You are faithful, "A Summary of Numbers"

The beauty of God's promises

Hannah Arendt says, "Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible". However, how possible can the future be when a promise is made by man, who does not control the future? But God who holds the future, can give us an assurance in his promises and this He does–not only in the book of Numbers–but all through our lives.

God made a promise to one man, Abraham that out of him there will come a nation, more numerous than the stars and out of this Nation will come a seed who will bless the whole world forever (Gen 12).

The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. 3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” Gen 12:1-3

This promise of a Nation, involved not only a people, it involved a land, a system of government and a promised blessed seed. The people God chose were named Israel (Gen 32:27-18)), the Land was designated to be Canaan (Gen 15:18),  their leader was to be God Himself (Eco 3:10) and the promised seed was to be a God-man, who will remove the curse of sin from mankind (Gen 3:14-19) and become the source of blessing for the world. 

Now this is quite a promise to fulfill, as I like to say it was a God-sized promise that only He could fulfill. The big question is, was this promise conditional on how His chosen people acted towards Him?  Like a man in love, was his promise to his bride "till death do us?"…or was it more…"as long as you make me happy and do all I say, then I will love and bless you with all I have promised?". 

C.S. Lewis answers this for us in his book Mere Christianity, when he says, "A promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry.” In the same way, God's promise was unconditional, it was based on what God could do and would do, it was based on His unfailing love and not on the people, the object of His love.

So In Numbers we see how God fulfills this promise step by step. He molds this rebellious people in the desert, teaching them to obey Him. The book of Numbers, begins with a census of the fighting men (Chapt 1-4) and after 40 years of training, the book ends with another census (Chapt 26-36), this time the second generation of Israel are now ready to enter and possess the promised land*. The promise of a people under God is coming to light and God continues to work out His promise, by giving them a land they can call their own. 

The book ends when Israel is on the brink of entering into the promised land, and another book Deuteronomy begins as the Lord through Moses takes another opportunity to prepare them for their new life in Him. 

Our next book Deuteronomy is a book of remembrance and encouragement-reminding Israel of how they are to behave as people under God, offering them a remembrance of God's faithfulness through their history and encouraging them of God's continued faithfulness to them in the future-this is actually one of my favorite books in the Old Testament…Why? Well join me for the next few weeks as we journey through the stories of Deuteronomy and see how God, as a faithful lover fulfills His promise to Israel and eventually to the world.

 

So we can take away from the book of Numbers that, although Israel like us, are a rebellious people, our God is faithful to the end. We now know that God did not only fulfill the promise of a chosen people, and land to Israel but we live at a time in history when He has fulfilled the promise of the blessed seed.

This promise seed which was to come from the line of David, came in the person of Jesus Christ (Mat 1:1-16), He indeed removed the curse bestowed on us by Adam (1 Cor 15:22). 

22 Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life.-1 Cor 15:22

So trust Him my friend, and be assured that unlike man, God can make your future sure and reliable based on the hope found in His promise to you, if you would believe. Out of the over 3,500 promises in the Bible made by God to us, I leave you with one today, be encouraged because the Lord God says, "For I hold you by your right hand—
I, the Lord your God.
 And I say to you,
‘Don’t be afraid. I am here to help you"-Isaiah 41:13...now this is true comfort for the soul.

Next time we jump into Deuteronomy but until then…Read…Share…and be comforted.

* NKJV Nelson Study Bible, Summary of Numbers, 226.