Today I will be speaking on an area in the scripture; biblical types and patterns.
The purpose of this is not to go into a theological session and to explore every dimension of this topic, but for us to be able to understand the key principles, concepts therein, and to ask a few questions of what biblical types and patterns means for you and I as believers
Knowing these principles will give you a deeper understanding of how God operates.
Romans 1:20 says “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the World are clearly seen been understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse”
The scripture above is essentially saying that for anyone who says God does not exist, God uses the things we can see to give a better understanding of who He is.
God is a relatable God, He likes to give you examples, He likes to give you types, patterns, and parables, these are things that you can connect with, so that in connecting with those things you can begin to understand heavenly things.
When Jesus Christ came, it was fairly similar, the Bible says in Matthew 13:13, it tells us that Jesus used parables alot, “Therefore I speak to them in parables because they seeing, see not, and hearing they hear not neither understand”
Jesus Christ came and began to reveal certain things to people but He didn’t just tell them what was exactly going to happen, rather He gave them parables, one of the parables He told is the parable of the Kingdom of God, been like a man who was to travel, to a distant country but decided to share talents to his servants” (Matthew 25:15-21)
Christ gave this message as a parable so that people could connect with what He was saying, some people who heard His teachings, were hard in heart despite the fact that the truth was laid bare before them in parables they did not understand it.
But the principle here is that when God wants you to understand something He gives you an example.
And so when man fell in the garden of Eden, after the serpent deceived man, and the devil took away man’s authority and dominion, God decided immediately to put in place a redemption plan,
He decided to send a Savior and this Savior will save the World and redeem man, God put in place that plan, and as He put in place that plan, He began to reveal certain elements of that redemption plan
God wanted people to know that a time is coming when there is a Christ who will come and His Kingdom will be without end, so He began to put in place examples of what He will do in future.
For instance, God knew He would sacrifice His only begotten Son, whose blood will be shed as instrument to take away the sins of the World
To make an example, God picked Abraham and told him to sacrifice his son, (remember that it took Abraham a long time to have his son; Isaac, the child of promise, and that it was through Isaac that Abraham was going to be the Father of many nations)
After God gave Abraham, Isaac, God then asked Abraham to take the same child of Promise to the mountain and sacrifice him there unto God
In doing this, God gave us an example of what it meant to give up your only begotten son. So in a sense, Abraham was like a type of God, in that he showed us an example of something that was about to happen certainly in future
Then what happened when Abraham got to the mountain? Abraham took Isaac, placed him on the altar and was about to kill him when the Lord spoke and said “Do not touch that lad”, then the Lord provided a ram for sacrifice. (Genesis 22:12)
That gave us an example of the sacrifice of Jesus, Isaac was placed on the altar to die, but a lamb was given in exchange. Isaac came back to life as it were, giving us an example of how Christ will redeem man through death, resurrection and substitution of one by another.
When God wanted to give us an example of the fact that Jesus Christ was going to be killed or crucified and He will be made to go to hell, He would spend three days in hell but will arise the third day and come back from the dead,
God gave us another example, this time it was about Jonah, God instructed him to go to Nineveh and preach to the people to repent of their sins, Jonah refused and said that if he went, the people will repent and God been a merciful God will surely forgive them of their sins
Eventually, Jonah was swallowed by a fish, Jonah effectively died by entering into the belly of a whale, he spent three days (just like Christ spent three days in the grave but rose the third day) on the third day the whale spewed Jonah out and though Jonah was dead and gone in that he was taken away from the land of the living into the belly of a fish, he came back to life.
That is an example of what was to happen in the future about Christ, it showed to us that there will be a time when the devil will insist on killing Jesus, and Jesus will descend into hell, after been in hell for three days, setting captives free, death rejected Him, and Christ came back to life.
God gave us an example of what He wanted to do, when man sinned God says He can’t stand the sight of sin, He is of purer eyes to behold iniquity, therefore because man was in sin, man was separated from God, couldn’t approach God, God turned His face away from man (Habbakkuk 1:13).
So the question was what can be done to deal with the issue of sin, then God gave an example, this is the example of animals been sacrificed as sin offering, the animals were killed and specific things were done with the flesh, and blood of the animal so that people can have access to God (Hebrews 13:11-13)
People did not have direct access to God and the sacrifice had to be done through a priest, so men brought their animals to the temple acknowledging the fact that they are sinners and cannot go before the presence of God, so they would stand in the outer court and present their animals, and the priest will take the animal and sacrifice them
Some things will be done in the inner court to make some form of atonement, asking that the sins of each person be forgiven.
There were all kinds of offerings that had to do with the same sacrifice of animals that God gave to the children of Israel, there was the sin offering, burnt offering, wave offering etc,
There were different kinds of offerings for different circumstances, those who wanted to approach God were required to go with the merit of these offerings, because without the shedding of blood, they can be no forgiveness of sins. (Hebrews 9:22)
And He showed them so nobody dared to go into the presence of God without offering.
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