Bully’s Blog

1 Peter 2:4-10  |  Sermon Notes

Cut and Uncut Stones

4    As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him—

Peter’s use of the stone image should bring many Old Testament images to mind:

• the precious stones of Havilah, intended to be mined from the Land to glorify the sanctuary [1]
• the false stones of Babel (they had brick for stone)
• Jacob’s head on the altar stone, in a deep sleep
• Jacob’s raising of an altar stone in Bethel: “And this stone which I have set as a pillar shall be God’s house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You.”
• Zipporah’s sharp stone of circumcision
• Moses enthroned on a stone at the defeat of Amalek
• Israel’s altars of stone (one stone for each tribe) at Sinai and Carmel
• The precious stones on the breastplate of the High Priest
• The tablets of stone carrying the ten words
• The stones of the “Levitical” house in the city filled with plague
• The stones of judgment, the ground itself as a witness executing transgressors outside the camp
• The black and white stones in the ephod

We have two types of stones: uncut stones (altar, judgment - the Law) and cut, or precious, stones (glory and riches - Grace).

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or The Cultic Core of Revelation

“Revelation is not just a vision of the King of Kings,
but of the King of Kings in His court.”

Preterists have a go at dispensationalists for interpreting the Bible through the lens of current headlines. We recognize that the Bible must be interpreted in its historical context, for its “first audience.” But there’s a brand of “newspaper exegesis” that plagues preterism as well.

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or Raising Up the Temple

An analysis of the literary structure of Day 5 of Creation and passages that are apparently parallel.
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or The Rapture is History

“And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God.” Job 19:26

Full preterism leads logically to gnosticism. If death is already defeated, salvation has come to the world, and all is now perfect, then of necessity all three — death, salvation and perfection — have to be redefined. They are only Covenantal, “spiritual.” You can probably understand why doctrines like these don’t originate from the persecuted church. Some hope.

However, that said, I agree with 97.3963798475% of full preterism. Their take on the parousia texts is logical and contextual. Jesus actually did come back soon, as He promised, to rescue the persecuted firstfruits church. The textual ping-pong of the well-meaning partial preterists (who can’t agree between themselves on which parousia texts refer to the end of history) is a confusion of which our God could not possibly be the author. So what’s the answer?

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or Wandering Stars - 2

“Egypt, Judah, Edom, the people of Ammon, Moab, and all who are in the farthest corners, who dwell in the wilderness. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.” -  Jeremiah 9:26

Reading through the Old Testament as a young Christian, I always felt the Bible got bogged down when the Lord started pronouncing judgments upon nations other than Israel. For starters, I hadn’t paid enough attention earlier to remember who these sovereign states were. And more to the point, wasn’t God losing the plot a bit? I mean, there were plenty of other peoples during these times which aren’t even mentioned in the Bible at all.

Unfortunately, few commentators take the Bible seriously enough to understand what is actually going on. Older books will fill you in on the background, which is certainly helpful. But the big question is Why is God doing this now?, both now in history and now in the prophet I am reading?

As usual, when the structure and context of things is understood, seemingly boring “classic” texts suddenly come to life. In the case of the prophets it is a consuming fire. Continue reading

Just as the Restoration, through death in Babylon, miraculously reunited Ephraim and Judah in a new body, the attacks on the Firstfruits church miraculously reunited Jew and Gentile. The Restoration body (pictured in Ezekiel 37) was a type of the Firstfruits church. In the big picture, this new body appears in the Bible Matrix at Maturity. It was an army from the grave, a multitude of shiny individuals united and animated by the Spirit of God, moving as a single shining entity. The Creation week pictures this as flocks of birds and schools of fish. The Tabernacle images it as clouds of incense. This is the warrior bride, terrible as an army with banners.

Light - Ark-Word (Sabbath) -
Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit
through the bond of peace.

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The Restoration era Scriptures are the most misunderstood texts in the Bible. Our failure to recognise their recapitulation of patterns from the Torah — and the fact that they are not presented in chronological order but by genre — makes it hard for us to put the pieces together. [1] Very often, we miss great ironies because we don’t get the joke.

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or Forbidden Mixtures - 2

Many theologians will tell you that the Old Testament Scriptures have little to say about resurrection. Yet, typologically, they scream about it constantly if we have eyes to see. Many modern conservatives don’t understand the nature of revelation. God paints the same picture of death and resurrection over and over again at both personal and national levels and all these gents do is record how many pixels are in each image.

For a visual blow-by-blow account of this death and resurrection process, get a copy of Bible Matrix and read it twice. Here, I want to concentrate on the significance of Melchizedek in the Last Supper.

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The Art of Interpretation

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! (Romans 11:33)

Hermeneutics is a big word you learn at Bible College. It is the study or practice of interpreting texts in the areas of literature, law and religion.

In literature, discovering the intent of an author can be an enlightening game. In law, one’s life (or life sentence) can hang in the balance of a judge’s interpretation. In religion, besides plumbing the depths of the mind of God, it is an enlightening game in the balance of which many lives hang. God has revealed His mind in His Word, and has also seen fit to give to His people the often difficult job of interpreting it.

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Great stuff from Peter Leithart’s blog:

Michael Stead (The Intertextuality of Zechariah 1-8 (Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies)) points to a number of intertexual connections between Ezekiel 1-11 and the vision of Zechariah 5:5-11.  He concludes that the vision of Zechariah is an inversion of the Ezekiel’s vision of Yahweh’s departing glory: “Ezekiel 1-11 describes the departure of Yahweh from Jerusalem because of the idolatry (Ezek 8), iniquity (Ezek 4) and wickedness (Ezek 5) of his people, and his departure is attended by winged creatures riding on the wind.  But, now that Yahweh is returning to dwell in Jerusalem, idolatry/iniquity/wickedness is being forced to depart, in a parody of Yahweh’s earlier departure.”

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