The Eric Metaxas Show - Jay Brock (Encore)

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Jay Brock on the humanity of Jesus in his book "A God Named Josh: Uncovering the Human Life of Jesus Christ".

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m. Investments.com. That's LegacyPMinvestments.com. Ladies and gentlemen, looking for something new and original, something unique and without equal. Look no further. Here comes the one and only Eric Mattaxas. Folks, welcome. I've spoken previously on this program to our friend Rabbi Jason Sobel, who has certain many books. The new one is called Signs and Secrets of the Messiah. And last time, Rabbi, you were telling us some of these amazing correlations between the Old and the New Testament and the Jewishness of the New Testament, which people should know, but sometimes they forget.

get how profoundly the New Testament is a commentary on the Old Testament and points us back and how the Old Testament points us forward over and over. And last time you talked about the paralytic or the man who was unable to walk for 38 years. And you said that that relates to the Israelites wandering in the desert for 38 years. And you explained. about how they had been prepared by God for two years, but then they wandered for 38 years. I just find that kind of stuff so fascinating. So I know the new book is called Signs and Secrets of the Messiah.

What other things like that do you mention in signs and secrets of the Messiah? I mean, we get into so many miracles and, you know, God is in the details, right? So if there's a detail in the Bible, it's there for reasons. So, you know, again, the first miracle we talked about last time I was with. you is the first miracle we talked about in signs and secrets of the water into wine. Well, there's a detail there. It says that he said fill six stone pots to the brim. Well, the question is, if it says six stone pots, what's the significance that there's six

stone pots? Why not seven? Why not eight? Well, some of the significance there is that we have to understand there's a lot. Man was created on the sixth day. In Jewish thought, we fell on the sixth day. when when Jesus comes and he gives his life for us on the cross okay he dies on Friday which is the six day of the week he dies on a cross why because the first man and woman stole from the tree so

god puts Jesus who Paul calls the second Adam back on the tree for you and me with the crown of thorns on his head why what's the sign of the curse of creation the ground produced thorns and this he takes the curse on his head to break it and restore the blessing. And so when Jesus dies on the same day, man was created and fell, and he does his first miracle with six stone pots, he's saying, I am restoring the fruitfulness that was lost at creation. And I don't want you to anymore live out of the lack, but to live out of the overflow. And by the way, the number six in Hebrew is written with the letter, Bob, it's the conjunction.

and it's the letter that connects heaven and earth. When we sin, we broke the connection. Jesus comes back to restore it that we might experience his blessing. That is some heavy stuff. That is absolutely amazing. Say that again about the letter when you write the number six in Hebrew. Talk about that again because I want to make sure I catch that. Yeah, absolutely.

So Hebrew's alphanumeric. So there's no Roman numerals in the Bible, both Hebrew and Hebrew. and Greek have an alpha-numeric component, meaning that if I say open up the chapter 1 in your Bible, I'll say open up to chapter olive because it's the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value of 1. The 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet is the Hebrew letter Vav. It's the most used letter in the five books of Moses, and it's the conjunction and. The first place the letter Vav occurs in the Bible is in the first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1-1. and in Hebrew there are seven words in Genesis 1-1,

corresponding to the seven days of creation. The sixth word of Genesis 1 begins with the sixth letter. God created the heavens, that's the fifth, and that's the sixth, and Earth is seven. When we sin, we broke the vob, the letter, the number six, the letter vob that connects heaven and earth, when Jesus dies on Friday and does the miracle with the six stones, pots. He's restoring the connection and the blessing that was lost in the beginning.

You know, when you talk about these alpha numerics, obviously people can take that stuff too far and get kind of kooky and into numerology. At the same time, when you're talking about the word of God, how every letter, every word is sacred and has a certain place. So to hear you talk about that, you know, when Jesus says not a jot or tittle, now he didn't use. those words, those are English words from the 16th century, but the point is that not one mark will be changed from the law. That's the sacredness of the law, of the word of God, not one mark, not just not one letter, not one mark of one letter. And when you get into this kind of thing, that the first sentence of Genesis has this, you know, it's like looking at the stem cells,

like that right in the beginning, there's this meaning upon meaning upon meaning coming out and pointing us forward. It's, I think it's beautiful because it excites people about wanting to study the Bible and wanting to get into this kind of stuff. And obviously you write about it in your books. The one we're talking about right now is signs and secrets of the Messiah. And my guest is Rabbi Jason Sobel. But that is extraordinary that the Hebrew letters themselves have that kind of meaning. meaning and you said it's Vov is the sixth letter. How many letters are there in the Hebrew alphabet?

There are 22 letters. And we get into a lot of numbers in the book, like the man for 38 years who couldn't walk or 153 fish or Y5 Loads and two fish and all those things. And Galileo said, you know, mathematics is the language of creation, you know. And so understanding numbers when they're in the Bible are. important and, you know, they help us to go deeper and make different connections and insights. I think it also answers skeptics because someone can look at the Genesis account and say, well, that's just a myth. We can't believe that. But if you understand that letters and numbers are

interchangeable and God creates heaven and earth, God is coding creation. He's creating the mathematical as well as the spiritual structure of the world. So when God speaks, he's actually creating the mathematical structure that undergirds, you know, physics and quantumistics. It's amazing stuff. Right. And if you look at it from that perspective, sin is a virus in the system that causes it to crash that Jesus comes to fix the virus in the system. I have to ask you about the number 153. Can you shed any light on that? Because that's always been fascinating to me, the 153 fish. Yeah, absolutely. So the disciples,

are fishing all night, they catch nothing. Jesus says, throw the net again on the right side of the boat. What's interesting, just before we get into that, is that the word for fish and the word for fear in Hebrew shares the same root. The disciples caught nothing in part because they were fishing from a place of fear. When we live from a place of fear, our nets will be left empty, right? But then they catch this 153 fish. There's so much there with 153. we get into signs and secrets of the Messiah. First, 153 reveals his identity. The phrase, Ani al-Heem, I am God, okay, equals 153. The phrase, Ani adenai al-Heha, I am the Lord your Redeemer equals 153. Malik Haakovod, king of glory, Psalm 24A, equals 153. It's trying to show us that he has the power over creation, that he is the

promised messianic king and that he is the Lord our redeemer. We could get into the Passover lamb equals 153, sons of God equals 153, right? So he dies as the Passover lamb that we might be the sons of God because he is the king of glory. God made manifest in the flesh. I mean, that's extraordinary. I didn't know any of that. And I'm, I've always been fascinated by that number because it's a strange number. It's not a hundred, 44 or 100 or 150. It's 153. And you say, what is that? And on some level, I would think that it would reveal to people who were fishermen, that's an unbelievable amount of fish. They counted and it was exactly 153. It's not a made-up number. It's not a mythical number. And yet there is this

meaning to it. We're out of time. Folks, I hope I've piqued your interest in Rabbi Sobel's book. It's called Signs and Secrets of the Messiah. By Jason, thank you. Shalom. Shalom. It's great to be here with you always. For 10 years, Patriot Mobile has been America's only Christian conservative wireless provider. And when I say only, trust me, they're the only one. Glenn and the team have been great supporters of this show, which is why I'm proud to partner with them.

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He has written a new book. This is going to be a little challenging for me, at least. It's titled, a God named Josh. I can't imagine what Jared Brock, the author, means when he writes about a God named Josh, but here's the good news. I get to ask him and you get to listen to his response along with me. Jared, welcome back. Thank you for having me, Eric. Okay, seriously, the book is called a God name Josh. Help us. Yeah, so Jesus's real name was not Jesus. That is what we call him in English, but let's back things up. So his name in Hebrew was,

Jehosa, Ben Yehosef, which means Joshua, son of Joseph. And there's no big conspiracy. There's no Dan Brown kind of novel about how we ended up with the name Jesus. But we simply went from Yehoshua in Aramaic, or in Hebrew, to Yeshua in Aramaic, to Jesus in Greek and Latin, to Jesus in English. So if Jesus walked into the room and we called him Jesus, he wouldn't be mad or anything. But if he introduced himself, he would probably say, hi, I'm Josh Josephson. that's i mean it's interesting because of course many of us have heard uh him you know as described as joshua uh it but it's interesting that today it would be josh Joshua uh and that's obviously why the title of your book is a god named josh which is kind of funny in a way because it's surprising

but what possessed you to write a book with this title? I mean, what is the book in a nutshell? Would you call it a biography? I would. I mean, I'm not a professional biographer. I'm a Sunday school teacher in West Wales, and I make documentaries. And this book basically started in our kitchen. My wife and I, we were cooking Mexican food.

And I was tossing beans in lime and chili. And Michelle looked at the beans and kind of wrinkled her notes. and said, I wonder how often Jesus parted. And we descended into a fit of giggles. But then we just started talking about Jesus' humanity. Like, how far did he walk? The answer is over 21,000 miles in his life. And what kind of foods did he like?

Turns out he never had a potato or a tomato because those were new world fruits and vegetables that he never would have tasted. And so it sort of just led me down this rabbit trail of looking at the human life of Jesus Christ. You know, as Christians, we believe he's fully man and fully God. we focus a lot in his divinity, which is obviously important. But I wanted to look at his human side and say, hey, what are we missing?

What are his economics? What are his politics? Who actually killed him? All these interesting questions. So that's how we ended up with a God named Josh. I mean, that is a, it is an extraordinary thing how somehow our default mode is to avoid the humanity of Jesus or certain aspects of the humanity of Jesus, which is itself wrong. heretical. I mean, the idea is, of course, he was as much a human being as you are or I am or

anyone is. That's hard for us to process because we know he's also God. We know that. And so we're just, there's always that tension. And I think what what people do, as I said by default, is we sort of think, well, he was kind of like Superman. He's kind of like a cartoon figure. We don't understand. No, he really, really genuinely was a human being. And so obviously that's where you go in the book. So what do you say in this book, a God named Josh, that we wouldn't have thought of before? Okay, well, let's start with what did Jesus look like.

Now, we obviously all know what Jesus looks like. We've seen the paintings before. He is mayonnaise white. He has long flowing hair. And he wears a big sash and has a huge beard and a long robe. Now, of course, that's not true at all. Jesus almost certainly didn't look like that. He actually makes fun of people who wear long kind of Greek-style togas in scripture. Jesus has never caught in that stoli dress.

He's always caught in the working man's outfit, which is called a kaeton. We know how tall men were in first century Judea at the time. They were between 5 foot 5 and 5 foot 7. We know they had dark hair. They had all of brown skin. They had dark eyes. We have coinage. We have paintings.

We have bodies from the time. We generally know what people look like in Jesus' time. What's really interesting about the Bible and all ancient literature is that if the person they're talking about has something special about their looks, they mention it. So, for instance, Samson is strong and Saul is tall and Zacchaeus is short. And, you know, there's an ancient evil king who's voluptuously fat. You know, Socrates, as you know, for running Socrates in the city,

Socrates is ugly and bald, and therefore his philosophy must be true. you know, but there's no mention of Jesus's looks at all. He's probably just an average person. So if that is true, he's probably a lot darker than we imagine. He's definitely not wearing the sash or the long robe. He probably has a much shorter beard, much shorter hair than we see in the pictures. He's just an everyday guy. And he's probably shorter than most of us today, which is kind of crazy to think about.

Well, he's God. He doesn't have anything to prove, really. I don't think he wore elevator shoes, I'm pretty sure. So, you know, when you talk about Jesus as a person, as you just did, again, I think we forget that he lived in historical times. In other words, it's not like we're talking about somebody who lived, you know, among cavemen. There's no record. Nobody knows anything. It's Neolithic. It's lost. There is so much specificity. I mean, the more I read the scriptures, the more I'm shocked at the specific. I mean, they're talking about who was the governor and who was the this and who was the that.

Tremendous specificity that you can find, you know, particularly in the New Testament. But it is shocking that there are people, some of them atheists, some of them Christians, who try to push Jesus into this kind of mythic world, like he's Santa Claus or he's Bigfoot. He's certainly not an actual human being. I completely agree. I think even if you don't believe Jesus is God, we should be teaching him in every philosophy class, every economics class, every politics class. He has things to say that are brilliant, groundbreaking, world shifting on all these topics. What's really interesting in regards to the historicity is one thing that has puzzled people for a long time is who killed Jesus.

So, you know, on the surface, the typical answer for most of history has been the Jews, just carte blanche, the Jews, all the Jews killed Jesus. If you want to get more specific, okay, it was the Romans via pilot. But it turns out that there was a very specific crime family who engineered Jesus' assassination. So this idea that the carte blanche Jews killed Jesus, there's actually a name for it. It's Jewish deicide that the Jews killed a deity. And it's based on this verse in scripture where this family declares essentially a blood oath. They say, let Jesus' blood be on us and on our children. So who is this family?

So it turns out the man behind the scenes who is working to execute Christ is a man named Anas Ben Sethy. He is the high priest in Jerusalem. He's bribed his way to high office. After 10 years in power, he gets booted by the Roman emperor. And he gets his son-in-law, Joseph Caiapist, selected for the high priesthood. And they rule the temple with an iron fist. So he's in charge of the treasury.

He gets to collect the tides. He gets to set the interest rates. he gets to charge more for sacrificial pigeons and doves and sheep. He just rips people off. Jesus actually tells a parable about Anus. It's the parable of Lazarus, and it involves a father and five brothers. Anus rules the temple mount for 60 years. After Joseph Caiapus, he gets five of his sons selected to the high priesthood,

and they're horrible. And Jesus decides one day, enough is enough. He goes into their temple during Passover, and he drives out their booths, these booths from outside the Bible we know are called the Booths of the Sons of Annis. And the Bible says that from that moment, the high priesthood seeks to kill him. It turns out that... Where did you get? Before you continue, because this is so fascinating, you said the Booths of Anas, they're called?

The Boots of the Sons of Anas, yeah. Where outside of the Bible do we find that? So we actually... Annis is mentioned by name four times in Scripture and 64 times in total. his family is mentioned. But we also have a poem about him in the Talmud. There's a ditty about how horrible he is. He's also found in the works of Josephus, and we've got some, the Ascene or Dead Sea Scrolls make mentions to how wicked and greedy his family is. To put it in context, the largest house ever excavated in ancient Israel, 13,000 square feet, inner courtyard, built of stone. They believe belonged

to Anis. It's called the High Priestley House. When Jesus is arrested in the Garden of Gassimony, It's by the temple treasurers. And they take him not to Herod, not to Pilate, not to the Praetorium. They take him to the house of Anas. The first of Jesus's five trials is with this dark, shadowy crime figure. And it's only after Anus that he goes to the son-in-law, Gaiaphas, and then he's turned over to the Romans for execution. They need to make money during the Passover so they can rebryd Pilate to maintain the high priesthood.

So it is essential that Jesus gets killed. Now, Anis thinks that he is the power player, that he is pulling the strains. But little does he realize that he is a small player in God's much bigger story that what the devil means for evil, God is going to redeem for good. So I love the story of Annes. And it's crazy that it's kind of just disappeared from mystery. But no, the Jews did not kill Jesus. It was one crime family. Well, I mean, it's a little more complicated than that because we're all implicated in killing Jesus.

But the point you're making is very important. And we're going to go to a break. We'll be right back with Jared Brock. The book is a God named Josh. Don't go away. Tell me why Relief Factor is so successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question just the other night. I was asked that question.

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Folks, welcome back. We're talking to Jared Brock. He's the author of several books. The one we're talking about brand new book, A God named Josh, which is about Jesus. and you're giving us some really important information, Jared. I had an author on this program, Eugenia Constantinou, who wrote a book called The Crucifixion of the King of Glory, magnificent book. And in that book, she talks about some of what you're talking about, not quite in the way that you're talking about it.

But it's really eye-opening when you see how much actual information there is on what we're talking about. It's not like we have to guess or we have to generalize. We can really look into this kind of thing. and see what happened. Obviously, you've done that. Now, what led you down this path to look into this in the way that you have? Like, I mean, I have a really curious mind. If I discover someone in history that I feel needs to get elevated, I just do a deep dive. As, you know, we've talked about the road to Don and Josiah Hansen before. And there's no more important figure in all of human history than Jesus Christ. You know, I'm currently working on another book in this series.

So after God named Josh, I'm working on another book about the devil. And I'm currently down that rabbit hole. Oh, my goodness. But, you know, I'll hopefully write dozens of books in my life, but there's never going to be a more important subject than Jesus. And there's so many myths that surround him. Like, for instance, this idea that Jesus was a carpenter, that he just worked with wood. There's nothing in the Bible that says Jesus was a carpenter.

the word is tecton in Greek. There is a specific word for a wood carpenter, but that's never applied to Jesus. Jesus is a craftsman. He's a, most likely he actually works with stone. So Jesus only mentions wood twice in all of his parables. There just isn't how much wood in first century Judea. Solomon has to import carpenters.

He has to import wood to build the temple. It's just isn't a skill that's around in Jesus' time. But Jesus is mentioning rocks all the time. He's mentioning foundations and wine presses and millstones and towers and gates. He also seems to have knowledge of project management. He talks about budgeting. He talks about sitting down a plan before construction. He's a craftsman.

That's the best term for him. So that's how Jesus makes his money is he's a tecton. It is very romantic to think of Jesus as a man who quietly works with wood and is eventually kind of nailed to a cross. There is kind of a literary beauty to that. But it's just not what we see when you pay attention. of the Bible, which is, which is, you know, what you're saying is we just got to pay attention. Well, I mean, the fact is that most of us aren't aware when we've been fooled.

I mean, you know, you go on for years and years and years, having certain pictures in your mind. You don't question them. And so it's always shocking when I learned not very long ago that Jesus probably was not a carpenter. No, the word tecton means this and this and this and this. So probably he was this or this or this or combination, but not a carpenter, but a builder. and his father was a builder, and they lived four miles from Sephora, which was a big city. So Nazareth isn't in the middle of nowhere, and they were probably doing all of this work in Sephora.

You think, what, what are you talking about? I never heard that. There's all this stuff, and it's true. And God, who is truth, wants us to care about what is true. And so we have to be willing to say, okay, maybe I got that wrong. And you know what? So what? It's God just wants us to get it right when we.

we can get it right. And it's, I think there are people who are more wedded to tradition than they are to truth, which means more wedded to something besides God than God. And that ain't good. And so, whatever it is that is true is beautiful and will lead us into more truth. And so every time you peel away something that you misunderstood, it just brings you closer to Jesus himself, who is truth, which is, which is beautiful. And I'm just so glad that in this book, that you do some of that, because it's not unimportant. But what's fascinating to me, Jared, is that we're learning these things now. You know, like now in our lifetime.

We're learning things that you kind of think, how is it that we just learned this now? How did I just learn this now? You kind of think people would have covered this in previous centuries. Yeah, like another good example is this idea that Jesus had 12 disciples and they were all kind of middle-aged dudes, right? Like there's nothing in scripture that suggests that is the truth. So the Bible says that Jesus had either 70 or 72 disciples. Luke specifically says the number 72, and they're not all males. We actually know five of the female disciples.

The Bible says that Jesus chooses the 12 apostles from the 72 disciples. Some of these women disciples, we actually know more about them than we know about some of the male disciples. And what's really interesting and almost embarrassing for Jesus is when all four gospel writers go to sit down to write their gospel account. they actually admit the dirty, horrible secret truth about how Jesus is funded as a rabbi, and they reveal that he is supported by women. Now, you got to remember, women in the first century are essentially possessions. They're step above slaves and cattle. And the Bible mentions three of them by name, Joanna, Susanna and Mary.

And these women, the Bible says, out of their wealth, support Jesus and his huge group of traveling disciples. One of the women is actually Chuzah, who is Herod's household man. This is a crazy verse in scripture to think about. Jesus is bankrolled by enemy money. That's like Vladimir Putin's accountant funding Volodomir Zelinsky and the Ukrainians. It's crazy to think about how did that work? Were they divorced? Were they still together? Was he a secret disciple?

We don't know. They just, the gospel writers, move on because it's not the most important thing. But they do admit that these second class citizens, aka women, are the ones who are funding the work of the advancement of the gospel as part of this huge group of people. The Bible also mentions that some of Jesus' cousins are involved. If you do the math and you do the genealogy, some of his aunts are traveling with him. This is a group of mostly teenage boys traveling with their moms. It's very, very strange. And so it kind of begins to chip away of this picture of this tall white Jesus, just the 12 middle-aged men. It's a lot more diverse than we can imagine. It's unbelievable. We'll be right back talking to

Jared Brock. The book is a God named Josh. When the government used emergency edicts during COVID to restrict the gathering and worship of churches, three pastors facing the risk of imprisonment, unlimited fines, and their own churches being ripped apart, took a courageous stand and reopened their doors and the face of a world that chose to comply. The Essential Church is a feature-length documentary that explores the struggle between the church and government throughout history. This fascinating story uncovers those who have sacrificed their lives throughout history for what they truly believe in. We discover why the church is essential and how we prove that this stand remains true from a scientific, legal, and most importantly, biblical perspective. This is not your typical movie.

It'll change your life. You need to see this movie with your friends and family. The Essential Church is streaming today exclusively at SalemNow.com. That's Essential Church. at Salem now.com. Folks, welcome back. We're talking to Jared Brock, who has a bookout,

new book out called a God named Josh. Fascinating information on Jesus. And, you know, I think a lot of people, Jared, would be tempted to say, oh, you're just, you're kind of making stuff up. You know, you're kind of creating this narrative. But you're trying to tell the truth. You're trying to get us to focus on the fact

that to some extent we've bought a narrative that's not all true and that we need to be very careful. about that. Yeah, the final words in this book, I say, if this book does not drive you to scripture, it has failed. I have failed. A God named Josh contains over a thousand scripture references. My hope is that when people read this book, they're like, wait, what? And they rip their Bible open to look at scripture. So every single thing that every claim I make in this Bible in this book goes back to the Bible. It is, it is, you know, it's, we are, the Bible is our foundational document.

It is our charter. It is our founding document. And we are people of the word, right? We're people of the logos. And so we have to go back to it every single time. It's got to drive everything we do. It's interesting because this is where you see, you know, religion in the negative sense,

where people have these ideas. And they begin to worship those ideas and this other thing. They make an idol that's, it's not God. It's an idol. And they don't want to be bothered with anything that may bring them away from this idol that they've confused with God. And when you talk about going back to scripture, that is the key. And that's what's amazing is when you're confronted with something this, you go, wait, what? And you look at the Bible and you go, holy cow, how have I missed that?

How have I missed that? Like I've read over and over and over again, but my eyes just skip past it. And I just don't see that. I mean, I guess it was Rick Renner I had on this program some months ago, maybe before Christmas, talking about, you know, we have this idea that the, you know, the the wise men were there with the shepherds at the manger, whatever. You're like, no, no, that's wrong. There's reasons we have that idea, but they were probably there. Jesus was probably closer to two years old when they show up from the east. They weren't there the night he was born.

But, you know, but I saw it. You know, it was under the Christmas tree in a crash. It was right. I saw it. You're like, well, that's not what the Bible says. So it's fascinating to me how that happens and how information travels. and misinformation travels. And so I just want to thank you for doing the work of looking into this

and of putting it in a book. Now, when did you, you know, when did you get the idea that you wanted to write this book? Because I can see you have a mind that, you know, you're thinking about this stuff. But to think I'm going to get a whole book out of it, that's a challenge, speaking as a writer. Yeah, yeah, it was about three years ago. and I actually, insider baseball, I owed my publisher 60,000 words, and I handed in 110,000, and they very graciously published 100,000. I could have, if he had have let me go a while, I probably could have done another couple hundred thousand on this.

Like, I feel like I just got started on it. But, you know, in regards to what you were saying about once you see the truth, you're like, how did I never see that before? One of the big things that got unlocked for me as I wrote a God named Josh was how Jesus fulfills the old testament. So, you know, as Christians, we are not under the Old Testament law. But does that mean it's useless that it doesn't exist anymore? Well, it turns out that Jesus simply fulfills the law. He fills it up with love.

So every time we read an Old Testament command, we simply have to ask, what is the love of Jesus? What is the loving action that will fill this law so much that it obliterates it? So, for instance, I do not need a law that says, thou shall not murder my son, right? because I love my son so much that love obliterates the need for a law that says don't kill your children. So when the Bible has laws in the Old Testament, we just simply have to ask, what does that look like in the New Testament? And this is particularly going to inform the conversation around Christian economics, around how should we as Christians steward money and treat money.

So a great example. The Old Testament says, do not charge interest to fellow Jews. So what is the loving New Testament thing that, what is the loving action that fills that up that obliterates that law? Well, Jesus says, you know, you've heard it said, don't charge interest to your brothers. I say lend to anyone who asks, even your enemies, freely, and expect nothing in return. So just like interest is just off the table for Christians. And Jesus does this again and again. Doesn't matter the issue.

Old Testament says, don't commit adultery or don't, you know, don't get divorced unless you have a written note. from Moses's tribunal. Jesus says, you know, don't look lustfully on a woman. Because if you never lust, you're never going to get him in adultery, and you're never going to have to get divorced. Like, Jesus is always upping the Old Testament commands. He's filling them up with love. And so that helped me really understand how we as Christians grafted into Judaism

are fulfilling the Old Testament through Christ. It's just a, it was a fast, so that takes up like probably 100 pages of this book, just unpacking the implications of love. God is love. And he's driving this story forward. So just in case, I didn't say before, you live in Wales, which is in the UK. Yeah. And where did you grow up? So I grew up in Guelph, Ontario, in Canada. And we've been in Wales for about eight years. But our work, especially our documentaries, took us to 40 countries. And we've been to hundreds

of American states with our tours and stuff. But yeah, West Wales has been where we've settled for a while. We're likely moving to England. When you say documentaries, you made a documentary that was on PBS called Redeeming Uncle Tom with Danny Glover involved. What other documentaries have you done that we might be interested in? Yeah, so we made one called Over 18. That's a documentary about pornography addiction among teenagers, which is a massive issue. You know, kids have porn in their pockets via cell phones now. I teach Sunday school to teenagers here, and they're dealing with it every day.

and all their friends are dealing with it. This is a massive issue that countries just aren't grappling with. It's sexualizing our culture like we can't even imagine. So yeah, over 18, we also did one called Red Light Greenlight. Canada tried to legalize prostitution a few years ago. So we made a documentary looking at different prostitution models and how to actually prevent prostitution and trafficking. So all of all the work that we do,

we basically want to tell stories that lead people in the direction of Jesus. He's the most important thing. Like Jesus even says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one gets to God except through me, which if he is not God, is the most narcissistic claim in all of human history. He has the biggest ego imaginable.

And that's really the question, you know, when Jesus asks Peter, who do you say I am? That's the question that each of us has to answer. Who is this Yehoshua Ben Yehoshavim who claims to be the son of God and God the son? Is he good on his word? And that takes a huge step of faith. and if he's not God, then we are part of a death call. We literally eat a symbol of his body and drink a symbol of his blood.

It's crazy. I'm glad we've got another segment because there's a few more things we need to talk about. I'm talking to Jared Brock. You can find him at Jared Brock.com. Don't go away. Folks, welcome back. I have the joy of speaking to Jared Brock. We're talking about his new book called a God named Josh, which sounds absolutely fascinating.

And Jared, it's interesting to me, as I said before, that we can discover new things about Jesus. You think I've heard it all 50 times, 100 times, a million times, but we haven't. And there's just something beautiful about it that even in the last days, even today, we're discovering new things that are driving us closer to him, not pushing us away. I agree. You know, when I was going to propose to my wife, Michelle, I bought the ring. And every night before bed, I would look at it. the different facets under the light.

And ancient Jews say that the Bible has 70 facets, that every scripture has 70 revelations that it will eventually reveal to us by the power of the Holy Spirit and my God, which is a really beautiful idea. And one of the things that got kind of illuminated to me in writing a God named Josh was, you know, we live in this age of cancel culture, of just silencing people, of suppression of free speech and all of stuff.

And there's actually a parable. that Jesus tells that I think applies really well in this time. It's the parable of the wheat and the weeds. And it's a call to radical Christian pluralism. So basically this good farmer, God, sows wheat, this beautiful, healthy, good seed. And the enemy comes along and sows weeds. And the workers say, should we rip out the weeds? And the farmer says, no, let it all grow up together.

If you rip out the weeds now, it'll rip out the weed as well. Let it grow. And I will take care of it the other time. we'll separate the wheat from the weeds and we'll keep what's good and we'll throw away what's bad. Right now we live in a culture that's just weed ripping. It's just ripping each other apart. I don't like you canceled. I don't like you silence.

I don't like you. Let's curb your free speech. Jesus is inviting us to just plant good wheat, to just plant good things. Weeds typically die out on their own. They're not healthy. They're very noxious. And it is up to us to just plant good weeds. God will water what he waters.

God will grow what he grows. and at the end of time, he will take care of it. So I think there are political, economic, and philosophical implications to Jesus that we haven't even started to unpack. Wow. That's, it is extraordinary. It is extraordinary. But again, we're talking about truth. And as you said, when you're talking about truth, truth is infinite.

God just goes and goes and goes. It's not, you know, like you can memorize that you're done. It's just endless, absolutely endless. and amazing and people keep, I'm astonished myself. I mentioned Jeannie Constantine. When I read her book, The Crucifixion of the King of Glory, I thought, are you kidding me? How did I not know this? How did I know this?

You've mentioned a number of those things. Rick Renner mentioned a number of those things. I thought it's scandalous in a way that we haven't heard these things before, but it's beautiful that we're hearing them now. And it's interesting that you said that this book, a God named Josh, that it could have been a lot longer. Yeah, like, I'm writing a book on the devil right now, and a book on the devil is necessarily a book about Jesus, because even, as Martin Luther said, even the devil is

God's devil. Like, the devil is a servant of God, whether he likes it or not, and he is so useful to the kingdom of light in his quest for the kingdom of darkness, that we don't understand that there is nothing outside of God's sovereignty. He is the king, the only king, and his law and rule and reign are the only thing that will endure for all time. And that is really, really good news. You know, we're heading into political battles here in the UK, here in the U.S., God is sovereign, God is in control. He is still on his throne.

And even though Satan is going to test and temp, all of it is an invitation to grow closer to Jesus. What a beautiful place to end. Folks, go to Jaredbrock.com and obviously get a copy of a God. named Josh. Jared Brock, thank you so much. Thank you, as always, yeah.