Word of Encouragement (11/22/2022)
“And I pleaded with the LORD at that time, saying, ‘O Lord GOD, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your mighty hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as yours? Please let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan, that good hill country and Lebanon.’ But the LORD was angry with me because of you and would not listen to me. And the LORD said to me, ‘Enough from you; do not speak to me of this matter again.’” (Deut. 3:23-26)
As you can see, Moses here pleaded with God to let him go over the Jordan into the promised land and see it. The Lord rejected this plea but allowed Moses to go up to the top of Mount Pisgah and view the land from there. And the Lord charged him to get Joshua ready to take his place and lead the people into the promised land.
This is not to say that Moses was to die under God's condemnation. He was a faithful servant of the Lord. The Lord honored him by addressing him as His friend. However, he did fail to obey the Lord in his uncontrolled anger toward the sons of Israel. For that, he was not allowed to enter the promised land.
Why should God be so adamant in this when He loved Moses so? Wasn’t Moses’ request a good one? He was not asking for a longer life. He was not asking for more possession and a higher position. He longed to see the land God promised to give to Abraham and his descendants, for which they had been waiting a long time.
As we mentioned before, it may be that Moses was united with the exodus generation by baptism at the Red Sea (1 Cor. 10:2), and, as such, he had to share the same lot—of course, not the condemnation but at least not being granted the privilege to enter the promised land. More than once, Moses said that he was not allowed to enter the land on account of the Israelites and their rebellion (1:37; 3:26; also in 4:21). It may also be that Moses represented the Law and, as such, the denial of his access symbolized how one cannot enter the kingdom of God by the works of the law.
But one thing is certain. That God did not allow His faithful servant Moses to enter the promised land demonstrated that the land of Canaan, as good as it was, was not the ultimate destination of God's people. God already hinted at this when He told Aaron and the Levites, “You shall have no inheritance in their land, neither shall you have any portion among them. I am your portion and your inheritance among the people of Israel” (Num. 18:20). God could not have deprived Moses of the promised land if it were the ultimate blessing of God. His love is too generous and too great to do such a thing. Though Moses would not be allowed to enter the land and live in it, he would not lose God, his true portion and inheritance, and the true promised land—heaven. Even though the people of Israel had been waiting decades and centuries to take possession of the land, they could never forget who their true, ultimate inheritance was—the Lord their God and His heavenly kingdom.
We must keep this in mind and be humbled. The Lord has blessed us with different measures of earthly blessings. Some seem to have plenty of earthly blessings along with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Others seem to have no shortage of trials of many kinds. But the Lord would never withhold from us that which is essential and truly good and everlasting. So then, we should not make too much of God’s earthly blessings, which come and go and we will have to let go eventually, all of them, when we die. We should be grateful that God has given us the spiritual and eternal blessings of heaven in abundance, which He will never take away. We should strive to lay up our treasures in heaven through our labor of love for God and others.
Sometimes, in His infinite wisdom, God may not choose to answer our prayers, even the “good” ones. But this is not because He does not love us. If God should say no to our prayer, we should take that to mean that we don’t need it and, though it is hard to believe right there and then, it is not good for us. What is good is whatever deprivation and suffering we must go through in the meantime. May the Lord give us the wisdom we need to trust God’s goodness and the sufficiency of His provision for us.