TYPES OF CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
A Bible Study -
Commentary by Jim Melough
Copyright 2001 James
Melough
THE
BURNING BUSH
The account of Moses’
experience at the burning bush is recorded in Ex 3:1-5, and it is suggested
that the reader review those verses before beginning this brief study of that
bush as a type of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Ex 3:1.
“Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian:
and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain
of God, even to Horeb.”
Ex 3:2.
“And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him (Moses)in a flame of fire out of
the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire,
and the bush was not consumed.”
Ex 3:3.
“And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush
is not burnt.”
Ex 3:5.
“And he (God) said, Draw not nigh higher: put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”
In Scripture the angel of the
Lord is one of the OT descriptions of the Lord Jesus Christ, and here the
appearance was in the desert, a figure or type of this world which is a
spiritual desert. The typological portrait is of Christ come down to earth to
make atonement for sin.
But it was specifically “the
backside of the desert,” i.e., the west side, and in Scripture the west is the
direction that invariably speaks of approach or nearness to God, in contrast
with the east which is always associated with sin and departure from God.
This is intended to remind us that the Lord’s earthly life was lived in
unbroken nearness to, and communion with His Father.
The location is further
specified as Horeb, which means a waster, and points us to Calvary the
place of wasting, for it was there that the Lord Jesus Christ obediently
submitted Himself to the outpouring of Divine wrath against sin, He dying
there in your guilty place and mine.
The fact that the bush burned
with fire, but was not consumed by the flame is the symbolic announcement of
the truth that while the Lord submitted Himself to death at Calvary His death
was different from that of all other men, as He Himself had already declared
to His disciples, “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my
life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I have power
to lay it down of myself, and I have power to take it again,” Jn 10:17-18.
“And Moses said, I will now
turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.” Moses
turned aside in awestricken wonder, but it was very different when the type
was fulfilled at Calvary, for the majority of those gathered around the cross
were there to gloat, and mock the Lord’s dying agony, as it is written, “And
sitting down they watched him there.... And they that passed by reviled
him.... Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and
elders, said, He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the king of
Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him... The
thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth,” Mt
27:36-44.
“And he (God) said, Draw not
nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou
standest is holy ground.”
How great is the contrast
between the type and the reality! The type was invested with the reverential
fear that becomes man in the presence of God, for we read that “Moses hid his
face; for he was afraid to look upon God,” verse 6. How terrible will be the
judgment meted out at the great white throne to those who sat around the cross
that day mocking and taunting God’s Son while He died as their Substitute to
make possible the remission of their sins.
He is a wise man who looks at
Calvary with the same reverential wonder as did Moses at the burning bush, and
accepts as his Savior the One Who fulfilled the type that day two thousand
years ago.