Deuteronomy 34:6

Deuteronomy 34:6

We shall take the account of the death and burial of Moses, and seek to show how it was fitted to be a source of fruitful reflection to the Old Testament Church.

I. God will have no one, living or dead, to stand between His creatures and Himself. The first great lesson which the Jewish people were to be taught was the supremacy of the one true God. It was the lifelong work of Moses to fix this truth of God's sovereignty on the people's minds. And yet what he had done for them made it not unlikely that their reverence for him might prove their snare, and that they might be tempted to give him the place he desired to secure for God. Moses died apart, and was buried in secret, where his grave could be dishonoured by no pilgrimage and where no false veneration could rear altars to his memory. And this first lesson did not fail. The nation worshipped many strange deities, but it never gave the place of God to His prophets.

II. God wishes men to see something more left of His servants than the outward shrine. In the history of the greatest and best, the tomb is often remembered and the life forgotten. It is an easier thing to revere the dust than to follow the example. God takes away the grave of Moses that the people may have before them, in full and undisturbed relief, the man himself. The sepulchre of the greater Prophet than Moses is equally unknown. God has made the march of armies and the desolation of centuries do for the sepulchre of Christ what His own hand did for the grave of Moses.

III. God takes the honour of His servants into His own keeping. "The Lord buried him." There is a higher honour conferred upon him than if all Israel had met to weep and lament, or the world assembled to his obsequies.

IV. God would teach men that He has a relation to His servants which extends beyond their death. The great truths of life and immortality must surely have begun to stir in the hearts of thoughtful men when they knew this, that "the Lord had buried him."

V. God would teach men from the very first that His regard is not confined to any chosen soil. The death of Christ has consecrated the soil of the world. Wherever men kneel with a pure heart they find God's mercy-seat, and wherever they are buried they are in holy ground.

VI. The seeming failure in a true life may at last have a complete compensation.

J. Ker. Sermons,p. 153.

References: Deuteronomy 34:6. Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Cambridge Lent Sermons,1864, p. 253.Deuteronomy 34:7. G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount,p. 58. Deuteronomy 34:9. S. A. Brooke, The Unity of God and Man,p. 110. Deuteronomy 34:10. J. H. Jellett, The Elder Son, and Other Sermons,p. 77. Deuteronomy 34:10. W. M. Taylor, Moses the Lawgiver,p. 451.Deuteronomy 34 Parker, vol. iv., p. 400; Expositor,3rd series, vol. ii., p. 289.