Sep
6
2011
Still the Only Solution?
Dennis Prager recently had a lot of good things to say about the Ten Commandments, highlighting the stupidity of the West in its hurry to tear them down and remove any trace of them.
Sep
5
2011
A Stormy Brew
Joel 2: 1-11
Into Joel again, and he knows nothing of our chapter divisions. At least the chapter break occurs at the end of an obvious stanza. We are still within Ethics 3, so this is the Trumpets stanza of a Trumpets cycle (aren’t fractals fantastic?) It’s a bit like that movie Inception — as the prophecy moves forward, each step is expanded to further level of structure, a dream within a dream. In this case, it is a multi-level nightmare, a brewing, billowing thundercloud. [1]
Jerusalem had become a new Babel, so God raised up a real Babel in order to overrun the Land and swallow her up. Joel uses the Creation, Dominion and Feasts structures but applies them to the invading Babylonians in ironies that would go over our head — if we weren’t familiar with these literary devices!
Sep
4
2011
Feasts in Doxology
Here’s the feast/Covenant structure in the doxology that appears near the end of the book of Hebrews:
Sep
4
2011
Priest, King and Prophet
Run-of-the-mill triperspectivalism not only misses the progression inherent in the three roles of prophet, priest and king, it gets the order wrong. Well, kind of…
Sep
2
2011
From the Vault
Aug
31
2011
Things to Come
Hebrews 13:1-14 | 27 August 2011
Introduction
The book of Hebrews follows the Covenant pattern, most obvious in Deuteronomy. The final point is Succession arrangements, the future. The author outlines the most important things that those in the household of faith must remember. He is dealing with the major landmines hidden in the path of Jewish believers in the first century church.
Aug
30
2011
A Prophetic Temper
Years ago, when those “spiritual gift” tests were in vogue, a pastor told he didn’t like them because Christians were using them as an excuse to be slack in the areas where they were not “gifted.”
Aug
29
2011
Ambassadors in Chains
“But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing…” Matthew 6:3
When it comes to doctrine, Mark Driscoll defines all issues as either closed-handed or open-handed. The non-negotiable fundamentals are held with a closed hand. In the open hand are issues that can be debated without shafting a church’s faithfulness to the apostles’ doctrine.
Aug
24
2011
The Covenant of Perks
James Jordan comments on the erroneous assertion of a “Covenant of works”:
[An] error, which has plagued some Calvinistic theology for generations, is to think that there were two covenants: a covenant of works and a covenant of grace. It is the phrase “covenant of works” that is the problem. Theologians vary in how far into error they go as they try to use this bad term, but one way or another the idea seems to be that Adam was supposed to earn eternal life through good works. Since he failed, Jesus came and did it for us. This error is compounded when some theologians say that we “receive” the “covenant of grace” by faith, as if Adam was supposed to earn his merits apart from faith!
Aug
23
2011
Repo Men
or Feasts in Joel 1
The prophets were God’s “Covenant sheriffs,” hammering on the door with the broken contract like repo men from hell. They don’t want your car. They want your blood.
It should not surprise us when their words follow the Covenant structure. The first chapter of Joel is, once you know what you are looking at, a beauty and a terror. The prophet uses the Annual Feasts as a theme. It turns out that the Lord’s rebellious people will be the meat on the table.
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