Rabbi Schneider - God's Plan for Jewish People
We as Jewish people, oftentimes we think of ourselves as God's chosen people. But we have to understand what it means to be chosen. We were chosen to be the carriers through which Messiah would come to the entire world through. And so we need to understand that God is the God of the entire world, that He loves Jew and Gentile equally and alike in Messiah, Yeshua. That's why Paul tells us that in Yeshua, the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile has been broken down, that Jew and Gentile have become one in Jesus. It's an interesting thing that the Lord kept Israel separate to keep them as a special people through whom which Messiah would come into the world through. But unfortunately, sometimes the separateness of the Jewish people has caused a division between Jew and Gentile relating to each other.
This is why Paul was upset in his prophetic writings when one of the other apostles was kind of being double-minded and two-faced. That when he was with Jewish people, he lived like a Jew, then when he was with Gentile people, this other apostle let his guard down a little bit and was friendly with the Gentiles. But then when the Jewish people came to where Peter was being friendly with the Gentiles, Peter then began to kind of like withdraw from the Gentiles because he didn't want the Jewish people that had come to observe him being friendly with Gentiles. So Paul rebuked Peter to his face and said, "You're being a hypocrite. God has called us to be one in Messiah. Jew and Gentile one in Messiah. So don't bow down to this political and religious pressure thinking that you can't have fellowship with Gentiles when Jewish people are around".
So I'm simply saying that we see revealed in the ancient prophetic writings, that when Messiah came, He would break down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile that would become one Messiah, that there would be only one pathway to the Lord. It's not through the law. It's through Messiah who became our righteousness and took our iniquity and sin in His own body on the tree. And some of us that are schooled in doctrine and in the faith, we understand this. I wanted, however, to take things a different direction now. Now that we understand the Jew and Gentile are one Messiah, that there's no discrimination in the Lord, now that we've laid that foundation and see how this was indicated in messianic prophecy, that it would be the case going back to the book of Isaiah, but now I want to go a different direction. And I want to talk about the fact that we have gone so far in minimizing the role that Jewish people play, that we have lost something in the process.
You see, the scripture says there's no longer Jew or Gentile, there's no longer Jew or Greek, there's no longer male or female. We're all one in Messiah. And what Paul was referring to there when he said there's neither Jew or Gentile, there's neither male or female, we're all one in Messiah, what Paul was referring to there is not that there are not still distinctions. There are differences between men and women, right? I mean, does anybody have to really argue with that? All we have to do is look at the anatomy of male and female. Oftentimes, there's a huge psychological difference between the female brain and the male brain. I realize there's exceptions and there's a little man in every woman, a little woman in every man in terms of each one being able to adopt and share some of the other sex's attributes. In other words, as men, we have a real strong initiative. But that doesn't mean that as a man I can't also be nurturing.
So the nurturing characteristic would be a more feminine characteristic. So there are some of each of the male and female qualities in both male and female, even as some women are real drivers, which is generally a male characteristic. But still there's distinctions between men and women. Generally speaking, women are more nurturing, men are more drivers, women are more relational oriented, men are more goal-oriented. And putting that aside, if someone argue with that, let's just simply say, if we just look at the scientific anatomy of men and women, there's a difference between a male and a female. So when Paul said there's no longer male or female, he wasn't saying that there's no distinction anymore. What he meant was, beloved ones, that there is no discrimination.
Paul said there's no longer male or female, Jew or Gentile. He wasn't speaking about distinctions. He was speaking about discriminations. That Jew and Gentile now come to Messiah on equal footing, that male and female come to Messiah now on equal footing. But there are still distinctions. And unfortunately, many in the church, in Christendom, have gone so far to neutralize the role that Israel plays, the role that the physical descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob play, and the future destiny that God has for the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The churches so minimize that saying that there is no longer anything special about Jewish people anymore, Jew and Gentile are one in Messiah. The church has gone so far that direction that we have lost a huge core part of the heart of God and indeed the revelation of Scripture.
I want to communicate to you, beloved one, today, that God still has a huge distinctive role for Israel during this time. And there's a huge role that Israel is going to be playing eschatologically or in the future of God's redemptive plan. I want to talk with you about that today. I'm going to the book of Deuteronomy 32. This is often called the song of Moses. And there's a very mysterious and oftentimes overlooked verse here. Some of you are in the habit of reading through the Bible every year or every three years. And undoubtedly, in your reading through the Bible you've read this verse before. But I would guess that, for many, this verse has gone right over our heads when we've read it. Let's read it now, beloved ones, with a new consideration. Here the Word of God. Deuteronomy 32:8. "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the people according to the number of the sons of Israel. For the LORD's portion is His people; Jacob who is Israel and his 12 sons is the allotment of His inheritance".
Let's consider verse eight again. "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated-this is creation-the sons of man, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel". Beloved, this is creation language. When God created the world, when He created the sons of men, when He set the boundaries of the nation, He did it through the funnel, through the lens of Israel. Israel is center, Israel was center, and Israel will be center. Yeshua said in the gospels to the Jewish people, "You will not see me again until you're saying, 'Baruch haba B'Shem, Adonai.'" (Blessed it is He that comes in the name of the Lord). In other words, Yeshua was saying He will not return until His Jewish kinsmen, the Israelites in the flesh, His own people, until His own people, the Jewish people are saying, "Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord". Jesus said, "I'm not coming back until my own people, the Hebrews, call upon me to return".
You see, beloved, His coming back will not happen for you until it happens for Israel. Listen to what I just said. Jesus is not coming back for you until Israel is calling upon Him to return. God's redemptive purposes are intricately bound with the salvation of Israel. But many in the church today have completely overlooked Israel. They don't teach on Israel. All they talk about is the kingdom now, the kingdom is here, the charismatic gifts, body life, spirit life. They turn up the amplifiers in the sanctuaries to try to make people feel what they're telling them as the Holy Spirit. And Israel is completely left out of the picture. But when you read the writings in the Hebrew Bible, and when you read the writings of the Apostle Paul, it's far from the case. When you read the writings of the Apostle Paul, you find that Israel's salvation and God's covenant people, His first covenant people coming to faith is intricately bound up in all that God is doing on the earth.
Listen to what Paul said, for example, in the book of Romans 11, beginning in verse 15. The grass withers and the flowers fade, and the word of God abides forever. Now, why am I talking about this? Because I've been talking about the Messianic prophecies that enlighten us to the fact that when Messiah came, His ministry would extend to the entire world, Jew and Gentile alike, that Jew and Gentile would be one in Messiah. But in that understanding, too many have cast Israel's special role off completely. They don't want Israel to be special. It threatens them. They want to be first. They don't want Israel to have a special role because that threatens their own role. And so they've cast the role of Israel and God's redemptive plan out of their theology. They don't talk about Israel. Many within the church don't even preach the gospel to the Jewish people, and they condemn Jews like myself that are because it makes Jewish people mad and they're more concerned with being friends with Jewish people than they are with preaching the truth to Jewish people.
Jesus came to His own people. Jesus said to His own people, "Unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins". It's to the Jew first and also to the Greek that the gospel comes. So we have too many in the church, they've cast out Israel's role, they even condemned Jews like myself that are preaching the gospel that Jewish people. They just want to be loved and affirmed by Jewish people, but they don't want to offend them by sharing the gospel with them. They're so romanticized by the fact that the Jews are God's first covenant people, they think, "Who are my to share my faith with them"? And when someone has that type of attitude, it shows a deep lack of faith in the Word of God. Listen to what Paul said. He said, "If their rejection", I'm reading from the book of Romans 11:15, He's speaking of Israel to the church, to the Gentiles, "For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world".
What does he mean? That because Israel, the Israelites in the flesh rejected Jesus, by and large, Paul was sent to the Gentiles. So Paul's coming to the Gentiles was because when he went to the Jewish people they wouldn't listen to him. So Paul says, "For their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead"? In other words, Mr., Mrs. Gentile, if you were blessed when Jewish people rejected Jesus, how much more are you going to be blessed when Jewish people receive Jesus? That's the point that Paul's making. "If the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is also; and if the root is holy, the branches are too. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you-he's speaking to Gentiles-being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them and became a partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree".
And this is becoming a partaker of the olive tree, which comes from the God of Israel and you're now receiving the life of the God of Israel through Yeshua, the Jewish Messiah, Paul continues, "if you're now are partaking with them of the rich fruit of the olive tree," listen to this, "do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember, that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you". And yet there is a lack of the fear of God in much of the church concerning God's role and scriptural call upon the Jewish people. I mean, how many Jewish preachers are there like myself in the world, Jewish evangelists reaching the ends of the earth, and yet, there are Christian networks that won't let me teach on their network because I'm too much of a political hot potato, and I offend Jewish people? It's just unbelievable. We continue on. Paul says in verse 25 here, "For I did not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery-so that you will not be wise in your own estimation-that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved and the deliverer will come forth from Zion".
What is Paul saying? That there is a mystery going on. And the mystery is, in God's unsearchable ways, there is a blindness upon Jewish people upon Israel today, and this blindness will remain until the fullness of the Gentiles has come into the faith. I believe that the fullness of the Gentiles coming into the faith that Paul is referring to here has to do not only with the number of Gentiles that have come to faith in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah and Savior of the world, but it also pertains to Gentiles understanding their call to reach Israel with the good news of Messiah. Because Paul said in the same book that he was a Jew whose heart was to see Jewish people saved but he still rejoiced in his call to the Gentiles. Because Paul knew that through reaching the Gentiles, Jewish people would be provoked to jealousy.
So Paul said, "I magnify my call to the Gentile because in reaching them I'm going to reach my own people, because I know the Gentiles that have a genuine, passionate, fiery love for Jesus, who provoked Jewish people to faith in Jesus". And in fact, most Jewish people today have come to faith in Yeshua through the witness of a Gentile. You see, when I witness to a Jewish person as a Jew, they feel they automatically have to defend themselves against me, because they think it's such a shameful thing for a Jew to believe in Jesus. But when a Gentile believes in Jesus and starts sharing their faith honestly and humbly, the Jew thinks, "Well, I know that's what they're supposed to believe," and so they're willing to listen to a Gentile. And so Paul said he magnified his ministry to the Gentiles because he knew that through them he'd reached his own people.
Listen what the Apostle Paul said in verse 1 of chapter 11 of Romans. "I say then, God has not rejected His people," Speaking of Israel here, "has he? May it never be! For I too have am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin". And then he says, "No, the gifts and calling of God upon the Jewish people are irrevocable". Listen to what Paul said in Romans. "Brethren, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them". Who is the "them"? Israel. "Is for their salvation". And so today, we looked at messianic prophecy dealing with the role of Messiah in reaching the world. But let's not forget that God still has a critical, redemptive role that He is bringing forth in history to reach Jewish people. And in fact, the Jewish people reception of Jesus is intimately bound His return. He's not coming back for you, beloved one, until there's a mass of Jewish people that believe in Him and are calling on Him to come back.
So I want to thank you for supporting me and others like me that are Jewish forerunners preaching the gospel to Jew and Gentile, declaring that Jesus is not just the Savior of the world, He's the Messiah of Israel. Beloved, let's celebrate the Jewish Jesus because when we meet Him, we're going to meet the one that is going to be called in heaven the lion from the tribe of Judah. And we'll meet Him in that heavenly city called New Jerusalem, whose gates are inscribed with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel.
The world keeps on spinning, but God's word never changes. I mean, think about it. One of the things that defines the generation that we're living in today is that there is no truth that everybody is agreed upon. We used to be a country that by and large everybody believed there was a God. We had the 10 Commandments on government properties, prayer in schools. We understood marriage as the relationship between a man and a woman in a monogamous context.
Where today none of these things people agree on anymore. Truth is defined by whoever's voice is the loudest. Truth is defined by the spin that the media or people put on things. And eventually it's just accepted as truth, but it is not truth. But the Bible tells us that God's word never changes that he's the same yesterday, today, and forever. And people, now more than ever, they need to hear the truth. Jesus gave His church The Great Commission. At the end of the book of Matthew, Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation, making disciples of all nations. Beloved, we've been given a work to do, to preach the gospel to the entire world in the book of Mark, and to make disciples of all nations in the book of Matthew.
Let's be about our Father's business. I want to ask you for your financial support today. If you believe I'm making a difference, if you believe Discovering The Jewish Jesus is making a difference because you're experiencing a blessing in your own life, I want to ask you to financial support us. There's a link at the bottom of your description, or you can go to our website, DiscoveringTheJewishJesus.com. Beloved, what we do with our finances makes a difference. God is watching. Everything we do should be wrapped up in him. I want to thank you for your love, for your financial support today. And if you feel an initiative in your heart by the Holy Spirit to make a donation or to become a partner, beloved, just be obedient.