After forty years in the wilderness Moses is within sight of the Promised Land. But, tragically, it is here, within sight of his life’s goal, Moses reaches his breaking point and is barred from entering Canaan

What has been at the root of all Israel’s troubles has been a habit of defiance, and in Numbers 16-17 we see that the answer to that habit isn’t more legislation, but a priest – a mediator who can stand in the gap and made peace. In these chapters we see,

Numbers 15 inserts a groups of laws into the aftermath of Israel’s refusal to enter the promised land. But there’s nothing random about them – they are designed to introduce into Israel’s daily life over the next forty years three truths:

There comes a point in some stories – indeed, in some lives – where everything changes. It becomes the definining moment of that story or of that life. In the life of the newly born nation of Israel that defining moment is described in Numbers 13-14. Their moment of truth results in a spiral of…