Exodus 19:10-15
“The Lord also said to Moses, ‘Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments; and let them be ready for the third day, for on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. You shall set bounds for the people all around, saying, ‘Beware that you do not go up on the mountain or touch the border of it; whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. No (created) hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned or shot through (by the Presence of My Perfect Holy Nature); whether beast or man, he shall not live.’ When the ram’s horn sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain.” So Moses went down from the mountain to the people and consecrated the people, and they washed their garments. He said to the people, “Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Hosea 6:1-2
“Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up (who were formerly spiritually dead) on the third day, that we may live (eternally) before Him.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Matthew 16:21-23
“From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.’ But He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s!’” (Emphasis added.)
Isaiah 55:6-9
“Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Emphasis added.)
We’ve seen that Almighty God reveals Himself and does everything…in, by, and through His living Word. The revelation of the dynamic creative Reality of God’s Word can also be revealed on Earth in the words of men. We call that revelation, ‘The written Word’ or ‘The Bible.’ So the Word reveals Himself to us through the Holy Spirit, in our daily lives, and also through the inspired words contained in the Scriptures. This is tremendously important because in knowing the Word, we also know the Father who speaks Him forth to us.
But even during those times in our lives when we can’t perceive His Presence, or when we do not have access to the Bible, God’s living Word is always present and interacting with us. He is progressively fulfilling everything the written Word says about Him. So, at Sinai, at that strategic point of the unfolding of God’s plan for Israel, God sent His living Word to Israel at Sinai – to reveal more of God’s Nature and of the Fulfillment of His own personal commission to serve as our Covenant Representative and Perfect Redemptive Covering.
John 14:8-10
“Philip said to Him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works!’” (Emphasis added.)
Scripture has revealed that God, in His Perfect Nature, is changeless. It also reveals that we were made to be His image and likeness. From that we learn much about our fallen situation and current state, in relation to our changeless Creator. Our fallen flesh instinctively refuses to be His image and likeness; instead, it strives to take His place and usurp His Authority for itself! Nevertheless, God’s changeless nature and His ways and standards and requirements are not up for debate or discussion. Since Perfection never changes, neither will God’s views or His ways or His standards be subject to our approval or acceptance. They also will never change. So we are the ones that must change, in one way or the other. Thus everything God has revealed through His Word, remains the same from Genesis through Revelation. The books of the Bible that follow Torah simply develop, amplify and explain what was eternally established even before God chose to create the dimension of time and space.
Our Eternal, Changeless God
So because our understanding of God’s Eternal Infinity is very limited, all that is packed into the Scriptures will progressively unfold in our perceptions. Our understanding will develop and deepen gradually, throughout the entire lifespan of the created universe. And it will continue to develop throughout eternity, because our God is infinite…boundless…and eternally unfathomably…One. Everything written about Him is beautifully, astoundingly unified and interrelated. And all of God’s Fullness is eternally contained in His beautiful, awesome, uncreated living Word. So God’s living Word is also changeless! In our profound limitations, we will never exhaust all that He is. And yet, He has called us to serve as His disciples! So realize our awesome calling and task! He has invited us to enjoy the honor and privilege of knowing and interacting with Him as intimately as it is possible for humans to do!
Numbers 32:11
“None of the men who came up from Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob; for they did not follow Me fully…”
Numbers 14:24
“But My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the Land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it.”
Jeremiah 16:10-12
“Now when you tell this people all these words, they will say to you, ‘For what reason has the Lord declared all this great calamity against us? And what is our iniquity, or what is our sin which we have committed against the Lord our God?’ Then you are to say to them, ‘It is because your forefathers have forsaken Me,’ declares the Lord, ‘and have followed other gods and served them and bowed down to them; but Me they have forsaken and have not kept My law. You too have done evil, even more than your forefathers; for behold, you are each one walking according to the stubbornness of his own evil heart, without listening (being obedient) to Me!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Throughout the lifespan of the created universe, the Eternal Word is ever-present…abiding within each particle and energy wave of Creation…maintaining, sustaining, providing, protecting and, above all, fulfilling His Father’s Perfect eternal will, purpose and plan. So now, in Exodus, God is giving a deeper revelation of the Perfect Divine Nature that He began to reveal in Genesis. We must have this progressive revelation of God’s Word so we can grow in our understanding of what already fully exists in God’s eternal dimension. The Word’s Perfect Finished Work exists in God’s Eternal Fullness. But to us who abide in time and space, it appears as something dim and distant…something that is developing…advancing and growing. In other words, it seems to us to be a Journey that is drawing us onward…into a future Perfect Restoration and Fulfillment. At the end of that ‘journey’ of increasing awareness of what is perfect and changeless in eternity, God promises that what we will see and have then…will correspond perfectly to what God has always had waiting for us in eternity. His ‘finishing touches’ of revelation will be seen and experienced by those that chose to believe and obey His Word in time and space. So even though, to our very limited earthly eyes, all of this appears at present to be serialized and progressive, God is letting us know that our perceptions are an illusion. Creation’s ultimate Perfect Fulfillment is inevitable and certain because it already exists in its eternal completion in God’s Eternal Kingdom! That is why we’re required to live by faith…and not by sight, as we make our way through the dimension of time and space.
And to make sure we understand what is involved and what He had to do to set things right between us, God points out the infinite differences between the awesome Perfection of His Eternal Nature and Life…as opposed to the current state of our fallen nature and what Sin and its Death-inflicting corruption has done to us. He must show us what Sin is and what it has made of us, in His sight. And we must realize, even as we agonize and struggle through our time and space journey, that the wonderful Reconciliation that God’s Word, the Last Adam, has already effected for us in eternity, to cancel and reverse the relational damage with God that the First Adam caused in time and space, is already available to us in and through the Fullness of God’s revealed Word.
God’s living Word, who was made flesh, is our Eternal Covenant Representative. He has set us free and covered us from the effects of the first Adam’s Blood Covenant violation. But at Mt. Sinai, Israel could not have known the Fullness of what God was revealing. They could not have known the vastness of the difference that exists between His Perfect Nature and our fallen Adamic nature, and what enormous radical steps He would have to take to restore and reconfigure what we are in our fallen state…so that we can be reunited with Him and be transformed back into His image and likeness.
God’s Word, our Last Adam, had to endure the full brunt of God’s Perfect Justice, His hatred of, and enmity against Sin! He had to absorb and endure the full Wrath of God’s Perfect Judgment against our Sin! This fulfilled the eternal Covenant, which requires God to bear the full, awesome responsibility and agonizing suffering required to make full Atonement for us and perfectly satisfy the Divine Standards of Justice, Righteousness, Order and Equilibrium. God’s Perfect Nature must, at all times and in all cases, operate at the level of Perfection because that is His eternal Nature. His Holy Righteousness and Purity were being revealed at Sinai in awesome, soul-gripping, terrible intensity that no flesh had ever seen before, or has seen since. He showed Israel what lay behind the destruction of the flood in Genesis that wiped out all Sin-corrupted flesh, except for eight repentant, obedient people. The entire Sin-corrupted nation of Israel received a glimpse of the unspeakable infinite chasm of antagonism and essential incompatibility that separates God from the Serpent’s Sin. This had to be deeply impressed into Israel’s mind and heart…so that she could make this revelation unmistakably clear to every other nation on Earth.
The Exodus is for Everyone
What happened at Sinai is not a mere dusty historical legend, a murky event that took place long ago between God and a band of ancient Israelites. The Exodus began to happen the moment God’s living Word covered the nakedness of Adam and Eve. And it is still happening in every generation to each and every human being that the wills of fallen men and women decide to conceive! The Exodus is an ongoing universal event that not only concerns the Jewish people but…all the families of the Earth! It involves you and me just as much as it involved Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Noah and Abraham! Sinai is an eternal proclamation and revelation that the Creator of all things MUST deliver to each of us, since we are all made to be His image and likeness and to co-administrate His universe with Him!
1 Corinthians 6:2-3
“…Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life?”
There’s an infinite chasm between God’s nature and anything that Sin touches, kills and corrupts. The separation is absolute, infinite, eternal and non-negotiable. Sin is Darkness; and it causes Death. But God is Eternal Life and Light! How can God’s Presence and His absence be compatible? How can those two opposites have anything to do with each other? They are utterly opposed, contradictory and mutually exclusive enemies! So, before any aspect of Death-infected Creation can safely abide with God and share in His Perfect Peace, Joy, Harmony and Rest, every speck of Sin that remains in it must and will be dealt with, one way or the other. That is why, in order to be saved from eternal perdition, we must repent of and fully renounce and die completely…to our state of living death and whatever is linked to it. Only then is our changeless, Perfect God legally and by His Holy Essence, free to regenerate and bond with us by His Holy Spirit and unite us to His living Word’s Eternal Perfection.
The Exodus from Death to Resurrection
Notice the ‘on the third day’ pattern that God is establishing in our opening text. He ordered a three-day preparation period to take place. This speaks of that death to radical independence that we must all undergo. Only after every speck of living death has been destroyed and removed from us, can we be made ready to approach God. So, at Sinai, Israel’s fallen Sinful human flesh had to undergo a profound level of mortifying preparation and purification before their meeting with God could take place. When we realize what the issue really is, that Truth will make us completely ready to repent and rely entirely on our Redeemer wholeheartedly, without any questioning, quibbling, or mental reservations. This is why God gave that awesome display of ‘Fire and Brimstone’…to let us see the depths of the curse and death penalty that the fallen children of Adam are always under. In our living death state, we cannot be allowed to approach God’s Living Presence! This is in keeping with God’s Truth, Reality, Justice and Order, as well as for our own eternal protection and safety. Just as Sinful Adam and Eve were barred from contact with Tree of Life in the Garden, for their protection, so too must Israel’s Sin-corrupted flesh be barred from approaching God’s Holy Presence at Sinai. If they dare to cross the boundary, His Justice will be forced to blast their bodies and condemn their souls to the Darkness of an eternal Hell where they will be forever subject to the rage and malevolent hatred of the Serpent and his minions. So we encounter the two edges of the Sword of God’s Word once again. On one side, our sinful flesh cannot abide being in God’s Holy Presence; but on the other side, God is intent on becoming one with us and abiding in our hearts and in our midst forever! How can those two apparently contradictory truths ever be reconciled?
Even Israel, God’s chosen one, is by nature so fatally Sin-corrupted, that she can’t bear the overwhelming Glory of God’s Holy Presence. That is why they had to undergo a three-day period of purifying preparation. And even then, only those God had chosen to represent the people before Him, were allowed to approach Him on the mountain:
Exodus 19:16-25
“So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain.
“Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently. When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him with thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain; and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, ‘Go down, warn the people, so that they do not break through to the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish. Also let the priests who come near to the Lord consecrate themselves, or else the Lord will break out against them.’ Moses said to the Lord, ‘The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for You warned us, saying, ‘Set bounds about the mountain and consecrate it.’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Go down and come up again, you and Aaron with you; but do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord, or He will break forth upon them.’ So Moses went down to the people and told them.” (Emphasis added.)
So as long as even a speck of Sin is allowed to abide in us, we dare not venture into God’s Holy Presence. We will be unprotected…lacking the Covering God has provided for us. In relation to God’s Holy Nature, Sinful sons of Adam’s disobedience are like tissue paper trying to approach a roaring white-hot blast furnace! The two natures can’t abide each other, to say the least. So God’s Word and His revelation and commandments must insulate and protect us from direct contact, for our own eternal good. This isn’t a matter of personal resentment or emotional mood. It is not merely an abstract theological religious concept. This is a matter of physics and metaphysics. It concerns the essences and energy polarities of two realities that conflict and move in directions that are completely opposed to each other in every way possible.
Through the fall of the First Adam (our original Covenant Representative before God) we were all legally dragged (by his acceptance of the Serpent’s lies and refusal to believe and obey God) into the state of Sin and its lethal, corrupting effects. Sin is Death; it is enmity with God who is Life. Sin is total separation from and incompatibility with, the one and only Source of Life. That separation in Adam and Eve infected, twisted, disfigured and mortally wounded all the rest of us beyond recognition. We were designed and created to be one with God through His Word; but Sin destroyed our ability to fulfill our God-given purpose. Now, whether we realize or admit it, or not, people that are decapitated from the Authority of God’s Word are the image and likeness of the Serpent!
So how can such a cosmic conflict be peacefully resolved? How is it possible for the awesome God, this Eternal, Changeless Being who is Perfection personified, to be free to love and deliberately bond Himself and become one with the likes of us? Who could believe, much less imagine that it could be possible? To our way of seeing and thinking, this is incomprehensible and out of the question.
Mark 10:25-27
“‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’ They were even more astonished and said to Him, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Looking at them, Jesus said, ‘With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.’”
Light and Darkness
And so God must reveal how He restores the two-edged equilibrium between His Perfect Justice and His Perfect Mercy in our regard. This Equilibrium MUST be restored! This is why God had to send His Word and Spirit to the entire nation of Israel with such overwhelming, devastating and terrifying Majesty and Power! He had to drive home the seriousness and reality and truth of His Eternal Judgment. So He delineated clearly, the changeless boundaries that separate His Light from the Serpent’s Darkness. This was training they had to receive, since they were to serve as God’s ‘human torch’ of illumination for the world…His ‘Light to the Gentiles’. They are to be the ‘demonstration model’ for the world. So…as the chosen people obey, or disobey God’s Word…the Eternal, Perfect, Changeless Divine Nature and its Laws respond accordingly. Thus God reveals Himself and His ways through Israel…positively or negatively…for the benefit of the rest of the human race. God’s reaction to Sin is as consistent and changeless with Israel, as it will be with all other human beings. This Law is just as impartial and universal as the laws of chemistry and electricity and the other laws of physics that God created and established to reveal His Nature to us. Regardless of what any fallen flesh may assume or wish, this is how it really is and always will be and nothing we think, do or wish or choose, will be able to change it.
So, at that dread-inducing, foreboding mountain, in a most desolate, stark wilderness setting…there was spiritual purity and utter simplicity that revealed the true relationship that exists between Almighty God and every one of His creatures. The desolate surroundings exposed the utter bankruptcy of our Sin-corrupted state of living death. It also pointed out most graphically, how utterly bankrupt we are in ourselves and how totally dependent on the one true Source we creatures are, by essence:
John 15:4-5
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am THE VINE, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing!” (Emphasis added.)
At Sinai, Israel was being weaned of her habitual dependence on the demonic idols of Egypt. Here there was nothing created for them to look to or depend upon. There was only the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, speaking forth His uncreated Word. There was no possible connection to the Titanic-like world system that remained for God’s people to rely on out there…there was nothing that could beckon and lure them into severing themselves from God’s Word. In the purity of that absolutely desolate wilderness, Israel had the best chance possible to get in touch with the reality of the death and disintegration that was in them and in all of the world systems that humanistic people keep devising. God placed His ‘Mirror of Truth’ before Israel and forced them to look into it and see themselves, and the rest of mankind, for what we really are before the Eternal Perfection and Holiness of Almighty God.
The Lie
Sin-corrupted people labor under demonic delusions that cause them to assume that they have it within themselves to make their own way in the world. And so, they also try to justify and exonerate themselves by their own contrived religious devices. This is in keeping with the Serpent’s outrageous lie…that men can be ‘like God’ in their own right. Like Cain, the religious ones they try to coax God into changing or keeping His distance; and they try to conceal the true state of their hearts beneath their ‘spiritual-seeming’ disguises and ritualistic formulas and nice-sounding man-bestowed titles, honors, achievements and positions. But at Sinai, none of that was possible. Nothing could be hidden…nothing that was false or unworthy of God was able to lurk in Darkness…because atop Mt. Sinai…there was no Darkness! There was only God…and the blazing overwhelming Light of His living Word! So anything containing Sin that would dare approach and cross the barriers God’s Holiness established, would be instantly found out and destroyed. And this is the aspect of God’s Perfect Holy two-edged Nature that the world must become aware of, before the day of our Judgment arrives! Remember He is Perfection, and Perfection overlooks nothing. And that fact will never change!
Ignorance of this resembles the ignorance of people who dare to approach and touch high-powered electrical cables or radioactive material without the necessary covering and insulation! It is certain death to touch those things without proper protection! And so is it with Almighty God and the Judgment and Condemnation and Eternal Punishment side of His Perfect Goodness, Holiness, Truth and Justice. Sin-corrupted beings must be insulated from the Holiness of all that He is. And, His living Word made flesh is our Perfect Eternal Insulation – the only Insulation that God has provided for the human race.
Israel had recently experienced the ‘insulating’ aspect of God’s Nature – the Perfect Love, Grace and Mercy part. That was demonstrated through the revelation of God’s Eternal Word…as our Perfect Eternal Sacrificial Lamb. He is The Lamb that was slain before the creation of the universe. He is truly fallen man’s one and only ‘Coverer’ (Genesis 3:21).
God revealed this through the recent Passover when He spared Israel from the terrible fate of unrepentant Egypt. On that dreadful night, the only difference between the Egyptians that came under God’s judgment and the Israelites that were spared, was this: the Israelites abided under the protective covering of God’s Word because they believed, accepted and obeyed what He had revealed and commanded through Moses. It was because of the obedience of their faith, that the Word was able to bring them under the covering of His Eternal Sacrificial Covenant Blood. And that Eternal Sacrifice made on mankind’s behalf was prophetically revealed for centuries, through the sacrificial offerings of those sinless substitute Passover lambs, and the multiple millions of other sacrificial animals that died throughout Israel’s Biblical history. They died in the place of any Jew or Gentile who believed what God’s living and written Word revealed, and obeyed what He commanded. And that connected them to the Eternal Covering of God’s own Lamb, the Word.
1 Corinthians 1:29-31
“ …so that no man may boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us Wisdom from God, and Righteousness and Sanctification, and Redemption, so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord!” (Emphasis added.)
In this Covenantal substitutionary way, God revealed and foretold the awesome significance of His Word who would, one day, appear in the person of Yeshua –the Messiah…the Eternal Incarnate Lamb, who, as humanity’s Eternal Covenant Representative, would live out, in our space and time dimension, the full, Perfect Atonement that He had already made in eternity. Our Eternal Covenant Representative identified with all of us so perfectly, to such a profound depth, that He was legally able to take all of our corporate and individual Sin and the curse of Death, upon Himself! In that Substitute Sacrifice capacity, He lived His perfectly Sin-less earthly life before God and shed His human Covenant Blood, and then, He willingly laid down His perfect, Sin-less human life on the altar of the Cross – as our sacrificial atoning infinite Passover Lamb. Thus He obeyed the commandments we could not stop violating and atoned for us and redeemed us, to Perfection, before God’s Perfect Righteousness and Justice.
Genesis 17:1-2
“I am God Almighty; Walk before Me, and be blameless. I will establish My covenant between Me and you, And I will multiply you exceedingly.”
The terrifying ‘fire and brimstone’ Judgment that was displayed so graphically atop Mt. Sinai, revealed what all naked non-insulated fallen flesh has coming, in relation to God. So God’s Word made flesh had to endure and experience all of it…in our place…in eternity first…and then in time and space…when the time came for Him to face and experience God’s Eternal Justice and Wrath against Sin, on the Cross. His Death satisfied God’s Justice and Judgment against us. And His Resurrection satisfied and demonstrated the Perfect Fulfillment of God’s Eternal Grace and Mercy. So the Word is the Restorer of the Perfect Order and Equilibrium in God’s Perfect Changeless Nature. And apart from Him and what He has done in our name, there is no hope for Sinful man.
Although in Himself God’s Word is Sin-less, nevertheless, as our Representative, throughout His human life, He had to suffer the very same frailties, temptations, humiliations, demonic oppression and the death penalty to which the rest of us are legally and rightfully subject! So the need for such a drastic, perfect, cosmic measure of Atonement, is what God was revealing through the terrifying Fire, Smoke, Thunder, Lightning and the Shofar (rams horn) Blasts that caused the earth to tremble so violently. Israel’s terror at Sinai joined her to the Terror of Judgment, Condemnation, Curse and Death that Messiah Yeshua would have to face, endure and experience in our name, on Golgotha. And it also revealed the shame, terror and judgment that every unrepentant, self-adoring non-insulated being in Creation will experience when the time comes for God to judge us all, when this corrupted time and space dimension reaches the end of its course. God first did to Himself…what will have to be done to all unrepentant sinners at the end…so that we could be covered by His Word and saved from His changeless, relentless Justice.
Messiah – the Sinless Seed of Abraham
Sinai also revealed more about the commission for which God had chosen Israel. She was also to be the human matrix, the ‘womb’ so to speak, into which God’s Word would be placed. From the union between God’s Word and His Bride, the Messiah would later emerge as the utterly pure, Sinless Seed of Abraham. As Israel’s Messiah and mankind’s Eternal Covenant Representative, God’s Word became…one of us…before Creation took place. And at the appointed time, He appeared on Earth in the person of Messiah Yeshua, to reveal, embody and transmit His Perfect Eternal Atonement into Israel, and through her, into all those that He would be able to graft into His Eternal Covenant union with Israel. So God’s Word was impressing upon His people, in the most spectacular, soul-chilling, gripping way possible, how tremendously deep and overwhelmingly terrible the consequences of Sin really are and what Sin has done to the human race, and what Israel, as God’s priestly nation, would have to receive, absorb, identify with, proclaim, teach and demonstrate…on behalf of all of the pagan Gentile nations of the earth.
Acts 10:39-41
“We are witnesses of all the things He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They also put Him to death by hanging Him on a cross. GOD RAISED HIM ON THE THIRD DAY and granted that He become visible, not to all the people, but to (faithful repentant Israelite) witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God, that is, to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
We must understand the infinite gap and separation that Sin has caused between God and us. If we don’t, we remain blind and deaf to God’s complete Truth and Reality. We only have a part of the picture. There is more to the picture than the fact that God’s Word is our Love Covering and Wedding Garment. He, in His Perfect Resurrected Humanity, is also the ‘Plumb Line’ of the Perfect, God-approved Standard of Humanity, against which all still-decapitated humans will be judged!
Matthew 17:5
“While he (Peter) was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, ‘This is My beloved Son, (the only one) with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
We MUST allow God’s Word to transform us into His image and likeness. We MUST become one with Him so that His Perfect Atonement, Righteousness, Acceptance and Inheritance can become one with us! If we remain ignorant of these aspects of God’s Nature, we remain clueless and crippled. We won’t feel any conviction of Sin, no need to repent, and no need for salvation, redemption and restoration, and no need to identify and become one with, our Lord and Master. Instead, we’ll remain beguiled by the lies of the Serpent…spiritually decapitated…and blind and deaf to Almighty God as He really is! So is it any wonder that God would choose to name His beloved Son, His living Word made flesh, ‘Yeshua’ which, in Hebrew, means – ‘Salvation’?
John 8:31-33
“…Jesus (Salvation) was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, ‘If you continue in My Word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ They answered Him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?’” (Emphasis added.)
Genesis 3:4-5
“The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be LIKE GOD, knowing good and evil!’” (Emphasis added.)
Revelation 3:15-18
“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see!” (Emphasis added.)
Blinded by the Lie
As long as the Serpent manages to put out our spiritual eyes, we have no authentic, accurate sense of God…and no way of knowing the true state of condemnation in which we helplessly abide! Without a convicting sense of our Sin, we feel no remorse or guilt, and no desperate need for salvation. Such jaded, hard-hearted people invariably scoff and turn their backs on God’s living and written Word. The very suggestion that they are not as ‘good’ or ‘righteous,’ as they like to think they are, is a profound offense to them. So when God’s Truth invades their comfort zone and challenges their delusions and topples their false god of self-righteousness, their self-justifying efforts are exposed and dismantled. At the mere mention of Sin and their need of repentance, if anyone should imply in any way that even they are helplessly spiritually bankrupt, and condemned to an existence of living death, they are consumed with murderous rage; and do whatever they must to silence God’s Word and the messengers who bring Him to them. This rage arose in many among the generation of Moses, and in many among Messiah Yeshua’s generation, like Saul of Tarsus. And it continues to rear its venomous head even today, throughout most of our generation!
Acts 7:51-54
“You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit; you are doing just as your fathers did. Which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become; you who received the Law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it.’ Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him.”
The conflict between God’s Nature and Kingdom and ours, can’t be imagined by fallen human minds. Only God, within His own Perfection understands it fully. And only by His infinite Wisdom, Grace and Mercy can His Perfect Righteousness and Justice be satisfied and resolved in relation to us. The revelation God entrusted to Israel through the Torah is the changeless foundation of created reality. It is utterly overwhelming in its significance and life or death importance. And it will never change as long as we still abide in this fallen broken world.
So, IF…we allow what God is telling us, to enter our hearts…and IF we allow God’s Word to hit us full force in our innermost being…God’s Eternal Covenant Love will be free to pierce, penetrate and impregnate us to the core of our innermost being with the imperishable Seed of His Word’s Eternal Righteous Life. And THEN…God will be free to impart His Holy Spirit to us and the Spirit will unite and bond us to God and equip us to hear His voice and understand His heart and we’ll follow His Word out of our original Sin-corrupted time and space state and into His Eternal Righteous Resurrection Perfection!
God must explain this with great clarity and brutal honesty! Our eternal wellbeing and safety depend on it. If we become one with His Word, the Word becomes our Obedience, Love for God, Forgiveness, Cleansing, Purification, Regeneration and Transformation. He will reconfigure us entirely into His perfect image and likeness.
Genesis 1:26-28
“…God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Emphasis added.)
As part of the full Restoration process that God is revealing, the former Egyptian slaves of Moses’ day, were required to shed their former identities, mentalities, priorities, ties and lifestyle habits. Former offspring of the Serpent must forsake their former worldly radical independence from God as thoroughly as snakes shed their old skins. But more than that: they must also die to being snakes! They must leave behind all that they truly are in their fallen natures and Sin-loving, corrupted hearts! Note well what Messiah Yeshua was saying to one of the most ‘religiously correct,’ spiritual elite superstars of His day:
John 3:5-7
“Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”
Genesis 6:1-8
“Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of (decapitated, radically independent, rebellious) man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them. BUT Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” (Emphasis added.)
Matthew 3:7-10
“But when he (John the Immerser) saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
God’s Perfect Standards Are Met by His Perfect Provision
God won’t accept cheap, superficial, religious ‘repair jobs.’ True Salvation must be utterly radical and comprehensive! To satisfy His Perfect Standards of Purity, our Perfect Creator must start over with brand new, perfectly righteous, utterly Sin-less creations! This is consistently revealed through the deaths of sacrificial animals that represented Israel. They prefigured and pointed to Yeshua’s death on the Cross, followed by His Resurrection. And His agony and total reduction to zero, was what God was revealing to the human race at Sinai and throughout Israel’s later history about how we stand before God in our original Sinful state! What was really being put to death on those altars and on that Cross was – all of us! And what Israel experienced at Sinai, was a foretaste of what the Cross would later inflict upon Yeshua, our Eternal Covenant Representative. He had to endure for us, throughout His entire earthly life… Sin-less living…and agonizing atoning death…followed by glorious, fully vindicated Resurrection. Yes, He was perfectly Sin-less! He deserved the Fullness of God’s own Perfect Glory. But He had to take on all of that terror and horror of Judgment and Punishment that was revealed to Israel amid the thunder, lightning, fire and smoke atop that mountain in the wilderness. All of that had to be inflicted upon Him because He is our Representative, our Life Source…our Head! Before we can be incorporated into His Resurrection Righteousness, as His eternal living members, we must first be joined to His atoning Death since that is what we ‘sons of disobedience’ have coming to us. The debt must and will be paid in full, either by our Redeemer, or by those of us who choose to face God in our radically independent, unrepentant, self-life nakedness
We must join and identify ourselves with God’s Word, even as He has joined and identified Himself to us. And together (Head and members) we must go into and through that death and resurrection Exodus process. God’s Word is the two-edged Sword of Mercy and Justice. He is what delivers us from Death and makes our Exodus possible. The Perfect Equilibrium He embodies is what will lead us back into God’s Embrace and a full share of His Perfect Integrity, Righteousness and Justice.
2 Corinthians 5:17
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”
As God summoned the children of Jacob to the base of Mt. Sinai, He was expressing the depths of the enormous Reality and Identity-Shifts that their spirits, souls and bodies would have to undergo in order for them to become God’s ‘True Israel’. They had to forget all about who and what they thought they were in the past. They had to forsake their former understandings of themselves and their woefully inadequate cultural, traditional and familial ideas of what ‘Israel’ is. What they believed of themselves could not have even approached the Fullness of God’s understanding. So God had to show them that He is always going to be moving them forward…and He won’t stop revealing the Fullness of what ‘Israel’ truly is and what she means to the world until He takes the human race across that Finish Line that separates our temporal fallen world, from God’s Kingdom in Eternity!
Hebrews 11:8-10
“By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”
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 (independent) life will lose it, and he who has lost his (independent) life for My sake will find it.”
So no generation, not even our so-called, up-to-date, ‘modern’ one, can dare assume that it ‘has ‘arrived,’ or that it has ‘all the answers.’ The story of the Exodus of Abraham and his family to God’s Eternal Perfection and Fulfillment is far from over. There’s much more that has to happen up ahead. All of the former and present things and theologies and philosophies and traditions and ‘conclusions’ we’re tempted to cling to, will continue to fall far, far short of the True Eternal Israel and the full meaning of what God has always had planned for us in His eternal mind. No national or cultural or family or religious empire or traditional ethnic heritage that we picked up along the way in the past, can be allowed to hold us back from the Heavenly Fullness that still awaits us in the future. All former things derived from the Sin-corrupted past, and whatever we are tempted to idolize and enshrine and cling to in the present…are part of this fallen, Titanic of a world! Only God can give us what we truly need! And what He has for us comes from His Eternal Kingdom. He imparts it to us while we make our way through a world that is continually decaying and falling away from us of its own dead weight even as we pass through it!
So everything we see, think and have now, is temporary. We’re not ‘there’ yet. Our real Home and True Identity and Inheritance with God lie ahead of us, in Eternity! The True Land of Promise, the Authentic Israel is yet to be seen! We dare not settle for less. Nothing must be allowed to interrupt or abort the full development of our time and space Exodus process. We dare not allow anything to stop us short of God’s Finish Line! Ponder what was said by a ‘Pharisee of Pharisees,’ who was wise enough to never stop. He had seen enough to know that we must all continue to follow our beloved Messiah all the way to the End, to the Finish Line that God Himself has set before us:
Philippians 3:7-16
“But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from (my created understanding of) the Law (Torah), but that which is through faith in Christ, the Righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the Power of His Resurrection and the Fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His Death; in order that I may attain to the Resurrection from the dead.
“Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but (like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob before me) I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same (resting in God’s Perfect Finished Work) standard to which we have attained.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Because God’s Word came to Earth to lead us into Eternal Freedom, He is a forward-looking and forward-moving Shepherd. Therefore, at any given point in space and time, all that the former Israelite and Christian generations believed and assumed to be the complete Truth in their day, must be to us, only temporary, fleeting, limited insights and concerns. None of what they were content with should be idolized and enshrined and set in stone. As soon we do that, just as happened to that first generation in the wilderness, our Exodus will also grind to a halt! So the achievements and understandings of the past must not be allowed to prevent the further insights and achievements and Fulfillment that the Spirit of God still has waiting for us in the future, from emerging. Nothing can be allowed to stop Israel’s forward progress to Eternal Perfection. If any of us should choose to stop for any reason, God’s living Word will have to take His True Remnant forward, without them. Every speck of Sin-Corruption that remains in us must be exposed and stripped away and left behind. Everything we were must be replaced with the Fullness of God’s eternal perspectives, attitudes and vistas. We must finish the Journey. Our True Destination is not of this world. So God must take us far beyond anything we’ve ever seen or experienced or imagined up to this point. The Journey is not over as long as we’re still in the betrothal process phase! So we must keep moving forward…the Eternal Wedding Feast and Full Consummation lie ahead of us!
Revelation 3:22
“He who overcomes (perseveres to the end), I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame (persevered to the end) and sat down with My Father on His throne.”
Don’t Stop…Keep Growing!
So beloved, avoid the traps of complacency and arrogant self-satisfaction that the first Exodus generation fell into. We’re not close to finishing our Exodus. Let’s gear ourselves to keep going so that we can keep growing, learning, developing and maturing. We must develop a much larger, deeper and more world-impacting viewpoint, identity and understanding of our true purpose and destiny than we currently have. Compared to the Enormity that is in God’s Word, our current understanding of ourselves and of our ‘righteousness,’ is as pathetic and inadequate as a pile of filthy rags! Don’t settle for that. We all have something waiting for us that none of us has ever been able to imagine! Only God’s infinite Wisdom knows what it really is; so do not become arrogant and self-satisfied…keep going…the Finish Line is still ahead of us!
We’ve said several times, that Israel is God’s chosen ‘Light to the Gentiles.’ God determined in His eternal counsels, to teach the entire world through His chosen people. The Remnant, that part of Israel that obeys God’s living and written Word, will be in position to receive God’s Fullness of Blessing. And they will be a very positive, enviable example and object lesson for the world. But the part of Israel that disobeys and rejects God’s Word will be a very negative, terrifying object lesson to the world. In either case, the way Israel responds to God’s living Word will derive certain promised results. Obedience to God’s Word keeps us in position to receive the blessings God yearns to bestow upon His own. But disobedience to the One that God has sent, keeps Israel and the rest of the world out of position to receive God’s blessings…and those people remain trapped in the Serpent’s coils where he is free to vent his venomous, malicious rage against anyone within his reach:
Deuteronomy 28:1-7
“Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God: Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground and the offspring of your beasts, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord shall cause your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you; they will come out against you one way and will flee before you seven ways.”
Deuteronomy 28:15-24
“But it shall come about, if you do not obey the Lord your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: ‘Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will send upon you (allow) curses, confusion, and rebuke, in all you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken Me. The Lord will make the pestilence cling to you until He has consumed you from the land where you are entering to possess it. The Lord will smite you with consumption and with fever and with inflammation and with fiery heat and with the sword and with blight and with mildew, and they will pursue you until you perish. The heaven which is over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you, iron. The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; from heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed.”
The severity of God’s warnings in His Torah reveal the enormity of the stakes that are involved for all mankind. The obedient portion of Israel, ‘The Remnant’, is preparing, during this extended period of betrothal and Marriage Preparation, for the Bridegroom’s return. They, and the others who are joining them, will receive the fullest measure of God’s living Word and Holy Spirit. Their regenerated spirits and renewed souls and redeemed flesh will be ready to enter into and abide and operate from within God’s Eternal Blood Covenant Consummation! And when the bonding process is complete, the joining of their spirits with God’s Holy Spirit will make them truly one with God.
Revelation 21:10-14
“And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Her brilliance was like a very costly stone, as a stone of crystal-clear jasper. It had a great and high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names were written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. There were three gates on the east and three gates on the north and three gates on the south and three gates on the west. And the wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”
Wouldn’t you agree that such a quantum leap in viewpoint, identity and purpose requires an enormous amount of appropriate new revelation, instruction and training? Don’t we need to be trained and fully equipped to see, understand and handle everything we’re going to have to face and overcome, while we are still en route to Full Consummation with God in our Eternal Destination? Can’t we see that we’re not there yet, that we still have a long way to go before we finish? This is not a toy or a game! This is Eternal Life, or Eternal Death! The stakes are All or Nothing…Heaven or Hell!
Deuteronomy 4:5-9
“See, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it. So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples (Gentiles) who will hear all these statutes and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is the Lord our God whenever we call on Him? Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you today? Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life; but make them known to your sons and your grandsons.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
What God’s Word burned into those stone tablets…is the perfect Human Nature, Life, Righteousness and Love for and service to, Almighty God that can only be found in His living Word. So it is the living Word Himself that God promises to burn into the innermost spiritual part of every person that will hear and believe and submit to His absolute eternal Authority. That is the Glory of the New Covenant and its promises. So…when the living Word of God Himself enters us and takes over in Spirit and in Truth…that will truly be the death of what we were at conception and birth in this world. Our Master, the Word of God, will clear all of that away, and completely replace it with all that Fullness of God that He contains within Himself!
Psalm 8:1-6
“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your Name in all the earth, Who have displayed Your Splendor above the heavens! From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established Strength because of Your adversaries, to make the enemy and the revengeful cease.
“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers (of your living Word), the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; what is man that You take thought of him, and the Son of Man (their Covenant Representative) that You care for Him? Yet You have made Him (the Son of Man) a little lower than God, and You crown Him with Glory and Majesty! You make Him (who is Your resurrected creative Word) to rule over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under His feet…”