This is Your God

One of the profound difficulties when you are counseling people about their relationships is to get them to deal with reality. Many times people are willfully blind to the character of the person to whom they are married. They come to you and complain that they want their spouse to be a certain way, though in reality that is not the person they chose to marry. Perhaps a woman wants her husband to be more romantic and sensitive, or a man wants his wife to be more supportive and submissive; yet the spouse just does not have that trait as part of his or her makeup. Facing up to reality is not always easy; yet it is an essential first step in building a true relationship.

In the same way, many people do not want to deal with reality when it comes to God. They prefer to try to relate to a god whom they have created, their projection of what an ideal deity ought to be, instead of seeking to relate to the one true God who really exists. In this case the irony is that the character features that people most often seek to blur about God are not flaws but rather his uncomfortable perfections. It is God’s holiness, righteousness, and justice that we find awkward because he is so different from us. These features may leave us desiring what we perceive as a kinder, gentler (though less perfect) god. What happens when we seek to eliminate those awkward aspects of God’s character, though, is that any possibility of true relationship is immediately sacrificed. Until we deal with God as he really is, we cannot begin to enter a relationship with him. Paradoxically, the more we deal with God as he really is, the more we find that he is exactly the God whom we need. After all, he is the one who created us in the first place with just such a relationship in mind.
The sacrifices listed in Numbers 15 are designed to show us a full-orbed view of God. In verses 1–16, which we looked at in the last chapter, we saw various sacrifices that underscored God’s ongoing desire for a relationship with his people. In spite of their rebellion in the previous chapter, the Lord confirmed the fact that he would still bring their children into the land of promise and show them his favor there. The requirement for the people to pay tribute to the Lord as the one who gave them their land was also highlighted (vv. 17–21). In context, this commitment to follow through on his original promise confirms Moses’ description of God as “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression” (14:18, quoting Exodus 34:6, 7). Israel’s God is indeed a God of grace and mercy.

Yet Moses also confessed that the Lord is a God who “will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation” (14:18, quoting Exodus 34:7). Israel’s God is a God of justice as well as mercy, and this is the aspect of God’s character that comes to the fore in the latter part of Numbers 15. If our God is a God of justice, how shall the needs of that justice be satisfied?


A REMEDY FOR SIN

The answer to that question, of course, lay in the sacrificial system. As well as being a means of enjoying fellowship with God and paying tribute to him, the sacrificial system of the Old Testament provided a remedy for sin. Those who had sinned could bring the appropriate sacrifices, and they would be forgiven. If the whole community sinned, then along with the burnt offering that symbolized the restored relationship they desired, they would offer a male goat as the sin offering (v. 24). If an individual sinned, the sin offering was a less valuable female goat (v. 27). The same rules applied to native-born Israelites and aliens alike: the sins of all people, whether Israelite by birth or by choice, could only be dealt with in one way—through the shedding of blood.

This remains the case for us, which is why the cross was necessary for our salvation. God couldn’t simply pretend that our sins didn’t exist or didn’t really matter. Fellowship with a holy God is only possible if our sins are atoned for, and without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins (Hebrews 9:22). In order for us to be reconciled to God, therefore, the blood of a perfect sacrifice had to be offered in our place. The sin offerings of the Old Testament were pictures preparing God’s people for the cross. All of the blood of bulls and goats shed under the old covenant pointed forward to that final perfect sacrifice by which Jesus atoned once and for all for the sins of all of his people.

Not all sins could be atoned for, however. The sacrificial system only covered “unintentional” or inadvertent sins (vv. 22, 27). In one sense, of course, many of these sins were not exactly unintentional. Sin is rarely completely devoid of intent: at some level, we invariably know that what we are doing is wrong. Yet there was a distinction made in the Old Testament between sins that were inadvertent and sins that were defiant (v. 30). This is much like the difference that we recognize between murder and manslaughter. If you are convicted of manslaughter, you are responsible for the death of another human being. Perhaps you drove your car carelessly or too fast or you tossed a rock off a high building that then killed someone on the ground: you have done wrong, and you are culpable for it, but you didn’t set out to kill someone. Your responsibility is not the same as that of a man who deliberately lay in wait in order to run over his enemy or a woman who planned and schemed how to poison her husband. That is murder. In our legal system, we even distinguish between premeditated murder and crimes of passion: in the latter, you may have meant to kill the person in the heat of the moment, but at least you didn’t plan to do so ahead of time. You were in the grip of a kind of temporary insanity.

It is the same way with sin. Much of our sin falls either under the category of carelessness or of acts of passion. In most cases we didn’t set out with the intent of saying a cruel word or hitting that annoying person or thinking proud and lustful thoughts. In one sense, “it just happened.” It was a careless act of thoughtlessness. Other sins could be characterized as “temporary spiritual insanity.” These sins flow out of the war that goes on inside us between our sinful natures and our transformed hearts. This is the conflict that Paul describes in Romans 7, where we see that we find ourselves doing what we do not want to do because of the continuing power of the sinful nature (vv. 15–17). As long as we continue to inhabit our earthly bodies we find ourselves repeatedly overpowered by our sinful natures, carried away into sin. Now none of these causes of sin release us from responsibility for our actions. We are responsible for our careless thoughts and our sins of reaction, just as we would be responsible if we drove without due care and attention or in the heat of the moment picked up a baseball bat and hit someone with it. Sin is still sin, whatever its source.


DEFIANT SINS

Yet there are sins that fall into a different category, that of defiant sins. Defiant sins are literally in the Hebrew “sins with upraised hand.” These are premeditated sins that are flaunted in the face of God. In this case persons have not fallen into sin or been overcome by sin; rather, they deliberately dived into sin and embraced it. Such persons could not have their sins forgiven through the sacrificial system because they had no desire for the relationship with God that the system was designed to restore. Until their proud defiance was broken, they could not have fellowship with God. As long as they remained in such a defiant state, they did not belong as part of God’s people, and so the Israelites were instructed that such people must be cut off (v. 31). Whether native-born Israelites or aliens, they were to be removed from the people of God.1

What follows these regulations is a case study in just such defiant, premeditated sin. A man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day (v. 32). This was actually a double sin: not only was gathering the wood itself work and therefore forbidden on the Lord’s holy day (Exodus 35:2), but the only reason for gathering wood on the Sabbath would be in order to light a fire on the Sabbath, which was explicitly forbidden in Exodus 35:3. Thus the man was committing one sin in order to be able to commit another—a defiant, premeditated flaunting of God’s commandments. When Moses sought the Lord’s guidance as to what should be done with this man, the answer was definitive: he must die. The whole community had to take him outside the camp, symbolizing his exclusion from the community, and there stone him to death (vv. 35, 36).


QUESTIONS ANCIENT AND MODERN

This incident raises two questions that we need to address, one modern and one ancient. The concern that this passages raises in the minds of modern readers is this: Isn’t stoning a rather harsh punishment for such a trivial offense? This is a question that would probably never have occurred to the ancient audience, so it is something of a digression from the purposes of the passage; but it is a question that is pervasive enough in our context that we need to deal with it. After we’ve dealt with that modern question, we can return to the real question that this passage raised in the ancient context and continues to raise for us.

First, though, why should a man be stoned to death simply because he gathered a few sticks on the Sabbath? Is that a fair punishment for such an offense? The answer to that question is to recognize the attitude that lay behind the sin. It is not coincidental that this case study immediately follows the legislation on defiant sin. In one sense we could say that the man wasn’t put to death for gathering the sticks: he was put to death because of his flagrant defiance of God. He knew the law that forbade working on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2). He also knew the law that said he shouldn’t kindle a fire on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:3). Meanwhile, he was camping in the wilderness in the middle of approximately two million people. Was it likely that no one would have seen the smoke from his fire once he had kindled it? That is hardly plausible. More likely, he brazenly went out in front of everyone and broke God’s Law defiantly. Such defiance had to be dealt with or the whole community would be compromised.

Within our legal system the concept of “contempt of court” has a similar function. You won’t typically be put in prison for parking in the wrong place. Yet if you repeatedly fail to respond to a citation to appear in court because of that parking ticket, the judge can and will put you in jail. Furthermore, if you continue to defy the system, he has the power to keep you in prison indefinitely. You cannot be put in prison for life for a parking offense, but you can be for ongoing contempt of court related to that initial offense. If the courts failed to respond severely to such contempt, the whole legal system would be endangered.

It is the same way with sin. There is no such thing as a trivial sin. Some sins may seem less severe than others. It may look on the surface as if swearing and coveting are less serious than murder and adultery. But the heart attitude is what counts. All sin is, on one level or another, an expression of cosmic rebellion against our Creator. It is a more or less deliberate turning of our backs on the one who made us for fellowship with him. That is why the wages of all sin is death, as Romans 6:23 reminds us. If we turn our backs on God in sin, it is fitting that he should turn his back on us. That is what we deserve every time we sin, and if he carries out that sentence upon us, it will mean our eternal death. All sin is therefore serious, but defiant sin is especially so. If we willfully and persistently turn our backs on God, how shall the relationship be restored? How can there be anything in store other than the death we have chosen for ourselves?

This highlights the importance of repentance as the pathway to forgiveness. Defiant sin necessarily leads to destruction, whether the sin is murder or self-centeredness. In repentance, on the other hand, we agree with God that our sin is offensive and wrong, and we humbly plead for his forgiveness. A repentant and contrite spirit is the exact opposite of a proud and defiant heart, and therefore when we approach God with such a spirit, we find him more than ready to forgive even the most heinous offense. King David committed adultery and arranged for the murder of Uriah, but when he came before God with a broken and contrite heart, he found forgiveness and acceptance (Psalm 51:17). A gross sinner who repents is welcomed in, while others who have committed apparently much less serious crimes but have hardened their hearts against God and remained defiant are cut off forever. There is no sacrifice possible to atone for such a spirit.


EXCOMMUNICATION AND THE CROSS

This is why the new-covenant equivalent of the penalty of cutting off—excommunication—is only ever truly administered for the sin of defiance. The pattern given by Jesus in Matthew 18 shows this clearly. If there is sin within the church, the first step should be to try to resolve it privately (v. 15). If private attempts to resolve the issue fail, others should be brought in to help find a resolution (v. 16). If that also fails, the matter is to be brought before the leadership of the whole church (v. 17). Ultimately, if the person will not listen to the testimony of the church, then there is no alternative but for him to be excluded from the covenant community and treated as a pagan or a tax collector (v. 17).2 The occasioning sin that leads to the person being confronted in the first place may be large or small, but if there is true repentance, excommunication is not necessary. The only sin that inevitably leads to excommunication is persistent defiance.

This now brings us back to the real question this passage poses to all readers, ancient and modern, which is this: if defiant sins deserve exclusion from the community and death, how could Israel survive? What could be more defiant and willful than listening to the unbelieving report of the ten-man majority and spurning the faithful report of Joshua and Caleb (14:1–4)? What could constitute a clearer turning of their backs upon God than the community’s attempt to conquer the land in their own strength after God had judged them and sent them back to the wilderness (14:39–45)? If God’s judgment on the Sabbath-breaker was exclusion and death, how could Israel live? Theirs was not the inadvertent sin of an individual, or even of the whole community, for which the death of a mere goat might atone. What sacrifice could be sufficient to atone for their sin and give them a future in God’s plan?

The answer lies in the greater sacrifice that God would offer at the cross, the sacrifice to which all of the other sacrifices pointed, so that through his covenant faithfulness, his original purposes for his people would conquer. The first generation would indeed experience exclusion from the land and death in the wilderness; yet God’s irresistible grace could not be overcome by their sin. Ultimately, his purpose of blessing for his people must be accomplished


THE TASSELS: SIGNS OF COVENANT FAITHFULNESS

That covenant faithfulness brings us to the tassels. The Lord instructed Israel through Moses that from now on all Israelites should have tassels on the corner of their garments, tassels that must contain a single blue (literally, “violet”) thread (v. 38). At first sight this commandment may seem like a colossal non sequitur, entirely unrelated to what has gone before. Yet in fact it is an exposition of the third aspect of God’s character to which Moses made reference in his prayer of intercession (14:19): God’s covenant love (ḥesed). At that time Moses confessed that the Lord is a God of mercy and of justice, and he appealed to the Lord’s covenant love as the foundation for his request that God would forgive his people’s sin and remain in relationship with them (14:18, 19). So also here, having given the Lord’s people laws that demonstrate his mercy (15:1–21) and his justice (vv. 22–36), the final commandment in this section speaks of the Lord’s covenant faithfulness. The tassels were designed to remind Israel who they were by God’s grace, which in turn was the foundation for their call to obedience.

The key to understanding the tassels lies in the location of the tassels and the single blue thread that each one contained. In the ancient world, the hem of someone’s garment was regarded as an extension of the person.3 We read in 1 Samuel that David crept up on King Saul while he was relieving himself in a cave and cut off the hem of Saul’s cloak (24:4). Afterward he was remorseful over what he had done. Why? Was it merely that he had spoiled Saul’s clothes? On the contrary, it was a much more symbolic act than that: in cutting the hem of his garment, he had effectively assaulted Saul himself because the hem was part of his identity (v. 6). In some ancient cultures, a man could divorce his wife by cutting off the hem of her robe, symbolically turning her loose, while in others an imprint of the hem served as a personal signature. Putting the tassels on the hem of the robe was thus not merely a matter of decoration. In that location, the tassels expressed something fundamental about the Israelites’ identity.


CLOTHING AND IDENTITY

This use of clothing to convey identity is familiar to our experience also. In Britain, football fans identify themselves as devotees of their favorite team in numerous ways, but by far the most common way is by wearing a scarf in the team colors. Scarves form a cheap and readily identifiable marker of football identity. In fact, for that very reason it is not safe to wear certain colors of scarf in rival areas of big cities on game days. The same is true for gangs in the larger cities in the United States. Certain colors are regularly outlawed in some public schools because of their use in identifying people as belonging to one gang or another. In our culture we may not wear tassels, but we still have ways of marking out who we are by what we wear.

The key element within each of these tassels was also a color, a single violet thread. Violet dye was phenomenally expensive in the ancient world since it came from tiny sea snails that had to be harvested by hand, each of which only produced a single drop of dye.4 The color violet therefore came to symbolize wealth and nobility in society at large. Even more significantly, violet was the most sacred color in the tabernacle (see the discussion on 4:6, 7). The single violet thread in the midst of the tassel thus symbolized Israel’s identity as a royal priesthood. Requiring a single thread made it an affordable badge for everyone to wear, even the poorest members of society. All the Israelites would be reminded by their tassels to live according to the sanctity and nobility of their calling.

In particular, the tassels served as a reminder of two things. In the first place, they reminded the Israelites who they were by God’s overwhelming grace. They were the people of the Lord, the people he had redeemed from Egypt. He had redeemed them so that they might have an ongoing relationship with him: neither the power of Egypt nor their stubborn, defiant rebellion could compromise that purpose (v. 41). Secondly, though, it reminded the Israelites of the obligations that went with their calling. They were redeemed from Egypt to be a holy nation and a royal priesthood. God brought them out of bondage so that they might obey his commands and be consecrated to their God, instead of going after the lusts of their own hearts and eyes (vv. 39, 40).

In some ways, with this combined emphasis on their privilege and responsibility, the requirement to wear the tassels sums up the thrust of the whole chapter. God redeemed Israel by his grace for relationship with him; yet that did not now leave them free to do whatever they wanted to do. Such “freedom” would actually merely be a different kind of bondage, prostituting themselves to their own lusts (v. 39). A relationship with God by grace does not eliminate the need for obedience but rather forms the foundation for it. The God who commands us is the same God who first delivered us from bondage; so we know that his purposes in commanding us are good. In fact, he delivered us from our former bondage to sin so we could experience the true freedom that comes as we obey his commandments and law. His law turns out to be the path to true liberty.

This is exactly what Israel failed to see in Numbers 13, 14. Instead of following God’s commands and trusting his good purposes for them, they chose their own path, which led not to freedom but to death. God’s path is the way to life and happiness, even though it may seem circumscribed with all kinds of regulations and limitations. Tassels, sacrifices, and Sabbath-keeping seem, to the natural mind, to be narrow and restrictive; yet they are actually the way to fulfilling the goal for which we were created—fellowship with God.


NEW-COVENANT OBLIGATIONS

So what are the obligations that God places on us in the new covenant, now that we are no longer under law but under grace? We don’t have to bring goats for sin offerings anymore because the definitive sin offering has already been presented. Jesus Christ took his own blood into the heavenly Holy of Holies and presented it there to make atonement for all of the sins of his people (Hebrews 9:24–28). God’s irresistible grace has completely accomplished our salvation. Yet that does not mean that we have nothing to give in return. Our response to that sacrifice is to “continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” (Hebrews 13:15). It is “to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (Hebrews 13:16). It is “to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1). Those are all-embracing demands: hearts that continually worship God, hands that share everything we have with others, and bodies that are pure and holy, completely given over to God’s service.

Fulfilling these obligations will take more than Sunday-only religion: to give God these things will fill our Sabbaths so full that one day is not sufficient to contain them, and they will spill over into the rest of our week. To those around us, these demands may seem narrow and restrictive. A life full of worship, generous giving, and holy purity is not most people’s idea of fun. To many, it has all the attraction of a smoke-free day to a nicotine addict. Yet if you understand the salvation that God has wrought for you in Christ and know that you were once dead in your transgressions and sins but have now been made alive by grace, you will understand that this is real life. This is what you were made for: a relationship with the holy Creator God of the entire cosmos.


BAPTISM: A SIGN OF GOD’S COVENANT FAITHFULNESS

How can we remind ourselves of these realities? We don’t wear violet tassels on our robes. Some may have fish symbols on the back of their cars or wear crosses around their necks, but neither of these is ordained by God. That doesn’t necessarily make them sinful, but it does highlight the difference between such identity tags and the Israelite tassels. What is the required marker that God has placed on each one of his new-covenant people? Surely it is the water of baptism. Although not a visible mark in the way that the tassels were, it nonetheless communicates the same reality. It declares that we were called out of the world by God’s irresistible grace and marked out as belonging to him, children of the King. We have been marked with a symbol of purity—clean water—as a sign of our priestly calling. It identifies us as being united to Christ in his death and resurrection and therefore even now enthroned with him in the heavenly realms. The water was poured out upon us as a symbol of God’s pouring out the Holy Spirit into our hearts, turning loose his sanctifying power within us, making us saints. Our baptism is thus what identifies us as part of God’s new-covenant kingdom of priests (1 Peter 2:9).

I suggest that most of us don’t think nearly often enough about our baptism. Typically we view it as a long-past event without much significance in our present lives. Yet it is what marks us in our identity as belonging to the people of God. The old Puritans, who were wiser than us in so many things, spoke often about “improving your baptism.” If we would think about our baptism daily, it would remind us to be thankful for the relationship we have with God by his grace and to be careful to live a life worthy of the calling we have received. If we would talk to our children regularly about their baptism, it would open up the door each time to speak to them of their need of Christ and the way in which the gospel meets all of their deepest needs, as well as their obligation to pursue obedient living. Baptism reminds them and us that the way to life is not through following our own wisdom but in submitting ourselves joyfully to the commandments of God, which bring true freedom. It reminds us that real life comes through dying to ourselves and rising to a new, holy life in Christ.

The hymn-writer declared, “Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it!” Perhaps that could also read, “Baptized, how I love to proclaim it!” What could be more incredible than God’s persistent grace that takes families of stubborn, defiant sinners like you and me and turns them into holy saints? What could be more amazing than the work of God’s Spirit that brings us into a daily relationship with him? Remind yourself daily, therefore, of the reality of your baptism and what it symbolizes. Recall daily the grace you have received and the wisdom of obedience to God’s Word. Rejoice daily in the high calling you have received as part of his kingdom of priests. Resolve daily to live a life worthy of that calling, a life of purity and praise.


Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 189–198). Crossway Books.