Foreign.

S welcome to Fed by the Fruit, a podcast focused on nourishment for the mind, body and soul.

I'm kb, a spirit filled certified life and nutrition coach with a calling to disciple women who are hungry for more.

Each week we will learn who God is and what he wants for and from us through powerful testimonies, biblical truth and and so much more as we fuel our minds and bodies in ways that honor Him.

Let's get fed.

Hello friends.

Happy Monday.

Welcome to Fed by the Fruit.

How are we?

It is the second week of the month, which means we're going to deep dive into a story or character of the Bible.

I'm trying to go chronologically as much as I can.

Of course I'm not going to be able to share the entire Bible, but looking for more well known or prominent stories and characters of the Bible for our first year together.

So today I have a couple of things I want to talk about.

So we've talked about creation and we've talked about Adam and Eve.

Before we switched to Fed by the Fruit, we talked about Noah's Ark, which is what would be next chronologically.

So I'm not gonna.

I'm not gonna do Noah's Ark again.

You can go back and listen to that episode if you'd like.

But today I want to talk about dispensationalism and I want to talk to you about the Tower of Babel.

And that's not something that's often talked about, I don't think so.

I think that it would be fun for us to dive in together.

So let's do that.

And don't shut it off, because this is gonna be interesting.

If you just heard me say a big word and you thought, nah, this is not for me.

Stick with me, kid.

Okay?

Stick with me.

So dispensationalism is a method of interpreting history that divides God's work and his purposes toward mankind into different periods of time.

So this actually makes it easier for us to understand the Bible when we break it up.

So there's some debate among theologians.

Some say there are as few as three, some say nine, and others say up to 37 dispensations.

But I'm going to share the seven basic dispensations found in Scripture.

So the first dispensation is called the dispensation of innocence.

This dispensation covered the period of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

In this dispensation, God's commands were one, to fill the earth with children, two, to subdue the earth this meant to actively manage and cultivate the earth in the benefit of humanity.

3.

Have dominion over the animals.

4.

Care for the garden and 5.

Abstain from eating the fruit from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

We know how that turned out.

Right?

God warned of the punishment of physical and spiritual death for disobedience.

This first dispensation came to an end when Adam and Eve disobeyed by eating the forbidden fruit and being expelled from the garden.

So that is the first dispensation.

The second dispensation is called the dispensation of conscience.

And it lasted about 1,656 years from the time of Adam and Eve's eviction from Eden until the flood.

This dispensation demonstrates what mankind will do if left to his own will and conscience, which have been tainted by the inherited sin nature.

Right?

We are all, we all have original sin now since the fall of man with Adam and Eve.

The five major aspects of this dispensation are 1.

A curse on the serpent.

Remember, he is cursed to crawling on his belly and eating dust.

And a symbolic representation of its defeat by a woman's seed.

So think Satan, who is this represented by the serpent versus Jesus, the coming Messiah, who is represented by the seed of a woman.

He comes from the seed of a woman.

Two, a change in womanhood and childbearing.

So we the Bible says with pain you will give birth to children.

Three, a curse on nature.

So it's the the ground is less productive and produces thorns and thistles.

Four, the imposing of difficult work on mankind to produce food.

The ground was cursed because of the fall.

And five, the promise of Christ as as the seed who will bruise the serpent's head serpent being Satan.

So this signifies Christ's victory over Satan and sin through his finished work on the cross, his death and resurrection.

The third dispensation is the dispensation of human government which began in Genesis 8.

God had already destroyed life on earth with a flood, saving just one family, right?

Noah's family to restart the entire human race.

So God made the following promises and commands to Noah and his family.

God would not curse the earth again.

Noah and his family are to replenish the earth with people.

They are to be fruitful and multiply.

They shall have dominion over the animal creation.

They are allowed to eat meat now.

They were not allowed to eat meat before this.

The law of capital punishment is established.

So meaning the death penalty can be applied to those who take another human life, which was a necessary restraint on Human behavior in the absence of perfect obedience to God's will, number six, there will never be another worldwide flood.

The sign of that promise is the rainbow, right?

That's why Christians get up in arms when other groups of people hijack the rainbow.

It is a sign of God's promise that he will never flood the earth again.

So Noah's descendants did not scatter and fill the earth as God had commanded, thus failing in their responsibility in this dispensation.

So about 325 years after the flood, the Earth's inhabitants, so these are descendants of Noah and his sons, began building a tower.

This tower was a great monument to their solidarity and pride, the builder's aim.

So all the people, all the people on the earth, they were building this tower together in solidarity.

Their aim was to reach heaven and make a name for themselves.

Oh, the pride.

Oh the arrogance.

The.

This goal was in direct opposition to one of the first commands God gave man both at creation and after the flood, which was to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

So God, seeing their unity and ambition, confused their language, so they could not understand one another.

This encouraged them then to split into tribes and settle in other parts of the land, so God's original plan to fill the earth would come to pass.

As a result, the tower was left unfinished.

It was called Babel, meaning confusion.

You've heard someone say, oh, she was just babbling.

That's where that comes from.

So the Tower of Babel story teaches us the vital importance of humility before God and obedience to his commands.

Notice God's God's plan happened, right?

He just had to intervene because the people were not being obedient.

The pride of the residents of Babel led them to seek their own glory and security, disregarding God's directive to spread out and fill the earth.

Their disobedience resulted in God confusing their language and scattering them across the earth.

So the people of Babel, this is 325 years worth of the descendants of Noah, tried to reach heaven without God.

They tried to build a tower to reach heaven.

But God, he disrupted their plans to preserve his purpose.

So if you've ever wondered how we ended up with different cultures and languages, this moment marks the division of people, groups and languages across the Earth in our world today.

Human pride, our own human pride, still seeks to build towers.

People today still try to make a name for themselves through ambition, influence or status, often without seeking God.

Like Babel, modern culture often celebrates self reliance, meaning our own plans over surrender, meaning God's plans.

We must remember that unity without God is dangerous.

The people of Babel were united, but for the wrong purpose.

Unity in rebellion is not righteous.

Today we see powerful movements or systems that reject God, yet seem unified in mission.

Think Planned Parenthood or Black Lives Matter.

Even today, God still interrupts plans that don't serve his purpose.

Right.

He interrupts plans that don't serve his purpose.

It reminds me of my own testimony.

He interrupted my own plans for me, my own selfish desires because his plans were better.

His disruption at Babel reminds us he will lovingly intervene when we drift from his will, even if it means confusion, delay or rerouting.

We're also reminded that cultural and language differences are not accidents.

The division of languages was God ordained, not random.

It shows God's sovereignty over nations and cultures.

And it reminds us of our need for humility, empathy and dependence on him, especially in a divided world.

Now, how cool is this?

The Gospel is the great reversal of Babel.

Stick with me here, okay?

In Acts 2, which is in the New Testament, so remember, everything we've talked about so far is still happening in Genesis.

This is the very first book of the Bible.

Lots going on, right?

So in Acts 2 at Pentecost, God unified people of different languages through the Holy Spirit.

It shows that only through Christ can true unity be restored.

When we seek greatness apart from God, the result is confusion.

But when we submit to God's greatness, He brings clarity, purpose and unity.

Now, the fourth dispensation, called the Dispensation of Promise, started with the call of Abraham, who will be our character for next month.

So in September, we're going to dig into the life of Abraham and continued through the lives of the patriarchs and ended with the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt.

So this was a period of approximately 430 years.

So during this dispensation, God developed a great nation that he had chosen as his people.

Right?

Israel, the nation, the people of Israel.

The basic promise during the Dispensation of Promise was the the Abrahamic covenant.

So, 1.

From Abraham would come a great nation that God would bless with natural and spiritual prosperity.

2.

God would make Abraham's name great.

3, God would bless those that blessed Abraham's descendants and curse those that cursed them.

Four, In Abraham, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

This is fulfilled in Jesus Christ and his work of salvation.

Five, the sign of the covenant is circumcision.

We'll talk about that later too.

6.

This covenant, which was repeated to Isaac and Jacob, is confined to the Hebrew people in the twelve tribes of Israel, this covenant is for the chosen people.

Now, the fifth dispensation is called the Dispensation of Law.

It lasted almost 1500 years from the Exodus, so from the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt until it was suspended after Jesus's death.

This dispensation will continue during the millennium with some modifications.

During the Dispensation of law, God dealt specifically with the Jewish nation through the Mosaic covenant.

This dispensation involved temple worship directed by priests, with further direction spoken through God's mouthpieces, the prophets.

So the prophets in the Old Testament are the mouthpieces of God.

Eventually, due to the people's disobedience to the covenant, the tribes of Israel lost the promised land and were subjected to bondage.

All right, Are you still with me?

We're at the sixth out of seven.

So the sixth dispensation, the one in which we now live.

So you and me, we are living in.

The sixth dispensation is called the Dispensation of grace.

It began with the new covenant in Christ's blood.

This age of grace, or the Church age, starts with the coming of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost and ends with the rapture of the Church.

This dispensation is worldwide and includes includes not just God's chosen people, but the Gentiles as well.

That's us.

That's you and me.

Man's responsibility during the dispensation of grace.

That's us.

That means this is our job, what we are supposed to be doing right now.

Our job is to believe in Jesus, the Son of God.

In this dispensation, the Holy Spirit indwells believers.

The indwelling God, the Holy Spirit lives within us as the comforter.

This dispensation has lasted for almost 2000 years and no one knows when it will end.

No one knows the day or hour.

We do know that it will end with the rapture of all born again believers from the earth to go to heaven with Christ.

This means that there is a day where the eastern sky will break open and Jesus we will.

We will be caught in the air and we will meet Jesus to go to heaven.

We do know that it will end with the rapture of all born again believers from the earth to go to heaven with Christ.

Following the rapture will be the judgments of God lasting for seven years.

So this is the tribulation.

Seven years of tribulation.

Now the seventh dispensation is called the millennial kingdom of Christ and will last for a thousand years as Jesus Christ himself rules on earth.

On this earth, this kingdom will fulfill the prophecy to the Jewish nation that Christ will return and be their king.

The only people allowed.

Listen carefully.

The only people allowed to enter the kingdom are the born again believers from.

From the age of grace.

That's us.

Righteous survivors of the seven years of tribulation.

So that means that unbelievers, people who are in this living now, in this age of grace, who are not raptured with the church, who are unbelievers, they will have the seven years of the Tribulation to choose Christ and be born again believers.

However, it's going to be hell on earth during the tribulation and they will be deceived and they will be looking for a Savior and they have to pick the right one.

You don't want to live through these seven years of tribulation.

And the resurrected Old Testament saints, they will also go.

But no unsaved person is allowed to access the kingdom.

Satan is bound during these 1000 years.

This period ends with the final judgment.

The old world, this earth as we know it, is destroyed by fire.

Remember, he will never destroy the earth with water, but he will destroy this earth with fire.

And the new heaven and the new earth talked about in Revelation 21 and 22 will begin.

That was a lot.

But I love how it's broken down.

I think it makes it a lot easier to understand.

We're going to deep dive into a lot of those things, so many of those things as we continue along in our just learning together and getting a better understanding of the, the Bible and what it all means for us and why, why it's the most important thing.

We are here to believe in and love Jesus in this sixth dispensation as we await his triumphant return to earth to be raptured, to be caught up in the air with the Lord.

I mean, my goodness, I am.

I cannot wait for that day.

What, what a day.

What a day.

You do not want to be left behind.

I promise you that.

As we are now into August, the second week of August already, our memory verse for the month is my very favorite.

My just such a special verse to me absolutely got me through the hardest time of my life.

If you remember, I shared this in my testimony.

But the reason I.

This verse kind of came to me was I was at a doctor appointment.

It was before I even knew that I had to have heart surgery.

But it was after I knew I had an aneurysm.

The, the er doctor referred me to my primary care.

And so I went to the primary care and the nurse came in and she was doing like my intake, taking my blood pressure.

And I looked at her wrist or her arm, the side of her arm.

And she had a tattoo and it said Isaiah 4110.

So as she left the room, as I wa the doctor, I looked up Isaiah 41:10 and this was the message that the Lord had for me that day.

So do not fear, for I am with you.

Do not be dismayed, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you and help you.

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

I would encourage you to write that down.

Maybe you have a journal.

Maybe you have like a daily planner.

Write that down, meditate on it.

Maybe look it up, get some more context.

I think it's really important for us to.

To memorize scripture and use it as our armor and our comfort.

So I hope that you have a wonderful Monday.

I hope that this was interesting.

I hope you didn't listen to me on double Speed because it was a lot, but I am so grateful that you're here and I can't wait to come back next week with a guest and the following week with another catch up.

I really enjoyed July's Just Catch up episode.

I got some really great feedback and just y' all are just so kind to me.

I don't know what I've ever done to deserve the kindness that you all offer me as I share my struggles in my life with you.

So I love you.

I'm grateful for you.

Happy Monday.

See you next week.

Later.

If this podcast blessed you, please share it with a friend and hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Leave a five star review on itunes and come hang out with me on Instagram edbythefruit.

I'd love to connect with you there.

And most importantly, I'll see you right here next week.

Come hungry, get fed.

Sam.