Let's Go Shopping For Our Spiritual Clothes

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Did you realize old Israel's physical exodus from Egypt and their forty year trek in the wilderness was a perfect picture of our individual walk with God as well as the combined spiritual walk of the family of God? To properly see and spiritually understand this sequence of events we must again try to look at this time in history through the eyes of our spirit.

Turning back the pages of time we see old Israel crying out for salvation and begging God to free them from the land of the Pharaoh's. He delivered and led them away from Egypt, which is symbolic of the world today, for a much better land. God intended their entrance to the promised land to be quick, but due to their complaining and rebellion they ended up making a forty year walk through the wilderness with only two families of that generation arriving there.

We too leave the world behind for a much greater land, the Kingdom of God! How hard it is to get there depends largely on our attitude also, just like old Israel. They went through the Red Sea, the color red symbolic of Adam, a name derived from the Hebrew name to be ruddy, and the sea, the sea of humanity, referring to Adam's race. We experience the red sea miracle as we sever soul ties to the world, die in the watery grave and resurrect from our death at baptism as a new creature. In other words we leave our life in the world to be born again, a new kind, no longer connected to Adam and his race.

We become ones with a different spirit like Joshua and Caleb. Pharaoh, symbolic of Satan along with the people of the world he rules are to be cut off from us forever so we will become evidence of God's sovereignty and freed to begin our walk to the Kingdom of God. As newborns we are dressed in our first spiritual garments, swaddling clothes, with a warm robe of salvation to cover us.

If born again from within Sion, the spiritual mountain of God, swaddling clothes make the newborn secure and bind them to God. However, if rescued and born again, but not separated from the world, the swaddling clothes must be removed before receiving our new ones. Rather than swaddling clothes, they are more like grave clothes that have man bound to Satan. As in the parable of Lazarus, man must be set free of these clothes to enable him to begin his walk with God and His people.

As a side note: the cloth, as defined in the Strongs Concordance, on Lazarus' face was a "sweat cloth". If not removed it would stand as evidence that his toil and work would be for this world and its master. Remember, when Jesus was resurrected, the cloth was neatly folded and "set apart" from the other grave clothes in the tomb, signifying His labor here on earth would cease as he re-entered God's rest to carry out the rest of His plans in the supernatural. All else He does on earth will be accomplished through His body of people, the new species, those born again in His image that lay down their works and enter God's rest to fulfill His plans.

You see God did all things, worked out His whole restoration plan before He ever created man, and then He rested. He knew what we would do, He knew what Satan would do also. Man's victory over the enemy lies within God's rest where we must enter.

Now back to our spiritual walk. As new creatures in Christ, born through the Word, we must feed only on God's knowledge from the tree of Life.

We must not return to the tree of good and evil, Satan, for his knowledge, his world or his people ever again. If the blood of Adam is washed off in the water of separation and purification as we studied in an earlier blast, and we are baptized or have experienced the red sea, the eye of God will always be watching over us as we wander through the wilderness of this world in pursuit of the Kingdom. He will spread His protective wing over us to cover our spiritual nakedness until we are old enough and mature enough to be properly dressed. Like any newborn we are naked "but not ashamed". You see, we have to mature in the things of God enough to even know we have the need to be further clothed. Apostle Paul was one who saw the necessity of these clothes many years ago as we saw in 2 Corinthians 5:2-4. So let us once again look at this scripture.

In Deuteronomy 29: 5 we see again a prototype in old Israel of the newborn being covered by God. This was after she was baptized in the Red Sea.

First in the natural then in the supernatural! He covered and preserved her physical clothes, so she would manifest a picture for us in the natural of what He would also do one day in the supernatural. We will finally have spiritual clothes that won't wear out! They are preserved through the words of our testimony, by speaking and walking out the truth, by being under and therefore establishing God's universal law, and remaining righteous through the blood of Christ! Fully and beautifully clothed we will then be immortal!

We put incorruption on when we are born through the incorruptible Seed, Jesus and keep His commandments.

We have His blood mingling with ours when we are born again, and enter His blood covenant through communion. Life is in the blood. Life swallows death as light dispels darkness! This is a fact positionally, but experientially, immortality will not be for man until they are fully clothed. Here is why. As mentioned earlier, when man is spiritually naked he is vulnerable to the evil spirits and above all Satan. When he connected mentally to Adam and Eve this gave him the entrance he was looking for to use their bodies. He entered through their minds! As we see in Genesis 6 man began to think like the enemy, see things according to his perspective, even to interacting sexually with fallen angels. Remember, God was so angry over this situation that He destroyed all of wicked mankind along with the whole earth, sparing only Noah who He said was not involved with the angels and was righteous.

In other words, Noah had on his robes of righteousness and was separate from this world's activities. He therefore wore robes of separation and was in turn the covering for his family. Combined there were only eight people in all. This number eight in itself by the way is symbolic. It foreshadows the eighth day children that are spared in the next judgment day, because they too are made righteous through being born again, separate from the cursed race and therefore covered by Christ the greater husband. Peter speaks of Noah and this time in history in 1 Peter 3:20-21.

In other words, when we are baptized into Christ, He becomes our Father, our greater husband, far greater than Noah, and our covering. We are protected by Him from the wrath of God at the end of this age.

Side Note: Jesus like us, was born through a human mother that was of the Adamic bloodline. So Jesus also had to be born again, because His body, like ours, was corruptible. It genetically carried defects from the sin of Adam through His mother and would one day die, even though His spirit and soul were immortal. In other words, He had to be born again to be bodily a perfect specimen, a flawless, unblemished sacrifice for humanity, one also spiritually fully clothed to gain the victory over the enemy. An Adamic body cannot fully be clothed in spiritual clothes. Remember the skins God put on Adam and Eve? Even though Jesus allowed Himself to be crucified in order to pay our death penalty, death itself could not hold Him captive. His walk was perfect, He never broke God's law. His body was therefore covered, because His spirit was fully clothed making Him incorruptible and therefore immortal.

Jesus was not born spiritually fully clothed. He came as flesh and blood, because that is what Eve chose for us.

He not only had to be born again, but be filled with the Spirit. He endured temptation and affliction at the hand of those led by unclean spirits just like us to acquire His spiritual clothes. This meant He was faced with situations where pride could have entered in, yet He remained humble and gained the victory over pride to be dressed in humility. He had to be heavy at heart at many points in His life and ministry on earth, to be covered in the garment of praise, etc. The word tells us He was tempted in all things just as we are.

The paramount part of His victory however was His resurrection. He actually annihilated death for all creation! Now, through the eyes of your spirit see what this victory did for us!

Wasn't God's plan perfect! Jesus gave us the chance to be born over again, shaped, molded and dressed spiritually to become like Him, immortal!

As Adam and Eve connected to the mind of Satan becoming mentally like him, so those connected to God's knowledge, through the mind of Christ begin to change, think and act like Him. We should be a human spirit, that has a soul, our will and conscience, that lives in a body making it possible to physically dwell and function on earth. One that lives according to God's law, becoming evidence that God's Kingdom is being established and His will is being done, as His plans for humanity's restoration are being fulfilled in them.

Now here is something for those who are already born again to thinkabout. The Word tells us the outside of a person reflects or mirrors what they are on the inside. One who wants to please God must then ask themselves, in the natural, do our actions, speech, decisions, and yes, even our natural clothing, reflect a soulish person or a person guided by their spirit? For instance, are our actions self-centered, all about what we want, or do we esteem the needs of others over ourselves? Is our speech coarse, offensive to others? Are off-colored jokes still a little funny? Do we speak harshly, hurt others' feelings just because we are angry? Do we secretly think we are superior to others because of our worldly education and training? These are all carnal reactions to life in this world, and the course, crude, unloving language of our soul man. When we make decisions, do we first consider what the Lord would have us do? Do we check that our decisions are in line with the truth found in the Word and in line with God's law? Understand, our spirit humbly seeks direction from God, while our soul intellectually seeks instruction from the world's knowledge and reasons for itself. Again, which Kingdom do we represent? The Kingdom of Light or darkness? Look at all the body piercings and tattoos found on people of all ages and both sexes and sadly in the world's churches in spite of Leviticus 19:28 for instance.

Old Testament, yes, but is God the same today, yesterday and forever? If only man could truly understand that Satan is as adamantly gathering and marking man for his harvest as God is cultivating a new species, a sacred seed that stand as evidence they belong to Him.

So in closing, let us take inventory of our outward appearance. Does it reflect or mirror our spirit and our inner spiritual clothing of righteousness, humility and regal, quiet dignity befitting a born again child of God? Or, do we look like the world that has Satan as its trend setter? May we seriously consider Matthew 13:40-43.

Maybe we should seriously ask ourselves, who is doing our shopping? Our soul man or our spirit?