The Old Testament Witness to Christ and His Kingdom, Student Workbook, SW09

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T H E O L D T E S T A M E N T W I T N E S S T O C H R I S T A N D H I S K I N G D O M

Jesus Christ. Three distinctive moments in their history which illustrate this principle is their deliverance at the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan and the entering into the Promised Land, and the restoration of Israel from the Babylonian Captivity. The experience of God’s redeemed in Christ is exhibited clearly in these three moments in Israel’s history: the Church’s new life in Christ is their New Exodus, a new deliverance from the powers which oppress us spiritually; the Church’s fight against the devil and the world is its New Conquest of Canaan, and the ministry of the Gospel of Christ represents our New Restoration of God, leading eventually to the new heavens and new earth under the sovereign authority of Jesus Christ. Our objective for this segment, The History of God’s People as Type and Analogy , is to enable you to see that: • The simple definition of type is “an object, event, happening, image, or reality that prefigures in the OT a reality in the NT, usually focused on Jesus Christ (as its antitype ).” • The major hermeneutical justifications for a typological approach of the study of the Scriptures are that it was the method employed by both Jesus and his apostles and that the Bible itself makes in comparative study implicit connection between many of the same representations and images mentioned throughout Scripture. • The major aspects of biblical types suggest that types (and their antitypes) are historically real, they illumine the person and work of Christ, true types of the OT are always contained in the NT, they are connected to God’s redemptive work in Christ, and they illumine the teaching of God on the matter they cover. • The principles for using typology in biblical hermeneutics include our need to believe that God has placed correspondences in the Bible, to focus on Christ in drawing connections between the Old and New Testaments, to concentrate on the major links suggested in the types themselves and not on the details, and to appreciate the relevance of the type through the antitype . • The experience of Israel, the descendants of Abraham and the people of God, represent an analogy which can help us understand the larger relationship of God with all of the redeemed through Jesus Christ. Three distinctive moments in their history which illustrate this principle is their

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