devotional post # 2223

Numbers 1:1

Num 1:1  Yahveh spoke to Moses in the desert of Sinai, in the conference tent, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, and this is what he said,
Num 1:2  “Take a head count of all the congregation of the people of Israel, by clans, by fathers’ houses, by the number of names, every male, head by head.
Num 1:3  From twenty years old and upward, all in Israel who are able to go to war, you and Aaron shall list them, by their armies.”

head count

Numbers is a deeply spiritual book, but it begins in a mundane fashion. It starts out as a command to organize the armies of the nation. In a sense, it is a record of the draft. You do not draft in peace time. You draft when you are expecting to be involved in a long and deadly conflict. As we read through this book, we will find that the nation delivered from bondage in Egypt is still in a mighty war. Instead of the slavery of Egypt, this nation is now in severe spiritual warfare. An entire generation is now mustered to engage in that war, but they will lose. The generation behind them will reap the victory. The book of numbers is the story of those two generations, and that spiritual warfare fought in the desert.

LORD, wake us to the reality of the war we are in, and the cost it will take to be victorious in that war.