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©
2006 John D. Brey
The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham.
Galatians 3:8.
Paul’s
statement that “the head of every man, is messiah” boldly goes where no man has
gone before! Through circumcision Abraham unveiled the messiah as the dead
Deliverer attached to broken stones. --- In other words, Freud was on the trail
of Paul when he spoke of the fact that a woman’s genital organ was always
veiled while Abraham unveiled the already more visible head of every Jewish
man’s male-member. With this Freudian slip of Abraham’s foreskin, Paul embarks
on one of the oddest typological adventures in the Bible!
“Does not nature herself teach us” that it’s a shame for a man to be veiled while her veil is a woman’s glory? Biology 101! ---- Nature teaches that a woman’s fountainhead was veiled by natural design: enfolded or enveloped in flesh (Freud played on the idea of the pubic hair as an external veil that covered the female organ). ---But man’s fountainhead is unveiled both by natural design and by Abraham’s scalpel. “The head of every man is messiah.” Abraham takes away the veil that hid the bloody truth about a dead Deliverer attached to broken stones! A disfigured Deliverer sent to disseminate from already broken stones, rock tablets that were broken even before He was disfigured, revealed, and then restored!
Abraham’s stones were broken before the fulfillment of the covenant that was said to come through them, as God’s stones were broken before the fulfillment of the covenant that they would bring into being? Two separate narratives have the stones that are seminal to the covenants they will establish being broken before the establishment of the covenant? In both cases new stones establish a new covenant apart from the first covenant.
Abraham establishes “Ishmael” from unbroken stones. And God establishes “Israel” before the breaking of His seminal stones.
Both Ishmael and Israel represent first covenants established with intact stones. Isaac, on the other hand, is born of restored stones; Isaac is Abraham’s “spiritual” covenant. ---- Again, like Ishmael -- Israel is born of a natural covenant with God. Israel becomes a people or nation at Sinai in accordance with the first set of God’s stones.
When God’s original stones are broken, like Abraham’s stones were broken through senescence, Israel and Ishmael become united not just phonetically, but theologically. ----- The breaking of the tablets of God’s covenant makes Israel the sons produced by the first set of stones. The restored stones establish the spiritual progeny of God, the new covenant. The Jewish priesthood is established in accordance with the second set of stones. The priests are sanctified from Israel and set apart as custodians of the new covenant.
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Despite the breaking of the first stones, the first covenant to Israel is still in affect until the actual birth of the new covenant. The restored stones of God are protected by the priestly custodians until the arrival of the bride (spiritual Sarah) whom God will make pregnant with His restored stones. ---- In other words, Israel, like Ishmael, functioned as the quasi-legitimate heir of God until the “unnatural” birth of the one born of the restored stones through a bride who was formerly barren (Gentiles).
Ishmael was reckoned the heir of Abraham only until the birth of Isaac. Until the birth of Isaac there was no possibility of rejecting Ishmael’s claim as legitimate heir of Abraham. Only after the “supernatural” birth of Isaac was it made perfectly clear that God would reckon Abraham’s spiritual progeny through Isaac and not Ishmael. ---- Likewise, Israel was the suspected spiritual heir of God only until the birth of the one born of the restored tablets of the Law! Once the spiritual heir of God was born then the one born of the first stones is set aside for the new covenant.
* * *
Abraham appealed to God for explanation as as to how he could righteously reject Ishmael when Ishmael was his legitimate firstborn and heir? Likewise, Saul of Tarsus sought to understand how God could set aside the nation of Israel in favor of the Body of Christ? Saul knew that Israel was the legitimate firstborn of God! --- How could God set aside His own firstborn in favor of one whose birth was not even according to natural law?
God’s answer to Abraham was that he fathered Ishmael as “Abram” and not “Abraham.” With the new stones a new name was established for Abram (Rev. 2:17). Abraham had died to all those things he did as Abram; he became a “new man.” --- The problem for Saul was imagining God Himself “dying” to those things He had established before the breaking of His first stones? ---- Into this conceptual void founded on fear and trembling and even schizophrenic dissociation of everything sacred to Judaism Saul heard the Christian’s he was killing proclaiming the “death” of God’s manhood on the cross . . . and the resurrection of a "new man" in Christ Jesus.