September 25th.

And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?

I gave them my decrees and made known to them my laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them.

Nobody would expect us to just say we're not going to do such and such for no reason. God's decrees, precepts and commands, His law, was so that a man could live, but not just live like all the other animals, but live as David lived—alive to God, aware of God, with Him where He lives, near to Him and close to Him. David loved God's law and meditated on it day and night. He lived to God, where other men only lived and died to themselves, like wild animals. To live is to be alive to God, meaning that David was seen and known by God. There was a record of his life in God's mind—his name was written in the book of life, those who have life, according to God.

...so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

The question is this—do we want life or death—and what is life?

This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.

To believe and trust the Father and the Son is what can bring us closer to Him, and as we get closer then we are more able to know Him, and knowing the Father is the most a man can attain to in this life. The assumption this rests on is that the humans don't know Him because they're separated from Him. We know that because we understand how separated we are from Him, how far away any true and actual relationship seems to us, right now where we live. Even though we receive many gifts that keep us going down the road that leads to the Father, nevertheless we comprehend the void between the hope that is growing in us to know the Father, and that which we perceive to be an actual relationship we're comfortable with.

The deal is that God is a jealous God, and there are many things that we constantly put our hope and trust in as the animals that we are, who receive their hope and trust from things, relationships & situations and what all those things represent to us—some kind of security and a false happiness that we trust and believe in because we were taught that they can give us comfort. But they're all temporary, they all only last a little while and then they're gone, sooner or later they can't stay with us any longer, nor give us what we think they are giving us, no matter what they are.

If a major requirement of the relationship that God wants from His own sons rests on true trust, faith and belief (rather than merely theoretical faith and belief), we should be given chances to show that we aren't just full of hot air about what we would do for God. We can see examples from the words that illustrate how certain sons like Abraham, Jesus the firstborn Son and Peter were given the chance to prove to God that they "Loved Him more than these," that their choice wasn't just all theory, what they would do *if* they had to choose (thinking in the back of their brain they probably won't have to, because of their own predictions about how things would go for them. They all could have justified and rationalized their desire to keep what the Father told them they must let go of to go further in to where He was calling them e.g., Abraham could have easily said that since the child was the child through which all the promises would come, there is no way he was going to kill him.

Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, "We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again."

The disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about.

Jesus was most likely led by the Father who raised him up to believe that he might be the Son of David according to how all the humans assumed the Messiah would look. Most likely, just before he was baptized he started learning about how the Messiah would suffer and die, and that it was literal, not metaphorical.

"You don't know what you are asking," Jesus said. "Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?"

It became a point of crisis for Jesus to come to realize that he would literally be going to die. The idea of it being a metaphorical thing was probably hanging over him, even until just before he did suffer and die:

"Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."

Jesus may have been thinking about how, after God tested Abraham and it was established that he indeed *was* willing to do the thing he least wanted to do for God's sake, he allowed him to receive back the boy, as if from the dead.

A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Jesus was about to go to be baptized with his true baptism, which was going into the ground for three days, after which he would have to ether be raised up by the Father, or else he would just stay there rotting. This was something that took a stance of 100% trust in the Father's promise to raise him up, and there was nothing he could do in regards to that. The Father wants nothing less than this kind of 100% trust in what He wants to provide for His sons, and He puts them in the situations where they can choose to do that by denying their fears and the ways they instinctively want to hide like a wild animal, so that they will indeed learn to *not* hide, merely because they know they can't hide.

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these (fishes)?" "Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you." Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."

Again Jesus said, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me?"
He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." Jesus said, "Take care of my sheep."

The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"

Peter was hurt (internal crisis) because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."

Jesus said, "Feed my sheep. I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, "Follow me!"

Salvation, being saved, being redeemed, being in the kingdom is all so egocentric. It all has to do with us: "I am being saved," and "I hope to be resurrected." I get, I want, I want to be, I want the spirit gifts, I want to be in the kingdom. To be a fruitful and productive tree, useful to God—to be known by God as a friend who has risked everything that's valuable to himself for His sake—is to find our life.

Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called God's friend.

To have life that is truly life, to have our name written in the book of life, is to be known by God—to be alive to and recognized by Him, to not be forgotten as just another part of the present natural creation like a speck of dust or a leaf on a tree, a goldfish, or any of the billions of humans who have ever existed then died, to be remembered no more because their memory just fades away.

That's the reason His sons are being redeemed, because they're not forgotten like everything else that has run its cycle then becomes forgotten because it just melts back into the creation it sprung up from out of. Everyone thinks they're good, which is the very curse of the nature they're a slave to—they all collapse inward on themselves and their own craving to be good and right and contained (their own self-righteousness), so they can't get out of that black hole that keeps sucking them in, loving themselves and those who look like them because they share the same DNA, or those who agree with them because they reinforce the same lies—those who can promote their cause of promoting their cause.

The tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

The one who kept His sabbaths holy, who obeyed His laws and decrees showed God that he loved Him enough to suffer by refraining from what he wanted to do, which was the opposite of what the nation did, which enraged God so many times—seen especially in these Ezekiel chapters. It's hard for the human to do what's right. First, though, he has to know what's right versus what's wrong. The mere men will never know what's right or wrong because they don't have eyes to see nor ears to hear. They think and assume they know the way to God, but we know they just don't know, because it's not available for them to know. Sure it may be unfair from the perspective of all the humans who are not chosen to know, but the humans don't matter—God matters, what He wants and desires matters. His family of sons matters, since they are His ultimate reason and purpose for this present, temporary creation. That's why He loves Jesus, because Jesus put off the way of the humans, the way of the natural, dying creation, the way of the animal—tending to his own needs and desires—and instead cared more about what God wanted than his own needs.

To become a son of God, one must first know right versus wrong. The ironic perfection is that what's wrong is everything about the humans and the ways that they naturally are because of the instincts that are in them. Since they all are naturally bound up to those tendencies, needs, urges, cravings and instincts—what creates their perspective—they can never see that they are what's wrong, that the devil, the adversary, the serpent is the nature that inhabits them, so it is them. You are what you're led by, and in turn that defines you. So what the humans can only do is look for the bad god outside of them—some devil, something evil other than themselves. The human way is to identify what's less and bad, and separate our self from it in that egotistical way, because we have the instinctual craving to be better than the others, more right than they are—self-justified by being the one who's right. Without the lesser, the one who's wrong, we can't be better, the one who's right.

God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.

The sons, when learning right from wrong, see that they are what's wrong—their own nature and identity as a human with all their own human tendencies and perspectives—and they have to separate themselves from that condition of being merely another dead animal to God. In order to do that, they have to separate themselves from what keeps feeding that "old man," as Paul termed it, so they can learn the new way of being able to start knowing their new Father.

The copy and warning for the sons is God's insistent commands and warnings to the Israelites to completely destroy the inhabitants, along with their ways and culture (the culture of idolatry and foreign gods), of the land into which He was delivering them. If they didn't do that, it would come back into their lives and pollute them, turning their hearts away from God, never to learn His ways, become holy and consecrated to Him, for His purpose, as His people who are unlike all the others.

On the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho the LORD said to Moses,  "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'When you cross the Jordan into Canaan, drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images and their cast idols, and demolish all their high places.

But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live. And then I will do to you what I plan to do to them.' "

Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the aliens living among you must not do any of these detestable things, for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.

Everyone who does any of these detestable things--such persons must be cut off from their people. Keep my requirements and do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came and do not defile yourselves with them. I am the LORD your God.

The LORD said to Moses,  "Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: 'Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.' "

The copy of the Israelites is to show that God desires to have a group of humans who are different, separated and unlike all the other humans. He wanted them specifically to be His people, to not continually go running after all the things that everyone else who are not His people run after. The Israelites couldn't do it on the whole, because what was instinctually in them was stronger than their desire to please God and be that holy, separated people. So He declared, just as they were going in to the captivity, how He would accomplish that, through a new and better covenant:

"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people."

The Israelites were the copy of the sons of God who were born after the firstborn Son of God—after his likeness and after he became One with the Father. That Son brought the new way that God would deal with His people, not as a fierce angry God, but a Father who wanted His sons close to Him so He could love and enjoy them, be near them, and them Him. The new way would not be like the old way.

It will not be as it was: The lowly will be exalted and the exalted will be brought low. A ruin! A ruin! I will make it a ruin! It will not be restored until he comes to whom it rightfully belongs; to him I will give it.

And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD—and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.

What is being holy, and why did God want that? Being separated from what is wrong, evil and bad is necessary in order to learn what is good and right. Israel was nothing when God came to her, not even a nation with its own land, but a huge group of slaves. They didn't know God nor His ways when He came to her and took her for His own, as per Ezekiel 16. All they knew they learned in Egypt, from their old father and master. God claimed that ragtag group of nothings for His own, because He loves the lowly and detestable things and He's against the humans and their systems of valuing people and things. He pulled them out from Egypt, desiring to deliver them to the place where He could teach them how to learn the new ways, His ways, and unlearn the old ways, of their old father. He wanted to live with them in peace, and give them all they wanted; and forget about all the ways they had known before so that He could teach them how to be a proper people, holy and consecrated to Him, chosen unlike any other people.

However, they rejected His ways, and allowed themselves to be continually exposed to the old ways, even though they had been warned over and over that exposure to that element would lead to the contamination of what God desires to not be contaminated; it would lead to them loving and following after God's enemy rather than Him. Therefore they were continually commanded to separate themselves, to pull themselves away from the contaminating forces so they could be sanctified, made holy and set apart to God as His holy people, so they could learn to be His people, and learn His ways and abandon the old ways, what is detestable to Him.

King Solomon loved many foreign women...They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, "You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods." Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love.

As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been.

The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight."

The deceitfulness of wealth, the love of money, the craving to worship the creation (women, sexuality), the need to be self-contained, self-righteous and independent, arrogant and presumptuous about God. These are some of the core of what is naturally in the humans to be, because of that nature that was "put on" to them in Genesis 3. The sons have to learn first of all what evil is before they can know what good is, because evil is them, the nature that is naturally in them to define them as mere animals. The sons of God aren't just magically transported to a place and condition of bliss once they're born to God. Just like Jesus, they have to learn to reject the wrong and accept the right. Since they are what's wrong, they have to reject themselves, hate themselves and what they see they are, because of the teaching of the word that's in them.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.

But this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.

To hate my life is to hate my self and what I naturally am, because I see I am what God hates, what can never come near Him, what can never be brought into His presence because I am unclean and evil. The humans who don't have eyes that can see what God wants them to see, because He doesn't want them to turn and be healed, will say that they are bad and evil, "sinners from birth," but they don't believe it. They can't, because they can't see what that means. They have taken the words that weren't meant for them, and adopted those words for themselves, and so presumed to know what they mean. Even though they might say the words, they will still, in their heart, believe that they're good and righteous, which will come out in various ways. That is because they are bound to that slavery of only serving and loving themselves, which precludes them from ever seeing, turning, being healed, then being brought near to God, as close as a dearly loved child. That is the sinful nature, the animal nature, which can only be detected by those who are given eyes to see it. Otherwise, the humans will just continue to assume that the sinful nature is what the "bad people" do, the others, who are not like them, that they can escape from it just because they think they're privileged in some bizarre way.

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

As God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

We can observe some of the humans taking these verses as commands for themselves, trying to adopt and institute them with their own natural abilities, with what is naturally inside them, because they haven't learned that they are what's evil. We see that when even the slightest thing comes up, the love they've attempted to adopt goes right down the turlet and what they are, in their heart, comes out. The good, loving imitators of God—as per Paul's exhortation not to them but a totally distinct group of people who actually were the people of God—turn into barbaric animals who can only act according to what they are, in their hearts.

He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.

The idea is that that condition which existed in the first century, when God and Jesus, as the only eternal spirit, lived in the bodies of men—to whom Paul's exhortations were intended—was taken out of the world. Because of that, one cannot just pick up the words and apply them to ones' self as though that condition were actually still here and available. That's a very important thing for God's sons to understand; otherwise one can only be led by lies and presumptions, which all of the self-appointed leaders are obviously led by. Otherwise, what they have wouldn't look like such a lie.

God's sons don't appoint themselves to anything, and certainly don't presume to stand up in front of a group of animals and teach them man made lies about how to get to God. They know that the way to God is secret, and is revealed to those whom God has chosen, not them. They could only reinforce what's bad in the other animals, the animal nature which serves to keep all of the humans separated from God. That way, He can choose whom He wants to be brought near to Him, while the rest of them remain separated from Him, so they don't defile the temple, the family, what's good and holy, where He lives. Nobody wants a house full of rats and wild dogs with their feces and garbage strewn about, especially God. The animal nature is how He assures that doesn't happen.

The sons of God learn the new way, and learn to reject the old way, the way that everyone else is hanging onto so tightly. They have to see that they are what God hates, because they are unclean animals, and what keeps them that way is continually allowing themselves to be led by that old nature, allowing themselves to continue to let the others reinforce that in them, by exposing themselves to it and to those who can only contaminate them, never bring them into God's presence. There is a warning to the first century believers, who thought they could be God's people, yet still love and run after the things the humans love and run after:

These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to vomit you out of my mouth.

You say, `I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.

Going back to OT salvation, God says that He desired His people to keep His sabbaths holy so that this could be a sign between Him and His people That sign was that they were different than all the other nations, that there was only One God, whom they worshipped, served and loved—unlike all the other nations around them. They couldn't help themselves, though, and did the opposite of what God wanted. Instead of being different than the other nations, they became like them. Instead of worshipping, serving and loving God; they worshipped, served and loved the gods of the nations that they were supposed to be different than.

You say, "We want to be like the nations, like the peoples of the world, who serve wood and stone."

Instead of loving God with all their heart, mind soul and strength, and their Israelite brothers as themselves; they loved and served the gods of the nations around them, they pleased themselves and did whatever pleased them, and exploited their brothers practicing injustice in the land, for their own gain. Instead of caring for and lifting up the poor, the widow and the orphan, they tossed them aside and considered them nothing, like rubbish, because these people couldn't benefit them, couldn't serve them in promoting themselves.

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

The new covenant brought a new sign with it, which was an extension, enhancement and perfection of the OT sign, what was contained within the law, but hardly recognized because the pull of the animal to serve and love itself was too strong. God lived in the bodies of His sons in the first century, because He wanted to live in a place of peace with them, in their midst without all the crap of the animal. The attitude of love for their brothers, the other ones whom God was also living in, was the opposite of what the animal is and does. Love brings peace in the house of God, whereas the animal always wants to be first, best, better, stronger, smarter, righter than the other. That is the way of man.

It was only because of the love of God for His family of sons that He did this, which is yet another pointing to the greatest thing, when death is finally destroyed, when the animal's influence is not able to come in and create chaos in God's house, between His sons. Their love for each other will be good, and perfected because the evil will be rooted out from their midst and they will no longer have to serve it and be influenced by it. Then there will be peace in God's house. In that sense God's sons are urged by the leaders of God's sons in the NT to be that living copy of God's ultimate will and desire, what will be one day.

Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.

Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.