Exodus 20:14
“You shall not commit adultery.”
After we repent of our Sinful radical independence from God, His Holy Spirit ‘impregnates’ us with the Seed of His living Word’s Resurrection Life. Thus the Word of God begins to live, work and produce His fruit from within our regenerated spirits. And tremendous changes begin to take place in us. We become brand new creations when we allow our Messiah to join us to Himself. And we die to our former life of radical independence from God. Our Messiah’s perfect atoning death that He offered to God, in our name, is joined to the death of our self-life. Thus, as soon as we join ourselves to it, our Messiah’s death on the cross strips away our original corporate and individual worldly identities and ‘track records’ and completely removes the personal guilt, shame and condemnation we could never atone for or remove for ourselves. Then, through the impartation of our Messiah’s Resurrection Life, God restores and imparts to us the perfectly righteous identity, nature, purpose and destiny of His own Word! This Perfect living Word is the utterly Righteous Eternal Life that God always intended for us to have, since before Creation took place!
And after God imparts the Life of His Word to us, He begins to teach and train us to forsake and leave behind all that originally belonged to our original fallen ‘living death’ state, which we so ignorantly used to call, ‘my life.’ This exchange from ‘living death to Resurrection Life is far beyond our ability to effect and it is so supernatural that we cannot even comprehend what happened in us, much less walk out the changes that the new Life within us has created. At first, it is our spirits that are new. But our minds and hearts are still the same. Thus they instantly become grossly out of date and are in great need of updating, renewing and reconfiguring. So God requires us to grow into the realization and skill it takes to abide and operate in the miracle that God has done in us. So, after we’re regenerated and filled with God’s Spirit, that old self-life residue must be dealt with…continually and progressively.
And God uses the events and circumstances in our lives that we consider bad and evil, as tools for our training. We try to escape such things; but God incorporates them as He deals with that residue and prepares us to move into the Ultimate Fulfillment of His promises. He doesn’t cause or inflict evil or injustice or tragic events upon us. The Serpent and his Sin-damage do that. But in His Wisdom, God uses those things as ‘boot camp’ training situations to purify, teach, train and prepare us to learn to operate out of the new Life of His Word, who is now ready to take dominion over our heart of hearts. So a continuous renewing and updating of our minds and a corresponding ‘rewiring’ in our brains, begin to take place. This mental and neurological re-alignment is difficult. It is often more rigorous and demanding than any earthly boot camp training could ever be. This training doesn’t merely repress our urges and alter our outward lifestyle…it pierces us to the core and makes brand new beings out of us! But that is what it takes to equip and empower us to ‘outgrow’ all traces of our past worldly lives and leave them behind. Only that can truly set us free and keep us moving further and further along our Exodus Path.
All along the journey, God’s Word serves as our Eternal High Priest. He continues to ‘cover our nakedness’ while we stumble and falter and blunder our way through the course of our training. God’s Word is now our true Master and Head. And we’ve become true living members of His Body on Earth. So now, we are His responsibility.
John 6:39-41
“This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”
This is the awesome Reality for which our Master’s indwelling Spirit must mentally and emotionally equip and train us. We need time to gain the wisdom and skills needed to ‘put on’ and ‘own’ our new identity, status and capabilities, and learn to express and walk them out effectively. Then we can withstand and overcome whatever the powers of Darkness may try to do to derail and destroy our Exodus. In Joseph’s case, his training proved to be more than adequate. When the time for his great temptation and testing arrived, he was ready to deal with it.
The Way God Sees Disciples-in-Training
One day Rabbi Yeshua gave His disciples an awesome parable in which He revealed the tremendous value and significance we have in God’s eyes. When we finally surrender to the Authority of God’s Word, then through Him, we become one with the Father and His Holy Spirit! He makes us to be awesome spiritual beings! We are now equipped to begin to share in all of His Fullness. And that makes us to be God’s treasured, cherished people indeed. Here is the parable Yeshua shared:
Matthew 13:44
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” (Emphasis added.)
God’s living Word lived on Earth as The Son of Man. He is The Last Adam or Covenant Representative for the human race. In that capacity, He legally redeemed us from Sin and Death by offering His Sin-less human life and shedding His Covenant Representative Blood in Full Atonement for our corporate and individual state of Sin. Thus we see what is meant in the parable: God gave all He had (He gave Himself, through His living Word) to buy the whole field (the entire human race). He made full payment for all humans – knowing that many would continue to reject Him! But why did God make sure that His Redemption and Restoration would be so completely comprehensive?
He did it to make sure that none of those who would respond to Him would be lost. He made absolutely sure they would be included. They are ‘The Treasure’! God places enormous value in the precious beings He created to be His image and likeness, even those that ultimately reject Him! So our Messiah’s absolute redemptive Authority redeemed or ‘bought back’ the entire human race that the first Adam gave up to the Serpent. And even after He has totally destroyed the works of the powers of Darkness and has taken back all Authority and Dominion over all of Creation, even over those who continue to reject Him, He leaves those who truly are His among those who refuse to be His. And He uses the conditions caused by the natural conflict that arises between the two groups, to educate, purify, and train and make those who are His, eminently fit for His service.
Thus do we remain hidden in this ‘boot camp’ of a world…while our Master corrects, realigns, refits and trains and shows us how to face and work through all the wickedness, injustice and brutality that surround us! This is what in other articles we call, ‘The Arena of Testimony’. We are being prepared to pass the tests we’ll face in that Arena, thanks to the struggles we endure as we’re learning to understand and walk in God’s ways…under combat conditions. And while we struggle to learn and grow, our Redeemer and High Priest intercedes for us and covers our imperfections and fills in our ‘gaps’, with His Perfect Righteousness. This is how much value God sees in us. This is why He calls us – even though we’re still, obviously, very imperfect – His precious personal Treasure or, in Hebrew, His Segulah.
This is how it was with Joseph and Moses. God set them apart and hid them while He was getting them ready to fulfill their assignments. During their long periods of training, they remained insignificant and anonymous. Joseph was younger and smaller than his brothers. And because of his favor with Jacob, they jealously held him in contempt and eventually sold him into slavery. And Moses was educated and prepared for royal Egyptian status, only to be forced out into the wilderness in disgrace. And for forty years, he was relegated to be a ‘nobody’, a nomadic sheepherder living in the solitude of the Midian wilderness. To these two Israelites it most certainly seemed as if their lives were over and nothing significant was ever going to happen to them. But in truth, they were in ‘boot camp’, preparing for the awesome things that God had waiting for them in the future. In Truth, despite their lonely hidden anonymity and harsh conditions, much was happening. They were being steeled, toughened, taught and purified. God was weaning them from any trust in this Titanic of a world that remained in them. In other words, they were coming to know the living God, as He really is! And that weaned them of idolatry and fitted and equipped them to observe God’s first commandment! Gradually, they extracted the roots of their allegiance and trust away from this world, and transplanted them into the Perfection and Fullness of God’s living Word!
God gave them time to learn and to undergo the discipline and training they needed to develop wisdom and skill in withstanding the powers of Darkness so that they would be ready to engage their enemies in ‘The Arena’. The true disciples of God’s Word are of the utmost value and importance in His Eternal Plan. So He takes great pains to forge them for combat and the fulfillment of their assigned tasks. Then, when they’re trustworthy and reliable, He is able to reach out to the still-decapitated humans all around them. It is precisely because God places so much responsibility and trust upon them that He prepares them so rigorously. The importance of their commissions makes it essential that they become eminently wise, reliable and invincible.
So is it with us. When our Master begins with us, we’re raw untrained recruits. So He must begin to teach us to identify with Him, just as much as He has identified with us. We must learn to do everything with Him and to draw from the Perfection of His Finished Work at all times. He must become our one and only Source for all things. So he weans us from our addiction to this fallen world. And we gradually learn to work with Him and from, only Him. We become extensions of His Perfect Presence, even as He becomes our indwelling Life. And we’re trained to do everything as one with Him, as one unit. This is what our Marching Orders are all about! It takes boot camp-level training to render us able to carry out those Marching Orders. [See The Original Marching Orders section on the website for more detailed information.]
Sometimes our Master stations and deploys us in the exact same place and situations we were occupying when He found us. But at other times, especially if He has to remove us from Sinful entanglements and demonic overload, or if we require special training in order to do our jobs properly, He ‘transfers’ us to other more appropriate sectors of this world. But regardless of where He may lead and deploy us, we are already His, under His command and wearing His uniform. So as we learn to abide in His Presence, we are no longer ‘exempt civilians’. We are continually ‘on duty’, and never again are we allowed to be part of this world. We remain IN it…living among the living dead people who continue to reject and ignore our Master, but we are no longer part of them in any way, shape or form.
Matthew 10:26-30
“Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.”
We live in the midst of a generation that is so addicted to indulging its sexual passions and pleasures that it is ready to kill, in order to maintain and protect its utterly immoral attitudes and lifestyles! Joseph, Moses and the prophets lived in the same kind of atmosphere. And so did Yeshua and His apostles and disciples. Regardless of the era, boot camp training remains the same.
Joseph became intensely aware of God’s living Word while he was very young. He learned that from his father Jacob. And he was in ‘boot camp’ while he tried to share with his family what God’s Word had revealed to him about his destiny and unique purpose. But his brothers were jealous. So they scoffed, rejected and derided Joseph. This was all part of boot camp. And his training continued when they put him into that pit, and later sold him into slavery. And it continued all the while he was working his way into Potiphar’s total trust. All that time, Joseph was an anonymous, hidden nobody in this world. And no one receives special privileges or high rankings while they are going through boot camp.
The Testimony and Example Joseph Gave
But when it was time for Joseph to be put to the test through the temptation to commit adultery with Potiphar’s wife, what his boot camp had taught him was already deeply engrained and deeply established. It was already operating at full speed because Joseph had fully internalized his training. It was now his unconscious, instinctive reaction pattern. He was God’s Blood brother, through thick and thin. He was an Israelite, chosen by God for special duty. So he knew what to do and how to do it. And he knew why he had to do it.
It was very fortunate for his family – and the future nation of Israel – and all those from the families of the earth who would later be saved through the Messiah’s Perfect Atonement, that Joseph was so well prepared. The Serpent could have decapitated him at that critical time when his master was away and the seductress began to make her move. But Joseph’s early immersion into God’s Covenant ways had prepared his soul. He was hardened and steeled to withstand that most severe level of demonic pressure and opposition. Throughout the gut-wrenching temptation, the Serpent failed to sever Joseph’s mental perspective from the Perfect Presence of God’s living Word. He couldn’t drag Joseph’s soul into the Darkness of this fallen world’s God-less, self-centered perspectives. Joseph wasn’t fooled or intimidated. He never saw himself as a poor, helpless, abandoned victim who was at the mercy of overwhelming forces. He was not impressed with the grandeur and power of Egypt that surrounded him. He saw it, to be sure; but he could also see much more beside that. His habitual perspective, or ‘set of mental Covenant glasses,’ enabled him to see the awesome Presence of Almighty God who was at the center of everything that surrounded and concerned him. And God’s awesome Presence dwarfed and overwhelmed everything the Serpent used from Egypt to try to intimidate and discourage him. Because of His God-centered perspective, Joseph refused to identify with the ways of the Egyptians. His destiny was to be a blessing to all the families of the world, rather than being swallowed up by the Darkness of the families of this world.
So God was always with Joseph, just as He is always with everyone else. But the major difference with Joseph and with disciples like him, was this: in Joseph’s mind, heart, soul and will, Joseph was also always with God! God and Joseph were ‘on the same page’! And this is what our Marching Orders are meant to train us to be and to do, as well.
Joseph did not live by sight or by his own limited human reckoning, or how his flesh may have been feeling. He was not a slave to his circumstances or even to his powerful human appetites. Yes, he was a slave outwardly and legally to his Egyptian masters. But in his heart of hearts he was totally free of the Serpent’s coils, free from the tyranny of fallen flesh and Sin and the Death-inflicting activities that were so common to the Serpent’s human slaves among whom he was forced to live. Nothing demonic was able to ‘hack into’ Joseph’s inner workings. There was no opening offered to the worldly influences through which the Serpent sought to infect the sanctuary of Joseph’s heart. His was the heart of a True Israelite. It was a heart that was exclusively reserved for the ownership and exclusive occupancy of His Covenant Lord. Nothing created was allowed to usurp that sacred place. His heart remained the exclusive Throne Room that belonged only to the living Word of God!
Psalm 25:1-7
“To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in You I trust, do not let me be ashamed; do not let my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none of those who wait for You will be ashamed; those who deal treacherously without cause will be ashamed. Make me know Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your Truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; for You I wait all the day. Remember, O Lord, Your compassion and Your lovingkindness, for they have been from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to Your lovingkindness remember me, for Your goodness’ sake, O Lord!”
Matthew 10:32-33
“Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.”
God’s Word and Holy Spirit did a beautiful job of preparing Joseph during his hidden years of anonymity. Just as God had prepared Isaac and Abraham and Jacob before him, and just as He would prepare Moses and many others after him, so also in His Eternal Perfect Covenant Faithfulness, God prepared Joseph. His Word was always in the center of Joseph’s perception. And that blessed viewpoint served as the lenses of Joseph’s God-given mental eyeglasses. And that is why Scripture so pointedly tells us, several times, that, ‘God was with Joseph.’
Acts 7:9-10
“The patriarchs became jealous of Joseph and sold him into Egypt. Yet God was with him, and rescued him from all his afflictions, and granted him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he made him governor over Egypt and all his household.” (Emphasis added.)
God was with Joseph in the sense that Joseph was always aware of God’s Presence and abided in Him. As we said, God is with everybody! But not everybody knows or acknowledges this. So God was with Joseph because Joseph always kept that fact in the center of his stream of consciousness. From what Scripture reveals, theology infers that Almighty God is infinitely Perfect. Thus He is omnipresent. He abides continually with every speck of His Creation. He is with all humans, giving to each one of us every heartbeat, breath and brain wave we will ever experience. So in that sense, He is always with all of us. If He were to abandon us for one moment, we would ‘blink off’ and disappear! But what Scripture is revealing here is much more personal. It is a revelation of Joseph’s heart in relation to God. The trouble with most of mankind is that most people are not with God in the same abiding, interactive way that He is with us. Our decapitated Serpent-induced worldly perspectives and lines of reasoning make us blind and deaf to God and what He is doing at all times on our behalf. Thus we forget and ignore Him, and leave Him out of the considerations of our hearts. Then, to fill the vacuum that creates within us, we seek other gods, false non-existent sources, with which to try to meet our own needs. The habitual perspectives and lifestyles of such people erase God’s Word and all that He is here to be and to do on our behalf. Self-life lenses drag us into a state of hypnosis…forcing us to believe that we are the center of the universe, that everything revolves around us, and that we are independent lords, free to live and do as we please.
Self-Centered, or God-Centered?
As we said, the habitually God-less perspective that the fallen world is so intent on using, creates an enormous vacuum and void in the hearts and lives of the people who are stuck in it. Their radically independent viewpoint makes them totally Self-centered. God has no place within the meditations, drives and aspirations of their self-absorbed hearts. That’s why they feel no need to make their Exodus from the sinking Titanic. On the contrary they keep investing everything they have in it, to make sure they receive the very best that it can offer. And so they idolize and adore their sexual urges, passions and pleasures, and assign to them the ultimate value and priority. But yet, that innate need and desire to be one with God remains within their Sin-corrupted blinded, deafened faculties. Thus, to find a semblance of ‘connectedness’ and ‘union’, they worship the false god of Sex, and look to created beings like themselves to take the true God’s place. Thus they remain totally blind and deaf to the real God, who is always with them, ready to take them off of ‘The Titanic’.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
But Joseph, Moses, Joshua and Caleb were fully trained. So they had spiritual eyes to see and ears to hear what the Holy Spirit was saying to all of God’s human creation. They wouldn’t settle for anything less than union with the true, living God. And Yeshua Himself lived that same, fully trained disciple life…to Perfection…IN OUR NAME! He was always in perfect touch with the Spirit of His Father. He never thought or acted independently of God or His Eternal living Word. Yeshua was the Perfect Human image and likeness of His Father. And He did that so that He could perfectly fulfill all of God’s Commandments…IN OUR NAME! And God’s living Word is with us too, at all times, through the Holy Spirit, to do the very same thing…live His Perfect Life from within us! He is here to teach us how to be filled with and overflow with and radiate and release the Perfect Presence and Glory of God’s Eternal living Word…into every thought, action, reaction and interaction that God entrusts to our care.
The Book of Acts makes it a point to say the same thing about Yeshua that Genesis said about Joseph: ‘and God was with him.’ Thus we see how God was revealing His living Word, who would one day become flesh, through the life of Joseph. That is why the promised Messiah was sometimes called by Israel: ‘Mashiach Ben Yosef’ or ‘Messiah Son of Joseph.’
Acts 10:38-39a
“You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. We are witnesses of all the things He did, both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem.”
Even when Potiphar’s seductive wife threw herself at Joseph, and luridly tried to arouse his passions, Joseph did not see himself as being alone with her. In his perspective, he was not a poor victimized defenseless slave, at the mercy of this woman’s enticements. He saw and heard her…but he was also seeing and hearing something much greater, something with much more substance, something real and true and Eternal! His heart and soul remained focused on the Perfect Presence of God’s living Word, and what the Word had revealed and promised to him. Joseph never separated his mind and heart from His Covenant Friend. He never forgot about God, or the Israelite identity He had given to him, in order to chase after the false, cheap demonic substitute gods of Egypt.
Genesis 39:12-21
“She caught him by his garment, saying, ‘Lie with me!’ And he left his garment in her hand and fled, and went outside. When she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled outside, she called to the men of her household and said to them, ‘See, he has brought in a Hebrew to us to make sport of us; he came in to me to lie with me, and I screamed. When he heard that I raised my voice and screamed, he left his garment beside me and fled and went outside.’ So she left his garment beside her until his master came home. Then she spoke to him with these words, ‘The Hebrew slave, whom you brought to us, came in to me to make sport of me; and as I raised my voice and screamed, he left his garment beside me and fled outside.’
“Now when his master heard the words of his wife, which she spoke to him, saying, ‘This is what your slave did to me,’ his anger burned. So Joseph’s master took him and put him into the jail, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined; and he was there in the jail. But the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him, and gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer.” (Emphasis added.)
This was Stephen’s secret also. He was well-prepared for combat in ‘The Arena of Testimony’. The Holy Spirit was able to keep God’s living Word, real, alive, active and eminently fruitful in and through his thoughts, words and deeds even while he was under the deadliest, most intense enemy fire! The Serpent never got his way with Joseph or Stephen. He could not ‘decapitate’ these faithful Israelites because they refused to think of themselves as ‘abandoned helpless victims.’ They were True Israelites…true ‘Blood brothers’ to Almighty God. They remained in constant touch with their True Head, the Word of God. Their hearts were rendering priestly service to God’s Word at all times. And thus they avoided the Serpent’s efforts to ‘decapitate’ them.
Acts 7:54-60
“Now when they (the Judean Jews) heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him (Stephen). But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’ But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse. When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him; and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul. They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!’ Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” Having said this, he fell asleep.” (Emphasis added.)
Philippians 4:11-13
“Not that I (Paul) speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH HIM WHO STRENGTHENS ME!” (Emphasis added.)
Yeshua, Our Only Source
What is this Secret? It is Yeshua Himself, God’s living Word. He is real and risen from the dead and He promised to be with us all days, in all circumstances! He is the Spirit-imparted One. It is His Word of God-Life, or Messiah-Life, that God puts into His faithful disciples. God’s Word is the one who was with Joseph and Stephen, and all the rest. He is the one that the True Israel is trained and prepared to be able to see and hear, regardless of circumstances. He was abiding with the prophets throughout Israel’s subsequent history. He was with Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, and Peter, James, John and Paul and all of the others. This is what Adam and Eve failed to grasp. But now that it is our turn to learn this, He is here with you and me, and every other faithful man or woman of God to teach, train and prepare us to abide with Him and to draw everything FROM HIM, all the way to the end!
Joseph demonstrated to perfection what the identity, purpose and destiny of one who follows God’s living Word looks like, and how God works through such people. Joseph knew the secret of remaining intimately, personally, lovingly connected to this awesome Word. So he was able to continually draw everything he needed from His Divine Creator, Sustainer, Provider and Protector, regardless of what was happening around him. Instead of opening himself up to what the Serpent was doing to manipulate that poor woman, Joseph never allowed the Serpent to decapitate and drag him into his Darkness. He remained bathed in the Light that comes from God’s Word. And so, he stood and held his God-given Ground. He resisted the Serpent…and there was nothing the Serpent could do about it because the only thing he has to work with are empty lies that have no substance in God’s True Reality. The living Truth in Joseph’s heart, trounced the empty lies coming from the decapitated Serpent and his slave.
Therefore Joseph never strayed from the Source. He remained in position to share in the continuous Fountain of Blessing that God always gives to His Word, His beloved Son. Joseph remained one with the Word, so he also remained one with the Infinite Inheritance of the Word. Instead of settling for cheap, counterfeit substitute gods, the way most humans do, Joseph remained rooted in the One True God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Genesis 17:1a-2
“I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless. I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.”
Hebrews 1:1-3
“God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the Word of His Power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…” (Emphasis added.)
God’s Perfect, Eternal Love-Nature never stops giving of the Fullness that is in Him. He does that through His living Word and Holy Spirit. But most of humanity allows the Serpent to drag them out of position, away from the eternally changeless cascade of Life, Provision and Protection that never stops flowing out of God’s Perfect Presence. His Fullness is always here for us too. So it’s never a matter of whether or not God will be with us, or whether He cares about us or whether He is able to fulfill His promises, or not. It’s always a matter of whether or not we will, in our inner habitual perspective, choose to train ourselves to hold our Ground and stay with God! As long as we abide with His Word and believe and operate as one Blood Covenant Unit with Him at all times, He is free to share the Fullness of His changeless Love-Nature that He wholeheartedly desires to bestow upon us. He has sworn by His Eternal Blood Covenant Oath to be here for us at all times! And nothing in all of Creation can stop that from happening, except unbelief. He is with us…as long as we abide with Him…in the obedience of faith.
Matthew 21:20-22
“Seeing this, the disciples were amazed and asked, ‘How did the fig tree wither all at once?’ And Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen. And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.’”
God Himself, Our Habitation
So our Master’s ‘Follow Me!’ command is not a call to join some man-created religion or man-controlled religious denomination or a certain elitist group of people. It is not about embracing and trying to follow specific theologies or religious formulas. It is a command to come under the absolute Authority of the living Word of the True, one and only, living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and to abide with Him in His Perfect Presence so that He can regenerate us and make brand new creations of us and guide and lead us by His own Spirit! When God’s Word truly becomes our indwelling Life, THEN we are equipped to see and to hear into the spiritual realms and finally be in touch with the enormous realm of God’s Heavenly Reality that is all around us, Reality that we’ve never been able to apprehend or explore before.
Many cannot follow God’s Word because they do not really submit to His Authority. He has not yet been allowed to pierce, penetrate and impregnate them with this new totally supernatural, Heavenly Eternal Life that only comes from Him. Many strive to be religious in self-righteous, performance-oriented ways. But few truly see themselves to be the personal property of God’s Word. Nor do they know how to rest and rejoice in and rely solely upon, the Perfection of His Finished Work! So they wear themselves out pursuing false gods and inventing false religions. But they never come close to obeying His ‘Follow Me!’ command.
Our Master requires something that is much more intensely personal and intimate than merely dabbling on the outer fringes and involving ourselves with religious matters that are one, two, three or more steps removed from His Person. He requires us to come to Him, to the living Person of the living Word Himself, on His terms! He must be the center of our mental perspective. He must be able to rule over us and interact with us so that He can permeate and rule within our stream of consciousness. He must be more than a topic of study and discussion. He must be the very Air we breathe, the Life that we live, the Food and Drink we consume and the Eternal Object of our wholehearted love, devotion and attention!
Joseph and Stephen were part of God’s Segulah, or Personal Treasure. Disciples that are fully trained, as they were, remain as one with God in their hearts and minds. They remember their Eternal Covenant Bond with Him and abide habitually in His Perfect Presence even in the worst of circumstances. In that way, God can be with them in a living, interactive way at all times and in all things; and they can continually draw from His Perfect Fullness and see their circumstances and situations transform into things of beauty and glory. Such people will not lack anything. The Egyptians looked at Joseph and saw only a Hebrew slave; and the murderers of Stephen beheld him and were only able to see a contemptible ‘heretic’. But God looked at them and saw – His personal Treasure! That’s because those two Israelite disciples didn’t have to think or act or live like the God-less, decapitated humans who lived around him. God described what decapitated people would be like in Genesis:
“To the woman He said, ‘I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’
Genesis 3:16-19
“Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have (rejected My living Word and instead) 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 (because you gave the dominion I gave you, over to the Serpent. Now, because he has you in his coils and he has separated you from Me); 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.’” (Amplification added.)
But disciples like Joseph never lose sight of God’s Word. They faithfully follow His lead. And that keeps them in the proper obedience-position that places them directly under the endless cascade of God’s All-Sufficient Blessing. When worldly people allow the Serpent to drag them away from God and into the Darkness, he removes them far away from the cascade of God’s Blessing. Thus fallen sons of Adam remain out of position, far removed from the Word’s Blessing Flow…until they repent of their God-less state of Sin and radically independent thinking and living…and return to the Ground that God intends to give to His image and likeness.
God’s Covenant friends hear His Word and do what He says. So they have the privilege, honor and opportunity of always being filled with His abiding, indwelling, Spirit-imparted Presence. They are no longer God-Seekers, they transform into God-Bringers! So our task is to bring God’s Light into the Serpent’s Darkness. We are part of our Master’s Invasion Force. We are not here to be victims of this world; we are here to accompany our Master as He takes His rightful place over this world as Absolute Lord and Master.
Matthew 10:34-39
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword! For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it!” (Emphasis added.)
This is what prepares us to overcome in The Arena of Testimony. It is the wisdom of Job, who, remained true to what God’s Word had revealed to Him despite the tragedies that befell him. This is the pattern God uses in the lives of all true disciples of His Word. They follow Him through thick and thin, for better or for worse, in sickness or in health, for life or for death. And the good news is, that unlike earthly human marital covenant unions, death can’t separate us from His Eternal Life. Our natural death will serve as a Birth Canal that will usher us into Almighty God’s Eternal Embrace and the Blood Covenant Blessings and Inheritance that He revealed to us during our earthly life will permeate our new regenerated Reality throughout all of Eternity!
Isaiah 64:3-5
“When You did awesome things, which we did not expect, You came down; the mountains quaked at Your Presence. For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him. You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, who remembers You in Your ways.” ( Emphasis added.)
1 Corinthians 2:6-9
“Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a Wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s Wisdom in a mystery, the hidden Wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the Wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; but just as it is written, ‘Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.’” (Emphasis added.)
The Disciples’ Commission
Today’s Last Days disciples are assigned to their posts. They are commissioned to stay ‘in the world.’ That’s part of the training. God is preparing them for His future strategic, military purposes. But in order to carry out their God-bringing, Word-embodying assignments, they must first be trained until they become fully aware that they are no longer ‘of the world.’ They must learn to fill themselves continually with the same Holy Spirit of God who once filled the body of Rabbi Yeshua when He walked the Earth.
Ephesians 5:3-21
“But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them; for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the Light, for everything that becomes visible is Light. For this reason it says, ‘Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’
“Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine (or any other addiction that blots God’s living Word out of your mind, heart and life), for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit (who makes God’s Word alive and real to you, in you and through you), speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear (profound personal love for, trust in and respect) of Christ.” ( Amplification and emphasis added.)
God’s Holy Spirit makes us one with Yeshua; and Yeshua makes us one with the Father who sends Him to us. So we are no longer condemned or cursed to remain as we were from our beginning. Now we can be new creations and transform into a completely different race, a chosen people, a royal priesthood that are deployed on Earth to be Warriors of God’s Truth and Light. Now we are commissioned to live with, and for, and by, and FROM – Almighty God – in all things and at all times!
Genesis 2:1-3
“…Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it HE RESTED FROM ALL HIS WORK which God had created and made!”
God’s Design for Human Sexuality
It is into God’s Perfection – the Perfection of His unique All-Sufficiency – that God’s Word summons us to follow and abide with Him. He created all sexuality. He designed and made the human body and endowed it with all of its faculties, organs, appetites and natural urges. He created it and judged it all to be ‘very good.’ There is nothing dirty or nasty or unworthy in anything that God has created. He created our bodies to be sacred, holy and honorable. He made us with the need to be close to each other and to enjoy marital intimacy and procreate children. God in His Perfect Wisdom and Love and Eternal Changelessness, put those needs and desires into each one of us to perpetuate the human race! So He will always hold human beings in high esteem and endow them with the utmost value, respect, affection and regard.
The Ten Commandments are not telling us that created things which pertain to sexuality are bad or nasty or ‘off limits’ to us. They are not saying that the human appetites and desire for certain pleasurable acts are bad or despicable! He’s not telling us that He is disgusted and put off by the people He has created when they feel these strong urges. Nor is He saying that He holds certain people in contempt because of certain ‘different’ feelings or urges that they truly feel and struggle with in their fallen, Sin-corrupted state. God has not discriminated against certain people and doomed them to hell and perdition! He’s not telling us that certain parts of the human race that He created are destined to be His image and likeness and others are destined to be His wicked, evil, perverse and unacceptable enemies! God does not discriminate or play favorites!
He’s telling us that we’re all born into a broken fallen world; and that every one of us is a broken, fallen person. He’s telling us that the beautiful human nature He gave to us in the beginning was horribly wounded and mutilated by Sin. He’s telling us that we have ALL been damaged and disfigured by Sin. He’s informing us that we ALL inherited the state of Sin and were born with its death already lurking in and consuming our bodies! So in that sense, we’re ALL born on ‘The Titanic’. We’re all ‘living dead’ beings. It doesn’t matter what color we are, or what religion we belong to, or what god we choose to worship, or what our sexual urges may try to get us to do. It doesn’t matter whether we prefer one type of sinful activity to other kinds of sinful activities. Those are all symptoms and signs of the living death that is already in us! Those are things that decapitated people aboard the sinking ship do. It isn’t that some things they do on the Titanic are okay, and other things are not. Nothing that is done aboard that doomed hulk will pass. They must get off that ship and allow God to regenerate them and make new creations of them! None of us can do that for ourselves! We were all born ‘dead in trespasses and sins’ because we are born to parents that gave birth to us aboard the doomed Titanic!
John 3:6-7
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again!’”
God’s Word warns the world about the Serpent and Sin and the Darkness and Death they have inflicted upon His beloved human creation! He is telling us how much He values and cherishes and desires to have us for Himself once more. He is showing us the Darkness into which the Serpent dragged us all. He is showing us the difference between that Darkness and His Eternal Heavenly Light. He is showing us how far the blast of Sin has scattered us from our true identity, purpose and destiny, and what it’s going to take to redeem, cleanse, regenerate and restore us to His Perfect, Eternal Standards of Righteousness!
The Word proclaimed God’s commandments from atop Mt. Sinai. They were accompanied by loud Shofar (ram’s horn) blasts that echoed and reverberated all over the Earth…and into the farthest reaches of the Time and Space Universe. He proclaims the commandments…to wake us and arouse us from our demon-induced stupor. He uses them to wake us up to our true helpless, bankrupt and hopeless condition. He gives them to summon us back to Himself…back to Truth, Sanity, Wisdom, Righteousness and true, authentic Humanity so that He can connect us to Himself and impart His Eternal Life and Righteousness back into us!
And when we come to know His ways, we realize that He has come to be our New Eternal Life. And He, by the indwelling Holy Spirit whom He gives us, will be able to be what only He can be… and obey His Father as only He can do it… from within our yielded flesh and regenerated spirits. By the Holy Spirit’s Power, He will keep the Law from within us…in our name. And that is how He will lead us forward, through the full extent of our Exodus… out of the clutches of the Serpent… and into the Eternal Embrace of our Heavenly Father. This is the True Exodus!
Ezekiel 36:24-32
“For I will take (separate) you from the nations (God-less pagans), gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God. Moreover, I will save you from all your uncleanness; and I will call for the grain and multiply it, and I will not bring a famine on you. I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field, so that you will not receive again the disgrace of famine among the nations. Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and your abominations. I am not doing this for your sake,’ declares the Lord God, ‘let it be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel!’”
The commandments are a revelation of how God intends to free and separate the radically God-less captivated human race from the coils of the Serpent! And that revelation will help us understand the true meaning and purpose of Israel. It is His intent to form all humans, Jew and non-Jew alike, into a New Creation. He began with the natural children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And from there He has continually reached out in all directions to the rest of the world, in order to create a human corporate gathering, a human Body in and from which God’s own living Word might abide and from which He can be revealed throughout the Earth. And that Restoration process is still going on.
Isaiah 60:1-5
“Arise, shine; for your Light (God’s living Word) has come, And the Glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, Darkness will cover the Earth And deep Darkness the peoples; But the Lord will rise upon you (My Israel) and His Glory will appear upon you. Nations (God-less Gentiles) will come to your (Master’s) Light, and kings to the brightness of your (Master’s) rising. Lift up your eyes round about and see; they all gather together, they come to you (as you serve as the Word’s image and likeness). Your sons will come from afar, and your daughters will be carried in the arms. Then you will see and be radiant, and your heart will thrill and rejoice; because the abundance of the sea will be turned to (the Lord who abides in) you, the wealth of the nations (God-less Gentiles) will come to (the Lord who summons them to Himself from within) you.” (amplification added.)
Hear (Obey), O Israel…
The prophets of Israel rightly reminded and warned God’s chosen people to pay heed to what the commandments of God are revealing to Israel, as well as to all the families of the earth. The commandments lay out the Narrow Path upon which God’s Word is sent to lead us all. The Person of God’s living Word Himself, and sole reliance upon Him and His Perfect Finished Work is the Narrow Path. And to stray from that path is to revert back to Sin, Self-life, Death and Darkness, to work on the side of the forces of Wickedness.
Micah 2:1-2
“Woe to those who scheme iniquity, who work out evil on their beds! When morning comes, they do it, for it is in the power of their hands. They covet fields and then seize them; and houses, and take them away. They rob a man and his house, a man and his inheritance.”
And so God sends His Word to all men, including all of the Gentiles who serve false gods and follow their own religions. They too will be included…IF…they will believe and obey and serve His living Word as true disciples. God will join them to His other believing, obedient Treasure, His Segulah. Through them, He will reveal and display His Eternal Faithfulness to every speck of His enormously vast, indescribably beautiful, Sin-wounded Creation, including the angelic hosts and the human family. And the revelation of His Eternal Covenant Faithfulness will be the rock solid foundation and anchor and cornerstone of the marriages between men and women.
Matthew 19:3-12
“Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?’ And He answered and said, ‘Have you not read (in Genesis) that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.’
“They said to Him, ‘Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.’
“The disciples said to Him, ‘If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.’ But He said to them, ‘Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it (My Spirit-imparted Resurrection Life) has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able (equipped by the Holy Spirit’s New Covenant regeneration) to accept this, let him accept it.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Beloved, notice what the response of the disciples was, and how our Master responded to it: ‘Not all men can accept this statement, but only to those to whom it has been given…’ Who are the ones that can’t accept it? And who are the ones to whom it has been given? The ones that cannot accept it are those who remain decapitated and marooned in the Serpent’s state of radical independence. Because of their spiritually ‘decapitated’ state, they are oblivious to God’s living and written Word. They cannot pick up its ‘wave length’ because they remain once-born children of the first Adam. They are the ones that Scripture calls, ‘sons of disobedience’. They WILL NOT accept God’s commandments because they CANNOT accept them. Only those who have been ‘born twice’ or ‘born again’ are equipped to recognize and embrace the living Word of God. He is the Sword of the Holy Spirit. And if that Divine Sword has not yet been accepted and allowed to pierce, penetrate and impregnate a person’s innermost being with the Eternal Life and dynamic, transforming Love Nature of God’s living Word, the glories that Scripture reveals and commands will not appear or register within their Sin-corrupted faculties. The Word won’t be alive and penetrating for them; nor will it bear any fruit in their hearts and lives. But God has always had the salvation of the entire human race in mind, even when He first picked Abram out of the midst of Chaldea, and chose to include him and his natural and spiritual Family in His Eternal Blood Covenant and its Inheritance:
Genesis 12:1-3
“…I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you ALL THE FAMILIES of the earth will be blessed.” (Emphasis added.)
And now we can see with greater clarity what Yeshua meant in the parable when he said:
Colossians 3:1-4
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again…
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.“ (Emphasis added.)
Once we are in God’s Covenant and are under the absolute Authority of our True Head, God’s Word, then the Word Himself becomes our indwelling Life. From then on, He is to live and operate and obey His Father from within us. And, instead of continuing to think of ourselves from a decapitated, radically independent, self-life perspective, we must be equipped and trained to see Yeshua as our one and only Life…training us to allow Him to live in us and do everything from within us.
John 3:29-31
“He who has the Bride is the Bridegroom; but the friend of the Bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the Bridegroom’s Voice. So this joy of mine has been made full. He must increase, but I must decrease. He who comes from above is above all, he who is of the Earth is from the Earth and speaks of the Earth. He who comes from Heaven is above all.”
Israel’s True Remnant and the New Covenant
This is the era in which the New Covenant that God promised through His prophets to fulfill for His True Israel, is going to be fulfilled. God added this Covenant so that His Eternal Covenant, and the Covenants He made previously with His chosen people, would finally be renewed and fulfilled to Perfection, by the only One who could do it – the Word of God Himself. This is part of the depths of Truth that the seventh commandment expresses. It is about God’s relationship with His True, Jewish and non-Jewish assembly of disciples…they are His True Israel!
Ephesians 5:15-33
“Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
“Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ (God’s living Word) also is the Head of the Church (Jews and Gentiles that comprise Israel’s True New Covenant Remnant), He Himself being the Savior of the Body. But as the Church is subject to Christ (Messiah), so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, that He might present to Himself the Church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the Church, because we are members of His Body. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This Mystery is great; BUT I AM SPEAKING WITH REFERENCE TO CHRIST AND THE CHURCH. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.” (amplification added)
Can you see how corporate and covenantal God’s ways and commandments truly are? Radically independent, Sin-corrupted people are by their fallen nature, totally selfish, self-centered and grossly individualistic. But originally, we were all intended to be a corporate entity, a living Body for God’s living Word! Humanity was created to reveal and express and glorify the Word in unison! In that way, they are to be His image and likeness! So in light of all that God has revealed about His Blood Covenant, corporate Family ways, realize this: whatever we think, say or do as individuals, is going to have an effect on and will influence all of us. God made us to be His Eternal Covenant Family. We are all meant to be ‘Blood brothers’ to God and also to each other! So to be God’s corporate image and likeness, we must first surrender our original self-life, our inherited radically independent ways of seeing, thinking, acting, reacting and interacting. In God’s Kingdom there is no place for radical independence and self-centered individualism. In God’s Kingdom, all citizens are One Body, under one Head, and we are all meant to embody, express and reveal God’s living Word, Yeshua, our risen Messiah! And this is what Joseph did.
“All (God-given) things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered (pulled into Sin’s radical independence) by anything. Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the (original) body (which God made to be sexual) is not for immorality, but (because you are God’s Spirit-filled image and likeness, your body is reserved) for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? (one with God’s living Word?) Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, ‘The two shall become one flesh.’ But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him (because of the Eternal Blood Covenant bond that makes us one with God).
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
“Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” (amplification added)
So regardless of which commandment we consider, our God-given corporate identity, purpose and destiny as Almighty God’s image and likeness and our total, perfect Ultimate Restoration, are the target at which God always aims. Everything a human being is made to be and to do, is directly related to God Himself. The seventh commandment is not essentially about regulating human behavior. It’s not about whether you or I can have sex, or whether or not we can have sex with men or women or with someone other than our spouse…
…It’s about whether or not God’s living Word is going to be able to live His Life and obey His Father, from within your spirit, soul and body! We were all created to be living reflections of Him! It is His Presence and Holiness and Righteousness that are supposed to radiate from us and be demonstrated to the world! Only God’s living Word can Perfectly obey the Father that gives His commandments to us. That’s why He must abide within us to be able to do it.
So human activity is not to be judged according to what we do, or with whom we do it, or how it is done on the outside. It goes much deeper than that. Our activity is to be judged according to what we really ARE. This is the standard: Who is living and operating and being revealed from within your thoughts, imaginations, choices, actions, reactions and interactions? Is it God’s living Word, Messiah Yeshua? Or is it that old original self-life you? If it’s you doing it, it will not pass God’s Judgment any more than Cain’s religious offering did. But if it’s truly His Son doing it through you, then, like Abel’s offering, and that of Joseph and Stephen, what you are offering to God will also be accepted and treasured.
Genesis 39:2-5
“The Lord was with Joseph, so he became a successful man. And he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian. Now his master saw that the Lord was with him and how the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hand. So Joseph found favor in his sight and became his personal servant; and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he owned he put in his charge. It came about that from the time he made him overseer in his house and over all that he owned, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house on account of Joseph; thus the Lord’s blessing was upon all that he owned, in the house and in the field.”