Deuteronomy 4:21-22

Deu. 4:21, 22. In this Moses was a type of Christ. God was angry with Moses for their sakes. So God was, as it were, angry with Christ for our sakes. He bore the wrath of God for our sakes. Our iniquities were laid upon Christ. Our guilt lay upon Him, and so He in some respect partook of our guilt. So Moses partook of the guilt of the children of Israel when by their rebellion they provoked his spirit, so that he "spake unadvisedly with his lips." And Moses was, as it were, a sacrifice for them; he died in the wilderness, and they lived and went out to possess the good land, as in verse 22. Moses mentions this as an instance of God's mercy to the people, as is evident by the foregoing verse, and by verse 22 - "But ye, " etc., God was pleased so greatly to testify His displeasure against Moses's sin, though he but lightly partook of the sin of the congregation, as utterly to refuse to suffer him to go over and possess the good land, and yet to suffer them, the children [of Israel] of that generation, who partook more largely of their fathers' sin, to go over. God insisted on having a great outward manifestation of His displeasure against the sin of that congregation. The death of so great a person and so holy a person as Moses, the head of the congregation (who only was nearly related to them, and lightly partook of the evil of that degenerate time), was so; as God, in a time of public judgment, is pleased sometimes to slay the righteous with the wicked, whereby there is so much greater and more awful testimony of His displeasure to the world (Ezekiel 21:3; Ezekiel 21:4). God thus slaying Moses and not suffering him to go in to the good land, God looked on the outward manifestation of wrath by this means to be sufficient without slaying the congregation, and so the younger generation were spared, and suffered to go in to the good land. Thus Moses's death was a kind of atonement for the congregation as to temporal judgment and manifestation of God's wrath in this world, and so he was an eminent type of Christ.