© Rev. Lance Carrithers, all rights reserved.  Permission required to copy any portion of this message by any means. Email for permission: lance@firstchurchdc.com

"Satisfied"

Deuteronomy 34:1-12

             Moses, in our lesson today, stands on yet another mountaintop.  Last week, he stood on Horeb, to receive the law of God.  Now, nearing his final breath, he climbs Mount Nebo to the summit of Pisgah. 

           Imagine what he sees from this high place.   Looking south he sees the great the Jordan valley all the way to Zoar, sitting on the edge of the Dead Sea.  And over there, north is the Sea of Galilee.  And the Mediterranean sea to the west.  From sea to sea to shining sea.  It’s the promise.  For forty years he and God’s people have longed for it, told stories about it, dreamed of it, and yes, even doubted it.  And now, on this high place, Moses sees it.  Finally can know that the promise is more than a promise, more than a crazy dream, more than a foolish hope.  The promise is what God said it would be.  A land of milk and honey, a land for the people to call their own.   The promise is their future.  
          We read that Moses sees the promise, but God tells him he will not enter it.  Here, on this high place, Moses will leave the promise in the hands of others.  Here, on this high place, God will tenderly bury him.  Here, on this high place, Moses’ old eyes will see for the first and the last time, the promise before him.

          I imagine that Moses, like so many who reach the end of life, might have reflected upon his life.  The adventures and the pitfall.  The mistakes he’d like to correct and the trials that made him stronger.  The blessings he had received, and the friendship with God like no other mortal had ever known.

         Can you see Moses, closing his eyes, and remembering?  His first recollection likely from a story.  He was too young, he couldn’t have remembered it first hand.  But no doubt he’d been told of his miraculous beginnings.   Placed into the Nile in a tiny woven life raft, only to be retrieved and raised as a prince in Pharoh’s household.  Yet, fully Hebrew at the breast of his own biological mother, who had been hired as a wet-nurse for the adopted son pulled from the Nile.  How, but for the grace of God, could such a turn of events ever be explained?  Even as an infant, God had been watching over, providing for his servant.

          The old man standing on the top of the mountain over the Negev was once a handsome, young, man of strength.  Perhaps he remembers the conflict that grew inside of him, born a Hebrew, raised an Egyptian prince.  And how that conflict boiled over into a murderous rage one day.  It was not a moment he would have been proud of.  But something inside of him snapped as he saw the Egyptian taskmasters beat a poor Hebrew slave, and he rushed the Egyptian and killed him on the spot, burying him in the sand.   Of course, such a thing can never be kept a secret, and soon Moses was on the run.  A fugitive--running to escape the consequences of his actions.  Prince or not, there would be little mercy for a Hebrew man who has taken the life of an Egyptian. 

          That’s how he ended up in the land of Midian.  At 40, he starts over.  I wonder how Moses, standing there on the mountain as old man, felt about that turning point in his life.  What would it have been like these ensuing 80 years if he had not killed that man?  If he had not run away?   At 40, he became a shepherd, caring for the flock of a Midian priest.  He would learn this desert terrain, not knowing then of course that one day he would be shepherding a flock of God’s people through the same land.  Of course, God surely knew.  Even then.  Shaping and forming his servant for the tasks that lay ahead. 

          For another 40 years, Moses tends the sheep out in the desert, nothing more than a man working for his father-in-law.   I can see a slight smile on the old man’s lips as he remembers the day he saw the fire.  Can you?

         He remembers the fire.   How could he not remember it?  That was the day everything changed.  The fire spoke his name.  And he met God--face to face.  The voice from the fire told him of the suffering and misery of the slaves in Egypt.  Of course Moses knew of that suffering.  And then the voice told Moses of the promise.

          To deliver the slaves from the Egyptian taskmasters.  To take them to a new land.  A land flowing with milk and honey.  A land to be their own.  And they would be God’s people.  And this God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph would be their God. 

          Then, Moses did not believe he could do what God was asking him.  To lead the people to freedom.  But he did not know how God had been watching over him, protecting him and preparing him for just this moment.
          The old man on the mountaintop,  breeze in his white flowing beard remembers how he had questioned God.  “Who shall I say sent me?” he asks the voice from the fire.  “Tell them I AM sent you.”  “What if they don’t believe me?” he asks.  “I will give you signs and wonders to perform.”  Moses remembered the staff and how it became a serpent, and turned into a staff again.  How his hand had suddenly become leprous and diseased, and then just as suddenly, whole and smooth again.

          God had thought of everything.  Even help to assist Moses in speaking to the people, "I will send your brother Aaron to help you. He can be your mouthpiece.” the voice had told him.  At the ripe old age of eighty, Moses returned to Egypt, to follow the promise.

          What an adventure!  Moses on the mountaintop remembers the plagues.  Pests, diseases, a river of blood.    He remembered how they had put blood on their doorposts so that the angel of death would spare the Hebrews, passing over them the night the lives of the firstborn of the Egyptians were taken.  He remembers the escape.  Asking for the gold from the Egyptians, carrying Joseph’s bones out ahead of them, moving out into the desert and across the red sea.  

          In an old man’s memory, that was certainly the greatest of adventures.   The waters parting so that the slaves could move through the sea on dry ground.  Pursued by Pharaoh’s arm, the people safely gathered on the other side to see the waters of the sea rush together and cover the chariots.   Was that when Moses knew in his heart the promise was real?  Was that when Moses knew down deep, this promise was worth giving his life for?  

         Oh, an old man’s memories.  This last forty years had been the hardest.  The grumblings of the people, and the out and out insurrections.  But in the face of each hardship, there had been the providing hand of God caring for the leading the people through the desert.  Food each morning, meat each evening.  Bitter water made sweet.  Even water that had poured out of a rock when there was no water at all!  And the enemies that had attacked them in the wilderness, how God had fought for them and defeated the enemies for them.  All for the promise. 

          They had almost lost it all.  When God’s anger burned against the people.  God had told Moses that day he was going to destroy them all and start again.   Moses had been again face to face with his intimate friend, the God of Abraham.  God had just given Moses the ten laws that would begin to bring the people together, to fashion them into a community, a people of God.   But while Moses was there on Horeb, the people fell away, Aaron had made a terrible mistake, casting a golden idol  from the earrings and other jewelry, gold that God had given them from the Egyptians.  Then, the people worshiped the idol.

          Moses pleaded with God on their behalf.  Moses begged God not to destroy them, but to remember the promise.  The promise!    And God had relented. 

          That day seemed long ago.  Indeed, there have been many years in the desert since then.  And the law did help them form community.  And they learned how to worship God.  They built a tabernacle in the desert, and their identity as the people of God was shaped.   All because of a  promise.   The promise.

          Opening his eyes again, the old man on the mountaintop look out again over the valleys, the river, from sea to sea.  There it was, the promise.  

          God had protected Moses as a infant for this promise.  Had sent him into the desert for this promise.  Had spoke to him from the fire for this promise.  Had provided a way out of Egypt for this promise.  Had fed and watered and given the people everything they needed for this promise.  Had defeated enemies for this promise.   Had given them law and discipline to shape them into a people ready to receive this promise.    And now, here it was.  All spread out below him.    A promise fulfilled.

          We read of Moses and sometimes we feel sorry for him, seeing the promised land but not being allowed to enter into it.  We sometimes assume he must have been sad, angry, or both.  He had given his life for this promise, why wouldn’t God let him enter it?

          But we forget what I think Moses, in his 120 years of wisdom, his decades of faithful serving knew.  The promise was made not to him, but to God’s people.  That God’s vision is much larger than any single individual.  Moses would not enter into the land that was promised, but he would have the satisfaction of knowing that God is true to God’s word.   And with that, Moses could lay down his head, and rest….knowing that the promise always was in God’s hands.    Joshua would have the same providence Moses had come to know.  And after Joshua, there would be others. 

          Even the people who entered the promised land could not have known, could not have seen how far the promise stretched.  Far beyond the tribes of Israel.  Extended through God’s own son to people of every nation.  Through generations, centuries, and even millenniums.  To you and to me. 

          The promise.  Moses, and many, many, many others have lived and died, knowing that the promise is fully in God’s hands.  And that others will take up where they have left off.  That still others will take up where we leave off.

          Like Moses, we live for a span, that is only a small segment of God’s enormous plan.  Of God’s enormous promise, that we have learned through Jesus Christ is the complete redemption of the world.  A Kingdom of God on earth, as it is in heaven. 

          We, in all probability, won’t live to see the promise come to pass.  But we live as part of the promise, faithful to serve as God would have us serve.   We may not live to see the promise become reality, but we can one day rest in the deep satisfaction, the deep satisfaction that Moses surely knew, that we were part of something big.  Something truly remarkable.  Something only God could bring about.  A promise.