Our Bible reading today picks up with the third book of the Bible – called Numbers in the English translations. Numbers continues the story of Exodus, with the Israelites on the way to the Promised Land. The divine intention was for the Israelites to arrive in the land, God give them a king and they await the coming of the King, Jesus Christ.
Remember that God’s plan to bring Jesus into the world involved three aspects: a people, a law, and a land (territory). The people now exist – Israel – by virtue of a law – the Law of Moses. God had promised Abraham to give him Palestine after his descendants stayed in a foreign land for 400 years (Genesis 15:13).
Numbers tells the story of the Israelites leaving Mount Sinai and moving toward Canaan. The first ten chapters deal with preparations for leaving. The nadir of the book is in chapters 13-14 when God sent the twelve spies to spy out the land. Ten came back with no faith in God’s power to fulfill His promise. When you don’t have faith, you don’t obey. The majority of the Israelites listened to the faithless and ignored the two still dedicated to God – Joshua and Caleb. To punish the Israelites’ disobedience, God made them wander in the wilderness for forty years.
We meet several interesting characters in Numbers – Korah, Dathan and Abiram and Balaam and Barak. But there are also heart-rending accounts of more disobedience before the God of heaven. The story of Numbers is one of unfaithfulness on the part of man contrasted with the faithfulness on the part of God. R. K. Harrison, in his classic Introduction to the Old Testament, writes about Numbers: “While God dwells in the midst of His people, His innate sanctity demands that any who approach Him do so through carefully prescribed rules” (pg. 634).
God would stay true to Himself because He has a plan to fulfill – bringing Jesus into the world. He can work with us or He will work without us. “If we are faithless, he remains faithful– for he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). Let us approach Him today through His carefully prescribed rules.
–Paul Holland