One For Israel

Dr. Erez Soref: The Passover story is not just remembering an event.

Guest (Female): For the first time the Bible came alive to me.

Guest (Male): And the question is, which lamb is Isaiah referring to?

Dr. Erez Soref: It's like God carved a message in eternity. A message that history continues to live out.

Guest (Male): And what the Father did with Israel, this is exactly what He sent His Son to do for all of us.

Dr. Erez Soref: I'm Dr. Erez Soref. I was born and raised in the heart of Israel, but I never heard the Gospel message until on a journey abroad, my eyes were opened to the Jewish Messiah. From that point, my life has been dedicated to bringing this Gospel back to my people Israel, equipping them to reach Israel and the world. Together as Jews and Gentiles, we are one in Messiah, One For Israel.

Passover, or Pesach, is one of the most important holidays here in Israel and for Jewish people all over the world. This is the time when families gather together and remember how God redeemed us from slavery in Egypt. We sing songs, act out the story, and read scripture, all over a meal that goes long into the night. But the Passover story is not just remembering an event. It points to a greater fulfillment, a greater deliverance, brought about by someone even greater than Moses.

And surprisingly, the Passover story also has roots that branch back before the Exodus event. It's like God carved a message in eternity, a message that history continues to live out, a love letter wrapped in our calendar where He continues to reveal more of His plan for my people and the world. Scripture tells us to remember the Passover each year, so we celebrate with unleavened bread, matzah, with bitter herbs, with four cups of wine, and a great meal.

Guest (Female): Wait, we forgot the most important part of Passover. Where's the lamb?

Guest (Male): It's the same thing Isaac asked his father. Remember Genesis 22? God asked Abraham to take his only beloved son on Mount Moriah, exactly the same place that the Temple was to be built.

Dr. Erez Soref: It might seem like the story of Abraham's binding of Isaac is out of place in a Passover narrative, but our forefathers had a different perspective. The Book of Jubilees, a Jewish book written in the second century BC, traces this pivotal event to the day of Passover. In fact, this book attributes much of the memorial of Passover day not to the Exodus, but to the story of Abraham and Isaac.

Guest (Male): Not only that, the great sages perceived great Messianic significance in Abraham and Isaac's great test. As Abraham took the donkey in verse three, Malbim, who was a Jewish commentator from the 19th century, insisted that this donkey was prepared for the Messiah. To prove this point, the Zohar even quotes Zechariah 9:9 in reference to this verse: "Your King will come lowly, riding on a donkey."

Guest (Female): Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. It's here in this section that the rabbis see something very interesting. They described in this scene that Isaac was like a man carrying his cross.

Guest (Male): In verse seven, Isaac was asking his father the same question we asked in the beginning. He said, "Abba, where is the lamb?" Abraham responded that God will reveal the lamb.

Dr. Erez Soref: As we read in verse nine, Abraham is tying Isaac to the altar. In the rabbinic commentary Midrash Tanhuma, they said Isaac asked his father to bind him tightly so he wouldn't break a bone, so he would be a fit sacrifice for our people. This is a clear allusion to Exodus 12:46 where God commands not a bone of the Passover lamb could be broken.

All of this culminates with God's intervention. According to rabbinic commentary and the Jewish Book of Jubilees, the one sent to stop Abraham was, and I quote, "Yeshua, the Angel of His Presence." This wonderful angel, according to the book, stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son and provided a ram in his stead.

Guest (Female): But we're still looking for the lamb. It's clear that the sages of old saw this Akedah passage as a reference to the story and sacrifice of the Passover lamb. As the ram took the place of Isaac, the blood of the lamb redeemed the firstborn in Egypt. God saw the blood of the Passover lamb and saved Israel's firstborn.

Guest (Male): The Passover lamb may have been the final blow that released our people from the clutches of Pharaoh. But as we read on, the promised lamb of the Messiah, as Isaiah 53 describes, would do more than release us from Egypt, but deliver us from sin and death.

Dr. Erez Soref: Even though God had delivered our people physically, we were still in need of a deeper deliverance. Prophets like Isaiah spoke of another lamb, a new Exodus, a greater deliverance. Not to take us out of Egypt, but a lamb to take away our sin.

Guest (Male): But this all sounds a bit familiar, right? It was first John the Baptist that proclaimed this truth plainly. He saw Yeshua as a fulfillment of this promise as he shouts out, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"

Guest (Female): Just as Abraham saddled his donkey on his way to Mount Moriah, Yeshua entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Like the rabbis saw with Abraham, Yeshua's disciples also saw the fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9. As Matthew 21 says, "All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your King is coming to you, lowly and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey."

Guest (Male): Just as Isaac carried the wood that the rabbis surprisingly compared to Isaac's cross, so Yeshua carried the wooden cross ascending the hill, just like Isaac, in the city of Jerusalem.

Dr. Erez Soref: It was on the same date of Passover, riding on a donkey, carrying the cross in the same mountain Isaac and Abraham ascended, that Yeshua Himself completed this sacrifice. Yeshua, many times referred to as the Angel of the Lord, didn't stop the spear that pierced His side. Driven by His love for us, He became the holy sacrifice, and as Isaiah prophesied, bore the sins of many.

And just as Exodus 12:46 states, so the eyewitnesses state, that not a bone of His was broken on the cross. He was a fit sacrifice for the sin of our people.

Guest (Male): In the Exodus story, it's clear that God took Israel out of Egypt, but He didn't take Egypt, the sin, out of our forefathers' hearts. As history goes on, we see clearly there needed to be a greater redemption to come. The sacrifice lamb of Exodus and the sacrifice of bulls and goats couldn't deliver and didn't take the sins of Israel, let alone the sins of the world. That's why our prophets, like Isaiah, talked about a new Exodus, a second Moses, and this is where the lamb shows up again.

Guest (Female): So who has believed our report? As Isaiah states so clearly, this Messiah would be rejected, just like Moses, just like David, just like Joseph. But a remnant would have eyes to see.

Guest (Male): He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth. The key point here is the text clearly says in Hebrew, "like the lamb." Isaiah is referring to the Passover lamb as he describes the suffering servant.

Dr. Erez Soref: So is the lamb at your table this Passover? At the end of our Passover Seder in every home, our kids run to the door to look for Elijah, the forerunner of the Messiah. But this year, instead of looking for Elijah, open your heart to the Lamb of God, Yeshua the Messiah. As He said, "I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, then I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with Me."

Will you open the door? Will you allow the lamb to deliver you? He spilled His blood so precious to pay for your freedom. Trust Him, follow Him. The Lamb of God is the Lion of Judah. He has become King and Lord.

Guest (Male): In the book of Revelation, John recorded the song he heard heaven sing: "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise. Worthy is the Lamb!"

Dr. Erez Soref: On Passover, we remember our deliverance from Egypt, and we look forward to God's deeper deliverance to come.

Thousands of years ago, God paid for our redemption by the blood of a lamb. And now, the true Lamb of God has been revealed. He has redeemed us from the slavery of sin by His blood. John the Baptist was a cousin of Yeshua, a preacher and prophet that began his ministry before Him, preparing the way for the coming Messiah.

John grew up his whole life knowing Yeshua as a close relative. Maybe their mothers had told them how their callings and even their births were connected. But one day while John was preaching, something suddenly clicked. A revealing, a connection took place. God opened John's eyes and he realized something for the first time.

His cousin Yeshua was the deliverance Israel was looking for, the fulfillment of God's plan. He saw Yeshua with new eyes and declared, "Behold, the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world!" The veil came off. Yeshua was revealed to him as the Messiah, the Lamb of God. Today we are seeing the veil coming off from many of my people. They are seeing Yeshua as He really is. Not just a Christian icon, but the true Deliverer for the Jewish people, the Passover Lamb.

Guest (Female): When I was nine years old, we moved to the United States from Jerusalem. And the number one song in the country was Anne Murray, "One Day At A Time, Sweet Jesus." And I'll never forget, my mom comes into the car and I'm singing, "One day at a time, sweet Jesus." My mom says, "What did you say? Mouth!" And I said I'm singing the song. She's like, "Lo omrim Jesus." We don't say Jesus.

But why? In Hebrew she says, "Zeh Yeshu." I grew up not being able to say that name. My son at the age of five was diagnosed with Asperger's. He was not verbal, he was very distant. He was the cause of me going back to school and becoming a special education teacher. I knew a lot about science, I studied a lot about everything, but I really never even opened the Bible.

Ironically, I was teaching Hebrew school as a side job, teaching the prayers, teaching the liturgy. I mean, I knew everything. I had seen my father pray the prayers and put on the tallit, and I know all of the rhetoric and everything that goes along with being Jewish, but I didn't feel any connection to God. I would sit at synagogue and I tried to feel something. I tried to feel God, and it wasn't. It was like the Chagall stained-glass windows and everybody around me, and the bima and the ark and the Torah being taken out, and I remember feeling nothing.

At my school, I worked at an after-school program and there was a woman that had written a book called *Jesus, Can I Talk to You?* So she said to me, "I don't have money to hire an editor. Would you help me edit my book?" And I said, "Well, I don't know anything about Jesus. I do know about writing, I know about English, I know about commas, I know about semicolons. I just don't know anything about Jesus."

It was a lot of stuff from the Old Testament, and I would see things like, this is from Ecclesiastes, or this is from Samuel or Kings, and I was like, "These are our books. This came from the Jewish Bible." I never read the Bible. I read about the fact that he would be pierced, and that's exactly what happened to Jesus. And for the first time, the Bible came alive to me.

It was Isaiah 53. I said, "How can you miss this? It's right there. It's right there in the scripture, in our book." I said the prayer and asked for him to come into my life, and I accepted him as my savior. Even though I just became a believer in the Jewish Messiah, but in Jesus whose name I can't even say at the private Jewish school.

This is too weird. The grandson of the head of our Judaics program, in the first year that he was there, he would talk to me and I would say, "Oh, it's time to go to tefilla," students were required to go to prayer and you must go to tefilla. He's like, "I hate tefilla." I'm like, "Your grandfather's the head of the Judaics program of the school."

And so he comes up and he puts a kippah on my head and he's like, "You're like a rabbi," because rabbi in Hebrew means teacher. He goes, "I could just see it. One day you're going to become a Hasidic." And I said, "No, Joshua. Totally the furthest thing I'm going to become." One day he says to me, "I don't understand you. What kind of a Jew are you? Do you keep Shabbat?" I said, "What do you mean, what kind of a Jew am I?"

And he goes, "There's something different about you. I don't know what it is. There's something different about you." And I said, "Joshua, sit down. I really respect you, and I'm going to tell you what's different about me is that I believe that Jesus is the Messiah." And his eyes got wide and he stood up and he pointed at me. He's like, "I knew it! I knew it! You're always talking about love and stuff!"

And the students know. They know I can talk about God all day. I couldn't do that in public school. Public school, you can't talk about God, but at a private Jewish school, I could talk about God all day. And sometimes they test me and sometimes they get real close and they really question what am I really saying? But if they ever come to me and say, "What do you really believe?" like Joshua did, I would tell them, "I believe that Jesus is my Messiah."

Coming out of the Messianic closet, that's pretty much a good way to put this. I've gone completely against the grain. When you go against the grain, you get splinters. It's not easy. It's not been an easy path for me, especially knowing what I know and hearing what I hear, how the rabbis talk about him, how the students mock him.

And I say, "Okay, I'm here for You. I want to stay here." And people ask me, "Aren't you afraid if they find out at your school that you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, that you'll get fired?" So? God will always provide. He has through everything, and He always delivers. He took it on the cross for me. Jesus died so that I could be born again. The greatest pain is to give up your own child. How much God must have loved us to give up His only Son for us.

Dr. Erez Soref: Behold, on the mountains, the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace. Celebrate your feasts, O Judah, pay your vows, for never again will the wicked one pass through you. We want to help you discover how the Jewish holidays can deepen your relationship with God.

This enlightening book uncovers the profound connection between each biblical feast or holy day and God's grand plan of salvation through our Messiah Yeshua. These sacred appointed days not only commemorate past events, they also unveil insights into future promises to come. It's a double revelation, both immediate and prophetic, waiting for you to explore. Get your free book and discover Yeshua in the biblical calendar.

Where is the lamb? From Genesis to Revelation, this idea of the lamb has been sprinkled throughout God's history of redeeming His people. Why a lamb? Why not a bull or a warhorse? Why is God's redeeming power symbolized in the humble and gentle lamb? In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John is taken to heaven in a vision.

There he sees heaven's throne surrounded by elders, creatures, and angels. The rainbow, thunder and lightning, and a sea of glass, all very majestic. John then saw God's plan for history being unfolded in a scroll, and there was only one who could unfold it. He heard an angel declare, "See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scrolls and its seven seals." When John looked for the lion, he saw in the middle of the heavenly court a lamb. A lamb that has been slain, but is alive.

Guest (Male): Shalom, everyone. We are here to discuss the foundational holiday of the Jewish people, the Passover, and to ask the question: what does the Passover have to do with Yeshua, with Jesus? And I have here with me Dr. Golan Broshi. Shalom, Golan.

Dr. Golan Broshi: Hi, shalom.

Guest (Male): Thank you so much for coming. So I think the first question we want to ask and discuss is why did Jesus have to be crucified on the Passover? I mean, isn't that our holiday as a Jewish people?

Dr. Golan Broshi: Yeah, and we have so many other holidays. Why crucify on Passover? And I think even the prophets of the Old Testament, when they looked at the Exodus stories at Exodus 12, they interpreted the last salvation, the bigger salvation, in light of the first salvation. So the prophets like Isaiah, they saw the salvation out of Egypt from bondage. They saw it as a picture of the bigger salvation, the final salvation from sin with the Messiah.

Guest (Male): So there's a famous saying of a very well-known rabbi from the 13th century on his commentary to the Book of Genesis. He said the acts of the fathers are a sign to the sons. In other words, what happened in the past points to an event in the future. This is really what you're talking about.

Dr. Golan Broshi: Exactly. And what the Father did with Israel, this is exactly what He sent His Son to do for all of us.

Guest (Male): Golan, when we see that when John the Baptist saw his cousin Yeshua coming up from the River Jordan, he said, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." And we know that the Passover lamb, which is a very central part of the Passover, has been a sacrifice. But the question is back to be asked when we make the connection to the New Testament: is the Passover lamb, or can the Passover lamb be a sin offering?

Dr. Golan Broshi: Yes. So when John sees Yeshua, he says, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes the sin." So the question is where did he get that from? If John is referring, and I think he is referring, to the lamb in Exodus 12, the lamb in Exodus 12 doesn't refer to as taking the sins of anybody.

So a really famous rabbi, which is also a professor, a scholar of the Hebrew Bible, asked that question: can the lamb of Passover be considered as a sin offering? And he said at first glance, it's obviously not, because you don't hear anything in Exodus 12 about taking the sins of anybody, not Israel, let alone the world.

But then he says, "But wait. If you look closely at the text," this rabbi is saying, "the language that Moses uses in Exodus 12 resembles the sin offering in the Book of Leviticus." And therefore...

Guest (Male): One-year-old, no blemish, not a bone broken.

Dr. Golan Broshi: Yeah. He said by the language, you see this rabbi is saying, not only that we should consider the Passover lamb as a sin offering, he's the head of all sin offerings.

Guest (Male): Golan, we talked a little bit beforehand and we discussed the potential similarities between the attempt to sacrifice Isaac and the Passover lamb. Can you talk a little bit about that and tell us why is it important?

Dr. Golan Broshi: When Abraham took Isaac to the Mount Moriah to sacrifice him, the day he put them on the altar was the 15th of Nisan.

Guest (Male): That's the Passover.

Dr. Golan Broshi: That's exactly the Passover. So first we see a book that comes before the New Testament and the book even says, "This is why Israel is celebrating Passover, to remember Abraham putting Isaac on the altar, to remember that."

So what God told Isaac: "Take your son, your only son"—which is a very unique way of saying it in Hebrew—"whom you have loved, Isaac, and sacrifice him to me on a mountain which I will show you." So a father is taking his beloved son to sacrifice him as the lamb.

And now a different Jewish tradition says that when Abraham put the wood on Isaac and let him carry it, the Midrash—rabbinic Midrash says when Isaac took the wood, he was like a man carrying his cross.

Guest (Male): Golan, I want to ask you about Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53, many people view it as the confession of the nation of Israel once we recognize the Messiah. Now within that passage, it's also a component of a wonderful description of the suffering Messiah, a wonderful description of the lamb. So I want to ask you specifically about verse seven, about the lamb. What's that about?

Dr. Golan Broshi: We started by saying that the prophets, and especially Isaiah, saw the first redemption. They read the first redemption in Exodus 12 and they depicted, they pictured, they saw the last redemption in light of that first redemption. And in the first redemption in Exodus 12, they're talking about the lamb.

So of course we expect Isaiah to mention the lamb. Now sadly, in many translations, most translations in English, there's a little bit of a change. And I want you to please read one of the translations. It's one translation, but it's most of them. Isaiah 53:7, see how it says that Isaiah depicts the lamb or a lamb.

Guest (Male): "He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter."

Dr. Golan Broshi: And the key here is "a lamb." In most English translations, "a lamb." Not a specific lamb, but any lamb. But in Hebrew, Isaiah is saying "the"—the lamb.

Guest (Male): The lamb.

Dr. Golan Broshi: Exactly. As "the lamb." And the question is which lamb is Isaiah referring to if it's not the same lamb that Isaac was looking for? "Father, where's the lamb? Everything is ready, where's the lamb?" And the lamb of Exodus 12.

So I think specifically Isaiah is using "the lamb" to again point us back, but to point us to the future. And therefore, when John sees Yeshua, John connects all the dots and he says, "Behold, the"—not "a"—"the Lamb of God."

Guest (Male): That's beautiful. Thank you, Golan. This has been fascinating and enlightening. And for you, our viewers, we are praying for you that you will see the depth of the love of God in the Messiah, that even this discussion about the Messiah in the Hebrew Bible will give you great depth and encouragement to your faith in the Messiah this Passover season. Shalom and God bless you.

Dr. Erez Soref: This Passover we have deliverance from sin and from the devil's bondage because of the lamb, one that paid for our freedom with His own blood. In Revelation, heaven worships this Lamb that had been slain. He reigns now and forever, living and giving life. Next time we look at how the Feast of Passover points to the greatest miracle in history: the resurrection.