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.”