Let Me Introduce You To One Like Moses

Title: Let me introduce you to One like Moses

Central idea: God planned to send Jesus.

Specific purpose: to persuade the congregation that Jesus is the fulfillment of a promise.

Remember in Exodus when the Children of Israel gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. There, from the top of Sinai, God had spoken to them in thunder and lightning, out of the midst of the fire and thick darkness. God spoke to the first two commandments to them directly; every word made their ears howl and their hearts tremble. They were so terrified that the whole congregation was ready to die with fear. In this fright, they begged that God would not speak to them in this manner any more, they could not bear it; it overwhelmed and distracted them. They begged Moses that God would speak to them by men like themselves, by Moses then, and afterwards by other prophets like unto him. God agreed and Moses did. Later, as Moses approached the end of his life, he wrote the Book of Deuteronomy. He includes in that Book a promise from God; that promise, God would send another like Moses to teach them. God did, God sent Jesus.

Deuteronomy 18:15-22, 15 The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. 16 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.” 17 The LORD said to me: “What they say is good. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. 19 I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. 20 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.” 21 You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?” 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.

I. Here is the promise of a great prophet, with a command to receive him and hearken to him.

A. Some think this scripture refers to the promise of a succession of prophets. Besides the priests and Levites, whose task was to teach God’s law, the Israelites would have prophets to reprove them for their faults, to remind them of their duty, to foretell things to come, to warn them of judgments and deliverances for their deeds.

1. Having these prophets, unlike the pagans, they need not use divinations nor consult with familiar spirits for they might enquire of God’s prophets even concerning their private affairs as Saul did when he was in quest of his father’s herds, 1 Samuel 9:6.

2. With the prophets among the Israelites, they could not miss the way of their duty through ignorance or mistake for the prophets warned them. In every doubtful case, the people of Israel heard the cry of the prophets. Deuteronomy 34:10 these prophets were like unto Moses in some respects though far inferior to him,.

B. Whether a succession of prophets be included in this promise or not, we are sure that it is primarily intended as a promise of Christ for God says that he will send "a prophet". Further, this is the clearest promise of Christ in all the Law of Moses. Acts 3:22 & 7:37 say this promise expressly applies to our Lord Jesus, the promised One. John 6:14 says “This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world”, and 1 Peter 1:11 that his Spirit spoke in all the other prophets, the spirit of Christ.

1. What God promised Moses at Mount Sinai in Deuteronomy 18:18 is the coming of Christ.

a. That there should come a prophet, great, above all the prophets, by whom God would make known himself and his will to the children of men more fully and clearly than ever he had done before.

b. John 8:12 says that he is the “light of the world.” John 1:1 and Hebrews 1:2 say that he is the Word by whom God speaks to us.

c. That God would “raise him up from the midst of them.” In his birth he should be one of that nation, should live among them and be sent to them. He was to be “raised up at Jerusalem”, and thence his doctrine should go forth to all the world. Thus God, having raised up his Son, Jesus the Christ, sent him to bless us.