Numbers also reminds us of the pervasiveness of sin and our need for a savior. It can be frustrating to read a book like Numbers because we just want the people to behave and the heroes to act like heroes. But they often do not. The only consistent hero in Numbers is Yahweh, God himself. Everyone else fails or shows themselves to be flawed. How we need to come to God in humility, asking for grace to live in God’s world without making a fool of ourselves! Numbers helps us in these ways and many more. 

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, [24] The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.” – Numbers 6:22–27 (ESV)
The worst thing about the Book of Numbers is its name. Those who expect a divine spreadsheet will be disappointed because the book contains much more than that. Numbers contains stories of plagues, miracles, espionage, political intrigue, divination, war, talking animals, and angels. And that is only a start. Far from being a book devoted to lists of names and tabulations, Numbers continues the story of the people of Israel’s exodus from Egypt and narrates the rest of Israel’s time in the wilderness.
This series continues to work through the books of the Bible, landing now at Numbers. An unsuspecting reader coming off of Exodus may expect Numbers to be a generally happy book, narrating how the people of Israel followed the freshly revealed glory of Yahweh into the Promised Land. But Numbers does not do that. Instead, we find in Numbers the story of how an entire generation failed to enter the Promised Land because of disobedience.
The Big Idea of Numbers
I have taught that the big idea of Numbers is that Yahweh is his people’s guide to the promised land. Although the passage cited above does not explicitly address Yahweh’s guidance of the people, it does address his intention and disposition toward his people. It also addresses Yahweh’s guidance and leadership of the people as a whole as he directs their way to Canaan.
The blessing Yahweh commanded the priests to pronounce upon the people represents a distillation of the hope of God’s people at all times and in every place. There is no greater hope than to see the face of God. It is shorthand for the entire experience of being fully in communion with God.
An Outline of Numbers
Numbers can be divided into three main sections according to the people’s location. The story picks up where Exodus leaves off at Mount Sinai, then tracks the people in the wilderness while the first generation dies off, and ends with the journey to Moab as the next generation finally prepares to enter the Promised Land.
Chapters 1-10 cover less than a year’s worth of time while the people are getting organized and ready to depart Mount Sinai. In this section, the people are divided and arranged in camps to prepare for their move. More instructions are given to the priests and Levites with various jobs assigned and various offerings made. The time at Sinai ends with the people celebrating Passover and departing from Sinai under the direction of Yahweh.
Chapters 10-20 cover the people’s journey to and stay around Kadesh Barnea. This is a span of about 38 years. Many interesting things happen during these years. Yahweh strikes down many in a great plague after raining quail on them (ch. 11). Aaron and Miriam find themselves in trouble for questioning Moses’ leadership (ch. 12). Spies are sent into Canaan to scope it out, only to return and recommend that the people not try to take it.
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The Psalms make clear that the life of the true believer is inevitably full of conflict, adversity, trouble, danger, and sorrow. The Psalms show us that, for the true believer, life is difficult, indeed, life is a fight. There are external enemies in this fallen world who hate God and His people; our own sinful natures that still reside in us, inclining us to disbelieve and disobey God’s Word; and Satan and his demonic minions who tempt us to sin, pester us with worldly distractions, accuse our consciences, and mock us for our feeble faith. Read the Psalms, and you will see that not all of them are beautiful words of comfort such as Psalm 23 or songs of praise such as Psalm 100. There are many psalms that are expressions of agony, doubt, and fear in the face of spiritual warfare.
Psalm 13 is a good example. How many of us, in one way or another, at one time or another, have felt like crying out with the words of Psalm 13, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” (Ps. 13:1)? This is one of those prayers—a lament —that, at first, we might be hesitant to pray. We might think that it sounds irreverent or even borderline blasphemous. Since God has said in His Word that He will never leave us or forsake us, it might seem as though we were accusing God of breaking His Word. Should we really cry out to God, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?”
Yes. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, God has given us Psalm 13 so that we can be assured that God accepts the honest outpourings of our souls. Most of us, if we live long enough, at some time or in some season, will feel so overwhelmed by adversity or grief that we will simply want to fall face down and cry out, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” At such a time, Psalm 13 can serve as your personal prayer.
Those circumstances might involve prolonged suffering or hardship; chronic illness or physical pain; caring for a loved one who suffers physically or mentally; a continuing problem that just won’t go away or cannot get resolved; a series of circumstantial hardships, trouble upon trouble disturbing your life; or an injustice, a wrong done to you by a malicious person that has continuing negative consequences in your life; or the replaying of those “old tapes” from long ago—hurts, regrets, failures—that just keeping on playing and playing in your mind. In any of these cases, we might cry out: “Why do I have to keep dealing with this and going through this? Why doesn’t God deliver me from this?”
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While there is no single liturgical from demanded by Reformed theology, Reformed churches typically regarded Scripture as regulating worship in a manner which presses towards an aesthetic and formal simplicity focused on prayer, the reading and preaching of the Bible, the sacraments, and singing, the latter of which was historically psalmody but now generally includes hymns as well. Such worship is seen as a practical manifestation of the Reformed commitment to the sufficiency of scripture, not simply for doctrine and ethics but also for church practice.

The term “Reformed Theology” has a range of meanings in contemporary church life and theology. It can be used to refer to the beliefs of any Protestant movement that adheres to a broadly anti-Pelagian understanding of salvation, as, for example, in the Young, Restless, and Reformed phenomenon. At a more technical level it refers specifically to Protestant churches that hold as confessional norms the Three Forms of Unity, the Westminster Standards, or (in the case of Reformed Baptists) the Second London Confession.
History
The Reformed churches trace their origins to the Reformation in Switzerland, specifically to that which originated in Zurich in the 1520s under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531). Zwingli’s reformation was distinguished from that of Luther theologically in its emphasis upon Scripture as the normative rule of liturgical practice (hence, for example, Zurich churches removed stained glass windows and developed a very simple, Word-centered form of worship) and in its denial of the Real Presence in the Lord’s Supper. This latter point led to a formal break between Luther and Zwingli at the Marburg Colloquy in 1529, an event which divided Reformed and Lutheran churches in perpetuity.
While Zwingli provided the initial formative impulse for Reformed theology, others soon came to play prominent roles. Heinrich Bullinger continued the Zurich reformation after Zwingli’s death; Martin Bucer implemented similar reforms in Starsbourg; John Calvin, Pierre Viret, Guillaume Farel, and Pierre Viret, among others, implemented reform in Geneva and its environs. Then, in the later sixteenth century, Reformed churches spread across Europe. To France, the Low Countries, England, and Scotland. By the end of the seventeenth century, churches adhering to Reformed theology were found.
During this period, Reformed theology also planted itself within the university system and this led to a flowering of Reformed thought in the late sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth centuries, of which John Owen in England and Gisbertus Voetius in the Low Countries are perhaps the two greatest examples. Such a fertile period was not to last, however, and the impact of Enlightenment patterns of thought on universities by the end of the seventeenth century meant that Reformed theology, rooted as it was in traditional metaphysics, was soon either modified beyond recognition or displaced within the curriculum.
In more recent centuries, Reformed theology played a significant role in the political and cultural life of the Netherlands, particularly through the figure of Abraham Kuyper who founded a denomination, a newspaper, a university, and a political party. He also served as Prime Minister. In Kuyper, Reformed theology came to take on a cultural ambition not seen since the Reformation of the sixteenth century and, through Kuyper’s friend and colleague, Herman Bavinck, found one of its most articulate and talented theologians. The latter’s four volume Reformed Dogmatics represents the last great attempt to offer a comprehensive account of Reformed theology in dialogue with modernity. One unfortunate dimension to Dutch Reformed theology was the role it played in South Africa where it was used as partial justification for apartheid, although, in a more liberal form, it also proved a resource for those who opposed the regime such as Alan Boesak.
In Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland and its educational institution, New College, provided some theological leadership particularly through its preeminent theologians, William Cunningham and James Bannerman. In America, Princeton Theological Seminary was the center of Reformed theology in the nineteenth century, and its two most famous faculty, Charles Hodge and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, also made significant contributions to Reformed thought, particularly on the issues of evolution and scriptural authority. Further, thanks to American missionary endeavors, Korea, and then after partition, South Korea, became a center for Reformed theology in the non-Western world.
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