John 8:23-24
“And He was saying to them, ‘You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.’” (Emphasis added.)
The Lord who called us to ‘follow’ Him tells us clearly that He is from another world, or dimension. In His world in eternity, there is not even a speck of Sin. His is a Kingdom of Covenant Love and total Oneness with no such things as rebellion, strife or discord. God is Love, and His Kingdom or ‘World’ is completely free of radically independent, rogue, Self-adoration, or Selfishness. And so this is what the Exodus is all about: God’s living Word is here to lead us out of this fallen, Sin-corrupted, Self-adoring world and into full membership and residency in His Kingdom and its Perfect, Self-giving Love. And those of us that have heard and are obeying His call to follow Him, must take to heart the prayer Yeshua offered to His Father on behalf of all disciples who were called to follow His leading, by duplicating the example given to them by His original New Covenant apostles:
“I have manifested Your Name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your Word. Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.
John 17:6-11
“I ask on their behalf; I DO NOT ASK ON BEHALF OF THE WORLD, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours; and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them. I am no longer in the world; AND YET THEY THEMSELVES ARE IN THE WORLD, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your Name, the Name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are.”
Beloved, we will spend all of eternity trying to fathom the depths of meaning contained in the prayer Yeshua offered to His Father in John 17! God sent His living Word to begin this Exodus with Abraham and with his chosen Israelite Family. And what He started so long ago, He intends to continue, and finish, with the rest of those who will be His own. He intends to lead all of us away from our former dependence on the created false gods of this world. Because our true, living God is of another world, He requires His Covenant Family to stop belonging to this world and join Him in His. This is the message that Israel’s physical departure from Egypt was meant to convey.
God doesn’t intend to relocate us to another planet. He means to remove His chosen ones from their slavery to the mentality and ways of this fallen world’s idolatry. He meant to uproot and transplant the spirits of the Israelites. And that included weaning their brains, minds and hearts from their former citizenship in – and ties to – the priorities, identities, values and agendas of the world’s God-less system. The Creator of all things sent His Word to reclaim the Creation that is rightfully His…starting with His Covenant Family, Israel. But through Israel, He is fully intent on redeeming and restoring all the rest of what is His.
Israel’s priestly calling and commission requires them to be removed and set apart for special, intense training in God’s Heavenly ways. This was revealed through the Covenant of Sinai and it is especially true in the New Covenant Fulfillment that He promised to impart to, and share with, the very same people. He must teach and train His own to know and interact with Him, personally and intimately, on His terms. This is disciple training. It equips us to live according to God’s ways and authorizes us to proclaim and demonstrate our God’s Reality to the rest of the world with Spirit-empowered integrity and Word-authorized authenticity.
And, Israel, despite her many Covenant lapses and moral failures throughout the centuries, has succeeded in making God known and giving His Original and New Covenant revelation to the rest of the world. She has proven that her God is real and true and that she has His authentic commission to proclaim Him – by her supernatural ability to survive and thrive. This awesome phenomenon, that has been evident since Israel’s inception, continually demonstrates that she is in Blood Covenant union with a God who is absolutely real and living and unbelievably powerful. And because He is so real and present to her, Israel possesses an eerie mysterious supernatural ability to survive – no matter what the world tries to do to eliminate her!
Israel’s Unprecedented Survival, Against All Odds
She has survived innumerable periods of persecutions, attacks and schemes to destroy her. She continues to overcome seemingly impossible odds and hopeless situations. Her history is utterly unique and her survival unprecedented, among all other nations and people groups. Centuries of slavery in Egypt didn’t stop her; invasions of her land and extended periods of exile didn’t stop her. And even after she was dispersed and scattered across the globe by the Roman Empire and suffered endless attacks, pogroms, expulsions, deprivations and discriminations, Israel has not been swallowed up and assimilated. She outlived the Roman Empire by far, and continues to remain unique and distinct. She keeps rising up, time and time again, from the ashes of apparent destruction – renewed, vibrant, strong…and invincible!
After the Babylonians, Greeks and Romans did their utmost to stamp out her faith in her God, and exterminate her, subsequent people groups and religious regimes have tried to do the same thing. They have inflicted fatal blows and caused her people to undergo enormous sufferings. This took place throughout the Dark Ages, the Medieval Era, during the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment and the recent Holocaust of our current technological era. But despite all of that, Israel is still here…unique, unconquered and isolated. She never ‘fits in’ with the rest of the nations. But it remains obvious that SHE IS NEVER ALONE!
Leviticus 26:43-45
“…The land will be abandoned by them (the Israelites), and will make up for its Sabbaths while it is made desolate without them. They, meanwhile, will be making amends for their iniquity, because they rejected My ordinances and their soul abhorred My statutes. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, nor will I so abhor them as to destroy them, breaking My Covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God. But I will remember for them the Covenant with their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God. I AM THE LORD!’” (Emphasis added.)
The Perfect One, our Eternal Covenant God, the one and only Source for all things… is always with Israel. And although all the spiritually decapitated ‘pharaohs’ of the world cannot get in touch with the Reality of her God and refuse to acknowledge Him and His chosen people, nevertheless, in that mysterious supernatural way that the leaders and sages of this clueless fallen world cannot comprehend, explain or prevent…Israel’s God is always obviously present. He is continually living and acting amid His people, perpetually watching over them to the befuddlement and consternation and gut-wrenching frustration of their Serpent-blinded enemies. But it is clear, to anyone who has eyes to see, and a brain with which to think, that there is nothing that the demonic powers of Darkness or their human slaves on earth can ever do to overcome the chosen people of Almighty God! Try as they might, they cannot succeed. God will never permit it!
Genesis 3:15
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.”
This is one of the ways by which Israel serves as God’s ‘Light to the Gentiles.’ God reveals His overwhelming and unconquerable Reality, Authority and Power through her weakness. In His Plan, it is not yet time for the ultimate Fulfillment of His promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to appear. But His written Word has already warned us that this current Sin-corrupted world and the demon-infested heavenly realms that surround it will one day be totally destroyed. They will be removed and replaced by a New Heaven and a New Earth that will be utterly free of Sin, Death and demonic evil.
2 Peter 3:9-11
“The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness?” (Emphasis added.)
Revelation 21:1-4
“Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth; for the first Heaven and the first Earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, made ready as a Bride adorned for her Husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the Tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; THE FIRST THINGS HAVE PASSED AWAY!’” (Emphasis added.)
When that happens, when everything that is currently in vogue and in operation disappears and is totally replaced… then, not one speck of demonic opposition or resistance or Sin or Death and decay will remain. And all of God’s people will receive new, glorified human bodies that will equip them to operate in the unimaginable new Kingdom of God that will, by then, be fully established, once God’s Renewed, Restored earthly Creation has completely replaced whatever existed before.
The Wilderness Weaning Pen
But, for the time being, Israel’s Exodus is not finished. Thus she remains en route, somewhere within her wilderness. And the wilderness serves each generation as a giant ‘weaning pen’ within which Israel, and those non-Jewish people who repent and allow God’s Word to graft them into Israel’s spiritual ‘Olive Tree,’ can be detoxified and cleansed of all traces of their former radically independent worldliness, idolatry and self-adoration. The weaning pen process enables God to liberate, cleanse, purify, renew and refit His people for their personal Journey along God’s Narrow Path. This Path is so narrow that only the one true God and one believer can fit on it at any given time! This is the Path each person must follow with our one and only God, to and into its eternal destination. God has promised to be with His own continually. His never-ending faithfulness and grace and provision will empower us to cross the ‘Finish Line’ that will lead all of God’s people into the awesome eternity that God has waiting for those who love Him. So in this sense, although we physically remain IN this world, we most definitely are no longer OF this world.
At this time, God continues to give unbelievers the opportunity to repent. And then He gives them time to detoxify, or go through the ‘sweating out’ process of full systemic withdrawal from all of their former Egyptian addictions. The Holy Spirit is here to set us free from our original worldly identities and entanglements. He’s dismantling and replacing all ‘Egyptian’ patterns in our reactions, thoughts, and lifestyles. There is still time for us to repent of those things and to receive and learn to use the New Covenant ‘paradigm eyeglasses’ we’ll need to develop the mind, heart and skill levels which will enable us to stay on the Narrow Path, and function in it, and navigate through the traps and snares and opposition that the powers of Darkness will try to place before us.
We still have time to learn to agree with God and willingly repent and effectively renew our minds and retrain our hearts and wills with what the true God is here to teach us through His Word and Spirit. Our wilderness experiences will toughen us and stimulate much spiritual growth and emotional maturity within us. The repetition that comes with faithfully and consistently following that Narrow Path with our God will install deep new habit patterns within us. This is the sort of training God wanted Israel to receive during those awesome early days of Israel’s original Exodus from Egypt. Egypt represented and embodied the coils of the Serpent and the spiritual Darkness and Death that Sin inflicted on the human race. And Israel’s freedom from that Sin and Death was what was at stake during the tragic golden calf incident. And that is what was at stake throughout all the other infidelities that Israel committed throughout her long history.
The Exodus is Much More Than Just an Old Story
So once again, I urge you to remember that what is true of Israel, is true for the rest of the world! The Exodus is the ‘skeletal structure,’ the main issue of the entire Bible! It is not just a quaint Bible story about an ancient people! It is the story of the entire human race! The Exodus is the most serious issue any of us will ever have to face! The Exodus is the main template that God uses to train, educate and redeem every repentant Sin-corrupted child of Adam. He must deliver us from the Sin adoring systems of this fallen world and transform us into brand new creations before He can truly redeem us and reconcile with us. Only a successful Exodus from Egypt and entry into the Land of Promise will fully restore us to Almighty God’s image and likeness.
James 4:4-5
“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: ‘He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us’”?
In the Fertile Crescent region of Moses’ day, the God-less world system thrived and prevailed. Its humanistic wisdom, perspectives and assumptions were merciless and brutal and they had a death-grip on human minds and hearts. Egypt, and all other empires like her, embraced a vast array of cruel, vengeful man-devised gods. Their economies and cultures, legal and judicial systems, and their priority and value systems were based entirely on the Serpent’s lies, delusions and unspeakable selfishness. But the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sent His Word and Spirit to invade the Darkness that enshrouded that temporary Sin-condemned, dying world. And the Light of His Word began to expose, discredit and replace all of its falsehood…through His interactions with Israel.
And so this Invasion by God’s Word continues to this day. The Lord continues to establish and enlarge His living Word’s Kingdom on Earth, one mind and heart and soul at a time. More and more people in our generation are seeing the Truth, that the living Word of God is the Supreme King and Lord of all of God’s Creation. And they are submitting to His Authority as He continues to establish His reign on the Earth and fulfill His Father’s ultimate Plan for the entire human race… to its Ultimate Perfection!
But like the pharaoh that Moses had to confront, Sin-hardened people insist on trying to maintain their insane, utterly indefensible state of rebellion. They refuse to face the facts that God’s revelation has clearly established. They refuse to allow God’s living Word to pierce, penetrate and impregnate them with His electrifying, living, transforming Reality! They refuse to be overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit’s awesome Presence and continual Activity. Thus, very few worldly leaders and societies transform. In fact, the world becomes ever more selfish and brutally unrepentant and lacking in morals and objective Truth and life-governing principles. Many spiritually blind and deaf people continue to acquire positions of prominence, leadership and influence in this dying world. And they keep looking to their false gods to help them try to defend, maintain, impose and cling to what they assume will insure humanity’s safety, prosperity and success.
Even after God shows them the error of their ways, they harden their hearts. Instead of admitting the Truth and repenting and submitting to God’s Word as He reveals Himself through Moses and the prophets and the New Covenant apostles of Israel, they insist on staying where they are… acting and speaking as if they know everything, pretending that they have arrived and can afford to ignore God’s Last Days warnings. So, like that first pharaoh, they posture and pose and continue to give commands… from the bridge of their sinking, dying, Titanic-like world that keeps crumbling, disintegrating and sinking, at an alarming rate of speed.
Exodus 10:21-29
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand toward the sky, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even a darkness which may be felt.’ So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days. They did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days, BUT ALL THE SONS OF ISRAEL HAD LIGHT IN THEIR DWELLINGS!
“Then Pharaoh called to Moses, and said, ‘Go, serve the Lord; only let your flocks and your herds be detained. Even your little ones may go with you.’ But Moses said, ‘You must also let us have sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice them to the Lord our God. Therefore, our livestock too shall go with us; NOT A HOOF SHALL BE LEFT BEHIND, for we shall take some of them to serve the Lord our God. And until we arrive there, we ourselves do not know with what we shall serve the Lord.’
“But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he was not willing to let them go. Then Pharaoh said to him, ‘Get away from me! Beware, do not see my face again, for in the day you see my face you shall die!’ Moses said, ‘You are right; I shall never see your face again!” (Emphasis added.)
The people of this fallen world do agree with Israel’s God in this one area: Israel is utterly different from all other peoples… and they MUST be kept separate. So, the world is unwittingly serving and cooperating with God. They assist Him as He continues to set His chosen people apart. So Israel remains reserved for His personal, exclusive service. Thus Israel continues to serve as a Light to the Gentiles, whether human beings understand what God is really doing through Israel, or not. It is true: God’s people are separate and different. Regardless of which Covenant they belong to, the children of Abraham remain in the world physically, but in no other way are they to be part of it any longer:
1 Peter 1:1-2
“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ…to those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying (setting apart) work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure…” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Boot Camp is Preparation for End Times Combat
So, beloved disciples, what does God want us to know? Why does He insist on grafting people from all backgrounds into Israel’s ‘Olive Tree’ spiritual heritage? Why does He continue to allow all of us to experience wilderness-type circumstances and situations that keep us isolated and set apart? What is He trying to teach us? And what is He trying to show the world, as He allows this to happen to us? It is simply this: God’s living Word isn’t here to lead us into an amusement park! He’s here to get us ready to be led into intense spiritual combat and be equipped and prepared to persevere, overcome and prevail eternally! He wants to impart to all of us the same Blood Covenant Love, Favor and Protection He swore to give Israel! We are not to keep separating ourselves from His chosen people; we are to join them as quickly as possible, in our identity, and in our perspectives and attitudes, so that we too can share in their destiny and its endless God-given blessings! We are to join God’s people and become part of their Exodus. No longer can so-called ‘believers’ assume that God will allow them to remain separate from Israel, so that they can continue to side with the fallen world!
Genesis 12:1-3
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And, IN YOU, all the families of the earth will be blessed.” (Emphasis added.)
So when Almighty God chooses us to be His New Covenant friends… and temples of His Holy Spirit… we must become aware of what our decision to follow His living Word will lead us into! He will lead us into…our own personal Exodus. And therefore, we must begin to identify ourselves with His separated chosen people. He is leading them into ‘boot camp’ in preparation for some inevitable deadly combat. And so those that join them must consider themselves to be ‘in uniform,’ ‘under the Word’s command, ready at all times to respond and obey… and live and think as one with God’s living Word and Holy Spirit and with His separated Covenant Family! This is what is required to become one with Almighty God…in Spirit and in Truth! Once we get that right, we will finally be able to begin to embody and reflect the Holy One, God’s living Word, as He really and truly is. He is most definitely not of this world! The Lord is our Messiah and He is taking us to His True Land of Promise, His True Israel!
John 15:18-20
“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his Master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also.” (Emphasis added.)
When we’re Covenant friends of God’s living Word, we become one with Him. Then, what is ours, becomes His, and what is His… becomes ours – including the world’s enmity and opposition against Him. And as soon as our union with Him becomes real, it will begin to be obvious to us, and to those around us, that we are no longer part of this worldly domain. Yeshua, the ‘Ladder’ (that Jacob saw in Gen. 28) and the Messiah (who revealed Himself to Nathaniel in Jn. 1) is that Ladder that connects us to Heaven. And then, through our union with God’s living Word, we die to what we were before He called us, so that we can be free to follow Him into His Eternal Kingdom and be included in what He is doing.
In a short time, it becomes very clear to all concerned, that we have changed radically. And we know in our heart of hearts that Yeshua is now our King and Lord, and we truly have been brought into His Heavenly Kingdom. The enormous differences that appear in us make it clear that we are regenerated sons of God and co-heirs with His Word. And it becomes obvious that we abide with God by His Holy Spirit, and that we are now equipped to reside where God’s living Word is now enthroned… at the right hand of His Father!
When Messiah’s indwelling Life truly becomes established within us, Our Master’s ways become our ways and His Heavenly economy becomes our sole source of supply. Thus, because we have become one with the One in whom all the Fullness of God resides…our habitual inner tendencies and external demeanor can change with amazing effortlessness, the more we believe and obey Him. And that supernatural manifestation of our regeneration will give us ample proof that we no longer have any cause for anxiety or worry… about anything! Everything about us now depends on God and His infinite Perfection, airtight Covenant Faithfulness and eternal Lovingkindness. So even though our mortal bodies remain stationed and deployed amid the dangers and insufficiencies of this temporal, living death world, we are assured that God is already covering and providing and abiding with us on the basis of His Heavenly Kingdom. Yes, we continue to live IN the world, but we no longer have any need to depend ON this world. Now our Lord is always with us, to cover us at all times and to continue to fulfill His Father’s Plan for us, even as the rest of the world rejects and tries to defy Him.
And because our Perfect Almighty Master is always with us… even though we sometimes suffer danger, tribulation and deprivation on this fallen earth as a result of our combat with the powers of Darkness… none of that really matters, because we continually abide with the Lord who has already conquered His enemies and ours. And because we abide in and with the One who is Infinite Perfection… OUR TEMPORARY CIRCUMSTANCES DO NOT COUNT! We are on the Resurrection side of the Cross. And we are free from having to depend on this earth or its resources as our source of wellbeing. We no longer even have to depend on our original temporary bodies, for we know that we will soon receive glorified bodies fit for Eternity, just like the one our risen Messiah already has! And so, for us, the angels of the Lord continually ascend and descend between Heaven and Earth on our behalf. We are already connected to Heaven, because God’s living Word abides within us, and He is God’s never-ending, ever-abundant Supply for us:
Romans 8:15-17
“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.”
Ephesians 1:3-12
“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.
“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.” (Emphasis added.)
So beloved, our challenge now is to get used to these awesome paradoxes:
1) In ourselves, we remain as weak, empty and bankrupt as ever. In that sense, no Jewish or non-Jewish person is, in himself, any better or higher or more worthy or important than any other human being. None of the benefits of our salvation and redemption and restoration come from us. They never originate from our personal efforts. Nevertheless, the Lord of Glory, the Perfect Human, the only resurrected, glorified One, contains within Himself all of the Fullness of Almighty God! And by the Holy Spirit of God, He is able to remain united with us and abides within us at all times! So even though we’re perpetually weak, empty and bankrupt in ourselves… through His living Word, Almighty God can share His Infinite Authority and His Spirit’s Power, Fullness and Abundance with us at all times!
2) As a result, we experience this second paradox: the harder and more dangerous things become for this fallen world and those who give themselves to it… the better things become for God’s Covenant Family. God is committed to us, to be our Full Redemption, Endless Inheritance and Eternal Triumph, forever. And because our Redeemer has completely uprooted us from this world’s condemned ground and transplanted us into His Eternal Covenant, we are truly free of this world’s impending destructive fate! We can see this from what happened to Egypt in relation to Israel. The plagues and destruction that befell Egypt did not touch Israel as soon as her Exodus got under way! And this is how it will always be with God’s own people who allow God to separate them from Egypt and lead them out of it, across the wilderness, and into His eternal Land of Promise:
Psalm 91:1-7
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust!’
“For it is He who delivers you from the snare of the trapper and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with His pinions and under His wings you may seek refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark. You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day; of the pestilence that stalks in darkness or of the destruction that lays waste at noon. A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not approach you.”
This is why the unbelief of so many Israelites at Mt. Sinai, and that of many others in subsequent generations, always proves to be so tragic! They should know better. They have every advantage imaginable! And yet, like Esau, many hold this Treasure in contempt and settle for worldly substitutes that are abysmally inferior and transitory by comparison. Such people do not believe or trust in God’s Word. Instead they continue to yearn and pine for the very things from which God sent His Word to deliver us! And this is why God’s True Israel, the faithfully obedient Remnant, must always be separated from the rest. The unbelieving people of Israel will never complete their task and serve to educate and transform the rest of the world as long as they continue to embrace and uphold the ways of that world. In that case, they cannot serve as God’s Light because they refuse to leave the Darkness of Egypt. On the contrary, they serve the Serpent by abiding in his rebellion and helping to maintain his fatal disbelief of the true God, and by putting false, man-made idols in the place of His living Word, Israel’s glorified Messiah King!
Oneness with Our God, Is a Testimony to the World
Whenever that happens to God’s chosen people, the Darkness of this world swallows up those who remain unbelieving… and they give the wrong testimony and remain engulfed in Darkness! But there is always a Remnant within Israel that stands firm. They maintain and defend their God-given Covenant Ground in the wilderness Arena… and the world sees God’s Light shining forth from within them. And they watch this True Israel, dancing with her awesome Perfect God in that harsh, brutal, merciless venue. And God’s Eternal Light permeates and surrounds her with His Covenant Protection and Blessings. And as that happens, the unbelieving world and its false gods that sit in the Darkness are clearly exposed, discredited, confounded and cautioned and warned and summoned to receive God’s Mercy for themselves. They watch in total amazement, while God, and His beloved faithful ones, continue to give their joint testimony in the Arena. And the world sees one false god after another being toppled and dashed to the ground and broken beyond recognition. Then… only the True God remains…the Supreme, Eternal Living God of Israel.
This is why Yeshua’s Jewish and non-Jewish disciples are such blessed people. It is their privilege, honor and glory to learn to ‘dance’ with Almighty God in this apparently hopeless wilderness venue, where only those who are supernaturally endowed and filled with God’s Word, can survive. And they not only survive, they THRIVE! They continually bear the awesome supernatural Fruit that only their Vine, God’s living Word, can produce! So for those disciples, the Arena and its rigors and dangers are not a trap for their destruction, they are their endless cause for Joy! For them, the wilderness Arena becomes a stage…a platform from which God and His people shine forth to draw and attract the rest of the people out of the Serpent’s Darkness! They do this by embracing and embodying God’s living Word, Messiah Yeshua. He is Jacob’s Ladder, our Stairway to Heaven. He is The Totally Heavenly, Supernatural Way that connects Heaven to Earth, Eternity to Time, and God to Man. And He provides everything needed from the Treasury of His Perfect Eternal Finished Work, for His beloved disciples.
So although the Serpent and his powers of Darkness captivate and trash this fallen world in their coils of Sin and Death, and although this fallen world and its systems are mortally wounded and nothing but more Death can come out of them… the King of the Kingdom of Heaven is here… to bring God’s Eternity down to Earth… and impart the Glory of the Redemption and Eternal Life and Eternal Inheritance that He was sent to be to us… to anyone who will believe, embrace and obey Him! But for the rest, there awaits God’s unspeakable Judgment.
So let us ponder at a more specific level, what Messiah Yeshua, Jacob’s Ladder, is here to be and to do on behalf of those who would become His own possession.
He is here to:
Exchange His eternal Resurrection Life for our living death.
Bring the endless riches and blessings of Heaven into this dying, bankrupt fallen Earth.
Heal the mortally wounded, diseased, decaying victims of the Serpent’s rebellion.
Open Sin-deafened ears and eyes.
Cure and heal the sick, and the crippled and the maimed.
Comfort the broken hearted, forsaken, rejected people of this dark, fallen world.
Forgive guilty sinners and Sin-encrusted criminals and to set them free and make sure they are no longer plagued and infested by unclean spirits. Then He fills them with His own Spirit and His Love, which they begin to share with others.
Embrace and include the disinherited, disenfranchised victims of this world.
Embrace and care for the hopeless, for the widows, orphans and all other rejected excluded victims.
Demonstrate and prove to this world that the true, living God of Israel is by nature Selfless Love, endless Covenant Faithfulness, and true Eternal Life, even to His enemies!
The Reality of the Eternal Kingdom of Heaven Is in Our Midst
None of these supernatural wonders originate in or come from, this demon-possessed Earth. They come down to Earth from the Eternal Kingdom of Heaven. Yeshua is the Gateway or Portal that introduces these treasures to us. So our Inheritance is 100% from Heaven and 0% from Earth. This is what God was revealing to Jacob that night as he slept in the wilderness. Somehow, God had instilled in Jacob a hunger, an instinct, for the things of God. So Jacob grew up with an insatiable hunger for God’s Truth and Covenant Inheritance. That’s because God had chosen Him for this, from all eternity. And He prepared him to struggle to possess it in that harsh wilderness setting. Jacob’s trials and hardships served as his ‘boot camp’ preparation. They forged him into an instrument, a human vessel, to whom and through whom God would give the Covenant birthright and blessings of His Son, His living Word.
Then the Blessing and Covenant Inheritance could be shared with the rest of the human race, through the obedient faith, hope and trust that God imparted to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These fathers of the Faith served as the faith channel, the opening through which God’s Heavenly Provision could enter this world. It is through participation in this Covenant and the Family that it forms, that we can all be equipped to see and recognize and receive everything necessary from the Living Word of God who serves for us as the ‘Ladder’ or ‘Stairway’ that connects Heaven to Earth.
Jacob’s brother Esau didn’t have that instinct and hunger for God that Jacob had. That’s why he was willing to settle for so much less than what God wanted to give us. But Jacob was eager to receive it and was willing to do whatever it took to satisfy the hunger and thirst for the knowledge and experience of God that kept gnawing at his innards. He even felt compelled to wrestle with God Himself, until God finally granted him the experience of this Birthright Inheritance Blessing! Jacob was right to seek and hunger and ‘wrestle’ to achieve this. It was God’s idea from all eternity to give it to him! And so God put this hunger and yearning into him, so that, despite Jacob’s inherited fallen Sin-corruption, this God-given hunger and yearning kept pulling and directing his steps in the right direction. And when Jacob sought for God and what God wanted to give him…with ALL of his heart and mind and strength… God imparted it to him and changed His name to ‘Israel.’
Jeremiah 29:11-14
“For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me WITH ALL YOUR HEART. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’” (Emphasis added.)
The fate of the rest of the world depended on whether or not Jacob would finally believe, own and use the Covenant Blessing and Inheritance he received from Abraham and Isaac. And by finally possessing it, he fulfilled His God-given identity, purpose and destiny as the father of God’s True Israel. Because Jacob never stopped wanting and seeking the Blessing, God imparted it to him and saw to it that the entire world would also be able to repent of Sin and rebellion and unbelief…and receive full shares in the Blessing and Inheritance of Israel as soon as he became willing to forsake everything else in order to have and share God’s abundant Mercy. And beloved, God will do the same for each one of us that will become as wholehearted as Jacob eventually came to be.
This is why the rest of us who will be part of God’s True Israel by being grafted into this spiritual Covenant Inheritance, must also receive from God that same instinct and hunger that Jacob felt in the deepest parts of our spiritual, mental and emotional being. That God-given hunger and homesickness that the Holy Spirit places within us will continue to serve like a spiritual GPS guidance system. It will continually draw and direct our steps toward the Land of Promise. The Lord and King of that Promised Land is our Master Yeshua. He is the one and only Source for all that is real, true and good. He is THE ONE AND ONLY GOD, who has revealed Himself to, and through, Israel! He is the only Door, or Gateway or Portal through which any child of Adam may pass…in order to escape the Serpent’s Eternal Death and Darkness…and enter into this Almighty God’s Eternal Life and Light.
God sent His living Word to Abraham, Isaac and Israel. And through them, He is continuing the process of saving the entire human race! Yeshua is here for each and every man and woman that God has ever created, or ever will create. And His Message of Salvation and the Good News concerning God’s Perfect Finished Work of Creation and Redemption is meant for all. So, the children of Israel… through their Torah and the rest of the writings of their prophets and New Covenant apostles…are commissioned to share their Inheritance with all of mankind – without exception – and usher them into God’s Word and God’s Covenant Family… and God’s Eternal Embrace. So we see another paradox: Before the world can have what Israel has been given…God must separate Israel from the world…so the world can see the huge difference between God’s Light shining in Israel…as opposed to the absence of that Light that is caused by the Serpent and his Sin and Death. When the world sees the difference, then, instead of banishing Israel, it will leave Egypt too and chase after Israel in order to catch up with her.
So contrary to what many in the world maintain, it is not true to say that ‘all roads or paths or gospels lead to God.’ There is only one Road, one Way. And the Serpent and his powers of Darkness are doing everything they can think of to warp, blur, distort and erase that one true Way from the sight and understanding of the human race. They’re willing to do everything imaginable to eradicate the Seed of Life that the Holy Spirit is here to sow into our hearts and souls and brains. They intend to destroy the ability of this Divine Seed to sink roots and bear its Fruit in the hearts and lives of men and women of every generation. If they can succeed in obliterating ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ from our minds, hearts and wills, they will succeed in maintaining the total destruction that came with Adam’s fall into unbelief, rebellion, Sin and eternal Death.
Becoming Master Gardeners
So we disciples are called and commissioned to garden, feed, water and protect that Seed that gives us the ability to see and recognize and embrace God’s living Word. We are to make sure that Seed sinks deep roots, takes over our fields, and produces an enormous Harvest of Salvation, Redemption and Full Restoration for as many human beings as possible. And this is why God’s True Remnant of Israel is so vitally important to the Salvation of the World. And this is why we must remain faithful and true to God’s living and written Word, regardless of the opposition. We must be trained to protect and garden and feed and water that Seed that Almighty God has planted within us. Nothing must be allowed to harm or disfigure or destroy this precious Seed and the Eternal Life and Inheritance that it contains. Nothing must be allowed to come between us branches and the Eternal Vine that is our one and only Source of Salvation and Eternal Life and the Fruit with which God desires to feed and maintain us.
This is what underlies the meaning and purpose of The Exodus! This is what the Bible is all about. This is what God’s chosen ones are called to be a part of. This Exodus is the difference between Life and Death! This is why Yeshua was sent to identify with us to such a profound degree. After He identified with us, He had to die to any reliance on His human self and temporary earthly resources! He had to demonstrate, through His Death, our helpless state of spiritual bankruptcy. God would use nothing that came from His humanity, even though He was Sin-less! This was to show the rest of us where we really stand with God, in our Sin-corrupted, mortal state. And this is why we must learn to identify with our Messiah, to that same degree of depth at which He identified with us.
We must become one with Him, as He became one with us, in all ways and to the fullest degree. This is why He had to die! He died to Sin and to the Serpent from which Sin comes, so that we might live to God, through His eternal living Word and Spirit! And so now, we too must die to our former self-reliant lives of radical independence and Sin… so that our risen God-approved Lord and Messiah may live in us and be and do what only He is able to be and do…in our name. As long as He is free to live in us and reveal Himself through us, ‘Jacob’s Stairway’ is in place and Heaven is able to descend to the Earth and we are able to ascend to our Heavenly Father’s Presence in Heaven with utterly open access. This is why our self-life residue must die daily and be eliminated. As this happens, the Perfect Righteousness and Purity and Obedient Faith and Love and Eternal Triumph of our Covenant Representative are able to work and produce fruit and shine forth from within us… on behalf of those around us who do not yet know our Master… to our Heavenly Father’s Eternal Glory and Praise.
So how can we have all of this? We can have it by believing and resting in the Finished Work of our awesome God. We must accept the revelation and ‘Good News’ of His Word. We must allow the Holy Spirit to transmit, or ‘download’ all that our Messiah is and all the Fruit of what He has already done and accomplished on our behalf, to us. We must learn to ‘defer’ to the Perfect Presence of our risen Lord… and bask in the full assurance that Almighty God is with us…through His Word and Spirit…living and working and acting and obeying our Father from within us. We do it by allowing Yeshua’s Righteousness to transform our thoughts, viewpoints, actions, reactions and interactions. It is no longer we who live in our flesh… it is our risen Lord who lives within us. We are no longer our own. We are His… His embodiment… His Body. And He is our New Life…in God!
As the Holy Spirit brings various commands that our Master gives us in God’s written Word to our remembrance, and into our daily situations, He shows us how the Scriptures apply to our daily practical realities and situations and circumstances and relationships. And we have the privilege of allowing God’s Word and Holy Spirit to obey Almighty God and meet His Perfect Standards in us, and display them to others through us… while we rest in Him and His Perfect Presence, we can receive and draw from Him in endless thanksgiving, all of the ‘Daily Bread’ that our situations and circumstances and needs require.
We can allow God to forgive and to impart favor, love and blessings to our loved ones and neighbors and co-workers and associates… and even to our deadly enemies…throughout our daily lives. We can allow our Master to spread our Father’s Goodness all across whatever may be happening in this evil, demon-oppressed world. We can overcome all demonic evil with God’s Eternal Heavenly Good. Thus we can cooperate with our Father as He reveals and exalts His beloved Son, His living Word. And His Word continues to do the Good His Father sent Him to do, in many tangible ways, to us, for us, and through us… to all those who are around us.
We can allow our Master’s thoughts, actions, reactions and interactions with others to come to them through us. He can live through us, as He wants to live, and give whatever He wants us to give through us, and do whatever He wants us to do through us. The Word of God has come to do His Father’s bidding… in and through our flesh! In this way, ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ can be seen and experienced in this world through the obedient faith and self-giving of the Lord’s thoroughly trained disciples. Our job, as our Master’s ‘branches,’ is to allow Him, the ‘Vine of God’, to do whatever His Father sends Him to do here on Earth…through His willing, totally receptive ‘branches’:
Colossians 3:1-4
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ (Messiah), keep seeking the things above, where Christ (Messiah) is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ (Messiah) IN GOD! And when Christ, who is our Life, is revealed, you also will be revealed with Him, in Glory!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)