The Book of Numbers: Still “In the Wilderness”

The Book of Numbers: Still “In the Wilderness”

I really didn’t have the intention of going through the Old Testament when I started.  I’m not sure that is what will actually happen.  But at this point, I am still following the Israelites through the book of Numbers as they travel their trailway to the Promised Land!  God’s perfect way of doing things just intrigues me to keep studying!  It’s like a well-written mystery novel!  I already know how it is going to end; but the Man behind the writing has captured my heart and soul!

David Jeremiah reminds me in his introduction to Numbers, that they “were only 300 miles” from the land God had promised Abraham and his children.  Yet, it “took them 38 years” to get there!  Because of their disobedience to the LORD, “the Exodus generation” of adults over 30 never made it!  “The trip from Prison Land to the Promised Land was spiritual to the core. It was a test to see whether the Hebrews would trust Yahweh to meet their needs and deliver them safely to their new home in Canaan. The Exodus generation failed the test.”  (The Jeremiah Study Bible page 171)

In Exodus, we saw them come to Mount Sinai as Hebrew slaves that had just escaped Egyptian captivity.  In Leviticus, we watched as they completed the Tabernacle and all it’s furnishings and received God’s instructions that organized them into  tribes encamped specifically around the Tabernacle.  There they received God’s instructions for moral and civil laws for living as His Chosen People that would make them to be a light to the world.

In Numbers, we will follow as they finally break camp in the beginning of their second year of traveling. Before God gives them the sign to move on, He spoke to Moses and appointed “the children of Israel (to) keep the Passover at its appointed time.”  (Numbers 9:2 )  “And they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month, at twilight, in the Wilderness of Sinai;”  (Numbers 9:5)  “Now it came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, that the cloud was taken up from above the Tabernacle of the Testimony.  And the children of Israel set out from the Wilderness of Sinai on their journeys; then the cloud settled down in the Wilderness of Paran” (Number 10:11-12)

I hope you are reading with me in your Bible as we journey with the Israelites. I only write on a little of God’s Word.  There are so many details that I can’t write them all.  But they all are important words God intends for us to know and remember in our hearts.  Numbers and Deuteronomy have some of my favorite verses!    I can’t wait to be with you tomorrow!!

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