The decapitation of the human race from the Headship of God’s Word has greatly damaged our nature. This is why God is so intent on leading all of us on the Exodus from that original fallen humanity…over to the Perfect Humanity of His beloved Son, our resurrected Lord and Redeemer. God’s Word is the Lord who created and sustains our existence. But now He has also spoken to us and summoned us to ‘follow’ Him as His personal disciples. But before any of this disciple reality can begin, He must first redeem, save and begin to restore us. It begins when we are truly reconciled to Him and have come to grips with the Supreme Authority that He, God’s Word, has over all of Creation… including us. Then, once we’re truly back under His Headship, God’s Holy Spirit is free to legally reunite us to God and makes us to be truly one with Him.
Psalm 51:5
“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.”
We are truly one with God when we reconcile with Him by believing, embracing and obeying His living Word. And when His Word truly reigns over us, He is free to supply us with everything we need. When this happens, our original radically independent life dies. And thereafter, the Word alone supplies us with whatever is real, true and good. And His Perfect Righteous Humanity becomes our Eternal Life and Inheritance…our Final, Eternal Destination, our Treasury and Fortress and Righteous Covering before God.
Messiah Yeshua has already earned and made this wonderful Fullness available to us all. He has made it legally possible for us to share His Resurrection Glory with Him. But as we said, although it is legally ours, we must respond to what God offers to us. And we do that by submitting properly to the Authority of His Word, our Messiah and Master. We will not be able to achieve possession of the full experience of God’s Fullness through an instantaneous ‘quantum leap.’ Instead, we will have to make our Exodus from Sin-caused enmity with God all the way to perfect Oneness with God! This Exodus Journey will take us into that enjoyment in stages. This is what the Torah reveals and the rest of the Bible explains.
2 Corinthians 3:18
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” (Emphasis added.)
Thus we ‘grow’ into this Fullness through a process, a progressive journey of maturation, during which God’s awesome Perfection, like an emerging dawn, appears within us as an ever-increasing awareness. As the Holy Spirit strips layer after layer of our original self-life from us, God’s Truth and Impact dawn upon us increasing gradually in our awareness, in scope, depth, height, breadth, clarity, action and impactful results. As God’s Word guides and draws us nearer and nearer to the Final Destination of His Perfection that awaits us, we become increasingly overwhelmed by Yeshua’s awesome Presence and the Greatness of God’s Truth, Reality and Fullness that are contained in Him.
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 (corporate, many-membered) 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…my amplification and emphasis added.)
Do you remember seeing pictures that modern technology enables us to take of what is in outer space? They enable us to get a small, limited perspective, some faint idea of how vast and densely populated with galaxies and solar systems God’s created universe really is! In that cosmic context, we can see how small and insignificant our planet Earth appears to be when we compare it to the vast expanses of the galaxies that spread out beyond Earth for light years that are much too numerous to even imagine. The tiny planet we call ‘home’ is situated within a universe so profoundly enormous and overwhelming in its expanse, that the Earth, that seems so large and vast to us, is literally dwarfed and overwhelmed. It disappears as it is engulfed by the immensity of God’s Creation that envelops it! And then…we get a much clearer idea of how weak, helpless and dependent we are in ourselves, and how truly dependent we are on the one that has designed, created and continues to sustain all of this. Then we see that we need Him…for everything!
God’s Supreme Word governs, synchronizes and maintains perfect order throughout this enormous cosmic explosion of God’s boundless Creativity and Power. God’s Almighty living Word…at His Father’s Command…presides over and protects and perpetuates the Fulfillment of God’s enormous Plan of Redemption and Restoration. The Word reveals God’s incomprehensible Love, Wisdom and the changeless Purpose in His heart to overcome our evil with His Good; and all of this is made real, alive and active to us, and in us, by His Holy Spirit. The wonder of all this is that God has chosen to reveal Himself and glorify His Name before the angelic hosts of Heaven as well as the demonic powers of Darkness, through the apparently insignificant little human race that originates from and resides upon…this tiny, apparently insignificant planet!
Ephesians 3:10
“…so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.”
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
“And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for Power is perfected in 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, then I am strong.”
God has revealed, in human terms we can understand, that He created us to be a race of embodied spirits, endowed with intellect, imagination and free will. And that is because He designed and intended us to serve eternally as His own everlasting, beloved, ‘image and likeness!’
Ponder that! Every human is designed, created and destined to serve a priestly function before Almighty God. We were made for His perpetual service…to stand before Him in a mediatory role, reflecting Him as He truly is, to all the rest of His Creation! Through us, all of us, God intends to rule and administrate the workings of His Kingship over His Creation. And, despite what Sin has done to us, He is working even now to equip and train us progressively so that we can fulfill our awesome function before Him. Thus He reveals His Perfect Omnipresent Nature and His utterly Perfect Holiness and Standards of Righteousness in stages, so that we can absorb all of this gradually, in ‘bite size portions,’ and not be totally overwhelmed by the Enormity and Immensity of all that is at work in God’s Infinite Mind and Will.
Through this race of tiny created beings called ‘Humanity,’ God is in the process of glorifying His Name and exalting and enthroning His living Word in the presence of the already-defeated demonic powers of Darkness! He is in the process of restoring us…despite the disaster that befell us when the Serpent decapitated our original parents from the Headship of His Word. God is restoring everything…despite the fact that Sin mortally wounded and severely damaged us. And so, He revealed His Plan of Redemption and progressive Restoration through His Torah…to Israel, His chosen people. He entrusted to them His Truth, Reality and an inter-related series of Commandments. Through the revelation and the commandments He begins to lay the Foundation of our true reality, identity and purpose in the Torah. There we begin to see the priestly function of Israel first…and then that of the rest of the human race. We see that God wants all of mankind to join in with Israel, His ‘firstborn’ nation…in His Service. Every human being is summoned to submit to God’s Salvation and Restoration Process. He wants us all to benefit from the Wisdom and Truth contained in His commandments…allowing them to fulfill their redemptive, restorative purpose on behalf of us all.
So, what are we to learn and understand about these commandments and their significance to us? Is it possible for us, in our Sin-blasted state, to even begin to fathom the Nature and Magnitude of the Almighty God we talk about so glibly? Can we comprehend, define and adequately explain all that this awesome Perfect Being really is? Can we, at this stage of our Exodus Journey into the Ultimate Fulfillment that awaits us, truly assume that we fully comprehend what it means to God’s mind, when He tells us that He created us to be His perfect image and likeness? And, at this stage of our Exodus, do we have in ourselves what it will take, as we currently are, to fulfill the awesome purpose, identity and destiny that God says He has given to us? Can we really be so arrogant as to assume that we can do what He proposes and fulfill His commandments? Was tiny Israel ready to fulfill the commandments when God was first leading them out of the brutal enslavement and victim lifestyle with which their souls and brains had been programmed and hard-wired?
Exodus 19:5-8
“‘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.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.”
“So Moses came and called the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which the Lord had commanded him. All the people answered together and said, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do!’ And Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord.”
Our Only Source is God Himself!
Did the first generation Israelites of the Exodus have any idea about how much they were ‘biting off’…to chew, swallow, digest and become? Did the fact that they assumed they had what it took to fulfill such an exalted task actually equip and enable them to do it? No, of course it didn’t. They had no idea of all that this awesome God was beginning to communicate to them! How, at that beginning stage, could they have possibly grasped the meaning and significance of all that He was revealing and requiring through these commandments? Isn’t it true that only God Almighty Himself can comprehend what is in His infinite mind? Who but God’s living Word, could contain, understand and perform what God speaks forth? Can any other, beside God’s Word, be as God is and do what God’s Perfect Standards require…to Perfection? Can anything created equal the Creator? No, of course not! Only God is God. There can be no other. So how then, could such a poor company of Sin-blasted, deprived, ill-prepared people have what it would take to obey and fulfill God’s commandments to Perfection? That was an absurd proposition then, and remains the same to this day!
So, centuries after they began their Exodus…here we are. Now it’ s the turn of our generation to join in and learn what it will take for us to successfully complete this Exodus. Much has happened since that first generation left Egypt. After the millennia that have elapsed since then, we have seen and experienced many things that they could have never imagined. And we must now try to absorb and work with the infinity of what God is saying and doing through His living, creative Word. Now we are in the midst of our Exodus, still en route, advancing toward that total, ultimate union with God…and we’re still trying to understand and make sense of all the revelation that is packed into Genesis and Exodus. There are things awaiting us in the future that, at this point, we too, like all the generations that went before us, cannot even begin to imagine, much less accomplish, in our own strength and by our puny devices.
So beloved, as we try to comprehend the significance of the commandments for them, and for us, and for all other humans, it may help if we use the analogy of the ‘runway lights’ that all airports supply for pilots who need to land their planes in the middle of the night. Think of the 613 commandments contained in the Torah and the 1050 New Covenant commandments written by Israel’s apostolic servants of God that amplify and further explain the Torah commandments, as a strategically arranged series of bright lights stretching out in the Darkness. They are working together, serving as the brilliant beacons that reveal and highlight the straight and narrow landing path upon which humanity-laden planes, flying at night, can safely land and complete their journeys successfully.
The Word and Spirit of God serve as our indwelling ‘Air Traffic Control Guides.’ We are to maintain ongoing connection and interactive communication with them at all times. And the commandments stretched out before us will serve us, the way those highly illuminated landing strips serve each pilot that tries to make his or her way through the demonic Darkness. God has wisely and strategically placed those beacon-like commandments in an intelligent sequence of flashing lights that light up the Darkness and present an array of Light Messages that will direct us safely all the way Home. Even while we’re still en route, flying through the Darkness, the commandments pierce the Darkness caused by Sin and mankind’s rebellious radical independence and self-centered absorption. And if we pay attention to them and heed what they are telling us and showing us, they will guide us Home safely…to the full Restoration of our true image and likeness level of Humanity.
Because we are flying through the night that is filled with total Spiritual Darkness and its potential lethal Destruction, we must battle enormous turbulent storms. So, if we wish to land safely and at the right location, we have no choice. To complete this Journey successfully, we must have God’s Wisdom and Truth to guide us to safety. So, even though the Serpent put out our spiritual eyes long ago, and although the powers of Darkness are doing their utmost to create destructive turbulence and storms to cause us to crash and burn before God’s Word and Holy Spirit can bring us Home, we have the commandments laid out before us. They shine brightly, bright enough to pierce even the murky clouds within the Darkness and Turbulence caused by their lies and deceptions. Our Air Traffic Controllers and the commandments that light up the outline of the landing strip are here with us…working with us…guiding and directing us onto the proper glide path so that we can land safely.
God’s Spirit is sent to be with us on this Journey…to make God’s Word, real, alive, active and successfully Fruitful in each of our lives. And the Word summons us to follow Him so that He can lead and guide us safely and surely according to God’s true and proper coordinates and headings. And until we actually land and taxi to a safe stop in our Home in the Land of Promise, the commandments will never change or move. Nor will we ever stop needing them to guide and direct us; and all other incoming humans that are en route behind us will need them too. So the commandment lights are utterly essential tools that enable us to make the proper approach at the proper altitude levels so that our Journey can result in a totally accurate, safe and successful, image and likeness of God, landing. If we observe the coordinates that the commandments of God provide, and stick to His Word’s true and proper ‘Flight Plan,’ God will most definitely transform us and guide us all the way Home, safe and sound, regardless of what our demonic enemies may try to do to deceive or damage and destroy us.
This is why the New Covenant Last Days disciples must maintain a true and realistic understanding of what we are currently up against as the Lord draws us to our very important and strategic assignments and deployments while we are en route. We must understand what we are being trained to face and deal with and overcome, as the Serpent prepares to give his all, his last gasp efforts to maximize the Turbulence and Confusion in a final attempt to defeat Almighty God and usurp His Word’s place as Lord of all Creation and destroy His image and likeness.
We must understand all of this background… the foundational Torah revelation that God began to give us in Genesis…before we can know God’s Nature and His changeless ways and laws of Creation. Then we can grasp and benefit from the Exodus commandment ‘coordinates’ that God so mercifully and lovingly supplies for those who will obey His Word and follow Him on their personal Exodus from Sin and the Eternal Death it has inflicted on the entire human race. This is the Flight Plan that God, through His Torah and the rest of the Bible, intends to give to us all.
So…now that we’re considering the fifth commandment, what is our true situation in relation to this commandment at this point of our Journey? We’re still flying through the Darkness; we’re still en route to our final Destination. We’re still experiencing a lot of the terrible turbulence and trouble caused by all the brokenness and damage and gross imperfection that the Serpent inflicted on the human race when our first parents fell into Sin and Death. So, how can we, at this stage of our trek, honor our parents properly, in light of all of the negative spiritual Reality and disadvantages and handicaps with which we must still contend? How are we to respond to parents and family and the often twisted, insanely faulty legacies we inherited from them and have often passed along to our own children? How can we possibly honor our parents and do right by all the other human beings with whom we must live and interact as we continue our Journey Home?
Shall we try to deal with them in a purely worldly way? Shall we try, in our own radical independence to love and honor them by simply relying on our own abilities and strengths that abide within our fallen, very damaged nature? Shall we grit our teeth and try everything we can think of to overcome the woeful Sin-Curse that the Serpent inflicted on us in Genesis? Shall we ignore the limitations inherent in our nature and try to outrun the endless frustration to which our Sinful state dooms us? Shall we give back to the people in our lives all of the imperfection and dysfunction and grief that they have inflicted upon us? Shall we respond to parents, family, friends and enemies according to what they deserve? If they love us and do well by us, do we then love them back in kind? And if they harm, damage and abandon us and fail to meet our needs, do we repay them in kind and force them to harvest whatever they themselves have sown into us?
And what shall we do if our parents and family members insist on rejecting God’s revelation and continue to disobey His Word and grieve His Holy Spirit? Should we accommodate our course to their rebellious desires, in order to have peace at any cost? Should we allow those that are still being oppressed and deceived and driven by the turbulence of deception that our demonic enemies are using against them to persuade us to ‘change course’? Or should we continue to heed the instructions of our Divine ‘Air Traffic Control Directors’, and keep our eyes on the landing strip that is being clearly illuminated and set before us by the commandment beacons?
What God plans to teach us through His commandments is vitally important.
The first four commandments give us the coordinates for our true and proper relationship with our Creator. And the fifth to the tenth commandments deal with how the Creator requires us to deal with and treat His human creation…in light of the fact that all the other humans, just like us, are created by Him, for His own Service…as His beloved image and likeness. So, regardless of how anyone appears to us or how they have affected our personal lives, the fact remains that all the people we meet and will interact with, are God’s property…and He never changes in His Love for them…and He is intent on redeeming and restoring them all to that image and likeness Destiny He intends for them to have and fulfill!
So God is training us to work with Him…to cooperate with His purposes by embodying Him and His Love for them, as we think of them and as we interact with them. We are not to be put off by their current oppressed, spiritually blind condition. We are to view them as He views them. Yes, we see them as they are…but God wants to equip us to keep our spiritual ears focused on the guiding instructions of our Air Traffic Control Directors and our eyes fixed on those commandment beacon lights that outline the right runway. So we must always see the people in our lives…in light of that safe and proper landing. We must regard them as they will be…after God finishes perfecting and preparing them to abide in His Presence and Glory. We must always deal with them in ways that will help them to see and understand our true destination and eternal purpose as God’s image and likeness!
Matthew 5:47-48
“If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect!” (Emphasis added.)
This is true concerning our parents…and it is also true concerning every other person we encounter. So remember the telescope analogy we’ve been using to describe Torah in relation to the other books of the Bible: the telescope has different segments. One follows another; BUT…they are all connected and are meant to work as one instrument, one unit at all times. The books of the Bible work this way, and so do the commandments. The Torah reveals from the first, in Genesis, that we are created to be God’s image and likeness; and it promises to restore us to that original Perfection by the very end, the Book of Revelation. And the commandments are the means by which God intends to accomplish this. So He reveals them in the Torah; and the rest of the Bible explains and amplifies the meaning within them, further and deeper.
So this fifth commandment is important and significant because it is like a door that leads us into everything else that must follow if we’re actually going to finish our Exodus Journey and find the right landing strip on which to land, safely and successfully. Only if that happens will we be able to possess and own and settle into our new home in God’s Land of Promise. Always keep the foundational background you’ve already received in the previous meditations in mind. In order to keep your destination focus clear…and know what heading, direction and coordinates you will have to follow, you must first know what your starting point is. In this sense, the Book of Revelation is going to fulfill to Perfection, what was first revealed to us in the Torah.
Always remember, whenever you consider yourself, or any other human being, including your parents, that God is intent on restoring you, and all the rest of us, back to His Service…as His perfect human image and likeness. Because He is Perfect, we too are to grow and transform until we also are perfect. So every command God gives in Scripture is meant to guide us into this Final Destination. God loves His human image and likeness with an eternal Passion. He must be one with His image and likeness and His image and likeness must be one with Him. This is not going to change, ever! So the commandments are wooing us, drawing us, reshaping and reconfiguring us from the twisted, warped things that Sin has made us to be…into the gradual restoration of what God has eternally intended for us to be…His beloved image and likeness. There is no greater Love than the Love God has for us. That level of Love is reserved for us…all of us! His eternal Love is ours before we start our Exodus from Egypt to Israel…and it will always be ours, during the Exodus and after we finally settle into our new Home in God’s Eternal Israel, for all of Eternity. And only our own deliberate choices to rebel and separate ourselves from His Word, will be able to stop that plan from being fulfilled in our case.
Psalm 136:1-7
“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is Good, for His Lovingkindness is everlasting. Give thanks to the God of gods, for His Lovingkindness is everlasting. Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for His Lovingkindness is everlasting. To Him who alone does great wonders, for His Lovingkindness is everlasting; to Him who made the heavens with skill, for His Lovingkindness is everlasting; to Him who spread out the Earth above the waters, for His Lovingkindness is everlasting; to Him who made the great lights, for His Lovingkindness is everlasting…” (Emphasis added.)
Genesis 17:1
“Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; Walk before Me, and be BLAMELESS!’” (Emphasis added.)
Matthew 5:20
“For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven!” (Emphasis added.)
Matthew 5:43-48
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in Heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is Perfect!” (Emphasis added.)
Luke 6:27-36
“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. Treat others the same way you want them to treat you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is Merciful.” (Emphasis added.)
Beloved, do you see what I meant when I said that the other texts in the Bible explain and amplify and reinforce and fulfill what was first revealed in the Torah about God’s image and likeness? There are different sections to this Biblical ‘telescope’ but it clearly remains one integrated, unified instrument of God’s Self-Revelation. And when He reveals Himself, He is also revealing the true nature and purpose and identity and destiny of each human being He creates. The God-given basis upon which all of our relationships…with parents, spouses, children, relatives, friends, neighbors, strangers and enemies… are to be built and conducted on the same basis! The Love-Nature of God is to be found and embodied and reflected by each human being that God’s Word created and intended to serve as His own image and likeness! Therefore, we are to deal with each and every one of these beings as if we were dealing with the beloved, totally accepted image and likeness of Almighty God Himself! We are to assist God as He continues to ‘garden’ and ‘feed’ and ‘prune and protect His human investment. God’s Eternal Love and the Perfection of His Plan constitute the purpose that underlies all of God’s commandments.
Matthew 22:35-40
“One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law (Torah)?” And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” (Emphasis added.)
So with this revelation, God’s living Word condemns, rejects and throws out all of the inequality, prejudice, discrimination, selfishness, sectarianism and the wicked, destructive brutality that fallen decapitated men love to create, establish, foster and pursue. The ways in which worldly Sinful priorities, structures and systems always operate in this demon-possessed, fallen, broken, Sin-corrupted dog-eat-dog world are not at all the ways of God’s Eternal Kingdom! This world and its system, at this point in the history of God’s dealings with mankind, operate according to the malevolent, destructive, lethal ways of the Serpent! Just look at us! Look at the world that our fallen flesh has designed and created and seeks to fix and maintain! Look at the corrupt greed and soul-murdering lusts and addictions and atrocities and cruelties we inflict on ourselves and upon each other! All of humanity is crippled and handicapped by the gross limitations and imperfections and self-destructive tendencies that Sin has embedded deep within every human heart! Thank the Serpent and his dupes for that. But thank God for the commandments He gives us to reconfigure and transform us back to His Eternal Order and Righteousness that flow out of His Eternal Perfection!
The Perfect Revelation of God’s Living Word
Look at yourself and probe deeply within your own heart! I challenge us all to admit to ourselves that what we see lurking deep within the recesses of our own hearts, falls far short of God’s changeless Perfect, Self-less Love and His Righteousness, Purity and Holiness. God commands us to admit that we have those selfish, self-centered, rebellious, manipulative, deceptive and predatory controlling urges, desires and tendencies. No matter how we try to deny and conceal them, they are the image and likeness of the Serpent…and they continue to ooze and well up from deep within us, as we try to live and interact with each other at this stage of human development! How can any of the humanity that fills the Earth today, in itself, ever assume that it is the true ‘image and likeness’ of our Infinitely Perfect Almighty God? How can any of what is common to us all, be blameless in God’s sight? And how will any of what we can currently offer to Him today, in our arrogant religiosity, ever ‘measure up’ to His Standards?
When the Day of our Final Judgment comes and God’s living Word, the Lamb that was slain on our behalf, measures what we are…against what is in Him…then we will all be confounded and forced to admit that only He, in His Perfect, Sin-less Humanity has been able to meet and pass the requirements of His Father’s infinitely Perfect, Eternal Standards of Righteousness!
Isaiah 6:3-5
“And one (of the Seraphim) called out to another and said, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.’
And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, ‘Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Revelation 5:11-14
“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 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 who sits on the Throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.’ And the four living creatures kept saying, ‘Amen!” And the elders fell down and worshiped.” (Emphasis added.)
Truly does Scripture warn us of the impossibility of our fallen human flesh being able to stand before our awesome Creator and assume airs of self-righteousness and to sing our own praises before Him. Woe to any man in whose heart the corruption of Sin abides, that would dare to glory and crow about what he can accomplish by his own soulish efforts and by corrupted man-made religious rituals and practices and devices in an attempt to cause himself, or any other created thing, to pass God’s Judgment by the workings of his or her puny Sin-twisted mind, will and devices!
This is the point that the entire Bible is trying to help the human race to see, understand and admit to itself: It is impossible for us, in our fallen decapitated, Sin-corrupted state, to improve or ‘fix’ ourselves, or to train and discipline ourselves to be ‘good enough’ in God’s sight. It is impossible for living Death, which abides within the Sin-full human race, to meet God’s infinitely Perfect Standards and aspire to enjoy His Eternal Life. Darkness will never become Light; Death will never become Life; Evil will never transform into Good. Those extremes are eternally incompatible and always war against each other.
Genesis 1:3-4
“Then God said, ‘Let there be Light’; and there was Light. God saw that the Light was Good; and God separated the Light from the Darkness.” (Emphasis added.)
This is another way of presenting and describing that ‘Infinite Chasm of Transcendence’ that separates the infinitely Perfect Nature of Almighty God, from the Sin-corrupted, very limited and damaged nature of fallen Man. And that is the main reason why God has given the awesome commandments to us that are revealed in the Torah, and amplified and explained further in the other, eternally valid Scriptures of the Tanach and the New Covenant apostolic writings:
Romans 3:19-31
“Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.
“But now apart from the Law the Righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His Righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His Righteousness at the present time, so that He would be Just and the Justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
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. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one. Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.” (Emphasis added.)
1 Timothy 1:8-10
“But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully, realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound (Torah-based) teaching…” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Do you see what God is saying, beloved? God does not hate any of us. Nor is He out to torture or frustrate us just because He resists and rejects the drives, urges and passionate appetites of our twisted DNA coding and our Sin-corrupted flesh! He is out to redeem, save, cleanse and regenerate us so we can be completely restored and taken to our proper altitude and status and Inheritance with God Himself. No matter what we’ve done or are currently doing, God loves us and is always the same toward us. But we are still bearing the Sin-contamination that is incompatible with His Perfect Sin-less Love-Nature. And He must deal with the residue of all the Sin that is still within us all. Regardless of our present current situation or condition, we are all contaminated and corrupted by Sin and its effects and the damage it has done to our individual and corporate DNA. And God loves us so much and values us to such an infinite degree, that He sent His living Word to invade the Darkness that enshrouds the demon-possessed Heavens and the Earth. The Word is here to cut us free from the coils of the Serpent and to reclaim us and reconcile us to God, so that God can free and transform us back to what He originally created us to be! The entire human race must begin and complete this awesome Exodus from Death to Life!
So can you understand why it is utterly necessary for our risen Lord and Master Yeshua, God’s Perfect, Eternal Living Word made flesh, to abide and live His Perfect Life from within us, as the Holy Spirit transmits His Life into us? Only the Sin-less Humanity of God’s Living Word passes God’s Perfect Judgment! Only the Word of God, acting as our Eternal Messiah and High Priest before God, can contain the Fullness of Almighty God and give us full shares in it! Only in Him can the Father be well pleased! No fallen flesh will ever be able to make this transition on its own. Only in the Lamb of God, Messiah Yeshua, can all of this be done!
Therefore, in relation to the rest of us, only God’s Word can be the Vine that supplies us! As long as we remain apart from Him and His Perfect Representative Humanity, the rest of us humans are nothing more than totally dead, bankrupt, completely dependent branches. We were totally helpless and bankrupt before God decided to create us out of dust. And this is all the more true of us since our corporate racial fall into Sin and Death. We are but dust…and the dust is now Sin-contaminated! So clearly, God’s Eternal Life and Truth and the Reality of Divine Righteousness, Wisdom, Truth and Eternal Fruit that is fit for God and His Kingdom can only come into us through and from God’s living creative Word! If these Sin-severed, dead branches, that we have all become, are ever going to bear any fruit for God’s Pleasure and Glory, it must be God Himself who gives and provides the Life that is in His Word, by the Power that is in His Holy Spirit! God must originate and create and give everything to His creatures. And so He does. He transmits and gives everything to us. He produces the Fruit that He commands to appear from within us, and He is the one who has the right to harvest that awesome Fruit. He gives to us all the Fruit that we receive from His Word. And we bear that Fruit for God, for His Eternal Purposes and Glory. And the commandments serve as God’s ‘pruning knives’…that clear away anything in us that gets in the way of our ability to be one with our Vine…so that we can bear the glorious Fruit that only He can produce to His Father’s Eternal Glory.
Humans who assume they are ‘okay’ apart from God’s Grace and Mercy are still spiritually blind. If they continue on that course heading, they will crash and burn instead of landing safely at their proper God-intended destination. So when men arrogantly claim to be complete and independent and self-righteous, they are actually allowing the Serpent to reveal himself through their flesh! So when God’s Word was sent to Mt. Sinai to write with His finger on tablets of stone, the Commandments His Father sent Him to reveal, He was revealing Almighty God’s own Perfect Nature! And since Israel was commissioned to be the first fruits of the human race that God intended to redeem and restore, He entrusted the commandments and all that they reveal and require of God and of Man, to them. It is Israel’s God-given commission to embrace, absorb, become and embody what God intends for all of mankind to do be and to do! The commandments are God’s redemptive example or model or salvation template. Israel had to learn to follow that template first. And once Israel blazed the Exodus trail from Egypt to the Land of Promise, the rest of the fallen family of the first Adam would be able to benefit from that ‘Landing Strip in the Darkness’ to follow it and ultimately land upon the Land of Promise in which it abides. This is what every generation of Jews and non-Jews must realize and come to grips with. We must wrestle with the living Word of God who became flesh so that He could reveal God’s Nature and His ways to us…and overcome our Sin-corrupted state…and make us into a brand new, God-approved, image and likeness creation. So when God’s Word made flesh finally is able to conquer us…we are finally able to conquer the powers of Darkness that once enslaved and damned us to Eternal Darkness…
Genesis 32:24-30
“Then Jacob was left alone, and a Man wrestled with him until daybreak. When He saw that He had not prevailed against him, He touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with Him. Then He said, ‘Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.’ But he said, ‘I will not let You go unless You bless me.’ So He said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ He said, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.’ Then Jacob asked Him and said, “Please tell me Your Name.’ But He said, “Why is it that you ask My Name?” And He blessed him there. So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, ‘I have seen God (in Human form) Face to face, yet my life has been preserved.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So when God’s Word commands us to honor our father and mother…He is commanding us to allow Him and the Holy Spirit to bring us to the correct altitude and teach us to follow the coordinates and headings that will lead us into His awesome level of Redemption and Salvation and God-embodying Holiness and Righteousness. And when they begin to emanate and radiate out from our redeemed flesh, they will give evidence that proves that God Almighty is now living and operating from within our Spirit-filled spirit. Only the Presence and Activity of God’s Word in us can produce such awesome, supernatural Fruit from within any man or woman in this world. Only by the Authority of God’s Word and the Power of His Spirit, can we observe and follow any of the commandments in a way that will pass Almighty God’s Righteous Judgment and bring us Home safely. We can’t do it apart from Him; God Himself must be free to do it in our name…through His Word…for His Eternal Glory.
Through His living Word, God Himself is here to be our ‘Covering’ and Newly Restored Life. He revealed His Word, whom we now know as Messiah Yeshua, at various times in the past, in a variety of ways. This is what we see in the Torah with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. And we see it in the rest of the Bible through the prophets that lead up to the era of the New Covenant that God pledged Himself to make with His chosen people, Israel. And now, the New Covenant disciples of Yeshua, the risen Word of God, are equipped to introduce and demonstrate the Fulfillment of all that came before us. Our awesome God is here to rescue, redeem, cleanse and fully restore the fallen human race, through Messiah Yeshua. He is God’s living Word. And He is here to be everything that is necessary to prepare and equip us to face and pass safely through God’s Final Judgment. God is here to be ‘The Infallible Perfect Pilot’ and also the ‘Perfect Air Traffic Controller’ who will guide and fly us to our God-intended Destination on His Side of the Infinite Chasm of Transcendence. Whatever we will need to receive along the way, in order to be fitted and equipped to pass that awesome Final Inspection with flying colors…GOD IS!
So…even though our parents conceived us in the Sin they inherited…even though they too, like all the rest of men, were mortally wounded and twisted and deformed and warped by Sin…even though the DNA coding they had, and passed along to us was badly scrambled and reconfigured by the Serpent’s Sin and Death…God is here with us…to restore us and meet His own Standards and fulfill His own commandments. As long as we learn to abide in His living Word and follow the leading of His Holy Spirit and His written Word in our thoughts, imaginations, choices, actions, reactions and interactions during our life journey through whatever we encounter as we pass through this fallen world, our wonderful God is here to be our Light…the Light that leads us into God’s Salvation, Redemption and Perfect Restoration.
Regardless of what our parents were like, regardless of what they did to us or failed to do for us, regardless of their level of worldly excellence or ignorance or woundedness or twistedness…and what all of that did to us, and what it may have caused us to do or fail to do in our own lives and interactions…our Master, Yeshua the living Word of God, can add His Perfection to our abysmal corporate and individual imperfection. He is here to put His transforming Righteousness into our inherited corruption, guilt and condemnation. He is here to place His Salvation into our perdition…his Eternal Triumph into our abysmal defeat. And only in Him, will we succeed in persevering and overcoming and landing safely on the right landing strip at our true, God-given Final Destination. Although it is true that in ourselves, we are very small, insignificant and weak and limited, Almighty God’s living Word is our Perfect, Eternal Covenant Representative and Redeemer. And He is more than enough to make up for what we so obviously and universally lack.
Abiding in Yeshua’s Perfect Provision
The Perfect One will cover us all, completely and totally, as soon as we receive and allow Him to do it. He IS all that we are not. He IS all that we need and do not have. And He IS everything that is necessary. All the necessary work is finished…and it is into that awesome Perfection and Sabbath Rest that our little human race was originally born. And it is into that same Perfection that our union with the death and resurrection of our Messiah causes us to be resurrected and reborn! This is the Perfect, Infinite and Eternal Inheritance to which our union with Yeshua eternally restores us!
So as we learn to abide with our Redeemer and Restorer…we can allow Him to progressively break and destroy any curses that our wounded forbearers, or any other created beings may have passed on to us. As we allow Him to do that, we exchange our inherited family curses for God’s Eternal Infinitely Perfect Covenant Blessing. We can likewise exchange everything in us and in our ‘family legacy’ that the Serpent imposed upon us…for the Perfect Restoration of our Original Blessing and Covenant Inheritance that the Serpent stole from us in the beginning. We can have it all back…and more besides…when Yeshua our Messiah is enthroned over us and over all that pertains to us. Through us, as Yeshua’s Eternal Life fills us, our forbearers and our future descendants can be blessed and honored and restored…as much as they will allow with their own free will.
We, in ourselves, cannot save anyone. But by our obedient faith in our Redeemer and Restorer, we can cooperate and allow Him to do what is impossible to us…through us. In and through Him, we can introduce what this world, and our family legacies and our circumstances and situations need. We can learn to become ‘God Bringers’ and usher in His Light into the Darkness of this world. And, if we do that, He will be everything God intended for us to be and to have. Oneness with Yeshua puts us in position to receive everything God wants to be for us and give to us. And that is how He equips and empowers us to give what God is in us…to our father, mother, and every other human being our lives will ever touch. And in this way, and only in this way, can we honor our parents and our entire ‘family line’ that goes all the way back to the first Adam.
If we will present ourselves to our Lord and Master, just as we are…with all of our wounds and bitter tragic memories and feelings of shame, rejection, inferiority, abandonment, pain, desolation and hopelessness…if we bring all of that to Him…He will exchange what He is and has…for that. But we must be honest and truthful and completely open and transparent with Him. We must not hold anything back or reserve anything for ourselves and our own control or manipulation. We are not our own. We are our Creator’s property, possession and responsibility by virtue of His Creation and also His by virtue of His Redemption.
So admit the Truth. Give yourself over to God’s living Word. When the Word comes looking for you, asking, ‘Where are you?’, stop hiding. Stop trying to control everything. You cannot even control or change yourself! So come out of your concealment, with your hands up. Run to Him, cast yourself upon His mercy and grace. And allow Him, as your Shepherd, to go over every inch of you on every level so that His Perfection may scan and cover and supply everything God knows that you need.
Matthew 11:27-29
“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.” (Emphasis added.)
If you allow God’s Word to restore you to His image and likeness, you will truly honor the ‘family tree’ and the specific man and woman that gave birth to your body and the original life and name and Sin-corrupted original legacy. And even though they, like you, were so imperfect and Sin-corrupted, Yeshua will make all of that right, for you and for them, as much as each of you will allow. And as He straightens out what is now so crooked and twisted, He will bless and free you from any unholy ties you may have to your parents and any other people, events and situations from your past. As you allow yourself to be included in His Cross and Death, that will cut those things away from you and set you free. And, the people connected at the other end of those unholy entanglements will also be released and set free. And they too, like you, will have the opportunity to receive their freedom and forgiveness and salvation from Him.
Our True Reality – We All Need God!
We cannot save the world or our family or our neighbors. They do not need you or me, or anything else that is created. We all need God’s living Word! Yeshua is the Creator and Sustainer and Redeemer of all things! So we all need to deal with Him. And when we come to Him on His terms, He is free, according to God’s Righteous Law and Standards of Perfection, to deal with all the realities and situations and needs that are impossible for all of us to handle. Only He can redeem and cleanse our past and our present and restore us fully and place us eternally in our God-intended future. He is here to redeem and restore EVERYTHING! No matter how badly beaten, bruised, broken and warped Creation appears today…He is restoring it. So the way it is now, is not how it will be by the End. God’s Love is with us even now, in the Person of His Word and the Person of His Holy Spirit. God is restoring it all. And it is our job, as His Word’s disciples, to embody that Reality and release God to live and work in us and through us, for the good of the rest of His Creation.
Luke 6:35-43
“But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned. Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.”
“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? A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye. For there is no good tree which produces bad fruit, nor, on the other hand, a bad tree which produces good fruit.” (Amplification added.)
The glory and privilege of the Word’s chosen disciples, especially those who are commissioned to live and operate in the Last Days, is that we are to be trained to prepare the way for Him to enter our demon-oppressed realities in the midst of this current ‘Desert’, or, ‘Wilderness’. We can usher in His invisible Spirit-transmitted Presence even while the rest of the world continues to await His Second Coming in Incarnate Form! At that time, the whole world will be able to see Him. But for now, He can be in us and work through us, in His invisible, Spirit-given Form. Our training is equipping us to embody Him even now, by Spirit-imparted, supernatural Faith! His visible, world-encompassing Triumph is coming soon. But until it comes, we can learn to cooperate with His Holy Spirit who is here to lay the Groundwork for restoring God’s Original Perfection throughout all of Creation…starting with this Earth that was originally entrusted to the care of the first Adam. At Present, The Last Adam, the Lamb of God…abides within us…to prepare His chosen ones for this Final Perfect Triumphal Restoration. At this time, He is restoring us…on the inside first…in our spirit and soul. As that progresses, we can cooperate with Him, by the way we embody Him and allow Him to love, honor, respect and bless all of the people in our lives that He is here to restore…beginning with our father and mother.
Isaiah 40:3-5
A voice (God’s living Word) is calling, ‘Clear the way for (Me) the Lord in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, And every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; then the Glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together; for the Mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)