Friday, September 5, 2025
This devotion pairs with this weekend’s Lutheran Hour sermon, which can be found at lhm.org.
Numbers 14:19-23a, 29a – [Moses said to the Lord], “Please pardon the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of Your steadfast love, just as You have forgiven this people, from Egypt until now.” Then the Lord said, “I have pardoned, according to your word. But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, none of the men who have seen My glory and My signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed My voice, [none of them] shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers … [their] dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness ….”
In a prior generation in America, you often heard people talking about someone being a “born again Christian.” It was a trendy way of talking at the time, though the phrase has since fallen out of fashion. “Born again” is a biblical way of talking (1 Peter 1:3b; see also John 3:3), but there’s more to say, because new birth in Christ is always preceded by a death—death to the old person. As the apostle Paul says, “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death … in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3b, 4b). “Born again” is half of it. Dying to rise is the bigger pattern.
It’s a pattern all throughout the Bible. When Abraham and his wife Sarah were old and barren, God promised to bring life from their bodies that were “as good as dead” (Romans 4:19b). Years later, when their descendants were slaves in Egypt, and the memory of the land God promised them was as good as dead, out of that living death, God brought His people to life. And then, when their rebellion tried to ruin everything and they were sentenced to die in the wilderness, God stayed faithful to them and their children and children’s children, so that they would trust, so that we would trust that He is the God “who gives life to the dead” (Romans 4:17b).
Dying, we live. That’s the pattern that repeats until it reaches fulfillment in Jesus. Jesus gave Himself into it for you. He was crucified to bring your rebellion to nothing. He rose from the dead to make new life possible for you. He promised to return and raise the dead and bring you with all His people into the promised land of God’s new creation. We are like that first generation of God’s people after the exodus. The difference is, we know the pattern. “In the wilderness” is where our me-centered selves finally die. “In the wilderness” is where life in Christ is re-born and refined. “In the wilderness” is where God gives us hope. “In the Wilderness” is also the name of the fourth book of the Bible, in the Hebrew language, that is. You might have learned its drier name, “Numbers.” Over the next few weeks, I’ll invite you into this wilderness story. Going forward, I’ll still refer to it by its other name, but hopefully we’ll start to see it as more than just numbers. Because they’re not just numbers. They’re people, like us, for whom Jesus died and rose, so that we would be born again as God’s children.
WE PRAY: Dear Jesus, teach me to die that so I may rise glorious on that awesome day. Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Rev. Dr. Michael Zeigler, Speaker for The Lutheran Hour.
Reflection Questions: