An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
Jesus was not an afterthought in the outworking of God’s purpose. He was God’s plan from eternity and in fact the goal to whom the Old Testament pointed. Seeing Christ in the Old Testament is a fascinating study always, and that’s the topic of this book by Dr. Michael Barrett: Beginning At Moses: A Guide to Finding Christ in the Old Testament. I’m Fred Zaspel, executive editor here at Books At a Glance, and Dr. Barrett is here to talk to us about his work.
Mike, great to have you with us!
Barrett:
Thank you, Fred, good to be here,
Zaspel:
This will date us a bit, and I don’t know if you recall, but in my undergraduate work I minored in Greek, and you were the professor in two or maybe three of my Greek exegesis classes. It’s been great to reconnect after so many years!
Barrett:
Well, I do have some vague remembrances of that. As I recall, you did very well, but I hope you’re still using that Greek.
Zaspel:
Oh, absolutely! I’m glad you have some good memories.
Your area of specialization, though, is Old Testament and Hebrew, and that really forms much of the background for this book, right?
Barrett:
That’s correct.
Zaspel:
First off, I have to say that I love your title – Beginning At Moses. Tell us how it characterizes your book.
Barrett:
Well, this is based, of course, on the words of the Lord Jesus on his post-resurrection walk on the road to Emmaus as he was speaking to those disciples that were so discouraged at the events that had taken place concerning the crucifixion of Jesus. And he began to open their eyes and Luke tells us, particularly Luke, chapter 24, that as the Lord Jesus was speaking to those on the road to Emmaus, trying to give them comfort concerning the circumstances of the day, he began at Moses. He began at Moses and then went through all of the Prophets and the Psalms and he made the remarkable statement that all of this speaks concerning himself. So, the Lord Jesus gives to us, in many ways, the hermeneutical clue, the key, that opens up all of the Scripture for us. And that tells us that if we come to the Old Testament without seeing Christ and what it reveals concerning the redemptive purpose that the Lord Jesus accomplished, then we are missing something very vital and misinterpreting, indeed, what the Old Testament says. So, I take that statement of the Lord Jesus really as the key that opens up the Bible.
Zaspel:
The first section of your book is not as specifically focused on the Old Testament portrayal of Jesus. Explain for us what you aim to accomplish there.
Barrett:
The book is subtitled A Guide to Finding Christ in the Old Testament, and one of the issues that I had noticed in so many years of teaching and ministering to people was that they couldn’t find Christ, if you will, because they didn’t know what or who they were looking for. My premise is that the more I know Christ, the more I know what the Bible as a whole teaches us concerning Christ, and we do have the fullness of God’s revelation, the more we can understand who Jesus is, both in terms of his person, in terms of his work, his deity, his full humanity, his messianic offices of prophet, priest, and king. The more I understand who he is and what he has done, then the more I can find him. I think one of the great reasons that people close the Old Testament is that they really don’t know who they are looking for. And my premise is that the more I know someone, the better I can see him. I think I used the illustration of my wife. I’ve been married now for 40-odd years and I know my wife very well. I could see my wife in a large crowd and if all I saw was the back of her head, I would know it was her because I know her so well and I can pick her out and I can see her even if I don’t see all of her at one time. And I think people have the idea that if I don’t see Jesus on the Cross, if I don’t see all of him, he’s not there. So, the first part of the book is identifying the key aspects of the person of Christ, the work of Christ, his messianic offices, so that even if I see a part of that, a component of that, I know that I am in a messianic text. So I spent considerable time, yes, in the first part of the book trying to identify who it is that we are looking for so that when we see him we know indeed that it is him.
Zaspel:
Okay, the second section takes up the bulk of your book. You call it “Where to Look,” and here you survey the various ways we see Christ in the Old Testament. I want to sample some of that, but before we get into specifics, explain for us the concept of “progressive revelation” and how that is particularly important in this area of study.
Barrett:
Progressive revelation is simply a term that we use in biblical interpretation that deals with the way in which God revealed truth. Obviously, the Bible did not fall out of heaven all leather bound, but it was written, the Old Testament, over a period of a thousand years. The New Testament, after a period of some 400 years, was written in 50 years. It took time and God did not reveal everything all at once. Progressive revelation is the concept that God progressively, in installments, if you will, revealed more and more about the truth. I think the key thing to keep in mind, however, when we talk about progressive revelation, is that progressive revelation is never from incomplete to complete because partial truth is not truth. And it is certainly not from wrong to right. Progressive revelation is always from a general to a specific view of a given truth. General to specific. And as we look at some of the early revelations concerning Christ, let’s start with Genesis 3:15, what we call the proto-evangelium, the first Gospel, we have there encapsulated the whole course of God’s redemptive purpose in that seed of the woman that will be encountering the hostility of the seed of the serpent. What is it about Christ, what is it about the work of Christ, that ultimately cannot be put within Genesis 3:15? But then we come to the next promise and we learn that the seed of the woman will ultimately be of the seed of Abraham; and then we see that he is the seed of David; and then that he is the king in Judah. More and more details are given to us so that by the time the New Testament comes, and I open up the New Testament and here comes Jesus, and I put all of that previous revelation together, there’s no doubt that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Christ of the Old Testament. The idea is that it goes from the general to a specific, so that when Jesus comes, there’s no doubt, there’s no doubt that this Jesus of Nazareth is the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, the seed of David and right on to his being born of the virgin in Bethlehem.
Zaspel:
How are the covenants key to this whole matter of finding Christ in the Old Testament?
Barrett:
Yeah, I think the covenants particularly. Now, I suppose we should back up and say that as a covenant theologian I believe in two principal covenants, the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. But that covenant of grace is progressively revealed to us. It is progressively revealed in that the center of it, and every one of the installments of the covenant, has as its primary focus a new revelation, a more detailed revelation concerning the identity or concerning the work of the Messiah. A covenant is a mutually binding agreement. And certainly when we think of God’s covenant with man, he is the superior, he sets the terms, he sets the conditions; but he also makes promises and at the heart of those covenant promises invariably was a revelation concerning Christ. But I say, as it progresses, we have the covenant with Adam – I know there that the Messiah is going to be the seed of the woman, the humanity of Messiah. We come to the covenant with Noah and how that is repeated, then, with the promise that the seed is going to come through his son, Shem. And then we have the Shemites, and then we have Abraham, and now we learn of all the Shemites, that the Messiah is going to be of the family of Abraham and then ultimately of the family of David, of the tribe of Judah. So, these covenant promises are part of this progressive revelation that, while they have attendant circumstances regarding the land, regarding kingship, and whatever else, at the heart of it is going to be the revelation of who Jesus is, who the Messiah is, who the Christ is, who he is. Then we have the Mosaic covenant that really becomes a theological timeout, if you will, in regard to identifying who Christ is, as to now, what the Christ is going to do. We have all of the sacrifices, we have the tabernacle. All of these are pictures of the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus. By the covenants, then, we know who he is, his identity, and ultimately what he is going to do in order to accomplish the redemption that God has purposed.
Zaspel:
Talk to us about christophanies – what they are, some specific examples, and their theological function or purpose in the larger biblical context.
Barrett:
A christophany is simply an appearance, a pre-incarnate appearance, of Christ in the Old Testament. We have generally theophanies which are appearances of God, so you have the cloud that led them in the wilderness, the fiery pillar. That would be a theophany, a visible manifestation of God. A christophany is a subset of that, a pre-incarnate manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity. He has the appearance of man, the form of a man, but obviously not the human nature. The human nature did not come until the incarnation, when the virgin conceived and bore that son. But there were times in the Old Testament for various reasons, to encourage the people, usually at times of crisis, times of uncertainty, times of difficulty, the Lord would make this special manifestation of the second Person of the Trinity that would be a foretaste of the work of the Christ, as his prophetic work, as his priestly work, as his kingly work. One of the common of these christophanies would be the Angel of the Lord, the messenger who is Jehovah, a remarkable christophany that occurred on various occasions, sometimes identified as deity, sometimes distinct from God. Which brings us mysteriously to the very aspect of the Trinitarian relationship between God the Father and God the Son. They were times of special encouragement, times at crisis when God would reveal the Redeemer very, very visibly to his people to encourage them in those times of great difficulties.
Zaspel:
What are some of the significant names given to Christ in the Old Testament, and just how are they significant? Maybe you can give us a few brief examples.
Barrett:
Particularly the names, or the titles, perhaps we should use the word titles there, although we tend to use the word names in a very broad sense. The appellations that are somewhat descriptive of, again, the entirety of the person, you think even of all the names of God, the titles of God. God is infinite. We can’t think of everything about God all at once, so when God reveals himself as the rock that gives a special view. When he gives us the revelation that he is adonai, the Lord, the master, the sovereign, we focus upon that. It teaches us something about the person, the nature or the work of that particular person. Now when we look at the various titles, then, of Messiah, they function in the same way. They are highlighting some particular aspect of his character, some particular aspect of his ministry. For instance, the great promise to Ahaz concerning the virgin birth, “and you will call his name Immanuel, God with us.” Well, that teaches us something of his presence, it teaches us his deity. You have times when he is called the shepherd, the servant. I think one of my favorite titles of Messiah in the Old Testament is the Branch. You see it in Isaiah, you see it in Jeremiah, you see it used in Zechariah on these occasions where it highlights on the one hand the humble origins of the Messiah, his humanity, particularly as it is identified with the root of David, the root of Jesse. But it speaks also of his deity, “the branch,” Isaiah says, “who is Jehovah.” Jeremiah speaks of the branch who is the king and Zechariah, the branch who is the man, the branch who is the priest. These are remarkable statements that teach us something of the person and the work, the character, of the Messiah. Even Balaam referred to him with some remarkable titles: he’s the star, he’s the scepter, the king, and that one that is most glorious. That’s one way, through his names, the names of God, or one of the ways that God chooses to reveal himself to us and we want to take advantage of that as one of the ways that we find Christ in the Old Testament.
Zaspel:
Highlight for us the complementary modes of word and picture prophecy.
Barrett:
When I say word prophecy, these are the express prophetic declarations, the predictions, that the prophets would make concerning the coming of the Messiah. I mentioned just a moment ago Isaiah 7:14, there’s a word prophecy, “behold a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and you will call his name Immanuel.” That was a verbal prophecy, and we can multiply those all the way through the Old Testament.
When I say a picture prophecy, this is my way of referring to what otherwise is called a type. A type is something that is based in history; a type is something that has redemptive focus because God has used this as a divine illustration, a divine analogy. There is something about that historic thing, whether it’s a person, an event, or a thing. God is telling us, look at this, look at this thing in history, look at this person in history, and it is going to be analogous to the Messiah.
So these pictures … God knows our frailty and he would often give them and give to us something to look at to aid our faith and to teach us. Now, I think it’s important to realize that these picture prophecies, themselves, never introduced a truth; they illustrated the truth; they were divinely prophetic analogies that God has given to bring our attention to the Messiah. All of the sacrifices, for instance, would be a great example of the picture prophecy. As the lamb was chosen, a lamb that was without blemish, without spot – that points to, that draws a line to the impeccability, the sinlessness, the perfection of the Lord Jesus. The fact that the hands were laid upon that animal, confessing the sin, showing the guilt of the sinner now being transferred to that individual, to that lamb, to that victim, and so it is that Christ took our sins upon himself. The slaying of the lamb, the use of the blood – all of that was picturing the coming of the real work of atonement that the Messiah was going to do. The day of atonement, itself, what a picture that was with the lamb that was sacrificed and taken in behind the veil. And then the scapegoat – there is propitiation as the blood is presented to the Father on the Ark of the Covenant and then the scapegoat that takes the sin away, the expiation. And all of that becomes a visible drama, if you will, and manifestation of what the Lord Jesus is going to do.
So, the word prophecies set the truth, they establish the truth, but it’s going to be the picture prophecies, the types, that illustrate by analogy, by divinely inspired analogy. And these are things that God intended; it’s not my way of just trying to rescue an Old Testament message. This is intended by God and if I don’t see the type, then I certainly miss seeing Christ in that particular instance.
Zaspel:
Yes, if we don’t see it, we don’t see it rightly. I love this area of study. I could do the whole interview on that. Maybe we can sometime.
Before we sign off, give us a brief overview of your book so our listeners can know what to expect.
Barrett:
Well, it’s written, I trust, for laymen. It’s not a scholarly work. I tried to avoid footnotes, intentionally, so that that’s not distracting. I want laymen to be able to take the book, with their Bible open. This is not a substitute for the Bible, but it’s a guide and that’s the significance of the subtitle. I’m not dealing with every messianic passage. It’s not a Christology from that standpoint, but it is a guide to help the reader, on his own, as he opens up the Scripture day by day to read the Scripture with Gospel glasses, to read the Scripture with the lenses of the Lord Jesus as he is revealed. If I can point men, if I can point believers, Christians, who are serious about the reading of the Old Testament Scriptures, if I can encourage them to look for Jesus, if I can show them where to look for him where they actually find him, then, if I can succeed in any little way that I give my humble thanks unto the Lord. I trust that it will be used from that standpoint.
Zaspel:
We’re talking to Dr. Michael Barrett of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and author of Beginning At Moses: A Guide to Finding Christ in the Old Testament. It’s a helpful, systematic very informative overview of a marvelous area of study. I enjoyed reading the book, and I know you will too. Check it out and enjoy!
Mike, great to have you with us, and thanks for talking to us today.
Barrett:
Well, thank you, Fred, very much.
