“His sons are far from safety, They are even oppressed in the gate, And there is no deliverer.
Job 5:4
This release from Eliphaz in Job’s conversation with his visitors is both realistic and pessimistic. He was slamming the foolish persons in his generation, intimating that justice is rare. Was it really? Abraham, who probably lived in the same era, seemed certain that God makes no mistake in this arena. He felt that God does not allow the innocent to be condemned alonged with the evil people. Eliphaz was obviously referring to human endeavours. He was outrageously wrong about the nonexistence of a deliverer.
Eliphaz knew little or nothing about the Exodus, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha, the death of Moses or the carreers of the judges.
We might see the same thing as we examine record of the first century or the twentieth. He would be totally convinced that justice and deliverance were absent- perhaps impossible- if he saw the persecution and murder of Christ.
Just because the courts in the modern era deliver convictions of (even commonly despised) defendants we cannot say our society is safe for our children we cannot say that deliverance from oppression is certain. That, we can be sure, was Eliphaz’ conviction. He observed oppression in the gate – in the local courts.
My world, supporting the world of technological wizardry, virtual reality and extreme fantasy creations, is a lot like Eliphaz’, a lot like the topsy turvy intellectual world of the citizens who persecuted the church in its infancy.
Psalm 28:9 has yasha (ישע) as the first word. It is one of the few sayings in the Bible with this leading word. There are fourteen such verses. There are only four of these verses that also have three other action words. The significance of this is that we have a chance to see (1) verses that are clearly prioritized with the verb to save but we also see (2) what other kinds of actions are essentially linked to this subject.
The salvation quad
Save (yasha) Your people and bless (barak) Your inheritance; Be their shepherd (raah) also, and carry (nasa) them forever.
Save Your people
Bless Your inheritance;
Be their shepherd also, shepherd them (רעם)
Carry them forever.
Save is essentially HELP. Bless is GIVE HONOUR. To Shepherd is to guard and feed. To carry is to personally LIFT and CARE FOR. Each of these actions or activities can be exclusively attached to God, and particularly to the Lord’s Anointed.
Christ is the blessing Agent in the creation narrative, and the blesser of all families as promised in the call of Abraham. Shepherding activity is at the heart of human occupation (Abel and all Hebrews) and God’s caring mission. See Isaiah’s Shepherd-God (Isaiah 40).
The mighty God arrives and carries
Like a shepherd He will tend His flock, In His arm He will gather the lambs And carry them in His bosom; He will gently lead the nursing ewes.
Isaiah 40:11
He carried (nasa) the redeemed Israelites on eagle’s wings (Deuteronomy 32:11) and the Lord’s Arm is responsible for carrying off/away – like an atoning offering – the problems of humanity.
Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted.
Isaiah 53:4
You can see how a single verse that does not use the customary words of the New Covenant can be brimming with the terms of divine salvation. Blood, life and death, justified, forgive and pardon do not appear but are present in these embryonic sayings. The rarity of this verse’s construction recommends it as one of salvation’s prime time players.
Our Lord’s ride into Jerusalem has become a rallying point for separating Judah’s government from the levitical system. The children knew what the adult guardians of the nation’s heritage did not recognize. The leadership’s resistance to asking for salvation (see the 21 pleas in the Psalms) stands in contrast to the children ascribing salvation to the man on the donkey. David’s son is appropriately named Yeshua, salvation, and a week after this moving event he would be completing his work before returning to glory. “Glory in the highest” rang out from the lips of heavenly beings when he came into the world, and now that he was about to depart the chant came from earthly lips: “Hosannah to David’s son! Hosannah in the highest!” It behoves us to keep our eyes on whether the highest, David’s son, and salvation remain connected and relevant. It is manifest that temple, the priesthood, and the law of Moses (the Pentateuch in particular) have no active efficiency in people being born from above and consequently receiving the Holy Spirit.
And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
Eating less, keeping fit, being joyful, and loving without limits are mysteriously not the trending lifestyle. That there is an outbreak of large meals, lots of snacking, idleness, and inactivity is common knowledge. Joy and laughter are eluding the majority of people on the planet. Feet were made for walking for walking’s sake. The secret is out. Nobody is coming up with a list to radically transform humanity or its slide into the devil’s cesspool. For long life there was a prescription in the Mosaic tradition. People living to be hundreds of years ought to be possible with the current level of the physical sciences. |It is not happening. There will be viral videos and DVD series hawked by religious pedlars and scientific crooks who are aging and dying like the rest of us. Failure is written all over the booksellers and marketers of ideas for quality human life.
Advice in the marketplace
Eating less, keeping fit, being joyful, and loving without limits are mysteriously not the trending lifestyle. That there is an outbreak of large meals, lots of snacking, idleness, and inactivity is common knowledge. Joy and laughter are eluding the majority of people on the planet. Feet were made for walking for walking’s sake. The secret is out. Nobody is coming up with a list to radically transform humanity or its slide into the devil’s cesspool. For long life there was a prescription in the Mosaic tradition. People living to be hundreds of years ought to be possible with the current level of the physical sciences. |It is not happening. There will be viral videos and DVD series hawked by religious pedlars and scientific crooks who are aging and dying like the rest of us. Failure is written all over the booksellers and marketers of ideas for quality human life.
Ageless bigots and juvenile elders
To a lot of people the eat, walk, laugh, and love advice is hard work. To others it makes sense. Others like me may find the love component to be misguided maxim-making. A love without messure is not found among humans. It is without doubt a thing we have failed. Many have tried redefining love as a commitment to doing what God says. This is a huge mistake. It always lands people in the turf of not practically caring for people. Loving those who are like us and have shown us love is not a manifestation of infinite or unconditional love.
Boundless love is a dangerous slogan
Love without measure gets people into trouble. It landed Yeshua, the king of love, in a heap of good trouble. If love is a measureless activity it certainly strays into oncoming traffic when it fails to be corrective or is misdirected according to age, for example, or is channelled towards a country or lifeless thing. If Christ had not died or interfered with funerals his life would have become the source of lists to guide humanity to long life. It has taken centuries for us to recognize that humans die with or without a connection firstrate or even supernatural advice. Love without limits would certainly end conflicts that extinguish the lives of of millions of combatants and thousands of innocent children. Even revolutionary wars show that love without limits are a silly pipedream apart from the example of one man, whose life many say is a myth.
Our Lord could only hold his countrymen to what was in the their history. The Holy Spirit convinced the Church that nothing good would come from being disciples of Moses. If anything is a tokenization of Moses’ legacy it is the Sinai experience. Christians should not be disturbed by the silly merchants of a phony lifestyle.
Wooly and greedy eyes
The following is from a featured ad in my email. I immediately took offence that someone was doing that old magician’s trick: bring back from the garbage what God has trashed. Whoever is inspiring these departures from the faith that was one-for-all-time delivered to the holy ones. No kidding! Someone who is not in a cult is writing a book about the living value of the Ten Commandments. It does not alarm me, but not soon from now, all those people who are clamouring for that coveted obedient status will be falling all over themselves to accuse, assault and punish their neighbours who have different beliefs and practices. Right now someone is thinking that all the public information about law and order, justice and the revelations of judicial court procedures (on television and in the movies), are influencing people to think that God has the same approach (tell them what not to do) for the spiritual life as earthly governments do. So they want to cash in with this resource “Ten Word to Live By…”
Wanna sell me a Sinai deal for life? Where exactly is the CROSS in the Sinai Deal? The Pharisees are not dead.
When someone unveils a lifestyle there are pictures of life from sunrise to sunset. Any racist, thieving, lying killer can sit at home doing nothing all day and say he’s lived by God’s word. Life that is righteous however ought to be a mirror of the Lifegiver. Moses never held the keys to eternal life, and Christ did not die to give people a pattern for daily and biological life.
Christians are disturbed by what is not good
“Since we have heard that some of our number to whom we gave no instruction have disturbed you with their words, unsettling your souls,
Acts 15:24
I do not consent with xenophobes and racist control of what I do not do. I can only be me, and that is true enough for God. Moses himself said you all must consult Messiah but that is not what the merchants are after. What a shame!
Christians are directed by what is SPIRITUALLY good
“For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials:
Acts 15:28
Christians are directed by what is indivisiblygood
it seemed good to us, having become of one mind, to select men to send to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul,
Acts 15:25
Christians live by what is good
Acts 15:22
Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them to sendto Antioch with Paul and Barnabas–Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren,
Caring not one whit about who Jen Wilkins, (the author of the resource on sale) is or claims to be, it is clear that only a wooly eyed shopper will buy a Christless view of proceeding along the way of eternal life. One “word” is sufficient: faith-that-works-by-love. Life with God should never be reduced to a list of what is not expected. That is a redcipe for ascetism and withdrawal from society, and cultism.
The cold pretentious heart of a law-abiding nation was on display the day a man sworn to uphold the law choked the life out of a defenceless man in his custody. No-one should think that God has any blessings beyond sunshine and rain for a nation that sinks below jackasses and cows, and no such nation can be expected to show forth the excellence that is exclusively the heavenly Father’s to share. A nation must at least remember its foundation and sustenance – the owner and the dinner table. The legacy of law and order is to bring to light the fact that rebellon continues and humanity has only the pretense of being in a healthy relationship.
There are only shipwrecks in the history of religions morphing into viable culture.
If people insist that there are individuals in the North American context who have never demonstrated the vileness included in the genesis of our nations then there is little reason to hope for a just society. They have been simply preparing to say “this nation is not responsible for the original and persistent sin of the nation”. The politicians who call themselves conservative and Christian are not friends of the gospel agenda. Peace, benevolence, and cooperation are priorities that often abandoned under the pretext of self-defence, nationalism, and a self-centred extremism. No religious group I know has put the pretexts ahead of a humane approach and not succeeded in bringing people together in creative and bold ways with integrity of process and content. I can say for Christians that a lot more needs to come out of the shell and bring more to the table of what is true and other. The other guy is not all wrong, and a look in the mirror will prove that. Theological problems are huge, but right where we all live, work and play are all the parts of an enlightened society. The process that brings us to renewal has never been adherence to law.
The diversity in a North American family, the integrity of villages and towns, the geographical boundaries and the jurisdictions they enclose make us the ripe fruit for the feast of genuine order and safety. I know that there are people who do not think they need any collective safety, and there are some who see no need to be saved. Faith and spirituality are not tools for civic government.
In all the fortresses of Christian theology the terminus is God’s will as obedience to all that He has spoken is an ostrich-like response to supreme grace. The approach by law severs the one supposedly coming to God from any of the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice. It is a grave error to pin salvation to anything beside the cross (atonement at Golgotha).
When the name “Yeshua” is at the centre that should include his authority as the fulfiller, not a recycler of Moses and the prophets. If there are pastors of Yeshua’s people they will not be caught pulling the law and order wool over those eyes that are supposed to be fixed on the Lifted-up Christ? These are the offensive helpers of who Yeshua spoke.
These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted;
Rise up, be our help, And redeem us for the sake of Your lovingkindness.
Psalms 44:26 ESV2011
Check out what this songwriter is asking. Without a “please” you might think he or she is telling God what to do. A little disturbing, huh? Maybe “please” is just another syllable, unnecessary when the situation is dire. “Kurie, sôson me” from Peter, as he sunk beneath the waves, is entirely appropriate.
The request for action, the command, is the imperative (command) form of the action word. Stop signs and “no entry” warnings, for example,, leave us no choice. They are perfect commands. Ignore them and you pay the violater’s price. When we want God to act we ask respectfully and do not command. “na” shows up when a request is urgent and “ana” shows up when the emergency is personal. The two appear in together in rare circumstances (Gen. 50:17, 2 Kings 20:3 [same as Isa. 38:3], Neh. 1:11, Ps. 118:25)
Let me say that asking God for anything successfully is shaped by us knowing what he might do and what he definitely will not do. We can also forget that idea about asking for whatever is in our heart (the heart being not the best place to source our requests to God). Success in our prayers does not depend on God’s ability to do what we deem is impossible. In addition there are way too many prayers that are like sending gift wishes to Santa Claus – asking for things we can get all on our own human initiative.
A law and order person cannot get away with trying to make the Law of God (there is only one!) the law of the land. Mixing human legislation with Mosaic law is a deadly trap. A kingdom built on a divine person needs no condemnatory guidance.
P l e a s e , with arm-pulling and a smile
“Pretty please” is a harbour for those who sense that their need may be urgent, who, with an added yank on the arm of the supplier (mom or dad) and a smile in his or her direction, put in their request.
Prayer does not work like that. Maybe with persistence (Luke 18:1ff) a prayer with no distinction will get God’s attention. It is entirely out of the question to approah God with our evaluation of ourselves as being in his will. God sees through our smile, and arm-pulling, and our spin or loyal talk.
Spin and poetic license
17). All this has come upon us, but we have not forgotten You, And we have not dealt falsely with Your covenant. 18) Our heart has not turned back, And our steps have not deviated from Your way,
Psalms 44:17’18
Have you ever wondered why a person who is, by whatever method of evaluation, keeping God’s commandments needs to ask God for anything? Is not commandment-keeping supposed to be the distinct and ultimate achievement?
To be recognized as perfectly obedient was the prized “credit score”. It is precisely the reputation that the writer of Psalm 44 felt he or she needed to protect- while acknowledging the decrees of God regarding the violation of the covenant. Frankly, there is no way to talk about law without recognizing the universal shortcoming.
That request we see in Psalm 44 came after Israel has been chastened by means of exile and still the lie persists. The more respectful request – without the poetic license – will address the matter directly. Hosannah is the cry for salvation, and there is no answer coming except, as the children in the temple chanted, from David’s son.
anna yhwh hoshiah na – anna yhwh hatslichah na
I think we owe it to our audiences to make it clear that our prayers do not tell God what to do. S’il vous plait – anna and na – are examples of the way humans can call on the LORD for salvation.
<p class="has-drop-cap has-vivid-green-cyan-color has-black-background-color has-text-color has-background" style="line-height:1.2" value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80">Grace is more than amazing. One thing's for certain: it is not human. More and more we hear people talking about loving their country and committing heinous acts against vulnerable people. If crimes against humanity were to be ranked we would see the names of the blind, widowed persons, migrants and female children. The authorities know that they cannot prevent common crimes like stealing and murder so they repeat terms such as "fully investigate" and "never happen again"; they create sound bytes that give the impression that we do not wink at wrongdoing. This is why talk about perfect performances are popular and perfection swings back and forth between pledges and discontentment with oneself, and all such talk is slowly being reined in.Grace is more than amazing. One thing’s for certain: it is not human. More and more we hear people talking about loving their country and committing heinous acts against vulnerable people. If crimes against humanity were to be ranked we would see the names of the blind, widowed persons, migrants and female children. The authorities know that they cannot prevent common crimes like stealing and murder so they repeat terms such as “fully investigate” and “never happen again”; they create sound bytes that give the impression that we do not wink at wrongdoing. This is why talk about perfect performances are popular and perfection swings back and forth between pledges and discontentment with oneself, and all such talk is slowly being reined in.
Everybody deserves second chances, but not for the same mistakes
Anonymous
Who gets one mistake?
What is a second chance? It is supposed to be an additional opportunity. A baseball player at bat gets to miss three times before the door closes on his batting. That is a game that runs for no more than a few hours, and surely, life is expected to be kinder to a person because there is so much time available. The people most ignorant of the process of human growth and the development of expertise need to tell us how many mistakes are made and how many chances are needed (i) by infants trying to walk (ii) adults learning to drive a car or (iii) seniors forgetting what they were doing before being interrupted.
It is an uncaring mind deluded by its own perfection that says a person is allowed to miss a goal once. A fisherman once thought that forgiving a neighbour seven times was a high bar, but he learned that 70×7 was more realistic.
Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” (21) Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven (22).
Matthew 18:21-22
The speed with people let go of certainty to cling to anxiety, anger and anguish indicates that the mystery of the human race’s deception is proceeding. We can feel that we have taken a tough stand by demanding that repeat errrors are conclusive in rendering the repeat offender unforgivable. Under circumstances of “never stumbling” no soul could ever be saved.
Life is Fun, But Not a Joke 