Moses raged against the rock, and with two swings of his staff, he lost the promised land. Of all the tragedies the Bible records, this one is among the most heartbreaking. Instead of possessing all that God had promised, the land, the milk, the honey, the rest, Moses would only view it from afar. Only his bones would possess the land.
How do we understand Moses’ fall? How can we understand his sin? The people of Israel had already come to rely on Moses rather than on God. By striking the rock, Moses put himself forward as their savior, saying in effect, “I am your provider. I am your deliverer.” God calls this particular sin unbelief: “You did not believe in me to uphold me as holy” (Num 20:12). For a moment, if only for the fraction of a second it took to swing the staff, Moses stopped believing in God and started believing in himself. He did not believe God. Here we see the connection between Moses’ sin and his punishment. To possess the promise of Abraham, one must believe (Gen 15:6).
Perhaps my sense of tragedy in seeing Moses’ fall stems from my own tendency to elevate leaders. I see myself in this story. It would have been so easy to put my trust in Moses rather than God. But Moses was just a servant: “Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God’s house as a son.” (Heb 3:5-6). We sin in our elevation of leadership when forget that Moses fades and that Christ endures. In the end, Moses, in all his faithfulness was still just a servant. His sin came when he forgot this and our sin comes when we forget that our leaders, however dynamic, however brilliant, however persuasive, are still just servants too. Even the promised land Moses was leading them to was not the fullness of their inheritance. There was a better Moses to come, and there was a better rest to come. “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). In Christ we possess better promises, we bask in the light of a better covenant, we stand on the boarder of a better rest. Our sin is to look at whatever Moses stands in front of us instead of to the rock. As Paul makes clear, there is much more at work in this story than thirsty Israelites: “For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them and the rock was Christ” (1 Cor 10:4). Might we drink from him and possess his fullness.