Moses had his ordinary shepherd's rod in his hand, when God called him to feed Israel (Ex. 4) It then became God's rod, for God made it the symbol and instrument of Moses's authority and grace in Israel. He was thenceforth to take it, that by it he might do his wonders in Egypt, and in the wilderness, for judgment on the enemy and for blessing to the people (Ex. 4:1717And thou shalt take this rod in thine hand, wherewith thou shalt do signs. (Exodus 4:17)).
It first swallowed up the rods of Egypt, to show that no strength could stand before God's strength, thus giving Egypt notice that it was hard to kick against the pricks (Ex. 7:1212For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents: but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods. (Exodus 7:12)). But Egypt would not learn that lesson. And then the rod brings the plagues of blood, of frogs,, and of lice, till the magicians own that they could not measure their strength with the Lord's (8:19). It is then used in the plagues of hail (9:23), locusts (10:13), and darkness (10: 22), and finally for the deliverance of Israel, and for the overthrow of Egypt in the Red Sea (14).
Thus was it the instrument of judgment and of grace in Egypt. It was but a weak shepherd's rod at first, but as such it was the more fit to become God's rod,-for he ever perfects his strength in our weakness, and chooses the weak things to confound the mighty.
But we are still to see the rod in the wilderness, for Moses with it opens the rock in Horeb (Ex. 17) By the same shepherd's strength and grace he now feeds the camp in the desert, as that by which he had redeemed them from bondage.
By all this use of the rod, Moses (and Aaron his associate) should have been fully submitted to by all the congregation. The wonders they did (of which this rod was the symbol) had fully accredited them, and entire subjection to them as the king and the priest, or God's dignities, was the righteous place of the congregation. But it happens otherwise. The congregation despise these dignities, and are for setting aside this king and this priest of God (Num. 16). That was a solemn moment in Israel. The rebellion of Korah and his companions was an awful consummation of despite of the Lord. But then the Lord pleads the cause himself. He judges the offenders, and in a solemn trial of the question, he determines by the budding rod who his dignities or officers were, that the murmuring of the congregation might be silenced forever, and that they might thus be saved from death (Num. 17).
Now we have much of the way of the Lord Jesus in all this. Jesus was set forth to Israel at the first as their Shepherd. He did his wonders of grace and strength, his miracles and healings and teachings, were enough to accredit him, so that they owned for a season that this was he (Matt. 12:2323And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David? (Matthew 12:23)). But Israel at length rose up against him, they despised God's king and priest, like Korah and his company, crucifying the Lord of glory. But God pleaded his cause against the nation by raising him from the dead. Jesus brought forth in resurrection, is the budding of the rod, the dead stick blooming blossoms and bearing almonds. Jesus in resurrection has all the virtue of this rod, both in silencing the murmur of every rival, and securing from death the soul that will trust in him, and allow his claims. These two virtues of the resurrection, are largely preached by the Apostles. The resurrection has made Jesus a Prince and a Savior. It has vindicated his claims and made him the dispenser of life. By it God has fully declared that all power is Christ's, that he is the spring of life and the executor of judgment. And the Apostles were the preachers of the resurrection in these its virtues, and the angel at the tomb so witnessed to it (Matt. 28 Acts 2:36; 17:31; 3:13, 16; 5:31; 1:22; 4:10-1236Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. (Acts 2:36)
31Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. (Acts 17:31)
13The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus; whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. (Acts 3:13)
16And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. (Acts 3:16)
31Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. (Acts 5:31)
22Beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection. (Acts 1:22)
10Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. 11This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. 12Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts 4:10‑12), Rom. 1:44And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: (Romans 1:4)). And now all blessing must flow through it, through this new rod, this budding rod, not Jesus as before born of a virgin, but Jesus brought from the dead; not the rod that was first in Moses's hand, but the rod that was brought from before the Lord (Num. 20:9; 18:79And Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as he commanded him. (Numbers 20:9)
7Therefore thou and thy sons with thee shall keep your priest's office for every thing of the altar, and within the vail; and ye shall serve: I have given your priest's office unto you as a service of gift: and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death. (Numbers 18:7)).
It is quite true that many perhaps at future seasons would not hear the voice of the budding rod, as now many will not hear the voice of the resurrection; but that does not alter the voice. Whether they will hear it or not, it silences murmurs,-the budding rod and the resurrection have established those claims, for which, Moses and Jesus the Son of God had been previously rejected and reproached.
This seems to me a simple following out of the history and the mystery of the rod. But then this also gives us the character of Moses's and Aaron's sin, by which they forfeited the land.
God will be sanctified in them that come nigh him (Lev. 10:33Then Moses said unto Aaron, This is it that the Lord spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace. (Leviticus 10:3)). He will have the provision which he has made, either for his own service or his people's blessing, honored by them. And the contrary of this was the sin of Nadab and Abihu. They took fire of their own, and did not use God's fire, the provision he had made for his own altar. Thus they did not sanctify him. And this was the sin of Moses and Aaron here. They did not sanctify God in his ordinance of the budding rod. They did not use it according to God's mind about it. They did not give it its ordained place, or duly own its virtues before the congregation. They acted as they did before, striking instead of speaking. They did not know the power of this rod-using strength instead of preaching the virtue of it. Nor did they duly honor the grace of the rod, for in it God's grace had greatly abounded. In spite of all their sin in the matter of Korah, God had set up this other witness for his praise and their blessing. But Moses and Aaron act no more in full sympathy with the grace, than they had with the power of the rod, for they upbraid the people, as well as strike the rock, while they were told merely to speak to the rock, and to do nothing with the people but bring them forth the water. Their conduct, therefore, was unbelief in the virtues of this mystic rod. It was unbelief in the present ordinance, and a return to previous dispensations.. They forgot the lesson of Num. 17 for a moment, and thus they forfeited the land.
Such was their sin, and such their judgment. And it is like present unbelief in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. For Christ risen is God's great ordinance now. The resurrection as I have said, is the true budding rod. It is that ordinance which has the virtues of Aaron's rod in it. When the resurrection is not honored in its fullness of grace to sinners, and of glory to God, as that which silences every tongue that should rise against the holy claims of Jesus, and also hinders the death and feeds the life of the poor sinner that will trust in him, God's ordinance is not honored, and then comes forfeiture of all blessing. For God must be honored in his ordinances, and sanctified in them that come nigh to him.
Now to this I would just further add, that Saul of Tarsus offended against the resurrection. He was chief among those who killed the witness of it (Acts 8:11And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. (Acts 8:1)). But Saul was brought to know it, and by that knowledge to die to himself and to live to be the witness of a higher glory still, even of ascension or heavenly glory. And so with Moses here. He offends against the budding rod, and loses Canaan, but afterward shines in the glory of the Church on the top of the hill (Matt. 17:33And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him. (Matthew 17:3)).
In the previous paper I have meditated on Moses's loss of Canaan. I would now trace the testimony to his heavenly glory. For though he lost the one, the Lord through abounding grace had prepared for him the other.
From Acts 7 we learn that the rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ by the earth, was the occasion (I speak of course, as remembering that " known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world") of giving him a glory in heaven, and in connection with a family there, of an order higher than any glory he would have known or gathered, had the earth received, instead of rejecting him. But that chapter also tells us, that that mystery had been typified in the histories of both Joseph and Moses. Joseph was sold, and Moses was refused by their brethren, but by reason of that, Joseph got joy and glory and a family in Egypt, and Moses got the same in Midian; and each of them was thus in his day, a foreshadowing of the glory and joy of the Son of God, in the midst of the Church or heavenly family, consequent on his being rejected in his day also by Israel and the earth.
But in the progress of Moses's history, we get him a second time separated from Israel, such separation being also followed by the same heavenly results. The sin of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai, by which the covenant was broken and the blessing forfeited, casts Moses again into the same heavenly character. The tabernacle, upon that sin of the golden calf, is removed, and pitched without the camp, the Lord in righteousness disowning his revolted people. But there Moses meets him, and meets him too in a new way, "face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Ex. 33:1111And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle. (Exodus 33:11)). This had not been so before. It was the expression of increased intimacy between the Lord and Moses. It was letting him into friendship with the Lord, such as the Church now stands in (John 15:1515Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. (John 15:15)). It was a new thing with Moses, a fresh character of glory in him, as his previous dwelling in Midian among the Gentiles had been new in its day.- And it was just the thing that distinguished Moses from all Jewish worthies or prophets, and took him above them; as we read, " there arose not a prophet since in Israel, like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face" (Deut. 34) And being in this place of intimacy, or in this heavenly place,, he acts according to the high prerogatives of it. He passes and re-passes between the glorious tabernacle which the cloud guarded, and the camp of the congregation (Ex. 33:1111And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp: but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle. (Exodus 33:11)). And this movement expressed his equal access to heaven and to earth, and thus that he was the Mediator, the shadow of our heavenly Priest, Christ Jesus. Joshua the while, was kept in the tabernacle, as the servant separated it is true, from the defiled and revolted people (as the righteous remnant will be in the latter day), but still not let into the place of intimacy, the heavenly place, which Moses filled.
And in another case he acts according to the high prerogatives of his new and heavenly character. He marries an Ethiopian woman (Num. 12) He takes another wife from among the Gentiles, and those, too who were, in common esteem, the very basest of the Gentiles (Jer. 13) His natural kindred, his connections in the flesh, are not prepared for this, and they speak against him, and are for refusing his place and authority. He being a man of heavenly temper, more meek than any who could have been found on the earth, says nothing to all this. But the Lord pleads his cause, and in doing so vindicates him on the very ground of that heavenly character which he had acquired in the days of the golden calf, or of the apostasy of the earthly people. " Hear now my words," says the Lord to Aaron and Miriam, " if there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream; my servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all my house; with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold—-wherefore, then, were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses."
Here the Lord very strikingly pleads in favor of Moses, and in full vindication of his doing an act which earthly or fleshly kindred did not understand, and were not prepared for, the intimacy with himself which Moses had acquired by the former sin of that earthly people. That intimacy, or speaking " face to face" with the Lord, had thus raised him quite above the Jewish, or earthly level, and had clearly given him a heavenly character, one of the prerogatives of which he had now been exercising, in marrying an Ethiopian woman, as he had before, as I have shown, exercised another of them, in passing and re-passing between the Lord in the tabernacle of glory and the camp of the people.
And I must notice the value of the word "all" in this passage. It is very striking in connection with my subject,-" who is faithful in all my house," says the Lord, words which went to tell Aaron and Miriam that Moses was a person of special dignity, having access to all parts of the Lord's house. It was not only that he was faithful, but faithful in all parts of the house, having title to be in the holiest, or heavenly place, as well as in the tabernacle of the congregation or the courts. For it is Moses's dignity as well as fidelity that his divine Advocate is here pleading.
All this strikes me as being very clear and strong, and thus Moses's second marriage, or with the Ethiopian, has the same voice as his first marriage, or with the Midianite. Both show him in heavenly character, or as the type of the Lord in union with the Church.
Thus Moses becomes a partaker of the heavenly calling, and according to this, as we may now further see, at the end he occupies the heavenly place.
We see him for instance, in the Mount Pisgah, viewing the land of Canaan stretched out beneath him (Deut. 34) That was a new mount of God to him. It lay a little outside the promised land, but it afforded him a full view of it. It was a high eminence, the top Pisgah on Mount Nebo, in the mountains of Abarim. The earth had now ceased to own Moses, Israel also knew him no more, the wilderness, too, had all been passed, and the Lord alone is his company on the hill that overlooked the land of promise. What an expression of the place of the Church or heavenly glory the whole of this is! on high with the Lord, Moses looks down on the earthly inheritance, the place of the tribes of Israel, Gilead and Daniel Napthali, Ephraim and Manasseh, with all the land of Judah to the sea, the south too, and the valley of Jericho, with the city of palm trees unto Zoar! A place that could command such objects beneath, and in such company, is heavenly indeed. Moses is on high with the Lord, looking on the cities and plains where the redeemed and happy families of the earth were to dwell. It is from heaven alone that such blessing and occupation of the earth in righteousness and peace, will be seen by the Lord and his children of the resurrection.
And again as another witness of Moses in the heavenly place, we see him in the New Testament, on another mount, the Mount of the Transfiguration. Peter, James, and John are there, representing Israel and the earthly people, and they are on the outside. But Moses is there, again in company with the Lord and another co-heir of the heavenly glory, and they are within, enwrapped in the cloud of the excellent glory, the true vail that is to separate the holy place from the courts, or the heavens from the earth. Moses is on the heavenly side of that vail, glorified in the likeness of the very Lord of the glory himself.
These are two strong and clear testimonies to the heavenly gloryof Moses,-striking exhibitions of him in the heavenly place, being in company with the Lord on the top of two hills, from the one of which he sees the earthly inheritance beneath him, and from the other, the earthly people outside him. And thus I judge from all these witnesses which we- have here listened to, we gather both the heavenly calling and glory, or the heavenly character and place of this honored and faithful servant of God. A child of the resurrection he is, and a joint heir of God with Jesus Christ.
Thus does Moses lose the earth, but gains heaven. He loses Canaan by his own wrong, trespassing, as we have seen, against the grace and power of the budding rod, but he gains glory on the top of the hill that overlooked Canaan, through the abounding kindness and love of God his Savior. Law says that "no man shall take advantage of his own wrong," and justly so, for righteousness forbids the thought that any one shall gain a benefit by his own misdoing. But grace does not act by law, for the glory we reap through it, as pardoned sinners, is richer and brighter far than that which Adam in innocency knew. God's riddle is solved in our history,-the eater has yielded meat, and the strong man sweetness. Moses and the Church both illustrate it: both are traveling onward through forfeiture of the earth, led by the hand of the Son of God, to the top of that hill which looks down on the goodly tents of Jacob beneath.- O beloved, what manner of people should we be! May the life and energy of the indwelling Spirit, keep us more and more separated to heavenly character, and heavenly hopes! Amen, Lord Jesus.