What did Moses write about Jesus?

And now in concluding the Lord would take away the last plank, as it were, to which they might cling. They boasted, in rejecting Him, of being true disciples of Moses (John 9:28). But Moses would be their accuser. "For if ye believed Moses," the Lord adds, "ye would believe Me: for he wrote of Me" (v. 46). But where shall we find that? Now there is one special prediction of the lawgiver, quoted both by Peter (Acts 3:22-23) and by Stephen (Acts 7:37), foretelling the coming of a Prophet like to him, to whom they were to hearken. And the likeness referred to, which is explained in Deut. 34:10, awaited for its fulfilment — the coming of Christ. No prophet in Israel, however eminent, for fifteen centuries ever thought of claiming for himself the special distinction of being known by God face to face. The mediator of the old covenant and the Mediator of the new are the only ones of whom that has been true. Refusing, then, to hearken to Christ, they were guilty of direct disobedience to Moses. The lawgiver would be their accuser. The professed disciples of Moses, jealous as they fancied for his honour, would find themselves accused before God by him! Was it unaccountable that they received not the Lord? "If ye believe not His writings, how shall ye believe My words?" (John 5:47) explained the matter. To the writings of Moses the Lord turned them. Then Moses wrote something. And New Testament teaching by Peter and Stephen expressly states that Deut. 18:15-19 are the words of the lawgiver — written, however, in vain for those people.

Yet the Lord Jesus had not come as their adversary, to accuse them. Their actual accuser was Moses (v. 45), of whom they claimed to be disciples (cf. John 9:28). Of course Moses was the lawgiver, and the very law that he gave was their condemnation, of which fact they were blindly insensible. But Moses wrote of Christ, in many ways, in type and prophetically, as the true and full answer to Israel's needs. Certainly then, if they had really believed Moses, they would believe Christ, just as if they believed the Father, they would believe Him. Moses' writings and Christ's words were perfectly concordant: therefore they did not believe Christ's words because they had not actually believed Moses' writings (v. 47).

Thus plainly we have the true prophet put forward, Christ Himself. For its application to Him, in the face of all the unbelief of men, is affirmed by the Holy Ghost over and over, by Peter in Acts 3, and by Stephen in Acts 7; and in point of fact we do not even need these citations of the passage. The entire New Testament is itself the irrefragable demonstration that Christ is the prophet here referred to, and of the consequent folly and sin of listening to another. For He is come; and God made this fact to be so much the more manifest in a more glorious way still for chosen witnesses. His own voice set aside Moses and Elias, though the one might be the introducer of the law and the other its great restorer. For it was the Son that was now to be heard, and He alone is left, the others disappearing. Unquestionably this goes beyond the revelation that was given by Moses here, while it is the highest possible confirmation of it.

Nevertheless, it is the Son Himself Who here gives to the writings of Moses a place in testimony beyond His own words; not because the servant approached the Master, or the Decalogue the Sermon on the Mount, but because the Scripture, as such, has a character of permanence in testimony which can attach only to the written word. And Moses wrote of Christ — necessarily, therefore, by Divine power — as a prophet of "the prophet which should come into the world," of the Prophet incomparably more than prophet, the Son of God, Who quickens every believer, and shall judge every despiser, raising from the grave these for a resurrection of judgment, as those for one of life. Had the Jews, then, believed Moses, they would have believed Christ: words which teach us that faith is no such otiose exercise as some would make it; for the Jews in no way questioned, but received his writings as Divine. But not to doubt is far from believing; and they saw not in any of his books the great object of testimony in all, Jesus the Messiah, a man, yet far more than man, a Divine Saviour of sinners and Sacrifice for sins, the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. If they believed Moses, they would have believed Him, for he wrote of Him. But if they believed not his writings, the Saviour did not expect them to believe His own words.

In these words also were exposed the evil motives lying deep in the hearts of His opponents, yet He was not their accuser. Moses was that through the law that had been given by him. They boasted in Moses, because they felt that great man conferred some honour upon themselves, but they did not really believe him. Had they done so they would have received Christ. Verse 39 applies to all Old Testament scriptures: they "testify of Me." Verse 46 alludes specifically to the early books written by Moses; and he "wrote of Me." This, then, is the key which unlocks all the Old Testament — the main theme is the Christ, who was to come.

The way in which the Lord linked His words with Moses' writings is very striking. If men refuse the earlier testimony through the servant, they will not receive the Son, when He speaks. And so indeed it is. The men today, who disbelieve the books of Moses and even deny his authorship, do not believe the words of Jesus. This is perfectly clear, inasmuch as He endorses here the very thing they deny. We must make our choice between the rationalistic modernists and Christ. They have stepped into the shoes of His Jewish opponents: that is all. The two questions, "How can ye believe?" and, "How shall ye believe?" are very striking. As the love of God is in us, as the glory of man fades in our eyes, we shall accept and believe the Holy Writings, and they will lead us in faith to Christ.

In contrast to the deluded prophets of idolatry, the Lord would raise up a prophet like Moses (but infinitely greater than Moses) from the midst of Israel (v.1). Israel is commanded to listen to Him. Moses was at the point of being taken away in death. But God remembered how Israel had been terrified at the thought of hearing God Himself speaking to them at Sinai (Ex.20:18-20), and had asked for an intermediary between themselves and God. Therefore the Prophet spoken of in verse 18 is the "one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim.2:5). He would speak faithfully the words He received from God (v.18).

In His sentence on the serpent God said, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." A double reference seems to run throughout this verse, a literal and a mystical one. The enmity between the serpent and the human race it is well known surpasses that existing between any of the lower creation and mankind, and the sentence is thus perfectly literal. In the mystical sense, the seed of the woman is Christ, and the clause, "between thy seed and her seed" would thus include all that are Christ's on the one hand, and the children of the devil on the other, whether wicked spirits or wicked men. The enmity would not be on the part of the children of God towards their fellow creatures, but it would be on the part of the wicked towards the righteous, as quickly illustrated by Cain's murder of Abel. "It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." The pronoun It, if taken by itself, might no doubt be so pointed in the Hebrew as to be feminine, but the verb being masculine shows that the pronoun is so too, and not, as the Roman Catholics try to make out, feminine in allusion to the Virgin Mary. It is masculine in allusion to Christ, whose sacrifice on the cross accomplished this prediction finally as regards the latter clause, and potentially as regards the former.

In these few verses in Genesis 3 we have Him first as the Seed and, remarkably enough, as the Seed of the woman, and not of the man. We read on through Genesis and we don't get many definite predictions until we come to chapter 49. True we find Him in "the seed" of Abram. The apostle Paul in the epistle to the Galatians is at pains to point out that he does not say "seeds" as of many but "Seed" as of one, and that One is Christ. This, of course, springs out of the fact that He was the seed of the woman, for the woman — Mary — was descended from Abram. This first great prediction of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ did not fall from mortal lips. Afterwards God did speak to men by prophets, but this most fundamental of all the great predictions came from the lips of the Lord God Himself, and was uttered not to man primarily, though we are permitted to hear it, but to the great adversary, Satan, under the form of the serpent. He said, "I will put enmity … between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." This word concerning the Seed of the woman is the great fundamental prediction of the coming of Christ.

The serpent Moses made was in the likeness of the serpent that bit the people, so was the Son of Man in the likeness of the flesh of sin. It was of brass, and brass is a type of the judgment of God against sin. The altar where the offerings were slain, and their bodies burned, was of brass. So also on the cross was the Son of Man under the judgment of the flesh of sin, abandoned by God, and being dealt with as sin deserved, though He Himself was altogether the delight of the heart of God. Had there been any taint of sin in Him He would have needed a saviour for Himself. But He was holy, spotless and undefiled, always delighting in, and doing, the will of the Father who had sent Him.

Verse 10 contains a striking prophecy, indicating that Judah would be the tribe out of whom should come the kingly line, culminating in "Shiloh," a term which is taken to refer to Christ as the Prince of peace. And of course we know that our Lord, as concerning the flesh, sprang out of Judah, as we are reminded in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Out of that kingly line He sprang, as is shown by the two genealogies recorded by Matthew and Luke. But at the end of that verse another striking fact is alluded to, for the word, "people," is more correctly, "peoples;" that is, it refers to the nations generally and not merely to the nation of Israel. And the coming of Shiloh has resulted in His becoming, by reason of His rejection and death, the Centre of gathering for a multitude out of all nations; and in the coming age He will be visibly the Centre not only of Israel but of the nations also.