As Prophet, Jesus represents God to us by preaching the law and delivering the good news of hope to guilty sinners. As Priest, Jesus represents us to God by covering our sin with his blood and offering up a satisfactory sacrifice that is well pleasing to God.

If you’ve spent much time around the zoo in a major city, you’ve likely noticed the numerous warning signs around the property. Such signs are intended to provide visitors with adequate knowledge of the danger of approaching the animals beyond the boundaries established for the general public.
Several years ago when I was in seminary, my wife and I were on a very tight budget and we had to be creative in our approach to date nights. One week, my wife informed me that she had a surprise for me for a date night on Friday evening. She told me how to dress and we also had to pack an overnight bag to take with us. As the weekend approached, I was really wondering what my wife had signed us up for and soon I would find out.
Over dinner at a restaurant, she provided me with the details for our evening. She had seen an advertisement for people to “camp out” for a night in the zoo in Louisville, Kentucky. She had managed to get our camping gear and was fully prepared for an amazing date night. It was an organized event with special behind the scenes opportunities with the animals. After arriving, the staff checked us in and provided us with our evening itinerary. We enjoyed special lessons from biologists and zoologists regarding the animals, their habitat, and dietary needs. Later that evening, as a group, we watched the movie “Ghost in the Darkness” which was fitting for the evening’s venue.
The following morning, we awoke to the calls of African birds and loud peacocks. We were then escorted behind the scenes before the zoo opened to the public to the lion’s habitat. We entered with the staff on the back of the enclosure to watch the staff feed the large male lion. He weighed in at about 450 lbs and had a large dark brown mane that covered the front half of his body. He was in his physical prime. As the staff led us down the hall behind the enclosure the only thing that separated us from the private dwelling place where the lions eat was a hefty chain linked fence. When we entered the hallway, I was at the front of the line in our group and when the male lion saw us—he wasted no time charging the fence. His large paws and teeth hit the fence in full attack mode as he breathed out a loud ear-piercing roar. I was standing no farther than 3 feet from him. It shook my body to the core.
Still to this very day, I have a very healthy respect for the boundaries in the zoo. I have no desire to approach the wild animals within their enclosure. However, when it comes to God who is a consuming fire and dwells in unapproachable glory—we have been given access to draw near to him. Unlike the Old Testament Israelites who were not permitted to approach the presence of God in the thick cloud that encompassed the mountain where Moses was to meet with God (Exodus 19), we are called to approach God, but not apart from Jesus Christ who is our Great High Priest. There is no greater proof of this great access than Jesus’ priestly work on behalf of his people. Jesus is the perfect mediator between sinful man and holy God.
The High Priest and His Work
When God delivered his people out of Egypt and demonstrated his sovereign rule over all nations and thrones—including the high throne of Pharoah, he provided clear prescriptions for how his people were to worship him. Any honest reading of Exodus will conclude that God is very much concerned with how his people approach him in worship.
Every detail of the tabernacle and the worship practices of his people were delivered to Moses and then by Moses to the people of Israel. In Exodus 25, we find the specific blueprint of the ark of the covenant and the mercy seat. In speaking about the mercy seat, God said, “There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.”1
When the entire tabernacle was complete and the furnishings installed as God had directed, the book of Exodus concludes by stating that Moses did all that the LORD had commanded and the tabernacle was erected and the glory of God filled the tent. It was also clearly established that Aaron was to engage in the priestly work inside the tabernacle which would be the plan for the temple in the years to follow. God established the priestly line of the Levites who labored in their service to the LORD. We find these details in the book of Leviticus.
At the heart of the worship of God is the necessity of a sacrifice. The five types of sacrifices mentioned in Leviticus serve different purposes within the religious practices of the Israelites. Each offering has its distinct significance and meaning, playing a crucial role in their relationship with God and the atonement for sin.
The burnt offering was a sacrifice made to seek forgiveness for general sins and to demonstrate complete surrender and dedication to God. It involved offering an entire animal, which was burned on the altar. The act of burning symbolized the complete devotion of the worshiper, acknowledging God’s authority and seeking purification.
The grain offering was a sacrifice made to express gratitude to God for His blessings, particularly related to the harvest. A portion of the grain was burned on the altar as an offering to God, signifying acknowledgment of His provision. The remaining part was given to the priests, emphasizing the importance of supporting the religious leaders and the community.
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Written by Jeffrey A. Tucker |
Saturday, January 13, 2024
The people who threw themselves into Covid controls as the greatest years of their lives are still at it. Hardly a day goes by when there is not a freshly written hit piece on the resistance and efforts to trash those with enough sagacity to see through all the baloney. Far from being rewarded, those who protested and opposed are still living under a cloud that comes with being an enemy of the state. We all know that it is not just about these dumb stickers and these virus controls. There is more going on. 

The train wasn’t scheduled for another 20 minutes, so I had a chance to contemplate the official sign on the door of the huge elevator leading to the platform. It said that only four people are allowed in because we must all practice social distancing. There was a helpful map of the interior of the elevator with stick figures telling people exactly where to stand.
Yes, these stickers are still everywhere. I recall when they first went up, sometime in April 2020. They seemed oddly uniform and appeared even permanent. At the time I thought, oh, this is a huge error because within a few weeks, the error of the whole of this idiocy is going to be known by all. Sadly, my worst fears came true: it was designed to be a permanent feature of our lives.
Same with the strange arrows on the ground telling us which way to walk. They are still everywhere, stuck on the floor, an integral part of the linoleum. If you walk this way, you will infect people, which is why you have to walk that way, which is safe. As for masks, the mandates keep popping up in strange places and strange ways. My inbox fills with pleas for how people can fight this stuff.
The essential message of all these edicts: you are pathogenic, a carrier, poisonous, dangerous, and so is everyone else. Every human person is a disease vector. While it’s fine you are out and about, you must always create a little isolation zone around you such that you have no contact with other human beings.
It’s so odd that no dystopian book or novel ever imagined a plot centered on such a stupid and evil concept. Not even in 1984 or The Hunger Games, or The Matrix or Equilibrium, or Brave New World or Anthem, was it ever imagined that a government would institute a rule that all people in public spaces must stand six feet away in all directions from any other person.
That some government would insist on this was too crazy for even the darkest imaginings of the most pessimistic prognosticator. That 200 governments in the world, at roughly the same time, would go there was unimaginable.
And yet here we are, years after the supposed emergency, and while governments are not enforcing it, for the most part, many are still pushing the practice as the ideal form of human engagement.
Except that we are not doing it. In this train station, no one paid any attention to any of the signage. The exhortations were entirely ignored, even by those who are still masked up (and, one presumes, boosted seven times).
When the moment arrived for people to get into the elevator, a crowd began to pour in, quickly beyond four, then eight, then 12. I stood there shoulder to shoulder with fully 25 other people in one elevator with a sign that demanded only four people get in at any one time.
I sort of wanted to ask the crowd if they saw the sign and what did they think. But that would have been absurd, because, actually, no one even cares.
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It is obvious now, looking back at the post-9/11 and pre-Obergefell era, that the leftward drift of this movement was inevitable. The end of Renn’s “neutral world” and the beginning of a negative world hostile to Christianity began soon after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision in 2015  and accelerated rapidly with Trump’s 2016 victory. Changed circumstances undermined the attractive witness model as previously practiced. The neutral-world ethos could not hold in the negative world; the era of open debate was gone.

I converted to Christ in the year 2000, leaving behind my atheistic contrarianism. I entered American Protestantism completely unaware that something unique was occurring. In the 1980s, Calvinism reemerged as a potent intellectual force in evangelicalism, spearheaded by Baptists John Piper and John MacArthur and Presbyterian R. C. Sproul. In the early 2000s, young Gen X seminary graduates and writers who were influenced by these men became a movement known as the Young, Restless, and Reformed (YRR). New personalities and publishers emerged, and megachurches were formed. Centered on Calvinistic doctrines of salvation, these Baby Boomers and Gen X Calvinists achieved a good deal of theological unity. 
Their cross- and intra-generational unity was most evident in the Together for the Gospel conferences (T4G), which began in 2006 and held every other year. It was organized by four friends, already well-established in their own  circles in the pre-social media days—Mark Dever (Baptist), Ligon Duncan (Presbyterian), Albert Mohler (Baptist), and C.J. Mahaney (Charismatic), along with three invited speakers: Piper, MacArthur, and Sproul. What unified them were belief in biblical inerrancy, male headship of families, and the “five points” of Calvinism, which can be reduced (albeit simplistically) to the traditional Reformed doctrine of predestination. Thus, they were opposed to feminism, modern “critical” biblical scholarship, and the freewill doctrines of Arminianism. The conference grew over the years to include younger pastors such as David Platt (Baptist), Matt Chandler (Baptist), Kevin DeYoung (Presbyterian), Thabiti Anyabwile (Baptist), and others. 
I attended the 2008 T4G in Louisville, Kentucky, seeing the men I had read for several years joyfully sitting on panels together, despite their important differences. This togetherness was real. But it was also entirely a product of the time. It was in the middle of what Reformed writer Aaron Renn has labeled the 20-year “neutral world” period from 1994 to 2014—a world in which Christianity no longer had a privileged status but was not disfavored. Most everyone in these evangelical circles was a political “conservative” or typical evangelical voter, against abortion and homosexual marriage. Nevertheless, on political questions, the YRR leaders approached politics very differently. Piper was an outspoken Christian pacifist who would have even refused to defend his own family against violence. MacArthur regularly proclaimed his sentiment that “government can’t save you.” In contrast, Mohler (along with thePresbyterians) devoted attention to “engaging” the culture. But in the neutral world these differences were seemingly less pertinent; the glue of their unity was opposition to theological liberalism.
The late Timothy Keller also rose in prominence at this time in communicating the Gospel to coastal elites. His neo-Calvinism spread far and wide among the Gen-X world, establishing an ethos centered on “winsomeness” and a “third-way” politics above (not between, so he claimed) the political left and right. 
Under Keller’s influence, the YRR era was not retreatist but activist—pursuing “cultural engagement” by demonstrating that orthodox faith is the key to a coherent, good, and complete life. The purpose of “public theology” was more evangelistic than political; and most adherents, even if they disapproved of “neutrality” language, still approved of the possibility of debate within a shared public square. That is, entering public discourse offered Christians the chance not so much to win politically as to demonstrate their serenity, through a politics that appeared attractive, heavenly, and pleasantly aloof, and devoid of anxiety, overreaction, and anger. To the urban liberal, this was a quirky but safe political stand that checked the boxes on most “social justice” concerns. 
Hence, Christians who followed Keller’s approach could downplay or overlook questions of political power and focus instead on verbal and aesthetic persuasion. The principle regarding politics, especially for followers of Keller, was that political commentary and activism was an extension of “witness,” not fundamentally a means for good political outcomes. Every decision in ministering this witness tended to defer to whether it resulted in making Christianity attractive to non-believing urbanites. Politics was an extension of cultural apologetics, built around “authenticity” as opposed to the kitschy, suburban “seeker-sensitive” movement of the ’90s. The assumption was that secular people will become dissatisfied with the secular identities on offer and look for a coherent alternative. This approach made sense in that neutral world that no longer exists, where the Christian identity was one viable alternative among competing identities.
The Gospel Coalition (TGC), founded in 2005, exemplified this approach. A “coalition” of likeminded mostly neo-Calvinist churches, TGC served mainly to platform rising stars and to establish an elite evangelicalism. TGC’s long-time (and current) editor in chief, Collin Hansen, who wrote the book Young, Restless, Reformed in 2008, credited Keller’s works on “cultural apologetics” as a driver of the movement. Subsequently, the target engagement-audience for TGC (and neo-Calvinist apologetics in general) has always been urbanites, or at least non-rural residents. Few talked about the need for ministries to rural, working-class whites.
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