Exodus 20:14
“You shall not commit adultery.”
Scripture reveals that Sin is the fatal result of having been cut off from God’s Word, our Life Source. It is an active reality that works within us. We inherit it at conception. It’s not just an idea, or theological proposition. It’s an energetic thrust, a set of strong tendencies, and a corporate racial energy impulse that comes out of us, seeking its own level. And we are born with Sin’s Death-Result already in us. God warned Adam about this in the Garden. But Eve and Adam disregarded His Word. So thanks to that decapitating separation from our Creator and Sustainer into which the Serpent lured our original parents, the consequences of their Sin afflict us all.
Romans 7:14-20
“For we know that the Law (Torah) is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but Sin, which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but Sin which dwells in me.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The Serpent’s ‘Pipeline’ of Sin
To help us understand what this means, we might compare our fallen state to something that’s very common in our modern technological era. We hear reports of serious ‘computer hacking’ whereby malicious, dishonest people devise ways to invade the computers and information systems of unsuspecting people. They steal their victims’ identities and money, and intercept, corrupt and disrupt infrastructures. They uncover the secret information of other countries and organizations, and private individuals. This sabotage and theft enables hackers to control the lives and futures of their victims. And for the victims, the results are devastatingly destructive.
The Serpent did something even worse to the entire human race. He ‘hacked’ into the souls or ‘operating systems’ of the first two humans that God created. Eve and Adam allowed him to invade their minds, wills and natural affections by believing his devious lies. The Serpent coaxed them to give him access to their innermost being. And by opening their souls and nervous systems to the ‘fatal virus’ and its false information with which he desired to infect them, he gained access to all of the children who would come from their union. Thus the Serpent usurped the authority of God’s Word and removed us from our Life Source, in order to dominate and destroy our ability to serve as God’s ‘image and likeness’.
The Human Mind’s Damaged ‘Steering Mechanism’
So instead of inheriting the original God-given ‘image and likeness of God’ nature that God gave Adam and Eve, we have to settle for the fallen, Sin-corrupted, mutilated and degenerate nature that the demonic deceptions created in them. We too are vulnerable to the Serpent’s influence. He can easily do to us what he did to our original mother, Eve:
Genesis 3:4-6
“The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”
The serpent contradicted God’s living Word and caused Eve and Adam to hold what He revealed and commanded, in disdain. That infected their perspective of Reality, twisting it out of its proper original configuration. So they passed on to their offspring a viewpoint that was God-less. But that is a horribly inaccurate, totally false viewpoint! And the thought patterns it leads people into, arouses God-less, powerfully destructive desires to well up in their hearts. Those desires compel men to act…to try to satisfy their insatiable Sinful desires. And the result is more and more Death.
[More information on our Mental Pipeline is available on the Letters from Home Q&A section on the Follow Me Ministries website.]
First the Serpent infected Eve’s soul and brain. Then, through her, he ‘hacked into’ Adam’s onboard operating system. That’s how Sin…and the Darkness and Death it causes to human beings, spreads its lethal ‘domino effect’ mortality throughout the Earth. And later, the Serpent tried to do the same thing to Joseph, after his Israelite brothers had sold him to some slave traders. He tempted Joseph to commit adultery with the wife of his master, Potiphar. And this demonic ‘hacking’ tactic is what continues to plague all of us! So remember the background issue that underlies God’s commandments. It’s contained in the promise that God’s living Word made to the Serpent and, indirectly, also to the man and the woman after all of that had happened:
Genesis 3:15
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman (Israel), and between your seed and her Seed (The Messiah); He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
From the moment that God’s Word revealed the coming of the ‘Seed of the woman’, the Serpent, and those he is able to deceive, enslave and condemn to share his fate, strive continually to blot out and eradicate God’s living Word from as many human minds and hearts as possible! If the Word of God is able to fulfill His promises, they know they are doomed! So they hiss and lash out against God’s Word and anyone that dares to believe and serve Him. They tried to stop Yeshua the Messiah from coming, by doing whatever they could to destroy the Family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But they failed. Nevertheless, even after His arrival and Blood Atonement on the Cross, they still oppose and try to kill His followers to prevent Yeshua from fulfilling His Last Days promises! And it is the task of His disciples to allow Him to live and work within us, so that He can be free to finish what He began.
Therefore, anyone who becomes one with God’s Word and follows Him and takes part in His Campaign to save the fallen human race, becomes a target for the Serpent’s lethal plots and schemes. So if the Lord has summoned you to follow Him, be forewarned and ready to deal with this reality. Learn the wisdom of Joseph. This is what was at stake when the Serpent tried to ‘decapitate’ him by manipulating Potiphar’s wife into trying to seduce him. If the Serpent had managed to decapitate Joseph, he would have been able to destroy Abraham’s Israelite family with a famine! And if he could have done that, the ‘Seed of the woman’ would not have appeared on Earth to fulfill His promises to Adam and Eve and restore God’s Original Blessing to them in exchange for the Serpent’s curses:
Genesis 39:5-7
“It came about that from the time he (Potiphar) 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. So he left everything he owned in Joseph’s charge; and with him there he did not concern himself with anything except the food which he ate.
“Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. It came about after these events that his master’s wife looked with desire at Joseph, and she said, “Lie with me.”
Temptation – the Invitation to Commit Spiritual Suicide!
The Serpent knew that Joseph would naturally be vulnerable to such a temptation. His painful situation would have made it easy for him to give in to natural feelings of self-pity and outrage against his brothers. Through no fault of his own, he was now a debased slave. And he was a young, strong, sexual being who appeared to be abandoned and all alone. Thus he was vulnerable to this pampered woman’s attention and desires. He was liable to become intensely aroused sexually, by the ego-exalting admiration and attentions she began to impose on him. That would have created intense pressure within Joseph to give in to such overwhelming seduction. The Serpent did everything he could do to distract and derail Joseph and blot out of his mind and memory what God’s Word had revealed and promised to him in those dreams he received when he was still with his family. So the habitual viewpoint or perspective of Reality, from which Joseph was operating, was of extreme importance not only for him, but also for his family and for all of future Israel…and for the future arrival of the Seed of the woman.
Joseph could have given in to the Serpent like Eve had done. He could have forgotten God and His Word and the Covenant he had with Him. He could have viewed his Covenant God as being flaky, inadequate and unreliable. He could have judged His Character and Covenant Loyalty (Chesed) to be highly questionable. How could God have allowed such a crime to be committed against his ‘Blood brother’? What had Joseph done to deserve the disgrace and shame and dislocation that God allowed his own family to impose on him? And now he had this opportunity, to feel ‘special’, to be wanted and to anesthetize himself for a few fleeting moments with the stolen bliss this alluring temptress was offering. Potiphar was away; and there was no one present to witness what this lonely pampered, perfumed woman was inviting him to do with her. The Serpent did everything possible to get Joseph to seize this opportunity to meet his needs, to assume that it was his basic human ‘right’ to take matters into his own hands and try to meet his needs and make up for the human comforts and pleasures that had been taken from him so heartlessly and unjustly.
And this is why Joseph’s perspective…the way he was used to viewing reality…was so vitally important. If he had been in the habit of using ‘God-less eyeglasses’, that made everything appear as if he himself was the center of the universe, there would be nothing to stop him from giving in to this enormously tempting situation. Those self-life mental lenses would have convinced him that he was radically independent and a god unto himself. If he had followed the ‘decapitated’ line of reasoning that naturally follows that perspective…he would have seen himself as being ‘his own man’ and having ‘a life of his own’. Like Eve and Adam, he too would have done as he thought best. He would have taken steps to live his life, ‘my way’. He would have decided for himself what would be good for him and what would be evil.
That line of reasoning would have forced him to regard the offered pleasures suggested by that woman as being his natural, normal human right. And he would have ignored the fact that she too had been created by God and also had a specific God-given identity, purpose and destiny in His Eternal Kingdom. He would have debased her, as she was debasing him, and would have thought of her as a ‘plaything’, a disposable ‘object’ that he could use for his own personal pleasure and satisfaction. He would have thought as Eve had done…seeing the woman as a delight to his eyes, and desirable and good for giving him the satisfaction and comfort he had never enjoyed before. He could have used her to numb his wounded soul and escape his brutal reality…pretending to be wanted, important, free and especially chosen…for a few fleeting moments.
If Joseph had chosen to see her that way, the ensuing train of thought would have aroused very powerful corresponding compulsive desires within his flesh. And the power generated by those desires would have quickly overwhelmed him and pulled him over the edge. And the Serpent would have ‘decapitated’ or severed him from God’s living Word. And that would have plunged Joseph into the Serpent’s Sin, Darkness, and Death, and would have condemned Israel and her world-transforming mission to present the Messiah to the world…to failure and oblivion.
The sexual appetite we inherit is Sin-corrupted and damaged! God didn’t make us that way; Sin did! Now our appetites are skewed, misaligned and doomed to seek after what frustrates us and cannot meet our true needs. They blind us to true, legitimate boundaries that keep God’s universe in order and harmony. They make us reason according to totally selfish and destructive priorities: ‘I want the best, finest and most pleasurable for me… even if it kills you and everyone else!’ Joseph could have used that woman the way the Serpent was using her. And the Serpent could have manipulated them both…for his own Word-destroying purposes.
It’s true that even in our fallen self-adoring state, we still have a strong inherent need for love and intimacy and close union and a sense of belonging. We DO need to feel important and esteemed and valued. That’s because in our Creator’s eyes we ARE important, esteemed and valued! He placed those desires and needs within us! They match the true purpose and destiny that He imparted to us! But those desires can only bear real, eternal fruit, when they match and fulfill our God-given purpose and destiny! God’s intent is to keep us bonded and united to Him, so that He, in all of His Eternal Fullness, can satisfy us as only He can do! Because of the way He made us, only He can truly satisfy and fulfill us! Those needs and appetites are part of our true image and likeness of God essence. They equip us to remain bonded to Almighty God through His living Word and Holy Spirit! We are God’s creations; designed for His purposes. We do not belong to ourselves or to any other created thing. God’s living Word created us for Himself; we are meant to embody and reveal Him and He intends to live in us and through us and be to us everything we will ever truly need!
John 17:22-24
“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world!” (Emphasis added.)
God intended to reveal the Perfect Faithfulness of His Word through the life of Joseph. And He trained and prepared Joseph to be a true disciple, an image and likeness of His beloved Son. This temptation was part of Joseph’s ‘boot camp’ disciple training! And fortunately, the Holy Spirit made sure that Joseph understood that. So the habitual perspective Joseph developed over the years, prepared him to ‘pass the test’, to remain true to God, to Reality and Truth, and to his true self. He persevered and stood his God-given Ground and continued to cling to God’s living Word. He never lost sight of the Word. His perspective and line of reasoning remained Word-centered! Thus he continued to trust in what God’s Word had promised. He continued to rely on God’s credibility. He chose to rely upon his Covenant God alone, according to the Covenant Bond and the Promises and the responsibility to abide in God’s Chesed. He remained true to his Israelite identity and the purpose that God had imparted to his family, and to him. So Joseph held fast to the Perfect Presence of God’s living Word. His perspective always remained rooted in what the Word had revealed and promised. He believed and trusted according to the Covenant Chesed that his bond with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob required. So he ‘staked’ his past, present and future upon the Rock-solid Credibility of the living Word of his living God.
James 4:6-8
“Therefore it (Psalm 138:6; Proverbs 3:34) says, ‘God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
We’ve said in previous meditations that God’s pattern of Salvation and Redemption and Restoration is not about our self-improvement or self-enhancement. God does not require us to mend, patch and fix our original Sin-contaminated ‘Self.’ He commands us to deny and forsake it! It’s on ‘death row,’ awaiting its rightful execution. That is why our Covenant Representative had to die on the Cross. He was representing us! So God had to deal with His beloved Son as if He were all of us! So The Son of Man underwent everything the human race has coming, in full. In His Covenant Faithfulness to us, God took upon Himself everything the rest of us deserved! That’s what our radically independent ‘self-life’ has coming according to God’s Perfect Standards of Righteousness! And so we are required to follow our Master…into that death to Death…and follow Him from that…into His Resurrection Life! In other words, God’s Holy Spirit is here to make God’s living Word BECOME our New Eternal Life. This is the pattern our Messiah, in His own Humanity, followed at all times with the Holy Spirit of His Father. He never indulged in ‘self-life’. He was always led and empowered by His Father’s Holy Spirit. And that is the Reality and lifestyle into which He is here to lead us!
Luke 14:26-27
“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate (prefer Me over) his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”
Mark 10:21
“Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me!’”
Obedient Faith Always Overcomes Radical Independence
Joseph’s obedient faith-perspective killed any traces of radical independence that may still have been lurking within him. He died to whatever was ‘natural’ and worldly and ‘normally human’ in his fallen nature and ‘lived’ to God’s Word that he allowed to abide within his heart. Thus he followed the ‘Death, followed by Resurrection’ Exodus Pattern God requires all fallen sons of Adam to follow. And, as the death of Joseph’s self-life took place, he also died to being enslaved by the Serpent, and to Sin and to the Death that Sin inflicts. He died to the powerful allure that the Serpent’s lying delusions hold over fallen humanity. He died to the Serpent’s falsehood and the empty promises he makes that lead to our doom and to chronic failure and disappointment and frustration.
And after that, God was free to give His Covenant friend Joseph, what was real, true, eternal and eminently substantial and eternally reliable in exchange. Those things are part of the ‘Resurrection Life’ that God has waiting for those that follow His Word. When Joseph died to self-life, God was legally free to transmit everything he truly needed from the Eternal Treasury of His Word’s Perfect Finished Work in Heaven. God’s triumphant Light obliterated that woman’s Darkness. His Righteousness abiding in Joseph, blasted through the Serpent’s Corruption. And Freedom disintegrated the net of Death that the Serpent had hoped to cast over Joseph and His Family and the coming of the Messiah. The Word led Joseph through and out of that steamy, deadly situation that the Serpent had prepared for mankind’s eternal demise.
Joseph chose the ‘Narrow Path’. He chose to allow the Atoning Death of the Eternal Lamb of God to kill and uproot from his heart, whatever was natural to his fallen, Sin-corrupted human flesh. He resisted the Serpent’s lethal ‘hooks’ and did not allow him to embed false hopes and expectations into his heart. Joseph did not sink his heart’s ‘roots’ into Potiphar’s poor, empty, demon-blinded wife. He kept his roots embedded where they had been habitually…in the Soil of the Perfect All-Sufficient Presence of God’s living Word and the promises God had made to him. And thus God’s Word was able to continue to fulfill His Father’s awesome Plan for Joseph…and through Joseph…for Abraham’s Family…and through Abraham’s Family…for the rest of the human race and all of His poor fallen, corrupted Creation.
And in His perfect timing, God elevated Joseph to a position of supreme authority, even over the pharaoh of Egypt! God, through Joseph, saved not only the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he also saved all of the Gentile peoples that had come under Joseph’s authority! And, all of Joseph’s personal needs were met as well. He lost nothing that was true and real and good by forsaking the allurements of Potiphar’s wife; instead He gained everything by continuing to cling to and trust in God’s living Word. Thus the disciple life that Joseph lived so well, served as a beautiful foretaste, a prefiguring revelation of the Messiah Himself:
James 1:12-18
“Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.
“Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the Word of Truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.” (Emphasis added.)
James 4:1-5
“What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: ‘He jealously desires (to see operating within us) the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us’”? (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Thanks to the malicious ‘hacking’ interference of the spiritual powers of Darkness, each infant that descends from the union of our original parents is born into the state of Sin. From our infancy, we are unknowing victims of the damage that has been done to our race by the Serpent, the ultimate demonic ‘hacker.’ We come into the world equipped with a ‘Sin-infected’ operating system that runs our ‘onboard computer.’ The natural ‘default’ information data bank and genetic coding we automatically receive is disastrously contaminated with untrue data, unreal navigational coordinates and deadly misleading information! This is why God’s written Word warns those of us who are being joined to His Israel and are following our Messiah, God’s living Word, out of the Serpent’s Darkness, and back into the glorious Light of His Eternal Truth and Reality:
Romans 12:1-3
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to (the false data and demon-induced misinformation of) this world, but be transformed by the renewing (complete rewiring, reprogramming and updating) of your mind, so that you may prove (enter into and actually experience and demonstrate to others) what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Ephesians 4:17-25
“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their (virus-infected, deceived) mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the (decapitated) ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous (due to their ignorant mistrust of God’s Perfect Eternal Covenant Faithfulness), have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.
“But you did not learn Christ (God’s living Word) in this way, if indeed you have heard (believed and obeyed) Him and have been taught (and trained to abide like branches abide in their vine) in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old (decapitated, Sin-corrupted) self, which is being (evermore progressively) corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new (Spirit-empowered, Yeshua-embodying) self, which in the likeness of God has been created in Righteousness and Holiness of the Truth!
“Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak (according to the ways of God’s Heavenly Covenant Realities and) Truth, each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another (one with our True Head...and one with each of His other members)!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
It is with this faulty, disastrously ‘hacked and infected original equipment’, that the fallen human race tries to operate and manage itself and make its way through the Sin-created pitfalls, traps and insanities of life in this darkened, selfish, brutal dog-eat-dog world. The world system bombards us with false advertising and false promises made by the false gods to which deluded humans give credibility and trust. But you will never achieve real, true results from false, delusional ingredients! False gods do not really exist, so their promises have no merit and offer no real hope of fulfillment. Instead, they blind and deafen you to the one true God and thus force you to remain trapped in your original Death State. Only God’s living Word made flesh has the Authority and Power and the Will to ‘deliver the real goods’ that lead to Eternal Life!
Imagine the following scenario: you are a passenger on the doomed Titanic. You’re taking a nap in your stateroom. Suddenly you’re awakened by someone pounding frantically on your door. You open the door and a distraught man is spewing something about a huge hole that has been torn in the bowels of the ship beneath the waterline. He tells you that if you don’t get off this ship, whether you admit it or not…you are a dead man! Then he runs down the corridor in search of other people that he might be able to warn.
You leave your stateroom and go up to the closest deck. Everywhere you look, people are busy entertaining themselves. Some are lounging in deck chairs; others invite you to join in on the various games they’re playing. You can hear dance music wafting from a concealed ballroom and a steward walks by announcing the first call to dinner.
What should you do? Which of the conflicting communications will you heed? Is this a time for games? Does it matter what is being served at dinner? Will any of the entertainments, diversions and pleasures being offered truly meet your needs? Is there anything more important than the dire need to find a way to get off of the doomed hulk on which you are standing while you still have some time left in which to do it?
This is the way it is on Earth in the sight of God. The world system is a ‘mortally wounded sinking ship’! And the powers of Darkness are busily distracting and anesthetizing myriads of its passengers with mindless, inane diversions and distracting snares in order to make sure they avoid the life boats and go down with the ship:
Luke 17:26-27
“And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.”
This is why God sent His living Word to reveal His Reality and Truth to the world. But the Serpent’s ploy is to fill the atmosphere with as many contradictory distractions and diversions as possible. Potiphar’s wife was one such distraction for Joseph. Today, the Serpent uses the secular media and saturates human minds with false information and pornographic traps and inane, meaningless prattle and diversions to try to drown out the revelations and warnings God gives through His Word and Holy Spirit. Satan appealed to the alluring satisfaction of Joseph’s human appetites, passions and natural likes, just as he does with us today. He makes them as loud and visible and appealing as possible…to drive God’s Word and the redemptive purpose of His Family, and the Messiah that has saved us …out of our minds and hearts. He does everything possible under the sun to get us to fill our hearts with something other than what God’s Word has revealed and the boundaries He has set for us, and the promises He is here to fulfill, for us.
If we fall for these traps, we will ‘go down with the Titanic.’ This is the essence of God’s Exodus Pattern. This is the awesome meaning of ‘The Gospel of Jesus Christ.’ So God’s Exodus pattern separates those who heed God’s Word from those who reject Him and choose instead to ‘remain in Egypt’. This is what is revealed in the Torah. God warns us about the conflict and tension we will encounter from this fallen world. The fallen pleasure-loving people of this world will never heed the warnings or understand the agenda of people like Noah who are commanded by God leave the world behind. Noah had to build the ark that God commanded him to build amid enormous amounts of derision, contempt and opposition. For decades, the world around Noah considered him to be utterly insane! And the same mistrust and disdain plagued Abram and his household when God’s Word led them out of the world and set them apart for his own service. It happened to Joseph and it happened to Moses and Aaron and Joshua and Caleb and the liberated nation of Israelites that the Word led across the Jordan and around Jericho. And it will surely happen to all of the Last Days New Covenant disciples of the risen Messiah.
Exchanged Lives
God’s living Word made flesh, is the ‘Seed of the woman’! And He is leading His own out of Eternal Darkness and Death…into true, substantial Eternal Life. He is intent on crushing the Serpent’s head in our lives, to set us free from our decapitated ‘living death’ existence. But we must choose to die to ‘MY life’ because it isn’t real Life. It is Death in disguise. The real issue is: ‘Will you get off the Titanic while you have time, and learn what real Life is all about, or not?’ The Torah reveals that we’re already dead from the moment we’re conceived! So we must relinquish that ‘my life’ delusion, to its rightful execution…seeing it for what it really is. And we must then exchange that, for the Eternal Life that only God’s living Word and Holy Spirit can be to us.
John 14:6
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am The Way, and The Truth, and The Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.’” (Emphasis added.)
And this is why God forbids us from doing what the Serpent managed to get Eve to do… rejecting God’s living Word and, instead, choosing to ‘think for ourselves’ as independent agents who take it upon themselves to decide what is ‘right and wrong,’ ‘true or false’ and ‘good or bad’ according to the fallen, twisted and highly mistake-prone perceptions, judgments, priorities and decisions that this world’s pundits use for navigation. He must protect us from ‘doing it my way’ and ‘choosing my own path’. He must set commandment boundaries that will prevent us from swallowing all of the other false principles, dogmas, values, priorities and agendas that this fallen God-less world idolizes and esteems. Those things are the ‘bait’ that the Serpent uses to draw us away from God’s Light and into the Darkness and doom to which he has condemned himself and those who obey him!
So the way in which we perceive or ‘see things’ is our vitally important starting point. Sometimes it is called our ‘paradigm’ or a ‘viewpoint’ or ‘perspective.’ That is what starts everything off. Our perspective leads us into the step-by-step cattle chute thought process that leads us into the inevitable holding pen of ultimate results…with which we will be forced to live. This is why we call that natural mental process that follows our initial perceptions, a ‘cattle chute’. That very confining structure will be constructed according to the perspective we hold to be true and real in the beginning. So our mental process begins with us humans having the freedom to choose. God’s Torah revelation shows us what happened between our first parents and the Serpent. His living and written Word shows us what happened and what it did to us. Then it tells us to ‘choose Life’ and warns against the demonic traps that the Serpent and his slaves place in our paths. Previously, we have compared those demonic traps to a demonic ‘mine field’ through which we must pass. And we said that God’s commandments are a Narrow Path that guide us truthfully and safely through that mine field… all the way into God’s Eternal Kingdom and the blessings and inheritance that await us when we make it all the way ‘Home.’ When God’s Word says, “Follow Me!” to us, this is the result-achieving process that is at stake. God’s Word is summoning us to follow Him out of demonic Darkness… and back into God’s Reality and Truth. We cannot find our own way. We will never make it on our own by using a Torah-less perspective. This is why we must abide in God’s living Word and Holy Spirit, all the days of our lives:
Psalm 119:9-16
“How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your Word. With all my heart I have sought You; do not let me wander from Your commandments. Your Word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You. Blessed are You, Lord; teach me Your statutes. With my lips I have told of all the ordinances of Your mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies, as much as in all riches. I will meditate on Your precepts and regard Your ways. I shall delight in Your statutes; I shall not forget Your Word.”
God’s living Word was habitually abiding in Joseph’s heart. So when he was in that house alone, with Potiphar’s wife, Joseph was never really alone. He was always in the Perfect Presence of God’s living Word! That is, he was in the Presence of Almighty God, through his heart’s connection with His living Word and Holy Spirit. God was there with Joseph to lead and guide his every step. And that God-centered perspective made it easy for Joseph to assess what that poor deluded woman was trying to do to him. He realized how little she really cared for him and his wellbeing. If she could so easily betray her husband, what would prevent her from betraying him? How could something as treacherous and deceitful truly meet his needs? So, he ran from her and continued to look only to God and trust exclusively in His Word. And the Word delivered him from the clutches of Death.
As long as we operate in God’s Wisdom and follow His Word, never taking our eyes off of our Shepherd and Messiah as He leads us, He will protect us and provide for us and take us all the way Home. If we cooperate with Him and abide in His ways, He will lead us into gloriously substantial and eternal results, even in this fallen world, just like He did for Joseph.
So, remember this: how we perceive our situations will determine our ensuing thought processes and choices. And that will determine the results and outcomes of our lives. All of that begins with the perspective that we habitually ‘practice’ and repeat and wire into our brains. That will direct our heart, our innermost being. And it will eventually work its way out and its fruit will appear in the light of day. What we rehearse within ourselves, during times of leisure and quiet, will automatically be there for us during times of stress, pressure and dire emergency. Make sure you feed continually on God’s Word! Don’t rehearse the wrong role and the wrong lines!
In light of all this, I ask you to take time to meditate on what the Holy Spirit is telling us in Psalm 73 (referenced below). He discusses two viewpoints, the natural decapitated viewpoint that is so common in this fallen world, and the viewpoint that we receive when we heed God’s Word and believe what He reveals, and obey what He commands. I point this out to you because everything that God is telling us through each of His Ten Commandments, including the seventh, continues the revelation of this all-important process that begins with the way we see or regard things. Remember that your viewpoint is like a set of mental ‘eyeglasses.’ Each set of eyeglasses has its own ‘tint’ and ‘prescription’ or ‘correction.’ If we continue to use the original set of natural mental ‘eyeglasses’ we all inherit from our first parents, they will force us to see the world in a decapitated way. They will give us the God-less viewpoint of this world’s system. But if God’s Word penetrates and impregnates our innermost being with His Life, God’s Spirit and Truth and Reality become our new set of ‘eyeglasses.’ Then we’re equipped to repent of our state of radical independence from God, and embrace His Word and all it reveals and commands. And with those new eyeglasses, everything about us will change. We’ll see the world, and ourselves, in a completely different way. We’ll have new eyes that open the way to a new life, Eternal Life! This Life awaits anyone who repents and is willing to follow God’s living and written Word out of the original Darkness and into the Light of God’s Eternal Covenant and Kingdom.
This of course creates trouble between the believers who leave their original places in this fallen world and begin to ‘cross over’ from the Darkness side of the infinite Chasm of Transcendence to the side where God’s Perfect Presence and supernatural Eternal Light abide and reign supreme. The sons of Adam’s disobedience see no reason to change or do anything drastic. So they choose to stay aboard the ‘sinking ship’ and worship its false gods and enjoy whatever temporary delights they can get hold of! They can’t understand why those who are ‘getting off their luxury liner’ have to disrupt everything so drastically and suddenly. They feel outraged and offended because these people no longer share their worldly self-adoring viewpoints, priorities and agendas. Asaph, the Israelite psalmist, described these two conflicting viewpoints that are created by those two different sets of ‘eyeglasses’ in this way:
Psalm 73:11-28
“They say, ‘How does God know?’ and, ‘Is there knowledge with the Most High?’ Behold, these are the wicked; and always at ease, they have increased in wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure And washed my hands in innocence; for I have been stricken all day long and chastened every morning.
“If I had said, ‘I will speak thus,’ behold, I would have betrayed the generation of Your children. When I pondered to understand this, it was troublesome in my sight…until…I came into the sanctuary of God; THEN I perceived their end. Surely You set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction. How they are destroyed in a moment! They are utterly swept away by sudden (demonic) terrors! Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when aroused, You will despise their form.
“When my heart was embittered (by worldly individualistic self pity) and I was pierced within, then I was senseless and ignorant; I was like a beast before You. Nevertheless (because You are my Shepherd who keeps and sustains me) I am continually with You; You have taken hold of my right hand. With Your counsel You will guide me, And afterward receive me to Glory. Who have I in Heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on Earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For, behold, those who are far from You will perish; You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You. But as for me, the nearness of God is my Good; I have made the Lord God my refuge, That I may tell of all Your works.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Romans 12:21
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with Good.”
So the pipeline consists of:
1) Viewpoint
2) Line of thought
3) Resulting feelings
4) Actions
5) Results (fruits).
And God’s Instructions are:
1) I’m the Almighty, All-Knowing, Infinitely Wise and All-Perfect God.
2) My Word is also Perfect. He is the Source of Life and Union with Me.
3) Be one with My Word; (His image and likeness), do what He says, no matter what!
4) Let Him live and produce His fruit from within you.
5) If you Follow My Word I will save and satisfy you beyond your wildest hopes.
The Serpent’s Tactic is to sever our minds from the Authoritative input of God’s Life-giving Word thereby destroying our, ‘God’s image and likeness’ nature. This is how he drove Cain to murder his brother Abel. And this is how he drives the rest of us to other acts of ‘murder’…the ‘murder’ of our true God-given identity, purpose and destiny and those of people around us.
The seventh commandment reveals one of the Serpent’s favorite weapons. He uses the strong human sexual appetite to manipulate our fallen souls and bodies in directions that decapitate us from God’s living Word. Then we’re blinded to His Truth… forced to view and judge and see ourselves, and others, in ways that will destroy our ability to be the image and likeness of God’s living Word. When we see the world through the eyes of needy predators, we think as the Serpent thinks… choosing to view creation through his adulterous perspectives and judgments. Then, we actually help the Serpent to murder our God-given identity, purpose and destiny, and those of the people that share our delusions, or that we entice or deceive or force to participate in our violations of God’s commandments.
If the Serpent is able to dominate us by filling us with his radically independent, God-less viewpoint, he can steer our minds into his predetermined cattle chutes of Death. He will arouse our powerful sexual urges, feelings, desires and cravings and drive us to act accordingly. As long as the Serpent has access to our inner workings, he will manipulate and exploit our fallen self-serving, dying flesh and force us to create Word-erasing, Serpent-embodying results that will destroy our lives, marriages, children, families, livelihoods, societies and eternal destiny. And if you ponder the intensely powerful and lucrative pornographic and human trafficking ‘industries’ that are flourishing in our highly-technological generation, you will see how many of God’s beloved humans the Serpent is managing to destroy all over the world.
Trust in God, or Mistrust of Him – One Means Life, One Means Death
The Serpent stirred up mistrust of God in Eve’s heart. He blinded her to what God shows us in His Torah revelation. And that drove her to assume that God’s ‘inadequacy’ would leave her stranded, marooned, alone and helpless. He convinced her that her needs would not be met UNLESS she took matters into her own hands. That way of viewing God, in her mind and in ours, generates continuous fear, anxiety and a perpetual sense of insecurity in our hearts. The Serpent then uses that fear to drive us into radically independent disobedience to God’s Word. Fear becomes the whip or lash with which the powers of Darkness drive people, like cattle, further and further away from God’s Eternal Perfect Rest! As long as we remain convinced that God is imperfect…that He’s not ‘good enough’ to care for us and meet our needs, we can never rest easy in His Perfect Sabbath Peace. To us, He will appear as if He is intent on making us miserable and frustrated and deprived. He will appear to be our betrayer and competitor. That’s how the Serpent deludes us into taking matters into our own hands and serving false gods. When we do, we become what he is…radically independent beings…trying to fend for ourselves and seek to control and make sure things turn out to be the way we think they ought to be.
Psalm 14
“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; there is no one who does good. The Lord has looked down from Heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.
“Do all the workers of wickedness not know, who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the Lord? There they are in great dread, for God is with the righteous generation. You would put to shame the counsel of the afflicted, But the Lord is his refuge. Oh, that the Salvation (Yeshua) of Israel would come out of Zion! When the Lord restores His captive people, Jacob will rejoice, Israel will be glad.”
Potiphar’s wife was rich and highly placed in this world. But in herself, she was desperately empty and needy and pathetically miserable. What did she really have to offer to Joseph that would have met his needs and given him a future? No…the Serpent was merely using her to tempt Joseph into ripping himself away from his Love-Bond with God. He tried to get him to mistrust, disbelieve and disobey God’s Word. He knows that when he blinds us to God’s Perfect Provision, Love and Faithfulness…we will feel empty and alone and we’ll begin to wallow in self-pity, fear, and insecurity. And that will arouse intense desires within us and drive us to satisfy our skewed, Sin-corrupted appetites and passions in ways that are totally selfish, self-serving and predatory. We allow the serpent to use our passions like cattle prods that drive us into the destructive and lethal holding pens that await us at the end of that process. Our quest to suit ourselves, leads us to defy God and overstep boundaries to which we have become blind. Thus we ignore the needs and rights of the people around us and, in our frenzy to satisfy ourselves, we wound, deprive and destroy them by preventing them from fulfilling their own God-given identities, purposes and destinies.
The Tremendous Influence of Technology in Modern Society
Our current generation is totally addicted to ‘techno-gadgets’ and inane, mindless ‘social networking’. Notice how utterly dependent most people have become on these things. They cannot live without them! Why is that? What are they looking for? They gravitate toward ‘social media’ and ‘networking’ and staying connected because – we all have a deep-seated need, a built-in hunger to be one with others! But those things are a wretchedly poor substitute for God’s own Holy Spirit, and the Resurrection Presence of His living Word! Thanks to our Sin-blindness and deafness, we live in a demonically selfish, individualistic, fragmented, highly-competitive world! How contradictory and crazy is that? How can we truly, authentically connect with any part of that world? And how prone to failure will such attempts be? By nature the world we live and trust in so much gears and prods us to turn against each other and compete with one another to prevail and gain for ourselves, as much as we possibly can! So how can we manage to ‘connect’ with each other at the same time? And how will such insanity ever be able to satisfy our needs?
We are made by God to be ‘Blood Covenant beings’. But everything has to begin by being…one with Him, through His Word and Holy Spirit! Then, and only then, are we equipped and predisposed to be one with each other! True Oneness is our true Eternal Destiny! But thanks to the Serpent, we have to live in a disastrously fragmented, individualistic, lonely disfigured world. And the bait of ‘union’ and ‘connectedness’ and ‘belonging’ that he dangles in front of us is not true. It is the Jaws of Death in disguise! If the Serpent can keep us separated from our True Head, he can easily continue to ‘dismember’ the rest of us.
We were designed to be one with our Creator…to serve as His image and likeness and embodiment and to live as one, with His people. So although Sin severed us from God’s living Word and destroyed His image and likeness by fragmenting the human race, the Serpent can deceive us into seeking counterfeit substitutes for Him and the true union we were meant to enjoy. These inane, mindless substitute ‘connections’ have become today’s false gods that cater to our drive and need to be ‘one’. We do it because of our true desperate loneliness, emptiness and ‘homesickness’ for God. The Serpent preys upon that in order to drive us to try to ‘connect’ and ‘unite’…with counterfeit substitutes…unreal unions with gods that do not really exist. In our delusion, we use to try to allow that to take the place of the one true God, as revealed in the Torah.
But God’s living creative Word made us specifically for Himself! And nothing beside Him will ever be able to satisfy us or take His place in our hearts. Any created thing we use in His place will prove to be a horrendous disappointment that will leave us empty and desolate. Disciples are filled with God’s own Spirit! Thus they’re equipped and eligible for the training they need that will enable them to become skilled in mirroring and reflecting God’s Perfect Faithfulness. God reveals His faithful nature by His perfect faithfulness to His living Word, and by His Word’s perfect faithfulness to His Father. We see this two-way Covenant Faithfulness between the Father and the Son throughout the written Word. And it is especially revealed by the way God always remains utterly faithful to unfaithful Israel. He sent His Word to become one with her! Thus, for His own Word’s sake, for the sake of His own Name, He remains committed to Israel, despite her failures and sins. And we can remain connected to Him…not by sight…but by our obedient faith.
God ‘spoke’ Israel into being through His living Word. And He commissioned His Word to become flesh, in and through and from, Israel. He was born of an Israelite mother… a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and King David. God made sure that His Word would be born a King, descended from David. His Word is the Seed of the Woman revealed in Genesis 3. And this living Word became one with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Blood Covenant union God entered into with them. And God confirmed the fact that He is one with the nation of Israel through the Covenant He made with His Word, and thus He brought the entire nation of Israel into that Covenant at Mt. Sinai during her Exodus from Egypt. And at the proper time, God’s living Word was born an Israelite and was circumcised into the Covenant of Abraham eight days after His birth. So make no mistake about this: God and His Word are one…and the Word is one with Israel. Therefore, whether the Serpent likes it or not, God is one with Israel…forever! He bound Himself to her through an Eternal Blood Covenant Oath!
The Image and Likeness of God’s Covenant Faithfulness
Nothing will ever separate God from His Word… and nothing will ever separate the Word from His chosen people, Israel… regardless of how unfaithful Israel herself has been throughout the centuries. In order for God to be unfaithful to Israel, He would have to break His Eternal Covenant Bond with His own living Word who is eternally one with Israel. So for the sake of His Word, which He joined to Abraham, Isaac (and Ishmael) and Jacob by His Blood Covenant promises, He will always make sure that He has a faithful Israelite Remnant through which to fulfill all of His Covenant promises. And that Spirit-empowered Jewish AND non-Jewish Remnant will be faithful to God even to the death. This is what God reveals about Himself when He covered the nakedness of Adam and Eve. He also revealed His Faithfulness through His covenant provision and protection imparted to Joseph. And Messiah Yeshua, God’s living Eternal Word made flesh, is the Ultimate New Covenant Revelation of God’s Perfect Love Nature and His Eternal Blood Covenant Faithfulness to Israel and through Israel…to all of Creation! And He intends to reveal Himself through His Blood Covenant disciples! And the Serpent keeps doing everything he can to erase it.
God continued to reveal His Perfect Faithfulness through the prophet Hosea and his rocky marriage with Gomer, his habitually unfaithful wife. And it is also revealed through the life of David, even when he committed adultery with Bathsheba… and then tried to keep from being found out by murdering Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband. David and the nation God had entrusted to his care were commissioned to be the embodiment and revelation of God’s Eternal Blood Covenant Faithfulness (Chesed). This ‘to the death’ Faithfulness is an eternal characteristic of God’s Perfect Love-Nature. But David, and Israel, in their mortal weakness, failed to demonstrate this faithfulness of God. So God’s living Word came to be their Covering. As their Eternal Covenant Representative, He came to serve as the Perfect Human Image and Likeness of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in their name. In Him, those who believe and obey Him and rest in Him can share in His Perfect Faithfulness to God. And this is what God’s True Israel, the Remnant of Israel that Yeshua and His New Covenant disciples have been commissioned to live out and embody. Yeshua, by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, will remain faithful to God. He will do it, to Perfection, from within us. Through us and as us, He will reveal and demonstrate the Perfect Fulfillment of the Covenant God has made with Israel. He did that through Joseph and He will do it through His Remnant-Disciples of the Last Days!
Living Revelations of the Living God
Thus our marriages are to be living revelations of this aspect of God’s Perfect Nature. And so must all of our other human relationships reveal and display and glorify God in all of His Perfection. Because we cannot do this by our own strength and religious effort, God’s Holy Spirit abides within us. And if we give Him full dominion over us, He makes Yeshua, God’s Perfect, Eternal, Creative Living Word, alive, real and active within us. The Eternal Word did, through the Holy Spirit, what Yeshua’s limited humanity could have never done. And He is here to do the same through us. Only in and through the Atonement of our Messiah, can we be empowered and equipped to reveal and reflect to unfaithful Israel and to the rest of the world, the Faithfulness and Holiness and Righteousness of God’s Nature and Character.
Yeshua and His ‘living branches,’ His New Covenant disciples are to be the fulfillment of the New Covenant God made with Israel. And, although she violated her Covenant with God in the past, the Covenant will be renewed and perfectly honored and fulfilled by God’s True, Israelite Jewish and non-Jewish Remnant in the Last Days. God will transform the living members of His Body until they faithfully and accurately embody His Covenant Faithfulness to His betrothed Bride, Israel, and through Israel, with the rest of the fallen sons of Adam.
This is part of the Scriptural significance underlying God’s seventh commandment. Yeshua is here to observe and fulfill all of it to Perfection, from within the regenerated spirits and yielded flesh of His New Covenant disciples. And this is why the Serpent and his powers of Darkness work ceaselessly to distort and destroy the true image and likeness of God identity, purpose and destiny of the human race. In this computerized digital age, the powers of Darkness have the means at their disposal to bombard humanity with multiple trillions of pornographic images, advertisements, suggestions, websites and industries every day. They use these things to hack into and further infect the souls and brains of every member of the human race and keep them hopelessly addicted and trapped. These gadgets enable them to soak the minds and hearts of fallen men and women in the same type of allurements that sought entry into the heart and soul and will of Joseph when he was enslaved in Egypt. But we must not allow him to suck up our souls into that filth. If we do, He will fill us with his Darkness.
The Serpent dangles all that bait before us, like an angler seeks to hook unsuspecting fish. Through our natural eyeglasses the bait appears to be real. Our Godless lenses prevent us from seeing the demonic hooks concealed within. So we make God-less judgments that seem to be true and good for us. Then, when we open our hearts to the bait and take it in, the Serpent deeply embeds his hidden hooks into our inner workings. And he traps and enslaves our Sin-corrupted appetites, instincts and desires and gets us to violate the commandments that protect our true human image and likeness of God identity, purpose and destiny. And the result is always, Death.
James 1:13-18
“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.”
Beloved, we must be taught, drilled and trained to recognize and avoid the Serpent’s bait. We must keep a safe distance between us and the deadly hooks that are concealed within all of that bait. It is a three-pronged trap that waits to drag us into spiritual death. The first hook is the ‘You can’t trust God to meet your needs’ lie. And the second hook is the ‘You are not good enough the way you are’ lie. And the third hook is the ‘But you can be good enough if you start to run your own life and meet your own needs’ lie.
These hooks drag you into a God-less perspective that will destroy your image and likeness of God true identity, purpose and destiny. They sever you from God’s Perfect Finished Work of Creation and the Eternal Covenant and all of the Fullness of Blessing and the Perfect Inheritance that union with God is meant to impart to us all. There is no Truth in the lies that the Serpent ‘hacks’ into our inner workings! To try to exist and operate apart from God’s Life-giving Word is truly an eternal sentence of Death! But to deceived fallen human flesh, that is totally intent upon remaining on ‘The Titanic’, it appears to be ‘fun’ and ‘satisfaction’ and, ‘The Good Life’.
Ephesians 5:1-14
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. 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 (in other parts of Scripture), ‘awake, sleeper’ and ‘arise from the dead’ and ‘Christ will shine on you.” (Amplification and emphasis added. See also: Isaiah 26:19; 51:17; 52:1; 60:1; Romans 13:11)
What Are You Really Storing in Your Heart?
I repeat: this is a matter of our heart of hearts. The perspectives that ruminate in our innermost being are what truly concern our Heavenly Father. Nothing is hidden from His gaze. Even when we strive to appear ‘right’ and ‘good’ and ‘fine’ and ‘okay’ to the world around us, and work hard to be religiously proper, pious and outwardly disciplined and virtuous…God sees what is truly happening within us. He’s not fooled or impressed by our flimsy cheap counterfeit religious disguises. Remember: God is Perfect! He knows what we truly are in our hearts and sees the schemes we concoct therein.
Naturally, because we are born in the fallen condition that is common to this world, we learn from birth to identify and see ourselves in purely worldly terms. We see ourselves as the center of the universe and can’t imagine that it could be any other way than what we learn to see and think from our earliest days on Earth. Most people around us remain stuck for life in that original self-adoring perspective. And so most humans get used to living and operating in a world that is alien to and distant from, the one true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The world does not know Him nor will it acknowledge His ways. The world is filled with ‘sons of disobedience’ that remain thoroughly imbued with the God-less views, values, priorities and aspirations common to this fallen world. But God is here to lead us out and away from the world and its systems.
John 6:26-40
“…Jesus answered them and said, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to Eternal Life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.’ Therefore they said to Him, ‘What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.’
“So they said to Him, ‘What then do You do for a sign, so that we may see, and believe You? What work do You perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread out of heaven to eat.’”
“Jesus then said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the Bread out of Heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the True Bread out of Heaven (His Living Word made flesh). For the Bread of God is that which comes down out of Heaven, and gives Life to the world.’ Then they said to Him, ‘Lord, always give us this bread.’
“Jesus said to them, ‘I AM the Bread of Life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe. All (those) that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from Heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. 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 (God’s Word made flesh, the Messiah of Israel) will raise him up on the last day!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Beloved, which of us does not fall short of God’s Perfect Nature and His Perfect Standards of Righteousness, Holiness, Purity and Self-less Love? Even on our best, most religious days, our hearts have been filled with evil wicked adulterous urges and desires that we, in our own strength can do nothing to change or atone for and redeem, or escape.
Romans 7:14-20
“For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law (as revealed in the Torah), confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but Sin, which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my (fallen, Sin-corrupted original nature that Scripture calls –) flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but Sin which dwells in me.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
God knew that He Himself, through His living creative Word, would have to re-create or regenerate our fallen spirits and rejoin them to His Holy Spirit. His Spirit has the Power to regenerate us fundamentally and make brand new creations of us. Only when God Himself keeps His own commandments from within our hearts, will His Standards of Righteousness be met and satisfied properly. That’s what saved Joseph during his excruciating time of temptation. He kept clinging to God’s living Word…and it was the Word working in Joseph that proved to be His faithful obedience to God. And that is what our beloved Master is here to be for us as well.
So, the commandments He gave at Mt. Sinai are meant to expose the Sin that abides within us. Our dismal failure to meet those standards proves that we’re bankrupt, spiritually speaking. And that exposes our false assumptions and empty hopes of being able, spiritually and morally, according to His Perfect Righteous Nature, to improve, justify, perfect and save ourselves by our own efforts. It is impossible for us to be ‘like God.’ He is infinitely, eternally, beyond us!
Romans 3:19-21
“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…”
Romans 5:19-21
“For (by God’s Eternal Blood Covenant Pattern) as through the one man’s (the first Adam’s) disobedience, the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One (the Last Adam, Yeshua) the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, (through God’s Covenant Covering) grace abounded all the more, so that, as Sin reigned in Death, even so Grace would reign through Righteousness to Eternal Life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The commandments strip the Serpent’s demonic lies away from us. We cannot and will not be ‘as God’ by our own radically independent efforts. We are made to be God’s image and likeness, reflections and revelations of what is in Him! Never were we designed or intended to be radically independent beings. So, in order to wake us from our demon-induced stupor into which he has lulled the human race to sleep, God lets us try our hand at observing His commandments, in order to bring us into His Truth and Reality.
Isaiah 28:16-18
“Therefore thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a Stone, a tested Stone, a costly Cornerstone for the Foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed. I will make (My Perfect) Justice the measuring line and (My Perfect) Righteousness the Level (Eternal Measurement); then hail will sweep away the refuge of (the Serpent’s demonic) lies and the waters will overflow the secret (concealed) place. Your covenant with death (created by the Serpent’s lies) will be canceled, and your pact with Sheol will not stand; when the overwhelming Scourge (of the Truth and Reality contained in My living Word) passes through, then you become its trampling place.”
The seventh commandment shows us that our original nature is adulterous to the core. Nothing that any of the false religions do to curb and repress and conceal the wicked desires of fallen human flesh can save us. Fallen flesh cannot ‘evolve’ into something else! Regardless of what they say or do, fallen men cannot keep that inner wickedness from erupting and spewing out in horrid, destructive and murderous ways. And if Joseph, in Genesis chapter 39 had not relied upon His Covenant God and allowed His Word to empower and guide him every step of the way as he lived out his circumstances in Egypt, he would have been equally empty and bankrupt in himself. He would have fallen for the Serpent’s bait and he would have failed dismally, like all the rest, to fulfill his true, God-given destiny. In that case, Joseph would have died as a disgruntled, anonymous, forgotten slave. And Israel would not have survived, and there would have been no ‘woman’ to bear the Seed that promised to crush the Serpent’s head.
So this issue underlying the seventh commandment goes much deeper than just the sin of violating human male/female marriage covenants. It goes all the way to the level at which the human heart violates its Eternal Blood Covenant Bond with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, by seeking to be united to other false, non-existent gods. Like all the other commandments, the seventh reveals the level to which we are faithful or unfaithful to our Creator! Because we, by our original nature, are so unfaithful to God, we are also naturally unfaithful to ourselves and to the other people in our lives. Our minds, wills and natural affections have been twisted and maimed. Now, instead of reaching out to God and bonding with Him, they’re reconfigured and programmed to retract and fold back into themselves! This is the state in which our human flesh is conceived and born into this world. And that is why Death is already contained within it. That’s why we cannot produce or duplicate the Righteousness that Almighty God’s Perfect, utterly Sin-less Nature and Eternal Life require. God knows that; but we are born completely ignorant of that fact. So the commandments expose the true perverted impulses that drive us. And that Truth, when we finally see it, is what drives us to repentance.
God sends His Word to each and every generation of human beings…to pierce, penetrate and impregnate their innermost being as they abide in the demonic Darkness that enshrouds this fallen world. His Holy Spirit seeks to impregnate human hearts with the Seed of Almighty God’s Eternal Resurrection Life, the Life that only comes to us from the living Word of God.
Genesis 3:9-10
“…The Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?” He said, ‘I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.’”
Come out of hiding! Surrender yourself to your true Creator and Lord, the living Word of God! Surrender your living death shroud to His Authority that He may strip it away from you and breathe His Spirit into you and bring you into the Light of His Eternal Life! Stop entrusting your future to a lie…come Home to the living Word of your Heavenly Father:
Matthew 11:27-29
“All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son (living Word) 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!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)