Rabbi Schneider - Fulfill Your Deepest Desires
Now we've been in the 4th chapter and in the 4th chapter we have a phenomenal dialogue going on between Yeshua, Jesus and this woman at the well. And He tells her that He has water to give her, that if she received it, would become within her a well of living water springing up to eternal life, so that she would thirst no more. And that is where I focused in season 4. Again, I really want to encourage you, go back and listen to those messages. Today we're gonna move on. I'm picking up in the 16th verse and we're entering in to a dialogue about God's purpose for the Jewish people in the earth. Hear the Word of God. The grass withers and the flowers fade, beloved one, but the Word of the Lord abides forever. He said to her, "Go call your husband and come here".
The woman answered and said, "I have no husband". Jesus said to her, "You have correctly said, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly". The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship". Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews".
So let's put this in perspective in our own language here. Jesus had just been speaking to this woman about the mysteries of the Spirit, that He had come to give the zoe, the uncreated, the eternal life of the Spirit to human kind. And He said to her, "If you ask Me, I'm gonna give you this life and it's gonna fulfill the purpose for what you're created for. It's gonna fulfill your deepest desires". He said, "You'll thirst no more". I want you just to consider with me, human beings if you think about the primary banner over the life of every human being; the primary banner in the natural world over every human being, is the word desire.
Think about human beings. What motivates us? What gets us out of bed? What gets us going? It's one desire that we look to be fulfilled after the next desire. We get up. We want something to eat. We go to work. We're looking for a promotion, or we're looking for more money, or we're looking for somebody to affirm us, or we're looking to have the desire of being important feel be fulfilled. We're constantly trying to fulfill our desires. And Jesus said to her, "Listen". He said, "If you'll receive this water that I have for you. It's gonna fulfill all your desires. This Spirit that I want to give you, it is the answer to your life". And then He says this to her, He says, "Woman go call your husband". And she says, "Well I have no husband". Yeshua said, "You have said truly. You've had five husbands and the man that you're now living with, he's not your husband".
At this point she knew in an instant that she was dealing with somebody supernatural. She knew He was not just from this planet. She said, "Sir I perceive you're a prophet". Yeshua said, "You have said rightly I'm a prophet". And then the dialogue continues and she brings up the fact that this Yeshua that she was speaking with, that she realized was somebody from another world, she realized that He was dressed as a Jew and that He was a Jew. And she started talking with Him about the difference between the way that the Samaritans, which she was, practiced their religion and the way that the Jewish people practiced their religion. And she said, "When we Samaritans worship in this mountain we know that you Jews, you worship in Jerusalem". Jesus said to her, "Woman, an hour is coming and now is where it's neither in this mountain or in that mountain, for the Father is looking for those that will worship Him in Spirit and in truth".
Look with me once again. Verse 20, "Our fathers," she said, "worshiped in this mountain and you people," meaning the Jewish people, "say that you worship in Jerusalem". Jesus said, "Woman," in verse 21, "believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews". We really have two different separate phenomenons, beloved ones, going on here. On the one hand we realize that Yeshua is calling people to worship the Father in the Spirit. It's neither in this mountain where the Samaritans were worshiping or in Jerusalem where true worship takes place. True worship takes place where our spirit, where human kind's spirit meets the Father's spirit outside of time, outside of space, outside of any material place on the planet. It's spirit. Spirit is above the natural.
In other words, Jerusalem is a very, very special sacred place. The Lord is connected to Jerusalem like no place else on the earth. There's something elevated about Israel above all the other geographical places on the planet. I know that for a fact. But on the other end there's something even greater than that. You can connect with the Father in the spirit, whether you're in China, whether you're in Nepal, whether you're in Kansas, whether you're anywhere on earth; because we connect with the Father in the Spirit and the Spirit is not part of the natural world.
So on the one hand Yeshua is going to be teaching us about true intimacy with the Father, takes place not in a specific material location. You don't have to go to this spot on the earth, or that spot on the earth, to enter into the most intimate place with the Father; because it doesn't happen in a natural geographical setting. It happens supernaturally in the spirit, outside of time and outside of space. But then there's something that seems to be opposite of this going on in the conversation. Because Jesus begins to speak about the fact that the revelation of the Father takes place and is released to the world through the physical descendants, so now we're back in time and space, the revelation of the Spirit has taken place and been released to the world through the physical descendants of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, that God's revelation has come to you and I through the Jews.
So let's look once again back at the text. Verse 22, Yeshua says, "You worship," He's speaking to the Samaritan woman, "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews". So on the one hand we walk with God in the Spirit. It's above time, space, any material thing. And on the other hand, the Jewish people are a people that are physical, they're not spiritual. They're spiritual, but they're physical, the physical lineage of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob and that's where revelation has come from. So I want to hit on both of those.
I want to speak first of all about the last verse that we were at, about the blessing that has been released to the world through the Jewish people. Now most of you know this and in no way am I puffing up myself or wanting to puff up Jewish people in pride. But I think we need to understand the ways of God and how He's revealed Himself to the world. And He's revealed Himself to humanity, beloved once again, through the Jews. So Jesus said, "We know what we're worshiping, because salvation is from the Jews". In other words, for hundreds and hundreds of years, almost 2,000 years, the church has tried to know Father God without going through the revelation that He's given the Jewish people. They've tried to actually cut the Jewish people out of relationship with God. It's called replacement theology.
The church began to teach, you know what? "The Pharisees and the Jewish leaders rejected Jesus, most Jewish people today don't believe in Jesus, therefore God has rejected the Jewish people", they've taught. And the promises that once were given to the Jewish people, now have been taken away because of the Jewish people's rejection of Jesus and those promises now belong to us, the Gentile church. And the Gentile church in fact began to look down on anything Jewish. That's why so many different days in the church's calendar distanced themselves from the Jewish holy days. For example, the church distanced the celebration of Passover by calling Passover Easter. In reality, it was Passover that the early church fathers celebrated. They called it Passover. It was only later that you'll find that in the translations of our Bible the word Passover, Pesach, was literally changed to Easter. Why did the translators make that change? Because they wanted to distance themselves from things Jewish.
We know that through the century, for example during the Spanish inquisition, they were forcing Jews to give up all their Jewish practices and to embrace Jesus. But they taught that in order for you to embrace Jesus you have to give up all your Jewish practices, you have to no longer identify with anything that God gave you through the Hebrew Bible, through the Tanakh. That's all done away with, it's all gone. That's old school stuff. It's not relevant anymore. Get rid of that. You just follow Jesus now and be like us. There has been this anti-Semitic religious spirit in the Christian culture for almost 2,000 years. So today, many, many, Christian people, they don't understand that our faith came to them through the Jewish people. They don't understand how the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament connect together. They don't understand how Jesus is the King of the Jews. They don't understand that the culmination of the plan of Salvation will result when Jesus returns and Jewish people see Him and look upon Him whom they've pierced.
They've discounted the Jewish people and the role that Jewish people play in God's redemptive plan. But not so with Jesus, not so with Paul, not so with the writers in the New Testament. They realized that God had and still has a special relationship with the Jewish people. Paul said concerning the Jews, that the gift and call of God on their life is irrevocable. And so I want you to appreciate the fact that beloved, the Jewish people have been the couriers of God's revelation into the earth. The Hebrew Bible came to us through the Jewish people. The Brit Chadashah, the New Testament writers were all Jewish. Yeshua, Jesus Himself came to the world clothed in the humanity of Jewish flesh. He died on the cross with a sign above His head that said, "Jesus, Yeshua of Nazareth. King of the Jews" as He hung on the cross.
He sits in heaven right now according to the book of Revelation chapter 5, as the lion from the tribe of Judah; from where we get the word Jews. Jews coming out of the word Judah. And when we get to heaven we're gonna meet, listen now, Jesus who describes Himself there at the end of Revelation, as the offspring of David. And then finally those of us that enter in to the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city, there's 12 gates there and the 12 gates are inscribed with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. So beloved, your faith is a very Jewish thing and it's important for you to embrace that, to love that, and even to bless the Jewish people for all they've done for you. You see Paul warned us in the book of Romans that Gentiles should not be arrogant against the Jewish people, because everything that they've received has come to them from the Jewish people. And we should honor those to whom honor is due.
Zechariah told us in the 8th chapter of his prophetic book, that the end of the days 10 men from all nations will take a hold of the garment of a Jew and say, "We want to go with you. For we know that God is with you". In fact we see when we travel around the world to places like Africa, there's such an expectation when I come, because I'm a Jewish believer in Jesus. And they've never met a Jewish believer in Jesus before and they realize that to meet a Jewish believer in Jesus is a fulfillment of end times prophecy that's taking place on the earth before Jesus' return. They have such high expectations that they're gonna receive something special and supernatural from God, because a Jew is preaching the Gospel to them, that we see blind eyes being open. People with deaf ears beginning to hear. People will run forward, running forward to receive Salvation by the thousands at a time.
You see Paul told us in the book of Romans, beloved one, that if Gentiles were blessed when the Jews rejected the Gospel. What did Paul mean by that? He said, speaking to the Gentile church, he said, "If you were blessed when the Jews rejected the Gospel". Now how were Gentiles blessed when the Jews rejected the Gospel? Because Paul, who is the primary writer of the New Testament and the primary first missionary of the church, he started out when Jesus appeared to him, going to his Jewish brothers about the message that he received. He started out going to Jerusalem, going to the temple, to share the revelation he had received about Yeshua. But when he was in Jerusalem the Lord appeared to him and spoke to him. And he said, "Saul, Paul, they're not gonna receive your testimony here. My Jewish people here will not listen to you. I'm sending you far away, Paul, to the Gentiles where they'll receive the word that I've given you".
And so as a result of the Jewish people not being willing to receive the message from Paul, Paul was sent to the Gentiles and as a result of that the Gospels eventually trickled down to you. It spread through the whole world. Why? Because the Jews rejected and as a result of their rejection the Gospel was brought to the Gentile world. So you were blessed because the Jews rejected Jesus and it came to you because of that. Paul said this. He said, "How much more will you be blessed when Jews come to faith? It's gonna be life from the dead for you". You were blessed when they rejected, when Jewish people receive it; Paul said, when they receive Jesus it's gonna be such a blessing to you. It's gonna give life to you that can only be compared as something that is a small trickle of being raised from the dead. Paul writes that in the book of Romans.
And so Jesus said, "Salvation is from the Jews". And I notice that a lot of times in the Gentile church there's not an honor towards the Jewish people. Even myself, I notice often times when I'm with pastors, they don't want to lose their place. They're threatened by a Jew that believes in Jesus and so sometimes Gentile pastors will try to diminish a Jew that believes in Jesus; say, "Oh there's nothing special about the call on your life". Because they don't want to lose their important place. They want to be the leaders. They want to be the heads. But the fact is, there's a supernatural call upon the Jewish people and when a Jew comes to faith, there's something very special that comes forth from that Jewish believer's life that can be a blessing to those that will receive it.
Beloved, when you look around the world today, it's easy for a thinking person to see once they analyze, there's something special about the Jewish people. You look at the amount of medical breakthroughs that have come into the world through Jewish people, the amount of inventions that have come through Jewish people, the amount of Nobel prizes that have been rewarded to Jewish people. When you look at the small numbers of Jewish people that live upon the earth, less than one half of one percent of the world's population are Jewish; but you compare that small, almost insignificant number to the amount of impact they had and it's entirely disproportional. What does that tell us? There's something special about the Jew.
Mark Twain said, "All these other people groups have come and gone, but the Jew is immortal". Of course that's an exaggeration, but he was just marveling at the fact how different people groups, the Babylonians, all these different empires have come and gone, but here are the Jews today. So small in number. They still remain, still having impact in the earth. Let's not forget the Jewish people. The Lord told us He'll bless those that bless the Jewish people, but He'll curse those that curse the Jewish people. When there's a mass of Jewish people, beloved ones, that come to faith in the world and they call upon Jesus to return, that's gonna usher in His return.
That's why ministries like Discovering the Jewish Jesus and others like mine are important. We're bringing the Gospel, beloved, to Jewish people to help them understand that believing in Yeshua is truly the most Jewish thing that a Jew could ever do. I realize the message is not popular and I realize the majority will not receive it, but God's people have always been a remnant from the very beginning and it will be so even to the end. And beloved, His chosen people are not just from amongst Jews only, but from among Gentiles and every tribe, tongue, and nation. God loves you beloved one. I love you. God bless you and until next week, shalom.