God did many important things through Moses. God did many “new”
things through Moses. We are not accustomed to thinking about things being
“new” when it comes to God, and that is not a bad attitude to have. When it
comes to God, new things are probably lies, coming from the father of lies, who
loves to deal in all things spiritual. Nevertheless, with Moses God did all
kinds of new things.
First of all, the number and power of miracles that are done
through Moses is a definite difference from the time of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. God did miracles for them too, but they were much more connected to
their family life. God caused Abraham and Sarah to conceive and bear Isaac even
though they were both extremely old. God gave Isaac his wife at the well. God
caused Jacob to flourish with his flock of sheep when he lived with his
father-in-law Laban.
These signs and wonders should not be poo-pooed. Every time
the sun rises and gives its warmth, every time a flower blooms, God’s
wonder-working power is what is behind it. Every day we are the beneficiaries
of God working and working. We would have a better sense of what is going on if
we understood that miracles happen every day and every moment as God does his
work, but that is not how we normally understand the word “miracle.” We take
the word “miracle” to mean that God does something unusual. He doesn’t use the
ways and means that we are accustomed to him using.
With Moses God does things that are very unusual. God called
him to be his servant at the burning bush. From that time forward there is
practically one unusual thing after another. God does signs through him before
Pharaoh. God pours out one bowl of wrath after another on the nation of Egypt
until Pharaoh decides to let his slaves go. God opens up the Red Sea for his
people to pass through on dry ground, but Pharaoh and his army and destroyed by
those same waters. He rains down bread from heaven and makes quail fly into camp
with the wind. He causes water to flow out of the rock. God manifests his glory
with the pillar of cloud and fire. When he takes up residency at Mt. Sinai it
is with fire, smoke, thunder, earthquakes, and all manner unusual things. God
sends fiery serpents. He opens up the ground to swallow his enemies. There is
just one thing after another that God does.
How can we explain this? One explanation might be that it
was necessary. Pharaoh had to have his stubborn will broken. The Israelites
needed to be gathered together as a nation numbering many hundreds of
thousands. (God wasn’t just dealing with a family anymore.) Plus the Israelites
themselves were stiff-necked and hard-hearted. They had to have their own will
broken over and over again, and this was done by God’s miracles.
So the number and power of miracles that God does through
Moses is something that was unprecedented. These sorts of miracles have not
been done since that time, as our reading from Deuteronomy said.
The other thing that is new with Moses is all manner of
religious things. God reveals his name to Moses at the burning bush. God gives
his people their first festival, which is Passover. God gave his people a
succinct statement of his Law with the Ten Commandments. God instituted worship
for the Israelites down to the smallest details. He gave them the tabernacle,
sacrifices, blessings, and the Aaronic priesthood to carry this all out.
From the time of Moses onward God blessed his people and
they returned their prayers and praises according to the way God set things up
through Moses. The Old Testament is dominated by what God did through Moses.
The word “testament” or “covenant” is about an arrangement between two or more
parties. God made an arrangement with his people whom he had chosen. The most
extensive covenant was set in place through Moses. Even at the time of the New
Testament, all the people we hear about—including Jesus—are still doing things
that God set in place with Moses.
With the coming of Jesus, however, we have someone who is
greater than Moses. Hebrews says, “Jesus is worthy of greater glory than
Moses, in the same way that the builder of a house has more honor than the
house.” The apostle John says, “The Law was given through Moses; grace
and truth were put into place through Jesus Christ.”
Jesus performed miracles. Jesus’s miracles were different
than Moses’s. Moses did not have power within himself to bring about miracles. The
source of that power was God. Moses was the means through which God worked.
With Jesus we are dealing with God himself. He is true man, born of the virgin
Mary, and true God, begotten of the Father from eternity. Jesus performed
miracles because he is God. This is hugely different than how it was with Moses.
Jesus’s miracles lack no power, but Jesus’s miracles are at
the same time deeper and more homespun. Jesus deals with the most fundamental
aspects of our lives as human beings. He casts out countless demons. Our
willingness to submit to the devil goes all the way back to the first
disobedience in the Garden. There is no more fundamental problem for us than
that we are born in subjection to the devil until and unless Christ sets us
free.
Jesus’s miracles also tend to have to do with people’s
domestic lives. He raises the dead on account of the grieving members of the
family. He restores sight, hearing, and speaking so that life may be lived to
the full. Most of Jesus’s miracles are kind of like the miraculous things that
God did at the time of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—things
connected with daily life.
And, of course, Jesus does things that are of supreme importance
religiously speaking. It is in Jesus that we have been given the authority to
become children of God. Jesus became one of us. Thereby we are given the gift
to become like him. The Son took on our flesh and blood. Having joined himself
to us we are given what he has. This is fully and completely communicated to
everyone who is baptized. It is by baptism that we are born again by the water
and the Holy Spirit to be a child of God—not figuratively speaking, but
literally. “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved,” Jesus
said. “Whoever does not believe will be condemned.”
Jesus does not institute a whole raft of statutes and
regulations like God did at Mt. Sinai. The statutes and regulations at Mt.
Sinai take up well over a dozen chapters in Exodus and the whole book of
Leviticus. Instead Jesus leaves behind a simple ceremony, the Lord’s Supper.
Although this ceremony is extremely simple—so simple that a seven year old
understands perfectly what is going on—it is also extremely profound. It is so
profound that most people, and even most Christians, can’t bring themselves to
believe it.
Jesus took bread, gave thanks, and distributed it to the
disciples. He said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in
remembrance of me.” A seven year old understands that Jesus is speaking
about his flesh which was crucified on the cross. Then Jesus gave them a cup of
wine. He said, “This cup is the new testament—the new arrangement between
God and you. This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you,
for the forgiveness of sins. As often as you drink it, do so in remembrance of
me.”
A seven year old who was unfamiliar with the Christian
church came to a service not too long ago and asked his grandma, “Are they
drinking blood?” The correct answer is, “Yes. That is Jesus’s blood, in, with,
and under the wine. It is the blood that was shed as the atonement for our
sins.”
Jesus leaves behind this simple ceremony. He says that we
should do it often. When we do it we should remember him. In remembering Jesus
we remember how he fulfilled God’s Law for us—the Law that otherwise cries out
for our condemnation and punishment. By Jesus fulfilling the Law for us we are
freed from death.
Paul says, “As often as we eat this bread and drink this
cup we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” When Christ comes again
we will enter into the fullness of our promised land. Our promised land is not
the land of Canaan, as it was for Moses and the Israelites. Our promised land
is the place that Jesus has prepared for us.
Jesus says in John 14: “Believe in God. Believe also in
me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have said
to you, ‘I go to prepare a place for you?’ And if I go and prepare a place for
you, I will come again and will take you along to myself, so that where I am,
you may be also.”
Moses was a great man. God hammered together a people into a
nation through him. Jesus is beyond orders of magnitude greater. He makes poor
miserable sinners into holy children of God. How does he do this? By the
sacrifice of his body and his blood on the cross. This is obviously at the very
heart of the sacrament that he has left behind for us. He, in this sacrament,
comforts us with the forgiveness of our sins. When we believe what he says in
this sacrament, we may be sure that we have exactly what he says.
The cross also looms large in Jesus’s transfiguration that
we heard about this morning. However, it is mentioned so unassumingly that it
is easy to overlook. When Peter, James, and John see Jesus transfigured he is
with two men, Moses and Elijah. Luke says that he is speaking to them about his
“departure which he was going to bring to fulfillment in Jerusalem.”
What Luke literally says is that Jesus is speaking with them about his “exodus”
that he is about to fulfill in Jerusalem.
The term “exodus” is loaded, particularly when Moses is
involved as he is here at the mount of transfiguration. Moses led the exodus of
God’s people from their slavery under Pharaoh. All the signs and wonders that
we have been talking about were connected with that whole exodus process.
Jesus has the greater and more fundamental exodus in mind.
The exodus Jesus brings about is the exit from slavery under the devil. Through
Jesus we become not only God’s people, but even his children. We do not just
enter a promised bit of geography, but the eternal dwelling God has prepared
for us. We will not have our interactions with God through a tent or a temple.
We will see him face to face. Without a shadow of a doubt, Jesus’s exodus is
greater than Moses’s exodus.
To say the least, however, not everyone would agree with me
about this. If we put the grand and magnificent miracles that God did through
Moses on one side of the scale, and Jesus’s exodus—his mistreatment, suffering,
death, and resurrection—on the other, our reason would go with the miracles
done through Moses every time. Our reason is impressed with the manipulation of
earthly forces. But our reason is very foolish when it comes to the things of
God. The biblical record bears this out even with the events that we have been
talking about.
God shook the earth and all the powers thereof at the time
of Moses. Our reason says that this should work like a charm for making people
believers and obedient. But what were the Israelites like? Over and over and
over they disbelieve. They want to return to their slavery. Despite the power
and the glory they are constantly breaking the first and most important
commandment. God many times over says that they are a stiff-necked people. This
is not the greater exodus.
The greater exodus is through Jesus. Grace and truth are
established through him. The gift of the Holy Spirit, who creates faith and
softens our stony heart, is a greater miracle than what God did at the time of
Moses. You are beneficiaries of Jesus’s exodus. You have been made into God’s
children, having been born again by the water and the Word. Embrace this life
of fellowship that Jesus has established between God and you. Believe the
promises. Wait for their fulfillment.
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