I Need a New Moses

Today on Summit Life with JD Greer. Unlike Moses, this new prophet never grows weary with us, and he never falters in obedience. He lived without sin. There was no guile or deceit that was ever found in his mouth. Jesus did not get mad and strike the rock in frustration like Moses did.

In love, he took the stroke of justice so that we could escape it. Jesus is the truer and better Moses. Welcome to another day of gospel-centered teaching here on Summit Life with pastor and author JD Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. If you grew up in church, you probably heard a lot of the talk about the heroes of the faith. You maybe even had storybooks or watched movies featuring these larger-than-life figures like Joseph, Moses, or David. They were presented as role models and almost superheroes. But when you read through their stories as an adult, you start to notice that these heroes were anything but perfect. Today, Pastor JD dives into the story of Moses to help us see what God was really trying to teach through this account.

JD titled this message, I Need a New Moses. But sometimes when I meet people at other campuses who have only seen me before on a screen, they will say, oh, I've never met you in person. You're so, and I can tell they're thinking disappointing, disappointing.

I know that's what they're thinking. And then there are people who just don't recognize me at all at other campuses. I visited one of our campuses not long ago and a very friendly lady.

I think she was on the first impressions team. She came up and said, are you new here? And I said, well, sorta. She looked down at my wedding ring and she said, she goes, you know, if you have kids, we have the most awesome kids ministries here.

And I said, I've heard that before. At one of our campuses, these two teenage girls came up to me and they said, well, you take a picture. And I thought, this is so sweet. These two high school girls want to get a picture of their pastor, or they can put on their Facebook wall and talk about how meaningful my messages are to them. And so I said, oh, I would be honored to, and I kid you not, she hands me her camera and says, just get the two of us over here by this summit logo, if you wouldn't mind.

I said, all right, I'll be happy to do that. For Jewish people, Moses was more than a celebrity. Moses was larger than life. He was not just a celebrity, he was the deliverer. He was their national founding father. He was their law giver. He was revered in life and even more so after death.

When he died, God had to hide his bones so that the Israelites did not dig them up and worship them. So there is no doubt that Moses really shocked them, surprised them. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you from your brothers.

It is to him that you'll actually listen. You see, Moses ends his life in his final sermon pointing to a new prophet, a better prophet, he is saying, who would do for the Israelite people what Moses had been unable to accomplish himself. Moses, you see, in many ways had been a failure. He had given the law to the Israelites faithfully, but he had been unable to get the people to actually obey the law. The history of Exodus through Deuteronomy, it reads like one long continuous list of failures. In Exodus 32, right after God gave the law, the cement was still wet on the tablets. Moses got delayed on the mountain so the people panic and they take off their jewelry and they melt it down to make a replacement God, which they start to dance around and jump over the fires and do all these pagan sex acts.

And then there was the incident at a place called Massah where they were running short on water. And so they said, God, you forsaken us. And they hatch a plot to kill Moses and go back to Egypt.

Keep in mind, this is after they've seen God split the Red Sea for them and provide manna every morning from heaven. The people doubted God when he told them that he would drive the giants out of the land, even though he proved that he could do it. Furthermore, Moses had been unable really to bridge the gap between them and God.

Even with all the complex system of sacrifices, a gigantic curtain remained between the people and God that they could not go behind and they may be struck dead. So Moses says, You see, the people had a problem. Even with Moses and a perfectly given law, the people could not stand in the presence of God because they had sinful hearts.

And what God had always wanted, what he had created us for was for us to be in his presence, for us to be closer to him than we were to anybody else on earth, to be his cherished sons and daughters, to be his friends. Furthermore, Moses turns out to be a deeply flawed leader himself. Moses had himself been sinful and unbelieving. In Numbers 20, the Israelites are in another one of their complaining fits, again, about where they're gonna find water. So God tells Moses, Go out and speak to the rock in the presence of the people, and I'll make water flow out of the rock for them. But Moses is ticked off. So he walks out there and he says, You fools, you hard-hearted heathens. And instead of speaking to the rock, like God had said, he hits it twice with his staff instead.

You say, Well, what's the difference? God said that it was more than just frustration and impatience on Moses' part. It was unbelief, and it was a failure of love. Moses had failed him as a leader. You see, Moses' love had its limits. So Moses said, I'm not the final prophet that you need. There's another one coming, and he is much greater than me.

As big as I've been to you, I've not been big enough. This coming prophet will do what I've never been able to do. I could explain the law accurately to you, but I have not been able to lead you to obey it. So let me stop before we go any farther and tell you why that is so important for us. You see, just like with Israel, number one, we need a law that can change us. For most of us, the problem is not that we don't know that we should be different. Our problem is that we can't make ourselves be different.

We know you may not believe in the Ten Commandments, but we all have a law that we kind of ascribe to. We know we should be more honest, more moral, more diligent, more loving, more courageous. We need to be better students or better dads.

The problem is not that we don't know these things. The problem is we can't convince our hearts to act that way all the time. The law gives us the way to go.

It doesn't give us the power to get there. It's what Martin Luther called the dilemma of the great commandment. The great commandment is that the way Jesus said you sum up all the commandments is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Luther said the dilemma of that commandment is that if you don't love something, then you can't be commanded to love it.

Right? I mean, remember when you were dating? If your parents commanded you to love something, somebody that you didn't love, no command of theirs is going to put love in your heart for them. The flip side of that is if you do love something, then you don't need to be commanded to love it. I've told you before, you never have to command me to eat a steak or take a nap or hug my kids or kiss my wife. I love those things.

I do them naturally. Luther said that's the dilemma. The dilemma is if you don't love God, you can't be commanded to love Him. And if you do love Him, you don't need to be commanded to. So what Luther said is what the law requires is freedom from the law. There ain't contradiction in it.

This law requires freedom from the law. Does that make sense? When I was in high school, I dated and started to date a girl and she was great, awesome. But, you know, I hadn't dated her enough that I didn't really know what her status of our relationship was. And I was too cowardly to actually have the conversation. So when it came time for me to go to college, she was still a senior in high school. So I just left.

I thought that's the easiest way to do this. I just left. I went to school up in upper state, New York. Now we wrote a few times. We agreed to get together when I was home for Christmas break. So December 22nd was the day that we were supposed to meet. And she lived about an hour away from me. And so the morning of December 22nd, I had this horrible thought. I thought I'm going to see her three days before Christmas.

I'm not sure the status of our relationship. Am I supposed to get her a Christmas present? Because if she gets me a Christmas present and I don't get her one, then I look like a total dirt bag. But I don't want to drop 70 bucks on some girl I've got no future with.

You can understand my dilemma, right? And so I'm driving on the way to her house and I run into the mall. I go into a sporting goods shop and there I see it.

I see the resolution to my dilemma. It was an Adidas neck warmer. It said Adidas in real big letters. You wore it when you were skiing. It cost $7. I thought that is perfect because if she gives me a gift, I'll give this to her. And if she doesn't give me a gift, I've always wanted one of those.

That puppy's going to be mine. So I bought it. I took it down to Nordstrom's downstairs. And I asked them to wrap it. They said, did you buy it here?

I said, sure. And so they wrapped it up and I put it in the back of my car, beautifully wrapped in the back of my car underneath the seat. I drive out the rest of the way to see her. And I knock on the door. She opens the door, big old smile on her face. Second thing out of her mouth after hi, how are you is I got you a Christmas present.

And I'm thinking, you genius. I got you a Christmas present too. So she runs quickly, grabs under the tree, grabs this big beautiful box with my name on it. And I put this thing up and I'm telling you, I'm not a clothing connoisseur as you guys can pretty easily tell, but I picked up this jacket that I could tell costs about like more than a hundred dollars is what it looked like to me.

And I literally panicked. I was like, I've got a $7 neck warmer in my car for this girl. And she says, well, you said you had a gift for me. I was like, I left her gift at home thinking it's an hour away.

I got days to be able to rectify this. She says, she says, well, she says, you know, my parents aren't here tonight, so we can't hang out here. Now, why don't we drive back to your house? And then you can just give me the gift there.

And I thought the judgment of God. And so we drove an hour back to my house. I go in the house and I was like, I want you to wait here in the living room for a minute. And I went back in there and I found my mom and on my mom, do you have anything that you were going to give my sister, Christy, who goes to the North Raleigh campus? Do you have anything you were going to give to her that she didn't know about yet? And my mom said, why?

I said, don't ask any questions, please. And I said, well, I'm going to give my sister's name on it. We take her name off of it. We put this girl's name on it and I hand it to her and I say, here's your gift.

I don't even know what it is. And she starts opening the presents. She's like, oh, what is it?

And I was like, ah, just open it. And so I'm as curious as she is. And she pulls out this sweater and it's like sweater vests and it's beautiful. And it looks like an equivalent gift.

And I was like, I live to see another day. To my knowledge, that girl still does have no knowledge of how that gift went down. And I was like, no, she doesn't have the knowledge at the time. Do you think she would have been flattered to receive that gift? No, she would be insulted because she knows I'm not giving it to her because I care about her.

I'm giving it to her because I don't want to look bad. Why do you think that God doesn't want people to obey him because they feel like they have to in order to get something from him or because obedience to him is going to keep them from something that they don't want like cursing or hell. God doesn't want people who obey him because they have to. He wants people who obey him because they have to.

Because they want to. He wants people who seek after him because there's nothing in life they'd rather seek after more than him. Who do righteousness, not because somebody is waving a stick at him saying, if you don't do this, I'm going to throw you into hell.

But because they love righteousness more than they love sin. And the law is able to tell us we should be like that, but the law is unable to actually put that desire in us. So number one, the law can't change us.

We need a law that can change. Number two, because our greatest enemies like Israel are within us, not outside. You see, just like with the Israelites, we think the problem is out there.

It's the giants of disease or debt or divorce, or it's the Pharaoh of a bad boss or a bad marriage or low self esteem. And we're like, God, we need deliverance. We need another Moses. We may not say that literally, but we need some kind of change in situation. We need a political or economic deliverer to come and save it. We need somebody who can bring hope and change or somebody who can make America great again, or we need somebody who will find a cure for cancer, or I need a new house, or I need a new spouse, or I need a new job, or I need new kids, or whatever you want to put in there. Somebody to make us all prosperous.

That's what I need. That's what the people were still looking for when Jesus came. When Jesus came in John chapter one, they started to see the miracles that he was doing. They're like, Hey, are you the new Moses? Are you the one that's going to come and get rid of the Roman oppression and get rid of all the debt and the disease? Give us that better life that Moses has always been talking about. Here's a lesson that Moses was trying to teach them. Your greatest enemies are inside of you, not outside of you.

That's the deliverance you need first. In the early 20th century, there was a group of socialists in America and Great Britain who believed that man's problem was oppressive government structures. Man's problem was poverty or lack of education. Socialism taught that man was basically good, that his environment had just messed him up. Well, after World War II and all the atrocities of World War II, a bunch of them totally and radically changed their outlook. One of them, the British philosopher David Cecil said, the philosophy of progress, the philosophy of the enlightenment had led us to believe that the savage and the primitive was behind us. It turns out that it was actually still within us.

All he did was discover what Moses illustrated 3000 years before. There is no law, no liberation, no external or circumstantial change that can transform the heart of man. You need something different. You need something more powerful, something that even a perfect law cannot supply to you. Number three, we need somebody who will love us unconditionally. In order for real love for God to grow in us, we need a leader who will show us perfect and unconditional love. All of our life, we've craved that unconditional love.

We look for it first in our parents, then we look for it in a spouse. And until we find it, our hearts are fearful and distressed. I told you a couple weeks ago about Martin Luther, the Catholic monk who rediscovered this idea that God's love is a gift that he gives us unconditionally when we receive it in Christ. The church of Luther's day was like, Luther, if you remove the threat of punishment, then people will lose all their will to obey. If they're not afraid that God will punish them and put them in hell, if they disobey, then what motivation will they have to obey? Luther said it's actually the exact opposite. Being afraid of judgment will produce a surface level adherence to God's laws. But underneath that thin veneer of obedience is going to rush this river of fear and pride and self-interest. True virtue grows only in the soil of security. It is only in the security of God's love for me that love for God grows in me. Here's number four, we need somebody who can actually bridge the gap between God and us.

We need somebody who can bridge that gap. Moses' law was effective at showing us how sinful we were. It was effective at showing us how terrible our sin was, but it couldn't change us. Last week, my wife and I were on a trip with our daughter who just turned 13. We're on a little special trip, so we stay at this cheap little hotel. My wife, when we walked into the hotel room, says what she always says when we go into a hotel room, don't touch the bedspread.

Why? Because she's seen that Oprah special where they take the blue light in and you see all the filth and contaminant and the bodily fluids. It's disgusting, right? The law is like that blue light.

It can reveal the filth of our hearts by showing us how warped and deformed the desires of our heart are, but it cannot change our hearts. If you want to clean the hotel room, you don't use the blue light. You've got to take Lysol.

You can Lysol the room or you can take off the bedspreads or, in my case, you can just ignore it and be happy in life. Okay? But the question is, how do you cleanse your heart?

How do you cleanse the filth of your heart? So what Moses promises is extremely relevant to us as well. The Lord your God will raise up a prophet, he says, like me, from among your brothers. Another one is to him, you'll actually listen. There's a couple important characteristics that he gives us in that one verse right there about this coming prophet.

First, he says it's going to be from among your brothers. Muslims always try to say that Muhammad is this prophet that Jesus was talking about, that Muhammad is the prophet who will come and give the better law, but Muhammad was not a Jew. And Jesus, I mean, God clearly says that this other prophet is going to be from among your brothers, from among the Jewish people, so it couldn't be Muhammad. The other characteristic is he says it's going to be like me, like me.

Consider this. Like Moses, Jesus was a Jew. Like Moses, Jesus was born during a time when Israel was oppressed. Like Moses, when Jesus was born, a local leader tried to kill all the Hebrew boys. In Moses' case, it was Pharaoh.

In Jesus' case, it was Herod. Like Moses, Jesus chose to leave his royal family to identify with his people. Like Moses, Jesus spent time in the wilderness before his ministry began. For Moses, it was 40 years.

For Jesus, it was 40 days. Like Moses, Jesus delivered his people from great danger. When Israel stood between a gigantic body of water and an angry Egyptian army behind them that threatened to destroy them, Moses stretched out his hands and made a safe passage through the Red Sea.

When we were pinned between the sea of our sin and the wrath of God that was coming to destroy us, Jesus stretched out his hands and made a safe passage through the waters of God's judgment. Like Moses, Jesus gave a law. Except Moses gave his law from Mount Sinai with the warning, if you do this consistently, you'll live, but if you disobey it, you'll die. Jesus' law, by contrast, was given from a mountain.

It was called the Sermon on the Mount. But he told his people, you can never keep this law, so I'll keep it for you, and then I'll suffer the penalty for you breaking it, and then I'll give you the power to keep it by keeping it in you. Moses told them to sacrifice a lamb at Passover and put the blood on the doorposts of their home so that the death angel would pass over their home. Jesus sacrificed himself and put his blood on the doorposts of our heart so that the wrath of God would pass over us. Moses had them bring a lamb each year as a substitutionary sacrifice to atone for their sin. Jesus gave himself as that substitutionary lamb whose blood once and for all satisfied the penalty against our sin. Jesus was the scapegoat sent into the wilderness, bearing our guilt on his head. He was the bronze serpent lifted up so we could be healed. The rock struck by the anger of God so that we could drink of the water of life.

The manna that dropped from heaven so that we could be filled with the bread of life. Everything that Moses gave in shadow, Jesus fulfilled in substance. And unlike Moses, Jesus' blood actually cleanses us so that we can be safe again in God's presence. Moses left the curtain in place, Jesus tore it in two. Every religion leaves the curtain in place.

No religion has yet figured out how to tear the curtain between us and God. You know, I used to live as a missionary among Muslims. And I was sitting one afternoon with a group of students trying to explain to them why Jesus had to die.

And them telling me why he didn't have to die. And right as we're in the middle of having this discussion, the call to prayer goes off. The Muslim call to prayer.

Five times a day this happens. They all get up, wash, come back. You know, they pray, they sit down. Every time Muslims pray, they go through this vigorous washing process. So when they came back and sat down, I was like, well, tell me why you do all that washing. And they're like, well, we've got to be clean before Allah.

So we clean every part of us and when we go before Allah, we're clean. And I said, okay, what is the filthiest thing that you can touch? Like, oh, pig, pork, bacon. If you touch bacon, you're just defiled. And I'm like, really? Like the filthiest thing in the universe? Yeah. Like if you touch pork, you've got to wash seven times.

Not just once, seven now. You've got to, you know, sand, water, soap. It's this big process. I'm like, so really in all the universe, the filthiest thing is a pig that God created. And they're like, well, one of them says, he says, well, because, you know, to be honest, what's probably filthier to God is when we have sin in our hearts and when we love other things more than we love Allah, or when we do things that we know are contrary to his will. I'm like, okay, because we've all done that. I was like, so where does that filth, where does it reside?

And they're like, well, it's in your hearts. I was like, okay, so how do you clean your heart before you, when you go before Allah? And when he said, well, we don't, we just repent and God forgives us.

And I was like, wait a minute. You can't just repent of touching the pig. You have to repent and wash. So why would God have you wash seven times for touching a pig, but the thing that's filthiest to him, there's no cleansing for it at all.

Now, they didn't fall to their knees and all get gloriously saved, but it connected with them at that point. Because see, Jesus' blood does what no religious observance can do. It's not water that we need to wash the filth of our bodies.

It's something that we need to wash the filth off of our souls. And there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins. Sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain. Most importantly, unlike Moses, this new prophet never grows weary with us and he never falters in obedience. He lived without sin. There was no guile or deceit that was ever found in his mouth. Jesus did not get mad and strike the rock in frustration like Moses did.

In love, he took the stroke of justice so that we could escape it. Jesus is the truer and better Moses. He's gone that came. He was like Moses, but he was better than Moses. And he gives us what Moses could never give us, what no law could ever give us. Pastor J.D. Greer points us to a better Moses today on Summit Life. We're in a series called The Whole Story, walking from Genesis to Revelation.

You can catch up on previous messages or download the transcripts at jdgreer.com. Alongside the teaching this month, we're also talking with Pastor J.D. about the topic of prayer. J.D., what has helped your prayer life the most? First, it's just having consistent times for prayer. A lot of people get overwhelmed thinking about, like, how am I going to, you know, Martin Luther prayed for four hours, how am I going to do it?

Just start with five minutes. I always pray out of the Bible. We always teach people to read the Bible with the HEAR method, which stands for highlight, examine, apply, respond. Highlight means take whatever you're reading in the Bible that is standing out to you that you feel like God might be speaking to you and let that be the first thing you respond back to God with. The Bible is a book of promises, more than 3,000 promises. Don't just read through the Bible, pray through the Bible. I wrote Just Ask to try to help you actualize those promises and turn that into a daily discipline prayer time. You can check out that book, Just Ask, at jdgreer.com.

Thank you, JD. Be sure to get in touch today so we can get you a copy of that book. It's our way of saying thanks when you donate to support this ministry. Summit Life would not be possible without the generosity of friends like you, so your gift truly does make a difference, helping more people dive into the message of the gospel. Request Just Ask when you give a donation today of $25 or more. You can also ask for the book when you join our team of monthly gospel partners. Just call 866-335-5220.

That's 866-335-5220. Or you can sign up to be a gospel partner online at jdgreer.com. If you'd rather mail your donation, our address is JD Greer Ministries, P.O.

Box 122-93, Durham, North Carolina, 277-09. Before we close, let me remind you that if you aren't yet signed up for our email list, you'll want to do that today. It is the best way to stay up to date with Pastor JD's latest blog posts, and we'll also make sure that you never miss a new resource or series.

It's quick and easy to sign up at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vitovich, so glad to have you with us today. Tomorrow we're looking at Moses' final sermon and discovering how, even in the Old Testament, Moses was pointing to Jesus and the gospel of grace. Listen Thursday to Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.