Taking Count

So all who were numbered of the children of Israel, by their fathers' houses, from twenty years old and above, all who were able to go to war in Israel -- all who were numbered were six hundred and three thousand five hundred and fifty.

--Numbers 1:45-46  (NKJV)

From the daily Bible reading on March 5, 2013 of Psalm 45; Acts 13:26-52; Numbers 1.

Early in their second year of wandering through the wilderness, God ordered a census of all men of an age that could go to war, to be listed by each house of Jacob.  The total was over six hundred thousand!  This was just the men from twenty years old and above.  If you add in the women, the children (including the males under 20), and those men too old to go off to war, the total count of the children of Israel was very likely near two million!  Maybe more.  And they had their flocks and their herds with them.  It challenges the mind to imagine this large company breaking camp and moving everything to a new location on a regular basis.  This would be considered quite a large city even by today's standards.  Back then it would have been huge, with a fighting force that would have been the envy of every nation in the region.  The logistics of feeding, supplying water to, providing for the needs of, and moving this enormous mass humanity, beasts and birds, and personal possessions would be a nightmare!  Yet one man, one very old man (over 82 at this point in the story), kept a fairly tight rein over all this.

Of course, Moses did none of this on his own.  Not even considering the help he received from his brother Aaron.  No, for any man or even a group of men, this would have been an impossible undertaking.  But Moses didn't really do any of this.  God orchestrated every move this mobile nation made.  God did it all, using Moses as His tool.  Moses, and Aaron, served the Lord and He made all this possible.  With man alone, this could not have been done.  With God, nothing is impossible.  Praise the Lord!  Amen.

Lord, we know that through You all things can be done.  Your holy word gives us example after example of how man alone would have faltered had it not been for You.  In You, the impossible is made possible.  Paul tells us that all things are possible through Christ, who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13).  Thank You, Lord, for doing for us what we could never do for ourselves, and especially for our salvation.  In that holiest of  names, Jesus, we pray.  Amen.