“Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father, there is one who accuses you, Moses on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”
But let them not think that He would act as their accuser. It was not necessary. Moses himself accused them, the Moses on whom they had set their hope. They should take note of the fact that when they face God at the final judgment it is Moses who will be their accuser, the very one whom they have exalted and relied on, and it will be because they have refused to listen to his testimony to Jesus. So their failure to believe in Jesus is very much a failure to believe the very writings of Moses which they revered and meditated in constantly.
Indeed had they believed Moses they would have recognised in Jesus, from the very purity and impact of His words, the ‘prophet like unto Moses' of whom God said ‘I will put my words in his mouth and he will speak to them all that I command them' (Deuteronomy 18:18). They would have seen in Him the One Who was bruising the serpent's head by His power over evil spirits (Genesis 3:15). They would have recognised the Seed through Whom the whole world would be blessed as large numbers, including Samaritans, experienced the blessing of God through Him (Genesis 22:18). They would have recognised the One from the house of Judah, to Whom all the obedience of the peoples would be (Genesis 49:10). They would have recognised the Star and Sceptre from Israel (Numbers 24:17).
Had they listened to Moses they would not have tried to build around themselves a wall of righteousness by making a multitude of requirements that they were actually unable to fulfil, and have ignored the deeper implications of the Law which would have convinced them of their own sinfulness and need for God's mercy. The sacrificial system was itself proof that they could not keep the Law, and yet they were trying to use the Law as a means of justifying themselves. But even the sacrificial system pointed to Him, for as Isaiah had drawn out in his interpretation of the Law, in the end the sacrificial lamb must be a unique human being, suffering for the sins of His people (Isaiah 53).
‘His writings -- my words.' Compare Luke 16:31 where it is said that those who refuse to listen to Moses and the prophets will not be persuaded though one rose from the dead. The Scribes and Pharisees laid huge stress on the written ‘Law of Moses'. They thought that eternal life was available through meditation in it and response to it as proof that they were in the covenant. Yet they did not listen to what it was saying because of the darkness in their hearts. Their spiritual senses were dulled. No wonder then that they did not hear the words of the One Who was greater than Moses, for, vital though they were, His words were not in their eyes sanctified by age.
‘On whom you have set your hope'. They had set everything aside apart from their trust in Moses and his writings. These determined the course of their whole lives. And yet because of their blindness, and because of their desire for the approbation of their fellow seekers, they had missed Moses' essential message, the message of a Coming One Who would bring all to rights. There is also some evidence that first century Jews believed that Moses would intercede for them at the judgment. But if only they realised it there was only One Who could do that, the One Whom they were now rejecting.
So Jesus left the Judaisers in no doubt as to what they were doing when they rejected Him. They had rejected God's bevy of witnesses.