Weeping over the Reprobate

Behold the foreshadow: a man broken, sorrowful, weeping, “O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!” See him there the man who is King, lying on all fours, with his head buried deep to the carpet, wishing that it could have been different, wishing that his own son didn’t rebel against him. See the tears falling from his eyes; hear his loud sobs. The attendants nearby sneak out in shared empathy and shame, leaving the king alone to mourn bitterly. His misery is palpable, his agony is real, and his soul is experiencing the worst grief, even though this same son was his enemy.
For how would you feel if your son rebelled against you, and perished into hell, never to return?
As a father considering my son, I can scarcely endure the thought.
This is our point of reference.

Behold the reality: (Luke 19:41)“And when He came near, He beheld the city, and wept over it,” (Matthew 23:37) “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that kills the prophets, and stones them which are sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but you would not!” See him there a broken man, sorrowful, weeping, the king wishing they would come to him, would throw down their arms and run to Him.  See how He sobs over his foes who know not the destruction and desolation they demand. Hear his agony in their final rejection. His grief is bitter; His loss is real, though they were His enemies. In His mind He yells at them as loud as He can “TURN! TURN! WHY SHOULD YOU PERISH!?!” (Ezekiel 33:11) But they heed Him not, and He breaks down again and cries.

Now you hyper-Calvinist, you tell me these are tears of rage, and that here we are given a picture of a God who purposed only their destruction and no more. He has no love for the lost, just for His sheep, He indeed cares nothing for these sinners. He was not overcome with sorrow, He was overcome with a thirst for blood.
And I will tell you “your heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this wickedness, and pray to God that your heart may be forgiven. For I perceive that you are in the gall of bitterness, and in the bonds of iniquity.” You had better hope that you are wrong in your understanding of this God- and you had better wish that you were wrong and He actually does care for lost sinners, because you are yourself in need of being found.

Killed by Lion

1 Kings 13 is one of the more baffling sections in the history of the Kings of Judah and Israel. A nameless prophet suddenly appears at Bethel to give a word of warning against the evil king Jereboam, survives the temptation to join sides with the crown, but then falls to the temptation of joining with the false prophets. 
As a result a lion comes and kills him.

It brings to mind the severe punishment Moses was given when he could not enter the promised land for his failure to obey God.
In Exodus 17:6 Moses had been given the great honor of acting out the nature of the Father striking the Son and causing living water to pour out to heal the people (1 Cor 10:4).  Just as Nehushtan was lifted up on a pole and healed those who looked at him, thus prefiguring Christ, Moses was given the duty of prefiguring the punishment God would inflict on Jesus.
You can see that in the second instance it would not do to strike Christ again, as the cross was a once for all time event, so God had Moses speak the second time (Num 20:8).  When an adopted, justified, child of the covenant sins the Father speaks to His Son, asking Him to intercede for the fallen people who have broken fellowship with Him. He does not strike His Son twice with crucifixion.  Moses had therefore not merely disobeyed God when he struck the rock twice, he had ruined God's example, and portrayed an inaccurate message of Christ to every subsequent generation. When we understand this we are less inclined to think the punishment does not fit the crime, instead we think are tempted to think that God let him off light for compromising our ability to understand Christ better.  

I think the nameless prophet was in the same situation.

Like Christ he was a prophet, who comes on the scene of history as a nobody (Matt 2:23), with almost no back explanation. Like Christ he pronounced doom upon the ungodly v2 (Matt 23) as a warning to repent, and demonstrated his message with signs and wonders v4 (Acts 2:22), including healing the crippled hand of a man v6 (Luke 6:10).  He cast down the ungodly ruler of the age v1 (John 12:31), was enticed to throw in his lot with the king v7 (John 6:15) but knowing their hearts and how unstable men are he remains steadfast to obey God v9 (John 2:24-25).
Unfortunately that's where his story ends because that's where the similarities to Christ end. He was to be a picture of Christ, a prophet come into the world to warn and heal, to have no intercourse with the ruler of this world, but to accomplish his mission and return to the glorious land. He was not to become enamored with the sinful world, nor was he to join it, nor live in it, nor linger in it, for Christ did not come to live in our world but to call us out of it and into a better one. This man was a foreshadow of Christ Himself. A tremendous, amazing, honor afforded to very few people in the pages of history, and instead of being pure and steadfast this prophet folded up and fell in with sin.
So God sent a lion to show His displeasure. That's not how His Son was to be represented, as some prophet that gets half way to the goal and then gives up and decides to disobey. His Son is too pure to be represented in such an ugly manner, so God had to pull the plug on the analogy in an obviously divine fashion.
Christ is not to be looked upon as merely a good prophet, or wonderful teacher who brought kind words and did nice things and we weep to think that here was love Himself come to show us love. We should not have apostates mourn for Him as if they had a share in His inheritance.   

So yes, God is holy, and just, and to be obeyed, and deserves our respect. But more then that I think that God was trying to help us understand His Son by analogy, and lest we be tempted to overdraw the analogy He cuts it off.  Nehushtan was designed to show people how if we look upon it lifted up we may be healed (John 3:14), but when the worship became idolatrous it was destroyed (2 Kings 18:4). Moses was to prefigure the healing Christ brought, but when he misled them to the nature of Christ he was barred from the promised land. And when this prophet did more harm to us than good God stepped in.

Christ is the fufillment of Isaiah 25:6-9

Isaiah 25:6 On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

Luke 22:15-18 And he said to them, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it  until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, "Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."
John 14:2-3 In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also"

v7 And He will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.

2 Cor 3:14-16- "But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed."

v8 He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.

1 Cor 15:55-57- ""O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
Rev 7:17- "For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
Rev 21:4 "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."

v9 It will be said on that day, "Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, that He might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for Him; let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation." 

Matthew 27:37 "And over His head they put the charge against Him, which read, "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews."
1 Peter 2:24 "He Himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed."
Phil 4:4- "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice"

Naboth the foreshadow

1 Kings 21:2 "And after this Ahab said to Naboth, "Give me your vineyard, that I may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near my house, and I will give you a better vineyard for it; or, if it seems good to you, I will give you its value in money."
Luke 20:13 "Then the owner of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.' But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.'"

1 Kings 21:3 "But Naboth said to Ahab, "The LORD forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers."
Matthew 4:8-10 "Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me." Then Jesus said to him, "Be gone, Satan! For it is written, "'You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.'"

1 Kings 21:13 "And the two worthless men came in and sat opposite him. And the worthless men brought a charge against Naboth in the presence of the people, saying, "Naboth cursed God and the king." So they took him outside the city and stoned him to death with stones"
Mark 14:55-56,61,64, 15:37 "Now the chief priests and the whole Council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they found none. For many bore false witness against him, but their testimony did not agree...But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?...You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?" And they all condemned him as deserving death...And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last"

2 Kings 9:26 "'As surely as I saw yesterday the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons..."
Acts 8:33 (NIV) "In His humiliation He was deprived of justice. Who can speak of His descendants? For His life was taken from the earth."

Christ at the Center of History

I'd pretty well comfortably worked through the thought that the Bible is about Christ, who is the real One. He's so real in fact that the first Adam is overshadowed by the second Adam.  But I didn't realize how massive it is to have Christ at the center of all of it, including those obscure passages.

Consider Jesus and the holy family fleeing from Herod into Egypt. Hosea 11:1 is a strange verse, because it seems not to fit at all.
Kevin DeYoung posits the correct interpretation on this thought: that Christ is the new Israel. That in the same way the man Adam, or Moses, or Jonah foreshadowed Christ, the entire nation together foreshadows Christ. Israel came from Egypt, was baptized in the Sea and cloud under Moses, faced the trials in the wilderness, preached the law from Sinai, and came into the promised land.

Jesus came out of Egypt, was baptized, faced trials in the wilderness, preached the law, and entered the promised land of rest.  Therefore Israel the nation is the foreshadowing of Christ. It's the analogy, the weak mist, the ghost compared to Jesus, who is more than the fulfillment of scripture and history, He is the source of it's strength. It is what it is by mirroring and copying Him. 

That is a truly remarkable thought. Christ positively bends all of human history about Himself. All nations, peoples, languages, relationships, and world events are taken after Him and find Him their source. Not only is He at the center of all the Bible texts, stories, commands, songs, He is at the center of the created History. He is more than the consummation of the Old Testament, He is it's substance, it's reality. It in itself is the dimly lit history or analogy pointing to the truth found in Christ. He is the foundation for existence, the highest end. He is the one in which all things hold together, all the narratives and events.  
And not merely at the center of Scripture, but at the very core of the universe which orbits around Him, created after Him, in His likeness.

Paul would say it like this in Colossians 1:16-17 "For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

But I confess I because of the size I had failed to apprehend the colossal statement that is, and it was not until I saw that the enormous history of the huge nation itself was foreshadowing Christ did I realize in some small part the magnitude of His anchoring presence in this world. 

It's one thing to bend all of scriptures about you, it's another again to bend all human history to you, and to have living nations existing for the sole purpose of reflecting your story.

Jesus as the center of the Scripture

 John 5:39-40,46 - You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life...For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.
Matthew 21:42 - Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures (Ps118:22-23) : "'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes'?
Mark 14:27 - And Jesus said to them, "You will all fall away, for it is written, 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.'(Zechariah 13:7)
Luke 24:44 Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.
We see that the whole of the Bible is drawing us into the idea of Christ, for Christ is conscious that He is fulling and the fulfillment of all the Old Testament Scriptures.  We therefore know that every book in the Bible from the Old Testament is really a story about Him.  Sometimes this is perfectly clear Psalms 40:7-10 Then I said, "Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart."I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD. I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation, and sometimes not as much Hosea 11:1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.  (I'll come back to this one in particular next post)

This is a foundational point in Reformed theology that the Bible is about Christ.  That the stories we read are foreshadowing Him. Song of Solomon isn't a holy "sex manual" it's a poetic message from Christ to His Church.  Ah, isn't it then wonderful to see the Scriptures open like a flower having understood that the Bible was written about Him, to Him, for His glory?  Makes so much more sense this way. See this well done video that makes the point for me.