Let's turn now in our Bibles
once again to Deuteronomy chapter 31. And we'll read verses 1 and 2
and the first part of verse 14. And Moses went and spake these
words unto all Israel. And he said unto them, I am 120
years old this day. I can no more go out and come
in. Also, the Lord has said unto
me, thou shalt not go over this Jordan. And then, if you will,
down in verse 14, and the Lord said unto Moses, behold, thy
days approach that thou must die. We began looking at these
last few chapters in the book of Deuteronomy several weeks
ago where God told Moses of his approaching death. His approaching
death in this world and the approaching end of his ministry in this world
as well. And from this point here, from
the point we just read, I counted six things that Moses still would
do before he was delivered from this world. We've already looked
at five of them and I'm going to list them once again Hurriedly
tonight, first of all, he had to encourage and assure the nation
of Israel of God's presence and help as they passed over Jordan
and went into the land of Canaan. God's presence and God's help. That's a promise for each one
of us tonight. God's presence, he said, I will
not leave thee nor forsake thee. And God's help, he's a very present
help. in the time of need. And second,
he had to charge Joshua to be strong and be courageous as he
led the nation across the Jordan into the land of promise. And
third, he had to finish writing the book of the law, that is
the book of Deuteronomy. He had to finish writing this
book and commit it to the priest, deliver it to the priest. And
fourth, He had to write and teach Israel the song that would be
for a witness, a witness for God and a witness against the
nation of Israel. And we saw when we looked at
that song how it covered the history of the nation of Israel
from that time until they were carried away in captivity in
A.D. 70. History, God wrote the history
before it came to pass. Known unto him are all his works
from the beginning of the world. And then last time, the fifth
thing that we looked at, Moses blessed every one, named every
one of the 12 tribes of Israel and pronounced a blessing on
them. And we only looked at two of those blessings in particular,
his blessing upon the tribe of Levi and his blessing upon the
tribe of Asher. Now tonight, we're going to look
at the sixth and last thing that he would do before he left this
world. Turn over to the last chapter,
chapter 34. The last thing that he would
do before he left this world, he would view the land of promise. He would view the land of promise. Moses went up from the plains
of Moab onto the mountain of Nebo. to the top of Pisgah, that
is over against Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the
land of Gilead unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of
Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah unto the utmost
sea, and the south and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the
city of palm trees unto Zoar, And the Lord said unto him, this
is the land which I swear unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto
Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed. I have caused
thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. So Moses, the servant of the
Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word
of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley
in the land of Moab over against Beth Peor. But no man knoweth
of his sepulchre unto this day. And Moses was 120 years old when
he died. His eye was not dim, nor his
natural force abated. He was 120 years old, but his
physical strength, that is the strength of his body, the scripture
says, was not abated, which allowed him to climb This highest peak
in the mountain range of Nebo, the highest peak in that mountain
range is Pisgah. His sight was not dim. God caused
him, if you notice in verse four, though his sight was not dim,
to be able to see all this land, the land on the side of Jordan
where he was at that time, the land of Moab, which had been
given to the two and a half tribes, Reuben and Manasseh, and the
half tribe, Manasseh and Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh. No, let me say that right. Two
and a half tribes. Reuben, the tribe of Reuben,
the tribe of Manasseh, and the, no, The tribe of Reuben, the
tribe of Manasseh, and the half tribe. The tribe of Reuben, the
tribe of Gad, the half tribe of Manasseh. I got it right that
time. that last time. Two and a half tribes, remember
their inheritance was on that side of Jordan upon which Moses
was at this time and was able to see that part of the promised
land plus all the land all the way to the Mediterranean Sea
even. And we see here God caused him,
even though his eyesight was not dim, there must have been
a special miraculous work of God in giving him the eyesight
to see this great expanse of land. How many times have you and I
sung the hymn, Sweet Hour of Prayer? The last verse, sweet
hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer, may I thy consolation
share, till from Mount Pisgah's lofty height, I view my home
and take my flight. This robe of flesh I'll drop
and rise to seize the everlasting prize and shout while passing
through the air, farewell, farewell, sweet hour of prayer. From Mount
Pisgah, that's literally what happened to Moses. It was from
Mount Pisgah that he viewed the land of promise and died there. Moses viewed all the promised
land. You notice in verse two, it says
he viewed all Naphtali. Now, Naphtali is where Galilee
was part of. And this is where the Lord Jesus,
we know, spent so much of his earthly life in Galilee. In fact,
I believe he's sometimes referred to as the Galilean. Galilee and
Naphtali. But he also, you notice in that
verse, viewed all the land of Judah, where the Lord Jesus at
Jerusalem gave his life for his sheep. And I believe that we
can say of Moses what the Lord Jesus told the Jews about their
father Abraham. Your father Abraham rejoiced
to see my day, and he saw and was glad. Moses didn't just see
the land where the Messiah would live and minister and eventually
die, but he saw by faith him who came into the world to save
sinners. He saw by faith the one that
that Passover service pictured, the Passover lamb that was sacrificed
so that they were freed by the blood and by the power of God
to leave Egypt. Now we all know that the promised
land, that is the land of Canaan, that Moses saw has served over
the years as a type of heaven. And I want us tonight to look
at the death of Moses as a type, as a picture of the death of
every child of God and what is revealed about that land that
he saw is also typical of heaven. And my prayer is that the God
who enabled Moses to see the land of promise before his death
will enable you and I tonight to consider the child of God's
death and his eternal home. First, Moses died and immediately
entered heaven. Notice verse five says, so Moses,
the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab. The Scriptures, the Word of God,
knows nothing of what some people have taught, that is, soul sleep. Soul sleep. The Bible doesn't
say anything like that. It teaches just the opposite.
What happened when Moses died that day? The same thing that
happens when every child of God dies. The same thing that's going
to happen when you die. If the Lord doesn't come in our
lifetime, Those of us who know him as our Lord and Savior, the
same thing happened to Moses that will happen to you. For
every child of God, the scripture says, precious in the sight of
the Lord is the death of his saints. Now death, in the word
of God, means separation. It doesn't mean annihilation,
it means separation. And when Moses died this day,
we know his soul was separated from his physical body. And immediately,
he was in the presence of God. As the Apostle Paul said, we're
confident. And I hope all of us tonight
have the same confidence. because of our relationship to
Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We are confident, and
I say willing rather, to be absent from the body and to be present
with the Lord. When Moses died, his soul was
absent then from the body, but immediately present with the
Lord. When his soul was separated from
his physical body, That meant that he was now present with
the Lord. Death not only separated Moses
from this tabernacle, this physical body, but it also separated him
from that old sinful nature. That old man, as the scripture
speaks, the old man, which is also called the flesh, and every
child of God, There is the two principles, the flesh and the
spirit. The spirit is that new nature,
that new man that is created in righteousness and true holiness. Sometimes it's referred to as
the seed, the seed that cannot sin because it's born of God
in 1 John. But there's that tension between
the two natures. But when Moses died and when
you die, when I die, God willing, not only will We be present with
the Lord, our soul will leave this body, but we will also leave
this body of sin. As the Apostle Paul spoke in
Romans chapter seven, that's what he called it, the body of
sin. Now, The body of this death, rather.
That's what, the way Paul referred to it, the body of this death.
And he's speaking of the sinful nature that he had, that every
child of God still has. You know, two times in Hebrews
chapter three, two times God says Moses was faithful in all
his house. That's a testimony, isn't it?
He was faithful as a servant. The Lord Jesus Christ is faithful
as a son. But yes, the word of God declares
unto us that Moses was faithful in all his house, but it doesn't
say that he was sinless. It just says that he was faithful. He was faithful, but not sinless. He was because he was like every
child of God. He still had that old man. And
he did when, that's the reason he did what he did at Meribah.
Even as the scripture here tells us that he was not allowed to
go into the land of promise because of his actions, because of what
he did the second time when God told him to speak to the rock. They needed water there in the
wilderness the first time God told him to strike the rock.
And that rock, of course, is Christ, or is a picture of Christ. How many times did Christ give
his life a ransom? How many times was it necessary?
One. For by one sacrifice he hath
perfected forever those that are sanctified. But Moses the
second time when God told him to speak to the rock, once again
because he was angry, the meekest man. The Bible refers to him
as the meekest man. But evidently, he was angry that
day. You bunch of rebels? Must I fetch
water out of the rock for you? And wham, he struck that rock
again. Now that rock was a picture of
Christ, and Christ only needed to suffer one time for the sins
of his people. And so that type there, Moses
ruined the type, and he is then not allowed to go into the land
of promise for his actions. But the point I'm making is that
while he was faithful, he was not sinless. There's only been
one man upon the face of God's earth for any time who was sinless,
and that is Jesus Christ, our Lord. Adam was sinless when he
was created, but he didn't keep that sinless condition very long.
Most writers believe that he fell the first day. Now, we don't
know. It's not necessary that we know,
but he didn't stay in that perfect sinless condition for very long
before he had disobeyed God. But the Lord Jesus Christ, from
the time of his conception to the time that he was crucified,
He was sinless. He had to be, to be our substitute
and sacrifice. So Moses died and immediately
he went to be with the Lord. That's what the believer looks
forward to, isn't it? To be with the Lord, which is
far better, the apostle said, far better. But now I want you
to, I want us to think for a minute about the land of promise as
a type of heaven. I want you to turn back here
in Deuteronomy with me to chapter 11, and we'll look at what Moses
told the Israelites about this land of promise. In chapter 11,
and beginning with verse 10, Moses tells them, for the land,
whether thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt
from whence you come out, where thou sowest thy seed and waterest
it with thy foot as a garden of herbs. But the land, whether
you go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh
water of the rain of heaven, a land which the Lord thy God
careth for, the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it from
the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year. As we look at the land of promise,
the land of Canaan as a type of heaven, the first thing that
we see in this passage when Moses was telling the Israelites about
the land that they were going in to inherit Heaven is not like
the land the child of God leaves at death. That's what God, what
Moses told them, first of all. The land that they were going
in to possess was not like the land they had left, that is,
the land of Egypt. The land the child of God leaves
in death is a place of that is under a curse because of sin.
In the scriptures, Egypt serves as a type of this fallen world
and Pharaoh as a type of Satan. And this world is under the curse
because of the first Adam's sin. This world is under a curse.
The land, the heaven we're going to is not like this land in which
we're going to leave. This land is a land because of
the sin of Adam, which is under a curse. The first man's sin
brought God's curse upon this land, but the land to which we're
going, that is heaven, because of the second man, that is the
God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, because of his work, is not like
this land. It's a place of blessing because
of his work. He said, I go to prepare a place
for you. It's a place where sin cannot
come. You know, leaven is a picture
in the word of God of sin. And leaven, when you put it in,
or when it's in a dough, It just starts moving, doesn't it? It
just starts moving. There's no place in this world
where you can keep sin out. People have tried it. Some have
moved out into caves. I remember when I was a young
man, a group of preachers from here in Houston, in fact, they
bought some property down in Paraguay. And they were moving
down to Paraguay and have a colony down there, just believers, just
Christians living there, you know, fence everybody else out. But you know, the problem is
they took sin with them, always do. Sin enters into every place. It's because of man is here,
because we are here. But heaven is a place where sin
cannot come, hitherto. Just like God said to the oceans,
hitherto shalt thou come and no farther. These people today
feel like the oceans are going to encroach upon the land and
before long there won't be any land and all of that foolishness.
No, God set the limits. And I'm telling you, He set the
limits as far as sin is concerned entering into heaven. It's not
going to be there. It's not going to come there.
In Revelation 21 and verse 27, the scripture says, there shall
in no wise enter into it anything that defile it. Anything that
defile it. Neither whatsoever worketh abomination
or makes a lie, but they that are written in the Lamb's book
of life. So the first thing that we notice
here, for the land, whether thou goest in to possess it is not
as the land of Egypt from whence you came out. Heaven is not,
that's where we're going at death. That's where we're headed. It's
not like this land that we're going to leave from whence we
come out. The Lord Jesus said this about
Satan. He said he was a murderer from
the beginning and abode not in the truth because there's no
truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks
of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it. Pharaoh,
as a type of Satan, was like Satan in the sense that he was
a liar. How many times did he tell Moses,
after God would work some sign there, pray and ask the Lord
to take this away, take the frogs away, take the lice away, and
I'll let you go? How many times did he lie? every time until that last plague
when God killed his firstborn. Then it was all for them leaving. He was a murderer, remember?
Pharaoh was a murderer. He told those midwives, if a
boy child is born, throw him into the Nile, throw him into
the river, away with him. In fact, that's how Moses got
his name, isn't it? He was taken out of the river.
taken out of the river in that ark that his father had made
for him. Don't you see the providence
of God, the wisdom of God? Here this mighty king, he thinks
he's going to eliminate the Israelites and he feeds the very man that's
going to lead Israel out of Egypt. God destroyed Pharaoh and his
host, his armies in the Red Sea. And the Lord Jesus crushed the
head of the serpent and his host as well in the Red Sea of his
blood. Now second, heaven is not like
the land the child of God leaves in death. It's a place called
paradise, paradise. Today, the Lord told that man
who was crucified alongside him who said, Lord, remember me when
thou comest into thy kingdom. Today, thou shalt be with me
in paradise. That land that we're going to
is a land called paradise. And notice these three things
here in the text. Heaven is a place of rest. You
know, Moses told the Israelites that in Egypt, notice what he
said, For the land whither thou goest in to possess it is not
as the land of Egypt, from whence you came out, where thou sowest
thy seed and waterest it with thy foot as a garden of herbs. In Egypt, they had to water with
their feet. Now that could be understood
in one or two ways, maybe more. Maybe it was the canals, the
sluices, somehow they opened with their feet to cause the
water to go out and irrigate the land, their farmland. But some believe it was they
had to bucket it, had to pick it up and carry it to their farm,
pick it up and carry it out to their crops and water them. And I like that because when
I was about 14 years old, I spent several summers with my uncle.
He had a farm up in, Central Texas, he raised chickens. That's
how he made his living. And it was a poor living, let
me tell you that. Friars, chicken friars. Well,
one year I was up there and he decided he was going to grow
a crop of vegetables. And he had a couple of acres,
I guess, fenced off there. And he must have had two or 300,
seemed to me like tomato plants. Had a big windmill and a big
tank up there to hold the water, you know. But the problem was
the spigot was right there at the bottom of the windmill. And
so we had to open up the spigot, fill that bucket up with water,
and carry it out there. It seemed like a long way to
me. Why didn't they have a hose? I don't know. I just know we
had to water. every one of those plants. Take
a bucket out there and pour about a half a bucket on one plant
and a half a bucket on another plant. And that's what I think
of when I read this here. When Moses told the Israelites
that the land of promise is not like the land you came out of,
that you had to water with your foot. Heaven is a place of rest. You know, in Revelation 14, we
read, blessed are the dead which dine the Lord from henceforth
Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and
their works do follow them. So first of all, heaven is a
place of rest. Second, heaven is a place of
beauty. And I see that when we read here,
but the land whether you go to possess it is a land of hills
and valleys. In any place that's just flat
land, and Egypt was a desert flat land for the most part,
But heaven is pictured here as a place of beauty because the
land into which they were going, it was made up of valleys and
hills. And those valleys were very fertile
valleys. Gilead, you've heard of Gilead.
That was a valley that was very fertile, but it was a place of
beauty. You know, people come here to
visit us sometimes to Texas, here in this part of Texas, and
they think, man, this is not a very beautiful place. It's
all flat land. I said, well, you remember, Texas
is a big place. And it is true, this is flat
land here, but there's parts of Texas where it's pretty. There's
valleys, and there's hills. There's mountains, even. Third
thing, heaven is a place of God's care. A land, Moses said, the
land where you're going is a land which the Lord thy God cares
for. The eyes of the Lord thy God
are always upon it. And we know that heaven is a
place where God, the scripture says, shall wipe away all tears
from their eyes. And there shall be no more death,
neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain,
for the former things are passed away. Well, I pray the Lord would
bless his word to us here tonight. And I've enjoyed preparing these
messages. I pray that you've enjoyed hearing
and learning about Moses and these things that he had to do
before he was delivered. One thing that I've learned in
studying this when I first began preaching these messages, I said,
the approaching end of his life, which was true, and the approaching
end of his ministry. And I've come to think that that's
not true. Yes, his ministry in this world
was ended, but he continues to minister unto the Lord in heaven,
just like all of us will. We're not going to be just up
there floating on clouds and doing nothing. No, we'll be worshiping
the Lord, ministering unto the Lord in whichever way will bring
Him glory. I pray the Lord will bless this
word. Before we are dismissed, Bill,