“And there’s such wisdom there because the life of Jesus is a model for the transformation God wants to bring in our life,” he added.
When it comes to the concept of Jesus as our messiah, modern American Christians have an idea of what that means. But what was the Jewish concept of messiah when Jesus arrived on the scene?
“In Judaism there’s actually belief that there [were] two messiahs,” said Sobel. “If you look at some of the Dead Sea Scroll texts or even in some modern rabbinic writings, the first messiah was going to be messiah son of Joseph, Mashiach ben Yosef in Hebrew.”
“And like Joseph, and we talk about this in the book,” Sobel said, “he’s going to be rejected by his brothers. He’s going to be sold for silver. He’s going to be stripped of his tunic, thrown into a pit.”
“Like Joseph, Jesus would be rejected by his brothers, and that would lay the foundation of the redemption of Israel,” said Sobel. “It’s interesting and I think no coincidence that Jesus is literally in Hebrew, Yeshua ben Yosef, Jesus the son of Joseph.”
“There’s also the Son of David messiah, which is what they were doing when they waved the palm branches and they said, ‘Salvation to Son of David in the highest,’” Sobel said. “The Son of David was the second messiah. He was the military, he was the conquering messiah…he was gonna bring defeat of the Gentile oppressors.”
“He was gonna cleanse the temple and establish the kingdom, and all the nations would…acknowledge that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the only God,” he continued. “And that’s what they believed would happen.”
“But what I’d say is that there [weren’t] two messiahs,” said Sobel. “There’s two comings. At the first coming, riding on the donkey, he comes as the Lamb of God, the suffering servant.”
“At the second coming,” Sobel said, “he does come riding on the clouds of heaven. And he’s coming as the Son of David, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of Jesse.”
The Bible is a historical collection of different books written over the span 1,600 years that is somehow still unified and filled with rich and detailed symbolism. Sobel pointed out that Jesus was crucified on a cross, a fact that alludes to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, through which sin entered the world. “The Greek word for cross is tree, right?” he said. “So God literally puts Jesus on the tree.”
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After Adam and Eve sinned, God cursed the ground to produce thorns and thistles, and when Jesus was crucified, he wore a crown of thorns. “So he takes on himself the curse of creation in order to break the curse,” said Sobel.
Other examples Sobel mentioned included Noah’s Ark as a symbol of Jesus’ salvation and the fact that Jesus was buried in a garden tomb (hearkening back to the Garden of Eden). Sobel also explained why Peter suggested building shelters when Jesus was transfigured. “As we go deeper, there’s just layers of meaning,” said Sobel. “It’s not just details for the sake of details. There are real, practical applications to these things.”
Part of the reason why Sobel wrote “Transformed by the Messiah” was to give people hope. “I believe part of what hope is, is knowing that your future is going to be better than your past, is knowing God is in control,” he said. “And one of the ways we know God is in control is by understanding God is in the details.”
For example, it might seem that when Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem for the census ordered by Caesar Augustus, they were simply being subjected to the whims of a “greedy megalomaniac, wicked Caesar king,” said Sobel. But they were not pawns of Caesar. “Jesus had to be born to fulfill messianic prophecy in Bethlehem,” Sobel said. “God used a greedy king to make a census to get Joseph and Mary to the very place they needed to be.”
“What seems on the surface like, man, they’re victims—they weren’t victims. It was part of God’s intentional story and bigger plan that he had from long ago,” said Sobel.
“And so as we understand how these old and new connect, it’s not that they’re just intentionally to be fulfilled for Bible prophecy,” he said. “It reveals God is that intentional about your life, about my life, to bring these things to pass because he loves us and he cares for us and he works everything out together for good.”
