Exodus 20:17
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
There are several basic Torah revelations and issues (that I can see at this time) that the Ten Commandments listed in Exodus bring into prominence:
1. There is only one God…one Source…for everything! He is the living God, the one true and only God…the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
2. Each human is designed and created to be His image and likeness.
3. The fall of our first parents into Sin has so mortally wounded and damaged us that we are incapable of fulfilling our true God-given identity, purpose and destiny.
4. God’s commandments, as revealed in His Torah, expose and reveal the desperate spiritual death state in which the Serpent has trapped mankind.
5. And God reveals through His written Word that He sent His living Word to be our Perfect Atonement Covering and Redeemer. He is the Ultimate Passover Lamb that came to reunite us to God and restore us to the original Perfection for which God created us. But before that can happen, we must make our Exodus from the radically independent, idolatrous system of this world (‘Egypt’).
6. If we repent of our original state of being and living as independent agents, and turn to our Redeemer, God’s Word, the Creator of all things, then He will become our new Life (and rightful Head) and He will do everything necessary to restore us to our true image and likeness of God state and status in God’s Eternal Kingdom.
7. Therefore, the only way we can fulfill God’s commandments and meet His Perfect changeless Standard of Righteousness is to stop pursuing our radically independent, God-less ways, and allow the Word and Spirit of God to live and operate within us, so that God’s own Word Himself can become our Obedience and Service to God. Then God’s Power, working from within us, will elevate and empower us to honor, obey and fulfill His Perfect Standards.
8. So this process requires much more than a superficial ‘self-improvement’ program. It demands a death and resurrection to take place in us…death to our original state of radical independence, so that the Perfect Eternal Resurrection Life of our Messiah can take over and begin to abide and operate within our spirit, soul and body out of His perfectly Righteous Resurrection Humanity.
Awake, O Sleepers, Awake!
So the Ten Commandments are like a cosmic Divine Shout that penetrates to the core of our spiritually dead hearts and summons all humans to respond to God’s call to repentance. His Word is able to bypass our blind spiritual eyes and deaf spiritual ears…and penetrate to our core, summoning us to come out of our tombs of living death. And as long as there remains a speck of integrity and respect for Truth in our innermost being, we can respond to His call. We sense the Truth that is in Him; and we respond accordingly.
The tenth commandment we are now considering is the coup de grace, the final thrust into the Sin-corrupted human heart. Even if the full impact of what God is telling us does not hit home when we hear the first nine, this tenth commandment stops us dead in our tracks! It pulls our ‘rug of self righteousness’ out from under our feet and knocks us to the ground. It forces us, whether we like it or not, to declare personal bankruptcy and acknowledge that we are helplessly dependent on our Creator for everything. It also shows us what God’s awesome Final Judgment will be like…when the Light of God’s Truth lays bare each human heart…and proves with finality that we are guilty and deserving of Eternal Perdition. And then, we will most certainly be lost …UNLESS we have submitted to the Redemptive Authority of God’s Word. If we submit, He will cover and redeem us through the Perfect Atonement that He made in our name. For just as God’s wrath against Sin fell upon the Sin-loving Earth through the great Flood millennia ago, so will His Judgment fall upon all fallen flesh once again, when the time for God’s final Reckoning arrives:
Matthew 13:36-43
“Then He left the crowds and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him and said, ‘Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.’ And He said, ‘The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the Kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels. So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit Lawlessness (Torah-lessness), and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous (who remain after the Lawless have been taken away) will shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.’” (Emphasis added.)
Matthew 24:36-44
“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be. Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one will be left.
“Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man (the living Word of God made flesh) is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Isaiah 2:17-22
“The pride of man will be humbled and the loftiness of men will be abased; and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day, but the idols will completely vanish. Men will go into caves of the rocks and into holes of the ground before the Terror of the Lord and the Splendor of His Majesty, when He arises to make the Earth tremble. In that day men will cast away to the moles and the bats their idols of silver and their idols of gold which they made for themselves to worship, in order to go into the caverns of the rocks and the clefts of the cliffs before the Terror of the Lord and the Splendor of His Majesty, when He arises to make the earth tremble. Stop regarding man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils; for why should he be esteemed?” (Emphasis added.)
Can you sense the electrical bolts of God’s intense Judgment against Sin crackling throughout these dire warnings? The stakes being revealed are enormous…because they are eternal! God’s Ten Commandments are like heart-piercing arrows directed against the habitual idolatry (spiritual adultery) that Sin embedded within the DNA of the fallen human race! They notify us, in a variety of gut-wrenching ways, that Almighty God is Perfect in His Nature and changeless in the Standards of His Righteousness. And God also reveals that He is Perfect in His ability and willingness to care for and provide everything necessary for the full Salvation, Maintenance and Restoration of every creature He has designed and fashioned. So, even if other gods and sources actually existed, there’d be no need to look to or pursue them. Our God can and will meet all our needs perfectly! He is the one true God, and no other alternative could possibly exist! This is the revelation of the Bible. And the Ten Commandments remove all doubt concerning this issue.
God’s Everlasting Faithfulness
Our true God created us by His living Word, and through Him, He will continue faithfully to meet our every need. And God sends His Spirit to us, to make His Word real, alive and active in the heart, life and circumstances of every man and woman who receives and obeys Him, on His terms. We must repent of looking to any other source beside Him. God is eternally intent on fulfilling His Blood Covenant promises to us. Thus He revealed Himself in human words and human form so we would fully understand. And He sent His living Word to become one of us, to represent and cover us, perfectly. And His living Word shows the depths of God’s Eternal Covenant love for us…how high and deep and far and wide His Lovingkindness and Provision are, for anyone who turns to Him and allows His Word to reconnect them with Himself. God reveals His Nature, Character and Perfect Infinite Faithfulness – not because He needs our approval, or because we have anything He lacks – but so that we’ll understand His Word’s awesome significance to us and receive as our eternal birthright and the awesome inheritance that the Word has made it possible for us to share in, to ensure our eternal well being.
So now, thanks to the Word’s Perfect Finished Work of Creation and Redemption, we can know and interact with God…as He really is! And now mankind is without any excuse. We can’t plead ignorance or say we were not warned. Now, if we reject this truth concerning God’s Perfect Ability and Reliability, we are deliberately rejecting and refusing to believe and depend on Him wholeheartedly. We are choosing to perceive and judge God as ‘inadequate’ and ‘not good enough’ to meet our needs and fulfill our expectations. Thus, whoever turns away from Him and looks for, or invents, alien alternate sources of provision and safety, commits spiritual adultery. They are rejecting Him and giving themselves to other gods (that do not really exist)! And this is the insanity and abomination that God, throughout His Scriptures, calls ‘idolatry’.
Since there truly is only one God and Source for all things, if we reject His Word, through whom He reveals Himself, we choose to remain in bondage to the Serpent in his demonic delusion and rebellion. Thus we’re idolaters, violating the first commandment. And if we violate the first commandment, we will violate all the others. And the tenth commandment that forbids ‘coveting’ brings this fact home beyond the shadow of any doubt. Our innate drive to abide in radical independence from God is what drives us into a compulsive insatiable frenzy that forces us to try to control and prey upon everything in sight. Our separation from our Creator leaves us with a burning sense of isolation, emptiness and insatiable neediness. That twists and warps our nature, and so we become monstrously dangerous, predatory creatures.
If we fully grasp what Genesis is revealing, we see the Truth and the Truth frees us from slavery to ourselves. Thus, it cuts away the delusive killing coils of the Serpent. The Truth revealed by God’s Word draws us out of Satan’s realm of Darkness and begins to transform us on every level. Then we finally understand what the Book of Exodus is saying when it tells us that God has to lead His people out of the ‘Egypt’ of this fallen world’s system…and into the Glory and Fulfillment that is in His ‘Land of Promise.’ To remain in ‘Egypt’ is to remain trapped in the crushing coils of the Serpent. So when we see this and repent of what we have become, and allow God’s living Word to reattach us to Himself, we come under His Life-imparting Authority. And He can then lead us out of ‘Egypt’ and away from this fallen world’s idolatrous ways. He takes us across the Wilderness of Transition…and finally, establishes us as full citizens of His Eternal Kingdom.
So as this process develops, we enter ‘boot camp’ and ‘learn the ropes’ and absorb the ways of God that impart the full experience of the awesome birthright and eternal inheritance God’s Word makes available to His beloved disciples. When we’re one with God’s living Word, who is the Firstborn and Lord of the human race, we’re one with all of His Perfection, and Infinite Abundance! In Him, we have everything; but apart from Him, we have nothing. Without Him, we’ll be forever empty and as bereft as Death itself!
When people ‘Covet,’ they reveal their true spiritual colors. They reveal what they really think of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in their innermost being. When they covet something that is not theirs, they reveal their insatiable selfish neediness and proclaim that they are ‘Law-less.’ They reject and deny and oppose what God revealed in His Torah. They proclaim their unbelief and mistrust of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That’s why they keep taking matters into their own hands and violating the boundaries God established to protect the people around them. Coveters are predators because they deny that God is mankind’s All-Sufficient Provider and Protector. They deny His ability and willingness to meet our needs. So they feel compelled to try to take His place and strive to control everything around them. They seek whatever they desire from any created source that seems, to them, able to satisfy their needy hearts.
The Shocking Truth
So Coveting, at its core, is a matter of rebellion against God and what He reveals about Himself and what He has promised to be for His Creation, through His Word. The Tenth Commandment shows us how terribly strong and deeply rooted within us that Rebellion truly is. When we see how powerful a grip it has on our hearts, and what we really are, the realization is utterly shocking, appalling and devastating.
We are trapped by a deceptive demonic paradigm that forces us to view reality through a skewed set of ‘mental eyeglasses’ that filter out any sign or perception of the one true God. And as long as we wear those ‘glasses,’ the true God is invisible and, to us, non-existent. This is what the tenth commandment exposes about us! It rubs our noses in God’s Truth and strips us of all false pretenses. It proves that we are born ‘decapitated’ and, therefore, remain separated from God’s Word. Because idolatry is embedded throughout the DNA we inherit at conception, we can’t help but covet because by nature, decapitated humans do not have the spiritual equipment that would enable them to know, believe and trust the one true All-Sufficient God! So instinctively, we seek after false gods, non-existent, alternate sources of safety, provision and wellbeing. The blindness the Serpent inflicts on us gives us no other choice! So the fact that we can’t stop coveting is the exposure– the glaring revelation – of the true state of fallen human flesh. ‘Spiritual Adultery’ is the hallmark of the ‘world system’ and it is the natural pursuit of all fallen human flesh. And that is what the Bible calls, ‘Egypt.’
So as we meditate on the meaning that is packed into the last of the Ten Commandments, we see that the tenth commandment is the true ‘Killer’ of humanity’s assumed postures of self-righteousness. It pulls the self-designed and made covers we use to hide behind, completely away, so that we can no longer conceal our spiritual nakedness. It completely exposes our spiritual bankruptcy and helplessness, and it proves that we are guilty and liable to the death penalty brought on by our Sin against our Creator. This is why our Master, who came to represent us in God’s Covenant, had to go to the Cross. He submitted to our execution! He entered it as…us! And that’s why He now says to those of us whom He truly represents: “Follow Me!”
If there was any doubt about our inability to keep God’s first nine commandments, this tenth commandment certainly pushes us over the edge of the cliff. It strips every last rag of presumed self-righteousness and ‘goodness’ away from us, leaving us with nothing to hide behind. And this is what the apostle Paul described with these words:
Romans 7:6-8
“But now (that we’re born again and God’s living Word abides within us) we have been released from the Law (which is meant to expose and condemn those who are not born again), having died (with our Messiah) to that (original curse and condemnation) by which we (also once) were bound, so that we (are now free to) serve in newness of the Spirit (of God’s Law) and not in (the religious self-striving) oldness of the letter.
“What shall we say then? Is the Law (Torah) Sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know (about my inherited state of) Sin except through the (exposure of my Sin state through the holiness and righteousness of the) Law (Torah); for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But Sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced (exposed) in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law Sin is dead (that is, our inherent Sin was not exposed, recognized and realized until God gave us the Law).” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
In order to observe the tenth commandment by God’s Perfect Standard of Righteousness, the true state of heart we must be in, in order to be God’s image and likeness, is expressed through these commands that God gives to His chosen Jewish and non-Jewish people:
Deuteronomy 6:4-6
“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. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart!” (Emphasis added.)
The Tenth Commandment helps us understand what God means by ‘wholehearted.’ It means 100% dependent and relying upon the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! It means there must be 0% coveting of anything God didn’t provide for us. It means our heart must be in 100% agreement with God and 100% submitted to His will! Israel’s faith is to be a ‘seamless garment,’ wholly and entirely given to us by God alone. So can you see why even the Adamic fallen flesh of Israel found it impossible to please God and satisfy His requirements throughout the centuries? No Sin-wounded child of Adam can do it. None of us can live as God’s image of likeness unless we turn to God’s living Word and He covers and regenerates and restores us! And now we can see why God had to make a New Covenant with Israel and why He continually describes her in terms like these:
Jeremiah 2:7-10
“I brought you into the fruitful land to eat its fruit and its good things. But you came and defiled My land, and My inheritance you made an abomination.The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ And those who handle the Law did not know Me; the rulers also transgressed against Me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal and walked after things that did not profit. Therefore I will yet contend with you,’ declares the Lord, ’And with your sons’ sons I will contend.’”
God’s Perfect Standards never change! They require all people – Jewish and non-Jewish – who would be His own, to believe, trust and rely upon Him and His Perfect Finished Work of Creation and Redemption 100% of the time! Not even 1% of our faith and trust can be withheld from Him and given to any other imaginary god or source! There are no other real gods or sources! Only God is God… 100% of the time! And the climate of our innermost being must reflect and proclaim His Perfection and All-Sufficiency! We are created to be the perfect corresponding image and likeness of Almighty God’s Perfection. So we’re required to abide in Him and receive everything from Him…with Perfect, uninterrupted Trust! The underlying wholehearted spirit of the Tenth Commandment makes no compromises whatsoever. It imposes these all-encompassing requirements on all men:
You shall not even so much as want to violate My other nine commandments! If you are to be My image and likeness, your heart can never entertain the least desire or feel the slightest need to violate any of My commandments! You will thus not even relish the imagination of possessing and enjoying anything I did not give you! I am the Lord God Almighty, the sole Creator and Provider of all that exists! And you shall look to no other Source or seek any alien provision! Why? Because there is no other source! You must abide with Me in My Truth and Reality 100% of the time! I created you for Myself! You are not your own. You belong to Me! And I will satisfy you and meet all of your needs!
Genesis 1:26-28
“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them (to Infinite, Eternal Perfection); and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
God’s Word – The Same Yesterday, Today and Forever
Sin destroyed our capacity to fulfill what Genesis reveals. Sin makes us to be ‘sub-human!’ But because God is eternally, changelessly Perfect, He always provides everything His Creation will ever need in order to fulfill whatever identity, purpose and destiny He assigned to each creature. When our Perfect God created His ‘blueprint specifications’ for Humanity, He did it perfectly, the very first time! Therefore His specifications and the calling and commission He imparted to the human race to be His perfect image and likeness, are also changeless. God is not like we are – changeable, flaky, fallible and unreliable. He is Perfect Wisdom, Faithfulness and Lovingkindness. He is Abundance and Omnipotent Ability, to an eternally infinite degree! So His idea of what we are to be will never waver nor will anything He has created (or what it does or fails to do) ever stop Him from fulfilling His Plan. Nor will any creature be able to change what He has already decreed and promised! If the free will of any of His angelic and human creatures chooses to rebel and reject God and His Word, He will simply continue to fulfill His Plan and purposes without them.
So God’s Ten Commandments, and all the other revelation He gives us in Scripture, reveal that His Perfect Standards will stand forever. He exposes our fallen Sin-loving state by shining the glaring Light of His awesome Truth and Reality, upon us all, and He does it to deliver us from the demonic Darkness of delusion into which we were all born.
John 8:31-38
“So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed (mentally agreed with) Him, ‘If you continue in My Word (and actually obey it), 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 Father of Lies).’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Before God gave His commandments and entrusted them to Israel, the whole fallen human race worshipped itself! Fallen flesh was using itself, and its own ideas and opinions and raging self-adoring passions as the norms by which it measured the truth and value of all things. Even when men invent gods for themselves to worship and serve, they are relying on their own understanding. They use their own wills as the authority to proclaim and elevate the gods of their own invention. Thus, just like the Serpent, fallen men approve of themselves and judge themselves to be ‘good,’ or at least, ‘pretty good.’ But once the plumb line of God’s Torah revelation is given and applied to all of our hearts and we are all measured against God’s living Word, who is the Real Image and Likeness of God, we are exposed! The Law makes it impossible for us to fool ourselves any longer; we can no longer deny that we love Sin and can’t stop wanting to wallow in it. And thus, we can also no longer deny that we have degenerated into the image and likeness of the Serpent!
No matter what we try to do to make them go away, our Sin-loving desires keep welling up from the depths of our Sin-twisted hearts. We have no power whatever to stop ourselves from having Sin-loving feelings, urges and passionate desires. And it is through the tenth commandment that we see our bankruptcy as clear as day. There is nothing in us that can save us or atone for our corporate guilt and condemnation. We can do nothing to justify ourselves in the sight of our Almighty Righteous, and Infinitely Just God. And only after Saul of Tarsus was pierced by the Truth that is in God’s living Word, and repented of his abominable self-righteous delusions, was he able to truly see and understand what the Torah had always been proclaiming to Israel, and through Israel, to the rest of the world. The Truth had always been present, but in his former decapitated state, Saul had never before been able to see it until God’s living Word pierced him to the core:
Romans 7:9-13
“I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the (tenth) commandment came, sin became alive and I died; and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it, killed me. So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
“Therefore did that which is good (Torah) become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was Sin, in order that it might be shown to be Sin by effecting my death through that which is Good (God’s Truth as given in His Torah revelation), so that through the commandment Sin (into which I was conceived and born, I) would become (aware that, in myself I am) utterly sinful.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Romans 7:17-19
“So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but Sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.” (Emphasis added.)
Torah Exposes the True State of Our Hearts
Beloved, can you see what Paul was saying? It isn’t God’s Torah and its commandments that are evil. Torah doesn’t cause us to produce sinful ‘dead works of the flesh.’ Torah EXPOSES the dead works that are already in us, and continually spew out of us! God’s written Word, which reveals His living Word, can never be evil; nor can the Life-giving Word lead anyone into bondage and death. The Serpent and his powers of Darkness are the ones responsible for that! But the revelation of God’s Word reveals and exposes our Sin to our own eyes. For the very first time, we realize the Sin that is in us and we become aware of the fallen nature it produced in us. Then we see that we are all born ignorant of all that has happened to us as a race. We are born into a God-less world that teaches and requires us to reject and ignore and try to erase His Word and what He reveals and requires. The written Torah reveals what we are and it thus drives us to seek mercy from God’s living Word, while we still have time to repent!
So how could it be the Torah that leads us into ‘dead works of the flesh,’ as so many believe and proclaim? No, Beloved, that is a lie. Torah reveals our Messiah…and our desperate need for Him in whom Eternal Life exclusively abides! Torah exposes our true state, and it drives us, in total shock and desperation, into the arms of our beloved Covenant Representative and Redeemer! And then He can become our Salvation and Restoration who obeys and fulfills the Torah from within our flesh! So, just as a menu directs people to real food; so does God’s written Torah drive us into the arms of Yeshua, the real Living Torah of the real Living God!
John 6:53-58
“And any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.’ Therefore I said to the sons of Israel, ‘No person among you may eat blood, nor may any alien who sojourns among you eat blood.”
“So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.'”
Matthew 11:25-30
“At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise You, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Come to Me (God’s living, covering, redeeming Word) all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
God sent His Word to remake us into brand new, God-satisfying creations! He is our Restorer and our Good News! And He is the one whom the Torah reveals. No man-made book can save us! But the living Word of God that the Bible reveals, is the one and only Redeemer who can and does save us! So the purpose of the Torah’s Law is to expose the real Truth about us, and about the terminal state into which we are born. Torah shows us what happened and what our fall will lead to, UNLESS we repent and return to God’s living Word who created us in the first place and is here to cover us. Just as He covered Adam and Eve, so is God’s Word able to cover and reconcile us to God and restore us to eternal union with Him and His Perfection. The Word who created us in the first place, is here to recreate and restore us to God’s original ‘blueprint specifications’ for true, image and likeness of God Humanity. Without the Gift of the Torah, that reveals God’s Eternal Passover Lamb and His Blood Atonement, the human race would have never even become aware of these awesome foundational truths! But thanks to the Torah and the Scriptures that explain and amplify what it reveals, those truths are now inescapable!
Yeshua, Our Only Source
After God’s living Word became flesh, and appeared among us in the Person of Yeshua of Nazareth, He embodied and demonstrated what a True Human Image and Likeness of God really is! He showed us how such a person lives and interacts with the Spirit of Almighty God, in the midst of this decapitated, demon-possessed world. That is why, at this time and space stage of our Exodus, He is the only one who is Righteous in the sight of God. And this is why we must learn to abide under the Covering of His Perfect Blood Atonement on the Cross! Our Head must become our Righteous Resurrection Life, since we as yet, do not have it in ourselves to meet God’s Perfect Standards. Remember: there is only one Source for everything, including Righteousness and Eternal Resurrection Life. It is Yeshua, God’s living Word, so only in Him, can the rest of us ever be complete!
Saul of Tarsus, that Jewish man, of the Tribe of Benjamin, that Pharisee of Pharisees, that highly educated, religious Torah-expert, failed to grasp this, as so many others have done and continue to do. Despite his former life of elite Israelite status and hyper-religiosity, despite his slavish observance of the thousands of prescribed ‘halacha’ or rabbinic ordinances, he failed to recognize His Messiah! And he rabidly pursued and persecuted those thousands of his fellow Jews that did recognize Yeshua for who and what He really is. He did that…until he too was pierced by the Truth. Saul was just like all the rest of us…born into Adam’s state of ‘living death.’ He was dead in Adam’s corporate, racial Trespass and shackled to the curse, guilt and death penalty associated with the countless sins of every other child of Adam that had come before him and his generation. The fact that he was a child of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob wasn’t able to save him. The writings of the man, Moses, were not able to save him. Only the living Word that God, through Moses, revealed to be the Creator of the universe, was able to save Saul. And yet, Saul had been doing everything he could to stomp out all those who believed and followed Yeshua! He continually denied the claims and promises of the very Messiah, the Anointed, God-sent One, that he had been waiting for all of his life!
God revealed the Word that appeared as Yeshua in His Torah! But not even Saul, the Pharisee of Pharisees, had been able to perceive this awesome, devastating Reality. He blithely assumed that he, and other Jews like him were already saved simply because they were Torah-observant Jews. So they viewed themselves as different and better than the pagan Gentiles who were desperately in need of Salvation. And, as all proponents of false, man-made religions do, Saul assumed that he was ‘just fine’ as he was…because he had been born Jewish, and because he was an elite Pharisee who ‘followed all of the rules’, and had studied and accumulated massive amounts of head knowledge. This was the false ‘righteousness,’ the artificial ‘front’ behind which Saul, and the rest of us who are like him, continue to hide. So that poor man was in a habitual trance, a deluded state that prevented him from knowing the freedom that comes when you know God’s Truth. Only that Truth can set all men, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, completely free of the death-grip of the Serpent’s demonic lies.
So for Saul, just like for all the rest of us, nothing happened…UNTIL God sent a bolt of revelation out of the blue…that pierced his heart and soul to the quick…and destroyed his personal little empire and comfort zone. God must do this. He must give us a fresh new revelation, a completely new perspective and understanding of His beloved Son, His living Word…Yeshua. That is what took place between God and Saul, on the road to Damascus. To get his full attention, the Spirit of God rubbed Saul’s face in the heart-piercing Truth of who Yeshua really was…and what He will forever be! Just as He had once removed the veil from before the eyes of Joseph’s brothers in Egypt, so did the Spirit of God remove the veil from Saul’s previously blind spiritual eyes. And from that moment, Saul was never the same again.
Acts 9:3-6
“As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.’”
Hebrews 12:4-8
“You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, ‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.’ It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.”
Until that awesome moment, Saul had been decapitated, and therefore spiritually blind. But now he realized that, all of his life, regardless of all his study and striving to be righteous, despite how ‘special’ he thought he was, and despite all of the rules he kept so scrupulously and the countless prayers he mouthed, his efforts had failed dismally. He saw how arrogant and blind he had been and how miserably short of God’s Perfect Target…His Perfect standards of Righteousness, his self-generated efforts had truly fallen. Only when he was confronted by the one and only Perfect Human, the Righteous One Himself, was Saul of Tarsus exposed! In the Presence of the Real Israelite of all Israelites, Saul’s bankruptcy suddenly became manifest. And he experienced what Isaiah before him had felt when, in the year of King Uzziah’s death, he finally ‘saw the Lord’! In a flash of revelation Isaiah and Saul saw, in living color, just how impossible it was for them, or anyone else, to keep God’s Law, or measure up to His awesome Perfect Standards. There was no Righteousness like that of this glorious One who was standing amid the Shekeinah Glory of God. God’s Glory, as revealed in the risen Messiah Yeshua, is what knocked Saul to the ground! Now he saw the demonic delusion and Sin that were in his heart. Now he could see how captivated he had been by the Serpent and by the Death Sentence imposed by the Sin of Adam in Genesis 2 and 3. And that’s what God’s Torah requires all of us to see as well.
Romans 7:21-25
“I find then the principle that Evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the Law (Torah) of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of (inherited Adamic) Sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then (I finally see that) on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh (I can’t stop serving) the law of Sin.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
I once read in a book that was describing life in the days of the ancient Roman Empire, that condemned murderers were occasionally punished in a unique and grotesque manner. The corpse of their victim was somehow fastened and bound to them! And thus the criminal could never get loose or be free from the fetid inescapable indictment of his crime! He had to haul that rotting corpse with him, wherever he went! Obviously, the condemned one would be forced to live the remainder of his days in horrible, devastating solitary helplessness. And perhaps that is what Paul was referring to when he penned the words, ‘Who will set me free from the body of this death?’ And immediately after writing those words, he gives us the answer to his question. The only One who can, and will, set us free from our living-death past is the Creator of all Life Himself…God’s living Word made flesh…the Messiah of Israel and the Absolute King and Lord of all Creation:
“Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
‘Jesus Christ’…Messiah Yeshua! Saul finally got it! Blazingly brilliant strobe lights suddenly flashed on, illuminating the insides of his heart and head! Finally, he understood the meaning and purpose of the precious Scriptures that God had entrusted to Moses and to Israel. This one, this Person –Messiah Yeshua, He is The Revelation of all revelations. Everything contained within all of Scripture is about Him…it is the revelation of God’s living, creative, redemptive Word made flesh. He is God’s Beloved He is the Revelation of the Father and the True Destination of our Exodus! We are to repent of our decapitated state and to allow Him to be our True Head and to restore us to Himself so He can become our Eternal Life! And when we do that, He restores us to Almighty God, from whom He proceeds. Only through Him can we hope to be one with Almighty God in all things and at all times…FOREVER! God must give us the eyes to see this. And when He does, we ‘see the Light’…and realize that we’ve been caught in demonic Darkness. And then we eagerly run into the arms of the Messiah, to whom the Torah intends to drive us all.
Romans 10:3-5
“For not knowing about God’s Righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to (Yeshua) the Righteousness of God. For Christ is the end (target destination) of the Law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Ephesians 3:14-21
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in Heaven and on Earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His Glory, to be strengthened with Power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the Love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the Fullness of God.
“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the Power that works within us, to Him be the Glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.”
Truly then, it is tragic beyond words, when the Serpent manages to hypnotize some people into believing that ‘The Torah is what redeems me; I need no other Redeemer!’ And it is equally disastrous when other people remain convinced that, ‘The Torah is no longer relevant; it is a bunch of myth and the folklore of ancient Jews. But it has nothing to say to me!’ What dreadful, eternally terminal blunders such beliefs are!
Can any created book, even one truly inspired by the true God, be able to take the place of Almighty God Himself? Can any created thing save and deliver us from Sin and its guilt and condemnation? Sadly, many people do believe that this is how it works. And because that belief is so common, many outside observers mistakenly assume that this false belief is actually what the Torah intends to teach and propose! So they reject the Torah because they wrongly assume that it is only for the Jews, but it is not for them! But that too is a dismal demonic fallacy. And so these delusions continue to prove to be strategically effective tactics for the arsenal of the powers of Darkness! Saul, who later was known as Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, finally saw through those errors and made the proper distinction between the false understandings about the Torah…and the real God-given purpose of the Torah:
Galatians 2:15-21
“We are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles; nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we (Messianic Jews) have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.
“But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found (to be) sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be! For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed (go back to my old self-justifying ways), I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.I do not nullify the Grace of God, for if Righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ (the Suffering Servant promised in Psalm 2 and Isaiah 53) died needlessly!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
We have said elsewhere that by nature, we fallen humans are selfish, self-centered, rebellious, manipulative, predatory, hyper-controlling and self-destructive. If you don’t believe that, take some time to look under your own hood and check what is rumbling continuously within your heart of hearts. Our own nature is what keeps driving us in the wrong direction. Our own nature sabotages our religious attempts to be righteous! Our Sin-corrupted DNA has a continual frustration destination embedded within it. It causes us to feel a chronic sense of emptiness and insatiable neediness and sense of impending disaster and dread. All that is caused by our Decapitation from the Headship of God’s living Word…our only true Creator and Provider. And that inherent spiritual condition, produces a shame-ridden sense of ‘lack’. It is Sin-deprivation that forces us to feel chronic longings, an inner ache and ‘homesickness’ within our souls that never lets us know true peace or lasting satisfaction.
Even when we achieve stupendous heights of fame, wealth, honor, power and worldly glory, our lives can never be fully satisfied; nothing is ever ‘good enough.’ The mountaintop experiences some of us achieve are, at best, momentary and maddeningly fleeting. Even in the midst of our greatest joys and most intense pleasures, we remain ‘dislocated,’ our souls are terribly ‘out of joint’…and the resulting pain and emptiness we feel corrodes our attempts. We cannot find any fulfillment that lasts. Whatever we achieve soon turns to dust in our hands…so we can’t stop needing and wanting ‘more.’ We drag our habitual frustration and neediness with us, just like those ancient condemned murderers in the Roman Empire once dragged the rotting corpses of their victims wherever they went!
Genesis 3:17b-19
“Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil (endless frustration) you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Torah reveals that as long as any part of us remains ‘decapitated’, or radically independent from the Headship and Authority of the living and written Word of God, there will always be something wrong, something missing, an endless ‘leakage’ that keeps contaminating our life and making it ‘not good enough.’ There’s always something we don’t have, more we could achieve…so we keep lusting after things that are just beyond our reach. As long as we are disconnected from our one true Source, we’ll never be satisfied; we will always feel empty and dissatisfied and won’t be able to stop ourselves from wanting more. The grass will always be greener on the other side of any fence behind which we find ourselves. This is what it’s like to be dislocated and apart from God in our souls. When we’re dislocated and severed from Him, we’re dislocated and severed from our true self…for we were designed and made to be His image and likeness!
This is the revelation God gives in the very beginning of His Torah, Genesis. And in Exodus, He exposes the empty futility and incurable weakness of ‘Egypt,’ the epitome of the idolatrous world system. He takes His chosen people out of physical Egypt…but the Exodus reveals just how much of Egypt that first generation of Israelites insisted on smuggling out with them in their innermost being. So, when God says to us: ‘You shall not covet…’ it isn’t that He actually expects us to meet His Standards and become righteous and holy and obedient to Him by our own efforts. On the contrary, He is shining the glaring Light of the Real Truth upon our heart of hearts…to expose the horrible bankruptcy that lurks deep within our inner being. He is showing us the dreadful results of Sin and the Death into which it has plunged all of us rebellious, unbelieving, disobedient creatures. The Serpent infected our DNA with His lie that ‘you shall be like God, knowing Good and Evil!’ That lie is part of our defective, fallen, God-less makeup! And no man-made religion, theology, philosophy, culture, discipline or ethnic origin will ever be able to go deep enough to remedy what ails our basic natural human makeup! This is what God is telling us. The Torah of Moses first revealed it; and the prophets of Israel and the Israelite apostles of the New Covenant that was instituted by Israel’s Messiah before His death and Resurrection, continually confirm, amplify and reinforce it:
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?(Only) 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 (as measured against My Perfect Standard of Righteousness…Messiah Yeshua).” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So now we can see the major, vital difference between the two human races that intermingle and populate this dying Earth. The only choice that the ‘decapitated’ portion of the human race has, is to continue to try to abide in and work from the original, fallen, Sin-loving nature that is in the DNA that we all inherit. And so, naturally, the false gods that come from the Sin-corrupted imaginations of these worldly men will tell us that we’re ‘all right’ as we are, that we are noble, even if we’re savages! And all we need is more ‘education’ and refining, religious ‘soul disciplines’ and enhanced ‘self-improvement’ techniques. So people endlessly chase after a ‘carrot on a stick’ that is always in the future. But in the present, they remain caught in the grief and frustration that God’s Word articulated when He described the fallen, Sin-corrupted living death condition into which Adam and Eve had fallen.
But the other human race is regenerated and filled with the Spirit of God! They are the people who have seen the Truth contained in the Torah. They repented of their radical independence from God and their former state of living death. They submitted to the Authority of the King of the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s Word. And so the Word is free to begin the process of saving them from themselves.
Because the Serpent severed all of mankind from its true Head, God’s living Word, all humans enter this world deprived of the spiritual eyes and ears that Adam and Eve originally received before their fall into Sin. Those eyes and ears would have equipped us to know God, personally and intimately. We would have been able to ‘hear His voice’ and interact with His Word and Holy Spirit in a living, loving, Covenant union interaction. We would have been able to ‘dance with God,’ knowing the ‘dance steps’ of His nature and His ways. We would have naturally been able to fulfill our image and likeness of God nature and commission.
But after The Great Decapitation separated us from our Creator and Lord, we fell into the Serpent’s Darkness of rebellion and disobedience and self-reliance. That made us blind and deaf to God and to His Heavenly Kingdom and its ways. And that is what Scripture calls, ‘ignorance’ and ‘foolishness’:
Psalm 14:1-3
“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God (of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and therefore,).’ They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; there is no one (among them) who does good. The Lord has looked down from Heaven upon the (decapitated) sons of (decapitated) men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Ephesians 4:17-25
“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you (Jewish and non-Jewish Messianic believers) walk no longer just as the (decapitated) Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the Life of God because of the (Torah) 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 (radically independent) 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.”
Luke 23:33-35
“When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left. But Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves. And the people stood by, looking on. And even the (Judean Israelite) rulers were sneering at Him, saying, ‘He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ (Messiah) of God, His Chosen One!’” (Emphasis added.)
And so we see that every child of Adam, regardless of whether we consider the Jewish ones, or the non-Jewish ones, or people who are circumcised under the Law of Moses, or those who are not circumcised …every one of them starts out in this world as ‘decapitated.’ This is a corporate tragedy. It isn’t due to what each individual does or fails to do. This is due to what the father of the human race, the first Adam, did in the very beginning! It happened before Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ever existed, before Israel or Jewish people or all the other ethnic groups existed. It happened before Moses and the written Scriptures existed. This predates every empty, fruitless, Cain-like man-made religion and cultural tradition and every false prophet and philosopher and teacher and ‘expert’ that has ever emerged throughout human history! This is something that no nation or bloc of nations or king or pharaoh or Israelite king or prime minister or Gentile emperor, president or caliph can contradict, oppose, change or reverse.
This is about the Almighty living God, the Creator of the Universe…and the issue that exists between Him and His Word and Holy Spirit…and every decapitated free-willed angelic or human creature that Almighty God’s living Word has created and maintains in existence:
Matthew 3:1-10
“Now in those days John the Baptist (Immerser) came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!’ For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet when he said, ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight!’
“Now John himself had a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the district around the Jordan; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins.
“But when he saw many of the (unrepentant, self-righteous Jewish) Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham!
“The axe is already laid at the root of the (unrepentant decapitated) trees; therefore every (decapitated Word-rejecting human) tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So, beloved, regardless of who or what we may think ourselves to be, regardless of our color and ethnic background, regardless of what ancestral patriarch or family line, or ‘religion’ or country and culture we may have been born into, regardless of what set of traditions our families passed onto us…God’s Torah revelation and commandments will strip all of those temporary, earthly false fronts and disguises away from us! None of that will save us. None of that can make up for the loss of our true original identity, makeup and calling. Nothing created can cancel or remove the unrighteous corruption that keeps bubbling up from our innermost being. The corruption will be there when the time for Almighty God’s Judgment is finally at hand…unless His Word has redeemed and renewed us!
If you don’t believe what we say about the corruption within you…just take some time to notice all of the urges, passions, desires and lusts that continually bubble up from within your heart of hearts. Notice all the things of which you are ashamed, things you would not dare admit, or allow to be divulged and seen in public. And when you see them, measure yourself against the Ten Commandments. And realize that Almighty God knows everything about your most hidden parts and all that goes on within them. He knows that you continually violate His Ten Commandments for all you are worth! And when you do appear before His Judgment, no ‘labels’ that you choose to plaster across your ‘outside’, will conceal what is going on in the depths of your insides. The Truth will expose you as a fraud. Your Sin-corruption will become apparent. So…REPENT…while you have the time to do it! Measure and judge your own heart against God’s Ten Commandments as given in Exodus chapter 20. Remember the Perfect Lawgiver who pronounces them. Remember that His Standards of Righteousness emerge from the Perfection of His Nature! It is against that Standard that Israel and all the rest of the world will be judged!
You shall have no other gods but only one…the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! But have you ever actually put your faith in other sources that have nothing to do with the true God? Have you ever wanted to look to some alternative to Him? You shall not idolize any created thing, whether it be a person, place or thing. Nor shall you place anything created, not even you and your own efforts, above the one true God in authority, value and trust! But have you ever done that? Have you wanted to do it? If you silently wanted to do it in your heart…then you did it!
You shall not take God’s Name in vain. But have you ever disgraced and diminished His Name by failing to be His image and likeness in public or in private? Have you wanted to be something less, something other than God’s image and likeness? Have you wanted to give yourself and serve something other than the Lord your God? You shall abide with God in His Perfect, Eternal Sabbath Rest…enjoying the Perfection of His All-Sufficient Provision, Protection and Covenant Faithfulness. But have you ever doubted, mistrusted and believed He wasn’t ‘good enough?’ Have you ever even wanted to look to something other than Him as your source of supply or protection or wellbeing and fulfillment? Have you labored and slaved out of fear and insecurity in order to try to meet your own needs?
Heart Check
Have you honored and respected your parents and legitimate authority figures at all times? Have you ever wanted to disobey or disrespect or defy their authority in your heart? God forbids you from committing murder. Implied in that is also doing serious damage and harm of any kind to your neighbor. Have you harbored thoughts of revenge, malice, ill will, betrayal and anger or resentment or bitterness against your neighbor? If you have, you’re guilty! And you shall not commit adultery…but even if you’ve never physically crossed the line and been sexually intimate with someone else…have you ever lusted after other people in your heart? Have you wallowed in pornographic daydreams and imaginations? Have you read material or viewed pictures or movies or web sites that aroused you sexually? How can you deny that you’re guilty? Even if no other person on earth but you knows about it…in God’s sight, the desires for such things that burn in your Sin-loving heart are the same as if you had physically done those acts! In physical reality or mental reality, the act is being done in your will…in the choices of your heart. And that is enough to constitute Sin, and enough to prove you’re not being the image and likeness of your Creator.
And what about dealing dishonestly with your neighbors: stealing and cheating and gaining unfair advantages over others? Have you ever wanted to possess something that belonged to someone else? If so, you’ve violated God’s tenth commandment! All of this kind of heart behavior is coveting, in one form or another. So with a heart as deviant and criminal as that, what chance will you or I or any other human ever have when it’s time for God to judge us according to His Perfectly Perfect Righteous Standards? There will be nowhere for any of us to hide. There will be nothing we can say. Our own hearts will scream accusations and condemnations at us! And this is what God’s Torah is meant to warn us about. There is nothing in us, or in anyone like us, that can stop us from loving Sin and wanting to commit it! And God will never allow that into His Presence!
Have you ever indulged in Truth-twisting? Have you ever denied or omitted or added to or mislabeled the Truth? Have you ever damaged lives by blurring or erasing true facts? Have you indulged in shame-based behavior in your relationships, presenting a false self and concealing the real you? The Lord who gave us the Torah isn’t naïve. He knows our true Sin-corrupted condition. So He doesn’t really expect us to be righteous. He gives the commandments to serve as a mirror into which we can see ourselves, as we really are, with all of the dirt, flaws, sickness, perversions, insanity and all the other things that ail us. He expects us to recognize and admit and repent of our utter Sinfulness! Then when we can do that, we’re ready to run to our Messiah and come under the shadow of His wings for protection and to ask Him to be to us everything we cannot be for ourselves. And then the Torah will have done its job, and we will be saved and restored.
There is only one who will be able to cover your Adamic nakedness and only one who has the God-imparted Authority and Power to save you and actually regenerate and transform your heart of hearts. It is God’s own living, creative Word made flesh…Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah (the Christ), God’s Anointed One. He is the Salvation of the entire Serpent-bitten, Sin-corrupted human race! He is the Creator of all things and only He can give you and me, and everyone else, a new heart and put a new spirit within us, a spirit that will be forever fused into one with the Spirit of Almighty God Himself! And He is the living Truth with whom we must all deal…while we still have the time to repent and be reconciled to the one true God…in Spirit and in Truth!
Psalm 51:10-13
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation And sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners will be converted to You.”
I urge you to read all of Psalm 51 very carefully. Ponder each word and line that David wrote as he was repenting of his own lust, adultery, double-dealing and murder in the depths of his Truth-pierced heart. What the Holy Spirit did for him, He will also do for you. Let God speak to your innermost being through His living and written Word. Open yourself to the living Word. Submit to the Authority of the risen Lord Yeshua, so that He can become present and real and livingly active and fruitful within you. Then you’ll be able to present yourself to God, filled with the Eternal Life and Perfect Righteousness of His beloved Perfect Son. And when God gazes upon you, He will see His Son in you! And you will be most gladly and eternally accepted, included and fulfilled!