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…”

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 indivisibly good

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 send to 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;

Jude. 1:12

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.

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.

“Can’t complain” is an answer to “How are you?” but complaints are not sinful. What we complain about tends to be slight and part of the common experience. We hear human parents saying they love us but we are not so sure they do when we experience their resolute attempts to change our life’s course. In hindsight we can be shocked at our rush to grow up in the natural world but we know how much safety there can be when we hold ourselves open to parental discipline.

You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; (4). and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved by Him; (5)

Hebrews 12:4-5

We are all eager to grow up partly because we long for freedom and independence, but we also do not want to grow up because parents are our natural safety net.

Go slap that kid – worse is likely to happen if you don’t.

There is value in childlike attitudes of dependence in the spiritual world without regard to how old we are or how advanced our journey is. While we naturally and legally disengage from parental discipline in the natural world there is no end of discipline in the spiritual world. It is certain that divine discipline will shock us but when we are oriented towards God as children we will also be convinced that we could not be safer.

The practice of learning by repeating may seem like the way to make God’s will a part of a person’s talk and walk.  After all that is how humans learn most things.  A person can wear the designated swag, eat the uncommon food, observe the cyclical memorials,  and provide the evidence of correct behaviour in all of life’s circumstances and still have a heart that is at arms length from God’s will.  In the few decades that I have been allowed to observe religious developments I have seen that it does not take long for lies  to become the truth.  Internal deceit is a thing we were born with so it comes quite naturally for humans to find lies attractive and easy for us to latch on to even the most outrageous falsehoods.

Insight from the Bible.

I do not sit with deceitful men, Nor will I go with pretenders.

Psalms 26:4

Psalms 26:4 seems to connect deceit with hypocrisy, but hypocrisy and hypoctite are not textually prominent.

Cleansing the holy should be taken as a joke

He shall make atonement for the holy place, because of the impurities of the sons of Israel and because of their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and thus he shall do for the tent of meeting which abides with them in the midst of their impurities.

Leviticus 16:16

Pretending and role plays are not joking matters. It is how we learn. If we taught today – in 2021 – that a man could redeem his life with the life of a lamb, goat, or bull, people would laugh us out of town, and we would be known as the people who are not worth much. However, when the people who hold your life in their hands tell you that the thing to do when you have violated the law is to bring an animal (get one if you do not own one) what is a guy to do?

A virulent version of vileness

How long have Christians been saying that physical healing is part of being adopted into God’s family? A few years at most.  There is no way that Christ endured the cross – stripes, bloodshed –  to arrange for a benefit that can be achieved by purely human means.  If there are illnesses that Christ atoned for those conditions would be the ones for which humanity has no remedy.  The cancers, heart failures, loss of limbs, and even aging would be the logical targets for divine relief.

No such treatment by the Holy Spirit has ever been attested. The Christians I know are not turning down health insurance or avoiding medical practitioners.  Would not putting distance between us and those agencies be the course to take?  If someone set up a clinic in your neighbourhood offering to forgive all of a person’s sins, give people new hearts, endow a person with supernatural gifts and a daily mental renewing apart from the gospel of Messiah Yeshua that clinic would be a place every believer avoided like the plague.

Cleansing an impure people with animal flesh and blood

for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the Lord.

Leviticus 16:30

As far back as the attempt by evangelical America to impose Christian views on the world apart from a personal salvation experience there has been the use of slogans to dupe people into thinking that the doctrine of Christ can be kidnapped for political purposes.  Christ did not recruit disciples on the basis of the Mosaic economy.  It is through Christ’s own blood and his gift of the Holy Spirit that individuals receive a fully functioning access to the eternal inheritance.  

They raised a question about what the accountable life looks like.  It is a near complete trashing of the facts, namely, that the tree planted by the rivers of water is fruitful and prospers in all it does.

So who is a true disciple and who is pretending? 

Dealing with sin has no annual cycle, no effective human component, no animal currency  and no repeat saving act.  Christ died all by himself without any help from apostle, disciple, judge or prophet. It is pure deceit to propose (a) that the human heart apart from God’s grace has the capacity to recognize God’s offer of salvation and adoption or (b) that any human has the will power to choose the way of faith.  Salvation does not come by means of human scrutiny or will power.  It comes by grace through faith.

Why call that salvation?

The foolish Galatian is alive and well in all the movements and doctrines of our times.  It is obvious that for the vast majority the grace that God designed for success is insufficient.   People needing to get their act together so that God can save them, are not saved,  by their own confession.  People who cannot say “I am safe” and “I am a child of God”  are lost in the desert of unbelief.

Trapped in the lobby

The only witnesses who told believers that they needed something additional was James and the Pharisee crew.  They proposed that believing in the Son of God was only a first step.  They argued that people coming to God through faith in Christ needed to be circumcised and observe Mosaic law.  People are still pushing falsehoods like that, thinking it makes them more responsible than other believers. Abraham had statutes and judgments (who does not?) but he had no law and priesthood.  His life was dominated by a promise.

There is no law that comes to humanity apart ftom Moses.  There is no salvation apart from the promise of  the  cross. If law could save there was no need for the cross. Life cannot possibly get crazier than for Christian faith to be defined by levitical practice in the second millennium after the crucifixion. Salvation is unequivocally Jewish and non-Mosaic. All those noisemakers revelling in their obedience to the law are the posterboys for desperately deceitful heart.