Rabbi Schneider - The Blood of the Lamb
Let me share with you first of all why Messianic prophecy is so important. We're living in a culture today where more and more, because of the culture of political correctness, believers in Yeshua are shrinking back and taking a posture of being politically correct. Many believers today, rather than stating their testimony rooted in God's Word that Yeshua is the only way to heaven, instead what many believers are doing today is simply saying, "Well you know I'm a Christian. I believe in Jesus, but you know I don't make any judgments about the other religions in the world. I mean if you're practicing this religion, that's fine. If you're practicing this path, that's fine". And they're shrinking away from standing with the Word of God, which teaches there is no way unto the Father, Jesus said, but through Him. And so when we understand that Jesus' claims are not only exclusive, they're not inclusive in the sense that they include every man can find his own path to God; rather they're exclusive, because Jesus said, "No man cometh to the Father, but through Me".
When we understand that His claims are exclusive, when we understand that it's gonna take strength to stand in those exclusive claims in the culture that we're living in today; which is so politically correct, that basically society teaches that everybody's right no matter what path they're on. When we understand those two things, then we can understand why Messianic prophecy is so important to the believer; because Messianic prophecy will help you, beloved one, know that even though you're living in a culture where the majority of people would accuse you of being bigoted, narrow minded, and primitive if you said that Jesus is the only way to God; when you understand Messianic prophecy, you'll become more convinced than ever that Yeshua is the only path to God and you'll have the confidence and the boldness to continue to be a witness for Him in this wicked and perverse generation in which we live.
Now you may be saying to yourself, "Well I'm not ashamed of Jesus". But let me ask you this question, if you have a Facebook site, are you posting anything about Jesus on your Facebook site? Now baruch Hashem, I know a lot of you are. But for many of you that are watching right now, perhaps you're not putting your testimony of faith in the Lord out there on your Facebook site. Why? Because of the culture that we're living in, because you don't want to be rejected. But I want you to hear me today. All that desire to live Godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. We have a mission, church, on this earth and our mission is to be His witnesses. Yeshua said, "I'm gonna send forth My Spirit upon you and you will receive His power and become My witnesses. As the Father sent Me, so also now I send you". Messianic prophecy will help gird you in strength and in the truth of the Word of God, so you can fulfill your mission of being a bold witness for Jesus.
Now to illustrate my point how important Messianic prophecy is, we should take note of the fact that the New Testament begins by showing us how Yeshua fulfills Messianic prophecy and the way the New Testament does that, is by tracing Yeshua's genealogy all the way back to Abraham, through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, through Judah, through David, to show that Yeshua is in truth the prophesied one that would come that would be the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world. Now, last week what I was talking about, was the fact that our understanding of Messianic prophecy needs to be expanded, because some of us have the notion that when we're speaking of Messianic prophecy, we're only talking about predictions that the Old Testament made about what would happen when Messiah came. A prediction is something that will happen in the future, that we're anticipating to happen. And some Messianic prophecies are of that vein. But many Messianic prophecies are not that Yeshua fulfilled a prediction, but rather how He filled Israel's history up with meaning.
You see Jesus, Yeshua, is Israel's divine head. And Yeshua is the aim of the Hebrew Bible. So what the New Testament writers did, what those that wrote the Brit Chadashah, the new covenant scriptures did, is they took scriptures from the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms. And they showed that Yeshua fulfilled them, not because He was necessarily fulfilling something predictive, but that He was filling them up with meaning. And so on last week's broadcast I used the example in Matthew chapter 2. In Matthew chapter 2 we read about how when Yeshua was born, Herod the king, heard that a king had been born. And so in fear of losing his place, Herod started killing the male Hebrew children. As a result of this an angel came to Joseph, Yeshua's father, and said, "Take the child to Egypt". Then when Herod died, the Lord led Joseph to take Jesus back into Israel. And then Matthew says, "Thus fulfilling," there's Messianic prophecy; Matthew records in Matthew 2, 13 through 15, "Thus fulfilling the word that was spoken to the prophet".
So when we read this, that when Joseph took Yeshua back in to Israel, He was fulfilling what was written by the Hebrew prophet. Out of curiosity many of you will say, "Well what Hebrew prophet wrote that"? And if you did some research, what you'd find is that there's only one place in the Hebrew Bible where we have that statement being written, "Out of Egypt did I call My Son". It's in the book of Hosea chapter 11, verse 1. Now I know this is review for those of you that were with me last week. So, just be patient for a minute while I bring everybody up to speed. When you go to Hosea chapter 11, verse 1 and read that scripture, "Out of Egypt did I call My Son," you say, "Wow, that doesn't really look like it was Messianic prophecy according to the way many of us understood Messianic prophecy"; because we understood many of us Messianic prophecy to be about predictions of the future.
But Hosea 11:1 is not a prediction of the future. Instead what's happening, church, in Hosea 11:1, is God is simply talking about Israel's past. He's talking about how Israel was a slave in Egypt under Pharaoh and how God called His Son Israel out of Egypt, out of the oppression of Pharaoh. So how then, with that being said, knowing that Hosea 11:1 was not predictive and in fact it had already been fulfilled, how then does Matthew use that saying that Yeshua fulfilled it? Matthew is using it, beloved ones, in a way by showing how Yeshua, Jesus, as Israel's divine head, brought Israel's history up to its fullest meaning in His life, ministry, and person. And so even as Israel was called out of Egypt under Pharaoh, so too God called Yeshua out of Egypt after Herod had passed away.
Messianic prophecy comes in many narratives, but understand that the entire Hebrew Bible once again, is pointing to Yeshua. And so I'm gonna be covering types and shadows in the Hebrew Bible and then after we cover types and shadows in the Hebrew Bible and Messianic prophecy of that texture, then what I'm gonna do, is I'm gonna move in to specific, measurable predictions of the future that the Old Testament or Tanakh made regarding the life and person and ministry of the Messiah. With that said, I want to give you another example of this, to help you even fully comprehend my point here. I'm going now to the book of Matthew chapter number 13. Yeshua's speaking here and He says this, "Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah," notice that word prophecy, because we're talking about Messianic prophecy.
So Yeshua says here, "In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says," and then He quotes the word in Isaiah, "You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; You will keep on seeing, but will not perceive". Now where in Isaiah is Yeshua pulling this from? Beloved, He's pulling this from Isaiah's calling. The Lord comes to Isaiah and calls him. So I'm gonna read of this now beginning in Isaiah chapter number 6, verse 8. Isaiah's speaking. He says, "Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?' And then I said, 'Here am I. Send me!' He said, 'Go, and tell this people: "Keep on listening, but do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand"'".
And so once again, a similar instance is taking place. The instance that Yeshua said is being fulfilled in Him in Matthew 13, that originally happened in Isaiah 6, was not a prediction in Isaiah 6. What was happening in Isaiah 6 was, God had simply called Isaiah into ministry. God said, "Go". Isaiah said, "I'm gonna go Lord". And then the Lord said to Him, "Isaiah, you're gonna speak and they're not gonna hear, they're not gonna understand, they're not gonna see". And so Yeshua's ministering now. He's speaking in parables and as He's speaking in parables, the people don't understand. They don't see. They don't perceive. And Yeshua said, "In this instance the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled".
So once again, the scripture in its initial historical context in Isaiah was not a prediction. Yeshua being the fulfillment of Israel's history, experiences the same thing that Isaiah experienced and brings the word that Isaiah experienced into its climatical fulfillment. And so Jesus says, "This word that was spoken through Isaiah, it's finding its ultimate fulfillment in Me. It's happening," once again Yeshua said, "in My ministry and thus it's being fulfilled even to the maximum place". And so Jesus fills Israel's history up with meaning here. This practice, as I shared last week, of taking scriptures in their original historical context and then adding interpretation and adding levels of revelation and meaning to them, beloved this is not something that originated in the New Testament. This has been the rabbinic way for thousands of years.
I shared with you last week, that today young children that are being educated in yeshivas are learning this from an early age as they mature towards adulthood and continue with their studies in the yeshiva, which is like a Jewish seminary, each boy will have a partner. And they'll sit across the table form each other studying the Talmud, which is a Jewish compilation of writings dealing with how to apply the Torah and commentary on the Torah. The yeshiva partners will look at a verse in the Talmud and they will try to give it as many new meanings and interpretations as possible. The imagination is the limit. And as you look at rabbinic writings, you'll find that often times they took scriptures in the Hebrew Bible and gave them a whole new meaning and it was accepted within Israel. So what the New Testament writers did here in taking sections of the Hebrew Bible out of their original historical context and applying them to Yeshua, beloved, this has been the Jewish way for thousands of years already. What I'd like to do now, is move forward and I want to talk about specific types and shadows in the Tanakh that pointed to Yeshua.
Again, we're taking a broad brush now. Later on in the series we're gonna look at specific verses, predictive verses; but first we're gonna look at these typological incidents in the Tanakh and how they all were being fulfilled in the ministry of Messiah Jesus. It's very deep, very beautiful, and very full of meaning and insight. Let's begin with the whole concept of blood in the Hebrew Bible. The book of Vaikra or Leviticus chapter 17, verse 11 says this, "That the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar," sayeth the Lord, "to make an atonement for your soul; for it's the blood by reason of its life that makes atonement".
All through the entire Hebrew Bible we see how important blood is. So that for example, Israel's birth as a nation often times is referred to as taking place when God delivered them out of Egypt. How did God deliver them out of Egypt? Beloved, it was through the blood of the lamb that they applied on their door post. Then the Lord took them out of Egypt through the blood of the lamb, brought them to Mount Sinai. Moses went on top of the mountain. He was there as we know, for 40 days and 40 nights. He received Hashem. He received Father God's divine revelation and covenant; he came down from the mountain and when he came down from the mountain, he assembled all Israel before him. And he read the covenant to Israel and Israel said, after Moses read the covenant, Israel said to Moses in the presence of Hashem, in the presence of God, "All that He has said, we will do". And when Israel accepted the covenant, the Bible tells us Moses then, listen, sprinkled them with blood.
Notice, I'm tracing now the line of blood through the Hebrew Bible. Why am I tracing a line of blood through the Hebrew Bible when we're talking about Messianic prophecy? Because Yeshua's ministry climaxed with the shedding of His blood. And all these incidents of the blood in the Hebrew Bible, they were all pointing to Yeshua, to whom the entire Hebrew Bible aims. What continues to happen in the Hebrew Bible as it relates to blood? Well, as Moses begins to teach Israel about certain holy days that must be celebrated to Father God, to Yahweh, to the Father God of all creation; he gives us a calendar and the holiest day in the calendar is called Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement. And Moses told the children of Israel in the book of Numbers, exactly how Yom Kippur needed to be celebrated. The priest needed to take the blood of a bull and the blood of a goat. And the high priest took the blood of the bull and the blood of the goat. He brought it inside the most sacred place in the earth, the holy of holies in the tabernacle, which was later developed into a permanent temple in Jerusalem. And inside the holy of holies was the Ark of the Covenant. Inside the Ark of the Covenant were the Ten Commandments.
The high priest on Yom Kippur took the blood of the bull and the blood of the goat, brought it into that holy of holies and poured it on top of the Ark of the Covenant, often times referred to as the mercy seat. And when the Lord saw the blood of the innocent animal on top of the Ark of the Covenant, where the Torah was kept, where the Ten Commandments rather, were kept; He forgave the sins of the children of Israel, because the life of the flesh is in the blood. And the Lord gave it to us to make an atonement for your soul.
Do you see why Jesus had to die on the cross and why His blood needed to be shed, why that they needed to take that spear and thrust it in His side, so that the blood came out, so that final atonement could be made? Because the only way that man could ever have access to God, was when blood was shed, indicating that an innocent one had died in the place of the guilty. All the sacrifices of the Hebrew Bible, all the blood that spilled, was just a shadow that was fulfilled in King Jesus, who fulfilled all the Messianic prophecy in the Torah and in the Tanakh. Beloved, I hope you'll be with me next week. You may even want to take notes on this. Sometime you may be able to teach it to a friend yourself. This is Rabbi Schneider saying, God bless you. I love you and shalom.