Messianic Perspectives

Chris Rodriguez: Shalom and welcome to Messianic Perspectives, a daily program where we look into the scriptures from a distinctive first-century Jewish point of view. Today our Bible teacher, Stephen Ger, begins his five-part series on Messianic Prophecy in the Pentateuch. And now, with today's teaching, here's Stephen Ger.

Stephen Ger: Shalom, this is Stephen Ger. Welcome to our series on Messianic prophecy, in specific, within the Pentateuch, or if you want to think of it simply as the books of Moses. Now, we're not going to be going through all five books of Moses. In reality, we're only going to look briefly in Genesis, and then Numbers, and then Deuteronomy before our entire series time is up. But I do want to make the most of my time right now, so let's begin looking at Messianic prophecy in the Pentateuch with Genesis 22.

In Genesis 22, we see Abraham's son Isaac as a prophetic type. Now, there are different types of Messianic prophecy. One type would be predictive prophecy—seeing something that is going to come to pass just as described. Another way of understanding a type of Messianic prophecy is literally that word, "type," typology. This is a picture of things to come. That's the kind of prophecy that we have in Genesis 22.

By the way, the third type of Messianic prophecy is analogous or correspondence. This is an analogous situation or a corresponding circumstance. But we are dealing right now in Genesis 22 with a Messianic typology, a picture of the Messiah. Now, I'm not going to read the passage because of time, but you are familiar with the passage. We discussed it briefly in a previous series when we laid our foundations of Messianic prophecy. What I want to focus in on is the bones of the story.

The outline of the story is simply God had promised Abraham a special son, a child of promise, a child of destiny, on whom the entirety of the Abrahamic Covenant rested. And then, when Isaac reached a certain age, God told Abraham to sacrifice his son on Mount Moriah, and that's indeed what happened.

Abraham and Isaac and some men went on their way, a three days' journey to Mount Moriah. The way the story reads, Abraham says to his workers, to his assistants, "Stay here with the donkey; I and the lad, my son, will go over there. We will worship and return to you." You're familiar with the story, but if you're not, it tells us in the details that Abraham takes the wood of the burnt offering, puts it on a makeshift altar, which they would have built on Mount Moriah. He lays the wood on that offering and then lays his son Isaac down.

Of course, as the altar is being built, as the wood is being laid down, as the journey is continuing, Isaac said, "My father, we have fire, we have wood, where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" See, this wasn't Isaac's first rodeo. He knows how sacrifices were to be done. You didn't leave things to chance to see if maybe perhaps I'll see an animal, but nobody's looking for an animal. They didn't bring an animal. So where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

And Abraham says, "God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." Well, he binds his son Isaac and he lays him on the altar on top of the wood. Apparently, at some point Isaac realized, since it's only the two of them, that one of them was going to wind up being the sacrifice.

So Abraham stretched out his hand, took the knife to slay his son. The angel of the Lord calls to him from heaven and says, "Do not stretch your hand against the lad; don't do anything to him." And remember the story—they find a ram caught by its horns in the thicket and they sacrifice the animal instead of Isaac.

Now, the rabbis are familiar with the story, of course. This is called in Jewish tradition the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. And the rabbinic teaching regarding this passage, the divinely initiated and subsequently aborted sacrifice of Isaac, has always viewed the willing sacrifice of Abraham and the willing sacrifice of Isaac in offering himself as an act of vicarious atonement.

That's a very interesting thing because when you read between the lines of the story, you know that Isaac is no child. The language of the passage and the chronology of the passage teaches us that Isaac is at the very youngest thirteen years of age and at the very oldest thirty-nine years of age. Nonetheless, he's at the very least a strapping young teenager, a healthy guy.

And Abraham is very aged at this point, and there's no way that Abraham would have been able to manhandle or wrestle his son down onto the altar unless Isaac himself specifically and purposely with intention laid himself on the altar as a willing sacrifice. And so the rabbinic teaching looks at this sacrifice of Abraham, this willingness to sacrifice his son, and on the flip side, Isaac's willingness to sacrifice himself, as an act of vicarious atonement that can be applied throughout the future history of their descendants.

In other words, the nation of Israel—the righteousness of the patriarchs in not exactly what they went through, obviously they didn't complete the act of sacrifice, but their very intention, their willingness to do so—that righteousness can be vicariously applied to their descendants in times of spiritual need.

Now, I'll tell you I don't believe that there is such a thing as a treasury of merit that Jewish people for all time can draw upon because of the righteous act of Abraham, and certainly not the righteous act of Isaac. But the rabbis were not completely off base when they see a picture of atonement in Isaac. They recognize this beautiful type because the events of Genesis 22 are a tremendous example of typology or what Scripture calls a shadow of things to come.

Remember that Colossians 2:16 and 17 is what Paul is addressing in his letter to the Colossians. He says, "Let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or respect to festival or new moon or Sabbath days. These are shadows of what is to come, but the substance belongs to the Messiah." So Isaac is a prophetic type. And by prophetic type, I simply mean a picture—a picture of whom? The Messiah, Yeshua.

So Jesus is not only the ultimate Israel, not only the ultimate Aaron, not only the ultimate David, not only the ultimate Moses, but he is especially the ultimate Isaac. They're very similar. Let me show you how the picture works because both Isaac and Jesus were sons of promise, and both men had miraculous births. Both Isaac and Jesus were obedient and willing sons who were prepared and ready to lay down their lives at their father's behest.

If you think about it, both sons, Isaac and Jesus, even carried the wood for their own sacrifice. As the Midrash teaches—the Jewish medieval sermon on the topic—it says Isaac carried the wood like a man who takes up his cross. That's found in the Pesikta Rabbati. I could not have said that any better and I could not agree any more wholeheartedly. Isaac did indeed carry the wood like his ultimate descendant, the Messiah—the man who took up his cross.

And you know, if you think about it, both Isaac and Jesus had fathers who were prepared to slay them in order to fulfill a larger purpose. As Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, so too was God willing to sacrifice His Son. Of course, God did not demand of Abraham what He demanded of Himself, because with Isaac, He provided a substitute sacrifice—a ram caught in the thicket. But for God's Son, there was no alternative sacrifice. Nothing and no one else could do.

The New Testament capitalizes on this prophetic type and alludes to Isaac's sacrifice and Jesus' fulfillment of this in several places. For example, in John 1:29, where Jesus' cousin John says, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." Jesus did become the Lamb of God slain for the sin of the world. Because after all, as John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life."

Finally, the book of Hebrews so pointedly states in chapter 11, verses 17, 18, and 19: "By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son. It was he to whom it was said, 'In Isaac your descendants shall be called,' because Abraham considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type."

So if you're curious as to whether we can, willy-nilly, out of our imagination identify things as types or not, generally the answer is no. But in this instance, we are on very firm foundation because the New Testament itself, the author of the book of Hebrews, identifies Isaac as a type of the Messiah.

There's one more passage in Genesis that I want to point out. In Genesis 49, what we're going to see is that the Messiah will not only be Jewish, which we knew from the Abrahamic Covenant, of course, but that the Messiah will be King, specifically from the tribe of Judah. How can I state that categorically? Well, I'm afraid I'll have to keep you in suspense, and we'll find that out next time as we continue to explore the Messianic prophecies of the Pentateuch.

Chris Rodriguez: Thank you, Steve. And thank you, listening friend, for joining us today. If you missed part of this series or would like to share it with a friend, you'll be glad to know that it's available on one convenient compact disc for the suggested gift of just $6. Just point your web browser to our online store at messianicspecialties.com and search for Messianic Prophecy in the Pentateuch and place your order with our secure server.

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This is Chris Rodriguez. Join us tomorrow for another edition of Messianic Prophecy in the Pentateuch, right here on Messianic Perspectives. Messianic Perspectives is sponsored by CJF Ministries in San Antonio, Texas, and is made possible on this station by the free-will contribution of our listeners in this area.