Rabbi Schneider - Enoch Experienced the Father
I'm reading now from the Book of Bereshit which is the Hebrew word for Genesis, it means in the beginning, and I'm reading now, Beloved, from the 23rd and 24th verse of Genesis, chapter 5. Hear the Word of God. "So all the days of Enoch were 365 years," and here's the phrase I want you to get, "and Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him". I want to ask you this question, how was it that Enoch was able to walk with God? Was it because he read a lot of books? Was it because he was part of some really select and elite Bible study group? Was it because he was a member of this super spiritual congregation? No, we all know the answer; Enoch was able to walk with God, Yedidim, Beloved Ones, because he had a relationship with God through the Ruach Elohim, through the Spirit of God. Enoch was able to walk with God because he was able to follow the leading of God's Spirit. That's the only way man is able to walk with God.
The Bible tells us in the Book of Romans: "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God". So Enoch was able to have this relationship with God through the Holy Spirit. Yeshua said in John 14:16 that it was good that he was going away because, he said, because of his departure and because of his sacrificial death for our sins, he was going to be able to release to us the gift of the Ruach Elohim, the gift of the Holy Spirit. We call it in Hebrew, the Ruach HaKodesh, and Yeshua said, "And when I release the Spirit of God upon you," Yeshua said, "he's going to take of me and he's going disclose unto you and he will lead you and guide you into all truth".
So the secret, Beloved, of walking with God as Enoch did is being led by the Spirit of God. Now in the Hebrew Bible there were a select few whom the Spirit of God was operating on in a very significant way. Enoch obviously was one of them. Elijah, Elisha, David, some of the kings, some of the prophets, some of the biblical patriarchs but as a whole the Spirit of God had not been poured out upon all flesh as it came to be poured out on all flesh at the experience of Acts, chapter 2, Pentecost or Shavu'ot which, by the way, was the fulfillment of Joel, chapter 2 which we're going to get into in this series. This is now the second part of this series As Enoch Walked With God. You can get the entire teaching, Beloved, through the broadcast or through our website.
I want to talk today about how it is that you and I can develop an awareness of the Spirit of God to be able to walk with him. I shared on last week's broadcast that when the Lord revealed himself to me in a vision back in 1978 and visited me in a few very powerful, special encounters during those early years of walking with him, the goal became for me, after that point, this: If God was able to make me supernaturally aware of his presence and of his Spirit when he revealed himself to me back in 1978 in the vision of in the middle of the night and through those other brief visitations I said, "Then why can I not always walk with a supernatural awareness of God's presence"?
So that became my goal as a believer from the very beginning, to walk with God, to walk in a way that I was conscious of his supernatural presence with me, of his love, of his power, and of his Spirit. The goal for me was never being a rabbi, it was never being a teacher, those things just happened as an overflow of my hunger to experience God myself and now I'm on that same path. I want to lay ahold of God, just like many of you do, just as he has laid ahold of me. I want to come to know him, Beloved, even as I am known by him and that's the same for many of you. You want to know him even as he knows you. We can only know him by his Spirit. Paul said, "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and neither has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those that love him and these things," Sha'ul said, Paul said, "he reveals to us and has revealed to us by his Spirit".
The point is, Paul's saying, there is such beauty, such revelation, such abundance, such fullness in God for us and we come into the experience of these realities, Beloved, by his Spirit. But many of you have made Bible reading the end rather than the means to the end and you've made the Christian disciplines the end rather than the means to the end. All these things are important; witnessing is important, tithing is important, Bible study is important, going to church or Christian fellowship is important, all these things are important, witnessing is important but, Beloved, these things are not to be the end but they're all designed, Beloved, to deepen our relationship with Yeshua that we might experience him.
You see, Beloved, the goal of our faith is to walk in a love relationship with the Lord. That's why he's created us. That's why the Book of Revelation tells us that our walk with him culminates in an event that the Book of Revelation calls The Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Can you imagine marrying somebody that you had never experienced? Can you imagine being married to somebody that you would only read about? Could you imagine being married to somebody that you only had a relationship with as a doctrine? No, marriage is designed to be the most intimate relationship between a man and woman. Intercourse is the fulfillment of that and that's what we have with God, he in us and us in him. The point that I'm making, Beloved, for those of you that are hungry, is that God has more for us. He wants us to experience him in Jesus, also we need to believe, Beloved, but our faith should bring us into a real and living encounter with him.
This is why Yeshua said in John 14:21 and 23: "If you love me, you'll obey me and it's going to bring you close to me". "Your love for me is going to lead you to obey me because you're going to want oneness with me, and because you want oneness with me, you'll obey me, and as you love me and obey me out of your desire to experience me, out of your desire for union and intimacy with me, what's going to happen," he says, "is you're going to be brought nearer to me". "I'm going draw nearer to you," and he said, "and I'm going to release the love of my Father into your hearts so that your experience him," Yeshua said, "I'm going to disclose myself and manifest myself to you". "I'm going to make my home with you".
Beloved, Jesus is to be experienced. Listen, walking with God, it's not just about some of the forms of religion that many are trapped in today. Walking with God is designed to lead us into an intimate, living, passionate, fiery relationship, hallelujah, with Yeshua who is a living person. That's why he has a name, because he's a real person that desires to reveal himself but he's not going to reveal himself to us, Beloved, until we make him King of our lives, until we choose to put him first, until we choose to jump out and say, "I love you". He will reveal himself when three things are in place, Beloved. First of all, when we say yes to him, when we're like the person that says, "Lord, I will be like the man that went and sold everything he had to buy the pearl of great price". That's what it takes. If we're going to be brought to the Lord, we're going to have to come to him on his terms and the first of those terms is that we forsake everything for him.
Remember, Yeshua said, "He that does not hate father, mother, brother, or sister," he said, "cannot be my disciple". What does that mean? Does that mean he wants us to turn our families with hatred? Absolutely not. But it means that we can't have anything getting in the way of our love for him. Nothing can stop us. Remember the man that says, "Lord, I want to follow you but first let me go bury my father". What did Yeshua say? "No, you let the dead bury the dead for he that seeks to follow me and then looks back, is not worthy of me". So the first requirement to entering into this experience with God, if we're going to walk with God like Enoch, we're going to need to be like Abraham that left everything to follow the Lord. The first requirement, Beloved, there needs to a big, resounding yes in our heart to the Lord, yes God, whatever it takes, whatever you have to put me through, whatever I have to go through, I want you more than anything else. I have made up my mind; you are my portion in life.
And then secondly, Beloved, we need to believe that we truly, Beloved, are in this relationship with him in such a way that he accepts us right where we're at. Many of us, Beloved, we don't really feel close to God because deep in our heart we feel that the Lord has condemned us because we're not perfect yet. I struggled with that for years. I used to declare in synagogue every Shabbat the Sh'ma, Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil, Adonai Eloheinu Adonai, Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil, Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad. And then I would go on to say the rest of the prayer: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and it says, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your soul, and with all your might, and I would say that prayer, and I'd say, but Lord, I don't love you with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my might, and then I would feel condemned. I would feel like I was rejected but then the Lord brought me into understanding and helped me to understand no, in your heart you want to love me with all your heart, you want to love me with all your soul, you want to love me with all your might.
You might stray at times. There might be times when thoughts go through your mind that you're not even aware of. There may be times when you let your guard down a little bit but deep inside you, my son, you have a yes for me and I want you to know, listen, that I love you just where you're at even though there's still weakness in you, even though you're love is not yet perfected, your love is real and genuine so I want you to know right now, Beloved, if you genuinely have a true love for God, if deep in your heart there's a big yes to him, if deep in your heart there's a big yes to him, if deep in your heart you're saying, Lord, I want to love you, I want to obey you with all my heart, strength, soul, might; I'll do whatever it takes. Whatever you have to put me through I'm willing.
I want you to know, Beloved, God loves you even in your weakness. Even though your love is not yet perfectly mature, even though your obedience is not yet perfect, God sees his Son in you, he sees your heart, and your love relationship with him, Beloved, is real right now. He accepts you right now. Just because you're not yet perfect, it doesn't mean, Beloved, that you're rejected. The opposite is true. You're in a real communion in God's love with him right now and those things that you've fallen short of, Beloved, Jesus died for those sins. That's what the Bible tells us in the Book of Ephesians that we stand before him right now, holy and blameless before him in love. So I want you to have confidence, Beloved, in two things at the outset. Number one, I want you to have confidence in God's love, his desire, his affection, his burning zeal for you. He created you for himself.
And I also want you to have confidence, Beloved, that your love, although it's not yet perfect, it is real, Beloved, and God accepts you, and loves you, and rejoices in you right now, right, hallelujah, where you're at. And so, as we think about this desire for intimacy with Jesus, we need to be confident of our walk with God, that we're in this divine romance with him, that we desire to be obedient, that we really do love him and that he accepts us, Beloved, just where we're at. He's never going to love you or me any more or any less than he does right now if we're really his.
If we're really choosing, Beloved, to love him, and serve him, and choose him, and pick up our cross daily denying ourself to follow him. Amen. It doesn't mean we're mean perfect but it means it's desire of our heart. We keep on fighting, we keep on overcoming. When we wake up out of bed every morning we say, Yes, Lord, I choose you today. I choose to overcome today. You're my goal, you're my prize, you're my inheritance, and all day long we press through every day, trying to make those decisions, trying to treat people the way that they should be treated, Beloved. When the Lord shows us things we obey him and I'm not talking about just the things that he reveals to us as we're reading in the Bible, absolutely the things he shows us when we're reading the Bible but even the things, Beloved, the Spirit of God softly is teaching us or whispering to us individually, things in our life that he's wanting us to work on, that we're saying, yes Lord, that was you and I want to obey what your Spirit has shown me, what your Spirit's been speaking to me about.
And so, as we're pressing forward in this love relationship and this divine romance, Beloved, I want you to know that Jesus wants to bring us all into an experience that we are emotionally experiencing him in reality, that it's not just about us reading what he did for Paul, or reading what he did for David, or reading what happened in the life of Abraham, it's what, Beloved, he's doing for us also right now in this life, hallelujah, and in this world. You see, this is what was prophesied from the very beginning. Again, that's why he said, "Let us make man in our image". Why? That he could fellowship with us. This is why he built the Tabernacle in Exodus 25. He said to the Israelites, "Build me this Tabernacle, this Mishkan, that I might listen, dwell with you". He wants us to have this encounter with him, this relationship with him.
That's why he brought Israel into the wilderness to Mount Sinai to bring them, listen now, near to himself and that's why Yeshua came once and for all to redeem us by his blood, hallelujah, bringing us into this divine love relationship with the Father and with him that culminates in the marriage supper of the Lamb. You see, Yeshua is referred to in the scriptures as the Bridegroom, right? And we are the Bride. This is love language, this is romance language, this is a relationship, Beloved, that's to be more than talked about. It's not something that we just study; it's not something that we just can dialogue about academically. We don't reduce love to a test tube. You can't put love under a test tube and examine it. Anybody that did that, we would say is what? Meshugah, he's crazy, right? No, love is something that you live, it's something that you feel, it's something that you experience.
This is what the Father is calling us to. This is why he said rivers of living water will flow from our innermost being when we're in this divine romance with him. This is something in his experience deep down from our kishkas, deep down from our guts, and from our innards, and from our inside. This is what makes it exciting. This is why we can be passionate, hallelujah, about Jesus, and when Jesus came he came as the Bridegroom and us as the Bride, and once again it culminates in the marriage supper, hallelujah, of the Lamb. Well, this is the theme of the series of messages then, intimacy with God, walking by the Spirit, experiencing the presence of God, this is the theme of the series called walking with God even As Enoch Walked With God. The precise term it says, Enoch walked with God. And what I want to do now is I want to talk about just kind of going back to the beginning, some basic structures and basic foundations of this relationship that the Lord has and how we can experience it and enter into it in a deeper way.
Beloved, the first foundation that I want to speak about today as we're laboring to walk with God, to walk with God as Enoch walked with God, to experience this divine romance in a way that touches our emotions and our affections, and is real. I want you to understand, Beloved, listen now, Jesus is in you. You know, for years when the Lord first revealed himself to me back in '78 and then once again many times in those first early years, and the Apostle Paul type of encounters, I knew that he was real, I knew that he was alive and I said to myself, what do I need to do get ahold of him? How can I experience him all the time the way I was able to experience him in these brief encounters that I've had with him and so I went to church, and I started reading, and studying, and buying books and studying the scriptures and it seemed like you need to read the Bible more, you need to pray more, you need to give more money, you need to witness more, and Beloved, because I was so hungry for God, whatever was said to me that I needed to do, I did all those things to the nth degree.
If you were in back of me at the grocery store, I would have turned around and witnessed to you. I would buy a new Bible and then all the sudden as I was walking out of the Christian book store, walking back to my apartment after buying the brand new Bible, I would witness to somebody as I was walking back to my apartment. From the Christian bookstore where I just purchased a new Bible, and I'd find somebody walking down the sidewalk, I'd witness to him. I would say after I'd got done witnessing to him, "Do you own a Bible"? And they'd say, "No". And then I'd give them my brand new Bible that I'd just bought. I can't tell you how many new Bibles I went through, just giving them away as I was leaving the Christian bookstore after I witnessed to somebody.
The point that I was making, I felt like nobody could be doing more in terms of seeking the Lord, I know this is not true, but I felt at the time that nobody could be doing more, I thought, no one's trying harder in their seeking after God than I am and yet after living like that for over 10 years, Beloved, I still hadn't laid a hold of God in the way that I was looking for. I hadn't come to an experience in my life that I felt his nearness to me. I hadn't come to a place in life that I felt his affection for me. I believed in him all right but I wasn't experiencing him in a real and tangible way that was fulfilling or that was empowering. I got burned out. I didn't know what else to do. Every time I heard somebody say this is what you need to do, I would think that's must be it; that's what I need to do, and I'd began to go after with all my gusto for a month or six weeks only to find out after doing it with all I had after six weeks, that still I wasn't finding what I was searching for.
I remember one time somebody said, well you need to pray the Lord's Prayer, that's what you're missing. And so, I started praying the Lord's Prayer, you know, the prayer Our Father that art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, and I would pray it. I started off praying it for 15 minutes a day, going through it, and speaking of all the Hebrew names of God, Our Father that art in heaven, hallowed be thy name and then I would bless the Lord and all the different multi-dimensions of his name, Yahweh Rapha, Yahweh Tsidkenu, Yahweh Nissi, and I would go through all the beautiful names of the Lord, and I would go through the entire Lord's Prayer giving special emphasis to each part.
And I did it for 15 minutes a day, it didn't seem like anything was happening, then I did it for a half hour a day, and it didn't seem like anything was happening, then I increased it to an hour a day and I felt if I wasn't talking, this is going back almost 20 years ago, I felt if I wasn't talking when I was praying, that I wasn't really praying so I would literally be speaking the Lord's Prayer without stopping for an hour, nothing happened. I increased it to an hour and a half, nothing happened. Increased it to two hours, nothing happened. Finally I said, "I'm going to pray the Lord's Prayer for three hours," and once again I felt if I stopped talking, I wasn't praying.
So I literally would go to my study, pray the Lord's Prayer without stopping for three hours, nothing happened. I said, "Maybe I'm talking too much". I said, "I'm just going to say the Lord's Prayer for an hour and a half then I'm going to sit and wait on him for an hour and a half". So I said the Lord's Prayer for an hour and a half, then I waited on him for an hour and a half, nothing happened. Then I said, "You know what, I'm just going to wait on the Lord for three hours". Beloved, I kid you not, I fell asleep. I was so burned out after this, I was so exhausted, I had so come to the end of my rope, I had just about given up and at this place, Beloved, of total burnout I felt the Spirit of Shalom, the Spirit of the Lord come upon me and the Spirit of God just revealed to me this, he said, "You've been searching for me on the outside". "You've been searching for me in your works". "You need to know that I'm inside you and if you're going to find me, it's only going to be as you find me inside".
This is what Paul said, Beloved, in the Book of Colossians, chapter 2, that the mystery of the Gospel is that Christ, Messiah, Jesus, is inside us, that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit and once the Lord gave me that revelation and brought me into that discovery, from that point forward, hallelujah, my life changed. There was a new empowerment. I began to depend, Beloved, on the mystery of the Gospel, the fact that Jesus, hallelujah, is in me by his Spirit and he's in you too if you know him. I want you to join me on next week's broadcast and I want you to tell a friend as we, Beloved, focus together on how we can be led by the Holy Spirit, how we can be led into intimacy and a real experience with Jesus, how we can walk with God, Shalom Yedeed, Beloved Ones, even as Enoch did. Until then, may God bless you and Shalom.