Moses foreshadowed Jesus as God’s chosen mediator between God and His recalcitrant people, turning aside God’s righteous anger. (As an aside, many people don’t think “propitiation”, with respect to Jesus’ sacrifice, should be in our translations of Romans 3:25, and perhaps they are right that “atonement” is more fitting, yet the principle of propitiation is hard to get away from when you study Old Testament prophecy).
23 Therefore [God, their Saviour] said he would destroy them—
had not Moses, his chosen one,
stood in the breach before him,
to turn away his wrath from destroying them.
32 They angered [the LORD] at the waters of Meribah,
and it went ill with Moses on their account,
33 for they made his spirit bitter,
and he spoke rashly with his lips. (Psalm 106:23, 32-33, ESV)
God was on the verge of enacting an almost total ethnic cleansing of the freshly rescued descendants of Abraham, until the one chosen by God, Moses, stepped into the breach to defend them (Exodus 32:9-14). Later, these same people—his own people—were his undoing, when Moses was prevented from entering the Promised Land as a result of his impatience with them and his failure to give God His due as holy before the people when he stole the credit for a miracle (Numbers 20:2-13).
Jesus is greater than Moses because, even though we caused His suffering He never spoke rashly so as to exclude Him from the promise, but went silently as a lamb to slaughter (Isaiah 53:7).
Lord Jesus, Prevent us from ever forgetting that You saved us when You stepped into the breach at the cross. We would surely have been destroyed had You not shed Your blood, it went ill with You a on our account, so thanks. Help us to honour Your Father as holy and not to steal His glory. Grant us to keep our cool, even when people let us down, and not say anything we come to regret.
Sparks 