Author: Pastor Bob

We find the actual words of God which forbade Moses and Aaron and the people of Israel from entering into the promised land.  Once again, like an old record that keeps repeating itself, we see that the people of Israel complain.  This time the complaint is about not having water and the complaint goes something like this: you don’t really love us, if you did love us then you would have given us water to drink.  You would rather us die in the desert, if not you would have kept us in Egypt to live.  

We have heard this before where the Israelites complain and God reacts.  Well, this time his reaction is found in vs.12 after he performs the miracle through Moses of bringing water out of a rock.  The punishment is a result of the people of Israel not trusting in the Lord, and so because of that: “you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”  But it just kind of sits there and there is no real reaction from the people or from Moses.  That is a bit strange.

The chapter then transitions to Edom refusing passage for Israel, and Israel just being willing to take that.  And then it transitions to the death of Aaron and the passing on of his high priest responsibilities to his son Eleazar.  A lot happens in one chapter which will impact the future of the people of Israel.

So we begin, or maybe continue to see, these laws of purification that can be confusing and as you read the Bible from the eyes of a 21st century Christian, bewildering.  The laws are simple.  Every year the people of Israel are to sacrifice a red cow, one that has never worked the field, as a purification offering.  Whoever is involved in this offering will be unclean until the evening.  

Then there is a transition to what do we do when we come into contact with the dead.  We see a whole list of commandments that are meant to be kept and are not to be overlooked.  If you do not follow what is written then it means that the person “shall be cut off from Israel.”  So, not really something to mess around with.  Anyone who interacts with a dead person or with death is unclean for a week.  But they can come back into good graces by purifying after 3 days and then again after 7 days.  All you have to do is follow the rules and everything will work out fine.

I don’t think we have a life lesson from that last sentence, but some do.  Our Christian life is not built around a set of rules.  Our Christian life is built around a relationship with Jesus Christ which is not founded on rules but rather on the love that he has for us which was seen when he died for us.

God lays out the responsibilities for the priestly class so that those who are not in the priestly class would not feel the need to get involved in things which they do not understand.  (Sorry, a whole bunch of double, triple, and quadruple negatives there.)  I want to be sure that you understand this was before they entered the promised land and worshiped in the tabernacle which was mobile and when they found themselves wandering in the wilderness.  Still, even at that time, God wanted them to worship correctly so he gave them instructions.  He didn’t leave them to their own devices, He never does by the way.

Aaron and his family were to be set apart in order to perform the duties  that were required of them for the Lord.  They were so set apart that they were not allowed to be approached by outsiders.   I’m not really sure how that worked, just that as vs.7 states: “any outsider who approaches shall be put to death.”  That sounds serious.

Notice that Aaron and the Levites do not receive any land from the Lord just these responsibilities and the food that comes from the sacrifices.  This is unique to all the other tribes who would receive land.  I guess that would be enough to guarantee them security for generations to come.  This is to serve, according to vs.31 as: “your payment for your service in the tent of meeting.”  This is a bit of a step away from our Protestant understanding of the Priesthood of all believers.  If you want to know more about this concept see here.  

“Protestants believe that through Christ they have been given direct access to God, just like a priest; thus the doctrine is called the priesthood of all believers. God is equally accessible to all the faithful, and every Christian has equal potential to minister for God.”

Let’s put the doubters to rest, we need one way in which we can get things back under control and make sure that the people know who was chosen by God to lead the people of God.  That’s basically what happens in this chapter.  God has Moses take from each leader of the twelve tribes their respective staff and put it in the tent of meeting, or the tabernacle, or the place where the Lord was residing while they were stopped.  

When he did that the staff of Aaron sprouted to the point that it produced the fruit of the almond and people were able to gather them from the staff if they wanted.  No other staff had any other significant change to it so the people were supposed to see that Aaron was indeed, as Moses had said, the one who was supposed to lead the people in their religious life and Moses was  supposed to lead in their civic life.  

But, as  a result of this display, the people were terrified.  We can’t approach God, no one can get near, is there any way that you can change all of this because none of us feels comfortable in God being in our midst and the impending doom hanging over our head for anyone who might question his authority.  Their fear is that they would all perish.  Moses comes up with a creative response to this fear in the next chapter. 

This is a really dramatic chapter.  There are certain things that happen in the Bible that as I read it I think to myself, I don’t ever remember reading this before.  This chapter is one of them.  I’m sure I’ve read it before, but I simply do not remember the earth swallowing up alive the families of those who were rebelling against Moses and Aaron.  But here we have it.  A bit of context might help.

Do you get the feeling that the baseball cheating scandal with the Astros has not lessened, but rather that the more time goes on the more people are upset to the point where I’m thinking it will soon get out of hand.  When the season starts I don’t think there will be a single safe Astros who will come to bat.  Soooo…, it seems like things are spiraling out of control for Moses and Aaron.  He just had to deal with the disobedience of the people and their banishment to the wilderness for forty years.  Now in this chapter we have another rebellion, but this time it seems to be much more serious because you have the priestly class going against Moses and Aaron, one of their own.  

Some of the priestly class have come out against Moses and are upset because of his preferential status before the Lord.  They say: you are not the only holy one here, all  of us are holy so we should all be able to have an audience before the Lord.  We should all be able to make decisions for the people.  We should all be able to establish rules and regulations for the people.  What makes you so special to think that only you have this right and this responsibility?  From Protestant eyes this all makes sense.  After all we have what is called the priesthood of all believers.  Not one of us, not me, nor any other pastor, has a closer relationship with God than anyone else simply from the fact that we are pastors.  We all have  the same ability and opportunity to live a full life in full communion with the Lord whether a person is a pastor or not.

That really wasn’t the case in the Old Testament.  Moses and Aaron really did have the hierarchical upper hand.  They set the rules, they called the shots, and that was just how it was.  But people weren’t happy with that, especially now that things were starting to go south, we better take the reins into our own hands before things really get out of control.  You don’t often see Moses angry, but here we see him angry.  He even tells God not to pay any attention to the sacrifices of the three families who have come questioning his authority.  He tells God to disregard them.  That is very unusual, so we know we are dealing with something serious.

God has had enough and once again wants to destroy all of the Israelites, but because Aaron and Moses intervene God does not destroy all of them.  But those families who rebelled he tells the other to move away from them, and they did.  As  a result the earth opened up and they all died.  Pretty dramatic.  Those 250 people who were in the priestly class who wanted to have the same say as Moses were also slaughtered.  The people continued to rebel and God sent a plague but once again Moses  and Aaron intervene to prevent the plague from spreading any further.

Just think what would have happened if Moses and Aaron had tired of intervening for the people of Israel.  What would have happened then?  It would have been a bit of a different history from what we have now.

So we get a pretty flexible law which is interspersed with a very legalistic application to the law.  We begin the chapter with a variety of offerings that were to take place once the people settle into the promised land.  It then slides into what should happen if a person “unintentionally” were to break the law, or not follow the law.  It  is not that big of a deal if they break the law, they should present another offering and ask for forgiveness and then life goes on.  Not a problem at all if someone breaks the law unintentionally.  

But, and this is where it gets interesting, if they do it intentionally, they should be cut off from among his people.  And then we get to vs.32 where we find a person who was caught picking up twigs on the Sabbath.  Does that sound at all like Jesus and his disciples gleaning the field on the Sabbath?  Look at Mark 2:23-28 and you see this take place where Jesus says the famous: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”  

Apparently that did not fly with Moses in this chapter, or maybe the person picking up twigs didn’t try this line of argument.  All I know is that at the end of the day the poor guy was stoned to death by the Israelite.  He then tells the people to put stuff on their clothes so that they won’t forget the commandments, because bad things happen when you forget the commandments.

A lot happens in this chapter that is well known that we have to look at.  First of all, remember the last chapter we left off with Joshua and Caleb pretty much being the only ones who said that the land that they spied out is pretty amazing, in fact it is a land flowing with milk and honey.  But the people chose to follow the words of the other 10 who said that the land is inhabited by giants so there is no way that God would ever be able to overcome them.  In vs.4 of this chapter it gets so bad that the Israelites say: Let’s choose one from each tribe who will lead us and take us back to Egypt.  The assumption is  that Moses’ time as our leader is finished.  We are doing this on our own.  And the this is to go back to to Egypt where we were slaves, because it has to be better than what we have now.

As a result of this infidelity of the people God decides to strike them all down and kill them (vs.12).  Moses intercedes for them and reminds God in vs. 18 that His holy Word once said: “The Lord is slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression…”  These are all words that the Israelites needed at this time.  So God responds to this appeal by saying: I do forgive, but none of these people who plotted against you, so against me, shall see the promised land.  

He sets the time that they will be wandering in the wilderness where they will do, for one year for every day that the people spied out the land, which would be 40  years since they spied out the land 40 days.  But only Joshua and Caleb are going to be able to enter the land.  When the word gets back to the people, as you would expect, they were remorseful.  They had a great idea.  Let’s show God that we are on his side and that we won’t do that again and let’s go and take the land over, that should show him.  Moses tells them, don’t do that, God is not with you, not a good idea.  They try to invade the land and they are repulsed and slaughtered,  Not all of them, but enough of them to leave a mark.

We now have the stage set for the people of Israel to die off so that their kids can take over the promised land…

The people of Israel are approaching the promised land so Moses sends out some lead agents to get a feel for the land and to bring back a report of what the land is like.  The report is supposed to include some tangible signs of what the land is like as well as a report on their military establishments.  Don’t pass over vs. 8 where we are introduced to Hoshea, son of Nun who then is clarified in vs.16 as the one whose name was changed to Joshua without explanation.  We should take note that name changes are pretty frequent and they always represent a pretty significant and dramatic change in the life of the individual involved.  We don’t hear about a change in the life of Hoshea which required his name to become Joshua.  But, we know what will become of Joshua so keep your eye on him as we go along in Numbers.

He is mentioned as one of the spies that were being sent out into the promised land to get a read on what the land was like.  They all go out and they find grapes the size of whose clusters were so big that they had to be carried by two people.  The same for the figs and the pomegranates, it was just a very impressive area with very impressive produce.  They set out for forty days.  Don’t let that number pass you by either.  Noah and the ark had 40 days.  The wilderness will reflect a 40 year wandering.  It is a time period which always seems to be just enough to get whatever job needs to be done to get done.  

The spies come back and they are all pretty much unanimous in their report except for one.  They all say: Yeah, pretty amazing stuff over there but the people and the fortifications are way too advanced and sophisticated for us to even have a chance of doing anything to take it from them.  Let’s just call it good and go look for something else.  Caleb, however, was the only outlier who said no, we should go right now for God has placed that land in our hands.  You would think that Joshua would have taken Caleb’s side.  But we don’t hear one way or the other about him.  So when you have all the other spies saying that there is no way that we can go into that land or we will be smushed, that will be the general consensus.  We will see that this is exactly what happens in our next chapter.  Folks are pretty bummed out.

In leadership there are always times when there are those who think that not only could they be doing a better job than you, but they are somewhat indignant that you are even given the position that you have.  We find a really interesting story of a family squabble.  Remember that Aaron and Miriam are the brother and sister of Moses.  So these are three siblings who have incredibly prominent roles within the history of the people of Israel.  Miriam is the one who basically saved Moses’ life by following him along the Nile when he was a baby in a basket and encouraging the daughter of Pharaoh to raise up Moses.  How Aaron escapes death as a boy Hebrew child we are not told.  

We find that all of a sudden it is as if they just realized that the woman to whom Moses is married is a foreigner.  This, in their minds, disqualifies Moses from being the chosen leader that he is.  He should be playing a secondary role because he is not nearly as pure as the rest of them.  They made that decision on their own and began sowing the seeds of discontent.  Moses was not really someone who was willing to buck their decisions so he was about to go along with it.  The Bible says that he was humble, more so than anyone on the face of the earth so he did not want to rock the boat.  They want to lead the people, that’s fine with me.  It wasn’t my idea to begin with.

God had different plans and insists that his plans be followed and not those that we come up with.  He calls Aaron and Miriam before him and punishes Miriam with leprosy because she dared to question God’s decisions.  God’s decision was to put Moses in leadership and that was not good enough for his siblings.  Somewhat similar to Joseph and his brothers, but different.  As a result of her punishment the entire tribe of Israel had to wait until she was healed from her leprosy so that the nation could move forward toward the promised land.  So her and Aaron’s questioning of God’s authority, which was displayed in their questioning of Moses’ authority, developed into a punishment that was only laid upon Miriam, but had an impact upon the entire people in their week long delay.  

God could have been more severe, but in this punishment you hope she and Aaron learned their lesson.  Golden calf anyone?

We begin to see what happens when you travel together as a family for a long time in somewhat cramped  quarters.  We find the people of Israel complain to Moses because they did not have meat to eat.  They were reminiscing about the good old days in Egypt when they had all the fish they could eat, they had their own gardens, they had anklets and necklets and bracelets around them because they were slaves.  They actually left that part out of it.  But they remembered the meat and vegetables part and complained to God that they were sick and tired of this thing called manna.  It reminds me of this scene in Forest Gump.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFyM3xNoGSE

For some reason this won’t click on immediately, just paste and copy onto your browser, you’ll see the scene.  But how many different ways can you make manna?  God responds by saying, I will provide you with so much meat that you will ask how many ways are there to cook meat?  Did you miss the bookend in this chapter?  It begins with fire and death and it ends with a plague of death for those who complained about not having meat.

As you would expect God provides the quail just as he promised.  He also provides some relief for Moses who felt the burden of having to hear the protestations of the people of Israel all by himself.  God gave his Holy Spirit to two other people besides Moses who were enabled to lead and to prophesy as Moses was.  A  lot happens in this chapter and it is a bit of a precursor for the time when Moses sets up other judges who can rule over the people as he rules.  That will come in the next few chapters.