Category: Numbers

The camp must remain pure. Again, the things that made them unclean were not their poor choices or deliberate sin, but the result of simply living in a sin-cursed world. These things defiled the camp if they were permitted to remain. The defilement could not be tolerated where God dwelt.

All of this may seem unjustly exclusionary, but given God’s holy nature, that is the way it has to be. Again, if we dwell on how unloving that seems, we are duped and drawn away by Satan as Eve was. The truth is, God’s intolerance of sin is one of the characteristics that makes Him wonderful. If sin and its effects can be removed from our eternal experience, that is good! Man’s sin and the resulting curse and all it brings were not part of God’s design or will for us; that uncleanness is not His problem unless He wants to persist in having a relationship with us. He is good to pursue that relationship and to give us a way to enjoy His presence despite our corruption from His design and purpose for us. Further, He is good to give us the information we need to take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy relationship with Him. Let us use the twisted thinking with which Satan wants to tempt us, as an opportunity to take our questions to God and allow Him to teach us the truth. Thus we can use Satan’s temptation in a way that will totally thwart him, to draw nearer to God by embracing the truth, knowing Him better, and glorifying Him!

We also don’t need to get hung up on the seeming injustice of the provisions of the Law giving all the rights to the husband and none to the wife if her husband were unfaithful. The provisions in the Law for divorce give the husband rights to put away his wife, but do not speak to the woman divorcing her husband. Perhaps this was because in that time a woman had little hope of survival, let alone a meaningful life, if she left her husband, because she had no way to earn her living. The provision for detecting adultery protected women from being “put away” unjustly, which doomed them to a poor reputation and an unfulfilling life despite their innocence. It also protected a husband from being duped into raising another man’s child as his own. The matter would be revealed by God in the ritual which would represent a husband’s asking for revelation and which would demonstrate faith in God’s all-knowing character and willingness to reveal the truth. Hidden sin would be found out and weeded out.

Does it speak to you at all about our relationship with Jesus being described as Jesus as the bridegroom and us as the bride?

A Nazirite was one who had made vows of devotion to God, like a monk or nun. The Law didn’t require such, but made provision and established guidelines for one who wanted to express his love for Him by devoting himself to God. One key provision was that they dedicated themselves to God for only a specified period of time. Once again, we see that this type of worship had to be offered God’s way and not in any way man desired.

After Nadab and Abihu’s deaths in the Tabernacle, how would you like to be a Levite and receive an assignment in the Tabernacle? That job would hold little appeal. God, however, was good enough to give them all of the organization and information they needed to perform their duties safely. We may find the assignment of their duties dull, but I’m guessing that the original audience found it very interesting. Why preserve the record for us? My guess is that it reinforces important truths that God wants us to remember.

Why did it have to be so dangerous? God is holy, and man does not approach Him of his own initiative and in his own way. Rather, man is granted access to God as a privilege, and with that privilege comes responsibility. Some of the requirements may not make sense to us, but that would be expected when God is holy; His “otherness” makes Him beyond our comprehension.

God is good to give us the details we need to come near to Him. He doesn’t need to bother with us at all, and the reality that He cannot tolerate sin in His presence might make His total rejection of sinful man understandable. Instead, He makes a way for us to come near to Him and provides a way for us to be protected from destruction that would otherwise result from sin approaching Him too closely. These instructions detail His goodness to man.

We can rush through some of these readings; I encourage you to use the time you save in rushing through the dull details, to understand the significance of those details to God’s Old Testament people. Then consider what they mean to us New Testament people. What praise for God do they inspire in you? Take the time to offer it to Him out loud today!

There is only a month’s time lapse between the end of Exodus and the beginning of Numbers. As the book opens, the Israelites are still at the foot of Mt. Sinai where they received the Ten Commandments, made the covenant with God and established worship in the Tabernacle as described in Exodus and Leviticus. It is now one year and one month since they left Egypt. Having established a covenant relationship with God, which now defines their national identity, they are ready to move forward to occupy the land of God’s promise.

The book of Numbers gets its name from the two censuses that take place in it – one in the beginning and one at the end -, which are an appropriate beginning and end of the story told in this book. It covers forty years of history and takes place in the wilderness of what we now call the Sinai Peninsula and southern Levant.

Just as with the dullest passages of Leviticus, if we can get a blessing from the description of the first census and the organization of the Israelites’ camp, we can appreciate the most challenging passages of the Bible. So what can we get from today’s very dull reading?

Man’s best current scholarship tells us that the Bible grossly exaggerates the numbers of the Exodus; in other words, the Bible lies. If there were 603,550 men of fighting age who left Egypt, not including the Levites (who numbered 22,000), how many people might you guess left Egypt? Three million might be a conservative estimate, if you do the math and if they were as prolific as the comments of the Egyptian midwives implied. The reason so-called scholars believe that number is vastly inflated is because that many people would take forever to get out of Egypt. The column, they claim, would snake all across the Sinai Peninsula when the first of the people were entering the Promised Land.

God’s word states the numbers very clearly – twice. We have a choice to believe God or believe man. No living witness was there to see it, except God. He is honored by our faith. On the other hand, if we don’t believe what He tells us in His word in this one small detail, what else can’t we believe that His word tells us? The choice to believe God or man in this matter carries a lot of importance. What do you choose?

That number also represents God’s faithfulness to His covenant with Abraham and further promises to Abraham and Jacob (Genesis 15:13-16 and Genesis 46:3-4).

That many people traveling, setting up camp, breaking camp and getting into formation would be chaos. Once again, God addressed this basic need with the plan of organization that He laid out here. Organization is good; with that many people it’s necessary. God not only provided food and water for them; He provided a plan for getting them organized. That teaches me that God understands all of our needs and has a way to meet them. What need of yours do you need to trust Him for today?