Rabbi Schneider - Obedience, a Different Kind of Food
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels. And the reason that they're called the Synoptic Gospels, is because Matthew, Mark and Luke all synchronize with each other and tell us the same story. The Gospel of John however, is very unique. It's separate from Matthew, Mark and Luke in the sense that it brings to us a whole different dimension. Whereas Matthew, Mark and Luke are primarily focused in space and time, John is focused in the spirit and eternal realities. For example, John reveals to us Jesus' words, where Jesus said, "I am from above. You are from below. You are from this world. I am not of this world".
In other words, the Gospel of John speaks to us of the mysteries of the Spirit. This particular series that I'm in is called "Mysteries from the Gospel of John". We're now in the 5th season of this series and I'm gonna simply pick up where I left off last week. I encourage you to go back and watch all the earlier episodes. You can do so on YouTube and visit our website for information. We're picking up now in the 4th chapter. Now Jesus had just got done dialoguing with the woman at the well. He told her how He had water to give her, that if she drank of it, it would eventually become within her through the course of her life, a well that would satisfy her deepest longings as a human soul; because she had been created to know God and only in being brought into intimacy and relationship with Him, would her deepest heart's desires be fulfilled. And I went into great depth there.
Again, I encourage you to go back and watch those episodes. I want to move on now and cover some new territory. Jesus left the well, He left the woman from Samaria and His disciples are walking. And we pick back there in verse number 30. "They went out of the city and people were coming to Him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, 'Rabbi, eat.' But He said to them, 'I have food to eat that you do not know about.' So the disciples were saying to one another, 'No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?' Jesus said, 'My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.'"
I want to take a couple steps back and think about this concept of how doing the will of God becomes food to us. Again, Jesus refused the earthly food and He said, "I have food to eat that you guys don't know anything about. I'm eating from a different place. There's something that I'm eating and I'm eating in a way that you guys are ignorant about. My food," Jesus said to them, "is to do the will of Hashem, to do the will of the Father". I want to take that concept that Jesus modeled for us and I want to try to make some application for your life and for my life. We don't understand that doing the will of God, that obeying Him, actually is food for us.
Some people when they relate to the will of God, they relate to the will of God as if the will of God is law, like as if it's rules, as if it's simply commandments that they're obligated to keep and somehow by keeping them God's wrath won't be upon them. And if they keep them enough they won't go to hell. In other words, they look at obedience to the Word of God as simply something that they have to do to get to heaven, or something that they have to do to be in good standing. But beloved, it's so much more. Doing the will of God, obeying His commandments, relating to His law through spiritual eyes, actually becomes food to us. We read in the New Testament, that the law is good for those that use it lawfully. What does that mean? That when we approach the Law of God, both in the Hebrew Bible and the commandments of Jesus.
When we approach them with the right spirit, it's all good for us. In other words, a lot of Christians have been taught that we should completely forsake the Law of God in the Old Testament. But the New Testament never teaches us to completely forsake the Law of God as if it's irrelevant, as if it has no purpose. What the New Testament does teach us, is that we have to relate to the law contained in the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, properly in the spirit. Let me give you an example. The Lord, Hashem, gave the children of Israel the commandment of keeping Shabbat. It's part of the Ten Commandments, keeping the Sabbath; taking one day a week and resting unto God. We, many of us as New Testament believers, think there's no relevance for that principle in our life, because we think the law's been done away with. But Jesus Himself in the book of Mark said that the Sabbath was made for man.
Notice that when Jesus brings up the Sabbath, which is the fourth of the Ten Commandments, He doesn't bring up the Sabbath as some type of rule that we need to submit to to be considered righteous before God. But rather when Jesus brings up the Law or the commandment of the Sabbath, He says that it was made for man. Man wasn't made for the Sabbath, rather the Sabbath was made as a gift for man. What I'm trying to help you understand, is that Jesus said His food was to do the will of Him who sent Him. And when we approach God's self revelation, which is given us through His commandments, through His laws, through His ordinances. When we approach it in a way that we're not under it, but that there's life in relating to it properly, it becomes food to us.
So for example with the Sabbath, for me, I practice Shabbat from Friday night at sunset to Saturday night at sunset. I'm a Jewish person and I want to relate to my God as a Jewish person. I don't feel like I'm under the law, but for me Shabbat is important, it's holy. And when I practice Shabbat, beloved ones, not making this a rule or a law for you; but for me as a Jew when I practice Shabbat, it's food for me, because I disconnect myself from responsibility. I stay at home or very close to my home. I rest. I read spiritual literature. I enjoy my family. I disconnect from the world to just be before God, to be a human being rather than a human doing. I just put myself on Shabbat in a place of receiving, because six days God worked and then on the seventh day He rested.
So when I align myself with this creation principle, because Shabbat, or the principle of the Sabbath, existed before the Torah; not the Torah, before the Law in the Torah was given. So Shabbat is actually a creation principle. We read about it in the first few chapters of Genesis. God created the world in six days and He rested on the seventh. This is before the Law was given to Moses. This goes all the way back to creation. So I find when I honor Hashem, when I honor God, by resting on the seventh day of the week, making it a day that's different from the other days by not doing the same things; and I don't recreate on the day, it's not a day of recreation, but it's a day of restoration in Hashem. It's a day of looking at God to receive from Him. And when I do that, what happens is I receive food.
You see Jesus said His food was to do the will of Him who sent Him. The same thing is true when we obey the word of Jesus in our life in other areas. For example, when I go visit somebody that I feel the Lord is calling me to visit; maybe I'm tired, maybe there's other things that I could be doing, but I sense the Lord says, "I want you to reach out to that person for Me". And out of obedience I go visit that person, or I go reach out to that person. I call them up. I show them love. I sacrifice my own maybe spirit of being tired to go, to give. What happens? In doing that I'm refreshed. I receive food. I'm strengthened. And so I want you to understand doing the will of God and obeying Him, we don't do it simply because we want to be obedient yes, but we do it also because we realize it's life for us. We receive from Him in it.
In other words, by obeying God, listen, through whatever commandments, we call them in Hebrew mitzvot; by obeying Father God by keeping His commandments, Jesus said, "If you love Me," in John 14, "you'll keep My commandments". By obeying His commandments, beloved, we create a life line between heaven and earth. We're not just doing it out of religious obligation, but in obeying Him we create a channel for Hashem, for the Spirit of Elohim, for God's Spirit Himself to impart Himself into our life. When we align our self with Him by obeying Him in specific acts of obedience, what we're actually doing is creating a life line between Him and us, so that we receive Him in obedience.
Let me tell you a secret, we can't separate loving God from doing the work of God. Let me say it again, we can't separate loving God from doing the work of God. Remember we're in John chapter 4. Jesus got done, just got done saying to His disciples when they said, "Eat something Rabbi. Eat something". "I've got food," He said, "that you don't know about". And then He went on to verse 34. He said, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work". Let me just read it again. I want to just bring it back to the text. The disciples were saying to Him in the end of verse 31, "Rabbi eat". But He said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about". So the disciples were saying to one another, "No one brought Him anything to eat, did he"? Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work".
And now I'm following this concept up by sharing this, we cannot separate loving God from doing His work and completing the work that He gave us to do. Some of us think that we can love God and we go to church on Sundays, we listen to the worship music; which too often times is way too loud. Forgive me for stamping on somebody's toes right now, but I am so distraught by the fact that when I visit churches, so often times the music is so loud that there is absolutely no question that it's damaging people's hearing. And I have to ask myself, "Is this God, that the music has to be so loud that every time God's people come their ear drums are being damaged"? Listen, I'm not making a pet peeve here. This is the truth. Do you know that after a certain decibel of volume your ear drums will be damaged?
Let me ask you a question. How many pair of ears did God give you? He gave you one pair of ears and if you keep on subjecting yourself to music, to music that the decibel is so loud it's over what your ear drums can tolerate without being damaged, you're gonna find yourself suffering ear loss, hearing loss, early in your life. I know a worship leader that's a good friend of mine. He always turns it up so loud. I've been telling him, "Why do you do that? Why do you do that"? He finally confessed to me, his hearing's damaged. It's damaging everybody's ears. Why are we doing this from the church? It's crazy. It's crazy. Anyways, loving God is not just going into a worship service, you know where the music maybe is too loud, not always and thinking well we love God, because we feel something when the music's playing. No, loving God is obeying Him. It's doing His commandments. Jesus said, "My will is to do the will of Him who sent Me". If we love Him, Jesus said, "If you love Me you'll obey Me".
Now watch. I'm gonna go to John 17. Forgive me for harping on this, but I really want to stress this. It seems a little redundant perhaps, but I want you to understand loving God is a choice. It's not about feeling anything first, it's about doing His will. John chapter 17, we can't separate loving God from doing the work of God. In John 17 Yeshua is about to go to the cross and this is what He says in verse number 4. He says, "Father I glorified You on the earth," get this now, "having accomplished the work which You have given me to do". Jesus is getting ready to go to the cross. He's entrusting His love for the Father. He's saying, "Father I'm so excited that You're gonna glorify Me again together with You, that We're gonna experience what We had together before I came to the world". And then He said, "Father, I've completed the work that You gave me to do".
He didn't separate loving God from having a feeling and completing the Father's work. They were the same thing. Loving God was doing the work of God. And so what is the work of God? The work of God is to believe in Him, to develop a relationship with Him and also as Jesus continues in the text here in John 4, He speaks about being a witness. So let's go back to the text where we're at in John 4. We're looking to uncover the mystery. The question is, will you receive it? Because I'm about to share something with you that you've heard it so many times some of you, that it rolls off your back like water off a duck's back. But the fact is, you've never actually done it.
Jesus says to the disciples, "I've got food that you don't know about and the food that I've got is to do the will of the Father". Look what He says in the very next verse. "Do you not say, 'There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest'? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for the harvest. Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true, 'One sows and another reaps". And He sends them then into the harvest field, listen, to be His witnesses and to witness to the kingdom of God. Jesus' is saying, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me". And what was the food? He was sent into the world to be a witness for the kingdom and then to die on the cross for our sins and all the other work that He accomplished in His own body.
But immediately after He says His food is to do the will of the Father, He tells His disciples what they should be doing, what their food should be. And He starts talking about not making excuses about why you're not witnessing. "My food," He said, "is to do the will of Him who sent me". And then He says, "Do not say," very next words, "Do not say there are yet four months and then comes the harvest". What is He saying? He's saying, "Don't make excuses up while you're not witnessing. Don't say people aren't ready yet. Don't say they don't want to hear. Don't say there's not an opportunity for you. Don't say there are yet four months until the harvest comes". He says, "Behold I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields. They're already white for the harvest".
There's already people in your life. God's created open doors for you to be a witness to. How do you be a witness? You first of all just be real. Be humble. Don't act like we're better than them, right? We don't witness to people as if we've got it all together. No, we don't lecture them. We don't operate out of pride. We don't use our Bible as a sword. We're simply honest with people. We tell them what we struggle with and we tell them how real Jesus is to us. We share with people what God's done for us. If He's done a miracle, we share it with people. We make Jesus real to other people by being authentic with them, not as those that hold our lives over theirs as if we're more righteous. We're real.
I remember somebody said to me, a person that I just not long ago met. They said that, "When you talk to us it doesn't feel like you're preaching to us". They said to me, "It feels like you're pulling for us". Why is that? Because I'm humble when I do it, by the grace of God. I certainly have a lot of pride to be rooted out of me, but I strive to be humble, to not, to just be another human being, to say we, not you, we. And I just share, beloved, who Jesus is to me and who He is. Beloved, I want you to know we can't know God if we're not willing to do His will. Do you hear me, what I'm saying to you? We can't know God if we're not willing to do His will. When we do His will, beloved, His will becomes food for us. As we die to our self, to be obedient, we're strengthened in the Spirit. The Bible says in the book of Acts, "God gives the Holy Spirit to those that obey Him". The Spirit's a gift, but the more we obey, the more we receive. Let's be like Jesus.
I just created a website. It's called WhoAmI.com. All you have to do is take the link WhoAmI.com and post it on your social media pages, your Facebook, etc. It's a way to be a witness. Beloved, go to WhoAmI.com, check out the three short videos, post it on your social media. Let's be His witnesses in the earth and do His will.