Ancient leaders whose lives came under divine scrutiny or had divine approval are many, even though only a few are celebrated by means of a book named after or written by them. David seems to outshine them all with curious distinction. From young shepherd to bandit king-in-waiting, to songster and builder of a palatial residence for Israel’s God, David rocks. All he ever wanted was to build a place where God would be pleased to live as sung in a pilgrim Psalm.

Remember, O Lord, in David’s favor, all the hardships he endured, how he swore to the Lord and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob, I will not enter my house or get into my bed, I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.

132:1-5

When Solomon, David’s son, departed from the standards delivered by Moses, God decided to rip up the kingdom, dividing it into two. The northern kingdom would bear the name of Israel (the father of the twelve patriarchs) and the southern kingdom would bear the name of Judah (the patriarch who had pled for Joseph’s life and whose family line was destined to be the house of Messianic revelation). The nation might have felt that a restart like the flood or worse, an overthrow like the Sodom and Gomorrha judgment was in the works, but God’s promises required a living people and due regard for David.

For David’s sake

Nevertheless, for David’s sake the Lord his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem, setting up his son after him, and establishing Jerusalem, (1 Kings 15:4) because David did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite (1 Kings 15:5).

David, with his blood-soaked hands and Yahweh’s sure mercies, was greater than Solomon and neither of these monarchs is the expected anointed one.
Building a house for Yahweh is an irrelevant and outdated instruction as we have come to understand the requirements for divine residence.

Mark 14:58

We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.

No building anywhere compares with the human body as residence for God.

The common or majority is not necessarily safe

The people had a common leader and experiences, yet they

1. Liked idols
2. Partied at the wrong time (ate, drank, and danced)
3. Slept with prostitutes, and had ritual sex
4. Grumbled incessantly
5. Wanted the bad things

Destructive desires lead to destruction

Let us stop imagining that we are experiencing super-human trials, because when we are Christ’s we have the confidence that with every trial comes an exit. The exit route is up “Endurance Road” not “Miracle Blvd”.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 2 Corinthians 4:7

Our quest

The human interest in goodness and excellence has often brought us to the wealthy and the influential. More often than not we look in the wrong places and our quests end with some of the most abominable things and people. Typically we pursue and latch onto the proud and self-reliant, the heroes of the world’s junkyards and dynasties.

God’s gift

God has deposited, to our surprise, his lasting, incorruptible, and theft-free fortune in the lowly of circumstance and heart. In these mortal bodies of ours there is excellence: the Holy Spirit and the character of God our Father and Saviour.

We have treasure!

You are deceiving yourself when you think that the institutions of the 21st century are going to bring about the end of bigotry, hypocrisy, and oppression. The answer to poverty is not more wealthy people. The trashy dreams of a new prosperous and secure reality, the influence of tech giants, the emptiness of soul that accompanies most moguls and philosophers are all going nowhere.

Never Happens Again

The next time you hear a politician, preacher, government official, or one of those media types talking about fixing some problem so that it never happens again just remember the following and save yourself from the idolatry of secular government and religious folly.

1. Law-abiding people and the enforcers are deceived. We are grateful for the latter but pass on being the cheerleader for either.
2. It has taken hundreds of years to face up to Caucasian hatred of people of color
3. Ethnic or religious states are examples of the abandonment of human conscience abd the betrayal of a divine ideal
4. People are rushing into slavery from Africa, Asia and Latin America as if the destinations are really interested in their wellbeing

My idol-smashing God

Ephraim is a pseudonym for Israel, Ephraim being one of patriarch Joseph’s sons. Both Israel and Judah, the two biblical jurisdictions with the most extensive legal system, never gave up the idolatry of Canaan, Aram/Syria, or the current world-ruling power. My God is not a thing: not state, not law, not family, not church, not a book. The gold dimmed a long time ago.

God’s people are not deceived, will not turn their minds over to the architects of imperial serial rapine as so many of the people aspiring to distinction have done.

Prepare to mourn the death of honesty. We have stopped nothing that prevents humanity’s wallowing in our mud.

Do we know when Yeshua is weeping?

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Matthew 23:37-39

It seems that our Lord may have passed by a blind person as he travelled with his disciples had they not seen an opportunity to get some insight into human disability and suffering, from someone who should know (vss 1-2). Everyone, even in our scientific and spiritual enlightenment, still is fascinated, if not disturbed, by human suffering, especially when the condition is from birth. The fire this inquiry started brings out both the shallows and the deeps of Hebrew thinking, the mysterious purposes of God (vss. 3-5), and the hard line between Moses and Yeshua. When the authorities get wind of the sabbath day miracle (vss. 6-7), an inquiry ensues, engulfing the man, his parents, and Yeshua (vss. 8-12). The Pharisees get roped into the action once they learn that Yeshua was responsible (vs. 13). After harassing the man about how he got his sight back, after interrogating the man’s parents, after assailing Yeshua’s reputation and calling him a sinner, and after finding that the man could not be bullied, the Pharisees retreat to their favourite cover: Moses vs the world.

For a second time, the Pharisees want to know how Yeshua made the man see again.

They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” John 9:26 (see vs 15)

The man is convinced that Yeshua was responsible, while the Pharisees press him to ascribe the whole affair to someone else. Once they realize that the man is not changing his report or gratitude they deride him. He could have replied “No, you are not, and I can prove it”.

And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. (John 9:28) We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” (John 9:29)

The religious people, who seem to know everything, become the object of deserving ridicule. When God’s works, set in motion from birth get reversed, they ought to have known. Didn’t they?

The man answered, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. John 9:30

The kinship between the disciples and the Pharisees is obvious. Both believe that the man’s blindness is the result of personal sin.

1. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” John 9:2
2. They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” And they cast him out. John 9:34

Both were barking up the wrong tree, but at least some people were aware of the underlying message, but the Pharisees were going to hear the amazing judgments of God, including sight to the blind and blindness to the sighted.

Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” John 9:40

Yup! Blind and guilty followers of Moses (vs 41)

Devil-Jesus America

There is a nation whose name is “lamb dragon”

• It has lamb powers but behaves like a dragon. Devil-Jesus!. Revelation of John 13:1 Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon.

Isrsel-Judah prostitution Inc.

Why does anyone buy a nation named “God’s prince”?

• when the capital is ***peace/health but she’s missed her opportunity to seal the deal
• when she has been the poster girl for prostitution, taking the Oscar for paying her johns

Local leaders

Washington DC is supposed to be the memorial to a revolutionary turned politician. American politicians have the perennial distinction of being neither revolutionary nor courageous fighter for the truth.

World leadership

The current predictions of an amphibian GOP and a cowardly, demon-possessed chief executive leading the world will never happen, just as surely as Moses’ blueprint never saw the light of day. The result: no one can find the city on the hill.

Reveille

It is time to think about what your capital call is and consequently what your leaders ought to be pursuing. Your discovery might jolt you wide awake.

His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.

John 12:16

Check Point Turnabout

God, the all-knowing, commits to not holding our record of rebellion against us and to purging his memory of the matter. The extent to which this works must be a factor of his unique power. We have no surefire method of purging our memory: events and people can pop back without notice. This makes forgiving and “moving on” more of a task than one imagined.

Dropped

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ Philippians 3:8

Abandoned

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, Philippians 3:13

We like to think of ourselves as fighting to turn, to discard, and abandon our former life, when in fact we have only a false claim of overcomng sin. We cling to all the pride of pedigree, all the past things that cover up, like a fig-leaf, our rebellion and shame.  The cheapest and shallowest roads, avenues, and boulevards in the Bible are the ones named “Touch not”, “Taste not”, “Handle not”, and “Not those guys”.

Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. John 6:32