We're on our sixth day of the annual Jericho Marches now. As I said at the beginning, this is no commanded observance but rather our own tradition. This just happens to be the exact time this event took place about 3,500 years ago, in the second month of the sacred calendar, and follows seamlessly after the spring festivals which preceded the invasion of Canaan. And I have personally experienced one dramatic instance of deliverance at this time when I 'marched' around a satanic coven following this divine tavnith or pattern apparently causing that coven to be suddenly flooded out of the cellar in which it was meeting.

Today I am to hurl a fresh grenade into your bucket again because the issue I want to specifically address does more to undermine our spiritual journey than most. I am speaking of those spiritually lazy Christians and Messianics who have swallowed the lie that we are not called to be 'perfect' because, they claim, we can't be perfect. And it's absolutely true, in our own power it's impossible. We fall flat on our faces time and time again.

That is not, however, the issue. The issue is one of unbelief not of unrealistic ambition. Do you believe that the Saviour would ever command anything that could not be done? Of course not...well, I certainly hope not. It would be a cruel parent indeed who insisted their child do something it could not do. It's repeated failure would cause discouragement and, if pressed enough, despair and a sense of hopelessness and perhaps even worthlessness. And no parent should ever deliberately put a child through that. Rather, we encourage them, saying, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.' I was brought up with that mantra and I am grateful for it. It taught me not to give up (and believe me, there are times I feel like it) but to overcome all obstacles.

Overcome? Now where have I heard that word repeated over and over again in the Scriptures? Yes, you remember: the Book of Revelation which we have been studying in depth, and which we soon need to get back to. Not only that, but you are told that the overcomers gain access to the Tree of Life which otherwise they wouldn't. So if you're saying overcoming is impossible, you are making Elohim (God) out to be a liar and saying, in effect, that nobody can attain eternal life, because eternal life is attained only by symbolically partaking of the Tree of Life.

Yah'shua (Jesus) said unambiguously and unapologetically:

"Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matt.5:48, NKJV).

Do you agree? You'd better!

Now there are those who love to stress the legal side of things, especially concerning salvation. And whilst the legal side is important, being declared righteous and thus giving us access to Yahweh through Yah'shua (Jesus) which otherwise we would not have been able to do - a passport into the Holy of Holies, as it were - this isn't the end of the matter. Let me ask you a question: do you believe that our Heavenly Father is literally perfect or only in the legal sense? Of course, that's a preposterous question, because obviously Yahweh is perfect in every sense. He requires no 'legal' perfection since He is perfection. He possesses all the attributes of perfection de facto. That's who He is, that's what His Name 'Yahweh' means. So if Yah'shua (Jesus) commands us to be perfect "just as (in the same way that) your Father in heaven is perfect", do you think He is only talking about the legal aspect or is He being literal? Now come one, don't try to fudge of twist this. He is speaking literally, of course. Let's speak plainly.

Now obviously He can't be saying we should become Elohim (God). Elohim (God) alone is perfect as Elohim (God) and we are not, and never can be, Elohim (God). We're not Mormons who think they will become gods and we're not charismatics who already think they're godlets. What are we? Or should I ask, what do we know we are for sure? The answer is, humans. We're human beings. And what Yah'shua (Jesus) is commanding is that we become perfect human beings, just as He, the incarnate Son of Elohim (God), is both perfect Elohim (God) and perfect man. He showed us what a perfect human being looks like by doing what a perfect human being does. And He accomplished that by obeying the Torah without once sinning, something we can't do. And yet He commands us to obey the mitzvot (commandments) which he wouldn't do were it impossible, else He would be a sadist, because as humans we always fail in our own strength. That much the 'imperfectionists' are right about. Yes, we're imperfect, but clearly we're not supposed to remain that way.

Since we clearly can't do it ourselves, and since clearly Yah'shua (Jesus) means more than some hypothetical 'legal' perfection - you know, the idea that 'Jesus is perfect, I trust in Jesus, therefore I am - wham - perfect because He is perfect'. That's just playing with words. It's philosophical mumbojumbo Yes, there is a legal sense in which that is true, and it's a very important sense too. This notion carries with it the idea of grace, or unmerited favour. We receive, or are, 'perfect' in Yahweh's even though we don't deserve it because all He 'sees' is His Son. We can't earn our salvation because no man can possibly atone for his own sins. Paul talks a lot about that, and he's right to. But that's not all there is to it. We are also, through overcoming, supposed to take that salvation on board and make it work in us so that we become transformed by being actually, concretely, saved from sinning behaviour and saved to godly behaviour. If someone tells me they have been 'saved' I will therefore, not uncommonly, ask them what they have been saved from and what they have been saved to because salvation is more than an idea is your head.

Then, when He returns, we will be found to be like Him (1 Jn.3:2) because our characters will have been changed to be like His. That happens - the literal 'chang-ing' as opposed to the legal or jurisdictional 'change' that exists because of initial trusting and continued trusting - and it happens literally as we overcome our sinful dispositions by consciously getting the chametz or leaven of sin our of our lives as we discussed last month at Chag haMatzah, a feast, remember, that Paul instructed us to continue to observe but in the New Covenmant context (1 Cor.5:8). That 'overcoming'(the language of John) is described by Paul using another word - 'working out' - as in " work[ing] out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil.2:12, NKJV). And if the verb 'to work' should per chance confuse you, cast your minds back to school when you were working out mathematical problems and ask yourself how passive that exercise was...whether it just 'happened' or whether you had to put some mental effort into it, or indeed, how passive or active 'working out' or 'solving' any kind of problem is. This is an activity - something you do - in addition to trusting or exercising faith.

I never cease to be amazed by all the mental gymnastics that people engage in to avoid the obvious, especially when the 'obvious' challenges their pet religious beliefs. And for some reason, people just don't believe that life is a multi-tasking operation...that we're called to do more than one thing at once. As I have taught for the past 35 years, the Hebrew word emunah, which we translate, sometimes confusingly, as 'faith', is not a passive word. It implies action - trusting that leads to activity or work. Indeed, Hebrew is very unlike English where we have lots of passive nouns because in the Hebrew language nouns also contain with them a sense of action. Hebrew is very dynamic. Things move. "If you love me," Yah'shua (Jesus) insisted, "keep My mitzvot (commandments)" (Jn.14:15, NKJV), not just because true love is evidenced by obedience but because divine ahavah, chesed or agapé-love is not a static thing. It's not about intentions or even saying lovey-dovey things, it's about doing loving things. "Do what is good," (Rom.13:3, NKV) Paul says, not just 'feel good' or 'speak good'. Again, I'm not saying that feelings and words are unimportant, just that when Yahweh speaks, things happen. So it should be with us.

We have another word in Scripture to describe the inner change in our spiritual condition as we move in the direction of perfection. It's called 'sanctification', the acts or processes that lead to holiness. Now the word 'holy', as messianics never tire of remiding us, certainly means 'set apart' or 'separated to' or 'dedicated to', but qodesh is a much bigger word than that. Indeed, all of these words are related and all have jurisdiction/legal and literal meanings. If you try to prize the two apart, you will eventually lose your mind, because they are integral to one another. Yes, we have inner and outer parts. Yes, there is legal and literal righteousness. But Yahweh always intended them to be echad or one, just as mind and heart weren't supposed to be separated - they are two things but are completely integrated. We are supposed to look at each other as whole beings. And at least when I was young, there was the outer 'letter of the law' as well as the inner 'spirit of the law', the intent or the outer.

The truth of the matter is that when we're not thinking about or analysing these things, we automatically treat them as one anyway. As believers, we try to treat people as better than ourselves (Phil.2:3) but we also 'see' them for what they actually are. Seriously, how many of you expect perfection in others, and especially in a partner (or potential partner), but not in yourself? We all expect things of one another, and usually more than we do of ourselves. Everyone is damaged goods to some extent, some more than others. We're imperfect, but we're not supposed to remain that way. We're supposed to effect repairs, otherwise we wouldn't bother with doctors, psychiatrists and even ministers like myself. People come to me for counsel because they're broken and want fixing. They want restoring and, if at all possible, to be even healthier than they were before.

We all sense the necessity of perfection. You see the damaged goods potential parners are, and they see the damaged goods you are, so how to you choose? The answer is you can't, because no man or woman is able to see what someone will be like in the future. You simply be the best person you can be by striving for perfection. You perfect your language skills, your driving skills, your behaviourisms, or whatever skills you have. We're constantly in the business of innovating to make things more perfect. It's a divinely implanted drive. And whilst our physical bodies must go the way of all flesh, we do look forward to perfect bodies one day. We have our hope in the resurrection to come.

But that's future. We can keep the old body going as long as we can but making it immortal we cannot. Only the ungodly try to do that. That's what cryogenics and transhumanism are all about, the attempt to live forever by combining humanity with machinery...or freezing it until we have the medical tech to make us live forever. But that can't happen, and won't happen. No one gets to cheat death and judgment. The end result of all that is, alas, more and more machinery and less and less humanity. But the perfection of the invisible side of us, that's not only possible while we're mortal but it's clearly commanded. We're told not to remain imperfect as far as our spirits are concerned. And our spirits impact our thinking and feeling...and actions whether our bones are creaky or not.

At times Yahweh has shown me in vision what someone looks like in their spirit and it can be quite surprisingly different from what we see on the outside. There you will find both concealed beauty and ugliness. When we die, we take that beauty or ugliness with us and a resurrection body is matched up to it. We're judged and assigned rewards based on what we are; and what we are is what we have believed, wanted and done. Anything else would be grossly unjust, and Yahweh is a just Judge. Do you remember that one of David Livingstone's key preaching topics was the Final Judgment? We tend to forget that. We mustn't. Preachers mustn't. It brings balance and perspective. The jurisdictional stuff won't allow us to get around that.

But to get back to the illustration of searching for a marriage companion if you're unmarried: once we know, by revelation, who our partner is to be (and not what we want him or her to be), it does not matter what either the inside or the outside looks like, nor, once we have received him or her, do we have the licence to sit back and do nothing in the path to purification. We owe it to ourselves, to our partners, and ultimately to Yah'shua (Jesus) who has commanded us to be perfect...to be perfect, to be more sanctified, to be more holy, to be better. In the choosing, knowing Yahweh's will is all that matters, for He alone knows the outcomes of relationships because He alone knows the future and the choices we will make. And sometimes they are not at all what we would like those outcomes to be but they may be necessary anyway for our progression...for our sanctification, for our perfection. After all, learning patience and long-suffering is part of the toolkit of seeking perfection and we need opposition for that.

This may seem an unusual topic to address during a Jericho March but I do so because most people I meet, including my former self, have, or had, unrealistic expectations of people. We are not guaranteed a smooth journey, either alone or with a partner. Indeed, adding a partner can make it both easier and more difficult - for both. What counts, first of all, is the character development of each and whether there is genuine movement in the direction of sanctification. Partners can only develop together if they are first of all developping individually. Those who drag their feet are dragging and slowing down their partners. We ened to constantly be motivating one another to good works. Read Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus because he talks a lot about that:

"For the grace (undeserved loving kindness) of Elohim (God) that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great Elohim (God) and Saviour Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works. Speak these things, exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you" (Titus 2:11-15, NKJV).

Every Jericho company has its Achan for there is a faithless and disobedient part in all of us called the flesh which only perfection eliminates. Accepting that as a matter of fact - of reality - is the first step in making progress. The second step requires we do something about it in ourselves irrespective of what our partner may choose to do, or not. In the fact, if we were only less focussed on self and on the progress we expect, demand or imagine we need of others, we would be a lot happier. This does not mean we should dissociate from any part of ourself or from our partner, though. It means, rather, we should be better focussed on Yahweh.

Most carnal people have their focus on either money, strength or control because all these give one a sense of purpose and create flushes of satisfaction when achieved. But Yahweh says:

"Money and strength [certainly] make a confident heart; but better than either, the fear of Yahweh. With the fear of Yahweh a man lacks nothing; with that he need seek no ally. The fear of Yahweh is like a paradise of blessing, it clothes a man with more than glory" (Ecclus.40:26-28, JB).

Jerichos of all descriptions cannot be taken with either money or brute strength because their walls yield only to the supernatural power of Yahweh. That is the first truth we must acknowledge if we are to enter into, and conquer, either our inner Canaan or a literal one. A supportative partner is wonderful, a huge blessing, but isn't necessary to cross the Jordan or to take Jericho. One man could have done either as well as a million. But the whole point is community.

Pursue perfection diligently. The Perfect One, Yah'shua (Jesus), has given us legal access to the Almighty through His sacrificial death and by our emunah (faith). He also makes available to us His supernatural power for our literal perfecting. Use it to perfect your human attributes as Yahweh is perfect in His, remembering that we are made in His image. Reject the lie that Elohim (God) doesn't expect perfection but only wants to see progress. No, no, that completely contradicts what Yah'shua (Jesus) said. It's only a half truth. Progress is good, but expecting perfection in Him and not in your own self or by worrying or stressing or any other atheistic characteristic (for worry is a kind of atheism). And there are all sorts of variants of that lie. The Christian internet is full of similar memes - 'God doesn't want perfection. He simply asks for obedience.' That's a contradiction. And don't accept this compromise which I recenly read that reads: 'God doesn't expect perfection from us. God works in our lives through faith. He wants us to trust Him, believe in Him, have faith in Him, and have a hopeful, pisitive attitude. He wants us to expect Him to do good things in our lives.' All of these things are true but they're not the whole Besorah (Gospel). He expects us to seek perfection in His strength. Anything less means setting lower goals and lowering standards. It's an invitation to compromise and has a built-in justification for failure. How about we simply take Elohim (God) at face value and believe what He says and commands? If you don't, you'll forever be dodging the hot potatoes and be throwing back the grenades sent to wake you up and thinking you're doing God a favour.

One meme I read that is true is this one: 'You don't need to be perfect to be loved by a Perfect God.' Definitely. We don't expect our children to be perfect before we'll love them but if we're good parents we will encourage them to strive for excellence and to do their very best without stressing over it. In Christ you don't need to stress. He has matters in hand. All He requires is that you maintain His Torah standards and seek to be like the human Messiah in every way. We're not perfect right now. We make mistakes. We mess up. But Yahweh's grace is bigger than our sins and his Ruach (Spirit) is available to us to enable us to accomplish everything He has called us to do and be. So long as we're giving our best, Yahweh won't fail to take care of the rest. He will strengthen us, equip us, enable us through trials and Jericho Marches. We are never alone. Like my father who held my bike when I was learning to ride a bicycle and let it go without my knowing, Yahweh will watch over you and release you to be what you thought to be impossible: perfectly human in the exact image of Christ.

We will conclude with the last part of this series of Jericho Marches tomorrow. Yahweh bless.