Moses wrote of me

We have considered how Moses recorded that God spoke to him, introducing himself by the name “I AM”. It is an astonishing phenomenon that God has broken the silence, communicating with man, revealing something about himself. He is a God who speaks! This is very important, first, because man’s mind is too tiny to teach truth about God unless God reveals himself. And second, it is vital, because if we are to obtain authentic answers to our many personal questions about life and everything, a God who speaks should be a major source of understanding. Indeed, the Creator of humankind must supremely be the one who can help us make sense of who we are and what life is all about.

Moses wrote of this encounter with God in Exodus chapter 3 in the Bible. Along with the account of God creating the heavens and the earth, Moses wrote of the divine intervention where God called Abraham, promising him that he would become the father of a multitude of descendants. Moses recounted the history of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and his children who became the twelve tribes of Israel. He related the exodus of the Israelites from their time of bondage in Egypt and he received and wrote down numerous laws and precepts that God gave him for the people to obey, notably the Ten Commandments.

One striking thing about the writings of Moses is the number of passages where God is speaking, giving him words to write; “the word of the Lord” is what defines his will and purposes for his people. Numerous chapters in Leviticus, for example, begin with, “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying…” The same is true of the great biblical prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, for example – so literally hundreds of communications of God are thus recorded.

But a most extraordinary thing happened over a thousand years after Moses, when another of Abraham’s descendants made the mind-boggling statement, “Moses wrote about me”! It was Jesus of Nazareth who said that: he dared to assert that Moses wrote about him (see John 5.46)! What did he mean? He was probably referring to a passage where God predicts to Moses that he, God, would raise up another prophet like Moses, and he specifies: “I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him” (Deuteronomy 18.18). Just listen to what Jesus went on to say: “The Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment – what to say and what to speak… What I say therefore, I say as the Father has told me” (John 12.49-50). Jesus is basically saying God put his words in his mouth.  So many of Jesus’ contemporaries thought that he was “the prophet who is to come into the world” (John 6.14), for the Jews had taken note of God’s prediction through Moses. 

“God spoke to our fathers by the prophets”, says the New Testament, “but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1.1-2). God’s communication of the answers we need got a huge step nearer.

Clive Every-Clayton