Rabbi Schneider - The Blessing of Israel
I've been talking about the plan of salvation and what we've been discovering is that Israel was saved in the Tanakh, or the Old Testament, in the same way that believers are saved today in the New Testament. In other words, the Gospel was revealed in its primitive form in the Hebrew Bible, in the pages of the Tanakh, or the Old Testament. We began to look at this by showing that even as God chooses His people today upon the earth, not from amongst Jews only, but from amongst every tribe, people and nation; so too Father God also sovereignly chose Israel in the Tanakh. The Lord said to Israel, "You alone have I chosen to be a people for Myself out of all the peoples in the face of the earth". In the same way today, the scripture tells us in the book of Ephesians that we were chosen in Messiah before the foundation of the world, in Father's love.
And then we looked at the fact that Israel was saved once they were chosen. They were able to enter into the salvation experience, listen, through the medium, through the vehicle of faith. Faith is living and it's active. You see when God appeared to Abraham and spoke to Him and appeared to Him in the book of Bereshit, in the book of Genesis, that ignited within Abraham faith. When God shows up, His Spirit fills those hearts to whom He's speaking to and they automatically have faith well up within them. So God chooses His people and then He comes to those that He's chosen and when He speaks to them, whether it be through intuition, through the written word, through a dream, or whatever means He chooses to; when He reveals Himself, faith springs up. And then when we act on that faith we enter in to the salvation experience.
Moses for example had faith that God would be with him and he was able then to begin to walk forward and lead Israel out of bondage. Moses said to the Lord, "Unless you go with me I will not go". And the Lord spoke to Moses and said, "I will be with you". And as a result of that, Moses believed and he began to move forward and led Israel into freedom. So once again, God came to Moses, He sovereignly chose him. He appeared to him at the burning bush. As a result of that experience and the Lord's continual dealing in Moses' life, faith emerged in Moses, so that he was able to act. And in the same way beloved, today God sovereignly chose at some point in your life to reveal to you that Jesus was the way to Him. You believed. You began to take action. You began to read the scriptures. You began to go to church. You began to pray. You began to become obedient and all those things that brought you in to a deeper relationship with God.
And then we saw that God loves us, He chose us, He gave us faith. But we also learned, that because of our sin, a blood sacrifice is required. We looked in the Torah in Leviticus 17, verse 11 and we read that, "The life of the flesh in the blood," sayeth the Lord, "and I've given it to you on the altar to make an atonement for your soul; for it's the blood by reason of it's life that makes atonement". And so we studied last week how Israel was saved. Each year they were forgiven of their sins through the blood sacrifice that took place each year at their highest holy day called Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when the high priest would enter in to the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle and then the temple. He would pour the blood of the bull and the goat on top of the Ark of the Covenant and when the Lord saw the blood each year, He forgave His people, because the blood symbolized that a life was given, that an innocent animal had died in the place of the guilty. And the Lord accepted that as a means of atonement for Israel, because that innocent animal, beloved ones, symbolized Yeshua.
As I indicated on the last few broadcasts, it's like a credit card that you use. You go to the store, purchase something on your credit card. Your credit card has no real value, but the merchant accepts it, because he knows that real payment is coming. In the same way the Lord accepted those sacrifices in the Torah and in the time before Jesus, because He knew that those sacrifices represented Jesus; that real payment in the person of Yeshua was coming. And so we once again, we looked at God's sovereignty in relationship to election. We looked at how He comes to those He has chosen and instills faith in their heart, that then we act on that faith. It brings us into the salvation experience. Then we looked at the blood covering as a means of atonement.
And then I ended last week's broadcast talking about the principle of a mediator. Many people say that, "I don't need a mediator. I don't need Jesus. I go directly to God. It's just God and I". But the fact is, that when we study the Hebrew scriptures beloved ones, when we study the Torah we find that there's always been the principle of a mediator. Moses interceded for Israel. Moses was Israel's mediator. And then we have the priests. The Lord chose the Levites to be able to minister sacrifices in the temple on behalf of the children of Israel. Each individual Israelite was not able to offer their own sacrifices to the Lord, but rather beloved one, they had to bring their sacrifice to the priest, who offered up the sacrifice on their behalf. So do you see how the Old and New Testaments and the plan of salvation between the Old and New Testaments fits together like a hand in a glove? The plan of salvation was revealed, once again, in its primitive form in the pages of Tanakh, the Old Testament scriptures. It finds it's fullfillment in the person of Yeshua in the Brit Chadashah, the New Testament, or the new covenant scriptures.
I want to conclude with this final principle in relationship to the plan of salvation, by looking at the role of the Jewish people or the Israelites. We have within Christianism today, in many circles, a huge misunderstanding and a very dangerous misunderstanding, where many Christians have assumed that because Israel as a nation in general rejected Jesus and still does not believe in Him, that God has forsaken Israel. They believe that the promises, many Gentiles believe that although Israel was at one time chosen, although God did choose them we read in the Hebrew Bible, many Christians believe that because the Jewish people of Jesus' day by in large as a nation, the religious leaders rejected Yeshua; many Christians are taught that the promises that once belonged to Israel, because of their rejection of Yeshua, have been taken away from him and that these promises now have been given to New Testament believers, Israel no longer holds a special role in terms of a chosen people on the earth.
And I want to tell you beloved, there could be nothing farther from the truth. In fact Paul states it so clearly, point blank, in the book of Romans. In relationship to Israel he says, even though they have rejected Yeshua, he said, "The gift and call of God in their life is irrevocable". They still have a special role to play. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bring you back to the beginning. I'm gonna show you that the choseness of Israel and then I'm gonna, after we develop this theme of the choseness of Israel, I'm gonna show you how Israel still plays a very unique and special role in the plan of salvation and in the history of the kingdom of God. So praise God. Let's just pray.
Father God we just pray that You'll give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of You. And that Father God You'll help me to make this clear, so all Your people understand and can pray for the salvation of the Jewish people as they come to learn how important Jewish people are in relationship to the end times and the return of Jesus. Amen, can you say amen with me? And amen.
Now I'm gonna go back to the beginning. We're gonna go back to the first book in the Bible, the book of Bereshit, the Book of Beginnings. And we're gonna read about the call of Abraham. I'm going now to the book of Genesis chapter number 12. I'm gonna begin there in verse number 1. Hear the Word of God. "Now the Lord," this is God's personal name here. Now the Lord, Yod Hei Vav Hei, often times pronounced very, with such reverence, a breathy YAHWEH. The Lord said, "This is My memorial name forever". "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed'".
So we read that all the nations of the earth shall be blessed through Abraham. I want you to hear, we need to honor the uniqueness of the Jewish people. That's why the Lord said, "I will bless those who bless you and curse those that curse you". They're a chosen people. Jesus came to us through the Jewish people. The Lord says, "Don't be arrogant against the Jewish people, because your salvation's foundation comes to you through them". Beloved it's the same way with our parents. Don't we want to honor our parents for giving us birth? In the same way we always want to honor the Jewish people, because it's through them that the writings of scripture came to us, that Messiah came to us, that the Apostles were Jews, right? So we want to honor the favor of God upon the Jewish people, because they have become a blessing to the entire church. It's through them that we've come to the knowledge of God. Remember Paul, who went to all these different Gentile nations, which launched the church amongst the Gentiles, Paul was a Jew. So we want to understand from the beginning, the Jewish people have played a special role in the kingdom of God.
Let's continue on here and find out what scripture has to say. Let's go to the book of Genesis continuing, verses number 17 here, verse 5 and 6. We just read in chapter 12 that the Lord spoke to Abraham and said, "Follow me". Once again, when God speaks, because of God's creative power, because of the life in His Spirit, when He speaks man's heart is ignited. This is why the scripture says, "In the day of God's power man is made willing". In other words, when God pours His life out on somebody, the person who receives His life, because God has poured it out on him, automatically comes to life. They spring forth faith. Remember Jesus said to Lazarus, "Come forth". And what did Lazarus do? He came forth, because when God speaks humanity comes to attention. It's the nature of the relationship between Creator God and His creation.
So God appeared to Abraham. He spoke to Abraham, so Abraham had faith ignited in him. You have faith, beloved, because God has revealed Himself to you. You may not realize it. You may think, "Well I never had Jesus appear to me in my bedroom. I never encountered God in a burning bush. I never had some kind of experience where my whole room was filled with angels or light. So how have I had a supernatural experience"? Beloved, the very fact that you believe is because of the fact that God has given you divine intuition in your heart to know that He loves you, to know that He's alive and to put your faith in His Son, knowing that His sacrifice paid the penalty for your sin. Even though you may have never had a spectacular experience when you compare it to others, that does not mean beloved one, that does not mean that you have not had an encounter with the Lord. It's just that sometimes His encounters are more subtle. He appeared to Abraham. He spoke to Abraham.
But in the same way, everyone that truly believes, believes because God has made Himself known to that individual. You know we sometimes hear the stories of you know the person that was a drug addict, or a heroin addict, or the Jew, or the Muslim that had this incredible supernatural experience and as a result of that experience God delivered them and brought them to faith. And we wish that we could have those experiences. But I want you to know, some of you may have not had that kind of experience, but you go back to perhaps when you were seven or eight years old and you were in church one day and you just believed, because you believed that God loved you. You believed that God, that you're precious to Him. You put your faith in Jesus with the heart of a child, that experience is just as powerful if not more so sometimes then the dramatic testimony. So don't discount, beloved, the supernatural relationship that God has with you.
And so let's continue on, Genesis 17, we're moving forward. Here we go, verse 5 and 6. The Lord had appeared to Abraham, was speaking to him here. He said, "No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you". So once again, what we're seeing here is the fact that the Jewish people are the foundation of the salvation that has come to the entire world. Remember the Lord said to Abraham, the Lord said to Abraham, "Abraham in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed". Well this verse is quoted in the book of Galatians by Paul in reference to Jesus. Paul lifts up Yeshua and he says to the entire church, "This Yeshua is the seed of the fulfillment of the promise of the seed that God made to Abraham". Paul was saying that when God said to Abraham, "Abraham in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed," Paul said in Galatians, "The seed that God was referring to in Genesis it is Yeshua".
So we need to get in alignment now with the fact that God has used the Israelites, He's used the Jewish people in a very special way in all our lives. We want to honor them and even more so we're gonna be seeing how they still play a key role in the world today. Think about it, again as I began to share earlier in the broadcast today, so many people in the church today they think, "Oh the Jews don't believe in Jesus. You know the Jews you know have been forsaken by God. The promises that once belonged to the Jews now belong to us".
Some people unfortunately even believe that Jewish people are under a curse for rejecting Jesus. But let me ask you beloved, can you still see the divine hand of God of the Jewish people upon the Jewish people today? Look at all the Jewish doctors. Look at all the Jewish bankers. Look at all the Jewish people that have made great breakthroughs in the fields of science and medicine. Look at the number of Jewish people that are leading figures in entertainment. In other words, the impact that the Jewish people have had upon the earth is unexplainable, because they're such a small proportion of the world's population. One fifth of one percent of the world's population are Jewish people, yet look at the amount of Nobel Prizes they've won, look at the amount of medical breakthroughs that have been discovered by them. Look at the amount of scientific discoveries that they've been responsible for. It's amazing the leading names in almost any field are Jewish people. How do you explain it? Because there's a special favor upon them even still. Even those that have rejected Jesus, the hand of God is still on their life in a special way.
Now don't misunderstand what I'm saying. Jesus said to the Jewish people, "Unless you believe that I am He you will die in your sins". I'm not talking about being in reference to salvation, but I'm talking about the Jewish people are a marked people. It is evident in scripture from the very beginning. When we look at our present history we still see there's something supernatural about their lives and beloved ones, they still play a supernatural role in the future of the church. And it's important for you and I to understand what their role is, because when we understand what the role of the Jewish people is in time going forward, it's going to bring us into the flow of God's Spirit and God's going to use it and bring divine energy into our life for being in alignment with Him in this particular area.
Let me read for you from the book of Isaiah chapter 49 verse 6 and I'm gonna have to finish this next week, so you're gonna want to make sure to tune in. But listen what the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah, 49:6. "Is it too small a thing that you should be My servants to raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore the preserved ones of Israel". Listen to this, "I will also make you a light of the nations," get it now, "so that My salvation may reach to the ends of the earth". And in this present time God is raising up Jewish believers like myself and a few others right now to reach the ends of the earth with the message of the Gospel.
The Jewish people are playing a unique role in these end times, that are leading up to Yeshua Hamashiach's return and I want to thank you beloved for supporting this ministry and supporting what we're doing. I love you today. Please join me next week. I'm gonna show you next week what Paul said in the book of Romans chapter 11, regarding the salvation of the Jewish people and the role that they're playing in the kingdom of God today. As you bless Israel, beloved one, in your heart the Lord said He's gonna bless you. Remember He said to Abraham, "I will bless those that bless you and I will curse those that curse you". I want to thank you for standing with me today. I want to thank you for standing with Discovering the Jewish Jesus. Most of all beloved, thank you for standing with the purposes of God during this time in the earth. In Jesus' name I bless you today in the name of the Lord. And until next week, shalom, shalom, shalom and shalom.