'Moses Wrote of Me’: The Messianic Hope of the Law - John Piper
- Andy McIlvain
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
Video from Desiring God
" 'Moses Wrote of Me’: The Messianic Hope of the Law - John Piper
Many of you know that the former US Senator from Nebraska and then-president of the University of Florida, Ben Sasse, was diagnosed recently with pancreatic cancer and is not expected to live but a few more months. He did an hour-long interview with Ross Douthat that was posted on YouTube on April 9.
Douthat asked him, “Are you angry at God ever?”
Ben Sasse said, “No.”
“Not at all?” Douthat responded.
Mr. Sasse went on, “No. I wouldn’t want a sovereign God to defer to all of my prayers with a yes. I’m not omniscient. I don’t know what the weaving together of the tapestry of full redemption should look like. But I know the period of suffering that I’m going through is a benefit because it is a winnowing. I’m filled with dross. This suffering is not salvific, but it is sanctifying, and I’m grateful for it. . . . I now in the midst of this disease know much more my finitude than I let myself believe in the past. . . . I can’t keep the planets in orbit. I can’t even grow skin on my face.”
Then Douthat asked him how to help an unbeliever:
“For the listener or viewer who . . . doesn’t believe in God and finds your cosmic optimism admirable, but maybe he thinks that you’re deluding yourself on the brink of actual finitude, what would you say to that person?”
This is the part of Ben Sasse’s response that I’m most interested in. Think of someone saying to Jesus (Sasse is not Jesus — that’s not the point), “Jesus, here you are surrounded by scribes and Pharisees who have read the books of Moses and the prophets all their lives, and who hear you talking about existing before Abraham [John 8:58] and death and resurrection and eternal life. And they can’t believe you. They think you are deluded. What would you say to them to help them see and believe the truth?”
Here’s how Ben Sasse said he would respond to the person who thinks Ben is deluded:
“Let’s read the book of Romans together. . . . Paul says in chapter 1 there are lots of intellectual arguments you can make against God, but you have to start with a fundamental question about what do you do with this moral issue of our own conscience. And does the individual in your hypothetical really start with the claim that things are right in your soul? Because I can’t relate to that. Things are not right in my soul. My soul thinks Ben should be God, and I want that to die. Cancer sucks. But I’m pretty grateful that cancer is a stake against my delusional self-idolatry.”
Now, what does that have to do with the overarching theme of this conference, “Christ in All of Scripture”? And particularly with the topic assigned to me, “‘Moses Wrote of Me’: The Messianic Hope of the Law”?
“If you could see and embrace the message of Moses, you would know Jesus. You would believe him.”
The connection is in this: Just as Ben Sasse was asked to speak into the unbelief of a person who can’t see the beauty and worth and greatness of the reality that is holding up Ben’s faith, so Jesus in John 5 is speaking into the unbelief of the Jewish leaders who cannot see the beauty and worth and greatness of the reality that has been in front of them in the books of Moses all their lives and now stands bodily in front of them in the person of Jesus. They didn’t see it in the books, and they didn’t see it in the person. Why? What would Jesus say? Is it similar to what Ben Sasse said?..." from the Transcript
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