Finishing Well!
Deut. 34:1-10
Nike makes a great shoe - in fact my favourite shoes are my Nike's. But it has a terrible philosophy of life. You see it everywhere: in buses, on billboards and at cinemas. It consists of just three little words, 'Just Do It.'
That's a bad principle to live by, because if something is really worth doing it is worth planning first. You don't just 'do', the really vital things in life, you strategize and think about them first.
Yet our culture has become a 'Just Do It' culture. People seldom think about the long-term consequences of their actions in the present. Jacques Ellul wrote that ,'We build faster machines to take us nowhere.' Another writer put it like this, '[Today we believe that] the past is irrelevant, the future is uncertain, so we just live for the present.'
Our God is a God of beginnings. In fact, you might say that His Word is a book without an end, because it's final chapters anticipate another new beginning!
However, when the Lord begins anything he does have an end or goal in view. He is not a 'means without an end' kind of Person.
At the beginning of any good thing it does us good to consider how the Lord wants it to look at its end - whether it's a new project, a new career or ministry, or even the whole of a life.
By any measure, Moses was a man who finished well. Matthew Henry wrote that, 'Though there were many men of great influence in heaven and great influence on earth, none of them either so evidenced or executed a commission from heaven as Moses did.'
How can we fulfill the call of God, and be sure to finish well what we have started?
1. BURNING VISION
Like Moses we must begin with a burning vision.
Verse 1 records the first time Moses ever saw the Promised Land. And yet, this was not the first time Moses had seen it! Over the years of looking forward to God's promise, he had no doubt played images of the land like a movie in the cinema of his mind. His vision of the promise was strong.
In Exodus 2 Moses had his first real encounter with God, through a bush which spoke to him. The bush was on fire but was not consumed. Moses was inspired to take a closer look, and the whole thing created the fear of God in him.
Actually, God was giving Moses a picture of what he was to become - a man absolutely on fire with a vision born of God, which blazed within him but did not consume him, and which inspired both interest and respect in others.
That is God's will for every Christian.
2. MEEKNESS
Secondly, we must have a meekness of heart. In Verse 4, God was telling Moses, 'You can look, but you can't touch.' Imagine you have spent two thirds of your long eighty-year life in the desert surrounded by sand, only to be told that you will never set foot in the land of promise.
I don't know how you would have responded. But I can picture myself saying something like, 'Hey, don't you know who I am? I'm Moses! One day they're going to make animated movies about me. This is not fair! I won't accept it.'
Yet Moses does not remonstrate with God. He accepts God's will with humility. Moses was not a weak man (see verse 12), but in his years of serving God he had learned meekness. Meekness is not weakness, it is submitted strength. Meekness is me saying, 'I may be strong in some areas, but I can only please God when I submit my strength to His greater strenght.'
In his youth, Moses had killed an Egyptian thinking the cause was just. He had reacted in his own strength, relying only his own resources. In his old age, Moses was willing to submit his considerable strength to an even higher power.
Jesus said, 'The meek shall inherit the earth'. He did not say they will take it by force. They will be given it by a higher power, because they are submitted to God's will.
3. INTEGRITY
Finally, we must have an integrity of heart. It's one thing for God to look into a man's heart from above, it's another thing for God and a man to know at each other 'face to face' (verse 10). That tells us that there was a consistency, a real-ness in the life of Moses which meant that, imperfect though he was, he did not need to cringe under the eyes of his Maker.
Integrity is a consistency between words and actions, between belief and behaviour.
With vision, meekness and integrity we can be sure by God's grace to finish well.
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