Deuteronomy 2

v1-3: It was during this time of wandering the deserts of Seir that “God not only disciplined” Israel “because of their grumbling and unbelief, but also prepared them for Canaan by humbling them for their sin and teaching them to put to death their sinful desires, to follow God, and to gain encouragement and strength from him.” The wilderness of life in this world for a believer is time for preparing “our souls for heaven.”

v4-7: The Israelites were to do business with the Edomites “as neighbours,” by buying “food and water from them,” and paying “for what they bought.” The all-sufficient God had given Israel “the means to pay for what” they needed. We are not to use any “underhand ways of getting by.”

v8-23: Israel was warned “not to provoke the Moabites or Ammonites to war” nor to “dispossess them or even disturb their possessions.” The reason for this was “because the land they possessed was given them by God, and it was not his will that Israel should possess it.” God both “gives and preserves outward blessings” to unbelievers, to teach His people “that these are not the best things,” and “that he has better things in store for his own.”

v24-37: God rewards the Israelites “for their obedience by giving them possession of the country of Sihon king of the Amorites.” We see from this that “if we abstain from what God forbids, we will receive what he promises and will eventually not lose out because of our obedience, even through it may at times seem at present to mean that we do lose.” God “will see us right in the end.”

Deuteronomy 3

v1-11: If people “are not woken up by the judgments of God on others but persist” in their rebellion against God, they are “heading for the same judgment on themselves.”

v12-20: The two and half tribes were not to rest in the land they had been allotted, until their brothers and sisters were resting too. We are all members of one body, the church, and so we should do “what we can toward” the good of one another. It is not right for us to be selfish and only be concerned with pleasing ourselves.

v21-22: “Those who are older and experienced in the service of God should do all they can to strengthen the hands of those who are younger and setting out on the adventure of faith.”

v23-29: It is possible for us to find ourselves “disciplined by the signs of God’s wrath in this world,” by being “denied some particular favour which [our] hearts are set on” even after we have been “rescued from the coming wrath.” This is because “God is a gracious, tender, loving Father,” who “disciplines his children when they do wrong” for their good.