From the Desk of Jeff King

God's goodness

The LORD is good to all (Psalm 145:9)

The Calvinistic doctrine of predestination falsely portrays God as a cold and calculating ruler. From His heavenly throne He determines who lives and dies spiritually. He appoints eternal life to the "elect," and eternal damnation to everyone else. Man's free will is irrelevant. It is an elitist, arrogant theology that violates Scripture and God's character.

The passage above says God is good to ALL. His grace is not limited to a few lucky souls who happen to win a celestial lottery. In our western, Greco-Roman culture, good is an abstract thought. To a Hebrew, words represent actions. God expresses His goodness by extending kindness and mercy to all men – the just and unjust. Here's rabbinic commentary from the ArtScroll Tanach Series book on Psalms:

How different is our God from mortal kings who restrict their goodness and favors to a small group of courtiers and intimates! Only God is capable of bestowing beneficence upon every one of His creatures. Moreover, if a mortal king is challenged by rebels he will seek revenge. Not so our Almighty God: He seeks the welfare of the wicked who defy Him and tries to inspire them to repentance.

Bizarro World

Blessed is the man whom You instruct, O LORD, and teach out of your Torah, that You may give him rest from the days of adversity (Psalm 94:12-13)

The world is a mess. Right is wrong, and wrong is right. People in positions of power and influence seem incapable of making just, common-sense decisions. It's like we're living in Bizarro World, the fictional, cube-shaped planet in Superman comics, where everything done or said is backwards.

But despair not. Messiah Yeshua offers us rest in a world of chaos and calamity. But what does that look like? Strong's renders the Hebrew word for "rest," shaqat, as idleness, stillness or quietness. In our western mindset, that can mean a lot of things. But look at the picture that unfolds when we translate the word shaqat in the ancient Hebrew pictographic script, which dates back to Moses. Deciphering Hebrew symbols is not an exact science – this was once a lost language – but we can, at the very least, make a good guess with the aid of resource books like Jeff Benner's Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible. Here's our picture (Hebrew is read right to left):

Followers of Yeshua will face adversity and tribulation. The Bible says so. But we can find rest in this promise: The LORD disarms our adversary. We are equipped to walk the straight and narrow road in a backward, bizarre world.

Senseless man

O YHVH, how great are Your works! Your thoughts are very deep! A senseless man does not know, and a fool does not understand this. (Psalm 92:5-6)

It's the Nativity season and wise men are nowhere to be found. That's the conclusion of Skip Moen, who picked Christmas to reflect on the foolishness of man. Here are excerpts from today's blog entry:

How far we have wandered from God's revealed truth! How much of our "faith" remains unexamined, the inheritance of a tradition of syncretism rather than attentive listening to the voice of our God! We have not meditated on the majesty of God nor have we stood in awe before His hidden plan. We think we know Him. Our arrogance and hubris are beyond comprehension. We don't even follow Him in the details He does provide yet we have the audacity to suppose we understand what He is doing.

Here's the punch line: On this day, when Christendom celebrates the birth of the Messiah with a pagan festival, do we stand before the Lord of hosts with humble confession that we do not understand Him? Can we say, "Lord, I can't even imagine why you love me?" Are we numbed with the thought that He is working a reality we only most dimly comprehend? Can we be satisfied to trust His plan even when it is hidden in the dark mystery of existence? Or will we insist that we know what God is doing?