In verses 19-33 we saw the practical steps of putting off every subtle manifestation of unbelief. And we saw that even believers can have unbelief in certain areas of their lives.

Well, in this passage we will look at how important it is to learn from God's disciplines when we engage in such actions of unbelief. This passage shows that unbelief and disobedience have real consequences. It is so common for Christians to treat grace as if it means we have a free pass to sin without any consequences. But nothing could be further from the truth. God's grace was intended to enable us to be follow God faithfully. That's the goal of grace; that's its teleology. And refusal to respond appropriately to God's disciplines always has consequences. The apostle Paul said this in Galatians 6:

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. [Get that phrase - "whatever a man sows." Every action you take will end up in some kind of a harvest - unless of course, God intervenes. Going on, it says,] 8 For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. 9 And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.

This principle is universal - choices always have consequences. And the context of that passage in Galatians 6 (just like the context of this passage in Deuteronomy) makes clear that persistent sin or unbelief will eventually bring a harvest of judgment.

Don't test God's patience or ignore His anger (v. 34)

And the first lesson that Moses gives to us is that even though God is incredibly patient, we should not test His patience or ignore the fact that He can get angry. Verse 34 says, "And the LORD heard the sound of your words, and was angry, and took an oath, saying..." We will look at God's oath in the next point, but here I will focus on the fact that God can get angry with us. I believe that this truth is a huge motivator to live a holy life. But many Christians simply don't believe that God takes their sins seriously enough to ever get angry over those sins.

Some people are willing to affirm that God gets angry with the reprobate, but they cannot fathom how God can ever get angry with His own people. But we will see in a moment that God got angry at Moses in verse 37. In fact, preachers who deny God's anger are willfully ignorant of a vast number of Scriptures. The number of Scriptures is so vast that it has got to be willful ignorance. Leon Morris claims that there are twenty different Hebrew words describing the anger of God, and that those words are used more than 580 times.¹ The various words certainly speak of various levels of anger, and some of the verses affirm that God is very patient and is slow to anger, but it is an undeniable fact that God gets angry. Indeed, in a sermon on Psalm 7:11, R.C. Sproul Sr. said, "a perfectly holy judge of all the world, who is incapable of being angry about evil, could not possibly be good." And I say, "Amen!" It is God's very goodness that leads Him to be angry with people who reject His goodness and opt instead for sin.

Nor is His anger incompatible with love. Another theologian said, "God's love itself implies his wrath. Without his wrath God is simply not loving in the sense that the Bible portrays his love."²

And several Reformed theologians have pointed out that you do not even understand the Gospel if you do not understand God's wrath to be at the heart of it. The only way any of us could be saved was if God's wrath was poured out on His Son as His Son bore our sins as a substitute. That's how seriously God took our sin. Everyone knows John 3:16, but twenty verses later John 3:36 says, "He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." Praise God that our salvation delivered us from the wrath of God - one of the strongest words in the Bible to denote God's anger. Believers won't ever have to face God's wrath. And that is why God urges all who are outside of Christ to experience safety from His wrath by being united to His Son. Psalm 2:12 says, "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him."

But I do want to nuance the nature of God's anger. Martin Luther pointed out that whereas God's love existed from all eternity past as something that was intrinsic to His being even apart from creation, that's not true of His wrath. There could be no wrath where there was no sin. God's wrath is simply the outworking of His character in relation to sin.³ Thus the Bible says that God is love, but it does not say that God is anger. And this is what makes God's anger so good and the outcomes of God's anger so righteous. God's anger is never an irrational outburst. God's wrath is always worthy of God. It is always a carefully considered and justly intense reaction to anything that is unworthy of and in violation of the character of the Trinity. It shows that God cares. OK, enough by way of background to this point.

But let's consider some reasons why God had Moses remind this righteous generation about His anger against the previous generation. Why does this righteous generation need reminding? I believe it was to give this second generation one extra motivation to follow the Lord with their whole heart. Let me give you six ways in which God's anger can motivate each of us to pursue holiness and seek to please God with our lives. And in your outlines I have put a blank where you can fill in one word for each of these six points.

1. First, God's anger reveals the seriousness of sin. The fake God of liberals never gets angry and coddles them and approves of whatever makes them feel good. Thus, they don't take abortion seriously. They don't take Gay marriage seriously. They don't take the theft of socialism seriously. They really don't take any sin seriously. But if you know that embracing what God hates makes God angry, it is a motivation to cast off that sin.
2. Second, God's anger is rooted in His love for holiness. You cannot even understand His anger without understanding what He loves and what He is passionate about. And if we want to please God and love Him, we will want to embrace the things that He loves and put off the things that He hates. He loves holiness and calls us to love holiness.
3. Third, God's anger serves as a warning and a call to repentance. Training us in true repentance is one of the goals of His loving discipline. Since God's anger always leads Him to discipline those whom He loves and to bring providential judgments upon those whom He hates, it motivates us to repentance.
4. Fourth, since God gets angry at oppression, injustice, abuse, and the mistreatment of the vulnerable, it gives encouragement to those who have gone through such abuse to cry out to God to do something about that injustice. God's anger motivates Him to do something - especially when those who are abused cry out to Him in faith. Victims of abuse can take great comfort in God's anger because it means that God does not ignore their plight. He is angry that they have had to face abuse. He hates the way abusers victimize others, and it motivates God to do something on behalf of those who cry out to Him.
5. Fifth, God's anger highlights the need for unbelievers to run to Jesus for salvation.
6. And sixth, God's anger motives the righteous to keep on the path of godliness.

The unbelief of the previous generation in verse 34 was the culmination of a long series of times that they refused to trust and obey. Numbers 14:22-23 says that this was the tenth time that they had deliberately and willfully put God's patience to the test. God had been very patient with them, but His patience finally ran out.

Don't commit the sin unto death (vv. 34c-35 with Numb 14:35-37; 15:30-31; 1 John 5:16; Acts 5:1-10; 1 Cor. 5:5; 11:30)

The next admonition that I see hinted at in the text is, "Don't commit the sin unto death." There is a lot more going on in this verse than that sin. In fact, that sin is only implied here. And if I was to redo the outline, I might have clarified that. But since at least some of those who were judged in verses 34-35 committed this sin, and since this particular sin is so seldom dealt with in the pulpit, I wanted to focus on those in this group who sinned the sin unto death. This might take a bit more explanation, but let me read the text first. Moses says that God:

was angry, and took an oath, saying, “Surely not one of these men of this evil generation shall see that good land of which I swore to give to your fathers.

The oath emphasizes the finality and certainty of what was about to happen. There would be amount of prayer that would remove that judgment. But there is more to it than that. If you look at the details of what happened in Numbers 14, you find that God brought instant death via an ugly plague to the ten spies who brought a bad report (that's Numbers 14:37). They were the ones who were the most wilful and guilty. But He also allowed a bunch of others to suffer in the presumptuous fight of verses 41-46, and the rest died in the wilderness. There is debate on whether that whole generation committed the sin unto death, or whether it was only the ten spies, or whether it involved a few others who died soon after. And I won't settle that debate. But you might wonder, what is the sin unto death that at least some were guilty of? 1 John 5:16 says,

If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin which does not lead to death, he will ask, and He will give him life for those who commit sin not leading to death. There is sin leading to death. I do not say that he should pray about that. 17 All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin not leading to death.

Let me read what I think is the best explanation of 1 John 5:16. This author says,

The best interpretation may be found by comparing this verse to what happened to Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1–10 (see also 1 Corinthians 11:30). The “sin unto death” is willful, continuous, unrepentant sin. God has called His children to holiness (1 Peter 1:16), and God corrects them when they sin. We are not “punished” for our sin in the sense of losing salvation or being eternally separated from God, yet we are disciplined. “The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son” (Hebrews 12:6).

First John 5:16 says there comes a point when God can no longer allow a believer to continue in unrepentant sin. When that point is reached, God may decide to take the life of the stubbornly sinful believer. The “death” is physical death. God at times purifies His church by removing those who deliberately disobey Him. The apostle John makes a distinction between the “sin that leads to death” and the “sin that does not lead to death.” Not all sin in the church is dealt with the same way because not all sin rises to the level of the “sin that leads to death.”

In Acts 5:1–10 and 1 Corinthians 11:28–32, God dealt with intentional, calculated sin in the church by taking the physical life of the sinner. This is perhaps also what Paul meant by “the destruction of the flesh” in 1 Corinthians 5:5.

John says that we should pray for Christians who are sinning, and that God will hear our prayers. However, there may come a time when God decides to cut short a believer’s life due to unrepentant sin. Prayers for such an unheeding person will not be effective.⁴

Like I say, the ten spies were certainly in that position because they were taken out right away. Some of the most vocal and ambitious ones that went to battle the next day were also taken out. They may have been involved in the sin unto death. The remainder were no doubt followers, but God's patience had worn thin with them as well. They suffered consequences, but probably not the sin unto death. But the oath shows that it was similar to that sin in that no amount of prayer would remove that judgment.

But the bottom line is that true believers who are headed to heaven can get to a place where God is done with them on earth, and no amount of repentance or prayers will change His mind.

Wholeheartedly follow the Lord with a multi-generational vision (v. 36)

Verse 36 goes on to say,

except Caleb the son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him and his children I am giving the land on which he walked, because he wholly followed the LORD.’

This is a motivation to wholeheartedly follow the Lord. The added motivation is that when we do so, we can see our children following in our footsteps and they themselves being blessed. It's true that Joshua and Caleb also had to wait 40 years (or technically 38 more years after this event. But even though Joshua and Caleb also had to wait (because of the sin of the nation), God did not abandon them. God embraced them and heard their prayers. They were allowed to go into the land and to engage in amazing feats of conquest. And God used them in amazing ways during the forty years as well. God was with them all through that time. In chapter 2:7 God tells the believing generation, "These forty years the LORD your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing." So yes, we can suffer from the discipline a nation receives, but the purpose of those difficulties is different for us; it is a blessing for us - it is not technically being disciplined.

Here's the point - just as God's love for righteousness makes Him angry at those who reject righteous living, God's love for righteousness makes Him richly bless those who embrace the things that He embraces. It's a huge motivation to holiness.

Don't think that anyone is exempt from discipline (v. 37)

But then Moses quickly adds that we should not think that anyone is exempt from God's discipline. Verse 37 says,

The LORD was also angry with me for your sakes, saying, “Even you shall not go in there.

Wow! If God was angry with Moses, what hope do any of us have? But I think the point is that to whom much is given, much will be required. Moses knew better. Yes, God forgave him, and yes God richly blessed Moses in other ways, but there are still consequences to sin. A pastor who commits adultery will be forgiven by the Lord when he repents, but he certainly can't continue in the pastorate. And his wife has the option of divorcing him. Repentance is not enough. To allow that pastor to continue in the pastorate (as so many have in our day and age) would totally miscommunicate to the rest of the flock what God's attitude to sin is. Notice that Moses says, "The LORD was angry with me for your sakes..." Leaders are disciplined for sin because failure to do so could have a negative impact on the flock as a whole. God demands consequences to the rebellion of a leader for the sake of the flock.

And there is often a huge fallout in a fallen leader's life in other ways. There are always consequences to sin. So the admonition is, "Don't think that anyone is exempt from discipline." God loves us enough to discipline us, and He is not an absent parent. He always follows through. You may have thought that you have escaped discipline for your deliberate sins; you might think that life is going on hunky dory. Ah, don't be so sure. God is so creative in the way in which He disciplines us. He doesn't have to give you disease or financial loss or a house on fire. If you look at Leviticus 26 and similar passages you will see all kinds of creative ways that God can discipline His people. He mentions things like gardens not producing well, robbers taking their goods, finances growing thin, disease in our bodies, disease in crops, unexplained anxiety and fear. Deuteronomy 28 mentions mildew (that’s an interesting discipline - mildew!. and He mentions), fever, itchiness, boils, confusion, and all kinds of creative disciplines. If you have eyes to see, you will notice God's loving discipline in your lives as well.

Miriam was temporarily struck with leprosy when she undermined Moses' authority. And other people's rebellion against authority led to all kinds of creative disciplines in the books of Exodus and Numbers. God often reversed the discipline when there was repentance - and that's the point. The goal of discipline is to bring about repentance. But when we *persist in rebellion and do not repent, discipline only increases seven fold and even seventy fold.

And let me give one illustration of how this works in a leader whom God loved. God got angry at David in 2 Samuel 24:1 for numbering Israel. Did you realize that a nation doing a census is a sin? It is. Anyway, God disciplined David for doing a census. And you might look at that account and wonder, "Now, wait a minute! How was David being disciplined? God was killing off other people!" But David saw it as God's discipline against him. And it is interesting that even though David repented before the discipline came and asked God to forgive him, God still brought discipline. Too many parents don't give consequences to their children because the child has (quote-unquote) "repented." But true repentance welcomes discipline because it is seen as God's discipleship into holiness. Interestingly, God gave David a choice of three things. I want to read that because David's discipline fell on the nation.

So Gad came to David and told him; and he said to him, “Shall seven years of famine come to you in your land? Or shall you flee three months before your enemies, while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ plague in your land? Now consider and see what answer I should take back to Him who sent me.”

2Sam. 24:14   And David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Please let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for His mercies are great; but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”

2Sam. 24:15   So the LORD sent a plague upon Israel from the morning till the appointed time. From Dan to Beersheba seventy thousand men of the people died.

[And you might think - that's just not fair! Well, they were covenantally connected to David's leadership and they had not resisted David's sin. It would have been perfectly lawful for citizens of that day to resist being part of that census. And there are hints that some did - to the point that Joab gave up. And I take one application of the 70,000 suffering because of David's sin as a warning to members of any covenant community that passivity can also receive God’s discipline. Members of apostate churches should flee from that church. The members of apostate churches suffer because of the leadership's sins. There are many admonitions in Scripture to flee from churches that are in rebellion. Why? Because the members are covenantally connected. Even the sins of leaders can negatively impact a family, a church, or a nation. Anyway, he goes on to say:]

16 And when the angel stretched out His hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD relented from the destruction, and said to the angel who was destroying the people, “It is enough; now restrain your hand.” And the angel of the LORD was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

And the genuineness of David's repentance can be seen in the next verse, which says,

2Sam. 24:17   Then David spoke to the LORD when he saw the angel who was striking the people, and said, “Surely I have sinned, and I have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let Your hand, I pray, be against me and against my father’s house.”

Certainly the people should have resisted what David was doing. That's why entire nations can suffer under a leaders' ungodly decisions. To just blindly support your favorite politician's positions out of loyalty to him means that you share in that leader's guilt. Those of you who are unthinking MAGA followers with blind loyalty to Trump need to take that seriously. God isn't interested in the conservative movement. He for sure isn't interested in the Liberal movement. God is interested in His law being taken seriously. We can never be neutral on civics. We need to agree with what is good in our political leaders' decisions (and there has been some recent good things that our leaders have done that we can agree with). But even with our favorite candidates, we need to disagree with what is disagreeable with God's law - even if he is the best candidate. This is what I love about Thomas Massie. He stands on principle even if it makes him a target. And it is my opinion that the 70,000 who died were just blindly loyal and overlooked sin or even justified David's sin. OK, enough on that rabbit trail.

The main point I am making is to not assume that any believer is exempt from God's loving disciplines. Too many people just go to the doctor without ever considering whether they need to first of all repent of something. If it is a discipline, all the medicine in the world is not going to help you - or the Lord may bring further complications. On the other hand, how many times do things quickly clear up when a believer repents of his sins and starts following the Lord with His whole heart. Again, the goal of God's disciplines is to bring us to wholeheartedly follow Him.

Don't envy the blessings of others; encourage them (v. 38)

Verse 38 of our passage says that when you go through discipline, don't envy the blessings of others who aren't suffering like you are suffering. That does no good. Instead, encourage them, and rejoice with them. That is a sign of humility that the Lord honors. After pronouncing His discipline on Moses, God told him,

Joshua the son of Nun, who stands before you, he shall go in there. Encourage him, for he shall cause Israel to inherit it.

Moses was bummed out, but God told Moses to encourage Joshua and to not envy him. Moses knew that God does all things well, and he humbly submitted to God's disciplines because his goal was not to be happy, but to be holy. His goal was not be self-pleasing, but to please God. That's the kind of repentance that God honors.

Your generation doesn't have to remain hamstrung by the previous generation (v. 39)

But verse 39 is super, super , super encouraging to me - especially since the last generation in America has given up so much to the devil. It says,

Moreover your little ones and your children, who you say will be victims, who today have no knowledge of good and evil, they shall go in there; to them I will give it, and they shall possess it.

He's talking about the children of these compromisers! Praise God! Their unbelief didn't automatically rule out blessings on their children. And keep in mind that it is this younger generation that Moses is now speaking to. Yes, they were covenantally connected with the nation, and suffered to some degree as a result, but the Scripture is clear that they disagreed with their parents, renounced the sins of their parents, and cut off the curse that God pronounced on Israel. They learned not to repeat the mistakes and sins of their parents, and God richly blessed them. It was a generation that followed God with their whole heart, and they saw incredible blessings poured out in their lives - not just in Canaan, but numerous blessings in the wilderness. And why would God not bless them when they were embracing and loving what God embraced and loved? Of course, as I mentioned in the last sermon, they had to specifically renounce the sins and curses of their parents and personally embrace God's covenant plans for them. We will get to that in a later chapter. The point is that the reversal of curses doesn't automatically happen just because you are living right. And in my Hour of Prayer booklet I have written some prayers that you can read from the heart to the Lord so as to find similar blessings for you and for your children.⁵ It includes prayer of repentance for the sins of the nation and the broader church and a renunciation of those sins. Your generation doesn't have to remain hamstrung by my generation's sins. I love this verse! It is so encouraging! Corporate curses can be broken off - even national curses.

Submit to God's discipline (v. 40)

But as to the previous generation, God's admonition to them was to submit to His discipline. Well, they refused to. They didn't learn. They failed to submit, as the book of Numbers records so vividly. But they could have. This verse simply summarizes what Numbers records in great detail. Verse 40 says,

But as for you, turn and take your journey into the wilderness by the Way of the Red Sea.’

Next week we will see that they refused to submit. They tried to take the conquest in their own strength, despite warnings from Moses that they could not do it without God's presence and power. But at least we can learn from this chapter and submit to God's discipline, thank Him for His discipline, thank Him for the love that His discipline displays for us, and grow as a result. If we will be a people that learns from God's disciplines, God will usher us into more and more blessings. Why? Because He can trust us with those blessings. Why would He give us blessings that we would misuse?

Let me end by reiterating three lessons we can learn from this short passage.

1. First, we need to take the consequences of sin seriously, and use the knowledge of those consequences as a motivation to holiness. Discipline can lead to missed opportunities and a longer journey before we enter into God's blessings. God's got all the time in the world to advance His kingdom; we don't. So the sooner we learn, the sooner we can be used by God for the advancement of His kingdom.
2. Second, God honors those who trust Him even when others do not. He honored and blessed Moses, Joshua, Caleb, and the younger generation with countless blessings during the next forty years. He honored and blessed women like Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. There were people even in the previous generation who found God's blessings. Trust is absolutely essential to receiving His promises. And when we do trust Him, God can bless us even when others are bypassed. So don't get depressed over the fact that our nation is in a bad state. God can still bless us even when the previous generation of unbelief is all around us.
3. Third, God's plans extend beyond one generation. Though the innocent might suffer to some degree from the sins of others, such suffering of the righteous is not a personal discipline, but a preparation of our lives to face the future successfully. It can be a training ground. So the exact same diseases, wanderings, and other troubles that were a discipline for one group can be a blessing in disguise to those who submit to God's will. Don't assume that everyone who experienced the forty years was being disciplined. They were not. The second generation received the exact same difficulties, but they received them with grace, and thus those same things became the means to help them become strong disciplined soldiers of the cross who depended upon God's Spirit to use them in their weakness. It prepared them. In any case, the main point is that God's mercies preserve a future and a hope for the next generation - if they will enter into it.

May we be like this second generation. Amen.