March 4, 2018 “Glimpse” – Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Deuteronomy 34:1-12
“Glimpse”
March 4, 2018 – Third Sunday in Lent

I did not take my father-in-law to see Crater Lake. It’s one of several regrets in my life. Not long after we moved to Oregon, he and Mom flew out to visit us. Dad sat in our backyard and marveled at the quiet, away from freeways like the one that ran behind their property in St. Louis. We wanted to show them the beauties of the Northwest, and planned a couple day trips. He wanted to see Crater Lake, but it just seemed too far. We had two little children, one a toddler. Dad and Mom weren’t able to walk very well. Beth and I also started to realize during the visit that Mom was in the first stages of Alzheimer’s. So I chose not to make the 3-hour plus drive each way to Crater Lake. Our journeys were only to Portland and Multnomah Falls and a little way up the road to Mt. Hood.

Dad didn’t live much longer after that trip. So he never got another chance. Beth remembers he had a picture of Crater Lake hanging in his office back home. I realize now that all the driving we did around Portland and the Gorge could have gotten us nearly to Crater Lake and back. That trip south might actually have been easier than fighting traffic around the city. Dad was so close but never got to a place he really wanted to visit. I think of Dad and Crater Lake when I think of Moses and the Promised Land.

Reading through Numbers and Deuteronomy the past few weeks made me realize how deeply God’s punishment of Moses must have affected him. We read the reason first in Numbers chapter 20. Instead of simply speaking to a rock from which God planned to bring water for His people, Moses in anger and impatience struck the rock with his staff and water burst forth. He said to the people “Listen, you rebels. Must we bring you water from this rock?” The implication of saying that was that Moses and Aaron produced the water rather than God. Moses took the glory for himself rather than giving it to God. God punished him by forbidding him to enter the land to which he led his people.

What I noticed in reading on from there was that Moses keeps mentioning this punishment over and over. God has forbidden him to enter Canaan. The people will go on without him. He repeats it in in Numbers 27, page 254 in Beginnings, then in Deuteronomy chapter 3 and chapter 4, pages 278 to 280. He implies it, as I said last week, in Deuteronomy 9 on page 287 when he says, “you” rather than “we” are about to enter the new land. Then it comes back again at the beginning of chapter 31 and the end of 32, pages 318 and 324. Finally here in what we read today in chapter 34 we see it happening. Moses gets to see, to glimpse the Promised Land, but he dies without ever going there.

For those of you who wonder about such things, no, I don’t think Moses wrote this last chapter of Deuteronomy about his own death. If he is the author of the rest of the book, then this was clearly added by someone else, perhaps by Joshua. It starts out by telling us that Moses climbed Mt. Nebo. There’s some debate about just where that might have been, but the traditional location fits pretty well, a slope northeast of the Dead Sea in what today is the country of Jordan. Nebo is also called Pisgah, familiar to us from the peak and arboretum by that name over south of Springfield. Pisgah may have just meant something like “summit.” So it would mean that Moses went all the way to the top of Nebo.

There are ruins of an ancient Christian church on the traditional site of Mt. Nebo, along with a modern memorial to Moses. It’s about 2,600 feet above sea level, higher than our Mt. Pisgah. From that point there is an excellent view north into Israel, slightly less of a view of the Jordan Valley, and on a clear day you can see Jerusalem.

The description of what God showed Moses is more extensive, a view of the whole land north and south and far west, including, specifically, the land all the way to the Mediterranean. That means Moses was given a vision of more than he could see naturally. You can’t see the Mediterranean from Mt. Nebo, any more than you or I could see the Pacific Ocean from Mt. Pisgah by Springfield. So God let Moses catch a supernatural glimpse of all that would eventually be given to his people.

Moses was arriving at the end of his life knowing that his work was not done. He had been called to lead Israel out of Egypt and to bring them into that land which God showed him there on that mountain top. But he was not going to finish the job. In Deuteronomy 3, on the bottom of page 278, we read that Moses pleaded with God to be able to cross over the Jordan and enter the land. But the answer was no. Moses was to commission Joshua to succeed him and complete the task.

It’s difficult to have unfinished work in our lives. When I left my first church to come here twenty-five years ago, one of the last things that happened just before I left was that the congregation voted to enter a building program. They knew I was going but still felt God leading them in that direction. I had spent months of meetings planning the design and led them through a successful fund raising campaign. I got a glimpse, but it was another pastor who would see the new addition go up. I still haven’t been back to see it. Now a young man who was in my Confirmation class then leads that church.

We typically want to guard against leaving things undone. Since the early 2000s, and particularly since the movie by that title in 2006, people talk about having a “bucket list,” a catalog of things to do and places to visit before one dies. We try hard not to end up like my father-in-law or like Moses, regretting at the end of our lives that we hadn’t been there or done that. But the lesson on Mt. Nebo is that God is often the one who decides such things.

What is traditionally verse 4 there on page 327 is the final word from God to Moses on the subject, “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 now allowed you to see it with your own eyes, but you will not enter the land.” God keeps His promises. He promised Canaan to Abraham’s descendants, but that did not mean that Moses himself would see or be part of the final fulfillment of that promise. He got a glimpse and that was it.

Over the years, I’ve run into Christians, some here in our own church, who were absolutely confident that Christ would return in their lifetimes. As they grew older they would sometimes try to hang on to that confidence. “I’m not going to die. Jesus will be back before then.” Yet I’ve watched two or three folks like that breathe their last and go to wait for the Second Coming of Christ in another place. God is going to fulfill His promises, but many generations of believers have had to be satisfied with only a glimpse of what is to come. Part of growing in our walk with Jesus means learning to discern which gifts God actually wants to give us here and now and which He only means us to glimpse.

There’s another lesson from the Pisgah summit. The realization that we may not go everywhere and do everything we imagine for ourselves, even when we are going there or doing that for God, should not discourage us. Moses did not simply give up when God made it clear that he wasn’t going to cross the Jordan in front of the children of Israel. As verse 7 says, “Moses was 120 years old when he died, yet his eyesight was clear, and he was as strong as ever.”

We read that last song and those last blessings that Moses gave to Israel. He knew full well that he would not be there to see how it worked out, but his words were full of vigor and energy and warning and encouragement. He kept at his task of leading Israel even while making ready to turn that leadership over to someone else. That kind of commitment and energy for our work for God, right up to the point He means for us to step aside or set it down, is something you and I need to learn and to discern.

Most of all, though, I suggest that Moses on Mt. Nebo shows us how to graciously let go of some of our glimpses of God’s promises, maybe even of some of our dreams. Movies and graduation speakers are always telling us these days to follow our dreams. But it may be just as important sometimes to let them go. God may have something wonderful for us that we cannot experience until we quit hanging on to a dream He may not really want us to follow, may not really want to give us.

As I said to the children, Jesus cleaned out the Temple there in Jerusalem so that what God really wanted for His people could be there. The Temple was to be a place of prayer, a house where men, women and children came to meet God. All that religious infrastructure to support the sacrifices being offered, all that buying and selling of animals and changing of money, got in the way of what God wanted for His people then. They needed to set aside their dreams of perfect Temple worship in order to receive the Savior whom God was really sending them.

You and I may need to set aside our dreams and visions of what might be a perfect life or perhaps a perfect church and accept what God actually wants to give us, His presence here and now in the circumstances and relationships we are already in.

One of the intriguing and enigmatic parts of this story of Moses is his burial by the Lord, as it says, there in Moab, east of the Jordan. No one knows the exact place, it says. The enigma is made all the greater by one verse, verse 9, in the little book of Jude in the New Testament. It talks about Michael the archangel in a dispute with Satan over the body of Moses. Jude was making a point about Christian behavior and, to illustrate it, he chose a story from a book that is now lost, The Assumption of Moses. Apparently in that lost book, Satan contended that Moses was a murderer. He killed that Egyptian back in Egypt. So the guilty Moses belonged to Satan. But Michael arrives to keep Moses’ body safe for God, telling Satan, “The Lord rebuke you.”

Jude’s point is that Christians ought to leave judgement up to the Lord, just like the angel Michael did, even with Satan. But we also catch a glimpse in these mysterious bits of Scripture of how God cares for and watches over His people. Moses did not get to enter the Promised Land, but God kept his body safe when he died. God was there for Moses even beyond his death. The same is true for you and me. When we trust in Jesus, when we commit our lives and our dreams to Him, He is there for us to end and beyond the end.

The last paragraph, verses 10 to 12, starts out, “There has never been another prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.” You see, that’s the glimpse God was giving Moses all along. Yes, he got that peek at the Promised Land just before he died. He got to look into country where he couldn’t go. But way back in the story he got to see what very few other people on earth have seen so clearly. He got to look into the face of God, into the eyes of the Lord to whom he did go in the end.

I submit that is what you and I ought to be about in our doing and our dreaming. If God clearly gives you a direction to go or a mission to accomplish for Him, great. If He calls you into a marriage in which to model Christian love, fine. If He gives you a good job that performs important service in this world and provides for you and others, super. If He sends you on a mission to share Christ across the world or across town, marvelous. But if one or more of those dreams doesn’t work out, maybe by your own fault, like Moses, do not despair. God may have given you a glimpse of something you aren’t going to have right now. But what He really wants to give you is a glimpse, and more than a glimpse, of Himself. That’s better than any promised land we might dream about.

The way to receive what God really wants to give you is to receive Jesus. If something in your life is keeping you from receiving Him fully, from seeing Him clearly, whether it’s a dream or a sin, whether it’s being too busy or being too lazy, then set those things aside. Ask Him to come and clear them out of your heart and life. Go up on your own Mt. Nebo and don’t look too hard at where you can’t go, but look at Who is there with you. That’s what He wants you to see. That’s what He wants to give you.

We come to this Table this morning to catch a glimpse, and more than a glimpse, of God giving us Himself in Jesus Christ His Son. May that be what you see here now. May that be what you receive.

Amen.