Rabbi Schneider - God's Destiny for Israel
I'm going to show you today how important the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament was for Jesus and His followers, and how Jesus and His followers used the Old Testament to reveal who the Messiah would be and then showed how Jesus is that person. So, today what I'm going to do is I'm going to take several steps back, and we're going to begin to look in the Hebrew Scriptures to begin the series. And we're going to point out that in the Hebrew Scriptures, we find that God had a very specific and special role for the people of Israel. And then from there, what I'm going to do is examine with you whether Israel fully as a nation fulfilled the destiny that God spoke over her life. Then we're going to move into how Israel did fulfill her role by bringing forth her representative, the Messiah, the King of the Jews, Yeshua HaMashiach, Himself. Then what we're going to do, beloved, is get very specific and show you Jesus revealed in the Old Testament.
So once again, we're looking at messianic prophecy. As time goes on, we're going to be focusing on Isaiah. But before we get to Isaiah, I want to first of all just look at prophecies in the Hebrew Bible concerning the nation of Israel and how Israel fulfills her purpose on giving us the Messiah. Let's begin. I'm reading from the book of Deuteronomy now, chapter 7, verse 6. "The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of God abides forever". Hear, beloved one, God's Word. God is saying to Israel, "For you are a holy people to Yahweh your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth". We can conclude by this that God very directly, in the Scripture, singles Israel out. He singles Israel out, out of all the nations for a very specific purpose. Listen to a few more scriptures that we find in the Word of God that speak of the same truth. I'm reading now from the book of Isaiah 41:8. The Lord is saying, "But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen".
And let me just explain. If you're newer to the broadcast today or if Hebrews teaching is newer for you, we see God speaking here to Israel, and then He switches it to Jacob. Listen again. "But you Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen". Israel and Jacob are the same nation. We understand that Jacob was a descendant... listen, it goes Abraham, and then Abraham gave birth to Isaac, and then Isaac gave birth to Jacob. And Jacob's name was then changed to Israel by God. And Jacob had 12 sons, who became the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel. So when God says, "Jacob," He's speaking to Israel. Israel and Jacob are the same nation.
So once again, looking at Isaiah 41:8, we read, "But you Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, descendant of Abraham my friend". This is interesting here. Because we're tracing Israel's beginning, we're tracing Judaism or the Jewish people's race, or I should say chosen-this is a better way to say it-we're tracing it back, listen now, to Abraham. That's why in Judaism, we trace our ancestry back to Abraham. Many of our prayers begin by speaking of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham then is the first Jew. He's the beginning of the nation of Israel. He's the one whom God made a covenant with that, through Abraham, God was going to bless all the world. We're going to see this in a second. So once again, "But you Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen-this is Israel-descendant of Abraham my friend".
Once again tracing Israel's history back to Jacob and back to Abraham, whom the Lord called His friend. Which is interesting to consider that for a second, that God says, "Abraham my friend". Because this is who God is. He's a friend. He wants to be your friend. He wants to be my friend. In fact, the New Testament tells us that the blessing of Abraham, listen now, has come upon everyone who puts their faith in God's Messiah Jesus. Most of you that are watching today are not Jewish by birth, but you've come into a relationship with the God of Israel through Messiah Jesus. The Lord tells us in the New Testament, that you Gentiles that have come into relationship with Him, with the God of Israel, through Yeshua, through Jesus the Messiah, the Scripture says, "The blessing of Abraham has come upon you". And what's the blessing of Abraham that we just read about? That God called Avraham, Abraham, listen now, His friend.
So I want you to know you're in friendship with God. You're a friend of God. Jesus said, "No longer do I call you slaves". He said, "Listen, I call you, friends". God wants to have that type of intimate, soft relationship with you. We continue our study. And we're turning now to the book of Isaiah 45:4. Hear the Word of God. "For the sake of Jacob, my servant, and Israel, my chosen one, I have also called you by your name. I have given you a title of honor, though you have not known me".
We're going to continue this theme now. As we're looking at the chosenness of Israel and the Jewish people, I want to continue this theme now, by going into the New Testament. We've very clearly established that in the Old Testament, God singled out Israel in a special way from all the peoples on the face of the earth. Now, listen. Those of you that are tuning in, listen. This is going to have application for you. Stay with it. Okay? I want to take this concept now, and we're going to go into the New Testament and we're going to see this same concept that God has a special call on the Jewish people and the nation of Israel.
I want to look at the words of Jesus first of all in the book of Matthew 15:21-24. Hear the Word of God. "Jesus went away from there and withdrew into the district of Tyre and Sidon. And a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out saying, 'Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon possessed. But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him saying, 'Send her away because she keeps shouting at us.' But He answered and said, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'"
So once again, what happens? Jesus is ministering, and a woman that's a Gentile, someone that was not Jewish begins to cry out, "Help me. My daughter! Deliver my daughter". The crowd is bothered by this Gentile woman that's shouting out. Even Jesus's disciples said to Yeshua, "Send her away". Jesus responds, and He says to the woman, "Listen, I can't help you. I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel". Remember, she was a Gentile. Jesus was saying to her, "I can't help you. I was sent only," He said, "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel". Notice once again, Jesus is identifying Himself with the prophets and the prophecies that I just got done reading about. That God singled Israel out to be unique. Jesus now comes, He comes from Israel, from the line of David, born a Jew, lived a Jew, and He says to this Gentile woman, "Listen, woman," He says, "I'm here for the lost sheep of the house of Israel".
Now, I know if you're Gentile right now that this could be a little hurtful. This could put you off a bit. But I want you to understand it was for a purpose. Jesus had to first fulfill His mission within Israel before His grace could be released to you and to the entire world. Jew and Gentile are now one of Messiah. He loves you if you're a Gentile, just as much as He loves any Jew. It's not about that. It's that God had a very specific purpose. And listen, now, it began with Israel. And that's what you see happening here in this portion of the Word of God.
A similar incident takes place in the Gospel of John chapter 4. In the Gospel, we say in Hebrew Yochanan. John chapter 4, Jesus was at a well. Many of us know the story of the woman at the well. And there's a woman that wasn't Jewish that began to dialogue with Jesus while He was standing at the well. And she says, "I see you're a Jew," she says to Jesus. She said, "we have a different way that we worship than you Jewish people". And she says to Jesus, "We worship over on that mountain. I know you guys worship in Jerusalem but we worship over there on that mountain". And Jesus said to her in John 4:22, He said, "Woman, you don't know what you're worshipping. We know what we worship, for salvation is from the Jews".
What that says to you and I, church, is that if we're going to fully understand the Scripture, we need to understand it, listen now, from a Jewish perspective. That's what Jesus said to her, He said, "Woman, you might be sincere," He said, "but you don't know what you're worshiping. We know what we worship for salvation is from the Jews". So, as I'm going through the series and these prophecies that God is speaking over Israel, that we're going to tie into Jesus and His relationship with you, I want you to understand, it's important for you to grasp this. Because your faith in Jesus, the Christian faith, listen now, was born out of Israel. And so bear with it. I know this is going to be very heavy teaching and it's going to be deeply rooted in the Word. And at times it might really seem, you know, difficult to stay with it, but please stay with it because God's going to train you in truth that will stabilize you in your faith.
What I have found over the years is this. When God's people understand that Hebraic roots of their Christian faith, when they see how Jesus is rooted in the Hebrew Bible, how the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament talked about Jesus, how the Old Testament prophets wrote about Jesus, when they see Jesus, listen now, revealed in the Old Testament, it stabilizes and strengthens their faith so that they don't have to wonder if they're right or not. Because in the world that we live in today, there are so many different ones that are crying out and saying, "our way is right".
I was just watching, in fact, a documentary on all the people in prison that are converting to Islam. And the truth is, is that many of these that have converted to Islam in prison, their lives really did improve once they committed to Islam. They stopped stealing, they stopped murdering, they stopped doing the other things that they were in prison for. Islam helped them. And so people see this, that aren't trained in Scripture, and that are deeply rooted in their relationship with Jesus, they see this and they say, "Well, how do we know if Christianity is right"? Look at these people that are Muslims that are coming out of Islam, they seem to feel that they're right, and they're being helped and they're being better people. So who's to say people ask, that one's better than the other, that all roads many believe, lead to the same place, that it doesn't matter what God you worship, as long as you're a good person?
But listen to me. The Bible says that there's no name under heaven by which men can be saved but the name of Jesus. That every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ, that Yeshua HaMashiach is Lord. And when you see, church, Jesus revealed in the Old Testament, particularly as we move into the book of Isaiah later in the series, it is going to stabilize you in your faith. The roots of your faith are going to grow deep. And even though you're going to see many people around you that have turned to many other religions and have received some help from becoming trained by those religions, those religions don't take them into eternity. There's only one that brings you into eternity. That's why Jesus said, "I am the way the truth and the life. No man comes to God, to the Father, but through me".
So Jesus said here to the woman at the well, "Woman, you don't know what you're worshipping. We know what we worship, for salvation is from the Jews". And so we've established that Israel, that Jewish people are God's chosen people. But we have to ask ourselves the question: what is Israel chosen for? What were the Jewish people chosen for? What does it mean that they're chosen? And how does that affect me? "If they're chosen," someone that's not Jewish asks themselves, "what does that say for me? Does that mean I'm not chosen"? I want to declare loud and clear. The reason God chose Israel was that through them, He could extend His mercy and His loving kindness to the entire world. How do we know this? Because once again, the first Jew is Abraham. Remember I shared that earlier in the broadcast. That's why many Jewish prayers include the Liturgy of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Jewish lineage begins with Abraham. And what is the promise that God made with Abraham that includes you? It's all the way back to the very beginning. It's in the book of Bereshit, the book of beginnings, the book of Genesis. It's Genesis 22:18. Here's what the Word of God says. God says Abraham, he said, "Abraham, in your seed", singular, "in your seed", not seeds, plural, but seed, singular, "Abraham, in your seed", singular, "all the nations of the earth shall be blessed". Everybody, that includes you. So God's purpose from the beginning was that through Israel, a seed would come. Paul identifies that seed as Jesus. And that through Jesus, God was going to bless the entire world. So God chose a nation through which the Messiah would come forth. That's why the book of Matthew chapter 1 begins by tracing Jesus' genealogy all the way back to Abraham.
So I want you to understand then church, that this plan of sending Jesus, it was rooted all the way back to the book of Genesis all the way back to Abraham. And as we continue to develop this, what I want to help you to understand is this. All the prophecies that God spoke over Israel, He spoke many prophecies over them. And we have to take a look at it, honestly, and we say to ourselves, did Israel as a nation fulfill all the prophecies and all the promises that God spoke over them? And when we look at Israel's history and look what happened to them in history, we have to say to ourselves, in some way, Israel as a nation-not as a singular seed of Jesus, but Israel as a nation-in some way they did not fully fulfill their destiny. Because Israel right now they're not, you know, reconciling the world to God. In fact, Israel doesn't proselytize Gentiles to become Jewish. They just feel that their role is to teach ethical monotheism, just to teach the world that there's one God and to abide by certain ethical commandments. But Israel as a whole has not shed light to the entire world. But Israel's divine representative King Jesus has fulfilled Israel's destiny by being the one that has brought revelation and the love of God to the entire earth.
Now, this is important to understand, because when we study messianic prophecy, we go back in the Old Testament, and we see that God spoke certain things over Israel that they would do. And the truth is, is that if we're honest, we have to realize that Israel did not fulfill all that they were supposed to do. The reason that I'm pointing this out to you is that within Judaism, from which I come-I'm Jewish, as many of you know-many of the Messianic prophecies that we look at, traditional Judaism says, had been fulfilled by Israel. By the nation. That these prophecies that you and I will be looking at together, Traditional Judaism says they're not about Jesus; they're about us the nation of Israel. But the truth is, the nation of Israel has not, will not, and cannot fulfill them.
In fact, at the end of Moses's life, listen to what Moses said, as I read from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 31, beginning in verse 24. This is what Moses said to Israel right before he died. "It came about when Moses finished writing the words of this law in a book until they were complete, that Moses commanded the Levites who carried the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord saying", and here's what I want you to really pay attention to, saying, "Take this book of the law and place it beside the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, that it may remain there as a witness against you. For I know your rebellion and your stubbornness. Behold, while I'm still alive with you today, you have been rebellious against the Lord. How much more then after my death"?
And Moses went on in the 29th verse to say, "I know that after I die, you're going to act corruptly". And that's exactly what happens. That's why they were displaced from the promised land. So the truth is the prophecies in the Old Testament about Israel being a light to the nations, it has not happened. Israel fell and stumbled. But Israel's divine representative, King Jesus, has fulfilled these ancient prophecies that God spoke over the nation. And next week, we're going to dig deeper into this right here on Discovering the Jewish Jesus. I don't want you to miss this. Beloved, when you and I get deep in the Word and understand the Hebrew roots of our Christian faith, nothing is going to shake us. Until next week, this is Rabbi Schneider saying, God bless you. I love you and Shalom.