Can we doubt that children all too often share in the consequences of their parents’ decisions? When Mom takes a better job in a new town, everyone has to move, but everyone shares the benefits that come with her higher salary. When Dad drinks too much, both Mom and the kids go through the trauma of his alcoholism. When Mom and Dad split up, the kids share the heartbreak and bear the emotional scars.

The children mentioned in today’s passage were no different. Their parents had gone through a crisis of faith and had decided not to trust in God after all. And so, because their parents were afraid to go into the land which God had promised to give them, the children had to wander for 40 years in the desert (v. 33), even though they hadn’t taken part in their parents’ sin.

That’s a bit of a shock to us individualistic Americans, isn’t it? We tend to be so focused on our own interests and desires, so interested in pursuing our own rights that we often forget our responsibilities to those around us. But passages like this one, along with our own experience, prove that, in one way or another, those closest to us will inevitably feel the effects of our actions. The sobering reality is that when one member of a family or a congregation is cut, we all bleed.

But we also find good news in this passage. For if the children had to wait for forty years because of their parents’ sin, they also weren’t excluded from the Promised Land because of that sin. In other words, while their parents may have delayed the blessings God had for them, they could not keep them from eventually receiving those blessings.

And the same thing is still true today – our past cannot forestall our future. Those who weren’t reared in a Christian home are still called to put their trust in God, regardless of their parents’ faithlessness. And all those who come to Christ in faith, regardless of their upbringing, will find grace and forgiveness for their sins. They will experience the presence of God that their parents rejected (v. 31).

So, let’s accept God’s gracious pardon, trusting Christ as Savior and bowing the knee to Him as Lord, not only for our sake, but for the sake of those who are watching us.

Numbers 14:31-35 (ESV)

31 But your little ones, who you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected.
32 But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness.
33 And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness.
34 According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.’
35 I, the LORD, have spoken. Surely this will I do to all this wicked congregation who are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall come to a full end, and there they shall die.”