The question may be asked: Which comes first; the shadow or the substance? Thinking of the Old and New Testaments, the obvious answer would be: The shadows came first, followed by the Substance. That answer is correct as far as time is concerned. But as a matter of fact, the substance is always first. Were there no substance, there would be no shadow.
So it was with the types and shadows connected with the Tabernacle in the wilderness. They were “a shadow of things to come; but the body [substance] is of Christ” (Col. 2:17). Men were permitted to see the shadows first, but God had His beloved Son before Him, and knowing the end from the beginning, He designed these shadows to prefigure our Lord as a Man amongst men in His sinless life, His sacrificial death and resurrection to glory.
We must never forget that the One who was thus prefigured, was none less than the Son, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is in the unity of the Godhead. The first three verses of Hebrews 1 set this forth very clearly. God has now spoken to us “by His Son:” that is, when the Son spoke, none less than God spoke.
In this scripture note carefully that our Lord is said to have been appointed “Heir of all things,” before it is stated that He “made the worlds.” The order of these wonderful statements is most illuminating. The first carries our thoughts back into eternity; the second to His action at the beginning of time. Then we have what our Lord was in Manhood and in time: “the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His Person;” finishing with the reason why He came to earth, even to die a sacrificial death, and in resurrection to take His seat at “the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
In Exodus sixteen and in Leviticus seven chapters are occupied with the Tabernacle and the offerings. Many, alas! see nothing more in these shadows than a dry recital of meaningless customs of a primitive race long centuries ago; but this is surely because they have never made heart acquaintance with the great Antitype, who is prefigured. On the other hand the late Sir Robert Anderson, who wrote a number of helpful books, put it on record that it was by means of the spiritual lessons, learned from the types and shadows, that he was led to take a definite stand as a Christian.
What then are the outstanding features of the typical system? First, there is brought before us the holiness of God in His nature, and His absolute righteousness in His dealings with sinful men. These cannot be over-emphasized in our minds for they cannot be deviated from for a single moment. But if these only had been in question, they could well have brought man’s sinful history to a close, and judgment might have swept the offenders off the face of the earth.
God is marked by pity and compassion, for “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Love is His nature, and that nature must find a channel through which to express itself. Man failed even under the best conditions, and we may read God’s pathetic lament over His chosen people, who were, “the vineyard which Thy right hand has planted” when, “it is burned with fire, it is cut down” (Ps. 80:15-16). Had the love of God no resource? Was He baffled? A thousand times, No! Immediately following we find the words, “Let Thy hand be upon the Man of Thy right hand, upon the Son of Man whom Thou madest strong for Thyself.” God’s resource is in Christ, in whom is no failure, no disappointment. Our Lord, when on earth often took upon His lips the title, Son of Man; as, for instance, when He told His hearers that, “The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).
The typical system brings before us, in the second place, that the only way in which a thrice-holy God can be approached by sinful man is by an atoning sacrifice. The mercy-seat was the spot where God could be approached once a year with the blood of sacrifice. We can visualize the inner sanctuary of the Tabernacle, filled with the Divine presence, and the slab of pure gold resting upon the ark; the gold representing Divine righteousness. On the great day of atonement the High Priest entered with the blood of the sin-offering and sprinkled it on the gold and seven times before it. Thus the demand of righteousness was met, and the throne of righteousness became a mercy-seat.
So in the New Testament we read of Christ being, “set forth … a propitiation [the same word in the original as mercy-seat] through faith in His blood” (Rom. 3:25). And again, twice in John’s first Epistle is Christ our “propitiation” so that the need of any poor sinner can be met. Thus “mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Ps. 85:10). What a triumph of Divine love!
The unending sacrifices on Jewish altars, whether, “Burnt,” “meat,” “peace,” “sin,” “trespass,” presented in type the atoning death of our Lord from different aspects. Putting them all together we get a full view of what that death meant for God and for us.
An illustration may help here. We all know that light is colourless, yet hidden in it are vivid colours, revealed in the beautiful hues of the rainbow. So we learn in the Gospels the great fact of the death of Christ, whilst we go to the indications given to us in Old Testament types, illumined by the teaching of New Testament epistles, to fill out for us in detail the meaning of that wondrous death.
We are told of course, “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins,” and that therefore God in them had “no pleasure” (Heb. 10:4, 6). They were but shadows pointing on to the great substance. When on the cross the Lord cried, “It is finished,” and gave up the ghost, “the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom” (Matt. 27:51). This was an act of God, showing that the glorious substance having come, the shadows must pass away.
The sacrifices under the law fell into two classes:those to which the expression “sweet savour” was applied, and those that could not be so described. The “sweet savour” offerings were the burnt, the meat and the peace offerings. Those not so described were the sin and trespass offerings. Yet all were descriptive from different points of view of the sacrificial death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The former looked at the atoning death of our Lord as being the supreme act of devotedness to the Father’s will, and therefore the delight of the Father’s heart. The latter looked at the same death as meeting the awful judgment of God against our sins. This latter aspect of the death of Christ is the one that an anxious sinner first realizes.
When we think of the burnt offering, we realize that never was God more glorified and never was our Lord more dear to Him than when Christ, “through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God” (Heb. 9:14). The Lord’s supper affords a beautiful reminder of the “sweet savour” aspect of the death of Christ. The Apostle wrote, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16). What a fearsome cup of Divine wrath the Lord took from the hand of God, the draining of which to its last dark drop, turned it into the cup of blessing which we bless.
The meat offering set forth our Lord’s sinless and perfect life, right up to the moment when He “yielded up the ghost” (Matt. 27:50). All went up as a “sweet savour” to God.
The peace offering does not signify the making of peace with God, which has been most blessedly and vitally accomplished, but rather the sharing in precious communion with God, of all that wondrous peace and favour before Himself, that the death of Christ has brought us into.
There remain the offerings for sin and for trespass, which were not for a “sweet savour.” With the burnt offering the laying on of the hands of the offerer signified that all the value and acceptability of the offering was transferred to his account. He stood in the sweet-savour of the offering. The anti-type of this we get in the scripture, “He has made us accepted in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:6). This is the only place in the New Testament where our Lord is described thus.
The sin offering presents the contrast to this, for when the offerer placed his hands on it, all the sins and demerit of the offerer were transferred to the sacrifice, which therefore came under the fire of God’s judgment. We are thus reminded of the very solemn scripture, “He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).
Another point of contrast between the two kinds of offerings is that the former were burned on the brazen altar inside the sacred enclosure, whereas the latter were burned “without the camp (Lev. 4:12, 21), expressive of God’s utmost detestation of sin. It reminds us of the fact that, “Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate” (Heb. 13:12).
As a last indication of how the offerings for a sweet savour were differentiated from those that were not, we may mention that the Hebrew word for “burning,” in connection with the former, is one used in connection with incense when its fragrance is brought out. A completely different word is used for the sin offering, indicating not incense going up as a delight to God, but His wrath poured down on the sacrifice, until it is utterly consumed. This points forward to the bitter cry of our Lord on the accursed tree, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). All words fail us, when we would express what our Lord suffered on our account. Eternity will be needed to express our praise.
Creation was necessary to afford a platform on which God could carry out His wondrous plan. The shadows of that plan are given to us in the tabernacle and its services. The earth on which we live is but the scaffolding for the erection of the building of God for all eternity. The sabbath was but a shadow of God’s abiding rest, when He will be all and in all for ever and ever.
The scaffolding will be taken down one day. Then, “The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10). Then the building of God will arise majestic and eternal to God’s glory and everlasting praise. God will yet rest in the complacency of His love, dwelling among His redeemed people, in a scene where there shall be no tears, no pain, no sorrow, no death.
And let us remember that, “He which testifies these things says, Surely I come quickly.” Our response surely is, “Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).