UNLESS YOU BELIEVE THAT I AM HE

UNLESS YOU BELIEVE THAT I AM HE

                “You are My witnesses, declares the Lord and My servant whom I have chosen in order that you may know and believe Me and understand that I AM HE. Before Me there was no God formed and there will be none after Me. I even I am the Lord; and there is no savior besides Me. It is I who have declared and saved and proclaimed and there is no strange god among you; so you are My witnesses, declares the Lord, I am God. Even from eternity I AM HE, and there is none who can deliver out of My hand; I act and who can reverse it?” Isa 43:10-13

                “Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says “sacrifice and offering hast not desired, BUT A BODY THOU HAST PREPARED FOR ME… behold I have come (In the roll of the book it is written of Me) to do thy will, O God.” Heb. 10:5-7 parts.

                And He was saying to them: “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I said therefore to you that you shall die in your sins; for unless you believe that I AM HE you shall die in your sins.” John 8:23, 24

                There can be no doubt that Yeshua was the very God who was speaking in Isa 43:10-13. And Yeshua brought this home to His fellow Jews when He said, “Unless you believe that I AM HE, you will die in your sins. So we know that Yeshua was the eternally self- existent One. And yet as Isaiah explained, when Yeshua came as Messiah, He would not be a strange god among them. Yeshua was none other than the one God of all scripture and this one God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself and in fact Jesus said that if you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.

                In John 8:58, Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM.”

                In John 14:8, 9 we see Jesus revealing His true identity once again. “Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him: Have I been so long with you and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father. “

                One of the cardinal themes of Israel is the Sh’mah which states: “Hear O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord.” and Jesus indeed confirmed this fact. And it is because of this cardinal rule that Israel has a hard time with Jesus being God, for indeed many Christians treat Father, Son and Holy Spirit as if they are separate entities and this just doesn’t fly with them.

                Now Paul throws another wrench into it by saying in Col. 1:15 that He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” Whaaaat? Well is Jesus the eternally self-existent One, or is He a created being?

                The answer to this question is BOTH. Yeshuah is the eternally self-existent One who spoke to us from the Pages of Isaiah 43: 10-13. But as it says in Hebrews 10:5-7 A body of flesh was prepared for Him. A temple of flesh so that He could dwell among men… a man made of flesh and bone in order that He, as a man may die in our place.

                In the false doctrine of replacement theology, some Christians actually believe and teach that the God of the Old Testament was this cranky old God… demanding and ready to strike people dead with the drop of a hat and that conversely, Jesus was a kind and gentle and compassionate God who came to stand between us and the cranky God’s wrath, but this is very far from the truth.

                The truth of the matter is seen in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” And when was Jesus begotten? When He entered into the human race in a body that was prepared for Him.

                Paul goes on in 2 Cor. 5:19 that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself…”

                So God Almighty entered into creation by preparing a creation body for Himself so that He could dwell among men and reconcile them to Himself. Just as it says in Romans 8:3: “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did; sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh.”

                So God came into the world dressed in a human body to reconcile us to Himself, to demonstrate the nature and power of His kingdom, to then die in our place as a ransom and then to go back to heaven. From there He sent us His own Holy Spirit to empower us to live as He lived and to overcome as He overcame.

                We mentioned yesterday that before the fall, Adam and Eve were called Ish and Isha. They were filled with the fire and life of God. They were created of dust, but then God breathed into them the breath of life, the Ish, the very life of God and man became a living soul.

                In Hebrew this has a great deal more meaning for in the sentence where it says that man became a living soul in Hebrew it literally says; and it was for the man’s soul the life of God. “The last two words written here are key to what God placed inside of him; L’nefish Chyah. This can be translated to say “for the soul is God’s life.” In other words, God created Adam from the dust of the ground: He placed within him a portion of His Own Life.”

                It was this life that Adam and Eve lost in the fall and it is this life that Jesus restored to us on the day of Pentecost when He sent down the Ish/Isha in cloven tongues of ish (fire) so that we could be filled with God’s Ish once gain.

                Jesus had to become a part of creation in order to die for us. He also came to show us the ways of God and to demonstrate for us just what fulfilling the commandments of God looks like when one is filled with God’s Ish. He begins to produce the fruit of the Spirit in and through his life.

                As long as Adam and Even had the Ish of God, they were immortal, but when they lost the Ish of God they died instantly spiritually and their bodies began the long descent into death as well and all of Creation with them.

                This is why we know Jesus as the new Adam. He came into the world to bring to us the Ish that Adam and Eve had lost. The Holy Spirit was WITH the Israelites throughout their history, but it was not until Jesus came and paid the ransom and covered our sins with His blood that the Ish could once again reside inside of us. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves.” 2 Cor. 4:7

                Jesus is very God in the Spirit and very man in the flesh and it was in the uniting of these two in Christ that we are reconciled to God. This fusion took place on the cross just as Jesus died and it was demonstrated in the temple as the veil between the Holy and Most Holy place was torn in two from top to bottom. In the cross we were made one with and as we accept this, we become children of the Royal family in heaven and joint heirs with Jesus.

                Can anyone doubt God’s love for us? Not if we know the truth of these things.