Burning Ones

Posts tagged with ‘Bible’

• Reflection on Hebrews 10:11-18

  From June 19, 2009 @ 6:00 am

  Mine:

  And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sin, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

  And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

  This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,

  then he adds,

  I will remember their lawless deeds and their sins no longer.

  Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sins.

  Real:

  And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

  And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

  This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,

  then he adds,

  I will remember theirs sins and their lawless deeds no more.

  Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

  Diff:

  I can’t seem to get my unified diff output to work correctly. I have no idea why. It makes me sad.

  However, you can see from the above that basically I screwed up the sins vs. sin in what Christ did. During the whole process of memorizing this I struggled with whether or not sin was plural, and I kept thinking it changed between lines. Also, I messed up the order of lawless deeds and sins in what the Spirit adds.

  Observations:

  1. I love how God not only makes the law more unavoidable in the present age by putting it on our hearts and writing it on our minds, but then he also takes away the law’s guilt-inducing power by forgetting our sins and our lawless deeds. It’s like he is at once making us more worthy of guilt and more able to approach him without shame. In fact, it’s not like that, it is that.

  2. I struggle with the idea of Messianic Jewish communities even now. I heard a ‘good’ argument for them at Onething this past year in that there is going to be a Jewish presence at the end of the age when Jesus returns that welcomes their promised Messiah with ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’ as he rescues them from the hands of the Antichrist’s army at the sound of the trumpet (Romans 11, Isaiah 63, Revelation 19, Matthew 23.37-39) and so even if you believe that Jesus is the Messiah and has indeed already come, there’s clearly evidence that perhaps you should remain Jewish and continue to practice Judaism until the second coming so you can be there for him. However, a strong part of me rejects this because of testimonies such as Hebrews 10:18 where it clearly states that if you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, there’s a new order to things. There is no longer any offering for sin, a clear tenet of the Jewish faith, because the sacrifice has been made. What does it mean to be Jewish and Christian? It means as much as to be Christian and Buddhist or Christian and Muslim. In other words, it’s a contradiction in and of itself. It’s as meaningless as saying I’m a Christian and an American. We are aliens here on this planet, pilgrims on our way towards our home. We are called to be a culture of our own within the culture that is hosting us. So why would you be both Jewish and Christian? It doesn’t make sense to me.

  3. Christ’s kingship has been inaugurated and yet not realized. However, his silence at the present time, his allowance of evil to continue, should not be taken as a sign of weakness or death. There will come a day when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead. All of his enemies shall be made into a footstool for his feet. This speaks, I believe, of his active role in their punishment throughout eternity. It is one of the hardest things for me to realize that we will rejoice in heaven at the judgement of God. The saints sing songs in worship to God that he destroys Babylon the great and causes her smoke to ‘rise up forever’ (Revelation 19. The concept that we will not know that God has judged our friends and family members and the fallen world around us who rejected him and his love is one that cannot be found in scripture. His very judgements will be the subject of our rejoicing. We will then see them perfectly and realize their righteousness. It’s a terrifying thought to me. I know too many who I couldn’t say with any confidence will be with me there. May this drive me to seek their good and God’s glory.

  4. Thank God that the work is completed in Jesus!

  ---

  I understand that this has been incredibly irregular anyway, but just to be clear, I feel like God is calling me to memorize all of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). This is going to take me a considerable amount of time. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll do it chunks that I can post here as I go along or whether I’m going to wait till the end. It probably makes sense to do the former, but we’ll see. Wish me luck and keep me accountable if you’re so inclined.

• I want it to be rich

  From April 27, 2009 @ 4:15 pm

  On Sunday we went to see our friend’s babies get dedicated (three babies all with the same set of grandparents!). The preacher at their church is an older man (80s?) and has been saved for a long time. What hit me so much was not really the message that he gave but how rich his relationship with God was (or is rather).

  It pains me how much of that I lack. I know I’m making progress. In fact, I could not be happier with my progress (by God’s grace). I feel constantly stretched and tried and it feels good, even if I don’t respond well to the trying.

  I don’t know what a rich relationship with Jesus looks like. I think a key to experiencing that is getting into the Bible more. I have a daily reading plan but I don’t feel like I’m “eating the scroll.” I feel like I need to be meditating on Scripture (a.k.a memorizing, but not mindlessly). If Jesus IS the actual Word than I feel like an idiot for not doing it sooner because how obvious is that?!

• A Brief Outline of Leviticus

  From January 16, 2009 @ 6:00 am

  The Scene

  Exodus and Leviticus could easily be one book.

  Israel has just spent a little over 80 days plus however long it took to build the temple in presence of a flaming, shaking, thundering, smoking mountain. The temple has just been built and either Mount Sinai is still flaming, shaking, thundering, and smoking and God’s glory has descended on the temple or God’s glory has departed from Mount Sinai and is resting solely on the temple.

  Either way… Redonk!

  God calls to Moses from the Tent of Meeting (1:1) and gives him an initial set of laws (1-7)

  In all likelihood, this was a very short period of time.

  The LORD spoke to Moses.

  Likely serves a dual purpose.

  1. Reminder of whom these laws are from. Moses is not creating a government here. God is issuing the points of his covenant with the people of Israel and Moses is receiving them.
  2. Perhaps Moses was fainting or simply overloading from the glory that he was enduring in the presence of God. These points could speak to God pausing to let Moses recover for a little before continuing with his statements.

  We do not typically think of the law as being glorious, but do not forget the context! This is as glorious a moment as anything else I am aware of in scripture, particularly because of the astonishingly corporate nature of this encounter. It makes the falling away of Israel to a piddly Golden Calf all the more shocking in light of what they were experiencing.

  God instructs Moses as to the consecration of the first Priests of the Aaronic line and the cleansing is executed. (8-9)

  Less than two weeks.

  Nabab and Abihu are killed for improper worship. (10)

  1 day

  This episode does evoke questions as to the mercy and judgement of God. However, I believe the main point here was to express how completely holy the God is. Nabab and Abihu may have been ‘playing’ at religion or pridefully gloating in their new found status as Priests. These would be two possible cynical interpretations. On the other hand, they may have been sincerely worshiping a God whom they feared and loved. In either case, God makes it clear that he is not safe or like us and that he is thus to be feared and respected.

  God gives the next set of Laws and Customs, this time to both Moses and the newly consecrated Aaron. (11-25)

  About a day.

  The terms of the covenant. (26)

  Addendum Laws (27)