Big themes that I noticed in Numbers: 1. God is faithful. 2. God is serious about His glory and His people showing it. (Side note: I listened to a Mark Driscoll sermon on the way down about Jesus and His glory. Great sermon and it kind of made me laugh because I totally expected some stuff from the New Testament to get a look forward at some of this. Nope. He spoke on 2 Corinthians 3... it totally rehashes the Law... which is what I have been reading for a week... which was actually kind of cool to see him lay some of it out. But that's beside the point. The point is he gave a definition of glory at the beginning of the sermon and I realized that I haven't really done that. So when I get a chance I'm going to write down how he defined it for you guys. Sorry, kind of a long side note.) Okay, Numbers: 1. God is faithful. 2. God is serious about His glory and His people showing it. Here's why I think that.
The book starts out with a bunch of censuses. That shows how faithful God is because of His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He said that He would make them into a great nation. Well at this point I think they are like 700 years from that promise and God has made one old couple who had a son when they were about 100, into a nation of what looks like about 1.5 million people (603,550 men over 20, not including the Levites). The thing that I found interesting is that God keeps killing a ton of Israelites at a time. At the golden calf incident, He killed 3,000 men (Exodus 32:28). At Korah's rebellion (Numbers 16), He kills almost all of Korah's family and his cohorts families. Then consumes 250 other Levites that were involved with fire. The next day the rest of the people were grumbling, so God puts a plague on them. When Aaron and Moses finally sacrifice to atone for their sin, God has already killed 14,700 of them. So God keeps killing off all of these people... yet they still grow into a great and mighty nation. I thought that was interesting.
It also brings me to the second thing that I noticed. God is serious about His glory and His people showing it. There are quite a few instances in Numbers in which people rebel, grumble, disobey God. He does not take those things lightly. I just showed you some of them. Here are a few more that point directly to someone making something else out to be greater than God. This is one that I didn't put in the last section but probably should go there. At Peor the Israelites start to get into Baal worship. From seeing the first chunk of the Ten Commandments, we should no that is a big deal to God. So He starts a plague. It kills 24,000 people! So Eleazar's son, Phinehas sees the Midianite woman (apparently she is causing this is some way because the plague stops after she dies), takes a spear and puts it right through her and the guy that brought her there. Normally I would think, 'This is one of those instances where the guy went too far. He shouldn't have speared them should he have?' After this, God tells Moses that He's giving His covenant of peace to Phinehas because "he was jealous with My jealousy among them." So this was good. It was pleasing to God that he gored those people. God doesn't like it when people look to something else as their God. There are a few more, but I'll just give the most blatant and and well-known example. In Numbers 20, Moses strikes a rock to get water from it when God told him to speak to it. Because of this, Moses cannot answer the promised land. It seems like an overreaction on God's part right? I mean it wasn't that big of a deal was it? This is God's reason, "Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel." So He's saying, I did this to show my greatness to my people and apparently you didn't think it was great enough. I saw a lot of God caring about people believing that He is the greatest good there is. Anytime someone acted otherwise, he either destroyed or punished them severely. Many examples. Read it. They are important.
One thing that I read and have read before and I just don't get is the story of Balaam. It starts in Numbers 22. Balaam is apparently a prophet of some sort (which I found very surprising that God speaks through someone not of Israel), and this kind, Balak tells him to curse Israel for him. Balaam says he can only do what the Lord tells him too, and so he blesses them a bunch. Those blessings are actually pretty cool because it's like, "These people are great. There God is great." Proclaiming God's glory again. But I've always heard that Balaam kind of screwed Israel at the end and told Balak, just intermarry with them and it will destroy them. I saw that happen, but I didn't see Balaam telling them too. Actually his last oracle seemed like he was prophesying about Jesus. I might be way off. I'm not a scholar, that's just what it looked like to me. But I never saw him tell them that. Apparently he did do something wrong though, because later when they destroy the city, it says they kill Balaam. But I didn't see it. If anyone else did, let me know where.
Lastly, I need to say this again. I'm not going to cite God's control as much as I was because it is EVERYWHERE. It will take quite a bit to convince me that God is not completely in control of everything at this point. The Bible says He is over and over again. The people believe it to be true in the way that they talk. Even pagan nations speak like they know it is God doing these things. If you see something that says otherwise, talk to me so I can understand and praise God more accurately. Thank you.
I know this was kind of sloppy. I've had two hours of sleep in the last 2 days about. I just am so eager to get to Deuteronomy, I didn't want to leave this hanging. I'm salivating thinking about the rest of the book. I look through to kind of see what's coming my way, and I'm so excited. Again, let my excitement, my thoughts, even my wrongness if you see it, be a challenge for you to read and learn more accurately who God is and what He is like.
For His glory,
Mitchell
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