Month: August 2019

Since you died

eejoseph

How dare anyone who died with Christ keep running to dogma – law or statute of any kind – as if life in the world was actually maintained by human observation and performances. Talk about arrogance and foolish pride!

Colossians 2:20

Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances,

Dying with Christ has nothing to do with our accountability but with his. We did not care that much. So dying with Christ has nothing to do with our personal preferences but with his. He chose us. Dying with Christ has nothing to do with our performance but with his. His one act of laying down his life still blows away anything we can possibly do or anything we have wanted to do.

I died with Christ

The text is a powerful affirmation of the fact that we died. There is nothing iffy about me needing to die in order to live. I died to elementary things. I died to law and prophets. I died to don’t touch, I died to dont taste, I died to don’t handle, but that is where we are, rejecting the death-to-life trail, and looking on high to see the things of Christ is of little interest to us.

Forgetting why we died is a sign of denial of Christ’s lordship.

Murder by proverb

eejoseph

Proverbs have been a refuge for many believers because of their relation to daily life or because of observations that are common and viewed as helpful. It is often forgotten that Solomon’s wisdom was targeted at ruling the Iraelite nation and it was what he asked for. Much of dismay at what seems like incorrigible malicious behaviour may be attributed to misapplication of commands and observations. People doing business with or for the state are not the same as individuals walking with God.

What’s in a proverb

There are 139 commands in the Book of Proverbs and we are not surprised to find that the terms of the Covenant are not highly featured.  After all Solomon seems to have been oblivious to the first stipulation of the Covenant. Proverbs are for rulers and no one gets life by being in charge of anything. If Genesis has anything to say about the subject, it is that dominion by smarts kills.

The sayings in the Proverbs are observations of human life, warnings about careless living, and declarations about the ruler’s relationship with God.  The  proverbs reflect the life of someone in charge.  A person in possession of proverbs is expected to rule successfully.  If anything seeps in from the covenant it is family life; parents and children in harmony and the dangers of prostitution.

Rule by proverb or power?

Solomon’s exorbitant wealth is no token of divine approval and his rule over Israel mirrors with precision the rule of Adam over the world: disastrous. It is raw power that Adam and Eve shared as dominars of sky land and sea.

Listen to your mom and dad

The message of Messiah’s mighty messenger addresses the quality of the relationship between parents and children. Every generation has an obligation to work on dancing to what is appropriate for parents and children. This can only happen when the parties are willing and courageous to repent of their futile ways. Parents can take little pleasure in seeing only that their children simply follow their lead. Children can take little pleasure only in rebelling against their parents’ simply lead.  To fail this test is to court a curse.

Malachi 4:6
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Luke 1:17
And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

The Certainty and Nature of our Inheritance

eejoseph

We commit our lives to what Christ has purchased for us even when we do not see the precise form of the gift. Our sonship remains mysterious in accordance with the Spirit’s motions. If we did see we would be able to say we know the unknown, and then we would have nothing to hope for. Faith is concerned with things we hope for and the resources of the exalted Christ are of distinct and immovable significance.

Our interest

Since we are connected personally with Christ in glory – we died with him, rose with him, and are seated with him – our desires ought to be focused on his possessions in their primary essence.


You were raised from death with Christ. So live for what is in heaven, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.

Colossians 3:1
Christ’s glorious riches are for strengthening us in our inner being.
Every need of the believer gets attention out of Christ’s glorious riches.
The purpose of the Christ Event is to make known His glorious riches to the Gentile world.
It is impossible to find an inheritance that is not the personal property of the Lamb of God.

It is a demonic lie that offers people everything their hearts desire.  Even if one had evidence of having a perfect delight in the Lord our hearts ought to be in sync with his heart. He is not unaware of our mundane needs – as our daily prayers should alert us – but we can do  better than to show ourselves as imitators  of the Gentile world by seeking things for our biological eexistence: food, drink and clothing.

Glory Glory

eejoseph

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

Proverbs 25:2

God’s concealing and our searching constitute a monumental and beneficial hide and seek. God is not in the hiding business but neither does he leave his business out in the open. Recall how Yeshua spoke in parables, and how he called the most important revelations mysteries.

Royal Assignment

  • God is not opposed to kings; his glory is not opposed to man’s honour
  • Neither kings nor commoner can find God by searching
  • God’s concealing his business does not put it beyond reach.

Far from being opposites, God and the king are in the business of honouring each other.

There is no need to wax poetic over kabod being aplied to God and man. There is no need to change the translation of dabar when it applies to either God or man.

Conceal = encrypt
Glory and honour; kavode כבוד
Thing and matter; word, dabar דבר

God’s fingerprint is on display in the encryption of his business. If you do no research you are not a king/queen. In nature and the written revelation God is revealing matters, and nothing trivial. Though these are matters are apparently ignored by many, the messages await in their encrypted states the deciphering by our ears, eyes, taste, touch, and intellect. There are two criteria for dealing with God’s encrypted business.

Overwhelmed by choices

Unklike the crooked systems of human governance our choices of getting the glory are simple and transparent. The choices of where a matter lands is binary. The design of the universe has binary distinctions: life and death, good for us and bad for us. Beyond binary is mere diversity: The beginning of our realities had heaven and earth. The consummation of God’s business is a series of heaven-on-earth kind of activities.

Correct Criteria

One must measure everything by heaven and earth. Recall how Yehsua taught using the motif the kingdom of heaven is like. He also made it clear that when heaven initiates change in the earth the subjects are like the wind – one does not know its origin or destination. This means that the revolving explanations of what is or ought to be in the hearts of queens and kings are likely to be a lot of hot air.


The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is unsearchable.

Proverbs 25:3

When we are done seeking out the wise sayings of Solomon, Hezekiah’s men, Agur, and Lemuel we will find that there is not much that informs our great salvation. Solomon has a descendant whose glory and kingdom eclipses anything Solomon came up with or possessed, and the ancient kingdoms under David’s dynasty or not are measured purely by earth, not heaven.

Kill the Dreamers-3

eejoseph

Killing the dreamer epitomises the history of the Israelite family. Their persecution of their prophets and leaders is aptly reconstructed by Stephen in his defence before the Sanhedrin where he was arraigned for blasphemy. “Kill the dreamer” is the solution that comes up time and time again in the history of the modern world as it did in summary narrative of Stephen’s defence.

Cowardly champions



The surprising result of comparing biblical dreamer-killing with secular assassinations shows how deeply into human nature the resistance is drilled. Every group of believers has created structural barriers to curtail legitimate dreaming. Denominational visionaries and bishops seem to have taken the cowardly approach to development and progress, and most of these gatekeepers are ill-equiped to deal with dissent and the profound issues of the Christian faith. Step out of line – even to ask a pertinent question – and all barrels are aimed at you.

On record

Dreamers are out of line with the trending treasures and yet their dreams were more fundamental than the wise imagined.  Powers like the United States, while championing inventiveness and liberty are on record as having no compunction with imposing silence by means of death on dissenting voices and on those who dare to dream beyond the status quo. The United States is also not alone in prosecuting anyone who dares to seek to do the very thing that distinguishes America from her mother. Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. are seated into the living archives of human memory. In the place where peace has a memorable and contestable mention the record is equally distressing. Jerusalem has been killing dreamers too, joined in recent times by Egypt. Two dreamers stand out: Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin.

Kill the Dreamer -β

eejoseph

Part 2

Joseph, the eleventh son of Jacob, began having dreams of future personal greatness, the first of which he shared with his brothers (Genesis 37:5-8). In the first dream, the brothers were all in the fields, and their sheaves bowed down to Joseph’s upright sheaf. Incredible as this was to the brothers this was not a young boy’s arrogance. The second dream (vs. 9) was also shared with his brothers whose responses are not recorded. When Joseph told his father the dream, Jacob’s reaction was the same as the brothers’: incredulity, and with the added detail of the parents – Jacob and Rachel – (the sun and the moon) in addition to the 11 stars bowing down to Joseph.

Hate the dreamer

The hatred stirred up by the disclosure of these dreams boils up when when Joseph visits them on an errand from the father. The brothers plotted to throw Joseph into a pit, leave him to perish in the pit, then to report to Jacob that a wild animal had attacked and killed Joseph. Reuben, the eldest of the brothers, did not agree with killing Joseph, and he hoped to be able to rescue Joseph from the pit which had little or no water. When he returned to the pit Joseph was gone. The brothers had sold Joseph to traders who were on their way to Egypt. All of this was divinely arranged to begin the 400-year sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt and their salvation in the Exodus.

Thus began a trail of intimidating prophets and kings, and rejecting ledership. Murder continued as a reminder of the fate of those who perished in the wilderness, who rejected Moses as leader in the wilderness journeys, failed to gain entrance to Canaan, and discounted Moses passing the Torch to a non-Levite king-priest. Dreamers then were not only people who received intsruction in their non-waking hours, but they were also the people who dared to attach their faith to the unseen and to the promises given to their ancestor, Abraham.

Kill the Dreamers

eejoseph

Dreams and visions have enlightened and comforted humans, and even charted the path for families, and one might say the entire human race. At the end of Stephen’s cutting defence in his case before the Sanhedrin, he had a vision which consoled him, but his defence had unvelied a pattern of behaviour which I would like to call “kill the dreamer”.

Killing the dreamer was the consistent response of a stiffnecked and resistant people to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Dreams and visions can characterize the deeper levels of divine instruction which often come into conflict with the written instructions, hence the resistance of those who thought that the Law was the last word in divine intervention. Christians are called to dream: dream against the grain, swim upstream and in the face of contradiction and hopelessness. Stephen was a dreamer. He was appointed to take care of daily distribution of life’s necessities but he was granted to follow his master in accurate tteaching of the truth and dying for the cause.

Have you stopped dreaming?

More tomorrow

I need look no further

eejoseph

When the words that flow are hateful, fierce, and unfounded we detect demon influence. The reasons the bigots of our times are not being properly diagnosed and their demons not being sent into the swine or whatever animal happens to be nearby is that there are too many demons. There are probably more demoniac heads of state than we would want to admit, and not enough certified or fake exorcists. Americans live in one huge cage, sharing accommodations with hateful and unclean birds, and I do not need to look any more.

When the preacher spends 10 minutes setting up his spiele and there is no sign that he has taken in the dimensions of the text I tend not to look any more. When the politician says “when you look at…” and there is nothing except more moronic megalomania people tend to stop looking.

When our friends keep turning our attention to symbols and idols we draw the line. We do not need kindergarten when we come of age. Faith – the man Messiah Yeshua – has arrived and maturity is the package. When they tell us that today’s movie is yesterday’s blockbuster we do not need to look any more. Counterfeits, cleverly devised fables deserve no further look.