Skip to main content

Eat Your Veges


          Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood  Jesus, y a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body,  and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, ot giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:19-25) 

          We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand.  In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness (Hebrews 5:11-13)
          Today, we need to begin with a side note. A few days ago, I shared my belief that the curtain separating the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place represented sin. The author of Hebrews holds that it represents Christ. I like my imagery as well, but the author knows better what he intended. So, the curtain represents Christ’s body. Because it was torn, we have access to the Most Holy Place. So be it.
          The preceding nine and a half chapters addressed the foundations of our faith, and the reasons why the Jewish Christians who were beginning to face persecution should not walk away from their new faith. I believe they also constituted the milk he mentioned in chapter five. But instead of leading us on to meat and potatoes, and heroic deeds, he leads us to quotidian (daily) walks and the salad bar.
          “Let us….” He says this three-times in four verses, and he implies it six more
“Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart”
[Let us draw near to God] “with the full assurance that faith brings”
[Let us draw near to God] “having our hearts sprinkled to cleans us from guilty conscience….”
[Let us draw near to God] “having our bodies washed with pure water.”
“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we professed, for He who promised is faithful.”
“Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds”
[Let us] “not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing….”
[Let us] “encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
            I wonder what life would be like if we ate (or fed others) nine services of Let Us every day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listen To Him

              The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him . (Deuteronomy 18:15)           Today, we switch from Jesus’ claims of “I am” to prophecies made about Him. My Bible platform is starting in Deuteronomy. I’d start in Genesis, where we would learn that the one who would save us would be a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15), of Noah (by default), Abram and Sara(Genesis 12:1-3). Isaac (Genesis 17:19), Jacob (Genesis 25:23), Judah (Genesis 29:8), and David (II Samuel 7:12-16). There were also references to a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). In addition, there were prophecies about when and where the prophet/Messiah would be born and what would happen to him.           Of course, naysayers will claim that Jesus’ life was retrofitted or reverse enginee...
Post a Comment
Read more