Hope and Eternal Life - David Mitts


A Song of Ascents. Of David. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron, Running down on the edge of his garments. It is like the dew of Hermon, descending upon the mountains of Zion; For there the Lord commanded the blessing-- Life forevermore. (Psa 133:1-3)

Click here to listen to "Hope and Eternal Life"


Each year as the season's cycle, we see the leaves bud and return to the barren trees.   The Lord reminded me that the budding and the return of the leaves occurred naturally as the seasons cycled with the presence of daylight. The trees don’t do anything different, they just wait for the appointed time and the life that is in them knows when it is time to sprout out new growth.
In the same way, we are entering into the time for new growth and an explosive manifestation of the life of God in us.

This time of year is called  Aviv, which is translated as Spring. The word contains within it the name of the Father, Av, from which we get Abba, and Avraham. If you look up the word meaning it is divided between the season of spring and the season of the Father.  The Father representing intentional seed with destiny in the seed.

Seed is an interesting thing in that seed goes into the ground and dies to be born again as a new creation.  This is the “glory” of Yeshua.   He is the seed that went into the ground, died and resurrected as the new man.  He carried the seed of the Father, which was the pure genetic imprint of a new race of man free from the seed of Adam.  The new seed would birth the children of the kingdom of God, which becomes the hope of our glory. OK. Let’s slow this down a bit but anchor it with Word.

But Jesus answered them, saying, "The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor. (Joh 12:23-26)

The hour has come…. This is a reference to the season of the Aviv.
The Son of Man should be glorified…… Yeshua was both the Son of God and the Son of Man. As the Son of God, He is immortal, cannot die. As the Son of Man, He is mortal.  His “glory” is to die, to be resurrected as the New Man.

If a grain of wheat must go the ground and die to be freed from being alone.  Remember the image of God is plural.  We are created in His image, plural.  The antithesis of our creation is the identity of aloneness.  It requires death for the seed to produce the many.  Yeshua’s glory was to be that seed. He, alone as one man, gave His life for the restoration of the plurality, the image of God, the many.
In order to enter into that glory with Him, we too have to die to our old life and join Him as the New Man, the many.

This process is made clear in the Passover Feast, where the lamb is sacrificed for the deliverance of the people. One dies to free the many.

Ok. Let’s go a little deeper into the Aviv, the seed of the Father with an intentional destiny.  You see when we as humans plant seed, we have no idea of destiny.  Yet the Father who knows the future always plants with intention of specific destiny.

This destiny is our glory.  Yeshua’s glory was to become the seed for the many.  Each of us when we receive Him, by faith, the hearing of faith, enter into our glory our own destiny.

The Aviv is a specific condition or ripeness of the barley gain.  It is the condition when the grain goes from green to gold.  This marks the beginning of time.  It is also a time of great fragility of the grain.  The grain is not fully ripened but ripened enough that it can be parched and eaten.  In this way the grain is usable. In Matthew 12, we see a strange little story about Yeshua and His disciples:

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, "Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!" But He said to them, "Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple. But if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." (Mat 12:1-8)

We see the disciples eating the grain in the fields, on the Shabbat.  The Pharisees who cannot see the times or the seasons because they are anchored to tradition, object.  Yeshua answers their objection by pointing out that the traditions are subject to a greater reality.  The Law serves the Lawmaker, not the Lawmaker serves the Law.

The grain is Aviv.  It is edible and the disciples are directed to eat the grain. This reveals the truth that the anointed operate from the place of the Spirit and in that place, there is a freedom that surpasses the “rightness” of things and touches the heart that those things are designed to serve. 
Yeshua gives the master key, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice”.  This is breakthrough reality of the Spirit.  By eating the Aviv barley, on the Sabbath, the disciples were displaying a deeper reality of God’s love and provision that goes beyond rules and traditions and pierces to the heart of love.
See the whole picture. Yeshua is the seed who will die and be reborn to bring the Aviv into its true purpose eternal life.  This is a set time or an appointed hour that He is fulfilling.  In God, it is the new birth time, the eternal Aviv.  His disciples are hungry.  He takes the symbol of His new birth and tells them to eat the Aviv.  They eat the Aviv are criticized for the plucking of it to eat on the Sabbath.  It is not the eating but the plucking.

Yeshua who is bringing the whole system of works to a close tells the gatekeepers, the merciless Pharisees, who have turned everything into sacrifice, that His value system is for mercy.  Truly it is mercy that allows for the Shabbat in the first place, not laws.  Shabbat is a gift from Go not a set of rules enforced by man.  Shabbat is provision and peace.  Yeshua ends by declaring this reality that He is Lord of the Shabbat. 

This is the place of the Aviv, as the symbol of the Kingdom of Eternal Life.
This brings us to the Passover.  Aviv marks the beginning of time and the Passover marks the season of deliverance.  Time begins with deliverance from bondage into new life.  Slavery to sin or slavery to Egypt as the picture of the world’s system requires a deliverance.  Slavery to sin or to the world’s system is the outcome of the system of judgments. 

Slaves become slaves because someone determines their value as commodities in the world’s eyes.  This is at its root the most extreme and perverted system of idolatry.  God is the only one who can determine a person’s value.  Anytime we exchange His determination for one of man’s creation we become slaves to that system.

Whether the value determinants are how strong we are, or how beautiful, or how smart, or whatever talent we want to exalt and market, that valuation generates a slavery to itself. This is the true system of mammon.  Human trafficking is valuing women or men for their utility as sex or work objects. Literally, a price is put on their heads.  This is obviously the grossest form of this system.  But I want you to consider that any valuation that is not God-centered is a form of slavery as we strive inside that valuation.

So Passover is the Feast of the Lord that begins it all by freeing the slaves from the valuation of them as a commodity into the freedom as children of God.

Hope comes to the slave when He or She realizes that their value is NOT what some person or system says they are worth but based the value God, Abba places of them.  God so loves and values them that He sacrifices His Son for them.

Yeshua is the seed who dies for the birth of the new race, the new Man, who is the restored image of God in the Earth and in Heaven.
He dies and goes into Adamah, the earth, and is resurrected as the new Adam, the restored image and likeness of God.  The earth, Adamah is the image of a living heart which can receive the seed and bring forth the Aviv, the new crop of Adam.
Through Passover, a new race of children is born, each of who has unique freedom and collectively show forth the image of God restored in the Earth.

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you--even Jesus. Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. (Act 3:19-21)

In this hour God is restoring His image prior to the return of Yeshua.
For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. (1Co 15:22-23)

We are His by covenant.
So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man. (1Co 15:45-49)

The heavenly man is the restored full image of God, in man.

Activation: 

Let’s use the Passover season to change our value system.  What have we placed value on that can be taken from us? How can we be free to be who God has said we are. Who are we to Him? What value has He said about our lives?




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