The human body knows when it deserves urgent care. The doctor comes later. The spirit has needs too (none if we believe in immortal souls and perfectly fit persons, believers and nonbelievers healed by God) and it has healing and maintenance routines. Conscience, experience and faith build our spiritual health and fitness. Believing what God has promised is more than sufficient. Instead we have thought that positive thinking can replace the abject negativity of human righteousness (performing what we think God wants) we have the spiritual equivalent of a contagious and fatal disease. To sum up in simple terms, we suffer from icanitis, and tacking on “through Christ who strenthens me” does nothing to hide our proud foolishness.
The covid-19 blessing
We are showing the world how threatened we are by both surprising events and by scheduled ones. Death is coming and we have no remedy. Coronavirus threatens a lot of people and the remedy is not blood on the doorpost of anyone’s house nor are there buttons available to believers to vaccinate people or cure people.
Spiritual solutons are essentially cheap trash. Would we not expect our Jewish brothers and sisters to tell us that the solution to the pandemic is obedience to all the Commandments of God? Are Muslims saying that covid-19 gets beaten if we believe that Muhammad is Allah’s only prophet and there’s only one God named Allah?
Plague or plot
When exactly the blood of Christ became a commodity for Christians (and anyone else who dares) to pour, wipe, smear or sprinkle is not clear. It is not a Bible doctrine. Demons are responsible for the idea that Christ’s blood is for everything. It is not healthy to call bad things good but that does not restrain the fear mongers. They believe they can stop the plague from doing what God wants, but we cannot have the pandemic as one of the must-happens and complain about it and expect God to stop it before it does its work. When the plagues at the end of the age move into their last stage we do not see the masses repenting, and we cannot believe that catastrophic events are intended to help people see a loving God and worship Him. You buy that and you’ve lost your mind.
Look up! Redemption is near!
So when you hear the list of great things that will come about as a result of the coronavirus pandemic just be sure that that virus does not become the god that we are worshipping, which is the way it seems right now. How many of us are doing bad things so good can come? Is that a godly method? Get yourself a God who can hear you and talk to you and you will be in line for every day blessings, with or without pandemics, famines or earthquakes.
Never thought of
The genius behind the American adventure is thought to be religious. “One nation under God ” and “the pursuit of life, liberty…” and other rubbish sayings are not Christian or even Jewish. The love of truth in the context of politics and religion is taking a backseat to lies and propaganda just as it has for millennia.
Of course no religion has openly advocated that lying is acceptable but a nation claiming to be religious and the mightier Israel does. If only they could keep the embarrassing records of religion out of sight.
Are you inoculated against religious and political and ethnic lies?
A day like this
And it came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judæa, and Jerusalem: and the power of the Lord was present to heal them.
Luke 5:17
We suspect that many of the events in Yeshua’s life come to us in the gospels are examples; that many of his encounters with people are likely to have been repeated all over Palestine throughout the three years.
You are not alone in your longing for a day when healing power was in the village. Such days may be few as are genuine (verifiable) cures of cancer and diabetes. The widow of Nain was not the only witness to power present. Neither was:
Mark 6:5-6
- Simeon, an old man waiting for a look at Messiah
- The distressed mother whose child needed urgent care
- The bereaved who had heard that death was subject to the reversal
- The leper who had given up hope of ever feeling love in the touch of a human hand
Power exhibits like this should be happening often, especially when two days every week we see people gathering to Christ from their neighbourhoods.
And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages teaching.
Mark 6:5-6
How the gold dims
Books like this (small booklet) have been part of satisfying the thirst of many believers. Having a number of Bible verses in one place in some kind of order is a huge time saver. But what if the order itself has no structure? Chaos follows. The entry for covenant in this book has two parts: new and old.
Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
Hebrews 13:20
If the point is to compare the two then one should use the same measures: the same hearings and questions.
The new covenant is in Christ’s blood. He ratifies it. There is no connection to the Sinai or the Palestinian covenant. It has nothing to do with Israel’s exit from Egypt
Hebrews 8:8-9
8. For finding fault with them, he says, Behold, the days come, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: 9. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, says the Lord.
There is no commandment participation
God’s role is clear – I will. Human participation does not include drilling it into “our kids” for example as the custom was for the old/first covenant.
- I will put my laws into their mind, and
- write them in their hearts:
- I will be to them a God, and
- they shall be to me a people
- they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
- I will be merciful to their unrighteousness,
- I will remember their sins and their iniquities no more.
The author is not comparing old and New covenant. He is actually making the points he wants to make about obedience about where the covenant placed but he says nothing about the record of keeping those Commandments.
Criteria for the new
- Where written
- Compared to the other
- Same as another
- Who ratifies
- What is its commemoration
The writer wants to say that the law is now written in human hearts but he does not deny that you can’t be teaching people about that. He compares the old to the new without saying they are different. He talks about the ratification of the old but says nothing about the ratification of the new by the blood of the Incarnate Word, not by animal blood being sprinkled on a book. There is no commemoration of the first covenant. The Jew is obliged to do what it says, not celebrate it.
Criteria for the old
- Must obey God
- What it is based on
- Who wrote it where
- With what it is ratified
- People quickly broke it
Hundreds of years later
Following the Sinai failure the precious message from God became talking points until judgment arrived and exiled the Jewish people.
How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street.
Lamentations 4:1
Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord.
Lamentations 2:9
A “told you so” turning point
What do you say to the worried people?
This question posed to the American president at a White House briefing received an abominable response that made me remember thinking “potus45 has no heart at all”.
That’s a nasty question and you are a bad reporter.
We may have thought that an existential crisis can wake the dead but not even the mounting infection rates of covid-19 and the need for discipline are revealing the humanity in the executive branch of the US government. I told you so.
See the exchange on YouTube. https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=T_G4hTJX1Xw
Not even a little compassion.
The gloating bigot in the White House sees pomp and profit only, and hears only those small soundbytes that stir up people who do repeat without thinking.
Potusbigotusgloatus45 cares little about people dying of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Living in terror – the new sliced bread
This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; but you shall meditate therein day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success.
Joshua 1:8
Depart from my mouth? It would be a genuine comfort if I could recall who put all that there, because I am not a Jew (even though I am a follower of the King of the Jews, the Saviout of the world). Not many of us can honestly recall getting a mouthful of law, yet some would love to keep pretending that they were born with the law of God in their hearts, and they lost it. This should disturb every believer.
Knowing that the law is not for the just[ified] we can restate what has been said to us consistently. (1) The law is spiritual (2) so one needs to be born again (3) to recognize (discern) it and (4) there is no guarantee that one observes its hundreds of instructions, and then (they tell us) that (5) the believer needs to hide God’s word in our hearts (6) so that we do not sin against him.
That is what we say. What we mean walks away from the writer’s intention and end up making up what we want people to hear. How many lies did you detect in that scenario? The law is, pure and simple, a lot of talk. Do not complicate your life by labeling God’s work with Israel as God’s will for the human race. How many of us are ready to go where the Hebrew people have lived?
Was Moses terrified or reverent in his encounter with Yahweh on Mount Sinai?
18) For you are not come to the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor to blackness, and darkness, and tempest, 19) And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: 20) (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: 21. And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:)
Hebrews 12:18-21
We can try to restate the Joshua proposition as we can best receive it.
- I, Gentile, need to learn everything that is written because I need death and condemnation
- I, Gentile, need to say (recite, meditate on) everything that is written because I am a leader in Israel
- I, Gentile, need to observe everything that is written
- Because that is how I, Gentile, ensure prosperity and success for myself
If we found the mercy, justice and faith in those books we would have neither the community nor the authorized processes to make them work. If we are fearful of not pleasing God then we can consider that God’s love is a stranger to our hearts.
Reverently receiving the word
Much of the message planted in Joshua will find no good ground where it can germinate. Consider the following. Some things in Scripture are not going to be repeated and others are fulfilled and pass away.
- None of us is anywhere near Joshua’s person, or near his actual or typical mission.
- No believer sits as the leader of God’s people.
- No believer is responsible, like Cap’n Joshua, for taking the Lord’s people into their inheritance.
I can read a story and find neither instruction nor correction. Most people tend to invent a morale. The truly dangerous set Scripture aside and get the meaning from a dream or vision or create a story with magical twist. What is missing is a heart open to love people like God does. That is fear’s antidote.
No aroma?
Mix the spices together to make a sweet-smelling incense. Do this the same as a perfume maker would do it. Also mix salt with this incense. This will make it pure and special.
Exodus 30:35
The old and the new, symbol and reality
Sweet aromas and salt were a part of the sacred tent. The fact that God included a particular odour in this arrangement for communication and residence with his people tells us that God’s idea of holiness is atmosphere. The senses come into play in a big way. Even though a privileged few saw, smelled and heard the features of the tabernacle inner operations the aroma of the incense went where the wind blew it. The aroma gets you as you approach the tent.
Seasoned Christian
TWO SMELLS are in the works of the Christian life according to 2 Corinthians 2:14-16. We give off knowledge of the divine, everywhere.
(14) But thanks be to God, who always leads us in victory through Christ. God uses us to spread his knowledge everywhere like a sweet-smelling perfume.(15) Our offering to God is to be the perfume of Christ that goes out to those who are being saved and to those who are being lost.
- (16) To those who are being lost, this perfume smells like death, and it brings them death.
- But to those who are being saved, it has the sweet smell of life, and it brings them life.
Who is competent to do this work? With whom does the buck stop when life and death are at stake?
Who has the keys of death and life, the grave and grace? Who supplies the salt?
