The Leaders of the People Challenge God’s Sovereign Choice of Aaron as their Priestly Leader

Once again, the people have rejected God’s sovereign choice of their leader. To indicate whom God had chosen to serve as the priestly leader of the people, God told Moses to collect a staff from each of the Israelite tribes. He was to write the name of the tribe on the staff and write Aaron’s…

Challenging Authority

Several times in today’s Bible reading* we see challenges to authority. And challenging authority was not a good thing! Anyone who’s had children knows that children will at some point challenge authority. They will test boundaries. We see it in nature, too as young lions challenge the dominant male. These are natural challenges. It’s part…

Blessing God’s People

Today’s Bible reading* includes a Blessing prayed over God’s people. For many of us who have been around church for very long, we may be familiar with this Blessing. In The Blessing, Moses gives Aaron and his sons the content of what to pray over the people of God. This is a prayer prayed by…

Duties of the Kohathites

There’s a good reason the book of Numbers is called that: it lists a bunch of numbers. It’s a census of the people of Israel. And there were a lot of people! If you’ve ever seen Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic film “The Ten Commandments” (shown on network television every year since 1973 during Easter/Passover…