God told Moses to warn the pharaoh so that he and his people could turn to Him and be saved. But the ruler of Egypt hardened his heart more and more, refusing to listen, repent and obey. So the inevitable consequences of His rebellion against God’s living Word appeared. Judgment began to fall upon him and his people. The Nile River turned to blood…an invasion of frogs covered the land…an infestation of flying insects oppressed every living thing…a plague killed Egypt’s livestock…skin boils erupted all over the bodies of Egypt’s people…hail destroyed their crops…swarms of locusts consumed and denuded the land’s vegetation…killing destructive hail pelted everything in sight…swarms of locusts darkened the sun and afflicted the land. And for three days and nights…solid darkness engulfed the entire region.
These were the consequences that followed the pharaoh’s defiant, Serpent-inspired rejection of and disobedience to, God’s living Word that was given to him through Moses. And if the pharaoh had stopped his disobedience and turned to God’s Word, there would have been no further need for the judgments. But because he remained adamant in his refusal, the final, crushing blows…the death of every first born human and animal under the pharaoh’s rule…and the destruction of the Egyptian military force that the pharaoh sent to run down and kill the newly-liberated Israelites, devastated that kingdom.
So, was God revealing a vengeful, sadistic side of His nature by causing these things to happen? Is He a mighty but moody and petulant God that delights in getting even with puny little humans that disobey and displease Him? Does He seek revenge and devastate them in retaliation for their gross disrespect?
Arrogant, decapitated, self-absorbed, self-centered, self-assertive and individualistic humans can’t help but interpret things like these plagues in those very terms. They project onto God, the ways of fallen human flesh. They accuse Him of seeing, thinking and reacting with the very same ‘tit for tat’ attitudes and perspectives they themselves employ! We see and react to things in that way because we have been Sin-corrupted and damaged. We are born separated and alienated from our Life Source. We’re conceived and born into this fallen, man-controlled, humanistic, self-worshipping and competitive world. So naturally, we take on its ‘me first’ viewpoints and attitudes and practices. We are born with the genes, mental programs and neurological ‘wiring’ that places ‘self’ in the highest place. We do not know and are not about to worship our Creator or place Him at the center of everything. Instead of viewing Him as our Source for everything, we view Him as an angry, vengeful competitor that keeps getting in our way and ruining our happiness and the fulfillment of our radically independent agendas.
But that proves to be an enormous handicap and disadvantage. It alienates us from the one who loves and values us more than we could ever imagine and causes us to regard Him as our enemy and our biggest threat to peace, joy, fulfillment and well being. So, like Eve, and like Adam who followed her lead, we too are driven to be wary and suspicious of God (if we’re even willing to admit that He exists). And that drives us to ignore and disobey His Word. We remain obsessed with steering, controlling and manipulating whatever we can get hold of. We feel compelled to try to make our own way through our time and space existence in this world. For Serpent-bitten people like us, the thought of entrusting ourselves wholeheartedly into the hands of some transcendent Creator that we know next to nothing about, would be like deliberately jumping off of the edge of a very high cliff…to our death! So instinctively, we cringe, resist and pull away from God. We cling to our innate state of decapitation to maintain that false sense of independence, freedom and control that our self-assertiveness seems to give us.
But that doesn’t mean that we are actually able to run our own lives! It doesn’t mean that we’re born free and independent. And regardless of how we see things or what we think, that decapitated state does nothing to put us in control of anything. Genesis reveals that we’re born into a state of ‘living death’. That Death took hold of us all, as soon as our first parents fell for the Serpent’s lies! Death is not freedom; it isn’t self-determination. To be trapped in Sin and Death is the most profound bondage and slavery imaginable! And that is the true legacy and lot of the children of Adam. For we are conceived and born into the state of being hopelessly trapped and choked and deprived of our true identity, purpose and destiny by the Serpent’s coils! How could that be freedom, self-determination and fulfillment?
Our Amazing God!
As Genesis reveals the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and His true nature, we learn that He is completely transcendent and beyond us in every way in terms of His Wisdom, Authority, Creativity, Character, Disposition and Power. He is the Lord, Master and Owner of all of His Creation. And He means us nothing but good! His original act of Creation was, like Him, completely finished, comprehensive and utterly perfect. Everything every creature of His will ever need has already been foreseen, created, paid for and given – in the perfect Original Blessing that He imparted to Adam and Eve and their offspring, through His living Word. And we know that the Fullness of God and all that He is and has and gives to us is contained in and imparted by that Perfect living Word. So to reject God’s Word, is to reject our ultimate joy and fulfillment and God-given Inheritance! So, separation from Him is not freedom; it is profound delusion, leading to eternal Death!
But even after Adam and Eve fell into the state of decapitation from God’s Word and the human race and God’s physical Creation began to suffer Sin’s lethal effects in Genesis 3, God already had the Solution and Full Restoration of Creation in mind and in place…waiting to be applied to whoever would repent of that state of Sin and believe, embrace, submit to and live as one with His living Word.
We learned that God, because He is Perfect in every way, never changes. He is always perfectly complete. Only those of us that are imperfect and incomplete have to change. We were created, destined and commissioned to be God’s image and likeness! So the perfect laws that govern God’s perfect Creation will never change. And those laws serve as natural principles according to which every level of God’s Creation is governed and to which all creatures must conform in order to ‘succeed’…that is, in order to fulfill their God-given identities, purposes and eternal destinies and pass God’s Ultimate Judgment.
We learn from the Torah that if we think, live, act, react and interact in true Wisdom, according to the unchanging laws and principles our Perfect God has established, the laws and principles will work for us…on our behalf. And that is why God sends His Word to reveal His ways to us. And as God reveals His Word to us, the Word is revealing the Father who sends Him to us, for they are one in every respect. So, to know and believe and embrace the Word is to know, believe and embrace the living God who speaks His awesome Word to us. That is why the Word, after He became flesh and appeared in our midst, said this to His disciples:
John 14:1-7
“‘Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me (His living Word). In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.’ Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I AM the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
God’s Perfect changeless Nature…and the changeless laws and principles that emerge from Him within the horizon of His Heavenly Realm…are what govern us and determine what will happen to us as a result of what we choose to do or not do. If we abide by and align ourselves with what His living Word reveals to be Truth and Reality…and if we obey the commands He gives that guide our steps along the ‘Narrow Path’ of His Righteous, Wise and Loving ways…we become God’s human image and likeness and are in proper position to receive and enjoy the fullness of His Creation and His Blessing as co-heirs with His living Word (Son).
So it isn’t that our behavior is able to suddenly put God into a ‘good mood.’ And when we disobey, it isn’t that we suddenly cause Him to fly into a malicious, vengeful rage because of the way we’re performing. That’s how fallen humans think, act, react and interact. But God Almighty is completely transcendent and far beyond any of that. We are not even close to being His equal. We can do nothing to control or manipulate or affect or change Almighty God. Nothing about anything He creates has the ability to threaten, thwart, upset, harm or stop the fulfillment of His Eternal Plan and purposes. We do not control anything. There is nothing about us that can be ‘as God.’ That is a delusion foisted upon us by the lies of the Serpent. God is God, the one and only. And we are but dust…which He has formed by His Word and into which His Word has breathed life.
Our Choices Affect More Than Just Ourselves
So the results we achieve and experience come to us according to whether we choose to work on the foolish, destructive side of God’s unchanging laws and principles, or whether we choose to work on the wisdom side of those ever-consistent aspects of God’s Reality. Everything in the universe is connected. We live in a universe (a unified whole), not in a scattered, disconnected pile of individual parts and pieces that have nothing to do with each other. What one being does, creates cause and effect ‘shock waves’ that spread in all directions. What one does affects all the others in some way, and what the others do, affects each individual at some level or another. And God also told us about His laws of ‘sowing and reaping.’ Every thought, choice, decision, word, action, reaction and interaction creates spiritual, mental, emotional and physical changes in the universe. The energy such things release travels and hits and impacts the rest of God’s Creation in ways our fallen human intellects and senses could never even imagine, much less comprehend and explain. So to heed God’s Word and the revelation and commandments He gives us by which to guide our steps, is a very wise thing indeed to do at all times:
Deuteronomy 28:1-6; 15-19
“Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God: Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out…
“…But it shall come about, if you do not obey the Lord your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.”
Matthew 12:33-37
“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. But I tell you that every careless word (judgment or choice) that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the Day of Judgment. For by your (own) words you will be justified, and by your (own) words you will be condemned.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Proverbs 23:6-8
“Do not eat the bread of a selfish man, or desire his delicacies; for as he thinks within himself, so he is. He says to you, ‘Eat and drink!’ But his heart is not with you. You will vomit up the morsel you have eaten, and waste your compliments.” (Emphasis added.)
Jeremiah 17:5-10
“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.
“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart; I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.” (Emphasis added.)
“…each one must examine his own work, and then he will have reason for boasting in regard to himself alone, and not in regard to another. For each one will bear his own load.
Galatians 6:4-10
The one who is taught the Word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him. Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith.”
So the Truth is, that everything we think, say, do, refuse to do… and every action, reaction and interaction we engage in… creates spiritual, mental, emotional, relational and physical shock waves and repercussions in the universe around us. And we are held accountable and responsible by Almighty God for all that we do to or for His Creation. But God, of course, also has the freedom to create spiritual, mental, emotional, relational and physical results in His universe. So, even though fallen angels and Sin-corrupted humans sin and continually dishonor God by misusing the free will and abilities and gifts with which He endowed them, and although they continually afflict the universe with their innumerable dead, Sin-corrupted actions and destructive lapses, blunders and failures…God is free to keep adding ingredients and taking actions of His own…to ‘fill in our blanks’ and make sure that His Word can be validated and fulfilled, and His Plan of Salvation carried out to Perfection by the end of time.
God’s Perfect Plan and Provision Cannot Fail
So nothing we are or think or choose or do, or fail to do, can change or redirect or stop our awesome Perfect living God in any way. Not even the angelic powers of Darkness have such authority or power or ability in their makeup. The Ultimate Authority, Power and Creative Ability lie entirely in Almighty God and Him alone. He is the one and only Ultimate Source for everything that is real, true and good. He alone is the Lord of all Final Results:
Matthew 28:18
“And Jesus came up and spoke to them (His disciples), saying, ‘ALL authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Zechariah 4:6-7
“Then he (the Messenger or Word of the Lord) said to me, “This is the Word of the Lord to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by (human or angelic) might nor by (human or angelic) power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts. ‘What are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become a plain; and he will bring forth the top stone with shouts of “Grace, grace to it!”
We can learn much about God’s ways from His unchanging laws and principles of Creation, such as the laws of physics. Take the laws of gravity or buoyancy, for example. We may love God wholeheartedly or we may be devils incarnate, morally speaking. But in either case, if a human being jumps off the top of a sky scraper, the laws of gravity will destroy that person’s body and terminate his or her mortal life. And, as we’ve already discussed, if the hull of a ship has just one tiny hole or opening of any kind, the powerful energy contained in the ocean will press upon that point of least resistance and widen it and rush into the bowels of the ship until it sinks to the bottom. It doesn’t matter if it was a pirate ship, manned by vicious, cut-throat monsters, or a medical mercy ship that rendered aid to innumerable victims of sickness, disease and injury. Both will sink if their hulls lack integrity.
The laws and principles of God do not discriminate, nor do they change…unless Almighty God Himself chooses to intervene. And He intervenes when His living Word’s Reputation is at stake. If the situation requires God to testify on behalf of His beloved Son, His living Word, He will add ingredients and unleash His Holy Spirit with awesome Power and Forceful Persuasion. He sent His Word on a most important Rescue Mission. He was sent on behalf of the entire human race. Eternal Salvation and Restoration of His Creation is involved. And if part of God’s Creation chooses to war against God’s people and prevents them from obeying God and fulfilling His commands, He will intervene, in one way or another, to counter or neutralize and overwhelm the acts and works of the demons or men that would dare try to stop God’s Word from obeying Him to Perfection.
The Priestly Nation Comes Forth
In the Exodus account, God was in the process of forming the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob into a redemptive instrument, a priestly nation that was going to be separated to God’s exclusive service and trained, equipped and commissioned to become one with His living Word, so that through and with Israel, His Bride, God’s Word would be able to cover the nakedness of the entire human race and redeem us all, and restore us perfectly to our original, God-intended image and likeness status, purpose and eternal destiny. Whenever a situation calls for God to intervene and supersede the workings of His otherwise changeless laws and principles of Creation, He brings other, higher laws and principles into play and they override the laws and principles that operate at those lower levels. Thus God deals with matters on Earth from higher, more spiritual and supernatural levels than those that are available and normal to us. He does it to protect or to testify to the Truth of His living Word and His Word’s Mission of Salvation, Redemption and Restoration.
For example, just prior to His beloved Son’s crucifixion and death, in order to prepare His disciples for the unspeakable shock, trauma and discouraging disillusionment they would soon have to experience and fight through, Father intervened and showed them a side of His living Word that they knew nothing about, even though they had been living with Him day and night for several years:
Matthew 17:1-8
“Six days later Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground and were terrified. And Jesus came to them and touched them and said, ‘Get up, and do not be afraid.’ And lifting up their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus Himself alone.”
Yeshua’s glorification was awesome to behold. But at that time, the glorification was for Him alone. None of us would have been able to share it with Him had God left it at that. But the Word was sent on a mission by His Father…to include the rest of us in all that He was and all that was His. God’s Word is to be our Head…and we are to be living members of His Body on Earth! What belongs to the Head must flow to each member of His Body, or else they remain lifeless and fruitless and are not His true members at all:
John 15:4-6
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.”
So Father intervened supernaturally and spiritually…adding ingredients of His own for the sake of those disciples, so that they would be able to persevere through the ordeal ahead of them and so through them and their testimony, all other future disciples would be able to understand Yeshua at greater depths and realize more fully what God had sent Him into our midst to do. So, instead of taking His rightful place next to His Father in Heaven at that time, Yeshua stepped back out of that Glory. Then He gathered His disciples…and descended the mountain with them…back into the demon-possessed everyday world of men…to face, endure, and complete His atoning torture, crucifixion and death. Only after His awesome act of Redemption was complete would the rest of us be able to join Him in the Glory of His Resurrection and eternal Glorification…as eternal Covenant Friends of the living Word of God…and sons with Him…of God.
Our Heavenly Father sometimes acts in these stupendous, overwhelming, miraculous, Word-confirming ways. And now we see Him do it repeatedly in Exodus. And He will do it in many other parts of Scripture for the reasons just discussed. So the plagues begin to fall upon the rebellious, Serpent-dominated pharaoh and his earthly realm. The combination of pharaoh’s own violations – his deliberate choices to remain on and work from the foolish, self-destructive side of God’s laws of Creation…coupled with God’s Covenant faithfulness to His own Word and His promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, brought those horrendously destructive events…plagues and natural disasters…down upon the daily lives of the Egyptians. All of that was a judgment that was unleashed by God against the worldly idolatrous system that Scripture calls, ‘Egypt.’ The Bible isn’t telling us that God was picking on just one nation and its people. It is showing us what will happen to anyone who follows in the pharaoh’s Word-violating foot steps. The same will happen to all that do what he did, without exception.
God didn’t do this because the Israelites were so holy, righteous and perfect and deserving! He didn’t do it because the pharaoh was displeasing to Him. And He didn’t do it because Moses and Aaron earned His favor and protection by their great performance of awesome ministerial gifts and personal accomplishments. God did it for the sake of His own Name and to validate and fulfill the revelation and promises He gave us through His living and written Word!
Ezekiel 20:43-44
“There you will remember your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves; and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evil things that you have done. Then you will know that I am the Lord when I have dealt with you for My Name’s sake, not according to your evil ways or according to your corrupt deeds, O house of Israel,” declares the Lord God.’” (Emphasis added.)
Ezekiel 37:13-14
“Then you will know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done it,” declares the Lord.’”
When the Perfect living God speaks…His Perfect Word will perform what He said to Perfection. Nothing created will ever be able to stop it! And God had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that He would free Israel and give her the Land of Promise. So when the pharaoh insisted on holding God’s servant nation captive, God repeatedly warned him to let His people go. But thanks to the domination of the Serpent, the pharaoh refused to obey. And that is why Scripture continues to use the name of his nation to symbolize the entire fallen, humanistic, Serpent-controlled world and all of the decapitated human beings who remain captivated and dominated by The Father of Lies.
So we can see that God is not a respecter of persons. He doesn’t play favorites nor does He discriminate and treat certain humans or nations more fairly or unfairly than He treats others. But He does teach the world…by demonstrating His Reality and His ways, to, in and through His chosen people, Israel. The God of Israel is the Lord and God of all, the one and only. And He loves all men. He created them all to be His own image and likeness. And He intends for all of us to be set free from the Serpent’s clutches so that He can transform all men into His Word’s own image and likeness. That is why He uses Israel as His ‘example nation.’ What He does first with them lets the rest know what they too can expect in due time.
So if anyone, Jew or Gentile, chooses to oppose His plan of Salvation or tries to stop it…then what happened to the pharaoh and his kingdom will always be the result. Later on in Exodus, we will see God deal with rebellious Israelites who opposed His Word in similar ways, with the same awesome Judgment, stern correction and terminal effects.
So why does God do such things? He does it to let everyone know that the spiritual, eternal stakes in all of this are enormous! They are of supreme importance to God’s Glory and Satisfaction…and to our eternal well being! God goes to great lengths and takes tremendous deep measures to make sure we understand this and that we know that He is Perfect. We must know that His Standards of Righteousness and His Justice are Perfect and will never change! We must understand this. God will NEVER change! We can’t change Him or control or manipulate Him in any way. That is why He must do what it takes to warn us and to regenerate, transform and reconfigure us to meet His awesome standards and fulfill the indescribable destiny He has always had in mind for His human creation. We fallen, Sin-corrupted, Sin-maimed and deformed beings are the ones that must change! We must change drastically, fundamentally and thoroughly, before God can restore us to be what He originally created us to be…His beloved Word’s image and likeness…and His Word’s Eternal Bride!
As The Last Days Unfold, The Word’s Revelation Increases
As we said before, the Last Days events are going to usher in the Lord’s Final Day of Reckoning. All of His revelation and promises are going to be fulfilled before the eyes of all of Creation. And this was first revealed through one nation, Israel, and demonstrated to and through Egypt as an object lesson for the rest of the world…in the book of Exodus. The issue in Exodus is the issue that will be perfectly finished and fulfilled before the entire spiritual and physical universe by the end of the Last Days promised by the book of Revelation. As it was in the days of Moses, so will it be again when the time comes for the living Word of God, the risen Lord of Glory, to return. And when He returns, God will finally and terminally make the enemies of His beloved Son, a footstool for His feet (See Psalms 2 and 110.)
Throughout the entire Bible, we see the epic Invasion of the living Word of God attacking, invading and devastating the lies of the Serpent and destroying the works and results that come when angels and men believe his lies and fall under his domination. The Serpent deludes, hypnotizes and captivates God’s intended image and likeness humans…and the Word of God is sent to reclaim and take back what has always been and ever will be His possession and the love of God’s heart.
Genesis 3:8-10
“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?’ He said, ‘I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.’”
God’s living Word came, at His Father’s command, to continue the search. But as always, He starts with Israel. ‘Where are you, Israel?’ And in each generation, beginning with Jewish and non-Jewish Israelites of that generation who believe, embrace and obey Him and come out of hiding to receive and become one with Him, He becomes their ‘Perfect Covering’. He becomes for them what only He can be and does what only He can do to cover and cleanse and restore them. He makes them perfectly righteous and acceptable in the sight of God. Then through them, He continues to seek after all the others…starting with and including, the captors, tormenters and oppressors of His beloved Israel. Through His chosen people and what transpires between them and Him, God’s Word will reveal the Gospel of Salvation. He will continue to search for and cry out to the rest of the human race that is still hiding from Him. And to them He also calls out: “Where are you?”
But beloved it must always begin with God’s own people…the Jewish and non-Jewish people who seek after the heart, mind, will and purposes of God. They seek God because He has, by His Holy Spirit, chosen, separated and anointed them to stop being the slaves of the Serpent. Now they must return to their Creator and true Life Source, to love, serve and obey Him, not as slaves that are forced to toil, but as His totally united, bonded, loving Bride, who gives herself to Him because she knows, loves, trusts and desires Him with all of her heart, soul, and might.
Ezekiel 16:8-14
“‘Then I passed by you and saw you, and behold, you were at the time for love; so I spread My skirt over you and covered your nakedness. I also swore to you and entered into a covenant with you so that you became Mine,’ declares the Lord God. ‘Then I bathed you with water, washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I also clothed you with embroidered cloth and put sandals of porpoise skin on your feet; and I wrapped you with fine linen and covered you with silk. I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your hands and a necklace around your neck. I also put a ring in your nostril, earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your dress was of fine linen, silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour, honey and oil; so you were exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. Then your fame went forth among the nations on account of your beauty, for it was perfect because of My Splendor which I bestowed on you,’ declares the Lord God.”
The Lifestyle of Disciples
God intended, designed and created each of us to serve as an image and likeness disciple for His living Word. This is what the entire nation of Israel was chosen by God to be and to do. And that is why He separated His chosen people from all the rest and began to teach and train and discipline them for that very purpose. But before people can begin to live the disciple lifestyle with integrity and authenticity, they must truly repent of thinking, acting, reacting and interacting as if they were like God – self-sufficient, independent and all-knowing and in control of everything in their lives. Disciples forsake such ideas and die to the possibility of living as radically independent agents with lives of their own that they can manage and whose destinies are chosen and determined on their terms and by their own self-determination. Ponder once again the disciple lifestyle as we see it lived out in the Bible by Yeshua’s disciples. This is what they did:
1. They lived with our Master day and night and knew Him intimately.
2. They lived with each other as His personal family members.
3. They waited on and served our Lord, and each other, and memorized our Lord’s words and embodied His teachings.
4. They followed His understanding and interpretation of the Scriptures.
5. They learned to reproduce His Spirit-led actions and Scripture-fulfilling lifestyle.
6. They transformed into His living image and likeness.
7. They allowed apprentice disciples to watch them interact with our Lord so they could learn to be and do with our Lord what they saw the veterans being and doing with Him.
8. After His Ascension and their reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit, He became their indwelling Life. And because they denied their lives so that He could live His Life from within them, they served as His embodiment on the Earth. And He continued to produce His fruit, as only the living creative Word of God could do, through their obedient faith and crucified flesh.
When Moses was inspired to articulate for Israel and the rest of the world the lifestyles God requires disciples to have with His living Word, this is how He worded the relationship He wanted His fellow Israelites to share with the Word:
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
“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.”
So as you can see, the disciple lifestyle is nothing new. It is another way of saying ‘image and likeness of God’. This is what it is to be truly and fully human in God’s sight.
And when our Messiah called us and summoned us to ‘follow Him’…this is what He had in mind for us to become. God didn’t make any of us to be alien strangers to Him, nor were any of us originally intended to be worldly pagan ‘Gentiles.’ We were made to be His image and likeness and to live as one with Him at all times and in all things. So when you observe the fallen world as it actually is, and see the God-less people that populate it as they create and worship innumerable false gods that are products of their own imaginations and desires, it becomes obvious that Israel’s Remnant which is made up of those who choose to serve God’s Word as His faithful disciples will be in for a hard, conflict-ridden life (See Matthew 10). In the fallen world system, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is not welcome. His Word is not believed, accepted or taken seriously. In our modern era, humanistic people do not hunger and thirst for God and for His Kingship and righteousness. They strive instead to achieve and maintain a balanced ‘coexistence’ with their fellow idolators. They advocate ‘tolerance’ and ‘civility’. In our era people accept ‘plurality’ and ‘inclusion’ as ultimate human values that must be achieved and protected, even at the sacrifice of God’s Truth and Reality! Men do this as long as they continue to insist on deciding for themselves what is true and false and right and wrong and good and evil. Mankind will continue to refuse to admit God’s existence and Truth and refuse to deal with their innate Sinfulness. They will continue to refuse to repent and fall before God’s living Word and His Truth and Righteousness and Justice. So there will be no place for Yeshua, the living Word of God made flesh in their radically independent lives:
Luke 2:6-7
“While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”
So as each worldly person does as he or she thinks best, they all hope for and strive to achieve peace and harmony amid the great variety of diverse God-lessness that is promoted and pursued among us. All religions and philosophies are given a place and are accepted as being equal. Truth is considered to be ‘relative’ because man alone is considered to be supreme lord. And his human intellect and will are acknowledged to be the ultimate standard and measure of all things. So because there is so much selfishness, individualism and self-assertiveness, there are innumerable viewpoints, agendas and purusuits. So a place must be allotted to each one and somehow, in some crazy delusionary way, they hope and strive endlessly to find ways to coexist in peace and harmony!
Genesis 11:3-9
“They said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.’ And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said, ‘Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’ The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
The fallen world continues to do what was done at Babel. And the pharaoh of Egypt was no exception. Like the rest of the decapitated world system does, he too refused to know or recognize Israel or to heed Israel’s God. With the rest of the world system, he ignored God’s living and written Word. So, wittingly or unwittingly, the world continues to violate the unchanging laws and principles of Almighty God’s Creation. And the shock waves of their activities go forth to achieve their inevitable results that will affect and afflict the interconnected web of phenomena that makes up the moral, God-made universe…and so, they will call down judgment upon themselves.
Revelation 18:4-20
“I heard another voice from Heaven, saying, ‘Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues; for her sins have piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Pay her back even as she has paid, and give back to her double according to her deeds; in the cup which she has mixed, mix twice as much for her. To the degree that she glorified herself and lived sensuously, to the same degree give her torment and mourning; for she says in her heart, ‘I sit as a queen and I am not a widow, and will never see mourning.’ For this reason in one day her plagues will come, pestilence and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire; for the Lord God who judges her is strong.
“And the kings of the earth, who committed acts of immorality and lived sensuously with her, will weep and lament over her when they see the smoke of her burning, standing at a distance because of the fear of her torment, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city! For in one hour your judgment has come.’
“And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, because no one buys their cargoes any more—cargoes of gold and silver and precious stones and pearls and fine linen and purple and silk and scarlet, and every kind of citron wood and every article of ivory and every article made from very costly wood and bronze and iron and marble, and cinnamon and spice and incense and perfume and frankincense and wine and olive oil and fine flour and wheat and cattle and sheep, and cargoes of horses and chariots and slaves and human lives. The fruit you long for has gone from you, and all things that were luxurious and splendid have passed away from you and men will no longer find them. The merchants of these things, who became rich from her, will stand at a distance because of the fear of her torment, weeping and mourning, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, she who was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls; for in one hour such great wealth has been laid waste!’ And every shipmaster and every passenger and sailor, and as many as make their living by the sea, stood at a distance, and were crying out as they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, ‘What city is like the great city?’ And they threw dust on their heads and were crying out, weeping and mourning, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, in which all who had ships at sea became rich by her wealth, for in one hour she has been laid waste!’ Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her.”
The Word of God commands His disciples not to worry or fret, even though it often appears as if the enemies of God are perpetually ‘winning’ and to ‘prospering.’ But God warns us that this too is a demonic, satanic holographic deceptive delusion. The fallen world’s house of cards is not what it seems to be. The Wind of the Holy Spirit is moving and blowing harder and harder. And all that is built on the shifting sand of demonic lies will not endure or prevail against the coming Storms of Judgment. Only what is built on The Rock of God’s changeless Truth and Reality will be found standing at the end. (See Matthew 7)
Psalm 73
“Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart! But as for me, my feet came close to stumbling, my steps had almost slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant as I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no pains in their death, and their body is fat. They are not in trouble as other men, nor are they plagued like mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace; the garment of violence covers them. Their eye bulges from fatness; the imaginations of their heart run riot. They mock and wickedly speak of oppression; they speak from on high.They have set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue parades through the earth.Therefore his people return to this place, and waters of abundance are drunk by them. They say, ‘How does God know? And is there knowledge with the Most High?’ Behold, these are the wicked; and always at ease, they have increased in wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and washed my hands in innocence; for I have been stricken all day long and chastened every morning.
If I had said, ‘I will speak thus,’ behold, I would have betrayed the generation of Your children. When I pondered to understand this, it was troublesome in my sight…until I came into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end. Surely You set them on slippery places; You cast them down to destruction. How they are destroyed in a moment! They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors! Like a dream when one awakes. Lord, when aroused, You will despise their form.
“When my heart was embittered and I was pierced within, then I was senseless and ignorant; I was like a beast before You. Nevertheless I am continually with You; You have taken hold of my right hand. With Your counsel You will guide me, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For, behold, those who are far from You will perish; You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You. But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord God my refuge that I may tell of all Your works.” (Emphasis added.)