Genesis 1:27
“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
Exodus 19:5-6a
“Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation…”
Without God’s Torah (Pentateuch) revelation, we’d have no authentic, accurate understanding of the eternal Perfection of the one true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! We wouldn’t know that He created us to mirror and reveal and embody His Presence and Righteousness to the rest of Creation. Without Torah, there would be no Israel, Judaism or Christianity. And God’s ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ transforming power and influence would not be here to soften and transform hard, worldly, predatory, self-adoring hearts. We’d know nothing about God’s flawless Holy Nature and Perfect Standards of Righteousness; nor would we be warned about the demonic powers of Darkness or the Sin and Death into which they have dragged the children of Adam. Without the first five books of the Bible we wouldn’t know the extent of the horrible damage Sin did to us as a race, or our desperate need to be saved, regenerated and restored to our true God-given, ‘image and likeness’ purpose and destiny! We’d know nothing about the Eternal Salvation of which all humans are desperately in need; and without Torah, the other books of the Bible would be meaningless. In fact, they would not even have come into being!
Imagine a world without the Torah’s redemptive, restorative, loving influence! What a terrifying desolate prospect that would be! Take inventory of all the blessings Torah has introduced to the world; you’ll see the awesome Wisdom, Grace and Mercy of God! You’ll also see the true nature of societies that operate without Torah’s influence within their borders. Had God not entrusted His revelation and commandments to Israel, it’s probable that humanity would not have survived this long. Study history and you’ll see what the world was like before Moses wrote the Torah and the nation of Israel came to be. See what forces and priorities (not to mention the demonic manipulation that Scripture reveals) actually drove the despotic emperors, kings, and dominators of that era. It was greedy competition, brutal warfare, unbridled sensuality and predatory, controlling, manipulative self-interest of Adam’s Sin-corrupted fallen flesh that drove them. On every level of those societies, competitive personal gain and the satisfaction of fallen human urges, passions and pleasures drew people into the traps of predatory living and self-destructive cycles.
Before God revealed Himself and His commandments and Perfect Standards of Righteousness, notice how men regarded women. Was there any value to human life other than the selfish advantages and benefits men could derive by exploiting the weak and dispossessed – women, slaves and militarily conquered peoples? Were not most people forced to do the will of those fortunate or crafty enough to wield whatever power and influence there was to be had? Women were treated like farm animals! Men considered them to be their personal property! Infanticide for personal convenience or to appease the wrath of numerous false gods was rampant. Invasive warfare was idealized and supremacy in combat and conquest were the ultimate ideals of manhood! Murder and sexual license were perfectly normal and acceptable in the Torah-less world. And justice, well…that was only for those who had the power and might to demand it, or enough resources to buy it.
The unfortunate defenseless poor and dispossessed groveled hopelessly at the bottom of the ‘food chain.’ There was no future or dignity for them because selfless love and proactive charitable movements and institutions for the sick, poor and needy, motivated by lovingkindness and compassion never existed among such ruthless, power-mad, selfish pleasure-seeking peoples. Public hospitals, orphanages, asylums, welfare and charitable organizations are unthinkable in a Torah-less world! And what about universal education and high percentages of literacy? It was not until God created Israel and entrusted the Torah to her care that the idea of universal education emerged. God’s chosen people had to learn to read in order to know, understand and honor His Torah and its ways. So, thanks to Torah-submissive Israel, the world underwent a massive transforming paradigm-shift regarding the value of each human being and the need for universal education, literacy, love, mercy, compassion, safety, justice and kindness…even for widows, orphans, slaves and dispossessed aliens and strangers!
Without God’s commandments, the entire world would still be entirely driven by the Serpent’s malevolent Darkness. Rampant wickedness would have escalated and multiplied exponentially. And if mankind had managed to survive this long, we’d be forced to try to survive in atmospheres much harsher, more brutally vicious and much more desolate and lonely than what we actually experience today! And yet, chillingly and ominously…it is a fact that more and more modern era people habitually disparage, reject and ignore the Torah entirely! And once again, ever-increasing numbers of them are choosing to despise Israel and seek her destruction! Can we not see that because this is happening, the modern world is quickly reverting to the same gruesome demon-controlled conditions that existed in the days of Noah?
Genesis 6:5-7
“Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of 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.’”
Luke 17:25-27
“And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.” (Emphasis added.)
If God had left our wicked Sin-corrupted race to its own devices, we’d have no chance of knowing that our true identity, purpose and destiny lie in being His own true, image and likeness! But thanks to Torah, we can know who and what we really are! And we can know that if we settle for anything less than what God intends, we have no chance of being content, fulfilled or satisfied. Apart from God, the existence of those created to be His image and likeness, would be utterly meaningless and devoid of purpose and hope in this demon-possessed world! So, a ‘before and after’ knowledge of Torah clearly shows how God’s Word transforms human lives and entire cultures and societies. And we can see how different Torah-submissive peoples are… from those who reject and bypass God’s Word. We can know what will happen if we fail to fulfill our true God-given purpose, and what will happen if we do fulfill it. The difference between Israel’s true, Word-obedient Remnant, and that of the decapitated peoples that surround them is blatantly obvious when you see the quality of life that each group is able to produce!
Jeremiah 17:5-8
“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.” (Emphasis added.)
Deuteronomy 4:5-8
“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 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?” (Emphasis added.)
Matthew 7:18-20
“A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits.”
Today, entire regions…nation after nation…are being set ablaze and torn apart by the galling frustration, misery and murderous, vengeful rage of their own people! Why? What inflames the passions of these peoples to such revolutionary frenzy? Why do so many societies tear themselves, and their neighbors, apart? Why can’t their gods and religions and fervent religious practices prevent them from killing, maiming and undermining each other to their mutual destruction? After all these centuries, why can’t they see that their abysmally shortsighted, selfish beliefs and behavior are saturated with destruction and death and can only lead to more destruction and death? Why can’t their death-adoring gods ever show them wiser, more positive, constructive and beneficially cooperative ways in which to actually live and thrive? This is a demonic trap! And only the living and written Word of the true, living God can lead them out of it!
Be Honest With Yourself – Are You Growing? Or Are You Stuck?
What is the root of all of this frustrated discontent, envy, strife and murderous destruction? The root is, a despairing hopelessness that the powers of Darkness have embedded deep within the fallen human subconscious. It fills people with a gut-churning certainty that nothing their false gods promise to give, is actually attainable. Therefore, nothing is ever truly going to change. The emptiness this instills is a sign of spiritual decapitation…it is the hallmark of living death! As long as people remain stuck in their time-honored, inherited false belief systems and traditions, they will continue to sow seeds of destruction into their lives and those of their children and grandchildren! False gods offer false promises. But only the real, living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob offers true forgiveness from Sin and the sinful actions it causes. And only He is Eternal Life, and only He is able to share His Eternal Life with human beings.
So, the great irony is this: these millions of enraged, frustrated people hate and reject the only thing that could actually give them what they so desperately need and seek! They need and want Life; but they have been captivated by Death! And only the living and written Word of the one true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is able to impart to them the Life they so desperately need and seek!
John 10:10-11
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have Life, and have it abundantly. I am the Good Shepherd; the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.”
If, when they hear God’s Word and believe, repent and obey Him, Yeshua the Messiah gladly becomes their Eternal Life and He can and will heal and forgive them from their Sin and guilt and condemnation! Only He can save them from this and deliver them from Sin’s deadly results. And only He can transform them! So, unknowingly, decapitated people crave and seek the Wisdom, Truth and Grace that only comes from the living God of the Torah! Nevertheless, their blind leaders and teachers force them to continue to hate and reject the only true Source of Life. And they teach their victims to harbor murderous hatred against God’s chosen people…to their own destruction!
Genesis 12:2-3
“…I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Matthew 25:40
“The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me!’”
The living, Almighty God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has chosen to work in and through His chosen people. He is the one and only Source of Truth, Wisdom and Life. Only He can truly satisfy the human heart! But it can only happen when we respond to Him on His terms! All humans crave the safety and security and benefits that only His Truth and commandments provide. That’s because they were made to be God’s image and likeness. But in addition to reflecting and embodying the blessings He wants to give them, they must also reflect and embody the living Word that contains the fullness of those blessings. They must embrace Him…and His revelation…and His absolute Authority over them. His commandments create the ‘Narrow Path’ which leads men safely through the demonic Sin-loving mine fields and into God’s true, authentic Eternal Life. So when we reject, ignore or distort God’s Revelation and His people through whom that Salvation comes, we reject and ignore the fulfillment of our innermost heartfelt desires and needs! That results in total frustration in this life… and Eternal Perdition in the one to come!
Real Relationship with God is Essential
Apart from the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and His ways, Sin-corrupted men can’t be trained and prepared to live in true Wisdom or teach their fallen, Sin-corrupted children how to love, rather than to fear, hate and destroy. Their children desperately need to learn how to forgive and reconcile, instead of obsessing over achieving destructive, hate-motivated vengeance. They need to be taught to cooperate with others so that they can help themselves, and each other, to thrive and prosper. They need to be delivered from the patterns of living death that previous generations have taught them. Only then can they outgrow the desolate, hopeless living death legacy that has been theirs for so many centuries.
Torah-less people are not spiritually equipped to develop the depth of character and skill levels needed to overcome the effects of Sin, so that God’s living Word and Holy Spirit can create meaningful, fruitful changes within them for their lives and circumstances and societies! But, instead of allowing God to bless them, they reject Him and His Word. Thus, they continue to run around in circles, like dogs chasing their own tails…searching for nourishment until they drop in their tracks and die of starvation, or blow themselves and others to bits, as they vainly try to satisfy their incessant rage and jealousy and frustration!
By observing the way people in these hyper-religious societies maim, kill and hate, century after century, and the way those other secular, hedonistic societies worship their false gods, we see that neither group ever achieves fulfillment or peace of mind and heart. They can’t stop tearing down their own societies with selfish sectarian strife and selfish destructive addictions. They keep seeking what their belief systems and lifestyles will never allow them a chance to learn! But instead of questioning their false gods, prophets and teachers, they continue to ignore the true God and His revealed Word and follow their misguided blind guides into endless cycles of self-inflicted misery!
Religious sectarian strife is obviously destructive. But the secular, technologized, pleasure-seeking societies are equally destructive. They tear down their societies and personal lives with narcissistic selfishness, gross materialism, apathy, competitive greed, corruption, immorality and a vast array of suicidal addictions to which they and their children fall prey. In either case, people caught up in these forms of madness know nothing of what the true God of Israel gives through His living and written Word. They know nothing about sharing His Life and being His image and likeness. And so they remain cut off from their true God-given value, identity and destiny and serve as the image and likeness of the Serpent.
2 Chronicles 16:8-10
“‘Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubim an immense army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His. You have acted foolishly in this. Indeed, from now on you will surely have wars.’ Then Asa was angry with the seer and put him in prison, for he was enraged at him for this…” (Emphasis added.)
Proverbs 19:2-3
“…It is not good for a person to be without knowledge; and he who hurries his footsteps errs. The foolishness of man ruins his way and his heart rages against the Lord.”
Proverbs 28:25-26
“An arrogant man stirs up strife but he who trusts in the Lord will prosper. He who trusts in his own heart is a fool but he who walks wisely (living as one with God’s living and written Word) will be delivered.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Matthew 5:17-19
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law (Torah) or the Prophets (Hebrew Scriptures); I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until Heaven and Earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Emphasis added.)
Fallen human intellects try to usurp the place of God and the authority of His Word. They consider themselves to be ‘the measure of all things’ and the ultimate source of understanding and direction. They create ‘alternate views’ of what true ‘humanity’ is, and what it takes to satisfy and fulfill it. In other words, we who were created to be God’s ‘image and likeness’ take it upon ourselves to try to stand alone, as independent agents. Godless humanity tries to satisfy and fulfill itself apart from God, by striving to achieve:
- A more attractive personal appearance
- The right kinds and amounts of personal possessions
- The topmost positions and status levels in society
- Superior performance and attainment in worldly venues of endeavor
- Powers and skills by which they try to control their circumstances and exert manipulative influence over the thoughts and actions of others
- The ongoing attainment of pleasures derived from the stimulation and gratification of natural fallen physical, mental and emotional appetites and drives.
- Convenient religions that idolize lies and create God-less cultures and insanely rigid hyper-controlling tribal traditions and customs. But in the midst of this, they continue to idolize the fallen, Sin-corrupted personal appetites, passions and drives that their false gods are incapable of changing in the least. So, in place of the true God’s revelation and standards of Righteousness and Fruit-bearing Life, they remain trapped within the telltale symptoms and characteristics of Hopelessness and Death.
The more we pursue false self-adoring ways, the more aroused, inflamed and insatiably needy do our desires and passions become! So as long as we bypass the Word of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we remain dead decapitated caretakers of an unworkable world system that will never produce the results we so desperately need.
Genesis 2:16-17
“The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘from any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die!’”
Genesis 3:4-5
“The serpent said to the woman (as he was ‘decapitating’ her), ‘you surely will not die! For God knows (fears) that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
If human nature is truly meant to serve as the image and likeness of another… that is, if you’re really made to follow, reflect and embody God’s living Word, and nothing else… then you’re not built or equipped to stand alone! You can only derive what you truly are and can have and do… from the Perfect, All-Sufficient One that you were made to reflect and embody! God’s Word contains all the Fullness of Almighty God within Himself. It is only from His living Word that we can derive value, purpose, satisfaction and eternal wellbeing. We can’t be radically independent agents, or, ‘gods’ in our own right! We don’t have what it would take, in us, to be able to do that!
God’s Life-Giving Truth vs. Fallen Man’s Fatal Error
God’s revelation runs directly counter to all man-centered constitutions and worldly philosophies. He contradicts the quests of ‘democratic’ self-determining societies and the false religions that men devise for themselves. The fallen world systems are adamantly opposed to the Eternal Wisdom of the Torah. Man-made philosophies, charters and religions sound good. They say noble-sounding things. They pretend to possess goodness and proclaim altruistic love for all mankind. But look closely at what is really going on within them. Observe the true condition and plight of their teeming masses and the corruption that is always rampant in their elite power groups and ‘upper classes.’ You will see corrupt greedy self-serving hearts, hearts that ooze duplicity and give themselves over to a variety of destructive addictions, competitive violence, bloodshed, anxiety, discontent and jaded numbness.
So, at the heart of the terrible contention between God’s absolute Authority and the drive of fallen human flesh to rid itself of the ‘Yoke of obedience’ that His Word introduced at Mt. Sinai, we see a power struggle to the death taking place. Nevertheless, God has spoken and revealed that everything in Creation, including every free-willed angel and human being, belongs to Him!
Isaiah 66:1-2
“‘Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? For My hand made all these things, thus all these things came into being,’ declares the Lord. ‘But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My Word!” (Emphasis added.)
And all of this begins…and will end with…Israel. Israel is the world’s God-established example. And Torah is God’s ‘plumb line.’ Observe what happened even to many of God’s chosen people throughout history! Many of them became negative examples! That’s because it is possible for fallen human flesh to continue to resist God and disobey His Word, even if it is able to attain almost supernatural levels of religiosity and feigned orthodox ‘spirituality!’
Isaiah 29:13-16
“Then the Lord said, ‘Because this people (Israel) draw near with their words and honor Me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from Me, and their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote, therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous; and the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the discernment of their discerning men will be concealed. Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the Lord, and whose deeds are done in a dark place, and they say, ‘Who sees us?’ or ‘Who knows us?’
“You turn things around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, that what is made would say to its maker, ‘He did not make me’; or what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’”?
John 3:5-7
“Jesus answered (Nicodemas, the learned Jewish religious leader) ‘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.’” (Amplification added.)
Galatians 1:13-17
“For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I (when I relied exclusively on my preferred sectarian interpretations of God’s written Word) used to persecute the church of God (the believing Spirit-filled Messianic Jews that were following Yeshua, the living Word of God into the Fulfillment of God’s New Covenant promises) beyond measure and tried to destroy it; and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son (His living Word, Yeshua) in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles (and establish His Lordship over them as well), I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Matthew 7:21-23
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in Heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your Name, and in Your Name cast out demons, and in Your Name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice Lawlessness! (Torah-lessness)’ (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Torah Reveals Yeshua, and Yeshua Interprets and Fulfills Torah
God rejects the soulish opinions and any man-controlled religious tradition that fallen flesh may insist on idolizing. No Jew or Gentile will get away with ignoring God’s true Holy Spirit-revealed living Word, the Word that God commissioned Moses and the prophets and Yeshua’s New Covenant apostles, to reveal and proclaim. Torah reveals Yeshua, the living Word of God; and He is here to take over and replace everything alien that the fallen flesh of men holds dear! So, since Yeshua is God’s living Torah, His true disciples must take a much closer, deeper look at their Master, as He is revealed throughout all of the Scriptures. Ponder the warning He gave to His fellow Israelites that were not making the connection between what Moses had written and the living Word of God made flesh that was standing right in front of them:
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.)
Look for Yeshua as Moses reveals Him in Genesis through Deuteronomy. And look for Him in the prophets, wisdom writings and psalms of Israel. Look for Him in the apostolic New Covenant writings of His Resurrection witnesses. This is how His Heavenly Father chose to reveal Him to the world! Realize and admit that God’s living Word, who became flesh, is being clearly and unmistakably and authentically revealed throughout the first five books of the Bible, as well as all the other books that follow. It’s time to see and honor Him as His Father revealed Him in all of Scripture. And it’s time to admit that God’s Torah’s revelations are the rock-solid, changeless, ever-essential Foundational Footing revelations of our Messiah and of our Faith in the Almighty God that sent His living Word made flesh, to us!
I ask you again: ponder what this world would be like if God had not given us the treasure of the Torah. When we think along that line, we can see the awesome impact and significance Torah has had on human history. It is absurd for anyone, Jew or Gentile or Catholic or Protestant or Christian and non-Christian alike, to assume that both parts of the Bible are not essential! Torah and the rest of the Tanach (Old Testament) is the Foundation of the Faith; and the apostolic writings amplify, explain and fulfill it! To assume that the world can prosper without Torah is like trying to build a skyscraper without footings! And to assume that Torah is all that is needed is to insist that the footings are all that we need. But that is terrible shortsightedness, to put it mildly.
We Must Heed the Whole Counsel of God’s Word
So, beloved disciples, look at God’s 613 commandments in the Torah and also 1050 commandments that explain and amplify our understanding of the originals, as the Holy Spirit ‘unpacks’ them throughout the New Covenant writings. Look at them, as if you were doing it for the very first time! See them all as one integrated unit. Yeshua’s apostles did not remove one iota of what God had entrusted to Israel, nor did they add anything to what had been given. What they wrote, explains and reveals the Fullness that was always contained within the original Seed of God’s Revelation in the Torah. So realize that the Old and the New work together, like joined segments of a precisely crafted telescope. Torah is the first basic section out of which all the other sections emerge in their proper sequence. Each segment is needed to give a clear, full, accurate view of the vast expanse of God’s Kingdom Reality. Torah is the first segment of the telescope. But then, to amplify and explain what can be seen through the first segment, He gave all of the other book-segments to expand and reveal and enhance with awesome clarity, the full vista that the telescope is meant to show us when all the segments work together.
This must be repeated: The commandments found in the Torah and those that are found in the New Covenant writings, complement each other. They are saying the same thing in a variety of ways! So we need each section in order to be able to understand the other sections. Together they give us the Fullness of what God is saying! So ask God to free your mind and heart from all those deluded worldly influences and misguided theologies you may have inherited that give God’s Torah and His prophets and wisdom writers and His New Covenant apostolic writings, such a bad name among various groups of people. And realize also that when people choose to ‘cut and paste’ and chop up the Scriptures to suit their own agendas, they are not serving Almighty God, they are working against Him and His purposes!
We are in great danger of aborting our Exodus from this demon-oppressed world and its systems if we omit the Torah, or if we stop short of Torah’s New Covenant Fulfillment into which God truly intends to lead all men. Do not allow yourself to be blinded by the ‘veils’ created by the centuries-old opinions and agendas of Sin-corrupted religious flesh. Let God open your eyes to the actual, true Authority and Significance and Salvation-Wonder that the Messiah-revealing Torah actually brings into the world picture.
Genesis 1:1-4
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be Light”; and there was Light. God saw that the Light was good; and God separated the Light (of His Torah-revealed Word) from the Darkness (that is created by the Serpent’s deceptive Torah-contradicting lies)!” (Emphasis added.)
John 8:12
“…Jesus (God’s Living Creative Word made flesh) again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the Darkness, but will have the Light of Life!’” (Emphasis added.)
Yeshua’s disciples must regard Torah with the same heartfelt seriousness with which our Master Himself viewed it! If we are to be Yeshua’s image and likeness, we must learn to reflect with authentic accuracy what God’s living Word made flesh thinks of God’s written Word, and how closely and precisely the Perfection of His nature and His Father’s Perfect Standards of Righteousness required His Messianic Humanity to observe and fulfill it when He walked the earth. Just as our Master did, we too must give Torah the respect that God Himself gives to His own Word, for God and His Living and written Word, are one (echad)!
In light of this I ask you to consider ‘The Leash’ or ‘The Yoke’ aspect of Torah we discussed earlier – the yoke of the commandments that God’s Word ordered the sons of Jacob to receive and place upon their necks. We’ve seen that obedience to our Master’s commands is what makes us to be His true Israel, that Remnant that is truly one (echad) with Him, in Spirit and in Truth. And remember that God commanded Israel to share what He entrusted to them, with the rest of the human race! So, since we know that God and His Word never change, we know that everyone, past, present and future that is worthy of the title of ‘disciple’ will be required to put on the Commandment Yoke of His Master.
John 15:10-11
“If you keep My commandments, 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 joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”
Matthew 11:25-30
“At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.
“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke (My New Covenant way that actually fulfills the Torah in a way Israel, in the past, failed to do) is easy and My burden is light!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Note well what Yeshua is promising concerning His ‘Yoke.’ All of His Jewish listeners acknowledged Yeshua as a widely acclaimed first century rabbi. Thus He was always acting in the capacity of a teacher and demonstrator of the Torah. That’s what rabbis did; they were Torah teachers! So, like the other rabbis of His time, Yeshua was presenting His interpretation and way of fulfilling the Torah, to and through, His personal disciples. When He spoke of ‘My yoke,’ He was referring to His interpretation of the Law of Moses and His way of fulfilling it. And notice that He claimed that His Yoke was ‘light’ and ‘easy’ to bear. He said it would enable His disciples to find ‘rest’ for their souls. So ponder very deeply what this means:
It means that in our Master’s mind, Torah equals Rest (not legalism or bondage and toil)! Torah reveals God’s Eternal peace and enjoyment and the Glory of His Eternally Finished, Perfect Work!
Genesis 2:1-3
“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.“ (Emphasis added.)
It is vital that we know this. Throughout Israel’s history, many teachers have refused to accept Yeshua as Messiah and His interpretation and way of observing Torah. They could not recognize Him as the living, changeless, creative Word of God that was revealed throughout the writings of Moses. And throughout the subsequent history of Christendom, theologies and lifestyle practices have arisen, that contradict or totally ignore, Yeshua’s warnings concerning the eternal validity of the Torah. God’s living Word certainly did not consider ‘The Law,’ the first five books of the Bible, to be ‘dead works of the flesh’ and ‘performance-based legalistic bondage,’ and something that must be done away with! When you see what God says about His Torah throughout Scripture, you can see that such ideas are heresy!
The true Messiah would never violate Deuteronomy! That book caps off the Torah and gives Israel clear-cut, unmistakable guidelines and identifying characteristics of the true Messiah, and also of any authentic, God-sent prophet or teacher that would appear throughout all of Israel’s subsequent history and that of the world! Legitimate God-sent teachers and prophets and leaders must prove their authenticity by their perfect faithfulness, in living and teaching in accordance with what Moses wrote! Ponder Deuteronomy chapter 13 and Deuteronomy 18:15-19, very carefully. According to these texts, there is no way that the Messiah that God promised to send to His chosen people, could have ever advocated the disposal and abandonment of what God revealed through Moses and the Torah! The Scriptural proof of the Messiah’s identifiable validity is forever linked to His faithfulness to the writings of Moses, not to His abandonment of them! But yet, many Jews and Christians insist on accusing Yeshua and His apostles, of doing that very thing! But if the Lord and His disciples had forsaken or deviated from what Moses had written, they would have been exposed and proven by Scripture itself, to be false teachers that were not truly sent by God to Israel!
The Truth is that God’s living Word was sent by His Father, to give the proper interpretation of God’s Torah, which was intended to reveal Him and His awesome Significance to the world. And Torah was also intended, to enlighten and lead Israel and the rest of the human race into their actual Eternal New Covenant Fulfillment! This was promised through the prophecies concerning the New Covenant as given through Moses and the other inspired writers of Israel, including the apostolic Messianic writers who were Yeshua’s personal disciples and Resurrection witnesses. And do you remember when God first began to speak to us about the ‘Rest’ that Yeshua is promising? That primary revelation took place in Genesis! God’s Rest was introduced and revealed and established in the Torah! So, how can that exclude Yeshua, who has done all of the necessary work on our behalf, and how could it exclude the Torah that reveals all of this?
Leviticus 16:29-32
“This shall be a permanent statute for you: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall humble your souls and not do any work, whether the native, or the alien who sojourns among you; for it is on this day that atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; you will be clean from all your sins before the Lord. It is to be a Sabbath of solemn REST for you, that you may humble your souls; it is a permanent statute!” (Emphasis added.)
Perfect Creation, Perfect Provision, Perfect Rest
In three sentences, Genesis repeatedly emphasizes that God’s work of Creation is perfectly, eternally, complete, and all encompassing and eternally sufficient to meet every creature’s needs – past, present and future! This is another way of saying that God’s nature is infinitely perfect and that He has already done and provided everything flawlessly…to enable us to fulfill our nature and purpose in and for the perfect fulfillment of His plans. God’s infinite mind foresaw every probability, possibility and eventuality…including Sin and the Fall of Man and all the damage that it would do to us. And His Perfect original act of Creation and Perfect Covenant and the Original Blessing He gave to Adam and Eve through His living Word, contained and provided everything needed to redeem, restore, complete and fulfill everything all Creation would need, even after the Fall. It was all there…from the moment He created it. Everything needed…to the very last moment of the time and space dimension in which we now live…was already present and given and paid for in full. And that is the essence of the revelation God gives concerning His Eternal Sabbath Rest. But it must be fulfilled on God’s terms.
The Perfect Completion of God’s Work makes it unnecessary for us to try to bypass Him and become radically independent, like the Serpent and his powers of Darkness tried to do. Any assumed inadequacy that our flawed faculties may cause us to imagine and attribute to God, and any discontent or anxiety we may feel on account of our false assumptions are deceptive and totally unwarranted because they are based on demonic delusive lies. There is never a legitimate need to correct, change or add to the Perfection of what God has already done and given to meet our needs. According to Torah, everything is finished to Perfection and to God’s eternal Satisfaction! So, Torah does equal, Perfect Eternal Rest. And just as it is not permitted to add or subtract from what God has already provided through His Finished works of Creation and Redemption, so also it is not permitted to add or subtract from the Word He has spoken and written.
God can afford to rest. So why shouldn’t we be able to join Him in it? And why shouldn’t our Master Yeshua, God’s living Word, command all free-willed creatures to believe His Revelation and join Him in the eternal enjoyment of the Perfection of what He has done for us? And how could anyone assume or teach that the Torah that reveals this awesome Eternal Rest leads to religious bondage and is a temporary thing that must now be done away with? The rest, freedom and peace that Yeshua and His apostles announced and promoted, was a repetition and explanation of what God had already revealed in the Torah! So, nothing prevents anyone from sharing in Yeshua’s Perfect, Eternal Sabbath Rest except the disobedience that comes from error and unbelief. God gave us this wonderful news right from the very beginning! So since Torah reveals God’s Perfect Rest to us, how can it now be considered to be passé and no longer relevant with any legitimate basis in Truth? How can we accuse our Perfect, changeless God of giving us revelation that was temporary and changeable? How can we assume that God, at one time, gave something to His chosen people that would lead them into bondage and would have to be done away with at a later time, because it leads us to try to perform dead works of the flesh? Are not dead works of the flesh the Essence of Sin? Is God’s Torah really something that leads people into Sin? Or is it showing us how God’s living Word actually broke the power of Sin over the human race?
Yeshua is Gods’ living Word! Thus, He is the living Torah! It is His commission to properly interpret and fulfill everything that Moses wrote about Him! So He certainly didn’t have a yoke of bondage in mind when He told His disciples to follow Him and embrace His way of interpreting and observing Torah! His way is the correct God-authenticated way that gives the eternal Rest that fulfills the Torah! Yeshua’s way is easy, wonderful and meant to be a total blessing! So His true disciples must keep this in mind as they ponder God’s commandments and choose the way they should respond to them. God’s Law is impossible for our fallen flesh to fulfill. But God never imposes the unbearable burdens of the Law upon us. He imposes it on His living Word’s Perfect Nature that He Himself places within us! God didn’t give His Torah to the unsaved. He gave it to newly redeemed Israel! And the Word tells us that His Law is very doable by saved, Spirit-empowered people because it is an expression of their new, Spirit-imparted, Yeshua-revealing, regenerated Salvation-nature!
Deuteronomy 30:11-14
“For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ But the Word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it.”
Romans 10:6-13
“…The righteousness based on faith speaks as follows: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (That is, to bring Christ down), or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (That is, to bring Christ up from the dead).’ But what does it say? ‘The Word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”—that is, the (living incarnate) Word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes in Him (and His Perfect finished Work, instead of his own radically independent ability to keep rules) will not be disappointed.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him; for ‘Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Our regenerated spirits and Spirit-empowered New Covenant spiritual nature equip us to embody God’s living Word and to abide with Him in God’s Eternal Perfection! The Torah’s commandments are an expression of the most awesome, Good News possible! The Word of Salvation is not a human theory or a mere technique or just a religion with a set list of religious human practices. It is not a man-centered, flesh-accomplished discipline or exercise, or a soulish set of ideas that have been turned into rules! The Word of God is a living Person. It is Yeshua Himself! He is the eternal Word of God with whom the Eternal Covenant makes us one (echad)! He was made flesh on our behalf, because of that Covenantal oneness He has with us. He became flesh so that He could identify with us that fully and so that He could obey His Father to Perfection, in our name! God is telling us that His living Word has already done and given, everything necessary to fulfill God’s Law and His Word’s promises! Everything is in Him! And He is here to abide and be and work in us to be everything we will ever need!
Any theology or religion that ignores the Eternal Perfection of God’s Word, and our Covenantal oneness with His Perfection, will distort what His Torah actually reveals and it will lead people into deceptive self-absorbed religious theologies that lead unsuspecting ignorant people into multiple forms of error and misaligned practices that have nothing to do with God’s true intent. Even Israel is not immune from false Torah teachings and false leaders. And Moses was the first to reveal this and warn Israel about it. And the prophets and apostles repeated his warnings throughout Israel’s history!
Matthew 8:5-13
“…When Jesus entered Capernaum, a (Gentile Roman) centurion came to Him, imploring Him, and saying, ‘Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented.’ Jesus said to him, ‘I will come and heal him.’ But the centurion said, ‘Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.’
“Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following (i.e. His Jewish disciples and other bystanders), ‘Truly I say to you, I (God’s living Word made flesh…the Giver of the commandments) have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel! I say to you that many (Word-believing Gentiles) will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven; but the (unbelieving, disobedient native-born) Sons of the Kingdom will be cast out into the outer Darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!”
“And Jesus said to the centurion, ‘Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
2 Timothy 4:1-5
“I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the Truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry!”
Man-Originated vs. God-Originated…Natural vs. Divine…Flesh vs. Spirit
Remember what Torah and the other Scriptures tell us: the Mosaic Betrothal Covenant agreement between God’s Word and His intended Bride, Israel, as revealed in Exodus, actually turned out, over the centuries, to be a sad affair. There’s no other way to say it: It was a disaster! It failed! Why did it fail? It failed because fallen flesh views and receives God’s written Word through self-centered lenses. When it receives the commandments, flesh thinks: ‘This is all about me and what I have to do!’ But God doesn’t expect flesh to be religiously perfect in its performance. He knows it is Sin-corrupted living death and He will have nothing to do with it! Therefore, as part of our repentance and return to Him, He expects our fallen flesh to be permanently crucified and buried and done away with! God gives the commandments to us and views us through ‘Yeshua-centered lenses’. The point of our Exodus from ‘Egypt’ is the Exodus from putting faith in our own fallen flesh, to resting from that futile slavery…and learning to abide in the Perfect Finished Performance and indwelling Activity of His living Word and Holy Spirit! So the commandments given in the written Word…are a description of the Glory and Perfection of the living Word…who represents us in God’s Eternal Covenant! The Law is always to be viewed through Yeshua-centered lenses: ‘This is about the Perfection that God’s living Word is…and what He has already done in our name, and what the Holy Spirit is ready to apply to us personally and subjectively throughout our daily existence!’ God always had it in mind to renew and finally fulfill the Covenant contained in the written Word…by the living Word who now abides within His own disciples and lives His Life from within them:
Jeremiah 31:31-32
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, MY COVENANT WHICH THEY BROKE, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.” (Emphasis added.)
Ezekiel 2:1-7
“Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, stand on your feet that I may speak with you!’ As He spoke to me the Spirit entered me and set me on my feet; and I heard Him speaking to me. Then He said to me, “Son of man, I am sending you to the sons of Israel, to a rebellious people who have rebelled against Me; they and their fathers have transgressed against Me to this very day. I am sending you to them who are stubborn and obstinate children, and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ As for them, whether they listen or not—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them. And you, son of man, neither fear them nor fear their words, though thistles and thorns are with you and you sit on scorpions; neither fear their words nor be dismayed at their presence, for they are a rebellious house. But you shall speak My words to them whether they listen or not, for they are rebellious.”
Do Israel’s prophets and wisdom writings, such as Psalm 119, make it sound as if God intends to do away with, or rescind His Torah? No…they intend to make sure Israel and the rest of us will finally get it right and become part of the Marriage Feast Fulfillment of the Torah at last! So, obviously it’s absurd to assume that our utterly Perfect, Omniscient God did not know how this Sinai Covenant was going to turn out when He sent His Word to propose Covenant Betrothal to Israel. He wasn’t taken by surprise and terribly disappointed! Of course He knew they would fail during the betrothal period. We all fail as long as our fallen religious, living dead flesh assumes that it can fulfill any agreement it enters into with God! How can we not fail as long as we think it’s up to us to satisfy God’s Perfect Standards in our own strength?
The Israelites were fallen human beings, just like everyone else! They were living dead sons of Adam, with fallen Sin-corrupted flesh! And because they were among the living dead, God never expected anything from them that could or would satisfy His Perfection! This is the entire point of using the betrothal time to prepare and transform them into a Bride fit for the Bridegroom by the time the Wedding Feast finally arrives. This is what Scripture wants to get across to the entire Sin-corrupted, self-centered, spiritually bankrupt world! Israel’s original, self-glorifying way of understanding and trying to obey God was natural and self-centered and self-reliant. But God never intended Man to find his own way and follow his own devices to Eternal Salvation!
Romans 3:27
“Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith! For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.” (Emphasis added.)
Torah exposes the bankruptcy of our fallen flesh and its false religions and it proves that not one of us has it in us to meet God’s standards by our own performance. Torah drives fallen Jewish and non-Jewish flesh to despair and draws all men into the Perfection of the Finished Work of God’s living Word…the Eternal Lamb, the Word, who was slain in our place, before the foundation of the world!
Romans 3:31
“Do we then nullify the Law (Torah) through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish (complete and fulfill) the Law!” (Amplification added.)
1 Corinthians 2:2-5
“…When I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of Power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the Power of God!” (Emphasis added.)
The Eternal Covenant, which God made before the creation of time and space, is unilateral! So God expects the burden of the Law’s Perfect Fulfillment to be on His living Word and Holy Spirit! If Israel could have complied with God’s commands by self-effort and religious striving, God would not have rejected Cain’s offering or the religions of Egypt’s idolaters! But He did reject them! And He will most certainly reject any self-induced efforts of fallen flesh… even when they come from His own chosen people!
Remember what we said earlier: God’s living Word is the Perfect Law Giver…and He is also the Perfect Law Keeper and Fulfiller. That’s why we must allow Him to be our indwelling Righteousness. God’s Perfect Word has done all of the work because God (and His Standard of Righteousness) is Perfect. It takes Perfection to satisfy and fulfill Perfection! So only God’s living Word can please and satisfy Him. This is why God sent Him to be our Messiah and why He breathes His own Spirit into us. God intends to do everything to us, in us, for us and as us! So when God gives commandments to fallen, Sin-corrupted, sons of the first Adam, He’s giving the commands to our Eternal Covenant Representative… His beloved Son… the one He sent to cover, redeem, regenerate and restore those that Sin had decapitated. His Son’s Perfect Human Life and infinitely Righteous Performance have done everything necessary for the rest of us! Death can’t give Life to itself. We can’t believe or obey unless God empowers us to do it. So to truly obey God’s commandments… we must become ECHAD, (one) with God’s living Word, by faith…and look only to Him and realize that in His Perfection, He has done all that is necessary. Now He’s here to apply it to us so that He can work it into us, and reveal it to the world, through us!
This is the extent to which we must believe God and trust and rest in His Word’s Perfection. We must believe that God is here with us, through His Word and Spirit, to be everything we will ever need. And so when we put on our Messiah’s ‘yoke,’ we become one with Him by faith, and then we can enjoy God’s Perfect Rest and relief and personally enjoy the Fullness of His Finished Work, with Him:
Ezekiel 36:24-28
“For I will take you from the nations (pagan gentile idolaters), gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and (therefore, even) you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Colossians 3:1-4
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the (Perfection of the Divine) 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.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Philippians 2:12-13
“So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure!” (Emphasis added.)
When we understand what Genesis reveals, we also see what God is saying in Exodus. All of that and all the rest of Scripture is a revelation of His Word, our Messiah…Yeshua. He begins our salvation and restoration process…and only He can keep it going and bring it to its ultimate fulfillment in eternity. So, now perhaps you can better understand what Yeshua, Israel’s foremost Torah Teacher, was saying to His disciples in this regard:
Matthew 11:30
“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My Yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My Yoke is easy and My burden is light!” (Emphasis added.)
Genesis 2:1-3
“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work, which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work, which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” (Emphasis added.)
Yeshua Is Our Sabbath Rest…Only In Him Can We Be At Peace
The awesome Sabbath Rest is ours to enjoy when we can identify with our Master. When we finally understand that God’s Eternal Covenant makes us one with His Word and Spirit. When we’re one with our Messiah, we’re one with God’s Rest. So even while we struggle with our current grossly limited conditions in this fallen time and space dimension, God’s living Word is here to add to us everything we lack! He is the Supply of everything we will ever need to meet God’s Perfect Standards. Our Perfect Eternal Rest is a Person – Yeshua, the living Word of God! He is our living connection to God who is the awesome Inheritance that is ours in Heaven. In the Word, we share in God’s Perfect Righteousness and the Glory of His Word’s Perfect Finished Work. This can’t ever be attained by rigorous, self-absorbed, religious effort. It is already ours…in our Messiah…His Life and Perfection abide and work within us, whether we’re awake or asleep!
Genesis 28:12-16
“He (Jacob) had a dream, and behold, a Ladder was set on the Earth with its top reaching to Heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’
“Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it!” (Emphasis added.)
Because of our many current limitations and imperfections, we can’t comprehend or imagine the magnitude of God’s mind-boggling Perfection at this stage of our journey. So to know God accurately and authentically, we must learn to think and act and react and interact by faith in His Perfect living and written Word. We can’t afford to allow the Serpent to use our faulty faculties or our circumstances, or our flaky feelings and ever-changing situations to drag us back into doubt, unbelief and the decapitated, self-centered bondage that always follows. Our Master has guaranteed that He will add whatever is needed to bring us up to His level of Perfection. That is why we can rest and rejoice in Him at all times. Self-life, religious or otherwise, is spiritual, mental and emotional separation from Him. And that is a death trap that mires us in a twisted, deceptive paradigm that plows us into the ground beneath the unbearable weight of self-centered responsibility that God never intended us to assume. Self-centered eyes make us completely misunderstand and distort God’s Yeshua-centered Torah and what it is actually revealing.
Romans 8:1-3
“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the Law of Sin and of Death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh…” (Emphasis added.)
The total Fulfillment of the New Covenant won’t be complete until we all ‘cross God’s Finish Line’ together. In God’s plan, we will enter His Eternal Perfection as His one Covenant Family. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all those who went before us are waiting for us. They won’t enter our God-given eternal Inheritance without us, and without those that are yet to follow us. Ultimate Perfection is not attainable in this time and space fallen world. It only comes in eternity where God Himself will be our Fulfillment! But He is already ours when we become fully one with His living Word by faith. Nothing earthly or human will be included in the Ultimate Fulfillment. Everything that is temporary must first run its course and disappear. After that, our eternal Inheritance will be ours because it will be Almighty God Himself, as he actually is in Eternity!
Deuteronomy 30:1-6
“So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you, and you return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back. The Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.” (Emphasis added.)
Hebrews 11:39-40
“And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect.” (Emphasis added.)
How long will we remain trapped in our vain trust in our own efforts and in those of other fallen created beings and things? Anything Sin-corrupted and temporary will be completely replaced! In God’s New Heaven and New Earth, everything will be Heavenly and God-originated! What will remain at the End will be God Himself, and all that are truly His. And He will be the eternal Reality that will perfectly fulfill what He revealed through Moses, about Creation, since its very beginning! There’s never a question about whether or not God’s commandments should be obeyed and fulfilled or not! The only questions are:
- How can God’s perfect commandments be kept perfectly, in our name, in a way that perfectly satisfies God’s Perfect Standards of Righteousness?
- How can our fallen, Sin-contaminated flesh and its corrupt motives be bypassed?
- Is there any human who is not Sin-corrupted that could do this?
- If so, who is it?
It is Yeshua, our Covenant Representative. The living Word of God made flesh is The Answer! He has done everything necessary in our name. He is our Eternal Union with God. And so, we must learn to rest and rejoice in the Perfection that is eternally in Him! Perfection cannot be found in any other way or from any other source!