Gruesome…..Sacrifice needed (exodus 29)

         I was thinking about the way God ordained sacrifice for Aaron’s sons to be cleansed in this passage. God said “you shall kill the bull before the Lord,” basically so that He/we can see it clearly, Exodus 29:11. I was thinking, why does this even need to happen? Why must a Holy God who is pure be shown this? God loves analogies. Maybe sin is gruesome and gory to God? To see our “sin” placed on an alter and burned, in all of it’s goriness, is that sin being demolished away. God in His Holiness is demonstrating to us, graphically, what He sees everyday from us! This isn’t God who created gore, it was us first! We abused how He meant things to be. God is all for equality an balance of things, that offering doesn’t equal sin, it was only an animal. It’s a prophesy and the image of what needed to be done for us. The true sin offerings were meant through Jesus Christ, the representative for the human race. That “needed” to happen. We don’t have the ability to be perfect and free to not sin in our power. God had to offer Himself (His son) for all of our sin to create balance in this existence. His Judgment will not fall on those who choose Christ! It’s only right for a perfect God to create balance and judgment, for the same reason a judge in the judicial system can’t simply let a criminal go free unpunished.

Offering Life: Sin Theology

    It was for sin the Israelites not to drink “any living thing” because the blood is it’ life. How is that different from sacrificing it? To sacrifice It is to offer it’s life up. To drink it’s “life” is to take it into yourself. It’s selfish and obviously isn’t a sacrifice. Our giving is saying “You are life, take all I have. Take this life for that life only You can give.” It’s also saying that life paid the debt that I caused. Sin equals death. These sins would have eventually ended in my death but through the payment, I’m allowed to live! The animal sacrificed is only an analogy of the One true sacrifice that pays the full price. It’s as if your paying with a credit card, the debt will and can only be paid by God Himself, Jesus God’s own son, the perfect lamb. God organized reality. This is the only way that for life to work. In reality, if you notice, there seems to be a debt for anything at all. To function, something has to use energy and have waste. To live, you eat and expel fecal matter. To breath you use oxygen and carbon dioxide is expelling. All of the universe is on a downhill spiral.

       God is perfect, He uses nothing to produce power. He can keep going forever because He is perfect. Sin is death. It literally means “missing the mark.” It’s doing the wrong thing when the right thing equals a positive living motion. 

 

The Cloud (numbers 9, or on cloud 9?)

    A cloud by day and fire by night. God made His guidance apparent and clearly shown. Sometimes, I’ve noticed, it stays in a certain place for unpredictable amounts of time. Sometimes it stayed for a short amount of time. The text doesn’t give any reason but I believe God has His reasons. I personally think God was teaching the Israelites patients. Patients is vital, to just learn to be calm, knowing He is God. When they were waiting, they had water and food. I think the Israelites were at first eager to be moving, they were eager to keep going. Then, eventually, they knew/learned that they have all they need. I think they were just able to live their lives with the peace that their Father had them. All they needed to worry about was when to continue on to the next location/thing/object. It’s not that hard to follow a burning cloud of fire. When they saw it, it would just remind them that God is God. He is powerfully enough to provide, you’ll get wherever He leads. There’s just no need to worry. That right there is something that people who trust in the Lord don’t need to think about. He will provide. The world doesn’t share that view. If you don’t have the Lord in your life, al the weight of everything just falls on you. When something goes wrong, it’s your fault, no one else to blame. Need a job? It’s all on you. Are you hungry? Scrape up something to eat. Are you weak and need to be strong? Pull your bootstraps up. You’re the only one who can at this time. You’re the only one who cares about you! You made the choice! We weren’t created like that. We were created to run off of Him, His power. The Lord wants to give you what you need, but you need to follow the cloud. You need to walk on the path that He laid out.

           You say,, where do I start? You first take baby steps. You pray and tell Him you want to follow. You then do what you say, and follow through following His word in the bible. Follow what He asks you there. He’ll develop in you a passion for a certain part of it. You spend time with Him regularly. He’ll open up doors and make new pathways to follow. That’s how you do it. Trust the path He lays before you.

Matthew Kelly           

11/26/12

ABSOLUTE OF THE UNIVERSE

I've been thinking about this lately....

     The problem with intelligence, The question goes, if design is required to create the universe, wouldn't design all the more be required to create the creator?

     First you must keep in mind that if a designer requires a designer, everything else in the universe applies to the same concept. The proof that the question asker knowingly or unknowingly  infers is that something must eternally exist, and this is a very well founded and true point. If something must always require a creator, there must be something in the universe, with some absolute, that existed eternally because we are all here. The question is, what is this

absolute?  

    Keep in mind that it is a well known philosophic truth that nothing can come from nothing. Since the discovery by hubble, and the hubble law, we know that the universe as we know it had a beginning. Before that time, Einstein believed along with the major scientists of the world that the universe was eternal. It came to be a surprise to scientists when they discovered that there must have been a beginning. 

      In most peoples minds, it is easier to imagine an absolute nothing and that for forever in the past nothing existed ,and then everything came into existence. Everything in our being says that everything has a beginning and an end. In our eyes, we live, and we die ceasing to exist. You can think of nothing that has not had a beginning and an end. What if there was an absolute something? What if at all times at anytime in the universe there was always an absolute something. We must believe that something for all time existed, the question here that will be inquired upon is whether it is more logical to believe that the absolute that always existed was one of three things: an absolute nothing, the natural materials in the universe, or whether there was an intelligent absolute that always existed.      If  you are an evolutionist, you must agree that for all time something existed to make what we have today. Since the laws of the universe prevent life occurring from nothing and order forming without author, it would only be logical to assume that the infinite nothing was an infinite absolute of power rather then an infinite absolute of nothing.

    Lets discuss those three choices. You must believe either that this infinite absolute of the universe was an infinite nothing, all existing random material, or an absolute power. We know that it could not be an infinite nothing for one reason, an infinite nothing means that nothing exists, and therefore nothing could be here today. The second is a middle ground which believes that something for eternity existed but that everything came together through random chance or the big bang theory. We know that because of natural law, life has never been observed to come from death. Life has always come from life. Order in the universe is always breaking down to create disorder. The entropy of the universe is always increasing. If there was a something for all time, does it make sense to say that, that something (space dust, energy) created us by random chance? We are incredibly complex, our DNA is a map of information, can a lack of knowledge create information? Since there are only three possible choices for how the existence of life, humans, and anything in the universe came to be, we must come to the conclusion that this infinite was an infinite power, who is what we properly and philosophically have come to name as God. To answer the final and beginning question “If design is required to create the universe, wouldn't design all the more be required to create the creator?” We must conclude that this absolute power must be completely absolute, meaning there is nothing greater. He is the Alpha and Omega. There can be no creator of this creator because nothing can be great enough to create him, he must be “absolute.” If there is an absolute power in the universe, order, knowledge, and the universe as we know it is perfectly explained. It isn’t so hard to believe because at the same time an evolutionist believes that matter and energy existed for all time. It would be improper to question where God if one isn’t allowed to question an evolutionist where matter and energy came from. Besides this, there must be absolute in the universe if you can grasp the concept I was trying to explain in earlier paragraphs. Who denies an answer that fits for an answer that has many questions, and unproved theories(evolution)? Does this make sense?

-Matthew Kelly

Lucifiers Destruction (3)

          How’d  satan get to be where he is anyway?  A good account is traditionally  found in Isaiah 14:12-15…..

“How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne
  above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
    on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;  I will make myself like the Most High.” But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit.”

     That has been seen throughout church history as an account of him. Satan deceived himself into thinking “I” will make myself like the most High.” It all starts with the selfishness of “I.” This selfishness ruined him. Lucifer was cast down onto the earth, not to Hell. His time has not come yet. Maybe he was allowed to produce a certain amount of destruction with only the ability to offer humanity a choice. It’s a hard choice to make, but for God to create anything with real free will, He had to offer a choice. God didn’t offer the fruit as some demented experiment but He had to offer the choice or else love itself cannot exist, and that’s that. If only have the choice between doing good or doing good, how do you have choice at all? If you think about it, we have a Holy Father willing to take risks. In order to experience anything good, there are risks that must be made, especially in our own lives. To have a spouse you can’t just sit at home, you need to get out there and take real risks. To be successful ( I mean really successful ) you need to spend a little money to get a return that can make twice what you spent. Of course for God, there are also the opposite effects that can occur. Terrible as the consequence may be (eternity away), it’s real free will. It’s good to know we have a Father who is willing to offer himself the punishment that we couldn’t experience. We have a powerful Father who would fight for us, and literally go through hell for us. A demonstration of this is anytime any father offers to take the pain for his child, because he knows that this child just isn’t strong enough to take it. That is exactly the kind of Father we have. He offers us the choice of eternity.  He doesn’t force it by not giving us free will. He gave us minds to think. It’s a gift that can only be given with a choice of taking that gift or choosing evil for himself/herself.  We have the freedom to love and the freedom to hate. If we follow God’s guidance, we can love without any problems of betrayal. Lucifer disguised himself as a snake, he made himself into what he looks like as we all do given enough time. He planted a doubt based on what God said, “did God really say you shall not eat of any trees in the garden?” Eve politely corrected the serpent,  “but God said, “you shall not eat of the tree in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die” The serpent corrected her with his knowledge as if she got all the facts wrong but this one, new knowledge. That would have been attractive to her. Adam being right there with her didn’t stop the conversation from going. He did what any loving husband would do, He went right along with her, to distracted by how beautiful she was, like all of us men do. He might have thought, “Well she’s so pretty, how can that be wrong when this beauty looks so right?” Eve was just doing what she had practiced in God’s design in offering the fruit to her mate, she was practicing her oneness. It wasn’t taught , were created with it, it was a second nature. It was just as natural as breathing. All of the sudden their eyes were opened. They saw the truth, they were naked, and sought to distance themselves from one another. Lucifer’s plan of breaking God gorgeous “one-ness” like He was One, was falling apart. God allowed this terrible thing to happen because for humanity to experience His gift of love, they needed to choose what they would, believe the truth that He commanded of them or suffer the consequences of not. Lucifer had discovered a terrible thing. (he) is truly the father of lies. (he) began his career of lies by believing a lie at one time that he could be like God and that breaking lie is the key to all of the brokenness in the world. The lie can separate you from first the King of the Universe. It denies. The lie destroys anything. Let’s take a quick example. The lie that, “that big donut is good for you because it tastes good,” is one lie that plays on you. We believed the lie before our mothers let us know different, “All things that taste good, are actually healthy for you.” We are taught not to eat sweets to much by our mothers at a young age. We don’t see the results automatically so our child like brains believe, “it’s healthy for us as well as it taste good.” The lie grows up, and so we do. The lie becomes more mature. It becomes tricky. Say there is a very handsome man or a very beautiful woman passing by your window. We will automatically create in our heads a benefit of the doubt story that “they’re a great person.” Some are true to their exterior, and those are good wholesome people.  

            It Makes sense that “If the foundation of a building is strong, the building will hold.” If you eat well, that will show in your health. It’s the same thing with our belief. Our beliefs are our foundations to stand on. 

        Lucifer hated God and he still does.  he hates everything about God.  Mostly because he thought he could have as much power as God, he was jealous with power. Lucifer doesn’t want anything of God.  He wants to distort everything that resembles God. He desires to distort the beauty of the earth, God created it. The earth has perfection, Lucifer wants distortion.

Destruction

       It’s a fact that everything that doesn’t follow the rules, loses, blows up, gets warn down, etc. When I say that, I mean if you don’t work a machine how it’s meant to work, it usually wears down and ceases to work. It’s true that as humans, what’s healthy for us to do is to eat leafy greens, and other things that are commonly understood for us to be healthy. That’s true for everything living. That is a rule in life for us humans. God created us to be sustained by healthier foods. You’re “breaking that rule” for humans by eating dirt, lard or candy all day long. You end up unable to function or survive. That’s what satan wants to deceive us into thinking is good for us. The fruit tasted good and was pleasing to the eyes but the results of the truth happened, their eyes were opened. Satan’s hate for all God does and is, is what drives him. Seems a bit futile, his desire for being big and perverting everything God created is like actually befriending death and pain but his hate for God forces him to make that choice. This is the only thing God doesn’t own, God doesn’t own destruction, it’s all satan is left with. He is king of the dung heap.  Everything he has is pretend of what he wants. He truly is an “angel of light.” That’s what he pretends. He makes things only look beautiful, then bam, your stuck with a sham.

Humility :something grand

      I never knew this when I was a kid but "humility" in life is so good. I always thought "what's the point?” I thought it was not giving yourself credit for stuff.  Having humility is the only real way to learn anything. We need to realize we don't know it, and need to learn something new. Having humility can allow for wisdom for our actions, wisdom for things to say, and gives us the perfect timing for when and how to act. Humility, always makes us recognize the truth. We can see more clearly if we’re humble. We are not "all that," someone is always better than us. Along with other benefits of being humble, humility always makes us come close to God. He realizes that when we’re humble, we are seeing truth without distortion. When we’re humble, we realize that God is better than anyone at anything. He’s the fastest runner, the greatest basketball player, the most gorgeous singer, and He has the most amazing mind capabilities. We're saying, "You Father are true and ultimate, You Father know best, better than I could ever do.”
        It's interesting,  it's the key to a) Making friends, b)Earning a reputation, and c) Doing what you work on effectively. a) People are naturally drawn to be around people who aren't threatening. b) You are more sure of yourself and just comfortable being you, if you're around a humble person. c) It will make you more important to others if you're a humble person because a humble person appears to be "steady" and "reliable." A humble person doesn’t worry about anything than on the task at hand.
       To start to gain humility, the  first you need is the same with other things, we need to make "choice" to choose the truth of what is, admittance to the truth. We’re not really that awesome. We have our faults. Just be comfortable with that fact. Once you can accept that, others accept that. Everyone falls, everyone messes up every so often.

Life (All of Grace by C.H. Spurgeon)

Spurgeon starts his book by telling the story of a very poor woman a man told him about. The poor woman tried to avoid paying rent because she was very poor. The object of sharing this story was to demonstrate a "rent" we all owe and how God paid for us. We're all poor and destitute. God says that we can come to Him and trade our rags (sins, what we wear around) for clean clothes. You might think, "why do we need to be free of sin?" Because sin undoubtedly equals death. If you drove the car with your face, you'd be sinning to yourself because that way of driving is wrong and will kill you. If you love to play in the street with a blind fold, you're sinning to yourself because that  will kill you. It's like Genesis 3:4b says. The fruit of the tree gives the man and the woman knowledge of good and evil. God said not to touch or eat of it, that was sin, they will die. The first commandment  is to love God with all your heart soul and mind because that is grasping onto life. He is life. Loving God means constant communication with Him. How can sin if we freely choose to love Him? How can we die if we choose life? This is why Christ is important to us. This is why Christ must be number one to us. We're literally fighting for life and not death. Keep in mind, to God, everything means it's happen now. He is eternal, time to God is relative. When He saysm " you will die." He doesn't mean at 5 tomorrow, you'll cease from living and die. It doesn't matter what day here. When Jesus came to earth, He stopped death, literally. He brought life to us. We don't need to die anymore. If we take on Him for our own, He forgives the debt so that we can be in His Holiness. He died for us. We can take on His Spirit to guide us from that death trap. Eventually when our earthly body fails from the contamination of sin living all around us, we can take on a body of life.
-Matthew