February 9, 2020: Day 8 – Numbers 8

I’ll never forget hearing Tony Campolo speak one time and he hammered home a point to those in attendance, who tended to be somewhat elderly, that God never placed provisions for retirement when it came to serving the Lord.  I think Numbers 8 might have a different perspective on this.  Look at vs.24-25 where we find that the Levites are commanded to serve the Lord from the age of 25 on.  But at age 50 they are to retire and serve no more.  They can help out here and there, but at age 50 they have to hang it up.  Good thing that we don’t keep that statute in our running of the church.

This entire chapter is dedicated to ensuring that those who are serving the Lord are in the perfect condition to be able to serve the Lord.  It speaks about how the Levites, that is the priestly class, has to be cleansed completely and then an offering has to be lifted up on their behalf so that God is able to use only those who are the purest of the pure to do His work.  We are not talking about a moral judgment here, it is easy to go in that direction with our thinking.  Rather, God expected the individual to do what they needed to ensure that they were clean, and then those who were in charge, Moses and Aaron had to ensure that the person who is being lifted up is clean as well.  

The detail that went into this far exceeds what we think about when we recognize that our task is to serve the Lord and to bring His presence to the people.  In Numbers we see a concentration and an insistence of only those who are ready to serve the Lord are able to serve the Lord.