Discovering The Jewish Jesus

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: The biggest expression of Christianity on Earth under Constantine is an anti-Semitic movement which further divides the Jewish people and Judaism from the movement that we call Christianity. Did you know that the first believers in Jesus were still considered Jews? They considered themselves Jews, and the larger Jewish world recognized that they were Jews even though there was a lot of animosity between the different sects in Judaism.

Today it's a different era because today Jewish people look at Jewish people like myself that believe in Jesus as no longer being Jewish. Christians often don't understand the Jewish or Hebraic roots of their faith in Jesus. But the true context of our faith in Yeshua is a very Jewish thing. In fact, Jesus said in the last chapter of the book of Revelation that he was the offspring or the root of David. In Matthew 5:17 and 18, as I've often quoted in this series, Jesus said he didn't come to start a new religion. He said, "I did not come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill or fill them up with meaning."

Knowing that when Jesus came, he came as a Jew, lived as a Jew, and died as a Jew, and his apostles were all Jews and he was ministering only to Jewish people while he walked on the Earth in the flesh 2,000 years ago, how has it come to the place where Jewish people don't look at Christians as having anything to do much with Judaism? Conversely, Christian people are alienated from understanding the Jewish roots of their faith. We've been looking at what has happened over the centuries that has led to this division.

Today I'm not going to go back. I just want to pick up where I left off. We've covered so many things both historical and theological. I was talking as I ended the last broadcast on the subject that one of the things that led to the separation of the movement of Judaism versus the movement of those that have put their faith in Jesus, the King of the Jews, is the fact that the gospel went to the Gentiles.

In the Jewish world of Jesus' day, the religious Jewish leadership considered Gentiles unclean and they wouldn't associate with them. We read that last time in Acts chapter 10 after Peter had the vision to take and eat the un-kosher animals in the sheet that he saw in his trance. We saw that Peter understood the meaning of that to be that he wasn't to consider Gentiles unclean any longer and he was to go to share the gospel with them.

We see this further evidenced in Acts chapter 15 where there was a big debate in the church at Jerusalem. They were saying, "What are we going to do because we know that God is accepting Gentiles to himself now because they're being baptized by the Holy Spirit and we can't deny the evidence that the gifts of the Spirit are coming upon them. So what do we do? Do we make them get circumcised and become Jews?"

There was a lot of debate about what to do with these Gentiles that had put their faith in Jesus. Finally, after much debate, James, who led the church in Jerusalem, Jesus' half-brother, said, "No, we're not going to trouble those that are turning to God from among the Gentiles, but instead we're just going to write to them a letter." He said this in verse 19 of Acts 15: "Therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles."

It's really fascinating. Just think about this. In Jesus' day, it wasn't a question as to whether a Jew could still be a Jew if he believed in Jesus. That was not the question; that was just assumed. But the question was really the opposite. Can a Gentile have a relationship with the God of Israel through Jesus without getting circumcised and keeping the law? You see how much things have changed.

Today the question is, "Is a Jew still a Jew if he believes in Jesus?" I get that question all the time. "How can you say you're a Jew when you believe in Jesus? Aren't you a Christian?" I get that both from Jewish people and from Gentile people. They think if you believe in Jesus, you're no longer a Jew. But in the worldview of Jesus' day, if you believed in Jesus as a Jew, it had nothing to do as to whether you were a Jew or not. That was an assumed given.

The question in Jesus' day was, "Can a Gentile, someone that wasn't born Jewish, believe in Jesus without becoming Torah-observant and being circumcised?" It was a total different paradigm. Again, this debate takes place in Acts 15. James says, "No, we're not going to require the Gentiles that have put their faith in Jesus to get circumcised. We're not going to require them to become Torah-observant, to go under the law." I don't believe that I'm under the law or any of you are under the law. We're saved by grace.

Instead, this is what James says: "Therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles, but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols, from fornication, from what is strangled, and from blood." Why these four areas? I believe that these four areas of eating un-kosher, drinking blood, eating meat that was sacrificed to idols, and fornication would have made it so difficult for Jewish people to have any fellowship with their new Gentile brothers and sisters at all that James is saying these are the boundaries.

Other than that, he said we're not going to restrict them. Notice what the next verse says: "For Moses from ancient generations has in every city those who preach him since he is read in the synagogue every Sabbath." Now I know that I'm on dangerous ground here. I'm starting to lose some of you. So let me just kind of synchronize what I've said and make it very general, and then we're going to move on.

One of the reasons that the movement of traditional Judaism and the movement of those that followed Jesus separated from each other is because those that had put their faith in Jesus and were following him began to receive Gentiles into a relationship with God. Remember, the first followers of Jesus were all Jewish. They understood that God was including the Gentiles and they began then to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, fellowship with Gentiles, and so on.

Now that becomes a huge problem for the traditional Jewish community because they thought that we as Jewish people shouldn't have any association with Gentiles. We read about that in Acts chapter 10. So now we have these Jews that are fellowshipping with Gentiles and the Jewish people that were not following Jesus said, "We can't even get close to you because we can't have anything to do with Gentiles." A big divide is happening because of this.

Additionally, we still have a lot of confusion in the first church. So the first church gets together in Jerusalem, which was the mother church. It was led by James, Jesus' half-brother, and they begin to discuss. It's obvious that God has now brought Gentiles into relationship with him. In other words, God isn't just relating to the Jewish people. We see that now God has also accepted Gentiles who put their faith in him through Jesus.

The question is, "We know as Jews that God gave us the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Now that we have these Gentiles that are putting their faith in the God of Israel through Jesus, do we require them to keep the laws of the Torah and do we require them to be circumcised?" After a lot of debate, it wasn't an easy matter to resolve. James stands up and says, "No, we're just going to write to them to abstain from things sacrificed to idols, from drinking blood, from eating what was strangled, and from fornication."

Then he goes on in the next verse, and here's the key. He said, "For Moses is being read in the synagogue every Sabbath." I believe that what James was inferring was this: these Gentiles that have now come into relationship with the God of Israel are going to get more understanding as to who the God of Israel is because Moses, the revelation in the Tanakh and the Old Testament, is being preached in the synagogue every Sabbath.

What was going on was that many Gentile believers that put their faith in Jesus would go to the synagogue on the Sabbath to learn more about who the God of Israel was. The Gentile church was learning and growing in terms of understanding who the God of Israel was because they were going to the synagogue on the Sabbath, not because they were under the law but because they wanted to learn more about the revelation of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But what happened that interrupted that process was this: in the 60 to the 70 AD mark, the Jewish people living in Israel began to rebel against the Romans because the Romans were keeping them under their thumb. As a result of this, the Romans came in, invaded Jerusalem, and destroyed the temple and the Jewish people scattered. Now the Romans were so upset with the Jewish people's rebellion from approximately 66 to 70 AD that, in addition to destroying the temple, they also levied a tax against the Jewish people just to punish them for being Jewish because of their rebellion.

It was called the *Fiscus Judaicus* tax. Think about this. The Romans, to punish the Jewish people for rebelling against them, taxed the Jewish people just for being Jewish. How did the Romans determine who was Jewish? They decided that they would determine who was Jewish by penalizing and taxing anybody that did Jewish things, anybody that kept the Sabbath, anybody that associated with Judaism.

Where do you think the Romans went to find the Jews? They went to the synagogue on the Sabbath. Think again now. Gentile believers were now going to the synagogue because they wanted to learn more about the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that there was a tax by the Romans against anybody that was Jewish just for being Jewish, and the way that the Romans determined that was by anybody that associated with Jewish things, and the way that the Romans found those that were associating with Jewish things was by going to the synagogue, what happened?

Gentile believers in Jesus no longer would go to the synagogue because they didn't want to be considered Jewish so that they wouldn't get taxed. As a result of this, this growing Gentile church had less and less information about the God of Israel, about the holy days of the God of Israel, and about the mind of the God of Israel. So now we have all these Gentile churches that are growing and they have no understanding, no information, and no revelation about all that had been written in the scriptures in the Old Testament.

Dustin Roberts: You're listening to *Discovering The Jewish Jesus* and Rabbi Schneider will be right back in just a moment. First, though, I want to invite you to explore our messianic content on our website. You can dive deep into topics like the feast of the Lord, the prophetic significance of Israel, and how Yeshua fulfills prophecy. Visit discoveringthejewishjesus.com and click on our ministry and messianic content tabs, helping you understand the roots of your faith today.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: It can be easy to spend money on small things without thinking twice. But have you considered how big of an impact if all of you listening right now give a small gift? Maybe you've thought about it but said one day if I have enough I can give a big gift. But any gift matters, and maybe God is calling you to invest in his kingdom right now. So please give today. Call 800-777-7835.

Dustin Roberts: You can respond to Rabbi Schneider today by giving a gift of any amount. Just give us a call. Our number is 800-777-7835. That's 800-777-7835. And hey, if it's easier for you, head on over to the *Discovering The Jewish Jesus* website and donate there. It's just simply discoveringthejewishjesus.com. You can also mail your check to us. Send it to *Discovering The Jewish Jesus*, P.O. Box 777, Blissfield, Michigan, 49228.

As a token of our appreciation, we'll send you a copy of our latest newsletter and Rabbi's exclusive monthly teaching booklet. And for any new monthly partners, we'll send an additional token of our appreciation: a beautifully handcrafted shofar that's made in Israel. And you know, the shofar is an instrument that God uses to get the attention of his people. When you hear the sound of a shofar, it's a unique sound.

We saw this in the book of Exodus 19 when God met his people at Mount Sinai and the shofar was blown. That's why it serves as a reminder of the Jewish roots of our faith and how God is calling us to respond to him. It's an announcement of his presence, just like he announced himself to the Israelites in the wilderness. So if you want to learn more about your history and heritage as a Christian, I want to encourage you to become a monthly partner and get your own shofar at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. Now here's Rabbi.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Jesus said in the book of Matthew that every scribe that becomes a disciple of mine will be like the owner of a mansion that's able to bring out of that mansion things old and things new. Jesus said, "I did not come to abolish the law and the prophets but fulfill," and everybody that teaches out of the Hebrew Bible would be called greatest in the kingdom of God.

Jesus never wanted the Gentile church to be separated from understanding the Hebrew roots of their faith or from the Old Testament scriptures. He wants the church to be grounded in the word, both Old and New Testaments. But now that the Gentiles withdrew from the synagogue because they didn't want to be taxed with this *Fiscus Judaicus* tax, they had no information, very little information about the revelation that God had given before Jesus.

As a result of that, the church started looking less and less Hebraic. It started looking less and less Jewish. So when Jewish people would look at the church, it didn't look Jewish at all in a few hundred years because the church had got separated from her Jewish roots. I hope this is beginning to make sense. Remember, at the same time that the Gentiles withdrew from going to the synagogue so they could learn about the Jewish roots of their faith, at that same time, remember, Jewish believers in Jesus were being driven out of the synagogue because they were being cursed as being heretics and sectarians, and I talked about that in last week's broadcast as well.

A lot of information, I know this broadcast today was a little bit more complex than some of the others in this series, but I hope that you're getting a little bit of the point. Let's continue on now. We're looking at how the movement of traditional Judaism and the movement of those that follow Jesus, who said he was the King of the Jews, separated from each other. Remember Jesus said in John 4:22, "Salvation is from the Jews."

So how did the movement that followed Jesus, the King of the Jews, get separated from traditional Judaism? The next item that I want to bring to your attention is what is called the Bar Kokhba Revolt. It happened in 132 AD. What happened was that there was a Jewish general and he began to lead another revolt against the Romans. Remember, the Jewish people were upset with the Romans because the Romans were governing Israel.

Even though they were allowing the Jewish people some freedom to practice their religion, the Romans were still controlling almost everything. The Jewish people got so fed up again with the Romans interfering in their lives that they went through another revolt. Remember, the first one happened from 66 to 70 AD. Now in 132 AD, there's another revolt. During this revolt, there was a Jewish general that they began to call Bar Kokhba, which means Son of Light.

This Jewish general that was leading the revolt against the Romans, some of the Jewish people began to say he was the Messiah. There were some Jewish believers in Jesus that were actually part of the revolt. But when the people began to hail this Bar Kokhba, this Jewish general, as Messiah, the Jews that believed in Jesus withdrew because they said our Messiah told us that he was the only Messiah, that many false messiahs would arise, and that when they do, we need to not follow them but withdraw.

So Jewish believers in Jesus withdrew from the Jewish people in following this Bar Kokhba, and when the Jewish believers withdrew, they began to be looked at as traitors by all the other Jews that were following Bar Kokhba in the revolt. So this alienated once again even more the traditional Jewish community from the Jewish people that had believed in Jesus during these days. Because remember, when the New Testament was written, Judaism wasn't a singular movement.

There were the Sadducees we read about in scripture. There were the Pharisees. We know from historical sources there were the Essenes. Then we have the Jews that believed in Jesus; they were known as the Nazarenes. So we have all these different movements within Judaism. Even though the Jews that believed in Jesus were rejected by the Pharisees, they were still considered Jews.

But as time went on, the movements began to fragment away from each other so much that eventually the Jews that believed in Jesus were kicked out of the synagogue, were cursed, and no longer considered Jews. This last episode that I discussed of this revolt in 132 AD, when the larger Jewish community followed Bar Kokhba, who they were calling the Messiah, and the Jewish believers withdrew at that point because they said we can't follow a false messiah, that even pushed them further away from the Jewish community at large and isolated them.

Well, this spirit of separation continued with the emergence of a name that we're all familiar with: Constantine, who was leading the Roman Empire. Constantine, we read, said he had a vision of the cross and that he was supposed to conquer in the name of the cross. Constantine was also an anti-Semite. So Constantine unified the Roman Empire under Christianity after he said he had a vision of the cross and was supposed to conquer in the name of the cross.

He's unifying the Roman Empire under Christianity, but Constantine is an anti-Semite. So now the biggest expression of Christianity on Earth under Constantine, the Roman leader, is an anti-Semite movement which further divides the Jewish people and Judaism from the movement that we call Christianity. In this series, we've talked about historical and theological reasons that the traditional Jewish movement has separated from the movement of those that believe in Jesus, and why it is today that Christians don't understand that Judaism birthed Christianity and oftentimes how Jewish people don't see us that believe in Jesus as being Jewish anymore, speaking of Jewish people like myself.

I made some comments about the Torah today. I'm not under the law, you're not under the law, we're all under grace, and Jesus is our Messiah and Savior. Many of us have heard the principle of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Of course, what that means is we throw out the whole thing rather than keeping what's good. The reason I'm bringing this up is that some of us have forsaken honoring the Lord with our tithes and our offerings because we feel there's been those in the past that have tried to manipulate us for money.

I simply want to say, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Honoring the Lord with our tithes and offerings goes all the way back to the book of Genesis. Today the scripture tells us if there are ministries that are blessing us and feeding us, we ought to support those ministries with our finances: number one, to show thankfulness; number two, to honor the Lord; and number three, so they can continue to be a blessing to the world. Those of you that sow your finances into ministries that are blessing the world, you're going to be rewarded. I want to ask you for your help, and I want to thank you in advance for your love and sacrificial support.

Dustin Roberts: You can respond to Rabbi Schneider today by giving a gift of any amount. Just give us a call. Our number is 800-777-7835. That's 800-777-7835. And hey, if it's easier for you, head on over to the *Discovering The Jewish Jesus* website and donate there. It's just simply discoveringthejewishjesus.com. You can also mail your check to us. Send it to *Discovering The Jewish Jesus*, P.O. Box 777, Blissfield, Michigan, 49228.

As a token of our appreciation, we'll send you a copy of our latest newsletter and Rabbi's exclusive monthly teaching booklet. And for any new monthly partners, we'll send an additional token of our appreciation: a beautifully handcrafted shofar that's made in Israel. If you want to learn more about your history and heritage as a Christian, I want to encourage you to become a monthly partner and get your own shofar at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. And now here's Rabbi to speak God's sacred blessing over your life.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: In the book of Numbers chapter 6, we find a personal blessing from God our Father. This blessing should touch our hearts because it's so personal. Father God wants to intimately bless you, so receive his blessing into your life today with gladness and an open heart.

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift you up with his countenance and the Lord give you, beloved one, his peace. And now in Hebrew: *Yevarekhekha Adonai veyishmerekha. Ya'er Adonai panav elekha vikhunekha. Yissa Adonai panav elekha veyasem lekha shalom.* God bless you and Shalom.

Dustin Roberts: I'm your host, Dustin Roberts, and this program is produced and sponsored by *Discovering The Jewish Jesus*. Be sure to join us again when Rabbi Schneider reveals the effects of anti-Semitism. That's coming up Tuesday on *Discovering The Jewish Jesus*.