I woke up early yesterday, so I watched the soccer. In the world cup, the Australian socceroos played the pharaohs from Egypt. It reminded me of Moses and the Israelites verses Pharaoh and the Egyptians at the Red Sea.
Dallas Stadium was a sea of red, and Pharaoh was there in the crowd. There was an own goal and chasing the Israelites to the Red Sea was a home goal for pharaoh. Harry Souttar was a like Moses, only Moses wouldn’t have missed that goal!
They seemed to have changed the game of soccer by adding diving! Better dives get more penalties. There were also miracles – I saw players that were mortally wounded have a rapid recovery.
The prophet
After God defeated the Egyptians at the Red Sea, the Israelites travelled to Mount Sinai where they were given the 10 commandments. They were terrified when God appeared on the mountain and asked that God speak to them through a mediator (Ex. 20:18–19). And Moses was that mediator for at least 40 years. But in Deuteronomy, Moses was about to die. That generation of Israelites had never been without Moses as their leader and as God’s voice to them. But now that he was to die, how were they to know God’s purposes?
So, Moses told the Israelites, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. For this is what you asked of the Lord your God at Horeb [Mount Sinai] on the day of the assembly when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God nor see this great fire anymore, or we will die.” The Lord said to me: “What they say is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth.
He will tell them everything I command him. I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name.
(Dt. 18:15-19NIV).
The answer was that God would raise up a prophet whenever they needed to hear from Him. It says, “I will put my words in his mouth”. Each prophet spoke words given to him by God.
So, after Moses there was a series of Jewish prophets as described in the Old Testament. They were all “like Moses”. They spoke words that came from God. That was how God communicated with the Israelites.
The ultimate prophet
The people of the first century AD were expecting a particular prophet. When asked, John the Baptist said that he wasn’t “the prophet” (Jn. 1:21).
After Jesus fed the 5,000, some people said that that He was the promised prophet (Jn. 6:14). Likewise, after He taught the people some said that that He was the promised prophet (Jn. 7:40). When Jesus came into Jerusalem as King, the crowds said, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee” (Mt. 21:11).
Peter quoted Deuteronomy 18:15, 18, 19 and said that Jesus was the ultimate fulfillment of the promise (Acts 3:22-23). Paul agreed when he said, “there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). Jesus is the ultimate mediator between God and humanity. He is the go-between who resolved the conflict between God and mankind.
This Prophet is trustworthy because He is much more than a man. He is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Mt. 16:16). The people understood that this meant He was God (Jn. 5:18).
Prayer
Father God, we thank you for raising up Moses to be the leader and mediator of the old covenant (the Law). And we thank you for providing the other prophets to guide the Israelites after Moses died.
But most of all we thank you for providing Jesus as the leader and mediator of the new covenant (of God’s grace). We realise that as the divine Son of God, He is exceedingly greater than all the other prophets. And He fulfills the Old Testament roles of prophet, priest and king.
We thank you for His sacrificial death that enabled our sin to be forgiven and us to be reconciled with God. And we thank you for His resurrection back to life which was a great victory over death, sin and Satan. In Christ’s name, Amen.
G Hawke
