Moses and Messiah

“I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.” — Deut. xviii. 18.

“For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you.” — Acts hi. 22.

Any one who lias a wide acquaintance with the story of mankind must have fallen in with many individuals and many incidents which, to a remarkable extent, are the repetition of one another. You are reading the battle of Morgarten, where a handful of Swiss drove back from their valleys the vast array of Austria, and you are irresistibly reminded of Marathon and the little Athenian company which there hurled into the dust the pride of Persia. You read the disastrous march of Darius into the bleak and hungry wilds of Scythia, and you see as in a glass Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. At Salamis you are startled with strange foreshado wings of the Spanish Armada and its destruction on the coasts of Britain; and even at Lucknow you will find few incidents absolutely new, if already familiar with the defence and relief of Malta and of Leyden. And as with incidents so with individuals. Miltiades and Aristides, the saviours of Greece, are one day all but deified, another day the one is banished, and the other dies impoverished and disgraced. With such precedents, with such knowledge of the impulsiveness and ingratitude of a people, you do not wonder to find the brothers De Witt, after all their services to the republic, torn to pieces by the mob of Amsterdam. Caligula, savage, capricious, and fantastic in his cruelties, keeps the world in tremor, till in seK-defence his parasites and favourites are obliged to join together and destroy the bloodthirsty madman. Seventeen centuries later the same words would describe the career and fate of another emperor, Paul of All this is natural. If there be certain rules which guide the course of Providence, and certain laws which govern human nature, such selfrepetitions must abound in the annals of our species. Selfishness and passion, if unrestrained — and there is nothing to restrain a despot — will develop into a fierce and headlong brutality, till even flatterers find themselves endangered, and in self-defence knock on the head the infuriate monster; hence Caligula, hence Paul of Russia, hence the history of Oriental despotisms.

1 See Historical Parallels. — Lib. Ent. Knowledge.

A people so fond of liberty as not to care for life without it, will seldom be allowed to lose it; hence Marathon, hence Morgarten and Sempach, hence Bannockburn. And hence the philosophy of history. Hence it is that a thoughtful man, acquainted with human nature in its springs of action and its actual doings, will often predict, with surprising accuracy, the history of a popular favourite, the career of a commonwealth, the effects of an important law, the outgoings of a revolution. Give again similar men and similar circumstances, and you will have again similar results.

To these parallelisms we have adverted from time to time in our sketch of Moses, and as we proceed we shall likely notice others. But we are now called to mark an identity betwixt Moses and another, which cannot be accounted for as a mere casual coincidence, nor even as one of those historical parallelisms which are occasioned by similarity of disposition and circumstances. In the hand of God, Moses was himself a prophecy of a more illustrious Successor, and through his deeds and services the minds of the peculiar people were taught ideas which found their eventual realization in that great Prophet like unto Moses whom the Lord at last raised up from amongst His brethren.

When we say this we have not in view those outward or incidental resemblances with which every one is struck, and which certainly did not happen without the Divine intention and control. For example, Moses was born of parents in obscure and humble station, peasants, exiles, slaves; and Christ, born of a poor virgin, was called the carpenter’s son; whilst the ark of bulrushes finds its equivalent in the manger at Bethlehem. Moses in his infancy had well-nigh fallen a victim to the wrath of Pharaoh; Jesus was only snatched by a hand Divine from the cruelty of Herod. The ‘proper’ child, the son of Amram, beautiful exceedingly, is suggestive of that fairest of all men wdiom God anointed with the oil of gladness above all His fellows. And “the man Moses, exceeding meek,” makes us think of Him who says, “Come unto me, all ye that labour, for I am meek and lowly.”

But the identity to which we allude is deeper, and it will come out, I hope, as we proceed.

1. Moses was a great Deliverer. The Israelites were in despair. They laboured and found no rest. Their tyrants died, but the tyranny did not abate. The years went on, but their sorrows did not lessen; and amidst their growing burdens and deepening anguish, it was vainly that they looked around for a protector or champion, for he was never like to come. Cowed and heart-broken, their cry, their “groaning” went up to God, and from God direct a deliverer dropped into their midst.

And the world was all one Egypt when Christ came. Men were very miserable. The great Roman bully had knocked down all his neighbours, and left no independent nation within sight of his Seven Hills. The submissive fed their masters, the resistful only supplied victims by the thousand for the gladiatorial games. And worse than prsetors and proconsuls, men were serving divers lusts and passions, — the slaves of an unseen but ubiquitous Apollyon. The old Pagan faiths were worn out, and such poor virtues as heathenism for a time retained had yielded to unheard-of crimes, till the whole creation groaned, — till, mutually embittered and self-disgusted, all mankind had yielded to the bondage of corruption. It was then that Christ came. It was then that, hearing the cry, confused and anguish- stricken, from a world which had lost all means of self-emancipation or amendment, God remembered His covenant and came down to deliver. It was then that the Son of God was manifest.

2. Moses was a Prophet. Not that he uttered many predictions — for to foretell the future is a very secondary and subordinate function of the seer; and the man of God who tells. me what God is and who supplies me with motives to become what God desires, does me a far greater service than if he had projected ever so minute a map of the future. Of predictions strictly so called our text is almost the only example which occurs in the long career of Moses; and yet, among the mere sons of men, he stands forth unequalled for the contribution which he has been the means of making to our knowledge of God and of human duty. The entire Bible is built on Genesis. The whole subsequent revelations assume the unity of the Supreme Creator there revealed, and they assume the minute and careful vigilance of the great Governor, — the care taken of one poor lad from the pit in Dothan to the palacegates of On by that same God who said “Let there be light,” and who launched the planets on their paths, — that ability of attending to every affair, large or little, which infinite power gives to infinite goodness, and which we call particular or special Providence, the Providence of Omnipotence. And to this fundamental lesson of all piety, transmitted from patriarchal times and preserved in Genesis, what emphasis is given, how important are the additions made in the teaching more immediately Mosaic! The absolute oneness and spirituality of the Divine nature. His unspotted sanctity. His overflowing goodness. His great compassions! And then the Ten Commandments! “The law was given by Moses,” and no tongue can tell the service rendered to the cause of virtue and of God by those way marks and warnings, — those ten words of infinite weight which have kept on the path so many wayward feet, and which have haunted so many consciences till the wanderer returned, — that great manual -of duty, that little hand-book of human happiness, which we call the Two Tables, or Decalogue.

But if the law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Still mightier in deed and in word than the great legislator, needing no wonder-working rod, for He had but to speak and it was done, needing no thunder nor trumpet to overture His discourse and astonish His audience, the Lord Jesus gave a new idea of goodness and a new exhibition of the Godhead. With Moses the first prodigy was to turn water into blood, with Jesus the beginning of miracles was to turn water into wine; and on the key-note thus sounded in the case of each the subsequent anthem went forward: severity, stern sanctions, the one, — grace, attraction, encouragement, the other; the shekinah of the one burning with fire, and fenced round with the warning, “Put off thy shoe, for this is holy ground,” heaven so opening over the other as to delight whilst it dazzled, and make frail mortality still exclaim, “Master, it is good to be here.” How mild the accents, yet how holy and how pure! how j)enetrating, how satisfying! softly falling like the dew, mellifluous as the manna, and filling each capacity, the greatest and the smallest, like the snow which gives its convenient portion to the crocus -cup or the lichen, and of which there is enough for the widest valley! Xot that Jesus ignored or set aside the law. “The law was given by Closes,” but it lived in Jesus Christ. That holy law of God, He hid it in His heart, and so it circulated in the vital current of His blood, mantling in His cheek when a sinless indignation flashed on stupendous wickedness, and flowing forth in the more familiar tear which bewailed the fate which this wickedness entailed, — gleaming in the gracious smile which reassured the broken-hearted penitent, and bursting forth in that crimson sweat which, fainting yet pursued, and which, conquering its own reluctance, cried, “Father, Thy will be done!” But if in Jesus the law was fulfilled, so in Jesas God was manifest. True: He spoke many kind words concerning God, and some very solemn ones: some very solemn ones, — for it was He who said, “If ye forgive not them which trespass against you, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you your trespasses.” It was He who said, “It is better to enter into life halt or maimed, than having two hands or two feet to be cast into hell-fire.” But mostly kind and comforting — indeed all kind and comforting, if we only listen to them sitting at the Master’s feet, and so under the shadow of the

Mediator’s wing. Indeed, so kind and comforting, that He has only one name for the Most High, — “the Father,” “your heavenly Father,” — inviting us in His name to take it up and say, “Our Father which art in heaven.” But just as the Lord Jesus lived the law, so it was chiefly by His life that He let forth the glories of the Godhead — and for that manifestation of Him whom no man hath seen we must go not more to the words than to the mien, / the movements, the works of Immanuel. “Moses verily was faithful in all his house,” but it was the faithfulness of a servant, — “but Christ as a Son over His own house,” — a Son the express image of the Father — the Only-Begotten, familiar with His Father’s thoughts from all eternity, and giving forth no new revelation as it gradually dawned upon Him, but freely acting forth the Father’s mind as it had been from the beginning — acting forth as far as a true body and reasoning soul gave scope for the manifestation. And so for the knowledge of Him with whom we have to do we must look to His incarnate Son. If we wish to know what are the prayers which God will not regard, we must note those which Jesus did not answer. If we wish to know what is the exigency in which God will not or cannot rescue, we must find out the cases where imperilled discipleship vainly exclaimed, “Save, Lord, or I perish.” If we wish to know what is the sorrow of which the Most High is a heedless or unconcerned spectator, we must mark the sufferers against whose cry of anguish Jesus stops His ear, we must mark the graves by whose brink He stands without a tear. If we wish to know what is the unpardonable sin and who are the penitents who need ask no forgiveness, we must find some sinner who clasped the feet of Jesus and was shaken off — we must find some blaspheming renegade, some cursing and swearing apostate, at whom Jesus would never look again, and regarding whom He made a special exception, ‘Go and tell them all (save Peter) that I go before into Galilee and shall be glad to meet them again/

The likeness between Moses and Messiah we might pursue much further, and the parallel would not be the less impressive because in each particular we should find that the type was excelled or surmounted by the antitype. For instance, as a man, as a model or ensample to his people, Moses was nearly perfect; but although almost he was not altogether, and in the ebullition at Meribah the human frailty broke through. Not so with Jesus. If angry He sinned not. He never spake unadvisedly with His lips, and complete as was His code, sublime as were His maxims, there was a finish in His goodness, a divine felicity in His entire demeanour, which leaves Him unique and 126 MOSES AND MESSIAH.

unapproachable among the sons of men. Again, the mhacles which ]Ioses wrought were by a delegated power: the rod he carried was a borrowed sceptre, and a higher power wrought all its wonders. But affluent in His own omnipotence, the will of Jesu.s was itself a fiat, and a touch, a word, a look was followed by a feast for five thousand guests, by a blind man’s cure, by a dead man’s resurrection. Once more, as a mediator Moses had compassion on the ignorant and on them that were out of the way; and he had great power with God. But it is Jesus alone who is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Him, and Jesus is the only mediator who in His intercession says, “Father, I will.” And yet again, as the leader of the rescued Israelites Moses carried them far. He conducted them safely through the Eed Sea and through the howling wilderness; but he did not bring them into the Promised Land. But Jesus is Moses and Joshua both in one. Those whom He brings out of sin’s bondage He carries through and sees them safe to the better country. His guidance never ceases, His eye never dims. His interest never flags; but those who once place themselves beneath His guardianship, lo! He is with them to the end.

So, Moses is no isolated personage. He is “that prophet” (John i.) who prefigures the greatest of all, and when we survey him we are looking at one who is looking unto Jesns. This view of his character and attitude we shall often find instructive. Like his own rod it will draw water from the flinty rock, and convert into green pastures the passages most arid-looking in all the history.

Meanwhile, it is with the prophet like unto Moses that we have expressly to do; and it behoves us to ponder the words here subjoined, “Whosoever will not hearken unto my words which He shall speak in my name, I will require it of him,” or, as Peter gives the purport, “Every soul that will not hear that Prophet shall be destroyed from among the people.” If there were any Hebrews so besotted that they refused to quit Egypt, they had only one opportunity. No second Passover came. No new Moses appeared. The Eed Sea never sundered again; but by their own infatuation, cut off from their own people, they drudged out the dreary years in ignominious thankless bondage, and died in slavery.

When Peter adduced this precedent he was addressing his Hebrew countrymen, and he added, “Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers. Unto you first, God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning every one of you from your iniquities.” Without any straining — retaining their real point and spirit — we might apply the apostle’s words to a congregation like this, and say, “Ye are children of the prophets and children of the covenant. Many of you have had parents pious and God-fearing. You have been trained in Bible-classes and Sabbath-schools. You know a large extent of saving truth, and you have enjoyed an immense amount of helpful Christian influence. If you were deciding now, what an advantage you would have over the converted Pagan, or even over the converted Papist! How friendly are all the surrounding circumstances; how propitious to your progress! To you God gives the first offer of the Saviour. Suffer Him to bless you. Suffer Him to bless you by turning you from your iniquities.”

“Well, and (you say) it is not much that hinders. In turning from my iniquities, I have not to give up the gambling, or the drinking, or the profligacy which you were describing last Lord’s day; and as far as any rampant wickedness is concerned, I fancy that I might soon become a Christian. But I do not feel disposed. I do not see the need. I know that I am not what you would call a religious person; but I hope that on the whole I do my duty by one and all, and worldly as you call me, I think I have some virtues not possessed by all. the godly.” That is to say, you are in the position of an Israelite to whom with his divine commission Moses might have gone, and he should answer, “No, I thank you. My master is humane. He does not set me any revolting task, like so many of my brethren. I am neither scavenger nor swine-herd, but I wear this handsome livery. And I like the leeks and the onions, the melons and the cucumbers; and have no notion of going out into a stony desert to fast and hear your sermons.”^ Oh, what an abject! what a mean and unmanly spirit which can thus plead for leave to continue in bondage! how well he deserves to have his fetters made strong, and when times grow hard with him, and his taskmaster turns on him and delivers him to the tormentors, who shall pity him? Yes, indeed, Christ’s offer is irksome. You have learned to like Egypt. You cannot bear to be called a slave, and yet you are not free. You are in bondage to the world — to opinion and fashion; there are friends whose contempt or coldness you could not stand. You are in bondage to the flesh; you are the slave of appetite or indolence; you cling to the flesh-pots; you deprecate the march and the desert, the fatigue and the fighting. Or one is your master, even the devil; and by some fallacy or sophism that father of lies persuades you to put off or refuse altogether. Take care that you are not taken at your word! Seeing you hold salvation so cheap, take care lest when the Lord’s ransomed set forward yon be not left in the house of your bondage. Take care lest God swear in His wrath, “They shall not enter into my rest.”

Finally, you who follow Christ, how much you owe HiDi! How much you owe Him already, and how much more you shall owe Him before all is over! Of your salvation He is the Captain. Of His intercession you may form some idea from that memorable prayer, “0 Lord, this people have sinned a great sin; howbeit, if Thou wilt forgive their trespass; and if not — then I pray Thee blot out my name from Thy book.” But as that is a name which cannot be blotted out, forgiveness asked by the great Intercessor cannot be refused. If once He takes charge of you, He will see you safe through. Of all guides and leaders, He is the meekest and most magnanimous; and those who sing the song of Moses and the Lamb will have the same tale to tell of murmurings forgiven and mercies multiplied — of a patience which never intermitted and a love that never was exhausted.