In the Exodus text below, God’s living Word reveals the terrible situation into which Egypt’s pharaoh placed the children of Israel. Give special attention to the underlined and highlighted portions. Notice what God is revealing. He is expressing His Reality and the close personal involvement of His living, creative Word…that He truly is present and active…for Israel…and for all the rest of His Creation…including us.
God gave free will to each one of us and he will never take it back or revoke it. Nevertheless, His Word continues to work within and around the choices people make and overcomes their evil with His invincible Good. Our ignorance and the free will choices we make because of it cause many destructive effects to take place in time and space. But God’s own free will causes even more things, good and redemptive things, to take place in our world and in our lives:
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for under compulsion he will let them go, and under compulsion he will drive them out of his land.’
“God spoke further to Moses and said to him, ‘I am the Lord; and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My (personal) name, Lord (YHWH), I did not make Myself known to them. I also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they sojourned.
“Furthermore I have heard the groaning of the sons of Israel, because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. Say, therefore, to the sons of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. Then I will take you for My people, and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you to the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession; I am the Lord!’”
“So Moses spoke thus to the sons of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses on account of their despondency and cruel bondage.” (Exodus 6:1-9 Amplification and emphasis added.)
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21)
Can you see what God is revealing? We and those like us are not the important factors. It’s not about us, God’s creatures; it’s about our Creator! It’s true that we are all making one choice after another and creating an enormous sequence of inter-related cause and effect events and results. But God is always working around all of that. So in the end, it’s all about our Creator and how He continues, through His living Word, to fulfill His Plan to Perfection! Everything any of us will ever need, at any level, must and does come from Him. Our well being does not depend on the created wills of people like the pharaoh or on any nation or on any temporary created earthly circumstances we have to face. Nor does it depend on us. No created thing can take God’s place. Ultimately…everything depends on God for its existence and provision. And the well being of every created thing flows ultimately out of God’s Eternal Perfection and His Perfect original creative work and loving Blessing. That’s why God enjoys Perfect, Eternal Sabbath Rest. His work, past, present and future, has been done to Perfection, whether we believe, acknowledge and obey Him and His Word, or not. And that’s also why the Serpent will never succeed. In fact, he has already failed and is waiting to be completely crushed.
The Serpent and his powers of Darkness do their best to interfere with our ability to know God and His Word. They strive to deceive and distract us to make God’s Eternal Word unintelligible and ineffective in our lives. Nevertheless, God reveals that if we remain focused on and obedient to and dependent upon His Word, He will guide and see us through any and all demonic interference and opposition. Nothing they try to do will ever stop God from being God…to those who hear, obey and rely upon His living Word.
“Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.” (Exodus 19:5-6 Emphasis added.)
But notice how, throughout the book of Exodus, Israel, like most of the rest of the world, refuses to take God at His Word. Most continue to disbelieve, reject and back away from God’s living Word. Moses’ generation rejected the Word as He came to them through Moses, just as their original patriarchs, the sons of Jacob, rejected Him as He came to them through Joseph! And after Moses, the future generations will continue to reject God’s Word as He comes to them through the later prophets and their Messiah and through His apostles and disciples of the New (Renewed) Covenant. Nevertheless, He continues to reach out to the whole world even to this present day.
God’s Heart has always been for the Whole World
God does not change. His Perfect Nature continues to move to the perfect fulfillment of His original Plan. He will out-strategize and with His Wisdom, overwhelm any and all created resistance and opposition that dares to try to stand in His way. And because He never changes…He will continue to send His living Word and Holy Spirit to propose Blood Covenant marriage union to every generation of Israel’s children…so that through them, He can reveal Himself to the rest of the world…as He really is.
He continues to tell us that He is All in all…the one and only Source for whatever is real, true and good. He tells us that He is the one who brought all of Creation into being (even the Serpent) and that He is the one who supplies everything any created being in Creation will ever need. The Word of God is everything for all of us. He is here with us to sustain us and carry out His Father’s will on behalf of all Creation.
Long before He was due to appear to Israel as ‘Messiah Yeshua,’ God’s living Word was revealed to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Then He was revealed to the nation of Israel through Moses and his Torah. He did not reveal His true Name to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He identified Himself to them as ‘God Almighty’ (El Shaddai) in Genesis (17:1-2). But now in Exodus, He reveals Himself to Moses using God’s personal Name – ‘YHWH’ (Yehovah or Yahweh). And later, in the fullness of time, God will reveal His living Word as, ‘Yehoshua’ or, in the shortened form, ‘Yeshua’ (Salvation). But regardless of which name God uses through which to reveal Himself…He reveals Himself through His Son…His living Word. And through His Word, God fulfills all of His plans and promises. And from now on, God’s Eternal Word is to be known and identified by us in the Fullness of His revelation, as God has given it to us (Hebrews 1:1-4). From now on, He is to be known as, ‘Yeshua’, the Word of God who was made flesh…and who reigns forever as the risen Lord of Glory. The revelation of the Lord Yeshua, in all of His Resurrection Glory, includes and fulfills everything about Him that God revealed before. From now on we are to know Him in this fullest revelation and manifestation of God’s living Word. We need not remain rooted and stagnant in the earlier revelations of God’s living Word. Now we can know Him in His Fullest revelation…for the rest of eternity!
Through Moses the Word told the Israelites what their God-given identity, purpose and destiny were to be. But the Israelites were only men – created, Serpent-deceived, Sin-corrupted ‘dust.’ These children of Adam were, and are, just like all the others. We have all been blasted by Adam’s original Sin. And, just like cut flowers sitting in a vase, in ourselves, we are all just mortally wounded, helpless, dust. So God stresses that by His living Word and Holy Spirit, He will deal with Israel’s needs and defend her from her enemies. Despite the Serpent’s fierce demonic hatred and malevolent intent against God and His people, and despite the pharaoh’s apparent overwhelming military and economic might, God easily protected and delivered Israel. The pharaoh too was only dust…one among many of the living dead. But God’s Word, that He revealed to the world through Moses…is the Eternal Son of the Living God who created and continues to sustain all things! Nothing in all of Creation, demonic or human, can ever oppose or change or thwart or overcome the Authority of Almighty God’s living Word, regardless of the form or era in which He is revealed by God!
“He (Yeshua, God’s living Word) said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ (Messiah), the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this Rock I will build My Church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. I will give you (who have entrusted yourself to God who is this Rock) the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.’ Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ (Messiah).” (Matthew 16:15-20 Amplification added.)
“For by You I can run upon a troop; by my God I can leap over a wall. As for God, His way is blameless; the Word of the Lord is tested (proven); He is a Shield to all who take refuge in Him. For who is God, besides the Lord? And who is a Rock, besides our God?” (2 Samuel 22:30-32 Amplification and emphasis added.)
“Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes stubble and dry grass collapses into the flame, so their root will become like rot and their blossom blow away as dust; for (like the pharaoh of Egypt) they have rejected the Law (Torah) of the Lord of hosts and despised the Word of the Holy One of Israel.” (Isaiah 5:24 Amplification and emphasis added.)
God used Israel’s helplessness in the face of ‘impossible’ situations, as ‘raw material’ by which to reveal His Word’s Glory to every generation of His chosen people. He requires us all to align our minds, hearts and wills with Him, just as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph aligned their hearts to Him, before us. So through Moses, God is revealing the utter Perfection of His Original Creation and Original Blessing that He gave to Adam and Eve and all their offspring. He is revealing that He abides in His Perfect Eternal Sabbath Rest because His living Word has already done all of the necessary work to cover our every need. Everything has been done for us in advance! Our God is Perfect!
So even from the beginning…the rebellion of the Serpent and his powers of Darkness did not have a chance of success! The Serpent slithered into the trap God’s Love for us had laid for him, before he was even created. The omnipotent Wisdom, Authority and Creativity of Almighty God anticipated and confounded everything Satan would ever do…before Creation took place! And so any human the Serpent manages to deceive and dupe will, just like the pharaoh of Egypt, prove to be powerless to stop God from fulfilling His Covenant promises and applying the already-existent Perfection of His Provision on Israel’s behalf and on behalf of any other people of the Earth who will allow God to graft them into the obedient Remnant of His True Israel.
God’s Perfect Plan continues to Unfold throughout History
This Plan will never change! What God taught to the Fathers…is what Moses and all the prophets and wisdom writers of Israel tried, progressively, to impress on each succeeding generation. And after God’s living Word became flesh and appeared to Israel in the form of Yeshua of Nazareth, he commissioned His apostles and contemporary disciples to inform and align the entire Gentile World with the Fulfillment of what He had revealed in seed form, to the original fathers of the Faith, starting with Genesis.
The message of God’s Salvation will forever be the same. But God has to train Israel’s Remnant first…so that the Torch of His Truth and Salvation can be passed on from generation to generation, with authentic accuracy, precision and faithfulness. And this is what the first century apostles of Yeshua, that first New Covenant generation of God’s True Israelite Remnant, were empowered by God to make known and available to, the rest of the world:
“You shall not add to the Word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.” (Deuteronomy 4:2)
“‘For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.’ ‘But for you who fear My Name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,’ says the Lord of hosts.
“‘Remember the Law (Torah Revelation) of Moses My servant, even (including) the statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel.
“‘Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.” (Malachi 4)
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:17-20)
“And when the dragon saw that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. But the two wings of the great eagle were given to the woman, so that she could fly into the wilderness to her place, where she was nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon poured out of his mouth. So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” (Revelation 12:13-17 Amplification and emphasis added.)
The Torah Foundation of Faith
All the basic elements of the Salvation Saga that will play out throughout all of human history were entrusted to the care of Moses and his generation of Israelites who were to treasure, absorb and share this revelation with the world, serving as living examples and embodiments of God’s Word for everyone else. God inspired Moses to share this revelation through his written Torah. So the written Torah is the foundational revelation of God’s living Word. He is the Living Torah and now we know Him as Yeshua, the risen Messiah of Israel, and the Lord of all Creation. So when you think of Torah, realize: it is the revelation of the Master you have been called to follow! It reveals Him as He truly is. And He is here to fulfill every jot and tittle of what Moses was inspired to write about Him. And you are here to believe and follow Him and become His image and likeness amid all of the idolatry that takes place in this fallen world!
We see that most of Moses’ fellow Israelites obsessed over their troubles. So they were unable to truly absorb the full meaning and impact of God’s Word as He was revealing Himself to them through Moses. In their minds, God appeared too small to be truly effective. In their eyes He was unworthy of their complete trust. But the trouble is that trust in God, in order to be authentic, has to be wholehearted. If there is only one God, we can’t divide our faith and trust. It must all be His. So true faith and trust must be 100% airtight! Biblical faith is like the hull of an ocean-going ship. Ship hulls must have total integrity. If they are not completely sealed they won’t float! Even one small leak destroys a hull’s integrity. And if the leak is allowed to remain, the water pressure widens the opening and the ship is doomed.
The ‘faith’ of that first Exodus generation of Israelites lacked wholehearted integrity. So God’s people could not maintain total trust in God or rest, relax and rejoice confidently in His Perfection. They could not take God at His Word. What God’s Word was sent to be to them was blocked out of their minds and hearts for the most part by all the static and interference the powers of Darkness kept causing them to form in their imaginations and choices. They retained a worldly, extremely limited, self-centered, radically independent, Sin-corrupted perspective on everything. They allowed themselves to be overwhelmed with fear over their perceived impossibilities and insurmountable troubles. Despair filled their hearts, thanks to the God-less lenses through which they kept viewing each situation:
So Moses spoke thus to the sons of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses on account of their despondency and cruel bondage.” (Exodus 6:9 Emphasis added.)
But this didn’t shock or surprise God! He knew it would happen. And He knew that in later generations, the fallen, decapitated, Serpent-deceived world would continue to hiss and sneer and mock and deride and reject God’s living Word and the people that would dare to believe, obey and serve Him. So God’s Word became flesh to serve as our Perfect, totally obedient Blood Covenant Representative. In our name, He rendered the perfect obedience to God that our part of the Covenant requires. That is why His faithful disciples are commissioned to reveal and proclaim Him so that each generation can have a chance to know the Truth and receive Him and His perfect performance that is already finished…as their covering, leading to eternal Salvation.
Remember we said the chosen people are to serve as a Light to the Gentiles. This is true no matter how they respond to Him. So even if they reject God’s Word and distance themselves from Him, they serve as negative object lessons. And the obedient Remnant that does believe, embrace and obey His Word, serves as positive object lesson. But the living Word of God became flesh…to serve as Israel’s Messiah…and in her name and in the name of the entire human race, He fulfilled Israel’s commission as well as all the requirements of the entire human race! In His Eternal Perfection, God factored all of this into His Original Creation and Original Blessing plans even before Creation came to be! So through Israel, regardless of how each individual performs, God saves the world. He allows the world of fallen men to exercise their free will. But through His Word’s faithful disciples, He continues to let the world know that His Word has covered their nakedness and He lets them know what to expect when the Day of Judgment will finally arrive, if they reject His Word and the perfect Salvation He is here to be for them. So again, it’s not about men; ultimately…it’s all about God.
“…Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.” (John 2:24-25)
“When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left. But Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves. And the people stood by, looking on. And even the rulers were sneering at Him, saying, ‘He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One.’” (Luke 23:33-35 Emphasis added.)
God’s Airtight Faithfulness and Provision
All of this unbelief and disobedient rejection of God and His Word comes about because humans believe the lies of the Serpent. This trouble didn’t start with the pharaoh of Egypt; it began with Eve in the Garden, long before Egypt and the chosen people ever existed. So what God is continuing to do through Israel, is part of the ‘covering’ God originally sent His living Word to apply to naked Adam and Eve after they fell into Sin and were mortally wounded and hid themselves in the Garden! The Truth of the Gospel of Salvation is this: Everything that has happened or is happening or that ever will happen to the poor, Serpent-deluded human race…has already been taken into consideration and covered by the Perfect Creation which included the Perfect Finished Work of Redemption and Restoration. Everything has already been covered and done by the Perfect living Word of our Perfect Almighty God. It has been so even from before the moment physical creation took place…it pre-existed…in God!
“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” (Genesis 2:1-3)
“So there remains a Sabbath Rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His Rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that Rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience. For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” (Hebrews 4:9-13)
Can you see what our Heavenly Father’s ‘Disciple Boot Camp’ is designed to teach to all of the disciples-in-training who are privileged to pass through its rigors? Can you see that He is doing what is necessary to make us aware of Him and His Reality, so that we will not be deceived and deluded by the lies of the Serpent and his duped slaves? We must be able to live IN and FROM His living Word. So the training equips us to see through the lies so that we won’t fall for the Serpent’s malicious slander against God and His living Word and allow him to separate us and take us OUT of God’s Word! The Truth God gives us concerning His Perfect, All-Sufficient Grace through the Torah of Moses, equips us to sever the powerful coils of the Serpent that keep trying to squeeze God’s Life out of the human race! As long as we stand on what God’s Word has revealed and done, the Serpent can’t wrap himself around us (See how Yeshua, the living Word, demonstrates the Torah’s authority for us in Matthew 4:1-11). Torah teaches us to see the Truth about God so that we can easily spot the Serpent’s lies whenever they appear. Then we can learn to stand and hold our God-given Covenant Ground at all costs. We are not to listen to demonic lies! We are not to fall for the deceptions under which decapitated people around us continue to labor. We are to heed the Word of our Heavenly Father and trust in Him 100%! Only God has the words of Eternal Life because He IS Eternal Life! That’s why we must always be IN HIS WORD…100%!
“Let my cry come before You, O Lord; give me understanding according to Your Word. Let my supplication come before You; deliver me according to Your Word.” (Psalm 119:169-170)
“…that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the Riches of the Glory of His Inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His Power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the Strength of His Might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as Head over all things to the Church, which is His Body, the Fullness of Him who fills all in all!” (Ephesians 1:17-23 Emphasis added.)
“Therefore let us be diligent to enter that Rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience (as revealed in the book of Exodus and beyond). For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” (Hebrews 4:11-13 Amplification and emphasis added.)
God is the one and only Source of whatever is real, true and good in all of His Creation. Nothing of any real eternal value can come from any other source. The Truth is that there is no other source but the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! He is the Almighty Creator and Perfect Lord of the universe! In His perfect nature, only He has the right to wield all Authority over every speck of His Creation as its Supreme Lord. There is no other god. This is the issue that underlies the entire conflict between God and His Serpent-deceived, Sin-corrupted, demon-oppressed and mortally wounded Creation. Men and women, even when they become religious, do not realize how many false gods they unconsciously and unwittingly cling to. And for that reason they do not realize how entrapped within the Serpent’s coils they have become! And so this realization is what is at stake in Genesis, Exodus and throughout all of Scripture.
Yes, from Israel’s perspective, things looked and sounded very hopeless. But no…all was not lost. The Serpent cannot prevail. And so the living Word of God is sent to reveal and display and fulfill the wondrous Glory of God’s All-Sufficient Provision and redemptive Grace to, and in, and through His chosen people, Israel. God promised, once more, through Moses, that He would supply everything necessary. He let Moses know in advance that the pharaoh, and all the others like him and the Serpent they serve, have no real choice in this or any other matter. God will use their unrepentant hearts and the vast array of false gods they keep hiding behind, for His purposes. He will use His enemies as object lessons from which the rest of the world can learn and know that He is the one and only God, and apart from Him, there is no other.
Two Different Races… Two Different Mindsets
This was and is and always will be what underlies everything we see taking place in the Bible and in our current and future world situations. This is the issue God must always bring to our attention. Headless Sin-damaged humans naturally gravitate toward the rebellion and self-assertiveness of the Serpent. They take up the humanistic perspective and self-bestowed prerogative that makes them assume they have the right to decide whether or not God’s Word should be received, believed and obeyed. But God’s True Israelite Remnant has died to that spirit of Lawlessness. They consider themselves dead to that old way of seeing, thinking, acting, reacting and interacting. So the way each group reacts to God’s Word is what separates them into two different races with two different lords, realms, economies and destinies.
Bad as things may seem to our fallen senses, we believers of each generation must swim against the strong current created by the God-less assumptions of the majority of humans. We are to live by faith, and not by our natural, Sin-distorted ‘sight’. God commands us not to worry or fret. He is with us at all times, to make good on His Word and the revelation and promises He made through His Word. God’s Jewish and non-Jewish people are to be a living testimony that lights up the whole dark world with His blazing Truth. We are to forsake the false notions and religions that emerge throughout the kingdom of Darkness. Our God is the one true God…the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is the Perfect, All-Sufficient Lord…the one and only. And nothing can or will ever stop, change or overcome what He reveals and gives through His awesome living Word!
“Now the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Go, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the sons of Israel go out of his land.’ But Moses spoke before the Lord, saying, ‘Behold, the sons of Israel have not listened to me; how then will Pharaoh listen to me, for I am unskilled in speech?’ Then the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, and gave them a charge to the sons of Israel and to Pharaoh king of Egypt, to bring the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 6:10-13)
“…for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ…” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5)
In the early chapters of Exodus, we see that even after spending the last 40 years in God’s ‘Boot Camp,’ Moses still hadn’t grasped the full significance of the lesson every disciple must learn concerning the complete, total, eternal All-Sufficiency of our Perfect God. He still didn’t see the Perfection and Fullness of His Covenant Friend. He still eyed the mirage of Egypt’s power and might and allowed himself to be influenced by the boneheaded stubbornness and stiff-necked resistance of his fellow Israelites. That perspective made Israel’s problems seem far more formidable even than their living God, who was revealing Himself to them.
“Now it came about on the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, that the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘I am the Lord; speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I speak to you.’ But Moses said before the Lord, ‘Behold, I am unskilled in speech; how then will Pharaoh listen to me?’” (Exodus 6:28-30)
Moses still assumed this was about him and what he could do and what personal resources he had to work with. So God, in His long-suffering forbearance and patience, continued to teach and train Moses and Aaron…and slowly but surely, Moses began to ‘get it:’
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘See, I make you as God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh that he let the sons of Israel go out of his land. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart that I may multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. When Pharaoh does not listen to you, then I will lay My hand on Egypt and bring out My hosts, My people the sons of Israel, from the land of Egypt by great judgments. The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the sons of Israel from their midst.’ So Moses and Aaron did it; as the Lord commanded them, thus they did. Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three, when they spoke to Pharaoh.” (Exodus 7:1-7)
As it was in the book of Exodus, at the beginning of the history of Israel as a nation…so shall it be at the end…in the era that the book of Revelation will fulfill. It will always be the same issue. No matter how things may appear to you now, or in the future, don’t believe what you think or what you think you are seeing. Do not believe in your own understanding or feelings or in what other Sin-corrupted men may say. Believe in God’s Word. Believe in who He is and in the Perfection of what He is and what He has already done! What the generation of Moses and Aaron had to learn, concerning their awesome God, is exactly what the final generations of the human race, including ours, will have to learn as well. The ‘Boot Camp’ regimen is always the same. The lessons Moses had to learn and impart to his generation of the Word’s disciples are the same we must learn and demonstrate and impart to our generation.
God said to Moses: ‘See…I make you as God to pharaoh’.
What an awesome statement! And what a tremendous commission Moses and Israel were given to fulfill! But isn’t that the same scenario for which our Master Yeshua had to prepare His first century disciples and apostles? Wasn’t that what Yeshua was telling Peter, James, John, Paul and the others? He gave them the same commission He had previously given to Moses! And isn’t that our commission too? Are we not to be like God’s mirrors? Isn’t it true that God expects people to look at us…and see His Reality and Perfection being reflected out…from within us?
“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. But beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues; and you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say. For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you!” (Matthew 10:16-20)
This vital lesson is the same for every generation of Israel’s Remnant, the disciples of God’s living Word. It will never change, regardless of what generation you may be a part of. No matter what the circumstances and challenges facing you may be, even though the ‘frosting’ on the surface of things may appear to be different…and more ‘modern’ and ‘technological’…underneath, it will always be the very same ‘cake.’ Is our God truly God, truly the Perfect one, or is He not?
“…the Philistine (Goliath) cursed David by his gods. The Philistine also said to David, ‘Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field.’ Then David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted. This day the Lord will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from you. And I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the Lord’s and He will give you into our hands.’” (1 Samuel 17:43b-47 Emphasis added.)
Regardless of how impressive and overwhelming the opposition seems that opposes us in our created circumstances, regardless of how this fallen world dares to try to withstand and block out the Light of our Master’s Eternal Life and oppose and stamp out His chosen people, nothing will ever be able to stop, withstand or resist the invincible Power and Effectiveness of our Master – God’s living Word and His Perfect Finished Work. No created thing or person will ever be able to stop the invincible Power of God’s Holy Spirit that is here to reveal God’s Word and make His Truth and Authority and All-Sufficiency real, effective and gloriously fruitful in our time and space lives, issues, circumstances and seemingly impossible challenges.
“Then he said to me, ‘This is the Word of the Lord to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by (human) might nor by (created) power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘What are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become a plain; and he will bring forth the top stone with shouts of “Grace, grace to it!’” (Zechariah 4:6-7 Amplification and emphasis added.)
“Now when the attendant of the man of God had risen early and gone out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was circling the city. And his servant said to him, ‘Alas, my master! What shall we do?’ So he answered, ‘Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’ Then Elisha prayed and said, ‘O Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.’ And the Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” (2 Kings 6:15-17)
“Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:32-33)
The disciples of God’s Word are commissioned and anointed by the Holy Spirit to be ‘as God’ to those to whom they are sent to deliver the Truth of God’s living Word. In other words, they are to be living ‘lamp stands’ (menorahs)…servants of God’s Word, ablaze with His Life and Light that shine His Glory into the demonic Darkness that enshrouds the world. That doesn’t mean that the disciples transform into God, or that God deifies them! It means that God makes it possible for His living Word to be revealed to them…and in and through them…by His Holy Spirit. It means that the Word of God is free to live and work from within their flesh. It means that the Holy Spirit will be revealing God’s living Word through them…to the world that surrounds them. This is the way in which the Serpent and his hordes will be exposed, discredited and dismantled.
“Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight— we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:6-8)
It is never about how smart, great and powerful we can become in ourselves! We always remain the same…dust…bankrupt dust. The vital issue is what the Holy Spirit can do with God’s living Word if we submit to our Master’s absolute Authority and place ourselves completely into His hands, relying on His Infinite Perfection and Life-giving Presence. As long as Jewish and non-Jewish disciples believe, submit to and obey God’s living Word…and receive what only He can and will be for us…FROM THE RESURRECTION SIDE OF THE CROSS…we can serve as points of entry for Him to come into this world and do what He is sent by His Father to do. If we exchange the temporary living death state we originally begin with…and receive the Word and His Eternal Resurrection Life…then He will be free to obey His Father from within our flesh…and produce the Fruit that only He can produce…in our name…as our Blood Covenant Representative and new Eternal Life.
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” (John 15:4-8)
“When He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being covered with the waves; but Jesus Himself was asleep. And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord; we are perishing!’ He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?’ Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm. The men were amazed, and said, ‘What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?’” (Matthew 8:23-27)
“And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age!” (Matthew 28:18-20 Emphasis added.)
Before Whom Shall We Bow?
This is the issue…will we bow to the lies of the Serpent…or before the Absolute Authority of the living and written Word of Almighty God? We must decide with which of the two warring human races, the real Ultimate Truth, Authority and Power actually reside. Is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the one True God? Or is the Serpent that tries to convince us that we can be as gods and think and do as we please, telling the Truth? This is always what our God must teach to those that are summoned to ‘follow’ His living Word. So the foundational truth in the Torah that Moses was inspired to write, and through which this Truth is revealed, must remain foundational, basic and essential disciple-training revelation that all disciples must learn to live by:
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 Emphasis added.)
God’s Word first called Israel to discipleship. He had to teach, train, equip and prepare them to become similar to a corps of ‘drill instructors’ or ‘drill sergeants’ in a military-type boot camp. They were to be the living examples of what the raw recruits in their charge had to learn to become. The instructors were to embody what God’s revelation requires the rest of the world to know and become. They are to reproduce themselves on a ‘watch us…now you’ basis in the lives of their charges. They are to teach the rest of the world, by the demonstration of their own lives, everything it needs to know so that it too can escape the clutches of the Serpent and resist him and be fully equipped and prepared to engage in full-scale deadly combat with the decapitated hordes that continue to believe the Serpent and remain enslaved under the domination imposed by his lies.
In God’s Plan, the Gospel of full Redemption and Salvation was given to the Jewish people first. Then Israel’s Remnant, the Jewish apostles and disciples of Messiah Yeshua, are commissioned to take the Gospel into the Gentile World…in fulfillment of the promises God had made to Abraham in the beginning concerning the blessing that he and his offspring were to be to ‘all the families of the earth.’
So now the Remnant of Israel is made up of Jews and Gentiles living and working as One New Man under the Headship of the risen Lord, Messiah Yeshua. And it was to them that the Jewish apostle Shaul (Paul) wrote these words concerning His unbelieving Jewish brothers and the relationship that New Covenant non-Jewish disciples were to have with them:
“I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous. Now if their transgression is riches for the world and their failure is riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their Fulfillment be! But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them.” (Romans 11:11-14)
Moses gave us a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the spiritual terrain as it existed from the beginning, all the way to his day. Then the prophets continued to give us the ‘bird’s eye view’ as they interacted with the world in their day. And then the apostles of Yeshua began to give us the ‘bird’s eye view’ of what they were facing and what we will all have to face and deal with in the Last Days!
Will we learn our Boot Camp lessons?
Will the New Covenant Jewish and non-Jewish disciples of the Last Days be so well versed in the ways that God began to teach His chosen people through Moses, that His chosen people of that generation will actually be drawn to jealousy? What is the Holy Spirit telling us through Paul’s mysteriously tantalizing text? He didn’t say ‘envy;’ he said, ‘jealousy.’ What’s the difference? Well, envy implies a longing that arises in someone’s heart to possess something that belongs to another person, like when someone lusts after another man’s wife. But jealousy is different. That emotion arises when you see someone possessing something that originally belonged to you! It would be as if you saw another man enjoying an apparently intimate relationship with your wife!
So the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to ‘magnify’ his God-given ministry to the Gentiles so that he could somehow move Paul’s unbelieving, Messiah-rejecting Jewish brothers to jealousy! That would imply that the day is coming when Israelites will see the non-Jewish believers joining forces with their Jewish Messianic counterparts! Together they will love and obey the living Word of God that was originally sent and entrusted to all of Israel! The unbelieving Israelites will see their Jewish Messianic brethren, whom they consider to be ‘traitors’, welcoming non-Jewish ‘outsiders’ and sharing Israel’s spiritual Commonwealth with them! They will see representatives from all across the Gentile world taking God’s Word and His ways to heart and actually doing, in awesome Spirit-given Power, what God, through Moses, had first entrusted to their forefathers!
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 Emphasis added.)
To make non-believing, disobedient Israel jealous, the New Covenant Remnant that will be made up of believing Jews and non-Jews working together, will have to do what disobedient Israel has been refusing to do. They will love and reach out to and demonstrate together, as ‘New Covenant Jewtiles’…God’s Life-imparting Love through Israel’s Messiah Yeshua…to the whole world:
“You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. Your eyes have seen what the LORD has done in the case of Baal-peor, for all the men who followed Baal-peor, the LORD your God has destroyed them from among you.
“But you who held fast to the LORD your God are alive today, every one of you. See, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it. So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’
“For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is the LORD our God whenever we call on Him? Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole Law which I am setting before you today?” (Deuteronomy 4:1-8)
“The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to (obey) Him! This is according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.’ The Lord said to me, ‘They have spoken well. I will raise up a Prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My Words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which He shall speak in My Name, I Myself will require it of him!” (Deuteronomy 18:15-19 Amplification and emphasis added.)
“‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord. ‘But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will put My Law (Torah) within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.’” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
This is what God revealed through Moses and the prophets…and this is what He drove home through His living Word’s appearance in the first century…and through His Messianic apostles and disciples. And this is what the disciples of the Last Days will have to know, embrace, and embody to a degree never before seen upon the Earth before. By the time human history has run its full course, God’s Truth and Reality and the absolute Authority of His Word will be revealed fully, just as He has always been and as He will always be. It will not be done by the teeth-gritting religious efforts of controlling, self-centered, legalistic religious people. It will be done by the awesome Power of the Holy Spirit that will set disciples on fire with His anointing and through them, ratify and fulfill the Absolute Authority of God’s Almighty, Living Word…Messiah Yeshua!
“In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.’
“And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the Voice of Him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, ‘Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.’
“Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth with it and said, ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.’” (Isaiah 6:1-6)