30. The Sons of Jacob

By this time, we should be able to see that Yeshua (Jesus) is being revealed throughout all of Genesis. He was, is, and always will be, the eternal creative Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And not only do you see Him revealed throughout events and lives of people mentioned in Genesis, you’ll also see Him in every other book of the Bible. Now perhaps the following words He spoke to some unbelieving first century fellow Jews will resonate at a much deeper level of your heart:

“Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:45-47 Emphasis added.)

“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to Him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM!’ Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.” (John 8:55-57 Emphasis added.)

Revelation of Yeshua begins in Genesis…not in Matthew

Despite what many moderns naively assume, revelation and knowledge concerning our Master do not start in Matthew when He appears as the newborn infant of the Jewish virgin, Miriam (Mary). God began revealing His living Word much earlier than that. He begins to reveal Him from the very beginning of Genesis! And He continued to reveal Him throughout the Hebrew Tanach (Old Testament). Once you see this, you’ll start finding Him in throughout the Bible and you’ll gain a much more authentic and realistically accurate understanding of the Master whose image and likeness you are commissioned to be. You will see He has already been revealed extensively, long before you get to the New Testament!

As you learn to glean the enormous depths of His revelation in Genesis, you’ll begin seeing Him throughout Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and the rest of the Tanach. And you’ll grasp what He was saying when He said, “Moses wrote about Me!” The added fullness of His revelation in the Torah will become a granite-solid foundation for your faith. And you’ll be much less prone to mistakenly create false divisions and distinctions between the two testaments of the Bible. The writings of the Israelite Wisdom writers, and of the prophets and of the apostolic writers of the New Testament, all build upon that foundation of the Torah. And they bring it forward to confirm, validate, explain and unfold that awesome, profound original foundational revelation contained throughout the five books of Moses.

Our Master is God’s living Word…who is at the heart of everything God does or says. God reveals Himself through and by His the living Word. When you realize that, you’ll see, for example, our Master Yeshua in action at Creation and right after Adam and Eve fell into Sin and were ‘beheaded’ by the Serpent’s lies. As soon as that happened, God spoke His Word to the Serpent. And that living Word is your risen Master. He is the one that delivered this promise from God to the Serpent:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman (Israel), and between your (decapitated) seed and her (submitted to God’s Word) Seed; He (God’s living Word) shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.” (Genesis 3:15 Amplification added.)

The living Word was foretelling His own eventual appearance as Yeshua (Jesus), the Lamb of God. And after He was finally born to Miriam thousands of years later, He fulfilled that Genesis 3:15 promise He had made to the Serpent in the Garden. He is ‘The Seed of the Woman.’ His promise notified the Serpent of what God had already done in eternity, in the Blood Covenant that God made with Himself even before Creation took place. The Word warned the Serpent that His eternal Reality would enter Earth’s space and time dimension and to confound anything he might try to do to destroy God’s Creation. The Word gave notice that He would one day take on our human nature and serve as our Champion and Kinsman Redeemer. With that announcement, the Serpent knew that his evil works were doomed…unless he could manage to kill the family line from which this awesome Seed would emerge.

Eternity revealed in Time and Space

After giving His promise, the Word of God covered Adam and Eve’s nakedness. Thus God’s Rescue Mission, that was already complete and perfectly done in His mind, will and heart in eternity, began to be revealed and unfolded by His Word, in our earthly space and time dimension.

After telling the Serpent what would appear in space and time, God’s Word began to manifest how His promises would be fulfilled. Our Master, God’s living Word, brought all of it forward…into the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the nation of Israel that would descend from them. So from Israel (The Woman), God’s living Word would appear and fulfill His promise, as Rabbi Yeshua of Nazareth, Israel’s Messiah. And that’s why He said the following to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well:

“You worship what you do not know; we (Jews) worship what we know, for salvation (Yeshua) is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit; and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:22-24 Amplification added.)

The Hebrew name God chose for His living Word as He became flesh was, ‘Yeshua,’ a derivative of Yehoshua (Joshua), which in Hebrew means, ‘God is Salvation.’ So every time a Hebrew speaker hears His name, the message of God’s ‘Salvation’ is linked to Him, again and again. From the beginning, God’s eternal Word, acting as God’s perfect human image and likeness, fulfilled God’s perfectly perfect standards in our name. In that sense, God called Him, ‘My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ (Matthew 17:5) The Word contained within Himself everything needed to save God’s beloved humans from their ‘Head-less’ state of living death and to restore them and every other bit of Creation to the original pristine state of perfection God intended for them.

The Word created Adam and Eve in a state of ‘image and likeness’ innocence. Their humanity was ‘born innocent’ and perfectly aligned with its Creator – God’s living Word. The Word created the universe and every creature within it out of nothingness. And from the moment His act of Creation began, He has been continuously sustaining and carrying forward the existence and activity of everything and everyone in the universe. He is the sole Source and Sustainer of it all. He continually imparts life and provision, protection and ability to every atom, molecule and function of Creation so that it can run its course and eventually fulfill its God-intended purpose.

So the creative, sustaining ‘Fire’ of God’s creative, sustaining Presence abides in every particle of all living and inanimate creation. God’s Word continues to sustain everything in the dimension of space and time. He is the underlying cause and basis by which everything in the time and space universe continues to exist and hold together and operate. If something exists and continues from moment to moment, it’s because the Word’s fiery loving presence permeates and abides within every atom and aspect of its being…giving it everything it needs to continue being and doing.

“For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.” (Psalm 139:13-14)

“…work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12b-13)

Because humans are born into Adam’s state of spiritual separation from God’s Word, they’re ‘decapitated’ or separated from His spiritual Reality. Thus they are not equipped to sense His spiritual presence or be aware of how close He is to them. Nevertheless, He is in everything that concerns them. He is always with all of us, even when we totally reject and ignore Him. Without Him, none of us would be able to exist even for a second! This is true for whatever God creates through His Word:

“The angel (Messenger-YHWH) of the Lord appeared to him (Moses) in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, ‘I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.’ When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then He said, ‘Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ He said also, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” (Exodus 3:2-7 Amplification and emphasis added.)

God’s living Word (Messenger-YHWH) appeared to Abraham at Mamre in human form (Genesis 18). But this time, He allowed Moses to see His fiery presence as it permeated one bush in the wilderness. But when we understand how dependent on Him everyone and everything in the universe is for existence and sustenance, we realize that everything that He creates and sustains is like that burning bush. The Fire of our Master’s presence is permeating and sustaining all things in that same way.

‘Watch me, now you’ – God’s Model for Discipleship

This is another reason why disciples must be trained to be experts in living in His presence. We are to know more than anyone how supremely in need of Him, we and everyone else, truly is. We are commissioned to demonstrate with our lives that He truly is ‘The Vine’ of God, and we truly are His branches and that without Him, we can be, have and do nothing. Disciples must be the foremost demonstrations of this Reality. We must focus on and abide in and radiate His awesome presence for the benefit of the people in the world who are still decapitated and unaware of how desperately they need Him for everything. Disciples must know Him and interact with Him and draw everything from Him in The Arena of Testimony…while the decapitated world sits and watches us become as ‘burning bushes’ in their sight.

When disciples are able to ‘dance with God’s living Word’ in the Arena of Testimony, they become like a brightly-lit city on a hill that gives off supernatural, eternal Light that penetrates and dispels the demonic Darkness that envelops decapitated people. Our Master chose us to demonstrate and prove that His risen presence abides and works from within us and circulates in our midst. This is the purpose of God’s Jewish and non-Jewish chosen people. The fiery presence of God’s creative Word permeates all life…but He does not consume or destroy our life. He is the Source of it! He imparts it to us. And from time to time, He even reveals Himself to decapitated humans, and manages to get their attention! That is how we were saved in the first place. We did not choose Him; He chose us. And so now, we have the privilege and honor of bearing His presence and releasing Him so that He can continue to reveal Himself to others and save them as well.

This is why disciples must be trained to be deeply aware of Him as He abides with us. We must remain focused on His abiding presence so that we can abide with Him in like manner. New Covenant disciples are a ‘Royal Priesthood,’ commissioned and equipped to abide in God’s Presence with our High Priest and Messiah, to attend to Almighty God’s wishes and commands. And as we do what we were created to do, we can draw everything we are and have and do, from God’s indwelling living Word, and demonstrate to the world what the words, ‘image and likeness of God’ really mean.

“Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.” (Colossians 3:2-4)

Disciples must know in their heart of hearts that their Master Yeshua is actually the eternal, living Word of the one and only living God. They must realize that The Eternal One is in them and with them and is ready to reveal Himself through them for the benefit of the still-unredeemed world. He is here with us. And He has come for them, to reach out to them and draw them to Himself (God is Salvation) through our yielded flesh!

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.” (John 1:1-3)

“For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16-18)

“Thus says the Lord, ‘Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? For My hand made all these things, thus all these things came into being,’ declares the Lord. ‘But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My Word.” (Isaiah 66:1-2 Emphases added.)

All of Creation Reveals the Son

So our Master is revealed throughout all of Scripture. And, at the same time, He is also being revealed throughout everything in Creation. Everything you see, hear, touch or sense in any way is before you because of Him. He is here…sustaining it and keeping it in existence. And it is His plan and desire for His chosen people, His personal disciples, to be living, moving human vessels of His living presence…a Word-revealing Body through which He, the Head, may be known and do the work that only He can do.

The plans our Creator-Sustainer has for His image and likeness human beings will not change. He is always at work to reconcile with them and regenerate and completely transform them from their Sin-blasted, Head-less state, into beautiful, new God-filled creations. He has never distanced Himself from any of us. If He had done that, we would have all ‘blinked off’ and disappeared!

He will never abandon us to the hate-filled powers of Darkness. His plan for His Creation is eternal. And no rebel angel or deluded human will ever succeed in derailing or thwarting or stopping God’s Word from bringing His Father’s plan to its full and perfect completion. The living Word relentlessly obeys His Father and His Father sent Him to be our Salvation:

“…the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” (John 5:19)

“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” (Genesis 3:8-9)

Adam and Eve deliberately created spiritual, mental and emotional separation between themselves and God’s Word. Like the Serpent, they too manufactured a false, radically independent ‘self-life’ of their own that they tried to control and manage apart from their Creator. But the rest of us had no choice. We inherited that separation and were born into its living death. Nevertheless, God continually maintains physical contact with all of us. God never stops His Word from creating and sustaining and supplying us. He remains faithful to the righteous as well as to the unrighteous. The invisible spiritual Fire of the Word’s presence permeates everything in the universe and continues to supply and bless us with as much as our living death and disobedience will allow. So there is no real separation between the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘physical.’ The physical comes out of God’s spiritual Word. God’s spiritual Word sustains the physical world at all times. And at various times He penetrates our delusions and makes personal contact, even when we’re dead in Sin. He did this for Adam and Eve when they tried to hide from Him. And He comes after every decapitated human and seeks to break through all their barriers to pose that same, “Where are you?” question and await their response.

“He said to them, ‘but who do you say that I am?’ And Peter answered and said, ‘The Christ of God.’” (Luke 9:20)

We must know and understand – He is Here, really!

God’s living Word is nearer and more involved with us than we are with ourselves! But in our disconnected state we are not equipped to realize it. So we ignore His nearness and are unaware of our desperate need for Him. We remain like that except when we’re in deep trouble and on the brink of destruction. Then we admit our desperate need. Then we cry out with our whole heart and soul for salvation. And God’s Word immediately responds:

“But you, Israel, My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, descendant of Abraham My friend, you whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called from its remotest parts and said to you, ‘You are My servant, I have chosen you and not rejected you. Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand (living Word).” (Isaiah 41:8-10 Emphasis added.)

“Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me.” (Isaiah 49:15-16)

Out of His eternal Covenant Love, God commissions His Son to train His disciples to overcome the death-dealing lies of the Serpent and make our Exodus out of the Darkness of Sin and radical independence and all of their lethal effects. When we decide to come out of hiding with our hands up, and are ready to interact with God on His terms, He empowers us to ‘cross over’ from Death and imparts His eternal Life to us. And from that moment forward, He summons us to follow Him into His eternal Well Being. And if we do that, He transforms us into His own image and likeness and displays us to the rest of the world!

“For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust. As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and its place acknowledges it no longer.” (Psalm 103:14-16)

“Therefore it says, ‘When He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, And He gave gifts to men.” (Ephesians 4:8)

Throughout history, people and groups of people, governments, and religions and philosophies and political movements and domineering, military-backed empires come and go. They sweep over the Earth like enormous waves…then they recede, fade and disappear, only to be replaced by others. But amid what can be shaken, God remains unshakable and eternal His Word, Spirit and Plan abide and prevail forever.

When we first become aware of God’s Word the sin nature in us makes us recoil instinctively and we resist Him. But He keeps coming back, until He can pierce the hard outer shell of our self-life rebellion. Then He penetrates and impregnates us with His Life-giving, freedom-producing Truth that brings the dead to life.

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.” (John 12:23-26)

This is the issue God’s Word keeps bringing forward to Jew and Gentile alike. He offered His Salvation to Adam, Eve, and then Cain, Abel and Noah…then He brought it forward to Abram and Isaac. And now we see Him do it for Jacob…and his self-seeking, strife-ridden family. Jacob’s children not only inherited the self-life genes of Jacob, but they also inherited those of Laban and the two formerly pagan concubines of Jacob’s wives. That combination, in the natural realm, contained the Serpent-spawned seeds of its own destruction. So had it not been for God’s faithfulness to His Covenant promises, Israel would have perished and disappeared long ago. But by God’s grace, she remains strong and vibrant to this day.

The Torah reveals what Jacob’s family did after his death. In the days that followed, his descendants continued to be stubborn and stiff-necked. And very often they rejected God’s living Word. And many are still doing it to this day. So if there is ever to be a full reconciliation between the human race and its Creator, if Salvation will ever come to Israel and the pagan world through such an ill-equipped family as this…it will have to be due entirely to the sovereign work of Almighty God. The children of Jacob, as well as all the rest of us, are children born into Adam’s disobedience. Keep this in mind, as you read the love story of God’s living Word and the Sin-corrupted humans mentioned in Scripture. Only the Source of Life can right the wrongs and raise the dead and make the story turn out right. And God is doing it…in and through and by His living Word, our Master.

Throughout Genesis and the rest of Scripture, this is what is revealed. God chose the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as His instrument. He included them in His eternal Blood Covenant. There are relatively few people mentioned in the Bible, compared to the masses that actually existed in those days. But the few that are mentioned serve to demonstrate how God’s Truth will play out in every other human life, regardless of circumstances, or ethnic origins, race, color, culture, status or religion. All human endeavors and circumstance are corrupted by our corporate living Death. We are all in need of the Salvation that only comes from and through God’s Word made flesh.

Repentance is a Life or Death Choice

Since we can’t save or change ourselves, the question is, will we repent of what we are and respond positively to God’s Word when He comes looking for us? Will we finally look to Life Himself to bring us back into conformity and synchronization with God’s original Plan and Purpose? What happens to us throughout all of eternity will depend on how we respond to His initiatives now!

As we see this issue play out with Jacob and his strife-ridden family, it becomes clear that the fulfillment of God’s plan could never depend on the performance of the likes of them, or any of the rest of us. It depends entirely on how we respond to God’s freely given Salvation, as given through His Word. The question is: will we honor our Covenant relationship with God, as made possible for us by His Word, or will we resist and pull away from our Representative Head, just as the rest of the world continues to do?

God reveals His Word and what He is and means through certain believing, obeying people. He also reveals what His Word is not through the lives of those who rebel and disobey Him. Together, this two-pronged revelation provides a full, balanced revelation of God, His Word, and His standards of righteousness. And we see that God’s Word is always at work in the lives of the Remnant of His Chosen People, whether it is explicitly revealed in Scripture or not. Just as the Word of God always silently sustains the existence of every molecule of every creature, so does He sustain His chosen Remnant disciples and their families scattered throughout the nations, regions and continents across the globe. He is the Creator and Sustainer of every planet, solar system, star and galaxy across the universe. God is Supreme over every level of Creation. His living Word faithfully sustains all of it from moment to moment. And His disciples demonstrate that Truth through their thoughts, choices, actions, reactions and interactions in daily life.

This is true whether it is mentioned or omitted by men. Even when they deny it or fail to notice it, this underlying reality is present. It was always present in the lives, trials, tribulations and circumstances of Abraham’s Family and Israel and the rest of the world. Our eventual fate will depend on whether or not we chose to live and abide by God’s Truth…the Truth given and sustained by His Word. It will not depend on what world governments decide to do or not do. It won’t depend on our circumstances or feelings or limited perceptions. Everything will ultimately depend on God and what He ordained His Creation to be. His Word will bring it all to pass. But we get to decide whether or not the Word will be our Head and Lord, or whether we will try to make our own way without Him.

So from Abraham on, the living Word of God was present – actively creating, sustaining, maintaining and protecting the future Israelite matrix from which He would one day emerge. He made sure that the ‘womb’ from which He was destined by His Father to appear one day would survive and be able to fulfill its Messiah-revealing purpose. From the Woman, Israel, the Seed has come forth. God has revealed His living Word made flesh, His ‘Son’ – Yeshua of Nazareth, the Son of Man, the crucified Lamb of God, and Supreme risen King and Lord of all Creation.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son (His living creative Word), that whoever believes in Him (and what He was sent to be and do for us) shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” (John 3:16-21 Amplification and emphasis added.)

So Jacob, His two wives, two concubines, and the half-siblings they produced moved away from Laban the Aramean, made their peace with Esau, and went into the Land of Canaan that God had promised to give to their descendants; they settled there, in Shechem, and later Bethel.

“Then God said to Jacob, ‘Arise, go up to Bethel and live there, and make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.’ So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, ‘Put away the foreign gods which are among you, and purify yourselves and change your garments; and let us arise and go up to Bethel, and I will make an altar there to God, who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.’ So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods which they had and the rings which were in their ears and Jacob hid them under the oak which was near Shechem.” (Genesis 35:1-4)

Beware subtle, lingering idolatry

Notice how patient the Lord had to be with His stiff-necked people. Even after all God had done for them and meant to them, Jacob’s family kept idols, just in case. They worshipped false gods within their hearts to try to make sure they ‘covered all the possibilities.’ Notice how slow they were to learn to fear God and walk in His ways. Notice how double-minded and hesitant they were to make a full commitment to the one God of Abraham. He protected and delivered them from the clutches of the idol worshipper, Laban. He miraculously changed Esau’s decapitated heart and saw to it that no harm came to them. God took it upon Himself to walk them through every step of their Exodus because He is eternal lovingkindness, grace and mercy. Notice how God continually protected and sustained and supplied them. By that fact, He was revealing Himself to the unbelieving pagans around them and to every generation of succeeding human history:

“As they journeyed, there was a great terror upon the cities which were around them, and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. So Jacob came to Luz (that is, Bethel), which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him. He built an altar there, and called the place El-bethel, because there God had revealed Himself to him when he fled from his brother. Now Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died, and she was buried below Bethel under the oak; it was named Allon-bacuth.

“Then God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Paddan-aram, and He blessed him. God said to him, ‘Your name is Jacob; you shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.’

“Thus He called him Israel. God also said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come forth from you. The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give it to you, and I will give the land to your descendants after you.” (Genesis 35:5-12)

God brought the Original Blessing forward and bestowed it on Jacob and his family. From the beginning, God knew everything that would happen. He knew Adam would fall. He knew what Sin would do to us and what we would become as a result of it. He knew all the limitations and liabilities and inabilities we would inherit. Nevertheless, He blessed Adam and Eve and commissioned them once more to be fruitful and to multiply and administrate and rule over the Earth. And He kept that ‘job description’ and brought it forward to bestow on Abraham, Isaac and now – on Jacob and his very imperfect family. God is ever-faithful to them.

Nothing that happens will surprise or dismay Him. He already has all of that factored into His plans. So the Word brings what He is – Salvation – forward to each generation…to give Himself to us so that He can lead us all across the Finish Line that will lead us into eternity and beyond. May His Name be forever praised and loved!