8. God’s Heart Revealed Through His ‘Original Blessing’
“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.
“They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you? … The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” Genesis 1:7-9; 21
We now know that God only reveals Himself and interacts with us through His living Word. Everything we know of Him has come to us through His Word apart from whom we cannot know or connect with the awesome living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God’s written Word confirms this (Ex. 33:12-23; Jn. 3:9-15; 14:1-13; 17:6-10). So to know and embrace God is to know and embrace His living Word who was made flesh. And to know and embrace Him is to know and embrace God who sent Him to us for the Speaker and His Word are one.
We also know that many centuries after the Genesis account of the fall of man, God’s Word took on pure, Sin-less human nature and appeared on Earth in human form to reveal His representation of us in God’s Eternal Covenant. But when He became human He did not descend from Adam’s sinful flesh; instead, like Adam, His perfect Humanity came directly from God, through His living creative eternal Word.
The Father named Him ‘Yeshua’ (God is Salvation). And so Yeshua became one of us so that He could legally stand before God as our authentic Blood Covenant Representative and Substitute. But Yeshua is the living Word of God in human form. He was, and ever will be, the living Word, the one anointed by God to be our all-sufficient Original Blessing (Genesis 1:28). Everything God intends to bless us with is contained in Him. He came to be with us and He lived, died and rose from the dead to impart everything that was in the Original Blessing that contained our redemption and salvation. Then when His work was finished and His Father raised Him from the dead, He ascended back into God’s eternal Heaven where He reigns supreme with the Father as our eternal High Priest. In that capacity, as a result of His perfect humanity and Sin-less performance, all authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to this unique Son of Man, who is also the Son (living Word) of God.
By His absolute authority in Heaven and on Earth (Matthew 28:18), He and the Holy Spirit intercede before the Father on behalf of the entire human race. And He shares His eternal Covenant Blessings and Inheritance with all of those who hear and obey His revelation and commandments. But we do not receive the Blessing and what it contains because of our performance. We receive it because of God’s perfect, changeless nature and His Word’s perfect performance that was done in our name. Our obedience merely reveals the fact that God’s indwelling Word is operating within us and is putting us in position to receive what God has already made available for those who obey. It is by the Word’s obedience given in our name, and our obedience to Him, that we are able to inherit all of the rewards that are coming to Him.
In Genesis, God reveals clearly that the Original Blessing He imparted on us all does not depend on, and is not contingent on, our performance. Our performance does not cause God to bless us, nor does it earn anything for us as payment. The Blessing flows to us as a revelation and manifestation of God’s perfect, infinite, eternal, never-changing love, nature, character, credibility and perfect Blood Covenant faithfulness and loyalty. God gave it as soon as the first humans were created…long before the births of any of their sinful descendants took place.
In other words, this perfect Blessing in its eternal perfection is all about God and His nature; and not about us and our performance. The Blessing is given to us but it does not depend in any way on us. The blessing, like God, is perfect. And there is no need for perfection to change. Perfection gets everything right the first time and so it remains the same, forever.
This is the nature of God’s beautiful eternal Blessing. It reveals the eternal selfless love and benevolence of God toward His human creation. Since God’s nature is perfect selfless love, even after the humans fell into Satan’s rebellion, sin and the death that follows in Sin’s wake, God and the perfection of His Word-Blessing did not change. Satan was too late. The perfect Blessing had already been given in eternity. So there was nothing the serpent could do in eternity or in space and time, to permanently harm or destroy us or steal our birthright from us. The humans were already perfectly blessed and provided for, despite his wiles, by our Almighty, Perfect God…according to the absolute Authority of His eternal Perfect Word! All we have to do is come to God and receive from His Word, whatever we are in need of. Whatever we need, God’s Blessing contains. We need only be in position to receive it from God’s Word who is, our true and rightful Head.
Decapitated—Headless Humans!
The Serpent deceived the man and woman into separating themselves from their Head, God’s Word. In that sense, he ‘decapitated’ them and dragged them into his own state of Sin, or radical independence from God. Once they were in that state, they were no longer led by their Spirit-led spirits. They were now led by their Sin-corrupted and damaged souls (mind, will and affections) and natural physical appetites and passions. Thus spiritually speaking, in their decapitated state, they were dead and blind to God and thus became extremely confused and disoriented. They no longer knew God or His ways. They could not receive His counsel, guidance and direction. They were Head-less; so they began to assume that everything was now up to them to do for themselves and by themselves. And because they had fallen into this terrible state and had suffered fatal damage to their nature and their original bond with God was severed, they were filled with a most dreadful, toxic sense of being hopelessly defective, damaged, degenerate and spiritually ‘orphaned’.
An unbearable sense of shame overwhelmed them and drove them to hide themselves in darkness by any means at their disposal. They knew what they had done. They knew Sin had stripped them of their friendship and standing with God. And they knew that their personal future lives were hopelessly shattered, broken down and lost. So all they could assume, when they heard the sound of the Lord walking in the Garden they once shared with Him, was that their accursed state of Sin was hopeless and irreparable and that God in His awesome holiness would never again be able to stand the sight of them. So because they believed they were hopelessly, eternally devastated, despised, forsaken and lost, they tried to hide themselves from His sight.
But the actual truth was very different. God had not changed one bit. Perfection is always perfect. Love always loves and under any circumstances, He wishes the best for His beloved. So He did not send His Word after them to expose and condemn them. He was not intent on avenging Himself against them. Why would He do that? He Himself had already imparted His perfect, all-sufficient, eternal Blessing upon them! And because the Blessing was perfect, it contained within itself everything that would ever be required to cover every possible contingency and need the human race would ever encounter in the course of its existence, including THIS! Now it was time for God to reveal His perfect Love-Nature in a way their fallen faculties could have never imagined possible:
“Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
Because God is perfect Love, His perfect Wisdom and creativity had already factored in the fall of the human race and all of its consequences. God had an answer for all the problems and impossibilities that would ever befall them. The answer is – His perfect, living Word, period. We need nothing else because He is the Blessing that contains within Himself all of the eternal Fullness and Perfection of His Father.
So our perfect God will never have a need to react viciously, vengefully or spitefully against us. The fall of Adam and his wife did not surprise Him. Nothing has the ability or authority to stop the fulfillment of God’s will, plan and purpose for His Creation. He has always known that this was going to happen so He already had the perfect atonement, redemption and restoration for them built into the Blessing that He imparted upon them. The only time He destroys fallen flesh, as He did in the flood of Genesis 7, is when He knows that people are hopelessly unrepentant and fixed in their rebellious intent to stop His Salvation from reaching others and preventing them from knowing and reaching out to the Word He sends to save all men.
Daily Bread for Every Need
God sent His Word to come after the man and the woman to give them the ‘daily bread’ they so desperately need at every moment. He came to impart what they could have never provided for themselves. The Blessing of God was and is to them and to all of us, everything we will ever need! If we need love, He is love to us. If we need cleansing, He is the ‘cleansing Blood’ and ‘living water’ to us. If we need food and sustenance, He is ‘The Good Shepherd’ who feeds us (Psalm 23; Ezekiel 34: John 10) and He is also ‘the Bread come down from Heaven’ to us. If we need atonement for our Sin and Justification for our crimes, He is ‘The Lamb of God who takes away the Sin of the world’’ to us. If we need an adequate, capable protector and mediator to bring us through God’s perfect Justice and Judgment and reconcile us to God, He is our eternal ‘Atonement’ and ‘Eternal High Priest’ who exercises His absolute authority before the Throne of God in the highest heavens and throughout the entire created universe on our behalf! The Word is the Blessing and the Blessing is everything that we will ever need and more besides. That is how perfect our awesome living God and His love and provision for us really are!
So that His beloved humans could know and receive this Blessing, God inspired Moses to write down these awesome major revelations in the Torah. These revelations are the birthright of every human being God creates and we should never forget or ignore or try to replace them:
1. God is perfect. That means He is changelessly good, holy, loving, just, pure, righteous, fair, wise, capable, reliable, credible, faithful and perfect in all that He is and does.
2. The living Word that comes forth from Him is His perfect image and likeness and one with Him in every respect. His Word is living, active, creative and contains the absolute perfection, presence and fullness of Almighty God. God and His Word and His Spirit are one. We call this aspect of God, ‘The Trinity.’ But regardless of how our imperfect and very limited mental faculties try to imagine and articulate the Reality of God, our efforts always fall far, far short of the infinite, eternal perfection that God really is. That is why His living and written Word are so important and vitally necessary for us.
3. God reveals that His Eternal Blood Covenant perfectly covers the nakedness of Sin-full, fallen, demonically deceived humans. He anointed and commissioned His perfect Word to become flesh in order to represent us in God’s Covenant and enable us to satisfy and fulfill God’s perfect standards of righteousness and justice…perfectly…in our name.
4. In addition to being the Lamb that God sent to atone for us as our perfect ‘Sin Offering,’ the living Word (who is our perfect Blessing) was also sent into our midst to be our perfect Shepherd. He comes to gather us to Himself and be everything we need Him to be. He cares for our continual sheep-like, helpless dependence…to perfection. Whatever we need, HE IS! But we must believe and obey Him and interact with Him on His Father’s terms in order to be in position to receive the Blessing He is for us.
5. Therefore, everything we will ever need, now or in the future, already exists in God’s mind, will and heart as He reigns in the highest heavens. And He sent His Word to abide in our midst. The perfect Blessing that contains and imparts to us everything God has given to cover our every need, is here to live within each one of us and to abide always in our midst. There is nothing left for God to do to provide for us, protect us or correct the destruction, damage and death that Sin has inflicted upon us. Everything is covered. Everything has been provided. Everything is complete. “Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished!’ And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” (John 19:30)
6. Our Covenant blessings and God-given ‘birthright’ are ready to be released to us by God’s living Word made flesh. He waits to apply them to those who believe and obey His commands. The Holy Spirit is commissioned to transmit what is already ours in Heaven’s Treasury and apply it to us as we make our way through the daily issues of our life on Earth. The polarity of that transmission is 100% from God to us. We creatures are responsible for originating or producing 0% of what we need. The Word of God must be our All in everything because there is only one God!
7. God has revealed that His perfection has provided for us perfectly in eternity. Much of the world of time and space does not realize or admit this. That is why people insist on taking matters into their own hands and creating other gods in their imaginations. This is why people search endlessly for religious, magic-like formulas, incantations and gimmicks in order to seize and exercise supernatural powers to meet their needs and achieve their goals. They do that because it appears to our fallen, Sin-damaged senses and perceptions that what exists in this Sin-corrupted, fallen, broken time and space world we live in is all there is. And it is obviously broken, inadequate and lacking. But because such people cannot live by faith in our perfect God and His perfect, finished work on their behalf, everything appears unfinished, imperfect and incomplete. So they are driven to ignore God and look to substitute gods or sources for their well being. But when they do, they fall into the Serpent’s trap and he is able to destroy them as he always intends to do.
8. Nevertheless, the perfect credibility of God’s living and written Word assures us that if we repent of that and begin to look to the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob alone, and to no other source, He will transmit the perfection of His complete provision in Heaven, and impart it continuously, by His Holy Spirit, into our endless neediness here 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)
“When it was evening, the disciples came to Him and said, ‘This place is desolate and the hour is already late; so send the crowds away, that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat!’ They said to Him, ‘We have here only five loaves and two fish.’ And He said, ‘Bring them here to Me.’ Ordering the people to sit down on the grass, He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, He blessed the food, and breaking the loaves He gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds, and they all ate and were satisfied. They picked up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve full baskets. There were about five thousand men who ate, besides women and children.” (Matthew. 14:15-21)
“For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.
“‘For yet in a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay. But My righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.’
“But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.” (Hebrews 10:36-39)
Our own senses, feelings and worldly, humanistic, self-centered cultural surroundings appear to be compelling evidence that contradicts and belies the Word of God and His revelation. And of course the demonic powers of Darkness do everything they can to reinforce those impressions that bombard us continually. They never cease trying to do to us what they succeeded in doing to Eve and her husband in the Garden:
“The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’
“When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.” (Genesis 3:4-7)
One Focus – on God Alone
Disciples of God’s living and written Word must be trained to stay focused on God and His perfection and the all-sufficiency of His perfect Original Creation and Blessing. We must know that everything has already been covered, factored in, paid for, and provided to us by God’s living Word. This is the issue God revealed in the very beginning of His Scriptures, and it will be the same issue that will usher in the final climax of God’s story with mankind that we are warned about in the Book of Revelation. If God is truly God, then He is perfect. And if He is perfect, then no matter what need or danger or challenge we may face today or in the future, we must realize that He has already provided for us perfectly in the past.
If He is not perfect, He is not God, and we are fools to believe His Word and trust in Him. But if He is the perfect God He says He is, then He always has everything that we will ever need already covered, paid for and ready to apply to us. Believing or disbelieving this is the never-ending issue between God and man throughout all of human history. The agenda of Satan, the spirit of Anti-Christ (Anti-Word) is to blur, distort, alter, add to, subtract from, contradict or completely erase the perfection of God’s living and written Word from our minds, hearts and lives…so that he might take God’s place in our lives…and destroy us.
So the more Satan and his powers of Darkness continue to try to blind the world to God’s Word in these very perilous days, the more their deceived victims assume that they must follow their own perceptions, feelings and opinions and do whatever is necessary to control and dictate everything that happens. Unfortunately, they do not see that when they operate in that mode, they are operating ‘Head-lessly’ and are serving as the image and likeness of the Serpent!
While most of the world does that, disciples must be trained to operate exclusively out of God’s eternal Sabbath Rest, knowing that everything we need is not in this world, but it is waiting for us as part of our eternal birthright inheritance in God’s Kingdom. We must be trained to remain connected to the Lord Yeshua, our ‘Head,’ through the Holy Spirit, so that He can continue to transmit to us from Heaven, what we so desperately need here on Earth. In this way we will continue to serve God’s living Word and rest in Him and proclaim and embody Him before the eyes of the unbelieving world. We are called to serve as His New Covenant ‘demonstrators’, showing and proving through the needs and issues of our own lives that God and His Word and His Covenant promises are real, authentic and truly worthy of our trust and obedience:
“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 within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
“Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations (Gentiles) where you went. I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations (Gentiles), which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations (Gentiles) will know that I am the LORD,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight. For I will take you from the nations (Gentiles), gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God.” (Ezekiel 36:22-28 Emphasis added.)
Out of Egypt
The disciples who will follow God’s living Word out of their former places in ‘Egypt’ (the fallen world system), and venture with Him into the ‘wilderness of transition’ will see with their own eyes and actually experience in their own lives just how perfect, complete and all-sufficient God’s Original Creation and Blessing actually are. In the wilderness, where no false gods can save them, God’s people can come to know the reality, truth and perfection of our living God like they’ve never known Him before. Amid those brutal, humanly impossible circumstances, God can and will override their own poor human bankruptcy and helplessness. He will reveal Himself in all of His Glory to them and draw them to Himself so that He can share with them the most intimate Blood Covenant level of intimacy and union and joy imaginable. When they can know God as He really is, it will not matter where they are or what circumstances they are in. They will be able to interact with Him and rejoice in His perfect faithfulness at all times, even when everything around them is being devastated. And when they know God like that, they truly have ‘taken the Land of Promise’ and are full-blown citizens of God’s Kingdom.
Only with such impossible wilderness conditions serving as a backdrop can God’s awesome Perfection be known for what it really is. Only there can God truly make us His own, in Spirit and in Truth. And there, in the midst of such desolate, hopelessly impossible conditions, can we truly experience the glory, richness, perfection and safety contained in the full, eternal meaning of these awesome words:
“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)
The nearer we come to the violent, chaotic, brutal climax of the Last Days, the more God’s people will need to know the awesome Perfection and everlasting Lovingkindness of our awesome God. We must learn to live by faith and not by sight. We must learn to live by faith in God’s perfect presence and rest in His perfect credibility rather than trying to live by the perceptions of our very limited, fallen human senses and faculties. We must learn to live by faith in God’s Eternal Perfection even as we go through the ‘birth canal’ of death that leads into our Master’s eternal Resurrection Life. Even then, when we are being stripped of everything that we have loved and held dear in this life…if we cling to Him by faith in His Word…then we will know and experience the reality that WE HAVE EVERYTHING IN HIM…NOW AND FOREVER!