Images of the Savior (The History of Israel, God’s Firstborn Son)

When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. – Hosea 11:1

Thus far in our reflection on the types and images of the Savior from the pages of the Old Testament, we have spent much time looking at specific events, persons, and occurrences which foreshadowed the Messiah in some particular way. In this way, the Holy Spirit has uncovered before our eyes of faith many rich and precious gems, multi-faceted and many-splendored tessarae, each one worth mountains of gold and more precious than all the wealth of ten thousand worlds. But here the wonder increases many-fold: not one of these precious truths was designed to stand alone, but each takes on a deeper and richer significance by virtue of its relationship with all the other truths surrounding it. We may therefore compare the types of the Old Testament to the design of a masterful mosaic: each piece is chosen for its intrinsic value and beauty, and so arranged that, by its place in the whole work, it functions together with the other pieces to bring out a brilliant scene to the eyes of him who steps back but a few paces, and observes the entire display at once. So, throughout the history of redemption, we meet with many types of Jesus the Redeemer; but when we scan redemptive history from beginning to end, we find that these many, various types work together to form one great type. The stories of God’s works are so many types; and the history of his epoch-work brings those types together into one vast picture. The stories of various persons of God are types, and the story of the people of God is the great type which overshadows the whole, and brings all of God’s redemptive mercies into one mighty redemptive history, which is the display of the character of God, and hence the shadow of the lovely face of Jesus our Savior, in whom God’s glory finds its final expression (2 Corinthians 4:6; John 1:14,18).

From our passage in Hosea, we may affirm all the necessary heads of this doctrine; for, first of all, God there speaks of his people in a collective, national sense as his “son,” and therefore likens their entire national history to the history of one man; and second, he later makes undeniably explicit who was intended by the history of this one man, the son of God, as displayed in the history of the Jewish people: this one man was none other than the eternal Son of God, who would walk the earth as the Son of Man, and recapitulate in his own history the history of a nation. This Matthew makes clear for us, in his assertion of prophecy/fulfillment with regards to Hosea’s statement and the circumstances of Jesus’ life (Matthew 2:15). And even if Matthew had not so unequivocally expressed the truth, the gospel-history of the life and works of Jesus so clearly follows the pattern of God’s great work of redemption among his people Israel, that only the blinded eye and hardened heart would venture to deny it. Let us then make note of a few of the ways in which these two histories coincide.

First, we see that Israel as a nation was called God’s son, and his firstborn son in particular (see Exodus 4:22-23; Jeremiah 31:9). So also Christ is the “only begotten Son” of God (John 1:18, 3:16), and the firstborn in particular (Romans 8:29; Colossians 1:15; Revelation 1:5). Next, we observe that when Israel was only just born, as a nation and a people, the earthly, Satan-empowered ruler of the land spewed forth his murderous venom against the people of God, and destroyed every male child whom he could lay his hands upon (Exodus 1:8-22). So also, when Jesus was born, Herod performed precisely the same act of cruelty, an act so barbarous that only divine design could have brought the satanic opposition of the world to such a display of its true nature at these two precise times in history. Next, we see that God called his son out of Egypt, and brought him to the promised land. So God called Jesus, his true Son, out of Egypt, that symbol of the world which is under the power of the devil and opposed to God and his Messiah, and he caused him to return as a child to the promised land of Canaan. Next, we see that God brought his people through the baptism of the Red Sea, passing through which waters of judgment they were preserved safe from the wrath of God and the rage of the world; and at the same time, God baptized his enemies with the mighty judgment of his wrath, and consumed them all. So Jesus, at the beginning of his ministry, passed through the waters of John’s baptism, which looked ahead to a baptism of the Spirit, which would preserve God’s people, and a baptism of fire, which would destroy his enemies. In this event, Jesus dedicated himself to passing through the waters of judgment, but coming out victorious at last, with a victory won for all his people. And so his people, who have “died with him,” who have passed through the waters of God’s judgment in baptism, which judgment was poured out on the victorious Christ, can walk unscathed through God’s fierce judgment, by his miraculous power of mercy; but all else will be utterly destroyed by these waters crashing down upon their heads in eternally implacable force. This symbolic baptism, which God’s son Israel underwent, was undergone by Jesus the Son of God at precisely the same point in his life history.

And going on, we find that Israel wandered for forty years in the wilderness, having failed their test of temptation by the devil, before they were finally allowed to enter the promised land of rest and fellowship with God. So Jesus went for forty days in the wilderness, being tempted by the devil, but was victorious over him; and then he entered his public life in the land of Israel. At this time, Moses gave the law of God to Israel, from Mount Sinai; and at this time as well, Jesus gave the full significance of the Law of God to the people, in his “Sermon on the Mount”; only he spoke with ultimate authority, and not as a mere spokesman or mediator. We see in Israel’s history that the people slowly conquered all the land of Canaan, and finally held it firm in their possession, with King David reigning over it in great glory; but shortly thereafter, the Kingdom was slowly rent away from his posterity. So Jesus walked about the land, preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, and drew many crowds of followers after himself, who were ready to take him by force and make him king; but the fickle crowds began to leave him by slow degrees until all but a few had forsaken him, and indeed, at the very end, not one man was left by his side. The ultimate outcome of this decline in Israel’s history, we know well; first the Northern Kingdom and then the Southern was forced into exile away from the land of promise; they were utterly cast away from the place of God’s presence, from the city where his temple stood; but then, God brought them back from captivity, and gloriously restored them. Can we not see these things with utmost clarity in the death and resurrection of Christ? After the crowds had crowned him King, at his triumphal entry into Jerusalem (even as David his ancestor was King), the kingship was torn away from him, he was cast away from all his friends, he went into exile away from the presence of God his Father – but after three days, he was gloriously restored. Even as God promised his exiled people that he would gather them again from every land and reconstitute them as his people, so he restored Christ and reconstituted his people Israel of those who are in him, from every people under heaven. And we saw how the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and then rebuilt, in the days of the restoration – was not Christ’s body, the true Temple where God’s presence is brought down to man, destroyed and then rebuilt in three days?

Now, let us draw all this into one wide glimpse of redemptive history: man, having been created in a place of joyful fellowship with God, fell from God’s favor through his disobedience, and was cast out of that beautiful garden. God promised that he would restore mankind through a seed of the woman, who would overcome the treacherous serpent. Eventually, he crystallized this promise in his oath to Abraham, which promised a land of restored fellowship with God (of which Canaan was the shadow); a seed whose inheritance would be this place of restored fellowship, which was at once singular, and denoted some specific person, and collective, speaking of many nations; and a blessed restoration which would come from father Abraham’s loins and yet bless him who was the father as one greater than he, yes, and bless all the nations besides.

This promise was accomplished in shadow form in the history of this people Israel, God’s firstborn son, the singular, collective seed of Abraham. But God’s son Israel was not sufficient to bring to pass the eternal scope of the promised inheritance, and so the land and temple, which signified God’s presence among the people, was corrupted and destroyed. The promise of a blessing by and to Abraham’s seed, which was indeed nothing other than the promise of victory to the seed of the woman Eve before him, failed to find its final fulfillment in the history of God’s typical son. But when the antitype came, the eternal Son of God, he recapitulated this same history, substituting mighty victories for all the failures of the shadow son before him. He overcame the serpent indeed, in his wilderness wandering. He went through the true fulfillment of God’s waters of judgment, which Israel passed through in a figure, when he suffered all the floods of God’s wrath on the cross. He brought God’s presence down to his people in truth, when he took on human flesh, as the Shekinah glory of the temple did in a lesser and temporary way. He was Abraham’s seed according to the flesh, and but one man; and yet in him are all the elect of God from all the ages, nations and peoples too innumerable to count. He is Abraham’s offspring, and yet greater than Abraham and the one who blesses him and all who are like him in faith. He is the Son of David, reigning forever upon the throne which David himself could only hold for forty years. He is the firstborn Son who was exiled from God’s presence because of covenant unfaithfulness (not his own, except by imputation), and he is the restored Son, who came back from exile victorious forevermore. In short, all the redemptive history of the Old Testament was a shadow of the life of this one Man, the great Hero of all history, Jesus the Messiah. How great must this man be, if all the ages of the world were designed with the purpose of displaying him! Let us fall down at his feet and worship forevermore! He has overcome the serpent, he has carried all our sins and sorrows, he has brought us back into the Eden of God’s joyful presence. What Israel could never accomplish, God’s true Israel, his Son and his Messiah, has won for all of us who are found in him.

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