Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries |
The dispensation of Israel. Part 2. The faithfulness and grace of God in giving the Mosiac Law.
Friday, July 18, 2008
The second Theocentric dispensation, the Dispensation of Israel.
1. This is the dispensation where God made and chose a nation to be the recipient, custodian, and communicator of the written canon of Scripture.
2. Not only would Israel furnish the human authors of the Old Testament canon, but also the history and function of Israel herself would be recorded forever in Scripture for our example.
ROM 15:4 For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have confidence.
3. The Mosaic Law is a remarkable legal system that defined freedom and civil responsibility in Israel for believers and unbelievers alike.
4. The Law also set forth the precise correct procedure involved in spiritual ceremonies by which the Jews would worship God.
5. Because their God was also their king, it was the responsibility of everyone in Israel to observe the Mosaic Law as part of Jewish national life, although the spiritual provisions were properly meaningful for believers only.
6. As a single, integrated whole, the Mosaic Law also focused on the Tabernacle (and later the Temple) where the presence of God resided.
7. Offerings, rituals, and Holy Day observances conducted there anticipated the day when God would come in the flesh as the promised Messiah.
8. For the orderly conduct of these rituals and for the oral communication of God’s written Word, the Law instituted the Levitical priesthood, DEU 31:9-13; 33:10.
9. The Mosaic Law was a new phenomenon, a thorough system of private and public duty in Israel under the immediate rule of God.
10. This dispensation, the dispensation of Israel, was the time in human history of the dispensation of direct revelations in writing from God called the Torah and later on the entire Old Testament.
In GEN 3:11-24, Adam and Eve explain whose fault it really is.
In GEN 4:9-12, Cain tries to hide sin from God. GEN 4:9.... “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
In JAM 1:13-16, God does not tempt us to sin. (Don’t try to use God as an excuse).
MAT 25:41-46 - at the judgment there will be no excuses.
MAT 25:45 Then He will answer them, saying, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.”
EXO 3:11-4:17 - Moses tries various ways to get out of a job from God.
In JDG 6:11-16, Gideon tried to avoid God’s call.
JDG 6:13 - “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
JDG 6:14-16 And the Lord looked at him and said, “Go in this your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you?” And he said to Him, “O Lord, how shall I deliver Israel? Behold, my family is the least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house.” But the Lord said to him, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat Midian as one man.”
1SA 13:7-14 - Saul had fear of the enemies and the problems he was facing, and fear is not a valid excuse.
In the dispensation of Israel, there was a book called the Torah, which means the teaching and instruction from God, filled with divine guidance and commands for man to live a long life and prosper, even for the unbeliever.
“Would man respond to this way of divine truth as it would now be revealed?”
JOH 1:14 - the written Word will become flesh, a member of the human race and dwell among us, and man will even reject Him.
1TI 3:16 And by common confession great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh,
The rituals prescribed by the Mosaic Law were a dramatic “shadow of what is to come,” COL 2:17; HEB 8:5; 10:1.
The Levitical priesthood’s function and every individual’s daily life included participation in ceremonies that depicted these tremendous doctrines.
When Christ later came in the flesh, the reality fulfilled the shadows, making this magnificent heritage of rituals suddenly obsolete, HEB 8:13.
In the Church-age the believer’s way of life manifests the all-powerful reality rather than the shadow.
The ritual plan of God found in the Torah remains part of Scripture, documenting God’s faithfulness and describing Christ’s person and work.
The nation of Israel was chosen by God to demonstrate and communicate the grace of God, the greatest expression of which was that She would be the nation through which the Savior would be born into the world.
The sequence of the promises of God that guarantee the coming of Christ, beginning with the “Seed” revealed to Adam and Eve (GEN 3:15) and continuing with the promises made to Noah (GEN 9:26), proceeded to become more specific.