Bully’s Blog

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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Does Christ’s exhortation to His disciples in John 15 to remain in Him allow for the possibility of unregenerate New Covenant members?

Doug Wilson writes:

“For many Christians, [John 15:1-6] is a ‘problem passage.’ We want Christ to use a different figure. We want Him to be the Marble Box, with us as the individual marbles. When we are saved, we are put into the Marble Box, and we had better watch it, or we might find ourselves taken out of the Marble Box, losing our salvation. Or, if we know that salvation is not a possession of ours, which we could lose, we want the Marble Box to have a great big lock on it, and to be full of elect, non-loseable marbles” (To a Thousand Generations, p. 84).

We agree that the truly elect cannot be lost. We also agree that not all of the Old Covenant people were truly elect. But can we import this “not all Israel are Israel” into the New Covenant order?
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The debate over infant baptism at Doug Wilson’s blog continues. Pastor Wilson writes:

“The Gentiles were threatened with removal from the same tree the unbelieving Jews had been in. But if this were the tree of salvation, then the elect can lose their salvation — which cannot be defended biblically. And if this is the tree of the covenant, then the point stands” (To a Thousand Generations, p. 36)

This looks logical enough, but trees are a process of maturity, from seed to fruit. So is righteousness, and so is sin.

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“…how we feast and celebrate is a reflection of our beliefs concerning the salvation of the world.”

Sermon Notes on Deuteronomy 14:22-29 - Part 3
Guest post by Michael Shover

Gathering Clouds

There is another aspect to the Feast of Booths that we need to take into consideration. The sacrifices. During the Feast of Booths, 70 bulls were sacrificed. 13 on the first day, 12 on the second, 11 on the third, 10 on the fourth, 9 on the fifth, 8 on the sixth, 7 on the seventh which equals 70. Then 1 on the last day. Why 70? What is the significance of the number 70? The 70 bulls represented the 70 nations of the world as outlined in Gen. 10. The 1 bull that was sacrificed on the eighth day represented Israel. The 70 bull sacrifices represented the ingathering and atonement for the 70 nations of the world. Salvation was accomplished by Israel for all the nations.

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“…how we feast and celebrate is a reflection of our beliefs concerning the salvation of the world.”

Sermon Notes on Deuteronomy 14:22-29 - Part 2
Guest post by Michael Shover

The Garden City

According to Leviticus 23 the Feast of Booths, or The Feast as it was later called, was an eight day celebration.

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“…how we feast and celebrate is a reflection of our beliefs concerning the salvation of the world.”

Sermon Notes on Deuteronomy 14:22-29 - Part 1
Guest post by Michael Shover

Feasting, the Heart of Evangelism

It has been one of the most unfortunate developments in the history of the Church that we have gotten away from and have forgotten the Biblical mandate to feast before the Lord.  We so often lead lives that are shallow in piety and so consuming in busyness that we become forgetful, nay even neglectful of the fact that our God commands such things as, “And you shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires: for oxen or sheep, for wine or strong drink, for whatever your heart desires; you shall eat there before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household.”

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“Screw the truth into men’s minds.” - Richard Baxter

Doug Wilson, (in an interview a while back concerning Collision, I think), spoke about “copiousness.” It is the Christian’s practice of picking up striking thoughts and illustrations from reading, and from life, for future use. He advocates keeping a Commonplace book to jot things down.

“Keep a commonplace book. Write down any notable phrases that occur to you, or that you have come across. If it is one that you have found in another writer, and it is striking, then quote it, as the fellow said, or modify it to make it yours. If Chandler said that a guy had a cleft chin you could hide a marble in, that should come in useful sometime. If Wodehouse said somebody had an accent you could turn handsprings on, then he might have been talking about Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland. Tinker with stuff. Get your fingerprints on it.” [1]

He describes an incident that makes this book (or blog or mental practice) sound more like keeping caches of ammunition near at hand. Continue reading

The content of this post has been revised and included in Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.

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[1] See Behold Your Mother.
[2] See Incantation or Incarnation.
[3] Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper, pp. 73-75. Forget Calvin. Forget Barth. This book is a must-read.
[4] See Little Man With No Hair and Veiled Lawlessness.

or Who Is My Neighbour?

The content of this post has been revised and included in Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.

An Exhortation to Be A Fruitful Tree

Tabernacles was the final annual feast, a Godfest to be thrown by Jews as a ministry to Gentiles. At the Feast of Clouds [1], every household temporarily became a new house of God, a “local branch” of the Tabernacle, a “priesthood of all believers.” Of course, we see this fulfilled in the book of Acts. Just as we see Paul exhort the Ephesians (Gentiles!) to put on the mediatorial body-armour of the High Priest, [2] his final exhortation to the Roman Christians alludes to not only Israel’s feasts but Israel’s priesthood. Pretty much every church he established was a “booth” made of natural Jewish branches and ingrafted Gentile branches. [3] At Pentecost, the same cloud that received Jesus filled the house. [4] Now every household of faith was a Tabernacle, a glorious cloud with a government of human angel-elders. [5] In the Bible’s literary structure, a recurring motif at Tabernacles is good fruit, godly offspring. God wants more than just a covering of leaves. As in Eden, future generations hang upon wise government.

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