Roger Marsh: Welcome to today's edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh, and we are one day closer to the end of 2021 and another new year. What a whirlwind 2021 has been. We pray that you and your family are safe and healthy, and hope that you have been blessed by this program all throughout the year. We know that it hasn't been an easy 12 months for many of our listeners, so please know that we are praying for you as we all enter 2022, keeping our eyes on God's promises and faithfulness.
Now, before I introduce today's guest, I do have an important message to share. I want to let you know that we have a matching grant in place right now here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. Any donation that you make to the JDFI and Family Talk during these last two days of December will be doubled. As you do your year-end giving, please consider making Family Talk a part of your list. A gift to the JDFI right now is a great way to ensure that biblical truth is upheld in the public square.
You can make a donation online when you go to drjamesdobson.org, or give us a call at (877) 732-6825. Now, today on Family Talk, we'll be sharing the second half of Dr. Tim Clinton's riveting conversation with Rabbi Jason Sobel. He's the founder of Fusion Global, a ministry that seeks to bring people into the inheritance of faith in Jesus Christ by connecting what they call the treasures of the old and of the new. On yesterday's broadcast, Dr. Clinton and Rabbi Jason began discussing Jason's new book called Mysteries of the Messiah. The book focuses on the importance of understanding the Bible, both the Old, as well as New Testament's, in order to better understand who Jesus is. Let's jump back into that conversation right now here on Family Talk.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Thank you so much for joining us. Again, we're talking about your amazing new work, Mysteries of the Messiah. Rabbi, as we begin, we talked a little bit yesterday about how people are settling for half of their inheritance. Clarify exactly what you mean by that, and then I want to continue our discussion about the Mysteries of the Messiah.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: Yeah. We talked about yesterday Matthew 13:52, what can a scribe who understands the kingdom of God be compared to, like a householder that brings forth treasures new and old, and I feel like many Christians settle for the new and understanding of the New Testament, and they're getting half the story, but the full story, the full understanding is when we understand how all the details of how everything that was spoken of, of Jesus in the Old Testament finds fulfillment in Him. It just gives us a sense of wonder and amazes us, and gives us a sense of beauty and mystery. There's a verse in the Scripture that I love. It says, "It's the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of kings to search it out," and we are children of the King, right?
Part of our glory is to search the Scriptures, just like the Bereans did, and to see how all of these things point to Him and connect, and it's just, it's an exciting journey that makes the Scriptures come alive. Within that, I think one of the reasons why it's so important too, is because from a Hebraic perspective, even from a New Testament perspective, what it means to be a disciple in Hebrew and Greek, the word talmid in the Hebrew and in the Greek literally means a learner. Like a disciple is a learner, therefore, teach them to obey everything that I've command you. Why is a disciple first and foremost being a learner? Because in Jewish thought, the highest form of worship is learning.
Well, why? Because you can't love someone if you're not passionate about learning who they are. A relationship dies or goes stagnant when you stop learning in your growing in your understanding of who that person is. There's more things to know about Jesus, there's more things to know about God, and the day we stopped looking for those things, I think our love begins to grow cold.
Dr. Tim Clinton: As you went back and studied, things began to come together for you, and you started to see how Jesus fulfilled all this and the amazing dynamic and the mysteries. Take us on that personal journey into how you began to see Jesus. You have an encounter with Him, and then you begin to see the revelation of all of it.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: Yeah. I mean, the way that all really began is that I come to faith, Rabbi Jonathan Cahn leads me to faith, I take the first New Testament ever given, and I had to break out my Hebrew Bible and go through it and say, "What are all the passages in the Scriptures that point to Yeshua, Jesus as the Messiah?" One of the things that really blew me away was the fact that the Messiah was going to be pierced for our transgressions, right? Psalm 22 talks about they cast lots for His garment. They jeer at Him.
His tongue's cleaved to the roof of His mouth, and as Jesus is hanging there on that cross on a Good Friday, He says, "Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani." "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?" One of the things we have to understand is that Jewish people memorize the psalms, right? It's our book of worship. For most Jewish people, if you say the beginning of a psalm, they can recite the rest of the psalm if they're a religious Jew.
As Jesus said these words, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?," the rest of the verses, "They've pierced my hands and my feet, my tongue cleaved," so they're literally standing there and these words of this psalm are literally playing out before their eyes as He's hanging there on the cross, and it just blew me away as I realized that all of these prophecies found their fulfillment in Him.
Dr. Tim Clinton: As I've looked through your book, Rabbi, I looked deeper into the life of David and the significance of him being a shepherd. I looked at the life of Moses, and I didn't know Moses, really from the context of being a shepherd. I saw the story of Ruth and Boaz as a foreshadowing of Christ. Then, as we go move into this week, I began to think more about these traditions and customs, the Passover. Talk to us about those customs and the significance of these mysteries being revealed to us in Christ.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: I mean, there's so much there. I mean, as we talked about the Last Supper was actually a Passover Seder, and so as He was celebrating this with His disciples, every aspect to it, like the matzah bread, He breaks the matzah bread. It's known as the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is funny because when you think about the most famous picture of the Lord's Last Supper, it's Da Vinci's, and what are they eating in that picture? Fluffy loaves of white bread. If there's anything you don't eat at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, it's fluffy loaves of white bread, but again, it's being taken out of context, but they would've been eating the unleavened bread, the matzah, and why is that so significant?
Matzah is pierced, striped, bruised and broken. It's a perfect picture of Isaiah 53, pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, by His stripes we're healed. There's literally stripes going down, pierced stripes going down the physical matzah that all points to Him, and He breaks it and says, "This is My Body, which is broken for you." I mean, Jewish people are celebrating this and they don't even know or understand the imagery because who is the first person in history after supper to break the matzah, the unleavened bread and give a special significance, is Jesus. He was broken for us, wrapped in a white linen cloth, buried, come back.
The last thing you eat today, Jewish people to date is the matzah because the taste of redemption is meant to be on our lips, and this is what Jesus institutes at the Last Supper, His Body broken for us.
Dr. Tim Clinton: I wonder what it must be like for you, for all of us, really, to go back now and read Isaiah 53, how He was bruised for our transgressions, broken, our iniquities were upon Him, what He must have suffered and endured on the cross. Rabbi, go to 1 Corinthians 15, where the great Apostle Paul challenges us on the resurrection of Jesus, and he said, "It's everything. Christ is risen. If He be not risen from the dead, your faith is ..." What? In vain.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: Absolutely.
Dr. Tim Clinton: You are without hope. Talk to us then about the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: Yeah. I mean, there's so much here. I mean, what's incredible is that when He dies, He dies, we call it Good Friday, but what's amazing is that on the Hebrew calendar, we talk about the significance of numbers in Mysteries of the Messiah, He dies on a Friday, which on the Hebrew count is the sixth day. We have to understand God orchestrated that He should die on the sixth day. Why?
Man was created on the sixth day. In Jewish thought, man fell on the sixth day. In Jewish tradition, man lost six things as a result of the fall. When Jesus comes to do the first miracle to announce Himself as the Messiah, He turns the water into wine with how many stone pots? Six stone pots, because He's looking to restore the blessing that was lost at creation with the fall when we sinned on the sixth day.
Jesus dies on the sixth day of the week. He's on the cross for six hours, and the important thing that we have to understand is that Hebrew's alphanumeric. You write letters with numbers. There's no Roman numerals in the Bible, and so if I say open to chapter one of your Bible, I'd say open to chapter aleph because it's the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and has the numerical value of one. In Hebrew, the letter six is the letter vav. The letter vav in literally in Hebrew is the letter of connection and is and, so the very first place the letter vav occurs is in the very beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
The letter vav, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is the letter that connects Heaven and earth. When we sinned, we broke the six, we broke the vav, we broke the connection between Heaven and earth, and therefore, Jesus dies on the sixth day to restore that connection, and the vav is actually in the shape of a nail because His hands were nailed with the vav, with the nail, with the six on the sixth day to restore the connection, to reverse the curse and bring back the blessing.
Dr. Tim Clinton: You're listening to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. I'm Dr. Tim Clinton, your host. Our special guest today is Rabbi Jason Sobel. He was the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi. He has a brand new book out called Mysteries of the Messiah.
It's our subject today, Unveiling Divine Connections from Genesis to Today. Rabbi, I wanted to ask you, hopefully it's appropriate here, why did Jesus have to die, and by the way, why did He have to die such a gruesome death?
Rabbi Jason Sobel: Yeah, that's the great question. I mean, I think ultimately, the reason why Jesus had to die is because sin is a debt. When we sinned, the wages of sin, this is the wages of sin is death.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Is death.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: When we sin, there's a negative balance that's put to our accountant, and the question is, "How do we pay back God for what it is that we've done wrong?," and it is impossible for us to ever make that payment back. Once we broke the connection between heaven and earth, it is impossible for a human being to ever restore the connection between Heaven and earth, but let me share with you a little bit of story to help explain this. Have you ever gone out at the holiday season at Christmas time and spent too much money on gifts, and you get your credit card statement and you're like, "Oi, how am I going to ever be able to pay all of this back?," and you don't want to ruin your credit, so what do you do? You pay the minimum. The problem is when you pay the minimum, all you're doing is paying the interest. That's exactly what the credit card companies want you to do.
Just pay the minimum, so you just pay the interest, so you wound up paying two or three times the amount of what it is that you've purchased over the years if you can't afford to pay it back. What we have to understand is that the word for sacrifice in Hebrew is the word kaphar. It means to cover, the sacrifices of the Old Testament God gave us to cover the debt and the wages of sin, but the reason why the sacrifices had to be offered day after day and year after year is because they only covered the minimum. But when Jesus came and died on that cross, He didn't just pay the interest, He paid the principal and the interest, and He wiped the entire slate clean, and therefore, our account is not only without debt because He paid the debt of sin, but then He does something even more amazing. He credits His righteousness to our account, and therefore, not only are we set free from our sin, but He gives us righteousness, and He clothes us and gives us the inheritance of eternity and all of these blessings in God. That's just one of the reasons why He has to die, to pay for that sin and wipe out the debt.
Dr. Tim Clinton: And you were bought with a price. Paul said that He died and that He rose again, is everything. The resurrection of Jesus, one of the great mysteries foretold. Tell us about the resurrection of Jesus now.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: Oh, man. There's so much there. I mean, as we talked about He dies as the Passover Lamb, but then He rises from the dead as well on a biblical holiday as well, which is the biblical holiday of First Fruits, so on the second day of Passover, but what happened in Jerusalem is that the priests would offer the first fruits of the harvest to the Lord, and they'd wave it before the Lord. They lift it up and wave it before the Lord, and if there was a good first fruits, it was a sign of a later greater harvest. Paul calls Jesus the First Fruits from among the dead.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yes.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: The reason why that is so significant, because if there's a good first fruits, it's a guarantee of a later greater harvest, and that later greater harvest is us rising from the dead as well, but of course, there's more there, right?
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: What is the more? Well, again, God is in every detail here of the resurrection, right? First of all, He's placed in a garden tomb. Well, why a garden tomb? Where does the fall happen?
The fall begins in the garden. It all began in the garden. It has to end in the garden with the resurrection in the garden to bring about a new creation and to reverse everything that happened in the beginning, and Jesus is actually mistaken for a gardener, which Adam and Eve were in the garden, stewarding the garden as well, but of course, He's buried in a rich man's tomb. Why? That's part of prophecy.
Prophecy says that He's literally going to be buried in a rich man's tomb, so He's fulfilling. Nicodemus has to give Him that tomb in fulfillment of that prophecy, but of course, there's even more, because when we think about the death and resurrection of Jesus, we tend to think of it as being on the first day of the week, but actually it is the first day of the week, but it's actually chronologically the eighth day of the week. As we've said, Jesus dies on the sixth day. Why is that important? Because God finished the work of creation on the sixth day and rested on the seventh day, so Jesus finished the work of salvation and new creation on the sixth day.
He goes in the grave and rests on the seventh day, just like the Lord rested in the very beginning, and then He rises from the dead on Sunday, which would then be the eighth day, and part of the reason that's so significant is eight is the number of new beginnings. He died that we might have a new beginnings. Eight were saved in the ark in the days of Noah. Eight is the number of the supernatural, okay? When you turn eight on its side, it's the number of infinity.
The infinite broke into the finite to redeem us, to save us, to bring the kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven, and eight is connected back to David. You mentioned David earlier. David was the eighth son of Jesse, so the eighth day, new beginnings, the infinite, the supernatural, David, and guess what? Jesus' name in Greek, because not only is Hebrew connected to numbers, so is the Greek alphabet, Jesus in Greek adds up to eight, eight, eight in Greek because He is the ultimate eight, right? He resurrects on the eight, He comes to bring new beginning, infinity, and gives us the ability to rise above and transcend it all.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Rabbi, we are fighting time, but I want to go to the book of Matthew 22:42, probably the most significant question in Scripture, "What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?" Rabbi, can you close us there today and talk to us all about the significance of knowing Him, not just knowing about Him, but knowing the Messiah?
Rabbi Jason Sobel: I think there's two great questions that all of us have to answer. The one question is the question He asked His disciples, "Who do you say that I am?"
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: Who we say He is, He's either the Messiah or He's a maniac, because the things He said and the things He did, there is no ... He can't be just a prophet, He can't just be a good man, He can't just be a moral teacher. He claimed to be God in flesh and blood and the Messiah, and when I encountered Him and came to that realization, I was looking for God in all these different places, and when I encountered Him, it's like the miracle of the water into wine. It was one thing, but then it was transformed into something completely other. Jesus has transformed my life from water into wine.
I've become a new creation. I am totally different. The way I think is different, the way I live is different, the hope that I have, the shalom that I have, the joy that I have, and the promise of eternity of seeing Him face-to-face and having that intimate relationship with Him. There's no greater joy. There's nothing more important than knowing that and answering that question.
In Mysteries of the Messiah, when you see how it all comes together, there's no other explanation. You can't make this stuff up. All the prophecies, all the details, all these things, it is just so clear and we need to give our life to Him because He changes us.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Rabbi, could I ask you to do something right here?
Rabbi Jason Sobel: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: That evening, when you went into a church service, Rabbi Jonathan Cahn was speaking, he gave an invitation for all those in attendance to accept Christ, and there was a young man named Jason Sobel who said yes to Jesus in that moment. Would you lead us in a prayer to accept Christ for those listening who may not know Him?
Rabbi Jason Sobel: Yeah. Friends, I just want to encourage you that Jesus says that if you all who believe upon Him, He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life, and if we believe in our heart and confess with our mouth, we will be saved. If that is your desire, then I just invite you to just pray these words with me. "Our Father and our King, I thank You for Jesus who gave His life as the Passover Lamb, who died on that tree for me, that I might be set free, that I might find freedom and forgiveness, that I might find wholeness and shalom and the promise of eternal life because You, Jesus, died and were buried and rose again, and I place my faith in You. I can't save myself.
I can't change myself, but Lord, You can, so I place my faith in You. Come into my heart and fill me with Your presence in the name of Yeshua, Jesus. Amen."
Dr. Tim Clinton: Amen. If you prayed that prayer, welcome to the family of God. Rabbi, what a delight to have you. Hey, He has risen.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: He has risen indeed.
Dr. Tim Clinton: And He now sits at the right hand of God and prays for us, and He is coming again. Rabbi, it's been, again, such a delight to have you on the broadcast. I know Dr. Dobson, his wife Shirley, our entire team at Family Talk salute you and thank you for your words. This amazing book, again, The Mysteries of the Messiah: Unveiling Divine Connections from Genesis to Today is a must-read for everyone, published by our friends at W Publishing. Rabbi, I noticed that you closed your book, "Peace, blessing and good to you." Would you mind saying that in Hebrew for us?
Rabbi Jason Sobel: Shalom, bracha, vav tov, Yahshua Mashiach. Peace, blessing and good in the name of Yeshua, Jesus our Messiah. Amen.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Again, thank you for joining us.
Roger Marsh: Amen. I'm Roger Marsh. Thank you again for joining us for today's edition of Family Talk. If you prayed that prayer and accepted Jesus as your Savior right now, won't you give us a call? We would love to celebrate with you and to point you in the direction of helpful resources as you begin your journey as a new creation in Christ.
Our phone number is (877) 732-6825. If you'd like to learn more about Rabbi Jason Sobel and his book called Mysteries of the Messiah or his ministry, Fusion Global, you can visit our broadcast center at drjamesdobson.org/broadcast. That's drjamesdobson.org/broadcast. Now, before we leave for today, I want to remind you that right now is an exciting time here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
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That's drjamesdobson.org, or call us at (877) 732-6825. Well, that's all the time we have for today. I'm Roger Marsh. Please join us again tomorrow for a special New Year's Eve edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.
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