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.

Was almost finished with a really good ride today and had a flat. That part was no big deal, but as I was putting the new tube in, I spotted cracks in the alloy rim. Big cracks, like the spokes pulling out of the rim if I kept riding it. So I took it back to the dealer. It's not under warranty any more. And because it was a rather expensive model with really good quality stuff, they had to order another one pretty much like it. I haven't yet heard what it will cost (the parts catalog was not up today) but I am expecting it to be expensive. Oh, and the front rim has similar, but much smaller cracks, so I'll have to replace that one next month.

Meanwhile, no bike riding for me until I get the wheel back.

The soul of Old Testament religion was mysticism. While the legalism of the Sadducees and Pharisees differed, it was still two brands of the same basic error. However, Jesus lowers the boom particularly on the Scribes in their alliance with the Pharisees.

In the midst of a laundry list of their evil, the Lord points out something that seems to summarize everything else. They would tithe legalistically on the kind of household plants everyone grew for their own private consumption. During Jesus' day, it was common to find something like a window box where the homemaker would grow a few herbs that were best when used fresh in cooking. The Scribes and Pharisees would actually tithe on this pitiful handful of household plants.

Yet, anyone could see they weren't so honest with God about the broader meaning of divine justice. Jesus chose words to indicate the divine moral character of His Father: covenant, discernment, mercy and faith. They held themselves accountable for tithing on household herbs, but very pointedly left out their hearts. They did their best to silence their convictions because they somehow imagined God was petty and silly enough to be satisfied by semantic wrangling over superficial details in the Law of Moses.

It was as if they would sift out a gnat from flour to avoid eating non-kosher meat, but they would swallow a camel, which was the largest non-kosher animal they would ever encounter in Palestine. Their focus was too small, yet their appetite for injustice never came to their attention. So they would not hesitate to defraud people by secret code words and corruption. Over and over Jesus kept using the word translated into English as "hypocrite" to refer to acting a part in a play.

Then Jesus spoke words of prophecy on behalf of His Father.

He promised to send them messengers of various types: prophets, sages and scholars. Some they would murder or execute, and some would be flogged. Either way, they would chase them down for daring to tell the truth and expose Pharisaical lies. The reason God would let them get away with such intolerable behavior is so that their blood-guilt would become too large to ignore. They would then become liable for all the blood-guilt since people were kicked out of Eden. They were the same kind of people; they put their hands to the same kind of sin.

The current generation would see God pour out His wrath on them in ways they could not imagine. It's not even certain they would even notice. They had so completely left the Covenant that they would be purged from it.

Then He said something poetic about how the City of Jerusalem had become a symbol of rejecting the Word of God to the point of murderous rage. Jesus came to heal and restore divine justice, and they had done everything possible to prevent it.

Then He said something that most western readers miss: Their role as a covenant nation would be vacated. They would lose their moral and spiritual identity completely. From that time forward, they would no longer be God's People.

They would have to start all over again. The only way they could restore their ancient identity would be as individuals who joined a king of hearts. Until the welcomed the Messiah as their Lord and exult in the opportunity for redemption, they would remain just another tribe of fools who don't even know their Creator.

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.

The soul of biblical religion is mysticism, seeking to connect directly with God as a Person. It requires a rather strong notion of a higher realm that exceeds human comprehension, and a deep distrust of this realm of existence as essentially a punitive mirage. Our only hope in this life is to seek peace with God. We burn through this human existence seeking to bring Him glory.

When the Pharisees were paired up with Herodians, it was a sign of desperation in both parties. The Pharisees we know, and the Herodians were partisans who supported the royal household of the Herod, the kind of sycophants every ruler must endure. The mutual hatred between these two groups was well known. About the only thing on which they could agree would be a strong desire to shed the burden of Roman rule.

It sounds like the Herodians asking the question with their smarmy courtesan opening. For the Pharisees it was a matter of their false holiness, but for the Herodians, paying tribute to Rome was a practical matter of politics. It was tantamount to asking whether this "Messiah" was planning to get rid of Rome. If Jesus agreed with that, they could denounce Him to the Roman officials. If He rejected the idea, then it would fracture His popularity with the crowds.

Of course, Jesus saw through this plotting, and pointed out that the whole question was missing the point. What was stamped into every Roman coin? The image and inscription of one or another Caesar, whomever reigned when the coins were struck. It was part of the cultic practice of Caesar worship, claiming that he was at least part divine. Pharisees would talk about how it was a sin to even carry those coins, but they were so common that it was almost impossible to avoid them. Jesus noted that the Roman denarius was part and parcel of the presence of Roman authority. If the coins celebrate Caesar, then he can take them back any time he likes. Meanwhile, God is a much higher authority, so why was everyone ignoring His due? Would the Herodians be any less idolatrous about having someone from Herod's dynasty on the throne? How about giving God your heart?

The Sadducees took a shot at making a fool of Jesus. They trumped up this wild tale of seven brothers who all in turn passed down the wife of the eldest and dying prematurely without anyone producing heirs to the eldest brother's estate. With whom would she cohabit in the Resurrection? Not that the Sadducees believed in the Resurrection, but isn't it noteworthy how their question clung to the issue of inheritance, given this was their aristocratic claim to governing authority over the Jewish people?

Jesus shot them down on both points. Those whom the Lord resurrects to His eternal Kingdom would have no need for sex, marriages, families and children, since they would be eternal themselves. Eternal bodies don't reproduce. And given how they nitpicked over the precise words of the Pentateuch, Jesus reminded them that Moses heard from the Burning Bush how God was alive in Eternity, and so were the Patriarchs. David spoke openly of an afterlife in God's Presence. The Sadducee insistence on no afterlife was simply sullen obstructionism.

Given how the majority of all Ancient Near Eastern philosophers and scholars believed in the afterlife in a higher realm of existence, you have to wonder how the Sadducees could claim to be the true representatives of Moses' teaching.

One of the scribes noticed that Jesus was very sharp, and admired His poise in such a public setting. So He asked Jesus one of the most common rabbinical questions about the two greatest commandments. Jesus simply echoed the common answer. When the Scribe agreed and affirmed how actually loving Jehovah from the heart was the true measure of holiness, Jesus noted how close this fellow was to entering the door of Eternity.

Just to nail it all down, Jesus added a final rhetorical flourish. He noted a paradox: How could the Messiah be David's descendant and superior at the same time? It was something the rabbinical scholars could not answer. Not because it was such a deep mystery, but because the only plausible answer was to embrace mysticism, and neither Pharisee nor Sadducee would do that. The Messianic Son of David was also the Son of God, the preexisting Lord born as a human. Jewish rabbis choked on that.

Finally, Jesus warned His audience to stay away from Scribes and not trust them. They were only concerned about one thing: reputation. Their holiness was transparently fake. They had no peace with God, and weren't too friendly with their own kind.

So, what have you all been doing? I took advantage of the slight relief from the heat and have put in some miles on the bike this week. If I make the ride I hope for today, that will be about 140 miles in 5 days. In the news, there's been way too much activity; I'm almost numb from the antics of the political class. And the neighbors from across the breezeway moved out. Decent people; we'll miss them, even though their lives have been filled with unnecessary drama. I wonder what kind of folks the Lord will send next.

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.

Jesus pronounced doom on the Pharisees and their false system. It was one of those times when He was teaching in the Temple Plaza and they came up to pester Him again, likely associates of the Sanhedrin itself. Matthew places it with the time they questioned His authority to teach and heal. He silenced them and then warned of God's wrath.

Asking them how they would judge, He told the story of two different sons whose father asked them to go and work his vineyard. The vineyard was an ancient symbol of God's Covenant Nation. The first son said he'd rather not work that day, then regretted it later and went to work. The second said, "Yes Sir!" But then he never got around to doing it. Who actually carried out the will of their father?

Of course the Pharisees said it was the first son. Upon this, Jesus said it was a picture of all those folks that the Pharisees rejected because they wouldn't knuckle under their pretentious authority. Tax collectors and harlots would repent and make peace with God before the Pharisees would.

The same John the Baptist, whose authority the Pharisees couldn't discern, came to preach the Scriptures, but they didn't repent. Instead, all the so-called sinners and social outcasts came to him and repented, being baptized. After all those decades of harassing such "sinners" and seeing none of them change, God speaks to them through John. The Pharisees should have been celebrating that the wayward souls came back to the Covenant. Instead, they decided it meant there was something wrong with John, as if rescuing lost sheep was somehow a sinister act.

Jesus unloaded another parable on them. He told about a head of household who went to a lot of trouble constructing and planting a vineyard. He did it right, with all the appropriate facilities, fully self-contained. Then he leased it to some people who were supposed to be good at producing a nice vintage from it. Then the owner traveled abroad on other business.

While he was there in a foreign country, he sent some servants back at wine-making time to obtain his portion of the produce, typically something like 10%. We can imagine the renters thinking that if the real authority was so remote, then what risk would there be in ignoring his messengers? They went a step further and beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. The owner kept sending representatives and the renters kept abusing them.

Perhaps they would respect the owner's own son? No, but they plotted to kill him. As the only heir to the vineyard, if he was dead, and the owner stayed away, there was a chance they could seize the title of the property. All of this assumes the owner would never return in person. Who was going to enforce the distant owners will? He had to show up in person with a title deed to the property in order to file a claim in the local court system and get a judge to order any action.

What did those Pharisees reckon would happen when the owner did return in person? Of course, the wicked renters would be arrested and executed. Then the owner would find more honorable people to lease his vineyard. The Pharisees' own words would judge them.

Jesus quoted Psalm 118:22-23 about the stone the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone of a new project. Anything built in that hilly land required a massive block set into the side of the slope in such a way that the rest of the stones in the building could lean against it from up-slope. It was the most important stone in the whole building. They understood this as a Messianic reference, and it wasn't lost on them that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah.

Then, Jesus flatly told them that they were the criminals in the parable who had been hired by God to bring forth the fruit of the Covenant. Instead, they tried to consume all God's provision upon themselves, treating God's vineyard as their private playground, instead of as a sacred trust to change the world. So God would come and remove them and lease it out to another nation that was more honorable.

Meanwhile, those who trip over Jesus' claim to be the Messiah would be broken and then remade, but those on whom this Stone fell would be crushed. The crowd understood the references, and so did the Pharisees. They would have arrested Him on the spot, but knew the crowd would riot in Jesus' favor.

First, let me explain that I do not like Stew Peters. I don't like his presentation at all. He sounds too much like a lot of liars that I've encountered in the past. Nonetheless, I'll give him credit for this scoop: Watch the Water. He teams up with Dr. Bryan Ardis for this video. I do tend to like Dr. Ardis.

I've stated unequivocally that our federal government is trying to kill us, and that COVID-19 was a lie. I've said I'm convinced that something else is happening, and that certain people have been exposed to something that is no COVID at all, but something specifically designed to kill. Further, the totalitarian control asserted over medical treatment protocols for COVID patients was a plot to murder mass numbers of people. I've thought that the CDC, FDA and Fauci are mass murders.

Dr. Ardis nails down sufficient details to make it clear that such thoughts are accurate. What they have called "COVID" is a cobra venom being administered in some as-yet secret means. It mimics a lung infection. Further, the vaccines are another derivative of this same venom. And there's more, but I think this is probably one video that's worth the time. The odd title ("Watch the Water") refers to how the murdering officials are watching the effects of this toxic program via water testing; it shows up in sewage.

I don't care for the final 8 minutes or so where they speculate spookily about the motives. Mass slaughter is already an established motive.

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.