Mighty men are tried.

 

Nehemiah 4:14. And I made an inspection, and, being strengthened in heart, said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, “Be not afraid of them: remember the Lord, He who is great and fearful in power, and fight for your brothers, your sons and daughters, your wives, and your homes.”

Nehemiah surveys the strength of the enemies of the people who are rebuilding the city walls and realizes the truth about them…they outnumber his people dramatically.  However, he knows that the Lord God has given him a task to complete and that mandate outweighs the strength of his enemy beyond measure.  He goes on to provide outstanding leadership not only as an administrator, but also as a warrior and fellow laborer in renewing the strength of Jerusalem.  Every stone laid on top of the next is one less toehold that the enemy of the Lord’s people has in the city where the name of the Lord is invested (2 Chronicles 6:6). 

When believers in Jesus Christ are assembled spiritually, they are described by the apostle Peter (1 Peter 2:1-7) as being a house of living stones.  The first stone among them and to which they conform (in time…no one has pre-creation credentials except Jesus—God Himself!) is the elect/tried/servant stone of Jesus Himself.  Each stone that is laid in this building brings all of creation closer to the last day, the last moment: the invasion by the Lord God to save His people. 

Calvinists like to make up fantasies about the end of time as though it will arrive because something nebulous they call the “Kingdom” will spring forth from their legalism and the forces of evil will melt away -- somehow.  Jesus, they claim, will show up somehow and everyone gets to go home to the Garden of Eden… the garden has apparently been hidden away in Tibet or who knows where. Avalon?  Ragnarok?  Pahranagat Valley?  Meanwhile, calvinists prefer not to bother about building walls by somehow winning souls for Jesus.  They don’t seem to have much use for standing watch or fighting spiritual warfare against an enemy that has humanity’s destruction as its target; it must be that they consider humanity not worth fighting for…worth Jesus’ dying for – but that’s another story that only involves them and God’s top secret counsel.  Apparently when one has his salvation ticket punched in advance and is thankful that God will let him in on reprobate hunting as a lifetime sport, then it is unnecessary to fight for brothers, sisters, children, wives, families, homes and homelands.

God created mankind so that He could ally us to Him in the warfare prescribed against Satan and evil.  Some of mankind will get to “enjoy Him forever.”  They have no hope to enjoy Him at all when they build their own mighty fortresses (Isaiah 28:14-18) and try to wait out the devices that the enemy has in store.  The place to enlist with Jesus Christ and forsake spiritual evil is the cross.  The cross was provided to humanity so that everyone can have hope in a relationship with God through Jesus.  The cross was accepted by Jesus as the final crushing place of the living stone that is available to all of mankind.  The cross was blessed by the Father as the place where the limitless supply of sin cleansing blood can be found by all.

Come to the cross.

The Secret of Agency

Ezra 9:24-30. Ezra wisely deposited different parts of the temple treasure into the hands of a dozen priests.  Rather than loading a wagon and using twelve mules to pull the load, he trusted others to help him.  As agents, appointed to complete the adornment of the temple, these twelve men relieved Ezra of direct (and constant) responsibility for the treasure.  

God works through agency.

Abraham = agent of fatherhood

Moses = agent of legal administration

Jesus = agent of salvation

There are times when God is both owner and agent.  There are some things that cannot be accomplished through agents within the created order. Obviously, God must create without help from creation.  He uses His own raw material to work out the specifics-the stuff of creation.

The calvinian perspective is that God has no agents.  They believe that He has plenty of play actors (Greek word = hypocrite) who pretend to do things that are effective for God.  However, their ideas point to the notion that God does everything - absolutely everything - and nothing happens that He doesn’t do directly. (Unfortunately, this philosophy is precisely the same as evolutionary doctrine.)

If the calvinians are correct, God has made other human beings that appear to be just like them into worthless trash that could never be good in any way.  It doesn’t take much common sense to understand that what they really believe is that they are special and anyone that disagrees with them or doesn’t conform to them is worthless trash.  Since they have made themselves special they believe that God will rubber stamp their perspective.

God works through agency.

New creation cannot be accomplished from within the created order.  New creation was not accomplished at the time of old creation (or before).  In other words, no one was preselected to receive new creation (new means NEW- stop lying to yourself with restoration theology!) before the old creation was accomplished.  Sin, a key component of new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17-21), was not available until it happened in the garden.

Jesus Christ - agent of salvation - is God and man; creator and participant in the created order.  He, as firstborn from among the dead, provides the glorious treasure that is intrinsic to His entire being for all  mankind.  It is available to any clay pot on earth (2 Corinthians 4:6-7).  His only begotten and firstborn status can be poured like oil into clay pots - all they need to do is ask for it and accept it.  Jesus took the time to make himself available as agent of salvation at the cross. 

Come to the cross.

The Way is a way of walking...follow!

Solomon, the great king of Israel, finished the defining work of his lifetime by building the Temple for the Lord God and building Jerusalem into the greatest city of the world of his time.  The wealth of the nation can be well defined by noting that silver (1 Kings 10:21) was so common that it was worth the same as copper pennies would be to us.  The construction projects that Solomon undertook rivaled anything that was done in Egypt.  His power and influence, gained for him by the greatness of his extraordinary father, David, established peace in the land of Israel and throughout what we would call the Middle East.

The Lord God made a contract with Solomon in 2 Chronicles 7:17-22.  If Solomon would perform his side of the contract, the Lord God would make his throne continuous until the Messiah.  If Solomon turned away from the deal God made with him (which, of course, he did -- the king worshipped idols...1 Kings 11:4-7), then the temple of the Lord would be destroyed, the people taken into captivity, and the throne of David abandoned.

Notice that the consequences of the contract included the destruction of the Temple.  Surely this is a rather strange thing to promise.  After all, why would the Temple be hooked in with the throne of David and the works of Solomon?  Why was the fate of the Temple contigent on the faithfulness of Solomon?

The real answer comes from inverting the question.  What is it that Solomon was supposed to do in order to maintain the Temple in its authoritative condition?  Solomon was supposed to continue to wage war against evil.  By all accounts, the land had not been purged of idols or idolatry since Joshua and the Host of Israel crossed the Jordan.  Instead of destroying the idols and idolaters, Solomon eventually allowed idolatry to trickle into his life and the trickle became a flood (how does the incidental become monumental?? it grows!).  Meanwhile, he established what could be understood as a calvinian way of living..."I am ok because God chose me.  I don't have to bother with spiritual warfare as long as I am protected by the Temple and my father's faithfulness..."

The calvinian idea runs in the same riverbed as Solomon's.  God pre-selected them, they believe, and actualized their faith to make them sinless and perfect no matter what they do.  They are under no obligation to join with the balance of Christians who are challenging darkness as a choice.  They have wandered off the way of the cross and become entangled in the brambles of a ridiculous heresy that is based on the commandments of men (Titus 1:14); Augustine, Luther, Calvin, etc.  Salvation is something God does...or doesn't do...and they have no part in making that happen.  "We calvinians just need to sit here in smug narcissism and wait for God to make righteousness miraculously bloom at our feet.  Can't wait to smell the flowers of Eden."

The Way of the cross has no side paths that lead to a more "adult" understanding of God's plan that exempts the follower of Jesus (Jesus is God!) from doing the work He assigned.  All side paths lead to either brambles or cliffs.  Any side path makes the vision of the cross obscure.  The Holy Spirit only guarantees to keep the cross in view from the Way.  The Way of the cross leads home...a home that is new for those who are a part of the new creation.  No one is restored to Eden.  The door of Jesus (John 10:1-9) does not lead back to there, we must choose to move "further up and further in," so to speak.

Come to the cross.

Good news...it's New Creation.

 “Oh give thanks unto the Lord for He is good.

For His mercy endures forever.”  1 Chronicles 16:35 NKJV

Here is my question for the calvinist …

When does the mercy of God begin?

Think about forever.  Not from our perspective.  Think about it from God’s perspective.  If God is always, then doesn’t He have mercy always?  Forever, for humans, has a beginning point and it seems absurd that God, who has no beginning (or end), would need to have mercy before there was some object that requires mercy.  But this is the way practical, created people think.  I don’t need jumper cables when my battery is working properly. 

The problem for the calvinist is that he has bought into the bad philosophy (Greek, no doubt) that teaches him that he is an eternal being and has always existed.  Of course, somewhere in his unconscious, he realizes the ridiculousness of this idea but he has managed to shut the door to that part of the house.  If he could ever get that door open again, he would find that he is created and contingent like the rest of humanity and needs to depend on the provision of God in time.

God’s mercy was fully operational when he created the heavens and the earth.  His mercy was fully operational when He made everything that supported human life.  His mercy was fully operational when He made man in His Image (Jesus is the image of God (Colossians 1:15) so being made in God’s Image means that Adam was in a right relationship with Jesus…same as Paul saying that we are “in Christ” (1 Thessalonians 4:16) if we trust in Him).  God’s mercy was, is and always shall be fully operational because He is God and mercy is a part of His love.

Calvinist doctrine teaches that God had no mercy when He created because He preselected a number of humans that He arbitrarily wanted to destroy.  They were all just as human as Adam from whom they were derived and just as sinful as anyone else (except for the babies that Calvin, Luther and Augustine want to burn in hell – no mercy there…).  Calvinists believe that they existed before their birth and that God had mercy on them before creation.  They don’t have any pre-creation credentials (the Mormons will be glad to provide them with some) but they thrive on making up imaginary stories about reprobates that God hated because He has always wanted to.  Mercy, for the calvinist, only happens now and then…when one of them comes along.

Obviously, all of this calvinian way of thinking is derailed from what the Bible teaches.  There is not the slightest hint of biblical evidence that God hated reprobates before he created and that He fully intended to burn them in hell.  The Bible teaches that every human is subject to the same worthless condition (Revelation 5:2-3) due to evil and sin and death.  The Bible teaches that every human is loved by the God who gave His only begotten Son to provide salvation.  That salvation was worked out on the cross of Calvary – in time.  No one gets salvation credentials (or is blotted out) before the foundation of the world.  You cannot be registered in heaven in the church of the firstborn before the firstborn is risen from the grave (Hebrews 12:23).  The cross is the beginning point of the new creation. 

When God says it is NEW, He means new!

The cross is the beginning point of the new creation.

Come to the cross.