Please note that the underlined words are links to scriptures. Be sure to click on them for additional context.
Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
In the previous episode, we explored what it means to rightly divide the Word of Truth, and why it is essential for teachers operating under the New Covenant to know the differences in the Law pertaining to the parts that were written to be fulfilled in Christ and those that were written for our learning. This distinction helps us understand the relationship between God, the Law and Moses.
In this episode, we explore how Moses’ lineage predisposed him to cruelty, and how the wrath with which he enacted the Law was forecast by Jacob. We shall also explore how that wrath morphed into an ill advised attempt to appear holier than he was, leading to the vailing of the Israelites into bondage.
It might come off as I am judging Moses too harshly, and inferring motive without the requisite context. To some extent, I agree — I was not there with Moses on the mount, neither did I spend forty years in the desert (and neither would I want to, thank God for the Cross that has provided a better way). In such matters, I am guided by the famous psychologist Carl Jung:
If you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences — and infer the motivation.
Carl Jung
The precise motives behind Moses’ actions remain unclear — and it’s impossible to definitively tease them apart. However, we can infer his intent from the outcomes that history offers us, given that the outcome is not dissimilar to the intention.
It is worth noting that acknowledging the flaws of historical figures does not diminish their significance or impact on the overall scriptural narrative arc that led to Jesus. After all, God works through imperfect individuals, and we are all subject to human fallibility. However, as we reflect on their actions, we must do so with the awareness that we are viewing them through the lens of Grace, just as future generations will evaluate our own deeds.
The Error in Moses
When the Bible speaks about the Law in terms of pedagogy — with regards to what was given to the Israelites — it emphasizes it as the Law of Moses. However, when it speaks about the Law in terms of what was meant to be established, it reclaims the possession towards God. The wrath that is spoken of in the Law is the wrath of Moses, not of God.
Moses, the revered leader of the Israelites, was born into a world of curse, wrath, and cruelty. He had a tendency of taking matters into his own hands, and this had the unintended consequence of impeding God’s plan. His early actions, including the murder of an Egyptian, were driven by his desire to hasten God’s promises to the Jews. However, this impulsive crime led to his exile into the desert and delayed the fulfillment of God’s promises by forty years. In fact, Moses’ actions delayed God’s will to bring the Israelites to the Promised Land by a total of eighty years, and is thus solely responsible for their wandering in the desert. Despite his close relationship with God, Moses did not live to see the fulfillment of those promises. Its plausible to conclude that God mercifully shortened his work because there was a risk of him further delaying the Jew’s entry into the Promised Land by another forty years.
Recall that Moses is descended from the tribe of Levi, and together with Simeon, they were given a very marked inheritance by Jacob:
Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their selfwill they digged down a wall. Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.
Genesis 49:5–7
There is no coming back from such an inheritance, especially if it is bestowed by a father on his dying bed. Simeon and Levi’s fates were entwined and its no coincidence that Moses received the Law and the Levites became custodians of the Law and thus take up Moses’ seat. However, Jacob’s prophecy foreshadowed the cruelty that the Law would exact on its adherents.
Simeon and Levi’s slaying of men in anger, against their father’s will, foreshadowed the slaying of three thousand people — at Moses’ behest — when the Law was given, and the wrath with which Moses ground the golden calf, mixed it with water and made the Israelites to drink:
Moses took the calf which the Israelites had made, burnt it in the fire, ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water and made the children of Israel drink of it.
Exodus 32:20
How cruel! Instead of exercising mercy by cleansing the children, he marinates them in their sin, like his ancestors did. Simeon and Levi hatched a nefarious plan to make the men of Shechem weak, by asking them to circumcise themselves, something they acquiesced to. As they were recuperating, Simeon and Levi attacked them and killed them. The circumcision is a subtle reference to the circumcision of the heart, since the shechemites were technically gentiles who repented. Perhaps the incident that best captures Moses’ cruelty was the sentence he passed on the man who was caught picking sticks on the Sabbath to make a meal. I personally do not believe that God passed this sentence, I believe Moses creatively interpreted it thus, and passed a death sentence on a hungry man. In contrast, Jesus defended the disciples when they picked corn on the sabbath, and healed people on the sabbath, which was contrary to the statues of the Law of Moses.
Moses then possessed what I call the curse and the wrath of the cruel — the inheritance of those that adhere to the Law, and its fruit is death.
The Error of Moses
Above all else, Moses was a man given to mystery. He encountered a burning bush that did not consume, he turned sticks into snakes, called plaques on people. He spent forty days and forty nights atop a mountain, speaking to a being he envisioned was God (it was a dialogue between him and angels). He saw the back-parts of God, accused God of sinning, threw the tablets onto the golden calf and had a face that spastically glistened for a moment when he left the presence. By any measure, he encountered mysteries that most religious men crave for.
The peculiar thing in all his exploits was that God forbade him from building the Ark of the covenant and its accoutrements — if we take the Ark to be a symbol of Jesus, then Moses did not establish Jesus — and also failed to attain the gift which he purportedly led others to — the Promised Land. By another measure, he failed as a leader.
What Moses failed to perceive is that the same vail that prevented him and his priestly cast from entering into the Holy of Holies was the same vail that would take away the sins of the world, and most importantly, open the way to the Holy of Holies for everyone. On this, it’s hard to blame the guy — it is plausible that if anyone were thrust into his shoes, they would have done the same thing. Like many things of God, it’s easy to miss the obvious. How would anyone believe that the thing that separated the most sacred part of the Tabernacle would turn out to be the instrument of salvation? That is like the secret service forbidding a man to see the US president, while simultaneously ushering him into the presence of the president at once.
And that is how Moses lost his way. He concealed that which was meant to be revealed. He deduced that because he encountered God in a rock, where the hand of God vailed him so that He could not see the face of God, that God would always be a mystery only attainable by a few. He probably concluded that God would always vail himself from people. And by carrying this understanding throughout his life, he prevents the children of Israel from understanding that which was abolished.
He envisioned the status quo as eternal (or at least wanted it to be), even promising that God would send them a prophet like him, which was not true since Jesus was unlike Moses in almost everything. He failed to see the latter consecration through the vail by the blood of the Lamb, that was to be done for the benefit of the people. He failed to perceive that the door that kept out was the door that ushers in — or that the hands that concealed his overzealous heart were the same hands that would be nailed for the sins of the world.
In insisting to see God, he received a vailed revelation of God without the understanding to receive a full revelation of Jesus. Like the Apostle Peter warns, he wrestled with a vailed revelation to his own destruction.
What then
To answer that question, we have to appreciate the passion of the Christ with a thankful heart that hopefully gives us a new perspective through grappling with the following question:
Was it necessary for the romans to treat Jesus as brutally as they did?
Given the profound awareness of the severe cruelty, divine wrath, and formidable curse that pervaded the Mosaic Law, it becomes incontrovertibly apparent that the magnitude of Jesus’ affliction had to be equivalent in order to fulfill its demands. Christ Jesus had to endure the burden of the Mosaic Law in order to expiate sins on our behalf — it is imperative to comprehend that Christ’s vicarious suffering was a mandatory condition to effectuate its expiation on our behalf.
The condemnation stipulated by the Mosaic Law was borne by the sacrificial lamb of God, and as those who are reborn in Christ, we are able to abscond the divine wrath of the Law. The brutal torture and agonizing crucifixion that Jesus endured at the hands of the Roman authorities were necessary to secure our liberation from the apprehension and terror prescribed by the Law.
The Law of Moses has been fulfilled, and in the absence of the Law, there is no transgression. As those who belong to the New Covenant, we have been liberated from the wrath of the Law and have been engrafted into the lineage of God through Faith. Moreover, we have received the righteous requirements of the Law, and no longer need to be burdened with the interpretation of the commandments of Moses for righteous living. By looking to Christ and relying on the Holy Spirit, we can continue to be transformed into vessels of holiness and righteousness.
We shall explore the consequences of divorcing from Moses in a latter series, in the meantime, I hope this edification empowers you to live free, bold and have the courage to approach the throne of Grace — something that Moses nor the Israelites couldn’t do.
In the next episode, we explore how Moses embraced the hidden things of dishonesty leading to the vailing of the Israelites, to this day.