‘Moses Wrote of Me’: The Messianic Hope of the Law

Many of you know, that the former senator from Nebraska and former president of University of Florida, Ben Sasse, was diagnosed last fall with pancreatic cancer and is not expected to live more than a few more months.

He did a interview with Ross Douthat which is posted on YouTube April 9, and I would just be curious, if you've seen any part of that video, would you raise your hand? Good number.

If you haven't, by the time I'm done, I think you'll think I should go look it up.

Just type in Ben Sasse into the search and it'll come.

So at the end of that interview, Ross Douthat asked him, I mean, he looks like his face had been taken to a blowtorch.

You've got to be careful.

If you've got a queasy stomach, you might not want to look at this video.

But he asked him, are you ever angry at God? And Ben Sasse smiled and said, no.

And he said, not at all.

And Ben 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 that the suffering I'm going through is a benefit because it is a winnowing and I am 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 of 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 how he would help a person who cannot believe this.

Douthat says, for the listener or viewer who doesn't believe in God, and finds your cosmic optimism admirable, but maybe he thinks you're deluding yourself on the brink of actual finitude, what would you say to that person? Now this is the part that I want to talk about in relationship to our theme, believe it or not.

And before I read his answer, think of Jesus, he's not Jesus and that's not the point.

Think of Jesus here surrounded by scribes and Pharisees who have read the books of Moses and the prophets all their lives and who hear you, Jesus, talking about existing before Abraham, talking about dying, talking about rising again, talking about eternal life.

And these Pharisees and scribes can't believe you.

They think you're deluded.

What Jesus would you say to them? Jesus, what would you say? That's where we're going in John 5 in just a minute.