Deuteronomy - 34:1-12

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week's message.

Well, friends, I don't know if you realized it yet, but today

you came to church to come to a funeral.

Mm, hmm. Mm.

Hmm. Hence the dress, you know, the

the suit. I thought it was only

appropriate that if we're going to be at a funeral, this is how

I might dress. This is fairly typical for me

when I've done funerals in the past with some certain

exceptions, but for the most part this is this is what that

looks like. So welcome to the funeral that

you didn't know you were going to.

Today we are holding a funeral for our good friend Moses.

I suspect, like many God fearing Christians I know, Moses at his

funeral would not want us to really talk about him.

He would want us to talk about the God whom he loved, who

walked with him in life and in death, who was so faithful to

him. God or Moses would want us to

talk about that God. He would want us to talk about

the God that he so eagerly sought, the glory of his entire

life. He would want us to know who

that God is and he would want us to know that that God is

perfectly faithful in all of his promises related to that.

As a Hospice chaplain for for a for a time, I dealt with death

and the conversations around death nearly every single day.

And it's interesting that in death or as people are

approaching that the the things that we strive for most in the

prime years of our life are not the things that we care about at

all. We go from caring about having

the right career in the right title and having a big enough

house to house everybody that we want to have come over, or a big

enough house to be able to hide from people who we don't want to

come over. All these things that we worry

about. But as people near death, none

of those things come to mind. And I can tell you that for

certain. What I can tell you about people

who are nearing death is wildly consistent.

There's a number of things that they think most about.

Now, the things I'm about to tell you, they don't necessarily

go in this order because every single person is a little bit

different. They have different priorities

as they know they're leaving this life.

But in general, here's what that looks like.

Here's what people worry about. Am I right with my maker?

In other words, where am I? Where am I going?

When I die? What's going to happen to me?

They worry. Is it going to hurt?

Is dying going to hurt? Am I going to suffer?

They also worry because they have things that they still need

to say. There are things there are

regrets that they need to air out.

There's apologies that they need to make.

And then on the other side of that same coin, there's things

that they want to hear. They want to hear from people

who love them or were supposed to.

They want to hear forgiveness. They want to hear

reconciliation. And finally, they want to know

that the people that they love and they care about are going to

be OK without them, that there is provision for them

emotionally and otherwise, that they're going to be OK.

Now, as you'll hear in this text that we're going to read this

morning, Moses died in peace. Our friend was OK when he died.

Why? Because he knew God's promises

were sure and true. Additionally, he did the things

that I just mentioned, those things that people worry about.

He said what he needed to say. He took all of his writing, the

law that the God had given him, all the precepts.

He wrote them down and he handed them to trustworthy people so

that they could be read aloud, so that they could be copied and

laid next to the ark. He gave Joshua leadership so

that way he would know that his people would be well led and

that they would be OK. Most of all, he knew his God and

he knew his God's character, that it was perfect.

And so despite Moses being 120 years old and strangely,

strangely strong and undimmed, when he died at 120, there was

no fight, there was no argument. He knew whom he was going home

to and he was OK with that. He was ready to meet his Maker.

Therefore today we will honour our friends Moses.

We will honour him, but we will not stay on Him.

We will not stay there because again, anything that Moses or

anyone in heaven or hell could tell you, if they could tell you

anything, they would tell you that I should just talk about

Jesus. So that's what we're going to do

today as we honor Moses. Let's go to the word of the Lord

in Deuteronomy chapter 34. But I suppose before I do that,

Deuteronomy 34 · chapter mention

maybe I'll tell you where we're going.

First and foremost, if you haven't already read it on the

screen. We're going to start with

Moses's obituary. It's important to honor him as

God used him. Then we're going to see that the

Lord has absolutely unchangeable character.

And then we're going to see the Lord's faithfulness even in

death. So let's go to Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 34 · chapter mention

chapter 34, and then we will explore these themes that we

have for today. If you have your Bibles, you can

open there. You can follow along on the

screen. It will be right there.

Deuteronomy 34. It's a short chapter, it's only

12 verses and we read this in Jesus name.

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, all of Naphtali, the land of Ephraim

and Manasseh, all the land of Judah, as far as as far as the

western sea, the Negeb, and the plain that is in the valley of

Jericho, the city of palm trees, as far as Zohar.

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, and I have let you see it with your eyes, but you

shall not go over there. So the So Moses the servant of

the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word

of the Lord, and he buried him in the valley in the land of

Moab opposite Beth Pior, but when no one knows the place of

his burial to this day. Moses was 120 years old when he

died. His eye was undimmed and his

vigor unabated, and the people of Israel wept for Moses in the

plains of Moab 30 days. Then the days of weeping and

mourning for Moses were ended, 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.

And there has not arisen a prophet since since, since an

Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, none like

him. For all the signs and the

wonders that the Lord sent to him to do in the land of Egypt,

to Pharaoh and to all his servants, to all of his land,

and for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror

that Moses did in the sight of Israel.

Here ends reading of God's Word. So Moshe, better known to us as

Moses, died at 120 years old. He was the son of Amram, his

father, the son of his mother, Jack Bed, and he had two

siblings, a sister, Miriam, a brother Aaron.

And then later in life he grew up and he married Zipporah, and

they had two sons, Gershom and Eliezer.

Now I have to tell you that Moses was born in unusual

circumstances. Moses was born into slavery.

And in fact, Moses was born to die.

And that's kind of a strange thing to think about, but it's

true. Moses was born to die.

And the reason why we know that is because when Moses was born,

he was born during a time when Pharaoh, the greatest king of

the earth, in that moment, had instituted genocide for every

male Hebrew born baby. And so his mother, when he was

born, she looked at him and she could not help herself.

She broke the law. She loved him too much.

And so she hid him for three months.

She hit him for three months until she could hide him no

longer. And then when she could hide him

no longer, she created a plan. She made a little bed inside of

a tiny basket, just large enough for a baby.

And she set that basket along the Bank of the river, knowing

that this is where this is where the daughters of Pharaoh would

often times go to bathe. And so she set that down.

And sure enough, one of the daughters of Pharaoh came to

bathe one day. And there Moses was.

So as she uncovered him, he was weeping.

He was crying, as you can imagine.

And she had compassion on him. And her compassion changed the

entire world. So what happened is Moses had an

opportunity to be raised by his mother for a short time before

he was taken into Pharaoh's Kingdom.

And when he was taken into Pharaoh's Kingdom, he had every

opportunity given to him. He was a Prince.

All of the best education, all of the best training, everything

was at his fingertips. And yet, as he grew, he never

forgot who he was. He never forgot his people, his

family. And so one day as he went out to

see his people, as I suspect he usually did, he saw a slave

master beating one of his people in a fiery, burning anger and a

righteous anger for his people being mistreated.

He murdered an Egyptian. Well, we know Moses was always

an outsider. He was a Hebrew.

He didn't belong in that palace. And so he knew he had to run.

He knew he would no longer be accepted in the very place that

trained him and grew him. So he ran.

He fled to Midian. And there in Midian for the next

40 years, Moses would be, he would tend the sheep, he would

get married, he would be a husband and he would raise

children. And during that time he lived in

relative obscurity. That is, until, that is, until

one day God showed up. The great I AM showed up in the

mystery of the burning Bush, and changed Moses's life forever.

You see, The thing is, Moses believed that his life was

pretty much over. He was content to be unknown,

unseen, and relatively unimportant to the rest of the

world. But when God showed up, he

realized that his life was no longer his own.

He realized that his life had a purpose beyond himself.

And he realized that God was going to ask him to do the

impossible. God is going to ask him to defy

the very Pharaoh that he ran from with his tail tucked.

Not only to defy him, but to bring God's people out of

slavery, out of Egypt, so that they might worship God, so that

they might inherit the land that God had promised to Abraham and

Isaac and to Jacob, and so that they could rekindle their

intimate relationship with the Lord the way that all of their

ancestors had. All of this had, all of this had

pretty much come to fruition in Moses, 120 years of life.

All but one thing. God looked at Moses and he said,

no, you don't get to go. You will die here on this

mountain. You will not touch that land

that I've promised you and your people.

Moses is survived by his nation. The people whom he served, whose

bloodline would go about, would go on to bring about the greater

mediator, Jesus Christ. This was Moses's life.

Now you might say to me at this point, pastor, that's all well

and good. Thank you for the history

lesson. Thank you for the obituary.

That was really fun in the suit and all the things.

That's really great fun theme. Good for you.

You might be saying that now, but what you might also be

saying is that there's something very wrong with this story.

Something does not sit right and you wouldn't be totally wrong.

Here's what shouldn't sit right for you.

Moses was a servant of the Lord. He gave his life to serve these

people who never really fully appreciate him, who never really

expressed the gratitude that they should have.

He worked like a dog and then God cannot do him this one final

kindness to bring him into the land that he fought so hard to

bring those ungrateful people into.

What is happening? This is ridiculous.

Now, if you think then that God is being unjust or unfair, I

want you to consider this one very true fact.

God is unchangeable. He is absolutely unchangeable.

And the fact is, we need Him to be just like that.

We need him to be unchangeable. Otherwise all of us will be lost

forever. Here's what I mean by that.

If you go backwards a little bit into Numbers chapter 20, what

Numbers 20 · chapter mention

happened was Moses was with the people, and he had once again

LED them into a place where there was very little water.

So the people did what they always did when things got a

little dicey. They grumbled and they grumbled

and they complained. And it usually sounds like this.

Moses, you're just the worst. You're the worst leader.

You have no navigational skills. You always end up bringing us to

these places where we're going to die of hunger or thirst.

What is your deal? What you should have done was we

should have probably died in that plague that God had.

Or better yet, we should have died in Egypt where we had like

food and water and we worked like dogs.

But that's fine. Typical, very typical.

They have, they have memories like goldfish.

Well, Moses then and Aaron, they did what they normally do in

this, in this situation, which comes about far too many times,

they go to the Lord and they ask, they appeal to God and they

ask him to intercede because these maniacs are going to kill

us. And so God does something.

He says, all right, here's what we're going to do.

Moses, I got a plan for you. You are going to go before the

elders and before the people, and you're going to go to the

rock as you have previously, and this time you are going to tell

the rock to let out its water, that the livestock and the

people may drink and be satisfied.

And then and then I will be glorified amongst the people

because they have heard my word and my word is the thing that

has watered them. Well, what does Moses do?

Moses goes and in the midst of the people he takes his staff

and God bless Moses. He was probably so angry.

So what he does is instead of telling the rock, he takes the

staff and and he says to the people, you want us to bring

water out for you? Sure thing.

Bam. And he hits the rock twice.

Do you see what happened there? Do you see what the problem is?

There's a major problem that just occurred, and the major

problem is this. All of the eyes of the people

went from God to Moses. Moses is going to get the credit

for that. Do you see it?

Moses is the one who in his great anger and his fiery

frustration that we've seen him play out in other times in his

life, in that anger and his annoyance with those people,

instead of doing what God told him, instead of God getting the

glory and the praise, Moses is going to get the glory and the

praise and he's going to and he's going to make sure people

know he's serious. Because that's the thing.

He's so frantically bothered by their, by their ingratitude and

their unwillingness to to really put their faith in God that he

is going to let his anger flow. But the problem is God doesn't

get the glory. It's not his word that does the

work. Then it's Moses and his power

and his anger and his staff. Now a greater problem to all

this is Moses is a mere human. He's a mere human.

He's not God. He will not be with those people

forever. He can't.

And so God, knowing that, wanted to make sure that the people

knew who was really taking care of them.

And Moses blew it. Now, were God changeable, he

would have probably said, you know what, Moses, you were

right. They were being jerks again.

They're kind of the worst people.

I mean, they're really, they're really terrible.

They're really ungrateful. So Moses, you go ahead and blow

off some steam, that's fine. In which case, if that's true,

God probably would have looked at Moses and like, hey man, I

remember that whole deal with the murder in the Egyptian

thing. He was kind of a jerk too.

So he had it coming. Murders, fine, it's fine.

Don't even worry about it. And on and on and on.

God could make excuses for himself and his people if he was

changeable, but we need God to not grant concession to

temporary feelings. If God starts granting

concession and truth to temporary feelings, the world

will be lost and will be lost with it.

I don't know if you know this, but feelings change pretty

quickly. Let me give you an example

that's really relevant. When I walked on this stage, I

saw from my angle a lot of you go.

Is the suit really that bad? Geez, guys.

Just surprising. I know.

Normally I'm just a sloth and a slouch.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Really. It's the elders fault.

They told me I had to dress this way from now on.

Thanks, Wayne. You're the best.

It's not true. It's not true.

No, but we we need God to not grant concessions to temporary

feelings. They change too fast and based

on our feelings. The law seems to change in our

own land and it's not based on a moral or good ethical anchor.

It's based on I feel, I feel we need God to be unchangeable.

He has to be that way or we will not survive.

Now, if I have not made that case thoroughly enough yet, I

want to prove it to you like this.

Don't you think that God's heart broke when His Son knelt down in

the garden and prayed for any other way for judgement to be

satisfied? Don't you think that was

heartbreaking to Him? And don't you think that he was

inconsolable? He's a father looking at his

son, knowing that his son was going to be brutally tortured

and beaten and mocked and spit on.

Don't you think he got in his heart was inconsolable?

And don't you think that God was miserable and downcast, knowing

that if he was just willing to change, His son wouldn't have to

endure hell? But he didn't change.

He wouldn't change. And the reason why God refused

to change is because if he changed, you would be lost

forever. He would never have you.

You could not be his son and his daughter if God changed.

God doesn't change. Now knowing that God doesn't

change, let's be honest, sometimes that's going to lead

to our short term pain and discomfort and disappointment.

I have the very real sense that although Moses had peace with

God, there was a high level of disappointment that he did not

get to go to the land that he fought so hard to bring his

people into. And he's dead now.

Lest I make you believe that's the end of Moses's story, I

don't want to leave you there because that's not the end of

Moses's story. There was more that God had for

him to do. And you say that's weird because

he's dead, but it's true. There was more that God had for

him to do because God is just as faithful in life or in death as

He is in life. And here's how we know that.

If you have your Bibles and you want to flip to Matthew 17, I'm

going to read a short passage from that and we're going to see

what life looks like for Moses after death.

Just the first couple verses out of this, out of this text.

Matthew 17. Now I got the sniffles.

It's terrible. Nobody wants to hear that in a

microphone. I'm trying to hold it back.

Matthew 17 And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and

James and John his brother, and LED them up a high mountain by

themselves. And he was transfigured before

them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became

white as light. And behold, there appeared to

them Moses and Elijah talking with him.

And Peter said to Jesus, Lord, it is good for the for us to be

here. If you wish, I will make 3

tents, one for you and one for Moses, and 1:00 for Elijah when

he when he was still speaking, when behold, a bright cloud

overshadowed them and a voice from the cloud said, This is my

beloved son with whom I am well pleased.

Did you catch it? Did you see it?

If you haven't realized what just happened, God is faithful

even in death. The very place that God told

Moses no, after a lifetime of work, God placed him in the very

center of it and the very apex of it.

That's where Moses is standing. When he is standing and speaking

with Jesus, he's standing in the promised land at the very top of

it. God is faithful in his promises

even in death. Now, what's more interesting I

think about this that we need to make sure we get is this Moses,

when he died in at the beginning of his natural life, God, he

took him up. Nobody, as far as we know,

nobody went with Moses to the top of the mountain.

So Moses climbed to the top of the mountain during his life so

that the Lord could take him up and bring him to his real home.

But here's the thing, as Moses and Elijah and Jesus meet on the

top of the mountain, Jesus climbed a mountain in the

promised land, in the land that Moses was promised.

And he climbed that mountain not to be taken up by the Lord, but

to get his marching orders. Jesus went to the mountain to

get his marching orders from his Father and from Moses and from

Elijah himself. And what were those marching

orders? Those marching orders were you

don't get to stay on the top of the mountain, you don't get to

live here, you don't get to be here.

You need to go down the mountain.

You need to descend and when you descend you are going to go up

again, but this time it will not be a mountain you will ascend, a

cross you will climb across. And as you climb that cross you

are going to be fixed to it by nails.

Those nails being the very sins. They will hold you fast to that

cross because they are the very sins that my judgement is

putting on you so that so that my children aren't lost forever.

This was Jesus's mountain that he climbed.

It was the cross at Calvary. But because he climbed that

mountain for you and for me, we are not lost.

We have assurance of life. We have assurance that even when

things don't go our way, even when we're disappointed, even

when God says no, His ultimate answer is always yes.

His final answer is always yes to you because of what Jesus

Christ has done on your behalf. Do you believe that?

Do you believe it? Because if you do, not even

death, not even death itself, will stop you from worshiping

the Lord. You will worship Him and all the

more as you get closer to that day.

Because as you get closer to that day, you draw closer to the

glory of God. The very thing that Moses went

after with all of his energy and all of his heart, you draw

closer to it. Don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid. Jesus climbed the cross so that

you could be on top of the mountain with God.

Amen. Amen.

Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, thank you

for your servant Moses. Thank you for instilling in him

a faithfulness that we celebrate today.

But Lord, we don't just celebrate Moses your servant.

We celebrate the one who Moses looked to, Jesus Christ our Lord

and our King, our King that took the cross instead of the throne

so that he could defeat death forever and sit rightly on his

heavenly throne. Father, you are good beyond

measure. Your steadfast love endures

forever and we thank you for it. I pray now, Lord, that anybody

in this room or listening that has not understood the gospel

until this moment, Lord, would you open up their hearts to

believe? Would you give us the faith of

Moses? Lord, we know you're capable, we

know you're able, and we know you're faithful to do it.

So we pray all these things in Jesus name and all God's people

said Amen. Thanks for listening to ERC

Sundays. To support the work God is doing

at Emmaus Rd. Church, visit

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