Jesus Was A Jew – Really?

The question of who the man Jesus was is one that has dominated discussions for 2000 years. Many have tried to describe Him, and many artists have tried to capture His likeness. These decisions seem to make the topic more confusing, as historians did not find much to comment on Jesus’s looks and artistic renderings are inconsistent, including the way His racial identity is portrayed.

European art makes Jesus look European; African art going back centuries makes Him look African; Asian art makes Him look Asian. And American art makes Him look American with lighter hair and blue eyes. Despite these contradictory images, the Bible is clear about His genealogy and religious identify – He was Jewish.

There is Biblical and cultural evidence to support the stance that He was an ethnic and religious Hebrew, who reached across these barriers to bring all people to the Father.

The Bible provides 2 genealogies for Jesus in the Bible, tracing His earthly heritage back in time, one of them all the way to Adam. Coupled with the genealogical records in the Old Testament, it’s easy to trace Jesus’s heritage back through the history of the Hebrew people who became the Jewish nation. The 2 genealogies traced in the Gospel are generally accepted to trace Jesus’s heritage through both His earthly parents, and are targeted at 2 different audiences.

Matthew, the Apostle, was Jewish, and the primary audience of his letter was targeted at a Jewish audience. He begins his record with Abraham, the father of the Hebrew nation, and ends with Joseph, the man who raised Jesus and acted as his earthly father. The line-up of men in the genealogy run from the father of the nation, to David, to Joseph, which would have been culturally important for establishing Jesus’s Jewish heritage to that audience.

The emphasis on Abraham would have set up Jesus’s credentials as the Messiah, and showing the connection to David through his son Solomon would have shown how he fulfilled some of the prophecies about the Messiah. It also makes sure to hit all the important moments in Isreal’s history. “So all the generations from Abraham to David to the deportation to Babylon to Christ was fourteen generations” (Matthew 1:17). Matthew’s records hold cultural and historical information supporting Jesus’s heritage.

Luke’s gospel follows the genealogy of Mary. She is not mentioned by name, but that would have been common during the 1st century. The connection to David is reinforced, this time through his son Nathan. It is important to trace Jesus’s linkage around the 1st century, Jewish heritage was passed matrilineally, through His mother. While certain aspects of the Jewish culture and religion are passed through the father, such as priesthood, the birth tight to be considered Jewish comes from the mother because of the general consensus of interpretations of the Torah and the Talmud (Jewish religious texts which include the Bible.

The genealogy is the biological connection to David. Unlike Matthew, Luke was a gentile (a person who is not Jewish), writing to another gentile – a friend of his named Theophilus. Luk traces Jesus’s heritage all the way back to Adam. The reason that it was important for Luke, and the gentile audience, is because it is a good reminder that Jesus was not just the Messiah for the Hebrew people, but for all people.

Jesus was also a Jew in the religious sense, though He had a perfect understanding of a right relationship with the Father, where mankind has misunderstood it. Jesus was called a Rabbi, or Teacher, and preached in temples throughout Isreal during His 33-year ministry. He followed the Holy Days of the Jewish calendar and had an observable relationship with God. Though the religious practices of the day do not exactly align with contemporary Judaism, at that time, He would have been considered a religious Jew by the Roman authorities. Other Jewish leaders, including the Pharisees, would have considered some of His teachings heretical.

In Jesus’s time there was a strong desire for the Messiah to come because of the oppression of Rome. The Messiah was perceived in a similar way as He is today, but many also believed He would overthrow Rome, leading to an independent Isreal.

Like today, devout practitioners of Judaism would have observed high Holy Days, many which involved a trip to Jerusalem if possible. They followed Levitical law, giving tithes and sacrifices as required. Historians categorize this period as the Second Temple period. Solomon’s temple was gone, and Herod constructed the second. The influence of the Pharisees and Sadducees increased, and they added the to rules and regulations of the laws to Hebrew traditions.

Jesus commented on this issue, “But you say, If a man tells his father or his mother, what you would have gained from me is Corban (that is given to God) – then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making good the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down (Mark 7:11-13). Even though there was religious corruption, there were many honorable and sincere Jewish believers waiting for the Messiah.

Matthew 5:17, says “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law of the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but the fulfill them. Jesus’s teaching were the ultimate of the law, rather than new and contradictory. He took the rules and prophecies from the I, d Testament and explained them I full, rather than from the limited and flawed view of man. He highlighted the limitations of the law to redeem a soul, and that following the rules does not fix the inner man’s sins, that is something only God can do.

He laid this premise out cleat in the Sermon on the Mount:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not murder; and murders will be liable to judgment; But I sat to you that everyone who is angry with his brother (or sister) will be liable to judgment.

Matthew 5:21-22

You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery; But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with , lustful, the intent has already committed adultery with her (or him) in their heart

Matthew 5:27-28

These are two of several examples of Jesus highlighting that the point of law was not only to prevent wicked actions, but to also turn a mirror inward, and require the individual to repent of their inner sins, which prevent someone from being righteous before God. Because no one can live in perfect righteousness on his own, Jesus paid the price for the is a of the world so that their righteousness can be attributed to the sin er, saving that person from judgement.

Who’s the primary focus of Jesus’s ministry was His people, the Israelites, but He still reached out to the Gentiles (us). He shared the Gospel with the Samaritan woman. When the Centurion in Capernaum reached out to Him to heal a gravely ill servant, He said that if Jesus commanded it, the servant would be well. even if Jesus did not take the physical journey to the home. In response, Jesus devoted, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Isreal have I found such faith. I tell you many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven…” ( Matthew 8:10-11. Here, Jesus declares the future salvation of the Gentiles.

The Messiah came to save both the Hebrew people and the whole world. He reached out to both groups. He discipled 12 Jewish apostles, who became the formidable force behind the beginnings of the church, bringing the Gentiles into the family of God. Through His death, Jesus saved the Gentiles just as much as the Jewish people.

Time Travel

I often think about what I’ve been through in my life. All the downs and ups.

But then I think that some of the freest, most pure hearted people have gone through and absorbed incredible abuse and gross injustices in their early years. All of us to some extent have had traumatic events the condition for a certain dread of reoccurrence. Those occasions we have been at the receiving end of cutting words along with terrible physical, mental or sexual experiences that often replay and fuel the flames of shame.

No matter what we have been through no matter how painful. God wants us to be free. (Isaiah 57:18-21). It took my a long time to realize that God is a awesome God. And that I wasn’t my mothers sin. I have the choice to either continue living in shame and regret, or look at every day as a miracle.

Satan is a master at forcing us to view the horror show of our most painful past moments. He fast accuses God of afflicting these horror shows on us, while he keeps piling on the blame game and crushing our sense of self-worth. Satan makes see God as uncaring and vicious, while making him look life the savior instead of God.

While in reality Jesus saw the whole thing (Psalm 34:18) grieving for us in that we weren’t able to see Him at the time.

As I grew up and learned that God is our only hope, I began to remember where God had protected me all through my childhood and my young adult years.

Satan will only try to hurt us, God will only love and care for us. But we have to be willing to let Him in. Other wise Satan will continue to sneak in through the cracks and destroy our souls.

Do You Struggle With Being Offended By God?

Matthew 11:6 says “Blessed is the person who is not offended by me.”

I was so offended by God when I was growing up so much so I started hating Him. I could not understand why He was allowing the awful things that were happening to me. And then I started hating myself and everyone around me. It took me through dark times. I no longer cared about anything. It wasn’t until I thought I fell in love with someone that I began caring. But it was all about attraction. I still had a 100 ft wall up around me, so no one could hurt me.

To be offended means to stumble or trip. Scripture tells us that Jesus is a rock to offense…or a rock of stumbling… to the disobedient (1 Peter 2:8). In His earthly days, Jesus was constantly offending the religious establishment.

But in the scripture above, Jesus has someone else in mind. He’s speaking to His followers: “Blessed are you, my followers, when you are not offended by me.”

John the Baptist was utterly loyal to Jesus. He walked a life of total self-denial. He gave everything up for his God. And he found himself in a cold prison.

There is no record of Jesus ever visiting him there. So John was questioning and doubting. He was probably thinking, “Was it really worth it? I lived my whole life to pave the way for the Messiah, and now I’m in prison. The Kingdom hasn’t yet come.”

John was wondering and wavering; he’s tempted to stumbiat his Lord. So he sends word to Jesus asking, “Are you really the one who was to come? Or should we expect another?”

Again Jesus didn’t visit John. He instead sends the answer to him via His disciples:

“Go back and report to John; the blnd see; the lepers are cleansed; the dead are raised; the good news is being preached to the poor…and happy is the person who is not offended in me. Peaceful is the man who doesn’t stumble over me. Blessed is the person who doesn’t fall away on account of what I do or not do.”

Over the years I’ve watched take offense with the Lotd. Some of them were passionate followers of Jesus in the younger days, but later ended up renouncing Him. Why? Because they chose to be offended by Him.

“Blessed is the person who is not offended by me.” This is the forgotten gratitude.

There are three reasons who followers of Jesus become offended:

1. He Demands Too Much. In John 16:1, Jesus tells His disciples that He’s sharing “all these things” so they won’t be offended by Him. Some of those “things” we’re stern warnings that they would be hated by the world and persecuted (John 15:18). Jesus made clear that following Him won’t lead to a bed of roses. Suffering and loss are involved.

Unfortunately, some present a gospel that leave parts out. The result is His followers get offended when the realize what they’ve gotten into. But Jesus lets us know up front what following Hin entails. Even in His own day, some of His followers stopped walking with Him because they regarded the cost of it too high (John 6:53-50).

1 He Doesn’t Meet Our Expectations. The Lird often works in ways that we don’t understand. Maybe you’ve heard some say, “My life would have been so much better today if I didn’t follow Jesus. Look where it’s gotten me.” It’s called the catch-30 crisis. There comes a point in all of our lives where we reassess the major commitments we’ve made a in early adulthood. And we either dig in deeper or we abandon ship.

Isaiah says that God’s ways are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:9). The Lord works on levels that we cannot fathom. Paul says that God works all thing for our good (Romans 8:28). Why hasn’t God answered this prayer? Why didn’t have to conform this promise? Why did He let this happen to me? Why is God silent when I need to hear Him the most?

These are questions that plague the mind of any serious believer. If you’ve not me the God who refuses to meet all your expectations, you will. And how you react in that time will reveal whether you are wishipping Jesus Christ or Santa Clause (John 6:26).

We have a to be willing to say, “I will still serve Him, even if it sends me to hell. Should we receive good from the Lord and not evil? Scripture tells of an account where three Hebrew children that we’re loyal to their God and the pagan king said to them, “Worship my golden image of you’re going to die in my fiery furnace. Their answer was “We’re not going to worship this image or serve your gods. The Lord is able to deliver us, and He will deliver us from your fiery furnace. But even if He doesn’t, we’re still not going to bow down to your false gods” (Daniel 3:8-25).

Those words contain thunder and lightning for every believer of Christ.

The thing is only God can see the whole book. And He’s only given us the ability to see 300 or 400 pages in the entire book. We can only speculate and assume what’s in the rest of it. We create all sorts of intricate theological systems to explain the mysteries we don’t understand.

Life always comes down to trusting in the Lord rather than trying to figure out His ways with our finite, limited understanding. But we can discover and understand what’s in the pages of 300 or 400, and thereby learn to live more effectively within them.

3. He Doesn’t Show Up On Time. He works too slowly. He reacts too late. His deliverance takes too long. God’s clock is a lot slower than ours. We can text or email our prayer to God, and He doesn’t text or email back when we expect. In fact, sometimes we never hear back from Him at all. The screen is blank.

Sometimes we’ll pray for an important matter in our own lives…or we’ll pray for someone else…for years. And the dial doesn’t move. Waiting on God we can become weary. And it can lead to offense. But God always keeps perfect time. It’s just that His timing I’d different thano ours.

Here’s how NOT to be offended by God:

Remember that He demands everything, and He has promised suffering and tribulation along with blessing and eternal life. So don’t seek out for a cheap easy life. Such is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. He told us what we were getting into and exhorted us to count the cost ahead of time (Luke 14:26).

Remember that His ways are higher than ours, and He doesn’t always show us what He’s doing or why. We may not always understand what He does or allows, but He can still be trusted. This is the nature of walking by faith rather than by sight. Even when His grace isn’t sufficient, it is always sufficient.

Remember that God is always on time, but His clock ticks differently from ours. He’s a Lord who sometimes shows up long after the hour of healing has passed and we are dead for four days. Just ask Lazarus.

Being offended by God is a choice. You can choose to take offense at the Lord and stumble over that which you don’t understand. Or you can “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5j.

“The depth of the riches both of wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgements, and His ways past finding out” (Romans 11:33).