Nathan E. Lewis

Deuteronomy 32: 48-52
(sermon preached by Nathan E. Lewis at Chehalem Valley Presbyterian Church in Newberg, Oregon, and at Evergreen Church in Beaverton, Oregon.)

In the ancient world, the mountain was the place where the divine would visit humanity. Moses, the great prophet of Israel, ascended Mt. Sinai to meet with God, to hear the voice of God and to receive the law of God written in stone. On the mountain, Moses requested to see God’s glory. God said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name, and I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” God told Moses to hide in the cleft of the rock on the mountain, to hide there until he had passed by. As God was departing the summit of the mountain, he allowed Moses to see the trailing glory!
When Moses descended the mountain his face shown like the sun and so the people, even Aaron, his brother, were afraid to come near Moses. No one else in Israel had come so close to the glorious presence of God on the mountain. In the Holy of Holies, Aaron, the High Priest of Israel encountered the glory of God descending upon the Ark of the Covenant. But when it was Aaron’s time to die, he was gathered into the eternal presence of God at Mount Hor. At the summit Moses stripped Aaron of his priestly garments, placing them upon Eleazar, the son of Aaron. Then Aaron died on the mountain in the presence of God, gathered to his people.
When it came time for Moses to die, God commanded him to ascend Mount Nebo. And so, Israel lived in ancient times with this visual presentation of God meeting with his loved ones on the mountain. William Schniedewind, Chair of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA includes an interesting paragraph in his book, How the Bible Became a Book. He mentions the Babylonian god of the scribes, Nabu, whose Hebrew name appearing several times in the Bible is Nebo. Schniedewind writes, “It is perhaps not a coincidence that Moses ascends to heaven from the top of Mount Nebo, a mountain apparently dedicated to a god of scribes.” Moses, the great prophet who preserved the oral traditions of Israel by writing the very words of God upon scrolls, the author of the first five books, the Pentateuch, died on Mount Nebo, named for the Babylonian god of the scribes.
If you have ever read the little book of Jude in the New Testament, you have come across this cryptic statement, “But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” The point seems to be in its context that the archangel, Michael, was careful to pit God himself against the devil rather than pitting himself against the fallen prince of the angels. In doing so, he carefully and properly refrained from blasphemy. What was the devil doing on the summit of Mount Nebo? Could it be that he regularly went there to gloat over the funerals of Babylonian scribes? Could it be that he argued that Moses belonged to him as well? But God sent his archangel to protect the body of Moses, the one scribe of the ancient world, who belonged not to Nebo, but to Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Was God making a statement in the death of Moses and the precise location of his death, that his word spoken and written is superior to that of the scribes of this world? We will never know for sure.
What we do know from our text is not easy for us to accept, namely that Moses was not allowed to enter into the Promised Land. The reason God supplies for barring Moses’ entrance is that Moses broke faith with God in the midst of the people of Israel at the waters of Meribah-kadesh. God says to Moses, “You did not treat me as holy in the midst of the people of Israel.” To make matters worse, God says to Moses and Aaron at Aaron’s death on Mount Hor, that the reason Aaron is not entering the Promised Land, is that Moses did not treat God as holy in the midst of the people.
In Exodus 17, Moses records an episode in the wilderness of Zin, when Israel was in need of water. Because the people were quarreling about the lack of water, this site became known as “Meribah,” which means quarreling. God instructed Moses to take his rod and strike the rock at Horeb and then water would flow from it. Many years later, after wandering in the wilderness, the quarreling generation dying, the second generation arrived at Kadesh with Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. Kadesh was the entrance point into the Promised Land. Here on the plains of Moab, Moses prepared the people to enter the Promised Land. Once again, in this wilderness of Zin, Israel lacked water and began to quarrel as their parents had done so years ago. God instructed Moses to hold his staff, but rather than striking the rock as he did the first time years ago, he was to tell the rock to yield its water. With the people quarreling again, Moses was agitated, if not furious. He stood before the people and said, “Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” Then he took his staff and struck the rock twice and the water gushed forth.
How I sympathize with Moses! How difficult it is for any of us to hear people quarrel. Discontent and discord are difficult to tolerate. For Moses there was also the issue of submission to God. The first time round, God said, “Strike the rock once.” But the second time round God said, “Speak to the rock.” Why can’t God standardize his instructions? Why was God so harsh with Moses? Several times in the past God was angry with Israel’s complaining and rebellious spirit, ready to annihilate the whole lot, but Moses, the mediator between God and Man begged God to spare the people and on one occasion, Moses even asked God to take his life in place of the people. Did not God understand the heart of Moses? Had God forgotten the record of his appointed mediator, who poured out his heart and soul for the people? Why did these quarreling Israelites enter the land but Moses was barred for striking the rock twice and speaking his mind before the people?
God loved Moses and ushered Moses into his glorious heaven. God immediately received the soul of Moses at death. He sent the archangel Michael to dispute over the body of Moses, protecting it from the devil. At death most bodies decay in the grave – ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But a few have escaped this resting in the grave, caught up immediately into heaven. The prophets Enoch and Elijah did not even die, but instead their were caught up body and soul into God’s glorious heaven. Moses did die on Mount Nebo, but it is possible, though I can not say for certain, that the archangel not only disputed with the devil over his body, but snatched his body, transporting him directly to heaven. Perhaps Moses’ body never rested among the graves of the Babylonian scribes in honor the Nebo, the god of the scribes. Perhaps God was making the point that his prophet and his written word are high and above the prophecies and scrolls of men. After all, Moses appeared in his body on the Mount of Transfiguration, along with Elijah and Jesus in heavenly glory, Peter, James, and John witnessing this amazing display.
What we can say for certain is that God kept his unconditional promises to Moses, graciously receiving him into his glorious heaven, giving to him the eternal Promised Land, the new heavens and the new earth. God will do this for each and everyone of us, who are connected by faith to the One and only Mediator between God and Man, the Man, Christ Jesus. We may consider our disobedience to be as gray as Moses’ irritation, anger, and failure to follow instructions, which seem to be seemingly minor in light of 2 million people in desperate need of water. We may conclude that God would overlook such minor sins, stopping short of executing his just demands for perfect obedience. But the case of Moses stops us short of such thoughts. But if we confess our sins, including the gravity of any sins, including minor sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, cleansing us from all unrighteousness.
Having made the connection between the Promised Land in this world and the more glorious and eternal Promised Land we call heaven, we must pause at Mount Nebo with Moses and gaze at the real gift of land to Israel. This land flowing with milk and honey was a gift God granted conditionally. The condition was the perfect obedience of Israel once she entered the land. Any infraction of God’s law inside the Promised Land was just reason for God to expel Israel from the land. From the first day in the land, any member of Israel, who understood his own sinfulness and frailty would realize that every moment spent in the Land was an act of God’s mercy and grace. Can you imagine 2 million people perfectly obedient for one minute, let alone one day? The biblical narrative records large-scale blunders and sins soon enough among Israel. None of us could hold onto the material and conditional blessings from God’s hand for more than a nano-second.
Israel in the wilderness as well as Israel in the Promised Land must look in faith to God’s provision of a true Israel, meeting the conditions and winning all of God’s blessings. Moses on Mount Nebo looked at the Promised Land in the final moments of his life. But his eyes of faith saw further than the Promised Land in the valley. His eyes of faith, like his father Abraham, were upon a city whose architect and builder is God, the heavenly Zion, the new heavens and the new earth. As his eyes closed in death, the archangel Michael descended to say to the devil, “The Lord rebuke you!” Moses, body and soul belonged to the Lord. All of us, who have the faith of Moses shall receive the same care and we shall be ushered into the same glorious heaven as Moses. We may not be accompanied by so great an angel as Michael, but any one of our guardian angels will do. What matters is that we shall indeed enter the land and there we shall meet our Mediator face to face. His face shall shine greater than Moses’s face. Moses’ face merely reflected the divine light. Our Mediator is the light and he shall shine upon us the smile and the glory of the infinite and holy God.