Ask Yourself: Where Is His Glory?

Posted on December 23, 2018 by ehurst

Tonight I had a conversation with a friend about abortion.

This is something where we can apply the biblical process of multi-level moral reasoning. Reduced to it’s bottom line in Biblical Law, it’s nobody’s business but the mother and her family what happens to her babies. So the mere presence of a civil law that declares the government the owner of all children is an abomination to God.

But such is the legal principle in Western nations: The state asserts the ultimate claim over every person as if they were an asset managed by the government. In divine justice, we treat civil law as a tactical issue. God requires us to do what we can to stay below the radar, but in the final analysis, we don’t take the moral posturing seriously. American law and government in particular is a hideous nasty heathen mess.

If we really felt it was necessary to change how Americans act regarding abortion, then we cannot enact laws and think we are done with it. That didn’t work too well a century ago when abortion was illegal. You cannot make laws that ignore the cultural milieu under which people live. To change American attitudes about abortion requires a very radical and thorough change in the culture, which means seizing control over the education process (among other things). That it itself violates Biblical Law, but we can at least recognize that this is what we have to work with right now.

Of course, if you only want to change the government’s policy, then you need to get a substantial number of people willing to say with full conviction that “abortion is murder.” Push that button without mercy with rallies, bumper stickers and on every social media service. Treat every abortion doctor as a murderer; accuse them as much and harass them without mercy. Organize boycotts and lawsuits in pursuit of this rallying cry and defend it tooth and nail. Make it sorrowful and do that thing with baby coffins, etc., in mass rallies. This is the one thing the pro-abortion people fear most.

In fact, when the pro-life folks were doing that a few decades ago, the pro-abortion folks were careful to infiltrate the pro-life institutions and raise a moral complaint against such a vicious attack. The game of politics is dirty and ugly and you have to steel yourself and your organizations against it. That’s a very tall order, but it can be done.

And for any other political agenda like that: screw the rules. It’s the same as law and government. It’s just a tactical consideration. It means making yourself unassailable, with leadership that has nothing to gain except the sheer conviction that this must be done. Politics doesn’t require money; it requires an army of people with conviction who will sacrifice personally. Viciously attack as a murderer anyone who dares politically support “abortion rights” and push right up to the fringes of what is legal. Edit: Anything less than this is frivolous nonsense that we all know accomplishes nothing.

Do you see how it works? I would never join a pro-life movement, but I can tell you what would work because it’s a matter of understanding reality from the heart. I can also tell you that it won’t work for very long unless it is the one big issue with churches and so forth, because that’s how political activism works. Once you commit to something like that, it has to be your forever trademark issue and you have to keep your army motivated for it. And when I explained all of that, I would also explain how that is not the way God wants us to do things.

Given the exceeding high level of corruption in this country, the best course of action is to withdraw as much as is practical and turn it all over to God. We already know He’s turned Satan loose on America. We’ve got better things to do than waste resources on something that cannot bring God the glory. If we could conquer this world, we would know better than to want something that is so hopeless.

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Teachings of Jesus — Luke 13:1-9

Posted on December 22, 2018 by ehurst

We have two items addressing the same issue: tragic fates and bearing fruit. Who could forget the warning from Isaiah, about God’s vineyard bearing no fruit? The Covenant was supposed to make the nation so winsome that other peoples would want to hear the Word of God.

While Jesus was teaching a group of people, someone brought fresh news of events elsewhere. It was likely some Pharisees and this was yet another test of Jesus’ orthodoxy. Noteworthy was the story of Pilate’s soldiers slaughtering a bunch of Galileans, mixing their blood with that of some ritual sacrifices. We have no external historical record of this, so we can’t add any context, such as where this took place, when or any part of why. The point here is that it was a tragic and unexpected death for the Galileans involved. The question on their minds was implied by the context of Jesus teaching on repentance.

Jesus asked whether these Pharisees imagined somehow that these Galileans must have angered God more than any other Galileans. It’s a subtle dig at the self-righteous viewpoint of your average Pharisee. It’s the same nonsense that Job faced: His friends insisted that your physical fate was directly tied to God’s favor. If things are okay for you, it must be because of God’s favor; human suffering was proof of God’s disfavor.

To this Jesus replied that they should not be fooled by the immediacy of the timing. God is not a slot machine paying off with good or bad right after you pulled the lever. The whole nation deserved to die just like those Galileans. It was time they repented and made ready to face their Messiah.

Jesus then compared that story with a similar event in Jerusalem, when eighteen folks by the Pool of Siloam died because a tower there fell on them. Were they somehow worse sinners than anyone else in the city? By no means; everyone in the nation deserved such a fate. The Pharisees had arrogantly rejected the message of John the Baptist, the same message Jesus proclaimed since His baptism at the hands of John. They were convinced they had God over a barrel.

So Jesus told another parable with not-so-subtle digs at the Pharisees as self-proclaimed religious leaders of the Jewish nation. Since when would a vineyard owner waste precious ground space with a fig tree? Only as a frivolous hobby. And in the past three years when God was expecting fruit, it bore nothing. Wild fig trees did better than that. Of course, the three years was meaningful if we can agree that Jesus’ ministry lasted that long. All this invested effort and the fig tree of Judea was not responding to the favorable treatment.

Should God not deal with it now and get it over with? No, says the vine-dresser Jesus. Give us just a little more time. Let’s fertilize it with more miracles and water it with more teachings and if in this last year it does not respond, then cut it down. There will be no excuse at that point.

The Pharisees would have caught onto this immediately. It wasn’t so much Judea that was doomed, but the Pharisees who intruded in the nation with their promises of fruitfulness that competed with the rest of God’s vineyard. But they produced nothing that God found useful. Their time was short. They were hardly any better than the slaughtered Galileans or those unfortunates at the Pool of Siloam. Jesus was prophesying of their doom.

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Faith, Religion and Life

Posted on December 22, 2018 by ehurst

Faith is the soul’s response to a touch from God. Religion is the implementation of what faith demands.

Our religion is called Radix Fidem. You’ll search in vain in our documents or on this blog for any kind of prescribed orthodoxy or orthopraxy. We take the approach that those are details to be worked out between you and God.

We do offer teachings that typically help American Christians start on the long journey of faith, and these teachings sometimes help folks in other cultures, too. We offer the various ways we approach it ourselves, not as a model, but as clues to how you can approach the question of how to do religion. We offer a record of some of our thought processes and some of our actions in pursuit of faith. They constitute recommendations, but always with the warning that you truly must have your own inner drive. If these things we recommend don’t resonate with your own faith, try something else.

We know that faith works through our minds by helping us recognize the fingerprints and footprints of God. You’ll run across things to which your heart will leap with joy because it reminds you of your Savior. We have full confidence in His power and inclination to guide those in communion with Him.

He doesn’t need us, but loves to use us. Nothing is more blissful than to make ourselves available. A part of that bliss is sharing our faith with each other. If you tell us you are Christ’s, we’ll take you seriously. We will then look for clues that help us find a common ground for sharing faith. Mine are that you give evidence of respect for Scripture and that you can exhibit some communal warmth — love His Word and His people. Worshiping together comes first; working together is optional.

It depends on each of us to discern what God has called us to do. Then we must discern with whom we can do it together and where the boundaries are. Boundaries are essential for your identity in Christ; love isn’t just a feeling. You must do what Christ has called you to do, and love means first and foremost being faithful to your Lord. You cannot love someone effectively without a clear sense of who you are. If that means taking a path and actions someone can’t share, that doesn’t mean you don’t love that person. It means God didn’t intend you to walk the same path.

Don’t use mere emotional warmth as an excuse to pull someone off their mission. Compare notes, but never assume your path is the only right one for everyone. And don’t be embarrassed if the paths cross, and then later part again. That’s in God’s hands; you focus on obeying for yourself.

So we don’t debate religion, only compare notes on how it works for us in this life. And we exclude folks who can’t tolerate us, for as long as they can’t tolerate our choices. There’s nothing to gain from the standard Western approach of trying to unify through false uniformity. There is truly nothing in the world that we need to accomplish; we are striving to escape this world. We live with the fire of the Spirit to burn away the sins of his fallen existence.

Yet we know that the Lord is pleased to leave us here for a time, with a foot in both worlds. That’s only so that we can shine His glory to others who need to see it. Everyone deserves a chance to see His glory, the one and only thing that is anyone’s real interest. That’s the focus of our lives here.

You can belong to this online parish — Kiln of the Soul — simply by tolerating me as elder. You can belong to our religion — Radix Fidem — by embracing our unique approach to religion. It helps if you tell us about it, but that’s up to you. Announce it or don’t; you and the Lord can decide without our input. Otherwise you are free to hang around as much as you like.

What we really want to see is you prospering in the Lord by seizing your divine heritage on the way to our final journey Home.

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The Shape of American Christian Religion

Posted on December 21, 2018 by ehurst

I’ve seen this up close and personal, so it’s not just wild propaganda condensed from news sources. I’ve worked on staff of churches and been involved in denominational politics with several different backgrounds.

The big and successful churches today have taken the entrepreneurial path. Their product is entertainment that provides a distinct religious feel to it. The product varies across a wide spectrum of theological backgrounds, but the basic business plan is the same.

One critical element is to engage in worship that squelches individual expression from anyone except the approved professional performers. The only teaching and training activities are those that are carefully structured to keep a tight focus on the entertainment aspect. Each one has their founding curriculum that is inserted back into everything. It’s all designed to distract and dampen the urging from the Holy Spirit to be more spiritually active. The only volunteer activities permitted in these churches are pretty lightweight stuff, such as facility setup, moving chairs and tables, and the like.

In these churches, the entire message can be summed up as a distinctly middle class cultural form of Christian religion. The preachers will pretend to be thought provoking, but the whole purpose is to dumb down the meaning of spirituality, and to numb people from feeling drawn into an independent path. It’s all about keeping that captive audience, their enthusiasm, their money and free advertising. All of them strive to capture celebrities that raise the organization’s public profile.

On top of this, most of the big religious entertainment franchises have a political agenda. How honestly they admit to their agenda varies widely. There is a particular group of these organizations with a very sinister, almost secret agenda that his hidden behind the scenes. Their leadership have deep connections to a series of para-church organizations that mimic the kind of shell game you get with front companies and deceptively named advocacy groups.

There is a large collection of these groups who bear a common agenda that has been around for centuries, in one form or another. They are planning to simply take over all governments of the world. They honestly believe this is the gospel message. The intent is to shape society and culture so that the a critical mass of the population will be on board with this political agenda. From the church as a core activity of influence, they have invested in private schools from day care up through postgraduate levels. The intent is to get their people into the right places to exert leverage on national and international policy.

Up to a certain point, this is all simply competing with other cultural and political agendas. The problem is that it hijacks the gospel message to do it. While the names and branding of these religious groups have come and gone over the centuries, with each succeeding generation the agenda becomes more secretive and elitist. They are keeping alive a brand of Christian religion that is progressively shallower and more worldly in focus.

Thus, the likelihood of corruption in the leadership increases. We have seen large evangelical church franchises engage in child sex trafficking, drug running, money laundering, and influence peddling. Some have been offering cover for the likes of the CIA in so-called mission areas for the purpose of assassinations and worse. Even where individual pastors and other major figures have generally good intentions and clean hands, they are still suckered into belonging to these political agendas and providing cover for the darker agenda.

Older generation churches and denominations are being eclipsed by this entrepreneurial brand of religion. The older groups aren’t necessarily going away, but their numbers are declining and their influence fading into irrelevance. This is the future of Christian religion in America, in particular.

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He Enjoys Our Company

Posted on December 20, 2018 by ehurst

Faith is a question of perception, getting your head lined up with your convictions. The fallen fleshly nature rejects the leadership of revelation. By design, we have the volitional means to overcome the resistance of the flesh. We have within us a will that can be aligned with revelation. It already has the wisdom of Heaven encoded like DNA, so it requires only that we exercise our will to focus on what God has burned into our souls and stop allowing the fleshly nature to usurp His lordship.

We don’t do it in the strength of our flesh. Redemption is Him pointing out to us the resources He already left stored inside of us. They came from Him. The meaning of Zechariah 4:6 is that it does not rest on human capabilities either as a virtuoso or by concerted exercise of authority. Whatever power resides within us that is actually able is not from those sources, but came from Him as a gift.

The Bible says things that are difficult to understand from the fleshly level. When you read it, you are supposed to be processing with your heart, not merely your intellect. The heart is able to fill in the blanks, the gap between what the words say and what God intended for us to do with it. Why is there a gap? Because we are fallen. The process of recording divine revelation into writing necessarily leaves that gap because the people recording it and the people transmitting it are still fallen. Thus, a fallen reader coming to that text has to face that gap.

We are fallen, but we are not abandoned. The path back to Eden is not closed; it is guarded. The guard is the revelation of God addressing our fallen nature. We must allow the Flaming Sword of Truth to penetrate our souls. That’s presented as a parable for a reason; it requires you process the whole thing in your heart, not your mind. That’s why Jesus used parables — to sift out those who were conscious of their divine heritage from those who refused to accept the demands. You must accept your fallen state and your culpability. You must agree with God regarding His declarations, His revelation of what is good and evil. You can’t keep going back to the Tree of Knowledge and asserting your fleshly nature as capable of reasoning it all out.

The issue is not whether you belong in Eden. You do belong, but you don’t get access on your terms. We have to submit to God for a restoration of what He designed.

This is why we say that eternal salvation is totally in the hands of God. It does not rest on historical events; it is not a matter of getting it, but of recognizing something that was true eternally. Spiritual heritage as a Child of God was established before you were born; it took place outside the time-space continuum. What happens inside that continuum is your recognition of it, if it applies to you. No one but God knows and He’s not telling anyone else but you.

You don’t “get saved” in the sense of obtaining but in the sense of waking up to eternal reality. You then set out to discover the implications, the full heritage. So our focus in evangelism is helping people discover the heritage they already own. The single best way to start that process is by us living that heritage. That means we walk around with our consciousness focused in our hearts; we live by your convictions. We conform to the character of God as expressed in His Word, particularly in the Law Covenants. We read the Bible from the heart and perceive the living reality hidden behind the words recorded there. It makes you a fully participating member of divine Creation.

This will call out to those around you, though you cannot predict whom and when. The timing is in God’s hands, working to break through the fleshly resistance in those people. At some point, there may well be some personal interaction, though there doesn’t have to be. God can speak and influence people in ways we cannot possibly comprehend. But at least some of those folks will need to interact with us in order to recognize the truth. There is no magic formula, no universal orthodox mental process for this. This is not a memorized process, with all the right words representing the right ideas. It’s just you and I as living manifestations of divine truth doing whatever it is God called us to do. The mental process is unique to each individual.

The key is their volition in response to the divine call. It’s not our words and actions; our testimony is used by God, but not essential. It’s His invitation for us to participate in His glory, as any father would delight in letting His children play along with His work. It’s actually more work for Him that way, but it’s what pleases Him. He’s extravagant with His resources for the joy of having our company.

Our teaching in Radix Fidem is not about getting folks saved, but of helping them discover their divine heritage, whatever that may be. We focus on how to live in this world, not whether anyone of us has somehow “obtained” spiritual birth. There is nothing anyone can do either way on the human level to affect the eternal destiny of anyone. It’s not about avoiding damnation as most people think about such words. It’s about seizing the divine inheritance in this world. If someone lacks the full use of their divine nature, they won’t be able to do this, and they won’t be able to pretend for very long. But the question on which we focus is seeking the ways we can help people discover that power if God has connected them to it.

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Faith Is Faith

Posted on December 19, 2018 by ehurst

Let’s clarify something: What we here at Kiln of the Soul call “heart-led” is synonymous with genuine faith. The problem is that most Christians use the word “faith” with a different meaning, different from what we mean and different from how the Bible uses the word.

You can spout all kinds of definitions for the word “faith” and still have a false image in your mind. Regardless of what people say, they tend to act as if faith is a matter of what’s in your head. That’s just plain wrong. Faith requires your mind to implement, but faith itself is a synonym for commitment, trust and confidence to act. The Bible says faith is a matter of what’s in your heart, and in biblical terms, “heart” is synonymous with your will, not your emotions or some reservoir of sentiment. Heart is the repository of convictions and faith. That meaning is present in English speaking cultures, but it’s muddied by the often unconscious assumption that it includes sentiment or emotion.

Sometimes American Christians can stumble into genuine faith, and miracles happen. The whole point is that faith is what drives you to face God and make bold requests. It drives you to seize His promises and act, which is where your mind comes in. Your brain organizes and implements what faith asserts is so. Most believers can do that some of the time.

We here at Kiln of the Soul parish do not claim to be the only believers with genuine faith. We do claim to have a better grasp on the biblical meaning of the word, simply because we consciously dismiss Western thinking about such things. We start from a different set of assumptions about reality and what words mean. We try to pull the process out into the open, make it conscious, by digging into the details of how Hebrew epistemology in the Bible is radically different from what is underlying the West. And we see strong evidence that the Western part of “Western Christianity” is a deep corruption of Christianity.

If there is any good thing we can do to help Western believers, it is teaching them to stop relying on human reason and to fully jump onto faith and conviction. That task is a lot easier if you take the time to become conscious of what’s involved in creating this false reliance on human reason. The Western churches are loaded with references to making faith reasonable, and that is a primary mistake, a lie from Satan. Faith is inherently unreasonable, and makes preposterous demands of you.

You hold your opinions; your convictions hold you. Your opinions are the product of reason. Convictions and faith are a divine gift lodged in your heart. This is our job: Helping people who have some faith to put their full trust in it. We are promoting Biblical Mysticism, because “mysticism” in the Bible is a distrust in human reason.

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What Does It Say?

Posted on December 18, 2018 by ehurst

I’m not going to tell you there’s no place for showmanship. When the mission of glorifying God requires drawing attention to your physical presence, then do so. However, this is not the norm.

How many times have we been told in the New Testament to tone it down and fly below the radar? Let’s see: 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12; 1 Timothy 2:1-4 & 9; 1 Peter 3:3-4. We already know the Old Testament set modesty as the standard; both Isaiah 3:16-24 and Jeremiah 40:30 portray the obsession with finery as the path to destruction. In other words, it’s not that having nice stuff is wrong, but that we must guard against the very human tendency to wave it around and become boastful.

It boils down to taking yourself too seriously. Next to that is the problem of faithfulness in stewardship. We assert boldly that God owns us and all our stuff. There’s nothing wrong with having a few quirks about how you decorate things you use, but the issue is what these things say to our world about where our treasure is.

You can’t buy a Lamborghini while testifying to an otherworldly faith. This is naked “prosperity gospel” greed. There’s no way we can set precise boundaries, but it’s not too hard to find some common sense in car choices if you are seeking to avoid the extremes.

I admit that I am embarrassed how things turned out with that XPS 13 I bought a while back with donations I requested. If I were on the road a lot, it would be perfect, but it’s too small for extended use at home. It turns out a far cheaper Inspiron 15-3000 is better for that use, and that one sees far more action than the XPS. I’ll keep the XPS until God shows me what it’s really good for, but I could have made a much better choice at the time.

If the thing your ministry needs is expensive because of actual useful quality, that’s the way it goes. For example, in order for a diesel engine to work at all, it has to be expensively built because of the extreme pressures generated inside the cylinders. So it’s common for diesel engines to run for a million miles in a vehicle, and such vehicles are designed and priced accordingly. But it’s not critical to the way a vehicle serves its purpose to have it excessively ornate with leather interior and exotic wood trim.

But it’s just as easy to go to the other extreme in reverse pride about how austere and grouchy you can be. Nobody says you have to wear some particular uniform with funeral colors. The whole point is calling attention to your faith, not your material existence. The proper decor is the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s you being the self God made you to be. It’s obvious conspicuous consumption is aimed only at flaunting material wealth and suggesting others are all “little people.”

A critical part of our divine calling is helping the little people find the abundant life of walking in Christ.

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Odds and Ends 04

Posted on December 17, 2018 by ehurst

I have a theory about cravings. You know that body fat is deposited in layers, built up based on whatever was happening in our bodies at the time that wasn’t balanced out. Some of the garbage in our systems at that time is stored in the fat. When you start to lose weight, that garbage comes back out. If you find yourself hit with sudden cravings, it’s because your body is releasing from the fat certain markers that register in the brain as a craving for whatever you ate that helped build that lard at the time.

Anyway, I can tell when fat is being burned in my system by the odd flashes of craving for things I ate in the past, and refuse to eat now.

At least once every week in the past couple of months, I’ve ridden my bike out to Draper Lake. It’s not as if there has been no progress at all the bikeway, but darned little of it. You can see the evidence of work alright, but nothing like the first few months when the project started. There were easily 50 workers running all that equipment then; now I see evidence of about a dozen. It will certainly not make the window of completion at the first of the year.

I tested OpenSUSE on my Inspiron laptop, and it simply could not handle the task of hibernation. I also tested PCLinuxOS, but it has way too little software. Lots of stuff I depend on was not included, nor was there any access to the build libraries so I could compile the stuff I wanted. For now, this laptop is running Mint 19.1 Beta.

I want to develop a curriculum without actually writing a book. The objective is to counter some bad theology that is common among Western evangelicals. I’ve done it sort of piecemeal here on the blog, but I think we need to consider a more cohesive approach. I’d rather not do it alone, so if you are interested in helping, just point out theology issues that should be included. I’m not going to write a new theology; part of the problem is trying to herd everyone into one set of ideas. In this case, all we need to do is counter some bad attempts to do that.

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Demonic Mythology of the Mind

Posted on December 16, 2018 by ehurst

One of the biggest flaws in Western Christian thinking is to externalize and project moral conflict outside of self. The idea that all moral conflict is outside of oneself permits the deeply false model of internal problems as “illness.” The illness model excuses moral failure; if you are “sick” then it’s not your fault. This locks us into a false frame of reference that excludes spiritual discernment.

This also brings a crippled image to so-called “spiritual warfare.” People get all militant and verbally forceful, and we see lots of “spiritual heroes” supposedly with special talents for effectiveness in dealing with problems. This is not the way things are depicted in the Bible, but it’s read back into the Bible.

A critical element in deliverance from demons is that the victim hears and recognizes the word of truth in the midst of their internal storms. The ritual of demanding demons leave serves the purpose of awakening the moral awareness of the person who is suffering demonic presence. I realize it doesn’t sound like that when you read stories in the Bible about casting out demons. There is probably nothing I can do to convince your mind this is how it works, but I’m trusting your heart to catch the truth of this. Demon possession doesn’t work like most Western minds imagine it, because Western thinking is poisoned with a pagan mythology inherited from the heathen Germanic tribes that conquered the Roman Empire. It’s half the foundation of Western thinking.

Demon possession is fundamentally an issue of moral volition. Demons are quite happy to seize any authority you yield to them in your soul. Granted, your human development can be crippled badly by your environment and can set you up for failure, but there is something inside of you that is attuned to recognize divine truth. It’s in the dynamics of that field of sensory activity in the heart that recognizes the presence and authority of another heart that has the right answer. So the real miracle here is not the authority of the words spoken in some orthodox ritual of precise language, but the resonance of two humans communicating on the heart level.

Seeking God’s face and gaining moral clarity changes the resonance of your heart, that 10-15 foot field of quasi-electromagnetic energy our hearts exude. Actually, the field stretches off into infinity, but the measurable activity is detected at 10-15 feet with current technology. Either way, when someone surrendered from the heart to Christ comes within proximity of someone in need, that someone in need is capable of recognizing it.

Demons naturally recognize it, and they do what they can to bias their captives from hearing the truth. But demons can’t change what God has made, and reality actively supports those who are committed to Christ. So when a true believer announces authoritatively that the victim need not remain captive, it really depends on the victim to seize the moment of God’s mercy or to reject it.

Even with all this explanation, I’m not giving you a genuine clinical description; I’m portraying it in a fashion that should help you be an agent of God’s miraculous powers. I’m striving to counteract a very bad imagery, false parables, and hoping your heart will receive my words as a better representation of truth. And it really is between you and God. I’m not going to pretend I can authoritatively assert anything that doesn’t depend on the Holy Spirit actively breathing it into your soul. Don’t do this by your mind; let it learn from the heart.

This is the whole issue. If we saddle the mind with figuring it all out, we will get it wrong and keep doors open for the demons to come and inhabit our souls. Let the heart establish what’s true and the mind work out the implications. That’s how it should work. Rituals are not magical incantations of “word power,” but are calls to the soul. All I can do is seek to awaken some moral awareness inside of you; you are the one to cast out your own demons. If your faith rises because it resonates with your convictions, then you win.

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Teachings of Jesus — Luke 12:54-59

Posted on December 15, 2018 by ehurst

This continues the previous lesson from last week. Jesus pointed out that His coming as Messiah would polarize those under the Old Covenant and separate out those who would belong to the New Covenant. His Covenant would restore what all previous covenants should have done, but the new age He would usher in would not do away with the fallen context of human existence.

He reuses a parable from previous times teaching the crowds, about being able to predict the weather conditions. After many generations in that land, the people had learned that when clouds rose up in the western sky, over the Mediterranean Sea, it would rain later that day. If the wind was from the south where the Sinai was, it meant a hot dry day. You would think they had learned to recognize the weather like old friends and enemies by their faces, easily discerned at a great distance.

But this was pretending to be something they weren’t. They knew the weather patterns in that land, but didn’t recognize the hand of God when it was moving. That’s because they didn’t know Him well enough to discern His divine moral character. They certainly didn’t properly judge by His character their own lives. Wasn’t that more important than knowing the weather?

God was calling them to account before establishing the Messianic Kingdom. They were being sifted and judged by His revelation. Like someone being dragged before a judge in civil claims court, it was wise to get to know your adversary. Find out what would appease him before it goes to trial, or the penalty will be strict. Come to terms before it’s too late.

Jesus warned them that most of them were not ready to face the Messiah. They had no moral standing with God as their Father, but were adversaries who had flouted His Law. They had tried to trick Him and play games, but this was serious business. The Kingdom of Messiah would be founded on a heart of faith, and games would not get you past that standard.

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