If you are looking for a reason why Moshe got punished for hitting the rock you can look in the many many sources that have that. Two great places to look are the Meshech Chachama who gives three very unique reasons and Rav Shimon Schwab who says that Moshe knew before hitting the rock that it would cause him to not be able to get into the land and he did it to save the Jews. But that is not what we are discussing now. My question is what does hitting a rock have any connection to not getting into the land. Well if you remember what I have spoken about the past few weeks you already know the answer. I said before that the real sin that the Jews did was not the meraglim and it was not the rebellion of Korach, it was that the Jews complained for meat. I spoke a fews ago about the Megaleh Amukos who said that a person can survive on just bread and water but when he eats other foods his body will require them. It is only when you begin to allow your tievah to get the better of you it will only get stronger, until you cannot live without your desires. This is what happened when the Jews ate the meat. As apposed to the Man which was a spiritual food in that it gave you only exactly the amount of nutrition you needed and no more the meat was just for pleasure. The Meshech Chachma explains that when the pasuk says (20:8) "... You shall bring forth for them water from the rock and give drink to the assembly and to their animals." The word "V'et" (and to) is a separation between the assembly and their animals. That the people were supposed to have spiritual drink of water while the animals where supposed to have a physical drinking. When Moshe spoke to rock only a little trickle of water came out, but that little bit would have been enough for he Jews to survive. By telling Moshe to hit the rock, leading to a lot of water bursting forth it allowed to them to drink until they were full, as the pasuk says (20:11) "Then Moshe raised his arm and struck the rock with his staff twice; abundant water came forth and the assembly and their animals drank." Although the difference cannot be seen in the English, in the Hebrew the word "V'et" is not in this pasuk, meaning that the drinking of the animals and the assembly was the same. Instead of the people getting a spiritual drink they got a physical one. Now, we know that the sin of the people was the complaining for meat. When they sinned (with the Meraglim, which as we explained before was only because of this new mentality of theirs) it led to them wanted more physical pleasure. If Moshe would have taught them the lesson now with the rock that we do not need to be physically full then the Jews could have learned that lesson they lost 38 years earlier when they wanted meat and they could have returned to the level they were on back at Har Sinai. With this failure it was not impossible at that point to fix that generation and for that reason Moshe could not enter the land because he had failed to bring the people back to that level. This teaches us that the main sin of the Jews in the Midbar was their desire instant gratification. We all know that if something is even one minute late that we get angry. We need to work on ourselves and try to remove this desire and hopefully we will be able to bring the final Geulah.
This issue connects directly to the attack of the snakes. Why did snakes attack us? We know from Parshat Beshalach when the Jews were leaving that snakes, scorpions, and wild animals surrounded them but the cloud kept them out. So now, after Aharon's death, and the disappearance of the cloud, why did only snakes get in? The reason is clear. As we know the snake (from Berieshit) represents the yetzer hara. Now when the Jews had the ability to return back to the level of Har Sinai they were tempted by the water, much like Chava with the Pri Eitz Hada'at. The snake represents them falling for their tievah, and that is why snakes were the only animal to come attack them.
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