Genesis 12:1
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you…’” (Emphasis added.)
We can see that right from the beginning, as God’s Word first revealed Himself to Abraham, He was inviting him, and his entire family, to share in an intensely personal, ‘marital-level’ Blood Covenant relationship. This type of bond required the death of Abraham’s former personal, radically independent, God-less, ‘self-managed’ life. This is a tremendously important revelation because it reveals what God requires of every other human, Jewish and non-Jewish alike!
If we aspire to being authentic, God-approved children of Abraham, we must understand what the cost will be. When we say, ‘Yes’ to the ‘Follow Me’ summons of God’s Word, He will begin the process of restoring us. So, what we used to be, must be forsaken and left behind, in favor of the transformation God will create in us. God is intent on transforming us into His Word’s human image and likeness! So all of Creation, as it exists in its present Sin-corrupted state must be completely remade. To abide authentically in God’s Eternal Perfection, as God’s beloved ‘friend’ Abraham did, means that we must allow God to remake us spiritually, mentally and emotionally, in this life. That makes it possible for us to be part of God’s brand new, fully restored Creation. And then, throughout all of eternity, even our bodies will be new and glorified, just like our Master’s!
2 Corinthians 5:16-17
“Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God…” (Emphasis added.)
Remember that when Adam and Eve fell into Sin…Death entered the picture and overtook us all, as well as the rest of God’s earthly Creation! The Serpent managed, by his Sinful rebellion and Truth-twisting, to pollute the heavens all around us, murder the human race and devastate the earth over which mankind was supposed to rule! So, despite what the humanistic world thinks, God’s Truth is this: we do not have a ‘life.’ Genesis reveals that spiritually we’re all born dead! And even as they emerge from the womb, our bodies are dying! So the issue with God is not that we need to be ‘fixed’ or ‘improved.’ There’s nothing to improve! Death can never be transformed into Life. If something is already dead, it’s too late to try to fix it. So, before we can be said to be ‘alive,’ we must be recreated, or, ‘born again’.
Genesis 1:16-17
“The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die!” (Emphasis added.)
John 10:10
“The thief (Serpent) comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have Life, and have it abundantly.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
John 3:5-7
“…Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’” (Emphasis added.)
Please don’t miss this; it’s vitally important revelation! Every child of Adam is conceived and born into that sub-human state (in contrast to what we were before the fall) of living death. And living death can never be life, no matter what you try to do with it. Death breeds more death. So the sooner we see and admit this, the sooner we’ll see ourselves as Almighty God does, and the sooner we’ll realize the horrible eternal peril of people who believe they’re ‘Okay’ and thus insist on remaining as they are. When the light of Truth goes on in our innermost being, we’ll be able to see through the flimsy facades of the gross delusions that blind most of the human race to the Truth and Reality of God and the actual horrors of their true state. When we see the Truth, we’ll have no trouble honoring and valuing and yearning to receive the Salvation and new life that God offers through His living Word. We’ll see true Reality with our newly opened spiritual eyes and be utterly relieved and grateful and receptive to God’s Word in our heart of hearts!
God’s revealed Truth and Reality flow directly against the flow of the mindset, attitudes and priorities of this fallen world and its rebellious self-adoring system. That’s why God had to keep His chosen people separated from the people of Egypt, even when Israel lived in their midst! The Israelites’ occupation as the keepers of flocks made them repugnant to Egyptian society and its customs from the beginning of their stay. And God used that fact to keep his chosen ones separate after their arrival. He made sure they’d be placed in a ghetto-like location, in the area called ‘Goshen.’ And later, the abject slavery they had to endure also kept them segregated. Thus God preserved and protected His ‘Light to the Gentiles’ from the Darkness that enshrouded the minds, hearts and lives of the Egyptians. In this sense, God blessed and protected Israel, even while she was being abused and held captive by the will of that pagan nation!
The response each group gave to the Word of God, as He revealed Himself through Moses, separated the people of God’s Light from the denizens of the Serpent’s Darkness. Egypt rejected Him but Israel began to believe and obey Him. So the vastly different responses to the Word produced vastly different spiritual and earthly results. That is the difference that enables God to open the eyes of the fallen world to its true situation and desolate outlook. So obviously, if God doesn’t separate His own from the fallen ways of the pagan world, there will be no difference between the two. There’ll be nothing to distinguish one from the other. They will all be one… trapped in demonic rebellion, Sin and Darkness! And there will be no hope for the world.
Deception!
The people of Darkness have no choice but to call their state of living death, ‘my life.’ They must ‘re-label’ wicked disobedience and rebellion against God’s Word as ‘freedom’ and noble ‘self-determination.’ Thus they are shown to be, ‘Egyptian,’ or humanistic. Such people consider living death to be ‘normal’ and properly ‘human,’ and an inalienable ‘right!’ They call lies ‘truth’ and what is evil, ‘good.’ So they reject the true Good that is from God, and accuse those that uphold and proclaim God’s Truth of being, ‘bigoted,’ ‘judgmental,’ ‘narrow-minded’ and ‘irrelevant.’
So unless God creates, protects and maintains a chosen few to serve as His demonstration models of the vast difference there is between humans that are connected to their true Life-Source and ‘Head’ of the human race, and those that are ‘decapitated’ and separated from Him, there will be nothing by which to expose the demonic Delusion that fatally wounded Creation. God’s Light will have no human ‘lamps’ through which to shine His Light so that the Darkness of Sin that leads to eternal Death may be overcome and dispelled.
Four centuries of abiding in Egypt’s soul-numbing, worldly atmosphere, coupled with the agonizing tribulation suffered at the hands of those idolatrous pagans, took a great toll on the children of Israel. They sorely needed to be reminded of and reestablished in, the identity and purpose God had given and taught to their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The contemporaries of Moses, which by then numbered in the millions, had to be brought back and reattached to their spiritual Root on a national level! They needed to have Abraham’s profound respect for God’s ways and His perfectly obedient service to God, restored. The legacy passed down by the fathers of the Faith was a dim memory that always has to be faithfully revived and rekindled. And of course, while God began to work on and in His people, the pagan world around them remained locked in the spiritual blindness and deafness we all originally inherit from Adam.
So it’s a constant struggle for disciples to abide in God’s Light, when everyone and everything around them is determined to remain in the Darkness and scream at God’s chosen ones to stop what they’ve been called to do and allow themselves to be sucked back into the Darkness that the rest of the world stubbornly refuses to forsake. In such a corrosive environment, God’s people are like ships that must be maintained. Their sea-worthiness must be continually restored and protected. They need to be ‘dry docked’ regularly…and refurbished, refitted and restored for future action. So God sees to it that disciples of His Word are set apart for ongoing protection and the maintenance of sustained concentration on Him and His ways. Thus the Lighthouse beacon of Salvation continues to shine for those still trapped in the Darkness.
As long as people continue to doubt and mistrust God, they will naturally create and maintain distance from Him. And they’ll oppose His Word and transgress His ways. So, God keeps applying discipline and pressure on His people for their own protection. He guards the integrity and focus of their God-given purpose by continually ‘pruning’ what is wrong and useless from their souls, lest, like the rest of the world, Israel and her true meaning slip back into rejoining the world system and accepting its God-less ways as ‘normal human living.’ The Truth is, separation from God’s living Word is not normal human living; it’s the state of being ‘Headless’ and therefore, spiritually dead!
So, when God sends His Word to summon us out of the hypnotic stupor imposed on us by the peace we’ve made with God’s enemies and their lies, our fallen flesh naturally resents Him and sees His initiatives as unwelcome, ‘unreasonable’ intrusions. So we’ll tend to ignore or reject His call to follow Him out of Egypt and shrink away from having to deal with the strangeness and dangers and agonies of uncertainty and discomfort we’ll surely experience if we follow Him and allow Him to take us out of our habitual comfort zones and into the terrors of true freedom that can only be found in the Wilderness.
As long as we live apart from God’s living Word, He can’t be our Life-giving Head and we can’t be living, image and likeness members of His Body on Earth. So God warns us, in order to wake us up, that the only real legacy the first Adam passed onto us, was Sin and Death! And that’s why worldly people who refuse to admit this, resent the Word of Life so deeply. They become enraged at the suggestion that God is truly the one and only God and they could be so wrong, so out of touch with Reality! So when God leads His own into the Exodus, that is His warning to the fallen world. The worldly haunts of fallen flesh are what Scripture calls ‘Egypt.’ The pharaoh of the Exodus was the embodiment of this fallen world’s system. And like him, the world insists on rejecting and ignoring the revelation of God’s Word as He gave it through Moses. And the world regards the God of Israel, and His chosen people that revere and obey His Word, with the utmost scorn and contempt.
“For the Word of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the Power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?
[The Dake’s translation of the Bible gives insight to the worldly atmosphere that the New Covenant disciples and apostles, like Paul, must always deal with. A footnote for this text says that Paul lived in an age of intellectual speculation among the erudite Jewish and pagan ‘thinkers’ of that time. The ‘debater’ of the age was a critical ‘questioner,’ a spiritually dead, soul-driven seeker of allegorical, mystical, metaphysical and cabalistic insights as a substitute for God and His authentic Truth. Such worldly ‘wisdom’ is relative and highly changeable because it is always man-originated and man-controlled. It is not given or directed by God’s Holy Spirit; it comes from the fallen souls of men. It is intellectual, theoretical, analytical, distant, dispassionate and self-serving.
But the Covenant relationship between the living Word of God and His Spirit-led disciples is vastly different. To New Covenant disciples, Truth is a Person…the living Word of God made flesh. And their knowledge of Him is intensely personal, intimate, Love-based and interactive. Theirs is a Spirit-imparted bond by which the Word of God teaches His disciples to live, think, move and act as one with Him, at all times and in all things, out of undying mutual trust, loyalty, affection and to-the- death faithfulness.]
“Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
“For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but 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.)
The attitude of the radically independent humanistic world prevails in anyone who remains mentally, emotionally and spiritually disconnected from God’s living Word. He, as our Creator, Provider and Sustainer, is the Vine to which we must be attached if we are to be alive and fruitful in God’s sight. But if we’re severed from God’s Word by demonic lies and Sin and worldly habits, we’re decapitated, cut off from Life Himself and therefore, dead. Then we’re not equipped to share in the things of God and His Kingdom. In that state, we can’t know God intimately and personally; nor can we hear His voice or function with Him on His ‘wave length’ and ‘frequency.’ So decapitated people occupy a sub-human level of existence, unable to be God’s image and likeness. For a time, such people function at basic, animal-like mammal levels; but spiritually, all the while they remain apart from God’s Word, they are spiritually dead and cannot be truly human as God intended them to be. They are like TV sets. Even when they are new and fresh out of the carton, even if their cords are plugged into a wall socket and they are turned on, they can only function at the lowest, most basic level. And not until they are specially connected and equipped to receive cable or satellite signals, can they pick up the vast array of knowledge and awareness that comes from all the other channels that are only available through this new special equipping. Nothing that exists in that other dimension is possible or available, as long as they are limited to relying on their own original antennas.
Grafted into the True Vine
So we can see that there are two separate human races that exist on the earth. One race is still tied to and bound by the living death state of the first Adam (Covenant Representative), and the other race are those who have made the Exodus from that original existence that we inherit from Adam. The disciples of God’s Word exchange their original ‘orphan existence’ for the truly human state of full union with God’s Word, the Last Adam, who is Creation’s sole Head and Life Source. They are grafted into the ‘Vine’ of God through participation in God’s Eternal Covenant. God’s creative Word is the Vine who shares all that He is and has and does, with His beloved disciples. But those who remain cut off from Him…remain trapped in the Serpent’s Rebellion and are cursed with all of Sin’s consequences and eternal Death penalty to which the powers of Darkness are forever liable.
Humans that follow God’s Word until they complete the Exodus, are removing and separating themselves from their original, condemned, sub-human existence perspectives, priorities and lifestyle habits. Light and Darkness can’t occupy the same space at the same time. It must be one or the other. When Light is absent, Darkness prevails; but when Light comes in, Darkness disappears. So is it with those who become one with God’s Word and His Perfect Righteousness and Purity. They become one with Almighty God by becoming one with His Eternal Word. That automatically fills them with His Light and sets them at odds with the fallen, Darkness-loving race, of which they are no longer a part.
1 Corinthians 2:6-16
“Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; 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 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. 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 (God’s living Word.” (Amplification added.)
The decapitated human race is naturally calibrated to believe and promote the Serpent’s lies against God. They are convinced that its radical independence is laudable and to be envied. But God says they are severed from His Word who is the Light and the Life of the world. So while the rebels abide in the Serpent’s Darkness, the redeemed disciples of God’s Word follow Him out of the Darkness…and they willingly submit to the tremendous spiritual, mental, emotional and physical reality-shift and ‘boot camp’ training, discipline and adjustments they will have to undergo, on their way to full residence and citizenship rights in God’s Land of Promise.
Constant tension and enmity naturally exist between the two races. One race is trapped by the Serpent’s lies, so they continue to embody and enhance his hatred and hostility against God and His Word and they also despise those who follow and serve God’s Word. They oppose and plot against God’s redeemed people and seek to silence and eliminate them entirely. The demonic, murderous spirit that drove Cain when he murdered his own God-obeying brother is still present and active in such people today, all around the world.
So God’s Word and Holy Spirit are here to convict all men, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, of their state of Sin and inherited enmity with God. And so God summons all men to repentance – to a radical exchange of viewpoints, attitudes and heart choices according to God’s Word. Thus the Word is able to lead them into a complete personal and corporate transforming Restoration.
The document entitled, Humanist Manifesto III, clearly expresses the belief system and attitude of the anti-Word of God people. Notice what I underline in its opening words:
“Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.
“The lifestance of Humanism—guided by reason, inspired by compassion, and informed by experience—encourages us to live life well and fully. It evolved through the ages and continues to develop through the efforts of thoughtful people who recognize that values and ideals, however carefully wrought, are subject to change as our knowledge and understandings advance.” (Emphasis added.) [Note: The entire document can be seen at: www.americanhumanist.org]
The authors of this manifesto deliberately reject and ignore God and His eternal revealed objective Truth and the changeless validity and inherent permanence of His Word. They ignore and disregard God’s warnings. They insist that the flaky intellects and relative personal perspectives of Sin-corrupted men that are continually changing, must be ‘the measure of all things’. So, because humans and their perspectives are always relative and subject to change, so are Truth and Reality always relative and subject to change. And sadly, there are even natural born Israelites and people that declare themselves to be ‘Christian’ that see and think along these Western, Hellenistic thought patterns that were birthed in the intellects of ancient pagan Greek philosophers that knew nothing of God’s revelation as given through Moses. And they strive and struggle to create stability, predictability and a sense of security while they remain trapped in their self-created, ever-changing, ‘blob’ of unreality.
Throughout Israel’s history, God has even had to judge and punish His chosen people for rejecting His Word! So everyone else should take heed and be warned: if Judgment comes upon God’s chosen people, the fallen world will undoubtedly experience the same thing when their day of reckoning finally arrives.
Isaiah 42:23-25
“Who among you will give ear to this? Who will give heed and listen hereafter? Who gave Jacob up for spoil, and Israel to plunderers? Was it not the Lord, against whom we have sinned and in whose ways they were not willing to walk, and whose Law they did not obey? So He poured out on him the heat of His anger and the fierceness of battle; and it set him aflame all around; yet he did not recognize it; and it burned him, but he paid no attention.” (Emphasis added.)
Such malice against God’s Word and the disciples who follow Him causes endless discord, strife, confusion and bloodshed. The Serpent stirs up the people he blinds and manipulates and drives them to articulate and embody the heart and spirit of Cain. The Serpent that keeps deluding people tries to put himself across as ‘an angel of light’ (2 Corinthians 11:14). And thus the worldly people that embody him, also strive to appear noble, wise and righteous. But their radically independent attitudes and agendas stem from that humanistic relativism that endorses and enhances the delusion that each one of us is free to do everything ‘my way.’ Such people presume to justify themselves and maintain self-righteous postures, even though by nature, their fallen flesh remains selfish, self-centered, rebellious, manipulative, predatory, murderous and, ultimately, self-destructive to the core. And notice how divided this fallen world remains. Headless people can never unite and work as one. Each one goes his separate way and does his own dead ‘thing’, just like their ancestors in the days of Babel. Do you remember how God responded to their insistence on ‘self-determination’?
Genesis 11:7-9
“‘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.”
Living Death and Its Deadly Fruit
Fallen flesh, as embodied through Cain’s mindset and lifestyle, feels justified in pursuing its own urges, passions, desires and agendas. But that is a symptom of the extremely limited, Sin-corrupted self-adoring drive that is common to all decapitated dead flesh. And it doesn’t take long before fierce conflicts and squabbling develop among those that remain Head-less, even the religious ones. Since each one believes he can be ‘as God’ and is thus driven to achieve personal success and preeminence …through self-serving drives which they won’t forsake… they keep getting in each other’s way. And they create a chemistry and atmosphere that produces anarchy…a world in which the rule is: ‘every man for himself!’ And that produces mutual suspicion and hostile defensive, controlling attitudes and incompatible chemistries and a deadly, brutally merciless, ‘dog-eat-dog’ atmosphere. The competitive pressure and anxiety that such selfish man-worship generates, can never result in peace, order or harmony. Each person who embraces this agenda and each generation that is conditioned and trained by it, remains geared and programmed by Death – for Death. This is the agonizing, frustrating and terror-filled legacy of Adam’s living death. And in God’s sight, that is ‘Egypt,’ the land of idolatry that teems with angry, hostile, soul-murdering ‘false gods.’
Isaiah 55:6-11
“Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.
“‘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 warns that we are all in desperate need of salvation and nothing short of total regeneration or re-creation will save us. Death, regardless of which nationality, race, religion, culture or accolades it hides behind, cannot be ‘improved’ or ‘fixed.’ By its very nature Death has no place in God’s Presence! So how can it be fixed or saved? Salvation is total union with God, who is Eternal Life! Only union with our Head, the risen Messiah of Israel can make the human race One! But when we’re separated from Him, Death rules and it flows out from our decapitated existence. This is why we must be born again! Death, even if it tries to be eminently religious and self-righteous, is total separation from our Creator. And if we’re separated from Him, how will we ever be able to remain united to one another, when we’re all insisting on taking our true Head’s place? We were designed and created to be His image and likeness! So how can that dismal state of alienation from God’s Word be ‘improved,’ much less accepted by God? In what way can Death be ‘saved?’ This is the absurdity that plagues us as long as we remain used to calling this worldly, God-less, radically independent state of living-death orphan-hood, ‘my life.’
The Bible tells us bluntly that we are wise to choose a response to God’s living Word that reverses the original response our first parents gave to Him in the Garden of Eden. When we stop running and hiding and making excuses in our vain attempts at self-justification and self-fulfillment…and finally allow God’s Word to catch up with us and pierce and penetrate and shatter our delusions and snap us out of our hypnotic trance, then we will finally see Truth as He really is…and our Lord and Master will be free to ‘cover our nakedness’ by cutting the Serpent’s coils from us and setting us completely free to obey and thus be reunited with Him…as His image and likeness!
But whoever rejects God’s living Word remains blind to God and His intent to save them. They deeply resent God and see His Word as an intrusion! They despise and hate the people who hear and follow and obey the Word. This is why the world so consistently tries to diminish, destroy and erase Israel and all that God designed and created her to be and represent. Darkness tries to survive by eliminating Israel, God’s ‘Light to the Gentiles.’ The world hounds and pursues God’s people. But at the very same time, Israel’s ‘Husband,’ the living Word of God, continues His relentless pursuit of the world!
By their very presence, existence and lifestyle, the Word’s disciples become like ‘strobe lights’ that invade the terrors of the night and pierce and expose what is lurking within the Darkness. And people who hide and lurk in Darkness are instantly exposed by their arrival. And they feel convicted, embarrassed and condemned by the contrast that appears whenever the two are beside each other. True authentic, Spirit-empowered disciples are living indictments against the rebellion and disobedience that the fallen world embraces and promotes. And so the world regards them as thorns in its flesh. It covers its eyes and ears, lest they hear the warning of the coming judgment and inevitable condemnation and desolation into which their false gods are continually leading them. They cannot even think about the consequences that will befall them IF…it should happen that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is real…and IF His Word actually did become flesh and appear among us as Israel’s Messiah…and IF His true chosen New Covenant disciples…are actually proclaiming the absolute, objective, eternally unchanging Truth of the one and only, true Living God! If all of that does happen to be true…then what?
Acts 12:18-24
“Now when day came, there was no small disturbance among the soldiers as to what could have become of Peter. When Herod had searched for him and had not found him, he examined the guards and ordered that they be led away to execution. Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and was spending time there.
“Now he was very angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon; and with one accord they came to him, and having won over Blastus the king’s chamberlain, they were asking for peace, because their country was fed by the king’s country.
“On an appointed day Herod, having put on his royal apparel, took his seat on the rostrum and began delivering an address to them. The people kept crying out, ‘the voice of a god and not of a man! And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and died. But the Word of the Lord continued to grow and to be multiplied.” (Emphasis added.)
Matthew 10:16-22
“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. But beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues; and you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say. For it is not you who speak; but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.
“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. You will be hated by all because of My Name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.”
We Die to Living Death…To Be Alive In Him
To follow the Word of God means death to our former living death existence in this world. So as we die to Death, we are free to live as one with God (Life), thanks to the Eternal Covenant. From that time on, all that we are and have and do, comes into us by the Word and Spirit of God because now we see clearly that there can be no other true source, but Him! And just as a marriage covenant between a man and woman condemns the radically independent ‘single’ life of each of the partners to death, and just as the union of those two ‘representatives’ is meant to unite their two respective families, so does God’s Blood Covenant marriage proposal crucify and execute our radically independent, single self-life individualism. The covenant union now requires us to forsake everything we once believed, thought, knew and treasured when we were oblivious to and independent of God. Our original identities, status, priorities, thought patterns and lifestyle habits must now be executed and forever buried because our Blood Covenant marital reality requires us to willingly, gladly and wholeheartedly sever all ties to our former worldly independence from our Lord and His people. Now we must gladly form ourselves into one unit with Him and become one family…God’s Family! This blood covenant requires us to be willing to do this…with wholehearted terminal finality:
Deuteronomy 6:4-6
“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.”
Luke 14:26-28
“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?”
Matthew 10:34-39
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.” (Emphasis added.)
Galatians 3:27-29
“For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise!“
Colossians 3:1-4
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.” (Emphasis added.)
Based on this changeless, Eternal Blood Covenant reality, we must develop a new Salvation identity and mentality that assumes that we died to Death. That is, we died to our old decapitated state, once and for all. And we must now own and live out from the Resurrection Reality of our Messiah’s Spirit-imparted indwelling Life. To make sure we understand this, God’s written Word repeats this in many different ways. We must realize that our relationship with God’s living Word does not consist in merely having ties and relationships to created things that are somehow about Him. That allows far too much distance to remain between Him and us. That’s nothing more than phony man-controlled, ‘denomination-ridden’, ‘us against them’ religion. We must realize that we cannot buy or earn or control or dispense God’s favor ‘for’ Him, nor can we ‘perform’ our way into His good graces and His Kingdom. Nor can we be naturally born into it. This awesome Restoration is purely a gift that God imparts to us through our death and resurrection regeneration, solely on God’s terms. It is not about inheriting an Adamic Sin-corrupted set of genes or belonging to a certain family tree. It’s not about active membership in certain man-devised ‘religions’ or philosophies of life or ecclesiastical, organizational membership in man-controlled churches, mosques, synagogues or ashrams. There can be no religious, theological, or ritualistic substitute for that personal, intimate, wholehearted obedience-based marriage bond we can have with the living and written Word of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Israel. Yeshua, our Messiah, is the living Word of the Living God! He is God’s Gift to us. And He is our only Source…given to us to abide and work within us as our Salvation. So we must ‘marry into’ all that He is and all He has done in our name and on our behalf! It is to Him that we must become personally bonded. Nothing short of the risen Lord Himself will do! He IS Salvation for us all!
It’s not enough to claim that we once made a decision to ‘accept’ Him. It’s not enough to ‘ask Him into my life’. It’s not enough to belong to Him organizationally or verbally and intentionally, in theory…while we continue to reject, ignore and disobey Him at the same time. It’s not enough to be a member of some man-originated and man-controlled religious organization. We have to prove – by our Spirit-empowered, Messiah-embodying actions, reactions and interactions and thoughts, words and supernatural ‘fruit results’ that give evidence to the fact that He lives and works in us and that we actually are Yeshua’s personal disciples. This can only be done when we’re empowered by God’s Holy Spirit! Only God can equip us to embody His Word and His Eternal Truth in our minds, wills, affections and physical actions, reactions and interactions. Anything short of that is only ‘Death, warmed over’.
I ask you to try to grasp the absurdity embedded within this scenario:
Imagine God’s living Word invading Abram’s space and making Himself known to that Chaldean moon worshipper. And He commands Abram to drop everything and follow Him:
“Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house To the land which I will show you…” (Genesis 12:1)
Now imagine what would have happened if Abram had responded by saying:
“Well Lord, I appreciate your invitation, but I’m just not in a position to accept. I’m too busy; there’s too much on my plate right now. But I’ve got an idea that is more realistic and workable: How about if…instead of having me drop everything so that I can come into Your Life and Destiny, how about if I invite You to ‘drop everything’…so that you can be free to come into MY life, instead? I need You to help me do a better job of living MY life! How about helping me live MY life more productively and efficiently and with maximum success? I’m willing to do that…so how about following me, instead of asking me to follow You?”
Can you imagine a slave to the living death and eternal condemnation of the Serpent, asking Almighty God who is Life personified, to interrupt His enormous Exodus-based Blood Covenant Plan of Salvation and Restoration for God’s Creation, in order to accept instead, his ‘come into my Egyptian life’ counter-proposal? Is it not utter absurdity to presume that God will allow a Sin-condemned son of Adam’s disobedience to twist the meaning of His call to Salvation into such a ridiculously selfish, ungrateful and erroneous substitute configuration?
No one can exempt himself from God’s call to make this Exodus! Cain and Nimrod and those who derided Noah so long ago tried to exempt themselves from having to make God’s Exodus from the Serpent’s Darkness. And so did the men that built the Tower of Babel and also Lot, Esau, Laban and the pharaohs of Egypt! That’s what the elite movers and shakers and superstars of this fallen world always try to do. They try to take God’s place. They contradict or edit God and bargain with Him so that He’ll settle for Darkness instead of Light and so that He’ll agree to a workable compromise arrangement, designed and controlled by them, that conveniently bypasses God’s commands, as contained in His Eternal Word!
Luke 6:46
“Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”
The earth is filled with people like the one in our imaginary scenario. They share the attitudes of the guardians, custodians and overseers of this world’s corrupt, humanistic, self-adoring system. Disciples must die to that! But unfortunately, even many Jewish and non-Jewish ‘Christian’ people piously claim to love and serve God, while they continue to cling to this mindset. Their professions of ‘faith’ are false fronts that conceal the dismal truth. Beneath the surface, they remain unrepentant, flesh-driven and radically independent. And no religious disguise or worldly accomplishment can hide the true state of their living-dead spirits from the gaze of our Perfectly Righteous almighty living God!
Matthew 23:29-33
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?
Revelation 3:15-18
“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me Gold refined by Fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see!”
This is why God’s unchanging living Word keeps moving forward, invading the Serpent’s Darkness…looking for those who will heed and obey His summons to be saved. And He leads whoever will truly repent and follow and obey Him…into the death, burial and complete replacement of their former living death existence. And He trains and disciplines them with firmness, consistency and endless love (See Hebrews 12), so that they can transform into His image and likeness, so that they too can become ‘sons of God’ and living ‘temples’ of His Holy Spirit…and fruit-bearing ‘branches’ of the one and only Eternal Living ‘Vine’ of God.
This is some of what was being revealed when God’s living Word led Israel out of Egypt and up to the edge of the Red Sea! It was time for Israel’s slavery to this fallen, Sin-corrupted world and its system to be executed, stripped away and buried. That living death existence that they called, ‘my life’ had to end. They had to forsake it so that God could replace it and all of the demon-inspired delusions that created it. Their radically independent streak had to be reduced to nothing (crucified), so that God’s infinitely Pure Word could bestow on them His Righteousness and the new identity and name and purpose, status and inheritance that God had always intended for them to have and live out.
This is what Father sent His Word to reveal…and not only to reveal, but to enforce, accomplish and fulfill to Perfection! Every command and requirement that God was giving to His poor bedraggled, clueless ‘pile of dust’ chosen people, was a command that He was actually giving to His beloved Son, His living creative Word. And the Word became flesh, in order to reveal this and to prove to all of Creation, that God truly had brought the fathers of the Faith into His Eternal Covenant, to be one with Him forever, so that He could be their Eternal Covering, Righteousness, Wisdom, Redemption, Endless Inheritance and All-Sufficient, God-given Blessing of Well Being.
The Eternal Covenant
So when the Word became flesh, many centuries after the times of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses, He was revealed in the Person of Yeshua of Nazareth, our Covenant Representative. God’s living Word came in human form to make sure we would finally understand how profoundly the Eternal Covenant intended to unite us to God and God to us. God became one with men so that men could become one with God! This is what the Word had been revealing and requiring all along, since Genesis! God sent His Word to do all that we could have never done! So He is our Salvation, Redemption, Restoration and Complete Fulfillment. That is why, although it was His right to do so, He did not live and operate on Earth as the Eternal infinite, omnipotent Son (Word) of God. He came to humble and abase Himself…living and operating as the Son of Man, as one of us…in our totally God-dependent weakness. He relied entirely on His Father and was continually, exclusively led by the Holy Spirit. He took our place and lived as the perfect Image and Likeness of God that our state of Sin made it impossible for us to be. And in that representative capacity He became one with us and took on our Sin guilt and the curses and death penalty that come with it and atoned for all of it Perfectly! Because we dared to try to be as God, God sent His Word to be abased and humbled and become one of us! And thus, God Himself became our Atonement! And in so doing, He cut right through the demonic lie of the Serpent and disemboweled it!
Genesis 3:4b-5a
“You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…”
The Lamb of God atoned for our enormous corporate suicidal offense against God, as well as for all of our symptomatic, living death sinful individual acts of commission and omission. That is why our Righteous Messiah first had to appear among us as the Suffering Servant, the Son of Joseph. The full Atonement had to be legally completed for all the rest of us who were spiritually dead and totally helpless to do any of that for ourselves. It had to be Death first, and then…Resurrection. It was, Suffering Servant first, and THEN…Resurrected Messiah King, Son of David and Lord of Creation! When this awesome release and liberation has been received by and applied to the entire company of men and women who will believe, receive and unite with Him in that…THEN…He will come again, not as the Man of Sorrows, but as the risen Lord of Glory. And the Son of God will eternally preside and rule in the New Jerusalem, from the Throne of David, with His faithful disciples and co-administrators in attendance.
Because God’s living Word, in His unlimited authority and favor with His Father, took on our human nature, except for Sin, to serve His Father and Restore all of Creation, as our Covenant Representative, He is now our Perfect Righteousness. He is our Perfect Satisfaction of God’s Perfect Justice. God’s Perfect Word took on our abysmal weakness and Sin guilt and paid for them to Perfection. And now, as His faithful ‘branches’ we have the right to receive and be filled with the Perfect Righteousness and Favor with God of our Eternal ‘Vine’. His Death, and our share in it, also makes it possible for us to share in all of His Resurrection Glory! And the fulfilled New Covenant makes it possible for Him to live His Life and do what only He can do…to us, for us, in us and through us!
This is what was being prophetically revealed when, as Yeshua of Nazareth, He allowed Himself to be immersed by John, the prophet-baptizer in the River Jordan. He was fulfilling and perfecting, as Israel’s Messiah, what had been prophetically revealed by the Holy Spirit centuries before at the Red Sea, through Israel. Just as the Israelites, in their Sinful Adamic state of Sin and condemnation, were immersed into the burial tomb of the Red Sea, so was Yeshua the Messiah of Israel immersed in the burial tomb (our burial tomb) in the Jordan River. And the second Exodus generation that followed Joshua and Caleb into and through the Jordan, were a prophetic revelation that Israel, the Bride of the Word, was following her Husband who became one with her flesh, into the Jordan…and out from the Jordan into His Resurrection and Perfect Fulfillment of all that God had required of the fallen human race. He led us into the death and burial of our Eternal Death state…so that we could be free of it…and have the right to emerge with Him on the other side, as brand new, pure, righteous creations who are, and will forever be, one with God and His Eternal Life.
Matthew 3:13-17
“Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John, to be baptized by him. But John tried to prevent Him, saying, ‘I have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?’ But Jesus answering said to him, ‘Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he permitted Him. After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased!”
What the Bride of God’s Word (Israel) is never able to accomplish in her own strength or devices, her Husband, (God’s beloved Word, or Son) has done in her place and in her name. So now, through His union with her, the rest of the world can know and believe that He came to do the same for all of the rest of the sons of disobedience. The passing into and through the Red Sea and the Jordan is the corporate covenantal ‘Mikvah’ or ‘Baptismal Immersion’ of the Husband and His Bride…into the Death of God’s Eternal Lamb. We are required to allow God to unite us all to that Death…with His Word, the Lamb…that had already taken place in eternity, to apply His Perfect Atonement upon us all. In Yeshua, through the Perfection of His Eternally Finished Work of Creation, Redemption and Restoration, the human race can be set free.
Acts 2:37-39
“Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brethren, what shall we do?’ Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” (Emphasis added.)
We can’t do any of this by our religious efforts or self-improvement techniques. We can and must do it with, in, and through the finished work of Yeshua, the Lamb of God. We must die to reliance on ourselves and what we will do or how we will do it. And we must be taught and trained to abide with God in His Perfect Rest and Joy, in the celebration of the Fullness and Perfection of His Eternal Word’s Finished Work.
We, who are called to be the disciples of the Word, must learn to do everything together, as His one Body. From now on, we do everything together as one…IN Him! We can’t do it ‘like Him’ or ‘for’ Him. We can only do it FROM Him, as one! We receive and apply to ourselves, what He has already done in our name, as us. The Holy Spirit that filled Him when He walked the Earth as God’s Suffering Servant, the Messiah, Son of Joseph, can now fill us with all that He is. We become one with Him in the Eternal Covenant. And in that sense, the Word of God becomes our ‘Head’ and we become His ‘Body’ on Earth…endowed and united with all that He is and has. When we become one, He imparts His Spirit into our formerly dead spirits. And His Life and Love penetrate and impregnate us with all that is contained in Him. His Life in us doesn’t need any help or advice from us. It knows what to be and do. That’s why we can rest and allow Him to live and reveal Himself from within us. This awesome Rest is the Freedom that makes us part of that new, second human race, the chosen, Word-obeying, fully restored, ‘True Remnant of Israel.’
After our personal Exodus truly gets under way, God’s Word, our Master, will lead us further and further into the Wilderness of Transition. And we’ll move further and further away from ‘Egypt’ and closer and closer to the Land of Promise…Israel…and full citizenship with all the rights and inheritance God’s Word earned for us and gives to us now as King of all Creation.
This is some of what it means to die to the habits and attitudes we learned in Egypt. If what we used to be ‘dies’ and falls away from us; the Word can begin to live and produce His fruit from within us. And instead of trusting in ourselves and in our own Sin-twisted ‘understanding,’ we can learn to trust in our awesome God’s Perfect, fully accepted, Finished Work of Total Restoration. And this is what God intends to teach us in the wilderness.