Great is thy faithfulness (Numbers 26-29, Luke 2)

How will God preserve His people? Doesn’t Christianity seem to be dying out? It can feel like that in the West. But the book of Numbers has a strange encouragement for us, God is able to preserve His people! In our reading today we come to the second census, more counting (the book of Numbers lives up to its name!). Why is there another census? Remember that the first generation failed to trust that the Lord could give them the land (Where are you looking? (Numbers 12-14, Psalm 28, Colossians 2). God’s punishment for their failure was that they would wonder the desert for forty years until that generation died out. Amazingly, God preserved them in the desert so that now after 40 years, they now number 601,730, almost exactly the same as the first generation (603,550 see Numbers 2:32) That’s fairly amazing when you think of the challenges of desert life.

And now in Numbers 26, after the final judgment before fresh start (Numbers 25) the question is what will new generation be like? Will they trust the LORD? Will they be faithful? He has shown His faithfulness to them, He is even faithful to raise up a new leader. We see in Numbers 27 that the LORD won’t leave His people as sheep without a shepherd. Moses won’t lead them into the promised land because of His failure (Numbers 20:12) but the LORD raises up Joshua (the Hebrew name for Jesus – the Lord saves). Joshua would be the one who would lead the sheep to the promised land, a shadow of the good shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep so that we can get to the promised land.

In our reading from Luke 2 we hear about another Census, this time it was the most powerful man in the world (Augustus), showing how great he was. Little did he know that he was just a pawn in God’s hand so that God’s Son would be born in the place He had promised.

How will God preserve His people? Be encouraged that just as He preserved them in the wilderness, He will keep us in Jesus, the Saviour who is Christ the Lord. He will build His church and the gates of hell will not prevail.