Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. – Luke 24:27
Ok, we’ve got several dig sites for our quest to find Jesus in the Scriptures. Before we take out brushes and trowels to discover Jesus in the lives of Isaac and Rebecca, let’s consider one more sighting of Jesus in the life of Abraham. As you remember, when we first met this man, his name was Abram.
Abram | Abraham —
If we just take a cursory look in Strong’s Concordance, we learn in Strong’s Hebrew 87, that Abram means “exalted father.” This meaning is a vertical metaphor – exalted, lifted. Abram was above others. Abram was raised up, as was Jesus. We see in John 12:32, Jesus declared, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
Therefore, we have a foreshadowing of Jesus in the original name Abram, a vertical component. Now, when we look at the name God gave him, we see that Abraham (Strong’s Concordance Hebrew 85) means “exalted father of many nations” (Genesis 17:5).
Now in Abraham’s name we see Christ’s great commission in Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”
So, we see a horizontal component in Abraham’s name. No longer is he just vertically exalted but, by the new name God gave him, Abraham is horizontally exalted. When you put the vertical and horizontal components together, we get a cross, a foreshadowing of the Cross of Jesus Christ. The deeper you dig into God’s Word, the more you see Jesus.
Photo by Hugo Fergusson on Unsplash
You may like:
https://rockexcavationservice.org/2018/12/06/christ-our-brother/