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FINISHING WELL
(Deuteronomy 34:1-8)
SUBJECT:
F.C.F:
PROPOSITION:
Finishing well means first of all to be…
I. COMMITTED TO THE LORD’S PURPOSE.
A. One last time, Moses is addressed by his
INTRODUCTION:
A. This is certainly a sad and touching text
common description, “the servant of the Lord,” as we
from God’s Word. Obviously this was written by
read in verse 5: “So Moses the servant of the LORD
someone other than Moses, probably at Moses’
died there in the land of Moab, according to the word
bidding, as was chapter 33 also, most likely, since it
of the LORD….” Moses is called “the servant of the
often refers to Moses in the third person. Our text
Lord” over 40 times in the Old Testament. He had
includes the last hours of the life of the second
determined to carry out the Lord’s purposes to the
greatest figure from the Old Testament including his
very end. The book of Hebrews reminds us that, even
death, and it concludes at a funeral.
though Christ is incomparably greater, Moses was
There is much that could be said about this
still faithful as God’s servant: “Now Moses was
text. It is so rich and deep, so emblematic of the
faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to
believer’s life: the sight of the Promised Land from
the things that were to be spoken later, 6 but Christ
the summit of Mount Nebo; the Lord’s taking Moses
is faithful over God’s house as a son.” (3:5-6)
into his presence, himself burying his wizened body;
Even when the Lord’s purpose seemed hard
the genuine grief of over a million children for their
or unwelcome, Moses was committed. At the burning
spiritual father, or grandfather as it were; their sense
bush, God told Moses he had heard his peoples’ cries
of aloneness and apprehension concerning the future,
and was sending Moses back to Pharaoh to deliver
bereft of the leadership of this great man of God. But
them. Moses gave every excuse he could think of, but
I have delayed the conclusion of this study of
he went. And now at the end, when he could “look
Deuteronomy long enough. And so this week, before
but not touch” the land he had longed for, he did not
we consider the final verses of Deuteronomy next
rebel or reject God’s Word, but finished his work
time, I want to focus on the subject of finishing well.
“according to the word of the LORD….”
B. Moses began life under God’s providential
B. Are you willing to do that? You must be, if
control, raised with a royal advantage to prepare him
you are to finish well, because God alone sets the
for a great task in his adulthood. In the prime of his
standard for what it means to finish well. And
life, at age 40, his anger got the best of him, and he
finishing well might look very different for all of us,
had to flee his post. He lived another 40 years in
but the one constant is that it requires adopting the
obscurity, tending sheep in the wilderness,
role of God’s servant and playing our part “according
unknowingly preparing to shepherd God’s people in
to the word of the LORD….” So whatever you may
the same place for the same number of years. And
envision the finish to be like (if you have even
then, near the end of that time, his impatience and
contemplated it at all), it must be in the role of the
anger, born of presumptive pride, again got the best
Lord’s servant, obeying him moment-by-moment
of him, and he was disqualified from the Land of
according to his Word.
Promise to which he had faithfully led his people.
C. Here’s what’s going to intrude into this
C. Yet, for all of his stumbles, he finished
resolve and try to sidetrack you or stop you cold.
well. And I know you also want to finish well. I
1. First, self will hedge and balk and drag its
know that you are wise enough to live in the present,
feet all the way along. The reason is very simple. Self
yet with one eye on the end. And you do not want to
already has an agenda, and it is not God’s agenda.
stumble and fall. You do not want to lie down and
Self wants to be god, so self will not surrender to any
quit before the finish line. You do not want to wander
other god, not even the one true God. Self will refuse
off into some trifle and waste the one life that was
to go where the Word of God calls it to go. Self will
entrusted to you. But what does it mean to finish
refuse to do what the Word of God commands it to
well? Does the one who dies with the most toys
do. And self will refuse to endure what the Word of
really win? Is finishing well determined by the bank?
God requires it to endure. So, unless you first master
Our text answers both questions for us. Not only
self and defeat self, you will not, you cannot finish
what it is to finish well, but the how question, also.
well.
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And that explains why Jesus declared in no
uncertain terms: ““If anyone would come after me, let
him deny himself and take up his cross and follow
me.” (Mark 8:34) So we must deny self, because self
will never follow another. Self will always follow
self; it admits to no other master.
2. But secondly, to finish well as the faithful,
obedient servant of the Lord, you may not allow
yourself to be a man-pleaser. If the self is what the
Bible refers to as the flesh, then the desire to be a
man-pleaser is what the Bible means by “the world,”
which we considered this morning. You must be so in
tune to the Lord and his desires, that you are immune
to the world and its demands.
Paul explains the goal of his service to Christ:
“just as we have been approved by God to be
entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please
man, but to please God who tests our hearts.” (1
Thes. 2:4) Paul knew that the gospel entrusted to him
would encourage some but also enrage many more.
How could he keep his focus? By utterly forgetting
about the opinions of others, and concentrating fully
on the only Opinion that matters.
Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4:1: “Finally,
then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord
Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to
live and to please God, just as you are doing, that
you do so more and more.” And likewise in 2
Timothy 2:4: “No soldier gets entangled in civilian
pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who
enlisted him.”
D. There is no other way to finish well except
to make it your single aim “to please the one who
enlisted you.” To finish well, we must be fully
committed to the Lord’s purpose.
Secondly, we must be…
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supernaturally aided vision since the western sea, the
Mediterranean, is not naturally visible from this
view.)
The point is that God kept his promise to the
T. Moses saw the land, but was forbidden to enter it,
just as God had told him in 32:49-50. But even more,
God reminded Moses of a previous promise and how
he was keeping that promise as well. “4 And the
LORD said to him, “This is the land of which I swore
to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, ‘I will give it to
your offspring.’ I have let you see it with your eyes,
but you shall not go over there.” Moses was
compelled forward because he trusted in the Lord’s
promise.
B. Now this hope and assurance empowered
Moses well beyond his years. Moses was 120 years
old. And yet, when he died at this point, the text
reminds us that “His eye was undimmed, and his
vigor unabated.” We may envision this feeble, old
man, and even wonder how a 120-year-old could
possibly have climbed a high mountain, and how his
weak eyes could possibly have surveyed that good
land. But Moses did not die of old age. He wasn’t
weak or sick or on life support. Nehemiah confessed,
“The joy of the Lord is your strength.” (8:10) Moses
was strong in the Lord even at his advanced age,
undoubtedly because he rejoiced in what God had
promised. The writer to the Hebrews applauds
Moses’ faith in the promises of God: “By faith
Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called
the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, 25 choosing rather to
be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy
the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He considered the
reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures
of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.”
(Hebrews 11:24-26)
C. Just to show you how well placed is your
confidence, your faith in God’s promises, consider
II. COMPELLED BY THE LORD’S PROMISE.
one other fact about Moses. As God gave him the
A. God kept his promise to Moses, to the
eagle’s view of what had been promised, he looked to
letter, and even more graciously than that. “1 Then
the north and saw a mountain, and over a thousand
Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount
years later, Moses set foot on that mountain, along
Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, (Nebo refers to the
with Elijah, as they met with Jesus on the Mount of
specific mountain peak, Pisgah to the mountain
Transfiguration. So whatever God has promised, we
range) which is opposite Jericho. And the LORD
can be sure that it will be even better than that.
showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, 2 all
This certainly helps to dispel the empty
Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the
promises of the world, like the American expectation
land of Judah as far as the western sea, 3 the Negeb,
of working 40 hours a week until you’re 65 and then
and the Plain, that is, the Valley of Jericho the city of
twenty years of loafing on easy street.
palm trees, as far as Zoar.” (This must have been a
So Paul writes of his own abiding interest in
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laying hold of what God has promised in Philippians
3:12-14: “Not that I have already obtained this or
am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own,
because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13
Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my
own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind
and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press
on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of
God in Christ Jesus.”
Finishing well will only happen when we are
fully committed to the Lord’s purpose. And that will
only happen when we are compelled by the Lord’s
promise.
And this will show itself in a
III. CONCERN FOR THE LORD’S PEOPLE.
3
ready and capably took the reigns right away.
C. Finishing well means that even though
your time may be finished, the work of building up
God’s people is still going on. It did not begin with
you or me, and it will not end with us, either. It’s not
a sprint, not even a marathon. It is a relay race,
running your leg, and handing off the baton to others.
So finishing well requires a concern for people,
building them up in the Lord and preparing them to
go forward, even to advance greatly without you.
It’s about the people of God.
D. The Apostle Paul wrote this to the church
in Thessalonica early in his ministry: “For what is
our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord
Jesus at his coming? Is it not you?” (I Thes. 2:19)
Finishing well is building up God’s people
Later, Paul expressed the same sentiment to
the church in Philippi: “Therefore, my brothers,
whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand
firm thus in the Lord, my beloved.” (4:1)
And near the end, Paul could say that his time
had come and that he had finished well: “For I am
already being poured out as a drink offering, and the
time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the
good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the
faith.” (2 Timothy 4:6-7) And so what? “Shows
over? Call it quits? The work dies with me?” No,
Paul had already called Timothy to carry on without
him: “I charge you in the presence of God and of
Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead,
and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the
word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove,
rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and
teaching.” He was handing off the baton! He placed
it in capable hands he had already trained to carry it
well and to hand it off to others.
A. It’s true that we cannot be a man-pleaser.
But at the same time we can deeply desire to be a
man-saver. Alan Harmon notes that this account of
Moses’ death “has mysterious elements in it….” For
one thing, as we noted, Moses was very old, but did
not die of old age. No, his time had simply come. He
had finished the purpose for which God called him.
Finishing well understands this. It’s not really about
us. Every one of us is expendable. There will come a
time for our departure, and then God will continue
his work through others.
B. This is demonstrated in the other element
of mystery surrounding Moses death. The Lord
buried him secretly, in an unmarked grave: “5 So
Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land
of Moab, according to the word of the LORD, 6 and
he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab
opposite Beth-peor; but no one knows the place of his
burial to this day.” Again, this was not about Moses.
God left no trace of him, not even a marker that could
be a distracting monument to his name. He was not
CONCLUSION
what mattered, but the flock, the precious people of
God.
Will you finish well? It is all by the grace of
And it worked. The people were able to move
God. But his call to us, to finish with strength, is that
on without him. “8 And the people of Israel wept for
we must be:
Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days. Then the
Committed to the Lord’s Purpose
days of weeping and mourning for Moses were
Compelled by the Lord’s Promise, and
ended.” Notice they did not collapse and say, “Now
Concerned for the Lord’s People.
what can we do? Moses is no longer here to lead us?”
They were not paralyzed with fear or at a loss for
<Deuteronomy 34:5-8>
direction. Moses had faithfully taught them and
prepared them to do what he himself could not. He

had trained his own replacement, and Joshua was
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