Series: The Great Doctrine
,Corinthian letter, the tenth chapter, the sixth and the eleventh verses. First Corinthians, right in the middle of your Bible, First Corinthians the tenth chapter, the sixth and the eleventh verses. I am going to speak this morning on Types and Antitypes. And in speaking of that, I have a perfectly good biblical word; because the word “type” is a Greek word. And we are going to look at it right now.
In the tenth chapter of the first Corinthian letter, the sixth verse reads like this, “Now these things were our examples,” and he has just referred to the story of the children of Israel as they were journeying through the wilderness. Now you have it translated “examples” there; “Now these things were our examples.” The Greek word translated there “example” is “t-y-p” and then you have a Greek ending, “o-s,” “typos.” They didn’t have any “y” in the Greek language, just a “u.” Oft times when you find a Greek word with a “u,” when they anglicize it, when they take it into English, they will make the “u” a “y.” So the Greek word “t-u-p-o-s,” “tupos,” turn it into English, and it becomes “t-y-p,” and then in the English we will put an “e” on the end of it, we will anglicize it, “type,” a type. “Now these things were our types, our examples.”
Now look at the eleventh verse: “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples,” isn’t that an old time word? I don’t suppose they’ve used that word in 250 years. This Englishman over here, he hasn’t used it in his lifetime either. “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples, for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” Now let’s look at that Greek word translated “for ensamples.” That’s tupikos, we’ve almost got our word “typical,” “typikos,” “Now all these things happened unto them for tupikos,” put it in the English, “typikos”; “Now all these things happened unto them typically: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” These things that happened back there in the old Bible were not just isolated events; but they happened, they are events, they are things that foreshadow, that prophesy, that typify other things that are yet to come.
Now look over here at a typical instance of that. In the fifth chapter of the Book of Romans, and the fourteenth verse, Paul writes – now he’s going to use that word again – “Nevertheless,” Romans 5:14, “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of Him that was to come.” Now that word translated “figure” there is “t-y-p-o-s,” “typos,” type. Now look at it: “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the type of Him that was to come.” Now I’ve just chosen those; there are many others in the New Testament. But I have just chosen those to show you that the Old Testament, the people, the events, the things that happened back there, were not isolated, they were not casual or adventitious; but those things happened under God, and they were types, they were figures, they were adumbrations of the great things that were yet to come. That’s why I’m speaking this morning on Types and the Antitype; the figure, and the thing that was prefigured.
Now you find it again here in the Book of Hebrews. In Hebrews, the tenth chapter and the first verse, he says it in another way: “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these sacrifices,” Now look at that word, “a shadow, not the very image of the thing.” In Dr. Roddy’s prayer, he thanked God that we were not living in the days of shadows and types; but we are living in the days of the reality of the very image itself. Now the author of Hebrews here says back there it was a shadow, but this is the very image, the thing that casts the shadow, the very image of the thing is here in the new, what we have now. The type of it, the prefiguration of it, the anticipatory figure of it was in the old.
Now let’s do a little exegeting here. In the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Matthew, Matthew 13:52, you have a summary there, you have a summary there of the parables of the kingdom, which is, which parables, seven of them, are here in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. And when Jesus gets through speaking the parables of the kingdom, then He summarizes them and says, “Then said He unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old, things new and old” [Matthew 13:52]. There’s a certain theological institution here in this city that teaches their theologians, their young students, they teach them that the Old Testament is nothing but just a history of the Jewish people, that’s all. If you had in your hand a book of the history of the Egyptians, why that would be just as good and as valuable. If you had in your hand a history of the empire of Japan, that would be just as pertinent. All it was back there, they say and they teach, all that it is, is just the history of the Old Testament, that’s all; just a history of the Jews, just a story of the Jewish people. And they refer to the things back there in the Old Testament, they refer to them as being mythological; they are fables, they are not actual truths, they’re not actual events, but they’re the literature of a naïve adolescent people who lived in the long time ago. Well, when the Bible is looked upon like that, it becomes disjointed, it has no particular meaning. You can read it as you might read the fables of Greece and of Rome or as you might read the Book of the Dead in the Egyptian tombs; but it has no pertinence, and it has no cohesiveness. The front and the back have no particular relationship with each other, except just the continuity of mere profane history.
Now that’s not the way the Bible looks on itself, and that’s not the way the Lord Jesus Christ taught it. But the Bible looks on itself as being one great revelation of an infinitely all-wise and executed divine plan. And the end of it is like the beginning of it: God’s finger and God’s hand moves all the way through it. And the Author of it is the same: the Author of the first syllable in the first chapter of Genesis is the same Author of the last syllable in the last verse of the Revelation. And what that Author did all the way through is conjoin it, it’s put together, it has a purpose and a meaning. And the things that happen are not isolated adventitious incidents, things that happened opportunistically, things that were said on the spur of the moment; but what happened written here in the Bible, recorded here in the Bible, all of it has an infinite meaning. And the Lord God is moving toward a great and final consummation. And I say, the Holy Spirit is the Author of all of it, all the way through. In [2] Peter 1:21, he says, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” All the way through, these things that we read and these things that happened, they have a meaning under God, and the Lord molded it, and moved it, and guided it toward that holy end that He had in His mind, in His heart, in His will.
All right, now let’s look at this summary of the parables of the kingdom. Jesus says, “Every scribe, every teacher, every pastor, every leader in the church, every scribe which is instructed in the kingdom of heaven”; that’s the trouble: our people don’t know, our teachers don’t know, our people are not taught, they’re not instructed. “Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder”; he has a house full of things, “and he bringeth forth,” when you go to visit him, “he bringeth forth out of his treasures things new and things old” [Matthew 13:52]. What are the old things? Oh, they’re the treasures in the Old Covenant, in the old Bible, in the Old Testament, in the old revelation. You mean there are treasures back there? That’s what I’m trying to speak of this morning; and I hope I can and show it plainly and patently. A man can preach Christ in the Old Testament just as surely and as certainly as he can preach Christ in the New Testament; doesn’t make any difference. All of it is of a piece, it’s of a kind, it’s of a pattern, it’s of a sowing, it’s of a weaving, it’s of a making, all of it. Not just here and there did men rise to great inspirational truths; but every Scripture, all of it, every sentence of it, every syllable in it, every piece and part of it, all of it is God-breathed. That’s the Greek word for “inspired.” “Every Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for instruction and righteousness: that the man of God may be thoroughly furnished” [2 Timothy 3:16-17], his head and his heart and his soul, all of it is. So he brings out of his treasure “things new and things old” [Matthew 13:52]. The old things are the old covenants, the old laws, the old ceremonies, the old rituals, the old rites, the old ordinances, the Old Testament; out of the old things great treasures. And then out of the new, this new wine, this new garment, this new covenant, this new revelation, out of both of them, great treasures.
I read this week a little couplet that stayed in my mind: “The new is in the old contained. The old is in the new explained.” I like that. That’s exactly the way it is. “The new is in the old contained. The old is in the new explained”; all of a piece. The thing that makes it of a piece is this: that in the Old Covenant, in the Old Testament, we have the shadow, we have the type, we have the prefiguration, we have the anticipation, we have the looking forward to; and then in the New we have the image, we have the thing that was shadowed, that was prefigured. And both of them are exactly alike. Its message is the same, its gospel is the same, its plan of salvation is the same. Back there it was a shadow, here it is an image. Back there it was a type, here it is an antitype. Back there it was an anticipatory prefiguration, here the fullness of time, it is come to pass.
Now may I show you that, then we’re going to start, really. So many times in the Bible – these are all introductory words, but they come to my mind, and they’re all vital, they help us. If we can ever get it right, start it right, then as we study and learn, the thing has a foundation, it sits upon something. It’s the truth of God, not on the sand, but on the rock. Now in the Bible, so many times you will find in using a type and an antitype, an anticipatory figure and then the actual coming to pass, so many times you’ll find those little conjunctive comparative words “as” and “so,” “as” and “so.” “As” referring to the type, the thing, the event, the object, whatever it was back there in the Old Testament, “as so and so.” Then the “so” refers to the historical sequence, the image, the actual thing as it came to pass. Well, let’s look at some of those, just looking at them.
In the twelfth chapter of the Book of Matthew, here’s one of them: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” [Matthew 12:40]. “As,” that is, Jonah was a figure, he was a type; and the thing that happened to him, happened to him figuratively, typically, adumbrationally, prophetically, “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” All right, now let’s take another one. Here in the twenty-fourth chapter of the Book of Matthew, the thirty-seventh and following verses: now you’ll find the same thing again,
As the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they ate and drank, and married and gave in marriage, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.
That is, the thing that happened back there in the days of the flood happened prophetically, typically, adumbrationally; it prefigured, by type, the great final judgment day of the Lord. “As in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man.”
Now let’s take another one. You don’t need to turn to this one, this one’s in your head, I know. Listen to this one, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness” [Numbers 21:8-9], now that thing happened, Jesus says, not just as an isolated incident, unrelated, but that thing happened, says Jesus, as a prefiguration, as a type of something that was yet to come. I suppose all, practically all of us here, saw that unusual picture by Carl Steel, when he had up here a picture of a serpent around a pole, then he turned on that black light, and suddenly the pole and the serpent have changed into the cross of Christ and the Lord nailed thereon. Now there’s your “as” and “so.” “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up” [John 3:14]. It’s the type of the thing that was yet to come.
Now I’ve just one other, and then we’ll stop this. In the fifteenth chapter of the first Corinthian letter, in the twenty-second verse, you find the same thing again: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Adam is a type; he is a figure of the second greater Adam who was yet to come. And as in him everybody died, so in Christ shall everyone be made alive.
May I parenthesize here? Parenthesize, this is a parenthesis, has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. When anybody asks you, “How is it that little babies are saved?” what do you say? They’re not old enough to believe in the Lord. But if one of them dies, every preacher I know of, except those extreme Calvinists – and I’ve never seen them – every preacher I know of will preach a beautiful little sermon about the little child in heaven. How do you know that? How do you know that? What do you say? All right, this is just a little piece of what you can say, according to the Bible. How do you know the little baby is saved? Well, this is why: “As in Adam all of us die, all of us die, so in Christ all of us are made alive, every one of us; all of us are made alive.” Well then, preacher, why is it that some of us are going to hell? We’re not all saved? Maybe not all of us are saved here this morning. Why is it that we’re not all going to heaven? Why? If as in Adam we all die, and we know that, then so in Christ we’re all made alive; why don’t all of us go to heaven? All right, this is why we don’t all go to heaven: when you reach the age of accountability, you sin, you sin. All of us sin. The Bible says we do. And our hearts confirm that revelation. All of us sin. And I must repent of my sin. I must ask forgiveness for my sin. I must bring my guilty soul to God, and ask God to wash my iniquity away. I must trust in Jesus for the washing away of my sins. And if I don’t, I die; not because of Adam’s sin, or not because of the sins of my fathers or my forefathers, but I die because of my iniquity, my unrighteousness, my transgressions. Now that’s the reason the little baby is saved: “As in Adam all of us die, so in Christ all of us are made alive.” In Jesus all original guilt, all total depravity is washed away. But when I reach the age of accountability, I must trust Jesus for my sins and ask forgiveness for my transgressions. And if I do not, I am personally lost. But the provision is made for the salvation of the whole world in Christ. End parenthesis.
Now let’s go back to the type. “As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive” [1 Corinthians 15:22]. Now we’re talking about the things of the Old Testament, that Old Covenant, this old Bible, that they were all adumbrations, prophecies, pointing to the great image, the great truth, the great reality, the great antitype that was yet to come. Now there’s a flood of things that come into your heart when you think about that. Do you remember when John the Baptist was standing on the banks of the Jordan River, and the Lord Jesus passed by? And John pointed Him out and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world” [John 1:29]. And two of John’s disciples heard him speak: one was Andrew, one was the beloved disciple who wrote the book. They followed Jesus that day, and there began the public ministry of our Savior. And now let’s look at that. And John pointed Him out, “Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.” John stood there and pointed to Christ. The whole Old Testament is that. Here and there and there and yonder, all through the Book, a pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ.
For example, the ark; it was in a day of awful judgment, and the Flood destroyed this world. But there was a way of escape to any man that would believe the invitation and the preaching of Noah. And how many doors did it have in it? How many? Oh, I hear you say, “It doesn’t make any difference. Why, you can go to heaven and ride a sacred cow, like a Hindu, and that’s all right. And you can go to heaven and worship at a Shinto shrine, and that’s all right. And you can go to heaven and be a speculative philosopher, and that’s all right. Just so a man is sincere, that’s all right.”
How many doors had that ark? How many? All of you that believe it had even two, would you stand up, and let me look at the foolishness of somebody like you? Yea. Didn’t even have two doors, did it? How many doors into that ark? There was one door, and only one [Genesis 6:16]. And I used to know a song like that:
One door, and only one, and yet the sides are two
Inside and outside, on which side are you?
One door, and only one, and yet the sides are two
I’m on the inside, on which side are you?
Now I don’t, I’m not making any applications to the Metropolitan Opera about to go out of business. But that’s a good gospel song, I tell you. Did you recognize it? Did you? That’s a good gospel song. One door and only one. Jesus said, “I am one of several ways,” did He? “I am the way, the way” [John 14:6]. There is one door in the ark, and just one. And that’s a picture, that’s an adumbration, that’s a prefiguration, that’s an anticipation of Jesus Christ. It points to Him.
Let’s take another one. Let’s take Isaac. Isaac is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaac is. “Well, what do you mean, preacher, Isaac is a type of Christ?” Well, the things that happened to Isaac were typical things. They were pointing, they were shadowing the great reality that was yet to come in the Lord Jesus. Now look at some of these things that come to your mind when you think about Isaac. Isaac’s birth was pre-announced. Isaac’s name was given to him; just like the name of Jesus was given to Him before He was born. Both births were anticipated by heaven, were announced from above. And the names of both of the children, Isaac and Jesus, both of them were given to them before they were born. Both of them were born unnaturally, against nature. Sarah was ninety years old when he was born. And when God said she should have a child, she laughed. Isaac, “laughter.” And Abraham laughed; he was a hundred years old. The birth of Jesus was not natural: He was a virgin-born Child, against nature, contrary to nature. When they were growing up, the kindred mocked them. Ishmael stuck out his tongue at Isaac. And Ishmael is still sticking out his tongue at Isaac, over there in Palestine; been doing that for three thousand and more years. And the family and people of Jesus rejected Him: “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not” [John 1:11]. Both of them, Isaac and Jesus, were offered up on an altar; though they had done no crime, though no guile was found in their mouths, though they had broken no law. Both of them were offered up innocently. Both of them went willingly to that sacrifice, both Isaac and the Lord Jesus. Both of them carried wood upon which they were to die: Isaac, the wood in his arms; and Jesus the wood across His shoulder, the cross. Both of them apparently were forsaken by their father. And both of them were received in resurrection from the dead. You look at this thing, as the great preacher in Hebrews will use that as a type:
By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure, in a type
When Abraham lifted up that knife to slay his son, he didn’t know the angel was going to speak and to stay his hand. Abraham lifted up that knife to plunge it into the heart of his son [Genesis 22:10-12]. But he never staggered at the promise of God, “accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure” [Hebrews 11:19]. That is, when he took Isaac back to his heart and put his arms of love around that boy, it was as though he had received the boy from the dead; which the author here says is a figure, a type of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, when God, in the Holy Spirit, raised Him up from among the dead.
I’m trying to get you to see that the things back there in that Old Book are not just isolated, indifferent, unattached, separated, cut off events; but they all happened as types, as shadows of the great gospel that was yet to come. Now we were talking about some of these things that point to the Lord Jesus, like that ark, in the day of judgment, and there was one door, and anyone that entered that door would be saved, anyone, anyone. It was an open door. Then we said Isaac is a type of the Lord Jesus, and he points to Christ. Here are some others. The Passover is a type of the Lord Jesus: the lamb that is slain, and the people under the blood, and God saying, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you” [Exodus 12:13]. It isn’t what you think of the blood, it’s what God thinks of the blood. So many of these theologians cast such scorn and ridicule upon what they call “that bloody gospel.” Well, I’m not saying they’re not smart men and very learned men; but I am saying they’re not as smart as God, that’s what I’m saying. And God said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” God says, “And for My Son’s sake, if a man will put his heart and his trust in Jesus, I will save him for My Son’s sake.”
I’m not saying these theologians are not brilliant, they’re not learned, they’re not astute, and they’re not all that they think they are, I’m not denying that; I’m just saying that the gospel message is this: that God gave His Son, and so vitally important does God look upon the sacrifice of that Son, that God says, “If a man will put his trust in My Boy, and will love My Son, and commit his soul and his life to My Son, I will save him for My Son’s sake.” That’s the Passover. That’s the Passover. You get under the blood, you sprinkle that blood on the doorposts and on the lintels, and get in the house. Don’t care who you are, you get under the blood. And when the death angel visits, he will pass over that home and pass over you [Exodus 12:7, 13, 24]. That points to Jesus. That’s a type, that’s a prefiguration, that’s an anticipation of the great reality that was yet to come.
Here is a type pointing to the Lord Jesus: there’s the Lord, the raising of the serpent in the wilderness [Numbers 21:8-9]. Why, it happened just like you’d think an event would happen in the story of people down there, out in the wilderness. But no, not according to the great plan of God. That thing happened under the hand of the Almighty, and it foreshadowed, prefigured, the great plan of salvation in Jesus Christ, the raising up of that serpent. Did you ever think of that? Do you ever stop and ponder some of these things in your heart? Look at that. Look at that. All that it took to save the man was to look, to look and live, to look and live [Numbers 21:8]. Well, why such a plan of salvation as that? Well, this is why, this is why: there were many of those people that couldn’t do anything else; they were hurt, and they were dying, and they were slain, and they were bitten. Those little fiery tenuous slender serpents were everywhere! And they were dying by the thousands on every side. And had the way been hard, had it been difficult, there were many of them that could not have even walked, they couldn’t have stood up, they couldn’t have taken a step, lots of them. But all they could do was just look, that was all, just look. And it was a moral act to look, to look. I believe the message of the prophet, of the Word, I believe God. God says if I look I’ll live! [John 3:14-15]. You didn’t buy it. You didn’t work for it. You just had to have enough faith as of a grain of mustard seed, to lift up your eyes and look, look. And he that looked lived. That didn’t just happen. God didn’t arrange that as an isolated event. But it was a prefiguration, it was an adumbration of the great plan of salvation that was yet to come.
What is that chorus?
I have a message from the Lord, Halleluja!
This message unto you I give
‘Tis recorded in His word, Hallelujah!
It is only that you “look and live.”
[“Look and Live”; William Ogden]
How come you to know that? You like it. He says, “I like it.” It’s the gospel message, “’Tis recorded in His Word, Hallelujah! It is only that you” look and live.” That’s the message of salvation.
Well, we’ve got a minute or two left. Pointing to the Lord Jesus, pointing to Him; the scapegoat was a type of the Lord Jesus. That great awful holy Day of Atonement [Leviticus 16], when the two goats, the two victims were brought to the door of the congregation, the tabernacle, and there the high priest cast lots: one was to be slain and the other carried far out into the wilderness. And the one that was to be slain, the high priest put his hands over the head of the victim and confessed there all the sins of the people. And then that victim was slain, and its blood brought into the Holy of Holies and there sprinkled on the mercy seat in the ark of the covenant. Then the high priest came back out, and the goat that was living was taken far, far, far away and driven and lost out in the wilderness. That was the Day of Atonement. Well how, why did God do that? Oh, that was just a happened so. No sir. It was a planned so, it was a know so, it was a God’s arrangement so; the victim slain for the sins of the people; and the victim driven far away, with the sins of the people confessed on its head, a picture of the taking away of the sins of the people: all of it a prefiguration of the Lord Jesus Christ. They are types, they are adumbrations, they are shadows of the great spiritual realities that were yet to come.
Why, my dear people, I could stand here in this pulpit and we just take the rest of the day talking about that, the whole day. And you wouldn’t exhaust it. Time would fail me to speak of Melchizedek and of Aaron, types of the great High Priest who is now beyond the veil in heaven. Time would fail me to talk of David, the great king, and his Son that shall sit upon his throne and reign forever and ever [2 Samuel 7:12-16]. Time would fail me to speak of Moses and Elijah, who appeared to the Lord Jesus transfigured, glorified [Matthew 17:1-5] – Moses a type of the law, Elijah a type of the prophets; Moses a type of those who when the Lord comes in glory will be resurrected from the dead, and Elijah a type of those who will be in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, changed, immortalized, who will never see death – type, figure, adumbration.
Time would fail me to speak of the veil, of the seven branched lampstand, of the altar of sacrifice, and what could a man speak of when he came to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah? My soul, my soul! Pointing toward the Lamb of God, looking to Jesus; shadows, types, adumbrations, overtones of the great symphony, of the great reality that was yet to come. I say, it’s all just one Book, just one, one Author, one message, one revelation, one plan of God all the way through, bringing out of it treasures new and treasures old.
We must stop. While we sing our song, somebody you give his heart to the Lord, put his life in our church; a family of you, or one somebody of you, while we sing this song, tarrying this moment just for you, while we sing this song, into that aisle and down here to the front, would you come? Would you come and stand by me? On the first note of the first stanza, would you make it now? Won’t you make it now? While we stand and while we sing.
For more sermons by W.A Criswell, please visit www.wacriswell.com