Stand Up and Be Counted

NUMBERS 1:1–46
I recently went to a large online bookstore to see if I could find a book entitled The Joy of Accounting. I didn’t find it. I found The Joy of Cooking, The Joy of Photography, even The Joy of Juicing. But there was no book called The Joy of Accounting. Why in the world would that be? I wonder. The answer is, perhaps, that for most people accounting—organizing endless columns of numbers—doesn’t seem like all that much fun. Now before some of you besiege me with protestations that accounting is really far more complicated than that and that accountants are profoundly interesting people with hearts and souls as well, let me hasten to agree with you. My own sister and brother-in-law are accountants. Accountants are wonderful people who are immensely useful in society. But admit the point: not many schoolchildren fantasize about growing up to be accountants. They want to be teachers and nurses, firemen and astronauts, sports heroes and presidents … but not accountants. For all its strong points as a career path, there is not much glamour and glitz in that profession.

That is one reason why our eyes instantly glaze over at the sight of lists of names and numbers such as we find in Numbers 1. It looks like a runaway accounting file. What spiritual truths could possibly be lurking in this passage, or even in a book that contains such passages? This certainly does not seem at first sight to be a promising text in which to spend our time. Some of us are perhaps thinking that we should have chosen to study the book of Romans instead. In reality, though, our first response to this passage is profoundly wrong. Our society actually loves lists of names and numbers every bit as complex and apparently obscure as this one. All we need to make the list jump to life are keys to understanding what the list is all about and why it is relevant to our situation.


THE JOY OF NUMBERS

Let me begin by showing that each one of us has some area of life where we obsess about names and numbers. We could start with the daily newspaper. Turn to the sports pages, and what else is there but names and numbers? Baseball is all about RBIs, ERAs, and slugging percentages. Football is rushing yards, third down completions, and interceptions. Next turn to the business section. There you will encounter the Dow Jones Index and the S&P 500. There is the Price/Earnings data and year on year growth. Perhaps, though, we are not investors or sports fans. Consider the advertisements section. There we find yet more lists of items and numbers. Some of those numbers describe performance data (256 gigabytes, 172 horsepower, 72-inch screens, 1 carat diamonds, 24 cubic feet capacity, and so on); some of it is price data (50 percent off; buy one, get one free). The newspapers wouldn’t fill their pages with lists of names and numbers if everyone’s eyes glazed over whenever they saw such lists. They publish them precisely because they know that in certain areas that are of personal interest to us we are intensely fascinated by lists.

Let me add one more example for those (like my wife) who still think that I haven’t included them. Let me rehearse a fairly typical domestic conversation for you. Myself: “Honey, I just got a call from Brian to say that Julie had her baby.” My wife: “Tell me all about it.” Myself: “She had a boy.” My wife: “When was he born? What’s his name? How long is he? What was his weight? How long was the labor?” Myself: “Ummm …” Believe me, we all have some area of life in which names and numbers mean a great deal to us—the exact same statistics that to an “outsider” may seem to be boring and irrelevant details.


THE MESSAGE IN THE NUMBERS

The problem with this text is therefore not that it consists of a list of names and numbers. Rather, it is simply that we come to the text like non-sports fans to the baseball pages, clueless about the vital meaning of the numbers contained there. Once we learn what the numbers are about and what these stats tell us, then it will all make sense and come to life. So what is this set of names and numbers all about?
First, this set of names and numbers is about commitment. In the United States, the government takes a census every ten years. There are two main reasons for doing this: they want to know how many resources they have and how many resources they need. A census tells us how many people should pay taxes and could theoretically be drafted to fight in our armed forces, and also how many roads and schools and senators each town and state should have.1 By means of a census, we find out how many citizens we have in our country, how many people are willing to “stand up and be counted,” as we say. Those are the people who contribute resources to the community and who we need to ensure have resources available to them.
It was basically the same in the ancient world. The primary reasons to take a census in the ancient world were for taxation and for military planning. You wanted to know how many people you could call up to fight for you in case of need and how much money you could raise from them. Think of some well-known censuses from Biblical times. Why did Caesar Augustus order a census throughout the Roman Empire when Quirinius was governor of Syria, at the time when Jesus was born (Luke 2:1, 2)? It was because the Romans wanted to check their tax records. Why did King David want to count the people in the book of Samuel? It was because he wanted to know how many fighting men he had (2 Samuel 24:2). What then does it mean for Israel to be numbered here in the book of Numbers? It was an opportunity and obligation for them to say, “I’m here. If there are taxes to be paid, you know where to find me. If there is a war to fight, I’m on your list. You can count on me.”

Of course, that kind of commitment is not always willingly given. That’s why censuses have often been unpopular, both then and now. Not everyone wants to be counted in and counted on. People try to dodge being tallied one way or another, precisely because they don’t want to have to be committed to their community. But we read of no census dodgers in Numbers 1: everyone was on board; everyone was willing to stand up and be counted. They were willing to be identified by name as part of the community and to pay the cost that went with being a member of the people of God.


EDGE-BOUNDED GROUPS

Sociologists tell us that there are essentially two ways in which people come together into groups. There are edge-bounded groups and center-focused groups. Center-focused groups are organizations in which the glue that holds the group together is a common interest or center, around which the group comes together. So the Audubon Society comes together because everyone there is excited about birds, while those in an operatic society meet because they share a common love of opera. In a center-focused group, everyone can tell you what holds the group together, but they can’t necessarily put an exact count on who is in the group and who is outside. The edge of the group may well be rather fuzzy, with people moving in and out around the fringes.
An edge-bounded group, on the other hand, has a clearly defined boundary. Everyone in the group knows who is in and who is out, though they may not be equally clear on what this particular group has in common. The family is an edge-bounded group: you either are part of the family or you are not. There are no fuzzy boundaries. Yet it is not always clear what this disparate mass of individuals have in common, particularly once you get up to the level of extended family. We are so different in our interests, in our beliefs, in our concerns, and yet we are all part of the same family. People can come into the family through birth or marriage, and they can leave the family through death, divorce, or being disinherited, but there is no fuzzy middle. With an edge-bounded group, you are either in or out.

So what kind of group is the people of God? Numbers 1 shows us that the people of God is an edge-bounded group. It is a family. You are either in or you are out. Nowhere is that clearer than when there is a census among the people of God. A census presses the question, “Are you in or are you out? Do you want to be counted in or do you want to be excommunicated? What’s it going to be?” We will see in the next chapter that the people of God make up an edge-bounded group that is also center-focused, but here in Numbers 1 the focus is on the people of God as an edge-bounded group. To be counted means being identified as part of the people of God, with all of its responsibilities and privileges.

This is true just as much for the present-day people of God as it was for Old Testament Israel. The church, which Paul calls “the Israel of God,” is God’s family or household (Galatians 6:16). It is a flock, a fellowship of people who are bonded together in covenant with God and with one another. It is a group with defined limits, and you are either inside or outside. Otherwise the book of Acts could hardly have talked about specific numbers of people being added to the church (e.g., 2:41).


RESPONSIBILITIES AND PRIVILEGES

So what responsibilities and privileges go with being part of the people of God? The first responsibility that came with being part of God’s people was giving. There is mention in Exodus 38:21–31 of a similar census2 that took place during the previous year in the wilderness wanderings, a census that provided many of the materials for the construction of the tabernacle. Everyone who was counted had to contribute exactly the same amount to the Lord’s work: one half shekel. If you were to be part of the community, anticipating the blessings of the inheritance that would come to you as part of God’s people, you had to contribute financially to support the work of the ministry. There are responsibilities that go with being part of the people of God.

The purpose of this new census in Numbers 1, though, was not to raise money. It was to get organized for war, which is the second responsibility that comes with being part of God’s people. That purpose is prominent throughout the listing: Moses was not to count everyone but only those men twenty years and older, who would serve in the army (1:3, 22, 24, etc.). Unlike some similar census lists in the ancient world, there was no upper age limit to those who were to be counted.3 This was one war in which there was no exemption for senior citizens. All those who could fight, should fight, and the census was a means of finding out who they were and how many they were.


TOTAL COMMITMENT

The idea of the kind of total commitment that this census embodies is not a popular one in the modern world, not even in the modern Christian world. We live in a world where advertisers promise us “Nothing more to buy” or “No annual contract.” People don’t stay with the same employer for life or live in the same town in which they grew up. In many cases they don’t even remain with the same partner for life. In our modern world we live very disconnected lives in which it is easy for us to become fragmented individuals, only loosely connected to other people.
You see exactly the same problem in the church: people float from one fellowship to the next, loosely connecting with those who attend there, hanging around on the fringes, but never really coming in and being committed. Many today don’t want to stand up and be counted as part of any particular church, with the obligations and benefits that come with it. One of the attractions of worshiping at a mega-church is that you can be anonymous, slipping in and out unobserved. The vision of the counted people of God in Numbers 1 challenges this aspect of modern society. The church’s motto is not, “Brethren, hang loose.” We are to be a family of insiders, people who have made a commitment to one another and a commitment to this particular expression of God’s people, with all of its faults and foibles and quirks. That’s what being family is.

That is not to say there are never legitimate reasons for leaving one church and joining another. Certainly not! We may need to leave a church if we discover that it is built on significantly flawed theological foundations, or that the gospel is not being faithfully preached in a way that feeds our souls, or that we cannot trust those in leadership to shepherd our souls faithfully. But we should only leave in order to find a place where we can truly cleave. Our goal must always be to find an expression of the family of God where we can fit and commit. The inheritance of the saints toward which we press is not a vision of myself and Jesus sitting down at a table for two: it is a vision of the people of God gathered together to feast with him. That is our equivalent of the inheritance in the Promised Land that God’s Old Testament people were pressing toward. What we press toward is not an individual heavenly cottage in a clearing in the forest but rather a place in the midst of the city of God, surrounded by his people, worshiping together at his throne. Now if this is what Heaven is, and if we are truly excited about that prospect, then its realization must also be something for which we strive constantly while we are here on earth.

That is why church membership is an important step to take. It is the equivalent of standing up to be counted in the census. When you become a member of a local fellowship, you are saying to them, “You can count me in. You can count on my contributing my resources to this community of believers, and I’d like you to count me when you think about the flock you are watching over.” You are saying that you are going to contribute as much as you are able to the work of ministry in that place, both in terms of financial support and using your own personal spiritual gifts to edify and build up that particular expression of Christ’s body. You are saying that you are joining up with that battalion of Christ’s army in the spiritual warfare that engages all of us, young and old, men and women. You are saying, “I’m going to fight alongside this family, wrestling together in prayer, reaching out together with the good news, tending the wounded with love and care, sounding the trumpet of God’s greatness together with you in worship.” God’s people still need to stand up and be counted.


THE PRIVILEGE OF BELONGING

However, this census in the book of Numbers is not just a call to commitment. It is not simply a paraphrase of John F. Kennedy’s famous challenge: “Ask not what your God can do for you; ask what you can do for your God.” In fact, it is quite the reverse. The first privilege of being counted is precisely that of belonging to a family. The people of God were not counted as 600,000 disparate individuals, essentially disconnected from one another. The individuals were counted family by family, clan by clan, tribe by tribe. To be in the people of God was to fit somewhere in this order that God had set up, with other members of the family of God around you. The only way to be part of Israel was to be part of a family network.

What makes this striking is that not all of these family members necessarily came into Israel’s family by birth. When Israel came out of Egypt, a multitude of others came with them (Exodus 12:38). Many who had seen the Lord’s power wanted out of the bondage of Egypt. Others also sought to join them on their pilgrimage for a variety of personal reasons. Even at the very first Passover, there were outsiders who wanted to join them; so there needed to be regulations about how they could participate in the feast (Exodus 12:48). Yet Moses was not instructed to create a thirteenth tribe, a kind of Israelite Foreign Legion, for the ragtag assortment of strays and immigrants who wanted to be part of what God was doing. On the contrary, in order to be part of Israel, you not only had to be part of one of the twelve tribes but part of a family and clan as well. These strays who joined Israel, who were circumcised and came by faith to Israel’s God, had to be welcomed into the family structure, where they fully became a part of the people of God.

The second privilege that came with being part of the people of God was having a share in the division of the Promised Land. This was the greatest blessing of being in God’s people. To be counted in the census meant that when your tribe and your family and your clan received an assignment in the Promised Land, you would be listed there too. Even those who had been adopted into the family structure of Israel would receive an inheritance along with their adoptive family. Being counted as part of Israel thus meant the prospect of an inheritance among the Lord’s people when they reached the land of Canaan. This was, after all, the goal of the whole exodus, the end for which they had begun their journey. Being counted in as one of the Lord’s people was therefore an act of faith that what God had promised would one day be theirs, even though in the present they could not yet see it with their eyes.


THE FOUNDATION OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS

However, the act of faith was not a complete leap in the dark. It was a leap based on God’s past faithfulness. God’s faithfulness was the foundation for this census. The most prominent feature of the numbers that are returned from the accounting is their huge size!4 This was an enormous people! From the family of seventy or so that went down to Egypt in the time of Jacob and Joseph, the people of God had swelled to become an enormous nation, more than 600,000 men of fighting age, plus women and children. This is a vast host, a dramatic fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham. God had said to Abraham in Genesis 12:2, “I will make you a great nation,” and he did. He had said to Abraham in Genesis 15:5, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.… So shall your offspring be.” In answer to that promise, here now was the host of Israel, as abundant as the stars of the sky. The Lord had said to Abraham in Genesis 17:4, “you shall be the father of a multitude of nations,” and now he was.

The census was thus a tangible, physical reminder that God had been faithful to the promises he had made to multiply his people and to bring them out of Egypt (see 1:1). God had been faithful to his Word: the numbers don’t lie. This should have been a source of great encouragement to God’s people as they headed into battle to take the Promised Land. They certainly didn’t lack the resources to do the task that God had assigned them. Since God had been faithful to his promises in the past, he could be counted on also in the future.


A GREATER FULFILLMENT TO COME

Yet even while the census figures show us God’s faithfulness to his promises in the form of a concrete head count, they also leave us looking for more. God didn’t just tell Abraham he would become many, but specifically that he would become innumerable, like the stars in the sky. Paradoxically, the same counting process that shows us God’s faithfulness in the past leaves us looking for a greater fulfillment in the future: Israel was huge, to be sure, but she could still be counted. Israel had come out of Egypt, just as God promised, but she had not yet received the land of promise. She had tangible tokens of God’s faithfulness to do what he had promised, while at the same time being reminded that there was still more for God to do.5 The wilderness is not Heaven; this world is not our home. However, the God who has brought us safely thus far can be trusted faithfully to complete everything that he has committed himself to do.

This is an important aspect of church membership as well. When we stand up and make vows to join the church, we do not simply commit ourselves to do our part in the spiritual battle. We first affirm our testimony that God has done his part thus far and our faith that he will continue to be faithful to his promises until our redemption is complete. We confess that when it comes to standing up and being counted, God has already done that for us. The army with which he accomplished our salvation consisted not of 600,000 men but of one single God-man, Jesus Christ. Jesus entered the wilderness of this world in our place and persevered faithfully through all of its trials and tribulations. He became part of a human family and then committed himself to twelve disciples, into whose life he poured his own. He gave everything he had to his mission—all of his financial resources and all of his personal resources. Everything he was and everything he possessed were poured out without reserve on behalf of his people.

There was nothing fringe about Jesus’ involvement in the world either. On the contrary, he came into this world to fight for our lives. He entered into a spiritual battle for our souls, a battle that on the cross took the ultimate commitment on his part: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). On the cross Jesus not only called us his family—he called us his friends. He laid down his life for us, so that we who by nature were not part of his family could be brought in. The result of his death is that those who were once strangers and aliens have now become naturalized citizens of the kingdom. Those who were once the enemies of God have become his friends and now experience the peace and blessing that flow from a living relationship with him.

It is because Jesus has committed himself to us in that extreme way that he calls us to take the extreme and countercultural step of belonging, of standing up today and being counted as part of his people in our local communities. Jesus calls us to belong to his church and to be one of his counted ones. Have we each received the gift of life from Jesus? If we have, then we can praise God for the family he has given us in our churches. With all of our faults and failings, we are God’s gift to one another. We should let others know that we appreciate their presence and involvement in our churches.

If we are part of Christ’s people but not yet connected with a particular local church, we should find a family that we can fight alongside. Membership in Christ’s church is not restricted to those who were born insiders or to those who can pass some complicated theological entrance test. Membership in the church is open to all who simply confess their faith in Christ, to those who believe that his victory in the battle with sin is also their victory and that by faith they are insiders with God through Christ. If that is you, stand up and be counted! Be committed to a local group of believers, a fellowship where you can give your resources generously and cheerfully. Find a place where you can support the work of ministry with your financial and spiritual gifts, that the promise of God that he would establish a family without number may be fulfilled.

God will fulfill his purposes either way—with or without our help. God is going to establish his church and make it an innumerable host from all nations, tribes, and languages, a family brought together in his Son and bonded together into local fellowships. He will build his people and give them their inheritance, with or without our involvement. Yet he invites us in his grace to be counted, and thus to count: to have a part in his cosmic plan of blessing for his people and the world. Make sure your name is recorded on his list today, added to the number of those who are enrolled in his service and to the fellowship of those who are ready and eager to serve him right here in their own community and to the ends of the earth.


1 The official census materials stress the latter reason, of course, since they want to encourage you to participate. Yet historically the former was the principal reason for counting people, and it remains an important goal.

2 Since the total numbers counted are exactly the same (603,550), it is possible that the same census data was used for both. However, since the result of the first census was to provide the materials out of which the tabernacle was constructed and the tabernacle was complete by the beginning of the first month of the second year (Exodus 40:1), the data would have been several months out of date by the beginning of the second month of the second year. This may explain, though, why the census could be completed so rapidly: the earlier data simply had to be updated and, by a statistical quirk, the final total was exactly the same.

3 See Jacob Milgrom, Numbers, JPS Torah (Philadelphia, JPS, 1989), p. 5. The Levites did have a mandatory retirement age from certain aspects of their work (8:25), but there was no retirement from military service.

4 In fact, the numbers are so large that it has been questioned whether they could possibly be literal: how could so many people survive in the wilderness, or even fit in the Promised Land, given the level of ancient agricultural productivity? For a straightforward survey of the real difficulties, and of attempts to reduce the numbers down to a more plausible size, see Gordon Wenham, Numbers, Tyndale Old Testament Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1981), pp. 60–66. However, it seems to me that the explanations why 600,000 really means a more “reasonable” number somewhere between 5,000 and 70,000 flounder on two fronts. First, the text clearly understands these to be real numbers that can be added together and multiplied by one half shekel to make a real amount of money (see Exodus 38:21–38). The second point on which attempts to scale down the numbers fails is that they end up removing the very point that the text is trying to make, which is the enormous blessing of God that has multiplied a single family into such a huge force. It is perhaps plausible that these numbers are hyperbolic, in accord with ancient Near Eastern literary conventions (see David M. Fouts, “A Defense of the Hyperbolic Interpretation of Large Numbers in the Old Testament,” JETS 40 [1997], pp. 377–388). However, whether literal or hyperbolic, the main point remains the same: the vastness of God’s blessing on his people.

5 It is tantalizing to wonder if the very numbers themselves subtly convey that same message. When Israel went down into Egypt, they were seventy—a small yet complete number in Biblical terms. When they came out of Egypt, we are repeatedly told that they were around 600,000 (see Exodus 12:37; 38:26; Numbers 11:21)—a vastly increased number, yet one that begins with the number of incompleteness, six. They had multiplied greatly, but they had not yet arrived at completeness.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 25–33). Crossway Books.