Roger Marsh: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Family Talk, the listener-supported broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Roger Marsh. In 2 Timothy 3:16, the apostle Paul writes, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." As Christians, we are called to meditate on God's word daily, to hide it in our hearts through memorization and to talk about it with our family and friends. Our guests for a second day of broadcast is Rabbi Jason Sobel.
Roger Marsh: Rabbi Sobel is the founder of Fusion Global, a ministry that seeks to bring people into the full inheritance of faith in Jesus Christ by connecting what they call the treasures of the old and the new. He is a highly sought-after speaker, an author, and also serves as religious advisor for The Chosen, the multi-season TV show about the life of Jesus. Now, on yesterday's broadcast, Dr. Clinton and Rabbi Jason Sobel began discussing Jason's new book, Mysteries of the Messiah. His book focuses on the importance of understanding the Bible, both the Old, as well as the New Testaments, in order to better understand who Jesus is. Today, they'll be continuing that conversation.
Roger Marsh: They'll emphasize that God, who does not waste words is in every detail of scripture. Let's get started.
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 household or 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.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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 is 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. "A disciple is a learner, therefore, teach them to obey everything that I've commanded you."
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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 and your understanding of who that person is.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: There's more things to know about Jesus, there's more things to know about God, and the day we stop looking for those things, I think our love begins to grow cold.
Dr. Tim Clinton: As you went back and studied, and you grew up in a Jewish home, 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 it all really began is that I come to faith. Rabbi Jonathan Cahn leads me to faith. I take the first New Testament ever given. I hid it in my bedroom.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: God forbid my parents should ever find it, right? In my home, having a New Testament was worse than having pornography, and it all began with me having to study, to prepare, to meet with the Rabbi, and I talk about it in Mysteries of the Messiah, and I had to break out my Hebrew Bible and go through it and say, "What is everything ... 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."
Rabbi Jason Sobel: "They jeer at Him. His tongues cleave 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.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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 pierced my hands and my feet, my tongue cleaves," 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. It just blew me away as I realized that all of these prophecies found their fulfillment in Him.
Dr. Tim Clinton: As I look through your book, Rabbi, I look 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 of 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.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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 was the first person in history after supper to break the matzah, the unleavened bread and give it 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 back now and read Isaiah 53, "He was bruised for our transgressions, broken, our iniquities were upon Him." What He must have suffered and endured on the cross, I know a lot of Christians like to go back and watch The Passion of the Christ movie during Holy Week. 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 calendar is the sixth day. We have to understand God orchestrated that He should die on the sixth day.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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?
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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 a numerical value of one. In Hebrew, the letter six is the letter vav.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: The letter of vav and 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.
Dr. Tim Clinton: 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? 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 in a sense, what we have to understand is that sin is a debt. When we sinned, the wages of sin, it says 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 account, 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, and at Christmas time and spent too much money on gifts, and you get your credit card statement, you're like, "Boy, 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.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: That's exactly what the credit card companies want you to do, just pay the minimum, so you just pay the interest, so you want to pay 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. 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 that 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 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. Now, it comes together. The resurrection of the Christ, 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, like going back to Egypt, it says, "When I see the blood on the doorposts, I will pass over," so literally, the blood is supplied and applied by His death 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.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yes.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: On the second day of Passover, 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'd 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, and 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, when they go to ... He's placed in a garden tomb. Well, if there's a detail in the scripture, listen, God doesn't waste words. Why a garden tomb?
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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, right? He's actually, 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.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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. Eight is connected back to David, which ... You mentioned David earlier.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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 add ... Because not only is Hebrew connected to numbers, so as 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're fighting time, but I want to go to the book of Matthew 22:42, probably the most significant question in scripture. A young boy from New Jersey was confronted with this question, "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 that, 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.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: I 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, especially at this season when He died and rose again. In Mysteries of the Messiah, when you see how it all comes together, there's no other explanation.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: 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 is risen.
Rabbi Jason Sobel: He is 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 berakhah ve-tov lecha. 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, thanking you for joining us for today's edition of Family Talk. If you prayed that prayer and accepted Jesus as your Savior right now, why don't you please give us a call? We would love to celebrate with you and to point you in the direction of helpful resources for you as you begin your journey as a new creation in Christ. Our phone number is 877-732-6825.
Roger Marsh: That's 877-732-6825. We're here for you 24/7, as the kids like to say. Now, to learn more about Rabbi Jason Sobel or his new book, Mysteries of the Messiah, visit our broadcast page at Drjamesdobson.org. That's D-Rjamesdobson.O-R-G/broadcast. While you're on our website, be sure to sign up for Dr. Dobson's free monthly newsletter as well.
Roger Marsh: In his newsletter, Dr. Dobson offers biblical answers to tough questions regarding culture, parenting, marriage and more. You can sign up at D-Rjamesdobson.O-R-G/subscribe. That's D-Rjamesdobson.O-R-G/subscribe, or call us at 877-732-6825. Be sure to join us again tomorrow for a special Good Friday broadcast. From all of us here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, thanks again for listening to Family Talk.
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