“Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across form 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 Mediterranean Sea, the Negev and the whole region from the Valley of Jericho, the City of Palms as far as Zoar.” (Deuteronomy 34:1 NIV)
I’ve always felt a bit bad for Moses. He followed God faithfully through the desert. He spent more than forty years contending with a stubborn and ungrateful people. He met with God regularly and enjoyed His presence like you and sit down with a friend for coffee. Yet one bad day, one strike instead of speak, and the Promised Land will never rise to meet his feet. The grumbling Israelites got to go in, but God held Moses back.
Instead, he climbed up one last mountain to die. Even death was a physical effort for Moses. If I were him, I’d get to the top of that last peak and sit down feeling pretty sorry for myself. But Moses met his Maker-Sustainer one more time. He couldn’t go into Canaan, but he got to see it. The Lord showed him the whole of the land.
I don’t know how I’ve flipped by this text in previous trips through the Pentateuch. Perhaps it’s clearer since I’ve set foot in the Promised Land myself. You can’t see the Mediterranean from Moab. It’s at least eighty-five miles to the coastline. You can’t lay eyes on Dan and the Negev at the same time – they are hundreds of miles in the opposite direction. The land that God was giving over to the Israelites was vast and varied. God would have had to have given Moses some sort of supernatural viewing for him to see it in the detail described in the last chapter of Deuteronomy.
I’m always wondering, you know, how did God make it happen? Was it a big screen in the sky? Did Moses fall in asleep and receive a vision? Was this the very first drone footage; three thousand years ahead of human schedule? Did Moses get a Holy Spirit flyover, like a biblical sort of Superman? It’s fun to truly try to picture what the Word says happened. What we know for sure is the Moses got a backstage pass to the Promised Land, a private tour with God before he went Home himself.
I’m encouraged by this. I read of Moses’ faithfulness and honestly, I’m intimidated. I’ve been more like the Israelites and less like Moses. I’ve griped and moaned and dug my heels in. I’ve overacted and struck when I could have spoke more than one time in my years of God-service. Yet, Moses receives grace. He gets a special, one-of-a-kind experience with God and then he gets to skip right past the physical Promised Land and is promoted to the permanent one.
“And Moses the servant of the Lot died there in Moab as the Lord said.” (Deuteronomy 34:5 NIV)
We don’t read one word of complaint from Moses. He simply accepts his fate and fold up with God and goes home. He appears to be content with God’s complete rewrite of his story.
We struggle, don’t we? We struggle with sin and we struggle with consequences and we struggle with waiting for good things to come to pass. Maybe most of all, we struggle with others. But God and His grace. What a relief it is that He loves us so! What a wonderment, that He sent His Son! What sweet hope we have in heaven, an invitation afforded by blood atonement alone!
Lord, forgive us for all the times we’ve grumbled and all the times we’ve struck when You’ve commanded us to speak. Please give us patience. Grow our obedient hearts and cooperative spirits, but above all, give us grace. We may miss the fullness of Your blessing here, but we are so grateful for the standing invitation to Your forever Home. Amen.