When You Get Where You Are Going Whose Got Your Back?

When you get where you are going who has your back?

I talk to people all the time who feel like they have been betrayed, double crossed, stabbed in the back, cheated. And maybe that is you here today.

I had an uncle named Rob. He was mine and many of my other cousins favorites.

My cousin Daniel who is Uncle Rob’s son said to me, “I don’t know what I am going to do. the only person who every believed in my no matter what is gone.” the only person who always had my back.

life is a journey . . . and when you get where you are going who has your back?

I was thinking about this question when I considered the life of Moses. It seems like at this time of year they alway play the 10 commandments on TV so there he was on TV and I was thinking about him.

You know what I believe that people appreciate about Moses is that he always was advocating for others. He was a guy who people knew had their back even at the expense of his own back.

That is how he got into trouble in the first place. He was raised in Pharo’s household and he saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite and so he stepped in to defend the Israelite slave and ended up killing the Egyptian. Moses was looking out for the variable.

He is forced to flee Egypt for his life bc of this episode but he does not stop advocating for others. While on the run he notices some girls who are shepherds that are being harassed by some men who were shepherds. Moses being the big guy he is stands up for the girls and saves them for the men who were trying to drive them off. I am glad he did because of those girls a shepherdess named Zipporah becomes his wife.

over and over again Moses has others’ backs he is standing up for others.

Perhaps the greatest example of this is when Moses is with God on the mountain receiving the law . . . in Exodus 32 the people make the golden calf to worship and God is angry!

Moses is the one who stand up for all of them before the Lord and asks the Lord to forgive them.

I have been troubled for sometime I would even say disturbed.

Numbers 20:10–12 “Moses and Aaron summoned the assembly in front of the rock, and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels! Must we bring water out of this rock for you?” Then Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff, so that abundant water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust me to demonstrate my holiness in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this assembly into the land I have given them.””

I was disturbed as a child in Sunday School to hear this. No it can’t end this way. surely someone will come to his defence. God you have to let him into the promised land. You have to! Please God.

And Moses died and that was I assumed the end of his story. The man who always had others backs and was advocating for other was died so alone that no one even knew where he was buried. No advocate and unable to see the promised land.

Deuteronomy 34:5–6 “So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the Lord’s word. He buried him in the valley in the land of Moab facing Beth-peor, and no one to this day knows where his grave is.”

I was disturbed until I leaned that this was not the end of Moses’ life. I want to show you something that perhaps you have never considered before. It is in a passage in the New Testament in Luke chapter 9.

Before you say, “Now Pastor Ben Moses is an OT charterer not a NT character just trust me I want to show you this.

it is an Easter passage but a more obscure one.

Jesus face changed dazzling white clothes the parallel with these and Moses on mount Sini is Exodus 34:29 “As Moses descended from Mount Sinai—with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands as he descended the mountain—he did not realize that the skin of his face shone as a result of his speaking with the Lord.”

is not to be understated.

1 Timothy 2:5 “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,”

1 John 2:1 “My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous one.”

And if you believe in the traditional location of the Mount of Transfiguration weather it be Mount Tabor south of the sea of Galilee which is where the church fathers reckoned it to be or Mount Hermon in the north which is what some more modern scholarship guesses it to be. Regardless of which of the 2 mountains it is of interest to note that not only did Moses find the man Jesus who had his back . . . but Moses also finally made it to the promised land. He set his foot in the land of promise.