Rabbi Schneider - Questing for Righteousness
The Beatitudes are keys to living in the shalom and in the light of the kingdom of God. As we begin to incorporate Yeshua’s words of the Beatitudes into our life, we’re going to find ourselves walking in deeper and deeper fellowship with Him. And the deeper fellowship we have with Him, the more we know Him living in the center of our heart. And our lives no longer are about worshiping somebody that’s just up there at the right hand of God.
Now, we know Him living within us. And that’s the key. Jesus doesn’t want us just to know Him as the one that’s standing at the right hand of God or sitting at the right hand of God. He wants to, listen to this, incarnate Himself in us. See, the whole purpose that Father is doing in your life right now is He is transforming you into the image of His Son. And so what has to happen is we need to transition from knowing Jesus as someone that’s out there to instead knowing Jesus as someone that is in us and living through us so that we are in Him and He’s in us and we’re conformed to His likeness. Because the more we become conformed into His likeness, the more fellowship we have with Him. I mean, it’s then we’re like experiencing Him in such a way that we’re walking in true love, true peace, true confidence, and true power.
And the life of many of those that call themselves Christians, it’s religious. They’re doing religious things, they’re saying religious things, but they’re not walking in the confidence and in the groundedness and in the rootedness that Yeshua walked in. You see, when Yeshua prayed, He didn’t use all these fancy thees and thous and all this religious language. He was just walking in union with God. And that’s what God’s call is in our life. And so when we put these beatitudes into practice in our life, what happens is we sink down into the very person of Yeshua and we begin to then move in power and we begin to move in a knowing. Not just a knowing about Him, but a knowing, just a raw knowing where there’s power and there’s peace.
So let me just quickly read through the first three and then we’re going to get into the new material. «Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God». Blessed are those that realize they’ve come to the end of themselves and so they’re reaching out to God because they realize they don’t have the answer inside themselves. Then Yeshua said, blessed are those who mourn. In other words, they’re no longer satisfied with life, no longer satisfied with their lot. They’re looking for something more. So Yeshua said, when you come to that place, you’re ready now to become filled with God’s spirit. You’re divinely blessed. And then the last one we covered on the last episode was, «Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth». And I spoke about the fact that men particularly don’t esteem to be gentle. But if we want to be like Jesus, «a bruised reed, He did not damage,» the scripture says. At times He could be hard, but He chose instead, often as He could, to be gentle. Because gentleness, beloved ones, is a fruit of the spirit.
So I really want to encourage you, and this is where I left off last week, look at the way that you talk to people. How do you treat people? Even telemarketers, how do you treat them? You don’t have to be on the phone with them forever, but you could just say, «God bless you, thank you. I’m not interested». So treat people with gentleness and monitor yourself to make sure you’re walking in that. Okay, moving on to some new material. Remember, this Sermon on the Mount opened up… it opened up in verse number two with saying about Jesus, He opened His mouth and began to teach. What does this mean? That something is about to drop out of His mouth that’s a bomb of power in the kingdom of God. He opened His mouth. Why do they say He opened His mouth? Because something is about to drop, that’s about to explode into the earth and build the kingdom of God.
These words, beloved, are divinely important. The next beatitude is this. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. This is similar to what I’ve covered, but I want to go deeper. Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. I remember a relative said to me some time ago, she said, «You know, you’re like on a quest for God. You’re on a quest for God». And I really love that because I am on a quest for God. What did the Lord say? Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness. What is righteousness? It just means you’re walking rightly before the Lord. It means you’re walking in union with Him. It means you’re walking in fellowship with Him. It means you’re related to Him in such a way that He’s in you and you’re in Him and that same light that’s in Jesus is in you.
We’re not talking about just some religious moral righteousness. We’re not just talking about moral values. We’re talking about, beloved one, being rightly related to God, becoming one with Him. Jesus' desire for us is that we would know Him even as He knows the Father, that we would know the Father even as He knows the Father. So hungering and thirsting for righteousness is just having that quest to know God, to walk in true power to know His mind, to know His heart, to think like He thinks, to feel like He feels, and to act like He acts. You see, the reason that I’m on a quest to know God, and I say this only that it might inspire you, is because of the promises that Jesus gave. Jesus said, if the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed.
Think about that. I mean, isn’t that what the whole hippie movement was about? They wanted freedom. Doesn’t everybody want to be free? Why do people want to learn to fly? They want to be free, right? So many things that people do, they do because they want to experience freedom. I remember as an athlete back when I competed as a teenager, I loved having my hand raised because when I had my hand raised in victory, I had such a sense of freedom. Well, you know what, Jesus said, «If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed». And Jesus likewise said, «My shalom, my wholeness, my completeness, my peace, I give to you».
So we should be hungering and thirsting after God. We should be on a quest to enter into the realities of the things that Yeshua promised. And if we have that quest and that hunger, if we believe that what He said is true and that we can have what He said we can have, then we’re going to hunger and thirst for righteousness. We’re going to hunger and thirst to enter into the fullness of His promises in our life.
So Yeshua said, «Blessed are those…» In other words, you’re divinely blessed. You’re divinely happy if you’re hungering and thirsting for righteousness because if you’re on a quest for God, you’re going to be fulfilled because He fills those that are hungering and thirsting for Him. Because if you have a burning hunger and a burning thirst to know God and to enter into the reality of His promises being fulfilled in your life, knowing once again His power and His peace and his soundness of mind and His shalom and entering into the revelation that He promised, to have the same love for the Father in you that He has for the Father, if you’re on a quest to enter into those realities and there’s a fire in you that causes you to put Him first in your life, that gives you a hunger for His word, that causes you to just naturally talk to God every day, all day long, that causes your actions to do the right thing because you want to be blessed.
Jesus said you’re blessed and you’re going to find yourself being filled with the realities that you long for. Yeshua said you’re going to end up, in the end, being satisfied. Now listen to this for a second. I want to read it again, but this time I want you to focus on the last word. I want you to focus with me beloved one on the word satisfied. Hear the Word Word of God once again, Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be, get it now, satisfied. Satisfied. Isn’t that what we all want? Don’t we all just want to be happy? Don’t we all just want to be at peace in our own skin? Don’t we all just want to feel fulfilled? Well, this is what Yeshua is promising. If we’ll be on a quest for Him, if we’ll put Him first, if we’ll hunger and thirst for His righteousness in our lives for His purposes and His will to be perfected in our life, Jesus said eventually we will be satisfied.
Now listen to this. You see, when you fall for the devil’s false bait, in other words, the devil hangs something in front of us, he dangles something in front of us, and when we take his bait, we immediately feel satisfied, but then afterwards we feel remorse. Let’s say, for example, you’re struggling with your weight, and you know you should lose weight, and you know you should discipline yourself to not eat the way that you’re eating. You know you’ll feel better if you discipline yourself and lose weight. You know you’ll be more pleasing to God if you don’t indulge in an appetite that’s leading you to get sick, and you know it’s outside of God’s will. And all of a sudden the devil dangles your favorite fruit in front of you, right?
You go to a restaurant, you see it on the menu, you go to the grocery store, you see it in the aisle, maybe it’s cake, candy, I don’t know what your favorite food is. But you’re overweight, and all of a sudden that temptation is put in front of you of eating that unhealthy thing. Well, at first when you eat it, whether it’s candy, a donut, kuchen, whatever it is, that’s a Jewish word for pastry, you eat it, what happens? When you taste it, you feel satisfied. But how do you feel an hour or two hours later, right? You feel remorse and maybe sick to your stomach. On the other hand, if you deny it because you’re hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and you want to fulfill God’s purpose in your life, at first it doesn’t feel good to say no to that thing.
At first, it’s hard to deny the candy, deny the cookie, deny whatever it is, the ice cream, whatever it is that you want, but you know you shouldn’t have. At first, it feels really hard and agonizing to deny it. But how do you feel at the end of that day or the next day knowing that you limited your body, that you restricted yourself, that you didn’t allow your flesh to reign? How do you feel now? Now you feel satisfied. You feel self-satisfied in the Lord that you denied the flesh and put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit, and you overcame. So now you have an internal sense, right, of divine satisfaction. And that’s how it is, beloved, when we’re following after God’s ways.
So when we do God’s will, when we do the right thing, because we’re seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness, we’re hungering and thirsting after righteousness, maybe for you it’s sharing your faith. You find yourself so often times you know you should share your faith, you know you should talk to people about what Jesus has done for you, you know you should share the love of Jesus with people, but you’re afraid. How do you feel afterwards? You feel bad, you feel like a coward. If you do it, you may be rejected, and you may feel bad at the time, but as the years go by you’re going to feel thankful that you obeyed the words of Yeshua. So you need to understand, Jesus said if you hunger and thirst after righteousness and put Him first and do the right thing, although at first that’s the hardest thing to do.
You have to deny yourself from looking at the thing that you don’t want to look at. Maybe it’s lust if you’re a man. And so what do you do? You deny yourself. If you know that there’s a person coming that’s going to tempt you to lust, you just look straight ahead, don’t look. It’s hard to look straight ahead and not look. If you looked, immediately you would feel excited that you saw this and that you lusted after, but afterwards how would you feel? You’d feel defeated and you’d feel condemned by the devil and you’d condemn yourself. But if you deny yourself, it might hurt your heart because you’re fighting so hard to resist sin, but at the end of the day, what happens? You gain more and more power. You become more and more sealed and self-contained by God’s Spirit, and you get more and more satisfied in your walk with Him and in being comfortable in your own skin because you’ve now been sealed by the Holy Spirit.
This is progressive. It happens more and more over a lifetime. So the devil’s ways promises a quick answer, you get instant satisfaction. The Bible says the ways of sin are pleasant for a season, but the end result is death. On the other hand, God’s ways are hard at first, but the end result is the peaceful fruit of righteousness. So choose to stay with whom you’ll serve. What are you going to go after? The quick, easy way of the devil that gives immediate satisfaction but ends in death, or God’s way, which is the way that’s much harder. You’re swimming upstream. You’re resisting the world, the flesh, and the devil. But at the end of the day, you come to the end of your life and you have peace and shalom in your heart, and Jesus said, you’re satisfied. Amen.
Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Okay, let’s move on now to the next beatitude. «Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy». Say it with me. «Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy». We need to understand, my beloved friends, my brothers and sisters in the Lord, we have an enemy. The devil is called, listen now, the accuser of the brethren. We’re in a war against the world, the flesh, and the devil. The devil is the accuser of the brethren. What does this mean? He is constantly accusing everybody day and night. That is his nature. And we don’t realize that a lot of the thoughts of accusation that we’re having towards people, our brothers, our sisters, even our best friends sometimes, are actually coming from the realm of the power of darkness, who is the accuser of the brethren.
And if we’re not wise and we don’t understand what’s going on, we will allow ourselves to come into agreement with the accuser of the brethren. So when we have a thought of hatred and accusation against somebody, we need to reject it. Jesus said, blessed are the merciful. Mercy is the opposite of accusation. Mercy is the opposite of accusation. So when we feel accusation towards somebody, we need to resist it. The Bible says, resist the devil and he’ll flee from you. When we have a thought of accusation against someone, we need to resist it, not let it in, and we need to ask God for his love and for the eyes to see that person the way He sees that person, because there’s something deeper going on. Because the Lord’s love is unconditional, right?
If God wanted to condemn us, He could. If God wanted to be unmerciful, He could. But the Lord described Himself as merciful and gracious. The Bible says, «There is therefore now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus». Jesus didn’t come into the world to judge the world, but to save the world. So if we’re gonna follow Jesus, we need to develop the attitude of being merciful.
So I want to challenge you today. When a thought of accusation enters your mind against somebody, you need to go like this. You need to keep it out. You need to not let it in. You need to resist it, and instead cling to God’s word that says, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. You see, when we accuse somebody, we open up a legal door for the enemy to come in and accuse us. Keep that door shut. Extend mercy to people, love to people, shalom to people, ask God for help, and ask Him to help Him see people the way He sees people… Ask Him to help you see people the way He sees people, so, beloved, you can walk as Jesus did and show mercy and be merciful. And in so doing, you’ll have peace with God, you’ll have peace with yourself, and you’ll be on the road to heaven.