What was so great about the man called Moses that we would feel compelled to offer him a great tribute after studying the details of his life and death in the Torah?
MOSES WAS A SHADOW OF MESSIAH
Just exactly who was Moses anyway?
His name is thrown around a lot, but what do we really know of him?
Have we taken advantage of the fact that if we study the words God gave him to write down in the first five books of the bible, we might learn practically everything that anyone ever needs to know about how to live life on this earth?
We can’t really think too much about Moses and who he really was without first considering those old Israelites that he led out of Egypt.
Do you realize why they were in slavery for 400 years in the first place?
GOD HELPED MOSES TO FEED THE PHYSICAL ISRAELITES
A famine came upon the land of Canaan and they had to go to Egypt to obtain grain. Is it possible that this same story could play out again?
That was the reason the Israelites first came to Egypt. Here is the point where a million stories unite, and to make a long story short; they wound up living in Egypt for the next 400 years.
Not only did they live there; they later became slaves of Egypt because of some very strange family circumstances that played out over time.
Could this happen again?
Their first years in Egypt were good and abundant.
Pharaoh loved Joseph and they lived under that blessing. Years went by and both Pharaoh and Joseph died. The new Pharaoh didn’t think much of the dirty shepherds of Israel who lived in the land of Goshen. He only noticed how plentiful they had become and how their people seemed to be filling the land, taking up food and shelter that could be used by Egyptian natives.
This new Pharaoh taxed the people into debt, then used their debts to enslave them. It made him feel more secure to know that he had the power to command them any way that he chose.
Could this happen again?
There was no Joseph this time. They were caught in the trap of “survival.”
Those ancient Israelites wanted and needed a deliverer. The Israelites sought God every day and night asking for someone to come and save them.
God sent Moses.
Centuries went by. Time moved on. The same Israelites who had received salvation in the form of Jacob’s son named Joseph, and then a man named Moses; eventually came home to Israel and grew into a great nation who was later dominated by the Romans.
Again; they prayed to God for deliverance.
God sent Jesus.
SO MANY SIMILARITIES
Like in the times of Moses, a savior appeared.
So similar to the story of Moses, he too was born under the reign of an evil dictator who sought to kill him at birth.
Just as Jacob escaped to Egypt in order to live; so did Mary and Joseph and Jesus.
Just as the Israelite descendants of Jacob came out of Egypt when they were led by Moses to cross the Red Sea in order to escape slavery; so Jesus and his holy family came out of Egypt and later he was baptized in order to show his people how to escape the slavery of sin.
SAME TRIALS AND TEMPTATIONS
Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness.
Jesus spent 40 days in the desert.
God provided the Manna from Heaven to Moses for food for the people of Israel.
God multiplied the loaves and fishes for Jesus to feed the hungry people.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD
Though Moses grew up to become a Prince of Egypt; he gave that up to become a shepherd in the wilderness.
Jesus came down from His Throne in Heaven as The Son of God to live the lowly life of an ordinary man and many came to know Him as The Good Shepherd.
Moses was misunderstood and rejected by those of whom he came to save.
Jesus experienced the same human behavior.
Both Moses and Jesus denied themselves and pursued the mission that God had purposed for them to do.
Moses was such a shadow and type of Jesus.
These two heroes lived and died centuries apart; but in spite of that, they knew each other.
Yes; you read that right.
A GOOD SHEPHERD MEETS THE GOOD SHEPHERD
Moses met Jesus Christ centuries before He came down from Heaven to be born as a child and laid inside a manager in Bethlehem.
When that little child was born in Bethlehem centuries after Moses lived and died; it happened again.
The humblest of shepherds were the ones who met him first.
The same experience was true for Moses. He was living the life of a lowly shepherd when he stumbled across a strange curiosity. It was a burning bush.
When Moses came closer, a voice came out of the bush and it was the voice of God in the form of the Incarnate Jesus Christ.
When these two similar heroes met under such strange circumstances; the whole world changed.
It was a major miracle.
GOD IS ALWAYS IN CONTROL
That was when Moses became a believer and a follower of Christ, though He did not recognize him in the same way that others later came to recognize him.
With this burning bush encounter with Christ; Moses suddenly realized the reasons for every strange circumstance that had led up to that moment in his life. God had been in complete control of his life from the moment he was born, even as his parents laid him gently into that basket in the bulrushes and floated him down the river.
Moses did not fully realize his true destiny until he encountered the fire in the bush.
When you see fire in the scriptures it symbolizes God’s holy presence in a place.
Moses had come to know the holiness of God.
It forever changed him.
Moses met Jesus in the burning bush even before Jesus came to deliver the earth. Through Jesus we can and have encountered The One True God. They are One. This was the way that Moses encountered God.
Through Moses; we came to know God’s ways.
God wrote them down on stone tablets so they would never be forgotten. Moses was the willing vessel that God used to give these ways to us.
When God came to Moses through the burning bush it was because He remembered his covenant with Abraham.
When He comes to us today; it is because The Gospel of Jesus Christ became the New Covenant.
In this covenant God has promised our salvation and deliverance.
God always keeps his promises.
HOW GOD USED MOSES TO SHOW US THE WAY
He kept the promises He made in the Old Testament when He made promises to Israel through Moses.
God kept the promises He made to believers in the New Testament through Jesus.
God used Moses to show us the way to Jesus.
He is a covenant-keeping God.
We can believe this and count on the fact that He always remembers us and never leaves us.
It was through Moses that God showed us how to find our way through life. God used Moses to show the Israelites how to find their way to a new land full of promise and opportunity.
Jesus showed us how to find our way to The Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is a place where the laws of Moses are written inside men’s hearts instead of residing on stored away tablets of stone.
John the Baptist was born to pave the way for people living in New Testament times to know our Messiah. Moses was born to pave the way for people of all times to learn how to live the way God wishes us to live after we believe in this Messiah.
AN ETERNAL PROMISED LAND
We are all still on our way to another Promised Land.
Our life in the wilderness of earth is where we learn God’s best ways to live (the way that Moses showed us) as we wait on the return of our Messiah.
Like the children who followed Moses in the wilderness; we too know to follow our deliverer. But this deliverance isn’t just about escaping death and gaining eternal life; it is about being closer and being able to worship God without restraint.
The Kingdom of God is about the worship of God.
It begins here on earth whenever we become believers and it goes on throughout eternity.
Moses delivered physical men from Egyptian powers.
Jesus delivers spiritual men from Satan’s evil powers.
Was this an easy task for either of them?
Not at all.
NOT AN EASY TASK
Both Moses and Jesus faced difficulties, impossibilities, opposition from within and opposition from without.
They both lived through hardships, setbacks, harsh treatments by friends and enemies.
Whenever these things happened they both went to God and poured out their hearts. God always heard their prayers. His answers were not always what they asked for; but they were always the right answers delivered in exactly the right timing.
The answers to their prayers trickled down through all time and became the answers to our prayers.
KEEPING PASSOVER
We know that Moses was obedient to God and kept the Passover which brought Israel into freedom.
Jesus too kept the Passover. He shared it with His disciples in those days just as He shares it with His disciples of today. This brings all of us who believe in Messiah to freedom.
Both Moses and Jesus, in keeping the Passover, were being obedient to God. God blessed their obedience just as He blesses ours today.
I can’t emphasize enough that obedience is everything.
OBEDIENCE IS EVERYTHING
Both of these; Jesus and Moses, shared blessings and trials and testing during their days on this earth.
The people of God and Moses were tested in the wilderness when they came to Marah very thirsty and found the only water there to be so bitter they could not drink it.
Could this happen again?
This was a test. Would they turn to God and trust Him for answers?
They did not! They grumbled!
Moses in great obedience cried out to God and God showed him a tree. He threw that tree into the water and what was bitter became sweet.
WHEN BITTER TURNS TO SWEET
That time Moses passed the test; but the people failed. The generation that first entered the wilderness from Egypt would fail over and over again.
The tree that made the water sweet was symbolic of the cross on which Jesus died for our sins.
All humans have failed and come short of the glory of God.
What Jesus did for us on the cross turned the bitter water of our sins into a sweet blessing of eternal life.
God used the life of Moses in so many ways to prepare our hearts to understand these meanings of the life of Jesus.
Also God used both of their lives to prove to us that thankfulness is the antidote to grumbling.
THANKFULNESS IS THE ANTIDOTE TO GRUMBLING
Was there anything that Moses did that did not point us to Jesus?
There were lots of things actually; which brings us to the point that Moses was merely a sinful man whom God used in a great way.
Without God Moses would have been no one doing nothing.
The same is true of you and me. It is God and God alone who brings the power that we need to overcome the world and rise above sin and walk into the abundance of Kingdom living.
Jesus, however; WAS God.
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are One. Jesus is One aspect of God. He was the part of God who was used to come down to earth and live as an ordinary man so that we could receive freedom from our sins.
The huge difference in Moses and Jesus was that Jesus NEVER sinned.
We have to focus on the fact that Jesus was 100% human and yet 100% God. I know that is hard to understand; but it is the only explanation I have to offer. He (the man part of Jesus) accomplished what no other man had ever done before (even Moses.) Jesus lived a perfectly, flawless, sinless and righteous life. He was God’s gift to us. It was the most perfect gift that anyone could ever offer. God gave us a perfect part of Himself in order to save us so that we could live with Him forever.
MOSES WAS ONLY HUMAN
Moses was not capable of doing this; but maybe he came closer than many. God loved his efforts and it must have been very hard for God to see the day that Moses committed a very grave sin, a sin that would keep him from finishing his life as he had expected.
The day came when the people grumbled against Moses again. They were in the place where God had led them to be; but there was no water.
Again; as so often before, they accused Moses of bringing them out of Egypt so that they could die in the wilderness. This was so opposite of the truth, and it must have hurt Moses’ feelings.
He understood that he was not sufficient enough to solve this problem on his own. He again, rightly sought God for answers.
But; in spite of consulting with God, something called anger was brewing in the spirit of Moses. He had held a lot of anger inside for a long time. The people had provoked him. It was not the first time that his heart harbored anger. He had been angry with the Egyptian taskmaster.
Also; there was that time when he had returned with the commandments and saw the people worshiping the golden calf. He had been so angry that he threw the stone tablets on the ground with such force that they broke into a million pieces and shattered to the point that they had to be written down again.
Actually; looking back, we can see a trail of times when Moses had shown an unusual amount of anger and rage in public. Though most of this was righteous anger – it took away from the moment’s holiness before God.
HOLINESS AND ANGER CANNOT EXIST TOGETHER
Holiness and anger cannot exist together and survive. Many times before God had overlooked the fits of anger and given Moses grace.
This time there would be consequences; because this time’s anger was very unholy and showed a deliberate lack of respect for God’s direction in front of the whole congregation.
Apparently Moses did not listen very well to God’s instructions. Maybe it was his anger that had kept him from hearing the new instructions. Before, when they had been without water and God miraculously brought water from a rock; God had commanded Moses to strike the rock with his staff.
This time God’s instructions were different.
Now God directed Moses to take the elders with him and to SPEAK to the rock.
Before Moses had struck the rock with the same staff that had become a sure symbol of God’s power and authority and the water had gushed forth. We are speaking of the same staff that struck the Nile and divided the Red Sea. This was the staff that Moses had held up to help the army of Israel to prevail against Amalek. Everyone knew and understood that the power of this rod came directly from God. Moses was simply the vessel who carried out God’s commandments.
Moses didn’t speak to the Rock; he struck it twice while still holding anger inside his heart.
UNDERSTANDING THE SYMBOL OF THE ROCK
The Rock in the wilderness that had provided pure fresh water had followed them where ever they went.
This rock so clearly symbolized Jesus.
The first time that Moses struck the rock was very symbolic of Jesus on the cross. The water that poured from the side of the rock was healing for the people and a symbol of ever-lasting life that had been provided for them.
This amazing ever-presence of the rock always among them afterward was symbolic of how much He loved us and looked after us.
In the time we speak of now though, Moses was asked by God only to SPEAK to the Rock.
Why?
ONCE FOR ALL
Because there was only need for Jesus to die on the cross once.
After that one time; there would always be provision of the waters of everlasting life for God’s people. All they had to do was to come forward and speak their needs to Him.
Moses had acted in anger and in the flesh. His actions did not portray the story that God was writing for His people. It was the most important story ever told and Moses had been given the privilege of helping God tell it correctly, but instead he acted on his own understanding, which was wrong and out of anger.
God could not let this act go unpunished.
The punishment was that Moses would not cross over into the Promised Land with the people when they arrived. He would die on the other side of the Promised Land.
THE UNLIKELY ENDING?
What a terrible way for the life of our hero to end!
God DID show him the land from a distance before he died; but he did not cross over with the others who were left at the end of the 40 year journey.
That is; unless you look way ahead in the scriptures and read about The Transfiguration. Remember where we think it took place?
Most say Mount Tabor was the location, which is right in the middle of The Holy Land and/or The Promised Land.
What on earth does this mean and what am I talking about here?
Let’s start with a scripture found in Jude 1:9, But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”
THE REST OF THE STORY
So, it would seem that Moses died and Satan and Michael had an argument about his body; perhaps over whether Satan had the rights to it or if Heaven had the rights to it.
I think Michael won that argument.
That seems to be right because many years down the road, in the time just before Jesus was crucified; we hear of The Transfiguration. It was there that the disciples got a glimpse of the Divinity of Jesus. They saw Moses and Elijah with him up on Mount Tabor.
Jesus was bright and his countenance was shinning like the sun.
We all know that Elijah never experienced death but was taken in bodily form into heaven in God’s chariot. Elijah was a great prophet and most believe he was there to confirm the fact that Jesus was about to fulfill all old testament prophesy.
WHAT ABOUT MOSES?
But what about Moses? Apparently Moses’s body had been assumed into Heaven after his death. Though God could not let Moses cross over into the promised land before he died; now he was clearly standing in this land known as the land of promise, and to top that miracle; He was standing next to a Transfigured Jesus.
Moses was there to represent that Jesus was about to fulfill all of The Law.
Both Moses and Elijah were there to state that a new way of looking at the law and prophesy was about to come through Jesus and the Passion that He was about to suffer.
ENDING AND BEGINNING AGAIN
So I wouldn’t worry too much about Moses not going immediately into The Promised Land with Israel.
God took him up on a mountain and showed him all of the land, then Moses had a peaceful death. After that death his body was resurrected by God (He believed in and knew Jesus incarnate; even before He lived and walked the earth later) and Moses was somehow assumed into Heaven.
Here is a type of what it will be like when Jesus returns to earth for the Second Coming. Christ will descend from the Heavens in His Resurrected body.
The dead in Christ will rise. This is what Moses symbolizes in the Transfiguration. He died knowing Christ and accepting the Messiah on faith. He was resurrected and found himself standing next to Christ.
Elijah never died. He was taken into heaven supernaturally. He represents those of us who will still be alive when Christ comes again. These will be changed and rise to meet him in the air.
Both of these parties will be with Jesus forevermore and together they will establish The Kingdom of God on the earth and rule and reign with Him for 1,000 years.
Moses and Elijah had come to encourage Jesus to continue His important mission, and to serve as confirmation that He was the One to fulfill all that had been written in the Old Testament. They represented the turning over of the Old Covenant to the New Covenant and the releasing of one way of life into an even better way; that of the fulfillment of Jesus.
God was helping Jesus to show the disciples (and us) the truth of the past, present and future with this time of Transfiguration.
All of this was about to become possible after Jesus went on to the cross, died, was buried and resurrected in three days.
TWO WITNESSES
As for Moses and Elijah; I’m sure they went back to heaven to prepare for their roles to do even more for God during the end times. I truly believe that they are the “two witnesses” we read about in Revelation.
Whatever Moses missed by not immediately crossing over to The Promised Land was made up to him a million times over by God allowing this moment.
He got to stand beside the Transfigured Jesus Christ and become a witness for the disciples. Also; in the future he will get to do the same for those who live through times of tribulation.
Yes; this could happen again!
In the meantime; the place where Moses now resides with God, Enoch and Elijah and the angels must be so much better than the place where the Israelites received their earthly inheritance.
IT ISN’T FINISHED UNTIL GOD SAYS IT IS FINISHED
There are those who do not search out the rest of this story. They stop at the death of Moses and think Moses did not finish well. To those I say; it isn’t finished until God says it is finished.
Apparently God had more plans for Moses than we usually think about or recall.
So when you are disappointed with the way things seem to be going in your owh life and you think God might have forgotten your destiny or left you outside of his current plan or be finished with your services altogether; just keep trusting that God knows best.
That was what Moses did and I don’t think he had one regret.
In the life of Moses we saw what all followers of Jesus need to see. We saw that breaking just ONE tiny, little part of the law can condemn a man forever. That was true for awhile; then Jesus came with a better way.
In the Transformation we see that knowing Jesus and trusting Him with everything is the key to a divine way of living. He fulfilled the law and He alone has the resurrection power that saves us.
THE WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE
Moses knew Jesus.
Seeing Moses at the Transfiguration was positive proof that Jesus is truly the way, the truth and the life.
Moses believed in Christ even before He came to live on this earth. That is true faith. God never lets true faith go unrewarded though it may not look that way from a distance. God’s timing and our timing are so different. He is outside of time and we are inside of time. He knows the end; but we must live it out to know.
If Moses could believe without even seeing or knowing all of the facts; why can’t we believe by knowing the facts and seeing the proof standing with Jesus up there on that mountain?
There will be miracles; when we believe.