THURSDAY 22nd
Deuteronomy 34
NIV (v10) – ‘Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face . . .’
ESV (v10) – ‘And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.’
What a statement to have made about you, and what a privileged position in life Moses had, in that he was used by God in a powerful way to bring about the exodus from Egypt, and to top it all who the LORD knew on a face to face basis! There is another verse earlier in the book of Numbers that describes the kind of man Moses was, ‘Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.’ (Numbers 12:3) And yet at the same time, we also find this man was not perfect, he had his faults and sadly one of them disqualified him from entering the Promised land, the sin of disobedience. I mentioned in an earlier devotion that humanly speaking it would seem to us that given all the positive things said about Moses and with all that he had done, that God dealt harshly with Moses in preventing him from entering that which he was leading the people of Israel toward. But God is God, and he has the right to do what he deems necessary in any and every given situation.
We have come to the end of Deuteronomy today, Moses has died and his successor Joshua, is now responsible for leading the people of God. But what a legacy Moses had left behind, despite his failure Moses was a man who had listened to and obeyed God, (except in his sin that barred him from the land), think about the immense task he was given to do at the start of his leadership, to go down into Egypt and face the Pharaoh as God’s spokes-person. He had had to put up with a lot of rebellion, grumbling and murmuring from the people, he had been willing to intercede for them even if he may have thought they didn’t deserve it, his family had opposed him, but he remained determined in his calling and responsibility as God’s man for the moment to lead or shepherd the people
He had left his mark, and even we today can learn valuable life lessons from looking back over his life.
I wonder what legacy we will leave behind, or firstly what legacy are we leaving before we are gone? For every moment in our journey with God matters and counts, I can think back over the years of those who in particular who by their example made an impact on my life, some may now be gone, but their legacy is that they had an impact upon me. They showed an example to me which I have wanted to follow.
My parents and grand-parents who instilled in us as a family a godly heritage, I think of one of my previous pastors, Ken Rees and his wife Eva, who when I was a teenager, had an incredible impact upon me towards my spiritual walk, and who impressed upon me the importance and value of the sound preaching of the Word of God, the list could go on, men and woman who God placed in my life at the right moment of time to keep me from being in a wilderness and to keep me transitioning towards the eternal kingdom.
What examples are we being and leaving today to those around us who know what we are in Christ, are we ensuring that we will leave a good legacy behind, being examples that others would be pleased to follow.