Dr. Manhattan:
"...But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget...I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away. Come...Dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg..."Moore, Alan. Watchmen. Chapter IX, 27.
Ayn Rand:
"Humor is not an unconditional virtue; its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue; to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice." The Romantic Manifesto, 133.
John Calvin:
"As regards future events, Solomon easily reconciles human deliberation with divine providence. For while he derides the stupidity of those who presume to undertake anything without God, as if they were not ruled by his hand, he elsewhere thus expresses himself: 'A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps," (Prov. 16:9); intimating that the eternal decrees of God by no means prevent us from proceeding, under his will, to provide for ourselves, and arrange all our affairs. And the reason for this is clear. For he who has fixed the boundaries of our life, has at the same time intrusted us with the care of it, provided us with the means of preserving it, forewarned us of the dangers to which we are exposed, and supplied cautions and remedies, that we may not be overwhelmed unawares. Now, our duty is clear, namely, since the Lord has comitted to us the defence of our life,--to defend it; since he offers assistance,--to use it; since he forwarns us of danger--not to rush on heedless; since he supplies remedies,--not to neglect them..." Institutes of Christian Religion, Volume I, Chapter 17, 186-187.Calvin's Calvinism is not without human responsiblity. When you get sick--take pills. When you get cancer--pray for healing. When you lose your job--find another one. When you sin--seek God for forgiveness. When you need to get something done--plan to do it and do whatever is necesarry beforehand. When you preach--call sinners to trust in Jesus. When you have to go to work in the morning--get out of bed.
On the day of atonement the Israelites were to humble themselves and not work. Human work and God's work of atonement never mixes. Atonement is made for you never with you. What makes you clean is not renewed work to do the right thing but by Jesus, the solitary and only scapegoat, who takes all the bad things you've done and carries them away from you into the distant wilderness of forgiveness where you could never reach on your own.
"...you shall humble you souls and not do any work, whether native, or the alien who sojourns among you; 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." Lev. 16:29-30
Ayn Rand:
"In the privacy of his own soul, nobody identifies himself with the folks next door, unless he has given up." The Romantic Manifesto, 139.
I began Leviticus today, and every time I read Leviticus I want to know and understand more. When I come to this book I often find myself confused, at best, and completely lost, at worst. Well, I should not say completely, 'cause actually the completion and fulfillment of all the book of Leviticus requires is in the person and work of Jesus Christ. This reality is compelling shown by the writer of the Hebrews. However, there is still much in Leviticus to be mined that is helpful and beneficial to all new covenant believers.
Leviticus is not a waste of time. Just because one knows Jesus doesn't mean one should just forget about Leviticus and get to Hebrews. I am confident there is more here in Leviticus that is helpful to me and to all believers. Today a commentary helped me with things like animal fat and kidneys...
Gordon J Wenham:
"The reason for the prohibition of eating fat remains obscure. Calvin may well be right in thinking that fat was thought of as specially belonging to God. Certainly fat in the OT can be synonymous with 'the best' (Gen. 45:18, Ps. 81:17 [Eng. 16]. By giving the fat the worshipper was giving the best of the animal; and insofar as the animal was thought to represent the man, the worshipper showed he was giving God the best part of life.What I learned: Worship is very specific and holistic. Leviticus is rigorous in what it requires of the Israelite worshippers. This hasn't changed. God's desire is that I worship Him, and that I worship him with my mind, will, and emotions, and that I offer my life, the best in my life, to Him.
The kidneys were also picked out to be burned on the altar as well as the fat surrounding them and the intestines. It is likely that some symbolism was attached to this gesture. The kidneys and entrails are referred to in the OT as the seat of the emotions (Job 19:27; Ps. 16:7; Jer. 4:14; 12:2), just as in English we talk of the heart. (The heart in the OT refers primarily to the mind and will.) It is possible that offering the kidneys and internal fat symbolizes the dedication of the worshipper's best and deepest emotions to God. For the peace offering was often tendered in intrinsically emotional situations, when a man made vows or found himself seeking God's deliverance or praising him for his mercy." The Book of Leviticus, NICOT, 80-81.
Christopher Wright:
"The extent of God's love is not only that he has entered with compassion into our suffering and proved (from the exodus to Galilee) that he is the God who stands with the weak and the oppressed--all this is gloriously and gratefully true. God has identified himself with our suffering and knows what it is to bear the pain of human injustice and violence. Yes, but the even greater extent of God's love is that he also took our sin and rebellion--of the oppresed and the oppressor--and bore all its just consequences on himself, in the mysterious unity of the Trinity at the cross...
...there is a twisted version of penal substitution that is rightly to be rejected--the idea of an angry God making a victim Son the whipping boy for his brutality. Such a picture of 'cosmic child abuse' is indeed a gross caricature. But it is equally a grossly deficient caricature to reduce the cross to nothing more than a cosmic symphathy card, in God's handwriting shaying, 'I share your pain.' God did more than merely share our pain. God in Christ bore the pain of the just consequences of our sin, bore them 'for us', such that we need never have to bear them ourselves, for all eternity." The God I Don't Understand, 153-154
Exodus 32 shows that idolatry is always active not passive. Idol worship never just happens to you. The fire of circumstance and the actions of other people are never the reason for your idolatry.
Idols are always fashioned and made. They are formed and nurtured and sculpted and cultivated. They don't just come out of nowhere.
How often are you shocked and reply, like Aaron to Moses, "...out came this calf." Rather then repenting and acknoweldging that you've been fashioning that idol in your heart with "a graving tool" all along.
Let's be like Moses and "grind" those idols "to powder."
Idolaters, "every man his brother, and every man his friend, and every man his neighbor," still deserve to be slayed with the sword by the "sons of Levi."
Thankfully, which Moses cries out to God for, there is "atonement for your sin."
The idolatrous golden calves of our hearts can be cleansed by the spotless Lamb, Jesus, who "takes away the sin of the world."
(Image Source: Wikipedia)
I don't know about you, but I was particularly moved, on many levels, by Slumdog Millionaire.
Tears were very close, and I do mean very...
If you haven't seen it I happily recommend it. Easily the best movie I've seen this year.
Ps. 107:21:
"For he commanded and raised the stormy wind..."Listening to the storm and staying up late. Even though judging by storms this is relatively tiny, still...
John Calvin:
"...angels are the ministers and dispensers of the divine bounty toward us. Accordingly, we are told how they watch for our safety, how they undertake our defence, direct our path, and take heed that no evil befall us...It's not that Christians have one special "guardian" angel--it's that they have several.
Those again who limit the care of which God takes of each of us to a single angel, do great injury to themselves and to all the members of the Church, as if there were no value in those promises of auxiliary troops, who on every side encircling and defending us, embolden us to fight more manfully." Institutes of Christian Religion, Vol. I, 145, 147
As I read Acts this morning I came across good 'ole Priscilla and Aquila. I don't know about you, but I always have a hard time remembering which one is male and which one is female, but for those of you who forget they are a husband and wife team: Priscilla being the wife of her husband Aquila the Jew. I couldn't help but think, and then pray...
Where are the Priscilla's and Aquila's in the church?
Where are the husband and wife teams who BOTH know the Scriptures so well to train fervent teachers like Apollos who aren't quite getting the Bible right?
Oftentimes you find couples where one knows the Scriptures well, but not often do you find both.
May God give the church both.
Christopher Wright:
"[The Millenium] means a period of one thousand years. When you think of the amount of controversial theological and popular theories that surround it, it may come as a surprise to learn that the term is actually found in the Bible in six verses of only one single chapter--Revelation 20....
Yet people have built whole timetables, theologies, and complicated schemes of interpreting the rest of the Bible upon their understanding of a phrase that comes just six times in six verses in its final book. Whole denominations have formed around the differences of opinion!...
My point is simply that we need to avoid getting sidetracked into a whole jungle of arcane interpretations, built on shaky assumpitons about a term that occurs in one single short passage and nowhere else in the Bible. That does not mean that it doesn't matter. It means that the millenium probably is not such a central part of what we need to focus on when thinking about the end of the world as some people make it out to be." The God I Don't Understand, 164.
I love my wife.
She is mine by grace and in the grace of life.
A gift of God.
A good thing.
And evidence of God's favor in my life.
Christopher Wright:
"...the Bible uses different metaphors as ways of conveying the multifaceted truth about what God accomplished through the cross of Christ and what that accomplishment can mean for us when we put our faith in him. This basic affirmation, however, at the heart of the Bible's interpretation of the cross, namely, that it was an act of God in which God in Christ put himself in our place is an act of substitution for our benefit, is not really a metaphor...
the act of substitution seems not to be a 'something else' that we can use as one way of talking about a different reality--namely, what God did at the cross. Rather, there is something inescapably essential about this. Substitution is not a metaphor for what God did; it is what he actually did. God actually did choose to put himself in a place where we should be, to do for us what we could not do for ourselves...[this] is not one metaphor among others, but the core reality that then presents itself to our understanding through the variety of metaphors and analogies that the Bible uses to appreciate the vast rich reality of all that God achieved by that self-giving, self-substituting act." The God I Don't Understand, 125.
Christopher Wright:
"To me it is a profoundly moving thought that the word that introduces our most tormenting questions--'Why...?'--was uttered by Jesus on the very cross that was God's answer to the question that the whole creation poses." The God I Don't Understand, 21
