It really makes me laugh, when I’m not groaning, when an atheist says that the Bible is made up, that the gospels were written hundreds of years after the fact, that some churchian guys just got together and fabricated the whole “Jesus myth.”
There are so, so many problems with that concept, some of which I’ve addressed before (the impossibility of all the New Testament copies, written in various languages, and yet all saying the same thing, being conspiratorially made up at the same time, with no evidence of such a hoax, being perhaps the greatest issue and the one I’ve mentioned most). But one thing that is impossible to miss is that the Old Testament foreshadows the New Testamet.
In the Old Testament, Israel was promised a Savior, a Messiah. In the New Testament, Jesus is proclaimed the Christ (which means Messiah), the Savior. In the Old Testament a substitutionary system of sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins is presented, which the Jews were to follow. In the New Testament, Jesus is identified as the Perfect Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
There are smaller instances, or types, in which an Old Testament person or his action foreshadows some aspect of Christ’s work, revealed in the New Testament. There’s Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, along with the provision of a ram that substituted for the son, pointing ahead to God’s willingness to sacrifice His Son who IS the substitution for each of us.
Then there’s David, the rejected boy, who became king, just as Jesus was the rejected of the religious Jews, yet He came to be their spiritual king. There’s Moses who led Israel out of captivity, just as Jesus leads those who believe in Him out of the slavery to sin and death and the Law.
There are literally dozens, maybe hundreds of these kinds of Old Testament foreshadowings. I just learned of another one today.
My church is reading Exodus together, then someone will write a meditation on it. Today we read about how the tabernacle was put together after the Israelites all gave the needed materials and the craftsmen constructed the parts.
In this particular passage, one of the pieces detailed is the ark. That’s essentially a box that contained, at the time, only the stone tablets of the Law. On top, covering the ark, was what the Old Testament calls, the mercy seat. Image. Mercy covering the Law.
Well isn’t that precisely what the New Testament teaches? Jesus dying in our place freed us from the Law; God’s mercy overcomes the Law.
James says, “Mercy triumphs over judgment” and of course, judgment is a result of law.
The author of Hebrews says, “Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.”
Paul says, “For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” Or mercy. Because the Law was always under the mercy seat.
