God’s plan for us may be deterred or delayed, but it is not defeated! Paul puts it this way in Romans 8:35, 37-39: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
What is the foundation or biblical underpinning of Paul’s confidence that God will keep His promise, that He will finish what He started back in the book of Genesis? It is his unflinching belief that God is sovereign, that He rules in the affairs of nations and individuals, and that He will defeat the powers of evil and will reign forever among His faithful people.
Our journey of discovery about God’s promises began in the Garden of Eden and has brought us to the plains of Moab in Numbers 26, just across from the land He promised to Abram in Genesis 12. This promise has passed from Abram to Isaac, on to Jacob and his sons. God preserved the Israelites through the heroic work of Joseph, but they spent hundreds of years in Egyptian slavery before God sent Moses to deliver them.
God made a covenant with Israel, making them his chosen nation to bless all the nations of the earth. The Israelites were very troublesome and obstinate, but God had made a promise to Abraham, and He worked around their sin and rebellion to bring them to the story we will look at today. God’s plan may be deterred or delayed, but it will not be defeated. The text is selected verses from Numbers 26.
Back in Numbers 25:9, we are told that God sent a plague that killed 24,000 Israelites who had committed harlotry with Baal, the Moabite god. He was about to do something big with those who were faithful, and He eliminated those He could not depend on to accomplish His plan. What was God’s plan? What did He have in mind for the faithful?
What do we learn from Numbers 26:1-2? ” Then it came about after the plague, that the Lord spoke to Moses and to Eleazer the son of Aaron, saying, ‘ Take a census of all the congregation of the sons of Israel from twenty years old and upward, by their fathers’ households, whoever can go out to war in Israel.'”
God instructed Moses and Eleazar to take a count of all men twenty and older who were able to fight.
Does this sound familiar: a census to see how many men could go to war? You may recall a similar situation forty years earlier when Moses and Aaron did a “head count” after God had made a covenant with them at Sinai. There were 601,730 able-bodied men to accomplish God’s plan. Numbers 1:1-3. God was preparing the Israelites to defend themselves against enemies as they made their way to the Promised Land, and ultimately destroy the pagan peoples. God’s gift of the land came with the requirement that they possess it through war.
You know the story of Israel’s great rebellion. Joshua, Caleb, and ten other spies were sent to determine the strength of the people and to prepare to take possession of the land. The unfaithful spies brought a discouraging report, and the people forfeited the opportunity that God had offered them. As a result, the unfaithful spies and those forty and above were sentenced to die in the wilderness. God’s plan for this generation was delayed, but it was not defeated.
Forty years would pass before the people had another chance to possess the land God had promised Abraham. The older generation had delayed and somewhat deterred God’s plan, but they did not defeat it or Him. The promise the old generation had squandered is offered to a new and wiser one. This census yielded 603,556 warriors who would receive, by faith and fighting, the Promised Land.
It is wise to understand and cooperate with God’s plan for our lives, and in all things. He can accomplish His will with or without us. We get to choose which way we will go. And our choice will determine the blessings we receive or forfeit.
Numbers 26 closes with a sad reminder to those who oppose God’s plan. ” There was not a man of those numbered by Moses and Aaron the priest, who numbered the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. For the Lord had said of them, ‘ They shall surely die in the wilderness.’ And not a man was left of them, except Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, the son of Nun.” Numbers 26:64-65.