Why The Jewishness of Jesus Matters to You | Rabbi Matt Rosenberg | Gateway Church

[Music] good morning good morning how is everybody you look good today i want to welcome our tempe campus wanna welcome everybody joining us online we are continuing our series this weekend entitled the real jesus and one of my friends is in town to preach and teach from god's word and he just so happens to be a messianic jewish rabbi from seattle his name is rabbi matt rosenberg he's become a great friend he is a in my opinion a genius theologically i'm just going to tell you a little bit about him uh because we're we're just a little bit different uh he's gonna tell more jokes in his first point than i've told in the last year of sermons um and you're gonna be going i wish preston was this funny it is never gonna happen never gonna happen you don't want it to happen okay my jokes are horrible but he literally is a genius theologically i always love getting time with him i always learn when i'm with him he's going to say some things that might challenge you a little bit and i i want you to remember if you haven't been in this series don't just take this message this is a part of an entire series we've been on a journey talking about all of this and and so go back and catch up if you're this is your first time with us welcome but here's what i would say i don't want you to focus on being right okay i want you to focus on learning at least one new thing about the one you love because i promise you there's probably going to be at least one moment in this message where you're like i don't know if that's this is not about you being right okay it's annoying to be in love with someone who always has to be right because unless your name is jesus no one's ever had that happen okay so i don't want you to fix it i'm being right i want you to lean in and i want you to learn something about the one you love because you're about to hear one of my favorite messages of the year all right so would you please welcome my friend rabbi matt rosenberg [Applause] being a genius theologically is tough to live up to so hopefully that hopefully that works out for us today uh pastor preston mentioned uh last week in his message he talked about perpetual celebrators i am a perpetual celebrator i work under the title rabbi my my hashtag on social media for myself is the happy rabbi uh i i am a rabbi but the title i prefer which i made up for myself at my congregation it's on my business cards it's uh the coa of restoration that's the chief officer of awesome uh i serve an awesome god and i'm part of an awesome people and my job is an awesome privilege and if we learned anything from the lego movie everything is awesome that's my whole life really uh so far in this series um which has been really incredible uh from a perspective of a messianic rabbi you need to understand that what your pastor is doing in this series no other church that i'm aware of has done or is doing and it's really exciting and pastor preston is a good friend and it's an honor to speak to you to this church so so far you've heard from tall skinny white guys so what you didn't know you needed he's a short chubby jewish guy um i wrote a book which is very exciting this is my first book this is a proof of the book it has my name on it which is weird um and it's called jesus never said anything new and it's available on amazon on february 19th our friend our mutual friend pastor tim ross wrote the forward which is super fun and a lot of what i'm going to talk about comes out of this book so if you'd like to dig into more um i encourage you to grab a copy pastor preston already said i'm going to say some hard things today and maybe some things that you've never heard before uh but you have to understand that this is a journey all of us are on sometimes when people talk to messianic jews or they find out i'm a messianic rabbi there's like this weird honor thing like they don't know what to do for with a rabbi like am i am i supposed to bow i'm like no no um and uh and i love what pastor preston just said because this is true for us as a people as well there is no interest in being right the heart of judaism is we're not actually interested in answers as much as we are in the questions that are being asked and the more you dig and the more you read and the more you study and the more uh you grow in your relationship with god the more questions you have for the rest of your life i have spent my entire life my dad is also a messianic rabbi my brother's a messianic rabbi my uncle's a messianic rabbi and i've spent my whole life studying the word of god and i find new things all the time and it doesn't make any sense i i've read my dad has a system of reading the bible that he got me on when i was eight years old that has that had me reading the bible the entire bible every 90 days i started that when i was eight and i didn't do it in college and then i came back to it but the more you read it the more it becomes a part of your life the more you just find man i just don't know enough and i certainly don't know enough to be convinced that i'm the most right um in the room so we're talking about the real jesus so i just wanted to show you the not real jesuses that's not him that's well compassionate but not him definitely not him and and here's the thing jesus isn't white and he's not black and he's not mongolian and he's not japanese and but you find expressions of him in every culture and it's a human thing where uh we want to make like fit jesus into our culture because it feels like we relate better but the truth is he's probably olive skinned with a dark beard and dark eyes he's probably five foot five and a little overweight this guy bring back the sonic so today we're going to talk about why the jewishness of jesus matters to you and the idea is putting jesus back into his jewish context because the jewish context of jesus has been lost for quite some time and when we talk about context i want to just take us back to the basics so we're gonna talk about green eggs and ham a little bit you guys know if i could turn to my favorite passage i could not would not on a boat i will not will not with a goat i will not eat them in the rain i will not eat them on a train not in the dark not in a tree not in a car you let me be i do not like them in a box i do not like them with a fox i will not eat them in a house i do not like them with a mouse i do not like them here or there i do not like them anywhere thank you [Applause] uh by the way the the title of uh green eggs and him in israel for the hebrew translation is not green eggs and ham because of the ham mostly yes so in hebrew it's called not hungry don't love it [Applause] and here's what i did i i looked up i googled uh the meaning of green eggs and ham and there are some crazy things on the internet i don't know if you guys realize there's some crazy things on the internet the the standard is and you've probably said this to your kids when you read it to them or your parents said it to you when they read this book to you you'll never know you don't like something until you try it right that's what everybody thinks is about one person said it's a reference to white americans unwillingness to accept blacks one said it's a portrayal of early marxism in fact it was banned in china and one guy said that greed exit ham is a very sophisticated theology of the incarnational non-dual spirituality with the book acting as a modern retelling of great spiritual texts like the baha'i gita yeah i know here's what green eggs and ham is really about green eggs and ham was a bet between dr seuss and his publisher see he had already written cat in the hat and cat in the hat has 225 words in it it's one of the best selling book children's books of all time and his publisher said i bet i'll bet you fifty dollars that you can't write a book with 50 words in it that's why he wrote green eggs and him that's why it repeats so much sam i am i am sam it's just because it has 50 words i know some of you are thinking what are the 50 words i'll tell you am and anywhere rb boat box car could dark do eat eggs fox goat good green ham here house i if in let like may me mouse not on or rain sam say see so thank that they them there they train tree try will with would you 50 words and here's the thought if a 50 word children's book if the purpose for a 50 word children's book if the context of a 50 word children's book can be so confusing to people how much more is the context of 66 books written over a period of a thousand years by 40 different authors how much more confusing can the text of the bible be in in all of the times and all of the history and all of the places that it's written and even though the majority of it is written to jewish people they're jewish people over a span of a thousand years the world changed culture changed everything changed and so when you read the scriptures you have to know a little bit about context for the things you're reading what the author actually was saying and what the people in the time were actually hearing and sometimes what we do naturally is we just read the text and we impose our culture onto the text but our culture is so far removed from the culture of the writers of scripture that we have a lot of work to do to understand historical context and then you have all the translations and all the languages that's been translated into and all the different ways that people have interpreted things so this morning what i want to help you do is understand why through context of the whole bible from genesis to revelation why the jewishness of jesus matters to you it's somewhat obvious why it matters to me because i'm jewish and i want jesus to be like me it's a little less obvious for those of you who are not jewish who are gentiles which by the word by the way the word gentile gets a bad rap gentile means nations and there's a separation where god took the jewish people out of the nations to separate us from the nations but the purpose was for us to preach to the nations to be a light to the nations so he had to separate us in order to bring us back so that we could tell the nations that there's no other god but the god of israel and so in context and i love that pastor preston did in the first message of this series he he said lovers are learners and if you if you love someone you want to know everything about them and here's what i want you to understand the jewishness of jesus and in fact his practice of judaism his daily decisions the holidays that he celebrated the sabbath that he kept the fact that if you invited him over for easter dinner he wouldn't eat ham he wouldn't mind if you eat it he wouldn't judge you for eating it but he wouldn't eat it be because he's jewish it's it's a part of who he is and the more you can understand the context you can go back and understand context the deeper your relationship with jesus will go whether you're jewish or a gentile from the nations and for us as messianic judaism you know modern messianic judaism is really only just a little over 100 years old and over the last few generations our our fathers and mothers tried to figure out what practicing judaism centered on the person of jesus would even look like which is funny because when he showed up everybody he spoke to was jewish and all of his followers were jewish in fact everyone who's filled with the spirit in acts chapter 2 is jewish i'll even go as far as to say that the the the holy spirit doesn't fall in gentiles until 10 years after the resurrection which means for 10 years the holy spirit only fell on jewish people and then in acts chapter 10 when peter preaches to cornelius and they're filled with the holy spirit the question is is this allowed can can gentiles be filled with the holy spirit not because they were angry or frustrated but because in their experience all they had seen was the holy spirit falling on jewish people and a lot of the context that i'm going to share with you a lot a lot of the things that i've discovered and that my parents before me discovered come out of practicing judaism and the more we've practiced it and it's different messianic judaism is different than modern orthodox judaism for lots of reasons but we started to celebrate passover and we started to keep the shabbat and we started to do the blessings and we started to do all these things and the more we did these things the more we saw those things in the new testament and realized oh right he's doing those things because he's jewish and these blessings and these things are far older than jesus and so in his time he would have done these things as well so it's not like we have all the answers as messianic jews because we're on a process of discovering for ourselves as we continue to do a be who god has called us to be jews who center our faith on the jewish messiah that the more we practice the judaism of jesus the more it becomes clear and pastor preston said throughout the series this church isn't going to become jewish that's not the goal but the goal is for all of us to understand context i remember i was preaching at a church not too long ago and i finished preaching and i said the benediction and then i came down and somebody came up to me and said i've i'm just i'm really excited because i've never met a rabbi before and i said that's not true he said what do you mean you're the first rabbi i've met i said i you you pray to one yeah you're not tracking with me yet you worship a rabbi please don't worship me but you worship we worship the same jesus is my rabbi in fact pastor preston is going to do a message in this series called jesus the rabbi and so i'm going to give you some uh uh three reasons why the jewishness of jesus matters for you the first and this is really theologically deep so i want you to you know roll with me jesus is jewish not a christian i know it's good right some of you are scared i can tell it's okay but just think about it this way christian means christ follower jesus doesn't self-identify as a christian because he doesn't follow himself the second reason is because he's jewish and somewhere in the history of our peoples over the last 2000 years christian has become synonymous with not jewish and it's not even that jesus was jewish which is important it's that he still currently is jewish as he sits at the right hand of the father um my my dad is jewish and my mom is italian she was raised roman catholic people ask me what does jewish food taste like and the answer is i have no idea i i grew up on pasta like pastor brad said in his message a few weeks ago as an italian i grew up on pasta minus the sausage of course but uh but i grew up on pasta and i think you can tell between pastor brad and i which one actually loves pasta the most i know it's brad right that speaking of italians my grandma who was roman catholic uh said to me one time very italian lady she said you know who the two greatest italians who ever lived are i said who grandma she said frank sinatra and jesus i said grandma nobody's questioning frank sinatra i'm with you but but jesus isn't italian he he never went to italy like he never visited rome when he he he lived on earth and this is part of the the struggle is when you go to the sistine chapel and you see the picture of the blond-haired blue-eyed clean-shaven soft white definitely moisturizes and conditions jesus at the last judgment this is really far removed from rabbi yeshua the son of miriam and joseph from nazareth in eretz israel rabbi jesus son of mary and joseph who grew up in nazareth in the land of israel and the reason why it's important is because if you love somebody you want to know everything about them and what you need to know about jesus is during his time on earth he never spoke english i know this is when preston said i was a theological genius this is this is all where it starts just follow me follow me he never spoke english his disciples never spoke english he never heard the name jesus in his lifetime i'll give you he's probably used to it by now that was way funnier than you laughed [Applause] the truth is he's an observant jew and he kept all the require the commandments required of him he celebrated shabbat he attended synagogue he prayed in the temple in jerusalem on the feast of the lord he never ate unclean food his parents were also observant jews brought him to jerusalem to be circumcised on the eighth day and they offered the prescribed sacrifice after his mother's days of purification were over and they named him a jewish name yeshua now yeshua literally means from hebrew to english means salvation jesus is his english name but we lose some of the power of his name if we don't understand his hebrew name yeshua which literally means salvation you guys know the verse from christmas time matthew chapter 1 and verse 21 the angel says to joseph she'll give birth to a son and you will give him the name jesus because he will save his people from his sins but if you understand that the word jesus is yeshua and that yeshua means salvation in a messianic translation it reads this way she will give birth to a son and you shall call his name salvation for he will save his people from their sins so when the shepherds are on the hill in bethlehem and they see the star and the angels appear and they sing gloria in excelsis day oh joseph was like could you repeat that in hebrew i even sang guys that was okay like it's a beautiful song i love that song do you think the angels sang in latin no because the shepherds were jewish people in the land of israel in bethlehem and they heard them singing in hebrew and they understood what they were saying so the the bottom line of this message today is the jewishness of jesus and his practice of judaism is a part of who he is and the more we can go back to understand context of who he is the jewish context the deeper your relationship with jesus is going to go whether you're jewish or a gentile now i i was part of a youth group of a church when i was a kid because our synagogue didn't have a youth group and i came back with one of the bracelets the wwjd bracelet and my dad's a rabbi some of you are wearing them and and my dad said what does the bracelet mean and i said well we're supposed to ask ourselves dad in any given situation what would jesus do and my dad being jewish answered a question with a question do you know what the real answer to that question is and i said what he said what would jesus do he'd go to synagogue see people ask me often especially when they find out i'm a messianic rabbi and it doesn't matter where they come from but people will often look at me and say how can you be jewish and believe in jesus and it's such an odd question it makes sense in our culture and in our context but for the disciples they never imagined a world where that question would even be asked because for them in the jerusalem council in acts 15 their question was the exact opposite how can gentiles follow yeshua and somehow over 2000 years it's flipped over on its head and it's upside down where people assume that if you believe in jesus you're not jewish when everybody who followed jesus including jesus himself are all a part of the jewish people i was 16 years old in social studies in high school and my and my teacher put up a chart like this on the board and she put judaism on one side and christianity on the other and she had the ten commandments under judaism and love your neighbor as yourself under christianity i raised my hand and i said you can't do that and she said why i said because what christian do you know doesn't follow the ten commandments and love your neighbor as yourself is from leviticus 19 verse 18 it's in the torah you char your chart doesn't work similarly my daughter uh my daughter emma who's 15 but when she was 13 she had her bat mitzvah in our synagogue and her friends in school were having their bar mitzvahs and you know they went to each other's parties and one of the kids uh said to her um well believing in jesus and being jewish is not a real thing and my daughter at 13 years old just looked her friend right in the face and said i mean i'm standing right in front of you i was in i went to a christian college and when i was in college one of my professors bust into the room before class and said i didn't have my son circumcised on purpose to prove he was free from the law i was like 18. i you can't do that you can't say that and he was like why i said because why would you try to prove that you were free from something you were never under like circumcision is for jewish people and it's not a burden for us and it's certainly not a curse we're not trying to be free from it it's what god told us to do all the way back to our father abraham but gentiles don't have share the obligation in fact i wrote a paper in college which the title i'm still proud of to this day which uh the title was should jews stop circumcising their sons just because it hurts and my professor said he said to me look it's an a paper but if you don't change the title i'm going to give you a b and i said then i'm getting a b and he in my paper my conclusion in my paper was jewish people messianic jews should continue to circumcise our sons on the eighth day and gentiles have no obligation to do circumcision they never have it's nowhere in the torah it's not there and he was concerned for me and he said i'm i'm really concerned that you're teaching the heresy of judaizing and so i went and i looked up judy eyes in the english dictionary and i went back to him i said i know this isn't like scholarly necessarily but i looked up judy eyes in the english dictionary and the definition is to make one jewish how can you judaize jews we're already jewish right i understand that you could judaize gentiles but that's not what i was saying in the in my paper so what when it comes like in our community in seattle we often say look jews are jews and gentiles are gentiles and we're all part of the same family but there's really only two divisions that god made he started with male and female and then he separated the jewish people from the nations the reason for the separation was not just because we're the chosen people people say to me all the time you know man it's so cool that you're chosen part of the chosen people and i say you know it is cool but do you know what we're chosen for even other jewish people do you know what we're chosen for and everybody goes no well isaiah said about 35 times in the in the book of isaiah that our job is to be light to the nations that's what we're chosen for we're supposed to tell the nations that there's no other god but the god of israel in fact any gentile here or watching online who believes in jesus believes in jesus because the jewish apostles did their job they went and told the whole world and most of them were martyred were killed for it the reason why any of us believe is because of of the who they were and the judaism that they practice so the first why the the jewishness of jesus matters is jesus is jewish not a christian the second is jesus saves jews first not last it order matters and in romans 1 16 this is the words of paul for i am not ashamed of the gospel because it is because it is the power of god that brings salvation to everyone who believes first to the jew and then to the gentile and in the first century this is entirely practical if in the preaching of the gospel a jewish person or jesus himself walked into a gentile audience and said all of the prophecies have been fulfilled and i am the messiah you've been waiting for the gentiles would say what prophecies what's a messiah like what are we i don't know i don't know what you're talking about but the reason why the gospel is to the jewish people first is because when you walk into a jewish room and say all the prophecy has been fulfilled and i'm the one you've been waiting for some people are like we should probably kill this guy and other guys are like i mean he could be it's it's the experience like you got to get in the head of the the the jewish disciples who who walked with him for three years who who spent all this time with him who who who uh uh loved him and how and how amazing and curious and wonderful and stressful it's my favorite thing through the gospels is everything jesus says there's always a line after that says and the disciples did not understand a word he said and they don't understand it until the giving of the holy spirit 50 days after the resurrection and it's after the resurrection on shavuot where where they start to have conversations being filled with the spirit going man remember when he killed that fig tree and he quoted the prophets just made sense to me it's like uh if you've ever seen uh the the if you've ever seen the movie honey i shrunk the kids anybody anybody a few people okay uh he he goes she like drowns and the kid older kid resuscitates her and her younger brother says where did you learn that and he says french class it's a good joke the very end of the movie the last scene of the movie is a kid going french class now i get it the disciples heard everything and experienced everything but it made no sense to them until they were filled with the holy spirit tim mackey who is the theologian for the bible project this is what he says about the old testament because again order matters he says it's a prophetic interpretation of israel's history that reveals god's purpose to rescue the whole world and we don't call the old testament the old testament we call it the tanakh and the tanakh is tnk is torah nevim ketuvim which is where you get the word tanakh and it means the the law the prophets and the writings it's a different order than you're used to in christian translations there's the old testament has a jewish order and really the gospels carry the tanakh forward because they tell the story of the jewish messiah who comes to fulfill all of those prophecies the book of acts tells the story where jesus said in acts 1 8 to his disciples you should go to jerusalem judea samaria and to the ends of the earth i don't know if you realize that the book of acts they literally do that the first few chapters are jerusalem then they're in judea and samaria and then they go to the ends of the earth where paul ends on trial in rome the center of the ends of the earth in the ancient world and um the the truth is christianity and judaism are not supposed to be different religions they're counterparts judaism's for jews christianity is judaism for gentiles i know some of you are like carry the one i'm not christianity is judaism for gentiles because gentiles don't become jews but they do become followers of the jewish messiah who came first to save the jewish people and then everyone else and this is why if you look even in the order of the books it's really fascinating that in jewish translations the the old testament the tanakh ends with second chronicles it doesn't end with the italian prophet malachi just kidding malachi he's not italian either grandma i promise so it ends with malachi and if you have a bible i want to encourage you to open to the end of malachi um in the end in the new nlt that's page 574. the end of malachi and what i want to show you at the end of malachi is there's a page in your bible that doesn't belong there i know it sounds scary i get it but this page is not inspired by the holy spirit it's a it's a literal middle wall of partition it's a it's a literal page of separation at the end of malachi malachi ends and there's a page that says new testament on it the back of that page is blank and then it goes to matthew the problem is and this is what you should do with that page if you take this page out not inspired by the holy spirit well when you take it out it's inspired by the holy spirit it wasn't inspired by the holy spirit to put it in when you take it out look what happens the story continues there's no separation i heard that tara yes get it get it bro because the story continues there's no start over there's no birth of something new there's not the start of a new people it's a continuation of the story and actually in the jewish order if you look at the end check out this is the beauty of continuing the story second chronicles 36 this is the end of the hebrew scriptures in the jewish order this is what cyrus the king of persia says the lord the god of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at jerusalem in judea in judah and any of his people among you may go up and may the lord their god be with them guess who goes to this temple matthew chapter 1 verse one in in a messianic translation in the hebrew it says this is the book of the genealogy of yeshua hamashiach ben david ben avraham where in the niv it says this is the genealogy of jesus the messiah the son of david the son of abraham that sounds pretty jewish because the story continues and really this is our dilemma friends it's jewish people the majority of jewish people don't read the new testament because they've been told and have understood that it's an anti-semitic book that is against jewish people in part because the new testament has been used to kill us or kick us out of countries over the last 2000 years in the name of christ and the flip side is christians generally don't read the hebrew scriptures they read the new testament so we have jewish people who are not reading the end and we have christians who are not reading the beginning i mean i know you read genesis chapter one and two and you skip to isaiah 53 but you don't read [Applause] the whole nobody's reading the whole thing people uh people say to me uh you know um people people will say uh that this is it i don't know it just if the new testament is about killing jewish people well it makes sense that it wouldn't be for us but what if it's the one we've been waiting for yeah my dad said i used to i worked in manhattan um when uh after after seminary and i was the words the world's worst real estate agent because we'd walk into apartments and i'd be like there's no closets you guys don't want to live here let's go let's go somewhere else and they'd say you know is it is it cheaper to leave in brook and live in brooklyn and queens and i'd say oh gosh it's so much cheaper don't rent in manhattan you should go to brooklyn and queens you get an mta card it'll like so much cheaper you have anything in brooklyn and queens no i only do manhattan that was terrible but i would go home on friday nights and i would leave early to get home for shabbat and it was like me and every orthodox jew in brooklyn and queens on the on the train and i would take out my complete jewish bible like out of my bag it says complete jewish bible and i would wait for somebody to talk to me and i was talking to my dad about it and i said you know i take out my bible and waiting for conversation my dad said son what are you so afraid of i said i'm not afraid of anything and he said no for real what are you afraid of i said honestly they're going to tell me that i don't speak hebrew and i can't read hebrew fluently so what kind of rabbi am i and my dad said son just ask them if they've heard about jfk getting shot what ask them if they've if they heard about martin luther king assassination where are we going dad they'll hear of those things and then say how could you miss the messiah 2000 years ago like yeah i don't speak hebrew and yeah you might think i'm less of a rabbi because i don't speak hebrew but i mean missing the messiah is a big deal so it's like what are we so afraid of it rabbi troy did a great sermon in this series of jesus cover to cover and and his appearances all through the scripture you got to understand for the disciples they like ate with him just like abraham they spoke face to face with him just like moses they worshipped him just like our patriarchs they laughed and cried with him just as the prophets did before the difference was they didn't see him in snippets and scenes they spent three years with him every day they spent all this time with him and they didn't understand anything it was a message the gospel is a message for jewish people by jewish people through jewish people like it's a message for us jesus came to save his own people first so that we could do what we are called to do as a people and tell the nations that there's no other god but the god of abraham isaac and jacob in the person of yeshua our messiah that's the story that's where you clap because that's a big deal [Applause] the jewishness of jesus and his practice of judaism is a part of who he is and the more you can go back to understand jewish context the deeper your relationship whether you're jewish or gentile the deeper your relationship with jesus will go so jesus is jewish he's not a christian jesus saves jews first not last and the third is jesus is a restorer not an innovator and this is really the idea of my book jesus never said anything new which when i say the title i know some of you like no he definitely said the word new i remember he said new he said new a few times and you're right he did you'll have to read my book to find out why he never said anything new the struggle is in our culture people desperately need jesus to do something new because they don't understand jewish context if you understand the full story and you understand that nothing that he said was new in fact everything he taught was taught by the rabbis of the first century because they were all using the same text they were all preaching from the hebrew scriptures they they taught all the same things the difference between jesus and the pharisees and the sadducees the scripture tells us is the authority with which he spoke i'm from new york so it's authority translation for tongues is authority that's my wife tells me i have to say that it's his authority it's not the content of what he's saying it's the way he's saying it in judaism we are super comfortable with disagreement it's a big difference between judaism and christianity in in christianity you have a systematic theology right this plus this equals this and if you don't believe this and you then you don't believe in orthodox christianity in judaism we have rabbis and one rabbi reads the text and says one thing remember fiddler on the roof on the one hand and on the other and another rabbi says the complete opposite and then everybody goes yeah they're probably both right and the difference for jesus is he what steps in to the first century and there's all this opinion and all the opinions are good in fact the pharisees are not jesus's enemies they're his brothers he didn't come to beat them up and tell them they're legalistic and like tell them that they've done everything wrong he called them back of all the good things you know and all the things you do to lead our people which i gave you the authority to lead our people jesus steps in and says can i just tell you guys what i meant when i wrote it and i gave it to moses i mean think think about their reaction but but look at the reaction of people right matthew chapter 7 and verse 28 says when jesus had finished saying these things the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught as one who had authority and not as the teachers of the law or mark chapter 1 verse 21 they went to capernaum and it was the sabbath and jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach and the people were amazed at his teaching because he taught them as one who had authority not as the teachers of the law so jesus steps in and says i'll just tell you guys what i meant when i wrote it and their response is well who do you think you are i remember one time a guy i was sitting on the first front row for the start of our service the music had just started playing and uh um you know guy comes in and he's tall and everybody's taught next to me but he was tall and he was wearing white jordans and white pants and a white button-down shirt and he had a white blanket touted around his neck like a cape that went all the way down to his ankles and he sat next to me and he leans over and says could i speak to you after the service i said sure let me preach first so i come down and he says can we spend a few minutes privately together and i said i'm sorry i don't meet with people privately on shabbat and he said i said but i'm willing to buy you coffee on monday and we can talk and he said i'm sorry i i have to kick the dust off my feet and leave and i thought that's a weird thing to say then i realized i got an email from this guy earlier in the week and it was you know i'm going to be at the service and i'd like to speak to you afterwards so i emailed this guy back and said are you the gentleman who was at the service i'd love to buy you coffee on monday and he replied i am he period and you rejected me and so i have to kick the dust off my feet and move to the next town and i thought he thinks he's god and sometimes in the humania humanity of it we miss like the pharisees should have seen it yeah but if somebody's standing in front of you telling you their god your first response is i don't think so that can't be right and their frustration john 5 verse 18 it says of the pharisees the people were impressed with this authority but the rabbis tried to kill him not only because he was breaking the sabbath which is not true that's another sermon that pastor preston would have to bring me back for but he was even calling god his own father and making himself equal with god now what you don't what you may not understand is in the torah in deuteronomy 13 and deuteronomy 18 it says very clearly that if someone comes preaching and does miracles and they tell you to worship another god then you should kill them so we look at this and think wow how evil but they were actually doing what they were supposed to be doing i mean he had to die there's all kinds of nonsense about the jews killing christ and and how much in fact i think my next book is going to be called the jews did not kill christ subtitle and other frustrations of a messianic rabbi um because the pharisees are not jesus's enemies they're his brothers and and this is the way a.w tozer said it jesus never spoke an opinion oh man i love that everybody has opinions right we have theological opinions we have arguments over theology and we say well maybe you're right maybe i'm right and jesus just comes and says well i'll tell you guys what i meant when i wrote it and gave it to moses when i spoke to him face to face or when i wrestled jacob or when i showed up at the top of jacob's ladder or when i like it was all me you know it's it's it's startling because yeshua is not just one of us he's not just one of the jewish people he is the one that we were waiting for and there's tension that's created that's natural and practical to work that we were supposed to do as a people to make sure double check triple check that he actually is the one that was sent well-meaning christians asked me often how could jewish people not see jesus in the fulfillment of prophecy and this is the hard part and i mean this from a place of compassion the greatest single cause of jewish rejection of jesus is christians who turn jesus into another god of another people and a creator of another religion he's not those things he is still the god of israel he is still what they put in mockery above his cross the king of the jewish people and he is ours first because of the order of how god set up the separation of the jewish people so he could speak to us and through us and then we could tell the whole world that there's no one else there's no other god but the god of israel if jesus starts a new religion if jesus starts a new people if jesus divorces the jewish people and remarries another woman called the church if jesus makes a new covenant with someone else other than the jewish people if he presents new content and doesn't follow the hebrew traditions of revelation then he's not what the writer of hebrews calls the same yesterday today and forever the difference for jesus was his authority not the content which he taught the authority as the one that we have been waiting for and it's so amazing to be a part be connected to a church like this and pastor preston and and your staff and and people that are we're living in a time that was the dream of my parents and my grandparents before that that the whole world both jews and gentiles would come to understand the jewish context of jesus not just for the salvation of the jewish people which is important to me but also for every gentile who follows jesus to grow deeper in their relationship with jesus when they understand his jewish context and his practice of judaism so jesus is jewish he's not a christian jesus saves jews first not last jesus is a restorer not an innovator he is the king of the jewish people and he is the king of kings and the lord of lords of anyone who calls on his name from any nation the doors were flung wide open when he rose from the dead and he sent his disciples out to reach the ends of the earth and here we are pretty far away from jerusalem sitting in a church in arizona talking about the jewishness of jesus 2000 years later and if you haven't ever called on the name of jesus i i just encourage you to say yes it's so much more wonderful and so much more amazing than you could ever imagine and there's so much deeper that all of us can go if we dig into the context of the whole scriptures let me pray for you lord god we thank you for who you are and who you've called us to be as your people and we pray that you would continue to meet us where we're at and speak to us through your holy spirit on these things in yeshua's name we pray amen amen would you stand we're going to do something really cool to end the service in just a minute there's so many things about that message that i love one of my favorites was him addressing the question how how is it even possible that the jewish people have missed that jesus is their messiah and that picture of the guy in all white because all of us would be like that is not jesus that is not god right but we just don't fully understand and the way i've described it is god chose abraham and his family as a people to be prepared for the coming messiah when we hear first when we hear chosen if there's any bit of orphan in us it's like wait a minute i am too yeah that's not what this is about this is about him when we read scripture in the western american context of us right now we think the bible is about us that's a book about me okay i have to remind myself daily my name is not in that book my name is in his book thank the lord but it's not in that book so we have to remove ourselves as we study the one we love and we give our lives to being more like him matt's going to close with the mid-addiction and if you know what that is you've probably heard the benediction in english but we're actually going to end this service a little bit differently and he's going to give beautiful context to why but i want to invite the altar ministry team to come forward and after we dismiss matt's going to dismiss us if you need prayer for anything at all just come and pray with somebody if we haven't met you we'd love to meet you out in the lobby but let's together celebrate what we've just heard by ending our service together with a beautiful benediction so you guys know number six verse 24 to 26 as the lord bless you and keep you the lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you the lord turn his face towards you and give you peace verse 27 is a command for the high priest aaron when he says this blessing over the people to lift his hands and when he lifts his hands it says verse 27 so they will put my name on the people and i will bless them oh man this is so cool luke chapter 24 yeshua is about to ascend into heaven 40 days after his resurrection he's taken off into the sky and it says luke 24 and verse 50 when he had led them out to bethany he lifted his hands and he blessed them the benediction is the end of every jewish service and what we do in the benediction in fact you may have seen this symbol from star trek leonard nimoy was jewish and he got this from the rabbis in synagogue when they say the benediction at the end of the service so live long and prosper is actually part of jesus blessing over us but through another jewish guy but when the scripture says he lifted his hands and blessed them to every jewish person that means he said the benediction and the benedictions at the end and after he finished the benediction he took off into the sky and he blessed his disciples by putting his name the name of the lord on them and i'd like to bless you the same way if you want to lift your hands you can if you want to hold your palms up forward to receive the blessing whatever is comfortable for you be blessed by the lord as i say these [Music] words [Music] oh the lord bless you and keep you the lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you the lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace in the name of jesus our messiah we pray and everyone said amen have a great sunday

Channel: Gateway Church

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Keywords: Preston, Morrison, gateway, church, gateway church, scottsdale, tempe, gateway church sermons, church online, arizona church, arizona churches, scottsdale churches, tempe churches, phoenix churches, gateway people, gateway life, Preston Morrison, Robert Morris, Pastor Robert Morris, Pastor Preston Morrison, Preston Morrison sermons, church sermons, Rabbi Matt Rosenberg, Jewishness of Jesus, Jesus the Rabbi, Real Jesus, Christianity and Jewish

Id: VoIZOUHjesk

Length: 56min 40sec (3400 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 08 2021