Let me start off today’s post by asking you a question.
If you were to pick one of the greatest moments in Scripture history, which event would you choose?
Would it maybe be the Creation story in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis?
Or would it possibly be the Great Flood when God destroyed all of mankind and started over with Noah and his family?
Or how about the splitting of the Red Sea?
Surely we cannot overlook that awesome event.
Or how about the Exodus when the Lord with a mighty hand practically destroyed Pharaoh’s kingdom and freed Israel from slavery in Egypt?
Surely we can’t overlook that event either.
Truthfully, I wouldn’t object to any of the answers given above.
And, at this juncture, I can also hear a chorus of voices raising up in protest saying NO, the advent of Yeshua and his ministry is without a doubt the greatest event in all of Scriptural history.
Well, I wouldn’t object to that answer either.
The answers to the question I posed will vary depending on the person.
However, what I find interesting is that when I pose the question of “Which Scripture event do you think is the most awesome?“, I’ll get a bunch of different answers…
…but the one answer I rarely ever hear is the one answer I’m about to give you right now.
What do you think it might be?
Let me give you a hint.
Given that we’re now fast approaching end of the Book of Numbers, let me ask you this.
What would you say has been the main theme of the Book of Numbers?
Because I think that the answer to that question also happens to be the answer to the question I posed to you all at the beginning of this post.
Here’s the answer:
Ultimately, the Book of Numbers is all about Israel’s possession of the Promised Land.
That’s right folks!
Without a doubt I think this event ranks right up there at the very top of the list of the most awesome events ever to take place in Scripture.
What we’re witnessing here in the final chapter of the Book of Numbers is the realization of a 600-year old covenant that God made with Abraham.
A covenant that said Abraham’s descendants would be given a land of their own which they would possess FOREVER!
Let’s just think about this for a minute here.
Understand that up until this point in the Torah, the Israelites had always been a people minus a country of their own.
From the moment when God commanded Abraham to pick up and leave the land where he was born and raised and separate himself from his countrymen and his family…
…Abraham and all the Hebrews born from him would for centuries be just resident aliens wherever they went.
Sure, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did spend time in various parts of Canaan, but they were still residing there as “foreigners“.
They were still as house guests who lived in Canaan at the pleasure of the ruling Canaanites who owned and controlled the land at the time.
Once Abraham accepted HASHEM’s invitation (at the time Abraham only knew the Lord as the “God of the Mountain” or EL SHADDAI), he became instantly locked into the blessings of the covenant, a covenant which guaranteed a place for him and his descendants to live forever…
…a place that would be his own, and finally a place he could call “home” where he and his kin would no longer be considered foreigners.
However, before that event would become a reality, Israel would spend over 400 years in Egypt.
Yet in spite of being IN Egypt a mighty long time, Israel was never OF Egypt.
Whether they were treated well or bad, the Hebrews still lived in Egypt at the pleasure of the Egyptians.
Even Joseph, who rose to become the second most powerful man in all of Egypt, never considered Egypt his home.
We know this because Joseph ordered that his mummified body be taken to the Land of Canaan on that incredible day when Israel exited Egypt for the last time.
In the beginning Israel was warmly welcomed by Egypt and given a territory of their own they could live in.
Yet from the beginning they never really did fit in with the Egyptians.
The local Egyptian population gradually became aware that the Hebrews weren’t really a part of Egypt.
In their eyes, the Hebrew people began to look different and odd.
It didn’t happen overnight.
As I said, in the beginning the Hebrews were welcomed and the Egyptians even took to adopting some of the Hebrew ways (and vice versa), yet the acute awareness that the Hebrews were different and separate remained.
Over decades of time the separateness and different-ness of the Israelites began to irritate the Egyptians.
And then over more decades of time, the separateness and different-ness of the Hebrews turned from irritation into outright bitterness and violent hostility.
It was this violent hostility that resulted in the Hebrews being made into slaves.
At this point in history, God chose to act and sent Israel a savior in the form of Moses to rescue them and bring them to a land they could call their own.
There is something interesting I want you to notice about the story of Israel and their coming into a land of their own.
I believe every believer also goes through a similar journey of bondage to sin to be being freed from slavery to sin and then being brought to the Promised Land.
We’ll talk about this next time.
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