AWAKE BIBLE IN A YEAR FEBRUARY 23
Read Leviticus 26-27, Numbers 1-2
“ ‘I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you. You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.”
Leviticus 26:9-12 NIV
The Israelites have God’s direction and presence and now they set out to obtain the promised land. The road trip route to the promise land: SINAI, PARAN, and then MOAB.
LESSONS WE CAN LEARN FROM THE WILDERNESS would be a good title for the book of numbers.
They start off pretty good, they are doing everything God commands. How tender, how sweet like my children when they were too young to consider rebellion.
What promise they begin with, and then like us, they will stumble and fall. And we will see the character and faithfulness of God.
As we read Numbers in light of the great deliverance from Egypt we will see our common struggles reflected in their wilderness. We can not forgot as we read there really is a promised land ahead. The same is true for us today. No matter the trials and how challenging the process, God will maintain mercy and faithfulness. I see this same God in the gift of Jesus. There is a prepared place for us ahead. Stay the course. Stay close to God.
He died that He might purchase for us glorious mansions. Therefore heaven is called not only a promised, but a “purchased possession,” Ephesians 1:14. Christ died for our preferment; He suffered that we might reign; He hung upon the cross that we might sit upon the throne. Heaven was shut: the cross of Christ is the ladder by which we ascend to heaven. His crucifixion is our coronation.
To bring us into favor with God. It is one thing for a traitor to be pardoned, and another thing to be made a favorite. Christ’s blood is not only called a sacrifice, whereby God is appeased, but a propitiation, whereby God becomes gracious and friendly to us. Christ is our mercyseat, from which God gives answers of peace to us. Thomas Watson
