| Christian Life and Doctrine | November 1969 |
Moses As a Mediator
THE Law Covenant instituted at Mount Sinai was not made with Moses, but with the people of Israel, as Moses declared: “And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them and keep and do them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us alive here this day.”—Deut. 5:1-3
Moses was merely the mouthpiece of that covenant. The word “mediator” signifies “go-between”; as Moses said, “I stood between God and you.” (Deut. 5:5) The terms of the covenant and the arrangements of the mediator place the responsibility upon the mediator as the representative of the people, and as the representative of God to the people.
Correspondingly, Christ is the Mediator of the New Covenant. He is not yet completed. The Head has finished his work, ascended to glory, and has become the Advocate of those who desire to become members of his body, and for eighteen centuries God has been receiving the members of the body of Christ, the Mediator, into relationship with himself. Soon the last member of the foreknown and fore-ordained number of the elect will have been called, accepted, and found faithful; and then this age will end, because the great Prophet, Priest, King, Judge, and Mediator will be complete. And more than this, he will have finished his sacrifice—the sacrifice of the flesh, the merit of which is to go to Israel and the world, under the terms of the New Covenant: “They shall obtain mercy through your mercy.”—Rom. 11:31
So it was in the type. Before the Law Covenant was inaugurated, Moses took bulls and goats and slew them and used the blood thereof for the sprinkling of the tables of the law, representing the Almighty and his obligations to the covenant, and then he sprinkled the people, bringing them under the obligations of the covenant. The antitype of this is that immediately after The Christ is glorified beyond the veil, he will apply the merit of his sin-atonement of Calvary for the satisfaction of the whole world, and as the basis of the New Covenant which will be inaugurated with Israel, as promised.—Jer. 31:31
“To the Jew First” Is the Divine Arrangement
The sprinkling of Israel will come first—“To the Jew first” is the divine arrangement, as the offer of the privilege of becoming members of spiritual Israel was first offered to the Jews. But it will not cease with them. Many nations will be sprinkled—all who will. The knowledge of the glory of the Lord will fill the whole earth, and many nations shall say, “Come, let us go up to the house of the Lord; he will teach us his way, we will walk in his paths, for the law shall go forth from Mount Zion [the heavenly or spiritual kingdom] and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem [the earthly phase of the kingdom, represented by the Ancient Worthies, whom Messiah will make princes, or rulers, in all the earth].”
It will be seen that while it took but a moment to sprinkle the tables of the law, it must have taken Moses a considerable time to sprinkle all the people, numbering millions. And, in the antitype, that work lasts for a thousand years. During the entire thousand years of the reign of Christ upon his mediatorial throne the work of sprinkling the people—the work of justifying them, making them acceptable, cleansing them from sin, and bringing them into relationship with the covenant and its demands of perfect obedience—will be in process. At the close of the thousand years, when all of the people shall have been sprinkled—when all who desire to avail themselves of God’s gracious arrangement through Christ shall have done so—the mediatorial kingdom will come to an end; having finished its intended work the disloyal and disobedient will be destroyed in the second death. Thenceforth the New Covenant between God and men will remain a perpetual covenant. Through all eternity it will be true that Jesus was the Mediator of that covenant, but his mediatorial office will not continue.
“Still Beloved for the Fathers’ Sakes”
So it was in the case of Moses: the Law Covenant which he mediated was binding both upon God and Israel for a time whether Moses lived or died. Long after his death it was still spoken of as the Mosaic Law Covenant, and Moses was referred to as the one who mediated that covenant. Since the people could not fulfil the demands of the law, they could not have the everlasting life which it promised, but instead received its curse or condemnation of death. The atonement day, year by year, took knowledge of this fact and typically made satisfaction for their sins of the year and gave the Israelites another year’s opportunity in God’s favor, to try whether or not they could obey the law and gain everlasting life. But since the temple has been destroyed, and the Jewish priesthood lost, they have had no further repetition of the atonement-day sacrifices for now more than eighteen centuries, and hence, for all this period of time, they are completely cut off from manifestations of divine favor. The apostle, however, assures us that they “are still beloved for the fathers’ sakes,” and that in the divine plan a blessing is yet to come to them.
That blessing will come from under the New Covenant, established by the better Mediator. All who will accept him and the gracious arrangements of his mediatorial kingdom will attain the highest blessings promised to the nation, and become associated in the kingdom, which for a thousand years will bless all people with the gracious opportunity for returning to divine favor on the same terms—obedience to the extent of ability and faith in the Redeemer.