Shadows that Haunt the Jevtf From an Address Given at a Hebrew
Christian Alliance Gathering By REV. M. MALBERT,' B. A.
C HILDREN are impressed by shadows. Intelligent children will try to dis cover the object that makes the shadow. The people of Israel are called children — “ The children of Israel.” As children it was necessary to rouse their minds by the impression of shadows that they might look for their object. The Old Testament religion is only shadow type. “ For the Law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the thing.” In those shadows was seen one central ob ject, the Messiah. The Rabbis declared: “All the Prophets prophesied of nothing else but of the days of the Messiah.” The idea of a suffering Messiah is not a new one to the Jew. The Targumim and the Yalkut interpreted Isaiah LIII, as well as other Messianic passages the same as we do. The latter Rabbis did not like the in terpretation and frankly admitted it. They merely say that they cannot accept the interpretations on account of “the sages of the Nazarenes, who apply them to that man who was hanged in Jerusalem towards the close of the second Temple, and who according to their opinion was the Son of the Most Blessed, and had taken human nature in the womb of the Virgin.” Every student of the Bible knows that the center of the Old Testament around which everything focused was the sacri fices, as the center of the New Testa ment around which everything else focuses is the Atonement of Christ. The sacrifices were linked with the^ Temple, and the Priesthood, and when the Temple was destroyed and the Priesthood scat tered, the Jews were left without a reli gion. God demanded repentance of guilt
before He accepted the sacrifice, and claimed an acknowledgment of the offerer that instead of his own blood, He ac cepted the blood of an innocent animal as an expiation. Thus substitution of sacrifice was the shadow of better things to come. The sacrifices were the only means of approach to God by sinful man. All this pointed to the one great sacrifice of Christ, through Whom the worshipper should be brought near to God, and kept in fellowship with Him. Those Israelites who saw in Christ before His coming, a perfect substitute, a perfect mediator, a perfect priesthood, offering Himself a perfect sacrifice on a perfect altar once for all, were as true children of God, as we are: For they by faith looked forward to the perfect Atonement, as we by faith look back to it. Our blessed Lord made this fact quite clear to the Jews, when He said to them: “ Your father Abra ham rejoiced to see my day; and When he saw it he was glad.” At the very threshold of the old dispen sation stands the sacrifice of the Pascal Lamb, the blood of which sprinkled on the doors of the Israelites in Egypt, saved them from destruction. That blood was the initiation of Israel’s existence as a people. And this, too, was anticipatory of “the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world". The Jews today keep the Passover in all its solemnity; they have the unleavened bread, observe all the rites connected with their bondage and deliverance from Egypt, but one thing they are lacking, and that is the principal thing, it is the Pascal Lamb. They put a piece of roasted shank bone of a lamb on the table as an excuse for
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