Old Testament Photos

1 Peter 1:10, “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully,” The Old Testament has many ceremonies  and rituals and events that were like 2 dimensional photographs of the real thing.  We have the real thing. 

The people  of Israel celebrated Passover and ate the bread and the tasted of the Lamb.  But brothers and sisters.  1 Peter 1:18–19, “you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”

BREAD MEDITATION: I am Bread from Heaven

Can you imagine? Every day when God’s Old Testament people were in the wilderness, they had to gather their  food from the ground?  But Jesus says in John 6:51, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Jesus said again in this passage – eat my flesh and you will have eternal life.  What does that mean, “Eat my flesh.” It means to believe by faith that Christ in His body substituted Himself for you. The Almighty God of Heaven, the  Second Person of the Trinity has offered Himself up and taken the blows of the lowest hell for you.  Receive Him by faith.  

CUP MEDITATION: I am the Way

The Old Testament way of doing things was very bloody.  God commanded Moses to set up the Tabernacle where, in order to reach God’s presence you had to offer a lamb or a bull or a goat or a dove. Have you read the book of Leviticus?  It’s a bloody book!

The way to have life in the Old Testament was through the blood.  You had to sprinkle everything with blood.  Moses sprinkled the people with blood.

Today we don’t come to God with the blood of animals.  We say with John the Baptist: “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of  the world.” (Jn. 1:29).

The way to God’s presence in the Tabernacle was through blood.  But  that was  just a picture.  The reality today is that Jesus is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life – no  one comes to the Father – to God’s presence except through Him.” (Jn. 14:6)

If you come to God you must come through the Beloved One.  All in  Christ are “accepted in the Beloved.”  Let us celebrate today that we are no less accepted today than the day when God says to each one of you: “Well done good and faithful servant, enter into your rest.”