Matthew 16:21-23
“From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He MUST go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.’ But He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s!’” (Emphasis added.)
God warned us that His thoughts, plans and ways are not at all like ours (See Isaiah 55:8-11). Because of that enormous difference, at first most of us (just like the contemporaries of Yeshua, including His own disciples) cannot adequately take in and grasp the awesome truth and significance of the fact that God’s living Eternal Word actually became one of us and at one time, for specific God-ordained purposes, lived and died among us here on Earth! But not only that, He actually rose from the dead and is able to abide with us today, through the awesome Gift of the Holy Spirit! He never leaves us nor will He ever forsake us! And this is the awesome Reality into which we New Covenant disciples must be deeply and thoroughly rooted and grounded.
But there’s even more! Our Master will come again in His risen human form to completely fulfill all that was promised in God’s written Word. He will then usher in the climax of this current time and space era. And the awesome day of His second coming is approaching very quickly.
At the time of His first coming, as Yeshua of Nazareth, Israel was agonizing under the heel of Roman occupation. So the Jewish people were yearning for their long-promised Messiah to come and give them relief and freedom from the ruthless brutal pagan idolaters who were making life utterly miserable for them all. Most of them expected a worldly ‘freedom-fighter’ type of Messiah to come and remove Rome’s yoke from their necks. Even the Lord’s disciples expected this, since Israel had suffered for centuries at the hands of various invading kingdoms and empires. So the air in first century Israel was electric with anticipation of an invincible conquering warrior-messiah that would emerge and crush the might of the oppression under which they suffered. The disciples naturally assumed that since they’d seen Yeshua perform so many miracles before their eyes, He would soon begin to use this awesome power to improve the lot of the Israelites’ fallen flesh by rescuing it from the fallen flesh of their Roman oppressors.
God’s Redemptive Purpose is Eternal, Not Just Temporal
Because Israel’s suffering was intense, it was natural for the disciples and their fellow Jews to ignore what their own prophets (for example, Isaiah) had specifically foretold concerning the redemptive purpose that God would send His Messiah to fulfill. The main thing He had to do was deliver Israel and the rest of the world from the lethal coils of the Serpent and his powers of Darkness! Any other temporal form of liberation would have to be secondary to this all-important eternal liberation! So although most people focused on finding immediate relief and the worldly improvement of their temporary lives on the Titanic, God was intent on sending His Son to get them and the rest of the world, including the Romans, completely off of that sinking hulk before it went under and pulled them into eternal separation from God!
Isaiah 53:1-3
“Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.” (Emphasis added.)
God’s Word warned Israel that their Messiah would first appear as a suffering servant like Joseph, who had been sold into slavery by his own brothers. Only later did God elevate Joseph to personal preeminence and glory. And David also began very humbly. He was a lowly shepherd. And although he did deliver Israel from Goliath and the Philistines, he was occupying a very low position at that time. It was much later before God elevated him to the throne as Israel’s greatest human king. So most Jews forgot about ‘Messiah Son of Joseph’; they had no interest in a humble, suffering leader that would be despised and held in contempt. That would not enhance their earthy, self-serving hopes and agendas in any way. They were waiting for a ‘superstar’, a ‘King-Messiah…an all-conquering, Israel-glorifying Son of David’ that would outdo what the Maccabees had once done to overthrow the reign of the tyrant Antiochus.
But, nevertheless, God sent His living Word to free all of mankind from the coils of Sin and Death. So at first He was not the triumphant, David-like warrior that could satisfy Israel’s craving for immediate freedom and worldly supremacy. He came as the meek, humble, non-resisting redeeming Messiah and willingly poured Himself out, like a drink offering, before God, on our behalf. He was our Covenant Representative. Thus, in that capacity, He had to take the death we all have coming, upon Himself! And having done that, because He was Sin-less, and because Sin had no legal hold or claim on Him, the Death penalty that follows Sin also had no claim on Him. Thus by dying, He entered into the bowels of Death and completely defeated it in our name. And by His Resurrection, He became the ‘Firstborn’ of all the other human beings that would believe and rely upon His Perfect Finished Work of Redemption and Restoration.
God’s living Word allowed Himself to be disgraced, stripped naked, and murdered on an execution stake. He did it to completely nullify and reverse the disobedient path of the arrogant, self-adoring Serpent. He did it to atone for what ‘face-saving’, ‘me first’ fallen human beings keep doing to try to take the place of Almighty God. So Yeshua’s humiliation and abasement were unacceptable to most of the Israelite people. At first, not even His disciples could stand the thought of it!
Only after they were baptized in the Holy Spirit, were the disciples spiritually equipped to understand Yeshua’s full significance and the Wisdom and merciful Glory of God. Then they were able to serve as His Spirit-empowered New Covenant apostles, and patiently await His second coming – the glorious coming of the triumphant Son of David…the King of kings and Lord of lords:
2 Peter 3:7-9
“But by His Word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the Day of Judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (Emphasis added.)
Fallen flesh is unable to recognize the fullness embedded within God’s written Word that reveals the eternal Perfection of His infinite, eternal Living Word. So until God Himself reveals this to people, no one can grasp and fully appreciate the God-ordained connection between what God’s Living Word had once done to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness in the Garden of Eden…and how, as God’s Passover Lamb, He also covered Israel’s spiritual nakedness with His Covenant Blood in the days of Moses. And so they are also unable to link those former things with what Messiah Yeshua had to undergo and fulfill when He finally arrived and lived among men in the flesh. The Israelites since His day have found it to be inconceivable that their Messiah would have to come to Earth twice! And so, since He actually did come initially to fulfill the role of humanity’s Ultimate sacrificial, Blood Covenant Passover Lamb, the majority of His fellow Jews interpret His disgrace and agony as a sign of God’s rejection and proof that His claims to Messiahship were false. So instead of embracing Him and thanking God for their deliverance from this fallen world, and from slavery to their own fallen flesh, and freedom from the coils of the Serpent, they despise and reject Him as a betrayer of Israel and a fraud!
Luke 23:34-35
“But Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves. And the people stood by, looking on. And even the rulers were sneering at Him, saying, ‘He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One!’”
The Lamb of God
On the very day the high priest in the temple was commemorating the Passover and performing the prescribed rites…Yeshua, the real, eternal High Priest and Lamb of God was offering Himself, as the true Day of Atonement Sacrifice and Scapegoat! His was the true Sacrifice, whose Perfection would cause God’s Judgment to pass over His Sinful, but repentant, obedient people. He took mankind’s Sin upon Himself and allowed some of those fallen men to lead Him to the hill of execution outside the walls of Jerusalem so that they could kill Him. There He willingly poured out His Life’s Blood – His whole heart and soul – to seal and fulfill everything God had promised and done through His eternal Covenant, as it was revealed by the Torah of Moses and the prophets, in this time and space dimension. Through Yeshua, God let the world know once more, that His perfect Work of Creation and Redemption is finished! We can all be redeemed and reconciled to God and delivered from our Sin-corruption and restored back to our original image and likeness of God position, by resting upon and drawing all we need from…His perfect, eternal, living Word:
Leviticus 16:29-33
“This shall be a permanent statute for you: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall humble your souls (lives) and not do any work, whether the native, or the alien who sojourns among you; for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the Lord. It is to be a Sabbath of solemn rest for you, that you may humble your souls; it is a permanent statute.
“ So The Priest who is anointed and ordained to serve as Priest in His Father’s place shall make Atonement: He shall thus put on the linen garments, the holy garments, and make atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar. He shall also make Atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Isaiah 53:10-11
“But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. AS A RESULT OF THE ANGUISH OF HIS SOUL, He will see it and be satisfied; by His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.” (Emphasis added.)
The instructions given in Leviticus 16 concerning the duties of the high priest on the Day of Atonement did more than just link the passing generations of Levitical high priests to what God’s Word did to cover Adam and Eve and what He did through the Passover lambs and other sacrificial animals in the day of Moses. They were also prophesying and explaining the future event through which He, the living Word of God and our Eternal High Priest, would fulfill to perfection in time and space, what had always existed in God’s mind, will and plan, from all of eternity! The Scriptures written by Moses and the other prophets gave prophetic revelation of the eternal living Word of God and the Ultimate Sacrifice God had already made of Him…before the foundation of this temporal world.
Genesis 22:7-8a
“Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, ‘My father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ And he said, ‘Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ Abraham said, ‘God will provide for Himself The Lamb for the burnt offering, my son…’” (Emphasis added.)
The Living Word was being revealed to us as the Ultimate, Eternal ‘Lamb of God.’ The real Sacrifice that God Himself had to make in order to perfectly satisfy His own perfect Standards. Only God Himself could be the ultimate, infinitely perfect, God-worthy Sacrifice. So His Word was slain for us…according to God’s eternal Blood Covenant Plan. All of this is contained forever in Yeshua. He did, in time and space, in unspeakable agony, what was needed to express the eternally active Love that God has for each one of His image and likeness humans.
Many minds boggle at the thought that the Almighty Infinite God who is pure Spirit…would actually appear as a man and allow Himself to be so abased and disgraced. But what should really grab our attention are these two mind-boggling questions: 1) How could we be so dense as to assume that anything would be impossible or out of the realm of possibility to our Almighty God? And, 2) How could fallen human flesh be so arrogant as to assume that any of us have it within us to save and justify ourselves by our own pathetic, puny Sin-corrupted religious efforts? God has told us in many ways that our ‘righteousness’ is no better than ‘filthy rags! (See Isaiah 64:6 KJV) How could the likes of us ever hope to satisfy the standards of such an awesome, holy, PERFECT GOD? How could anything so far beneath the magnitude of God’s Perfection ever expect to work such a PERFECT act of Atonement, when we have such Sin-corrupted hearts?
No…only GOD HIMSELF is up to such a task. Only He could satisfy His perfect standards, perfectly. And that is why He spoke His eternal living Word and sent Him to us. He had to become one of us…to do what had to be done…to do what only God Almighty Himself could have done…in our place and on our behalf:
Luke 22:41-44
“…He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, ‘Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.’ Now an angel from Heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.” (Emphasis added.)
God MUST Cover Us By His Covenant Grace and Mercy
Torah is the foundational revelation…that all fallen, Sin-corrupted children of Adam must be covered by God’s Covenant grace and mercy. And it reveals that God’s Living Word is our Eternal Covenant Representative Substitute. He is the Ultimate Passover Lamb…the only Way and Truth that can lead us back into God’s grace and eternal Life. All is contained in, and done by, God’s Word, our Messiah, Yeshua. He had to do it all and make it available to the rest of us. So He became one of us…to serve as our Perfect Eternal Covenant Representative.
John 19:28-30
“After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, said, ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar full of sour wine was standing there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop and brought it up to His mouth. Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘IT IS FINISHED!’ And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” (Emphasis added.)
Leviticus 17:11
“For the life (soul) of the flesh is in the blood, and I HAVE GIVEN IT TO YOU ON THE ALTAR TO MAKE ATONEMENT FOR YOUR SOULS; FOR IT IS THE BLOOD BY REASON OF THE LIFE (soul) THAT MAKES ATONEMENT!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The Lord Yeshua reappeared to His astounded disciples in His glorified, resurrected state. And He gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit so they would have the fullness of this overwhelming, heart-crushing revelation. Then they would be sure to truly and deeply understand this marvelous turn of events and proclaim the Glory of God to the rest of us after His Ascension into Heaven:
Luke 24:25-27
“And He said to them, ‘O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His Glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself IN ALL THE SCRIPTURES (in the Hebrew Tanach, or ‘Old Testament’).” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Acts 1:6-8
“So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, ‘Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.’”
1 Corinthians 15:20-22
“…now Christ has been raised from the dead, the First Fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man (the first Adam) came death, by a man (the Last Adam) also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ (the Word of God and Messiah of Israel) all will be made alive.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The Torah reveals what God’s Creation means to Him and what it should mean to all who are designed and created to be His Word’s human image and likeness. It also reveals that in God’s mind, the lives of men (including Yeshua) and the lives of animals, are contained in and represented by, their blood. The life of the flesh is in the blood. In Scripture, the word ‘life’ means more than mere physical existence. The English word life is used to translate the Greek word, ‘psuche,’ which is the human soul – the thinking, willing, choosing and loving part of us…our ‘heart.’
When Yeshua speaks to His disciples about saving or losing our lives, He is including all the functions and activities that go on within our heart of hearts. Our ‘life’ is meant to express and represent what we really are in our hearts – whatever truly goes on in and flows forth from within our ‘souls.’ So in this sense, God allowed His innocent Sinless human ‘heart’ to be utterly crushed, broken and poured out in Atonement for all the rest of our Sin-loving corrupted hearts.
Jeremiah 17:9
“The (Sin-corrupted human) heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Amplification added.)
All men have been redeemed by the infinite Perfection of this sacrificial act. The only question that remains now, is which of us will receive that redemption from Him and come under our Creator’s absolute Authority…and which of us will choose to remain where we all begin…trapped within the disobedient coils of the rebellious Serpent?
Yeshua is the true fulfillment of what was first revealed through Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah in Genesis 22. We believe that this was a prophetic revelation of what our Father God and His Son, the living Word, have done eternally on our behalf. The Son of God gave up His soul and personal inner human life by the shedding of His Covenant Blood. This was the ultimate eternal, Divine Act of self-giving for our sake. And we disciples are to follow our Master in that act of Love, for God’s sake. God’s Word poured His human life out before God for His Father’s sake, as well as for ours; and we, as His image and likeness, join Him in the ultimate denial of our radically independent, Sin-full self-life, for God’s sake…for the sake of His absolute, changeless Truth and Reality, and for that of the rest of God’s beloved Creation that is so sorely in need of having Yeshua’s Redemption and Restoration applied to it.
Luke 9:23-24
“…‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life (soul) will lose it, but whoever loses his life (soul) for My sake, he is the one who will save it.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Leviticus 17:10-12
“…any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. For the life (soul) of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life (soul) that makes atonement.’ Therefore I said to the sons of Israel, ‘No person among you may eat blood, nor may any alien who sojourns among you eat blood.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Exodus 21:23-25
“…if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life (soul for soul), eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise…” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
This awesome principle of atoning redemption that God established reveals His perfect nature and His perfect standards of Order, Justice and Righteousness. There is perfect order and justice in God’s nature and mind and will. So His human image and likeness must reflect this Perfection perfectly. And Yeshua made it possible for us to do this. His atonement made to our Perfect God in our name, is perfect. And since we were conceived in the state of Sin, and our nature is fallen and Sin-corrupted, we can’t fulfill God’s perfect Standard of Righteousness on our own. So none of this is essentially about us, or what we do or the way we do it. What stands in the way is what we ARE…Serpent-deceived, Sin-corrupted, fallen flesh. What our fallen nature produces is grossly imperfect compared to God’s perfect nature and standards. Whatever we do, out from our fallen nature, intensifies what Sin has already done to us. And when that is measured against the perfection of God, it could never pass God’s Perfect Standards of Righteousness! That is why God Himself, through His living Word, in His infinite, Perfect Mercy, chose to become our ‘Sin-Covering’ and ‘Wedding Garment.’
Therefore, we must look to our holy, awesome, Perfect God…working through His living Perfect Word and Perfect Holy Spirit…to save, redeem, forgive, cleanse, restore and transform us. It is purely by God’s perfect love and grace, from start to finish, that this can happen. What is in Yeshua has redeemed what is in us. And so, He is ALL – in all that pertains to us.
1 Corinthians 2:1-5
“…when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the Power of God! (Emphasis added.)
1 Corinthians 1:27-31
“…God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us Wisdom from God, and Righteousness and Sanctification, and Redemption, so that, just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord!’” (Emphasis added.)
Colossians 1:15-20
“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.” (Emphasis added.)
Isaiah 55:8-11
“‘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.” (Emphasis added.)
God Alone Is Our Only Source and Resource
Beloved, can you see it? Can you see how our awesome God is, and must always be, everything to all of us? There is no other real Source for anything…including our Redemption, Salvation and Restoration! So if we personally believe and receive God’s living Word and rely upon and draw from Him and His perfect finished work, we truly do worship and serve the one true God. We look to and believe and rely upon the true, living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…and Him only! This is the way we love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. When we live and operate purely and entirely by the Authority of His Word and the Power of His Spirit, our lives are truly based on the granite-solid Rock of God’s Truth and Reality. Then God can freely apply to us the benefit of His living Word’s perfect Finished Work which was done personally and with impeccable perfection, on our behalf.
Romans 4:16-17
“For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, (as it is written, ‘A father of many nations have I made you’) in the presence of Him whom he believed, even God, who gives Life to the dead and calls into being (by His living Word) that which does not exist.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Matthew 7:24-27
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on The Rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on The Rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”(Emphasis added.)
Habakkuk 2:4
“Behold, as for the proud one, his soul (life) is not right within him; but the righteous will live by his faith.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Isaiah 66:1-2
“Thus says the Lord, ‘Heaven is My throne and the Earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? For My Hand (Word) made all these things, thus all these things came into being,’ declares the Lord. But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My Word!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So as we ponder what is contained in Exodus chapter 12, we see that the time For God to completely humble and break the Serpent-manipulated pharaoh’s resolve to defy His Word had finally arrived. It was time for the final plague to fall upon him and for him to get out of God’s way so that the ultimate separation of the Word’s Light from the Serpent’s Darkness could take place.
Our Eternal Blood Covenant Covering – The Living Word
But notice that the criterion for this Exodus separation between God’s ‘Israel’ and the Serpent’s ‘Egypt’ had nothing essentially to do with any of the fallen human beings that were involved – not even Moses and Aaron! In themselves, none of these humans were anything special. They, like the rest of us, were conceived in the state of Adamic Sin. This is why God is no respecter of persons. All Adamic flesh, including that of Moses, is under the curse and death penalty of Sin. In that sense, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were in the same boat with all of the other peoples of fallen Egypt. They were chosen by God for a purpose, but they were not chosen because they were any different from the rest. All were trapped in Sin and its Death Sentence. All were stranded aboard the mortally wounded, sinking ‘Titanic’ and desperately needed their Sin-nakedness to be adequately covered by Another, by God Himself. So the determining criterion was this: God’s destroying angel of Judgment would pass over all those who would believe and obey God’s Word and come under His Sacrificial Blood Covenant Covering. It didn’t matter whether they were Jews or not. What mattered was whether or not they allowed God’s Word to cover them with the atoning Covenant Blood of His Eternal Sacrifice!
So as you ponder the Book of Exodus and the trials, tribulations and sufferings of all the people involved in that story, realize that God didn’t do what He did to unrepentant sinners or to His chosen people that believe and obey Him, because He is petty or vengeful. He didn’t inflict plagues, tribulation, testing and correction because He delights in seeing humans suffer! He didn’t do it to torture or deprive people of their lives! The truth is that none of us has a life! That’s the problem! We are the living dead! And God is intent on doing what must be done in order to wake us out of our Serpent-induced stupor so that we will finally allow Him to strip that living death off of us and set us free from the coils of the Serpent by means of His beloved Son’s Cross! The Cross and its agonies are what strip off the Death State that engulfs us and sets us free from its lethal effects. If God can succeed in doing that, with our obedient cooperation, His Word will then be free to lead us into His Eternal Life!
It is only because of the Blood Covenant Covering of God’s Word that any of us can live. So those who believe and obey and repent and follow Yeshua…leave the Titanic. They are covered and protected by His precious Covenant Blood Covering. They are the ones who will be saved and taken off that hulk before it sinks into eternity.
The pharaoh had his chance and he made his choice. And so must we. It’s up to us to decide how we will respond to this awesome news that comes from the Kingdom of Heaven. Will we continue to crow and boast to the world: “I did it MY way,” or will we fall at Yeshua’s feet and put on His light and easy ‘Yoke of Authority’ and follow Him into Eternal Life?
Exodus 12:5-13
“Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month; then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight. Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, both its head and its legs along with its entrails. And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning, you shall burn with fire. Now you shall eat it in this manner: with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste—it is the Lord’s Passover.
“For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments—I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.” (Emphasis added.)
John 6:42-58
“They were saying, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of Heaven’?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught of God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has Eternal Life. I am the Bread of Life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the Bread which comes down out of Heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the Living Bread (Word) that came down out of Heaven; if anyone eats of this Bread, he will live forever; and the Bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My (atoning) flesh!’
“Then the Jews (Judeans) began to argue with one another, saying, ‘How can this man give us His flesh to eat?’ So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no Life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has Eternal (Passover) Life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My (Passover) flesh and drinks My (Passover) blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the Bread which came down out of Heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this Bread will live forever.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The True Vine And Its Branches
Yeshua said, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in Him…”
We might rephrase what He said in this way: ‘He who abides in Me and I in him…eats My flesh and drinks My blood’! In other words, He who abides with Me by faith and draws from all that I am and all I have done will be like a true, authentic living branch of a Fruit-producing Vine. My ‘branch’ will partake of Me and abide with Me exclusively in My Covenant with the Father who sent Me’. And it will bear the fruit I, through My Life abiding and working within you, will be able to produce from within it. Everything depends on and comes about by the living, creative Word of God and the perfect Finished Work He accomplished through the sacrifice of Yeshua’s human body and the shedding of His life’s blood! Life for life; Blood for blood; Soul for soul! The righteous shall live by faith.
Salvation is not a matter of ethnicity or man-made religion, or specific man-made theologies or ritual practices. Salvation is not a created thing we can conjure up for ourselves. It is not a gift-wrapped inanimate object. True Salvation is a Person! His Name is Yeshua, and He is Almighty God’s Eternal Living Word made flesh. He is the Messiah sent by God. And He contains in Himself, all of the Fullness of the Father! Father’s Word is ‘The Lamb of God!’ Salvation is only in Him. It is not in anything He created. It is in the Creator Himself! So we must all be covered by His atoning, redeeming Covenant Blood. He is The Perfect ‘Substitute Covering’ that makes us righteous and presentable in God’s sight.
This is a small part of the awesome depth of Revelation that God embedded in His written Word concerning His living Word and the Exodus from Darkness that God requires all of us to make. The Word and His Glory are revealed amid the inadequacies, weaknesses, trials, tribulations and failures of God’s chosen people as well as those of all other peoples. Before He became flesh, God’s Word revealed Himself as our ‘Covering’ first to Adam and Eve and then through them to God’s chosen lineage of redemption…Abel, Enoch, Noah and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and the children of Israel. God’s Word contains and sustains all of God’s ‘very good’ perfectly complete and finished Creation. He contains God’s perfect Original Blessing. He is the perfect ‘Covering’ that deals with everyone’s spiritual nakedness. He is the perfect ‘Ark’ that saves mankind from God’s Judgment against Sin. His Blood sealed Abraham and his offspring into God’s Eternal Covenant. He is the perfect Passover Lamb, whose Blood protects the human race from God’s Judgment. He is the Perfect Offering, the Beginning and the End, representing and including everyone who believes and obeys Him. Only in Him is the Father ‘well pleased.’ This is the Word of God that pledged Himself to Abraham in Covenant blood:
Genesis 15:12-14
“Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. God said to Abram (through His living Word), ‘Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.’”
And this is what God’s Word will fulfill at the very end:
Revelation 21:1-7
“Then I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, made ready as a Bride adorned for her Husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the Tabernacle (living Word) of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
“And He (the Lamb) who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ And He said, ‘Write, for these words are faithful and true.’ Then He said to me, ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son…’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
John 4:21-24
“Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for Salvation (Yeshua) is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The Exodus is about Almighty God’s awesome Perfection and All-Sufficient Grace. It is about the marriage whereby His infinite Abundance, and our infinite, bankrupt neediness come together. When we become one with God’s living Word made flesh…we ‘marry’ into all that God is and all that He has to offer. So the equation comes to this:
Infinite bankruptcy and neediness + Infinite Perfection = Infinite Perfection!
Exodus 15:11
“Who is like You among the gods, O Lord? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in praises, WORKING WONDERS?” (Emphasis added.)