The death of Moses was a devastating blow in the historical march of the people of Israel to the Promised land. He had played such an almost irreplaceable role of leading God’s people from a land of bondage, slavery and hopelessness through the dessert, disappointments, rebellion and many trials.
“After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses assistant, saying: Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, the children of Israel.”
Joshua 1:1-2
To fully understand the gravity of the calamity that the death of Moses represented to the children of Israel, we must understand that he was all they had or knew in their walk with God since they left the land of Egypt. So in their minds they had reached the end of their ropes. They could not imagine how they could continue without the man who had been their singular middleman between them and God, their hopelessness and hope, between where they were coming from and where they were headed.
So it was natural that they were in a state of shock, extreme despair and utter confusion. It was in that dark, drab and gloomy circumstance that God spoke to Joshua, who had served as helper and assistant to Moses. “Moses, my servant is dead,” was God’s way of bringing home to them the finality of Moses departure. It was time to put paid to their dreamy, eerie rationalization of the absence of Moses. He had to jolt them awake from their state of despondency and the resulting immobility. It was a ‘stop-press’ moment – Moses is dead! Gone! Get used to it.
There are several spiritual applications in this drama. Many of us are still cradling, pampering and romancing ideas, dreams or projects whose time and purpose had passed. We still hold these dead babies in our hearts and hug their carcasses. God has moved on but we are tied down to this stage that God wants to graduate us from. It could be in business, or in relationships; we just don’t know when to move on. We squander precious time and resources on battles that have been lost though we don’t seem to know it. We are still in the trenches fighting causes whose time has passed.
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