The Prophets and Christ

We now move into the next section. The prophets showed God’s will and the problem of the human heart and they also showed God’s solution: the sending of His Son.

The prophets spoke a lot on the coming of Messiah. Most of the usual texts are well known and will not be dealt with here. Some of the usual texts are dealt with in other sections of this book. What we will be looking at more specifically here is the Old Testament in relation to the church of Jesus Christ.

The Church of Christ

The temple is an Old Testament shadow or type of the body of Christ, the church. It was where the presence of God was. God dwelt within the Holy of Holies, within the tabernacle that Israel made in the wilderness. Today God’s people are His tabernacle, as He dwells within our heart (1 Cor 6:19).

When Israel came out of Egypt into the wilderness they were called to God. Sanctified means to be separated out to become God’s possession. In the New Covenant, to be sanctified means to be a saint by new birth, a living member of the church.

In the wilderness Israel was called the assembly, or in the Greek Septuagint the ecclesia (Lev 8:4, Num 14:5). From this we derive ecclesiology, meaning the doctrine of the church. Church means the Assembly of God’s people. In the Old Covenant God dwelt with the assembly. In the New Covenant He dwells in the hearts of those in His assembly.

The church existed in the Old Covenant in the sense that there was a fellowship of God’s people. These were the elect, the “church within the church”, the ecclesia or called out people, the remnant of Israel, the true Israel (Rom 9:6). This gives a true prophetic picture of the church. It is not just a public assembly, but an individual call of God.

The New Testament fulfilment of this Old Covenant picture of the church is well described in 1 Pet 2:4-12, Ephesians 2 and Hebrews 2. The whole Book of Hebrews portrays the relation between the Old Testament imagery regarding the assembly and the New Covenant church, drawing on the Old Testament Psalms as well as many of the prophets.

Saying, I will declare Your name to My brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise to You. (Heb 2:12, Ps 22:22, 25).

See also Heb 2:13 and Is 8:18, where the children are the church. The prophets did not fully understand their statements, but they did know that these utterances related to the Messiah and His people. Their original utterances can be shown exegetically to refer to the church and are not just interpreted that way by the New Testament.