3. The Removal of Sin-Residue
“But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.” (Malachi 3:2-4)
“…looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.” (Titus 2:13-15 Emphasis added.)
Through His Word’s Chosen Jewish and non-Jewish disciples, God intends to continue bringing Salvation to the world throughout the generations. He started the world-wide Salvation campaign with Abraham, and progressed from Abraham’s immediate family to the entire nation of Israel. Now, through that Covenant Root of Israel, God intends to graft the whole Head-less world into that Root of Salvation. And so those of us who obey the summons of God’s living Word to follow Him, must allow Him to save us first by allowing Him to ‘engraft’ us into His Eternal Abrahamic Covenant Root, thereby extracting us from the tightly wound coils of the Serpent.
But after that, God must do more work in us. The Serpent’s residual Anti-Word venom that remains within our fallen, mortal flesh must also be dealt with on an ongoing basis. That residue will always be what it is…Sin. And it will always tend to reactivate. So we must be vigilant to see that it remains continually over-ridden (crucified) deep within our heart of hearts.
“For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to Sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but Sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but Sin which dwells in me.
“I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the Law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (God’s living Word made flesh) So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the Law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of Sin.” (Romans 7:14-25 Emphasis added.)
If we truly repent of being the Serpent’s image and likeness we must allow God’s Holy Spirit to make God’s living Word so alive, real and dynamically active within us, that we will be able to forsake the Sin residue that lurks within us and embody our indwelling Messiah instead. In that way, we keep the residue ‘crucified’ and bypass our original radically independent life entirely by continually deferring to our indwelling Master and allowing Him to live His Life in us and through us. Thus He can obey our Father…doing what we could never do in our own strength…through our flesh. And He does it in our name, to God’s eternal Glory.
“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that one lay down his (decapitated self) life for his friends. You are My friends IF you do what I command you!
“No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you (Covenant) friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear (My) fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My Name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.” (John 15:12-17 Amplification and emphasis added.)
Transformation!
Through our obedience to Him, our Master transforms us into His image and likeness. If we operate as His image and likeness, Yeshua is free not only to abide within us, but also, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to prevail and reveal Himself and operate within us by His Resurrection Life. Thus when He is revealed to be living, acting and obeying His Father from within us, He is then operating in our name! And if He can do that, Father can, in the Name of His Son, give us what His Son, His living Word has coming by way of Divine Response and Eternal Inheritance and Reward. So what our Master Yeshua is, as He obeys His Father from within our spirit and soul, becomes our perfect obedience to God as we defer to Him to operate from within us by the Holy Spirit.
Only God’s living Word can meet God’s perfect standards perfectly. And only when we operate from the Resurrection side of the Cross by the Holy Spirit’s Power can He live within us and please God in our name. So all traces of our former resistance and blockage to God’s Word that Sin created in us, must remain crucified and bypassed on this continual basis. And this is how…in the desert of transition…we undergo our metamorphosis and transform into His human ‘highway’ that is open for our Lord and Master to come into us…and flow through us…into this fallen, Sin-darkened world:
“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.”
“A voice says, ‘Call out.’ Then he answered, ‘What shall I call out?’ All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.” (Isaiah 40:3-8)
“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the (pagan, decapitated) Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance (of God’s Torah revelation) that is in them, because of the (decapitated) hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ (the Lordship of God’s living Word) in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as Truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside (crucify) the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new (Yeshua-in-you) self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.
“Therefore, laying aside (Serpent-induced) falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are (Blood Covenant) members of one another. Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity (to divide and destroy us). He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need. Let no unwholesome (Yeshua-disfiguring) word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God (who is here to reveal Messiah to you and in you), by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:17-32 Amplification added.)
The Utter Necessity for Obedience to God’s Word
Based on what we learned from the lives of Adam and Eve in Genesis, we know that God’s living, creative, sustaining Word is the Head and Supplier of all Creation, including the human race. In that sense, God’s living Word truly is our Life and our Wealth and our Shepherd!
“The Lord (the living Word) is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod (of discipline and correction) and Your staff (of absolute Authority and Power), they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:1-4 Amplification and emphasis added.)
God’s written Word (in Genesis) tells us that God’s living Word was revealed in a living way to Adam, Eve and the Fathers of the Faith – from Noah to Joseph – long before any Scriptures were ever written. This is the legacy left to the world by the ‘Fathers of the Faith’.
“Remember the law (Torah) of Moses My servant, even 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 4:4-6 Emphasis added.)
And now, thanks to the great gift of God’s written Word, we can also know more about the living Word, through God’s written Word. Scripture lets us know that we all have the same abiding personal need to know the living Word personally, intimately, in a living, life-changing way, just as the Fathers of the Faith knew Him even before the Scriptures existed! We must know this same living Word which proceeds out from God Himself. He is the Creator and Sustainer of all creatures, including angels and human beings. We must know that God’s living Word is Everything – for all of His Creation, including each one of us. That is what Scripture reveals:
“For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16-17)
Abiding Oneness with our Creator
To believe and abide with and obey God’s living Word (Yeshua) is to remain as one with the Source of all Life and all true Well Being. As long as He truly is our personal Commander and Guide, we are no longer ‘Serpent-decapitated,’ that is, when we believe and obey God’s Word, we have our proper Head on our spiritual, mental and emotional ‘shoulders.’ And He can continually share His Life and Activity and Eternal Reward and Destiny with us. In this way, we serve as His ‘points of entry’ and ‘bases of operation.’ We are His ‘image and likeness’ on Earth…in The Arena of Testimony, just like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph once were. This is what the written Word keeps trying to tell us: “Don’t stop with studying the Scriptures…Keep going! Become one with the Living Word of God, Yeshua! He is the one with whom the Scriptures are trying to get you to connect. It’s all about Yeshua. He is your Everything!”
The written Word tells us that when the Serpent ‘decapitated’ Adam and Eve, he cut them off from the one and only Source of life…God’s Living Word. And they died immediately –spiritually, relationally and physically. They fell into a state of ‘living death.’ Their souls and bodies continued to function for a time, but mortality was now in them. And that state of living death is what they passed on to all of us, their future offspring. So we are all in dire need of Yeshua’s Eternal Life to abide and operate within us…because what we call, ‘my life’ is actually living death…mortal existence apart from my Creator. And God will not allow that living death into His holy Living Presence.
“In the beginning was the (living) Word, and the (living) Word was with God, and the (living) Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the Darkness, and the Darkness did not comprehend it.” (John 1:1-5 Amplification and emphasis added.)
Our Exodus from our Living Death to His Eternal Life
Genesis reveals through the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and the writings of Moses, that if we truly repent of our disobedient ways in relation to God’s living and written Word, we make the Exodus – from Death to Life – from demonic Darkness, to Spirit-guided Light – from adoring our own corrupted souls, to being led by God’s own Spirit and Word – from enmity with God to oneness with Him forever – from this fallen world system to God’s eternal Kingdom of Heaven. God sends His living Word to lead us out of living death by reconnecting us to Himself and He restores us by sharing His eternal Life with us. And to make sure we understand what is at stake and what must happen, God supplies His written Word (the Torah) to reveal and explain this foundational Truth and its eternal significance. Torah reveals that God sends His living Word to be our All-Sufficient ‘Covering’ and ‘Exodus Shepherd’ and ‘Passover Lamb’ of Atonement.
If we learn this lesson, we know that the issue for us is not good vs. bad behavior, or right vs. wrong behavior, or good thinking vs. bad thinking. It is not about belonging to the ‘right religion’ and avoiding ‘the wrong religion.’ The real issue goes much deeper than those superficial considerations. The real question is: are we alive with the life of God’s Word, Yeshua the Messiah, or are we cut off from the one who is the only Source of life and therefore, dead? This is the issue: Eternal Life…or…Eternal Death!
So obedience to God’s Word leads to Eternal Life; disobedience to Him keeps us trapped automatically in the Serpent’s Eternal Death. Humans trapped in the Death of disobedience are completely incompatible, by their decapitated nature, with the eternally changeless Perfect nature of God. Everything that the decapitated dead try to do, even when they become religiously pious, is still dead. God’s perfect nature is incompatible with such people and their ‘dead works,’ even if they are very well meaning and pious. True salvation consists in repenting from our original, Adamic ‘living death’ identity and lifestyle. We must come back under the Life-giving Authority of the living Word of God…as He is truly revealed in His authentic entirety, in God’s written Word.
This is the foundational granite foundation, the main issue between God and mankind, as it is revealed in Genesis. And now Exodus carries the same issue forward. God’s living Word revealed Himself to and through Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. And this is the issue that will be explained and discussed before the world through God’s written foundational Word (the Torah – Genesis through Deuteronomy). Now the living Word will be revealed through the life and writings of Moses. So it is always all about the blessings that come from having a living relationship with God’s Word, on God’s terms…or the consequences of the absence of that relationship. In this sense, Yeshua was being revealed from the very beginning.
The Life vs. Death issue is what God’s Word was sent by His Father to bring forward to His enslaved Chosen People, who by the time the Book of Exodus opens, numbered somewhere between two or three million. God’s Torah reveals this life or death issue…and all the other books of Scripture elaborate on what it means and what it requires of us, as far as God, our Creator is concerned. Through His living and written Word God says:
“Ho…Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come; buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is Good, and delight yourself in Abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen that you may live; and I will make an everlasting Covenant with you, according to the faithful mercies shown to (the Son of) David. Behold, I have made him a Witness to the peoples, a Leader and Commander for the peoples.” (Isaiah 55:1-4 Amplification and emphasis added.)
The Perfect Word of our Perfect God
Our living God is Perfect and Almighty; and His living Word proceeds from Him to do His will. The Word of our perfect God is also living and perfect and Almighty! And that is why whatever God ordained and decided in the very beginning, at the dawn of Creation, will be fully restored to its pristine Perfection by the end of human history. The Word, our Master, will do His Father’s will regardless of what the Serpent and his demonic powers of Darkness and all the false religions he spawns may try to do to change it or stop it from happening! It will happen…for the living God has spoken. And His Word is Almighty! And His Word lives and works from within His own disciples:
“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My Word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)
“Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son (God’s living Word) can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son (the living Word) also does in like manner.’” (John 5:19 Amplification added.)
Two Conflicting Humanities and Covenants
The love story between God and humans who were designed and created to be His Word’s image and likeness, revolves around which of the two Adams we choose to serve as our eternal Covenant Representative. In this sense, there are two human races, two conflicting kinds of humanity. One is decapitated from the Word of God and therefore dead; and the other is one with God’s Word and embodies His indwelling Presence, Life and Nature through their thoughts, words, actions, reactions and interactions. One race is manipulated by the dead, disconnected Serpent and his dead powers of Darkness. The other race lives as the living expression of God’s Word, the Body of the Messiah of Israel. This is the awesome significance of Yeshua (Jesus) that is revealed in Genesis and Exodus and the rest of the Bible.
Each Adam represents one of these human races. This is what God’s Word was sent to reveal to Abraham and to demonstrate through him and his family through the Eternal Covenant that exists between God and His living Word and Holy Spirit. God’s Word and Holy Spirit fulfill and execute the terms of this perfect Covenant…both on the part of God, and on the part of Man. This is what was implied when the living Word of God first appeared to Abraham and said:
“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.” (Genesis 17:1b-2)
The only way for Abraham to be blameless, was to repent of and die to, his decapitated, disobedient connection to the first Adam’s violated Covenant. And that was done by making a total surrender to the authority of God’s living Word. The Word, acting as the Son of God, is sent to become flesh, like us, so that He can also serve as our Eternal Covenant Representative – ‘The Son of Man.’ So He became ‘The Last Adam.’ In His humanity, the Son of God appeared in the humanity of Yeshua so that He could legally make the perfect human Covenant response to God as – The Son of Man. In eternity past, even before the foundation of this world, God’s eternal living Word operated as ‘The Son of God.’ And in space and time, He came as ‘The Son of Man’ to fulfill our part of the Covenant of God. So the living Word of God is Everything. He is our only true link between the living God and the fallen human race. The Word of God fulfills the Covenant of God to perfection on both levels. And by and through His perfect living Word, God saves and restores us. And by and through His perfect living Word, God is eternally glorified and satisfied. There is no other way in which this can be done. This is what God chose to do.
As the Son of Man, Yeshua utterly, perfectly submitted His Sin-less Humanity to God’s authority. In other Words, the perfect living Word of God, in His representative Humanity, perfectly obeyed and fulfilled Man’s relationship with God, by obeying and being one with the perfect eternal living Word of God! God Himself had to do everything to ensure that His perfect standards of Righteousness and Justice would be met and fulfilled Perfectly…in our name. So God’s Word, acting as The Son of Man, covered our spiritual nakedness perfectly by making full and perfect Atonement for us through His substitute, representative death on the Cross. Thus, when we obey Him we become one with Him. And when we are one with Him in this Blood Covenant sense, our Representative becomes our Life or our ‘Head’ and our Perfect Performance. And we begin to live IN Him and serve as His living members. In that Covenant state, IN Him, we all become God’s corporate Family, a Body for His living Word. And everything we are and do is IN our Covenant Representative. And conversely, our Representative is IN each one of us.
The Eternal Blood Covenant Pattern
The Covenant pattern that God uses requires us to so identify with His living Word and all that He is, that we actually die to our former separated identity and lifestyle. We die to disobedience to God and we die to idolatry and citizenship in this fallen world and its system. We die to Sin and its Death and corruption. The dominating grip of the Serpent’s coils is broken as soon as we join our atoning Representative in His death on the Cross. When He died…we died. And when we die to the Serpent and to Sin and to the curses that come from enmity with God, we live only to God and from God. So the Serpent loses his hold on us! He cannot touch the living image and likeness of God Himself.
This is another aspect of the ‘Narrow Blood Covenant Gate’ that we’ve been discussing. Ongoing obedience to God’s living and written Word is the ‘Narrow Blood Covenant Path’ on which we must remain all the days of our lives. Once our Master calls to us and says: “Follow Me,” we must obey and allow Him to lead us on our own personal Exodus. If we study and learn what God reveals to us in His foundational Scripture revelation, the Torah, we will understand the rest of the Bible and how its subsequent books are to be accurately and authentically interpreted. And we will know our Master, accurately, precisely, intimately and authentically as well. We will know what to expect as He lives from within us and what He will change us into, as He imparts His Eternal Resurrection Life and Perfect Blamelessness to us. Just as He once did it for Abraham, His Blood Covenant friend and for Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and all the faithful, obedient members who followed Him into His Father’s Eternal Household, so will He also do for us in our generation!
This is the only way all Sin-corrupted, living dead children of the First Adam can be saved. Abram believed God’s Word and submitted to Him. And so God renamed him, ‘Abraham’ and brought him under the perfect, flawless eternal Representation of His living Word, the Last Adam. So this is how God’s Salvation process is carried forward, generation after generation until now. And now, it has been offered and given to us!
“Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, ‘As for Me, behold, My Covenant is with you, and you will be the father of a multitude of nations.” (Genesis 17:3-4)
Death to self-life and the gift of our Messiah’s Resurrection Life and Spirit-led direction are the heart of the pattern God established in and through Abraham and the other Fathers of the Faith. This is how God recreates or ‘circumcises’ human hearts. This is how He restores His original ‘image and likeness of God’ level of humanity – to those who embrace and adopt the obedience of Abraham’s faith. This is how God’s living word leads all men through the delusional ‘fog’ of demonic deception that tries to get us all off God’s ‘Narrow Covenant Path’ by deceiving us with an endless array of false gods, false prophets and false teachings that trip and ensnare unsuspecting humans that remain ignorant of God’s living and written foundational Word, the Torah of Moses.
We must preserve and protect God’s precious Revelation. What He has spoken into being and what He has written, cannot be changed or challenged. His living Word is the Root that God wants to reveal to the rest of the world, and into which the unsaved world must be grafted. And this is what God reveals and gives, through His true, Word-obeying, faithful, Biblically-revealed and Spirit-protected, ‘Israel.’
“Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations (Gentiles), leading to (Abraham’s) obedience of faith…; to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, be the glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 16:25-27a Emphasis added.)
This is the ‘image and likeness pattern’ that Adam and Eve refused to follow in the Garden. And God sent His Word to restore us to it. It is the pattern that Abel followed and Cain rejected. It is the pattern that was rejected by the decapitated humans who perished in the flood (Genesis 6-8) and by those who were intent on making a name for themselves at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11). And it is the pattern that God’s living Word then brought forward and taught to His Covenant friends, Abraham’s Family (Genesis 12-50). And throughout the rest of history, the living Word of God will prove to be the Great Divider…for those that obey Him He becomes ‘Salvation’; but for those that reject Him, He becomes ‘The Stumbling Block’.
“And the Word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts and have put right before their faces the stumbling block of their iniquity. Should I be consulted by them at all? Therefore speak to them and tell them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Any man of the house of Israel who sets up his idols in his heart, puts right before his face the stumbling block of his iniquity, and then comes to the prophet, I the Lord will be brought to give him an answer in the matter in view of the multitude of his idols…” (Ezekiel 14:2-4)
“For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:22-24)
Our Covenant Foundation and Salvation Pattern
Exodus and the other books of Scripture focus on the protection, amplification and continuation of what God began to reveal in Genesis. He revealed the Salvation Pattern, and the fate of those that embrace and follow God’s Word and the fate of those that deny and reject Him. This is the revelation we must keep in mind. We will see it play out in the life of Moses, when the living Word of God is sent to work in and through him, in order to prepare God’s Chosen People to fulfill their assigned commission in God’s service. And we can see that the prophets and the Wisdom writers and the Messiah and His apostolic emissaries and martyrs throughout the generations preserved, obeyed, protected, proclaimed and shared the same message to the entire world.
And now it is our turn to respond and take our place in God’s ranks…and do whatever it takes to hold and defend and enlarge this precious Covenant Ground that God revealed to us through His living and written Word. The final climax and fulfillment of history will usher in the Perfect Restoration and Fulfillment of the original revelation of God. The Authority and Preeminence of God’s Word who is, the ‘Tree of Life’ will do it. And although our Exodus Journey is still making its way through this fallen world in space and time, and the ‘Finish Line’ that will usher us into the total perfect Fulfillment is ahead of us in Eternity, all the necessary work that had to be done to rescue humanity from Adam’s fall, has already been done to perfection, by the Last Adam, our eternal Covenant Representative:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.” (Ephesians 1:3-12 Emphasis added.)
God has done everything necessary to make sure we spend eternity united to Him, endowed with the Glory and Inheritance that His Word is to us. He sent His Word to cover us and lead us into the Exodus transition and total oneness with Him so we would be ready to enter the changelessness of eternity. Do you remember how God began to reveal this to us? He began right from the beginning, in Genesis:
“The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. Then the LORD God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever’; therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.” (Genesis 3:21-23 Emphasis added.)
And the revelation continues throughout the entire Bible, ending with the very last book:
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the Tree of Life, and may enter by the gates into The City. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.” (Revelation 22:13-15 Emphasis added.)
The Love Story of the Ages
This is the love story of God and the human race. It is a seamless garment from start to finish because it reveals the eternal, perfect, changeless nature and ways of our Perfect Living God. Because God does not change, and His Word does not change, the revelation He gave us of Himself will not change. And so a dreadful fate awaits anyone who would dare add to or subtract from God’s Word. The Scriptures that reveal God’s nature and His ways must not be changed by anyone! God is one; His Word is one with Him; His salvation plan for all of mankind is one. He is intent in gathering all of His Sin-blasted, scattered human creation back into one, integrated living Body that will embody our Head. And because God’s beloved Son…the living Word that created, redeemed and sustains us all, is one…we were created to be eternally one with Him and in Him and through Him.
“For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. For the Body is not one member, but many.” (1 Corinthians 12:12-14)
“Even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the nations will be blessed in you.’ So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.” (Galatians 3:6-9 Emphasis added.)
Through our union with God’s living Word made flesh, we are included IN Him, in God’s Eternal Covenant. And so we become ‘Blood brothers’ with God and with God’s other Blood brothers…Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the prophets, the Messiah and His apostles, the martyrs and all the saints who have followed our Master into and through the Exodus from Sin and Death and the domination of the doomed Serpent. Yeshua, the Eternal Word of God, is our True Deliverer. He was His Word that God was revealing to and in and through Moses, just as He had revealed Him earlier, through the Fathers of the Faith. God is one and His Covenant Exodus Family is one. The Word of God makes them all one, even as the Death of the Serpent once confused, divided and separated them. So submission to God’s Word, Yeshua, is the true submission. When we submit to Him, we submit to the real, true, living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! So let’s ponder what the Scripture says once more:
“But now that faith (in the living Word has come, we are no longer under (limited to) a tutor (the Menu). For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus (the real Living Feast). For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.” (Galatians 3:23-29 Amplification and emphasis added.)