At that time I pleaded with the Lord: “Sovereign Lord, you have begun to show to your servant your greatness and your strong hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do the deeds and mighty works you do? Let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan—that fine hill country and Lebanon.” But because of you the Lord was angry with me and would not listen to me. “That is enough,” the Lord said. “Do not speak to me anymore about this matter. Go up to the top of Pisgah and look west and north and south and east. Look at the land with your own eyes, since you are not going to cross this Jordan. But commission Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he will lead this people across and will cause them to inherit the land that you will see.” So we stayed in the valley near Beth Peor. (Deuteronomy 3:23-29)

Here at the end of chapter three, after Sihon and Og, the Kings of the Amorites have been defeated, Israel is ready to enter the promised land. The anticipation is growing, and on this threshold between the wilderness and the promise, Moses prays. God has shown him so much, will God not show him just a little more by allowing him to go over to see this good land for himself?

Moses already knew the answer, of course. God tells him that this answer will not change. However: God does grant half of Moses’ request. God will indeed allow him to “see” the promised land: "go look at the land with your own eyes,” God says. But Moses is not to confuse the land of God’s promise with God himself. God and God’s word of promise will have to be enough for Moses. This is as far as he will go. It is the one named Joshua, meaning, “the Lord’s Saves”—he is the one who will lead the people across to their inheritance.

One direction this devotion could go is to speak to all of us on the threshold of life transitions that force us to relinquish all that we still would wish to be and to do. Getting married, having a baby, sending a child to school, graduating, starting a job or career, retiring, downsizing, contemplating death as Moses was—all of these are just that sort of transition that entail a loss of some kind. The question to us would be: in these transitions, is God enough for us? What if it’s just him and his promises and nothing more? Can we let go and rest in the peace of God, trusting that that is enough for us?

Another direction this devotion could go is to recognize something curious about Moses himself. One of the commentators we’ve been following (Patrick Miller, Interpretation) does this, and I think it’s worth a few words. Moses says that it is “because of you the Lord was angry with me and would not listen to me.” In the end, Moses also accepts this word from God. In a strange way: Moses, the faithful servant of the Lord takes on the punishment for the people. The people will enter the land. Moses will not—and somehow that is because of their sin (as the book points out elsewhere too).

The suffering servant of Isaiah plays a similar role. As does Jesus, who was the second Moses. Here in Deuteronomy 3 then is Moses’ Gethsemane prayer: praying for the cup to be taken away. And yet in the end, Moses resigns himself to the will of God—"not mine but yours be done.” Moses remains in the wilderness.

We as Christians—“little Christs”—are also called into this priestly role as we follow our Saviour, Jesus. We are called to bear the sins of the world and of our families, neighbours, and friends—to accept slaps and slanders, persecution and whatever else. We are to bear it in our souls where all this evil and sin can be put to death in the death of Christ such that what comes back out of us in return is the life of Christ. In this way we are priestly agents of God’s transformation in the world: turning evil to good, sin to forgiveness, decay into hope.

What Gethsemane prayers might you need to lay before God in order to live this this priestly role faithfully today?