Jesus Unmasked: The Truth Will Shock You (3 page)

The Big Question

Chapter Three — Big, Fancy Words

If you, like I, have ADH whatever it is, you will love this. You are going to read almost one thousand chapters of the Bible in just a few paragraphs. That’s right, you are going to zoom through four thousand years of history in a matter of minutes.

Fancy Word Alert

But (you knew that was coming) before you blitzkrieg through the Bible, you are going to get bombed with some fancy theological terms. Some people might say this is unprofitable, but understanding big theological words can be beneficial in three ways:

> You will score big points in Scrabble if you ever get to use one of these whoppers.

> You will see that Christianity is not an ignorant religion for feebleminded people.

> The Bible will explode as you read it. It will come to life for you in ways you never imagined.

Supralapsarianism

Here is your first fancy word that will impress your friends and neighbors: Supralapsarianism. Say what?

Supralapsarianism (and its cousin, infralapsarianism) logically defines the order of God’s thinking regarding the creation of the world. What does that have to do with the price of tea in Texas on a Tuesday? It tells you what the purpose of your existence is.

There are three great philosophical questions that every philosopher since Sophocles has pondered:

1. Where did I come from?

2. Why am I here?

3. Where am I going when I die?

Supralapsarianism answers all three questions.

1. God thought of you before the foundation of the world.

2. You are here to glorify God by believing in Him and His Son, Jesus Christ, and live in a way that is pleasing to the One who made you and owns you.

3. If you repent and trust Jesus, your sins will be forgiven and you will go to heaven to enjoy your maker forever. If you do not repent, your sins will not be forgiven, and God, the just judge of all the earth, will sentence you, the guilty criminal, to hell.

Supralapsarianism tells us that God created the world knowing humans would sin in order to send His Son to redeem a people for Himself. Saving sinners was not God’s afterthought because Adam and Eve took a nosh of fruit. Saving sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ was God’s eternal plan before He even created the earth.

The Bible is God’s history book telling us how that plan of redemption unfolded. Everything we read in the Bible is ultimately about God’s plan to forgive rebels through Jesus Christ.

Second Fancy Word: Progressive Revelation

The following sentence may win the award for the most obvious statement ever made: History doesn’t happen in an instant, it takes time. You are probably thinking, “Duh!”

Sometimes we have a tendency to forget about time as we read the Bible. The story of redemption doesn’t happen instantaneously; it took time. Furthermore, God did not reveal His exact plan of salvation in every detail at creation. Instead, He progressively revealed His plan little by little.

The Bible starts out with very fuzzy pictures about the plan of salvation that becomes progressively clearer. Jesus’ Apostle, Peter, explained it this way:

As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that 
would come
 to you made careful searches and inquiries,
seeking to know what person or time
 the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He 
predicted the sufferings of Christ
and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven — things into which angels
long to look
(
1 Pet. 1:10–12; NIV).

In the Old Testament, God slowly revealed more and more information about Himself and His plans to save sinners. Even angels didn’t know exactly how the story of redemption was going to unfold.

But when the
fullness of the time came
,
God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons (Gal. 4:4–5).

Give or take, God created the world approximately 4000
b.c
. He spent the next four millennia rolling out His plan of redemption. The Old Testament is a history of a chosen nation called Israel, which would produce a Messiah who would suffer and die for sinners (Isa. 53).

Israel was to be a set-apart nation, different from all of her neighbors because God wanted a holy nation to be the country that delivered the Son of God to save the world. As you read the Old Testament, that is what you are reading: God’s story of redemption through a chosen people.

It was at the exact right time that God finally sent His Son to be born in Israel to redeem the world. When Jesus Christ began His ministry of redemption, He announced, “
The time is fulfilled
,
and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15).

The Old Testament progressively led to a culmination in Jesus and here is the kicker: the New Testament points to a climax in the future that involves you.

Third Fancy Word: Typology

How exactly did God progressively reveal His plan of salvation in Jesus Christ throughout the Old Testament? He did it through prophecies (predictions of future events) and through our third fancy theological term:
typology
, also known as types and shadows.

It has been said the Old Testament is a hall of mirrors reflecting Jesus. Theologians take their cue from Jesus Himself when He spoke to the Pharisees in John chapter 5:

You diligently study the Scriptures (Old Testament) because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that
testify about me
(John 5:39; NIV).

While there is some wisdom literature (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, etc.), the Old Testament is actually a history book with theology in it. There are no true allegories (fictional events that teach a lesson), but there are actual events that are fuzzy pictures of something else. This is called “types” and “shadows.”

Is the shadow of an object the real thing? No, it is merely a shadowy representation of the real thing, but it is not the object itself. If I stand in your shadow, am I standing in you? No, I am merely standing in a less-than-perfect representation of you. In the Old Testament, God shares stories with us that are shadowy pictures (or types) of the real thing. The real thing is Jesus.

Types can be a person, object, office, ceremony, structure, or event which is a fuzzy picture of Jesus. The “type” is an Old Testament shadow of the clearer “anti-type” Jesus in the New Testament. Even though the type is an actual person, place, or thing, the anti-type is always greater and more clear than the type. The picture is never as clear as the actual subject.

Here is the New Testament verse that makes this fuzzy concept very clear:

Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day — things which are a mere
shadow
of
what is to come
; but
the substance
belongs to
Christ
(Col. 2:16–17).

Old Testament festivals and the Sabbath were shadowy pictures of Jesus Christ. Other verses in the New Testament identify even more shadowy Old Testament pictures of Jesus: people, places, things, events, offices. While some people go looking for Jesus in every verse in the Old Testament, we are going to limit our examination to just the types and shadows that are identified as such in the New Testament.

Why?

Why did God do it this way? Why did God wait two thousand years to send Jesus to redeem the world? Why didn’t He just create the world, let us sin, and then send Jesus right away?

Imagine a man who stood in Times Square today and shouted, “I am God. Repent and believe in ME.” We would think him a madman.

Two thousand years ago, that is exactly what Jesus did. He stood in the marketplace and called Himself God. Why should we listen to Him? Why should we not consider Him a crackpot?

Jesus was not a crazy street preacher without a basis in history. Jesus’ history doesn’t start in Matthew 1, it starts in Genesis 1.

1. Jesus has the history of a set-apart nation.

2. Jesus has the history of a religion.

3. Jesus has the history of a God who performed miracles.

4. Jesus has the foundation of a book.

5. Jesus is the fulfillment of dozens of prophecies predicting where He would be born and how He would live and die.

Because Jesus was the fulfillment of four thousand years of expectations, Jesus was not a Time’s Square crackpot.

Bad Grammar

Let’s put all of our fancy words together in one run-on sentence: God’s pre-eternal plan of salvation is revealed to us in a progressive revelation that established Jesus’ words and miracles as more than a show but as a fulfillment with a history and a foundation through a series of types and shadows in the Old Testament revealed in the New Testament anti-type, the Lord Jesus Christ.

You are about to see those types and shadows. You are about to see fuzzy Old Testament pictures made clear in the person of Jesus Christ. Prepare to witness the amazing consistency and prophetic nature of the Bible. Prepare to see the unmasked Jesus.

Chapter Four — The Scarlet Thread in the Old Testament

Let’s begin in the beginning.

Two Naked Vegetarians

We don’t know the exact date of creation, but let’s call it 4000
b.c
. God spoke the entire universe into existence and He called it very good (Gen. 1:31). Because everything was “very good” and there was no sin, the first humans were two unashamed naked vegetarians named Adam and Eve. They lived in a beautiful garden, communing with God. There was a river and two trees. God gave them a single rule: Don’t eat from that one tree or you will die (Gen. 2:17).

Yes, Adam and Eve were perfect, but if God had not given them free wills, then obeying God would have been a coerced, forced obedience. God gave them one rule to obey: don’t eat that!

Unfortunately, that rascally devil came along and tempted them to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree.

The woman was convinced. The fruit looked so fresh and delicious, and it would make her so wise! So
she ate
some of the fruit. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her. Then
he ate
it too. At that moment, their eyes were opened, and they suddenly
felt shame
at their nakedness. So they strung fig leaves together around their hips to
cover themselves
(Gen. 3:6–7; NLT).

This was no ordinary boo-boo. Our two naked vegetarians had everything in the world, but they still rebelled against God. What was their first response to their major league hiccup? To cover up their nakedness and shame with fig leaves. They chose fig leaves because they were vegetarians; they would never think to kill an animal to make a leather covering.

When God informed them of the consequences for their sin, we see the first shadowy reference that He will rescue mankind from the death they deserve for disobeying Him.

“God spoke to the devil, ‘From now on, you and the woman will be enemies.
. . .
He will crush your head
, and you will strike his heel’” (Gen. 3:15; NLT).

Who Is He?

This was a shadowy reference that Eve would have a human descendant (He) who would crush the work of the devil, but it will cause that human a great deal of pain (a bruised heel). Theologians call this verse the proto-evangelium, the first Gospel. While certainly not a complete picture of salvation, it is the first time the Gospel is promised. That promise was given immediately after mans’ fall into sin.

The Gospel begins in Genesis. The Cross is foreshadowed at creation. The Old Testament is not a bunch of haphazard stories strung together until a man named Jesus showed up. Because the story of the Bible is the story about Christ, He makes a fuzzy appearance immediately at creation.

Immediately after promising a Savior, God cast another shadow. “And the Lord God made clothing from
animal skins
for Adam and his wife” (Gen. 3:21; NLT).

The first animals ever butchered were killed by God Himself. Man’s effort to cover his own shame with fig leaves was not acceptable to God, so He shed the first blood that was ever spilt for the covering of man’s sin.

There are five crucial lessons to be learned from this:

1. Sin is very serious. Sin is violation of God’s law (1 John 3:4). Because God is so holy, so perfect, so righteous, so just, even the slightest infraction of His law is worthy of eternal punishment. Why? Because our sins are committed against the One who is eternally perfect.

2. Because God is loving, He has righteous anger toward sin (Ps. 7:11). He has a settled, determined wrath that will be poured out to satisfy the demands of the law. God is not capricious. He does not fly off the handle when we sin. He is a calm, just God who is the perfect accountant. Not a single sin will fall through the cracks. There will be a day of justice when every single violation of His law will be accounted for (2 Cor. 5:10).

3. Man’s efforts to appease the wrath of God are not sufficient. Not only are our efforts not enough to satisfy His demand for justice, our good works are actually seen as contaminated offerings. All of our righteous deeds are like “filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6) because they are offered from sinful, contaminated hands. We can do nothing to satisfy the righteous demands of a righteous God. Left to ourselves we are without hope.

4. We need God to intervene and rescue us.

5. We need a perfect blood sacrifice. We need a perfect man to represent sinful man, and we need the sacrifice of God Himself to appease the wrath of God Himself. We need a God-man to shed His blood for the forgiveness of our sins.

Human history begins with two shadows of God’s prearranged plan to rescue us. These are shadowy pictures indeed, but the shadows slowly lift.

Still Approximately 4,000 Years Before Christ

The very next Bible story picks up our shadowy theme. Genesis 4 is the true story of Adam and Eve’s first two sons.

Cain and Abel both offered a sacrifice to God. Cain offered God a grain offering while his brother Abel brought choice selections from his flock.

The
Lord
accepted Abel and his offering, but He did not accept Cain and his offering (Gen. 4:4–5; NLT).

God was pleased with the sacrifice of an animal offered in faith, but He was not pleased with a grain offering. We see that God’s “sacrifice of choice” is a blood-bearing animal. The shadow becomes just slightly less fuzzy.

2,050 Years Before Christ

God’s shadowy prearranged plan unfolds with a man named Abraham. God called Abraham to be the father of a great nation (Israel) by providing aged Abraham with a son. One day, God tested the faith of Abraham. On the surface this event may sound strange to us, but this event happened as a shadow of things to come.

God commanded Abraham to do something that He had forbidden: sacrifice a human being. God told Abraham to sacrifice his precious son, Isaac.

Abraham traveled to
Mount Moriah
(the mountain right outside of the not-yet-built city of Jerusalem) with Isaac and two of his servants.

Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the young men. “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.” Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the knife and the fire. As the two of them went on together, Isaac said, “
Father
?” “Yes,
my son
,” Abraham replied. “We have the wood and the fire,” said the boy, “but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” “
God will provide a lamb
, my son,” Abraham answered (Gen. 22:5–8; NLT).

Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son and God intervened.

“Lay down the knife,” the angel said. “Do not hurt the boy in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld even your beloved son from me.” Then Abraham looked up and saw a
ram
caught by its horns in a bush. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering on the altar
in place of his son
. A
braham named the place
“
The
Lord
will provide
” (Gen. 22:12–14; NLT).

Two thousand years before God’s Son, Jesus Christ, came to this earth, God gave us a shadowy picture of the death of another beloved son in Jerusalem. In this shadowy picture, the son was spared. The next time the sacrifice of a son was required, blood would be shed. That blood would be from the lamb that God would provide.

1,446 Years Before Christ

The Jews are now captive in Egypt working as slaves. God rescued them by sending ten plagues to Pharaoh. The first nine plagues failed to soften Pharaoh’s heart, so God sent plague number ten and it was a doozey. God threatened Pharaoh, “If you don’t let my people go, I will kill every firstborn child” (Exodus 11:4–8). However, God provided a way for the Israelites to escape the death of their firstborn children.

Announce to the whole community that on the tenth day of this month each family must
choose a lamb
or a young goat for a sacrifice. . . . This animal must be a
one-year-old male
, either a sheep or a goat, with
no physical defects
.

Take special care of these lambs until the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month. Then each family in
the community must slaughter its lamb
. They are to take some of the
lamb’s blood
and smear it on the top and sides of the doorframe of the house where the lamb will be eaten.

On that night, I will pass through the land of Egypt and kill all the firstborn sons and firstborn male animals in the land of Egypt. . . . The
blood
you have smeared on your doorposts will serve as a sign. When I see the
blood
, I will
pass over
you (Exod. 12:3–13; NLT).

A spotless lamb would dwell with a family for a short time and then the family would kill the lamb without breaking any of the lamb’s bones. The blood of a lamb would cause the angel of death to pass over those who put their trust in God. Shadowy, but clearer.

Jesus Christ came and dwelt with His people for a short time. He was spotless and His own killed Him. Despite the fact that He was brutally beaten and had nails pounded through His hands and feet, not a bone in His body was broken. It is the blood of Jesus that provides forgiveness of sins and allows us to escape spiritual death.

1,444 Years Before Christ

The Jews had been delivered from Egypt and they were at the foot of Mount Sinai. God provided a long list of rules for the people to obey. God instructed the priests to make an annual sacrifice for the covering of people’s sins: this was called the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).

On this day, the priests would lay their hands on the head of an unblemished lamb, signifying the transfer of sins from the human to the lamb. Then they would slit the throat of the lamb and it would bleed to death for the
covering
of their sins.

More Blood

By now you might be wondering what’s up with all the blood?

For the life of any creature is in its
blood
. I have given you the
blood
so you can make
atonement
for your sins. It is the
blood
, representing life, that brings you
atonement
(Lev. 17:11; NLT).

Just imagine the amount of blood that was shed over the centuries. This was a constant reminder to the Jewish people that blood was required for the covering of sins. Unfortunately for them, a lamb could not forgive sins.

Because a lamb doesn’t know if he is on his way to get a haircut or to become a lamb chop, a lamb sacrifice only served as a covering for sin. That is what Yom Kippur means — a Day of Covering. Even though millions of lambs were sacrificed, this was merely a picture of a need for a greater sacrifice for the complete forgiveness of sins.

The shadowy picture of sacrificial lambs is becoming progressively clearer.

600 Years before Christ

For the next eight hundred years, the children of Israel lived under this sacrificial covenant system. Because this system covered but didn’t remove their sins, people still lived with guilt. Despite rivers of blood from lamb sacrifices, forgiveness was still longed for.

Suddenly, a prophet named Jeremiah announced a new covenant that would FORGIVE their sins and remove their guilt once and for all. Needless to say, this was a big announcement.

I will
forgive
their wickedness and will never again remember their sins” (Jer. 31:34; NLT).

God announced a brand-new way to have sins not just covered, but forgiven. The question was, how would God do this? The prophet Isaiah gives us more than a hint by describing a coming Messiah. Keep in mind, this was written over six hundred years before Jesus Christ was born.

There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was
despised
and rejected — a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by. He was despised, and we did not care.

Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins! But
he was wounded and crushed for our sins
. He was
beaten
that we might have peace. He was
whipped
, and we were healed! All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
Yet the Lord laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.

He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led
as a lamb to the slaughter
. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open His mouth. From prison and
trial
they led him away to his death. But who among the people realized that
he was dying for their sins
— that he was suffering their punishment? (Isa. 53:2–8; NLT).