As I wrote in last year’s post for these chapters (note the link to it in the underlined words), I can think of some good reasons why God’s treatment of women should differ from His treatment of men. The difference didn’t disparage or devalue women; rather, it gave them the good fortune to be granted reprieve from their “thoughtless utterances,” a privilege that men didn’t have. Our culture trains us to take offense at different treatment for women; we need to recognize that deception for what it is and instead submit to God’s higher ways and thoughts for our good.
Numbers 27 – 29
Burnt offerings were a pleasing aroma to God. This is a part of His character that I find difficult. As much as He values His creation and demonstrates respect for life in His commands, I don’t believe that His pleasure indicates that He is cruel, although I believe Satan would like for us to be offended by it. This is something to give prayerful consideration as an opportunity to know God better.
Burnt offerings were recognized as a part of worship. It’s interesting that worship cost the people. In a culture where wealth was measured in flocks and herds, sacrificing burnt offerings was like throwing cash on an altar. God doesn’t need or value our cash any more than He needed food. So why did it please Him that they sacrificed their wealth? What does this teach you about right worship of God?
The schedule of their offerings teaches us about God’s desire for His people’s worship. They worshiped every day, morning and evening. An offering would have been burning on the altar continuously. What does that teach you about the worship God desires from you?
There were special observances each week on the Sabbath, and each month at the new moon. Every holiday featured worship of God, which would have made it part of their most treasured traditions as well as their everyday. Do you find Him worthy of including worship in your happiest occasions?
Numbers 25 – 26
So we see why God forbid His people to interact with the people living in Canaan. They weren’t even in the Promised Land yet, and they had already disobeyed that command. And promptly gave in to the lure of worshiping other gods. That experience reinforces that God’s commands, harsh as they seemed, were protection for His people. Their observance would have protected the people from straying.
Once again, Israel’s experience offers us an opportunity to check ourselves, hopefully before we have to suffer the ugly consequences of sin. Do you feel safe flouting God’s (admittedly restrictive) warnings, which are given for your own protection, because you believe you are immune to the danger? God’s warnings are there for a reason. We may seem child-like to live by them rather than exercise our own judgment about the danger, but we must understand that God’s knows the danger better than we do.
The census taken at the end of the forty years in the wilderness is a reminder to us of God’s faithfulness to His promises, both for our good and our bad. The numbers indicate that God fulfilled His promise to Jacob to make his descendants into a great nation while they were in Egypt (Genesis 46:3), which of course also fulfilled His promise to Abraham to multiply his descendants. It also fulfilled His promise to the generation who rejected the Promised Land; not one of them were left except Caleb and Joshua. If He stuck to His promise to prevent their entrance into the Promised Land, will He also prevent sinners from entering the place of promised rest for eternity? Today’s reading is a sobering reminder to us, and an opportunity to evaluate where we stand so that we are prepared to be welcomed instead of rejected when we face Jesus.
Numbers 14 – 15, Psalm 90
After rejecting God’s provision for them, the Israelites rejected God’s punishment for them and took off in pursuit of the Promised Land they had previously rejected! God’s mercy extended far enough that He didn’t destroy them all as He had Nadab and Abihu or the grumblers who perished at Taberah (v. 11:1-3), but no further. He did not relent this time, and they were stuck with the consequences of their choices.
One of sin’s effects on us is to harden us to sin. We grow used to our sin and it doesn’t offend us. We feel comfortable committing acts we never dreamed we could commit. That effect keeps us from seeing sin for the awful thing it is. The Israelites probably did not intend to show contempt for God with their complaints and turning away from the Promised Land, but that’s how God saw it. His viewpoint is the only one that matters.
Psalm 90 has felt like balm to my soul. Moses would have written this psalm during his forty years in the desert suffering not because of his own choices, but because of the people’s rebellion. In the midst of some painful and difficult situations of my own I appreciate the reminder that life isn’t easy for any of us, and we probably all have more difficult days than easy days in our lives. So why do we expect God to grant us better than that, or worse yet, expect to achieve better by our own efforts? Moses asked not for all glad days, but for more glad days than bad days.
This is probably important for us, because our enemy tries to convince us that a life of constant glad days is a realistic expectation, which keeps us striving instead of accepting from God and submitting to His will for our lives. Striving prevents us from ordering our days rightly. Rightly-ordered days each start with seeking God, being satisfied in His love and choosing to rejoice (there’s that word again!).
Can you imagine sitting in the desert, of all places, forty years with nothing to do, knowing that you could have been enjoying the fruits of your labor in an abundant land instead of twiddling your thumbs in that drab place? Those forty years would not have been glad days, but days of affliction. Yet Moses anticipated that God’s satisfying them with His love would result in their singing for joy and being glad all of the days of those forty years, and beyond. Can you expect the same in days of affliction?
Every morning we need to seek God. Moses didn’t admonish the people to be satisfied with God’s unfailing love; he asked God to satisfy them with His unfailing love. Can you choose to ask the same – each morning – and trust God to do it? I have placed this little gem before me so that I will remember to ask it each morning until it has become my habit.
Numbers 11 – 13
The people’s complaining displeased God; Moses’ complaining didn’t. What made the difference? Moses presented his complaints to God.
We don’t usually think of complaining when we think of consuming-fire-worthy sin, but let’s understand why it is so offensive to God. The Israelites’ complaining scorned God’s powerful and glorious rescue from Egypt and His miraculous provision of manna, and expressed lack of trust in Him to provide. It called into question His claims about who He is and disdained the privilege of their special relationship with Him. God had made it clear that their complaining displeased Him and that He took it personally, and yet they persisted; their complaining was rebellion and demonstrated a lack of respect and love for Him.
Moses, on the other hand took his issues to God. He didn’t actually request anything, simply laid out the situation before God, entrusting all to Him. That speaks to me about how I pray. Often I offer the solution to the problem as I pray, instead of laying the situation out before God and trusting in His higher ways and thoughts to work out a solution that is greater than I could even think of asking. Moses entrusted the situation to God and received “abundantly above all he could ask or think.”
We heard a powerful sermon Sunday about Israel’s complaining. Since they are an object lesson to us of our own human weaknesses, we need to realize that we as God’s New Covenant people share their same tendencies if we don’t let Jesus transform us and if we are not on our guards. The correction and preventative for our complaining problem is found in Philippians 4:4-7: rejoice, be gentle, and present our requests to God.
Their constant complaints became a habit until they rejected the Promised Land because of their complaints. That was a serious consequence for sure, for those who rejected it never saw the Promised Land, to their sorrow.
That Promised Land is an object lesson to us of Heaven. Can you imagine being refused Heaven because of a habit and character of complaining, being told “I never knew you” because you refuse to trust Him by taking your concerns to Him and instead grumble in a way He dislikes? If that frightens you, please make it right with God and ask Him to help you substitute rejoicing, gentleness and prayer for complaining.
Numbers 7
Another dull passage, but let’s not miss the fact that the gift given by the twelfth tribe was as noteworthy to God as that given by the first tribe. Are you last? Do you feel obscure and forgotten, buried in the invisible middle of the line? God hasn’t missed you or your gifts; He values you as much as the first person in line, and treasures your contribution as much as that first guy’s.
A sad reality of life in our sin-cursed world is that not everyone can be first. That’s sad enough that our culture tries to convince us that it’s not so, so everyone gets a trophy. God doesn’t propagate that lie, but He does treasure each one of us as much as the first. If that doesn’t feel like enough to you today, please ask God to align your perception with the truth.
As monotonous as this reading is, isn’t it so much more effective a reminder of God’s esteem for the obscure than His simply saying so would be?
Numbers 5 – 6
Sin makes us self-centered. Not only does that impact our relationship with God, but with others as well. God makes the latter ever so important in Numbers 5:6-7 when He equates wronging another “in any way” with unfaithfulness to Himself, and calls it sin for which He requires confession and restitution.
Modern culture normalizes and justifies self-centeredness so that it is hard for us to recognize it as wrong. This is just one way we become contaminated by living in this sin-cursed world, and why we need to be in God’s word daily – not simply reading it, but reflecting on what we read and how it applies to us. So please take the opportunity this reminder affords us to consider your relations with others. What do they reveal about your relationship with God?
Our culture and our enemy will also cause us to consider God unjust in seeming to promote a male-dominated culture that is unfair to women by offering a test for an unfaithful wife and not one for an unfaithful husband. I addressed that in last year’s post; you can click on the link in the underlined text here to go to that post and so gain a better understanding of why this was so. Because if you are offended by this it is due to lack of understanding, and that will result in missing the important point of this provision and causing you to have the mind of sinful man rather than the mind of Christ. Don’t play into Satan’s hands like that!
The principle behind the test for the unfaithful wife is that God does not want the weak suffering unjustly at the hands of the strong. What a good God.
An equally important truth in this provision is that God reveals the hidden truth if we ask Him. The “bitter water that brings a curse” would produce the outcome God directed. The ceremony offered here was a petition to God to reveal hidden truth. Please don’t miss this reminder. Questions about others can hinder our peace and joy; ask God to reveal the hidden truth, and trust Him to do so.
Numbers 1 – 4
Do you notice how even the most routine tasks can take longer when the routine is broken? I was reminded of that when I was taking a shower while visiting my sister and brother-in-law last weekend. I had to get out from under the running water to get my soap, I got burned by the hot water, I used too much shampoo because I forgot that their soft water requires a fraction of the shampoo I normally use, and it seemed like a simple shower took much longer than usual. I felt like a comedy of errors doing something I am so used to doing every day that I usually don’t have to think about it!
How much more awkward is the forgetting, the overlooking, the confusion, chaos and time required to do something we’ve never done before. The Israelites had never set up camp, never broken camp and set out before they left Egypt, and moving that large amount of people was no small feat. Then they lingered at Mt. Sinai for a year setting up the Tabernacle and institutions of worship described in Exodus and Leviticus; at the end of that year those activities were even more complicated because they had the Tabernacle to manage as well. They didn’t want to make mistakes with that, considering what had happened to Nadab and Abihu.
Think how much the Israelites appreciated the details in these chapters.
If they followed these directions, each Levite performing his assigned task, there would be no chaos, not even the first time the Tabernacle was taken down. Nothing would have been overlooked, hopefully no goofs would have been made. None of the holy loaves of bread accidentally dropped to the ground prompting the responsible Levite to look around guiltily before snatching it up and dusting it off. There would be no opportunity for the holy to become common or ridiculous, no cause for humor in the handling of the Tabernacle. For what we laugh at we lose respect for.
I don’t enjoy these chapters, but I do appreciate what I learn about God in them. They remind me that God cares about and is involved in the affairs of our lives, even the dull details like logistics. I am a planner and thrive in an organized environment, and I appreciate that God provided that for His people living a nomadic lifestyle in the wilderness, on which their vast numbers would have imposed a heavy burden. Consider how good God is to give His people these guidelines!