Primary Text (Deuteronomy 4:1,2,9) - Secondary Text (Deuteronomy 34:1-6)
Single Quotation (Numbers 20:10,11)

"Moses said, And now, O Israel, give heed to the statutes and the ordinances which I teach you, and do them; that you may live and go in and take possession of the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, gives you. You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God. ... take heed, lest you forget these things, lest they depart from your heart"

But Moses forgot what he himself said, said so well, and it is a warning to every preacher in every church, if he really means what he himself says, and should never himself forget, or let depart from his heart.

Moses forgot, he let is depart from his heart, and it cost him the final fulfillment of his life, it deprived him of everything he had worked for.

Every one remembers Moses on the mountain top - Sinai that is, with the Ten Commandments in his arm. We may actually be remembering Charlton Heston, but still we all remember. There is another mountain, later on, and less well-remembered by all of us. Not Sinai, but Nebo, a sad, sorrowful peak, not in the midst of the Wilderness, but on the very edge of the Promised Land.

At the close of Deuteronomy, the Israelites, led faithfully by their Moses, have come at last to the edge of the plains of Moab - the actual border of the Promised Land. The closing verses say: "And Moses himself went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, which is opposite Jericho - and the Lord showed him all the land, as far as the western Sea - And the Lord said to him, This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob: I will give it to your descendants. I have let you see it with your eyes, but you yourself shall not go over there. So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, opposite the promised land, according to the word of the Lord, and he was buried in the valley below, but no man knows the place of his burial to this day."

Why, why did the Lord decree, and decide, "I will let you see the Promised Land, but you shall not enter it?"

Why? Well, Moses was punished by God because he had disobeyed. He himself had not remembered what he himself, Moses, had said to the people in the name of the Lord. And he was punished for that one great sin.

Moses had so long ago, in the part used as today's first lesson, very directly cautioned the people never to forget the direct command of the Lord, or to let it depart from their hearts. And yet Moses himself had. And in just the way you would imagine a preacher would. He sinned in exactly the way you would expect a religious leader to sin. It was not that he did not keep the word which the Lord had commanded - it was that first part, the earlier bit, the probably somewhat unnoticed first command: "And now, O Israel, give heed to the statutes of the Lord and do them that you may live and go into the land, which the Lord gives you. ...You shall not add to the commandment of the Lord, nor take away from it."

There is the great sin of the clergy and the Church - not the one that makes the lurid headlines, of course, but the one that cancels out the Promise and deprives us of more than a mere glimpse of the final glory, while only others go forward to claim it and enjoy its blessings. The clergy, the Church, the religious leaders, elected. appointed, and self-appointed versions, die alone and unremembered in an unmarked grave on the edge of glory, having only seen it from afar when they do this: Not, not when they do not obey the commandments, but when they add to the commandments and the statutes and the ordinances. When we make up for what we must stupidly believe is the inadequacy of God and his commands. When the People of Israel needed water in the Wilderness, God told Moses to speak to a rock, and water would gush out. Not good enough for Moses, not showy enough, not involved or elaborate enough, I guess. From the Book of Numbers (20:11): "Moses, with Aaron, gathered before the rock and he said to the people: Hear now! Shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock? And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his rod twice, and the water came forth abundantly." All were amazed. Impressed, I think, by Moses and his power. Maybe not as impressed with God as they might have been, should have been. Moses grabbed the attention, Moses got the credit - from the people, from himself, but not from God. God had said, speak to the rock. Not, strike it, strike it twice, make a big deal out of it, simply speak to the rock. And so now, God says to Moses: "Because you did not believe in me, to sanctify me before the people, you shall not be the one to bring this people into the land which I have given them."

We would all be well advised, lowly simple preachers, and the movers and shakers of the vast religious establishments across the world, and all the assorted attention-getters in-between - we would all do well to remember Moses and Mt. Nebo. Do not add to what the Lord asks of people or complicate it. God intends it to be simple. Love him with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself. To add anything more to that, to make that more rigorous or onerous or complicated or involved - to add in any way to that, means risking, and deserving, the loss of the Promise Land. We then glimpse the glory, but never see at, we die alone, unknown, on the edge, "according to the word of the Lord."

The next time any of us is tempted to be too strict, too unbending, too certain of the moral code, too legalistic, too zealous, too rigorous, too holy, the next time we are tempted to scold or hector or bully people for not obeying what we feel must surely be the full, fuller, and fullest command of God, we would do well to remember Mt. Nebo. Do not turn away, as Moses said, and never let this depart from your heart: "You must not add to the commandment of the Lord" Moses did and Moses died, outside. We do well to be wise and warned, and more gentle with ourselves and those around us. It is not devout to seek to be better than we are expected to be - it is disastrous and deadly. And you will never enter the Promised Land.