Tuesday: Being Thankful: Numbers 12:3

Sermon: Complaints and Opposition

Scripture: Numbers 12:3

In this week’s studies, we learn important lessons about how Moses dealt with complaints from the people and opposition from his own family.

Theme: Being Thankful

What’s the difference between when they complained the first time about their diet and now? Well, the difference is that a year in their lives has transpired, and during that year God has revealed a great deal about Himself. When they came out of Egypt they didn’t know much about God at all. They were a nation of slaves. But He’d begun to teach them about Himself at Sinai. He taught them that He is a holy God, and that He is a powerful God. They’d seen the miracles. The Israelites knew how He was preserving them as they went through the desert by the manna they ate and the water they drank. A great cloud overshadowed the camp in order to protect them from the hot desert sun in the daytime, and then it turned into a pillar of fire at night to provide both warmth and light. They had perfectly adequate evidence of the power and the grace of God and shouldn’t have been complaining now. 

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Monday: The People’s Complaints: Numbers 12:3

Sermon: Complaints and Opposition

Scripture: Numbers 12:3

In this week’s studies, we learn important lessons about how Moses dealt with complaints from the people and opposition from his own family.

Theme: The People’s Complaints

In the first ten chapters of Numbers, everything seems to be going well. The people are commended for obeying God, and the idea that they did what God commanded them occurs again and again. Yet when we come to the eleventh chapter, the tone is different and the people are complaining. This is a beginning of a series of complaints that’s going to go throughout the whole book. 

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Friday: Service That Lasts Forever: Numbers 1-10

Sermon: Numbers: An Overview

Scripture: Numbers 1:1-10:36

In this week’s lessons, we learn about the formation and preparation of the Israelites for their journey to the promised land, and learn what this means for us today.

Theme: Service That Lasts Forever

When we get to the tenth chapter, the Israelites are ready to go. They had made trumpets that were to be sounded when they began their march. This section probably also belongs earlier chronologically. The trumpets may have been made when all of the other articles were made, as described especially in Exodus. But the description of the trumpets is held for here because the trumpets signaled the march.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Thursday: Resting in God’s Gracious Direction: Numbers 1-10

Sermon: Numbers: An Overview

Scripture: Numbers 1:1-10:36

In this week’s lessons, we learn about the formation and preparation of the Israelites for their journey to the promised land, and learn what this means for us today.

Theme: Resting in God’s Gracious Direction

The Aaronic blessing is a very beautiful benediction, perhaps more so in Hebrew than it appears to be in English—although it’s beautiful in English as well. In Hebrew there are three lines, but broken down to six in our Bibles. Each one begins with the name of Yahweh, the LORD. And each line has two elements of benediction and they are arranged in a typical parallel fashion. The lines become progressively longer. In Hebrew the first line has three words, the second line has five words, and the third line has seven words. It’s as if the blessing of God is unfolding and pouring out upon the people.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Wednesday: Separated unto God: Numbers 1-10

Sermon: Numbers: An Overview

Scripture: Numbers 1:1-10:36

In this week’s lessons, we learn about the formation and preparation of the Israelites for their journey to the promised land, and learn what this means for us today.

Theme: Separated unto God

Yesterday, we concluded by saying that the census in chapter 1 numbered the fighting men, and did not include the Levities because they didn’t fight. But when the Levites get counted, everyone is included who is one month old and upward.

Another thing to remember is that the number in the third chapter is compared to the total of the firstborn males in Israel. When the people were brought out of Egypt, God had killed the firstborn of all the Egyptians when the angel of death passed through the land. The firstborn of all the Israelites were spared who had put the blood upon the doorposts of their houses. God said that those firstborn children nevertheless belonged to Him. They were saved by the blood. If it wasn’t for the blood they would have died as well. They were sinners just like everybody else, and salvation was by the blood that pointed forward to Jesus Christ.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Tuesday: God with Us: Numbers 1-10

Sermon: Numbers: An Overview

Scripture: Numbers 1:1-10:36

In this week’s lessons, we learn about the formation and preparation of the Israelites for their journey to the promised land, and learn what this means for us today.

Theme: God with Us

Notice that all of the fighting men were counted. Every one of them was important. That’s true today in the church as well. The Bible says in several places that God has a scroll in which our names are written (for example, Ps. 139:16; Rev. 20:12). Every one of us is important. Although we don’t have a census on earth in the church that corresponds with the very literal census of Israel, there is a heavenly census that is far more important.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Monday: Numbers: An Overview

Sermon: Numbers: An Overview

Scripture: Numbers 1:1-10:36

In this week’s lessons, we learn about the formation and preparation of the Israelites for their journey to the promised land, and learn what this means for us today.

Theme: Through the Wilderness

Let’s face it: Numbers isn’t the kind of book you just naturally pick up to while away a few hours on a weekend. It’s part of the Old Testament law, for one thing. That’s bad enough. None of us likes law very much. But in addition, it’s also called Numbers. Some who score very high on their achievement tests or who major in mathematics are interested in numbers. But the rest of us think they are generally pretty irrelevant. And this title isn’t an aberration either—it really is about numbers, at least the first section of the book is. It’s about the numbering of the tribes of the people of Israel, and the arrangement of their camp, and the purification of the people for their march. That’s just not terribly appealing. For the title of the sermon, someone had suggested that I call it “Numbers: An Audit,” since people do not find audits by the Internal Revenue Service appealing, either.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Friday: Making Our Lives Count Forever: Leviticus 25:1-55

Sermon: Jubilee

Scripture: Leviticus 25:1-55

In this week’s lessons, we learn about what happened at the Year of Jubilee, and see what this has to teach us about our own view of wealth and the accumulation of possessions.

Theme: Making Our Lives Count Forever

In yesterday’s study, we saw in Leviticus 26 that the Lord gave a list of rewards and punishments. If Israel obeyed God’s laws, blessings would follow. But if the people disobeyed the Lord’s commandments, curses would be the result.

Earlier in our study, I said that the Jubilee year began with the sounding of the trumpet. One day, according to the teaching of Paul, another trumpet is going to sound for us: “…and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thess. 4:16b-17). Are you cherishing this hope? If you are waiting for the sounding of the trumpet, for the day when you will be caught up to be with Jesus Christ forever, then it will give you a right perspective on the things you possess now, and you’ll live for God in this world. Do you have that perspective? Does that really matter to you? If it doesn’t, the time to do it is now. Don’t wait. Life is short. It’s passing away. Make it count, and make it count right now. 

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Thursday: Duties to Help the Poor: Leviticus 25:1-55

Sermon: Jubilee

Scripture: Leviticus 25:1-55

In this week’s lessons, we learn about what happened at the Year of Jubilee, and see what this has to teach us about our own view of wealth and the accumulation of possessions.

Theme: Duties to Help the Poor

The long and concluding section of this chapter is verses 35 to 55, which has to do with duties to the poor. You might say, at first glance, “Why in the world are these duties to the poor here at all? Why does this belong in a chapter having to do with the Jubilee?” Well it shows that the central concern of the chapter is to protect or help the poor. There are a number of cases here.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

Wednesday: The Kinsman-Redeemer: Leviticus 25:1-55

Sermon: Jubilee

Scripture: Leviticus 25:1-55

In this week’s lessons, we learn about what happened at the Year of Jubilee, and see what this has to teach us about our own view of wealth and the accumulation of possessions.

Theme: The Kinsman-Redeemer

There’s another important idea in this chapter, and it’s that of the kinsman-redeemer (see vv. 25-28). If a family was poor and was forced to sell their land, it wasn’t always necessary for them to wait till the Year of Jubilee came around to get it back. That could be a lifetime away. If that year came in your youth, you may be an old man before you got your land back. However, it was possible for the land to be bought back and restored to the original owner by a near relative who was called a kinsman-redeemer. Or, if the original owner prospered, he had the right to buy it back again. Now the amount the original owner had to pay was the difference between what the buyer had paid for it originally and the amount of crops that he had gotten out of it in the meantime. So if he had paid for ten years of crops and only three harvests had gone by, he had to be paid for the seven years of crops.

Think and Act Biblically from James Boice is a devotional of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. It is supported only by its readers and gracious Christians like you. Please prayerfully consider supporting Think and Act Biblically and the mission of the Alliance.

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