Rabbi Schneider - 3 Reasons Jews Reject Jesus
Why have the majority of Jewish people rejected Jesus? Reason number one is it is simply an emotional knee jerk reaction that they have to Jesus, because they believe that you can't be a Jew and believe in Jesus. Let me give you a conversation that I recently had with a close relative of mine. I began to gently witness to this individual about Jesus. As soon as I said Jesus's name, this person became filled with rage, filled with intense, hostile energy and said to me, "I'm a Jew, don't say Jesus to me". This individual that I'm referring to doesn't even believe in God. They're not a practicing religious Jew. They simply believe that being a Jew is not believing in Jesus.
And so although many Jewish people, the majority are not religious. Judaism to them isn't a religion. It's simply a cultural identity. But as a cultural Jew, they believe that you can't be Jewish and at the same time believe in Jesus. This mindset is not something that they have thought through logically. It's just something that they have picked up in their home. It's something that they've picked up in their culture. It's something they've heard since they've been little children. We're Jews, we don't believe in Jesus. It's not based on logic. It's not based on an analysis of the scriptures. At least an honest evaluation of the scriptures. It's simply based on a traditional, cultural position that they've taken that goes all the way back to the time that Jesus walked on the earth. Reason number one then that Jews reject Jesus is simply, they believe they have to because part of being Jewish is rejecting Jesus.
Reason number two, that Jewish people reject Jesus, Jewish people feel that God should not be illustrated or should not be contained in any type of image. Because when God first revealed himself to the Jewish people on top of Mount Sinai, they didn't see God. They saw his glory. They saw the fire on top of Mount Sinai. They saw the smoke, but they didn't see God and when God gave the Jewish people the law there, he said to them in the commandments, "do not make any graven image of anything in the likeness of what is on earth".
To a traditional Jewish person, God cannot take on the form of a man, but to me as a Jewish believer in Jesus, this analysis is faulty and it is not as deep as the scriptures go. Because in fact, we read in the Torah that God actually appeared to Avraham, to Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre in the form of a man. So as a Jewish believer in Jesus, I'm not saying that God is a man. I'm saying that God clothed himself in humanity just as the New Testament teaches in John chapter one. "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and the word became flesh". But Jewish people, because they're trapped in the mindset of rabbinic Judaism and believe what the rabbis tell them, they are not open to understanding the deeper mystery.
Reason number three, that Jewish people reject Jesus is because a misunderstanding of what Jesus taught about the law. You see what the rabbis teach is that Jesus did away with the law, that Jesus broke the 10 commandments. For example, we read in the gospels that Yeshua was walking through a field one day on the Sabbath and he picked grain up on the Sabbath and he was accused of harvesting or working on the Sabbath. And so Jewish people reject Jesus because they feel that Jesus rejected the law and tried to do away with the law. But in fact, that's not what Yeshua did. He kept the law.
Again, He said, "do not think I've come to abolish the law. I've not come to abolish, but to fulfill". He kept the law, beloved, in its truest and its original intent. In other words, he kept the law in the sense that he did in the law, what was meant to be done that pleased the Father that gave the law. And ultimately he fulfilled it because the laws true intent was to cause mankind to recognize that we are not in and of ourselves capable of keeping the law to perfection.
At the end of the day, our heart is not true enough, it's not pure enough, it's not perfect enough to meet the demands of the law. And recognizing that we are now prepared to receive God's ultimate answer, which is the Messiah, King Jesus, King Yeshua. So in review, Jewish people reject Jesus because number one, they're taught to by osmosis. Number two, they've been taught from the rabbis that God can't be a man. And number three, they think that Jesus broke the law. None of those things are true. Yeshua is God in the flesh that perfectly kept the law and fulfilled God's ultimate purpose from eternity.