Do You Get It? - Genesis 43:15-45:5 Series

Neil and I were talking at the men's barbecue yesterday about how God puts His word together so much. When you study God's word, you're just amazed at how many things go together. I think it is fascinating to see that, especially when you see that the whole scripture is focused on Jesus Christ. Certainly all those passages, the New Testament, the gospels, and the epistles are all reflecting on Jesus. But it's really interesting to see the Old Testament passages that reflect Christ. When we see those, it just gives us such an amazement about God's word.

The Bible even reveals some of those things in the Old Testament that are types of Christ or that we see Christ in the Old Testament. You know the story in the wilderness where they were complaining, so God has these servants come and there's all this plague that's bothering all these people and people are dying. So Moses was given instruction to put the pole up with the serpent on it, and the scriptures say when they looked at that then they were healed. You couldn't say to your wife, “Hey, go out and look at the look at the brass snake on the pole for me.” You'd have to go out and look at it yourself, and you would be healed. Now Jesus takes those same words from the Old Testament and in John 3…this is the same one with John 3:16 in it and right before that He says that like the pole in the wilderness was raised up, so the Son of Man is raised up so that we can see Him. So you look at Him and salvation is pictured there in John 3, taking this whole illustration from the Old Testament. Which we wouldn't have known in the Old Testament about this, except that we're taught about it in the New. But there's this picture of Jesus Christ right there in that story in the wilderness.

The story of Noah and the ark and how there were some people who got on that ark, they chose to get on the ark, and they were saved from the judgment that was there, and they were protected in safety. So Peter takes that story of Jonah, lifts it up in 2 Peter 3 and he talks about the ark and the saving of people is like salvation for us. He's taking this understanding of what's taking place in the Old Testament and bringing it into the New. It's really a fascinating thing.

In fact, if you study the Old Testament, you become amazed at so many pictures of Jesus. It starts in Genesis 3 where we have the promise that someday the seed of the woman (who would be Jesus) will crush the serpent's head. A picture of Jesus that's yet to come. Certainly in the law when we see the design of the tabernacle, we see the clothes that the priests had, the works that the priests did, we see the sacrifices that were taking place, all of that are pictures of Jesus Christ. And when you go and study those Old Testament passages, you go, wow, this is really interesting how Jesus is portrayed in the Old Testament, although you wouldn't know it then. But we understand and we see it in new ways because we now have the New Testament. So when Jesus says He fulfills the law, it's just this fulfillment that's so big and broad.

What does that do for us when we recognize that Jesus is pictured in the Old Testament? I think it does one thing that it gives us this amazement for God's word. We go, “This is an amazing book.” Secondly, I think it gives us an appreciation for Jesus Christ Himself, that He's the center of the whole Bible, but He's the center of our lives. He's the center of the universe. Colossians says that He holds all things together, all the atoms are held together. He holds all that together. Jesus Christ is the center of everything. I think what that does is it motivates us to say I want Jesus to be the center of my life. I want everything I do to wrap around the Lord and what He's doing.

Well one of the things that we see as scholars study the scripture is they look at Joseph himself, and they say Joseph is a type of Christ. There's so many parallels between the life and work of Joseph and Jesus Christ that it's just uncanny. After you start looking at a lot of these things, you start to say, wow, this is a really an interesting type of Christ.

For example, just think back through the life of Joseph, he was the one that was beloved of the father, which reminds us of the time God spoke at the baptism of Jesus and said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” When he went to his brothers, his brothers plotted to kill Joseph. They were going to their plotting to figure out how can we get rid of him? How can we kill him? In the same way, His brothers (the Jews) plotted to kill Jesus.