is the part that is most directly aimed right at you and me. I love the whole Bible. All Scripture is profitable. The Doctrine of Proof, Correction, Instruction, and Righteousness. But the Pauline epistles are right for mine and your time right now. We need to study them and we need to know them well. Alright, Colossians 2 verse 13, And you, being dead in your sins, and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened, together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross." Isn't that a blessing? You get reading that Old Testament, you start trying to live up to all those rules and that law. No wonder the Bible says the law was a schoolmaster in bringing us unto Christ. Nobody can know principalities and powers. He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days." All those Old Testament details that you had to keep. Verse 17, notice this closely, which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ. If I understand that verse correctly, the idea is that the real thing, the actual person standing there is one thing and the shadow that it casts is something else. Perhaps you've been in a place where the sun was shining brightly and somebody was around the corner and you couldn't see the person yet, but you saw their shadow coming and you knew somebody was coming before you actually saw the body. So I want to preach this morning on this, the body is of Christ. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this chance to read and study your word and I pray your spirit will bear witness to the truth of it and help us understand some things that will reveal our Lord Jesus Christ to us even better. He is the anti-type. And there is no greater anti-type than the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the main one this whole Bible talks about. It's true that we don't have the full revelation of Him until we get in the Gospels. But even then, there's something missing that we pick up more of through the Pauline epistles and pick up even more of in the book of Revelation. Now by the time you get Revelation, you've got the Lord Jesus Christ front and center on the stage. He is the main subject of everything going on there. If there was a problem, he took responsibility for it and handled it. One thing that Pauline epistles teach is that a marriage, a husband and a wife, is a picture of Christ in the church. Amen. Do we here at Victory Baptist, that's a good thing to remember. But the great anti-type is the Lord Jesus Christ. If the husband is a type of Christ, then goodnight, that scares us to death. You know who he's a type of? He's a type of the Lord Jesus. None of us can live up to that, but that's the role that we play. Now, Paul's talking about the Jewish laws here, as we mentioned, and he's concerning food and drink and observance of days, and he says this. He says, they're a shadow of things to come. In your Bible, the type is usually a type of something in the future. It's not usually looking back. In literature, we talk about something that is a for, shadow of something that's going to come later. And those Old Testament types, as rich as they are, and thank God for these Bible stories and these children, Sarah and Isaac, and Daniel in the lion's den, and the three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, and they can tell you those stories, but they still haven't received Jesus Christ. They can tell you all those stories, but even if they did get saved, they still haven't made Him Lord of their lives. I want you to look at these types and I want to contemplate them to see what a great, great person Jesus Christ is. But at some point, you need to make a personal application and receive Him as your Savior. And even after you've done that, you need to make Him Lord of your life and say, Lord, I've decided to follow you with my life. Thank God for my fire insurance. Thank God for washing my sins away. Thank God for saving me from hell. Thank God for giving me eternity in heaven. Those are all wonderful things. But I love you and appreciate you so much I'm going to live for you even after I'm saved, not just get saved and let that be you. The doctrine of Christ, you'll have to admit in the Bible, is staggering. He is the creator of the universe. He is the lawgiver. And he is also the one that holds everything together, and then the one that will be crowned by his father, wonderful day, and will rule and reign forever and ever. You tell me a greater doctrine than that. How in the world can your mind even wrap around that? The vast majority of the Old Testament types point to the Lord Jesus Christ, either His person or His work or His gospel or His church or His ordinances or the benefits of it. The Lord Jesus Christ is the anti-type. The Bible was called by a new convert out on the mission field one time, the Jesus book. And I've got to admit, there's a lot of truth to that. It's off the Lord for a while. We get to Adam. You know what Jesus is called? He's called the second Adam. What was the first Adam? Well, he came directly from God, didn't he? You know what Jesus did? He came directly from God. God sent His Son, praise the Lord. Adam was built in the image and made in the image of God, wasn't he? You know what Jesus is? He is the image of God. When you trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are trusting the one who is the image of God. He is not the image of sinful man. Jesus was different, like Adam. When Adam was created, he was given dominion over the earth and all the animals. You know what Jesus has? Absolute dominion. When it came time, because the Lord saw that Adam was alone and did not have a help meet for him. You know what the Lord did? He cut him in close. And I many times refer to him and I say, Noah, my rest, my peace. How are you today? Noah, will you help me with this? Noah, my rest, my peace. And sure enough, Noah in the Bible, his name means rest. He lived in a wicked generation. and yet lived a comparatively holy life. He was a preacher of righteousness. And you know what he had? He had salvation from judgment that was coming through. You know what the Lord Jesus Christ does? He offers you peace or rest. He's called the Prince of Peace. He says, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you Rest. You know where Jesus Christ is? Right in the middle of a wicked generation. He still lived a holy life. As wonderful as it is, look at that interesting, mysterious character named Melchizedek. That strange guy that shows up and Abraham, as great as Abraham was, Father Abraham, the picture of faith for us in the New Testament, and the father of the Jews in the Old Testament, Abraham, as soon as he saw Melchizedek, humbled himself and paid tithes to Melchizedek. Who in the world is so great that Father Abraham gave him his tithes? Amen. And yet, he has a mysterious lineage. We don't know where he came from. We don't know what nationality he was. We don't know what his descent was. We don't know who his mom and daddy was. He just shows up and Abraham hits his knees. He was a king and a priest. You know what the Lord Jesus Christ is? He is a priest forever. Not after that order of Aaron, like the Old Testament priests, but after the order of Melchizedek. What an interesting, interesting character. And then how about Isaac? We got a guy in here named Isaac, don't we, praise the Lord. Isaac, the son of faithful Abraham. Mighty father. His very name means laughter. You know what I like to do? I like to be around somebody that is happy and has joy and is often laughing. Isn't that a blessing? It is. He had a predicted birth. A couple people beat me to it. Moses, over a hundred years old, I think 120, leading the children of Israel through the wilderness, right up to the promised land, on a mountain with God, and God showing him that promised land that they were coming into. And it says, his eye was not dimmed, nor his natural force evaded. That's pretty good at 120 years old. Here's Caleb, he's getting up in his 80s, if I remember the story correctly, and the one that we sing that song, I want that mountain, I want that mountain, and you know what Caleb's word of testimony was? I am strong now to go out and come in as I was before. You get serving God and don't you worry about your glory days being behind you. God Almighty will keep you serving Him all the way to the end and give you the strength to do it. I was bragging on some of the men at Victory Baptist Church back there in the Sunday school rooms. We got people that are great grandfather in here and still serving God. We got people in their 70s and 80s and still serving God. This is God Almighty's birth of his son Isaac and it was his only son. Legitimately and correctly. But sure enough, in that story that is so hard for us to understand, the Lord said, take thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and offer him unto me. And Abraham was so true to the Lord that he passed that test. And the Lord stopped him before he could. Now that does remind me to say, you know what the Lord will test you in? He'll test you in that thing that you love. Your money. Whose is it? If you're here today and you're saved, I hope the first thought that came in your mind is God's. Let me tell you what happens a lot of times, especially when people start hitting middle age or so. They start thinking, you know what? I've sacrificed. I wish to God they could trade place with some people in Victory Baptist Church today. Amen. They can't stay off the dope and the drugs and the drink. They can't stay out of therapy. You trying to live for the Lord Jesus and you've been rejected by some people in your family or in your close circle of friends. Your heart was broken and you feel rejected and you're disappointed. Oh, let me tell you who you can look to for comfort. Jesus Christ that went through all of that. Joseph was a great type of Christ in that he was rejected by his brethren. He was sold by his brethren. He was falsely accused. You know what he did? He just kept serving and moved right up. When he was sold by his brethren in Potiphar's house, you know what he did? He was the best servant Potiphar ever had. Then when he was falsely accused by Potiphar's wife and ended up incarcerated, you know what he was? With two others. You remember the butler and the baker? And Jesus was condemned with two others. You remember a thief on either side of him there on the cross? Then Joseph was highly exalted. And he fed people in a famine. And he forgave his brethren. You know what the Lord Jesus did even on the cross? but to save His people from their sins. Moses was the lawgiver like Jesus is. What's the problem? We ought to hang our heads and we ought to humbly submit ourselves to the Lord. You under a boss that doesn't exactly treat you fairly? I understand that. You know why you ought to be able to submit to that? Talk about, you know, abuse and stuff that's going too far. Use some common sense here, folks. That just an imperfect authority, you know why you ought to be able to take that? Because Jesus Christ came all the way down from heaven and got under some ungodly authority and he was able to do it. You can, too. Again, I'm not talking about criminal activity or anything like that. I'm talking about, you know, just an imperfect person. Every one of you, as you got older, As good as your parents were and as much as they loved you, you started to see they're not exactly perfect authorities. There's not a husband in here, as much as the Bible teaches, the man's the head of the house, there's not a husband in here that's a perfect authority. Whatever the authority we're talking about, Jesus Christ went even further. And he was able to do it. And furthermore, if you're saying you're just gonna only submit to the rightful authority, Then how come you're not submitting to Jesus Christ? Because you can't find one problem with Him. Let's just be honest, folks. We're all sinners. Amen. We have an authority problem. You know what Moses was? The meekest man in the world. And yet, the children of Israel kept rebelling against him. You can't say it was because Moses was too mean. He was a real monster and heavy-handed. No, he was the meekest man there was. Now, don't misunderstand. You need to be a good, meek person if you're in a position of leadership. You really do. But it's also true that we have rebellious hearts, and the meekest man on the earth we still wouldn't submit to the way we should. And the meekest one of all is Jesus Christ, and we're not exactly 100% submitted to him, are we? Amen. I say 100%. We're probably not 80% submitted to him. Probably do what we want with our money and our flesh and our time, don't we? Moses. Then there's Joshua. His name means Savior. He succeeded Moses, the lawgiver. He did that miracle at the Jordan River. He got possession of the promised land and gave out the dwellings to all the children of Israel. He'd come out of those things and whooped those Philistines up in fears. And then Samson slew more in his death than he did in his life. You know when the Lord Jesus won the greatest victory? At his death. That was when, buddy, the blood shed and the sins were washed away and eternal life was given. And all our victories come to the cross of Calvary. Bible says about the Lord Jesus, the gates of hell shall not prevail against him. One time they thought they had Samson locked in and you know what he did? He just picked up gate and bar and all and took them out of there. Gates couldn't prevail against big strong Samson and they sure can't prevail against Jesus. Even the gates of hell. Then we have David. Oh, what a great character is David. Imperfect. Now I can list his sins. I'll guarantee you, I can tell you some better family in the heart of God like His Son Jesus Christ. David was anointed to be king and who in the world is anointed? The very name Christ means anointed one. The word Messiah means anointed one. David was king, one of the great kings. But who is the king of kings? The Lord Jesus Christ. David was envied. Who in the world has been more envied than the Lord Jesus? It says, for envy they delivered him. That's true, when he was killed. And David had traitors. Absalom. You know what the Lord Jesus Christ had? Judas. Oh, Christian, I don't care to talk about this. I wish I could skip it. But I believe the Lord had me say it. When you decide to live for the Lord, you know what's going to happen? Somebody's going to be a traitor to you. Somebody that you love and somebody that you put a lot of confidence in and somebody that you trusted in and somebody that you've been a great blessing to will do you wrong. In the heart of the earth, Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale. Type after type after type in the Bible. Christ is the body represented by the personal types. Christ is the body represented by the things and the events. You remember the story of Jacob's ladder? Who in the world is that but Jesus? He was placed on earth, but he reached to heaven and the angels surrounding him. There were angels all over the life of Jesus Christ. They announced his birth. They strengthened him in times of weakness. They were all around after his death and resurrection. Angels were all over him. And there were angels all around Jacob's ladder reaching up to heaven. Jesus is the anti-type of the Passover lamb. You know what Jesus was? He was smitten. God smote him. And you know what came out? Blood and water. It pleased the Lord to bruise him. Why? Because of the blessing that came out for everybody from it. And he was gushing the water of life. All right, then we have the manna from heaven. It was also from God. It was also free. Those of you who are here and you're saved today, how much did it cost you to get saved? How much money did you pay in order to get saved? It's free. Isn't that something that the most precious substance in the whole universe, the lifeblood of God's own son is offered to you free. The manna from heaven in that whiteness was free. It was not outwardly cuddly. Nobody looked at it and said, oh man, that looks like a meal from a five-star restaurant. It was just something white down on the ground. Probably got a little dirt on it. It was on the ground. Is that where you usually get your food? When you go out today, you get a little priest who put his hand on the head of that goat before the thing was offered. You know what happened to the Lord as he was dying there on the cross? our sins were put on them. That's true. He that knew no sin became sin for us. There was the real torment to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now granted, I'm not saying that the physical torment wasn't bad. It was horrible, I'm sure. But far more important to His eternal holiness was the fact that he who knew no sin became sin for us. What did they have to do? They had to lift him up so everybody could see him. Christ did fulfill the law. The manna, there's some of it in the Ark of the Covenant. I've got to admit, probably not going to happen, but wouldn't it be the neatest thing if they found that Ark of the Covenant? And they opened that thing up and there was some of that manna, all these millennia later, and there was the tablets given to Moses. Wouldn't that be wonderful? That would be the neatest thing. One of these days we're going to see that thing. It's up in heaven, or at least the anti-type of the worldly one is. It had Aaron's rod that budded to show, hey, that's the priest I want you to go through. Then I think of the anti-type of the city of refuge. If you accidentally killed somebody, and you didn't mean to, it was a completely accidental death, and here come their brother coming to kill you for killing his brother, you could run to a city of refuge, and you could be safe. You know what I did one day? I ran to the city of refuge. I got scared. I was going to hell. Oh boy. How it was lowly, just like God's church is lowly. I get thinking about it out in the desert. It doesn't have much sustenance. What we are, we're a church in the middle of a wicked world. And we're not encouraged to live godly, are we? We're not encouraged to follow this scripture. We're encouraged to do the cool thing, the fun thing, the thing that'll make you rich. The things that'll get you attention and make you feel good about yourself. But the Bible says, humble yourself and he shall lift you higher. Burning bush in the desert, suffering. A bush in a desert, it's not exactly thriving. But it was from that bush that when the suffering came and the fire was on that poor little bush, it still stayed. It was so obvious that Moses, who probably had tunnel vision and was busy thinking about things, the type of the church, the priesthood of the believer, you know what those priests were? They were separated. It wasn't just everybody was a priest. They had to wash. It wears me out to read how much washing those poor priests had to do. They had to put on linen clothes so they couldn't even sweat once they get in there is what I'm told. But you know what those priests could do? They could go to God for you. You know what we can do in the New Testament? We can go straight to God. We don't have to go find a priest and confess our sins. My goodness. Like some of the false religions teach. We go straight to God. We don't go through Mary. We don't go through John the Baptist. We don't go through our preacher. We don't go through anybody else. You, if you're saying, and I hope that you are, you go straight to God. And if you want to get saved, I can't save you. A priest somewhere can't save you. You go straight to God and say, as Peter did, Lord, save me. You find it would be a better prayer than that. Then the tabernacle and later the temple. I hope I'm not sounding disrespectful here. You know what? There's a lot of New Testament instructions about church and how you're supposed to behave in here. This stuff is important to God. How about the Jewish nation? Chosen because of his friend Abraham. And they're supposed to be a holy people and a peculiar people and had the special love of God. But after all these types of the people and the items and the institutions, all the types and metaphors are only feeble representations of our Lord. They were sinful. He is sinless. They were created. He is the creator. They were temporal. He is eternal. They were incomplete. He is the fullness of the Godhead. They were weak. He is almighty. They were earthy. He is heavenly. That reminds me to say this. Many times I have wondered, why is it that some people with the same family, in the same church background, raised in the same way, and remember how to spit it all back to me out of rote memorization from hearing it a hundred times, but I want to ask you, did you ever get to Jesus through this book? That is the part that we can't do for you. The greatest preacher you ever heard can't make you trust Jesus. The greatest Sunday school teacher you ever heard can't make you trust Jesus. The greatest mom and daddy and the greatest Christian can't make you trust Jesus. At some point, you're going to have to see you're lost and you're sinking, and I don't care how much Bible you know, you're going to have to say, Lord, save me. Have you done that? Amen. You think about those two thieves on either side of Jesus Christ on that cross? They were both just as wicked as they could be and fully deserved to die by their own admission. I'm not arguing it anymore. Jesus is ruler of my life. I'm not. Whatever it is he's dealing with, if he's trying to get you to drop a bad habit or pick up a good habit or be more generous or be a better witness or a better testimony or clean up some dirty stuff in your life, whatever it is, are you going to submit to him? I know. You're not. You're going to mess up. But I want to know, number one, have you trusted Him as your Savior? And number two, have you decided you're going to submit to Him? Because all these types, as wonderful as they are, and as they bless my heart to lift up the Lord Jesus and remember the great characteristics of Him as we study Him, it won't matter if I haven't trusted Him as my Savior and I don't have a personal relationship that made Him Lord in my life. And I'll add a third. Have you made Him your best friend? And you go to Him as soon as something goes wrong in your life. For you call your mama, for you call your brother, for you call your sister.