Rabbi Schneider - Finding the Truth
"...if we continue in His word", Yeshua said, "You will know the truth and the truth will make you free". So what's the truth that sets us free? I'm going to Chapter 8 and verse 31. Hear the Word of God. So Yeshua was saying to those Jews who had believed in Him... now this is "If you continue in my Word, then you are truly disciples of mine". Now I want you to think about this. Jesus says to the Jews who had believed. Now these were Jews that were believing. These were believing Jews. Listen again. Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed, "If you continue in my Word, then you are truly disciples of Mine". And we're going to continue on here, and we're going to see that these that began believing in Him eventually opposed Him. Now, I want you to think about the different categories of faith and being in relationship by faith with Jesus.
First of all, we have the seekers. These, beloved ones, were the ones that even John records, they came because they wanted to eat the loaves of bread. Jesus had done miracles. He turned the bread into loaves, and He turned the bread, He multiplied it, and was able to feed thousands at a time. Some of the people that were following Jesus just followed Him because He was feeding them. Jesus said, "You didn't even come because of the signs". He said to them, "You came because you ate and were filled". And so they were following Him around just to eat. Then we have others that followed Him because of the miracles that He did. They wanted to see the signs. It was spectacular.
So we have those that followed Him just because they wanted a miracle. They wanted food. I mean, sometimes when I go to the mission field, people come just because they want to see a miracle, or they want a miracle. Then we have people that come, they believe. But notice what Jesus said. "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine". So there's a difference, beloved one, between being a believer and being a disciple. We have the seekers, those that wanted food for their stomach, those that wanted to see miracles. Then we have believers, these that Yeshua is speaking to right now. But Yeshua said, "If you continue in My word, then you're truly a disciple and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free".
So it's important to understand that it's not enough just to believe. Jesus said, even the demons believe and tremble. We become disciples if we continue in His word. And Jesus said, if we do continue in His word... I love this. One of my favorite verses in the entire word of God, John 8, 32, if we continue in His word, Yeshua said, "You will know the truth and the truth will make you free". Now, at face value, you could say, oh yeah, I'll know the truth and the truth will make you free. But have you ever asked the Father, have you ever asked Jesus, what is the truth, Yeshua, that You're talking about, that You said would make me free? Think about that. Jesus said, you'll know the truth and the truth will make you free.
But memorizing the Bible alone doesn't make somebody free, does it? I mean, we know a lot of people, they know the Bible very well, I mean, they can quote scripture after scripture, yet they're not free, right? They're not happy. So what's the truth that sets us free? I want to just encourage you and lovingly challenge you to be praying about that, say, well, what is the truth that I need to know that will set me free? I, for one, I think it has to do with knowing how much we're loved by the Father and knowing how protected we are and safe we are in Him and how much He's going to take care of every need our whole life. I think that's the truth that sets us free. If you think about little children, they're really free, but they know that they're loved by their parents and they know they're loved by God. They just know it.
Now, I know that there's challenges and situations, but I'm just talking about in general. Children are free. They're happy. They dance. They laugh. They're free with their emotions because they know who they are in their parents' love. They don't know themselves just by looking in the mirror, not like people today, right? You try to know yourself by looking in the mirror. You try to get your identity by looking at yourself in the mirror. But little children don't get their identity from looking in the mirror. They get their identity from knowing how loved they are from their parents and how safe they are in their world. Because little children that haven't been exposed to dangers yet, all they know is the embrace of their mom and dad. So, Jesus said, you'll know the truth. Amen.
Yeshua, we ask You to set us free with Your love and with Your truth. Lord, we ask that You would cause us, each one that has a hungry heart right now, each one whose heart is panting after You and spirited in truth, Lord Jesus, set us free in the truth.
Yeshua also pointed out that the way that we could be set free, beloved one, is if we continue in His word. And what this means is, is that the longer we continue in His word, the narrower the road becomes. Remember, Jesus said, broad and wide is the way that leads to destruction, and many there be that take it. But straight and narrow, He said, is the way that leads to life, and few there be that find it. He said, Strive to enter through the narrow gate. So as we continue in the truth, the truth gets narrower. What I mean by that is, is that as we continue on with Jesus, we have to continue to die to ourselves, to obey Him and follow Him. Remember, John the Baptist said, He must increase, but I must decrease. You know, if you think about... I've used this illustration in other applications.
But if you think about... if you look... remember when you were in school, when you were a child and you looked into the microscope, and there was a slide under the microscope, and you put your eye to the microscope and you looked at the slide, and you maybe didn't see much, but then as you adjusted the power and turned the power up on the microscope, suddenly you were able to see little organisms moving around on the screen. This is what happens, beloved ones, when the Lord tunes up the power, turns up the power of the working of a spirit in our life. As we continue on with Jesus, the laser of God's light and word shines into our soul, beginning to expose those parts of our life that need to be transformed that we haven't even been aware of.
I told you, many of you, about the experience I had many years ago, a dream that I had, a vision of the night. And I'm not talking just... this was really, I believe, from the Lord. And in this dream, my wife Cynthia and I, we were traveling on a journey somewhere. I don't even know exactly where we were going. I just knew we had a destination. And we were halfway through the journey, and it was time to stop for the night. So it just so happened, in this vision on the night, we stopped at a man that was teaching me martial arts. In real life at the time, we stopped at his home. And he said, yeah, you can stay here tonight. He said, "Let me show you your bedroom where you'll be sleeping".
So he took us up to the bedroom. And on the way up to the bedroom, he showed us where the bathroom was, and he pointed to the toilet. And the toilet, when he pointed to the water in the toilet, it was all blue. You know, like it was full of sanitizing fluid. Like you know when you clean your toilet, you pour that blue sanitizer in there? So that's what it was like. It was all blue water. Then all of a sudden, my martial arts instructor that was about six foot two, all of a sudden, he jumps up in the air and becomes like this big, and he dives into the toilet. And he's in the toilet surrounded by all this blue sanitizer. Like I said, he's only about this big now. And I can see in there, I'm looking at him, and he's all joyful and happy inside. And all of a sudden, bam, he springs back out of the toilet, full size again. And it's like, the dream just continues on now.
So next he brings us into the bedroom. Cynthia and I go to sleep that night. We wake up the next morning to continue on the journey. And we walk down, we make the bed, we straighten up, we walk down the steps, the martial artist instructor's down there in the main living area, and we say, thank you, you know, we're going to continue on with our journey. He said, well, now, yeah, let's go upstairs first and look in the bedroom where you guys slept last night. So he takes us into the bedroom, and there's this dresser against the wall. So he lifts up the dresser to one side, he pulls it away from the wall, and he has like a little toothbrush, and he starts scrubbing the wall behind the dresser where the baseboard was.
And I'm thinking, "What's going on? I slept here for one night, and he thinks I got it dirty there, behind the dresser at the baseboard? Why is he telling me that the room's not cleaned yet, that it's not time for me to leave yet"? And then there's a little hole in the wall where you would see an electrical socket, and there were some... this was behind the dresser also that he had pulled away from the wall was some wires coming out. And he says to me, "I want you to go reset that over there. There's a little gadget attached to the wires". So I go over there, I don't know what's going on. I look at the little gadget, there's like a button on there that I see, I don't know what to do, so I press the button. And when I press the button, the martial arts instructor says real loudly to me, "You're not thinking! You're not doing it right"!
And I don't even know what to think. Then he comes over, and he opens a panel on this little electrical gizmo that I didn't even see, I didn't even know it was there. He opens up a panel, presses a few buttons, bam, then he closes it and puts it back in the wall. "You're not thinking"! he said. "You're not doing it right"! And then the dream was over. And I really thought, "Man, this dream meant something. What did this mean"? I wrote the dream down. And I felt like the Lord was communicating to me, you know, you thought you were clean, because you've cleaned up all these outer things in your life. Remember Jesus said, if you continue in My word. It's not a one-time thing. So the Lord, I think, was saying to me, I'm very confident, he was saying to me, you know, you've cleaned a lot of things up in your life.
Just like in that bedroom, you cleaned up the things that you could see before you left. But the Lord was saying, I want to go a lot deeper than you realize. I want to scrub in those nooks and crannies that have not yet been washed and sanctified. Remember, the beginning of the dream started with the martial artist diving into the toilet bowl into the sanitizing fluid. He was all joyful in there. So the Lord was telling me, you know, I want to sanctify you and sanitize you. And the way that I'm going to do it, the Lord was showing me, was through your thoughts. Remember the last part of the dream where the martial arts instructor told me to reprogram that little gadget? And I went over there and I just kind of glanced at it and I just saw one button. So I pushed the button and then all of a sudden he screamed, "You're not doing it right, you're not thinking".
And then the dream was over. The Lord was showing me, you're not paying attention to the thoughts that are going through your mind. I want to sanctify you deeper. But in order to do that, you need to wake up. You need to pay attention to the thoughts that you're allowing to go through your mind. And you need to take every thought captive and bring them under the truth of my word and Lordship. So Jesus says here, "If you continue in My word..." God wants to bring you deeper. He wants to deal with more things in your life. He wants to address your thought life. This is how we continue in His word. You see, some of us we love Jesus, we read the Bible, but you know what? We have a real short temper, especially some of us when it comes to our spouses. You know, we're not always courteous to our spouses and we're not treating them oftentimes the way they deserve to be treated, the way God treats them.
So God wants to make us aware of all these things, attitude changes, selfishness. How many times are we so selfish just, you know, being in airports or, you know, walking through the grocery store, you know, trying to be the first one over the line, you know, in the parking lot, someone's going to get that space. Now the Lord wants to deal with so many things in our life. And if we'll let Him, if we'll let Him, if we'll continue in His word. And what's His word? It's not just the written word, it's not just the logos we call in Greek, but it's also the rhema. It's what the Lord is communicating to our hearts subtly by His spirit. It's not an audible word. It's something that you just sense with your conscience.
See, the Lord is trying to sharpen our walk with Him through the Holy Spirit's word in our conscience. It's like an inner knowing. But we have to become aware of that. We have to practice awareness of the presence of the spirit. And then when we do feel Him speaking to us, we have to yield and obey. So I want to ask you, how badly do you want to know the truth? Because Jesus said, He that loses His life for my sake shall find it. Jesus wants to keep going deeper. We're going to have to keep going deeper with Him. We're going to have to keep on submitting and giving Him lordship. And as we do, Jesus said, we're going to find our life. He that loses His life for My sake shall find it. So once again, Yeshua says, "If you continue in My word, then you're truly disciples of Mine and you'll know the truth and the truth will make you free".
Now remember where we started, Jesus was speaking to the Jews that believed in Him in verse 31. But notice what happens as Jesus is speaking, as He's going deeper now with these Jews that believed in Him. "They answered Him," verse 33, they said, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been enslaved to anyone". So Jesus is saying, "if you continue in My word, I'm going to set you free". They said, "We're Abraham's descendants, we don't need to be set free. They answered Him, we are Abraham's descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free? Yeshua answered them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever, the Son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed".
The issue here was sin, right, being enslaved to this invisible power called sin. That's what our souls are enslaved to, is sin. I love the fact that Jesus, the name Yeshua means Yahweh saves. When Jesus was born, they said, His name shall be called Yeshua, for He shall save you and me, His people, from their sins.
So Yeshua, we ask you right now to save us from our sin. We don't want to be slaves of sin. We're not just looking at our environment and saying, we're not enslaved. We're saying, we're agreeing with you, Jesus, we need to be delivered from sin. We need to be freed from sin. We know that you came, Jesus, to deliver us and save us from our sin. So we ask You now, Lord, we ask You now, come and do the sanctifying work of cleansing in our life that will free us from the slavery of sin. We worship You, King Jesus. We invite you into our lives. We don't resist you as these did in John chapter 8.
And we're going to see on the next episode, it gets even worse as the dialogue between these, quote, 'believing' Jews and Jews continued. You're going to see that not everyone that says they're a believer is a disciple. And unless we're a disciple, we're going to die in our sins. This is Rabbi Schneider saying to you, Yeshua loves you, Jesus loves you, I love you, Cynthia loves you, and from the whole DJJ staff today, we love you. God bless you. And may you continue on in your journey and go from strength to strength and freedom to freedom. Baruch Hashem, bless the name of Yahweh, bless the name of the Lord.