The Last Mountain
Did you ever wish that leaders were held accountable? Today it seems so many leaders in every field of human endeavor politics, business, sports and even religious leaders get away with their offences and sometimes end up pretty well off. Is there some day of reckoning for them?
Do we also try to get away with things we know we should pay a penalty for? Do we seem to want to eat our cake and have it too? We tend to want more than one can handle or deserve, or to try to have two incompatible things. We want forgiveness but still want to sin a little.
I want to continue to look at the Mountains and Valleys of life that so many people of the bible had come to know. These mountains and valleys represent for us some of the same conflicts and conquests that we encounter in our lives today.
We hope to learn from these people and apply it to our lives.
Last Sunday we looked at Abraham and Isaac and the “Summit of Sacrifice” on Mount Moriah which we also learned was part of Golgotha where Jesus sacrificed himself for us. It is an important mountain that has great spiritual significance for us in our own time.
We discovered that God wants us to look at His word as our promise rather than to looking at any physical sign or representation of that promise.
Abraham may have looked upon his son Isaac as the promise but in reality God’s word is what Abraham needed to focus on.
God drove home the point by challenging Abraham to sacrifice that which he felt was most precious to him, Isaac the son of laughter.
The place of testing and sacrifice for Abraham and Isaac became known as “God will provide” which translated is Moriha. Today we see the Moslem temple “The Dome of the Rock” sitting on the site.
God tested Abraham’s obedience and Abraham passed the test.
In the Old Testament living under the law was a hard way to please God. In fact it was the only way that then existed. The law was almost as hard as the rocks that made the mountains. The law could and would crush you by its weight or cut you by its sharp edges. You would think that the person who first received those same laws would have realized these facts.
Moving forward we come to Moses and Mount Nebo. Here we have a man that God has refined through trial and affliction through divine protection and who was pursued by enemies and lived in the wild untamed elements of the desert wilderness. With all these hard lessons and through all these difficult challenges of life he would not enjoy the satisfaction of touching the very thing he had worked for all his life, the “promised land”.
In Abraham, God would choose a promised people. In Moses God would provide for this people a promised land. Step by step and generation by generation God works out His great plan to redeem mankind.
For those of us who need a little refresher as to why Moses was denied entry into the “promised land” we need to refer to his great error. It was a simple thing that held great consequences.
Numbers 20 NIV
Water From the Rock
1 In the first month the whole Israelite community arrived at the Desert of Zin, and they stayed at Kadesh. There Miriam died and was buried.
2 Now there was no water for the community, and the people gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron. 3 They quarreled with Moses and said, "If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the LORD! 4 Why did you bring the LORD’s community into this desert, that we and our livestock should die here? 5 Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!"
6 Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the LORD appeared to them. 7 The LORD said to Moses, 8 "Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink."
9 So Moses took the staff from the LORD’s presence, just as he commanded him. 10 He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, "Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?" 11 Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.
12 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 give them."
Clearly Moses and Aaron failed to obey and as a result the penalty for stealing God’s glory and failing to honoring His Holiness was death.
This account gives me some measure of peace when I think of all the boastful T.V. evangelist types who build for themselves empires of wealth by using God’s word as a sales pitch and robbing widows and the needy of their meager savings. Yes they too will pay a penalty.
For Moses it meant he would not enjoy the plenty and rest that the “Promised Land” provided. But Moses did enjoy the eternal rest and was in fact buried by God himself on Mount Nebo. No one to this day knows where that burial place lies but God does.
Imagine the great weight of that offence on Moses heart. All the way up the mountain he knew what awaited him. He was climbing at age 120 to his death. A lot of men have died trying to reach a summit only to die part way up. Moses knew he was going to die only after he finished reaching the top.
For the most part Moses had been a faithful servant of the living God. He had endured rebellion and hunger, the desert heat, and the constant refining of his person through trial and adversity.
Yet through it all it was his attempt to up stage God that cost he and Aaron their lives. God will be honored, God will be glorified, and God alone is Sovereign. Here we learn a very important lesson about walking with God.
You may walk through valleys of need and through trials of distress in your life, you may walk through the heat of a burning, scorching sun in life’s deserts and you may travel through deep waters in order to touch the distant shore on the other side just as the Hebrews went through the Red Sea.
You may even walk amongst the great tall mountains from which you can see the whole of the world laid open before your eyes and you may know the pleasure of walking green valleys of plenty. But unless you honor God through your entire walk unless you recognize His holiness above your sinfulness, unless you listen and follow His word and instruction obediently you may miss the reward of a lifetime of walking.
No you will not miss knowing the salvation of our God for Moses too was saved from his enemies in Egypt and those of the deserts. But he missed out on what would have been his greatest earthly reward. To enter into the Promised Land. To see and know and touch and taste the fulfillment of his life’s work. To satisfy his heart with the reward of his years of effort and service. But such was not to be.
We too are promised rewards for our walk as we make our way through our deserts, valleys and mountains.
Revelation 22:12 NIV
"Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.
2 John 1:8 NIV
Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully.
In Moses we learn the importance of finishing well. Its one thing to win a prize here and there but quite another to lose a treasure. Jesus tells us;
Matthew 6:21 TNIV
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Is your heart set upon honoring God in your Christian service? Do you try to steal a little honor here and there for yourself, a little recognition, a little glory?
The life of Moses teaches us to give all the Glory and Honor and Praise to our God. We need to guard against pride and selfish ambition in the church of God and rather work for Gods greater glory.
Some of us may work pretty hard in Gods kingdom here on earth. Maybe you have given five, ten even twenty years or more in service to one ministry or another. But I caution you, seek not the recognition of men for your service for God knows what you have done and under what circumstances you have achieved it. St. Paul counted all his effort as rubbish.
Philippians 3:8 NIV
What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ.
Philippians 2:3 NIV
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
Seek to earn the rewards God desires to grant you for your Christian service but mind your footing as you walk or you may lose out on a very great blessing.
God rewards that which is done in secret.
Matthew 6 NIV
1"Be careful not to do your ’acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 3But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Let us surrender our service without strings attached, let God reward us according to His richest blessings.
Ephesians 3:19-21 (King James Version)
King James Version (KJV)
19And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.
20Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
21Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
Let us pray.
Mount Nebo (Hebrew: הַר נְבוֹ, Har Nəvō, Arabic: جبل نيبو, Jabal Nībū) is an elevated ridge that is approximately 817 metres (2680 feet) above sea level, in what is now western Jordan. The view from the summit provides a panorama of the Holy Land and, to the north, a more limited one of the valley of the River Jordan. The West Bank city of Jericho is usually visible from the summit, as is Jerusalem on a very clear day.
Deuteronomy 32 NIV
48 On that same day the LORD told Moses, 49 "Go up into the Abarim Range to Mount Nebo in Moab, across from Jericho, and view Canaan, the land I am giving the Israelites as their own possession. 50 There on the mountain that you 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. 51 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. 52 Therefore, you will see the land only from a distance; you will not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel."
Moses to Die on Mount Nebo
Deuteronomy 34:1-4 NIV
1 Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the LORD showed him the whole land—from Gilead to Dan, 2 all of Naphtali, the territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the western sea, [a] 3 the Negev and the whole region from the Valley of Jericho, the City of Palms, as far as Zoar. 4 Then the LORD said to him, "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 let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it."
