{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fskycrest-community-church.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Fmoses-ep13-9626-_QVgC3OZ","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"Moses - EP13 - 9.6.26","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/419fcac3-b17d-4c49-92ef-06c18811ab6c/8d6ce35b-5b8d-45ea-83f6-cda06ce43009/cropped_1788779792454.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"","height":200,"description":"Moses Died on a Mountain. Here's Why That's Good News\n\nPastor Chris closes the Moses series by asking what made Moses' faith active, not just believed.\n\nSeries: Moses \nSpeaker: Pastor Chris \nPassages: Deuteronomy 34:1-10, Hebrews 11:24-28 \n\nHe climbed a mountain at 120 years old\n\nNo trail. A 4,500-foot climb. And he was 120 years old. That's how Moses' story ends in Deuteronomy 34 — not in a hospital bed, but on top of Mount Pisgah, looking out over a land God had promised his people generations earlier. God showed him all of it: Gilead, Dan, Ephraim, Judah, all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Then God told him he'd never set foot in it. Moses died right there, and God himself buried him in a grave no one has ever found.\n\nIt's a strange way to end a story. But Pastor Chris pointed out something easy to miss: losing the Promised Land \"did not alter his relationship with God. They were just as close as they were before.\" Moses' mistake earlier in the story cost him the ending he wanted. It never cost him the friendship.\n\nWhat made his faith different\n\nSo what was it about Moses that made his closeness with God worth wanting for ourselves? Pastor Chris turned to Hebrews 11, sometimes called the \"Faith Hall of Fame,\" where a few short verses eulogize Moses' life. The answer wasn't that Moses had some special spiritual talent. It's that his faith was active — it actually changed what he did.\n\nMoses grew up with everything: raised in Pharaoh's household, educated, decorated, on track for power. Hebrews 11:24 says that when he had \"become great,\" he refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He had every reason to keep quiet and enjoy the life he'd been handed. Instead, his faith decided who he was going to be.\n\nWhat he valued, and what he stuck with\n\nThat same faith shaped what Moses valued. He chose to be \"mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin,\" trading comfort for something he believed mattered more. And it shaped his resolve — his willingness to keep going even when obeying God made no sense to anyone watching. When God told him to paint lamb's blood on his own doorpost the night of the Passover, it must have looked bizarre to Egyptians and Israelites alike. Moses did it anyway. Pastor Chris called that \"the resolve of faith, to choose to be obedient when it doesn't make sense.\"\n\nThe question underneath the story\n\nMoses' life raises a simple, uncomfortable question: is your faith something you hold, or something that actually moves you? It's one thing to say you trust God. It's another for that trust to shape what you do with your Tuesday, what you value, what you're willing to walk away from.\n\nYou don't need Moses' life story to ask yourself that question this week. If you want to hear the message in full, or want to talk it through with other people wrestling with the same thing, we'd love to have you in a group. Join us this Sunday, or reach out — we're glad to point you toward a next step."}