Discovering The Jewish Jesus

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: "For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. What does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness."

Dustin Roberts: Propitiation, propitiation, propitiation, propitiation, propitiation. That was pretty good, Rabbi.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: That's better than I've ever done.

Dustin Roberts: The Rabbi challenged us to say that word, propitiation. That simply means to appease God. We're in Romans chapter three, exploring Paul's epistle. We are in verse 25, which says, "Whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood," speaking about Jesus' blood through faith. We talked yesterday about how salvation is a gift and that it's because of Jesus' shed blood, and that's how we appease God. But Rabbi, you left off saying that this comes through faith.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Yes, we want to talk about faith. But just to clue in all our listening audience, the reason Dustin did that was because it's a tongue-twister word. I talked about the meaning of propitiation in the previous episode. Propitiation means that the innocent one died in our place, beloved ones, so that you and I could be just and holy and blameless before our Creator. When we put our faith in Yeshua who gave His blood, we then become justified.

As we spoke about last time, the reason blood is stressed is because the life of the flesh, the Scripture teaches, is in the blood. God gave us the blood of His Son so that His life was given for our life, so that we could be in relationship and have fellowship with the Father. I love that the Father sent Yeshua to die in our place when we were still sinners.

What this means is that God just loves us. It's just an unconditional love. He didn't begin to love us when we repented. He didn't begin to love us when we started to look righteous. He loved us when we were dead in our transgressions and sins. Father, I just pray that You'd reveal what You see in us.

Father, we so desperately need to know who we are in Your love, who we are to You, what You see in us, so that we can come out of sadness and darkness and feeling depressed and overwhelmed because we don't understand the value of who we are. Father, we seek to find that value of who we are in the world by living up to the world's definition of success.

Father God, save us to know who we are in Your love. That will answer every question. Open the eyes of our heart to know who we are to You and how You see us, and how, Father, we're so valuable and precious and loved by You that You sent Your Son to redeem us when we were dead in our transgressions and sins. We cling to You now, God. Open our hearts and eyes to understand Your love, we pray. Amen.

So we put faith in this one that died in our place because of the Father's great love for us. Yeshua, we thank You today for dying in our place. This happens through faith. What is faith? Let's read it again: "God displayed publicly Yeshua as a propitiation in His blood through faith."

We're saved by faith. "By grace we've been saved," the book of Ephesians tells us, "through faith." Paul's going to go on in the book of Romans in chapter four, talking about justification, becoming right with God through faith, not by the works of the law, but through faith. We can only be saved one way, and that's by putting our faith in the one that died in our place. Then when we put our faith in Him, He not only forgives us our sin because He gave His life, which was evidenced through His blood, but He saves us to the uttermost because He gives us His Spirit.

He begins to transform us, not by deeds of righteousness which we do, but according to His mercy through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit who's given to us as a gift to transform us and reveal Jesus to us once we put our faith in Him. It's a free gift of God. The Bible says faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen. Faith is when you're hoping something will happen. That gift of the Spirit, because hope is a gift of the Spirit, goes to another level when you're absolutely convinced in your heart that what you're hoping for is going to happen.

Dustin Roberts: My hope here is to appease God.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: You're hoping for something in the future. If you're looking to get married, you're hoping that God will bring the right husband or man to your life. If you're looking to have a baby, you're hoping for that baby. But Abraham believed he was going to have the baby. He wasn't just hoping; the Lord told him that at this time next year, you're going to have a son.

Abraham believed and was counted to him as righteousness because faith is the conviction of things unseen. Faith is the conviction that what you desire is now. Once it's happened, it's no longer faith. We are convinced that Jesus is alive, that He has done for us what the Scripture said He did. He justified us through His blood and we believe that. We have faith that there is no other pathway to God. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life." We believe God's word. That's faith.

It's a substance. It's real. We can't see it, but the Bible says faith is the substance. There is something real about it. We can't see gravity, but I'm sure there's a way for scientific instruments to pick it up. People believe. Jesus said, "Your faith has made you well." There's something about faith; it's an energy, if you will, a spiritual force that can't be observed with the eye, just like gravity can't be seen, radio waves can't be seen by the naked eye, but they're real.

Dustin Roberts: This is how God has basically dealt with us from the beginning, Rabbi. He just wants us to believe what He says. Like with Adam and Eve, if you eat of this tree, you're going to die. Abraham, go to this land, I'm going to give it to you. That's what He's been looking for, that we would trust Him.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: You know, as you were saying that, I just had revelation, Dustin, that why would that matter so much that we believe? But when we believe God, that is really the next evolution of the spirit, which is love. To believe God moves His heart because believing is connected to loving Him. If you tell me something and I believe, have faith that what you're telling me is so, there's a connection of love there.

Dustin Roberts: If I tell you something and you're like, "I don't believe that," there's no relationship built between us. There's no trust between us. There's no genuine connection.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: There's an evolution of this gifting. First it starts out as hope, then it escalates to a burning fever of faith, and then that faith is what brings the relationship together in proximity of love, like love now. I think this is why faith is so important to the Lord, because it shows that we love Him, that we trust Him. It speaks to who He is as well. I could tell you something and it could not be true, but He says, "I'm going to save you if you have faith." It speaks to who He is and His character.

The beautiful thing is that the faith that we have when we put our faith in God in Yeshua, it's a gift to us. That's an important thing. Some people have made faith work. We're talking about faith right now because Paul is speaking of the fact that the whole world is guilty before God, and the only remedy to this is through faith in Yeshua, His sacrifice and His blood.

Some people, when they think of faith, they think of faith as a work, like somehow they've got to muster up enough faith. And "Did I believe enough?" and some even think about healing. "I wasn't healed of my sickness because I didn't believe enough." But we have to understand that faith is a gift. The Bible says in the book of Ephesians chapters one and two, that "By grace," Paul says, "you've been saved through faith, and this faith is not of yourselves, it's the gift of God," lest any man should boast. Even our faith is a gift.

Dustin Roberts: That's basically what verse 27 says. "Where then is boasting? It's excluded. By what kind of law of works? No, but by a law of faith." Even faith is a gift.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Yes, and this is going to lead us into the precious revelation that Paul's going to bring us when we get to Romans 9 through 11, where Paul is speaking of the fact that you need to recognize that the reason you believe and others don't is because God's given you a gift, and the gift that He's given you, He hasn't given everybody. I know that's a hard statement to receive. But even as God chose Israel out of all the nations of the earth in the Hebrew Bible, Paul says there's a remnant chosen today, not from amongst Jews only, but also from amongst Greeks.

It doesn't seem fair to us, but Paul says, "Who are you, oh man, that answers back to God? Does not the potter have the right from the same lump of clay to make one vessel for honor, one for dishonor and common use?" So Paul goes into this whole theology here of election. The fact that we believe, the fact that we have faith, is not because we worked it up, it's because God gave us revelation and gave us the ability to believe.

Guest (Male): Rabbi Schneider, he has this evangelistic Jewish meeting, and hundreds of Jewish people came to the meetings.

Guest (Male): It's very important that Rabbi Schneider brought this message, because they wanted to hear it from a Jewish person.

Guest (Male): I am half Jewish. Come to Yeshua tonight.

Guest (Male): His words touched me. They entered my mind and my soul. I received Yeshua today. I feel Him in me and I know within me that it was real.

Dustin Roberts: Amen. This ministry is reaching Jewish people around the world. When Jewish people get saved, the Scripture tells us that Jesus is going to return. If this speaks to you, would you stand with us? Give at DiscoveringTheJewishJesus.com.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: So we're going to wrap up here this third chapter of the book of Romans. Paul continues on by saying in the 30th verse, "God will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith." It's one; both Jew and Gentile, the only way to be justified is through faith. Then Paul continues: if we're all justified by faith, do we then nullify the law through faith? In other words, do we throw the law out the window? Paul says, "May it never be. On the contrary, we establish the law."

How is that? We establish the law because the "Telos," which is the Greek word in the book of Romans, the Telos of the law is Christ. Christ is the end of the law, Paul says, to everyone that believes. That Greek word "end" is Telos. The way that we establish the law through faith is that the purpose of the law was to bring us to Christ, that through the law came the knowledge of sin, and the knowledge of sin is what should bring us to Christ.

Dustin Roberts: I love this, Rabbi, because I'm not Jewish. But it gives me a comfort knowing that I'm coming as a Gentile, that I am just as accepted and fully, as Paul's going to say later, grafted in and just as accepted by God because I'm coming with the same faith that you're coming with to God. That's an assurance that no matter who you are today and no matter what you've done, no matter what law you followed or whatever you've heard before, if you don't know Jesus, you can accept Jesus today just by accepting this gift of His blood being shed for you by faith.

It's an amazing thing. If you don't know Jesus and you do want to accept Jesus today, I encourage you, go online to DiscoveringTheJewishJesus.com and click "Find Jesus" there. There are some videos there that'll help you get started on this journey of faith.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Amen. You may be driving in your car right now and just are feeling lost and hopeless. God's got more for you. Continuing on, Paul brings us into Romans four. This is just good Bible teaching Paul's given us here. He just keeps elaborating, so it must be really important.

He says in the first verse there, "What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness."

Once again, the same concept here. All God's asking of us is that we put our faith in His Son and love Him. Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as favor but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

Dustin Roberts: Honestly, Rabbi, I can't help but feel thankful right now that He made it this simple. I didn't have to go and do all these works to get saved. The fact that Abraham believed God and it's credited as righteousness, and like I didn't have to do these works, but God justifies me because I believe. I'm thinking how amazing it is that He loves me that much.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Again, it's just love. It's unconditional love. No matter who you are right now, no matter what you've done, no matter what mistakes, no matter what sin has been committed in your life, Jesus died for you. To think that your sin disqualifies you from receiving God's free gift of righteousness, what that actually does is one of the most vile sins, because you're basically saying that your sin is more powerful than the blood of Jesus.

Let me ask you, my brother, my sister, is your sin more powerful than the blood of Jesus? This is a real issue because experientially, we are not receiving the love that God has for us. We're not allowing ourselves to experience God's love for us because we feel we're unworthy.

Remember Yeshua when He was celebrating the Last Supper, the Passover meal with His disciples, and He took out the basin to wash their feet? He came to Peter to wash Peter's feet and Peter said, "Get away from me, I'm unholy, I'm unclean." Peter thought his own sin disqualified him from receiving the love of God. Jesus said, "If you don't let me wash your feet, you're going to not be able to have any part with me."

I think the application and relevancy of this right now for all of us is that I think God wants us to experience His love more than we are, but we won't allow ourselves to feel His love, to experience His love, because we don't feel like we're worthy.

Dustin Roberts: When I look at my sin, I think about what I've done. I absolutely don't feel the way I feel right now after just reading this.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Father, right now I just pray for my precious beloved brothers and sisters that are just struggling and they're just depressed and down and feeling darkness on them. They just feel the conviction of sin, not from the Holy Spirit but from the devil. The devil is causing them to feel bad about themselves.

Father, we come to You right now and we just magnify Your love and the forgiveness that You've provided for us through the blood of Jesus. Through His blood, through Your sacrifice, Jesus, we are holy, we are blameless, and we can stand before You right now and rejoice in that.

Father, we declare right now that Your blood, that Yeshua's blood is more powerful than our sin, and that Yeshua, Your blood has the power to wash our guilt and our sin away. Father, I think about if You loved us when we were yet sinners, how much more can we experience Your love now that we've put our faith in Your Son. So we ask You to wash our hearts, open our hearts, help us to receive the forgiveness and the love that You've provided for us and that's upon us through Your Son.

Father, help us to receive the fullness of Your love by believing in what Your Son has done and by believing what You say about us because we've received and put our faith in the gift that You've given us through Your Son; that we are holy and righteous before You now. Amen.

Dustin Roberts: Amen. "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account."

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Dustin, you were speaking a bit ago of the fact that there's no superiority amongst Jew and Gentile, that God has broken down the dividing wall in Messiah Yeshua. There's still distinction; Jews are still Jews and Gentiles are still Gentiles. There's still distinction, but there's no discrimination. We're all on equal footing, all guilty before the law, all able to receive the fullness of His gift on equal footing now.

Dustin Roberts: And we need each other. The Gentiles will help, the Bible says, provoke the Jews to jealousy and bring them to faith. Yet on the other hand, it's the law, it's the word of God that came through the Jewish people, God's firstborn people, that even brought us to faith as Gentiles. I'm so thankful, Rabbi, to be partnering in a part of a ministry like Discovering The Jewish Jesus in the earth that's teaching the Jewish roots of our faith, because so much in our churches today, we're taught all sorts of things. We'll have communion at our churches, but we have no idea that that was a Passover meal that Jesus was celebrating, that Jews had been celebrating for thousands of years.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: When the church does not recognize its relationship with the Jewish people, God's firstborn, the church becomes deformed because we need each other. The same is true of Jewish people, Jewish believers. When Jewish believers don't recognize the relationship between the Gentile body and the Jewish Bible, the Jewish sector of the church becomes deformed.

At the end of the day, God has commissioned the Gentile to provoke the Jew to jealousy to bring them to faith, so that there's this equal partnership that we play in God's redemptive plan. When we don't recognize the part that each one plays, we become separated from ourselves. We become separated from God's purpose and His body. The Jewish roots of the faith are extremely important. God is in the process of restoring His precious beloved bride to an understanding of the Hebraic or Jewish roots of their faith.

We're getting ready to meet, according to Revelation 22, the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the offspring of David. He's not coming out of Rome. He's a Jewish man, David, and He's coming back as the offspring of David in Revelation, the Lion of Judah. He's going to take us to the New Jerusalem, whose gates are inscribed with the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles. It's going to be a Jewish thing. It's Jewish clothing. God is beyond Jew or Gentile; He's not flesh, but there's a color of the anointing that somehow is always going to be Jewish.

So it's important for our church today to understand this and to have a love for Jewish people and an understanding of the Jewish Scriptures. I just want to ask you today, if this teaching is helping you today, if you think it's important, would you financially support this ministry? I'm lovingly asking you now to offer a sacrificial donation to the Lord through Discovering The Jewish Jesus, because it's only through you, beloved, that we can continue to teach the truth to God's people in the earth. You're going to be rewarded for every sacrificial gift you make to the Lord with a true and a pure heart.

Dustin Roberts: If you'd like to give today, if the Lord is leading you, go online and give at DiscoveringTheJewishJesus.com. You can also support this ministry by giving us a call today at 800-777-7835. Your faithfulness allows us to share the Gospel in Israel, reaching Jewish people with the truth about their Messiah, our Messiah, Jesus.

As a token of our appreciation, we want to make sure that you receive our latest newsletter. It is full of exclusive content and exciting ministry updates. For those of you who would like to deepen your connection with the ministry, would you consider becoming a monthly partner today? If you do, you're going to receive an additional gift: a handcrafted shofar that's made right in the Holy Land. It's used to announce Jesus' second coming.

Thank you so much for connecting with us today and listening. If you'd like to donate, just visit us at DiscoveringTheJewishJesus.com. Partner today, get your very own shofar. God bless you. Now, here's Rabbi again to speak God's sacred and special blessing over our lives.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: What I love about the Aaronic Blessing is that it did not originate with man. The words actually proceeded from the very essence of God Himself. The blessing comes from the book of Numbers chapter six. So listen to these words and receive the blessing of the Lord into your life today.

Yevarekhekha Yahweh veyishmerekha. Ya’er Yahweh panav eleykha vikhunekkha. Yissa Yahweh 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 ones, 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. Be sure to join us again when Rabbi Schneider explains why we have to be justified by faith. That's coming up Wednesday on Discovering The Jewish Jesus.