A Type of Christ

How many times does Moses cry out to the LORD for others as intercessor? After reading through Exodus and Leviticus and now in Numbers, Moses’ as a type of Christ seems clearer than ever. In literature, types commonly abound, being representative or symbolic of something to come. Biblical types are not perfect imitations but flawed characters pointing the way to Christ. 

Moses is clearly a deliverer “type.” Nothing could be clearer when looking at Exodus and God’s sending of Moses into Egypt to deliver His people from bondage, which is an easy type to see. God speaks to Moses “mouth to mouth, even openly, and not in dark sayings” (Num. 13:8, NASB revised) and sends him from his curious investigations of a burning bush in the wilderness into the darkness of Egypt, the place from which he has fled in fear and humiliation. Unlike Christ, this Moses is far from perfect, having fled from Pharaoh after murdering an Egyptian for beating a fellow Hebrew. This man who murders and hides his sin in the sands of Egypt is castigated by two Hebrews who ask him, “Who made you a prince or a judge over us?” (Ex. 2:14). Ironically, later God would elevate Moses, who argued he had not the skill to deliver God’s people from bondage to Egypt, telling him that He would provide Aaron to be his mouth, and Moses would “be as God to him.” Later, God tells Moses He will also make him “as God to Pharaoh” (Ex. 7:1), a king of kings as such. This reluctant leader full of flaws is left without excuse for obeying the seemingly impossible task God has assigned him 40 years after he fled Egypt, yet his lack of confidence in himself only serves more to elevate God, who does the work. 

In stark contrast to Moses, Christ does not hesitate to take on the seemingly impossible task of delivering His own by becoming one of the humans He has created. The Christ does not struggle with sin but is the perfect lamb of God, speaking often with the eloquence Moses himself complains of lacking—and He, too, confounding his hearers as He delivered hard truths to them. Christ is the ultimate deliverer that Moses points toward, and God shows this clearly in a prince of Egypt turned lowly shepherd, who becomes the very humble servant of God, far “more than any man who was on the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3). It is this humility that points to another type of Christ that Moses represents, an intercessor. 

An intercessor is one who puts himself between God and man for the purpose of reconciling, pleading on his behalf. Moses is such a man, as Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers clearly show, and it is this that has struck me so today. Moses not only intercedes to God on behalf of Pharaoh and the people of Egypt when asked for relief from the plagues, but he also intercedes for his own people time and time again as they grumble and complain and test God in the wilderness. Again, Moses is just a type of Christ, a flawed man interceding for other flawed men, but Jesus, a perfect man, intercedes for imperfect men showing that God’s requirement of His flawlessness is the only acceptable, perfect sacrifice for sin (1 John 2:1-2). As Leviticus clearly shows when God is establishing the Old Testament Law, a perfect animal without defect was required for the LORD to sanctify His people. 

Without Christ, we would be lost, particularly as Gentiles, “separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). Yet the hopelessness of our state apart from Christ’s perfect sacrifice is banished with the next words: 

“But now in Christ Jesus you who were formerly far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing in His flesh the enmity which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.” (2:13-16, NASB) 

Moses, having no home and finding one in the wilderness, having been rejected by both the Hebrews and Egyptians, like Christ who said of Himself, “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man ha nowhere to lay His head” (Luke 9:58, Matt. 8:20), chooses to intercede for his people. Like Moses, who often stretches out his arm with his staff extended as a type of Christ (Ex. 7:19; 8:6; 9:22-23, 29; 10:12; 14:16, 21, 27), Christ, extends his arms on the cross (Matt. 27:27-50) and redeems His chosen ones. God foreshadows this coming in Exodus 6:6 where He redeems His people “with an outstretched arm and with great judgments” (Ex. 6:6) through Moses, a type of Christ.