Genesis 32:24-28
Then Jacob was left alone, and a Man wrestled with him until daybreak. When He (God’s Living Word) saw that He had not prevailed against him, He touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with Him. Then He said, ‘Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.’ But he said, ‘I will not let You go, unless You bless me.’ So He said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ He said, ‘Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and (since I revealed Myself to you, as I really AM, I have set you free from striving. So now, you) have prevailed.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
God’s Living Word was not only speaking to Jacob in this mysterious passage, but also to all of his descendants! Through them, God reveals more of Himself and His ways to the whole world. And He’s also revealing more about Israel’s future, and that of the human race… from God’s viewpoint! The human race insists that it is ‘good’ and has a ‘Divine Spark’ within it. But did you notice how, after Adam and Eve fell into Sin, Cain, their first born, was filled with rage and envy and murdered his own younger brother? And did you notice how the wickedness of the human race prompted God to remove them by the flood, before they completely destroyed each other, and the world, and His Plan to Restore all of His Creation? Even Jacob’s eleven sons, the patriarchs of the nation of Israel, wrestled with, and resisted, God’s Living Word as He revealed Himself to them through Joseph! And thereafter they revealed their fallen flesh in a variety of ways. Do you remember that?
So, it should be no surprise to us when, throughout their forty years in the wilderness, and the centuries that followed, most of the Jacob’s descendants continually wrestled with God’s Living word as well! So beloved, doesn’t that tell us that God sends His Living Word to us… to save us from ourselves? According to worldly standards, we should assume that Israel, who was so favored and blessed by God, should have had a enormous advantage and edge over the rest of the world in spiritual matters. But remember what God told Isaiah to write concerning His chosen people:
Isaiah 6:8-13
“Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” He said, “Go, and tell this people (Israel), ‘Keep on listening, but do not perceive; keep on looking, but do not understand.’ Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed!’
“Then I said, ‘Lord, how long?” And He answered, ‘Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant, houses are without people and the land is utterly desolate, the Lord has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
Yet there will be a tenth portion in it, and it will again be subject to burning, like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains when it is felled. The Holy Seed (that will emerge from among My people) is its Stump!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
God inspired Isaiah to warn Israel that He would wear down the entire ‘tree’ of their resistance, until only a ‘stump’ remained. So God’s own Holy Seed, His Living Word, will be the last human being left standing, when the ‘smoke’ of human history dissipates. He is the one and only human being who will be found to be blameless before God. And He is the one that will set things right on behalf of us all, Jew and Gentile alike! The day is coming when everyone will see that God’s Word has all the authority and merit that exists. And He will touch the collective socket of the human race’s ‘thigh.’ And just as He did to Jacob, so will He do to Jacob’s descendants, and to the rest of the world. All are fallen children of Adam, and so all have death always at work within them. And so they will fail to change themselves by their own efforts and wits. And when all men have been exposed in the end, God will have the Last Word!
All human rebellion, regardless of the human in which it is found, will exhaust itself; but Messiah, The Stump that grows out of Israel’s Root, will succeed, on behalf of us all. He will redeem, save and restore all those who will repent and give up, like Jacob did! After that, we will all trust God’s Word to be and do, what to the rest of us, was impossible:
Isaiah 52:13-15
“Behold, My Servant (My Living Word) will prosper, He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted. Just as many were astonished at you, My people, (and the world keeps wrestling with you, just as you, My people, continue to wrestle with Him) so His appearance was marred more than any man and His form more than the sons of men. Thus He will sprinkle many nations, kings will shut their mouths on account of Him; for what had not been told them (as My Word has told it to you Israelites) they will see, and what they had not heard (and what you heard and rejected,) they will understand!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Scripture warned continually, that most of Jacob’s children would continue to struggle with, and resist, God’s Living Word until the New Covenant He promised to make with them would be completely fulfilled. And through the children of Jacob, God is exposing all of human nature, and all the rest of mankind. He reveals, in unmistakable terms, the corporate rebellion against God’s Word that lurks and strives from within the depths of the heart of every child of Adam. God must expose and deal with Adam’s rebellious flesh, that we all inherited. Every trace of that self-life must be broken, crucified and rendered helpless, within us all. Otherwise, the root of Sin remains active within us and we can’t be restored to our image and likeness of God essence!
Matthew 15:18-20
“… The things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man…”
Ponder the relationship Abraham’s family had with God throughout Genesis. At that time, only His Living Word interacted with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. God’s written Word, which we know as ‘The Bible’ did not yet exist! They didn’t have the advantage and blessing of the written Torah and the rest of the Scriptures, to which we can now so easily refer, in order to keep our minds and hearts aligned with the mind and will of our Creator. Nor did they have the luxury of hindsight that all post-Torah generations have. And they weren’t bogged down and confused by the innumerable, more or less organized, religious systems spawned by Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism etc. etc. that abound today. That huge man-created ‘Buffet’ of confusion didn’t come into being until centuries after the fathers had passed from this world.
Disciples Are Known by Their Fruit
But their remarkable relationship with God’s Living Word continues to produce wonderful Fruit, even now! Their original, intimately personal, electrifying, Fruit-producing relationship with the Word is the awesome Life-giving Root from which, tragically, much of the modern world remains severed! And even after many become reattached to the Word spiritually, they still remain severed from Him in their minds, hearts, wills and lifestyles. That is why, in comparison to the fathers, such people bear very little fruit for God’s Glory, and their own good.
So here are some questions to ponder: How did the fathers of our Faith get by without all the books and ‘meetings’ and Bible study materials and organized human control tactics that abound today? How could they do without all the competing man-controlled denominational structures and all those ‘professional spiritual leaders’ and gurus that so many idolize today? They needed none of that! Yet their interactions with God were incredibly alive, dynamic and amazingly productive in terms of eternal Heavenly results! They knew God in ways that most people today can’t even imagine! So what did they do? To whom did they turn? Who taught and trained them to know the ways of the Living God? It was God Himself who did it. Nothing created, that was only something ‘about’ God, got in between them and their Creator! They had direct, personal knowledge of and interaction with, Almighty God HIMSELF!
The answer to the questions above is simplicity itself: They only had one option! They had to depend exclusively on the Living God to speak His Living Word into them! God created and maintains and supplies and fulfills everything for every one of His creatures. He does it through His Living Word! He speaks… and through His Word, He reveals Himself and His ways, and interacts and deals with all of His Creation! He does everything through His Word! And the Word is what Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had. And, obviously, He was all they needed! So why is our generation, despite its multitude of religious groups and organized religious machines, so separated from Him?
The Word always took the initiative to connect with the fathers, to teach, train, correct, discipline and lead them through their Exodus out of this world’s system. They had to learn to follow and abide with Him, just as He Himself always abides with and follows His Father! Nothing created took His place in their daily experiences, or stood between them and Almighty God! God’s Uncreated Word was the Precedent and Connecting Link and Template for their Faith. He was the only ‘Way’, the only ‘Truth’, and the only ‘Life’ for them. He was the only one they knew. So it was for Him that they learned to wait and Him that they began to obey. And, by knowing Him, they knew the Father that sent Him to them, as well! That union and what God was able to impart to them through it, bore enormous Fruit!
God revealed this to Moses and instructed Him to write it in the Torah for the whole nation of Israel, and through her… for the rest of the world:
Deuteronomy 18:13-19
“You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. For those nations, which you shall dispossess, listen to those who practice witchcraft and to diviners, but as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do so. The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to (follow and obey) Him! This is according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice (this terrifying appearance of God’s Word) of the Lord my God, let me not see this (stupendous, overwhelming, terrifying appearance of) great Fire anymore, or I will die!’
“The Lord said to me (Moses), ‘They have spoken well. I will (send My Living Word to them in another form. At that time I will) raise (Him) up (as) a Prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in His mouth, and (just as My Word always does) He shall speak to them all that I command Him. (Then after that, if they still refuse to accept and embrace and submit to Him) It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words, which He (My Living Word) shall speak in My Name, I Myself will require it of him!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
A Promise Fulfilled
And true to His promise, God continued to reveal Himself to Israel through His Living Word. He sent Him to be as a Prophet of even greater stature than that of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses combined! The Word was born a descendant of King David. But He emerged in humble anonymity from among His chosen people. And just as God had warned through Moses and the prophets… most of Israel rejected Him! And to this day, they continue to resist and wrestle against this Holy Seed and against His New Covenant disciples. But, together with His true disciples, Messiah Yeshua is the Preeminent Israelite of all time! And He serves the human race as that awesome ‘Stump’ about whom Isaiah had prophesied. So consider this testimony that one of Yeshua’s disciples, who knew and lived with Yeshua, and with Peter, James and John, is giving in this awesome passage:
Matthew 17:1-8
“Six days later Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him. Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here (sukkot… the temporary shelters Israel uses during the Feast of Tabernacles), one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, ‘This is My beloved Son (My Living Word), with whom I am well-pleased; (so do what Moses commanded you to do and) listen to Him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground and were terrified. And Jesus came to them and touched them and said, ‘Get up, and do not be afraid.’ And lifting up their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus Himself (God’s Living Word) alone.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So, since the beginning, the Living Word was continually revealing Himself to Israel. And to this day, most people, Jew and non-Jew alike, continue to wrestle with and oppose Him… generation after generation. Even now that we are fast approaching the great Climax of the Last Days of God’s Love Story with the fallen human race, most people still will not allow God’s Living Word, Yeshua, to pierce them with His Truth. And this is why the disciples who do believe and step forward to serve Him are required to learn and demonstrate God’s New Covenant fulfillment of all the revelation, commands and promises God has given to the world since the times that are recorded in Genesis! The Master of these disciples abides within them… to fulfill to Perfection everything He previously revealed, commanded and promised to the fathers of the Faith as recorded by Moses in the Torah:
John 14:1-7
“‘Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.’ Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” Jesus said to him, ‘I AM THE WAY, AND THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE! NO ONE COMES TO THE FATHER BUT THROUGH ME. IF YOU HAD KNOWN ME, YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN MY FATHER ALSO; FROM NOW ON YOU KNOW HIM, AND HAVE SEEN HIM! ’” (Emphasis added.)
Do you see what Yeshua is revealing? Even up to the moment of His suffering and death, His disciples still did not have a clear idea of who He really was and always will be! Thomas was the epitome of us all, an example for all time – of the Eve and Adam syndrome – that tendency we inherited… to wrestle and struggle against God’s Living Word, who challenges and warns us of our true fallen state of being. And the time is fast approaching when Father will re-establish the Absolute Supreme Authority of His beloved Son over all of Creation. So, He must be free to begin His Son’s Full Enthronement… in this generation… starting with us!
Psalm 110
“The Lord says to my Lord (His Living Word), ‘Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet!’ The Lord will stretch forth Your strong Scepter from Zion, saying, ‘Rule in the midst of Your enemies.’ YOUR PEOPLE will volunteer freely in the day of Your Power; in holy array, from the womb of the dawn, Your youth are to You as the dew. The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind; ‘You are a Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek!’
“The Lord is at Your right hand; He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath. He will judge among the nations, He will fill them with corpses; He will shatter the chief men over a broad country. He will drink from the brook by the wayside; therefore (the Father who speaks Him forth) He will lift up His head!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
During the years Messiah Yeshua spent with His first century disciples, He was continually teaching, training and correcting them. His Father had given Him a small window of opportunity during which He was to pierce, penetrate and impregnate them with His Eternal Truth and Reality. He had to prepare and equip them to introduce the era of God’s New Covenant with Israel, to the whole world. So even on the eve of His execution, He continued to do with them, what He had done in the beginning, with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! And, at first, they wrestled with Him too… just as their fathers had done. But, by the end of His stay on Earth, they were ready to receive the Gift of the Holy Spirit, who succeeded in making Yeshua’s Perfect Resurrection Presence, real and startlingly Alive… to them, in them, and through them. New Covenant disciples are equipped to demonstrate His Truth and Actual Presence to this fallen world. Now He can be real and personal and breathtakingly Alive for many people, simultaneously, all over the world! Finally God’s Truth can penetrate many hearts… Reality can ‘jackhammer’ its way through all of humanity’s mental and emotional ‘concrete’!
And something like that happened to Jacob on that fateful night when his wrestling with God’s Word finally came to an end. Suddenly the Word broke through the concrete-hard resistance in Jacob’s soul and all the Adamic rebellion drained out of him. Genesis likened his drive to wrestle with and oppose the Word’s full Authority, to the hip of a wrestler being suddenly pulled out of its natural socket. From that time forward, further wrestling is out of the question. And so when disciples of the Word are finally broken of that habit, they develop a ‘limp’ just like their spiritual father Jacob did. They finally realize that when you are in the grasp of His Living Word, you are in the grasp of Almighty God Himself!
Genesis 32:25
“When He (God’s Living Word) saw that He had not prevailed against him, He touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with Him.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
John 21:18-20
“‘(Peter) truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.’ Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He said to him, “Follow Me!”
Beloved, unless God’s Word is allowed to do this with us, we’ll have nothing to look to or depend upon that will be True and Substantial and Reliable! We will be left with the empty, desolation and Darkness of self-deifying demonic lies to trust and try to stand upon! But of course that will collapse under us! It is from that disaster that God sent His Word to save us! And each time someone finally embraces God’s Word and submits and embraces Him, on His terms, that person will have a very noticeable Jacob-like ‘Limp.’
A Living, Personal Relationship with Our King
The early fathers finally saw the Word’s Light; thus they repented of their rebellious ways, and stopped resisting. His Living Reality threw them to the ground, and they remained there, on their faces. And for the rest of their days, they submitted wholeheartedly to His Absolute Authority. Then He was able to interact with them at much deeper levels. So the way the fathers knew Him was living, intensely personal, electrifyingly loving, and Eternally Substantial!
Genesis 12:1-3
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed!”
God taught the fathers to trust Him with airtight faith… so they could obey Him with airtight faithfulness and determination, no matter what! And God intended to establish that level of relationship with their descendants, so that He could do the same… with all other peoples! Beloved, as soon as we are reconciled to God’s Word, He will bless us and abide in us and be as one with us, just as He was with the fathers! That’s what He came to fulfill through His first century New Covenant Israelite disciples! But despite the fact that God created all men for Himself… and despite the awesome Mercy, Compassion and redemptive Love the Word continually poured upon His chosen ones… most of Yeshua’s fellow Israelites insisted on rejecting and ignoring Him when He appeared among them. And to this day, many of them reverse God’s Exodus and choose to turn away from Him and return to Egypt:
John 8:52-59
“The (Judean) Jews (who rejected God’s Living Word the way Eve and Adam had done in Eden) said to Him (Yeshua), ‘Now we know that You have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets also; and You say, ‘If anyone keeps My Word, he will never (decapitate himself from Me and) taste of Death.’ Surely You are not greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets died too; whom do You make Yourself out to be?”
“Jesus answered, ‘If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My Father who Glorifies Me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God’; and you have not come to know Him, but I know Him; and if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you, but I do know Him and keep (obey and fulfill) His Word (as revealed to your fathers and also to you, in your own Torah). 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.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Throughout his earlier years, while Jacob strove and competed against his brother Esau for God’s Blessing and the position of spiritual eldership in Isaac’s family, and all the years that he strove with his uncle Laban, this human dichotomy was active in his soul: he truly wanted to know God, but he couldn’t stop struggling and wrestling for personal supremacy. That’s what we all do, beloved! God made us for Himself, but instead of responding to His Reality… we try to impose our self-devised controlling ways in His place! We all have that seemingly unquenchable desire to know God’s Living Word. We’re all homesick for God… because we’re homesick for our true self, our true identity, purpose and destiny… to be the image and likeness of the Word of God! But at the same time, the rebellious thrust we got from the Serpent drives us to resist the Redeemer that is here to save us from ourselves! We remain so preoccupied with fending for ourselves, that we are never ready to drop everything and simply follow Him.
This destructive twist that the Serpent’s Sin injected into us, contaminates all of our perspectives and thinking. It lures us away from knowing and loving the Word Himself… for His sake… and it causes us to obsess over how we might dethrone Him and take the first place for ourselves. But how can a true image and likeness of an Original (the created reflection of that Uncreated Original) strive to take the place of the Original… and still be true to the reality of what it actually and essentially is made to be? That is the insanity into which the Serpent dragged us! And this is why we simultaneously feel homesick for the Word of God but also compelled to wrestle and struggle against Him! And because God in His Perfect Wisdom knows we can’t do anything to help ourselves, He took it upon Himself to do whatever was necessary for our full Restoration. And He revealed in Genesis 2:1-3 that He has already done everything necessary. The Work of our Full Atonement for Sin was also finished, through His beloved Son, the Word (John 19:29-30). And it is done eternally, to Perfection! This is what the Holy Spirit highlighted and imparted to the fathers. And He is here to do the same for every generation of Jacob’s children… so that through their example, God can also restore and bless the rest of this fallen world, and transform us all into His True Israel! And this is why God gave Israel such an urgent warning at the end of the Tanach, through His prophet, Malachi:
Malachi 4:2-6
“But for you who fear My Name, the Sun of Righteousness (My Living Word) will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. (If you abide with Me, under My Word’s Authority, as your fathers learned to do,) You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the Day (of Accounting and Judgment) which I am preparing,” says the Lord of hosts.
Remember (what I revealed to you through) the Law (Torah) of Moses My servant, even the statutes and ordinances, which I commanded him in Horeb (Sinai) for all Israel.
“Behold, (when I begin to establish My New Covenant with you) I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible (Judgment) Day of the Lord. He will restore the hearts of the fathers (revealed in Genesis, who, in previous times, communed directly with, and were obedient to, My Living Word) to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
In Covenant with Yeshua… Forsaking All Other gods
The fathers learned to abide as true disciples of God’s Living Word. The direct, personal interactive intimacy they had with Him is what God desires and intends for all of us to have. Nothing must be allowed to get in the way of our personal contact, communion and interaction with Him. But if we are to actually rely exclusively and directly and personally upon Him by the Power of the Holy Spirit, we’ll have to learn to do it exclusively by faith; not faith in our created concepts, imaginations, concepts, circumstances or feelings, but faith in His Perfect Eternal Nature and the Infinite, Absolute Credibility of His Word! We must learn to rest and rejoice in God’s All-Encompassing Perfection, and stop looking to and relying upon any and all of the passing temporal things that we think and feel, and see, hear and touch! We must truly be led and governed by God’s Word, rather than by anything that is created. And once we’re truly connected to the Creator of all things by that airtight trust and full expectation of His Goodness, we’ll be equipped to serve as open channels through which He can appear and impart God’s Grace to us and to all that is around us.
Genesis 12:2-3
“And I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed!” (Emphasis added.)
This is why we desperately need to learn and practice that level of abiding, airtight obedient faith that was demonstrated for us by the fathers of the Faith. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is the one true, Infinitely Perfect Living God! Unlike the flaky, petulant false idols created by our deluded human imaginations, Israel’s God is infinitely Real, Credible, Trustworthy and Reliable! His Reality depends on His Perfect Uncreated Nature, and not at all on our created perceptions, sensations, opinions, circumstances, decisions or understanding. His revelation of His Perfect, All-Sufficient Finished Work of Creation and Redemption is worthy of our absolute airtight faith and trust.
God’s Perfection is the solid granite-hard foundation upon which the fathers of the Faith learned to know, rest upon, and interact with Him. They were like living branches connected to the one true Vine, God’s Living Word. They had direct personal ongoing interaction with His Infinite Perfection, so there was no need for them to try to ‘reinvent the wheel’. In Him, they had everything they needed; so they stopped striving for control and supremacy and instead began to bear His Word’s awesome Fruit that glorifies Him. True disciples realize that God’s Living Word is here to be Everything… on behalf of those who will repent, submit and obey Him! And that is why we can afford to rest and rejoice in Him, receiving everything from Him, as His image and likeness, at all times.
Reality – Not Theory
There is nothing theoretical about this level of relationship and interaction with Almighty God. None of it is based on our cerebral or intellectual ‘wrestling.’ Nothing is based on or derived from the products of mere human faculties. God doesn’t depend on our rationality or philosophical theories or speculations or circumstances or feelings! He is not merely a product of human imaginations.
The true Eternal Bond with God that the Word is here to create in us flows out of the fact that God is giving Himself to us! Whatever we need must be directly imparted to us from Almighty God Himself! God’s own Living Word and Holy Spirit are here to be for us and do in us, what only God can be and do. That’s why a true relationship with Him always follows a one-way polarity. It is never a two-way interchange. God does all of the giving; and His creatures do all of the receiving! When we realize this and learn to act and react accordingly, we are equipped to prove that we’re true disciples of God’s Word. And our relationship with Him will stand every test the powers of Darkness will ever throw against us. That is how intensely personal, and lovingly intimate, and interactive, and supernaturally productive God is here to be with us and through us! When we finally learn to be living reflectors and radiators of His True, Authentic Infinitely Perfect Presence and Eternal Glory, THEN… the Word’s Authentic Eternal Fruit can begin to appear on His ‘living branches.’
So ponder the ‘wrestling match’ that took place between Jacob and the Living Word. Up to that point of his journey, Jacob was still largely unaware of this, just like the rest of men. He was still wrestling with God’s Word in ways that resembled the way Eve, and later, Adam, wrestled with Him in the Garden. That ‘decapitated’ unbelieving way fails to properly reflect God’s Word. Instead it opposes, distorts, rejects and contradicts Him! But Genesis 32 shows us, that at this turning point of Jacob’s life, God’s Word revealed Himself to Jacob… and that awesome Revelation killed his rebellion once and for all. And Jacob was finally enabled to rest, relax, and submit to His Lord and Master, at last. And THEN… God’s Living Word changed his name to ‘Israel!’
That was a major turning point in human history! It announced a marvelous, startlingly supernatural ‘Exodus’ from the ways of this fallen world. God’s Exodus requires us to make that level of profound transition… from reliance on the fallen humanity of the first Adam… to total resting faith that is placed upon the Perfect Heavenly Human… God’s own Living Word… the Messiah and Redeemer King of Israel. He is the Lord and Master of all Creation. This is what everyone’s relationship with God’s Word must become if God is going to reconcile, redeem, regenerate and fully restore us. All Unbelief and Rebellion and Disobedience to God’s Word must be squeezed out of us… to the very last drop! We are not to try to replace or correct or improve God. You don’t do any of that with one who is Eternally Perfect! So human beings are made to reflect and radiate and embody all that He is and the Fullness of all that He has done… to whoever and whatever may be around them!
Notice the very human ways in which God revealed His Living Word in the Torah. His Word ‘walked’ with Enoch (Genesis 5:22, 24) and ‘instructed’ Noah (Genesis 6:9) And He ate a meal and visited with Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 18), and He appeared to, and interacted with Isaac (Genesis 26:1-5) and previous to that very significant ‘wrestling match,’ the Word had previously interacted with Jacob (Genesis 28:10-22). So this incident during which Jacob wrestled with God’s Word was nothing new in terms of the Word’s human-level appearances. But it was the point at which Jacob’s Adamic ‘self-life’ finally died; and then the Living Word of God Himself was able to become his new abiding Life, at last!
Realize that the same pre-Exodus type of intense ‘wrestling’ was still taking place in Israel, centuries later! At that time, just as Moses and Isaiah and other prophets of Israel had prophesied, God’s Living Word appeared to Israel once more. This time He came as ‘Yeshua of Nazareth,’ their long-awaited Messiah. He had been appearing to and interacting with His chosen people all along. But this time He came to initiate the New Covenant and to begin the total Fulfillment process of everything that God had revealed earlier in seed form. And this was part of what He began to reveal to his fledgling disciple Nathaniel in John 1:50-51, when He identified Himself as the ‘Ladder’ that connected Heaven to Earth. He was revealing that it was He that Jacob once saw and knew in His dream, in Genesis 28. This, and much more, is what the New Covenant is in the process of restoring and fulfilling… to Perfection!
Genesis 28:12-13
“He (Jacob) had a dream, and behold, a Ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to Heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
John 1:50-51
“Jesus answered and said to him (Nathaniel), ‘Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these.’ And He said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
So, the Torah reveals that God’s Living Word had been appearing to humans in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, and to Abraham and his family, from the twelfth chapter to the end. He continued to intervene and interact with them during the times of Joseph. And He continued to make Himself known to His people in the book of Exodus, with Moses and the newly liberated infant nation of Israel, and with Moses’ successor, Joshua. The Lord appeared in dreams, and in a burning bush, and with fire and thunder and smoke atop Mt. Sinai. He appeared on Israel’s behalf as a pillar of Fire by night, and a pillar of Cloud by day… and to Joshua, as a Warrior, a Man with a Sword, ready to lead His chosen ones into the Land of Promise! All of these appearances of God’s Word are expressed to us in human terms, as are many that follow throughout the Tanach. They were preparing Israel for the Word’s appearance as Israel’s Messiah, leading up to the Word’s Ultimate Appearance in the first century CE. At that time… He arrived on Earth in human flesh… as Yeshua of Nazareth. Thus we see that God Himself became flesh and appeared as Israel’s long-awaited Messiah. And, in the End, God will enthrone His Living Word as Israel’s Redeemer King and the Lord and Master of the Created Universe!
So we see Yeshua being revealed even from the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis. And He continues to be revealed throughout the Hebrew Tanach! And so we can also see that the writings of the New Covenant apostolic Jewish descendants of Jacob (the writers of the New Testament section of the Bible) who will finally become ‘New Covenant Israel,’ were not introducing anything new or alien. There is nothing contained in the New Testament writings that is disjointed or contradictory to anything that Moses wrote in the Torah or the prophets and Wisdom writers put in the Tanach. Nothing concerning the New Covenant God made with Israel differs from or alters anything that God had already entrusted to Israel’s care. The New Covenant simply continues to unpack, explain, properly interpret and fulfill the ‘Seeds’ that God began to plant in the Torah!
The Good News is a Person – Yeshua
Through Yeshua and His New Covenant, God is fulfilling what He established through the Foundation He put down in Genesis through Deuteronomy! The apostolic New Covenant writings recorded the coming and actions of what God’s Word came to be and do through Yeshua… who came to fulfill all of the revelations, claims and promises He had already given to Israel! This is the awesome, universe-transforming Significance of Messiah Yeshua. God’s Living Word was made flesh. He is now one of us… forever! In God’s Eternal Covenant Reality, the Living Word of God made flesh, now serves as our Everlasting Blood Covenant Representative and Champion! What He is, and has accomplished, is credited to us! And what we once were, He atoned for and removed to Perfection!
This is how deeply our Creator intended to unite and bond with us. This is how serious He always is about restoring us to our original ‘image and likeness’ of God status and activity! And this is at the heart of the Genesis revelation that He came to fulfill. And His first century Israelite disciples were the eyewitnesses of this progressive Fulfillment! Yeshua is the Good News that they and their true successors were commissioned to announce and reveal to the rest of Israel and with the rest of the human race!
Genesis 3:21
“The Lord God made garments of skin (the covering supplied by an innocent substitute representative) for Adam and his wife, and clothed (covered and shielded) them.” (Amplification added.)
John 1:14
“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His Glory, Glory as of the Only Begotten from the Father, full of Grace and Truth!” (Emphasis added.)
So, in light of all His appearances throughout the Bible, it shouldn’t shock us to see Him interacting with the descendants of Jacob’s twelve sons in the book of Exodus. He was commissioning them to follow Him on their personal Exodus from the ‘Egypt’ of this fallen world’s ‘System.’ What God did with Jacob, whom He transformed into Israel, is what He intended to do in the wilderness with ‘the Children of Israel’ during the time of Moses, and beyond! But we’ve seen that most of the Exodus people did not follow the lead of Israel, their spiritual father. They reverted instead to the ways of ‘Jacob the wrestler.’ They continued to resist and struggle against God’s Word… throughout their years in the wilderness and throughout their subsequent history, even to the present day!
The Sin of the human race has so saturated us all with the Serpent’s demonic Rebellion, Arrogance and Defiance of Almighty God, that in order to represent us in the Covenant, and make Full Atonement for what we now have become, in our Sin-corrupted mortal state, God’s Living Word had to humiliate and abase Himself before God, and before all of His Creation, to the uttermost depths! The pride and arrogant rebellion we flaunt in the face of our Creator, and everything we refuse to do to obey God… is what God’s Word had to take upon Himself, in order to make Atonement for it before His Father! As our Covenant Representative, He had to do to Perfection before His Father, what we would not and could not do. So He did it … in our name! This is the Agony of Humiliation and Atonement that God had to impose upon Himself… in order to reverse the disastrous results that were introduced by the fall of our first parents. And so God reveals all of this about Himself… through His Living, Perfectly Obedient Word:
Isaiah 53:1-6
“Who (in Israel) has believed our message? And to whom has the Arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender Shoot, and like a Root out of parched ground (wrestling Israel); He (in His atoning state of sacrificial humiliation and abasement) has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised; and we (children of Jacob the wrestler) did not esteem Him.
“Surely (in fulfillment of the New Covenant God has made with Israel) our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our wellbeing fell upon Him, and by His scourging we (wrestling but repentant Israelites and all repentant Gentiles) are healed. All of us (Jew and Gentile alike) like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord (in the New Covenant Fulfillment of Leviticus 16 and Deuteronomy 16 & 18) has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Matthew 27:11-31
“Now Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor questioned Him, saying, ‘Are You the King of the Jews?’ And Jesus said to him, ‘It is as you say.’ And, while He was being accused by the chief priests and elders, He did not answer. Then Pilate said to Him, ‘Do You not hear how many things they testify against You?’ And He did not answer him with regard to even a single charge, so the governor was quite amazed.
“Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the people any one prisoner whom they wanted. At that time they were holding a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas (which means in Aramaic, Son of the Father). So when the people gathered together, Pilate said to them, ‘Whom do you want me to release for you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ (the Messiah who covers and represents Barabbas and the rest of the human race)?’ For he knew that because of envy they had handed Him over. While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent him a message, saying, ‘Have nothing to do with that Righteous Man; for last night I suffered greatly in a dream because of Him.’ But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to put Jesus to death. But the governor said to them, ‘Which of the two do you want me to release for you?’ And they said, ‘Barabbas.’ Pilate said to them, ‘Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?’ They all said, ‘Crucify Him!’ And he said, ‘Why, what evil has He done?’ But they kept shouting all the more, saying, ‘Crucify Him!’ When Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but rather that a riot was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this Man’s Blood; see to that yourselves.’ And all the people said, ‘His (redeeming atoning) Blood shall be on us and on our children!’ Then he released Barabbas for them; but after having Jesus scourged, he handed Him over to be crucified.
“Then the (gentile pagan Roman) soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole Roman cohort around Him. They stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. And after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on His head, and a reed in His right hand; and they knelt down before Him and mocked Him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ They spat on Him, and took the reed and began to beat Him on the head. After they had mocked Him, they took the scarlet robe off Him and put His own garments back on Him, and led Him away to crucify Him.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Thus, to atone for the arrogance of a race that was created by God’s Living Word out of the dust of the earth, but insisted on rearing up before God to try to usurp His true 100% Level of Supremacy and Authority, God’s Living Word had to satisfy God’s Perfect Justice. He had to reverse all that human arrogance and allow Himself to be humiliated and reduced all the way down to the Zero Point! Life Himself embraced our Death, in order to set us free from its clutches. Thus did He undo the Evil done by the Serpent’s lie and turned Death inside out in order to lead us into His Eternal Resurrection Life!
But even so… just as the prophet Isaiah foretold, many of Jacob’s children, continue to ‘wrestle’ with God’s Living Word even to this day, trying to take His rightful 100% Position at the Highest Place rather than following their perfectly righteous atoning Messiah to their rightful Zero Point level before God. And from this example given to the world by many of God’s own chosen people, the rest of the children of Adam can know and recognize the Serpent-induced rebellion and hatred of their Creator with which his lies has infected every human heart!
John 2:23-25
“Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for HE KNEW ALL MEN, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for HE HIMSELF KNEW WHAT WAS IN MAN!” (Emphasis added.)
This is why people tend to remain hard-hearted and blind and deaf to God’s Living Word. And to avoid Him and having to face this issue, they marinate themselves in worldly distractions and numb their dead souls as much as possible with temporary addictive mind-altering things. They try to hide behind them so they can continue to try to hide their spiritual nakedness. And this is why God’s Gospel is so offensive to them. To their sensibilities, it is always a strident, extremely shocking, irritating discordant warning alarm… a relentless interruption, calculated to jolt fallen humanity out of its lethal coma. God will not stop exposing Sin and what it does to the human heart. He shows to every generation what He reveals in His Torah and throughout Israel’s entire history. And He’ll continue to do it to the end of time. Moses foretold this in Deuteronomy, and so did the prophets, such as Jeremiah and Ezekiel:
Deuteronomy 31:24-29
“It came about, when Moses finished writing the words of this Law (Torah) in a book until they were complete, that Moses commanded the Levites who carried the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, saying, ‘Take this book of the Law and place it beside the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, THAT IT MAY REMAIN THERE AS A WITNESS AGAINST YOU! For I know your rebellion and your stubbornness; behold, while I am still alive with you today, you have been rebellious against the Lord; how much more, then, after my death? Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers, that I may speak these words in their hearing and call the heavens and the earth to witness against them. FOR I KNOW THAT AFTER MY DEATH YOU WILL ACT CORRUPTLY AND TURN FROM THE WAY IN WHICH I COMMANDED YOU; AND EVIL WILL BEFALL YOU IN THE LATTER DAYS, for you will do that which is evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him to anger with the work of your hands.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Jeremiah 30:1-9
“The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “Write all the words which I have spoken to you in a book. For behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will restore the fortunes of My people Israel and Judah.” The Lord says, “I will also bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers and they shall possess it.”
“Now these are the words which the Lord spoke concerning Israel and concerning Judah: ‘For thus says the Lord, “I have heard a sound of terror, of dread, and there is no peace (as long as Israel continues to wrestle against My Word). Ask now, and see if a male can give birth. Why do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in childbirth? And why have all faces turned pale? Alas! For that Day (of Reckoning) is great, there is none like it; and it is THE TIME OF JACOB’S DISTRESS, but (as soon as I touch his thigh again, and he begins to limp) he will be saved from it. It shall come about on that day,” declares the Lord of hosts, (when they embrace and become the new name I gave to Jacob) “that I will break his (collective, corporate) yoke from off their neck and will tear off their bonds; and strangers will no longer make them their slaves. But they shall serve the Lord their God and (His Messiah, Yeshua, the resurrected Son of) David their King, whom I will raise up for them!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Ezekiel 37:11-14
“Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole House of Israel; behold, they say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.” Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “Behold (when I fulfill My New Covenant with you), I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord, when (through My Word, your risen Messiah) I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people.(Then,) I will put My Spirit within you and you will come to Life, and I will place you on your own Land. Then you will know that I, THE LORD, HAVE SPOKEN AND DONE IT,’ declares the Lord.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.) “
Matthew 23:37-39
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!'”
Humanity’s Fallen Nature Exposed
Israel’s habit of contesting with God’s Word reveals the fallen nature of all children of Adam. It matters not what our color is, or what culture and religious traditions we inherit and have been taught to believe and embrace. Nor does our geography or political system or philosophy of life exempt any of us from Adam’s Fall. All children of the first Adam are driven from within to resist God’s Living Word and the Redemption God sent Him to be on behalf of all mankind. Israel’s wrestling ways clearly typify all human flesh! That is the ‘Jacob’ that God intends to transform into His beloved, crucified, limping, ‘Israel.’ His Fulfilled, Beloved, New Covenant Israel is currently ‘under construction,’ as our corporate Family Exodus continues. The Exodus Family is made up of the Jewish and non-Jewish people who believe, obey and allow God’s Living Word to enter their innermost being, completely unopposed! They are the ones God is in the process of transforming into His own New Covenant image and likeness!
So the spiritual fathers got over the human habit of resisting God’s Word. They finally learned to believe, submit, embrace and obey their Lord, and to accept Him, exactly as He is… as The King of kings and The Lord of lords! Their natural drive to achieve preeminence, to be radically independent and autonomous and self-serving, was finally broken, crucified, and forsaken. They stopped worshipping and trusting themselves and their deviant feelings and opinions and circumstances! They forsook all conflicting subjective human perspectives, ideas, sensations, hunches and natural worldly urges to edit and attempt to remake God into something of their own choosing.
They finally realized the absolute Authority and Transcendent Preeminence of the Living God who was making contact with them! And they rested upon His Eternal Perfection! They dropped their false gods and prostrated themselves before Him, and waited upon Him, realizing how bankrupt, helpless and dead they were in themselves. And they acknowledged God’s Reality… and the Truth of their fallen bankruptcy and helplessness before Him, hit them full force, and so they began to look to God’s Word to apply to them everything He had already done to reconcile, redeem, regenerate, restore and provide for them… at all times! This is why God holds them up to Israel and the world as examples! They followed God’s Word out of this fallen, self-adoring world system… and He led them into God’s Eternal Kingdom… where God and His Living Word, reign Supreme, as promised.
Genesis 17:1-5
“Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless! I will establish My Covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.’
“Abram fell on his face, and God (through His Living Word) talked with him, saying: ‘As for Me, behold, My Covenant is with you, and you will be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of (repentant) nations.’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
This is the relationship God must create, protect and perpetuate with the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And that is what He wants to have with the people who come from all the other families of the earth. They must all be grafted into God’s True Israel!
Numbers 15:38-40
“Speak to the sons of Israel, and tell them that they shall make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and that they shall put on the tassel of each corner a cord of blue. It shall be a (Blood Covenant reminder, a) tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, so as to do them and not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you played the harlot, so that you may remember to do all My commandments and be holy (set apart and reserved) to your God.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
God must reveal Himself to each generation, and each individual human – AS HE REALLY IS! But at first, we cannot bear the message. It hits us like an unexpected bucket of ice water; or it feels like fire that scorches and sears our flesh. The Revelation is utterly terrifying and profoundly devastating! At first, our rescue from the coils of the Serpent, and from the Desolation and Darkness of eternal spiritual Death, to which we’ve become so accustomed, seems terrifyingly strange and alien to our fallen sensibilities. Our Salvation presents a dire threat to everything we cherish and depend upon and strive to protect! It threatens our cherished delusions, errors and false assumptions. It is strident and discordant to our personal ‘symphonies.’ That is how far away from the true Living God we have strayed. And that is why our own Creator seems like such an unwelcome Stranger.
The Gospel of Life represents Agonizing Death to our fallen flesh. It represents total destruction to the false religion of Humanism and its false proclamation that, ‘Man is the measure of all things and the captain of his own soul.’
Luke 14:25-35
“Now large crowds were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’
“Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions. Therefore, salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” (Emphasis added.)
The ‘Jacob inclination’ to wrestle with God’s Word is in all of us. So we must realize and admit the truth… and recognize that we are suffering from a terrible habitual ‘Homesickness for the True, Living God’ that is caused by our great distance from Him. But thankfully, God uses that Homesickness to serve as a loving ‘homing device’… to turn our attention to His Word, which is God’s Eternal Beacon of Light in the Darkness! This crazy two-way polarity that is in us all is actually revealing our yearning for Ultimate Truth which God uses to call to our innermost being. He prods us to get moving, to pursue this quest… and make our way back to Him… to our true Source and the original image and likeness of God position that He gave us. To have true peace, contentment and fulfillment, we must realize in our heart of hearts that what we are and have now, will never be enough. We must find our True Source! We must reconnect with our true God-given identity, purpose and Home Destination. The Serpent kidnapped us and stole our true identity and destiny from us! So our hearts will continue to cry out for God… and for everything our Heavenly Father originally imparted to us in the Beginning. It will continue… until His Word finally leads us across the Finish Line of Eternity, and we’re all the way back Home!
So, it’s very fitting that Jacob, from whose seed the nation of Israel would emerge, would have this wholehearted desire to know and be one with God to such an exceptional degree. God intended for Jacob’s descendants to inherit that hunger as an example for the rest of the world!
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!” (Emphasis added.)
Beloved… have you come to grips with that God-installed ‘homing device’ that is always at work in your innermost being? It will not stop drawing you to the one true, Living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It will continue to compel you to seek for Him, and try to connect with His Truth and the Reality of His Perfect Finished Work that awaits you in Eternity. Matters that somehow pertain to Him will continue to arouse your curiosity. Sooner or later, you’ll have to face the inevitable. God’s Throne is already taken. And it can’t be occupied by anything or anyone that Almighty God has created, not even you!
So I submit this for your consideration: Notice the enormous radical transformations that took place at some point in the lives of each of the fathers of the Faith, as recorded in the Torah. Something enormously life transforming happened to each of them. God finally broke their willfulness. When God’s Word finally got through to them and ‘hit home,’ His living, electrifying, devastating Presence blasted through the flint-hard stoniness of their Sin-corrupted hearts. Their self-life was ‘circumcised’ or, cut away from their innermost being.
And that same drastic change will take place in anyone who is suddenly pierced, penetrated and impregnated with the Eternal Life of God’s Living Word. It resembles the way previously disconnected electrical appliances suddenly begin to interact with real electric power when they are reconnected with the true power source and their switches are turned on. Then suddenly, real life-giving power begins to flow into them and through them, and things begin to happen that the appliances could have never done on their own. The fathers reached such a point in their relationships with God. They suddenly ‘got it!’ The Word finally pierced and penetrated them to the core. The Power of His Holy Spirit’s Presence knocked them to the ground… and they finally ‘saw the Light’… the Electrifying Reality and Power and Authority of the Infinite, Eternal, Perfect, abiding and overwhelming Presence of the Living creative Word of God. That’s when He truly became the Living God, who identifies Himself as, ‘The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!’
Knowing Him as He really is, intimately and personally, made all the difference. Their arrogant self-life was then truly ripped apart on the Cross of our Messiah. Then, they joined themselves to His atoning death. And His Eternal Resurrection Reality pierced them, and imparted to them a total awareness and realization of His majestic Immensity and Glory that completely humbled and dethroned them. Immediately they fell prostrate before the Almighty Living God who was revealing Himself to them like they’d never imagined could be possible. They came to know that in His Nature, He is Perfect, Self-less Love! He loves all of us… not for His sake, but for our sake. His is such a uniquely Transcendent, Transforming, Resurrecting, Unifying and Totally unselfish level of Love, that the Beauty and the Purity and the Overwhelming Force of it will kill any Sin-corrupted, selfish rebellious flesh that dares to come too near. The Reality of His Perfection and our utter need for Him explodes all over us. And if we’re still operating out of our fallen, soulish flesh, His Reality will kill us, UNLESS, His Cross is able to circumcise our hearts and set us free from ourselves and our falsehoods!
Knowing Him is the True Wisdom that insulates and protects us from His Infinite Righteousness and Perfect Justice and Eternal Wrath against the Serpent’s Sin. Once we’re properly covered by the Beauty and Perfection of His Word, God gladly, eagerly allows us to approach Him and make direct contact with His overwhelming Fullness. And then we are no longer just His creatures… He transforms and regenerates us into His own sons… and we are given the right to live with Him, and from Him, forever!
Isaiah 66:1-2
“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 (by My Living Word) 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!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
This is at the heart of the issue between us, and the Creator who gives us our every breath, heartbeat and brainwave. Knowing Him blows away everything in us that is unworthy of His Holy Presence. And then what is left, after we truly repent of our inherited corporate Sin and the sinful actions it has driven us to commit, becomes the awesome new identity, status, purpose and destiny that He burns into us permanently.
After that happens to you, beloved, you will never be the same. And people who know you will notice that there is something drastically different in you from that point, on. You’ll no longer reek of worldly arrogance. And shame and pride will no longer drive or manipulate you. And, instead of being compulsively addicted to control and center stage attention, you will exude God’s own Peace, Joy and Contentment. And your self-life, or ‘Jacob life,’ will transform into God’s True Israel. And from that time forward, you too will have what can be described as, ‘Jacob’s Limp.’