Psalm 55:5-7
“Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror has overwhelmed me. I said, ‘Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away AND BE AT REST. Behold, I would wander far away, I would lodge IN THE WILDERNESS.’” (Emphasis added.)
Scripture makes no effort to hide or minimize Israel’s chronic unbelief and disobedience throughout her history. And now, we have the luxury of hindsight. We know that Israel was chosen to serve as God’s example or template, for the exposure of the rest of the world! Unbelief, and the spiritual decapitation to which it leads, are not limited to Israel. They are habitual problems for the whole human race!
Many of the newly freed Israelites violated their Covenant with God by committing a flagrant act of idolatry. Thus they proved that they didn’t really believe or trust the God of their fathers. They didn’t seriously intend to follow His Word with unconditional, wholehearted love and trust. Thus they were not at all committed to finishing the Exodus. And that prevented them from being able to embrace and absorb the new identity, purpose and destiny God wanted to give them in exchange for the old ones that their time in Egypt had programmed into them. God had recently given them His Ten Commandments…so this tragic act of idolatry was Israel’s first official act immediately afterward. What they did with the golden calf was the exact reverse of what God had just required of them through His very first commandment:
Exodus 20:2-5a
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in Heaven above or on the Earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them…”
Beloved, you and I know from our own personal experience and observation that our fallen, Sin-loving human flesh cannot fully understand, absorb and obey the first commandment. Many in each generation believe that it’s possible for some kind of god to exist. But no one can agree on who that god really is. And many assume there are many gods. And even when we claim to worship only one, we often grossly misunderstand what it is we’re embracing! That’s why there are so many gods! That’s the way it was before and after the Flood, and the way it was in the days of Moses and the Exodus…thousands of gods were devised and developed by human imaginations and established for human reasons and purposes. And that’s the way it is to this day.
Nevertheless, the living God of Israel gave His Torah revelation to His chosen people and insisted that He alone is the one and only true and living God! And that means that all the other gods are nothing more than the dead products of Sin-corrupted human imagination! So, naturally the world and its deeply established idolatrous systems resent Israel’s God and want nothing to do with Him, or His chosen people. The Torah revelation embedded within the first commandment is inconceivable and unacceptable to such people. Even many of Moses’ fellow Israelites couldn’t grasp what God was really saying. Fallen, self-adoring flesh is never ready to hear, receive and obey the Word of Israel’s God. To decapitated people, He is much too invasive, radical and revolutionary to suit the passions, urges and sensibilities of our Sin-loving flesh. Israel’s God deeply offends and shocks with His demanding bluntness and unyielding insistence. He disregards and brushes aside every existing religious system, theology and ritualistic tradition that the fallen world embraces. And so, rather than repent and obey this God, His enemies choose to ignore or resist Him, and they despise those foolish enough to follow Him. They cling to what they have and are willing to kill, or be killed, in its defense!
Since the time of Moses, many external trappings of humanity’s worldwide idolatry have changed. But the same demonic religious spirit that drove so many people then, continues to drive many of their descendants even now. Fallen, Sin-corrupted, Serpent-dominated minds, wills and hearts cannot be so consistently faithful and true to only one deity. But this is exactly what Israel’s God demands. He commissioned her to share this truth and its practice with the rest of the world! So, any of us who will take Him seriously and follow His living Word must ‘unlearn’ what we thought we knew, and allow God’s Word to retrain and reconfigure us until we can believe, trust and depend on Him exclusively…for absolutely everything! This is implied in the original Genesis revelation:
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.”
Can you see the direct connection between this text and the need for Israel’s Exodus? The world doesn’t believe that God could be so exclusively Perfect! How can men dare to trust Him that much, so that they would never reach an end to His credibility and never have to ‘draw the line’ on how far and how much they would be willing to trust Him to meet their needs and insure their perpetual well being? Such a perfect, infinite, airtight God requires infinite airtight trust! But we are finite beings. We can’t be infinite or ‘airtight’ or perfect in anything! Nevertheless, if we do choose to believe and obey Him, we’re required to repent of our former unbelief and radical independence of Him. And we will be forced to trust Him to regenerate and reconfigure us until somehow, He will be able to empower and enable us to resist with flawlessly persevering fidelity, the constant negative pull that the opposing influences and practices of all other peoples continue to exert in the opposite direction. True, authentic disciples must learn to believe that the one living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob already has everything we will ever need (past, present and future) created, paid for and waiting for us in His Eternal Treasury in Heaven. And we must believe that we need only come to Him for it, and it is ours:
Luke 11:9-10
“So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened!” (Emphasis added.)
Living Testimonies of God’s Perfect Faithfulness
And so our disciple boot camp training must instill this knowledge and lifestyle into us at a very deep level. Our lives must transform into living testimonies to the Truth that our God is Perfect and everything He has done is Perfect and Complete. Only when we can know Him at this depth of absolute Perfection, can we psychologically and emotionally rest upon and draw exclusively from His All Sufficient Perfection, regardless of our earthly circumstances and current conditions. Then we’ll be able to afford to render to God the worship, love and obedience that His Word requires of us:
Philippians 4:4-7
“Rejoice in the Lord ALWAYS; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for NOTHING, but IN EVERYTHING by prayer and supplication WITH THANKSGIVING let your requests be made known to God. And the peace (supernatural Heavenly Shalom) of God, which surpasses all (worldly, radically independent) comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The Israelites who cavorted with their golden calf had sworn, by Covenant blood-sealed oath, to refrain from trusting in any created person or thing. They were not to rely upon Moses, or themselves, or any other human or human device. They were not to rely upon the excellence of what they thought they could become or accomplish or acquire. They were not to view anything created as their sources of provision, protection and wellbeing. God alone is the Creator and He is to be their one and only Source, at all times and for all things! He provides everything for all of us; so we are to look only to Him at all times. There is no other Source.
But beloved, which of us does not struggle with this? Does it not seem to us, as we view reality through our Sin-warped mental eyeglasses, that nothing in this world is finished? Do we not see imperfection and incompleteness within ourselves, and all around us? Do we not feel fear and anxiety and uncertainty in our guts, despite the assurances that our invisible God has given to us? God says that in His eternal Realm, everything is Finished and Present! He has already created and provided it all. So He requires us to take Him at His Word; and rely only on Him… as we make our way through this grossly imperfect space and time world. We are to abide in His Perfection, with total trust, even as we pass through the gauntlet of the brutal demonic traps and contradicting messages and opposition thrown against us by the powers of Darkness and those that serve them!
God’s Torah revelation requires us to be deeply rooted upon the Ground of God and His Perfection and His All Sufficient Finished Work of Creation and Redemption. We are to think, act, react and interact in the certain knowledge that our God has already covered, provided and paid for everything, in full! We are to know that He is waiting to transmit to us, whatever we need in time and space, from His Throne in eternity! This is the Narrow Gate through which we must pass, that leads us onto the Narrow Path we must continue to remain within, all the days of our lives. And this is why disciples of God’s living Word are so different from, and alien to, all the other people around them.
Matthew 7:13-14
“Enter through the Narrow Gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the Gate is small and the Way is narrow that leads to Life, and there are few who find it.”
The commandments of our God are like stone markers that point out the Narrow Path and keep us safely within its limits. So if we believe and obey our God, He and His ways will separate us from all unbelieving people of this world and their idolatrous systems. And God’s Word will lead us safely through all of the demonic minefields that are embedded across the world. This is the Path upon which God’s people will grow spiritually and mature to be wise, knowledgeable, skilled citizens of God’s Heavenly Kingdom. We will demonstrate, through our obedient faith, the Reality and Truth of God, to those who are all around us. This is the purpose and function of God’s True Israel. This is the Root into which God intends to engraft anyone who will repent of radical independence from Israel’s God. And He will join us to the awesome Covenant Salvation Root that He entrusted to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so that, through them, He could also share it with the rest of mankind!
But in order to be free to have this Salvation, we must allow our Messiah’s Cross to pull our very roots out of the idolatrous, rebellious soil of this fallen world and its self-centered system, and transplant them into the Ground of His eternal Blood Covenant union. Beloved, how’s that for a Narrow Gate and Narrow Path? This way is so narrow that only Almighty God and one of His Word’s disciples can pass through it at any given time! In each disciple’s journey, there is never any room for the false, empty word of any other god! Everything must be supplied for us from the Perfect Heavenly Finished Work of Creation and Redemption that the one God of Israel has already provided through His Word! So, unless we wholeheartedly receive and believe this revelation that God’s Word gives, it’s psychologically and emotionally impossible to observe the first commandment in a way that would satisfy God’s Perfect Standards. Without absolute airtight faith and trust in God, we naturally fall back into idolatry by default.
So… how many people, regardless of whether they call themselves ‘Jewish’ or ‘Christian’ or anything else, really and authentically observe the first commandment in a way that satisfies God’s Perfect Standard of Righteousness? Are any of us really any different than those people at Mt. Sinai? That tragic episode was only one among countless other violations that the entire human race continually commits! And this is why we must never trust in ourselves to do anything God requires of us. This is true for two major reasons: 1) We absolutely cannot do it because of our state of living death and our Sin-corruption, and, 2) The necessary Work that accomplishes everything has already been done. It is finished… thanks to what God’s living Word has already done in our name and on our behalf. It’s not necessary for us to try to manufacture or originate anything else. God requires us to look to Him alone, for everything… to His eternal Glory!
We are Called to Repent of our Idolatry!
So we must repent of and forsake our original, grossly warped eyeglasses! They twist our perceptions of God into monstrous caricatures that are vastly different and much lower than He really is. They make Him appear small, inept and unreliable. They destroy His Credibility in our hearts. And since we assume He isn’t good, strong, wise or faithful enough to handle what we think our needs require, we feel forced to look elsewhere. So we devise an array of substitutes with which to fill the ‘adequacy lapses’ we think God’s inability or lack of concern create in our security and wellbeing. Thus idolatry creates a horrible separation and alienation from our one true Creator and Perfect Source. Unbelief is for us spiritually, what decapitation would be in the physical realm. The only difference is, physical decapitation finishes us on the spot. But spiritual decapitation is a slow, drawn out death process. But whether we fall immediately or later… the truth remains that the moment we’re decapitated, we are already dead!
All peoples and traditions, regardless of their color, background, culture or religious beliefs, violate the first commandment repeatedly. Even when they claim to believe in only one god, they do not trust that god completely. They can’t stop adding other things to him, or her… just to ‘be sure.’ Their unconscious habitual formula is: god + this government, or, god + the money and things I can amass, or, god + these human relationships, or, god + my devotion to this prophet or religious theological system, or, god + this position or job, or, god + the excellence of my knowledge and performance and attainments, etc., etc., etc.
Can you see the direct connection between God’s emphasis on idolatry in Exodus and the foundational revelation He gives in Genesis 1 and 2? Genesis says that Almighty God is the sole Creator of the entire universe… the one and only Source for whatever is real, true and good. God speaks His Word, and His Word produces whatever His Father wants… out of nothingness! And so God is Supreme, Infinite, Omnipotent, and He alone is the Lord, Owner and Master of whatever He creates. He is Perfect and all that He created was perfect, complete and all sufficient from the very first moment in which He created it:
Genesis 1:31
“God saw ALL that He had made, and behold, it was very good…”
And because Israel’s God is infinitely Perfect, His All Sufficiency automatically gives rise to His Sabbath Rest. Rest follows upon knowing God as He really is. When we know His Perfection, and the absolute, infinite, eternal Completion of His Creation, we KNOW that He did everything perfectly and comprehensively the moment He spoke and His creative Word came forth to do His will! And we know God’s Perfect Fullness is contained in His Perfect Word! And the Perfect Word is in the process of completely renewing Creation and restoring it to its original Perfection. Thus not one detail of Creation’s entire history has been overlooked or forgotten. Whatever each and every creature will need in time and space, whether it is past, present or future to them, God reveals that it already exists in eternity, in His Word. The Word is the Creator, Sustainer, Reconciler, Coverer, Redeemer, Protector and Restorer of whatever God has made.
John 17:1b-3
“…Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son (living Word), that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give Eternal Life. This is Eternal Life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
God’s Truth is that, no matter what any free-willed creature, or group of creatures decide to do to try to deny, contradict or derail God’s Plan, He knew and anticipated that. And He had already supplied whatever would be needed for His Creation to recover and be restored and realigned so that it can proceed and ultimately fulfill its God-given purpose. All of this Fullness and Perfection abide in God’s Word. And the Word was made flesh and appeared as Yeshua of Nazareth. So now, as the risen Messiah and Lord of Glory, He IS the Beginning and the End… and nothing created can prevent the Almighty Uncreated Word of God from fulfilling His Father’s Plan and purposes, even though in space and time, the restoration process is progressive, to our way of seeing and thinking.
God is perfectly in touch with His Perfection. And this is the view of Himself that He revealed to us in images and words we can understand. And when we truly believe His Word, we are also in touch with His Perfection and can thus naturally afford to rest, knowing that even in our present situations, we can draw continually from the total adequacy of what God has already done and provided. But people who remain Serpent-deceived, keep viewing everything through those warped, twisted, distortion eyeglasses we all inherited. Thus nothing seems complete or ‘good enough’ to them. All outcomes seem to be pending, uncertain and unfinished. So, they believe their warped glasses and disbelieve, mistrust and contradict the one true God, and stay trapped within their deeply embedded habits of anxiety, suspicion and paranoia and control addiction.
Genesis 3:1-5
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field, which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, has God said, “You shall not eat from any tree of the garden”?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, “You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.”’ The serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil!’”
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.)
Since humans can only see one thing after another; the reality of eternity’s Fullness eludes us. We must grope through our moment-by-moment existence, where it seems as if something else has to happen that is better than what already exists. But the first commandment won’t allow us to put faith in that flawed perception. It requires us to look instead to God in His Eternity, so that from that dimension, He can transmit to us, through our faith in Him, whatever we lack in space and time. This is how He calls us out of our slavery to the demonic lies that so grossly limit our intellects and physical senses!
And that creates tremendous tension within us. We are caught between the pull of our invisible God’s Word, and the pull created by the very real dangers, needs, cares and concerns that abound in this temporal dimension. Our faculties see nothing but warning signs, dangers and question marks. But God’s first commandment requires us to rejoice with Him in the completion and Perfection of His Finished Work! This is why our disciple training has to be so rigorous and demanding. It takes supernatural empowerment from the Holy Spirit to be equipped to see what God sees and join Him and remain bonded to His Perfection and Eternal Sabbath Rest, no matter how things may look, sound or feel to our natural physical eyes:
Hebrews 4:9-13
“So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His (God’s) rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent (persevering in our struggle) to enter that Rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience. For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Deuteronomy 6:4-5
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love (and trust and rest in and obey) the Lord your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your might!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Our God’s Eternally Airtight Perfection
Have you ever really pondered what the words of God’s greatest commandment above, are saying? They require us to be airtight in our response to God…‘with ALL our heart and ALL our soul and ALL our might’! We were made to be God’s image and likeness! And He is Eternally Airtight in His Perfection and Faithfulness. So His image and likeness must correspond to what He is, with Perfect Airtight Faith, Trust and accurate Confidence in Him! But we Sin-corrupted, terribly damaged people can’t manage to think, act, react and interact with God, or anyone else, at such a perfect level… not even for three seconds! In this world, even when something seems to be achieved and finished…it never lasts! Everything keeps changing (dying)…so for us, God’s Perfect Rest and Peace elude our natural grasp. We are mired in time and engulfed by Death; but God’s Perfection and Eternal Life abide simultaneously in Eternity, which is a completely different dimension. It is on the other side of the Infinite Chasm of God’s Transcendence. So we can only know it by faith in God’s Word and abide with Him in the Perfection that only He possesses.
Isaiah 55:8-9
“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.”
The Perfection God requires of us can never originate in us. We can’t produce it. The Fullness of God’s Perfection is in His Nature and in His living Word that reveals and obeys Him. This is why the Word was commissioned to be our Eternal High Priest and Blood Covenant Representative and Messiah. Only He is the Perfect Israelite. Only He lived the Perfect Torah-fulfilling, commandment-keeping Human Life to Perfection. Only He is the Perfect Image and Likeness of Almighty God! And He has already done all the things required of us, in our name! He became flesh to represent us and to live as the Perfect Human Image and Likeness of His Father. And because He is the one and only Perfect Israelite, God is satisfied only with Him! But if He’s satisfied with our Representative, He is satisfied with us…through Him. And that is why the Holy Spirit of God is here to transform us into His Son’s image and likeness. His Spirit imparts to us the Perfection that only abides in the Word, God’s beloved Son. Yeshua is our New Eternal Life… so what is natural only to Him can also be seen working within us and manifesting His Glory through us, purely by God’s grace:
John 5:19; 30
“…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… I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”
By nature, we are utterly imperfect! The imperfect will never achieve Perfection! None of this Perfection God requires could ever come from us. Contrary to the Serpent’s claim, we cannot and will not, ever be ‘like God’! Perfection belongs only to God’s Nature. If we are to have any share in it, God’s Perfect Word must impart it. So unless we have God’s Word abiding as one with us, obeying the Torah commandments in our name, we will never access God’s Perfect Peace, Rest and Perfection.
Permit me to offer some personal experience. In the last few years, I began to experience an amazing change within my innermost being, which in itself is just as weak and Sin-prone as anyone else’s. But in recent years, I have spent much of my time focusing on writing these meditations on Genesis and Exodus. And as I’ve concentrated on God’s Torah revelation, and prayed over it, and asked the Lord to teach and train me to walk in His ways… after some time, ‘light bulbs’ suddenly began to blink on in my mind and heart. And our Master’s abiding inner Presence started to become much more real and alive to me. An abiding sense of His nearness and airtight Lovingkindness caused an outrageous confidence in Him and His Perfection, to well up within my inner being. This is what comes as a result of trying to carry out our ‘Follow Me Marching Orders.’ The more we abide with our indwelling Master, the more we get to know Him!
I believe this is what our ‘disciple job description’ requires and produces. Wonderful results appear as we habitually apply ourselves to our Marching Orders. So I am more convinced than ever that disciples of the Last Days must learn to live with our Master day and night, as members of His personal Family. We must not stop short of this level of interactive union with Him. We must learn to abide with Him by faith, through the Holy Spirit’s equipping Power, so that we can continually hear His voice and learn from Him what the name, ‘El Shaddai’ (the many-breasted one) really means. God’s all-sufficient Word will then begin to transmit His love nature and character and disposition into us. And He will reveal Himself and His ways within our daily experiences. And this is what we will need in the Last Days, for life in this world will become increasingly difficult and trying and dangerous for all of us.
At first it is a struggle to remain aware of His Presence with us. But after enough practice and repetition, it becomes easier, more natural and automatic. Then we can abide and interact with Him with ease, and begin to sense Him teaching, training, disciplining and correcting us, as needed. And His Perfect Life and Fullness begin to produce the Fruit of His Perfection from within us… and all around us… to our Heavenly Father’s eternal Glory. It’s not about what we think we will do for God; it’s about learning to allow God to apply what He has already done for us… into us… and through us!
John 15:7-11
“If you (the branches) abide in Me (The Vine), 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 (trust Me to) keep My commandments (from within you), you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments (by the Power of His Holy Spirit) and abide (with Total Rest) 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.” (Amplification added.)
The Torah truly is ‘The Tree of Life’ for it contains depths of revelation that we will never completely fathom or fully explore throughout all of eternity! And when Yeshua, the Living Torah, actually lives and works in us, God’s Eternal Reality takes over and does all of the work we could never do. We’ll never know all that there is to know, or do the impossible supernatural things God’s Perfect Standards require. The Treasures embedded in the written Torah can only be fulfilled by Yeshua, the Living Torah. His Perfect Glorified Human Body abides with the Father at His Throne. But His New Covenant Earthly Body becomes incarnate…through His New Covenant disciples! And the Fruit He came to produce in them will begin to appear in their circumstances through their Torah-based faith. People around such disciples will begin to see and experience His Reality for themselves as His disciples embody Him. This will arouse a lot of animosity in many; but it will also arouse curiosity and hope and excitement in others. And more and more people will become motivated to learn and hear more and more. Then some of them will begin to dig into the Scriptures and learn to abide with Yeshua too, under the gentle guidance and personal example of the veteran disciples that capture their attention. So, if we apply ourselves to follow our Master’s Marching Orders, then, as we learn to follow Him, He will fulfill the following revelations and promises in us and for us:
Matthew 11:27-29
“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.” (Emphasis added.)
2 Corinthians 4:7-11
“But we have this Treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing Greatness of the Power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the Life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the Life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh!” (Emphasis added.)
Philippians 4:3-7; 12-13
“…I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I CAN DO ALL THINGS THORUGH HIM WHO STRENGTHENS ME!” (Emphasis added.)
God’s Perfect All Sufficiency is clearly revealed throughout the Bible. But at first, when we read the texts… it doesn’t penetrate and settle into the depths of our innermost being. It’s like rain drops hitting slabs of granite. Thus we do not experience what they promise to convey. And I believe this happened to most of Israel during their days in the wilderness. So why didn’t this awesome Truth sink in? I believe it is a matter of proportion. It depends on what we tell ourselves in our own hearts. Our brains only listen to us. If our ‘heart talk’ contradicts God’s Word, our brain will listen to us, not God. So our previous worldly programming acts like a slab of granite that resists God’s gentle rain of Revelation.
The results depend on the actual difference between how much of the world is already in us, and how much of what is in God’s Word we are actually going to start putting into ourselves. We literally spent decades marinating ourselves day and night in this fallen world’s atmosphere, learning its systems, values, priorities and lifestyle habits. Thus, by the time we first become aware of God’s Word, we are already slaves to the tyranny of that endless inner repetition of the preprogrammed voices in our onboard computer . But…if water hits our granite with enough repetition, enormous gorges and canyons can be cut into it! But without that kind of repetition, nothing much changes.
The Inner Conflict
So, when we begin to hear about God and become aware of His written Word, and hear about His Resurrection and the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, the voices that are already programmed into our heads will scream denial and contradict this new input. So it’s not enough to dabble superficially with organized, man-controlled religious activities, services, reading, classes, talks and programs in the vain hope that these things will be enough to change us. That will never take the place of our own continuous ‘heart talk’. If that external religious activity was all it takes for us to transform, then the disciples of Yeshua would not have needed to be immersed into God’s Holy Spirit and their unique disciple lifestyle! All they would have needed is to find a good synagogue to attend…and good books to read…and first class academies and universities in which to enroll. But they needed much more than that. It’s not enough to expect outside influences to change us. We must begin to steer and reeducate and retrain our own brain! It takes much more than claiming to be ‘saved’ and ‘redeemed’ and professing to believe and serve God. We must learn to abide and interact with Almighty God Himself…on His terms!
Remember this awesome fact: ‘Our brains only listen to us!’ This is how God made us. We have free will. So we must choose who we will be and what we will believe or disbelieve and what we will and will not do. We must assume full responsibility for taking over the management and steering controls of our own brains! We determine how much or how little of something we will put into them and into which direction we will decide to steer them. If you sow the same old kind of seed, nothing changes; but if you sow a lot of new seed, you transform!
We all know that most people do not even come close to growing and maturing to a true disciple level of responsibility. They do not make the necessary response to God’s call to apply themselves to what He reveals about His nature and His ways. At best, most of us ‘play around’ with God’s revealed Truth. We learn a little ABOUT it, but we seldom practice and train and drill our own brains to absorb the new patterns and instill sufficient amounts of actual repetitive practice into ourselves until we BECOME it. This is why God leads His own into His wilderness ‘Boot Camp’. If we are willing to continually plant enough of God’s new ‘Seed’ into the rocky, weed-strewn fields of our souls and brains, the Seed of Heaven will eventually sink deep root systems and take over and crowd out and starve whatever was growing in us in the past.
The way to overcome deeply established old seed that already prevails in our heart, is to starve it out, to overwhelm it with massive amounts of new seed that we have not known before. But if we continue to plant more of the same seed and fail to plant enough of the new seed, we’re kidding ourselves. The smaller amount of input and repetition, regardless of what it is, will never overcome and absorb the greater amount. So if we do not make a clean break with our past and begin with realistic determination to renew our minds and brains effectively, we really never choose to ‘leave Egypt’. We refuse to die to it…and never devote ourselves wholeheartedly, to the new disciple lifestyle of living and interacting with our risen Lord, to which God has called us. Only those who seriously repent and forsake Egypt in Spirit and in Truth… apply themselves to living with their resurrected Master day and night. They ‘marinate’ themselves in God’s living and written Word… absorbing, absorbing and absorbing Him more and more…until they finally transform into new creations that begin to embody and reflect the inner Presence of Yeshua, the Perfect Image and Likeness of God.
Most of the Exodus Israelites did not make that wholehearted transition. They never ‘changed sides.’ So their old worldly identities and viewpoints remained deeply embedded within them. The alluring familiarity of Egypt kept pulling them backward, to their past, back to childhood…to what had been so familiar and predictable all of their lives. What God was showing them didn’t soak in deeply enough. So despite God’s spectacular displays of Power and Authority, they never escaped the trap of their old self-centered mindsets and habits and the unbelief and lack of trust and rebellious ‘heart talk’ that were already wired into their brains and programmed into their minds.
We must accustom ourselves to seeing and understanding more of what God is telling us… that He is the one and only Servant of all Creation. We must realize that since He created us out of nothingness, and since we were formed out of the dust of the Earth… by our essence, we are always totally helpless and dependent upon Him. So our Creator is the only One who really does any work! The rest of us can only receive and pass along what we first receive from Him. We are not as our Creator is! He is infinitely beyond us!
God’s Word – Our One and Only Source
We may be creative, but only He is The Creator! So even if we start and establish giant corporations or earn enormous incomes and achieve top status in the economic or political ‘rat race’ of this world, even if we win multiple gold medals… the fact remains that everything we are and have and use… comes to us from God’s living creative Word. So the bedrock Truth is this: God’s Word is our one and only Source for whatever is real, true and good. And the rest of us can do nothing but receive and receive and receive… endlessly, while God’s Word does all the Work and gives and gives and gives and gives…the Fruit of His Perfect Work to all of Creation!
Beloved, if you take this to heart, you will begin to understand what God’s Perfection means to us. And you’ll persevere in training and aligning your mind and brain with His Reality. Then you’ll begin to feel the Contentment and Joy and Safety and Rest and Security and Satisfaction that He is here to be to you. Continuous repetitive exposure to, and interaction with, God’s Perfect Word is like a steady, gentle rain. As He continues to do His work, His living water will wear through the ‘slabs of granite’ and penetrate and sink into your deeper parts until He reaches and permeates your innermost being. After that, you will actually begin to feel God’s awesome Eternal Peace (Shalom) in your ‘guts.’
When you can start to actually feel His Peace, you’ll know that His Reality has formed a deep root system within your brain, heart and soul. And more and more light bulbs that were always dormant on your internal control panels will suddenly begin to flash on, and God’s Truth and Reality will activate and take over and begin to reconfigure your ‘onboard computer.’ The more God’s living Word becomes real to you and His written Word soaks into you, the more Light will you be able to see and abide in and radiate to others. And your feelings and instinctive reactions will transform gradually and automatically into abiding Peace (Shalom).
After that, God’s abiding Presence will be like soothing, healing, reassuring, comforting balm for your heart of hearts. His Peace will obliterate and replace your former chronic granite slabs of worldly selfishness, apprehension, paranoia, insecurity, anxiety, frustration, control addiction, depression, hopelessness, anger, and stress. You will know that God is with you, and with all of us, at all times, to administer the awesome perfect, eternal Fruit of the glorious Covenant Reality that assures us that everything is already ours!
Romans 8:14-17
“For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”
Look once again at what Yeshua is telling us:
Matthew 11:27-29
“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 (become My disciple) and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find Rest for your souls.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Forsaking All Others…
The Narrow Gate and Narrow Path Yeshua spoke of in Matthew 7 are Hebraic images that reflect the Truth of the Torah’s first commandment. They are symbolic images of the Reality that there is only one True God, and Yeshua, His living Word, is the ‘Stairway’ that Jacob saw. He is the one Source for everything. To embrace this Truth and the God who gives Himself to us through it, we must chose to forsake any other possibility. When we truly follow our Master Yeshua… He is the only item left on our menu of options. Everything else upon which we once relied, must be crucified, executed and buried. From then on, only Yeshua remains – Supreme, Sovereign and All Sufficient. He becomes our new one and only Life. And His Perfection eliminates all competition and reigns Supreme.
If we allow God’s Torah to develop the proper ‘eyeglasses’ in us that enable us to ‘see the Light’, then no matter what our circumstances in this life may be, no matter where we are, even if we’re surrounded by deadly enemies in the middle of a barren desert wilderness with no human resources or natural hope to sustain us…our Creator, who made us from nothing, is always with us…to be whatever we need Him to be. He will take us through every temporary situation, challenge or apparent impossibility. And so, even if it requires the final demise of our temporary bodies to remain faithful and true to Him, we can gladly surrender this temporary life as a pure testimony to Him… knowing that He Himself will be our new Eternal Resurrection Life and He will bring us into the everlasting, mind-boggling Inheritance that He has already earned for us as well.
Read and ponder Psalms 136 & 139. Absorb them and all the other texts like them. Repeat them so that like a steady gentle rain, they can penetrate your granite and sink deep roots into your deepest inner parts. With that kind of repetition…you will actually ‘wire in’ or install the revelation that imparts God’s Perfection into you. Program and install Him into your neurological wiring and mental programming, and your mind will be renewed. Continual repetition gradually changes the prescription on your ‘eyeglasses’ and replaces it with God’s prescription. Then you can see the Light… and the Light can expose the hidden dangers and safely guide your steps… all the way into your Perfect Eternal Home with Almighty God. Don’t be overcome by the evil that is in your former programming; overcome it with even more programming of the Good that is already yours by the Love and Grace and abiding Presence of Almighty God!
Isaiah 5:20-24
“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight! Woe to those who are heroes in drinking wine and valiant men in mixing strong drink, who justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the rights of the ones who are in the right! Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes stubble and dry grass collapses into the flame, so their root will become like rot and their blossom blow away as dust; for they have rejected the Law (Torah revelation) of the Lord of hosts and despised the (Living and written) Word of the Holy One of Israel.”
Colossians 1:13-17
“For He (through His Word and Spirit) rescued us from the domain of Darkness, and transferred us to the Kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He (the Word or the Logos in Greek or the Davar in Hebrew or the Memra in Aramaic) 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.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The Sabbath Reminds Us of Our Perfect God and His Sufficiency
This is why, from the very beginning, God set the seventh day of each week aside for a special purpose. Throughout the rest of the week, God wants us to anticipate and look forward to that blessed day. On that day we once again celebrate with God in the absolute Perfect All-Sufficiency of His Love and Provision for us. God wants us to join Him in repeatedly celebrating and enjoying the airtight Fullness of His Perfect, finished, all sufficient Work of Creation and Redemption. The Sabbath is the constant reminder of what is always true…it is like a steady flow of granite-eroding Water, our effective Teacher, Instructor and Trainer that permeates us with the ever-present Reality that everything we will ever encounter or face or even imagine… is already covered and provided for, by our Father’s all sufficient Grace.
The Sabbath also teaches and trains us to see and think of ourselves – and to live – as God’s ‘sons’ and ‘heirs’ and eternal Blood Covenant Family members. We are not created or destined to toil and slave and agonize in anxiety and inferiority and defeat. The Lamb of God enables us to leave the cursed ground of the decapitated world…so that we can share and participate in His Perfect Human Life, Perfect Faith and Perfectly Obedient Righteousness before His Father. He has freed us from the Sin of radical independence and its curses and the Death Penalty that those who are guilty of it incur. When we became one with Him, we became regenerated sons of God, no longer doomed to live in orphan-like squalor, defeat and neediness, no longer forced to labor under an abiding sense of inadequacy, failure, rejection, abandonment and impoverishment. Could any of that worldly desolation that surrounds us be the image and likeness of Almighty God? No, of course not.
Matthew 5:14-20
“You are the Light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives Light to all who are in the house. Let your Light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law (Torah) or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until Heaven and Earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Torah reveals what the Serpent and his Sin have done to the human race. The rest of the Bible amplifies and further explains it. So note this well: the Exodus from the Serpent’s Sin and Darkness, and the Sin and Death they inflict, are the primary lesson, message and template that God gives to us in the bedrock foundation of the rest of the Bible! The Serpent and his Sin destroyed the original image and likeness beauty with which God first endowed us. The powers of Darkness waylaid, robbed, and horribly mutilated us and left us for dead! As a race, we’ve become spiritually blind, deaf, cursed and mortally wounded by the venom of the Serpent’s lies! And how did he manage to cause all of this? He did it by convincing our first parents that God wasn’t ‘good enough,’ that they needed something else in addition to Him. That is how he lured them into the death trap of idolatry and horribly mutilated God’s human and earthly Creation!
So when the Torah is able to rewire and reprogram us, we are equipped with the new, proper God-given eyeglass lenses. And we can know in our innermost being that our God is Almighty and Eternal and Infinitely Perfect. We know that He alone is God and that there can be no other. And when we are safely rooted upon the awesome Ground of His Eternal Kingdom, we are totally off limits to the powers of Darkness! Because he is not allowed in God’s Kingdom, the Serpent can’t keep his coils around us! There is nothing left in us that belongs to him, nothing he can claim as his own or grab hold of. The Cross removes all the legal and mental ‘Sin handles’ that the Serpent formerly attached to us. After that, there’s nothing left in us that belongs to Satan. So he’s powerless to hold us or lay any claim upon us. Then God’s Torah revelation equips us with the map that we can use to begin and finish our Exodus from the Serpent-dominated world systems. God’s Spirit empowers us with the ability to stay on the Narrow Path… the Path that only allows the one true God of Israel to fill and exercise full dominion over our mental pictures and our walk through space and time.
Realize What Idolatry is and What it Does
Idolatry rejects the living God who reveals Himself to us. It pushes away the Word He sends with which to cover our nakedness and save us from ourselves. Idolatry screams disbelief, contradiction and rejection at the living Word through whom God has created and sustained and supplied us throughout every moment of our existence. God reveals that He is living and active; but the Serpent’s unbelief and rebellion drive us to assume that God’s Word is empty and powerless, that God does not exist, or if He does, then what He does and supplies is not enough, and is not to be trusted.
But since no other god could possibly exist in Reality, what is really happening is this: the deluded humans begin to do what the Serpent does…slip into the insanity of total delusion. Then their delusions drive and dominate them. Their Sin-corrupted perceptions, assumptions, appetites, passions, urges, circumstances, situations and feelings lead them around by a ring in their nose. And, spiritually speaking, that is the death trap of slavery to self that God continually warns against:
Jeremiah 17:5-10
“Thus says the Lord, ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. For he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt, without inhabitant.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.
“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.’”
Romans 6:23
“For the wages of sin is Death, but the free gift of God is eternal Life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
God, who is Perfect in Nature and infinitely Truthful and Pure and Righteous, has created us to be His image and likeness! Thus God’s living Word tells us:
Matthew 5:48
“Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is Perfect.” (Emphasis added.)
This tells us something about God’s Perfection… His perfect nature will judge us according to its perfect standards of Righteousness. In other words, all of Israel and the entire rest of the human race will be judged according to God’s eternal plan and purpose for us. So what will He see? Will He see His own image and likeness abiding within us, or not? His Word must be present and operating within us, as Lord, in order for us to pass God’s Judgment and be accepted by Him in eternity! And this is why we say that God’s one question to us at our final judgment might be expressed in these words:
“How Much of My Beloved Son (My Living Word) Is In You?”
Beloved, can you see what a tragedy and failure it was when so many first generation Exodus Israelites failed to realize this? God called them to be His, so that His Word could transform and lead them out of Satan’s Darkness. They were supposed to learn to reflect Him, as He really is, and thus serve as ‘the Light of the world.’ But instead of embracing God’s living Word, many disbelieved and rejected Him. Instead of being able to help lead the way for the rest of the world, and train others how to follow the One they followed, they themselves remained fallen, Sin-corrupted, deluded, sinful and idolatrous. And to this day, the God-less world system (‘Egypt’) continues to enslave many, and it forces them to serve the Serpent in his rejection of God’s living Word, the Messiah of Israel.
So Israel’s success or failure will serve as God’s instrument of instruction. And it will have a huge impact on the salvation of the rest of the world. And this is why God highlighted the failure of Saul, Israel’s first human king. He does not use him as an example because he faltered and failed. We all do that! But Saul is used as an example of those who refuse to abide by God’s Word and refuse to repent when they know that they have violated their Covenant with God. Such people do not renew their minds; therefore, they cannot finish their Exodus from Darkness. Instead, they perish somewhere out in the wilderness:
1 Samuel 15:22-23
“Samuel said (to King Saul), ‘Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and insubordination is as iniquity and IDOLATRY! Because you have rejected the Word of the Lord, He has also rejected you from being king!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Beloved, if we violate God’s first commandment, we will also violate all the other commandments! If we don’t know God in His Perfection, we can’t trust or obey His Word in any area. But if we take the first commandment to heart…the Word of God will be free to live and work from deep within our hearts at all times. When He becomes our new and eternal Life, the Power of His Spirit equips us to allow Him to obey and fulfill the other commandments of our Father…from within our yielded flesh!
Ezekiel 36:24-27
“For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” (Emphasis added.)
1 Corinthians 10:13-14
“No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the Way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it. Therefore my beloved, FLEE FROM IDOLATRY!” (Emphasis added.)
This helps us to better understand the kind of boot camp instruction and training we need. To save us, God MUST set us free from our slavery to the Serpent’s lies and his radical independence from God’s living Word. He must set us free from our slavery to the God-less world system into which we are all conceived and born, for it is the hotbed and green house for the idolatry of self adoration that the Serpent uses to deceive, blind and destroy us! So to finish our Exodus and be able to truly possess God’s Land of Promise, we must become one with God’s living Word and Holy Spirit. When that happens, we are truly ‘born again.’ And when God’s Word is truly our King… we truly become His Kingdom. From then on, we no longer take the lead… instead, we always follow our Master’s lead. And that definitely separates us from the rest of the people who choose to remain enslaved by the fallen world system and its false gods.
Ephesians 4:17-25
“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness 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.)
When God’s Word led the Israelites into the wilderness and had them all to Himself, He had the perfect venue, or arena, in which to reveal Himself and His Greatness, Perfection and supernatural All-Sufficiency. After He decimated Egypt and confounded their apparently all-powerful pharaoh and crushed his might and exposed and discredited all of the Egyptian false gods, God sustained His chosen ones in an environment that was totally devoid of the world’s system and its ways. None of them knew what to do to provide for their needs or anyone else’s needs. No one could call the shots or consider himself to be in charge or anything!
This is how God exposed the Serpent’s lies and discredited the delusions of ‘autonomy’ and ‘self determination’ that his lies had ‘downloaded’ into the Israelites and into the whole human race. And He exposed and discredited before Israel’s eyes, all of the world’s false teaching and the brutal, dog-eat-dog world system and its naïve beliefs that drive men to place their misguided trust in non-existent gods. Now Israel had nothing from this world to depend on; now there was nothing left for them to look to, or believe or trust in. Now they HAD to follow the living Word of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Now they could see for themselves, which of all the gods is the real one!
Israel saw God’s living Word supply their every need. They saw Him ignore and bypass everything that this fallen, dying world sincerely believes it cannot live or do without. Israel was allowed to see the Light of God’s Truth strip all worldly delusions away from their lives. That’s what the wilderness and the experiences it imposes can do for anyone who dares to follow God’s Word into it. In that unforgiving hostile barrenness, either the real living God will save and sustain you with His awesome, amazing creativity, and you will come to grips with His Truth for yourself… or… the wilderness will destroy you in a very short time.
The Israelites had nothing but barren emptiness to look at. And the murderous blistering heat by day, and the freezing cold by night, and the constant need for food and water and the hostile wilderness predators and the suspicious, hostile, territorial peoples who inhabited that region offered no amenities, no civilized comforts, no economic commerce, no insurance or pensions, annuities, military allies or public conveniences or transportation systems or life-preserving medical services. They had no natural, human means of settling into good land or building an economy and developing natural resources with which they could trade. Nevertheless, God cared for and sustained several million people… old people, children, infants and all of their herds and flocks in an environment that was rife with impossible, life-threatening situations. He proved to them, for forty years, that He needs nothing from this created world to fulfill His purposes.
And the rest of the world sat in the bleachers and looked from afar, into that awesome arena at the spectacle that Israel and her invisible God presented. They wondered how Israel could endure and survive for so long with one God, who was invisible and intangible at that. They expected Israel to perish. But Israel continued to live and thrive and multiply. As the Lord led them from one part of the wilderness to another, the surrounding peoples became increasingly amazed and in awe of Israel. And they became terrified at their approach.
This was the ‘Arena’ in which God revealed Himself. By all human reckoning, Israel should have perished. And the same thing has happened to and through Israel in every generation since that time. So it is obvious to those with the integrity to admit it, that this is totally supernatural. And thus Israel’s God truly has established Himself and His Name among the nations of this world. The message is clear and unmistakable: “The God of Israel is living and real and there is no other! And the Living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob does not need one thing from this fallen world or its system to do whatever He wishes, on behalf of His chosen ones that believe and obey Him!”
Isaiah: 66:1-2
“Thus says the Lord, ‘Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? For My hand (Word) made all these things, thus all these things came into being,’ declares the Lord. ‘But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My Word!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)