Discovering The Jewish Jesus

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Passover has many themes to it, but I'm going to be focusing today on the theme of Passover as it relates to deliverance from bondage. Passover has many themes to it: the theme of freedom, the theme of deliverance, the theme of new birth because Israel was delivered out of Egypt and became a nation. But I'm going to be focusing today on the theme of Passover as it relates, beloved ones, to deliverance from bondage.

And I know that word bondage is kind of a scary term. It sounds so heavy. But the truth is, we all need to be set free. So we're going to be focusing in today on what it is that we can be set free from and how Yeshua, who has become our Passover, has come to deliver us and to set us free.

Father God, we love you today. And Father, we don't want to hide from the truth. We think about the Pharisees that Yeshua came to and said to them, "If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed." And how they said to him, "We've never been in bondage to anybody." Father, we don't want to be like those Pharisees.

We want to let you expose any bondages that are rooted in our own lives, and we want to enter into this Pesach, this Passover season in you to be delivered from every last strand of bondage through the name of your son, Yeshua HaMashiach, Jesus the Messiah. Beloved, we're going to begin today by going to the book of Shemot, or Exodus, and going into the very text, the very origin of the Pesach or the Passover story.

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of God abides forever. Hear God's word. Moses is encountering the Lord at the burning bush. God calls him, tells Moses he's standing on holy ground, to take off his sandals. They enter a dialogue. We pick up in verse six. He said also, the Lord is speaking to Moshe, to Moses, "I am the God, I am the Elohim of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob or Yaakov."

And then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings." I want to hone in right now with the concept that God sees you. He sees where you're at.

He sees what you and I are going through. He feels our pain. Sometimes we think of Jesus as just being up in the sky somewhere. But remember, Yeshua became a man. And as a man, God relates to our pain through Jesus. Yeshua was in the Father's bosom before the foundation of the world. God identifies with us in our pain.

From this we get the Hebrew title for God, El Roi. That means the God who sees. And we want to take comfort in that. God sees where you're at. He feels you. He cares. Have you ever heard somebody say, "I get you, I feel you"? Consider that God gets you.

He felt what his children were going through. I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have given heed to their cry. When our enemies are too big for us, God doesn't leave us to be victims. He enters into our space. He changes dynamics to rescue us.

That's what Passover's about. Passover's about deliverance. God comes to deliver his people. What does the word deliver mean? Maybe you really haven't thought about deliverance in a personal way. You've heard the word, but you've never really looked at the word deliverance in a way that you're applying it to your own life.

What does deliverance mean? Deliverance means to rescue or to set free. And that's why Jesus came: to rescue us from the power of darkness and to set us free from the darkness, indeed from our own sin. Let's continue on.

I've heard their cry because of their taskmasters. There's an oppressor in the universe. And I'm aware, get this now, of their sufferings. Wherever you're at right now, God feels for you in your suffering. I don't know about you, but there's been times I've just opened my heart up to the Lord, especially I'm thinking, beloved, in times when I've been struggling with something physically, like a bodily illness.

I've had situations where I've just been in tremendous grief. And I thought, Lord, I know God cares. But Lord, if you care so much, if you're so close to me, why don't I feel you right now? Why don't you do something about this? I know that sounds perhaps like disbelief, but I think it's good when we open up our hearts to God and talk to God plainly.

And you know what? God responds to that. That's what David did. David opened up his heart to God. He complained at times. But we need to be open and honest with God. God feels us, he sees us, and he wants us to talk to him when we're suffering and when we feel like he's not with us because of the suffering we're going through.

He wants us to talk to him. Not to accuse him, but to say, "God, help me to know that you're here." The text goes on to say, the Lord responds, he says, "I'm aware," and he says in verse number eight, "And I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them up from the land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey."

I want to look at a few words there. First of all, in verse number eight, we see the word "down." The Lord says, "I've come down." That's an awesome thing. God, the Creator, the incredible world that we live in—I don't know if you ever watch any nature videos, but I encourage you, if you don't watch nature videos, watch some nature videos before you go to bed.

Just the HD film, and look at the birds around the world and the fish around the world in the oceans. And you watch those, and it's just like, how could anybody not see God's beauty and divine design, his divine intelligence in creation? It's like a sermon that's so loud, just to see God's beauty. This is the God that created everything. He comes down, beloved, to rescue and to deliver you and I.

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And just like the disciples waited for the Holy Spirit between Passover and Pentecost, this is an invitation for you to step into that same season of anticipation. Don't miss what God may want to do for you. Once again, get your copy at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. Now back to Rabbi.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: The Lord comes down. And why does he come down? He continues in the eighth verse: "to bring them up from the land to a good and spacious land." In other words, God has a great destiny for you and I. Sometimes we can get so beaten down by circumstances that we stop believing.

Look at this again. The Lord hears the cry in verse number eight and he says, "I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians." The power, beloved ones, of whatever has pressed you down. God comes down to deliver you and I from the power of darkness, which is manifest in all kinds of ways in the physical world.

Whether it's poverty, whether it's illness in our body, whether it's in abusive relationships, God has come down to deliver us and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey. I want you to get this.

You've been grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel through Messiah Yeshua. And God's purpose for us is to bring us into a spacious land. What does that mean? Consider that you and I, beloved, we live in spiritual space. We oftentimes think if we move from this house to that house, however far the distance is, that our life is going to change.

And it may change in some ways. But in reality, get this: wherever you go, there you are. We think that by moving to another part of the country, to a different place in the United States of America or wherever else we live, that our life is going to drastically change.

And again, it may change in some ways. But what doesn't change automatically regardless of where we travel to in space is the spiritual climate that we're in, the spiritual space that surrounds us. The Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, is a blueprint in the natural world to help us understand what God wants to do for us in the spiritual world.

God wants to bring you and I spiritually into a new space. He wants to bring us into a spacious land in the spirit where we're no longer tormented by worry, anxiety, fear, depression, wrong thinking, a wrong perspective of life. Where our mind is not bent over by the devil in a way that we have all kinds of wrong thoughts about what's really going on around us that torments us.

God wants us to deliver us from all that by bringing us into a new beautiful space he describes here as a space that's flowing with milk and with honey. So when we think of Pesach or Passover, I want you to cry out to God and be honest with yourself. Are you fully living in the light that you desire?

Are you experiencing the goodness of God completely the way that you want to? Do you feel God's love continually with you? Are you constantly experiencing the presence of God's comforting Holy Spirit in your life? Or do you feel oftentimes or sometimes oppressed, worried, angry?

Beloved, this is what the Lord wants us to look up to him for during this Passover season. He wants us to be honest with ourselves and honest with him so we can lift up to him where in our heart, where in our thoughts, we're being tormented, being oppressed just like Israel was in Egypt so that he can deliver us today because Christ, the scripture tells us in 1 Corinthians 5:7, has become our Passover.

Passover is the season of deliverance. Now I want you to get this. When you and I are being oppressed by the darkness or by other people, sadly what happens is the evil that oppresses us from the outside oftentimes gets into us.

When Israel was in Egypt being oppressed by Egypt, they fell into great spiritual decay and depravity. In fact, the rabbis teach that while Israel was in Egypt, due to the affliction that came upon them, they sunk down into the 49th degree of impurity—just one step away from complete collapse, which would have been the 50th degree.

The point is the sin that has come upon us from other people and from the enemy inflicting his lies upon us, we can begin to internalize that sin from the outside. And when we internalize that sin, we become tied up in bondage. And Passover is about getting set free from the sin that other people have inflicted upon your life and from the lies of the enemy that have come upon you.

Think about this concept with me for a second. Have you ever heard the phrase "an apple does not fall far from the tree"? So you think about innocent children being raised in abusive homes. You know what happens to those innocent children raised in abusive homes oftentimes? They become abusers themselves.

You see the sin of the environment they were raised in? It got in them. They internalize it and then they begin to repeat those same sins. It's called generational sin. Alcoholism runs in families. Worry runs in families. Anxiety runs in families. This happens not just genetically in the physical realm where diabetes runs down family trees, but it happens in the spiritual realm as well.

If you were raised in a home, you can identify something in the home that you were raised in. Maybe it was anger. Maybe your mom or dad were angry all the time and now you yourself are struggling with anger. Maybe it was immorality. Maybe your parents, one or both of them, were immoral and now you've found yourself or find yourself struggling with sexual sin.

You internalized the sin that was in the environment that surrounded you. Guess what? I got good news for you. Father God looks upon you with love and tenderness and mercy, and he has sent his son, Christ our Passover, to deliver us from the sins that got in us from the outside.

Even criminal behavior. You look, for example, at so many people that have been incarcerated. It's run in their family. They say, "I will never be like my father." And yet so many end up becoming exactly like their parents.

I think of a man years ago. He was the father of a good friend of mine. And I was struggling in life. I was like 19 years old. And this guy had known me since I'd been like in seventh grade, so he'd known me a long time. He knew my parents very well.

And when I was struggling at 19 years old, he reached out to me one day. He said, "Let's go to lunch together." So I went out to lunch with him in Beachwood, Ohio. And I remember sitting across the booth from him as we ordered our food, and he looked at me and he said to me, "You're not your father."

I never understood what he meant. I receive a lot of good things from my father. When I think back upon my father, I have many great memories. But there were some really bad things in my father's life as well that he probably inherited from his father.

And this man looked at me, said, "You're not your father." He wanted me to shake off anything in my life that got in me from the home that I was raised in. And primarily, beloved, we need to address identity issues that we might be struggling with because of the homes that we were raised in, because the abuse that we perhaps suffered when we were in school.

If you were bullied in school, if you're a woman and when you were in school, the popular girls excluded you or rejected you, that can still be affecting your identity today. And as a result of broken identities from abuse that we've experienced from the outside, we can actually be sinning against other people in our relationships today because we're still broken.

Now, I'm going to continue, beloved, this message, and I'm going to be talking about deliverance from sin. Not only from the sin that we have ingested because of the environment we've been oppressed by, but I'm going to be talking about deliverance from sin that we need deliverance from because of decisions that we've made where we willfully made a wrong decision, we willfully rebelled against God, we willfully went our own way, and as a result of that, we're in bondage.

Passover is the season of deliverance. Deliverance from bondage and every affliction. I want you to know God has so much more for you and I. It's a spacious place of milk and honey, but you've got to believe him for it. And you've got to be willing to be honest with yourself and honest with God about the places in your life that you need to be delivered from.

I'm excited about this because there's so much more that God has. And beloved, if we'll cooperate with God, if we'll confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us and deliver us from all unrighteousness and bring us into his freedom.

May you be blessed in the love of God in a very unique way during this special Passover season. Beloved, I found over the years that many of God's people do feel a special connection to their Creator during the Jewish holy days. And as a result, I've found that many of God's people have made offerings to the Lord through Discovering the Jewish Jesus.

If you're being blessed by my ministry, would you consider sowing a special love offering in honor of Yeshua, the true Lamb of God, through Discovering the Jewish Jesus during this Passover season? Beloved, your financial blessing through this ministry will be used to reach people with the gospel.

We're reaching people all over the world, and it's because of you that we're able to do that. I prayerfully would like to ask you, would you consider making a special Passover offering to the Lord in Yeshua's name through Discovering the Jewish Jesus this year? It'll go a long way in reaching people with the love of God. Hag Sameach and all God's best to you.

Dustin Roberts: Amen. And you can give a special Passover offering of any amount to Discovering the Jewish Jesus just by visiting us online at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. If it's easier for you, give us a call. Our number is 800-777-7835. That's 800-777-7835.

Or send your special Passover gift to Discovering the Jewish Jesus, P.O. Box 777, Blissfield, Michigan 49228. Thank you so much. And we want you to know that Passover begins at sunset tonight and concludes at nightfall on Thursday, April the 9th.

You can also learn more about celebrating Passover and other biblical feasts from the Lord by visiting us online at our website, discoveringthejewishjesus.com. It's a time when we remember God's deliverance when he rescued his people from bondage in Egypt and brought them into freedom.

And that same deliverance is available to you through the blood of Yeshua, our Passover Lamb. So when you give a Passover offering, you're partnering with us to share this message of freedom with people all around the world.

You're helping us proclaim that the same God who delivered Israel from Egypt wants to deliver you from every bondage. So if you'd like to give and support this ministry, you can give a Passover offering once again at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. You can also text the keyword "GIVE" to the phone number 88777. And now let's turn things back over to Rabbi so he can wrap up our special message with God's sacred blessing. Rabbi.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: In the book of Numbers, chapter six, the Lord gave instructions to Moses and Aaron to speak this blessing over his people. And the Lord said, "When you speak these words over my people, I will place my name on them and bless them." Receive the impartation of the Lord's blessings.

Yevarekhekha Adonai veyishmerekha. Yaer Adonai panav eleykha vikhunekka. Yissa Adonai panav eleykha veyasem lekha shalom.

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: This program is produced and sponsored by Discovering the Jewish Jesus, and I'm your host, Dustin Roberts. Be sure to join us tomorrow when Rabbi Schneider shares more about God's Passover. That's coming up Thursday on Discovering the Jewish Jesus.