John 6 and Israel’s Covenant History

 John 6:25-40 - And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You come here?”

Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”

Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”

Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”

Therefore they said to Him, “What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do? Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

Then they said to Him, “Lord, give us this bread always.”

And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

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This conversation in John 6 occurred right after Jesus had miraculously fed the people with bread and fish. And this makes it even more confounding. At least one lesson to be had here is that unbelief and sin make a person undiscerning. The people who had just seen Jesus miraculously feeding them then asked for a miraculous sign, as if one had not just occurred before their eyes. They even went so far as to make the connection between God feeding Israel with Manna in the wilderness and Jesus feeding them with bread and fish. And they did this without Jesus leading them to it. Yet in spite of all this, they still could not perceive that He was God, or that He was the Savior of the world. Just as God had sought to lead Israel out of her bondage in Egypt, so Jesus had come to lead Israel out of her bondage to sin and the world.

But that generation of Israel in the Exodus not only prolonged their time in the wilderness, but in fact died there, not having reached the promised land. And the reason for this was twofold. First, she fell in her sin because the people did not exercise faith in God; they did not believe; they did not trust God. Just as faith in God and godly works are always found together, unbelief and sin always exist together; where one is, you always have the other. A person always acts in accordance with what he believes.

But beyond this, Scripture tells us that Israel failed because her role was a temporary one, intended to prepare the way for Jesus to come into the world. And until He came, the work of salvation had not yet been accomplished, and faith would not be possible. Israel’s laws, her lineage, her priesthood, her land - they were intended by God to illustrate salvation and its need, things which she could never provide.

This leads us back to John 6, in which we see Israel simply repeating the same unbelief that she had always had. She may have physically no longer been in Egypt, but spiritually she had never left. Jesus in giving them bread was merely repeating the pattern with her that she had been through with Yahweh over and over again throughout her history, always without her exercising faith. The point of this passage and of Jesus’ miracle was not merely symbolic. It was to establish a historical fact - Israel had been unfaithful in her covenant with God, and could not be saved apart from Christ and without the Gentiles. Jesus was again giving her a chance to repent and believe, but she would not. She would do to Jesus what she had always wanted to do to God, in giving Him over to the Gentiles to be crucified.

The Church of God, the New Israel, would soon after be established, with many of Israel as her foundation. As the Gentiles would begin to join with them, Old Israel, Israel according to the flesh, would continue in the unbelief she had always known. And yet God continues bringing the salvation that His Son accomplished through His Church today, a Church of Jews and Gentiles, even as He feeds us with bread and wine.

There Is No Transcending Culture

 You can have good culture or bad culture, Christian culture or anti-Christian culture. But you can never have non-culture, whether in the worship and ministry of the church, or anywhere else. Culture exists everywhere, and the worship and ministry of the church are always enculturated in practice. To exist in Creation always involves enculturation.

A Congress of Thieves and Liars

 Republicans in Congress are normally quite happy to blow billions of dollars on foreign “aid” and the corporations that fund their lifestyles. I find it hard to believe that their opposition to Trump’s recommendation of $2000 checks is over the effects on the economy.

The Illusion of American Capitalism

 Opening the economy back up won’t be enough to fix the current problems. What we’re dealing with isn’t simply the result of the shutdown, but rather years of actions by governing officials determined by back room deals with corporations who then funneled money back to the governing officials for favoring them over small businesses and the majority of American citizens. We don’t have capitalism or a free market, but rather Leftist globalist corporatism. The shutdown merely accelerated the already existing trend toward oblivion. And that‘s without even bringing up China, a whole other part of it.

Hebrews, Pt. 1

Once you have a complete understanding of what the Book of Hebrews is saying, Dispensationalism falls apart like the house of cards it is.

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The Book of Hebrews tells us that all of history after the Fall in Genesis 3 is divided up into two parts - 1. the Old Covenant, and 2. the New and Better Covenant. The writer begins with this distinction from the very first verse: 

“God, (1.) who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

(2.) Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds...”.

“Time past” was the Old Covenant, and “these last days” are the New. We see these two periods throughout the book. But we’re told that this is no mere distinction of periods of history. Rather they are stages in which God accomplished the salvation of man and the world.

This Evil Stimulus Package

Congressman Ted Budd, on Facebook, said the following a few hours ago:

“I wish I could have voted for a targeted COVID relief bill several months ago. We need to end economic lockdowns and support small businesses and their workers. But this package is a classic Washington shakedown game, and I’m not playing it.

Instead of going through the normal legislative process to pass a targeted COVID relief package, a handful of Congressional leaders emerged from their backroom with a trillion-dollar package that had to be attached to another multi-trillion-dollar spending bill in order to pass. There was no real debate, no amendments, and no time to comprehend a 5,593-page spending package that represents one of the largest spending bills in U.S. history. That’s no way to run our government.”

But even this, as true as it is, is way understated, given the suffering Americans are going through, and the wickedness of this package. Which goes back to why Trump was elected, with all his brashness. People are tired of wimpy talk and hollow procedure that do nothing. Instead we get this package that does more for the rest of the world than it does for the Americans who are starving and sinking further into debt. And, it is our children who are paying for it. As somebody has already said somewhere, our leaders hate us. It is impossible to measure their arrogance and spite towards us. If you haven’t been praying imprecatory Psalms against them and begging for God to deliver us from them, you should be.

Merry Christmas, Obama

 Ten years ago on social media, it was all about flash mobs surprising people with musical performances. Today it’s just mobs, destroying everything in Western culture they can. The Leftists, and especially Obama, really accomplished what they were aiming for.

On Christian Nationalism

 I’m not a nationalist in the strict sense of the term. It seems to me that nationalism has had a centralizing effect that has been detrimental to this country ever since the Constitution, one that takes away the rights and responsibilities that belong solely to individuals, families, and other bodies. In fact, that nationalism is very much to blame for many of the problems we suffer today. But Scripture makes it clear that every nation, country, city, county, state, and any other grouping of territory or people, owes its allegiance to Jesus the King alone. And it is the duty of every such body to declare its allegiance to King Jesus, along with the Father and the Spirit, the Holy Trinity, and no other “god”, with no lack of clarity on the matter. All things in Heaven and on Earth have been given to the Son by the Father in His ascension, and to refuse to bow and serve Him is idolatry and rebellion against Him, the one true Ruler of all things. Insofar as any body refuses to worship and serve Him, its judgment by God is just, deserved, and inevitable.

Yes, She Knew

 Nothing witnesses to the Church’s cultural irrelevancy like the fact that we think critiques of the twenty-four year old song “Mary Did You Know?” are daring and new.

The Supreme Farce and the NeverTrumper’s Guilty Conscience

 What we’ll be seeing now are posts, articles, etc. on how the Supreme Court made the right decision, from people who have hated, complained about, been envious of, and been found guilty by the speech of, President Trump for five years - people who in any other case would have been talking about how this election was rigged, had it been somebody they didn’t have a personal, emotional problem with. You can just write off anything they have to say about what has happened.