The Death of Moses

This morning we are coming to the end of our Exodus series. We've been in the Exodus for the past two months, believe it or not. We've walked through this journey, almost through the Israelites. It didn't take us forty years. It's only eight weeks, but it's an amazing look at one of the most influential moments in biblical history and the history for both the Jewish and the Christian faith.

And this morning we come to the end of the story in the same way that the end will come for all of us, and that is through death. This morning we look at the final moments of Moses' life and his interaction with God before he passed away. And it's a beautiful moment, as I'm sure you'll see. If you have your bibles with you, let's turn to Deuteronomy 34, and we'll read the chapter. Deuteronomy 34 from verse one.

Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the Plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah across from Jericho. There the Lord showed him the whole land from Gilead to Dan, all of Naphtali, the territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negev, and the whole region from the Valley of Jericho, the city of Palms, as far as Zoar. Then the Lord said to him, this is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when I said, I will give it to your descendants. I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you will not cross over into it. And Moses, servant of the Lord, died there in Moab, as the Lord had said.

He buried him in Moab, in a valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is. Moses was 120 years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak, nor his strength gone. The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, until the time of weeping and mourning was over. Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom, and Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites listened to him and did what the Lord had commanded Moses.

Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, who did all those miraculous signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his officials and to his whole land, for no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel. So ends our story. Now this powerful scene is so succinct and short, you know. It ends a story that has spanned forty years, remember? And because it touches on all the themes that we've spoken about in this series, it is actually a very fitting way to wrap up this Exodus series.

Because what we see here, as we've seen in the last seven weeks, is we see the personality of God. We see the personality of Moses, and we see the nation of Israel involved, and we see the promise, the land that awaits this nation. And I want us to see three things this morning, and we'll look at a few of them separately. Firstly, the consecrated humble heart of Moses. The man who had led a fledgling nation of slaves through deserts, through mountains, and through a big blue sea even, who commanded armies, who established trades with kings, who sat as supreme court in legal matters, and mediated the word of God like a prophet and a preacher.

This was the man Moses. And historians often even to this day would write that Moses the man was a colossus amongst human history. But despite all of this, do you know what the bible holds as eminently important? What was of greatest importance of Moses' life and a sign of his greatness? It was his humility.

This man who led armies, conquered nations, made trades, and was a supreme court judge, Numbers 12:3 records this. Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth. Moses presents for us a beautiful picture of real humanity mixed with real humility and genuine godliness. In Moses, we see the mixture of our flawed humanity mixed with tremendous potential, God-given potential. Moses never believed the press reports about him.

Moses never got lost in his own track record. He stayed real. He stayed believable. He stayed humble. And I can't help but think that this humility came from a gospel perspective.

Moses was keenly aware of his inability. We see that right from the start in Exodus 3. He was keenly aware of his own inability, whether it was speaking in public or whether it was ruling a nation. And his past mistakes, in fact, that single solitary mistake at Meribah, at the rock from which the water came, cost him so much. But despite all of these flaws, his brokenness and his sin, God remained faithful, and He sustained Israel, and He sustained Moses up to the point where he was 121, and his strength wasn't gone, and his eyes were not weak.

The bible records this beautiful line in Exodus 33 of the relationship that God sustained even after all the brokenness of Moses. Exodus 33:11, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks with his friend. Isn't that a beautiful image? After God had said to Moses, because of this sin that you have done, because you have dragged My glory through the mud in front of the Israelites, you will not see the promised land, but God still loved Moses. And He still met Moses face to face, and He spoke to Moses as a friend speaks to his other friend.

As we've travelled through the story of Exodus, we see a God who rescues. He rescued a group of desperately needy people and turned them into His treasured possession, but He also rescued one man from the brink of self destruction. And we see that this is the God of the gospel, and this is the gospel story that we, like Moses, are more loved and more treasured than we could ever dream to be possible, while at the same time being more flawed and weak than we would like to admit. Charles Swindoll writes that the story of Moses reveals to us that God is able to take your life with all the heartache, with all the pain, with all the regret, with all the missed opportunities, and to use you for His glory. And I believe that Moses understood that, and it gave him this amazing perspective to see who he really was in light of God's grace, and that gives humility.

The gospel causes you to be humble. It causes you to be forever thankful because you know that everything you have, everything you have in this life is pure grace. And I believe when Moses came to the end of his life in this morning's passage, we see the extent of his humility. God said to him, it's time. It's time, Moses.

Thirty nine years before, God had said this day would come, and now it had arrived. And he went out, I'm sure after saying his goodbyes, and he climbed that mountain without a hint of self pity or grumbling. Moses knew that it was time, and he was okay with that. And he had come to know God well enough to trust Him all the way up that mountain. For us as Christians, there is an aspect to living that requires a whole lot of trust.

But that is also true in the case with dying. We trust that God knows best how we should live and what our life will amount to, but we also trust that God knows how we are to die. God is in control of it all and there is no need to be anxious about it. Because even in those final moments, God is with us. In those final moments that can be so lonely, God promises to be present.

And we see that with Moses, that God was there. Moses is the only person in the bible that was buried by God Himself. Isn't that an amazing thing? And it shows us again just the intimacy between God and Moses, like a friend burying his mate. And I think God also did that so that, you know, no one could claim that Moses was more than he was.

He was simply a servant of God. If people would have found Moses' grave, they would have turned it into a Mecca, like Muhammad's grave is for the Muslims. He died a humble death. Verse 6 says that, to this day, no one knows where his grave is. What we see in Moses is the humility of a consecrated heart.

A heart that has been given over to the holy purposes of God. A heart in submission to his Lord and his saviour. Moses lived under the direction and the leading of God every single day, every single hour, every single minute, hearing and knowing and believing the word of God and applying it and living it out. And it challenges us, doesn't it? To return to God over and over and over again.

To reflect on the will of God for our lives. To consecrate our lives to God as living sacrifices to Him, not for ourselves, not sacrificing ourselves for ourselves, living for God because that leads to humility. If pride is the beginning of sin, friends, then humility must be the beginning of righteousness. The second thing we see is the grace of God to grant him his final wish or his final desire. Verse 7 says that Moses was 120 years old when he died, and yet his eyes were not weak and his strength was not gone.

In other words, his physical body could continue for another forty years. Physically speaking, he had enough health to cross over into the promised land to reign and to rule and to look after the people, but it was time. In a moment of weakness and anger, he had broken God's word. He had dragged the glory and holiness of God through the mud, and as the leader, and as the example to the rest of Israel, he had sinned greatly against God. God was going to use someone else now to establish this nation.

We know from the book of Deuteronomy that Moses pleaded with God three times that God would reverse this decision, but God did not, and Moses accepted that without another word of appeal. God's judgment was fair, but God did not stay angry at Moses. This relationship was not broken, but God's decision remained standing. That's what we see. And yet, despite all that, we have this beautiful snapshot of God again.

When it was time for Israel to move over into the promised land, when they had come right to the banks of Jericho and they could see the promised land on the other side, they were on the Plains of Moab, these high, beautiful, rolling hills overlooking this new land. God said to Moses, go up on the mountain. And there God showed Moses the entire land, it says, from the North in Dan to the East of Gilead, to the South of Judah and Simeon, to the other side of where the Mediterranean Sea was, the land of Manasseh and Ephraim, God showed Moses the entire picture. And the amazing thing here is, I've been on that mountain. Actually, I've got a photo of being on Mount Nebo, and maybe you can make it out, but you can see the green down the bottom there.

That is the Jordan River running through there. Everything else, you can see this is what the country looks like. But down there, beautiful green pastures. Jericho, the city, was known as the city of palms. And God brings Moses up on this mountain, and he can see this beautiful land.

And he knows that this is the land, the promise that his people had been brought to. And God gives him this final moment of saying, this is the fruit of your labour, Moses. This is what your forty years in the desert has amounted to. It is beautiful, isn't it? And the amazing thing in this is it's physically impossible to see all the way up to Dan and all the way over those mountain ranges at the back there to the Mediterranean Sea.

But God supernaturally gave Moses this vision of the entire land, a bird's eye view of everything. It was as if God was saying, there it is Moses. This is why I called you. And God granted Moses for a moment the privilege of seeing His finished work, mission accomplished. And that to me is just a special insight into the Father heart of God.

Although God moves and though He orchestrates history and He raises leaders and He breaks them down, He gives victory to some and loss to others. Although He takes a bunch of slaves and forges them into a nation, this God never forsakes the individual. We see the grace of God in granting peace to an old man. Moses could pass away a happy man, satisfied that his work was complete, and that his people that he had grown to love, the stubborn, stiff necked people of Israel, that they would be okay. Although He is so big, although He is so powerful, He will never forsake His child.

He cannot. It would go against His nature. Isaiah 49:15 says this is what God says, actually, to Isaiah. Can a mother forsake the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child that she has born? Even if she was to forget, I will never, I will never forget you.

God goes on and says, see, I have engraved you on the palm of my hand. God granted Moses peace before he passed away. And the Israelites, when they realised that Moses was dead, mourned for thirty days for their great leader before they got ready to do the next thing, which was to cross the Jordan River. Finally, in the final verses of Deuteronomy, we see a beautiful obituary to Moses. It says in verse 10, since that time, since that time, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, who knew the Lord face to face, who did all those miraculous signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt.

For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of Israel. Moses was one of a kind. He was a prophet, he was a priest, and he was a king, he was a ruler. There would never again be another Moses. But, even this man Moses was given the insight to know that someone else was coming, the Messiah.

And he said in Deuteronomy 18:15, these amazing words, a rare insight into the earliest book of the Bible. Deuteronomy 18:15. Let's have a look at that, actually. Deuteronomy 18:15. The Lord, Moses said to Israel, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers.

You must listen to him. From this moment, the Jews were waiting for a Messiah, and someone that was even greater than Moses was going to come. That was the expectation. And when we reached the New Testament, you see for the first time people starting to claim that this prophet had arrived. After Jesus had fed 5,000 people, a miracle of astounding power.

John 6:14 records this. After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, surely this is the prophet who was to come into the world. As Moses brought Israel bread from heaven, Jesus brought bread to the people. And if we read our Bibles carefully, we see the unfolding affirmation that this Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the man that Moses foretold. And it is amazing.

Listen to this. Just as there were four hundred years of silence before Yahweh sent Moses to deliver Israel, there was four hundred years of silence before God sent His own son, the bible says. Both Moses and Jesus were utterly humble to the will of God. Both rejected the possibility to become rulers, powerful rulers. Moses raised as a son in the royal family could have enjoyed a lavish lifestyle as a powerful ruler, but he chose differently, Hebrews 11:24 says.

And Satan offered Jesus the rule over all the kingdoms of the world in Matthew 4, and Jesus rejected that offer and chose to offer His life instead for His people. Both knew and spoke to God the Father face to face. Both gave the people bread from heaven. Both of their faces shone with the glory of heaven. Moses on Mount Sinai in Exodus 34, and Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17.

And as Moses lifted the bronze serpent in the wilderness to heal the people, so Jesus, according to John 12, was lifted up on the cross to heal all believers of their sin. There's a prophet coming greater than me. There is one difference in this, one all defining thing that makes all the difference. Jesus was the son of God, exemplified in His powerful resurrection. Where we see this morning that Moses died and was buried by God.

We know as Christians of a saviour who died and was raised by this God. The book of Hebrews in the New Testament speaks of Jesus being a better Moses, because while Moses was able to lead the people to the promised land, he could never enter it. But Jesus entered into the promise when He was raised to life as the first fruit of the resurrection, the first sign, the first hope for all believers. And this is our greatest hope as Christians, that the God who consecrates us, the God who sets us apart for His purposes, the God who blesses us with sheer grace, who never forsakes us, who knows us personally, this God has also rescued us through an exodus. An exodus.

An escape from sin and death into the promised land of God's kingdom. All of this in Exodus was to show what would happen in Jesus, that there would be a future homeland flowing with milk and honey, a kingdom of peace ruled by the God who could split a sea, who could undermine a superpower, who could bring water from a rock to save His people, the people who He calls His treasured possession. The story of the Exodus shows us a God who is willing to go to extreme lengths to rescue those He loves, and in Jesus, we see exactly how far He would go for us. Hallelujah. Let's pray.

Lord, it's almost sad to say goodbye to Moses. To say goodbye to this story. Because we see so richly Your character and Your personality. We see, Lord, that You are a God who delivers, who rescues, who saves, that You heard the groan of Your people going out, the groan that went into the big blue sky who did not know You, who had forgotten You, and yet, Lord, You heard, and You had compassion, and Your heart was moved. Thank you, Lord, that You saw our condition.

Thank you, Lord, that Your heart was moved for us. Thank you, Lord, that You would go to extreme lengths to save us. Lord, that You would even conquer death through the resurrection of Your son, Jesus, for us. Thank you for the example of Moses. Father, I pray that we may be just a fraction as faithful as this man was, but more than that, Lord, we thank you for Jesus.

Because, Lord, we also realise that, like Moses, our hearts will be prone to wonder and doubt, that there will be earthly consequences for our actions, and yet, in Jesus Christ, we have the assurance that our relationship with You will never be broken. That through Your Holy Spirit, Lord, we may speak to You as a man speaks with his friend. Thank you, Lord, for this great hope that we have. And Father, I pray that we may become more humble through this, that through this humility, Lord, we may walk righteous lives, upright lives, lives and hearts that are consecrated to You. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.