Numbers 33

v1-49: Moses is told by God “to keep a journal or diary, and to write in it all the significant events that happened” which when looked over in the future, will show how God had led them. It can “be useful to individual Christians… to preserve in writing an account of the providence of God concerning them and the constant mercies they experience” because “our memories are deceitful,” and this is a way to “remember all the ways which the Lord our God had led us in this wilderness.”

v50-56: In the Promised Land they were about to enter, the people there worshipped idols and false gods. The Israelites are “commanded to completely destroy all the remnants of idolatry… both as a sign that they detested idolatry and also to prevent their being tempted to worship those idols and the false gods they represented, or to worship the God of Israel by such idols.” This warning reminds us that “if we do not drive sin out of our lives, sin will drive us out,” and “if we do not put to death our sinful desires, those sinful desires will lead to the death of our souls.”