Exodus 20:15
“You shall not steal.”
The Tanach tells us that the Covenant relationship God established with His chosen people at Sinai failed from the start. Despite God’s awesome forbearance, patience and mercy, Israel continued to revert to her idolatrous, Sin-full ways. But God also tells us that He knew from the start that it would be that way with Israel and all the rest. Moses said it would be that way in the Torah!
But fallen human nature is very slow to realize or admit how hopelessly corrupt, bankrupt and needy it is, spiritually speaking. God intended to shine the Light of His Truth and Reality upon Israel so that through what would be seen in her, the Light would also shine upon and expose what is in the rest of the world as well. Israel’s failure was the object lesson for all the rest; the dire warning it gives is this:
If even Israel, God’s chosen people, with all of their God-given spiritual advantages and Covenant inheritance can’t meet God’s standards by their own efforts, then how much more bankrupt and hopeless will the rest of the world prove itself to be? So the commandments serve to bring out the contrast between what is in us… and what will be in the Messiah Son, His living Word, whom God also continues to reveal progressively, throughout the Torah and all the rest of the Scriptures.
Luke 24:24-27
“‘Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just exactly as the women also had said; but Him they did not see.’ And He said to them, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ (Messiah) to suffer these things and to enter into His Glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the (Hebrew Tanach) Scriptures.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Thus in Exodus 20, where the Torah first lists His Ten Commandments, God is revealing what He sent His Son to be and to do… to us, in us and through us! When He says for example, ‘You shall not steal,’ it is true that He is speaking to all fallen human flesh, for His Perfect Standards of Righteousness apply to all of His Creation. But because He is in the process of restoring fallen Creation to its pristine level of Perfection, He’s also speaking to His living Word, who was sent to represent us in God’s Eternal Covenant and who is the only one who could perfectly fulfill those commandments. So the Torah is revealing that God’s living Word is the Torah Giver… but He must also be the Torah Fulfiller! And this is why God made His New Covenant with Israel, and why, approximately 1500 years after the Exodus Covenant was made at Mt. Sinai, the living Word became flesh and appeared as Israel’s Messiah, to institute the era of the New Covenant Fulfillment.
Matthew 5:17-19
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
The Sin-corrupted fallen flesh we all inherit is, in itself, the image and likeness of the Serpent! In that state, we are utterly bankrupt and incapable of being the image and likeness of God. No one knows this better than God does. So when He told us not to engage in idolatry, or disrespect our parents or to steal, murder or commit adultery, etc. etc., if He was only addressing us directly and commanding us to be and do what we could never accomplish, His commandments would be a brutal, grotesque mockery of our weakness and spiritual bankruptcy. God would be sadistically torturing us, knowing our inability to obey and meet His Perfect Standards of Righteousness, perfectly. That would impose a certain, inescapable death penalty on us. And it would be like condemning birds for not being able to swim in the depths of the ocean, or condemning fish for not being able to build nests in the treetops!
God Is Our Loving Father
Obviously, that is not what these commandments are intended to do. God is not a cruel sadistic tyrant! He is our Father! Yeshua revealed that when, as one of us, He called Him, ‘Abba’ which is the Aramaic term for ‘Daddy!’ Yes, God’s commandments truly do expose our spiritual nakedness and moral bankruptcy, but only indirectly. Directly, they are revealing the Perfection of the Covenant Representation that God’s living Word eternally renders to God on our behalf! Ultimately, God gave the commandments to our Covenant Representative, our Eternal High Priest, Messiah Yeshua! So they are a revelation of Him and His Perfect Finished New Covenant Work of Fulfillment! He is the Fulfillment of the promises God made to Israel through His prophet Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 36:23-27
“‘I will vindicate the holiness of My great Name which has been profaned among the nations (Gentiles), which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord,’ declares the Lord God, ‘when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight. For I will take you from the nations, 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.’” (Emphasis added.)
Do you see it beloved? On Mt. Sinai, God’s living Word was pronouncing His commandments to our Eternal Blood Covenant Representative – Messiah Yeshua! And Yeshua received them and proceeded to obey them Perfectly, and He satisfied God’s Perfect Standards of Righteousness perfectly… in the name of anyone who would believe, obey and become one with Him through the Gift of the Holy Spirit! What God said on Mt. Sinai, His Word made flesh, our Messiah, fulfills in the New Covenant.
So now we see what God is REALLY saying through these commandments. So what was His primary and direct intention, when He established these boundaries? Was he not repeating and reemphasizing the original revelation that He gave as soon as the human race fell into Sin, Darkness and Death?
Genesis 3:21
“The Lord God (through His living creative Word) made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.” (Emphasis added.)
The commandments reveal, in greater detail, how God’s Word was sent to cover us all. And this is why God sent His Word to appear to Abram the Chaldean and established His Blood Covenant relationship with him and his family. Through this Covenant, the living Word of God provides the redemptive ‘Covering’ for those that will join Him in this awesome union:
Genesis 17:1b-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.”
To ‘walk before’ God’s living Word is to abide with Him on His terms, in intimate ongoing faith interaction. It is to depend on Him at all times and to draw from His Perfect Presence and all-sufficient Finished Work, just as our Follow Me Marching Orders are describing! When we do that, we are doing what our Master taught Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses to do! And that enables our Master to abide in us… as our New Covenant Fulfillment Resurrection Life! This is what it means to have God’s Torah ‘written on our hearts.’ It happens when, by faith in Him and the Perfection of His Finished Work of Atonement and Restoration, we rest with Him and enjoy the Glory of all He has done in our name, to perfectly satisfy Almighty God’s Standards!
Throughout all of Scripture, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is telling the world how comprehensive, complete and Perfect the ‘Covering’ of our infinite ‘Coverer’ truly is! He is revealing all the areas of human living in which His living Word and Holy Spirit are here to purify and set us free of Sin, Guilt and Death! He is revealing that He is going to redeem, rescue, reconcile, rejuvenate and perfectly restore us back to being His image and likeness! He is telling us the mind-boggling Good News of Salvation in terms that will cause us to be blown away in awe and joy and relief… when it finally dawns on us how infinitely Perfect and Just and Righteous and Loving and Good our awesome Heavenly Father truly is! When we see the infinite depths to which our Creator loves us, we will finally be set free from our slavery to ourselves! We will be delivered from the Serpent-injected ‘virus’ of radical independence from God! We will be free of strife and bondage and finally enter into God’s Eternal Sabbath Rest and be able to enjoy its Perfection with Him, forever!
God is revealing through His Biblical Commandments that He is the one who will perform and fulfill everything He requires of us. He is promising that He Himself will do it; He will fulfill the requirements and meet His own Standards, on behalf of His beloved chosen people. He revealed this through Moses and the other prophets that succeeded him, like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, and Ezekiel, who wrote down the promises listed above. He sent His prophets to get Israel to stop looking backward to Mt. Sinai, and to their own religious efforts and dismal failures…and begin to look forward… toward the glorious era of the New Covenant Fulfillment, that Messiah Yeshua and His apostles were going to introduce to the world:
Jeremiah 31:31-37
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the Covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My Covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.
“‘But this is the Covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will put My Law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.
“Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day And the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; The Lord of hosts is His Name: If this fixed order departs from before Me,’ declares the Lord, ‘then the offspring of Israel also will cease from being a nation before Me forever.’ Thus says the Lord, if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out below, then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done,” declares the Lord.”
Ezekiel 36:28-32
“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 (because you performed so well),” declares the Lord God, let it be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
God is doing this for His own sake! He is making sure that the integrity of His Name and Nature and Character and unilateral Covenant Promises are upheld. He is making sure that what He revealed and promised through His living and written Word is fulfilled to Perfection. He is doing it for His eternal Glory and Satisfaction, as only Almighty God Himself can do.
Beloved, when we place the New Covenant promises of God next to the portion in Exodus that lists the Ten Commandments, and the other 603 commandments listed in the Torah of Moses, we can gain a true and accurate understanding of the awesome revelation Almighty God is giving through His Law. Even in Exodus, God is revealing His living Word, His beloved Son, Yeshua. And when we finally understand that, and are able to recognize Him, as God continues to reveal Him throughout the entire Bible, we will be able to allow God to strip away the inherent, pre-programmed self-centered arrogance and radically independent, Serpent-injected self-righteous rebellion and mistrust of God that we inherit in our Sin-corrupted, Adamic DNA! Then we will see clearly that in order to perfectly satisfy His Perfect Justice and Perfect Standards of Righteousness, God Almighty Himself has to be the one that obeys His own commandments in our name!
New Covenant Promises and Provision
This is what the New Covenant is promising and making possible for all who will believe and obey. God’s own Word will be our Life and Perfect Righteousness and Holiness in the sight of God. God will make sure everything is done properly and fulfilled to His eternally Perfect specifications, by doing it Himself, since there is no one else in existence who would be capable of such a magnificent, monumental infinitely perfect work!
If God is addressing us when He pronounces these commandments, and attaching a death sentence if we violate them, He is requiring us to do something that He knows we are utterly incapable of accomplishing! But if He is addressing His own Son, who serves as our Covenant Representative, then we can understand and actually experience the awesome Glory of being ‘under the shadow of His wings,’ covered to Perfection by the most Perfect Champion and Redeemer imaginable!
Exodus 33:17-23
“The Lord said to Moses, ‘I will also do this thing of which you have spoken; for you have found favor in My sight and I have known you by name.’ Then Moses said, ‘I pray You, show me Your Glory!’ And He said, ‘I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the Name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.’ But He said, ‘You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!’ Then the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the Rock (which is My living Word); and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the Rock and cover you with My Hand (My Messiah) until I have passed by. Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”
Matthew 23:37-39
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (Emphasis added.)
When we try to be righteous by our own religious striving and self-improvement efforts, we indulge in consummate arrogance and spiritual blindness; we are stealing from Almighty God! We ignore what He revealed in His Torah and thus rob Him of the ability to fulfill His awesome promises to all fallen human flesh. We rob Him of the Glory that is due to the one true, living God and to Him alone. He is the Source of everything, including any Forgiveness, Atonement, Reconciliation and Righteousness we will ever enjoy with Him. We can’t redeem or justify ourselves any more than we can create our own heart, kidneys, liver and lungs! There is nothing we can be or do in ourselves by which we will be able to cover ourselves by equaling our Creator’s Perfect Standards. And that is why, if we dare to rob Almighty God, and usurp for ourselves what belongs only to Him, we will naturally, without any qualms, be ready to do the same to our neighbors who are made to be His image and likeness. If God’s Word is not truly living and operating from within us, then the Serpent is the one that dominates us. And we know that God exposes him as being ‘The Thief and The Murderer.’ (See John 10:1-18)
The Sin-corruption that has taken over the operations of our hearts makes it doubly impossible for us to satisfy God’s Perfect Standards of Righteousness perfectly. This is an inescapable metaphysical fact. And so the Truth contained in the first commandment is reinforced and repeated everywhere we turn to look: There is only one God…one Source for whatever is real, true and good. And all of Creation must look to, rely upon and draw from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, at all times, for all things. If we look to any created source in His place, including trying to come up with our own Righteousness, which we need in order to be God’s image and likeness, we fall immediately into the Serpent’s trap of rebellion and the idolatry of Self-worship.
Very often we focus on specific sins, like acts of rebellion against legitimate authority and violence and murder and sexual violations and theft of what belongs to our neighbors, because on the surface, those acts appear to differ from each other in nature and scope. But at their root, we can see that all of those lawless acts spring from the same root… the lie with which the Serpent infected the minds and hearts of our first parents:
‘Your eyes will be opened…and you (when you take matters into your own hands and become independent of Him) will be like God’!
Regardless of what commandment or which act of omission or commission we might consider, when we sin, we are putting our faith in ourselves… in false, non-existent gods. And we are placing those idols in the place of the Supreme Authority that only rightfully belongs to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! We anoint ourselves as our own supreme source of truth and reality. Our own understanding thus becomes, for us, the measure of all things. And thus, regardless of which commandment or sin we consider, any violation decapitates us from the true Headship of God’s living Word. Our repeated failures to create or provide for ourselves, or to protect, improve and redeem ourselves, proclaims to the entire universe, throughout all the eons of time, that we worship the false god of ‘Self.’ And we deny that the living Word of the one true God is in Reality, our one and only Source for whatever is real, true and good. So the eighth commandment, and all the others, can be fully and accurately understood in the light of God’s Authority over us, and whether or not we have allowed His living Word to cover our shameful nakedness.
When humans steal from each other, they deny that the living God who revealed Himself to us even exists! They deny that He is the only Creator and true Provider for all of Creation. They deny that He has authority over us. They deny that He has the right to tell us what is right and wrong, good and bad, and true and false. Thieves take it upon themselves to ‘be like God’ and thus usurp His Authority and Autonomy. And while they remain under that delusion, they ‘think for themselves’ and ‘run their own lives’ and do everything ‘their way.’ But in reality, they are nothing more than empty, ravenous predators…just like the Serpent. And when they steal what rightfully belongs to others, they are stealing from Almighty God…robbing Him of His Glory, the Glory that belongs solely to our All-Sufficient Shepherd and Provider.
When God is not at the center of our paradigm of reality, or worldview, we reject what He has revealed about Himself. And because we do not believe Him and trust and rely upon Him exclusively, a huge void is created in our minds and hearts by our unbelief. That void causes us to feel anxious and ill at ease… and so we try to fill the void with something other than the God of Israel and what He has already provided for us. We invent myriads of false gods in an attempt to allay our fearful, desperately needy imaginations. But when we invent false gods, we enthrone our own intellect and understanding as the supreme measure of all things and usurp the Glory and acknowledgement that is God’s just due. That is the essence of humanism, in which Sin-corrupted souls love to indulge. And any commandment we violate is a symptom, a variation of this one basic issue: We are rejecting the one true God!
Malachi 3:7-9
“From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’
“Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings; you are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you!”
In all the centuries from Moses until the arrival of John the Immerser (Baptizer), Israel’s attempts to honor her Covenant relationship with God failed to please or satisfy Him and His standards and expectations. Why? The answer is fairly obvious. Almighty God is infinitely Perfect in every way! And created, Sin-corrupted humans are, to put it mildly, utterly and hopelessly imperfect! So as long as an Israelite, or anyone else, tries to interact with God in his or her own strength and by their own well-intentioned religious efforts, then, even before they have a chance to get started, they are doomed. They have fallen short of God’s Standard and all their efforts will fail utterly and totally!
The Perfect God and His Perfect Standards
Never forget this: Only the Perfect Supreme God of all Creation has it within Himself to meet and satisfy His own Perfect standards… Perfectly! It takes Perfection to be Perfect. So it is absurd to expect the likes of us to interact with God at His transcendent utterly Perfect level and think we can deal with Him on an equal footing. God is the Uncreated One. We are His creations. Therefore, we can never be equal to our Creator, or independent of Him…in anything!
This is why God’s Blood Covenant Pattern is so vitally important and necessary. In order for us to fulfill the awesome intent and plans and ‘image and likeness’ Destiny that is ours, we must have a Perfect Representative to fulfill everything in our name! We can’t do anything directly and personally to fulfill God’s Perfect requirements. He is God; we are dust that He fashions into human beings. And mortal dust does not qualify in terms of being ‘raw material’ for living and operating like our Perfect, Eternal God. Thus we see the utter absurdity of the Serpent’s lie by which he was able to deceive and captivate Eve and Adam:
Genesis 3:4-5
“The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil!’” (Emphasis added.)
The Serpent’s lie hypnotized these two created beings, that began as ‘dust’, and convinced them that they could become radically independent and autonomous beings with the capacity to meet their own needs, and fulfill and satisfy themselves, and operate at God’s level without depending on God’s creative Word! Contained within this toxic virus with which the Serpent infected them, was the falsehood that led them to assume that they had the power, ability and intelligence to satisfy their own needs… and that they really didn’t need God to be their Eternal Shepherd and Provider. They further assumed they didn’t need to obey God’s Word when He told them what they could and could not do. So they believed they could figure everything out for themselves and develop the skills they would need to be able to meet their own needs. Based on those assumptions, they thought they could afford to break away from God’s Word and do as they thought best, determining for themselves what is good and evil, and true and false, by what they could see on the screens of their their ‘virus-infected’ onboard ‘computers’.
This is why the Serpent so easily dominates the human race. He simply gets us to keep trusting in our own virus-infected, extremely limited, damaged Sin-corrupted perspectives, and twisted, defective reasoning processes that separate us from God and His Word. That is what killed Adam and Eve, and all of their offspring. Cain inherited that hideous, virus-damaged human equipment. And he began to use it to reason further:
“If I have what it takes to satisfy myself…THEN…should I desire to establish diplomatic relations with God, whoever or whatever that might be, I must also have what it takes in myself, to satisfy him!”
The Serpent’s Deadly Version of Virtual Reality
And so we see Cain indulging in self-centered, performance-based, human religion. The grossly defective human intellect looks at its warped viewing screen and is forced to see a reverse image of Reality. Man sees himself as being supreme in importance and authority. Man is now the hero of the story and star of the show. And so the ‘god’ or ‘gods’ that men imagine, are made in their own image and likeness. That is the exact reverse of what the true, living God actually intended and created! So such deluded beings, if they should deign to have a relationship with a god of their choice, will instinctively view Man to be preeminent… the captain of his ship, with the assistance of his gods… not realizing that what he is doing is condemning himself to remain stuck…aboard the Titanic! And if he invents gods of his choosing, he assumes that he has the right and ability to manage and control the reactions and behavior of those gods. How does he do it? He does it by inventing ways to control his gods, that do not really exist…by his own religious ideas and performance.
Isaiah 44:12-17
“The man shapes iron into a cutting tool and does his work over the coals, fashioning it with hammers and working it with his strong arm. He also gets hungry and his strength fails; he drinks no water and becomes weary. Another shapes wood, he extends a measuring line; he outlines it with red chalk. He works it with planes and outlines it with a compass, and makes it like the form of a man, like the beauty of man, so that it may sit in a house. Surely he cuts cedars for himself, and takes a cypress or an oak and raises it for himself among the trees of the forest. He plants a fir, and the rain makes it grow. Then it becomes something for a man to burn, so he takes one of them and warms himself; he also makes a fire to bake bread. He also makes a god and worships it; he makes it a graven image and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he eats meat as he roasts a roast and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, ‘Aha! I am warm, I have seen the fire.’ But the rest of it he makes into a god, his graven image. He falls down before it and worships; he also prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god.”
Psalm 94:8-10
“Pay heed, you senseless among the people; and when will you understand, stupid ones? He who planted the ear, does He not hear? He who formed the eye, does He not see? He who chastens the nations, will He not rebuke, even He who teaches man knowledge?”
Genesis 4:4-5
“Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.”
Isaiah 44:6-8
“Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the First and I am the Last, and there is no God besides Me ‘Who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it; yes, let him recount it to Me in order, from the time that I established the ancient nation. And let them declare to them the things that are coming and the events that are going to take place. ‘Do not tremble and do not be afraid; have I not long since announced it to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me, or is there any other Rock? I know of none.’” (Emphasis added.)
Revelation 1:17-18
“When I saw Him (God’s resurrected Word as He really is), I fell at His feet like a dead man. And He placed His right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.” (Amplification added.)
Beloved, can you see what the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is revealing throughout the Bible? Can you see the infinite Chasm of Transcendence that exists between Him, who is the Creator of all things, and each one of us created beings? There is no comparison, no equal footing whatsoever between what He is and what we are, in our Sin-corrupted mortally wounded state. How could we presume to meet His Perfect Standards of Righteousness? There is no delusion, no lie, as profoundly absurd as the one the Serpent ‘downloaded’ into the minds of our first parents in the Garden of Eden.
But absurd or not, the lie…that we can be ‘like God’…serves as the totally acceptable norm for the fallen world system to this day. It is the ‘hallmark’ or linchpin by which the religion of Humanism and its assumed self-righteousness and ‘wisdom’ are held in place. It is the Ultimate Robbery that oversteps the boundaries that separate us from God and leads us to believe that we can, with impunity, be and do whatever pleases us. And so, since decapitated humanity dares to rob God of His true place of Supremacy, then it has no problem violating the boundaries that were meant to protect us from each other. Thus fallen flesh readily defies the boundaries of others and violates and harms and steals from whatever and whoever may happen to be in the vicinity.
When we rob our Creator of His true Authority and Supremacy over us, we are viewing His commandments through our self-centered, Serpent-imaging ‘eyeglasses’. Those glasses do not allow us to see our Redeemer; they only allow us to see through the Serpent’s self-adoring perspective. And in that perspective we can only be aware of and concerned with, ourselves. And so what God reveals and requires means nothing to us. And in our blinded state, we follow the path of least resistance and opt for whatever seems natural, pleasurable, convenient and appealing to our fallen, twisted, Sin-loving flesh. This is why men so easily violate the boundaries and sensibilities and rights of others. Everything becomes ‘fair game.’ That is the way of this fallen world, where never-ending competition…the ‘law of the jungle’…prevails. Sin-corrupted Humans are pulled down by the powers of Darkness and their own corrupted mental equipment forces them to abandon their intended image and likeness of God level of operation, in favor of the level that is occupied by brute animals. That fallen level of Creation is devoid of selfless love. At that level, the law is: ‘the survival of the fittest.’ Thus entire nations, and religious sects, and ethnic groups, economic and social castes, and murderous street gangs readily swallow and chew up and consume any competitor that would dare to get in their way. But in God’s Reality and Kingdom, the Reality and Truth and Law is:
‘Love Almighty God with all of your heart and soul and strength, and, love your neighbor as yourself.’
Is not this fallen world, this ‘Egypt’, vastly different from the Kingdom of Heaven? Is it not true that the fallen decapitated Lawless world, even in the realms occupied by ‘World Religions’, the agenda is: ‘Let everyone fend for himself’ and the rules are: ‘win at all costs’? No holds are barred in the way they compete and undermine each other; so, like it or not, people remain fragmented and divisive and are forced to do whatever they have to do, to prevail and survive.’ Thus the promoters and proprietors of this fallen world remain Lawless and the whole world that is under their control is forced to live in fear and anxiety. Doors and windows must be locked; fences and walls must be erected to try to keep predators out. Insane levels of protectiveness and extremely expensive, sophisticated alarm and surveillance systems must be employed and maintained because the vicious wickedness that dominates in fallen human hearts never rests or ceases to take advantage of every weakness and opening. This is why we live in a world filled with fallen fearful highly armed humans. And this is why we must always be on the lookout. The world is crawling with wild predatory human animals that have no boundaries established in their hearts. There is nothing in them that equips them to exercise self-control. They only seek to control whatever is around them.
Thus we see that God’s commandments are not guidelines given to such wicked, predatory people to observe. They are declarations of how far below God’s standards we actually have fallen! They show us that for our fallen human flesh and the performance level that is natural and normal for the people of this fallen world, God’s commandments are indictments that accuse and condemn fallen human nature, and expose it for the predatory, lawless thing it truly is. They expose our bankruptcy… and if we heed what they are revealing, we will be appalled and convicted of our Sin and turn to the true God…and our bankrupt guilty hearts will be driven to embrace the One that Almighty God sent to us…to be our ‘Covering.’
Romans 5:19-21
“For as through the one man’s (the first Adam’s) disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One (Messiah Yeshua, the Last Adam) the many will be made righteous. The Law (Torah) came in so that the transgression (we inherited from Adam) would (be stirred up within us and) increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as Sin reigned in (our inherited state of living) death, even so grace (from God) would reign through Righteousness to Eternal Life through (our resurrected Messiah, God’s living Word made flesh) Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Amplification added.)
Perhaps now we can begin to see how fallen flesh is inherently geared by our state of Sin, to rob God of the Supremacy and Authority over us that is truly and rightfully His. And, even when we violate the fifth through the tenth of God’s commandments, we are in effect, robbing God not only of His Supreme place of Authority, but are also robbing Him of something else: We must keep in mind that our Creator has a Plan in mind for each part of His awesome Creation. He loves all of His creatures without exception and is committed to protect and provide for all of their needs and concerns. Each one of God’s creatures has a specific purpose and function in His Plan. And that is the way it is for every human being that He creates. Each of us has received from God a specific identity, purpose, role and destiny. And when we think or choose or judge or act, react and interact in ways that would twist, taint or destroy that God-given identity, purpose, role and destiny, we are working to rob God of the Glory and Satisfaction that will be His when the people we encounter and interact with have been fully restored to the intended image and likeness of God Perfection. And we are robbing our neighbors by diminishing or even destroying their true, God-given identity, purpose and destiny, which is the only way they can truly be fulfilled and satisfied in eternity. With our selfish predatory greed and lust…we get in the way of all that and cooperate with the Serpent’s destruction of God’s image and likeness.
Whenever we play loosely with the boundaries that are established to protect the wellbeing and purpose and role of any of God’s creatures, we are attempting to rob God of the Glory and satisfaction that will come when their purpose and destiny are fulfilled to Perfection. When we sin and violate God’s boundaries, we foul up the workings of His Plan for these creatures of His. So when we interact with other humans, whether we consider God’s chosen Israelite people, or the other families of the earth that God wants to bless and redeem and restore and fulfill, and we invade their lives and their boundaries and take what is theirs, we do serious damage to them and their ability to be and to do what God created them to be and do. Thus we rob God of the Glory that will come to Him if and when these people transform into His human image and likeness!
Matthew 25:41-46
“But when the Son of Man comes in His Glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious Throne. All the nations (Gentiles) will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the (faithfully obedient Remnant of Israel) sheep from the (Lawless, rebellious) goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For (you observed My commandments: ) I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these (Covenant) brothers of Mine, even the least (deserving) of them, you did it to Me.’
“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Amplification added)
Each time you interact with another human being…the potential exists for you to honor, protect and enhance the fulfillment of your own God-given identity, purpose and destiny, as well as those of the other person. You will either damage, derail and perhaps totally destroy the fulfillment of God’s plan for you and for them… or you will think, act, react and interact with them in ways that help to protect, preserve and ‘garden’ the fulfillment of God’s plans. If we choose to violate, harm and destroy, we’re acting as the image and likeness of the Serpent, allowing him to rob everyone involved of the fulfillment God has destined for all of us to enjoy. And that is the ultimate, most devastating robbery of all. But if we choose to protect and enhance God’s plans for us and for the people in our lives, it will be because His living Word, Yeshua the Messiah, is now our Life and is free to fulfill God’s commandments from within us, by the Power of the Holy Spirit:
John 10:9-11
“I am the Door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the Good Shepherd; the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” (Emphasis added. See Ezekiel 34.)
(Note: you may find it helpful to consult our other article entitled: “The Beautiful Oasis”. It is a parable that helps us to understand the dynamic of God’s Kingdom and the ways of His image and likeness, as opposed to the ways of the Serpent and his realms of Darkness. You can find it posted on our website under the section: ‘Articles and Teachings’. In that section is an article called, ‘Why God Sets Disciples Apart – Part 2’. The Beautiful Oasis parable is found there.)