5. Our Perfect God’s Perfect Work of Creation
God’s Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible) and other Scriptures, reveal in a variety of ways that God’s nature is perfect. What He is and all He does is infinitely and eternally flawless, blameless, pure and complete in every way. And because His perfect, selfless love nature never changes, there is no end or fluctuation or lack or limit to God. He has always been, currently is, and always will be – utterly perfect in every way and on every level. And, perfection, by nature, never changes. Only what is imperfect in nature is subject to change.
Because God is perfect, so is His work of Creation perfect. He abides in the dimension of Eternity… where everything we consider to be ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ is already forever present before Him. Thus God has completely foreseen and provided everything His creatures will ever encounter and will ever need… to fulfill their God-given purposes and destinies! Nothing is lacking. Everything already exists in God’s living Word and all of that Fullness is already factored into God’s Perfect Plan of Creation! We don’t have to ask God to do something extra or to become more than He already is, or to do something He has not yet done or made available! The Fullness of God exists in His Word; and waits in eternity for us to come to Him to receive it as the needs arise in our space and time existence.
“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 Emphasis added.)
Will we believe Him?
If we rely only on our very limited and time-based, apparently incomplete perceptions, feelings and circumstances, it won’t seem so our minds and senses as if God has everything covered. But His Word assures us that everything we will ever need to live, thrive and fulfill our purposes and destinies already exists in God, in His eternal Heavenly Kingdom. And it has been paid for in full, by His Perfect Living Word. And it is made fully available to us by and through His Holy Spirit:
“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.” (Ephesians 1:3-6 Emphasis added.)
A firm foundation
This is tremendously good news for disciples! Ponder its meaning: Anything we will ever need is already in God and He is always ready to bestow it upon us in His perfect timing. He will guide us through any time and space experiences we will encounter in this life. The Absolute Perfection of our eternal God and the Perfect Care He exercises on our behalf, constitute the one and only granite-solid Foundation upon which every disciple’s life can, and must be, built and developed. That’s why God’s living Word made flesh, Yeshua the Messiah, taught His disciples to pray to their Heavenly Father in a way that acknowledges the all-sufficient perfection of His provision. We are to ask Him to send down what already exists for us in Heaven, as we need it day by day in our time and space dimension on Earth:
“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.’]” (Matthew 6:7-13)
We can’t conceive of, or comprehend, what God’s Infinite Perfection truly is. The endless depth and scope of a God that is eternal, infinite, omnipotent and limitless overwhelms us. Nothing in our experience of the physical universe can compare with the awesome Perfect Nature and Being of the one and only Living God! What we are and know, is very limited and imperfect in nature and function, compared to the Perfect One that spoke the immensity of Creation into existence. Our Sin-corrupted, terminally damaged world is now fallen and broken and temporal and highly changeable. And we who are part of its fall and degeneration are also broken and incomplete and very limited in our present state. So we can’t confine or define or contain God, or His Heavenly Kingdom, within our tiny mental structures or dare presume to speak of Him and His ways, with smug, know-it-all definitive, comprehensive authority. He is absolutely and totally ‘Other’:
“‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the LORD. “‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. 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 55:8-11 Emphasis added.)
The magnitude, depth, majesty and limitless vastness of God stuns whoever is given a glimpse of His Glory – into silence, awe, submission and continual worship. Our God is completely beyond what we are and what we can do. And because we can’t ‘figure Him out’ or manage or control Him in any way, we can only know and embrace and interact with Him by faith and trust in the perfect credibility of the perfect living Word, through whom God reveals Himself.
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5)
“Thus says the LORD, ‘Cursed is the 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.” (Jeremiah 17:5-8)
Consider the Perfect Word of Our Perfect God
As the prophet Isaiah said in the above text (55:8-11), God creates, sustains, provides for and interacts with His Creation through His Living, creative Word. The Word of our Perfect God is also Perfect. He contains all the Fullness of God within Himself; so He is everything to us – our Creator, Sustainer, Revealer, Teacher, Shepherd, Provider and Protector. He is the Source and Foundation and Maintainer of all created beings. He gives us our every breath, heartbeat, brainwave and life impulse. If He should stop giving us our being, even for a moment, we would instantly blink off and disappear into oblivion.
So, everything about us is really about how God deals with us through His Word and Holy Spirit. Scripture reveals that God’s living Word became flesh and lived among us in the person of Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth, and most people on Earth still do not realize or believe it:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the 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)
“He is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all Creation. 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. He is also Head of the Body, the Church; and He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have First Place in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the Fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on Earth or things in Heaven.” (Colossians 1:15-20)
The apostles John and Paul wrote of the totality of our perfect God in relation to His Creation: “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.”
So the way in which our perfect God created, was also perfect and complete, from the very first instant that He spoke forth His creative Word! From the beginning, His Perfect Wisdom took into account everything that would ever happen, including Sin and the fall of human nature and all the damage and decay that would befall His Creation. Even before Sin happened, God’s Perfection was actively at work in and through all of Creation. God factored all that would happen as a result of our gift of free will and what we would do with it. So, even despite our fall into Sin, Corruption and Death… the Perfect One put into His Creation everything we would need to live and to be redeemed and restored to the ultimate perfection God naturally has in mind for anyone made in His image and likeness. The Perfect Fulfillment of God’s Eternal Purpose was factored into our destinies and planted and set into motion so that in the End, the Ultimate Complete Restoration and Fulfillment of His Perfect Plan would appear and come into being… to the Eternal Glory and Praise of God! (See Revelation 21 & 22)
One God, One Source
So we must come to grips with the Reality that our God is the one and only eternal Source for everything we will ever need. There is only one God…one Source. There can be no other. There is no need for another. God’s Perfection needs no help or supplement and no editing or revision or correction. God is completely complete and right and true and infinitely, eternally, perfectly holy, blameless and comprehensively adequate and fully consummated.
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Exodus 20:2-6)
For this reason, God commands those who embrace, believe and obey His Word, to live on the basis that He is the one and only source for whatever is real, true and good. And that requires us to look to Him alone and place all of our expectations, hopes and dreams upon Him at all times and in all things:
“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.)
Disciples are called and commissioned to be the living embodiment of God’s perfect presence and the fullness of His perfect Reality and Truth in the midst of this world and in the sight of all peoples. That’s why we must be utterly grounded in the firm assurance and outrageous confidence and trust that our ‘airtight’ God is perfect and He abides with us always – ever ready to be whatever we will need Him to be to us. He alone will empower us to be and do whatever will be needed to fulfill the purpose and destiny He gave us.
Regardless of how the powers of Darkness try to contradict, distort or deny God’s living and written Word to get us to doubt and mistrust God, this awesome Truth stands forever: whatever we will ever need, regardless of what circumstances or challenges or demonic interference we encounter, we can know for sure that our God has already foreseen and taken everything into account. Everything is contained in Him and has already been paid for and is given and available to us in and through His living Word, the Lamb of God.
Perfect Provision
So His Holy Spirit is ready to transmit what we need, to us, as our ‘daily bread’. There is nothing we can imagine or think of or encounter today or in the future that God has not already considered. Everything is done. It is perfectly perfect and complete, no matter what our circumstances, feelings or opinions or other people may try to tell us to the contrary. Because God is perfect, His love and care for us are also perfect. We are not to believe in our very limited created faculties and sensory impressions. Nor are we to fall for the lies that the powers of Darkness set before men to entrap them. God has given everything already. So if there is any blockage preventing His perfect provision from hitting us, the blame does not lie with God. It’s not because He failed to think of or do something that was left out of our inheritance in Christ. The trouble lies with created beings who are not in position to receive. They are out of line with the polarity of God’s energy-flow and are opposing and resisting it through unbelief, mistrust and disobedience to His living and written Word.
These are the issues that underlie the witness we are to give on behalf of our awesome God, in the Arena of Testimony. We must be deeply, fully grounded in His Truth so we can actually demonstrate and proclaim clearly and faithfully, that He, through His Word and Spirit, is the perfect and only real source of Truth, Reality, Goodness and Guidance!
“Know therefore that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments; but repays those who hate Him to their faces, to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face. Therefore, you shall keep the commandment and the statutes and the judgments which I am commanding you today, to do them.” (Deuteronomy 7:9-11)
Our glory and responsibility as God’s sons, Covenant friends and disciples of His Word, require us to rejoice in Him and His perfection at all times. We are to depend on and submit to His Spirit and embrace and abide in His Word. We are to depend on Him like children resting in total assurance, in the arms of their loving, all-sufficient Father (Philippians 4:4-13; 2 Corinthians 4). Even when we are tested by difficult, painful times on Earth, we must be trained and equipped to remain unshakably rooted in the assurance that even when we suffer in this world, our Father has a very good and redemptive purpose for allowing it to happen. He does not withhold anything from His own as long as they are not creating blockage or resistance to what He has already given them. We must realize that even when the flow of His Original Blessing seems to stop, He has not changed. He is being perfectly faithful to us, ready to see us through any difficulty successfully and effectively, if we will allow Him to expose and remove whatever blockage may remain in us that impedes or diverts the flow and fulfillment of His eternal plan and Covenant promises to us.
God has sworn by the Covenant Blood He sent His living Word to shed for us and sprinkle on us, that whatever we will need in time and space, He will supply by the perfect infinite power of His Holy Spirit. That includes all of the growing, training, correction, discipline and maturing He must apply to us to cause us to develop from the level of children, to the level of full-grown, faithful, battle-tested sons. If we allow Him to include us in His perfect eternal Covenant, and graft us into the root of His Chosen People Family, He assures us that He will always be everything to us that we will ever need Him to be. And that victory and inheritance are absolutely guaranteed by one who is absolutely PERFECT!
“Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
“For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons,
“MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM; FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.”
“It is for discipline (combat training) that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His Holiness (Perfection). All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.
“Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification (perfecting) without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.” (Hebrews 12:1-17 Emphasis added.)
For True Disciples, Even the Bad Times Are Good!
The rigorous and at times excruciating demands that ‘disciple boot camp training’ makes, prove how perfect God is as our Parent. He knows everything we need to be able to master Sin and overcome the effects it has left in our human makeup. As He applies the Cross of His beloved Son to us, we are delivered from Sin’s dominating grip and empowered to sever and effectively outgrow the roots of past iniquity and old self-life patterns. The sustaining power of His Spirit brings us through it all. So even this type of success in overcoming Sin was implied in God’s revelation of His perfect Blessing:
“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Genesis 1:27-28)
God’s perfect foreknowledge factored in everything – human rebellion and disobedience, the fall of our human nature, and the mortal wounds and decaying process that were to befall our world as a result of the death-dealing wages of our Sin.
“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)
Our Sabbath Rest
Can you see the enormous significance to what God reveals about ‘The Seventh Day’ – the Sabbath? In the Hebrew mentality, the number seven bespeaks spiritual perfection, completeness and utter consummation. And it is into the start of the seventh day (the evening of the sixth day) that the first man and woman were created. They were born into the fullness of the culmination of God’s work of Creation. So even though we still inhabit this broken, fallen, Sin- contaminated world, this revelation enables us to know that God already has everything covered. That gives us cause to learn to rest and rejoice in Him as children and heirs of His Perfection, regardless of any current circumstances.
The Enemy Intends to Destroy Our Peaceful Rest
We all know that the world, the flesh and the devil play, in every life, the same part Potiphar’s wife played in the life of Joseph. The world system gives the same alluring invitation to us that she gave to Joseph: ‘Come, lie with me.’ If Joseph had succumbed, he, along with his family, the chosen people of God, would have perished along with Egypt, thanks to the famine that only God knew was about to afflict the entire region. But thanks to Joseph’s God-given ability to remain faithfully trusting and obedient to God, the survival of Israel and the eventual birth of Yeshua, Israel’s Messiah, were assured.
The world keeps tempting us too – to doubt and mistrust God. It tries to get us to put our faith in false, alien gods – in governments and charismatic people and religious organizations, nations, economies, philosophies, soulish techniques and formulas, armies, businesses, relationships, pleasures, material possessions and power. It keeps drawing our attention to everything and anything…as long as it isn’t Yeshua, the living Word of our God. But to the degree that the Serpent succeeds in getting our eyes off of God’s living and written Word, he succeeds in causing our doubts and disobedience to create blockage and resistance to the already given, perfect Original Blessing that already contains everything we’ll ever need. So if we are trained, drilled and equipped to remain faithful and non-resisting before God, we can withstand any and all of his tactics — ridicule, contempt, dire threats to our property and reputation and status and, if necessary, even the loss of our temporary bodies and earthly existence! When we have God’s beloved Son… we have Everything!
Standing Firm in Our Faith
If we’re firmly rooted in the assurance of God’s Perfection we will faithfully withstand the pressures exerted on us by whatever will serve the purposes of the satanic spirit of Anti-Christ. No legislation or military and terroristic heavy-handedness or violent persecution or deceptive man-made, humanistic teachings will get us to twist, distort or deny God and His Word and the perfect, eternal Truth He has revealed.
Utter, airtight faith and confidence in God must become second nature to us, as familiar as our own name! We must know our God so well that nothing can mar our serene ability to abide in the eternal, infinite depths of His perfect finished work and eternal Sabbath Peace, Rest and Joy. We can overcome unspeakable temporary earthly trials as long as God’s supernatural joy, love, peace and confidence continue to be freely transmitted into us. Those qualities do not appear within us spontaneously, or by accident. We must be equipped spiritually and trained vigorously to remain open to God and what He keeps sending to us, before we will be able to remain firmly grounded and secure amid combat conditions, under intense fire.
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, ‘FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED.’
“But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:31-39 Emphasis added.)
Beware of Idolatry
People who fall into idolatry do so because they deny the revelation given to us by the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They reject His living and written Word and grieve His Holy Spirit. Instead of looking to God’s living Word who is our perfect, Original Blessing, they look to cheap, counterfeit substitute sources that do not really exist. And even those who do accept and believe God can be lured into disobedience and idolatry if they’re not grounded in His perfect all-sufficiency. To the degree that they still doubt God’s perfection and all-sufficient grace, to that same degree they feel compelled to look to something else, some other supplementary source or sources (false gods) to provide them with what they will consider to be adequate safety, protection, provision and well being. And that creates a resistant ‘dam’ to the flow of God’s already-given grace and blessings. The temptation is always to ignore, bypass or minimize the perfect Word of God. Satan is happy to allow us to give God lip service. But he does everything he can to keep us convinced that God in Himself is not enough for us. In that case, we may seem to cling to God’s Word but in reality, we always require God’s Word PLUS something else. But that violates the first commandment (Exodus 20:1-6) and gives evidence that our understanding of God is skewed and limited.
We must not fail to love and look to and trust our God exclusively and totally, with all our heart, and all of our mind and will and strength (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). God is perfect. And He is the only real God. (Any other god or presumed source is purely a figment of someone’s deluded imagination!) So He alone is sufficient for us in all things and at all times. And He commands His disciples to be ready, willing and able to demonstrate that fact by their single-minded faith and trust in Him at all times.
God’s Perfect Original Blessing
Scripture reveals repeatedly that the totality of God’s Creation contains absolutely everything that each of us will ever need because God is perfect in all that He is and does and promises. So we must understand The Original Blessing God pronounced over the human race in light of this over-riding airtight, never-failing perfection:
“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:27-28 Emphasis added.)
The Original Blessing, given by our Perfect God is also Perfect. God pronounced it over the first humans and all their offspring, through His Perfect Living Word, knowing they would rebel against His Word and separate themselves from Him! His perfect foreknowledge and wisdom took that into account when He created and blessed all that He had made.
When God spoke His Living Word over them, the Word contained the fullness of God’s Blessing. In other words, His perfect Word WAS, AND IS HIS BLESSING. God gave His Word, which contains all of His Fullness, to Adam, Eve and all of their unborn descendants; so even Sin and all its lethal effects were covered. The infinite price it would take to atone for and satisfy God’s perfect Justice was given within that Blessing. The Word of God covered and redeemed all of mankind from what it would do to itself by pulling away from God’s Word. Everything was already perfectly paid for on their behalf, in the mind and will and heart of God. It was done through God’s perfect living Word, through God’s eternal Blood Covenant (Hebrews 13:20-21). He is the eternal Blessing God gave to His Creation. And we are to remove all resistance and opposition to God’s ability to impart to us the fullness contained in His Word.
It is essential that we know that our Master, the Living Word of our Perfect God is also perfect. Once our perfect Father gives His perfect Word, the Word and the perfection He reveals and has given, stand by us forever. God never takes back His Word or revokes the perfect Blessing that is revealed and promised and given through Him.
“Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever! Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were so occupied were not benefited.” (Hebrews 13:7-9 Emphasis added.)
The Father and His Word are one. The Father’s Word contains within Himself the Perfect Fullness of our Perfect Father. The Speaker of the Word, and His Word, are one. And so the Living Word of God (Yeshua) is The Blessing given to us from the very beginning that contains all that our Perfect God is committed to be to us and for us. So, everything we need or will ever need in the future of our time and space life, has already been bestowed upon us in eternity – in Him – the perfect Word of our perfect God. He contains and makes available to us all of God’s eternal grace.
The Cross Kills Our Compulsion to Take Charge
Sin is a delusion, based on the satanic lie that tells us God isn’t ‘good enough’ for us. It hypnotizes those who believe it into thinking they can and must be as God in their own right. And because they can’t trust in God’s perfection, they live in the dread that their needs will not be met unless they radically separate themselves from God and pursue self-driven lives and agendas that are independent of God and His Word and His Spirit.
Such people may even try to establish diplomatic relations with God and try to cut a deal with Him. Cain is a good example of that. He tried to please God by offering the product of his own independent efforts and religious good intentions. But he did not trust in God alone…in His perfection and all-sufficient grace. So he offered an alien thing that did not first come to Him from God’s Word. Many radically independent people start entire religions and theologies and philosophies of life that are inspired by the mistrust or rejection of God that the Serpent arouses:
“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. I do not receive glory from men; but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves. I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:39-47 Emphasis added.)
“‘Surely You are not greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets died too; who do You make Yourself out to be?’ Jesus answered, ‘If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My Father who glorifies Me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God’; and you have not come to know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you, but I do know Him and keep His word. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.”
“So the Jews said to Him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM!’” (John 8:53-58 Emphasis added.)
By His Word and Holy Spirit, God is ready to transmit to us all that we need as we make our way through this space and time dimension, provided we obey His Word and look only to Him and the perfect work He has already finished that supplies everything we will ever need. It has been perfect from the very beginning and will continue to be perfect for all eternity. So how much more perfect, safe, all-sufficient and reassuring can God’s Word be to us?
Can you see why the commandments of God require us to fix all of our faith, hope, expectation and trust upon the one and only Living God…with airtight, everlasting devotion? Can you see why He commands us to love Him with ALL of our heart, soul and might? Can you see why idolatry, which is looking to other, supplemental sources for life, provision and well being, is such an offense and abomination to the real God? Our true wellbeing does not depend on us or anything we do, or the manner in which we do it. It’s not that our faith in God has to be perfect. We are imperfect, Sin-corrupted creatures. Our faith and religious striving will always be imperfect. So it’s all about God, and the perfect Humanity, Love, Faith and Obedience of His beloved Son…which were given to God in our name! The Representative God sent to stand before Him ‘as us’, is Perfect! So it is in the perfection of His finished and given provision that we must learn to rest and rejoice. It is from Him and the perfection of what He is and has already done in our name that we must draw everything we will ever need. There can be no other real source. We need no other source!
The Wages of Sin Is Death
The lies of the powers of Darkness are calculated to cut us off from our one and only perfect and eternal Source of Life. The Serpent ‘decapitated’ the souls of Adam and Eve in relation to God’s Word, their sole Source of Life. That is why Sin and the wages of Sin is Death. When a body is beheaded, it dies. So too is it with our spirit and our soul. When we are severed from our Source of Life and Light, we die and begin to abide in demonic Darkness. We must realize that the created things that serpent-deceived men look to as alternate sources for wellbeing are not sources at all. They too are merely God’s creations. And as creatures, they are as empty, limited and dependent on the Creator as we are! That is why looking to anything created, is idolatry. And that is why idolatry is the height of the satanic delusion and idiocy that leads men into physical and spiritual death.
All of mankind is designed and made to be the image and likeness of the one and only God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So we are to reflect back to God, His Perfection and the Original Blessing He has already bestowed upon all of mankind and the perfect Rest, Peace, Joy and Wellbeing that God’s Reality engenders. Our reflection of Him must radiate back the total satisfaction God has in Himself and what He is in us and to us and for us. We are made to give this radiant testimony to the powers and principalities of the Kingdom of Darkness in The Arena of Testimony! We are made to be the corresponding reflection of God’s Perfection. The Perfection He first shines upon us as He regards us is to be the Perfection we radiate back to Him as we regard Him!
“Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, ‘Thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them: “The LORD bless you, and keep you; the LORD make His face shine on you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace.’
“So they shall invoke My name on the sons of Israel, and I then will bless them.” (Numbers 6:22-27 Emphasis added.)
Boot Camp
This is why disciples need a ‘boot camp’ level of training. We must be trained to offset and overcome the bogus conditioning with which the fallen world pelts us continually. We must give to God the image and likeness level of obedience and service that He deserves. It takes military-level discipline, focus and drill instruction to equip us to maintain our proper ‘image and likeness’ of God testimony under fire amid the vicious, destructive, lethal malice of Satan and his powers of darkness. They’ll do everything they can to separate us from God and the Original Blessing He gave by destroying our understanding of and undermining our faith in, Him. To the degree that they succeed, to that degree they can lure us into some form of idolatry, which is Sin. And the wages of Sin…is Death!
If our testimony to God is to be perfect, it must come to us from the power of God’s perfect Holy Spirit. By His perfect power, the risen Lord is free to live and act in us and through us in all of His awesome perfection…with no resistance from us.
“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.” (John 3:14-15)
As Stephen did, so must we receive the apostolic training that equips us to maintain Spirit-empowered focus on God’s New Covenant perfection so that our love, trust and interaction with Him can continue uninterrupted even amid the most intense war time conditions.
“Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him. But being full of the Holy Spirit, he (Stephen) gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’ But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse. When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him; and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul. They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!’ Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them!’ Having said this, he fell asleep.” (Acts 7:55-60)
We must maintain Stephen’s laser-like focus, faithfulness and consistency as we embody God’s perfection, even amid unspeakable conditions. The training we need is easily and readily available and free of charge. The fallen, demon-possessed world all around us provides it. It is a perfect boot camp training ground for us. It supplies all the needed difficulties and hardships in which we can drill and practice amid rigorous, tough and intensely demanding pressures. We have all the repetition and practice necessary in daily life which can be the equal of the finest military training facilities. These are the conditions this fallen world provides:
“Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:17-19)
Adam surrendered the beautiful creation God had entrusted to him, to the domination of the Serpent and his rebellion against God. So our Earth was cursed, broken and doomed to frustration by its separation from the life-giving authority of God’s living Word. Our human nature was also damaged and broken in the same way. But even before the fall, God had already blessed us with His perfect Original blessing. And that Blessing also included the guarantee and assurance that God will create a new Heaven and a new Earth which will fulfill all of His plans and will be eternally perfect. So, we know that God’s Word and the perfect Blessing He contains within Himself, will prevail and be ours, in perfect Fullness.
But in the meantime, disciples-in-training must learn to see and use all of the Sin-corrupted earthly limitations, disappointments, frustrations, distractions, injustice, deprivations and inconveniences as God-intended teachers, instructors and trainers. They will provide the toughening exercises we need. We must learn to use these things wisely to strengthen our faith in and focus upon God’s perfection. We can use these things to make us stronger, tougher and more battle-ready and effective. The more we use negative things for this positive purpose, the more they will serve to train and equip us. We can redirect all the negative, hurtful, frightening, frustrating and disappointing missiles the enemy fires at us, and use them against him for our own advantage. We can transform those potential weapons into our servants and use them to help us learn to overcome whatever the enemy tries to do against us. We can flip the very things the enemy sends against us, on their backs and use them to train ourselves to stare down the powers of darkness and cut through whatever they try to do to distract, derail and destroy our faith in God. We can overcome demonic evil with the perfect, all-sufficient Good of our God. We can use adversity to make us stronger and more consistent and effective in our testimony to God than ever before!
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, HAVING GIRDED YOUR LOINS WITH TRUTH, and HAVING PUT ON THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, and HAVING SHOD YOUR FEET WITH THE PREPARATION OF THE GOSPEL OF PEACE…TAKING UP THE SHIELD OF FAITH with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. AND TAKE THE HELMET OF SALVATION, AND THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT, WHICH IS THE WORD OF GOD. With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints…” (Ephesians 6:10-18 Emphasis added.)