Exodus 20:8-11
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea AND ALL THAT IS IN THEM, and rested on the seventh day; THEREFORE, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (That is, He reserved and set it aside to make it special and unlike every other day).” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
What awesome, cosmic, transcendent depths of revelation is God giving through this commandment regarding His Sabbath Rest? It’s almost as if He is shouting a proclamation of utter Triumph and Consummate Fulfillment across the entire expanse of the universe He created. It contains utterly basic, essential information about Him and His Perfect Nature that we must all receive and take to heart. If we’re going to know the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with precision and authentic integrity, we dare not misunderstand or ignore this. God is using this commandment to truly separate the Truth of His Eternal Kingdom of Light from the insane delusions that compose the abysmal Darkness of Unreality caused by the Serpent’s lies.
Ponder what is embedded within this fourth commandment until you understand why God takes it so seriously. Ask yourself: why did He require His chosen people (whom He was at that time commissioning to become His image and likeness example for the rest of the human race) to take this commandment to heart just as much as He does?
Exodus 31:13-15
“But as for you (Moses), speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘You shall surely observe My Sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. Therefore you are to observe the Sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall surely be put to death!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Obviously this is not something to be ignored or taken lightly! But despite the seriousness with which God regards it, of all of God’s commandments, this is quite possibly the most misunderstood, ignored, undermined and neglected one of all! The fact that so many take it so lightly that they ignore it, must be due to the profound, satanically induced spiritual blindness under which most of humanity remains enslaved. That blindness comes from our inherited state of ‘decapitation,’ or severance from God’s living and written Word. It keeps men blind and ignorant concerning Almighty God’s Perfect Nature and the requirements His Perfect Standards of Righteousness reveal in God’s written Word about His awesome Perfect Finished Work of Creation and Redemption as revealed in Genesis.
Set Apart!
Please don’t miss the significance of this: God is sanctifying, or setting apart, His chosen people in the same way that He sanctified the Sabbath day and set it apart from every other day of the week. Beloved, for any true disciple of God’s living Word, this is vitally important! What God reveals here is meant to be the solid ‘Rock’ upon which disciples, the Word’s true image and likeness chosen, redeemed living members and Covenant friends, are to live! They live, surrounded, by the living dead people of this demon-possessed world! And they are commissioned to serve as God’s Light to the pagan Gentile idolaters… a witness and living testimony to what the Torah reveals about the one and only true living God, and His Perfect Nature and Perfect changeless ways. What we think of Almighty God’s commandments clearly reveals what, in our heart of hearts, we think – of Him!
God’s Eternally Perfect Nature and His Eternal Blood Covenant with His Perfect Living Word, who is sent to lead the fallen human race into full participation in that Covenant, is the granite-solid Rock upon which God commands us all to build our lives! If we think, act, react and interact based on adequate knowledge of His Perfect Nature, Character and the All-Sufficiency of His Finished Work of Creation and Redemption, then the Fruits of the Joy, Peace and Rest that flow out of His Perfection, will always appear in our lives. God’s Perfect Peace and Rest will protect us and supply our needs and fortify and equip us to resist and overcome any storm, attack, trap or disaster the powers of Darkness may try to inflict upon us!
Ephesians 6:10-17
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His (revealed) might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace (that flows out of God’s Perfect Rest); in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the Sword of the Spirit, which is the (living and written) Word of God.” (Amplification added.)
Identification and union with God’s living and written Word make us one with Him! That enables us to abide in perfect alignment with God as His image and likeness. This Covenant union is the Rock, the Fortress that enables us to withstand and overcome anything the Serpent and his powers of Darkness try to use against us. Remember that our Master Yeshua is the living Word of God made flesh. He is the very same living Word through which God revealed Himself to the fathers of the Faith, as recorded in God’s Torah. And this is why Yeshua was so adamant in giving this dire warning to His New Covenant disciples:
Matthew 7:21-27
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who (actually) 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 (who ignore or reject what I revealed about My All-Sufficient Finished Work in My Father’s Torah).’
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the Rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the (changeless revelation base given in the Torah) Rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand (of rebellious radical independence). The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
This is of Utmost Importance!
Ignorance concerning the revelation that the fourth commandment emphasizes causes us to misunderstand everything else that comes after the Torah throughout the rest of the Bible. We must have an accurate basic understanding of the one true living God and His Nature, His ways, and Perfect Standards of Righteousness. This commandment highlights the foundation of all of our dealings with God and with everything else in Creation. It tells us what the proper, appropriate, righteous response must be from those who will serve as Almighty God’s true image and likeness! This commandment pierces to the core of the demonic deceptions that give rise to pagan idolatry! It gores and destroys the demonic rebellion and the lies and confusion that lead people into the decapitated state of radical independence from God! It reestablishes God’s living Word to His rightful place of Absolute Authority over every speck of creation. And it places all intelligent free-willed created beings in the proper position relative to the Truth and Reality of God’s incomprehensible Perfection and Lovingkindness.
Therefore, the Serpent does everything he can to keep us oblivious to the basic, vital foundational realities and facts that flow out of God’s Perfect Nature and His Word’s Finished Work. When we overlook or ignore God’s Truth, we automatically and immediately begin to drift in wrong and fatal directions that cause us to draw false conclusions and make grossly inaccurate assumptions that God lacks something and isn’t ‘good enough’ to meet our needs. Thus we are driven by fear and anxiety to create or seek out other, false gods of our own choosing. This is why the Torah-ignoring world continues to wallow in grievous error and catastrophic self-destructiveness. This is why such profound depths of spiritual Darkness can continue to enshroud the earth and becloud human minds, hearts and lives…generation after generation after generation!
Do you think this is an exaggeration and an overstatement? If you do, then answer this: How is it that even now, millennia after God inspired Moses to relay His specific Self-Revelation to this fallen world, so many billions of seemingly ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’ people remain so ignorant and deluded concerning our true Creator and His ways and requirements? How is it that even within Judaism and Christianity, so much confusion, controversy, strife, division, disobedience and suspicion-based contentious fragmentation continue in our midst? Is any of that the true image and likeness of our God, who is One? Doesn’t our confusion, strife and fragmentation give obvious confirmation that we are allowing the Serpent to deceive, divide and conquer us? Our chronic state of confusion and division and our lack of power and spiritual authority in the world cannot be the result of our obedience and the fact that we truly are God’s image and likeness, can it? No, instead it is the result of the fact that, for the most part we, just like Eve, and just like those that tried to build the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, continue to reject and disobey His Word and insist instead on continuing to do as we think best.
Why do we allow the Serpent to do to us what he did to Eve? How is he still able to convince so many that God’s Word should be mistrusted, not believed, and disobeyed? How can the Serpent continue to confuse, divide and get so many to believe that he doesn’t even exist? The depths of his demonic deceptions are the reason why so many feel justified in rejecting and ignoring or cutting and pasting and deleting portions of God’s written Word, or twisting what He revealed into such alien, false configurations that they completely change the original meaning and purpose of what God is really telling us!
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, “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.”
Beware of the Wolf (Serpent) in Sheep’s Clothing
Do you see what the Serpent did to Eve? Instead of accurately describing God as He really is, he described himself to Eve, and persuaded her to link what he was saying…with God! He deceived her into tagging what pertains to the Serpent onto God, and tagging what pertains to God onto the Serpent! Thus the Serpent succeeded in switching places with God, in Eve’s scrambled thinking. He is the Liar, not God! He hates humans and uses and manipulates them to their own desolation and destruction, not God! God is the one that is true and trustworthy and credible, not the Serpent! But, instead of doubting and rejecting the word of the Serpent, Eve doubted, rejected and detached herself from the creative, sustaining Word of God. And so she and Adam followed the lying Serpent into his realm of Darkness and Eternal Death!
By contradicting and confusing what God revealed of Himself to Adam and Eve, the Serpent twisted their minds and persuaded them to mistrust and distort God’s Perfect Love-based Character and His totally Self-less, Love-based motives toward them. The perceptions of the first humans became so twisted that they began to see God as a lying, selfish, sinister deceiver. And when they saw Him in that way, it was a foregone conclusion that they would mistrust and disregard His command concerning the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Thus they degenerated into the image and likeness of the Serpent…taking the initiative to invent alternate ‘plans’ which they then began to follow. Thus they severed themselves from their true Head, God’s Word. And that condemned them to the living death of radical independence from God. And separation from Him is what killed them and their offspring…physically and spiritually.
By disbelieving and disobeying God’s Word, Adam and Eve refused to accept God in all of His Eternal Perfection, as He had revealed Himself to be. They refused to cling to the Truth and Reality His Word gave them and instead, they obeyed and followed the Serpent’s lies. Had they remained faithful to God’s Word, they would have continued to relate and interact with God as He really is. They would have obeyed Him in every instance because they would have no cause to doubt or question God’s Perfection or His loving, infinitely wise intentions and motives toward them. Even in matters that would be too vast and deep for them to comprehend, they would have been able to rest in God’s Perfection, like trusting little children. They would have continued to believe, trust and REST in their Heavenly Father’s Perfect Wisdom and Eternal Love for them, regardless of whatever happened in their experiences. In that case, the Serpent would have had to slither back into His realms of Darkness and Eternal Death, and abide there…without them.
Many today continue to repeat the fatal blunder of Adam and Eve. They still do not grasp the monumental significance of what God reveals about Himself in His Torah. They blithely skim over the very first thing God revealed in Genesis about His living Word. They race past it as if it wasn’t even there! Seldom, if ever, does that first sentence hit any of us. If it did, it would stun us like a hammer slamming into the side of our head!
Genesis 1:1
“In the beginning…GOD CREATED…the heavens and the earth!” (Emphasis added.)
Who can understand the stunning, mind-blowing significance of what is packed into that one sentence? Let’s put it another way: does that sentence omit or leave anything out? Isn’t God telling us that He covered and considered everything to Perfection, right from the beginning? Isn’t He telling us that everything we creatures will ever be or have or need, throughout the course of our existences…has already been created, paid for and made available to us…right from the start of this dimension of time and space? Doesn’t that sentence reveal God’s infinitely Perfect Self-less, Parental Love and reassure us that He is here for us at all times and in all things, and on every level of our existence? And if that doesn’t enable us to see the Perfection of God being revealed to us, how about what He reveals to us, about us?
Genesis 1:27-28
“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.)
Perfect Provision from Our Perfect God
If God is at total peace, joy and satisfaction with His Perfect, All-Sufficient Creation, shouldn’t His image and likeness be enjoying all of that with Him? Doesn’t He tell us that He created and blessed us with everything we’d need to succeed and be completely fulfilled? If God is Perfect in every way, should we not also be able to live in His total Satisfaction and Rest with Him? Shouldn’t we be as pleased and delighted with God as He is with Himself? Can you see that if we believed and obeyed His Self-revelation, there wouldn’t be a speck of unbelief, rebellious disobedience or idolatry to be found anywhere? The first sentence of Genesis notifies us that there is only one God, and His Nature is so Perfect that He did everything right the first time. He thought of everything, created everything and anticipated what every one of His creatures, from the most immense to the most microscopic, would encounter or need throughout its past, present and future existence. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob supplied it all…right from the beginning of this time and space dimension…through His living, creative Word. And nothing was forgotten or left out. He did everything with Perfect Precision and Infinite Wisdom. That’s why all there is left for Him and for each of His creatures to do is…REST!
Ponder that! Whatever any created thing or being will ever need… no matter what the Serpent and his powers of Darkness may have done…or will ever do, regardless of anything we will ever encounter…and no matter what we may do wrong, or what wrongs may be done to us, no matter what may fail, or how much damage any of us may do or have done to us… our Perfect God has already foreseen and factored His Forgiveness, Healing and Full Restoration into His Plan of Creation. And He has already done everything necessary to redeem, cleanse, restore and resolve it… to His Eternal Satisfaction and our Eternal Perfection! He provided everything for us, perfectly and completely, even before our first parents ever came to be!
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!”
The first two chapters of Genesis give us infinite, airtight assurance that we can trust our Creator with a corresponding infinite airtight faith, trust and dependence. Because there are no ‘leaks’ or ‘holes’ in His Perfect Nature and Character, and so it is a travesty when ‘leaks’ or ‘holes’ appear in the way we regard Him and respond to His living and written Word. This is what Israel was to demonstrate and proclaim to the entire world! It is only right that we believe and obey God with airtight, eternal faith, hope, trust and outrageously consistent, eternally optimistic expectation, regardless of any real or perceived (imagined) created circumstances! The Perfect One reveals that it is impossible for Him to ever disappoint or betray or forsake any creature that He has made!
This is what God proclaims throughout all of Scripture. So, how should we respond to that? Is anything missing? What has He left undone? What more work or toil remains for anyone else to do? How is it that we who are so used to gut-gnawing fears and anxieties and insecurities are such slaves to one thing or another in this Serpent-dominated world? How is it that so few are able to enjoy the status and position and rank that our Heavenly Father has given to us all? How is it that so many still know nothing about enjoying our Inheritance with Him…and resting with God in His ETERNAL PERFECTION?
Ephesians 3:14-21
“For this reason [seeing the greatness of this plan by which you are built together in Christ], I bow my knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for Whom every family in Heaven and on Earth is named [that Father from Whom all fatherhood takes its title and derives its name]. May He grant you out of the rich treasury of His Glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man by the [Holy] Spirit [Himself indwelling your innermost being and personality].
“May Christ through your faith [actually] dwell (settle down, abide, make His permanent home) in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love, that you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God’s devoted people, the experience of that love] what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of it]; [That you may really come] to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!
“Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]– to Him be Glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen (so be it).” (Amplified Bible)
Our Inheritance and Birthright is Sabbath Rest
Through His precious Sabbath Reality, God proclaims that Adam and Eve, God’s original human image and likeness humans, were born into the Perfection of His Finished Work. As soon as He finished creating them, there was nothing more for God to do, but to enter into His Eternal Peace, Joy, Satisfaction and Rest. So obviously, there was nothing more for the human race to do either, but to look to God, who created them from the dust of the Earth, for everything else, throughout every moment of their existence! And this is the true birthright that God gave to our original parents, and all other humans who would ever come from them. Children of the Perfect God are heirs of the Eternal Inheritance which is His Eternal Perfection!
We are all intended to be God’s image and likeness! And we do that by receiving wholeheartedly… and reflecting back… the revelation of God’s absolute, Eternal, Infinite Perfection. What His Word shines upon us is exactly what we are designed and created to reflect back to God, and to all the rest of His Creation! Perfect Faith and Trust and Obedience from us are God’s just due. His Creation owes Him perfect, absolute, unquestioning, unwavering faith, hope, trust and expectation. It’s not because we’re so great, but because HE IS SO GREAT! We are utterly weak, helpless and dependent upon Him. But because of His Perfect Love and Eternal Faithfulness, we can afford to celebrate and dance and sing because of Him, forever. We can know with absolute certainty that our Heavenly Father will fulfill every one of His promises, to His Eternal Glory and to our Eternally Perfect Well Being!
Because God knows this, He is perfectly satisfied and at rest and peace with what He has created. He abides in His well-earned Eternal Sabbath Rest, with or without us. The Sabbath Rest is a revelation and proclamation to all of Creation of the Glory and Love and Goodness and Perfection of Almighty God. And so, we who are to be His image and likeness are commissioned to enjoy, to benefit from, and to nurture that same perfect satisfaction, rest, peace and contentment in our hearts and minds at all times and in all things. To be God’s authentic image and likeness, we must be one with God’s Word who contains and provides and enjoys His Father’s Perfect Rest. And He was sent to convey all that He is, to us, and to share Himself with us!
As God’s image and likeness, we humans were never meant for the toil, drudgery, bondage and misery of slavery under which most humans still actually languish! We were meant to enjoy with God, whatever He enjoys with Himself. And since God is Perfect, and never changes, His original plan and purpose for creating us will also never change.
Called out of Darkness and into His Marvelous Light
And this is what the Serpent’s lies destroyed in the mind and heart of Eve, and of Adam, and their fallen offspring. In place of their innate God-given Freedom and Abundance, the Serpent substituted fear, insecurity, suspicion, hostility, selfishness, strife, control obsession and endless self-perpetuated toil. But God is intent on restoring us all to His original Perfect Rest! Not even the Serpent’s rebellion and Sin and Darkness and the Death into which his lies pulled the human race will change God’s Eternal Nature or deter or stop His Plan and Purpose from being fulfilled. The One and Only Perfect God always succeeds…no matter what any creature may do or fail to do.
Once we’ve allowed His Word to reconnect us to Himself, and once we’ve been redeemed and cleansed from Sin and delivered of the power it used to have over us, God begins to disentangle our minds and hearts and the lies and false programming we and the world have put into them. He also empowers us to cooperate with Him and use our free will to agree with Him and to forsake the lies of the Serpent, so that He can progressively educate and retrain us. Then, through and by our Exodus from the self-life into which we were born, we can follow His Word out of that Darkness. And then He can free His own forever from the curse of toil, drudgery and perpetual frustration to which the living death caused by Sin-condemned, fallen Adam and the race that came from his Sin-corrupted seed.
Genesis 3:17-19
“Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Romans 12:1-2
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove (actually demonstrate by your lives) what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and PERFECT!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
We are Made to Dwell in Eternal, Changeless Truth
Because God is Perfect, none of His creatures were ever intended to lack anything! And now, even after humanity’s fall into Sin and after all the damage the Serpent and his powers of Darkness have done to God’s Creation, when we begin to see God’s Truth and choose to believe His Word and repent of our past Sin against Him, then God’s Word covers, redeems, regenerates, cleanses, purifies and sets us free from the power of Sin and Death, unto total Restoration! And so, as we begin to follow the Word, He begins to teach us to learn to believe God’s Eternal, changeless Truth. And He progressively leads us back to full identification and union with our Heavenly Father so that we can abide with Him in His Endless Peace and Rest in Eternity. We can begin today, to know that our true Head, His Word, is ready to restore us fully and that He already has us covered to Perfection by the Perfect Atonement He made to God in our name, even before the Creation of time and space began! His Name is, ‘Messiah Yeshua’!
At all times and in every circumstance… regardless of the way things in this fallen, broken world appear… regardless of what anyone else says… and regardless of how our natural, Sin-damaged perceptions and faculties and sensations may cause us to see, think and feel, our Perfect God and his intentions and Plan never change. His Eternal Perfection has our past, our present and our future all Perfectly Covered! Everything has already been provided and, because of Him and His Perfection, there is never any cause for us to fret or feel that we have to do something to make up for whatever we may think He has not taken into account:
Isaiah 49:14-17
“But Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me and the Lord has forgotten me.’ Can a woman forget her nursing child And have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me. Your builders hurry; your destroyers and devastators will depart from you!”
Matthew 6:25-33
“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin; yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His Kingdom and His Righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Texts like these tell us that our awesome God…IS…in His Perfect Nature, EVERYTHING that any of His creatures will ever need. He, through His living, creating Word and Holy Spirit is the one and only Source of all created things. So everything any creature will be or have or do, and everything real, true and good that we will ever need to succeed and fulfill our God-given purpose, identity and destiny, exists and can be found in HIS PERFECT, ETERNAL WORD. The Word of the true, living God is Perfection personified. God’s own Name is in Him. The Word contains within Himself, all the Fullness of God. All other created things come from Him and are sustained by Him. Therefore, the Word made flesh, Yeshua, the risen Messiah, is ALL in all…for all of us.
John 1:15-17
“John testified about Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’” For of His (the Word’s) Fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law (the written Torah) was given through Moses; grace and truth (that is, the actual Fulfillment of Torah) were realized through (the living Torah who is) Jesus Christ!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
It is in and by and through His awesome living Word, that God reveals Himself and creates and sustains all things. This is only a tiny glimpse into the awesome Revelation that God packed into and embedded within this one awesome introductory sentence:
Genesis 1:1
“In the beginning God (through His living Word) created the heavens and the earth.” (Emphasis added.)
And if we miss the significance of the Perfection and Fullness that God is revealing right at the beginning, we will continue to miss the significance of what He says later, phrase by phrase and text by text, to confirm and amplify it:
Genesis 1:31
“God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was VERY GOOD (that is, Perfect and eternally Complete)!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
And to make sure we understand, God emphasizes and amplifies what He said, one more time, in the sentences that immediately follow:
Genesis 2:1
“Thus the Heavens and the Earth were completed, AND ALL THEIR HOSTS!” (Emphasis added.)
Does that sentence leave anything out? No, it doesn’t. It confirms what the very first sentence (Genesis 1:1) stated, doesn’t it? And then, to make triple-sure that we understand, the following sentence says exactly the same thing in another way:
Genesis 2:2
“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.”
And so, having laid down these elemental, basic foundations of God’s revealed Reality and Truth with significant, unmistakable repetition, God enables us to see the wonderful news He is proclaiming, and its utterly absolute meaning and significance. Rest is the automatic, gut-level, response that comes when we know Almighty God as He really and truly IS! All of this is the revelation through, by, and OF God’s living Word… His Beloved Perfectly Obedient Son! God has already done everything necessary to Perfection through Him! If we understand and believe what God is telling us, we can’t help but embrace and become one with His Word… and rejoice and celebrate the endless peace, joy and absolute contentment that follow when we become one with all that He is and all that He has done and all that He brings and transmits into us from His Father’s Eternal Perfection. We can bask in God’s awesome, infinite, eternal PERFECTION in which the fourth commandment teaches us to abide, and we can reflect back our Master’s constant indwelling Perfection… to our Heavenly Father… and to whatever portions of His Creation that we may encounter:
Genesis 2:3
“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.)
Hopefully the Holy Spirit will now help you understand more of what God said in those meaning-packed sentences with which He chose to begin the Torah. And once you grasp that, then hopefully, you will begin to see more and more of the depths of the important response that the fourth commandment requires of the Word’s true disciples. The revelation this commandment gives is utterly necessary and important to the entire human race. Historically, even to the present moment, most of the human race could not care any less about this commandment. But if we who were called to follow Yeshua, are going to be His New Covenant, Last Days disciples, we must understand this and take it to heart as much as is humanly possible. If we do, we will better understand the rest of what is contained in the Bible and we’ll better understand the strategy of our demonic enemies. We MUST make sure we start off on the right foot. We must have an unshakable grasp on the significance of the meaning of what God told us in the very beginning. It’s going to take God’s Eternal Perfection to see us safely through the unspeakable tribulations that the written Word tells us await the dying Word-rejecting world and its rotting, disintegrating system, during their Last Days.
In the Beginning God…
That highly significant first sentence of the Torah’s first book reveals the Perfect, utterly comprehensive, all-inclusive and all-sufficient Nature of the Creator of the universe. He introduces the work of His ‘Hand’ (His living Word) as a consummately comprehensive Finished Work. It is a Work in which everything that is, and will ever be, necessary was already present from the very first moment of the dimension of time and space. God, in His Eternal, Infinite Perfection put everything into His Word’s Creation. So Creation always has available to it, everything it will ever need in order to work properly and succeed. And this is what the awesome Word of God was thundering and proclaiming to all of the Israelites who cowered beneath Him at Mt. Sinai on that awesome and unique day in human history when Almighty God revealed Himself to an entire nation! Nothing like that has happened since. God spoke like He had never spoken to men before. And once was enough. He said what had to be said perfectly…the first time. For He truly is THE LIVING ALMIGHTY GOD…THE ETERNALLY PERFECT GOD!
So, regardless of what happens to, or in, any of His creatures throughout the course and span of Creation’s existence…whatever creatures need to fulfill God’s Original Blessing and abide in the identity, purpose and destiny He gave them, will always be ready and available to them… IN GOD’S LIVING, CREATIVE WORD… the WORD that later became flesh… the WORD that we now know as ‘MESSIAH YESHUA’ or ‘JESUS CHRIST’… THE RISEN LORD OF GLORY!
This is what David understood and expressed so beautifully in so many of his psalms; for example:
Psalm 23
“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of Righteousness for His Name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, FOR YOU ARE WITH ME; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my (satanic and human) enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely (Your two faithful ‘sheep dogs’) Goodness and Lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The New Covenant Israelite apostle Paul strained and struggled to articulate what the Holy Spirit was putting into Him concerning God’s living Word made flesh, for the instruction and eternal benefit of the rest of the world:
Colossians 1:15-20
“(As God’s Eternal Living Word) He is the Image of the invisible God, (and as the Word of God made flesh, the Son of Man, He is) the Firstborn of all Creation. For by Him ALL things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—ALL things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before ALL things, and in Him ALL things hold together. He is also Head of the Body, the Church; and He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have First Place in Everything! For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the Fullness (of Almighty God Himself) to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile ALL things to Himself, having made Peace (for us with God) through the Blood of His Cross; through Him, I say, whether things on Earth or things in Heaven.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Hopefully this Revelation will help you to better understand the astounding, mind-blowing significance of what happens, when this same Perfect, Eternal Word that proceeds from within Almighty God Himself, picks you personally, and separates you from the rest of the crowd, and gives you this gut-wrenching, disciple-commissioning command:
“FOLLOW ME!”
The Infinite, eternally Perfect Creator of all things has summoned you and your fellow disciples into His New Covenant ‘image and likeness’, Royal Priesthood Service! He will now follow the ‘disciple-training process’ of imparting in a variety of ways, including human words and many personal experiences, a level of Truth and Reality that no created being – angelic, human or otherwise – could possibly figure out, comprehend, or arrive at independently by self-generated intuition or rational induction or deduction. The Reality that our awesome Master will give you, and the rest of us, only comes from God’s Infinite, Perfect, Eternal side of the Chasm of Transcendence that separates His Perfect Uncreated Nature from ours! Flesh and blood cannot stumble upon this; nor can flesh and blood convey it to any other flesh and blood. And so since we are limited physically to living on this broken, Sin-corrupted and damaged side of that Chasm for the time being, we can’t know this simply by relying on or consulting our own wits and faculties. We can’t even be aware of it unless…Almighty God Himself specifically reveals it to our spirits that already have the privilege of abiding with Him on His side of the chasm (See Colossians 3:1-4).
The Infinite eternally Perfect side of the Chasm of Transcendence is God’s domain alone. Only He can know it and only He can tell us about the Perfect way in which He protects and provides for us. We must therefore, take His Word for it. And that is why He sent His Word to become one with us by bringing us into God’s Eternal Blood Covenant. God sent His Word to ‘cross over’ and bridge the Infinite Gap that separates us. He came to reconnect with us and lead us all back to His Father. And so, even now, BY FAITH IN GOD’S WORD, full citizenship in God’s Eternal Kingdom can be ours! God Himself has come looking for us, in and through His Beloved Son! And His Son is the one who has summoned you into God’s Eternal Service…which is…JOY, PEACE, ONENESS AND REST!
The Holy Spirit is here to make real, alive and fruitful within us, the Living Word so that He can cause God’s Truth to be real and alive and actively fruitful within us. And when we submit to this Life-giving, life-transforming work, then God’s living and written Word can lead us successfully across the ‘Finish Line’ of our Exodus from this fallen world’s crushing oppression, and into our ‘Promised Land’ of absolute and eternal Rest, Joy and Peace IN GOD!
This is very difficult for the fallen, Sin-blinded children of Adam to even be aware of, much less fathom. We entered this world in the Sin-caused state of radical independence from God. We inherited that from our first human parents (See Genesis 3). The damage Sin did to the human race makes it necessary for the generations of Adam’s children to abide in mortally wounded, Sin-damaged bodies. So we are born into this living death state of ‘decapitation,’ separated from our True Head. And that is what forces us at first, to try to navigate under that gross handicap. We begin by relying upon our badly damaged and misaligned faculties that continually give misinformation and false coordinates.
Jeremiah 17:5-10
“Thus says the Lord, ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. For he will be like a bush in the desert And will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.
“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results (fruits) of his deeds.”
This is why God commissions and trains disciples to become as one with His living Word. In them, the Word can be God’s Light for those who remain trapped in the Serpent’s Darkness. In and through His disciples, the Word can reveal the Glory and Radiance of His beloved Father. The living Word creates, sustains, redeems and fully restores us.
But radical independence, or ‘decapitation’ from Him, deprives us of our original image-and- likeness-of-God identity and awareness and causes many to remain spiritually blind and deaf in that Darkness, and so they live as strangers to God and His Word and His Kingdom. And God must somehow penetrate the Darkness that engulfs them and transmit into their hearts a true, accurate grasp of His Truth and Reality. And when, through His written and living Word, God can live and work in and through disciples, the rest of the world can see and experience some of what He is saying, and then they have evidence and good cause to begin to believe and obey it too.
They begin to awaken from their Sin-induced trance and realize, for the first time, that the Serpent’s coils are wrapped tightly around them! Suddenly they see the enormous danger they’re in and how desperately they need God to do whatever it will take to save them from what Sin has done to them and forced them to become. THEN they cry out to Him with all of their heart and soul… asking God to save and restore them. And God is telling us through His Torah, that this is all any of us has to do, to receive whatever we need from all that Fullness that He has already provided for this purpose. And then our Exodus can begin and proceed on course, with step-by-step perseverance and joy… and God’s awesome beloved Word can lead us out of the Darkness… back to Him who is Everlasting Light.
Genesis 3:8-10
“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?’
“He said, ‘I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.’”
Genesis 3:21
“The Lord God (through His living creative Word, nevertheless) made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them (with His Word’s Perfect Righteousness and applied to them the Eternal Atonement His Word had already made on their behalf and in their name).” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Truth Revealed… the Good News
Before we can truly grasp the significance of such awesome Good News, God must first drive home the reality of the Bad News to us. We need to know about Sin and understand the full impact of its lethal effects and our true ‘decapitated’ state. As long as we remain hypnotized in the delusions caused by the Serpent’s lies, we also remain trapped within his Death-imparting coils, and share in his rebellion and disobedience against our Creator. And we must realize and admit that we all are born with a natural bent and desire for Sin. That is what has enslaved and done so much damage to us and to the rest of God’s beautiful Creation. And this is what that Darkness is about, that God revealed in the second sentence of Genesis:
Genesis 1:2
“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.” (Emphasis added.)
Where did that Darkness come from? Obviously it didn’t come from God. God made a distinction between it and His Holy Spirit. So Darkness was, and is, an alien, external reality. But what brought it into being? Genesis 3 reveals that rebellious created being, named ‘The Serpent.’ His rebellious disobedience created the Darkness. It comes from the unbelief and rebellion against God’s living creative Word that he began, and with which he infected the rest of God’s Creation. Darkness comes from the choice that God’s personal, intelligent, free-willed creatures make… to refuse to take His Word for what only He, in His Absolute Transcendence, is able to reveal to them and provide for them.
In other words, when we are separated from God’s Word, demonic Darkness (which is actually a state of insanity that severs us from Reality and Truth) engulfs us and we remain blind to God and His Reality. When we deny or reject or ignore or twist and disfigure what God reveals through His Word and Holy Spirit, we turn away and separate ourselves, and anyone who believes us, from our Creator and Sustainer. Then we try to exist and operate on our own, fending for ourselves, as if we could actually be radically independent agents. We are still just as needy and dependent on God’s Word as ever…but, just like the Serpent, we refuse to admit it. We refuse to acknowledge God’s Word for what He is to us. In place of the pure, holy Light of Truth and Reality that emanates from God’s Word and Holy Spirit, we try to devise alternate sources and means of knowing and living. Thus the Serpent gets us to remain ‘decapitated’ from our true Head and Life Source, God’s Word. Thus we abide in the living death…the curse brought on by Sin and alienation from God. And that, beloved, is what God’s Torah calls ‘Darkness.’ It is the curse of living in Unreality, doing unreal things that will never be able to produce Real Results that are Eternal.
Luke 6:39
“And He also spoke a parable to them: ‘A blind (decapitated) man cannot guide a blind (decapitated) man, can he? Will they not both fall into a pit?’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So in the second sentence of Genesis, God reveals the existence of this angelic, demonic rebellion. It existed even before the creation of the physical universe, before the first human being ever came to be. And now the human race is born into that Darkness; and from our very beginnings, it has blinded us to God’s Perfection and the awesome joyful Rest that comes from knowing Him as He truly is. Darkness prevents us from enjoying the Blessing that is ours when we believe and obey the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and we take Him at His Word.
Creation Began with All that Was Needed
So now, notice that in the following sentences of Genesis 1, God introduces the revelation of the created universe and of our Earth. It appears in the very early, primitive stages of its development and purpose. It is organic, a living work whose full purpose and eventual outcome is similar to what exists within a tiny bud that begins to appear out of a seed that becomes a plant in its earliest stages. Everything the plant is ever going to be and to need has already been created and placed within it. But after the fall, all of this awesome life was badly damaged and poisoned and twisted. But what God has eternally ordained still abides within that tiny bud. So this organic, ever-developing creation is going to be fully healed and restored because God foresaw all of this. And right from the beginning, its full redemption and restoration was already placed into all that He created. The Word of God who created it and who protects its existence and sustains it, even in its fallen state, IS the Redemption and Restoration that it needs. And so anyone who turns to Him in the perfect faith, hope, trust and expectation that the commandments of God impart to us and require back from us, will be completely, eternally ‘saved’ and ‘gardened’ back to Perfect Wholeness, by the Creator of all things, who is also, the most awesome, Perfect ‘Gardener’ imaginable.
To counteract, neutralize and reverse the effects of Sin…God’s earthly Creation must be nourished by the living water of God’s Word. This is the work of His Holy Spirit of Truth. Thus God can tend to it and protect and garden it so that what is potentially complete, can be healed and restored into full actual healthy development…en route to the full Substance of its complete Fruit-bearing Fulfillment
So in that sense, despite what the Serpent has done, God is gardening Creation back to its original Perfection. Only now, what was once a tiny bud is being gardened to its full Eternal Bloom and Fruitful Harvest. And God does it all through His Word, who in this sense becomes ‘The Vine,’ and we humans who allow Him to reconnect us to Himself, become The Vine’s ‘living branches.’
John 15:4-11
“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. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. 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 (Eternally Perfect) joy (and Sabbath Rest) may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Only when we understand that God is ready to transmit His Eternal Perfection into us, will we cooperate with Him as He ‘gardens’ us into our ultimate maturity and the actual resting Fruitfulness that God intended for us to share in and enjoy and reveal from within…for our Father’s eternal Glory. Regardless of how sick, wounded, twisted or soiled and corrupt we may have been in the past, Almighty God, by adding from His Eternal Perfection to what we are, can make us whole and bring us across the Infinite Chasm of Transcendence, to abide with Him, on His Eternal Perfection side of it.
Genesis 2:15
“Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden (so that through His Word and Holy Spirit, He could abide in them) to cultivate it and keep it.” (Amplification added.)
The Revelation of God
So we see that the fourth commandment is just like the first three. It is another way of aligning His Jewish and non-Jewish chosen people, and equipping them to become a living statement to all of Creation, concerning God and His Perfect Nature, Perfect Character, and Perfect Credibility. The first four commandments align God’s redeemed people with God and His Eternal Reality. And they empower us to mirror God’s response to the Serpent and his powers of Darkness:
Ephesians 3:10
“…so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the Church (Covenant Family of God) to the (angelic beings, including the satanic powers of Darkness, the) rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.” (Amplification added.)
We must know the Master who summoned us to follow Him as He really is. Then we’ll have no trouble allowing Him to abide within us so that He can reflect back to His Father… and to the powers of Darkness… and to the Creation around us, everything just the way He first gave it to us in Genesis, before we fell into Sin. Our complete Redemption and Restoration were given and available to us from the very beginning. But if we refuse to receive and accept the revelation God’s Word gives us of God, as He really is, we will allow the Serpent to slip grossly distorted, false caricatures of God back into our minds and hearts. And that makes it psychologically impossible for us to believe, trust and obey Him when He commands us to enjoy His Perfect Rest with Him.
This is why there can be is no substitute or alternative for God’s living and written Word. We must cling to and follow Him as our Lord and Master, and receive and accept Him just the way His Father has given Him to us. And on that basis, we can follow His lead…and go wherever He takes us, and do as He says. Our safety doesn’t lie in what we will do, and how well we do it; it lies in the Perfection of what He has already DONE…and how deeply and thoroughly we trust and rest in Him. This is how He will lead us through the demonic ‘mine fields’ of this fallen, confusion-filled world, all the way Home and into our Father’s Perfect Eternal Arms.
God is absolutely serious about having us share and participate with Him in His Eternal Sabbath Rest. It is not enough for God to have it and enjoy it by Himself. His redeemed image and likeness must have it and enjoy it and proclaim it with Him! This is what He was telling Israel from atop Mt. Sinai, through His living Word. This is our glory and our privilege! This is what God’s chosen, holy ‘Priesthood’ was created to be and to do!
Exodus 6:2-9
“God spoke further to Moses (through His living Word) and said to him, ‘I am the Lord (YHWH); and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty (El Shaddai), but by My name, Lord (YHWH) I did not make Myself known to them (as fully as I am making Myself known to you now). I also established My Covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they sojourned. Furthermore I have heard the groaning of the sons of Israel, because the (decapitated idolatrous) Egyptians are holding them in bondage, and I have remembered My Covenant (with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). Say, therefore, to the sons of Israel, ‘I am the Lord (YHWH), and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. Then I will take you for My people, and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you to the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession; I am the Lord.’
“So Moses spoke thus to the sons of Israel, but (because they were still in their Sin-damaged condition and had not yet come to know God fully) they did not listen to Moses on account of their despondency and cruel bondage.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Now perhaps we can see that because God had everything done, right from the beginning of Creation, everything was already figured, factored in, provided, covered and paid for by His living Word. That included Israel and her weakness and stubborn, stiff-necked failure-prone inability to believe and receive and obey God’s Word. That too had already been covered…when the Word came to cover Adam and Eve, He was also covering all of their still unborn offspring. This was done in Genesis. But God’s Eternal Blood Covenant that made it possible existed since before the creation of the time and space dimension and the physical universe that abides within it!
So Who covers all of this for the fallen human race? Who is able to provide all that we need? As we can see now, there is only One who could have done it… only One with the Eternal Ability, Power and Authority. It is Almighty God Himself, through His living Word and Holy Spirit who has done it… to PERFECTION! As soon as anyone, Jew or non-Jew alike, turns to God and submits to the authority of His Word over them, Yeshua will begin to fill their imperfection with His Eternal Perfection, and make them whole with His Perfect Righteousness! This is the heart and soul and essence of God’s Eternal Sabbath Rest and its amazing, mind-boggling Perfection.
Exodus 19:3-6
“Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, IF you will indeed obey My Voice (My living Word) and keep My Covenant (by resting in Me and enjoying My Perfection with Me), 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 (set apart, image and likeness nation).’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Matthew 5:20
“For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that (rigid, self-centered, slavish cultural traditional, religious formalism) of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Matthew 5:48
“Therefore you are to be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is Perfect!” (Emphasis added.)
Perfect Provision is Ours…from the Beginning!
Our God depends on and draws, entirely and exclusively, from His own Eternal Perfection. Therefore, He never expects to draw anything from poor, bedraggled, Sin-wounded Israel, or any other group of Sin-corrupted humans in order to perfectly fulfill His Perfect Promises! He Himself is the Perfect Fulfillment of everything He has created…through His living Word! The Word was commissioned to be our Eternal Blood Covenant Representative, the Lamb of God, since before the foundation of this world! And He is the one who did all of the work to make sure that everything would be done PERFECTLY, in our name. What else would we expect from an utterly Perfect God? This is the Glory of God, as He is revealed and expressed through His Perfect, Eternal Sabbath Rest. And His living Word is the awesome ‘Garment of Righteousness’ that God has given to us to put on to cover our shameful nakedness:
Ephesians 1:3-5
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him (His living Word, our Perfect Representative who is our Sin Covering) before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ (the Messiah, His living Word made flesh) to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will…” (Amplification added.)
Revelation 5:11-13
“Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain (before the creation of the world) to receive Power and Riches and Wisdom and Might and Honor and Glory and Blessing.’ And every created thing, which is in Heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, ‘To Him (Almighty God) who sits on the Throne, and to the Lamb, (His living Word with whom He is one) be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.’” (Amplification added.)
Beloved, can you see it? The fourth commandment supremely ‘caps off’ and finishes the commandments that precede it. Those four give the guidelines for what our relationship to Almighty God must be, if we are to live and operate in Spirit and in Truth. The commandments that follow the first four, cover the ways in which God’s image and likeness is to relate to the rest of God’s Creation. These ten commandments are a revelation and proclamation and assertion, given by God, together with His obedient, priestly, image and likeness people, of His beloved Son, the living Word, Yeshua our Messiah! Everything is created and given and redeemed and fulfilled by Him and – IN HIM. It is done through His eternal Covenant Representation of the obedient, repentant members of the human race!
Yeshua is the Message and the Messenger through which God’s Eternal Perfect Finished Work is given to the repentant fallen world. He is our Sabbath Peace with God. He is our Eternal Life and Eternal Reward and the reason why we can enjoy God’s Perfect Rest with Him. Yeshua is Everything to us all. And this is what the fourth commandment requires us to remember and celebrate and proclaim with our lives, as it teaches and trains us to REST IN OUR PERFECT GOD…FOREVER!
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
“Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My Grace is sufficient for you, for (My Perfect Divine) POWER is perfected in (your utterly needy human) weakness!” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the POWER OF CHRIST may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak (in myself), then I am strong (enough to be able to rest in Him and His Perfect Finished Work)!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)