The Rabbi Everyone Forgot Was Jewish - Jeff Morgan

[00:00:10]We have Jeff Morgan. Jeff is a Jewish believer in Jesus Yeshua from Natana and the founder of Highway 53 Ministries.

[00:00:21]Once immersed in new age spirituality, Jeff now shares the gospel throughout [music] Israel and around the world, helping people discover the Messiah in the Hebrew scriptures. Join me in welcoming Jeff Morgan.

[00:00:41][music] There were like a >> the You guys can stay up here. It's cool. Just play play softly in the background while I'm >> speaking.

[00:00:58]Thanks, Travis.

[00:01:01]Wow. One more round of applause for these amazing worship leaders.

[00:01:09]And thank you, Clay. Um, my name's Jeff.

[00:01:16]>> Should I do it? Some of you are going to understand this. My name's Jeff.

[00:01:22][laughter] >> Jeff Morgan. Uh, about a generation ago, it was uh Jeffrey Cohen. Um, but my my grandfather and his brothers chose a gentile name so that we could assimilate and not be persecuted as Jews coming from Eastern Europe. So, my last name used to be Cohen. It's now Morgan.

[00:01:43]Totally fine with that. But yes, my name's Jeff. Um, a couple of years ago, I was in Tel Aviv sharing the gospel and I was asking a simple question. What do you think about when you hear the name of Jesus? And I'm asking this to my fellow Israelis and and Jewish people. And one guy said, um, well, I heard he was a prophet. And another one said, oh, I heard he was a good teacher. Someone said, 'I have no idea who he is whatsoever. And one guy said, and I kid you not, he said, Cheeseburger.

[00:02:19]Now, if you're not Jewish, that might, you know, not make really sense to you, but if you are Jewish, you understand that observant Jews, according to tradition, they don't mix dairy and meat.

[00:02:33]So, cheeseburger.

[00:02:35]And what was shocking was that I'm standing there in Israel and in Tel Aviv realizing that there are a lot of people that think of Jesus as completely foreign, uncosher, and not for us. And for so when he said uh when he said cheeseburger, he wasn't thinking about food. He was thinking about identity. Uh something that didn't belong to him. And I was like, how how did we get here? How did the Jewish Messiah become the inaugurator of a non-Jewish faith?

[00:03:10]And how many of us accept that conclusion? Because the more I read the Gospels, the more Jewish Jesus becomes, not less. And that's what I'm going to be talking about today, the Jewish Jesus. And it's really funny because I go to I go to Jerusalem. I don't always like to, but I go to Jerusalem to share the gospel with my fellow Jewish people and Orthodox Jews. And it's challenging.

[00:03:33]I know that I'm going to be facing re uh rejection, but I I I go there and I'm I'm sharing the gospel and and you see like uh kind of a gloss over I'm a Jewish, I believe in Jesus. And automatically there's some form of rejection.

[00:03:53]And what I'm trying to get to today is that we accept a conclusion that we've been given that's been handed down. And the more I read the gospels, the more Jewish Jesus becomes, not less.

[00:04:11]And the more I realize that Jesus is the most famous Jew that ever lived, the more I realize that, the more I understand how many people don't even think of him as Jewish at all.

[00:04:24]I ask many people to uh picture Jesus and they'll imagine a guy from the last supper painting, right?

[00:04:31]You know, the one the long hair, the European background, uh everyone somehow sitting on like the same side of the dinner table, which would be really awkward. Imagine last night, you know, everyone's like next drain. But that's often how people imagine Jesus. the the the real Jesus was a first century Jewish man celebrating Passover and that's what that picture represents. That was a Passover meal. I remember showing that picture to Jewish people on the streets of Israel and I said, "Have you are you familiar with this painting from Leonardo da Vinci?" Like, "Yeah, that's the last supper." And I said, "Do you know what supper that was?" And they're like, "Nope." I said, "That was Pesak, Passover." And they say, "What? No way."

[00:05:14]Yes, it was Jewish man celebrating Passover with his Jewish disciples in Jerusalem. It's a beautiful painting, isn't it? It's just not a photograph.

[00:05:25]Nobody forgets that Moses was Jewish.

[00:05:27]Nobody forgets that King David was Jewish. Nobody forgets that the Hebrew prophet Isaiah was Jewish. But somehow somewhere along the way, many of us started imagining Jesus disconnected from the very world that he came from.

[00:05:40]And I say this as a Jew who had to rediscover Jesus for myself.

[00:05:45]In Jewish culture, church is not something that we associate with. It has nothing to do with us. But the first time I walked into a church before coming to faith, I heard about Jesus, a message about Jesus on a mountaintop talking with Moses and Elijah. And as a Jew, I was like, I know those guys.

[00:06:05]These are the guys I grew up learning about in Jewish school when I was young.

[00:06:09]But what are they doing on this side of the book talking to Jesus? It was really strange for me.

[00:06:18]What I didn't realize at that time was that Jesus wasn't stepping into the story of Moses and Elijah. He was already a part of it. He wasn't a detached religious figure floating above uh history. He was a Jewish man living inside a Jewish story. And what's fascinating is that the New Testament already assumes that the reader knows this. It assumes you know who Abraham is, who Moses is, who David is. It assumes you know what the covenants are, what Passover is, the temple, the Sabbath, the priests, the sacrifices. It assumes that you know these practices and it also assumes that you know the Jewish hopes for the Messiah.

[00:07:01]Now, this may have happened to some of you yesterday evening, but have you ever walked into a group conversation where people are deep in laughter and conversation and you want to be a part of that conversation and you kind of walk up and you're like, "What's up everyone?" And they're laughing. You're like, "Yeah, [laughter] you have no idea what they're talking about, but you want to be part of this story." You know, they're laughing.

[00:07:23]They're finish finishing each other's sentences and sandwiches.

[00:07:29]This is a dad joke. We had sandwiches yesterday, you know, like the Anyway, um, but everybody seems to know exactly what's going on and you want to join in.

[00:07:37]So, you smile and you laugh and you're you're kind of pretending like you're part of it, understanding what they're talking about and you spend the new the next few minutes trying to figure out who's who, what they're talking about, and what you missed. And that's how a lot of people approach the New Testament. They step into a conversation that's already been going on for well over a thousand years, but instead of sandwiches, they're finish finishing each other's uh humus.

[00:08:03]In fact, if you've ever tried reading the New Testament without knowing the Hebrew scriptures, you've probably noticed some people talking about some very strange things that aren't fully explained. For example, Jesus heals a leper. Got into a really lovely conversation with uh Lydia sitting next to me last night about that. Right, Lydia? Right. Yeah. I've met so many amazing people. Uh and so Jesus heals a leper and then he tells him to go show himself to the priests and offer the gift that Moses commanded. Now, if you don't know the story that came before, you're thinking, why does he need to do that? Who are these priests? What gift?

[00:08:41]And what did Moses command? And the writers, they don't stop to explain that because they assume that you already know.

[00:08:49]The New Testament doesn't begin with once upon a time in Rome. It begins with a genealogy. The genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, Yeshua Hamashiach, Ben Davidid bin Abraham, son of David, son of Abraham. And Abraham and David, they weren't biblical characters to Jesus.

[00:09:07]They were his family.

[00:09:10]>> And from the very first page, you step into a story that was already in progress. Because Jesus didn't arrive to start a brand new story. He arrived in the middle of Israel's story. He was born into a Jewish family, presented at the temple in Jerusalem, circumcised on the eighth day, raised in a Jewish home, attended synagogue according to custom.

[00:09:31]Attended a celebrated Passover, Pesak, according to custom. He was given a Hebrew name, Yeshua, which means salvation or the Lord saves.

[00:09:43]The angel didn't tell Miriam and Yseph or Mary and Joseph to call their child Chad.

[00:09:53]He was born a Jewish child with a Jewish name into a Jewish family in a Jewish land. And that's the Jesus that we meet in the Gospels. And his part participation in Jewish life went far beyond simply growing up around it. The gospels repeatedly tell us that he taught in synagogues throughout the Galilee and Judea. Now, a synagogue, for some of you that might not know, is a place where people come together, Jewish people, their prayer, scripture reading, gathering, community life, teaching. And Luke tells us that in Nazareth, he stood up to read from Isaiah and teach the congregation, telling them about its fulfillment. Matthew tells us that he taught in their synagogues throughout Galilee. Mark records the Jewish crowds being astonished by his teachings.

[00:10:37]Imagine that the Jewish crowds were astonished by his teachings and Mark records that he was teaching in synagogues in Capernaum.

[00:10:47]Now, as a Jew, those details really struck me.

[00:10:51]Jesus wasn't standing outside Jewish society looking in critically.

[00:10:57]He was functioning from inside it. He was welcomed into synagogues. He was invited to read the scriptures and invited to teach. And in order to be invited to teach in a Jewish synagogue, you had to be recognized as a respected Jewish teacher operating from within Jewish society according to Jewish law, not outside of it. And one of the most fascinating details is that the word rabbi, the famous word that Jews use all around the world, do you know where it first appears in Jewish literature?

[00:11:28]In the New Testament.

[00:11:31]When most people think of rabbis, they think of the famous Jewish sages, the ones that came later. Rabbi Aka, Rabbi Mayer, Rabbi Yehuda Anasi. But Jesus wasn't living in the world and the religion that emerged after the destruction of the second temple. Jesus lived during the second temple period itself. Temple was standing, the priests were serving, sacrifices were being offered, and pilgrims were coming to Jerusalem. And the Judaism that Jesus practiced was the Judaism of his own day. the Judaism we read about in the Old Testament, aka Tanakh.

[00:12:05]In fact, before we meet Rabbi Aka, we meet Rabbi Yeshua.

[00:12:13]Another amazing fact, the first people ever called Rabbi in recorded surviving Jewish literature are John the Baptist, Yohan Hamatil, and Yeshua, Jesus.

[00:12:28]two Jewish men speaking to Jewish people inside the world of first century Judaism.

[00:12:35]The first rabbi many Christians ever learned about was Jesus. And the irony is that many of us were never encouraged uh to think of him in such a way. The people of Israel called Jesus rabbi because that's what they recognized him to be. a Jewish teacher, a respected voice within Jewish society, a man entrusted to open up the scriptures, explain them, and reveal what's within them. The message that would eventually transform the world began with a Jewish rabbi walking the dirt roads of Israel among his Jewish people. And Jesus didn't merely teach within Jewish life, he honored it.

[00:13:13]And it wasn't just the way Jesus lived that was Jewish. It was the way that he taught. It was very Jewish. parables, extremely Jewish way of of of of teaching, discussion back and forth, questioning questions. When someone asked him about the greatest commandment, he didn't invent a new answer. He quoted the Israel Adonai Adonai here. O Israel, the the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

[00:13:43]Imagine that.

[00:13:45]The prayer every observant Jewish child learned. the prayer every Jewish person still prays today. When he taught in the synagogues, he taught from Moses and the prophets, the scripture of Israel itself. When he climbed the mountain and taught what we call the biatitudes, he wasn't introducing a new way of thinking. He was quoting scripture. If you read the Psalms, Isaiah, Proverbs, the Psalms, uh you'll find those very biatitudes. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord. Blessed are the humble.

[00:14:16]Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness. Jesus wasn't replacing the Hebrew scriptures. He was drawing people deeper into them. And perhaps one of the most fascinating things is this.

[00:14:26]Even later rabbitic expectations of the Messiah included the idea that Messiah would rightly interpret interpret and clarify the Torah. What do we see?

[00:14:41]Now, of course, I believe that Jesus is the Messiah. But notice the expectation.

[00:14:46]Nobody expected the Messiah to throw Torah away. They expected him to explain it correctly.

[00:14:52]>> And that's exactly what we see Jesus doing. You have heard it said, but I say to you, >> speaking with authority, not abolishing God's word, but revealing its deepest intention. Again and again, Jesus does not move away from the Jew Jewish story.

[00:15:09]He brings people back to its heart to the God of Israel. Remember the example of the leper.

[00:15:17]This was a man cut off from family, cut off from community, cut off from worship. And Jesus heals him. And what does he say next to the man? He says, "Ditch Moses.

[00:15:32]Start a podcast. Get some merch ready.

[00:15:35]And make sure you don't get my handle wrong. It's at Yeshua.

[00:15:40]He doesn't do that. He says, "Go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded."

[00:15:48]It's easy to skip over that, to read over that. That's Leviticus. That's the law of Moses. Jesus came to abolish the law. No, he lived perfectly within it.

[00:15:57]Jesus had just performed a miracle. If there was ever a moment to say, "Forget Moses. Forget the priesthood priesthood.

[00:16:04]Forget all that Jewish stuff." That was the moment.

[00:16:08]Instead, he sends the man directly back into the life of Israel according to what? The Torah. Jesus was not dismantling Jewish life. He was living within it. One of the most remarkable statements Jesus ever made was Matthew 15 24. I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

[00:16:32]When I say that to Jewish people, the jaw hits the floor.

[00:16:37]>> Wait a second. He's not for them. But I thought that that No, no, no. This is what he said. His three-year ministry was to the Jewish people, not because they're better, but because of covenant relationship.

[00:16:51]>> Come on.

[00:16:54]>> God's love does not stop with Israel. We know this. The gospel eventually reaches every nation through faithful Jewish men. And because Jew Jesus understood his earthly mission as unfolding through the covenant promises God made to Israel, the Messiah came first to the people to whom the promises were given.

[00:17:12]Because God keeps his promises. It's a reoccurring theme. If he keeps them with me, he'll keep them with you. If he breaks them with me, what confidence do you have? That doesn't make the Gentile nations less important. Obviously not.

[00:17:27]And quite the opposite. The amazing thing about the gospel is that through Israel's Messiah, the blessing eventually reaches every nation. And it begins where God promised it would begin. And then Jesus says something equally remarkable in John chapter 4.

[00:17:43]Salvation is from the Jews.

[00:17:48]Not around the Jews. Not despite the Jews. Not replacing the Jews. From the Jews.

[00:17:57]God chose to bring salvation into the world through a people, through a family, through a covenant, through Israel. So the source is God.

[00:18:08]>> But the channel he chose was Israel.

[00:18:12]That's not a political statement. Okay?

[00:18:14]I'm not making a policy here, a political thing. It's a family statement. Imagine a young man whose grandparents spend their lives building something phenomenal for future generations.

[00:18:25]It wasn't a perfect family. There were arguments. There was bad behavior. There were mistakes, failures. They got some things right.

[00:18:33]They got some things wrong. Like every family, right? But through all of it, they sacrificed, struggled, and preserved something of immense value.

[00:18:42]Eventually, they left their grandson an incredible gift, a brand new home, something he could never afford for himself. It changed his life and he gladly accepted it. He moved in there. He raised his family there, invited friends over, talked about how happy he was that he has this amazing house. But imagine then if he started saying, "I love this house, but I just don't want anything to do with the family that gave it to me."

[00:19:11]Imagine if he spent years criticizing them, mocking them, distancing himself from them, and rejecting them. You'd probably think it's kind of a strange response.

[00:19:22]You gladly accept the gift, but then you reject the family through whom it came.

[00:19:28]And in some ways, I think that's what Jesus is getting at. Not because Jewish people are better. The Bible goes out of its way to show that we are not.

[00:19:38]Which brings me to something that I need I think we all need to remember.

[00:19:42]Sometimes when people think about Israel, they think about the failures.

[00:19:45]They think about the idolatry. the waywardness in the wilderness, the the rebellion, the prophets being rejected and killed, the Messiah being rejected.

[00:19:55]And sometimes people read those stories and conclude that Israel somehow disqualified itself.

[00:20:03]But I think there's something deeper going on. The story of Israel is not primarily the story of bad Jewish people.

[00:20:10]It's the story of humanity. It's my story, but it's also your story.

[00:20:19]Israel's story was simply placed on display for the world to see.

[00:20:24]>> Yes.

[00:20:26]>> Imagine that.

[00:20:28]And I honestly sometimes I think about what that would look like for me.

[00:20:32]Imagine every thought I had, every selfish motive, every failure, every jealous moment, every bad decision, every proud moment, every embarrassing conversation. There have been many, and every moment that I wish I could take back. Imagine if that was recorded, turned into a two-part series, 10 episodes, released worldwide.

[00:21:00]How would that go for me?

[00:21:02]How would that go for you? I doubt people would finish that series and say, "What a hero Jeff is."

[00:21:09]>> No, I know myself well enough to know that that's not the case. The difference isn't that Israel was worse than everybody else. The difference is that their story was recorded.

[00:21:20]>> Their struggles were written down. Their failures were put on display for generation after generation to read.

[00:21:27]So when Israel when Israel rebelled, we can see ourselves. When Israel doubted, we can see ourselves. When Israel wandered, we can see ourselves. And when Israel needed mercy, we can see ourselves. And if we're honest, had God chosen the Americans or the British or any other nation to carry that story, do you really think it would have gone any differently?

[00:21:49]I know in my heart well enough to doubt that the Bible is not ultimately a story about how good or bad Israel was. You said this. It's a story about how faithful our God is. And at the center of that story stands Yeshua.

[00:22:05]>> A Jewish man, a Jewish Messiah, a Jewish king. The faithful Israelite where everyone else failed. The one who who succeeded where Israel didn't. And if we're honest, where we fail, in the same exact way, he stands as the mediator, not only for the Jewish people, but for the nations as well. And through that Jewish Messiah, grace comes to us all, to Jews, to Gentiles, to everyone who needs mercy. I needed it so badly. My story is a miracle. And I'm not here to share it with you today, unfortunately, but it was a miracle. An unsuspecting Jewish man contemplating suicide and my wife contemplating divorce. And here he is. Hello, I'm here.

[00:22:52][applause] I fell to the floor in despair.

[00:22:55]He lifted me up on my feet full of hope and joy and I was able to lead my family into a new life. And I'm a Jewish man with a Jewish family. And I wasn't even looking for him.

[00:23:08]>> Grace comes to us all. Israel is not superior.

[00:23:14]And I think that instead of the posture of superiority, we have to have a posture of gratitude. One day I was in Jerusalem speaking with an Orthodox Jewish man and I asked him what he thought about Jesus and he said, "He was Jewish once, but then he started a new religion. He's not for us, he's for them." And honestly, that's one of the most common things I hear on the streets of Israel.

[00:23:38]The assumption isn't that Jesus wasn't Jewish. The assumption is that he stopped being Jewish. that he began as Israel's Messiah and somehow became somebody else's.

[00:23:48]And standing there listening to him, I remember I'm thinking, how strange.

[00:23:51]Because if everything that we're talking about this weekend is true, then the question isn't how Jesus became non-Jewish. The question is, how many of us came to think that he did? For centuries, Jesus was often presented to the Jewish world as a symbol of a religion that persecuted Jews. I was asking a gentleman in in the streets of Jerusalem, 'What do you think about when you hear the name of Jesus? He says, I think about centuries of Christians persecuting us for not believing in Jesus. And I asked him and I told him, I get that. I'm part of that. So is my family part of that. But can I ask you a question?

[00:24:31]Do you think that has anything to do with Jesus? and he paused and he said, "No, I don't."

[00:24:41]And I said, "That's such a mature answer. Thank you for that."

[00:24:45]Jesus had been painted over with layers of history and culture, misunderstanding and distance, and eventually many Jewish people stopped seeing him as one of us.

[00:24:53]But Christians can make a similar mistake from the opposite direction. We can come become so familiar with Jesus as savior that we forget the story that he stepped into. Let me ask a simple question. If what what if Jesus walked into this room right now? Not the stained glass Jesus, not the Jesus from the painting, the Jesus from the Gospels, the Jesus who walked the roads of Gall Galilee, dusting off his feet, the Middle Eastern Jew who quoted Torah from memory, who knew the prayers of Israel, quoted the Psalms, he knew about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David as his family history, spoke about Passover as his feast, Jerusalem as his city, and Israel as his people.

[00:25:34]Would that surprise us? Because it shouldn't. But for many Christians, it does. And sometimes I wonder what h what would happen if Jesus walked into a church today? I think people would recognize him as Lord and Savior. But what if he started talking about Pesak?

[00:25:49]What if he started quoting Torah? What if he spoke Hebrew and Aramaic? And what if he looked you in the eye with the expectation that you understood the story through which he came?

[00:26:00]would somebody quietly pull him aside and say, "Jesus, we're glad you're here, but can you tone down some of that Jewish stuff?"

[00:26:08]But then the re realization hits home.

[00:26:10]Jesus never toned down the Jewish stuff.

[00:26:12]Why? Because it wasn't Jewish stuff. It was his life. It was his family. It was identity. It was his story. And maybe part of loving Jesus well is learning to love him as he actually is. Not as history repainted him. Not as culture rebranded him, not as we have imagined him, but as the gospels have revealed him as a Jewish rabbi, a Jewish Messiah, a Jewish king, the savior of the world.

[00:26:38]And the more I read the gospels, the more I find myself coming back to one simple reality.

[00:26:44]Jesus did not arrive detached from a people, detached from a family, detached from a story. He came through a people, through a family, through a story. And the most famous Jew who ever lived is still Jewish. And that's not a problem to solve. It's a gift to rediscover. And maybe that's where this conversation today leads as I wrap up. Not just to appreciate the Jewish roots of the faith, but to realize that there are still Jewish people today who have never met their Messiah.

[00:27:12]People whose story gave the world, the scriptures, the prophets, the apostles, the Jesus that they gave us Jesus himself.

[00:27:22]Imagine the Jewish men and women who sacrificed themselves and even their lives to bring that message to the nations.

[00:27:32]The message came not we don't just have Jesus. We have the family that brought it to us. And perhaps one of the most beautiful uh responses in rediscovering the Jewishness of Jesus is this. to care about the people that he came from, to those Jewish people who sacrificed and even died to bring that message of the good news of Yeshua salvation. I want to read to you the last thing. This is a comment uh on my YouTube channel, Highway 53, from someone that I got yesterday.

[00:28:01]All I know is as a Gentile who once hated Jews, that since I accepted Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah, I have peace in my heart that I cannot explain.

[00:28:18]regardless of the turmoil in the world.

[00:28:20]And guess what? I now love Jews, good or bad, because God calls himself to the God of Israel. So, who am I to argue with the God for God uh with God for his choice of people? He's the God of Israel. So, I pray for and support Israel because I love the Jewish Messiah. How many other Gentiles out there can say that same thing? Your God is great. Thank you for bringing us his word, you precious Jews. You [applause] >> and thank you Gentile brothers and sisters who were bold enough to share the gospel with this unsuspecting Jewish man in the gym just before he committed suicide.

[00:29:07]Excuse me.

[00:29:11]I'm happy to talk with anybody that would love to talk to me afterwards about the Jewish roots of the faith uh later on. But we should never assume that God's story is finished with the Jewish people because the God who kept his promises to Abraham through David and the God who sent his Messiah exactly as promised is still keeping his promises today to all of us. Not because of us, right? But for his name's sake.

[00:29:32]And maybe if we recover that truth, we'll discover that God's heart for Israel has been right in front of us all along. And what is his name?

[00:29:42]>> Yeshua. Thank you. [applause]