has provided up to that time in human history.
It is very
important to understand this idea of progress of revelation. Failure to do so crops up in the most interesting places.
I go on to say:
Each administration period is characterized by revelation, specific
responsibilities, a test in relation to those responsibilities, and failure to
pass the test in God’s gracious provisions of a solution when failure occurs.
Five things - that
pretty much goes along with how Dr. Scofield set
things up. For the most part Scofield has a
very workable understanding of dispensations.
So what are we
saying? First of all these distinct elements are from the viewpoint of
God, not from the viewpoint of man. It is Theo-centric not man-centered, God centered not man-centered. We look at these in terms of how and what
God reveals.
Second, there is a
time when one ends and another begins. There may be a transition period
in there as one is fading out and another is beginning like you had in the book
of Acts. This is a problem the charismatics
have. They don’t understand the transitional nature in the book of
Acts. At the beginning of the books of Acts when Peter is preaching in
Acts 2 and again in Acts 3, there is still a holdout. Technically up
until 70 AD there is still the possibility that the Jews can repent and accept
Jesus as Messiah and the millennium will come. They are still in the land
and the temple is still there. But, in another sense they have already
forfeited that by their rejection of Jesus as Messiah. God in His grace
still holds out that option.
Peter says in Acts
3 to turn to Jesus and accept the times of refreshing which is a term of the
kingdom. The times of refreshing will come. So there is a transition
period there. But it is still clear that something is different.
On the day of
Pentecost in approximately 33, the Holy Spirit descended.
Individuals who were believers in Christ are baptized into the body of Christ,
were filled with the Spirit, indwelt by the Spirit and that never happened
before. It is unique to this age so it is very clear that that’s the
demarcation line. There is some overlap.
I always have fun
thinking, what would you do if you were a Jew and you were an Old Testament
saint and you lived in Rome and you died in 45 AD before the gospel got
to Rome? Are you a member of the church or are you Old Testament
A third point is
that this emphasizes the divided administration of history. History
isn’t as Henry Ford said one time, “One damn thing after another.” It an
orderly guided progression of events that is the outworking of God’s
plan. It is not just a bunch of chaos. God is moving history and He
is doing certain things and teaching certain things in each one of these
dispensations because they manifest different characteristics and
qualities. In that period from Adam to Noah, God’s presence is still in
Adam could take his
great grandchildren and his great-great-great-great-great grandchildren down to
see the cherubs standing there with the flaming sword guarding the Garden of
Eden and say, “God lives in there.”
Did you ever think
about that? They could see the angles; and human beings could see the
demons. The sons of God were not invisible when they were cohabiting with
the daughters of men in Genesis 6. Now after the Noahic
flood, you don’t have this. The angels are not visible. They are
not operating on the planet in a visible overt manner like they were before the
flood. Then you have this mass of demon activity at the time of Christ
and then it sort of fades out. A lot of people want to think that it
continues demonic activity of course, but not quite in the same way because the
Messiah is not here. It is really interesting; you have very little
reference to demons in the Old Testament. There is no demon possession,
nothing like that in the Old Testament. All of a sudden it explodes on
the scene in the gospels and then you have a little bit of a hangover when you
get into Acts. Then the epistles don’t even mention it. There isn’t
one mention of demon possession in the epistles. I wonder why that is...
New revelation
designates the shift from one dispensation to another. That is why I come
back to saying that it’s the covenants that indicate the movement. God
reveals to man in the Garden of Eden what his role and responsibility is.
He is to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and the beasts
of the field. He is to guard and keep the garden. The wife is to be
a helper to the husband. They are to be fruitful and multiply and fill
the earth. They are not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge
of Good and Evil. But, what happens? They disobey God and all that
has to be modified. Then you go through another period of time.
There is another worldwide cataclysm and judgment with the Noahic
flood. God comes back and has to restate each of those principles
again. They are still to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, but
now there is going to be other characteristic differences on the planet.
God gives a new set of stipulations. But, man disobeys. You have the
And then God
decides “Well, heck with the whole human race. So I am only going to work
through one man and his descendents.”
Then you have the Abrahamic Covenant. So, new revelation comes.
So each time you have new revelation in the form of a legal contract, the
dispensation shifts. When they do, some things remain the same; some
things change. For example you are still saved by faith alone in Christ
alone. God provides a solution. Your understanding of Christ and
who He is changes, is modified, clarifies, gets
tighter in focus as you go down through the ages. If you are not saved by
works in the Old Testament, you are not saved by law. You are not saved by
morality. You are not saved by ritual any more than you are in the New Testament.
You are saved by believing the promise. In the Old Testament you look
forward to the fulfillment of the promise. Now
we look back to the fulfillment of the promise.
So each dispensation has its own responsibilities and tests. That’s
indicated by change and expansion of revelation.
Last but not least,
each successive stage moves God’s plan closer to conclusion.
When it is all said
and done I think God is going to look back and say, “See in each one of these
dispensations we had conditions and circumstances that pretty much covered
every possible condition and circumstance. Man failed in every one of
them when he tried to do it on his own. You can’t come up with another way of
possibly doing it.”
What God
demonstrates through all of history is that there is only one way and that’s
God’s way and you have to be dependent on God. Nothing else works.
So how do we know
when a new dispensation begins? That’s a key question. That comes to the
idea of a covenant.
Here is a quote
from another very good dispensationalist – not an American dispensationalist
but a German dispensationalist by the name of Erich Sauer. He wrote
several books – The Dawn of Redemption, The King of
the Earth. This was the first theologian that I was ever aquatinted
with. The pastor of the church where my parents were going when I was
really little recommended these books to my dad to read. He bought the King
of the Earth and read that. I think I read it when I was in junior
high – excellent book. He is a European dispensationalist so he is a
little different from the flow of dispensational thought that occurred in
A new period always begins only when from the side of God (notice these
guys are all Theo-centric. It isn’t a man centered
theology.) a change is introduced in the compositions
of principles valid up to that time;
What is the one
word to describe that when a change is introduced in the composition in the
principles involved up to that time? What is one word you use to
summarize that? Revelation, new revelation.
He says:
1. There is a continuation of certain ordinances valid until
death; some things continue the same.
2. There is an annulment of other regulations that were valid up
to that point. Some things change; some things stay the same.
3. There is a fresh introduction of new principles not before
valid.
That is why you can
say – see you don’t have the indwelling of the Spirit, the baptism of the
Spirit, or the filling of the Spirit in the Old Testament. When you read
about the Holy Spirit interacting with Old Testament saints, do not make the
mistake of reading into that the same behavior he has
in the Church Age because it was different. It was for a different
purpose.
In the Old
Testament the Holy Spirit came upon men like Gideon, and Jephthah
and Sampson not for the purpose of their spiritual life or spiritual growth but
in order to give them military capability to defeat the enemies of
Now Arnold Fructenbaum in his book summarizes it this way. His
book is called – what is that tee-shirt that Bruce always wears? Footsteps of the Messiah. See you can’t forget
it. He’s got 20 tee-shirts that all say the same thing.
From God’s viewpoint a dispensation is an administration. From
man’s viewpoint a dispensation is a responsibility. From the viewpoint of
progressive revelation a dispensation is a stage in it.
That is a stage
within the progress of revelation.
From God’s viewpoint a dispensation is an administration. From
man’s view point a dispensation is a responsibility. From the viewpoint
of progressive revelation a dispensation is a stage in it.
Then I put this in
to give you a little bit of an idea. This comes out of Ryrie’s book Dispensationalism and gives you some different
breakdowns of dispensations from different dispensationalists.
Now one thing I
want to point out because some people think, “Ah, a dispensationalist. You have
to have 7 dispensations.”
That’s a good
biblical number of fullness, right? Seven, so you have to have 7
dispensations. Some people have 4 dispensations. Some people have 8
dispensations. The number of dispensations is not relevant to whether or
not you are a dispensationalist. Dallas Seminary only mentions 3
dispensations in their doctrinal statement.
Now Pierre Poiret was a dispensationalist in the 17th
century. He had 6 dispensations.
Isaac Watts the
hymnist who wrote Joy to the World was a pre-millenialist.
He breaks down. He has an early dispensational type breakdown. He
breaks it down as:
He doesn’t break
the Church Age down or the
Now the first
consistent dispensational theologian was an Irishman by the name of John Nelson
Darby. Darby was originally trained as a lawyer. Then he went into
the clergy. He was in the Anglican Church and broke away from the
Anglican Church because he didn’t like their ecclesiology. They were ….in
his church for many reasons. For many reasons he was right. He also
came over the
You will find a lot
of people who say, “How can you believe in a pre-trib rapture? Darby invented that. Nobody
believed in that before Darby.”
Well, there are at
least three different evidences that they have discovered in the last 15 years
of people who in church history who held to the disappearance of the church
prior to the tribulation. One goes back to a document called
pseudo-Ephraim. That’s who the writer was called because he took the
pseudonym of Ephraim. We don’t know who the actual author was. He
indicates that the church goes up before the time of God’s wrath.
Then there is a
Baptist (I don’t remember his name.) president of one of the most liberal
universities in the country in
Then there was another evidence that came up on a reversal. There was
a document that was discovered written in the Maryland colony in the late
1700’s that was refuting a pre-tribulation rapture which means that somebody
had to be teaching it.
Then I was talking
to Tommy the another day and he said they found some other (he didn’t tell me
what it was) but they think they have discovered another early writing that
indicates a pre-trib rapture. So Darby just
systematized this.
James Hall Brookes
was a Presbyterian pastor in
James Hall Brookes
had a former drunk Confederate War hero, now Christian show up in St. Louis who
he mentored by the name of Cyrus Scofield, C I Scofield. So Scofield then broke
the dispensations down into what has become classic because of the influence of
the Scofield Reference Bible.
What’s good about Scofield’s scheme is he breaks each one down because of a
covenant shift that takes place. So I think he’s got that nailed down in
terms of innocence up to the time of Adam’s fall. He is innocent not
because he is naïve but because he is judicially not guilty. He is not just not guilty, he is innocent judicially. That’s
a very good concept to hold on to. He is innocent. He becomes
guilty. Because he is legally guilty he has to become legally justified
in order to get saved. So it ties all that together. It is a very
good concept.
The Age of
Conscience is from Adam to Noah. The Age of Human Government is from Noah
to Abraham and then the Age of Promise from Abraham to Moses and then the Age
of the Law, the Age of Grace and the Age of the Kingdom. So that just
shows you some different ways that dispensationalists have broken down the periodization of dispensations over the years.
So how does God
advance the dispensations? He does it with covenants. Now this
looks like a lot up there, but it really isn’t. You can summarize it
pretty easily. First of all I say it’s a contract. Always think of
that. I think I have drilled that in to you enough by now that a covenant
is a contract.
When you signed on
the dotted line to apply for a credit card, you have signed a covenant; you
have signed a contract. That covenant that you have with your VISA company is assigning a particular interest rate and certain
responsibilities and also punishments that are part of that contract.
When you bought you house or you leased an apartment, you have a
contract. There are certain stipulations in that contract as to how long
the term of the lease is or how long the term of the mortgage is or whether it
is a fluctuating rate mortgage or whether it is a fixed rate loan or what the
percentage rate is. Let’s say you went out and you got a 7 ½ % loan
several years ago. You come along and it’s now 2005 or 2006 and mortgage
rates have dropped down to 5 ½ %.
You say, “I don’t
think it is fair that I keep paying 7 ½ % on my mortgage for my mortgage
rate. I am going to start paying them 5 ½%.”
Do you think that
will work? No, you can’t change the terms in the covenant once it is
enacted.
You say, “Well, my
next door neighbor got a great deal. He got a
VA loan and his loan is only 4.8%. I think I will start applying that
rate to my mortgage.”
Will that
work? No, you are reading your neighbor’s
mail.
See this is what
people do who go to the Mosaic Law and say “I think the Mosaic Law is and I
need to apply that to my life.”
What’s the
problem? The Mosaic Law wasn’t addressed to you. It was addressed
to
What happens if
they come to Ephesians
What is going to
happen? Well, reading the wrong mail again!
The Spirit as a restrainer is going to be removed during the tribulation
period. What about baptism of the Holy Spirit? Somebody is going to
get a hold of a Pentecostal tract during the tribulation period and go around
saying that you have to be baptized by the Holy Spirit and speak in
tongues. Oops! You are reading the wrong mail again. See, you
have to be careful with this.
So a covenant is a
contract between God who is the party of the first
part who makes a sovereign disposition obligating Himself in grace to bless man
who is the party of the second part. God is always the
initiator. He’s the one who set’s the parameters and provides the
revelation.
Now there are two
covenants between God and Gentiles as a whole. Actually you could say
there are three.
Then there are five
covenants between God and
It doesn’t mention
the church in Hebrews 8. When Hebrews 8 comes along as we will see in a
few weeks when we get there, it is a direct quote from Jeremiah 31. It
begins by saying in Hebrews 8:8:
NKJ
Hebrews 8:8 Because
finding fault with them, He says: "Behold, the days are coming, says the
LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of
It didn’t add “with
the church.” Covenants don’t change. It’s still the same New
Covenant that you had in Jeremiah 31 through 34. Of these, what we will
see is that the Mosaic Covenant was intended to be temporary and was designed
to end at a particular time. The other covenants are permanent in
nature.
Going back to the
original covenant there was an Edenic responsibility
given in Genesis 1. They were to be fruitful and multiply. But in
Genesis 3 in the revision there is now going to be pain in child birth.
The woman is a helper in Genesis 2. She becomes involved in this
authority struggle in Genesis 3. Man is to subdue the earth in Genesis
1. Now the earth is cursed and there are thorns in Genesis 3.
In Genesis 1 he is
to rule over the animals, but the animals are now cursed in Genesis3.
Every plant was given for food in Genesis 2. But in Genesis 3 it is
restricted to plants of the field. In Genesis 2 man is to serve and guard
the Garden of Eden. But now he is expelled after the curse. He is
not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The
result was now there is spiritual death which brings physical death. This
shows the correlation between Genesis 3 and Genesis 1. Man is still to be
fruitful and multiply and fill the earth which is what is brought out in the Noahic Covenant. So these three covenants are really
modifications of the same contract. God has to come in and as it were
establish an addendum to the contract because the conditions on man’s part have
changed because of sin.
So you have two
conditional or temporary covenants, the Edenic
Covenant and the Mosaic Covenant. The Edenic
Covenant has some conditions on it because as long as they don’t eat from the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil they can stay in the garden.
The Mosaic Covenant
Secondly there are
unconditional or permanent covenants. I like that term permanent more
because even within some of these unconditional covenants there are conditions
on their full realization like in the Abrahamic
Covenant. Those are your two basic breakdowns.
So what do we say
about these covenants then? Four things.
Now earlier
dispensationalists thought that well, there is a new covenant with
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Mark
Well, there must be
a new covenant for the church. But it doesn’t say that - anywhere.
So, hum. What’s the relationship of the church to the New Covenant?
The relationship is this.
Let’s say that I am
entering into this contract with Claude here. I enter into this
contract with Claude and I say that on the basis of this legal contract that we
have, I am going to bless everybody else in this room. But the legal
basis for that blessing of everybody else in the room is the contract that he
and I have. The rest of y’all aren’t contract partners. That
is what God did with Abraham.
In the Abrahamic Covenant He said, “Through you all people will be
blessed.”
The expansion of
that blessing part is the New Covenant where God says, “I am going to put a new
heart in
What He is doing is
the same thing.
He is saying, “I am
going to establish a covenant with
One of the ways
that’s done is that we are in Christ who is one of the covenant partners.
He is not the party of the second part; He is party of the first part. So
there is no new covenant for the church, just a New Covenant for
So we conclude with
Romans 9:4.
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Romans 9:4 who are
Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the
giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises;
Paul still
recognizes the Jews still get a right to the covenants. They are Israelites,
his fellow ethnic relatives. They are Israelites.
It doesn’t say that
they were taken away and given to the church. They are still to
So here they
are. You have the Gentile Covenants.
Jewish covenants:
These are all
unconditional, permanent covenants. There is one conditional or temporary
covenant. That’s the Mosaic Covenant given in Exodus 20 to Exodus
40.
So we are almost
out of time - two more quick charts. The Age of the Gentiles is
subdivided into three dispensations based on your three different
covenants. Then the Age of Israel covers two eras – the dispensation of
the patriarchs and the dispensation of the law – The Abrahamic
Covenant at the beginning and the Mosaic Covenant comes in at Sinai.
Then you are going
to have another shift when the Messiah appears because Jesus comes along and
now you are no longer believing that God is going to
provide a future Messiah. What do you have to believe? That He is
the Messiah. The requirements shift. The test shifts. They
now are to repent for the
I am going to skip
these verses. We will come back to them later.
After the cross you
have the Church Age that ends with the rapture. You all have seen it
before. It ends with the rapture. Then there is 7 years left over
for the Age of Israel which is the tribulation. That ends with the Second
Coming of Christ when He comes to establish His kingdom. That’s when the
New Covenant goes into effect and you have a literal 1,000 year reign of Christ
at the
We will come back
and wrap it up a little it in summary next time.