Rabbi Schneider - Comprehending God's Authority
As we pick up today, we come to the place in Jewish history where Hannah had brought her boy Samuel to the house of the Lord. He had just got done being weaned. She presented him to the priests there, Eli, and together they dedicated Samuel to the Lord to live for Him for the rest of his life. And I shared last week this is where we get the tradition in the Christian Church of infant dedication right out of the book of 1 Samuel. And right after Hannah dedicated Samuel to the Lord, she burst forth into a prayer or a song that begins in chapter 2. Now, as I indicated, I've I'm not going to go back and review everything, but I'm going to pick up right where I left off last week.
Last week, I left off in verse 6, when I said, "The LORD kills and makes alive; He brings down to Sheol and raises up. The LORD makes poor and rich; He brings low, and He also exalts". And I'm talking about the fact that we need to expand our understanding of the ways of God to include a paradigm by which we can perceive circumstances in our life, whether good or bad, as relating to the Lord. In other words, many of us have a paradigm where we think that the good things in our life are from the Lord and the bad things in our life are from the devil and never the two meet. But that's not the way Hannah saw. She said, "The Lord kills and makes alive".
Notice that she's holding the Lord responsible for the good things and the bad things. She continues, "He brings down to Sheol a painful, painful reality and raises up. The LORD makes poor and rich; He brings low, he also exalts". Notice that Chanah's perception is that whether someone goes up or down, it's all coming from the Lord. Whether someone is poor or rich, she said, "The LORD makes poor and rich; He brings low, He also exalts". Now, we have to ask ourselves the question. Was Chanah deluded? Did she, in the time that the Old Testament was written, not understand who God really was? Did she not have the revelation and enlightenment that we have? Because most of us, I'm speaking of the people of God in general today, they have a concept, once again, that when something good happens is from God and when something bad happens is from the devil.
And once again, that's the reality that they perceive their life through. But that was not the reality that Hannah perceived. She said, "Listen, if someone is struggling in life, that's from the Lord. If someone is exalting in life, that's from the Lord". So we have to ask ourself the question, are we right in thinking that when something bad happens it's necessarily the devil's doing and has nothing to do with the God with the Lord's doing? Or do we rather, as the Hebrew writers most often did, ask the Lord whether something is happening in our life that's good or bad, do we rather say, "God, what's going on? Because everything that happens to me in life, I need to filter through Your eyes and ask You, what are You doing in this? What are You saying in this? How do You want me to respond to this? Because you are God and there is no other. Your Word says in Deuteronomy 4:39 that you're a God in heaven above and on the earth below".
And of course, Isaiah said, "The Lord causes wellbeing and creates calamity". And I am speaking today as a Jewish believer in Yeshua Messiah, that we need to get the mind of God by understanding the way that the writers of the Hebrew Bible understood God. They understood Him, beloved, in more full terms and in a greater reality that many of us in the New Testament church do. And so in my life, if there's something that's hurting me or something that's bad that's happening, I don't just blame it on the devil. Because to me, God is God of everything. Yes, it might be the devil, but why is God allowing it? What purpose may God be having in this? When the devil attacked Job, God allowed him to attack Job. And God had a purpose in it. Because after Job was attacked from the devil, Job said, "You know what, God..."?
After God had brought him through that terribly painful ordeal, Job came to the other end, and he said, "Lord, I knew about you before. I superficially knew about you. But Lord, now that I've had a struggle and prayer and anguish to try to understand what was going on with me when I was struggling so terribly after I had to seek your face through all of this, and all the confusion I was in, and now you finally brought me through it", he said, "Now, Lord, I know you". He said, "Lord, before I went through this thing, I'd heard about you, I believed in you. But now I know you". So God had a purpose in His allowing Job to be attacked in his finances, in his health, in his family. It was horrendous. And I believe that you and I need to be called back to a biblical perspective to stop blaming everything bad that's happening in our life on the devil.
When Jesus stood before Pilate, and He was completely calm and rooted, and Pilate was scared, he said, "What's the matter with you"? to Jesus. "Don't you realize I have the power to crucify you"? I mean, I believe Pilate was shaken when Yeshua stood before him rooted and grounded in the God of all being, without a fear in his bones. And Pilate was shaken to see how can this man stand before me with such security? So again, Pilate said, "Don't you know I have the power to crucify you? Aren't you going to say anything"? Jesus said, "You would have no power over me unless it had been granted to you from above". Did you get it? Did you get it? Jesus said, "You".
Pilate was going to give the order for Jesus to be crucified. Did Jesus said, "Oh, it's the devil". I mean, it was the devil that entered into Judas Iscariot, right? We know that the devil literally entered in to Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus. But did Jesus blame His crucifixion on the devil? No. Jesus said, "You would have no power over me unless it had been granted to you from above". So yes, Jesus understood that the devil was at work. But He didn't see the devil as Lord and reigning. Jesus saw the devil having an opportunity only to operate under the real Father God's authority.
And you and I, beloved, need to start viewing our life and perceiving our circumstances in the same way. Yes, the devil does attack sometimes. But we need to stop just saying, "Oh, God's good and He would never allow the devil to attack me," or "You know, this can't have anything to do with His purpose". No, we need to say, "Lord, why did this happen? Why did You allow it to happen? What do I need to learn from this? Help me to respond to this the right way"? Maybe the Lord allows something bad to happen to us, allows the devil to do something in our life that causes pain because He wants to strengthen us. How did Jesus get strengthened? By battling the devil in the wilderness for 40 days.
In the Hebrew Bible, we find a high view of the sovereignty of God, not like the weak view that so many in the church have today with a theology that basically divorces God from anything bad that ever happens in the world. I've seen, for example, when calamity strikes the earth, especially sometimes when they happen in cities in the world that are just filled with sexual perversion and vanity and all the things that exalt themselves above the knowledge of God, you know, something happens, a natural disaster or whatever. God forbid, that a Christian prophet should ever say, "I believe this is a judgment of God". When they do that-I've seen it happen-the whole church jumps on them. The world jumps on them.
Did you see what this narrow-minded, hateful Christian said? He said that that pain and suffering that came upon the people in that city was a judgment from God. And so Christians are afraid to open their mouths that God would ever judge something because it's not politically correct to do so. But Beloved, if we're going to conform our mind to the Word of God, we have to recognize God does bring judgment. Over and over again we see Him bringing judgment. Whether it be on Sodom and Gomorrah, whether it be on the whole world when God drownded the world in the times of Noah, whether it be when God opened up the ground and swallowed Korah and those that were in rebellion against God's leadership, whether it was when the Serpents bit the children of Israel in the wilderness and thousands died, whether it was when Israel went to war when they weren't living in alignment with Hashem's will and as a result, God allowed them to be put to death.
Beloved, we have to recognize that God is good, in Him there's no darkness at all. But because He's good does not automatically equate to that He would never cause something or allow something bad to happen. Because God can oftentimes bring about a higher good through bringing us into a painful time. I see many people in life that they weren't living for God. They might have been nominal believers at best. And then all of a sudden, a tragedy happened in their life. And as a result of the tragedy, whether it be a physical tragedy, whether it be the loss of a job, maybe it whatever it might be, I've seen them, as a result of going through the tragedy, they were broken in their own strength and gave their life to the Lord at that point. And that tragedy became the link that brought them into relationship with Father God. The same thing is true, beloved, for you and I.
Remember when Jacob, the father of Israel, the father of Israel, I say, because it's his 12 sons that became the 12 tribes of Israel, we read the story of Ya'akov which is Jacobs Hebrew name, wrestling with the angel one night. And Jacob call this angel the angel of God because at the end, he said, "I wrestled with God". The angel said to Ya'akov, "You've wrestled with God and man and you've overcome". So in this episode, people in the Jewish community understand it differently. But I believe that the angel was God Himself in a pre-incarnate form. That means that He manifested Himself in the physical universe to wrestle with Jacob. And the Bible says that Jacob wrestled with him all night. And at the end of Jacob wrestling with God all night, God dislocated him in one of his joints. And for the rest of Jacob's life, it says he walked with a limp because God had dislocated him in one of his joints there.
And to me, what that means is, is that when Jacob wrestled with God and God broke that part of his body so that Jacob walk with the limb for the rest of his life, what that says to me was, in order for Jacob to become the father of the 12 tribes of Israel and to have his name changed to Israel, because the Lord changed Jacob's name in that incident to Israel, in order for Jacob now to fulfill that calling, to be the father of the 12 tribes of Israel, he had to walk with a limp for the rest of his life, because the limp was a symbolic representation of the fact that he was walking in weakness, and having to depend on Hashem, on the God of Israel. You see, he had a physical weakness in his body and in that physical weakness in his body, it was remainder that he always needed to cling to God to be strong. And so God brought that dislocation of his hip. Why? Because God was changing him to make him dependent upon Him, and to become the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.
So let's move away from this shallow theology that we often are seeing in our church, in our culture that says that God could never be responsible for anything bad. And let's mature, beloved, and recognize that there's only one God. That He's not up in heaven with His hands tied, you know, fidgety, anxious about what's going on down here on earth. No, He's God on earth just like He is in heaven. Yeshua said that not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father. So let's begin to process our life and everything that's going on around us. Not by saying, "It's the devil, it's the devil, I rebuke you, devil. I rebuke, Satan". No. Let's say, "God, what's going on here? Help me to understand what's going on here from Your perspective. Help me to respond to it how You want me to".
If it involves taking authority over the devil and putting him under your feet, by all means, take authority in the Spirit, in the Lord and do that. But let's not try to perceive what's going apart from the lens of God, but let's understand everything through the lens of God and understand that ultimately our God is sovereign. I hope you're getting this. I hope you're getting this. He is Adon Olam, the master of the world. And when we read the writings of the Hebrew prophets and the writers of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, we see that this is how they understood God and His operation in the world.
And we as a church need to come back to this biblical reality, this biblical paradigm, and stay focused on seeing our life only through the lens of God, rather than having this dual concept of things as if the devils over here, God's over here, the two are fighting each other, and somehow God's got a little bit of an edge, and He's going to win in the end, but maybe not in this battle. No, God is the Lord in heaven above and on the earth beneath. Let's continue on. In verse 8, she says, "He raises the poor from the dust, He lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with nobles, and inherit a seat of honor".
So this is really touching to me. Because when I think about who I am and the brokenness that God saved me out of, and even my own stature, I'm only five, five, and a half in terms of my height, and you know how the Lord has rescued me. He's delivered me from brokenness, saved me out of mental illness. He's lifted me up, stabilized my life, blessed me, given me a beautiful wife, great children, and a beautiful everything. God had mercy on me. This is what she's saying. "He raises the poor from the dust, He lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with nobles, and inherit a seat of honor". You know, Yeshua said, "Everyone that humbles themselves will be exalted".
What does it mean to humble yourself? It means to become dependent on the Lord, to not rely on our own talents, to not think more highly of ourselves than we ought, to live with the spirit of contriteness and humility before the Lord, to recognize that without Him we're going to be blown away, we're going to be chaff in the wind that the devil is going to destroy. To walk in humility, beloved, is to cling to God, to recognize that without Him that we are completely vulnerable and alone. And in coming to this place of contrition and dependency, to come to this place of having a broken heart and clinging to God, the result of that is that He will lift you up and exalt you and honor you. And this is what Chanah or Hannah is saying here. "He raises the poor from the dust, He lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with nobles..."
I want you to know today, as you and I continue to truly humble ourselves under the Spirit of Hashem, there is a guarantee in the spirit realm that we will be exalted. I want to encourage you today, keep pressing forward in your faith. You're gonna have to let go the world. You're gonna have to break free from it. But as you focus on Yeshua, He is going to lift you up.