Along with posts devoted to gleaning insights from the preaching of Jonathan Edwards and from key homiletics authors, I will be suggesting a preaching strategy through the book of Numbers (see a similar approach through Chronicles).

Yup. That’s what I thought too.

But I love showing our faith-family how to read a book like Numbers so it functions for us as God intended.

When you select a title for the series, consider

Numbers 14:8 “…He will bring us into this land…”

That kind of title connects the Story to the saints. In many ways their journey from redemption from Egypt to the Promised Land mirrors our journey from our initial redemption to the new creation. And that’s why God can speak through Numbers to the Church.

The title also provides hope for our journey: we are going to make it because God is going to fulfill His promises to us. The examples, both bad (mainly the first generation of Israelites) and good (mainly the second generation), will teach us along the way.

As always, we will only go and do otherwise (bad examples) or go and do likewise (good examples) after an affirmation of faith in Christ who either was or did what God intended His people in the wilderness to either be or do. That’s faith-first or faith-driven application.

Then, notice in the image above that a sub-title is provided along with the Scripture. The one shown is from the famous Aaronic Blessing paragraph at the end of chapter 6. I’m only a few weeks into the series, but anticipate that each subtitle developed from each preaching portion will provide an angle that explains how we make our journey from redemption to new creation.

I realize you may not be in a series on Numbers, but I hope that these posts will show you a hermeneutical/homiletical strategy to handle such OT narratives…

So God receives glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:21),

Randal