MOSES and JESUS: “A Prophet Like You” (Deuteronomy 18:18)

 MOSES and JESUS: “A Prophet Like You” (Deuteronomy 18:18)

There is a resonance between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and a primary example of this is the relationship between Moses & the Four Books about Moses in the Old Testament .. and Jesus & the Four Books about Jesus (the Gospels) in the New Testament. You can read Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in the Old Testament. You can read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the New Testament.

God Himself makes this explicit in Deuteronomy 18:18, where He says, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.” Jesus affirms this in John 17:8 -- “I have given to them the words which You have given me.”

The parents of Moses are both Levites (Exodus 2:1-2). Jesus’s physical father, Zachariah, was also a Levite, as was his wife Elizabeth (Luke 1:5), while Jesus’s mother was Mary, a descendant of King David, which is appropriate because Jesus is both High Priest and King, so his physical self/body/vessel combines both lineages, while his Spirit Self is entirely from God. Jesus is Emmanuel, “God with us,” the substantial body of God, God’s nature of love and dominion in the flesh.

At the time of Moses’s birth, Pharaoh commanded that all male babies of the Israelites be killed (Exodus 1), while at the time of Jesus’s birth, King Herod ordered the slaughter of all male babies two years old and younger in Bethlehem and all its districts (Matthew 2:16-18). According to God’s plans, Moses is saved by the wisdom of his mother (Exodus 2:3-10); and Jesus is saved by Joseph, who acts according to the direction of the angel (Luke 2:13-15). Moses passes from the Hebrew side of the River Nile to the Egyptian side, while Joseph takes Mary & Jesus from Israel to Egypt.

When it becomes apparent that Moses is a son of Israel and not of Egypt, he flees into the wilderness of Midian (Exodus 2:11-15). When it becomes apparent that Jesus is the son of God after he is baptized by John, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil (Matthew 3:13-4:1).

Moses gives God’s Law as the Ten Commandments written on stone to the people when he comes down from Mount Sinai (Exodus 20). Jesus expands upon and deepens the meaning of these laws during his Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew Chapters 5, 6 & 7, and “the people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority” (Matthew 7:28-29).

In Jeremiah 31:31-34, God promises to “make a New Covenant with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah … I will put My Law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” Jesus fulfills this promise and is himself the New Covenant, as he makes clear in Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, and Luke 22:20.

Moses gets to see the Promised Land from atop Mount Nebo, but dies there and does not get to enter (Deuteronomy 32:48-52). Likewise Jesus is tortured and murdered without being able to establish the foundation for the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, a godly family, which is God’s Original Purpose of Creation (OPOC).

Moses lifted up the Bronze Serpent in the wilderness to save the people from the bites of the fiery serpents in Numbers 21:4-9, and Jesus was lifted up on the Cross to save us from sin. Jesus makes this parallel clear in John 3:14-15, 8:28, and 12:32.