Lessons from Moses' Journey and God's Guidance

Yeah, the Lord told me I should stay there until you guys got it right. I'd like to move along a little faster, but, you know, when you have people that just don't move, you have to do whatever you can. There you go. Deuteronomy chapter 32, and I want to start with verse 48. This is a passage of Scripture where God has given clear instructions to Moses as to what he's supposed to do. All of chapter 32 was the song that Moses was required to write. The song was a song of prophecy. God knew the people of Israel very well, and he said, I know what's going to happen to you as soon as you get in the land of promise. I bless you with the property, and I bless you with the good things that come to you. You're going to get successful, and you're going to forget me. You're going to think, well, now everything we've got going our way. We don't have to worry about these things. And then you're going to find yourself moving away and being unfaithful to me. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to make sure that the judgment comes to you because of it. All the things that you've left behind, I'm going to make sure that you remember. And then whenever the people who are your neighbors look at you and say, why has this disaster come to them? I'm not going to destroy you completely because I don't want them to think that I don't have the power to take care of my people. So instead of destroying you completely, I will simply bring you to your knees in the hope that you will return to me. This was the song of Moses. It's a song that was sort of like a lawsuit. Now Moses is finished with this. God asked him then to recite this, and he recited this song to the people of Israel. And then when it was over, he said to him, now is the time for you to go to Mount Nebo. This is the place you want to go. Verse 48 says, On the same day as he had recited this, the Lord told Moses, Go up to Ebarim range to Mount Nebo in Moab, across from Jericho, and view Canaan, the land I am giving the Israelites as their own possession. There on the mountain you will have climbed, you will die, and be gathered to your people just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people. This is because both of you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the water of Meribah, Kadesh, in the desert of Zin. And because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites, therefore you will see the land only from a distance. You will not enter the land I am giving the people of Israel. Now what he's talking about here in this story is what took place a long time ago. If you look back in your Bibles to the story that he's referring to, he's describing an event that Moses failed to be obedient to God. In Numbers chapter 20, if you find that in your Bible, the people of Israel had run out of water one time and God brought them to the place where he was going to give them water. And he told Moses to take his staff that he used as a symbol of God's presence with him. Take the staff and then I want you to hit the rock and water will squirt out of that rock. The time came a little later when the people of Israel were again in a situation where they had no water. This is the story in Deuteronomy as Moses tells this story. The second event that took place, I know that you think, well, why didn't they remember that the first time they were out of water, God just told him to hit a rock and water squirted out. Why did they forget that? Well, for the same reason, every time you are faithful to God and things go really well, and then bad things happen and God helps you out. And then the next time bad things happen, it's harder for you to follow because you remember the good times and you forget how God has helped you in the past. All of us have these lapses of memory that cause us to remember, to forget that God has helped us in difficult times in the past, but this circumstance just seems different. And that's what happened to Moses. And Moses and his brother were responsible for making sure that the people of Israel had guidance from the Lord. In chapter 20 of the book of Deuteronomy, beginning with verse 2, Now there was no water for the community, and the people gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron. They quarreled with Moses and said, If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the Lord. Why did you bring the Lord's community into the desert that we and our livestock should die here? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? There's no grain or figs or grapevines or pomegranates, and there's no water to drink. Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance of the tent of meeting and fell face down. This is a wonderful picture of how God guides. He didn't provide everything perfectly for us, but whenever difficult times come, what He wants us to do is to come to Him. They fell face down on the ground to say, We can't solve our problems, but we're completely submissive to you in whatever you ask us to do. And the glory of the Lord appeared to them. The Lord said to Moses, Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will pour out its water. Then before He'd ask them to strike it. Now He says, Speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so that they and their livestock can drink. That was His instructions. Now Moses took the staff from the Lord's presence just as He commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock, and Moses said to them, Listen, you rebels. Listen, you rebels. Must we bring you water out of this rock? Now if you hear what he said, he didn't say, God is going to do this. He and Aaron said, We are going to bring water out of this rock. Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. You will remember this event because Moses struck the rock instead of speaking to the rock. But the real calamity was not striking instead of speaking, but taking credit for the water themselves. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. God didn't dishonor what He did. He gave them the water. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Because you did not trust in Me enough to honor Me, as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I gave them. So this is the story that is referenced here in this passage in Deuteronomy. Now Moses tells this story in Deuteronomy chapter 3. This is sort of Moses' version of what took place. Deuteronomy chapter 3, beginning at verse 23. Beginning at verse 21. Moses is telling the story. And he said, The Lord was angry with me because of you, and He solemnly swore that I would not cross the Jordan and enter the good land the Lord your God is giving you as your inheritance. I will die in this land. I will not cross the Jordan. But you are about to cross over and take possession of this good land. Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that He made with you. Do not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden, for the Lord your God is a consuming fire and a jealous God. Moses was talking about what took place with himself and why it was that he was not going to be able to enter the land of promise. He was angry with him because of what he had done and what he and his brother had done. So that is the background of this passage. On that day, the same day, the Lord told Moses, Go up to Abraham, the range in Mount Nebo in Moab, across from Jericho and view Canaan, the land I am giving the Israelites as their own possession. What God promised Moses whenever all this took place was you cannot go across into the land of Jordan. And Moses asked God, Can I at least look it over? And so this is his fulfillment of that promise. I am going to allow you to go to the mountain and look at it. He could look north, south, east and west and see all the direction across the Jordan. So he could see the land, but he was never given the opportunity to enter it. So that is what God is saying to him. Go to Mount Nebo across from the Jordan and view Canaan, the land I am giving the Israelites as their own possession. There on the mountain that you have climbed, you will die and be gathered to your people as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people. What God is showing Moses is that the result of his failure to honor him resulted in his own brother not being able to enter the land of promise. And now he will not be able to enter that either. When people look at this story, a lot of times people find this upsetting. In fact, if you look up on the Internet, sometimes it will reference this story. You will see articles saying, Is this fair of God to do this to Moses after all he had been faithful to him so many years? He had done everything he was supposed to do for so many years. And then because of this one flaw, Moses is kept from being able to enter the land of promise. And whenever we decide that we are going to pass judgment on what God has done, which is what questions like that ask you to do, if you were God, how would you treat Moses as a result of this? And we look at ourselves and say, Well, there are times that I haven't done exactly what God wanted me to do either. And when you think of it as striking the rock, instead of speaking to it, it seems an insignificant thing, strike or speak. And that's what makes it seem unimportant. But in this whole event, the speaking and striking was not the issue that was critical to God. For what God saw was that Moses failed to do the primary thing he was supposed to do. Moses was never to appear to the people of Israel as if Moses was leading them. He was never to appear to them as if the decisions that were made by God and passed on to Moses were the decisions that Moses was making. For God wanted above all the things that happened, He wanted them to understand that He was the Lord. He was the one that had the guidance. He was the one that had the wisdom. He was the one that had the answers for them. And all the decisions that came, came from Him. This issue is important to God because it focuses on the most critical issue in the Bible. That is, who is in charge of this world? And who can you depend on in times of difficulty and trial? So Moses and Aaron misused God's message to them and God's purpose for them. They were to die and travel the distance to be with their family. In the Old Testament you'll notice that they don't say they die and go to heaven because there's not very much of a picture of the Old Testament and not very much of a picture of what happens after a person dies in the Old Testament. So when you see people die in the Old Testament, they say they go to be with Abraham or they go to be with those who are dead. And they usually reference this as if it's the people of Israel that they go to be a part of their world when they're dead. In the Bible it's difficult in the Old Testament to look around and try to discern whether or not people are going to heaven. It's harder than it is in the New Testament because it's not the kind of emphasis that they place on defining it. The Bible has a sort of a progressive way of teaching us about God and spiritual things. When you're teaching children, you can't sit down and tell them everything about a subject. For example, if you're teaching math to a first grader, you can't get into algebra. They don't have the background or information that allows them to be able to gather that subject together. So you start with the basic fundamentals. In the next grade, they advance a little bit further. In the next grade, they advance a little bit further. Now, even though you don't tell them the whole story, you don't lie to them when they're in the elementary beginnings of mathematics. You tell them the truth, 2 plus 2 equals 4. That's going to be a foundation for what they learn. So when people look back at the Bible, they find it disconcerting that whenever God starts with His people, He doesn't tell them everything that we see in the full picture in the New Testament. And it's the very same reason because spiritually, they're beginning to learn who God is and what He's like and what's going on. So when you read the things in the Old Testament, they're true, but they're not quite the full picture. Jesus said He came to fulfill what was needed to be fulfilled from the law of the Old Testament. That means that there were some things that were left to explain or to demonstrate or to show. So when you read the Old Testament and you see passages here, like Moses is going to be with his brother, was it he said? You'll die and be gathered to your people. When he talks about him dying and be gathered with his people, it's the way they talked about in the Old Testament that we describe as going to heaven. But they didn't have a picture of it because God had not shown that to them yet. Now, the picture that He does show them is that they're going to be with people that they love and care about. And that's the picture and the only thing they had to see. So what Moses is assured of is that his life is not wasted. His service to God is not wasted. But in this world, there has to be a consequence for what he's done. A consequence that would allow everyone to understand the importance of what God was trying to teach them. It's very important whenever you begin in almost anything that you do, if you go to the army, one of the first things they do is they teach you discipline. Whenever we tell you to do something, we want you to do it right then. And whenever you have children, you're trying to raise them, and you want them to be able to understand life and take responsibility for themselves, you have to teach them discipline. So when I tell you to sit down, I want you to sit down. When I tell you not to hit your brother or sister, I don't want you to hit your brother or sister. These are the rules. What it does is it teaches people the boundaries in which they can live successfully. God was teaching the people of Israel that too. I want you to understand what I want you to do, and I want you to understand what the limits are. So sometimes in the Old Testament and in the beginning of the New Testament, God is more disciplinarian, much more of a disciplinarian than he appears to be at other places. If you read the New Testament where the guy went out and sold his land and came back and gave money to the church and told them this was all the land brought, and then as soon as he was confronted with that, he said the same story and he passed over dead. His wife came in just about the time they'd finished burying him. They buried people because they didn't have hot country and didn't embalm them, so if you died, they took you out and buried you. They asked her about it and him about it, and both of them died. People look at that and they say, well, it's really a very serious thing that God does. But often in the beginning in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, God does things that emphasize the significance of obedience to him in a dramatic way. It wasn't that he was unfair to them because they did something, it's true with Moses too, they did something that was absolutely forbidden by God. In his grace and mercy, sometimes he works with us through these circumstances, but sometimes he does exactly what we deserve. This is a case for Moses and his brother in which that happened. Now, he explains to us what it was that they did. Verse 50, there on the mountain you will die and be gathered to your people just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Horn and was gathered to his people. This is because both of you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah Kadesh in the desert of Zin. And because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites, therefore you will see the land only from a distance. You will not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel. The phrase here, you broke faith with me, is a serious phrase. We would use the word apostasy sometimes to reflect that same idea. Apostasy means that you reject your beliefs and your faith. It means you reject and turn aside and abandon your faith. So, a person who is in apostasy has said to God, I am not going to do what you tell me to do. You are not in charge of my life. I am going to rule my own life. A person who is in apostasy has said, I reject your authority over me. Now, Moses and Aaron, when they came to do this act that God told them to do, the people of Israel were desperate for water. They were crying out because God had led them to a place that there was no water. They thought God was going to kill them, that they would all die right there. And they were in great rebellion against God. Moses and Aaron come then and say to the people, we will rescue you. What God wanted to show the people of Israel when he led them into difficult circumstances was he was their Savior. He was the one they could depend on no matter what. Now, the very leaders of the nation are not pointing to God as the Redeemer and Savior, but pointing to themselves. Moses said, well, we are going to have to make water come out of this rock. As if they had the ability to do that. As if they were the ones who thought of the idea. You remember the story, whenever they were confronted with the lack of water, they did not know what to do. They went to their tent, fell flat on their faces and said, Lord, there is nothing here that is going to happen except a disaster. What in the world do you expect us to do? What do you want us to do? God told them what to do and what he was going to do. And they took the information they had from God and acted as if they had come up with the solution. We are going to save you. We are going to rescue you. And suddenly they made themselves, in the eyes of the people, God. Their rescuer, their Redeemer, their Savior. This sort of rejection of the authority of God before the whole nation of Israel was a devastating thing because it encouraged the nation of Israel, who did not trust God very much anyway, to do repeatedly acts that made them say, we do not trust God anymore. They were in a state where their faith was weak and they were already saying, why did you lead us out here so that our animals are going to die and we are going to die? And now Moses and Aaron says, don't worry, God has led you out here to all this, we will rescue you. This act of apostasy was in God's eyes unforgivable. It is as if someone who is now a follower of God, a follower of Christ, suddenly says to God, I no longer believe that what you say is true. I no longer am going to accept your authority over my life. I can do it myself. I can make my own life work. This act of rejection of faith and assuming the responsibility for your own life as if you could manage it, if you could make the choices, as if you had the wisdom to be able to do those things, is a rejection of God. In Hebrews chapter 6, the writer is talking about the fact that someone who finds himself in this position, who has been a follower of God, and suddenly comes to the place where they no longer trust him and they turn their back on him, that it is impossible for that person to ever restore that relationship because they have experienced every good thing that God wants to give them and then they've turned their back on God. The writer of that book is writing to Hebrew people who have started following Christ, it appears, and were having second doubts about this, second thoughts. They weren't sure that with all the persecution they were getting to, if it was really worth all of it. And the writer warns them, once you start on this journey and you've experienced the Holy Spirit and the blessings of God and all the things that God's going to give you to turn your back on it, there's no hope for you. This is the picture of what took place with Moses and Aaron. It wasn't that God rejected them. He forgave them for that. But he had to do something that made every person in Israel aware that leaving God, turning your back on him, was the most serious thing they could do. It is the rejection of the first commandment. You're going to have no other gods except me. I am the God who made the world and all the universe, and I have ultimate authority. And that first commandment is the commandment on which all the rest of them are built. So that's why the issue was so important. It wasn't speaking to the rock or striking instead of speaking, but it was the failure to point to who God is. That's what he said. This is because both of you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah Kadesh in the desert of Zin, and because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites. Now, when he uses this word, a holiness, uphold holiness in the eyes of the Israelites, there are several different translations that you could get of that that may be not easy for us to grasp, but it's translated in different versions of the Bible in terms of failure to honor God, failure to uphold his sanctity. The word sanctity means to be a saint or to be holy. And the idea of holiness is that God is separate from us. He's not like us. We are made in his image, but he is uniquely different. He is holy. That means he's set apart and different than we are. And we're to reflect not only in the nature and character of God, but we're to reflect also that he is holy, set apart or separate. The word saint or sanctify or holy are all out of the same words in the Bible. They describe someone who is different, who's set apart for only one purpose. When God is operating in the world, he has one purpose, and that is to live the life of his nature and character. And he never changes from that. He's always God. His power is always the same. His wisdom is always the same. And they made God look like he wasn't that, like they could figure out what was going on. And they caused people to think less of God than what they would have thought before. It dishonored him. That's one way to say it. They failed to honor him. They failed to sanctify him. They failed to display his holiness, that he was different. He always knew what he was doing. He led them there. He was going to take care of them. He was going to provide for them. That's what he wanted Moses and Aaron to say. But they instead gave the impression, God has failed you, but we haven't. So if you will depend on us, we will give you water. Now, this story is a powerful story of the judgment of God and the justice of God. He lives by the rules that he's given us. And he demands that we live by these same rules too. What God is trying to help us get at here is that we are held accountable for the way we live our lives. It doesn't make much difference if you've done a lot of good things for God. You're still accountable for all the things that you do in your life. You can't build up seven years of good faithfulness and then say, well, I have a bank of faithfulness here. Now I can go out and do whatever I want. That's not the way it is. Either you trust your life to God or you don't trust your life to him. And the faithfulness is required of everyone. And no matter who you are, if you're Moses, you still have to be held accountable for being faithful to what God asked you to do. When he said, I want you to go there and I want you to speak to that rock, that's exactly what he meant for him to do. Now this helps us focus on something that's really important. When you know what God wants you to do, it's important for you to do it. For God puts thoughts in our minds and we think, you know, I ought to call that person or I ought to go talk to that person or I should sit down and read the Bible today. That thought comes to your mind. And sometimes, you know, we say, well, you know, I'll do it later some other time. We don't recognize the voice of God's authority as having authority for us. The Bible is trying to help us understand the importance of living this life of obedience to God. When you know what God wants you to do, you're accountable to do it. And he holds us accountable for that. And that's a picture of this story. God holds us accountable for our behavior and he rejects the idea that we can do what we want when we're ready. And he punishes us for these actions of failure, failure to acknowledge his authority. And his punishment is powerful and strong. It's always intended to correct. It's not intended just to be an act of pain. But what God is trying to do is what we do with our children when we're raising them. We make life hard for them when they do things that are bad so they'll quit doing them. God does the same thing for us. So if you have a series of times in which you rejected what you know God wanted you to do, you can expect some difficult times in your life because God is in the business of correcting his children, making sure they learn what happened and why it took place. What God wanted Moses and Aaron to do was to learn how to lead his people with faithfulness to him and faithfulness to what he asked them to do. God shows in this story about what happens when we take credit for what God has told us to do. Moses and Aaron took credit for that. Now, I want you to think about times in your life in which you know God has wanted you to do something. And you did it. And the people you did that for and you helped them a lot, they said, you're a wonderful person. Thank you very much. Who gets the credit for that? They don't know because they're looking at the world through eyes of human nature. And they think there are some people that are good and some people that are bad and you're one of the good ones. You're just a generous person. If God has led you to do something and you know he's led you to do it, when people compliment you for what you've done, you have an obligation to honor God and to let the world know of his holiness. And you do that by simply saying, it wasn't me that did this. It was God. This struck me one time when somebody came through town. They wanted to have some gas or something, I think. So somebody in the church and I went down there on Sunday and filled a guy's tank up with gas. And when he got through, he came around and he came up to me and shook my hand and said, I want to thank you for your generosity. And I said, no. Let me tell you something. I'm not a generous person. And I only did this because I thought God wanted me to do it. If it had been left up to me, I wouldn't have done it. That's just not my nature to give my money away. But God said, this is what I want you to do. So you should recognize that I didn't do this. God did this for you. And you owe him something because he's taking care of you. I realized in the moment that he said that to me that I was taking credit for something because I really didn't want to do it. I was taking credit for something that I didn't want to do that God told me to do and I was obeying him. There are times, you know, whenever we let these slip and we know that God did that through us. And sometimes we're a little hesitant to say it because it sounds religious. Well, it should. It's a spiritual event if God directs you. So if you compliment someone or you're nice to someone or you do something that you know God wants you to do, always remember to give credit for him for this gift. Now, what did God want the people of Israel to know? I can provide for you and I will take care of you. What does he want them to know whenever he gives us the responsibility to do something nice for people or helpful to people? He wants them to know he loves them and cares for them. And he's doing his loving and caring through us. That's what he wants to know. If we take the credit for it ourselves, we don't show the holiness of God. We don't show the concern and care that God gives. So whenever you get the idea that you should do something that God wants you to do, he has an ulterior motive for it. Not only does he want to help someone or encourage someone or support them, he wants them to know that he's doing it and that he is the Lord that redeems and saves people. And we are the messengers to be able to do it. What God shows in this story is a very powerful thing. God wants to be honored. He wants to be presented to the world as holy. That is not like any other person that lives on the earth. He is concerned that people around us will know who he is and what he is like. And Moses and Aaron's failure to do that was very costly to them. It was not a small matter. In fact, it was the very heart of the Ten Commandments and the very heart of what God was trying to do in the world. Moses tells the story. God's concern about his witness to God was the reason that he never made it into the land of promise. I think the story tells us that he made it to heaven. But in his life work, he actually missed the one thing in his life he wanted most of all, to get the people of Israel into the land of promise. God is serious about faithfulness. And that's a word that we should remember. Join me in prayer. Forgive us, Father, for neglecting to give credit for you for the things that you do. Sometimes it's awkward because we don't want to seem too religious. We don't want to seem like we're strange. But we do know that you want the world to know who you are and what you're like. So remind us, when you tell us to do something, that we make sure that the people around know that it's you who are doing it through us. Father, whenever we hear what you want us to do, help us not to put it off or turn it aside, but to make sure that what you've asked is what we do. Help us to understand the times of judgment that come to us, that there are correction times, times in which you're helping us to know how to live and the way to treat each other and the way to treat you, that we might grow in our faith and trust in you. In the name of Christ we ask it. Amen.