In the Bible, God continually separates what comes from and aligns with His Word, from what does not. It begins in Gen. 1:4 when God separates the Light from the Darkness. Then He separates Adam and Eve from their ‘fig leaf covering’ and clothes them with animal skins. Then He separates Abel from Cain and also, Noah’s family from the rest of the world. In Gen. 11 He separates the rebellious humans from each other to divide and confuse them and minimize the effects of the spiritual damage they are doing that will delay and confuse His Plan for Creation’s Redemption and Restoration. And finally, in Gen. 12:1-3, God sets apart Abram and his family and all his unborn spiritual and physical descendants, from the rest of the world. And the stage is set for the Exodus, the Ultimate Journey revealed in the Bible, to all those that will be saved.
So why is God doing this? Is it because He’s angry at some people and desires to get even? Does He play favorites? We fallen human beings think, act, react and interact out of malicious and vengeful motives… but does Almighty God do that too?
As we ponder this, something the prophet Isaiah wrote supplies a clue. He says specifically that God is not at all like us. His nature is perfect selfless love. So everything He does is for the best and highest good of what He has created. So it’s safe to approach God, once you begin to get to know and understand more of His nature. And in that light, God reveals this about Himself through Isaiah:
Isaiah 55:6-9
“Seek the LORD while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the LORD, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Emphasis added.)
When we realize that God’s nature is perfect in every way, and that He is utterly unchanging in His pure, selfless love, then we’ll see that He is the safest being of all to approach, even if we’ve been His bitter enemies. He will accept anyone that comes to Him seeking Truth and Reality. The problem is not that God doesn’t accept us as we are; it’s that we refuse to accept Him as He is. Even so, God remains perfectly loving and open to us, always wanting the best and highest good for every person He creates.
So when He sets those that are His, apart from those that keep rejecting Him, He’s acting out of love and compassion for all concerned. And this awesome truth is clearly revealed in what God first said to a moon worshipper that originally lived in Chaldea, named, ‘Abram’. God sent His living Word to Abram to say this to him:
Genesis 12:2-3
‘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 later renamed this man, ‘Abraham’. And we will understand much about Abraham’s significance and that of his descendants if we pay attention to what God promised them in the beginning: ‘I will bless you and make your name great…and so you shall be a blessing…and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Can you see it? God separates those that hear, believe and obey His living Word from those that, for whatever reason, refuse to do it…so that through the people that are His, He can continue to reach out to the others…hoping to bless and reveal Himself to them too eventually, as much as they will allow. He will do this as long as there is still time for people to repent and return to Him. Salvation for all that will repent is His purpose. And anything that insists on resisting His purpose to save mankind…will most certainly be taken out of the way.
So Abraham and other disciples of God’s Word are not specially favored, coddled pets. They are devoted family members and servants of God’s Word. That’s why God’s living Word made flesh, uttered this rather jarring statement in Matthew’s Gospel:
Matthew 12:47-50
Someone said to Him, ‘Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak to You.’ But Jesus answered the one who was telling Him and said, ‘Who is My mother and who are My brothers?’ And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, ‘Behold My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother!’” (Emphasis added.)
God’s ultimate purpose is to reinstate His living Word as Lord of all Creation. Creation comes forth from God’s Word, and is sustained by His Word and will ultimately return to and be perfected in and by His Word. So the Word will end up to be…All in all. In this sense of ultimate and eternal authority and preeminence, the pattern was given by John the Immerser: ‘He must increase, but I must decrease’ (Jn. 3:30). For this reason, disciples must be trained to abide under the Headship of God’s living and written Word even now, while their Master’s pre-eminence over everything else continues to progress to its ultimate fullness. Disciples learn to live under His full authority now. They live with Him and from Him and He can thus obey His Father through them to fulfill His awesome redemptive purposes. Because they obey, they transform into His image and likeness. So God can then entrust disciples with the privilege and commission of serving as God’s ‘light of the world’ (Mt. 5:14-16) for the sake of those that do not yet obey God’s Word. Disciples lovingly allow God’s Word and Spirit to live in and work through them – so He can redeem, save and restore the Original Blessing (Gen. 1:27-31) to all of mankind.
So the Lord’s partnership with His disciples is similar to the activity of a capable ‘Hand’ that wears a ‘glove’. Through the glove, the ‘Hand’ fulfills its purposes. God, through His Word and Spirit, works through disciples, doing what only He can do to save and restore His Sin-corrupted Creation. As God’s indwelling Presence abides and works within disciples, they ‘light up’ and through their thoughts, words and deeds, the Word of God lives and acts through them. Thus God’s Word seeks out what is lost, and gives Life to what is dead, heals what is broken and sick, and liberates whatever remains trapped in slavery to malicious satanic deception and domination.
In other words, God and the disciples always work together to re-attach ‘Head-less’ humans to their Life-Source, God’s living Word, and to restore to them the Original Blessing given in Genesis 1 that the Word is sent to be to them. The Word and His disciples serve to make bad situations better. That’s what Life always does! The nature of God’s Life is to always react to bad things in ways that make them better! Instead of thinking, acting, reacting and interacting in ways that make them worse, which is what Serpent-deceived, decapitated dead people do, God’s Word who IS the Original Blessing that God freely imparted to all mankind, contains within Himself everything all humans will ever need to prosper, thrive and fulfill their God-given purpose and destiny!
So disciples are to be God’s shining ‘Life’ examples, or ‘demonstration models’. They display the dramatic life-changes and fruitful effects of the depths of the Love that God wants to shower upon all people and the obvious fruit in their lives proves how much God desires to rescue them all from the Serpent and the deadly ravages of Sin.
After Adam and Eve sinned and separated themselves from their Creator, God sent His Word after them…to restore the Original Blessing that He is meant to be to all of us. Realize that the original separation was between God and the entire human race. And God did not cause it. The Serpent and Sin are what ‘decapitated’ us. But God took the initiative to heal that fatal rift. He sent His Word, the Head and Lord of the human race, to re-attach the ‘decapitated’ humans to Himself so He could cover their spiritual nakedness and restore them to full friendship and image and likeness union with God. And so any unrepentant ‘Head-less’ people that the Serpent uses to try to stop God’s Salvation-bringing Word from doing what He is sent to do, will either be thwarted and confounded in their attempts to stop God’s salvation plan from progressing, or, when necessary, they will be removed from the scene altogether, as was done in The Flood. God allows nothing to stop His Word and His Word’s family of disciples, from fulfilling their redemptive purpose.
The Blessing God gave to every one of us will never be revoked. Once God speaks, His Word stands forever. When He blesses, or enters into a blood covenant or commissions someone with a calling, these things are permanent; God eternally stands behind every Word He has spoken. So even after the Serpent ‘decapitated’ Adam and Eve and they fell and passed Sin and its damage onto their descendants, God sent His Word after them to ‘re-attach’ them to Himself. But their descendants multiplied and their evil ways increased until almost all of them became hopelessly unrepentant. So to protect His salvation process, God cleansed the earth of their wickedness by sending the flood. Then immediately afterward, He restored and entrusted His Original Blessing to the obedient Noah. Then God entrusted the Blessing to Noah’s son Shem and his line. And after several generations…He entrusted the Blessing to ‘Abram’, who later was re-named, ‘Abraham’.
Even within Abraham’s large family, God continued to set some people apart from others. He separated Abraham’s sons, Isaac and Ishmael. He separated Isaac’s sons, Jacob and Esau. He separated Jacob’s son Joseph from his family and his son Judah from the rest of his brothers. There was a strategic, redemptive purpose for this. God was setting apart and preserving the generational line from which the incarnation of His living Word would take place. From that line, Yeshua of Nazareth, the long-awaited Messiah of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the sons of Israel, would in the fullness of time, emerge.
So naturally the Serpent and the other powers of Darkness are dead set against the human race being re-attached to its Head, the Word of God. They do everything they can to make sure we remain ‘Head-less’ and always at odds with one another. If they succeed, God’s Word will have no Body through which to work on the earth and humans will never be able to share in His eternal Life once again. But if the dark powers fail to stop the Word’s invasion into their Darkness, they know God’s Word will rule and reign supreme over more and more members of the fallen human race. So they vent their rage against anyone that dares to embrace God’s Word and obey Him. They always seek to hide, erase, twist, disparage and dispose of God’s Word. And so Abram and every other disciple of God’s Word are perpetual targets of their fierce hatred and opposition. And humans that they can continue to deceive and manipulate, will be willing instruments in their efforts to destroy the Word’s disciples.
That’s why disciples must be thoroughly trained and disciplined to do their all-important job of bearing, expressing and releasing the living Presence of their risen Lord into this fallen world. The Lord must be free to work in them and through them like a Hand in a glove, or like a Head, expressing Himself through the members of His Body, so that God’s dynamic redemptive activity can continue to work on behalf of the fallen world and its broken, damaged, decapitated citizens!
Disciples must be trained to obey and embody their Commander at all times, under combat circumstances, at any cost. So they are plucked out of their former lives and ties, priorities and habit patterns, and transferred to an excruciating crucible, a ‘weaning pen of isolation’ that we might liken to a spiritual, mental and emotional ‘boot camp’.
Matthew 10:37-39
“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”
Radical separation is not meant to torture or punish us. It is intended to transform us into something we’ve never been before. Just as sloppy, unfit, self-indulgent former civilians must be refashioned into highly-disciplined combat-ready warriors, so must we be taught, trained, drilled to develop and install new wiring and programming into ourselves that until now were alien to us. Boot camp gives recruits massive repetitive exposure to new warrior ways and weans them from former civilian softness and self-indulgent irresponsibility. And so must we be immersed, marinated and thoroughly permeated with God’s mindset, attitude, priorities, focus, purposes and Heavenly lifestyle. Our training must prepare us to overcome any challenge and contingency that the fog, chaos and terrifying confusion of deadly spiritual combat may thrust upon us in the future.
It takes rigorous training to remain focused on obeying God, when everything and everyone around you is driven by hate-filled powers of Darkness to do just the opposite. The world system is fueled by satanic rage, hatred, selfishness, greed and murderous intent. But we must be equipped to resist those forces and hold our God-given Ground. The temptation to give in to demonic temptation and provocations stirs up the residue of Sin that remains in our human flesh. Then the enemy uses that to try to drag us back into acting and reacting and thinking as we did before God saved us. So it takes training, drill and discipline to remain focused on our redemptive task and continue to draw from our Head, all of the fruit and provision He earned for us by His finished work. And now the Holy Spirit is ready to transmit all of that to us from Heaven on a continual basis. That is why we must remain ‘connected’ to our Head, at all costs. God must be able to supply, protect and empower us continually, out of His infinite riches and the authority and power of His saving, blessing, Covenant Love…no matter what the opposition may be doing to the contrary:
Romans 15:1-6
“Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves. Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to his edification. For even Christ did not please Himself; but as it is written, “THE REPROACHES OF THOSE WHO REPROACHED YOU FELL ON ME.” For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Luke 23:33-35
When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left. But Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves. And the people stood by, looking on. And even the rulers were sneering at Him, saying, ‘He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One.’ (Emphasis added.)
God’s Spirit is here to keep us connected to our risen Lord. As long as we stay connected, His redeeming, saving Life will work within us and we will not be pulled back to what we used to be in the fallen world. Now we must be deeply rooted in our new Heavenly identity and its mindset so that we can continue to express His Life in us and fulfill our new purpose…and overcome the force of what will continually be swirling around us. We must not be sucked back into despising, reviling and acting just like the worldly people around us do. We are sent to invade that world and embody the risen Lord who is here to love and rescue all people from the coils of the Serpent.
So now we know God’s purpose for separating us. And we can understand why, as God saves humans that repent and come back under the authority of His Word, from those that do not, two different human races emerge…those that are newly restored to the Headship of God’s Word, and those that still choose to remain ‘decapitated’. In the Gospels you see that many Israelites of our Master’s day were ‘Head-less’ despite their Jewish heritage and deeply-rooted religious traditions and lifestyle. So the Lord ordered His disciples to come out from their midst.
But wherever they went, crowds of very religious, but still ‘decapitated’ Israelites chased after Him for a variety of reasons. But the Lord kept His disciples apart from them so that He could train them to outgrow their innate selfishness and learn to love and serve God wholeheartedly. That’s why He dealt with the multitudes and His disciples in two different ways:
Matthew 13:10-17
…the disciples came and said to Him, ‘Why do You speak to them (the multitudes) in parables?’ Jesus answered them, ‘To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says,
‘YOU WILL KEEP ON HEARING, BUT WILL NOT UNDERSTAND; YOU WILL KEEP ON SEEING, BUT WILL NOT PERCEIVE; FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE HAS BECOME DULL, WITH THEIR EARS THEY SCARCELY HEAR, AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR EYES, OTHERWISE THEY WOULD SEE WITH THEIR EYES, HEAR WITH THEIR EARS, AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART AND RETURN, AND I WOULD HEAL THEM.’
“But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear (obey). For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.’” (Emphasis added.)
At first, the Lord’s response sounds harsh, negative and critical. But He does not hold the people in the multitudes in contempt. He knows they do not know what they are doing as long as the Serpent manages to keep them in his spiritually blinding, deceptive coils. He grieves for them and is intent on fulfilling His Father’s eternal plan to save them. That’s why He does with His disciples what He once did with Abraham and his family. He sets them apart and restores the Original Blessing to them. Then He trains and equips them to live in that Blessing so they can transmit and share it the others that are not yet able to enjoy the Blessing through their own obedience of faith.
Matthew 10:7-8
“And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give.”
God’s Word always thinks, acts, reacts and interacts out of God’s eternal Love-Motive. He is positive in nature and intent, and not at all negative. Negative critics discriminate, condemn, reject and abandon whatever they judge to be ‘not good enough.’ That is the way of the unsaved world. In the world, the criterion is: ‘What have you done for me lately?’ In the world, it’s, ‘Every man for himself’. In the world, everything depends on your individual performance. If you perform well, you’re accepted and rewarded. But if you fail, you’re rejected, shamed, thrown on the human trash heap and forsaken. But that is ‘Head-less’ thinking! God doesn’t do that. The salvation He gives through His Word doesn’t depend on our performance; it depends on His Son’s perfect love nature and the perfect finished performance He has already rendered to His Father in our name! What He has already done on our behalf is what saves us! nothing we do in the present or will do in the future, regardless of how ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ we think it is, will be of any avail. If it comes from the finished work of the Son of Man, the Messiah… IT IS LIVING! If it comes from any other source, it is Head-less…and therefore… IT IS DEAD!
Self-centered, performance-based people can’t help but be critical, judgmental and negative. If your perspective is ‘Head-less’, you can only look to yourself and judge everything subjectively and individualistically. So you won’t be able to do or think in any other way but with self-absorbed, self-centered modes. And you will always ‘rate’ other people and situations and circumstances based on what they do for you, and what you can get out of them. You will naturally focus on what they do that is wrong, not good enough and unacceptable by your subjective decapitated standards. Head-less humans don’t have to go to school to learn to be judgmental and critical. They’re born that way! In fact, it’s impossible for them to stop doing that, unless they repent of that completely… and then allow God to spiritually regenerate them! And even after that happens, His Holy Spirit still must re-train, re-wire and re-program us with continuous practice and daily discipline! (See Rom. 12.) Only after we’re re-trained can we undergo the profound growth in heart and mind needed to develop deep relational wisdom and emotional maturity. That’s why God says to us:
Hebrews 12:7-13
“It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.”
The worldly ‘decapitated’ way of thinking and living is called, in Scripture: Flesh’. Flesh operates in the dark, lowest levels of our inner being. It motivates and drives this God-less, demon-possessed, dog-eat-dog world. And that’s why God has to break our ties with everything the Serpent’s malice and rebellion spawns and controls in this world. God doesn’t separate us from people; He separates us from the influence and allurements of the Serpent that is dominating all the other people, lest he continue to dominate us too!
When God sends us back into the world from which we came, we must be able to stay focused and cooperate at all times with God in blessing, saving and restoring those the satanic powers continue to enthrall and victimize. We can’t allow the smoke, fog, deception and resistance that the Serpent goads Head-less people to throw against us, to stop us from releasing the advance of God’s redemptive Word! We must be able to see through and beyond what the people around us are saying and doing and keep our focus on resisting and overcoming the invisible Powers of Darkness that are pulling their strings. The decapitated people are victims; but the Powers of Darkness are the ones that are deceiving and abusing and murdering them! The invisible powers of Darkness are the real enemy, not their victims.
There’s a huge difference between God’s heart and the fallen human heart! And only God’s living Word can bridge that gap. And so He did! We could never be like God or do what He does the way He does it. So God tells us:
Isaiah 55:8-11
“…My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”
It wouldn’t enter our mind to aspire to God’s level had He not revealed Himself and told us that He is committed to saving us from what Sin has done to us. So it is evident that any commandment and requirement God lays upon us is not something He expects us to do on our own. We don’t have what it takes. That’s why He warned His disciples to operate in God’s own Righteousness instead of offering cheap, decapitated, flesh-generated counterfeits to Him:
Matthew 5:20
“…I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:48
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
God empowers us to abide in His Wisdom and Holiness and to remain free of all that drives this ‘Head-less’ world even while we’re living in the midst of it. We don’t have to waste time and energy bewailing, condemning and criticizing what is evil in the world. We’re equipped to bring down to Earth the infinite Blessing that God’s Word is sent from Heaven to be to us all. That’s why we surrender ourselves as living sacrifices to God, so that our Head (God’s Word) can do whatever is necessary – to us, in us and through us. When human history, as we know it now, is over and the salvation story concludes, God’s Creation will be just the way God always intended. His enemies will be punished and disposed of. And He will derive endless Glory from each speck of whatever has taken place since time began.
Part 2 of this meditation will offer a parable for you to ponder, pray over and absorb. Hopefully it will help you understand God’s heart and see what His attitude toward all ‘decapitated’ human beings really is and what He is here to do on their behalf…through those of us that have learned to remain united to our Head, the living Word of God.
Our indwelling risen Lord, the one who abides within us and among us at all times, is like a Beautiful Oasis in the midst of a barren desert. To the natural human faculties it does not appear that way. But when we have spiritual eyes and equipment to use, we begin to see Him in everything…in every situation, challenge, task and personal encounter. Then we can abide in Him always. The presence and activity of God’s Word is embedded throughout the sands of our desert realities because He is the Creator and Sustainer of all things. That’s why we must be trained to look for Him and expect Him to be in everything, everywhere. If we do that, we will be able to keep drawing from His perfect Presence which for us will be like rivers of Living Water. The Holy Spirit will cause Him to flow into us and make oases out of us too. And from us, the Lord will flow into the desert around us. And wherever He flows, whatever is dead comes to life and begins to flourish and bloom and be fruitful (See Ezek. 47:1-12). And that is what will give everlasting Glory of our wonderful, loving, God, and insure that all of His Creation receives and enjoys God’s best and highest blessings!