Signs and Secrets of the Messiah : A Fresh Look at the Miracles of Jesus by Rabbi Jason Sobel

Author:Rabbi Jason Sobel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2023-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Secular, Holy, and the Number 7

The word for sickness also connects to the word for secular. Six days of the week are secular and ordinary, but the seventh day is holy. Society becomes sick and enters chaos when we remove God from it. Secular is the opposite of holy. A secular society is sick because the culture has removed God, the moral foundations, and spiritual principles. I’m talking about extreme secularism—atheism and agnosticism that try to destroy the Judeo-Christian worldview and foundation. Just look around. Immorality and perversion are celebrated as good and normal, while actual good is called evil and hateful. Our culture is sick. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil,” warned Isaiah, “that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isa. 5:20 KJV). We are there.

Don’t be fooled, though. God’s patience in judging sin does not mean He is tolerating it. He is serious about holiness and is dealing with wickedness. Throughout the Bible, God lets us know His feelings in various ways. One, as we’ve been discovering, is through numerical symbolism. Holiness is connected to the number 7. God created the heavens and the earth in six days, but He sanctified the seventh day. He infused it with holiness. The six days of the week are like the body; the seventh day of the week is like the soul. When you remove the soul of Creation—the holiness and the spiritual reality of the world—you’re left with a sick, dead world. This connects to Yeshua’s healing of the nobleman’s son. John told us the miracle happened “at about the seventh hour” (John 4:52). The opposite of sickness is holiness. Let me be clear: I’m not saying that people are sick because they are not holy. I’m saying that sickness, especially spiritual sickness, is the opposite of wholeness and holiness. Yeshua released holiness and wholeness onto this child, and he became healed. Holiness and healing are connected. There is no healing without holiness. Holiness ultimately means being conformed to the image and likeness of the Messiah. To the degree that we’re not like Him is the degree that there is something unhealthy in our souls, because He is what we should aspire to become. He is the Holy One of Israel, and when we believe in Him by faith, He takes our dirty robes of unrighteousness and clothes us with His holiness and wholeness. And that holiness, that justification by faith, brings healing and transformation into our lives.

The number 7 also connects to the messianic age (the time that is all Shabbat). This world is like the six days of a week. When the Messiah comes, it will be the seventh day, the Shabbat, the rest, the messianic Kingdom (Mic. 4:1–4). Messiah healed at the seventh hour because holiness and wholeness is rooted in the Messiah and the messianic Kingdom, shown to us in the recurrence of the number seven.

The midrash—Jewish tradition—says this: “At the time of creation, it was at the seventh hour that He [God] blew into his [Adam’s] soul.

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