THE PRINCE OF EGYPT AND THE PRINCE OF PEACE

THE PRINCE OF EGYPT AND THE PRINCE OF PEACE Deuteronomy 18:18-19 and Acts 3:22-23 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introductory The only film I ever went out of my way to see on its opening day was the movie, The Prince of Egypt.  I had read several good comments about it and the work of director Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks studios.  Time Magazine gave the film front page coverage, along with an interesting study on the character of Moses.  Pat Robertson had signaled his delight with the film, and Jerry Falwell said of it, “Hollywood got this one right.” I’m not one to swallow hype, but I figured this movie had some promise.  So Charlotte and I, along with Joni,  Heather and the grandchildren got tickets to the rush hour showing on Friday, Dec. 18, opening day.  In my opinion, it is a good film, and I can offer a rare recommendation.  Along with being good entertainment and a biblically accurate story, this movie got me thinking about Moses. I turned to some study resources I have not looked at for a long time and set about to rediscover Moses--the hero and deliverer of Israel.   He was a man who stammered but with God’s authority confronted the Pharaoh of Egypt, arguably the most powerful   leader on earth at the time.  He was often clutzy and clumsy, but always willing to do what God told him to do.  He was an Israelite raised as an Egyptian, a defender of the innocent but guilty of manslaughter,  a shepherd and a military leader,  a prophet, a deliverer and the great leader of Israel. But, as I studied again the life and ministry of Moses, I was impressed mostly with another role God had for Moses--and, may I add, perhaps his greatest role, as we see God’s plan disclosed in history.  Beyond his role of leading the Israelite nation out of Egyptian bondage and through her wilderness wanderings, God called Moses to TYPIFY THE COMING CHRIST.  That is, he serves, biblically, as a model, a type, a prefiguring of Christ who was to come much later in Israel’s history. We know, of course, that it is God’s way to give prophetic pictures of things that are yet to come.  God gave a sign to stubborn king Ahaz of Judah, saying, The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call his name Emanuel.   This was fulfilled in Isaiah’s day, but also served as a forecast of the coming of Christ.  The use of a lamb in the sacrificial system which was to be slaughtered to pay the price of forgiveness for the sins of people was more than just a ritual of Israel,  it was a “type” of the coming Christ, whom John the   Baptizer would call, “The lamb of God”.   The Tabernacle--the very presence of God among His people in the Old Covenant--served its purpose in that regime, but also pointed to a future reality - that, in Christ, God would set up His residence in the hearts of men and women who believe. So much of the Old Testament history and teaching pointed deliberately to the future coming of Christ, who would fulfill and supersede the former covenant between man and God.   All of history anticipated the coming of Jesus, the Savior of the world.   There was the prophecy made in the garden of Eden, following the sin of Adam and Eve, that one day, the seed of woman would receive a wound from t he bite of the serpent, Satan, but would then deliver a killing blow to the serpent, by crushing his head.   The son of woman is Jesus, who was wounded for our transgressions, but who triumphed over the powers and authorities of Satan by the cross. The next great biblical allusion to the coming of Christ is the man Moses, the one whom God called to be the prophet of Israel, the Mediator of God’s covenant with the people of Israel, and the Deliverer (or, Savior) of Israel. Moses lived out this great threefold role, but, as he did, he served in the even greater historical role of forecasting the person and ministry of Jesus, who would be God’s greater and final Prophet, Deliverer and Savior. Read with me the account at Deuteronomy 18.  Deuteronomy is, as you know, the teaching of Moses gathered into one long instruction and given to the people of Israel just before Moses died and passed the mantle of leadership on to Joshua.  Right smack in the middle of that long sermonic teaching, Moses gives strict warning to the Israelites not to be involved in trying to know the future through false teachers, prophets, practitioners of the magic arts--diviners, sorcerers, witches, mediums, spiritists (you know, Kenny’s Psychic HotLine or Dionne Warwitch’s Lady Psychics.  God says through Moses these kinds of practices are detestable to Him.  Pick up, then, at verse 15... The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me (Moses) from among your own brothers.  You must listen to Him.  For this is what you asked of the lord your God at Horeb 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 (Moses) from among their brothers; I will put my words into his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him.  If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.” MOSES PREFIGURED JESUS AS THE PROPHET OF GOD Moses was God’s specially chosen Prophet for His people.  God chose to use the man Moses for the express purpose of communicating His Law and His Leading to His people.  God actually emphasized the central place of Moses as prophet to Miriam and Aaron when they began to doubt Moses’ leadership.  In Numbers 12, He said to them, Moses is faithful in all my house.  With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord.  Why, then, were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?  Israel, in the time of Joshua’s leadership looked back on Moses with the kind of respect that is written in the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy: Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, who did all those miraculous signs and wonders the lord sent him to do in Egypt--to Pharaoh and all his officials and to his whole land.  For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel. Then, God says, in chapter 18, He will raise up another prophet like Moses. The picture is of someone who is talking face to face, like Moses did...working miracles and signs and wonders, like Moses did...speaking the very words that God gives him to say, like Moses did...and the one who does not listen to that prophet would be under God’s wrath, like those who opposed Moses. All the way through Israel’s history the people of God expected this Prophet to arrive on the scene.  This as-yet-unseen prophet was going to be great, and even greater than Moses.  He began to be identified with the Messiah who was to come.   All this expectation seems to have reached a fever pitch by the time Jesus arrived.   Listen to what the priests and Levites asked John the Baptist, who was creating quite a stir and drawing a lot of religious attention: “Are you the Prophet?”   He answered “No”.  After Philip met and heard Jesus, he ran to find Nathanael, and what did he tell him?  We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and about whom the prophets also wrote--Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. When the Jewish religious leaders pressed Him, Jesus gave them this response (in John 5:46):   Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set.  If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. After Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, and the power of the Holy Spirit has come to the apostles, Peter preaches to the crowd that gathered near the Temple when the lame man was healed.  As he preaches, he speaks of Jesus as God’s fulfillment.  He says (Acts 3:22-23):  For Moses said, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you must listen to everything he tells you.   Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from among his people. He just says exactly what Moses prophesied and says in the clearest terms that Jesus is the fulfillment. In chapter 7 of Acts, Stephen is preaching his last sermon, because what he is saying is so infuriating the Jews that they are ready to stone him to death. But he says the same thing, This is that Moses who told the Israelites, “God will send you a prophet like me from you own people.  Stephen goes on to emphasize how the forefathers failed to listen to Moses as they ought to have done, then adds a juicy comment, You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears!  You are just like your fathers: you always resist the Holy Spirit...you even killed those who predicted the coming of the “Righteous One”.  And now you have betrayed and murdered Him!  It would be safe to say that with these kinds of comments he had sufficiently angered his listeners, and his imminent demise was but a stone’s throw away! God had said through Moses that this specially-anointed prophet would say the words that God put in his mouth, and would tell the people everything He commanded him.  It was Jesus who did exactly that, and who was fond of saying things like what He said at John, The words I say to you are not my own.  Rather it is the Father living in me who is doing His work...These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. Several years ago, just a few months after Joni had come to live with us, we made arrangements by phone to meet her birth father and Joni and Charlotte and I would visit with him.  We planned to meet in Nashville, TN, nearly half way between our two homes.  We set it up that we would meet at the Cracker Barrel restaurant at exit #215 off Interstate 40 just east of town.  We would meet at 11:30 a.m.  We had never met him, so he gave us this description--he would be driving a 1984 blue Toyota, two door, South Carolina license plate #SMG212.  He said he was short and thin, his hair was light brown and very thin.  On top of that, we and he knew that Joni would recognize him.  Well, at about 11:30 am on the appointed day, a 1984 blue Toyota, 2-door, with S. Carolina plate #SMG212 pulled into the parking lot of the Cracker Barrel restaurant at exit 215 off Interstate 40.  A short, thin man with just a little light-brown colored hair stepped out of the car.  he smiled at Joni, Joni squealed, and we looked into the face of a man who was obviously genetically connected with Joni.  We had our man. Jesus was well-described by Moses and the other Old Testament prophets. He was, as one author put it, “The only expected man in history”.  Jesus came as the Prophet whom Moses prefigured and predicted.  And the ministry Jesus received was superior to that of the prophetic ministry of Moses, who was but a shadow of the things to come.  Jesus is the substance--the great prophet of God whose ministry dwarfs that of even Moses. MOSES PREFIGURED JESUS AS GOD’S PROPHET AND GOD’S MEDIATOR When God called Moses, he called him to be His spokesman, primarily.   At the burning bush, God said He had seen the affliction of His people under Egyptian bondage and had heard their cries, and now he was going to act on the problem.   How?  He said, So now, go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.  Moses contested momentarily indicating that basically he didn’t talk too well, the Israelites wouldn’t listen to him, let alone Pharaoh, and, well, he was just chicken.  God’s response? Tell them I AM sent me here to you... The Lord used Moses mightily not only to speak to them (God always chooses a human agency, doesn’t He?), but also to stand as His Mediator between Him and His people.  It was through Moses that God mediated the covenant with the people of Israel by giving him the commandments.  The people had made it clear once they saw the glory of the Lord on the mountain that they did not want any face-to-face encounters with God.  Send Moses!  He’s used to this kind of thing!  God used Moses as His go-between with His people.  That’s what a mediator is.  So, through Moses the covenant of commandments was made between God and His people. But there was a greater covenant coming.    Moses knew it.  Jeremiah prophesied it: “The time is coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with he house of Judah.  It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.  “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord.  “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.  I w ill be their God and they will be my people.  No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord.  “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” God made it plain to His prophets--of course, He always said that he would not do anything important until He told His prophets about it in advance!--He made it plain to His prophets that there was a new and better covenant coming in the future.  Moses was the MEDIATOR of the older, temporary covenant, but god was bringing a newer, perfect covenant.  After Moses, this mediatorial ministry was carried on by the priesthood in Israel, but that was still the old covenant.  There would be a new covenant coming, and Jesus would be the NEW MEDIATOR OF THE NEW COVENANT. Hebrews 7:22 says that Jesus has become the guarantee of a BETTER COVENANT....because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because he always lives to intercede for them.   The ministry Jesus carries on is far superior to that of Moses and the priests of Israel, because He never dies, but ever lives to be our intercessor.  And this intercession is not just praying for us (although the Spirit of Christ does intercede for us), it is the actual mediating intercession of His sacrifice.  The blood of Jesus’ death for our sins keeps on covering our sins and making us acceptable to the Father.   Moses delivered the Israelites from Egyptian bondage once, but Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, continues to deliver us from the bondage which keeps us from Father God--sin. His mediation does more than move us geographically out of the reach of political oppressors.  By his atoning death, he delivers us from the power of the evil one himself.  Hebrews 9:15:  For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called my receive the promised eternal inheritance--now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.   The law which was mediated by Moses was only a “shadow” of the good things to come, not the realities themselves (this is what He. 10:1 explicitly says). SO MOSES PREFIGURED JESUS AS GOD’S PROPHET AND GOD’S MEDIATOR, BUT MORE THAN THAT...MOSES PREFIGURED JESUS AS GOD’S SAVIOR. Moses was God’s chosen DELIVERER for the nation of Israel.  In great power and in a glorious display of God’s glory and victory, Moses faithfully led the people out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and eventually to the shores of the promised land.  These were without a doubt magnificent feats of faith.  But there was an even greater reason for the works God did through Moses.  He was giving Israel, and us, a PICTORIAL LESSON in what was to come, which would be even greater.   Deliverance from Egyptian bondage was wonderful, but compared to what God was going to do for, not just Israel, but the whole world, the Red Sea was a flannelgraph presentation.  But the Lord set it all up this way--He wanted to do a major “show and tell” historical demonstration to set the stage for His big play.  Moses was a great opening act, but Jesus is the show-stopper.  Moses was a great introduction, but Jesus is the climactic final chapter in God’s cosmic drama of bringing lost people to Himself. Consider the bondage of slavery in Egypt for the Israelites.  It was apparently pretty oppressive, even before Moses aggravated the situation and Pharaoh made the Israelites work even harder.  God had told Moses He had seen the oppression and had heard the cries of His people and He was moved by it.  It was time for Him to act to bring deliverance to the people.  God told Moses, “I’ve got a plan to get them out--it’s not gonna’ be easy--and YOU will play a major role in it.   You’re going to be my spokesman, my prophet; you’ ll also be the mediator between me and the people in the process; and because you will be the main leader in the whole affair, you will become known as my Deliverer--the Savior of the Hebrew race. But what God would not tell Moses--what would only be revealed in the course of history, as the Lord unfolds His plan--was that Jesus would be the ultimate deliverer, the ultimate Savior.  God used Moses’ very valid ministry of deliverance of the Hebrew race as a PREFIGURING SYMBOL of Jesus Christ, yet to come, who would deliver the entire Human race from the worst kind of bondage.  Hebrews 9:26-27 - Christ has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people... And here is where it gets good for you and me.  What Moses couldn’t do, what the Law he brought couldn’t do, what the sacrificial system of the Old Covenant couldn’t do--namely, to rid us of our sin and make us acceptable to God--JESUS DID AT THE CROSS.    Friends we all are victims of the greatest slavery ever perpetrated on mankind--the slavery of sin.  Not only does living in rebellion against God keep us miserable in the here and now, it brings us eternal death in the hereafter.  “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God--there is no one righteous, not even one--the soul that sins, it will die--the wages sin pays is death.”  That’s a picture of our condition, and all the priests and laws and sacrifices and blood and rituals of the Old Covenant; all the king’s horses and all the king’s men--not even Moses--can deliver us from our condition.  ONLY JESUS. The scripture is clear--There is no other name given among me whereby we can be saved.   Why?  Because Jesus paid the price for us.  In his atoning death He paid the ransom price for our sin. Dr. Claude Barlow was a medical missionary to Shaohsing China in the early part of this century.  During his ministry there a strange disease began killing people and he couldn’t find a remedy.  In search of a cure, he filled his notebook with observations of the symptoms he had witnessed in hundreds of cases.  Then, with a small vial of the germs, he sailed for the United States.  Just before he arrived, he injected himself with the deadly germs and hurried t his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University Hospital.  He had become very sick and now depended on his former professors to find a cure for the disease.  They did, and as a result hundreds of lives were saved, including Dr. Barlow’s. In the movie, The Prince of Egypt, the scene that so captured me was how accurately the producers and director handled the “Passover”.   Moses had instructed the Israelites to apply the blood of a lamb on the doorposts and lintels of their homes to protect them from death.  God would send the death angel through the nation that night to take the life of every first born child. But, when the angel would see the blood applied to the door frame, he would “pass over” that home, and the first-born would be saved. Our epidemic is sin.  We can expect only what we have earned--death.  But Jesus died on our behalf, shedding His blood (because ever since the earliest days of the older covenant it has been true that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin).  This, too, is all a prophetic picture of what the ministry of Jesus would be.   Jesus paid for our healing with His life. We can be saved, if His blood is applied to our lives. Here is how Jesus does it, just exactly how Jeremiah predicted it would happen in the new covenant:  I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more...I will put my law on their hearts and in their minds...I will be their God and they will be my people... Jesus is THE DELIVERER, THE SAVIOR.  And the real clincher, which Moses could not know, which the angels nor the patriarchs nor the prophets knew, is that, since we cannot earn it, it is given to us freely by God’s grace. God has brought about what He pictured in Moses as Prophet and Mediator and Savior, and He has done it in Jesus, and Jesus alone. Do you want to be saved from the consequences of your sin slavery?  Do you want a new heart?  Do you want the power of the Holy Spirit enabling you to live for God like you’ve always wanted to?  Do you want the assurance that your sin no longer separates you from friendship with God?  Do you want to be certain that, when you die, you will not be separated from God forever in what the Bible calls Hell?  You can be certain today, if you will accept the One who can do it for you.  And it’s not the prince of Egypt--it’s the PRINCE OF PEACE, JESUS. [Click here for more details]       [Top]