Sermons tagged with Punishment

Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on Labor Day Sunday. Thank you for joining us. If you're watching online, must be nice. Maybe next year I can live stream from your place. But for those of us here, I hope we're having a good Sunday morning. This is the last part in our series in Moses that we've been going through all summer long. And so I believe that this is the 13th installment. It's 12th or 13th. So thank you for hanging in here with the life of Moses. And I hope that it's been rewarding for you and encouraging to you to go through that life and see how much we have to learn from this miraculous man and figure in the Bible. This morning, as I was trying to decide where are we going to land the plan on the series, where are we going to focus, I thought it most appropriate to focus on the death of Moses, because Moses has, I was going to say pretty unique death, but it is a unique death in Scripture and in history, I believe. And so I thought it would be appropriate to focus on that. Not only because that's where the story ends as we end our series, but I've always found the story of Moses' death to be one of the more puzzling stories in the Bible. It's one that it took years for me to wrap my head around and felt like I even understood God's actions in it. Because I think that there's some stories in the Bible where the actions of God perplex us a little bit. What we know about God, or more often than not presume about God, would lead us to believe that what he did is out of step with his character. It's out of step with who he says he is. We can't make sense of it. And because we can't make sense of it, we kind of think, well, maybe, maybe God got this one wrong. And I think that this is one of those instances. So before the death of Moses, Moses is punished. God tells him that because you did this thing, I'm going to punish you. And we see this punishment being levied in Deuteronomy chapter 32. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Deuteronomy. And I would tell you to go ahead and turn to Deuteronomy chapter 35, because we're going to cover almost that entire chapter before we're done here today. But in Deuteronomy chapter 32, we find this, and I'm going to read you a lot of verses, more didn't stumble over any of those names, so I am very happy. Second, more importantly, here's the context for what God has said. So, God says, you and Aaron sinned against me in a river, in a particular land a few years ago. Because you did that, you will not enter the promised land. And so here's the offense. You can find this offense in Numbers chapter 20, verses 1 through 13, if you're interested. The offense is they have been moving through the desert for, at this point, plus 30 years. 35 years, I don't know. They were in the desert for 40 total years, and this is towards the end of the journey. And the Hebrew people had this very familiar, consistent refrain and grumble, which was when things got hard, when food got scarce, when they couldn't find water, they would cry out and they would say, Moses, why did you bring us to the desert to die? We were better off as slaves in Egypt. We were better there. And they were upset that they had been freed from their oppressive masters to come and wander in freedom in the desert because now desert life is hard. And Moses, frankly, got tired of it, as anybody would, as any leader would, with people coming and complaining to you all the time about everything. And so he went to God. They came and grumbled to him. And so he went to God. He says, your people are thirsty. Can you provide water? And God says, yes, go to the rock in this river and speak to it or go to the rock in this place and speak to it and water will flow from it. And so Moses says, okay, got it. And he walks out and he gathers the people, the assembly around this rock and he chews them out and they deserve to be chewed out. You whiny little babies. God always provides. He's going to provide again. Here, look. And he hits the rock with his staff twice. Because the last time he brought water from a rock on behalf of God, that's how he did it. He hit the rock with his staff. But this time God told him to speak and he didn't. But in anger and frustration, he hit it twice and water flew forth from the rock and the people were satisfied. But God pulled him aside and Aaron after that. And he said, because of your impertinence, because of your sin against me, because you struck the rock and you did not speak to the rock as I instructed you, you stole some holiness from me. You impugned my holiness and my dignity. And because you did that, I will not allow you to reach the promised land. And just so we're clear on what kind of punishment that is for Moses, Moses is, according to Scripture, probably about 110 to 115 years old right now. He got called out of being a shepherd at the age of 80 and told to go lead God's people. He performed miracles. He led the plagues. He confronted the Pharaoh. God used him to destroy the Egyptian army. He performed miracles in the desert. He set up something to heal from snake bites that we didn't even get to in this series. He went on top of a mountain and met the very face of God, so much so that he shone for three days afterwards. He was the one charged with bringing the tablets down the mountain, with issuing the law to the people. The first five books of the Bible are the books of Moses forevermore. He had been a faithful servant and everything in him was journeying to the fulfillment of his life, which is going to be to enter the land that was promised to his forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And he was going to get to be the one that did it, and he was going to finally get to set feet on this land that he had never seen in his whole life, and it's what he lived for as he served God. One day, I will be on the promised land. And God says, because you hit that rock two times instead of speak to it, you can't do that, which feels unfair. Does it not? The punishment feels like it very much outweighs the crime. And I hate it when that happens. I feel bad for anyone when that happens. And when I was a senior in high school, it happened to me. I was in class one day, Jen, I'm very sorry for this story. I was in class one day, and I had a friend, she was sitting a couple desks over, and I just got a wild hair that it would be funny to write her a little note and see if I could make her laugh in this class where we had a really strict teacher and you weren't allowed to do that. So I was trying to mess with her. And so I wrote her a note and in the note, I proposed to her that maybe after school, we'll meet at my car and we'll engage in teenage activities. Not married people activities, okay? It wasn't crass. Teenage people activities. Now, important to the story is I went to a very strict Christian school. That was not a lot. And it worked. She laughed. And then we laughed about it later. Well, fast forward six weeks. Some stupid eighth grade kid finds the note and reads it and is so deeply concerned in their conscience about it that they hand it to a teacher. The teacher confronts me. and she says, I don't know what to do about this. This could get you in big trouble. And I said, I can't tell you what to do with it, but it was a joke. I won't do it anymore. And she's like, okay. The next day, I get called into my principal's office, which happens to be my soccer coach. And he calls me in, and he says, Nathan, because I was Nathan at the time. By the way, my name became Nate instead of Nathan when I began to work at Macaroni Grill at the age of 19, and I had to write it on the table, and it's just shorter to write Nate. That's the only story there is for that. So he says, Nathan, I saw this note. It's completely unacceptable. And listen to me. I wish I still had it. I would let any of you read it. And you would think, this is funny. You would not think a teenage person deserves to be punished for this. But he was like, I don't know what to do with it. And I'm like, well, what's the normal punishment? He says, well, I need to suspend you. And I was like, oh, that's a bigger deal than I thought. And at my school, if you got suspended, you couldn't participate in athletics for three weeks. Well, I was the captain of the soccer team, and we were about to enter into the state playoffs. We won the state championship last year. We were probably favored to win it this year. And I was Allstate, okay? I was good. But being Allstate in that league is like being the best toy on the island of misfit toys, okay? I was never good. Sometime post high school, thinking I was good at soccer, we played a team that gave away scholarships and they were actually good at soccer. And I was oh I'm not athletic so not bragging I'm just saying in the moment this is how this is how big it was for me this was my moment right and he suspended me and I didn't get to play in the playoffs my senior season and it always felt incredibly unfair and to me that's what this punishment feels like from God. And if you're watching closely, yes, I am comparing myself to Moses. That's what this punishment feels like from God. And in my case, in my case, one of the things that helps me reconcile that is first of all, it really wasn't my principal that suspended me. It was my dad. Because my principal called my dad and made me read the note to my dad. And then my dad said, what would you do if he wasn't on the soccer team? And my principal says, I'd suspend him. And my dad said, suspend him. And he kind of hung up the phone. But one of the things that helps me reconcile that is knowing that there's probably a dozen other things that I did that deserve suspension that I did not get caught for. So it kind of worked out in the wash. But for Moses, that's not the case. This is what is said about Moses. In Deuteronomy 35, these are the last words, these are the last verses of Deuteronomy. These are the last verses of the books of history. I believe every Christian or faithful person who's lived since then who looks at the story of Moses, if Moses were to make an appeal and say, God, can you let me off with a warning for the whole rock hitting thing? Can we maybe look over that one and still let me put my toes in the sand of the promised land? Can maybe we still do that? I think all of history would be like, God, he makes a good point. Like of all the people that God should let off the hook, why doesn't he let Moses off the hook? And you would think that maybe he said that early on. He said that at the river when it happened or at the rock when it happened. But then eventually over time, it would wear off and he'd be like, all right, Moses, you're fine. Like you've lived a good life. You can still enter into the promised land. Like you'd think he'd let him off the hook, but that's not what he does. Look at the beginning of 34. This is the tragic story of the enforcement of that penalty. Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the Lord showed him the whole land. Now these words you're about to hear and read are, these are the tribes of Israel. These are, this is the territories of the different tribes. This is like someone taking us up on a mountain, God taking us up on a mountain and saying, that's where North Carolina is going to be. and that's where Virginia is going to be, and that's where South Carolina is going to be, and that's where Tennessee is going to be. That's what that means. So he says this. The Lord showed him the whole land, from Gilead to Dan, all of Naphtali, the territory of Eph He said to I'm not going to let you in. And then he didn't. He took him up like he said he would. And he said, I wanted your eyes to see it. This is what it is. This is what I promised on oath to your forefathers. This is where you've been leading my people. And I know that you thought you were going to lead the procession in. But I'm only going to let your eyes see it. I'm not going to let your feet touch it. And so I've struggled with what to do with this story. Because it seems out of sync with the character of God. But I do think that here's one of the things that we can take from this story. And it's a very simple thing, but it's true, and it's not something we like to confront very often. But the reality is actions have consequences, both natural and punitive. The things that we do have consequences. Both natural and punitive. And so when we commit a sin, when we make a choice, those choices have consequences. And that doesn't go away because we're thousands of years removed from this. It didn't go away when God applied the law to his people and said, if you were guilty at one point, you were guilty of all, which Moses did. You're guilty at one point, so you are condemned. That was the deal. It's a picture of why we need salvation, because we are guilty in at least one point. And that's why we can't get into the promised land by ourselves, because we have sin in our past. But that sin and those actions have consequences. And we don't like to think about that, and we don't like to deal with that. And I think sometimes we have an attitude of, yes, I've done this, but God, if you would please expunge the consequences from my future, that would be great. But the truth is that our actions have consequences. And those consequences are both natural and punitive. And if you're a parent, you understand what that means. This makes sense to you intuitively. When you're a parent and you're guiding your children to become who they need to become, who God created them to be, you have to either allow consequences or you have to apply consequences. Sometimes you watch your children or your child doing something and you know they're cruising for a bruising, right? You know this is going to end poorly. But you think that the best way to love them as a parent is just to let it play out and let them learn from their own consequences. One of my favorite things about grace is that every Sunday, all the little kids are running around the room and I think it's great. And it brings life and vibrancy to the church. And I don't mind that they bang into the wall. And sometimes we'll somebody, we have a kid one time that just took a marker and ran down that whole wall. Just the whole, just, they just, we needed a racing stripe. Okay. Um, I don't mind that. And they knock over people's coffee. They bump into us out there. I don't care. I think it's, I think it's fun. And one day I was in here and my son, John is four. And he was over in this corner and I was standing up there next to the doors. And I looked over and he was running up to a child that was sizably larger than him. And John likes to hit right now. He just, and he hits like that. And so he ran up to this kid and just hit him in the back. And instead of running over and grabbing him and say, we don't hit, you know, I thought, let's just see how this plays out. And the kid turned around and was mad and hit John back and knocked him on his butt and made him cry. And John came running to me. Daddy, so-and-so hit me. I said, yeah, I saw. This should teach us not to hit people that are bigger than us. Don't do that. Don't do that, son. You see me? I've never picked a fight in my life. You know why? Because I don't like to cry in front of other people. And so I could have run up and I could have stopped and not let the other kid hit my son. But I thought the best thing to do was just to let the consequences play out. And so sometimes we watch our kid cruising for a bruising and when they fall on their rear end, we pick them up and we go, yeah, don't do that again. The reason you're in pain now is because your actions chose it. Our actions have consequences. Other times as parents, we need to make the consequences punitive, don't we? We need to punish, to teach a lesson so that they don't do that again, to help them remember that that's not the way they're supposed to act or behave or the attitude that they're supposed to have. In our house, screen time's a big deal. You bring up screen time and there's tears right away before you even say how much screen time is going to be lost. And some actions require a punitive consequence. When they get older, you take the car keys or whatever it is. But as parents, we understand these things. That when we're in charge of a child and we're in charge of raising them, it is absolutely irresponsible to try to raise them in an environment in which their actions do not have consequences. It is completely unhelpful for life. And in understanding this principle, we understand that this is what good parents do. And so the other thing is, this story reminds us that God is our father and we are his children. God is our father and we are his children. God is the father of Moses and of the Hebrew people. And when Moses, one of his sons, sinned, God had to apply a punitive consequence. It was not a natural consequence that Moses experienced. By all accounts, he could have gotten there and gone across the river. But God applied this punitive consequence for this action to correct it. And to set an example for the rest of his children that no one gets off the hook. God is a fair God. But because God is our Father, he must also, as he looks down on us as his children, apply to us both natural and punitive consequences. God cannot run over and protect us from the larger child when we choose to take an action that we shouldn't. He's not going to do that. He will allow us to experience natural consequences of our choices. If we choose, and I know this from experience and unanswered prayers, if we choose to eat like a garbage can and avoid exercise for a couple of decades, we're going to end up in poor health. And we can't just pray that God will make us magically healthy. These are consequences of our actions. If we volunteer for everything and we say yes for everything and we overextend and we can't say no to anyone and we end up stressed and exhausted, that's not God punishing you. That's the natural consequence of your actions and your choices. But sometimes we like to blame God for things that we brought on ourselves. I remember at my last church, this was easily over a decade ago, and my last church, it was a larger church, it was about 2,000 people, and I was on staff. I was a staff pastor. And if you called the church and you said, I need to talk to a pastor, they funneled that call to me, which makes total sense because I ooze tenderness. And so I took a call this one day. I don't know why y'all are laughing so hard at that. Jeepers. It's a little funny. I didn't know it was that funny. I take a call one day from this guy, and it's like early 30s. And he says, hey, I just need to talk with a pastor. I just got something going on in my life. I just can't make sense of it. I was like, all right, what's going on, man? And he says, well, because I got this girlfriend that I really love. I'm like, well, that's good. And he goes, yeah, but I've also got some problems with drug addiction, and I'm kind of in and out, and it's a real struggle for me. And a few months ago, she gave me an ultimatum. She was like, you know, clean up or I'm out of here. And he goes, and I just messed up a couple more times, and she left me. And I'm devastated. And this is the kicker. I just don't know why God would allow this to happen to me. What? And I was nice. I didn't just be like, you're dumb and hang on the phone. But I tried to say, like, our actions have consequences. But I think a lot of times in life, something difficult will happen to us. And sometimes we can throw ourselves a pity party and we can think, why did God allow this to happen to me? Why did God make this happen to me? Why did God allow this to happen to me? And if we look, it's like, well, you took some steps to lead to this consequence. God didn't allow that business deal to go bad. It was a bad business deal. God didn't allow you to lose your job. You just underperformed for a few months or years and your boss got sick of it. Like sometimes there's natural consequences in life. Other times God does bring, we see in scripture, punitive action into our lives to correct our behavior and direct us to the right place. We know this is true because not only do we see it in the life of Moses, but we also see it in the life of David. When David, the second king of Israel, you may have heard of him. He's a pretty big deal. He got towards the end of his life. And in 2 Samuel chapter 16 and 17, David has this conversation with God. And he says, he says, Father, I want to build your temple. You'll remember from the story of Moses that God instructed them to build a tabernacle, which was a fancy tent with a big square tent in the middle. And the Holy of Holies was half of that tent. And that was where the presence of God rested. And it was built to be nomadic, to be able to take it up, move it, and set it back up. That was the job of the Levites, setting up the tabernacle, taking down the tabernacle, moving the tabernacle, setting up the tabernacle. That's what the Levites did. And so when they finally got into Israel, into their promised land, into Jerusalem, and David's sitting on the throne. He says, Father, I want to build you a permanent home. And God says, David, I can't let you do that. There's too much blood on your hands. That's a punitive consequence. I can't tell you exactly what sins are involved in too much blood on your hands, but David did a lot of killing. And if you read between the lines, he did a lot of sinning. And so God said, no, you're not the one to do this. You haven't lived the life of the person that I want to allow to do this. So you can't do it. That's a punitive consequence. And we know it's punitive because before he died, he gathered all the materials, everything that was needed, all the cedars of Lebanon and all the rocks from the quarry were put on the job site so that when the next king became king, he could say go and he could have the honor of building the temple. So by all accounts, he could have built it by the end of his life. This was not a natural consequence of his actions. This was punitive by God. The biggest result or example we see in Scripture of someone suffering a punitive consequence is that. It's Jesus on the cross. He was being punished. He was being punished as a consequence of our actions, of your actions. That's a punishment that we deserve. That's a punitive consequence that should have been laid on us, death. But God chose instead to punish not his children, but his child. Do you see? So we know in scripture that God exacts punitive punishments for consequences of our actions. Now, I don't know how to tell you how to parse out what in your life is a punishment and what is a natural consequence. I really don't know how to tell you to do that. I thought about it this week and I'm like, I'm not even going there. I don't know how to tell you to do it. I just know that both are true. But that far more often than not, the hard things that we are experiencing are natural consequences of our actions. And so we see in the story that our actions have consequences. Our sin has consequences. And it makes me wonder, I wonder what our sin has prevented us from. I wonder what our sin has prevented us from experiencing or doing. In the example of Moses and David, Moses, God took an opportunity from him. You will not enter the promised land. David, God took an opportunity from him. You're not going to be the one that builds the temple. The opportunity, the thing that Jesus had to give up is staying in his perfect divine form forever. He had to take on human form. He had to condescend to become flesh. And so if that's what happens with sin in the Bible is opportunities are removed from us. God's going to use us in smaller ways or in different ways. I wonder what I've missed out on because of my sin. I wonder what opportunities I've squandered because of the way I've chosen to behave and exercise my faith for the last decade. I wonder if you think it might be possible that you've missed some opportunities in your life because of some actions that you've taken in the past. And I don't know that God is ever going to take any of us up on a mountain and go, do you see what you missed? But maybe it'll happen in heaven, I'm not sure. But it makes me wonder, the story makes me wonder, what opportunities am I missing out on because of the actions that I've taken in the past? But here's the thing I love about this story that dawned on me this week as I sat with it and for the past couple of weeks. This isn't just a story about punishment. This isn't just a story about consequences. This is also a story about comfort. Let me show you. In a second, we're going to look at verse 5 in Deuteronomy 34. You'll remember the first four verses are God taking him up and going, this is the land of Gad, and this is the land of Naphtali, and this is the land of Ephraim, and this is the land that I swore on oath to Abraham.? I'm going to let you see it with your eyes. You cannot touch it with your feet. But then he takes him. He's the only person I'm aware of that died in the presence of God. And he's the only person in scripture that's buried by God himself in a secret grave that no one has ever found. And so what we see is that we have this God of consequences, but we have a God of comfort. And so in this passage, what I see is God holding consequences necessarily in one hand, because if he doesn't, he's not a loving father. But in the other hand, he holds comfort. And as he's exacting consequences on Moses with one hand, he's immediately comforting him with the other. I think that's amazing. So because he loves us, he holds consequence in one hand and comfort in the other. This is true of the story of David too. This is true of the story of David. When he says, David, no, you cannot build my temple. There's too much blood on your hands. The immediate thing coming after that, in the passage, the immediate thing that God says is, but I will allow your son Solomon to build it. And my son, the Messiah, will sit on your throne for all of eternity. Consequence, you can't build the temple. Comfort, here's what I can promise you. That's the passage that becomes the Davidic covenant. Consequence in one hand, comfort in the other. Now here's what's really cool. I told you the example of Jesus being punished for us. Consequence in one hand. But Jesus, but that's our punishment. Those are our consequences that he's holding. But in Jesus, we also find our ultimate comfort, right? We also find our ultimate comfort in Christ because on the cross, death was defeated. I did a funeral the other day and I got to say, as you get to say at funerals of people who believe in Jesus, this is not goodbye. This is goodbye for now. There's hope here. We know where she is. We know she's looking down on us. We know she loves us and that she's seen the face of her Savior and that we should be jealous of her and where she is. So on the cross, death lost its sting and sin lost its chains. And so it is the source of the greatest comfort for anyone in the gospel. That because of our actions, we deserve profound consequences. And whether they seem disproportionate to us or not, Jesus paid for those. And in that payment, he also becomes our comfort. And so God doesn't have to say, this is going to happen, but this is going to happen. He says this is happening. This, to me, is what the story of the death of Moses is about. I've told you repeatedly, everything points to Jesus. And I believe that this story points to the gospel in multiple and profound ways. And I want us to remember as we go, whenever we are experiencing consequences, whenever we feel like life is hard, life is dark, like life is deep, in our darkest days where our sin is so great that we feel we can't move. And I've had those days when I was so wracked with guilt for my sin and my choices that I felt ashamed of who I was and I didn't want anyone to know and I didn't want to look anybody in the eye. When we have those days and we are experiencing the consequences of our actions, we can always, always, always look to the cross and be comforted that God still loves us, that he covered this too, and one day we will be in eternity with him. Whenever we experience consequences, we are also offered comfort. Let's pray. Father, thank you for being a good father. It may be odd to pray and scary to say, but thank you for consequences. Thank you for the things that direct us. God, I pray that in our lives, when hard things are happening, that we wouldn't immediately blame them on you, but we would stop and assess ourselves and say, well, maybe this is my fault. God, if there are instances where we do think maybe we're being punished, God, I pray that we would trust you in that punishment and that we would remember in Hebrews that we're told that the Lord disciplines the ones he loves. We're so grateful that you're a good father. We're so grateful that every story can be woven in such a way that what we find is it's really pointing us towards your son and your love for us. Thank you for loving Moses the way you did, and thank you for loving us the way you do. In Jesus' name, amen.