Rabbi Schneider - Made to Experience Him
I want to encourage you and I today to continue to contend for, to believe for, to ask for, to move towards an actual experiential relationship with the Spirit of God. Now, I love the Song of Songs so much because the Lord reveals a face of his to us in a way that is not revealed in any other parts of the Word of God. So for example, when we look at God's word, we have, for example, the book of Proverbs, which reveals God's wisdom to us. We have the book of Romans, which is a doctrinal treatise on understanding the truths of salvation. But the Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon reveals another facet of God's nature. It reveals to us, beloved ones, the emotional side of the Lord. The Song of Songs reveals God's affections to us in a way that no other book of the Bible, either the old or New Testaments does.
We find in the Song of Songs the mystery of the love relationship that Father God, and Yeshua have with their people. Even the rabbis of ancient Israel understood that the Song of Solomon or the Song of Songs was actually a love letter to God and his people. Now, I know as I've said in the other two parts of the production, the series here, I know that I've stated that this in its literal form is a letter that King Solomon wrote to his bride to be the Shulamite bride. But there's something going on beyond that. It's a prophetic book. You see, all the books of the Bible ultimately are designed to lead us to Father through Jesus. Jesus had everything that's written in the Hebrew scriptures was ultimately pointing to him. So we need to look beyond the surface meaning of this book simply being a love letter between Solomon and the Shulamite bride. And we need to understand that there's something deeper going on, that it ultimately is a revelation of God's love to the church, to his people.
So with that said, I'm going to pick up now, in verse number four of chapter two. The Shulamite bride, who's a shadow, or a type of you and I have the church said this. "He has brought me to his banquet hall and his banner over me is love". Now I did comment on that at the end of season number two, but I want to just start here as a launching point as we begin season number three. Listen, once again. She's declaring, "He has brought me to his banquet hall". What I want to stress here is that she was describing a real experience with God. She said, "He has brought me to his banquet hall". I want to encourage you and I today to continue to contend for, to believe for, to ask for, to move towards an actual experiential relationship with the Spirit of God.
You see, the Father's in heaven. Yeshua is at his right hand in heaven. But the Spirit is on the earth and the Spirit brings us into a literal experience of relationship with the Father and the Son. Sometimes we can be deceived, thinking that we're believers, simply because we know certain doctrines and agree with those doctrines. But beloved, knowing the doctrines and affirming that they're true is not enough to save us in the sense that we're brought in to an experience. You see, Jesus said in the gospel of John to the Pharisees, he said, "You search the scriptures because you think in them you have life". But he said, "It's these, these scriptures that bear witness of me and you refuse to come to me," Yeshua said, "that you might have life".
In other words, Jesus said the scriptures were designed to lead us to God, not to replace God, but to lead us to God. And the assumption is that we can literally be brought in to an experience, an experiential relationship with the Father and the Son, through the Spirit. Let's not settle for anything else. Listen again, what the Shulamite bride, who's a shadow of you and I, because ultimately the Song of Songs is a poetic love story about the relationship between God and his people. And so listen what she says. "He has brought me to his banquet hall". In other words, she had been brought in to an experience. You see, the children of Israel, stay with me for a moment. The children of Israel were delivered out of Egypt, but because they didn't have a vision for what God wanted to give them, which was the Promised Land, all of them by Joshua and Caleb died in the wilderness.
In other words, you and I can affirm certain Christian doctrines. We can affirm justification by faith. We can affirm that Jesus sacrificial atonement and his shed blood is the way for forgiveness. We can believe all those things and experience some level of deliverance, as we experience a burden lifted of our guilt of sin. But even as Israel experienced deliverance out of Egypt, but never as a nation, was able to enter the Promised Land because they didn't believe for the Promised Land. They didn't have an eternal view of where God was bringing them. They didn't have a long-term future perspective of what God wanted to do in their life. All they could focus on was the now, that they had enough food in their stomach. All they could focus on was the manna on the ground. Because they had no long-term faith for and view for their inheritance, which was to be brought into the land of milk and honey, the Promised Land, because they had no view for that, but we're only focused on the now. Even though they were delivered out of Egypt, they still ended up dying in the wilderness and never entered the inheritance.
And you know what? Some of you today are in that same boat. You see, you've received Jesus. You've asked him to forgive you for your sins. And beyond that, you're just living in the now. You have no real view or faith for the fact that what God really wants is to bring you and I into an experience with him. Remember the Shulamite bride said, "He has brought me into his banquet hall". This is describing fellowship. A banquet hall is where people ate together and enjoyed fellowship together and enjoyed each other's company in a celebratory sense. She had an experience of this. It was real. It was fulfilling her. But like I said, Israel, that was delivered out of Egypt, died in the wilderness because they had no view for the Promised Land. They had no faith for the Promised Land. They were not able to deal with the problems of today in view of the inheritance that was ahead. They didn't look to the inheritance that was ahead. All they looked at was the now and they complained that they didn't have enough food in their stomach or enough water and they ended up dying in the wilderness.
And likewise, what I'm saying, beloved one, is many of us right now are just like them. We don't have faith to be brought into the bosom of God's love. We don't have faith that we can really experience him. We don't have faith that Jesus promised could really be fulfilled in our life. That if the son sets you free, you'll be free indeed. Rivers of living water, Yeshua said, will flow from our innermost beings. And his Spirit within us would become a well of living water, springing up to eternal life so that we thirst no more. We don't have faith for that. We're not contending for that. All we're focusing on is the problems of today and beloved, if we're not careful and if we don't repent of that kind of attitude, if we don't start having an eternal perspective of our faith, rather than a just now perspective of our faith, we're going to end up like the children of Israel. Listen now, that don't enter into God's rest. You see, the New Testament tells us to be careful that we don't stop short of entering into God's rest, that we don't stop short, if you will, of entering into his banquet hall that the Shulamite bride just described here.
Getting even deeper to the root of our problem, beloved ones, that I'm wanting us to consider today in the love of HaShem, the love of God, so that we can be quickened and come out of it is this. We think that faith sometimes is just affirming certain doctrines of the scriptures. We say, "Yes. I believe that". I believe the basic doctrines of the faith, as I've just stated. I believe that I believe Jesus died for me. I believe that Jesus is the only way to God. I believe there's only... Yes. We think that if we simply say yes to those things that makes us believers, but beloved, that's a deception and a trap because affirming that something is true is not enough.
What has to happen for us to have saving faith and to be brought into an experiential relationship, like the Shulamite bride is describing for us here, in order to be brought into this experiential reality, what has to happen is when the truth is proclaimed, not only must we affirm that it's true, but we have to reach out, listen, we have to reach out with it faith and take it, bring it into our soul, make it ours and move forward in it. It's not enough to say yes to it. True faith reaches out and takes a hold of the truth and then appropriates it and receives it. And as a result, it propels us into our destiny. Again, many, so many in the church today, they don't have an eternal view of what God wants to do. To them, they think it's enough to say the sinners prayer and quote, "get saved".
Again, just like Israel, thought it was enough they got out of the bondage of Egypt, but died in the wilderness because they had no long-term view of what God was bringing them into. So to, some of us today, don't have a long-term view of what God's doing. We're only focused in the now. Will God meet my needs today? Will God give me a husband? Will God give me a wife? Will God pay my bills? Will God give me a promotion? Will you give me a new house? Will you give me a new car? And there's nothing wrong with casting all our cares upon him. But you see, if we're rooted only in the now and focused only on the temporary now, and don't understand what God's wanting to bring us into, which is an experiential relationship with him, that's tangible, that we know he's real. All around us, we're experiencing him.
If we're not contending for that, but only focusing on our temporal needs, we'll be like Israel and die in bondage, die in the wilderness because of unbelief. We need to understand that the scripture, over and over again, tells us that we're being called into a kingdom, a kingdom in which Yeshua is going to reign and everything is going to be subject to him. And the fullness of his kingdom is not yet here, but we're contending for it.
See, a lot of people today are talking about the kingdom now, but let me tell you, no matter how many times people declare the kingdom now, the kingdom is not fully now and won't be fully now until Yeshua returns. And we have to be living today, in anticipation for the fullness of his kingdom to be manifest, like leaders of the faith of old times. They believe God their whole life and they hadn't even yet entered into the fullness of their destiny. Even when they died, they still are not entered in, like Abraham and Moses, that was looking for a greater city whose architect and builder was God. And they died in faith, having never seen the city, but they were living for something out in the future.
And you and I need some of that imparted into our own soul. We need to get our eyes off of just the now and we need to understand that Jesus is coming back and that his reward is with him and that our inheritance is to fully experience the Lord, not just these temporal needs and that when Jesus returns, not only would he reward us for what we've done, but furthermore, he's going to put us in positions of government, depending on how faithful we've been to him on this earth. So I just wanted to encourage you today, that there's more, folks. The Shulamite bride said, "He's brought me into his banquet hall". She was brought into an experience.
I want to encourage you to live for something that's greater. Keep your eyes on the future. Understand that God is bringing you into something that's way beyond this world. This world is not our home. It's not just about having our needs met now. It's not just about the kingdom now. It's about God is bringing us into a future destiny in which everything will be transformed. And these mortal bodies will be putting on immortal bodies and we're going to be glorified and it's all going to be dependent on what we're doing with our lives today. Will you live in faith that you can experience God? And as you put him first in your life, know that he's a rewarder of those that diligently seek him. As you order your steps in obedience every day, by monitoring your thoughts, bringing your mind into subjection of the Holy Spirit and of the Word of God. By monitoring your words, making sure that the words that are coming from your mouth are pleasing and acceptable to him.
Like David said, "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you". And as we're ordering ourselves, sacrificially, giving ourself over to Hashem, over to Jesus in this life, we're going to be brought in, listen, to the experience of relationship, into the banquet hall. Like Yeshua said, "If you obey me, I'm going to come to you, John 14, and disclose myself to you and my Father and I will come and make our home in you". So as we order our path after him, beloved, two things will happen in closing today. Number one, as we continue every day, as soon as we get out of bed and our feet at the floor, we recognize Jesus as Lord and our mission for the day to submit to him, to surrender to him, to love him, to put him first, to give ourselves sacrificially to him, to serve him, denying ourself, like Jesus said.
If you're going to come after me, you must pick up your cross, deny yourself and follow me. If we'll do that every day, make that the mission of our life, whether we're going through an easy time or a hard time, the goal is always the same, to obey him, to lay a hold of him, to submit to him, to love him. If we'll do that, we're going to be more and more brought into an experience into the banquet hall. And then secondly, today, as we close, I'm wanting to encourage us all that we need to just stop focusing on the toes of our own feet.
So many of us, all we're looking to God for is to meet our needs right now in the temporary. But when you study the scripture with revelation and an open heart and mind, you'll recognize that the call of God and the destiny over your life is much bigger, beloved ones, than God, then Father just meeting your needs today. He's calling you in to an eternal glory. He's calling you and I in to a theocracy, to a government in which he is going to reign, and he's going to be giving us positions in his millennial kingdom and in the new heavens and the new earth and the positions that he's putting us in, in the transform world when Jesus reigns is going to be based on how faithful were we to him in this age.
So let's lift our eyes and look to the hills from where our salvation comes. Let's gain a greater perspective of what life is all about. Let's get our mind just off the here and the temporal and the now. Let's keep the goal before us. Let's be willing to suffer what we need to suffer to get there. Because everybody that desires to live godly in Christ Jesus shall be persecuted and beloved. When we bring our mind and our thoughts into harmony with his word and his truth, we're going to go somewhere and we're going to go somewhere quick. God will propel us by the Holy Spirit into eternal life. And beloved Jesus said, "He that puts their hope in me will not be disappointed".