The times of adversity have a date with relief as surely as day follows night.  We are often most uncomfortable when the times are actually changing. We need to up our game on the basis of the daily dawn transition and the assurance that chastening has a ringside seat in the arena where anger and love merge.

12. Blessed is the man whom You chasten, O Lord, And whom You teach out of Your law; 13. That You may grant him relief from the days of adversity, Until a pit is dug for the wicked.

Psalms 94:12-13

We cannot say we do not relish the fate of the wicked

For the choir director,  a maskil of the sons of Korah, Psalm 44 is a surprising song.  It opens as though it is a historical summary, but gives an overview of early events with a healthy personal testimony and a few surprising allegations.

O God, we have heard with our ears, Our fathers have told us The work that You did in their days, In the days of old. Psalms 44:1

Possession of Canaan – the planting

You with Your own hand drove out the nations; Then You planted them; You afflicted the peoples, Then You spread them abroad.

Psalms 44:2

The divine content Psalms 44:3

Testimony

For by their own sword they did not possess the land, And their own arm did not save them, But Your right hand and Your arm and the light of Your presence, For You favored them.

Psalm 44:3

Confessing God as king is extremely multifaceted.  The king in Israel is a storm waiting to happen.  The road to having a king is adorned with upheavals affecting the promises,  redirecting the priesthood, and putting Yahweh on the side.  The road with kings is a major embarrassment.  The kings showed themselves incapable of bringing the nation to fulfillment.  A host of prophets and wise persons were equally unsuccessful.

You are my King, O God; Command victories for Jacob.

Psalms 44:4

God is also reported to have stopped going out with Israel’s armies, so verse 5 is another example of fact seeping through to draw attention to God’s perseverance in spite of determined resistance.

Throughout You we will push back our adversaries; Through Your name we will trample down those who rise up against us.

The two sides of the fortune coin

Psalms 44:9

Yet You have rejected us and brought us to dishonor, And do not go out with our armies.

Psalms 44:13

You make us a reproach to our neighbors, A scoffing and a derision to those around us.

A prayerful approach is always helpful

Psalms 44:4 asks for help; victories are scarce.

You are my King, O God; Command victories for Jacob.

Allegations unbecoming

Far be it from me to argue with the record.   Synchronizing life with the law and covenants has never gotten a passing grade.  No fable can change the facts.  Yahweh never sleeps,  he does not reject a  people he foreknew, and he knows how many times the people have forgotten him and when the covenant became a casualty of a resistant mindset.

Psalms 44:23

Arouse Yourself, why do You sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not reject us forever.

Psalms 44:12

You sell Your people cheaply, And have not profited by their sale.

Psalms 44:17

All this has come upon us, but we have not forgotten You, And we have not dealt falsely with Your covenant.

Obviously false claims can enter the songbook and we do not know how many people actually bought into these unfounded allegations. Let’s not join the crowd, singing songs just because they exist.

Work and duty have caused a lot of crashes yet they are as popular as ever.  They are so easy to duplicate or fake.  If we told a group of Christians to stop coveting (there is no point in asking humans never to offend God since everyone offends Him) some would choose to lock themselves in an empty room, plug their ears, cover their eyes, and report that they have stopped coveting. 

A much better way

The catalogue of my deeds

The opinion that no one is saved until they get their new bodies is full of fear and unbelief.   There is little love for God and what he has done it all humanity in that sentiment.  After believing and confessing one is told “now you need God’s righteous commands”.  They call that holiness (the setting apart of the believer) your lifelong pursuit.   Along with that they introduce you to the kingdom diet – a regime that does not exist – for if the flesh of bulls and goats is no longer good food for sustaining life Christ is misleading us with “man lives by food and God’s word”. 

Many Christians are wallowing in a compliance mud pit.   The deeds we need to COMPLETE are OUR WARFARE – that is what “having done” means –  and it is not to diligence over food, drink and the shadows of things to come.

Cowardly and Busy Noisemakers

It is obvious that putting on God’s armour has an expected end.  In fact there are two aims.  The first is resistance [withstanding] in the evil day.  The second comes after the combatant “has done all”, and this second end is also an [up]standing.  It is the list of things to do that causes the crashes.  What exactly are we expected to do so we can ultimately stand?  It is the fight, the blows to Satan’s head, the exposure of the lies by which the father of lies has trapped millions of believers; lies so outrageous that the term believers does not fit any more.

Solutions abound in the books of our contemporaries and these answers leave us in the doldrums.  They leave us trying to bring about the very condition that equips us (a) to take up (put on) the armour, (b) do a full job,  and (c) stand in the final stage of our pilgrimage. 

• It is because one is saved that one can put on the armour
• (1) Taking up the armour and (2) doing all are both verbs compounded with kata.
• Katalambano = fully take up
• Katergazomai = fully work out, completely absorb

If our interest is to run interference then we might tell the believer that his standing will take a lifetime, instead of affirming that the full package of working everything down to the bone is not a question of adding anything to the load that the Holy Spirit disperses.   We may attach  our work as nothing  cooperation with the Spirit’s fruit and gifts.  The gifts in which the believer is intended to excel are immediately evident.   So are the fruit.   All half-hearted motions in the realm of gifts or fruit are insulting to the Saviour.  If we could claim to be in love (be patient, kind and faithful etc.) with God without the Holy Spirit’s help or the Christ Event we would, and that is the textbook definition of fearing the lifeboat.  The message of the armour points to a sobering reality.  Taking and using the armour is warfare.

Putting on a face

We cannot say we do not know how disturbing religious posturing is to God.  People have a tendency to say “Yes, yes, yes” loudly and openly when pressed then whisper “What a load of utter rot!” to their neighbours. We complain and murmur.  Historic hypocrisy is rooted in the fog over loving God and fearing Him.  Neither can be faked or manufactured. God has to build and guard the house.

If fearing God is where wisdom begins love will never find its wings

• Loving from God’s perspective means pulling out all the stops
• Fearing God means keeping one’s distance (unless one is ready to die)
• Believing in one God insults polytheists
• Keeping commands as proof of love is an empty shell when the only neighbours one knows are one’s siblings

Thinking of all the denominations that have risen, all the nations that have been staking out identity as moral standard bearers, we are convinced that the triumph of sham,  pomp, and predatory power is over.  We have sniffed out the pretenders and the news cycle is hard to summarize.  One cannot fear God so much that caring for one’s neighbour or donkey is not attractive. Duck! There is a woe ready as long as pretentious love is tower in which we find refuge.

You shall not follow the masses in doing evil, nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after a multitude in order to pervert justice;

Exodus 23:2

The example of the GOP Senate leader publicly affirming that he is an agent for injustice and lies ought to have woken everyone.

Injustice does not just happen! People just want their piece of the pie at any cost.   “I will not do impartial justice…” The senate leader undertook the job was to work with the defense to acquit the accused. His example did not wake up the masses. Have you seen an American church service recently? They continue their feel-good gospel and their die-and-go-to-heaven faith. They have their feet up to the ankle in a muddy puddle and want is to believe that they are swimming in the ocean.

The face of deceit is present in homes, churches, state and schools. It is dominant in those places where everyone seems to turn to superstition and ancestral practices, and no more so than in the mighty nations.  Meanwhile we have spent decades pushing a ticket-to-heaven theology and having little time for undoing the burdens we have the power to.

The one and only God

Naturally, some of the deceit is pretense. When  we  discover that the face of truth belongs to someone else,  we take the easy road, going through. They regularly put other names out front and think we do not notice. They have only recently discovered that spiritual life is supernatural and out-of-the-box.

The good in all men

Do we know how many Christians today are following ancient regulations which they see as fundamental to life and expresses something with royal features, even when the palace and its functions are finished. Food and drink are shadows as surely as feasts, new moons, and sabbath’s are. Faith, not human accomplishment (filthy rags?), pleases God today. It is sheer deceit that brings people to try repeating the assault of James and the Pharisee clique. The Pharisee clique thought that by introducing abstinence from things (contaminations they thought essential to avoid) that they had ensnared the church into the camp of Moses. They had not. Noone reads the letter sent out from the Jerusalem leadership (Acts 15) saying “The church must circumcise converts and teach them to keep the Law of Moses”.

The majority is still not the repository of wisdom. The church still says no to circumcision, Moses and the law. If you have been bullied into signing up for “God is love and love is commandment-keeping” there is no rock under your sandals. No argument can change the rock of salvation into the sand of carnal and human ordinances. The popular and influential leadership of the church across the globe still find their moral compass in the ten commandments and any part of the Bible that suits their agenda. What kind of learner are they when the cross is the instrument and revelation of God’s personal righteousness? The vast majority of believers think that God is righteous because he keeps the law, a law designed for bad people, not the just or justified.

There is fraud in the limitless spiritual life

Since Christ is God and Master the servants will always be below him. Do not ask the televangelists and super church members. They would not know. They are worshipping angels and making alleyways to being little gods. The “pure church” people are busy carving out a space for themselves as the only people with the truth. They all do it even when their message is clearly not from the Bible’s kingdom gospel but from a dream, a vision, or a book. It is fraudulent to accept Jesus as SAVIOUR and adopt Moses or any figure as the guide for the new life.

Angels are messengers with jobs. They have no family status as believers. Angels do not take credit for Christ’s work. They have learned from the expulsion of one-third of their number. Conversations with them have to be rare and well below the exchanges with the Holy Spirit.

Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind,

Colossians 2:18

20. The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; 21. and they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their immorality nor of their thefts.

Revelation of John 9:20-21

Rotten to the core

To the very end the people who we thought were leaders turn out to be in bed with demons, perverting justice, and refusing to pay for their crimes against humanity. The day for the great friendships and alliances to face the music has arrived. It will stop. The faith of Christ is unpopular because it holds up a dying Lamb as the solution to sin and the pattern of life. The kingdom gospel does not ask anyone to stand at a distance so clean that genuine fellowship is fatal.

You can be a good citizen who makes no waves and merely follows the crowd (church, school, business) but you are marking time if your salt and light is grounded in Moses or folklore. Moses will not acquit you. He cannot. He will accuse and execute you. Thankfully Yeshua and the Holy Spirit are on the same page. The Two are on the pages of our hearts. Rotten citizens in the world’s systems violate law, but the rot that accompanies many believers comes from violating the person God designated to bring us to glory. Whose government is your guiding light?

It sounds intelligent when someone says the word truths and the deception floats right by until one turns to Christ.  It must be clear that the human heart cannot be split into compartments for God and anyone or anything else.   There are no degrees to which the mind can be dedicated to God.  The idea that the whole heart and being can contain the fulness of the godhead makes little sense until one has the temple/tabernacle and the Son of Man in the same frame. If we had a narrative that establishes our way to the Father as having its root in something present or happening in heaven, we would listen to people who specialize in many truths and countless ways.

God is Father of those who come to Him through his Son. 

The sole stole

There are not many versions of Christ’s righteousness: one for people who have their act together to some extent, another for those who are far from the kingdom,  and another for whom one has undertake long journeys.  The graphic of the priests clothed with salvation (Psalm 132:9, 16) helps to pin the clothing to Messiah. Everyone in the assembly of saints wears a white robe.

One robe is all we get and its laundering is certain

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands;

Revelation of John 7:9

Believers are capable of soiling this robe and need to wash (this is not being saved again, but rather akin to one washing his or her feet after one has had a bath John 13:10)

Testimony like the following are fabulous and revealing. The first shows that knowing God’s ways is different from knowing him. The others are manifestly problematic as factual experience.

• Now therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight. Consider too, that this nation is Your people.” Exodus 33:13
• The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. Psalm 19:7
• For I have kept the ways of the Lord, And have not wickedly departed from my God. Psalms 18:21

There are so many ways to understand the many paths in the Bible. They all run headlong into our Lord calling himself the Way. Could our Lord be mistaken with this saying? Not likely. What the ways accomplish when compared to Christ the Way, makes the case. Those ways – not a single one – brings life to the dead. Christ’s robe furthermore is not related to the law (precepts, statutes and judgments). The law is not for just people and “way” must take its cue from the person and work of the Son of Man. “Truths” are second class badges. Avoid discussing them. Christ Crucified is the lifegiving truth.