Since December of 2022, we’ve been diving deep into the book of Hebrews as a church. This epistle reveals so much about who Jesus is, what He has done in the past, what He continues to do in the present, and what He will accomplish in the future. Hebrews is such a rich book that constantly points us back to the Old Testament and how Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of the promises of God. Many Christians tend to skip over the Old Testament in favor of the New Testament. The NT pages of their Bibles are marked up and worn while many of the OT pages are pristine and even stick together from lack of reading. But I hope and pray that it’s been obvious throughout this seres that you miss out on so much essential theology and blessing when you neglect the OT section of your Bible. By largely ignoring the OT, you are ignoring 75% of God’s Word. The 39 books of the OT are just as inspired and important as the 27 books of the NT. The OT constantly points forward to the person and work of Jesus Christ and this truth is made evident all thought the gospels and the epistles.
The greatest example of this is Jesus’ time with two of his followers on the Road to Emmaus after His resurrection. These two guys are bummed out because of Jesus’ death on the cross and they didn’t understand the true significance of His empty tomb. Jesus plays a bit of a holy prank on them by disguising His appearance from them. He eventually reveals to them that the Messiah had to suffer, die, and then rise from the grave. Then “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself,” (Luke 24:27 ESV). As He sits and eats with them later He says, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was with you, that everything written about me in the Law and Prophets would be fulfilled,” (Luke 24:44 ESV). So, according to Jesus, who is the OT all about? Himself! Jesus perfectly kept the Law of God which we never could. He fulfilled the promises and prophecies written about Him by men such as Isaiah, Zechariah, and Micah. We also see Jesus pop up throughout the OT in two other ways: Christophanies and foreshadowing.
A Christophany is a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ in the OT. Below are several examples.
1. The LORD Appeared to Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 18:1-33) - In Genesis 18, we are told that the LORD appears to Abraham and Sarah. This visitor who is labeled as the LORD can’t be the Father because the Bible tells us that the Father is spirit and He has never been seen and will never be seen. This isn’t the Holy Spirit because we only see Him appearing in the likeness of a dove and tongues of fire in the gospels and the book of Acts; He never appears in the form of a man throughout Scripture. So, this divine visitor must be Jesus in His pre-incarnate state because no other explanation makes sense according to Scripture.
2. The Angel of the Lord - This special and very specific angel pops up throughout the Old Testament and scholars have different opinions on who this figure is but the overwhelming majority agree that the Angel of the Lord is Jesus Christ in His pre-incarnate form. Why do many OT scholars and I believe that this angel is Jesus Himself? There are several reasons: (1) He speaks with divine authority – He often says things that only God could say and even swears by Himself which no angel or mere human being ever does throughout Scripture. Only God could swear by Himself which He did with Abraham according to Genesis 22:16 and Hebrews 6:13. (2) He appears to have to have omniscient knowledge (3) He identifies as God and is often identified as God by those whom He appears to – Hagar identifies the Angel of the Lord as God, in Genesis 22. The Angel of the Lord and the Lord are spoken about as if they are one and the same person. After Samson’s father encounters the angel, he tells his wife, “We shall surely die, because we have seen God!” (Judges 13:22). When the Angel appears to Jacob in a dream He says, “I am the God of Bethel,” (Genesis 31:13). The Angel of the Lord wrestles with Jacob (Genesis 32:22-32), appears to Moses out of the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-4:17), and calls Gideon to fight against the Midianites (Judges 6:11-27).
3. The Commander of the Lord’s Army (Joshua 5:13-15) - Before the Israelites’ famous march around Jericho, Joshua is approached by the Commander of the Lord’s army. This must be a Christophany because Joshua bows down and worships at the commander’s feet and He isn’t rebuked for doing so. If this commander was just an angel, He would have yelled at Joshua and redirected this worship to the Lord. But since He was the second member of the Trinity, He accepted Joshua’s worship because he was more than worthy of it.
4. The Fiery Furnace (Daniel 3:8-30) - After Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are thrown into the furnace for refusing to bow down before the king’s statue, Nebuchadnezzar looks in to see that not only are these three men not hurt but there is a fourth figure among them. Nebuchadnezzar says to his guards, “I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods,” (3:25).
I’m a big film buff and I love to watch movies; one of the greatest devices of the film medium is foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is when a filmmaker or writer warns the audience of a particular plot point or event that will come to pass later on in the story. One of the most famous examples of foreshadowing in film occurs in The Empire Strikes Back. In this movie, Luke Skywalker goes to the planet of Dagobah to be trained by the great Jedi master, Yoda. During his training, he duels with a vision of Darth Vader; at the end of this quick fight, Luke cuts off Vader helmeted head. Once the helmet hits the ground, the mask explodes and Luke sees his own face staring back at him. This foreshadows that Darth Vader is actually Luke’s father which we discover at the very end of the movie (spoiler alert for a 40-year-old movie). In a much greater way, the OT foreshadows or points towards Jesus through many characters and events. Theologians identify these examples of foreshadowings as types; David Murray describes types in this way: “A type is a real person, place, object, or event that God ordained to act as a predictive pattern or resemblance of Jesus’ person and work.” [1] To be clear, types are not allegories; allegories are almost always fictional stories or examples that speak to spiritual truths while types are historical people, events, places, or objects that point forward to Jesus. Below are several examples of types:
Jesus is the greater and better Adam who succeeded in all the ways that our first representative failed.
Jesus is the greater and better Noah who brought us onto the ark of salvation and saved us from the overwhelming flood of God’s wrath.
Jesus is the greater and better Isaac who willingly laid down His life on the altar of sacrifice.
Jesus is the greater and better Moses who led God’s people out of slavery to Satan, sin, and death.
Jesus is the greater and better Passover lamb whose blood covers us from eternal death.
Jesus is the greater and better bronze serpent who we look to for salvation from the deadly illness of sin.
Jesus is the greater and better David whose rule over the entire earth will never come to an end.
Jesus is the greater and better Jonah who descended into the belly of the grave for three days and three nights but rose again.
I could go on and on with more examples but this post is long enough already! I hope that it’s apparent to you that Jesus is all over the OT and you can spot Him like a Where’s Waldo book if you have the eyes to see. If this topic fascinates you and you want to know more, I recommend two fantastic books to you: Jesus on Every Page: 10 Simple Ways to Seek and Find Christ in the Old Testament by David Murray and What is Biblical Theology? by James M. Hamilton Jr.
[1]Jesus on Every Page: 10 Simple Ways to Seek and Find Christ in the Old Testament, David Murray, pg. 138.
