The Things Concerning Himself
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Read Luke 24:13–35 in full before proceeding. Then re-read whatever Genesis passages have stayed most strongly with you across the previous thirty-one sessions. The deepest preparation for this final session is the reading of Genesis itself as a single book in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things written about himself in all the scriptures.
— Luke 24:27
This is a different session from the thirty-one that have come before. We have, across this volume, worked through the book of Genesis sequentially — from the creation of the heavens and the earth through the patriarchal narratives to the coffin in Egypt that closes the book. Each session has handled the text of Genesis in its own integrity, drawing the theological observations the passage itself yields. And throughout, in the synthesis sections of each chapter, we have noted the Christological patterns that emerge from the text — the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15, the binding of Isaac with the ram-substitute at Mount Moriah, the angel-of-the-LORD encounters with Jacob, the deep typology of Joseph as the favored son hidden among foreigners, the messianic prophecy over Judah, the climactic articulation of providence in you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.
This final session pulls those threads together. We will not work through a new passage of Genesis. We will, instead, look back across the volume and ask: what has the book of Genesis, read through the deepest Lutheran-Christian lens, been showing us about the Lord Jesus Christ? What patterns have been emerging? How does the book of beginnings function as the patriarchal foundation for the gospel that the apostles would, in time, preach?
The framing for this session is given to us by the Lord Jesus Himself. On the road to Emmaus on the afternoon of His resurrection, He walked with two disciples who did not yet recognize Him. They were grieving, confused, telling Him about the events of the previous days — the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, the empty tomb, the women’s report. And the Lord Jesus, still unrecognized, began to teach them. And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:27). The Hebrew Scriptures — the Old Testament — are, in the deepest Christian reading, concerning himself. Christ is the subject of the whole of Scripture. The Lord Jesus did not invent this reading. He uncovered it. He said elsewhere: You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me (John 5:39).
The Lutheran tradition has, across the centuries, held this as one of the deepest convictions of biblical reading. Luther himself spoke of reading the Old Testament for that which shows forth Christ — was Christum treibet. The Scriptures show forth Christ. Not by the reader’s projection of Christ onto whatever passage, but by the Holy Spirit’s having written into the patriarchal history the patterns that anticipate the deeper revelation in the Lord Jesus. The patriarchs were not commenting on Christ; the LORD was, through them, anticipating the Christ to come.
This is not allegorical reading. Allegorical reading would mean projecting Christ onto the text wherever the reader wants, with no anchor in the text or in the apostolic witness. Typological reading — the kind of reading the Lord Jesus and the apostles use — means seeing the patterns the LORD has built into the history. The patterns are in the text. The patterns are confirmed by the apostolic witness. The Christian reader recognizes them and articulates them. Genesis 15:6 — Abram believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness — is not, by allegorical projection, about justification by faith; it is, by the apostle Paul’s deliberate handling in Romans 4, the foundational text on justification by faith. The text is the same text. The apostle uncovers what is in it. The patriarchal anticipation reaches its gospel articulation.
We will, in this session, walk through eight movements of the Christological reading of Genesis. The seed of the woman. The friend of God and his substitute. The angel-redeemer and the ladder. The favored son hidden among foreigners. The line of Judah and the greater Substitute. The providence that means it for good. The coffin in Egypt and the visitation foretold. And then we will gather the threads into a single synthesis and look forward to Volume 2: Psalms — Luther’s prayer book of Christ.
This will not be an exhaustive Christological reading of Genesis. The book is too rich for any single session to handle every pattern. We will trace the major patterns we have been seeding across the volume and let those patterns demonstrate the principle. The Christian reader who has worked through this volume should now be able to read other Genesis texts with the same Christological sensitivity — not by forcing the connections, but by listening for the patterns that the text itself yields and the apostolic witness has authorized.
The Seed of the Woman
The book of Genesis opens with the Word.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light (Genesis 1:1–3).
Three things stand at the beginning. God. The Spirit hovering. And the Word that brings light. The Christian reader who comes to Genesis 1 from the Gospel of John recognizes the pattern. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:1–5).
John 1 is not allegorizing Genesis 1. John 1 is reading Genesis 1 with apostolic authority — declaring that the Word who was in the beginning, the Word who created, the Word who brings light into the darkness, is the Lord Jesus Christ. The patriarchal opening of Scripture is, in the deepest Christian reading, the Christological opening of Scripture. The Lord Jesus is the eternal Word through whom all things were made. The Spirit hovering over the waters anticipates the Spirit who descends at the Lord Jesus’s baptism. The light that breaks into the darkness anticipates the deeper light — the true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world (John 1:9).
And then comes the Fall, and with it the first gospel-word in Scripture.
The LORD God said to the serpent… I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel (Genesis 3:14–15).
This verse, traditionally called the protoevangelium (the first gospel), is the foundational seed of the gospel pattern. The seed of the woman — zera ha-ishah in Hebrew — will, in the fullness of time, crush the serpent’s head. The serpent will strike his heel. Both actions are real. Both happen at the cross. The Lord Jesus’s heel is struck — the wounds in His hands and feet, the suffering He endures, the death He undergoes. And the Lord Jesus crushes the serpent’s head — the decisive defeat of Satan, the conquest of death, the breaking of the power of sin.
Paul picks up the protoevangelium in Romans 16:20: The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The patriarchal verb of crushing reaches its apostolic articulation in the church’s participation in the deeper crushing the Lord Jesus has accomplished. The pattern that begins in Eden — the woman’s seed crushing the serpent — reaches its full bloom at Calvary and, through the cross, in the believing community.
And the seed of the woman phrase itself carries Christological weight. Most patriarchal genealogies trace through the male line. The protoevangelium speaks of the woman’s offspring — perhaps anticipating, in the deepest reading, the virgin birth, where the Messiah would be born of the woman through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit without the agency of a human father. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son (Isaiah 7:14, picked up in Matthew 1:23). The patriarchal phrase the seed of the woman finds its deepest fulfillment in the One born of Mary through the Holy Spirit.
And then, in Genesis 4, the pattern of the righteous brother killed by his own. Abel offers the firstborn of his flock. Cain becomes angry. Cain murders his brother. The blood of Abel cries out from the ground. The pattern is the first patriarchal anticipation of the pattern that will run through the entire biblical witness: the righteous one rejected and killed by his own. Stephen will, at his martyrdom in Acts 7, identify this pattern explicitly. And the Lord Jesus Himself will be the deeper Abel — the righteous one killed by His own brothers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify… so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar (Matthew 23:33–35). The Lord Jesus places His own coming-killing in continuity with the killing of righteous Abel. The pattern begins in Genesis 4 and reaches its consummation in the gospel.
And the book of Hebrews picks up Abel one more time. By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks (Hebrews 11:4). The faithful Abel still speaks. And in Hebrews 12:24, the deepest connection is made: you have come to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Abel’s blood cried out for vengeance. The Lord Jesus’s blood cries out for forgiveness. Both bloods speak. The Lord Jesus’s blood speaks a better word. The patriarchal anticipation of Abel reaches its consummation in the deeper blood that has been sprinkled on the believer’s conscience through the Lord Jesus.
The flood, then, picks up the pattern of the LORD’s preservation of His people through the catastrophe of judgment. Noah and his family are preserved through the ark. The waters that destroy the wicked are the waters through which the LORD’s people pass to the new creation on the other side. And Peter, in 1 Peter 3:20–21, explicitly connects the flood with Christian baptism: in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The patriarchal pattern of being brought through the waters into the new world reaches its gospel form in the Christian baptism that joins the believer to the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
And Babel — the scattering of the nations at the tower — finds its reversal at Pentecost. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance… How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? (Acts 2:4, 8). The patriarchal scattering at Babel is reversed at Pentecost. The Spirit gives the gift of intelligible communication across the very linguistic divisions the LORD had imposed at Babel. The patriarchal judgment becomes, in the LORD’s deeper purpose, the setup for the gospel-deliverance. The nations who were scattered are, in the gospel, being gathered.
The primeval history of Genesis 1–11 thus sets up four patriarchal-Christological foundations. The Word who creates becomes the Word who saves. The seed of the woman who crushes the serpent’s head reaches its full form at Calvary. The righteous brother killed by his own anticipates the deeper rejection of the Lord Jesus. The waters of judgment through which the LORD’s people pass into the new world anticipate the baptismal waters that join the believer to the Lord Jesus’s death and resurrection. The scattered nations at Babel anticipate the gathering of the nations at Pentecost. The deep patterns of the gospel are seeded in the patriarchal opening of Scripture.
The Friend of God and His Substitute
With Abraham, the LORD narrows His promise to a particular family. The Hebrew lekh-lekha of Genesis 12:1 — go for yourself — begins the long arc of the LORD’s electing love. Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:1–3).
The patriarchal call is the foundational gospel-call. Go from your country. The patriarch must leave the old order and enter into the LORD’s promise. The Christian call follows the same pattern. If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me (Mark 8:34). The Lord Jesus calls the believer out of the old life into the new. Abraham’s lekh-lekha anticipates every Christian’s call to follow the Lord Jesus.
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. The Hebrew nivrekhu vekha kol mishpechot ha-adamah is one of the most theologically loaded sentences in Genesis. The Abrahamic blessing is not just for Abraham’s biological descendants. It is for all the families of the earth. The mission to bless the nations is built into the Abrahamic call from the beginning. And Paul, in Galatians 3:8, identifies this verse as the gospel beforehand: And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” The Abrahamic blessing is, in apostolic reading, the patriarchal preaching of the gospel — the announcement that the LORD’s purposes have always included the blessing of the nations through the patriarchal seed.
And then comes the foundational verse on justification by faith. And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6). The Hebrew ve-he’emin ba-YHWH va-yachsheveha lo tzedaqah. Abraham believed; the LORD counted it as righteousness. Not Abraham’s works. Not Abraham’s circumcision (which had not yet happened). Not Abraham’s later faithfulness or even his earlier failures. The LORD counted Abraham’s believing as righteousness. And Paul, in Romans 4, builds the foundational chapter of Christian doctrine of justification by faith on this single Genesis verse. What does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:3). The deepest single doctrine of the Christian faith — that the LORD counts the sinner righteous on the basis of faith in Christ, not on the basis of works — is the apostolic articulation of what was already, in Genesis 15:6, established in patriarchal form.
Then Melchizedek appears. In Genesis 14, after Abraham’s military victory in the rescue of Lot, Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And Abram gave him a tenth of everything (Genesis 14:18–20). The patriarchal text is brief. Melchizedek appears, blesses Abraham, receives a tithe, and disappears. But the figure is unforgettable. King of righteousness (the meaning of Melchizedek). King of Salem (the meaning of peace). Priest of God Most High. Without genealogy in the text — unlike every other significant patriarchal figure, Melchizedek’s parentage and lineage are not given.
And Psalm 110 picks up Melchizedek: The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (Psalm 110:4). And the book of Hebrews — Hebrews 7 — makes Melchizedek one of the central typological figures for understanding the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. For he is testified to be “a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well… For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests (Hebrews 7:17, 12, 14). The Lord Jesus is a priest not after the Mosaic order (because He was of Judah, not Levi) but after the deeper, patriarchal order of Melchizedek. The patriarchal priesthood of bread and wine, of king-and-priest combined, of righteousness and peace united in one figure, reaches its consummation in the Lord Jesus Christ. The patriarchal foreshadowing is the apostolic argument.
And then comes the binding of Isaac — the Akedah, the deepest single Christological pattern in the patriarchal narratives.
After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Genesis 22:1–2).
The patriarchal father is commanded to offer his beloved son. The Hebrew bin’kha yechid’kha asher-ahavta Yitzchaq — your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac — emphasizes the bond. This is the son of promise. The son who was born when Sarah and Abraham were too old. The son through whom the Abrahamic blessing was to flow. And the LORD commands his sacrifice.
Abraham obeys. The patriarchal father climbs the mountain. Isaac carries the wood of his own sacrifice. The Hebrew vayakach Avraham et-atzei ha-olah vayasem al-Yitzchaq beno — and Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son — carries the deep Christological pattern of the Son carrying the wood of His own cross. Isaac questions — behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Abraham answers — God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. The Hebrew Elohim yir’eh-lo ha-seh — God will see/provide for himself the lamb. The patriarchal naming of the place — YHWH yir’eh, the LORD will provide — enters the Hebrew memory as one of the great places of divine deliverance.
They climb. They build the altar. Isaac submits. He does not resist his father. The Hebrew narrative is sparse — we are not told whether Isaac understood what was about to happen — but the lack of resistance is striking. The patriarchal son submits to the patriarchal father’s hand. Christian readers have heard, in this submission, the deepest pattern of the Lord Jesus’s submission to the Father’s will in Gethsemane: Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done (Luke 22:42).
Abraham raises the knife. And the LORD stays his hand. Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me (Genesis 22:12). Abraham lifts up his eyes and sees a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. He offers the ram in the place of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided” (Genesis 22:14).
This is the deepest patriarchal foreshadowing of the cross. The father and the beloved son climb the mountain together. The son carries the wood. The son submits to the father’s will. The substitute is provided at the moment of greatest crisis. The patriarchal son is spared because the substitute dies in his place. The pattern reaches its consummation at Calvary. But there is one striking inversion. At the Akedah, the patriarchal son is spared. At Calvary, the divine Son is not spared. The Father gives Him up.
Paul makes this inversion explicit in Romans 8:32: He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? The verb ouk epheisato — did not spare — is the same verb the Greek Septuagint uses in Genesis 22:12 (and 22:16) of Abraham not having spared Isaac. The patriarchal text says of Abraham: you have not withheld your son. Paul echoes the same construction of God the Father: he did not spare his own Son. The patriarchal Abraham who would have offered Isaac becomes the patriarchal-anticipation of the Father who would, in time, offer His own Son. The difference is that at Moriah the ram was substituted for Isaac; at Calvary the Son was not substituted with another ram. The Lord Jesus is, Himself, the ram caught in the thicket. He is the substitute provided by the LORD at the deepest moment of crisis.
And Hebrews 11:17–19 articulates the patriarchal-faith dimension: By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. The patriarchal faith already operates in resurrection categories. Abraham believed that even if Isaac were killed, the LORD could raise him. The patriarchal anticipation of the resurrection-hope is already operating in the Akedah. And the Lord Jesus’s actual resurrection is the deeper fulfillment of what Abraham had already, in faith, anticipated.
The patriarchal Akedah is the deepest single Christological pattern in the patriarchal narratives. The father offering the beloved son. The son carrying the wood. The son submitting to the father’s will. The substitute provided. The mountain of provision named for what the LORD has done there. All of these reach their gospel articulation at Calvary. The patriarchs were not commenting on Christ; the LORD was, through the Akedah, anticipating the cross.
The Angel-Redeemer and the Ladder
Through Jacob, the patriarchal narrative encounters the angel of the LORD — the figure who appears at moments of decisive divine action and who, in deepest Christian reading, has been identified with the preincarnate Son of God.
Jacob, fleeing from Esau’s wrath, sleeps at a place called Luz. He dreams. And behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! (Genesis 28:12). The LORD stands at the top of the ladder. He speaks the Abrahamic blessing to Jacob. He promises His presence: Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you (Genesis 28:15). Jacob awakes, recognizes the place as the house of God, names it Bethel, and sets up a stone as a memorial.
And in the Gospel of John, the Lord Jesus identifies Himself with the ladder. Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man (John 1:51). The patriarchal ladder is the patriarchal anticipation of the Lord Jesus Himself. He is the connection between heaven and earth. He is the place where the LORD’s house meets the earthly ground. He is Bethel in person.
This is theologically rich. Jacob’s Bethel experience was the foundational patriarchal-encounter with the divine presence in a particular place. The LORD met him there. The angels ascended and descended. The patriarchal stone he set up became a memorial. The Lord Jesus, in John 1:51, identifies this whole reality with His own person. He is the deeper Bethel. He is the deeper ladder. The Christian no longer needs to go to a particular place to encounter the LORD’s presence; the Christian encounters the LORD’s presence in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The patriarchal anticipation reaches its incarnational consummation.
Twenty years later, Jacob returns to Canaan. On the night before he meets Esau, he is alone at the Jabbok. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day (Genesis 32:24). The Hebrew vaye’avek ish immo ad-alot ha-shachar. The word ish — man — is striking. The patriarchal text does not, at first, identify the figure. Only as the narrative progresses does the identity become clearer. The figure dislocates Jacob’s hip. He refuses to let Jacob go without giving a blessing. He gives Jacob a new name — Israel, one who has striven with God and with men and has prevailed. And he refuses to give his own name. Why is it that you ask my name? And he blesses Jacob there.
And Jacob’s recognition: I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered (Genesis 32:30). The Hebrew ki-ra’iti Elohim panim el-panim va-tinatzel nafshi — for I have seen God face to face, and yet my soul has been preserved. Jacob identifies the ish as God. The figure who has wrestled with him is, in Jacob’s deepest awareness, divine. Jacob names the place Peniel — the face of God.
The prophet Hosea will, centuries later, refer back to this scene: He strove with the angel and prevailed; he wept and sought his favor (Hosea 12:4). The Hebrew narrator (or perhaps the prophet himself) identifies the figure as the angel. The angel of the LORD. The same figure who appears throughout the patriarchal narratives — to Hagar in the wilderness, to Abraham at Moriah, to Moses at the burning bush — has appeared to Jacob at the Jabbok and has wrestled with him through the night.
And the Lutheran tradition, along with the broader Christian tradition, has read these angel of the LORD appearances as the preincarnate Son of God. The angel who speaks as God, who receives worship, who blesses, who saves — the angel who is, in some mysterious sense, both distinct from the LORD and identified with the LORD — is, in deepest Christian reading, the eternal Son in patriarchal anticipation of His incarnation. The same Lord who would, in the fullness of time, take on flesh and be born of Mary, appeared in patriarchal form to the fathers. The ish at the Jabbok is the patriarchal anticipation of the Word made flesh of John 1:14.
And the wrestling is pastorally significant. The LORD comes to break Jacob in the right place. The patriarchal hip is dislocated. Jacob walks with a limp for the rest of his life. The blessing comes at the cost of the wound. The pattern is one of the deepest patterns of biblical faith. The LORD does not always come to give us what we ask for; sometimes He comes to break us in the right place so that we can receive what He has already given. The Christian who has wrestled with the LORD and emerged with a limp knows the pattern. The deeper blessing requires the deeper brokenness. The Lord Jesus would, in Gethsemane, pray in agony and submit to His Father’s will — not my will, but yours, be done (Luke 22:42) — the Son’s obedient prayer within one divine will, not a contest of wills within the Godhead. The Lord Jesus would, at the cross, be broken so that His people might be made whole. The patriarchal pattern of Peniel anticipates the deeper wrestling and the deeper brokenness at Calvary.
And finally, at the end of his life, Jacob will name his angel-encounters explicitly. The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys (Genesis 48:15–16). The patriarch on his deathbed identifies the angel of the LORD as his redeemer — the one who has go’el (redeemed) him from all evil. The Hebrew verb ga’al is the great covenantal-familial-economic verb of redemption. The patriarchal angel-redeemer of Jacob’s blessing-formula is, in deepest Christian reading, the Lord Jesus Christ in patriarchal anticipation. You were ransomed… not with perishable things such as silver or gold… but with the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18–19). The patriarchal go’el reaches its gospel consummation in the kinsman-redeemer who shed His own blood to redeem His people from all evil.
The Favored Son Hidden Among Foreigners
And now we come to the deepest single Christological pattern in the book of Genesis. Joseph.
Across seven sessions in Volume 1 — from Genesis 37 through Genesis 50 (fourteen biblical chapters) — we have traced the deep typology of Joseph as the patriarchal Christ-figure. The patterns are numerous and consistent. Let us gather them now into a single sustained reading.
First, the favored son. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors (Genesis 37:3). Joseph is the beloved son. The father’s love for him is distinctive. The robe is the visible sign of his favored status. And the Christological resonance is real — the Lord Jesus is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17, 17:5). The patriarchal favored son anticipates the divine favored Son.
Second, hated by his brothers because of the father’s love. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him (Genesis 37:4). The Lord Jesus would, in time, be hated by His own. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him (John 1:11). The pattern of the favored son hated by his brothers because of the father’s love reaches its consummation in the gospel.
Third, sent by the father to his brothers. Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.”… So he sent him from the Valley of Hebron (Genesis 37:13–14). The Lord Jesus is the one sent by the Father. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son (John 3:16). I have not come of my own accord, but he sent me (John 8:42). The pattern of the beloved son sent by the father to his brothers anticipates the deeper Sending.
Fourth, stripped of his special robe. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore (Genesis 37:23). The Lord Jesus, at the cross, would also be stripped of His garments. When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier (John 19:23). The patriarchal stripping anticipates the cross-stripping.
Fifth, cast into a pit — the descent pattern. And they took him and cast him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it (Genesis 37:24). The Lord Jesus would, in time, descend into the deeper pit — the grave, the dust of death, the descent to the dead. The pit-pattern reaches its full form in the Lord Jesus’s burial.
Sixth, sold for silver. Then Midianite traders passed by. And they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver (Genesis 37:28). The Lord Jesus would, in time, be sold for thirty pieces of silver — the higher price under the deeper covenant. Judas’s betrayal mirrors and exceeds Judah’s sale. The patriarchal silver-price reaches its gospel form in the betrayer’s payment.
Seventh, bearing false accusations in silence. Potiphar’s wife accuses Joseph falsely. The patriarchal text records that Joseph does not defend himself in the narrative; he is simply taken to prison. The Lord Jesus, before His accusers, would also be silent. And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?” But he remained silent and made no answer (Mark 14:60–61). The patriarchal silence in the face of false accusation anticipates the gospel silence.
Eighth, the two prisoners. The cupbearer and the baker, both dreamers in the prison with Joseph. One restored to life. One executed. The patriarchal anticipation of the two thieves crucified on either side of the Lord Jesus. One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him… but the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?”… And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:39–43). One is saved; one is lost. The patriarchal pattern reaches its gospel form at Calvary.
Ninth, the LORD was with him — the Immanuel pattern. Genesis 39 uses the phrase the LORD was with Joseph four times. In Potiphar’s house. In prison. In every descent. The LORD was with him. The Lord Jesus would, Himself, be Immanuel — which means, God with us (Matthew 1:23). The patriarchal Immanuel-presence reaches its incarnational consummation in the Lord Jesus.
Tenth, raised from the pit to the right hand of the king. Joseph is brought up from the prison and elevated to the second-in-command of Egypt. The patriarchal resurrection-ascension pattern. The Lord Jesus would, in the fullness of time, be raised from the grave and ascend to the right hand of the Father. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name (Philippians 2:8–9). The patriarchal exaltation pattern reaches its gospel form.
Eleventh, receives a Gentile bride during his exile. Joseph is given Asenath the daughter of Potiphera the priest of On. He marries during his Egyptian exile. The Lord Jesus, during the present age — while the kingdom is still hidden under the cross before its visible consummation — has received His Bride — the church, including its gentile members. Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her… so that he might present the church to himself in splendor (Ephesians 5:25–27). The patriarchal-Gentile-bride pattern reaches its ecclesial form.
Twelfth, provides bread for the world during the famine. Joseph stores grain during the seven years of plenty and distributes it during the seven years of famine. And the people of all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain (Genesis 41:57). The Lord Jesus would, in time, declare: I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger (John 6:35). The patriarchal bread-provider anticipates the deeper Bread of Life.
Thirteenth, go to Joseph. When the Egyptians come to Pharaoh in the famine, he sends them to Joseph: Go to Joseph. What he says to you, do (Genesis 41:55). Mary at the wedding at Cana would, in time, instruct the servants in nearly identical words: Whatever he says to you, do it (John 2:5). The patriarchal direction to the favored son is the gospel direction to the divine Son. Go to Jesus. What he says to you, do.
Fourteenth, the favored son hidden in foreign disguise — recognized only when he reveals himself. Joseph in Egyptian robes, with shaven face, speaking Egyptian through an interpreter, is not recognized by his brothers when they come to buy grain. The disguise holds for three chapters until Joseph reveals himself: I am Joseph; is my father still alive? (Genesis 45:3). The Lord Jesus on the Emmaus road walks with His disciples unrecognized until he was known to them in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:35). The pattern of the favored son hidden until His revelation reaches its resurrection form.
Fifteenth, the reconciliation accomplished through tears, embrace, and it was not you, but God. Joseph weeps. He embraces his brothers. He kisses them all. He speaks to them tenderly. He names the deepest framework: it was not you who sent me here, but God (Genesis 45:8). The Lord Jesus, in the upper room after His resurrection, would also speak peace to those who had betrayed Him. Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you (John 20:21). The patriarchal reconciliation pattern reaches its resurrection consummation.
And sixteenth, foretells the visitation that will bring his bones up out of exile to the land of promise. God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here (Genesis 50:25). The Lord Jesus has foretold His return. I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also (John 14:3). The patriarchal-visitation-promise reaches its eschatological form.
Sixteen specific patriarchal patterns. All converging on a single picture. Joseph is, in the deepest Lutheran-Christian reading, the most extended Christological pattern in the Old Testament. Not by allegorical projection but by typological recognition. The patterns are in the text. The apostles and the Lord Jesus Himself have authorized us to see them. The favored son hidden among foreigners who descends, suffers, is exalted, provides bread for the world, receives a gentile bride, reconciles his brothers through tears and embrace, names the deeper providence, and foretells the visitation — this is, in patriarchal form, the deeper Joseph we know as the Lord Jesus Christ.
A note on the weight of these parallels. Not all sixteen carry the same authority. Some are anchored directly in apostolic teaching — the rejection and exaltation of the beloved son (Acts 7:9-10 recounts Joseph’s story in exactly these terms as prelude to the rejected-and-exalted Christ), the LORD’s deeper purpose working through the brothers’ evil (Acts 2:23 uses the same framework for the cross that Joseph names in Genesis 50:20), and the office of the deeper Substitute in the line of Judah (Hebrews 7:14; Revelation 5:5). Others are strong canonical patterns the biblical witness itself develops — the descent-and-exaltation shape, the Immanuel-with-him refrain, the bread-for-the-world office. Others are churchly and homiletical resonances the church has long meditated on without direct apostolic naming — the specific price-echoes, the two-prisoners scene, the receiving of a Gentile bride, the “go to Joseph” and “do whatever he tells you” verbal echo. All three tiers are legitimate; the deepest are the first. Reading Genesis with risen eyes involves noticing all of them while ranking them honestly.
The Line of Judah and the Greater Substitute
And yet the favored Christ-figure of Genesis is not Joseph alone. The messianic-line carrier in the patriarchal blessing is Judah. The line that produces the Substitute is the line that begins to learn substitution in patriarchal form.
Judah’s arc across Genesis is the deepest moral arc in the patriarchal narratives. We have traced it in detail across multiple sessions. The brother who proposed selling Joseph for twenty pieces of silver (Genesis 37:26–27). The brother who failed Tamar and refused his levirate duty until Tamar exposed him through the signet, cord, and staff (Genesis 38). The brother who was publicly forced to confess she is more righteous than I (Genesis 38:26). The brother who offered personal surety to his father for Benjamin’s safety: I will be a pledge of his safety. From my hand you shall require him (Genesis 43:9). And the brother who, when given the chance to walk away from the cup-in-Benjamin’s-sack test, stepped forward to take his brother’s place: please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my lord, and let the boy go back with his brothers (Genesis 44:33).
The transformation across Genesis is real. The brother who learned at Enaim what confession costs becomes the brother who, in Egypt, offers himself as substitute. The line that will produce the Substitute learns substitution itself. The patriarchal preparation of the messianic line is happening through Judah’s actual moral development — not as a moral exemplar (Genesis 38 is one of the most morally complicated chapters in the book) but as the patriarch whose transformation under the LORD’s discipline is real.
And the messianic prophecy comes at Jacob’s deathbed. Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples (Genesis 49:8–10).
The scepter remains with Judah. The royal authority is concentrated in the patriarchal line that begins with Judah’s transformation. David will come from Judah. The Davidic kingship will be the royal manifestation of the patriarchal blessing. And ultimately, the Lord Jesus Christ, born of David’s line through Joseph the husband of Mary and through Mary herself (traditionally understood as also of David’s line, though Luke 3:23 presents the traced genealogy through Joseph), is the Shiloh of Jacob’s prophecy. The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered (Revelation 5:5). The patriarchal blessing reaches its consummation in the One to whom the obedience of the peoples is due.
And the wine-imagery of the Judah-blessing carries the deeper foreshadowing. Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes (Genesis 49:11). The patriarchal-poetic imagery of agricultural abundance becomes, in Christian reading, the foreshadowing of the cup of the new covenant. This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood (Luke 22:20). The garments washed in wine become the garments washed in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14). The patriarchal-Judah-imagery reaches its consummation in the patriarchal-Christ-imagery of the Apocalypse.
And the deeper theological move must be made. The line that learned substitution produces the deeper Substitute. The patriarch who offered himself in another’s place produces the patriarch who actually accomplishes the substitution that Judah only partially anticipated. Judah offered to be Benjamin’s slave; the Lord Jesus offered to be His people’s substitute in the deepest sense — the substitute who actually bears the sin, who actually dies for the sinner, who actually rises again to vindicate the gospel of substitutionary atonement.
The pattern that runs from Genesis 38 through Genesis 44 through Genesis 49 to the Lion of Revelation 5 is one of the deepest typological patterns in all of Scripture. The brother whose moral arc was the deepest in Genesis produces, through his line, the One whose moral perfection is the gospel itself.
The Providence That Means It for Good
And then comes the deepest single articulation of providence in the Old Testament. Genesis 50:20.
As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today (Genesis 50:20).
The Hebrew — attem chashavtem alai ra’ah, Elohim chashavah le-tovah — uses the same verb chashav (to plan, devise, intend) for both the brothers’ evil intention and God’s good intention. The same verb. Doubled. The brothers’ agency was real — they intended evil. The LORD’s agency was deeper — He intended good. Both intentions were operative through the same act. The same selling of Joseph at Dothan produced both the brothers’ guilt and the LORD’s preservation of the patriarchal family.
This is the foundational patriarchal-articulation of the Lutheran reading of providence. The LORD has, in some mysterious sense, two wills — the revealed will, which forbids what the brothers did, and the hidden will, which works through what the brothers did to accomplish God’s purposes. Both wills are God’s. Neither cancels the other. The brothers are fully responsible. The LORD is fully sovereign. Both truths are operative. Both must be held together without resolving them in either direction.
And the cross of Christ is the deepest single instance of this pattern. The killing of the Lord Jesus by the Roman authorities and the Sanhedrin was, in the LORD’s hidden will, the means of the world’s salvation. It was also, in the LORD’s revealed will, the worst evil in human history. The same act produced both. Peter at Pentecost articulates the pattern: This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men (Acts 2:23). The delivered-up according to God’s plan and the crucified by lawless men are the same event. The Joseph-pattern of Genesis 50:20 is the gospel-pattern of Acts 2:23.
And the apostolic articulation runs further. In Acts 4:27–28, the early Christian community prays explicitly with this framework: for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. The same pattern. Human agency operative in the gathering against the Lord Jesus. Divine purpose operative in what was, all along, the LORD’s predestined plan. Both true. Neither cancelling the other. The Joseph-pattern as the gospel-prayer-pattern.
And the more general apostolic-theological articulation is given in Romans 8:28: And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. The patriarchal-Joseph-statement — God meant it for good — becomes the apostolic-Pauline-promise to every believer. The Christian who has been brought into the LORD’s covenant family can rest in the same assurance Joseph articulated to his brothers. Whatever evil others may intend, the LORD intends good. Whatever circumstances may seem to threaten, the LORD’s purposes are not threatened. He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32). The cross-providence pattern becomes the foundation of the believer’s daily confidence.
And the patriarchal-cross-providence arc deserves to be traced one more time.
Job suffers without knowing why. The LORD’s purposes through Job’s suffering are real but hidden from Job himself. I know that my Redeemer lives (Job 19:25), Job declares — the patriarchal-faith-statement that grasps the LORD’s hidden purpose without yet seeing it clearly.
Joseph in Egypt knows that the LORD is with him but does not, for years, know that he is being positioned to preserve the patriarchal family through the famine. The narrative withholds the framework until Genesis 45 — God sent me before you to preserve life — and Genesis 50 — you meant evil, but God meant it for good. The patriarchal-Joseph-recognition of the LORD’s hidden purpose happens gradually across the narrative.
And the Lord Jesus at the cross knows the framework fully. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father (John 10:18). The deepest knowing of the cross-providence pattern is the Lord Jesus’s own knowing. He knows that He is being delivered up for the salvation of the world. He knows that the same act that is the worst evil is also the deepest good. He does not need to learn the pattern; He is the pattern. The patriarchal-Job-Joseph-arc reaches its full consciousness in the Lord Jesus’s own crucifixion-knowledge.
And the Christian believer, in turn, walks the patriarchal-arc. Sometimes we are like Job — suffering without knowing why, holding to the bare faith-statement that our Redeemer lives. Sometimes we are like Joseph — partially seeing the LORD’s pattern, recognizing in retrospect what we could not see in the moment. And sometimes we glimpse the Lord Jesus’s own clarity — the moments when the gospel illuminates the present circumstance with the delivered-up-according-to-the-definite-plan framework, and we know, in the deepest sense, that what is being done is in the LORD’s hand. The Christian life moves between these three patriarchal-stages of knowing. But the LORD’s purposes are operative throughout. You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.
The Coffin in Egypt and the Visitation Foretold
The book of Genesis closes with a coffin in Egypt.
So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt (Genesis 50:26).
The patriarchal foundation does not reach its consummation within the book of Genesis. The land is not yet possessed. The great nation has only just begun to form from the seventy-soul household. The deliverance is not yet accomplished. The patriarchal-Christian hope is deferred. The favored son’s bones are in a coffin awaiting visitation.
And the deferred hope is anchored in Joseph’s final faith-statement. I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob (Genesis 50:24). The Hebrew paqod yifqod Elohim etkhem — visiting God will visit you — uses the great Exodus-anticipating verb paqad.
The verb runs through the rest of the biblical witness. Moses at the burning bush picks it up explicitly. Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, “The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, ’I have surely visited you and seen what has been done to you in Egypt’” (Exodus 3:16). The Hebrew paqod paqadeti — visiting I have visited — the same construction Joseph had used. The patriarchal-foretelling reaches its Mosaic-fulfillment. Joseph said God will surely visit you; Moses says the LORD has surely visited you. The promise is being kept.
And the verb reaches its deepest fulfillment in the gospel. Zechariah, at the birth of John the Baptist, picks up the same theme in his prophetic song. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people (Luke 1:68, KJV). The Greek epeskepsato translates the Hebrew paqad. The LORD’s visiting His people in the patriarchal pattern reaches its consummation in the Lord Jesus’s incarnation. The Lord Jesus is the deeper visitation of all. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). The patriarchal-Joseph-prophecy reaches its incarnational fulfillment.
And the deeper Christological resonance goes further. The Lord Jesus will, before His ascension, promise another visitation. I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also (John 14:3). The visitation that began at Bethlehem will reach its consummation at the LORD’s return. The patriarchal-coffin-in-Egypt awaiting visitation is the patriarchal-anticipation of the Christian-saint-in-the-grave awaiting the resurrection. The deferred hope is the deepest Christian-eschatological-hope.
And Hebrews 11 articulates this most clearly. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland… they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city (Hebrews 11:13–16). The patriarchs died without seeing the promised consummation. But they died in faith. They believed the promise even without seeing the fulfillment. The patriarchal-Christian pattern of dying in faith is the deepest pattern of the believing life.
And Hebrews 11:22 picks up Joseph specifically. By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones. The author of Hebrews identifies Joseph’s bones-instruction as one of the great patriarchal acts of faith. Joseph believed that the LORD would visit. Joseph staked his bones on the promise. And the eventual fulfillment in Joshua 24:32 — as for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt, they buried them at Shechem — demonstrates that the patriarchal faith was vindicated. The LORD did visit. The bones were carried up. The promise was kept.
And the deepest patriarchal-Christian image: a coffin in Egypt awaiting visitation. This is, in some sense, the image of every Christian saint who has died in the faith. The bones are not abandoned. The bones are kept. The LORD’s promise will, in the LORD’s time, be kept. The coffin will, eventually, be opened. The resurrection of the body will, in the LORD’s time, be accomplished. The patriarchal-Joseph-bones-pattern is the Christian-resurrection-pattern. The deferred hope is the deepest Christian-eschatological-hope.
The book of Genesis thus closes not with the consummation of the LORD’s purposes but with the foretaste. The patriarchs have died in faith. The seventy-soul household is in Egypt. The bones of Joseph are in a coffin awaiting visitation. The LORD has made promises that have not yet been fully kept. And the believing community is to live, across the centuries that will follow, in the patriarchal-pattern of waiting for the LORD’s visitation.
And the visitation has come. The Word has become flesh. The Lord Jesus has visited His people. And the visitation will come again. The Lord Jesus will return. The deeper exodus will be accomplished. The deeper resurrection will be effected. The deeper homeland will be reached. The deepest patriarchal-Christian hope is anchored in the LORD’s visitation — the one that has come and the one that will come.
The Whole Book
Let us now step back and see the whole book.
Genesis is, in the deepest Lutheran-Christian reading, the book of the things concerning himself. The opening Word who creates is the eternal Son. The Spirit hovering over the waters is the Spirit who will descend at the Lord Jesus’s baptism. The protoevangelium is the first gospel-word. The patriarchal call to Abraham is the patriarchal-anticipation of every Christian’s call to follow the Lord Jesus. The Abrahamic blessing of all nations is the gospel preached beforehand. The patriarchal justification by faith in Genesis 15:6 is the foundational text on which Paul builds Romans 4. The Melchizedek encounter is the patriarchal-foreshadowing of the Lord Jesus’s eternal priesthood. The binding of Isaac is the deepest single Christological pattern in the patriarchal narratives. The angel-of-the-LORD encounters are the preincarnate Christ in patriarchal form. Jacob’s ladder is the Lord Jesus as the connection between heaven and earth. The Peniel wrestling is the preincarnate Christ breaking the patriarch in the right place. The Joseph narrative is the deepest single extended Christological pattern in the Old Testament. The line of Judah produces, through David, the Lord Jesus Christ. The providence-pattern of you meant evil, but God meant it for good reaches its consummation at the cross. The coffin in Egypt awaiting visitation is the deepest patriarchal-Christian image of the deferred hope.
All of these patterns converge on a single picture. The book of Genesis is, in its deepest reading, the book that prepares for the gospel. The patterns the LORD has built into the patriarchal history reach their consummation in the Lord Jesus Christ. The patriarchal seeds bloom in the gospel flowers. The patriarchal foundations support the apostolic building.
And the deeper observation must be made. None of this is allegorical projection. The patterns are in the text. The apostolic witness has authorized them. The Lord Jesus Himself, on the Emmaus road, interpreted in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. The patriarchs were not commenting on Christ; the LORD was, through them, anticipating the Christ to come.
And the Lutheran tradition has, across the centuries, held this as one of the deepest convictions of biblical reading. The Old Testament is, in deepest reading, for that which shows forth Christ — was Christum treibet. Luther’s hermeneutical principle: read the Hebrew Scriptures for what shows forth Christ. Not by allegorizing texts that have no Christological content, but by recognizing the patterns the LORD has built into the patriarchal-prophetic history. The patterns are there. The reader must learn to see them. The apostles have shown us how.
And the deepest pattern of the entire book is the pattern of the LORD’s faithful covenant working through real, broken, complicated human history. The patriarchs are not moral exemplars. The patriarchal family is not a romantic ideal. The covenant runs through a deceiver who became Israel, through a beloved son who was sold by his brothers, through a substitutionary instinct that began in Judah and reached its consummation at the cross. The patriarchal narrative is honest about human sin. It is also faithful to the LORD’s purposes operative through human sin. You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good — the deepest single sentence in the entire Old Testament on the question of how the LORD’s purposes work through the actual circumstances of human life.
And the believing community that reads Genesis with these patterns in mind discovers something extraordinary. The same LORD who walked with the patriarchs walks with us. The same LORD who preserved the patriarchal family through the famine preserves the church through every catastrophe. The same LORD who made promises that took centuries to fulfill is the LORD whose promises to us will, in His time, be fulfilled. The same LORD who closed the book of Genesis with a coffin in Egypt awaiting visitation has, in the Lord Jesus, visited His people — and will, in the deeper visitation that is to come, complete what the patriarchal-coffin only anticipated.
The book of beginnings is, in deepest reading, the book of the beginning of the gospel. The things concerning himself are in Genesis from the first verse. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth — and the Word who creates is the Lord Jesus Christ. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Genesis 1 and John 1 are the same beginning.
Gathering the Threads of Volume One
This is the final session of Volume 1 of The Things Concerning Himself. We have, across thirty-two sessions, worked through the book of Genesis.
We have worked through the creation and the fall. We have read the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 as the first gospel-word in Scripture. We have watched the line of promise begin with Seth and continue through Noah and through the line of Shem to Abraham. We have followed the patriarchal call — go from your country — and the Abrahamic blessing that has, all along, included the nations. We have read the justification-by-faith verse of Genesis 15:6 as the foundational text on which the apostle Paul would build the doctrine of justification by faith. We have encountered Melchizedek as the patriarchal-foreshadowing of the Lord Jesus’s eternal priesthood. We have climbed Mount Moriah with Abraham and Isaac and seen the deepest single patriarchal anticipation of the cross.
We have followed Jacob through his deceptions and his exile. We have seen the angel of the LORD appear to him at Bethel and wrestle with him at Peniel. We have read these encounters as the preincarnate Christ in patriarchal anticipation. We have watched the patriarch transformed by the wrestling. We have heard him, at his deathbed, name the angel who has redeemed me from all evil as his patriarchal-redeemer.
We have followed Joseph through the deepest single Christological pattern in the patriarchal narratives. The favored son. Hated by his brothers. Stripped of his robe. Sold for silver. False accusations borne in silence. The two prisoners. The LORD-was-with-him refrain. Raised from the pit to the right hand of the king. A gentile bride during exile. Bread for the world during the famine. Go to Joseph. The hidden son revealed: I am Joseph. The reconciliation through tears and embrace. It was not you who sent me here, but God. The bones in the coffin awaiting visitation. Sixteen specific patterns converging on a single picture of the Lord Jesus Christ in patriarchal anticipation.
We have followed Judah through the deepest moral arc in Genesis. From the sale of Joseph through the failure of Tamar through the confession at Enaim through the substitutionary offer for Benjamin to the messianic blessing of Genesis 49. The line that learned substitution producing the deeper Substitute. The Lion of Judah of Revelation 5:5 in patriarchal seed-form.
We have encountered the deepest single articulation of providence in the Old Testament. You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. The Hebrew verb chashav used for both the brothers’ evil intention and God’s good intention. The Lutheran reading of God’s hidden and revealed wills at its fullest patriarchal expression. The cross of Christ as the deepest single instance of the pattern.
We have ended Volume 1 where the book of Genesis ends — with a coffin in Egypt, with the patriarchal hope deferred, with the bones of the favored son awaiting visitation. We have learned to read this image as the deepest patriarchal-Christian image of the resurrection-hope. The bones in the coffin are the patriarchal anticipation of every Christian saint awaiting the LORD’s deeper visitation.
And we have, throughout the volume, held to the Lutheran hermeneutical principle. For that which shows forth Christ. The Old Testament read with the apostolic-authorization to see the Christological patterns the LORD has built into the patriarchal-prophetic history. Not allegorical projection. Typological recognition. The patterns are in the text. The apostles have shown us how to read them. The Lord Jesus Himself, on the Emmaus road, demonstrated the method.
Looking Forward — Luther’s Prayer Book of Christ
Volume 2 of The Things Concerning Himself turns to the book of Psalms.
And the deepest single insight Luther gave us about the Psalter is that the Psalms are the prayer book of Christ. The Psalms are not just psalms about Christ; they are psalms prayed by Christ, prayed in Christ, prayed through Christ. The Lord Jesus prayed the Psalter throughout His earthly life. He learned the Psalms as a Hebrew child. He prayed them in the synagogue. He prayed them at the festivals. He prayed Psalm 22 from the cross: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He prayed Psalm 31 with His last breath: Into your hands I commit my spirit. The Psalms are, in deepest reading, the prayer life of the Lord Jesus.
And because the Psalms are the prayer life of the Lord Jesus, they are also the prayer life of His people. When the Christian prays the Psalter, the Christian prays the same psalms the Lord Jesus prayed. The Christian’s voice joins the Lord Jesus’s voice. The Psalter becomes the prayer book of the church because it was first the prayer book of Christ. This is one of the deepest single insights in the entire Christian tradition’s reading of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Psalter is not just a collection of ancient Hebrew prayers; the Psalter is the patriarchal-prophetic-prayer-collection that is, in deepest reading, the prayer life of the Lord Jesus Himself.
Volume 2 will work through the Psalms selectively — not all 150, but a representative selection across the major genres. The royal psalms (Psalm 2, Psalm 110) that the New Testament reads explicitly as messianic. The laments (Psalm 22, Psalm 88) that the Lord Jesus and His apostles will pray. The wisdom psalms (Psalm 1, Psalm 73, Psalm 119) that articulate the patriarchal-Christian wisdom-tradition. The imprecatory psalms (Psalm 109, Psalm 137) that demand the Christian’s careful Lutheran reading. The Psalms of Ascents (Psalm 121, Psalm 130) that the patriarchal-Christian community has sung as the pilgrimage-songs of every age. And the great praise psalms (Psalm 23, Psalm 100, Psalm 150) that are the patriarchal-Christian community’s deepest songs.
Across all of them, the Lutheran-Christian reading will hold. The Psalter is the prayer book of Christ. The Christ who prayed these psalms is the Christ we encounter in them. The Christ we encounter in them is the Christ who teaches us, through them, how to pray.
The volume after Psalms will be Isaiah — with extra weight on the Servant Songs. And the final volume of the series will be the twelve Minor Prophets. Across all four volumes of The Things Concerning Himself, the same hermeneutical principle will hold. The Old Testament read for what shows forth Christ. The patriarchal-prophetic patterns recognized. The apostolic witness honored. The deepest patterns of the gospel discovered already in seed-form across the patriarchal-prophetic history.
Volume 1 closes. Volume 2 opens with the Psalms. The patriarchal-narrative of Genesis becomes the patriarchal-prayer-book of the Psalter. The same LORD has spoken in both. The same Christ is shown forth in both. The same believing community reads both with the same Lutheran-Christian gratitude.
Read Psalm 1, Psalm 2, and Psalm 22 before the opening session of Volume 2. These three psalms together will frame the opening of the next volume — Psalm 1 (the wisdom-psalm that opens the Psalter), Psalm 2 (the royal-messianic-psalm), and Psalm 22 (the deepest single messianic-lament that the Lord Jesus prayed from the cross). The patriarchal-prophetic Psalter is, in deepest reading, the prayer book of the Lord Jesus Christ.
For Discussion
The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.
Luke 24:27 records that the Lord Jesus, on the Emmaus road, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. How does this verse shape the Christian church’s reading of the Old Testament? Where in the New Testament do the apostles demonstrate the Lord Jesus’s hermeneutical method of finding the things concerning himself in the patriarchal-prophetic Scriptures?
The binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) is, in Christian reading, the deepest single Christological pattern in the patriarchal narratives. The father offering the beloved son. The son carrying the wood. The substitute provided. Romans 8:32 makes the inversion explicit: He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How does the patriarchal Akedah shape your reading of the cross? What does it teach about the LORD’s costly love for His people?
Joseph’s story shows sixteen specific patterns that anticipate the Lord Jesus Christ. The favored son sent by the father to his brothers, the descent and the exaltation, the bread for the world, the gentile bride during exile, it was not you who sent me here, but God, and many more. Which of these patterns has stayed most strongly with you across this volume? Why has it spoken to you most deeply?
Genesis 50:20 — you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good — is the deepest single articulation of providence in the Old Testament. The Hebrew verb chashav is used for both the brothers’ evil intention and God’s good intention. How does this verse shape your understanding of how the LORD’s purposes operate through human evil? Where in your own life have you, like Joseph, only been able to recognize the LORD’s good purposes in retrospect?
The book of Genesis closes with Joseph’s bones in a coffin in Egypt, awaiting the LORD’s visitation. Hebrews 11:13–16 identifies the patriarchs as those who died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar. How does this image of the deferred patriarchal-Christian hope shape your reading of the resurrection-hope? What does it teach about how Christians are to live in the time between the LORD’s first visitation in the Lord Jesus and His second visitation at His return?
The Lutheran hermeneutical principle is to read the Old Testament for that which shows forth Christ — was Christum treibet. How is this principle different from allegorical reading that projects Christ onto any text? What are the safeguards against uncontrolled allegory? Where do the apostles, in their own handling of the Old Testament, demonstrate the proper typological method?
Looking Ahead
Volume 2 of The Things Concerning Himself opens with the book of Psalms — Luther’s prayer book of Christ.
The opening sessions of Volume 2 will frame the Christian reading of the Psalter. Psalm 1 — the wisdom-psalm that opens the entire Psalter with the two ways, the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked. Psalm 2 — the royal-messianic-psalm that the New Testament quotes more often than perhaps any other single Old Testament psalm, with its declaration of the LORD’s anointed Son and the nations’ rage against Him. And Psalm 22 — the deepest single messianic-lament that the Lord Jesus prayed from the cross. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Across the volume that follows, we will work through a representative selection of the 150 Psalms — perhaps thirty to forty psalms across the major genres. The laments. The royal-messianic psalms. The wisdom psalms. The imprecatory psalms (which require careful Lutheran handling). The Psalms of Ascents. The great praise psalms. Each will be read with the same hermeneutical principle that has guided Volume 1: the Psalter shows forth Christ. The Psalms are the prayer book of Christ. The Christ who prayed these psalms is the Christ we meet in them. And the Christ we meet in them teaches us how to pray.
Read Psalm 1, Psalm 2, and Psalm 22 in full before the opening session of Volume 2. These three psalms will frame the volume’s opening.
Closing Prayer
Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who has spoken through the patriarchal-prophetic Scriptures of all the things concerning Your Son, who built into the book of beginnings the patterns that anticipate the gospel, who gave the protoevangelium in the garden, who promised that all the families of the earth would be blessed in Abraham, who provided the ram caught in the thicket at Moriah, who wrestled with Jacob at Peniel, who sent Your patriarchal-Joseph into the descent and the exaltation that anticipates Your divine Son’s descent and exaltation, who held together in Joseph’s mouth at the end of Genesis the two truths that the gospel itself proclaims — you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good — we worship You. Thank You for the long arc of Volume 1. Thank You for thirty-two sessions across the book of beginnings. Thank You for letting us see, in the patterns the LORD has built into the patriarchal-narrative, the things concerning himself. Thank You for the Lord Jesus Christ, the seed of the woman who has crushed the serpent’s head, the beloved Son carrying the wood of His own sacrifice up the mountain, the angel-redeemer who became flesh and dwelt among us, the deeper Joseph who has descended with us into our suffering and been exalted to provide bread for the world, the Lion of the tribe of Judah whose substitutionary love is the gospel itself, the One whose visitation we await in our coffins-in-Egypt seasons. Bring us, with every patriarchal saint who died in faith, to the deeper visitation that is to come. Open our eyes, with the Emmaus disciples, to recognize the Lord Jesus in all the Scriptures — in the patriarchal narratives we have just completed and in the patriarchal-prophetic Psalter we are about to open. Make Your church, in every generation, a community that reads the whole of Scripture as the patriarchal-prophetic preparation for the Lord Jesus Christ. And bring us, finally, to the deeper homeland — the new heavens and the new earth that You have prepared, where every patriarchal-Christian hope reaches consummation, where every coffin in Egypt opens to the resurrection, where every promise that has been delayed is fulfilled, where every visitation that has been foretold is accomplished, and where we shall see, with our own eyes, the Lord Jesus Christ — the seed of the woman, the Son of Abraham, the angel-redeemer, the deeper Joseph, the Lion of Judah, the One who is, has been, and ever shall be the deepest single subject of all the Scriptures. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.