Exodus 18:13-20
“It came about the next day that Moses sat to judge the people, and the people stood about Moses from the morning until the evening. Now when Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, he said, ‘What is this thing that you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit as judge and all the people stand about you from morning until evening?’ Moses said to his father-in-law, ‘Because the people come to me to inquire of God. When they have a dispute, it comes to me, and I judge between a man and his neighbor and make known the statutes of God and His laws.’
“Moses’ father-in-law said to him, ‘The thing that you are doing is not good. You will surely wear out, both yourself and these people who are with you, for the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone. Now listen to me: I will give you counsel, and God be with you. You be the people’s representative before God, and you bring the disputes to God, then teach them the statutes and the laws, and make known to them the way in which they are to walk and the work they are to do.” (Emphasis added.)
This portion of Exodus reveals many things. But I ask you to focus on one aspect. Notice that Moses initially assumed that his job was to serve as God’s representative to the people. But Jethro told him he was wrong. So what is God telling us? Many people think that certain special people are ‘anointed’ or ‘chosen’ to stand in God’s place before His people. And remember what God had told Moses earlier:
Exodus 7:1
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘See, I make you as God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet.’”
But we must remember that the pharaoh was a totally unrepentant ‘decapitated’ idolater, in the sense that he completely rejected the God of Abraham and the Headship of His Word. So there was minimal relationship between him and his Creator. So Moses was empowered to embody and reveal God’s living Word to Egypt’s ruler, to warn and confront him and his idolatrous nation. But here, in chapter 18, God reveals how Moses and any other leader is to relate to and teach and train those that are chosen by Abraham’s God to serve Him! Now, the entire nation is going to be commissioned to embody and reveal God’s living Word to the rest of the world! So Moses must not presume to stand between God and His people! Nothing must be allowed to separate His people from His living Word and Holy Spirit. So now, Moses’ job is to model and demonstrate his Word embodying-and-revealing role and function, to the nation of Israel, so that they may all learn to be and do, and teach the same thing to and for, the rest of the world!
So there is a huge difference in emphasis and thrust between how disciples are to interact with each other and with the God-rejecting, decapitated world! Only one Man can fill the position of being ‘as God’ to God’s people or anyone else! Only God’s living Word, who later was made flesh, owns the position of Eternal Blood Covenant Representative and Eternal High Priest for the human race. Only the risen Lord Yeshua has the right and authority to stand before any of us…in the Name of and as the Perfect Image and Likeness of…Almighty God! It is only through Him, and only by Him, the Last Adam, that any fallen child of the First Adam can gain access to Almighty God!
John 14:6
“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.)
So even from the days of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses, the chosen people were to connect with God’s living Word directly and personally…and only indirectly, with any other human. And Abraham’s family is to embody God’s living Word, so that He may continue to reach out to the rest of the world. So the Word has always been, and always will be, mankind’s one and only Head! Centuries after Moses, the Word became flesh and appeared in Israel as her long-awaited Messiah. So by His Incarnation, we know that God was proving that His Word actually is our Eternal Covenant Representative. He is one of us and one with us. And He represents us truly and legally, in the Eternal Covenant, before God. So God’s Word is the only true Eternal Mediator and High Priest that is qualified to be ‘as God’ to us. And only He has the Authority make us one with God. This is the Reality that the New Covenant God promised to make with Israel, is to demonstrate and fulfill to Perfection, by the time God’s dealings with the human race in this world are over:
Jeremiah 31:33-34
“‘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 within (each and every one of) them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their (personal) God, and they shall be My (personal and corporate) 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 (personally, intimately and directly), from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the Lord, ‘for (through My Word, the Eternal Lamb) I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Neither Moses, nor any other fallen flesh, prophet or otherwise, may presume to take the place of God’s living Word and Holy Spirit before anyone, especially before God’s chosen people! None among them is to dare to try to be ‘as God’ to himself or to any of the others. God’s own Word fills that position forever! So men, to whom God truly delegates some of His Word’s Authority, are to lead the rest of us to God’s Word…and in Him, we can all stand before God together, as members of the Body of His Word, who is our Head.
Colossians 3:2-4
“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.)
Yeshua Is Our Only High Priest and Source
So each faith-filled disciple of God’s Word, who serves as mankind’s God-appointed Eternal High Priest, interacts with Him and lives from Him at all times. Just as nothing can come between a vine and its branches, nothing can come between disciples and their Head. So the delegated leaders bring their own cares, concerns and needs, and those of their Covenant brothers, to their common Head. He in turn, as their High Priest, brings them all to His Father. So God only connects with us through His Word, and we can only come to God and meet with Him, in and through His Word. The Word is the living Connection, the only one that can unite us to God. He does everything, on the part of God and on the part of mankind. The appointed leaders among the Israelites were to represent the corporate Body that belongs to God’s Word. The Word was to be their Head; and everything was to be done in and by the Head, and through Him, each one was to remain connected to God Himself.
Matthew 14:15-21
“When it was evening, the disciples came to Him and said, ‘This place is desolate and the hour is already late; so send the crowds away, that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’But Jesus said to them, ‘They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat!’They *said to Him, ‘We have here only five loaves and two fish.’And He said, ‘Bring them here to Me.’Ordering the people to sit down on the grass, He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward Heaven, He blessed the food, and breaking the loaves He gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds,and they all ate and were satisfied. They picked up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve full baskets.There were about five thousand men who ate, besides women and children.” (Emphasis added.)
And since all of God’s people are to be the Temple of God’s Holy Spirit and living members that embody His Word…It is the Word, their Head, who serves as High Priest and Covenant Representative for the human race in God’s sight. The human leaders merely represent and embody the Word’s indwelling Presence to everyone else …as He lives and operates from within them. So…mere man-centered, man-controlled ‘decapitated’ religions and their myriads of external rituals and formalities and super-elite ‘clerical classes’ are never allowed by God to approach Him or to serve as substitutes for His own living Word:
Exodus 19:5-6
“Now then, if you will indeed (personally and corporately) obey My voice (living Word) and (thereby) keep My covenant, THEN you shall be MY OWN POSSESSION among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall BE TO ME a kingdom of priests (under the Headship of your High Priest) and a holy nation!’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
John 15:10-16
“If you (allow Me, Your Head, to) keep My (Father’s) commandments (from within your crucified flesh), you will abide in My love; JUST AS I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My (Vine) Joy may be in you (My branches), and that your joy may be made Full (Perfect).
“This is My commandment, that you love one another, JUST AS I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you (allow Me to) do what I command you (from within your flesh). No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you (My Covenant) friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear (MY) fruit, and that your fruit (which only I can produce) would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My Name He may give to you.” (Amplification and emphases added.)
You can see from the amplifications inserted above, that God’s living Word truly intends to be as one with us in all things. He intends to transform all former self-centered, individualistic sons of Adam into – one, integrated, synchronized Body – His Body! So before the Salvation Life of God’s Word can actually live and be revealed in us and through us, our original self-centered, radically independent mentality and attitudes and energy-thrusts must die. That is, our minds and wills and affections must completely reverse direction…and move into this new Spirit-empowered union with the Resurrection Life of Yeshua and share His Life in mutual care and protection and total respect and reverence for anyone that belongs to, and is one with, Him.
True disciples, in whom the Word’s Life abides, give tangible evidence that they are being filled with and fueled by, the Spirit of the Almighty God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! In the Word’s Body, there is no room for the old, naturally inherited flesh-traits with which we all begin. By nature, we are all self-adoring, selfish and rebellious against authority, and manipulative, predatory and essentially self-destructive. No one has to teach us these things when we’re children. We are conceived and born with those strong rebellious and destructive self-willed tendencies because of what Sin has done to our corporate and individual human nature. But none of that can embody the Perfect Resurrection Humanity of God’ living Word! He is one with the Father and there is no Sinful Self-life in the Word of God!
So the Word and Holy Spirit of God are here to reverse completely and undo and replace every bit of damage the Serpent and his Sin have done to us. Starting with Israel, God intends to regenerate our innermost being and replace our original, naturally divisive, antagonistic and individualistic traits, with His own Spirit. And the Spirit will transmit all that pertains to our Head into our regenerated spirits. Then we must realign and retrain our intellects, wills and hearts to express and embody His Love Nature. So His selfless, supernatural Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Faithfulness, Goodness, Gentleness and Self-Control become the unmistakable ‘Fruit’…that proves that His Life is actually flowing into and out through – our actions, reactions and interactions. Only that can prove that God actually is in us and with us; and that we truly belong to Him. Such regenerated, transformed people no longer embody their old self-seeking and individualistic ways. For the common good of all of the fellow members of the Body of their Head, they embody God’s living Word to one another. By abiding under His absolute Authority, they become God’s family, protecting and nurturing the new nature, purpose and destiny that God puts into each of them. Now they all serve as living expressions of their one Head, the Word of God, who IS God’s redeeming, restoring Love to and for us all…and who has poured Himself out on our behalf, with all of His heart, mind, heart and strength! His Righteousness, flowing into and out from us, observes God’s commandments in our name. And we give evidence through our lives that He truly lives in us.
Since God never changes…if we allow Him to achieve what He intends to do with us…we will change…drastically, from the inside, out! God will transform and integrate us until we become the corporate human image and likeness of His Eternal Word. That is why each individual must die to his or her original radical independence and individualistic worldly ways…and transform into a unified member of God’s Blood Covenant corporate entity, a wonderful God-filled, Love-sharing family…His Family. So now, thanks to what God’s Word says through Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, we see two things that God wishes to reveal and emphasize to the world:
1. God’s chosen people are not to remain individualistic in a worldly sense.
They must transform into a corporate Blood Covenant Body under the Headship of God’s living Word. They are not to remain self-centered, or humanistic, focusing on and falsely exalting themselves, or other certain ‘special’, ‘elite individuals or groups of individuals in their midst. The Lord Yeshua is the one and only Supreme Authority on Earth. And His disciples are all to be integrated, synchronized members of…His one Body…under the Headship…of God’s living Word. So the authority that is to be exercised in everyday practical matters will not reside in any man or group of men, not even Moses and Aaron. They are all called to be a chosen priestly nation commissioned to serve as a model that will serve as a warning and a pattern for the rest of the living dead human race to follow (See Jn. 17)
Matthew 28:18
“And Jesus (Almighty God’s living incarnate, resurrected Word) came up and spoke to them, saying, “ALL AUTHORITY has been given to ME in heaven and on earth!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Since the Sin of the Serpent decapitated the human race, fallen Adam’s rebellious self-adoring Sin-nature is what each of his living death children inherits, without exception. And that nature is what chops and dices and divides us. We are driven by individualism and we compete and strive against each other incessantly, until we burn out in total exhaustion. So, to deal with this, God began our universal corporate Restoration by creating, training and unifying individual Israelites first. They were to be the nucleus of His new personal Blood Covenant Family on Earth. So Israel is God’s ‘teaching instrument’ and ‘spiritual ‘greenhouse’ in which the Life of the Word of God is to be nurtured and protected within each one of God’s people. The Word reveals through them (positively or negatively), what authentic God-created Humanity truly is, and conversely, it exposes whatever is not true, authentic, God-originated humanity.
This prototype God-Family is to embody and express our Creator’s Love-nature, as revealed in and through His Word. And they are to reflect, protect and maintain the Word’s Perfect Image and Likeness of God, standards of Righteousness. The Father is one with His Word and Spirit; and that oneness can only be revealed and reflected through the oneness of God’s chosen, Spirit-empowered people on Earth. That is why disciples must be reconfigured and realigned within their deepest parts…to consider themselves to be dead to self-life, and filled with our Head’s Eternal Resurrection Life. It is His Life, flowing into each of us, that will make us into a corporate entity, a Blood Covenant Family, a Body that serves God by embodying and expressing His purpose and His viewpoint and focus, values, priorities and ministry of Reconciliation and Restoration to and for the rest of the world. Therefore:
2. God’s Life, and its Authority and Responsibility are to be delegated to and embodied by, each disciple.
In God’s Family, no one among us is inferior or subordinate…because no one among us is superior and preeminent! We are to be one, as our God is one! The transformation of that original Exodus slave-rabble into one unified image-and- likeness-of-God Body, required each individual to embrace and adopt equally, God’s vision and purpose. Since all had to be trained to be one in spirit and purpose, God began to bring other men into the picture, to come alongside Moses and Aaron…and take the load of false responsibility off of their shoulders so that their common Head, God’s living Word, could take over. They were to serve as the Word’s Body together, so that their Head could bear the burden of Ultimate High Priest by His Eternal Authority and the Power of God’s Holy Spirit. The Israelites were to learn to embody God’s Word…together…and the task of their delegated leaders was to teach and demonstrate this Word-embodying lifestyle to all the rest.
This is how each one was to mature and grow into the common responsibility to ‘garden’ the common good. Each and every living member of any body must embody its head. So each Israelite had to assume and own the responsibility of embodying and revealing their Head, God’s Word. In doing so, they assumed the responsibilities of leadership – caring for and protecting the health, safety and well being of His entire Body.
And so God began to develop an infrastructure of Love and mutual Care, a skeletal authoritative framework structure for His Word’s Human Body that would train each part to remain aligned with and obedient to, the Headship of God’s Word. So the interaction of the members was not to result in the exaltation of certain special members! There are no special members! All of the members are there to exalt and reveal and express the Head, by allowing His Life to abide and work from within each one. The New Covenant is thus meant to teach Israel and bring her into the ultimate fulfillment of this, so that, at last, what she has historically failed to grasp and do nationally, through her original Mosaic Covenant, can be fulfilled in and through the New Covenant:
Colossians 2:8-12
“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ (God’s Word made flesh). For in Him all the Fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the Head over all rule and authority; and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
1 Corinthians 11:1
“Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.” (KJV. Emphasis added.)
When men follow a true New Covenant disciple of God’s living Word, they are not taught to invest their focus and devotion in that man or woman. The disciple is not the one they are to learn to follow. True veteran disciples teach their apprentice fellow disciples to do what they are doing…to focus on God’s living Word who is Head over them all. They are to learn to abide in and follow Him, just the way they see the veteran disciples abiding in and following Him! Together, they are all members of His Body; and they all follow His lead and embody the Life that He is in all of them.
The way of the world is vastly different. Fallen men exalt and follow other fallen men. But as they do that, their innate self-centered predatory nature causes them to fail and betray each other…for they are all…decapitated and Sin-corrupted and doomed to failure:
Luke 6:39-42
“And He also spoke a parable to them: ‘A blind man cannot guide a blind man, can he? Will they not both fall into a pit? A pupil is not above his Teacher (God’s living Word); but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like (will embody the indwelling Life of) his Teacher. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
When each true Israelite exclusively focuses upon and draws Life from God’s indwelling living Word, then, God’s living Word actually begins to have a Body on Earth that is truly His, and not someone else’s. This Body is specifically calibrated to reveal and express Him…exactly as His Father chose to reveal Him to and through Israel. And through His obedient Body, the Head can then impart and reveal the Perfect Love and Obedience He renders eternally to His Father, through the inter-connected members that embody Him. And, at the same time, He is able to impart the Father’s Love to each one of His members…just like a grape vine imparts its sap and life and abundant fruitfulness into, and out through, each one of its branches.
Our Awesome Destiny and Corporate Responsibility
This awesome destiny will require the head of each Israelite household to identify with and assume responsibility for, the health, growth and ongoing protection of the entire Body, for the sake of their beloved Head. Each head of every household will thus teach, demonstrate and impart the Covenant Love and the new corporate identity and mentality it requires, to each member of the household. The Israelite Body must have only one Head…and conversely, their Head must have only one integrated, synchronized Body! So the responsibility of each man, woman and child is to protect their precious union and work together to embody and reveal their Head who abides in them and circulates through their midst. And God’s Word will thus integrate and synchronize them into one…and develop, protect and maintain the unity of His own Body. This responsibility is corporate; therefore it must be owned by and shared and expedited by each one that is one with the Head. The Head works through each member. And so, each Israelite must learn to allow the Master to ‘garden’ and beautify and protect God’s ‘True Israel’, through them. And if Israel is thus protected and maintained properly from within, according to God’s Word and Spirit, the Redemption and Restoration of the entire world is also being protected and maintained properly, and the dark works of the Serpent are destroyed and replaced to that extent, by the Light of the Life of the KING…of the Kingdom of Heaven!
This is why the head of each household is accountable to God for making sure everyone in his or her family remains united in love and faithful obedient devotion to God’s Word and Spirit. Thus each child of each generation can come to know God and abide under the Headship of His Word. Each one will be enabled, personally, to interact with God, as a ‘son of the Covenant’…a mature, responsible part of God’s unified, Word-embodying, world-redeeming Blood Covenant Net of Salvation for all the other families of the Earth. So individual Israelites are not to settle for being associated with an earthly, self-adoring Israel…each one is expected to BECOME God’s True Israel!
It is vitally important for Israel…and also for the rest of the world…to know and keep this in mind. The intensely personal Eternal Blood Covenant union that God established with the fathers of the Faith in Genesis and began to expand to many others, in Exodus, must be protected, maintained and brought forward in time and space…and established within each generation of the nation of Israel. And the Body of God’s living Word must spread and expand from within Israel…into each new generation, era and locality of the rest of humanity, until the end of time.
Genesis 17:6-7
“I (God’s living creative Word) will make you (Abraham) exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you. I will establish My covenant between Me and you Acts 1:6-8 and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting Covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Acts 1:6-8
“So (after the living Word’s Resurrection) when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, ‘Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
In the days of Moses, this had to begin with each Israelite family. Through each family the responsibility for living out the Covenant with God could then begin to be shared collectively, throughout the entire nation, and beyond. They were to instill the Covenant Bond into each family…until the entire nation could be made up of like-minded, Word-submissive, smaller family units that would serve like healthy cells of that much larger, national Body through which God’s living Word would be able to reach out to the other nations of the world. But for this supernatural level of personal interaction with God to be possible…the nature and the ways of God had to be imparted to each Israelite man, woman and child, and learned with great diligence, precision and faithful accuracy, by each of them.
The stakes underlying this are Eternal Life vs. Eternal Death…both for Israel and for the world. This is an indication of how God intends to bring His Perfect Finished Creation (as it already is in eternity – see Gen. 2:1-3), down into this fallen, Sin-corrupted, demon-possessed time and space dimension (See Revelation 21). Israel’s commission is tied to the validation, fulfillment and eternal preeminence and Eternal Glory of God and His living Word! So nothing is more important to God, and to our Eternal Salvation, than His Word! And this is why God is so strict and demanding with Israel. He has to teach the importance of this and the high stakes underlying it very clearly and effectively for His chosen priestly nation. Israel’s part in the salvation and restoration of the rest of God’s Creation is of vital importance and so God is adamant in requiring their authentic, accurate, precise obedience to and preservation of, what He has revealed and commanded through His Word.
Deuteronomy 4:2
“You shall not add to the Word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the (Word embodying and revealing) commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.” (Amplification added.)
John 5:45-47
“Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (Emphasis added.)
Hebrews 12:1-8
“Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on (God’s living Word,) Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of Faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
“You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, ‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.’
It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
And, of course, because God’s True Israel is so important to the Restoration of God’s Creation, that is also why the powers of Darkness never stop trying to destroy her! If they can destroy Israel, then her God is not God! And the rest of Creation will not be liberated from satanic domination and restored! That’s why throughout all of Israel’s history, decapitated people have been incessantly driven by their demonic taskmasters to turn against God’s chosen people in order to destroy and eliminate them completely. They do this because Creation’s Salvation and Restoration are forever linked to the successful fulfillment of Israel’s God-given Commission! The Perfect Restoration and the Eternal Fulfillment of God’s Covenant promises to the human race began with and will also end with – the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And that is why, to insure Israel’s success, He sent His own living Word and Holy Spirit to do the job and make sure His Eternal Covenant will be fulfilled to Perfection:
Zechariah 8:22-23
“So many peoples and mighty nations will come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘In those days ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’”
Isaiah 65:17-18
“For behold, I create New Heavens and a New Earth; and the former things will not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; for behold, I (God’s living Word) create Jerusalem for rejoicing and her people for gladness.” (Emphasis added.)
Revelation 21:1-4
“Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, made ready as a Bride adorned for her Husband. And I heard a loud voice from the Throne, saying, “Behold, the Tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first (Sin-corrupted) things have passed away.” (Amplification and emphasis added.
God’s Perfect Eternal Kingdom
The Perfect Restoration of humanity, if it is to meet God’s Perfect Standards, must be totally Perfect. That requires a new Creation that will completely replace the original one that Sin mutilated and mortally wounded. So mere ‘mending’ and ‘patching’ and ‘straightening’ and ‘retreading’ of what Sin has already killed, can never suffice. Sin and whatever comes from it must be completely excluded from God’s Perfect Eternal Kingdom. So, our Exodus transformation must be universal and absolute. We must die to our original state of God-rejecting Death…so that the Life of our risen Messiah can be imparted to us. And then we can be eternally one with our Pure and Holy and Righteous God and serve as His Word’s image and likeness, in Spirit and in Truth! And all of this has been revealed to, and through, Israel.
No revelation could be more important than this: God will never be satisfied with our natural, radically independent attempts at religious striving. That is evident from the way He reacted to Cain’s religious, self-devised ‘offering’. People like Cain reject the Perfection of God’s Finished Work; so God rejects their efforts to bypass and replace it. So…even when fallen flesh devises beautiful religions, and lofty religious ‘works of art’, even when they produce the best that fallen human ingenuity can concoct, and even when such things stir the souls of fallen men with their pleasing, beautiful, religious ‘inspirations’…to God, they are nothing more than mimicry, cheap counterfeit substitutes, that will never equal or replace the True God-pleasing Reality that flows out of God’s own Perfect Word and Holy Spirit. God warns in advance, all those that strive to achieve such self-improvement, self-actualization and self-justification: They will not pass God’s Final Judgment! Striving in our flesh for anything that we are not receiving from and through the Word of God, amounts to unbelief and rebellion against His Word, and rejection of His Perfect Finished Work. To do that is to rely upon and worship false, non-existent gods! And that always has been, and always will be, the Sin of idolatry.
So we must ponder deeply and sincerely what our Creator requires so that He will be able to transform us from what we were, to what He intends to make of us. Consider the difficulty Israel experienced in the wilderness. Most of them failed to learn these lessons thoroughly, accurately and effectively. God began this with Israel so that the rest of the world would see exactly what lies in store for it. We must all forsake what our birth into natural fallen families and worldly cultures and religions and philosophies program and condition us to be and to see and assume and think. We must allow God’s Word to pierce, penetrate and impregnate the depths of our being with God’s Eternal Truth. God must be free to do everything on our behalf! And He has! He has done everything necessary to remake everything about us into something new, that can perfectly reflect Him and embody His Perfect Presence, as perfect, Heavenly, New Covenant beings.
So it is God’s exclusive responsibility to do the necessary work; and, Glory to God, He has done it! And now our responsibility is to allow Him to empower us to live accordingly and demonstrate the awesome fruit-filled results of His awesome Finished Work,
Ephesians 3:10
“…so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church (the true Family of Abraham) to the (demonic) rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
In God’s eternal Kingdom, everything is newly created, utterly pure and Perfect! Because God is Perfect by nature; His Standards of Righteousness, Justice and True Humanity require us (His image and likeness) to reflect and radiate His Perfection. This eternal Reality is far beyond anything we have ever seen or could ever imagine in our wildest time and space dreams in this fallen world!
Isaiah 6:1-5
“In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said,
‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His Glory.’
“And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.
“Then I said, ‘Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.’” (Emphasis added.)
Jeremiah 17:5-10
“Thus says the Lord: ’Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. For he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.
“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.’” (Emphasis added.)
Matthew 5:48
“Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is PERFECT!” (Emphasis added.)
How can fallen flesh ever hope to mimic or duplicate the infinite Perfection of Almighty God? Can you see the utter absurdity of such an idea? No matter how hard we work and how ‘religious’ we try to be, no matter how brutally the world’s religious overlords and taskmasters flog us, in their efforts get us to ‘improve’ and ‘reform’ and ‘correct’ our fallen, Serpent-bitten, Sin-disfigured ways…fallen flesh can never change itself or ‘perform’ well enough. Whales can never be trained to be ballerinas and not one of us will ever succeed at, trying to be ‘as God!’ Only God can meet His Perfect standards, perfectly. So we must ‘give up’ and ‘let go’ and declare total bankruptcy before Him, just as Isaiah was forced to do, in the text above. When God gives us a ‘peek’ at His awesome majestic Infinity and the Glory of His Eternal Perfection…we will finally see the Truth. And we’ll have no trouble acknowledging His inescapable Light of Truth. Then we will automatically begin to live by faith in His Perfection, instead of being led by our own pathetic perceptions, hunches and feelings. When God’s Glory is revealed to us, it overwhelms and forces us to agree and submit to the inescapable Truth about how things really are with Him and with us.
Of course what I’m saying runs counter to the dogmas and agendas of worldly, humanistic decapitated people. They are blind and deaf to God and His Word. So they assume they are on their own, with no other choice but to ‘make the best’ of what they currently are and have. So they look only to themselves and to alternative man-made ‘solutions’. They remained trapped in the delusion of ‘self-improvement’ based on education, training and the ‘discovery of ‘a better way of life’. But no matter how many things they devise to try to maintain and ‘fix’, or ‘reform’, and ‘save’ their lives…the sound and smell of Death permeates and ruins everything they try to do. And when they can strive and struggle no more, the Death that has always been within them, catches up with them and prevails and completely engulfs them. And so Yeshua, God’s living Word, warned His New Covenant Israelite apostles about what they could expect from such people:
John 15:18-25
“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world (as it still exists even in Israel), the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My Word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates Me hates My Father also. If I had not done among them, the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well. But they have done this to fulfill the Word that is written in their Law: ‘They hated Me without a cause.’” (Emphasis added.)
This Truth is foundational for the understanding of every race, kingdom, nation, culture and religion on the face of the Earth. It is the revelation of the existence and nature and ways of the living God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses. It reveals His Perfection and His Perfect Ways and humanity’s true, God-given essence, purpose and destiny. The Sin-damaged, mortally wounded human race that descends from The First Adam, no matter how wonderful and excellent they assume themselves to be, will never meet God’s Perfect Standards and pass the scrutiny of His Judgment. And no matter how rigidly men cling to their violent, destructive, rebellious ways, God will never change. In that sense, all men, as a corporate race and as individuals, are born ‘naked’ in God’s sight. So we must all ‘repent’ of what we are in our original fallen nature – not only of what we do and fail to do, but deeper than that; we must repent of what we ARE, of what Sin has made us to BE! This is why God’s living Word, The Last Adam, is so adamant about the conditions under which He summons us to ‘follow’ Him out of this fallen world system and all that it represents.
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.)
These inescapable facts of Eternal Life must always be in the forefront of our awareness when we try to know and abide with, our awesome God in this fallen time and space world. We must take to heart what He tried so hard to teach to that original company of Israelites that followed Moses out of Egypt. It is the same thing that He has been trying to teach to every bull-headed, stiff-necked generation of human beings of all backgrounds and eras ever since. Isaiah articulated beautifully, the true state of fallen, unregenerate humanity with these words that he addressed to God:
Isaiah 64:5-7
“You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, who remembers You in Your ways. Behold, You were angry, for we sinned, we continued in them a long time; and shall we be saved? For ALL OF US have become like one who is unclean, and ALL OUR ‘RIGHTEOUS’ DEEDS are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on Your Name, who arouses himself to take hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us And have delivered us into the power of our iniquities.” (Emphasis added.)
But now notice the way God describes the redeemed, regenerated and Spirit-filled true disciples of His Word:
2 Corinthians 5:17-19
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ (the Messiah of Israel, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come! Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ (His living Word) reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us (Jewish and non-Jewish disciples) the Word of Reconciliation.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
James 2:5
“Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?” (Emphasis added.)
Ephesians 3:14-19
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in Heaven and on Earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His Glory, to be strengthened with Power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts THROUGH FAITH; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the Fullness of God!” (Emphasis added.)
This is what belongs to those that live by faith and are thus one with God’s living Word made flesh, our Messiah. The Resurrection Life of God’s Eternal Lamb flows into them and out through them…from the Resurrection Side of His Cross! This great Gift of God’s own Life within us progressively dismantles and strips away and replaces, every trace of the fallen original humanity we all originally inherited. If we ponder the depths of meaning contained in God’s commission that was imparted to Israel in the wilderness, to be His ‘holy righteous, priestly nation’, along with the 613 commandments contained in the Torah of Moses…not to mention the 1050 commandments embedded within the apostolic, New Covenant portions of the Bible, we can see that the Torah revelation and commandments are not expectations that God places on our poor, bankrupt fallen flesh! The commandments are not for decapitated people! To assume that would be like assuming that whales can be ballerinas! The commandments expose the bankruptcy of our fallen flesh and they drive us to despair! The commandments describe the new nature of regenerated redeemed beings that abide with God and share in the Resurrection state that belongs to their risen Head, God’s living Word. Only when God’s Word becomes our Life-giving Head and we truly become His Life-receiving members, can this supernatural Life and Righteous Nature flow into us. Then the Life of our Messiah works naturally in us, the way the life-giving, fruit-producing sap of a grape vine works within all of it’s truly connected, abiding branches. It is all about Him, The Vine, and never about the totally dependent branches. As long as we remain one with Him, He transmits the Fruit of His Perfect Finished Work into us. And so His Life does all of the work; while we learn to rest and wait and abide and realize that everything is being transmitted into us…from the total Adequacy and Perfection of our one and only Source, God’s Word.
Conversely, just as disconnected, dead branches can never have life or produce fruit in themselves, so too, as long as humans remain apart from Messiah Yeshua, God’s living Word, who we now know took on our flesh in order to represent us before God. Apart from Him, we can have no eternal Life or Perfect Righteousness operating within us. Only the Life and Nature of God Himself is able to do the ‘good works’ God requires us to do. So His Word must do the work and we must reveal and embody Him and all that His Life does. If God does not live and work in us, then no matter how religiously disciplined and ‘proper’ we try to be…we will never transform into His true, authentic image and likeness, nor will we be truly, fully, ‘human’.
The Wisdom of the World is Far Removed From God’s Truth
There are many contradictory, conflicting things, concocted by fallen, Sin-corrupted secular and religious gurus. But their teachings and writings ignore and bypass God’s Perfect Finished Work of Creation and Redemption! So realize that this awesome Messiah-centered revelation of Truth comes from the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses, as He reveals Himself throughout the entirety of HIS written Word…the Bible! No other source reveals this. Everything else is, ‘Egypt’.
The laws of fallen men drive and try to force our flesh to improve itself until it can finally become ‘righteous’. But God gives the Law to expose the deadness of our spiritually naked and totally bankrupt state! His Law forces flesh-driven people to realize their state of living death…and the despair that comes with that realization compels them to admit their dire need to repent of their innate radical independence! The Law exposes and drives them into the arms of our Messiah, the living Word of God. He is our only true Hope…the only true Head and Source of Eternal Life and everything that pertains to it.
Romans 5:19-21
“For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Emphasis added.)
So for disciples of The Last Adam, the Law has a completely different purpose. It describes the Life and workings of our indwelling Lord and Master is as he abides and lives his Life from within us. It reveals what He is now able to be and do from within our crucified, totally dependent flesh…in our name. He is the Perfect Giver of the Law…and He is also the Law’s one and only Perfect Keeper! God’s Law reveals God’s Nature…the Nature He shares with His Word and Spirit. And now He is here to share that awesome Nature with His Word’s own true disciples. And so only in God’s Word, and by His Word, can any human keep God’s Law in Spirit and in Truth. To abide in God’s Law…is another way of saying that we are equipped by God to embody His living Word, Yeshua, who abides within His own and becomes their obedience, by the Holy Spirit’s Power:
Psalm 1
“How blessed is the (Word-embodying) man who does not walk in the (decapitated) counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the Law (nature of the living Word) of the Lord, And in His Law he meditates (draws Yeshua’s Life and Righteousness into himself) day and night.
“He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers.
“The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff which the wind drives away.Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.For the Lord knows (IS) the way of the righteous, but the (flesh-driven) way of the wicked will perish.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
John 4:20-24
“‘Our (Samaritan) fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you (Jewish) people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.’Jesus *said to her, ‘Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.But an hour is coming, and now is, when ( I, working from within) the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The people of this world, regardless of ethnic origin, are an earthy, Sin-corrupted, mutilated race compared to what God originally created. Everything they do comes from the rebellious, Serpent-inspired, unrepentant condemned side of our Messiah’s Cross. But those that God is able to graft into His living Word – the Root of God’s True Israel – transform into God’s Heavenly People, His Covenant Family. Everything the Word is and does in their name is holy and righteous in God’s sight because it comes from God’s own Word from the Resurrection side of the Cross of God’s Eternal Lamb! And we will see the full Glory of that Resurrection…in the Fulfillment of the New Covenant!
Revelation 7:9-1
“After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the Throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation to our God who sits on the Throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Emphasis added.)