The Death and Legacy of Moses

Morning crossing Church, how are you doing today?

It is good to be in the House of the Lord with the people of the

Lord. Look around you at 48th St.

We are packed out. That's always a good feeling

just to be rubbing shoulders with other believers.

Awesome to be here today and I'm sure that's happening to all of

our locations all across this region.

If you're inside or online, we're so thankful for each and

everyone of you. Are there any ladies that went

to rise? Was that any good?

My wife came home. She had a lot of really, really

good things to say, really applicative for her life, for

our lives together. And so thankful that that's able

to happen amongst our women, just like uncommon with our men.

And if our, if our relationship with God is stronger and that's

incorporated in our marriages and they're stronger, we become

a pretty unstoppable force. And that's a great thing.

Well, it's been a long journey, 14 weeks.

That's how long this series has been, 14 weeks to get to the end

of the journey, which is where we are today.

But it's no, not as long as the children of Israel.

That was 40 years, so a lot longer for them to make the

journey that it was for us to make the journey.

I've heard a lot of people talk about just different parts as

we've taken this journey along with them that has really showed

up in our lives. Some things that we need to

change, move, adjust, turn over to the Lord, put under the blood

of Jesus, those sorts of things. And here we are at the end of

it. The torch of leadership has been

passed from Moses to Joshua and it's time for the nation of

Israel to take possession of their ancestral home.

What I want to do to end the series is take a deep dive into

the man that Moses became and how God shaped him through his

life. There's a lot of things we can

think back on about what he was like when he was 40, what

happened from 40 to 80 when he came to the burning Bush, and

then from there, 80 to 120 when he became this deliverer of

Israel. But this is taken this this

little snapshot is taken at the latter part of his life.

It's an Exodus chapter 33, verses 15 to 20.

Exodus 33:15–20

It says. Then Moses said to him, that's

God. If your presence does not go

with us, do not send us up from here.

How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and your

people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me

and your people from all the other people on the face of the

earth? Then the Lord said to Moses, I

will do the very thing you've asked, because I am pleased with

you, and I know you by name. Then Moses said, Show me your

glory, what a bold thing to ask for.

And the Lord said, I will cause all my goodness to pass in front

of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord in your presence.

I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have

compassion on whom I will have compassion.

But he said, you cannot see my face, for no one can may see me

and live. I love this scripture because it

emphasizes the man that Moses became, the man that God shaped.

You remember when he was a young man of 40, he was a completely

different person. He wanted to be the deliverer of

Israel on his own, on his own terms, by his own definition.

You remember he was the guy who looked this way and that and

then killed an Egyptian and hid his body in the sand, acting

more like a terrorist than any kind of a delivered.

That was not a man that God could use.

That was a man who was in charge of his own life and wrecked it,

wrecked his life. But the man you see in this

statement is a man who's holy and completely dependent on God.

If you don't go before us, I'm not.

I can't, I can't go. If you don't go before us, these

people can't go. We have to have you.

If we don't have you, we don't have anything.

What will the rest of the world say?

Do you hear that? It's not about Moses's

reputation anymore. Now it's about God's reputation.

He is a completely changed man, and the thing he wants more than

anything isn't just God to go ahead of them into the Promised

land. It is to see the glory of the

Lord, to experience the glory of the Lord.

He's a man that had gotten to the place where he says, if your

presence is with me, if you don't go with me, I can't go.

I wouldn't dare. It's not about me anymore.

It's all about you. And then and only then could God

unleash his power in Moses because Moses became a

transparent man. And this is what I mean when I

say a transparent man. When people looked at Moses,

they didn't see Moses. They looked right through him

and they saw God. What would it be like if you and

I could become transparent people?

That our relationship with God was so complete that when people

looked at us, when people considered us, they didn't

really consider us at all. It was like we're not even

there. It was like they were looking

right through us and they were seeing God himself.

That's a pretty impressive statement about Moses's life,

but there needs to be something that we kind of to

counterbalance that with. I want you to look at the

Scripture in the Book of Numbers.

Again, it's at the end of Moses's life.

There were a lot of things to deal with when Moses LED this

band of 2,000,000 slaves into the Promised Land.

Just daily things. One of those things was thirst.

I mean, they're in the wilderness.

There's not water in the wilderness.

And so it was a miraculous thing when those 2 million people plus

all their animals would have enough water to drink.

It had to be a miraculous thing. And we read about that different

times in different ways where God made bitter water sweet when

they they, they threw this wood into the, into the water that

was there. That was bad water.

And then the times when Moses struck the rock with his staff

and water came out, this time it's related in Numbers chapter

Numbers 20 · chapter mention

20. And what God says to Moses is

speak to the rock, and water will come from it.

Speak to the rock. Moses and Aaron gathered the

people together. But when Moses began to speak,

instead of speaking to the rock, he spoke to the people.

And this is what he said in the 10th verse.

Must we bring water out of this rock?

Stop right there. Must we bring water out of this

rock like Moses could bring water out of a rock, like Aaron

could bring water out of the rock?

When God said don't speak to the people, speak to the rock and

the water will come out for you. And who's the one who's going to

be bringing that water out of the rock?

It isn't going to be Moses, it isn't going to be Aaron, it's

going to be God himself. It goes on to say that he struck

the rock with his staff twice, bringing out enough water for

all. So he says this to the people.

Then he strikes the rock 2 times with his staff, which is

something God didn't tell him to do.

And then he took the credit away from God for himself.

Now you know God made good on his promise.

And so the water came out, and the people had their thirst

quench quenched. But Moses had this momentary

lapse in humility. And because of that one

momentary lapse in His humility, God says this in Numbers 2012,

two verses later. Because you did not trust me

enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, You

will not bring this community into the land I give them.

He had disqualified himself from entering into the Promised Land.

It was like God was saying, you know, Moses, I'm going to let

you look into this promised land, but you're not going to be

able to walk in it because you took the credit away from me.

How does that hit you? I want you to think about like

the totality of Moses's life, how far God's taken him, and

then he has this one momentary lapse in his humility and does

this thing, and then God says you are now disqualified from

going into the promised land yourself.

How many of you would say, you know God?

I think that's pretty harsh. I think you're kind of, you

know, coming off the top rope on this one.

Don't you think you could have a little bit of mercy?

Don't you think you can have a little bit of grace for this

guy? Just one little slip.

I mean, Moses entire life had been directed to deliver God's

people to this new land and all of a sudden all he gets to do is

stand on a mountaintop and look in.

Come on God, where's your compassion on this man that you

love so much? Now I'm going to say something

here that might startle you. I think that's the beauty of it.

I think there's something incredibly beautiful about this

moment, if you, if we can get outside of our own selfishness

for a little bit. You see, Moses had become so

close to God, he'd become so far beyond what he had been early on

that God held him to a much higher standard.

Can you imagine being so close to God that the slightest slip

would cause a great problem? Moses had become so pure and so

holy in his thinking, so set apart for God's purpose, that

even the slightest mistake was a huge one to God.

OK, so if I'm looking at Moses and I'm kind of doing some

comparative thinking here, I had a real problem.

I had a real problem with this because gotcha.

God watches me as I do so many things outside of His will.

How about you? Does God see you doing all sorts

of things outside of His will? Let me tell you, it is a full

time job for God just to forgive me.

And I bet it's a full time job for Him to forgive any one of us

but Moses. Humility was so focused that any

departure from God's expectations was inexcusable.

And I have a question to ask here.

Do you think that God sees that kind of a potential in US?

How is Moses any different from us?

He's just a guy that God had a plan for that was walking in

that plan. A lot of times he was obstinate,

like he was fighting against that plan, and yet God used him

and God shaped him and God molded him and he was so

obstinate. It took him 40 years to learn

humidity, humility. He didn't learn it quickly.

And I'm sure there's a lot of things in your life as I know

there are in mind where I'm, I'm not going to be able to get this

quickly. It's going to take me some time

to be able to understand God this way and then incorporate

that in my life, even in a semi consistent way.

But what about the potential of that?

Can God see the potential of that?

Where we might become the transparent person?

Where we might become a person who is so dedicated to God that

even something small would push yourself would be a big thing?

This is something that we should want in our lives.

Love that. And then the curtain falls on

Moses's life. God instructs him to go up to

the top of a mountain called Mount Nebo.

And Mount Nebo is in the present country of Jordan, Southern

Jordan area, anciently called Moab.

It was a high mountain range. And from the top of that

mountain he could look out and he'd be able to see the the

wilderness in front of him and then the entire Jordan River

Valley. So this land that the nation of

Israel was going to take, I'm going to show you a picture of

it right now. That's the top of Mount Nebo

where you see that sculpture. And if you look beyond it, I

mean, this is taken, you know, aerially.

But if you look beyond that, you'll see that there's these

these hills of the wilderness. And then if you look way out

beyond that, you can see the green of the Jordan River

Valley, the Jordan River Valley coming all the way from the

north of of Israel down to the South where it dumps into the

Red Sea. Once you turn.

The reason I want to show you this picture is because the last

week, last week, you know, we had the sermon on complaining,

right? And, and God did this thing

totally out of character where he told Moses to put a bronze

snake, make a bronze snake and put it on a pole, break the

commandment of graven images, put this thing on.

And everybody had to look at this because these snakes were

biting them and they would still bite them, but the venom

wouldn't kill them. That is an artist rendering of

it. Do you see it?

The post with the snake coiled around it all the way to the

top. Some of you go.

You know what that looks like? That looks like the symbol of

modern medicine, doesn't it? Well, the symbol of modern

medicine, if there's any doctors or anybody in the healthcare

industry that's listening to me that you would say, now wait a

minute, that is the, that's about the God Asclepius, this

Greek God. Well, just to tell you, you

know, Asclepius, that mythology, Greek mythology was 500 BC and

this was 1000 years before that. All I'm saying is that the

Greeks copied their homework off the Hebrews, and it was from

this point that Moses was able, at 120 years of age, to see the

land that he had never set his eyes on before, the land that

God was going to give the nation of Israel to possess.

Now you saw the picture of how rugged that is.

Moses is 120 years old. He's 120 years old and he

climbed that mountain. He didn't take a cable car,

didn't take a Jeep. He walked it.

And who was with him? No one.

He was alone. So that gives you an indication

of the vitality of Moses, even at 120 years of age, to climb

that range of mountains to the top of that mountain, to be able

to see the Promised land that God was going to give that

nation of Israel. And God had told Moses that when

he got to the top of the mountain and saw the land, he

was going to die. So Moses, the friend of God, was

shown the essence of his life. This is why you were born for

this. You were made to bring these two

million people to this point. You've done what I told you to

do. You've been the person I created

you to be. And I can almost hear the words

of the apostle Paul 1500 years in the future echoing backward

in Second Timothy 47, where he said, I have fought the good

fight. I have finished the race.

I've kept the faith and while looking at that land, Moses fell

dead at the feet of God. And what follows is surprisingly

one of the more beautiful passages of Scripture.

In Deuteronomy chapter 34 verse 6, it says he buried him in Moab

Deuteronomy 34:6

in the valley opposite Beth Pior, but to this day no one

knows where his grave is. The poet put it this way.

By Nebo's lonely mountain, this side of Jordan's Wave, in the

veil of the land of Moab there lies a lonely grave.

But no one dug a sepulchre, and no man sought air, for the Angel

of God upturned the sod and laid the dead man there.

In the entire Bible, there's only one man that God buried

himself. And when we bury someone, we get

the shovels out, maybe we get a backhoe out, we dig a six foot

hole, we put a vault down into the ground that a casket fits in

before we fill the remainder of that hole back up.

And I wonder how God buried Moses.

Maybe he picked up the entire mountain and placed his body in

the midst of it and then gently set it back down on him.

Moses, this mountain will be your tombstone because it

reflects the mountain of a man that you've become.

I want to share one more passage about the man that Moses became.

It's written in Deuteronomy 3410, and it could have been the

epitaph that was written on his tombstone, if he had.

One says this. 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 all his officials, and to his whole

land. For no one has ever shown the

mighty power performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in

the sight of all Israel. That's the kind of man that only

God can make. When a man or a woman is fully

submitted to God and humility, their potential has no earthly

limit. And humility is the only way God

can shine through US. Pride, it takes us away from

God. Pride becomes a mirror where we

look into it and we think, look at me, pride is the most ancient

of all sins, the sin of Satan himself.

But then God breaks that pride down like he did in Moses, and

he says it's only through humility, the recognition of who

you are and who I am, that you can truly be who I've designed

you to be. God has a plan for your life.

And, and I know that God has a general plan for humanity.

He has an upper story plan for humanity, but he doesn't just

have a general plan. He has a specific plan for your

life, your individual life. How else could the apostle Paul

say under inspiration Ephesians 210 for we are his workmanship

created in Christ Jesus under good works that God has prepared

beforehand, that we should walk in.

And that means that you live under a calendar of divine

appointments every day, every time you get up, every time God

allows you to live another day, you have a string of divine

appointments in front of you that God is designed

specifically for you. In Hebrews chapter 12, he tells

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

us to lay aside every weight and all the sin that entangles us

and run with endurance. What the race that has been

marked out for us. That's not general, that's

specific. You see it in Moses.

He was a man who had a specific plan.

God has this plan for our lives, but as long as our pride gets in

between US and God, we will never be able to experience that

potential. We have to be humble and you

know, humility. You can pray to God for

humility, and that's a scary prayer, by the way, because you

know he'll answer that one. You know, my mother used to say,

if you ever pray for patience, duck.

And I really think that's true. And if you pray for humility,

humiliating things are going to happen to you because that's how

you learn humility, right? But the Bible says humble

yourself in the sight of the Lord and then he will lift you

up. So are we going to give God the

responsibility of humility, or are we going to take that

responsibility on ourselves like God teaches us?

Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and He will lift us

up. Every one of us has the raw

material to become exactly what God has planned for us to be.

And then God can and will change the world through us.

Unfortunately, we're like the younger version of Moses a lot

of the time. And we try to do it in our own

power. We like setting our own agenda.

We like writing our own story. But our story is never going to

be anywhere as good as the story God has planned for us.

And I, you know, I mean, this would be a great time to, to

say, OK, Moses. Well, there's a, a great person

to try to live my life after. There's a great person that I

need to use comparatively so that I can and, and, and that

that's, that's not bad. That's, that's a good idea.

But you know, there's someone better than that.

It's interesting, isn't it, that in the Old Testament, and it was

true when it was written, that since then no one has risen up

in Israel that has done these mighty things and these

wonderful works, You know, for no one has ever shown the mighty

power and performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the

sight of all Israel. And that was true when it was

written, but it's not true anymore because someone has

written up, risen up in Israel that is greater than Moses, far

greater than Moses. And the signs and the wonders

that he accomplished were greater than Moses.

And the greatest of all those signs and wonders was to have

the willingness to lay down his life and to die alone on a cross

for you and for me. For nothing that he did, but for

everything that you did and that I've done and that I will do and

that you will do. Past President, future, all that

burden of sin, taking on himself, bearing that sin alone

on that cross 2000 years ago, being buried in a borrowed tomb.

And then the greatest of all signs and wonders ever

accomplished, that ever will be accomplished in the human

experience was the Sunday morning that an Angel came down

and rolled that stone away and sat on it.

And my Savior, who had been so brutalized and so ruined in his

humanity, walked out of that tomb alive, and the only marks

on him were the ones that he chose to hold on to his trophies

and proof. Thomas, don't believe me?

Put your fingers into the nail prints in my hands.

You don't believe me? Put your hand into my side.

He kept those. That is the greatest hero of

God's word, and he's my hero, He's my Lord.

Listen, you might be dealing with realities that have come

from setting your own agenda, maybe from making your own

decisions. Maybe other people have made

decisions for you and you feel victimized.

You feel broken like Moses did after that first 40 years.

You might be feeling destroyed and broken and shattered right

now because you failed or somebody failed and you're

living in that failure. Maybe things haven't worked out

the way that you wanted them to. Maybe you're feeling like Moses

in the wilderness when he said I have become an alien in a

strange and foreign land. Maybe right now you're feeling

deconstructed. Maybe you've started in on this

journey of faith, but instead of God building you up, you feel

like he's tearing you down. And maybe He is tearing you down

because he's getting down to that faulty foundation that you

built your life on to make sure that you're building your life

on the one and only foundation that you can build it on.

And that is Jesus Christ. And once that foundation is

laid, what God will build on that foundation is greater than

anything you can imagine. That's how He will make you in

into what He wants you to be. He removes all that has been

built on a bad foundation, and then He will build His holy

temple in your heart. Maybe you're beginning to

experience God laying that foundation and building that

house. He's doing it out of living

stones and precious jewels. Where are you right now with

God? Maybe today is the day that

boldly you speak to God about humility.

There's none of us that can say, Yep, I'm here, I've arrived.

The real question is whether or not you'd be willing to be on

your knees for it, to look inside and ask yourself the

question, the question that we started this series with, who am

I? And realize that you are always

intended for God to set the identity of your life, not you.

I want you to think about that while we move to a time of

decision. So, you know, I, I, I, I preach

up there, I'm elevated that that's really just so people can

see. It's not because I'm any better

and some of you know me and you'd go aim into that.

You know, some of you just watch me or see me, but you don't

really know me. And if you do know me, you know

that I'm a very inconsistent person.

I struggle a lot in my walk of faith.

Sometimes I feel pretty strong, sometimes I don't.

As a matter of fact, the times I feel stronger, I'm probably

further than the times I feel weaker.

That make sense to you? And then we come to this point

of decision and I come down on the floor.

You know, I've done that ever since I've been here.

And the reason I'm standing on the floor is because I want, I

want there to be a visual representation of the fact that

we're all standing on the same ground.

We're all just people who mess up a lot, but we are also the

children of God that are loved by God beyond our ability to

even understand it. And I would just like for you to

consider something today. I would like you to consider not

just maybe praying a prayer that God would move in your life.

I would like you to consider coming up here and getting down

on your knees. I mentioned this, I think last

week that I had a person a long time ago when I first came to

Quincy and they saw that I was doing that, that I was inviting

people to come up and get down on their knees.

And we would always have kind of a, we wouldn't have like a short

song and let's go home. It would be, we spend some time

up here and it was like a long time and people would come up.

And I remember talking to a person, it was at an event, at a

Salvation Army event. And, and that person said to me,

that is so humiliating. Why would you bring a person up

here and make them get down on their knees in front of other

people? That's humiliating.

And I thought about that word, that word humiliating.

What does that word mean? Humiliating.

Well, it humbles me. And then I thought, is that a

bad thing? Is it a bad thing to be humbled

before Almighty God? Is it a bad thing to have a

physical representation with my body that I'm getting down on my

knees because I realized there is a God and I'm not God and he

is God and, and I need to honor him as God and I need to be

dependent on him as God and, and to approach God like that, to

approach God more as a a prodigal son who I don't really

deserve to be part of a member of your family.

But if you would just let me be a hired servant, you know, I'd

be happy with that. And then what happens then God

grabs a hold of you and he puts his arm around you.

Just like in that story. That father wasn't hearing any

of that. He, he, he was saying my son was

dead. He's alive again, was lost.

But now he's found. Go kill the fatted calf.

Put a ring on his finger, put a robe on him.

Right. We humble ourselves in the sight

of the Lord, and then he does what we can't do.

He lifts us up. He exalts us.

We live in a world crammed full of people who exalt themselves.

Why do, why do we do that? We have these huge tragedies

that happen. They've had, there's been a lot

of them, right? These hurricanes and stuff.

And the people get up at the mic and you know what they do for

the 1st 15 minutes, they thank everyone.

Have you ever heard of that? I would just like to thank these

people and I would like to thank these people and I would like to

thank these people. You know, so we're all doing

this thing. We're all doing the whole

exaltation thing. What if we just was, we're

humble. Maybe, maybe church is a place

that we can be honest just for a moment.

And instead of giving each other trophies, what we do is we just

come before an almighty God and we get down on our knees and we

humble ourselves before him and then wait for him to exalt us.

And when he does that, then we're blessed.

I don't know what you're dealing with.

A lot of people in this room, a lot of people online already

believers. Maybe today is a day that you

just lay something down and that's what this is for.

Just lay something down. Maybe this could be a burning

Bush moment for you or your life is focused and directed by God.

I don't want my will anymore. I want yours.

And for many of you here today that have never made a decision

to have an intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

And I'm not talking about being a church person.

I'm not talking about having your name on some roll.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about you and Jesus

Christ having an intimate relationship together.

That's what he's calling you into it.

If you've never done that, you might have done all the other

things around it, but you've never done that.

Here's an opportunity to do that.

There's going to be somebody right over there by that

baptistry that loved nothing more than just talk to you about

it and pray with you about it. But I'm telling you right now,

we are in this singular moment right now in time and space, and

the angels of heaven are around this room, and Satan is not

welcome here. And the Holy Spirit is in this

room. And the Bible says that Jesus is

walking up and down these aisles because we're two or three

gathered there. Am I in the midst of them?

He's here. He knows you, He knows your

story. He knows all the things you say

to yourself that aren't even true.

And he's not here to judge you. He's here to save you because He

loves you. Would you stand with me?

Let's pray, Heavenly Father, in Jesus name, I pray that all of

the defense mechanisms, all the strongholds inside of our heart

would just come down right now. That you would bring them down.

All the places that we like to hide from you.

And even though, Father, that sounds like being exposed, help

us to realize that you are not a God in this moment in time that

has any desire to judge us. If you did, you would not have

sent your Son Jesus to die for us.

You are here to love us and to heal us.

You're here to call us your children.

You are here to bring us home. And I pray, Father, that we'll

have the courage to trust you and seek you with our hearts

even now, in Jesus name, Amen.