|
PAGE 93
Moses was the great-great
grandson of Jacob in the line of Levi, Kohath and Amram.
He was born in Egypt in the year of the world 2383, which,
according to our computation published in Elpis
Israel, was 727 years after the Flood, and 350
years after the confirmation of the promise of Canaan
to Abraham and his Seed for an everlasting possession.
He was named Moses by Pharaoh's daughter,
importing that he was saved out of the water.
We do not propose here to compile a history of this,
the greatest man of his time, and of the sixteen centuries
and a half which succeeded the passage of the Red Sea.
It cannot be better related than it is in the admirable
writings current in his name. Our object is to call attention
to him as a representative man -- a man
representing or typifying another man, even "the
Man Christ Jesus". (1 Tim. 2:5)
The history of Moses is representative from his flight into
the country of Midian, Arabia Petrea south of Mount Sinai,
to his decease when the Lord hid him from his nation. There
was a likeness, indeed, between Moses and Jesus in their infancy;
for while the life of Moses was jeopardized by the decree
of Pharaoh, Jesus was also endangered by the mandate of Herod
against Rachel's children of two years old and under. But
Jehovah [Yahweh] preserved them; and thus were they cast upon
Him from their birth, and kept in safety, or "made to
hope" upon their mothers' breasts (Matt. 2:13-18; Psa.
22:9,10). There was a resemblance also in the high qualifications
and faithful self denial of these two personages in their
manhood. "Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians, and was mighty in words, and deeds." (Acts.
7:22) This was previous to his attaining the age of forty
years. To this time, though the adopted grandson of Pharaoh,
and heir apparent of the Egyptian throne, and surrounded by
the licentious notables of its court, where the God of Abraham
was unknown, Moses was a man of faith - - a learned, mighty
and faithful man, who might have worn the crown of the greatest
monarchy of the age, with all its treasures; but he renounced
them all, and became a fugitive, and companion of oppressed
bondmen, that he might share in the kingdom to be established
under Abraham's Seed in the adjoining country of the Canaanites
(Heb. 11:24-26).
PAGE 94
Jesus, too, was the most learned and the wisest man of that
or any other age before or since. He was wise and learned
by divine intuition (John 7:15-17); and in the language of
Cleopas, "was a prophet mighty in deed and word before
God and all the people" (Luke 24:19). His political self-denial
was as conspicuous as that of Moses. Thrice he refused dominion
and a crown at the hand of any power inferior to God (Luke
4:5-8; John 6:15). "All these tetrarchal kingdoms of
the land", said their possessor, "will I give to
thee, if thou wilt do homage for them to me"; but on
such terms he rejected them. He knew that all upon Israel's
land was his, and the world in its widest sense beside. A
then present possession would have saved him much suffering,
and have exalted him at once to honour and glory. But he knew
that to receive even his own at the hand of the enemy would
be to forswear the supremacy of Jehovah [Yahweh], and to become
Satan's king instead of God's. "Thou shalt do homage
to the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." These
were the words of Moses to which he had respect as the words
of Jehovah [Yahweh]. He knew that to receive the kingdom,
glory and dominion of the world from any other power than
God would be to descend from the high position of the predestined
representative of the Divine Majesty upon the earth for ever,
to the degradation of a mere equality with Caesar and the
world-ruler of the age. Yea, like Moses, "he had respect
unto the recompense of the reward"; and "for the
joy that was set before him" he refused to let the people
make him king, "choosing rather to suffer affliction
with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin
for a season".(Heb. 11:24-26) The "kingdom is not
from hence" (John 18:36). It can only be received with
eternal honour and glory from thence; that is, from God, not
from Satan nor the people. Moses and Jesus understood this
well; therefore Moses forsook Egypt, and Jesus forsook Palestine,
that they might receive the royalty from God at the appointed
time.
Thus far the resemblance between Moses and Jesus is complete.
Cradled in peril, saved of God, and hopeful of the same promise,
they were men of renown in word and deed, whose faith was "made
perfect" (John 17:23; Gal. 3:3; Heb. 5:9; 11:40; 12:23;
James 2:22; 1 John 4:17,18) by their works after the example
of their father Abraham (James 2:22), leaving behind them
illustrious exemplifications of the truth that the enjoyment
of the pleasures of sin for a season (Heb. 11:25) is incompatible
and fatal to an inheritance of the kingdom of God.
PAGE 95
But here the present similitude between them is suspended.
Moses and Jesus were indeed the rejected of the nation, as
is already implied in the allusion to their departure from
their people, the one into Midian, where he met with God in
the bush; and the other to a far country, where he is still
in the presence of Him whose glory illumined the rocky Arabia:
but as yet, unlike the case of Moses, Jehovah [Yahweh] has
not sent Jesus from "holy ground", (Ex. 3:5; Acts
7:38) shining unapproachable light, to be a ruler and a deliverer,
to bring the tribes of Israel out of the land of the enemy,
even those tribes which said unto him, "Who made thee
a ruler and a judge? Away with such a fellow; we will not
have him to reign over us!" (Ex. 2:14; Acts 22:22; Luke
19:14)
But Moses, whom they refused, they afterwards received as
their commander, legislator, and king. They placed themselves
under him as Jehovah's [Yahweh's] representative, through
whom the nation should obtain political independence and organization,
and by whom it should be put into possession of a country,
even of that country from which their fathers came before
they migrated into Egypt, and which was promised to Abraham
and his Seed for an everlasting possession (Gen. 12:1-3;13:14-17;15:7,
8,18-21;17:5-6).
This was an acceptance of Moses which finds no counterpart
in the annals of Israel and the history of Jesus. They have
refused him as they refused Moses, but a like acceptance of
him is yet to come.
From the accession of Moses to the leadership of the Twelve
Tribes of Israel, his history is that of the nation also.
He is no longer to be contemplated as an individual isolated
from his people; but as a prophet (Deut. 34:10), a mediator
(Exod. 24:2; Deut. 5:5; Gal. 3: 19), a lawgiver, a man of
war (Exod. 14:25-27; Num. 21:34), and a king (Deut. 33:5).
These were his relations to Israel from his second appearing
in their midst to the end of his career. He was a mediator-
prophet, a lawgiving-prophet, a warrior-prophet, and a royal-prophet.
He was not simply a man through whom God spoke to the tribes
of Israel as he spoke to them through Ezekiel -- a man whose
functions were restricted to the utterance of the divine purpose;
but a man who was not only to speak but to execute the will
of Jehovah [Yahweh], whose servant he was.
Now the reader will see by consulting the references that
Moses was precisely the kind of prophet we have indicated.
During his administration of the national affairs, Jehovah
[Yahweh] spoke by him alone. At the commencement of his career,
before he was accepted by the nation, he was sent to the people
as a prophet-preacher, announcing that the time had arrived
to redeem Israel from the power of them that hated them, and
to establish the kingdom of God in the promised land - that
glorious kingdom of which they were to be the priestly and
holy nation (Exod. 19:5,6). This proclamation of "the
Everlasting Gospel" (Rev. 14:6) they believed for a while;
and in consequence placed themselves at the disposal of Moses,
that they might obtain its promises at his hand. "The
gospel", says Paul, "was preached unto them";
(Heb. 4:2) that is, by Moses: but it did not profit that generation,
because their faith failed them. They had faith enough to
escape from Egypt, but they had not faith enough to enable
them to enter the promised country, and to possess it Mosaically;
much less faith had they to obtain a right to it everlastingly,
under the covenant which provides for the priesthood and royalty
of Christ.
But, as is well known, the character of Gospel-preacher was
merged into that of the prophet-judge of Egypt, and the warrior-prophet
of Israel; for Moses, having preached salvation to the tribes,
executed judgment upon their oppressors, and by the hand of
Jehovah [Yahweh] his strength gave the nation baptism into
himself in the cloud and in the sea, as its sovereign under
God. Henceforth, Moses was every thing to the Twelve Tribes.
When they had once heard Jehovah's [Yahweh's] voice thundering
forth the Decalogue from Sinai's cloud-capped, burning, and
trembling mountain, He granted the petition of their terror-
stricken hearts that henceforth He would speak to them only
through His servant Moses, lest they should die. Jehovah [Yahweh]
spoke to Moses in their hearing thus that they might believe him
for ever (Exod. 19: 9); for if they should believe
Moses, they would not fail to believe in him of whom he was
afterwards to write. As Moses was to Aaron, so he was to all
Israel, "in the place of God". He gave them the
bread of heaven to eat, and water out of the flinty rock to
drink, and clad them with raiment that waxed not old upon
them. What a prophet-king was this! Truly the father of his
people, who sustained them in life and food and raiment, and
taught them wisdom from above. What nation ever had such a
king as Moses? and what were David and Solomon to Israel after
him? As the servant of Jehovah [Yahweh], he gave the nation
an existence, ushering it into being, amid storm and fury,
and the ruin of a mighty host, from the depths of the sea;
he sustained it from the stores of heaven for forty years;
beat down their enemies, and trampled them as the mire of
the streets; gave them a holy, just and good, but inexorable
law; and brought them to the verge of Canaan's land, a well
trained and disciplined nation, fit and prepared to take possession
of it under the conduct of a successor worthy of himself.
He was Jehovah's (Yahweh's)_ servant, "faithful in all
his house, for a testimony", or representation, "of
those things which were to be spoken after". (Heb. 3:5)
He was the greatest character the world has known, with one
exception. The world's great ones are not to be named in the
same breath. Moses! What meekness, disinterestedness, faithfulness,
self- denial, wisdom, knowledge, power, honour, glory, and
exaltation, doth that name represent!
Dost thou not, O thoughtful reader of the living oracles,
recognize in the foregoing sketch the Moses of the Pentateuch?
Yea, verily, it is a true portrait of the original in outline,
left unfinished in detail, that thou mayest fill in the lights
and shadows of the picture at thy convenience. Study Moses,
and see if he was not the kind of prophet herein described.
Do you think you would have a true conception of his prophetic
character, if you knew no more of Moses than as a preacher
of the gospel to Israel before he visited the court of Pharaoh?
No indeed. You must know the whole written history of the
man to be able to say, "I know the prophet Moses":
for Moses was a prophet to the end of his career. You cannot
separate his prophetic office from his mediatorship, or his
legislatorial, or regal functions. His code is a great symbolic
as well as verbal representation of the truth -- a speaking
prophecy to the eyes and ears of his nation, and to all others
who comprehend it. You must contemplate him in the entirety
of his mission; you must view him as a whole, and then, and
not till then, will you be able to say if Ezekiel or any other
prophet be "a prophet like unto him".
Moses, the prophet thus fully manifested in Israel, was a
representative man. This is evident from the following passage
in his writings. Addressing the Twelve Tribes he says, "Jehovah
[Yahweh] thy God shall raise up unto thee a Prophet from
the midst of thee of thy brethren, LIKE UNTO ME; and unto
him ye shall hearken; according to all that thou desirest
of Jehovah [Yahweh] thy God in Horeb in the day of the assembly,
saying, Let me not hear again the voice of Jehovah [Yahweh]
my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that
I die not. And Jehovah [Yahweh] said unto me, they have well
spoken what they have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet
of their brethren, like unto thee, and
will put my words into his mouth; and he shall speak unto
them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass
that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall
speak in my name, I will require it of him" (Deut. 18:15-19).
This passage attests the truth of what we have said. It plainly
and explicitly declares that the prophet Moses was typical
of a future prophet who was to appear in Israel. In other
words, that this future prophet was to be like Moses.
(continued)
|
|