Mountains of God – Mt. Nebo
Mountains of God – Mt. Nebo.
“Your saving grace and your righteousness are like the mountains of God.” (Psalm 36:6).
Yes, God lives in heaven. But all through Scripture He appears to have a second home here on the earth, in the mountains. God’s personal involvement on mountains deepen the meaning and significance of what mountains have come to symbolize through the ages… stability; safety; permanence; majesty; beauty; spiritual inspiration. One of God’s names in Scripture is El-Shaddai (Genesis 17:1), and an ancient meaning of that name is “God of the Mountain.” It’s easy to see why. God’s attributes can clearly be seen in mountains, including the fixed foundation of His faithful love. “For even if the mountains move and the hills disappear, even then my mercy for you will remain. My covenant of blessing will never be broken, says Yahweh Lord, who has mercy on you.” Isaiah is saying that we all know how next to impossible it would be for a mountain to totter and fall. But it’s more likely for mountains to move away than for God to withdraw His unshakeable love for you.
God is like the mountains: He doesn’t change, He stays the same, He is consistently steadfast and stable. Mountains are referenced over 500 times in Scripture. Not only are mountains the go-to place for momentous events all through the Bible, but God Himself made it clear from the beginning that mountains are His first choice as a site to reveal Himself and His favorite place to meet with people. “I lift my eyes to the mountains; where is my help to come from? My help comes from Yahweh Lord who made heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:1-2).
Down through history people have assumed that since God is in His heavens, the closer one can get to God on high, the more spiritual enlightenment one can receive. There have been pagan shrines and mountaintop gurus as long as we can remember. People have always climbed to the “high places” for heavenly insight and personal contact with the gods, or with God. Irish Christians consider mountains to be one of those sacred “thin places” where the layer between heaven and earth is so thin that a believer can easily step from one to the other. As one person excitedly told Barbara Brown Taylor, ‘You’re sinners going up, but you’ll be saints going down!” People still refer to a special time with God as a “mountaintop experience.” As we study the Mountains of God in Scripture, we come to appreciate how central mountains are in the Word, how important they are to God himself. Mountains will be seen as a sacred part of nature that consistently has seen powerful events and profound conversations between us mere mortals and the Almighty God. Let us rejoice and applaud the God who is the Rock, who has a glorious history of preferring His own mountaintop experiences with us.
Mt. Nebo was the historical site of Moses’ death, and somewhere on that mountain is Moses’ bones, buried where no one could ever find him. God Himself buried Moses. Nebo is at the front door of the land of Canaan, the Promised Land of the Israelites. It is located in today’s Jordan, and during the time of Moses the land of Moab. Nebo rises more than 4,000 feet above the Dead Sea, so one can easily view the Jordan River valley and even the city of Jericho. On a clear day, Jerusalem can be seen in horizon.
“How blessed you are, O Israel! Who else is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is your protecting shield and your triumphant sword! Your enemies shall submit to you, and you shall march on their high places! (Deuteronomy 33:29).
Much like Jacob in his dying moments, Moses gave prophetic blessings to the tribes of Israel before his final breaths on earth. “This is the blessing that Moses, the man of God, gave to the people of Israel before he died.” (Deut. 33:1). His final words exclaim how lucky Israel is to have God on their side, and how unlucky their enemies are to have God oppose them.
But there must have been a mood of sadness in Moses’ spirit as he extended those final words to his people. God had just told him something that must have broken his heart. The Lord confided to Moses that as soon as His people enter the land of Canaan, they will abandon God and chase after the foreign gods. They will violate their marriage covenant with God, they will commit spiritual adultery (Deut. 31:16). We wouldn’t blame Moses if he felt like a failure. After all his work of delivering the people out of the clutches of Pharaoh and away from the slavery of Egypt. After leading and guiding them for forty grueling years through the wilderness doing the impossible. After helping them finally reach the entrance to the Promised Land of their forefathers. After all that sacrifice and commitment, the Chosen People will act like they are not God’s people at all. After Moses dies, the Lord told him, they will act like they never heard of their Savior Yahweh.
Moses was undoubtedly heartsick as he spoke the end of his blessings. He might have been a bit outraged as well. After speaking these blessings in Deuteronomy 33, he climbed Mt. Nebo with God to witness the far reaches of the Promised Land, his goal after all these years. At this point, in his disappointment, he could only find hope for the Israelites in the forgiving grace of God, in God’s fidelity to His covenant with the people. Moses must have felt like a parent who can only watch helplessly as his children wander away from everything he has taught them growing up. Moses was perhaps the greatest leader who ever lived, yet he couldn’t make their decisions for them. Moses had to let it all go in his dying moments and trust in His God.
When Moses died somewhere there on Mt. Nebo, he was 120 years old… Forty years in Egypt growing up; forty years as a shepherd; forty years in the wilderness with his people. His eyesight remained clear to the end, and his strength was not diminished. Despite the disappointing news of their future rebelliousness, Moses closed his life on a hopeful, optimistic note. Israel is blessed. The Lord is their refuge. Their enemies are destined to fail. Moses earnestly sought to be an encouragement to his people till his dying breath.
“Then Moses went up to Mt. Nebo from the plains of Moab and climbed Pisgah Peak, which is across from Jericho… So Moses, the servant of Yahweh, died there, just as the Lord had said… Moses was 120 years old when he died, yet his eyesight was clear, and he was as strong as ever. There has never been another prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.” (Deuteronomy 34).
Why was Moses not allowed to take his people across into the land of Canaan, after forty years of miracles, and wonders, and difficulties? In Numbers 20 are specific instructions from Yahweh to Moses and Aaron: “You and Aaron must take the staff and assemble the entire community. As the people watch, speak to the rock over there, and it will pour out its water. You will provide enough water from the rock to satisfy the whole community and their livestock.” So Moses took his staff and struck the rock twice, and water gushed out of the rock. There is some confusion as to why this incident was punished and Moses was not allowed to take his people across the finish line into the Promised Land. It’s not difficult, though, to take the Lord at His word when He explained the punishment to Moses: “You broke faith with me, Moses, in front of all the Israelites. You did not trust me enough to demonstrate my holiness to the people. You betrayed me in front of the whole community.
(1.) Moses let his frustration with the complaining Israelites to cloud his thinking. Yahweh clearly told Moses to “speak to the rock” not strike it. The anger of Moses seemed to deafen his ears and he didn’t seem to take in that direct command, and the result was disobedience. The fact that Moses struck the rock not once but twice, demonstrated the anger he must have been feeling. Moses also tipped his hand as to his frustration with the people by yelling out to them “You rebels!” which certainly betrayed his emotion at the time.
(2.) God changed His plans from forty years earlier, when He asked Moses to strike the rock for water (Ex. 17). This time, in a completely different place to a new generation of Israelites, God wanted to show a different strategy. Speak to the rock, Moses, don’t strike it. God wants the people to see Moses trust God enough to quietly talk to the rock. You don’t even have to yell at it, Moses, just a spoken word will be fine. Moses didn’t rise to the occasion, unfortunately. He didn’t trust God that speaking would be enough. God’s holiness demands that we trust Him and take Him at His word. Moses failed the test.
(3.) The Lord mentioned more than once that their disobedience was in full sight of the Israelites. They were bad examples to the community, when they could have just as easily been excellent examples of faith by simply obeying God and trusting that His word was enough to get the job done. God called their leadership into question, which is very important in the eyes of God. Unfaithful behavior is like a contagion and can spread from one person to another until distrust is everywhere. God didn’t want that to happen. God expected more from them at this stage of the journey.
(4.) Moses was evidently trying to take the credit for the miracle about to happen. Instead of giving God the credit and pointing to His power and love, Moses said, “Must we bring you water from this rock?” Some give Moses the benefit of the doubt and think that perhaps Moses was referring to himself and God, but some of us have out doubts. Moses didn’t seem in the mood to give God the credit.
(5.) It has been suggested that God had something else on His mind that Moses knew nothing about. It’s clear from 1 Corinthians 10:4 that the rocks with water in the wilderness represented Jesus Christ. “In the cloud and in the Sea, all of them were baptized as followers of Moses. All of them ate the same spiritual food, and all of them drank the same spiritual water. For they drank from the spiritual rock that traveled with them, and that rock was Christ.” The rocks were a hint of what was to come much later in the history of the Chosen People. The miraculous rocks that gushed out water were meant to be object lessons for future believers. Jesus was a spiritual rock accompanying and sustaining the Chosen People, from whom would come springs of living water. Paul is saying that Jesus Himself was a spiritual presence during the wilderness wanderings, and that the rocks were a physical picture of a spiritual reality. Perhaps the first rock with water, the first shadow of Christ, was struck, representing the Crucifixion in the salvation story. And maybe the second rock was to represent the spoken word, prayer, and its importance in one’s faith in the Lord. Moses certainly complicated things for the Lord’s intended lessons, and God wasn’t happy about that.
An interesting legend got some traction in the early Church regarding the body of Moses that was never found. Jude:9 mentions Michael the archangel fighting with Satan over Moses’ dead body there on Mt. Nebo. Jude took this story out of the apocryphal book “The Assumption of Moses.” In the oral tradition of that book, Satan wanted to take the body of Moses to use as a relic that the Hebrew people would worship instead of Yahweh. Michael won the fight against the devil, but people wonder what happened to Moses’ body. There was one tradition that Moses was resurrected and taken directly to heaven. No one knows, of course, but we do know that Moses made an appearance 1,500 years later at the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mr. Tabor (Matthew 17 and Mark 9). There is no Scriptural support of this incident about Moses, so we can take it or leave it.