Rabbi Schneider - Find Divine Satisfaction
As we walk with God I think the question we always need to be asking ourselves is, "How big is our vision of who He really is"? It's really helpful to realize that the Lord said, "I am unlimited. I am without beginning and without end". It's important to recognize that the God beloved, that we've been called into relationship with is eternal. In Judaism He's called The Ansof, the One that has no beginning and has no end, The Eternal One. The reason why I think this important to stress and the reason I want to challenge you with this, is because sometimes our vision of who God is is small. And when our vision of God is small it will keep us from going as high as God wants us to go, or as deep as He wants us to go. In order to go higher and deeper in the realm of the Spirit through Yeshua, we have to have a huge vision of God and even our vision of Him is completely inadequate.
Some people are locked into religion, meaning that they don't even think of this aspect of God. They don't think about the fact that God has no beginning and has no end, that they've been brought into a relationship with the eternal one, that there are realms in the spirit that God is bringing us into that are beyond anything that we ever thought or conceived of before, that the destiny that we have is so incredible that it's not even entered into the heart of man how incredible it is. Many people sitting in church pews have such a limited definition of who God is and such a constricted concept of what it means to know Him, based only on things that they can read in a you know, in a book, or things that they've heard in their church tradition. It's just so small. You know you do this, you do this, you don't do this, you don't do this and as long as you do the right things and don't do the wrong things you're good. That's such a limiting, constrictive concept of what it means to know God. Yeshua came to earth so that we would know God.
We began last week in the book of Colossians chapter 1, verse number 13. And we began to look at the preeminence of Yeshua Hamashiach. Yeshua Hamashiach's preeminence and what I showed you was, that this One that died on the cross for us, He existed before He became human. I showed you from the Gospel of John and from Paul's letters that the One that died on the cross for us is God Himself, who at a point in time the scripture calls it at the fullness of time, manifested Himself in the flesh for us; that He could die for our sins and save us. And so I encourage you to get the last episode on Yeshua Hamashiach's preeminence. But I'm gonna dive right in again. We're gonna review and pick up some new territory. Paul is speaking here of Yeshua.
Who is Yeshua? Yeshua is the person that we gave the name to, who died on the cross for our sins. Yeshua is the One that manifested Himself in time 2,000 years ago. It was when God united Himself with the body. But the Word that clothed Himself in humanity existed before we gave Him the name Yeshua and before He was clothed in humanity. In other words, God Himself came to earth, clothed Himself in humanity and as the angel told Mary, "Call him, make His name Jesus, which means salvation". But it was God Himself that came. God Himself is our salvation. Listen how Paul puts it, "For he rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son". Who is he speaking of here? He's speaking of Jesus. He's speaking of Yeshua, that came and rescued us. "In whom we have redemption, forgiveness of sins". What does this mean? That this One that came died on the cross for us, He died in our place, shed His blood and through Him and by Him we have forgiveness of our sins.
Now who is the one that did this for us? Verse 15, "He is the image of the invisible God. He's the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created both in heavens and in earth, visible and invisible; Whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things and in Him all things hold together". Again, I want to encourage you to get the teaching from this last episode, because I explain this in fuller detail. But what we find here is this One that rescued us in verse 13, this One through whom we have forgiveness through in verse 14, He is God Himself. He is the Creator.
John as I mentioned last time, spoke about this. "In the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God. All things came into being by Him and apart from Him nothing that's come into being has come into being and the word became flesh and dwelt among us". So God Himself manifested Himself to you and I in space and time in the person of Jesus, in the person of Yeshua, died on the cross for our sins and showed us His heart. When you think of Jesus, when you think of Yeshua, you have to think of God, because it was God in Him. He is God incarnate. We look in verse number 18, "He is the head of the body," the church, "He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything". And here's this next verse is what I wanted you to hear right now, "For it was the Father's good pleasure," listen, "for all the fullness to dwell in him". What does this mean? The fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Yeshua in bodily form.
So I am wanting you and I to recognize that God is calling us into the realm of the spirit. Some people they just look at a figure on the cross and they just meditate on the figure of a cross and they got a picture in front of them of a human being. But Jesus is so much more than a human being. It was God making Himself visible. So we need to move beyond the natural, beyond that which can be seen, into the supernatural. When you see for example how Yeshua is manifested in the book of Revelation, He doesn't look the same as He was when He was walking upon the earth 2,000 years ago. He looks different. Right? He has eyes as a flame of fire. He's got a two edged sword coming through His mouth. His hair is like white wool. His face is like the sun shining in His strength.
I want to move you beyond where you've been looking to help you look some place bigger, so that you can rise in the Spirit and enter in to new realms beloved, of eternal life. There's always more and God wants to ignite within our heart a fire that regardless of what our experience has been. Some of you as I've been speaking, you feel trapped right now. It's like there's nothing left for you where you're at. You've already been through all the Bible studies. You've already heard all the preachers. You've already done all the things the church told you to do and you're still feeling empty. Well I've got good news for you today beloved child of God, God's got more for you. But you need to be able to look to Him, to recognize that He's more than maybe your pastor told you He was.
And I'm not putting down any pastors. I would say that to my people. I pastor a congregation too. I would say to my people, "God is more than I told you, because God is bigger than I know". So this is true of everyone. But I'm just saying that we need to expand our boundaries. Remember the saint of old in the Hebrew Bible, He asked, Jabez said, "Extend the boundaries of my borders". He wanted to enter in to something new. He wanted to enter in to something more. We need to begin to think like Yeshua. We need to begin to think in the spirit.
Let's look at this again. Let's pick up. I'm just trying to impart to you who this Yeshua is that you're being drawn into a deeper relationship. "For by Him," verse 16, "by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible; whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him". You see all the things that you experience in life, all the pleasures that you experience in life, listen, there's the spirit nature of God behind those things. In other words, if you experience pleasure on earth, I mentioned on last week's broadcast the pleasure we can get from eating, the pleasure we can get from being in an intimate relationship with our spouse. We have to recognize that beyond that pleasure, the pleasure of our taste buds, the pleasure of intimacy, we have to recognize beloved one, listen, that beyond those pleasures is the God of pleasure.
The scripture says, "He is the God of pleasure for evermore". So we need to begin to look to Father God, let me find divine satisfaction in You alone. Let me know that everything that I see just portrays an image of You, it portrays a part of You, it's created. And everything that's created, everything that we can see with our eyes is passing away. And they're just shadows of You, but they're not the fullness, they're not the substance. You're the substance. So Father let me keep on pursuing You until I find everything that I need, everything that satisfies, everything that makes me complete, in You alone. Because beloved one, the scripture says, in Christ Jesus, in Yeshua you and I have been made complete. You know, have you ever noticed in your life that you're always looking for something? You're always in search of the next thing to satisfy an emptiness in your soul. You think if you go over there you'll be satisfied and then you get to that spot and you think, well if I go over there I'll be satisfied.
I remember some time back being with somebody and they said, "Let's go to the park". They were in such a hurry to get to the park, so anxious to get to the park. We got to the park, we were walking. It wasn't five minutes till they said, "Well let's go get a cup of coffee". They're anxiety was driving them and they kept on living under the delusion that if I go over there I'll find satisfaction. They kept on going from here to there, to there, looking for that place where they thought they'd find satisfaction and it was never there, because the problem was where ever they went there they were. You know I want to get to the place in my life where I have divine satisfaction, that I am satisfied, listen now, with God Himself; that God Himself, child of God, becomes the source of our satisfaction. And I believe this takes some fasting from the things of the world. It takes some temperance and some self discipline, so we're not continually indulging ourselves in the things that God has made, which could never completely satisfy us and we search for meaning instead in the One that has made them. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
The application and the challenge for you today beloved one is this, take time alone every day, discipline yourself to spend time with God, because He is the one that created everything. Our satisfaction is not in what He created. There's only limited satisfaction there. We all know that. There's only temporary satisfaction there. True satisfaction can only come from the One that made those things, that created us and our soul in His image to know Him. It's such a tragic thing of famous people that are taking their own lives. I recently, I won't mention the name, read and heard about an individual taking his own life. He had everything going for him it would seem. He had fame, he had wealth, he had whatever relationship you know he wanted so to speak. He had even achieved an excellent mastery in a particular martial art. I mean he had everything and yet he took his own life.
Only God knows why, but I can only imagine that the reason that he took his own life beloved one, is because he had everything that he thought would satisfy him. He attained it all. He attained everything that he thought would satisfy him, wealth, fame, relationships, even becoming an expert in a particular martial art and yet when he had attained all those things his soul was still empty and he didn't know what else to do at that point. Because he didn't know God, life was just hopeless for him. He already had gotten everything that he thought would satisfy, only to realize that none of those things did and now he thought there was nothing left and so he killed himself. I mean I'm just surmising, but I believe that's very potentially what happened, because that's what happens to people that even attain everything that the world has to offer. They realize the answer is not there and if they don't have God at that point, they become utterly hopeless.
This is what Solomon was teaching us in the book of Ecclesiastes. He pursued everything that he thought would satisfy him. He pursued wealth, women, knowledge, everything and he got to the end of it all and what did he say church? He said, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity and striving after the wind". And then he said the answer is this, "Walk with God". I challenge you today, as you're walking with Yeshua, lift up your eyes. He's not just a human being that died on the cross. It was God Himself that manifested Himself to you in bodily form, so that you could be brought into a relationship with Him and He's got a journey ahead for you that has nothing but joy, fulfillment, richness and happiness, but we've got to keep on striving to know Him. We got to keep on seeking to enter in.
And understand, life is a cycle of trials and then releasing in joy, trials and then releasing in joy. There will always be trials on this earth, but know that every single trial that you walk through committed to God, steadfast in God, keeping your eyes on Him, is only building up your spiritual inheritance. Jesus my friend, Yeshua Hamashiach is God in the flesh. And I want to challenge you, forget about what everybody else is doing. Don't be bound by the culture of this world. Don't even be bound by the culture of the church. Go after Jesus, get into His word. Spend time alone with Him. Keep seeking, keep knocking, keep praying, keep talking to Him. Keep telling Him that you love Him. Keep being thankful and He's gonna bless you in a way that you never even imagined.