How To Study The Bible
Vern Peterman · Nov 11, 2001
How to Study Bible (2001-02), No. 06
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262237417670

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

as a result of that choice, what happened? Sin entered, and the way in which God dealt with man changed. Now, did they have the Mosaic Law yet? Had Jesus come yet? No. So what happens is now we see a change. You'll see in this chart, you'll see that one page on there has a chart. You go from this period of innocence into a period of its conscience. Conscience. Why conscience? Because there is really no law laid out. There really isn't any standard of morality laid out. It's just whatever man thinks is right.

But, then there is the flood of Noah. Some things change again, don't they? What happens after the flood? The Lord comes to Noah and he says a few things. He said, If one man kills another, let his blood be required of him. Capital punishment. What else? I'm not going to send a flood anymore, and I'm going to give you a sign to show you. What is it? The rainbow. See? Now you've got to change into another.

Dispensation it's called. Incidentally, you say, where does that word come from? It shows up in more than one place in the King James Bible. That's where the word comes from. If you come up with some other name, I don't particularly have a problem with it.

The main thing is that you understand the principle. As we go through there, then there is the call of Abraham. Now you're in the period of promise. This promise to Abraham was repeated to Abraham, it was repeated to Isaac, and it was repeated to Jacob. It keeps showing up all through the book of Genesis. and then the introduction of the law. So you see, what happens is there's still man. Man has still got the same problem after the fall.

But God's manner of dealing with man changes at each of these kind of change points that you see flagged here. The time in which we live is called the period of grace. God is dealing with man by grace. It is also called the church age. and so then the next age to come will be the Kingdom. So now we've got those seven periods, if you will, and let's go over here what remains the same right below it. What remains the same through all dispensations? God's character doesn't change. We know that. He spells that out.

Salvation by faith is God's provision all throughout those times. Even when the law of Moses was given, how was salvation brought to the people that were given the law? It was still by faith, wasn't it? We live now by faith. When we are taken out, when believers are taken out of the world and taken to be with the Lord, those who must go through that period of tribulation, that awful period of tribulation, will be saved how? It doesn't matter. In each case, salvation is always by faith. But, the third thing, salvation is by God's sovereign grace. It is by God's grace that people are saved.

Let's take a look right below that. Understanding of the Distantiation is based upon consistent literal interpretation of Scripture, a continuing clear distinction between Israel and the Church. You will come across Those who do not believe in these dispensations, so what we teach here has a distinction. Those who do not believe in these dispensations typically say they believe in covenant theology.

They try to make everything look more or less the same across all time. Example, they will say that Israel is also the church. They will say the promises given to Israel are carried over to the church. So they kind of blur those distinctions in how God dealt with man. Now, you see the last one, understanding of dispensations is important. We know what God expects of us based upon who we are and when we live. It allows us to understand God's word to rightly divided. It shows God's character and glory.

And the last, it impacts how we view and treat the people of Israel, that is the Jews today and in the years to come. Those who set aside this understanding of dispensations typically look at God as having rejected the Jews. That was a teaching that took hold strongly during the centuries that the Catholic Church was predominant in Europe, and it was carried on through a lot of the people during the period of the Reformation, unfortunately, and many of those, even up till today, reject the place that God had promised to the Jews and set that aside.

However, one of the reasons why our country has been a backer of Israel, even though they haven't always agreed with everything they've done. We've been a backer of Israel. One of the reasons is because we in this country have had a strong understanding of dispensationalism. It's one of the things that allowed Israel to become a nation again back in the late 1940s.

Okay, now one more thing to turn over. Each dispensation involves a stewardship. I think that's the key. It's a stewardship. It's between God and man. The Lord is saying, here are some responsibilities I want you to have. Your salvation is not dependent upon it, but in terms of how you deal with things here on planet Earth, this is how I want you to do it. While we show on the front of this this chart that shows these sharp marks of demarcation, the truth is, and you see it in this mini chart at the bottom on the back here, There is a period of transition. Right? Let's take it for instance. Jesus first came and he was born of the Virgin Mary. Then he chose his disciples. Then he went to the cross.

Was the transition done yet? No. There was still more to come. There was still the Pentecost yet to take place. And you know, it was still almost a decade before the disciples understood, oh, we're supposed to tell other people besides the Jews. So a time of transition may take a while. The book of Acts, and when we look at it and we say, okay, I'll read that in a little while, it's a period of about 30 years. So this transition takes time. Let me pass out something I think you'll find real interesting. Need to get some more. We've got some folks over here. You've got some extras right behind you there. I want you to take a look at this one here.

It looks like a couple of squares with ellipses. It is fascinating to look at the implementation of the old covenant and the implementation of the new covenant as it's implemented with the church. Do you see the parallels there? It is remarkable how similar the timing and the events were.

See that? As the Lord had the Passover lamb chosen, the tenth of a month of Abib, and then Jesus rides in Jerusalem, comes into the temple, the tenth of Nisan. That's not a car, okay? And then, look here, you've got the Passover feast, and Jesus celebrating the Passover. The timing, even to the day, is remarkably similar. You see that? The sequence that takes place.

But one thing that you'll notice, even if you get to the end of this chart, the law was not still completely given in the Old Testament. There was still more of it to come, right? It wasn't actually spelled out entirely for some period of time, and actually not entirely until the end of Deuteronomy, decades later. when the Jews are ready to pass into the promised land. And as the new covenant is implemented with the church, the day of Pentecost is not the end either, is it? You still have almost a decade before they realize that, oh, this is for the Gentiles too. And then more decades pass before they've actually gone out and gotten the gospel to a significant number of people and taught them and gotten these churches started.

So that's one thing to remember is that these times of transition are times when things are still kind of partly in place. Now, one of the things you may have noticed is there are groups around today who will take a time of transition and use that transition as the standard.

You go into Acts 2 and what's taking place. What's that? Okay, but that's the day of Pentecost, right? And the day of Pentecost, what happens? Okay, the Holy Spirit is given and you see tongues come about, right? And then it shows up again as the Gentiles are introduced to Christ as Savior. Then you see tongues show up again, and then you have it show up one last time when you have Jews who had just been taught under John the Baptist, Jews among the Gentiles. So first among the Jews, then among the Gentiles, then Jews among the Gentiles, and that's the only descriptions you ever see of it.

So what do they do? They take the transition. There are groups today, a lot of the Charismatics and Pentecostals, and I know my grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher. they will teach that that time of transition is the norm. Do you see what happens there? They make the mistake of taking the transition and saying that's the norm. That is no more the norm than to say, to really be a Jew, you've got to keep going back up and down Mount Sinai and get more of the law. Do you see that?

So be careful about taking the time of transition and saying that's the norm. That's no more the norm than we should try to go back on the ark. There are those periods of transition. We need to understand what's happening in the transition and then understand what is to be the norm during the bulk of the time following.

You see the distinction? It's real critical when we look at these things historically. Let's get the big picture. Look at this chart that you have that shows those different dispensations, those periods of time in which God is working with a different stewardship. Look at those, but understand as you're reading the historical account that each of those transitions is a transition and the transition is not the norm.

Am I making sense? Okay. All right. It's critical because entire churches and church denominations are based on misunderstanding just what I've talked this morning. You see that? They will base entire church denominations on a misunderstanding of that transition principle. And we don't want to do that. Okay? Okay. Now, having done that, I did want to mention one thing. Hal, some years back, prepared a chart that's on the flip side.

So you actually have quite a bit of information. on the flip side where it takes these dispensations and breaks them down between their impact on Israel and impact on the Gentiles. Do you see the difference there? And that I think is in some ways helpful too because it gets crystal clear in our mind. The chart that I showed you at first is kind of simplified in a way in that it doesn't show the distinction between Israel in the Gentiles, whereas this chart that Hal prepared does. So I think it's perhaps helpful to get it clear in your mind.

Now, I want to pass out again. And again, pass them front and back as needed there to equalize among the groups. Okay, now it's your turn. Yeah, your turn to pass out. What we have here is three different passages And I've color-coded them for a reason. What I'd like us to do is to look at the phrase and look at this chart that you first looked at there that has got kind of the seven periods of time. And let's see if we can decipher by looking at the language and looking at what he's saying and see if we can determine which of those dispensations is it talking about. because what you will find is within one verse or within one passage, there may be multiple dispensations referred to. And understanding what he's talking about is important, otherwise we're not going to get the idea.

Now, the first one, Titus 2, 11-14, this is Paul writing to Titus. Titus was one of the guys who was given to found the church on the island of Crete. And in the middle of his letter to Titus, he says, For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men.

Now, when did that happen? At the cross. And it was really kind of at the end of the period of the law, wasn't it? At the end of the period of the law. So that's the first one. Then, verse 12, he shifts. See the color change there? When is He instructing us? Instructing us to deny right now. So now this is in the period of grace, or the church age. You can write that below there. To deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age. See that? See the change in language there? In the present age.

So because He came at the end of the law, and it was actually Christ that formed that transition from one dispensation to the next, from the prior one under the law to the current one under grace. Because he did that, he instructed us how to live in this present age while we're under grace and then look at the ship looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Christ Jesus.

And what is that? That's a transition into the next dispensation. Do you see that? Now here in three verses, he shifted between the three dispensations. He says, that happened then, it impacts how you live now, and it impacts what you're going to be looking forward to. And now in three verses we've just talked about three dispensations. Do you see that? Make sense? So now he's talked within those three verses about the three dispensations and actually at this point in time, nice sequential order.

Now, let's look again. Verse 14, "...who gave himself..." Oh, when did that happen? She's brought up a good point. The truth is it was in eternity past, but in history it took place... We're back to verse 11, aren't we? He's shifting back to verse 11 He gave Himself for us to redeem us. Back then, historically, it took place then at that transition at the end of the law, into the time of grace, to redeem us from every lawless deed. Now, when does every lawless deed take place for us?

Right now. Or at least during this age. And to purify for Himself. When did He do the purifying? At the cross. So now He's jumped back. a people for his own possession. When is he possessing us? Now. Zealous for good deeds, and those good deeds take place now. Do you see what's happened here? He has kind of jumped, starting with one dispensation, or at least the end of it, into the present one, then into the future, and then back into the end of the last dispensation, then into the present, back to the last, and then into the present.

If we understand these and can see it from that standpoint, it will make our understanding of Scripture much more clear, because Scripture always talks in terms of one of these dispensations. And we need to ask ourselves as we're going through it, which ones are we talking about?

Yes? In verse 14, isn't the phrase, from every lawless deed, be a part of while we were living on the earth or while people were living on the earth? From every lawless deed, let's put it this way, for those people who are living at that time, yes it could be. For us, it would be pretty tough for us to do that. is simply because we're way past that time.

So I'm making personal application here, but good point. From every lawless deed, for those people he wrote to, could well have been prior to the time that Christ was sacrificed on the cross. Let's look at another one here, Luke 1, 26-33. Now this one keeps more within a particular dispensation for a length of time. It doesn't jump around so much like the Titus passage we just looked at.

This is at the time where the angel Gabriel is coming to talk to Mary, and this must have been a shocking introduction. It doesn't say exactly, but Mary was probably somewhere around 14 in age, and we don't know that by something the Bible says, the common age of betrothal in those days. So here's Mary, who's about 14, getting this message. Now, in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, which, by the way, was just a garbage heap. It was a trash town. It was low life.

To a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, Greetings, favoured one, the Lord is with you.' But she was very perplexed at this statement and kept pondering what kind of salutation this was. The angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus."

So far, what dispensation are we in? We're still at the end of the law, right? And Paul in Galatians writes about this, that while we were still under the law, at the right time, God sent his son. So here we are still under law, and these pronouncements are being made. But then look at the jump, verse 32. He, and who's he talking about? Jesus, he will be, now notice what's the verb tense. It's future tense, okay?

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord will give him the throne of his father David. Now let me ask you this. Did that happen when Jesus was here on planet earth the first time? No. He was not given the throne of his father David.

He says, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end. What is this talking about? And what are some of the clues we have that this is the future kingdom? He's going to reign forever, and even the word kingdom pops up here, right? And even the verb tense. And why does he say his kingdom will have no end? We show an end there, but what happens?

In truth, it goes into eternity future. And so now, what we have is, here's something under the law, and then it's going to jump ahead to the kingdom, what happened to the time we live in? He skipped over it, isn't that interesting? Yeah, he skipped over it. He is talking about the law and then he jumps ahead to the kingdom. Why would he do that? Why would he make that jump?

The Old Testament does not talk about the Church. Not in any explicit way. The Old Testament does not talk about the Church. And these folks aren't boycotting, by the way. They talked me about it ahead of time. The Old Testament does not talk about the Church. And in truth, this is still under the law, and he's still really not talking about the Church. The best clue we have is what is he to name, what is she, rather, to name her son? Jesus. And the name Jesus means? Savior. So that is the best information we have out of this about his first coming.

The second coming that you see here, the time of the kingdom, you can write down in here, 2 Samuel 7, because that is where David, is given a promise. David, there will be a descendant from you. There will be a descendant from you, David, and that descendant will have a house, a throne, and a kingdom.

You see that? And look at the words here. A house, a throne, and a kingdom. Direct fulfillment. And this chart on the wall, if you want to look at it afterwards, shows the lineage lineage of Christ up to David through both Joseph and Mary, both sides. The house, throne, and the kingdom promise comes from David. The house has to do with the family lineage. The throne has to do with his authority and the kingdom has to do with those over whom he has authority. So he's promised those three things. It was given to David almost a thousand years earlier. The lower part of the chart on the wall in the middle shows the lineage of Jesus from David through both Joseph and Mary, and shows you how that was fulfilled through the lineage of David.

And by the way, whose town are they going to go to not long thereafter? They're going to go to Bethlehem. Why? because they had an order from the Caesar that says, you're to go to the town of your forefathers. So they're both going to Bethlehem, city of David. So they have the lineage of David.

And what's happened? We know now that it's been 2,000 years and a little bit more since this was given. So what happened is we looked at this message from the angel to Mary, he talked about, here's the situation you are in now under the law, and here's the kingdom. Mary being Jewish, her primary concern is, how do the Jews stand in this whole thing? And that's why we have in this just the discussion, and here's how it impacts the Jews. That's the context in which she's going to be thinking.

Alright, let's look at the Isaiah passage right below it. And before we get into that, This is the passage that Jesus quotes, and I have the reference there in Luke 4. In Luke 4, Jesus is in the synagogue. Now, the custom in the synagogue is that you would have somebody be given a scroll from the synagogue leader. They would read a passage from the scroll and sit down. But what Jesus did is he reads from this passage from Isaiah 61 and the strange thing is he stops in the middle of the verse and rolls up the scroll. We're going to be reading the whole passage but recognize that Jesus stopped and let's look at why he stopped. It has to do with these dispensational distinctions we've been talking about. So let's read it.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Now if that's Christ saying that, that's what under the end of the law, right? The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.

That's where he stops reading, in the middle of the sentence. Why? Why would he stop reading in the middle of the sentence? I mean, that's weird. They must have thought it was weird. Why would he stop in the middle? He'd stop and say, today this is fulfilled in your sight or something? That much is being fulfilled now. Okay. Which is extreme heresy. Yeah. He's claiming to be God. That's right.

He is claiming fulfillment of what he has just read, but he stops mid-sentence. And you're right, this was a phenomenal proclamation for him to have made personally. He's saying, I personally am fulfilling what I have read to you, but I stopped mid-sentence. Why did he stop mid-sentence? Because the part that you see highlighted in green is for the kingdom to come. So he had to stop because he couldn't say that's being fulfilled right in front of you. Let's read that part.

And the day of vengeance of our God, what's that? What's the Day of Vengeance? This is what we term the Tribulation Period. When we finish going through, in our main service, the time of the seven churches, we'll be getting into the Tribulation Period, and that's what he's talking about here, the Day of Vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion.

See, now we're moving into what we call the Millennium, which will follow. to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes. During the tribulation period, Israel is going to be under severe and unprecedented attack. Everything they're going through now is nothing compared to what's going to be happening during that tribulation period. To give them a garland instead of the ashes that they've been going through during the tribulation time, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of the spirit of fainting. See, what's going to happen is Israel is going to be entering this tribulation time. Towards the end of it, they will finally come to realize the only thing that will save us is an act of God. And that is exactly what will save them. They will recognize that God saves them. But up until that time, they will be under dire threat. Ghastly things will be happening. the mantle of praise instead of the spirit of fainting, so they would be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified."

Amazing, huh? But Christ didn't read what you see there in green, because that was still at least 2,000 years away. As we mentioned in our Sunday morning service, the period of tribulation lasts for seven years, and what that means is, let's say that the period of tribulation were to start over this next week, The millennium, the time that we read about here in the green, the millennium could start as soon as the year 2008. That could be. That's possible.

Now, do you see the difference that reading dispensationally makes? Now, if I look at a passage, I can say, what period of time is it talking about? Out of those seven periods of time, which one am I in? And you can look at any particular passage and now begin to make kind of time sense out of it. Again, remembering a dispensation isn't explicitly a period of time, but it takes place within a period of time. If I can keep that in mind, and keep the chart in front of me if that helps, I can look at any particular passage and begin to break it up in terms of what's it talking about. Otherwise, I'm going to get really confused. Am I under the law?

See, a lot of Christians don't understand it. They think they're still under the law. There's a lot of Christians who don't look at... See, we have in here these kingdom promises that we've seen in green on the back here. We have a lot of Christians that think we're trying to live that now. I mean, that's just horrifically... Yeah, I mean, it's just horrifically confusing. People who get confused are trying... People right now that call themselves Christians are trying to live under the law. They're trying to live under the kingdom. and it's completely mixed up, and you can understand why.

If we look at things and make these distinctions, then we say, oh, I know what he's talking about now, and we can understand the distinctions that show up there in Scripture and make time sense out of it. One of the things that's important for us as human beings is to have a time frame of reference. We'll even talk to each other about, oh, this happened back when, or this is going to take place at this time. We look backwards and we look forwards to get an understanding of where we fit in things. So having this understanding in front of us, we can get a very specific understanding of what is Scripture talking about with respect to the time frames that we're living in, that happened, that are happening now, and are going to take place in the future. we can have a very explicit and specific understanding.

And it keeps things from getting real foggy and unclear. We then won't get confused and think we have to live under the law. We won't get confused and think we have to bring in the kingdom. Those are all things that happened or are going to happen because God makes them take place, not because we try to do anything. Am I making sense?

OK, hopefully that helps. If you still have questions, be sure to ask, because I don't want to leave you in a fog. But we've run out of time now. And I've got more things to pass out. So matter of fact, let me do this because we're short on time. I'll put it up here, and you can pick it up. What we have here is a ton of CDs to people. And if we run short, let me know.

These have over 150 megabytes of different files to help you with Bible study. And it includes massive volumes. If this were printed out, it would fill a whole wall. So there's lots of information on there, commentaries on a number of books in the Bible, a lot of history, books about the culture of the time. I recommend using Windows Explorer. to get around in this, although a lot of the files are Microsoft Word files. If you don't have Microsoft Word, there's a Word viewer in here. So there's a lot of things in here to help. Pick up one of those. This is an outline of the different things that are on the disk. So you get a listing of what's on there.

And lastly, next week, Mike Doyle is teaching the Romans class, will not be here. And so I said, well, let's work something out so that both classes can be working on the same thing. and that way they won't have discontinuity and we can keep moving. So if you pick up this last sheet, these are some questions that he's also passing out to his class, and they're going to join us next week as we go through this passage in Romans 7 and apply the very things that we've been learning so far. So pick up one of each.

If we run short of the CDs, and I had some technical difficulties, You know what James says, rejoice when you encounter various computers. Anyway, if we run short, let me know and I'll try to crank out some more if I can get the computer to cooperate, okay? Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you that as time comes and goes and as the ages roll on, that you are sovereign over all and that we can entrust everything into your hands. Now we just pray as we go from here that you would enlighten our hearts and minds so that we better understand your word, the glorious truths that you've laid out for us. In Jesus' name, amen.