Month: December 2018

Swerving from Conscience to Box

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The purpose of God’s lifegiving command and the apostolic priority is to create loving hearts, good consciences, and faith without pretense.

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 1 Timothy 1:5

Thinking outside the box as adopted children of God (even though we do not yet have our final shape or form) is facilitated by our new conscience. Our thinking about God-living-in-us and speaking with us directly needs to proceed without putting on a show or making a case for having done everything right.

Sanctuary Box

Thinking out of the box is not just a cute saying or a mere uncomfortable exercise. The very nature of the heavenly gifts does not allow for human assertions of capacity or credit for eligibility.

The challenge to think out of the box is the primary activity to which the New Covenant brings us. We are no longer logged in to the box that stands as the instrument of our death. The tablets of stone are witnesses to the condemnation of both Jew and Gentile. The challenge is also to accept the authority of Christ above all else. Faith breaks us out if jail when Moses, the Law, and the Jewish people and government refuse to take God’s global standard seriously.

Conscientious and heartless

Many of us think we can follow a few Jewish practices and call ourselves “Jew” and child of God but Jews have had major hurdles to mount when conscience and heart are involved which we can only imagine.

  1. No heart at Sinai (rightly choosing to hear Moses rather than to hear God)
  2. No conscience on entering Canaan (loving the neighbor by destroying people and property)
  3. Not one israelite has passed into life by being obedient to the Covenant. Now the house is desolate

There is a dynamic sense of being out of the box, and that begins with our change of mind concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. he has taken us out of the box for a New Perspective.

How can there be a new view without a new object, and what would be the point of looking at the same object from a different position?

If Christ is the judge the guilty go free. Most Christians say that but they do not believe it and are not willing to forgive the guilty. If Moses and the Law are the bosses then we are in prison: faith (Christ) is locked out and our juvenile status is confirmed. When a believer sins no death sentence can apply, because the believer has already passed from condemnation to justification, from death to life. The strength of sin is the law and when the Law speaks it speaks death.

Law has never created hearts of love that succeed in loving. The law has never created a good conscience that helps people accept the truth no matter how different or difficult it is, and the law does not create faith. Law and Faith are not partners.

Hearing the message of salvation is what awakens faith: faith comes by hearing the gospel, the promise of Life in Christ. Let us examine ourselves to see if we have jumped out of the box and into Christ’s lap (bosom) because loving hearts, good consciences, and faith without pretense will never come from trying to do all that God has said.

The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let the one who hears say, Come. And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. Revelation of John 22:17

Shekinah and Dabar

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Residence and Communications are the stated purposes for building the Tent of Meeting and this Tent turns out to be so full of detailed revelations about the divine order that one can easily go astray in assigning value to its many details. Paul’s contention in 1 Timothy 1:5ff shows how successful the deceiver of souls has become in having people rejoice in elevating the moon above the sun. The contention is sobering because it comes as the first thing on the apostles mind.
Paul was concerned about people swerving off the highway of truth.

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, (1 Timothy 1:7)

The simple stories of the Mosaic Economy have become the pillars of those who wander away but Paul was onto them. Their purpose was clear to Paul and is to us now.

are desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

The tent narrative is hard for all of us but it is not mysterious. Two things are stated explicitly.

God wants to live in his people

Exodus 25:8. Dwell is from shaken (shawKANE שכן)

And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.

God wants to communicate with his people.

Exodus 25:21-22. Speak is from dabar דבר

And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you. There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel. Exodus 25:21-22

Tent and temple without a Christian centre crumbles and distracts from the facts, of which the temple is but a mere shadow. The temple/tent/sanctuary is not a building in heaven, it is a symbol of God at work in us.

Christ is above the heavens, from whence he ministers the spirit to those who come to God the Father through him, making us a fit dwelling place for the Holy Spirit so that it may said even now

Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. Revelation of John 21:3b

There is no greater Shekinah than Christ dwelling in the hearts of those who come to God and there is no greater communication than the Holy Spirit who speaks the word of Christ to us and guides us into all truth.

Straight to the top

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Few lives stay the course as did George H.W. Bush’s.

Great dad and public servant.

There is no age limit to the trauma of becoming an orphan and the excellence that belongs to genuine service in any sphere of human life will only be missed by the cold and heartless.

The passing of the 41st president of the United States is, for the vast majority, another day to be distracted from the murders and bribery that dominates. The example and experience of a public servant does not get shinier.

An appropriate footnote to a majestic moment would have to include the awareness that American ears are waxy.

For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them. Matthew 13:15

Total Loyalty to God is a Shameful Lie

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One of the signs of the modern hypocrite plague is the affirmation of total loyalty to God. We hear a lot of talk about discipleship and learning, but all the talkers can offer the world is the insane treadmill of death, sin, and law.
The world – with the Jewish people in particular as the example – was held behind bars until faith came. There was no gift of the Holy Spirit until Christ died. Faith is said to have busted open the prison that held us. In this sense the word faith takes on a personality. That prison is also described as the age of minority; the juvenile stage of human life. It is the stage of immaturity, no authority as family member, and subjection to appointed guardians and custodians. Faith brings us to freedom from this juvenile stage.

  1. It is Christ who came
  2. It is Christ who died
  3. It is Christ who freed us

We need to tell James to stay home: faith can never be dead because faith is the means of getting life into us and faith is the road on which we walk. How can it ever be dead?
That perversion of the sacred narrative is an example of the ongoing error of the human effort to ingratiate oneself to God. Salvation and grace are not of human origin.

Now the only people who will claim that achievement are those who are resistant to the need for a change and the one-sided (divine) responsibility for salvation. It is an abomination that people want credit for God’s work.

It is also shameful because the mark of good interpretation of Scripture is the division of saving truth from childish and useless fables. The only people who resisted God, for the record, are Jews. It was to them that God turned his attention and no one can tell the story of Abraham’s descendants without recognizing the predicament of the human race. A dismal failure is the best way to illustrate the winning plan these loyalists are selling us in the 21st century.

Scripture is convincing that a temple and its laws have no relevance when the salvation of the world is confessedly the exclusively work of the Son of God. Christ did not come to impose the teachings of Moses.

The Lord Yeshua the Messiah is sacrifice, priest, holy place (as residence), mercy seat and the satisfaction for all who come to God by him. Animal blood does not cut it.

We love because he first loved us.