Jesus & Wine

I.)  Mt. 26:27 “Then He took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in My Father’s kingdom.” 

With Jesus’ institution of the Lord’s Supper, he brings forth wine again. This in effect gives us wine bookends of his ministry. Water to wine in His first miracle. Then on the night before His crucifixion, it was wine in order to show forth the blood of the covenant. In this, we see that in Jesus, who is the new and better covenant, we have the one who brings together the joy of the new covenant represented by the water to wine at Cana while at the same time wine is the blood of Christ to us in the Eucharistic meal. Jesus takes upon Himself the maledictory blood oath in our place and we are given the wine which celebrates the good in good Friday. As Christ’s younger brethren we drink the wine of Cana at the table because He took upon Himself the wrath of God that should have justly found us all being plagued with the death that the water to blood was to God’s Egyptian enemies in the Old Covenant. Christ took the curses for the penalty of sin that we might drink the wine of Cana.

 
 
II.) John 2:10 And he said to him, “Every man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well drunk, then the inferior. You have kept the good wine until now!”

The comment by the Master to the Bridegroom at the end of the Cana record about the quality of the wine is a double entendre. The obvious meaning is, of course, quite literal, but the underlying motif is covenantal in meaning. In redemptive history, the new and better covenant is “the good wine kept until last.”

Lessons in Poetry from the Whoopi Goldberg Controversy

Listen closely Whoopi
And heed what I’m telling you
A black woman can criticize anyone

That is except the Jew.

For the Jew was lifted up by God
And you’re in second place
A useful tool ‘gainst the evil whites
But the Jew’s the chosen race.

So listen closely Whoopi
And heed what we’re telling you
We’ve brought you up from the back of the bus
But never past row two

So, understand your place assigned
Those dreadlocks won’t save you
From your being all to uppity
By casting shade upon the Jew

Chambers (1-3) & McAtee (4)

Chit-Chat on Wedding Ceremonies

Ever wonder why the Father gives away the Bride?

There the groom stands. There is no Father to give away the groom because in keeping with Scripture the groom has left father and mother. The bride, however, has not left the home and ideally should not leave the home until given to another covenant head. The Father still rules over the bride as her covenant head. The groom is then presented a bride by the Father in acknowledgment that the Father is transferring authority over to the groom. This is a picture of the Heavenly Father giving the church as bride to Christ —  the son.

One addition here. The modern habit in weddings now of answering the question, “Who gives this woman to be married to this man,” with “Her Mother and I,” or a joint parental response of “we do,” is a Lilithization of the husband and father. The traditional habit of the father alone answering, “I do,” recognizes the father’s proper place as the covenant head of the family and of the bride being presented. Men, if you include your wives in answering that question you are communicating that covenant headship is equal in the husband and wife and are screaming Lilithism at the new bride and groom.

Ruminations on Finding the One and the Many in Social-Orders

God alone has original sovereignty. All other sovereignty is delegated sovereignty by God to his representatives in one of the various jurisdictional spheres He has ordained. In such a way God remains the absolute sovereign over each of the jurisdictional spheres with His delegated representatives answerable to Him if they abandon God’s legislative Word for those jurisdictions.

R2K denies this premise by insisting that God has abandoned his original sovereignty choosing to delegate that sovereignty to the realm of Natural law. As such R2K denies that God’s Word has legislative authority for any realm save the church realm. What this move does is to guarantee that the different jurisdictional realms will be sideways with the Church as a jurisdictional realm as there are two different sovereignties established — (1) God’s sovereignty over the Church and (2) Natural law as interpreted by the autonomous and fallen man as sovereign in all other jurisdictional realms. As autonomous and fallen man begins and ends with himself as his authority, the “theology” of R2K guarantees either conflict between the Church and the other jurisdictional realms or (more likely given R2K’s passivism) the church becomes the tail on the social order dog as Christians are explicitly taught from R2K pulpits that there is no “thus saith the Lord” for other jurisdictional realms. Christianity thus becomes privatized and the social order becomes the incarnation of other theologies that are not so shy to fill the vacuum left by the retreat of Christianity.

However, this problem is not present in a muscular and Biblical Christianity as all jurisdictional realms find their unity and so a harmony of interest in God’s sovereignty and legislative Word. Each of the representative heads of the various jurisdictional realms is uniquely responsible for their own assigned realm but each finds harmony with one another in the fact that each is bowing to God’s sovereignty via His legislative and authoritative Word.

So, we see, that it is only by maintaining God’s unique, original, and exhaustive sovereignty over all of reality wherein social-orders can maintain a lack of conflict among the various jurisdictions. If, on the other hand, Christians, for whatever reason (R2K, Pietism, etc.) surrender the public realm and its jurisdictions to other competing sovereignties the long-term result will be a conflict of interests. Something the West is now discovering too late.

In Biblical Christianity, God’s original and absolute authority mediated by the Lord Christ is the sovereignty that yields harmony to the many jurisdictional realms. Each realm is distinct in its responsibilities and yet all united by oaths of fealty to the Triune God.

This unity is augmented by the recognition that each of the distinct jurisdictional realms is informed by a shared totalistic theology. Theology — and the Biblical world and life view it creates — in submission to the God of the Bible is the subterranean aquifer out of which bubble forth the various springs which we label the various jurisdictional realms and social-order institutional structures and procedures. In this understanding Law, Education, Arts, Law, Family, Church, Politics, International relations, etc., are merely theology by other means. There is unity between these not only because of God’s original and absolute sovereignty but also because man, in submission to God’s legislative Word, owns a shared theology that manifests itself in a myriad of ways like light through a prism produces various colors — all authored by the original light.

It will never do, contra the Amsterdam philosophy, to suggest that these various jurisdictional realms and social order institutional structures and procedures each have their own locus of original and legislative authority.  Cutting off each of the jurisdictional realms from the common aquifer that is a shared theology as “the Queen of all the sciences,” is sure to render a kind of polytheistic hodgepodge as each jurisdictional realm and social order structure and procedure seeks its own independence at the expense of all the others. That independence could never be arrived at apart from some other God and some other theology/philosophy informing these putative independent jurisdictions.

We see again that the only way to keep Education at peace with family, family at peace with Law, Law at peace with Education, Courts at peace with the Church, the Church at peace with the Arts, Politics at peace with family, etc., is for each and all to come in glad submission to God’s original and absolute sovereignty while at the same time each taking up theology as the Queen of the Sciences as applied to their particular fields and callings.

Limericks for Justin Castro Trudeau

Trudeau unleashed a world by Max
Pushing policy regarding truckers and vaxs
And now he must hide
In unknown quarters inside
Lest his person gets totally waxed

_________

There once was a Prime Minister Trudeau
Whose regime was a minstrel show
He nettled the truckers
That crazy Canucker
That Prime Minister and Cuban Castro

_________

In a final display of a snit
Trudeau accused the truckers of being misfits
The response to this claim
Was to set Canada aflame
With Maple Leafs flying from Mad Max cockpits