A High Standard No.8 Tribute to a great man

Nice to have you with us and it's the first time that you've come, we're particularly glad to have your company, it's a special day, you should have received notes and news as you came in, that's for you to read, preferably not during the time of the address. One of the things that we have as a highlight today, in one sense it's a bit sorrowful, is saying goodbye to Henneke Cook because ere long she'll be setting off to North Africa, not immediately after the service today, she's still got a few weeks to go, but nonetheless this evening we will be specially committing her to the Lord. And at this very moment the Hansen family, the Dave Hansen family will be already on their way back to Pakistan, so we've got them also in our minds, of course it wasn't that long ago when we said goodbye to the Mike Jones family, now in Turkey and they're very much part of our TAB family and we concentrate on prayer for them today.

Well if, as I say, you're a newcomer we're glad to have you, if you're just travelling through God bless you and if this is the first time you happen to be a resident here in Worthing we hope that you'll make this a habit of being with us on Sundays. Now we're going to sing a few songs to praise the Lord and Ruth's going to help lead us to do this, but let's just stand for a moment and come together in the words of the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. Remain standing.

Sorry, I've got a little follower here. We're going to join together and sing number 727 in mission praise and then we'll go on to sing God of Glory which is number 191 in mission praise. Sorry, 726.

We declare your majesty. We declare your majesty. We proclaim that your name is exalted.

The words come immediately into my mind. The response of Moses who too heard a call, but actually was less than enthusiastic. For God says to him in Exodus 3, though we will go back to the prescribed reading in a moment, Moses, you're to go.

But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go? And God said, I will be with you. Moses said, suppose I go. And they say, what is your name? What shall I tell them? God said, I am who I am.

This is what you are to say. And then when you move forward into the book of Deuteronomy, you find Moses towards the end of responding to the mission challenge. Not everything has gone well.

It never does. For the Bible is a true reflection on life. And thank God it paints an accurate picture.

And Moses, right at the end, once with a degree of reason behind his request to go from where he's at in Sinai on into the promised land, O sovereign Lord, chapter 3, verse 24, you have begun to show to your servant your greatness and your strong hand for what God is there in heaven on earth who can do the deeds of mighty words that you do. Let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan, that fine hill country and Lebanon. That is enough, the Lord said.

Do not speak to me anymore about this matter. And then you go on to the final chapter, which Laura read to us, Moses, having preached one of the finest sermons that you discover in the Old Testament, now is at the end of his pilgrimage on this earth. Talked to a man I'd come to know fairly recently.

His dear wife, who'd been with him for 40 years and more, had gone to glory before him. And in subsequent pastoral visits, we talked over what should be chiseled on the upturned stone he'd arranged for the stonemasons to put, marking the spot where his wife's body was in the ground. That's called an epitaph.

I've quoted before, but it stays in my mind as something that often needs to be perhaps repeated. That there is in the Paris area, just outside Paris, a cemetery, and there again, as you would expect, are many upturned stones with epitaphs on. And one of them reads, Here lies the man who went out of this world without ever knowing why he came into it.

And in my northern Derbyshire, where I was brought up, at least South Yorkshire and northern Derbyshire were obviously quite close, because they're counties that are parallel to one another. There's a village graveyard, and one of the tombs commemorates a servant girl who had obviously had quite a hard life. I say girl, the years had lengthened into more maturity.

And she'd had inscribed on her tombstone, Don't mourn for me now. Don't mourn for me never. I'm gonna do nothing forever and ever.

Well I guess if you'd spent your time in Victorian England trying to keep northern households clean and decent, there'd be a bit of an excuse for putting that on your tombstone. But why be so somber on this particular occasion? Well because I have, by the very practice of Tim and myself making our way through the books of Scripture and letting Scripture dictate the agenda, I have to come to the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy, where here there is the wonderful, sensitive description of the death of Moses. And the funeral agency has been monopolized by God.

The epitaph has been, if not engraven on stone, certainly engraven on Scripture, and it needs to have some concentration from you because of the divine nature of its authorship. Since then, verse 10, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. No prophet, no person like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.

In the stakes of spirituality, in the task of judging what constitutes success in the earthly pilgrimage, God does not give much attention to Moses' education in Egypt, nor indeed to the length of his years, which actually were less than those of his father and his grandfather. God pays attention to Moses' spirituality. He was a man with whom God spoke face to face.

And one of the things that is a hallmark, surely, for every successful missionary, for every successful servant of God, is that they cultivate what I think I could daringly call a divine intimacy. Here is the Apostle John in a little red epistle, his second, which you find tucked away at the end of the New Testament. And as he makes his concluding remarks, he says in his second letter and the twelfth verse, I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink.

Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face so that our joy may be complete. The same motivation compels him to write a similar conclusion at the end of the third letter. Knowledge by proxy, knowledge by facts, knowledge by the abomination of desolation in the twentieth century otherwise known as the telephone answer machine, is not the most intimate.

and the best of knowledges. And what Moses desired and cultivated with a degree of astonishing success was intimacy with God. And at the end of his life, as the Lord is looking after the funeral arrangements, God makes this comment about his servant.

There hasn't been the likes of this man before. I speak to him as a man speaks face to face. And on another occasion, you remember, God says of Abraham, I can enjoy his company talking to him as a man talks to his friends.

Now, it was not just the degree of intimacy alone, though that was obviously a prerequisite that makes Moses such an outstanding man. It was also the fact that something that governed the building of the tabernacle, that was the sort of portable church or temple in Moses' day, also governed Moses' life. You say, what do you mean? Well, in the book of Exodus, when instructions are given concerning the erection of this mobile place of worship, God says you are to build it according to pattern.

It's not as a result of your choice. You are not to determine anything about the shape, about the architecture, or about the furniture. You are to build according to pattern.

And don't you see, that principle which was to dominate the thinking of the craftsmen as they put together that remarkable portable church or temple, is also a principle that Moses recognized as governing his life. And now it wasn't an easy thing for him to acknowledge God's harness upon him. One hundred and twenty years he lives, and they break down conveniently at the historical level into three categories of forty.

For forty years he was in Egypt, spending a major part being instructed in the wisdom of the Egyptians, not only in their philosophy, not only in their law, but also with military strategy, so that Moses, when he is ready to take over leadership of Israel, is a man who has been tutored by the best knowledge that there is in this world. But he has a lot still to learn. And in a moment of passion, as he does to death an Egyptian, thinking that the Hebrews will automatically receive him as their Savior, he then moves from the first forty years into the next forty years, where God will teach him, not in the hurly-burly of a university, but in the backwaters of Midian, that the soul who will be successful in the ministry of God is the soul who will wait quietly before him.

And for forty years, with Jethro, and eventually being married to a Cushite woman, Jethro's daughter, Moses will know more training, until with a further bout of passion he puts to flight a group of men and then returns to Egypt and takes on the task that God has called him to do, that of leading one of the most difficult congregations of all time from one part of the known world to another part of the world. This was Moses' task. This was his mission call.

And in order to do this with a degree of success, I tell you, the hallmarks were intimacy with God and an ability to fit with the blueprint that God laid down, not only for the Israelites as a whole and their religious worship, but for Moses as an individual. I remember so well standing just a few months ago by the grave of William Carey and remembering reading how in Leicester when he set out to the unknown territory of Asia, he said that his goal was just to be God's plodder, not to rush forward, not to make a mighty impact, but rather to harness the resources of his very meager education and the illimitable resources of the Holy Spirit. And with the Word of God in his hand and with the Spirit in his heart, he would try to make an impact upon the community which was dominated by Hinduism and tinged with Islam.

And if you went and read the epitaph of Carey by his tomb, you'll find that he lived within the parameters of his goal when he left Leicestershire. He lived and died a plodder, a worm as he called himself, nothing apart from the grace of God. And don't you see, Henneke, and all who are eavesdropping, that that was an example that he got from Moses as well as others in the Old and the New Testament and par excellence our beloved Lord, because it is said of Moses, there was not a more meek man in the whole of the world, a man who was humble, a man who recognized that the only things that he could achieve in the purposes of God would be as a result of God giving him the enabling.

And that's what God does. You see, Moses was very much like Paul. We judge these men sometimes with rose-tinted spectacles, as though we've never really read the whole account of what they had to say.

Paul was no natural orator. He was a man who found words difficult to put together, and Moses' reaction to the call of God at the beginning of his pilgrimage was, no Lord, you've got the wrong man, why? Because I can't speak. But it's always been the plan of God to take the foolish and the inadequate and those who feel they are totally and utterly unqualified, and to use them in his royal service.

Check the history of missions. Read the history of the church. It's a constant denominator.

And so, now here is Moses, towards the end of his life, and actually we've got little information about Moses, even though he lived a hundred and twenty years. You say, well, how can that be the case when the first five books of the Bible are generally attributed to him? Well, that is so, but the majority of the teaching here has very little to do with Moses personally. In fact, we've only got insights into about three and a half years of his life, if you check it through at the beginning and in the middle and towards the end.

And there's so much that we would like to know, but there's so much really that we don't need to know because we have sufficient information with what is already contained within these chapters. When Moses is at the end, he is going to be taken into the immediate presence of God, not as a result of physical disability. He had twenty-twenty vision, better off than the majority of us here.

For most of us, it would be spectacle, or we conceal our helps by other means. It's not as though Moses was particularly dull in his mind, for he has just preached a sterling sermon which even in the realm of poetry would get him a place in the world's history. But Moses is at the end of his course as far as God is concerned, and his contemporaries have gone.

You see, one of the things that marks Moses actually is his loneliness. I mean by that even in Egypt, the first forty years, he was not fully understood, he could not have been. Here he is a Hebrew amongst the Egyptians, learning their culture but not being part of it.

When he marries and spends time with Jethro and his family, again you read between the lines but there seems to be an incipient loneliness. And when Moses is leading the people for those last forty years, he's out on his own. Spiritually they can't touch him, they don't really understand him.

This is the reason why he has so many problems with them. And when it comes to the end, well, Miriam, his sister, has already been buried. Aaron, some time before Moses has gone onto the high mount of Hur and disrobed his brother and given the priestly garments to another as Aaron has been gathered to the community of those who have gone on having died before.

And here is Moses. His contemporaries have died. Only Caleb and Joshua are left.

What does a man like Moses do when he is at the end? He responds to the command of God who says in the forty-ninth verse of chapter thirty-two, Go up into the Abraham range to Mount Nebo in Moab, across from Jericho, and view Canaan, the land I am giving the Israelites. And it's there that Moses will be buried by none other than God himself. Thus the fifth verse of the thirty-fourth chapter, Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab as the Lord had said.

God buried him. What peace. In the valley opposite Beth Peor.

What lack of ostentation. Moses, buried by his friend. And no one knew what marked the grave.

But when Moses, in the era of our Lord Jesus, is brought back to planet earth and speaks alongside Elijah to Jesus, God knew where the grave was. God always knows where his people are, their souls and also the remnants of their body. For the man, the woman, who has entrusted himself, herself to the Lord God, has the protection and the security of God, has the vigilance of God throughout life and on and on into eternity.

And so here is Moses. The end of his day. The end of a long life.

Interesting isn't it? That Moses wanted to see the promised land but was never allowed so to do. Cary would have longed to have seen the Mitzoram people, the people of Mitzoram state in north India and other states to the north respond to the gospel but he never did. Here is Moses on one occasion and God in effect says, Moses I want you to go into a new sphere of ministry and Moses said well I won't go unless you grant me one thing and God says what is it and Moses says show me your glory.

And here is Moses in the cleft of the rock and the glory of God passes by. What a mega response to a mega request. And here is a mini response, here is a mini request, Lord let me go on into the land.

And God says no. It's not for you. There's been some disobedience.

But Moses even beyond and above your disobedience there is a sort of a dispensational reason for this. You're the man who's brought the law. You bring the people to the edge of the promised land.

I have another. His name is Joshua. He prefigures another whose name is Jesus in the Greek.

You Moses speak of law. They will speak of grace and when Jesus comes my grace will be seen to be even greater than the wisdom of my law. But Moses in the economy of God is allowed as a result of resurrection activity to stand in the very land which was precluded from his step during his earthly ministry.

Don't you see my missionary colleagues here at the tab? Some of you will never see the final goal. Joshua will come along after Moses. Paul will come along after Stephen.

Timothy will come along after Paul. And though you may not see on this earth all that you want yet with eyes of faith you look beyond as Abraham as Moses was allowed to look into the promised land. So you look to the time when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever.

And so you're left in the book of Deuteronomy with this tremendous scene. Moses and God. Moses whose eyes are not dim and God says look to the north.

You see the slopes rising up into Mount Hermon where Lebanon is, that white kissed mountain. Drop your eyes down now. Go on a panorama.

Come into Galilee. Come into Judea. Go down to Beersheba where your forefather Abraham pitched his tent and erected an altar to me and then go beyond to the sands that drift onwards to Egypt.

Moses this land from the north to the south and what you see in front of you as the Jordan laps the mountain on which you're standing. That will be the land of these people for it is the land that I promised to Abraham and to Isaac yesteryear. And don't you see the smile that crosses the face of God's friend Moses as he perceives something of what God has in the future.

And Moses dies and God buries him and chisels out the epitaph. No prophet has risen in Israel like Moses who has this double, double qualification. Intimacy with God.

Harnessed to the purposes of God, obedient to the blueprint. If in the latest hour you're on this earth, God draws near, how wondrous that will be. The Hebrew here says literally God's kiss came to Moses to be in the embrace of God and to slip away into eternity.

That's the promise of those who are faithful in service to the Lord. O thou thy cross before my closing eyes, shine through the gloom, point me to the skies. Heaven's morning breaks and earth's vain shadows flee.

In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me. It's number four. We'll sing verse five, remaining seated.

Then Ruth leads us in. Isn't he wonderful? Slip away at this point then please do so. But we're bringing these emblems around for a folk who want to remember the death of our beloved Lord Jesus.

So let's go on to this song. Now a few moments for your own intimacy. As you bring your heart's devotion before the Lord and ask for his forgiveness for all the wrong that perchance you have done, this lurks as unconfessed sin.

Remembering that the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son, is able to cleanse us from all our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So Moses beheld in the glory of God pass by that we have seen in even greater glory the body of our Lord broken and his blood spilt so that you and I might have an opportunity of coming back, embracing our Father, knowing his forgiveness, submitting to the blueprint of his Spirit and enjoying fellowship as a friend talks to his friend. The cost was enormous.

Moses and Elijah spoke to the Lord Jesus and they spoke about his death. That's perfectly obvious from the setting of their conversation. They heard about what God would do in the earthly ministry of a greater than Moses, a greater than the lawgiver, a greater than the prophets.

So as in a moment we break bread, let's thank God for it. And as we drink wine, let's thank God for the blood of Jesus.