Year 4, Day 141: Numbers 26

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Up

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.

I don’t think I write often enough about Up.  After all, Up is where it all starts.  God needs to be at the origin.  The Father needs to be at the beginning.  The King needs to be the source.  Without Up, what do we have?

I think Numbers 26 provides us with a neat perspective.  The Hebrew people do not increase in the wilderness.  In fact, they actually decrease.  When the census is taken, there are fewer Hebrew males after the purging of the wicked generation than when they went into the desert.  While you might be tempted to think that this makes sense because of the generational purging, remember that it only takes each family to have 2 children in order to keep a population stable.  Families with 2 children was not only the norm for that time period, it was actually below the norm!  The population should have grown under normal circumstances.

So what is going on here?  We see that the blessing of God has been removed from the perverse generation.  They turned their back on God and they diminished.  It’s as simple as that.  When we who are supposed to be God’s people become focused on other things, we diminish!  It’s a very simple lesson to learn.

When God is in our Up position, we will flourish.  Our life may be difficult because of persecution, but we will flourish.  But when we substitute God for something else and God is not in our Up position, why would we expect to flourish?

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