Rabbi Schneider - Can You Trust God to Provide for You?

TOPICS: Trumpets Atonement and Tabernacles, Feast of Tabernacles, Trust, Provision, Sukkot

Shalom uvrachah, peace and blessing friends. I'm excited today. We're going to be doing a show about the feast of Tabernacles, called in Hebrew Sukkot. I want to welcome my friends today. We've got Noey and Brondon and Jennifer and Ryan. Thank you for joining us today. And we just wanted to try to make this feel homey to you because this Holy day, Sukkot, it's celebrated just like this. We're inside a Sukkah, we're inside a Tabernacle. And the reason we're inside the Sukkah, beloved ones, is because it reminds us of how the children of Israel lived in temporary booths or shelters when they were journeying in the wilderness for forty years as they came out of Egypt and were waiting to enter the Promised land.

And so every year the Torah commands us as the children of Israel to celebrate this Holy day, Sukkot, and to build these temporary shelters individually called a Sukkah, plural called Sukkot, to remind us that when we were in the wilderness, as the Hebrew people for forty years, we had nothing but Hashem. We had nothing but God. And yet, even though having nothing but God, we had no insurance policies, we had no jobs. We were completely dependent upon Hashem for food every day. Remember for forty years, God sent the manna on the ground. Six days a week, supernaturally. He sent the quail later in the day and Israel was supernaturally sustained like this for forty years.

And so the point today, whether you're Jewish or whether you're a Gentile that knows God through King Jesus, the application is the same for everybody, Jew and Gentile, one in Messiah that even beloved ones, and I really want you to take this to heart. Even if we lost everything in life, as long as we still have God, we will be okay because He will supply every single one of our needs. And you know, Ryan, I don't know. I don't know if you've ever thought about this before, but I remember years and I was celebrating the feast of Tabernacles Sukkot one year. And I was outside on my back porch, the same house I'm living in now. And I had a Sukkah built and I was sitting in the Sukkah and I was at a place in my life, Ryan. I was just kind of stressed because I was thinking at the time about all that I was doing to keep things going. And I was getting burned out with feeling like if I stopped, everything would fall apart.

And I had to say to myself, Lord, I need to get out of the cycle thinking it all depends on me. And I need to start depending on you and trusting you, even as you took care of Israel for forty years in the wilderness. I need to surrender this burden that I'm carrying, that it all depends on me and start trusting you. And I can honestly say that was like a crisis in my life. For some reason, a freedom came in to me just through that realization of being able to give the burden to God, to trust Him to go before me, that really, really made a difference. What do you guys think about that? Have you guys ever thought about this or maybe never even in reference to Sukkot before, but just this whole concept of, you know, the Israelites had nothing but God, and yet He was enough. How do you process that today? Anybody?

Brondon/b]: Well thinking about it, it actually reminds us how dependent and how focused that our relationship with God should be comparing it to how Israel dependently looked to God in the wilderness. As we're transitioning through this life, He's looking at this as our wilderness and our process to the Promised land as being dependent upon him. So it helps me when I think of that.

[b]Rabbi Schneider: Amen. You know, I remember going through another difficult time of my life, some years back and thought if I lose everything, I'll still have Jesus. And that realization was like, I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be okay. And that's a freeing revelation. So that to me is an introduction to my really entering in, personally for me, what I consider to be part of the depths of experiencing the feast of Tabernacles. This realization that Israel for forty years had nothing but God. I mean, look at this here. I mean, you would not hire an architect to build this. You know, they're building a house not too far from me now. Cynthia and I took a walk the other day to look at the house. I mean, it's gorgeous. They got all this stuff, you know, all these modern amenities. They've got a two car garage. But you know what? We don't need any of that stuff. If God took it all away. If he stripped us of everything, we might be happier then than we are right now.

Ryan/b]: It's reassuring to think about God being able to sustain you and just trusting in Him.

[b]Rabbi Schneider: Yeah. You know, you think Ryan, along with what you're saying about we've seen testimonies, you know, oftentimes in the news, of communities that get hit with a natural disaster. You know, a hurricane happens, or a flood happens and you know, people's homes are destroyed and there was no electricity and the whole community starts coming together to help each other. And they're giving these testimonies. It was such a time of friendship and of fellowship and of community and such a beautiful time of people coming together. And you get the sense from what they're saying, that they're actually feeling a deeper richness in everybody coming together, even though they lost everything else. They have lost their homes, but there's something else that they received. But listen, I don't want to get too far off the main biblical text.

So let's go to the book of Vayikra, the book of Leviticus today. And I'm going to be reading from the 23rd chapter. I'll begin here at the 40th verse. Just to set the stage for the biblical precedent of the feast of Sukkot, or the feast of Tabernacles. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but baruch Hashem the word of the Lord, beloved ones, abides forever. Hear the word of God. "Now on the first day, you shall take for yourself, the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches, and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice". That's a key word because this particular feast is about rejoicing. "You shall rejoice before the Lord, your God, for seven days". So this feast is seven days and there's an additional day added on at the end, that is considered to be part of it. Verse 41, "you shall thus celebrate it as a feast of the Lord for seven days in the year. It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations. You shall celebrate it in the seventh month".

So it happens the same time every year. It's the seventh month on God's Holy calendar. And we call it in Hebrew the month of Tishrei. And it's interesting during this seventh month, not only do we celebrate the feast of Tabernacles, but previous to the feast of Tabernacles, we begin in the seventh month called Tishrei, by celebrating Rosh Hashanah, called Yom Teruah, which is the Feast of Trumpets, that begins this Holy fall season. The Feast of Trumpets. If you watch my earlier episode, speaks of the coming of the Lord, Jesus, the announcement of the kingdom of God. And then 10 days after the Feast of Trumpets, we celebrated Yom Kippor, or the day of covering, the day of atonement. It's a time where Israel recognizes the consequences of sin. That blood must be shed. And today we realize that this day was fulfilled in the shedding of Yeshua's blood. And then following Yom Kippor, we have this crown Holy day in the fall called Tabernacles.

This is a feast of celebration because we've been through the Feast of Trumpets, recognizing that God is going to judge the world and we need to be ready. We've been through Yom Kippor, where we recognize the consequences of sin. And now, since we're through repentance, we're through atonement, now we're celebrating with the Feast of Tabernacles. And during the Feast of Tabernacles, the original context was it took place again in the fall and it was the time of the last fall harvest in Israel. So one of the things that was going on as the Israelites were thanking the Lord, they were thanking the God of Israel for His provision, for the fall harvest. And they were also looking forward with anticipation for the coming winter rains so that they could have a big harvest again in the spring. So it's a time of rejoicing, of anticipation, of future blessing.

Let's continue on. The 42nd verse. The Lord continued. He said you shall live in booths. Okay. Sukkot or singular Sukkah. That's what we're sitting in right now. "You shall live in booths for seven days. All the native born in Israel shall live in booths". And so today, all over Israel, during the Feast of Tabernacles, you'll see people living in these individual booths. "So that your generations," here's the reason why we're commanded to live in booths, "so that your generations might know that I had the sons of Israel live in booths when I brought them out from the land of Egypt. I am Yahweh. I am the Lord, your God".

So it's a time of remembrance. God is saying, listen, approximately 3,500 years ago, you my people, were living in these temporary booths in the wilderness as I was bringing you into the promised land. I don't want you to forget that. I don't want you to forget who you are. And I don't want you to forget that I'm your God. And I want you to remember that you yourselves know what it's like to suffer and to be hungry and to be discriminated against as you were in Egypt. And I never want you to forget that because I want you to treat everybody else on earth in the same way that you know that you should have been treated when you were being abused. And so built-in to Jewish ethics and Jewish society and into the land of Israel today, is a great spirit of democracy where the underprivileged are being taken care of because Israel themselves knows what it's like to be the underprivileged and the underdogs. So the Lord continues. He says, "so Moses declared to the sons of Israel," verse 44, "the appointed times of Yahweh, of the Lord".

Now with that said, what I'd like to do is to make some application, some modern day principles that can be applied to our lives today. As we're thinking about the feast of Tabernacles, you're watching the show today. Some of you are actually building a Sukkah on your own property, Baruch Hashem, praise God. It's a beautiful thing to do, to be able to sit out here and look through the roof. You can see that the roof, you can see through it. And the reason that we leave the roofs semi-transparent is so that at night we can look up through the roof. We can see the stars. And when we look into the sky, it reminds us of Hashem. It reminds us of God, how we're under the authority of a creator. And we just begin to thank Him. That know we live in an earth where God is here and He's taking care of and providing for His people.

So some of you will actually build a Sukkah. Others will not, but you're interested in applying the principles of this to your life today. And I want to speak to all my beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord. Especially, I'm speaking for a moment for those of you that are Gentile and are not going to be necessarily building a Sukkah, I just want to stress that there is real opportunity for a blessing for you in understanding this Holy day. Because when the Lord introduced this day, He didn't say this was a Jewish Holy day. The Lord said, this is My appointed day. So He said, this is My, Yahweh's speaking. He said, this is My appointed day. And so, because this is Father God's appointed day, and you've been grafted in to a relationship with Him, into covenant with Him through Messiah Jesus, that those that were once far off, the Lord says, speaking of the Gentiles, have now been brought near through the blood of Jesus, that the dividing wall that separated the Lord from Gentile people has been broken down.

Now, Jew and Gentile are one in Messiah. And so now, because you're one with Hashem through Jesus, His Holy days have application for your life today. So there're principles that when applied to our life can become opportunities for spiritual blessing. We're not under the law, but let's not throw out the baby with the bath water, because the law is God's self revelation. And there's an opportunity for us to be blessed. This is why Jesus said in the book of Matthew chapter 13, He said every scribe and a scribe was a Jewish teacher that knew the Torah. And He said, every scribe, that becomes a disciple of mine will be like the owner of a mansion that's able to bring forth from that mansion, treasures old and new. In other words, that as new Testament believers, there are treasures for us, both in the new Testament, the Bri't Chadashah, but also in the ancient writings in the Torah.

This is why Jesus said, do not think I've come to abolish the law and the prophets, for I've not come to abolish, but to fulfill. Now, I know Jennifer, you're someone that really has kind of embraced this whole Hebraic concept as a Gentile in your life. Not as someone that's under the law, but just as someone that you just appreciate it because you love God. And you know, just because you love Him, this kind of love for who He is as the God of the Hebrews and the revelation that He gave us in the Hebrew Bible, you know, is just something that's close to your heart. And I know that you've celebrated the feast of Tabernacles before in your congregation. When you think about the feast of Tabernacles, what to you warms your heart?

Jennifer/b]: I think to me, especially the message that God dwells with us, even despite our sin. You know, as you mentioned, you know, coming off of like Yom Kippor and many people out there are feeling really sorrowful for their sins. They don't believe that God loves them. They don't believe anymore that God, you know, they believe God abandoned them. And to me to know that Christ died for us, to know that it's not just a conditional thing. You know, you've sinned once and oh, okay, now you sin 400 times, I'm leaving you now. But rather that He died and He paid the price for our sins. And to me, like I'm when it said God dwells with us, is that He never leaves us or forsakes us.

[b]Rabbi Schneider: Wow. You know, I'm thinking Jennifer, in relationship to what you're saying, Israel was in the wilderness, how long Brondon?

Brondon/b]: Forty years.

[b]Rabbi Schneider: Forty years. And do you know, for forty years, every single day visibly the spirit of God manifested as a divine fire in the nighttime that rested over the big Mishkah, the big Tabernacle that housed the Ark of the covenant. And then when the day came, the fire turned into a glory cloud. So for forty years, Israel literally saw the presence of Hashem dwelling with them. And so yeah. And Israel, as long as the fire and the cloud, the glory cloud, remained over the, the, the Mishkah, the main Tabernacle that housed the Ark of the covenant, which housed the 10 commandments. As long as the fire stayed over it, they camped in that same location. But whether it was sometimes two days, sometimes it was two months, sometimes two years, eventually the fire and the cloud would lift and move. And whenever the fire and the cloud lifted and moved, the children of Israel picked up camp and they followed the fire and the cloud wherever it moved to. But they never knew when it was going to move and where it was going to move to.

And so it's not only about God dwelling with us, but it's about us dwelling with Him. Because if they would not have moved when the fire moved or when the cloud move, you know what would've happened? They would've ended up dying where they were because there was only a provision when they followed the manifestation of God's presence. And so that really speaks to us of the importance of being flexible in our lives to experience God's dwelling with us. We can't, you know, put God on our terms and say, "well, God, you know, I'll go with you next week. I think I'll be in a better mood. And Lord, I'm not really quite ready to obey on that one, but just hold tight God and be on standby. And I'll let you know when I like to talk further". No, it's like when He moves, we've got to move. And if we don't yield and follow, we'll parish, we'll die. We'll end up withering in our spiritual life and potentially end up being separated from God.

There are so many lessons from the Feast of Tabernacles. The truth is I've got 10 different points here. I haven't started any of them yet. All we did today is we got warmed up and we got comfortable. In next week's broadcast, God willing, I'm going to go through 10 specific applications that you can take away and apply to your life from the feast of Tabernacles. Whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, these applications will have meaning and relevance for you. And like myself, when I first started internalizing the revelation in this Holy day and applying it to our life, truly a freedom came over me that was a brand new thing.

So beloved, I want to say to you, as we're in this special, Holy season today, Chag Sameach, happy holidays. It's a very happy time of year. It's a time to be thankful for all that the Lord has done for us. It's a time to be thankful for the fact that He's brought us to this place in our life. And perhaps most of all, it's a time to be thankful that soon you and I, as we keep our eyes on King Jesus, we'll be going to heaven. Jesus said rejoice, that your names are written in the Lamb's book of life.

So Father, we want to thank You today for who You are and for the future and destiny we have in You, in King Jesus' name.