PROPHET AND MESSIAH
Jews think very highly of Moses. In fact, their entire religion is based on the law of Moses and they regard him as the greatest prophet who ever lived. Christians surely honor Moses as a great Bible character, but he does not factor into their religion — except for the Ten Commandments and for the miracles he did that make exciting material for Sunday School Books.

For Jews and Christians, Moses is a larger than life Biblical character. Except for Jesus, Moses had an unparalleled standing with God. His importance to both Jews and Christians is confirmed by the fact that Moses is mentioned in the Bible 764 times, while  Jesus is mentioned 948 times. For comparison, King David is mentioned 854 times, and Paul the apostle is mentioned 156 times. Moses is arguably an important character worthy of study.

Moses has a reputation as a prophet and lawgiver. Rarely do we think of him as a messiah, but he did fulfill a messianic function when he delivered Israel from Egypt which symbolically represents sin. Actually, he was both a prophet and a messiah. And, because he was born to parents from the tribe of Levi, he is also a priest. 

Prophets, messiahs and priests are not three different functions. These labels are just different ways of identifying people who are anointed to speak for God. They are also called angels, high priests, witnesses and warriors.

The qualification to be a messiah is anointing. God anoints people when he speaks to them. That means he puts his spirit (i.e. oil) on their hearts. This action by God is also represented as the process of becoming a New Covenant disciples which is what happens when God writes his laws on hearts. In other words, oil, spirit, and God’s laws are all the same thing.

STUDY TIP: See God’s Spoken Word for a list of the many words that God uses to symbolically represent his spoken word.

Moses was qualified to anoint Aaron and his sons because God put his words in Moses’ mouth when he sent Moses to deliver Israel from Egypt. Moses and Jesus were both prophets who spoke God’s words.

STUDY TIP: The topic of anointing and the story of Moses can be understood only when we first understand that Bible characters are not just historical characters. All Bible characters are People from whom we can learn.

The story in Exodus 4:10-16 about God’s words in Moses’ mouth is not just a story about a unique man named Moses. Rather, it is a parable of the experience that is common to all New Covenant disciples. That means that we should see ourselves as deliverer prophets like Moses and Jesus because our experience with religion and deliverance is modeled on their experience.

Like Moses, most of us are all born into religious environments. We all have some kind of status as spiritual sons of religious leaders (i.e. pharaohs). And a few of us have, like Moses, taken notice of the abuse that religious leaders have laid on our fellow religionists, and perhaps even made some feeble attempt to use our human strength to deliver them from oppression. And then, like Moses we have pulled away from religion because religious leaders tried to harm us because of our ineffective human efforts to subdue religion.

What happens to us after disengaging from religion may, or may not, be the same as what happened to Moses. The turning point for Moses was his encounter with God at the burning bush where he got a vision of Israel under fire from religion but not consumed by it. The vision he received was of God rescuing Israel (i.e. Moses’ family and friends whom he left behind in Egypt) from religious leaders (i.e. pharaoh) who had unjustly enslaved and oppressed them. Because Moses had already been moved in his heart to do something to help his people, he understood and appreciated what God wanted to do. And he was somewhat willing to do what God wanted him to do, but he had doubts that either pharaoh or Israel would listen to him. It is not surprising that Moses had doubts. God had a big job for him. Here is what he wanted Moses to do:

Moses’ doubted God on three points: That God would speak through him; that people would listen to him; that he was eloquent enough to speak for God.