‘Moses Wrote of Me’: The Messianic Hope of the Law

0:00 Father, into your hands we commit our spirits as one who is so powerful. No scheme of man, no power of hell can undo us in our hope. Now come, Lord, we need your help in the ministry of the word. and my prayer is that you would drive a stake through the heart of every remnant of self-idolatry in our hearts. Kill it.

0:35 So that we have eyes to see and a heart to believe Christ in all of Scripture. I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Many of you know that the former senator from Nebraska and former president of University of Florida Ben Sass was diagnosed last fall with pancreatic cancer and is not expected to live more than a few more months.

1:21 He did an interview with Ross Douthat, which was posted on YouTube April 9, and I would just be curious if you've seen any part of that video. Would you raise your hand? Good number. If you haven't, by the time I'm done I think you'll think I should go look it up. Just type in Ben Sass into the search and it'll come. So at the end of that interview Ross Douthat asked him, and he looks like his face had been taken to a blowtorch. You've got to be careful if you've got a queasy stomach you might not want to look at this video. But he asked him, are you ever angry at God? And Ben Sass smiled and said, no. And he said, not at all.

2:18 And Ben Sass went on, no. I wouldn't want a sovereign God to defer to all of my prayers with a yes. I'm not omniscient. I don't know what the weaving together of the tapestry of full redemption should look like. but I know that the suffering I'm going through is a benefit because it is a winnowing and I am filled with dross.

2:59 This suffering is not salvific but it is sanctifying and I'm grateful for it. I, now in the midst of this disease, know much more of my finitude than I let myself believe in the past. I can't keep the planets in orbit. I can't even grow skin on my face. Then Delfod asked, how he would help a person who cannot believe this. Doubt it says, for the listener or viewer who doesn't believe in God and finds your cosmic optimism admirable but maybe he thinks you're deluding yourself on the brink of actual finitude, what would you say to that person? Now this is the part that I want to talk about in relationship to our theme, believe it or not.

4:09 And before I read his answer, think of Jesus. He's not Jesus and that's not the point. Think of Jesus here, surrounded by scribes and Pharisees who have read the books of Moses and the prophets all their lives and who hear you, Jesus, talking about existing before Abraham, talking about dying, talking about rising again, talking about eternal life, and these Pharisees and scribes can't believe you. They think you're deluded. What Jesus would you say to them? Jesus what would you say? That's where we're going in John 5 in just a minute. And I want you to compare Sass and Jesus.

5:11 Here's what Sass said, how would you help them? They think you're deluded. What would you say to them? He said, let's read the book of Romans together. I laughed out loud. Who would say such a thing? What a great line. Let's read the book of Romans together.

5:41 Paul says in chapter 1, this is still sass now. Paul says in chapter 1, there are lots of intellectual arguments you can make against God, but you have to start with the fundamental question about what to do with this moral issue of our own conscience. Does the individual in your hypothetical really start with the claim that things are right in his soul? Because I can't relate to that. Things are not right in my soul. My soul thinks Ben Sasse should be God and I want that to die. sucks, but I'm pretty grateful that cancer is a stake. against my delusional self-idolatry?

6:44 End of answer. I was just in awe. Now here's what in the world is the connection between that and the theme of this conference which is Christ in all of Scripture and my topic in particular assigned to me by the president, Moses wrote of me the messianic hope of the law. The connection is this, just as Ben Sasse was asked to speak into the unbelief of a person who can't see the beauty and worth and greatness of the reality that is holding up his remaining life, so Jesus in John 5, which we'll look at in a minute, is speaking into the unbelief of the Jewish leaders who cannot see the beauty, the worth, the greatness of the reality right there in the book of Moses all their life. And now they can't see it when he's standing in front of them in the flesh. It's all a delusion. They don't see it in the books and they don't see it in the person. Why?

8:21 What would Jesus say? What would Jesus say is the reason these people can't see Jesus. They can't see him as he stands here. They can't see him in the books. Open your Bibles, please, to John 5, and we're going to read verses 36 to 47. And as we read it, here's the way I'm going to do it. Just every couple of verses I'm going to pause and point out five successive descriptions of the spiritual condition of the Jewish leaders that is blinding them to Moses and Jesus. It's amazing.

9:18 Then we'll try to figure out how they all fit together and see where it takes us. And close with an exhortation from Ben Sasse. So I'm at verse 36 in John 5. The testimony that I have is greater than that of John, John the Baptist. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me." First description coming now. First description of their spiritual condition. His voice, the Father's voice, His voice you have never heard.

10:20 His form you have never seen and you do not have his word abiding in you. Whose word? God's word. You don't have God's word abiding in you as you read the books of Moses, as you read your Bible, you don't have God's word abiding in you and you don't have Jesus words abiding in you. Continue. For you do not believe the one whom he has sent. So the evidence that you don't have the word of God abiding in you is that you don't believe me. If you had the word of God in you, which you claim to have been reading all your life, you'd believe me. And you don't believe me, so you don't know what you're reading.

11:14 Second description, verse 39. You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may live. Now literally that verse 40 is, you don't want to come to me, which I think is much more indicting. It's bad enough to refuse. It's really bad to refuse because you don't want to come. You don't desire to come. I'm not the kind of Messiah you want. And the message of Moses was not the message you wanted either. We have the same message.

12:10 Third description, verse 41. I do not receive the glory from people, receive glory from people, but I know that you do not have the love of God within you. That's just appalling. You don't love God. And that's all Moses is about. This is the first and great commandment in Moses. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. Deuteronomy 6, 5. You don't love him. You don't have a clue what Moses is about. The God you claim to see in Moses is not God. Whoever you love, it's not him. Fourth description, verse 43, I have come in my Father's name and you do not receive me.

13:14 If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? That's a rhetorical question. You know what we do with rhetorical questions, right? Rhetorical questions don't have an answer stated because the answer is so easy. They expect you to give the answer. What's the answer? how can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from God? And the answer is you can't. How can you? You can't. As long as you think that the Messiah that Moses is hoping for supports your love affair with the praise of man, you won't ever know Moses and you won't ever know me.

14:18 Moses will be a closed book and I will be a closed book. Ben Sasse said to the unbeliever, come join me in learning that the book of Romans and my cancer are mercifully intended by God to put a dagger through the heart of my self- idolatry, my love affair, with your praise, which belongs to God. And I want it! I want it! that's got to die and he isn't dead yet and they can't see Moses they can't see Jesus because they have a love affair with the praise of man which makes Jesus the kind of Messiah who cannot be trusted cannot be believed in cannot be understood he makes no sense at all because that's not the way he is. He's not coming in his own name. If he came in his own name, it would be for his own glory, and he wouldn't be praying things like, Father, glorify yourself. John 12, 27.

15:36 It all be by him, not his father. And then it would fit because that's the way they want to be. Right? I want praise. So give me Messiah that modeled that for me and I believe that Messiah but not one like this. Fifth description, verse 45. Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope, for if you believed Moses, you would believe me. Wow. The reason you don't believe me is because you don't believe Moses. End of verse 46, for he wrote of me.

16:38 but if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? That's the end of the walkthrough of the five indictments, the five descriptions of the spiritual condition of the Jewish leaders that makes it impossible for them to read Moses and to know who Jesus is. Now, before we try to put those five things together and ask which is at the bottom, which is at the top, how do they fit together to explain what's going on in these hearts?

17:24 Let's try to focus for a moment on verses 46 and 47. 46, if you believe Moses, you would believe me. He doesn't say anything about a specific prophecy, does he? A specific prediction. It's just general.

17:58 Believing Moses would lead to believing in Jesus. Just generally, if you get Moses, you'll get me. Nothing specific. Same in verse 47. Sounds the same to me. If you do not believe his writings, Thank you. How would you believe my words? So no specific promise, prediction, type, event, law, just his writings, Moses. So you get two pairs, verse 46, believing Moses, believing Jesus. Verse 47, Moses writings, Jesus words. So my conclusion is when Jesus says at the end of verse 46, He wrote of me. He's not thinking of a specific prophecy. He could. I mean there are a lot of them. We'll say something later about that but like Deuteronomy 1815, the Lord will raise up a prophet like me. That's pretty specific. Moses says that the Lord will raise up a prophet. It's quoted in the book of Acts.

19:13 I don't think that's what he has in mind. Instead I think he's thinking about the entire message of Moses, the entire message of Jesus, if you could see and embrace the reality that Moses is talking about for five books, vision of God in his supremacy and freedom and grace and glory, vision of man in fallenness and bondage to sin, need for salvation, vision of redemption, Bring these futile repetitive sacrifices to an end. Cover sin once for all. Make the human heart new. Vision for God-pleasing life of love and humility and loneliness and righteousness and mercy. If you could see Moses' message, you'd believe in me. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Jesus was that message fulfilled.

20:22 So the statement, he wrote of me, 546, John 5 verse 46, he wrote of me, I take to mean if you rightly understand the message of the Pentateuch as a whole. If you embrace it, believe it as the truth of God, you will recognize Jesus Christ as the embodiment of that truth, that way, that life. Now, of course, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible are strewn with foreshadowings of the Redeemer. Serpent crushing the seed, offspring of Abraham blessing the nations, Passover and blood sacrifices, manna and the water gushing rock, tabernacle patterned in heaven, high priest and propitiating altar, prophet like Moses, and on and on.

21:29 But here in John 5, I don't think Jesus is calling attention to one of those. I don't think that's the focus. So what's the focus? Now to see the answer, let's do what we postponed. Let's take the five indictments, the five descriptions and put them together. All right, so here's the review. One, verse 38, you don't have God's word in you. When you read Moses, you miss the meaning. Second, verse 40, this is not an intellectual problem. This is a desire problem. You don't want to come to me. You don't like the kind of Messiah I am.

22:22 You don't like the truth of the meaning of Moses. You don't want me and I embody Moses. Number three, verse 42, you don't have the love of God in you and loving God is the aim of Moses. What do you love? And he answers very clearly. This is number four, verse 44. You love the glory that comes from man. That's what you love. Not the glory that comes from God. So you can't believe on me because my very existence as a self-denying, God-glorifying, suffering Messiah contradicts your aspirations. You want a Messiah who comes in his own name, not for the glory of his Father, because that would fit what you want. Self-exaltation, loving the greetings in the marketplace, being called Rabbi, practicing your righteousness to be seen by others, craving the first place at the banquets, making long prayers in public.

23:36 You want a Messiah who fits with your love affair with the glory of man. He's not that way, so you don't know him. And he embodies Moses. He can't get Moses. Number five, verse 46, you don't believe Moses. How do those five things fit together? What's at the bottom causing all the others? if this were a class I would make you answer that that's what we do that's what we do The deepest problem I'm going to suggest that's keeping them from seeing Christ in the writings of Moses or right there in front of them is they don't love God, they love the praise of man. Those are two sides of the same coin. Which one is it?

24:40 You don't love God, you love the praise of man. That's the deepest thing. Or Ben Sass words, I want to be God. I want the praise for myself that belongs to God. So they don't believe Moses. They don't have his inspired words abiding in them. And the Pentateuch is a closed book. A veil lies over their hearts. Second Corinthians 315. Their hearts are, their minds are hardened. 2 Corinthians 3 14, Romans 11 7. This is not a Jewish problem. This is a human problem. It's your problem tonight where you sit. Everybody in this room wants to be God. Everybody in this room loves the praise of men, can hardly stand it when you get the opposite.

25:52 This is a human problem. It's pervasive all over the world. What kind of veil is it? He says a veil. Paul says a veil lies over them. When Moses is read every week and in the synagogue, a veil lies over their minds. Hardness. What's the veil? My answer is the veil is self-exaltation, self-glorification, self-rule, self-determination, or as Ben Sasse calls it, self-idolatry. In his case, he says, I'm pretty glad that cancer is a stake against my delusional self-idolatry because if our self-idolatry can die, if something could kill it...

26:57 the veil would be lifted. and we would see what Moses is trying to communicate. and we would see the beauty of Christ. So I have two questions remaining. First, do the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, drive a stake through the heart of human self-idolatry? Do they? That's what Jesus implies when he says, there are two reasons why you don't believe in me. One, you love your own self-idolatry and two, you don't believe Moses. Implication, Moses kills self-idolatry. That's the point of the Benedict.

28:02 that him who boasts, boasts in the Lord, all human boasting at an end. That's the point of the Bible and the law. So, is that true? Does the Pentateuch really put a stake through the heart of your self-idolatry? Does it? Does it for you? It does. And I'm going to show you four ways that it does. four ways that the Pentateuch, Moses, kills the very thing that keeps people from seeing Jesus. and seeing Moses. Number one, Moses drives a stake through the heart of self-idolatry by teaching the universality of human sinfulness and the hopelessness of self-salvation. Romans 3 19, we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped.

29:27 And the whole world held accountable to God for by works of the law no human being will be justified in the sight of God since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. One of the great purposes of the law is to teach that law-keeping as a way of getting right with God is hopeless. That's the point of the law, to teach that law-keeping as a way of getting right with God is hopeless. Scripture imprisoned everything under sin. Galatians 3 22. God has consigned all to disobedience.

30:24 Romans 11 32. That's the starting point for the death of self idolatry. Left to ourselves before the holiness of God, we are hopeless. On the day you eat of it, you will die. And in Adam, all died. You died. You are dead spiritually unless some amazing grace happens. That's number one. That's Moses. Number two, Moses drives a stake through the heart of self-idolatry by teaching that the only way out of this hopeless condition is a new heart that God alone can give.

31:25 The new birth. God asks in Deuteronomy 529 is my literal translation, who will give and it will be in the heart to fear me, to keep all my commandments smooth it out. Who is going to give this rebellious people a heart to fear me. And Deuteronomy 29 answers, to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear. They have to have a new heart or they're hopeless and God's the only person that can do this heart surgery and he hasn't done it for Israel. Will he ever do it?

32:21 He will. It's called the new covenant and Moses predicted it. Chapter 30 verse 6, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul that you may live. That's coming. God's gonna do that. So when Jesus said to Nicodemus, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom, and Nicodemus was baffled. He said, how can these things be? You remember how Jesus responded? Are you a teacher in Israel? You don't understand these things. Read Moses!

33:17 Read Jeremiah, read Ezekiel. The new birth... is another nail in the coffin of your autonomous self-idolatry. You have to be born again, and you can't do it. Only God can. Number three, Moses drives a stake through the heart of self-idolatry by teaching unconditional election. You thought that was a... Reformation doctrine is actually a mosaic doctrine. The only people who will be born again are those whom God unconditionally chooses to regenerate.

34:25 Paul saw this in the story of the patriarchs, right? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. In Romans 9, 8, he says, It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God. So being Jewish doesn't make you a child of God. It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of promise who are counted as offspring. And then he illustrates by using Isaac and Ishmael. God chose Isaac, not Ishmael. How did he do that? He brought him into existence impossibly.

35:19 She's barren. He's 100 years old. This isn't going to happen. New birth doesn't happen. Election is sovereign. And then, to confirm, he chose Jacob and not Esau. Listen to how he describes it. This is Romans 9, 11. Though they had not yet been born and had done nothing good or bad in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls. She was told the older, totally unexpected, is going to serve the younger. And Paul underlines the freedom of God in election.

36:17 Three verses later, quoting Exodus 33, 19, quoting Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. That's the end of human boasting. It's over. It's the death of self idolatry. Finally, number four, Moses drives the stake through the heart of self idolatry by teaching justification by faith alone apart from works of the law. Justification by faith alone apart from works of the law. In In Romans 4, Paul builds his entire argument on Moses, namely Genesis 15-16. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

37:23 You have to be righteous friends, you know this. You feel it. If you don't have a stitch of training in Christianity, you know your conscience says, if I'm ever to stand before the living God, I've got to have a righteousness. You can try to establish your own righteousness, it's called self-righteous, or you can embrace Jesus whose righteousness counts for years. Here's Romans 10, 3 and 4.

38:16 Being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own. Friends, that is hopeless. Being ignorant of the righteousness of God, namely how free it's going to be as a gift from Jesus, from God through Jesus, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, Israel did not submit to God's righteousness. And then this amazing sentence, this is my translation, for the The goal of the law... is Christ for righteousness to everyone who believes. That's what Moses was writing about. The final nail in the coffin of our self-idolatry is that from now to eternity we are dependent totally on somebody else's righteousness for acceptance with God.

39:35 So, shut up to the deadness of sin, desperately in need of new birth, dependent on God's free choice, not our own, and now forever relying on the righteousness of another. You tell me what has become of our boasting? It is excluded. On what law? Moses. who taught sin, new birth, election, and faith. So here's my final question. I'm done. It's a question for you. It's a question for me. Do you tonight, sitting where you sit, do you see the all-satisfying glory of Christ in the books of Moses?

40:36 Do you see it? If you insist that apart from grace you're not dead in sin, the new birth is nonsense like Nicodemus thought. Your self-idolizing will is the decisive means and definition of your future, not the election of God. and you were going to establish your own righteousness, if you insist on that, Moses will be a closed book for you, and there will be no Christ in it.

41:25 But if you join Ben Sass, who has just a few months left, if you join Ben Sass and millions of happy, broken, humble, childlike believers on Jesus.

41:46 And you welcome a stake driven through the heart of your self-idolatry. The Bible, I say this to the students who might come here, the Bible will be a new book for you. and Jesus will be beautiful. Let's pray.

42:10 Oh, Father, thank you for Jesus. Thank you for his word. And now I pray again, as I did at the beginning, do what you have to do for all of us in this room to kill our desire to be God. to kill our self-idolatry and thus lift the veil,

42:37 take away the hardness, open Moses, reveal Christ. I pray in Jesus' name.