“Yet it isn’t I who will accuse you before the Father. Moses will accuse you! Yes, Moses, in whom you put your hopes. If you really believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me. But since you don’t believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?”
John 5:45-47 NLT
Was Jesus correct when He told the Jewish leaders that Moses wrote about Him? Of course He was, although admittedly it wasn’t by name. Jesus quoted Moses’ writings several times in the Gospels. For example, we have John 3:14, “And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up”. Then there is the parallel between manna and Jesus being the bread of life, or Jesus proclaiming that anyone believing in Him will produce rivers of living water flowing from his heart. The Jewish leaders, however, failed to make the connection between what was written in the Pentateuch by Moses, and the Man standing before them. Their minds and religious thinking was stuck in a groove more focused on a different religion of rules and regulations, and nothing was going to change their minds. Not even with God’s own Son standing before them.
But the Jews were not unique in their approach to matters religious. Today we have Christian denominations and movements stuck in their own individual grooves. For example, if we look at the Church of England, we find the Book of Common Prayer. In this worthy tome we will find Orders for Morning and Evening Prayer, various Creeds, the Order of how Holy Scripture is to be read, and so on. There are a shed full of scenarios for all the offices of the Church but perhaps we wonder why all this is really necessary. After all, the early Church liturgy can be found in Acts 2:42, “All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer“. So what would happen to the orders of service if Jesus came along with a counter-cultural exposure of congregants trusting in liturgies rather than His teaching as recorded in the Gospels? In Hosea 6:6 God said, “I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings“. Perhaps we could write, “I want you to show love, not follow a liturgy. I want you to know Me more than a pew or the Book of Common Prayer”. Of course, I might be doing many sincere Christian believers a disservice, but I’m sure my readers will understand my point.
By now, I’m sure my readers will also recognise that I am passionate about the Bible and its integrity and value in supporting life in the Kingdom of God here on 21st Century Planet Earth. In His day, Jesus came as the fruition of many prophecies about Himself, and He accused the Jewish leaders of not believing in Him in spite of all the evidence that said He was who he said he was. In particular He pointed out the incongruity of the leaders putting their hope in Moses and his writings, and yet refusing to believe and understand what those writings meant in the Person of the Man standing before them. But we pilgrims today must never abandon or rationalise the Scriptures to make them fit in with our ideologies, liturgies or world views. Just because we don’t understand, or refuse to understand, what the Bible says about living in the Kingdom of God, it doesn’t meant that what is written isn’t valid. We will never achieve everything that the Bible says we need to attain holiness by trusting in our own strength. But through the grace of God and the blood of Jesus, we can stand before God righteous and holy. It’s all about Jesus, not about the man made liturgies we love to install in our churches and fellowships.
There is much more written about Jesus in the Bible. Throughout all the Old Testament books there is a thread foretelling the Messiah, woven almost into every page. And then He burst upon the scene, making an impact that launched the new order, the New Covenant between God and mankind. Most of the religious leaders in Jesus’ day failed to recognise Him, as many still do today. We have to remember though that the enemy has blinded the eyes even of God’s own people. But one day everyone, including all powers and authorities, will be forced to bow the knee before Jesus, the Son of God.
Dear Lord Jesus. We give You all the praise and glory. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 