A Prophet Like Moses
Notes
Transcript
Review ALL IN series. Purpose for the series: how our discipleship process is just beginning like it was for them…
Review where we are: we are studying Peter’s second sermon. He preached this sermon in the temple just after he and John healed the lame man at the gate called Beautiful .
Review Last Week: One of the four prophetic categories Peter declares Jesus as fulfilling.
There are four sets of prophecies mentioned by Peter that we are going to camp out on for a few weeks…
17 “And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also.
18 “But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.
19 “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord;
20 and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you,
21 whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.
22 “Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren; to Him you shall give heed to everything He says to you.
23 ‘And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.’
24 “And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days.
25 “It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’
26 “For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.”
Pray
Peter is here referencing a depth of 1st century Jewish understanding , making layered points that those in the temple where he’s preaching would’ve understood immediately.
Because we are 2000 years removed from the context, we need to reference the Old Testament to see what he’s talking about.
Peter has just told them that Jesus is the Messiah and references prophecies that He fulfilled, thus proving this to be true.
Peter mentions (1) the prophecies He fulfilled in His suffering, (2) the prophet like moses, (3) the agreement of all the other prophets in history, and (4) the “seed” of Abraham.
These are all prophetic elements that were understood to be revelations about the coming Messiah and Peter is telling them, “Jesus fulfilled them all.”
He throws the whole gambit at them, he’s careful to talk about every prophetic cornerstone the first century Jewish believers would be familiar with when it came to the Messiah.
In other words, He’s not just the fulfillment of part of what God had, He’s all of it.
Jesus isn’t a bridge to another coming Messiah. He’s not looking forward to another messenger from God to be the anointed one…
Jesus is the Messiah. He is the Christ. He is the fulfillment of all the prophets spoke of.
Here’s the thing… Peter’s words in this sermon are enough that in the next few verses at the start of chapter 4, The priests and the Sadducees have them arrested!
For you to fully understand the weight of Peter’s words, we have to go back to the origin of the prophecies and see exactly what Peter is saying Jesus fulfilled.
Peter begins with the suffering of Christ as a fulfillment of prophecy and works his way backward to the “Seed of Abraham”
We talked about the “Seed of Abraham” last week and we are moving chronologically to Jesus being the fulfillment of Moses words quoted by Peter in verse 22.
22 “Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren; to Him you shall give heed to everything He says to you.
23 ‘And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.’
The question we have to ask is, “What does it mean when the bible specifies a ‘prophet like Moses?’”
This is one of those scriptures that I read through and assume a loose reference between Moses and Jesus and move on..
But what I found out when I started studying is that there is what one author calls a “remarkable chain of similarities” to be revealed when paralleling the lives of Moses and Jesus…
To begin, we must first visit the words of Moses that Peter quotes from Deuteronomy 18.
15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.
16 “This is according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.’
17 “The Lord said to me, ‘They have spoken well.
18 ‘I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
19 ‘It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.
This interesting portion of scripture is found in the midst of an instruction from Moses to Israel, giving them direction as to what they are supposed to do and not do when they enter the Promised Land.
Moses has led Israel from the time they were in Egypt, through the wilderness for decades, and now the time has come for them to enter the promised land…
But Moses has been told by God that because of his own disobedience, he will not be the one to lead them into the promised land.
In fact, Moses knows that his death is near, so he is giving his last set of instructions from God to Israel so they will know what God expects of them once they enter the promised land.
This set of instructions stretches across the whole of Deuteronomy, which is written much like a farewell letter from Moses.
Joke:
Now in order to fully understand the context of this scripture in Deuteronomy, we need to start back at the beginning, so for the next 37 weeks we are going to be in a series to get back to this scripture in Acts…
I’m joking! Mostly…
What we see when we look at the immediate context is Moses contrasting the culture of the Canaanites with the culture of Israel and how God expects them to live…
He speaks of the priests and God’s expectation of them, then contrasts the spiritism and witchcraft of the land they are going into and he tells them, DONT DO THAT.
Do what God has instructed you. Don’t imitate those nations.
We would do well to heed that instruction ourselves… We don’t need to imitate the world to influence the world… We are in this world, not of it…
So as Moses is contrasting them with the world, he gets in this prophetic vein:
15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.
He contrasts the divination and witchcraft of the nations with the prophets of Israel…
He confirms there’s a prophet coming that will be “from among you, from your countrymen.”
Explain dual fulfillment, Joshua and Jesus..
but don’t get too caught up on comparing Joshua and Jesus because the prophecy we are talking about is between Moses and Jesus. So make the case for dual fulfillment, then start the comparison between Moses and Jesus
What we see with Joshua as a partial fulfillment is what we see in many cases…
There are many who fulfill one part or piece, but no one fulfills every part until Jesus shows up on the scene…
In fact, the comparison between Moses and Jesus goes much further than just being a prophet…
While still a toddler, Jesus was protected from a massacre wherein the ruler of the land killed all the male children…
Sound familiar?
The way Moses got his name was because the ruler of the land commanded all the male children born of the Hebrews be killed, but Moses’ mother hid him until she couldn’t, then she sends him down the river to be found by Pharoah’s daughter, who found him and called him Moses, which means to be drawn out of water…
In both cases, the ruler of the land tried to kill the seed we talked about last week, but in both cases God protected them…
In both cases the protection was in the land of Egypt:
13 Now when they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him.”
In His baptism, Jesus came up from a river, just as Moses was drawn from a river…
So Jesus commences His ministry with the image of a literal representation of Moses’ name…
Moses after giving the farewell in the Book of Deuteronomy ends his journey in the wilderness of Moab, which is the same wilderness where Jesus is led by the Spirit to fast for 40 days and be tempted…
Moses was the inaugural prophet introducing the Law of God, while Jesus has become what Hebrews calls the guarantee of a better covenant…
22 so much the more also Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.
He goes on to compare Moses and Jesus, celebrating Jesus as the fulfillment for what the Law and tabernacle were just a shadow of…
5 who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle; for, “See,” He says, “that you make all things according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain.”
6 But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.
11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation;
12 and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.
13 For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh,
14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
15 For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
This is the reason the comparison is important…
Moses introduced the Law, Jesus introduced Grace…
Moses built a tent where God would visit… Jesus made us the temple where the Spirit of God could have a permanent residence…
What Moses built according to God’s instruction was a shadow of a heavenly concept carried out by Jesus…
Call worship team
What Moses started, Jesus finished…
11 Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins;
12 but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God,
13 waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet.
14 For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
15 And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying,
16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them
After those days, says the Lord:
I will put My laws upon their heart,
And on their mind I will write them,”
He then says,
17 “And their sins and their lawless deeds
I will remember no more.”
19 Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus,
20 by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,
21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;
24 and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,
25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
Because of this… Because Jesus completed what Moses began… Because we can now approach the throne with boldness…
Let us draw near! Draw near with a sincere heart… Draw near in full assurance of faith…
Having been cleansed, Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope… Without wavering… because HE WHO PROMISED IS FAITHFUL…
But he doesn’t stop there… because it’s not just about us as individuals, it’s about the Church being the Church… The body being the body… Disciples being disciples….
Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together…
Get together and encourage one another… Not passively, but let us consider…
Spend time thinking about it. How does God want you to do it? Stimulate one another to love and good deeds!
Will you consider it? How will you stir one another up? As we worship together, consider how you may stimulate one another…