Numbers has been an interesting book so far.  The attention to detail! Wow!  God is a God of order and organization.  I want to be a child of order.

In Numbers 1 God orders a census of all males 20 and over, excluding the tribe of Levi.  There were 603,550.  Can you even imagine traveling with that many people?  This does not include Levites, women, or children under 20.  What a massive group they must have been!

Numbers 2 gives the traveling orders:  3 tribes each to the East, South, West, and North, followed by Numbers 3 & 4 giving specific instructions to the Levites (subcategorized as the Gershonites, Kohathites, and Merarites) for the taking down, carrying, and reestablishing of the tabernacle.  Again the order amazes me.  8580 Levites carried out this work.
Chapter 5 focuses on purity laws.

Numbers 6 explains the Nazirite vow of separation, which was usually for a month, but Samson took this vow for life.  Verses 24 - 26 are the basis for several songs.

Numbers 7  & 8 tell the anointing of the tabernacle and its tools and the setting of the gold lampstands.

Numbers 9 is the celebrating of Passover on the 14th day of the first month.  This is a memorial to the firstborn child of the Israelites being passed over during the plagues when the Egyptian firstborns were killed.  God camped them in the Desert of Sinai for a little over a month.
 I found the cloud over the tabernacle intriguing.  The people were completely dependent on God for their mobility.  I bet there was grumbling when they had to pack up again so soon.  They probably got too comfortable at times, just as we do.  Maybe we do the same servant work for years, we may enjoy it, but our creativity may wane if we don't take some time to renew ourselves or maybe we stop doing something and then wonder how in the world did we ever had time to do it.  Does God speak to us like that today?  Telling us when to camp on something and when to move on?  I don't know.  I wish I could saw that my prayer life is at the point that I always know when the Holy Spirit is pushing or pulling me, that I have removed all the distractions from my life that prevent me from hearing the call.  But I haven't yet.  I pray that someday I will.  Someday soon.

Numbers 10 - The people left on the 20th day of the 2nd month, 2 years after they left Egypt, moving to the Desert of Paran.  After traveling for 3 days, the people were already complaining, to the point that Moses was ready to die rather than endure it for the rest of his life.  At that point God divides the burden.  Seventy leaders were assigned to help Moses. 
The grumbling of the people for meat turned God against them.  If a little is good, a lot must be better, right?  Meat every meal for a whole month, until they were sick of it!  But Moses' question was  where would the meat come from.  This tested the Lord's patience.  Verse 23 says Is the Lord's arm too short?  You will now see whether or not what I say will come true.  This should be a reminder to us that God is always in control and is capable of all things!  Praise be to God!

Numbers 12 emphasizes another character flaw.  Miriam and Aaron, Moses' siblings, have a problem with Moses' power and importance, even though the Bible calls him the most humble man on earth.  That assures us that Moses has done nothing to deserve his anger and jealousy. God does not take their words and actions lightly.  He called the three of them to the Tent of Meeting and confronted Miriam and Aaron, reminding them that God spoke to Moses face to face, not in visions, as he spoke to other prophets, so why were they not afraid of speaking out against Moses.  God struck Miriam with leprosy as her punishment.  Moses asked God to spare her, so after 7 days, she skin was cleansed.

Chapters 13 - 15 may be the most well-known chapters in Numbers, the story of the 12 spies sent to Canaan. Joshua and Caleb believed they could take the land, with God's help, but the other 10 were cowardly. God was again ready to destroy the entire Israelite nation, but Moses asks God to forgive the people.  God does not destroy them, but he does punish them.
Verses 18 - 19 say The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.  Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.  Commentary information reminds us that the sins of our family sometimes have consequences that we cannot escape, but we are only responsible for our own actions and our own path to salvation.
God's punishment for their lack of faith and rebellion was 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, 1 year for each day the spies searched the land.  The 10 faithless spies were stuck with a plague and died, while none of the people over 20 would live to enter the promised land, except Joshua and Caleb.

And then the Israelites changed their mind!  They thought they COULD take the land, but Moses warned them that God would not be with them and neither would he.  Of course, they were unsuccessful and driven back.

Numbers 15 explains the offerings to be made to the Lord after their arrival in Canaan, along with giving an example of the punishment for a Sabbath-breaker, who was stoned.  Those who sinned in defiance of the Lord were cut off from the rest of the people.  God did not tolerate rebellion then and I believe he still has the same opinion of it.