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Twisted and Destroyed
If the Isaiah 8:20 test is to be applied to Christian faith we should have a consistent definition of law and testimony. What is the law? What is a testimony?
What is the Isaiah 8:20 test? It is a light test. It tests content for accord with the law and the testimony. Speech that lacks this solidarity with the law and the testimony is without light.

What is the law? All of the instruction given to the Hebrew people is law. Torah is the noun derived from yarah, he taught, ירה
More precisely, the law refers to Moses’ 5 books, commonly called the Pentateuch (from the Greek for five scroll, pente teuchos)
An even more restricted but contrived meaning of law is the covenant, the Ten Commandments, thought to be the eternal moral standard for all creation. It is contrived because there could not possibly be any such pre-human standard as the two tablets address. Property, relationships, and procedures that did not exist before the creation of man make such standards irrelevant.
The New Testament has its own precision about law. It tells us about the law of Christ as opposite the law of sin. Whatever the Jewish people called law is, by Christ’s intervention, ineffective for salvation and righteousness. Despite the terrifying, high and mighty claims of the psalmists and the Pharisees, the law is done: it has fulfilled its purpose.
There seems to be little precision in using “the law” as a test for light.
Christ’s testimony is all Holy Spirit business. His speech and work are his testimony and believers, by witnessing his glory and grace are part of that testimony.
In the earlier revelation testimony is grounded in the covenant. Yahweh’s witness, most spectacularly, comes in the fiery and cloudy pillar, the tabernacle, the mercyseat and the tablets of the covenant.

Elbert E Joseph, PhD
Salt that refuses to be trampled
www.yeshuaspeaks.WordPress.com

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PERFECT PRAISE
The praise of children in the temple is a striking example of how we should approach the Saviour even though the term Hosanna strictly speaking is not a praise term. It is a cry for help from the Hebrew language. HO-SHE-AY-NEE, means “save me” or as we have it in the New Testament from Aramaic HO-SHA-NAH, meaning “save” (Greek has no “sh” letter hence we get “hoSanna”). It is what Peter would have said in his native language, Aramaic, as he sunk in the waves of Lake Kinneret.
A familiar mode of salvation comes from the Red Sea experience of standing still to see the salvation of the Lord.
Another comes from Israel’s sojourn in the land of Canaan where the people face their crises not by arming themselves but by sending forth choirs of praise.
In response to both actions of God’s people he saved them from oncoming enemies and so he’s able to do the same today.
So how does hosanna to the son of David work? It works because we leave our salvation and have a rescue in the hands of the great saviour of the world. That’s really raising a cup of Salvation to the son of David.

Elbert E Joseph, PhD
Salt that refuses to be trampled
www.yeshuaspeaks.WordPress.com

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Faith in Action
The one thing that pleases God remains jumbled behind Pharisee zeal for Moses and the Law, liturgical purity, Protestant speculation, and present truth innovations. One cannot read the proclamations about faith without realizing that we experience its value in both living and dying. Hebrews 11 is an iconic exhibit in this regard with its instruction about what faith looks like in the lives of ancient witnesses.
As a result of believing the subjects – Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets — experienced a variety of outcomes, all of which “pleased God”.
It is obvious that moral behaviour is not the focus of these outcomes and commendations. The message is not that these individuals avoided sin: the commendations assert that faith made the impossible happen or made unseen things appear. “Faith needs works” is a distraction that springs from a dark place, a Christless place. The condition and behaviour of the just are not tied up in “You shall not” but in God’s work.

Jesus answered them, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. John 6:29

And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 1 John 3:23

1 John 3:24
Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.

It cheapens salvation to imagine that compliance to any law is evidence of a relationship to God and especially one through Christ and especially one that comes from doing nothing. The church unravelled the knots of every ism in its early days (Acts 15, Acts 6 and 7, Galatians 2:12-14, 5:2-6) yet here we are 19 centuries later tied up in knots about irrelevant theories.

Believers are not hoping to be righteous: we are. Believers are not capable of untying that knot that kept us bound: Christ has, in one majestic act, replaced the nots with yea and amen promises which yield life and true righteousness. He has replaced the knots with reliability.

Believers have “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness”. Ephesians 4:24

Returning to the proposition that faith is discerned by both living and dying we find that faith needs love and hope. More precisely, we find that we come to life through faith and the life we live is tagged as faith working in love. The critical evaluation of the faithful seems also to be faith-related when the writer of Hebrews in 11:13 concludes that those who died in faith are secure.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

Elbert E Joseph, PhD
Salt that refuses to be trampled
www.yeshuaspeaks.WordPress.com

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The Hell-Earth Traffic

A Prayer for life to be free from challenges and evil is popular, and while the invitation to ask God for what[ever] we wish stands such a prayer is shortsighted and pitiful.

For the children of God, no such world exists.
Everyone does not receive the object of our best wishes.
Saying “in the name of Jesus” does not make the prayer effective.
No one can command:
(a) the unbeliever “saved”, (b) God to save xyz, or (c) command xyz to get saved.
There is no one going to Gehenna today and there is no one coming from Gehenna today.
Preachers who say there is hell-earth traffic are under a demonic spell.

Elbert E Joseph, PhD
Salt that refuses to be trampled
www.yeshuaspeaks.WordPress.com

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Did you know? You May Have Given up your right to eat.

We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. Hebrews 13:10

Food and drink and carnal ordinances do not cut it.

[The tent symbolizes the present age]. According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation. Hebrews 9:9-10

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Romans 14:17

Tabernacle is a fancy word for tent.
Yes, that place that moved with the ancient Israelites and provided them with the point of access to God and atonement was a tent.
No matter how dazzling the beauty or splendour, the Tent of Meeting (and the later temple) was a far cry from the Word made flesh. Jewish attempts to rebuild a temple are probably just the kind of thing one thinks one sees at a funeral parlour viewing. Which part of “desolate” do they not understand?
He was full of grace and truth and brought the same to all.
The ToM was limited to Israelites.
It had no grace for the guilty.
It was the place where the last murder of an innocent took place.
The children of Israel called it _MISHKAN_ because God resided there. שכן. _shakan_, he dwells. (Shekinah is from this word)
The children of Israel called it _MIQDASH_ because God’s devoted things were there. קדש _qadash_, he devotes (he makes holy)
The tent is defunct because a *better and eternal covenant* is now in place. Hebrews 13:20 and Matthew 26:27-29

The long and short of our interest in the tabernacle is that no-one can serve God and the tabernacle (or what it stood for). People can seem to be hugging Yeshua but once they start talking about tent, holy place, commandments, regulations about food and drink it is a foregone conclusion that they are lost in the woods.
If you are trying to be the “new Jew” or if you have been convinced that there is justice and morality in the old covenant it is no surprise to God. When Moses brought the Israelites the covenant they were telling themselves that a golden calf had rescued them from Egyptian bondage. When Christ gave the Israelites the only sign of who He was – *dead for 3 days then back to life* – they told themselves that the disciples had stolen the body.
The new covenant does not contain the old covenant.
The new covenant is not the old covenant.
Following Moses, the Old Covenant and its housing puts you in the wrong place. You have no right to talk about the Saviour as if you know him.

Elbert E Joseph, PhD
Salt that refuses to be trampled
www.yeshuaspeaks.WordPress.com

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Study what???

Study What? Getting it Straight About Cutting it Straight.

Recently and repeatedly I have had the hair on the back of my neck stand up and have bowed my head in prayer and shame on hearing someone use “Study to show yourself approved…” (Stsya) especially when it is on the lips of someone appointed to instruct and guide believers.
The approval is not that an audience says Amen or that the words spoken can be corroborated by commentaries. It is rather that the words spoken fit what is written, especially what is written about the Savior’s mission.

That which passes for Bible study these days is pure brainwashing. Do we recognize the difference between a lecture hall and a classroom ? Do we recognize the difference between a monologue and a discussion ? If commandments are the subject there is nothing to discuss. People who end every session (teach or preach) with obedience and the law of God are the current examples of demon-influence. They can end with Christ as a tack on, as they do in their prayers, but either ending – law or grace – is dust in the wind.
If you think you need to explain grace to believers then there is no Jesus in the picture. Let’s get that clear.

The most disturbing example of people using the saying “STSYA” is when children are the targets. Neither adults who merely read for perhaps one hour total in a day, nor children, nor semi-literate people who have any capacity to teach the Scriptures are in any position be evaluated as word-worker.
The outrage mounts when one realizes that the professional pastor comes up short

Elbert E Joseph, PhD
Salt that refuses to be trampled
www.yeshuaspeaks.WordPress.com

[Draft]

Holy Just and Good

In the meetings in the Christian Community we often the focus on the joy of the Lord or the requirements of the Lord. By this I mean that we approach the corporate movement in terms of what are our privileges and what are our responsibilities. The privileges include the joy of fellowship and sharing and the responsibilities then return to the individual as that presses him or her towards accountable behavior, our responsibility.
The three descriptions in the title of this essay are words that attach to the Divine entity. Humans borrow these from God. Those adjectives belong to God in an exclusive way.
If we seat those excellencies in Yeshua we are able to arrive at a
who what when where why and how.

God, not any creature.
Gift, not loan
On Passover
Outside the holy city
Great love
By dying and rising

One can see that saying the law is HJaG is a mantra that Paul uses to ease the blowback by Moses’ disciples. There is no question that Paul taught the end of the law; he even gave it a bad name: prison. He did not say the law is good for salvation. He could not.

How can obedience be a virtue (=power, from dunamis δύναμις) when one lies every day about doing what God wants and when the thing on which one relies, the whole [the sum] of man, keeping God’s commandments, is where injustice shows its power to condemn and kill.

My friendship with MESSIAH does not include the voice for juveniles, the voice of condemnation, nor the voice of wise and ignorant hypocrisy.

One will reject opportunities be gracious and merciful because one’s morality is to avoid sin.

One day the Sanhedrin heard that the son of a priest was out in the desert preaching and showing every evidence that the status quo in all of Judah’s institutions was inadequate and irrelevant. The iconic commentary of the times on the written word of God was focused on the Law and the temple, both of which were about to be exposed as hostile to John’s preaching.

The Voice for Juveniles
Law as temporary guardian

The voice of Condemnation
Righteousness is apart from the Law. The law condemns everyone. It serves up death. One is wearing all veil if one reads the law as if it were the ultimate voice of God. The things said at Sinai pale in comparison to the lifegiving sayings of God. Both Law and Prophets lose their authority when Christ shows up. Christ the not come to establish what Moses and the prophets taught. I’m sorry that is utter bunk.
The demon-indoctrinated flocks remain unable to say whether the cross
1. Commends God or Moses
2. Ends or begins Christ work
3. Delivers a gift or a loan
Having taught their children to diligently keep the Laws of God from their birth (appropriate for all children whether divine or human laws are the object) when the time comes to respond to Christ’s call it is ridiculous to offer them more Ten Commandments, more Health Laws, more diving into the symbols of salvation the tabernacle the Mercy Seat, and more tables of stone revised. No-one, it seems, under Law could ever arrive at the Jordan river experience of the

The voice of wise hypocrisy.
a reliance on wisdom sayings which show no appreciation of God’s grace.
The scribe, the priest and the elder have

The voice of ignorant hypocrisy.
If the latest tweet from the temple or Sanhedrin said that the priests profane the Sabbath by the work they do and are blameless would one not ask “Who else is doing essential work on the Sabbath?” As good, holy, and just as the Law is its inability to provide

Elbert E Joseph, PhD
Salt that refuses to be trampled
www.yeshuaspeaks.WordPress.com

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Stop confusing yourself. Yeshua is not Moses.
Great love is in a league of its own. We can no longer drink from the cup labelled “love” because being obedient is the proof of love. If that was what Christ meant we may have found a contradiction in the perfect messenger.

Love is being painted as exemplified by obedience. Hold everything! Is that what spousal love is about? Love between married persons is certified by perfect compliance with commands? I do whatever my spouse says and that is love? Smellier dung is hard to find.

This idea is more evidence that both Judaism and Christianity that adopts Judaism’s core is kindergarten.
Law is for – not as property – the lawless and disobedient, the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, 1 Timothy 1:9 (we are aware that the law outlaws many more than these 8 areas of life)
The law, being claimed by the saints is an affront to Christ.
People who embrace The law as the foundation for spiritual life are affirming that they are still lost. Just persons do not need the law. The law is for persons who are:
unprincipled o
Disobedient

understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for

Is God’s love corroborated by his commandment?
Is there a set of rules that he upholds without turning?

If when both Moses and John the Baptist said a prophet is coming to rise above them the Jewish people were still talking about keeping Moses in place and killing any messenger we cannot expect the leaders of the church to say anything that stays close to the helm of divine love.

If you take your conclusion of the whole matter from the Solomon then you probably do have shaky legs just like the wise king. The commandment keeping arrangement is definitely not great love. Obedience is fuelled by fear.

Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.
Hebrews 5:8 ESV

So you think the great command in the law is about a day? If the great commands are to do nothing that offends (that is a shaky foundation because love does well for others) does not love of the divine kind elicit beautiful works for others. It is distressing that people are acting as if revelation hit the ceiling at Sinai

Do you believe that divine justice allows one of us – the priest – to get away with working on the Sabbath? That situation shows that the ten commands are not the last word in moral or pleasing actions.

Real love, love of the great kind would bring the wheels of modern justice to a jolting halt. It would bring the capitalist system to its knees. When was obedience ever the resource poured into hearts? Love is really people business and we are fully aware of people who have been so strict commandment keepers that they resolutely block off any shows of love, even to those who are in dire straits, as we see in the story of the good Samaritan.

“God blesses obedience” is a demonic doctrine because it contradicts a clear teaching of Christ.
Doing what God has said gets no recognition. Why does anyone expect commendation for what should come naturally?
Just so we understand what defines an unprofitable servant let us see how the term performs. The only other occurrence of this term is
Matthew 25:30. There we learn that an unprofitable servant is assigned to the darkness of punishment.
And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Elbert E Joseph, PhD
Salt that refuses to be trampled
www.yeshuaspeaks.WordPress.com