Month: August 2022

Grace better than life

eejoseph

1) O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water. 2) Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary, To see Your power and Your glory. 3) Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips will praise You. 4) So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. (Psalms 63:1-4, NASB)

When a person has an encounter with GOD he or she finds that a thirst sets in.  Things previously unnoticed come to light.   This psalm has a number of these – pleasant – surprises. The inscription of this song says that David was in the wilderness and he experienced some kind of deliverance from his enemies.  But then he talks about the holy – place – and one thinks that this the sanctuary.  However there is no sanctuary in the wilderness of Judah. 

David is obviously excited about divine holiness, gracious holiness.   The tent was not particularly comforting or satisfying, since it was a place where God makes clear that people are guilty and that only blood will satisfy his demand. The repeated sacrifices every year shows that holiness was never accomplished.  Israel never became clean or free of guilt. To this day they still speak about rebuilding the Temple so they can offer a blood sacrifices. How much of the psalmist’s satisfaction can we say people occupied with the tabernacle had?

The exceedingly wonderful grace of Zion’s king

Pity the person who is still stuck on the golden rule as God’s standard, even after hearing “no greater love…lay down his life” and “not even for a righteous or good man will a person dare to stand in”. Loving oneself does not amount to much. Does not love of self facilitate ignoring others who are in distress, and what might godliness be if it is not caring for others? Grace, as given to us, and dispersed to others is better than life.

What dare I call life that is not rooted in the Beloved?

As far as the believer is concerned the price tag of life begins with his helplessness. “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6, NASB). It is not pegged at waking up this morning but glued to rising from the dead with Christ when we first believed. There is no particular assent to a kingdom teaching or demonstration of consistent discipleship necessary. The gift of life is that extreme in value: better than life.

A sacred vote? Really?

eejoseph

I do not know how many Toms, Dicks, and Harrys in Canada are talking about the divided country, but the news broadcasters allow pundits and simple news readers to jump in and give the impression that something strange is happening because diverse opinions and violently opposed residents can be shown in audio and video clips.  It makes one think that all the talk about friendly debate is just malicious window dressing.   We are certain to hear more than a few experts claim to have predicted the unhinged passion that ends in bloody confrontations and civil war.  If when we say we agree to disagree it is a matter of high principle then are not divided legislatures a good thing to be treasured?  We keep plodding along with division as normal but we disrespect Canadians who deliver a minority government.  The thing that makes democracy worthwhile and sacred is not the name of the winner or the loser.  It is the privacy of the ballot.

Who a person chooses to vote for is a private matter for a noble reason.

Abhorrent political interference with my vote

During the last election in Ontario the corporation behind the Ford campaign sent me an SMS asking me if the PC party could count on my vote. I chose not to dignify that intrusion with a reply.

The win by Ford was the outcome of an appeal to people’s emotions with traditional empty slogans. The current (July 2022) outbreak of covid19 variants, the gouging of consumers by oil and gas companies, the continuing shortage of firstrate health-care, are evidence of the government surrendering people’s health to business interests. We are not that blind. People have thrived in Ontario before there were truckers, large corporations and anarchists.

Politics is not warfare and governments represent all the people

The price we will pay by supporting big and small business over people, single or families, will be a slave economy which will fail the test like ancient Israel did. The perennially tempestuous relationship between government and labour is part of the DNA that has made Canada the latest confirmed genocidal beast.

Who gets my vote is a private matter

I say ban public displays of political persuasion. Debates should only identify the candidates. The audience should be polled anonymously. Division, as we can see from the American quagmire, is neither funny, inspiring, nor helpful for a nation that wants to keep bloodshed and deceit out of the public and private life.

Senator’s job

eejoseph

Lindsey Graham does not remember being all in with insurrection and mayhem on January 6, 2021, but he ran like hell’s freezing with “Count me out” on January 7th when the brave police officers had kept the Republican homicidal patriots from bullying VP Mike Pence into rejecting the votes of the American people which put the freaky 45th in his place.

Let’s be sure: one can only be counted out when one was in

Law and order Republicans? Ha! Ha! Blunder thunder! What is that job he and his partisan siblings want to be left alone to do?

Kings and the law

eejoseph

Modern rulers are jokers when it comes to knowing the business of governing. Most are merely lining their pockets and trying to look like absolute sovereigns. Many are so out of touch with their people and the particular prescriptions for national health the chances of them being confronted with the claims of the true God and so much as battng an eyelash or having Israelite king Josiah’s response are remote as a heatwave in Antarctica.

When the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes.

2 Kings 22:11, NASB

What makes a king rip his clothes? Outrage that his people had been kept in the dark. Josiah had become king at age eight, and he is reported to have copied the ways of David. He is in his mid twenties when this incident occrurred. Egypt had raided the temple (1 Kings 14:25-27); the temple was in disrepair and Josiah was preparing to repair it (2 Kings 22:3-5). He was on the highway, with one exception. The law was not the featured light it was designed to be. Hilkiah the priest had found a coipy of the book of the law, and Shaphan the scribe had broght it to the king and was reading (a portion of?) it (2 Kings 23:8-10). King Josiah was ripping his clothes because he realized that the people had been violating it.  He had been kept in the dark about the monarch’s obligation to have a copy of the law.

Now it shall come about when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests.

Deuteronomy 17:18, NASB

“…וְכָ֨תַב ל֜וֹ אֶת־ מִשְׁנֵ֨ה הַתּוֹרָ֤ה הַזֹּאת֙…

“and he must write for himself a copy of this law”

This indicates that (a) the kings were expected to write a copy of the law, and (b) that the content was the Pentateuch (this law, at the time of Deuteronomy). In writing it he would have became familiar with the content. 

Solomon’s familiarity with this convention

The king of Israel (God or the Messiah) is not a sinner, but the kings of Israel were all sinners: the law of God is not a terror to Yahweh’s anointed.  Still, we have to make up uour minds whether wisdom in any nation’s head includes monotheism. Solomon clearly did not get it, even though he had intimacy in dream and sacrifice, and of course excellent judgment to lead a nation..

What the servants of Messiah were sure to encounter

Not one of Yeshua’s disciples in the Bible calls for loyalty to Moses. “Keep my commandents” from Yeshua could not possibly mean “Get circumcised and keep all that Moses said”. Observing all that Moses taught will eventually get around to the word of that prophet (Deuteronomy 18:18ff, Acts 3:21-22, 26) whose word is essential and final for any hopes of passing from the childish (Paul’s analog) cycle of festivals, sacrifices, food and drink and carnal (bodily) ordinances.

8) But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9) realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers 10) and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching,” (1 Timothy 1:8-10, NASB)

Not many people are so naive as to believe that Yeshua is simply restoring Israelite kingdoms and covenants. The few who do are vociferous and certain that they alone have the orthodox view, even though in every case, their opinions derive from extra-biblical “authorities” such as visions and books. When a person runs into Messiah one finds that there is no one else in the mix as guide and help.

What the kings of Israel were sure to encounter

Law is not for justified people, no-one can claim to have kept the law, and the law is a witness against its main witnesses

Take this book of the law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may remain there as a witness against you.” (Deuteronomy 31:26, NASB)

Go, inquire of the Lord for me and the people and all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found, for great is the wrath of the Lord that burns against us, because our fathers have not listened to the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us. (2 Kings 22:13, NASB)

The wisest king, without controversy, was Solomon, and we can see that attention to law was not a strong pillar in his administration. The man was wise, but not unto salvation. He was definitely not a worshipper of one God. He knew God but only as the God of his father David, who gave him a charge he took to heart with zeal, temple-building. Now one greater than Solomon has come. He brings the law to its end: Messianic atonement and Holy Spirit residence apart from the law’s hundreds of injunctions and prohibitions. His great love accomplishes all.

Just another blah, blah, blah?

eejoseph

Some legislator in the United States is trying to jump ahead of the righteous judgment of God by recognizing fetuses as persons.  Sure, it will spin off financial benefits for some one, but it will do nothing for the untold millions who have come from the womb into life under the sun,  who have no prrotection from police brutality, from deceitful preachers and from corrupt lawyers.  Every blah, blah, blah, book, podcast and television program is not from a decent or honest place.  There are hundreds of blurbs, series and traditional sentiments that fail to put truth and reality first.  They are not harmless diverse views.  These are dangerous demon-inspired or demon-influenced blahs that we are warned to avoid with a ten-foot pole. 

Imagine an unborn citizen of any country

The idea of a fetus being a person had to be cooked up by a brain cooked by the fires of a desolate land.  Did anyone not hear the Creator say it was better for certain individuals who offend the living to have not been born?  Did the Lord of life mean born or conceived?

Anything will be the cause of American decline except slavery and Jim Crow, hijacked religions, and First Nations genocide

If Christ could say to his disciples before the Pentecostal Event that they were salt, light, and friends, to what end does anyone invite believers to be “like Jesus”?  Believers are children of God, are people passed from death to life, have God’s seal of approval, have his seal of the best-yet-to-come, and have his authority.  Anything more than mutual encouragenment to keep pressing forward is sure to be an attempt to mislead.  All the beauty of Yeshua is equally avalable to all his disciples.  The believer who displays more compassion than his brother is not any more a disciple than his brother, and we had better stop wasting time asking God for more of what we have full and unrestricted access to.  Find a dumpster and flip the blah, blah, blah into it.

Stop devaluing the Messiah to make yourself look legit

Few people are interested in a hero who pokes massive holes in their most sacred traditions, demonstrates that hundreds of “words” about sin, leprosy, and other gods is maximized window dressing, proves that  rivers of blood are incapable of atoning for sin, and gets convicted of capital crime.  Few people indeed.  One Messianic saying goes, “Many are invited, but few are selected”; it runs against the grain of the faiths and spirituality woodworks.  There is no such thing as a faith that seeps into national or tribal culture.  Sooner or later,  the enforcement  used to make people religious, spiritual or faithful becomes an open book for the world to see. Since being in the Way is not confirmed by good deeds – bad people do good things too – the blah, blah blah of sages, seers, and zealous peers, written or spoken, does not amount to a hill of beans.

MORE JEWISH THAN THE JEWS

eejoseph

“To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law;” (1 Corinthians 9:20, NASB)

In the turmoil of the twenty-first centuries’ misanthropic pandemic you would not have guessed that the person who said the words in the citation above was an exemplary Jew. This saying by one of Yeshua’s dedicated messengers is a stiff rebuke to Alice’s wonderful world. People in the modern era have gone to great lengths to show that the law of God (the ten Commandments and all the statutes and judgments) are God’s way.  We know they are not really trying to show even a little integrity when they protest that they are only interested in the moral law. When they hug the seventh-day Sabbath – a manifest festival -as if eternal ife depended on it you know who is in wonderland. Never, never, never, was eternal.life dependent on observance of days, months or years. Paul, a Pharisee, the best of the best, said that these time observances and the whole set of taste not, handle not, and touch not regulations were weak and beggarly rudiments, which have nothing to do with the mature relationship with God.

This is obviously in opposition to Christ saying He is the way, He is the king,  He is the guarantor of salvation, not human obedience. If he is the Way, there is nothing any command can add to the journey. Access to God is not for obedience to law, but for a firm and irrevocable adoption into God’s family, an event by which faith, hope and love come to reside in the pilgrim.

Paul said what he meant and meant what he said

Here in this passage of his letter to the Corinthian Church Paul makes it quite clear there are people who (A) do not have the law of God and (B) are not under it,  whereas those who are more Jewish than the Jews would love to tell us that all the people on the planet have been given the law of Moses as the standard for the kingdom of God and as the guide for their individual nations. Who ever thought that every nation was being invited to be A PECULIAR NATION, HIGHER THAN THE REST, A KINGDOM OF PRIESTS? It is a complete red herring; a filthy rabbit hole. People who reject the essence of Jewishness – all pervading law, covenant, and peculiar promises – cannot say they are the true Jews. Maybe they want us to laugh. What is even worse is the American conviction that their constitution is an improvement on Moses’ rendition of God’s code. Now we know why American progress towards good governance has not even gotten out of the starting blocks. The first judgments after the Ten Commandments are a set of rulings on how to treat slaves or servants. Israel failed to meet the servant treatment standard and so have all other kingdoms, All the talk about law and order today is just a lot of posturing. Israelites (the people of the kingdom of Judah) were also posturing when, as a last minute test, Jeremiah presented them with an escape from judgment: free your servants in compli8ance with the seventh-year release statute. (Jeremiah 34:8-20)

Law is law, and Christ is not Moses

Paul distinguishes law of God from law of Christ, or can they not read? In fact the clamour for high ground with law as the climbing boots is seriously offbase. Commands (Greek entole) are from the root TEL (end) from which we also get teleioo (I perfect), and teleios (perfect or mature, the adjective). Those commands that play no part in the march of faith, repentance and the receipt of the Holy Spirit towards final glorification are of no consequence. Like the clear pronouncement by the One-Who-Knows of defilement not coming from unwashed hands or what what one ingests, some people do not hear. All the “unclean until evening” prescriptions for uncleanness amount to molehills.

They hate Jews

They go so far as to say that the Jews are not really Jews. They are ready to write off Abraham’s descendants according to the flesh. There are even clashing Black and Caucasian theories that send people dancing to down to river to be drowned. The Caucasian theory says that America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are the true Israel, based on their amazing rise to wealth and uinfluence in the world., and that there is a suppposed Judeo-Christian basis for the respective bodies of law in these nations. Just so we know they are full of hot air, (A) lies dominate the air waves in political talking points and false advertising by business and (B) no-one observes the 7th day sabbath, which is the sign of the Old Testament God’s covenant with his people.

The Black version of a neo or true Israel seems to be based entirely on skin colour. They quote Solomon (?) as saying “I am black”, and Moses’ marriage to an Ethiopian, and the wooly head of the God in the visions of Daniel and John (in the book of Revelation). There is also a theory that the ark of the covenant is now in its rightful place, Ethiopia, in the hands of Black people, based on material from the Kebra Negest, a book narrating the relationship between Israel’s king Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

One family, war or peace

What is really disturbing is that few of these theorists have the ability to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures especially. not because it is hard, but because it clearly sets the tone for a unity of Abraham’s flesh descendants and Abraham’s Gentile descendants on the basis of faith in what God has done. Israel did not inherit the land of Canaan because of the Law, but because of God’s oath to Abraham. The madness will only get worse: war on temple mount, Islam against Judaism, Christianity claiming the priority ,meanwhile the God of peace and mercy watches with horror as humanity corrupts the few remaining beacons of decency.

On kings, presidents and tyrants

eejoseph

Then all the people said to Samuel, “Pray for your servants to the Lord your God, so that we may not die, for we have added to all our sins this evil by asking for ourselves a king.” (1 Samuel 12:19, NASB)

The sensitive heart of God’s servant Samuel appears in this episode.   He knew beyond a shadow of turning that asking for a king in imitation of the surrounding nations was a grave error.  Even so Samuel knows that just simply giving up on the people and not praying another word in their behalf; sensitive to the fact that he would be missing the mark by light years.  This is one trait that distinguished Samuel from his predecessors. 

Not willing to give up

You may recall Jeremiah pulling the plug on Judah, on GOD’S orders, a few years from the destruction of the temple and Babylonian exile.

Here, however, is Samuel, the man who would pour the oil on Israel’s first and second kings, committing himself to not pulling the plug on Israel, despite the consensus that asking for a king was a rejection of Yahweh.

The Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them.”

1 Samuel 8:7, NASB

Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you; but I will instruct you in the good and right way. 

1 Samuel 12:23, NASB

Having a king was going to have result in consequences, of Samuel’s making.. There were consequences with which even jurisdictions with monarchies in the twenty first century struggle.

This will be the procedure – policy – of the king who will reign over you

1 Samuel 8:11-17

  1. He will take your sons and place them for himself in his chariots and among his horsemen and they will run before his chariots
  2. He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and of fifties
  3. He will appoint some to do his plowing
  4. … to reap his harvest
  5. …to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots
  6. He will also take your daughters for perfumers and cooks and bakers
  7. He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves and give them to his servants
  8. He will take a tenth of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants
  9. He will also take your male servants and your female servants and your best young men
  10. … and your donkeys and use them for his work
  11. He will take a tenth of your flocks
  12. You yourselves will become his servants.

All heads of state, except the ones that are purely ceremonial will try to assert privileges that line up with Samuel’s predictions. Even when the law states that they should not seek to profit from their office they invariably do.

They’re all dead, right?

eejoseph, , ,

Salvation is great because it is eternal.  It is eternal because the human problem is not temporary or incidental.  “… death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.” (Romans 5:14, NASB)  The problem cannot be fixed by anything created because humans were designed with the capacity to depart from God’s roadmap. Salvation is the remedy prepared before the problem happened and before the perpetrator was created. The benefits of this highest level initiative has nothing temporary: not the pardon, not the gift of the Holy Spirit, not the life of service and not the scheduled glory at the end of the age. Did I mention that glory also streams through pardon, descent and residence of the Holy Spirit, and loving service? No person called and chosen by GOD for this salvation needs to come back for another try. All the people who saw financial prosperity, problem-free employment and relationships, perfect physical fitness and freedom from disease, as benefits of the great salvation are all dead. Are they not?

A few rabbit holes to avoid

  1. Salvation that leaves you unsafe
  2. Hope gets hoovered up by how well people perform
  3. Caring more about obedience brownie points than compassionate actions towards humans or animals
  4. Commands unrelated to from the human terminal condition
  5. Love that discriminates (gender and ethnicity bases come to mind)
  6. A new covenant that reads in all the terms of its predecessor

Do we know anyone who, in addition to passing from death to life, from condemnation to adoption, legitimately represents the Risen Lord as passed from common human conditions like poverty, weakness, famine, and distress?