The Significance of Christ’s Death: Types (Pictures) of Death, Matthew 27:45-49

We are going through the stages of the crucifixion, stages the crucifixion that began with Jesus being led out from the Praetorium where He had been found guilty, and the death sentence passed by Pilate in the sixth trial, the third trial by the Romans, the second trial by Pilate, as described in numerous passages. That is the first stage. The last stage is when they seal the tomb.

We are pausing a minute to reflect upon the significance of Christ's death. We looked at prophecies and types, and today were going to look at more significant types of Christ. A type is a shadow. It is a picture that is portrayed in either an object, or an event, or a person, that is designed under the sovereignty of God to depict something about the person or the work of Christ on the cross.

Just by way of review we've seen in the first five stages the procession of Jesus from the Praetorium him to Golgotha before He was crucified. Then they crucified Him, and we looked at the first three hours where the wrath of man, the mocking the insults, the ridicule, that were that was hurled at our Lord as He hung on the cross.

Then we looked at the second three hours when sin was paid for—the spiritual death of Christ on the cross when God the Father covered the land with darkness so that His intense suffering could not be seen, and when our Lord cried out, "My God my God why have you forsaken me"—not that the Trinity was breached, but because in His humanity Jesus was being judicially condemned and judged for our sin. "He who knew no sin was made sin for us that the righteousness of God might be found in us". It is during those three hours that He paid the penalty. When it was finished, as the apostle John said, Jesus said, "It is finished", a term that means paid in full—an economic term written on bills to indicate that the bill was paid in full, the debt was canceled, there was nothing else needed to fulfill the payment. And that is the second three hours.

It was after that that Jesus died physically on the cross. So there's a spiritual death on the cross and there is a physical death on the cross. And at that point we begin this interlude, looking at prophecy and types of the Messiah's death, to understand what happened on the cross and why it is significant, and to do that we don't start with the Gospels. We don't start with the major prophets in the Old Testament, we start by going back to the beginning of sin in Genesis chapter 3 and looking at God's provision for the sin problem and the pictures that God gave from Genesis through Malachi in the Old Testament, so that when the Messiah came people should be prepared. They should be able to recognize Him for who He was and understand why He came in what he was to do. Though many rejected him there were many who accepted Him. There were those like Simeon and Hannah at the temple when his parents brought him to dedicate him in the temple who understood exactly who that infant was and why He had come. And they praised God for that provision of a Messiah. It was, not an accident. Galatians 4:4 says that it was in the fullness of times that Jesus came forth. In other words God waited 4000 years before providing the Savior. He waited for a reason. There was a preparation that was taking place.

What we began to look at last time was three particular incidences that are described by John that relate to a fulfillment of types or pictures or prophecies in the Old Testament. There is the phrase that John the Baptist used when Jesus came down: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world". That related to the Passover event in the Old Testament, and we talked about that and the presentation of the Lamb, his observation and testing to make sure he was, without spot or blemish—a picture of the fact that the Savior must be without sin—and then His death in the application of the blood of the Passover lamb to the door post and lintel of the house, and then God would pass over not take the life of the firstborn.

In John 3:14 we saw the picture of the brazen serpent who was lifted up to heal those who had been come under God's judgment for their bellyaching and for their griping against God for the lack of tasty food. God sent these fiery serpents among them, and so the solution was to for Moses to make one who elevated on a post and that if people simply looked at it, they would be healed.

Looking at the Savior in faith, trusting that He can do what He promised to do is the essence of salvation. It's not what we do; it's what we believe. That is the issue in the Gospel of John. And that's also depicted by Jesus' statement that He is the living bread which came down from heaven. Eating and drinking as we portray in the Lord's Table is a picture of accepting something as our own, taking it into our life; another picture of the idea of believing or trusting in Christ as Savior.

I want to look at four important Old Testament pictures that will help us understand the significant things that happened on the cross. That's what we will begin next time in terms of understanding what Christ did the concept of substitution, the concept of redemption, the concept of forgiveness—sometimes the word used is expiation, that is, the canceling of the debt, the idea of forgiveness, the idea of the of propitiation or the satisfaction of the Father. Those key doctrines, those terms that are used to describe the benefits of Christ's death in the New Testament are pictured in the Old Testament, and I don't think we can fully grasp what some of these abstract ideas are apart from those pictures that God gave us in the Old Testament.

His sacrificial death was portrayed in the tabernacle, a tremendous picture of Christ. You have the brazen altar and the laver outside the holy of holies, which depict aspects of Christ's death that can only be accomplished by Christ's death. Inside the holy of holies you have three pieces of furniture in the holy place the table of showbread, the menorah, and the altar of incense that depict aspects of Christ's ministry for the believer: that He is the bread of life, that He is the light of the world, and that He is our mediator, our intercessor with God, pictured by the altar of incense. Then inside the innermost area, the holy of holies, is where the ark of the covenant is located, and that comes back to what we will see depicted also in the importance of Christ's death.

We have the blood sacrifices, the Levitical offerings that are defined in Leviticus chapters one through six. Then we have Yom Kippur. This is when the Ark of the Covenant comes into significance where cleansing of sin, forgiveness, is depicted through that ritual that we read about in Leviticus chapter 16.

The fourth significant image that we find in the Old Testament is that of the kinsman redeemer, the Hebrew word is goel, and it refers to the fact that a person who was a slave could be redeemed by a kinsman and set free. And that is the picture that we have of Jesus Christ. He becomes a human being, thus a kinsman, and therefore He can pay the redemption price so that we can be set free from the penalty of sin.

We will begin with the first element, that is Christ's sacrificial death that is portrayed in the tabernacle itself, the laver. The Hebrew term for the tabernacle is mishkan. What consonants do you hear there? You hear the M; you the SH; you hear the K and the N. The root word there is SHKN, or what we think of usually as Shekinah. It is a Hebrew word for a dwelling place. And you convert a verb to a noun in Hebrew by simply adding an M at the beginning, so shakan means to dwell some place and mishkan means the dwelling place. It is the dwelling place of God.

The emphasis in the mishkan is that God dwells between the cherubs in the holy of holies. Everything surrounding it has something to do with coming into the presence of God. There is only one entry. As Jesus said, "I am the way the truth and the life", so the entry depicts Jesus as the only way to God. Then to come into his presence the first piece of furniture you see is the brazen altar, and it is there that a blood sacrifice, usually a burnt offering, is made. The next piece of furniture in the outer courtyard is the laver, depicting the importance of cleansing.

Those are the first two that we are looking at, because in order to enter into the presence of God there must be a sacrifice. The brazen altar pictures that and a death, and ultimate cleansing is also based on the death of Christ. As 1 John 1:7 says, the blood of Christ continually cleanses us from all sin.

The passages for the brazen altar are in Exodus 27:1-8, 38:1-7; Hebrews 13:9-16. The description is given in Exodus 27, “And you shall make the altar of acacia wood, five cubits long and five cubits wide; the altar shall be square, and its height shall be three cubits." A cubit was approximately 18 inches. There were different cubits that were used but that will give a basic estimate of the size of the altar.

“You shall make its horns on its four corners; its horns shall be of one piece with it, and you shall overlay it with bronze. You shall make its pails for removing its ashes, and its shovels and its basins and its forks and its firepans; you shall make all its utensils of bronze. You shall make for it a grating of network of bronze, and on the net you shall make four bronze rings at its four corners."

Notice how God is detail oriented here. He doesn't just give them an abstract concept go build an altar that square, He is very specific how this should be constructed.

Exodus 27:5, 6 “You shall put it beneath, under the ledge of the altar, so that the net will reach halfway up the altar. You shall make poles for the altar, poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with bronze."

All of this is to teach something about Christ. The acacia wood is an extremely hard and dense wood; it is almost impermeable; it will not rot; the insects will not be able to penetrate it; it is going to survive. It is a picture of the humanity of Christ that was without sin and emphasizes His sinless nature as described in Hebrews 4:15 and 7:26. It is united with the four horns. They are all to be of one piece. The horns were used to bind the sacrifice to the altar. They were also said to be sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice and so the horns and the altar altogether point to the death of the sacrifice and ultimately pictures the death of the Messiah: that He would have to die in order to make a payment for sin.

What underlies all of this is that idea of substitution. From the beginning of these sacrifices in the Old Testament, the first being when God killed the animals to make the animal skins, the clothing for Adam and Eve in the garden, that initial sacrifice, and then through progressive revelation more and more is described. There is the first mention of sacrifice in Genesis 3 and the next sacrifices mentioned is in Genesis 4 when Cain and Abel brought sacrifices to the Lord. Cain's offering was not accepted because it was the benefit are the product of his own works and producing the fruit of the ground, but able sacrifice was acceptable because he followed God's instructions and brought an animal sacrifice.

You see the expansion of the idea of sacrifices and its importance with the patriarchs. One of the first things that that Abraham did when he came into the promised land, when he came to Shechem, was to set up an altar. And then he set up another altar between Bethel and Ai has he was moving south to observe the land that God had promised him. Then he built another altar at Hebron. All of this is a description of the centrality of the altar and the sacrifice as the only way in which we come to God.

Isaac built an altar and Beersheba; Jacob built an altar at Bethel and also at Shechem. It is believed that he rebuilt the altar that Abraham had originally built. There's a history there. And in the fourth century AD, a Byzantine church was built on that location between Bethel and Ai, that's just about three or 400 yards off of the highway. That has been excavated and the mosaics indicate that there was a recognition that this was that site.

The important thing to recognize with the brazen altar is that it speaks of the need of a sacrificial payment for sin. It is a substitutionary payment and it is necessary in order to enter into the presence of God, to worship God and to serve God. There must be a payment for the sin penalty.

The next thing that speaks of this death of Christ and the tabernacle is the laver. The laver primarily emphasizes cleansing that must take place before the priest goes into the holy of holies. At its foundation is the idea that a death has been accomplished. This whole concept of cleansing, and that word just runs through all of these different sacrifices, and the word that we translate atonement—that English word atonement actually was coined by early Anglo-Saxons as a way of describing the totality of what took place in the death of Christ—was a compound word from at-one-ment, the idea that early scholars thought of when they were learning Hebrew. The word kaphar for atonement was a word for covering. There are actually two homophones in Hebrew—words that are spelled the same but have different meanings—and kaphar is one of those. There's the pitch that Noah used to cover and seal the ark to waterproof it, and that covering is one word, but not the meaning here. In fact the rabbis who translated the Septuagint into Greek frequently translated kaphar with the Greek KATHARIZO, which means to cleanse. That's the word that we have been 1 John 1:9, that if we confess our sins, He will cleanse us [KATHARIZO] from all unrighteousness.

But that concept of cleansing not only applies to the ongoing experience of the believer after salvation, but it applies to the initial results when he is saved; he is cleansed positionally from all sin. And so the cleansing at the laver—the picture of water washing away sin—is used as a metaphor and picture of that initial forgiveness and cleansing that takes place positionally when we trust in Christ as Savior.

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “You shall also make a laver of bronze, with its base of bronze, for washing; and you shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it."

Then he goes on to describe how on a regular basis when Aaron and his sons would go in, they would have to wash their hands and their feet. When they were initially inaugurated into the priesthood they would wash their whole body. That's positional cleansing, and then each time after that they would only have to wash their hands and their feet. That is experiential cleansing.

A failure to do that carried with it the death penalty in Exodus 30:21 because unholy, unsanctified human beings cannot enter into the presence of a holy God on their own terms.

This is what happened at the beginning of Leviticus 16. "Now the LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they had approached the presence of the LORD and died."

Nadab and Avenue and Abihu brought their own concept of fire to the Lord, not according to the specifications of Scripture. We can't just come into the presence of God on any basis. We can't do it because this seems right to us. Proverbs says there's a way that seems right to man but the end thereof is death. We can't come up with our own concept. Well it makes me feel good; it makes me feel closer to God. That's inadequate. We have to do exactly what God prescribed to do. Aaron had two sons who did it their way and were immediately executed by God. And Aaron was warned that if he even hinted at grief, if he even began to tear up, the God would take his life as well. Sounds harsh, but God's teaching a principal, and that is that sin separates man from God and the only solution is His solution, and anything else destroys the possibility of eternal life because we are making it up as we go along.

Then we have the blood sacrifices. This is a second picture, the blood sacrifices described in Leviticus 1:1-6:7. There are several sacrifices that are listed there. You have the grain offering, the peace offering; those are not blood sacrifices. The focus here is on the blood sacrifices because it's the shedding of blood that pictures death. That is an idiom in Hebrew for death. You go back to Genesis 9:6, 7 when God is giving the covenant to Noah, and He says if anyone sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. So shedding of blood is an idiom for being killed, for taking someone's life, and in and in a violent manner. So these are blood sacrifices and it's the shedding of blood, which really means that death of the sacrifice. That is what is related to the payment of the sin penalty.

Here's a chart of the five sacrifices mentioned there. The first one, the burnt offering, which is an olah in the Hebrew. That means to go up and refers to the fact that everything is burnt and consumed by the fire on the on the brazen altar, and everything goes up into smoke and goes up as an offering before God. It is sometimes referred to as a holocaust offering because that's the root meaning of that term. That is why there is great debate that still exist today, even in the Jewish community, that holocaust is not the appropriate term to use to describe the Holocaust events of World War II, because the debate is, it was an offering to God, it was something much worse. That's why the Hebrew term is not related to that, it is the word shoah, which refers to a catastrophe. So I think that probably is a better term for it. The burnt offering was a holocaust offering; everything was burned up, consumed, and is a picture of substitutionary judgment is a picture payment for sin.

The second and third offerings in the chart do not relate. The fourth is the sin offering, which depicts forgiveness and purification for unintentional sin.

The fifth is the guilt offering, which is also for forgiveness but it pictures purification for specific sins. And so the thing that comes across in these offerings is that they are substitutionary in nature, that it is the death of an animal. The burnt offering is consumed completely in the fire. Everything goes up every day; the worshiper has nothing for himself, indicating that the offering is total as Christ completely paid for sin. There's nothing of the worshiper that is involved whatsoever.

The words used for the sin offering sin offering used here are primarily hata, which means to miss the mark, and it is a payment for sin. We are reminded of Hebrews 9:22 that according to the law almost all things are purified with blood. That means death. It's what the blood pictures that's important, it's not the blood itself. It's a picture of death, and without the shedding of blood there is no remission or forgiveness of sin.

So what we see in the tabernacle is this picture of death. We see that in the brazen altar, we see it with the laver, and then we see it in the sacrifices that were made on the brazen altar: "without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin". The blood of bulls and goats, writer of Hebrews says, cannot take away sin. They were limited. They were ritual only. They depicted something. It was only when a perfect sacrifice of infinite value could come and pay the penalty that it would be finished, and that is what happened at the cross. As the writer of Hebrews says, "after that there is no more sacrifice". That is the final sacrifice; it is the complete sacrifice that took away sin.

And then we have a picture also of the red heifer offering. They would look for a heifer that was to be without defect or blemish, not even a white hair, and they would take that heifer and then they would burn it as a complete burnt offering. Then the ashes of that were taken in order to purify the temple. The main picture in the red heifer offering was to detect the purification. It was a sin offering, and is described in Numbers chapter 19:1-22, and it also indicates that that there has to be a death in order for there to be purification from sin.

We've looked at the furniture in the outer courtyard in the tabernacle, we've looked at the blood sacrifices, all of which picture the necessity of a substitutionary death, and then third, we come to Yom Kippur, what transpired on the Day of Atonement. The focal point on Yom Kippur is on the two goats that are taken for the high priest. One will be sacrificed in one is let go into the wilderness.

When we look at Leviticus chapter 16, ultimately, the application of the blood is on the Ark of the Covenant. There are two cherubs representing the holiness of God, the mercy seat is the lid, and underneath inside the box was the broken Law, which indicates the sinfulness of man. And on the Ark of the Covenant, the high priest would sprinkle the blood, first of the bull that was sacrificed for him and for his family, for the priest, and then the sacrifice of the of the goats. It's located inside the holy of holies. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest would enter the veil and splatter the blood on the Ark of the Covenant.

The center ritual is that he would take two goats and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. He's at the entryway, so he's observable from those who are outside. Then he would cast lots for the two goats. One is going to survive; one is going to die. The one who would survive as a scapegoat would not survive with any of his previous flock, he would be taken far into the wilderness.

The description is in verse nine that he would take the goat on which the Lord's lot fell and offered as a sin offering.

Leviticus 16:9, 10 “Then Aaron shall offer the goat on which the lot for the LORD fell, and make it a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot for the scapegoat fell shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make atonement upon it, to send it into the wilderness as the scapegoat".

So we go back to what I talked about in the last point: we have a sin offering that's designed to teach a purification for unintentional sins, and this goat is going to be sacrificed; and he makes atonement, that is, he makes cleansing. This is a sacrifice for the nation that will get them through to the next Day of Atonement. It's temporary every year; it would have to be repeated, unlike the sacrifice of Christ.

The other is going to be the scapegoat. He will put place his hand on that goat and recite the sins of the nation, and then that goat would be taken far, far away, deep into the wilderness so that it could never find its way back, and that is a picture of our forgiveness. God completely removes our sin from us. He doesn't bring it up later on; He doesn't bring it back. It is paid for; it is taken away, and God forgets it.

Leviticus 16:15, 16  “Then he shall slaughter the goat of the sin offering which is for the people, and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. He shall make atonement for the holy place, because of the impurities of the sons of Israel and because of their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and thus he shall do for the tent of meeting which abides with them in the midst of their impurities".

He sprinkles the blood on the mercy seat, and this is a picture of God's satisfaction with the sacrifice. The cherubim who are associated with God's justice and righteousness, His holiness, look down and see that there is this blood, that death that covers and pays the penalty for the broken sin, the broken tablets, and it is satisfied.

The word that is used there in the Greek to translate mercy seat is picked up in the New Testament: HILASTERION, used to depict God's satisfaction; what we call the doctrine of propitiation. You really can't understand propitiation if you don't understand what happens on the Day of Atonement. That is the picture. A death must take place.

In verse 16 we read, "so he shall make atonement for the holy place, her cleansing because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel because of their transgressions, for all their sins, and he shall do so for the tabernacle of meeting." You have the one goat that is sacrificed, and blood put on the Ark of the Covenant, and then you have the scapegoat that is taken out into the wilderness, a picture of our cleansing and the picture of forgiveness.

These are the first three. They all emphasize the necessity of death in order for the sin problem to be taken care of. The fourth is the kinsman redeemer. That picture is described in Leviticus 25:47-49, and is depicted in the book of Ruth. The book of Ruth revolves around this understanding of the goel, the kinsman redeemer, but this is the foundation passage for it.

In Leviticus 25:47-49. "Now if a sojourner" … that would be a resident alien, the word for an immigrant someone who is not Israelite but is someone who is legally living with in the land and is a resident alien, a Gentile …" or stranger …" That would be just a more temporary alien or immigrant. "… are close to you becomes rich, and one of your brethren who dwells by him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner close to you or to a member of the stranger's family …"

This is what would happen. You had a sort of the idea of an indentured servant where if you became so poor because of your bad money management, or some crisis or something else, then you could sell yourself as a slave. But it was not life-long slavery; it was temporary. If you wanted it to be life-long, you could do that, but it was temporary and you would be released from that on the sabbatical year, every seventh year, so it was a way out. It was not anything like the slavery that we had in the United States. This was a way to indenture himself to pay off his debt. In verse 48 there's another way to gain that freedom. After he is sold he may be redeemed. Again, that's the Hebrew word for redemption, the payment of a price. One of his brothers may redeem him, so he is to be purchased by a blood relative.

Jesus becomes our blood relative by entering into the human race. We all come Noah. We all come from Adam but that funnel narrows with the family of Noah because they're the only ones who survive. We all trace back to one of Noah's three sons, so were all basically cousins, we are all part of the same gene pool, we are all related. And so the idea of Jesus entering in as a man is so that He can pay the penalty for our sin.

As the kinsman redeemer one of his brothers may redeem him, or his uncle or his uncle's son may redeem him, or anyone who is near kin to him and his family may redeem him. If he is able he may even redeem himself, but the goel is the picture of the kinsman redeemer, which is fulfilled in Christ. He pays the price to redeem us. What is the price? The price is death. This is what we see again and again in the Old Testament: the necessity of a substitutionary death in order to pay the penalty for the human race. Nothing else can do it. Good works can't do it. Joining a church can do it. Repentance can't do it. Emotion can't do it. Nothing can do it accept the payment of the sin penalty, the redemption price. And that is why when we come to realize our need for salvation it is based on simply faith alone in Christ alone, no works are involved whatsoever. In fact, works taint the transaction and destroy it. All that we need to do is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and we will be saved.

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