Author: Pastor Bob

We have trumpets, and these trumpets signaled a few things.  A double trumpet meant the whole assembly had to gather for something really important.  A single trumpet would sound if only the leaders were supposed to gather together.  There were other trumpet signals that would sound to go into battle.  And yet another trumpet sound to signal that we are picking up stakes and moving on, or that we will be settled down right here where we find ourselves.  I love the fact that it was the Levites who blew the trumpets.  Moses makes it really clear that only the Levites and no one else was supposed to be allowed to blow the trumpets.  Look at vs.8 and this was supposed to hold true for all generations.  I guess I am supposed to be the one who rings the bell when the first service starts.

It then moves on to describe how the tribes moved out when it was time to go forward in the journey.  We have an interchange between Moses and his father-in-law.  Remember Moses married a foreign woman who worshiped other gods.  He told Moses that he was going to head back home, it was fun, but home called.  Moses asks him to stay on because there was no one who was a better scout than he was.  He tells him: “You know where we should go.”  We don’t hear, but we can assume that he stayed on.  

Notice that Moses has a prayer for when they start off in the morning and when they settle in for the evening.  It sets the example of prayers in the morning and prayers in the evening.  

There are two  things to watch for in this chapter.  The first still  continues true to this day and that is the institution of the celebration of Passover.  Here we find that a specific month and day was to be used in order to celebrate the Passover.  This year it begins April 8 and it ends April 18.  Remember what the Passover celebrated.  It celebrated the literal passing over of the angel of death as the people of Israel were in captivity in Egypt.  They were spared the angel of death by the blood on their doorposts while the Egyptians lost their first born sons.  It was this tenth and final plague which allowed the Israelites to escape from Egypt, but hurriedly.  

The question arises if I am unclean am I still able to celebrate the Passover?  We know how strict the purity laws are, but Moses  talked  to God and God said absolutely!  You have to celebrate the Passover regardless of your purity status.  It is kind of neat to be able to see something instituted that is still celebrated today.  Remember, the last supper was a Passover meal.  So they all tie together.

The second matter that this chapter deals with is this cloud and fire which guided the tabernacle and the people of Israel.  God made His will be known in regards to when the people  were to move and when they were to camp out and hang out with a cloud and with a fire.  When a cloud was present they would hang out, no matter how long the cloud was there.  When a fire was present then it was time to move.  Wouldn’t you just love to have a cloud and fire directing you to knowing and understanding the will of God?  That would be pretty nice.

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.

This chapter is redundant with information, but every now and then we need a little redundancy.  Moses, as they make their way across the wilderness toward the promises land, has set up the tabernacle, which is the precursor to the temple which will eventually be built in Jerusalem.  But the tabernacle was a mobile temple which every tribe had to support and had to give tribute.  What we find to begin this chapter is that every priestly class was given something because of the work that they put into building the tabernacle.  Every family except the Kohathites, because they were “charged with the care of the holy things that had to be carried on the shoulders.”  So…, not sure why they were left out of the goodies that the other priestly tribes were able to receive.

The redundancy comes as we see each tribe of Israel give the same exact contribution to the tabernacle, to the presence of the Lord.  I love the idea that every single tribe had the same value, had the same gift, had the same understanding of what it means to be a child of God.  No one gave more, no one gave less.  They each gave the same.  As a  result we see that God’s love for them is the same as it is for each tribe.  Not that this is a conditional relationship, rather the contrary is seen.  Each tribe wants to give the same to the Lord just as the Lord wants to receive  from each tribe the same.

I wish there were more redundancy in our world, where each person cares for the Lord and cares for each other in the same way.  Instead, it seems like there is a competition to build up our own resources to the detriment of those around us.  Moses’ relationship with God is still “face to face”.  What a rush it must have been to know that their leader had a relationship with God where he actually gets to hear his voice audibly.  

There are two topics that we need  to discuss today.  One is the Nazirene and what that means and who was a Nazarene in Biblical history.  The second is the priestly blessing which is incredibly powerful.  In the Bible we see that Samson the judge was a Nazirite.  This is why he had long hair and was required to abstain from alcohol.  Those were two of the commandments that they had to follow: no hair cutting, no drinking alcohol, and they had to keep themselves ritually pure which meant not getting close to any dead bodies.  The term means technically: “set apart”.  A Nazirite was someone who was set apart to do the will of God.  There was also Samuel who was  Nazirene and was set apart from birth and grew up to be a very powerful and important high priest.  

There is some debate as to whether John the Baptist or Jesus or Paul were Nazirites.  I would say no, Jesus was called someone who didn’t hesitate to drink alcohol.  There are other reasons.  But each of them, and each of us as we think about it, are called to be “set apart” for the work of the Lord.  Each one of us is called to make a vow of obedience to the Lord.  How that vow is lived out depends primarily on each one of us.  Some of us may choose not to drink alcohol, some of us may choose to not cut our hair, some of us may choose to maintain ritual purity.  But we do not, in the New Covenant under Jesus, have a specific path we have to follow in order to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.  Just love him and have a personal relationship with him.  How that plays out in our lives will be different for each person.

We can’t miss the very powerful Priestly benediction which we find in vs.24-26.  Some pastors only use these verses when they give their benedictions.  I love it and it has power because of its antiquity and because of its authenticity.  Let me leave you with it today:

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

We begin to get into areas that are skewed in proportion to what is expected of women and what is expected of men.  The chapter begins innocently enough with the command to ensure  that anyone who is unclean because of a discharge or been in contact with the dead should be put out of the camp.  We do not know for how long, but just that they have to be put out of the camp.  This all makes sense just because the way that diseases spread back then was definitely a result of bacteria and those who are “unclean” coming into contact with people.  There really was no ability to disinfect anything.

The next section deals with restitution which again is innocuous and deals with paying back a person who has been wronged, not only what is due him, but a small percentage more.  That all makes sense.

 But then we get to the part about an unfaithful wife.  But as you read it, it not only covers an unfaithful wife but also a jealous husband whose wife has been faithful.  Keep in mind that there is no, at least at this point, law that speaks about the infidelity of a man, especially if the woman with whom he is unfaithful is unmarried.  Then it seems like nothing matters.  All of the emphasis is on a married woman who is either unfaithful or is subjected to a jealous husband.  In order to discern if a wife has been unfaithful or not the church, or the priests of God, are signed up to give a toxic chemical to the woman.  If she bleeds out and dies then she was guilty, if she survives, then she is innocent.  It does sound a lot like this scene in Monty Python. 

If you look at the structure of the Presbyterian Church (USA) you will see that it is not in any way a top down organization.  We have people within the church who have taken on leadership responsibilities, but they are members of the church just like any other member of the church.  In this chapter in Numbers we see that God chose specific people with very distinct individualistic roles which revolved around worship and the tabernacle.  From within his people he chose people who would be responsible for the detail of spreading a tent and cloth over the tabernacle.  There was another group of people responsible for carrying the tabernacle from point A to point B and every point in between.  There was another group of people responsible for carrying the accouterments around the tabernacle.  

The way in which the people from these three categories were chosen depended on the family into  which they were born.  So every person born in that family had one role and one role alone and they could not have grown out of their role or responsibility.  That is not the way in which we ask people to serve around here.  We don’t have all the people of one last name serve in this capacity, and another last name in a different capacity.  Where you are called to serve is where you will be asked to serve.

This week the young adults Sunday School class is taking a spiritual gifts inventory.  It is supposed to help to discern where we are gifted and so ultimately where we are called to serve.  I have never done this before at a church before, but I am looking forward to it because it should give some direction and guidance to people who are looking to get plugged in.  Notice that Moses continues to obey the commandments of the Lord and it seems at this point that things are going pretty well.  

What happens in this chapter is a very detailed description of the roles of the Levites in the temple.  The chapter begins with the sons of Aaron.  Remember Aaron was chosen by God to be the head priest before the people of Israel.  The descendants of Levi, they were called the Levites, were given the responsibility to help Aaron as he carried out his priestly function.  So this tribe was called the priestly tribe.  This chapter contains the details of what the sons of Levi were supposed to do.  

You will see starting in vs.25 the “responsibilities” that one of the sons of Levi had.  The next son had other “responsibilities” that are delineated starting in vs.31.  Another son and his “responsibilities” are laid out starting in vs.36.  From there you see that it was commanded that the first-born of each family and every tribe in Israel was supposed to go to the Lord, was supposed to be offered to the Lord.  

Now, even though the Lord required this offering, the Levites as a whole were counted as a substitute for that offering.  So instead of each first-born son from every tribe being offered to the Lord and taken from his parents in order to serve God, the Levites were counted as a substitute for that offering.  It is interesting that the number of first-born and the number of Levites were about exactly the same. 

So while this whole concept of God demanding the first-born son from every family seems to be a bit draconian, the substitute clause allows for the grace of God to shine through.  That is a common theme in all of Scripture.  What at first seems to be “unfair” is then met with the complete grace of God.

If you want to know where to focus on when we are looking at numbers and names don’t forget to look at what I call the bookend verses.  So the bookend verses for chapter two would be found in vs.1-2 and vs.34.  Each of the soldiers of the people of Israel were to be put in their families and lined up  in their grouping.  Each camp, so all 12 of the tribes, were to be facing the tent of meeting so that the tent of meeting would be the wheel from which all of the spokes would emanate.

I love that image.  I love the image of the house of worship being the center of the community.  When you go to Europe you will find piazzas (not pizzas!), or squares, which were the center of the community.  That is why it is called the square because it is supposed to be in the center of the community.  In each piazza was the central church, or the cathedral.  That is such an important image to remember  that it takes a church, or a group of churches, to raise a village.  

A simple guide to the book of Numbers doesn’t really exist.  It is a book which describes the passage of the people of  Israel from Mount Sinai, where they received the 10 Commandments, all the way to the border of the promised land.  Within this book we will find census lists, ancestral promises, divine presence and guidance, revelation and human leadership, holy people and holy priests.  I can’t encourage you enough to hang in there as we make our way through this book of the Bible.  It is here where most people lose interest as they are reading the Bible from beginning to end.  Don’t lose interest.  Let’s look at the first chapter.

Do you remember when God got really, really angry with David because he took a census back in II Samuel 24?  Not so here with Moses in the very first chapter of Numbers.  God actually asks Moses to take a census of how  many young men there would be who might be able to do battle for Israel.  So he counted the 12 tribes and came up with a number for each tribe.  The final number comes out to 603,550.  Remember this doesn’t include women and children or the tribe of Levi which was the priestly class.  That is a lot of people for back then!

I love the detail of the last verses which describe the Levites from vs.48 to the end of the chapter.  It describes this priestly class and their roles and their responsibilities and how they were not counted as those who were to go to battle because they had very specific religious duties that they had to fulfill.  Keep this tribe in the front of your mind because we will see them play a primary role a bit later on.