If any man ever was a servant of the Lord, it was Moses. Like no other in his days, he spoke with God “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exodus 33:11). He climbed up into God’s smoky presence and was not consumed by the fiery site that scared others miles away. It was to him that God could entrust the timeless Ten Commandments. He led a nation out of the hold of a very reluctant super-power tyrant. When mortals spoke against him, God Himself came to his defence. Even his own sister, Miriam the great Worship Leader, became leprous merely for sponsoring a gossip against him (Numbers 12:1-9), and over two hundred noble men with their entire families and properties perished in a single day in a most unique way as the earth also joined forces with Moses to “swallow” them up, because they dared to carry placards against him (Numbers 16:23-35). This man was verily the servant of the Most High God. Yet of this man, there came a day when God Himself announced, “Moses my servant is dead” (Joshua 1:2).
How could a man so holy, so Godly, so awesome ever die? Maybe if he had never ceased, men would ultimately have taken him for a god, and there could not be another God. He died, and God Himself proceeded announce his obituary: “Moses my servant is dead.” There was no question about Moses being a servant of God, no shadows about his pure spirituality, no doubt about his greatness, yet he also died, like others of lesser spirituality. Hmmm!
This is one sober truth that many would shift to the never-never back of their minds, so it surprises them when it eventually comes, then mortals, rather than God, announce their demise. The beauty, however, is not the cessation of Moses on earth, but his continuation with God in heaven. Sometimes someone walks so gloriously with God that they become unfit for this sinful plane and have to be ‘elevated’ from the realm of mortality. Sometimes someone walks so beautifully with God that God misses them much and chooses to take them away from this unworthy world so that He and they can continue their pleasant walk up in the worthier streets of gold. That was the story of Enoch, a man who “walked [in habitual fellowship] with God” and then one day he simply disappeared, “for God took him [home with Him]” (Genesis 5:24, Amplified Bible).
No good man is so good that his end stops God. God needs mortals to do what Heaven would accomplish on the earth, but God is not held to ransom by the cessation of one good man. Hear how God addressed the matter of Moses’ demise: “Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go…” (Joshua 1:2). Moses’ end was going to be Joshua’s beginning; Moses’ finishing line, Joshua’s starting point; Moses’ grave – Joshua’s open door. The land was not to mourn Moses forever.
The sad end of one dispensation is sometimes Heaven’s joyous announcement of the start of a fresher dispensation. It sometimes will take someone to go for another to enter into their long-awaited destiny (Matthew 2:19-20); it will take the Old to go (with all the tears it behoves) for the New to appear. Moses had ended, according to Earth’s clock; but it was time for Joshua to start, according to Heaven’s calendar. Moses had dropped down in death, but it was the time for Joshua to arise and go. It was a season of national tears, yet it was the season for Joshua’s national unveiling. In that season, Joshua needed special encouragement to stir him up and on, hence the voice of God that came to him, urging him as many as three consecutive times to “be strong and of a good courage” (Joshua 1:6, 7, 9).
If God cannot be stopped by the expiration of Moses, let no one’s end mean your end; let no ‘helper’s’ end define your helplessness. Time “now” to “arise” and “go”! There is a Jordan river waiting to be crossed in a Joshua-style; in a different style than the Red Sea had been crossed. Arise. Go! Amen.
From The Preacher’s diary,
October 6, 2017, (revised May 7, 2022)
