Donald Grey Barnhouse provides a helpful illustration about the right attitude toward the Bible. He imagines a person standing before a window high in a skyscraper overlooking the ocean. What would we say if the person talked only about the window itself—its dimensions, the kind of material in it, and its construction? We would marvel that he made no mention of the ocean view! Likewise, we must not study the Scriptures as if the Bible itself were our focus. This is the mistake of those who approach God’s Word only to examine, analyze, or criticize its teaching. Just as the purpose of a window is to see what is outside, the purpose of the Bible is to see the person and work of Jesus Christ as he is revealed in Scripture, so that we might believe and be saved.

First, the Old Testament contains a storehouse of prophecies that find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Some have to do with the details of his life, such as his birth by a virgin (Isa. 7:14) in the town of Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2). Others pertain to his ministry, such as Isaiah 61:1: “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” Above all are a great number of prophecies concerning Jesus’ death and resurrection, which Charles Simeon describes as “so detailed they could never have entered into the mind of an uninspired man, nor could possibly have been accomplished by any contrivance or conspiracy of men.” An abbreviated list includes these prophecies: he would be sold for thirty pieces of silver (Zech. 11:12); he would be beaten on the face and spit upon (Isa. 50:6); nails would pierce his hands and feet (Zech. 12:10; Ps. 22:16); he would agonize in thirst and be given gall to drink (Pss. 22:15; 69:21); despite the normal Roman practice, no bone of his would be broken (Ps. 34:20); and after death he would be buried in a rich man’s grave (Isa. 53:9). The Old Testament also prophesies the purpose and significance of his death: “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:5).

Second, the Old Testament teaches about the coming Messiah by means of types. These are persons, events, and institutions that typify something about Jesus Christ. Moses was a type of Christ as our deliverer from bondage. David was a type of Christ as the faithful king. Solomon typified Jesus’ reign of peace and glory. The conquest of Jericho was a type of Christ’s conquest over Satan. The tabernacle typified God as he dwells among men through Christ. How important it is that we read the stories of these Old Testament people and events not just as interesting history or as moral fables, but to teach us about the person and work of the Savior who would come.

Third, the Old Testament ceremonies spoke powerfully of Jesus Christ. The Levitical priests anticipated Christ’s ministry of reconciliation for sin, and the sacrifices showed forth his saving blood. A prominent example was the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16), in which the high priest would enter the Most Holy Place once a year to make a sacrifice for the sins of the people. The details were all significant. First, the high priest would put on clean and holy garments, signifying the Messiah’s perfect righteousness to serve as priest before God. He then took two male goats from the people. These were also spotless, to show that the true Sacrifice must be sinless. On one of these goats, the high priest laid his hands, signifying the transfer, or imputation, of the people’s sins to this “scapegoat.” That goat was then “sent away into the wilderness” (16:10), far beyond the sight of the people, just as our sins are taken away by Christ. The other ram was killed as a sacrifice, and the high priest took its blood into the Most Holy Place. There, in the presence of the glory of God and before the tablets of the Ten Commandments, which presented God’s law that the people’s sin had broken, the high priest sprinkled the blood on the mercy seat, just as Christ died to present his own blood to atone for our transgressions.

The prophecies, types, and ceremonies are some of the main ways of seeing the Old Testament’s teaching about Christ. Jesus himself homed in on the witness of Moses, since the Jewish leaders particularly revered him: “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:45–47).

The five books of Moses, known as the Torah, or the Pentateuch, are filled with prophecies of Christ—such as those made to or by Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, Joseph, and Moses. Most of these people are types either of Christ or of faith in Christ. The ceremonies of the law that point to Christ were also given by God through Moses. That the scribes and Pharisees should fly the banner of Moses and so fail to comprehend his witness to Christ is nothing less than damning. This is why Moses himself, whose name they most prized, condemns them. Through the law he taught, which judges their sin, and the gospel he promised, which they refused by their opposition to Christ, Moses above all accuses these Old Testament scholars. That same law accuses each of us, unless, as Jesus said, we “come to [him] that [we] may have life” (John 5:40). Let none of us look down on the scribes and the Pharisees, though their guilt was very great, but rather let us confess our own sin and come to Christ, to be saved by the gospel that both he and Moses proclaimed.