In the weeks before Jesus went up to Jerusalem to die, he had told his disciples three times what was going to happen. The first time was after the conversation at Caesarea Philippi where Peter had declared, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Matthew 16 21 From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
After Transfiguration Jesus said this.
Matthew 17 22 …. ‘The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. 23 They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life.’ And the disciples were filled with grief.
Matthew 20 17 … On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, 18 ‘We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death 19 and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified.’
As he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey in triumph, Jesus knew very well that a week later he would be nailed to a cross. He knew that it was God’s plan that he should sacrifice his life.
Mark 10 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’
In John 10 Jesus taught, 11 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. …
14 ‘I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me 15…. …and I lay down my life for the sheep. … 17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life …. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.
John the Baptist had announced that Jesus was the Lamb of God.
John 1 29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
35 The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. 36 When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”
Jesus came to be the Saviour of the world. To set people free from the penalty and the punishment of their sins. The title, “The Lamb of God”, would have reminded any Jew of at least three parts of the Old Testament. Firstly, it points to the Passover Lambs. When the Tenth Plague of the death of the firstborn came on Egypt, only the children of the Israelites would be spared, and that was because they had sacrificed a lamb and smeared the blood of the sacrifice on their doors. The Passover Lamb was a pattern, a type, of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for the sins of the world. In echoes of the Exodus, the Lamb of God brings salvation and freedom to God’s chosen people.
Secondly, the Lamb of God would remind any Jew of the most important sacrifice of the year, which was offered on the Day of Atonement. Just once a year, only one man, the great High Priest was allowed into the most holy place in the Temple, the Holy of Holies, to present this sacrifice for sin. This sacrifice on the Day of Atonement was also a type, or a pattern, for Christ the Lamb of God who deals with all the sins of all the people.
The Letter to the Hebrews picks up this understanding of Jesus’s death.
Hebrews 9 11 … Christ came as high priest … 12 He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, so obtaining eternal redemption. … 14 How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!
27 …. he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 … Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many;
So the Passover Lamb and the lamb sacrificed on the Day of Atonement are patterns, or types, for the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. But there are also two human figures in the Old Testament who point forward specifically to Jesus’s death. We have seen other patterns of the Saviour in Moses and Joseph and last week in Melchizedek the king and priest.
Then we have talked many times about the prophesy in Isaiah chapter 53 of the Suffering Servant who would sacrifice his life so that sin could be forgiven.
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors.
But this sacrifice was God’s way of dealing with the sins of the world.
Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, …. and he will bear their iniquities.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.
For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
These are all things the prophet Isaiah foretold about God’s Suffering Servant.” Jesus himself knew that he would be fulfilling those prophecies by dying on the cross for the sins of the world. “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
But there is one more Old Testament figure who the church through the ages has interpreted as a type, or pattern, for Christ. That is Isaac in the story of Abraham offering Isaac on Mount Moriah. There are actually a number of similarities between Isaac and Jesus. The birth of Isaac was promised repeatedly; so was the coming of Jesus Christ. Both were “miracle babies”. Abraham and Sarah were too old to have children, yet Isaac was born, because as God said to Abraham, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14) Just as Isaac’s birth was the result of the supernatural power of God so too was Jesus’s Virgin Birth. Isaac was the only and dearly beloved son of his father; Jesus Christ is the only-begotten and beloved Son of God, in whom His Father is well pleased. Isaac was obedient to his father, and Jesus was obedient to His Heavenly Father, to death, even to death on the Cross. Some preachers have even noticed how just as Isaac himself carried up the mountain the wood on which he was to be sacrifices, so in the same way Jesus carried up to Calvary the Cross on which He was to die.
When we read Genesis 22 we need to pay close attention to verse 1. Some time later God tested Abraham. We need to understand that it was never God’s intention that Isaac would die or that Abraham would kill him. The whole incident was God testing Abraham’s faith and Abraham’s obedience. Would Abraham actually obey a command which would mean the end of all God’s promises to him.
2 Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain that I will show you.’
Isaac was Abraham’s beloved and only son. More than that, all the promises God had made to Abraham would be channelled through Isaac.
Genesis 17 19 … ‘your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. 20 And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation.
Descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. A great nation and a promised land. All were to come through Isaac, and would be lost if Isaac died as a child. God does sometimes calls his servants to give up things which we hold most dearly, to show that we love and obey and trust Him. This was a test of loyalty, a test of priorities, a way for Abraham to show that he loved God with all his heart and soul and strength and mind. It was also a test of obedience
9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’
‘Here I am,’ he replied.
Let’s pause on that cliffhanger to note that God was testing Abraham but it was also a test of obedience for Isaac. To allow his father to tie him up and lay him on the altar. This was a test of Abraham’s faith in God, but also of Isaac’s faith in his father. The catalogue of the great Old Testament heroes of faith in Hebrews chapter 11 celebrates Abraham’s faith. It makes clear to us that the whole experience was a test of Abraham’s faith. God never actually intended Abraham to kill his son. God was just wanting to find out how much Abraham trusted him or whether there were limits to his obedience.
Hebrews 11:17-19 17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.
God will sometimes test OUR love, OUR obedience, OUR faith. God will sometimes demand sacrifices from us too! Are there limits to our obedience or our faith? Are there things in our lives which come between us and God?
God will provide! Although he could not have known what God had planned in this test of faith, Abraham still trusted in God. And God did provide. Just in time the angel spoke from heaven.
12 ‘Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.’
13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.’
God was only demanding from Abraham the same sacrifice He himself would give for the salvation of the world. Abraham was challenged to give up His only son Isaac. God the Father DID give up His only Son Jesus Christ for the sins of the world. Jesus was the substitute. Jesus died not only in the place of Barabbas but in the place of every sinner who truly repents and believes the gospel.
There is so much symbolism in this story. Abraham representing the Father willing to sacrifice up his only Son. Isaac representing Jesus the obedient son, the one would die as the perfect offering for sin. God has provided such a wonderful Saviour! Abraham’s love and obedience and faith released great blessings not only for him and his family but for the whole world. How much more has Christ’s sacrifice brought us all the blessings of forgiveness and eternal life. Isaac was indeed a pattern, a type, for Christ. The big difference was that Isaac did not die. Jesus did die.
God provided the sacrifice for Abraham, the ram caught by its horns. And God himself did provide the sacrificial Lamb of God. That is how 1 Peter explains Jesus’ death on the cross.
1 Peter 1 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.
So Isaac was a pattern for Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. God loves us so much! When Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem, and as he entered the city riding on a donkey, he knew he was going to die there. He knew that just a week later he would be nailed to the cross. Still Jesus went. That is how much God loved the world! That is how much Jesus loved you and me!

I want to introduce us this morning to Melchizedek. Melchizedek is possibly the most enigmatic person we meet in the whole of the Old Testament. He appears briefly in just three verses of Genesis 14 and gets one more mention in Psalm 110. But then Melchizedek is named four times in Hebrews chapters 5, 6 and 7. We first meet this extraordinary and mysterious individual in Genesis 14 when Melchizedek blesses Abraham and Abraham responds by giving him an offering of one tenth of everything he had.

Who was Melchizedek?

Genesis 14:18-20 18 Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, 19 and he blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.20 And blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

We come to Melchizedek today because we have been looking at figures in the Old Testament whose lives point forward in some way to Jesus. We have thought about Adam who brought sin and death and condemnation, in contrast to Jesus who brings us salvation. We have talked about Joseph, and Moses who foreshadowed Jesus as a Saviour. And last week we thought about Elijah the great prophet who won a decisive victory over evil. From the Early Church pretty much until the Reformation, typology was at the heart of the way Christians understood the Old Testament. Like these others, Melchizedek serves as a pattern, or a type, of Christ. That link is made very clear both in the Old Testament and the New.
Apart from Genesis 14, the one other mention Melchizedek gets in the Old Testament comes in Psalm 110. Psalm 110 was understood by the Jews to be a prophecy referring to the Messiah. Jesus applied the beginning of that Psalm to the Messiah and in Acts 2 Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost quoted that verse to demonstrate that Jesus was the Messiah.
Looking forward to the Messiah, in verse 4 Psalm 110 says this.

Psalm 110:4 The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind:
‘You are a priest for ever, in the order of Melchizedek.’

The tasks of the priests were to represent the people before God and represent God to the people, and to offer sacrifices for sin. Psalm 110 makes a very clear link between Jesus and Melchizedek. The Messiah will be a priest forever, a priest like Melchizedek. And the Letter to the Hebrews unwraps this idea for us. Hebrews talks a lot about Jesus being our great High Priest. And in no less than four separate places, Hebrews quotes Psalm 110 to describe Jesus as “a priest in the order of Melchizedek”. So if we want to understand what those parts of Hebrews tell us about Jesus as our great High Priest, we need to understand what the writer believed about Melchizedek

WHAT KIND OF A PRIEST WAS MELCHIZEDEK?

Hebrews 7:1 This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, 2 and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First, his name means “king of righteousness”; then also, “king of Salem” means “king of peace.” 3 Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, like the Son of God he remains a priest forever.

Genesis tells us that Melchizedek was a priest serving God Most High, many centuries before God appointed the tribe of Levi to be the priests serving Israel after the Exodus. Melchizedek was also A KING. Zedek means righteousness so he was KING OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. And he was KING Of SALEM which means King of Peace. After the Exodus in the nation of Israel the roles of King and Priest would be strictly separated. Kings were not allowed to offer sacrifices – that was the priest’s job. Yet Melchizedek was both a priest AND a King.
But more than that. The Jews in the first century AD believed that Melchizedek was in some senses at least ETERNAL.
Hebrews 7 3 Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, like the Son of God he remains a priest forever.
Because the Old Testament text doesn’t talk about his birth or his death, by the time of Jesus, Jews thought of Melchizedek as a very special person and even considered him to be eternal. There is a fragment in the Dead Sea Scrolls dating back to around 100 BC which regards Melchizedek in some senses as a divine being. Another Jewish book written sometime in the 1st century AD called the Second Book of Enoch contains a section called “The Exaltation of Melchizedek” which similarly portrays Melchizedek as more than human. The Jews thought of Melchizedek as an eternal King and Priest – a different kind of priest to all those who would follow him under the Jewish Law. His priesthood was not bounded by mortality – he would be a priest forever!
For this reason the Jews regarded Melchizedek as a better kind of priest than all who followed him.
IN WHAT WAYS WAS THE PRIESTHOOD OF MELCHIZEDEK SUPERIOR TO THE PRIESTS OF ISRAEL?
The Levites were priests – Melchizedek was both a King and a priest. The Levites were mortal – Melchizedek’s priesthood was eternal. But then there was even more than that!

How great Melchizedek was

Hebrews 7 4 Just think how great he was: Even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of the plunder! 5 Now the law requires the descendants of Levi who become priests to collect a tenth from the people—that is, their brothers—even though their brothers are descended from Abraham. 6 This man, however, did not trace his descent from Levi, yet he collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. 7 And without doubt the lesser person is blessed by the greater. 8 In the one case, the tenth is collected by men who die; but in the other case, by him who is declared to be living. 9 One might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth, paid the tenth through Abraham, 10 because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor.

Abraham, and through him all his descendants including all the priests of Israel who were ever to come, paid their tithes to Melchizedek because he was greater than them all. And in turn Melchizedek blessed Abraham and his descendants – and the lesser is blessed by the greater. So that’s how great Melchizedek was. A priest who was greater than all the Levitical priests who would follow him. When we see just how great Melchizedek was, we can begin to understand what Hebrews is saying when it describes Jesus as a priest of the order of Melchizedek.
So HOW WAS JESUS LIKE MELCHIZEDEK?
4 The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”

Hebrews picks up this idea in several places and explicitly says that Psalm 110 was talking about Jesus. We jumped past the first mention of it which we find back in Hebrews 5:6.

How was Jesus a high priest?

Hebrews 5:1 Every high priest is selected from among men and is appointed to represent them in matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. 2 He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. 3 This is why he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for the sins of the people.
4 No one takes this honor upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was. 5 So Christ also did not take upon himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him,
“You are my Son; today I have become your Father.”
6 And he says in another place, “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”
9 … once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him 10 and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

The Levites were the priests in Israel just because they were the descendants of Levi. Hebrews tells us that Jesus was a priest like Melchizedek because God appointed Him to be so. And that is why Jesus is able to bring salvation which is eternal.

Jesus is not a priest like all the Levites. Like Melchizedek, Jesus has a priesthood which is eternal. Hebrews 6 repeats this same very important point.
619 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.

Like Melchizedek, Jesus is King of Righteousness and King of Peace. Like Melchizedek Jesus is eternal. For that reason

JESUS’S PRIESTHOOD IS SUPERIOR TO ALL OTHER PRIESTS

Hebrews 7:11 If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it the law was given to the people), why was there still need for another priest to come—one in the order of Melchizedek, not in the order of Aaron?
7:15 And what we have said is even more clear if another priest like Melchizedek appears, 16 one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life. 17 For it is declared:
“You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”

So Hebrews is saying to us, Jesus is a better priest. He is of the order of Melchizedek. His priesthood, like Melchizedek’s, comes from His eternal life. Hebrews 7 continues,

Hebrews 7:20 And it was not without an oath! Others became priests without any oath, 21 but he became a priest with an oath when God said to him:
“The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever.’ ”
22 Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.
23 Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; 24 but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. 25 Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.

So Jesus is a better priest than all the descendants of Levi could be, because He is eternal. His priesthood lasts forever. And Jesus is also superior to all the other priests, even Melchizedek, because He offered once and for all a perfect sacrifice for sins – His own life.

Jesus’s perfect sacrifice

Hebrews 7:26 Such a high priest meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. 27 Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. 28 For the law appoints as high priests men who are weak; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever.
8:1 The point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, 2 and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man.

So Jesus is the greatest High Priest of all. His sacrifice was perfect and all-sufficient. His priesthood is eternal. And the New Covenant which Jesus’s death has instituted is superior to God’s Old Covenant with Israel.
The Letter to the Hebrews was written to encourage Christians to hang on in there when the going gets tough, even through persecution and suffering. Chapters 5 to 8 are telling us that Jesus is indeed the greatest High Priest, even greater than the eternal priest the enigmatic Melchizedek. Jesus’s sacrifice was perfect and all-sufficient. Because Jesus is such a great High Priest we can be sure of at least three things. Hang on in there, because all our sins have been dealt with by his perfect sacrifice. Hang on in there, because we have complete access to God and to His throne of grace. And hang on in there, because Jesus the greatest High Priest is Himself even now interceding on our behalf.

Jesus is our great High Priest

Hebrews 6:19 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.

Hebrews 7:24 … because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. 25 Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.

Which people from the Old Testament do you think get the most mentions in the Four Gospels? Obviously top of the league is great King David with 39 appearances, closely followed by Moses at 38. Abraham is named 32 times. But the next might be a surprise to you. Not Jacob with 14 mentions or Isaac with just 7. It is the prophet Elijah, whose whole story only occupies 5 chapters in the Old Testament, who appears 26 times in the Gospels.
If we are comparing people in the New Testament with those in the Old Testament, when we think of Elijah we would immediately think of John the Baptist. The Old Testament foretold that God would send a Messenger to prepare the way for the nation of Israel to welcome her Saviour the Messiah.
Malachi 4 5 ‘See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.’
So the Jews were expecting God’s Messenger to come, to prepare the way for the Saviour, and that the Messenger would be Elijah. Jesus actually identified John the Baptist as the fulfilment of those prophecies.
Matthew 11 14 … he is the Elijah who was to come.
John the Baptist was certainly Elijah returning to prepare the way for the Saviour and the day of salvation. But this morning I want us to make a different comparison and see the many ways in which Elijah also foreshadowed the life of Jesus himself.

During Lent we have already thought about three individuals whose lives serve as types, or patterns, for the life of Jesus. Adam brought us condemnation but Jesus bought us salvation. As in Adam all die so in Christ all are made alive. Joseph was the physical saviour of the descendants of Abraham and of the whole region of Egypt. Jesus is the spiritual saviour of everybody who puts their trust in him. Last week we saw how Moses what the saviour of the Israelites, and more than that all the events of the Exodus give us a pattern for the wonderful salvation we received through Christ. Escape from slavery and death to freedom and eternal life – all through the death of Christ our Passover Lamb and the glorious miracle of his resurrection from the dead.
Elijah foreshadowed John the Baptist but there were also many ways in which Elijah’s life pointed forward to Jesus as well. Elijah was a type, or a pattern, of Christ. We can start by pointing out that during Jesus’s ministry there were some people who did identify Jesus was Elijah.
While Jesus and his disciples were preaching throughout Galilee, we read this.
Mark 6 14 King Herod heard about this, for Jesus’ name had become well known. Some were saying, “John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.”
15 Others said, “He is Elijah.”
And still others claimed, “He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago.”
The disciples reported the same.
Matthew 16 13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’
14 They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’
The reason people were thinking that Jesus was Elijah was that

BOTH JESUS AND ELIJAH WERE GREAT PROPHETS
Both had an itinerant, travelling ministry.
Matthew 8 20 Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

Both Jesus and Elijah brought God’s love and blessing to the poor and oppressed and even to those outside Israel.

Both Jesus and Elijah were preaching God’s righteousness, calling a nation who had rejected their God to repentance.

Both were hated and feared by the King and by the nation’s leaders, because the common people recognised them as prophets.

Both Jesus and Elijah worked powerful miracles, signs and wonders.
They fed the hungry. They healed the sick. They even raised dead people back to life again. One comparison is particularly significant. They each blessed poor widows in desperate situations. We know the story of Jesus feeding 5000 families with just five loaves and two fishes. But in Elijah’s time, during a desperate famine, God worked a miracle with a jar of flour and a jar of oil which never ran out. A widow and her son were saved. When Jesus gave his first sermon and talked about taking God’s blessings to outsiders, and to the poor and the needy, he compared his ministry to that of Elijah.
Luke 4 24 “I tell you the truth,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon.

Both Jesus and Elijah were despised and rejected by God’s own people.

Both Jesus and Elijah could well be described as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”

Being God’s messenger always brings opposition and persecution and suffering. You might remember the story of how discouraged and depressed Elijah became, foreshadowing Jesus’s experiences of rejection and suffering. How Elijah just wanted to die. Remember how God appeared to Elijah on Mount Horeb and comforted him, not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in the still small voice of calm. Elijah as one of the greatest Old Testament prophets pointed forward to Jesus as the greatest messenger from God. And Elijah’s sufferings as a prophet foreshadowed Jesus’s sufferings.

Jesus is like Elijah because
BOTH JESUS AND ELIJAH WON GREAT VICTORIES OVER EVIL.

In the contest on Mount Carmel against the prophets of Baal, God demonstrated his superiority over the false gods of the surrounding nations.
36 At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: ‘LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. 37 Answer me, LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.’
38 Then the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.
39 When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, ‘The LORD—he is God! The LORD—he is God!’
The contest on Mount Carmel was a decisive victory over the false gods who were leading the people away from God.
Throughout his ministry Jesus was defeating the powers of evil.
1 John 3 8 The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.
We thought about this in our evening Zoom Church last week. Jesus did not only come to save human beings from death. At the same time he came to set the world free from the grip of the devil. A large part of that was his ministry of driving out demons, setting free those who were imprisoned by evil.
Matthew 12 28 But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
29 “Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house.
In that little parable of disarming the strong man, the strong man represents the devil and Jesus is represented by the person plundering his possessions which is a picture of Jesus driving out demons. Jesus was able to command the demons because he had already “tied up” the devil. And Jesus accomplished that at the very beginning of His ministry when he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. Jesus was tempted. But He did not give in to temptation. Jesus was the first human being ever who did not give in to the devil’s temptations. He proved there that He was stronger than the devil. It was there in the wilderness that Jesus “bound the strong man”. From that point on, the battle was won. Demons would have to obey Jesus every time!
Jesus came to release the prisoners and set the captives free – to set people free from evil by driving out demons. But the decisive victory over the devil and all the powers of evil was won on the cross. Just a few days before he died Jesus said this.
John 12 31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. 32 But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”
The hour has arrived. The hour which Jesus had been anticipating every day of his life was getting very close indeed. It would be a vital hour not just for Jesus but for the whole world, the whole of humanity in every age. Jesus would be glorified – but that would be through his death. The judgment and the salvation of the whole world would hang on that one hour. For Jesus it would be the hour of his departure – the hour Jesus had to leave the world in death. But that be the hour when the devil was finally defeated and the grip of evil on the world would be broken for good. On the cross Christ not only paid the penalty for our sin. He also won the victory over the devil and all the powers of evil.
Colossians 2 13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
It was by the sacrifice of his death on the cross that Jesus set human beings free from the grip which the devil has over us all. We were slaves of sin – Jesus’s death sets us free.
Hebrews 2 14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
Both Elijah and Jesus went into battle with evil. Just as Elijah won that decisive victory over the prophets of the false god Baal on Mount Carmel, even more so on the cross Jesus defeated the devil and set us free. As we put our trust in Jesus, we share in the benefits of his victory. We have overcome, because he has overcome.
And there is just one more way in which the life of Elijah foreshadowed the life of the Jesus.
SPOILER ALERT! If you don’t want to know how the story of Easter ends, look away now.

Jesus is like Elijah because
BOTH JESUS AND ELIJAH LIVE ON FOREVER
This is how the life of Elijah ends.
2 Kings 2 11 As (Elijah and Elisha) were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. 12 Elisha saw this and cried out, ‘My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!’ And Elisha saw him no more.
Elijah was one of the two people who the Old Testament tells us went straight to heaven without dying. His life had a very happy ending. He was still alive!
In contrast, Jesus was not spared death. But the Bible tells us that his life had an even more glorious end. The tomb was empty. Jesus rose from the dead, never more to die. Elijah foreshadows Jesus because both are alive forever,
And after his resurrection, just as Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind, we read in Acts 1 that Jesus ascended to heaven.
9 After (Jesus) said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.’
Jesus and Elijah. Mighty prophets, bringing God’s message of judgment and salvation and calling God’s people to repentance. Working miracles, feeding the hungry, healing the sick and even raising the dead. Defeating the powers of evil. And finally triumphing over death, alive forevermore.
Jesus asked in Matthew 16:13 … , ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’
14 They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’
15 ‘But what about you?’ he asked. ‘Who do you say I am?’
16 Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’

In 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 7, the apostle Paul uses a very strange phrase. He says,
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. What exactly did Paul mean in 1 Corinthians 5:7 when he called Christ “our Passover Lamb”?
For our sermons in Lent we are looking at individuals in the Old Testament whose lives foreshadowed in some ways the life of Jesus and God’s masterplan of salvation. We compared Adam who brought us condemnation with Jesus who bought us salvation. And we thought about Joseph, who was physically the saviour of the descendants of Abraham and the whole nation of Egypt when the seven years of famine came. Joseph points forward to Jesus the spiritual saviour of all who put their trust in him. In both situations God was working behind the scenes to bring salvation out of suffering. But in the history of Israel there was another individual who was even more a saviour to the nation. Moses, the Lawgiver.
What we are looking at here is called typology. The Old Testament figure is described as a type, or a pattern, of Jesus. With Moses it is not only his life, but also all the events of the Exodus which foreshadow the wonderful salvation which God has provided for us through our Lord Jesus Christ. In this way the Exodus itself is also a type or a pattern for our salvation. And in particular, the Passover Lamb is a type or a pattern for Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross.
We can start by briefly comparing the lives of Moses and Jesus. Although he was a Hebrew baby, Moses was raised in Egypt. Jesus was also a Jew, a descendant of Abraham. After he was born in Bethlehem, Jesus was taken by Mary and Joseph to Egypt and spent two years there to escape from Herod. Moses was born at a time when Pharaoh was murdering all the boys born to Hebrew mothers. After Jesus was born Herod slaughtered all the baby boys in Bethlehem. Both Moses and Jesus spent the early parts of their lives in obscurity, Moses hiding from Pharaoh in Midian and Jesus in a back-of-beyond village called Nazareth. Moses and Jesus both brought salvation with powerful miracles. God sent ten plagues on Egypt. Jesus brought God’s Kingly Rule through signs and wonders, miracles of healing and deliverance. Moses was the Lawgiver, who brought the Covenant and the Jewish Law which created the Nation of Israel. The teachings of Jesus have created the church.
So Moses was the Saviour of Israel as Jesus is the Saviour of all who receive forgiveness and eternal life through him. The events of the Exodus fifteen hundred years earlier foreshadow the salvation which Jesus brings us in a number of ways. As we understand what God did for the Israelites in the Exodus, so we understand better the glorious salvation we ourselves have received.

WHAT WE ARE SAVED FROM
Escape from slavery
Remember the slavery the Israelites were escaping from. The cruelty of the slave masters, the forced labour, making bricks without straw! Pharaoh commanding the midwives to kill any new-born baby boys for decades. No wonder the Israelites ran away so fast!
But the Bible tells us that without Christ, all of us were once slaves to sin.
Jesus said in John 8:34 “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
Romans 6 16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. … 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Just as much as the Israelites were slaves of the Egyptians, so all of us are slaves to sin. We need God to rescue us just as much as the Israelites did, not from physical slavery but from spiritual slavery to sin.
The Israelites ran away from Egypt “in haste”! There wasn’t time for the dough to rise as they baked their bread – and they spent a whole week eating unleavened bread to help them remember that urgency, that hurry. Sometimes we Christians are not in so much of a hurry to run away from the life of slavery to sin which God rescues us from. Sometimes we would rather stay in Egypt than make haste to enter the promised land.
Escape from the death of the firstborn
We saw two weeks ago how Adam’s sin brought condemnation on all human beings. God’s judgment brought physical death in this life and spiritual death through eternal separation from God. The Tenth Plague on Egypt, the death of the Firstborn, was a visual aid of the death which is a consequence of sin for all people.
By nature we are spiritually dead, cut off from God by our sins. In Adam all die. But Jesus offers us life instead of death. Just as God rescued his people from the Plague on the Firstborn, so Jesus rescues us from death and brings us life in all its fulness, life which not even death can take away. Escape from slavery and escape from death. That is what we are saved from.

WHAT WE ARE SAVED TO
God brought the Israelites to the promised land
Instead of a life of slavery, God brought the people of Israel to the land he had promised to their ancestors Abraham and Isaac and Jacob centuries before. The Promised Land flowing with milk and honey. A place of peace and blessing. A place where they could worship and serve God in complete freedom and safety. But the blessings of the promised land are only a faint foretaste of all the blessings God pours out on those who put their trust in Jesus.
God brings us to life in all its fulness and glory forever
Our sins are forgiven. We share Christ’s resurrection life – eternal life, life in all its fullness. We have the happy certainty of heaven, an inheritance which can never perish, spoil or fade. The
Holy Spirit lives inside us, bringing the presence of Jesus into our hearts. We have a personal relationship with God as our loving heavenly Father. We belong to the Church, God’s forever family. God answers our prayers and he gives us victory over sin and the devil – we will be talking about that in our sermon this evening. God’s grace is always with us, strengthening us in times of need. So we are filled with God’s love and joy and peace. All these wonderful blessings of salvation which are worth so much more than pearls or diamonds or gold or great big houses: the buried treasure and the pearl of great price which is the Kingdom of God. This is what we are saved to.

WHAT WE ARE SAVED BY
All the events of the Exodus were part of God’s masterplan of salvation for Israel, right from when he first called Moses from the Burning Bush to the day they took possession of the Promised Land under Joshua. But two events were particularly important. The first was
The Sacrifice of the Passover lamb
Exodus 12 5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. …. slaughter them at twilight. 7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door-frames of the houses where they eat the lambs ….it is the LORD’s Passover.
12 ‘On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. 13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
The lamb, the sheep or the goat without defect, died so that its blood would give protection against the Destroyer which would kill all the firstborn in Egypt. All the ten plagues on Egypt were God’s punishment on the sins of the Egyptians who had exploited the Israelites and on the demonic gods of Egypt they served. This final plague brought death which is the consequence of sin.
The Passover reminds us that all of us deserve death. Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death,. The consequence of sin is always death. Physical death. And ultimately spiritual death. Eternal separation from God who is the only source of life.
For the Israelites it was the death of the Passover lamb who saved their firstborn from death. And the apostle Paul reminds us that Christ is our Passover Lamb, Christ was sacrificed so that death the destroyer would pass over our houses, leaving us living.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The greater sacrifice of the cross
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. (1 Corinthians 5:7)
The sacrifice of the Passover lambs rescued Israel but it was the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross which brings salvation to all believers.
John 1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
It was Jesus’s death on the cross which paid the penalty for the sins of the world as he gave his life as the ransom for the many.
1 Peter 1 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.
The events of the Exodus are a type, or pattern foreshadowing our salvation. But it is particularly the Passover Lamb which is a pattern pointing forward to Christ’s death on the cross.
Then there is a second event in the Exodus which revealed God’s power and glory to the Israelites and the Egyptians.
The miracle of escape across the Red Sea
Exodus 14 18 The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen.” …
21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the LORD drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, 22 and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.
30 That day the LORD saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. 31 And when the Israelites saw the great power the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.
God parted the waters of the Red Sea so that hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of slaves and descendants of Abraham could escape in safety. And then he brought judgment on the pursuing Egyptian armies by drowning them all as the waters closed in again. More than any other event, this mighty miracle was the foundation of the nation of Israel. But crossing the Red Sea only foreshadows another miracle.
The greater miracle of the resurrection
Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the world. And then God raised Jesus from the dead, the firstborn from among the dead. A miracle which was so much greater and more wonderful even than the Parting of the Red Sea.
Just as Moses was a Saviour for Israel, how much more is our Lord Jesus Christ the Saviour for all who follow him. Escape from slavery and escape from death. Escape to eternal life in all its fulness. Escape through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God and the glorious miracle of the resurrection.
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

In the Old Testament, Almighty God was the Saviour of Israel. He rescued Abraham’s descendants from slavery in Egypt and gave them the covenant which them into his chosen people. On many occasions God saved his people by giving them victory in battle. He saved them by bringing the faithful remnant back from Exile. And through the prophets God made very many promises to send them a Saviour.
At the same time over those centuries there were particular individuals who God used as he was bringing his salvation to his chosen people. Humanly speaking, they could be described as saviours of Israel. Next week we will think about the important part Moses and the Exodus played in the history of Israel. This week we are going to look five hundred years earlier at how Abraham’s descendants came to be in Egypt in the first place. All that came about through a most unlikely saviour, Abraham’s great grandson, Joseph.
The story of Joseph was important not only for the descendants of Abraham and Jacob but also for the millions of Egyptians alive then. It was significant for the future of the Egyptian Empire and Culture and their impact on the rise of civilisation. The story of Joseph is the story of how God used one of his servants to save the nation of Egypt, the children of Abraham and the whole surrounding region from death and disaster when the seven years of famine struck.
This was a vitally important occasion when God in His mercy intervened in the history of the world. Joseph became the Saviour not only of Egypt, but of the whole of the Ancient Near East! It all came about because God had given Joseph the ability to interpret dreams. The Egyptian ruler the Pharaoh experienced two very disturbing dreams. In the first, seven thin ugly cows came up out of the river Nile and ate up seven sleek fat cows. In the second, seven thin and wind-scorched heads of grain swallowed up seven healthy grains. God revealed to Joseph that the interpretation of the dreams was a solemn warning to Pharaoh.
Genesis 41 28 “ … God has shown Pharaoh what he is about to do. 29 Seven years of great abundance are coming throughout the land of Egypt, 30 but seven years of famine will follow them. Then all the abundance in Egypt will be forgotten, and the famine will ravage the land. 31 The abundance in the land will not be remembered, because the famine that follows it will be so severe. 32 The reason the dream was given to Pharaoh in two forms is that the matter has been firmly decided by God, and God will do it soon.
Genesis makes clear that the famine is in God’s hands – it is something that GOD will do. Perhaps, like the plagues of Egypt which would come 500 years later, it was the hand of God in Judgement on the false gods the Egyptians worshipped instead of worshipping the one true and living God. Perhaps it was part of God’s cosmic masterplan to humble nations like Egypt and bring them back to their Creator again. Genesis does not explain why these things would happen. But it does indicate the seriousness of the crisis which was to unfold. We also see in Genesis 41 the great mercy of God. Even though the famine was pre-determined, God was also acting to bring salvation within it. Through Joseph, God would make sure that the suffering and damage from that famine was minimised.
The story tells us how God had manoeuvred his servant Joseph into a position where he could be used in this way. It all started when God gave dreams to Joseph in Canaan which provoked his brothers to jealousy and hatred, so much so that they sold Joseph into slavery. Then in Egypt, false accusations by Potiphar’s wife put Joseph in prison so he could meet Pharaoh’s cupbearer and baker to interpret their dreams. That was two whole years Joseph would meet Pharaoh!
Over all those years from Canaan to Egypt , God was doing two things in Joseph’s life. By His sovereign providence God was bringing Joseph into the right place at right time, through an intricate chain of events all so that he could be introduced to Pharaoh at the proper time. But then secondly, God was preparing Joseph. God was humbling him by his experiences of rejection, slavery and imprisonment, God was changing Joseph so that the spoiled brat with the Technicolour Dreamcoat could be used by God when the time came.
In every part of life, but especially during the hard times, we need to remember that God works in the lives of individuals, but not just to bless US. God also works to purify us and refine us and change us into the kind of people He can use for His glory. At the same time, God is at work behind the scenes to bring us to the right place at the right time for his purposes. So when Pharaoh’s own magicians and wise men couldn’t interpret his dreams, his cupbearer told him about Joseph.
All according to his sovereign plan, God brought Joseph out of prison to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams. And the masterplan of salvation didn’t end with delivering that warning. Joseph would have an even more important role in saving Egypt from disaster. Pharaoh appointed Joseph to be his right-hand man to collect reserves of food ready for the years of famine. God had brought Joseph into a position where Pharaoh would trust him, a foreigner, only 30 years old, to save the whole nation. And Pharaoh trusted Joseph – because he saw that He had the Spirit of God in him.
During the seven years of abundance Joseph collected all the food and stored it in the cities.
49 Joseph stored up huge quantities of grain, like the sand of the sea; it was so much that he stopped keeping records because it was beyond measure.
This was GOD’s provision for the whole nation of Egypt. Because God cared for the Egyptians. He didn’t want them to suffer! So when the famine became severe, Joseph opened the storehouses and sold the grain to the Egyptians. By God’s plan, Joseph became literally the Saviour for Egypt. God rescued the Egyptians and the whole of the Ancient Near East from disaster in very concrete physical ways. And when Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt to buy food, Joseph became the saviour of all the descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob as well.
In our sermons for Lent we are looking at Old Testament figures and seeing the ways they point towards the Lord Jesus Christ and towards God’s masterplan of salvation. Last week we looked at Adam. Adam brought us condemnation – Jesus bought us salvation. As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. This approach to interpreting the Old Testament is called typology. Joseph can also serve as a type or a pattern for Christ as the way he served as a saviour in his generation foreshadows in many respects the salvation which Jesus brought. Earlier generations of preachers devoted whole books of sermons to comparisons between Joseph and the Lord Jesus Christ. Here are a dozen of the very significant similarities those preachers noticed between the life of Joseph as the physical Saviour of Egypt and the life of Jesus as the spiritual Saviour of the World.
1. Joseph was hated by his brothers, and this is what the Lord Jesus says about Himself, “They hated me without a cause.”
2. Joseph was sold by his own brothers for 20 pieces of silver, and the Lord Jesus was sold by one of His own twelve apostles for thirty pieces of silver.
3. The brothers plotted to kill Joseph. God’s own chosen people plotted to kill the Lord Jesus.
4. Joseph was 30 when he began his work for Pharaoh. Jesus was 30 when He began His ministry.
5. Joseph was hated by his brothers, and they handed him over to foreigners. He couldn’t defend himself, and he was unjustly accused. The Lord Jesus was also handed over by His own people to the religious rulers who in turn delivered Him to the Gentiles. He was innocent.
6. Joseph was mocked by his brothers and the Lord Jesus was mocked.
7. Joseph’s coat dripping with blood was returned to his father. They took the coat of the Lord Jesus and gambled for it.
8. Joseph was numbered with the transgressors. He brought God’s blessing to the butler, but judgment for the baker. The Lord Jesus was crucified between two thieves. One thief was blessed and the other thief was judged.
9. Joseph was put into the pit which was meant to be a place of death for him, but he was lifted up out of the pit again. The Lord Jesus was crucified but then he was raised from the dead on the third day.
10. The brothers rejected Joseph, and God’s people rejected Jesus. “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.”
11. Joseph became the savior of the world during this period, in the physical sense by saving them from starvation. The Lord Jesus Christ was in every sense is the Savior of the whole world.
12. Joseph was the one who had the bread! Jesus is the bread of life!!!
So Joseph became the Saviour for Egypt and all the surrounding regions, as many years before the birth of Christ as we are living after it. The story reminds us first of all that we serve a God who cares about ALL people – not just about his chosen people, his special people, but ALL people! Everything that happened to Joseph was not just for HIS benefit, but to fulfil God’s promises to the Patriarchs Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and his descendants forever, and to save the people of Egypt. It was all part of God’s masterplan of salvation.
Secondly, the story of Joseph reminds us that God is often at work in our lives even when we don’t recognise it. God can weave the hard times and the challenging times and the painful times of our lives into his mysterious purposes of salvation.
When Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt looking for food, they realised that their saviour was the little brother they had sold into slavery years earlier. They were scared of how Joseph would act towards them. Would he take revenge for the ways they had treated him? But instead Jospeh said this.
Genesis 50 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
God intended it for good. His purpose was to save many lives. Joseph saw the big picture. He saw beyond what his brothers had done to him, the ways they had rejected and hurt and got rid of him. he saw behind all these things God’s master-plan. How God had allowed these things for a reason. Joseph saw his life from God’s eternal perspective. Especially when the going is tough, we need to see our own lives in that way. And we can also see how God’s masterplan worked out in the life of our Saviour Jesus Christ. Everything that happened to Jesus was part of God’s plan. Even Jesus’s suffering on the cross was part of God’s plan. The prophet Isaiah foretold how Jesus would be the Saviour.
Isaiah 53 4 Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way;
and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

As God put Joseph in the right place at the right time, so God also sent Jesus at just the right time.
Romans 5 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. … 8 … God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
God was at work through the lives of Joseph and of Jesus, even in the hard and painful times. And with the eye of faith we can look for the ways God is at work in our own lives, even in the difficult times. God is working behind the scenes even through this season of lockdown.
20 … God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
So the story of Joseph is the story of how God used his servant to save Abraham’s descendants and the whole nation of Egypt and the whole surrounding region from death and disaster when the seven years of famine struck. But the story of Joseph also points forward to God’s gift of His Son the Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, who is an even more wonderful Saviour to us than Joseph was for Egypt.

Adam. Moses. Elijah. Joseph. Melchizedek. There are a number of individuals in the Old Testament whose lives foreshadow the life of Jesus. There was Moses, the Lawgiver and the Saviour to all the slaves in Egypt. There was Elijah, the prophet who spoke out against the evil King Ahab in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Long before Moses there was Joseph the Dreamer, who God made to be the saviour of the nation of Egypt and all the descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob when seven years of famine came. Even earlier there was the enigmatic Melchizedek who was both a king and a priest and who gave his blessing to Abraham. Through the eye of faith we can see that the lives of these important individuals actually pointed forward to the coming of our Saviour, Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. In certain respects, each of their lives were similar to the life of Jesus. We will be looking at Moses, Elijah, Joseph Melchizedek over the next month. Today we are going to begin, quite appropriately, at the beginning by thinking about Adam. In what ways was Jesus similar to Adam? More significantly, in what ways was Jesus different to Adam? What can we learn when we compare Adam and Jesus? And what does that mean for our lives and our salvation?
This approach to understanding the Bible is called typology. The character in the Old Testament is called a type, or a pattern, in Greek a tupos of Christ. From the similarities in their lives, or sometimes from the contrasts, we can learn more about Jesus and about God’s amazing masterplan of salvation. We can see from the ways God worked in their lives, how God worked through Jesus.
Paul actually uses this word type, or pattern, in Romans 5:14. He says that Adam was a pattern of the one to come, that is Jesus.
Romans 5 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.
(Message) But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
We know Paul is appealing to typology when he uses two little words. “As …. So.” “Just as ….. so in the same way.” As it was with Adam, so it is with Christ. Watch out and see how many times that line of reasoning, “As … So” appears in our verses this morning.
The similarities between Adam and Jesus obvious. They were both human beings. Adam was the first human being. Paul calls Jesus the last Adam. Adam was created in the image of God. Jesus WAS the image of God, God born as a human being. Physically, Adam was the father, the head of the Old Creation, the ancestor of all human beings. Spiritually Jesus is the father, the head of the New Creation the ancestor of all who have eternal life through him. These are some of the similarities.
But it’s actually the differences between Adam and Jesus which are more important. Adam got us into the mess we are in. Jesus got us out of it. So what can we learn from those contrasts?

1 Adam disobeyed God but Jesus obeyed God

Romans 5 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
The book of Genesis tells us that right at the very beginning of humanity when God created Adam and Eve and put them in the Garden of Eden, he gave them one simple rule to obey. “Do not eat of the fruit from the tree of good and evil.” Just one rule. And they disobeyed it.
Genesis 3 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised that they were naked;
By that one act of disobedience Adam and Eve spoiled the perfection of God’s creation. And that ruined the relationship between them and God.
Genesis 3 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’
10 He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’
So Adam’s disobedience brought sin into the world. In contrast, Jesus always obeyed God, completely in every way, and however great the cost. Two of his apostles, who probably knew Jesus as well as anybody except Mary his mother, wrote this.
Peter said 1 Peter 2 21 22 ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’
John wrote 1 John 3:5 “In him is no sin.”
The letter to the Hebrews says
Hebrews 4 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.
Paul said in Philippians 2 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!
2 Corinthians 5 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
So here is the first dramatic contrast between Adam and Jesus. Adam disobeyed God, but Jesus obeyed God completely. Adam brought sin into the world. Jesus was without sin.

2 Adam brought condemnation and guilt and judgement but Jesus brought righteousness

Romans 5:16 tells us that the judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.
The consequence of Adam’s act of disobedience is that all human beings ever since stand condemned before God because of what the church through the ages has called “original sin.” Firstly, we are tainted with Adam’s rebellion. We are separated from God by the guilt we have inherited from Adam. But secondly we have inherited a bias towards sin. Faced with the choice between doing what is wrong and doing what is right, human beings have this tendency to choose to do wrong. As a result, no human being has ever lived a perfect and sinless life. The only exception to that was the Lord Jesus Christ. Adam’s disobedience has brought condemnation on us all, but Jesus’s obedience has brought us justification and made us righteous in God’s eyes. Jesus has put us right with God. Adam got us into the mess we are in, but Jesus has got us out of it! Adam brought us condemnation. But by his death on the cross Jesus bought us salvation.

3 Adam brought death but Jesus brought life

Romans 5 12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
God never intended for human beings to die. But sin separates us from God and physical death is the inevitable consequence of being separated from God who is the source of all life. As Ezekiel 18:20 says, “the soul who sins will die.” And because we all disobey God in many different ways, every human being dies. This is why we all need Jesus to save us.
15 … For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
We die because we follow in Adam’s footsteps. But despite our many sins, God’s grace comes to us through Jesus Christ.
As Romans 6:23 says, 23 … the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 5 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
Through Jesus, God forgives our sin. But more than that, God’s amazing grace means that we all “reign in life” through what Jesus has done for us. Reign in life! Adam brought death into the world but Jesus brings life, life in all its fulness, eternal life which not even death can take away.
Rom 5:21 … just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Paul uses this same approach of typology comparing Adam and Jesus in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 to give us our fourth point of contrast between Adam and Jesus. We have seen the giveaway words a few times already. “As …. So.” “Just as ….. so in the same way.”

Take a look at 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 and 44-49
See how many more instances of “as … so” you can spot in these few verses.

4 Adam give physical life but Jesus gives spiritual life.

Whereas Adam brought death into the world, Jesus brings resurrection life.
1 Corinthians 15 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
Adam brought death to all his descendants. But Jesus brings life to all who follow him.
1 Corinthians 15 45 So it is written: ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven.
So whilst Adam had physical life, Jesus has life in the spirit. In that sense Adam was just the dust of the earth whereas Jesus belongs to heaven and gives the life of heaven to all who are saved by him. Adam’s physical life was the pattern for all human life. In contrast, Christ’s resurrection life is the pattern for the lives of everybody who puts their trust in him.
1 Corinthians 15 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.
So all human beings follow in Adam’s footsteps. That is why we need saving. But by God’s grace those who put their trust in Jesus will become like him and share in his resurrection life. That is how Jesus saves us.
22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
Message “Everybody dies in Adam; everybody comes alive in Christ.”
Adam gave physical life but Jesus offers us spiritual life. A verse in that great 18th century hymn by Isaac Watts, “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun” puts it perfectly.
“Where he displays his healing power, Death and the curse are known no more;
In him the tribes of Adam boast More blessings than their Father lost.”
Of course Paul is writing to Christians. He doesn’t bother to explain here that we each need to choose to accept that free gift of eternal life for ourselves, although of course we do. So here are the things we can learn by comparing Adam and Jesus. Adam disobeyed God and his disobedience brought condemnation and guilt and judgement on all human beings. In that way Adam also brought death for all his descendants, right down to all of us today. In contrast, Jesus obeyed God. His act of obedience on the cross brought forgiveness and justification and righteousness and new life. Adam gave us all physical life but Jesus gives spiritual life to everybody who is saved by him.
Adam brought us condemnation. Jesus bought us salvation, as we are born again through him. So here is the life-or-death question. In our natural state, all human beings are “dying in Adam”. Only those who put their trust in Jesus are “being made alive in Christ”. Every person on earth faces a simple choice. Are we choosing to remain dead with Adam? Or have we chosen to accept God’s free gift of eternal life thought Jesus? Are we dead in Adam? Or are we alive in Christ?