{"id":1023,"date":"2014-07-05T16:36:48","date_gmt":"2014-07-05T23:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/?p=1023"},"modified":"2014-08-02T14:15:29","modified_gmt":"2014-08-02T21:15:29","slug":"who-is-your-moses-john-5-45-47","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/?p=1023","title":{"rendered":"Who is your Moses? John 5: 45-47"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who is your Moses?<\/strong><\/p>\n

45\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. 46\u00a0<\/sup>For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. 47\u00a0<\/sup>But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just like every message, my hope is that the title of this has stirred just a little bit of curiosity in you to discover what the world I\u2019m talking about.\u00a0 If so, that\u2019s good.\u00a0 If not, well you know that I care enough to try and get you to hear what I am about to teach because I believe it is that important.<\/p>\n

Let me recap just a little in case you joined us a little late. Jesus is spending a little one on group time with the leaders who honestly wanted him dead.\u00a0 This is one of they way people deal with things that annoy them, they get rid of them.\u00a0 I believed Jesus threatened their elevated position in life by destroying the very foundation of what they held tightly to.\u00a0 Rather than investigate if what he was teaching was correct, they attacked the messenger and in this case, the messenger was God in the flesh. Jesus was accusing them on the basis of several witnesses, some of which were discussed in previous messages which can be found on the church website.\u00a0 I\u2019ll include the site in the email.\u00a0 Now, Jesus is about to declare something that will rock them to their core.<\/p>\n

Jesus declares: 45\u00a0<\/sup>Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope.<\/strong> I wonder how much this must have incensed this crowd.\u00a0 What was meant by the statement that they had fixed their hope on Moses?\u00a0 To fix your hope on someone is to depend upon pleasing them in order to get into heaven.\u00a0 They believed that if they could satisfy Moses\u2019 requirements then they would enter glory.\u00a0 To them, Moses had set the bar for the entry requirements to enter heaven.\u00a0 They saw the 10 commandments as the path to heaven.<\/p>\n

They expected that Moses would stand at the side of God and defend them as followers but Jesus declares that the very person they had fixed their hope on will stand as their accuser.\u00a0 That Moses would turn from being the object of their hope to their accuser.\u00a0\u00a0 Can you imagine you were involved in a serious accusation, standing before a judge and you call in your best friend for life and he or she gets in the witness stand and turns against you?\u00a0 What would that feel like?\u00a0 How could it happen that the person who they believed would defend them would turn into an accuser?\u00a0 Because the very standards they had professed to follow are the ones they could not follow.\u00a0 You see, they choose the commandments of Moses to define holiness and then failed to reach the mark they had set.\u00a0 They could not follow the standards they had set in order to enter heaven.\u00a0 Truth is, no ordinary human was meant to but they couldn\u2019t see that.<\/p>\n

By the way, Romans 2:1-3 tells us that even non-believers have a Law which they attempt to adhere to and fail to follow.\u00a0 You might say, they don\u2019t appear to have a law. They do when they condemn others but then break that very law themselves. The fact that setting standards for others accuses us brings me to a very logical question and the title of my lesson.\u00a0 Who is my Moses?<\/p>\n

Who sets my standard?\u00a0 Who determines my bar, who writes my Law?\u00a0 If you are like most people, it is most likely one or several of the following.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You set your own bar \u2013<\/li>\n
  2. Your people \u2013 your parents, your gang, your family<\/li>\n
  3. Society \u2013 you live by the expected rules<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It is not so important who sets your standard but what we hold to be true if we keep to the standard that has been set.\u00a0 The point of Jesus in this passage is that the very standards that we attempt to keep will stand in judgment before a holy God.<\/p>\n

    There is no hope of entering heaven by any standard we attempt to live by with human strength because we are constantly breaking our own standards. \u00a0If you don\u2019t mind the example, take a diet.\u00a0 Imagine that you believed that you would make it into heaven if you never ate any meat, and then one day you discovered that you had been served beef broth instead of vegetable broth.\u00a0 There seems to be always things that begin to cross any line. \u00a0This is what Jesus did when he took the commandment Do Not Murder and went further to say that if we have anger towards another we are guilty.\u00a0 And if we are disgusted with someone enough to call them a fool, we are guilty enough to go to hell.<\/p>\n

    Have you ever heard the expression that there is honor among thieves? \u00a0\u00a0If you believe that thieves never steal from thieves \u2013 then you probably don\u2019t know many thieves. \u00a0Some people, when trying to determine if they would go to heaven or to hell, state they have never robbed a bank. \u00a0But should that bank make an error in their favor for a small or large amount, they wouldn\u2019t mention it. \u00a0And why do you think they attach all the pens in the bank to a small chain? \u00a0Because people do steal from banks.\u00a0 My point is that not only can we not live up to God\u2019s 10 commandments; we can\u2019t live up to our own list of rights and wrongs. \u00a0Even those who don\u2019t have God\u2019s commandments will condemned by the very things that they accuse others of doing. \u00a0You don\u2019t have to know the 10 commandments to have failed to live according to what you believe to be right and wrong.<\/p>\n

    When Moses wrote down the commandments, he gave God\u2019s list of perfect obedience. \u00a0This was given not to show us how to earn redemption but to show us what our Redeemer would be.\u00a0 That is the point of the next phrase as Jesus continues.<\/p>\n

    Moses was writing the standard that the coming Messiah would have to follow in order to be confirmed that He was the Messiah. \u00a0If the Law was the path to fellowship with God, how could Noah be called \u201crighteous?\u201d \u00a0He didn\u2019t even have the Law. How could Job be called righteous? \u00a0Abraham or Jacob.\u00a0 They all lived before the Law was known and yet God showed them that salvation comes by faith, not by works. \u00a0You don\u2019t need the law to know that you are breaking your own standards or your own law. \u00a0Did these patriarchs believe in Moses?\u00a0 Of course not, they didn\u2019t even know his name.<\/p>\n

    These people, who remember hated Jesus with a passion, believed that Moses had set out the rules for being saved but Moses wrote about the Savior and what His life would be like. \u00a0That is what Jesus means when He says that Moses wrote about Me.<\/strong> \u00a0Now, does that negate the commandments?\u00a0 Of course not \u2013 it just puts them in the proper place and shows that they are the guidelines for Holy living but they are not rules for redemption. \u00a0Salvation is by faith alone.<\/p>\n

    And Christ asks one more question that presumes a guilt upon his hearers. \u00a0But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0 He makes a statement about their lives by beginning with the statement, if or since you do not believe the writings of Moses. \u00a0This is more declarative than a question to them.\u00a0 They refused to understand because they had invested too much on the path towards faith by works that they refused to consider reconsidering. \u00a0This might be a character trait of men \u2013 usually we don\u2019t care if we are hopelessly lost. \u00a0We seem to have the mentality that if we are determined, we will get there eventually. \u00a0That might be true when you are looking for an address, but nothing could be more wrong about getting to heaven. \u00a0We might even look like we are being obedient to the point that we are doing things for God, but if we believe we are earning our way into heaven, we will be like those poor misguided hearts that stood in judgment and thought that doing things for God would get them into heaven. \u00a0Lord, didn\u2019t we cast out demons, and do great works for you? \u00a0I never knew you was God\u2019s response to these because they never believed in righteousness by faith. \u00a0They never suspected all the diligence in the world will not open heaven\u2019s doors. \u00a0No man will be saved based on what he did, unless what he did was believe God for his righteousness. \u00a0All our works are as filthy rags.<\/p>\n

    Christ\u2019s point is simple, if you wouldn\u2019t listen to the one that you admire the most \u2013 and for the Jews, it was Moses \u2013 then why would you listen to the Messiah when He came with the same message?<\/p>\n

    So who is your inner voice \u2013 who is your Moses? \u00a0What are the standards we are using to attempt to make us pleasing to God? \u00a0How sad it is when a child works so very hard to attempt to earn the love of a parent who loves them unconditionally? \u00a0Even in our Christian life, we have a measure of this that creeps in. \u00a0We like to think that we have to continue to earn God\u2019s favor. \u00a0I don\u2019t see that in the bible.\u00a0 Now please, don\u2019t believe I think that Christians can live like the world without some kind of discipline happening. \u00a0When we are disobedient to God, we bear the strain of that in many ways because God is teaching us obedience through many different tools. \u00a0But you can not lose God\u2019s love.\u00a0 You can not lose something you never earned, your salvation. \u00a0You can not earn redemption by your own good works and obedience when God has made provision to give it to you. \u00a0And the same is true with our daily fellowship with God. \u00a0Your fellowship with God is built upon what Christ did on the cross, not what you did do or didn\u2019t do last week.<\/p>\n

    May we understand our complete and total dependence on Christ for all things. \u00a0Live right but understand why you live right \u2013 to give glory to God and not to earn a gift that is already yours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Who is your Moses? 45\u00a0Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. 46\u00a0For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":592,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[46],"tags":[52],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1024,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions\/1024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hobart-community-church.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}