1 John. 2:14a
“I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning…”
When we ponder Abraham’s life and significance, it’s important to realize that he is part of each disciple’s life, and each disciple is a part of his! We must not see him merely as a blurry historical figure from the distant past. God spiritually connects all true disciples to him and to all that was birthed out of God’s Covenant bond with him. But to relate to Abraham in a living way, we need to receive from God, the same kind of deep, intimate, highly personal interactive bond that Abraham had with God’s living Word. Many people know a lot of things about God. But there are few that know Him the way Abraham knew Him. He was one of those ‘fathers’ that knew God Himself…intimately and personally. But that was only because He knew God’s living Word intimately and personally:
Genesis 17:1-3
“Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the (living Word of the) LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless. I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.’
“Abram fell on his face; and God (through His living Word) talked with him…” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The personal love bond that God had with His friend Abraham was the Root from which Israel’s ‘Olive Tree’ emerged. That’s what the apostle Paul refers to in Rom. 11:17-18 when he wrote the following to non-Jewish people that had come to believe in Israel’s Messiah:
“But if some of the branches (Jews) were broken off, and you (non-Jews), being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich Root of the Olive Tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the Root, but the Root supports you.”
The Root is that precious living eternal covenant union with God’s living Word…that delivered Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all redeemed humans from the coils of the Serpent (Eph. 2). Such people are grafted into union with God through the obedience that comes from a true faith in God’s Word. To get used to abiding with God, always on His terms, and interacting obediently with disciples that are also one with God, on behalf of a very undeserving, unlovable world…will require much interactive prayer and gut-wrenching re-orientations and ongoing educational, corrective experiences. In other words, it will be sort of like, ‘Boot Camp’!
If we compare knowing God’s Word in a true authentic, living way, to the knowledge of electricity, we’re not talking about the kind of knowledge you get from reading books or attending classes and seminars and listening to dead, dry lectures about electricity in crowded auditoriums. The kind of electrical knowledge that compares to Abraham’s knowledge of God is more like having a ‘hot’ cable in your hands and feeling the surging electrical voltage within it crackle and spark throughout your entire being! It is a living, experiential knowledge of God that is electrifyingly dynamic and life-changing. It’s hard to understand or explain this to someone else. But you can’t really know God if your experience of Him comes only from hearsay, or reading or by trying to ‘figure Him out’ with your puny little intellect and personal worldly experiences. The deep ‘Root-relationship’ that Abraham and the other ancients had with the Creator of the universe was much more real and went far deeper than that.
There Can Be No ‘Go-Betweens’
The ancients didn’t have to consult spiritual gurus to learn what they knew. Their knowledge didn’t depend on objective, conceptual studies that gave them ideas and theological propositions about God. They were pierced, penetrated and impregnated by God’s Living Word Himself! God spoke His living Word into them and the Word electrified – pierced, penetrated and impregnated the depths of their innermost being. They received a very intimate, personal knowledge of ‘Him who has been from the beginning”. It didn’t come to them from the outside-in. It was an intimate shocking encounter that they experienced with God’s incomprehensible living Presence – and after His Word penetrated their hearts, He began to abide and work from within them, transforming them from the inside-out!
If this has begun to happen to you, you’ll be able to relate personally to Abraham and others like him in the Bible. You’ll understand the enormous changes they underwent and why God was able to change the entire world through them. But until you too know God in that way, mere religious rituals and routines and theoretical words about Him will remain empty and meaningless. Such ‘knowledge’ amounts to nothing more than human speculations and resembles the frustration of puppies that are intent on chasing their own tails…endlessly!
After God’s Word pierced and penetrated Abraham, he was never the same. The passionate love for God that developed in his heart compelled him to drop everything he knew and cared about prior to that electrifying moment. Love compelled him to obey and follow His Lord and Master…through the spiritual portal that had suddenly opened up before his spiritual eyes. The Lord showed him the eternal Heavenly dimensions that await us all beyond the portal. And for Abraham, that proved to be a point of no return. The inexpressible magnitude and enormity the Lord placed before him made it impossible for him to go back to his former existence. He had to follow God’s living Word into the Great Unknown. So from then on, he was a nomad. He never reached the end of his quest as long as he lived in this world. That’s because there’s no end to knowing the living God. And so…Abraham just kept following God’s Word and obediently staying in close touch with Him…and the Word is still leading him now, in eternity, into each new awesome revelation…and further into the endless wonder and amazement that awaits all of us that will follow the Lord the way Abraham followed Him.
The world that lies beyond that portal that opened up for Abraham doesn’t depend on this fallen world for anything. So when the ancients passed through it, they had to make a total break with their past. It crucified their former life and forced them to make an exodus, a total ‘crossing over’, from one world and kingdom…to another. The eternal world the Lord led them into runs parallel to the time and space world they left behind. But the world that is on the other side of the portal comes from another dimension that, as we said, does not depend on anything that is found in our time and space dimension. In fact, this time and space world originated in and came from that other world that abides in Almighty God’s Eternity:
Genesis 1:1-4
“In the beginning God (through His living Word) created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” (Emphasis added.)
A Descendant of Abraham
Many centuries after Abraham’s time, one of his Israelite descendants by the name of Nicodemas, encountered God’s living Word in the flesh! He was a well-established, highly trained religious leader of Israel! But there was a big difference between his first encounter with God’s living Word, and Abram’s first encounter with Him. Abram was a pagan moon worshipper when God’s Word first encountered him. But Nicodemas was a highly-placed leader, a part of Israel’s religious elite…educated and traditionally grounded. He was as religious as a Jew of the first century could possibly be…part of the inner circle, an embodiment of the religious establishment who knew many things about God…conceptually and theologically.
But he did not yet know God, ‘electrically’. And because he lacked that level of experience with God’s living Word, when the living Word that had appeared to Abraham and enjoyed his hospitality and ate his food (See Gen. 18) now sat before him…in the humanity of Rabbi Yeshua…Nicodemas did not recognize Him! He didn’t make the connection between the man before him and the living Word of God that had electrified Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Joshua! That’s why Nicodemas couldn’t fathom what Yeshua was saying. The words the Lord said later, to another disciple, would have at this time, been incomprehensible to Nicodemas:
John 14:6
‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.'” (Emphasis added.)
But God’s living Word wasn’t saying anything new to Nicodemas, nor was He introducing a new deviant, heretical religion. He was describing the New Covenant that He had promised, through several prophets, to make with Israel, centuries before! The New Covenant was meant to restore and bring forward to completion and total fulfillment the original, precious, pristine Abrahamic type of relationship with God that Israel kept losing sight of over the centuries. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God had promised the New Covenant that would bring Israel back to that original, intimate, image and likeness of God relationship that all of mankind was originally intended to enjoy since Adam was first created!
Jeremiah 31:31-34
“‘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 (the same Law that Israel kept violating) 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 inside, in their spirits), 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.’ (Emphases added.)
The New Covenant was going to restore people like the very religious Nicodemas, back to the kind of relationship that Adam and Eve rejected…back to the relationship God’s Word re-introduced to Abraham. But at the time Nicodemas first met Yeshua, he was personally disconnected (unplugged) from the electricity of God’s living Word and Holy Spirit. His soul and brain couldn’t interact with God, spirit-to-Spirit, in the New Covenant way that God was going to reveal to him. So in that sense he was ‘decapitated’ or ‘disconnected’ – in a very practical living sense, from the living Word, his true Life Source. That happens to many people today – even after God spiritually connects and regenerates them. Because they do not renew and update their minds, and rewire their brains after it happens, their Sin-damaged natural faculties remain out of date and therefore, ‘unplugged. They fail to catch up with the New Covenant Reality and they cannot interact with the New Life and the Kingdom of God Status that being one with God makes available to them. So tragically, they remain mentally and emotionally separated…disconnected from God’s Living Presence…and blind and deaf to His living Word and Holy Spirit. And, as a substitute for electrifying interaction with the living God, they settle instead for… ‘being religious’.
The Serpent continues to use the Sin residue and its corruption that remains in our flesh, to keep us hypnotized. Thus we continue to perceive, think, act and react in our old ‘decapitated’ or ‘disconnected’ worldly ways. And we continue to experience chronic feelings of being alone, isolated, and spiritually and emotionally speaking, insatiably empty, needy and famished. We habitually see, understand, define and grasp everything from a worldly self-centered, radically independent perspective. Because we feel so alone and incomplete, we keep seeking, searching and trying to manage and structure and orchestrate our emotional climate and everything we touch…as if God is absent and hasn’t done enough to meet our needs…and so, since we have no one real to embrace and follow…we think act and react as if everything depended on us… yet, although we remain Headless and spiritually ‘orphaned’, we continue to crave and remain addicted to myriads of created things that are all around us!
Ephesians 5:15-18
“Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit…” (Emphasis added.)
Throughout Israel’s history, God kept sending His living Word to His people, again and again, whenever they fell back into this terrible mode of radical separation. And in the first century, God’s living Word was back…in the humanity of Yeshua, to institute God’s re-connecting New Covenant with Abraham’s disconnected religious descendants, including Nicodemas.
The Menu is not the Real Feast
Keep this in mind: in the days of Abraham and the other fathers of The Faith, there was no Bible, no written Word of God, for them to study and try to interpret. The only Word they knew was God’s living Word – the one before whom they were compelled to fall on their faces and worship, the one that electrified them to the core. And in their day there was also no ‘Jewish nation’ and no Judaism, or temple or synagogue. Nor did Christianity exist, with all of the organized religious church and denominational systems, ministries, and theologies we’re so familiar with today. There was only God’s living Word, the one that created the universe and scattered the galaxies all across it. And for Adam, Eve, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and many others, that living Word of God was more than enough!
Centuries after Abraham, God added the written Word of Scripture and all those other aids just mentioned, to help His people better understand and be sure to remain connected to, His living Word. But these created things were never meant to serve as substitutes or replacements for the living Word. They were not intended to stand between us and Him. The written Word, the Bible, reveals and explains God’s living Word… for the purpose of drawing and joining us to… HIM! And the living Word is here to fulfill everything that is written about Him in the Scriptures. The Living Word and the written Word must always go, and stay, together. One cannot be known, with accurate authenticity, without the other!
So the Bible, and the other ‘aids’ God gives us, serve the same purpose that the pictures and word descriptions in dinner menus, are meant to serve. The menu is not the preeminent feature or main attraction of an eating establishment. We’re not supposed to eat menus. Menus are not meant to draw attention to themselves! They draw attention to the real food and drink that are waiting for the clientele… back in the kitchen! And that’s similar to what the created religious menus are meant to do – direct all attention to the real…living Feast…God’s living creative Word – the Person – Yeshua – the living Word of God that became flesh.
If we use the menu properly, we will turn to our living God and He will personally speak His electrifying, Life-giving Word into us. And the Word will fill us with God’s Holy Spirit. And the Spirit will connect us with the eternal Perfection and Completeness of God’s electrifying interactive presence. God Himself is The Feast that we can rely on and draw from, or, in other words, ‘eat and drink’. Only the real, living God can transmit His life and love-nature and wisdom, righteousness, joy, peace, strength, guidance and health into us. And nothing short of that will do! We must have Him, in Person, not just things that somehow pertain to Him!
John 6:32-40
“Jesus then said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the Bread out of Heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the True Bread out of Heaven. For the Bread of God is that which comes down out of Heaven, and gives Life to the (decapitated, dead Jewish and non-Jewish) world.’ Then they said to Him, ‘Lord, always give us this bread.’
“Jesus said to them, ‘I AM the Bread of Life! He who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from Heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the Last Day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have Eternal Life, and I Myself will raise him up on the Last Day!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The written ‘menu’ God provided for Israel and the rest of the world, must point us to, and connect us with, the living presence of God’s Son, the risen Messiah. Scripture chronicles His various appearances and manifestations to believing men and women throughout the past. And it warns of His ultimate final appearance that is going to take place in the Last Days. Everything must always point to and highlight the living, creative, electrifying Word of God…the same one that Abraham and the other fathers knew so intimately! He’s here…with me and with you…to do the same things with us that He once did with them. What you see in the menu is pointing to the risen Lord who is ready to ‘electrify’ you at this very moment!
Over the centuries, many of Abraham’s descendants kept turning away from God’s living Word. They obsessed over and settled for, ‘the menu’ alone. Their hearts however, were disconnected from God’s living Word. So the relationship with God that Nicodemas and many other members of the religious establishment of the time had with God, was an inherited man-made creation, a set of dead, man-constructed, religious and cultural traditions handed down from previous generations. It was a man-made academic study routine with rituals, familial traditions and external religious formalities. Instead of enjoying Abraham’s organic, living, personal interaction with the electrifying Living God, most of first century Israel was trying to derive life from a static organized ‘thing’. In Yeshua’s day, the second temple in Jerusalem was about to be leveled to the ground! And the Jewish people that would survive the horrific onslaught of the Roman legions, would soon be scattered all across the world. But, without Him, what would they really have? Without Him, all they could do would be to try to rummage through the rubble of what Rome destroyed and left behind… in hopes of salvaging a few shreds of their inherited traditions that might still be somewhat recognizable.
In the day of their visitation, God’s living Word, Messiah Yeshua, appeared once again in their midst. But most still did not link Him to what He had once been to their forefathers. They had the religious menu in their hands and that is all most of them thought they needed. So… most of them failed to turn to the living Word that the menu pointed to, to enthrone Him in their hearts. When He appeared, they refused to partake of Him…the real Feast that God wanted to set before them. That’s why Nicodemas struggled so, as he tried to fathom these words Yeshua was saying to him:
John 3:5-15
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.’
“Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered…‘Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. (Emphases added.)
Nicodemus had strong suspicions that Yeshua was something special…but he had no idea how infinitely special He really was! And in the course of their conversation, Yeshua referred to Moses and how he had lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness. He was revealing to Nicodemas that Moses had been writing about the one that was before Him! He was the one that all of us must personally lift up to God in a similar way – ‘in our wilderness’!
But what does that mean? What does the wilderness have to do with anything? Nicodemas had no clue; and neither do most of us. That’s why we remain so tangled up with ourselves and people just like us. And God’s abiding presence gets lost in the shuffle. We wallow in soulish, self-serving, sensual and worldly concerns. We allow the world, the flesh and the devil to hijack and captivate and arouse our senses, appetites, fears and desires. And that blinds and deafens us to Abraham’s portal and to the still, small voice of the living God, in whom we actually are always living, breathing, moving and drawing our very existence!
The Boot Camp in the Wilderness
So the Wilderness is the necessary ‘boot camp’ site in which God has to reveal Himself to His disciples…to teach, train, equip and prepare them for His service. They have to experience the same awesome silence and solitude that He Himself experienced before them. For Him and for them, it had to be in a wilderness for it is only there that humans can truly understand their personal weakness and bankrupt helplessness before God. And only there can the true meaning and significance of the first commandment be known and understood experientially at the deepest level of understanding. There we truly understand who God is and how desperately every creature needs Him. If God is not able to lead us into wilderness conditions, we will naturally remain self-reliant, spiritually dense, mentally scattered and continually clueless. God doesn’t take us out there to punish or torture us. He does it to train and discipline His sons and daughters to full maturity so we can transform into His eternal Word’s true image and likeness (Heb. 12). The wilderness is where God reveals His living Word to us. And if we progress in knowing Him, the Word’s presence, nature, character and disposition begin to appear and take over and operate in us. And when that happens, God can finally reveal His living Word to the rest of the world – through us! Here are some examples of how God used the wilderness to reveal Himself to people in the past:
- God’s Word drew Noah and his family out of the ark…and into the solitude and silence of a brand new earth and a new beginning. There was nothing to distract their focus or interrupt their ongoing need to abide with God’s Word and follow His promptings as they began to start the new human family and the new world that did not yet exist.
- God’s Word drew Abram out of his native pagan civilization and into a nomadic wilderness to teach and discipline and train him in His ways (Gen. 12). He did the same with Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and He does it with true disciples of every generation.
- The living Word came after Hagar and Ishmael when they entered the wilderness with absolutely no hope of survival or a future…and showed His love for them and saved them and blessed them with both (Gen. 21).
- The Word trained, taught and commissioned Moses and Aaron in the wilderness (Exodus).
- The Word led His chosen people out of Egypt and into the wilderness Ex. 13).
- The Word saved puny Israel from the Pharaoh’s mighty army in the wilderness Ex. 13-14).
- The Word appeared to all of Israel and gave them the Torah and made a Blood Covenant with them in the wilderness (Ex. 20).
- The Word began to live amid His Covenant people in the wilderness (Num. 2.)
- Scapegoats, bearing the sins of the people, had to be led out into the wilderness (Lev. 16) to prefigure the eternal Lamb of God who was sent out there too.
- Unbelieving Israel had to wander in the wilderness for forty years and that is where they perished. To this day they serve as an example to the rest of the world (Lev. 26:14-45; Heb. 4).
- The Word comforted, restored and encouraged Elijah in the wilderness. (1 Kgs. 19)
- In King Jehoshaphat’s day, God’s Word saved Israel from overwhelming numbers of enemy forces…in the wilderness 2 Chron. 20).
- When the Word appeared as ‘The Son of Man’ He was trained and tested in the wilderness before He started His public life (Mt. 4:1-11)
- When the time came to announce the New Covenant era, John the Immerser was trained by the Holy Spirit to live in the wilderness. And he identified his prophetic commission with what Isaiah had foretold centuries before:
Isaiah 40:3-5
“A voice is calling: ‘Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness! Make smooth in the desert, a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; THEN the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Emphasis added.)
One reason the wilderness is important for our training is that it is, ‘wild’. No man can ‘tame’ or control’ it. It is, ‘no man’s land’. It lies beyond the borders and property lines and cultural limits of all human ability. It crucifies soulish human externals, such as nationality, ethnicity, racial color, natural gifts, innate talents, religion, cultural traditions, economic and social status, philosophies and theologies and takes us to much deeper, spiritual levels of Reality and Heavenly concerns. But as long as we remain rooted in our own devices and highly structured ego-adoring worldly civilizations and concerns, our arrogant selfish viewpoints, opinions, aspirations, goals, interests and agendas completely dominate and prevail and so God and His Kingdom continue to appear distant and unimportant. God’s voice is perpetually drowned out by the endless shallow glitz, glitter and din of our self-seeking diversions, desires, schemes, priorities and addictions. That’s what keeps most people distracted, and needy and disconnected from the Lord’s perfect Presence!
But in the wilderness…everything is reversed! The fearful solitude takes us to much deeper, more primeval levels of awareness and concern. At this ‘do or die’ level, the world system and our subjective personal empires do not even exist! The danger and our helplessness drive people to desperation and a wholehearted need of God. And so His awesome Majesty and overwhelming Presence become utterly, blatantly, real and preeminent. Amid the terrible silence and solitude, God’s voice can pierce and travel right through us; and we hear Him clearly and understand what He is saying. The wilderness crucifies our fallen flesh so that it can no longer dominate, control, interrupt or take the lead in any way. And because the wilderness is ‘no man’s land’…it forces us to really mean it when we cry out for help…Then…God has no competition or static-like interference. And He can get our full attention and give of Himself freely, to everyone – with no discrimination, advantages, privileges, or favoritism. The depths of desperation that only the wilderness is capable of generating in human hearts becomes…‘The Great Equalizer’ and…‘The Great Enlightener’… and our totally open Connecting Link with the Living Word of the Living God!
Jeremiah 29:11-14
“For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart! I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’” (Emphasis added.)
The wilderness brings us to utter desperation. And that makes us wholehearted, thanks to the stark revelation we receive there about our utter and absolute need for OUR God! That desperation becomes the perfect backdrop that lights up and displays the full magnitude, and infinite authority and glorious preeminence of God’s living Word. He finally gets our full attention. He pierces and penetrates our innermost being with His Truth, Light, and living Reality. And suddenly the portal that leads to eternity becomes visible to us. And as we look past it…we begin to see the beginning of what lies beyond – the enormous, mind-boggling dimensions of the infinite, eternal Kingdom that beckons to us from the other side. For the first time, we get in touch with… The Great Unknown… that eternal birthright, inheritance and status God has always had waiting for His Covenant friends that would finally allow His living Word to forge them into His image and likeness. And then, finally, as soon as we hit bottom and reach the end of ourselves and our own Self-adoring devices, we realize what truly matters…and what does not. We see that there’s much more to life than the glitzy, temporary satanic deceptions and delusions that the flaky decapitated world always tries to get us to fall for. We see right through the destructive insanity that comes from the idolatry that decapitated people of this world adore and serve. And it’s easy to submit to the Truth when we have no other choice. Then…we allow our awesome Creator to ‘impregnate’ us with His Life and Love and Righteousness.
Seeing the Truth compels us to submit and transform into ‘electrified’ sons and daughters of God! We’re ready to cooperate with our Master and receive the infinite Blessing He was sent to be to us. His Covenant Love begins to flow into us and ‘light up’ our circumstances. And not only are we blessed to overflowing, but we become a blessing to others as our overflow enters their lives as well. Through us…just as God promised Abraham…He begins to bless all the families of the earth.
God’s Word has been trying to reveal this since He was sent to seek after Adam and Eve and coax them out of hiding so He could replace their fig leaves and cover their spiritual nakedness properly with what only He can give! But most of us pay no attention. We continue to pull back from God’s Word and follow our own ways. So the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews was giving the same stern warning to the first century Israelites that had begun to believe and follow Messiah Yeshua, but were being pressured by their families, spiritual leaders and circumstances to pull away from Him and return to their former, Messiah-less religious traditions:
Hebrews 12:25-29
“See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on Earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from Heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, ‘YET ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE NOT ONLY THE EARTH, BUT ALSO THE HEAVEN.’ This expression, ‘Yet once more,’ denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we receive a Kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a Consuming Fire!” (Emphasis added.)
The above words were written a very short time before the Roman legions were sent to surround and destroy Jerusalem and the temple and Judaism itself, as it had come to be known to that point. It is when humans have lost, or, are about to lose everything, including their personal and religious and philosophical ‘bearings’, that the meaning of this warning truly hits home. Then, although we may still be surrounded by the empty pomp and thin veneer of fleeting glitter of human ‘civilization’… just around the corner, the powers of Darkness are approaching… to bombard Head-less people with the temptation to cling to organized, man-controlled religions and systems and ornate temples manned by professional religious go-betweens. These are the things that offer false, empty promises of paradise and heavenly wellbeing to those naive enough to believe them.
So unless we’re very careful and discerning…things like religion and cultural traditions can be misused and turn into false gods that become death traps. Such things then become walls that actually separate us from the real God. Those pre-packaged intellectualized things about God, come at us from all sides. And they can easily become substitutes in our minds and hearts, for the real God Himself. But we dare not confuse those man-made offerings that are encased in little theological ‘boxes’, for the real, Infinite, Electrifying, Living Feast… that only the Supreme Bolt of Lightning that the Living Word of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob can be to us. The man-made things come at us from the outside and try to work their way into our hearts are light years removed from the way in which God’s living Word and Holy Spirit actually pierce, penetrate and impregnate the minds, hearts and lives of the human beings that encounter God in the wilderness. God works on us from within our innermost being! And then He and His transforming activity in our hearts begin to work their way out to whoever and whatever happens to be around us! Almighty God doesn’t need any help or advice or translation assistance, or coercive strong-arm tactics from any of His creatures to set things straight! He uses each person’s personal wilderness experiences and the obedient faith and willingness of their hearts that the pressures of the wilderness force to well up from within them. And, finally, they get them out of the way so that God Himself can do whatever task may be at hand!
Earthly, man-made systems can’t survive in the wilderness ‘no man’s land’. The pressures exerted out there, crucify everything that our fallen flesh deems essential. The solitude and silence force us to come to grips with the real God, and Him alone. We can’t define, predict, control or represent Him. And only He can guide us through the impossibilities and perils that the wilderness presents. So in the wilderness, we don’t study or mentally dissect the real God. It’s just the opposite: the Word of God dissects and opens us up; He examines us and reveals and judges what is really inside of us.
John 4:19-24
“The woman *said to Him, ‘Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.’
“Jesus *said to her, ‘Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth!’” (Emphasis added.)
If God Isn’t Real, We Will Perish!
The wilderness makes it clear that if our God isn’t real and living, we will quickly die. But if we turn to Him, His Reality hits us full force and He has a glorious opportunity to prove that He is our All-Sufficient Reality. And then … from the other side of the portal… the eternal side, where God’s Perfect Finished Work of Creation awaits us…He begins to supply and nurture us in this time and space dimension:
Jeremiah 17:5-10
“Thus says the LORD, ‘Cursed is the (decapitated) man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the LORD. For he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD and whose trust IS the LORD. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.
“The (decapitated) heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the LORD, search the heart; I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.” (Emphasis added.)
In the wilderness, there is nothing unreal to deceive us. There is only God’s Light, and the Satanic Darkness that is obviously seeking to destroy us… and our bare naked self. Only then can we see how real God is, and how desperately we need Him. And we can also see clearly, at last, that we are never alone, defenseless or hopeless…as long as we keep depending on His living Word alone.
Ephesians 1:18-23
“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.” (Emphasis added.)
This is what God revealed to Abraham and the other ‘fathers’. He took them to the uttermost edge of human endurance, capability and hope…to show them and the rest of us that we are all made of nothing but dust. He does this to crucify our arrogant radical independence from Him and stop us dead in our tracks. He does it to join us to Himself so that He can truly become and remain…Our one and only GOD!
Hebrews 4:3-13
“For we who have believed enter that Rest, just as He has said, ‘AS I SWORE IN MY WRATH, THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST,’ although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day: ‘And GOD RESTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY FROM ALL HIS WORKS’; and again in this passage, ‘THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST.’ Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience, He again fixes a certain day, ‘Today,’ saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, ‘TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS.’
“…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.” (Emphasis added.)
God sent His Word to take on our nature and flesh so that He could legally represent the human race as Redeemer, King, Prophet and High Priest. He came as ‘The Seed of Abraham. And immediately after the prophet John immersed Him in the Jordan, Father sent His beloved Son into the wilderness blast furnace… to be tested (Mt. 4:1-11). Operating as the Son of Man, He too languished in total human need, weakness, bankruptcy and helplessness…to prove to us that if we follow Him and depend on what He depended on when He was out there acting as our Covenant Representative, Father will meet us there and fulfill our needs and teach us the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven on account of what His beloved Son has done to lead the way and represent us all in God’s Eternal Covenant:
Matthew 13:10-15
“…the disciples came and said to Him, ‘Why do You speak to them (the decapitated multitudes) in parables?’ Jesus answered them, ‘To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull, with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I would heal them.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Now It’s Our Turn
The Lord wants to reveal Heaven’s mysteries to us too…if we will only submit to His Word’s Absolute Authority and allow Him to graft us into His Covenant Family. Once that happens, our Master will lead us to our place by Abraham’s campfire, so that He can teach us too, the Blood Covenant ways of God that He taught to those that came before us. But the ‘Heavenly Electricity’ that comes from Him can’t be found two seconds into the past; nor can it be found two seconds into the future. You can only find the ‘Electrifying One’ in the …NOW…in the present…at this very moment!
Matthew 6:5-13
“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in Heaven, hallowed be Your Name. Your Kingdom come; Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever. Amen.’]” (Emphasis added.)
Luke 11:9-10
“So I say to you: ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened!” (Emphasis added.)
The written Word tells us of past people and events. But those people from the past are important to us for this vital reason:
They learned to hear God’s voice in their immediate present. They interacted with Him in a living way…in their ‘NOW’ moments!
Scripture wants us to learn from them…to do what they did. Don’t just slavishly ape and mimic the things they did as you read about them in the Bible and what they did in the past. You must go beyond what He did in the past with other people. You must connect with Him yourself… in the present! Let our living God be with you, just as He was with them! Interact with Him the way they learned to interact with Him. Watch them keep their eyes on God…and then turn your eyes to Him too, just as they once did, as He abides with you and keep them focused on Him…in your ‘here and now’, just as they once did in theirs.
God abides in eternity. Eternity is always now! Connect with our eternal living God in your present moments, just as they did in their present moments. You don’t connect with ‘the fathers’ by trying to imagine what they were like in the past. You can only connect with them by bonding with God in the eternal present, just as they did. Only in the eternal NOW can we connect with those that lived with Him in the past. But once you do connect with the Living One in the present… you will forget everything else… even yourself!
The fathers focused all their attention on God’s living Word in their present moments. And the same living Word is here with us right now, to electrify us too – in our personal, ‘right now’ present moments’. Don’t look for Him in other people or their personal lives. Look for Him in your personal life! And don’t look for Him as He was two seconds ago…or as He will be two seconds from now. Always look for Him NOW! We serve an eternal, living God. He’s not the God that was, or the God that will be. He is the God that IS! So Meet Him NOW…let His living Word pierce, penetrate and impregnate YOU – in His eternal NOW! If you do, you’ll be like the fathers…abiding in Him and you’ll remain connected with them…in Him. God’s living Word is with you now, in your time and space, even as He is with them in Eternity. He is the one who has been from the beginning. Those that have gone before are one with Him right now. And so if you become one with Him now, you will also be connected with Abraham’s entire Covenant Family. But it can only be done IN HIM!
Deuteronomy 30:11-14
“For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. It is not in Heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to Heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ But the (living, ever-present electricity of God’s living) Word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it! ” (Emphases added.)