Of God, by God, for You, His People

By A Believing Disciple

Of God, by God, for You, His People explains how Moses taught people who could not read or write. He provided language for them to expand their thinking to four dimensions. He told them who God is, what he does, and how to grow as his children to be as he is. Moses uses metaphors of the physical environment to present rock-solid principles and knowledge a person needs to become as God our Father. Life is the classroom to which we should apply these rock-solid principles. This process is called the Way. Often people are baptized into God's family and then are not informed specifically what we as children are to do to grow up and what we as adults are to do. Moses's metaphors are very clear once God's plan is explained. This book covers that plan for any individual who desires to do what God says, knowing what to do and how to do it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781642140415

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Of God, by God, for You, His People

A Believing Disciple

Copyright © 2018 A Believing Disciple

All rights reserved

First Edition

Page Publishing, Inc

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc 2018

ISBN 978-1-64214-040-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64214-041-5 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

Preface

Grace is a miraculous thing. When God calls us, he offers us saving grace by the death of his son. He allows us to know that we can be forgiven for the sins of our past. When we accept this grace, we are saved from being locked into the prison of our own inabilities to grow toward being what God wants us to be. God says if we believe that he is who he is, he will finish in us what he has started. If we call him Lord and do the things he says, he will grow us from babes drinking milk to wise men capable of chewing the meaty issues of life. He will do this using the mind of his son and his Holy Ghost. Once we have been saved by the free gift of his grace, we are to work out our salvation by doing what he tells us to do with trust and diligent commitment. We are saved and are to join to God’s goal of becoming as he is (Genesis 1:26). When we accept adoption by God, he becomes our father and takes on the responsibility of making it possible for us to become as he is. We have been given the gift of salvation. Now we must use that gift and work toward becoming like our father by doing what he says and growing as he wants us to grow. This book identifies the goals and the thinking processes used to learn God’s plan for us and how to grow in it. God says there is only one Way to reach him. This book explains the process.

The scope of this book includes the personal developmental plan that God has for those who have been given grace and adoption as his children. Clinging to his grace, becoming a part of his family, we are positioned to either do as God tells us or refuse to follow the family laws. Please study this book slowly and thoughtfully. Use a King James Version of the Bible to check the references and their context.

Jesus died for our salvation. We are to work out that salvation with fear and trembling as we grow from infants in God’s family toward what God would have us be—like him (Genesis 1:26).

God desires that none would fall short or miss the mark of his high calling. Any parent knows that an infant bearing the family name has much to learn during the journey to become as skilled as the parents. Parents require children in their charge to obey and develop. Good parents will birth a child and then present a step-by-step plan for that child to develop into adulthood. Hopefully, the plan includes much grace, love, forgiveness, and repetitive guidance as the child learns to function as a successful adult.

God does this for his children. He presents a curriculum where the child who has accepted his grace and adoption learns to observe and to do. He allows us free agency. Once in God’s family, we choose to see, hear, and do his curriculum or not. It is our decision to do as he says or not. It is our decision whether or not we become as he is, by getting and using the gold tried in the fire (Revelation 3:18).

This book is about hitting the mark of the high calling of God. It is about perceiving the instructional plan God has supplied for his children who desire to achieve the high calling, growing from a babe in Christ to a king and a priest in God’s kingdom.

It is the rebellious, selfish, self-willed child who accepts grace and adoption into God’s family but then does not do well. He and his offering are not respected by God (Genesis 4:5). However, if one does well after his adoption into God’s family, respect will be afforded to the child and to his offering; that child will be accepted (Genesis 4:4 and 7).

Often children fail to comprehend the action of the parents. They do not see the already working grace and love being given to them. They see instead parents as authority figures to be manipulated and used to get what the children want. They do not identify the difference between chastening (the process of parent and child removing undesirable behaviors and thoughts), discipline (instilling the orderly progress toward a desirable goal), or punishment (pain inflicted in the hope of avoiding harsher consequences or a final judgment).

When God calls us or draws us in his direction, we should identify the call and recognize his grace toward us. Certainly, up to the time of his drawing, we have done nothing to deserve God’s forgiveness or grace. After all, attention and care are his undeserved gifts. It is by his unmerited favor that we can even reach out for the salvation he offers. As we choose to accept that salvation from final death, we are told in Philippians 2:12 to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

This book was written in recognition of the journey I have embarked upon, by first answering the call and accepting the grace of my salvation from certain eternal death. Second, in my continuing efforts to work out my salvation, I have found knowledge in the Bible’s pages, which has allowed me to see the scope of God’s Way and to use his given keys to the kingdom toward the goal of his likeness. I do so with fear of knowing what my failure would mean, trembling with anticipation of overcoming my inadequacies and missteps.

I know the grace of salvation and I count on the knowledge of sighted faith in God’s Way to forge obedience as I grow in Christ, picking up my cross and following him.

I find joy from the indwelling of his mind and power from the Holy Spirit as I press toward the prize of his high calling. I desire to fight the good fight and finish my course keeping the faith.

Finally, Moses, by metaphor, describes how God draws us to him, and the work we must do before resting in him. By accepting his grace, we secure our hold on salvation through his sacrifice.

This book is the description of what I have found over twenty-seven of a possible fifty-year journey in God’s Way. This is a book of my opinions and observations as God has taught me and walked me through his plan for us, his children. I stand now face to face with God. I diligently study and apply his Way. This book is about the working out of our salvation after we have accepted his grace and adoption, because Christ came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it. He showed us how to use the law to follow him.

Introduction

For most of our lives, we are in a battle with ourselves trying to grow and mature with success. We battle with our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Throughout our lifetime, the war in our heads is a battle fought between selfish survival behavior and higher intellectual growth. Other-centered orientation is one of the more important themes of the Way as we seek to progress from self-indulgent human beings to generous and loving children of God. Our minds are constantly seeking to comprehend, and change our poor responses to life’s challenges. We need more than just fight or flight, more than might makes right, and we need the directions for inner change. The Way gives us insight into the systematic influence of our ungodly environment and provides the necessary tools to complete the journey.

During writing this book, I encountered distractions that occurred (and they were myriad and frustrating). They have taught me that by engaging this Way of God, I recognize that God is testing me on the very material I am writing about. As the reader, you can expect that God will test you on your perception, comprehension, and use of this information. Life’s problems become opportunities to become more like God—all life’s problems. I have chosen to use the old King James Version of the Bible and Strong’s Concordance for this study.

The book’s purpose is to illustrate several of these tools, which offer solutions to life’s problems and answer pertinent questions: Why are we here? What are we supposed to do? Can our life have solid goals and purpose? Who is God and what does he want from us? I want people to comprehend the Bible, using the Concordance to illuminate the original meanings of vocabulary, and to follow the Way to become as God is.

This book seeks three audiences: first, those who have come to a place in their lives where the only place to go is up and have become willing at any cost to live in God’s Way; second, those who only seek personal benefit and short-term security through affiliation with God; third, the person with a good heart who is willing to seriously consider the options before deciding which way to go. When the first and second audiences are actively working the Way, they will become viable examples for the third audience to emulate. These three audiences contain the people who do not want to waste their lives in useless pursuits that do not target the goal of eternal life. Jesus’s eleven disciples progressed from the selfish second audience to the first audience having hit bottom at his crucifixion. They became benefactors for all three audiences who chose to follow.

Is it possible that one can comprehend what is in the Bible and perceive the meanings of its parables, metaphors, and allegories? Can we understand the intended meanings of its words? This is certainly a topic of hot debate in most circles of those who study its pages. Perhaps the best manner in which to get to the meaning of the Bible’s messages is to learn to think in the terms that the author (inspired writer, Moses) of the first five books of the Bible thought. Moses was a man who grew up in Egypt and was educated as a son of Pharaoh. He was a literate and skilled man when it came to communication and the expression of authority. He was also a man capable of murder, a great fear of Pharaoh, and one who did not know himself. He spent forty years in the desert as a sheepherder, studying under the priest of Midian, his father-in-law Jethro (sometimes called Reuel) (Exodus 3:1) while married to Jethro’s daughter Zipporah (Exodus 2:21). There he learned about his ancestors’ history and about God. It was there, in Midian, that Moses learned things about God that Pharaoh certainly could not have taught. God made known his ways unto Moses (Psalm 103:7). Moses became aware of what a person must do in order to move toward and get to God (John 14:6). Moses, having studied the law and comprehending the grace that the law leads to, was then able to serve God (Exodus 3:12 and Psalm 101:2, 6). In this example, Moses saw clearly that the spirit of the law establishes grace far beyond the letter of the law. Moses first learned Egypt’s way of doing things (idolatry, slavery, and ignorance), then learned God’s Way of doing things (reverential trust, liberty, and knowledge). God then sent him back to Egypt to bring his people, the Hebrews, out of Egypt to be God’s people, Israel.

What did Moses know and not know? Moses did not know about dinosaurs and the eons of physical evolution that preceded mankind. He did know that God had created everything that had been created (Genesis 1:1, Ephesians 3:9, Colossians 1:16, Revelation 4:11). Moses was not concerned with the arguments about where mankind fits into the genetics of physical evolution. Instead, he was very concerned with the evolution of people away from the ways of the world and into God’s kingdom. He sought to present God’s process of personal change from emptiness and worthlessness without purpose to a knowledgeable godly being not only with form and purpose but also with an eternal future. This is no small or easy journey. It is the hardest journey that a person can take. It is filled with incredible difficulty and very long distances.

At the end of his forty years as a sheepherder, while studying under Reuel, Moses was faced with a daunting challenge. His job was to lead a people out of Egypt—people who, after being slaves for four hundred and thirty years, knew very little about their background and next to nothing about God (Exodus 12:40). Giving these people tools, teaching their use, and then having them benefit from their use would be a notable task. To facilitate this challenge and provide food for thought, Moses used the very environment around these people as a classroom. They were herders, fishermen, and grain growers. The metaphors Moses used were perfectly clear to each group. Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible using such concepts as parables, proverbs, metaphors, similes, and allegories. Often different metaphors have the same core meanings and can be connected and understood by people ready to see the full message. As an example of core meanings we can use the idea of cleansing ourselves using whited sepulchers (Matthew 23:27) and removing beam and mote from eyes (Matthew 7:4). Even if one is illiterate, as the Hebrews were, anyone called by God (John 6:44) can comprehend the breadth, length, depth, and height of the scriptures if he is willing to develop eyes to see and ears to hear (Proverbs 23:26, Revelation 2:7, Proverbs 18:1, Genesis 4:7).

Proverbs 23:26

"My son, give me thine heart, and let

thine eyes observe my ways."

Revelation 2:7

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

In addition to Moses’s using the environment to teach the Hebrew people, he also used an annual calendar based upon the phases of the moon, another environmental tool the people could use to perceive, comprehend, and finally stand under the intended meanings of God’s Way. The Hebrew calendar serves as a timeline template to help people practice a system of behavioral development and become very quick at implementing it. What would take a year the first time, with practice, can be done in seconds. The calendar orders behavioral development, enabling one to recognize and internalize godly behaviors.

This Hebrew calendar is a structural template for several things: a yearly practice model, a format for seeing yearly and monthly progress. Eventually, with practice, we experience daily even moment-to-moment success in our growth. In this calendar, we can see the whole plan for humanity. As we do the Way, more and more of this plan is discovered and appreciated.

Proverbs 18:1

"Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom."

Genesis 4:7

"If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him."

When a person begins reading a book, if he does not know the same meanings to the words that the author intends, then the concepts and conclusions reached by the reader will be very different from what the author intended. Also, if one starts reading a book from the second chapter, excluding the first, he is likely to miss the whole foundation of the structure and purpose of the book. This is truth of the Bible. Therefore, let’s start at the beginning of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and concentrate on the meanings of the words that are used and seek what Moses intended to pass on to us—the process of an individual developing into a godly person. Let’s begin to acquire the gold that God speaks of in Revelation 3:18, 20–22.

I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich . . .

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

CHAPTER 1

Heaven and Earth

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

This statement describes the rest of the activities of the Bible. All our finite history (past and future) constitutes the beginning of God’s creation of eternal beings. This creation is growing toward eternity with God, an eternity that will commence for some of us when Christ returns. For the rest of us, commencement will happen after Christ returns.

The creation of the heaven and the earth, as Moses writes, has nothing to do with the traditional concepts of physical evolution or even with the creationist point of view that God instantly created the whole of reality for us. As I stated above, the creation of the heaven and the earth is about people—their growth toward godliness and away from not knowing God at all. This process of human growth (by the creation of Heaven and Earth) is described in Genesis 1 and 2:1–7, often called the seven Days of creation.

Proverbs 25:2–3 describes the challenges that the Earth and the Heaven are to overcome in this process: "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is unsearchable." God knows what is in our hearts. These are the kings and priests who will have searched out the truths that God intended his priests and kings to know. The concealed thing is the full meanings of the four dimensional language in which God speaks (Matthew 13:13, Ephesians 3:18).

THE HEAVEN

God first created the Heaven. Here is some research done to find out