Last Sunday I preached the Aaronic Blessing, one of the richest passages in all of Scripture. It is the blessing Yahweh commanded the priests to pronounce over Israel, likely as the people departed from the tabernacle after presenting their offerings. The blessing consists of three lines, two of which speak of God's face turned toward …
Let those who fear you turn to me,that they may know your testimonies. Psalm 119:79 ESV In the preceding verses, the psalmist has made a series of appeals to God. In verse 76, he asked for God's steadfast love to comfort him. In verse 77, he pleaded for God's mercy, that he might live. And …
Continue reading Let Those Who Fear You Turn to Me | Psalm 119:79
Clinger. Clutcher. Grabber. The ESV footnote says that Jacob's name means 'to take by the heel' or 'he cheats.' If we called him Grasper, he certainly lived up to the name. While Esau let go of his birthright for a bowl of soup, Jacob clutched it away from his brother's hand. Then came Isaac's deathbed …
Continue reading Blessed: The Aaronic Blessing | Numbers 6:22-27
I haven't seen Christopher Nolan's Odyssey. I don't know if I will. The internet seems divided. Some call it one of Nolan's greatest achievements; others call it a desecration of Homer. I suspect the truth is somewhere between those extremes. Great artists have always reimagined great works, and viewers have always been free to embrace …
Continue reading Whether You See the Movie or Not, Read the Book
God is preparing His people for the Promised Land, and so far in Numbers, Israel has been counted, centered, guarded, assigned, and cleansed. As we have noted, these chapters have come in pairs. Chapters 1 and 2 concerned the whole congregation of Israel. Chapters 3 and 4 narrowed the focus to the Levites. Now, chapters …
Continue reading Consecrated: The Nazarite Vow | Numbers 6:1-21
Yahweh is preparing His people to enter the Promised Land. That is the big idea for all of Numbers 1-10. And He is not simply getting them ready for possession but for invasion. Four hundred years prior, God promised to give Canaan to Abraham's family, but He did not do so in the patriarch's day. …
Numbers 4 must be understood in the context of Numbers 1-10, which is primarily about Yahweh preparing Israel to be His earthly army, paralleling His heavenly army. That preparation began in Numbers 1 with the first census. God's people needed to be counted, both counted in for the privileges and counted on for the responsibilities. …
Continue reading Assigned: The Work of the Levites | Numbers 4
We come now to the final set of virtues. The first three we called the rooted disposition of a fruitful marriage. The next three are its visible expression. These last three round out the list with enduring fortitude because the connective fiber between these three is that they are lasting and enduring virtues. They are …
Continue reading Enduring Fortitude: Faithfulness, Meekness, Self-Control
The overall purpose of Numbers 1-10 is that Yahweh is organizing and preparing Israel to be His earthly hosts. They are to be His earthly army through whom He will enact His judgment upon the Canaanites. So far, the first two chapters have given us the number and focus of the whole congregation. In Numbers …
Why is the Bible so full of chiasms? A chiasm, we should recall, is a literary mountain, where the emphasis is placed upon the center and everything before and after that center parallel with one another. We observed a number of chiasms last year during our study of Leviticus, which is chiastically structured around chapter …
B. C. Newton 