Exodus 14:10-12
“As Pharaoh drew near, the sons of Israel looked, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they became very frightened; so the sons of Israel cried out to the Lord. Then they said to Moses, “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you dealt with us in this way, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness!’”
Beloved, focus your attention on the perspective of those Israelites. Notice that the way they evaluated what was happening led them to automatically assume that pharaoh and his army were vastly more powerful and authoritative than their God! That is why that panic-stricken, helpless victim-reaction spewed out of them. The identity and reality system they habitually harbored in their hearts forced them to fall apart, as if God didn’t even exist!
But were they any different than most of us? Is our generation less rooted in worldly priorities and God-less viewpoints than they were? The truth is that most of us are perhaps even more mentally and emotionally separated from God! Very few see themselves being totally united with Him. Very few are convinced that in every moment, every situation, He is here in our midst and in our hearts to fully restore all of Creation and save and transform the human race. And that is why so very few are able to peacefully rest in God’s Perfect Presence and All-Sufficient Fullness. So the pharaohs of modern generations continue to be exalted, and virtually worshipped to this day!
Yes, it’s true that the poor band of ex-slaves that began the Exodus did not yet know God as He really is. So they were unable to trust and identify with Him and rest confidently in the Eternal Peace and Wellbeing guaranteed by His Covenant. But how different their reactions would have been, if they had only known the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as He really is!
Psalm 56:1-4
“Be gracious to me, O God, for man has trampled upon me; fighting all day long he oppresses me. My foes have trampled upon me all day long, for they are many who fight proudly against me. When I am afraid, I will put my trust in You. IN GOD, WHOSE WORD I PRAISE, IN GOD I HAVE PUT MY TRUST; (and so therefore,) I SHALL NOT BE AFRAID! What can mere man do to me?” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
At various eras of Israel’s history, vastly differing outcomes took place, all depending on whether or not each Israelite generation was bonded to God by faith in His revealed Word. Human outcomes always depend on whether or not Israel remains true to her God. Does she habitually respond to, and believe and obey God’s living and written Word and His Holy Spirit, or not? The difference is like night and day! When God’s people put their trust and expectations upon Him, and not in themselves or other people or earthly circumstances and conditions, the glorious Presence of the Holy Spirit lifts them high above whatever dares to threaten them. He places His own above any circumstance… in a lofty place, in safety and wellbeing. But when even they remain ‘decapitated’ from God’s Word, the whole world is out of position to know God and receive His Covenant blessings. To receive the ‘Daily Bread’ God’s Covenant provides for His Family, we must first come to know Him as He truly is! Then we can believe and trust and fully expect that He will sustain us. But when we don’t know Him, we fall apart… and disaster overtakes us.
Hebrews 4:1-7
“Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His Rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had Good News preached to us, just as they also; but the Word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. For we who have believed enter that Rest, just as He has said, ‘As I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My Rest,” although His works were finished from the foundation of the world!
“For He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day: ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all His works’; and again in this passage, ‘They shall not enter My Rest.’ Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience, He again fixes a certain day, ‘Today,’ saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, ‘Today if you hear His Voice (living Word), do not harden your hearts!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Matthew 14:15-18
“When it was evening, the disciples came to Him and said, ‘This place is desolate and the hour is already late; so send the crowds away, that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat!’ They said to Him, ‘We have here only five loaves and two fish.’ And He said, ‘Bring them here to Me.’”
Matthew 9:28-29
“As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed Him, crying out, ‘Have mercy on us, Son of David!’ When He entered the house, the blind men came up to Him, and Jesus said to them, ‘Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ They said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord.” Then He touched their eyes, saying, ‘It shall be done to you according to your faith!’”
Beloved, do your beliefs, perspectives and expectations habitually idolize and exalt temporal worldly beings and circumstances? Are you easily swayed and deeply affected by what society’s current events and public opinions try to dictate? Do you use circumstances as the measuring stick of your wellbeing? Is that how you assess reality? Do your natural senses take the place of God’s Word and Holy Spirit? Or, have you received the disciple training and equipping that enable you to keep always in mind who and what Almighty God is and what He has made you to be in His eternal counsels? Do you remember what He commissioned Israel to be and how she was to identify and comport herself in this world, no matter what might be happening?
Exodus 19:4-6
“You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice (living Word) and keep My Covenant (serve as the obedient image and likeness of My obedient living Word and the written Word that reveals Him), THEN you shall be My own Possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation!’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Our God is Truly Enough… Always!
So what goes on in your heart and will, when you face danger, uncertainty and dismal circumstances? Do you experience the Perfect Eternal Presence, Glory, Majesty, Peace and All-Sufficient Grace of Almighty God? Is that what wells up from deep within you? Or do you panic and become angry because the appearance of doom seems inescapable? In this sense, what you see is what you will get! Your faith in God’s Perfection and Faithful Presence, or the lack of it, determines whether or not you can receive into yourself the fruit of God’s Perfect Finished Work. He is always ready to give to His own whatever is needed. He will equip and empower them to deal with and overcome any circumstances they encounter. But it is one thing for God to give something… and another thing entirely for His people to actually receive it and own it!
Our habitual emotional climate, and our overall results depend on how well and how intimately we know Almighty God! If our hearts are habitually God-less, it won’t take much to upset, overwhelm and devastate us. But if God Almighty fills us… and we habitually abide with Him and receive everything from Him, we can know with certainty that the Perfect One abides in us, and all around us… and is acting at all times on our behalf. And knowing that He is with us, and for us, will empower even the weakest among us to desire and cooperate with His awesome plan and purposes. And we will all flourish, even while others around us perish!
Beloved, you must know in your deepest parts that our God is always fulfilling the revelation He gave us in His written Word. You must know that He is with you to fulfill His promises in you, for you, and through you! You must know that His Word abides within you to fulfill all the revelation and promises and commandments He Himself has given to you! All things must, and will, be done by and through the Word and Spirit of God. He will insure that God’s Glory remains Eternally Perfect and Complete, regardless of any created circumstances that may be taking place within you and all around you.
Matthew 12:33-37
“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the Day of Judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Beloved, do your thoughts, words, actions, reactions and interactions remain rooted in God’s living and written Word? If they do, then you can serve as His human ‘mirror’! But if your heart remains worldly and God-less, you will embody the Serpent and his lying, accusing, contradictions and denials of God’s Word! What are you habitually sowing into yourself? Is it God’s Word, or are you filling yourself with worldly opinions, gossip, and passing appearances and ever-changing circumstances and the flaky humanistic pontifications of unbelieving God-less humans?
Gardening Our Hearts
Remember this: every thought, word, imagination, action, reaction and interaction that comes out of you is another seed you are planting yet once again, into your own heart of hearts… and into the hearts of anyone around you who is gullible enough to trust and believe you! And each of those seeds produces more of its own kind… much more than you planted… at a later season. The multiplication compounds to enormous proportions, at an astoundingly rapid rate of speed.
Galatians 6:7
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap!” (Emphasis added.)
Notice the kind of ‘Seed’ God’s Word requires us to plant into ourselves:
Psalm 23
“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want! He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake. Even though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I fear no evil, FOR YOU ARE WITH ME; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. YOU (personally are always present to) prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
The Exodus Israelites could have viewed what was taking place as the pharaoh’s chariots were bearing down upon them in two ways. The book of Exodus reinforces what Genesis had already revealed concerning God’s Perfect Nature and airtight Covenant Faithfulness and the All-Sufficient Provision provided for us by His Perfect Finished Work of Creation and His Original Blessing upon mankind. We must learn to be deeply rooted in this revelation of Reality. Even after humanity’s fall into Sin and Death, God sent His Perfect living Word to cover and remove our nakedness, bankruptcy and guilt completely! So we must be wise enough to rivet our attention solely upon what those Israelites failed to see and continually ignored… the Eternal Perfection and Endless Lovingkindness of Almighty God!
God, and the Eternal Covenant Bond we are entitled to enjoy with Him, must be our habitual central focus! Never forget about or ignore the Reality of our Eternal, Omnipotent, ever-loyal Covenant God! We are chosen to be His image and likeness – His personal ‘living testimony’ witnesses on Earth. He intends to demonstrate His Truth and Reality to the rest of the unbelieving world, through our obedient faith! So we must be trained to side with Him and to stand and walk before Him – blamelessly! We must allow the Infinite Credibility and Reliability of His Perfect Presence to be our impenetrable Covering. Then we can exalt, adore and worship God… even in the presence of the pharaohs of this world and all their hosts. True disciples never exalt or glorify false gods. The throne of their hearts is reserved and occupied at all times by the One True God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob:
Exodus 14:13-18
“But Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear! Stand by and see the Salvation (Yeshua) of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again forever. The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent.’
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Why are you (corporate Israel) crying out to Me? Tell the sons of Israel to go forward. As for you (Moses), lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, and the sons of Israel shall go through the midst of the sea on dry land. As for Me, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and (although My chosen people are not honoring Me) I will be honored through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen. Then (even though My chosen people are not able to serve as My image and likeness at this time) the Egyptians will know (through what I do to stop them) that I am the Lord, when I am honored through Pharaoh, through his chariots and his horsemen!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Deuteronomy 6:4-5
“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.)
Do you see what God expected of His chosen ones throughout that seemingly impossible situation at that point of their Exodus? He intended to reveal Himself to the Egyptians and to the whole world… THROUGH the obedient faith, hope, trust and Covenant love of His chosen people! He revealed Himself to Israel so she could be filled with His everlasting Wellbeing, Peace and Rest. God never lacks; nor does He have problems. Nothing can thwart or outdo or defeat Him! And Israel was created and sustained to be His Family… they were to be the image and likeness of His Perfection and to inherit and enjoy and reflect back to God and to the world, the Fullness of God’s Original Blessing that was given to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1. Israel is made to reflect God’s Restored Glory; she is to be God’s ‘Light to the Gentiles’ who languish in the demon possessed Darkness and remain enslaved by the malevolent domination of the Serpent!
Note What Scripture is Saying:
God’s Word comes to each generation of Jewish and non-Jewish Israelites so they can know Him as He really is and so they can stop trying to force Him to be what they think He ‘ought’ to be. Instead, they can allow Him to live and work and obey His Father from within them, just as He is. And then they allow the Holy Spirit to transform them into His authentic image and likeness! Only then can they serve as an authentic living revelation and warning to the rest of the world’s Sin-murdered people. Originally, all humans were designed and created to be God’s living image and likeness! But we no longer have the ability to fulfill our awesome purpose and destiny. But God knew this would happen. So, in His Wisdom, Mercy and infinitely Capable, Faithfulness, He sent His living Word (who later became flesh and appeared as Messiah Yeshua), to be for all of us, and to do, in our name, what we could never be, or do, in or for ourselves.
God first revealed His nature and Perfect Standards through His living Word. Then He presented His living Word, in written form, through the Israelite Scriptures, and then He sent Him in human form (Messiah Yeshua) to fulfill what had been revealed and commanded, so that He could redeem and bring back to eternal Life, thus fully restoring, His beloved human race! The Word became one of us, to fulfill all of God’s requirements in our name. He obeyed, to Perfection, every commandment and did everything that God’s Perfect Nature requires of humanity. So notice the significance of Yeshua: His is the Law Giver through whom God first gave the Law to us. Then He came among us to be the Law Keeper and Fulfiller! He obeyed all that the Law revealed, promised, commanded and required of the human race. He had to do it since thanks to our state of Sin-blasted living death, we could never do anything like that for ourselves!
So I repeat: The living Word gave us the Torah… and the living Word fulfilled the Torah… to Perfection… in our name! Thus the living Word IS the Living Torah. This is why He impressed upon Joshua, and the second generation of Exodus Israelites, the necessity for God’s people to have their hearts circumcised of all God-less considerations and viewpoints. Israel must maintain her God-reflecting attitude, mindset and practice, no matter what her succeeding generations of disciples may encounter in this world:
Joshua 1:1-9
“Now it came about after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ servant, saying, ‘Moses My servant is dead; now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel… No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you (generation after generation); I will not (ever) fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land, which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous; be careful to do according to all the Law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the Law (My Torah teaching and instructions) shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go (to fulfill in you, for you, and through you, everything that has been written)!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Beloved, to believe and live by this revelation, is always our challenge. We must be able to reflect God’s Glory back to Him and to everything else in Creation, with accurate precision. Each generation has its ‘pharaohs.’ There are always those who oppose and try to silence, neutralize, threaten, attack and destroy God’s Truth and His people. They try to twist, distort, deny and completely erase the covering, redeeming Word of God from the minds, hearts and wills of mankind. Endless threats swirl around us, creating an ever-present atmosphere of violent hostility and disadvantage, in an attempt to once more strip us of our God-given Covering. The Serpent manipulates the multitudes to force as many people as possible to doubt, fear and give up. He tries to drive wedges of doubt and confusion into our hearts. And if he succeeds, the wedges separate our uncircumcised hearts from our eternal Covenant bond with our Almighty Covenant God!
God Never Changes!
His heart is always the same toward us! When we fall for the Serpent’s lies, we naturally doubt and distance ourselves from Him. Then we vainly try to gain control over our situations and meet our needs and ‘save’ ourselves. But we’re doomed, as long as we remain apart from our one True Source. So God sends His Word and Spirit after each generation. And He says: “Drop whatever you think you are and think is top priority in this world… and Follow Me!” So we disciples MUST receive and follow God’s Word. If we do, a fresh, new, undamaged set of New Covenant ‘hard wiring’ and programming can be personally and effectively installed in us. Each Israelite brain, nervous system and mind must be thoroughly updated and reprogrammed with accurate, true, God-reflecting paradigms and thought and reaction patterns.
If we take God’s Truth into ourselves with sufficient repetition, we’ll transform into the image and likeness of God’s Word. We will accurately reflect God’s Almighty, Perfect Presence, as He abides within our innermost being. This is how He fills Israel’s surroundings with His grace and transforms His own and overcomes the evil that Sin put into them with His Goodness and Righteousness and Holy Spirit. Then, seeing them, the world is able to see and understand what the Scriptures have been saying all this time. God’s Eternal Lovingkindness, covers His people. He is like that ‘Eye’ of total Peace, Rest and Serenity in the midst of the demonic ‘Hurricane’ that always plagues this fallen world. As long as we abide with our Omnipotent God in Covenant Union, His Perfection is our invincible Covering. His Perfect Living Word is our Infinite Provision and Wellbeing. When we are one with Yeshua, mentally and emotionally, we can KNOW WITH CERTAINTY that nothing created can harm or deprive us of the Eternal Covenant Birthright and Inheritance that our Uncreated Lord and Master is here to be for us! The world may separate us from our first body, but nothing can touch the Eternal Life that Yeshua already is, within us!
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
Ephesians 1:3-10
“In Him (Messiah Yeshua) we have Redemption through His Blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the Fullness of the times, that is, the Summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth!” ( Amplification and emphasis added.)
Rest upon His Perfect Finished Work
The Israelites who came out of Egypt were bankrupt and utterly weak and hopeless, just as we all are. The faith structure that was in their minds and brains was too primitive and undeveloped. They had no idea of what God intended to be and do for them. Had they known, they would have realized that it’s never up to us to try to control or achieve or accomplish what must be done to save us! God has already done it, and He wants to impart the fruit of His Salvation (His indwelling living Word) through His Holy Spirit to us. All of this was, and always will be, up to God! Remember, He set Israel free from slavery. She no longer had to do all of the work! She was now a Heavenly People, and it was up to God’s Perfect Finished Work of Creation and Redemption to impart all of its results to them. Israel had to learn to rest and rejoice and be at peace, in God’s Word!
Despite the unbelief of the people, God vindicated Israel and set her free. He devastated Egypt’s military force! Obviously, that didn’t happen because of any effort on the part of Israel. She didn’t even realize or believe what God was able to do on her behalf! Nevertheless, He did it anyway… by His Faithfulness and Omnipotent Power… for the sake of His Name and Eternal Covenant! This is what God’s people of every generation must learn – to abide with God in the Reality and Truth of His Perfect Finished Work. This is Israel’s Perfect Birthright and Blood Covenant Inheritance; it appears on the scene when Israel’s heart is in perfect union with God. Then the Authority of Yeshua’s Covenant Blood and the Power of God’s Holy Spirit can cover, protect and provide for all of God’s people, no matter who or what may dare to come against them! Nothing depends on the efforts of God’s chosen ones. They need not strive or toil to enjoy the fulfillment of God’s promises. They are no longer slaves, that is, radically independent agents that languish under the abuse of the powers of Darkness. They are one with God, His image and likeness. And it is their privilege, honor and glory to partake of all of His Fullness, at all times and in all things, as His beloved sons and heirs. That is the calling and purpose of God’s ‘Light to the Gentiles’.
But obviously, in order to swim against the current of this fallen world and its false gods, a strong, airtight, granite-solid faith in Almighty God’s Perfection is necessary. That’s why we must come to know our God at a very deep, intimate and accurate level. And this is what the glorious Spirit-empowered, Messiah-fulfilled New Covenant that God made with Israel, makes possible for all of mankind! God guarantees that this Covenant and its promises are already fulfilled for us! And He now imparts the Reality of this ETERNAL PERFECTION to all the families of the earth by the invincible Authority and Action of His Word and Holy Spirit! Thus God leaves nothing to chance. Like Abraham before us, we too can learn to rest in Him, because even before Creation came to be… He had already taken all the responsibility upon Himself, for fulfilling His own Covenant to Perfection!
And so, this is where the Last Days disciples of Messiah Yeshua come into the picture. We must realize, more than any prior generation of disciples ever realized it before, that in ourselves we are bankrupt, hopeless and empty. BUT IN OUR MESSIAH, we are overwhelmingly invincible and victorious! God, in His Eternal Perfection has made sure that His Work of Restoration would be Perfectly Finished. In our Messiah, it is already done! We have already triumphed in our battle with the powers of Darkness! The war has already been won – not by us, but by our Substitute, our Covenant Representative – Messiah Yeshua, the Lamb of God! We must now learn to stand on God’s Truth and hold the Blood Covenant Ground that God has already won for us and entrusted to our care:
2 Corinthians 4:5-7
“For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the Face of Christ. But we have this Treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing Greatness of the Power will be of God and not from ourselves …” (Emphasis added.)
The world can’t be saved unless God’s people can somehow, someway, come to know God so intimately that they will reflect and embody His Perfection and absolute credibility and trustworthiness. Then through their testimony, He will reach out to the rest of mankind. So we must learn to rest in God’s Perfection and abide with Him as full-fledged sons and heirs… one with Him, in Spirit and in Truth. Only God can satisfy His own Perfect Standards. Only He can redeem, release, regenerate, reconcile and restore Creation and transform fallen mankind back to His true image and likeness! So we must know Him without distortions, delusions or errors and allow what He has already done, to take its full effect within us and around us.
It is our privilege to be God’s ever-faithful, perfectly accurate reflections. He must be free to abide in each of us, as our SUPREME TRIUMPHANT LORD! And we must reflect His Reality and Truth to the rest of the world, regardless of what situation or circumstance we may have to pass through. The Exodus Route is always filled with demon-inflicted hardships and danger. The powers of Darkness are desperate. They know their time is limited and their doom immanent. But even their desperate hate-filled frenzy against us serves God’s purposes. Lies and deception and delusions are all they have to work with! So when God’s Truth appears in the midst of all that, the Darkness is confounded and dispelled, and the Glory and Light of God and His Word shine forth with blinding, dazzling Brilliance!
God uses the demonic malice and opposition to serve as our ‘boot camp’ training… to strengthen, toughen, train and equip us to reflect and embody His Word, regardless of any apparent dangers, hardships and seemingly impossible situations we may encounter. Just as His airtight faithful Lovingkindness was with Israel in the wilderness, so is it with us! That is why He deploys us throughout this world and commissions us and trains us to be His effective, credible witnesses. In the Arena of Worldwide Testimony, we too will face impossible situations. And they will serve as a perfect backdrop, for the Glory of Almighty God! So, the powers of Darkness can be confounded at every turn if we cooperate with God. He will use what they try to do against us, as a platform from which we can give our testimony to God’s Perfection! And God will expose, discredit and destroy their demonic lies and deceptive traps. What they intend to do to us… our God will do to them! He will strip, expose and devastate them, even as He covers, defends and provides for the Remnant of His True Israel!
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
“And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then (in and through My Lord and Master who always abides and works from within me) I am strong!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Taught and Equipped by the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is here to be our Advocate, Teacher, Trainer and, whenever necessary, our Disciplinarian. He equips us to see Truth truthfully, without flaws or distortions, just as Almighty God Himself sees it. The Spirit prepares us to deal with God’s Reality, just as He is. So, to expose and reveal what damage the Serpent and his lies have actually done to us, He first shows us what is truly operating within our hearts. And He does it with relentless, devastating authenticity, accuracy, and thorough precision. This helps us to wake up and grasp Reality as it truly is. Then we see and assess our true present state as God sees it. And when we know where we really are, and what we need, we turn to God, and He continues to train and equip us to spot the enemy and what he is trying to do to us, through whatever is around us. This is how disciples can respond to and rout the Serpent and his wiles.
So, here’s the critical question: do we actually stay in close touch and interact with God’s Holy Spirit? Do we REALLY want to hear and see the Truth contained in God’s living and written Word? Is our Teacher really free to reveal Yeshua… to us, in us and through us? Or, are we still as radically independent as we naturally were from our birth? We were born and raised in the God-less ‘Egyptian Section’ of this fallen world! So the question is, will we completely finish our Exodus? Will the cross we take up really free us completely from our original starting point? What do our paradigms, viewpoints and perceptions reveal about the present state of our hearts in relation to God and His Self-Revelation? Who and what are the prominent factors in our mental pictures? Is God really The Center of our mind, will, heart and affections, or is a deep, outrageous confidence and joyful awareness of Him still absent within us?
We need to learn the ever-relevant lessons of the Exodus. We must be honest with ourselves and identify the exact position we truly occupy within the panorama of that story. Of all the people mentioned in the Exodus account, which of them do we actually resemble? Who’s legacy are we carrying forward into our own time and generation? Do any of us know God more deeply and accurately than the majority of that first Exodus generation of Israelites did? Are we like those who complained so bitterly and took Moses to task for leading them into that barrenness? And if there are people among us who are more like Joshua and Caleb, what is it that makes them different? What signs, characteristics and clues do they give that let us know they are growing to be true disciples of God’s living and written Word? How does each one of us react as we face our modern day pharaohs, and deadly enemies and persecutors and impossible situations that always surround us? What are we reflecting back into our surroundings? Do we embody the circumstances, or do we serve as the image and likeness of the Lord of all circumstances?
Hebrews 3:7-15
‘Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, and saw My works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with this generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, and they did not know My ways’; as I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My Rest.’
“Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, while it is said, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.’”
No generation of fallen humans differs from the people we read about in the Bible. The viewpoints, priorities and feelings the Israelites entertained in that barren wilderness when the Pharaoh’s chariots were bearing down on them, are identical to ours and the rest of our generation. It doesn’t matter if we’re Jewish or non-Jewish, or Christian or non-Christian, or black, yellow, red, brown or white-skinned, or African or Asian, Middle Eastern, European or South or North American. What that first Exodus generation was… so are we. We too have Korahs, Dathans and Abirams in our midst. And there are also people like Moses, Aaron, Miriam, Joshua and Caleb, and people like the pharaoh and his false prophets and priests and empty idols among us as well. And each of us gets to choose who and what we will become.
In every locale and era, fallen human flesh behaves the same. When we see our realities through the same natural, worldly, paradigm lenses that most of those poor first generation Israelites used we cave in under the pressures and the fear we experience paralyzes us. Many of us share the rebellious, unbelieving attitude of Korah, Dathan and Abiram against God’s living Word as revealed through Moses. And there are many who share the viewpoint, attitudes and idol worship of the pharaoh and his court. The fallen world holds the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in contempt. They despise those who have carried forward the place of Moses and Aaron in this generation. And they continue to try to exterminate the Chosen People with whom Almighty God made an eternal Covenant. But God intends to develop the Last Days disciples into a Holy Nation that will carry on the legacies of Joshua and Caleb, and take them further – all the way to total Completion and Fulfillment! Will you join them? Will you finish the Exodus with them?
Numbers 14:24-25
“…But My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the Land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it.” (Emphasis added.)
Joshua 1:5-7
“(Joshua) No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land, which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous; be careful to do according to all the Law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Combat Ready
Be forewarned: in order to finish your journey, you will face deadly combat! So follow your Commander’s orders! The real struggle will first take place within your own heart and soul and will. Each person who followed Moses out of Egypt had some kind of idea in his or her mind of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Like you, they too had inherited ideas from their families and enhanced them with what people around them had been saying about Him as they were growing up. Hearsay and what they had personally experienced and imagined up to that present hour, convinced that generation that there was no hope, that the god they had fashioned in their minds could do nothing to help them; so they were convinced that they were about to die. Therefore, I remind you once more of what we’ve discussed elsewhere: The ideas you entertain in your mind about God, are not even close to being equal to the true, LIVING GOD, as He really is! Do you understand this? Your idea of God is not GOD! So this is a critical issue that the Torah and the rest of the Scriptures continually bring to our attention.
We must be in continuous, dependent communion with the living God Himself if we’re really going to be able to know Him in a way that begins to approximate the Standards and Workings of His true Nature. Abiding with Him, through His Word and Spirit on a continuous basis, equips us to begin to see the same earthly things that are around us, in brand new ways, Heavenly ways. And the result of that will be that all of the earth-originated mental structures we spent our previous years assembling and constructing will, at times, explode and crash to the earth in shambles. At other times, they will slowly disintegrate and crumble and collapse progressively. But either way, we will undergo a series of massive ‘paradigm shifts.’ And we will experience an array of gut wrenching emotions, starting with terror… leading to disillusionment, discouragement and desolation.
2 Corinthians 3:18
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” (Emphasis added.)
Originally the revelations we receive of God, start out as fresh new, living events over which we had no control. But after a while, our fallen minds and imaginations begin to gnaw and work on them… adding, subtracting, and changing them. Our fallen Sin-corrupted flesh nature adds its own contaminating ingredients. And once we and others add their ‘earthly ingredients’ to God’s revelation, the living revelations begin to petrify and become dead rigid things within us… to which we insist on clinging. In that sense, they become false gods. So, periodically, the True God has to destroy them and free us of their tyranny. And that is gut wrenching and intensely painful to us. When it happens, the flesh within us begins to experience a sense of horror, devastation and shock… but then, in His mercy, God gives us a fresh new revelation of Himself which sets us free once again! And then the cycle begins anew. At first, we feel a sense of awe and newness… and that is followed by feelings of overwhelming relief … peace, rest… and inexpressible joy… and so it goes.
The cycle is repeated many times throughout a lifetime. Then, eventually, we are finally able to see that God abides at a level that is far removed from and transcendent to, us, and everything we see, hear, do or think. None of our earthly, created, mental products that originate in us, can create or direct or change or erase the true Living God.
Isaiah 55:6-9
“Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.
“‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts!” (Emphasis added.)
He is Almighty God, the Totally Other… forever. He never changes. Nothing that creatures do or fail to do can oppose or stop Him from being and doing what He is. And when we know Him as He truly is, there will be nothing left on our menu of options, but freedom from self and rejoicing and singing and dancing. When we know that our awesome, Perfect, Majestic, Omnipotent God is with us and for us, we’ll never have cause to doubt or fret about anything, ever again! And this is what God wanted those Israelites to learn and enjoy with Him, even amid the rigors and dangers of the wilderness.
So here is some Truth with which disciples will have to become very familiar: God’s thoughts, perspectives, purposes and ways are not at all on the same level as our thoughts, perspectives, purposes and ways. He is infinitely above and beyond us in viewpoint, activity and capability. Nothing in creation can stop, harm, or divert the progression of His Eternal Plan. God’s Nature, Presence and Purposes do not depend in any way or on any level, on any of His created angelic or human beings. God, in His Being and Nature and Activity does not depend on, nor is He derived from, nor can He be changed by, the acts, viewpoints, situations, thought patterns or intellectual or sensory faculties of any of His creations. Thus, we do not create the true, living God with our imaginations or mental constructs or sensations, feelings or impressions. What He is, in Himself, does not in any way or level depend on what is in us or what we think or assume or anything that comes out of us. God is completely transcendent, totally ‘Other.’ He does not flow out of any other being; all other beings flow out of Him. So, clearly, our idea of God is not the True Living God. And that beloved, is cause for great joy, peace and rest!
When we finally know our God’s Eternal Perfection, with accurate precision and authentic wisdom… and realize the meaning and completeness and the impact of what He has already accomplished through His Perfect Finished Works of Creation and Redemption, then all the people and issues and circumstances we once dreaded and held in awe, fade and disappear from our sphere of consideration. All that is created and temporal will decrease… but the Glory of God in His Eternal, Changeless Perfection, will increase, until He is ALL that remains, in all created things:
Isaiah 1:2-3
“Listen, O Heavens, and hear, O Earth; for the Lord speaks, ‘Sons I have reared and brought up, but they have revolted against Me. An ox knows its owner, and a donkey its master’s manger, but Israel does not know, My people do not understand…’”
Isaiah 2:12-22
“For the Lord of hosts will have a day of reckoning against everyone who is proud and lofty and against everyone who is lifted up, that he may be abased. And it will be against all the cedars of Lebanon that are lofty and lifted up, against all the oaks of Bashan, against all the lofty mountains, against all the hills that are lifted up, against every high tower against every fortified wall, against all the ships of Tarshish and against all the beautiful craft. 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.)
When the real, living God intervenes in our lives, we will finally begin to see Truth and Reality as they really are. He lets us know experientially some of His awesome Authority, Majesty and overwhelming Power, and the endless Perfection and All-Sufficiency of what He has provided for us as our Inheritance. And that will set us free from all former demonic deceptions, delusions, misconceptions and misunderstandings. The false gods we once clung to and held dear will crumble to dust, and the dust will blow away from us.
Exodus 14:10-14
“But Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear! Stand by and see the Salvation (Yeshua) of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again forever. The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent.’”
Exodus 14:26-31
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may come back over the Egyptians, over their chariots and their horsemen.’ So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal state at daybreak, while the Egyptians were fleeing right into it; then the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen, even Pharaoh’s entire army that had gone into the sea after them; not even one of them remained. But the sons of Israel walked on dry land through the midst of the sea, and the waters were like a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.
“Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. When Israel saw the great Power which the Lord had used against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in His servant Moses (instead of fearing worldly created people and circumstances that they previously exalted in their worldly perceptions and thinking).” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Owning Our Inheritance in Yeshua
For forty years, that generation of Israelites saw God, working and fighting on their behalf, and providing for their every need! Nevertheless, they quickly forgot all that they had seen Him do, and they kept going back to their old ways and patterns. They hadn’t accepted and ‘put on’ and ‘owned’ the new Heavenly Identity and Citizenship God had bestowed upon His Covenant Family. They couldn’t see and think of themselves as sons and heirs and priests of Almighty God! In their hearts and eyes, they remained slaves – beaten, disenfranchised, abandoned, isolated, and hopeless.
In that state, they couldn’t stand before God as His sons and Covenant friends and intercede before Him on behalf of the people of this world. They couldn’t see through the Serpent’s demonic lies, so they remained victims to his traps and deceptions. And because they refused to accept, own and identify with the Covenant Treasure that was theirs, their new Identity, Inheritance, Purpose and Destiny in the Land of Promise remained closed off to them and they couldn’t use or enjoy any of their Heavenly Father’s Bounty. And when we regard them, we see ourselves… and our desperate need for God’s living Word, Yeshua, to cover us and lead us out of the Darkness!
Disciples are not to believe or put any expectation on anything created! God’s Word and Holy Spirit are here to bring us into a new, God-imparted Wisdom and Awareness that nothing created can impart! God commands us to stop obsessing over such puny things, and to look to Him, and know Him and believe what He has revealed, and draw from what He has already done and given to us… and do as He commands. And if we do that, He assures us that He will keep us safe and provide for us completely:
Habakkuk 2:3-5a
“For the vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it, for it will certainly come, it will not delay. Behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him; but the righteous will live by his faith (in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and what is contained in, and done by, His Word). Furthermore, wine betrays the haughty man, so that he does not stay at home. He enlarges his appetite like Sheol, and he is like death, never satisfied.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Hebrews 10:37-39
“For yet in a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay. But My righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.” (
Philippians 4:4-7
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And (if you do this) the Peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
When we can finally know God as He really is, and abide in the Truth of all that His Word has revealed and fulfilled, we get in touch with our God-given Reality, and can remain deeply rooted in the Eternal Covenant Ground of who and what we really are in our Messiah… and what His Father created, commissioned and intends for us to be as a result of the Perfection of His Finished Work on our behalf:
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; 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.’” (Emphasis added.)
“For this is contained in Scripture: ‘Behold, I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious corner stone, and he who believes in Him (the living Word of God made flesh) will not be disappointed.’ This precious value, then, is for you who believe; but for those who disbelieve, ‘the stone which the builders rejected, this became the very Corner Stone,’ and, ‘A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense’; for they stumble because they are disobedient to the Word, and to this doom they were also appointed.
1 Peter 2:6-10
“But you (believing New Covenant Jewish and non-Jewish disciples) are a chosen race, a Royal Priesthood, a Holy Nation, a People for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of Darkness into His marvelous Light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Ignorant? Or Informed? It’s a Choice.
When we remain ignorant of God’s complete Scriptural revelation, our views and understanding of Reality remain seriously skewed and delusional. We have only partial, grossly inadequate knowledge of what is vitally essential. Partial knowledge cripples us and prevents us from being able to see and experience the fullness of what God has actually created. Partial knowledge stops us dead in our tracks and gives openings by which our enemies can wound and cripple us and rob us of the opportunity to know anything with accuracy and precision, as it really is.
For example, imagine what it would be like if I wanted to introduce you to another person that you have never seen. I praise this person to the skies. And, after telling you how wonderful the person is, I promise to bring that person to your home. But when the time for the meeting arrives, I appear at your door and apologize, saying: “I’m sorry but so and so was unable to come. So I did the next best thing.”
Then I lead you to a table, and proceed to take some of that person’s body parts out of a sack and place them on that table… one eye, an ear, a left arm without the hand, two teeth, a spleen and a liver! Then I say: “Do you see what I mean about how great and wonderful this person is? Isn’t this the greatest person you ever saw?”
Even if the body parts were genuinely derived from the person in question would that scanty portion of the full reality of what the person is and represents, be able to satisfy you? Would it fill the need to know that person? Could you operate in Truth… and have an accurate knowledge of the person I was trying to introduce to you? Or rather, would that grossly distort the Truth and make it impossible for you to know what I was trying to show you?
If you can know the whole person as he or she really is, you see the entire, intact person and are thus delivered from fatal gaps and grossly incomplete information. Otherwise, you would be led into misapprehension, false assumptions and delusionary half-truths that would naturally skew and distort the actual Truth beyond recognition. And that is similar to what Biblical illiteracy and disconnection from God’s Holy Spirit do to us. The fallen world, even when it tries to speak of our God, can only place a few random bits and pieces of what they have gathered before us on the table. But their views are not to be believed or followed. They do not receive God’s Wisdom from the Holy Spirit! So their partial perceptions, derived from their own imaginations, are earthy created things.
No Substitute for God’s Presence
Those who believe what they say are then led into deadly spiritual and mental traps and crippling handicaps. Even if you do know some of the written Word, that little bit of soulish knowledge can easily become like having just a few parts and pieces of the real person. If you actually do have a few body parts of that mystery person lying before you on a table, that is not enough information! It forces your fallen, Sin-corrupted imagination to try to fill in the gaps left by that partial knowledge. So you will naturally, automatically, begin to put in homemade fillers that your imagination creates about what the person’s whole body, mind and personality are really like! With only homemade substitute ‘fillers’ to go by, you’d end up with something false, unreal and misleading, compared to the actual reality of the true living person in question!
There is no substitute for the real person’s living, active presence! And God’s Presence is imparted to us, not by anything we, or our faculties can supply; God’s True Presence can only be imparted to us by His own Word and Holy Spirit! The Spirit makes God’s Word real, alive, authentically accurate and enormously Fruitful within us. And there can be no substitute for this. God Himself, just as He is, must be free to abide and work in us. He must fill our many blanks with His Reality! And this is what the New Covenant promises to make real in us and fulfill in this world, through us. God’s Word must increase within us… and everything else must decrease!
That first Israelite Exodus generation wasn’t able to serve as God’s true image and likeness. They didn’t absorb all the revelation they were given. So they couldn’t know and understand the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as He really is. They had ‘bits and pieces’ but not the entire picture of His Greatness, Credibility, Goodness, Integrity and infinite Reliability. So they remained fearful, stunted, timid and filled with doubts and fears. But God continues to reach out to every generation and summons them to follow Him into this same Exodus. Through the example of those original Israelites, He wants to show us what will happen if we make the same blunders and fail to embrace and become one with His living Word and Holy Spirit that He sends to us all. And through the other prophets of Israel, God continues to reveal and explain and amplify Israel’s experiential knowledge and understanding of His living Word throughout the Tanach (Hebrew Scriptures). He continues to send His Living Torah, Yeshua, to the world, and He sends His Spirit to abide in Israel’s midst, so that all of mankind can believe and obey His Word, as recorded by our Messiah’s New Covenant apostles, and be fully restored.
Isaiah 66:1-5
“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!’
“But he who kills an ox (in mere formal, religious ritualistic acts of worship) is like one who slays a man; he who sacrifices a lamb (but who holds My Word in contempt) is like the one who breaks a dog’s neck; he who offers a grain offering (without heartfelt sincere love and obedience to My Word) is like one who offers swine’s blood; he who burns incense (externally, but in his heart holds My Word in contempt) is like the one who blesses an idol.
“As they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations, so I will choose their punishments and will bring on them what they dread. Because I called, but no one answered; I spoke, but they did not listen. And they did evil in My sight and chose that, in which I did not delight. Hear the Word of the Lord, you who tremble at His Word: ‘Your (Israelite) brothers who hate you, who exclude you for My Name’s sake, have said, ‘Let the Lord be glorified, that we may see your joy.’ But they will be put to shame!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
God is Perfection, and Perfection never changes. He always works according to His Perfect Righteousness and Truth. So we, who are imperfect, must change. We must allow God to redeem, realign and restore us, and the rest of His Sin-damaged Creation, to what He originally intended and created it to be. He allows us to falter and stumble, so we can learn what is true and what is false, and distinguish what is real from what is unreal. It is a painful, trying, grueling process, but it progressively leads us out of imperfection and draws us surely and securely, onto His Ground of Eternal Perfection.
Jeremiah 29:10-14
“For thus says the Lord, ‘When seventy years have been completed for (your exile in) Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good Word to you, to bring you back to this place (My Land of Promise). For I know the (unchanging) plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for (eternal) welfare and not for calamity to give you a (secure, eternal) future and a hope (that you will always be able to rely upon). Then (when you truly know Me and can trust Me) you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you (know enough to be able to) search for Me with ALL your heart. (and then) I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations (idol worshipping pagan gentiles) and from all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’ (Amplification and emphasis added.)
God does not ‘quit’ or ‘give up’ on His Sin-devastated Creation. He does not abandon his Sin-crippled humans. Instead, as a loving Father, He disciplines and corrects and restores His beloved ones. He is not a vengeful tyrant. He disciplines us to make us into ‘disciples of His Word’, in the hope that we will finally open our hearts to Him so that we can see and hear the Eternal Reality He desires to impart to us and reveal Himself to us, in us, and through us. God saw to it that His Self-Revelation was given to Israel, and through her, to the rest of the human race. He revealed His beloved Son, the Living Word, in human words that we can relate to and understand.
Although most of the Israelites struggled to grasp what God was telling them, there were always some who did manage to see the Truth and believe. And this Remnant memorizes the words God has spoken to us and absorb the Living Word they reveal. And they pass Him along to others, with awesome authenticity and precision, from generation to generation. And gradually, as God’s Life-giving Word is deeply etched and ‘branded’ into our heart of hearts… the Holy Spirit is able to preserve God’s Truth for us, generation after generation. The Word, living and working within us, thus becomes the Living Fulfillment of the Torah, and we become His earthly image and likeness. Those who hear, repent, and begin to obey God’s living and written Word in their heart of hearts are His True Israel:
“But the Lord (of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) is the True God; He is the Living God and the Everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure His indignation. Thus you shall say to them, ‘The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.’ It is He who made the Earth by His Power, Who established the world by His Wisdom; and by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens. When He utters His Voice (living Word), there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth; He makes lightning for the rain, and brings out the wind from His storehouses.
Jeremiah 10:10-16
“Every man is stupid, devoid of knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols; for his molten images are deceitful, and there is no breath in them. They are worthless, a work of mockery; in the time of their punishment they will perish. The portion of Jacob is not like these; for the Maker of all is He, and Israel is the Tribe of His Inheritance; The Lord of Hosts is His Name!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)