Lesson 4
Gracious Discipline – 1:34-2:1
We are in a section of Deuteronomy that’s important because it lays the
foundation for the entire Law. We will
be emphasizing this until we finish what we call the historical prologue or the
first four chapters of this book, that these chapters are to build a grace
platform on which the Law would be built.
The Law is grounded in grace.
This is too frequently overlooked by dispensationalists, but salvation
was accomplished by grace, enablement was accomplished by grace, everything
was accomplished by grace that was truly accomplished under the Law. So grace is an all-encompassing principle and
the historical prologue, these four chapters, lay down God’s grace.
We divided this prologue into several sections. The first section runs from 1:6-2:1. The argument behind this historical account
is an argument demonstrating that God is a God of grace and that He goes one
step further than He is required to do by Law.
God, at a point in time we call
Therefore, when the nation went in, here at Sinai they moved northward
and eventually they arrived at the boundary of the Promised Land. This is the place called Kadesh-barnea and
this represents the southern most point of the land. At this point a crisis is reached. This would be analogous in your life as a
believer as the point at which God calls us to service for Him. In other words, you may have been saved and
may have grown up in the Lord through study of His Word, prayer, etc. and then
God calls you to do something. God calls
you in a special area of service and this point would be analogous to this
Kadesh-barnea point because at that point the nation
Remember the geographical location of this. Even though this is a small
nation,
Therefore God placed His nation at the crossroads of the world, a
strategic point of witness. At this
point when they went up to Kadesh-barnea to get into this location, they went
negative. They refused God’s provision
to move into this land and this is significant.
Tonight we’re going to finish out this particular rejection. It is important because people who deny
eternal security inevitably point to this passage of Scripture and say aha, I
showed you, there Israel was rejected, they died in the wilderness, they never
entered the Promised Land and therefore the Old Testament clearly teaches loss
of salvation so we’re going to deal with that question, the question of eternal
security and we are going to use as the chief passage the passage which is used
for the opposite doctrine.
We begin in verse 34 with the analysis of God’s viewpoint of the
situation. They had a session in verse
32 of unbelief, unbelief, unbelief, unbelief.
Now in verse 34 you have God’s reaction to it. “And the LORD heard the voice of your words,
and was wroth and swore, saying,” and the first word of verse 35 is the word
“surely” except that is not the way it should be literally translated. If you swore in Hebrew in the kind of oath,
this is not slang swearing, this is legal swearing, If you always prefaced what
you said, “if”, and you said something here and then you said “then,” this is
an oath formula. We only have half that
formula here and this is customary. What
it should read is “If,” replacing the word “surely” with “if,” “If there shall
not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land, which I swore
to give unto your fathers,” then I am not God.
In other words, God is swearing by Himself and saying listen, as long as
I am living I am going to make sure that not one person of this generation sees
that land.
So this is an oath and represents a divine transaction which cannot be
changed from this point on. This is why it has sort of a condemning
effect. By the way, you run into this in
the book of Hebrews, this idea that one who will fall in the way, etc. can’t
come back. Of course people that are
always after eternal security love to go to Heb. 6, except Heb. 6 proves too
much to deny the doctrine of eternal security because what it says if you fall away
you can never be saved again, and I’ve never heard an honest proponent of the
doctrine of conditional security yet say that you could be lost forever once
you fall away. They always say you can
be saved again. So Heb. 6 actually
proves too much if you want to use it against eternal security; it leaves you
out on a limb that is very uncomfortable.
That’s not actually the teaching of Heb. 6 nor is it the teaching of
this incident on which Hebrews 6 is based.
“Surely there shall not one of this evil generation see that good land”
represents an inviolable change in the plan of God. From this point on, no matter what happens to
that generation they will never go back into that land and this is something to
notice first of all. It is inviolable,
it is an oath and when God swears an oath this makes it unconditional from this
point on and this means these people are unconditionally excluded from the
land, no matter how much they repent, no matter how much they would believe
after this, they would not go back into the land. Their time of opportunity is
closed by an oath of God. So that’s the
first thing to notice about this. This
is an inviolable standard signed by an oath of God.
Verse 36 gives a very interesting statement, “Save Caleb, the son of
Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him will I give the land that he has trodden
upon, and to his children, because he hath wholly followed the LORD.” I want to camp on this phrase, “wholly
followed the LORD.” What does this mean,
to “wholly follow?” I you look up the
Hebrew word and look around at another spot in the Bible where this phrase
occurs. Perhaps that spot will be
clearer and then you can deduce what the phrase means and then apply it to the
situation.
Turn to 1 Kings 11:4ff and we’ll see where this is used again in the Old
Testament and here it’s very clear what it means to “wholly follow the
Lord.” This deals with Solomon. You had David, you had his son, Solomon, and
then you had this clod by the name of Rehoboam.
Rehoboam was Solomon’s younger son who was one of the stupidest men who
ever sat on the throne of Israel. This
person had his teenage gang along with him and he used them as his counsel of
war. He accepted their counsel and as a
result of these young men they split the nation in half. So here we are introduced to an incident back
in Solomon’s time, just before the civil war.
The nation is in the height of its prosperity and in verse 4 it says,
“For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his
heart after other gods, and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as
was the heart of David, his father.”
That should immediately clue you as to what is not being said here. It is not being said that he was sinlessly
perfect because you know what David did.
David was not a sinlessly perfect individual; David fell down, he went
on negative volition and he rejected God’s Word and he was disciplined. He did many heinous sins so we know this is
not teaching sinless perfection. What is
it teaching then? “His heart was not
perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David, his father.” Let’s eliminate one possibility at this
point. It is not teaching sinless
perfection, so “wholly follow the LORD” has nothing to do with intensity of
commitment.
Let’s go on and see if we can find more hints of what it means. Verse 5,
“For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after
Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. [6] And Solomon did evil in the sight
of the LORD, and went not fully after the LORD, as did David, his father.”
There again, remember David is not sinlessly perfect. Verse 7, “Then did Solomon build an high
place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before
Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. [8] And
likewise did he for all his strange wives, who burned incense and sacrificed
unto their gods.” “Strange wives” means
Gentile women; Solomon had to marry Gentile women in order to make
international treaty with them. If you
made an international treaty, say with Pharaoh, part of the guarantee of the
treaty was that you had to marry Pharaoh’s daughter. So he’d bring these women in and they’d be
his legal wives and then he felt he had to make a house for everyone of these women
and so he made a house and out in the front he’d have all these idols. So for every wife she had her own house, nice
luxurious living, but Solomon at the same time compromised his religion because
he bent and stooped to their particular forms of religion.
Verse 9, “And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart was
turned from the LORD God of Israel, who had appeared unto him twice.” There’s no question that Solomon’s a
believer; no one is going to argue this, and yet it clearly says at this point
wives turned his heart. This is said to
be not following the Lord fully. Verse
10, “And had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after
other gods; but he kept not that which the LORD commanded.”
The key verse is verse 11, “Wherefore, the LORD said unto Solomon, forasmuch
as this id done by thee, and thou hast not kept My covenant and My statutes,
which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend [or tear] the kingdom away from
thee, and will give it to thy servant.”
Here you have one of the characteristics of not following the Lord and
this turning; the believer is removed from the place of service. This is not talking about Solomon’s
salvation; it is talking about Solomon’s political prosperity and production
and God is saying that I am going to take away your service, your kingdom from
you, except Solomon your skin is personally saved, your son is going to have to
bear it. You’ve dropped the ball and
you’re going to have to pay a price but I’m going to delay it and your son is
going to have to pay the price.
The reason God delays is another important principle of chastisement in
the Bible, verse 12, “Notwithstanding, in thy days I will not do it, for David
thy father’s sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of your son.” Why is this true? In 2 Sam. 7 when we dealt with the Davidic
Covenant we said one of the characteristics of the Davidic Covenant was that
God would inviolable, He has already sworn this, He would inviolable establish
the kingdom of David’s son. God cannot
go back on His word, so here’s the problem.
We’ve got 2 Sam. 7 staring us in the face that says the kingdom can’t be
taken away; the kingdom is hardened to the son by declaration of 2 Sam. 7 but
on the other hand we have the declaration of verse 11 that the kingdom is going
to be rend. So how is God going to work
it? God will therefore rend it from the
son of his son, in other words, here’s Solomon, here’s David. The son of David, which is Solomon, is
guaranteed the kingdom by a previous promise, so God can’t take away what He
has inviolably promised.
This is a principle of discipline and it is a principle that carries
throughout the Word of God and this is why no Christian can every lost his
salvation because in Rom. 8:29 it says for those whom He foreknew, those He
predestinated to the image of God, those He called, those He justified and
those He glorified. Those are promises
inviolable in the Word of God and God disciplines but He has to discipline
bounded by His previous promises. God’s
discipline cannot transgress a promise of the Word. Therefore you can think of it as a box; the
box represents all the promises of God to you.
Therefore God can operate within that box but He can’t go outside of the
box. God is locked inside that box by
His own Word. That Word to us is Rom. 8;
the Word to Solomon was 2 Sam. 7 which guaranteed the kingdom to him. However, Solomon would be disciplined because
his son would get it. This is the way
God disciplined; it was a discipline in that day because the father thought a
lot of his son and if his son was to live through hard times it was a
discipline on the father, especially if he knew it.
These are some of the principles we gain from 1 Kings 11 and we discover
in this passage that following wholly after the Lord has nothing to do with the
intensity of the commitment, it has to do with the duration of the
commitment. In other words, we can look
upon the plan of salvation as we have often times in three phases. That’s the
point at which you trust in Christ. This
goes on until the time that you die or the rapture occurs. If you don’t wholly follow the Lord, this is
what it means. It means you go on in the
Christian to some point here; at that point God calls you into some service,
some area of ministry, and you say no; you go negative right there. God says all right, you have not fully
followed Me, meaning that you have not fully followed out phase two of my
program for you; therefore you are going to be miserable.
We can see where this did not happen but it’s the same principle
involved, if you turn to 1 Cor. 9 where Paul used this to support his
ministry. Paul was conscious of the fact
that he could commit this sin. Here is where Paul “wholly followed” the Lord
but he was conscious of the fact that at some time in his lifetime as a believer
he might possibly go on negative volition and at that point he would get caught
in this whirlpool of carnality and he would be judged and he would be removed
from the sphere of service. In this
passage we see why this is horrible discipline.
Beginning at verse 16, “For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing
to glory of; for necessity is laid upon me,” this means it is God’s will, this
means that Paul didn’t say hey God, I volunteer to preach the gospel, I think
You need a nice intelligent man to act as your elder statesman throughout the
eastern end of the Mediterranean so I’ll go touring around Asia Minor for You,
I volunteer. That’s not the way Paul
looked upon his ministry. Paul said
look, I am a believer and God has called me to do this and this means this
creates a problem of sin in his life.
This means that he has a sin which he can commit and no other person can
because God has revealed His will to Paul and if Paul says no Lord, I’m tired,
I can’t be bothered with this fiddling around visiting around from one place to
another, he might say I’ve met this nice woman and I’d like to get married,
etc. Of course it was not God’s will for
Paul to get married because he could not support a wife and tend to family
affairs in his ministry; it was an itinerant ministry and he had to be
subjected to danger, so Paul’s will as far as he was concerned was
celibacy. That is not God’s will for all
men, needless to say, we wouldn’t have another generation.
This demonstrates a particular will of God, so he says in verse 16,
“…necessity is laid upon me,” it means that it is not of my will in one sense,
God has given me an assignment, “yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the
gospel!” So God has revealed to Paul, you
are to preach the gospel, you are to be an apostle to the Gentiles; I’ve got
plans for you Paul, and therefore I have given you an assignment to occupy all
of phase two. That’s the assignment God
has given Paul.
Drop down further and you’ll see the imagery that he brings out
here. Verse 24, “Know ye not that they
who run in a race fun all, but one receives the prize? So run, that you may
obtain.” Here is the athletic metaphor
in Scripture; he’s likening it to the Olympic Games where a runner would run to
obtain a prize. Verse 25, “And every man
that strives for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible
crown,” referring to the athletic awards of the day, “but we an incorruptible
crown. [26] I, therefore, so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one
that beateth” boxes literally, “the air. [27] But I keep under my body, and
bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to
others, I myself should be a castaway.”
What does “castaway” refer to there?
It is not referring to loss of salvation because it is imbedded in a
context of Scripture that is talking about athletics. And the athletics in turn is the metaphor of
rewards. This isn’t talking about
salvation because if it was it would be talking about salvation by works. It can’t be talking about salvation; he is
running that he may obtain a prize. That
is contrary to the whole doctrine of salvation in the New Testament so we know
right away that the context here is not talking about salvation, it is talking
about rewards for living as unto the Lord in phase two, between the time that
you trust in Christ and the time you die.
That’s what Paul is talking about and he’s talking about rewards as a
result of the effort expended in phase two.
This means that we as believers as we go through life from this point,
somewhere you are on this line if you are a believer; you may be here, you may
be way down here, only hours away from your date with death. You don’t know where you may be on this line
but somewhere you are between these two points. What’s the issue? The issue is rewards.
You’ve already got salvation; that was guaranteed when you trusted
Christ. Now the issue is how much do I
produce for Jesus Christ in this life over my capacity to produce. In other words, this is a relative term, it
doesn’t mean everybody has to produce the same; it means God has a fraction and
in the denominator of this fraction He has your total capacity. You are not rated against some other
individual; you are rated as an individual.
So here’s your total, this is how much you could produce in the
Christian life if you lived in fellowship all the time. You don’t live in fellowship all the time; I
don’t live in fellowship all the time, so our actual production might be 5% of
what we should; it might be 55%. But our
production is over the total, it’s a ratio and it is determined by whether we
are following the Lord’s will for our Christian life. As a result of following God’s will for our
Christian life we get these rewards which, you might say, give us a status in
heaven.
We’re all guaranteed heaven, our citizenship is in heaven as of the
moment of salvation, but in heaven it’s not going to be a communist society
where everybody is going to have equal rights.
In heaven there will be gradations as there is in society today. It doesn’t mean people are going to be sad
but it does mean there will be different levels in heaven in eternity
future. We are not going to have some
communist state of heavenly bliss where everybody has the same. That is not
taught in Scripture. Therefore, right
now if you are a believer you’re determining your status in eternity by your
response for God’s will for you personally.
So now what’s the issue? Paul
says look, God has told me what His will is; His will is to preach the gospel
as far as I’m concerned. He didn’t go
around saying it’s your will, it’s your will, it’s your will, he believed in
every believer evangelism but he’s talking now about apostleship, etc. and he
didn’t go around saying that. He said as
far as I’m concerned, this is God’s will for me. Now if this is God’s will for Paul and it
says “preach” then Paul gets out of fellowship any time he violates that will
of God. So if Paul says look God, I’m
tired, I want to take a vacation over here in Decapolis for a while, it’s a
nice healthy winter resort and instead of staying here for a year like he did
when he wrote Titus, I’ll just stay here for a few years. In fact, this works out pretty good, I think
I’ll retire here, buy myself some land and have a good retirement
community. We can all have a Christian
community and Christian movies, Christian this and Christian that, Christian
everything, it’ll be all cozy Christian organizations, Bible City or something.
He didn’t say this; he couldn’t, because if he did what would
happen? If he said I am not going to do
it, that would knock him out of fellowship and when he got knocked out of
fellowship he couldn’t produce and when he couldn’t produce this total would
get lower and lower and finally he would be a castaway. A castaway is not one who has lost his
salvation; a castaway is one who has been disqualified from the race. It’s not talking about salvation. So here we have an interesting situation
where Paul says because God has impressed His will on me, it puts me in a bind
because if I say no to Him it knocks me out of fellowship and if I’m knocked
out of fellowship, then I can’t produce and if I can’t produce where does that
put me for eternity? That means I come
out with zero rewards I’m a castaway; a castaway means I get zero as far as the
production of my life is concerned. This
is a very interesting case where Paul said because God’s special will for me is
to preach the gospel, this sets up a situation that puts me in a spot. If I say no, that automatically sentences me
to being out of fellowship the rest of my life.
We have the same thing back with Solomon. What was God’s will for Solomon? To be the king of the nation and he was
called to this very high task and he couldn’t change his heredity seeing he was
born into the royal family. Therefore
all of phase two was set up for him.
This doesn’t mean this operates in every believer’s life, we’re not about
to say this. But we do say that at least
in these cases it operated where God had a will that He had for this whole
person’s life and these men had a clear vision of it. By the way, in every case where this
situation occurs you notice God has personally revealed Himself to these men. There is no ambiguity in their divine guidance. Paul was personally told by the Lord in no
uncertain terms. Solomon, it says in the
text, the Lord appeared to him twice. So
these men are special believers in one sense, that they had a direct
revelation. We don’t have direct revelation in this sense of the Word. They had a direct call of God. Jesus Christ appeared to them and said men, I
have something for you from here to here and that’s your job; I’ve given you
that assignment. Now after having that
direct revelation Paul could have gone off the track; Solomon did and he turned
away, and when he turned away God says all right, you’re finished, you’re just
going to stick around here and finish out your term but you are finished as far
as I’m concerned.
Now go back to Num. 14 and we’ll pick up the language in which God used
to declare this truth. We’re going back
to the nation Israel. Israel has been
called directly, by direct revelation, in this point of history to go into the
land. There is no ambiguity, that
generation existed to do one thing for God, to move into the land. There were no options, no plan B, there was
only one plan, plan A, and if they flubbed plan A that was too bad, no plan B
available. This is what happens in Num.
14:1-10, this is the actual incident and I want to take you back to here
because I want you to notice the little prayer that Moses prays and you watch
how the bargaining goes on, it’s very interesting.
Verse 1, “And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and
the people wept that night.” This is the
crybaby section, because they’ve got up here to Kadesh-barnea and all of a
sudden they say God wants me to do something. Of course, they failed to realize
that God had provided, God had provided, God had provided all their needs down
in the wilderness, and all of a sudden God wants to use them for something, in
His service, holy war of all things. And
they don’t like this. We saw last time
they saw these giants, these Anakim and they got their eyes on the giants
instead of on the Lord and that led them to this crybaby session in verse
1.
Verse 2, “And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and
against Aaron, and the whole congregation said unto them,” and notice this
tremendous belief they have, really positive thinking here, “Would God that we
had died in the land of Egypt! Or would God we had died in this wilderness!”
[3, “And wherefore hath the LORD brought us unto this land, to fall by the
sword, that our wives and out children should be a prey? Were it not better for
us to return to Egypt?] In other words, that’s analogous to saying, for example
if Paul had said this, oh God, why did you save me, I was so comfortable as a
Pharisee, I could have sat around the city of Jerusalem all the time, of course
I would have gone to hell but nevertheless I would have sat around and had a
nice comfortable life; God, why did you have to save me because now look what a
mess I’m in, now I’ve got to go around and preach to all these Jews all over
the Mediterranean and get rocks thrown at me and go around and get nasty
remarks made to me, etc. It’s a retreat,
going back to the pre-salvation condition.
In verse 4 it leads to actual rebellion, they want to make a
captain. So Moses and Aaron go to pray,
this is about the only thing they can do at this point, and in verse 8, Caleb,
along with Joshua, comes up with some advice on the situation. “If the LORD delight in us, then he will
bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which flows with milk and
honey. [9] Only rebel not ye against the LORD,” and they have the God-centered
viewpoint of keeping their eyes on God and not on people, not on circumstances,
and not on anything else. They have
their eyes on the Lord, and of course this makes for a very comfortable
life. They have the right viewpoint of
the situation, but the people, verse 10, you can see how nicely they accept
that advice. “But all the congregation
demanded to stone them with stones.”
These people are kind of desperate at this point and when you see about
one million people in front of you and they’re starting to reach down and
there’s rocks down by their feet, it produces sort of a “I wish I wasn’t here”
feeling.
It was kind of a crucial situation and then the Lord breaks in. “And the glory of the LORD appeared in the
tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel.” He has to come to their personal aid. In verses 11-12 you have one of the crucial
passages. God threatens to break the treaty. This you have to understand because otherwise
you won’t get why the book of Deuteronomy is written. In verse 11, “And the LORD said unto Moses,
How long will this people provoke me?
And how long will it be before they believe me, for all the signs which
I have shown among them? [12] I will smite them with the pestilence, and” and
there’s the crucial word, “and I will disinherit will make of thee a greater
nation and mightier than they.”
Now at this point there’s a crisis.
At this point God could legally kill off the nation. He had brought them out, He could have killed
them off legally under the treaty, the treaty didn’t commit God; once the
nation broke the treaty, fine, you break the treaty, I’ll break the treaty and
I’ll just kill you. So God was not
obligated at this point and in verse 12 you have the threatened breakage of the
treaty. Here is where the grace comes
in, verse 13, here’s Moses’ prayer, “And Moses said unto the LORD, Then the
Egyptians shall hear of it…. [14] And they will tell it to the inhabitants of
this land; for they have heard that thou, LORD, art among this people, that
thou LORD, art seen face to face,” etc.
And then in verse 16 they will say, “Because the LORD was not able to
bring this people into the land which he swore to give unto them, therefore he
hath slain them in the wilderness.” Do
you notice what basis Moses argues on?
He doesn’t go back to the Law; he can’t go back to the Law and argue,
the Law doesn’t guarantee anything. He
can’t go back to the Abrahamic Covenant because the Abrahamic Covenant does not
specifically apply to any one generation.
So what does Moses do? The only
thing you can do; when you get involved in a situation like this where the
promises of the Word of God don’t cover the situation there’s only one out and
that is to go back to the master plan of God.
If you ever have a situation in your life where you have to plead with
God, you plead on the basis of the master plan of God and you say to Him, God,
if you will do this then it will redound to Your glory more than if You did
something else. In other words there are
two choices, A or B, God can kill the nation off here or He can make it survive
and Moses argues God, why don’t you choose B because if you choose B then it
will glorify you more in the world because these Gentile nations will see you
killing these people and they’ll say huh, what kind of a God was that, He led
them out in the wilderness and they died.
So it will break up a testimony if you do A. God threatens A at this point and Moses
pleads for B but notice the basis; He goes back to the master plan and that is
the only possible way you can deal with God if you are involved in a situation
like this, as Moses was. You haven’t got
a promise to stand on from the Word of God, the only thing possible is to go
back to that master plan and that’s why that plan is so important.
[17, “And now, I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great,
according as thou hast spoken, saying, [18] The LORD is long-suffering, and of
great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the
guilty, or visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation. [19] Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this
people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, as thou hast forgiven this
people, from Egypt even until now.”
Now verse 20, “And the LORD said, I have pardoned according to thy
word.” Are those people saved or aren’t
they saved. “I have pardoned according
to thy word.” This means God at this
point goes on plan B and the nation becomes acceptable with Him, [21] “But as
truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD.”
There’s reference to the master plan again.
[22] “Because all those men who have seen My glory, and My miracles,
which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted Me now these ten
times, and have not hearkened to My voice, [23] Surely they shall not see the
land which I swore to give unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that
provoked me see it.”
Here God says I’m going to discipline them. I’m going to chastise them; I’ve forgiven
their iniquity but they are going to pay for it in their Christian life and
notice what a tremendous ministry these people have for the rest of 38 years,
out drinking that nice yellow water that we talked about, that you could scoop
out with your hand in the wilderness, wouldn’t you love to do that for 38
years, drag your family all over the Sinai desert, scooping out yellow water
out of the sand. That’s what happened;
these people were sentenced to this kind of discipline because of their
rejection at this point and here is where you have Moses praying. By the way, this is a perfect type of Christ
here, Moses is praying to God for these people and he receives, as their
intercessor he receives authorized forgiveness for them. This enables these people to survive.
Going back to Deut. 1 they survived for another reason too, and that is
that they can raise up another generation.
God is going to allow them to die off slowly. You could say look, God could have killed
them, why didn’t He kill them right then?
He could have killed them, just the guilty ones. Plan B didn’t say that He had to not kill
anybody, He could have just killed the guilty ones and left the wives and the
children there and they would have brought up a second generation, but God in
His mercy extended the discipline over 38 years so that many of these homes
that would be missing a man would have a man at the head of that home. See if God had destroyed the guilty men, all
of whom were over 20, He would have destroyed the head of the family and it
never is God’s will to break up the family unit. So here we have God very graciously applying
the discipline so that these homes and these families can mature out there in
the desert under a man’s leadership.
Even though only the men here are responsible, as we will see.
Back to Deut. 1:36 where we left off, Caleb is the one who “hath wholly
followed the LORD.” Verses 37-38 are a
parenthesis that simply deal with Moses and Joshua. Verse 36 is actually continued in verse 39
and it’s not “Moreover.” If you look at
the end of verse 36 you see it terminates in kind of an odd way. Verse 35, “Surely there shall not one of
these men….”
Verse 36, “Except Caleb, [and to his children, because he hath wholly
followed thee LORD],” and his sons. That
kind of leaves you up in the air because aren’t any more people going to
survive except Caleb and his sons? The
sentence is continued in verse 39, “And your little ones, who you said shall be
a prey, and your children, who in that day had no knowledge between good and
evil, they shall go in there, and unto them will I give it, and they shall
possess it.”
Now here we come to a phrase that we have to examine briefly. What does it mean that they had no knowledge
of good and evil? Some people have said
this violates child evangelism. Do you
know how people knock out child evangelism?
Very simple, they just take verse 39 and you say “without knowledge of
good and evil” means these people are without God-consciousness, if they are
without consciousness they can’t hear the gospel, negative on the gospel,
negative on evangelism. Do you know how
old these people were? Twenty years;
that shows nobody under twenty is spiritually mature. I’ve actually heard a minister do this. It’s absurd, we know that children respond to
the gospel so something’s wrong here and this can’t mean
God-consciousness.
So what does it mean? Turn to
Num. 1 and we’ll see who is responsible and how old they were and then we’ll
see what it means not to have knowledge of good and evil and from this we will
be able to deduce a principle of God’s dealing with us. Num 1:1, obviously Numbers is a book that
deals with numbers; the whole book of numbers is a book of statistical
summaries conducted by the nation. “And
the LORD spoke unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of the
congregation….” Verse 2, “Take the sum
of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the
house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their
polls.” Notice the people that were polled were only males, verse 2, and over
twenty in verse 3.
So the only people counted in this particular census was males over
twenty. Those are the two
conditions. Females are out and any male
under twenty was out. Why? Because verse 3 goes on to say, “From twenty
years old and upward, all who are able to go forth to war in Israel: thou and
Aaron shall number them by their armies.”
This is the draft age in the nation, twenty. Therefore if this is the draft age, all these
males were responsible; they were full participating members of the
congregation of Israel. So when the decision was made at Kadesh-Barnea to
reject, all of these males share in that rejection. Notice who doesn’t share? Their wives don’t share because their wives
didn’t have any say. Their children
don’t share because the children didn’t have any say, only the men who were in
the army share in this discipline, and God therefore applies the discipline
only to those who had the opportunity of choice.
This is a principle that occupies all of Scripture, God never
disciplines or judges or holds responsible people who did not have a chance of
choice. You realize that this gives you
leverage when you witness to somebody, because when you witness you know that
person has heard and he’s responsible from that point on, no matter how you
view the heathen. Once you’ve witnessed
to someone you’ve placed the burden and the responsibility on him. Now he knows the story and God is going to judge
him how he responds. So here we have the
principle that God always disciplines only those who have the right of choice,
volition again. Whether they go positive or negative, only men over twenty
actually were participating in this decision of rejection.
To see this clearly turn over to Num. 14:29, here God explicitly states what
I’ve just told you. By the way, this
shows you another thing. It shows you
that whether these are believers or unbelievers is not the issue here because
if you’re going to be consistent with your interpretation and you are going to
say that these people are unbelievers that were excluded, isn’t it rather
strange that only males over twenty were unbelievers. They were all believers because if you start
fiddling around here and start putting unbelievers in your interpretation you
get into some trouble real fast because you’ve got to say the wives and the
children must have been believers because they are allowed to go into the land,
some old lady lived to be 95 years old, she was in the land and all the
children were in the land. Do you mean
to tell me that only males over twenty… it’s kind of an artificial boundary if
you’re saying these people weren’t saved.
So these people are all saved and their salvation has nothing to do with
this, this is talking about a responsible decision by a believer. Num. 14:29, here’s God’s declaration: “Your
carcasses shall fall in this wilderness; and all who were numbered of you,”
these were all the young men in the army, “all who were numbered of you,
according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, who have
murmured against me.” And there he
defines who it was that murmured against him.
Undoubtedly the wives and the children murmured along with them, but
they aren’t counted because they did not have a responsible choice. A woman could be back here and her husband
say I’m not going into Kadesh-barnea and she could out the rolling pin and go
chase him around the tent a couple of times and it wouldn’t solve the problem
at all because she didn’t have the right of choice. Only the man had the right of choice,
therefore only the man was disciplined.
This shows you something else about people who don’t speak up in a
group. You notice “all” the men were
disciplined here, and you can just see Johnny-come-lately down here and old
John, he’s down in the lower part of the congregation and he just turned twenty
and he says God, I think it’s very unfair that you discipline because after all
I was just a silent warrior standing here with my spear and all these more
mature men said let’s not go into Kadesh-barnea. Now I just sort of went along with the crowd
and I said well, they’re older, they should know better, so I’ll just go along
with them. Do you notice God doesn’t
recognize that, He says sorry, where were you when the division came, you
should have stepped out, broke rank and left along with Joshua and Caleb. Every person was responsible here, again
illustrating the point of volition.
Let’s turn back to Deut. 1:40 and here we have the last declaration God
speaks to this generation. God never
speaks again to this generation; these are the closing words He has for this
generation. “But as for you, turn you,
and take your journey into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.” I want
you to cool your heels for 38 years and here’s where you are supposed to
go. They are right around here, Kadesh
is a large area and they were to move down over to the east side of the Red Sea
and move down into this wilderness.
Later on we find where they are as we will in chapter 2, but they are to
go up here and usually you find Bible maps showing them wandering around
here. This leaves them in a very
peculiar position as we will see next time.
They are to actually go across the way of the Red Sea, which is down at
the east side of the Gulf of Aqaba and go down and wander around here for a
while. Edom is right here; this is a
blocking position to the nation.
Israel’s boundary comes down like that so they can’t cut; they can’t go
through this way, so the only way they can go is this way, back down
south.
Here in verse 40 is the sentence passed upon the nation and then verse
41 is kind of a sad, very pathetic ending to this entire incident. This is what would happen, for example if
Paul went off the track and Paul said God, I’m not going to preach, or Solomon,
we know what happened to him, he went off the track, but here’s what happened
when believers who went off the track at one point tried to get back on
again.
Verse 41, “Then ye answered and said unto me, We have sinned against the
LORD: we will go up and fight, according to all that the LORD our God commanded
us. And when ye had girded on every man
his weapons of war, ye were ready to go up into the hill.” Verse 42, the Lord spoke to Moses, [“And the
LORD said unto me, Say unto them, Go not up, neither fight, for I am not among
you’ lest ye be smitten before your enemies.”]
In verse 43 Moses passed the word on down through the chain of command
of the people, “So I spoke unto you; and you would not hear, but rebelled against
the commandment of the LORD, and went presumptuously up into the hill.”
So what happened in verse 44, [“And the Amorites, who dwelt in that
mountain, came out against you, and chased you as bees do, and destroyed you in
Seir, even unto Hormah.”] they got chased and lost. Why?
Because at this point, under this special condition that we find here at
the Kadesh-barnea incident, we find it with Solomon, we find it with Paul,
these men who have had a direct revelation from God for their life, from the
time they were saved until the time they die, God has laid out a program for
them and if they don’t get with it, they get off and they are castaways. These people were a castaway, they did not
lose their salvation but they were castaways for thirty-eight years. By the way, isn’t it ironic; they spent two
years at Sinai, two plus thirty-eight equals forty, and those forty years equal
the number of days that the spies were in the land? Those spies were for forty days in that land
and so the nation is going to spend one year for every day those spies were in
the land.
So God has ironic ways of testing.
By the way, forty is also the number of testing in Scripture. So here you see believers chastised because
of this sin. By way of conclusion, what’s the application? We’ll leave them in Kadesh in verse 36 and
pick them up there next time. The
principle is this: if God has called you to some task, we can’t directly apply
this because obviously we don’t receive direct revelation, we have indirect
revelation through illumination of the Holy Spirit using Scripture that we
know, but if God has called you to do something, you have a spiritual gift or
something, you’d better pay attention to that because the fastest way to be
miserable the rest of your Christian life is to play around with the will of
God.
This is why on the basic series we will go into divine guidance and some
of these techniques that God’s Word gives us for finding out His will. Finding out His will is not something that
you tack onto the Christian life; it’s the center of the Christian life. Every one of you have a gift, or gifts,
plural, because at the moment that you are saved in this dispensation God gives
you a gift and we’ll go through these gifts.
Some of the gifts are gifts of helps; some of the gifts are in other
areas, administration, etc. But you’ve
been given a gift and God’s will for your life centers around your gift. This does not mean that you have to go right
out and volunteer to go to Africa as a missionary. It does not mean you have to be a pastor; it
does not mean you have to be a Sunday school teacher, but it does mean to
locate the will of God in conjunction with your own spiritual gift and follow
it because you will see the misery and the heartache and the sorrow and the
suffering that comes about because believers are out of the will of God,
wandering around in the wilderness like Israel was for thirty-eight years.