I used to do a fair amount of backpacking and really love the Northwoods. This is from more than a few years ago up in da UP (Michigan).   
   

It is critical here that we read this passage with a Hebrew mind, for it refers to Hebrew Scripture and oral lore. As noted in the previous chapter, the covenant under which Melchizedek served was the original covenant of faith finalized in Christ. It is an eternal covenant, while the Covenant of Moses was anchored in time and space.

Our High Priest is Christ, the living Word of God. He is revelation personified. Unlike the High Priests who served under Moses, all of whom died and are resting for the Day of Judgment, Christ lives eternally and sits at the right hand of the Father. This is an honored position reserved for the Heir to all Creation. He serves in the Heavenly Courts, not in some man-made shrine.

The earthly priesthood officiated over the required material offerings in the earthly Temple. Their place of service was a manifestation of God's courts. In Hebrew thinking, it's not that Moses saw a visual "model" in the western sense, but he gained a direction impression in his heart of something that would serve a particular function. God listed the materials He wanted them to use. This was all the clue they needed. Moses and his supporters would have already had in their minds the practical design based on what such materials would have made possible for that kind of use.

They did not build a residence for Jehovah; they built a human representation of what a residence for an imperial ruler would have been. It would house however much of God's Presence as this world could endure. Meanwhile, Jesus is there in Heaven in the real thing, the ultimate reality of what the Tabernacle, and later the Temple, were meant to represent.

The same goes with the Covenant of Moses; it was simply a model composed of elements humans could grasp for a purpose they understood. It did not require faith in one sense, only submission. However, in another sense, Moses flatly stated that it wasn't the ultimate reality; it was an indicator of how someone could live in faith in that context. Had that law code been sufficient, there would never have been prophesies promising something else coming down the road.

The author quotes from the Old Testament prophesy of Jeremiah 31:31-34. God promised that He would call His people into a new covenant that was not merely law and custom, but would be expressed in His own Presence in their hearts. They would all know Him directly by His Presence.

Thus, the Covenant of Moses was obsolete. In Jeremiah's day, it was "already-but-not-yet" obsolete, and in Christ that action was finished. Granted, the Temple still stood, and the external trappings of that religion were carried out. But the author hints that this is almost at an end -- "about to disappear".

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

For those of you interested in what I'm doing with computer technology, I note that using a VPN (a virtual "tunnel") to escape the snooping by Cox accommodating unknown government agencies, it causes a lot of hassle with using Microsoft services, along with a few others. MS does not like me logging in via VPN. They seem to understand that an iPad is a mobile device, so they aren't suspicious of varying IP addresses for it, but for an actual computer, it raises alarms if your login comes from a different location. A VPN means appearing to be connected in another state.

At any rate, it remains a hassle and MS has zero interest in accommodating this. And I'm not going to change my connection.

Google, on the other hand, focuses on the devices, not the location. When I connect to Google services, it works just fine, once they recognize the machine as "me". This means that I will have a tendency to switch to Google for document handling and sharing.

To complicate matters further, MS does not get along too well with iPads in the first place. It's very tricky handling files stored in OneDrive compared to Google Drive. Google never balks; MS gets cranky and changes the file names, adding some kind of time/date coding. My Outlook email account works just fine; iPad is superior at email and communications in general, just not so good at document handling. Still, I was already preferring Google for documents shared between my devices.

So, I'm leaning toward keeping the Outlook email account on the iPad, but in general avoiding MS Office online. I'll stick with Google for documents in the cloud, particularly for sharing with others. I'm going to de-emphasize MS Office in general, using Google Docs much more. Don't look for Word documents from me any more. Look for more of my stuff to be shared in PDF format, since that's the best way to get you something you might want to print for yourself. If it requires a team approach for anything, be ready to deal with Google Docs.

This, despite my underlying distrust for Google. As long as it works, I'll go with it.

Once again, I defer to previous commentary...

While we must acknowledge that the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was a new thing on this earth, we make a grave mistake if we assume faith and grace were not in operation before Christ. The Jews assumed the Covenant of Abraham was fulfilled in Moses. It was not. Moses was on a wholly different level, an earthly symbol of a higher reality, with earthly requirements and earthly promises and blessings. Those things have their place, but they are mere symbols of a deeper reality. Since before Abraham, people gained right standing with God neither by rituals nor behavior at large, for all failed at those things. Rather, they stood before God on the basis of faith embracing His grace.

So, what was this Priestly Order of Melchizedek for which Jesus was the final member? First, his name is Hebrew for “King of Righteousness” and his title means “King of Peace.” Abraham knew this man. On his return from defeating the kings of Mesopotamia up north of Galilee, he was dragging a massive load of spoil these kings had taken. By ancient custom in every land in that region, it all belonged to Abraham by right of conquest. Melchizedek, as a fellow worshiper of God Almighty, met him and brought out some refreshments. This was a very strong symbolic gesture and Abraham gave recognition of Melchizedek’s priesthood of his own God by granting the priestly king a tenth of the spoils. The rest of the spoils Abraham righteously returned to the kings of the Pentapolis near the Dead Sea.

In this, Abraham operated by faith that such wealth would not benefit him, but would actually harm him. He had more than enough, anyway, and was regarded in those parts as a prince in his own right. Now, he was a proven master in battle, a battle by no means insignificant. It was all by faith, not by any human desire to dominate. Abraham would have been just as happy to keep a low profile and hold a reputation as harmless. The Jews proudly pointed out how all their wealth was a gift from God, not taken from the likes of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet, in all this pride, they failed to grasp the significance of Abraham giving a tithe to Melchizedek.

This priestly king was unknown, no official genealogy. All we know about his priesthood is Abraham’s recognition of it. We have no idea who his parents were, when or where he was born, nor where he died and was buried. Symbolically, that means his priesthood is eternal, since no one can pinpoint the terminus of it. If the Jews had long recognized David’s prophecy of the Messiah as being of that order, and Jesus was the Messiah, we must realize that this order of priesthood never ended. Was not David King of Salem? David touched the Ark without being struck dead. Was not this a sign that his righteousness and reign were at least theoretically marking him as a Priest of the Order of Melchizedek? Was not Jesus of his lineage, proven by pedigree? And was He not the Messiah, also of the Order of Melchizedek?

If the Levites, who receive the tithes of Israel under the Law of Moses, were born of Abraham, then while yet unborn they paid tithes to Melchizedek. Do not the lesser pay tithes to the greater? Surely, it isn’t that hard to grasp! Jesus the Messiah, Priest of the Order of Melchizedek, belongs to an order that is greater and older than that of Aaron. The Aaronic order of priesthood and all it represented had a distinct beginning and end.

If the Law of Moses had been the final fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, then there would have never been any prophecies of a new priesthood rising from an ancient order. Changing from Aaronic DNA and pedigree to some other means of passing office means that Levitical Law was not intended to be permanent. David’s prophecy in Psalm 110 was a subtle declaration that Moses had an endpoint. Indeed, we already have said Jesus was not a Levite, but of the Tribe of Judah, of which not a single man ever stood as priest under Moses. For a man of Judah to now stand as High Priest – prophesied by David as all Jews agree – it requires doing away with the Law of Moses. That Covenant of the Law ended in Christ. His priesthood was not about law, but faith. It returns things to the original covenant of redemption, to which both Abraham and Melchizedek adhered. It was a covenant marked by Eternal Life, not rooted in this world.

This Law of Moses is dead. Christ closed it forever, by opening the door for us all to come into the Presence of God. It was His promise from long ago. Priests are sworn in, passing through a very rigorous background check. Jesus was sworn in by His Father, having already established His background by divine birth. Notice how every Aaronic priest eventually died. There were a bunch of them. Jesus is a spiritual priest, standing in a spiritual realm, a spiritual temple, in the very presence of God Almighty, never again to die. His priesthood is eternal.

Unlike the Sons of Aaron, who have to keep offering a sacrifice for themselves first, before they can offer the sacrifices of others, Jesus is His own sacrifice, once and for all. He needed no sacrifice for Himself, because He was already sinless and pure, unlike every priest of Aaron. The Law of Moses placed in office men who were morally unfit, but as long as they and the nation met the ritual requirements, the system continued to work. And what was that work? It was mere earthly blessings. Jesus was the one and only perfectly sinless man, the only one truly fit to be our High Priest. The result is pulling the whole business up into the spiritual realm, which is the only place to find God. Everything else is just symbolism.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

This is the so-called "spaceship effect" we sometimes get when storms pass over, or pass close to us. This one passed close, and we are viewing the southwest edge (often the trailing edge in OK) of a rough one that had plenty of ground strikes, but nothing flickered while I was shooting this. If a tornado were going to form, it would happen on this edge of the storm cell.
   

This chapter is one of those Bible passages that suffers a lot from translation in English. It was bad enough translating Hebrew thoughts into Greek. It's easy to miss what the writer is telling the Hebrew Christians in Rome.

The rise of the rabbinical Talmudic teaching had robbed the common Hebrew people of their deep cultural heritage. The previous chapter ends with the author warning that they had forgotten too much of the Old Testament oral lore, and should have by that time reawakened it and become instructors. Why must we wade back through the basic meaning of Messiah, leaving behind the Talmud in favor of personal submission to God? Do we need to rehash the symbolism of baptism (a ritual of allegiance to Christ), why we lay hands on each other in prayer (that's how God works through us), that He promised to retrieve us from the grave when He returns, and all the promises regarding the Final Judgment?

The nature of a Christian is to grow, but the way his readers were talking, it would seem they were ready to back up and rehash, not just the teachings the way rabbis do, but to walk backward through the giddy first experience of the miraculous powers of the Holy Spirit. If you've actually tasted those divine powers, how can you back out now? Would you expect to someday, when the persecution dies down, to pick up where you left off?

The writer warns them that if their spiritual rebirth was genuine, to bail out on Christ's domain means He bled and died for nothing. It's a denial of the New Covenant. And if you could leave it behind, there's no way in God's Creation you could ever come back. To enforce that, he points to the parable of the soil that is sown. Once God rains on it, if that soil sprouts nothing but weeds, the whole pasture gets set ablaze at harvest time. It is defiled ground that is never sown again.

Surely the Hebrew Christians in Rome are better than that! He cites the example of Abraham. God's promises did not fail, despite Abraham's failures. Rather, God carried Abraham through those bad times, and faith remained alive. Abraham laid claim to promises he never saw come true; it was his feudal grant from God. The persecuted believers in Rome were going through tough times, no doubt, but if all they cared about was this world as it now is, they'll never see the promises waiting for them in Heaven.

There is no higher authority by which God can make such a promise except Himself. The author quotes from the passage where Abraham was commanded to offer his son, Isaac. In that pagan world (including the Roman Empire), humans often swore on the names of deities to solemnify an oath. It was supposed to indicate they took the matter seriously, because atheism was unheard of. They might escape human detection, but gods were expected to punish those who blasphemed by lying in the name of the gods; they really believed that. But there's no one above Jehovah on whose name He could swear. Indeed, if He gives His Word, reality will change to match it. That's the power of His Word.

Our hope in Him is an eternal anchor that outlives our human existence. Our hope reaches into Eternity, to the very presence of God Himself, as symbolized by the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies on Atonement Day. Except, Christ is a priest of a far higher order, and He is the reality on which the ritual symbol is based. When He cried out that it was finished, the Temple veil was torn open forever.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

Aside from a progress shot of the Okana Resort...
   

It's time for some late summer flowers.