While reading the Old Testament, I discovered that there is no record of a funeral service for Moses, the man
God used so wonderfully to deliver His people out of slavery in Egypt and to the Promised Land of Caanan.
Moses lived to be 120 years of age. The oldest person I have given a funeral message for was 103,
so this will be a first for me.
If his funeral were to be held today the services may have gone something like this, and, unless
otherwise noted, the information all came from the Bible.
OBITUARY OF MOSES
He was the third child of Amram and Jochebed of the tribe of Levi, and, at the age of three months, was given up for adoption to the daughter of Pharaoh. He was subsequently returned to his natural mother to be raised as her foster child. While living with his natural parents he was home schooled in the culture of his own nationality, Israel, taught that he descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and was trained in the ways of the one true God.
Moses passed away at the age of 120, at the top of Mt. Nebo. It was said that “when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.”
He married Zippora, the daughter of Jethro, the Priest of Midian, and to this union were born 2 sons, Gershom and Eli-ezer.
He was preceded in death by one sister, Miriam, one brother, Aaron, and two nephews, Nadab and Abihu.
He was survived by his two sons, Gershom and Eli-ezer, two grandsons, Shu-abel, the son of Gershom, and Rehabiah, the son of Eli-ezer, and numerous great-grandsons by Rehabiah, as well as two nephews, Ele-azar and Ithamar.
Internment was in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor, with graveside services conducted by God. No man knows of his sepulcher to this day.
EULOGY
Moses was a man of many great and lasting accomplishments, but probably his greatest was leading the Children of Israel, some two million strong, out of slavery in Egypt and to the Promised Land. This journey was on foot and took 40 years to complete. Along the way he wrote five “best seller” books and one Psalm, while leading this company through a desert land. His literary skills, which he learned in Egypt, were used, under the guidance of God, to write these five amazing books. They are titled Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. He also wrote Psalm 90. 3500 years later they are still on the annual “Best Seller” list in many parts of the world.It is recorded in the Bible that God spoke to Moses face to face as He did to no other man.
Moses was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter shortly after birth but he was returned to his natural mother to rear through his early childhood.
He later was returned to the daughter of Pharaoh at an early age and lived in the house of Pharaoh until he was 40 years old. I quote from Acts 7:21-22, “Pharaoh's daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. [22] Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.”
Secular history records that he attended the Egyptian school of advanced learning which was called “The Temple of the Sun.” There he was trained under many of the wisest and learned men of the time.
According to Jewish historian Josephus, he was an officer in Pharaoh’s court and Pharaoh's army. He led Pharaoh’s army in successful military campaigns against Ethiopia as well as against a fortified island city in the River Nile.
At age 40, Moses attended the funeral of an Egyptian slave master, who had died a very sudden death. Moses left the next day for the desert of Midian, where he spent his next 40 years. Many years after he buried this one Egyptian, he attended a funeral where God buried many thousands of Egyptian soldiers in the Red Sea.
His second 40 years were spent as a shepherd in the land of Midian. At the age of 80, God spoke to him from a burning bush on Mount Horeb in the desert, and he returned to Egypt.
There he appeared before Pharaoh on behalf of the Children of Israel, in the very court where he grew up, to warn Pharaoh of God’s coming judgment on Egypt.
Moses, along with his brother Aaron, were used by God to lead the Children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt and across the Red Sea, and then to the Land of Caanan.
Even though he was raised and lived as an Egyptian for 40 years, and then spent 40 more years in the Land of Midian, Moses never forgot his Israeli roots. He spent his third 40 years in the wilderness and desert area of what is now the Arabian Peninsula, leading the Children of Israel to the Land of Caanan.
He passed away at the age of 120, high on Mt. Nebo on the eastern border of Caanan. Although he was not allowed to enter the Land of Caanan, he was able to view the length and breadth of the land and saw it was a fair land flowing with milk and honey, the land promised to his illustrious ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob many years before. This truly was the Promised Land.
This concludes the services for Moses.
On the serious side, let's look at some of the incidents where God dealt with Moses in his later life. Click on Exodus 3. At this time he is 80 years old, he's not much of a success, and he's still herding sheep out in the desert for his father in law, and his nation is still in bondage in Egypt.
Most of the time I think we look at these Bible characters as perfect. They weren't super saints. In many respects, it's very likely that they were inferior to us in education and knowledge.
Moses may have been an exception in the education department, but he had been out of touch with the rest of the world for forty years. Would you have chosen a sun-burned, eighty year old shepherd to represent you before Pharaoh, one of the mightiest kings in the world at that time? Moses had been out to pasture for forty years. He had lost touch with his people and probably the world. Here was an 80 year old with a wife and two kids, he was living with and working for his father-in-law. In four decades the man couldn’t scrape enough together to buy a place of his own. Does it seem like he had executive ability enough to lead an entire nation out of captivity, to steal a couple million slave laborers from Egypt, the mightiest nation in the world?
Where would most of us be today if we were out of touch for that long? If we go on vacation for a week or ten days, I feel like an alien when we get back I'm so out of touch.
I think we would have a hard time believing that many of these people were God's choice to do these wonderful things. They have one characteristic in common that lifted them above ordinary men and that's why their names are recorded in Scripture, they had tremendous faith. Not confidence, faith. Faith is the capacity of the human heart that can be used for God. Four times over, Moses' faith in God is recorded as the reason for all that he was able to do for his people.
All of the teachings of Jesus were centered on faith. He never stopped to ask the amount of power or wisdom or enthusiasm that His disciples had. In His judgment, these things make about as much difference as a few specks of dust on a scales. They're not likely to affect the results of a man’s life. But His constant demand is for faith.
In Mark 9:23, Jesus is talking to the father of a demon possessed boy and He said; “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” His words are still the same to us. Jesus says; “There is no "if" in My power; the "if" is in your faith.”
Faith isn't some inherent power or quality certain people have that enables them to accomplish special things that others can't. It's the power to put our worldly inclinations aside so that God can work unhindered through us. When we determine the will of God and want to fulfill it, we know with all our hearts that God will work out His purposes through us.
Faith is when we let ourselves become the channel or vehicle God wants to use to accomplish His will. The willingness to let God use us without reservation, regardless of the consequences to us in this life, is the necessary condition for true faith.
According to Scripture, Moses had a handsome body and a brilliant mind. He had been versed in all the learning of his time, yet the outcome of his lifework wasn't due to any of these qualities. His success was due to his faith, not his confidence or abilities. That's why God called him His friend and said "I speak to My friend Moses face to face." What Moses managed to do by faith in God would have failed if it depended on all his other qualities.
God wants the cooperation of each one of His Believers in executing His purposes and in fulfilling His promises. He made Moses His partner and it was through Moses' faith that God fulfilled the promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob centuries before.
If we go back 40 years in the life of Moses, back before he left Egypt, we see how God allowed him to try to free his people his own way and with his own strength.
Moses intervened on behalf of one of his brethren against the Egyptian taskmaster, then he killed the Egyptian and completely failed in his attempt to help his people's cause for freedom. Moses ran for his life to Midian and gave up all hope of delivering his people.
He spent forty years in Midian as a fugitive where he was reduced to the status of a hired shepherd until God spoke to him from the burning bush.
God’s promise, made to Abraham years before, fixed four hundred years as the time the Children of Israel would spend in Egypt. That 400 years was up and God told Moses that He had come down to deliver His people, and He was going to use Moses for that purpose.
In Exodus 4 we have some interesting things. God is telling Moses how He'll authenticate him as their leader. We have a serpent picturing the original sin. We have leprosy, picturing our inherited sin. And we have blood, suggesting the coming sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our sin.
In verse 3 we have the serpent. It was Satan in the form of a beautiful serpent who got Eve to sin just by the power of suggestion. Eve said he beguiled her. Satan didn't make her sin. Satan suggested that she eat the forbidden fruit and she did it willingly, and sin entered the world.
In verse 6 we have the hand of Moses becoming leprous. In World War 2 we had phosphorous grenades that would burn through metal. We called them a bazooka. In my training as a tank commander I got to see what they could do to a tank and the people inside when they were fired.
When any of the phosphorous got on you it didn't stop burning until there was no flesh left. That's how Leprosy is and that's why God gives it as a picture of sin. Sin never stops trying to destroy us and only God can provide a cure. It was because of Moses' unbelief, which is sin, that God had to show Moses His power over sin.
In verse 9 God told Moses He would turn water into blood. The blood is a picture of the blood of Jesus shed for our sins.
About 15 centuries later, the Son of God would come to this earth to shed His blood as a sacrifice for Moses' sin. I'm sure Moses didn't realize that just then, but when Christ died on the cross, he died for your sins and mine, as well as Moses' sins.
Moses continued to argue with God but he finally ran out of arguments and obeyed God.
Moses' name means “the servant of the Lord,” and the phrase "as the LORD commanded Moses," is repeated many times over in the five books he wrote.
After the incident in Exodus 4 and with his faith in God's promises, Moses became the leader of those several million people. In the next 40 years, God assured Moses many times over that His faithfulness wouldn't fail him, and it didn't.
Why shouldn't you and I have that kind of faith? We have the same God. God’s methods are never out of date. If we pay the price of self discipline that goes with faith, why couldn't we see another exodus, only this time in the salvation of millions of people right here in our own country, an exodus from sin to salvation.
There is no limit to the possibilities when we let ourselves become the channel through which God can work freely. What this country and this world needs is 144,000 Billy Grahams preaching the Gospel.
Don't think that you can't be a part of that. Moses said he couldn't do what God wanted but God enabled him to do things no man has done before or since. God can still do that.
I believe the present age is drawing to a close, and that God has some fantastic events that are going to happen shortly. According to His unchanging method, God is going to accomplish them through faithful people. The one question is, is our faith of such a nature that He can use us to glorify His Name?
Think about the lessons we can learn from the life and character of Moses, how we can become better prepared so God can use us to accomplish His full purpose.
I believe that time is running out for the world as we know it today. The day of grace appears to
be nearly over. Do you know Jesus Christ as your Savior? He died on the cross for your sins
and He wants you to turn your life around and confess that you are a sinner in need of
salvation. Then, just trust in His forgiving grace and you are saved from hell for eternity. Lets look at
Romans 10. His promise is in the Scriptures.
Romans 10:8-10. "But what saith it? The
word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which
we preach;
9: That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart
that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
10: For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is
made unto salvation.