What Can We Learn From Moses? How God Uses Ordinary People for Extraordinary Purposes

There is something quietly stunning about these final verses of Deuteronomy. Moses is gone — standing on a mountaintop, looking out over a land he will not enter — and the writer pauses to say something that echoes across all of scripture: there has not been another like him. Not because Moses was flawless. Not because he never stumbled. But because the LORD knew him face to face.

That phrase is worth sitting with over your morning coffee. Face to face. Not at arm’s length. Not through a long chain of intermediaries. God drew close to this man — a stutterer, a fugitive, a shepherd who once tried to talk his way out of his own calling — and knew him fully. That kind of intimacy is the real miracle of Moses’ life, more than any plague or parted sea.

One of the deepest lessons from Moses is that God does not wait for you to have it all together before He calls you close. Moses met God at a burning bush while he was hiding in the wilderness (as Exodus 3 reminds us). He was not in a season of triumph. He was in a season of exile. And yet — there was the fire. There was the voice. There was the call.

The signs and wonders described in these verses were not monuments to Moses’ ability. They were evidence of God’s mighty hand moving through a willing, if reluctant, servant. That matters for you today. Whatever you are carrying into this morning — inadequacy, exhaustion, a sense that you are too ordinary for anything significant — those are the exact raw materials God has always worked with.

It is also worth noticing what the text does not say. It does not say Moses was remembered for his comfort or his ease. The “great terror” and the “mighty hand” speak of a life lived at the edge of the impossible, trusting a God who kept showing up. There were long stretches of desert. There were moments of deep failure, as Numbers 20 quietly records. God’s faithfulness to Moses was not a smooth road — it was a real companionship through a hard one.

You may be on a hard road right now. Maybe the calling on your life feels too large, or maybe it feels invisible — like you are waiting and wondering if God sees you at all. The closing words of Moses’ story are not a trophy case. They are a testimony: one person, known by God, used by God, sustained by God, all the way to the end.

You are not Moses. Neither am I. But the God who knew him face to face is the same God who sees you this morning. That is not a small thing. That is everything.