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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/norman-crawford/types-of-the-lord-jesus/
I was asked this week by a very sincere person why I believe the Bible. I think that kind of question is being asked more openly than perhaps at any time in my memory. And it is not wrong to use fulfilled prophecy in the scriptures to prove that it truly is the Word of God.
The reason I say that is because that's exactly what God uses. I think there are seven times in the prophetic scriptures that God says that what he has said will come to pass, and it proves that he is the God who knows the end from the beginning.
So if God uses that, then certainly we can use it. With this particular person, I went over a number of the hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament that have been perfectly fulfilled in the Lord Jesus.
And I must confess that this particular passage in Leviticus 14 has a very special appeal to my heart. Seven verses, and these seven verses contain truth that is eternal, and it has to do with two little birds.
Verse 1 of Leviticus 14,. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing. He shall be brought unto the priest, and the priest shall go forth out of the camp, and the priest shall look, and behold, if the plague of leprosy be healed in the leper, then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed two birds, alive and clean.
Now, each one of these items is of the greatest importance, cedarwood and scarlet and hyssop. The priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. As for the living bird, he shall take it and the cedarwood and the scarlet and the hyssop and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water.
And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean. The priest, now, who pronounces him clean, and shall let go, and this is one of the most important statements in these verses, shall let go the living bird loose into the open field.
I am sure you know that the Old Testament is full of types. What we have read in Leviticus 14 is not just an illustration, it is not just a picture, it is a type. And why these particular things have such meaning to us is not just because of these seven verses, but because throughout the Levitical system, throughout the order that God gave to Moses, to God's people in the Old Testament, each one of these items has particular meaning.
Not something in our imagination, not something we think it means, but of course there is powerful evidence that it would be impossible for me, both because of a lack of ability and a lack of time, to be able to prove to you that every one of these items to mean what I am going to tell you they mean.
Now, when God chose types of his son, he chose an ox because it is a beast of burden, because it is patient, because it is faithful. He chose a goat. I have always had great wonder at the mountain goat being such a picture of the Lord Jesus.
Because you see, a mountain goat can walk on a path that another animal would not attempt. And actually, the goat tells us of the sinlessness of the Lord Jesus, that he walked a path here on earth that no other man has ever walked.
So God chose a mountain goat to be a beautiful type of his own son. And when it came to the Lord Jesus coming down from heaven, this was a great wonder to me. God chose a little pigeon, a homing pigeon, a little bird, and that little bird actually gives us a beautiful picture of Christ, and we are going to see that.
Of course, when it is a matter of sorrow, God chose the mourning dove, a creature that we see every day, a creature that I have often noticed has very little awareness of its danger. But yet the Lord Jesus, as the man of sorrows, is pictured, or typified actually, in that dove.
For loneliness, God chose a tola, a little worm, as a picture of his son, as a type of his son. And for gentleness, the hind that would not flee. But these two birds have great significance. That God would choose two little birds is most touching.
We see many, many birds every day, of course all of us do, and we had some people at our home today and they were amazed at the beauty of the cardinals against the white snow background. They are beautiful creatures, a little bird, and God chose two little birds to be a type of Christ.
The fact that there are two, of course, you understand, it takes two. And if you were to go through the Old Testament, you would discover that, for instance, Moses didn't stand alone. Moses and Joshua appear in the Old Testament passages as types of the prophet who was to come, the Lord Jesus.
When it came to the priesthood, Aaron wasn't enough. It took Melchizedek as well. And when it came, of course, to the idea of a king typifying Christ, David doesn't stand alone for he was a man of war.
His son Solomon, who came to the throne in peace, tells us of the coming prince of peace. God oftentimes uses two types to give us a beautiful depiction of his own blessed son. So two birds, alive and clean.
Why birds? Because they come down from above. Because in a bird, God has given us a type of the one who came from the highest heights of glory into this world of sin. He descended. He stooped down. He came down from the highest glory.
So the fact that God chose a bird to picture his son is because he is the one who came down from heaven. Very simply, the cedar wood, we are helped to understand the meaning of the cedar wood in the tabernacle, of course, but the cedar wood is an incorruptible wood.
And actually, there is something about the cedar wood that is very, very powerful. It actually tells us that apart from the precious blood, sin is eternal. Sin is eternal. That is a tragedy. And of course, it is necessary that sin be eternally punished.
But when I think of Isaac, I immediately see what the wood means. Because when Isaac traveled with his father to the place of sacrifice, he carried the wood, he carried the burden. And it tells me of a savior, not only carrying his cross to Golgotha, but on the cross.
I don't think that the reading of the revised version of 1 Peter 2 and 24 is correct. He didn't carry our sins up to the tree. He bore our sins on the tree. And so there on Calvary, the tremendous weight, the load of our guilt and sin was laid on the Savior.
And the wood gives us a type of the burden of sin that Christ bore. The scarlet. I think we understand Isaiah chapter 1 quite distinctly, verse 18. Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they be like crimson, they shall be as wool.
The scarlet actually tells us not of sin, but of the perfect sacrifice for sin. It tells us of the Savior who must shed his precious blood, who must die in agony upon the cross as the payment for our sins.
And what a blessed thing it is to discover my sins have been dealt with righteously by a holy God. Every claim of his holy throne has been fully met by the sacrifice of the Savior. And to think that that should all be pictured in the cleansing of a leper, why?
I've got to ask that question. Why in the cleansing of a leper is there such typical teaching of Christ? I think you know. Leprosy was a disease that invaded every part of the human body. It caused disfigurement.
It caused disablement. It caused death. It was fatal. And the leper was unclean. That is perhaps the strongest truth in the Bible about leprosy. The leper could not enter the city gate. He had to be a far off.
And if he saw anyone approaching him, he had to cover his upper lip and cry, unclean, unclean. What a picture. What an illustration of what sin really is. We had a disease that would certainly have ended in death.
Sin with it is finished, bringing forth death. So leprosy is in the Bible an amazing picture of the guilt of our sin, the deadliness of sin, and that sin can only be cleansed by the precious blood of God's Son.
So there's an earthen vessel here. Interesting, isn't it, that God has so much to say about earthen vessels? What is he doing? He's telling us that the one who is verily God yet became truly human, the one who took upon himself humanity, who took a body.
And the earthen vessel, of course, is a beautiful type of that body to us. It was killed over running water. And the Scripture has a lot to say about this subject, so I'm not going to try to give you evidence of it.
There wouldn't be time to do that, but I believe that what we have seen in this beautiful type is the Lord Jesus, and you can't look at him without knowing that everything he said and everything he did and every step of his life was by the fullness of the power of the Holy Spirit of God.
And the Lord Jesus, as you know, in John 7 and other passages of the New Testament, describes the Spirit as a fountain flowing, as water gushing out. So the little bird killed in an earthen vessel over running water tells us that the one who walked here is a man for God.
And God did not give the Spirit by measure unto him. He had the fullness of the Spirit of God in everything he said and did and thought. I think that's wonderful that there was such harmony, that the Godhead was so perfectly displayed in a man, that the Holy Trinity was so perfectly displayed in the man Christ Jesus.
The blood of the little bird that was slain, the blood of a little bird. That's very simple, isn't it? Hardly anything very complex about the blood of a little bird. But into the blood of this little bird was placed, as we read, the living bird, first of all, then the cedarwood, then the scarlet and the hyssop.
I think you can see the picture. It really is beautiful. Here's a living bird dipped in blood. It's marked by blood, but it's living. The one bird has died. It takes two, you see. The one bird has died and its blood has flowed.
The other bird is alive and it's marked by blood. And into the open field, the priest allows that bird to fly. What a beautiful type of the resurrection of Christ. He entered heaven by virtue of his own blood.
Not as some have tried to teach, they took his blood into heaven. His blood was shed here. But by virtue of the blood that he shed, by virtue of that blood, he entered heaven. A living bird, alive and clean, and yet marked by blood.
We have a blessed Savior above. His blood was shed here, but he's alive, he's living, and he can never die. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus, without any question, is the greatest truth in the Bible.
Interesting, then, that 1 Corinthians 15 and 3 says that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. That's the little bird whose blood was shed. He was buried, and even that is such an amazing prophecy.
I think you know this, don't you, that in Isaiah 53, we are told that there would be two men involved in his burial. We even know their names now. Isaiah didn't, but we do, because the Word of God is true.
It was fulfilled. And he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. This is one of the scriptures that tells us of the resurrection of Christ. There are many others, but this is one of the very clear scriptures.
The living bird, allowed to fly free into the heavens, and our blessed Lord left an empty grave and rose in mighty triumph over death. We are linked to a living Lord, one who shed his blood at Calvary, and the value of that blood is an eternal redemption.
The value of it will never end, and to think that it should all be so typified in two little birds. How careful God is to give us beautiful, beautiful types of his own beloved Son.