Food for Thought

While re-reading The Lord's Service by Jeff Meyers (which everyone that ever darkens the doors of a church should do), I encountered a thought in a dark corner of my mind. Since bringing it into the light, it has grown too large already to be put back, and threatens to write up a lease agreement for the upstairs bedroom.

Could communion be defended as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? All elements seem to be there, and it is there that we eat and drink of our "dying you shall die" type of death.

Anyone with thoughts, feel free to hurl them at me.

Adams as Priests

Something that has been on my mind over the last few weeks: the parallel between Adam and Christ as Priests.


INTRODUCTION

The priestly office, it is generally agreed, involves guarding the relationship between God and His people from external enemies and internal pollution. A priest must first keep himself and his own pure, then must protect the temple so that there is no hindrance to God's people meeting with God. As such, it is an office that is concerned with guarding the life of the people of God (John 17:3).


PART ONE

Now, look at the way, particularly the order in which Adam (who was placed in the garden as a priest, to guard and tend it) failed:

1. He failed to protect the garden from external enemies--he allowed the dragon to enter;
2. He failed to protect his own--he allowed Eve to be deceived by the dragon;
3. He failed to protect himself--he was not deceived, but simply, high-handedly rebelled by obeying the dragon.

A brief aside: it was not until his ultimate rebellion that he was expelled from his position as priest and given the task of attaining the position that he had just rejected. We can see then, that God is not a legalistic God--He allowed Adam to fail two times without judging or condemning him for them.

PART TWO

Now we can look at Christ, Who fulfills Adam chiastically:

3'. He protected Himself through His threefold temptation by the dragon (part of which included refusing to take food for Himself);
2'. He protected His own--He ministered to Israel for three years, casting out the dragon (demons) and correcting the deceptions that Israel was under;
3'. He took the garden back from the dragon by replacing the fruit that was taken off of the tree (He was the fruit that was placed on the tree, fulfilling the principle of "eye for an eye"), and by doing so, expelled the dragon from the garden forever, restoring in Himself and then in us the temple that we had failed to protect.

A parallel aside: it was not until His death on the cross, His refusal to refuse the position given Him as priest that Christ succeeded in regaining what we had given away.

PART THREE

A few miscellaneous notes:

Adam was not simply assigned to protect and guard the garden, but to extend its boundaries to the four corners of the earth. Our assignment from the Second Adam mirrors this: we are to disciple the nations and populate the earth by declaring the victory of Christ.

There are three offices given to men, and in hierarchical order they are Priest, King and Prophet. In the new covenant, all Christians are Priests by definition (1 Peter 2:9), all are Kings in Christ, and all are Prophets in Christ. These latter two I will explore as the urge takes me, but to very briefly and inadequately define: Kings have the same assignment that priests do, but it is extended, and includes many more grey areas. If you have a family, you are a Priest and a King in that family, either well or poorly. The Prophet is one who has access to the very counsel of God Himself, and is called to rebuke Kings that are out of line. Draw your own conclusions; I leave you here.

CONCLUSION

The theme of Priest, King, Prophet is continued through Genesis, culminating in Joseph, who was the best picture of Christ that Genesis offers us. Look for it. It also extends to the people of Christ corporately, though it has not yet been fulfilled there.

Blessings,
Jesse Broussard

Creations, First and Second

Understand: I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet; closest my dad's come to "being in the Spirit" is when he used to get so full of spirits that he'd black out, and the closest I've come to prophesying is when I correctly called a coin toss ten tosses in advance.  Useful for gambling income, but not quite Elijah material.  So nothing that I say is inspired or even necessarily correct--I believe that it is, or I wouldn't say it, but I also believe that HIV and AIDS are two entirely different things, and that William Shakespeare wasn't the author of all those plays and poems, so keep one eye on me and one on the text.

The three persons of God were involved in the creation of the world: the Father planned and spoke it, the Son did it (as the Word, see John 1), and the Spirit was the Agent, the one actually guiding the bees and holding the electrons and planets in orbit.  Adam was placed in the garden and charged with dominion of it, then Eden, then the surrounding lands, then all the earth.  To help him in this task, he was put into a coma, his side was opened, and from his side a helpmeet was built.  The two of them were to grow and fill the earth, transforming all of it into a garden, Adam ruling as he submitted to Christ.

The three persons of God were involved--past tense--in the re-creation of the world: the Father planned and commanded it, the Son did it (incarnation), and the Spirit is the Agent, still guiding bees, but now, not only bees, but also the Church.  The second Adam (Christ) was placed in the garden (where He prayed and was raised) and charged with dominion--first to Jerusalem, then Judea, then Samaria and the surrounding regions, then the nations.  To help Him in this task, He was put to death, his side was opened, and from his side a helpmeet was built--the blood of the Eucharist and the water of Baptism.  He bestowed this task of dominion upon us in the Great Commission, and in Pentecost, He gave us the Agent by which it is to be done.  We are now to grow and fill the earth, transforming all of it into the garden city of the New Jerusalem, while Christ is seated and rules, submitting at the right hand of His Father, Who, through us and the Spirit in us, puts all of Christ's enemies underneath His feet.  The last enemy to be conquered is death, which will be done when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, but all other enemies will be under His feet by that time.

We are in the new heavens and the new earth: we are the new Eve.  Let us therefore make Eden.

Matthew 20

Matthew 20 tells the story of a landowner hiring workers for his vineyard.  He hires them in five different groups, and none but the first group had an agreed upon wage.  Each of the different groups end up being paid the same amount, despite the fact that they all worked different amounts of time.

This appears to be a picture of the Jews and Gentiles, as the Jews had the initial covenant (the Abrahamic), which is then inherited by the late-coming Gentiles.  Also, the vineyard is a common picture of the people of God (faithful or not).

Excerpt from Westminster Rhetoric Lecture II

"IV. For Instance

In Matthew 16, Jesus answers those who say they want a sign.  He says no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah.  A little later in the chapter, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ.  Jesus pronounces a tremendous blessing on him--on Simon, son of Jonah.  A little later, Peter pulls a Jonah and rebukes Jesus for His prediction that He will spend three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, thus fulfilling the sign of Jonah.

Fascinating, but we still want to stay closer to shore.  We simply want to know that something is the direct object here because it is in the accusative case and in the same sentence."

Included interspersed throughout this section were other points: Jerusalem was Ninevah, and did not repent, etcetera.  It was quite interesting, with our teacher's usual touch of hilarity.  A bit later on, the following topic merrily lilted itself into the lecture:

"V.  Read Carefully and Broadly

Last week, I said that you should ransack Scripture for its figures and metaphors.  What else, you might wonder.  Actually, this will take you the rest of your life, and the task is not as narrow as you might think.

Picture the main street of a desolate Western town, mid day, one hundred and fifty years ago.  The street is deserted, except for a few blowing tumbleweeds.  Some townspeople are looking out the windows of the shops.  Now, what is about to happen?  And how do you know this?  This is a particular motif, with which we are all familiar.

Now picture a man dressed in a biblical manner.  He is standing next to a well.  In the distance, a woman is approaching with a jar on her shoulder.  What is going to happen?  Now, what is the meaning of Christ's encounter with the Samaritan woman?  His father is seeking worshipers, that is to say, a bride for His Son."

Fishy fish

An interesting note: in all of the Old Testament, I have found no narrative that mentions people eating fish.  If I am wrong, please correct me.  The implication of this and the John 21 passage (Christ cooking and eating fish on the shore, the disciples catching 153 great fish, etcetra) had the relative effect upon me of a sweet adorable four year old girl smiling as she hits me in the face with a Louisville Slugger.

Land represents the people of God (Jews) while the gentile nations are represented by the sea.  The people of those nations?  Fish--"I will make you fishers of men."  In the New Covenant, fish shall be saved and included into the body of Christ.

Zechariah's horses: angels or men?

"I saw by night, and behold, a man riding on a red horse, and it stood among the myrtle trees in the hollow; and behind him horses: red, sorrel, and white.

"Then I said, 'My lord, what are these?'  So the angel who talked with me said to me, 'I will show you what they are.' 

"And the man who stood among the myrtle trees answered and said, 'These are the ones whom the LORD has sent to walk to and fro throughout the earth.'

"So they answered the Angel of the LORD, who stood among the myrtle trees, and said, 'We have walked to and fro throughout the earth, and behold, all the earth is resting quietly.'

The rider of the red horse is almost undoubtedly Christ--the Angel of the LORD who stood among the myrtles.  This would then imply that the horses are one of two groups: either angels or the church.  Oddly, the amillenial commentators that I have read interpret the horses as angels (Meredith Kline, Glory in our Midst), while the postmills hold to the church (Jas. Jordan, Peter Leithart.  Interesting tangent: Jordan also uses this section to interpret Revelation six (the four horsemen) as being Christ "riding" the church in each of the four sections).  

There is very little in the vision to clarify which of the two groups the horses are, which actually is of no little importance, as symbolic Judaic literature remains fairly consistent, and borrows off of other symbolic Judaic literature--beasts are empires, seas are pagan nations, fish are unbelievers, and horses are--well, what are horses?  Whatever they are here is most likely what they are in Revelation, as John is borrowing from this imagery--coincidences do not happen in Scripture.  Why is the number six the number of man (and of the beast)?  Because men and beasts were made on the sixth day.  Goliath was six cubits and a span wearing scale armor and was killed by a head wound.  Sisera was killed by a woman's tent peg through the skull.  There  was a scarlet cord tied around the younger of two twins who ends up in the line of Christ, and what do we find in Rahab's window--the window of another ancestor of Christ?  No, we're not going for subtlety here--if there are two similar sections of Scripture, they are linked and should interpret each other.

The colors of the different groups are very interesting (at least if you're reading Kline--otherwise they're just kinda colors).  There is white, red, and "sorrel" or "bay."  Kline notes that these colors may be used to imply flame and light: "A desire to produce such a bright, fiery image would then explain why black horses, which are found in the seventh vision, are absent from this first one.  Also, the second color term"--the one rendered "bay" or "sorrel"--"seruqqim, evidently derives from a verbal root that is used for the shining of the sun."

If Kline's take upon this is correct, then the horses are a manifestation of the Glory of God, of His Presence.  This does not definitively demonstrate the horses to be angels or men.  However, what would we normally say is the manifestation of God's Presence and Glory on earth, and do we have any reason to shy from that in this instance?