Teaching The Book of Numbers

The Amazon delivery man came by the church today. This always brightens your day when your community’s leading bookseller is....Walmart. Today he brought me three new commentaries.

Numbers: God's Presence in the Wilderness (Preaching the Word)
Iain M. Duguid (Author), R. Kent Hughes (Series Editor)

The Book of Numbers (New International Commentary on the Old Testament) Timothy R. Ashley (Author)

Numbers (The Tyndale Old Testament Commentary Series) Gordon J. Wenham (Author)

As some of the blogosphere’s sharpest minds you have likely deduced that I will soon be teaching on the book of Numbers (midweek Bible study).

Numbers has some wonderful narrative and really speaks to life between “where we have been” and “where we are going”. I preached through the book about twelve years ago and I enjoyed looking over my old notes earlier this week. (Does anyone else read their old sermon notes and think… “why can’t I preach that anymore”?)

Not that anyone is asking me, but if I ever write a commentary on Numbers myself I am going to try to come up with a better opening paragraph than this one from Iain Duguid --

"Before I began work on this volume, I had little exposure to the book of Numbers. I had never preached on a text from Numbers, nor, as far as I know, had I ever even heard a sermon on the book of Numbers."

Not the most confidence inspiring introduction I have ever read.

If you have preached from Numbers recently I would love to hear some of your approach. What resources did you find useful?

Tim