January 28

Numbers 10:11‑12
 
“It came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, that the cloud was taken up from off the tabernacle of the testimony. And the children of Israel took their journeys out of the wilderness of Sinai; and the cloud rested in the wilderness of Paran”— Numbers 10:11, 1211And it came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, that the cloud was taken up from off the tabernacle of the testimony. 12And the children of Israel took their journeys out of the wilderness of Sinai; and the cloud rested in the wilderness of Paran. (Numbers 10:11‑12).
THE Book of Numbers gives us the account of the wilderness experiences of the children of Israel. It is the book of testing, covering the forty years between Sinai and the entrance into the land of Canaan.
For us as Christians there are many salutary lessons to which our attention is called in the New Testament, where we are told that “all these things happened unto them for ensamples (types): and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Cor. 10:1111Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. (1 Corinthians 10:11)). Their many failures are held up as warnings to us, lest we also go astray by unbelief and self-indulgence. The only path of safety is that of implicit obedience to the Word of the living God. To turn aside and follow the path of our personal inclinations is bound to result in failure, dishonor to God, and loss to ourselves.
It is well to remember that the wilderness was no part of God’s purpose for His people, but it was part of His ways with them, to bring them to a realization of their own frailty and the untrustworthiness of their own hearts, in order that they might learn to depend entirely upon Him.
What though today
Thou canst not trace at all the hidden reason
For His strange dealings through the trial season,
Trust and obey!
Though God’s mercy-cloud enfold thee here,
In after life and Hight, all shall be plain and clear.