Hello All,
Someone once said, "Many people want to be married to Jesus, but still think it's ok to have an affair with Moses."
When we think and read about God in Scripture, nearly every sermon we've ever heard is lingering in our consciousness as our interpreter. This interpreter wants to make Jesus and Moses equal. It wants to say that the God Moses revealed is the same revelation of the Father that Jesus gave us. It's just not true. And if you read Scripture and think like Moses, the Bible literally says that there is a veil covering your eyes, hiding the truth from you. Here's what Dr. Brad Jersak writes:
"For example, we read in John 1:17 that Moses gave us the Law (a system of rewards and punishments), but Christ brought us grace and truth. We read in 2 Cor. 3:9ff that Moses’ covenant brought condemnation but Jesus’ covenant brings righteousness, true freedom and transformation.
What’s happening here? Rather than replacing Yahweh of the Old Testament with the Christ of the New, these authors emphasize that Moses’ revelation of God as the just Judge (the law-bringer) is being eclipsed by Jesus’ greater revelation of God the loving Father (the gospel-giver). They preach the same God, but through a different lens. With the restorative lens of Jesus and his glad tidings, Yahweh comes into focus as that gracious Father whose judgments are mercy. Whatever maleficent image we see is the result of distorted vision, whether ours or the stories’ characters or their human narrators. Through a retributive lens, even Jesus appears vengeful and violent.
Remember, it’s not only the vengeance or violence from which I’m recoiling: the real problem is the portrait of a God whose un-Christlike naked will eclipses love and trumps grace—a coercive force incongruent with Christ’s cruciform revelation of his Father’s love."
Jesus trumps Moses just as Mercy triumphs over Judgment.
Grace=Peace,
Jeremy
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