Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1966
“So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the Word of the Lord.” Deuteronomy 34:5.
WHAT an honorable title! Moses is distinguished as “the servant of Jehovah.” He was this of choice, for he willed to be the servant of God rather than to be great in the land of the Pharaohs. Such he was most perseveringly throughout the whole of his life. Such he was most intensely, for he waited upon God for his directions, as a servant waits upon his master, and he endeavored to do all things according to the pattern which was shown him in the holy mountain. Though he was king in Jeshurun, he never acted on his own authority, but was the lowly instrument of the Divine will. Moses was faithful to God in all his house, as a servant. You neither see him overstepping his office nor neglecting it. His reverence for the Lord’s name was deep, his devotion to the Lord’s cause was complete and his confidence in the Lord’s Word was constant. He was a true servant of God from the time when he was appointed at the burning bush until the hour when he surrendered his keys of office to his successor and climbed the appointed mountain to die. Oh that you and I may so live as to prove ourselves servants of God!
Unto as many as have received Him, our Lord Jesus has given power to become the sons of God and this is our great joy! But as sons we aspire to serve our Father, even as His great first-born Son has done, who took upon Himself the form of a Servant that He might accomplish His Father’s good pleasure for His Church. Let us with good will do service unto our Father who is in Heaven, seeing it is but our reasonable service that we should lay out ourselves for Him who has made us His sons and daughters. Redeemed from the slavery of sin, let us, as the Lord’s freemen, cry unto Him henceforth, “O Lord, truly I am Your servant; I am Your servant and the son of Your handmaid: You have loosed my bonds.”
But servant of God as Moses was, he must die. It is the common lot of men. Only two have passed out of this world into the abodes of Glory without fording the stream of death. Moses is not one of the two. Even had he crossed the Jordan into Canaan, he would, in due course, have died in the land. We might have expected that he would live on till the people were settled in Canaan, but it seemed right unto the Lord God that on account of his one slip he should die outside of the Promised Land, like the rest of the people. Only Caleb and Joshua, of all that generation who came out of Egypt, were permitted to possess the land towards which they had journeyed for 40 years!
If that one offense lost Moses the privilege of entering the earthly Canaan, there may have been still more powerful reasons why he should not enter the heavenly Canaan without experiencing the change of death. He must not make a third with Enoch and Elijah, but he must die and be buried. Such will probably be our lot in due season. Brothers and Sisters, it may be that we shall not die—our Lord Jesus may come before we fall asleep—but if He does not come speedily, we shall find that it is appointed unto all men once to die. We shall pass from this world unto the Father by that common road which is beaten hard by the innumerable feet of mortal men. Since we must die, it is well to meditate upon the solemn future. Moses shall be our teacher in the are of dying. We will consider his decease in the hope that our fears may be removed and our desires may be excited. There is a Pisgah where we must yield up the ghost and be gathered to our fathers—may we climb to it as willingly as did Moses, the servant of God!
The manner of Moses’ death is exceedingly remarkable. I suppose that no subject presents a finer field for oratory than the sublime decease of the Prophet, but we have nothing to do with oratory—our objective is spiritual and practical profit. Poets might well expend their noblest powers in depicting this strange scene of the man of God alone on the mountain’s brow, with the view of Canaan at his feet and himself in holy rapture passing away into the eternal state. We
are not poets, but simple Believers, desiring to learn some holy lesson from the death of one who, though the greatest of men, knew no higher honor than to be the servant of the Lord! Oh that the Spirit of Grace and Truth who has come to us by Christ Jesus may help us find instruction in the death of him who brought the Law from the mouth of God to men!
I. We are told in the text that, “Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the Word of the Lord.” This I shall read, first, as meaning that Moses died on Pisgah ACCORDING TO THE WARNING OF THE LORD.
His death was long foreseen. Moses knew some time before that he must die without setting foot in Canaan. Read in the first chapter of Deuteronomy his own account of the sin of the people at Meribah and the Lord’s sentence, then and there pronounced—“Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land, which I swore to give unto your fathers, save Caleb, the son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him will I give the land that he has trodden upon, and to his children, because he has wholly followed the Lord.” “Also,” adds Moses, “the Lord was angry with me for your sakes, saying, You also shall not go in there.’