If Exodus is the face of the Pentateuch turning away from Egypt, Numbers is the turning to the Promised Land. How painful it is sometimes for us to leave what we love behind to follow Love into the wilderness.This series is not a verse-by-verse study of the Book of Numbers; it is a study of the human heart as he learns to leave behind the good of the world for the greatest good:
Duties of the Priesthood: how they must serve the Lord
The celebration of the Second Passover
Israel's fall and the Forty Years of wandering
Rebelling against God
The Test of the Rods and the awful punishment
The death of Aaron
The Snake of Bronze
Balaam the Prophet
The Seventh Month and the First War
Settlement in the Transjordan and final instructions
Numbers is a journey, a long and difficulty, often tragic journey (when seen from man's perspective) of a people who did the impossible: leave behind a land they had settled in for four hundred years and walk into the wilderness towards a war of conquest, a conquest of the Promised Land.If you were an Israelite, would you have liked to leave behind the familiar chores of Egypt -- especially after the ten plagues that had decimated the Egyptians and incapacitated their military power? Goshen, it must be remembered, was unharmed from the plagues and the Israelites could have lived a comfortable life in Goshen.The Lord, the mighty one, brings them out of Egypt into the wilderness and promises He would be by their side during the conquest of Canaan.They don't believe him. How many of us would?Exodus is not a human journey then, for we are all too familiar with man's tendency to sin, fall, betray, steal, lie and kill; the world is filled with stories recounting man's fall. Numbers is the book of the fidelity, constancy and love of the Lord who stays with Israel all through the forty years and never ceases to lead them. Throughout this study, we gain a deeper and more incisive knowledge of the constant presence of God next to us. He is here, he listens, and he rules. "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life," says the Lord in John 14:6. Numbers echoes these words and shows us how God is the way, the life and the truth.Numbers, teaches us about God's way, God's love and his unassailable Truth.
