What You Didn’t Know About Jesus and Passover

Rabbi Jason Sobel, host of TBN’s Mysteries of Messiah, unpacks why the Passover still has significance for Christians today. Watch as Rabbi Jason draws the connections between the Old and New Testament scriptures in this 27-minute video.

Editor’s Note: The transcript that follows was automatically generated and lightly edited, so please be aware there could be typos or other small errors. The Stream is working toward a transcription service that does fast, accurate, and reliable work; thank you in advance for your patience!

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On this episode of mysteries of the Messiah, we’re looking at Passover, the traditions, the meanings and the symbolism. Passover is more than just a holiday. It’s a day when God protected his people, and it’s set in motion a series of events that led to Yeshua. Understanding Passover helps us understand Scripture as a whole. We’re diving into redemption. What it meant during the Exodus and what it means for us today.

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We’re also taking a renewed look at Jesus’s final Passover Seder, the Last Supper. What does this show us about the character of Yeshua and His heart for us? You’ve never seen Passover like this. That’s happening now on Mysteries of the Messiah.

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And.

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Every major event in the life of Yeshua Jesus happened on a biblical holiday. For example, he died as the Passover Lamb. The last meal he ate before his death is known as the Last Supper. But it was actually a Passover Seder that he celebrated with his disciples. Probably the most famous picture of the Last Supper was the one paid to by Da Vinci.

00:01:35:19 – 00:02:02:07
But when you look at it, you realize there’s a lot of things in it that are not quite kosher. Think about it for a moment. This was a Passover Seder, and the people sitting around the table were white European. They weren’t Middle Eastern. What were they eating as the main course? They should have been eating the Passover lamb, but they were actually eating fish because a painter was a nice Catholic boy, and they ate fish on Fridays during lent.

00:02:02:10 – 00:02:18:19
And when you look at the bread they’re eating, come on. It’s actually fluffy loaves of white bread. If there’s anything you don’t eat on hog, how much? So, the feast of Unleavened Bread. It is fluffy loaves of white wonder bread.

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Israel was in Egypt for hundreds of years. When God raised up Moses to go to Pharaoh and say, let my people go, Pharaoh hardened his heart and God brought ten plagues upon the Egyptians. The worst plague was the last plague, which was the death of the firstborn. Only those who put the blood on the doorpost of their home were spared the horrible fate for the firstborn child.

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But the question is, why did God have Moses tell the children of Israel to slaughter a lamb and use his blood? What’s so significant about a male lamb, also known as a ram lamb? Well, we have to understand is that in Egyptian culture and religion, the ram was a symbol of some of their deities, and ram’s were used in the temples as sacred animals.

00:03:07:12 – 00:03:33:25
They even had a whole temple in Egypt that was dedicated to the god of the ram. And so could you imagine when the children of Israel put the blood on the doorposts of their house? It was basically telling the Egyptians that their gods were worthless, helpless, and completely powerless to deliver them in the face of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

00:03:33:27 – 00:04:14:16
The Passover lamb had to be ultimately without spot or blemish and Hebrew to meme. The numerical value of Tomi is 490. 490 is also the numerical value of Beit Sam Bethlehem. Do you see the connection? Ultimately, it points to Messiah Yeshua Jesus, who was the spotless, blameless Passover lamb for 90, who was born in Bethlehem for 90, to give his life for us so that we might be redeemed by his blood, just like the children of Israel were spared in Egypt.

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Passover actually occurs on the 14th day of the month of Nissan, as we’ve shared before. Hebrew is alphanumeric. You write letters with numbers. The way you write 14 in Hebrew is you’d add those two letters literally spell yod, which means hand. God redeemed the children of Israel on the 14th day of the month of Nissan, because he was demonstrating his mighty hand of redemption, as you promised.

00:04:42:24 – 00:05:07:22
I will take you out of Egypt with a yacht, has a car with a mighty hand and a zero in it, and an outstretched arm. But this ties directly to Messiah Yeshua, who had his hands pierced at the Passover, and John chapter ten. Yeshua says this my sheep hear my voice. I give them eternal life, and no one can snatch them out of my hand.

00:05:07:24 – 00:05:41:19
Yeshua Jesus in John chapter ten, connects his hand with the hand of redemption that was revealed at the Passover. No one can deliver us or snatch us out of the hand of our Messiah. We’re truly safe in his hand. Ultimately, at the Second Coming, God is going to reveal his hand a second time. He’s going to reveal himself to the children of Israel and redeem them and ultimately bring salvation to Israel and the nations.

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In the West. We’ve seen a lot of depictions of Jesus in art. The Gardner sermons, iconic 1940 portrait that shows Jesus is a light eyed, sandy blond European man. Selman was a commercial artist known for painting advertising campaigns with a keen sense for marketing. He sold his image to a couple of Christian publishing companies. Before you know it, this depiction of Jesus is hanging in homes across America.

00:06:18:17 – 00:07:05:20
Settlements. Head of Christ. Portrait Lizardan. Prayer cards, hymnals, souvenirs and nightlights. Even more iconic is the Last Supper, a masterful work by Leonardo da Vinci. This piece shows Jesus and the apostles seated together, dining. The piece is undoubtedly beautiful, but historically accurate, not even slightly. The clothing worn is Renaissance era European garb. The bread isn’t unleavened. They’re eating fish other than them, and they’re seated in chairs rather than on the floor.

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These are just a few examples of many. Everything from the tableware to the time of day could only be classified as an artistic interpretation, not an accurate portrayal. And just as in Warner Sullivan’s portrait, the most glaring inaccuracy is simply that everyone in the painting, including Jesus, is European, not Middle Eastern. Of course, we can see that these depictions of Jesus aren’t accurate.

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But why does it matter? After all, we can’t be completely sure what he looked like anyway. Well, in a lot of ways, these artistic images of Jesus reveal a gradual move, a move that separates Yeshua and His Jewishness. His appearance was informed by his heritage as we separate the issue from his heritage. Even in small ways, we miss out in richness, beauty and vital context.

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The lens through which we see Yeshua becomes clouded. It’s clouded by generations of secular details being lost or ignored. Western Christianity has shaped an image of Jesus that we accept. It may be comfortable for those of us that grew up with it, but it isn’t too. The question is, where did this version of Jesus begin?

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While in Egypt, God told the children of Israel to put the blood on the doorpost of their home, so that when he saw the blood, he would pass over and death would not come to the firstborn. The blood on the door posts of their homes actually formed a Hebrew letter. It was the letter Tov, which in ancient times was written in the shape of a cross.

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So what’s become the symbol of Christianity? The cross actually started out as a Jewish symbol. The letter Tov is also in Jewish thought. The sign and seal of ownership. Horses and camels. In ancient times had a cross written on them to show that they were owned, and that they were not wild. This makes perfect sense. Why? That was the blood seal on the doorpost of the home.

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Because the children of Israel had been owned for hundreds of years by Pharaoh and the Egyptians, and their ownership was being transferred. They were now going to belong to the Lord.

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In the New Testament. The idea of redemption literally means to buy a slave off the auction block. And we’ve also read the verse. You have been bought and paid for a price. Therefore glorify God in your body. The wages of sin is death. Yeshua paid the price to buy us from the world, the flesh and the devil, and now we belong to him.

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We’ve been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light.

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In the book of Ezekiel. We read how God tells the angels to go. Mark the people in the city who cry out to him. The people who were righteous and who were going to be spared judgment were marked with the sign. In Hebrew, the word for sign is literally tov. That means those individuals who were spared judgment literally had a cross placed upon their head from Egypt to the days of Ezekiel to the coming of Yeshua.

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The cross has always been the sign and seal of God’s redemption. It is mark on his people that they belonged solely to him.

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We also have to understand that the top is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. That means it is the seal. Some call it the seal of truth, but it also symbolizes the end. Yeshua Jesus in Greek is called the Alpha and Omega, but in Hebrew He is the olive in the top. He is the beginning and the end.

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That is so significant. Think about it. The last letter of the Hebrew alphabet was in the shape of a cross, an ancient times. The one who redeemed us is the olive in the tub, who gave his life on the cross, which was in the form of the letter Tov. We are sealed by the blood of the lamb, like Israel was sealed in Egypt.

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We are marked by the messianic seal of truth. The top.

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How do we end up with the Western Christian image of Jesus? American earth like wilderness settlements. Head of Christ, or even Renaissance era works like the Last Supper? We are the first to depict Jesus as European. It actually all began in the early days of Christianity’s formation as a religion. Syncretism is when different parts of separate religions of cultures are combined.

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Syncretism is exactly what Christian artists in the first fulfilled centuries used to depict Jesus. Take, for instance, the iconic image of Jesus as the good Shepherd. This is an ancient image of Yeshua, painted to look like Hermes and Apollo. Pagan idols. These images serve their purpose in cultures trying to grasp who Jesus was. Syncretism was a way to quickly show who Jesus was in a way that people could digest.

00:13:19:20 – 00:14:09:26
He looked the way that people of that culture expected God to look. During the Renaissance era, European artists with light skin and light hair began to paint portraits of Jesus. Combining the facial features of Jesus with their own. It was a combination of portrait and self-portrait. We ended up with works that show Jesus as European. As you look, continue to colonize in the 15th and 16th centuries, the image of European Jesus came within your colonized, far reaching lands, converting natives to Christianity along the way.

00:14:09:28 – 00:14:49:26
The image of a European Christ informed new converts that had never seen an image of Christ before. European missionaries built painting schools, teaching native people around the globe to paint Jesus in the same style. This depiction was not only inaccurate, but was eventually manipulated for evil in the newly colonized Latin America. The image of a European Jesus was used to justify a caste system.

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White Christians were at the top with the darker skin. The native people of Latin America were ranked much lower. They were subjected to poverty and treated as less than back in Italy, home to many of these artists. Anti Semitic myths and hate were very common with the Christian population, so much so in fact, the Jewish people were usually segregated to their own sections of major cities.

00:15:26:16 – 00:16:06:00
The Jewishness of Jesus wasn’t just being forgotten. It was being ignored. This practice is still ingrained in culture today. Media, schools, the 20th and even 21st century has regularly adopted an image of Jesus with careful attention to his teachings, and helped that forgotten a cornerstone of his life. Jesus was a middle Eastern Jewish man. Recognizing this begs the question if he was on, heritage can be largely forgotten.

00:16:06:02 – 00:16:23:27
What else about Yeshua? Has Western Christianity lost? What do we discover when we allow our own view of Yeshua to be informed and painted by Scripture and Scripture alone?

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The Passover is centered around four cups of wine, and it’s so significant because the last Supper was actually a Passover Seder. And so, as he was celebrating with his disciples on that Passover evening, he actually began the Last Supper Seder with the first of the four cups. And the first of the four cups is known as the cup of sanctification, and it’s known as kiddush in Hebrew, which comes from the Hebrew word kadosh to set apart or to make holy.

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And this reminds us that God not only set apart the Passover as a time of holiness and redemption, but also he set aside, set apart the children of Israel from the Egyptians, that they were no longer going to be slaves, but they were going to be valued as precious children in his sight. And the same is true for each one of us.

00:17:27:05 – 00:18:05:14
The cup of sanctification is connected to the washing of the hands, to the purification. God wants to wash away our past. He wants to renew us and transform us, and he wants to set us apart for his plans and for his purposes. At this point in the Seder, it’s likely that during this point, Yeshua washed the feet of the disciples and just like the priest, had to have their hands and feet wash as they ministered in the temple, so God washes us.

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He purifies us. He sets us apart from the world. He sets us apart from sin. But then he sets us apart to himself for his plans and purposes. So when we say this prayer, we literally lift up the cup and it reminds us of that verse from Psalm says, I am the Lord your God, who elevated you out of the land of Egypt.

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God has elevated you even as we lift up the cup. The Lord is lifting you up and can lift you up out of your situation and your circumstances. And then we have the second cup. The second cup is known as the Cup of Plagues. And it’s over this cup that we recite, the ten plagues that God brought upon the Egyptians.

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And as we said, his shua is the greater than Moses. So many of his miracles connect back. Think about it for a moment. The first miracle the water into wine connects to Moses’s first miracle. The water into blood. Then, during the time he’s on the cross, there’s literally three hours of darkness. Why? Because that’s like the ninth plague on Egypt.

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Three days of darkness. The 10th played the death of the firstborn. So just really incredible. And I think there’s more there, though, because when you’re sure after he’s celebrated with the disciples, his Seder in the upper room, he went to the Garden of Gethsemane. And he prayed. What? Lord, take this cup from me. Well, what cup was he talking about?

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It’s the cup of plagues. It’s the cup of judgment. He drank that cup and he didn’t take a sip from that cup. He drained it completely. He drank our pain, our sin and our shame so that we can be redeemed. Jesus would have had the second cup at his Seder, but we actually don’t read about the second cup in the Last Supper account.

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But we know historically that it would have been there. Then we have the third cup, really the most important cup. The third cup is known as the cow’s get up. It’s known as the cup of redemption. So the question is, why is the third cup the cup of redemption? Well, the Israelites, when they were told to put the blood of the lamb on the doorpost of the house, there were three sprinklings, one on the top and one on the two sides of the doorpost.

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Three sprinklings third cup. And when we think about Messiah, so much of his work of redemption is connected to the number three, right? He began his first miracle on the third day. He was on the cross for three hours. There was three hours of darkness. There was three crosses. He rose from the dead on the third day, all connected to that third cup, pointing to the fact that Yeshua was the greater Redeemer.

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And it reminds us of the blood of the Passover Lamb, which is so significant because God says, when I see the blood on the doorpost of the house, I will pass over. And death and judgment will not come to the firstborn. Well, the same is true today. We need to apply the blood of the Messiah, the Lamb of God, to our lives by faith.

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And when we do, the Lord will pass over and we’ll go from death to life. When we believe that Messiah died for us, that he rose from the grave. Then we can go from death to life. And we don’t have to worry about judgment, but we can have salvation in eternal life. And we see this even deeper in the numbers, because the numerical value of blood in Hebrew, which is Dom, literally has a numerical value of 44.

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44 is the numerical value of one of the Hebrew words for lamb. It’s the numerical value of the word for exile. It’s a numerical value for he will redeem. So by the blood 44, he redeems us 44 from exile, 44 so that we can find life. And the fourth cup is known as the Cup of Praise. Also as the cup of acceptance.

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So think about it for a moment. After God sets you apart, he marks your life. After he spares you from the judgment because he drinks the cup. After you believe that he died and took that judgment upon himself, and you turn to him in faith, you receive that redemption. What else can you do but praise him? Right. The natural response to God bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt.

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God says, let my people go, that they might worship me. The response to redemption is worship and praise and thanksgiving. And part of that praise is connected to the second name of that cup, which is the cup of acceptance, because he accepts us as his children. And that’s one of the key messages of Passover and of the death of the Messiah.

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That you’re not slaves. You’re not even servants. First and foremost, we become royal sons and daughters of the King. We go from being sinners to becoming saints in God’s eyes. And that’s something worth praising him. Because truly, you know, the Passover declares that God has done something good in our life and some people believe that you didn’t drink the fourth cup.

00:24:18:22 – 00:24:40:26
There’s debate on that because you show us as the next time he drinks this cup, he will drink it again in his father’s kingdom. Whether Messiah drank the cup or not, it doesn’t make a difference because the next time he drinks the cup, he will drink it with us face to face in the messianic kingdom at the marriage supper of the lamb.

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And I hope that day comes speedily and soon. And so the Last Supper, which is really the last Seder, reminds us that Yeshua is the Greater Moses, and whom the sun sets free is free indeed. We truly have freedom in Messiah in a very real and tangible way. We don’t need to live in fear because we know we have the promise of life to come and of the Messianic age.

00:25:13:27 – 00:25:23:20
Rabbi, I have a question. I know Christians like myself that follow Yeshua. Should we participate in the Jewish holidays? And how important is that in our walk with Jesus?

00:25:23:22 – 00:25:53:06
Yeah, I think it should be important. I think, for example, the biblical holidays are not called the Jewish holidays. They’re called the Lord’s appointed times. And so there’s a richness. There is a revelation. There is a wisdom. There is a beauty that helps us understand the person and work of the Messiah better. When we begin to study, understand and incorporate these things in some way in our life.

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But I just want to be clear about this. There is not a divine obligation. Like I don’t think believers are in sin or doing something wrong or less than if they don’t do these things. What I will say is there is a divine invitation to participate in these things. Because Jesus did them, the disciples did them. There’s a richness that’s added to our understanding of scriptures and our life when we do them, and the ability to communicate this to our children and the next generation.

00:26:29:29 – 00:26:55:08
And for all these reasons and more, including being a testimony to the Jewish people, I think they’re significant and they become, you know, a real blessing. And I know many of my friends and pastors who we’ve taken to Israel and experienced these things and have begun to incorporate things like Shabbat, Sabbath or Passover. You know, they’re blessed. They’re blessed.

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And it’s been a blessing to their community, has been a blessing to their families. And you all have gone with us to Israel. And I know you’ve come back and you’ve incorporated things like the weekly Shabbat into your life and what does that meant to you all?

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Everything. It’s a it’s a rich richness and a high definition that you say those words better than I do, or at high definition that I thought I would never have. It’s taking it off of paper and incorporating into your own life. But I would say it’s an absolute blessing for the family.

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It’s awesome.