Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we drop back in on Moses' speech to the new generation of Israelites before they enter the

promised land. This is his final locker room talk. He's recounting all the

ways they've made bad plays in the past, and he's going over the plays they want to execute well in the

future. He tells them that the wilderness was a test to refine them, and it's clear that the

promised land will be a test as well. It's not some kind of end game for them, some kind of reward where they can just

kick back and do whatever they want. They personally won't retain the land unless they respond to

God's covenant promise by worshiping him alone. The promised land is just another part of God's process

to restore wicked humanity in relationship with himself. And he knows how this next step will turn out,

too. He's not testing them for his sake. He's testing them for their sake. This generation had yet

to encounter anything that was really a result of their own actions. They had to endure at least a

portion of the 38 years of wilderness that their parents received as punishment, but they

weren't complicit in the rebellion at Kadesh-Varnaya. So this wasn't a punishment for them,

even though they had to endure it just like their parents did. I'm sure it felt like punishment

at times, but it wasn't in response to anything they had done. For them, it was discipline.

It was training and how to respond to hardship and how to

trust God. It's important to make a distinction between punishment and discipline. And in fact,

for those of us who know Christ, all our punishment has been absorbed by him on the cross.

If you've been adopted into God's family, you are his forever,

and you can rest assured that he is never punishing you. He might be disciplining you as any good

father does, but you will never, ever, ever see his wrath. Not ever. Christ absorbed it all on the

cross. It's not that we don't deserve punishment. We

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