Mysteries of the Messiah: Unveiling Divine Connections from Genesis to Today

By Rabbi Jason Sobel and Kathie Lee Gifford

Are you settling for half the story? Highlighting connections that have been hidden from non-Jewish eyes, Rabbi Jason Sobel will connect the dots between the Old and New Testament, helping you see the Bible with clarity as God intended.

Most people—even people of faith—do not understand how the Bible fits together. Too many Christians accept half an inheritance, content to embrace merely the New Testament, while Jewish people may often experience the same by embracing only the Old Testament. But God has an intricate plan and purpose for both the Old and the New.

In Mysteries of the Messiah, Rabbi Jason Sobel reveals the many connections in Scripture hidden in plain sight. Known for his emphatic declaration “but there’s more!” he guides us in seeing the passion and purpose of the Messiah. Mysteries of the Messiah:

• Uncovers connections between the Old and New Testaments
• Connects the dots for readers with details about Jesus, the Torah, and biblical characters
• Written with the unique perspective of a rabbi with an evangelical theological degree

No matter how many times you have read the Bible, Mysteries of the Messiah will bring fresh perspective and insight. God’s Word, written by many people over thousands of years, is not a random selection of people and stories. Rabbi Jason Sobel connects the dots and helps us see with clarity what God intended.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Mar 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9780785240075

Rabbi Jason Sobel

Rabbi Jason Sobel is the founder of Fusion Global, a ministry that seeks to bring people into the full inheritance of the faith by connecting treasures of “the old and the new.” Rabbi Jason’s voice is authentic, being raised in a Jewish home, and qualified by years of diligent academic work, he received his rabbinic ordination from the UMJC (Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations) in 2005. He has a B.A. in Jewish Studies (Moody) and an M.A. in Intercultural Studies (Southeastern Seminary). He is a sought-after speaker and the author of Breakthrough, Aligning with God’s Appointed Times, Mysteries of the Messiah, and coauthor with Kathie Lee Gifford of New York Times bestsellers The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi and The God of the Way.

Book preview

chapter

ONE

THE JOB DESCRIPTION OF THE MESSIAH

As a young Jewish boy growing up on the streets of New Jersey, I encountered many things that influenced me. My parents and their faith were my heritage, but my friends and their ways were different. It was a little challenging to reconcile everything. But while I became fluent in the culture, even learning how to rap with my homies, I remained faithful to our Jewish tradition. Not just because I had to but because I wanted to. Yet I often felt there was something more.

At the age of eighteen I found myself one day in a state of meditation. This was something I did regularly as I attempted to figure out things in the midst of a world that was constantly pulling me away from spiritual things. It was an ordinary day but a truly extraordinary experience in that I had a personal encounter with Yeshua. This was the first time I’d ever felt as though the Lord was speaking directly to me. It was so unbelievable and yet so real, and I will never forget His words. He said, Many are called, but few are chosen.

In my innermost being I knew exactly what he was saying, but I needed to ask, Lord, am I chosen?

He sweetly smiled and replied, Yes.

I was overcome by the peace and presence of God—energized and in awe of the experience. I felt as if I were in a state of euphoria. This filling, which was much like an indwelling, kept me in a state of deep contentment. I ran down the steps and into my front yard. Not caring who was watching, I jumped up and down, screaming at the top of my lungs, I am called to serve Him! I am called to serve Him!

At this same moment my mom pulled into the driveway and saw her good little Jewish son running around in circles like a crazy man for all the neighbors to gawk at. Surely she thought I was mashugana (a Yiddish term describing a person who is nonsensical or silly). I didn’t care; I was so elated by the fact that God, the God who created the universe, wanted to use me.

Although she did not understand what was happening to me, my mother did not want to rain on my parade. There was only one problem. I wondered, What does it look like for a nice Jewish boy to begin serving Yeshua? I had no clue.

My best friend was John. I met him as part of a wannabe Filipino gang. We became close, practicing martial arts together and discussing spiritual things. By this time, John had become a believer in Yeshua and talked about it with me as often as possible. One day he called and asked, You went to Hebrew school as a child, right? Do you think you could tell the difference between the Old and New Testaments if I read you some passages?

I said, Sure.

He read me a passage about this guy dying on a cross and asked if it was from the Old or New Testament.

I said, Obviously it’s from the New Testament because it’s talking about Jesus.

He read another passage: He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. . . . He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. Then he asked, Is this from the Old or New Testament?

I said, It must be from the New Testament because it sounds like it’s talking about Jesus.

John paused, then said, It’s from the Old Testament, from Isaiah 53 [vv. 5, 7 NIV]. Isaiah was a Jewish prophet who lived seven hundred years before the Messiah was born.

That got my attention.

After our conversation I agreed to go with John to the messianic synagogue led by Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, who would later write the highly acclaimed and bestselling novel The Harbinger.

During the service, Rabbi Cahn talked about being born anew, but I didn’t think a good Jewish boy should ever do that. However, when he gave the invitation, I stood up. Rabbi Cahn led me in a prayer to receive Yeshua. My friend had prayed to lead one Jewish person to faith in Messiah Jesus, but he never thought it would be me.

After the service I was given the first New Testament I had ever seen. I took it home, not quite sure what had just happened, and hid it in my room—God forbid my parents should find it. Of course, Mom did find it and confronted me: What is this? Don’t tell me you’re a Jew thinking about believing in Jesus!

By then, I had read the New Testament and believed that Jesus was the One that Moses and the prophets had foretold. He was the One who spoke the words of eternal life.

My mom was concerned and called our rabbi to meet with me. I knew I needed to verify for myself that Yeshua was the Messiah of the Hebrew Bible. As I studied in preparation for my meeting with the rabbi, I made a list of all the messianic promises and prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures that I could find. I wanted to make sure I clearly understood and could articulate what I believed about the Messiah based on the Hebrew Bible and Jewish sources.

The rabbi asked me how I had come to believe in Yeshua as the Messiah, and I read all the passages that had impacted me. This chapter is a fuller version of what I shared in our meeting.

There are five major areas that reveal key clues about the Messiah: (1) His humanity, (2) His ethnicity and tribal identity, (3) His royalty, (4) His virgin birth and divinity, and (5) His suffering and rejection. All of these create a powerful, prophetic portrait of the person and work of Yeshua, the Messiah.

THE MESSIAH’S HUMANITY

The LORD God said to the woman, What is this you have done?

The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.

So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,

"Cursed are you above all livestock

and all wild animals!

You will crawl on your belly

and you will eat dust

all the days of your life.

And I will put enmity

between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and hers;

he will crush your head,

and you will strike his heel."

—Genesis 3:13–15 NIV

In the aftermath of the Fall, the Lord appeared in the garden, offering a ray of hope. God promised Adam and Eve, the parents of humanity, that in the future a seed (offspring) would be born who would defeat the serpent. This first prophecy about the coming Messiah is the root from which all other messianic prophecies sprout.

The Creation and fall of humanity are connected to the number six. Man was created on the sixth day, and in Jewish thought the Fall occurred on the sixth day. In order to understand this, we must explore the meaning of the number six from a Hebraic perspective. As I explained in the introduction, the Hebrew language is alphanumeric: each letter has a numeric value, and numbers are written with letters. The number six is written with the letter vav. Vav is the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and appears for the first time in the Bible at the beginning of the sixth Hebrew word of Genesis 1:1, where it functions as the conjunction and. "In the beginning God created the heavens and [vav] the earth." In this verse, vav literally connects heavens and earth. When Adam and Eve sinned, they broke the vav, the connection between heaven and earth, which, again, according to Jewish tradition, happened on the sixth day (a Friday). We revisit another significant biblical use of the letter vav in the last chapter of this book.

The mark of the beast (Rev. 16:2), which, as I also mentioned in the introduction is 666 (Rev. 13:18), connects to the letter vav. There are six dimensions of the physical world, as seen in the six factors that make up the basic units of measurement—length, comprised of (1) left and (2) right sides; breadth, which is (3) front and (4) back; and depth, which is (5) top and (6) bottom. The numeric value of vav also corresponds to the six directions of the physical universe: (1) north, (2) south, (3) east, (4) west, (5) above/up, and (6) below/down. Since Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day, this also makes the number six the number of mankind.

How does this tie to 666, Satan the serpent, and the mark of the beast? In Hebrew, anything said or written three times expresses the highest degree or quality. The reason the angels cry out, Holy, holy, holy is because they are declaring that the Lord is the One who exhibits maximum, complete, and ultimate holiness (Isa. 6:3). Since six represents the number of the physical world, 666 (the number six expressed to the highest degree) represents total materialism. It is complete physicality, earth apart from heaven.

In the beginning, God created heaven and earth, and He created mankind to embody the ideal union between heaven and earth. We find this ideal union in the name of the first man, Adam. In Hebrew, Adam’s name means man, and it is comprised of three letters: aleph, dalet, and mem. Man, who is a microcosm of Creation, has both a physical body and spiritual soul. Likewise, Adam’s name can be broken into these two parts. The Hebrew letter aleph represents the spiritual aspect of man: his soul. The name of God used in the Creation account, Elohim, also begins with the letter aleph, which underscores the connection between aleph and the spiritual part of mankind. The other two letters of Adam’s name, dalet and mem, spell blood in Hebrew, which points to the physical aspect of humanity. The image of God can only be fully expressed when the physical and spiritual aspects of humans, represented by the three letters of Adam’s name, are completely connected.

Satan’s goal is for humanity to focus on our physical needs at the expense of our souls, so that we become no better than animals, no longer bearing God’s image in the world but instead bearing the mark of the beast (666).

The Fall can be summarized by one word: exile (Hebrew, golah). The antidote to exile is redemption (geulah). In Hebrew, there is only a one-letter difference between the words exile and redemption—the letter aleph, the letter of God’s name. When the Lord is removed from our lives—from our families, from our nation, and from the world—we are left in a state of chaos and exile. The promise of Genesis 3:15, commonly referred to as the protoevangelium (literally, first Gospel), is that the Seed of the woman, the Messiah, would come and reverse the effects of sin and death caused by Adam and Eve’s disobedience. The promised messianic Seed of the woman died on a Friday, the sixth day of the Hebrew week, to restore the vav, the connection between heaven and earth.

THE MESSIAH’S ETHNICITY AND TRIBAL IDENTITY

Now the LORD had said to Abram:

"Get out of your country,

From your family

And from your father’s house,

To a land that I will show you.

I will make you a great nation;

I will bless you

And make your name great;

And you shall be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,

And I will curse him who curses you;

And in you all the families of the earth shall

be blessed."

—Genesis 12:1–3 NKJV

I will richly bless you and bountifully multiply your seed like the stars of heaven, and like the sand that is on the seashore, and your seed will possess the gate of his enemies.

—Genesis 22:17

The Lord made a promise to Abraham that through him and his descendants the blessings that were lost in Eden would be restored. From this point on, the identification of Abraham’s offspring, his seed, becomes one of the chief themes of the Torah. This is seen in the supernatural births of Abraham’s son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. Furthermore, the Lord was at work in the births of Isaac’s twin sons and chose Jacob over Esau.

The next puzzle piece of the Messiah’s identity is found in the Shiloh prophecy: "The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people (Gen. 49:10 NKJV). Many Bible versions translate Shiloh as he to whom it belongs." The Shiloh prophecy provides the critical detail that the Seed of the woman would not only be a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob but, more specifically, a descendant of the tribe of Judah.

The numeric value of Shiloh, which is understood to be one of the names of the Messiah, alludes to another key aspect of the mystery of the Messiah: His divine identity. Its value of 345 is the same as God Almighty (El Shaddai). Today, traditional Jews don’t pronounce the divine name, YHVH (YAHWEH), but rather use the term HaShem, which means "The

Name." HaShem equals 345 as well. The Messiah, who is known as Shiloh (345), will be the incarnation of El Shaddai (345) and HaShem (345), as in His name is the name that is above every name (Phil. 2:9). This prophecy also tells us that the Messiah would be a King from the tribe of Judah who would rule over Israel and the nations. It even provides answers to the mystery of the time of the Messiah’s coming. We will talk more about this in chapter 4.

THE MESSIAH’S ROYALTY

Now therefore, thus shall you say to My servant David, "Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘I took you from the sheepfold, from following the sheep, to be ruler over My people, over Israel. And I . . . have made you a great name, like the name of the great men who are on the earth. . . . Also the LORD tells you that He will make you a house.

‘When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.’"

—2 Samuel 7:8–9, 11–13 NKJV

Based on 2 Samuel 7, the identity of the Messiah narrows even further. He would be from the tribe of Judah and also a direct descendant of David—thus, the Messiah is called the Son of David. The Hebrew prophets also gave Him the name of the Branch (Hebrew, Tzemach). "In those days and at that time, I will cause a Branch of Righteousness to spring up for David, and He will execute justice and righteousness in the land (Jer. 33:15; see also Zech. 3:8, 6:12). Isaiah speaks of the promised Branch (Messiah) who will restore glory to Zion in the end times (Isa. 4:2). Speaking on the messianic nature of this passage, the rabbis wrote, What is the name of King Messiah? R. Abba bar Kahana said: ‘Lord [ADONAI] is his name, for it is written, I will raise unto David a righteous branch (shoot). . . In his days Judah shall be

Reviews for Mysteries of the Messiah

[alekee_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Having recently completed an in-depth study of Genesis with my BSF group, I found this book fascinating and eye opening, I've also heard my pastor speak of studying Greek and Hebrew and reading the bible in the original language. This book gave me a greater understanding of using the language Jesus was speaking, and his disciples, and applying it to scripture.The mysteries, and as Rabbi Sobel reveals some of them that are hidden in plain sight: Hebrew word for Father, has a Numerical Number of 3, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Since a tree caused the Fall, the son of God had to die on a tree.There are so many words of wisdom here, I will be reading this one more than once!I received this book through Read With Audra, and was not required to give a positive review.

[fcplcataloger · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Let me begin by saying that this isn't a book to quickly read and set aside; instead, it should be read slowly, with a pen and paper nearby. Mysteries of the Messiah offers a unique look at the connection of Jesus to both the Old and New Testaments, and it is full of intriguing information that I've never seen before. The author is Rabbi Jason Sobel, and he assures readers that "Uncovering the mysteries of the Messiah, the divine connection God has woven throughout Scripture, is a lifetime adventure that will never disappoint." Thankfully, Rabbi Sobel offers assistance for our journey, as he uses the Hebrew and Greek alphabet, and the numbers associated with the letters, to shine a light on this 'divine connection'.Mysteries of the Messiah: Unveiling Divine Connections from Genesis to Today is a fascinating resource that is both enlightening and inspiring. I recommend it to all who want to learn more about the presence of Jesus in both the Old and New Testaments, and deepen their personal relationship with Him! I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via I Read with Audra. There was no obligation for a positive review, and I am voluntarily sharing my thoughts.

[beautyinthebinding · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In Mysteries of the Messiah: Unveiling Divine Connections from Genesis to Today, Rabbi Jason Sobel calls for Christian and Messianic Jews to come together in unity by recognizing and embracing the Jewish heritage of Jesus. As the subtitle indicates, Rabbi Sobel starts with the Genesis creation narrative and highlights the evidence of Yeshua even in the earliest parts of the Bible.Often Mysteries of the Messiah read like a college term paper as it was highly analytical. At times, Rabbi Sobel expounded on his point to offer a life lesson or spiritual truth, but most of the information was factual about how the promised Messiah presented in those events. The numerical value of Hebrew letters was a new and interesting concept to me that came up frequently throughout the book. While I was not always convinced by Rabbi Sobel’s points, I found his explications very informative and worth consideration. He gave the best explanation of the Torah, Talmud, and Midrash that I have ever read. My favorite chapters were The Messiah, Our Passover (Chapter 8) and The Messiah in the Desert (Chapter 10).I recommend Mysteries of the Messiah: Unveiling Divine Connections from Genesis to Today by Rabbi Jason Sobel to readers who desire to explore the Old Testament (and portions of the New Testament) in light of Messiah Yeshua. This book is precise and informative, appropriate for clergy and lay people alike. Disclosure of Material Connection: I was provided a copy of this book by the author or publisher. All opinions in this review are my own.