Vindication and Encouragements

‘The next day Moses entered the tent and saw that Aaron’s staff, which represented the tribe of Levi, had not only sprouted but had budded, blossomed and produced almonds.’ Numbers 17:8

Today, we see God’s powerful work of preparation working in a completely different way. A way that none of us finds easy.

A sense of tedious discouragement marks the middle part of Numbers (chapters 15-21), as we wait over a period of forty years for the ‘older generation’ to die, having failed to believe God and enter into their inheritance.

Nevertheless, there are encouragements. Two rebellions against Moses’ leadership fail and (in the story cited above), the Lord vindicates Aaron as the high priest. God continues to provide his people with food and water, and when two local ‘kings’ muster their armies and attack, both are defeated.

God’s many dramatic interventions in the two years leading up to the crisis at the border contrast with the long forty years of waiting that follow that crisis. But watch how God is working in both periods. His work of perfection is seen in the slow waiting over four decades as he prepares the new generation to trust and believe him, where their parents didn’t.

We see this in the structure of Numbers. Numbers 26 introduces the second part of the book with a second census, and from then on, every issue where the older generation failed is revisited. We watch the children’s generation obey where their parents failed.

So Numbers 26-36 serves as a correction to Numbers 1-25 in the sense that it shows us what should have happened. In Numbers 26-36 there is not one single rebellion against God, no one complains, no mistake is made, no one dies.

So we can see a crucially important principle at work. The Lord prepares us to enter into and participate in our inheritance through times of great activity in the Spirit, and also through long periods of waiting.