THE FUTURE PATTERN BECOMES CLEAR
In the early days of settling in the Promised Land the children of Israel were always looking backwards. To counter this Joshua got the people to renew the covenant, and rededicate themselves to God. At Shechem he got them to recite and remember what God had done for them in the past, in particular the leaving behind of Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, and God's great provision during the wanderings in the wilderness (Josh. 24:7). So two years later Samuel asked them to cast their minds back to see God's goodness in times past (1 Sam. 12:7). It was common practice in their prayer life to challenge God to be as gracious to them in their day as he had been to their forefathers in the exodus. Elijah on Carmel called upon the God of Isaac, Abraham and Jacob seeking God to answer by fire from heaven (1 Kings 17:21), Elijah remembered Moses calling upon God before Pharaoh and God answering him. During the reign of King David, the prosperity of Israel was at its best, but a more glorious era was prophesied. This was to come into being when David's successor - his own son Solomon on the throne that God had established eternally in a kingdom of peace and prosperity (2 Sam. 79). It began to dawn on the Israelites what this new future might mean for them. Such a clear promise of future greatness made them look forward to this messianic era, which might be just around the corner. With each birth of a new heir to the throne they asked the question "Could this be the anointed one?" However as king succeeded king and things grew worse, as indeed the kings followed suit. Some were weak in their faith, other bungled things, and others turned to other gods, and the people grew despondent of making any progress toward this new era that had been promised. Perhaps at such a stage we would expect to find increasing pessimism and cynicism, and a looking back to past glories. Then we find something out of the ordinary happening to the prophets of Israel. They prophesied that it would not be a continual process of corruption. That God would intervene to bring them back to himself. The way He would do this would be terrible, involving other nations. God would use the worst nations as instruments to cleanse his people, and then destroy the instruments he had exalted. In the midst of all this terrible judgment, God could begin to
fulfil all the promises he had given to the house of David on a scale more glorious than had ever been dreamed of before. The great events of their past history, they now said, held as much hidden meaning for the future as the former glory of the house of David and his city Jerusalem. In this new messianic age there was ordained for the people of God not only a new David, a new Jerusalem and a new Temple but also a new exodus, a new entry into a new promised land under a new covenant - indeed for God's people there would be a new creation: mankind could be given a new heart. However, the later prophets found it difficult to apply these ideals and standards as they faced a collapse, socially and spiritually in Israel. They gave up all hope of restoring the past and found great problems in interpreting this prophecy in their time as the hearts of the people grew worse; and yet in spite of this they became more and more certain that all the promises of God to their nation were going to be fulfilled in a new unknown way through creative acts of God, never before dreamed of as possible. Sometimes they felt it in their own hearts and saw signs around them that the new had already begun "Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old, behold I am doing a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Isa, 413: 18-19). They continued to take heart and encouragement from the past, for the new era was to come about under the same power that had accomplished in the past. Moreover in the "former things" they found the patterns God was going to follow in the new future. Indeed their whole past history under God was to be repeated and transformed. The prophetic linking of the past to the future has led to what is often termed a "typological" interpretation if the Old Testament, the basic principal being that God in the past showed a shape of the future events not simply oracles but through His day to day working in the nations history, in particular by the lives of chosen individuals within the nation, and in the institution and customs at the centre of their religious life. In the early history of Israel we find God working by foreshadowing things that were to come, and this was taken up by the New Testament writers who saw the Old Testament as "full of pointers and predictions of the Christ event". These writers made the approach to the Old Testament based on the fact that "all Israel's experience of Yahweh had been planned with reference to Jesus Christ". Through this fact when they gave Him the title "the Messiah" "The Christ" (the Anointed One) they were acknowledging that He was the glorious redeemer at whose future coming the prophets hopes and aspirations had been lifted so wonderfully, as all their false hopes had vanished. As indicated, this typological exegesis did not confine itself to the patterns set by the monarchy, or even by the great historical acts of the exodus and the wilderness wanderings. It certainly found a pattern, which Jesus filled in the figures of the great prophets, especially in their sufferings and intercessions, and found parallels in the actions and intentions of the temple priests in offering their sacrifices to that of Jesus and His cross. Moreover they found all the old Testament acts of atonement meaningful in understanding His sacrifice. Here it has to be noted that the same prophetic circle which gave glorious pictures of the new exodus, the new covenants, the new age of glory, and the new king, also gave an unforgettable picture of a suffering servant of God, partly priest, partly prophet. This occurs in four revelations in the last chapters of the book of Isaiah culminating in Chap.53 (Is.42:1-14; 49: 1-6, 50: 4-9; 52: 13-53:12). In the first revelation He is described to us. The second and third He is present with us speaking and revealing His mind as if He were a friend; and fourthly He has died and the meaning of His life and death is being described to us especially in His unique death on the cross by those who misunderstood and persecuted Him, but who have since found salvation and new life through what He suffered. In the sight of God, whom He always pleases He is to have glory and honour (49:3; 52:13). He is to establish justice on earth, to be a "light to all nations and salvation to the ends of the earth" (42:4; 49:6). He accepted the task, His Father's word is His only assurance and comfort and reward on this earth (49:4; 50:7-9) for with man He is destined to win only shame, misunderstanding, hatred, treachery and condemnation to such horrible death that even the hardened and cruel are startled and ashamed (52:14-53:3). Yet He turns the other cheek to those who smite Him, praying for those who not only take part in His death, but those who watch this terrible act. To fight His enemies, to win those back to God He used only the weapons of speech and suffering. (42:2). We learn that after His death, those who told of His death, and others who heard, came to understand that somehow in His death He was bearing the sin not only of those who struck Him, but of many (53:12). "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to His own, and the Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all" (Is.53:5-6). Isaiah gives a prophetic description of the Messiah, His Servanthood, His death but most of all His love for fallen mankind, and the atoning work would find it's
fulfilment by the cross and resurrection. It seemed that the Old Testament picture was one of an ideal only to be realized in the messianic age, and we have to agree here "in secret a mould was being prepared into which the experience of Jesus was to be poured" the prophets were able by God to see other features from the past that are relevant to this study of the atonement. One of these is the feature of the "remnant".
The whole community of the people of God would have to be tested and sifted before the new age could come (Amos 9:8-10). The standard that God set for His people in their daily lives, and those who glibly professed to belong to Him, would find that they would be too high for most of them. For those who would remain loyal they would be known as the remnant. Early in the history of Israel, only Joshua and Caleb out of those who left Egypt entered Canaan, and in Elijah's day only seven thousand out of all Israel were numbered by God as His own (Num. 14:26-31) (1 Kings 18:18). It was Isaiah who saw clearly the election of a surviving faithful remnant as a chief feature of Israel's entry into the new age. The idea was lodged in his mind from the day of his call, and he felt it was divinely given. He wanted to impress his conviction on his contemporaries. "Though your people Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return (6:11-13, 7:3;10- 22). Isaiah in his poems describes the survival of the remnant very vividly, and he gathered and taught a little community of the faithful these truths (8:5-18). The later prophets kept these traditions before them during the crisis that led to the exile (Zeph.2: 3-9), 3:13), Yet though their hopes were high that the ones that returned from the exile might show the characteristics of the elect, such hopes were soon dashed. The
fulfilment of the picture of the true people of God coming out from the nations who had overwhelmed them, and forming together a new and close community (Ezek.36: 24 Mal.3: 16) had to wait for the
fulfilment in the "latter days" along with the other great visions of the future. It may be that another picture of this remnant deliberately thrown into the ultimate future is given to us in "the saints of the Most High" who at the end of the conflicts among the nations, are seen as sharing in their triumph and kingdom of the "Son of Man" and the kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him (Dan.7: 27).