Well, you can turn in your Bibles to Numbers 1, for a new preaching series titled, “Between Promise and Possession.” We finished Mark two weeks back. Mark ends his gospel account by challenging readers to “take courage” and respond to Christ in obedience and faithfulness. The book of Numbers provides a perfect continuation of that theme.
The Hebrew title of the book is “In the Wilderness,” because the stories that fill the book take place, “in the wilderness” of Sinai. This is a peninsula of wilderness between modern Egypt and Saudi Arabia, southwest of modern Israel. Israel wandered this uninhabitable desert 40 years, awaiting God’s time to inherit the land of Canaan.
This is where the title of this preaching series comes from. God promised Israel a future possession of a dwelling place, but for a time, they lived between the promise and the possession. And as they wandered about in the wilderness, in this “between time,”
God tested Israel in many ways to determine their faithfulness. And this pattern now fits the church.
God made a promise through Christ to his people. We read something of this promise in Romans 8:28-39, that those foreknown by God will eventually receive glory. This coming glory is the possession of the new heaven and the new earth when God with his people in the new city. But in between the promise and possession, we live in our own wilderness “between” experience, rife with all manner of tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and even the sword.
Both Israel and the church, as the covenant people of God, have this same experience of being called out of the nations of the earth to inherit a future kingdom. The Old Testament saints were called out of Egypt to the land of Canaan, but in between, they had to wander the wilderness of Sinai. The church is called out of the world, as a whole, to be a distinct holy nation, as Peter calls it. Which is why the biblical writers refer to both the old covenant saints and the new covenant saints as “strangers and exiles.”
Perhaps you’ve heard that song from Woody Guthrie, written in 1940, “This Land Is My Land.” This land is your land. This land is my land. From California to the New York island. From the red wood forest to the Gulf stream waters, this land was made for you and me. It’s a nice sentiment from the world’s perspective. But this is not the perspective of God. This land is not our land. God has placed his people to inhabit regions in the world, but we are strangers and exiles. Because, our land is yet to come…
