FIGURES, Harold Hunt The Law Service provides us with an entire system of types, and shadows, and figures, of Bible truth. Those figures served as a kind of prophecy for the children of Israel during the time of the Old Testament, and they still serve as illustrations of Bible truth in our day.
Those figures are found, in the feasts, and sacrifices, and ceremonies of the Law Service, and in many of the experiences of the saints of that day. They literally acted out divine truth, and it is amazing how clear, and how graphic, those figures can be. But, while those figures are found throughout the ceremonies of the Law Service, and the lives of the saints, we should never get the idea that every story recorded in that part of the Bible is a figure or a symbol of something.
Most of the stories recorded in the Bible are not symbolic of anything at all. They simply tell us what they did, what they said, and what the consequence was. The passage may, very well, serve to make a point, but it is not necessarily a symbol of anything. Many a minister has worn himself out trying to explain the symbolic connection of some passage, when there is no symbol to be found.
One of the experiences that seems to go with having preached for a long time is that sometimes people get the idea you are well supplied with answers. I feel flattered when somebody comes to me with a question, but I have always been much better supplied with questions than I have with answers.
Some young preacher is forever coming to me for an explanation of some passage. The text seems to be plain enough, and I tell him, “This is what they did, and this is what they said, and these are the consequences.”
“But, what does it symbolize?’
“I can’t tell that it symbolizes anything. This is what they did, and this is what they said, and these are the consequences.”
“But is there not some deeper meaning than that?”
“Not that I can tell. This is what they did, and this is what they said, and these are the consequences.”
In some sense, most people understand the Bible better than they think they do.
One of the reasons so many people are convinced they cannot understand the Bible is that they have been taught to look for something that is not there. If it is not there, you are not going to find it, and you should not beat up on yourself, because you cannot see it. I believe most people would be better off, if they would just accept the simple lessons of the Bible for what they say, and not be forever looking for some great mystery.
Granted that there are mysteries in the Bible we are never going to figure out. We could not understand some of those mysteries, even if they were explained to us. They are beyond our capacity to entirely understand. We will never entirely understand the doctrine of the Trinity. The Bible teaches it, and we believe it, but it is beyond our capacity to entirely explain it. We will never entirely understand the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. If the very heaven of heavens cannot contain him, how could he become a little baby his mother could hold in her arms? How could he become incarnate in human flesh and walk around among us? The Bible calls it a mystery I Tim. 3:16, and if it is a mystery, you and I cannot entirely explain it. If we could, it would not be a mystery.
We cannot explain how God is going to raise the dead on that final day. Paul calls the resurrection a mystery 1 Cor. 15:51, and, if it is a mystery, you and I cannot entirely explain it. Suppose a sailor dies and is buried in the sea. His remains are eaten by fish, and those fish are later caught and eaten by other people, and the flesh of those fish becomes the nutrition that makes up the flesh of other people. Then those people die, and are buried. How will God ever sort it all out? You can be sure that the God, who created the universe and everything in it, will not have any trouble on that day, but you and I cannot explain it.
Why does God save one person and pass another by? The only answer God gives—and, I believe, the only answer we will ever have—is, “Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight” Matt. 11: 26. It pleased God, and if it pleased God, that is as far as I am going to pursue the question. I do not dare challenge him.
I doubt we will entirely understand some of these mysteries, even in the world to come. We sing a song that says, “We will understand it better by and by.” We will, indeed, understand it better, but, that does not mean we will know everything there is to be known. In order to know all about it, we would need a mind as great as the mind of God—and we will never have that.
God will always be the Creator, and we will always be the creature. When we arrive in that world, we will just as surely stand in awe of God, and his attributes, and his work, as we do in this life. We would not deny that there are some subjects that by their very nature—and our own finite nature—we cannot understand, but the fact remains that God intended for the Bible to be read and understood.
Any humble, prayerful, and obedient child of God can read the Bible and understand those things which will satisfy his present need. But, back to the subject of figures: how can you tell if something is a figure? Well, it helps, if the Bible tells us—in so many words—that it is a figure.
Baptism is a figure; the Bible says so. 1 Pet. 3:21, “The like figure whereunto baptism doth also now save us (not the putting way of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” It is a figure of the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord, and it is a figure of the child of God, dying to sin, and rising to walk in newness of life.
The sacrifices of the Law Service were a figure. Again, the Bible says so.
Heb. 9:9, “Which was a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience.”
The deliverance of Isaac on the mountain was a figure.
Heb. 11:18,19, “Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence he received him in a figure.”
And, it helps if the type looks so much like the antitype that you cannot always tell which is under consideration.
King David was one of the clearest Old Testament types of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was such a clear and convincing type of the Lord that, in some passages such as Psalms 89, you cannot always tell whether you are reading about David, the son of Jesse, or the Greater David, the Son of God.
It also helps if you have someone, obviously sent from God, to point to the antitype and call him by his typical name.
John 1:29, “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
Every lamb, for that matter, every animal, sacrificed under the Law Service, was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, and here we have John the Baptist calling our attention to that fact. There is a scarlet thread that reaches all the way from the Garden of Eden to Calvary. When Adam sinned, God made coats of skins for him and his wife. In order for them to have coats of skins, an animal had to die.
Heb. 9:22, “And almost all things are by the Law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission.”
The Bible does not tell us what kind of animal it was. It is purely an opinion of mine, but I think it was a lamb. Every time the priest, or in the case of the Passover, the head of the house, took the sacrificial blade, and drove it home into the body of the sacrificial animal, the rich, warm, red blood of that sacrifice, flowed out of the wound, over the blade, and perhaps over the hand of the priest, and that shed blood extended that scarlet thread—the scarlet thread that reaches all the way to Calvary.
It appears to me that God has made the Bible as clear as it needs to be. Sometimes I have trouble finding my way around in some of these big city hospitals. The way they have changed, and remodeled, and added on, I can get lost. But, some of the hospitals have come up with a simple way of helping out. “Do you see that red circle over there on the floor, and do you see the long red line leading from it? Well, you follow that red line all the way to the end, and you will be right where you need to be.” I can follow that kind of directions.
But in the Bible God does even better than that. God has John the Baptist stationed right at the end of that long scarlet ribbon, to announce that we have arrived at the end of our journey. There at the end of that long scarlet ribbon was the Lord Jesus Christ, ready to be baptized by John and to start his own public ministry.
John 1:29, “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him and saith, Behold The Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
There was John pointing to the Lord, and announcing that this is the one you have been waiting for. This is the one who was symbolized and prefigured by all those other sacrificial lambs. He was pointing people to the Lamb of God, pointing them to the Savior. That is what I am trying to do, I am trying to point you to the Lamb of God. Far too much of religion points people away from the Lord, and back to themselves—away from the Lord and his righteous-ness, and back to themselves, and their own accomplishments. It is the place of the gospel preacher to point people to the Lord, and away from themselves. hlh