All true disciples of the risen Messiah of Israel are part of God’s Exodus. They are making a radical and total departure from their original state of living Death over to a share in our Lord’s Eternal Resurrection Life. Another way of looking at it is to think of it as a great transition from the realm of the Flesh to the Heavenly realm of God’s Holy Spirit. Disciples die to being self-driven and begin to live only to being energized and led by God’s own Spirit! If you plumb the depths of what Scripture is revealing, you’ll see that this is what the New Covenant promised to make possible for Israel, and through her, for all of mankind!
When Messiah Yeshua lived among us in the first century, He was demonstrating this New Covenant lifestyle whereby humans are empowered and guided by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit equips them to embody God’s Living Word and fulfill His written Word. Thus disciples can serve as the Word’s image and likeness. The transition from a flesh-driven existence over to being Spirit-empowered, and Spirit-led, creates a radical shift in a person’s identity, reality, outlook and thought life. It moves us out of our original earthly viewpoints and self-centered mentalities and lifestyles. And, it requires us to absorb and assimilate the Heavenly identity and Lifestyle that embodies what is required of true, God reflecting, Word-embodying, Biblically-obedient Faith.
Embracing Our New Identity
The New Covenant requires us to undergo a complete mental and emotional overhaul that amounts to embracing and installing a complete new set of identity, thought, action, reaction, interaction and lifestyle patterns into ourselves. For example, imagine a person born into a certain family and culture and nationality being told to ‘repent’ of being what he originally started to be… and to begin, from that point onward, to allow himself to be grafted into a completely different family that has a completely different culture and who are citizens of a completely different dimension and world! So, from that point forward, the person must not revert to whatever he was or valued or did, before that total ‘uprooting’ and ‘transplanting’ process took place.
In such an instance, we could say that this person has made a total ‘exodus’… from one state of being and doing, to a completely new one. And that is exactly what the Gospel of Salvation requires of the fallen, Sin-murdered children of Adam! They must repent of being radically independent sinners and enemies of their Creator, God’s Living Word. They must repent of ignoring, rejecting and rebelling against the Word’s Authority over them. They must do whatever is necessary to submit to Him, and to learn to be and to live as His image and likeness. They must take on the identity, character and disposition of regenerated sons and Family members of God! And they must embody and reflect His Presence, His Nature, His Ways to whatever or whoever happens to be around them, and to devote themselves to extending the limits of His Kingdom all across this fallen Earth!
This is the kind of Exodus that God’s Scriptures are talking about! This is what it will take for repentant people to forsake their original self-life… in order to be free to embrace, ingest, absorb and become one with God’s Living Word. The Word is here to reveal Himself once more. But this time God intends to reveal His Word through the yielded flesh of His New Covenant disciples! And this is the Great Transition disciples are required to make. This is what it really takes to realign, transform, and make us compatible with the tremendous spiritual realities that God’s Presence makes real within us. He regenerates our spirits, fuses His Spirit into them… and begins to transmit into each disciple… whatever pertains to their Resurrected Messiah!
John 16:13-15
“But when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all the Truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” (Emphasis added.)
So… just before we actually receive the Salvation God offers us… we must make a very hard choice. We must either choose to reject God’s offer and remain trapped in our current state of living death, or we must agree to undergo these enormous changes that will lead to our total resurrection transformation! This is why so many people stop at that awesome point of making that choice. Instead of actually choosing between Life or Death, Spirit or Flesh, many turn back and return to their old comfort zones and familiar territories in some region of ‘Egypt.’ They can’t bring themselves to say goodbye to everything they were and forsake everything they treasured and held dear before the Lord summoned them to follow Him. So, instead of embracing the disciple lifestyle to which He has called them, they settle for remaining where they are, and becoming ‘religious’.
They do this because they know instinctively that if they follow Him into the Great Unknown… they will no longer be able to rely on themselves and their own devices nor will they any longer be autonomous and self-driven. Everything they have previously learned and practiced in Egypt will do them no good because from that point on, Someone else will be in charge and they will stop being preeminent – and everything will change – and they’ll be forced to venture into a new Reality in which they will never again be supreme, or independent, or ‘in charge’.
But for those who do choose to follow the Lord, the further away they move from their original starting point, the more they will be venturing into territory that is completely unfamiliar. And that new total absence of familiarity will reduce them to the level of helpless little children. The strange new land and unfamiliar environment will bewilder and disorient them. And the Lord will have to lead, every step of the way, because only He knows where they are in relation to where they must go. The disciples will see things in this brand new World that they’ve never seen before and will have to venture into things they previously knew nothing about. So they’ll be forced to trust in and rely exclusively upon the Lord… waiting upon His Wisdom and Initiative, every step of the way thereafter. Their new surroundings will force them to give up all their old inclinations to be in control. Now it will be obvious that Someone else, Someone who knows what is happening and what must be done, must take full control from then on!
Of course this is exactly what the ego-enhancing, self-assertive people of the world refuse to do! And that is why so many who are called to follow the Lord turn back and instead of continuing, they turn around and return to their starting points. The Exodus separation process is ongoing and becomes more and more and obvious.
Matthew 10:34-36
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household!”
John 12:24-26
“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.”
So, in order to finish this Exodus in spirit and in truth, we must actually die to our former selves and former ways. Then we must dare to venture forward and follow our Master into the Unknown. God requires us to do this willingly and wholeheartedly. Notice what He required His chosen people to do in the beginning of their Exodus:
Deuteronomy 6:4-6
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God; the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart!”
Our Exodus is a complete death to what we were before, followed by the total embracing of the new resurrection identity, purpose and lifestyle that God offers us in exchange. Once that exchange is made, we must place 100% of our trust, hope and reliance upon the Lord we will be following into Eternity. He must be totally in charge of us from that point on. And we will no longer be oppressed slaves of the powers of Darkness; we will willingly become like bond slaves, in the service of the Living Word of God! And since we’ve died to everything we knew and were and did in the past… and since we’re entering a strange, never before experienced environment that lies ahead of us, what other choice but to trust and follow Him would we have?
This prospect of willingly making such a radical change within us becomes an enormous mental barrier for most people. It frightens and prevents them from persevering and overcoming the frightening rigors and dangers everyone will encounter on this Exodus. So a great separation process takes place at the point where Egypt ends and the wilderness begins. Those who decide to turn back have chosen to remain slaves to their demonic taskmasters and to remain stuck in their habitual self-life. But those who decide to depart and never return, become the reserved holy nation of priestly bond slaves in the service of the Word of Almighty God!
So… as long as your heart identifies with Egypt, you are driven to keep trying to be a god to yourself! But you’ll never succeed! You’ll remain stuck in your inherited state of total slavery! And because you choose to try to be radically independent, you will always be responsible for doing all of the work! You’ll have to try to achieve all of the results! And you’ll have to endure all of the pressure and take all of the blame for anything that will go wrong. And it most certainly will go wrong!
Sin-blinded people of this world continue to claim that, because they’re radically independent, they are therefore, ‘free’. But the truth will be that, as long as you strive to remain independent, you’re always on your own! In that case, you’ll always be under tremendous pressure to perform and perform and never stop performing, until you drop from exhaustion! When you dare to assume that you are in charge of everything… you will eventually run out of fuel. You will weaken and slow down and begin to stumble and stagger and then… everything will eventually go wrong for you. You will never have what it takes to keep going… nor will you ever be able to usurp the place of the true, one and only Living God! So, in the end, you will fail miserably!
Those who continue to follow God’s Word choose… step by step… to persevere in trusting in and receiving everything from, their Lord and Master. The change creates a night and day difference for the disciples. They’re not prepared for this. They don’t know what it means to be able to keep drawing from an Infinite, Eternally Inexhaustible Source! So they must be taught and re-trained and reconfigured to abide and rest and rejoice in this awesome new, supremely confident and secure new Lifestyle. They must willingly allow Almighty God to lead them into His rigorous wilderness Boot Camp Training regimen so that whatever remains within them that would oppose or retard what God intends to make of them can be removed. God must see to it that they are fully prepared to fulfill their awesome New Covenant commission, properly and with excellence:
1 Peter 2:9-12
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of Darkness into His marvelous Light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the Day of Visitation!”
And these disciples will have to be trained to withstand the rigorous combat conditions that the powers of Darkness will force upon them to try to intimidate and deceive them and convince them to give up and run away. So we must learn to endure and withstand and fight to overcome all kinds of pressures, opposition and excruciating circumstances, testing conditions that await us. We will have to develop new combat skills that will equip us to overcome and defeat the snares, traps, illusions and counterattacks that the powers of Darkness, their demonic opponents, will surely unleash against us.
Only those who are determined to persevere in trusting their Master will develop what it takes to endure and overcome every wile and attack that the malice of their enemies will unleash against them. And only going through all of that rigorous training will transform them into true invincible warrior priests of God. So this is the personal set of decisions each one of us will have to make:
‘Am I truly serious about following My Lord, who chose me to be His disciple? If I am, then I must wholeheartedly agree to follow Him, no matter what the consequences may be. And I’ll have to willingly drop everything I’ve known and owned and controlled in the past. I’ll have to cut all ties with whoever chooses to stay behind. I must not allow anything or anyone to hold me back or interfere with my decision to follow where my Lord will lead me. From now on, I will follow Him, no matter what it costs, or what it may lead me into. I am His forever!’
After we make that terminal cut with our past… we begin to move, willingly and wholeheartedly, into that strange New Covenant Territory we’ve never seen before, and about which we know nothing. From that point onward, everything will be completely different and bewildering for us. We will never know what to expect next because it will never again be up to us to choose and decide upon an agenda. All of that will be up to our Commander. Only God knows His own Mind and Plan. Only He knows what our Eternal Destination is and what is required to enter it. Only He knows where we actually are, in relation to where He must take us.
So, it stands to reason that He must lead us every step of the way. This is why we’ll have to look only to Him to make the decisions. We’ll have to depend exclusively on God’s Living Word… our Lord, Master, Owner and Shepherd. He will always be guiding, leading and protecting and providing for us from now on. Nothing will ever again depend upon us. So after we begin this enormous departure, there can be no looking back, no regrets, no second thoughts. We’ll have to be eager to learn everything new, from scratch. We’ll have to learn to embody the Reality of what it is to be ‘born again’ and what it means to have died to our radically independent self-life… and what it requires of us to live only to God… in and through and from His Living Word and Holy Spirit:
Ezekiel 34:11-16
“For thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the streams, and in all the inhabited places of the land. I will feed them in a good pasture, and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I will feed My flock and I will lead them to rest,’ declares the Lord God. ‘I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick; but the fat (self-satisfied) and the strong (arrogant radically independent individualists) I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment.’”
Isaiah 66:1-2
“‘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 (Living Word) 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!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
To follow the Lord in Spirit and in Truth is to be willing to go wherever He knows He must take you. And that will certainly require you to undergo the agonies of violating and turning away from your most natural, instinctive urges, preferences, desires and passions! You’ll have to do whatever violence is necessary to whatever is in you that will balk at and resist His initiatives. You must relinquish anything that might hinder or prevent you from making this radical transition and undergoing the fundamental changes that your new Life in and from your Messiah will require of you.
1 Corinthians 15:31
“I affirm, brethren, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily!”
This is the only way we can truly transform into His image and likeness. We will naturally, inevitably experience many negative reactions and consequences as we press forward. We’ll feel many unpleasant feelings similar to ‘jet lag’ and ‘culture shock’ and ‘addiction withdrawal’ and gut-wrenching ‘homesickness.’ But all of that will be temporary. Those are natural consequences of leaving an old comfortable, familiar ‘home’ that you know you will never see again… and exchanging it for a brand new home and lifestyle and status you still know next to nothing about. But you will get used to it! Then you’ll be able to appreciate the wonderful advantages that are yours, after you’ve made the transition and see the vast difference between what was, and what still lies ahead of you.
All of this must be done purely by faith in God’s Absolute Credibility, at first. Before you actually take that first step across the border of Egypt, you won’t have tangible proof or absolute guarantees in front of your eyes; nor will you be able to see all of the results before you actually dare to plunge into the Unknown and begin your Journey! You must act out of total belief, trust and love-impelled hope… in Almighty God’s Perfect, Infinite Credibility and Covenant Faithfulness. We must all surrender ourselves to Him and trust totally in His claims. He revealed that He has Infinite Wisdom and Ability, and that His Covenant Faithfulness (Chesed) is Everlasting. On that basis, we’ll have to begin to entrust our entire past, present and future to His care, trusting fully that He will be able to do what He promised and depend fully on the fact that He is able to provide the Total Care, Absolute Protection and All-Sufficient Provision that He has clearly promised to provide for His own. We must absolutely trust Him… simply because He said that He is infinitely Worthy of our trust and obedience. And then, only after we step out at His command, will we begin to see the results sprouting up here and there, that will prove, again and again and again…that indeed, our trust is very well founded.
Therefore, at first, we will undergo the agonies of the natural withdrawal symptoms people feel when they withdraw from their former addiction patterns and habits of self-reliance and self-trust. We will die to living as if we are our own gods. We’ll have to stop serving as the image and likeness of the Serpent that hates and opposes the Word of God at every turn. But to die to that state of living death and its horrendous eternal consequences… and to be set free to enter into Almighty God’s Eternal Embrace as His sons and heirs… is not really Death. It is the opposite of Death! It is to be newly regenerated and reborn into a share in the Eternal Life that only Almighty God can bestow. When we can share in the Life of the Word of God, we become one with Him. And thus we also become one with the Father who spoke His Word into us. And when we become one with the Father… we are one with His Eternal Life and Infinite, Eternal Resources!
John 17:3-5
“This is Eternal Life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the Work, which You have given Me to do. Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the Glory which I had with You before the world was.”
Isn’t this worth any temporary twinges, discomforts and uncertainties that this Great Transition will require us to feel and undergo for a short time? Yes, it most certainly is worth the cost! So, if we’re serious about this Exodus, we must resign ourselves to the fact that we’re in for an enormous reality shift in our experiences and habitual viewpoints and identities and lifestyles. And realize, beloved, that there will be very few in this world who will be truly ready and willing to enter into the depths of this Exodus wholeheartedly. Along this Journey you will encounter very few people who actually understand how deep the True Gospel really is and what it actually requires of those who are called to embrace it and live out the new Reality it makes possible. Many around you will begin to slow down and falter and eventually fall by the wayside. The moment the Cross is brought into the picture, you will see many people stop, turn, and run away. They’ll flee… back to what they assume is the safety of their former haunts. At the critical point when they realize that everything they’re clinging to is about to be taken away and replaced with something new that is all about God, they’ll quit and turn away. Thus they will fail to transform into something brand new that they never were before. Nothing essential and substantial will change for them. The changes that must take place only happen for those that persevere and finish the Journey. For them, God will make everything brand new:
Revelation 21:3-8
“And I heard a loud voice from the Throne, saying, ‘Behold, the Tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.
“And He who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ And He said, ‘Write, for these words are faithful and true.’ Then He said to me, ‘It is done (there is nothing the powers of Darkness can do to stop this). I am (God Almighty, the one and only,) the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End! I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death!’” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
To become a true human being like us, God’s Eternal Living Word had to completely lay aside His Eternal Glory and Divine Position for a time. As the creative Word of God, He proceeds eternally from His Eternal Father. And His Father commissions Him to serve as our Eternal Blood Covenant Representative. In the blood covenant structure, people must be represented by one of their own, by one who comes from their midst and is one of them in spirit and in truth. So, to do that legally and authentically, God’s Word had to become human, just like us… except for Sin! His coming Humanity was put into the Seed of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and David. And in His authentic, real, human state, God commissioned His human Israelite Word, to identify with us to such a depth and extent, that He could, legally speaking, take on our Sin, and all of its consequences, in order to make full Atonement to God for it, on our behalf and in our name!
Because the Word became our Human Representative, when He does something, we do it too. When something happens to Him, it also happens to us, for according to the Covenant structure, the representative and those he represents are considered to be one and the same person! The Covenant, and His Israelite lineage, made Him an heir of Abraham’s Covenant with God. Thus it was possible for Him to legally represent anyone who will repent and receive God’s offer of salvation. For them, He is commissioned to serve as their substitute Champion and Redeemer. Thus Almighty God, humbled Himself and actually descended to our level to identify with us and truly represent us. And although there was no Sin in Him, because He was our Representative, He had to be subjected to the very same human weakness and struggles and temptations and penalties that are common to us all! And this is why God said to the Serpent:
Genesis 3:15
“… I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.”
And to fallen Adam, He said:
Genesis 3:17-19
“…‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’ (Death has entered into your fallen nature, and); cursed is the ground because of you (Death also entered into the Creation which I put in your charge, and therefore); in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, (and abide in your state of living death) till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return!”
Then God sent His Living Word to begin the salvation and restoration process for Adam and Eve, and all of us. Our first parents were no longer fully human. The Sin that the Serpent had tempted them to enter into mortally wounded their humanity. Thus they fell into the state of living death. And in that state, they were spiritually dead to God and to the fulfillment of His Plan for Creation. In that sense they were spiritually naked and helpless. And they have passed that state onto each one of us, through human generation. That is why God sent His Word… to serve as our Covering and Substitute Sacrifice Atonement so He could reconcile with us and restore us fully, in the fullness of time.
Genesis 3:21
“The Lord God made garments of skin (from slain substitute sacrificial animals) for Adam and his wife, and clothed (effectively covered) them.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Serving as our Divine Covering, God’s awesome Word stood between us and the Father’s Perfect Justice and Wrath against Sin. The Word is our perfectly Righteous and Pure Mediator, who covers us with His Perfect Righteousness and the Perfect Obedience and Service to God that He renders eternally to His Father, on our behalf. Thus God Himself serves as our Protective Covering or Insulation from His Righteous Wrath against Sin and Death. He took on our Sin, so that He could share His Righteousness with us, in return. And He took on our Death and by His Sin-less Righteousness and Authority, He broke its power over us and set us free and gave us His awesome Blessing in its place. As a result of His death on the Cross, God took our self-life and radical independence into Death with Him. He did it so we could take part in the Perfect Righteousness and Eternal Inheritance that is coming to His Resurrected Humanity! So, as our Representative, God absorbed and took all of our sin, death, curse, condemnation and punishment onto the Humanity of His Word. The Covenant made the Word one with us, and made us one with Him. Thus when He, in His Humanity, was punished, tortured, crucified and executed… we underwent the same things – not in ourselves, but IN our Eternal Covenant Representative! And our debt is fully paid… in the eyes of Almighty God!
This is why, when we receive, embrace and follow God’s Word, we receive the Father from which He came. Thus God becomes the Salvation that He sent His Word to impart. And this is why we must forsake whatever we were, prior to our entry into the Covenant, prior to our salvation and prior to being joined to our Messiah. We must die, mentally and emotionally, to all that Sin corruption and living death and eternal condemnation that our Messiah’s crucifixion and death stripped away from us spiritually. It happens as soon as Yeshua actually and truly becomes our Lord, Master, Owner and Messiah. He must first become our Lord and Owner. And if we come under His Full Authority, we are rejoined to our rightful Head, the Source of all Life, and so we become members of His Body. And then He is legally free to serve as our New Life and Eternal Salvation. Only if He becomes our Lord can He serve as our Redeemer and Savior. So we must first come fully under the Authority of the one who defeated the powers of Darkness and destroyed all their works. And if we are under His Authority, it follows that we will do what He commands.
That union with Him is what sets us free. This is how God takes the Serpent and his powers of Darkness completely out of our picture. They can no longer make any legal claim upon us or accuse us before God of being guilty or unworthy of His grace and favor, because God has made us one with Himself! So our demonic enemies no longer have a legal right to manipulate or harm or interfere with us. But, in their rebellion and deadly malice, they continually overstep their boundaries and try to deceive and lure us into pulling away from our Master and leaving His service so they can entrap us once more, and drag us back in chains, to Egypt. But our boot camp training will train and equip us to stand our God-given ground and resist their lies, deceptions and delusive snares. We must not allow the Father of Lies to deceive us any longer. We must learn to withstand his barrage of lies and delusions and faithfully man our posts. We must have nothing more to do with the demonic Truth-twisters or their legions of deceived slaves, from this point onward. And that is what our training is equipping us to do.
Ephesians 4:17-25
“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the (living dead) Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the Life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as Truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the Truth. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak Truth each one of you with his neighbor, for (because we are all members of our one Head) we are members of one another!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
This massive Exodus reality-shift is so profound that many fail to grasp how deep and radically new God makes us to be, when we embrace His Word. If we fail to grasp the depth and full meaning of this we won’t understand the True Gospel and what it requires of us. And we’ll fail to finish the full transition and get caught somewhere en route, in the middle stages of our Exodus. Even so-called ‘believers’ continue to identify with worldly, earthly, temporary things of the earth. Instead of learning to become new, regenerated spiritual sons of God in Messiah… they continue to think of themselves as ‘white’ or ‘black’ or ‘red’ or ‘yellow’ or as ‘male’ or ‘female’ or ‘straight’ or ‘gay’ or ‘Russian’ or ‘Dutch’ or ‘Irish’ or ‘Republican’ or ‘Communist’ etc., etc., etc. They remain mentally and emotionally chained to temporary created things and man-made labels that are fleeting. But all of those created things will go down with the sinking ship that this fallen world truly is! So we must not lose sight of the Master that is leading us to His Eternal Home. We must not allow demonic lies to sap our strength and stop our momentum.
Those of us who are destined to bring God’s Story of Redemption and Restoration to its final Fulfillment and Climax must persevere and overcome whatever may dare to stand in our way. We must relinquish our original self-centered perspectives and mindsets and false gospels. We must stop clinging to our old self-life ways. We must see through and beyond the old demonic self-improvement trap and stop ignoring and bypassing our Messiah and His Perfect Finished Work!
Luke 9:23-24
“And He was saying to them all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after (that is, Follow after) Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily (just as you have seen Me doing in My capacity as your Covenant Representative;) and follow Me (by embracing that very same lifestyle).
“For whoever wishes to save (improve, enhance and protect) his (radically independent self-) life will lose it, but whoever loses his (radically independent self-) life for My sake, he is the one who will save it!’” (Amplification added.)
To self-pampering people that indulge their strong natural urges for self-preservation and gratification of their fleshy passions and desires, those words are terrifying and foreboding. But true freedom and salvation are embedded within those words! The Cross sets us free from our state of living death… and that frees us to receive our Messiah’s Eternal Resurrection Life instead! Anyone who understands this rejoices at the sight of the Cross! But those who do not yet see what God is telling us, shut down and run like rabbits, at the sight of its approach. But beloved, if we personally stop short of the Cross… we personally stop short of the Resurrection! Resurrection only comes after Death. It is not a substitute for Death; it is the next step after Death. Resurrection is the New, Eternal Life that is possible for those who really and truly have died to their former, original Sin-corrupted self-life. And this helps us to understand why, according to Almighty God’s Infinitely Perfect Justice, our Covenant Representative had to be dealt with by His Heavenly Father in such a harsh, demanding, unforgiving, merciless manner. This is why He had to drink the Cup that was coming to us, to the very dregs! God Himself was making sure that everything needed would be done for us Perfectly… by Him!
Luke 9:22
“… The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day.’
Matthew 26:38-40
“Then He said to them, ‘My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.’
“And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.’ And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, ‘So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour?’
Beloved… notice what our Covenant Representative was saying in these texts! He’s telling us that He was required by Divine Justice to pay our penalty in full! He was fully human, just like we are! And the prospect of having to pay the full penalty that every human being that God had ever created, or ever will create, was a burden that no human imagination could comprehend or handle. And just imagine the overwhelming hurricane of demonic opposition He was undergoing at that time. The powers of Darkness showed Him no mercy in their attempts to stop Him from fulfilling His commission and breaking the chains by which they were entrapping the human race. So, naturally, because He was a weak, vulnerable human, just like us, our Representative was laboring and groaning under the weight of the Load that had been placed on His shoulders. So He asked His Father if there could be any other way besides what was being inflicted on Him, by which His Task could be done. But the answer from His Father was NO! God is Infinite Perfection! His Standards of Righteousness and Justice are Infinitely Perfect. So, there was no other way by which Almighty God’s Perfect Standards of Justice and Righteousness could be perfectly satisfied. The perfect Order of God’s Creation had to be restored in a Perfect, Eternally Complete way. God’s Perfect Justice was forced to reject the Sin-corrupted, rebellious human race… therefore, the Covenant Representative of that race had to receive the Full Rejection and Condemnation and Punishment that they had coming! He had to take all of that upon Himself, in order to set us free from it.
Everything that makes us guilty and unworthy HAD to be stripped away by His Cross! So, just as He, in His Perfect Righteousness, had to become one with us… we, in our Sin-full state, must identify with and become one with Him… in His atoning Death. THEN… we’ll be free to become one with Him in His Resurrection Righteousness and Eternal Glory.
Not only did our Representative have to undergo the death that we had coming to remove what Sin had done to the human race, but all of the traces of our former radically independent rebelliousness have to undergo the same Death! Father sent His Son to lead the way to the Cross and its Death. This is the True Exodus that takes the human race out of the Death that is caused by the Serpent’s rebellion and state of Sin. In exchange for that, our Messiah brings us into His Eternal Resurrection Life. That is why we dare not stop short of the Finish Line that takes us into our Eternal Home with God!
An image and likeness, by nature, reflects and reveals someone else that is ‘the original.’ It can never have an independent life of its own! It always reflects and reveals the other – the original source! And this is what God’s Living Word made flesh was doing on Earth. He was always being led and empowered by the Holy Spirit of His Father. He is, by nature and essence, one with the Father who speaks Him forth. What is in the Father is in His Word! So, to know the Father… you need to know His Word. And to know the Word, is to know the Father from whom He proceeds. And this was always being revealed to us through our human Messiah! So get this: we humans were originally made to be the image and likeness of God’s Living Word! And, if we become the image and likeness of the Word, we also become the image and likeness of the Father!
John 5:19
“Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, 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.’”
This text is a perfect description of what a human image and likeness of God is and does. And so, although He was the only human who could do this, He nevertheless said to each of His disciples that were called to ‘follow’ Him:
Matthew 10:24-25
“A disciple is not above his Teacher, nor a slave above his Master. It is enough for the disciple that he becomes like his Teacher, and the slave like his Master. If they have called the Head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household?”
Beloved… this is the critical point of the True Gospel! If you’re really going to forsake your demonically-induced radical independence from Almighty God, you must really forsake and crucify it! This isn’t mere religious doctrine and talk! This is experiential reality! Our Messiah had to endure the Cross to make Atonement for us. And now we have to endure the Cross… so that it can strip away every last speck of Sin that separates us from God and His Mercy. The Cross sets us free and cleanses us and prepares us to be free to identify fully with our Covenant Representative and all that He has accomplished on our behalf! So, to truly identify with our resurrected Messiah to that degree, it will cost our rebellious fallen flesh and its state of living death – EVERYTHING! Whatever is unworthy of God’s Presence must be taken completely out of our picture!
And, if we do follow our Lord and forsake this fallen sinking world…. the fallen world that chooses to remain under the delusion and domination of the Serpent will hate us for what we have chosen to do. The living dead people are enslaved by the powers of Darkness as long as they still cling to the fallen world that the demonic powers dominate! So anyone in that state will despise and oppose those of us who dare to forsake Egypt and leave it behind. That’s why we MUST make our personal Exodus. As long as we remain radically independent, we make peace with our state of Sin… and the rest of the Sin-loving world will love us for it and accept us as their own. But as soon as we take our first true Exodus step out of Egypt and their system and agenda… they will turn on us and we will suddenly find ourselves in a state of total war!
Part of the horrendous damage that Sin has done to us is that it altered our DNA… our basic human essence and nature. We inherited the radically independent, rebellious, anti-God traits of the Serpent! We are conceived and born into that Satanic/Adamic state of Sin. We were conceived into its living death! Death was already at work within us even from the first instant of our existence in the womb! So Death is our original, natural, inherited ‘home!’ When we’re born into that, we may seem to be living, kicking, cooing, cuddly little beings… but we’re not living beings. We’re greatly flawed beings, beings that are already dying! We’ve been murdered by the Serpent; and from the first instant of our existence in this world, we’re forced to die progressively… a slow, drawn-out, sorrow-filled death!
And as long as we remain in that state, the living death that works in us can only produce dead results. And that is why God can’t and won’t accept anything that originates from our spiritually dead fallen flesh and any product that comes out of our fallen soulish faculties. God, by nature, is the Source of all Life! So it is against His very nature to have anything to do with what is dead or whatever comes from what is dead.
James 4:3-5
“You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? (Emphasis added.)
In my experience and observation, this transition from self-life… over to True, Authentic Word of God Life… has always been the sticking point. The world wants its radically independent self to become religious, so that it may improve and move up in stature… and continue to be preeminent! But Almighty God demands that it be forsaken, crucified, executed and buried forever! That’s quite a difference in opinion, wouldn’t you say?
So this is why most people get stuck at the point of the Exodus where they are forced to choose between Life or Death, between Spirit or Flesh, between Israel or Egypt… or, in other words, between the Life of Messiah, God’s Living Word, or the radically independent living dead existence with which we begin. This has been the main issue since the days of Cain and Abel. We can see that clearly from the revelation given throughout all of Scripture – fallen human flesh always craves to be ‘Number One!’ It strives to gain the preeminence and maintain the control and get the credit and enjoy top level status in all areas. That comes from the Sin-corruption that the Serpent injected into our DNA. It is always at work in us. The drive to be ‘Number One’ and to have the best for ourselves, are traits that have become so normal to this fallen world and its systems that it is even normal and ‘highly desirable’ for religious self-driven people who claim to be believers! They do not question or oppose the world when it speaks of people ‘having a life of their own.’ So, in their religious delusion, they try to ‘spiritualize’ their living death state… by spiritual-sounding rituals and activities and practices and traditions. So, in actual fact, by doing that, they agree with and help to foster the self-life delusions of this demon-oppressed world! They foster the deception that living dead people can ‘learn’ and ‘improve’ and ‘achieve’ and ‘be good’, by their own self-effort.
The absurdity in all of this is that the dead keep striving to enhance their ‘lives!’ But they have no lives! They are dead because they remain separated from God’s Word… yet, like Cain, they keep trying to please and serve the God who is the Source of Life by offering Him cheap counterfeit substitutes of their own devising, in place of God’s own Word! And instead of becoming one with God’s Word, and thus one also with each other, they continue to scatter and go their own ways… and remain incurably ‘denominational’ and ‘sectarian’ and ever-divided!
Going Past Our Intellect
People do that because we are all so profoundly hardwired and programmed to be intensely selfish and self-centered in our habitual perspectives and attitudes and reaction patterns. And that’s why we become so frustrated and enraged when anyone or anything crosses us and gets in the way of our quest to be preeminent in all things. We refuse to see or admit that Death is already at work in what we are and what we do and what we crave and try to reproduce. We won’t admit that there is only one True God, one Sole Source for whatever is created. We won’t acknowledge Him because we’re still so busy trying to put something or someone that He has created… in His place!
And that self-life perspective of independence and the natural traits and passions and urges that flow from it constitute the living hell from which the Cross is meant to free us! The Cross is God’s instrument of Freedom and Liberation. But we run from it like crazy! We cringe at the thought of embracing it because deep in our hearts… we still cling to the delusion that we’re not in such bad shape. We won’t accept what God said about us. We insist on assuming that we still have some form of life in us that can be improved and exalted and elevated… with a little more education… or with better positioning… or with more material assets and money and fame and possessions or better relationships etc., etc., etc. The last thing we want to do is to let go of ‘my life’ and ‘my best interests’ and ‘my personal little empire’ that we spent so much time and effort trying to create and protect. To us, giving up our living Death is the worst thing that could happen to us. But, in God’s sight… when we give up our living Death… He is free to give us His Eternal Life in exchange! But of course, fallen flesh doesn’t want to hear about any of that.
So when we hear the Gospel for the first time… our mind may tell us: ‘This is true. This is right.’ And that may prompt us to give mental assent and agreement to what it tells us. But very often, that’s where many people will leave it. They stop at that point and claim to be ‘saved’ simply because what they heard made sense to their intellect. Thus they assume that the mental intellectual agreement they give to certain parts of the Bible is the Biblical Faith that pleases and satisfies God. But beloved, that’s not true Biblical Faith! Biblical Faith comes when we understand what our Covenant Representative had to undergo in His own flesh, all the while He was acting ‘as us!’ All that time, He was making atonement to God for us and our Sin and all of Sin’s consequences… He had to receive and undergo the same response from God that Cain received in Genesis 4! He wasn’t rejected and condemned to death because He did wrong. He underwent all of that because He was representing you and me! What our fallen state of Sin forces us to undergo… is what He willingly took upon Himself so that He could make Perfect Atonement in our name! But He also did it to lead the way for us… to show us the way we too will have to travel… if we’re truly following Him!
This is why even God’s beloved Son had to experience the same rejection all fallen flesh can expect to receive from God. Our state of living death forces that rejection upon us! So, although He was the Eternal Living Word of Almighty God Himself, as long as He was representing us on Earth, His Sin-less Humanity had to be crucified to every trace of self-life. As our Human Representative, He too had to come under the Absolute Authority of God’s Living Word! He too had to believe, trust and obey God by faith. He too had to serve as the Image and Likeness of God’s Living and written Word! And so, He too had to depend on His Father to supply everything He was and everything He did in His Humanity! In that sense, our Lord lived the crucified life throughout every moment of His earthly stay!
He did that because that is what God created all the rest of us to be and to do! We are made to be Almighty God’s image and likeness! So I pray that we may come to understand more and more about the enormous distance that exists between what God originally intended for us to be… and where we actually are now, at this point of God’s saga of Salvation History. We still have quite a way to go before God restores us fully, wouldn’t you agree? We can see this… if we consider the life that Yeshua lived on earth in this light. He was demonstrating to us what true, image and likeness humanity actually is! He was, and is, the Last Adam!
1 Corinthians 15:45
“So also it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living soul.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”
The Holy Spirit empowered Yeshua to do what the first Adam refused to do! So, as we regard Him and the Spirit-filled and led Life He was living, in this sense, we can see the vast difference between what He was, and what we are. Then we’re able to understand why all of that selfish, ego-adoring ‘me first’ residue that remains in our original fallen flesh, must be continually crucified and kept out of the Holy Spirit’s way. We can’t have it both ways. We will either continue to do it ‘my way’… or, God’s Holy Spirit will continue to transform us back to that original perfect, pristine image and likeness of God, level of Humanity that we have never known or seen since we were born.
Sometimes people assume that the great giants of the Faith that Scripture tells us about, were somehow higher, and more exalted and more spiritually capable than the rest of us. But that too is a delusion. Even that great New Covenant apostle and disciple, Paul, had to struggle with his inherited Adamic flesh, just as mightily as you and I have to struggle with it. Ponder what he revealed about his own struggles when he wrote these words:
Romans 7:15-25
“For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate! But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law (the Torah), confessing that the Law (Torah) is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but Sin (and its living death nature), which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me (through my intellectual assent to God’s revelation), but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want!
“But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but Sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the Law (Torah) of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the Law of Sin which is in my members.
“Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Beloved, this text reveals the battle that rages within each one of us! There are no exceptions! Even Yeshua had to struggle with the same temptations that are common to us all! And can you see how all of this ties in with what Father revealed to Cain, just after he rejected the dead products that Cain, in his radical independence, had just tried to offer to Him. Cain tried to do what ‘he thought’ would be good. But by acting in that self-centered capacity, he was ignoring and bypassing what God’s Word was offering to him! He got ahead of God instead of following His Word! And that’s what his parents, Adam and Eve had done, at the prompting of the Serpent. Thus Cain was perpetuating the radically independent rebellion of the Serpent. He most certainly was not operating as the image and likeness of God’s Word. And when God saw that His own Word was not being allowed to mediate with Him on Cain’s behalf… God had to reject what Cain tried to do for himself, on his own initiative. God will only accept from us what He first gives to us… through His Living Word! When we do that, we act as His image and likeness; but when we refuse to do it, we’re the image and likeness of the Serpent!
Genesis 4:6-7
“Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
Cain labored and struggled mightily to try to please and appease God by his own efforts. And while he did that, he was actually indulging and extending the influence of the Sin that the Serpent had injected into his fallen nature. He kept rejecting God’s Word and what the Word was sent to do from within his heart. Thus he strengthened the death grip that the Serpent had on him. And apparently, Cain never learned his lesson. Sin continued to delude and mislead him… and he continued to feed and protect and ‘stoke’ that Sin, which made the domination it had over him ever more powerful with the passage of time.
And this is why God had sent His Living Word to Adam and Eve as soon as they fell into Sin. He came to be our ‘Covering’ and our Full Atonement! This is why He was commissioned to serve as our ‘Passover Lamb,’ our Sacrificial Substitute Representative that came to satisfy the Infinite Justice and Perfect Standards of God’s Righteousness in our name. Every second of His earthly existence was spent making Atonement to God for our lifetimes of arrogant radically independent rebellion and disobedience to God’s Word. So that is why Yeshua had to live the crucified life that the rest of us refused to live. He did it every moment He was on Earth, representing us!
He offered up His Perfect Sin-less Humanity as a Sacrifice to God. How much more then will we be required to offer up our Serpent-killed, Sin-corrupted independent flesh on the altar before God’s Holy Presence? So, as long as God’s Word was representing us… He too, as God’s Image and Likeness, continued to receive everything from Father… through Father’s Living Word and Holy Spirit. In this way, our Human Messiah… was operating as the image and likeness of God’s Living Word… the Word that Adam and Eve had refused to believe and obey. And now we are called to follow Him.
So, can you see that Yeshua was always ‘Following’ God, receiving everything from His Father and initiating nothing of His own? Can you see that this is why Father was so pleased and satisfied with Him and with what He was doing on our behalf, as our Representative? The Performance that our Messiah offered to God on our behalf and in our name, was, and is, Eternally Perfect! And if the Cross is free to strip away our miserable personal performances… then we are free to receive credit for Yeshua’s Perfect Performance, which He offered to His Father in our name!
Matthew 3:16-17
“After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.’” (Emphasis added.)
Father wasn’t just speaking of His Living Word made flesh… He was also speaking of those disciples of His who are one with Him and that He was representing before the Righteousness and Justice of God! Cain did not accept what came to him through God’s Word. So, just as his parents had done in Genesis 3, he was also embracing the word of the Serpent, and bypassing God’s Word! He was following the Serpent in his radical independence from God. But Yeshua was demonstrating to the world what True Humanity, as originally created by His Father, really is. He was also showing us where He intends to take us… as soon as we repent of our radical independence and allow the Cross to remove it from us. Once that happens, room can be made in what is left of us… for God’s Living Word to pierce, penetrate and impregnate us with His own Eternal Resurrection Life and Perfect Humanity. This is why it is so necessary for us to renew our minds and install brand new paradigms and patterns into our inner workings that match what our Messiah is and does from within us. If we don’t do that, we’ll never be ready to follow Him where He actually intends to lead us.
So beloved, how does all of this play out in our daily lives and routines and situations? How do we pick up our crosses and how do we follow our Messiah to wherever He has to lead us? Well… that’s what I’ve been trying to learn for myself. I’ve stumbled and struggled and failed, many times, like all the rest. And I’ve struggled to articulate the lessons I’ve learned through this rigorous process, for many years. And I continue to try to articulate it in the Follow Me material that is now being made available to you. So allow me to remind you about what I said concerning the first authentic step that begins our true Exodus from self-life over to Messiah-Life. This is what it will sound like, as you interact with your indwelling Lord on that basis:
“Lord… I defer to You. I can choose to go back to my original self-life ways. Or, I can crucify all that and join it to Your Atoning Death. I can do this because of the New Covenant Bond into which You brought me. As I crucify my self-life… and defer to You… You are free to live Your Perfect Resurrection Life in my regenerated spirit. And Your Life, working in my spirit, is free to reveal You and produce Your fruit from within my fallen soul… and my mortal flesh. Your fruit will appear in my situations and circumstances and interactions on Earth… and You will continue to supply everything I will need, from the Resurrection side of the Cross.
“At present, only You occupy that Resurrection Position. You are already there. But I am still following You on my Exodus. I know You are leading me to the same Destination that you currently enjoy. So that’s why I choose you and defer to You so that You may live in me and through me, even now. I choose to acknowledge and admit that my radical independence died when You died. And I remind myself of that… again and again… moment by moment… and choice by choice.
“So even though I’m still en route, I can be with You, where You are, at Father’s right hand… through my faith in what you, as My Covenant Representative, have done in my name. By faith I can grab hold of what Your written Word has revealed to us. By faith, because You are there… I too can be there; not in myself, but IN YOU! And that is what I choose to believe and rest upon. By faith… I will keep drawing everything needed… from You. I will draw from You everything that You know I’ll need… as I take this next step… and the next step…. and the one after that… etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.’
Life Lived In God’s Revelation
By deferring continually to your indwelling Lord… you ‘die daily’… many times daily… so that He may continue to live and act and obey His Father… in your name… through your poor fallen flesh. He remains your Perfect Covering and Infinite Ability… and you remain His crucified disciple. At first this exchange will seem strange and cumbersome. But after you’ve repeated it enough… it will become smoother, and more natural and automatic. And soon it will be so much a part of you that it will automatically flow out of you, even in your dreams!
As you probably already know from your own boot camp experiences, we are called to a life that can only be lived when we operate purely by faith in God’s Revelation and Credibility. What we need, to please and serve God, and to live this disciple life, will never be something that originates with you or me. While we’re in our current state, none of that can come from us. So this is not at all about you or me and what we may try to do for God.
All of this must come to us from the Perfect Humanity and Presence of our indwelling Lord. He makes it available to each of us… from the Resurrection side of the Cross. He is the only Human that is actually there, physically. But we can join Him there, by faith in His promises to us. By faith, we can be joined to His Eternal Perfection. And that is what the New Covenant has made possible for us. But the fact remains, at his point of our Exodus, we won’t ever be able to ‘feel’ it, or ‘sense’ it or ‘summon it up’ or ‘control’ any of what only He can give to us, by our will or intellect or any other human device. And we won’t be able to feel or control this Reality from within our fallen dying flesh. All of what really matters is still only IN HIM! So we must learn to trust Him, and only Him. Our confidence and trust and reliance in Him must be so deep, and so far-reaching, that we can begin to practice resting in His Perfection and in the All-Sufficiency of His Perfect Finished Work, even though we have no control over it whatsoever. Our Eternal Wellbeing comes entirely from our Lord’s total Reliability.
And if we practice relying on Him like that, with enough repetition, He will become our New Eternal Life. And deferring to Him like this, over and over again throughout each day, will gradually become a deep habit, a New Covenant habit that will equip us to persevere all the way to the end of this Journey.
And when we know and interact with Him like this… the new wiring and programming that doing this will begin to install within our onboard computers will finally begin to take over and overcome our old original Adamic wiring and programming. The new data we’ll be adding and installing will begin to allow and enable us to actually experience the Peace and Rest and Freedom from self-striving bondage that the Cross was meant to impart to us.
The Cross our Master offers doesn’t inflict torture and death on us. That’s what His Cross imposed on Him! But the Cross He offers to us, is the New Covenant Cross that prunes us of the remnants of our self-life… and that gives us FREEDOM from Self; FREEDOM from Self-striving and performance-based pressure! It imparts FREEDOM from having to carry the load on our own backs and having to be responsible for all the results! The Cross He gives us imparts His PEACE into us, along with FATHER’S PERFECT JOY AND THE CONTENTMENT AND SATISFACTION that He receives from His Son who is Covering and Protecting and Representing us before Him. The Cross our Master offers to us, cuts us free from bondage to and identification with… this fallen, sinking Titanic of a world… and it transports us to where our Master sits in Glory… at His Father’s right hand… in the highest place in God’s Heavenly Kingdom.
Colossians 3:1-4
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ (by your Faith-based participation in the New Covenant God made with Israel), keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 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 (through your obedient Biblical Faith), then you also will be revealed with Him in Glory!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
From what I can see in Scripture concerning Israel’s long history, and from what I see in Church history, this revelation has not been very well received, or absorbed, or practiced, by most of us so-called ‘believers.’ Many of us gain some level of mental understanding of the traditional Gospel message. And many gave their assent and agreement to it. And many enter into the practice of some form of ‘Judaism’ or ‘Christianity.’ But still… after many centuries of that… how few among us have actually experienced the elation and joy and peace and rest that the Lord promised to give to those who come to Him and truly follow His instructions and commands.
Matthew 7:13-14
“Enter through the Narrow Gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the (Narrow) Gate is small and The Way is narrow that leads to Life, and there are few who find it.” (Amplification added.)
We know that what the Lord said above is true because we see it with our own eyes and often, in our own experiences. How few there are who no longer carry the burdens of the world upon their own backs because they know beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they died… and the Living Word of God Himself has done all of the work needed in our name. And because so few understand this, even most believers continue to carry all of the load… all of their cares, concerns, needs, issues and circumstances upon their own backs. Very few among us realize that those loads have already been taken off of us and the New Covenant has placed all of that on our Covenant Representative’s back! He already carried our burdens into Death! And when we follow Him into that Death… He sets us free from having to carry all that dead weight! But how few among us can know, in their gut of guts, that IT IS FINISHED! The Work is completely DONE… and our job is to join Father and His Living Word and His Holy Spirit in GOD’S PERFECT ETERNAL REST!
Beloved… I believe that the time has come for this Revelation to be known and understood and put into full practice by God’s People! The time for God to take us into the Ultimate Fulfillment of all of His Covenant Promises is at hand. I believe that the generations that live today have been commissioned, not only to give intellectual assent to God’s Revelation… but to take it much, much deeper and further than any prior generation has ever been able to take it. Now we must take it all the way to the end of the Exodus Course… all the way Home… into its Ultimate Fulfillment!
The previous generations did what God expected of them. May His Name be praised! But now it’s time for our generations to ram all of this Home… to its Ultimate Fulfillment! So, hopefully, we will realize better than all the others, that we truly did die with Adam and Eve… and that Death is still at work within us… and that we have no other choice (if we want to Live) but to defer to our resurrected Messiah… so that He may live His Perfect Resurrected Humanity from within us. And this is what I believe Father is intent on teaching us during our Boot Camp Training!
We will advance if we learn to defer to our indwelling Messiah by faith in what He told us, instead of putting faith in our original self-centered paradigms and natural feelings… and what we think we are perceiving or thinking or feeling. We will then begin to create a highway in the wilderness for the coming and appearance, and Ultimate Revelation, of our Glorious Resurrected Lord to emerge in our midst! It won’t come as a result of our ‘self-improvement’ efforts; it will come when we believe enough to take that authentic ‘He must increase; I must decrease’ step that is so necessary before we can even begin our Exodus Journey. We must take that step over and over again… until it takes us across the Finish Line. Self-Life kills our Exodus. But Messiah-Life… IS THE EXODUS!
The more our fallen world continues to shake and totter and crumble and disintegrate all around us… the more do we need to be in touch with the Eternal One who never changes, never forsakes and never disappoints His own. He’s right here with us all the time. But He waits for us to choose between Life and Death, Messiah-Life or Self-life, and being Spirit-empowered or Flesh-driven.
Luke 12:8-12
“And I say to you, everyone who confesses Me (as I live and work from within you) before men, the Son of Man will confess him also before the angels of God; but he who denies Me before men (and insists on remaining radically independent) will be denied before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit (who is in you to make God’s Living Word alive, active and fruitful within you), it will not be forgiven him (what you produce in that state will not be accepted by God). When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not worry about how or what you are to speak in your defense, or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say!” (Amplification added.)
Beloved, let’s have the Wisdom to get out of God’s way! Let’s learn to depend and rely upon Him to be our Total Covering and Eternal Redemption and Restoration. Let’s usher in the Full Authority of God’s Living Word, and the boundless Power of His Holy Spirit. Let us stand and hold our Blood Covenant Ground and watch Almighty God do everything that His Perfect Standards require of us… in our name… to Perfection! If it really is true that only the Cross can open the way for Him and His awesome Liberation and Transformation to appear in our midst… then let us embrace and welcome that Cross with everything that is in us!
Revelation 12:7-12
“And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in Heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the Serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the Earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the Salvation, and the Power, and the Kingdom of our God and the Authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them (the brethren) before our God day and night. And they (the brethren) overcame him because of the Blood of the Lamb and because of the Word of their testimony, and they did not love their life (that is, their decapitated, living death existence) even when faced with death (on the Cross. Instead of fearing the Cross, they embraced it and the Cross set them completely free of the Serpent and his Sin and Death) For this reason, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)