The book of Numbers (in the Bible) finds finds a lot of people fighting back yawns as they attempt to trudge through it on their way through all 66 books of the Bible. If you made it through Leviticus, you’re sure to wither away in the wasteland of Numbers—they reason. Other slow going, thick and soupy books include, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Lamentations. Let’s face it, when it comes to Bible reading, most of us are sprinting toward the good stuff—heading for the gospels, or all those, ‘let’m have it’ letters that Paul wrote to various churches. But I want to encourage you to slow down through the sleepers (and I don’t mean that like a ‘nap.’ I mean that like a ‘hit movie’ that no one suspected) and move in closer than ever for what God is really trying to say to us.
I use the Word of Life quiet time diary (you can find them here) and have for over 30 years. Using it, you end up going through the entire Bible every five years or so. But what I like best about it is that it forces you to go through the books of the Bible you might be tempted to avoid—the ones that take a little more effort to mine out the deep truths of God—but also yield great riches as you draw closer to Him!
Blah, Blah, Blah…
Anyway, I am in “Numbers” right now and fascinated with how obsessed God is with, well, ‘Numbers.” He’s counting absolutely everything in this book! I’m surprised the Israelites don’t have to stop what they’re doing if a herd of deer pass by or a flock of geese, in order to count them! But who knows, I’m only in chapter 6–-maybe they will get to that later on the book!
The point is, God is into counting—even the most simple-minded person couldn’t possibly miss this truth. So it is incumbent upon us to figure out why? Why does He have Moses and Aaron and the Levites and Priests and tribe leaders and family heads count…EVERYTHING?! Especially when the Bible says that God even knows the number of hairs on our head! He already knows the sum of every addition equation but he asks us to add everything up anyway!
Why?!
God already knows people matter to Him. But to a lot of us—can I be blunt?—people don’t matter as much as they should. The only thing that matters a lot of the time, is US! If I’m honest, I struggle not to show favoritism to my 3 favorite people—me, myself, and I! God desires to change that focus in all of us—from inward to outward.
God counts people because people count!