Exodus 20:16
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
Our indwelling Lord is here to abide within His New Covenant disciples…to live, work and manifest His Resurrection Presence from within them. So what is the risen Lord here to do as He works from within us? Well, we don’t have to guess. The written Word reveals the nature of the living Word. It tells us what He always does:
Isaiah 55:10-11
“For as the rain and the snow come down from Heaven, and do not return there without watering the Earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My Word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it!” (Emphasis added.)
John 5:19
“…Jesus answered and was saying to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.’”
The Word abides in us to obey His Father and make sure His commandments are observed according to His Perfect Standards of Righteousness. By the Power of the Holy Spirit, the Lord Himself becomes our Perfect Obedience and Righteousness before God’s Perfect Presence.
Genesis 17:1
“Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before Me; and be blameless…” (Emphasis added.)
Only the perfectly obedient living Word of Almighty God can be God’s Perfect Image and Likeness. And only He can be blameless in God’s sight. He has the Perfect nature that covers, represents and serves us and enables Him to be our perfectly acceptable Champion before God. He did it on behalf of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and does it for every other Sin-corrupted human that ever was or ever will be! So, in the Fullness of the New Covenant God has made with the House of Israel and the House of Judah, this is exactly what His Word will abide within us to accomplish. He first gave the Covenant Commandments to Israel through Moses; and now He is here to obey and fulfill what God’s Perfection requires of us, in our name.
Matthew 5:17
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill!”
We must have a deep understanding of this awesome Torah revelation before we can truly believe, embrace and identify with the true Biblical Gospel of Salvation. The true Gospel is based on our crucified and resurrected Messiah, and our Holy Spirit union with Him. It does not depend on us, or our desires, intentions, agendas and personal performances. Our state of living death must be joined with Yeshua’s death on the Cross! When that is done, God’s Perfect Eternally Righteous Nature is free to restore and fulfill His Plan for Creation in our name!
Zechariah 4:5-6
“So the angel who was speaking with me answered and said to me, ‘Do you not know what these are?’ And I said, ‘No, my lord.’ Then he said to me, ‘This is the Word of the Lord to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord of hosts!” (Emphasis added.)
Please remember what Genesis and Exodus reveal! We are dealing with a Being that is absolutely Infinite Eternal Perfect Righteousness and Holiness! Nothing in our earthly experience, or our Sin-corrupted intellects, or other faculties can even come close to approaching, much less attaining such a totally transcendent altitude! Because God’s Nature IS Perfect, everything about Him is, and must always be – Perfectly Pure and Flawless. And whatever will be allowed to abide in His Presence must also be perfect, in the sense that it is exactly as God intended it to be when He spoke His Word to create it.
So, the ultimate destination of our Exodus Journey is…Perfection! God is transforming His own into His own perfect human image and likeness! He is re-making us to be just as He has always intended for us to be, and to do exactly what He designed us to do. At the final Judgment, nothing that falls short of this Perfection will be accepted. This is what the Ten Commandments, and the rest of what is in the Torah and all the other Scriptures that explain and amplify it are telling us!
Leviticus 11:43-45
“Do not render yourselves detestable through any of the swarming things that swarm; and you shall not make yourselves unclean with them so that you become unclean. For I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth. For I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, FOR I AM HOLY!’ (Emphasis added.)
Philippians 1:3-6
“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the Gospel from the first day until now. For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until The Day of Christ Jesus.” (Emphasis added.)
Throughout the Exodus and all of human history, God has been dealing with fallen, Sin-contaminated, guilty people! The Serpent’s Sin murdered us all! From the first moment of our earthly existence, we abide in the state of Sin and are mortally wounded by it! How can we call this Sin-murdered living death existence, ‘My Life?’ Self-adoring Hellenistic philosophies and the false religion of Humanism that idolize the radically independent human ‘Self’ are demonic deceptions and delusions! They constitute the false creeds of the decapitated human race that covers the earth. This is why our Creator came to cover our spiritual nakedness. He is here to restore us to God’s True Eternal Life and Reality. He revealed this to Moses and commissioned him to write it down in human words. And thus the Torah was entrusted to the nation of Israel so that the Truth could be shared with all of mankind and spread all across the world! The Truth is: our original, desperate, Sin-mutilated condition is not what God originally created; in the beginning, we were intended and created to be Almighty God’s perfect image and likeness!
So, after we learn about our fall into Sin, and realize that the Serpent decapitated us by tearing us away from our true Head, God’s living Word, we can readily admit that, in ourselves, we occupy a level that is far beneath God’s Perfect level. And we see that we’re not at all what God originally created and intended. Then we see clearly that since Death can’t transform itself into something that shares in God’s Eternal Life, our Sin-corrupted human nature can’t be ‘fixed,’ ‘improved’ or ‘educated’ into something that is Perfectly Righteous and Holy. We realize that as long as we remain in this state, God in His Mercy must provide us with a Mediator, a Representative, a Perfectly Righteous High Priest who truly is Holy and truly does occupy the same level of Perfection and Holiness and Righteousness that only Almighty God Himself occupies. And then we can rejoice and exult in the wonderful news: this is exactly what God has done for us, in and through His beloved Son, Yeshua our Messiah.
God has ‘covered’ us with His own Son, His living Word who has become one of us. With such a Perfect Champion to cover, protect and represent us, we, despite the disaster that befell us, can be regenerated and transformed and equipped to re-connect and interact with God the way He originally intended. Created, Sin-corrupted men can’t accomplish this transformation by anything they do! But one, who is Perfect and yet Human, has done everything necessary to make it possible and attainable. Yeshua, the Word of God made flesh…He is the one!
John 1:45-46
“Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see!’
Our Perfect Redeemer and Covering
So, the wonderful News is, that through His living creative Word, God Himself is our Perfect Redeemer…our All-Sufficient Covering, worthy Mediator and Eternal High Priest. That’s why we say, ‘it’s not about us…it’s all about HIM!’ There’s nothing we can devise, invent or initiate with which to cover, mend or improve what we are by nature. The Creator of all things, God’s living Word, must be free to re-create and regenerate us spiritually…to Perfection! And, at this stage of our Exodus from Darkness to Light and from Death to Life, He begins and continues this process for us, one person at a time. Only He is our True Head. And only He has overcome the Serpent and Sin and Death. At this point, He is the only human that has been resurrected from the dead. Others, like Lazarus, were resuscitated; but only our Messiah is truly resurrected. The ultimate Resurrection Life is only in Him, but not yet in us. So we must look to Him to be our Perfect Supply in everything. And the good news is that He, in all of His Fullness, can abide within us and give of Himself to us, through the indwelling Holy Spirit who is available to us in the New Covenant.
Our salvation and sanctification process begins when God regenerates our spirits. But even after that happens, our souls and bodies retain their original Sin-corrupted condition.
Genesis 4:7
“If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, Sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
Only through our Word and Spirit-filled, newly regenerated spirits, can we connect with God and be as one with Him. But our still Sin-corrupted souls must be subdued and brought into alignment with this awesome spiritual reality. If our fallen soul and brain are properly re-aligned with the Truth and Life that God is within our spirits, we will abide in Truth, under the dominion of the Spirit of our Messiah. And the behavior of our bodies will conform to, and manifest, the Authority of the Life of our Master that is operating within us. So once the connection is made between God’s Spirit and our spirit, we can embark immediately on our Exodus…from the Serpent’s temporal, earthly Darkness into God’s Heavenly Light. Our Master will free us from the Serpent’s Death-grip and take us toward our future full possession and share in His Eternal Resurrection Life. It is toward this Eternal Fullness that one day will be completely ours, that we are currently moving. And this is what it means to be ‘saved’ or ‘born again’ in Biblical terms.
Meanwhile, we still have to contend with the residue of Sin that remains in us. We struggle to bring it under God’s Dominion. But we know that the day is coming when our souls and bodies will also be made brand new. And then our entire makeup will be regenerated and fully equipped to embody God’s living Word to Perfection. But for now, we must follow our Lord as He continues to lead us into that Ultimate Destination. And while we are en route, He continually covers us by His Perfect Atonement and Presence. Until we reach our Fulfillment in Eternity, our Messiah must be our new Resurrection Life and Righteousness. Apart from Him, we have nothing of eternal value in ourselves. So through Him, and only through Him, is any human forgiven, reconciled and joined to God.
Psalm 91:14-16
“Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him securely on high, because he has known My Name. He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. With a long life I will satisfy him and let him see (enter into and experience for himself) My Salvation (Yeshua).” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So for now, unless our Redeemer’s own personal Covering insulates us, our fallen flesh can’t endure the awesome Perfect Presence of God. God’s Word must shield and protect us. He is the Connection that makes us one with God, while we’re still en route to our Final Destination. Until then, Yeshua must serve as our Perfection. Apart from Him, we are bankrupt and helpless. And this brings to mind a parable that Yeshua once related to express and reveal God’s righteous requirements concerning our spiritual nakedness. In the parable He spoke of a king that was planning a wedding feast for his son. And he ordered his slaves to find guests for the feast:
Matthew 22:9-14
“Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all they found, both evil and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests. But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.” (Emphasis added.)
Do you see what He is saying, beloved? God is warning us against false, man-devised religious substitute coverings that we may try to devise for ourselves. Our independent activities are unacceptable. Nothing we do apart from our Redeemer can raise us to His level of Perfection. If we understand what God reveals in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, we will understand what He is revealing in the Ten Commandments. We will see that, spiritually speaking, from the moment Adam fell into Sin and severed himself and the rest of us from our Head, God’s living Word, there has been nothing left in the human race to ‘improve’ or ‘save.’ Adam and Eve DIED! Therefore, all their offspring died with them. And death cannot be improved or saved! So, regardless of how many false gods and religions we invent, it’s too late! Death has had us in its clutches from the very beginning! So only a resurrection, through Another, can save us! And at this time, only Yeshua has entered into Eternal Resurrection. That’s why He must become one with us, so that He can share His Resurrection Life with us, the way a head shares its life, identity and status with the members of its body. There is no way we can bypass or substitute for what God’s Word provides. This is the inescapable Truth for anyone who has been decapitated from the Source of all life:
John 3:3
“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God!’” (Emphasis added.)
In our still-fallen state, if we do offer anything to God that will pass His awesome Judgment and be accepted by Him and avail throughout all of Eternity, it will be because God gave it to us first, from the Treasury in Eternity of the Perfection and Completeness of His Word’s Perfect Finished Work of Creation and Redemption! What He first gives to us we can safely offer back to Him, knowing it will be accepted. In other words, it must come to us from God’s Eternal side of the Infinite Chasm of Transcendence because only He has what it takes to satisfy His own Perfect Standards and fulfill His own Commandments! His plan has always been to meet His own standards through us, as we serve Him by submitting ourselves to be His ever-receiving embodiment or, corresponding ‘image and likeness’.
Isaiah 55:11
“…So will My Word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”
So all of Scripture is the revelation of the absolute Preeminence of God’s Perfect Self-fulfilling, living Word. If we do not submit wholeheartedly to His absolute Authority, and come to God covered by His Perfect Blood Atonement, we can’t face or endure Almighty God’s Perfect Presence:
Matthew 22:14
“…For many are called, but few are chosen.”
So God has given fair warning: by our fallen Sin-loving nature, we are all born selfish, self-centered, rebellious, manipulative, predatory, controlling and self-destructive! How can that be the image and likeness of God? We all sin and make horrendous blunders. We are all guilty of multiple sins of commission and omission. We have sinned against ourselves and against others and we’ve ruined relationships and have left countless deeds of corrupt selfishness in our wake. So, clearly, if we appear before Almighty God’s Judgment Seat in our independent spiritually naked, grossly flawed state, it will be terrifying to consider what will happen. When we stand in the glare of God’s awesome Truth, it exposes us as those who dare to approach God while serving as the living embodiment of His eternal enemy, the Serpent!
Isaiah 6:1-5
“In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, The whole earth is full of His Glory!’
“And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, ‘Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’”
For fallen flesh to try to approach the Presence of God’s Holy utterly Pure Nature, without the Word’s ‘Insulation’ will be like a piece of tissue paper approaching a roaring blast furnace! Paper and fire are incompatible by nature. And that is how God’s Nature and that of Sin-corrupted flesh are. They too are totally incompatible. Sin has no chance in God’s Presence.
But beloved, destruction is not the end God intends for us. That’s why He warns us: we MUST come to grips with the Truth that He, in His Perfect Eternal Nature, never changes! He is always Perfect and everything He does must be, and will be, Perfect! And that includes how He will judge the creatures He has made. We will be measured against His own Eternal Perfection! So, since God does not change…and we cannot change ourselves, then before we can be made right with Him, and become compatible with His awesome Nature, WE MUST BE CHANGED BY TOTAL UNION WITH HIS WORD! God’s Word must be free to transform us.
If we truly submit to His Authority over us, He is free to do what is necessary. He will regenerate or re-create us. And we will transform from Sin-ridden ‘tissue paper’ into little flames of the same Righteous Fire that is in God! We will not become God. But we will be the perfect human image and likeness of our utterly Transcendent God’s Holiness and Righteousness. God’s living creative Word, who created us in the beginning, is now here to recreate us so that we can become compatible with the nature of God, and pass His awesome Judgment and be received by Him for all of Eternity!
God wants passionately to give Himself to us…to make us one with Him. He desires to transform us so that we can enjoy His Perfect Righteousness, Peace, Joy and Fulfillment with Him! That’s why He gave us the instrument of the Cross that He Himself, as our Covenant Representative, had to endure on our behalf. When we join Him in His death, to the same extent that He joined us in our Sin so that He could atone for us…the Cross strips away our former radically independent existence. And God’s Word makes us one with the Glory of His Human Resurrection! This is the merciful aspect of God’s nature as revealed to and through Israel, during the devastating era of her Babylonian captivity:
Jeremiah 29:10-14
“For thus says the Lord, ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good Word to you, to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’” (Emphasis added.)
The Battle is the Lord’s
God is not thwarted or threatened in the least by the Serpent’s malicious schemes. God’s demonic enemy isn’t going to get away with anything. God’s awesome Judgment awaits him too! And that’s why the Cross must separate us from the Serpent. When it does, it becomes the instrument of our Salvation. This Truth strips away the Death Mask that prevents us from seeing Reality and Truth as they really are. The Serpent has blinded the human race. In our original state, we share in his spiritual blindness and arrogant independence from our Creator. Thus we mindlessly defy the very One who is maintaining us in existence! But the Revelation of Sin, and of the Cross that strips Sin away from us, blows away all the demonic delusionary ‘smoke’ that once blinded our spiritual eyes. And we are able to see what we really are, and the horrible trap into which we have fallen. Then we can turn to God for Salvation and Restoration and receive the living Word He sent to save all of the Serpent’s human victims. And, thanks to the perfect life, death and Resurrection that our Messiah went through, as our Eternal Blood Covenant Representative, the Serpent’s evil works are nullified and destroyed and Sin and Death lose the death-grip they once had over us!
Romans 12:21
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with Good!” (Emphasis added.)
So, once we receive salvation from our Messiah, what we were and what we did and failed to do in the past is finished and totally cancelled out, forever! Therefore, we must never allow the past and the Sin residue that remains in our fallen souls and bodies to continue to haunt and cripple and cancel out the spiritual Treasure God’s Presence is now free to begin to give to us in the present. We must not allow past things to abort or prevent our Exodus from being completed. We have died to living death, and it has died to us! What we were when we were conceived into the first Adam’s Sin is no longer ours, once we’re regenerated by God’s Holy Spirit. God’s Perfect Righteousness is ours, as soon as we also become one with our Messiah through the Eternal Covenant, in our minds, wills, affections, judgments, choices and emotions.
Luke 10:26-28
“And He (Yeshua) said to him, ‘What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?’ And he answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.’ And He said to him, ‘You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.’”
This has always been, and always will be, the essence and core of the True Gospel of Salvation from the one true, living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! This is what the Exodus and the rest of the Torah out of which Exodus emerges, and all of the Commandments, have always been trying to show the sons of Israel and the rest of the world! Our God is Perfect. In His Perfection God’s Word has already identified with us to free us from our Sin. Now we must identify with Him so that He can impart His Righteousness and Resurrection Life to us. Messiah Yeshua contains in Himself everything any of us will ever need, at any level, including that of total forgiveness, reconciliation, redemption and full restoration. No other false god that the minds of men invent is based on Reality. Those idols cannot save us or provide anything for anyone that will be real and abide in Eternity.
When God’s True Word became flesh to represent us, His Perfect, Sin-less Humanity, although it is forever Sin-less in itself, still had to be reduced and stripped to total ZERO, not theologically and theoretically, but experientially, in real, agonizing, human flesh and blood living color! Because Yeshua, the True Passover Lamb, was standing and acting in our place, and covering us, He had to take on the totality of the Sin of the entire human race, and undergo the full punishment and curse and retribution that God’s Perfect Righteousness and Justice had to impose upon us all! The one who is Life personified and who is the Creator of all created life, came to represent every living dead human that had been severed from God by Sin. In that sense, Eternal Life invaded the realms of Eternal Death…and He overcame and conquered the Serpent and took all the Sin and Death off of us. Fallen human flesh is spiritually dead, but we have a Redeemer and Savior that has done everything necessary so that we could be restored.
Anything that comes out of our original human living death is also dead…and it is therefore, unacceptable to God. The state of living death, must be forsaken, denied, and exchanged for what can only come to us from our Messiah, God’s living Word, the risen Lord! This is what He means when He says:
Matthew 16:24-25
“…‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.’” (Emphasis added.)
2 Timothy 2:12, 13
“If we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us; if we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.” (Emphasis added.)
Not Just Good News…THE Good News!
Now let me utter this additional, all-important, inescapable fact in which Last Days disciples-in-training must be grounded. We already know that God is Perfect and therefore, He never changes! And from this Truth flows another that needs to be emphasized here. Because God never changes, His original intent and plan for each human He creates will also never change! This is the most awesome Good News imaginable for Sin-ridden human beings: Since He originally gave us an identity, purpose, calling and destiny, then, regardless of what Sin has done to us, regardless of what life on this earth has done to us, and regardless of what sins or crimes we have committed in the past…God will never revoke the original identity, purpose and destiny He gave to us. He is here to restore them to us. So the only way in which we can be deprived of the awesome birthright, and Heavenly Status and Destiny He has waiting for us is if we continue to use our free will to reject and bypass His Word, the Messiah whom He sent to serve as our redemptive Covering.
So the Gospel forces us to choose – between Eternal Life…and Eternal Death. And the Glory of it is that we actually do have the freedom and ability to choose. We don’t have to go down with the Titanic! Word-less, decapitated people operate in futility that comes from spiritual blindness. They are like dead branches, cut off from their vine. They are captivated and locked into a demonic trance. Thus they try in vain, to achieve full Perfection and Fruitfulness, apart from the one and only Source of all things. But once we know the True Gospel, our Exodus is within our reach. And we can return to God by entering into this fully unified interaction with God’s living Word. So, it amounts to this:
John 3:30
“HE must increase, but I must decrease!” (Emphasis added.)
As long as we remain mentally and emotionally ‘decapitated’ from our Messiah by worldly, Serpent-induced error and false, inane teachings, we cannot fully renew our minds and perspectives to align ourselves with the Truth of the Gospel. Thus, even those who are already spiritually regenerated can continue to misfire badly and spend their lives floundering and ‘barking up the wrong trees’ and falling far short of what God’s indwelling Presence in their spirits is here to be and do in us and through us. If our spirits are truly equipped to enter into the Land of Promise, but our hearts, souls, minds and brains remain firmly anchored in our original, self-absorbed ‘Egyptian identity,’ we’ll remain locked in that demonic radical independence. Thus we’ll fail to finish our Exodus and will miss out on the full enjoyment of God’s Gift, our Israelite New Covenant ‘Birthright and Inheritance.’
So beware of the delusive trap of remaining stuck within your original ‘Egyptian’ identity, perspective and mindset and habit patterns. Beware of trying to ‘run your own life’ and ‘do things for God.’ When you do that, you fail to receive anything FROM God. Instead you keep trying to improve and save yourself. Realize that what we originally are is the result of mankind’s fall into Sin. And that living death MUST be forsaken entirely and completely exchanged for the perfect Finished Work that we can only receive from our awesome resurrected, indwelling Messiah!
You can’t fix, improve or save anything that is dead, including yourself! In that sense, we are all totally bankrupt! Our only hope is for God to create us anew, through His living Word. That’s why for us, Messiah Yeshua, God’s Word made flesh, is everything! He can supply us with everything because only He is both God and Man. And only His Perfect Humanity has entered into Eternal Resurrection. But He can unite us to God because He actually IS God! He went before us into death, atonement and Resurrection. And when we allow Him to bring us into the Covenant that makes us one with Him, He gives us the Gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit of God. Then God can abide with us on Earth, and from within our heart of hearts, meet His Perfect standards, perfectly, in our name. He becomes our Perfect Righteousness and Success. Everything necessary for this has already been done and is offered to us. And that is why we too, must endure the discipline of retraining and reprogramming and rewiring ourselves so that we can learn to join God in His Eternal Sabbath REST!
Genesis 2:1-3
“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work, which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work, which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”
Psalm 50:7-12
“Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, I will testify against you; I am God, your God. I do not reprove you for your sacrifices, and your burnt offerings are continually before Me. I shall take no young bull out of your house nor male goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is Mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird of the mountains, and everything that moves in the field is Mine. If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is Mine, and all it contains!” (Emphasis added.)
Matthew 4:17
“…Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”
So obviously the renewing of our minds and rewiring of our brains is of utmost importance in relation to our successful completion of the Exodus. Disciples can’t afford to be hobbled and shackled by remaining mesmerized and stuck in their old worldly, humanistic, self-absorbed identities from the past. What good will we be for God’s Kingdom if even those of us who are called to be His disciples remain entranced, enslaved and haunted by past slavery to ourselves? How can we be free to be new creations if we continue to reenact our former identities and past history and our childhood viewpoints, fears and issues? How can we embody our Messiah if we continue to wallow in our pre-Messiah past, with all of its shame, fear, anger and old childhood taboos and hang-ups that keep contaminating and aborting our future with God? How can disciples help their children and other disciples, to grow and mature, if they can’t even resolve, outgrow and effectively deal with their own old identities and wounds and resolve their issues and outgrow them and leave them behind? Is that not what forced the majority of the first Exodus generation to perish in the wilderness?
Old Self-Sabotaging Patterns Must be Replaced with Truth
No beloved, we must learn to diligently tend to and completely heal, all of our old soul wounds. And we must replace childish, self-sabotaging crooked patterns and habits with new ones that truly do align and equip us to embody our indwelling Lord, as He really is. Once we effectively renew our minds and brains, we’ll no longer be condemned to drag the weight of unfinished business from former years, into our future endeavors. If we finish it mentally and emotionally, as well as spiritually, THEN…we’ll be through with it entirely. And we’ll be free to fill ourselves with God’s Holy Spirit and able to embody our risen Lord in His Resurrection Glory, as He really and truly is.
Romans 12:2
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove (by the experience of your lives) what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Amplification added.)
Yeshua’s summons to follow Him requires us to forsake and finish all of our unfinished emotional business, and to heal those painfully sore areas – those old hurts, horrors, hatreds, humiliations and unmet hungers that have kept our souls and lives in chains. And even if our egos became bloated with worldly honors and acclaim, that too must be cut away (circumcised) from our hearts and our identities. That will no doubt be painful, but the pain from successful, life-saving surgery is only temporary. It soon heals and the traces of our former worldly slavery will disappear. Then, we’ll have no further need for the addictive activities and substances we once used to anesthetize ourselves. The old fears, phobias, hatreds, resentments, hang-ups and walls we once erected to prevent the wounds from being jarred, jostled and irritated will also no longer be necessary. We must be free of all former addictions because nothing from this fallen world will be allowed any longer to abide in God’s Perfect Presence! Therefore the Lord’s Presence is here to set us free from slavery to ourselves.
Matthew 10:39
“He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”
Ephesians 5:26-27
“…So that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, that He might present to Himself the Church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.”
2 Peter 3:13-15
“But according to His promise we are looking for new Heavens and a new Earth, in which Righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you…” (Emphasis added.)
Stop identifying with what you were in earlier years. Stop mentally and emotionally clinging to what you picked up in and from this fallen world. Outgrow the identity, perspectives and habitual patterns you developed in ‘Egypt!’ Freedom from those old things will enable you to put on the identity, perspective and lifestyle habits of Messiah Yeshua, the Lord of Glory:
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
“Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is IN CHRIST, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are FROM GOD, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God He made Him who knew no sin to be Sin on our behalf, so that we might become the Righteousness of God IN Him.” (Emphasis added)
A major reason why so many get stuck in past issues is that ignorance of these things is passed on from generation to generation. No one ever teaches us how to effectively recognize and then disengage from and outgrow the past. Therefore most of us continue to reenact it, over and over, in the present and in the future. And as long as we do that, we have no chance of moving into the future God intends for us. Our past will be our future. We can’t embody Yeshua as long as we continue to reenact our past living death existence and experiences. We keep doing the same things in the same ways… even with the new people we encounter in the future! As long as the issues from the past remain active, we who refuse to resolve and outgrow them will continue to identify with them and wrestle and struggle with them. In that case, we’ll be like being prisoners that are chained to a decaying corpse. We’ll be condemned to drag that corpse with us… until we too become a corpse!
Some people begin to grow and mature and move on shortly after they are saved. But others remain stuck. And so The Ultimate Journey material and support group training that we discussed in part no. 2 of this meditation are for those that are stuck. The training and education they supply teach us the steps that lead to true freedom from the past. Then we can grow, mature and become more skilled in following and embodying our Master’s indwelling Presence with faithful accurate precision. Any lies we learned and still believe and any significant abuse, rejection and neglect we underwent in our formative years, and any traumatic, excruciatingly painful events we experienced that continue to cause destruction in our lives, must be addressed and dealt with. We must first strip that old ‘garb’ off, before we’re free to put on ‘the New Covenant ‘Wedding Garment’ – our new Israelite Identity, Citizenship and Lifestyle that God gives in exchange for our old rags.
Gardening Ourselves is Essential!
So this is where we encounter a paradox:
You can’t really outgrow and leave your past behind…UNTIL you are finally willing to admit, accept and embrace it, just the way it really was… so you can deal with it effectively and thoroughly!
This is the secret to being rid of what happened to us in our past – TRUTH, OPENNESS AND TRANSPARENCY AND THE DILIGENT ‘GARDENING’ OF OUR TRUE NEEDS. This is true for us, true for our children and true for everyone with whom we interact. We must be real, open and transparent with ourselves, with God and with others. When we reach the point where we effectively deal with important matters instead of running away from them, then our long-frozen emotional equipment will begin to ‘thaw out’ and it will begin to work once more, exactly as God designed it to do. And we will begin to actually feel again. We will feel what we’re REALLY feeling… and all the trapped emotional voltage will begin to thaw and flow. And when it has been properly and effectively vented, discharged and totally released, our grief work will begin and progress and finally be done. And THEN… our souls can heal and experience closure, resolution…and Peace. Then we will outgrow and leave those past things behind. And, once and for all, we’ll enter into what is New, Holy, Heavenly, Good and Eternal.
In our early days, had we been privileged to have wise mature allies with us who were skilled in helping and teaching and supporting and guiding us in processing our pain, we would have quickly grieved our losses and moved beyond them. But because we didn’t learn how to process our experiences properly, we became frozen and stuck in shame, anger, and denial of our pain and all the Truth-twisting and unreality that follows denial. This is why so many cannot experience the fullness and the glory of what it means to be ‘born again’ as brand new creations, as children of God, and temples of His Holy Spirit, and the embodiment of His glorious risen Son, Yeshua. And all of this is involved in the proper observance of the ninth commandment! When we fully resolve the old issues…we can truly ‘die to them’ and Yeshua, our New Resurrection Life, will take over in all of His glorious Perfection.
Can you see it, Beloved? Your open wounds will never heal if you keep denying that they exist! That prevents you from tending to them as they really are. So, since we’re called by the Lord to be His disciples, we must learn to deal with these things with our fellow disciples, as God’s healthy, transparent Family. If God’s Family learns to do this, each one of us will have a safe place in which to receive the help we need. We will all develop the wonderful ‘people-gardening’ skills we need. And we will no longer have myriads of angry, wounded ‘adult children’ in our midst. No longer will deep pockets of neglected, festering uncleanness lurk beneath the surface of our marriages, families, fellowships and other human associations.
The disciples of the Last Days must learn to stand by and help and support each other. This is how we become and remain a unified, healthy, combat-ready Body that is able to resist and overcome the Father of Lies. We overcome his traps of delusions, lies and unreality by helping and encouraging one another to be truthful, admitting and accepting our wounds and needs truthfully. Then we can learn to care for and tend to the needs of all of our family’s wounded. But we must start with ourselves! We need to be proactive in creating an environment in which it’s safe to be real, open and honest, so that these issues can be dealt with in healthy ways. Then we will all be strong, fit healthy and able to take our proper places in the battle lines against the powers of Darkness! Wounded, crippled troops are useless in battle! Instead of being an asset to the Lord’s Host, casualties become an enormous liability and drain upon an army’s manpower, focus and resources. So dealing with the Truth, truthfully, is an essential element and requirement for any healthy, efficient, smooth-functioning Last Days army.
It is with these types of issues that the Ultimate Journey support group ministry is so helpful in teaching disciples how to ‘leave Egypt’ in Spirit and in Truth. With the proper help, we can be free for the rest of our lives, able to move into the future free and clear of the harmful, debilitating residue from the past. And once we reach that level of healing, health, wisdom, skill and well being, we will become wonderful instructors and guides for the new generations of ‘disciple recruits’ that God will place under our care. So again, here is the ministry website address through which you can gain more information about this process and its material: www.theultimatejourney.org
Our future ability to do our jobs properly in the Last Days will depend on whether or not we are able to truly and successfully persevere, overcome all demonic opposition, and truly finish our Exodus. Will we be equipped and educated and trained to abide with God in His Biblical Israelite ways? Will we truly be fitted for citizenship in His New Heaven and New Earth? Because so many believers still labor under the handicap of being deprived of the advantage of knowing God’s living and written Word, and having Spirit-led veteran disciples to guide them into God’s Whole Truth, they are condemned to ‘fly blind.’ But once they learn about these things and become knowledgeable, skilled, mature disciples, they will grow in wisdom and skill and they will learn to guide and help their children and their friends through the Serpent’s ‘mine fields’ that cover the face of the earth…safely and successfully.
Ephesians 4:17-25
“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the (Torah-less) Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness (deeply embedded damaged DNA and programming and wiring) of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.” (Emphasis added)
True Disciples Are Not Improved…They’re Resurrected!
From this text we can see that God is here to remake us completely! He won’t accept our existing structures in order to ‘renovate’ or ‘adapt’ them for His purposes. He is Almighty God! And He is Perfect. He won’t accept or use anything that is Sin-corrupted and has been murdered by the Serpent! He won’t come into our worldly Sin-corroded lives and help us to run them better. On the contrary, we must drop every bit of that in order to be free to come into our Messiah’s Perfect Life! This is why the Holy Spirit always uses God’s ‘Death and Resurrection’ Exodus pattern with us. Everything that was once corrupted and disfigured by Sin, must be made new.
Any ‘service to God’ or any ‘ministry’ in which we may engage, that is going to bear true Heavenly fruit and avail into eternity will only avail because it first came to us from eternity…from God and His Infinitely Perfect Treasury of Provision that has always been contained in the Perfect Finished Work of God’s living creative Word. What comes from this fallen world has Death that is caused by Sin, in it. But what comes from God contains Eternal Life.
Genesis 2:1-3
“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work, which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work, which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”
If we try to serve God by putting our faith in earthly created things, we will unconsciously and habitually continue to follow the ways of Cain. Cain tried to add to the Perfection God had already created. But God won’t accept any of that, as we see from the way He rejected Cain’s offering, but accepted Abel’s, in Genesis 4. Abel ‘followed’ His Master, God’s living Word. Cain went his own way. This is not about living for God, or trying to be like Him. This is about learning to live FROM Him, at all times and in all things. He must supply everything! When we operate with Him and work on these terms, THEN we are living and acting and speaking with TRUTH. THEN…we are learning the ‘steps’ He wants to teach us so that we can be ready to dance with our one and only Source in the Arena of Testimony!
This is why our Master is so adamant when He tells us to ‘pick up our crosses’ and FOLLOW HIM! Violence, leading to death, must be done to ‘MY life.’ Since there is no improving our radically independent, self-adoring, self-righteous religiosity and our diligently designed and crafted comfort zones, and pet opinions and philosophies and habitual viewpoints and path of least resistance lifestyles, God will ‘blow all of that up’ with gut churning, shocking, devastating suddenness and thoroughness. Here are a few examples:
Genesis 22:1-2
“Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, ‘Abraham!” And he said, ‘Here I am.’
“He said, ‘Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”
2 Kings 6:15-17
“Now when the attendant of the man of God had risen early and gone out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was circling the city. And his servant said to him, ‘Alas, my master! What shall we do?’ So he answered, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’ Then Elisha prayed and said, ‘O Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.’ And the Lord opened the servant’s eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”
John 20:24-28
“But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples were saying to him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.’
“After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then He said to Thomas, ‘Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.’ Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
Acts 9:1-10
“Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.’ The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.” (Emphasis added.)
Beloved, can you see what the Holy Spirit had to do to each of these disciples? Each one received a ‘My Lord and My God!’ revelation flash. They saw God’s Word from a fresh perspective they never dreamed possible. The revelation totally devastated their long-held opinions, theologies and former comfort zones! It pulled the rug out completely from beneath their past and present levels of operation. What God showed them literally ‘fried their brain circuits!’ For them, the past was ruined. They HAD to forsake it and leave it behind! God didn’t do anything new or extra; He simply let them see it from a new perspective that was so shocking, so stunningly, devastatingly gut wrenching and heart breaking, that it ‘crucified’ them in the most real sense of the word. God HAD to deliver them from their habitual self-centered pet viewpoints and self-centered worldly humanistic perceptions, assumptions, reasoning and delusions so they could begin to grow beyond the point at which they became stuck! In their minds and hearts, the King of the Kingdom of Heaven was finally able to begin to descend upon – and enter – their heart of hearts.
Whenever God has to do this to get us moving and growing again toward total union with our Messiah, will be agonizing, shocking, and painfully disorienting. It will take time to recover from it whenever it happens. But it must happen… to all of us…repeatedly! This is how He enables us to keep going, to continue until we cross the ‘Finish Line’ and truly finish our Exodus. We must successfully follow our Master all the way… from our original worldly delusions and radically independent lifestyle ways… to total union with His Word and Spirit and Reality, in the Kingdom of Heaven. Try to imagine, as you ask God to teach and guide you, what it will take for Him to get you ready to enter into and handle the enormous turbulence that awaits this fallen world in this future and to persevere until we overcome:
Revelation 18:4-19
“I heard another voice from heaven, saying, ‘Come out of her (the fallen world system), my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues; for her sins have piled up as high as Heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Pay her back even as she has paid, and give back to her double according to her deeds; in the cup, which she has mixed, mix twice as much for her. To the degree that she glorified herself and lived sensuously, to the same degree give her torment and mourning; for she says in her heart, ‘I sit as a queen and I am not a widow, and will never see mourning.’ For this reason in one day her plagues will come, pestilence and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire; for the Lord God who judges her is strong.
“And the kings of the earth, who committed acts of immorality and lived sensuously with her, will weep and lament over her when they see the smoke of her burning, standing at a distance because of the fear of her torment, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city! For in one hour your judgment has come.’ And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, because no one buys their cargoes any more—cargoes of gold and silver and precious stones and pearls and fine linen and purple and silk and scarlet, and every kind of citron wood and every article of ivory and every article made from very costly wood and bronze and iron and marble, and cinnamon and spice and incense and perfume and frankincense and wine and olive oil and fine flour and wheat and cattle and sheep, and cargoes of horses and chariots and slaves and human lives. The fruit you long for, has gone from you, and all things that were luxurious and splendid have passed away from you and men will no longer find them. The merchants of these things, who became rich from her, will stand at a distance because of the fear of her torment, weeping and mourning, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, she who was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls; for in one hour such great wealth has been laid waste!’ And every shipmaster and every passenger and sailor, and as many as make their living by the sea, stood at a distance, and were crying out as they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, ‘What city is like the great city?’ And they threw dust on their heads and were crying out, weeping and mourning, saying, ‘Woe, woe, the great city, in which all who had ships at sea became rich by her wealth, for in one hour she has been laid waste!’”
This Exodus can’t be completed by merely acquiring enormous amounts of ‘head knowledge’ or by adopting new man-made traditions that cause us to become hyper-religious and grossly self-righteous. True healing and the resolution of old issues and tensions finally happen when we stop giving God ‘lip service’ and actually enable Him to reverse the process that destroyed us. Our natural original family relationships and environments and associations in this fallen world wounded us even further! Those twisted relationships hurt and crippled and misled us. Interacting with the people from our past is what ‘scrambled’ our minds and souls on the ‘Titanic.’ And that is the ‘unfinished relational business’ we must finish and outgrow so we can be free to leave the Titanic behind, and all that is connected to it.
But it will take new, healthy, Biblically-based disciple-level relationships that we create in the present, in order to cancel out and undo the damage inflicted by our original, unhealthy, destructive relationships that hurt us in the past. The damage can only be healed and repaired when we deal with it at the same level in which it was caused… in new, disciple-level relationships with the people currently in our lives. Our original relationships were, for the most part, devoid of the Word of God and His influence. But now we are in need of experiencing relationships that are Word-embodying, so that He can reverse and undo the damage done to us, and give God’s awesome Original Blessing to us in exchange. And that’s where the Family of God, or the Body of our Messiah, comes in. They are to be the demonstrators and bringers of this Kingdom of Heaven lifestyle.
So disciples must learn about healthy, nurturing, productive, Love-based relationships in God’s healthy Family of redeemed, mature Yeshua-embodying disciples. Now we can learn to create our new identity and thought and reaction patterns that will reverse, neutralize and undo the old damage. We need to have the right way of engaging in relationships demonstrated to us. And that is why God gave the Torah and the Ten Commandments to His chosen people. Israel was commissioned to become a corporate, family-level, ‘Disciple Nation,’ a people who learn and treasure and harbor, not just God’s written Word… but actually embody, revealing from within their thoughts, actions, reactions and interactions, the living Word that the written Word reveals. He is the one that must live and work from within our disciple hearts.
And through His New Covenant Israel, the Word will be free to practice and observe the revelation of His new ways. The commandments were meant to create the new boundaries for Israel and all of her generations, as they learned to embody God’s Word. Had they, or any of us, truly embraced the Word wholeheartedly in the past, the repetition and drill and new patterns God provided would have retrained and reconfigured our minds and brains for the present and future. And if we had inter-related with God’s living Word wholeheartedly, making Him Lord, Master and Guide, in our heart of hearts, we would have truly been ‘reborn’ or regenerated spiritually. And that would have equipped us all to be the ‘Light to the Gentiles’ throughout the generations that God created Israel, and the rest of the world, to be.
But Israel’s first Exodus generation had been deeply wounded by past unhealthy abusive relationships in Egypt. They needed to learn what new healthy, nurturing, redemptive relationships were like. If they had engaged in the mature, productive relationships God wanted to lead them into, they would have effectively reversed the damage they suffered in the past and outgrown their childhood patterns. They would have created and installed new perspectives, patterns and identities into themselves, and received what God wanted to put into them. That would have completely redirected the future course of their lives! But instead, most of them failed to finish the Journey because they remained stuck. So they perished in the Wilderness of Transition, instead of resting in the Land that God promised to give to their fathers. And unless we learn from their mistakes, we will be no different:
Hebrews 4:1-7
“Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His Rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the (living) Word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. For we who have believed enter that Rest, just as He has said, ‘As I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My Rest,’ although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day: ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all His works’; and again in this passage, ‘They shall not enter My Rest.’ Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience, He again fixes a certain day, ‘Today,’ saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, ‘Today if you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So part of our disciple training must include the actual, hands-on experience of what a healthy, Word-embodying family is, and how it lives in and from God’s Fullness and how it protects and nurtures and teaches its own, out of the Word’s Fullness. The Word living in us is kind and forbearing…yet He always stands firm upon God’s Truth before the rest of the world. Healthy Spirit-filled families know how to accept people just as they are, and have the skill and experience to give them what they need, so that they can heal, grow, mature and learn our Father’s proper way of doing things. Healthy, True Israelite families are open, honest and transparent with each other. But they are also consistent and firmly rooted in Truth and Reality. And this is what God is intending to teach to His Last Days New Covenant Israelite Remnant to do for the rest of Israel, and for the entire world!
But be warned, even our own family histories and traditions, whether they be Jewish or non-Jewish… and those of all of the Gentile cultures that surround us…and our own fallen flesh and personal worldly roots that are sunk so deeply into this Titanic-like fallen world system will fight against our Exodus and its completion. But beloved, we dare not allow anything to get in the way of our union with our Master. He told us very clearly that anything short of total union with Him was living death.
Ponder The Words of Our Master
John 15:4-11
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing! If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” (Emphasis added.)
If a New Covenant disciple ‘branch’ is going to bear the Vine’s Fruit effectively, NOTHING can be allowed to interfere with or prevent its union with the Vine. Nothing must be allowed to sever or separate any of us, in any way, from our one and only Life-Source. This is how it is with God and His intended human image and likeness. Yeshua, when He walked the earth as our Covenant Representative, lived to perfection, the life of a most fruitful ‘Branch.’ Nothing ever got between Him and His Father’s Holy Spirit – NOTHING – not even for a moment. The Life of God filled Him and worked in and through Him and produced God’s Fruit in Him, at all times.
Isaiah 11:1-5
“Then a Shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch from his roots will bear Fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him, The Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding, The Spirit of Counsel and Strength, the Spirit of Knowledge and the Fear of the Lord. And He will delight in the Fear of the Lord, and He will not judge by what His (human) eyes see, nor make a decision by what His (human) ears hear; but with (the Holy Spirit’s) Righteousness He will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth; and He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked. Also Righteousness will be the belt about His loins, And Faithfulness the belt about His waist.” (Amplification added)
Eternal Resurrection Life can only be found in Yeshua, our Vine. And it is in this Life that New Covenant disciples are called to abide and from it they are to receive and share with the world what God gives to us. The Life of our Messiah is here to abide and work in us at all times. And this is the Truth that the ninth commandment requires the human race to embody and proclaim and reveal to all of Creation. So, in other words, to fulfill any of the commandments in a way that will satisfy the Standards of God, it must be our risen Messiah Yeshua who lives and acts from within us, by the Power of the Holy Spirit. He is the Eternal Life and Truth that must come to us from Eternity…from the Infinite Treasury of God’s Perfect Finished Creation and Redemption…into our time and space circumstances, events, conditions and relational interactions…at all times. This is what fulfills the New Covenant God made with Israel.
So come to grips with this fact once and for all: Our Messiah is not here so that you can do your best to fit Him into YOUR self-centered existence that you call ‘life!’ He is calling on you to forsake YOUR living death! Lay it down on the altar before Almighty God as a living sacrifice. And once you do that, God will breathe His own living Life-giving Word into what’s left of you, to save you and make you His own.
Galatians 2:19-21
“For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in (of) the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if Righteousness comes through (our self-initiated efforts to keep) the Law, then Christ died needlessly.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Romans 12:1
“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.”