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READ: NUMBERS 13\u201314\n\n\n\nNumbers\u2014funny name for a book, don\u2019t you think? Five of its thirty-six chapters contain lists of people. But most of this book records the story of a people on the move. The best part of Numbers? We find God\u2019s loving intervention in the lives of His people, over and over again.\n\n\n\nNumbers not only includes records of people and lists of ceremonial regulations, it also contains stories. Have you ever heard the story of a flashing sword, a shining angel, and a talking donkey? It\u2019s in chapters 22-25, and it involves blessings and curses, bribes and greed. In this passage, and throughout the whole book of Numbers, we discover the underlying theme of God\u2019s unceasing goodness, His personal interaction, and His abiding care for His people. He plans good things for them, even when they are ungrateful, stubborn, and faithless.\n\n\n\nGod\u2019s plan for His people, the Israelites, was to give them a home\u2014the Promised Land. And this was crucial. For from this nation would arise His Son\u2014the Savior, Jesus. And Jesus would be the perfect Israel that the Israelites could never be\u2014 faithful, loving, and sinless. God\u2019s strategy all along was ultimately to provide the way of salvation for His people through Jesus\u2019s death and resurrection. And the book of Numbers is part of His rescue plan.\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s in Numbers that we get the inside story of how God\u2019s people responded to Him in defiance, faithlessness, and fear right on the borders of their Promised Land. We learn how that broke God\u2019s heart, and then we see how He directed His people back into the desert to wander for forty years, until that faithless generation had died out.\n\n\n\nThen, we learn about how Joshua and Caleb finally led the people into the Promised Land, and we see God\u2019s undying faithfulness through it all. We learn how trustworthy God is, and how important it is for us to trust Him. His ways are good, and trusting and following Him is the best thing we can do. Today, if we know Jesus, He lives inside us through the Holy Spirit, helping us to faithfully follow our loving God. This treasure of a book has much to offer the student of the Word. May He reveal Himself to you as you read it! \u2022 Kristen Merrill\n\n\n\n\u2022 Which of the stories mentioned above sounds the most interesting to you? What questions do you have about them?\n\n\n\n\u2022 How could remembering the ways God has been faithful in the past (either in our own lives or in the lives of people in the Bible) help us trust Him to be faithful in the future?\n\n\n\n\u201cDo not rebel against the LORD, and don\u2019t be afraid\u2026 the LORD is with us!\u201d Numbers 14:9 (NLT)