Discovering The Jewish Jesus

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Homosexuality, sexual identity disorder is just another manifestation of the brokenness of humanity due to sin. But this is why Jesus came, to reconcile humanity back to God.

Dawson: Welcome to Discovering the Jewish Jesus today. We're going to be continuing our series on exploring Paul's epistle, the Book of Romans. This is a special series where Rabbi and I are sitting right here in the studio, and we're going line by line.

If you have your Bible today, open up to Romans 1:18 and follow along with us. Rabbi Schneider's here. It's going to be very special. Make sure to catch up with the ministry at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. Now, let's jump right into things. Rabbi?

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: God bless you. Great to be with you, Dawson. God bless my friends that are listening today. I'm excited because I'm excited about the word of God. I love the Book of Romans. It's one of my favorite books in the Bible.

We're continuing today from where we left off last time, and we're going to hone in on the concept that the gospel is introduced to the world by. The concept that Paul introduces the gospel to the world by is very different than the way that the gospel is oftentimes introduced to the world today. Because the Book of Romans is the fullest theological treatise of any book in the New Testament.

In other words, the Book of Romans lays the foundation for the good news of the gospel. And that's what gospel means: good news. How does Paul begin introducing the good news? He begins, Dawson, by causing the listener and the reader to understand that we're guilty, the whole world and as individuals. We're guilty before our creator.

That's the way Paul introduces the gospel. In other words, before Paul presents a solution, he makes mankind aware of the problem. So, we read the 18th verse of Romans 1, and this is how Paul begins introducing the gospel. This is Paul's introductory statement in introducing the gospel.

He says, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, against unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." This is what Paul is wanting to press down and lay on our soul: that we're guilty. Why are we guilty? Paul continues in the next verse: "Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them."

Paul says you're guilty, and you're guilty because that which is known about God, you know. What Paul is going to do next is he is going to say we're guilty for two reasons. God has made it evident to mankind two ways. Number one, God has made it evident to man through his creation, which we'll get into in a second.

When you look at the world, you somehow intuitively know that there's a creator. Yet, even though you know that there's a creator, you don't live under the authority of that. The second reason you are guilty before the Lord, and in this particular case, God's speaking to the Jews, is because you know His law. Even though you know what's right and wrong because He revealed it to you in the Old Testament in the Torah, you haven't obeyed it. We're guilty before God. That's how Paul introduces the gospel.

Dawson: Wow, that's really amazing, Rabbi. Is this different than how God introduced His kingdom to the Jewish people in the Old Testament?

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: You know, that's a great point. Because if you think about what you just said, the way that John the Baptist introduced Jesus to the world, he said, "Repent." John the Baptist was in the wilderness baptizing people for the repentance of sin, and John's word was, "Repent."

You don't have to repent if you're not guilty. John introduced the gospel, the forerunner of Jesus: "Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand." Yeshua's first words were, "Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand." This is all consistent.

Dawson: It reminds me of what you always talk about, of how the law came to show us that we were in sin, basically. This is what Paul is addressing here, just saying it is evident that humankind is sinful.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Paul's exact words. He says men are guilty before God once again in verse 18 because they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Now, what does it mean? Suppressing the truth means that you know something, but you push it down.

He continues, saying, "Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them." This is the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, the one that's bearing witness with our conscience that we just intuitively know. Because we're birthed from God in His own image, we intuitively know that certain things are wrong. But even though we know they're wrong, we still do them, and then we try to deny that what we are doing is wrong.

Then Paul goes into another witness. "For since the creation of the world His, the Lord's, invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so they, all of us, are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened." What do you think about this?

Dawson: What you said about suppressing the truth really stood out to me. I just think about in life and humanity, my kids and so forth. My kids know that it's wrong to lie, but they justify it and they are like, "No, it's okay, it's okay," until they get caught.

They're like, "No, it's okay, it's okay," because they're getting away with something, and they suppress that so that they can get away with something because their flesh wants something so much. But that's exactly what Paul is saying here. What I hear you saying is we're suppressing the truth. There's this conscious thing in our mind that just knows it's wrong. Then when I catch my kids lying, I'm like, "Hey," and they're like, "Oh, I know that's wrong." They confess.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Kids know. That's an amazing thing. Yeshua said, "Unless we become like children, we will in no wise see the kingdom of God." I think that that subject, that concept that Jesus was speaking of to become like a child to enter the kingdom, can be addressed in multidimensional ways.

I think we need to become like children in many areas. But one of the ways that we become like children is we return to what we knew as a child. This is what Paul is saying. Even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give Him thanks.

As mankind, as we age, we kind of lose that sense of innocence that we had as a child. We forsake the truth, and we begin to suppress it. This is what Paul is speaking of here. Everyone's done it, and we're guilty before God.

It's interesting that Paul says that as a result of this suppression of the truth, we exchange it for a lie. "For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God."

He goes on here. One of the phenomena that's taking place that Paul is speaking of here as we flesh this out is as men begin to sin, in order to try to justify themselves, they have to create an even bigger lie. The bigger the sin, the bigger the lie you have to create to justify yourself.

Man now is becoming futile in his speculation because he suppressed the truth and he's tried to cover it up. He tries to cover it up by justifying his sin. Even from the very beginning, even Adam sinned. What did they do? They immediately tried to cover it up with a lie.

Dawson: That's right, Rabbi. We're going to continue in just a moment. You're listening to Discovering the Jewish Jesus. But first, did you know that you can easily access Rabbi's teaching right on your phone? Just download the Rabbi Schneider app today from your phone's App Store and unlock a wealth of content, including daily devotions, videos, and so much more.

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Just visit discoveringthejewishjesus.com. That's discoveringthejewishjesus.com. Or you can donate right from the Rabbi Schneider app that we just shared with you about. Just click the donate button right there on the screen. We believe it'll really be a blessing to you. Now, back to our message. Rabbi, you read that we become futile in our speculations and our hearts darken. The more we sin, the more we believe these lies. Does something actually change in our mind?

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Yeah, Paul says our conscience can become seared, and we can no longer discern the presence of the Spirit. To willfully sin puts us in a position where the Lord releases us to believe a lie. Paul speaks about in another one of his letters that when people don't receive the truth, God turns them over to a lie, to believe a lie. He turns them over to the power of deception so that they'll be judged because they did not receive the love of the truth.

This is the danger of sinning. This kind of gets back to the fear of the Lord. Why it's important to fear the Lord. One of the things that's encompassed in fearing the Lord is the recognition of the judgment that comes upon us when we continue to willfully sin against Him.

Let's face it, all of us sin. The scripture says that he that says that he's without sin is a liar and the truth's not in him. So we're not talking about sinning. We're talking about someone that is willfully living a life of sin and has no intention of repenting.

Their foolish heart gets darkened, Paul says. Professing to be wise, they become fools. They exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of a corruptible man, of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore, God gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity so that their bodies would be dishonored among themselves. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

So this is the consequence. When the Holy Spirit comes, when there's a witness in our heart of truth, God is looking for a response from us. A lot of people think, "I believe that Jesus is the Messiah, and I want to get saved, but not yet." The deception of that is thinking that we can choose when we're going to say yes to God. We cannot choose when we're going to say yes to God. We cannot have a plan, "Lord, I'm going to choose you when I'm 45." No. The day of salvation is now. If today you hear His voice, do not harden your heart.

This is what's happening here. They're rejecting the truth, and rather than God giving them another chance at age 70, instead what God does is He turns them over to believe a lie.

Dawson: This is why Paul started us off, like you said earlier: the key is repentance. Because we know the truth, we have to repent right now or we're in great danger of really God letting humanity... and this is why humanity today, Rabbi, we're seeing what this talks about next. We're seeing this happen in our culture in America now just like Paul's about to address them in Romans.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Absolutely. Paul is speaking about the phenomenon of what happens that man, when he doesn't respond to the Lord, the Lord turns them over to believing in the creature rather than the creator. So the scripture says here that they began to worship physical objects, four-footed animals, images of God that were created. People said, "Oh, this is God." They built a statue of something.

In the Book of Romans, Paul is speaking to God turning them over to believe in an image rather than believing in Himself. Today there's not many people worshipping statues, but we're worshipping concepts and ideologies, which is the evolvement of this same trajectory. When you don't receive a love of the truth, you begin to believe in ideology and worship an ideology that is totally of the realm of deception and evil.

For example, today we have an ideology that there's no boundaries anymore of good and evil. So we think, for example, of the blur between the sexes. That in the beginning God created as we know male and female. But because people reject God's word, which is very specific, that men are not to dress in women's clothes, women are not to dress in men's clothes, and God is very clear homosexuality is a sin, very strong boundaries.

But when we reject God's truth and His witness because we have feelings for people and we feel sorry for people or we feel sympathy or empathy for people, and so we don't want to say that somebody's wrong, we don't want to hurt them, we don't want to make them feel rejected, we put our own human emotions over God's word. Then God turns us over to believe a lie, and we come up with this concept of life that God just loves everybody, God loves everything, He doesn't reject anything.

What we've done is we've turned ourselves over to the same thing that Paul's describing here. We've exchanged the truth of God for a lie that we think is God, but it's not God. The result of following an ideology is that we're following an idol and we're going to be judged for not believing the truth.

Dawson: I think about everybody these days saying, "Everybody's allowed to have their truth. This is their truth. This is how they feel. This is what they think. And that's okay." And that's exactly though, it's funny, this is what Paul is addressing here. He's sitting here saying that your minds became degraded and it just gets worse and worse and worse.

The result of this is God gives us over to these lies. In verse 24 he says, God gives them over to the lust of their hearts. So whatever their heart believes is true, He's just like, "There it is." And this is where our society is today.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: It's totally amazing, Dawson, because as the text continues, in just a few verses, Paul actually addresses the very subject we're talking about: homosexuality. Because he says right here in the 26th verse, as the result of man disregarding God's truth, God gives them over to degrading passions.

Then the 26th verse: "For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural. And in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind."

This is the result of all this. We forsake God's truth because we think we know better. One of the things I just want to bring to the surface here, because we are specifically discussing the result of disregarding God's truth and His word resulting at the end of all this, homosexuality. I think it's important to state that I do have a heart, we do have a heart for people that are living in this lifestyle.

Most people I personally believe that are living a transgender lifestyle, a homosexual lifestyle, they're leading lives where there is tremendous hurt, tremendous confusion. I have deep empathy for them and God does too. So this is not to just condemn people. This is to exalt truth.

I want to just express my love to anybody that might be struggling right now with same-sex attraction or even identity confusion, sexual identity confusion. The reason that mankind is struggling with sexual identity confusion or same-sex attraction is the very reason that the gospel came: because sin.

Sin has broken the world. Sin has affected every human being that's ever been born into the planet. Some people are born with a defect in their heart. Some people are born with a gene, if you will, that makes them candidates to become alcoholics. Some people are born in the world as Siamese twins where they're actually connected bodily to another human being.

The point is that sin has broken all humanity. All of us are broken in some way. Homosexuality, sexual identity disorder is just another manifestation of the brokenness of humanity due to sin. But this is why Jesus came, to reconcile humanity back to God. Regardless of what our sin is, we all have sin.

Regardless of what the sin is, the answer isn't to try to justify the sin and somehow say that the sin is good and that the sin is just another expression of diversity, and love is diversity and so to be loving you have to love all expressions of humanity. That's a deception. That's becoming futile in our imagination.

This is what Paul addresses here when he says here in this 22nd verse, "Professing to be wise, they became fools." No, the answer is to recognize that all these forms of living our lives that are contrary to God's word and to creation itself are not to be accepted and blessed and justified in our own mind, and we come up with some kind of explanation why it's all good. No, we need to reject it and we need to say, "Jesus, help me. Save me. Deliver me."

I finally want to say here that I know that there are people that are caught up in these problems that Paul's addressing. He specifically addresses homosexuality here that comes as a result of rejecting God and sin, which I'm not pointing the finger at any individual but as humanity as a whole. I understand that there are people that are caught in this lifestyle and their earliest childhood memory is a same-sex attraction or sexual identity confusion.

They tried asking for help and they prayed, "God, save me." They prayed for maybe a long time and they felt like they weren't receiving help, so then they just gave themselves over to it. But I want to say to you, my beloved friend today, if I'm speaking to you, I want you to know God still loves you.

There's still help for you. Even as, let's say, a heterosexual man has to live his whole life rejecting lust and sexual relations with women that are not their wife, so too if you are struggling with same-sex attraction, you might have to lead your whole life rejecting your disposition to want to have sex with another man. It's crucifying the flesh.

Dawson: It's not that the feelings aren't real. Whatever someone may be struggling with today, your feelings are real, but we have to submit that to the truth of the word of God. If you'd like prayer for anything today, visit our website discoveringthejewishjesus.com and submit a prayer request. We pray for every individual request. Rabbi?

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: I just want to thank you for tuning in today. I feel like we're together, partners and friends just to being able to share in God's word together. I'm blessed. I feel like you're here, those of you that are listening today with me.

I want you to know it does cost me money to do what we're doing. We send this out all over the world on radio, podcast, so many different distribution outlets. It all costs money. I've got three producers in the room here with me that do such a wonderful job producing these programs and so on and so forth.

So would you support us because the scripture tells us that those that are being blessed by the truth should support the ones that are feeding them the truth? I just want to thank you today for your love and financial support.

Father God, I just pray for everyone that's listened today. Thank you, Lord, for encouraging us in your word. Thank you, Father, for loving us. Thank you, Father, for sustaining us by your power. Your word says, Father, that you will preserve us to the day that we meet your Son face to face. Father, we want to please you. Cause us to continue, I pray, to grow in your grace in Yeshua's name.

Dawson: Amen. To financially support Discovering the Jewish Jesus with a gift of any amount, please reach out to us today. You can call us at 800-777-7835. You can also send your financial donations in the mail. Our address is Discovering the Jewish Jesus, PO Box 777, Blissfield, Michigan, 49228.

I want to thank you for your gifts. They make a difference. As a token of our appreciation when you support us, we want to send you our latest newsletter in the mail. You're going to be able to read the impact that your giving is having through the testimonies that our listeners send in, which are truly something special.

You'll also receive Rabbi's free monthly teaching booklet, which is extra teaching to bless specifically you. So I want to encourage you, reach out today and give generously. Give by calling us at 800-777-7835 or visiting discoveringthejewishjesus.com. As our tradition goes, here's Rabbi to wrap up with God's sacred and special blessing.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: In the Book of Numbers chapter 6, 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 blessing.

Yevarechecha Adonai veyishmerecha. Ya’er Adonai panav eleicha vichunnecha. Yissa Adonai panav eleicha veyasem lecha 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.

Dawson: This program is produced and sponsored by Discovering the Jewish Jesus, and I'm Dawson Roberts. Be sure to join us again tomorrow when Rabbi Schneider helps us stand firm and speak love. That's Tuesday on Discovering the Jewish Jesus.