MOSES.
Moses was about to leave the children of Israel in the wilderness. He had led them up to the borders of the Promised Land. For forty long years he had been leading them in that wilderness, and now, as they are about to go over, Moses takes his farewell. He said a great many wise and good things on that memorable occasion.
There was not a man on the face of the earth at that time who knew as much about the world and as much about God as did Moses. Therefore, he was a good judge. He had tasted of the pleasures of the world. In the forty years that he was in Egypt he probably sampled every thing of that day. He tasted of the world—of its pleasures. He knew all about it. He was brought up in the palace of a king, a prince. Egypt then ruled the world, as it were.
Moses had been forty years in Horeb, where he had heard the voice of God—where he had been taught by God—and for forty years he had been serving God. You might say he was God’s right hand man, leading those bondmen up out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage into the land of liberty, and this is his dying address—you might say, his farewell address. This is the dying testimony of one who could speak with authority and one who could speak intelligently.
If you have not read that farewell address of Moses, you will find it in the last few verses of Deuteronomy. I advise you to read it. You are reading a great many printed sermons. Suppose you read that. Why, there is as much truth in that farewell address of Moses as there is in fifteen hundred printed sermons at the present time. Let me just give you a few verses:
“Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O Earth, the words of my mouth.
“My doctrine shall drop as the rain; my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass.
“Because I will publish the name of the Lord. Ascribe ye greatness unto our God.
“He is the Rock; His work is perfect. For all His ways are judgment; a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He.
“They have corrupted themselves; their spot is not the spot of His children. They are a perverse and crooked generation.
“Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is not He thy Father that hath bought thee? Hath He not made thee and established thee?
“Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations. Ask thy Father, and He will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.
“When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.
“For the Lord’s portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.
“He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness. He led him about; He instructed him; He kept him as the apple of His eye.”
There are two or three sermons in that last verse.
“As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.
“He made him ride on the high places of the Earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and He made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock.”
And so Moses went on and finished his sermon, and God called him off into the mountain. He went up into Mount Nebo, and there God showed him, from the top of Pisgah, that land which he could not possess; showed him the land from Dan to Beersheba.
Then “God kissed away his soul and buried him.”