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[0:00] It's lovely to be with you. Father, I just pray that as we share your word together now, you will clarify things in our minds and particularly in my mind, because it's not very clear right now.

[0:12] ! Lord, just teach us and change us, we pray, as we study your word and lift our faith and reinforce our faith, I ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

[0:24] Amen. So, last time, we looked at the visitation of the Messiah, didn't we? And we deduced from the scriptures that the Jews should have expected him.

[0:37] They should have been sitting there looking at their watches saying, any minute now he's going to be here, because he made it so clear when he would turn up. And we went through some calculations that were originally done by the man who wrote The Coming Prince, whose name has gone right out of my head.

[0:58] Sorry? Robert Anderson. Sir Robert Anderson, who was knighted for his work. And he came up with this conclusion that from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem in 445 BC through to the very first Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry was exactly, it was forecast to be 173,880 days.

[1:20] And sure enough, 173,880 days later, Jesus came into the city on a donkey. And that in itself raises all sorts of questions. Why a donkey? But we won't do that this morning.

[1:38] So, what I want to do this morning is take a look at it from a slightly different angle. So, there aren't any calculations and slides this morning, but there is something to explore. And it comes from John's Gospel. So, if you turn to John's Gospel, chapter 5.

[1:56] And we're going to read from verse 39. The two verses I'm particularly interested in are 39 and 45. But we'll read that section.

[2:08] And this is where Jesus is talking to Jews about himself. And he's relating to them things about himself from the scriptures.

[2:21] And what he says is this. In verse 39, he says, You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about me.

[2:33] And you are unwilling to come to me so that you may have life. I do not receive glory from men, but I know you that you do not have the love of God in yourselves.

[2:45] I have come in my father's name and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. And incidentally, there was a man called Rabbi Bach Kochba who they thought was the Messiah.

[2:59] And I won't go into the life of Rabbi Kochba, but clearly wasn't the Messiah. But he came in his own name. He didn't come in the name of the Lord. He came in his own name. Verse 44.

[3:14] How can you believe when you receive glory from one another? And you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God. Do not think that I will accuse you before the father.

[3:27] The one who accuses you is Moses in whom you have set your hope. For if you believe Moses, you would believe me for he wrote about me.

[3:38] But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? And so the title of this mini series is Jesus, the expected one. And what Jesus is saying here is you've already been told about me.

[3:54] The whole of the scriptures testify about me. And of course, the scriptures then would have been only the Old Testament because the New Testament hadn't yet been written. So what he says is all the scriptures you've been given talk about me.

[4:08] And then he goes on and refines that statement a little bit and says, Moses wrote about me. And so we're going to look at a couple of portions of scriptures where Moses particularly wrote about Jesus.

[4:27] But before we go on to that, just just to say this, we've already in our previous Bible studies, we are always talking about Jesus fulfilling messianic prophecy in the Old Testament.

[4:42] Angela was talking to me yesterday about apologetics. This for the Jews in particular and should be for us is an apologetics subject in that because God said he would do it and we now see the evidence that he did it.

[4:57] That gives us an apologetic or a reason, a reason for believing. Because he said it was so and it was so. And he said it was so before anybody else could have known it was so.

[5:10] But he is God. He says, I believe in Isaiah 42, I am God and I can tell you the end from the beginning. He is outside time and he can point to any point in time and say, I know what is going to happen and I can tell you what is going to happen at that point in time.

[5:28] Just mentioning in passing as well. In the passages we're going to read, nowhere does the name of Jesus get a mention. But what is mentioned is someone who would come and what they would be like and what they would do.

[5:48] And over the centuries, the Jews called this person who was to come, the promised one, they called him Messiah. And Messiah, Mashiach, is the anointed one.

[5:59] And the Greek equivalent of the anointed one is Christ. So Jesus Christ, Christ was not his surname. It was his title. It was Jesus, the anointed one.

[6:11] So this anointed one was going to come and then did come on time in the right place. Born in the right town to do a prescribed set of things.

[6:23] So they could look at the things that he did and go, does that appear in the scriptures? Oh, yes, it does. So it's as simple as that. It is. I say simple.

[6:34] I mean, it took even God sort of 4000 years to put it together. But the thing is that if we get a piece of packed flat furniture and we get with it an instruction book, we can look at the instruction book and go, yes, that piece goes in there.

[6:54] And eventually this piece of packed flat furniture is built because we referred to the instructions that had been pre-written for our benefit. This is the same in principle.

[7:04] It's a very limited analogy, I will admit, but it's the same in principle. God said, I will send a man born only of a woman on a certain date.

[7:16] He'll present himself 173,880 days after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem. He'll present himself as the king of Israel at that point. He is your Messiah, the anointed one who I promised to send you.

[7:31] And I have sent him and he's there and he's on time. And guess what? You reject him. So it's fair to assume that the whole and we've covered this so many times.

[7:45] I can't. I haven't got three hours this morning. I've got less than one. So we can't cover the whole of scripture except to say we've already said many times studying Matthew's gospel that Jesus fulfilled again and again and again.

[7:57] Messianic prophecies. So we're going to look at Moses. And we're going to start with the most obvious one. Now, obviously, well, it's not obvious unless you study it.

[8:09] But Moses wrote so much about Jesus. So much so that anybody who read the Torah in Jesus' day should have gone, ah, this means this must be Messiah.

[8:21] Oh, this means this must be Messiah. Some of which we've already covered in Matthew's gospel, like he healed the leper, for example. It was Jesus. It was the anointed one who was going to come and heal the leper.

[8:33] And because a Jewish leper had never, ever been healed before. Well, not quite true, but certainly since the law was given. Once the law had been given to Moses, it didn't happen after that.

[8:47] You had that case of I think it was Deborah, wasn't it, who became leprous and Moses prayed for her and she was healed. But that was before the law. Once the law was given, they had this law sitting on what you would call their statute book.

[9:01] Getting very, very dusty through lack of use. Until one day, Jesus healed a leper on the Sabbath. But he healed a leper.

[9:14] And for the first time in the whole of the history of the law, he had to go to the priest and invoke that law. And say, I was a leper and I've been healed.

[9:26] And he had to present himself to the priest so that the priest could go through a ritual that you'll find in Deuteronomy. These are all apologetics for the fact that Jesus was who he said he was.

[9:40] So there are so many we could pick and many of which we've touched upon anyway going through the gospel. But turn to Deuteronomy 18. Incidentally, while you're turning there, it's not something I'm covering today particularly, but all of the Jewish feasts in some way model Messiah.

[10:01] They all look backward to a time when they were blessed. And they look forward to a time when they will be blessed again by the appearance of Messiah. Some of them deal with Messiah at his first coming, some at his second coming.

[10:12] But they all deal with Messiah. One day we will do a series on the feasts because it is such a blessing to do. Right. Deuteronomy 18 verses 15 and following.

[10:26] And before we read verse 15, the passage immediately before this forbids spiritism. So you have you have God's people consulting the spirits of the dead for what might.

[10:46] As an attempt to get solutions to problems, they're consulting the spirits of the dead. And of course, the Bible speaks out and forbids against this and basically says that in verse 11, one who casts a spell.

[11:03] Let's start with verse 10. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes a son or daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination or one who practices witchcraft or one who interprets omens or a sorcerer or one who casts a spell or a medium or a spiritist or one who calls up the dead.

[11:20] For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord. And because of these detestable things, the Lord your God will drive them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God.

[11:30] So that's the that's the sort of preamble to what we're about to read. He's trying to take them from that which they should not be doing. And you could you could look upon the whole of the book of Deuteronomy as a kind of a sermon for them as to when they enter the promised land, how they should live and behave.

[11:51] Because Moses, of course, doesn't go with them into the promised land. That's another study. But what's happening here then is in order to instruct them.

[12:02] As to what the future holds for the Jews, he then says this in verse 15. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen.

[12:16] You shall listen to him. So Moses here is is designated as a prophet. We also know that Moses was a priest.

[12:31] Not in the sense of being a Levite necessarily, but he was a priest because he did things that priests do. He if you think about it, prophets spoke the word of God to the people and priests took the side of the people and represented the people before God, usually to ask for his mercy, sometimes to ask for his direction.

[12:56] But the prophets spoke the word of God out. The priests put themselves before God and pled their case. And Moses did both of those.

[13:08] One week, if you want to take a quick look at an example, go to chapter 32 of Exodus. And if you start at verse 11.

[13:19] Moses entreated the Lord, his God, and said, Oh, Lord, why does your anger burn against your people whom you were brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians speak saying with evil intent?

[13:33] He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth. So God's people have really upset him and he's threatening to just destroy them.

[13:48] And Moses, as a priest, is saying, why would you do this? Turn from your anger and change your mind about doing harm to your people. If you then jump down, because we're not there to study the rest of that passage, but this is Moses in role as a priest.

[14:06] If you go to verse 32 of the same chapter. So fervent is Moses' representation of the people that he says.

[14:16] Moses puts himself in the place and is prepared to die, if you like, as a kind of substitutionary sacrifice for the sins of the people whom he represents.

[14:43] So he's modelling what Christ will later do. Because in this particular instance, he's not required to give up his life, that God does hold back his anger from the people.

[14:55] And it's through Moses that the various feasts are introduced that allow people to get temporary measures of forgiveness. When they make a burnt offering or on the day of atonement or, you know, times like that.

[15:10] It's through Moses that these pathways are created to. You know, when you you know, when you get an email that you're not sure how to respond to.

[15:21] So you send what they call a holding email. And it's an email that says, yeah, OK, I've heard your message, but I'll come back to you. This is that kind of thing where the Jews are given all of these sacrifices that temporarily relieve their sin.

[15:38] But none of it is permanent until Messiah comes. And what we just read in chapter 15 was. God had said to Moses, tell the people, I'm going to send a prophet like you.

[15:52] In the future, because you're not coming into the prophet land, promised land. They're all going into the promised land without you. But they're not being left bereft.

[16:03] Someone will come who will be like me, like Moses. But go back to Deuteronomy 15, because there's one or two bits.

[16:15] We need to understand that whilst this is a prophet like Moses, the likeness is limited.

[16:27] He's someone who people are going to be able to look at and say, well, he's just like Moses. And if you recall, they said this of John the Baptist. One of the reasons you can be sure that John the Baptist also had a miraculous ministry.

[16:41] Again, that's another study. But they said of John the Baptist, is this Moses? Is this Elijah the prophet? Who is this? Is this the Messiah?

[16:53] They all asked questions because he was like Moses. But in chapter 15, the passage we've just read, or the verse we've just read, verse 15.

[17:04] Chapter 18, verse 15. Excuse my stumbling tongue.

[17:15] The Lord will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you. So this means whoever this prophet is, is going to be a Jew.

[17:25] And you shall listen to him. I don't want to over-egg this, because one can be in danger of manipulating scripture.

[17:38] But when it says you will listen to him, it uses the same word as is used when God says, hero Israel, Shema Israel, the Lord your God is one.

[17:52] I'll leave Linda to say it in Hebrew if she wants to. The Shema, the most famous, I guess it's the most famous repeated verse in Judaism.

[18:05] Shema Israel. There you go. Why should I do it when I've got people in the room who speak the language? So Shema does mean here, but it doesn't mean here.

[18:24] And please do correct me if I'm wrong about any of this, but this is as I understand it. It doesn't mean here in the sense of, oh, I heard a bird sing, or I heard a car go past.

[18:34] It means here and respond. Here with that kind of heart that says, what do you want to say to me? It's the sort of hearing that we, I hope, do, and with very limited ability, I have to say, when we pray, and when we're praying about something in particular, and we're asking God to show us something, or to show us the way, or to reveal a fact to us, or direct our lives, or whatever it is.

[19:04] We are, I want to know. I really want to know. It's a sort of hearing that I think St. Paul describes when he says, Lord, I want to know you and the power of your resurrection.

[19:17] It's a kind of an urgent hearing. And I hope I haven't over-egged it, but that's what I think is expected here, that you won't only witness the arrival of this witness, but you will listen to him with ears that want to respond to what he says.

[19:32] And so was Jesus a prophet like Moses, is the next question. Because if he wasn't, they should have rejected him out of hand. And I'm going to take a fairly, what shall I say, unscholarly look at this, in the sense of this had to be obvious to the people of the day, who may not have been particularly literate, who may not have been avid students of the Bible.

[20:00] But somehow they knew the Bible because the Pharisees had beaten them down with it all their lives and their ancestors had passed it on to them.

[20:11] And they just lived in the Bible and they knew what the scriptures said. And so one of the first things that would have revealed that this was a prophet like Moses is the similarities between the two.

[20:25] Of course, you can't see this, so I will run through them. The one slide I should have put on the screen and I didn't. So Moses was born in a time when babies were being killed.

[20:39] And they had to protect him from being killed. Jesus had to flee to Egypt to avoid the slaughter of babies. Moses learned all the wisdom of Egypt and was viewed as being mighty in word and deed.

[20:53] And you'll read this in Acts 7.22. In Mark 6 verse 2, they were astonished at his teachings in the synagogue.

[21:06] So the level of depth, wisdom, profundity in these teachings that Jesus was giving made him very much like Moses and the way Moses was understood.

[21:19] Moses supposed his brethren would understand. This is that occasion when he killed the Egyptian. But he assumed they would understand about things, but they just didn't.

[21:30] You read that in Acts 7.25. In John's Gospel, chapter 1 verse 10 and 11 and chapter 6 verse 66, it says, Moses was rejected by his brethren.

[21:47] Jesus was rejected by his brethren. Moses returned to his people after those who sought to kill him were dead. Jesus went off to Egypt to be protected as a baby and returned to Israel when Herod had died.

[22:05] Israel was in bondage to the Egyptians, always a symbol of sin. Egypt was always a symbol of sin. Israel was in bondage to Egypt.

[22:18] In Jesus' day, Israel was in bondage to literal sin. Not just something that symbolized sin, Egypt, but they were in bondage to sin. And in Matthew 1 verse 21, I came to set his people free from sin.

[22:36] Or John 8.36 gives the same message. They turned Moses down as their ruler at one point. They rejected Jesus, who was the heir of the father, as their leader.

[22:50] And we've seen that happen in Matthew 12 as we've been studying Matthew's Gospel. And you can also find it in Matthew 21 verses 33 to 39. Moses showed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt.

[23:05] Acts 7.36. Jesus went about healing all manner of sickness. In their hearts, the people turned back again to Egypt. They, we want to go back to Egypt.

[23:20] And in John 6 verse 66, from that time, many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him. So lots of things about his life.

[23:32] And I've got a list of, I think there's nine in that list. You could make a list of multiple tens of examples where Moses was, his life paralleled the life of Jesus right through.

[23:49] So just looking at his life would be enough to make somebody say, this guy was just like Moses. So many items in his life reflect what Moses' life was like.

[24:03] Another example of when Moses wrote about Jesus is in Genesis 22. In preparing for this morning, it wasn't a question of finding passages I could use.

[24:17] It was a question of which ones do I use and which ones do I exclude? Because we could be here till tomorrow morning if I'd gone through all of them. But in Genesis 22, we've got this account of the offering of Isaac.

[24:38] Itzhak. And it says this. Now it came about after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham. And he said, here I am.

[24:49] And he said, take now your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.

[25:01] First of all, if you think of Isaac, was Isaac Abraham's only son? Literally, he wasn't.

[25:15] If you look at our society on earth today, how many sons does God have? Would you say they're all his sons?

[25:25] And I mean female sons as well as male sons. Are we not all his sons? Of which sons does he actually account them as sons?

[25:37] Of which does he actually say, yes, you're my son. And today I have begotten you. Sorry? Legitimate sons.

[25:49] The legitimate sons are the ones who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and are saved. So it's worth making the point that although Isaac was not his only son, he was his only legitimate son.

[26:02] And he was the son of promise as we are sons of promise. So he's only paying attention to the sons of promise when he says this. And he says, take now your son, your only son.

[26:13] And offer him there as a burnt offering. A burnt offering was an offering for anybody? Sin. And the burnt offering was an offering in which the animal that you put on the fire as a substitutionary sacrifice was burnt to complete destruction.

[26:38] So there was nothing left but ash. So God was saying, take now your son, your only son, and destroy him as an offering for sin.

[26:52] Just to clear up one thing that bothers some people, and that is God has in other places in Scripture spoken against child sacrifice. And so they do tend to say, well, how can God be against child sacrifice and ask him to do this?

[27:09] The point was he never, ever intended Abraham to carry this through. So this was a symbolism, not only for Abraham, but ever since that day for us as well.

[27:24] Because when the knife was raised, let's read on. So Abraham rose, verse 3. So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son.

[27:37] And he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place which God had told him. On the third day, that's significant, isn't it?

[27:49] You just pass over that. But on the third day, it was three days from knowing. Effectively, Moses lost his son on a particular day because he knew he had to sacrifice him.

[28:02] And three days later, he was on the offering table where he was raised from the operating table. He was raised from the offering table.

[28:16] Just no extra charge for that. On the third day, Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance. Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there, and we will worship and return to you.

[28:33] Can you see here that Abraham believes that whatever happens, God, if necessary, will raise his son from the dead?

[28:46] Because he says, we're going to return to you. Verse 6. Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife, so the two of them walked on together.

[28:59] Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, my father. And he said, here I am, my son. And he said, behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

[29:12] Lots of people portray this in pictorial ways where you see this man leading a little child up the mountain as an act of child sacrifice. By this time, Isaac was at least, and people argue about this, but only within small amounts.

[29:29] He was an adult. He was at least 18 years old. Some say he would probably be 30 years old because it would have made him approximately the same age as Jesus when he was sacrificed.

[29:40] So there are all sorts of nuances, which I'm not going to go into this morning. But one of the critical things is this is not a baby. This is a fully grown man who trusts the father implicitly.

[29:58] If you want me to lay on an offering table, dad, I will lay on an offering table. You think he couldn't have fought him off if he'd wanted to. But he allowed himself to be bound on the table and allowed the kindling to be stacked around him and saw the knife and implicitly trusted the father for the outcome.

[30:18] Just as Abraham was implicitly trusting the father for the outcome. Verse 8. Abraham said... Now this is interesting to me.

[30:29] This verse fascinates me. In English, most of your versions will say Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.

[30:42] So the two of them walked on together. If you have an old King James, it will say, God will provide himself the lamb. It lifts out the for himself.

[30:55] It leaves that out. The truth is, the Hebrew language at this point, as far as I can work it out, it's ambiguous. And one way to read this, and the way I choose to read it, and you'd have to work your own thing out, is God will provide himself a lamb or as a lamb.

[31:16] I think, personally, this is a promise that you don't have to sacrifice Isaac because I will sacrifice myself.

[31:30] Now you can read it, he'll provide a lamb, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I think it's deeper than that personally. And by all means, argue with me about that later if you feel the need. So why did he go through all this?

[31:45] Why did God go through this ritual, this, I don't know what you call it, drama, when he never had any intention that Isaac would die? Well, number one, he was testing Moses to see if he meant business, and I think we can all expect those tests.

[32:01] There are times when God will see if you mean it. But I think it was also to enable Jesus, in John chapter 5, to say, Moses wrote about me.

[32:19] Because Abraham didn't kill anyone. Moses wrote about Abraham. Abraham didn't kill anyone. He was ready to if God demanded it of him, but he didn't have to, because God intervened with a substitutionary sacrifice.

[32:33] That enables us to believe that Jesus was like Moses, in that he brought himself as the lamb. And I think John the Baptist got a hold of this when he indicated Jesus approaching and said, behold, the lamb of God.

[32:51] As soon as he said, behold, the lamb of God, every Jewish mind around would have thought Passover lamb. He's talking about the Passover lamb. And he's indicating Jesus is the fulfillment of and will be the ultimate Passover lamb.

[33:09] And he was able to do that and gain understanding from his Jewish audience because Moses wrote about Jesus in this passage. That's my contention. Turn to Acts chapter 7.

[33:23] Because what I think we see in Acts chapter 7 is an important use of the fact that, according to the Old Testament, Jesus was expected by the generation that had Jesus in their midst.

[33:41] And you know this occasion quite well. Stephen was giving a defense for his faith, after which he got stoned to death.

[33:52] It was the final rejection. It was an opportunity for the Jews one last time to repent and to accept their Lord. And they did not. But Stephen says this in Acts chapter 7, starting at verse 1.

[34:06] The high priest said, Are these things so? And he said, Hear me, brethren and fathers. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham.

[34:17] How do they know that happened? Because Moses wrote about it. When he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, Leave your country and your relatives and come into the land that I will show you.

[34:30] Again, Moses records this. Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him moved to his country in which you are now living.

[34:42] So, again, they got that from Moses. But he gave him no inheritance in it, not even a foot of ground. And yet, even when he had no child, he promised that he would give it to him as a possession and to his descendants after him.

[35:00] This is all Moses writing about Jesus. And Stephen is using it to preach the gospel to the people who are about to throw rocks at him. But God spoke to this effect, that his descendants would be aliens in a foreign land and that they would be enslaved and mistreated for 400 years.

[35:20] And whatever nation to which they will be in bondage, I myself will judge, said God. And after that, they will come out and serve me in this place. And he gave him the covenant of circumcision.

[35:34] And so Abraham became the father of Isaac, and circumcised him on the eighth day. And Isaac became the father of Jacob and Jacob of the 12 patriarchs.

[35:45] The patriarchs became jealous of Joseph and sold him into Egypt. Yet God was with him and rescued him from all his afflictions and granted him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

[35:58] And he made him governor over Egypt and all of his household. Now a famine came over all Egypt and Canaan and great affliction with it. And our fathers could find no food.

[36:10] But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our fathers there the first time. On the second visit, Joseph made himself known to his brothers and Joseph's family was disclosed to Pharaoh.

[36:23] Then Joseph sent word and invited Jacob, his father, and all his relatives to come to him, 75 persons in all. And Jacob went down to Egypt and there he and our fathers died.

[36:35] From there they were removed to Shechem and laid in the tomb which Abraham had purchased for a sum of money from the sons of Hamor in Shechem. But as the time of the promise was approaching, which God had assured to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt until there arose another king over Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph.

[36:59] It was he who took shrewd advantage of our race and mistreated our fathers so that they would expose their infants and they would not survive.

[37:11] It was at this time that Moses was born and he was lovely in the sight of God and he was nurtured three months in his father's home. After he had been set outside, Pharaoh's daughter took him away and nurtured him as her own son.

[37:26] Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians and he was a man of power in words and deeds. But when he was approaching the age of 40, it entered his mind to visit the brethren, the sons of Israel.

[37:40] And when he saw one of them being treated unjustly, he defended him and took vengeance for the oppressed by striking down the Egyptian. And he supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him, but they did not understand.

[37:58] On the following day, he appeared to them as they were fighting together and he tried to reconcile them in peace, saying, Man, you are brethren, why do you injure one another?

[38:09] But the one who was injuring his neighbor pushed him away, saying, Who made you a ruler and judge over us? You do not mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday, do you?

[38:21] At this remark, Moses fled and became an alien in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. After 40 years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of the burning thorn bush.

[38:38] When Moses saw it, he marveled at the sight. And as he approached to look more closely, there came the voice of the Lord. I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

[38:50] Moses shook with fear and would not venture to look. But the Lord said to him, Take off the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt and have heard their groans and have come down to rescue them.

[39:07] Come now, and I will send you to Egypt. This Moses, whom they disowned, saying, Who made you a ruler and judge? is the one whom God sent to be both a ruler and a deliverer with the help of the angel who appeared to him in the thorn bush.

[39:24] And just pause there for a moment. This paints a picture of exactly what Jesus came as their deliverer and they rejected him and he will come again and he will deliver the remnant.

[39:38] But all that we've read so far, they learned from Moses. Moses wrote of me, Jesus said. Verse 38, This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness together with the angel who was speaking to him on Mount Sinai and who was with our fathers.

[39:56] He received living oracles to pass on to you. So he's now addressing the crowd. He received living oracles to pass on to you. He's suddenly in the present.

[40:06] Saying to Aaron, Make for us gods who will go before us for this Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt. We do not know what happened to him. At that time, they made a calf and brought a sacrifice to the idol and were rejoicing in the works of their hands.

[40:23] But God turned away and delivered them up to serve the hosts of heaven as it was written in the book of the prophets. It was not to me that you offered victims and sacrifices 40 years in the wilderness.

[40:35] Was it, O house of Israel? You also took along the tabernacle of Molech and the star of God, Rompha, the star of the God, Rompha. The images which you made to worship, I also will remove you beyond Babylon.

[40:52] Our fathers had the tabernacle of testimony in the wilderness just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it according to the pattern which he had seen. And having received it in their turn, our father brought it with him.

[41:05] Sorry. Our fathers brought it in with Joshua upon dispossessing the nations whom God drove out before our fathers until the time of David. David found favour in God's sight and asked that he might find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.

[41:22] But it was Solomon who built a house for him. However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands as the prophet says, heaven is my throne and the earth is the footstool of my feet.

[41:35] What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord? Or what place is there for my repose? Was it not my hand which made all these things? You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit, you are doing just as your fathers did.

[41:57] Which one of the prophets did your fathers persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the righteous one. You see, he was expected. They killed the prophets who were announcing the coming of the righteous one.

[42:10] Whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. You who received the law as ordained by angels yet did not keep it. And the last little bit of the passage, they stoned Stephen to death for what he had said.

[42:26] The point of this little mini-series which finishes today because next week we're back on Matthew's Gospel is Jesus was always expected and there was no excuse for rejecting him.

[42:42] And what we read in Romans chapter 1 if you start at verse 18 and read through to the end you will find that we today also have no excuse for rejecting him.

[42:54] If you just look at his creation that should be enough to at least convince us that there is a God and he's real. Father, thank you for this word and for bringing clarity to my mind as I spoke it which I must admit I didn't have when I started.

[43:14] Lord, your word is true and dependable and we can we can simply trust that our Father knows what he's doing even when it all appears to be going wrong.

[43:29] And just as just as Abraham trusted you in the face of having to sacrifice his son we can trust you even in situations of life and death with the worst case scenario being that we will be among those saints under the altar saying how long, oh Lord before you avenge our blood that Lord you haven't just sorted our lives out temporarily while we are on this earth but you have sorted our lives out eternally and we are so grateful that we have an eternal existence with you to look forward to Amen Amen.