A Place for Everyone and Everyone in His Place Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness

NUMBERS 1:47–2:34

One of my daughter’s favorite television programs is called Clean Sweep. On that show a group of professionals come into an incredibly messy room and transform it into an ordered paradise, with storage places for everything and everything in those storage places. Our family, for one, could certainly use some help in that department. Perhaps some of you would be eager to volunteer for that program as well. It seems to me that the writer of the book of Numbers would have been well-qualified to work on that show. He had a mind for order and structure, an eye for a world in which everything and everyone had their place. In that appreciation for order, of course, he was simply following the lead of God himself, the one who first took formless chaos and rendered it into an ordered cosmos in Genesis 1. The creation of this universe was the original clean sweep.

The key to order, though, is not just having a place in which to put things. It is having the right place in which to put things. If we don’t understand the writer’s concern for locating everything in the right place, we may miss what is going on in this chapter. As I write this, we have just completed a sleepover for one of my sons, with a dozen or so of his friends. At bedtime we piled them all into a big bedroom and told them to find a place for their sleeping bags. We knew there was enough floor space for everyone and weren’t too concerned which child occupied which piece of carpet. This chapter of the book of Numbers, however, is not content simply with everybody having a place to pitch their tent somewhere in the camp. Rather, the writer wants everyone to be in the right place, the place assigned to him by God. That is the driving vision behind this particular set of names and numbers and locations: it is designed to put people in their proper place. Essentially, what we will see in this chapter is this: first, that the people of God are arranged around God; second, how the people of God are arranged around God; and third, that the Levites were assigned the key task of standing between the people and God.


ARRANGED AROUND GOD

First, then, the passage shows us that the people of God are arranged around God. Sometimes important elements of a story may be so obvious that we can completely overlook them. That is the case here. The Lord instructed Moses and Aaron: “The Israelites are to camp around the Tent of Meeting” (2:2, NIV). At the very center of this vast and complicated arrangement of an enormous people was a simple reality: the presence of God was to be at the heart of everything they did. After all, the presence of God with his people was the goal of the covenant that the Lord made with Israel, in which he promised, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”

That promise was far more important to Moses than the Lord’s promise of land or blessing for his people. He wanted the presence of God with them more than anything else in the whole world. Thus in Exodus 33, when the people had broken covenant with God through their sin with the golden calf, and the Lord threatened not to go with his people on their journey to Canaan lest he destroy them along the way, Moses pleaded that he would indeed be with them. God offered to send an angel to make sure they received the land he had promised them, but that offer was not enough for Moses. He responded, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?” (vv. 15, 16). Moses was saying, “Who cares about the Promised Land, or about abundant food and drink, if you are not with us, Lord? Other nations have wonderful lands in which to live, with palm trees and blue skies and abundant food. But only we are the Lord’s people. The only truly distinctive thing about us as a people is your presence in our midst, Lord.” God heard his prayer and answered it with an assurance that his presence would indeed be with the people. The Tent of Meeting in the center of the camp was the answer to Moses’ request.


A CENTER-FOCUSED GROUP

What this means is that the people of God is not only an edge-bounded group, an entity defined by its outer limits. They are that, as we saw in the last chapter, but they are also a center-focused group, an entity held together by a common center. The people of God, both in its Old Testament manifestation and in the church, is a fellowship focused on the reality of God’s presence in our midst. Both elements that define the church—the boundary and the center—are important. The boundary line reminds us that the church is a community, and you are either inside or you are outside. There is a clear line around the perimeter of the people of God, and you need to make sure you are on the right side of it. You need to repent of your sins, trust in Christ for your salvation, and stand up and be counted as part of the fellowship of faith. Yet some churches and individuals spend so much time patrolling the boundaries of the faith that they run the risk of losing sight of the center, the guiding reality that calls us all together.

This loss of focus can happen in a variety of ways. Some people confuse crossing the physical line into the community of faith with crossing the finish line in the race of faith. They will tell you that they made a decision for Christ at a particular event or church service or that they were baptized into the church, and they think that is all they need to do. Yet Jesus did not tell us to go out into all the world to seek professions of faith but to make disciples. All of his followers, no matter how young or how old, need to be looking toward the center, pressing toward the mark, moving on in discipleship. We need to grow constantly in our knowledge of the truth, our love for all the saints, our obedience to God’s Word, and our desire for our heavenly home. In fact, we can say it more strongly than that: if you are genuinely inside the community of faith, you will inevitably press on toward the goal of holy living. This is certain because Christ not only dwells in the midst of his church, he also dwells in the hearts of all of his people by his Holy Spirit. If there is no fruit of that indwelling, no movement of your heart toward Christ as the center of your life, then there is good reason to doubt whether you are genuinely on the right side of the line. Crossing the line physically into the church is the beginning of the adventure of faith, not the end of it.

Another way in which we can lose sight of the center in our zeal for the boundaries is to form a doctrinal or behavioral correctness patrol. This is not for a moment to undervalue doctrinal correctness. There is a boundary, an edge to the camp, and it is important to discern where it is. It is as ridiculous to say, “Let’s all love Jesus and forget about theology” as it would be for a husband to say to his wife, “Honey, let’s not talk about who we are, or the story of our lives before we met and since we came together, or what we like and what we dislike, or what our deepest hopes and dreams and aspirations are—let’s not talk about any of that stuff. Let’s just love each other.” Such a proclamation would lead you to suspect that the man had a very shallow understanding of what a true loving relationship looks like. Doctrine and theology are our food and drink as believers, because they are the foundation for healthy growth in our relationship with God. They are the means by which we grow in a true and accurate knowledge of the God whom we profess to love. Likewise, living in accordance with God’s Word will be a matter of passionate desire and great delight to the believer. Yet just as some people become overly obsessed with the food they eat, so too it is possible to become overly obsessed with minor theological details or minor lifestyle concerns to the point that we lose the big picture. We can become like the Pharisees, meticulously tithing the herbs that grow in small quantities in our gardens, while ignoring the weightier matters of our relationship with God. In our constant search for boundary transgressions, it is possible for us to lose sight of the center of the camp, God himself.


THE IMPORTANCE OF WORSHIP

That is why worship is so important to our hearts and souls. Worship is not just a warm-up exercise that we do on Sundays before we plunge into the rigors of the sermon, lest we pull a spiritual muscle when we attempt some theological heavy lifting. Worship is a reorientation of our souls toward the center of the camp—a reminder that God is at the heart of everything that we do and are. He is the one for whom and by whom we exist: he is our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sustainer. The Lord is our Rock and our Refuge, our Shepherd and our Savior. Daily we need to refresh our vision of who he is, opening up the Scriptures on our own so that our hearts can be reoriented toward him. Weekly we come together with others to sing God’s praises and turn our eyes toward him once more. That is why it is so important that we make the content of our songs of praise, and indeed of our whole worship service, as fundamentally God-centered and Scriptural as possible. We don’t simply want to sing about our commitment to love God or to spend our time looking at one another looking at him; we want instead to look directly at him as he has revealed himself in his Word. In worship we turn our hearts away from ourselves and our preoccupations and toward our true center, God himself, experiencing and enjoying his presence in our midst.

That worship, the enjoyment of who God is and his favor toward us in Christ, is to be what we seek above all things. It is the one thing that is truly distinctive about us as God’s people. If the church does not provide political commentary and social action, others may step into the gap. But if the church doesn’t worship God, no one else will give him the glory he deserves. What is more, just as Moses didn’t want the Promised Land if it came without God’s presence, so too we are not to seek God because of the blessings that may come to us when we do, but simply for himself. Heaven itself should be desirable to us not just because it offers a preferable lifestyle option to the alternative destination, Hell, but because there we will truly be able to know and appreciate God as we ought. There we will be able to worship him without the sin and distractions that hinder our relationship here. That is why for the true believer the prospect of Heaven is far more desirable even than the very best this world could ever offer.


THE GOD-CENTERED LIFE

How can we know if that is really our attitude? Let me suggest a couple of simple tests. First, what is our reason for going to church? Some people go to church to see their friends. Some go because it is entertaining and intellectually stimulating. Some go to be seen as respectable members of the community. Others, however, go to church to meet with God. These people assess the worship service by the answer to these questions: “Did I meet with God today? Was his Word proclaimed in a way that showed me clearly the glory of Christ and the gospel? Did the songs remind me afresh who God is? Did the prayers help me enter his presence, confess my sin and unworthiness, and bring my petitions and praise to him?” As a pastor, I long for all of my people to come to church with those concerns on their hearts—and I pray for myself and the others who assist in leading worship that God would help us lead them toward that goal.

The second test is this: what are we living our life for? If the goal of our whole life is to glorify God and enjoy him, then our heart’s desire will be to become oriented more and more toward the center, to be increasingly submitted to God’s plan for our life. God’s tent was in the midst of the camp not just because he is the center of our devotion, but because the center of the camp in the ancient world was the location of the king’s tent.1 God is our King. This is not unrelated to the previous point, of course: we worship God, among other reasons, because he is our King. Yet it is worth making the point explicitly that for God to be at the center of our lives must mean obedience to his commands. Following God is not simply a matter of emotional attachment and warm fuzzy feelings in church on Sundays: it must also result in transformed lives of obedience. We have not become true disciples of our Lord until we have gone beyond learning information about his ways to putting them into practice. God is not really at the center of our lives unless his truth finds expression in every corner of them.

Such a radically God-centered focus for our existence is far more of a commitment than what most modern people want from their religion. Edmund Clowney describes the normal preference today in these terms:

  [Many people] do not want to lose all contact with God, but prefer that their relations with him be handled by a professional. Let a clergyman do the praying. It is as well to have God available at no great distance. We might need his help—in a counseling center perhaps, or as a national deity who could restrain the Kremlin. But to have God at the center of our lives—that is decidedly too close. His presence would be most inconvenient for some of our business deals, our entertainment, or our grabbing a little of the gusto that the TV commercials advertise.2

Do we really want God at the center of our lives? That is a challenging test. If God were to call me to leave my comfortable home and life and go somewhere else to serve him, would I really be willing? I used to be willing to drop everything and go anywhere at God’s call when I was younger. Of course, it was a whole lot easier then: there was so much less to leave behind. It is so easy now, however, to think that I couldn’t possibly do without all of the comforts and securities to which I’ve grown accustomed and step out in faith. Or what if God were to take my life through pathways of suffering and pain—either my own suffering or the suffering of someone I love? Would I be willing in the midst of that harsh and bitter reality to say, “Lord, I have no clue why this is happening to me, but I know you are both good and all-powerful. You are my King, and I accept this assignment from your hand as designed to glorify you and to sanctify me”? Am I ready for that? Is my whole life so camped around the presence of God as my King that I can say, “Lord, so long as I have you, there is nothing else that I need. My life is yours to command, for sickness or health, for prosperity or poverty, for useful service or an apparently wasted life, given up for you”? That is a profound test, isn’t it?


THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE CAMP

The most fundamental reality expressed in Numbers 2, then, is that the camp of Israel was to be arranged around the central presence of the Lord. However, the camp was also to be arranged around the central presence of the Lord, and this is what takes up most of the detail of the chapter. It only takes one verse to tell us that the camp is arranged around the Lord; it takes another thirty-two verses to tell us exactly how they are arranged. Once again the extensive details may look at first sight as useless as a page of football trivia to those who hate sports. Look again, though, and let me show you what is being accomplished here.

First of all, you need to understand that the people are arranged by their tribes in a square shape around the tabernacle. In the old English legend, King Arthur is said to have had a round table constructed for his knights to prevent any of them from claiming that he held a higher position than the others. This, though, is the opposite. Israel’s tribes are not placed in a circle, in which every position is equally significant and valuable, but rather in a square, with three tribes on each side. In the order in which we meet them, there are three tribes to the east, three to the south, three to the west, and three to the north. That order itself is significant because in the orientation of the Bible, east is forward, the most important direction.3 The prime position in the camp is to the east, and then (in clockwise direction) to the south, the west, and the north.

So who receives the prime assignment in the camp of Israel? Judah. To see clearly the fact that this is not simply a random assignment, it is worth noting that this is the third different order given for the twelve tribes in the book of Numbers. The first order of the tribes is in Numbers 1:5–15, where the princes of the tribes who will assist Moses are named. This was the order of natural precedence. It starts with the firstborn, Reuben, and proceeds through the children of Leah (omitting Levi who is not to be counted). That takes us down to Zebulun. Then we have the children of Rachel, who were born after Zebulun: Joseph has a double share, Ephraim and Manasseh, to keep the number of tribes at twelve even though Levi is removed, and then comes Benjamin. Only after we have heard all of the names of the children of Leah and Rachel do we get the names of the four sons born to their maidservants: Dan, Asher, Gad, and Naphtali. Although they were born before Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin, these brothers rate behind them. Their names are also given without reference to their mother or their order of birth, another way of putting them in a lower place.

The second order in which the tribes are given is the order of the census itself. Here there is the same order of natural precedence, with one exception: Gad is moved up to third place. Why this sudden promotion for Gad? The answer is that the census is already preparing the tribes in groups of three for the march. Gad needs to be where he is in the census, in company with Reuben and Simeon, to get the whole people organized for the place they will have in the camp.

That background then prepares us to look at the order in the camp. On the east side, the prime location, we have Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun, who were the second threesome in the census list. On the south, we have Reuben, Simeon, and Gad, the first threesome. To the west, we have Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin, while to the least favored north we have Dan, Asher, and Naphtali. So the tribes are arranged like this:



The Arrangement of the Twelve Tribes

Notice the crucial exchange of the first and second threesome from the census order when it comes time to order the camp. Natural precedence is not decisive for your place in the kingdom. Reuben was born first, but he lost his privileged place as firstborn through sexual sin: he slept with his father’s concubine, Bilhah (Genesis 35:22). For that reason, when his father Jacob blessed his sons at the end of his life, his words for Reuben were a mixed “blessing”:

Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the firstfruits of my strength, preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power. Unstable as water, you shall not have preeminence, because you went up to your father’s bed; then you defiled it—he went up to my couch! (Genesis 49:3, 4)

Simeon and Levi, who would normally have been next in line, likewise lost their position through sin. When Dinah was raped by Shechem as recorded in Genesis 34, they tricked the inhabitants of his city into thinking they could incorporate Jacob’s family into their community if only they would agree to be circumcised. Then, once they had gained their trust, Simeon and Levi slaughtered them all. Their father’s blessing on them too was more of a curse:

  Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords. Let my soul come not into their council; O my glory, be not joined to their company. For in their anger they killed men, and in their willfulness they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel. (Genesis 49:5–7)

Jacob’s blessing on Judah, however, was a true blessing, assigning him the place of leadership and ultimately of kingship. The ordering of the tribes in the book of Numbers reflects the words of Jacob. Reuben and Simeon have lost their position of natural precedence and are placed on the south side, alongside the son of one of the maidservants, facing the other three sons of the maidservants. Meanwhile, Judah and the other brothers of Leah are on the favored east, facing the three tribes descended from Rachel—Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin. The arrangement of the camp shows us that the words of the old blessing were being fulfilled.

Yet the point being made here is not quite the one you might think at first. You might assume that since Reuben and Simeon lost their primary positions due to their sexual sin and violent disposition respectively, the message is simply a warning against illegitimate sex and meaningless violence. Certainly that is part of it: the writer is showing us that sin has consequences, and those consequences may affect our children as well as ourselves. It was not just Reuben and Simeon personally who suffered because of their sin: 400 years later their tribes were still feeling the effects of their actions. That should caution us against ever taking sin lightly. Satan wants us to think we can sin without it hurting anyone, but the camp of Israel shows that sin has serious and lasting consequences.


CURSE TRANSFORMED

Yet if the main point is that sin has lasting consequences, then it is hard to explain the present layout of the camp. After all, Judah was not exactly blameless on the sexual integrity front. In Genesis 38 we read of his liaison with Tamar, whom he mistook for a Canaanite prostitute. Meanwhile, all of the brothers together, including Judah, plotted to bring Joseph’s life to a violent end in Genesis 37. Judah, however, learned through his experiences and came to a greater understanding of God’s grace. The result of that learning process was evident when the brothers went down to Egypt a second time in search of food to sustain the family. Judah was the one who volunteered to take the punishment in his younger brother’s place, after Joseph had accused Benjamin of stealing a silver cup. Judah’s thoughts were now solely of the sorrow that the loss of Benjamin would cause his father. He was willing personally to pay any cost to save his father from that pain. Thus the life of Judah shows us a different lesson. It shows us that even though sin may have its consequences, the experience of grace can have lasting consequences of its own: it can take and transform the results of our sin. Because of Judah’s willingness to substitute himself for his brother and bear the living death that had been assessed on his brother, he was now a fit ancestor for the line from whom Jesus would come.

The same point, that curse may be transformed into blessing, is seen also in the fate of the tribe of Levi. Jacob’s “blessing” on Levi condemned him, along with his brother Simeon, to be scattered throughout Israel for their massacre of Shechem. Yet when the people of God went astray and worshiped the golden calf while Moses was on Mount Sinai, the tribe of Levi’s moment of transformation came. There the Levites joined with Moses in bringing judgment on those who were rebelling against the Lord and had their own curse transformed into a blessing (Exodus 32:27–29). Their confrontational temperament, under the direction of the Lord, had now been harnessed as an asset in their service of him rather than a liability. They would still be scattered among Israel, just as Jacob had prophesied, but now their scattering would be a blessing to them and to Israel, not a curse. The tribe of Simeon was scattered and ultimately disappeared, mainly absorbed by the tribe of Judah. However, the tribe of Levi was scattered and prospered, in numbers if not materially, as they brought the Law of Moses to all of the towns and communities of God’s people. Their radical commitment to protect God’s holiness at Sinai earned them the privilege and responsibility of camping immediately around the tabernacle.

Do you see the principles, then, that God is making clear by the way he arranged the tribes around the camp? On the one hand, the people are being reminded that sin has consequences. Sometimes our sin has long-term results that affect our children as well. Whether divorce or adultery, alcoholism or eating disorders, even gossip or pride, our sins can be a negative legacy that has a lasting impact on our children. From my own family I learned the art of making sarcastic remarks, dismissive words that cleverly cut someone else down to size. As a result I have spent my whole lifetime trying to unlearn that “skill” and retrieve situations damaged by my tongue. Learning how to sin was easy; unlearning it is much harder. Learn this, then, from the arrangement of Israel’s camp: our sins have consequences that are real and may be lasting.

Yet at the same time God’s grace is greater than our sin or the sins of our parents. God will in some cases reverse or modify those consequences, and even turn them to his own glory. Sometimes God takes the damage we have done and turns it around in our own lives, as he did with Judah, or in the lives of our children, as he did with the Levites. We all come to God as intensely damaged people, damaged by our own sin and the sins of our parents; yet God in his grace and mercy can restore what sin has torn asunder. Sometimes God demonstrates his power by delivering us dramatically from our patterns of sin. At other times our pain and ongoing personal struggle is precisely what equips us to minister God’s grace to others in the midst of their pain. At all times, awareness of the depths of our sin is what drives our appreciation of the enormity of God’s mercy toward us.
We certainly cannot presume on God’s grace, however. Reuben lost his place of primacy forever, and Simeon was irretrievably scattered, lost as a separate tribe. Not every effect of our sin can be waved away with a wish and a pinch of pixie dust. Yet it is worth noting that for all of the ongoing effects of their sin, Simeon and Reuben were still there within the camp of Israel around the Lord’s Tent. For all of its consequences, even their flagrant and deep sin couldn’t remove them from the circle of God’s care. God had chosen all of the sons of Jacob to be his people, and not even their transgressions could prevent God from achieving his purposes. God’s grace will win the final victory, not our sins.


THE ROLE OF THE LEVITES

Finally, though, the third thing to notice about the arrangement of the camp is that the Levites were assigned the key role of camping between the Lord and the people. We will address this role more fully in the chapters that follow, but for now we will simply note the fact that they needed to be there. There was a reason why God was reluctant to go with his people on the journey up to Canaan: it was because of the risk that he would get angry with their sin and destroy them along the way. The Lord is a holy God, so it is a dangerous thing to have him present in the midst of the camp. There needs to be a separation between him and the unholy, lest that which is unholy be vaporized by his holiness.

It is this role of acting as a human safety cordon around the tabernacle that the Levites filled within the camp. They were to camp between the Israelites and the tabernacle and to take care of all of the responsibilities associated with it “so that there may be no wrath on the congregation of the people of Israel” (1:53). All who stepped out of their appointed place in God’s order risked bringing judgment upon themselves and upon the whole community of God’s people: the Levites were to do all of the work associated with the tabernacle and to keep the rest of the people away, or those who transgressed would be put to death (see 3:10, 38). That this warning is no empty threat will become clear when we get to Numbers 16, 17, the rebellion of Korah along with Dathan and Abiram. These chapters show what happens when the order set up by God is violated: the result is death. The Lord is not a tame God: to be in his presence is not safe, and the warlike Levites were there to protect against precisely such tragic incursions.

This is a profound picture of our dilemma in the world in which we live. In Eden it was safe for man to be in God’s presence because Adam and Eve were created holy. In the garden they could walk and talk with God in the cool of the day. But then Adam and Eve fell and sinned against God: they were cast out of the garden, and a barrier was placed between them and the life-giving presence of God (Genesis 3:24). The cherubim and a flaming sword kept them at a distance, a kind of heavenly equivalent of the Levites. Yet herein lies our dilemma. In order for our life to have meaning, it needs to be centered around the Lord, our Creator and God; at the same time, though, his holy presence means certain death to sinners such as us. His presence in the midst of his people, while surrounded and protected by fierce guards to keep people at a safe distance, can only be an interim solution. It is better than not having him present in the midst of his people, but it is rather less than a return to Eden.


A RETURN TO GOD’S PRESENCE

The final solution to our problem comes in the person of Christ. In him, the Word became flesh and tabernacled in our midst (John 1:14). God took on safe human form in Jesus, so that we could look upon his glory and experience his presence among us. Our King came to live with us on our wilderness journey, sharing our hardships and trials. Yet Jesus came to do more than simply show us God. He came to bring us into God’s presence by equipping us with his perfect righteousness, imputed to us by grace. That is what effectually bridges the gap between God’s holiness and our sin: Christ gave us his holiness that enables us to be welcomed in. The guards are waved aside, and we can enter into God’s presence, clothed in his righteousness.

At the same time, our sin had to go somewhere. It couldn’t just be ignored; it had to be paid for. The wages of death had to be deposited into someone’s account. So Jesus took into himself the death that unclean sinners deserve for the sins that separate them from God. He placed himself under the flaming sword that separated us from God and paid in full for Adam’s sin and ours as well. Through his death, he made a way through the Levites into the very presence of God for you and me, so that in him we can approach with boldness the throne of God’s grace.

God dwelling in the midst of his Old Testament people was remarkable grace, given their track record of rebellion and sin. What, then, shall we say of our own experience of God? There are now no barriers and no second-class citizens in our camp. Descendants of Judah and of Reuben, Jews and Gentiles, males and females, black and white, slave and free—all are one in Christ Jesus, and all are welcome to come in and abide with God forever. He has prepared a place for us and has given us the promise that where he is, there we shall be also. There is a place for us, and at the end of all things we shall find ourselves in our place forever.
Will you be there? When they call the roll in Heaven, will your name be on the list? Then give thanks for that assurance, and center your life here and now around the presence of your awesome, almighty, and holy King. Celebrate his goodness and his grace. Magnify his holiness, and delight in his love and favor to you. Rejoice that in Christ you too have been found worthy to stand in his presence.


Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 35–46). Crossway Books.