Bully’s Blog

or Ethnic Cleansing as Mercy

“In representative terms, the people of God are no longer the Land but the heavenly Sea. The Church herself is the oncoming storm.”

In The Days of Vengeance [PDF], David Chilton did a great job of introducing many of us to the fact of Jesus’ use of “cosmic language” in Matthew 24 to describe the end of the Old Covenant. Not only is the idea of an actual, physical star falling to earth impossible (can you imagine the sun “falling to earth”?) but Jesus is quoting from a prophecy against Babylon. His audience would have realized this as a scathing attack against the Herods and their “government controlled” Temple worship. So, the language is clearly poetic, but why would the prophets—and Jesus and His apostles—deliberately cause so much confusion by using cosmic language to describe non-cosmic events? The answer is found in the mercy of God.

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“For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body,
whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free;
and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” 1 Cor. 12:13

On the BH forum, Michael Jones observed:

“If you look up the words for “drinking into” lexically (Strong’s), you come up with the idea of plants being irrigated and soaking up water through the roots. Is this somewhat valid? Are we like a bunch of trees around an oasis in the desert?” [1]

I believe that very often, the word choices of the biblical writers are hints to the literary structure — especially when their word choices are a little unexpected or ambiguous. This one isn’t unexpected, but perhaps that’s because we are so familiar with this passage. It really is an odd turn of phrase. Could the Bible Matrix shed any light on it?

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The systematic typology of the Bible Matrix allows us to follow the structures of the Torah thoughout the rest of the Bible. Here’s something that links the Restoration era with the book of Deuteronomy.

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or Yahweh, the Household God

“For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed.” (Joshua 2:10)

The gods of the ancients had their places in the heavens. The gods of the ancients also had their domains on earth. Besides the holy places within each boundary, each deity had its locale, its household. The gods were territorial. The gods didn’t move.

When people moved, they took care to not to offend the gods of the land into which they moved. They often adopted the local gods for worship. Do we see this reflected in Israel’s holy places, or is there something else going on?

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1 Peter 2:4-10  |  Sermon Notes

The Stoning of Israel

I think it’s worth looking at the literary structure of this passage. Here’s a revised version of the sheet I handed out after the sermon.

As I’ve written before, modern readers (and commentators) only look at the content of the text, but the authors of Scripture also communicate to us through where they place that content within that text, i.e. how it is arranged.

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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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The description of Jesus in Revelation 1 follows the Bible’s new Creation matrix.

Jesus is the Word, and His manifestation is described in the pattern of the Creation Week. He is the Word made flesh, the Sacrament who “tabernacled” among us, and so is described in the pattern of the Tabernacle. He is the Word in Government, ruling over the pastors of the churches, and so we also see elements of the corresponding Dominion pattern.

Revelation is indeed a sublime book. Every stanza refracts the structure of every section, which in turn refracts the structure of the book, which in turn refracts the structure of the entire Bible. This literature comes from the mouth of the uncreated, the One who creates things fully formed from nothing; it is irreducibly complex. Nothing can be added, and nothing can be taken away.

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“But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing…” Matthew 6:3

When it comes to doctrine, Mark Driscoll defines all issues as either closed-handed or open-handed. The non-negotiable fundamentals are held with a closed hand. In the open hand are issues that can be debated without shafting a church’s faithfulness to the apostles’ doctrine.

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or Feasts in Joel 1

The prophets were God’s “Covenant sheriffs,” hammering on the door with the broken contract like repo men from hell. They don’t want your car. They want your blood.

It should not surprise us when their words follow the Covenant structure. The first chapter of Joel is, once you know what you are looking at, a beauty and a terror. The prophet uses the Annual Feasts as a theme. It turns out that the Lord’s rebellious people will be the meat on the table.

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