“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Eph. 2:10)
When Moses met God at the burning bush, from that time forward Moses was no longer in complete control of his life.
In the scriptures Moses is called the “law-giver” (Jn 1:17), because through Moses the Israelites received the Ten Commandments and the other ordinances that make up the Law. Yet when Moses is delivering the Ten Commandments to Israel in the fifth chapter of Deuteronomy…at the same time that Moses is delivering his speech…he is also standing there as an example of the second half of the cross.
After his calling at the burning bush, the self-will and self-direction of Moses are nailed to the cross of Christ as much as anyone in the Bible.
Paul says in the New Testament that the cross of Christ was a stumbling block to the Jews (1 Cor. 1:23). The Pharisees and scribes expected the Messiah to be a savior who would deliver the nation of Israel from the political control of Rome (Jer. 23:5-6; Isa. 9:6-7).
The Pharisees and scribes could not conceive of a Messiah who could deliver them from something far more enslaving than the political and military power of an occupying foreign nation—namely their own self-in-control natures as kings atop the thrones of their lives.
Throughout the gospel of John the Jewish leaders and Jesus are in verbal conflict over what constitutes true worship of God and right living. The Jewish leaders claimed to be the children of Abraham and disciples of Moses, yet Jesus said that they did not have the knowledge of God in them (Jn 8:19). The Pharisees, scribes, and Jewish leaders stumbled so badly over the life of Jesus that they became the major players in bringing about the death of Jesus by crucifixion.
Not only did they fail to accept the first half of the cross—repentance and faith in Christ leading to salvation, but they utterly failed to comprehend and accept the second half of the cross—the death of self-will in surrender to God’s plans for their lives, after the pattern of the people of faith in the Bible.
Had they been faithfully living according to the second half of the cross, they would have recognized Jesus as the Messiah and followed Him. The second half of the cross was staring them and us in the face, when we look at the life of Moses the lawgiver.
What if Jesus did militarily defeat the Romans, and like King David restore political freedom to the nation of Israel according to popular expectations? The same religious leaders who rejected the baptism of John the Baptist, crucified Jesus, and persecuted the early Christian church, would still have remained in self-control on the thrones of their lives. Without personal repentance and conversion, the nation of Israel would not have been spiritually free at all.
Reformed Israel actually became the new Christian church, of Jewish and Gentile believers, in the first century.
In considering the life of Moses…Moses was a righteous man for the same reasons that Abraham’s faith alone was accounted to him for righteousness. By the time that the Law and the ordinances came to Moses and the Israelites, Moses had already gone to Egypt, performed miracles, delivered the Israelites, and parted the Red Sea, all through faith and trust in God. Moses was walking in God’s life-script for him long before the Ten Commandments came along.
This was the fundamental mistake made by the Pharisees, scribes, and Jewish rulers of Jesus’ day. They concentrated on following the Law, the ordinances, the temple services, the festivals, and other religious practices, according to their own self-efforts, and missed altogether the second half of the cross leading to a personal adventure of faith with God (Rom. 9:32).
Following the Law, and experiencing a living walk of faith, were both equally portrayed in the Hebrew Bible. Old Testament faithful believers were supposed to follow the “law of Moses” and have a personal relationship with God.
The Cross in the Christian Life 