F4F | Interview with William Weedon on how The Bible is All About Jesus
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- 00:15
- Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ.
- 00:20
- This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. Now, from time to time, we have guests on the program and we interview them, and a year ago we had
- 00:30
- Pastor Will Whedon of the podcast, The Word of the Lord Endures Forever, and we've invited him back for another interview, and today we're going to be talking about finding
- 00:40
- Christ in the Old Testament and how the Bible is actually about Jesus. It's not about you.
- 00:46
- So let me pull this up, and Pastor Whedon, good to see you again, sir.
- 00:52
- Good to see you too, man. So are you staying out of trouble? I dare never answer that in the affirmative.
- 01:02
- Okay, all right, just checking. So you have a daily podcast where you're walking through exegetically entire books of the
- 01:13
- Bible, and you've just launched into a study of the book of Joel, if I'm not mistaken?
- 01:19
- Yeah, what's interesting to me, I sort of ended up here because of working through Matthew, and as I worked through Matthew, it became really clear that Jesus is fascinated by the book of the 12.
- 01:33
- So what we think of as the minor prophets in Hebrew really constitute a single book, and I haven't really counted it out yet, but I have the impression from working through Matthew that I think
- 01:45
- Jesus maybe quotes the book of the 12 even more than Isaiah. If you think of them as a single book, it's huge, right?
- 01:52
- So we did Hosea first, the great love affair of God for his people, and then the second book in the book of the 12 is
- 02:01
- Joel, and God's great call for his people to come back to his embrace, return to me in return, shoo, is the big word, right?
- 02:09
- So anyway, it's a fun walk through, I've been enjoying it a lot. Yep. So real quick, talking about kind of the state of affairs within the visible church, and when we talk about the visible church, that's a huge spectrum, is that a lot of Christians, and when
- 02:26
- I was an evangelical, I had difficulty with this, they have a hard time rightly understanding the scriptures because there are certain fundamental assumptions that people bring to their study of the biblical text that oftentimes can mislead them.
- 02:42
- And as a result of it, we have to pay close attention to the voice of scripture. And I've learned over the decades that God's word legitimately tells you how to understand it rightly.
- 02:54
- And if you listen to the word of God, it's going to kind of blow your mind, but it'll then force you to see the real meaning behind so many passages that just kind of get locked up and, or pushed aside as, well, that's kind of weird,
- 03:12
- I don't understand that, that Old Testament stuff is really not relevant for today. I mean, with all those blood sacrifices and all those weird dietary laws and things like this,
- 03:23
- I mean, we need to talk about stuff that's practical, like how to get our kids to behave and stuff like that. So yeah, it's kind of weird.
- 03:33
- One of the critiques I get from time to time is that my sermons are not practical. It's like, what? So that being the case, when we talk about the subject matter of the
- 03:45
- Old Testament, I can think of a couple of passages, but I'd love to kind of get your input on this.
- 03:50
- Who does Jesus think the scriptures are about? And like, when we see Jesus quoting biblical texts, like the
- 03:56
- Minor Prophets, the Book of the Twelve or Isaiah, over and again, we see that Jesus says the word of the Lord can't be broken.
- 04:02
- He says this has to be done so that the word, what was spoken by the prophets must be fulfilled.
- 04:09
- And like the Gospel of Matthew in particular, it's like chock full of fulfilled prophecy after fulfilled prophecy, after fulfilled prophecy, after fulfilled prophecy.
- 04:17
- And that's an integral part of the Gospel of Matthew. So then what does the
- 04:25
- Bible say? What does Jesus say regarding who the Bible is about? And how do we go about seeing
- 04:35
- Old Testament stories in light of what Christ says? Well, we know for certain that Jesus was convinced that Moses wrote about him.
- 04:42
- He said that Moses wrote about me. And he shows a similar take, if you will, beyond Moses.
- 04:50
- If we remember the three categories of the Hebrew scriptures, the, you know, the law, the prophets, which would include the
- 04:58
- Nabi and the prophets would be like our historical books as well as what we would normally think of as the prophets,
- 05:05
- Isaiah, Daniel, et cetera. And then actually Daniel ends up in the Ketuvim, the writings or the
- 05:10
- Psalms, you know, the sort of the more liturgical pieces of the
- 05:16
- Old Testament. And under those three categories, then you have Jesus saying after the resurrection, when he goes and opens the mind of his disciples, he shows them in Luke 24, everything that's written about him in fulfillment of the law and the prophets and the
- 05:35
- Psalms that the Christ had to suffer, that the Christ had to die, that he'd be raised from the dead so that the message of forgiveness of sins could go forth and repentance unto the forgiveness of sins could go forth to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
- 05:48
- It's all there. So Jesus was convinced, hey, the entire thing is about me.
- 05:54
- And once we see that, then you understand, like, why does Matthew begin the way that he does when he says the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ?
- 06:03
- And then, you know, he goes through this, you know, the long from Abraham down, you realize, oh, wait a minute, he's saying the book that's, you know, the thing that really gets cooking with Abraham on down, the book we call the
- 06:18
- Old Testament, this book is really the story of the genealogy of Jesus.
- 06:25
- And not only is it about how he comes down into the world, how he becomes part of this world, but it's also about how in 101 different ways
- 06:36
- God will try to introduce us to his son. I think the last time we spoke, I might have mentioned the weird quote from St.
- 06:44
- Irenaeus, where he said, what the heretics do with the Bible is it's like taking a mosaic of a great king and then rearranging the stone so that you get a picture of a fox.
- 06:55
- That is such a powerful way of thinking of it, then, that the scriptures are actually given you as a mosaic, as a picture of the great king.
- 07:05
- So you need to learn to read and hear the Bible with the face of Jesus popping out all over the place.
- 07:12
- And every one of those revelations of Christ will lead us deeper into awe and wonder and joy at this
- 07:19
- God that we get to see and know through these stories. Yep. So let me kind of start with one that I think is like, if you consider the implications of it, it's super easy to see the mosaic of the king as Irenaeus described it.
- 07:36
- Let's talk about Joseph for a second. All right. This is such an interesting account.
- 07:42
- It is such an interesting account and the details, just the sheer quantity of details in this thing are ginormous.
- 07:51
- I think there's a death, there's a resurrection. You even have a kind of a nod to the
- 07:57
- Lord's supper and bread and wine. And then you have this, literally the relationship of the father and the son with Pharaoh and Joseph.
- 08:09
- There's some interesting things going on here, but walk us through a little bit of the story of Joseph and then connect it back to Jesus.
- 08:17
- And I think it'd be kind of fun to start with an easy one like that. Well, it is one of my all -time favorite ones.
- 08:25
- And it is shocking that the New Testament makes nothing of it, right? I mean, this is one of the ones that you're like, this is handed you on a silver platter, but maybe it's because it was so blatantly obvious that there was no need to actually point it out.
- 08:40
- He starts out being the beloved son of his father, right? And as the beloved son of his father, he ends up incurring the hatred of his brothers who sell him.
- 08:52
- They sell him. They make money off of him selling him to the Ishmaelite traders, right? And remember at the beginning,
- 09:00
- Joseph had these, the dreams, I'm going to call them the promises from God that he would be exalted, right?
- 09:06
- That his brothers and sisters, his mother and dad, everybody's going to be on the ground in front of him, worshiping him. So he's got this picture.
- 09:12
- And then God's going to set about bringing it about. How does he bring it about? Well, let's see.
- 09:18
- He'll make sure that the boy is hated, that his cloak is taken from him, just like at the cross.
- 09:27
- And he is sold as a slave. And then in the middle of the
- 09:33
- Joseph saga, near its start and not the middle, you have this weird contrast. You're learning all about Joseph and you're going to, and then we flip over to Judah for a second and this whole
- 09:46
- Tamar story. And I was like, well, what is this, you know? And it's set up right against Joseph being a man of integrity in the house of his master would not, he wouldn't go down the path
- 10:03
- Judah went. He is going to, he's going to maintain, he's going to be, if you will, he is a perfect picture of the sinlessness of Christ in the way the whole story is told about him.
- 10:12
- He's not into using other people. It's not one of his things. He's into serving.
- 10:18
- He's, he comes and everywhere he goes, he serves and all of his service, God blesses. And he gets totally falsely accused, thrown into jail.
- 10:28
- And there he continues to serve and to do good and to be a blessing. And I'm sure though, there were moments as he's sitting there in jail that he's thinking,
- 10:39
- God, do you remember those, those promises you made me when I was a kid?
- 10:44
- I mean, I'm just not seeing how this is coming to pass in my life, you know? The Bible doesn't deal with, with, with what was going on in his head.
- 10:53
- But I just know if I were, if I were Joseph, I would be thinking thoughts like that. And then as, as you go along, he does this, you pointed out the bread and the wine.
- 11:02
- I love this, you know, in, in the Bible, bread is introduced at the fall, right?
- 11:08
- You'll eat bread with the sweat of your face. It has to do with sin and the fall. And on the other hand, wine always has to do with this, with the eschatological banquet with joy, right?
- 11:18
- So he has these two stories told to him by these two men that he's befriended there in the prison.
- 11:24
- And, and the key verb is lifted up, right? Each one is going to be lifted up.
- 11:33
- One of them in, in great blessing, the wine one, it's going to, you know, you're going to be raised up and restored to your former position.
- 11:40
- And the other one, the bread one, you're going to be raised up as a curse on a tree. You're gonna be hanged on a tree.
- 11:47
- Okay. So he's like, he's like, so which one of these is Jesus? It's like, I mean, there's this, yes, yes, you know, yes.
- 11:57
- Both of them. And yet, of course, what happens is that they don't remember him.
- 12:04
- I mean, yeah. The thief on the cross saying, Jesus, remember me. But Joseph was the one who was always forgotten.
- 12:11
- I mean, no matter what good he did, it just seemed to never doing until, until that one day with, with the, the butler remembers and tells
- 12:19
- Pharaoh after the dream. And, and all of a sudden, I mean, I, can you imagine being
- 12:25
- Joseph in that moment where all of a sudden you go from a prisoner to being the prime minister of Egypt.
- 12:34
- And then, and then when the brothers come, the brothers come and they, they're, they're, they're down on the ground in front of him and he's going like, oh my goodness, you brought me here.
- 12:47
- You brought me to this moment to do this. And it's, it's not over there by the time his brothers come there.
- 12:53
- I mean, the whole point is his brothers then have a very justly guilty conscience over what they did to him.
- 13:01
- And, and, and after, after the father dies, he, he, they're, they're afraid he's going to pay him back.
- 13:08
- They don't understand him at all. And he tells them, look, you guys meant it for evil.
- 13:16
- You really did. But that very thing that you meant for evil, God meant for good.
- 13:22
- I love the Hebrew there, for the saving of many lives alive, you know, for, for, for, for this big hall of lives.
- 13:29
- That's why I'm here. So I will provide for you and your little ones.
- 13:34
- Do not be afraid. And Joseph then gives them food. Christ risen from the dead gives food that provides, instead of saying, okay, now
- 13:45
- I'm going to pay you guys back because of what you did to me, he's like, no, no, this is, this happened by God's plan so that I could provide for you what you need to give you eternal life.
- 13:56
- It's just such a great, I mean, there's, it is one of my all -time favorite stories in the whole of the Bible.
- 14:01
- And in it, you can definitely see a prophecy of our Lord's entire mission from his incarnation through to the resurrection and ascension.
- 14:11
- It's all there. Yeah. So, so I can, I can hear somebody sitting there going, how is this not allegory?
- 14:18
- How is this just somehow, you know, this, this type and shadow approach just basically kind of like turning this account into mythology or something like that, you know, that how is this, how is this somehow okay to make the scriptures about Christ and to find these different aspects that could, that hook back in to the life ministry, character, death, resurrection, ascension rule, goodness, kindness, mercy of Christ, you know, because all of those are in Joseph's story and, and it's like, we're reading, we're reading
- 14:48
- Joseph's story and, and we're like intentionally projecting
- 14:54
- Jesus onto him. Is this a legitimate way to handle the biblical text? Yeah.
- 14:59
- I think it's better to say it's project, the text projects Jesus out from it. Yeah. You, you, you begin to see him from that text and it's not allegory because we are absolutely not questioning the whole history of the story.
- 15:14
- The story happened the way it did, God, because God is God. He can write the poetry of his prophecy into history and so we're going to see it, it's in institutions, it's going to be in, it's, it's in so many ways, he, he, he, he bombards us with this picture of the great
- 15:33
- King so that we can see, I mean, here's the great King and what he does. He wipes out the sins of those who have conspired against him and tried to destroy him.
- 15:43
- He wipes them out and provides for them and their family. This is who Jesus is.
- 15:48
- We're not reading that into the story. That's learning to read Jesus out of the story, out from the story.
- 15:55
- And I think you're right, but it has to be addressed because that's one of the, that's
- 16:00
- I will say this, that there, historically there have been a small percentage, but a few people who have hidden behind the types and shadows to somehow smuggle into exegesis and theology, the, the belief that it doesn't matter if these stories really took place in history.
- 16:20
- What matters is how they exemplify the character of Christ. And we are in no way supporting that, that, that use of types and shadows.
- 16:29
- No, and in fact, the sad thing is they'll do it for the story of Christ himself. The resurrection itself becomes a picture of, of,
- 16:36
- I don't know what, of the triumph of life over death, of light over dark.
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- I mean, they'll just, you know, they, they, they, they got the story of Christ and there's no way that you can read the
- 16:49
- Old Testament and take it seriously historically and then arrive at it not really mattering whether or not it happened.
- 16:57
- I mean, to take one that Jesus uses for himself, the story of Jonah, right?
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- This is huge. And people will say, well, it doesn't matter, it's just a story and the story is supposed to convey to you this overall mess.
- 17:14
- No, that's not how it works. It's in fact the other way around. I have a vicar who, who proposed this idea to me and once I heard it,
- 17:25
- I was like, I love this. I absolutely love it. How could Jonah survive in the belly of the whale?
- 17:32
- He said he didn't, he died. That's the whole point of the story. He dies. And then he's raised.
- 17:38
- And I was like, oh, so when
- 17:43
- Jesus points to Jonah, it's like, oh yeah, the resurrection.
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- That's just beautiful. And his description of, of the descent as going,
- 17:55
- I mean, when he, when he is in the belly of the whale, he describes it as Sheol, right?
- 18:03
- In the great Psalm and chapter two. So it's just, once you see it, you're like, that is amazing and beautiful.
- 18:11
- Yeah, no, yeah. That's kind of the, the between the lines bit, you know, whether or not he physically died and rose again, the text doesn't say, but it sure does have explanatory power, you know, along those lines.
- 18:23
- Now let me, let me, let me, let me kind of pitch to you then, you know, a bad interpretation or bad preaching
- 18:29
- I've heard on the story of Joseph. Just like Joseph had a dream, God wants you to have a big dream, to dream big about some kind of future reality for yourself.
- 18:39
- And you need to be scared by how big this dream is. If you're not scared by it, then it's not big enough.
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- It's not a God -sized dream. So we need to learn how to dream God -sized dreams. What do you think of that?
- 18:54
- It kind of makes me feel nauseous. And the reason why is because the dream that God has already given you in Christ is so much bigger than anything you're ever going to dream up on your own.
- 19:07
- In fact, St. Paul talks very clearly about how it's bigger than anything you can imagine or conceive, right?
- 19:12
- It's that big. And that dream is that you're going to be part of his family forever. He's washed away your sins to bring you into his kingdom, to fill you with his spirit, to make you reign with him eternally.
- 19:25
- What kind of dream are you going to come up with that's going to rival that? I mean, seriously. Yeah. And I like to say that Joseph wasn't looking to have these dreams.
- 19:35
- These dreams found him because they were prophetic in nature, sent by God, you know?
- 19:40
- So, you know, it's like, you know, so, all right. So here's another one, all right? So Genesis 22, sacrifice of Isaac, all right?
- 19:51
- Here's generally how this gets preached. You know, Isaac was the apple of Abraham's eyes and so God wanted him to lay down and prove to him that God was more important than his son,
- 20:06
- Isaac. And that's the reason why he told him to sacrifice Isaac. So what is the
- 20:11
- Isaac in your life that you need to lay on the altar today? Oh, wow.
- 20:17
- That's how that gets preached. That gots the joy of the whole story, right?
- 20:24
- Right. Abraham is called a friend of God and a friend is someone who knows what you're going through.
- 20:32
- And I mean, this is the beautiful thing in this story. Like when
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- God begins in Genesis 22 talking to Abraham about this, he says, you know, you have to go and take your son and then, especially it's very vivid in the
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- Septuagint, right? Your monogamous, your only begotten son, whom you love, where we heard this, this is my beloved son and whom
- 21:00
- I love, you know, and take him and sacrifice him on the mountain that I will show you.
- 21:07
- And then again, you just take the entirety of the passion of Christ and you hold it up and you look at it through this story and all of a sudden you go, oh my.
- 21:20
- So Abraham takes this beloved son, this only begotten son.
- 21:27
- And he saddles a donkey, don't miss the donkey, they head to the mountain and he lays on the sun, he lays on the sun, the wood for the offering, you know, and as they're heading up there, the son asked the question, dad, dad, dad's getting old after all, dad, did you forget something?
- 21:49
- I mean, we have the fire, we have the wood, but where's the lamb for the offering? And then those prophetic words that are at the heart of the entire story, right?
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- God will provide for himself a lamb for the offering, my beloved son.
- 22:05
- And when he's preparing to do what God asked him to do and the hand is raised up in the air to slay his son before he sets fire to him, the angel calls out and says, stop, stop, stop.
- 22:20
- Yeah, yeah, I see now that you love the Lord. But the meaning of the story is told when
- 22:28
- Abraham gives the name of the place, right? He said, you know, he looks up, he sees the ram, the ram is a substitute for the lamb or for his son, and yet at the end,
- 22:41
- Abraham says, on the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided or will be seen to literally, it will be seen to on the mountain of the
- 22:50
- Lord. And so it's future, it's not past.
- 22:57
- It's not that that ram was, and oh, he knows that there's a lamb coming. So when
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- John points to Jesus and says, behold, the lamb of God, I mean, immediately Genesis 22 should be exploding in your head and you should be going, wow, this is the moment, this is the lamb that God has provided.
- 23:15
- I mean, like, isn't God giving you his dearest treasure at the heart of what
- 23:21
- Genesis 22 is about? Yes, yes, Abraham did have a dear treasure and he was willing to sacrifice it for God.
- 23:29
- But that's not what the story is about. It's about God giving his dearest treasure and refusing to hold it back.
- 23:38
- I mean, there's a contemporary Christian, well, it used to be contemporary 20 years ago, a contemporary
- 23:44
- Christian song by Michael Card that asked the question, you know, what more could
- 23:49
- God have given? Tell me, what more did he have to give? That's at the heart, he gives his son.
- 23:56
- Yeah. Now I'm going to show you something real quick here. And I started doing a little bit of this from memory, but coming back to the text that you were invoking here, verse 14 of Genesis 22,
- 24:09
- Abraham called the name of that place, Yahweh will provide. So Ra 'ah in Hebrew can also be seen, he will see.
- 24:18
- On the Mount of Yahweh, it shall be provided or seen. And I'll tell you my personal, what
- 24:27
- I think the connection here is, do you remember, so the mountain itself is Mount Moriah, we know this.
- 24:35
- It's Mount Moriah, which Christ is crucified on the slopes of Mount Moriah. That is most certainly true as well.
- 24:42
- But that being the case, it's in the Chronicles account of King David taking the census.
- 24:50
- Yes, the curse. Yeah. And there you've got the angel of the Lord just bringing a plague.
- 24:56
- And it literally says that the Lord saw and stayed. He stayed his hand, yeah.
- 25:01
- He stayed his hand. And that was on the threshing floor there of that fellow,
- 25:07
- I forget the Hittite's name, but David buys that threshing floor and that's where the temple is gonna end up being built.
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- And then we learned later that the Temple of Solomon is built on Mount Moriah.
- 25:22
- And so, as I look through these things, because here we've got the sacrifice, the monogamist, your son, your only begotten son.
- 25:31
- I keep thinking, everyone's got two kids. You know, what's all this talk about your only begotten son, right?
- 25:41
- I think that what's going on here is like a dress rehearsal in the type and shadows for the crucifixion of Christ, you know, and him laying down his life.
- 25:49
- And that on the mountain of the Lord, it will be seen. I think the direct connection is clearly gonna be with the angel of the
- 25:56
- Lord staying his hand at that very spot. But then on Mount Moriah, then Christ lays down his life and the
- 26:03
- Lord himself provides for our sins and actually did provide the sacrifice. And in the meantime,
- 26:08
- I like to think of the ram caught in a thicket. Thickets are full of thorns. I always think of that thicket as like showing me the crown of thorns of Christ.
- 26:16
- Am I crazy here when I see it that way? No, I mean, and go all the way back to Genesis 3 too, right?
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- Because, you know, thorns and thistles, it shall bring forth for you. In other words, thickets and out of the cursed ground, you know?
- 26:31
- And so, yeah, it all ties together. I've seen a picture. I think it was in, it was actually,
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- I don't know what, it was a diagram, I guess we could say. But Jordan Peterson, where he showed that the
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- Bible's talking to itself. All the places where things correspond, it was an amazing, everything connects.
- 26:56
- It just goes all over the place. And by the time you've seen that, you realize, oh, okay.
- 27:02
- And the point at which, what is the point that holds them all together? What connects this to this, to this, to this?
- 27:09
- His name is Jesus. Yeah, that's right. It's exactly right. So let's fast forward a little bit, but I might want to come back.
- 27:19
- Fast forward a little bit to the Exodus. So there's 10 plagues. Those 10 plagues seem to make a reappearance in the book of Revelation.
- 27:26
- Revelation, yeah. But that being the case, the Passover lamb.
- 27:31
- I mean, you have Paul saying, Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed or slain.
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- Connect with, if you could, at least from the Passover to the crossing of the Red Sea, the emphasis on those two aspects of the
- 27:47
- Exodus account. How then do they connect back to Christ? Wow. Well, obviously with the
- 27:53
- Passover lamb, you have, again, the angel of death, kind of like the guy you met there on the threshing floor.
- 27:59
- The angel who will, he will hold his sword when he comes to the blood of the lamb, marking the house or sheltering underneath the blood of the lamb on the lentils of the house.
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- So that in itself provides us with this whole imagery of taking shelter under the blood of Jesus.
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- In fact, I think if you jump all the way up into the passion story and you hear people cry out, you know,
- 28:24
- His blood be on us, on our children. Amen. We'll take responsibility for His death. But of course, it's a very faithful prayer that every
- 28:32
- Christian prays, may His blood be on us and on our children, because we know that only under that blood are you safe.
- 28:38
- That blood is what releases you from the consequences of sin and the righteous judgment of God.
- 28:44
- And it is like your protection. I, you know, I don't know if this is a good picture or not, but I always think of it as like the umbrella.
- 28:50
- The wrath of God can come down all around, but it can't get to that umbrella. You can sit under that and be safe. There's enough room under that umbrella for us all.
- 28:56
- So the lamb as and of course, they had to eat the lamb. And not only did
- 29:01
- His blood go on, but they ate its flesh. Right. Yep. Ate the flesh of their Passover lamb.
- 29:07
- It was a real meal. And then they ate it in a household. So one picture, one little lamb inside of each household as they, as they, as they, they go out.
- 29:16
- And then the crossing of the Red Sea, this becomes like, you know, OK, the land where you were slaves to this scary place where you're going to have to learn to walk with God and freedom.
- 29:25
- In the wilderness until He brings you to the promised land. So, you know, you're like, so baptism moves you.
- 29:36
- I mean, Paul makes this explicit in 1 Corinthians 10, right? You know, they were baptized into Moses in the sea, you know, in the cloud and in the sea, a cloud is a sign of the
- 29:46
- Holy Spirit there. So you have this entire picture just running all the way through. And when
- 29:51
- Paul says, Christ, our Passover, the people would have been like, yep. And we still eat the blood or we eat the flesh and drink the blood of God's Passover lamb.
- 30:00
- And we are safe. You know, my favorite hymn on this, of course, is at the
- 30:05
- Lamb's High Feast, right? I mean, it's so filled with joy, you know,
- 30:11
- Paschal victim, Paschal bread. It's just all there. Yeah, no, no, absolutely.
- 30:17
- OK, so let me ask you this. So the promised land, if, you know, so you have this type and shadow of the promised land and the crossing of the
- 30:27
- Jordan, the conquest of Canaan and stuff like this. Would it be out of bounds then in the types and shadows to see the fall of Jericho as kind of a picture of the eschaton, the end of the age, you know, with, you know, with the trumpet blast and the destruction of the walls and the saving of Rahab, the prostitute.
- 30:48
- Talk to me about this. Wow. You know, that just let me see if I can find exactly where I read this in Isaiah, because it's the remember the passage when the towers fall.
- 31:02
- I think it's Isaiah 30 or 29. I can't remember. But the picture of when when this this building of this old world comes down, the way
- 31:14
- I'm not ignoring Jericho, but to step back to the 16th century for a moment.
- 31:20
- Luther said that it's like you've been captured by the, you know, your enemy.
- 31:27
- And you're you're in that that evil prince's dungeon. And all of a sudden, as you're sitting there in the dungeon, feeling sad and wishing you weren't there, you hear boom.
- 31:38
- And, you know, you try to see if you can see and you see through a crack in the wall. And it's your prince.
- 31:44
- And he's attacking the dungeon where you're being kept. And he's knocking it down, bringing the walls down.
- 31:49
- So, yeah, the walls of Jericho coming down as a sign of how at the end of time, this visible creation is going to be brought down.
- 31:58
- Whereas St. Peter would say in second Peter, you know, it's going to go it's going to be burned up. Everything's going to be burned up. It's going to go into the fire.
- 32:04
- And then out of it comes this new heaven and the new earth, the place of which the land flowing with milk and honey was a sign and a type where you get to be home, really home forever.
- 32:18
- You know, and tied to that man, maybe. So Jesus uses two terms for himself all the time.
- 32:26
- He is he is the son of man, but he's also the bridegroom of the church. Right. So if you start thinking about the meta narrative, the big overarching narratives of scripture, right, it's always about going to find the bride and bringing her back home.
- 32:43
- That's massive. And so with God, even in Exodus, God sends
- 32:48
- Moses back to go get the bride and bring her home to the to the promised land.
- 32:55
- Right. You know, wait a minute. And as he sends him, he meets him at this meeting place on the road and almost kills him.
- 33:03
- Yeah. Right. You're like, wait a minute. You're killing the one you're sending to you're killing the one you're sending to save Israel.
- 33:11
- Oh, and that's the very first time in the entire Bible that the word bridegroom shows up.
- 33:18
- And then, you know, Jesus never lets that go. He constantly refers to himself then as the bridegroom.
- 33:24
- When his disciples are criticized for not fasting, he's like, dude, how can they be fasting? The bridegroom's here.
- 33:30
- It's party time now. Now is not the time to fast. It will come, he says, when the bridegroom is taken away, referring to the death of when he becomes the bridegroom of blood for his church.
- 33:40
- Right. I'm coming back to Jericho and Rahab. So, I mean, this bridegroom thing.
- 33:46
- Tell me about that prostitute again from Jericho. I mean, is it a hoot that as soon as the men are sent in, they go to the house of a prostitute?
- 33:57
- Okay, that's kind of interesting. Yeah. And she hides them and she is the one who, you know, sends them home safe.
- 34:07
- And as a result, she and her family get saved and more than get saved, she actually become part of the messianic line.
- 34:15
- She becomes Jesus's ancestress. Exactly.
- 34:21
- She marries the guy in Judah who is next in line in the genealogy of Christ.
- 34:27
- I always like to say, we don't get the details of the wedding, but sometime shortly after Jericho, you have the marriage of the
- 34:35
- Messiah and this prostitute. Who does that sound like? Yeah. I mean, isn't it amazing?
- 34:40
- The more you think about it, the more joy it gives you. It's like he really did come for real honest to God sinners.
- 34:46
- He wasn't afraid of our sin. Yeah. And so that scarlet thread of hers. It's the scarlet thread that runs throughout the scriptures, right?
- 34:58
- Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, it's just, it's amazing stuff. So now, last time we talked,
- 35:05
- I mentioned it and it's worth talking about here, because there's two sons of David that I think we could probably do a little bit of work on.
- 35:13
- But let's start with the easy one first, because I consider this one to be a little bit easier. So David, he has sex with and impregnates the wife of Uriah the
- 35:26
- Hittite and then murders him. Marries the lady that he knocked up.
- 35:34
- God's not happy with it. Sends Nathan the prophet. David legitimately owns his stuff and just gives a straight up confession.
- 35:42
- I've sinned against Yahweh. He gets an absolution from Nathan the prophet. However, the son that Bathsheba bears, the son of David is going to die.
- 35:55
- Can we talk about the son of David that dies because of his sin? Yeah, yeah,
- 36:00
- I think so. In other words, when Nathan says to him, how did he say it?
- 36:08
- I think he said it like this, you will not die. But because by this you've caused the enemies of the
- 36:17
- Lord to scorn, right? He says, the child born to you, the sin is literally transferred from David to the son of David and the little child dies.
- 36:28
- And it even gets worse. If we're to read that it all happens right as the child is born, then
- 36:35
- David's fasting and praying is to get the child through to the eighth day so he can be included in the covenant.
- 36:41
- And if he doesn't make it to the eighth day, not included in the covenant, it becomes even sadder.
- 36:48
- But then you realize, oh, wait a minute. So he takes the sin of David and he bears the curse of David in his place.
- 36:59
- He's Jesus's little brother, giving you a beautiful picture of what Jesus actually would do.
- 37:05
- He would bear on the cross the curse that is ours, the son of David.
- 37:10
- I even wonder if that's what Bartimaeus meant when he cried out, son of David, have mercy on me.
- 37:16
- The mercy that the son of David has is the mercy of coming to actually bear our sins in our place, the transfer of the sin.
- 37:23
- That's huge. But I mean, I love the other one you mentioned too. Yeah, we'll get to him in a second here.
- 37:28
- So the second one, harder to understand, but it's there in the types and shadows if you know how to look for it.
- 37:35
- So here you've got the insurrection, the coup d 'etat of Absalom, who wants his father dead.
- 37:41
- And David legitimately, he runs for his life and his son, you know, wages war and David's not allowed to participate in the fight itself.
- 37:52
- But Absalom dies in a very interesting way that invokes one of the passages of the
- 37:58
- Mosaic Covenant that Paul quotes in the book of Galatians, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.
- 38:07
- And the source of his pride, his long hair is what did him in, right? Right. His mule goes underneath the tree, his hair gets caught and there he's hanging.
- 38:17
- And it's not just that he's hanging there, but then he is pierced in his heart. And he's suspended between heaven and earth.
- 38:26
- I think that's kind of an instrument. Yeah, exactly. Suspended between heaven and earth and Joab does him in with the spear thrust.
- 38:36
- And so you have this picture of, of course, Christ not being done in by the spear thrust, because he had already given himself into death.
- 38:44
- But as soon as the spear does go in, out come the blood and water by which salvation is given to the world.
- 38:51
- And, and so you have David's son who is trying to usurp him hanging in the tree. And then you have
- 38:56
- David's son who doesn't usurp, but is indeed the one promised to his father who comes and hangs on the tree.
- 39:03
- Why? To give the kingdom to us. He wants us to. Yeah, that's a great point.
- 39:10
- So Christ gives, he's not taking the kingdom for himself. So Absalom is like the, the polar opposite of Christ.
- 39:17
- He's, he's an antichrist figure, if you would, who rightly is cursed in his death suspended between heaven and earth on a tree.
- 39:28
- Yeah. And, and that's kind of the things, the types and shadows, sometimes they reflect aspects that we have to consider the darker pieces of it.
- 39:38
- And one of the types and shadows who is held up as a type of Christ and is even mentioned in the book of Hebrews in the great hall of faith is a person we do not understand at all.
- 39:49
- And that's Samson. Yeah, yeah.
- 39:57
- Seriously. He's a tough character. But the bad preaching
- 40:02
- I heard, I hear over and again by Samson. Samson was a person who represents the purpose driven life.
- 40:08
- God had a purpose for him and he blew it by, you know, by squandering his, his purpose with, with a woman of the night,
- 40:18
- Delilah. And, and don't lose your, don't let sin keep you from achieving your purpose.
- 40:26
- I mean, I am shocked at the ways that these stories can be gutted. Yeah. Okay. So, so the thing that we see with, with Samson is he and his death actually is the cause of victory, right?
- 40:43
- He brings, he literally brings the idol's temple down by his death.
- 40:50
- Right. And he's, and he defeated them by stretching out his arms. He stretched out his arms and by stretching them out, he brings down the idol's temple and in his death, we're told he actually did, he killed more than he did in his life.
- 41:05
- And I think his big typology for Christ, don't look at this.
- 41:10
- I mean, hanging out with prostitutes and sinners might be something you might notice is, is similar. But what's really amazing is that Sam, Samson has this amazing strength and, and, and look at Christ who can say to the wind, stop, and he stops.
- 41:25
- I mean, he has, he has this amazing strength, which he uses on,
- 41:31
- I mean, Samson uses it for destruction. Christ uses it only to destroy the, to destroy what
- 41:37
- Satan has destroyed in human lives. Right. Sometimes the way I describe Samson to people is
- 41:42
- I say that there's an aspect of Christ that is offensive and the idea that he bore our sins, and this is part of the scandal of the cross is that, you know, the
- 41:54
- Jews look at the cross and go, he can't possibly be in the Messiah. He was cursed because he was hung on a tree.
- 42:01
- And Isaiah says it so, so beautifully. He says that the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
- 42:07
- Sometimes I think of Samson as, you know, since he's, he's so clearly a type, a type of Christ, but I kind of look at him that he has kind of the scandalous aspects of the fact that our sin is laid upon him.
- 42:20
- You know, and so, you know, in the types and shadows, I mean, Samson is not a guy that I would say exemplifies any kind of a morality that we would consider to be faithful to the commandments.
- 42:32
- But that's kind of the scandal of it, if you would. And Christ is, his death on the cross, people view him as being sinful in kind of the way they view
- 42:40
- Samson, but Samson legitimately was, Christ never was. Right. I mean, I think you can also see us as sort of anti, a contrast to Christ.
- 42:50
- You see his anger. Samson has anger management issues, but then you see holy anger in Christ.
- 43:00
- I mean, we always want to imagine that there is no such thing as this righteous indignation, but then you read the
- 43:06
- Jesus you meet in the gospels was not opposed to taking, you know, making a whip and using it on people.
- 43:12
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, indeed. You know, so, okay. So I think we're starting to see a picture emerging here now.
- 43:22
- So all of these things in one way or another are pointing us back to Jesus. So are you saying that I don't need to figure out what my five smooth stones are in order to defeat the
- 43:31
- Goliaths in my life? Well, the great five smooth stones should caught to your mind, the five books of Moses, right?
- 43:42
- And Jesus is the one who wields the stones. He's the new David, right? That Jeremiah is clear,
- 43:48
- Ezekiel is clear. Long after David's history, right? After he's turned to dust, there's all this talk about the one, the
- 43:56
- David who's coming and he is going to fell Goliath and he's going to fell him. You see it already in the temptation accounts, right?
- 44:03
- He picks up three stones, but he picks them up from the book of Deuteronomy and hurls them right at Satan.
- 44:10
- And we see then Jesus is the little, what David is, so is he.
- 44:18
- And just as David fell the giant, so Jesus fell Satan.
- 44:24
- He makes it clear. He's come to do that. He's come to bind the strong man and to plunder his house. Yeah. And so coming back to another aspect then,
- 44:33
- I love what you said here of the book of Exodus is that it's a feature that a lot of people don't take into consideration.
- 44:41
- In the 10 plagues, you have God judging a false God. And I always like to point out to people, what did
- 44:49
- Pharaohs wear as a headdress? They wore a snake hat. Okay. You couldn't get a more visual depiction of the serpent of Satan than a false
- 44:59
- God who wears a snake hat as his crown. You know, everything about him invokes a viper or a snake.
- 45:08
- And it's like God through these judgments is doing the same, but they show up again in the book of Revelation.
- 45:14
- These same 10 plagues show up in the book of Revelation. Can you connect those 10 plagues then to God's judgments at the end of the age?
- 45:25
- Yeah, I think that all the... In other words, if you work your way through the Exodus, every one of the plagues basically ends up with God.
- 45:32
- It's God taking his finger and knocking down their idols, one after the other. So in Revelation, you have this same thing happening where all the idols are being knocked over.
- 45:42
- I mean, most famously, I think of even in Revelation 19, you get the big celebration or in 18,
- 45:49
- Babylon falls, you know, and all the people are moaning. Oh man, nobody's buying our goods. Nobody's doing...
- 45:55
- The economy is being ruined. Get down the line. All the things that we make gods out of, God is just in the process of knocking them over one by one.
- 46:05
- And a lot of... You think about the gods of this age right now, health. Let me see if I can knock that one over for you.
- 46:15
- You think about the economic prosperity, of course. There he goes, knocks that one down.
- 46:23
- The actual physical state of the earth, the environment. The fear about the roaring of the seas and all that.
- 46:32
- Yeah, I mean, so all the natural stuff that comes at you every which way and through it all,
- 46:37
- God saying, that is not anything that's worth your trust. I mean, over and over again, he's trying to just knock the idols out of the way so that the only thing that remains for us to trust finally is him and his words and his promises.
- 46:50
- That's what doesn't give way. Everything else gives way. The point of the 10 plagues throughout the book of Exodus and then echoed further in the book of Revelation is just to show us, man, the idols are just cheats.
- 47:02
- They can't deliver anything to you. Nothing of lasting value. All right, let me...
- 47:08
- Something a little more controversial. I mean, good night. It's like, I feel like I'm trying to trip you up and you just can't be tripped up,
- 47:15
- Whedon. What's the deal here? Okay. I'm sure you can. Keep going. So you think about that time when the scribes and Pharisees are trying to trip up Jesus.
- 47:26
- And so they tell a story about a fellow, about a woman who married a fellow, he died, and then she was given in marriage to his brother and five of them all died.
- 47:37
- And then the question was, who's was she going to be in the resurrection?
- 47:43
- But I note that Jesus over and again, he quotes the
- 47:49
- Torah as if the Genesis account is real. And so in talking about divorce,
- 47:56
- Jesus says, you know, it wasn't always so as it says in the scriptures, a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, but then you get to all the way over to Ephesians and marriage is held up as somehow having a type and shadow that shows a reality about Christ's love for the church.
- 48:15
- You know, can you connect these things all together for us? Wow. That whole picture of what
- 48:24
- Paul does in Ephesians is simply shocking to a lot of people, right? Because he just throws out the little statement there, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife.
- 48:34
- I'm talking about Christ and church. Oh, by the way, it does have implication for you, husbands and wives. But this is about Jesus and the church.
- 48:41
- So the fundamental truth about Jesus and the church is that he is the bridegroom of the church.
- 48:47
- And once you realize that the bridegroom, when he marries you, think baptism, he forks over to you in common property, all that's his and all that's yours, all your indebtedness is assumed by him.
- 49:04
- Christ comes to be our bridegroom in that beautiful sense. He's going to give us his wealth and he's going to take our poverty.
- 49:12
- And even more, he really does want to become one flesh with us.
- 49:18
- The one flesh union is, you know, if he didn't want to become one flesh with us, he would not have assumed our flesh.
- 49:25
- And having assumed our flesh, he actually then tells us that we need to eat it and drink it so that he may abide in us and we in him.
- 49:35
- He's actually going to become one with us in that very real intimate way by the very nature with which we are kindred.
- 49:45
- I mean, he is truly our brother. And so in this sense, he has come to be the great bridegroom.
- 49:54
- And I think, you know, in Revelation, it just becomes the final picture, if you will, is of the great marriage feast.
- 50:02
- You know, when that moment happens, blessed are those who are called to the supper of the
- 50:07
- Lamb. Beautiful. And then talking about kinsmen, you know, I think of the category in the
- 50:13
- Old Testament, the kinsman redeemer, which is such, it's at the heart of the story of Boaz and Ruth.
- 50:23
- You know, here you got this, I always get choked up on this story, this Moabitess that does this love story with Boaz.
- 50:35
- I mean, walk me through this one, because I don't even think I can tell half the story without like losing it.
- 50:41
- So well, I mean, first of all, note the echoes with Rahab. Okay. So Naomi was of that tribe and, you know, from Bethlehem and she and her husband in a time of famine, once again, depart from the promised land, but there her husband and her children die.
- 51:07
- But her children had, her sons had married and the two children, the two daughter -in -law start to go home with her.
- 51:13
- She finally is like, go back. I'm not going to have any more kids. Who are we kidding?
- 51:18
- Just go back to your own people, your own way. And Orpah returns, but Ruth will not.
- 51:25
- Ruth will not leave her. And those beautiful words, you know, treat me not to leave thee in order to return from following thee. Where thou goest,
- 51:30
- I will go. Where thou dwellest, I will dwell. Thy people will be my people. Thy God will be my God. And there I'm going to die where you are.
- 51:39
- So she gets back to Bethlehem and the people want to call her Naomi, of course.
- 51:44
- Is that Naomi? They're like, call me no more, Naomi. Call me Mara, which is related to her
- 51:50
- Mary. And she then has
- 51:59
- Ruth looking after her and Ruth is told to go glean,
- 52:04
- I mean, to pick up the trash that people were leaving behind, if you will, the crops that weren't picked up.
- 52:10
- They were for the poor of the land as the law of God commanded in the five books of Moses.
- 52:16
- So she goes to glean. She gleans in the field of a Boaz who has great mercy upon her and sees her and realizes he knows the story.
- 52:25
- He knows what she's doing and what's up. You know, he sees she's providing for her mother -in -law. And so he instructs his people, leave some stuff for her.
- 52:33
- Don't pick it all up. Leave some for her to pick up. So they do that. And when she comes home that day, man, she's got such a pile of food that Naomi is like, whoa, blessed is the man who took notice of you.
- 52:46
- Tell me what went on. And she tells him that it was from Boaz. And she's so happy.
- 52:51
- She's like, Boaz, he is our kinsman redeemer. Well, next in line to our kinsman redeemer.
- 52:58
- He is. He is one of the ones who can redeem the property, who can buy it back. And when she hears this, she tells
- 53:07
- Ruth, it sounds kind of racy. She tells him to go at night and sneak up and lay at Boaz's feet.
- 53:18
- We don't even go into that. To provide in this way for Boaz to put his cloak over her, to cover her, to include her and bless her and bring her into the family, which he does.
- 53:31
- You know, he wakes up in the middle of the night. There's this woman there. And he says, don't let anybody know you've been here. He provides her with food again and sends her.
- 53:38
- Just like Joes are promoted at the family. The one who provides with food is always a big key.
- 53:45
- So so he provides her with food and sends her home. And surely enough, the next day, when he sees the guy that is near a relative than himself, he tries to he says, you want to buy their land?
- 53:57
- You've got to marry Ruth. And no, no, no, I don't want that. And the guy says, fine, then
- 54:02
- I'm going to buy it. And so he buys it. He marries Ruth. He buys the right of redemption. He marries Ruth. And they beget
- 54:09
- Obed. And from Obed comes Jesse. And from Jesse comes King David. And it's just like such such a beautiful story.
- 54:17
- One who is actually of your blood has to buy you back. He has to redeem you, your kinsman redeemer.
- 54:24
- And this is the same word that Job uses in 19, right? I know that my kinsman redeemer lives.
- 54:30
- And you know, at the last, he will stand on the earth. So Jesus is your kinsman redeemer.
- 54:35
- He comes to, he shares our flesh. He comes to actually bring us as his bride home to the father.
- 54:42
- Right on. And he restores our inheritance. And I love the fact that Ruth, a
- 54:48
- Gentile Moabitess is brought into the covenant. It's just so, so amazing. All right, barren wombs.
- 54:55
- Let's talk about those for a second. Because those seem to be throughout the scriptures. You know, you think of Sarah, she can't bear.
- 55:02
- And God eventually makes it possible for her to bear a child. And then you think of, you know, again,
- 55:09
- Samson's parents. They weren't able to bear. And then you think of Hannah. There seems to be all of these barren wombs running around the
- 55:17
- Old Testament. What's that all about? I think the temptation always for humanity is to imagine that humans are of our creation.
- 55:25
- You know, I'll decide when I'm going to have a baby, whatever. And the Bible is very clear to remind us, no, that's not how it works.
- 55:32
- Children are always going to be gifts of the Lord. And there's always this, with the barren womb stories that run through the
- 55:42
- Bible, there is God saying, you think you're so smart, don't you? You think you got this all figured out.
- 55:49
- Well, let me show you how this is going to work. So Sarah sets the pattern for us. We see this, that it's, she's 90 years old.
- 55:59
- You can't blame her for laughing when God says, you know, no, no, no, it's going to be, you know, maybe
- 56:04
- Abraham could be a father. Okay, but she's like, come on, I'm 90 years, it's way past the time that I could have a baby.
- 56:10
- It's not going to happen. And she laughs. And then the question comes from the Lord. Why did you laugh?
- 56:16
- Is anything too hard for Yahweh? That's at the heart of the, is anything too hard for the
- 56:23
- Lord? And so all these barren wombs where we can't give life, He is going to show
- 56:28
- I can give life and I can even do it when it seems really impossible and silly to you.
- 56:34
- In fact, if you thought that was silly, I mean, he just goes through over and over again. I mean, you mentioned all the stories, but I mean,
- 56:40
- I think they all drive you, push you into the New Testament where all of a sudden you meet Elizabeth and she's in the same boat as Sarah and God does it again.
- 56:49
- And it's like, oh, you think that's something, do you? Well, let me show you this one. And He then proceeds to actually give a child through a virgin, through a virgin who had never known a man.
- 57:04
- And is anything too hard for them? I mean, isn't that when Mary asks for, and big,
- 57:09
- I mean, study those two stories, the story of the annunciation to Zechariah and the annunciation to Mary, because in the annunciation to Zechariah, Zechariah is like, you know, how am
- 57:21
- I going to know this? Give me some proof, right? She doesn't say that. She just asks, how will this be?
- 57:29
- Seeing I know not a man and the angel gives her the information.
- 57:35
- Oh, it's the Holy Spirit's going to do it. So she's not struck dumb for her question.
- 57:44
- And the impossible comes to pass. And even more impossible than a virgin bearing a son is that the son the virgin bears is
- 57:55
- God. I mean, God, the son in the flesh. Throughout it all, all the barren wombs are setting you up for this moment where God does something even more impossible.
- 58:07
- I mean, what did He tell Ahaz in Isaiah 7? It's like, you know, it can be as high as heaven or as deep as Sheol.
- 58:14
- So that's when people say, well, that's obviously just Hezekiah or whatever. You're like, and how would that be?
- 58:19
- High as heaven or deep as Sheol? Excuse me, that's not a great sign. And you do get the combination of the great sign shows up then in Revelation chapter 12, right?
- 58:31
- Where the woman who is like Israel crowned with the stars and the sun and the moon, and she gives birth to the man child and he's to rule the nations.
- 58:41
- It's a great sign. So the barren womb can see birth.
- 58:48
- And I would even argue it's a fulfillment of the very first promise regarding the
- 58:54
- Messiah from the Proto -Evangelion in Genesis, because it's the seed of the woman who crushes the head of the serpent, not the seed of a man and a woman.
- 59:04
- And I think when we hear that, we can't even be, we've all but forgotten that,
- 59:09
- I mean, we cover over it and use the word semen today. That's just the word seed.
- 59:17
- And so that's actually the shocker. I mean, when he said seed of a woman, immediately everybody would have been like, that's not how it works.
- 59:25
- They thought of the woman as the fertile ground in which the seed would be planted. But this is a seed of a woman.
- 59:32
- So it's a powerful, powerful passage at Genesis 3 .15. And all of Genesis echoes all the way through.
- 59:38
- And of course, in case you missed it, the very closing chapters of Revelation just hammer it all home so that it's all back again and you see it very, very clearly.
- 59:47
- Yeah. And then at the end of Genesis 3, God does, there's that unfinished sentence, where God, the
- 59:53
- Trinity is musing with themselves going, oh my goodness, what if they ate of the tree of life and live forever? But there's this little bit there that says that God made skins of clothing and he's the one who clothed the nakedness of Adam and Eve.
- 01:00:09
- So what can you do with that? Man, every time we try to clothe our own nakedness, we end up with the fig leaves that get blown away.
- 01:00:17
- We can't clothe our nakedness. We can't do it because it requires death. There is no two ways around it.
- 01:00:23
- It requires the death of a living creature, of an innocent living creature for us to be clothed.
- 01:00:29
- And so in the skins in which Adam and Eve were clothed by God, already the principle of the sacrifices were laid out.
- 01:00:38
- That this, the price, God has said, the day you eat of it, you're gonna die. Well, they did die spiritually that very day, right?
- 01:00:45
- They came disconnected from God. But also that day, God transferred some of their guilt onto those animals and the animals died in their place.
- 01:00:54
- They saw that. Can you imagine what it was like when you saw that? I mean, you'd been the Lord of creation and these animals were your playthings.
- 01:01:00
- You were enjoying them and having fun with them. And now you see they have to die to clothe you. And you go, whoa, what did
- 01:01:06
- I do? What did I introduce here? That then becomes the picture all the way through of the garments in which
- 01:01:14
- Christ will clothe us, his own righteousness, which can only come to us by way of his own suffering and death, his sacrifice, the death of the innocent one in our place.
- 01:01:24
- Yeah, yeah. So we've just had a wonderful conversation just walking through what
- 01:01:33
- I would consider some of the highlights of the Old Testament. But the Bible itself from cover to cover is just rich with this tapestry, this mosaic that you talked about, all of them pointing us to Christ and in different aspects of it.
- 01:01:49
- And in so doing, it's like our hearts are meditating on the greatness, the mercy, the love, just the kindness, the generosity of our
- 01:01:59
- God. And we haven't talked about, well, I haven't slayed any of my giants or anything like this, but in going along with this way of interpreting scripture, this way of looking at the scriptures teach us to do this.
- 01:02:17
- I think about the feast days. I almost have to end here, but I think about the feast days.
- 01:02:23
- So every seven years, every seven days, the people have to take a day of rest.
- 01:02:29
- Every seven years, the land has to rest. Every seven, seven years is the year of Jubilee.
- 01:02:35
- All debts are canceled. All slaves are set free. All lost inheritances are restored.
- 01:02:45
- What's the picture here that connects us to Christ? Well, I'm going to quote Michael Cardigan.
- 01:02:51
- Jesus is our Jubilee. That's forgiven, sin set free. Jesus is our Jubilee. In the initial
- 01:02:57
- Sabbath rest, the one every week, that's a picture of us resting from our works in the finished work of Christ.
- 01:03:06
- So we have, as in the first creation, God did his work for six days, and then he rested on the seventh.
- 01:03:12
- So Jesus finishes the work of redemption on the sixth day, and he then cries out, it is finished.
- 01:03:20
- And then he rests in the tomb on the seventh day. And that made that rest be something amazing because out of it comes the eighth day when we get to live in the time beyond death.
- 01:03:32
- And we learned to rest in his finished work that way. Yeah, yeah. The thing is, we could talk about all the sacrifices, how they connect to Christ, the day of atonement.
- 01:03:42
- We could talk about the other feast days themselves. The Bible is all really about Christ, and it's this multifaceted jewel.
- 01:03:56
- So the person who says, yeah, well, we don't really need the Old Testament. They don't know what they're talking about. No, no, no, no, no.
- 01:04:02
- Hey, you know, one thing we didn't yet mention that we probably should throw in there is the Psalms. So in the
- 01:04:08
- Psalms, we begin with, blessed is the man. This is not you. This is
- 01:04:14
- Jesus. He is the blessed man. He is the one about whom the Psalter will sing.
- 01:04:20
- And as you work your way through the Psalms, you soon realize, oh, that is him all the way through. Even when he's confessing sin, he's standing in unity with our sin under the judgment for us.
- 01:04:31
- So from start to finish, the Psalter is the prayer of Jesus. And this really transforms how you pray the
- 01:04:38
- Psalter. Yeah, no, it radically transforms like the entire scripture altogether.
- 01:04:45
- And it sets you free from kind of the goofy nonsense that people come up with.
- 01:04:52
- But at the same time, it gives you absolute comfort. And not only that, the miraculous power of the
- 01:04:57
- Bible, nobody could have put this thing together. I mean, who can write prophecy merely in the lives of people, in the actual little details in the minutia of their life story,
- 01:05:08
- God writes prophecy that points us to Jesus. This is a book like none other. There is nothing even that comes close in all of the world when it comes to this.
- 01:05:20
- And I think it's one of the great, it shows the wiles of Satan that he's taught people to basically not even hear it or know it or listen to it.
- 01:05:27
- And so, even inside the church, we've had this great ignorance now of these stories that give us nothing but Jesus.
- 01:05:35
- And it's so, so sad. Yeah, it's sad and tragic. And people are in bondage because of it.
- 01:05:42
- But when you see the love of Christ and how these scriptures all testify about him,
- 01:05:48
- I think about one of the things that Jesus tells the Pharisees, he says, you diligently search the scriptures because you think that in them, you have life.
- 01:05:55
- Yet they are the very scriptures that testify about me. And you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
- 01:06:02
- And that's the thing. Christ is the only one we can go to to have life. Everything else is death.
- 01:06:08
- And it's death masquerading poorly as life. And at the end of it, it's not only dissatisfying, it's damning when you think about it.
- 01:06:20
- So Pastor Whedon, I gotta admit, this is exactly the kind of conversation that I enjoy having.
- 01:06:27
- This is to be able to commiserate and wander through the scriptures together. And I think it's fantastic that you and I, although we've studied in different places and we've served in different congregations, yet the unity we have in seeing
- 01:06:44
- Christ in these Old Testament texts, you and I are seeing the exact same things. And the reality is, is we're not the only two.
- 01:06:51
- When you read the writings of the church fathers, the writings of the church fathers are rich with this. You know, they saw
- 01:06:56
- Jesus in every rock tree and twig in the Old Testament. And it's amazing when you think about it.
- 01:07:03
- So tell people, remind everybody again, how can they find your daily podcast so that they can avail themselves of your daily biblical teaching as you work through the different books of the
- 01:07:16
- Bible? Well, the easiest way to do it is to go to www .wordindoors
- 01:07:24
- .org. And from there, you can find, you know, how a link to whatever podcast provider you like to use.
- 01:07:32
- Sounds good. So Spotify or Apple podcast. Yeah, we are, we are.
- 01:07:40
- Okay, they can link to that or can rather click on that and go directly to the podcast.
- 01:07:48
- You can listen to it on your web browser. You can listen to it directly. I shouldn't even say that.
- 01:07:54
- I was going to say, I think there's a way you can even do it with your phone, but I'm not, I mean, like calling a number, but I don't remember what that is.
- 01:08:01
- So scratch that. Okay, so all the details and all the different listening options, including potentially listening on your phone.
- 01:08:10
- Those are all at www .thewordindoors .org. Is that correct?
- 01:08:18
- www .wordindoors .org. wordindoors .org. Hold on. You know what? I should, can you hold on one second?
- 01:08:25
- And we'll make sure that that's not wrong. Well, that's, that's his email.
- 01:08:31
- We'll put a link down below. We'll put a link down below. Yeah, put a link. Just put the link. That's what we're going to do.
- 01:08:37
- We're just going to put the link there. So hold on. I don't, I don't know what, what
- 01:08:42
- I went. Well, there I am. I'm angry because I am that. You know what? I'm, I keep touching the screen and nothing is happening because it's not one of those things.
- 01:08:53
- There we go. Okay. I mean, I only use a tablet. So I forget that.
- 01:08:58
- I mean, I'm sitting here going, push, push, push. And you're on a laptop. Oh man.
- 01:09:07
- Yeah. Sorry for all the editing. You're going to have to do, dude. Yeah, that's right. Josh, we feel your pain.
- 01:09:14
- Don't, don't worry. We'll give you an extra two minutes to work this all out.
- 01:09:20
- So yeah. Well, Pastor Whedon, it was a pleasure having you on Fighting for the
- 01:09:27
- Faith. Thank you for your time and Lord's blessings to you as you continue to serve the body of Christ in your podcast.
- 01:09:36
- Thank you. And to you too, Christian. Thank you for all the great work you do. Thank you. All right.
- 01:09:41
- So if you found this helpful, all the information on how to share this episode of Fighting for the Faith is down below in the description.
- 01:09:49
- And of course, all the information on how you can find Pastor Whedon's podcast is also down there. And until next time, may
- 01:09:54
- God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.