Discovering The Jewish Jesus

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: Don't look at Judaism as some foreign religion. You actually are birthed out of Judaism. Jesus came as a Jew, lived as a Jew, hung on the cross as the King of the Jews, and He's coming back, beloved ones, as the offspring of David.

The term Judaism isn't in the Bible, and the term Christianity isn't in the Bible. Neither of those terms are actually biblical terms. When we say Judaism, that is a term that is meant to describe those that follow what we call the Old Testament, but what Jewish people call the Tanakh.

Judaism is a term that represents the community of religious Jewish people who are relating to God entirely through the revelation of the Tanakh. Let me say again, the term Jew is a biblical term. Salvation is from the Jews, Jesus said in John 4:22.

But Judaism is a term that is not a biblical term, but is a term that is used to describe the religion of the Jews. Not all Jews, because I'm a Jew and I believe in Jesus. I'm not following traditional or Orthodox Judaism; I'm following the one that I believe to be the King of the Jews.

In traditional Judaism, I am looked at as someone that is a heretic because I believe in Jesus. Even some say that I’m no longer Jewish because I believe in Jesus. Yet, we know that Jesus came as a Jew, lived as a Jew, and celebrated Passover.

His disciples were all Jews. Did you know that at the end of the book of Acts, Paul said about himself, "I am a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees"? Paul saw himself as totally Jewish. He still saw himself as a Pharisee.

He never saw himself as someone that was no longer Jewish, someone that was a Christian and not a Jew. He saw himself as a Jew that was following the King of the Jews, the prophesied Messiah, Jesus.

I just got done saying the term Judaism is not a biblical term, but is just an expression that man has used to describe the religion of the Jewish community in general. The word Christianity is also not a biblical term.

The word Christianity is used to describe the belief system of those that have put their faith in the Christ. The word Christ is used in the New Testament. It is a Greek term, and it means the anointed one.

When I say that I'm a Christian, it really has nothing to do with being Jewish because being Jewish is something that I was born into. In other words, I was born a physical descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Jewish boys, according to the Word of God and according to the Torah, are circumcised as Israelites or Jews on the eighth day. Being a Jew or being an Israelite doesn't have to do with our belief system; it has to do with our ancestry.

People are circumcised the eighth day when they're a physical descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You're born a Jew; it's being born into an ancestry. But being a Christian is not about ancestry. You're not born a Christian.

You become a Christian when you decide to pick up your cross one day and follow Jesus. The word Christ is in the New Testament, and the word Christian is in the New Testament. It's used three times, and it describes those that are following the Christ.

The word Christianity as a term is not in the New Testament. The word Christianity, like the term Judaism, is a general term that is a man-made term used to describe those that are following the Christ.

I hope that makes sense. We're talking about how these two movements of Judaism and Christianity separated from each other. One of the elements that has caused a separation and a divide between the two movements is antisemitism.

In the 300s, the Emperor of Rome, Constantine, said he had a vision of a cross. He inferred from that vision that he was to conquer in the name of Christ. He unified his kingdom under now what he believed to be Christianity.

Here now, the largest Christian influence in the world was an antisemitic movement because Constantine was an antisemite. He actually made it illegal for people under his government to work for Jewish people unless the Jewish people had become Christians.

Think about this. Constantine becomes the leader of Christianity in an earthly sense. Here now, the leader of Christianity in the known world, Constantine, who is also an antisemite, is breathing antisemitism into the people that he's calling to Christ.

What happens? An antisemitic spirit is birthed in a huge way into Christianity. We already talked about some of the other influences earlier, like the influence of the Pharisees that persecuted Jesus. But this is a different type of influence.

This is antisemitism coming from the greatest first leader of the church. Christianity becomes an antisemitic movement. This mindset of antisemitism that Constantine breathed into the church becomes so evident as time goes on.

For example, one of the continual leaders of the church, one of the church fathers around Constantine's time, was a leader by the name of John Chrysostom. There are still churches today within Catholicism that are named after John Chrysostom.

John Chrysostom, who lived from 349 to 407 AD, preached what is known today as ten sermons against the Jews. These sermons issued forth such hatred against the Jewish people, causing division between Christians and Jews.

He just spewed out such hatred towards Jewish people. It's leading to a huge separation between Christianity and Judaism and Jewish people. People my father's age would walk down the street and they'd be called the Christ-killers.

They'd be called all kinds of dirty names. Why? Because of the antisemitism that was breathed into the church, beginning with Constantine and then continuing on with John Chrysostom. Perhaps the one that you're most familiar with that's responsible for this is Martin Luther.

Martin Luther, who's responsible for birthing the Protestant Reformation, rejected some of the Catholic practices, for example, of selling salvation, which is known as indulgences. He rebelled against this.

He said it's only Scripture and salvation's by grace through faith alone. His leadership birthed the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, who was responsible for so much good, also became eventually an antisemite.

He said that the Jewish people's synagogues should be burned and their rabbis should be flailed or beaten. This influence of Martin Luther spread through the Christian world. It became so predominant that during the Holocaust in Europe, Hitler's picture was hung in many churches there.

The church was so antisemitic. Without antisemitism having taken such a foothold in the church, the Holocaust of six million Jews through Nazi Germany could have never happened. It's no wonder today that Jewish people are afraid of Christians that say they love them.

So much damage has been done to the Jewish people through the church because of all the antisemitism that was in the church. Obviously, this led to a huge separation between traditional Judaism and the movement of Christianity.

Christianity was immersed with antisemitism. This antisemitism is further evidenced in what we call today a theological term known as replacement theology. Perhaps some of you have been exposed to this in your own church.

Replacement theology says that the promises that once belonged to Israel no longer belong to Israel because the Jewish people rejected Jesus.

Dustin Roberts: This is Discovering the Jewish Jesus, and Rabbi Schneider will be right back. But first, I want to ask you the most important question you could ever be asked. Do you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?

If you haven't yet invited Jesus into your heart today to lead your life and asked God to save you from your sins, I want to invite you to do that right now. If you're ready, then I want you to pray this prayer with me.

Father God, I repent of my sins, and I ask you to cleanse me with the blood of Jesus. I accept Jesus Christ, your Son, as my Lord and Savior. Help me to follow you all the days of my life as you show me how. In Jesus' name, amen.

Friend, if you just prayed that prayer, I'm so excited for you. Let us know by clicking "Find Jesus" at discoveringthejewishjesus.com. And now, here's Rabbi.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: What the people that teach replacement theology teach is that the promises that once were given to Israel have been taken away from Israel and are now given to the church since the Jews rejected Jesus.

It's just a form of antisemitism because what the New Testament tells us in the book of Romans is that the gift and calling of God upon the Jewish people is irrevocable. They're still beloved of the Father.

But again, much of the church has been taught this replacement theology, that God has rejected the Jewish people and God's done with the Jewish people. Much of the church has been taught that God no longer has a destiny for the Jewish people.

This began with Constantine, continued on through the church fathers like John Chrysostom, and went as far as Martin Luther, the founder of the Reformation. I remember the first time I went to Israel with a group of pastors.

I won't even mention what denomination this one pastor on the group with me was from, but he was part of one of the mainline churches in the Western world, a denomination that you're all familiar with.

He knew I was Jewish. We're sitting down to eat one day, and this pastor says to me, "Yeah, Paul met Jesus and he came away with pork on his breath." It was such an offensive thing to say to me as a Jew, whether I keep kosher or not.

It's just a replacement theology, antisemitic type of comment. It's again this concept that God no longer has anything to do with anything Jewish. He's taken it all away, and God's done with all that. He's all for the church now.

I pray, beloved ones, that if you have been taught that, Father would deliver you from that right now. God still has a special call upon the Jewish people. He still has a special call on the nation of Israel. We have to respect that and honor that.

Paul told us that in the book of Romans. He says, "Don't become arrogant against the root that supports you," because the Scriptures come from Israel and Jesus Himself is a Jew. We shouldn't be arrogant against Jewish things, but we should be appreciative.

We should honor that which has come to us through the Jewish people, the nation of Israel. Even heaven's going to be a Jewish place. The city of heaven is called the New Jerusalem, whose gates are inscribed with the twelve tribes of Israel as well as the twelve Jewish apostles.

I hope that through this series, you have come to understand how Jesus never came to start a new religion. He came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, as he clearly stated in Matthew 5. But because mankind messes things up and obscures things and confuses things, we have a lot of confusion today.

We went back to the beginning, and we traced how this confusion today came. We shouldn't be confused. Jewish people should understand that believing in Jesus is the most Jewish thing that a Jew could do because Jesus is the fulfillment of Isaiah 53.

He Himself bore our sin in His own body on the tree. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord laid upon Him, meaning Yeshua, the iniquity of us all, and by His scourging we are healed.

Peter said Jesus is the one that Moses spoke of. Peter said Jesus is the one that was revealed in the Torah. When it was written in the Torah, the Lord said to Moses, "I'm going to raise up from your brethren, Moses, a deliverer like you from amongst your kinsmen."

Peter said the one that God was referring to when He said that to Moses is Jesus. Jesus said in John 5 to the Jewish people, "If you believed Moses, you'd believe me, for Moses wrote of me."

My heart's desire is to help Jewish people understand that believing in Jesus is entirely Jewish because He is the prophesied Hebrew Messiah. He is the Messiah. He's the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Remember, He said, "Don't think I've come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I've not come to abolish but fulfill." Conversely, I want to say to the church, don't look at Judaism as some foreign religion. You actually are birthed out of Judaism.

Jesus came as a Jew, lived as a Jew, died as a Jew, and hung on the cross as the King of the Jews. He sits in heaven right now as the Lion from the tribe of Judah, and He's coming back as the offspring of David.

Honor this and appreciate the Jewish roots of your faith. Learn more. Don't be antisemitic. Don't separate yourself from Jewish believers. So many times I think the church, because they don't have this information, they're afraid of it.

What they're afraid of they try to diminish. So there's a lot of people that talk bad about congregations that practice some of the Hebrew roots out of fear and insecurity. Don't be like that. Let's embrace the truth, no matter how it affects us.

We need to pick up a cross, deny ourself, and follow Jesus. What I've given you is spirit and truth. Over the course of the last episodes, we've talked about how the Pharisees of Jesus' day rejected Jesus because of their jealousy, and that began the divide.

We continued on and we talked about how when Jesus said He and the Father were one, the Jewish leadership of Jesus' day couldn't understand how a man could say he was one with God. They got so upset, they tore their clothes and called Him a blasphemer.

Then we looked at how in John's Gospel, he uses the term "Jew" sometimes in a negative light because he's not referring to the Jewish people in general, but he's referring to the religious Judean leadership that had rejected Jesus.

Then we continued on and we looked at the difference between the oral law and the written law. We looked at Mark chapter 7 and Exodus 24, and we shared how the fact that Jesus said that much of the oral law was just the tradition of men.

Since the Pharisees and Orthodox Jews today believe that the oral law came from God and Jesus called it the tradition of men, there was even a further divide between the traditional Jewish movement and the movement comprising of those that are following the Jewish Messiah.

Then we looked at the phenomenon of the inclusion of the Gentiles. When the church began to receive Gentiles, that created a bigger division between the traditional Jews and the church because traditional Jews don't associate closely with Gentiles.

God put an end to all that, but for the Jewish people that haven't received that revelation, they were further moving away from Jewish people that did because they couldn't see how associating with Gentiles could be a good thing.

Then we looked at the revolts in 66 AD leading to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD and then the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132. We talked about how the Jewish people's revolt against the Romans led to a further division.

I would encourage you to study this information. If you want to study history, the best history to study is church history. I've tried to make this as simple as possible. I hope it's been a blessing to you. I love you, and I want to simply close today by saying this.

Jesus didn't come to start a new religion, but he came to make Jew and Gentile one in Messiah. God is not the God of the Jews only; He's God of all humankind that He's created in His own image. He sent us Yeshua the Messiah to bring us all to Himself.

Neither you nor I would go to a restaurant, order a meal, and then not pay for it, right? But yet we do that with God. I think that's why the Lord said in the book of Malachi chapter 3, "Will a man rob God?"

They said, "How are we robbing you?" The Lord said, "In tithes and offerings." We're instructed in Scripture to financially support those ministries that are blessing us and feeding us. If Discovering the Jewish Jesus is a blessing to you, would you support it?

The Lord will bless you for honoring Him with your wealth. God wants us to respond to His love through our wealth. The book of Proverbs tells us in Proverbs 3, verse 9 this word: "Honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first fruits of all your produce." Honor the Lord with your wealth through Discovering the Jewish Jesus if He's blessing you through this ministry.

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You can even text us your gift. Just text the keyword "GIVE" to the phone number 88777. Thank you for standing with us and helping this ministry bring biblical truth, hope, and the love of Jesus to people everywhere. Now I want to turn things back over to Rabbi so he can speak God's sacred and special blessing over your life.

Rabbi K.A. Schneider: The words from the Aaronic blessing in the book of Numbers chapter 6, verses 22 through 27, help us to realize how good God is to you and I personally. So receive His blessing into your life and then, beloved one, go bless somebody else in Jesus' name today.

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.

[Rabbi Schneider sings the blessing in Hebrew]

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 explains God's plan for Israel. Learn the details Wednesday on Discovering the Jewish Jesus.