Note: The content of this meditation relates to that shared in two Genesis meditations: No. 3: The Arena of Testimony, and No. 33 Dancing in the Arena of Testimony. It may be helpful to review them, while you begin to ponder this one.
Let’s consider what Scripture reveals about what was in the hearts of most of the sons of Israel as they began their years in the wilderness. How did they picture God…as they faced the apparently impossible circumstances that their new, very desolate wilderness abode was forcing upon them?
Exodus 16:3
“The sons of Israel said to them (Moses and Aaron), ‘Would that we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’”
Even after God redeems us spiritually, we still have a problem. The perspectives and mentality we developed during our original state of ‘decapitation’, remain programmed in our souls and wired into our brains. But now, they are grossly out of date and inappropriate. So if we fail to challenge, discredit and replace them by creating new patterns we never had before, all of that old data will remain active and it will prevail and continue to deceive and afflict us. Not until we know God intimately and experientially, as He really is, and reprogram and rewire ourselves accordingly, are we able to outgrow our past and leave it behind! But if for any reason we fail to update our ‘onboard computers,’ we will be forced to navigate in new territory with false outdated maps and coordinates that will not match the actual terrain through which we are now travelling.
This happened to many first generation Exodus Israelites. That’s why they remained distant from God and couldn’t stop doubting and viewing His intentions, ability and faithfulness with deep mistrust. Despite the many miraculous wonders He had already performed on their behalf, they wallowed in unbelief and remained spiritually dense and distant from God and His ways.
The same happens to us. After we’re redeemed, our former misunderstandings, worldly perspectives and radically independent attitudes and assumptions remain active and maintain their grip on us. They pull us in directions that run counter to what God’s Holy Spirit is in us to do. So, somehow, the new spiritual God-indwelling Reality in our spirits must be transmitted to and installed and activated in, our still-fallen souls and nervous systems. If that doesn’t happen, our physical actions won’t be able to mirror and reflect God as He really is, in His awesome, airtight perfect credibility and faithfulness to us. We’ll remain self-absorbed, unbelieving, insecure and unable to complete our Exodus.
So as our salvation process begins, we are in desperate need of extensive reorientation and rigorous training in the ways of God. Radical changes must take place that will shake and roust us out of our deeply embedded original mindsets, attitudes, priority systems and comfort zone lifestyles. And at first, we’ll resemble ignorant, flabby, undisciplined civilian recruits just stepping off the buses that have brought us to a military boot camp. God must do this when we’re newly redeemed because now we belong to Him and He is responsible for teaching, training and transforming us. And we need to begin to cooperate with the process. We need to begin to start saying brand new things to ourselves in order to assist in our own restructuring and life-transforming discipline and training. And that will equip us to grow, mature and develop the skills we’ll need to engage in deadly spiritual combat with the powers of Darkness. We must be drilled and trained with great repetition, to absorb and be equipped to walk out our true, God-given identity, purpose and destiny as His living embodiment on Earth.
God had already been training Moses like this for the past forty years! So when the Exodus began, he knew God at a deep level. And he could commune with Him and understand what was in His heart. And now God began to train and prepare him… to put what he was learning…into human words. And the result was what we know today as ‘The Torah’ or ‘The Law.’
God Himself Trains His Disciples
Torah is meant to be God’s boot camp instruction and training manual for beginning, maintaining and successfully completing the Exodus from the Serpent’s Darkness to His Kingdom of Light. The training it provides strips those whom God has freed from the residues of bondage to this world’s fallen, idolatrous system. And it reconditions, retrains and transforms them into full-fledged citizens of His Land of Promise – Israel. The training that Torah imparts builds an authentic, unshakable and irreplaceable Revelation Foundation within us and enables us to practice the ways of God’s Righteousness until they become fully integrated into and absorbed by, our innermost being. And that equips us to stay on course and avoid the demonic deception traps we’ll encounter as we focus on completing our Exodus with accuracy, fidelity and ultimate success. Torah is given as a tool that helps to transform former ‘Egyptian slaves’ into ‘True, Full-fledged Israelite sons of the Living God.’
Moreover, since Messiah Yeshua Himself told us, point blank, that Moses had written about Him, we know that Torah is the revelation of God’s living Word – our Master – the risen Lord who summoned us to follow Him! So, to know and practice the written Torah, is to know our Messiah, The Living Torah, and to learn to absorb His ways!
Colossians 1:15-17
“He is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all Creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together!” (Emphasis added.)
Genesis told us that God’s living Word is the Basis and Originator and ongoing Sustainer of all of Creation. Disciples must know their Master exactly as His Father chose to reveal Him. And Father chose to lay the entire foundation of His Son’s revelation through the Torah of Moses. Then Father sent His Word, the living Torah, to live among us and fulfill to perfection whatever was revealed and promised concerning Him in the written Torah. And this is what our Master’s disciples are commissioned to proclaim, embody and teach to the rest of the world. So, because Torah is the sole source of this utterly essential and foundational revelation, God intends for us to use it to train, instruct and impart God’s ways to ourselves and the other chosen people and to the rest of the world. We must have it in order to reconfigure and equip their minds, wills and hearts effectively, with the God-revealed accuracy and precision so essential for authentic discipleship. So to take the Torah’s instructions and training to heart, is to have our innermost being accurately realigned and synchronized with the Holy Spirit and the living Word who is here to be our Covering and Perfect Restoration:
Exodus 24:12
“Now the Lord said to Moses, ‘Come up to Me on the mountain and remain there, and I will give you the stone tablets with the Law and the commandment WHICH I HAVE WRITTEN for their instruction.’” (Emphasis added.)
Romans 12:1-3
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect (in God’s sight). For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.” (Emphasis added.)
Psalm 119:105
“Your Word (as He is revealed and established in the Torah) is a Lamp to my feet And a Light to my path.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
If we do not renew (reprogram) our minds with God’s Heavenly foundational viewpoints, revelations and Messiah-revealing thought, reaction and lifestyle patterns, the old wiring in our brains and outdated programming will continue to contaminate and distort our future efforts! We’ll be like a man straddling two canoes…with one foot in the canoe of God’s plan for the future…and the other stuck in our God-less, worldly, pagan past! God provided the Torah to the world in which is contained an indescribably beautiful and necessary Treasure. That’s why God taught Israel to view it as, ‘The Tree of Life.’
But those who, for whatever reason, reject or ignore or bypass Torah, even if they’ve been redeemed, will remain crippled and therefore, handicapped by their misinformed, untrained and error-filled minds. That’s because they’re repeating the huge mistake made by pharaoh and most of that first Exodus generation: they rejected God’s living Word as God Himself revealed Him to the world…through Moses. Such people, even if they do try to acknowledge the one true God, will be like spiritual billionaires suffering from chronic amnesia! They won’t know who they really are. They won’t recognize the One who was sent to redeem and restore them. Nor will they be trained to be one with Him and serve as His true, accurate, authentic image and likeness! They’ll be ignorant of the blessings that flow out of the ‘Living Torah’, the True ‘Tree of Life’…God’s living Word…from whose Root God’s Covenant protection, peace, joy and glory are derived. And they will not be able to identify with and own their true, God-intended Heavenly Israelite identity, status, purpose and inheritance. And in days of tribulation, when they are forced to deal with danger and distress, they won’t have access to the endless Heavenly Treasure that is ours as sons of God. Instead, they’ll think, act and react like abandoned Egyptian orphans and victimized paupers that know nothing of God’s ‘Land of Promise’ Revelation.
Numbers 14:11
“The Lord said to Moses, ‘How long will this people spurn Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst?’”
Matthew 5:17-20
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law (Torah) or the Prophets (the Tanach or Old Testament); I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Despite the tremendous honor and dignity God gives His people, despite the awesome purpose He tries to train us to fulfill and despite all we’ve already seen God do on our behalf, our untrained, unbelieving hearts won’t allow His living Word to pierce, penetrate and impregnate us with His Life and dynamic transforming Fruit. As long as we see Him and His chosen people as ‘distant strangers,’ we’ll keep pulling away from Him, the way undisciplined, disobedient dogs pull on their leashes and are unwilling to go where their master wishes to take them. For that first Exodus generation, God’s instruction and commandment ‘leash’ had to remain very long. Their attitude of hostile mistrust and resentment against Moses and what God was revealing through him, proved, like nothing else could, that the hearts of those people did not belong to God; they belonged to Egypt.
‘Our slave masters may have mistreated us, but, unlike this God that is leading Moses and the rest of us into total disaster, Egypt at least provided resources we could depend on. It gave us food, shelter and the security of day-to-day predictability!’
That’s what they were thinking in their hearts. Their un-renewed minds could only see the danger-filled wilderness …but not the awesome, majestic Lord of all Creation who permeated every molecule of their being and who was their Covering and Fortress and endless Source of provision.
They didn’t realize He was always protecting them ‘under the shadow of His wings.’ So instead of knowing God’s living Word who was among them, the same Word (Memra) that would later appear to their descendants as Messiah Yeshua! And instead of sharing in His joy and feeling delightful excitement and invincible peace, they were overwhelmed with feelings of panic, abandonment, hopeless resentment and certain doom. They never learned to rest in the eternal spiritual Covenant Reality of God’s Word that continually permeated and upheld each molecule and atom of their makeup. God’s Word continually surrounds and permeates every speck of the created universe! He is everywhere, in everything…sustaining, watching, guiding, providing and protecting every portion and level of it. Nothing escapes His purposeful Wisdom and Authority as He obeys His Heavenly Father to Perfection. Nothing happens without His permission and enablement. The Word was and is, the one and only Source of all things and He is our eternal Covenant Friend and Protector and Provider!
But God’s people couldn’t see Him in that light then, nor can most of today’s generation see Him that way now. The people of the first Exodus generation only saw a tiny part of the big picture…their part. They only saw themselves, alone, bereft and defenseless…but not the Greatness of the Perfect Presence of the awesome Word of their Majestic and Omnipotent God! God’s living Word created and maintains the cosmos! Moses recorded and revealed His nature and His ways and deeds in the Torah. He was writing about and revealing the very same living Word that would later take on our flesh and live among His people as the long-awaited Messiah of Israel! So take note of what the Holy Spirit says to the chosen people, and the rest of the world, about the living Word that God is revealing through Moses:
Deuteronomy 18:15-19
“The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to (obey) Him. This is according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.’ The Lord said to me, ‘They have spoken well. I will raise up a Prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which He shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.”
John 5:46-47
“…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?” (Emphases added.)
The Perfect Word of our Perfect God has His very imperfect, Sin-maimed people, Perfectly Covered all the time! Each danger they encounter, every need they develop and everything they need to finish their Journey to perfection is eternally covered and present…within God’s Eternal Perfect Nature and in His living Word’s absolute Authority and All-Sufficient grace.
Job 40:7-14
“Now gird up your loins like a man; I will ask you, and you instruct Me. Will you really annul My judgment? Will you condemn Me that you may be justified? Or do you have an arm like God; and can you thunder with a voice like His? Adorn yourself with eminence and dignity and clothe yourself with honor and majesty. Pour out the overflowings of your anger, and look on everyone who is proud, and make him low. Look on everyone who is proud, and humble him and tread down the wicked where they stand. Hide them in the dust together; bind them in the hidden place. Then I will also confess to you, that your own right hand can save you.”
Eternal Covenant Marriage
The distance the ex-slaves placed between themselves and their Redeemer was great. He was there to bring them into eternal Covenant marriage union with His living Word. But they saw His Word as a Stranger. Most of them had the genes of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in their fallen flesh…but their hearts embraced the idolatrous viewpoints, attitudes and priorities of people like the pharaoh! They needed to learn to walk ‘the narrow path,’ the Blood Covenant path, with God. People on that path believe and trust in what He revealed of Himself through Moses. Whether they are Jewish or non-Jewish, they must all embrace and remain united to the Word of the one and only true God…the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! They must learn to rest in His Word’s Perfect Finished Work of Creation and Redemption and Restoration, knowing with outrageous confidence, that He can and will supply every need on every level, from the Eternal Treasury of that Perfect Finished work. This is the revelation that trains us to forsake all other false, man-made gods…and walk only in and from the one true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!
But in their ignorance and deluded reasoning, most of the first generation Exodus people retained their outdated Egyptian minds and kept assuming that everything was about them and that Abraham’s God was much less real than they and their concerns were. So they felt abandoned and bereft of all resources. Their fears drove them to invent substitute devices that took the place of the true God. Even Aaron was following that ‘broad path’ at first. He wasn’t truly following God’s Word; he was following his brother Moses. But Moses had learned to keep his eyes on God’s living Word. He strove to follow His leading, despite all of the negative opposition and pressures that the others kept heaping upon him. He knew something they didn’t know. He saw awesome Reality that they couldn’t see. He had been pierced, penetrated and impregnated by God’s living Word, so he was equipped to learn God’s ways and reveal them to the world.
God took great pains to train His rebellious, stiff-necked people. They were already spiritually linked to Him through the Eternal Covenant. But they needed a governing ‘Covenant Leash’ to keep them safely connected to God in their spiritual ignorance and willful immaturity. Because of their immaturity, the leash they resentfully accepted had to be very long. It kept them safely connected to God, but it couldn’t keep them close enough to Him to enable them to recognize His face and learn His ways and become His image and likeness. The long leash they demanded enabled them to maintain a cold distance from their prospective Husband, God’s Word. But for Gods’ plan to succeed, He must have people who know His living Word at a much deeper, more intimate level. So God took the initiative and began to shorten Israel’s ‘leash’ – drastically.
Fallen flesh can’t connect directly with the infinitely Pure, Holy, totally transcendent nature of God. The distance between God and us is infinite! But His infinite Wisdom and Faithfulness to us has spanned the gap! It is done by the absolute Authority of His Word and the Power of His Holy Spirit. God sent His Word to surround and uphold and cover and permeate us with His Perfect All-Sufficiency. The Word is everything for us – Provision, Protection, Redemption and Restoration. And God’s Spirit makes the Word real and present and alive to us and in us. If our hearts are open and receptive and willing to receive Him, God empowers us to respond to and connect with Him through His Word, in a way that even surpasses the relationship He has with the angels! So our response to God’s Word, starting with His revelation through Moses, mirrors what our response to Almighty God Himself, actually is!
1 John 2:20-24
“But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus (God’s living Word made flesh) is the Christ (Messiah of Israel)? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father AND the Son! Whoever denies the Son (the living Word) does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son (as the Father revealed Him) has the Father also. As for you, let that abide in you, which you heard from the beginning (Genesis through Deuteronomy). If what you heard from the beginning (in the Torah) abides in you, you also will abide (truly and authentically) in the Son AND in the Father.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
John 14:1-6
“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.’ Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I AM the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me!’” (Emphasis added.
Ephesians 4: 30
“Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the Day of Redemption.”
True Disciples
To know God and His Way is to know His living Word IN PERSON…at the very deepest Heart-to-heart level! Yeshua, God’s living Word, was, is, and always will be, The Way. He contains in Himself the Fullness of all that the Father is. To know Him personally, takes us into that deep, intimate, unifying level of Blood Covenant penetration by God and synchronization with God, for which there can be no substitute. To know Him is to be a true, authentic Israelite. True Israelites are true disciples of God’s living Word. Disciples know Him just as His Father revealed Him to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses! They are filled with the same Holy Spirit that filled the fathers and that filled the perfect Sin-less flesh of Yeshua, the Messiah of Israel. That Spirit is also given to anyone who wholeheartedly embraces and obeys God’s Eternal living Word! The Spirit works in us to make the risen Lord’s Presence real and alive and actively fruitful in our lives and circumstances. And thanks to the Spirit of God who is always with them, disciples can live and act, react and interact as one with the Word, at all times and in all things. And when they’re one with Him, they’re one with God! So disciples never have to be alone; they can go everywhere with God and God can do as He wishes through them! That is how we become God’s image and likeness. The Word is our Eternal Covenant Representative and High Priest and Perfect Restoration. He is here to transform us completely, back to what God always intended for human beings to be:
John 17:22-24
The Glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected (fully restored as Your image and likeness) in (Blood Covenant) unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The above text in its full context articulates the Fulfillment of the New Covenant that God swore, through His prophets, to make with Israel. Despite Israel’s chronic faults and Covenant violations, He promised to send His Word to be her Perfect New Covenant Covering and Redeemer. And the Word is here to be and to do, everything that God requires of His people to Perfection:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
“‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new (restored) covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord. ‘But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will put My Law (Torah) within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me (directly, personally and very intimately), from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
This is the glorious Perfection and Fullness that God committed Himself to share with the world, through the instrumentality of His chosen people. It is done progressively, through God’s living Word and Holy Spirit. In the beginning, God used the long external ‘leash’ of the written Torah and the Covenant of Horeb (Sinai) that He made with the nation of Israel through Moses. But in the New Covenant, He imparts the inward ‘leash’ of mutual Love. In the New Covenant, God’s Holy Spirit is the ‘very short Leash of Oneness’. He comes to impart the Fulfillment into us and through us… by the Authority of the Perfect Finished Work of Creation and Redemption that the Living Torah, Yeshua the Messiah has completed to Perfection! The Fulfillment of the New Covenant God makes with Israel through her Messiah, is what will transform the disciples. It will be the definitive sign, to the rest of the world, that through Israel, in God’s eternal counsels, His living Word has already completely and perfectly covered the spiritual nakedness of the entire human race.
If we truly believe, receive and submit to the infinite Authority and abiding Presence of the living Word who once dealt and interacted with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses, He will infuse our gross imperfection and weakness with His Eternal infinite Perfection and Ability. He will abide within us, and interact with us on very intimate terms…as He once did with the fathers of the Faith. And it is to that original pristine relationship with His living Word, that God intends to bring all of Israel; and through Israel, the rest of humanity as well. Those who repent of their habitual separation from His Word and agree to become one with Him, on His revealed terms…will be saved and fully restored through the New Covenant that makes men to be one with the Eternal Perfection of God Himself!
This awesome perfect, all-sufficient ‘Covering’ is what God intends to display and reveal to His Word’s Bride, the nation of Israel. And the wilderness was a perfect setting and backdrop in which to begin to do it. God started with a long leash; but He is progressively ‘shortening’ it…until no gap, no personal and emotional distance will remain between God and His people. This is what the New Covenant is in the process of accomplishing. The leash was long in the beginning; but in the end, it will be completely replaced by the Love Bond we will have with the Spirit of God Himself! Then we will all see the Glory of the Eternal Covenant, and the union it makes possible between God and men. When the fullness of the Covenant arrives, we will be one with our Creator in the most perfect Blood Covenant Union imaginable! And no longer will there be a need for external restraining ‘leashes’ around our ‘necks’, to protect us from ourselves.
Song of Solomon 6:3
“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine…He who pastures his flock among the lilies.”
Ezekiel 34:11-12
“For thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day.” (Emphasis added.)
Make no mistake: the Exodus God requires of us is enormous. God’s Righteousness will obliterate every speck of Sin left within us! And that won’t happen by accident or default. We must deliberately choose to receive, absorb and embody Him. And that requires a total readjustment and refocusing of our perspectives and awareness. When we’re born into Egypt, we’re the natural image and likeness of the Serpent! But by the time we finish our personal and corporate Exodus, Almighty God will have transformed us into His image and likeness!
To impart such an awesome spiritual Inheritance to worldly, selfish and severely limited people requires vigorous, intense discipline and relentless boot camp type of training. Before we can trust God with airtight faith, we must get to know His unimaginable Perfection and Completeness and the full Dependability of Almighty God’s Eternal Nature. And we must also realize and admit the horrible damage that Sin and the demonic delusions that entrap this fallen world, have done to us. Like those Israelites in the wilderness, we too must know who it was that was sent to ‘cover’ our nakedness and how completely and thoroughly and perfectly He has done it. When we know Him like that, it is easy to be willing to trust and do what He tells us. And so God chose that frightening wilderness-level of trials and tribulations as the backdrop against which to demonstrate His airtight Covenant Faithfulness or ‘Chesed’, to His chosen people. He had to effectively impart the following vitally necessary key Truths to them, and to all the rest of us:
1) He is the one and only true, Living God in existence. There can be no other god or gods! So people born and raised in idolatrous ‘Egypt’ have much to unlearn in this regard, even as God exposes them to the newness of His authentic Truth and Reality.
2) The one true God is infinite; that is, He is Perfect in every way and unlimited, or, omnipotent, on every level. Therefore He is totally ‘Other,’ totally transcendent to us. Nothing in Creation equals Him, nor can any of His creations, including the Serpent, stop or deter Him from fulfilling His Plan perfectly. He is the living God who speaks and performs; everything He sent His Word to do…happens!
3) The Covenant we have with God requires us to trust Him with exclusive, airtight love, faith, trust and hope. We must learn to be outrageously confident in His perfect, airtight faithfulness to us. And, by knowing Him as He really is, in His Eternal Perfection and Finished Work, we can maintain our airtight assurance that, by His Word’s absolute Authority and His Spirit’s omnipotent executive power, God can, and will, and already has, backed up and fulfilled all of His promises to us.
Philippians 4:4-7
“Rejoice in the Lord ALWAYS; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. THE LORD IS NEAR. BE ANXIOUS FOR NOTHING, but IN EVERYTHING (in the Perfection of His Word’s Finished Work) by prayer and supplication WITH THANKSGIVING let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all (decapitated Egyptian) comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (who is God’s living Word made flesh).” (Amplification and emphases added.)
4) Therefore God’s Word is All Sufficient and able to meet all of our needs …to Perfection! We seldom see that in our earthly circumstances and feelings. But we can always see it in God’s Perfect Eternal Unchanging Nature! Our problems are not problems to God. They are opportunities for Him to reveal His Glory and All-Sufficient Word to us, again and again…until we learn how safe and secure we truly are in His grace and love. So when we know Israel’s Perfect God as He really is, we can abide with and be satisfied with Him alone, in His Eternal Joy, Peace and Rest. And this is what God began to teach to Israel and the world through the ‘long leash’ Covenant of Moses that He made with them in the wilderness. He had to teach them His Perfection and how He, through His living Word, will be the Perfect Fulfillment of every one of His Covenant promises.
The rest of the world is ‘Torah-less.’ That is, it rejects God’s living Word as His Father revealed Him through Moses, in Genesis through Deuteronomy. So they mindlessly follow the broad idolatrous path that leads to perdition. It is an expansive, careless, rootless path created by the unreality and deception of satanic lies. On that path there is ample room for multitudes of man-made opinions and viewpoints to emerge. And that gives birth to many false man-devised gods that fallen deluded human minds create. But that is idolatry! And idolatry is the Serpent’s Death Trap!
The Narrow Covenant Path
The narrow Covenant Path our Master requires us to embrace and maintain bonds us and keeps us safely enfolded and protected in the Perfect Love of one God only, the true, Living God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. From Him we receive the Perfection of His Word’s Finished Work of Creation and Redemption at all times and in all things. This is the one and only Path or Way that leads us out of the Serpent’s Darkness and into eternal Light, Life and Union…with the true Source of all things. This then, is what God must teach to all of us. His living Word is the Path! And when we learn and can demonstrate this Truth, THEN we’re equipped to interact with God as His mature, fully developed, image and likeness ‘sons,’ abiding with Him in His House, and co-administrating His Eternal Kingdom with Him, at the level of that true, eternal, God-intended Humanity that the Serpent managed to temporarily derail.
Exodus 16:1-2
“The whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The sons of Israel said to them, ‘Would that we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’”
It was time to give Israel, and through her, to all of us, a major lesson. So God ‘shortened the leash’ and closed the distance gap it made possible. And He began to train the chosen people, as much as they would allow, to get to know His Word at a much deeper, more intimate and trusting level.
Exodus 16:9-21
“Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘Say to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, ‘Come near before the Lord, for He has heard your grumblings.’” It came about as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the sons of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘I have heard the grumblings of the sons of Israel; speak to them, saying, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”
“So it came about at evening that the quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew evaporated, behold, on the surface of the wilderness there was a fine flake-like thing, fine as the frost on the ground. When the sons of Israel saw it, they said to one another, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, ‘It is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded, ‘Gather of it every man as much as he should eat; you shall take an omer apiece according to the number of persons each of you has in his tent.’ The sons of Israel did so, and some gathered much and some little. When they measured it with an omer, he who had gathered much had no excess, and he who had gathered little had no lack; every man gathered as much as he should eat. Moses said to them, ‘Let no man leave any of it until morning.’ But they did not listen to Moses, and some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and became foul; and Moses was angry with them. They gathered it morning by morning, every man as much as he should eat; but when the sun grew hot, it would melt.” (Emphasis added.)
There is much to ponder and absorb from this section. But don’t just see it as a mere academic exercise. The Reality embedded in and conveyed through this text is not just an intellectual, theoretical study of past history. It is something alive and much more real and personally invasive than any classroom or lecture hall teaching and discussion. This Reality isn’t a leash around your religious ‘neck’. It is God’s Spirit that He wants to fuse into you so that He can write God’s Word upon your heart! This Reality will plunge us into a new dimension of awareness…and lead us into incredibly deep spiritual water. It is a shocking and totally mysterious and unexpected spine-tingling experience! To receive your ‘daily bread’ in such an unorthodox, surprising and unexplainable way is like being hit by lightning and having it shoot and crackle throughout your entire makeup! The gut-wrenching lightning bolt shocks of penetrating revelation can’t be comprehended, analyzed or explained! The living God is so immense and stupendous and ‘out of this world’ that we can never wrap our puny intellects around how He could sustain all those people and animals for forty years, without relying on any human, worldly device whatsoever! The miracle simply kept happening…every day! No one had a clue then, of what was really happening or how it worked, or what it meant. And few today understand what God is telling us through all of this, even after the thousands of years that have elapsed.
We are Changed by Encountering the REALITY of the LIVING WORD!
When God’s living Word confronts you and reveals Himself, He hits you like a bomb blast at first. But in due time, after the initial shock wears off, you may begin to learn a little about what happened. And perhaps you’ll be able to understand and explain a bit of it. But at first, you must receive it with the total trust of a tiny little child. We can’t begin to know and believe and embrace God through arrogant, self-elevating analyses or theological constructions and definitions so common among worldly ‘experts’, ‘academic masters’ and ‘religious gurus’. Nor will we ever be able to manipulate God by using typical soulish pagan religiosity and ritualistic formulas and spasms of religious emotionalism. The awesome, true living God hides Himself within our earthly events. And the suddenness and mystery of His invisible Presence stuns and prostrates and forces us to our faces in spontaneous worship and praise that well up involuntarily from deep within us. That’s how it begins…because there’s no way to fathom what it means or how it works, to ourselves, or anyone else.
Matthew 18:2-4
“And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, ‘Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.’”
When God gave this kind of revelatory experience through the manna, it was so shocking and overwhelming that the people could hardly remember their names or where they were! The only response they could come up with in their dazed amazement was one word that kept welling up and escaping through their lips, “Manna?” (“What is it?”)
And notice that God chose to feed them on a daily, short-term, step-by-step basis. Learning to trust Almighty God from the perspective of a tiny child means that we must constantly, continuously abide with Him in order to keep feeding from His miraculous, All-Sufficient ‘Breasts’. We can’t stray or separate ourselves from Him for even two moments! God’s Word is Oxygen and Life and everything else to us! And so, He wouldn’t allow the Israelites to hoard large amounts of manna. It was not to be strategically stockpiled ‘for a rainy day,’ in warehouse distribution points. The radically independent world of Egypt operates like that because it puts faith in created things rather than in the real God. But it can never be that way with the Real God! In His Camp…the head of each household in His Covenant Family must gather just enough ‘daily bread’ to last the household for that day, no more, no less. That’s how God kept shortening ‘The Covenant Leash’. Now it would be impossible for His people to forget and ignore Him for long periods of time. They couldn’t lose themselves in a fog of competing, alien created distractions and worldly diversions. He wanted to wean them of obsessing over themselves and all they thought they could be and do and have, apart from Him. His short leash forced them to remember Him and concentrate on Him and depend only on what He was providing. Amid the wilderness dangers and their total neediness, God began to show them that in God’s Kingdom, there is no ‘yesterday’ and no ‘tomorrow.’ It is always TODAY…always…NOW!
Psalm 95:6-8
“Come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness…”
The Living God is not an idea, a religious concept or institution to which you can render occasional religious ‘lip service.’ He is much more than a mere academic topic for you to read about and study casually and discuss with others in shallow, meaningless terms that produce no changes. He is our one and only Source for sustenance and ongoing life and strength. So He is a perpetual living experience, the knowledge of whom transforms fallen flesh – radically! The Israelites couldn’t explain or define what was happening. They were being forced to know Him like they’d never known Him before. No false god from Egypt could have sustained so many like this; only the God of Abraham could do it. So He forced them to begin to believe, embrace and obey Him, like helplessly dependent toddlers. And this is the secret…to know God’s Perfection, against the backdrop of our chronic utter weakness and neediness to the point of perpetual bankruptcy. Only in this way can we know God and ourselves… as we both really are.
This is the revelation and wisdom of the ‘shortened leash.’ It trains us to walk that very exclusive, intimate and personally electrifying ‘narrow Blood Covenant Path’ that imparts a living, intimate personal knowledge of God’s eternally Perfect, living Word…at a Husband and Bride level. It enables us to know Him the way a living connected branch knows the life, strength and fruit of its vine. This is how we get to know, really know God’s living creative Word, the one that gives each one of us every heartbeat, breath and brainwave we will ever have…moment by moment… step by step…all the way into Eternal Life!
Exodus 16:22-30
“Now on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one. When all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, then he said to them, ‘This is what the Lord meant: Tomorrow is a Sabbath observance, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning.’ So they put it aside until morning, as Moses had ordered, and it did not become foul nor was there any worm in it. Moses said, ‘Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will be none.’
It came about on the seventh day that some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My instructions? See, the Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore He gives you bread for two days on the sixth day. Remain every man in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.’ So the people rested on the seventh day.”
Matthew 7:21-23
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice Lawlessness (you who do not take to heart the Torah revelation My Father give to you about Me and what that requires of you, by way of response…you who insist on rejecting and bypassing My ‘training leash’).’ (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Leash Training is for Dogs and for New, Raw Disciple Recruits
We will consider the depths of God’s Eternal Sabbath Rest at a later time. But for now, let’s ponder The Leash.’ Have you ever seen people who try to walk their untrained, undisciplined dogs with long leashes? The roles are reversed in those situations. The dogs do what is natural to wild animals; they take the lead and strive to be allowed to do just as they please! They know nothing about following the lead of a human master. They go here and there, doing what comes naturally, in ways that suit their natural desires. And they pull and tug, expecting the humans to follow and obey them! This kind of dog fears and shuns the discipline of obedience. So they never become the image and likeness of their masters. They may be tethered to their humans, and cared for by them, but the long leash allows them to remain radically independent, willfully pursuing agendas of their own. Thus they never learn their master’s ways.
But highly trained and disciplined dogs are vigorously trained by other means. They are tethered to their masters with incredibly short leashes that barely allow their front feet to touch the ground! Because there is no slack, there is no other choice but to learn to walk in perfect unified synchronization with their master. The short leash, forces the dog to learn to hug the master’s hip until he learns to walk easily and in perfect step with the master, as the master leads. Short leashes force dogs to learn to listen and wait and join in with the master’s every move. This is how they learn and absorb the ways of the master. They are certainly not the dog’s ways; the master’s ways are not natural to the dog. But the master refuses to change or relent or give in to the dog’s natural urges! So the dog must learn to mirror and reflect back whatever the master chooses to do, whenever the master decides it is to be done. This is what the Torah does for God’s Jewish and non-Jewish, chosen, ‘Israel.’ God’s commandments are the ‘dance steps’ He wants to teach to His chosen priestly nation, His intended image and likeness. At first, the training is hard, burdensome and agonizing. But with enough repetition and consistency, God transmits His patterns into His people. And when the people are able to absorb and internalize His patterns, they ‘learn the dance’ and are able to join with their Lord and what He wants to do with them, more and more, with greater and greater ease, fluidity, smoothness and enjoyment. What begins as torture…ends up to be a beautiful, flowing, effortless dance of love in which the living God and His people become as one.
By the time that arduous, rigorous phase of the short leash training is done, the dog, or the person, has transformed! Now they know a level of loving obedience and a depth of relating to and with their master that to most others would be impossible. Now they are so beautifully trained and disciplined that for the rest of their life, not even the short leash will be needed for the dog…and no external leash-like rules, or ‘muzzle-like’ regulations will be needed to protect the humans from themselves! God has always intended to teach us to outgrow the external leash…and replace it with the internal Love and Trust of His indwelling Word and Spirit. What the external restraints began to train us to do, can then be permanently etched and inscribed on our innermost being. And we will know our Master and His ways, so well, and will have developed such a beautiful loving, trusting relationship with Him, that we will literally be able to ‘dance’ with Him, in perfect synchronization and harmony. We will do everything together with Him and from Him. We will live as one with Him, regardless of anything or anyone else that may happen to be around. Now the Master and the disciple will only have eyes for each other. And they will both live to please and gratify each other. They will be able to perform in crowded arenas throughout the world, filled with amazed ‘Egyptian’ spectators. And the observers will see the perfect image and likeness of our invisible Master. And through us, He will begin to make Himself known to them and draw them to Himself. That is how God’s commandments and our obedience to them can transform our previously rebellious and wretchedly independent, human hearts.
Ezekiel 36:24-27
“For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My (Torah) statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
In the fullness of God’s Spirit-empowered New Covenant level of obedience, external leashes and muzzles become dim memories from the past. But now, because we know our Master so well, we can love and trust and rest in His awesome Perfection so profoundly, that we gladly let go of all former mistrust…knowing that He is continually transmitting the Perfection of His Finished Work into us and applying its benefits to our circumstances, needs and situations. Now we become very sensitive to His voice and imperceptible ‘nudges’ and through our willing cooperation, His will and His ways appear from within our innermost being more and more. So the ways of our Master can be revealed and experienced and known and understood by the rest of the world…through our yielded, obedient flesh! This level of devotion and obedience becomes a very effective revelation of the Master…to those who so desperately need to know Him and what He is here to be for them.
This is what God yearns to have with His chosen people…so that through them, He can have the same thing with the rest of the world. So, to better understand why God trains His Word’s disciples with such rigorous disciplined, ‘short leash’ consistency, and what He intends to accomplish through it, let’s consider one of our Master’s parables…the one that is commonly called, ‘the parable of the prodigal son.’
Luke 15:11-15
“And He said, ‘A man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ So he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.”
Notice what Yeshua is saying to His Israelite audience. In the story, the father divided his wealth between the two sons. He gave them their portions all at once. So the younger one began to put his faith and trust in worldly riches, instead of in his father’s love. And He distanced himself from his father…and went into the fallen world and its radically independent, self-serving, controlling ways. In other words, this Israelite went back to ‘Egypt.’ So, in light of how God began to train His chosen people in the wilderness, imagine Yeshua telling the parable in this way:
“God had two sons. The younger asked for his share in God’s estate. So God said: “I am always giving you your share my son. Come to Me at any time, for whatever you need from my estate. But don’t assume that My estate is your exclusive personal possession and that you can do what you please with it. This is always My Estate. And I am always sharing it with you and all the rest of my children. So keep coming to me for whatever you need. But so that you never forget, I’ll give you your inheritance – one shekel at a time. When you spend that shekel, come to Me for another …and then another…and then another. Your needs will always be met; for My inheritance is infinite and ever-present. But to make sure you remain close by and learn to become My image and likeness, I will never give you two or more shekels at any given moment…only one.”
Can you see the vast difference this would make in the ongoing interactive relationship between the Father and His son? Can you see the very short ‘Covenant leash’ that would bond them? The son is to be the Father’s image and likeness. He must learn to co-administrate the Father’s Estate with His Father. So he must be trained to be of one mind, one heart and one life with His Father. The leash must be very short because a long leash would prompt the son to stray all the way back to ‘Egypt.’
‘Short leash’ training detoxifies us of our radical independence. Unless God’s people know God and His Word and His ways, personally and intimately, they remain unaware of their true God-given identity, station and purpose. They mistrust God and consider Him to be a ‘weak, miserly cheapskate.’ Their profound ignorance causes them to see Him as a myth or as someone that is weak and petty and selfish. They resent his refusal to ‘set them free’ and ‘launch them’ into the radical independence that our fallen ‘Egyptian’ flesh so desperately adores and craves. The decapitated world sees, thinks and acts that way. But how should redeemed, Sin-wounded and disfigured disciples who are actually designed and created to be the living image and likeness of their Creator be trained?
Beloved, the sooner we see the Truth concerning God’s Love and our true state as His image and likeness, the sooner we’ll see the Torah Wisdom underlying the revelation of the manna. And when we learn that, God’s love will ‘garden’ and empower us to outgrow any need for muzzles and training leashes to remain around our fallen minds, wills and affections. Once we come to know our Master and the awesome Love, Wisdom and Covenant Glory He is ready to share with us, we need no external restraints. The Holy Spirit of God that is fused directly into our spirits makes us forever one with God. So God’s Word Himself can now become our Spirit-transmitted obedience to God. And nothing need separate us and put us at odds with our Father and His Word and Holy Spirit, ever again!
Galatians 3:21-29
“Is the Law (Torah) then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart Life, then Righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the Scripture has shut up everyone under Sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ (God’s living creative Word made flesh) might be given to those who believe.
But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the Law (external Torah commandments), being shut up (blinded) to the faith, which was later to be revealed. Therefore, the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith!
“But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor (bound by ‘restraining leashes’ and ‘muzzles’). For you are all (Spirit filled and Love-empowered) sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ (are now one with God’s living Word). 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.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The first generation of Israelites served as God’s indispensable instrument to ‘break the ice’ of worldwide unbelief and rebellion against Him. There was much they could not know. But even so, God’s Perfect Finished Work of Redemption was in place to cover each one who gave his or her heart to whatever they could grasp of God’s Word and Good News. But now, we are blessed with a much fuller revelation. We know the living Word in ways they could not have understood. So we leave them in God’s loving hands, with deep gratitude and respect for ‘breaking the ice’ and undergoing all the tribulations and suffering they endured for the benefit of the rest of the world.
And, now that we are equipped to persevere and finish and fulfill what God so wonderfully began with them, we can allow God to bring us into the Fulfillment of the Last Days. We can love and ‘dance’ with our Master in the ‘arenas’ of this fallen world, ‘leash free’, but always empowered by the Holy Spirit to remain Word-governed. God can do this through us, in the name of, and on behalf of…all of the Covenant Family members that came before us…and those who are all around us…and those that will come after us!
Galatians 4:1-7
“Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers (muzzles and goads and leashes) until the date set by the father. So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
If we claim to be fully mature, Israelite sons of God that are ready for the arena of testimony…but know, deep in our hearts, that we have never even begun to be be properly ‘leash-trained’…then we are twisting God’s Truth…in a way that will be impossible to explain or justify to our Master, in light of what He has already revealed to us. Wouldn’t you agree?