SECTION II. — OF THE PROMISE.
Sect. 2 — The Promise renewed to Abraham.
Ant. What followed then?
Evan. Why, then the promise was turned into a covenant with Abraham and his seed, and often repeated, so that in his seed all nations would be blessed,1 Gen. 12.3; 18.18; and 22.18. This promise and covenant was the very voice itself of the gospel, being a true testimony of Jesus Christ.
The apostle Paul bears witness to this, saying “the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles through faith, preached the Gospel to Abraham beforehand,” Gal. 3.8, saying, “In you, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.” And to better confirm Abraham’s faith in this promise of Christ, it is said in Gen. 14.19 that Melchisedec came forth and met him, and blessed him. Now, the apostle says in Heb. 7.1-3, and 6.20, “This Melchisedec was a priest of the most high God, and king of righteousness, and king of peace, without father and without mother; and so he was like the Son of God, who is a priest forever, in the order of Melchisedec;” and both king of righteousness and king of peace, Jer. 23.6; Isa. 9.6; indeed, he is without father as touching his manhood, and without mother as touching his godhead.
By this we are given to understand that it was the purpose of God that Melchisedec should, in these particulars, resemble the person and office of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; and by God’s own appointment, he was a type of Christ to Abraham, to ratify and confirm the promise made to him and to his seed in respect to the eternal covenant;2 namely, that he and his believing seed would be blessed in Christ, as Melchisedec had blessed him.3 Now, let me tell you more: some have thought it most probable, and indeed have said that if we search out this truth without partiality, we will find that this Melchisedec, who appeared to Abraham, was none other than the Son of God, manifested by a special dispensation and privilege to Abraham in the flesh, who is therefore said to have “seen his day and rejoiced.4 John 8.56. Moreover, in Gen. 15.17 we read that the Lord again confirmed this covenant with Abraham; for when Abraham had divided the beasts, God came between the parts like a smoking furnace and a burning lamp, which,5 as some have thought, primarily typified the torment and rending of Christ; and the furnace and fiery lamp typified the wrath of God which ran between, yet did not consume the rent and torn nature.
And the blood of circumcision typified the blood of Christ;6 and the resolved sacrificing of Isaac on Mount Moriah, by God’s appointment, prefigured and foreshowed that, by offering up Christ — the promised seed — in the very same place, all nations would be saved. Now this covenant, thus made and confirmed with Abraham, was renewed with Isaac, Gen. 26.4, and made known to Jacob by Jesus Christ himself. For that man who wrestled with Jacob was none other than the man Christ Jesus; for he himself said that Jacob would be called Israel, a wrestler and prevailer with God; and Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, because he had “seen God face to face,” Gen. 32.28, 30.
And Jacob left it by his last will to his children in these words, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, till Shiloh comes,” Gen. 49.10; that is to say, kings will come from Judah one after another, and many in number, till at last the Lord Jesus comes, who is King of kings and Lord of lords; or as the Targum of Jerusalem and Onkelos translate it, until Christ the Anointed comes.
Nom. But, sir, are you sure that this promised seed was meant of Christ?
Evan. The apostle puts that out of doubt, Gal. 3.16, saying, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed.7 He does not say — and to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to your seed, which is Christ.”8 And no doubt these godly patriarchs so understood it.
Ant. But, sir, the great promise that was made to them, as I conceive it, and which they seemed to have the most regard for, was the land of Canaan.
Evan. There is no doubt that these godly patriarchs saw their heavenly inheritance (by Christ) through the promise of the land of Canaan, as the apostle testifies about Abraham, Heb. 11.9, 10, saying, “He sojourned in a strange country, and looked for a city having foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” “By this it is evident,” says Calvin (Instit. p. 204), “that the height and eminence of Abraham’s faith was looking for an everlasting life in heaven.” He gives a similar testimony of Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, “All these died in the faith,”9 Heb. 11.13 — implying that they did not expect to receive the fruit of the promise till after death. And therefore, in all their travails, they had before their eyes the blessedness of the life to come. This caused old Jacob to say at his death, “Lord, I have waited for your salvation,” Gen. 49.18. The Chaldee paraphrase expounds this phrase thus, “Our father Jacob did not say, I expect the salvation of Gideon, son of Joash, which is a temporal salvation, nor the salvation of Samson, son of Manoah, which is a transitory salvation, but the salvation of Christ, the Son of David, who shall come, and bring unto himself the sons of Israel, whose salvation my soul desires.” And so you see that this covenant, made with Abraham in Christ, was the comfort and support of these and the rest of the godly fathers, until their departure out of Egypt.
Ant. And what followed then?
Evan. Why, then Christ Jesus was most clearly manifested to them in the Passover lamb; for as that lamb was to be without spot or blemish, Exo. 12.5, even so was Christ, 1Pet. 1.19. And as that lamb was taken up the tenth day of the first new moon in March, even so, on the very same day of the same month, Christ came to Jerusalem to suffer his passion. And as that lamb was killed on the fourteenth day at evening, just then, on the same day and at the same hour, Christ gave up the ghost; and as the blood of that lamb was to be sprinkled on the Israelites’ doors, Exo. 12.7, even so the blood of Christ is sprinkled on believers’ hearts by faith, 1Pet. 1.2. And their deliverance out of Egypt was a figure of their redemption by Christ;10 their passing through the Red Sea was a type of baptism,11 when Christ was to come in the flesh; and their manna in the wilderness, and water out of the rock, resembled the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; and hence it is that the apostle says,1Cor.10.2-4, “They all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.” And when they had come to Mount Sinai, the Lord delivered the Ten Commandments to them.
The ancient promise given to Adam was the first gospel, the Covenant of Grace. For man, by his fall, “having made himself incapable of life by the Covenant of Works, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the Covenant of Grace,” Gen. 3.15. Westm. Confess., chap. 7, art. 3. When that promise or covenant was renewed, in which the persons it respected were not expressly designed, Abraham and his seed were expressly designed in it; and so it became a covenant with Abraham and his seed. And the promise, still being the same as to its substance, was often repeated, and in the repetition it was more fully and clearly opened. So Jesus Christ, revealed to Adam only as the seed of the woman, was thereafter revealed to Abraham as Abraham’s own seed; and thus it was believed and embraced unto salvation in the various revelations of it. “God sought Adam again, called upon him, rebuked his sin, convicted him of it; and in the end, he made a most joyful promise to him, namely: that the seed of the woman would break down the serpent’s head; that is, he should destroy the works of the devil; this promise, as it was repeated and made more clear from time to time, so it was embraced with joy, and may constantly (i.e. most steadfastly) be received by all the faithful from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to David, and so forth to the incarnation of Christ Jesus.” Old Confess., art. 4.
That passed between the Father and the Son from everlasting.
Melchisedec was a type to Abraham, to confirm him in the faith, so that he and his believing seed would be as really blessed in Christ as he was blessed by Melchisedec.
This seems to me to be a more than groundless opinion, being inconsistent with the Scripture account of Melchisedec in Gen. 14.18; Heb. 7.1-4; nevertheless, it lacks no patrons among the learned; declaring this is no just ground to fix it on our author, especially after his speaking so plainly a little before of Christ and Melchisedec as two different persons [e.g., Joseph was a type of Christ, being in the pit and raised again to save his people; but no one would claim he was the pre-incarnate Christ]. The text (John 8.56) alleged by the patrons of that opinion does nothing for their purpose: “for all (we mean the faithful fathers under the law) saw (namely: by faith) the joyful day of Christ Jesus, and rejoiced.” Old Confess., art. 4.
Namely, the passing of the furnace and burning lamp between the pieces.
Heb. 9.22, “And by the law almost all things are purged with blood: and without the shedding of blood there is no remission.” Compare Gen. 17.14, “The uncircumcised man-child shall be cut off from his people: he has broken my covenant.”
Namely, the promises of the everlasting inheritance, typified by the land of Canaan: see these promises in Gen. 12.7 and 13.15.
That is, mystical Christ, Christ and the Church, the head and the members; yet so as the dignity of the head is still reserved — he is to be understood here primarily, which is sufficient for our author’s purposes; and his members secondarily only.
These three, together with Abraham, are meant here by the apostle, and not those mentioned in the first seven verses of the chapter, if it is considered that he spoke of them last, ver. 9. 11. The promise of Canaan was given to none before them; and they were the persons who had the opportunity to return to the country from which they came, v. 15.
That is, the deliverance of the Israelites out of Egypt was a figure of the redemption of believers by Christ.
Not that it prefigured or represented baptism as a proper and prophetic type of it, though some orthodox divines seem to be of that mind; but as the author expresses himself, in the case of the manna and the water out of the rock, that it resembled baptism, being a like figure (or type) to it, as the apostle Peter determines, concerning Noah’s ark with the waters of the deluge, 1Pet. 3.21, even as the printer’s types of the letters are impressed on the paper, both signifying the same word. For the ancient church is expressly said to have been ‘‘baptized in the sea,” 1Cor. 10.1, 2, and as the rock with the waters flowing from it did not signify the Lord’s Supper, but the thing signified by that New Testament Sacrament (namely, Christ, ver. 4), so their baptism in the sea did not signify our baptism itself, but the thing represented by it. And thus it was a type or figure answering to and resembling the baptism of the New Testament church; the one being an extraordinary sacrament of the Old Testament, and the other an ordinary sacrament of the New, both representing the same thing.