The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

By Chad Bird

Reading the Old Testament can seem like exploring an old, mysterious mansion, packed with of all sorts of strange rooms. The creation room, vast and sublime. The exodus room, with hardhearted pharaohs and dried-up seas. The war room, with bloody swords and crumbling walls. The tabernacle room, with smoking altars and dark inner sanctums. What does this odd and ancient world have to do with us, who are modern followers of Jesus? As it turns out, everything! Every chapter in the Old Testament, in a variety of ways, tells the story that culminates in Jesus the Messiah.

What Christians today call the Old Testament is what Jesus and the earliest believers simply called the Scriptures. That was their Bible. From its pages, they taught about the Messiah's divine nature, his priestly work, his ministry of salvation. The Christ Key will reintroduce readers to these old books as ever-fresh, ever-new testimonies of Jesus. By the end, you will see even Leviticus as a book of grace and mercy, and you will hear in the Psalms the resounding voice of Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: 1517 Publishing
• Release date: Jul 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781948969536

Book preview

Cover Page for The Christ Key

The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

© 2021 New Reformation Publications

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

Published by:

1517 Publishing

PO Box 54032

Irvine, CA 92619-4032

Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked (GWT) are taken from GOD’S WORD®. © 1995, 2003, 2013, 2014, 2019, 2020 by God’s Word to the Nations Mission Society. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked (WEB) are from the World English Bible.

Scripture quotations marked (NRSV) are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (YLT) are taken from the 1898 YOUNG’S LITERAL TRANSLATION OF THE HOLY BIBLE by J. N. Young, (Author of the Young’s Analytical Concordance), public domain.

Scripture quotations marked (NET) are from the NET Bible® copyright ©1996, 2019 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. http://netbible.com All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are from the King James Version.

Scripture quotations marked (NASB®) are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.

Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

Names: Bird, Chad, author.

Title: The Christ key : unlocking the centrality of Christ in the Old Testament / by Chad Bird.

Description: Irvine, CA : 1517 Publishing, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: ISBN 9781948969512 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781948969529 (softcover) | ISBN 9781948969536 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Old Testament—Hermeneutics. | Bible. Old Testament—Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Jesus Christ—Biblical teaching.

Classification: LCC BS1171.3 .B57 2021 (print) | LCC BS1171.3 (ebook) | DDC 221.6—dc23

Cover art by Brenton Clarke Little

Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1. The Layered Bible

Chapter 2. Christophanies: Walking Backward to Bethlehem

Chapter 3. Pencil Sketches: How Old Testament Individuals Outlined the Messiah’s Colorful Life

Chapter 4. The Genesis of Revelation: Old Creation, New Creation, and the Messiah

Chapter 5. Exoduses: Exile and Return as the Messianic Mission

Chapter 6. The Sanctuary Garden of God

Chapter 7. Furnished for Atonement

Chapter 8. The Psalms as the Prayerbook of Jesus and the Church

Afterword. A Prayer for the Reader

Scripture Index

Foreword

In Hebrew, the word for key (mafteach) is formed from the verb to open (patach). This makes perfect sense, of course, since a key is designed to be an opener. It opens doors. It opens gates. We even speak of the key to open someone’s heart. The purpose of a key is to get inside, to step into some space that otherwise remains closed to us.

This book is entitled The Christ Key because its purpose is to get you inside the rooms of the Old Testament (OT). To swing wide the door leading into Genesis. To walk into the wild and crazy hall of Judges. To inspect the poetic furniture and musical decorations in the book of Psalms. But you’re also in for a surprise. Ordinary keys get you into a place, but the things you see inside that place are not the key. Not so with the OT. The key called Christ not only opens the doors of every room from Genesis to Malachi; when you walk inside, what you see there is Christ as well. He is the key, and he is the content. In one way or another, every narrative, every prophet, every psalm, whispers his name and winks about his mission.

This book makes no claim to being a comprehensive treatment of Christ in the OT. Indeed, such a book—or series of books—cannot be written. The subject is inexhaustible. You had just as well try to weigh the waters of the ocean with a bathroom scale and a five-gallon bucket. Rather, these eight chapters are designed to feed you just enough to whet your appetite for more. My hope—indeed, my fervent prayer—is that this book encourages you to spend the remainder of your days saying to every part of the OT, Show me Jesus.

The impetus behind writing this volume came from teaching the course, Christ in the Old Testament, for 1517 Academy. The chapters follow the same basic outline of the class but expand greatly on the content. If you are interested in signing up for the course, it is a free resource for individuals, churches, and study groups. For registration and more information, go to https://1517-academy.thinkific.com/courses/christ-in-the-old-testament.

You may also be interested in the podcast, 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, that Daniel Emery Price and I have been cohosting for several years. We began with Genesis 1 and, as of this writing, we have worked our way, chapter by chapter, into 1 Samuel. In that podcast, you will find hundreds of hours of dialogue about the variety of ways that Christ appears or is foreshadowed in the lives of the patriarchs and beyond.

Here are a couple of items to keep in mind as you read along.

1. On occasion, I refer to the Septuagint. This is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Since translation always entails interpretation, it is useful for understanding how Jews understood some portions of the OT around the first century BC and AD. And because the New Testament (NT) authors frequently quote the Septuagint, it is an important link between the two testaments.

2. When citing biblical texts, I often highlight certain Greek or Hebrew words by writing them with English letters. These transliterations are, almost without exception, only the root or stem of the original Greek or Hebrew, not the full grammatical form. My purpose is usually to show links between various passages. The simple root form best accomplishes that for readers who do not know the original languages.

Chapter 1

The Layered Bible

Tucked into the back pocket of my bell-bottomed blue jeans was the weapon with which I terrorized the rodents and sparrows of my 1970’s childhood domain. My grandfather, Lee Roy Bird—Granddaddy to me—had risked rattlesnake encounters to scour through patches of mesquite trees near my home to find the wood necessary to craft this weapon. We lived in Jal, New Mexico. Now Jal may be lacking in water, green grass, and overall natural beauty, but one thing it could boast was a sprawling proliferation of those squatty, thorn-laden trees. Finally, after an hour-long search, my Granddaddy spied the perfectly shaped, perfectly sized forked branch. A little sawing. A little whittling. A little sanding. Soon, in my juvenile hands I held a slingshot, equipped with two wide rubber bands and a leather pouch made from an old shoe tongue.

And so, strangely enough, began my career in biblical interpretation.

Having been raised as a churchgoing, Sunday School attending Southern Baptist, I cut my teeth on the old, old stories in which arks became zoos and seas were cloven in half. I had memorized every word from the Bible’s opening chapter and, at our preacher’s request, recited it from the pulpit one Sunday morning. Daniel and the lion’s den. Joseph’s coat of many colors. Gideon’s fleece. All these unforgettable stories formed the thesaurus of my young mind. But in my opinion, the greatest hero of them all was that bold, young shepherd who steeled himself to meet the uncircumcised Philistine, armed only with a sling and five smooth stones. All the other heroes and heroines of Scripture were stars, but David, well, he shone brightest. And now, slingshot in hand, pockets bulging with pebbles, I was ready to be an acolyte of his illustrious legacy.

Many years would pass before I learned the Latin word, imitatio, but unbeknownst to me, I was already engaged in it on an elementary level. I was active in imitation, modeling, mimicking. My hero, David, had become my aspiration. The narrative of his youth would be the blueprint for my own. I would hone my skills. I would sharpen my wits. Sure, I might never stand before a real Goliath, but foes manifest themselves in a multiplicity of forms. And a boy can never be too prepared for any field of battle.

My teachers, no doubt with pious sincerity, encouraged and cultivated this imitative manner of thinking about the stories of the Bible. The obedience of Noah, the humility of Moses, the prayer life of Daniel, the devotion of Ruth—all of these men and women modeled the life of a true and serious follower of Jesus. And on the flip side, there was no shortage of scallywags and good-for-nothings in ancient Israel whose lives besmirched this sacred narrative. Bloodthirsty Cain. Ungrateful Esau. Pigheaded Balaam. Don’t be like those bad guys but be like the good guys: that was the creed of younger years. I had a long way to go, mind you, but at least my eyes were locked on a target. I hitched my wagon to the star of David. And in my back pocket, I carried the slingshot that, for me, compressed into a single wooden icon my hermeneutic—my approach to reading, interpreting, and applying the ancient stories of Israel.

Forty years later, that same slingshot, worn with age, now sits on a bookshelf a few feet away from me. One of the most cherished mementos of youth, it reminds me of my Granddaddy, now almost twenty years with our Lord in glory.

But I keep that slingshot in my field of vision for another reason as well—one not necessarily as positive, but vitally important. Every time my eyes drift toward it, I remember a sea change in my approach to the Scriptures, one in which the creed of Be like the good guys, not the bad guys was tossed aside onto the trash heap called moralism.

Like most things in life, this alteration in my interpretation of the Scriptures was the result of multiple factors. For starters, I grew up. I learned the dark reality of fallen humanity. I realized that just as the people today (including myself) are not good or bad but a cocktail of both, so were my boyhood biblical heroes. The Goliath-slayer became the Uriah-murderer. The obedient ark builder was also drunk, naked Noah. As for devoted Ruth, what exactly happened on that threshing floor during her nocturnal, risqué rendezvous with Boaz? Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it. If we read the Old Testament (OT) searching for role models, we might all end up intoxicated, fratricidal polygamists who impregnate our daughters-in-law and build temples for child sacrifice. No, a moralizing, imitative approach to the stories of Israel is a recipe for interpretive disaster.

Another reason I abandoned that approach was that, during my graduate studies with rabbis and Jewish scholars, they introduced me to what is called intertextuality or (as I sometimes refer to it) the layering of the Scriptures. This is the understanding that, as more and more biblical material was inspired by the Spirit and written down, every book built upon what came before it. And every new layer interacted with and interpreted former layers. For instance, Exodus not only follows Genesis but interprets it. Likewise, Joshua interprets Deuteronomy, Isaiah interprets Judges, and on we go until we get to the New Testament (NT), which interprets the entire OT. There exists, therefore, intertextuality—that is, texts interpreting texts. Rather than reading Scripture as if it’s a Christian variety of Aesop’s Fables, punctuated with good and bad exemplars of behavior, I began to read it as a multilayered web of interconnections that gradually construct the Big Story of Scripture. We will have more to talk about on this topic in a few more pages.

The final and overarching reason that I shifted away from reading the OT as a sort of handbook of morality was this: I began to take seriously the NT’s insistence that everything from Genesis to Malachi is, in one form or fashion, about Jesus the Messiah. This truth is found on the lips of Christ himself. For instance, when Jesus walked with the Emmaus disciples on the day of his resurrection, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:27). Later that same day, he reminded his followers, Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled (24:44). Earlier in his ministry, he told his detractors, You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me. . . . If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? (John 5:39, 46–47). To follow the Messiah entails following how he interpreted the Scriptures. And judging by his words, he interpreted them, in their totality, as a testimony about himself.

His disciples did as well. Already in the opening chapter of John, Philip told Nathanael, We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph (1:45). In Acts, Peter declared, What God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled (3:18). He adds that all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, proclaimed the days of the Messiah (3:24). Later, Peter will preach that to Christ, all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name (10:43). Notice how, three times, Peter insists that all the prophets spoke of the Messiah and his advent. Not one, not some, not most, but all. Paul will pen his own exclamation point onto Peter’s words when he says to the Corinthians, that all the promises of God find their Yes in [Christ] (2 Cor. 1:20).

Of course, God spoke of the Messiah to his people of old by the prophets at many times and in many ways, as Hebrews says (1:1). The prophetic speech was not monotonous but varied in pitch and tone from author to author. What is patently about the Messiah in Isaiah 53 or Psalm 22 is more latent in the narratives about Samson or the wisdom sayings of Proverbs. But that only increases the joy of the search, the thrill of interpretative labor! We, like archaeologists, get dirty while digging into and sifting the various levels of speech, metaphor, allusion, foreshadowing, and patterning in these ancient textual sites to discover what artifacts the Spirit has left there to teach us about the Son. For instance, I recall, many years ago, the moment I realized that Isaiah, in a prophecy about the Messiah (9:4), alluded to a detail about Gideon from the book of Judges. Suddenly, I felt like the Emmaus disciples, whose hearts burned within them while Jesus opened the Scriptures to them (Luke 24:32). With heart ablaze, I traced the connections from Gideon to Isaiah to Jesus, jumping from verse to verse. What before had seemed merely one more bloody battle from the dark book of Judges now shone with the light of Gospel glory. The more I studied, the more such experiences multiplied over the years. Every time I return to a text to meditate upon it anew—to pick it up, turn it over, shake it—some new Christological jewel drops from it. What a first-century rabbi named Ben Bag-Bag said of the Torah is true of the entire OT: Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it.

One might say, therefore, that if my trusty old slingshot had been the icon of my interpretive approach in my younger years, it was replaced by the image of the manger.¹ Walk up to it. Peer inside. Cradled there is the Messiah. There he rests. Now he may not look like much of a mighty Savior in this common, rough-hewn crib, swaddled and sleeping. But your eyes deceive you. It is he. That manger holds the Logos by whom all creation came into existence; the Messenger of the Father, who led Israel through the wilderness; the Glory of God who filled the tabernacle; the Son of Man whom Daniel saw receiving a kingdom; the Yes to all the promises of the Father. The scrolls of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings are the manger that cradles this same Anointed One of God. When we pore over those pages, we will discover many things—laws, history, lament, song, prayer, prophecy, proverb, riddle—but we will endeavor to find out how all of these comprise the manger of the Messiah.

The Tanak: Exactly How Long Is the Bible?

We have touched on two or three topics so far that we would do well to spend a little more time on, especially since they will arise repeatedly in the chapters that follow. The first of these ought to be so obvious that it hardly deserves explanation, but in my experience, the most frequently ignored truths are often those that are staring you square in the face.

I refer to the fact that, for the earliest followers of Jesus, their Bible was twenty-seven books shorter than our own.

Let’s pretend for a moment that the year is AD 40. Caligula is the emperor of Rome. The temple in Jerusalem is still standing, smoke wafting from its altar, its courts abuzz with activity. You and a small group, all followers of the Way, are in Jerusalem, but you are not in the courts of the famous sanctuary. Rather, you have gathered in the home of a friend. Every male in your group is circumcised, and every woman grew up practicing purification rites after her monthly period. You’re all in the family tree of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What binds you into a community, however, is not your ancestral heritage but the shared confession that another Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, is the Messiah—crucified, resurrected, and now seated at the right hand of the Power on high. You share a meal. You sing some psalms. You pray traditional Hebrew prayers. And you discuss, debate, and deliberate upon the Scriptures.

Now I ask you, What Scriptures? You certainly would not be discussing the finer points of atonement, predestination, or justification in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. Nor would you be deciphering the wild happenings when the sixth apocalyptic seal was opened in Revelation. Nor would you be studying the string of parables in Matthew 13. To do any of that would be rather difficult, seeing that no scroll had yet been inked with these gospels, letters, and visions. In other words, there was no NT. Yes, the stories and teachings of Jesus were told and retold—and no doubt were being written down, at least in note form—but nothing resembling NT Scripture had yet come to be.

But that made little difference. Why? Because you already had the Scriptures. You had—what came to be called—the Tanak, an acronym formed from T=Torah, N=Nevi‘im, and K=Ketuvim. The Tanak (also written Tanakh) is based on the traditional, threefold Jewish division of what Christians call the OT. The Torah is the five books of Moses (Genesis-Deuteronomy). The Nevi‘im or Prophets is comprised not only of what we usually think of as prophetic writings (e.g., Isaiah and Jeremiah), but also prophetic histories like Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. And the third category, the Ketuvim or Writings, is made up of all the rest, books like Psalms, Proverbs, Job, etc.

To return to our little group gathered in AD 40 in Jerusalem, that Tanak was your Bible. Not that you owned scrolls of each of the books, but that you were well acquainted with them. They were read, studied, and preached on