Rabbi Schneider - Embracing God's Appointed Times
So we're going to be focusing on the holy days of Rosh Hashanah or Yom Teruah, Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), and the Feast of Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles. Before we get into these individual holy days, I want to create a foundation for us today to prepare our hearts to enter in, to open up, to receive, and to expect something from God. Let's begin just by opening our hearts and looking to the Father together, asking Him by the working of his spirit within us to prepare us to expect so that we can receive something from Him during his holy days because, beloved, there's something extra that can be imparted to us when we come into alignment with these redemptive themes.
So, Father God, we worship You today. Father, I know that people will be hearing this broadcast at different times, some on television, some on YouTube, Father, but they might not be actually hearing it I know exactly when these days are falling. But Father, we honor You, and Father, we celebrate the revelation that You've given us in Your holy days. And Father, we're not looking just for information today. Father, I'm not trying to educate. And Father, I pray that those that are listening are not just looking for an education, but Father, what we're looking for is to come into alignment with You so that You can impart into us the blessing that accompanies these holy days as You impart Your spirit impartation into our souls as we celebrate Your holy days with You.
Now, notice what I just said. We're celebrating God's holy days with Him because these holy days we're going to see in a few moments are introduced to us in Scripture by the Lord through Moses as, listen now, God's appointed days. So I want you to hear this. These are not just days that we are celebrating as human beings. More importantly, the Lord called these days His appointed days. We call them in Hebrew, Mikra, His festivals or holy days. So these are God's holy days. We want to come into alignment with that because as we do, there's something from heaven that's released into our lives. We're strengthened.
Jesus, for example, in relationship to God's holy days, and the first of which is Shabbat or the Sabbath, and Yeshua said of the Sabbath that man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man. So think about what Yeshua said about the first of the holy days, Shabbat. It happens once a week. Yeshua said God did not give us Shabbat (the Sabbath) so that we would have to follow a bunch of laws because he wanted to oppress us. But rather Yeshua said God gave man Shabbat or the Sabbath that we could be blessed.
That the Sabbath was made for man, that we could receive a blessing, that we could receive rest, that we could receive renewal, that we could have our spiritual compass reset once a week by taking a day of rest, disconnecting from the world, disconnecting from technology, disconnecting from working, so we could just be in God's presence and receive from Him. In fact, on Shabbat, one of the rules is you don't go far from your home. God just wants us to be with Him so that he can strengthen us and bless us and prepare us for the six-day workweek that's ahead. And so the point that I was making, my beloved friend, is Shabbat is a gift. God gave it to us to prepare us to have maximum effectiveness in the world.
Now, let me turn to the Word of God for a second. The LORD, and this is capped here, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. Many of you know by now, this is the way that the English translators put down God's sacred name, which is composed of the four Hebrew letters, Yud Hei Vav Hei (Yahweh). I heard an interesting thought the other day, that a baby's first words when he comes into the world are Yahweh. The baby breathes in Yah-weh. It's an interesting thought that possibly a baby's first words when he comes into the world gasping for breath, taking his first breath, Yah-weh, is God's holy sacred name.
Nevertheless, it's a thought. It's possible. I don't know that to be a fact, but I love that. So here's the Word of God. "The Lord (Yahweh), spoke again to Moses saying, 'Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, 'Yahweh's or the Lord's appointed times, which you shall proclaim as holy convocations-My appointed times are these". So what are God's holy days? First of all, beloved, God's holy days are themes. In the revelation of God's holy days, which He made for man, which He made for you and I to enter into so that we could walk in fellowship with Him, these holy days are themes...
If you see me clapping and stuff like this, I'm flapping away mosquitoes from me. These holy days are the themes of redemption. In fact, Yeshua coordinated His earthly ministry - I'm going to show you in a minute - that He did the specific acts that redeemed us in connection with these holy days, with these Mikra. So they contain themes of redemption. For example, the first holy day, Passover, is the day that Yeshua was crucified on. And what was Passover about? It was the day historically that the Israelites were redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.
And so again, I want you to understand that these holy days are themes. And as we enter into celebrating the Lord's theme, celebrating His holy days, what it does is it tunes us to walk in the substance of our salvation. Our salvation is architected. It's architected. All the themes that are contained in the holy days are the important principles that operate in the souls of us that God has redeemed, beginning with Passover, but continuing on through all the holy days. We're going to be looking today at Yom Teruah, the Feast of Trumpets. How does the Feast of Trumpets, how does the theme of the Feast of Trumpets help us to walk with God? Because the Feast of Trumpets reminds us, beloved, we're going to see, that Yeshua is coming again.
So celebrating the holy days keeps us walking in the great truths of our salvation. And we need to be reminded year after year of the great truths of our salvation, because if we don't, what happens is we end up straying from the things that ground our soul in the key truths that really matter. They're seasons. They're seasons that we need to be focusing on every year. We need to be focusing on how we've been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. We need to focus on how we died in Yeshua. This relates to the themes contained in the spring holy days. We need to be focused on the other themes of the spring holy days. For example, we find the last of the spring holy days was the feast where Israel first received the law, Shavuot, and the church received the spirit on Shavuot.
So by focusing on these great themes every year, we're reminded, beloved, of the things that are most important to us in our walk with God, instead of falling for the newest spiritual fad. You see, because God's people are not grounded in the themes of our salvation, which are foreshadowed in God's holy days, what they end up doing is going down bunny trails, focusing on the latest prophecy, focusing on the newest book that becomes a fad in the Christian world, and they end up losing their way without even knowing it. Paul talked about it being a different gospel. So once again, my point is, is by celebrating, by honoring, by remembering God's holy days, it keeps us grounded in the great truths of our salvation.
Many Christians don't understand how these Jewish they think of them as Jewish holy days are important to them. But let me remind you, my friends, God did not call these Jewish holy days. He called them His holy days. And if you're a Gentile believer, you've been grafted in to the commonwealth of Israel. These holy days were first given to Israel, of course, but they're not just Jewish holy days. They're God's holy days. And you, my beloved friend, have been grafted into these holy days because you were grafted into the commonwealth of Israel when you put your faith in Messiah Jesus, who's the king of the Jews and the savior of the world.
You know, I have a neighbor and some of you can relate to this. Some of you are still trying to get clear in your own mind about this. But I have a neighbor. He was just sharing with me yesterday that when he tells people about me, he says, "Yeah, I have an interesting neighbor. And, you know, he's preaching this message on the Jewish Jesus". And he said everybody that he's ever shared that with has kind of shaken their head, "No, no, no. It's either one or the other". It's either Jesus or Jewish. You can't have them both. He said the only person that ever recognized that it's the same thing, that we're talking about the Jewish Jesus, that Yeshua is the prophesied Messiah that was revealed to us in the Torah and the prophets.
My neighbor told me the only one that ever got it was the most sincere Christian that he knew. All the other Christians that he knew, when he began to talk about the Jewish Jesus, he said, "No, no, no. You're either a Jew or you're a Christian. It can't be both". Why would it be that so many Christian people can't receive the revelation that comes to us through the holy prophets, through the Torah, through the Jewish Jesus? Why do so many that call themselves Christians put their hand out like this when you begin to talk to them about God's holy days? When you begin to talk to them about Shabbat, why do so many Christians block it out and disregard it?
The reason is, beloved, they're stuck in what Paul calls a spiritual stronghold. It's a stronghold of religion. It's a type of thinking where one thinks something is God because he was educated religiously to believe a certain way and because he was educated to believe a certain way and believe that the way he was educated was true, a person will block out then new revelation which can actually save them and bring them deeper into the truth.
See, this is what happened to the Pharisees of Jesus' day. Why couldn't they receive Yeshua? Because they were stuck in a spiritual stronghold. They were stuck in a construct of thoughts in their mind that they thought was God, that were religious, but the thoughts that they believed was God, their religious thoughts actually prevented them from receiving true revelation. And all of us need to be careful that we don't let pride keep our heart closed from receiving new truth. It's not only pride that keeps us from receiving new truth, it's fear that keeps us from receiving new truth. Even laziness. We just don't want to deal with processing new information.
So some of you that may be hearing this message, this is new to you, and you could be lazy and just say, "You know what, I don't want to take the time to investigate what Rabbi Schneider is teaching". You could be lazy. Or you can have pride and it affronts you that I'd be sharing with you something that you don't know. And so you'd say, No, I reject that. And you have hatred for it just because you don't know it because of religious pride, because perhaps you're stuck in a religious stronghold. Paul told us to cast down every stronghold that exalts itself above the knowledge of Christ. "Cast down every thought," Paul said, "that exalts itself above the knowledge of Christ".
So if Jesus is wanting to bring new revelation to you and I, if He's wanting to draw us deeper into Him, if the Father is trying to draw us deeper into His Spirit and deeper into the river through new revelation, let's not let a thought that exalts itself above the truth to keep us from that new revelation. Rather, let's tear it down. You see, Jesus, listen carefully, friend, said this. He said every scribe... and a scribe was a Hebrew teacher. A scribe was somebody that knew the Torah and knew the Hebrew Scriptures and taught the Hebrew Scriptures to others. Jesus said every scribe that becomes a disciple of mine will be called greatest in the kingdom of God.
Now think about that statement as it has relevancy for your life and my life today. Jesus said, every scribe, everybody that... all the Jewish people, He said, of His day that knew the Torah and became a disciple of His and taught others the Torah through the knowledge they had in Him would be called greatest in the kingdom of God. What does that say? It says that when you receive the knowledge of the Torah as a disciple of Jesus, you're going to go to the highest level. You're going to go to the highest level. You don't want to be someone that's just stuck in the New Testament without having revelation from God that's given to us in the Hebrew Scriptures, in what we call the Old Testament. Because Jesus said this. He said a person that knows the Old Testament and then becomes a disciple of mine will be like the owner of a mansion that's able to bring forth out of that mansion treasures old and new.
So I feel a sense of excitement right now because there's some of you that are listening and you've never really seized this word. You've never really taken a hold of it. Perhaps some of you have heard about it before, you think it's interesting, but you've never really asked yourself, how can I take the revelation in God's holy days? And we're going to be looking during these fall holy days that we're going to be looking at in the season here that we're in right now. I'll be continuing once again with Yom Teruah (the Feast of Trumpets).
We're going to be looking at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. We're going to be looking at the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Sukkot. Some of us are familiar with these perhaps, but we've never really asked ourselves, how can I apply these holy days to my life? What relevance is there for me? Some of you that are Gentile Christians, you're saying, what relevance for me is there in these feasts that I once thought were just Jewish holidays, but now I'm learning they're not just Jewish holidays, they're God's holy days. So I'm asking myself now, I'm speaking on our behalf, what relevance do they have for me and how can I enter into them so that I can be brought into greater empowerment in my walk with God?
Beloved, I want to close today by saying this. The church today is broken, weak, and confused because they're not walking in the revelation that the Father gave us in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible is the foundation of Scripture. The New Testament begins by quoting Jesus' genealogy going back to the book of Genesis. If we don't get grounded in the Tanakh, in the Torah, and in the Hebrew prophets, our faith is going to be sloppy, we're going to fall for sloppy agape, greasy grace, we're going to lack the fear of God, and we're going to lack power. But God loves you and you're about to be empowered, beloved, in a way that's going to ground you. Perhaps for some of you, you're going to experience a brand new ascension through this series in your walk with God.