by Elizabeth | Mar 27, 2011 | Learning Story
http://thebestchristpainting.blogspot.com/2010/11/blood-of-christ-painting.html
I discovered recently that there are some modern theologians who suggest that blood was used metaphorically in the Bible. That was very surprising to me, especially in light of Leviticus and communion. Read these two verses, then take the five minutes of slow reading aloud to go through what the Puritan writer Henry Law says about the blood of Christ. What do you think? Is the “blood of Christ” significant?
“And I will turn against anyone, whether an Israelite or a foreigner living among you, who eats or drinks blood in any form. I will cut off such a person from the community, for the life of any creature is in its blood. I have given you the blood so you can make atonement for your sins. It is the blood, representing life, that brings you atonement.” Leviticus 17:10-11
53 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 John 6:53-59
We join Henry Law writing about theprohibition against blood in Leviticus 17.
“From age to age, until the expected Jesus came, the same forbidding voice was heard, ‘Touch not, taste not, the blood. It is devoted unto God. It is most holy unto Him. It pictures out redeeming suffering. It is atonement for the soul.’
Reader, the elders of faith’s family were thus constrained to note this mark. No day could pass without remembrance of its hallowed end. We live in Gospel-day. The wondrous death is no more veiled in mystic types. We gaze with open eye upon the blood-stained cross. We can approach the fountain opened in a Savior’s side. We may sit down beneath the trickling drops. We may there wash our every sin away. Shall we, thus privileged, fall short in reverence? Forbid it faith, forbid it love, forbid it every throb of every new-born heart.
Come, think for a few moments of the grand antitype—Christ’s blood. Ponder its worth—its use—its mighty power—its unspeakable results. And may the Spirit reveal its glories in their fullest light.
Turn not your eyes from the grand dignity of Calvary’s Lamb. This is the marrow of all Gospel-hope. This brings in merit. God cannot ask, or find, a greater or a worthier price. Oh! bless the Father for this appointed help. Bless Jesus for this all-sufficient aid. Here is an able Savior, for the blood flows in the channel of omnipotence.” Henry Law’s Commentary on Leviticus
by Elizabeth | Mar 25, 2011 | Learning Story
Abbey the 'wonder-dog' scared the burglars away with her barking!
“Shame on you.”
The police officer shrugged as he said it, as if to say, “Yeah, I know, we all get lax about locking our cars when they’re parked in the garage.”
“Yeah, it’s a group of teenagers – they steal small electronics, wallets, even guns – but only from unlocked cars. They figure if your car’s unlocked, you’re fair game.”
My response – “That’s just WRONG.” Because I write and teach and think in the grid of creation-fall-redemption-restoration, I used that structure to figure out WHY that thinking is so wrong-headed. I thought of at least 3 reasons:
- I am created in the image of God. They are disrespecting me when they transgress my space.
- They are created in the image of God. They should be out mowing the lawns of the elderly, not stealing from people who didn’t lock their cars.
- They are blaming me for their sin. That goes straight back to the Fall, when Adam even dared to blame God for making ‘that woman’!
It also made me think of Leviticus, which I am currently studying for a Sunday school lesson for high school seniors. Many people observe that some of the strangeness of Levitical law is for the healthy functioning of society, and that is of course true. But what we can’t miss is that the core of the Levitical narrative (yes, it is part of the Israelite history) is the HOLINESS of God.
“Be holy; for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44) is the central theme of Leviticus. The reason the teenagers shouldn’t have stolen from an unlocked car is that they are created in the image of God and placed in a cosmos and community where people are meant to live and love in harmony. Because of the Fall, people do steal; shalom is violated. Law is a necessary part, not only of community life, but also of living a holy life.
There’s more to say about how Leviticus led me to hope for redemption for these young people, but it’s time to conclude. I’ll leave you with the verse Eugene Peterson quotes in his introduction to Leviticus in The Message:
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Romans 12:1-2)
by Elizabeth | Mar 24, 2011 | Learning Story
Aw, shoot, I really am not allowed to eat a camel?? (Lev. 11:4)
“Then the Lord said to Moses, 2 “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. I am the Lord your God. 3 So do not act like the people in Egypt, where you used to live, or like the people of Canaan, where I am taking you. You must not imitate their way of life. 4 You must obey all my regulations and be careful to obey my decrees, for I am the Lord your God. 5If you obey my decrees and my regulations, you will find life through them. I am the Lord.
6 “You must never have sexual relations with a close relative, for I am the Lord.
7 “Do not violate your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother; you must not have sexual relations with her.
8 “Do not have sexual relations with any of your father’s wives, for this would violate your father.
9 “Do not have sexual relations with your sister or half sister, whether she is your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether she was born into your household or someone else’s.” Leviticus 18:1-9
“Can we just STOP?!!” My 10-year-old son’s cry for relief rings in my ears over a decade after the famous Leviticus eruption. Our family had developed a practice of reading the One Year Bible together after dinner. We had been struggling through Leviticus until we reached chapter 18, and now we were squirming. My son’s irritation was two-fold. First, he didn’t want to be hearing the word ‘sexual’ aloud so many times with his parents at the dinner table, and second, weren’t the points being made OBVIOUS, even to his 4-year-old baby brother?!!
I was reminded of this story recently in the Sunday School class we help lead. Our group of Seniors wants to do a series on “Hard Questions” about the Bible, Christianity, life. One brave soul had written down Leviticus as his suggestion. At first we thought he was kidding. But he said, “No, I’d really like to know why it’s even in the Bible. It’s such a weird book, but it’s in there, so I know it must be there for a reason.”
How about you? When’s the last time you read Leviticus? This might be a good time. I’m going to be going back through it over the next few days, and I’ll share with you what I learn. If you have any questions, please send them. If you simply object to Leviticus 18, you’ll have to do what I told my son to do — take it up with God.
by Elizabeth | Mar 22, 2011 | Learning Story
Division in the church shatters the heart.
13-16Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom? Here’s what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It’s the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. Mean-spirited ambition isn’t wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn’t wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourselves sound wise isn’t wisdom. It’s the furthest thing from wisdom—it’s animal cunning, devilish conniving. Whenever you’re trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others’ throats.
17-18Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.
James 3:15-18, The Message
Ayyyyhhhhhh….Yikes! Eugene Peterson, as he does so often, brings James to stick right to our hearts like velcro — there is no way to shake this if we really listen to it.
I don’t know about you, but my pain tolerance for division, especially in churches and fellowships, is low. James also has a low threshold for disunity among Christian brothers and sisters. Here’s what John Stott says about this passage.
“James requires us to affirm that whatever displays a sharp, antagonistic spirit of self-concern (jealousy), whatever leads to or favours party spirit or the creation of parties or the dividing of fellowships (selfish ambition), whatever issues in disorder (restlessness, instability, disturbance in the fellowship), and in meanness in thought, word, and deed (every vile practice) — this is the wisdom which in no way comes down from above.
We need to ask ourselves very seriously whether we believe this or not. We look about us and see fellowships being sundered — sometimes in the name of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of fellowship himself! It does not look as if we really believe James when he says that the spirit which promotes, tolerates and brings about divisions is of the earth (not of heaven), of the natural man (Not the Spirit of God) and of the devil (not of the Lord). We look about us and find Christians being catty and petty, as anxious to keep their end up, and to defend their rights, and so on, as the next man. It does not look as if we believe James when he says that all that is mean lacks heavenly validation. We need to ask ourselves very seriously whether we believe James or not.”
A challenge for us all today: Do I believe James or not? How do I sow discord, disunity, or division in the church, fellowship, group, team, I am a part of?
What would it look like to pursue peace, extend mercy, and grow unity in this place?
by Elizabeth | Mar 21, 2011 | Learning Story
StoryPeople.com by Brian Andreas
“What did the monkey say when the lawn-mower cut his tail off?”
“It won’t be long now.”
That is a favorite ‘joke’ my Dad always used to tell us when we were little and asked, “How much longer,” on a car trip to Grandmom’s house. I’m thinking of it today because we are in the final stages of preparing the Bible study, Learning God’s Story of Grace, for publication. (It’s due in May!!!) The idea that we are “living story” is not new with me; I really think it is written all through the Bible. Today I discovered some earlier writings about what it means to be a Story People. This is the concept the Bible study is based on:
God and Jesus use story as a vehicle to open eyes and ears and hearts to unseen and unheard things, but God also created us to be a story people. Scripture speaks the story of God’s pursuing love for us; God also authored us as stories who testify to his creative power and transforming love. Dan Allender writes about our story natures:
You are a story. You are not merely the possessor and teller of a number of stories; you are a well-written, intentional story that is authored by the greatest Writer of all time, and even before time and after time. The weight of those words, if you believe them even for brief snippets of time, can change the trajectory of your life….
God always intended for his children to join him in completing creation. We are not inanimate entities that merely reveal glory but living stories that are meant to create glory.[1]
God authored us as living stories to tell His story. The written Word, Scripture; the Incarnated Word, Jesus; and the created word, God’s people, are all story shaped by our Creator. Clearly, stories bear great significance, because they point us beyond the surface realities that we see to the greater realities of God’s glory and design for the world.
[1] Dan Allender, To Be Told (Colorado Springs, Co: Waterbrook, 2005), 11.
by Elizabeth | Mar 19, 2011 | Learning Story
Japan Nuclear Plant Post-Earthquake
I spent far too long last week looking for a link to embed the awesome Sandra McCracken’s version of Go to Dark Gethesemane (the process was complicated by the struggle to remember how to spell Gethsemane:)…and then I ran out of time. In the end, I decided to point you to High Street Hymns’ version. It’s not nearly as upbeat as McCracken (Indelible Grace) version, but it draws me to slow down and gaze at all that lies before us in our world through the Redeemer’s eyes. What a great season to remember — HE DIED THAT WE MIGHT HAVE LIFE! But that’s not all, HE ROSE — RESURRECTION MEANS REDEMPTION HAS BEGUN! Can’t you just see with him this world longing for redemption?
Click to listen to
High Street Hymns’ Go to Dark Gethsemane
Go to dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter’s power;
Your Redeemer’s conflict see, watch with Him one bitter hour,
Turn not from His griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray.
See Him at the judgment hall, beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned;
O the wormwood and the gall! O the pangs His soul sustained!
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss; learn of Christ to bear the cross.
Calvary’s mournful mountain climb; there, adoring at His feet,
Mark that miracle of time, God’s own sacrifice complete.
“It is finished!” hear Him cry; learn of Jesus Christ to die.
Early hasten to the tomb where they laid His breathless clay;
All is solitude and gloom. Who has taken Him away?
Christ is risen! He meets our eyes; Savior, teach us so to rise.
