July 4, 2022 — Welcome To The Book Of Numbers

Here’s an exciting book, where we all go camping with the Lord. What lessons we can learn!

Numbers? Is this a book about numbers? Well, not exactly. The Hebrews gave this book a title from the fourth word, “in the wilderness” (Num 1:1), calling it Bemidbar. It was called “Numbers” after the Greek and Latin versions because the book begins in Chapter 1 with a census of all the men of fighting age in the nation, listed tribe by tribe. It concludes in Chapter 26 with another census of the new generation who are getting ready to enter the Promised Land. We have already seen that Genesis is the book of beginnings, Exodus is the book of redemption, and Leviticus is the book about worship. Now Numbers is going to describe the 38-year journey of the Israelites from place to place in the desert—after they encamped for two years at Mount Sinai. In this case, we don’t have to wonder whether the lessons to be learned are obviously for us, because we are told just that! Negatively, they were put down for our warning: “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor 10:11). Positively, they were recorded for our learning: “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Rom 15:4). The trek from Egypt to entering the land of Canaan only took eleven days, but because the people lost faith in the Lord to lead them in, they were left to wander until all of that adult generation died, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, the two spies who believed God. The wanderings weren’t God’s will for them, but the 11-day journey was—to teach them (and us) that, when they only had God in the desert, God is always enough.

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