Rabbi Schneider - Enoch was Convicted

TOPICS: As Enoch Walked with God, Enoch, Conviction

The book of Genesis, chapter number So all the days of Enoch were 365 years. And here we go, and Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. Imagine, he had such a close relationship with God, he walked in such friendship with the Father, he walked in such union with the Father, beloved, that he just walked right up, hallelujah, into the heavens. Beloved, this is the type of relationship that Messiah Jesus has destined us for. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter 2 that we've been made alive in Messiah and have been raised up with him and seated with him in the heavenly places just as Enoch was. You see, this story about Enoch, it seems hard to understand, how could that be? How could Enoch have just walked right up into the heavens?

Beloved, I don't know the answer to that. What I do know is that it's prophetic. It's a shadow, beloved, of the same walk and destiny that you and I have that are born again believers in Jesus. The Bible says once again in Ephesians chapter 2 that the Father raised us up with Jesus and seated us with him in the heavenly places. Just as Enoch walked with God and ascended up into the heavens and was no more, beloved, that's your destiny and my destiny, and so we're calling this series As Enoch Walked With God And Was No More. That's where we're going. Isn't that exciting? We're talking in this series about how we can ascend in our walk with God. I want to begin today by talking about this element of friendship that Enoch had with God. He walked with God.

Beloved, think about Moses. The Lord said concerning Moses that when the Lord has a prophet, he'll speak to the prophet in a vision or a dream, but not so with Moses. The Lord said he spoke to Moses face to face, even as a man speaketh to a friend. The Lord also called Moses the humblest man on all the earth. Beloved, Moses walked in fellowship and friendship with God. Enoch walked with such a tight relationship with Yeshua in the Spirit that he ascended right up into heaven. How can you and I, beloved, walk in friendship with God? What in the reality is taking place in all our lives to different degrees is there's this fight going on. Rather than walking in perfect union and in perfect friendship with God, there's this striving going on.

See, the Bible tells us in the book of Romans that the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit lusteth against the flesh. In other words, we're cooperating with God all of us to different degrees. Some of us are cooperating with the Spirit of God much more so than others. But none of us are perfect. The Bible says he that says he's perfect is a liar. None of us are perfect. See, what the Lord wants to do, beloved, he wants to bring you and I to the place where there's no more of a fight going on, there's no more of a struggle going on in our lives between who's going to be in control. Is he going to be in control, or are we going to be in control? God wants to bring us to the place, beloved, that we can walk with him in such fellowship and in such intimacy that there's no more striving he against us and us against him, but that we just merge together and we become like Enoch, beloved, and just ascend up with him in the Spirit to enjoy that divine romance with him that he's called and destined us for.

And so we need to recognize that the Lord is in us, but we can grieve him, that there's a struggle that can go on, that if we're not being sensitive to the Lord, if we're more connected to the outer realm than to the Lord, if we're more connected to people than to the Lord, if we're more connected to our social life than to the Lord, if we're more connected to our job than to the Lord, if we're more connected to fear and worry than to the Lord, then there's not going to be this peace inside, there's not going to be this friendship, there's not going to be this harmony, and we're not going to be like Enoch that was able to ascend in the Lord and enjoy, beloved, that sweetness of fellowship that God has destined for all of us.

And so I want you to understand, beloved, as I seek to understand myself that the Lord's purpose, beloved, is for he and us, beloved, to be able to dwell together in harmony and friendship. That's what he said to Israel in Exodus chapter 25, right? He said build me this mishkan, build me this tabernacle that I might what? Dwell with you. God wants to dwell with us. But how can two walk together, the Scripture says, unless they be in agreement? So the Father wants to bring us into agreement with him, that we can walk with him and ascend in the Spirit. And beloved, in his presence there is fullness of joy. If we seek the kingdom of God first, everything else shall be added unto us. Jesus said if the Son shall make you free, you'll be free indeed.

You see, Jesus' first miracle was changing the water to wine because joy, beloved, is the portion we receive when we begin to walk with God in harmony. Jesus said my joy I give, amen, to you. But some of you are thinking he said my joy I give to you. There's no joy in your life. But beloved, when you know Jesus, when you're walking with him in fellowship, beloved, then you're going to ascend, hallelujah, in the Spirit to walk in fellowship and in victory with him. But the only way we're going to learn, beloved, how to walk in that harmony with him, in friendship with him so that we're abiding in him even as he's abiding in us so that he's not striving with us and we're not striving against him, the only way we're going to come to that place of walking in agreement with him is when we cultivate, beloved, the reality that his Spirit is in us, as Paul said in Colossians 2, the mystery of the Gospel, Messiah Jesus is in us, only as we cultivate the reality, beloved, that he's in us will we be able to become sensitive enough to the Spirit's prodding within us.

Only then will we be able to become sensitive enough to the heart of the Spirit in us. Only then will we become sensitive enough to the directing of the Spirit in us. We have to separate ourself from everything that's outside of us, beloved, to just sit before God and be alone with him to develop a supernatural awareness, beloved, of his Spirit's presence in us. We need to get separate from the world. All that's in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, it's not from the Father. It's from the world. We need to say no to that, to serve Jesus instead. The world gives quick satisfaction. The world gives quick thrills. But it's always temporary, and it always ends in death. On the other hand, developing intimacy with the Lord takes a long time. It's harder. It seems like nothing's happening. But over time, beloved, it produces fullness and joy.

Some of you have heard me share the story. I talk about it in my book Awakening to Messiah, which is my spiritual autobiography. You can get my book online or through the number at the end of the broadcast. Some of you may remember the story I told in the book of how I had this dream actually in 2006. I was on vacation, and I had this dream one night. It was a God dream. We're going to be talking, by the way, in this series about prophecy, dreams, and visions as this series unfolds, Lord willing. But in the dream I was in a simple room. It was about maybe twelve feet long by eight feet wide approximately. It was kind of dark in the room, a little bit of light, but kind of dark.

I believe the fact that it was a little bit kind of dark in the room that, that represented the spiritual climate of the world that we're living in. I mean, there's some good things on this earth, the beauty of the Lord is here, we see it in creation in the flowers and the birds, but there's also a lot of darkness here. So it's a mixture. And that's kind of what it looked like in the room. There was darkness, but there was light at the same time. It was kind of a grayish color in this room. And inside the room there was nothing except a table, a person sitting on one side of the table, and me sitting on the other side of the table. There was no phone, there was no television, there was no music, there was no paintings. It was just a simple room, kind of grayish dark in the room, somebody sitting on one side of this simple table, I'm sitting on the other side of this simple table.

And I could tell in the dream as the dream opened that I'd been in this room a long time. And I was frankly antsy. I was tired of sitting there. It seemed boring. It didn't seem like anything was happening. I was jumpy. I wanted to get out. I wanted to do something that was more stimulating, that was more exciting. I wanted to escape just sitting in the room. And as this dream was unfolding, I recognized that this person that was sitting across the table from me in this room where it seemed like nothing was going on, I could tell that this person that was siting across from me was a person that had been with me my whole life, that he was a very familiar friend.

And then the Lord spoke to me in the dream, and he said to me this. He said the person that's sitting across from you is Jesus. You just keep sitting across from him. Don't run to go do something more stimulating. Don't run out of the room to go do something more exciting. Don't try to escape this slow process of just waiting on me, sitting before me. And if you'll just stay at it and stay put and stay facing my Son and don't try to escape from it, don't try to go do something stimulating and in fun from the world, but just stay facing my Son, the Lord said I'm going to heal you, and I'm going to make you whole.

Now, Yedeed, the reason I share it with you is not to talk about my own dreams for the sake of sharing my own experiences with the Lord, but beloved, I believe there's a message for you and for all of God's people. God's saying if you want to develop intimacy with me, if you want me, if you want me to be your portion, you need to be like Abraham that forgot everything else and sacrificed it all for me, including being willing to sacrifice his only son. Beloved, we can't have the world and Jesus, too. We can't do everything we want to do and take all that the world has to offer and then have Jesus, too. That's not God's gospel. If we want Yeshua, beloved, we have to say no to the superficial lust of the flesh and the superficiality that comes with the pleasures of this life, we have to say no to those things to just lead a simple life, beloved, before the Lord.

We've got to make that decision just to sit before the him even when it seems like things are boring and that nothing's happening, because the Lord says wait on the Lord, and your strength will be renewed even as the eagle that mounts up with its wings. Beloved, if we're going to develop this intimacy with the Lord that Enoch had, do you think Enoch was always distracted with the internet and the television and the movie theater and the restaurants and the iPhones and the Droids and the Facebook? You think he was distracted all the time with that? No. There was nothing going on. It was God and nature and maybe a few animals and a few human beings that he was in contact with.

Beloved, he had time just to face God. And we're living in a very dangerous time right now. Daniel talked about the end times before the anti-Messiah would be revealed, and he said it's going to be a time on the earth where knowledge will have greatly increased. And we're seeing this increase of knowledge today with all the technology and the incredible things that we can do in space and with computers, all kinds of technology. It's mind-boggling to me how you can transmit a television wave invisibly through the air to be picked up on an antenna by a television someplace else and that antenna then can go to the television screen and show you the picture of the person that's filmed in color and hear their voice just as it sounded in the studio. I mean, it's mind-boggling. I can't even fathom it.

Knowledge, Daniel said, will have increased. We see it all over the earth. And he said and people will be traveling to and fro, obviously seeing in advance airplane travel, et cetera. Beloved, we're living in these last days before the anti-Messiah is revealed. And these days are dangerous because these days are days, beloved, that people are no longer able to discern what's of God and what's not of God. But if you and I, beloved, want to be able to have discernment, we need to disconnect from all the superficial, demonic activity that's going on around us to just sit before the Lord so that he can develop a supernatural sensitivity within us, beloved, to discern the reality of his Spirit inside us, and to be able to obey his directives, to be able to understand when the Holy Spirit is releasing us to make a move, to take an action, to speak a word, to be able to discern when the Holy Spirit inside us is giving us a check, it just doesn't feel right.

But many of you, many of us, we are so disconnected from the awareness of the Holy Spirit's presence in us that we wouldn't know whether the Holy Spirit was giving us a nudge and a directive to move forward or whether he was giving us a check, because we're not connected to him, we're connected to the darkness and all the technologies and the pride of this life that's outside of us. Beloved, you need to make a choice. Who will you serve? Will you serve the Lord? If your answer is I'm going to serve the Lord, you need to disconnect in whatever way the Lord is telling you to from all that's keeping you trapped and keeping you connected to the realm of darkness rather than to the Lord. Because the Lord said all that's in the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life, it's not from the Father. It's from the world.

Where's the Father? The Father, beloved, is inside us. Yeshua said the works that I do, he said I don't do. It's the Father in me that does the works. It's the Spirit of God in us. The Spirit of God in us makes groanings too deep for words. Jesus said the Spirit of God is with you and will be in you. Know ye not that ye are the temples of the Holy Spirit? So if we want to gain a supernatural ability, beloved, to walk with God like Enoch did, we need to separate ourself from the world to just spend time alone with God even as the Lord was showing me in that dream where it seemed like nothing was going on in that room except that I was sitting across from that familiar friend that the Lord revealed to me was Jesus, and he was telling me you just need to stay with it, we need to just say God, I'm going to spend time every day with you now. I'm going to take an hour every day, Lord, just to sit before you, just to sit before you, Lord, asking you, will you show me, Father, that your Spirit's in me? Will you help me to be aware that your Spirit's in me?

You know, when you begin to practice this, when you say you know what, Lord, that's true, he's right, I need to take an hour every day just to sit before you, let me tell you, for some of you, when you start doing this, it's going to be so hard for you. You're going to sit down. As soon as you sit down, you're going to be so antsy. You're going to want to run to that smart phone, you're going to want to run to your computer, you're going to want to run to make a phone call. That's just evidence, beloved, of what a hold the enemy has on you. So don't take that as anything other than saying yeah, I do have a problem. I need to break this thing. And stick with it. God will give you the power to stick with it.

There's nothing that you can't do that God has for you that he won't give you the power to do through his Spirit. But it's not going to be easy. The Bible says he that overcomes will inherit these things. Jesus' overcoming was so hard, the Bible says in the garden he was sweating drops of blood. So don't expect it to be easy, right? Paul said I have fought the fight, I run the race, and now there's laid up for me the crown of righteousness. He was shipwrecked, he went hungry, he went sleepless. Don't expect that it's going to be easy. Don't expect that you're always going to be living in great comfort. No. If you mean business with Jesus, prepare to be a soldier.

And so I want to encourage you to take an hour a day if you're not doing it yet just to sit before the Lord and develop patience and say God, as I sit before you, all I'm asking you is for one thing. I want to learn how to be led by your Spirit. I want to learn of the reality that your Spirit is really in me, not just as a doctrine, not just as I read it in the Bible that your Spirit's in me, but I want to know it. I want to experience it. I want to come into the reality of my relationship with you by the Holy Spirit. And then, beloved, as you're sitting before the Lord just practicing, don't ask him for a million things, and don't feel obligated to pray for many things. Just say:

Lord, I just present myself to you as I'm sitting before you. I need to be led by your Spirit. I need to learn of the reality that your Spirit's in me, that it's real, that it's scientific from the spiritual sense. So I'm just going to sit before you, Father, and I ask you just to make me aware of that one thing. Teach me that your Spirit's in me, and teach me how to be led by your Spirit in me.

And beloved, don't expect to feel all blissful. Don't expect that there's going to be all kinds of supernatural phenomenon that are going to begin to happen and then give up in two days because nothing seems to be happening. No. You just stick with it and be confident that the Lord is a rewarder, beloved, of those what diligently seek him. And as he sees you coming to offer yourself to him, as he sees your hunger, as he sees you separating yourself from the world to draw near to him, beloved, he will impart to you the revelation of the Holy Spirit and will break the demonic bonds, beloved, that have been enslaving. But we need to stick with it, because the Lord says he has no pleasure in he that shrinks back.

So don't, beloved, give up after a day. This is something that you don't try to see if you like it. This is something that you say this is truth, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life seeking you, and I'm going to go from an hour a day to keep increasing it as my life goes on, to keep on seeking you, Father God, to grow. And as I grow, I'm going to get strength in crushing the devil's power under me, treading upon demons and scorpions, arising in the power of Messiah Yeshua, being able to manifest the authority, the peace and the love of God. This is real and it's true. But we need to give ourselves to him, beloved, just as he, hallelujah, has given himself to us. And beloved, another phase of this becoming more aware of the Spirit within us is the area of allowing the Holy Spirit to show us in our life what we need to be cleansed of and what we need to be convicted of. You know, Yeshua spoke about the Holy Spirit and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And one of the things that Yeshua spoke of when he spoke of the gift of the Holy Spirit, he says he will come, Yeshua said concerning the gift of the Holy Spirit, in John 14 and convict the world. And you think wow, is that a gift? Is conviction a gift? I mean, many of us hear the word convict, and rather than it feeling like a gift, we kind of want to shield ourselves from it, you know. We're kind of afraid of it. Uh-oh, conviction. But you know that conviction, beloved, is actually a gift of the Father to us? Because as he convicts us of our sin, as he convicts us of evil, as he convicts us of spiritual demonic powers that need to be broken off our lives, beloved, he's giving us the opportunity to come close to him, to free ourselves from these things. So conviction is a gift. It's the same thing as when the Lord says he disciplines every son that he loves. And so we should welcome the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

So Father, right now we ask you, Father, for a conviction. We want to be convicted, Father, of those things in our life that are keeping us, Lord, from loving you. So Lord Jesus, we ask you to wash us through your blood and by your Spirit, and we ask you, Lord, to reveal to us those things in our nature and those things, Father God, in our lives, in our attitudes, Father God, and in our heart that need to be broken and those things that are keeping us, Father, from deeper fellowship with you.

And so when the Holy Spirit begins to show us things in our life, beloved, that need to change, don't make excuses. Don't say yeah, but it was his fault. Don't say yeah, but she did that to me. Don't say yeah, but it's the boss' or the company's fault. Don't blame the president. Don't blame the governor. Don't blame your pastor. Don't blame your parents. Just say:

Yes, Lord, you're right. Please forgive me, Father God, and cleanse me, God. Wash me by the blood of Jesus. You are right, Holy Spirit. I want to walk with you in harmony and victory.

See, the Bible says if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. So first we sit before him.

God, help me to be aware that your Spirit's in me. Help me to become aware, conscious, Lord, of when your Spirit is leading me to take a step, to make a phone call, to speak a word, to take an action. And help me, Lord, to become sensitive to the nudge, to the prompting of your Spirit. His Spirit bears witness with our Spirit. And Father, also help me to mind the checks. And when your Spirit is telling me no when I want to go eat something that I shouldn't eat, when I want to go make a phone call that I shouldn't make, when I want to say something that you're leading me not to say and your Spirit is trying to tell me no, help me to become sensitive enough, Father God, and aware enough of your Spirit in me to be able to sense your Spirit's check in me, Father God, and to abide and to say yes, Lord. Help me to obey you, Holy Spirit. Help me to pick up my cross and deny my flesh and obey you.

Father God, we want to walk with you like Enoch walked with you. Father, I thank you that you call us to the same destiny as Enoch, that you've called me and those that are watching this broadcast that are yours, you've called us to be just like Enoch, Father God, that walked with you and were taken with you into the heavenly places. Father, we love you today, and Father, we want to make the most of this life. Father, we want to make the most of this life by seeking to love you every day. Father, we ask you to strengthen us to love you. Father, we ask you to strengthen us by your Spirit to obey you. Father, I ask you for fire and for Aish. I ask you for conviction for those that need to be convicted. I ask there to be permanent change, Lord, in the lives of these that are watching right now for your harvest, Lord Jesus, and for your glory to the Holy Spirit.