Such was Moses on Pisgah or on Tabor. Had we but hearts to enjoy it, all this would be to us welcome and blessed. This mount tells us that God exceeds His promise, and gives us something in the stead of what we have forfeited, that is far better. It is His prerogative thus to deal with us. He is known as the One who can make us happier than we could ever have made ourselves. This is His prerogative. This is His right as God. And faith, in the understanding of this, bows and says, “Thou shalt choose our inheritance for us.”
But it is not easy to admit this. We are slow to learn that the Lord can make us happier than we can make ourselves. Moses, we may say, contended with this. He longed for the land. He desired to be happy in his own way. But that was not to be. He had to pass through discipline, and to get a refusal, again and again, from the Lord. Till at length he finds himself entered into such a scene, as that he could not, I may say, would not leave it. Nature must dissolve rather. He finds himself “with the Lord;” and the inheritance he had desired is worthy only to be his footstool.
I believe all this is indeed a lesson for our souls. The Lord may disappoint our expectations, and cross our plans. To the end He may refuse us our way. But he will prove that He is able to do better for us than we could ever have done for ourselves; and our plan of happiness will be left far behind-no more to be compared with His, than a footstool is to be compared with a throne. And our hearts shall be brought to own this, and to say of the place to which His hand leads us, as Peter did, “it is good for us to be here;” or, like Moses on Pisgah, find ourselves unable to come down to earth again.