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.)
You’ve no doubt noticed I continually return to the above text in these meditations. I do it because it helps us remember there are countless things we humans are too small and limited to be aware of, much less comprehend. Sciences and technology show us that. And Almighty God reveals that He is eternal, infinite, omniscient and all-powerful. So He lives and operates changelessly…in an eternal dimension that at present is beyond our ability to imagine. He is thus completely beyond and independent of our temporal dimension of time and space. His essential being and level of operation are utterly different from and transcendent to ours. He is the completely ‘Other,’ the Infinite Eternal One…the uncreated one who contains within His Perfect Eternal Being, everything in Creation. It all comes from and returns to…Him. And all of this awesome fullness of Divine Reality is contained within His Perfect, living Word through whom He reveals Himself and is able to interact with us.
This realization is extremely humbling to any arrogant human that previously assumed he had Reality figured out and could thus enjoy radically independent liberty to be and do as he pleased. And that describes the humanistic, ‘self-adoring, spiritually blind mindset of this fallen temporal world. So to most people, this God and His living and written Word are going to be utterly offensive and unacceptable. Many reject and ignore this God, insisting instead on trying to control their own lives and make their own way. And any god that they are willing to acknowledge is a product of human imagination, made in our image and likeness.
But the living God has sent His Word to reveal that He created and designed us to be HIS image and likeness! (See Genesis 1:26) To accomplish that purpose, through the gift of His Holy Spirit, by which God fuses His Spirit with ours, He can live and fulfill His promises to us from within us. In that sense, we become temples of His Holy Spirit. In other words, we can serve as points of entry for Almighty God to abide in us and fulfill His Plan on Earth through us. We can thus serve as His bases of operation. From within us, He can have access to whatever affects us and pertains to our God-given purposes.
Reflecting Him!
So, in reality, our story is never ultimately and essentially about us. It’s about whether or not we are truly a human reflective revelation of Almighty God, or not. In Truth, everything about us is about God. We do not create and control Reality. God Almighty originates everything in existence, including us. Conversely, we receive everything we are and have and can do from Him. And so whether we admit it or not, we serve as reflections that He casts. As our Creator and Sole Supplier, He is always in the lead. So, to maintain true sanity, we must come to grips with the fact that we were are designed and created to follow His living and written Word, at all times and in all things.
God reveals that His eternal living Word, the Word that became flesh and appeared in our midst, contains in Himself everything God’s creatures will ever need to succeed. They can receive from Him whatever they need to fulfill the purposes, functions and destinies for which He created them. God intends for us to succeed and be fulfilled in the essence and purpose He gave us. And God also reveals that Satan, who is called ‘The Serpent’ in Genesis, deceived and drew the first man and woman into His rebellion and disobedience against God’s Word, and inflicted Sin’s fatal damage upon them and their offspring.
But in Genesis 3:21, we see that immediately after this disaster took place, God had already factored that into His Plan; so He sent His living Word to cover, atone and pay our entire spiritual debt to our Creator. So in whatever pertains to our creation, provision and redemption and restoration, God, through His Word, is everything that is Real. And He is everything we will ever need at any point throughout our existences. The Word is our Life Source and our Perfect Provider and Sin-Coverer, Forgiver, Redeemer, Regenerator and Restorer. He is everything to all of us! He is ‘The Good News.’ Our Life and Well Being is a Person…God’s living Word. And we are to be the image and likeness of His perfect Humanity, as revealed to us in and through the Humanity of Yeshua, the risen Lord. We are made to follow Him at all times and in all things. And that is why God commands us to believe, embrace, obey and follow His beloved Son, the Word, as our Lord and our Life.
Whatever we are and have and are able to do are gifts that originate in Him. We can originate nothing. We depend on our Creator for everything. God’s Grace and Loving-kindness come to us from God’s Heavenly side of the infinite chasm that separates what He is from what we are. So we must learn to work our way through and beyond the Serpent’s lies and be retrained to take God at His Word. All of this revelation is contained in the Torah. God lets us know that He is like a Shepherd to us, protecting, providing and watching over us through His Word who contains the Fullness of all of His Truth, Reality and Love. So to know and obey the Word of God is to know and obey God Himself, in Truth and Reality.
John 14:5-7
“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.’”
Matthew 11:25-30
“At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.
“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find (Genesis 2:1-3 Sabbath) rest for your souls.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Proverbs 3:5-6
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” (Emphasis added.)
Luke 18:11-14
“The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
When the Serpent slithered after Eve to entrap and destroy her and the human race that came from her (Genesis 3), he succeeded in getting her to doubt and suspect God’s Word. Then she began to doubt and suspect God’s character and motives concerning her well being. So, naturally, she felt compelled to take matters into her own hands and rely on her own extremely limited perceptions, opinions, feelings and understanding. And at that point, she ‘decapitated’ herself. That is, she cut herself off from Her Head, the Word of God. He is the Source of all Life and all Truth! Without His Light, she and the rest of us were suddenly engulfed by and trapped within the Serpent’s eternal Darkness. So thanks to what Eve and Adam were prompted by the Serpent to do, we who are their offspring were born in Darkness, deluded victims of the Serpent’s lies…and helplessly trapped within his lethal spiritual and physical ‘mine field.’ And now unredeemed humans must strive to make their way through that minefield, with no hope of success, throughout the short spans of their time and space existence.
If it’s true that there is much more to know than our very limited minds could ever perceive, much less contain, comprehend and define, we have no real or authentic choice but to take our Creator’s Word to heart when He reveals something to us. We must trust, believe and obey Him because, unless He reveals His Truth and Wisdom to us, there’s no way for us to be aware of the full scope and meaning of all that lies beyond the range of our Sin-twisted understanding. There is much too much in the Heavenly realms and across the created universe that lies beyond our ability to grasp and comprehend. Despite the arrogant assumptions of our most brilliant minds, we can’t begin to grasp the depths of all there is to know with our dim, highly limited senses and faculties of mind. The depth of our ignorance and lack of understanding is overwhelming when we become aware of the infinite Perfection of God and how much there is ‘out there’ in the vastness of His Creation that forever lies beyond the current tiny range and scope of our ‘mental headlights.’
And so our Heavenly Father, in His just and righteous Perfect Love, warns Israel, and the rest of us, through His Torah revelation, that if we ignore His Word and disobey the boundaries of the ‘narrow path’ they create as God guides us safely through the demonic ‘mine fields,’ we will surely fall into the Serpent’s death trap and suffer the curses that will follow.
Deuteronomy 28:45-46
“So all these curses shall come on you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. They shall become a sign and a wonder on you and your descendants forever.”
Romans 6:23
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The latter part of Genesis told us that Jacob’s family was saved from starvation through Joseph’s trust in God’s Perfect Covenant Loyalty. The little family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was warmly welcomed by the grateful pharaoh who had benefitted so much from Joseph’s God-given wisdom. But it was a mixed blessing for them, to say the least. They did escape the famine…but they were thus ushered into a portion of the Serpent’s ‘mine field’…another part of this fallen world in which it was normal for the idolatrous people around them to be alien to and separated from God’s living Word. The people of Egypt did not know the true, living God and His Word. So they were compelled to try to ‘figure things out for themselves.’ Thus they conjured up myriads of false imaginary gods that they looked to for protection and to satisfy their insatiable neediness.
So the Bible uses the land that Jacob’s family was brought into as a symbol for the demon-possessed fallen world system, the land of the ‘living dead,’ populated and run by ‘decapitated’, Sin-corrupted sons of Adam’s disobedience. Egypt was the home of many false gods. And all of those idols were, in actuality, masks beyond which the Serpent was hiding and manipulating the gullible people who believed in them. So the misguided delusions of the people served as the ‘strings’ by which the powers of Darkness could manipulate them and draw them into a share of their impending eternal destruction.
Israel’s Boot Camp Begins
So God had much to teach to His chosen people as their Exodus from Egypt began and progressed. He had to prepare, discipline, train and equip them to fulfill their awesome task. They had to come to know God as He really and truly is…in all of His eternal Perfection. The Exodus that lay before them was two-fold. First they had to learn, truly, to forsake and leave Egypt and its ways behind. Then, once they died to their past identity and lifestyle and truly moved beyond their former comfort zones and habitual ways of seeing, thinking and doing, they had to move into previously unknown and unexplored territory. They had to learn the ways God intended to teach to the world through them, and become citizens and administrators of true freedom…in the Land of Promise. So the Israelites had to begin to experience for themselves, God’s absolute credibility, authority, trustworthiness and all-sufficiency. God had to detoxify them from their natural addiction to the Serpent’s slander against God and the false gods that his lies compel men to create and enthrone in His place. The children of Abraham had to be weaned of their own inadvertent forms of idolatry. All of their unbelief and misconceptions and erroneous habit patterns had to be exposed and discredited so He could disconnect and remove all of the old ‘wiring’ and ‘programming’ from Egypt that were still operating from within their brains and minds and hearts.
And as we said, at the same time, God had to begin to rebuild and reconfigure their minds and hearts with His progressive Self-Revelation. They had to come to know the real God, the true Living God as their one and only Source, so that they could develop a true understanding of themselves and who and what they were really created to be. They had to know God with accurate, authentic precision in order to better understand what they, as His image and likeness, were to be and do in His service. Life in the Land of Promise was going to be utterly different from anything they had ever known or experienced in the past. And so everything about them had to change so that the new patterns God would teach them would equip them to match and be aligned with all that God really is. Only then would they be able to reflect, reveal and embody His Word and all of His Truth for the benefit of the rest of the fallen world.
Isaiah 29:22-24
“Therefore thus says the Lord, who redeemed Abraham, concerning the house of Jacob: ‘Jacob shall not now be ashamed, nor shall his face now turn pale; but when he sees his children, the work of My hands, in his midst, they will sanctify My name; indeed, they will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob and will stand in awe of the God of Israel. Those who err in mind will know the Truth, and those who criticize will accept instruction.”
John 14:16-18
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.”
For the sake of restoring this fallen world to His Truth and Reality, even from the beginning of their stay in Egypt, God made sure they remained separated from the rest. Since He had chosen them to reflect and reveal His Light into this fallen, demon-possessed world, the children of Israel had to learn to remain separated and at odds with the demonic Darkness and whatever served its purposes.
Genesis 46:31-34
“Joseph said to his brothers and to his father’s household, “I will go up and tell Pharaoh, and will say to him, ‘My brothers and my father’s household, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me; and the men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of livestock; and they have brought their flocks and their herds and all that they have.’ When Pharaoh calls you and says, ‘What is your occupation?’ you shall say, ‘Your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth even until now, both we and our fathers,’ that you may live in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is loathsome to the Egyptians.”
The Lord chose these people to be His Word’s disciples…living examples of His indwelling Presence and Truth, Reality and Authority on Earth. So He didn’t allow them to be mingled with the idolaters in the Serpent’s Darkness. Nor were they allowed to maintain their original identity as slaves to that fallen world, much less to keep serving the purposes of the Serpent. Almighty God intended to teach and train them to resist and combat that Darkness, by making sure they remained focused entirely on Him and the Light of His Word. God’s Truth, when we finally know it, sets us free of the Serpent’s lies and their Darkness. And then, once we’re set apart, God can refit and equip His own to embody and reflect and proclaim the Light that radiates out of His Word.
Isaiah 44:7-9
‘Who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it; yes, let him recount it to Me in order, from the time that I established the ancient nation. And let them declare to them the things that are coming and the events that are going to take place. Do not tremble and do not be afraid; have I not long since announced it to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me, or is there any other Rock? I know of none.’” (Emphasis added.)
Joel 2:26-28
“You will have plenty to eat and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; then My people will never be put to shame. Thus you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and there is no other; and My people will never be put to shame. It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.” (Emphasis added.)
So God commands His people: ‘Repent of your Egyptian ways. Do not dare ignore or disobey My living Word. He is the Light of the world. If you leave Him, you allow the Serpent to drag you back into total Darkness and Death. Do not permit his coils to pull you into the trap of trying to displace My Word and usurp His Authority with something of your own devising. That is utter suicide! So remain grounded and rooted in My Reality and Truth. Take my revelation and commands to heart. Believe My Word, love and embrace Him. And be sure to obey and follow Him all the days of your life!
John 8:12-18
“…Jesus (God’s living Word) again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the Darkness, but will have the Light of Life.’ So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true.’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh; I am not judging anyone. But even if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone in it, but I and the Father who sent Me. Even in your Law it has been written that the testimony of two men is true. I am He who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me.” (Emphasis added.)
Psalm 119:105-106
“From Your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way. Your Word is a Lamp to my feet and a Light to my path. I have sworn and I will confirm it, that I will keep Your righteous ordinances.” (Emphasis added.)
All humans, regardless of what station they occupy in this fallen world, will sooner or later receive the awesome revelation of God’s Reality and Truth. Even the most rebellious and unbelieving of men will one day, to their great dismay, be inescapably confronted and overcome by God’s changeless Truth. It is inevitable that God’s Word will prevail!
Psalm 2:4-9
“He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them.Then He will speak to them in His anger and terrify them in His fury, saying, ‘But as for Me, I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain.’
“I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron,You shall shatter them like earthenware.’” (Emphasis added.)
God’s Side or the Serpent’s… There is no Middle Ground
We are either aligned with and abide by God’s Truth and Reality and His unchanging laws of Creation, or we’re opposing, contradicting and contravening them. When we remain as one with God’s Word, He can freely bless and protect us beyond human comprehension. But when we separate ourselves from our own Head and Life Source and surrender ourselves to the coils of the Serpent, we are crushed and engulfed by Darkness and Death. God forbid that we should still be in that state when we enter eternity!
Matthew 13:41-43
“The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit Lawlessness (Torah-lessness) and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.”
Word-defying humans like Cain, Nimrod and the Word-defying contemporaries of Noah and the builders of the tower at Babel, all found this out. So did the pharaoh that rejected God’s Word as given to him through Moses. And King Nebuchadnezzar followed; and the Caesars of Rome and so will every other temporary puppet of the Serpent. They will all suddenly be engulfed by the terrifying discovery and experience of the devastation that overtakes anyone who dares to oppose the Supreme Authority of God’s Word. But even now, as that awesome Day approaches, many blithely rely on their home-made structures, philosophies, theologies and ‘kingdoms.’ But those things are built on the wrong side of that infinite eternal chasm that separates the Perfect Being, Essence and level of Operation of Almighty God and the fallen, terminally wounded world of men. Whatever is built on the Darkness side of the chasm will not stand and endure when the coming Light of God’s Truth invades the world and take possession of all that belongs to Him.
So, unless we allow God’s Holy Spirit to empower us to understand the Wisdom, Truth and Authority of the Word, as only God can do it, we will remain blind, deaf and clueless:
Matthew 16:13b-19
“He (God’s living Word) was asking His disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you (My disciples) say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock (of Spirit-given revelation) I will build My Church (congregation); and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; and whatever you bind on earth (will be what) shall have been bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on Earth (because of what God reveals to you will be what) shall have been loosed in Heaven.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The Israelites of Moses’ day had been born and bred in Egypt. For four centuries, although they always remained separate and apart from the rest, the atmosphere all around them was demonically controlled and devoid of the influence of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In that sense, although they were chosen to be God’s ‘Firstborn Servant,’ there was little about them, naturally speaking, that could have equipped them to fulfill their awesome job description.
Exodus 19:5-6a
“Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’”
They were programmed and hard wired to be under the heels of the Egyptians…whipped, disenfranchised and at the bottom of the food chain. For centuries they had been squeezed into the worldly mold of idolatrous Egyptians. So their minds and brains were, for the most part, programmed to operate in natural, soulish ways…and to be led by their own fallen perceptions and reasoning. Egypt, like most of the rest of the ancient world, was extremely religious, and so were most of the Israelites. But it was a ‘religiosity’ similar to that of Cain. It was a symptom of Adam’s fall…what ‘living dead’ people without their True Head do, as long as they remain disconnected in mind and heart from the true, living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and His Word.
Before Judaism And Christianity…Direct Intimacy With God
Notice that in the days of old, before Judaism and Christianity existed, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were pierced, penetrated and impregnated with the Life of God’s living Word. He finally succeeded in taking them back from the Serpent, and eventually, they became entirely His. And once that happened, it would have been the farthest thing from their minds to ‘start a religion’ and begin to organize and ‘run’ it according to standard worldly, flesh-driven norms and practices! What the fathers of the Faith experienced by interacting with God’s Word Himself completely set them apart. For the rest of their lives, their intimate, living interactions with God separated them from the worldly people who believed in and worshipped innumerable false gods of their own choosing. The fathers of the faith didn’t create theological systems by which to try to define, comprehend and control their living God. He was certainly not a product of their imaginations or instincts. He was totally ‘Other’, completely mysterious and beyond their ability to predict or control. Rather than being predictably religious, these fathers of the Faith, after they finally came to know Him to the depths that they did, remained overwhelmed with awe…stunned and prostrated by the awesome Enormity and Majesty of this living God who had invaded their space. His utter transcendence kept them continually on their faces before Him. They didn’t dare to take the initiative at any time. The weight of His supreme Glory and Authority forced them to be ready to wait upon Him and obey His commands and abide by His revelations! Thus they lived in awe of His awesome Reality that beckoned to them from the other side of ‘The Chasm.’
As they came to know God with increasing intimacy, everything they knew previously and esteemed and valued on this space and time side of the chasm, quickly faded and lost its hold on their conscious awareness. God and the Kingdom that He ruled on the eternity side of The Chasm replaced all of that. So it never entered their minds to ‘dabble’ with stuff ABOUT God that they could manufacture for themselves and control by their own devices. Their level of awe and prostration before this God whose Reality was penetrating them so deeply, made that impossible!
But people who know nothing about the sort of living interaction with God they knew…and what happens when He pierces, penetrates and impregnates your innermost being…have no choice but to settle for man-made religious substitutes…false gods devised and controlled by human imaginations and structures designed by fallen human intellects. God’s Heavenly System remains far beyond and removed from all of that.
So it’s no wonder that the ex-slaves of the Exodus had such a difficult time understanding and learning the ways of the One who abides on the other side of that infinite ‘divide.’ No wonder they were so stunned and terrified of Him, and so clueless. Unlike the Egyptians, they were dealing with Someone that is utterly Real! He is not a man-made idol from the human side of the chasm. The God they were coming to grips with was impossible to define or understand by fallen flesh or contained within man-made devices. They were dealing with the living God that once interacted with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and who revealed Himself to Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham. He was here again, reaching out to these befuddled slaves, and His Word kept summoning them to follow Him further and further into the desolate wilderness…and His intent was to take them deeper and deeper into a world they could never begin to anticipate or figure out, or control.
Throughout succeeding centuries, the Word of this living God would continue to approach and abide with their descendants… speaking and correcting and warning them through their prophets and wisdom writers. And finally, He would appear among them in human form once more, to reach out to the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in first century Israel. And even then, although many of that generation had inherited the self-glorifying, controlling, ‘religious ways’ of their fathers, many of them also stumbled badly when the moment of their visitation arrived. They misunderstood and failed to recognize God’s Word…just as their ancestors had done. And so they continued to live at a distance from Gods’ living Word, and settled for religiosity instead:
John 5:37-47
“…the Father who sent Me, He has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time nor seen His form. You do not have His Word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. You search the Scriptures (Moses wrote) because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these (Torah revelations) that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have Life!
“I do not receive glory from men; but I know you, that you do not have the Love of God in yourselves. I have come in My Father’s Name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the Glory that is from the one and only God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So the difficulties Israel experienced as the Lord led them out of Egypt continued. They plagued the Israelites, generation by generation, as they moved forward throughout their history. God had taken them out of Egypt…but, as all fallen sons of Adam with uncircumcised hearts continue to do, they continued to cling to and treasure, in their hearts and minds, what pertains and belongs to ‘Egypt’.
So it requires rigorous discipline and continuous correction on the part of God when He deals with fallen human hearts. And that is why that ‘wilderness boot camp’ is so necessary for all of us that are summoned by God’s Word, to follow Him. We must be stripped of our worldly ways and refitted to follow God’s living Word. That wilderness boot camp training is utterly necessary for each of us. Only that can force us to ‘unlearn’ all the false, Serpent-induced worldly ‘wisdom’ we’ve inherited and that was programmed into our minds and ‘hard-wired’ into our brains.
God always has to separate His own to ‘re-educate’ and train them. And so we see that He did not begin with Israel because He was playing favorites and discriminating against the pagan Gentile world. He simply started with Israel. They were the first to be separated from the fallen world system so that He could reveal Himself to them AS HE REALLY IS. They had to know the Truth about Him first. So He works to prepare each of their generations to become His instrument of Revelation and Redemption on behalf of all the other Sin-corrupted, Serpent-oppressed people that were scattered across the earth at the time of Babel in Genesis 11. ‘Egypt’ represented all of those people in the Book of Exodus. And God loves all fallen people and desires to save and restore them all…through His chosen instrument, Israel:
Isaiah 9:2-7
“The people who walk in Darkness will see a great Light; those who live in a dark land, the Light will shine on them. You shall multiply the nation (of Israel), You shall increase their gladness; they will be glad in Your Presence as with the gladness of harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For You shall break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, as at the battle of Midian. For every boot of the booted warrior in the battle tumult, and cloak rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire.
“For a Child will be born to us, a Son will be given to us; and the Government will rest on His shoulders; and His Name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His Government or of Peace, on the Throne of (the Son of) David and over his Kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with Justice and Righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will accomplish this.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So, because of the infinite chasm that separates us humans (including Israelites) from God, it is impossible for us to ‘figure God out.’ We have no chance of knowing or understanding His ways with true authenticity unless He takes the initiative and speaks His living Word into us Himself. And only God’s Holy Spirit can make His living Word real and alive to us and fruitful from within us. God must actually be present and active within us before our minds and brains can ‘get it.’ When the Spirit of God pierces and penetrates our innermost being with the Reality of the Word of God…THEN… ‘the lights go on’ in our innermost being. Suddenly we see and understand what Scripture and others who already believe have tried to tell us for so long. Suddenly it begins to make sense. It no longer seems absurdly ridiculous and contemptible. And we know that we’ll never be the same again because God Himself called us by name and spoke to our heart of hearts. When that happens to a human being, he or she will be equipped to serve as one of God’s points of entry and bases of operation on the Earth:
Acts 9:1-9
“Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.’ The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.”
Only God can bridge and cross the infinite chasm that separates us. We can’t make our way to Him; He must take the initiative and reach out to us and confront us with His Truth. No matter how holy, special and religious we may think we are, we will know nothing that is true and authentic concerning God unless He takes the initiative and invades our space and transfixes our hearts with what is in Him. And He does that through His living Word. Only when we embrace, believe and obey His Word will we have access to God and His Eternal Kingdom. He must ‘transpose’ His divine transcendent Reality into a human ‘key’ that we can ‘pick up’ and recognize. Then we are suddenly connected to Him and His Realm on the other side of the chasm that separates God’s Light from the Serpent’s Darkness. Then, we are able to begin to ‘hear the voice of God.’
People like Adam, Eve, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses were pierced, penetrated and impregnated by God’s Word. There was nothing ‘religious’ about what went on between God and these overwhelmed people. What they received was pure, direct, God-initiated revelation. And because of that, the fathers of the Faith became ‘consummated’ human beings. They didn’t just know ABOUT God. They KNEW GOD HIMSELF because He first knew, or penetrated and impregnated them!
1 Corinthians 8:1-3
“Now concerning things sacrificed to idols, we know that we all have (natural, soulish, worldly) knowledge. Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, HE IS KNOWN BY HIM!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
This is the great difference between Light and Darkness, between the Serpent’s living death and God’s Eternal Life. This always exists between God’s True, heart-circumcised Israel, and Jewish and non-Jewish people who become religious, but who remain uncircumcised in their hearts. Even if they are religious and seemingly ‘good’ on the outside, in God’s Truth, they do not have what it takes to be spiritual or saved and truly wise and righteous. That can’t happen UNTIL God Himself lives within them to impart His Wisdom, Righteousness and Holy Spirit’s guidance into them. Once that happens, these people have dual citizenship. Part of them will still live on Earth, but their regenerated spirits will belong to and abide with the risen Messiah at the Throne of God in Heaven. They will be forever united with Him, even as He is united with the Father that imparts Him. But the difference between Light and Darkness cannot be perceived by those who have not yet been penetrated and impregnated by God’s living Word.
1 Corinthians 2:7-16
“…but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; but just as it is written, ‘Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, And which have not entered the heart of (unredeemed, unpenetrated) man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him.”
“For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.
“But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised (God-imparted). But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
And this is a major lesson that God gives to the world through the revelation contained in the book of Exodus. So if you’re aware of this and continue to look for it, you will see God repeat this lesson over and over, throughout all the rest of the Scriptures.