Numbers

God answers our questions.

God answers our questions.

NUMBERS 36

After God instituted the inheritance rules for women (in response to the request of Zelophehad’s daughters), the family heads of their tribe came to Moses with a concern over the "unintended consequences" of such a rule. They were concerned that if the women married men from another tribe, the land would become the property of their husbands, thereby passing the land from one tribe to another. Theoretically, over time, one or two tribes could potentially amass a good deal of land through marriage.

God is a refuge!

God is a refuge!

NUMBERS 35

There is a beautiful analogy about God in this chapter of Numbers. If a person had unintentionally killed another person, the cities of refuge provided a place for them to flee when they were being pursued by the "avenger." If the "avenger" found them outside the city, they could be killed, thus "avenging" the death. But if the person made it to the city of refuge, they could request a trial. If found innocent, they would be allowed to stay in the city. If they were found guilty, however, they would be turned away from the city.

God is the landowner.

God is the landowner.

NUMBERS 34

I’m having an awe-filled moment with God right now. I love this little chapter. I just love the straightforwardness of it. It’s God, simply spelling out to His people the land they will inherit in Canaan. He plots out the land for them with no ceremony, no pomp, no fanfare. What I absolutely love about this is, the Canaanites were living in this land. Undoubtedly, they thought the land belonged to them. They thought they were the rightful inhabitants. They were wrong.

God travels forward.

God travels forward.

NUMBERS 32

So, the Israelites are again poised to enter the Promised Land, when the Reubenites and Gadites come to Moses and request to settle where they already are, outside the border of Canaan. After Moses makes sure they don’t intend to desert their Israelite brothers in the effort to drive out the Canaanites from the land, Moses makes the deal to let them have the land on the other side of the Jordan as their inheritance.

God listens when we speak.

God listens when we speak.

NUMBERS 30

There is a very simple point in this chapter: God listens when we speak. Our words are important to Him. And He wants us to take our words as seriously as He takes them.

Nowadays, business is run on the basis of written contracts. If you have to take a business partner to court, the court will make a judgment based on the terms of the signed contract. With little exception, what is contained in "the four corners of the contract" determines the outcome of the case.

God wants us to be happy.

God wants us to be happy.

NUMBERS 29

There’s an interesting observation to be made in Numbers 29. Here, we find instructions for three religious festivals that the Israelites were to observe in the seventh month. Actually, this was a very practical thing, because this was the time of year between harvest and seed-time, so it was the perfect opportunity for the people to slow down and attend to worship.

God has expectations of us.

God has expectations of us.

NUMBERS 28

Before the Israelites entered the Promised Land, once again, God went through His expectations of them regarding the offerings and sacrifices they were to bring to Him at the sanctuary. This included daily offerings, Sabbath offerings, monthly offerings, and sacrifices to be offered during The Passover and The Festival of Weeks. With daily, weekly, monthly, and  annual sacrifices prescribed, it sounds like God wanted the Israelites to come see Him often.

God champions women's rights.

God champions women's rights.

NUMBERS 27

Long before there was the National Organization of Women, there was God. In this chapter, the daughters of a man named Zelophehad came to Moses to plead their case: their father had died, never having had any sons, and under the current rules of ownership in Israel, they would be left without any land inheritance. So they said, "Why should our father’s name disappear from his clan because he had no son? Give us property among our father’s relatives." (vs 4)

God means what He says.

God means what He says.

NUMBERS 26

Just before entering the Promised Land, God had Moses take another census of the Israelites — men over the age of one month. And the census ends with this declaration: "These are the ones counted by Moses and Eleazar the priest when they counted the Israelites on the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho. Not one of them was among those counted by Moses and Aaron the priest when they counted the Israelites in the Desert of Sinai. For the Lord had told those Israelites they would surely die in the wilderness, and not one of them was left except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun." (vs 63-65)

God is fair.

God is fair.

NUMBERS 25

If you’ve already read the chapter for today, you might be wondering how you can find the "fairness" element in it. It’s a pretty gruesome chapter. The men of Israel went off whoring with some Moabite women — who subsequently took them to church in order to offer sacrifices to their god, Baal. What happened next wasn’t pretty: the ringleaders of this little jaunt were killed and publicly exposed, an Israelite man and Moabite woman were both run through with a sword and killed after acting in open defiance against the Lord’s command, and then a subsequent plague killed thousands of people.

God is not an elitist.

God is not an elitist.

NUMBERS 24

Sometimes, I get these tiny glimpses of God and see, once again, just how far removed He is from our human nature. I find Him acting in ways that are totally contrary to how I would act, and I’m in awe all over again! There was another such wonderful glimpse for me in this chapter. Balaam is still blessing Israel. By the time this chapter is over, he will have handed out seven blessings — ah, such a Biblical number!

God cannot be manipulated.

God cannot be manipulated.

NUMBERS 23

I love this! Right on the heels of yesterday’s blog, God is not a manipulator, comes today’s message: Neither can He be manipulated by others! Both of these are important, right? We don’t want God to be someone who pulls puppet strings and manipulates us. But neither do we want Him to be someone that we can push around.

God is not a manipulator.

God is not a manipulator.

NUMBERS 22

Here’s what I love about this chapter: it proves that God is not a manipulator. He’s not a control freak. He doesn’t stack His own deck. How do I know that? The story of Balaam shows just how few options God really had for "prophets." Prophets are the people who are supposed to be in tune with God, the ones who will listen to  Him. And what do we find in Numbers 22? A donkey was more attuned to God’s presence than Balaam: "When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road with a drawn sword in his hand, it turned off the road into a field. Balaam beat it to get it back on the road." (vs 23)

God is the only Savior.

God is the only Savior.

NUMBERS 21

There’s no way to write a blog about Numbers 21 without talking about the poisonous snakes. Oh, the snakes. Here’s how the story reads: "Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, 'We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.' So Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses, 'Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.' So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived." (vs 6-9)

God has a tender heart.

God has a tender heart.

NUMBERS 20

In this chapter, we see part of what it means to say that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. It doesn’t mean that God arbitrarily punishes children who have wicked parents. It doesn’t mean that He "takes out His anger" over sins committed by the older generation on the younger generation. It does mean that the evil tendencies and influences that children grow up with have an effect on them too, and often, they repeat the same behaviors and hold the same attitudes as their parents. (Look no further than our own society for modern-day examples of this.)

God turns the abstract into concrete.

God turns the abstract into concrete.

NUMBERS 19

Right off the bat, I have to be honest. This was a weird chapter, and it was difficult to settle on what I was going to write about. It felt a little hard to "get my bearings" in this chapter. First of all, I don’t understand why the red heifer. After doing some research, the best I could find was that it may have been another repudiation of Egyptian custom and tradition. Apparently, the Egyptians regularly sacrificed red heifers in worship to their "evil god" Typhon. But that connection was somewhat tenuous, at best.

God gives the best gifts.

God gives the best gifts.

NUMBERS 18

After the blogs on defiance over the last week or so, I’ve been itching for a short and sweet blog. And Numbers 18 gives me the perfect opportunity for that. Nestled in amongst instructions to Aaron and the Levites about their priestly ministry in the sanctuary is this little nugget: "But only you and your sons may serve as priests in connection with everything at the altar and inside the curtain. I am giving you the service of the priesthood as a gift." (vs 7)

God speaks sign language.

God speaks sign language.

NUMBERS 17

This chapter contains one of my favorite Bible verses. But I doubt it’s one that makes the usual "Top Ten" list of most-quoted Scripture: "The next day Moses entered the tent and saw that Aaron’s staff, which represented the tribe of Levi, had not only sprouted but had budded, blossomed and produced almonds." (vs 8)