Moses Death

Introduction

Good Morning! My name is Danny Watton and I am your service pastor. I want to thank you all for coming this morning!

I pray that you had a great week and that you enjoyed some much needed time with your families and loved ones over this long weekend.

The last couple of weeks have been challenging for me because I have been walking with people through their most difficult times in their lives.

And it has made my heart heavy because I was unable to remove their burden.

I was in the hospital with someone a couple weeks ago as they were losing a loved one.

During these times I think we ask ourselves what is the purpose?

Why do people have to walk down this road?

Personally, I was asking God what can I do? I can’t speak and command this person to rise and be healed.

That can only be done by Him who created life.

And as I was going back through came across a passage that reminded me of who God is and His faithfulness.

I told you that our goal since I took over this service was as we walked through Acts we would know our identities as Christians. And the book of Acts showed that too us. And the goal for us as we have being going through the last couple of months through

Deuteronomy is that we could firmly plant our identity by knowing who God is.

Knowing God is extremely important for us because as we walk through the hardest of times....as we doubt Gods nearness to us, we can know through those truths that He is near us and that He is faithful and will guid us through the wilderness.

So God spoke to me to remind me that He is a faithful God and that even when life absolutely doesn’t make sense that He is in control and that He will accomplish His goals so that we may experience no more pain and no more sorrow in eternity.

And that truth can help us fight the good fight and to continue serving God so that people will know Him.

I found myself this week looking at

“Understand, therefore, that the Lord your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps His covenants for a thousand generations and lavishes His unfailing love on those who love Him and obey His commands”

I read that and was reminded that He is God and He is in control.

But my faith was lacking because I wanted to know that GOD was here with us. Just as He was with the Israelites. With Moses in the desert.

Was He there in the hospital room. Is He walking with the thousands of families that are losing their loved ones across the world to the Corona Virus.

The ANSWER is, “YES”

As we read on

“the Lord your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps His covenants for a thousand generations and lavishes His unfailing love on those who love Him and obey His commands”

But I was really struggling to know if God was near us like He was with Moses and the Israelites.

Are we as a Chapel and as the body of Christ being faithful to what He is calling us to do or are we loving people like Christ calls us to do?

I closed my Bible and prayed that He would show me that He was near and bring me peace that HE is God. I prayed that He would make real to me.

And as I was going to bed on Thursday night I went through my dorm dinner photos to post on the chapel Facebook page.

And I was absolutely blown away that God would take the time to speak to me and answer my prayers.

DORM DINNER PHOTO

And I realized that God is still making His purposes known and changing lives on this base. He is still the God who is lavishing comfort to those in the midst of tragedy.

He is with the families who are going through illnesses and He is still working today to make sure that even though we may die here on earth that we will have an eternity with Him because He is a God who keeps His covenants.

I was given peace and energized to continue the race to tell people about His love.

And this week we are going to look at Gods faithfulness and love in the midst of the death of Moses.

And that might clue you in that after several months of walking through this treasure of Deuteronomy that we will be concluding this book today.

But before we jump into : 1-12

Let’s Pray!

The Death of Moses

34 Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, 2 all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the western sea,3 the Negeb, and the Plain, that is, the Valley of Jericho the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar.4 And the Lord said to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, ‘I will give it to your offspring.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there.” 5 So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord, 6 and he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-peor; but no one knows the place of his burial to this day. 7 Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eye was undimmed, and his vigor unabated. 8 And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days. Then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended.

9 And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. So the people of Israel obeyed him and did as the Lord had commanded Moses. 10 And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face,11 none like him for all the signs and the wonders that the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, 12 and for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.

The Warning of the Lord

Moses

What an honorable title. Moses was the servant of the Lord! He loved God and he served God and had the most intimate relationship with God.

He went up against Pharaoh even though he was frightened to do so. He lead the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea. And then he was with them for Forty Years in the wilderness guiding them and pointing them continually back to God.

May we all be honored when we come face to face with God that He may say to us,

“Well done good and faithful servant”

We know that even though we are servants of God we must taste death. There is no way around that unless Jesus comes back for His church before we die.

And Moses was no different. But we see here in chapter 34 that Moses died outside the land of promise.

But this was no surprise too Moses. Long before his death he knew that he would never set foot in the promise land.

We see that in

Deuteronomy 1:35–37 ESV

‘Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh. He shall see it, and to him and to his children I will give the land on which he has trodden, because he has wholly followed the Lord!’ Even with me the Lord was angry on your account and said, ‘You also shall not go in there.

Now I read that and I placed myself in Moses shoes. He had served the Lord with all his heart and all his mind and with all of his soul.

It had been his life work to follow God and to go against Pharaoh to breaks Egypts pride.

He babysat the Israelites in the wilderness and had to hear their cries as he guided them to the promise land. And through that faithful service God told him that he would not step foot in the promise land.

That he would die at the foot of its gates.

It was their rebellion that cost them entrance into the promise land.

Its ok to say that was a bitter disappointment.

To toil for so long and then to see the promise land at the top of mount Nebo but not be allowed to enjoy the land of milk and Honey.

To be refused admittance.

I can’t imagine what a disappointment that would have been.

Can you imagine that?

What if you spent two careers in the military, 40 years, saving up and waiting for retirement. Imagine the place you want to settle down.

For me that would be in Hawaii, enjoying the beaches, the ocean and then sun.

But imagine that you spent two full careers in the military,

posting up pictures of where you wanted to retire on your walls, screen savers to your computer and on your phone.

And then the day you where suppose to retire

you were told that you were not going to be able to enjoy retirement at all the way you thought.

All the plans prepping to enter your promise land and you are refused your retirement benefits and you end up going to another job and die before you ever set foot where you wanted to spend retirement.

Thats what Moses went through. A severe disappointment indeed.

But Moses remained faithful still even when he knew that he would not step foot in the promise land.

What a man of faith. He remained faithful to God because He knew that He served a good God and that his hope was not on earth but with God in heaven. His promise land was dwelling with his loving God forever in heaven.

My prayer for myself and for all of us would be ready to to give up our most deepest hopes and dreams

“

and say, “Thy will be done”!

Are we holding our life’s deepest purpose with a loose hand?

It would be wise for us not to hold onto our glory with a tight fist but be ready to let go of it for the glory of His kingdom.

God’s Devine Appointment

We see in chapter 34 that Moses died according to the Word of the Lord!

All the details of Moses death was pre ordained by God.

The time, place and circumstances had been arranged by God.

Let that sink into our hearts as that truth

Our deaths have been preordained and God is in control of every minute of our life. He will not let us take our last breath until He is ready for us to do so.

That brings me comfort that God is in complete control of my life. He was in complete control of Moses life as well.

We might be tempted to question God on why He did not let Moses enter the promise land.

But Moses died according to Gods divine appointment. He died without seeing the end result of his life’s work.

But as I ponder this I realized that sometimes we as humans think that our work is something that it isn’t.

We see in the Bible that David thought it was his life’s work to build the temple but it was not for him to build it. It was Solomon his son.

And leading the Israelites into the promise land was not Moses life work either. It was never going to be him to walk them through its borders.

It was never Moses job to give rest to Israel because the law gives no rest to its people and it can’t bring them salvation. But only Jesus Christ brings us into grace and truth.

If Moses was to bring them into the promise land then it would seem to teach us that rest would be obtained from the law.

But as Moses was laid to sleep by divine hands it was those same hands that would give us a new covenant that would give us salvation through the death and resurrection of His son.

Conclusion

As we conclude the book of Deuteronomy let me conclude this sermon with more more thought!

Moses death was according to Gods divine favour.

Moses had no regrets. His death was the highlight of his life because he was faithful to the job God gave him. He was to lead Gods people through the wilderness and that was accomplished.

He knew that Gods people would be in good hands and that God would continue to accomplish His goals.

Moses also died in the best of company.

He died in the presence of His God.

As a mother kisses her baby as she lays it to sleep, so did God kiss Moses soul away to be with him forever.

He was taken away from the sight of the earthly Canaan and awoke in the heavenly Canaan. So even though Moses never set foot into the promise land, God was still faithful to Moses and brought him into His presence forever where he would finally have eternal rest and happiness.

You see as I was watching people walk through the most difficult times of their life the last couple of weeks I was reminded that God is with us always.

That He is in complete control and that we may not know what His ultimate plan is as we watch people suffer but what we can say is that God is Faithful to us. That He loves us.

That He is with us every minute of every day and that He is active in our lives.

That we have a hope in eternity because Christ died on the Cross for us. That Moses may have given the Law to the Israelites but the Law was never meant to bring us eternal rest.

Only Jesus Christ can give us eternal rest and an eternal hope that is better then any physical place on earth could provide.

Placing our faith in Jesus, that he came and died on the cross for our sins and if we believe in Him that we will have eternal life.

And as I look at that Picture of that cross on the tv screen I know that God is actively working on this base.

That He cares about each one of us and loves us so much. That His purpose and plan is being lived out through all of us. And that as we continue to live and work on this base that we can tell the lost that their is a hope. And because we know the God we serve that they can be brought into the covenant that God gave His people. They may have a hope in Christ just like we do.

May we all rest in His peace. And the knowledge that God is a God who will keep His covenants for a thousand generations.

Pray with me!