Rabbi Schneider - What Does Saved by Grace Mean?
I believe the most profound need that you and I have as human beings is to know God as our Father. I grew up in a home where my physical father was present. And in so many ways he's a good father and was a good father. And I would not be who I am today, as I said last week, without God imparting to me through my earthly father. But even as a young person, I wanted so much more from a father. I remember as I wrestled going through school, I wanted so badly for my wrestling coach to put his arm around me and call me son. I remember wanting to go to military school because I craved discipline. You see, deep down inside whether you're a son or a daughter we need to be affirmed by a father. We need boundaries in our life. We need to know that we're protected. We need to know that our father is strong. And Father God wants to provide all these things to each one of his sons and daughters.
As I've said, if you were raised in a home where you had no father at all, or if you had an abusive father, or if you had a father that wasn't present; even though he was there physically he wasn't there emotionally or spiritually, I want you to know, with God all things can become new and Father God can fill every empty space in your life and my life regarding our need for a father. You see, Jesus said in the Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 18 and 26, these words. He said: I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.
Now in case you're wondering whether you saw this broadcast last week, you didn't. I'm just picking up where I left off last week. Right before Jesus went to heaven, he spoke to the greatest need that you and I have. He spoke to having what I'm calling an orphan spirit. He said, I will not leave you as orphans. What is an orphan? An orphan is somebody without a father. A father provides protection. A father provides identity. A father provides security. And Jesus said, listen, I'm going away. You won't see me physically anymore. But I want you to know, he said, you are not gonna be left alone. The Father's gonna come to you. I am gonna send you, Jesus said, the Ruach HaKodesh, the Holy Spirit.
Did you know, beloved, that outside of Jesus, everybody's an orphan, and that before you were born again, you were an orphan in the greatest sense of the word? The Book of Ephesians, chapter number 2, verse 1-6, described what happened when Adam sinned and how it affected your life and my life, and how Adam's sin made you and I orphans. Listen to this. Ephesians, 2, 1-6: And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Everybody that hasn't been regenerated, we were living by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, which are the sins that the devil tempted Adam and Eve with. The devil said to him, if you eat it, it's gonna make you like God. You'll know good from evil. It's gonna be good for the taste. It's pleasant for the eyes. This is the spirit that people are led by before they're brought into a regenerating experience and before they come to know God as Father.
Paul continues: Among them we too all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised up with Him, and seated with Him in the heavenly places. You see, beloved ones, what happened is that when Yeshua came, he brought us out of this isolated experience, in which Paul described, that we were separated from God, alienated from God, and through regeneration we've been brought into an experience not only with God but with knowing God, praise the Lord, as our Father.
In the Book of Malachi, chapter number 4, verse number 6, we read that before the coming of the Lord, that Elijah would come, the prophet would come, and he would restore the heart of the children back to the Father. Listen again, Malachi, chapter 4, verse 6: He will restore the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse. When John the Baptist came, Jesus pointed at John the Baptist and said, This is Elijah, if you can receive it. In other words, the primary, one of the primary purposes of John the Baptist was to restore our hearts back to Father. He's not talking just about earthly fathers there. He's speaking prophetically. He's talking about restoring our hearts back to Father God. And through Jesus's sacrifice on the cross, making Father God's heart active and experiential in our life. Because without a father, the land is struck with a curse.
Listen what Malachi said again: He will come and restore the hearts, speaking of Elijah. And remember Jesus pointed at John the Baptist and said he is Elijah. And so through Elijah pointing us to Jesus, our hearts would be restored to the Father, because Jesus said, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father but through me. Jesus taught us and modeled for us how to live in relationship with the Father. So once again: He will restore the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.
Now what does this mean where the Lord says here, that through the restoration of our hearts back to him and placing us in a position where we can walk in his fellowship through the cross, through Jesus, the land won't be smite with a curse. What does this mean? Did you know that when you look in the prison systems the percentage of those that are in prison that grew up in homes without fathers is astronomical? That whether it's drug abuse, whether it's teenage pregnancy, whether it's criminal activity, you look at every social ill, and the root of almost every social ill is the result of not having a strong father in the home. And so all these sins and all these abnormalities and malfunctions of society, the root of these things is not having a father. And through, through restoring, beloved one, our heart back into a relationship with Abba, with Daddy, with Father God, the land is then freed from judgment because through restoration with the Father through coming to know him as Father, our life then takes on a fragrance that's pleasing to him rather than we would continue in the pattern that we just read about in Ephesians, chapter 2, living in the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life that brings judgment.
And so when you and I are brought in to a restored relationship with Father God, we're brought into blessing. And every part of our life, beloved, then receives the blessing of Abba Father, just like John prayed that we would prosper and be in good health even, hallelujah, as our soul, praise his holy name, prospers. Jesus' mission was that he would die for our sin, and that he would reveal the Father to us, and bring us to the Father. Listen what Jesus prayed in John, 17. We call John, 17, the high priestly prayer because this is the prayer that Jesus prayed before he went to the cross. And you could say that a person's most weighty words are often times the words that a person will speak knowing that their death is imminent. In other words, you're gonna communicate to your loved ones the deep, deepest most weighty matters of your heart when you have a last opportunity to speak to them before your impending death.
And so when we come to John, 17, Jesus knows he's on the way to the cross. He's about to be crucified. And so he speaks his most weighty words, beloved, to those that he loved. Listen what he said in verse number 26. He says to the Father: I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known so that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them and I in them. In other words, Jesus is about to go to the cross. He's speaking the most weighty matters. He's speaking the burden of his heart. He's speaking the purpose for which he came and lived on earth for 33 years. He's carrying now the burden that, that he, that he had all his life that led him to the cross. And he said, Father, I've accomplished the work that you've given me to do. And listen what he said. I have made your name know to those that you love, to those whom you've given me, to the ones that Jesus referred to as the Father's sheep in John, 10.
And Yeshua said, and Father, I will continue to make it known. In other words, beloved one, Jesus got to the end of his life and he had completed his mission. He was about to go to the cross, bringing the mission to a climax, but his purpose was to reveal the Father to us and to die for our sins that he could bring us into relationship with the Father. He said, Father, I've revealed your name to them and I'll continue to make it known. Once again the name that he was revealing, beloved, was the name of Father, Father, Father. And Jesus taught us how to live in relationship with the Father by modeling for us what it means to be a son. Jesus showed us how to live as a son. And so we see the way that Jesus related to the Father. I could, I encourage you to go through the Gospel of John, and underline in John's Gospel every time that Jesus spoke to the Father, and you'll see how Jesus related to the Father. He lived his life to do the Father's will. He lived in total dependency on the Father. His food was through the will of him that sent him. Jesus was totally in love with the Father, was totally humbled under the Father's presence. I mean he walked in total dependency and submission. And he lived for the Father's glory. He showed us how to be a son. And Jesus is calling us, beloved, to in him walk out this same lifestyle by the Holy Spirit.
Now I want to give you some last words of encouragement before I close this series. I'm going to the Gospel of John now, beloved one, chapter number 13; John, chapter 13, verse number 3-4. Hear the Word of God. This is one of my favorite Scriptures in the entire Word of God. This was the last message that I preached in Bible school. Here's the Word of God: Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands... Knowing who had given all things into his hand? What? The Father. He knew he had everything. You see, Jesus wasn't living from a lack mentality. He wasn't living from a scarce mentality. He wasn't living from a poverty mentality. He was living from an abundant mentality knowing, it says here, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given him all things. Now this doesn't mean that Jesus drove around, you know, on the nicest donkey in Jerusalem. It doesn't mean he dressed in the finest clothes. But he knew that everything he needed for fullness in life the Father had given him; that he was lacking nothing that pertained to life and godliness.
And you know what the Bible says about us? That God has blessed us. The Father has blessed us with every spiritual blessing of the heavenly places. Father wants you to know that today. He wants you to begin to affirm it. Don't live from a fear mentality, a scarce mentality. Live from an abundant mentality. The Father has given you all things. Confess it. Declare it. Warfare into it by faith. Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and listen now Church, beloved one, and that He had come forth from God. He had an identity. See when we know who our Father is, we'll know who we are. When you and I see God in his glory and we know that God is our Father, and we see him in us, when we come into revelation of God's glory of the Father's Son living in us and through us, you'll know who you are. You won't need all the circumstantial things, all the superficial things, to put on a face of an identity that only lasts as long as you're in a protected, superficial environment. No, you and I will come to really know who we are so that everything could be stripped away from us, our looks, our beauty, all of it could be stripped away, and we would still have a great self-image because we would know, and know that we've come from God.
This is what Jesus said. He wasn't depending on a false face image. He was revelatory understanding that he was the Father's Son, and in that he was free. So knowing that he had come afore from God, and knowing that he was going back to God; not only did he know who he was, not only did he know that the Father was in him and he was in the Father, that the DNA that he had was the Father's DNA, which is the same of you, every child of God. I break every curse right now and every lie that's preventing you from knowing that you're the son and daughter of, of the living God, that you're a child and a daughter of the Most High God, that God's your Father. I release revelation to you right now knowing that he had come from Father God, and knowing that he was going back to Father God, he knew his destiny. He knew his destiny. He wasn't empty 'cause he knew who he was, and he knew where he was going, and he knew that the Father had given him all things. He was free.
And so the next verse said, knowing that in verse 4, He got up from the supper. He laid aside his garments, and taking a towel He girded Himself and began to wash the disciples' feet. You see, because Jesus knew he already had everything, which is the same for you. God, his Father, has given you everything that you're gonna need in life. It's already there. When you need it, it's gonna be there. And Yeshua, knowing that he had come from God, he knew who he was. And I want to encourage you, keep praying, keep asking, keep knocking, Father, to reveal to you that you're his daughter or that you're his son, that you'll know his DNA is in you. And Jesus then, knowing he was going back to God, he knew his destiny. He knew that this world was not his home, that there was something so much greater ahead for him. He had purpose and destiny. Knowing all that, he was free, beloved, listen now, to be concerned about other people.
You see, if we don't know who we are, then the whole, all our energy's gonna be spent trying to make ourselves somebody. We're gonna be competing with everybody else for a sense of significance. We're gonna try to take all the world has to offer to try to make ourselves see ourselves as valuable. We're gonna be competing. There's gonna be strife. There's gonna be division if we don't know who we are because we're, we have such a need for significance that we'll do whatever we need to do to find, to try to feel significant. And for many that involves beating up other people, you know, not physically so to speak but doing whatever they have to do to make themselves above others so that they can feel like somebody. But when we know who we are, we don't need to do that.
And so Jesus, knowing who he was, knowing where he was going, and knowing that the Father had given him everything so he didn't have to, you know, be operating in greed; he didn't operate on a scarcity fear base mentality, take, take, take, take because he was afraid he wouldn't have it or would run out. He knew the Father had given him everything. He knew who he was. He knew where he was going. So as a result of that, beloved one, he was able then to focus on the needs of others. And so he girded himself with a towel 'cause he was free. He already was full. He already had everything. He had identity and destiny. And in that state, he girded himself with a towel and he began to wash the disciples' feet. Isn't that beautiful?
Father God, Daddy, I pray for myself and for everyone right now. I want to encourage you, beloved, daughter child of God, son of God, put your hand over your heart and let's just ask Abba Daddy for this together. Father God, Daddy, I come to you as your son right now in Jesus's name, or I come to you as your daughter right now, Abba Daddy, in Jesus's name. I want and need what Jesus had. You said to me, Daddy, that you've adopted me as a son. You've adopted me as a daughter in your Son. And now I ask that I would understand through the revelation of the Holy Spirit through your Son, that I would understand that I've come from you, that I'm born of you, that your spiritual DNA is in me; Daddy, that I would understand that you have given me all things already. Everything I ever need in life, I already have. It will be there for me when I need it; that I don't have to have any fear or lack. And that Daddy, I'm going back to you;