Ecclesiastes 12:14 gets recycled perhaps as often as “Yahweh loves a cheerful giver” and “Yahweh is my shepherd” and with the same effect. Nothing big happens just for saying or believing these things. If 12:14 is TRUE we are all dead: fallen on our way to what we thought was rest and sanctuary, slaughtered by the idolatrous streak in our nature and by unbelief. Mighty Mount of Likes! It is still a lie.
Who is doing the judging and sentencing?
We cannot look away from Christ- the Nazarene- and call what we see truth.
He has the promises
He has the remedy to death
He has the bread to nourish us
All things have been delivered to me by my Father. No one knows the Son, except the Father; neither does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and he to whom the Son desires to reveal him. Matthew 11:27
“How much” God loves is a fool’s mantra and the seedbed for bigotry, racism and misogyny.
Ask yourself “Did God love the world more than he loved his Son?” “Does his love fluctuate or is he not pure unadulterated and unchangeable love?”
Reverence and diligence
How does the growth in Christ proceed? Still trying to find and live by every word that God speaks or has ever spoken? That amounts to hundreds of commands and loving others is supposed to foot the bill.
Get an attitude adjustment! It ends the labour and heavy load. It feels like rest.
Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.
Philippians 2:5-7
Deuteronomy 6:1
Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it:
This turning point of Moses’ leadership is aimed at LIFE IN CANAAN (LIC), and includes the essential statement of Judaism. It also states Israelite obligations with devastating clarity. The personal responsibilies were to do the CSJ (commands, statutes, and judgments), to take possession of Canaan, and to keep (guard) in an attitude of reference the CSJ.
“Ya gotta love” might have been the end of exhortation. Let’s face the fact that Moses was not commanding things that did not exist to become reality. He was stating expectations. It gets complicated when God’s uniqueness rises to the top of the confidence list. I mean the Shema which puts on blinders about how many gods have been part of Israel’s experience up to the Deuteronony turning point (and since).
The Shema calls for attention: hear, there is one God. It does not say “Israel has had one god; that’d be a false report.
What Israel had to do to have the Life in Canaan as promised are alien to the viability of Abraham’s family.
Is it slightly schizophrenic to embrace the Shema as a statement of faith without hearing what God’s spokesperson – it is not Moses or the prophets- has said?
Can neighbour be reduced to “partners in fables” or battered out of shape with the cyclical bloodbath of animal blood? Christians have more commands than Jews and face no risk of condemnation, exile or deportation. God has commanded repentance.
Saul had David to soothe his rages but potus45 has no remedy from his demons. Is there a balm for a gloating bigot?
The volume of empty sayings we repeat would be fewer if we stopped reciting without insight. It cannot be that we merely incite more futility.
Life is Fun, But Not a Joke 