In this segment let’s ponder a profoundly mysterious reality that sooner or later, we will all have to face and deal with. The depth of it makes it hard to put into words. I’m referring to the ‘Infinite Chasm of Transcendence’ we discussed in previous segments. We use that analogy to help us get in touch with the vast difference and utter incompatibility between the perfect nature of Almighty God, and the Sin-corrupted nature of the fallen human race. The imagery of an infinite chasm makes our Sin-caused separation from God, or decapitation from the Headship of His Word, that Sin causes between us, somewhat understandable.
We always fail when we try to wrap our intellects around the knowledge of God. Nevertheless, we must grapple with His Reality and do whatever we can, to achieve some grasp of what He reveals about Himself and His infinitely Perfect Standards of what will make us righteous and acceptable in His sight. For our own eternal wellbeing, we must try to understand what He’s saying, with all the integrity, honesty, respect and sincerity we can summon because, what will happen to us on the Day of Judgment, and thereafter, will depend on how we respond to His Self-Revelation, now.
We said earlier that what we’re seeing in the Book of Exodus isn’t about God rejecting and abhorring Israel, or the rest of humanity. It’s about that total incompatibility that exists between our respective natures. God is not out to destroy us; He’s here to save us from the terrible destruction that has already taken place! And this is the awesome part: This totally transcendent Being holds us in such loving regard, that He chose to design and create us to be His own ‘image and likeness’! And despite what Sin has done to us, He is intent on restoring us completely to be able to live in total oneness with Him! In light of such an inestimable honor and privilege, we can see how horrendously destructive and maliciously catastrophic the Serpent’s hatred of God must have been…to entice Adam and Eve, and the entire human race, into his delusional Creation-destroying trap! Such venomous hatred is also truly beyond our ability to imagine or fathom.
So, because God’s Perfect Nature and Plan never change, He reveals that even before Creation took place, He had already planned and created a redemptive eternal Blood Covenant. And He factored into His Covenant the workings of our complete and perfect Reconciliation, Regeneration and Restoration. And thus He brought Abraham, Isaac and Jacob into this Covenant and by that means, created the way for the entire human race to be redeemed, regenerated, perfectly purified and fully restored to His gracious full acceptance! The Covenant unites us with God and makes it possible for us to abide with Him and share in His Perfection, now and for all of eternity to come. So, to answer the question contained in this segment’s title, ‘Who Is Being Revealed in Scripture?’ the answer is two-fold: The primary revelation is of God and His living creative Word. And the secondary revelation is of us, since we are created to be His Word’s image and likeness. Scripture reveals what we are before our Redemption, and what God’s Word makes us to be, after it.
Beloved, imagine what a challenge it would be if, for some reason it was utterly necessary for you to reveal yourself and your ways to a species that occupied a level of existence that was as different from your level of being and doing as, say…that of amoebas, the one-celled organisms that are utterly simple, and, at the same time, complete and fully sustainable in themselves. We call them the ‘simplest form of life’ but yet those one-celled creatures are unbelievably complex! I once heard a reliable source say that scientists currently estimate that over two trillion separate but interrelated electro-chemical processes take place in each amoeba per second! So who but God could keep track of all the complexity that is in just one amoeba, not to mention that of all the others? And who could comprehend and manage what is taking place in the numberless other more highly complex individual creatures that occupy all the other levels of Creation? Who but God could fathom what takes place in the myriads of angelic beings and all of the human beings that God has created? Only our Creator could care for and manage each of His creations simultaneously…with such awesome order…to Ultimate Perfection!
Can you even begin to imagine what ingenious levels of communication it would take for you to communicate effectively with every amoeba? How would you go about communicating what you are and what you do and how you perceive Reality and deal with it, to such a different kind and level of being? It boggles the mind, doesn’t it? Where would you begin? What would you have to do to transpose what is in your natural level of human reality that is normal and obvious to you…into a ‘key’ that is so different, a key that the amoebas would be able to perceive, recognize, understand and benefit from, with sufficient accuracy, precision and authenticity, at their level of being? How could you enable them to have a sufficient understanding of the ‘wave length’ that you occupy and work within, when their wave length is so obviously different and removed from yours? And how would you communicate to them the fact that you were revealing yourself so that you could become one with them and ‘save’ them from a fate worse than death? How would you let them know that you loved and cared for them and intended to create, establish and maintain an ongoing love-filled, intimate relationship with them? And what would it take for you to actually become an amoeba and redeem and transform the nature of the other amoebas, so that they could actually transform into your own ‘image and likeness’ and understand what you had done so that they could operate at levels of being that are supernatural and completely beyond their original natural reach?
That would be truly daunting, wouldn’t you say? But that’s nothing compared to what is involved when God, the infinite, eternal, uncreated Originator of the universe, has to reveal Himself and the viewpoint and the priorities and ways that are natural to Him, to beings like us. We have the gift of free will, but yet we are grievously, terminally wounded, warped, scrambled and limited in nature, as a result of the Sin and Death that overtook us from the moment of our conception! The fact is that we are totally dependent creatures; and our state of Sin and living death create an infinite distance between God’s Nature and ours! He is Infinite Eternal, Uncreated, utterly Holy and Perfect Life. But we, in our original state, already have Death at work within us! Our existence is a slow process of decay and deterioration that, although we have free will, we can’t stop the death process. There’s nothing we can do about any of that!
Nevertheless, God is intent on saving and restoring us…and sharing His eternal Life with us! And He will do it, if we will only heed, believe and obey His living Word. And He has communicated all of this information to us in terms we can understand and to which we can adjust. He communicated enough to let us know, beyond any doubt, that His nature is Perfect and that we can trust Him with absolute, air-tight faith and confidence!
Amoebas are vastly different from us. But we share this with them: we are both created species. And both of us occupy highly limited levels of being and operation. Both species depend entirely upon God our Creator, for life, sustenance and protection. This is why God’s uncreated eternal Nature and our limited nature can’t be compared in any way! He is totally ‘Other.’ There is no other being in existence like the Uncreated One. So nothing that we are aware of (or unaware of) can be compared to Him. He is unique, the only one of His Kind! So only God has the Wisdom, Ability and Means by which to cross that endless chasm, and reach out to us at our level and communicate with every human in existence. Only He can make Himself sufficiently known and understood by us. And He does it…without depriving even one of us of the free will with which He endowed us!
The Treasure of the Word
If you ponder this, I believe you will begin to gain a much deeper understanding, respect and appreciation for, the treasure that is ours – Almighty God’s precious written Word…the Bible. I hope you can see how enormously valuable and priceless this Treasure truly is. And hopefully you can better understand that it is our ‘lifeline’ of information and direction and safety that leads to eternal reconciliation and reunification with the infinite and eternal God and Lord of all Creation. Most blessed and fortunate are those that revere and apply themselves to study and absorb God’s written Word! It contains revelation that is utterly necessary for our eternal wellbeing! It shows us the only Way by which we humans can enter into eternal union, wellbeing and total fulfillment in and from and with, our Creator.
To the degree that you respect and revere God’s written Word, to that degree must you also respect, revere and cling to the Torah…the basic, unchangeable Foundational Revelation about God and His Nature from which all the rest of the Bible flows. The Bible contains the revelation, but the Torah is the Bible’s bedrock Foundation and Wellspring! The first five books give us utterly essential revelation about God and His Nature and Reality. They reveal our true state to us as well. All the rest of God’s subsequent revelation flows from and rests upon that elementary set of truths. Thus the true Gospel of Salvation comes out of the Torah, and Messiah Yeshua and His New Covenant apostolic disciples were commissioned by God to proclaim that Torah-based Gospel and the Blood Covenant structure upon which it is based, to the whole world.
So, the more we realize how enormous the challenge is, of conveying the Reality of the One that is Perfect and Infinite and Eternal, to humans who are grossly imperfect, extremely limited and rooted in the dimension of time and space and temporality, the more we will appreciate what God has given to us in Genesis and Exodus. These books provide the utterly essential, unchanging bedrock Revelation of God’s Truth and Reality in terms we can understand and with which we can become realigned.
From Exodus 21 to Exodus 23:1-19, God gives specific boundaries and guidelines to Israel, His chosen priestly nation. He shows them, and the rest of us, how fallen human beings must approach God’s Holy Presence so that they can abide with Him safely. He shows us the proper insulating Blood Covenant Protection that is utterly necessary at this point of our Exodus…that moves us out of total enmity with God…into total union and compatibility with Him. Torah lays down the principles and the means by which this is possible. It shows us how human existence can become acceptable to God, and kept safe in His Presence. And it shows how it is possible for God to live among us and transform us into full-fledged members of His Blood Covenant Family! Israel has been studying and pondering Torah since it was first written! But she will never exhaust or completely grasp the depths of what God has embedded within it. Nevertheless, Torah gives us an understanding of the Truth and Reality we need to know in order to approach the Presence of Almighty God…and live to tell others about it.
Technicians who are required to work closely with radioactive or ‘hot’ nuclear material must be rigorously and thoroughly trained. They must know everything possible about the nature of that lethal material and the total incompatibility that exists between it and our human nature. Proper training enables the technicians to know and use the proper insulating protective shields and clothing so that they can do their work without being struck dead or hideously injured. And that is a dim comparison to what is at stake when fallen human nature is chosen and summoned by Almighty God, to approach Him and minister to Him on His terms, in a way that will bless us completely instead of striking us dead on contact. Consider two examples of how important this training is and how vital it is for us to always abide by it:
Leviticus 10:1-3
“Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective fire pans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what the Lord spoke, saying, ‘By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy; and before all the people I will be honored’. So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.” (Emphasis added.)
2 Samuel 6:3-7
“They placed the ark of God on a new cart that they might bring it from the house of Abinadab which was on the hill; and Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were leading the new cart. So they brought it with the ark of God from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill; and Ahio was walking ahead of the ark. Meanwhile, David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord with all kinds of instruments made of fir wood, and with lyres, harps, tambourines, castanets and cymbals. But when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out toward the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen nearly upset it. And the anger of the Lord burned against Uzzah, and God struck him down there for his irreverence; and he died there by the ark of God.”
How do beings that have the terminal damage of Death already in them, caused by their fall into Sin, dare to approach the Holy, Perfectly Righteous Presence of Almighty God who is Life Himself? How are such humans to interact with such a Pure, Holy God in safety and with impunity? How can they avoid being blasted into oblivion by His awesome Presence? They do it by heeding God’s revelation and doing what He tells us to do. Truly, this is a challenge that only God Almighty Himself is able to meet and overcome. So I urge you to read Exodus 21 to 31 (and the book of Leviticus) with this in mind. God is showing fallen humans that, although He is allowing certain ones into His Holy Presence, He must teach them how to protect their Sin-corrupted nature from direct exposure to His Pure, Perfectly Just and Righteous Nature. In themselves they have no defense; God, through His Covenant, must provide it for them. So ask yourself this question: In these texts, who is preeminent? Who is all of this revelation really about? Is it a revelation of us humans and how outstanding and preeminent we are? Or is this revealing the Glory of Almighty God and how great and totally beyond us He truly is, and how desperately in need of Him we are at all times and for all things?
Take note of what automatically appears in your mental pictures as you read the Scriptures. Go over the statutes and regulations recorded in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers (Shemot, Vayikra and Bamidbar). Ask your risen Lord (in whose Presence you, as a disciple, now have the privilege and glory of abiding) to continue to show you more and more of what these texts are actually revealing and saying. Ask Him what He wants you to learn from them. Ask Him to show you what kind of transformation He intends to create in your attitudes, priorities, personal lifestyle and interactive dealings with the rest of the world, as a result. If you truly desire to share in His Wisdom, God will begin to show you the vast difference between your vantage point and perspective, and His:
Isaiah 55:7-9
“Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, For He will abundantly pardon. ‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.’” (Emphasis added.)
Our Ever Present God
Remember that in whatever you do, including your reading of Scripture, God’s living Word, your Creator and Master, is right there with you at all times. So expect Him to be your Teacher and Trainer at all times. Ask Him to give you the Wisdom and Insight that only come from the personal guidance of His Holy Spirit. Ask Him to make you deeply aware of the vast differences between your personal natural earthly perspectives, and God’s eternal Heavenly viewpoints. Ask Him to make you deeply aware of the paradigm through which you are currently, habitually, viewing everything. Is yours still a self-centered, God-less and worldly paradigm? In other words, do the mental eyeglasses through which you view Reality keep you continually focused on you, and on other created things like you? Does your habitual way of seeing things keep God continually in the background, or completely out of view? Do you habitually see and think of yourself as the center and ‘the star’ of everything that is going on? Are created things still your top priorities and objects of attention?
Ask the Lord to show you the real Truth about what is going on in your soul and brain. Ask Him to make you aware of all the discrepancies that exist between what you see in the written Word, and what the Holy Spirit is actually saying in the written Word and on any other level of our ongoing training and development. If you really, sincerely want to know the Truth, He will show you how much still remains in you that is still contrary and opposed to what is actually contained in God and in His Truth and Reality.
If you habitually read the texts from your original decapitated, self-centered perspective, you will invariably assume that this revelation is all about you and others like you. You will assume that you, and others like you, are the most important consideration and the center of whatever is happening. But if you are retrained and ‘rewired,’ you will be able to read Scripture through the eyes of a disciple who has truly been ‘baptized’ into God’s living Word! You will be able to abide with the Lord of Glory and be as one with Him to such an extent that you will see Him as being your new and eternal Life and that it is He who is always living, working and acting from deep within you, at all times! He will be your constant Source of supply. You’ll be drawing everything from His Perfect indwelling Presence, and you will be following His lead at all times and in all things. Ponder the following texts in light of what the Holy Spirit requires a New Covenant disciple’s perspective to be:
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.” (Emphasis added.)
Colossians 3:2-3
“Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on Earth. For you have died (to the passing things of the Earth) and your life is hidden with Christ in (the eternal Realities that are waiting for you in) God!” ( Amplification and emphasis added.)
God is showing us the ‘narrow gate and narrow path’ that lead to eternal Life! The Torah, and the Scriptures which amplify it, tell us that in eternity, where Almighty God abides in endless Joy, Peace, Rest and Glory, everything we will ever need in our earthly time and space existence already exists in God’s living Word! In myriads of related texts, we learn that all of God’s Fullness is contained in and comes to us through His living creative Word. And we know that the Word became flesh and lived on Earth and lived the perfect Israelite life, and died to make perfect Atonement for us to deliver us from the power of Sin and Death, and rose from the dead in absolute triumph over the Serpent and all of his works.
It’s All About the Revelation of Yeshua
Our risen Messiah now He sits at His Father’s right hand as our eternal Blood Covenant Representative and intercedes on our behalf as our Eternal High Priest. And as a result of His Perfect Finished Work of Redemption, everything needed for Creation’s complete eternal Restoration abides eternally IN HIM! He is the Birthright and Inheritance that God has for us disciples. We follow Him because He is The Way to the Father. He and what He has done on our behalf serve as our ‘Protective Covering.’ This is what Scripture is meant to convey to us. Scripture is like a ‘Menu;’ and Yeshua, God’s living creative Word, is ‘The Real Feast’! Everything is all about God’s living Word. He is the Source and Terminus of all created things! He is the Star, and the major emphasis of God’s Revelation is centered on Him!
John 1:1-5
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”
Colossians 1:15-17
“He is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
Is this how you see everything? Is this your habitual picture of your Master and how you relate to Him? Is He your indwelling Life, and are you really aware of the fact that the one who lives in you is Almighty God, the One who contains within Himself the Living Heavenly Treasury, all of the Fruit of God’s Perfect, Finished Work of Creation and Redemption? Are you aware that He is our ‘Daily Bread’ who is transmitted into your time and space dimension from God’s eternal Throne? Or are you still blind and stuck in your original worldly, self-centered, decapitated identity pattern? When you read Bible texts, what do you see in them? Do you think the texts highlight and point to the humans involved? Do the texts focus on what they think? Do you think people have to do something to help God out, or to add to what He has already done? Has God not clearly told us that His Work is completely finished? What was He really trying to reveal and convey to His chosen people in the wilderness?
Can humans truly be the heroes and preeminent consideration of what takes place in those texts? How can we assume that the men and women recorded within are the major players, and that all of the outcomes depend on them what they are going to do? Why do we still identify with our original natural families and earthly nationalities and ethnic and cultural roots and past experiences, instead of identifying with God’s living Word who is our new Life? Isn’t it true that the texts reveal the Glory and Perfect Fullness of what Almighty God has already done on our behalf? And if that is so, what do you think must eventually happen to our worldly, self-centered, self-absorbing paradigms or ‘mental eyeglasses’ that automatically keep deleting God and His Word from our mental pictures?
As you go through all of your daily situations, problems, challenges, situations and experiences, do you now experience what is happening from the perspective of one who is already endowed with the awesome Inheritance and Provision that God has for us in His eternal Heavenly Kingdom? Or are you still seeing yourself as radically independent, a lone wolf type, an endlessly needy earthbound being that clings to a delusionary, self-reliant identity and perspective? What is most prominent to you? Is it the fact that God has raised you up with His Resurrected Son to be in His Presence at His Throne, or do you still identify with and wallow in the evil passing things that are roiling around (for a short time) on the Earth? Are temporary earthly events and priorities and issues the overwhelmingly powerful factors and ruling forces of your existence? Beloved, wake up to what is truly going on within you! Through whose ‘lenses’ and viewpoint do you see the living and written Word of God? Is it the fallen world’s innate view…or God’s revealed view?
The ultimate, overriding Truth that we disciples must learn is this: God’s written Word is primarily intended to reveal Yeshua. God does everything through and by His glorious living Word! His Word is the Creator and Sustainer and Redeemer of all things, the Beginning and the End of everything! But is He the One you see when you read the Scriptures? Is He the one from whom you continually draw and receive everything as you pass through your earthly experiences? Or do you still see the Bible texts through the eyes of someone who remains decapitated, radically independent and a self-centered part of this fallen passing world? Do you still see yourself as having a life of your own, apart from God’s Word? Do you still embody your original family and the identity and thought patterns and priorities your original worldly experiences impressed on you during your formative years of childhood? Do you still allow past things to control you in the present? Do you still obsess over worldly situations, concerns, achievements, or past events and resentments? Is the gratification of your senses and urges still your major priority? Do you continue to see everything as still unfinished? Are you uncertain about how everything is going to turn out? Do you still assume that the outcomes of your existence are up to humans like you, to determine? Do you still believe that God has left things unfinished and the fulfillment of your needs and concerns is up to you, or to the fallen, Sin-contaminated flesh of other humans, to finish? If you do, you desperately need to repent and update your internal workings and align them with God’s revealed Word.
We must finally realize that God’s living Word is the Preeminent One. God sent Him to you so that He could begin to live in you and through you! Is Yeshua truly your indwelling Life, Shepherd and ‘Coverer?’ Is He your Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption and All-Sufficient Treasure? Do you see yourself as one of His living, fruit-bearing branches? And is He truly your All-Sufficient Life-giving, Fruit-producing, ‘Vine?’
Can you see how important your habitual paradigm is? The lenses through which you ‘see’ things will either prevent you from knowing God’s revealed Truth and Reality, or it will properly connect you with it. Our original, self-centered worldly paradigm will deprive us of the New Covenant Birthright and Inheritance that God has already given and continues to offer to each of us. Have you truly and effectively renewed your mind and updated your neurological ‘wiring’ so that you have a brand new perspective through which to view Reality? Does your current paradigm automatically enable you to ‘dock’ and connect properly and enjoy what God has provided for you? Is God’s Holy Spirit free to transmit God’s eternal Peace that He enjoys in Heaven, into you, as you experience the circumstances of this temporary time and space earthly dimension? Is your disciple-level faith creating a Heaven-descending-upon-the Earth perspective, from which you see that your Perfect God is with you even now in the person of your risen Messiah…making all the difference…as He continues to advance the Restoration of this fallen world?
Isaiah 9:6-7
“For a Child will be born to us, a Son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His Name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His Government or of Peace, on the Throne of David and over his Kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with Justice and Righteousness From then on and forevermore. The Zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this!”
So, disciple of the Lord, learn this well: Your perspective is the natural outflow of the paradigm or set of ‘mental eyeglasses’ through which you habitually and automatically view your existence in this world. It will force you to understand yourself and interpret what you think you are seeing, and what kinds of responses you make, as you gauge and assess what goes on in this fallen world. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob tells us that the natural worldly, self-centered way of viewing things is utterly false, and the God-revealed Scriptural way, even though it is vastly different from the way we have been conditioned to see things, is eternally true. Our lenses will force us to see what we are looking at in a very specific, limiting way. The lenses will emphasize certain things, and block out other things. One set will glorify the Serpent and what he claims that he will accomplish; the other set will be so faith-based that we will continually glorify the Word of God and the Perfect Fullness and All-Sufficiency of what He has already DONE! Thus His Brilliance and Perfection will blot everything else that is imperfect, from our mental pictures and ultimate expectations!
The original glasses every human being is born with have a built-in prescription and tint that drive people to indulge in the Serpent’s kind of radically independent thinking, acting, reacting and interacting. Most of the people around you are using them. That is why this world is so selfish, treacherous and brutally cruel and predatory. That’s why humans are hopelessly addicted to the demonic lies that tell them it’s up to them to try to figure everything out and control whatever is going to happen next. And as long as people insist on maintaining that God-less viewpoint, God and His Kingdom and His Reality and Truth will remain blocked from their minds and hearts. In that case, even if they become religious, their ‘worship’ of God will be about them and what they are going to do and how they think they should do it…‘for God.’
Why is there so much strife and confusion and disagreement among human beings? It’s because of the ‘paradigm lenses’ through which they view everything. No two sets are alike. But in general, there are two basic types: self-centered lenses and Messiah-centered lenses. And most human viewpoints differ greatly from what God has actually revealed to us. This is why Scripture, and the ‘hands-on’ guidance of the Holy Spirit are so important! And this is why the Serpent and his minions work so hard to deprive people of the Scriptures and keep them blinded to God’s Truth. By blinding us to God’s Word, they prevent us from knowing God and receiving the benefits of His Word’s finished work on our behalf! So, can you see what God has revealed and understand what He intends to do to you, in you, and through you…for the rest of the world?
Romans 12:14-21
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. ‘But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, BUT OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD!” (Emphasis added.)
God’s Truth Revealed
Beloved, this is what God intends for His True Israel to learn and to become, so that through her, the rest of the world can come to know Him and His ways and learn to operate in them. In our natural state, we cannot know this. God must reveal it to us. And this is what His Spirit-empowered New Covenant with Israel is meant to empower and move us to fulfill. God’s intent and ultimate purpose for His True Israel is all-inclusive. He intends to welcome and include all of mankind, Jew and Gentile alike, into Israel’s New Covenant with God. Our Creator does not intend for us to be separated from Him and from each other. He intends for all of us to become reunited with Him…under His Word’s sole Headship…one with His Spirit and mind and heart and eternal purpose.
But that can never happen as long as humans remain stuck in the decapitated paradigm and viewpoint that forces them to be radically independent, self-adoring, competitive and deviously treacherous and selfishly divided. As we said elsewhere, thanks to the Sin corruption and living death embedded within it, fallen human flesh twists and disfigures human nature and warps it into something that is self-adoring, rebellious, competitive, manipulative, predatory, controlling, self-destructive and destructive of others. These qualities are the embodiment of the Serpent! They are at the heart of the systems of this fallen, ever-deteriorating, dying world. It is from this living death that God sent His living Word, His Son, to deliver us. And He has already done it. Everything is finished and in its proper place. Everything awaits us in eternity, ready to be transmitted into our earthly time and space circumstances and situations, by the Authority of God’s living Word and the Power of His Holy Spirit!
Ephesians 1:3-6
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” (Emphasis added.)
Thus the image and likeness disciples of God’s Word are, like our Master, an essentially priestly and intercessory people. We are made to be living examples and proclaimers and sharers of Almighty God’s Glorious Good News! The Good News is that all of the necessary Work is already done. It has been done perfectly by God’s Perfect Word and it is made available to us all through His Perfect Holy Spirit! So disciples are meant to minister to God by reflecting His Perfect Glorious Preeminence and Mercy, back to Him, in unending thanksgiving, praise, honor and worship. They are to proclaim His Name, as revealed to them through His Word, and transmit and share the fruits of the Word’s Truth…to the rest of the human race that does not yet know Him. And, through the ministry of these priestly disciples, God can share His eternal Life with the rest of His Creation…through the disciples’ abiding, obedient, trust and confidence in Him and by sharing with the world, what He has already done and given on humanity’s behalf. Ponder the revelation God gives us through the ‘job description’ He gives to His chosen people:
Exodus 19:5-6
“Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine;and you shall be to Me A KINDGOM OF PRIESTS and a holy (separated or reserved for God) nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.” (Amplification and emphasis added)
Hebrews 11:6
“…Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
Can you see the directional flow of ministry that God wants to create on the Earth? It’s 100% from God…Earthward! The Earth is caught in the coils of the Serpent. All of human nature has been bitten and poisoned by his Sin-venom. So we’re helpless and bankrupt in ourselves. God’s created beings have nothing to offer to Him. He supplies all with all. But God chose Israel to serve as His priestly, intercessory nation and channel of Grace to the Earth. So, what are these priests of God supposed to do? How are they to minister to God? How is all of this supposed to work? Beloved, it is extremely important that our Master brings us to a full understanding and practice of this awesome aspect of our calling. God has gathered us to Himself, to teach and train us to be and to live, as one with Him, to cooperate with Him and expedite His destruction and removal of the Serpent’s Evil with the eternal Perfection of His GOOD! Take note of the ‘job description’ that He gave to the priestly tribe of Levi:
Deuteronomy 10:8-9
“At that time the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the Ark of the Covenant(the Presence) of the Lord, to stand before the Lord to serve Him and to bless in His name until this day. Therefore, Levi does not have a portion or inheritance with his brothers; the Lord is his Inheritance, just as the Lord your God spoke to him.” (Emphasis added.)
From what Source does everything come in this picture? And are the priestly ministers of Israel connected to God, or are they still rooted in this fallen world? What, or Who, is to be their sole Source of provision and sustenance? From where do the blessings come that they are commissioned to impart to the people they represent? And whose Presence are they commissioned to carry and bring into their circumstances and situations? And upon whom is their full attention and focus and hope and trust and expectation to be centered?
Our Reigning King!
The Fullness of God and all of His Goodness and Redemptive Grace are contained in and embodied by Yeshua, His living Word made flesh. And Yeshua has risen from the dead and is seated in His absolute Triumph over Evil, at His Father’s right hand in Heaven. In other words, God, and His living Word reign supreme over everything in Creation. And we, God’s New Covenant chosen people, are one with Yeshua in God’s New Covenant. And so He is like a Vine, the Source of all of God’s ETERNAL GOOD. Yeshua is this awesome Vine Root, who abides in Heaven, in Eternity, in God! And the chosen priestly disciples of God’s Word are deployed and stationed all across the Earth…to be united with Him by the Holy Spirit and to serve as the His fruit bearing ‘branches.’ Through these branches, the Vine can transmit the eternal God-originated GOOD that is in Eternity, into the evil time and space situations and circumstances that are always cropping up all across this demon-possessed fallen world. This is why the New Covenant apostles of Messiah Yeshua, kept emphasizing the new paradigm perspectives and the New Covenant identity, purpose and destiny that belongs to the ‘sons of God.’
1 Peter 2:1-12
“Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word, so that by it you may grow in respect to Salvation,if (since) you have tasted the Kindness of the Lord. And coming to Him as to a Living Stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual House for a Holy Priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For this is contained in Scripture: ‘Behold, I lay in Zion a choice Stone, a precious Corner Stone (Messiah Yeshua, the Word made flesh), And he who believes in Him will not be disappointed.’
“This precious value, then, is for you who believe; but for those who disbelieve, ‘The Stone which the builders rejected, this became the very Corner Stone,’ and, ‘a Stone of stumbling and a Rock of offense’; for they stumble because they are disobedient to the Word, and to this doom they were also appointed.
“But you are a Chosen Race, a Royal Priesthood, a Holy Nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of Darkness into His marvelous Light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the People of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may, because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the Day of Visitation.” (Emphasis added.)
Disciples must be acutely aware of the lenses through which they habitually see things. Everything is contained in our Master Yeshua. Everything flows to all of Creation from Him in Heaven…to us who serve Him here on Earth. So, in God’s Perfect Paradigm, our Messiah is Preeminent. Everything is done by Him and for Him. He is the Source and the Hero and the Terminus of everything else. And the Divine Flow of Good that overcomes all demonic Evil, is a one-way flow. It comes from God’s Word, to us. But never is it the other way around. It never comes from us, up to God. It always comes to us from God, by Yeshua’s Authority and the Power of the Holy Spirit. Even our ability to worship and praise Him properly must first come to us from Him.
This is how God pictures His Reality. We are not the heroes or stars of the story. Yeshua our Messiah is Everything to all of us! And this is the paradigm that the Spirit of God intends to install within us and teach and empower us to abide in and follow. There is only one God, the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Israel)! So now remember that in our last meditation, we saw what God was revealing to the Israelites, and to the world, about the Preeminence of His Son, the Word, and His Perfect Finished Work, through these words:
Exodus 20:25-26
“If you make an altar of stone for Me,you shall not build it of cut stones, for if you wield your tool on it, you will profane it. And you shall not go up by steps to My altar, so that your nakedness will not be exposed on it.”
Look at this text again! Let the meaning of the words sink in and register in your understanding. God is telling Israel, and the rest of the world, that He does not accept any initiative or effort or ‘assistance’ from our Sin-corrupted fallen flesh! So ponder this very deeply:
How could God’s Torah and all the revelation, regulations, restrictions, commandments and statutes be something that He expects you or me to obey and fulfill by our Sin-corrupted, self-originated efforts? God makes it very clear that He will not permit or accept anything that has an unholy origin. He will not accept any offering that has a mixture of His Spirit plus some initiative from our fallen flesh within it! Everything that passes between God and us must be utterly pure and clean and Sin-less! So everything must originate in Him. His Word is the one and only True Source! And so Scripture is primarily a revelation of His Word, His beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased! And it also reveals those humans that have become one with Him and serve Him, through the Holy Spirit, the way living fruit-bearing branches serve their Vine.
God only accepts the Perfection contained in what His living Word is and does…in our name and on our behalf. No unholy addition, or alien initiative, no mixture of what is Holy with what is unholy is tolerated. Do not dare try to add something that is contaminated by Sin, to what is utterly Holy and Perfect and Pure and try to offer that to God! Nothing that God has done is to be contaminated by any added efforts or initiatives we fallen humans might feel led to add to what He has already finished. If we try to offer anything like that to God, no matter how ‘good’ our intentions may seem, He will reject it just as He rejected the offering of Cain. God will only accept Abel-type offerings…what He first gives to us…through His beloved Son, the Word. When we receive the Gift of His Son that He gives to us, and offer the Perfection of His Son back to Him, God will receive that offering. It will be an offering that comes to us from God’s Perfect Rest, and it returns to God because we have joined Him in His Perfect Rest.
Matthew 11:25-30
“At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise You, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My Yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My Yoke is easy and My burden is light.’”
So, Here it is Again…Reality as God Defines it!
Everything in God’s Kingdom and Economy is about His living Word, and the Perfect Work that He has already done on our behalf and in our name. It is Finished. It is Perfect. And God is perfectly, totally pleased and satisfied with what His Son has been and done in our name. And because all of the Work is completely Finished and Perfect, God COMMANDS us to abide in His Perfection and draw from Him, and identify with Him, and rely upon Him…at all times! God demands that we learn to abide with Him…and His Word’s Perfect Eternal Sabbath REST! Everything in our daily lives must reflect and confirm and embody this peace-giving, joy-filled Truth!
Beloved, can you see the vast difference in the two paradigm perspectives we’ve been discussing? How can any of us truly rest with God, and actually enjoy His total Peace, if we remain stuck wearing and using our original set of decapitated eyeglasses and believing that everything depends on us and on what we decide to originate and do and on how we decide to do it? How can we ever understand what God reveals about Himself in His written Word and interact with Him properly, and truly obey His first commandment, if we fail to understand what He is telling us about the Preeminence and All-Important Sufficiency of the Headship and total Authority and Worth that are in His Word…His beloved Son? It is utterly absurd to think we can get away with maintaining our original worldly, demon-induced perceptions and thought patterns concerning ourselves, and expect to enter God’s Presence and please and serve Him and satisfy His Perfect Standards, by striving and struggling to ‘finish’ or ‘perfect’ what He did, because we do not believe it to be ‘good enough as it stands!’
In all of God’s enormous Creation, there is no such thing as a purely autonomous, radically independent creature! Every heartbeat and breath and brainwave any of us receive must first come to us from God! If He should stop maintaining us and providing everything for us, for even a moment…we would completely blink off and disappear! So we are totally deluded when we assume that it’s up to us to be and do something in ourselves! How can we think that we’re independent and autonomous, and that we actually have a choice about whether we’re going to believe, trust and acknowledge the One who is continually keeping us alive and in existence, or not?
The Truth is that apart from God and His Living Word who created and sustains and maintains us, we can’t be or have or do ANYTHING! And that includes all of the instruction and laws and statutes that He enumerates for us in His Torah and the other Scriptures in the Bible. The Bible is the Revelation of God…and His living Word and Holy Spirit…and how He creates and interacts with each and every being in existence. It’s all about Him and how He is responsible for creating, maintaining, supplying, energizing, empowering, redeeming and sanctifying His creatures which He makes from nothingness. This is how deeply and intimately He wants us to identify with His Word…and how profoundly we must look to, rely upon and receive everything from Him at all times.
If our Creator, God’s living Word, and the Holy Spirit who makes Him real, alive, active and fruitful within us, does not obey and fulfill His own Law and Standards of Righteousness in our name, we are helpless and bankrupt and utterly unable to lift a finger or take a breath. If we can’t even cause our own heart to beat, or our brain to function, how could we expect to produce anything in and of ourselves that would be worthy of God’s Holy Standards? How could we think that we have it in us to bypass the Perfect Work of God’s Word, and try to put in His place, our feeble attempts to observe a bunch of rules, assuming that we can do it so successfully and perfectly, and that God’s infinitely holy and perfect and Righteous Standards will be satisfied by our religious efforts? Now that God has revealed what the Serpent did to the human race, and how our share in His Sin has mortally wounded and corrupted us, how could we think that our Perfectly Righteous God would even think of accepting something that oozes out of our state of living death? We are offering something corrupt and horribly contaminated to God when we do that!
So, beloved, perhaps now you can better understand what an awesome, exalted, humanly impossible ‘job description’ God has entrusted to His chosen people, Israel! How could any fallen human flesh succeed in fulfilling such a supernatural, Divine Mandate? As you learn to renew your mind and rewire your brain with God’s Truth and Reality, it is necessary that you begin to view all that is written in Scripture with authentic Yeshua-centered accuracy and precision. Then you will realize that all of these rules and regulations are revealing something that is incredibly deep…a profound mystery that only Almighty God, in His infinite, perfect Wisdom and Discernment, is fully able to understand and fulfill. Our Creator is taking care of each and every created thing, simultaneously, on every level of God’s awesome, tremendously complex Creation, at every moment! And Israel, above all, must be permeated and suffused by Almighty God’s Word Himself…in order for her awesome purpose to be perfectly fulfilled in a way that would even satisfy and fulfill the Plan of Almighty God!
Only God knows Himself and what He intends. Only He can know what each of His creatures needs, and when. Only He knows the exact precisely correct way in which His revelation is to be applied to us, in order for His enormous Plan for Creation to be properly fulfilled! We could never begin to contain and understand all of that with our tiny little minds! God isn’t ordering us to figure it out and comprehend it. He’s telling us to REST AND ABIDE WITH HIM IN HIS PERFECTION! Only He can keep all of this straight. His Plan and timing for each creature in existence contain much, much more than any puny self-centered human mind, or group of minds, could ever imagine or control or change!
Our Perfect God, when He reveals or imparts or commands something to us through His Perfect living Word…is also, in Him, perfectly fulfilling whatever He reveals, imparts or requires through His Word. The Word is the Revelation, and the impartation and the commandment. And the Word is also the Perfect Fulfillment. Everything, from start to finish, is contained and done and fulfilled in and by God’s awesome living Word!
Ephesians 1:18-23
“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the Glory of His Inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His Power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His Might which He brought about IN CHRIST, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as Head over all things to the Church, which is His Body, the Fullness of Him who fills all in all.” (Emphasis added.)
Matthew 17:4-8
“Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; LISTEN TO HIM!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground and were terrified. And Jesus came to them and touched them and said, ‘Get up, and do not be afraid.’ And lifting up their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus Himself alone.” (Emphasis added.)
Beloved, this is the true paradigm, the Yeshua-is-All-in all perspective, that God has embedded within His written Word. And it is the paradigm that Yeshua’s New Covenant Last Days disciples must have and follow, in order to fulfill their God-given purpose. It is the proclamation and sharing of this paradigm with as many who are willing to receive it through which we can fulfill this commission that God has given to His chosen ones:
Isaiah 40:1-8
“‘Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God.‘Speak kindly to Jerusalem; and call out to her, that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity has been removed, that she has received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.’
“A voice is calling, ‘Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert (of your own heart) a highway for our God. Let every valley (in your own minds, hearts and wills) be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; then the Glory of the Lord will be revealed (through you), and all flesh will see it together; for the mouth (living Word) of the Lord has spoken.’
“A voice says, ‘Call out.’ Then he answered, ‘What shall I call out?’
“All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the Breath (Spirit) of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
John 5:18-24
“…therefore the (Judean religious establishment) Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because (in their unbelieving estimation) He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.
“Therefore 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. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.
“For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives Life to whom He wishes. For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My Word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal Life, and does not come into Judgment, but has passed out of Death into Life!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So the animosity against God’s living and written Word that continually operates in the world and, sadly, even among many of God’s chosen Jewish and non-Jewish people, is caused by that worldly, self-centered set of ‘eyeglasses.’ It gives a worldview that is diametrically opposed to the one God is here to reveal and teach to us. People, regardless of how they view or rate themselves, who use that decapitated viewpoint, remain at odds with the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and His True Israel. They are convinced that they can see and interpret and understand Reality correctly. But they are just as spiritually blind as Cain once was. And those disciples who follow the other paradigm are like Abel. Can you see this, beloved? Do you understand what is happening in the world, and all around Israel and why it continues to happen, generation after generation? Can you see what Yeshua was saying and why the fallen world continues to reject Him?
Eyes to See
People like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses awaken from humanity’s Serpent-induced trance. They finally see what that first set of eyeglasses that they received really is, where it came from and how enormous the damage is that it has done to us. They realize how deeply the Serpent’s lies and delusions really are. So they repent and turn to God, to receive His viewpoint. This enables them to see His Reality, and live in it, as it really is. And although they cannot comprehend and contain its enormity, they can still fully own it and enjoy its eternal benefits.
James 2:18-24
“But someone may well say, ‘You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.’ You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘And Abraham believed (and obeyed) God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ and he was called the friend of God. You see that a man is justified by (Rest-based) works and not by (intellectually-based) faith alone.” (Amplification added.)
God intended to give His new Israelite nation those new ‘eyeglasses.’ But first they had to forsake their original ‘Egyptian’ eyeglasses and place them on the altar before God’s holy Word. Those who believed and obeyed benefitted from God’s ‘boot camp, live-by-faith-in-God’s-Word’ training. They transformed into a brand new creation that could see and think and act, react and interact as His Word’s image and likeness. Those with the mind and spirit of Joshua and Caleb consistently reconfigure and update and renew their minds and ‘rewire’ all their brains. And only they receive the full benefit of this training. The others run out of fuel and, sooner or later, ‘drop out’ and fail to pass the tests and complete the course. But the war rages on and everyone, whether they are ready or not, will be caught up in it nevertheless.
The boot camp training God administers in the wilderness is standard procedure for developing each new disciple. The barren, empty wilderness, that reveals to us what we are in ourselves, is the perfect backdrop against which God’s All-Sufficient Grace can be clearly seen. But most of the Israelites of that first Exodus generation could not see it. They would not trust and believe and obey God to such depths. And throughout history, most of each succeeding generation of so-called ‘believers’ continue to cling to the worldly self-absorbed patterns and examples of those rebellious, stiff-necked forefathers:
Deuteronomy 1:26-33
“Yet you were not willing to go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God; and you grumbled in your tents and said, ‘Because the Lord hates us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go up?’ Our brethren have made our hearts melt, saying, ‘The people are bigger and taller than we; the cities are large and fortified to heaven. And besides, we saw the sons of the Anakim there.’
“Then I (Moses) said to you, ‘Do not be shocked, nor fear them. The Lord your God who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place.’
“But for all this, you did not trust the Lord your God, who goes before you on your way, to seek out a place for you to encamp, in fire by night and cloud by day, to show you the way in which you should go.” (Emphasis added.)
This is why, after Israel proved to be incapable of fulfilling her part of the bi-lateral Covenant of Sinai, God promised that from His end of the Blood Covenant staff that joined Israel to Him, He Himself would fulfill what they were incapable of doing at their end of the staff. So, through His own living Word made flesh, and His Holy Spirit who makes the Word real, alive, and actively effective within us, God reveals once more that all of this had already been covered from the beginning, in God’s Perfection, in His Eternal Sabbath Rest. God has solved the seemingly impossible problem, of how to reveal Himself and His ways to the likes of us. And He has provided the New Covenant Way, the Spirit-empowered way, by which we can live with Him in Blood Covenant union, in and through His living Word:
Jeremiah 31:31-32
“‘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.”
Ezekiel 36:24-28
“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. You will live in the Land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God.”
This is how the complete Fulfillment of what is contained in God’s written Word will come about. Yeshua is everything to us. He does it all, as our Messiah, and High Priest and Covenant Representative. So, in this New Covenant, God’s faithful Israelite Remnant is the first to be overwhelmed by God’s Spirit. And then the Spirit empowers them, and begins to work from within them, to fulfill their part of the Covenant. God Himself applies the fruits of His Finished Work to us through our obedient faith…from within our yielded, crucified flesh, by the Authority of His Word:
Romans 12:1-2
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove (demonstrate and validate) what the will of God is, that which is GOOD and ACCEPTABLE and PERFECT!” (Emphasis added.)
Philippians 2:12b-13
“…Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; FOR IT IS GOD WHO IS AT WORK IN YOU, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (Emphasis added.)
Matthew 5:20
“For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven!” (Emphasis added.)
Our next segment will consider the disastrous downfall of Israel that took place in Exodus 32, with the incident of the ‘golden calf’. Perhaps what we’ve been considering in this meditation will help us better understand what happened at that point of Israel’s history, and why God was not at all surprised or taken off guard by it. Beloved, keep in mind what we’ve already learned from Genesis concerning the fall of Adam and Eve into Sin and the fatal results that befell them and their children. If you do, you’ll better understand what takes place in Exodus, as you see the grossly unfaithful behavior of many Israelites. Almost immediately, after entering into their Blood Covenant with God, they worshipped a product of their own hands…the golden calf! And how did God react? What did He really say to Moses? This is what we will consider in our next segment.