Abraham, my Friend 51

Father and Son

In our previous meditation I made the statement that from this point in the life of Abraham, the Friend of God, we come to a new aspect of Abraham’s life. We shall begin to see Abraham and Isaac as types of the Father and the Son. Typology is a blessed and dangerous piece of country. It has been brought into disrepute by some excesses and it is now treated with acute suspicion by some branches of the Christian family.

What is a type? The word has to do with the shape of things and is where we get our word ‘type’ from — the ink-coated metal imprinting its shape onto the paper. The word is itself Greek; tupos coming from tuptO meaning to beat into shape. So the word comes to mean a mark left by something applied with pressure. Its first use in our Bible is a sobering one:

The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”  So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25 NKJV)

Not the nails themselves but the shape of the nails. Types then are the shapes of something much more real; they are the mark left behind.

Another word which links with this branch of Bible study is the word ‘shadow’. In writing to the Colossians Paul says:

So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. (Col 2:16–17 NKJV)

Back to the future?

The Sinai laws were not themselves the reality but were the ‘shadow’ of the reality. The writer to the Hebrews uses the same kind of language:

For if He were on earth, He would not be a priest, since there are priests who offer the gifts according to the law; who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, “See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.” (Heb 8:4–5 NKJV)

The writer explains exactly how he is using this language a little later in Hebrews:

For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. (Heb 10:1 NKJV)

The law, says the writer, was not the reality itself but a shadow of the reality.

We can see an association of ideas here. Both types and shadows give the outer shape but have no detail, no colour, no breath, no real life. They are visual aids and not the things themselves. We need to see that, biblically, the reality must exist before the type or shadow. This is a real mind-bender. This means that, at times, we have to read the Bible backwards!

Among the reasons that William Tyndale gave for an extensive study of Romans, he included his opinion that it was the ‘best introduction to the Old Testament’. It is, then, important to realise that the reality must precede the type or the shadow. Even when they are ‘shadows of things to come’ the sense is from the eternal to the time-based. Imagine yourself walking towards a bright light and you encounter a shadow of a tree. In ‘order of time’ you will meet the shadow before you meet the tree, but there could have been no shadow without the tree. In like manner, without the eternal light which cast them, there could be no such clear shadows projected backwards into history.

The third testament?

If we are really to understand the Old Testament it will only be in the light of the New Testament. I sometimes say that my Bible has three testaments — an Old Testament, a New Testament, and an Old Testament understood in the light of the New Testament. Some Christians have never discovered the third Testament.

There are some ‘types’ whereby the anti-type or the reality which gave the shape to the type, are clearly interpreted. The word is sometimes translated ‘example’, or ‘figure’. Adam, we discover, was himself a type:

Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. (Rom 5:14 NKJV)

The word is also used as an example of good or bad:

Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. (1 Cor 10:11 NKJV)

And again:

Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern. (Phil 3:17 NKJV)

Types and shadows, then, serve as illustrations. Charles Spurgeon, in his Lectures to My Students, drew the attention of his students to illustrations. He likened them to windows through which light is let into the building. They are important, he said, but should not be too elaborate or draw attention to themselves. A stained glass-window only attracts attention to itself. Illustrations should serve their purpose simply. They are, he said, necessary, but ‘beware of building your foundations of glass.’ This is very sound hermeneutics. Types must not be used to create theology but to illustrate it.

Abraham and Isaac as a ‘type’ of Father and Son

So let’s take a look at Abraham and Isaac. The name ‘Abraham’ has the title ‘The father’ built into it, but the title only begins to make sense when it is used in relation to the son. We can’t have a father without a son nor a son without a father. Abram means high father, Abraham means the father of a multitude, but even a multitude must begin with a single starting point. Ishmael can never serve as a ‘type’ of the Son, because Ishmael was the son of Abram – high father, whereas Isaac was the son of Abra-ha-m – the father of a multitude.

It was always the Father’s purpose to bring ‘many sons to glory’, and both the Son and the sons must have the same Father:

For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren… (Heb 2:10–11 NKJV)

Father… what a wonderful revelation God has given us of himself. In terms of son-ship, the letter to the Hebrews refers to him as the ‘Father of spirits’ (Heb 12:9). I am so glad that God has ‘raised me’ as a Father of my spirit, rather than as a managing director, quality assurance controller or progress engineer! He doesn’t inhabit the penthouse suite of the Head Office as the CEO, but is wonderfully accessible as a Father.

Surely it is significant, in the account of Abraham and Isaac, that the father’s son is called Isaac – Laughter. Surely we are hearing that same laughter in Proverbs in one of those mysterious glimpses into eternity that Scripture reveals, giving us a glimpse of Father and Son in a snap-shot of eternity:

Then I was by him, as a master workman;
And I was daily his delight,
Rejoicing always before him… (Prov 8:30 ASV)

Daily delight

‘Daily his delight’… How long does an eternal day last? The picture is of a delight that never grows jaded. Did you see ‘delight’ on the face of any children over Christmas as they opened their presents? Did you see the whole person aglow with enjoyment and pleasure? He has his bicycle and his world is complete; he could not possibly want anything else. If so, you’ve seen a fleeting glimpse of this ‘daily delight’. Wesley tried to capture it in his hymn:

O GOD, of good the unfathomed sea!
…Fountain of good! all blessing flows
From thee; no want thy fulness knows;
What but thyself canst thou desire?

Through eternal days the Son was ‘daily’ the Father’s delight. There was never any loneliness in God; the Trinity is an important truth.

If ‘delight’ is the word to express the Father’s joy, how shall we express that of the Son? ‘…Rejoicing always before Him’. The word ‘rejoicing’ is the Hebrew word ‘yitzchaq’ meaning to laugh out loud. You will have heard the word before, it is the name of Abraham’s son —  yitschâq – Isaac. Sometimes coincidences are just too good to be coincidences!

What a word picture of ‘eternal days’ — heaven full of a Father’s delight and a Son’s laughter. There were no angels then, no sky nor earth nor sea nor men. Just God. Is this what you had imagined? Or had you imagined the Godhead in solemn counsel? When God created the angels and the earth the mood is one of contagious holy joy:

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare, if thou hast understanding.
Who determined the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who stretched the line upon it?

Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened?
Or who laid the corner-stone thereof,
When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Or who shut up the sea with doors,
When it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb… (Job 38:4–8 ASV)

When was the last time you shouted aloud for joy?

Arise, O Jehovah, into thy resting-place;
Thou, and the ark of thy strength.
Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness;
And let thy saints shout for joy. (Ps 132:8–9 ASV)

Can you imagine Abraham when Isaac was born? Can you imagine his delight?

Family

Some years we are able to celebrate Christmas as a family, with all the children and grandchildren making their visits. I wish you could see my wife at such times with everyone sitting around the table. It’s only for a brief time but the ‘family’ is together again; she would ask nothing more for Christmas. It’s a little heaven for her, all the flock safely gathered in. This sense of togetherness is a key part of the gospel story:

Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, “Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.” (Luke 15:25–27 NKJV)

There’s more noise in the Bible than you might expect, especially when people are rejoicing. We know the rest of the story but pause to think what the elder brother heard. I have no doubt that, as well as the music and dancing, he heard a father’s delight and a son laughing out loud.

When the time came for the Son to step into humanity, he came to Jordan and the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy:

Behold, my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen, in whom my soul delighteth: I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. (Isa 42:1 ASV)

He who had been the Father’s daily delight had stepped into time as his servant, but the Father’s delight in his Son was undiminished.

That mysterious Proverbs passage goes further:

Then I was by him, as a master workman;
And I was daily his delight,
Rejoicing always before him,
Rejoicing in his habitable earth;

And my delight was with the sons of men. (Prov 8:30–31 ASV)

We have touched these things before. Before the creation the thoughts of the Godhead were man-wards, laughing out loud over the prospect of the inhabited earth, and delighting in the prospect of ‘sons’.

But before the sons could be gathered into the family home, Father and Son must make their way together to a place of sacrifice and death. Only by this route would the sons be brought home. That part of our story still lies ahead, but we will never begin to understand the cost of that sacrifice unless we glimpse those eternal days of Father and Son in a perfect fellowship of delight and eternity itself ringing with laughter.