The Power of The Second One Sent Like Moses
22 Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you.
23 And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’
24 And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days.
25 You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’
26 God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.”
Acts 3:22–26 Read More
90% of the time when somebody in the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, you can look to the context of their quote and get a lot more information. This time it gets pretty interesting if you do that. Moses said it in the setting of bringing the Torah to the people after they said “Don’t let God talk to us directly. You do the talking, Moses, and we’ll just do what you say. Don’t let God speak to us!”
They were too scared and too stuck in their old ways to realize that God Himself wanted to talk to each of them directly.
And now, another prophet has come to talk to them. He’s here to talk to people and to talk to God, and to give us a Torah (way of life, directions on how to live.)
Every prophet from Samuel on pointed their prophesies and hopes to Jesus. He is the hoped-for Messiah that would fulfill all of the things that deliverance from Egypt and the giving of the promised land pointed to.
And the final line might be what hits the hardest if we really absorb it.
God…sent Him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness
Jesus came to pay the price for all of our wickedness and rebellion since Adam and Eve. With our sin taken away and not counted against us, we have the righteousness of God. With such purity and holiness conferred upon us, we can become His very own dwelling. God’s Spirit, right here in ourselves.
We’re a species that never existed before.
Adam and Eve had God’s breath, but we now have God’s very Spirit in us.
And just as my driver’s ed teacher learned as he shouted at me through a walkie-talkie at the Harrison High School driving course, you can guide something from inside much better than you can guide it from the outside. He’d yell “turn right” which was my left and “go that way” by pointing but I wasn’t watching him, I was watching the car I was learning to drive. Ain’t nobody ever going to get saved or learn how to drive by an external law!
So this second Moses, this second Adam, who was actually first and foremost of all creation because He was before all of creation, has come to us to bless us and to turn us from our wickedness from inside our souls.
He is doing it. The more we let Him work, the more we see it’s true. And He won’t stop.