74 - Like Moses

Deuteronomy 18:15 “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen…”

These are the words Moses spoke to Israel that planted in their hearts the expectation that God would send them another prophet like him. To be like Moses, this prophet would have to be many things - but importantly, he would have to deliver God’s people from bondage to their enemies (as Moses did) and he would also have to be the mediator of a covenant between them and God, just as Moses was. There were many great prophets in the Old Testament, and Jesus acknowledges that John the Baptist holds a very high place among them (Matthew 11:11) - but even he was not a prophet “like Moses.”

So from the time Moses said the words above, God’s people were on the lookout for “The Prophet” like Moses. But he seemed to be a long time coming. Indeed, the Old Testament closed over 1000 years after the time of Moses, and then the prophetic voice was silent for over 400 additional years before John the Baptist and Jesus appeared. Yet during that time, the people never stopped looking and hoping for “The Prophet” like Moses. When John the Baptist came, he was specifically asked whether he might be this person, but he denied it (John 1:19-25).

And during the life of Jesus, people asked themselves on at least 2 occasions whether He might be “The Prophet.” The first was just after He had fed the five thousand and the disciples had picked up 12 baskets full of leftovers:

John 6:14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!”

The second followed soon after, when Jesus had gone to the Feast of Booths in Jerusalem:

John 7:37–40 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. 40 When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.”

In both of these episodes, the people saw that Jesus was “like Moses” - through whom the people ate manna in the wilderness and by whom fresh water surged out from a rock. And Jesus did indeed tell them (and us) that both the manna (the bread from heaven) and the water (that slaked the thirst of the Israelites in the wilderness) were intended to point to Him - the Bread of Heaven and the source of living water, Who both nourishes and refreshes the souls of His people. It was God who had given them manna and water from the rock, not Moses by his own power.

So at last “The Prophet” came into the world but for those with eyes to see, although He was certainly “like Moses”, He was far, far greater. This is what the writer to the Hebrews says:

Hebrews 3:1–6 Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, 2 who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house. [that is to say, He is like Moses] 3 For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. 4 (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) 5 Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, 6 but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son. [that is to say, He is greater than Moses]  And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.

Jesus came as the mediator of a better covenant than the one Moses mediated. Jesus delivered His people from slavery to sin and death - from captivity to Satan, whereas Moses delivered Israel from slavery and captivity in Egypt. So Jesus is “The Prophet” like Moses but greater than Moses. When He comes, God said through Moses in the passage above, God’s people will listen to Him. He goes on later in the same passage to say this:

Deuteronomy 18:18–19 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19 And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.

Jesus came and He spoke God’s words to us. He commanded that we should turn from our slavery to sin, be delivered by Him from the power of death, feed on the Bread of Heaven, drink of the Living Water and have eternal life in Him. 

Those of us who have tasted of this Bread and have drunk this Water know that it is good! We know that every word Jesus spoke to us from God is true. We have come to know Him and His Father and to be certain of eternal life. 

Is Jesus your Prophet? Is He your Bread of Heaven and your Living Water? Is your soul nourished and refreshed in Him, even when things are so hard in this world? He still receives all who will turn to Him. He still feeds and waters their souls. Why not come yourself, taste, and see that He is good?

73 - An Oasis for the Soul!

The readings in my plan today were full of wonderful blessings and encouragements, and I spent a while trying to decide which one of them I would highlight here. In the end I gave up and decided to mention all of them, not least because there are glorious threads running through them and joining them together, as we might expect when we come to God’s Word!

The first passage is from Deuteronomy 16, where Moses is reviewing the Passover regulations with Israel and says this:

Deuteronomy 16:3 You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction—for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste—that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.

I hadn’t really focused on Moses calling the unleavened bread of the Passover “the bread of affliction” before. When Israel came out of Egypt, they did so in haste. The land was in shock and confusion because every firstborn was dead - except among the Israelites who were redeemed by the blood of the Passover Lamb. But the exodus of Israel wasn’t a walk in the park for them. There was haste, there was trouble - affliction. There was no time to make the bread with yeast as they usually did, so their food was unleavened bread for a time. Project that forward to the Lord’s Supper, where now the bread points to the affliction and suffering of Christ, and His words “this is my body which is for you” speak of His taking our place and being our substitute in the affliction that came upon Him. The cup, of course, represents the poured out blood of our Passover Lamb, Jesus, by which we are redeemed from our slavery to sin.

The second passage I read was Psalm 103. It’s all wonderful, but I will dwell on these verses:

Psalm 103:2–4 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, 3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

David is talking to his own soul, and exhorting himself to bless the LORD for all His benefits. What are some of the chief among these? That He forgives all of David’s iniquities, heals all his diseases, redeems his life from the pit and crowns him with unfailing love and compassion. How was God able to forgive, heal, redeem and crown David? Through the afflicted Christ at Calvary and the shed blood of The true Passover Lamb. How great is this unfailing love of God? How certain and irreversible and complete is this forgiveness, this healing, redemption and crowning? David tells us:

Psalm 103:10–12 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. 11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; 12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

How high is heaven above the earth? How far is east from west? That is the answer to these questions!

Then I turned to Isaiah 43 and read these words:

Isaiah 43:1–4 But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. 3 For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. 4 Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.

We will go through trials and afflictions. Sorrows like sea billows will roll over us. Our pathway will lie through fiery trials as we live for God in a fallen world. But what sustains us in these seasons? He is forming us into a treasured possession from all the tribes and nations and peoples and languages of the earth. He has redeemed us. We belong to Him. He is the Holy One of the New Israel, our Savior. He has given a man - no, a God-man, in exchange for our lives. We are precious and honored in His sight, and He loves us! Therefore we can be sure the waters will not overwhelm us and the flame shall not hurt us - His designs for us are for our good - it is well with our souls! 

Finally, a little later in the same chapter, we read these words:

Isaiah 43:25 “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

One of the characteristics of the New Covenant God has made with His people is that He will remember their sins no more (Jeremiah 31:31-34) and here it is repeated as God declares His everlasting and unconditional love for those He has redeemed. Again, all these promises and blessings find their ultimate fulfillment in the church, redeemed through the blood of Christ.

Can you hear the drumbeat getting louder and louder through these passages as common themes are repeated: Substitution, Redemption, Ransom, Forgiveness, Healing, Inheritance, Possession, Unconditional and Sacrificial Love? 

Can you see how, being assured of these truths, we can go through the waters and through the fires. As the hymn writer put it, how “With Christ in the vessel, I smile at the storm?”

72 - The Joy of the Lord

Psalm 100:1-5 Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth! 2 Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! 3 Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. 4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! 5 For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

I love this short psalm! Its tone from beginning to end is joy and gladness, singing and thanksgiving to the LORD because He is God, He is Gracious, He is Good and He is Glorious! We belong to Him and we may enter into His presence and bless His Name. He is also everlastingly loving and faithful. 

I also can’t read it without thinking of the hymn that is based on these words, and some pithy, amusing but valuable comments by C.H. Spurgeon on an alteration made to the English (as opposed to the Scottish) version of that hymn. He was preaching from Luke 19:37-40 back in February of 1866, and his message included these words:

Then, in the next place, you will observe that the praise they rendered was joyful praise. “The whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice.” I hope the doctrine that Christians ought to be gloomy will soon be driven out of the universe. There are no people in the world who have such a right to be happy, nor have such cause to be joyful as the saints of the living God. All Christian duties should be done joyfully; but especially the work of praising the Lord. I have been in congregations where the tune was dolorous to the very last degree; where the time was so dreadfully slow that one wondered whether they would ever be able to sing through the 119th Psalm; whether, to use Watts’s expression, eternity would not be too short for them to get through it; and altogether, the spirit of the people has seemed to be so damp, so heavy, so dead, that we might have supposed that they were met to prepare their minds for hanging rather than for blessing the ever-gracious God. Why, brethren, true praise sets the heart ringing its bells, and hanging out its streamers. Never hang your flag at half-mast when you praise God; no, run up every colour, let every banner wave in the breeze, and let all the powers and passions of your spirit exult and rejoice in God your Saviour. They rejoiced. We are really most horribly afraid of being too happy. Some Christians think cheerfulness a very dangerous folly, if not a ruinous vice. That joyous Hundredth Psalm has been altered in all the English versions.

All people that on earth do dwell,

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice,

Him serve with fear, his praise forth tell,

Come ye before him and rejoice.

“Him serve with fear,” says the English version; but the Scotch version has less thistle and far more rose in it. Listen to it, and catch its holy happiness:—

Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell;

Come ye before him and rejoice.

How do God’s creatures serve him out of doors? The birds do not sit on a Sunday with folded wings, dolefully silent on the boughs of the trees, but they sing as sweetly as may be, even though the rain-drops fall. As for the new-born lambs in the field—they skip to his praise, though the season is damp and cold. Heaven and earth are lit up with gladness, and why not the hearts and houses of the saints? “Him serve with mirth.” Well saith the Psalmist; “before him exceedingly rejoice.” It was joyful praise.

(Spurgeon, C. H. (1866). Praise Thy God, O Zion. In The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons (Vol. 12, p. 125). London: Passmore & Alabaster.)

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, so fear has a place in believers’ lives (rightly understood). But we have a Gospel that is worth shouting from the rooftops! Believing in our Savior, we are supposed to rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. And because the object of our joy is Jesus our Lord, who has given us a spiritual inheritance that can never perish, Christian joy may transcend earthly sorrows and afflictions and also be a source of strength in the midst of them. It was for the joy set before Him that Jesus endured the cross, despising its shame.

Let’s bask in this 100th psalm, then, and by God’s grace let’s enter into its outpouring of abundant praise to God! As Isaac Watts put it in his hymn, we have found glory begun below, but we are marching upward to a still more blessed and glorious home!:

Come, we that love the Lord, and let our joys be known;

Join in a song with sweet accord, and thus surround the throne.

Refrain:     We’re marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion;

We’re marching upward to Zion, the beautiful city of God.

The sorrows of the mind be banished from the place;

Religion never was designed to make our pleasures less.

Let those refuse to sing, who never knew our God;

But children of the heav’nly King may speak their joys abroad.

The men of grace have found Glory begun below;

Celestial fruits on earthly ground from faith and hope may grow.

The hill of Zion yields a thousand sacred sweets

Before we reach the heav’nly fields, or walk the golden streets.

Then let our songs abound, and every tear be dry;

We’re marching through Immanuel’s ground to fairer worlds on high.

71 - An Early Phishing Trip

Isaiah 39:1–8 At that time Merodach-baladan the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent envoys with letters and a present to Hezekiah, for he heard that he had been sick and had recovered. 2 And Hezekiah welcomed them gladly. And he showed them his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his whole armory, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them. 3 Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah, and said to him, “What did these men say? And from where did they come to you?” Hezekiah said, “They have come to me from a far country, from Babylon.” 4 He said, “What have they seen in your house?” Hezekiah answered, “They have seen all that is in my house. There is nothing in my storehouses that I did not show them.” 5 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the LORD of hosts: 6 Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the LORD. 7 And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” 8 Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good.” For he thought, “There will be peace and security in my days.”

Phishing, of course, is a scam that is usually performed by email. Someone sends you an offer that seems too good to be true, but still seems somewhat plausible. In replying, you open up your computer so they can gain access to lots of personal information. Often, the sad end of a phishing scam is the loss of a lot of valuables belonging to the victim. If it seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

I don’t know how sincere the envoys of the king of Babylon were when they came to inquire after Hezekiah, having heard that he had been sick but had been wonderfully healed. I suspect, though, that there was an element of intelligence-gathering that took place as a side benefit of their apparent concern for Hezekiah’s wellbeing. 

In what was far from being his finest hour as king of Judah, Hezekiah gave them royal treatment. Including a personally guided tour which included all of his military equipment, all of his supplies of food and water (perhaps he boasted to them about how he had engineered the water flows down the west side of the City of David - 2 Chronicles 32:30) and all the treasure of his kingdom - silver, gold, spices and precious oils. He left out nothing from the itinerary. I can almost see the envoys with clipboards taking copious notes as they went from one site to the next!

There is not a word in this passage to suggest that Hezekiah boasted to the Babylonians about his greatest treasure - his mighty God, Who had miraculously delivered Israel from a vast Assyrian army, and his merciful God, who had seen his tears when he was sick and had miraculously delivered him from death and given him 15 more years of life.

Whether or not the envoys were sincere, the information Hezekiah gave them must have been like hitting the jackpot. How useful it must have proved as Babylon grew and her king’s desire to extend the scope of his rule grew too. If it was a phishing trip, Hezekiah took the bait hook, line and sinker! He even enjoyed the moment - a moment which had only been granted to him because God had healed him. And he received with apparent indifference the prophecy about Babylon’s eventual coming to take away all the riches that he had shown the envoys - “at least it won’t happen on my watch.”

Hezekiah blew it, to put it in modern language. He had the opportunity to point Babylon to the Lord and engender reverence and respect in their hearts for Him. Instead, he came right down to the level of the world. He put God on one side and showed the enjoys “rich” and “powerful” he was. In 2 Chronicles 32:31, it says that God left him to himself when the envoys came, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart. Sadly, we have the answer in this account.

The obvious application here is to ask what is in our hearts today? What holds pride of place? What do we treasure above all else? 

When we talk with others (even with believers, but certainly with unbelievers as Hezekiah did here) what do we most readily talk about? Is it our house and car, our position at work, our vacation and countless other trivial and transient things? Or is it our mighty God and Savior, Who miraculously delivered us from captivity to a vast and powerful army of the forces of darkness, and our merciful God and Savior, Who miraculously healed us when we were dying from sin and granted us eternal life in Jesus Christ? Do we attempt to puff ourselves up in the sight of men on the basis of the worldly things we own, or do we make much of the God Who has had mercy on pitiful wretches like us, and has given us life and everything else we possess here and a glorious and eternal inheritance?

So, as those who are to be fishers of men, let’s regain our awe and wonder that we should be called “Children of God,” and eagerly point people to our greatest Treasure, urging them to receive Him as their own Lord and Savior. Let’s not fall victim to the phishing exploits of the enemy of our souls, in which we are tricked into boasting of worthless, worldly baubles and put ourselves in danger of losing everything.