Rabbi Schneider - Are You Going to Heaven?
This is so incredible because we can actually see who God is by looking at the prayer life of our Messiah, King Jesus. Did you know that you've been chosen, listen now, to be conformed to the image of God's Son; in other words, that the destiny that God has for you and I is to look exactly like Jesus. The Bible says that as we fix our eyes on the Lord through the Spirit, that we're being changed into the likeness of God. And how do we do that? Through the Word. One of the ways we fix our eyes on the Spirit is by fixing our eyes and heart on the Word, because the Bible tells us that the words that Jesus spoke in John, 6:63 are spirit and life. Jesus said the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.
So the Scripture tells us that as we fix our eyes on the Spirit, we're being changed from glory to glory into the likeness of God's Son. And so as we focus, beloved ones, on the prayer life of Jesus and truly are receiving his Word through this into our heart, we're actually being transformed, and washed, and sanctified, and becoming more and more like Jesus. We are truly on a supernatural journey of transformation. And do you know what? If you're the real thing, in other words, if you are truly in relationship with God, if God's Spirit is really in you, which is a real truth; in other words, those that know God and love God, it's because the Spirit of the living God actually inhabits them.
Paul said in the Book of Romans, if the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead doesn't dwell in you, then you don't belong to him. God's Spirit truly lives within his people. And when God's Spirit is in you, you know what's happening? You're being changed. I mean this is a scientific reality. In my life, every year I'm being changed, from, from, from grace to grace, from strength to strength, from glory to glory. Now I don't say this to bring any attention to myself. I'm just saying this is a real transformation and reality. I mean the people that know me see it. I'm constantly being changed. Why? I'm focusing on Jesus through his grace. I'm focusing on his Word. And as I do, I'm being changed into his likeness. The same thing is true of all of you that truly love God and are giving yourself to him.
So once again, beloved ones, as we're looking at the prayer life of Jesus, we're truly looking at the Spirit, according to God's Word. And as we do, we're being changed. With that said, let's continue now this series and we're looking today in the Book of Matthew, 26, verse number 39 and 42. I'm gonna be pulling just specific statements out of a few prayers and making reference because a lot of these concepts in the prayers I've spoken of in previous episodes. So because I don't want to be redundant, I won't always look at the complete prayer once again, beloved ones, because I've already covered portions of the concept of the prayer in other episodes.
So let's look again, Matthew, 26, verse 39 and 42: Jesus went a little beyond them, fell on His face and prayed, saying, listen, My Father, Jesus prayed, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not my will but Thy will be done. Now many of you are familiar with this portion of Scripture. Jesus is about to go to the cross. He's in agony. His soul is troubled, we're gonna look at in a little bit. It's very difficult. This was not an easy thing. The Bible says that the night before the crucifixion Jesus was so much in agony he was sweating, get this now, church, drops of blood. I mean, he was in agony. I mean his whole... He, he knew, listen, he knew that he was about to absorb the sin of the world.
I believe that the greatest pain that Jesus suffered on the cross, more so than the nails through his hands and his feet, the greater pain is when the Bible says that Jesus, he that knew no sin became sin on our behalf that we would become the righteousness of God. The greatest pain that Jesus was about to endure, greater than the nails through his hands and his feet, was the pain of knowing that he that was undefiled, that was the pure, spotless Lamb of God, he knew that he was about to take on the most wretched, vile sin of the entire world. And not only that, but all our sicknesses and diseases, according to the Book of Matthew, chapter 8, verse 16-17, where Jesus gets done healing all the people and Matthew says that it was to fulfill what was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah, chapter 53, verse number 3-4, when Isaiah says he himself took our sickness, he bore our sickness.
So what happened is when Jesus was on the cross as our substitute, he took into himself our sickness and our sin and he died in our place. Can you imagine how wretched that is? How defiled he became for us so that he who knew no sin became sin, the Bible says, on our behalf so that we can become the righteousness of God? That's what the pure, sinless Lamb of God was about to face. That's why it was so agonizing that he would sweat drops of blood about it; so painful that is undescribable to truly express what he went through to be able to be changed into that for the salvation of humanity. So Jesus is facing this huge mountain and he said, Father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me. In other words, if there's any other way; but then he said, yet not my will and he bowed his knee, and said not my will but Thy will be done.
I want to ask you a question. Are you and I practicing bending our knee. When we come to those difficult places in life where we know we're being challenged by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit to say no to ourselves and yes to God. I want to ask, beloved one, think about yourself. How are you and I doing when we're faced with difficult decisions in our life that we know are gonna cause us pain, but we know what the right thing to do is, are we trying to get around that thing in disobedience or are we bending the knee like Jesus and saying but Father, not my will but Thy will be done? This is the heart of a true disciple. That's why Jesus said, anyone that wants to follow me must pick up his cross, deny himself, and follow me. What does he mean, pick up his cross? It's exactly what we're talking about right here. The cross represented dying to self and doing the Father's will. Not my will, Jesus said, but Thy will be done.
So let's right now just present our hearts to the Lord. I want you to invite you if you can, even get on your knee with me. Maybe there's something in your life that the Father's been speaking to you about and you've been unwilling to listen, to let him in. You've been unwilling to yield your will to his will and say to him, yes, Father, your wine goes down smoothly. Not my will, but Thy will be done. That concept that I just shared, your wine goes down smoothly, that's from the Song of Songs when the Shulamite bride said your wine goes down smoothly, meaning that the will of God had now taken up primary residence in her heart so she wasn't fighting with God all the time about who she was gonna obey, her or the Lord. So right now, let's just bring right, our hearts to the Lord and say:
Father God, I come right now concerning areas in my heart that I have not bowed to you in; Father, concerning areas in my life where I have not bowed my knee like I see your Son, Jesus, doing here, where he knew how painful it was for him to go to the cross, and yet he bowed his knee in obedience and said yes to you and denied himself. So Father, right now, give me the grace, help me Father God, help me Father God, strengthen me by your Spirit, to say yes to you in those areas or that area of my life, Father, where I know that I have to do something. I've been putting off doing it. I've been unwilling to yield to you in this area of my life. But right here and right now, I make a decision to break that disobedience off my life. I refuse to yield to the stubborn heart any more. And I yield to you like I see Jesus doing here, saying yes to you and saying Father, not my will but Thy will be done.
Now I know for some of you there were specific areas in your life that the Lord has been dealing with you about and I pray and trust that just now as you said that prayer, that you just made a covenant with God to forsake disobedience, to forsake your own willfulness, to say yes to God, and to follow him alone. What an awesome example of how to live. Things in our life that the Holy Spirit speaks to us about, we say yes to him, not my will but Thy will be done.
I want to continue on now, beloved ones. I'm going to the Book of Luke, chapter number 23; Luke, 23, verse number 34 and 46, as we're examining the prayer life of Jesus. Jesus said, if the words that I speak, he said, will live in you; he said, if my words live in you, Jesus said, you will ask what you will in prayer and it will be done for you. As we receive the words of Jesus into our heart, truly in spirit and truth, and act on them, we're gonna find God answering our prayers, beloved, in a greater way than ever before. So those of you that just repented just now of a certain area in your life where you've been holding God out, where you've been stubborn, where you've known what he's wanted you to do but you've been unwilling to yield, but just now you received his Word and you let go of that thing, and you said yes to God and no to yourself, and you said not my will but Thy will be done, what you did is you received the words of Jesus into your heart, and as a result you're gonna operate in greater power, and you're gonna see more prayers being answered as Jesus is magnified in your life.
Now as Jesus was on the cross, as we're continuing now looking at the prayer life of Jesus, he says, Father, right before he was gonna pass away, right before he was gonna, his, his Spirit was gonna leave his body, right before he was gonna die physically, the last thing Jesus says is what? Matthew, 23:46, Jesus says, listen, Father, into your hands, Jesus said, I commit my Spirit. Once again, last thing Jesus said, Matthew, 23:46, Jesus said, Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit. Having said that, He breathed His last. You know that psychiatrists and psychologist have told us that subconsciously man's greatest fear is the fear of death. The Bible tells us that Satan holds people in bondage their whole life through the fear of death. That is the mother of all fears. In other words, many of us are not conscious that we're afraid to die. We have other fears that we are conscious of. But sometimes the root fear that you have, even though you're not conscious of it, is the fear of death.
In other words, you may be afraid of different things that you call phobias, and you don't think that you're afraid to die. But often times what happens is that the fear of death that people naturally have is pressed down, suppressed and covered up. But what happens is when that fear of death is suppressed and covered up so that you're not even aware that it's there, the fear that's covered up, listen now, it springs forth in different forms. It's like there's a seed that's there and you don't know what the genesis of the seed is, which is the fear of death, okay, but because you still have that fear there that's covered up, that fear is springing out of your life into strange ways.
Maybe you're afraid that when you're driving down the road you're gonna subconsciously or incontrollably, you know, go like this on the steering wheel and you're gonna go off the road. You're gonna lose control. Maybe you have a fear of blurting out something all of a sudden that you don't want to say. Maybe you have some other kind of strange fear of, of growing old. I mean even things that make sense, like losing a job, or, or, or going broke, all types of things we can think of make sense. But ultimately many of these fears, beloved, are rooted in the fear of death. But once we conquer the fear of death knowing that when we die we're gonna go to be with God, Jesus said, Father, into Thy hands I commit my Spirit. Once we break the fear of death, we're gonna realize that many of the other fears that we had go away.
See, because the fear of death represents, get it now, the ultimate fear of, first of all, the unknown. Think about it. Don't people fear the unknown? What is the greatest unknown? The greatest unknown is death itself. That's what Jesus is facing here on the cross. He's about ready to pass out of this world. He's facing what we call death. But Jesus says in the midst of facing death with confidence, Father, into Thy hands I commit my Spirit. He knew where he was gonna go. The Bible says in John, 13, that Jesus, knowing that he had come from God, knowing that the Father had given him all things, and knowing that he was going back to God, began to serve and wash the disciples feet. Jesus knew he was going back to God. So he knew that when he was gonna leave this world, he was gonna go back to God. But if you and I don't have a confidence that we're gonna go to be with God when we die, we're gonna have the ultimate fear of the unknown because we don't know what we're gonna face, and that's a scary thing.
And then secondly, death, beloved ones, when we don't know that we're gonna be going to God when we die, it represents the ultimate, listen now, fear of, get it now, being out of control. Many times people have a tremendous fear of being out of control. Think about it. If you don't have confidence when you leave this world that you're gonna go to be with God in his presence, that means if you don't have that assurance, that means that when you die, you are gonna be in a place where you're completely what feels to be out of control. I mean, who has control over death? Who has control over where they're gonna go when they die, outside of having a faith that's rooted in God's Son, Jesus, Yeshua the Messiah?
So I just wanted to point out to you here as we look into the prayer life of Jesus, Jesus, deep in his heart, as we're examining his heart, he had a tremendous assurance and knowing that when he left this world he was gonna go to be with God. And I want you, beloved ones, to have that same confidence and assurance in your life. See the Bible tells us concerning the Scriptures that these things have been written to you that believe in the name of the Son of God, get this now, that ye might know that you have eternal life. God wants us to have the assurance, like Jesus does, that when we leave this world, we're going to be with him.