Newsletter #15: The Tears of God

THE TEARS OF GOD

by Avram Yehoshua

(Footnotes are in red numbers and their notes appear at the end of the text)

God cries many painful tears for you my People. He hurts so bad for you. He wants you to come to Him. He wants so much to hold you and comfort you and tell you of His Tender Love for you. He wants to be one with you. To walk with you in your life. To be the 'God part' of your life. He desires with everything inside Him, to be your God. His pain is unbearable, because of His great Love for you, and your distance from Him.

All day long He stretches out His Hands to you.1 He wants you to know that He Loves you, even though you have broken His Heart by denying Him. You reject what He has done for you. God wants to raise you up in the Way that you should go. He wants to bring you into a Land of Blessing and Light. He wants to reveal Himself to you, that you might be filled to overflowing with His Goodness. He wants to dwell within you, and guide you through this land of perversion, darkness and death.

He is your Father, and like any loving Daddy, He wants to teach you about Himself. He wants to teach you that you can trust Him with your very soul. He wants to nurture you so that you grow strong in Him and His Ways. He wants you to know Him. For His Heart longs to be one with you.

Stage One: The Plan

From the very beginning, from before Creation, God wanted to be One with His Creation. This was the idea of His Plan for Man, with Adam and Eve. They were created perfect. Destined to live forever, if they but obeyed God's one Commandment to them: to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.2

Inherent in Adam's perfection was his ability to chose. They were perfect, but untested. When the Test came, they chose to believe that God was holding something back from them. They chose to believe the Liar.3

Their choosing to disobey God their Father, plunged them and all their children, into corruption and Death. For if the tree be diseased, the apples will be also. All mankind would be tainted by the corruption of Adam and Eve. But this did not take the Eternal Lord, the First and the Last,4 by surprise. The Lord God of Israel immediately speaks of One who would come from Eve, who would crush the Serpent's (Devil's) head, destroying the work of Satan in Man.5 This prophecy by God has always been taken to refer to King Messiah, and what He would do for us. The work of Satan separated us from God by giving us a nature like his: rebellious.

Stage Two: Israel

God chose Abram, of all the peoples of the Earth, for the Son of Adam, the Messiah, to come through.6 The Messiah of Israel would not only be the Glory of Israel, but a Light unto the Gentiles.7 Through Father Abraham came Isaac, and after Isaac, Jacob, and his 12 sons. And when they had gone down into Egypt, a new king enslaved our Fathers and afflicted them. God raised up Moses, and sent him to save us from Egyptian slavery. And the Lord promised us a Land flowing with milk and honey.8 But the Land was only a reflection of who our God was and what He wanted to give us: Himself.

Contrary to what you might think, our Fathers, like Adam and Eve before them, chose to believe the Liar, instead of Almighty God.9 They held God in contempt, not believing that He could take care of the giants of the Land. They despised God10 and His Promises to them, and so they wandered in the Wilderness until all of them died, except for Joshua and Caleb. These two, would lead the sons of the parents who would not believe, into the Land that God had promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But before they went in, Yahveh spoke to Moses and said that He would raise up a Prophet, who would be like Moses.11 Our People have always understood this Prophet to be the Messiah.

In Stage Two of the drama, Yahveh does something He never did before. He begins to dwell in the midst of His People Israel. To live among them! Even while they were in the Wilderness, with sinful and rebellious hearts, the Lord of Creation manifested Himself in the Shekina Glory Cloud every day.12

Now you might wonder, 'How could the Holy God, Yahveh, be among a very sinful and rebellious People?' For all the time He was with them, He relates how His Heart abhorred them, because of their not believing Him.13 Stage Two introduces us to the Mosaic Sacrificial System (Lev. 1-6, etc.), and the great Day of Atonement. All Israel was forgiven of their sin, and even the Tabernacle of Moses, which was in the midst of the Camp of Israel, was cleansed of defilement, from being in the midst of sinful Israel, by the blood sacrifice (Lev. 16:15ff).

Yahveh chose to use the death of an animal, to picture the destroying effect of sin; life apart from God. The animal represented all Israel, who should have died for their own sin, but couldn't, because only an innocent victim could be sacrificed. No animal that was blemished or diseased, could be offered up. This meant that even if a man were to sacrifice himself for his sins, it would not be acceptable to God, because Man is tainted with sin. Sinful acts of pride, stubbornness and rebellion against God show us that we are not like Him, holy. But even greater than specific sinful acts, is the sin or human nature. This gives rise to the acts and attitudes. It is our human nature that is perverse and excludes us from union with the holy God.

God was able to remain in the midst of sinful Israel because of the blood sacrifice. But not everyone could approach Yahveh in the Holy of Holies. Only the High Priest, on the Day of Atonement, once a year. And he could only approach God with the blood of the sacrificial animal (Lev. 16:1ff). For Yahveh is totally Other. He is Holy and we are defiled with sin. We are just as rebellious, stubborn and disbelieving as Adam and Eve, and our Fathers in the Wilderness. Yet, God was not to be denied His Oneness. And the Plan proceeded on. He would be One with His Creation, His People Israel.

King David, of whose seed the Messiah would come from14 was a picture of King Messiah in many ways. Chosen by God, but rejected by the authority15 in Israel, King Saul; mighty in battle, as Messiah would be over His enemies, and displaying the Heart of God that Messiah would have.

There is an event that stands out in the life of David where we see the Messiah's Heart within David. When David took a census of Israel, God sent a terrible plague upon the people. It didn't effect David personally, but his heart broke when David saw his lambs, the People of Israel, being destroyed, because of his sin. David cries out to God to take him, and leave them alone, for he was responsible.16

In this action, David pictures the Heart of Messiah Yeshua in that he comes between the Wrath of God and the People of Israel who were dying. David stops the plague by caring more for them, than for himself. This is not something he thought of, but something he felt. He acted because of his pain for his People. David pictures the Messiah taking upon Himself, the Wrath of God, for our sins.17 Messiah Yeshua would take upon Himself, the Wrath of God because of His tender Love for you.

Stage Three: Messiah

God sent Messiah Yeshua, as He had sent Moses, to call a People out for Himself. To call a People out whom He could dwell among. Whom He could be One with. And the only way that our Holy God can dwell within a sinful People, is through sacrifice. With the Blood Sacrifice of Yeshua the Messiah, God can dwell within His People Israel, both Jew and Gentile who believe what God has done for them in sending His Son Yeshua, to die in our place.

Messiah Yeshua is like Moses in that Yeshua delivers His People Israel from the darkness of slavery to sin and death. Moses delivered Israel from the darkness of Egyptian slavery. Yeshua was brutally crucified, that you might know just how much Yahveh loves you. For what Earthly father would allow his son to be terribly beaten and pierced to a tree, for you? But our Heavenly Father, in order to prove His Love to you, allowed His own Son Yeshua to die an awful death. Death is the work of Satan, but Messiah has set you free from sin and death. You are free to choose God's Messiah or Satan the Liar.

A perfect heart is a broken and contrite heart.18 A heart that begins to realize the Price that God has paid to make His Creation One with Him. God has sent His Son to bear our sin. Yeshua, born of a Jewish woman by the name of Miryam, of the lineage from Adam to Abraham to David, was truly both the Son of Adam and the Son of God. For the Spirit of the Holy One of Israel, conceived God's Word, His Messiah, in the womb of Miryam.19

Tempted by Satan, Yeshua remained obedient to His Father, even unto the death of being pierced to a tree. In this, He tasted Death for us.20 He took our curse upon Himself..21 He was the Perfect Sacrifice for Israel. He was the Perfect Israelite. Sinless. His Humanity was Adam's, before Adam disobeyed. Yeshua was God's appointed Representative, just as Aaron the High Priest had been. He was both fully human and fully divine. It's because of His Deity that His Blood takes on such an incredible reality for us. For His Blood not only forgives and cleanses us of our sins, but reaches right down into our sin nature, and promises to us who believe, a Nature like His. For Yahveh can only be One with an Israel that is without sin. Stage Three allows God to dwell within Man and pictures Stage Four, when we shall be like Yeshua is now, glorified. The New Jerusalem.

Yeshua is the Seed of Adam and Eve, come to take away your sin and bring you into intimate union with God Almighty. Here and now! He wants to cleanse you of your sin. Here and now! To make you pure and clean, so that God the Father, and Messiah the Son, can dwell within you by the Spirit of the Holy One. Here and now! He has come to prepare you to be His Bride. God and Man dwelling together. Oneness. Union with the Creator through the Messiah of Israel. Remember that promise of the Seed from Eve that would crush the head of the Serpent? Yeshua came to destroy the works of Satan within us. Satan bruised Messiah's heel by murdering Messiah, but it backfired on Satan. Messiah has triumphed over Death and Hell. Satan had no lawful right to retain a sinless Man. God allowed His Son to be the Sacrifice that forgives us, and resurrected Messiah Yeshua to declare to us that all Israel can be assured that Yeshua is the Messiah..22

God cries tears for you, for everything within Him wants to be One with you. He has made a way for you in sending the only One who could take away your sins and bring you into the Promised Land: Eternal Life and Oneness with Yahveh. God has done this for you. Come to the God of Israel, through His Messiah King Yeshua. Our sins nailed Him to the tree, but what kept Him there, was His Tender Love for you and me. Don't believe the Liar.

Footnotes:

1. Isaiah 65:2: 'I have spread out My hands all day long to an obstinate people, who walk in the way which is not good, following their own imaginations,'
2. Genesis 2:17: 'but from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.'
3. Gen. 3:4-5: 'The Serpent said to the woman, 'You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'
4. Isaiah 41:4: 'Who has performed and accomplished it, calling forth the generations from the beginning?' I, Yahveh, am the First, and with the Last. I am He.'
5. Genesis 3:15: 'And 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.' This speaks of the death of Messiah.
6. Genesis 12:3: '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.'
7. Isaiah 49:6: 'He says, 'It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant, to raise up the Tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel? I will also make You a Light of the nations so that My Salvation may reach to the end of the Earth.'
8. Exodus 3:8: 'So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land, to a good and spacious Land, to a Land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite...'
9. Numbers 13:32-33: 'So they gave out to the Sons of Israel a bad report of the Land which they had spied out, saying, 'The Land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a Land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size. There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.'
10. Numbers 14:11: 'Yahveh said to Moses, 'How long will this People treat Me with contempt? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst?'
11. Deuteronomy 18:18-19: 'I will raise up a Prophet from among their brethren like you, and I will put My words in His Mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him.' It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words, which He shall speak in My Name, I Myself will require it of him.'
12. Exodus 40:38: 'For throughout all their journeys, the Cloud of Yahveh was on the Tabernacle by day, and there was Fire in it by night, in the sight of all the House of Israel.'
13. Psalm 95:7-11: 'For He is our God and we are the People of His Pasture and the Sheep of His Hand. Today, if you would hear His Voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the Wilderness, when your Fathers tested Me. They tried Me, though they had seen My work. For forty years I loathed that generation, and said they are a People who stray in their heart and they do not know My ways. Therefore, I swore in My anger, they shall not enter into My Rest.'
14. 2 Sam. 7:12-13: 'When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish His Kingdom. He shall build a House for My Name, and I will establish the Throne of His Kingdom forever.' This word to King David has always been seen as concerning both King Solomon, who would immediately fulfill it, and also King Messiah. As Zechariah (6:12) declares, 'Then say to him, 'Thus says Yahveh Tzitvaot, behold, a Man whose name is Branch, for He will branch out from where He is; and He will build the Temple of Yahveh.' The Place where God dwells!
15. Isaiah 53:3: 'He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.' This speaks of the Messiah.
16. 1st Chronicles 21:17: 'David said to God, 'Is it not I who commanded to count the People? Indeed, I am the one who has sinned and done very wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done? O Yahveh my God, please let Your Hand be against me and my father's House, but not against Your People that they should be plagued.'
17. Is. 53:4-6, 8, 12: 'Surely our griefs He Himself bore and our sorrows He carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Yahveh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.' 'By oppression and judgment He was taken away and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the Land of the living for the transgression of my People, to whom the stroke was due?' 'Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong, because He poured out Himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He Himself bore the sin of many and interceded for the transgressors.'
18. Psalm 51:17 (51:19 in the Hebrew): 'The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.'
19. Luke 1:30-35: 'The angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Miryam; for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son, and you shall name Him Yeshua. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the Throne of His Father David, and He will reign over the House of Jacob forever, and His Kingdom will have no end.' 'Miryam said to the angel, 'How can this be, since I am a virgin?' 'The angel answered and said to her, 'The Spirit of the Holy One will come upon you, and the Power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the Holy Child shall be called the Son of God.'
20. Hebrews 2:9, 14: 'But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Yeshua, because of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.' 'Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the Devil,'
21. Deut. 21:23: 'his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day, for he who is hanged is accursed of God...'
22. Acts 2:36-38: 'Therefore let all the House of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Messiah, this Yeshua whom you crucified.' 'Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Kayfa and the rest of the Apostles, 'Brethren, what shall we do?' 'Kayfa said to them, 'Turn to God and each of you be immersed in the Name of Yeshua the Messiah, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the Gift of the Spirit of the Holy One.' Do it now. Call me.