Part 12 of the David Pawson 'Unlocking the Bible' Podcast series 

The book of Numbers starts and ends with a census of all the men over 20. There were about 600,000 both times. God was not blessing them because when God blesses, numbers multiply. At that time the life expectancy was about 60 so after 40 years, all but 2 of the men who had been over 20 at the beginning, had died. Only Joshua and Caleb survived. Two thirds of the book of Numbers should never have happened, they were not part of God’s purpose. God deliberately delayed their journey from Mount Sinai to the Promised Land because of their disobedience, so that a whole generation spent their entire adult life doing nothing and died before they reached the Promised Land. Numbers is important because if you don’t study history, you’re condemned to repeat it. God spoke to Moses eighty times face to face. When God camped among the people, there was a danger they would become over-familiar with Him, so God gave them the legislation in the book of Numbers to prevent that. There were three types of legislation - carefulness, cleanliness and costliness. You had to be careful how you approached God, you had to be clean when you came to Him and it is costly not to be holy yourself.