In Deut 1.19–33, Moses recounts to the children of Israel on the plains of Moab how the covenant community (specifically, their parents’ generation) had refused to enter the promised land. It is part of Moses’s summary and commentary on some of the events chronicled in Num 10.1–14.10.

Accusations against God

In focus is the episode where ten of the spies who went ahead into the promised land returned to spread a rumor (Heb. דבה, Num 13.32), a faulty interpretation of what they saw. They told the children of Israel that the land was filled with people too strong to be overcome. They portrayed the inheritance of the land as impossible. They announced Israel’s defeat before the battles were engaged. Now, this generation had witnessed God’s wonders in the wilderness and heard from their parents of the destruction of Pharaoh’s army in the sea. Did they still lack sufficient understanding of God’s mighty works? Was there some poverty of imagination? Maybe for some of them. But the problem was deeper. Not only did they have too slight a conception of God’s ability to work in their favor, but they also doubted God’s willingness to do so. They accused God of bringing them out of Egypt for nefarious purposes: “Out of YHWH’s hatred for us did he bring us out of the land of Egypt in order to give us into the hand of the Amorites—in order to annihilate us” (Deut 1.27; cf. Num 14.2–3). At issue is not God’s power but his goodness and faithfulness.

Contrary to the spies’ rumor in the wilderness, God had in fact promised long before that Abraham’s offspring delivered from Egypt would be his sword of judgment against the very same Amorites (see Gen 15.16). From the beginning his intention was not to exterminate his people but to bless them and keep them in the light of his presence (cf. Num 6.24–26), that they might live with him in holiness and peace (cf. Deut 8.3; 30.20; 32.46–47). The spies’ rumor amounted to accusing God of lying, of reneging on his promise, of denying his covenant with Abraham.

The temptation that the children of Israel faced in that moment should sound familiar. Recall that the enemy serpent’s opening question to the first woman (Gen 3.1)—and the silent first man who was beside her (עמה, v. 6)—implied that God was withholding many good things from them. The enemy flatly contradicted God (v. 4) and sought to persuade them that God did not have his choicest creatures’ best interest at heart (v. 5). Such is the enemy’s tactic over and over again: he seeks to push people into a position of doubting the goodwill of God toward his image-bearers and the faithfulness of God in the covenant.

In the case of both the first man and woman and in the case of the children of Israel, the devil aimed to pull the people’s eyes off of God’s eternal purpose to be their source of life, to do good to them, to confirm them in beatitude, to share his glory with them forever. Such was his desire from before the foundation of the world, all through the administrations of the old covenant, and now.

The Accuser Silenced

We find the same temptation illustrated when the devil, the same enemy from Gen 3 (see Rev 12.9; 20.2), tested Jesus Christ our Lord, the last Adam and true Israel. Having just come up from the creation-like and exodus-like waters, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil (Matt 4.1//Mark 1.12–13//Luke 4.1–2). Jesus was recapitulating the covenantal history of the first man and the children of Israel; he was taking their place and filling out the pattern in which they had walked. In the wilderness, Jesus, too, was tempted toward the thought that God did not have his best interest at heart. “If you are the Son of God,” the devil began (Matt 4.3//Luke 4.3, italics added). Implied in that conditional clause is the question of whether God does or does not love Jesus as his Son. There is the shadow of a hint of a rumor of a doubt that God might not have Jesus’s best interest at heart. Jesus, the devil thinks, should be wondering whether a father who would call him to walk a road of hardship really loves him the way that he says he does. The devil is subtly accusing God of having lied when he said, “This is my Son, the one whom I love, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3.17; cf. Mark 1.11; Luke 3.22).

Jesus saw through the devil’s trick. Jesus never once entertained the thought that his Father didn’t love him. Even when Jesus most desired not to suffer in his humanity for the sake of his mission, he still knew that his Father had his best interest at heart. The moment when he said, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt 26.39; cf. Mark 14.36; Luke 22.42)—in that moment, “he was entrusting himself to the one who judges justly” (1 Pet 2.23). In his commitment to the will of the Father, he never doubted the Father’s commitment to him. The devil’s accusations always fell flat in his ears, and his answers were always resounding vindications of God’s goodness and faithfulness.

Silencing the Accuser Still

Now, because of Jesus—not only from his example but also from his work—we gain assurance of the goodness and faithfulness of God. He never doubted God, and his mission from God grounds our faith in that same God. Out of love the Father gave his Son to die for us (cf. John 3.16; Rom 8.32), and out of that same love the Son accomplished everything to bring us back to the Father (cf. John 17.4; 19.30; Heb 2.10).

The devil will continually try to make us reverse God’s intention in the midst of hardship. The devil’s tricks have not changed from what is revealed in the Scriptures. Our enemy will always try to make God seem indifferent to our suffering, or cold to our prayers, or withholding of good things, or even malicious in his temperament and intention. The devil will attempt to transform the God who is our very life into an evil despot who wishes to torture and exterminate us. But no, for all who trust in Christ, God is for us and has loved us from before the foundation of the world (see Eph 1.4). We have every assurance that hardship is not a sign of God’s punishment but a tool to make us more like Christ, who once did suffer but now is glorified forevermore (see Rom 5.3–5; James 1.2–4; 1 Pet 1.7; etc.).

God has not delivered us to exterminate us but to sanctify us—yes, very often through hardship—for eternal joy and fellowship with himself.