Discovering The Jewish Jesus

Rabbi Schneider: We have this sense of which way to walk. We have a sense that yes, you should do that, or no, you shouldn't do that. But too often we're not in tune enough, we're not abiding deep enough in the spirit to pay attention.

The scripture says the word of God is living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword. I'm called to release Hashem's word, God's word into your life and into my life. I'm excited today to continue a series that I'm calling "Simple but Profound Truth." This series is not a religious series. It's about reality and relationship.

In fact, when I think of my relationship with God, I like to think of it scientifically. I like to think of it in terms of reality rather than religion. In other words, there really is a God. God is spirit. We've been born of Hashem's spirit. We've been born of God's spirit. We've been given his nature.

Now, what I want to do is I want to exercise the Holy Spirit that's within me that I can be transformed into the likeness of Jesus, be empowered by his power, ascend up into the light through the darkness, and walk in supernatural victory. This is not about religion. This is about reality and relationship.

I began this series with the scripture from the book of Genesis about Enoch. The scripture says there in Genesis chapter five verse 24 that Enoch walked with God. Then a very mysterious phrase: "And then was no more." Hear it again: Enoch walked with God and then was no more, for God took him.

That scripture speaks to us of the fact that Enoch was walking in such unity with the Creator that he ascended right off the earth. I like to use that example and put it in front of me to help me pursue that same type of experience, that same type of victory in my life. I'm not saying I'm going to be lifted off the earth and taken like Enoch was, but let's not limit God either. God can do anything. Nothing is impossible with God. Let's believe God for His best.

What I'm focusing on, however, in this series are simple but profound truths that will help us to walk with God even as Enoch walked with God. It begins by acknowledging God. Truly God can use them to change your life, to engineer, to rewire you, to get you on His path for your life.

Number one, we need to acknowledge God. Secondly, we gave you the second key to walking with God, and that is to understand His presence. I don't have time to go back and review everything. But the point needs to be made that many of us are missing so much of what the Holy Spirit is communicating to us.

It's not an automatic thing. We don't automatically hear what the Spirit is speaking to us. That's why Jesus said in the book of Revelation, "He that has an ear to hear, let him hear." Not everybody is hearing. Jesus is speaking to many of His children by His spirit, but they're not able to understand His presence. They're not able to discern His voice.

Often God is in the circumstances. Even difficult circumstances God is sometimes in. As I said, your difficulties sometimes are exactly what you need for a soul correction. They're exactly what Father is doing in your life to discipline you to bring you to the place where He can bless you. You need to be watching your circumstances.

Whatever you're going through every day, ask Father, "Are you in this? Is there a lesson I need to learn here? Is there something that you're saying to me in this circumstance?" Somebody calls you out of the blue on the phone. Don't just take it for granted that they called. Ask Father, "Father, are you trying to say something here to me through this individual?"

Look for His voice through what other people say to you. Obviously the scriptures, divine intuition, pay attention to what you're feeling inside. Oftentimes the Holy Spirit is speaking and we have this sense of what's right and wrong. We have this sense of which way to walk. We have a sense that yes, you should do that, or no, you shouldn't do that.

But too often we're not in tune enough, we're not abiding deep enough in the spirit to pay attention, to hear it and to walk in it. We need to understand His presence. Let's move on now to new territory. We can walk with God by clothing ourselves with His nature.

When I speak about walking with God, when I say you can walk with God, what I'm actually aiming towards is unity with Him. Enoch walked with God; he was lifted off the earth supernaturally and taken to be with God because he had reached a point of such unity with Hashem, the Creator.

This is the purpose for our life. We're going to get to this: unity with God. So when I say you can walk with God, I'm talking about you can come into unity with God by clothing yourself with His nature. You see, we have a choice of how we respond.

In other words, something happens that frustrates us. We can either be in the flesh and respond to that frustration with immediate anger, or what we can do is we can restrict our frustration, we can subdue that frustration and respond with kindness, compassion, and love.

If we're going to walk with God, if we're going to come into unity with our Creator, we need to clothe ourselves with His nature. Paul told us to put on the Spirit. He said that these are the characteristics of the Spirit: love, peace, joy, compassion, sound-mindedness.

Then Paul said these are the deeds of the flesh: division, anger, malice, evil thoughts, suspicions. He listed the difference between the things of the Spirit, the clothing of the Spirit, and the nature of the flesh. If we're going to walk with God, we need to restrict and subdue the nature of the flesh.

We need to put it beneath us, not live out of it, and instead, we need to clothe ourselves or put on the garment of the Spirit. Galatians 3:27 says this: "For all of you who were being baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ." Another scripture says, "Clothe yourself with humility."

I want to point out this is not something that automatically happens. To clothe ourselves with the nature of the Lord, we need to make a very conscious decision, once again, to restrict our flesh nature, to not yield to the lust of the flesh.

To not yield to the ambitions of the world, to not yield to anger, frustration, and evil gossip, we restrict that nature. We subdue it. We harness it, and instead, we choose, which is the harder road, to take on the nature of Christ. We choose to speak a word of compassion.

We choose to speak a word of love. We choose to keep from talking about ourselves to instead walk in humility. God's way is always the harder way. If we're going to walk with God, we need to clothe ourselves with His nature. To clothe ourselves with His nature takes great spiritual strength because we're swimming upstream.

We're swimming against the current. We have to resist the flesh to clothe ourselves with His nature. We have to say no to anger, no to frustration, no to gossip, no to yielding to watching shows on television that our flesh wants to watch. It's a constant battle every minute of every day to restrict the flesh.

Instead of yielding to the desires of the flesh, we choose the straight and narrow way and clothe ourselves with the Spirit. Jesus said, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for broad and wide is the way that leads to destruction, but straight and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few there be that find it."

Jesus said to strive. You have to strive to enter into it. Jesus said seven times in the first several chapters, in chapters two and three of Revelation, "He that overcomes will inherit these things." God made it so that we would have a fight. When we go to the book of Genesis, we read there in verse number two that before God created the world, before God created man, there was darkness that was moving.

Why is the darkness there? Because God created man to overcome it. He created us to get dominion over it through the Holy Spirit. We're supposed to be in a fight. God put the resistance here. Think about this: electricity does not form light without going through the process of resistance.

Light comes out of electricity by passing through resistance. The same thing is true in our life. We have to pass through the resistance of the flesh in order to clothe ourselves with the Spirit, in order to clothe ourselves with light. These are deep but simple truths. They apply to you every second of every day. They'll never deviate. These truths that I'm sharing with you will never be violated. You have to be responsible and I have to be accountable. Hashem, our Creator, has given us a gift and we must overcome. So we need to clothe ourselves with His nature.

Dustin Roberts: You're listening to Discovering the Jewish Jesus. Rabbi Schneider will be right back, but first I want to invite you to take Rabbi's teaching with you wherever you go with the Discovering the Jewish Jesus podcast. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and many more, you can listen to all of Rabbi's powerful messages anytime. Stay rooted in God's word. Just search for Discovering the Jewish Jesus on your favorite podcasting platform today.

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Rabbi Schneider: There's a spiritual law, and I like to call it the law of similarity and dissimilarity. What this spiritual law represents is this: the more similar we become to something, the more we can know that thing. In other words, I can never fully know a dog.

I can love my dog. I can have some connection with my dog, but I can't ever fully know my dog because I'm not a dog. But the point that I'm striving to make with you is this: we can never fully know God until we become like God. I'm not saying we're going to become God, but we're His offspring.

This is why the scripture is very explicit in the book of Romans about God's call on our life as it relates to becoming like Him, clothing ourselves with His nature. Hear the word of God now as I read Romans chapter eight verse 29. Get this into your soul. Hear God's word.

"For whom he foreknew, he chose in advance. He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son." What's the point? God chose us and predestined us to be conformed to the image of His son. God's purpose in our life is He's making us like Jesus.

So He's wanting to clothe us with the nature of King Jesus. The more we become like Jesus, the more we take on His nature, the more we restrict the desires of the flesh and choose the Spirit, choose to clothe ourselves with love and joy and peace and compassion and temperance, etc.

The more we restrict the flesh and choose the Spirit, clothing ourselves with the Spirit, the more we're going to be like Jesus. The more we become like Yeshua, the more we're going to come into unity with God and the more we're going to know Him.

We've talked about how to walk with God, to come into unity with Him. We need to acknowledge Him. We need to clothe ourselves with His nature. I want to move on to a new point now. We need to internalize His love. Until you and I have really internalized His love—I mean we deeply have become convinced that our Creator, the God of Israel, Hashem, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Master of the universe—until we internalize the reality that He really loves us.

That His favor is really upon us. Until we become convinced that He really wants to bless us, that He really wants us to be happy. Until we become convinced of His unmerited favor and love in our lives and internalize it, we're not going to be able to walk with Him.

So many people, even in the church, they have religion, but they haven't internalized the reality that the Father loves them, that the Father sent His son to die for them on the cross because He loves them. You see, the truth is God has been with you in your worst times and His love for you has never failed.

We need to internalize God's unconditional love for us and that He wants the best for us. He wants us to be happy. He wants us even to feel like He feels. He just wants to share Himself with us. Until we become convinced of the fact that God's favor is really towards us, that He wants us to experience His goodness, that He wants us to enjoy life, that He wants to bring us into His reality.

Until we internalize His love, we're not going to be able to walk with Him because God is love. In order to function out of God's nature, in order to function in the Spirit, we need to function out of love, and that has to begin by understanding how much He really loves you and me.

Guest (Female): Beloved, the Lord loves you. The Lord loves you. Rabbi, I believe that God is speaking to our viewers today. He's speaking by His spirit. You were talking about how we must know the love of God to walk with Him. I believe that even right now, we can invite that Holy Spirit into the living room or wherever our viewers are right now for them to experience this love, internalize His love right now.

Rabbi Schneider: Amen. You know, I've read biographies of great men of God, cutting-edge pioneers of the faith, and yet they got to the end of their lives and they still hadn't internalized the Father's love for them. They had great faith. They did great exploits in terms of reaching people with the gospel.

But they themselves had never come to the place that they were fully convinced that Father loved them. I've been walking with the Lord for 40 years, and I still pray daily that Father will help me to understand His love for me. Many people study different aspects of God's nature.

They have the scriptures memorized, but deep down inside, they don't have an experiential knowledge of how deeply loved and treasured they are from the Father. So, why don't we just do exactly what you said? Why don't we pray for everybody that's listening right now that the Holy Spirit would just open our hearts and give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God's individual, personal, and specific love for each one of our viewers.

Guest (Female): Yes, Lord. I thank you, Father. Even now, right now, we just put the blood of Jesus out before us. Through the blood of Jesus, all of this distraction of the world, all our sins, all of the things that are keeping us from knowing this holy, perfect God who loves us.

Right now, we take the blood and we place the blood over it all, over our sins, all of our blindness, everything that's keeping us from experiencing and knowing this love that exists right now, exists falling from heaven right into the hearts of our viewers.

Rabbi Schneider: In Jesus' name, I also ask, Father God, that you would by your spirit open the heart of every single one that is open to you that's watching this program right now or listening to it by podcast. Father God, that you would open our hearts and reveal to us your nature.

Father, that you're a personal God and that you're the God of love. Father, we need to encounter you. Father, we know we can't get to where you are, that we're dependent on you coming down and meeting us where we are. So, Father God, we ask you in Yeshua's name: open our hearts and reveal your love to us by the Holy Spirit. Father, do it I ask right now according to your word.

Guest (Female): Holy Spirit, we praise you. You are here. You are with us. You are in our hearts and our minds and in our souls forever and ever. Amen.

Rabbi Schneider: Do you know why the Lord asks you and me to tithe? Because when you and I tithe, we open up our hearts to Him and in so doing we're able to receive in an experiential way His love. You see, when we don't trust God with our finances, what we're unconsciously doing is agreeing with fear.

That's why most people don't honor God with their finances, at least significantly. They might tip God, but they don't really tithe, which is the precedent of the entire Bible, old to new. Why? Because they're afraid to. They think if I tithe, then I'm going to fall on my face and I can't really trust God.

I want to encourage you, beloved, and I want to encourage myself: let's choose faith, not fear. God told us if you honor me with the first fruit of your wealth, your barn is going to be full. David said, "I've never seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread."

I want to encourage those of you today that love God: take that next step if you haven't already. Honor the Lord and trust Him with your finances. Be a giver. Jesus said it will come back to you pressed down, good measure, and running over into your lap.

Dustin Roberts: Amen, and we're so grateful for your gifts of any amount. As the Lord leads you to support this ministry, you can give online at DiscoveringTheJewishJesus.com. Or if it's easier for you, call 800-777-7835. That's 800-777-7835. You can also send your donations in the mail. Our address is Discovering the Jewish Jesus, PO Box 777, Blissfield, Michigan 49228.

I want to ask you, are you looking for a way to stay encouraged in your faith throughout the week? If you are, I want to encourage you to tune in to our "A Minute with Rabbi" podcast. Right there you'll receive a short devotional every single day. It's just a minute long, and it's meaningful moments of biblical truth that can help refocus your heart and your mind on the Lord.

Whether you're starting your day, driving to work, or maybe even taking just a short break, "A Minute with Rabbi" is exactly what you need to receive practical encouragement and spiritual insight that you can carry with you through the rest of your day. So I encourage you: don't miss your chance to be refreshed by God's word just a few minutes at a time. Start listening to "A Minute with Rabbi" wherever you get your podcasts. If you want more info, you can always go to our website: DiscoveringTheJewishJesus.com. Now here is Rabbi to wrap up today's message with God's special and sacred blessing.

Rabbi Schneider: Blessings trump curses. In the book of Numbers chapter six, we find the Aaronic blessing that God commanded Moses' brother Aaron, the high priest, to speak over the children of Israel. There's power in blessing, beloved ones. So take part in receiving Father's blessing upon your life today.

[Rabbi Schneider sings the Aaronic Blessing in Hebrew]

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift you up with His countenance and the Lord give you, beloved one, His peace. God bless you and Shalom.

Dustin Roberts: I'm your host Dustin Roberts, and this program is produced and sponsored by Discovering the Jewish Jesus. Join us again when Rabbi Schneider explains how we can train ourselves to walk close to God. That's Tuesday on Discovering the Jewish Jesus.