The words of the text were the morning and evening prayer of the children of Israel.
I. Prayer is the best means of reminding ourselves of the presence of God. To place ourselves in His hands before we go forth on our journey, on our pleasure, on our work; to commit ourselves again to Him before we retire to rest this is the best security for keeping up our faith and trust in Him in whom we all profess to believe, whom we all expect to meet after we leave the world.
II. Prayer is also the best security for our leading a good and happy life. It has been well said twice over by Sir Walter Scott that prayer to the almighty Searcher of hearts is the best check to murmurs against Providence, or to the inroad of worldly passions, because nothing else brings before us so strongly their inconsistency and unreasonableness.
III. No one can pretend to prescribe what another's prayers should be; that each man must know best for himself. But the general spirit in which they should be offered is well expressed in the two great prayers of the text. Whatever may be our particular petition to God in the morning, we must have this object steadily before us: that He will rise and go forth with us to our daily duties and enjoyments, that He may be in our thoughts throughout the day, and that His enemies may flee before Him on every occasion when they lurk for us. And in the evening we have no less before us the desire that God may return to us, however much we have offended Him during the day, that He may turn again and make the light of His countenance to shine upon us.
A. P. Stanley, Sermons in the East,p. 81.
References: Numbers 10:35; Numbers 10:36. Old Testament Outlines,p. 39; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 220. Numbers 11:1. Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes,1884, p. 42.Numbers 11:1-3. Parker, vol. iii., p. 190. Numbers 11:11. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 28. Numbers 11:16; Numbers 11:17. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. viii., p. 276. Numbers 11:23. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 160; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vii., No. 363; Parker, vol. iv., p. 51.