My Glory and the Lifter of My Head: Study of the book of Numbers

My Glory and the Lifter of My Head is a companion commentary for a Bible study of the book of Numbers focusing on God in His glory: what a glorious God looks like, how He defines glorious living, what our own glorification as God's people looks like and how that is achieved. Each chapter highlights ways that we give glory to God or take glory from Him, as illustrated by the children of Israel on the Wilderness journey.

Step into the shoes of the children of Israel as we journey from Mount Sinai to the edge of the glorious Promised Land. We will pass through Taberah, Kibroth Hatta'avah, Hazeroth, Kadesh, the Wilderness of Paran, the Wilderness of Zin, and a number of enemy territories before coming to the final stop on the Plains of Moab before crossing the Jordan. Each stop is meant to lead God's people into a deeper walk with Him, to reveal Him increasingly in His glory, and for His people to be lifted up and glorified in return. Even so, each place becomes a point of stumbling, struggling, and failing. Enemies within and without plague their progress. Yet each moment of failing is balanced with forgiveness, grace, and hope that abounds in the magnificent prophetic pictures of a future Messiah woven through the narrative.

The physical Wilderness journey parallels our spiritual walk of faith as believers--the journey from salvation through the process of sanctification to the brink of our final glorification. Where we should be moving into a deeper walk with Christ, we stumble, struggle and sometimes fail in much the same way as the children of Israel did. Each place we camp in the Wilderness highlights a set of spiritual lessons, including taming the tongue, mixing with the worldly multitudes, decision-making (and the consequences of not giving God glory in our lives), dealing with anger, fear, discouragement, counterfeits, our leprous old man nature, and enemy tactics. The Old Testament pictures are paired with their New Testament principles, touching on passages from Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, James, 1 John, and Revelation.

There is also an examination and discussion of the various laws woven into the narrative, the principles they present, their bearing on the lessons, and some of the prophetic pictures of Messiah contained in them.