Who Mediates for Moses?

Passage Introduction

Turn in your copy of Scripture to the book of Deuteronomy 3. Our passage for this morning will be Deuteronomy 3:23-29.

Throughout our last few studies in Deuteronomy, I’ve had a lot to say about faith, about the importance of trusting God, especially in the fact of difficult obedience. And that’s still the note I intend to sound this morning. Maybe you think I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, like maybe I should find another point to make. But I keep talking about faith because that’s Moses’s point throughout this whole section. And Moses keeps urging the people toward faith, because faith is hard. So Israel needs to hear about it, a lot, and so Moses has given them a bunch of different reasons to trust God.

And since faith is as hard for us as it was for Israel, we also need to hear, over and over again, just how many reasons we have to trust God.

Let’s pray that God would make that clear to us today.

Sermon Introduction

If you were to try to figure out which person in the Old Testament had the closest, most intimate walk with God, Moses would have to make the short list. He was something special among the prophets of the Old Testament, without parallel among them, the greatest prophet that Israel ever knew. God himself says as much in Numbers 12:6–8, “Listen to what I say: If there is a prophet among you from the Lord, I make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my household. I speak with him directly, openly, and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord.”

And the event that Moses here recounts at the end of his historical review is one that occurs within that context of that intimate relationship with God. It’s a personal exchange between God and Moses. And as I picture Moses, speaking these words to the people of Israel, I imagine him getting a little emotional at this point in his address. Because he’s telling them of a desperate prayer, begging God for just this one thing, a seemingly good thing. But his request is denied. The one thing he most desires in all the world, is kept from him, withheld by the God whom he has served so faithfully all these years, and with whom he has walked more closely, maybe than anyone who ever lived. And he’s even rebuked for his persistence in asking for it.

And as I consider this exchange, and Moses’s reason for recounting it to the people at this turning point in his sermon, surely it’s more than just an announcement that he would be passing the baton to Joshua. No, I think this is one last way in which Moses is using history to call the people to trust and obey. And here in particular, he is urging the people, and urging you, to recognize the gravity of that call to trust and obey. From what Moses says here, you must realize that there is nothing in the world more important, than to trust and obey.

I. Important because of the greatness of God’s work.

It’s important, first of all, because of the greatness of God’s work.

That’s what Moses impresses upon Israel when he reports the content of his prayer in verses 23-25. The work that God has already done is incomparably great.

And three aspects of the greatness of God’s work come through in what Moses says: it is great in power, in goodness, and in grace.

The great power of God’s work is what Moses highlights most clearly.

Verse 24, speaks of God’s greatness and strong hand, his deeds and mighty acts

Not hard to imagine some of the things Moses might have been thinking of—the 10 Plagues, parting of the Red Sea, victories over the Amalekites and Amorites and Midianites, gifts of manna and quail to eat, water produced from a rock twice.

And the point Moses is driving is what he says in the second half of vs. 24: the God of these incomparably great works is an incomparably great God.

He is uniquely powerful.

Not just the #1 deity of a pantheon of deities, like Ra for the Egyptians or Zeus for the Greeks.

Israel’s God is not just a bigger, more powerful alternative to the gods of the nations. He is something else altogether, in a class of his own.

By the way, that’s why the whole question of whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God is just a bad question. That question only makes sense if more than one God exists, or could exist. The right question is if Muslims, or people of any other religion, know the one true God, to which the answer must, of course, be no.

Negatively, this shows the importance of trusting and obeying such a God because that means he’s not the sort of God you want to cross, unless you want to end up like the Egyptian army at the bottom of the Red Sea!

But Moses’s emphasis in the beginning of his prayer is positive: what a privilege to call this God, our God!

And then Moses also speaks of the great goodness of God’s works.

Evident in the fact that Moses is glad to have seen them!

But of course, something previously emphasized, Moses knows what they’ve already seen is only the beginning.

Begun to show—wants to see the end!

Knows the land to which God is bring Israel is a beautiful land, a good hill country!

God has done wonderfully good things, and the best is yet to come!

That’s why Moses is begging God—the word he uses in vs. 23 is very strong—to see the fulfillment of his promises!

He longs to continue to see God’s goodness!

Do you? Is that what you want, more than anything in all the world? To experience the great goodness of God and his works?

That goodness especially seen in the great grace of God’s works.

The grace is a bit less clear than the power and goodness, but it is here, and it’s really important!

For one thing, the begging—the word in Hebrew is basically just a form of the word often translated “grace” or “favor,” that most literally means to plead for grace!

And then, notice the role that the reference to God’s great power is really playing in this prayer. That God has already been good to Moses in showing him his great works of salvation is what leads Moses to ask God to continue being good to him by allowing him into the Promised Land!

You know, kids are pretty naturally good at figuring out which parent they should go to when they want something, because they know one parent tends to say yes more often than the other in most households.

Moses has seen that God is the kind of God you can ask for things, because God has already done so much for him.

He’s seen God’s character as a God who loves to do good things for his people, and that, and that alone, provides a basis for Moses’s plea.

Which is important, because what Moses is asking for is not merely a good thing he doesn’t deserve.

Really, he’s asking for a stay of execution. For release from God’s judgment, because it’s for sin that he’s being kept out of the land.

But Moses has seen God withhold judgment before, more than once, when Moses himself interceded for Israel after they sinned. I have to imagine that those incidents are really what are fueling Moses’s confidence in putting this request before God—he knows that he is gracious! He has seen the great grace of his works!

So in a variety of ways, the greatness of God’s works shines through Moses’s prayer, and that communicates to Israel how they ought to think about God, and how they ought to think about what he has set before them.

They can see that God is no petty, provincial deity, no sadistic tyrant, no stingy master from whom favor must be purchased at a high price.

No, he is the good and gracious Lord of lords, the true and living God, sovereign Creator of all things!

What confidence in God and commitment to him ought this to have inspired in the people of Israel? What confidence and commitment ought it to inspire in you, especially when you have seen works of God orders of magnitude greater than anything he did for Israel through Moses, because you have Christ! You have the mystery of the incarnation, God becoming human, and you have the miracle of the resurrection, and you’ve felt the miracle of conversion, your stony heart turned to flesh, that you might repent of your sins and believe in Christ for salvation!

How could you not trust and obey such a God?

II. Important because of the seriousness of sin.

But also, this shows you the importance of asking the question … if that’s who God is, and if he is a God who does such mighty works … what might be the consequences of turning from such a God?

It’s to that question that Moses turns next, as he shows you that the call to trust and obey is the most important thing in all the world, not only because of the greatness of God’s works, but also because of the seriousness of sin.

You really have to understand what I’ve just finished talking about to fully grasp how Moses drives this point home.

You see, he’s made clear that, in light of who God is, in light of what God has done, and in light of what God has promised to do, Moses has come to the point of wanting nothing more than to see the final fulfillment of God’s promises.

And as Moses turns in verse 26 to God’s answer to his prayer, you see Moses denied his heart’s deepest desire. Denied what he has been working toward for decades.

And the gravity of that loss for Moses is heightened by a few additional factors.

For one thing, never forget the real meaning of the Promised Land—it’s the place of the fulfillment of all God’s promises, the place of rest, the place where God would dwell with his people. That’s what’s being taken from Moses.

Moses himself is personally eternally saved; he doesn’t lose the ultimate blessing.

But here he’s serving as an illustration for Israel of the ultimate consequence of sin.

Which really further intensifies the loss, because it’s a punishment, one that flows from the judgment of God in his anger against Moses’s sin.

Now I can dive a bit into why God is angry at Moses.

He says to the people, “The LORD was angry with me because of you.”

Is God angry at Moses for his own sin, or the people’s sin? The book of Numbers tells you that God forbade Moses from entering the Promised Land after he struck the rock for water, instead of speaking to it like God had said, because he had lost patience with the people’s complaining, and God said he had failed to uphold him as holy before the people. But Moses makes it sound like he’s bearing the guilt of the people’s refusal to conquer the land 40 years earlier (refer back to 1:37).

Don’t need to choose—both are true!

Not denying his guilt, esp. since he wrote Numbers himself, and also repeats that explanation in Deut 32.

Here emphasizing his role as representative of the people, mediator who in some sense bears their guilt before God as he goes between them and him.

Drives home the weight of the people’s sin by showing that it has even brought him down. Even their mediator, who has turned aside God’s wrath for them numerous times, is unable to enter the Promised Land because of their failure to trust and obey!

And that leads to what I think is the most terrible thing about all this, which is the second half of verse 26.

God doesn’t just say no to Moses’s request. He says, “That’s enough! Do not speak to me again about this matter.”

God sounds like that parent whose kid won’t take no for an answer! “Stop asking, Moses! No means no!”

I had to wrestle with this for a while. Doesn’t Jesus encourage us to be persistent in prayer?

Well, yes, but the problem is that, for all the good things about Moses’s prayer that I highlighted earlier, we have to conclude that, in the end, this is not a prayer of faith, because it’s directly contrary to God’s word that he would not enter the land, and a prayer of faith must be based on God’s promises, not contrary to his word.

But didn’t I say earlier that Moses’s confidence is in God’s grace, and that he may have had reason to hope for a reversal of his sentence based on the fact that he had successfully petitioned God to turn aside his judgment against Israel numerous times?

Wouldn’t that make Moses’s hope a legitimate one?

Well, sort of, but there’s a key difference.

Moses called to mediate for the people as part of his office. Mediator between them and God because that’s the commission God gave him.

But what happens when the mediator is himself a sinner? What can be done for the mediator when he bears his own guilt?

To put it another way, who mediates for Moses???

Do you see what this would have communicated to Israel?

If not even Moses was spared God’s judgment, how deep must be God’s wrath against sin?

If even the mediator needs his own mediator, how can any of them hope to escape God’s judgment if they break faith with him?

But as terrifying as you can imagine that might have been for the Israelites, it really is God’s mercy to show this to them, because ultimately he’s pointing them to their need for a better mediator, one who won’t die before the promise is completely fulfilled, and one who isn’t a sinner who needs his own mediator!

It’s especially in this way that this passage reveals Jesus Christ!

Christ, not merely a servant in God’s house, but the very Son of God, who mediates between you and God but needs no mediator for himself, because he is the sinless one!

Even Christ, taking on the sins of his people, not spared.

But being the sinless Son, the word of judgment was not the last word for him—God, being pleased with his obedience and sacrifice, raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand, where now he ever lives to intercede!

Does this not make you fear and tremble, when you consider that that’s what your least sin, your smallest sin, every careless word and every perverse thought, each and every sin deserves what God did to Jesus?

If you do not believe in Jesus, then fly! Fly to Jesus, and beg his mercy, because aside from him you’ve no hope of escape, if even righteous Moses was not spared, if even sinless Jesus was not spared, then you surely will not be forgiven, unless you are in Christ, the only true Mediator between God and humanity!

If you say you believe, but you live carelessly, if you’re harboring sin and refusing to confess it and give it up, then you have to understand the deadly serious of this! Wake up to your danger!

Remember the words of Hebrews 2:2–3, “For if the message spoken through angels was legally binding and every transgression and disobedience received a just punishment, how will we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?”

For you who have not neglected it, who have believed in Jesus, who mourn your sins and daily repent, let this increase your hatred for your sin and strengthen your resolve to fight it to the last, and let it add fervor to your prayers for God’s aid in that fight!

But having believed, know also that this shouldn’t cause you to live in terror of God’s wrath against your sin.

Your perfect Mediator has truly borne it away!

And Christ’s intercession for you can never fail, no matter how badly you fail, if only you hold fast to him by faith!

III. Important because of the stability of God’s promise.

Leads to the final point.

Call to trust and obey is important because of the stability of God’s promise.

Vss. 26-27 could easily cause the people to despair. How can God take Moses away at such a critical time? Would he judge them all, too? Would he abandon them now?

But that’s not where Moses wants to leave them! He wants them to trust God, not him, and so he calls them to trust and obey because God’s promises are stable, too stable to be shaken by the death of any man!

Even verse 27 begins pointing that direction. Yes, God says Moses won’t cross the Jordan, but he does let him see across.

One last act of grace before Moses dies.

This tells you that Moses is not ultimately renounced by God.

And then, vs. 28.

Commission, encourage, and strengthen Joshua. God’s providing a new leader for the people!

And he will enable the people to inherit the land!

God’s promise yet stands! He has not forgotten, and he will not change his mind! He’s sworn to give Israel this land, and by God, he’s gonna do it!

Not normally OK with the phrase “by God,” because it’s taking God’s name in vain, but in this case I really mean it—God swore by himself to do what he had promised!

And one commentator/preacher draws a connection to a New Testament event that I think really powerfully drives home this point.

Remember the Transfiguration, when Jesus’s glory is revealed to three of his disciples on top of a high mountain.

Two men appear on the mountain—do you remember who they were? Elijah, and Moses!

That might mean that Moses did actually make it to the Promised Land eventually, but I wouldn’t stress that too much, because at least one of the most promising candidates for the location of the transfiguration is actually still on the wrong side of the Jordan.

But I doubt Moses cared either way, because in front of him stood Jesus, the Savior of sinners who would mediate for Moses!

Jesus is the real and ultimate fulfillment of all Moses’s hopes, of all God’s promises, and so Moses actually gets something far better than what he begged God for, and he even gets a change to participate in the fulfillment of God’s promises because he is sent to that mountain to strengthen Christ for his impending sacrificial death!

What better proof could their be that God’s promises are a stable foundation for your faith?

God will not, because he cannot, let a single word of his promises fall to the ground.

He has fulfilled them all in Jesus, and will complete their fulfillment when Jesus returns!

This should show you just how important it is to trust and obey, because only the one who trusts will partake of these promises, and the one who trusts will always obey.

Conclusion

I hope you realize that this means that your response to that call to trust and obey God, to trust and obey him in Christ, is the most important thing about you.

Without that, nothing else matters.

Your job, your family life, your friendships, your studies, your hobbies, even your “good deeds,” they’re all an utter waste if you don’t first make trust in Christ and living for him the center of your life.

But if you really do trust and obey, then it gives meaning to all those other things!

So make the aim of your life what Paul describes in Philippians 3:13–14, “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.” ,