Keep in mind that I am not talking now to your children, who have never experienced the discipline of the LORD your God or seen his greatness and his strong hand and powerful arm.
Exodus 24:3b KJV – .. and all the people answered with one voice, and said, ‘All the words which the LORD hath said will we do.’.
פָּקַד pâqad, paw-kad’; a primitive root; to visit (with friendly or hostile intent)
to attend to, muster, number, reckon, visit, punish, appoint, look after, care for
“But go now, lead the people where I told you. Behold, My angel shall go before you; nevertheless on the day when I punishH6485, I will punishH6485 them for their sin.”
Then the LORD struck the people with a plague, because of what they did with the calf which Aaron had made.
This is punishment: that the Lord attends to His own and that our reckoning will be by the hand of our Creator and Heavenly Father, who must punish His children who break our promises and violate our covenant.
“Out of the heavens He let you hear His voice to disciplineH3256you; and on earth He let you see His great fire, and you heard His words from the midst of the fire. – Deuteronomy 4:36
“So you are to know in your heart that the LORD your God was discipliningH3256you just as a man disciplinesH3256his son. – Deuteronomy 8:5
“.. but your own eyes have seen all the great work of the LORD which He did.
“You shall therefore keep every commandment which I am commanding you today..
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children..
עָוֹן — ʿāôn – perversity, depravity, iniquity, guilt or punishment of iniquity
‘You shall not worship them nor serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, inflicting H6485 the punishment of the fathers on the children, even on the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,
Beware that your hearts are not easily deceived, and that you do not turn away and serve other gods, and worship them.
“Otherwise, the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you, and He will shut up the sky so that there will be no rain, and the ground will not yield its produce; then you will quickly perish from the good land which the LORD is giving you.
Deuteronomy 11:17 [11:16 quoted above]
‘You shall not worship them nor serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, inflicting the punishment of the fathers on the children, even on the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me..
Deuteronomy 5:9
Will you receive the Discipline of the LORD our Father OR Punishment for your Sins?
“Know this day that I am not speaking with your sons who have not known and who have not seen the disciplineH4148 of the LORD your God—His greatness, His mighty hand, His outstretched arm.. but your own eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord which He did.
Deuteronomy 11:2,7 on the discipline of the LORD. – NASB
What is your Short Take on these Scriptures about Discipline and Punishment?
Please add your COMMENT at the bottom of this post. - RH
Observe carefully those faithful to the LORD and also leaders faithful to Moses. Then listen to the grumbling rabble of the disobedient and see a stark contrast.
Two faithful successors stand out because these contemporaries of Moses (who began this forty year exodus at age 80) stood faithfully with the LORD’s anointed leader: Joshua and Caleb.
So the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water so that we may drink!” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?”
We could have begun our pilgrimage much earlier than Noah.
“I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth.”
Genesis 9:11
Even though Abraham was far from sinless, the Books of Moses follow his blessings and covenants with the LORD.
As we approached the Promised Land we noted the disobedience of Lot’s wife, sin in the cities pervasive beyond the Jordan near the Dead Sea.
And it would seem that Moses, the LORD’s chosen leader in the wilderness encounters nothing but complaint, disobedience and sin by the ‘chosen’ now stranded in the desert.
While journeying from Mount Sinai to the promised land, although mention is made of important events delaying the Hebrews in the wilderness, I have not dwelled on an important consequence of disobedience we suppose to be just part of the Hebrew journey —
25 When they returned from spying out the land, at the end of forty days, they went on and came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh..
.. “We came into the land where you sent us, and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.
28 Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And indeed, we saw the descendants of Anak there!
30 Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will certainly prevail over it.”
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, because they are too strong for us.” 32 So they brought a bad report of the land which they had spied out to the sons of Israel…
And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night.
2 And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness!
5 Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces in the presence of all the assembly of the congregation of the sons of Israel.
6 And Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, of those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes…
10 But all the congregation said to stone them with stones. Then the glory of the Lord appeared in the tent of meeting to all the sons of Israel…
Moses then pleads for their lives
11 And the Lord said, “.. I will strike them with plague and dispossess them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they.”
13 But Moses said to the Lord, “Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for by Your strength You brought this people up from their midst…
19 .. Please forgive the guilt of this people in accordance with the greatness of Your mercy, just as You also have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.” So the Lord said,
“I have forgiven them in accordance with your word..”
and have not hearkened [šāmaʿ– shaw-mah’ ] to my voice…
shâmaʻ, shaw-mah’ – שָׁמַע
Strong’s Definitions – H8085matches the Hebrew שָׁמַע (šāmaʿ), which occurs 1,169 times in 1,072 verses in the Hebrew concordance of the NASB
to hear intelligently (often with implication of attention, obedience, etc.; causatively, to tell, etc.):—× attentively, call (gather) together, × carefully, × certainly, consent, consider, be content, declare, × diligently, discern, give ear, (cause to, let, make to) hear(-ken, tell), × indeed, listen, make (a) noise, (be) obedient, obey, perceive, (make a) proclaim(-ation), publish, regard, report, shew (forth), (make a) sound, × surely, tell, understand, whosoever (heareth), witness.
Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it:
Numbers 14:23 KJV
A spirit of obedience perseveres
24 But as for My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, I will bring him into the land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it…
We read the following previously in "You Will Not Be Led."
26 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron again, saying,
27 “How long shall I put up with this evil congregation who are grumbling against Me? I have heard the complaints of the sons of Israel which they are voicing against Me.
28 Say to them, ‘As I live,’ declares the Lord, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you;
‘your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness,’
‘all your numbered men according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me…’
31 ‘Your children, however,
whom you said would become plunder—I will bring them in,
and they will know the land which you have rejected.
But as for you, your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness.”
And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness.
Numbers 14:33 KJV
Why 40 Years?
The distance from Mount Sinai to the place where the Hebrews crossed the Jordan into the promised land is about 400 kilometers or only about 250 miles.
‘In accordance with the number of days that you spied out the land, forty days, for every day you shall suffer the punishment for your [fn]guilt a year, that is, forty years, and you will know My opposition.
39 Now when Moses spoke these words to all the sons of Israel, the people mourned greatly…
41 But Moses said, “Why then are you violating the command of the Lord, when doing so will not succeed? 42 Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you, to prevent you from being defeated by your enemies.
44 But they presumed to go up unto the hill top.. (while Moses and the Ark of the Covenant remained) .. 45 Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites .. struck them and scattered them…
Shema, Yisroel: Thou art to pass over Yarden today, to go in to possess Goyim greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and walled up to Shomayim
Devarim 9:1 Orthodox Jewish Bible
Hear, O Israel: You are crossing the Jordan today…3 Understand therefore this day, that the Lord thy God
is he which goeth over before thee;
as a consuming fire he shall destroy them,
and he shall bring them down before thy face:
so shalt thou drive them out, and destroy them quickly,
as the Lord hath said unto thee.
a few REMINDERS:
4 “Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them away from you,
‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to take possession of this land.’
Rather, it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you.
5 It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going in to take possession of their land,
but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out from before you,
and in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6 “Know, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people.
.. 27 Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not turn Your attention to the stubbornness of this people, or to their wickedness, or their sin.
Do YOU turn with the 10 against the Lord in the Wilderness?
And they said to Joshua, “The LORD has indeed handed over to us all the land; furthermore, all the inhabitants of the land have despaired because of us.” -Joshua 2:24
OR do you follow His leadership like Joshua & Caleb?
What day’s NEWS doesn’t HEADLINE: DISASTER? The world asks why God would allow this. Were those killed worse sinners than others, so God punished them by death?
This is how we think. Even if we acknowledge sin (in others) we want to blame God for punishment, especially in providential ‘acts of God’ which end lives unexpectedly.
The Good News of Luke briefly describes two such incidents.
Such disasters do imprint our memories for a time, for example in this 21st century just mention of NINE-ELEVEN.
Like the unexpected question, Who Sinned? , here Jesus gives a similar answer to disaster similar to the “WHY” about a man born blind from birth.
This time the crowds had complained of persecution of Galileans by the Roman Prefect of Judea Pontius Pilate. Jesus responds to the crowds with a rhetorical question about sin. (You need to think about what the Lord tells us here about the nature of sin and how we must approach it.)
2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no!
But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
Were these who died at the hand of Pilate worse sinners? NO.
The Messiah then addresses a local disaster, a recent act of God well-known to Jerusalem.
4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?
5 I tell you, no!
But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
‘Unless WE REPENT,’ the Messiah’s listeners must have thought? This rabbi preaches the same message as John the Baptizer and the Prophets of old.
Then in typical His typical teaching technique, Jesus tells a symbolic parable to illustrate his point that we must repent or we will also perish.
The fig tree, an ancient symbol of life in Israel and the middle east, represents prosperity, peace and righteousness throughout the Bible.
Parable of the Fig Tree
6 Then he told this parable:
“A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any.
No life in the tree, no prosperity for the owner of the vineyard, no peace here in Jerusalem where fig trees blossom and bear fruit.
7 Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard,
‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?’
The Son of Man, the Messiah has been sowing righteousness in the land for three years. Does Jesus ask this crowd of Jews (keeper of God’s vineyard), ‘Why has your faith not yielded fruit?’
Some Jews have believed and followed their Messiah. A faithful servant in God’s vineyard would plea for mercy for the vine. So his repentant answer would ask the Owner of the vineyard for mercy. He will promise to do his Lord’s work of righteousness once more.
8 “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’”
You too will all perish
There’s something about disaster and death which gets demands our attention: our own mortality.
Any story of suffering and sudden death of others reminds us of our own helpless before Almighty God. And some will recall their own past sins and immediacy of repentance.
One recent story of annual flooding in Jerusalem reminds us of the suddenness of the expected. These events often reveal the heritage of our past in addition to the mortality of its victims.
DISASTERS! “But unless you repent, you too will all perish.
Siloam was an area just outside the walls of Jerusalem on the southeast side of the city. A spring-fed pool was there, which was the scene of one of Christ’s miracles (John 9). The tower of Siloam may have been part of an aqueduct system or a construction project that Pilate had begun. In any case, the tower fell, and eighteen people were killed in the catastrophe.
I could have chosen pictures & NEWS from just this month, February 2020, even from contemporary Jerusalem where Jesus addressed sin and disaster in speaking of both the tower and pool of Siloam.
Refugees of natural disasters, even so common as annual hurricanes or typhoons (as pictured here from 2013 in the Philippines) remind us that our earthly home is temporary. The displaced ships in Luzon Philippines (above) are part of a witness by Pastor BERMIE DIZON who lived there at the time. He witnesses comparison to Jesus’ teachings about the tower and pool of Siloam.
“I was only a few miles away from the volcano, Mt. Pinatubo when it exploded in 1991. At that very moment of explosion, I really thought my family and I will die buried like those in the ancient city of Pompeii.
Pastor Bermie Dizon of GCI Ministries, Luzon Philippines bermiedizon.com/disasters/
I ask the same question of Jesus of those who perished in the fall of the Tower of Siloam:
Contemporary application by paraphrase of Jesus’ questions
“Do you think that these FILIPINOS were more sinful than all the other FILIPINOS because they suffered these things?
3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well.
“Or those two thousand killed by the #Coronavirus —do you think they were more sinful than all the other people who live in China and other places in this world?
5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well.”
Therefore, feed your faith
“‘… Perhaps it will produce fruit next year, but if not, you can cut it down.’”
Luke 13:9 CSB – Jesus’ Parable of the Barren Fig Tree
God-willing we will return to the pool of Siloam in John 9.
To be continued...
