Ex 9. The World System, the Pharaoh, and the Sheep Herder

by | Nov 1, 2012 | Biblical Meditations

9. The World System, the Pharaoh, and the Sheep Herder

As we continue to ponder what God reveals in Genesis and Exodus, we see that He entrusts utterly impossible tasks to each generation of His Word’s disciples. God knows there is no way they can obey and fulfill their commissions. But it is not enough for God to know it; we have to know it! When we do, we stop trusting in human ploys and devices. We stop trusting in ourselves or others like us. And once we forsake all of our false gods, we begin learning to put all faith, hope, trust and expectation upon our true, living God.

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

We learn to look to our one God alone and draw exclusively from the Perfection of what He has already done. All of that is waiting for us in eternity. And when we come to Him and ask Him to release it to us, then, through His awesome living Word and Holy Spirit, God transmits it from the dimension of eternity into our dimension of time and space, according to His eternal plan and purposes. And this is what God had to show Moses in the beginning:

“‘Therefore, come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.’ But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?’ And He said, ‘Certainly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.” (Exodus 3:10-12 Emphasis added.)

Can you imagine what Moses must have felt in the pit of his stomach when he heard: “I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt!”?

How in the world could he go back into such a ‘lions den’ and have the gall to create a David vs. Goliath-type confrontation with Egypt’s mighty pharaoh? Forty years earlier Moses was so terrified of the current pharaoh that he ran for his life and got as far away from that earthly grandeur and majesty and power of life or death, as possible!

“When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the presence of Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.” (Exodus 2:15)

So how will God equip His chosen servant Moses and the two or three million descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that He planned to put under Moses’ leadership? What could possibly equip them to obey God and fulfill their awesome, overwhelming commissions? By worldly standards they were as unimpressive and weak as anyone could ever be! Nevertheless, God chose a rabble of beaten, victimized slaves and a broken, insignificant sheep herder to face and confront the pharaoh of Egypt. This is the kind of monumental, humanly impossible challenge that God’s Word gives to those that He summons with the command: “Follow Me!”

God didn’t just place Moses at the head of his Hebrew brethren. He also planned to bring many non-Jewish slaves out of Egypt with them. Since God planned to graft those non-Hebrews into this new chosen nation, it was an even harder task for Moses! How could he blend such a weak, frightened, needy and diverse mix into a unified invasion force capable of taking the Land of Promise? Who could possibly do such a job under those circumstances? This is what our awesome God does. He always puts His chosen ones into impossible situations. Israel has had to face the same reality since her very beginning. And what do you think it will it take to prepare the Last Days disciples to live as one with God’s living Word when He begins to fulfill God’s New Covenant promises concerning the Last Days salvation climax of all of Israel and so many from among all the families of the earth in the turbulent days that are over our horizon?

So what sustained Moses during the very daunting, intimidating ordeal of having to face the pharaoh repeatedly under such dangerous conditions? It was like sending two little sheep (Moses and Aaron) into a lair of ravenous lions…or sending two tiny lights into the most profound demonic Darkness imaginable! Two absolute ‘nobodies’ had to confront and place outlandish demands on someone who thought of himself as a god in his own right!

Moreover, the Lord had warned Moses in advance that the pharaoh and his court were not going listen to anything he would be given to say. So Moses knew before he went in that this would have to end in a violent, bloody showdown. The Lord had warned him:

“…I know that the king of Egypt will not permit you to go, except under compulsion.” (Exodus 3:19 Emphasis added.)

“The Lord said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I said to you, ‘Let My son go that he may serve Me’; but you have refused to let him go. Behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn.’” (Exodus 4:21-23 Emphasis added.)

“And afterward Moses and Aaron came and said to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let My people go that they may celebrate a feast to Me in the wilderness.’ But Pharaoh said, ‘Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and besides, I will not let Israel go.’” (Exodus 5:1-3 Emphasis added.)

There we have it expressed in a few verses: Moses was really going to have to face the rebellious spirit of the Serpent! He was, and is, the one that dominates the fallen world system and all of its decapitated pharaohs, kings and lords. It was the Serpent, concealed behind the worldly pomp of Egypt’s pharaoh that was mouthing his defiance against God and disobeying the Authority of His living Word. Through his decapitated victims, the Serpent continually refuses to acknowledge God’s Word and come under His Headship:

“Who is this Lord of yours that He should tell ME what to do? I do not acknowledge Him nor will I do anything He says.”

It was the same demonic spirit of Anti-Christ or, ‘Anti-Word’ that was revealed in Genesis. The Serpent spirit speaks and acts through deluded humans that serve as his image and likeness. The Serpent manipulates the custodians of the fallen world system, like this pharaoh and uses them to continue to wage his rebellious war against his Creator.

This is the Darkness against which all true disciples of every generation must contend. Abel, Enoch, Noah and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph all faced it. When disciples are sent to invade the realm of Darkness from which the Serpent opposes God’s Word, those who serve the Serpent lash out against anyone that dares to oppose or contradict their demonic master. And this is what we must be trained, prepared and equipped to resist and overcome. The Serpent comes against us in a variety of clever, artful guises. So disciples must be trained, equipped and able to see through the lies, bluffs and hidden traps so they can continue to follow and serve our Master accurately and faithfully.

Disciple training, God’s way

So how did God prepare the lowly, sun-darkened sheep herder, Moses, to confront and stare down the arrogant Serpent that glared at him from behind the glittering façade of the pharaoh? How was Moses able to wage and maintain his invasion into that Darkness? What kept him from being sucked into the Serpent’s deceptions? Whatever it was that sustained him, is what we will need to sustain us as well.

So beloved, consider what we’re up against even now in our modern era! Has anything really changed? The faces, cultures and languages keep changing, but it’s always the same Serpent that continues to manipulate and exploit the so-called leaders and lords of every age including ours. Isn’t the Serpent still manipulating this fallen world and its economies and systems in the present day? Isn’t the fallen world still a Serpent-dominated system that continues to spurn and reject God’s living Word? And doesn’t the Serpent still despise and fear God’s Chosen People and continually strives to kill and eliminate them completely?

“Who is this Lord you represent, that I should obey His voice? I do not acknowledge Him, nor will I do as He commands. Nor will I abide the offensive arrogance of your people or release them from my clutches!”

Nothing has changed. The war between Light and Darkness we saw in Genesis is still going on. And God continues to call to His people and everyone else who would be saved, to make their Exodus from the world system. The issues are exactly the same today as they were when God’s living Word first confronted Abram the Chaldean moon worshipper and summoned him to follow Him so that this very same Exodus we’re on could begin:

“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.’” (Genesis 12:1-3)

Now it was Moses’ turn to confront the Darkness that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph had once overcome! He knew the pharaoh would be enraged when a ‘nobody’ like himself, with no position, status, influence, credentials or bargaining power whatever dared to stand before his throne and deliver a summons and a series of threats in the name of his God, on behalf of the miserable slaves that were forced to make bricks for his building projects. The mission God was entrusting to Moses would appear utterly preposterous to any sane, worldly, common sense person. It was a suicide mission! The supreme lord of Egypt would surely have him killed as soon as he opened his mouth. How could he take Moses seriously, or willingly damage his country’s economy by releasing slaves he considered to be his rightful property and that provided so much free labor for his empire?

Moses was truly in an impossible situation. Naturally his flesh would dread having to face the wrath of the supreme ruler of that entire region. Everything in him knew it meant certain death. The pharaoh’s total domination and control was more fearsome than anything that people of our modern era could even imagine. Nevertheless, somehow God equipped, trained and prepared His servant to stand his ground…and, he overcame! But how did he do it?

So we come to the crux of the matter concerning the Word’s disciples: Just HOW does God prepare and train them to do the impossible? What can we, who are also called to follow His Word, expect if we dare to obey the summons to follow Him? The answer never varies.

To prepare His Son’s disciples, Father gives them a series of fresh, new, gut-wrenching, spine-tingling, overwhelmingly electrifying revelations of His living Word! And they see a side of Him they could have never imagined possible in the past. And they are overwhelmed by His awesome Majesty, Authority and Power …and this revelation of His Perfection dissipates their inadequacies; and it becomes impossible to fear or be in awe of anything else, but Him.

Eyes to see Truth

The Spirit of God opens the spiritual eyes of the Word’s disciples and enables them to see Him from angles and perspectives unlike anything they’ve ever known in the past. And those living, personal, real-life ‘in your face’ Spirit-given revelations of God’s Son makes anything the Serpent’s lies and bluffs present to them seem ridiculous and insignificant by comparison. What once seemed overwhelming appears miniscule beside the revelation of His awesome Majesty and Authority. So these fresh new revelations of the Word equip them to see through the lies, bluffs and clever ‘holographic’ deceptions of the Serpent. Then they can see that the Serpent has nothing but lies to work with and he quickly loses his grip on them. The awesome Truth of God’s Word gets through and they are finally set free!

“Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.’ So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘You are testifying about Yourself; Your testimony is not true.’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Even if I testify about Myself, My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh; I am not judging anyone. But even if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone in it, but I and the Father who sent Me. Even in your Law it has been written that the testimony of two men is true. I am He who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me.” (John 8:12-18)

The Darkness of the Serpent is only able to delude decapitated people. To them, the Serpent’s lies remain overwhelmingly convincing, powerful and invincible. That’s how the Serpent manages to keep his coils wrapped around them and their circumstances. But the true, God-given revelations of the Lord and Master of all Creation fill His disciples with a deep awareness of His Supreme Lordship. They submit to Him and His Eternal Life begins to flow into them just as the life in any head flows into and animates and directs its body. God’s Word is the Light of the World! When His Light invades and penetrates the Darkness, there is nothing the Darkness can do to stop Him from destroying it. As soon as His Truth exposes the Serpent’s lies in a person’s mind and heart, that person is free!

So God speaks…and the living, electrifying Presence of His Word pierces, penetrates and dispels the Darkness. He impregnates His disciples with the Fullness of God that He contains within Himself! The disciple can then see the Truth disintegrate the pathetic false fronts behind which the Serpent once succeeded in concealing himself. The Truth lets disciples see what is real and what isn’t, what is truly living and what is dead, and what is bankrupt and impotent and what is Eternal Abundance. We MUST know God’s Word personally, intimately and directly. Our knowledge of Him must come directly into our spirits from God’s own Spirit! It is a direct ‘transfusion,’ a personal transmittal of revelation from God…into each disciple. And that is how God always teaches, trains and equips His own to face the Darkness:

“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” (John 16:13-15 Emphasis added.)

“But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say. For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” (Matthew 10:19-20 Emphasis added.)

God prepared, equipped and transformed Moses by enabling him to know and experience His living Word as he had never known Him before. Moses knew some things about Him in the past. He heard things from his mother and from elders among his Jewish brothers and sisters. But when he stood before that burning bush…God allowed him to experience the living Presence of His beloved Son, the living Word of God Himself! He beheld His awesome Glory and Majesty and overpowering Authority speaking directly and personally to him…from within that flaming bush!

“Now He (Yeshua) said to them, ‘These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures; and He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ (Messiah) would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations (Gentiles), beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with Power from on high (the Holy Spirit).” (Luke 24:44-49 Amplification and emphasis added.)

So Moses came to know God’s living Word, who later became flesh and appeared as Yeshua to His first century disciples. But in Exodus, He appeared to Moses and that revelation took Moses far beyond anything he had known about God and His Word from his Israelite childhood training and the hearsay of his contemporaries. Moses would receive even more and more of these awesome revelations in the days to come, but for the present, when it was time to begin to confront Egypt’s pharaoh, that burning bush revelation was more than enough to vivify, equip and empower him to follow God’s Word into this new territory with invincible confidence!

Equipped for anything – because He is enough!

So this is how God equips all disciples to fulfill their awesome, world-changing duties, regardless of the era or situations in which they must live and operate. First he breaks down their original Adamic radical independence. The Cross deactivates it as God makes them deeply aware of their need to repent of the self-life delusion. Then they’re predisposed to submit to God’s awesome Reality and Authority. And His Word summons them to forsake their prior lives as they knew them in the past. And if they obey and follow God’s Word into this personal exodus, he continues to discipline and break their self-sufficient, radically independent ways until they are fully and irrevocably aware of their true state before God and are forced to declare total bankruptcy once and for all. From that point on, they will instinctively look only to God and depend exclusively on the finished work of His living Word and depend on the Holy Spirit to apply for them the ‘daily bread’ that comes from it.

When God reveals His Word to these blessed people at these depths, His revelation blows all the satanic, worldly opposition out of their hearts. Then, while they are still trying to process what God showed them…in that broken, blasted state…with the revelation still fresh in their hearts…God leads them to take the next steps in their confrontation with the powers of Darkness. Now that they are armed and equipped with a fresh, living knowledge of God’s awesome Truth, they can stand and hold their Covenant Ground. Now they can see through the satanic lies and are able to resist and overcome the forces of the Serpent, no matter which false fronts or bluffs they may use to try to oppose the invasion of God’s Word. Against the stark Truth of Almighty God, lies do not have a chance.

Learn this well: If you have been summoned by the Lord to follow Him; be ready to be shocked and blown right out of your current comfort zone! God will do the same thing to you that He has done with countless other disciples in the past. He’ll reveal His Son to you like you never knew He could possibly be. And then…that fresh new revelation will impart to you what God has had in store for you since before the creation of the world. He will bestow your new, true, God-given identity. And perhaps He will even give you a new name to go with it. Along with that, He will show you your true, eternal purpose and destiny in His awesome Plan of Creation. Then, if you obey His summons to follow Him, He will lead you into the fulfillment of your true, God-given, eternal destiny.

“As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a Light from Heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus (Yeshua) whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.’ The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.” (Acts 9:3-9 Amplification and emphasis added.)

If you obey His summons, He will lead you into the true, awesome destiny that God in His Wisdom and Lovingkindness has always held in reserve for His Son and for those who follow Him…in His eternal heart of hearts:

“Again the next day John was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus as He walked, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. And Jesus turned and saw them following, and said to them, ‘What do you seek?’ They said to Him, ‘Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are You staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come, and you will see.’ So they came and saw where He was staying; and they stayed with Him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two, who heard John speak and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He found first his own brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which translated means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas’ (which is translated Peter).

“The next day He purposed to go into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” (John 1:35-45)

All of the Israelite disciples of God’s living Word had some prior idea of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They had received ‘second-hand’ ideas of what Moses and the prophets and wisdom writers had written about God and His living Word from their families and from their families and from teachings given by the rabbis in their synagogues. But because they were chosen from all of eternity to serve as disciples of God’s living Word, they each needed to receive a personal, fresh, new revelation of Him that came directly from God’s Holy Spirit so they would be truly equipped to fulfill their strategic, personal God-given tasks.

So take this to heart. Be ready. It will surely happen to you, if you are called to follow Yeshua. One moment, you will be completely comfortable, thinking that you are in charge of running your own life. And like Saul of Tarsus and many others, you too may be assuming that you have ‘arrived’ and have all the answers and know exactly what you’re doing. But then God’s living Word will explode all over you. And the blast will leave you stunned…lying in the dust…gasping for breath. And you will know like never before, that your future fate does not depend on you at all. From now on, you belong to Him. He is your only Lord and your new, Eternal Life and there’s nothing left of your former life you could go back to even if you wanted to. All of that will disappear with that blast. Nothing from the past will be left and you will have no choice but to obey and follow God’s living Word into brand new territory you never dreamed you would ever see, much less invade.

The question of the ages

There are no exceptions. This is how it was for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…and for Joseph and Moses and the pharaoh and the Egyptians and all the former Jewish and non-Jewish slaves. That is how it was for the Israelites of Yeshua’s day, and for all people of the present age. When God reveals His living Word to anyone, the question will be: how did you respond to Him? And Father’s question will always be: “How much of My Son is free to operate and be seen coming out from within you?”

“…Jesus was saying to those Jews, who had believed Him, ‘If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ They answered Him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, “You will become free”?’

“Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father (the Serpent)’

“They answered and said to Him, ‘Abraham is our father.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you are Abraham’s children, do the deeds of Abraham. But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the Truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do. You are doing the deeds of your father.’ They said to Him, ‘We were not born of fornication; we have one Father: God.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the Truth, you do not believe Me. Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God!’”

“The Jews answered and said to Him, ‘Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?’ Jesus answered, ‘I do not have a demon; but I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me. But I do not seek My glory; there is One who seeks and judges. Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he will never see death.’ The Jews said to Him, ‘Now we know that You have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets also; and You say, ‘If anyone keeps My word, he will never taste of death.’ Surely You are not greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets died too; whom do You make Yourself out to be?’Jesus answered, ‘If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My Father who glorifies Me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God’; and you have not come to know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you, but I do know Him and keep His Word. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.’ So the Jews said to Him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM!’ Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.” (John 8:31-59)

The Serpent conceals himself within decapitated people. But the Word of God lives, acts and speaks through His disciples! And the Word had to prepare Moses and the Israelites of his day to serve Him in that capacity. The Word of God is here to confront and deal with everybody, including the pharaoh and every Egyptian and everyone else He has created! All flesh must cease its service to the Serpent and fall down before the supreme Authority of God’s living Word. So when God decides to reveal His Son to you, you too will feel the blast and then you will have to choose your response. And upon that choice, your future in this life, and in the one to come, will depend.

“And He took him (Abram) outside and said, ‘Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness. And He said to him, ‘I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.’” (Genesis 15:5-7)

The revelation God gave to Moses from that burning bush was tremendously impacting and also utterly effective. It was enough to cause his natural fear of pharaoh to be replaced by an overwhelming awe and respect and fear of God instead:

“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 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.” (Isaiah 66:1-2)

The revelation Moses received was so real and alive and electrifyingly active within him that God’s Word was eminently more awesome and terrifying to Moses than any threat the Serpent could have presented through the pharaoh And of course the pharaoh became enraged when Moses didn’t cower before him; so he took it out on his enslaved, downtrodden Israelite brethren. Nevertheless, Moses knew God’s living Word! And that empowered him to persevere and remain faithful regardless of the cost.

Truth always prevails over lies and deception

Without this intimate, personal knowledge of God’s Word, no one can resist the strong current of deception directed against them by the powers of Darkness. But when we are armed with adequate knowledge of and obedient friendship with God’s Word, everything will change. The Truth God gives us will cut through anything and everything false that would dare to get in our way.

This is what God has always had in mind for His Chosen People since the care of Earth was first entrusted to Adam. And this is what He began to restore to Abraham. Since then, God’s Chosen People have to face impossible circumstances. And God equips them to do it by giving them Spirit-to-spirit revelation from which airtight faith and trust in God’s Perfect Finished Work of Creation follows. Without that Word-revelation, we succumb to the Serpent’s lies and fall for the allurements of this fallen, idolatrous system that he dangles before us

The Book of Exodus unpacks and reveals more revelation of God’s Word. It builds on what was originally packed into the Book of Genesis. And God sends His Word to bring that original revelation forward, to each generation. God commissioned Moses to write the Torah revelation, so we could all have all of this foundational knowledge and instruction. And that’s why He commissioned Israel’s prophets, wisdom writers and apostles to continue to unpack and amplify and bring the entire treasury of the revelation of God’s living Word forward so that the entire world could know and follow Him and know what to expect.

The depths of the revelation God entrusted to Moses, enabled him, and anyone else who will obey God, to get started and to face their impossible tasks and the demonic opposition without faltering or failing. This is for all of mankind. That’s why when Moses wrote the account of the start of Israel’s Exodus journey he also had to tell us about the non-Jewish members of their company, the ‘strangers’ or ‘aliens’…Gentiles who had also been enslaved during Egypt’s various military and economic conquests. God brought many of them out along with His chosen people. So God’s Word carried forward the promises God made to Abraham in the beginning, in Genesis, to a new nation of disciples that were Jewish as well as non-Jewish (‘Jewtiles’). Thus He made it clear from the beginning, that what God sent His living Word to do…is for the entire world!

“…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.” (Genesis 12:2-3 Emphasis added.)

All families of the earth are to be included in God’s Exodus. This was revealed from the beginning. So now we know that the Gospel of Salvation is not just for Israel; it is for everyone! Even Egyptians will be expected by God to join His Exodus and leave Egypt. The whole world must repent of its original living death existence so that all can be grafted into His Living Word and His Eternal Covenant…through Israel:

“‘…But if a stranger sojourns with you, and celebrates the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near to celebrate it; and he shall be like a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person may eat of it. The same Law (Torah) shall apply to the native as to the stranger who sojourns among you.’” (Exodus 12:48-49 Emphasis added.

“When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God. You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measurement of weight, or capacity (no discrimination or double-dealing allowed).” (Leviticus 19:33-35 Amplification and emphasis added.)

Oneness and Unity only in Him

Moses had to start all of this. So God prepared this Hebrew by seeing to it that he’d be raised in the pharaoh’s non-Jewish court. So Moses knew and understood the viewpoints and aspirations of people from each of those two worlds. Then God deliberately and strategically placed Moses in the most unfavorable conditions possible to make sure he would always have to look to and trust God’s living Word. Then He inspired Moses to write down all of this revelation and instruction and His standards of Righteousness to make sure the whole world could know what God required of Moses and Israel and the entire human race.

Moses had to know that the task at hand was utterly impossible for any human flesh to accomplish. And that was why the Torah ‘Boot Camp’ Exodus training was so necessary. Boot Camp puts its participants into gut-wrenching, excruciatingly impossible situations. At that stage of the training, it reveals us to ourselves. We get in touch with our true state of dust-level, bankrupt, Sin-murdered limitations and helplessness. We realize that we need to rely on something far greater than ourselves. In other words, we get in touch in very vivid, experiential, real life terms with how dead we have really been all of this time and how totally and completely we must learn to look to and rely upon Another (God’s living Word):

“The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.’” (Genesis 2:16-17)

The Torah Boot Camp brought the above revelation from Genesis…that we were all stripped naked and killed by Sin…forward…into the circumstances of Moses and his generation of enslaved Israelite brothers. And the same training is meant to bring the revelation forward into our current, desperate and humanly impossible situations in the present day. We are all being forced to know God’s living Word, as well as our true state of helplessness, experientially and vividly, like we’ve never known them before. We must know just how real that Genesis revelation and the living death state it says we inherit at conception, really are. And we must also be trained and disciplined and equipped not only to begin our own personal Exodus…but also to be able to finish it.

God knows that we must actually experience His Word’s living Presence and Authority before we’re really and truly able to believe and trust Him. So He repeatedly gives this grace to willing disciples. He gives them fresh new revelations of His beloved Son…and the living Word’s Light exposes what is false in us and enables us to see the Glory that is in Him. And that knowledge empowers us to follow Him and persevere. When we really know Him, we no longer have to be coaxed or forced or dragged into believing that God’s Word is true and should be obeyed. We know that we must look only to Him alone and receive from the Fullness of what He has already done in the Eternal Covenant. No more can we afford to look to ourselves, or anyone like us – for anything!

Disciples who are blasted by this awesome living revelation awaken to God’s Reality as never before. They truly do tremble at His Word…and for them obedience is no longer a problem. They know Truth Himself…the living personal Presence of the one that is revealed in Scripture is now actually burned and etched into our innermost being and He ignites us and causes us to glow, like lamps that are able to cut through the Darkness regardless of where we encounter it.

He is Real, Risen, Reigning – and Right Here… Always!

So now, like Abraham and the other fathers of the faith, we can know in the very marrow of our bones that the Word of the living God is absolutely real and true and present with us at all times. He is our Training and Equipping and Triumphant Revelation. And He is more than enough.

So now perhaps you will be able to appreciate a little more, the awesome value contained in our Follow Me Ministry ‘Marching Orders.’ Hopefully you will see what an awesome underlying structure those instructions provide. They are like a deep narrow ‘Riverbed’ or ‘Narrow Path’ canyon that the Holy Spirit has cut out for us to follow. It gives us the right coordinates and keeps us headed in the right direction. The focus they require us to maintain keeps the revelation of His Son alive within us. Our first love for Him remains active, alive and fresh in our hearts from moment to moment, and it maintains us, regardless of what else may be happening to us or around us. Here are those ‘Marching Orders’ once more:

1. Take My people further in their understanding of what it is to be a temple of My Presence.

2. Teach them to think along with Me, in all things.

3. Teach them to listen to Me at all times, even as they are thinking!

4. Develop a great tenderness and sensitivity for My Presence within them. Teach them to worship Me in the depths of their spirits and innermost minds, in all things.

5. Teach them to understand clearly and thoroughly, what it means to be faithful to seek, in all things, My viewpoint and the purpose of My Kingdom, Kingship and Righteousness. If they do that, I, for My part, will add all other things for them.

6. Take them further in their understanding of the depths of the New Covenant relationship they have with Me. Teach them what their part is to be.

7. Teach them how to respond to Me in even the tiniest matters.

8. I am with them in all things and in all ways. I want them to be with Me in the same manner!

Once we allow the Holy Spirit to train us to abide and interact with our Master at this intensely personal and interactive level, we are always in the proper position to face our God-given tasks with outrageous confidence. The deep experiential knowledge of our Master’s immanent Presence and His Perfection and Faithfulness enable us to draw from Him at all times…everything we need.

We serve an eternally Perfect God; we know the Truth concerning His Perfect All-Sufficient Original Creation; and we know that He is the Perfect Original Blessing that God gave to us all before the fall of Adam. We know that after Sin killed us all, this Perfect Living Word became flesh in order to cover us and represent us all in God’s Perfect Eternal Covenant. And we know that thanks to the Gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit that God gave to the world after His beloved Son was glorified, His Perfection is able to abide in us and go with us and be ever present to us. We know that He is here with us and in us…to provide for us and protect us by supplying every spiritual blessing for us and depositing them into us. We have the awesome privilege and opportunity to obey Him and follow His lead and go forward into our future circumstances, situations and challenges…with total joy, peace and outrageous confidence:

“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.” (Genesis 2:1-3)

“The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed (covered) them.” (Genesis 3:21 Amplification and emphasis added.)

“Now the God of Peace, who brought up from the dead the Great Shepherd of the sheep through the Blood of the Eternal Covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the Glory forever and ever. Amen.” (Hebrews 13:20-21 Emphasis added.)

“…All Authority has been given to Me in Heaven and on Earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations (disciple the Gentiles), baptizing them in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (bringing them into the Eternal Covenant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), teaching them to observe all that I commanded you (in the Scriptures); and lo, I AM with you always, even to the end of the age!” (Matthew 28:18-20 Amplification and emphasis added.)

“We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man COMPLETE IN CHRIST!” (Colossians 1:28)