Numbers - When obedience changes, you rarely notice the impact until it's too late.

I never really spend much time in the Book of Numbers when I was younger. It never really made sense in the grand scheme of the Bible. Count the people, give them jobs. But then I started looking at it from the perspective that the Bible isn't an action narrative, God has a plan and He is trying to show us something.

The first 6 chapters is a lesson on obedience. Within the first 2 verses of the first 5 chapters "The Lord spoke to Moses, saying" appears. God spoke. Moses did.

In the middle of their journey to Canaan, the promised land, God stops the people in the middle of nowhere to take a census and to set up His temple. The important lesson in that is that God makes Himself a priority over our journey or what we think we need to do.

At the end of Leviticus, we see God making promises to His people, like

You shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand, and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. (Leviticus 26:3-13)

God tells Moses to send spies into Canaan, and only 2 come back and say that it is possible to take the land. (Leviticus 13:30)

Despite everything that God has done, the people rebel because of fear (Numbers 14:1-11)

Then God makes a declaration about who He is, and a warning to those who don't believe that He will do as he promises:

  But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it.
(Numbers 14:21-23 ESV)

   The sad thing about the book of Numbers is a cycle that you see over and over again in the Bible and in peoples lives. God does something amazing. The people forget and go their own way.

   A book that starts in obedience, and an amazing count of the number of people that left Egypt ends with a small number of people actually seeing the promise with their own eyes due to disobedience.

   Let us struggle to listen to what God says and remain obedient.