At about 7:00 this morning, my otherwise obedient dog chased a maintenance employee carrying a giant step ladder down the hall. He was off-leash because he usually walks with me, and no one moves around then. But when GG gets territorial or frightened by something, he goes off. At least he comes to me when I tell him to come because of his training, which is invaluable. I’m like him when something frightens me, like my hefty car expenses this month—I go off into worry, fear, and pessimism. But, because of God’s discipleship and his help through Scripture, I remember his loving, abundant provisions and faithfulness. Unfortunately, unlike GG, I keep returning to the place of worry and have to keep reminding myself about all I know of God’s help. I’m like the Israelites, who would have gone entirely off the rails without God’s presence, intervention, and reminders of how to live a holy life. As we race through the book of Numbers for the remainder of 2023, we’ll see how God held the Israelites accountable to himself through his holy presence, ordinances, warnings, and spiritual blessings. Having received God’s instructions for living counter-culturally, his presence sanctified them. Today, we can appreciate our accountability to God with the Spirit’s presence in us, God’s sovereign providence, warnings in Scripture, and spiritual blessings through holy living in this life. We, like the Israelites, learn more through our failings than through our successes. But God continues to work in us, for us, and through us and the body of Christ to bless us. So it is with Israel who received the lovely Aaronic blessing from their faithful, merciful Guide and Commander.
Two Generations of Israelites
“Numbers was likely written as a warning to the generation of Israelites born in the wilderness that they should persevere in faith and obedience where their parents had not…The explanation for the death of the first generation comes in the middle two sections of Numbers. The first of these…describes how the Israelites rebel against God when confronted by the challenge of taking the land of Canaan and how they fail to trust God fully to provide for them in the wilderness. For these failures the adult generation is condemned by God to die in the wilderness, and the whole nation must spend forty years in the wilderness…[But] in spite of punishing the Israelites in the wilderness, God has not abandoned His plans for the nation… God’s faithfulness stands in sharp contrast to the book’s repeated depiction of human faithlessness, the utter failure of humanity to meet God’s standards by its own strength…Despite imposing obstacles, great dangers, and the failures of His people, God brings them safely through the wilderness.” (1)
God’s People in God’s Presence
“We follow a God who speaks, who orders the existence of his people. The God who dwells in the midst of his people is holy…Our hearts need to be constantly refreshed by [Christ’s] gospel announced in the preaching of [God’s] Word and tasted in the Lord’s Supper. Our lives need to be resubmitted to his ordering, as his Word challenges us week after week to live a life worthy of the calling we have received. In the wilderness [of this world], we desperately need the blessings that flow to us through the means of grace that God has established in the church.” (2) God held the Israelites accountable to himself in the wilderness through his holy presence, ordinances, warnings, and spiritual blessings. The nation was to be orderly and obedient to God’s particular and peculiar commands for order. “Take a census of all the congregation of the people of Israel, by clans, by fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, every male, head by head…Thus did the people of Israel; they did according to all that the Lord commanded Moses.” (Numbers 1:2, 54) “This set of names and numbers is about commitment…The first privilege of being counted….was to be part of Israel, a part of the family…The second privilege…was having a share in the division of the Pomised Land…This was, after all, the goal of the whole exodus, the end for which they had begun their journey. Being counted in as one of the Lord’s people was therefore an act of faith that what God had promised would one day be theirs, even though in the present they could not yet see it with their eyes…Since God had been faithful to his promises in the past, he could be counted on also in the future…God is going to establish his church and make it an innumerable host from all nations, tribes, and languages, a family brought together in his Son and bonded together into local fellowships…he invites us in his grace to be counted, and thus to count: to have part in his cosmic plan of blessing for his people and the world.” (3) Do we appreciate our accountability to God as his people? Do we demonstrate gratefulness for the Holy Spirit’s presence in us, God’s sovereign providence, warnings in Scripture, and spiritual blessings through holy living in this life? “The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘The people of Israel shall camp each by his own standard, with the banners of their fathers’ houses. They shall camp facing the tent of meeting on every side…so they camped by their standards, and so they set out, each one in his clan, according to his fathers’ house.” (Numbers 2:1, 34) “Do we really want God at the center of our lives? That is a challenging test…Is my whole life so camped around the presence of God my King that I can say, ‘Lord, so long as I have you, there is nothing else that I need. My life is yours to command, in sickness or health, for prosperity or poverty, for useful service or an apparently wasted life, given up for you?’ That is a profound test, isn’t it? The most fundamental reality expressed in Numbers 2, then, is that the camp of Israel was to be arranged around the central presence of the Lord.” (4)
Holy to the Lord
“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘List all the firstborn males of the people of Israel, from a month old and upward, taking the number of their names…All those who were listed of the Levites…were 8,580. According to the commandment of the Lord through Moses they were listed, each one with his task of serving or carrying.” (Numbers 3:40; 4:4-5, 46, 48) Iaian Duguid offers three wonderful truths about God in these chapters. “This one tribe [Levi] out of Israel was to be completely devoted to looking after the tabernacle, working on behalf of Aaron and on behalf of the whole community. Other tribes could pursue their own interests and desires, but the Levites were to be entirely dedicated to the Lord from birth…[So, firstly] all of the Levites one month old and older were to be counted. From their earliest days, they belonged completely to the Lord…[Secondly, the Levitical] clan descended from the firstborn son did not merit the most important place. Rather, the clan of the second son, Kohath, was given that lead role…It is not because of any particular sin on the part of Gershwin or his clan or any special righteousness of Kohath and his clan. It is God’s prerogative to choose the younger ahead of the older, as he does so often in Scripture, to demonstrate that standing in his kingdom is a matter of grace and not of works…[And thirdly,] Moving the holy objects in the tabernacle from place to place was a delicate job, as fraught with risk as commissioning a nuclear reactor. One false step, one wrong move, and someone could die (4:18-20). The ministry of the Levites was always a labor of life or death…a ministry that could not be undertaken too carefully…the Kohathnites were not permitted to touch the sacred objects themselves. They had to carry them once they were safely packed up, but only the priests could do the packing. In fact, the Kohathnites were not even allowed [“to look on the holy things even for a moment, lest they die”] (Numbers 4:20) [Duguid continues]…In the Scriptures we meet a God who is utterly transcendent and yet at the same time utterly immanent. Our God lives in a high and holy place (transcendence), yet also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit (immanence) (Isaiah 57:15). He pitched his tent in the midst of the camp of Israel, a radical act of immanence; yet at the same time his tent was surrounded by mystery and danger…The God who dwelt with Israel is a holy God, and all his things are holy…He is not tame, nor even necessarily ‘safe,’ if by ‘safe’ we mean that he will always work things out in ways that make sense to our wisdom. Though he dwells in the midst of his people, his holiness is always threatening to break out and consume the unholy people who are all around him. The warnings that are presented in Numbers 3-4 are found to be true in the rest of the book. An entire generation suffered the ultimate sanction for their unholiness and disobedience, being put to death in the wilderness.” (5)
A Solution For God’s Unholy People
God held the weak, sinful Israelites accountable to himself in the wilderness through his holy presence, ordinances, warnings, and spiritual blessings—just as we are accountable to him and have these graces. As we have Christ’s willing sacrificial life, death, and resurrection, the Israelites had the same God and the same help, but in an Old Testament, pre-incarnation application. “And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When either a man or a woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the Lord, he shall separate himself…Until the time is completed for which he separates himself to the Lord, he shall be holy.” (Numbers 6:1, 16) “The Nazarite provided a mirror into which Israel was to look and be reminded of who she ought to be permanently as a holy nation…the very existence of the Nazarite vow shows us the weakness and inability of the Old Testament people of God to meet God’s standard of perfect holiness. The Nazarites were called to be holy because Israel wasn’t holy. They were called for a while to be a miniature kingdom of priests because the larger people were not fully and perpetually devoted to the Lord. The same is true for us. We all should have the same level of committed devotion to God that the Nazarites did…The law of the Nazarite exposes our hearts as well as those of ancient Israel…[The] perfect Nazarite is Jesus Christ. He was truly separated to God from birth, not by outward symbols but by inner reality of a holiness that pervaded every aspect of his life…If Israel was supposed to be reminded of their own need to be holy every time they saw a Nazarite, how much more should you and I be convicted of our need to be holy every time we contemplate the commitment of Jesus.” (6) We are gifted with the Spirit’s presence in us, God’s sovereign providence, warnings in Scripture, and spiritual blessings through holy living in this life. We are truly blessed.
The Aaronic Blessing
“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.'” (Numbers 6:22-27) “The Lord, Jehovah, the personal name of God, is identified three times as the one from whom blessings come. Then, at the very end of the passage, just in case you somehow missed it earlier, the Lord sums it up by saying to Moses, ‘I myself’—literal translation, the Hebrew is emphatic here—’I myself will bless them’…True blessing is knowing God face-to-face…God wants our relationship with him to be one where we not only know his protection and keeping, but also where we know his presence…The Lord gives [this blessing] to his people freely…[But] The cross is the very antithesis of the priestly benediction. Did God the Father bless Jesus and keep him when he was on the cross? No, he handed him over into the power of those who hated him and wanted to kill him. Did God the Father make his face shine upon Jesus on the cross? No, he poured out his wrath and his crushing anger against sin upon him. Did God the Father turn his face toward Jesus and give him peace? No, he turned his face away from him, so Jesus cried out in agony, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ As Jesus lifted his eyes toward Heaven, for the first time in all eternity, there was no answering light from the Father’s face. Even the sun turned away its countenance from Jesus, as if for Jesus there was no peace. He was bruised for our iniquity; he was broken for our sin; he was abandoned for our faithlessness; he was cursed for our blessing. But he himself is our peace. In Jesus we now receive God’s blessing…God’s face is turned toward [us] in Christ, and no matter what [we] encounter in life, it can never, ever be turned away from [us, who are in Christ].” (7) As God’s people, we are called to continue to turn toward God in repentance. GG had to endure my silence for a few minutes after his disobedience today. God may be silent with us if we don’t acknowledge our responsibility to be holy. (See Numbers 5.) But, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place.” (2 Chronicles 7:14-15)
Related Scripture: Exodus 19:1; 20:12-16; 28:40-41; 38:1-31; Leviticus 13:45-46; Joshua 7:19; Judges 13:2-5; 2 Samuel 24:2; 1 Chronicles 23:1-6; Haggai 2:13-14; Amos 2:11; Matthew 3:6; Luke 1:13-17; John 8:1-11; Acts 21:23-25; Romans 1:1; Ephesians 1:4; 2 Timothy 2:21; 1 Peter 1:16; 1 John 1:9.
Notes:
1. The Reformation Study Bible, Introduction to Numbers, Reformation Trust Publishing (Ligonier Ministries), Sanford, Fl., 2015.
2. Duguid, Iain M., “Numbers—God’s Presence in the Wilderness,” Crossway Books, 2006. (I will be quoting extensively but selectively from Duguid’s Commentary. I wholeheartedly recommend reading of his entire explanations which are excllent in their specificity, historical context, and application to us.)
3. Duguid, Chapter 1, Ibid.
4. Duguid, Chapter 2, Ibid.
5. Duguid, Numbers 3-4, Ibid.
6. Duguid, Numbers 6:1-21, Ibid.
7. Duguid, Numbers 1-6, Ibid.
September 14, 2023
Divine Wisdom for Daily Living by Joanne Colvin 