Just at the point of highest tension in the story we get a strange interlude about offerings. It seems a bit like a commercial during an exciting part of a TV show. But there is a point to this. God has just told the people that, because they refused to listen to him, their children will enter the land after they die in the desert. So, in Numbers 15 God continues the conversation with Moses for the sake of the children. He anticipates the fact that they will be blessed in the land and will therefore in turn bring sacrifices and offerings with which to honour God for his faithfulness. So, God’s plan is going ahead, but the generation of adults who would not enter the land will not be included in it. Here is the lesson we can learn from this. God is faithful to his plan. He will fulfil his promises. But to be included in that plan we must remain faithful. You won’t be included in God’s purpose no matter what. You will be included if you continue trusting in him. We will see, as we read on, that the adults who rejected God’s plan were not completely abandoned by God. However, because of their unwillingness to trust God they missed out on something they could have had. That is what the narrator wants us to see, and this becomes a repeated cautionary tale for subsequent generations. The writer of Hebrews applies the message saying: “We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end” (Hebrews 3:14).
Are you being faithful?
Read Numbers 15 along with Psalm 95 and Hebrews 3:12-19
