Prophet Greater Than Moses

So, let’s talk a little today about the Grateful Dead. I don’t have a lot of chances here to talk about this band that I followed for a large portion of my adult life. And probably, that’s appropriate.

But in 1973 — way back when my musical heroes were still John Denver, Linda Ronstadt, and Captain and Tennille — the Dead changed live music forever.

By then, bands had begun playing in stadiums to tens of thousands of people. The audiences were huge, but the sound systems were still small. They’d hook up a 100-watt amp, power it to the max and feed it into a public address system. And the sound was terrible.

That’s one of the reasons the Beatles stopped touring: They could no longer play small venues, and the sound they could achieve in stadiums was terrible.

So, as the Dead became popular among a certain segment of music lovers, they realized they needed a solution. Enter, Owsley Stanley, Bear to everyone who knew him.

He was a friend of the band and widely known in an around San Francisco for entirely different reasons that eventually landed him in prison for a few years. But he had an idea. And his idea changed concert sound for good.

In 1973, after being released from a stint in prison, Stanley set his mind to the problem of lousy concert sound and created what came to be known as the Wall of Sound.

The Wall of Sound consisted of 48 amplifiers producing 28,800 watts of power that fed 586 speakers and 54 tweeters over 11 different channels. Essentially, each member of the band had his own sound system projecting from speakers arrayed in a three-story stack behind them all.

Each of the four strings on Phil Lesh’s bass guitar had its own amplifier and set of speakers. This thing was massive. Go online and search for it later; it’s truly something magnificent to see.

And it was apparently something magnificent to hear, too. People say that this megalith of amps and speakers produced remarkably pristine sound up to 600 feet from the stage and acceptable sound up to a quarter-mile away.

But the Wall of Sound was also a financial and logistical nightmare. It took 21 roadies four hours to build and four more hours to wire up.

So, the band needed TWO sets of this equipment. One set would be up and running for a show, while the other was already in the next city, being set up for the next show.

Finally, after using the Wall of Sound for only six months, the band sold off all the equipment and took a hiatus from touring.

But there was that one short period of time that Deadheads of all generations get all misty-eyed about, when the Grateful Dead was committed to the audience hearing exactly what they played and sang.

Now, contrast that with the 1990s band Milli Vanilli. Anybody remember them? What were they known for? That’s right. They lip-synced their live performances.

And the vocals in their recordings were actually sung by others. And they had a Grammy Award taken away when all this was discovered.

Of course, these days, even famous people like Taylor Swift and Mariah Carey — even Michael Jackson — have admitted to lip-syncing during complex performances. And auto-tuning to cover their vocal imperfections is, perhaps, even more common.

Let me just say this: Jerry Garcia often forgot the words to the songs the Dead sang, but at least we knew it was HIS voice we were hearing and that it was live.

So, what on EARTH does all this have to do with US here today? What does it have to do with JESUS?

Well, as we continue our series titled, “Jesus, the True…,” we’re gong to see how Jesus perfectly and completely fulfilled God’s intentions for a prophet, for one who spoke God’s words to God’s people.

He spoke with the authority of God, because He spoke the very words of God. He said this Himself on many occasions. The Apostle John records some of them, including this one from John, chapter 12:

John 12:49 NASB95

49 “For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak.

In this regard, and in others we’ll talk about a little later, Jesus is the fulfillment of what God had intended for His prophets.

But first, let’s remember the theological concept we talked about last week. Do you remember the word? Typology.

The idea behind typology is that certain people, places, things, and events in the Old Testament are there to point us to Jesus.

The Old Testament thing is the type, and Jesus is the anti-type. The Old Testament type is a sort of prophetic symbol that Jesus fulfills as the anti-type.

Remember that the Old Testament type is an imperfect representation that’s intended to foreshadow the perfection of that thing found in Jesus. What we see in the Old Testament types is a shadow of what Jesus reveals as the anti-type.

Last week, we talked about how Adam was a type for Christ. In fact, the Apostle Paul describes Jesus as the Last Adam and identifies the first Adam in the Garden of Eden as the type who points us to Jesus.

In his sin, Adam failed to demonstrate the character of the God who’d made him in His image TO show His perfect righteousness, His perfect holiness, His perfect grace, and His perfect love.

But where the first Adam failed in his sin to be what God had intended when He created humans, Jesus Christ — the Second Adam, the one who is fully God AND fully man — succeeded completely through obedience.

So, with that reminder about typology, this week we’re going to look at the next type that Jesus fulfills as the anti-type.

But instead of looking at a single man as the Old Testament type to which He compares, today we’re going to look at an office, the office of prophet.

Now, prophets in the Old Testament were charged with giving God’s people God’s words. We all know about the writing prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and all the minor prophets toward the end of the Old Testament.

But there were prophets all the way back to Adam. After all, who else would have told Cain and Abel it was appropriate to make sacrifices to God. Surely, their father must have served as prophet (and priest, by the way) for his family.

We think of Noah as a boat-builder, but he was also a prophet. In 2 Peter, chapter 2, the Apostle Peter calls Noah a “preacher [or herald] of righteousness.”

His point is that during the 100-or-so years Noah spent building the ark, he was also proclaiming the coming judgment of God upon those who’d rejected Him.

Abraham was a prophet, too. Throughout his story in the Book of Genesis, we see this Patriarch of Israel “calling upon the name of the Lord” in response to the blessings he’d received from God.

When we look at the Hebrew behind that phrase, what we can understand is that Abraham was proclaiming the goodness of God to all the pagan peoples around him.

He was telling God’s story to those who didn’t know God. And that’s one of the main things prophets do.

Now, those men seem to have proclaimed God’s word to the people they encountered. But they all sinned against God, too.

And the same two things are true of Moses, who was, perhaps, the greatest prophet of the Old Testament.

We see Moses performing the duty of a prophet before the Pharaoh when he proclaims that God will bring judgment upon Egypt and its false gods if that nation won’t release the people of Israel from bondage.

We see him performing the duty of a prophet when he stands before God on Mt. Sinai and receives God’s very words etched into stone as the 10 Commandments.

We see him performing the duty of a prophet when he meets God in the tabernacle and then comes out — face shining brightly from the encounters — to share God’s word with the Israelites in the wilderness.

And we see him performing the duty of a prophet in Deuteronomy, chapters 27 and 28, when he describes to the next generation of Israelites God’s promised blessings for their faithful obedience in the Promised Land and the curses they could expect for turning from faith in God.

But back in Deuteronomy, chapter 18, we see Moses performing another duty of the prophet: proclaiming that which God has shown him will take place in the future. And what he prophesies here is the antitype for whom HE is the type.

Turn with me, if you will, to the Deuteronomy 18:15, and let’s look at what he has to say there.

Remember that this is the generation that came AFTER the Israelites had been rescued by God from their enslavement in Egypt.

Because that first generation had failed to trust in God to deliver them safely into the Promised Land and to subdue their enemies before them there, God had caused them to wander in the wilderness to the east of the Jordan River until that generation died out.

Now the Bible tells us that God spoke to Moses face to face, “as a man would a friend.” But even Moses would be unable to enter the Promised Land, because he’d defiled the holiness of God’s word when he’d struck the rock to bring forth water, instead of speaking God’s word to it, as God had commanded.

And so, with the next generation now finally preparing to enter the land of Canaan, Moses spends much of the Book of Deuteronomy recounting the Israelites’ history. He reminds them of God’s faithfulness and charges them to respond with faith-FULL obedience to God.

So, with that, let’s pick up in verse 15.

Deuteronomy 18:15–16 NASB95

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.’

Moses understood his role as a prophet. And it had become clear to him on the day when he’d received the 10 Commandments that the prophet’s role as mediator between God and man was necessary.

It’s easy to miss in the Book of Exodus’ account, but God first gave the 10 Commandments orally. Back in chapter 19 of that book, He’d told Moses to gather the people of Israel, just three months after their escape from Egypt, around the base of Mt. Sinai in Horeb.

They were to stay clear of the mountain’s boundaries while Moses went up the mountain to hear from God. While he was there, God would reveal Himself in the sight of the people and speak to them.

And on the third day, that’s what He did. With thunder and flashes of lightning and smoke and fire and the shaking of the earth and the sound of a trumpet that grew louder and louder. And then, in chapter 20, God SPEAKS the 10 commandments.

But look at how the people responded in verse 18 of that chapter.

Exodus 20:18–19 NASB95

18 All the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance. 19 Then they said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die.”

They were terrified of God. Coming face to face with Him in all His glory and might was just too much for them to bear.

And so, they begged Moses to be their mediator, to stand between them and God, to bring them God’s word in a human voice.

So, God, in His matchless grace, provides for Moses to be this mediator. He is the prophet who will deliver God’s word to God’s people.

But then, God continues to pour out His grace on them and on us, as we see in the next verses from our Deuteronomy passage. Look at verse 17.

Deuteronomy 18:17–19 NASB95

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.

First, God shows His grace by understanding His people’s fear. “They have spoken well,” He told Moses.

The noise and thunder and earthquakes and fire that accompanied God’s voice were too frightening for them to HEAR Him when He spoke. So He’d made Moses His prophet.

But then, through that prophet, He announces that He’d give them ANOTHER prophet like Moses, who would “speak to them all that I command Him.”

Much as that Wall of Sound that so faithfully reproduced the music of the Grateful Dead during that short period of time in 1973, this prophet would perfectly reproduce the words of God and the heart of God.

Now, many of the prophets of Israel whom we see in the Old Testament did that, too. But we see the complete fulfillment of this promise — the anti-type to Moses’ type in Jesus.

In the Book of Acts, Luke records sermons by Peter in chapter 3 and Stephen in chapter 7. And both men, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit refer back to this prophecy in talking about Jesus.

He is the one whom God promised as the prophet “like Moses.” He is the anti-type to Moses’ prophetic type. He speaks only what God has commanded Him to speak.

And He speaks with the authority of God. He wasn’t lip-synching for God. He wasn’t God on auto-tune. This was God-in-the-flesh, God speaking as a human so people could hear His message of repentance and faith without falling over in terror.

And since Jesus spoke AS God, ignoring Him or rejecting Him is the same as ignoring or rejecting God and carries the same dire consequences for the one who does so.

It’s interesting to read the story of Moses’ life in light of what we know about Jesus, because — as with all typology — there are many similarities.

Just like Moses, Jesus was saved at birth. Just like Moses, Jesus came out of Egypt, where He’d escaped to as a child when His parents took Him there to save Him from Herod’s murderous rampage.

Just like Moses, Jesus had the right to be treated as royalty, but he renounced that right to become a shepherd to His people. Just like Moses, Jesus had compassion for His people.

Just like Moses, Jesus made intercession — He prayed for — His people, and He continues to do so. Just like Moses, Jesus spoke — and continues to speak — to God, face to face.

Just like Moses, Jesus is the mediator of a covenant. For Moses, it was the covenant of Law, and for Jesus it’s the covenant of grace.

“The greatest revelation in the Old Testament era came through Moses. This revelation was only surpassed in the coming of Christ, who not only revealed God’s message but provided salvation through His death.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Dt 18:9, quoting Schultz.]

But remember that in typology, the differences between the type and the anti-type are even more important than the similarities. Jesus, the anti-type, is SUPERIOR to all those types that foreshadowed Him.

Jesus is the prophet GREATER than Moses. So how is He superior to Moses?

Remember that Moses couldn’t save the people whom God had rescued from Egypt. That generation died in the wilderness for their rebellion against Him. But in His death at the cross, Jesus offers salvation to all who repent from their sins and turn to Him in faith.

Moses died, and his body remains in some unmarked grave somewhere. Jesus, on the other hand, AROSE from the dead in a glorified body on the third day.

Moses entered heaven in his spirit. But Jesus ascended to heaven with body and spirit united. And He’ll return one day in that body to take home with Him all who’ve placed their faith in Him.

When Moses died, his voice was silenced. But Jesus continued to speak after His death, after His resurrection, and even after His return to heaven.

We see Him speaking to His disciples, to the women who followed Him, to Saul on the road to Tarsus, and to the Apostle John on the island of Patmos.

And we still hear His voice today in the stillness of our hearts as He tells we, His followers, that He loves us, that He forgives us, and that we belong to Him.

When Moses died, he could no longer intercede with God on behalf of the people of Israel. Other prophets and priests and kings would take on that responsibility.

But the Bible tells us that Jesus CONTINUES to stand at His Father’s right hand, making intercession for us. For we who’ve turned to Him in faith, whenever the accuser tries to remind God of our sins, Jesus is there to say, “I died for that sin. I already paid the price for it.”

Moses’ death was the end of his relationship with the people he’d shepherded. But our Good Shepherd has promised that He’ll return for us one day as a conquering King and that He’ll take the Church He created home with Him as His very bride.

And finally, because of His sin, Moses couldn’t bring His people into the Promised Land. But Jesus will usher us into the very presence of God Himself.

He IS the prophet greater than Moses. And this is more than just an interesting theological point. This is GOOD NEWS for us.

It’s good news for us, because the mediator between us and God isn’t a fallible prophet, but the sinless Son of God who loves us and died for us.

We don’t have to be terrified of standing in the presence of God, because we know we stand in the presence of the God who took upon Himself human flesh. He became like us so we could become like Him.

Of course, much of the time, we’re either lip-synching Jesus like Milli Vanilli, or we’re Jesus-on-auto-tune. We’re BEING MADE into the image of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit within us. But that work is incomplete as long as we’re here in our sin-stained bodies.

But one day, we’ll be made complete in Him. One day, we who’ve placed our faith in Him will truly be LIKE Him. One day, we’ll receive glorified bodies like His, and they’ll no longer be subject to temptation or sin. One day, we’ll faithfully reproduce His character, His heart, and His love.

And the sound of THAT will make everything else sound like something from an old transistor radio tuned to an AM station somewhere on the other side of the world.

I wonder if we’ll get tie-dyed T-shirts. I can hardly wait to find out.