Month: September 2019

Finding Rest in the Text – Alpha

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We have found that the task of doing theology is an essential post in the fence we continue to build for the mysteries of our faith. It is for everyone’s benefit that we know why we do the searching, the proper handling and the accurate exposition.  There are many treasures that we discover from the Scriptures and they may become mere symbols, but coming to the sacred texts in the same manner as one comes to the Living Word can be expected to result in rest.


Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11:28

There is room enough in the final exposition for diversity of emphasis, but there is no fit for more than one interpretation. The discovery is either of faith or it misses the mark. The interpretation is married to the Living God who was crucified or it is not kingdom-helpful.

Next…

Protecting the mysteries

A day to remember, eh?

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One day long ago a Philistine capital was rocked to its foundation. A Jewish official, appointed by God and given superhuman powers, pulled down a Philistine government building killing 3000 persons. That day changed nothing in Canaan. In 2004 a tsunami took the lives of 225,000 in the Indian Ocean. That day changed nothing in the Asian world. Eighteen years ago the American people suffered the loss of 3000 persons in a suicide attack that also brought down a building. That day changed nothing even though the mantra would have people believe that there is a new era and a new world order emerging.

The one lesson that does way more than any kind of memorialization is the elemtary collective security and unity that nations love to name and fail to claim.

Appeal of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, June 1936

I ask the fifty-two nations, who have given the Ethiopian people a promise to help them in their resistance to the aggressor, what are they willing to do for Ethiopia? And the great Powers who have promised the guarantee of collective security to small States on whom weighs the threat that they may one day suffer the fate of Ethiopia, I ask what measures do you intend to take?

Representatives of the World I have come to Geneva to discharge in your midst the most painful of the duties of the head of a State. What reply shall I have to take back to my people?”

Whatsiz name

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To the chief Musician upon Gittith, A Psalm of David.

O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

Psalms 8:1

Prop and narrative

This is a song with a sobering proposition that stays from start to finish. The excellent name is perfectly clear to all observers. It cannot be that name that no one says. It cannot be that name that lives in a house without walls. It cannot be that name that condemns the innocent. It cannot be that name that is blasphemed in all the world by religious fanatics.

If you do not know what whatsiz name yet you will.

Grace and glory not earned

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Psalm 84:11-12 seems to give assurances of divine generosity but the precise pervasiveness of God’s giving needs to be held up to the light.

For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

The components of this verse are very different. On first glance we see:
A. What is. God is…
B. What happens or will happen
C. What will/might happen

For clarity we recognize that there is no path to worshipping the sun (the star at the centre of our galaxy or any other star) or a shield or any other defensive military equipment.

  • God is not a star or a piece of armour.
  • He does what the sun does.
  • He provides what a shield does.

We can misplace the generosity of the Lord by treating the gift as (1) merely likely, or as (2) if it never happened. What are the chances of the grace and glory gift being all future? Neither Jew nor Christian can say that favour and significance, grace and glory have been withheld. Both grace and glory have been given repeatedly, which is precisely the point of YITTEN, יתן, translated as “He will give”. Natan נתן would have meant the gift giving is over. He gives so much of this that there was no doubt of the activity. The straight line to the 3rd part is justified.

Life without grace or glory

We know most certainly that if God withheld grace and glory no one would survive. Of the good things we have two samples right here in the sentence: grace and glory.

The person who walks in integrity is a graced person. He or she can be in no other category. Someone who walks perfectly is a familiar image: Abraham, Noah, and David (Gen. 15:2, 6:1, 1 Kings 9:4). Each of these stands in company with sacrificial animals: blemish free. But we must notice that animals chosen as offerings need no work-up to their condition. Humans become flawless only when God accepts the sacrifice of His Son.

Those lovely apartments

“Will give grace and glory” is not the best translation. How else could any one claim to recognize God’s lovable residences?

Sparrows in the sacred tent, where only the priests could go?
Birds nesting in the holy places and in places where even the priests dared not?

Grace and glory he keeps giving
חן וכבוד יתן

So much hatred of freedom

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Someone shared the following rant against divine generosity. It failed to encourage me. It turns out to be so low there’s snake all over it.

What it means to maintain principles

Is that like having an annual clean up with no end in sight? Is that maintenance like the way of condemnation in the temple? Is that like executing people instead of liberating them?

In all dealings with His creatures God has maintained the principles by revealing sin in its true character, by demonstrating that its sure result is misery and death. The unconditional pardon of sin never have has been, and never will be. Such pardon of sin would show the abandonment of principles of righteousness, which are the foundation of the Government of God

(Gods Amazing grace 73.2?)… cannot be found in vengeance.

This outrageous venom is right next to Caiaphas’ denial of Christ. The writer is saying that grace is debt, that grace starts a race to set oneself right with God.

Not so certain truths

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Do you really want to cling to NEW BODIES ON CONVERSION?

  • We certainly have been forgiven, or is forgiveness a loan?
  • We most certainly are sons of God, or is that provisional until we comply with what the church says?
  • We most certainly are not condemned by the Covenant in Christ’s Blood as contrasted with the moral law written in stony tablets?
  • We are most certainly safe in the grace-faith that saves, just as having been plucked from the waves in which he was sinking, Peter was safe.

Do you really want to cling to GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER SO CHRIST CAN GIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT?

  • Let us just say that when the leopard can change his spots he needs no Saviour
  • God does not check ethnicity, culture, diet or compliance with Mosaic law.
  • Faith alone in Christ alone sets people free

Only the bewitched and demon-inspired cling to prison, condemnation and fear.

  • Prison, from which faith in Christ frees us. Galatians 3:23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
  • Condemnation, the stony record; 2 Corinthians 3:7 But if the ministration of death, written engraved in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
  • Fear of death and men; 2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

Alongside the cross, no buts or ands

No one gets power, love and a sound mind by any means beside faith in the crucified. If there is a “but” or an “and” on the must be saved highway that route is a detour and a shipwreck. No one gets out of the law’s prison by paying his debt. No one can embrace the law and not get burned. It is ridiculous to propose that the tabernacle stood until Christ came without a report of anyone – priest or commoner – asking for it to be put away permanently. Christ has the right to say “No more of your traditions, patriarchal, ritual, royal, or prophetic” and when we choose to take a pass on his voice, building our houses on things proven to be irrelevant and ineffective we can be sure that our priorities are not so certain truths.