Moses – The Mediator Who Spoke Face to Face with God
No figure in the Old Testament looms larger than Moses. For forty years he led Israel through the wilderness. Through him came the Law that would shape Jewish identity for millennia. He parted the Red Sea, struck water from rock, and ascended Sinai’s heights to receive the Ten Commandments directly from God’s hand. Scripture says of him, “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10). Yet Moses himself pointed beyond his own ministry to a greater Prophet who would come.
The Common Reading
Moses’ life divides neatly into three forty-year segments: forty years in Pharaoh’s palace, forty years in Midian’s wilderness, and forty years leading Israel. Born during Egypt’s brutal persecution of Hebrew infants, he was hidden by his mother, placed in a basket on the Nile, and providentially rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter. Raised in the Egyptian court with all its privileges and learning, Moses nonetheless “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God” (Hebrews 11:24-25).
His first attempt to deliver his people ended in failure. Killing an Egyptian taskmaster, Moses fled to Midian, where he spent forty years as a shepherd—a dramatic fall from prince to nomad. But God was preparing him. At the burning bush, the LORD commissioned him to return to Egypt and demand Israel’s release. “I AM THAT I AM,” God revealed Himself, sending Moses to confront the mightiest empire on earth.
Through ten devastating plagues, Moses demonstrated God’s supremacy over Egypt’s gods. The final plague—the death of every firstborn—broke Pharaoh’s resistance. Israel departed in the exodus, crossed the Red Sea on dry ground, and journeyed to Sinai, where Moses received the Law, the pattern for the tabernacle, and instructions for worship. For forty years he mediated between God and the often-rebellious nation, bringing their complaints to the LORD and the LORD’s commands to them.
Traditional reading emphasizes Moses’ role as lawgiver, leader, and intercessor. He becomes a model of faithful obedience (despite occasional failures), patient endurance, and selfless intercession. When God threatened to destroy Israel and make a new nation from Moses, he refused the offer and pleaded for the people’s forgiveness. His meekness was legendary: “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3).
The Limitation of This Reading
If Moses’ significance lies primarily in his historical role as Israel’s lawgiver, we face troubling questions. Why could he not enter the Promised Land? Why was his ministry characterized by a veil over his face and tablets of stone? Why did the law he delivered prove unable to transform the human heart? The writer of Hebrews is blunt: “The law made nothing perfect” (Hebrews 7:19).
More significantly, Moses himself declared his ministry provisional. Looking to the future, he announced: “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken” (Deuteronomy 18:15). Moses understood that he was pointing forward to someone greater, someone whose ministry would accomplish what the law could not.
The New Testament confirms this forward-looking character of Moses’ ministry. “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Jesus did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it—to accomplish what Moses’ ministry could only foreshadow and anticipate.
Christ-Centered Unveiling
The parallels between Moses and Christ emerge from the very beginning of their lives. Both were born under hostile rulers who murdered infants in attempts to destroy them. Pharaoh ordered Hebrew baby boys thrown into the Nile; Herod slaughtered the innocents of Bethlehem. Both escaped death in Egypt—Moses through the river, Jesus through flight to Egypt with His parents. Matthew specifically applies Hosea’s prophecy to Jesus: “Out of Egypt have I called my son” (Matthew 2:15).
Both Moses and Jesus embraced identification with their suffering people. Moses “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God” (Hebrews 11:24-25). Jesus, “being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of nothing, and took upon him the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:6-7). Both exchanged privilege for suffering in order to deliver their people.
Moses was initially rejected by his brethren. When he intervened between two fighting Hebrews, one demanded, “Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?” (Exodus 2:14). Stephen highlights this in Acts 7: “This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer” (Acts 7:35). Jesus experienced the same rejection: “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11).
Both Moses and Jesus were prophets, priests, and kings. Moses spoke God’s words to the people, interceded for them before God, and ruled over them in the wilderness. Jesus is the ultimate Prophet who reveals God perfectly, the great High Priest who intercedes eternally, and the King of kings whose reign shall never end.
The Fulfillment in Christ
Jesus explicitly identified Himself as the fulfillment of Moses’ prophecy: “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me” (John 5:46). When Philip found Nathanael, he announced: “We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth” (John 1:45). The entire Mosaic economy pointed forward to Christ.
Moses led Israel through water to freedom from Egypt; Jesus leads His people through the waters of baptism to freedom from sin. Moses gave bread from heaven (manna) in the wilderness; Jesus declared, “I am the true bread from heaven” (John 6:32-33). Moses struck the rock and water flowed for the thirsty multitude; Paul identifies that rock as Christ: “they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4).
Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness so that those bitten by serpents could look and live. Jesus declared: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:14-15). The cure for sin’s deadly venom is looking to Christ crucified.
Moses mediated the old covenant at Sinai with its thunderings and fire that made the people tremble. Jesus mediates the new covenant through His blood—a better covenant with better promises. “For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched… but ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God” (Hebrews 12:18-22).
The Gospel Mystery Revealed
The comparison between Moses and Christ ultimately highlights Christ’s superiority. Moses was faithful in God’s house as a servant; Christ is faithful as a Son over His own house (Hebrews 3:5-6). Moses’ face shone with reflected glory that faded; Christ is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3). Moses delivered the law written on tablets of stone; Christ writes the law on hearts of flesh through His Spirit.
Most significantly, Moses could not enter the Promised Land. At Meribah, he struck the rock twice in anger rather than speaking to it as commanded. This disqualified him from leading Israel into Canaan. Why such severe consequences for seemingly minor disobedience? Because Moses’ role was to picture Christ, and the picture could not tolerate distortion. The rock (Christ) was struck once at Calvary; thereafter we speak to Him in prayer, not demand He be struck again.
Moses died on Mount Nebo, looking into the Promised Land he could never enter. This is the ultimate limitation of the law he represented—it can show us the destination but cannot bring us there. The law reveals sin but cannot remove it. It diagnoses the disease but cannot cure it. Only Joshua (whose name means “salvation”—the Hebrew form of “Jesus”) could lead Israel across the Jordan into their inheritance.
What Moses could not do, Christ has done. Where the law failed, grace succeeds. “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). Moses pointed the way; Jesus is the way. Moses gave the law; Jesus gives life.
Have you been trying to reach God through law-keeping, through moral effort, through religious observance? Moses himself would tell you to look to Christ. “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet… unto him ye shall hearken.” The greater Moses has come. The true deliverer has appeared. He offers not tablets of stone but transformation of heart. Not a covenant of works but a covenant of grace. Not condemnation but justification. Look to Him and live.