Discovering The Jewish Jesus

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: We're seeing ourselves in a way that we haven't done enough, that we're not smart enough, all these different things. And when we accept him, his grace covers our life. We have peace with God.

Dustin Roberts: Welcome to Discovering the Jewish Jesus today. My name's Dustin Roberts, I'm your host, and it is an exciting message we have because right now Rabbi Schneider is right here in the studio with me. And we're beginning season two of the book of Romans, Exploring Paul’s Epistle. And you know, in life, there's not a lot of things that are free. But today we're going to be talking about how God actually has free gifts for us through his grace. Rabbi?

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: There is nothing like the word of God. And Dustin, even as I'm getting ready to begin to share with our beloved listeners today from Romans chapter five, just looking at the verse for myself, it's so refreshing. Have you ever heard the phrase that someone preached themselves happy? That's how I feel when I get into God's word. We're living in an age where there's really not a lot of teaching that is just focused and centered on God's word.

Dustin Roberts: Yeah, you're right. And that's what I love about what we do here. We teach God's word first.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Yeah. So let's get right into it. Romans chapter five verse one. "Therefore," Paul writes, "having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Again, the statement seems to be a statement that many of you that are listening right now have heard before. And you know, sometimes when we've heard something so many times it can tend to roll off our back, as the saying goes, like water off a duck's back. But I want to just pause and walk through this slowly with you for a second because there's so much here to be encouraged by.

Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God. I want to focus on this concept of having received this grace through faith. We've just believed in what Yeshua did. The scripture says if we believe in our heart that Jesus is who he said he was and confess him as our Lord, which means that we're truly following him in life. It's not just enough to say Jesus is Lord. When we say Jesus is Lord in a saving way, what that actually means is that we're coming under his lordship in our life and our lifestyle. And when we accept him and truly make him our Lord by seeking to be his disciple, what happens is his grace covers our life, his blood covers us, and the result of this is we have peace with God.

I'm focusing on this because we live in a realm in the spirit that does everything to keep us from having true peace. We're living in a spiritual environment where we're constantly being accused, Dustin, in our mind by the power of darkness that we don't live up, showing us ourselves or causing us to have a self-image or think of ourselves in a way that we don't have peace because we're seeing ourselves in a way that doesn't bring us peace. That we haven't done enough, that we haven't performed well enough, that we're not beautiful enough, that we're not smart enough, that somebody doesn't like us, that this person rejected us, all these different things that prevent us from having peace. But when we truly understand that we're accepted by God and affirmed by the father, we're brought into peace.

Dustin Roberts: Yeah, you're right. You know, so many people think, well, I've got peace with God, I didn't do anything. We don't realize that our sin and just the nature of this world and the things that are in us are inherently against him naturally. We don't have peace. And even once we get saved, you're right, things just inundate us. I love what you're saying, that when we hold on to this and we're not trying to perform, but when we hold on by faith, there is a peace that we can have that's not as the world gives.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Yeah, and it's difficult because we're not used to, I'm speaking for myself and I think I speak on behalf of humanity in general, we're not really used to receiving something that we don't feel that we've earned. In other words, when we feel that we've accomplished something, when we've worked hard for something, we really feel good about ourselves. If you compete in an athletic event and you trained hard for it and you won, you feel real good about yourself. If you made something, a piece of pottery or whatever it is, you're really proud of your work because you've put so much into it.

I know somebody right now that just finished writing a book and they're feeling so proud of themselves for having completed this thing. And that's natural and understandable. But what's difficult for us is to be able to feel good about ourselves for something that we don't feel that we've earned. To just simply say God affirms me and God loves me, and it's not because of anything that we've done, but it's something that Jesus did that's given to us. It's difficult for many of us to fully appreciate that because we still feel unworthy because we haven't done anything.

And this is why we need revelation. We need revelation to understand how God sees us. So this concept of having peace with God that we've received through faith, it has to do with receiving the revelation of who God is and who we are to him. Because unless we see who he is, it's not going to matter too much how he sees us. In other words, you probably don't care too much about how somebody sees you that you don't esteem. But if someone that you really esteem sees you in a real positive way, that's going to make you feel good about yourself.

Dustin Roberts: Makes a big difference.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: So we have peace with God through what Jesus did for us. But in order to have peace with God we also have to have peace with ourselves. And this comes by knowing who we are in God.

Dustin Roberts: How do we do that, Rabbi? Because like you said, there's so many things coming at us from this world. There's so many things that interrupt our peace. How do we actually change our focus so that we're walking in what you're talking about?

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Yeah. We cannot ascertain, we cannot grasp this positive self-identity that comes to us as sons and daughters of God when we know how he sees us. And we cannot perceive how glorious our father is without the revelation of the spirit. You know, Jesus said, "I'm going to send you my spirit, he's going to take of me and disclose it unto you." It's not something that we can receive just by reading the Bible. We need the reading of the Bible, we need the written word of God plus we need the ministry of the Holy Spirit to us in an experiential way so that the spirit opens up to us who the father is and that we're really loved by him. And when that happens, we have peace with God.

Dustin Roberts: It's not just this something that just comes very naturally, it's almost something that you have to strive to enter into.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Isn't that so true? Jesus said, "Seek and you shall find." "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many will seek to enter and not be able." You know, Paul prayed in the book of Ephesians that God would give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. So you're absolutely right. We have to knock, Jesus said, "Knock and the door will be opened." So draw near to God, James writes, and he'll draw near to you. So you're a hundred percent right. It's one thing for someone to quote the verse like you were saying in the beginning, we have peace with God. But for someone to really find peace with God, this takes a pressing in.

Dustin Roberts: It really does. And it takes a discipline almost every single day. Rabbi, what's the first step into realizing it? I think we talked about the fact that it's free today.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Yeah. I think when we think about the very first step, it gets back to the first verse that we read today, faith. We have to have faith. You know, the scripture defines faith as the assurance of things that are not seen. So faith is what compels us to come to God. faith is what inspires us to believe that this is true. So the first step is to really believe that God is glorious, that he's our father, that he loves us, that our sins are really forgiven. And then having that faith, we from there as a foundation, we begin to press in that God would open up to us the revelation once again, as we've been saying, of how glorious he is and who we are to him and that he truly is the answer.

Dustin Roberts: Yeah. Amen. Amen.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: So it's interesting here that as we continue, Paul speaks about that through this knowledge that he's writing about, he says at the end of verse two that we will exalt in hope of the glory of God. And I remember the Lord showed me some years ago that what people need more than ever before possibly is hope. What do you think about that?

Dustin Roberts: Well, you're right. I think every day we turn on the news or we read our social media feed and it can feel kind of hopeless sometimes. I think we like to pretend our lives are good. We post the best stuff, we talk about the good things that are happening. Someone says, "How are you?" and they're like, "I'm good," for the most part unless it's really bad. But I think deep down, I mean, we're living in a fallen world and sometimes there's hopelessness underneath the surface.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: I think so. Where is the hope? I mean, the older you get, the less hope you see around you. You know, the older you get, you see your friends beginning to age and you know, it's like you've heard before that sometimes people don't like being around older people because all they talk about is their health issues. But the reality is true, you know, as people age, generally speaking, many develop health issues. They can't go back and do the things that they once hoped for when they were young.

And what's left? Your friends that are going into the nursing home. You know what I'm saying? Everyone's dying. You look at the world today and we see the increase of corruption and just the defilement of everything. Where is the hope? Well, Paul tells us where is our hope. There's hope in God. Yeshua is the hope of the world.

Dustin Roberts: And as long as we can keep that as our actual focus and seeking first his kingdom, we can live in that hope.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Amen. We will be exalting in the supernatural hope of the glory of God.

Dustin Roberts: Amen. And before we continue with the rest of today's conversation, Rabbi, friends, thank you so much for spending time with us here today on Discovering the Jewish Jesus. And we want to stay connected with you beyond the broadcast. So sign up for Rabbi's Seeds of Revelation email. When you do you'll receive a weekly devotional that's full of encouragement. It also has ministry updates and news on upcoming live events. And it's a simple way to stay inspired every week.

To have that hope that we're talking about, it's a discipline thing that it puts it around you and encourages you. So if you want to sign up visit discoveringthejewishjesus.com and click stay connected today. And you know, truth like what's being preached here, it's getting harder to find. But Rabbi's teachings, they're grounded in scripture and as you can hear on this message, we are boldly proclaiming the gospel to a world that desperately needs it. So if you've been impacted by this ministry, I want to ask you, would you consider standing with us?

Your monthly support helps us to keep sharing truth all around the world. So you can become a monthly partner or donate by visiting us at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. And now we're going to continue the rest of this message. Rabbi?

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Thank you, Dustin. You know, people are listening today and some of the folks that are listening today, Dustin, they're going through difficult times as you know. I'm just speaking to my beloved friends today, my brother, my sister, maybe you're at a place in your life and some of the things that I've shared are really hitting home to you that perhaps you're a bit older and you feel that the best years of your life are behind you and you're looking at the world and you're looking at the corruption and you're looking at the division.

You don't have hope. But as we've been sharing, there is still hope no matter what is happening in the world and no matter how young or how old you are. Because true everlasting hope that does not disappoint is found when God continually makes himself known and real to us. When we begin to experience this supernatural relationship and understand that there's more and more and more of God to be revealed to you, that becomes your hope.

And as you're able to look forward in the future and understand that even though your outer man is decaying as the Bible says and you're eventually going to leave this world, you still have hope because you know that your best years are ahead. Your hope will remain because your hope is in the fact that you now have a relationship with the God of heaven who is glory and he's going to continue to reveal his glory to you and he's going to continue to reveal to you who you are to him and how much he loves you and this is real and experiential. And that's where our hope is, Dustin.

Dustin Roberts: Yeah, you know what, you said it at the beginning of this message, you are preaching me happy over here. I'm feeling hope rise up in my heart realizing that, yeah, my hope is in God. And I love the prescription that Paul gives next starting in verse three. He begins to talk about things and he takes it a step further.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Why don't you read that for us?

Dustin Roberts: Yeah. He says, "And not only this, but we also exalt in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance, and perseverance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us."

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: This really takes everything we've said so far and puts it all together. We have this hope in our heart that's unconquerable. Even difficult times and tribulations cannot take away our hope because these tribulations and these difficulties that we go through are just building us up. And this hope that we have, Paul says, will not disappoint. Why? It gets back to what we were talking about, the reality of the Holy Spirit, his supernatural presence in our life. Let's take a look at this verse again, these verses beginning in verse three and take it apart.

Paul says not only do we have hope to the glory of God, he says, but the hope that we have even abides with us in our tribulation. He says, "We also exalt in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance." What does this mean? It means when you're going through a hard time, it doesn't mean that it's not hard. But you still have joy, you still have hope because you know that there's a purpose for going through the hard time.

That the result of going through the hard time, Paul says, is that you gain perseverance, and perseverance brings forth proven character, and proven character, hope. And the hope that this is bringing into your life, the hope that is being imparted to you will not disappoint. And so when we think about this concept of being able to rejoice and have hope even during tribulation because the tribulation is working something for us, we really need to develop the mind of a warrior. Because a warrior goes through tribulation.

And many of us we think about, yeah, I want to be a warrior for the Lord, right? Right, we want to be warriors for the Lord, but many of us are just cupcakes. You know, we love the thought of it, we love the image of it, but as soon as the littlest thing happens, you know, or we've lost everything, you know, our composure and where is God and we start whining and we're crybabies. But you know, if you think about a warrior, a warrior is a warrior because he's gone through tribulation. There's no warrior that hasn't suffered. Every warrior takes some blows. Every warrior endures. But God is making his character established in us by having us go through hard times and making us warriors.

Dustin Roberts: You know, you don't get oil unless the olives have been pressed. And it's in the pressing times in life where God squeezes out that character like you're talking about. I think about when I was younger, Rabbi. I remember being in my room, I had just gotten saved maybe a year before and I'm seeing all these preachers and stuff and I remember praying, like, "Lord, you know, I want to be used for your kingdom and all this stuff."

But I had no idea the pressing that would be involved. It wasn't until I got older and I started reading verses about prophets in the Bible having to lay on their side for so many days and realizing what they had to go through to actually become what God was calling them to be. I didn't know what I was asking for. But even today, like, now I'm become thankful for those things that God sends me through, like you said, because I know he loves me no matter what. And I know because of that, I can go through and I can have hope that ultimately, it's about putting his character inside of me and enabling me to be this pure and spotless bride to connect with him.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Totally. And that's why Paul said that he learned in his life that when he goes through hard times that make him weak, this is actually what he's exalting in because he said God spoke to him when he was praying to the Lord going through a tribulation. And God said, "Paul, my grace is sufficient for you to get you through this and my power will be perfected in your weakness." So we have purpose. This is the main thing. Having purpose gives us stability and gives us confidence and hope.

Now Paul begins to shift a little bit as he continues in the text here and he says in verse number six. "For while we were still helpless at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." And I think there's just a couple things here that stand out to me as I read verse six. Number one, that God has a time for everything. There's times and there's seasons. And his ways are so much higher than our ways. That things are not going to go in life on our timing and they're not going to go always the way that we think they should go.

But God's got a supernatural time. He's so far above us that he's going to be doing things in our life that we could have never planned and perhaps would have never chosen. But we need to trust that whatever is going on in our life as we're in faith, we need to trust in God's timing. That it's producing something good as Paul said, that when we go through tribulation it's doing something good. We need to trust in God's timing. And then the second thing I see standing out here in verse number six is interestingly at the right time, Paul says, Christ died for the ungodly. Now let me ask you a question. What do you think Paul meant when he said at the right time Christ died for the ungodly?

Dustin Roberts: You're going to have to tell me, Rabbi, I don't know exactly what he means there.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: I think he was bringing man to the end of his rope. I think he was letting sin run its course. He brought the law into the world to cause all men to realize that they were guilty before a holy God. And after God had let the initial plan of redemption that began obviously all the way back with Abraham, one of the things actually that I think God was waiting for when he said at the right time was that it was communication.

If Christ would have come, let's say a thousand years earlier, there wouldn't have been a way for the gospel to spread. But when Christ came, it was in the midst of the Roman Empire, the Greek language was the most common language of the world. It could be communicated. So God sent the Christ after the law was given, man became convicted of sin, especially obviously Israel. And now the true redeeming means of salvation could be revealed and that message could be spread because the world was speaking Greek.

Beloved I say this with authenticity before the Lord. Discovering the Jewish Jesus is one of the best and most important ministries that you can partner with on the earth. We are reaching the world with the gospel and more precisely today we're reaching Jewish people with the gospel, which is the mandate of the church. Paul said to the Jew first and also to the Greek or to the Gentile. Yeshua came and he first brought the message to the Jewish people and then the message spread from there around the world.

To Jerusalem, Samaria, and all the nations of the earth. We are broadcasting right now in 97% of the homes in Israel that have television sets as well as a big portion of the entire Middle East. By you becoming a monthly partner with this ministry, you take a step forward and be part of God's steps on the earth to reach around the globe to gather in a harvest of precious Jewish souls. When Jewish people come to faith in him, that creates the spiritual climate for the Lord's return. Now is the time. I believe more than ever before to bring the good news of the Jewish Messiah Jesus to them, and you can be a part of doing that by becoming a monthly partner today.

Dustin Roberts: Thank you, Rabbi. And friends, if the Lord is leading you to financially support Discovering the Jewish Jesus with a gift of any amount, would you please call 800-777-7835 or give online at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. And you know, what Rabbi just shared about reaching Jewish people with the gospel, it's at the heart of everything that we do here.

Right now, this ministry is launching Israel Awakening and it's our most ambitious outreach into the holy land that we've ever attempted. Through billboards, digital advertising, and even strategic media placement, we're bringing the message of the Messiah to Jewish people in Israel and we're seeing real fruit. Jewish people are discovering Jesus because of supporters like you. To learn more about this new initiative and how you can be a part, just visit us at discoveringthejewishjesus.com and click on Israel Awakening.

And if you'd like to help support this initiative, I want to encourage you, become a monthly partner. Your support helps us plan and execute these strategic initiatives. Monthly partners receive our newsletter each month, a teaching, but more importantly, they receive their very own shofar made in Israel to remind them of the difference they're making. So connect with us today, go to discoveringthejewishjesus.com. And now here's Rabbi to speak God's sacred blessing over our lives.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Blessings trump curses. And 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.

Yevarekhekha Yahweh veyishmerekha. Ya’er Yahweh panav elekha vikhunekha. Yissa Yahweh panav elekha 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. Join us again tomorrow when Rabbi Schneider challenges the idea of grace that excuses instead of grace that transforms. Friday on Discovering the Jewish Jesus.