2 SAMUEL 19
Grace, Restoration, and the Return of the King

Key Verse:
“Today your servant knows that I have found favor in your sight, my lord the king.” — 2 Samuel 19:28

Devotional Reflection
2 Samuel 19 is a chapter filled with grief, reconciliation, and the difficult work of restoration after conflict. David returns to Jerusalem after Absalom’s rebellion, but victory is mixed with sorrow.

1. Grief That Overshadows Victory (vv. 1–8):
   David mourns deeply for Absalom, crying, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!” His sorrow is understandable, but it discourages the troops who risked their lives for him. Joab rebukes David, reminding him that leadership requires balancing personal grief with responsibility to others.
2. The King Returns (vv. 9–15):
   Israel begins to invite David back as king. David extends grace, even to those who opposed him, including Amasa, whom he appoints commander instead of Joab. Restoration begins not with revenge, but mercy.
3. Grace to Shimei and Mephibosheth (vv. 16–30):
   Shimei, who once cursed David, now pleads for forgiveness. David spares him, choosing mercy over retaliation. Mephibosheth also appears, showing loyalty despite false accusations. David’s responses reveal a king learning to rule with grace rather than bitterness.
4. Faithful Service Rewarded (vv. 31–39):
   Barzillai, the elderly man who cared for David during his exile, is honored by the king. Though Barzillai declines reward because of age, David promises kindness to his family. Godly leadership remembers faithfulness and rewards loyalty.
5. Division Still Lingers (vv. 40–43):
   Even as David returns, tensions remain between Judah and the northern tribes. Unity is fragile, showing that restoration often takes time and humility.

This chapter reminds us that the return of the king brings both grace and responsibility. David’s mercy points forward to Jesus, the greater King, who welcomes sinners back not with vengeance, but with restoration.

What Does This Teach Us About God?

• God’s grace restores those who return humbly. 
• Godly leadership balances justice, mercy, and responsibility. 
• God honors faithfulness and loyalty. 
• God’s kingdom is strengthened through reconciliation, not revenge.
• God establishes His King and will complete His righteous rule—fulfilled in Christ.

One Truth to Behold
The King’s Return Brings Grace to the Undeserving

We behold this: David’s mercy toward Shimei and Mephibosheth points us to Christ, the King who welcomes repentant sinners with grace.

✦ Action Steps for One Truth to Behold

1. Memorize 2 Samuel 19:28 – Reflect on finding favor before the King.
2. Reflect on Grace – Recall ways Christ has shown mercy to you despite failure.
3. Thank God for Restoration – Praise Him for not treating you according to your sins.
4. Read Psalm 103:8–12 – Rejoice in God’s compassion and forgiveness.
5. Share Grace – Encourage someone struggling with guilt that the King welcomes repentant hearts.

One Truth to Become

Live as One Who Extends Mercy and Pursues Reconciliation
We become faithful when we imitate the King by choosing forgiveness over vengeance and restoration over division.

✦ Action Steps for One Truth to Become

• Forgive Freely – Release bitterness toward someone who has wronged you.
• Honor Faithfulness – Thank and encourage someone who has supported you faithfully.
• Pursue Peace – Take one step toward reconciliation in a strained relationship.
• Balance Emotion with Duty – Like David, don’t let grief keep you from serving others faithfully.
• Fix Your Eyes on Christ – Remember Jesus, the true King, who restores His enemies through grace.

Small Group Discussion Questions
Why was David’s grief over Absalom both understandable and problematic?
How does David’s treatment of Shimei and Mephibosheth reflect grace?
What does it look like to pursue reconciliation while still honoring truth and justice?

Closing Prayer
“Lord, thank You for the grace You show to undeserving sinners. Teach me to reflect Your mercy, to forgive as I’ve been forgiven, and to pursue reconciliation in my relationships. Help me live under the rule of Christ, the true King who restores and redeems.” Our victory, and reigns forever. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.”

PSALM 64
When God Turns Hidden Arrows Back on the Wicked

Key Verse:
“But God shoots his arrow at them; they are wounded suddenly.” — Psalm 64:7

Devotional Reflection
Psalm 64 is David’s prayer in the middle of hidden attacks, whispered threats, and secret schemes. This is not a battlefield psalm—it is a psalm for those wounded by words, betrayal, slander, and unseen opposition.

1. David Brings His Fear to God (vv. 1–2)
David begins honestly: “Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint.”

He is not pretending strength. He feels hunted, surrounded by enemies who plot in secret. Yet instead of carrying fear alone, David carries it to God. Faith is not the absence of fear—it is taking fear to the right place.

2. The Power of Destructive Words (vv. 3–6)
David describes his enemies like assassins:

• Their tongues are sharpened swords.
• Their words are bitter arrows.
• Their attacks are secret and calculated.

Psalm 64 reminds us that words can wound deeply. Gossip, slander, manipulation, and false accusation are not “small sins” in God’s eyes. Evil often hides behind smiles, whispers, and secret counsel.

The wicked believe no one sees them: “Who can see them?” (v. 5)
But heaven sees everything.

3. God Fires the Final Arrow (vv. 7–8)
The turning point comes suddenly: “But God…”

The enemies shoot arrows secretly, but God shoots one arrow openly and decisively. The hunters become the hunted. The plotters fall into their own trap.

This is one of the great comforts of Scripture: God does not ignore hidden evil. What is whispered in darkness is fully visible to Him.

4. The Result: Fear, Worship, and Trust (vv. 9–10)
The psalm ends with worship:

• People fear the Lord.
• They proclaim His work.
• The righteous rejoice and take refuge in Him.

David’s confidence is not that he can outmaneuver his enemies, but that God is Judge, Defender, and Refuge.

What Does This Teach Us About God?

• God hears the cries of His people when they are attacked unjustly. 
• God sees hidden evil and secret motives. 
• God defends the righteous in His perfect timing. 
• God turns fear into worship and trust.

One Truth to Behold

God Sees What Others Hide
We behold this: no whispered attack, hidden betrayal, or secret scheme escapes the eyes of God.

✦ Action Steps for One Truth to Behold

• Memorize Psalm 64:7 – “But God shoots his arrow at them.”
• Bring Fear to God – Pray honestly about hidden hurts and attacks.
• Release Revenge – Trust God to defend you instead of retaliating.
• Read Romans 12:19 – Leave vengeance in God’s hands.
• Rest in Refuge – Spend quiet time remembering God is your protector.

 
 
One Truth to Become
Live as One Who Trusts God Instead of Fearing People
We become faithful when we stop living controlled by the opinions, attacks, or threats of others and instead take refuge in God.

✦ Action Steps for One Truth to Become

1. Refuse Bitterness – Do not let hidden wounds harden your heart.
2. Guard Your Words – Refuse to use your tongue as a weapon against others.
3. Pray for Integrity – Ask God to make your private life righteous before Him.
4. Choose Worship Over Worry – Turn anxiety into praise and prayer.
5. Fix Your Eyes on Christ – Jesus endured false accusations and entrusted Himself to the Father.

Small Group Discussion Questions

• Why do you think David brings his fears so openly before God?
• How have you experienced the destructive power of words?
• What does Psalm 64 teach us about trusting God when attacked unfairly?

Closing Prayer
“Lord, You see every hidden wound and hear every whispered attack. Thank You that You are my refuge and defender. Keep me from bitterness, guard my tongue from sin, and teach me to trust You when others oppose me. Let my fear turn into worship and my anxiety into confidence in Your justice.”

PSALM 62
My Soul Waits in Silence for God Alone

Key Verse:
“For God alone my soul waits in silence; from Him comes my salvation.” — Psalm 62:1

Devotional Reflection
Psalm 62 is a psalm of quiet confidence in God during pressure, opposition, and uncertainty. David writes as a man surrounded by enemies, yet instead of panic, his soul rests in silence before God. This psalm teaches us that true stability is not found in circumstances, wealth, or people—but in God alone.

1. God Alone Is Our Rock (vv. 1–2)
David begins with one of the strongest declarations in Scripture:
“He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.”

The world shakes. People fail. Enemies rise. But God is a rock—unchanging, immovable, dependable. David’s confidence is not in his own strength but in the character of God.

2. The Instability of Human Strength (vv. 3–4)
David’s enemies attack him like a leaning wall ready to collapse. They bless outwardly but curse inwardly. Human approval and human power are unstable foundations. The more David looks at people, the more fragile life appears.

3. Resting in God Alone (vv. 5–8)
David repeats his declaration, but now he speaks directly to his own soul:
“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence.”

Faith sometimes requires preaching to your own heart. David tells himself to stop striving and start resting. God is not merely a helper; He is refuge, hope, salvation, and defense.
David then calls the people to trust God at all times and to “pour out your heart before Him.” Silence before God does not mean emotional numbness—it means confident surrender.

4. The Emptiness of Earthly Security (vv. 9–10)
David warns against trusting in status, power, riches, or oppression. Whether high or low, humanity is “lighter than a breath.” Wealth cannot carry the weight of your soul. Only God can.

5. God Alone Has Power and Steadfast Love (vv. 11–12)
The psalm ends with two unshakable truths:

• Power belongs to God.
• Steadfast love belongs to God.

This means God is both strong enough to save and loving enough to care. In Christ, we see both perfectly displayed at the cross.

Psalm 62 reminds us that the soul finds peace only when it stops leaning on temporary things and rests fully in God.

What Does This Teach Us About God?

• God alone is our rock, refuge, and salvation. 
• God’s power and steadfast love are perfect and unchanging. 
• God invites His people to trust Him fully and pour out their hearts before Him.

One Truth to Behold
God Alone Is the Safe Place for the Soul
We behold this: when everything else shakes, God remains steady.

✦ Action Steps for One Truth to Behold

• Memorize Psalm 62:1–2 – Let God’s Word steady your anxious heart.
• Practice Silence – Spend 5–10 minutes quietly resting before God in prayer.
• Pour Out Your Heart – Honestly tell God your fears, frustrations, and burdens.
• Identify False Refuges – Ask yourself what you run to besides God for security.
• Read Psalm 46 – Rejoice that God is your refuge and strength.

 
One Truth to Become
Live as One Who Rests Fully in God’s Strength and Love
We become faithful when we stop leaning on unstable things and trust God alone as our security.

✦ Action Steps for One Truth to Become

• Reject Self-Reliance – Begin each day acknowledging your dependence on God.
• Trust God in Pressure – When anxiety rises, repeat: “He alone is my rock.”
• Refuse to Idolize Wealth or Approval – Hold earthly things loosely.
• Encourage Others – Point someone else toward God as their refuge.
• Fix Your Eyes on Christ – Rest in Jesus, the unshakable Rock of salvation.

Small Group Discussion Questions

• Why does David repeatedly say “God alone” throughout this psalm?
• What are some “false refuges” people trust in today?
• What does it practically mean to “wait in silence” before God?

 
 
Closing Prayer
“Lord, You alone are my rock, my salvation, and my refuge. When my heart is anxious and the world feels unstable, teach me to rest in You. Help me stop trusting in temporary things and anchor my soul fully in Your power and steadfast love.”

PSALM 61
Lead Me to the Rock

Key Verse:
“Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” — Psalm 61:2

Devotional Reflection
Psalm 61 is the cry of a weary king who knows exactly where to run when his heart is overwhelmed. David writes from a place of distance, weakness, and longing—but he also writes with confidence in the faithfulness of God.

1. A Heart Overwhelmed (vv. 1–2):

David begins with desperation: “Hear my cry, O God.” His heart is fainting under the weight of trouble. Yet instead of collapsing into despair, he asks God to lead him “to the rock that is higher than I.” David knows he cannot rescue himself. He needs a refuge greater than his own strength, wisdom, or emotions.

2. A Refuge Proven Faithful (vv. 3–4):

David remembers who God has always been: a refuge, a strong tower, a shelter from the enemy. Memory fuels faith. God’s past faithfulness becomes David’s present confidence. He longs to dwell in God’s tent forever, safe under the shadow of His wings.

3. A Future Secured by Grace (vv. 5–8):

David trusts that God hears vows, preserves His king, and extends steadfast love and faithfulness. The psalm ends not in panic, but in worship: “So will I ever sing praises to Your name.”

Psalm 61 reminds us that the safest place for an overwhelmed heart is not escape, but the presence of God. Christ Himself is the Rock higher than us—the refuge we climb into when storms rage.

What Does This Teach Us About God?

• God hears the cries of overwhelmed hearts.
• God is a refuge stronger than our fears or enemies.
• God’s steadfast love and faithfulness sustain His people.

One Truth to Behold
God Is the Rock Higher Than Our Weakness
We behold this: when our hearts fail, God remains unshaken and strong.

✦ Action Steps for One Truth to Behold

1. Memorize Psalm 61:2 – “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
2. Pray Honestly – Bring your overwhelmed heart to God without hiding.
3. Recall God’s Faithfulness – Write down times He has been your refuge before.
4. Read Psalm 46 – Meditate on God as your strong tower.
5. Rest in Christ – Thank Jesus for being your eternal refuge and Rock.

One Truth to Become
Live as One Who Runs to God First When Overwhelmed
We become faithful when trouble drives us toward God, not away from Him.

✦ Action Steps for One Truth to Become

• Run to Prayer First – Before reacting to stress, cry out to God.
• Practice Worship in Weakness – Sing or pray even when emotions are heavy.
• Seek Shelter in Scripture – Let God’s Word steady your heart daily.
• Encourage Others – Point someone overwhelmed toward God’s refuge.
• Trust His Stability – Remember the Rock does not move, even when life does.

Small Group Discussion Questions

• What does it mean practically to be led to “the rock that is higher than I”?
• How does remembering God’s past faithfulness strengthen us in present trouble?
• Where do you tend to run first when your heart feels overwhelmed?

Closing Prayer
“Lord, when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the Rock that is higher than I. Be my refuge, my shelter, and my strong tower. Help me trust Your steadfast love more than my fears, and teach me to rest safely in Your presence.”

PSALM 58
The God Who Judges the Wicked

Key Verse:
“Surely there is a God who judges on earth.” — Psalm 58:11

Devotional Reflection
Psalm 58 is a bold and sobering psalm of David. It confronts corrupt leaders, celebrates God’s justice, and reminds us that evil will not reign forever.

1. Corrupt Leaders Exposed (vv. 1–5):
   David addresses rulers and judges who were meant to uphold justice but instead practiced violence and deceit. Their wickedness is so deep that David describes them as estranged from righteousness “from the womb.” Like a cobra refusing the charmer’s voice, they reject correction and truth.
2. A Prayer for God’s Judgment (vv. 6–9):
   David cries out for God to break the power of the wicked. His language is vivid—teeth broken, arrows blunted, evil swept away before it can prosper. This is not personal revenge but a plea for God to stop injustice and defend the innocent.
3. The Triumph of God’s Justice (vv. 10–11):
   The psalm ends with confidence: the righteous will rejoice because God judges rightly. Evil may seem powerful for a season, but it will not endure forever. The final declaration is the anchor of the psalm: “Surely there is a God who judges on earth.”

Psalm 58 reminds us that in a world full of corruption and injustice, God is neither blind nor passive. His justice may seem delayed, but it is certain.

What Does This Teach Us About God?

• God sees every act of injustice and corruption. 
• God will judge wickedness in His perfect time. 
• God defends righteousness and vindicates His people.

One Truth to Behold
God’s Justice Will Ultimately Prevail
We behold this: evil does not have the final word—God does.

✦ Action Steps for One Truth to Behold

1. Memorize Psalm 58:11 – Let it anchor your hope in God’s justice.
2. Pray Honestly – Bring your grief over injustice to God instead of bitterness.
3. Trust His Timing – Resist the urge for personal revenge; leave judgment to God.
4. Read Romans 12:19 – “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
5. Praise God’s Righteousness – Worship Him as the perfect Judge.

One Truth to Become
Live as One Who Pursues Righteousness While Trusting God with Judgment
We become faithful when we stand for truth and justice without taking vengeance into our own hands.

✦ Action Steps for One Truth to Become

• Speak Truthfully – Refuse deceit, gossip, or corruption in your own life.
• Defend the Vulnerable – Stand up for those treated unfairly.
• Reject Bitterness – Don’t let anger harden your heart.
• Pray for Leaders – Ask God to raise up righteous leaders and expose corruption.
• Fix Your Eyes on Christ – Remember Jesus is the righteous Judge who will set all things right.

Small Group Discussion Questions

• Why is it important to believe that God will judge evil?
• How can we seek justice without becoming consumed by bitterness or revenge?
• What injustices in today’s world most challenge your trust in God’s timing?

 
 
Prayer
“Righteous Lord, thank You that You see every injustice and will judge rightly. Keep me from bitterness and revenge, and help me trust Your perfect justice. Teach me to walk in righteousness, defend the weak, and rest in the certainty that You will make all things right.”

PSALM 26 & 40
From the Pit to the Presence of God


Key Verses:
“I wash my hands in innocence and go around Your altar, O Lord.” — Psalm 26:6
 
“He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock.” — Psalm 40:2
 
Devotional Reflection
Psalm 26 and Psalm 40 beautifully belong together because they reveal two sides of the believer’s walk with God:

• Psalm 26 shows the heart that longs to walk in integrity before God.
• Psalm 40 shows the God who rescues sinners and gives them a new song.

Together, they remind us that the Christian life is both a pursuit of holiness and a testimony of grace.

1. A Heart That Desires Integrity (Psalm 26)

David begins Psalm 26 asking God to examine him:
“Prove me, O Lord, and try me; test my heart and my mind.” (Ps. 26:2)

This is not the prayer of a sinless man but of a surrendered man. David’s deepest desire is to live honestly before God. He refuses to settle into hypocrisy or wickedness. He loves God’s house, God’s worship, and God’s presence.

Integrity in Psalm 26 is not self-righteous perfection—it is wholehearted devotion. David knows that only a heart fixed on God can walk steadily in a crooked world.

2. A God Who Rescues from the Pit (Psalm 40)
Psalm 40 shifts from integrity to rescue. David remembers crying out to the Lord from a “miry bog” and a “pit of destruction.”

“He inclined to me and heard my cry.” (Ps. 40:1)

God does not merely sympathize from a distance; He reaches down and lifts David up. He sets his feet on a rock and puts a new song in his mouth.

Psalm 26 says, “Lord, I want to walk rightly.”

Psalm 40 answers, “And when you fall, I am the God who lifts you up.”

3. Worship Flows from Redemption

In both Psalms, worship is central.

• In Psalm 26, David circles the altar with thanksgiving.
• In Psalm 40, David sings a new song because of God’s deliverance.

Holiness and worship are never separated from grace. We do not worship because we are flawless—we worship because we have been rescued.

4. Jesus: The Perfect Fulfillment

These Psalms ultimately point to Christ.

• Jesus alone lived Psalm 26 perfectly, walking in complete righteousness before the Father.
• Jesus also fulfilled Psalm 40 perfectly, delighting to do the Father’s will (Ps. 40:7–8; Hebrews 10:5–10).

And through His death and resurrection, Jesus lifts us from the pit of sin and places us securely on the Rock of salvation.

What Does This Teach Us About God?

• God desires integrity in His people. 
• God rescues those who cry out to Him. 
• God turns despair into worship. 
• God provides righteousness and redemption through Christ.

One Truth to Behold
God Is Both Our Examiner and Our Deliverer
We behold this: The same God who searches our hearts is the God who rescues us from the pit.

✦ Action Steps for One Truth to Behold

• Pray Psalm 26:2 — Ask God to search and refine your heart.
• Remember the Pit — Reflect on where God has rescued you from spiritually.
• Memorize Psalm 40:2 — Let it remind you of God’s saving power.
• Worship with Gratitude — Thank God not only for blessings, but for redemption itself.
• Read Hebrews 10:5–10 — Rejoice that Jesus fulfilled these Psalms perfectly for you.

One Truth to Become
Live with Integrity While Resting in Grace

We become faithful when we pursue holiness without forgetting that our hope is in God’s mercy, not our perfection.

✦ Action Steps for One Truth to Become

• Walk Honestly — Refuse hidden compromise or hypocrisy.
• Cry Out Quickly — When you stumble, run to God instead of hiding in shame.
• Stay Near Worship — Like David, remain close to God’s people and presence.
• Sing a New Song — Let your testimony of grace encourage others.
• Fix Your Eyes on Christ — Trust the One who lived righteously and rescues completely.

 
Small Group Discussion Questions

• How do Psalm 26 and Psalm 40 balance integrity and grace?
• Why is it important to let God examine our hearts honestly?
• What “pit” has God rescued you from, and how has it changed your worship?
• How does Jesus fulfill both the righteousness of Psalm 26 and the redemption of Psalm 40?

Closing Prayer
“Lord, search my heart and lead me in integrity. Thank You for rescuing me from the pit and setting my feet upon the Rock. Help me pursue holiness while resting fully in Your grace through Jesus Christ. Put a new song in my mouth so my life becomes a testimony of Your mercy and faithfulness.”

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Christian History originally published this article in Christian History Issue #19 in 1988 

John Wesley not only turned 18th century England around with his preaching, but he made lots of money in the process. Here is a story about, and advice from, a man who knew how to make money . . . and how to spend it.

MOST OF US KNOW that John Wesley was used by God to revive 18th-century England and to start the Methodist Church. We know him as a great preacher, and a greater organizer. We remember him for his contribution to the Church’s thinking on sanctification. But few of us realize that Wesley made enormous sums from preaching; the sale of his writings made him one of England’s wealthiest men. In an age when a single man could live comfortably on £30 a year, his annual income reached £1,400. No wonder Wesley had strong opinions about the place of financial matters in the Christian life. This “rich” preacher has much to say to us about money.

Why Revival Tarries
In later life, Wesley grew discouraged with Methodism. Although he had seen the movement grow from two brothers to a society of almost a million people, he felt that it had lost much of its spiritual power. He believed the Methodists no longer hungered and thirsted for righteousness as they once had. He observed that they were not as eager to attend the 5 a.m. preaching services as in the past. He feared his followers had lost much of their love for their neighbors for he saw that they were not as ready as they had been to visit the sick and needy. He was convinced that this decline in the way they loved the Lord and their neighbors had grieved God’s Holy Spirit, and had driven him from their midst. He feared his lifetime of labor had been in vain.

Besides thinking that God had abandoned the Methodists, Wesley thought he knew the cause of this desertion: A particular sin had caused them to lose their first love and had separated them from God. Wesley said that not one Methodist in 100 obeyed the Lord in this regard. He complained that others never preached against this sin, and in later life he spoke against it frequently. In his last three years of life he published as many sermons against this sin as he had published against it in the previous fifty. In what he thought might be his final sermon, he rebuked his followers for their disobedience to the Lord in this area. He even told the Methodists in Dublin that they were personally responsible for the decline of Methodism. “Ye are the men, some of the chief men, who continually grieve the Holy Spirit of God, and in a great measure stop his gracious influence from descending on our assemblies.”

What had these men in Dublin done to merit this rebuke? What was the crime of the Methodists in London, Manchester, and Bristol whom Wesley found lacking? What was the sin that convinced him that God had abandoned them, and which he thought was hindering revival?

The Love of Money
Wesley noted that in the old days of Methodism, the people were poor. But, he observed, in the 20, 30, or 40 years since they joined the society, many Methodists had become 20, 30, or even 100 times richer than they were at first. With this increase in wealth had come a decrease in godliness. It seemed to him the more money the Methodists had, the less they loved the Lord.

Wesley noted several instances of the decline of godliness among the Methodists. The first was a lessening of their love for God, shown by a lack of interest in sanctification. He told them they no longer had “the same vehement desire as you formerly had of ‘going on to perfection.’” A second instance was pride. Wesley warned his followers that increasing wealth had made them arrogant. They had become more confident of their own opinions and less willing to hear reproof: “You are not so teachable as you were, . . . ; you have a much better opinion of your own judgment and are more attached to your own will.” (from the sermon Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity)

Another sign of their backsliding was that the Methodists were less meek than they had been. In the past, Wesley said, “your love was not provoked, but enabled you on all occasions to overcome evil with good.” But now, “How quickly you are ruffled!” The next indication of their spiritual deadness was an unwillingness to help the poor. Wesley reminds his hearers, “You once pushed on through—cold or rain, or whatever cross lay in your way, to see the poor, the sick, the distressed.” Now, however, he asks, “Do you fear spoiling your silken coat? . . . Are you afraid of catching vermin?”

The final mark of how far the Methodists had fallen was their neglect of personal evangelism. Whereas his followers once readily spoke to people about their souls, Wesley is now forced to inquire, “But which of you now has that compassion for the ignorant, and for them that are out of the way? They may wander on, for [all] you [care], and plunge into the lake of fire without let or hindrance. God hath your hearts.” (from the sermon The Danger of Riches. See also On Riches and Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse 8, and The Use of Money, for similar comments.)

One Word Wesley Hated
We don’t usually think of John Wesley hating anything. He was the one who always preached about love: love for God and for neighbor. He even taught that God’s love could so fill our hearts that we would be able to love God and each other perfectly. But there was one word that Wesley hated. He described this word as “idle,” “nonsensical,” “stupid,” “miserable, ” “vile,” and “diabolical.” He said it was “the very cant of hell.” Obviously no Christian should ever utter it. This exceedingly evil word “afford.”

“But I can afford it,” replied the Methodists when Wesley preached against extravagance in food, dress, or lifestyle. Wesley argued that no Christian could afford anything beyond the bare necessities required for life and work. He based his reasoning on five main points:

1. God is the source of the Christian’s money. None of us really earns money by our own cleverness or hard work. For God is the one who gives us the energy and intelligence. He is the true source of all our wealth. Wesley inquired of some Methodists who felt they were entitled to a higher standard of living now that they could afford it, “Who gave you this addition to your fortune; or (to speak properly) lent it to you?” (from On the Danger of Increasing Riches)

2. Christians must account to the Lord for how they have used money. Wesley urged people always to use money wisely, because at any time they may have to give an account to the Lord for the way in which they have used the wealth he gave them. Because no one knows when that might be, no one should ever waste money now, planning to make it up to the Lord later. “How long are you to stay here?” Wesley asked those who felt free to spend extra money on themselves. “May you tomorrow, perhaps tonight, be summoned to arise and go hence, in order to give an account of this and all your talents to the Judge of quick and dead?” (from On Dress)

3. Christians are trustees of the Lord’s money. The money God has put into our hands is not our own, but His. We do not own it, rather we are His agents in distributing it. Thus we must use it not as we wish, but as He directs. Wesley reminded his hearers of this truth by asking, “Can any steward afford to be an errant knave? to waste his Lord’s goods? Can any servant afford to lay out his Master’s money any otherwise than his Master appoints him?” (from Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity)

4. God gives Christians money for them to pass along to those who need it. God’s purpose in giving us money is for us to help the poor and needy. To use it on ourselves is to steal from God. Wesley demanded of some comfortable Methodists:

Do not you know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud your Lord, by applying it to any other purpose? (from On the Danger of Increasing Riches)

5. Christians may no more buy luxuries for themselves than they may throw their money away. God made us trustees of His resources so we may feed the hungry and clothe the naked in His name. We should turn our extra money into food and clothing for the poor. Just as it would be wrong to destroy other peoples’ food and clothes, so it is also wrong to spend money needlessly on ourselves. Wesley said, “None can afford to throw any part of that food and raiment into the sea, which was lodged with him on purpose to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.” But if we are determined to waste God’s money, Wesley argued that it would be better actually to throw it into the sea than to spend it extravagantly. At least throwing money into the sea hurts no one, while spending it needlessly on ourselves poisons all who see it with “pride, vanity, anger, lust, love of the world, and a thousand ‘foolish and hurtful desires.’ ” (from On Dress,)

Wesleys Advice
Wesley felt that Methodism had lost its spiritual power because the Methodists had become rich. He often preached against the sins of the well off, such as desiring riches and misusing money. He specifically rebuked extravagance in food, dress, and lifestyle. Wesley, however, did not just condemn the wrong use of money, he also gave his hearers clear biblical guidelines for the right use of money.

And how has God directed Christians to use their incomes? Wesley lists the following four scriptural priorities:

I. Provide things needful for yourself and your family (1 Tim. 5:8). The believer should make sure that the family has the necessities and conveniences of life, that is, “a sufficiency of plain, wholesome food to eat, and clean raiment to put on,” as well as a place to live. The believer must also ensure that the family has enough to live on if something were to happen to the breadwinner.

II. “Having food and raiment, let us therewith be content.” (1 Tim 6:8). How should Christians decide how much to spend on themselves and their families? Where should they draw the line? Wesley answers by quoting Paul’s words to Timothy. He adds that the word translated “raiment” is literally “coverings,” and thus includes lodging as well as clothes, and continues, “It plainly follows, whatever is more than these is, in the sense of the Apostle, riches; whatever is above the plain necessities, or at most convenience of life. Whoever has sufficient food to eat, and raiment to put on, with a place to lay his head, and something over, is rich.” (from The Danger of Riches)

III. “Provide things honest in the sight of all men ” (Rom. 12:17) and “Owe no man anything” (Rom. 13:8). Wesley says that the next claim on a Christian’s money belongs to the creditors, and adds that those who are in business for themselves need to have adequate tools, stock, or capital for the carrying on of that business.

IV. “Do good to them that are of the household of faith” and “As you have opportunity, do good unto all men” (Gal. 6:10). After the Christian has provided for the family, the creditors, and the business, the next obligation is to use any money that is left to meet the needs of others. Wesley says that God gives his children money so that their reasonable needs will be met, and then He expects them to return the rest to him by giving it to the poor. God wants all Christians to regard themselves as “only one of that number of the poor, whose wants were to be supplied out of that part of [the Lord’s] substance which He had placed in their hands for this purpose.” The Lord will then inquire:

Wast thou accordingly a general benefactor to mankind? feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting the sick, assisting the stranger, relieving the afflicted, according to their various necessities? Was thou eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame? a father to the fatherless, and a husband to the widow? (from The Good Steward)

Besides giving these four biblical principles, Wesley also recognizes that some situations are not clear-cut. It is not always obvious how the Christian should use the Lord’s money. Wesley accordingly offers four questions to help his hearers decide how to spend money:

• In spending this money, am I acting as if I owned it, or am I acting as the Lord’s trustee?
• What Scripture requires me to spend this money in this way?
• Can I offer up this purchase as a sacrifice to the Lord?
• Will God reward me for this expenditure at the resurrection of the just? Finally, for the believer who is perplexed, Wesley suggests this prayer before making a purchase:

Lord, Thou seest I am going to expend this sum on that food, apparel, or furniture. And Thou knowest I act therein with a single eye, as a steward of thy goods, expending this portion of them thus, in persuance of the design thou hadst in entrusting me with them. Thou knowest I do this in obedience to Thy Word, as Thou commandest, and because Thou commandest it. Let this, I beseech Thee, be an holy sacrifice, acceptable through Jesus Christ! And give me a witness in myself, that for this labor of love I shall have a recompense when Thou rewardest every man according to his works. (from The Use of Money)

He is confident any believer who has a clear conscience after praying this prayer will be using money wisely.

Wesley especially warns against buying too much for children. People who would never waste money on themselves might be more indulgent with their children. On the principle that gratifying a desire needlessly only tends to increase it, he asks these well-intentioned parents:

Why should you purchase for them more pride or lust, more vanity, or foolish and hurtful desires? . . . Why should you be at further expense to increase their temptations and snares, and to pierce them through with more sorrows? (from The Use of Money)

Wesley’s Example
Wesley preached a wealth of words about money. He had many ideas about the right and wrong uses of lucre. And as a man with one of the highest earned incomes in England in his time, he had the opportunity to practice what he preached. Many might ignore what he said about money, but none could dismiss the way he used it; what he preached by deed spoke louder than his words.

As a child Wesley had known grinding poverty. Samuel Wesley, his father, was the Anglican priest in one of England’s lowest-paying parishes, and he had nine children to feed and clothe. John rarely saw his father out of debt, and he once saw him marched off to debtor’s prison. When John followed his father into the ministry he had no illusions about its financial rewards.

However, though John followed his father’s vocation, he did not share in his poverty. Instead of being a parish priest, he felt God’s direction to teach at Oxford University. He was elected a fellow of Lincoln College, and his financial status changed dramatically. His position usually paid him at least £30 a year—more than enough money for a single man to live on. He seems to have enjoyed his relative prosperity while teaching, spending his money on playing cards, tobacco, and brandy. One incident that happened to him at Oxford changed his perspective on money. He had just finished buying some pictures for his room when one of the chambermaids came to his door. It was a Winter day and he noticed that she had only a thin linen gown to wear for protection against the cold. He reached into his pocket to give her some money for a coat, and found he had little left. It struck him that the Lord was not pleased with how he had spent his money. He asked himself:

Will Thy Master say “Well done, good and faithful stewards?” Thou hast adorned thy walls with the money that might have screened this poor creature from the cold! O justice! O mercy! Are not these pictures the blood of this poor maid? (from On Dress )

Perhaps as a result of this incident, in 1731 Wesley began to limit his expenses so he would have more money to give to the poor. He records that one year his income was £30, and his living expenses £28, so he had £2 to give away. The next year his income doubled, but he still lived on £28 and gave £32 away. In the third year his income jumped to £90, again he lived on £28, giving £62 away. The fourth year he made £120, lived again on £28 and gave £92 to the poor.

Wesley preached that Christians should not merely tithe, but give away all extra income once the family and creditors were taken care of. He believed that with increasing income, the Christian’s standard of giving should increase, not his standard of living. He began this practice at Oxford and he continued it throughout his life. Even when his income rose into the thousands of pounds, he lived simply and quickly gave his surplus money away. One year his income was slightly over £1,400; he gave all away save £30. He was afraid of laying up treasures on earth, so the money went out in charity as quickly as it came in in income. He reports that he never had as much as £100 at one time.

Among the ways Wesley limited expenses were by doing without luxuries and by identifying with the needy. He had preached that Christians should consider themselves members of the poor, whom God had given them money to aid., He put his words into practice by living and eating with the poor. Under Wesley’s leadership the London Methodists had established two homes for widows in the city. They were supported by offerings taken at the band meetings and at the Lord’s Supper. In 1748 Wesley lived in the same accommodations, along with any other Methodist ministers who happened to be in town. Wesley rejoiced to eat the same food at the same table, looking forward to the heavenly banquet that all Christians would share.

Dr. White, assistant professor of Christian Thought and History at Spring Arbor College in Michigan, is the Author of The Beauty of Holiness (Zondervan, 1986), a biography of revivalist Phoebe Palmer.

Only One Life, Twill Soon Be Past
by C.T. Studd

Two little lines I heard one day,
Traveling along life’s busy way;
Bringing conviction to my heart,
And from my mind would not depart;

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, yes only one,
Soon will its fleeting hours be done;
Then, in ‘that day’ my Lord to meet,
And stand before His Judgement seat;

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, the still small voice,
Gently pleads for a better choice
Bidding me selfish aims to leave,
And to God’s holy will to cleave;

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, a few brief years,
Each with its burdens, hopes, and fears;
Each with its days I must fulfill.
living for self or in His will;

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

When this bright world would tempt me sore,
When Satan would a victory score;
When self would seek to have its way,
Then help me Lord with joy to say;

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Give me Father, a purpose deep,
In joy or sorrow Thy word to keep;
Faithful and true what e’er the strife,
Pleasing Thee in my daily life;

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Oh let my love with fervor burn,
And from the world now let me turn;
Living for Thee, and Thee alone,
Bringing Thee pleasure on Thy throne;

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, yes only one,
Now let me say, “Thy will be done”;
And when at last I’ll hear the call,
I know I’ll say “twas worth it all”;

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.
And when I am dying, how happy I’ll be,
If the lamp of my life has been burned out for Thee.

Predicting the future is a tricky business at best, as history demonstrates. In 1929 Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, carved out a niche for himself in history when he said, “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau,” mere months before Wall Street crashed. Decca Records turned down the opportunity to sign the Beatles in 1962 with the words, “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” Ken Olson, founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation, declared in 1977, “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” Trying to track the trends of the future gives you a wonderful opportunity to fall flat on your face. The things that seem certain bets often backfire, while the most unlikely prospects may end up as runaway successes.

If predicting the future is hard, then how about controlling the future? What if you don’t like the apparently inevitable prospect that your future holds for you—is there anything you can do about it? How do you face and defeat problems that are far beyond your ability to control? Perhaps you have received a diagnosis of an incurable disease, either for yourself or for a loved one. Or perhaps you find yourself in a situation where life seems to have locked you in a box and thrown away the key. You see no way out through your own resources. Is it possible to find help and hope outside yourself when the only light that you see at the end of the tunnel is an onrushing express train that seems certain to crush you?


THE FOLLY OF SPIRITUAL COUNTERFEITS

That was the situation in which Balak, King of Moab, found himself. An enormous threatening force, the Israelites, was massing on his border. They had already defeated and destroyed Og, King of Bashan, and Sihon, King of the Amorites. He thought his territory might very well be next on their list (22:2, 3). Conventional warfare held out little prospect of success. So where was he to turn? His solution was to summon the internationally renowned prophet and diviner Balaam, in the hopes that through him he could acquire a weapon of mass destruction, a curse from the gods that would change Israel’s future and thereby also his own.

At first sight that solution to Balak’s problem may not seem very relevant to our modern situation. Even if the root of the problems in our lives can be identified as a person, we are not normally greatly tempted to call down a literal curse on him. In contemporary society when there is an archrival outperforming us at work or at school, we don’t typically pull out a voodoo doll and stick pins in it, hoping through sympathetic magic to debilitate him or her. Yet the broader temptation to pursue spiritual counterfeits as a means to relieve our pain and pursue increased success remains tremendously attractive to our culture as the rising levels of interest in psychics and horoscopes demonstrates. What is more, even if we don’t seek out the modern equivalent of pagan divination to seek the solution to our problems, we may still look to created things and people as the ones from whom our blessings will come. Yet this passage demonstrates clearly that the Lord alone has power to bless and curse.

Pursuing this theme, the passage underlines for us the folly of all spiritual counterfeits. Balak’s assertion when he first sent envoys to hire Balaam (“I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed,” 22:6) is shown to be mere wishful thinking. Far from Balaam being able to exert a measure of control over the deity, as a pagan prophet was paid to do, extracting whatever outcome he sought from his encounter, the Lord controlled Balaam. The Lord told him where and when to go and required him to say only what the Lord instructed him to say, reducing Balaam to a mere messenger boy. If the Lord could do that to an internationally acclaimed prophet like Balaam, no one would ever be able to stand against him. Balak’s plan to curse Israel was doomed from the outset.


COSTLY AND UNCERTAIN RITUALS

One aspect of the folly of pursuing spiritual counterfeits that emerges is the vast expense that they require. Three times, in three different locations, Balaam made Balak go through costly rituals. Each time he had to build seven altars, and on each one he had to sacrifice a bull and a ram, the most expensive of the various sacrificial animals (23:1, 14, 29). That was in addition to the cost of sending the envoys (twice) to persuade Balaam to come (22:7, 15), the cost of the feast on his arrival (22:40), and the promised payment of a handsome reward on completion of the contract (22:17). Balaam’s services were certainly far from cheap, a fact that is equally true of his modern counterparts.

We also see clearly here the uncertainty of spiritual counterfeits. Even after all this expense, there was no guarantee of Balak receiving any message from beyond, let alone one that would be favorable to him. Whereas in Israel only one altar was ever necessary for sacrifice, since Israel served only the one true God, here seven altars were required for each attempt to contact the deity. Presumably this was an attempt to cover all of the spiritual bases.1 Yet even with all of that effort, Balaam said to Balak after the first set of offerings, “Perhaps the LORD will come to meet me” (23:3). Balaam could not guarantee results from the process. The second time Balaam expressed similar uncertainty when he said, “Stay here beside your offerings, while I seek a manifestation yonder” (23:15, NJPS). There was no sure access to the Lord through this procedure: it was filled with “perhaps” and “maybe.” This uncertainty of approach for Balaam forms a striking contrast with the access that the Lord had promised to Moses. Whereas prophets—even true prophets—were dependent on dreams and visions, Moses had been granted the constant and assured right to meet with the Lord and speak to him face to face (12:7).

Balak might still have thought that all of his money had been well spent if it had finally accomplished his goals of cursing Israel. However, in the end all of his expense went for nothing. Balaam first tried to curse the whole camp of Israel from Bamoth-baal (22:41). From there he could see the whole camp of Israel spread out before him.2 Yet the only words he found he could utter were words of blessing (23:7–10). His second attempt was more limited in scope, seeking only to curse part of Israel. If he couldn’t manage to curse the whole people, perhaps he could at least manage to curse a small part of them. This attempt too was an abject failure: once again, he could only bless Israel (23:18–24). Nor was a third attempt from a different location any more successful (24:3–9). In each place, Balaam’s best efforts to curse Israel accomplished nothing.

In fact, as a weapon of mass destruction, Balaam proved to be not only impotent but actually counterproductive. Not only was Balaam not able to curse Israel, he repeatedly blessed them at Balak’s expense! What is more, when Balak finally ran out of patience with Balaam after three failed attempts and tried to send him packing, Balaam proceeded to deliver yet another oracle free of charge, which contained yet another blessing on Israel (24:15–24)!

That is always the way it is with spiritual counterfeits: they make grandiose claims for themselves and promise to give us substantial rewards, yet in the end they turn out to be expensive, uncertain, and ultimately impotent. There is neither blessing nor curse to be found in psychics or mediums, in astrology or horoscopes, or in any other source than the one true living God. These spiritual counterfeits have no power to affect either the present or the future.

In fact, the same is true of all of the many created things to which we offer allegiance as our idols. They are all ultimately equally impotent to bless or to curse. Some seek their value in money and possessions, but wealth cannot make us genuinely worthwhile as persons, and its absence cannot rob us of our dignity. Others look to power for their validation, but power cannot fulfill us, and its loss cannot make our lives meaningless. Still others invest the approval of people with ultimate significance, but gaining the love of a particular person is not where our value lies, nor will we be destroyed if they are taken from us, however painful that loss may be. None of these created things can make or break us, even though we continually act as if they can.

The power that we ascribe to these idols that we have set up for ourselves is evident in the way we pour ourselves so devotedly into pursuing their demands and are so wrapped up in fears of their loss. We would willingly go to the ends of the earth to do their bidding, and we regularly sacrifice on their altars whatever they demand. They fill our dreams and our nightmares, and they shape our expenditures and our relationships. They are profoundly expensive masters, both in financial terms and in terms of the turmoil that they create in our souls. Yet in the end, like all idols, they are impotent to deliver what they promise or threaten.


THE CERTAINTY OF BLESSING

In dramatic contrast to the expensive, uncertain, and ultimately impotent search for blessing and curse through spiritual counterfeits and the idols of our hearts, there is the free, certain, and effective way to blessing through Israel’s God. Israel did not have to pay Balaam or offer special sacrifices to receive a word of blessing from the Lord through him. On the contrary, the Lord had already freely committed himself in advance to bless Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 12:2, 3). The Lord had already told the Aaronic priests to pronounce his blessing regularly on the people, without any fee changing hands (Numbers 6:24–27). Balaam’s words of blessing were simply a reflection of the Lord’s settled attitude toward his people. As Balaam himself put it, “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Behold, I received a command to bless: he has blessed, and I cannot revoke it” (23:19, 20). Human beings are fickle and changeable creatures, but when the Lord declared a people blessed, they were indeed blessed.

The oracles of Balaam not only declared that the Lord’s blessing rested on Israel, however. They also unfold for us different aspects of that settled blessing—past, present, and future.
First, Balaam declared that the Lord has blessed Israel in the past. The Lord had multiplied their numbers to uncountable proportions, like the dust of the earth, just as he had promised Abraham: “Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the fourth part of Israel?” (23:10; see Genesis 13:16). He had brought them out of Egypt (23:22; 24:8), and he gave them the strength to defeat hostile nations resembling a wild ox (23:22; 24:8) or a lion (23:24; 24:9). The Lord made them a people distinct from all other nations, separated for a relationship with him (23:9). All of these predictions must have seemed far-fetched when originally given; yet the Lord had fulfilled each one.

Second, Balaam declared the Lord’s blessing upon Israel in the present. The Lord protected them from natural disasters: “He has not beheld misfortune in Jacob, nor has he seen trouble in Israel” (23:21). He guarded them from supernatural dangers: “For there is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel” (23:23). What made them distinct from every other nation was the unique fact that God dwelt in their midst: “The LORD their God is with them, and the shout of a king is among them” (23:21). They alone out of all the nations of the earth had a special relationship with the Lord, acclaiming him as their King and belonging to him as his people.


FUTURE BLESSINGS

What is more, the Lord would continue to be with Israel in the future, promising them fruitfulness and abundant water (24:6, 7) and victory for their king over Agag, the king of the Amalekites (24:7). This last promise is particularly striking since at this point in their history Israel did not yet have a king, even though God had already promised them that they would have one at some point in the future (Genesis 17:6). This promised monarch of the future would experience the Lord’s blessing, resulting in triumph over all of his enemies, who were personified as the king of their primary enemy, Amalek (see 24:20). Ultimately, all of Israel’s enemies would be destroyed: Moab would be defeated, Edom conquered, and even the great empire of Assyria4 would be brought low in the end (24:17, 18, 24).

These oracles of Balaam, which declare not merely positive present realities but a glorious future yet to come, are most certainly true because the Lord’s sovereign power extends beyond the present into the future. What man cannot predict—what the future holds—the Lord is able to declare, because he himself holds the future in his hands. Even sickness, disease, and the schemes of evil men are not exempt from his sovereign will to bless his people. For that reason, when Jesus and his disciples encountered a man who had been born blind, Jesus explained that this personal tragedy had happened precisely so that the work of God might be displayed in his life (John 9:3). That man’s disability was not an accident of fate: it was part of God’s plan to display his glory. In fact, even the most wicked act of history, the crucifixion of Jesus, was the result of God’s set purpose and foreknowledge (Acts 2:23). God’s sovereignty does not free human beings from their responsibility for their acts, but it does assure us of the certainty that his purposes of blessing and curse will assuredly come about. Who but the Lord has the power to foretell what the distant future holds? Who but the Lord holds that future in his hands?

This truth is a great comfort when life seems out of control, whether outwardly or inwardly. Outwardly life seems out of control whenever our circumstances threaten to swamp us through one calamity or another. Inwardly life seems out of control whenever our emotions threaten to drown us in a morass of anxiety or sorrow, of fear or depression. Precisely in those times of unsettled circumstances and tumultuous emotions, the Lord’s settled purpose to bless his people is a wonderful assurance. As the hymn-writer put it:

  Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
  Let this blest assurance control,
  That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
  And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

If God is for us, who can be against us? The settled assurance of the Lord’s purpose to bless us in Christ enables us in the midst of life’s chaos to sing,

  Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
  “It is well, it is well with my soul.”


A STAR FROM JACOB

The greatest declaration of Israel’s future blessing, though, was left for the distant future. In Balaam’s final oracle he announced that a star would come out of Jacob and a scepter out of Israel, a great king who would definitively crush all of her enemies (24:17–19). In that day, pride of place would not be sufficient to keep Israel’s adversaries safe: the Amalekites, who were “first among the nations,” would come to ruin (24:20). A secure location would be no defense either: the Kenites would be flushed out of their rocky lair (24:21). Even those whom God used to destroy those nations would themselves ultimately go down in defeat at the hands of others—the Assyrians who would overcome and enslave the Kenites would themselves be subdued in due time by a warlike power from across the sea (24:24).6 Meanwhile, those who brought low the Assyrians would themselves come to ruin in the end (24:24). Who can endure this great day of the Lord’s wrath (24:23)?

This final oracle thus spans the entire sweep of human history. Nation after nation will rise to world domination and then fall to defeat. But when the messianic King arrives on the scene, no people other than Israel, the nation set apart, will survive the final day of destruction. At the end of all things, when all of human history has played out its course of changing fortunes, the Lord’s people will be the only ones left standing.

If it is true that Israel as God’s people has a unique relationship with the Lord that means both their present blessing and final security, then they are indeed to be envied. If the Lord has chosen Israel to be his own and has promised to be with them in the past, the present, and the future, then Balaam’s wish is understandable: “Let me die the death of the upright, and let my end be like his!” (23:10). When you even out the merely temporary fluctuations in the fortunes of people and nations, there are ultimately only two fates offered in this world. There is the Lord’s blessing leading to a flourishing life and an enviable death or the Lord’s curse leading to defeat and ultimate destruction.

Yet the coming of the star that Balaam foresaw wasn’t entirely what you might have predicted. At the birth of Jesus, a heavenly star indeed rose over Israel to mark where the infant King lay. Yet the baby King lay in a manger, not in a palace, and those drawn by the star were not Israelites but foreign Magi, students of signs and portents as was Balaam, who came from the east, Balaam’s former home (Matthew 2:1–12) King Herod, an Edomite by descent, was not instantly crushed by the coming of this new King but continued his rule, slaughtering scores of innocent children in Bethlehem. The rising of this star in Christ’s first coming did not yet bring about the total destruction of the nations, for Jesus had come first to be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to … Israel” (Luke 2:32). Yet in another way, his coming was exactly what Balaam anticipated: those who, like the Magi, blessed the new Israel, Jesus, and submitted to him found a blessing for themselves. Meanwhile, those who cursed this new Israel found themselves under a curse, just as the Lord had promised Abraham (24:9; see Genesis 12:3). What is more, the day is yet coming when God’s final judgment will be delivered on Herod and on all those who stand against him and his anointed.


ISRAEL’S BLESSINGS FULFILLED IN CHRIST

What that means, then, is that these oracles for Israel are precious promises for us. Some Christians believe that Old Testament promises that speak of “Israel” are only intended for ethnic Israel and not for the church. For them, Balaam’s prophecies speak of a glorious future for the physical descendants of Israel, but they would call any attempt to apply these promises to the church “replacement theology.” I would suggest that this is a misunderstanding of what the Scriptures teach about Israel. It is not that the church has replaced Israel in the New Testament so much as that Old Testament Israel—ethnic Israel—finds its true goal and fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is himself the star of Jacob, the Israel of God.

In the person of Jesus, therefore, the true Israel has arrived, and all those who come to God by faith in him—Jews and Gentiles alike—become God’s children and are thereby incorporated into this new people of God (John 1:11, 12). In Christ, Jews and Gentiles together become the true heirs of the promise given to Abraham, his spiritual descendants (Galatians 3:29). Outside of Christ, on the other hand, there is no longer any true Israel. It is those who are in Christ who are the true chosen people: a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God (1 Peter 2:9). We have been chosen by God for exactly the same special relationship that he had with his Old Testament people. In his incredible grace and mercy, God chose us before the foundation of the world, so that we might be blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3, 4). He has rescued us from the final judgment that awaits all those who remain outside his people and has given us the glorious inheritance of a relationship with himself. In Jesus, the star of Jacob has risen for us and for our salvation.

If this is so, then we may have the assurance of the Lord’s settled purpose to bless us in Jesus Christ. No one can rob us of that blessing, and nothing can prevent us from inheriting its promises. All those who trust in Christ and are united to him by faith will die the death of the righteous, for Christ’s righteousness is credited to them, exactly as if it were their own. Whatever life throws at each of us, it must therefore always be “well with my soul,” for Christ has died in our place and is now risen from the dead. If we keep our eyes on that reality, then none of the traumatic rises and falls in our temporal fortunes that are an inevitable part of life in this fallen world can ever completely shake us. We will be settled on a solid rock, established on a firm foundation. People may come and go: some will let us down and hurt us, while others, no matter how faithful, will ultimately die and leave us on our own. But God will still be there. Fortunes may be made and lost, houses may burn, stock markets may crash, and cars will inevitably rust. Yet in Christ, we have an inheritance that no misfortune can touch. At the end of the day, only God remains, and those upon whom his blessing rests.


BALAAM’S CURSE

Ironically, though, Balaam never found that blessing. Even though he declared that he wanted to “die the death of the righteous” (23:10, NIV), once again his life didn’t match up to his words. If Balaam truly wanted to die the death of the righteous, the way to do so was to join the righteous during his lifetime. The Magi of Jesus’ day showed the way: he should have come to Israel’s God and laid his treasures at his feet. Had Balaam been willing to say good-bye to Balak and (more pertinently) to abandon his passion for Balak’s silver and gold, he could have received what he desired. The doors in Israel were open to aliens and strangers who wanted to abandon their old religions and join themselves to Israel and to her God. Sadly, though, money was more important to Balaam than achieving the death of the righteous. As a result, he stayed among the Midianites who opposed Israel and Israel’s God, and he died by the sword in their midst (31:8).

It is a sobering reality to think that many people say they want to die at peace with God but are not willing to pursue peace with God while they live. Being reconciled to the Lord is not something we can put off until a more convenient time, for in all probability such a time will never come and we will die still in our sins, rebels against the Lord of Heaven and earth. A day is coming when the Star of Jacob will come to crush all such rebels and enemies. When Jesus returns to this earth, it will be as a warrior riding out for the final battle in which he will crush all of his enemies (Revelation 19:11). If we want to spend eternity under God’s blessing as part of his people, today is the day to enter into his favor. Come to Christ now, as the Magi did at his incarnation, and submit your life to his lordship. Ask for his forgiveness to cover your sins; receive his righteousness to clothe your spiritual nakedness. The door is open today for everyone who will come in and bow the knee willingly to the Lord to receive his blessing. So come, enter into his people. As you do so, you will receive his blessing, find peace in the midst of a tumultuous world, and be able look forward with joy to the day when his final victory will be accomplished.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 281–290). Crossway Books.

Listening to the 2004 debates between the candidates for President of the United States of America was a fascinating experience. In each debate there were questions from the moderator to each candidate in turn, and each candidate had a chance to rebut the answers of the other man. In order to understand the positions of the presidential hopefuls, though, it was never enough simply to listen to what they said. You always had to be careful to notice what they didn’t say as well. In some cases the answer given by the candidate bore little or no relationship to the question he had been asked. In other cases the candidates answered part of the question but left another key aspect deliberately unmentioned. The casual listener might be moved by impressive sound bites or by the outward demeanor of the candidates, but the person wishing to understand their respective political platforms fully had to listen very carefully to the silences as well as to the words.

Numbers 22 has a lot in common with these political debates. The superficial reader, whose attention is focused on sound bites and the surprising appearance of a talking donkey, may easily miss the point and end up confused by this narrative. Is Balaam the hero or villain in this story? Is he a sinner or a saint? Why did God tell Balaam to go with Balak’s envoys (v. 20) and then get angry with him when he did just that (v. 22)? Did God suddenly and inexplicably change his mind? Or were there valid reasons for his anger? The key to understanding this story is to recognize that Balaam was a politician as well as a prophet, a man who made a living from his words. Such people do not always say what they mean or mean what they say. The speeches of people like Balaam need to be analyzed closely to hear what they do not say as well as what they do say. When you do that, the narrative springs to life with a whole new level of clarity.


IN SEARCH OF A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

The story begins with Balak, King of Moab, looking across his border in terror at the reality of the Israelites as new neighbors (vv. 2, 3). Given what the Israelites had done in the previous chapter to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites and Bashan respectively, this was perhaps not a surprising response. The idea of a conventional war against the Israelites seemed to have little prospect of success because of their vast numbers, and the thought of seeking a peaceful settlement with this new political reality apparently didn’t arise. What Balak and the Moabites wanted was a nonconventional war involving a weapon of mass destruction that would debilitate the Israelites, enabling the Moabites to be victorious over them. In the ancient world there was only one such weapon of mass destruction: a curse from the gods that would decisively tip the balance of power against your enemies.

It was in search of just such a curse that Balak sought out Balaam, a man with an international reputation for dealing in such weaponry. Balak sent messengers to summon Balaam to curse Israel, so Balak could defeat them in battle and drive them away, saying, “I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed” (vv. 5, 6). At this point, the battle lines were clearly drawn, for in Genesis 12:2, 3 the Lord had already declared to Abram:

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

By summoning Balaam to curse Israel, Balak had set himself against the Lord and the Lord’s people, and therefore he was under a curse of his own. Which curse would win out—the pagan prophet’s or the Lord’s?


LISTENING TO THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE

The elders of Moab, along with their allies from Midian, went to Balaam carrying Balak’s message and the down payment on the proposed divination contract (v. 7). Balaam responded by asking them to spend the night with him while he sought the direction of “the LORD” on the matter (v. 8). Now this is certainly a striking and surprising twist in the story: Balaam used the personal name of Israel’s God (Yahweh) as the one from whom he would seek direction. It raises the concern that if Balaam were able to consult the Lord, perhaps he could change the Lord’s mind from blessing to curse. Perhaps he had enough standing with his master to receive what he requested. Yet one shouldn’t jump too quickly from Balaam’s words to the conclusion that Balaam was an orthodox follower of the Lord. Like all politicians, Balaam was quite capable of playing the “God” card when and how it suited him to do so. He obviously knew who the Lord was and apparently received messages from him, but exactly what his relationship to the Lord was has yet to be made clear. In a narrative in which a donkey also sees the Lord and speaks his words, the ability to prophesy truthfully in the Lord’s name should not by itself be rated too highly.

Sure enough, the Lord appeared to Balaam in the night and asked him, “Who are these men with you?” (v. 9). On the face of it, that is a simple question, but why did God ask it? He certainly didn’t need the information from Balaam since he already knows all things. In the Bible God typically asks questions not for his own benefit but for the benefit of his hearers. When God said to Adam, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Genesis 3:11), he was giving Adam an opportunity to confess his sins. When the Lord asked Isaiah, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (Isaiah 6:8), he wasn’t expressing personal uncertainty; he was giving Isaiah the opportunity to volunteer for the mission. So too when the Lord said to Balaam, “Who are these men?” he wanted Balaam to reflect on who would be giving him his orders if he accepted their commission. What authority did they have to summon him, and what power did they have to reward him? These were not gods who had come to him—they were mere men.

Balaam responded to the Lord’s inquiry with a carefully edited version of Balak’s message (compare v. 11 with vv. 5, 6). What he left out in his presentation to the Lord was profoundly significant. Balaam omitted the fact that Israel had settled next to Balak but had not attacked him and that Balak’s action therefore could not be construed as justified self-defense. He also left out Balak’s flattering assertion that Balaam had the power to bless and to curse effectively. In contrast to this dissimulation on Balaam’s part, the Lord’s answer was definitive and clear: “You shall not go with them. You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed” (v. 12). The promise of Genesis 12 was explicitly still in force. The Lord had declared his will clearly and unequivocally to Balaam.


CONFUSING SIGNALS

In the morning Balaam took this message from the Lord and conveyed it to the envoys of Balak—once again in carefully edited form. What he said to them was simply, “Go to your own land, for the LORD has refused to let me go with you” (v. 13). There was no mention of the fact that he was unable to curse Israel because the Lord had decreed definitively that they were blessed, nor was there evidence of any reluctance on his own part to do their bidding. In fact, if they listened carefully, they would hear quite the contrary. When my son tells one of his playmates that his dad says he can’t come out to play until his homework is finished, he makes it evident that he would very much like to go with them but is presently being detained against his will. So too when Balaam said that the Lord had refused to let him come with them, he clearly implied that he personally would have loved to be able to oblige Balak if only the circumstances had been different.

By the time the envoys returned home to tell Balak the news, the process was beginning to resemble a game of Telephone, in which children whisper a message from one to the next down a line. In that game, the message that emerges at the far end is often quite different from the message that started out. So too here the message that Balak received was quite different from the one that the Lord sent. Far from being told that Balaam could not curse this people because the Lord had declared them to be blessed, he heard from his envoys only that Balaam had refused to come (v. 14). Not unnaturally, Balak read this as a mere negotiating ploy on Balaam’s part and responded by sweetening the pot. Balak promised to honor him greatly (i.e., reward him substantially) if he would only come and curse this people (vv. 16, 17). Nothing (and no one) should therefore prevent him from coming. Balak backed up his improved offer by sending a higher-ranking delegation of envoys to convey it to Balaam (v. 15).

When the more distinguished entourage of Moabites and Midianites arrived at Balaam’s home with this message, the prophet had to choose where his priorities lay. On the one hand, there was Balak, offering him honor and financial reward, while on the other there was the clear decree of the Lord: “You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed” (v. 12). Which path would he choose?

On the face of it, Balaam’s response to the messengers of Balak sounds wonderfully spiritual: “Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the command of the LORD my God to do less or more” (v. 18). What a noble and self-sacrificial position he adopted! However, you mustn’t forget that Balaam was a politician, and words are cheap. Balaam promptly exposed the true feelings of his heart with the rest of the words that he spoke to the delegation: “So you, too, please stay here tonight, that I may know what more the LORD will say to me” (v. 19, emphasis added). If Balaam really meant the fine words he had just said about not doing anything great or small beyond the command of the Lord, there was no reason for him to invite Balak’s princes to stay. What part of “You shall not go with them” didn’t he understand? What did the Lord need to add to “You shall not curse the people, for they are blessed”? Inviting the men to stay the night showed that Balaam still hoped the Lord would change his mind or that he might yet find some other way to claim the bounty offered by Balak. For all his wonderful words, Balaam couldn’t let the prospect of Balak’s gold escape without a fight.

What was the Lord’s response to Balaam’s request? “If the men have come to call you, rise, go with them; but only do what I tell you” (v. 20). Many commentators fail to notice that this is not a direct command to go to Moab. And it is not the exact opposite of the previous command to remain at home. Rather, it is a conditional sentence: “If the men have come to call you … go.”8 Clearly the condition in the clause has been met: the men have, in fact, come to summon him. So what is the point of including the condition here? The answer is that by putting the focus on the men, it brings to the foreground the same issue as was posed by the Lord’s original question: “Who are these men?” That is, what authority did they have to summon him? In other words, the Lord was saying to Balaam, “If the summons of men and the glory (reward) that they offer is really so important to you that it outweighs the expressed command of God, then you may go with them.” This is the equivalent of Joshua’s challenge to Israel to choose whom they would serve, whether the gods of their fathers or the gods of the Amorites or the Lord (Joshua 24:15). Balaam had to make a decision whether to go with the men and follow his idolatry or stay home and follow the Lord. Yet even his freedom to follow his own gods was limited. He was only free until he reached the end of a short leash, for even if he went with Balak’s men, he could do nothing other than what the Lord told him.


ANOTHER KEY SILENCE

At this point there was another crucial omission on Balaam’s part. In verse 13, after the Lord had spoken to him the first time, we read, “So Balaam rose in the morning and said to the princes of Balak …” He then recounted the substance of the Lord’s words to him. On this second occasion, in verse 21, the scene opens in exactly the same way: “So Balaam rose in the morning …” But from there onward the events diverged. What Balaam did not do this time was to get up in the morning and tell the princes of Balak what the Lord had said. He didn’t say to them, “Look, I can come with you if you want, but I can only say what the Lord says—and he has already made it clear that Israel is blessed and not cursed.” Instead, Balaam went with them in haste and without any explicit clarification of what had transpired overnight, presumably giving the envoys the impression that he had straightened out the difficulties with the Lord and was now all set to earn his substantial fees by cursing Israel.

Once that key omission is observed, it is simple to explain why, having given Balaam permission to go to Moab in verse 20, the Lord was so angry with him in verse 22. The Lord was angry not simply because Balaam had gone with Balak’s messengers but rather because he had gone in a way that evidenced a lack of submission to the Lord. He acted as if he were a free agent, able to control his own destiny as well as that of other nations. The Lord therefore determined that it was necessary to teach Balaam a lesson about who was in control of his life, whether he liked it or not. He needed to learn that though man may propose, God is still the one who disposes.


DIVIDED HEARTS

We have much in common with Balaam. One challenge that the story clearly faces us with is the question of who is pulling our strings. Faced with a choice between obeying the clear command of God and pursuing Balak’s house full of silver and gold, the silver and gold triumphed in Balaam’s heart, for all his protestations to the contrary. His besetting sin was greed, as Peter rightly diagnosed it (see 2 Peter 2:15). As a result, he went to Moab with the envoys of Balak instead of sending them on their way with the clear word of the Lord. The Lord gave him over, up to a point, to his sinful choices. Are we so very different from Balaam though? To what extent do the very same things that Balak offered Balaam—money and prestige—have a grip on our hearts? Are we ourselves free from the love of money, which Paul describes as the root of all evils (1 Timothy 6:10)? If these precise things do not hold our hearts captive, perhaps other idols drive our thinking just as surely: acceptance, physical beauty, intellectual accomplishment, or the like.

In seeking to understand what drives us, it is important to recognize that the answer is often more evident in our actions than in our words. Just as Balaam’s attempt to extract a different response from the Lord exposed his divided heart and betrayed the emptiness of his words, so too our words and actions are often at odds. Like Balaam, we may piously commit ourselves to the Lord wholeheartedly on Sundays, while from Monday to Saturday our lives are driven by the summons of different masters. We may say, “We love the Lord, not money,” but our spending patterns in our checkbooks tell a different story. We declare, “We fear the Lord and not people,” yet our cowardly refusal to stand up for Christ in the office or the classroom reveals a different truth. The essence of integrity is someone whose words and thoughts and actions are thoroughly integrated: they are all aligned in the same direction. Are we such persons of integrity? Do our words and our actions line up with each other?

If not, then it is almost invariably the case that our actions expose the real truth about our hearts. Our actions make plain what else we must have apart from the Lord to make our lives meaningful and significant. It may be money or power or acceptance or comfort or a myriad of other things, but whenever obedience to the Lord’s Word means that our idol is challenged, we find ourselves drawn away from obedience in pursuit of our “what else.” No matter how orthodox and impressive our words are, they are not worth the breath expended in uttering them if there is no congruence between them and our deeds.


BALAAM AND THE DONKEY

Balaam’s lesson in humility took the form of the famous incident with his donkey. The angel of the Lord took up a position on the road in front of Balaam to oppose him, with drawn sword in hand (v. 23). It was a menacing sight, the import of which the donkey clearly understood. Three times the angel of the Lord stood in the way; three times the donkey refused to pass, in spite of Balaam’s increasingly insistent urgings. The first time, the donkey turned off the road, and Balaam beat her to get her back on track (v. 23). The second time, the angel barred the way on a narrow path between two walls. In order to avoid the angel, the donkey pressed up against the wall, crushing Balaam’s foot, causing him to beat her again (v. 25). On the third occasion, there was no way past the angel; so the donkey simply lay down in the road, refusing to stir even when he beat her with a stick (vv. 26, 27).

At this point the Lord opened the long-suffering animal’s mouth, enabling it to confront Balaam. She said, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?” (v. 28). Balaam responded, “Because you have made a fool of me. I wish I had a sword in my hand, for then I would kill you.” Then the donkey replied, “Am I not your donkey, on which you have ridden all your life long to this day? Is it my habit to treat you this way?”
Let’s pause at this point and consider what is remarkable about this scene. It is not so much the fact that a donkey speaks: God created all of the animals, and he can cause any of them to do his bidding in any way he chooses. What is remarkable about this scene is Balaam’s blindness and impotence. Here is a man who is a professional seer, the kind of person who makes a living discerning messages from God in places where other people see only random tea leaves and miscellaneous flights of birds; yet he cannot see the angel of the Lord when he stands there in plain sight in front of him! His donkey can see the Lord’s messenger, but Balaam cannot. Moreover, here is a man who has been hired to travel some distance in order to harm an entire nation—Israel—with the mere power of his spoken word; yet when a simple donkey makes a fool out of him, he is reduced to beating her with a stick and uttering empty threats. He has no power to curse her by turning her into a frog or a pumpkin! The world famous super-prophet is both spiritually blind and unable to inflict harm, while a mere donkey whose mouth has been opened by the Lord is able to see the truth clearly and speak it out in a way that delivers from death. The scene forms a wonderfully humorous picture.

It was at this point that the Lord finally opened Balaam’s eyes to see the angel of the Lord standing in front of him with drawn sword (v. 31). The angel rebuked him for beating his donkey, whose actions had actually saved his life. Balaam’s reckless path in pursuing Balak’s gold instead of telling him the truth about the Lord’s purposes for Israel had put his own life in danger. Ironically, at the very same time that Balaam was threatening his donkey with death if he only had a sword in his hand, his own master had been standing over him with a drawn sword. Only the donkey’s faithfulness had saved him from death.

Now Balaam’s eyes were opened to see the folly of his ways. If he thought that his hitherto faithful donkey deserved death for its apparent perverseness in disregarding his commands, how much more must he himself deserve death for his own perverse pursuit of profit? After all, the donkey disobeyed him out of obedience to a higher authority, while his own disobedience was in pursuit of mere money. He stood condemned out of his own mouth. Balaam then confessed that he had sinned by going with the envoys of Balak, for he did not realize that the Lord was standing in the road to block his path. More precisely, the Hebrew says, “I did not realize you had taken a stand to summon me on the way” (v. 34). The verb used (qr’) is different from that used to describe the Lord’s purpose in verses 22 and 32, but it is the same verb that the Lord used in verse 20: “If the men have come to call you …” In other words, Balaam recognized at last that the issue here was precisely that of whose bidding Balaam was to do. In going to Moab, he had thought to obey the summons of Balak, but through the incident with the donkey, the Lord confronted him afresh with the reality of whose summons he had to obey. Like a mere donkey, Balaam’s part was not to be creative and pioneer his own path: rather, he was simply required to be an obedient medium for the Lord’s message.

Having made that point comprehensively to Balaam, there was now no need to turn him around and send him home. He could safely be sent on with his companions to Moab, with the injunction of the night vision once again ringing in his ears: “speak only the word that I tell you” (v. 35; see v. 20). It is striking that it was at this point in the story, after he arrived in Moab humbled after the incident with the donkey and reminded that he was not an independent agent, Balaam finally said the words to Balak that he earlier failed to say to his envoys. When Balak asked him why he did not come when the king summoned him (v. 37; the same Hebrew word as before) and said, “Am I not able to honor you?” Balaam replied, “Behold, I have come to you! Have I now any power of my own to speak anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, that must I speak” (v. 38). By this point Balaam had, however reluctantly, learned his lesson. Balak had neither the authority to summon him nor the ability to reward him sufficiently to achieve what he wanted. Balaam may not have been happy about this turn of events, as the terseness of his reply to Balak perhaps makes evident, but he recognized that he was not a free agent in this matter. He could only say the words the Lord commanded him to say.


THE LORD’S DETERMINATION TO BLESS

The central lesson behind the story of Balaam is the Lord’s determination to bless his people. No hotshot prophet will be permitted to curse God’s people, no matter how much he wants to, because the Lord has declared them blessed. Instead, his very attempt to curse Israel will itself be turned into another blessing. Israel was most likely unaware of this whole episode at the time when it happened. This is probably just as well, since the news that an international wizard was on his way to place them under a curse might well have sent them into yet another frenzy of worry and grumbling. Yet even had they been aware of it, they need not have worried. The Lord would turn the curse that they feared into a blessing.

Isn’t that a lesson we need to internalize as well? There are many dangers in life of which we are not even aware because the Lord extracts their sting before they even reach us. In other cases, though, we become aware of the rise of threatening thunderclouds, triggering panic in our hearts. Something or someone seems poised to ruin our lives once and for all. We need not be so easily afraid. As William Cowper put it in his great hymn “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”:

  Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
  The clouds ye so much dread
  Are big with mercy, and shall break
  In blessings on your head.

If the Lord has decreed our blessing, then nothing and no one can turn our blessing into a curse.

This reality is the answer to our sinful worries. Why do we fret about so many of life’s problems? As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, the reason we worry is because we have given in to the belief that God loves us less than he loves the birds of the air or the lilies of the field. They do not fret, yet they are constantly fed and clothed by the Lord (Matthew 6:26, 28)! Since we have far greater assurances of God’s care for us than any flower or bird ever received, why should we be so concerned about these things? Our worry reveals the fact that we are believing a lie about God, and the answer to our worry is therefore to remind ourselves afresh of the truth about his care for us.

This reality is also the answer to the various idols of our hearts that are continually pulling our strings. Why is it that we are driven by money or the prospect of power and fame? It is because we have begun to seek our blessing in these things. Why is it that we fear people and are so desperately afraid of being excluded from the in-crowd? It is because we are afraid of the curse with which they threaten us. Why is it that the desire for physical attractiveness or intellectual achievement or the need to have a perfect family holds us in its spell? It is because we have come to believe these idols hold sway over our destiny. We have started to believe that real meaning and significance in life is in the hand of our idol to give or to withhold. That is why we are so fearful and depressed, as well as why we are so driven and anxious. If you and I could learn to look to the Lord alone for our blessing and to find our confidence in his settled purpose to bless us, that would cut the strings that bind us under the power of all manner of other things. What peace and assurance would then be ours! If we could only be convinced of the Lord’s power and his purpose to bless us, the engine of our idolatry that drives us constantly into a variety of actual sins would be starved of its fuel.


AN ANCHOR FOR YOUR SOUL

How can we know for sure that the Lord is determined to bless us and not to curse us? Like Balaam, we too have gone astray perversely, wandering after all kinds of other gods. Why shouldn’t the angel of the Lord be standing in front of us even now with drawn sword in hand, waiting to cut us down? It would certainly be nothing more than we deserve. After all, even our best deeds—our most unselfish actions and kindly words—are often simply offerings to our idols, not acts of obedience to the living God. What shall I say then of my darkest thoughts and deeds? How shall I escape judgment for them? The answer is that if we are Christians, Jesus Christ has taken the curse that was aimed at us for our sin. The angel’s sword has already been plunged into his heart instead of ours. Our perversity earned us death, but Jesus died in our place. Our idolatry earned us permanent separation from God, but Jesus was cut off from the Father for us on the cross. Our sins placed us justly under the Lord’s judgment and curse, but in Christ we receive the blessing that the Lord has promised to all of the spiritual descendants of Abraham. The cross is the surety of the Lord’s unshakable will to bless his people. As Paul put it, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). For Jesus’ sake, the Lord is determined to bless us, and no one and nothing can ever turn that blessing into a curse.

Sadly, Balaam remained blind to the truth of the Lord’s goodness and grace. Even after his eyes were opened to see the angel of the Lord and he confessed with his lips, “I have sinned” (v. 34), Balaam’s heart was still a long way from true repentance, as his future behavior demonstrated. His words and his actions did not ultimately agree. He had chosen whom he would serve: Balak’s silver and gold, not the Lord. His heart was still captive to his idolatry, and even a face-to-face encounter with the Angel of the Lord did not free him from its chains. At the end of the day his donkey saw the Lord more clearly than he did; the brute beast understood more of God than the professional theologian. As a result, even though the Lord used him to deliver a blessing to his people Israel, Balaam’s own destiny was not ultimately changed from curse to blessing. All that happened was that his appointment with the sword of the Lord’s judgment was delayed. In the end he was killed by the Israelites when they took vengeance on the Midianites for leading them into sin (31:8).

It is still often the case that the Lord reveals himself to the weak and foolish, while remaining hidden from those who possess the wisdom of this world. Those who were blind receive sight, while those who claim to see are left in the dark. As an Old Testament scholar, I regularly meet and listen to men and women whose knowledge of the Bible and the Hebrew language is far in excess of anything I could ever attain. In academic terms they are racehorses, while I am merely a plodding donkey. When I hear their lectures and read their books, I learn many true and insightful things about the Bible; yet when it comes to the gospel they are utterly blind. They cannot see on the pages of Scripture the simplest truths about God. Many five-year-olds have more true Biblical insight into the gospel than they do, because spiritual truths are spiritually discerned, and for all their “wisdom” these people do not have the Holy Spirit to open up their stubborn hearts and blind eyes so they can see the truth that is right in front of them (see 1 Corinthians 2:14).

Could anything more clearly display God’s sovereignty than that? The supreme blessing in this world is coming to recognize who God is and how to find salvation in his Son. It comes as a free gift to those whose eyes he opens and whose hearts he touches with his grace. The work of his Spirit brings one to faith while another is left in unbelief, not because the one has greater merit than the other, but simply out of unconditional sovereign grace. The Lord chose Israel to be his people and left Balaam to his preferred darkness, though neither had any claim on him. Donkeys like us get to see and know the Lord, while professional prophets remain blind.

What is more, the future of those whom the Lord calls to himself is sure, settled by the unchangeable One and sealed in his blood. God cannot lie, and he cannot change his mind, as Balaam himself would declare (23:19). God has settled his inheritance on us with an oath, so that we may have the certainty of an irrevocable inheritance (Hebrews 6:17–19). Nothing and no one can separate us from that blessing, either now or in the age to come. Such a hope is a sure anchor for our souls and spiritual food for our hearts.

How then shall we respond? Surely we must burst forth with praise and adoration. Let us give thanks to the Lord for this inexpressible hope! May we rejoice in his favor shown to us! Let us rest in his love and bask in his settled attitude of blessing toward us, for as the psalmist repeatedly reminds us, “His steadfast love endures forever” (for example, Psalm 136).

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 269–281). Crossway Books.

Watching your children grow up is an odd experience. In some ways they are so like their parents. Yet, in other ways they couldn’t be more different. One of your children looks just like you perhaps, yet has a mellow temperament that is the opposite of yours. Another child has looks that must be a throwback from several generations ago, yet loves the same music that you do. A third shares your sense of humor but leaves you wondering, “Where did her artistic genes come from?” Moreover, however much our children are like us, they all speak a different language and, in some respects at least, inhabit a different culture from the one in which we grew up. The next generation is both like and unlike their parents.


The same was true of Israel in the book of Numbers. We have pointed out several times already that this book is essentially the story of two generations: the first generation who rebelled against the Lord and ended up dead in the desert, and the second generation who will stand on the brink of entry into the Promised Land at the end of the book. In many respects Numbers 20 was the end of the line for the first generation: it shows us the events of the fortieth year of wilderness wandering, bracketed by the deaths of Miriam and Aaron. Now in Numbers 21 we begin to read the story of the second generation.1 As in real life, such transitions are not hard and fast. The remnant of the first generation is still present until chapter 26, when the complete transfer is marked by a new census. Nevertheless, in some ways the story of the new generation starts here in Numbers 21. What will they be like? How will they be similar to and different from their parents? What this chapter shows us is that in this generation there is something different and something still the same, along with some other things that never change, whatever generation you find yourself living in.


A NEW VICTORY

The story begins with something completely different: victory over the Canaanites (vv. 1–3). It is a brief snippet within the overall narrative but one that is full of significance. The Canaanites initiated the conflict, attacking the Israelites and capturing some of them (v. 1). In the past this kind of reverse at the hands of their enemies could easily have been enough to send Israel into a catastrophic tailspin of despair and grumbling, but the new generation took the challenge in their stride. They went to the Lord and vowed that if the Lord gave them success, they would devote to destruction all of the Canaanite cities (v. 2). The Lord gave them the victory, and they obediently fulfilled the terms of their vow, completely destroying the Canaanites and their towns. This victory was a kind of firstfruits of the conquest of the Promised Land, a paradigm example of how to take on and defeat the Lord’s enemies through trust in him.

The practice of total destruction of the cities of their enemies (ḥerem) was not a regular part of Israel’s warfare throughout the ages. On the contrary, it was for the most part a unique and temporary feature particularly associated with the conquest of the land of Canaan. Just as the possession of the land of Canaan by the Lord’s people foreshadowed their heavenly inheritance, so too the slaughter of the present inhabitants was a foreshadowing of the final judgment of sinners by God. At the end of all things, there will be a judgment for sin that will encompass all men, women, and children and will result in a final separation of humanity into two groups. According to the Bible, all those who are outside of Christ will be cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:11–15), while those who by God’s grace are the Lord’s people will enter into their heavenly rest (Revelation 21). What happened in the conquest of Canaan was a visual depiction in time of that ultimate reality. The Lord had declared that when the sins of the Amorites were full, they were to be exterminated as a judgment from the Lord (see Genesis 15:16). In that judgment, Israel served as the human equivalent of the fire and brimstone that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24, 25) or the flood that destroyed the wicked in Noah’s time (Gen. 6–8).

This comprehensive judgment also served important purposes in Israel’s conquest campaign. In the first place, it marked out the battle as the Lord’s by dedicating the spoils of victory to him. Since the Lord won the victory, it was only fitting that he should receive the spoils of the war. Israel was not fighting merely to acquire territory or wealth for themselves. Rather, their battle was for the Lord: they fought for his glory and at his direction. That is why failure to observe the rules of ḥerem, as when Achan took some of the spoil from Jericho for himself (Joshua 7:1), was such a serious offense. It was stealing from the Lord, and it resulted in the Lord’s fighting against Israel instead of for them. In addition, the practice of total destruction of the Canaanites also removed the practical temptation for Israel to assimilate the ways of the inhabitants of the land, intermarrying with them and being drawn into the worship of their gods (see Deuteronomy 7:3, 4). A little later in the book of Numbers we will see just how serious that temptation to assimilate was, when we see the Israelites drawn into sexual immorality and idolatry through their contacts with Moabite women (25). Obviously, ḥerem warfare removed that potential temptation at the source.

Israel’s victory here in Numbers 21 marked their very first success against the Canaanites, and it was all the sweeter because it occurred at Hormah. Hormah was the site of the first generation’s defeat by the Canaanites back in Numbers 14, when they tried to enter the Promised Land in their own strength (v. 45). Now, though, it earned its enduring name of Hormah (derived from ḥerem) as the new generation demonstrated their faith in the same location where their forefathers had demonstrated unbelief. As a result, they saw the Lord grant them the firstfruits of the conquest.


MORE VICTORIES

Nor was this first success a solitary victory. Much of the chapter is taken up with the defeat of Sihon and Og, two kings of the Amorites. Israel at first sought to pass through Sihon’s territory peacefully (v. 22), just as they had asked the King of Edom for passage in the previous chapter (20:14–21). Just like the King of Edom, Sihon refused to let them pass and marched out against them with a sizable army. Here, though, the story line diverges from the preceding incident. Unlike the previous generation, the new generation was not so easily intimidated by a show of force. When Sihon fought against them, they put him to the sword and occupied his territory (vv. 23–25).

They then moved on to Jazer, where Moses sent out spies to survey the territory (v. 32). This kind of maneuver makes you nervous, in view of what happened after the last scouting trip (13, 14). Yet this time the story moves straight on from the scouting trip to the capture of Jazer and its surrounding settlements. It is once again clear that this new generation is not like their fathers, and it shows what could have happened earlier, if the people had only had faith in the Lord. Finally, they met Og, King of Bashan, and his mighty army (v. 33). The Lord reminded Moses not to be afraid of him, for the Lord had handed him over to the Israelites (v. 34). Once again, the result was a comprehensive victory for Israel and the total destruction of their enemies (v. 35; see also Deuteronomy 2:26–3:7). Israel then took possession of his land as well. The new generation was clearly new in more than just name: they were a generation who by faith were winning the battles that their parents never dared to attempt.


THE SAME OLD GRUMBLING

Yet in other ways the new generation was not so radically different from their forefathers. We can see that from the incident with the bronze serpent, which took place right after their initial victory over their enemies. Having defeated the Canaanites, the Israelites headed south once again to go around the territory of Edom, back toward the Red Sea (v. 4). Perhaps heading toward the Red Sea at this point felt altogether too much like going back to the starting point of the whole exodus. After forty years, the victory at Hormah notwithstanding, were they still just going in circles? Would they ever see the full harvest of victory over the Canaanites? Whatever the cause, the new generation found themselves in the same cycle of grumbling as their fathers had, over exactly the same things. They grumbled against God and Moses, suggesting they had brought them into the wilderness to die there (v. 5; compare 14:3; 16:13; 20:5). They complained about the lack of food and the monotony of the manna (v. 5; compare 11:6). They even moaned about the lack of water (v. 5), just as the older generation had in the previous chapter (20:5). It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The aftermath of this grumbling was no different for the new generation than it had been for the old generation. The Lord sent judgment upon his grumbling people in the shape of fiery serpents,5 whose bite was fatal (v. 6). The wages of sin and unbelief continued to be death for the new generation as it had been for the old. Yet once again Moses was there to intercede for the people when they repented. In response to his intercession, the Lord commanded him to make a bronze serpent and lift it up on a pole, so that anyone who had been bitten could look at the serpent and live (v. 8).

To understand what is going on here, it is important to recognize that neither the judgment nor the remedy was a random phenomenon. It is not as if the Lord saw his people sinning and then said to himself, “Now what shall I afflict them with today? I think I’ll send snakes! I haven’t tried that punishment before.” Nor was the form of the judgment simply due to the fact that snakes were a convenient commodity with which to afflict people in that part of the desert. Rather, it was a sign that was full of meaning for the Israelites, who had only a few years earlier emerged from Egypt and were therefore well-versed in Egyptian symbolism. These serpents were a potent representation of the power of Egypt, to which they were apparently so eager to return. Snakes were well-known symbols of power and sovereignty in ancient Egypt, as the familiar image of a cobra on Pharaoh’s crown reminds us.6 Having once been freed from Pharaoh, did they really want to be subject to the power of the serpent all over again?

Even more profoundly, though, the serpent (nāḥāš) is a symbol of the ultimate enemy of mankind, Satan himself. It was in the form of a serpent (nāḥāš) that Satan deceived our first ancestors and brought about the sin that caused us to be cast out of the garden into the desert of this fallen world. It was not the Lord who had brought them into the wilderness to die, as they alleged (v. 5). Their death was not due to his power failing to give them that which he had promised. On the contrary, death in the wilderness was the result of their own sin and that of their forefather, Adam. It was their refusal to submit to the Lord that led to bondage to Satan, who is the real hard taskmaster.

Nor was the standard on which the serpent was to be transfixed merely a convenient means of lifting the serpent up where everyone could see it. In Egypt, such a pole or standard was a recognized symbol of the deity’s power. Here it served to demonstrate that the Lord’s power was present in the midst of the camp, granting life to those whose sins had condemned them to death through the serpent’s bite. The transfixed serpent on the standard thus demonstrated in visual terms the defeat of Israel’s mortal enemies, Egypt and Satan, overcome by the power of the Lord. When the people felt afresh the bitter pain of their sinful rebellion, they were given a sign to show them the life-giving power of the Lord that was constantly available to heal them.

The serpent on the pole was not a magical cure for snakebite, however. On the contrary, it was a sign that worked by taking the Lord at his word through faith. The people were to look intently at the bronze serpent, putting their trust in the power of the Lord’s victory over evil, and then they would be healed. It is not coincidental that the Lord chose this means of healing the people, for faith is the key marker of those who would enter the Promised Land. The unbelieving generation of their parents, including Moses and Aaron, were excluded from the land because of their unbelief (see 14:11; 20:12). The judgment by the fiery serpents would similarly eliminate any from the new generation who were lacking in faith, for those who refused to look to the Lord through the bronze serpent would die. Only those who believed could enter the land, for only those who believed would live.


CAMPING AND MOVING ON

Grumbling was not the only experience that the new generation shared with their forefathers. They also experienced their fair share of camping and moving on, as verses 10–20 show us. This lengthy travel itinerary may seem at first sight a waste of our time as well as theirs. Who really knows where “Waheb in Suphah” was (v. 14)? The commentators can only guess. More pertinently, why would anyone really care? Yet the travelogue of desert camps heightens our awareness of the experience of the new generation of traveling on and on while apparently going nowhere. That is the precise point of its inclusion. It shows us that the new generation proceeded onward through a succession of nowhere places in the wilderness around Moab just as their fathers had; yet it was precisely in these places that they learned of God’s continuing faithfulness. There, in the middle of nowhere, they experienced the Lord’s faithfulness in providing a well (vv. 16, 17), contradicting their earlier complaint that there was no water in the wilderness (v. 5). There in the middle of nowhere they also experienced the Lord’s faithfulness in giving them victory in battle, as demonstrated in the reference to “the Book of the Wars of the LORD” (v. 14), along with the defeat of Sihon and Og, two of Israel’s most archetypal enemies. These victories disproved their earlier claim that the Lord had brought them into the wilderness to die (v. 5).

What is more, it was there in the middle of nowhere that the people started to sing. The first generation had entered the wilderness with a song on their lips (Exodus 15), but that song soon died away, overwhelmed by the harsh realities of life and the growing unbelief of the people. Grumbling is irreconcilable with singing. Grumbling feels sorry for itself, while singing delights in what God has given and what he has promised to give. It is therefore not coincidental that with the rise of the new generation and their healing for their sin, we see a new burst of song, which was the outward expression of their faith.8 When God’s people sing, they confess that life is not merely an endless cycle of one barren campground after another, as it sometimes appears to be. Rather, they proclaim that God is faithful in the present to provide provision along the way and that he can be trusted to give ultimate victory. Singing is always an index marker of faith in the greater realities to come.


FAITH NEEDED AND REWARDED

The bronze serpent was itself a sign of a greater reality to come. When Jesus met with the Jewish leader Nicodemus, he said, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14, 15).

In other words, just as the bronze serpent was a sign calling for faith to which people could look and be delivered from death, so Christ’s crucifixion would have the same effect. God was going to provide a means of dealing with the wages of sin through Jesus Christ being lifted up on the cross.

Yet, if you think about the symbolism of the original sign, the fulfillment is richer than merely a superficial parallel. For it was precisely on the cross that Jesus won his victory over the ancient serpent, Satan himself, fulfilling the original gospel promise of God: “I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). At the cross, Jesus broke the serpent’s power, just as in the wilderness the serpent was transfixed on the symbol of God’s power. Yet in the fulfillment of the sign, Jesus took upon himself the curse when he was lifted up on the cross. At that moment Satan seemed to have triumphed, killing God’s chosen one and extinguishing the light of the world. It seemed as if God himself had been transfixed by Satan’s power rather than vice versa. Death could not hold Jesus though: the resurrection showed that Satan had, after all, only struck Jesus’ heel. God’s power had indeed triumphed through that incredible substitution. Jesus bore in his body the covenant curse of God, so that through his death Adam’s offspring might be freed from that judgment. By his suffering we were healed. All we have to do to receive the blessing of eternal life in God’s presence is to believe in Jesus Christ and look intently to his death on the cross as the source and guarantee of our salvation.

The challenge that this passage presents to each one of us is therefore the question, to which generation do we belong? Are we part of the old, unbelieving generation that perishes in the wilderness, or part of the new, believing generation that is saved from its sin and grumbling by faith in the sign of God’s awesome victory over the evil one? If you have not yet placed your faith in Christ, now is the time to do so. The good news of the gospel is that those who were once part of the old, unbelieving generation, under sentence of death for their sin and already experiencing its effects, can become part of the new generation destined for life. Faith is the doorway to a whole new life. Whether you are young or old, all you need to do is look to Jesus Christ and confess him who was crucified for your sins and raised for your justification. In that simple confession of faith is the gift of eternal life. Just as Jesus told Nicodemus, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).


LIVING BY FAITH: SIMUL CANTOR ET PECCATOR

Faith is not merely the first step in our journey with God, however. We do not begin with faith and then move on to trusting in ourselves and our own efforts. Faith is the stuff of life in the wilderness, unleashing the power of God by which Satan is overcome. What, then, are the marks of those who are living by faith.

First, those who live by faith are committed to a life of repentance. Repentance is the reflex of the faith that brought you into the kingdom, for looking to Christ means at the same time turning away from all other means of salvation. You couldn’t look intently at the bronze serpent and at something else as well. What is more, repentance continues to be the reflex of faith throughout our earthly pilgrimage. We are constantly being bitten by sin, as it were—feeling the painful effects of failure in our ongoing struggle against our sinful nature. Just as we daily see those bitter fruits of sin, so too we are daily to take those sins and nail them afresh to the cross.

Repentance is not simply a matter of recognizing and bemoaning what great sinners we are. As long as we are doing that, our eyes are still fixed on ourselves. Repentance is turning our heart to Christ in the midst of recognizing our own sin and fixing our eyes once again on the remedy for that sin, offered to us in the gospel. Repentance is catching ourselves when we have grumbled over some challenge to our comfort or our sense of being in control of our lives or our acceptance by the in-crowd and deliberately turning our face afresh toward Jesus. Repentance is picking ourselves up after we have sought comfort in some earthly substitute for God, whether food or lustful thoughts or shopping or gossip or an angry outburst, and saying to ourselves, “This is not my comfort. My only refuge is Jesus.” The life of faith is a life of repentance that is constantly turning away from sin and turning toward Jesus.

Second, those who live by faith persevere by faith. The road through life is long and hard, and our progress is often slow and hard to measure. Sometimes it seems in our lives as if we are faced once again toward the Red Sea, going backward rather than forward. In those moments, faith remembers that our arrival at the promised destination depends on God’s faithfulness, not ours, and endures the difficulty. With the psalmist we may cry out, “How long, O Lord?”—the spiritual equivalent of the child’s “Are we almost there yet?” However, as long as we are gazing at Christ, we need never wonder whether we will get there. The crucified and resurrected Lord is himself the guarantee that all those whom the Father has given him will reach their destination. There are many wars and multiple campsites for us to traverse along the way, but his faithfulness will never leave us or forsake us.

Third, those who live by faith sing songs of praise. The gospel transforms us from sinners to singers. To be sure, that is often a gradual process. Throughout our lives, we will continue to be simul cantor et peccator (“at the same time a singer and a sinner,” to paraphrase Luther’s famous expression). However, as we near our destination, the songs should gradually increase in intensity. Those whose eyes are fixed on Jesus should be increasingly hungry for worship. They love to join the angels in singing praise to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, reminding themselves of the good news and declaring the gospel to all creation. They love to celebrate the faithfulness of the Lord in the present and the sure expectation of final deliverance from the Lord in the future.

Fourth, those who live by faith partake joyfully in the sign of the Lord’s victory over Satan. Israel was given a visible symbol to look at: a bronze serpent. We have been given a visible and tangible sign of God’s victory in the Lord’s Supper. As we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are pointed afresh to the Lord’s victory: we look backward and proclaim his death on the cross, and we look forward and proclaim his certain return. The Lord’s Supper too is a sign that works by faith, feeding and spiritually strengthening and healing those who discern the Lord’s body and blood, while those who partake without faith receive no benefits from it. It is spiritual food that sustains us in the wilderness and assures us of the reality of Heaven and the certainty of God’s faithfulness to us personally.

Faith gazes steadfastly and intently at the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross is the place where our salvation was accomplished. The cross is the guarantee of God’s present love for us, which is so great that he sent his only begotten Son to die so that we might live. The cross is the surety of the eternal rest that awaits us when our traveling and warring days are done. What could be sweeter, then, than to sing of the cross? In the words of the classic hymn by Isaac Watts:

  When I survey the wondrous cross
  On which the Prince of glory died,
  My richest gain I count but loss,
  And pour contempt on all my pride.

  Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
  Save in the death of Christ, my God:
  All the vain things that charm me most,
  I sacrifice them to His blood.

  See, from His head, His hands, His feet,
  Sorrow and love flow mingled down;
  Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
  Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

  Were the whole realm of nature mine,
  That were a present far too small;
  Love so amazing, so divine,
  Demands my soul, my life, my all.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 259–267). Crossway Books.

An old saying tells us, “Those who don’t remember the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.” Along similar lines some define expert as someone who recognizes his mistakes when he makes them again. Many of us can relate to this concept: we don’t remember the mistakes of our past well enough to avoid making them again, but they certainly begin to look familiar after we have made them for the second or third or umpteenth time. Whether it is failing to measure the materials accurately before we cut them for a hobby project or failing to be consistent in disciplining our children, we all have areas in our lives where we live out the adage, “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history” (Hegel). In that experience we have a great deal in common with ancient Israel. They too consistently failed to learn from their experience.

By Numbers 20 we have nearly reached the end of the wilderness wanderings: the events recorded here took place in the fortieth year after the Israelites started out (see 33:38). So what had they learned in the course of those forty years? The sad answer, at least for the older generation, was, virtually nothing. If there had been an exit exam for leaving the wilderness, as there is in California for leaving high school, these people would have been doomed to wander there forever.


BACK TO THE FUTURE

This failure to learn is highlighted by the fact that the primary event recorded in Numbers 20, the miraculous provision of water from the rock, was a mirror image of a similar event that had taken place in the very first year of their wandering (Exodus 17). That previous event is one of several backdrops against which we need to see this passage. At that first occasion in the wilderness of Sin (a similar sounding, yet different location from that in 20:1), the people quarreled with Moses and put the Lord to the test because there was no water for them to drink (Exodus 17:2, 3). They charged Moses with bringing the people out of Egypt simply to make them die of thirst in the wilderness (v. 3). However, on that occasion the Lord instructed Moses to bring the people to the rock at Horeb and to strike the rock there; water would flow from the rock for the people to drink (Exodus 17:6). In that first test Moses did exactly what the Lord told him to do, and the needs of the people were graciously met (Exodus 17:6).

That brief recap enables us to see what was still the same and what was new forty years later. The people’s quarrel with Moses was the same on the surface, but now it was amplified by the resuscitation of all of their intervening grumbles. Though the presenting problem for the people was once again the lack of water, their complaint was far more wide-ranging than that. In counseling terminology this is called gunnysacking. Perhaps a husband offends his spouse by failing to pick up his socks, which she has legitimately asked him to do every other week for the past ten years or so. Or perhaps the wife forgot to pick up her husband’s favorite suit from the dry cleaners as she had promised. Once the argument ensues, though, instead of focusing on the specific issue under dispute, all kinds of unresolved grievances emerge. One spouse inundates the other with every single one of his or her failings that he or she has carefully been saving up over the last six months, from the time she ran over the neighborcat to his habit of failing to put the lid back on the milk. The result is that instead of a limited argument over a minor issue, the couple ends up with a full-scale war because now they are dealing with six months’ worth of issues all at once.

In the same way, in this case the Israelites’ real problem was that they had nothing to drink, but once the Complaints Department was open for business, everything and anything was fair game. They repeated the complaint they had made when Moses had first brought them and their livestock into the wilderness—that he had led them there to die (Exodus 17:3), but now with an added edge. Now it was directed at Moses and Aaron together: “Why have you brought the assembly of the LORD into this wilderness, that we should die here, both we and our cattle? And why have you made us come up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place?” (20:4, 5). That complaint has a familiar ring to it because it combines the charge made against Moses and Aaron by Dathan and Abiram in 16:13 (“Is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness?”) with that of the people as a whole in 16:41 (“You have killed the people of the LORD”). In fact, the people now identified themselves explicitly as kindred spirits with Dathan and Abiram and the other rebels when they said, “Would that we had perished when our brothers perished before the LORD!” (20:3).3 In spite of the Lord’s grace to them as seen in the last three chapters, they declared that they would rather have died with those who had rebelled against the Lord.

Nor was it simply the sin of Numbers 16, 17 that was being recapitulated. The people also blamed Moses and Aaron quite unfairly for the consequences of their own choices. In chapter 14 they chose to believe the spies’ “bad” or “evil” (rāʿâ) report concerning the Promised Land (v. 37) and so refused to enter it, in spite of the positive evidence that the spies had brought back of its fruitfulness in the shape of grapes, pomegranates, and figs (13:23). Now, however, they charged Moses and Aaron with bringing them out of Egypt to an “evil” (rā) place (v. 5), the same word that the spies had used to characterize the Promised Land. They were frustrated because the wilderness had no grain or vines or fig trees or pomegranates—the very fruit the spies brought back with them from Canaan (13:23). In other words, the people were blaming Moses and Aaron because the wilderness was not like the Promised Land that the people themselves had refused to enter!

Two familiar patterns of sin in their complaint are problems for us as well: catastrophizing and blame-shifting. Catastrophizing means that we paint our situation in far darker colors than is really warranted. Was their situation in the wilderness really a fate worse than death by fire (v. 3)? They may have been thirsty and missing some of their favorite foods, but the Lord had supplied those needs before, and he could do it again. They weren’t really as bad off as they alleged—and often neither are we. Isn’t it amazing how full of woe we can be while we are still healthy, surrounded by a family that loves us, with a roof over our heads? If we lack anything, is it too hard for the Lord to supply what we need? Instead of catastrophizing and anticipating the worst, we need to take our concerns to the Lord and trust in his goodness and power to provide for us in the situation.


THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR CHOICES

Yet if the Lord is able to provide for our need, why doesn’t he keep us out of difficulty in the first place? One answer that we often do not want to face up to is that we may be there as a result of our own wrong choices. God is sovereign over all things, even over my sinful choices, and sometimes he chooses to let me suffer the consequences of my sinfulness so that I may learn something of their true impact. When that happens, though, instead of repenting and accepting responsibility for my actions, I often exhibit the fact that my heart has a blame-retardant coating. Never mind what I did, this problem must surely be someone else’s fault. I cry, “Lord, how could you let me end up in this terrible situation?” even though “this situation” is exactly where my own decisions and actions have logically brought me.

This is a trend that started all the way back in the Garden of Eden, with the woman blaming the serpent and the man blaming the woman and also God for giving her to him (Genesis 3:12, 13). Instead of blame-shifting, we need to take responsibility for our own actions and recognize that whatever our present situation, the Lord has always been far more gracious and merciful to us than we could possibly deserve. He never allows us to suffer in full measure the fate we truly deserve, and he always has good purposes for us in our trials, whatever our present difficulties may be.


THE RESPONSE OF MOSES AND AARON

However, unlike Exodus 17, the main focus of Numbers 20 is not the sin of the people in grumbling against the Lord, serious though that is. The main focus here is the response of Moses and Aaron to that complaint. They started out well enough, falling down before the Lord and receiving his instructions (v. 6), just as they had with the people’s previous complaints (16:4, 45). In response to their intercession, the Lord said to them:

Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water. So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle. (v. 8)

These instructions are clear enough, and the first two steps were carried out correctly: Moses took the staff from before the Lord, and he and Aaron gathered the people together, just as the Lord had commanded him (vv. 9, 10). However, this is where the obedience stops.4 Instead of bringing water from the rock by the simple expedient of speaking to it, as he had been commanded, Moses launched into an impromptu speech to the people and then struck the rock, not once but twice (vv. 10, 11). Both of these acts were problematic, and together they show us that Moses too had been caught up in the people’s sinful mind-set, even while he was ostensibly doing what the Lord told him to do.

First, there was his speech: “Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” (v. 10). There were two problems in this brief sentence. On the one hand, he termed the people “rebels.” You might say, “Well, that is what they were.” That is true. However, the problem is that Moses was putting himself in the place of judge to make that declaration though the Lord had not authorized him to do so. The Lord told him to extend his mercy and grace to the people in giving them water in a way that demonstrated unequivocally that the source was God; instead, Moses set himself up as their judge.

Not only did Moses set himself up as the people’s judge, he also set himself (and Aaron) up as their deliverers. He said, “shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” (v. 10). Then he struck the rock twice, as if it were his action that brought forth the water. Who provided water from the rock for the people? It was the Lord, of course. In his frustration with the people, Moses was drawn into the same mind-set they had, forgetting the Lord’s presence and power and acting as if everything were up to him. Moses presented himself as if he were a pagan magician with the ability to manipulate the gods to do his bidding.

There is more to Moses’ sin than mere self-exaltation though. In the first encounter with the rock in Exodus 17, it was clear that the rock represented God himself (compare Genesis 49:24; Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 78:35). There the Lord allowed himself to be put on trial, standing before Israel, instead of putting them on trial for their complaining. In that awesome picture of grace, the Lord was willing to be struck himself instead of his rebellious people, so that they might receive life-giving water. It is one thing to strike God when he instructs you to do so; it is quite another to smite him (twice!) on your own authority. Moses’ act was thus nothing short of a direct assault on God himself.

In setting himself up as judge and deliverer of the people, Moses was demonstrating that he too had failed to learn from the past. That same self-exalting attitude was exactly what he had demonstrated when he first recognized the plight of his people when he was living as a prince in Pharaoh’s court. At that time, Moses saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite, and he intervened and killed the Egyptian (Exodus 2:11, 12). The next day he saw two of his fellow Israelites fighting and tried to rebuke the one who was in the wrong. The man’s response was, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us?” (Exodus 2:14). In other words, as a youth in Egypt Moses had been trying to judge and deliver his people in his own strength without a commission from the Lord. That attempt had ended in abject failure. Now, many years later, Moses had reverted once again to that old pattern of self-trust, judging the people in his own wisdom and trying to deliver them through his own acts, with similar results.


BEATING THE SHEEP

Certainly Moses is not the only one who has ever been guilty of judging people or trying to deliver them on his own. It is a common temptation for those in leadership in the church to become frustrated when the sheep don’t want to follow their shepherds. It is easy for us to judge them, whether privately in our own hearts or publicly in our sermons, berating them for their lack of vision. Sometimes the problem is that we, the shepherds, are trying to make them jump through the hoops of the latest ministry fashion or leadership fad, which the sheep have far too much sense to be caught up in. At other times we are seeking to lead them in good directions, challenging their comfortable inertia and urging them to move out in fresh obedience, and the sheep are simply being stubborn in their refusal to follow our lead. Either way, though, we can easily end up substituting law for grace and guilt for gratitude as the motivation for their obedience.

We can even do the same thing with ourselves. When we respond to our own sin by beating ourselves and judging ourselves as worthless people, we are acting as if we are our own judges. When we despair of ourselves in our ongoing struggle with sin, we are acting as if we are our own deliverers. What matters, however, is not how we judge ourselves but how God the Father judges us—and he declares us “Not guilty,” for Jesus’ sake. In spite of our sin, he calls us “saint” and “my child,” because he sees us through Jesus and has committed himself to deliver us to himself holy and pure on the last day. It is his verdict that counts, not our own, and he is our gracious judge and faithful deliverer.

It is worth noticing that in Numbers 20, even though the people were clearly at fault in their complaining, the Lord viewed the sin of Moses and Aaron in judging them as a far more serious infraction. In other words, even when the sheep are simply being stubborn and recalcitrant in not following our leadership, we are not called to beat and berate them, even in our own minds. Instead, we are to love them and keep on urging them forward, gently and persistently pointing them to the cross.

In truth, much of our frustration in ministry comes from the fact that we have begun to see ourselves as the functional saviors of ourselves and our people. Remembering that it is the sovereign Lord who is saving and sanctifying us, and not we ourselves, will deliver us from much of our frustration. The Holy Spirit is the one who is responsible for transforming his sheep, and he will do so according to his agenda, not ours. We want ourselves and our people to be “fixed” right now, in part because it would give us a sense of personal satisfaction and achievement. We would then be able to bask in the glory of our renovation, feeding our pride and sense of self-worth. The Holy Spirit, however, is not eager to share his glory. He bears his fruit in the lives of his people in his season, not ours, so that it may be clearly seen that the work is entirely of him.


REBELLING AGAINST THE LORD

The irony is that in judging the people and seeking to deliver them on their own, Moses and Aaron became exactly what they accused the people of being: rebels against the Lord. When it was time for Aaron’s death at the end of the chapter, the Lord recalled their actions at Meribah and said, “Both of you rebelled against my command” (v. 24, NIV). The same was true when it came time for Moses to pass on the leadership of Israel to Joshua (27:14). In setting themselves forward as the people’s judges and deliverers, Moses and Aaron publicly displayed their own failure to believe in and fear the Lord as a holy God (v. 12). Because of this lack of faith, they too were now excluded from entry into the Promised Land. Like the rest of the first generation, Moses and Aaron would die in the desert, yet more object lessons of the holiness of Israel’s God

The sin of Moses and Aaron was thus itself a recapitulation of the sin of the people in Numbers 13, 14 when they refused to enter the Promised Land. What Joshua had warned the people not to do (“Do not rebel against the LORD,” 14:9) was exactly what Moses and Aaron now did (v. 24). The Lord’s complaint about the people then would fit Moses and Aaron as well: “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them?” (14:11). Little wonder, then, that their punishment was the same as that entire generation: those who rebelled against the Lord through a lack of faith would never enter the land, no matter who they were.

In essence, most of our sins boil down to a functional failure to believe God. In theory, we believe that God is our rock and our refuge; in practice, however, we often act as if God doesn’t even exist. Why do we judge people and write them off as hopeless? It is because in practice we do not really believe that God can rescue and redeem them. Why do we get so angry and frustrated when our spouses and our families disappoint us? It is because we don’t really believe that God is their judge, and we aren’t willing to let their sanctification rest in the Lord’s hands. Why are we so fearful for our own future? It is because we don’t really believe that the Lord will deliver us at the critical moment. Why are we so angry with God at the way our lives have turned out? It is because we don’t believe he has our best interests at heart or that there is more to life than what we see around us in this world. We are condemned by our failure to believe in the Lord as rebels against his goodness, just like Moses and Aaron and an entire generation of the ancient Israelites.


THE ENCOUNTER WITH EDOM

The parallels between Moses’ and Aaron’s failure to believe in the Lord and the failure of the people to do the same thing in Numbers 13, 14 help us see the significance of the enigmatic encounter with Edom that follows the events at Meribah (vv. 14–21). Moses sought to travel east from Kadesh, through the territory of the Edomites, but his request for passage was opposed by force and ended up in retreat. What we see here seems to be Moses doing exactly the same thing that the people did when they heard the Lord’s judgment upon them: refusing to accept that judgment and attempting to force their way into the land in their own strength (see 14:39–45).

Notice that the Lord did not instruct Moses to take this route, nor is the Lord’s name mentioned in the account, except in passing (v. 16). This is in dramatic contrast with the conflict that we will see at the beginning of the next chapter (21:1–3), when the people sought the Lord before going into battle and received victory from the Lord. When Israel’s first request was rebuffed by Edom, they sought to resolve the matter through political negotiations rather than through prayer. If the Lord had been with Moses and the people in this endeavor, it would not have mattered that Edom came out against them with a large army; but without the Lord’s presence they had no power to prevail over those who opposed them (vv. 20, 21). Like the earlier abortive campaign of the people, Moses’ attempt to find a shortcut into blessing ended up in a blind alley.


THE WAGES OF REBELLION

Numbers 20 thus shows us the judgment of the Lord on the wilderness generation reaching its climax in judgment on their leaders. Moses and Aaron joined the rebels in their sin and paid the same price as they did—exclusion from the land. The fact that the wages of rebellion is death for leaders as well as for followers is highlighted by the deaths that bracket the chapter: it began with the death of Miriam at Kadesh (v. 1) and ended with the death of Aaron (vv. 22–29). It was actually unbelief and rebellion that threatened death in the wilderness, not a lack of water.

Aaron’s death was announced ahead of time by the Lord: he was to go up Mount Hor with his brother Moses and his son Eleazar, where he would die (vv. 25, 26). There he was to be stripped of his robes of office, which were then to be transferred to his son (v. 26). This was more than a mere rite of transfer from father to son. The language of stripping implies that a measure of degradation was involved. To go along with the judgment of not being allowed to enter the Promised Land, Aaron was being stripped of his office as high priest, which from now on would be his son’s responsibility.

This time we are told that Moses did exactly as the Lord commanded him. The earlier disobedience that took place in the sight of the whole community (v. 12) was at last replaced by obedience in the sight of the whole community (v. 27). The high-priestly baton was transferred from one generation to the next, and the whole congregation mourned Aaron’s passing (v. 29). The old generation was fading away, their epitaph the words of Psalm 90, the only psalm written by Moses:
 
  You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,
  like grass that is renewed in the morning:
  in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
  in the evening it fades and withers.
  For we are brought to an end by your anger;
  by your wrath we are dismayed.
  You have set our iniquities before you,
  our secret sins in the light of your presence.
  For all our days pass away under your wrath;
  we bring our years to an end like a sigh. (vv. 5–9)


SIGNS OF GRACE

In the midst of the death and disgrace that so dominate Numbers 20, it would be easy to overlook the positive signs of the Lord’s grace that it contains. Even though Moses and Aaron sinned in carrying out the Lord’s command and received a curse, the Lord nonetheless granted his rebellious people the flow of water that they needed. Even though Moses would not lead the people into the land, yet the Lord’s promise to grant the land to them still stood, and he would raise up Joshua to take Moses’ place. Even though Aaron was now dead, the next generation was ready to take up his priestly work through his son, Eleazar. In fact, the deaths of Miriam and Aaron in this chapter in some ways mark the beginning of a generational transition. Even though the definitive turning point of the census of the next generation is still six chapters away, from the beginning of Numbers 21 things started to look up for Israel. The Lord is not only far more gracious than we believe him to be—he is far more gracious than we deserve.

On what is your trust for the present and your hope for the future built? You might think that a leadership team of Moses, Miriam, and Aaron would be a tough combination to improve upon, but by the end of this chapter their story is effectively over: they are dying, dead, and dead. We need a better leader than Moses, someone who will not get frustrated with his people and judge them. We need someone who will show his people grace and effectively deliver them in their hour of need. The good news of the gospel is that a leader who is better than Moses has come in the person of Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells us that Jesus Christ was actually part of this story in Numbers 20: he was the spiritual rock that accompanied his people through the wilderness and from which they drank (1 Corinthians 10:4). In Jesus Christ, God himself took the blows that we deserved for our rebellion. He is the righteous High Priest who was stripped not because of any failure on his part but to enable him to take our place on the cross under God’s curse. From him flows the living water that we need to slake our thirsty souls and to transform our lives increasingly into his image.

The wages of sin is death. This chapter demonstrates clearly the fact that this was true for Miriam, for Aaron, and ultimately for Moses as well. This is equally true for us all: we all have our own besetting sins to which we return, which are simply the outward overflow of our inner unbelief. It may be an uncontrolled temper or a sharp tongue or a lustful heart. It may be a complaining attitude or judgmental pride. Whatever it is, such sin marks us out as rebels against God. Like Moses and Aaron, we are all rebels who deserve death. Yet in Christ there is an answer for our rebellion. In Christ we have someone who has taken the death that we deserved and has paid fully for our sins. His perfect obedience is now credited to our account, exactly as if it were our own. In him we are justified freely right now, sinners though we are. In that reality lies our hope, our peace, and our comfort in the weary wilderness.

How long, then, will you and I refuse to believe in this God who has so wonderfully demonstrated his love for us in so many ways? How long will we trust in ourselves and judge others? How long will we become angry and frustrated over our own lack of sanctification and the failures of others? We must look to the Lord and submit our hearts to him, trusting in his goodness and mercy, believing that his timing is perfect, being filled with thankfulness for his death and resurrection. We must ask God to teach us wisdom and patience, grace and gentleness, and, above all, love. The day will come when our earthly struggles and rebellions will be over, and the Lord will welcome us into his presence; then all our frustrations will finally be over. Until then, the good news of his gospel of grace will faithfully sustain our thirsty souls step by step along the way.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 249–258). Crossway Books.

When his wife was away from home, the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote:

  The washing of dishes does seem to me the most absurd and unsatisfactory business that I ever undertook. If, when once washed, they would remain clean for ever and ever (which they ought in all reason to do, considering how much trouble it is), there would be less occasion to grumble; but no sooner is it done, than it requires to be done again. On the whole, I have come to the resolution not to use more than one dish at each meal.

We can all surely identify with that quote. Even in these days of dishwashers, it seems that we are no sooner finished loading it with the dishes of one meal and putting away the clean plates before we start the same cycle all over again. The same is true of laundry and vacuuming. Can we ever say that these jobs are really done? In our experience, cleanliness is not so much next to godliness as it is next to impossible to maintain, at least without an interminable effort. If someone were to invent a plate that once washed remained clean forever and ever or a suit of clothes that self-cleaned while hanging in your closet, his fortune would be assured. The same is true in the spiritual realm. Spiritual dirt—sin—accumulates constantly without any significant effort on our part. Spiritual cleanliness seems impossible for us to maintain.


DEALING WITH DIRT

How do we deal with that reality in the realm of physical dirt? Well, one way to approach the issue is to redefine the nature of dirt. Does that pair of jeans really need washing, or can it be worn another day? How many dust bunnies does it take to form a quorum sufficiently large to require vacuuming? If we are able to define the acceptable level of dirt upward, then maybe our task in combating it will become manageable. Alternatively, we can try to limit the sources of contamination. Use only one dish per meal, as Hawthorne suggested; tell your children they can only play with one toy car or doll at a time; make everyone take off their shoes before they come into the house. Maybe that will make the impossible job of keeping the house clean and tidy achievable.

Essentially, people tend to adopt the same kinds of strategies when it comes to dealing with spiritual dirt. Many people try to redefine the nature of sin, thereby making obedience more manageable. I know I have to love my neighbor, but if I limit the extent of who my neighbor is, then obedience to the Law seems more achievable. If righteousness is defined merely in terms of external obedience to a set of rules and regulations, then perhaps I can manage to achieve it by carefully writing in enough loophole clauses and exceptions. Alternatively, others try to achieve spiritual cleanliness by limiting the potential sources of contamination. They huddle in their own family and religious group so the world cannot soil them. They don’t watch movies—not even The Sound of Music—or listen to the radio or read secular books for fear of defilement. They try to separate themselves completely from anything and everything that might be a source of impurity.

Neither of these is a Biblical approach to the problem of the pervasiveness of spiritual dirt in our lives. On the one hand, the Bible works very hard to show the searching nature of God’s definition of sin. Just as the Marine Corps drill sergeant performing an inspection is not impressed by attempts to persuade him that a blotch of ketchup does not make your uniform dirty, the Lord is not impressed by our attempts to redefine sin. In fact, the Scriptures are far more searching than any other religious code in their definition of sin. In the Bible, sin is not just failing to keep an external code of rules—it is having a heart that is not right with the Lord. Sometimes I meet people who insist that they keep the Ten Commandments. Immediately I am tempted to ask how they are doing on the first one—“I am the LORD your God.… You shall have no other gods besides me” (Exodus 20:2, 3). Are they really loving the Lord, the God of the Bible, with all of their heart and soul and mind and strength? Are they putting him first in their use of time and money? Do they truly wake up each morning with adoration in their heart toward the Lord and go to sleep with his name on their lips? If they are really achieving this, then I’d like to know how they do it, for I know that I’m not like that. However, if they are not loving the Lord wholeheartedly moment by moment, then they are daily breaking the most fundamental part of God’s Law.

Equally, though, the solution to the pervasiveness of spiritual dirt is not for individuals to hide themselves away from the world. The Bible reminds us that sin comes not simply from outside human beings but from within. Like the Pharisees, such people are putting all of their attention on external sources of defilement when the reality is that sin comes from within. Figuratively speaking, they are carefully removing every speck of dirt from the dish before filling it with sewage-contaminated food and then wondering why they still become ill (see Matthew 15:1–20). The truth is that even if we were stranded on a desert island, we wouldn’t lack for opportunities to sin. The reason is simple: our sinful nature would be right there with us. Sometimes when we are caught in some sin, we blurt out, “I don’t know what happened. It’s not like me to do that!” The sad reality, though, is that sin is exactly like us. We bear the seeds of every possible sin within our hearts; all it takes is the right external environment to bring it out. As the book of James reminds us, “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:14, 15).

In the absence of a suitable external encouragement, the depth of our sinfulness may remain concealed, even to ourselves, but it nonetheless remains present.


THE NEED FOR CLEANSING

If what the Bible says is true, and we are deeply sinful people at the core level of our existence, then what we need is a comprehensive and regular cleaning. Just as we have a plan for removing physical dirt from our homes on a regular basis, so also we need regular provision for our spiritual dirt to be removed and our hearts cleansed. This is not something we can do for ourselves, any more than Lady Macbeth could cleanse her own hands through repeated washings. It is something that the Lord needs to do for us.

This concept of spiritual dirt and the need for regular cleansing is the principle that underlies Numbers 19. The ritual system of Israel was not an arbitrary set of rules and regulations that would have provided them a means of earning righteousness before God. Rather, it reflected in a profound way the values that the Lord was laying down for Israelite society. It was a simplified model of reality designed to help Israel understand the nature of the world in which she lived and the relationship she was required to have with the Lord. In that model, impurity could be contracted in a number of ways in ancient Israel, as we saw in an earlier study (see Numbers 5, considered in Chapter 6 of this book). Essentially, however, these diverse sources of contamination all reflected one central cause: contact with the realm of death. The purpose of the prohibition of touching a corpse in Numbers 19 was not mere superstition or the fear of contracting disease. Rather, it flowed out of the close connection between death and sin. The Lord is the God of life, and those who would approach him need to reflect that life. The Israelites were being taught that death has no place in his presence, nor does anyone who has had contact with the realm of death. Like matter and antimatter, the Lord and death cannot peaceably coexist: the Lord will ultimately vanquish death (1 Corinthians 15:26), and thus even traces of death adhering to a person made him or her unfit to enter the Lord’s presence.

The sharp separation that the Lord imposed between his people and death was designed to impress on the Israelites the defiling power of sin, which similarly contaminates us and makes us unfit for the Lord’s presence, even in the least quantities. Yet the commandment to remain separate from death and sin could never be enough by itself. In their present context the entire community had recently come into contact with death because of Korah’s rebellion and its aftermath. As a result, no one was free from death’s contamination, and all needed to be made clean. Numbers 19 thus fittingly concludes the central portion of the book (11–19), where death has been such a prominent feature. Everyone needed the cleansing that the Lord provided for them in this chapter, which itself was a profound picture of the ultimate cleansing the Lord would provide for the sins of his people. Through the regular application of the water of cleansing, the Lord promised to purify all those who had become contaminated by contact with death.


THE PROVISION OF CLEANSING

How was this powerful cleansing detergent that would wash away their contamination to be made? First, the priest was to take a perfect, red cow5 that had never been worked (19:2). The red-brown color highlighted the importance of blood as the key cleansing element. Two of the other key ingredients involved in the sacrifice, cedar and scarlet wool (v. 6), also share a reddish hue with the cow. The answer to the scarlet stain of our sin is thus a blood-colored sacrifice.

Once selected, the cow was to be taken outside the camp and slaughtered (v. 3). Some of its blood was then sprinkled seven times toward the entrance to the tent of meeting (v. 4). This ritual is reminiscent of the normal procedure for a purification offering (often called a sin offering), with the appropriate modifications necessary due to the fact that the slaughter was taking place outside the camp (see Leviticus 4:6). After the sprinkling, the entire animal was burned, including the blood (v. 5). This was the only sacrifice in the Old Testament where the blood was burned rather than poured out at the base of the altar. The reason for this change is simple. Since the cleansing power of this sacrifice resided in the blood, the blood too had to be rendered into ashes. The other ingredient put into the fire, along with the cow, the cedar, and the scarlet wool, was hyssop (v. 6), an herb traditionally used to sprinkle the cleansing blood on objects and people. Everything in this procedure thus focuses our attention on the blood.

After the sacrificial heifer and the other ingredients had been burned completely, the ashes were to be gathered up and stored in a ceremonially clean place outside the camp until they were required (v. 9). The ashes were thus, if you like, a kind of “instant purification offering.” Just as we have instant tea or instant soup, to which we simply add water and they are ready to serve, so these ashes were reconstituted by the addition of water to make them ready for cleansing use (v. 17).

In addition to the centrality of blood in this ritual, the other remarkable, even paradoxical feature of this sacrifice was its power to defile the ones preparing and administering it. At the same time as the ashes made the defiled person clean, they also made the ceremonially clean person defiled.8 From the priest who administered the ritual (v. 7), to the man who burned the animal (v. 8), to the man who gathered the ashes (vv. 9, 10), to the man who sprinkled the water (v. 21), every clean person who touched the ashes was defiled by them. Whoever or whatever they touched in the cleansing process became unclean because of the contagious power of defilement (v. 22). The ashes had to be stored outside the camp so they would not defile the camp by their very presence. It is as if the ashes were a kind of ritual detergent that cleansed the impure person by absorbing their impurity. In the process, though, they themselves became both defiled and defiling.

This is not a hard concept for us to grasp in the modern world. When I worked in the oil industry, we had a number of electrical transformers filled with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). As part of the regular maintenance procedures, we wanted to change the oil in these transformers, but because PCBs are hazardous to the environment, we couldn’t simply replace the old oil with new oil. Instead we contracted with a company to fill the transformers with fresh insulating oil, knowing that it would immediately become contaminated itself by the residue of PCBs. Then they removed this newly contaminated oil, along with the PCBs it now contained, leaving a cleansed transformer that could once again be returned to service. The cleansing process required the contamination of the clean as a condition for the cleansing of the contaminated.

Through the sacrifice of the red cow, cleansing was made easily available to all in the community, both native-born and alien alike (v. 10). The cost of the cleansing was kept low to the ones being cleansed. Yet the cost for the ones who made the offering on their behalf was substantial. It was not simply that the community had to bear the financial cost of sacrificing the cow. The one making the offering also had to temporarily sacrifice his own state of ritual cleanliness in order to let those who had become defiled enter in.

Once made, the ashes of cleansing had to be applied. As long as they remained stored away in a jar, they were of no benefit to anyone. The ashes had to be mixed with fresh (literally, “living”) water (v. 17). Then hyssop was dipped into the mixture and was sprinkled on anyone and anything that had been contaminated by contact with death. This sprinkling was not an instantaneous cure, however. It was not a magic ritual that removed the need for the normal cleansing process, as if contamination could be simply removed with a wish and a pinch of magic dust. The water and ashes needed to be applied twice, on the third and the seventh day of defilement, and the person also needed to wash himself and his clothes (v. 19). Only then would the purification process be complete. Anyone who failed to follow this procedure remained defiled and would be a cause of defilement to the whole camp. Such a person would necessarily be cut off from the community (v. 20).


OUR MODERN NEED FOR CLEANSING

What does all this have to do with us and our deep need of cleansing? The answer is that this comprehensive ritual shows us both our need of cleansing and God’s answer for it. In the first place, the ritual shows us our need of cleansing. Like the ancient Israelites, we are inevitably contaminated in our daily walk through this world. Just as they inevitably came into contact with death in their culture, so too we inevitably come into contact with sin. Some of their contact with death was deliberate, while other encounters were accidental, but it was virtually impossible for them perpetually to avoid such contact. They didn’t have mortuaries and funeral directors and all of the means that we have developed in our society to avoid facing the ugly reality of death. Sometimes, therefore, they had no choice but to come into contact with death. At other times their contact with death was the result of carelessness or thoughtlessness. Either way, contact with death defiled them.

So too for us. Some of our sins are deliberate, while others are the result of carelessness and thoughtlessness on our part. Some sin, such as failing to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and all our souls as we should, is virtually inevitable due to our weakness as fallen human beings. We are pervasively contaminated people on every level of our beings. Instead of redefining sin so that it no longer covers the things that we do, or pretending that sin doesn’t exist in our carefully sheltered world, it is far better to recognize the inevitable reality of our contact with sin and let that realization drive us back to God and to the cleansing he has provided.

In our society some churches are reluctant even to use the word sin anymore. They feel it is a negative word that will keep seekers away from God. Unfortunately, that refusal short-circuits the whole cleansing process: refusing to talk about sin is actually what keeps seekers away from God and not vice versa. Our natural tendency is to try to wash ourselves, substituting our own cleaning fluid for the living water and ashes. Just as ancient Israel insisted repeatedly on drinking from her own cracked and broken cisterns instead of looking to the Lord for living water (Jeremiah 2:13), so too we often substitute moral reformation—turning over a new leaf—for the Lord’s cleansing water. We are easily persuaded that going to church, developing healthy relationships, and a good self-image are sufficient to pass muster with God. We will never be cleansed by the waters of cleansing, however, unless we first recognize the depth of our need and name it as what it is, sin. Until we recognize the hand of death in our lives in the form of sin, we cannot bring it to the Lord and receive the cleansing that he has provided for us.


ONGOING CLEANSING

Moreover, the cleansing that we need is not simply a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Now, there is a once-in-a-lifetime experience of cleansing from sin, symbolized by baptism. That sacrament cannot be repeated, for it represents and communicates the completeness and sufficiency of our cleansing in Christ. What Jesus did on the cross is a once-and-for-all event that cannot be, and does not need to be, repeated. When we come to Christ by faith, at that moment our sins are washed away once and for all. Yet having been baptized does not in and of itself do away with our need for ongoing cleansing. Jesus pointed that out when he washed the disciples’ feet. Peter (typically!) wanted not simply his feet washed but his whole body (John 13:9). Yet Jesus responded, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet” (v. 10). In other words, there is a once-and-for-all washing that does not need to be repeated, but there is also an ongoing, repeated washing.9 As Christians, there are specific sins that we are conscious of having committed, along with the general grime that we acquire in the regular course of living in this fallen world. Both of these things need to be regularly washed away.

This is why the practice of confessing our sins to one another is so important. John reminds his hearers in 1 John 1:8, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” To refuse to recognize our sins puts us in the category of the person who refused the cleansing waters in Numbers 19. Such a person must be cut off from the community of faith because he or she has refused the means that the Lord has provided to deal with his or her defilement. Being a Christian doesn’t mean never having to talk about sin, any more than being in love means never having to say, “Sorry!” On the contrary, the reality is that it is those who are truly in love who are most likely to be found saying, “Sorry.” For the same reason, true Christians are the most likely to be saying, “I have sinned.” They don’t live in denial, proudly pretending there is nothing amiss in their life. Rather, they recognize that when they sin they have offended someone they love deeply, and they are confident that the Lord will extend his mercy and forgiveness to wash them clean.

In our church we regularly confess our sins to the Lord as part of our worship service precisely as an encouragement to each of us to be honest about who we are and how much we still need the gospel, even as believers in Christ. It is an opportunity to go before Almighty God and recognize publicly that we all individually need the waters of cleansing applied to our hearts and lives. After we confess our sins, the minister then announces afresh to us from the Scriptures the assurance of the gospel, that in Christ there is cleansing and forgiveness for all who come to God by faith in him. We say to God, “Lord, I’m filthy inside and out. I’m sorry. This is who I am by nature.” God in turn responds, “Here is the living water of cleansing that flows from the cross. Jesus died to make you acceptable to me just as you are, and I have sent my Holy Spirit to indwell you, to remake you ultimately as a new person.”

What stands in the way of confessing our sins to God and to one another? Surely it is our pride. I know that to be the case for myself. It is because I am such a proud and hard-hearted person that I find confession of sin really difficult. It is so much easier for me to excuse my sin or to deny my sin. Yet when I do confess my sin, my pride is placed on the anvil and delivered another shattering blow. My eyes are opened afresh to the depth of my need for the gospel, and I am made thankful afresh for the cleansing waters that flow from the cross.

When we confess our sins weekly in church, we look back to that once-and-for-all event and look forward to anticipate all the more eagerly that final day of cleansing. We come and receive the absolution that Jesus purchased for us through his death in our place. We come asking that his blood be applied to our sins, washing away their stain upon us. We know that because the Lord is faithful and just, he will do it, cleansing us afresh and making us fit to stand in his presence. We come thankful that one day our cleansing will be over and we will be perfectly clean forever.


GOD’S FAITHFULNESS TO FORGIVE SINS

The Apostle John sets out for us exactly that pattern of confession and assurance. Having reminded his hearers that they are indeed sinners, he goes on to say, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). The talk of Christ cleansing us from all unrighteousness resonates exactly with the application of the waters of cleansing, doesn’t it? It is Christ’s blood that washes us clean from our filth. However, the passage also raises the question of how it can be “faithful and just” for God to forgive our sins. We can easily see how it could be “merciful and kind” of God to forgive us, but how can it be “faithful and just” for him to do so?

Once again the sacrificial ritual of the red cow makes it all clear. Remember that this ritual required two things for the cleansing to take place. There had to be a spotless sacrifice who was slaughtered to provide the means necessary for cleansing and a clean person who was willing to give up that state of ritual cleanliness and access to God for the sake of another. Both aspects of the ritual point forward to Jesus, the one who gave us his perfect holiness as our clean substitute and suffered for us as the spotless sacrifice. These two aspects of Jesus taking our place are what theologians call the active and passive obedience of Christ. On the one hand, there is the active obedience of Christ: this is the means by which Jesus became our clean substitute. He is the only human being who has ever been perfectly clean. We could have called a surprise inspection of his life at any moment, but we would never have found a speck of dirt where it didn’t belong. He lived his life in perfect alignment with God’s Law, in perfect tune with God’s harmony. He thus took our place as the law-keeper, the clean one who administers the cleansing sacrifice for us.

But there is more. In addition to his perfect life, there is also his death for you and me—his passive obedience. He has not only taken our place as the law-keeper—he has also taken the place we deserved as law-breakers. He went outside the camp and offered his own blood as the atoning sacrifice: through his death he paid the debt for all of the sins of his people, and he became defiled in the process. As Paul puts it: “[God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Just as in the offering of the red cow, the clean one had to become defiled, so the defiled one could be made clean, Jesus took our sins upon himself. If Jesus has died and made full payment for our sins, however, there is no payment left for us to make on them. God can’t punish two people for the same offense. If Jesus has taken our defilement into himself, there is no stain left upon us. The foul spot has finally been purged away, transmitted to Christ. Therefore, because God is faithful and just, and the penalty for our sin has been paid in full, he must and will forgive all who are followers of Jesus for all of their sins.


PLEADING JESUS

When you stand before God as your judge in the heavenly courtroom, there are therefore only two options as to how you can plead—and innocent isn’t one of them. Nobody will be able to plead innocent before God because of a lack of contamination. The truth of our defilement will be clear to all. We have all disobeyed God and have gone our own way times without number. We are all thoroughly tainted by sin and death. One option is to plead guilty and pay ourselves for what we have done, refusing the water of cleansing that the Lord has provided. Tragically, many people will do that, and they will be separated from God forever as a result. “The wages of sin is death,” says the Bible (Romans 6:23). If we are determined to pay that price ourselves, we will be eternally cut off from God in Hell.

But there is an alternative open to us. We don’t have to plead guilty. We can plead Jesus. We can look to the purification offering that the Lord has established for us. We can say to God, “Lord God, I committed all those sins. They are all mine. The death that they deserve is mine. But your only Son Jesus has paid for every one of them. The payment for them all is death, but he paid it all when he died on the cross. He took my defilement on himself, and so now I am clean before you.”

Do you feel clean in the Lord’s presence today? Some people go through life like Lady Macbeth, scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing their hands with their own cleansing fluid, but they are never quite able to get rid of that foul spot. Perhaps there is some sin that clings to us like a neoprene wetsuit, defying our best efforts to dislodge it. Or perhaps there is some great sin in our past for which we are not sure God has ever really forgiven us. The cleansing that Christ provides for us not only makes us definitively clean when we first trust in him but also encourages us to come daily before him and ask for fresh cleansing in his blood. We must not ever get tired of bringing our sin to God; we have his word that he will never get tired of washing it away. In this fallen world, just as we continually wash our clothes and our dishes, we will continue to have to come to Christ regularly for washing. There is no magic cure that will keep us from further defilement. Praise God for the cleansing blood of Christ that purifies us from all unrighteousness. Praise God for the wonderful news that in Christ even our ongoing indwelling sins are presently covered and will ultimately be removed completely. Praise God that the day will come when we will have a spiritual cleanliness that will endure forever, when we enter into the presence of the Lord.


Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 239–248). Crossway Books.

We live in an age that suffers from a lack of the fear of God. That statement may surprise some of you at first hearing. How can a lack of fear be something bad? Doesn’t the Bible say that “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18)? In fact, most churches today go to great lengths to assure people that when they come to church there will be absolutely nothing to be afraid of. For example, one evangelical church advertises their services as follows:

  At———you’re free to enjoy yourself.
Enjoy God as you experience Him through the timely message, caring people, and inspiring music. And it’s okay to laugh at church—in fact we encourage it! We’ve got a casual atmosphere where you can enjoy your morning with a cup of Starbucks House Blend, a donut and some new friends.

In such churches, worship services increasingly seem to resemble coffee shops more than encounters with a holy God. While I’m sure that the people at this church mean well, their advertisement is certainly not designed to encourage the fear of God. Rather, they suggest that worshiping God is a casual and non-threatening activity, an enjoyable and fulfilling experience for everyone. They make coming into the presence of Almighty God sound like the spiritual equivalent of a visit to a favorite uncle.


THE PROBLEM OF THE ABSENCE OF FEAR

So what is the problem with an absence of fear in approaching God? Am I just a grumpy old-fashioned preacher, upset because other people seem to be having too much fun? I don’t think so. Even while as a culture we flee from all kinds of fear, we need to recognize that proper fear is essential to healthy living. Wise parents know that a large part of raising children is training their fears in the right direction. Some of our children are filled with irrational fears, and we have to teach them not to be afraid. They don’t need to be afraid of the dark or of terrible monsters hiding under their bed. They don’t need to be afraid of going to the doctor or having a haircut. Other children, however, seem born without fear, and so we spend a great deal of time teaching them to be afraid. Be afraid of touching the stove. Be afraid of climbing forty feet up a tree, especially in your best clothes. Be afraid of strangers who offer you candy or ask for your help looking for a lost puppy. Be afraid of what drugs can do to your brain. In our modern world a child who grows up completely without fear may not live to grow up. Life is not a casual and non-threatening activity, a fun and fulfilling experience for everyone. Some things truly ought to scare us to death. As the popular proverb wisely reminds us, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

For sinners, the prospect of standing in the presence of a holy God should be one of those truly frightening things. As a culture we resist that truth because we have lost our awareness both of God’s transcendence and holiness and of our own sinfulness and unworthiness. This trend was noted by J. Gresham Machen more than half a century ago when he observed, “There are those who tell us that fear ought to be banished from religion; we ought, it is said, no more to hold before men’s eyes the fear of hell; fear, it is said, is an ignoble thing.”

The fruit of that attitude is evident all around us. Somewhere in our church doctrinal statement, we may still confess the desperate danger that faces sinners in the hands of an angry God.2 But even in Christian circles, this note tends to be a subdued element in the contemporary chord. We should hardly wonder, then, that there is so little fear of God in our culture at large. Why should others be afraid of a God in whom they do not believe when we who confess his name stand so little in awe of him? Our churches have been radically infected by the spirit of the southside rebellion (see Numbers 16) that views everyone as by nature essentially holy and able to enter God’s presence without fear.


THE CURE FOR THE ABSENCE OF FEAR

We have seen how God dealt with that spirit in Numbers 16. The Israelites saw with their own eyes the earth open and swallow rebels alive (vv. 32, 33). They saw fire come out from the Lord’s presence and incinerate Korah’s 250 priestly pretenders (v. 35). They saw nearly 15,000 of their fellow Israelites killed by a plague of judgment from the Lord because they grumbled about the earlier deaths (v. 49). Then they saw the Lord confirm through a dramatic sign that only Aaron and the Levites could approach his presence (17:1–11). Little wonder that the Israelites cried out, “Behold, we perish, we are undone, we are all undone. Everyone who comes near, who comes near to the tabernacle of the LORD, shall die. Are we all to perish?” (17:12, 13).

An absence of fear was no longer Israel’s problem at the end of Numbers 17. They had learned through bitter experience to be afraid of the consequences of their sin.

Yet in their panic they missed the gracious aspect of the budding of Aaron’s staff, which through the symbol of the almond blossom spoke powerfully of the Lord’s purpose to bless them. This is typical of our spiritual experience: when we discover that we have made a mistake in one direction, we overcompensate in the opposite one. Until the Israelites understood God’s mercy and grace, they did not fear the Lord properly. The God whom they were called to serve is both the God who “will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” and “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6, 7).

Satan will always try to separate these two aspects of God’s character in our thinking. If he can persuade us that the Lord is all love and mercy and will not judge anyone, he will do so. But the moment it becomes clear to us that there is indeed a reckoning for sin, Satan immediately switches tack and tries to push us in the opposite direction, to make us believe that the Lord is hard and judgmental and that there is no forgiveness to be found with him. As the Puritan Thomas Manton put it:

  Satan labors to represent God by halves, only as a consuming fire, as clothed with justice and vengeance. Oh no! It is true he will not suffer his mercy to be abused by contemptuous sinners; he will not clear the guilty, though he waits long on them before he destroys them; but the main of his name is “his mercy and goodness.”

The true fear of the Lord flows out of an understanding of the whole character of God as both holy and merciful.

This is what Numbers 18 is about: the Lord in his grace had taught Israel to fear, and now the Lord was able to retrain and relieve those fears. Yet unless we first learn to identify with them in their fear of God, the remedy for that fear will make no sense to us. There is certainly a place for laughter and fun in church, but there must also be a place for being deadly serious. Unless you see with compelling certainty the fact that sinners cannot approach the Lord without being destroyed by his holiness, you will never understand the remedy that God has provided for our sin, which lies at the heart of Numbers 18.


THE MINISTRY OF THE PRIESTS AND LEVITES

The remedy to which God drew their attention was the Aaronic priesthood, who together with the Levites were given the task of taking care of and guarding the tabernacle so that wrath would not fall on the Israelites again (18:5). As we saw in the last study, this ministry was implied by the sign of Aaron’s staff. The priests and the Levites, like the lampstand of the tabernacle, were a sign of the Lord’s favor and determination to bless this people. The goal of their ministry was that the people should not die (17:10). So what kind of ministry did the priests and Levites have, and how did it deliver the people from their fear of death?

First, it was a ministry that was ordained by the Lord for the sake of his people. This is a central theme in these chapters of the book of Numbers: the Lord himself chooses those who come close to him and serve him. It was the Lord who chose Aaron and his sons for the priesthood (18:1), and it was the Lord who chose the Levites to assist them (18:6). All roads do not lead safely into God’s presence; that much has been made abundantly clear. Even the Levites could not help with the altar ministry and the work inside the veil of the tabernacle. Yet at the same time, one road does lead safely into the Lord’s presence. The Lord could legitimately have closed off access for Israel into his presence forever, but he chose not to do so. In the Aaronic priesthood, the doorway to Heaven was still open. The ones whom he had chosen could still approach him and serve him safely. The sacrifices they offered would be accepted by the Lord, just as Aaron’s incense offering was in Numbers 16:47. Through this means, the Lord would bless his people. The calling of the Aaronic priesthood by the Lord was thus a sign that his plan for his people is life and fellowship with him.

What is more, this ministry of the priesthood was a gift from God to Aaron and his sons (18:7). It was not something they had earned or deserved; on the contrary, what Levi had earned for his descendants was the sentence of being scattered in Israel. Because he slaughtered the inhabitants of Shechem, along with his brother Simeon (Genesis 34:25–29), Levi was cursed rather than blessed by his father Jacob:

  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)

Yet now there was an eternal covenant between the Lord and Aaron, and his descendants after him (18:19),4 a relationship that involved a number of privileges, most notably that of access into the Lord’s presence. The Levites would still be scattered, just as Jacob had prophesied, but their curse was turned into a blessing for the whole people. This transforming grace in the lives of the Levites was a demonstration in sample form of the Lord’s plan for his people. Even though the sin of Levi had earned his descendants a just punishment, the Lord’s grace was greater than all their sin. So too, the sin of the people did not necessarily mean their death. Even their ultimate scattering among the nations for their sin would be turned by the Lord from a curse into a blessing, as through them the gospel would eventually come to the whole world. God’s grace could redeem them also, just as it had the Levites.


THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PRIESTHOOD

Yet the ministry of the priesthood was not only a gift to the family of Aaron—it was also a responsibility. This responsibility is the primary focus of the passage here. It was the priests’ responsibility to prevent fools from rushing in where angels fear to tread. Their ministry was to be a ministry of exclusion, protecting the sanctity of the most holy things against encroachment by profane people (18:1). Such encroachment in the last two chapters had very nearly led to the destruction of the whole community, but now the Lord charged the priests with the responsibility of ensuring that such problems didn’t happen again. If there was a similar encroachment in the future, instead of the whole community being held responsible and liable to death, now only the priests would be held responsible. That is what it means when it says that the priests “shall bear iniquity connected with the sanctuary” (18:1):5 the buck stopped with them. They were now to carry sole liability for protecting the most sacred things.

Assisting them in this task were the Levites, who were to keep guard over the tabernacle as a whole. The priests were to guard the most sacred items and areas, while the Levites kept watch over the outer environs (18:3). Together they were to take responsibility to guard and protect God’s holiness. If they failed in that mission, both they and the one who encroached on the sacred things would be liable to death—but not the entire community. The priests and the Levites were thus assigned a substitutionary ministry, bearing the danger of death for sin on behalf of the people.

This aspect of the job of the priests and Levites is in some ways like the work of Secret Service agents who are charged with protecting the President of the United States. These citizens surround our leader and guard him against anyone who would try to get too close to him. It is a responsibility that must be undertaken with the utmost seriousness, even to the point of being willing to take a bullet in place of their Commander-in-Chief. They are required to bear the danger of death on his behalf. However, unlike the Secret Service men, whose job is to protect an essentially harmless President against potentially dangerous citizens, the purpose of the priestly guard was also to protect the citizens of Israel against a potentially dangerous God. It was not on God’s behalf that they risked death, but on behalf of their people. The goal of their ministry was to keep the people at a safe distance from God so “that there may never again be wrath on the people of Israel” (18:5). They freed the people from the fear of death by being willing to substitute for the people in paying the penalty of death should someone sin by trespassing on holy ground.


THE MINISTRY OF EXCLUSION

Who carries a similar responsibility in our situation? We do not have priests in the New Testament church because access into the Lord’s presence is now available to all who come through Jesus Christ, our great High Priest. Yet those who are leaders in Christ’s church—ministers and elders—are still called to a ministry of exclusion as well as inclusion. They are assigned the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, welcoming some people into the fellowship of the church and keeping others out. The Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 83) puts it like this:

What are the keys of the kingdom?
The preaching of the holy gospel and Christian discipline toward repentance. Both preaching and discipline open the kingdom of heaven to believers and close it to unbelievers.

Ministers and elders are responsible, through preaching and church discipline, for guarding against careless intruders who would encroach on the sanctity of God. That is a serious responsibility, which is why James warns that not many should presume to be teachers because we who teach will be judged more strictly (James 3:1). We need to proclaim clearly the message of God’s fearsome holiness and righteousness, as well as his grace, to those who are presently living careless lives. The task of the church is not to suggest to everyone that they are already “in” when it comes to God; rather, we need to show them that by nature they are excluded from his presence. We need to make it clear to people that they cannot simply approach God casually, with a designer coffee in one hand and a donut in the other, and wave a cheery hello. By nature they are God’s enemies, objects of his wrath (Ephesians 2:1–3).

Thus, when God summoned Adam and Eve into his presence after the fall, they didn’t come eagerly expecting to enjoy a timely message about how to make their marriage better, an inspiring song or two, and great refreshments. They came in fear and trembling, knowing that they had transgressed against the Lord’s power and majesty. They could not but come when God called them, but they came knowing that they deserved nothing but death. Until their desperate need for forgiveness was dealt with, nothing else mattered. This somber reality is part of the message that we have to communicate to our culture. The fact that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) is perhaps not a popular or appealing part of our message, but until this truth is understood, the gospel itself will make no sense. We need to show people the gulf that exists between them as sinners and a holy God for their own sake, lest they be consumed by his wrath. It is not that there is anything necessarily wrong with preaching on marriage or providing great music and offering refreshments. Yet the atmosphere we foster should be one that matches the serious message that we have to deliver to those around us.


THE CENTRALITY OF THE CROSS

The ministry of the Old Testament priesthood was well designed to communicate that serious message because it was built around sacrifice and exclusion. The armed guards who kept the people out of the Lord’s presence communicated vividly their separation from God. The constant shedding of blood and burning of flesh kept the reality of the consequences of sin very much in front of the people. You couldn’t visit the temple without being visibly confronted with both your exclusion from the Lord’s presence and the necessity of death to restore you into a relationship with God.

This is why our ministry must constantly be centered around the cross of Jesus Christ, which is the culmination of all those Old Testament sacrifices. We must be resolved, as the apostle Paul was, to proclaim only “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). The cross of Christ shows us the death that is the Lord’s answer to our spiritual exclusion from his presence. There at the cross Jesus Christ himself bore the responsibility for all of our transgressions against God’s holiness. It is not pastors or elders who substitute themselves to death for our sake: it is Jesus Christ. God’s wrath fell on him so that it might not fall on us and crush us forever. He was put to death so that you and I would not have to be put to death. He was cut off from the Lord’s presence so that the door might be opened for us to walk right in.

Does the cross mean no more fear for the believer? Certainly it means no more fear of the wrath of God. Because of the cross there is now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). As a result, believers in Christ have a peace with God that cannot be challenged. Even the reverses that I may suffer in my ongoing battle with sin cannot cause me to fear the loss of my salvation, for Jesus has undertaken to bear the responsibility for all my offenses. That kind of fear is gone forever. There is now no exclusion for all of us who are in Christ Jesus: precisely because we are in him, we have the right to go where he goes and to stand in God’s presence as he does. Now even when I have sinned, I can run to God without fear of judgment and confess my sin, asking for his cleansing.


FITTING FEAR

Yet the nature of God has not changed, and there is still a fitting fear in the life of the believer. Indeed, the Lord promises such godly fear to believers in Jeremiah 32:40, where he says, “I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.” Our God is still a consuming fire, as Hebrews 12:29 reminds us, a God who must be worshiped with reverence and awe (Hebrews 12:28). It is a solemn truth that many will be excluded from the Lord’s presence on the last day who are much smarter, better-behaved, and more sincerely religious people than we are: it is only God’s grace that allows us to enter in.

What makes the believer’s fear of the Lord distinct is that it is a fear that flows not simply from the prospect of God’s judgment but from a knowledge of God’s mercy. It is one thing to fear the Lord’s judgment, as Adam and Eve did when they heard the Lord walking in the garden. It is something else entirely to fear the God who combines judgment with mercy. Psalm 130:4 makes the connection between mercy and the fear of the Lord explicitly: “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.” Why should God’s forgiveness lead us to godly fear? The answer comes once again as we contemplate the means of our salvation and inclusion. What was the cost of my sin? Nails piercing the hands and feet of my Savior; a sharp spear penetrating his heart; a crown of thorns adorning his head; a back beaten to a bloody pulp; a Son’s face turned upward desperately seeking his Father and hearing no answer to his cry. Look at Jesus stretched out in agony, and tell me that our sin doesn’t really matter. Contemplate the cross, and sin will never again seem like a light thing to us. Pondering the Lord’s mercy will give us a healthy fear of the Lord and an abhorrence of sin.

After we have stood at the foot of the cross, coming into God’s presence will never again seem like a casual thing either. The Creator of the universe loved us enough to curse his own Son so that we might enter his presence. Giving him the thanks and praise he deserves is therefore no light matter. Coming to church to worship this God is not something to fit into our schedule whenever it suits us. It is not something to be undertaken casually, as we might meet with a few friends at a coffee shop for a stimulating conversation. What in the world could be more precious, more glorious than this? As we gather with other believers, we proclaim Christ crucified, our means of access to God, our way to life, our hope of glory. Worship is an awesome and fearsome event, yet at the same time deeply joyful and profoundly inspiring. For in Christ we now have an access into the Lord’s presence that is even greater than the special access God promised his chosen Aaronic priests. There are no longer any “Keep out” signs, warning us to stay at a safe distance, not even around the Holy of Holies. Dressed in the bloodstained robes of Christ’s holiness, we can draw near to the very presence of God himself and sing our praises to him.

The Lord is ready to receive our worship and praise in the assembly of his people Sunday after Sunday. In Christ the doorway is open, and we may go in. By his Spirit, the Lord is there as we offer our sacrifices of praise and lay our lives on his altar. The elements of the Lord’s Supper are there to communicate to us afresh the profound realities of the gospel of Christ crucified: the body of Christ was broken for us and his blood poured out to establish a new covenant relationship with us. Church is therefore always a place for doing serious business with God—business that is joyful, to be sure, but also serious and solemn. We must come ready to respond with deep gratitude for his gift of a perfect priest, Jesus Christ, who has stood between us and the judgment of God, bearing the responsibility for all our transgressions and sins. Our hearts must be filled with reverent fear as we contemplate the cost of our redemption. We must be touched with fresh wonder at the new and eternal life in God’s presence that was purchased for us. Then we will be prepared to stand in God’s presence and worship him.


Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 219–229). Crossway Books.

Some things never seem to end. A Wagnerian opera, for example, seems to go on and on. So does a root canal visit to the dentist, or a losing season for your favorite sports team. To that list of seemingly endless trials, we may add the sin of grumbling. In an earlier study we noticed that grumbling is a contagious sickness that spreads from one person to the next. Here we may add that grumbling is a chronic sickness: it is habit-forming and addictive. Once started, if left to itself, grumbling just goes on and on. In C. S. Lewis’s novel The Great Divorce, he imagines a group of inhabitants from Hell on a coach trip to visit the outskirts of Heaven. One of the memorable characters he describes is a woman who started out as a grumbler and ended up as a mere grumble. Lewis’s guide on the tour, George MacDonald, says of this phenomenon:

It begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticizing it. And yourself, in a dark hour may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no more you left to criticise the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.

We all know that to be true from our own experience, don’t we? Grumbling has enormous capacity to capture us in its power. How then can we cure grumbling? How can we finally break its power and emerge from its grip? You might think that simply exposing the truth would do the trick. If so, then you need to think again. In Numbers 16 we saw those who brought a complaint against Moses’ and Aaron’s leadership incinerated by fire from the Lord and swallowed alive by the ground. You would imagine that such a visible demonstration of the Lord’s power in support of Moses and Aaron would bring the issue to an end. Not so. Even though the ringleaders and their families were consumed by God’s judgment, their grumbling spirit lived on after them. Like spores of the anthrax virus, which have the ability to survive fire and flood, lying dormant in the soil for centuries before emerging to do their deadly work, the spores of the grumbling virus survived the dramatic judgment of God.


THE RETURN OF GRUMBLING

It didn’t even take long for the virus of grumbling to reappear. The very next day all of the congregation of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron, saying, “You have killed the people of the LORD” (16:41). That short sentence incorporates both aspects of the rebellion of the last chapter. Dathan and Abiram’s complaint against Moses totally denied the existence and relevance of the Lord, charging Moses personally with bringing Israel out of Egypt in order to kill them in the desert (16:13, 14). Now the whole congregation echoed that charge by blaming Moses and Aaron personally for the deaths of the conspirators (16:41).2 Even though these deaths were the result of dramatic judgments from God—fire from Heaven and the earth swallowing people alive—the people acted as if the Lord were not really involved and the deaths were solely the result of the actions of Moses and Aaron.

Similarly, Korah’s complaint against Aaron was that the whole community was equally holy and that the Lord was with them all (16:3). This claim was visibly disproved by God’s removing Korah’s associates from his presence once and for all (16:35). They were rejected and destroyed as unfit to burn incense before a holy God. Yet these same rebels who had died under the Lord’s judgment were now described by the community as “the people of the LORD.” It is as if they were asserting all over again that the whole community (even those who were destroyed for their sin) were really all one holy people. They said to the Lord in effect, “God, you have no business judging sin. Get over your narrow-mindedness and accept all of us just as we are.” Doesn’t that charge against God have a terribly modern ring to it? The spirit of the southside rebellion lives on in our contemporary context.

Once again, although the complaint is directed against Moses and Aaron, the people are not really grumbling against them so much as they are against the Lord. It is no surprise therefore that the Lord himself appears in the cloud over the tabernacle to answer their charge (16:42). Because it is the same rebellious charge as in the previous incident, the Lord responds in exactly the same way to Moses and Aaron: “Get away from the midst of this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment” (16:45; see 16:20). Once again Moses and Aaron fell facedown before the Lord, interceding on behalf of the people.


STANDING BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

It is at this point, however, that the story line diverges from the earlier incident. In this case, apart from Moses and Aaron, there were no innocent bystanders who risked destruction along with the sinners (16:22). The whole assembly had joined in the sin of rebellion, and therefore all had to face the Lord’s judgment. There was no separation between guilty and innocent in the plague that ensued, for all were guilty. However, the community’s survival was still secured because Aaron, the high priest, was an effective mediator to intercede for the sinners. The incense-offering priestly pretenders of Korah’s line had been consumed by the fire of God’s wrath the previous day (16:35). Their mediation could not even save themselves, let alone anyone else. Aaron, however, had been called by the Lord to this task of providing a remedy for sin and was granted the necessary access into God’s presence. Thus when he intervened, offering incense and interceding on behalf of the people, the plague was restrained (16:48). Aaron took up a position between the living and the dead, and by means of the incense that he offered, he drew a line of separation between the two groups. By his faithful ministry, he prevented those who remained alive from joining those already dead.

Once again we see the covenantal dimension of salvation. The faithful acts of the one man carrying out the task appointed by God had a life-giving impact on the fate of many. All are not equally holy, equally able to approach God, as Korah had claimed. Only God’s chosen priestly representative for the community, Aaron, could offer the intercession that turned away God’s wrath and halted the spread of the plague (16:48).

There is a challenge here for all of us. Under the new covenant, we have all been given the task of being ambassadors for Christ, bringing the aroma of the gospel to those around us (2 Corinthians 2:14–16). We have all been commissioned to intercede on behalf of our friends and neighbors and to set before them the line between life and death. Aaron could not perform his ministry in the comfortable confines of the tabernacle, however. He had to take the incense offering out to where the people were dying for it to be effective. This was a risky endeavor for a priest, for it carried with it the potential of being contaminated by touching a corpse. Such contact would have rendered Aaron ritually unclean. Yet he took the risk of encountering death for the sake of preserving some alive. Our calling of spreading the aroma of life will similarly require us not to huddle in little circles of believers but to take the risk of going out to where the spiritually dead are. It is our task to release the gospel freely so it can do its work of separating those called to life and those left alone in death. In that way, many may be delivered from God’s judgment upon sin and rebellion. We need to have a sense of the urgency of the gospel task, knowing that our friends and neighbors, our workmates and our fellow students, are quite literally dying for want of hearing the gospel.


THE END OF GRUMBLING

It is one thing to restrain God’s judgment, however, and quite another to bring it completely to an end. The plague may have ceased for now, as a result of Aaron’s intercession, but the threat of its return still remains over the people. In fact, before the book of Numbers is over, the Lord’s judgment of plague will again return to haunt the people (see 25:8, 9). What Israel needed was someone or something that would bring to an end the grumbling and rebellious spirit of the people once and for all. It is this need that is addressed in Numbers 17. On the one hand, it seems like a simple repetition of the lesson of the previous chapter, underscoring the choice of Aaron and the Levites out of all of God’s people to approach and serve him. Yet the goal of this positive sign is more ambitious than simply restricting the effects of the curse. By what this sign signifies, the Lord twice declares that he will bring to an end this constant grumbling by the Israelites (17:5, 10).

The sign itself is simple enough. The leaders of all twelve of the tribes of Israel, plus the tribe of Levi, are to submit their staffs to Moses (17:6).4 These staffs were symbols of authority and may well have been instantly identifiable by their distinctive shape or markings,5 though each man is told to write his name on the staff as well (17:2; compare the similar sign in Ezekiel 37:16, 17). Using their staffs was by no means a random choice of personal possession, since the Hebrew word for “staff” (maṭṭeh) also means “tribe.” These staffs thus self-evidently represented the various tribes of God’s people. The Lord declared that as these staffs were placed overnight before the Lord in the tabernacle, one of these dead sticks would sprout (17:5). In fact, the fulfillment of the sign was even greater than that: Aaron’s staff not only sprouted but budded, blossomed, and produced almonds (17:8). When the staffs were returned to their owners the next day, the evidence was undeniable. The Lord had definitively demonstrated whom he had chosen to serve him and stand in his presence (17:9).6 After the tribal leaders had each reclaimed his staff, the Lord instructed Moses to keep Aaron’s staff as a permanent sign to the rebellious people to put an end to their grumbling, so they would not die (17:10).

Why is God so bothered by grumbling? It seems on the face of it to be a victimless crime: when we grumble, it seems that no one is robbed or hurt. So why is grumbling a sin worthy of death? The answer is because grumbling robs and hurts God. Grumbling assaults God’s glory. John Piper has rightly argued that God is most glorified when his people are most satisfied in him.7 If that is true, though, what happens when his people are most dissatisfied with him? He is robbed of his greatest glory. When God’s people grumble, they miss out on their chief end in life: as long as they are grumbling, they are neither glorifying God nor enjoying him. In addition, grumbling believers give non-Christians little reason to want to join them. When we grumble against the order that God has set in place, we are robbing God of the praise and glory that is his due, holding our hearts closed against him, and distracting others from seeing his greatness. That is why grumbling is such a serious sin.


THE STAFF AND THE LAMPSTAND

How, though, was this simple sign in Numbers 17 supposed to put an end to their grumbling? To answer that question, we need to look at the sign more closely. It is not simply a sign that God had chosen Aaron and the Levites to serve him—it was a sign of his purpose in calling Aaron and the Levites to serve him. If God had wanted simply to indicate that Aaron’s staff was the chosen one, he could have had it emerge and stand upright while the other staffs bowed down to it. What actually happened was that the apparently dead staff showed incredible signs of fruitfulness—sprouting, budding, blossoming, and bearing fruit overnight. Moreover, the fruit that this little tree produced was not just any fruit but specifically almonds.

Where else in Scripture do you find a miniature tree with almond flowers and buds? That is exactly what the lampstand in the tabernacle was (Exodus 25:31–40). It was a stylized tree with symbols of fruitfulness on it. This tree with buds, blossoms, and flowers all at the same time was a static picture of the whole cycle of life under God’s blessing, nothing less than an image of the tree of life.8 The symbolic function of the lampstand was to shine God’s favor forward onto the Table with the twelve loaves of showbread (see the discussion of Numbers 8:1–4 in Chapter 10 of this book), which symbolized God’s favor and blessing resting on all twelve of the tribes of Israel.

The lampstand was not just any fruitful tree—it was specifically an almond tree. The Hebrew word for almond (šāqēd) is related to the verb “to watch” (šāqad), for the almond tree blossoms early and was thus a marker of the onset of spring. Thus in Jeremiah 1:11 the Lord used an almond branch as a visible symbol of the Lord’s watching over his word (in this case of judgment) and bringing it to imminent fulfillment. So too the lampstand as an almond tree was a marker of the certain fulfillment of a greater blessing that was yet to come. The Lord was watching over his people for blessing, both now and in greater measure in the future.


THE BUDDING OF AARON’S STAFF

With that as background, we can return to the budding of Aaron’s staff. The Lord took Aaron’s dead stick and turned it into a miniature lampstand in the midst of the other twelve sticks, a sign of life and future blessing in the midst of the community. This blooming almond branch was a symbol of the certainty that the Lord would fulfill his promise of great blessing for his people through the gift of the priesthood. That is why the sign should have put an end to the grumbling of the rebellious (17:10). It should have reminded them that the Aaronic priesthood was God’s chosen channel of blessing and life for the community in the present and a sign of an even greater blessing to come.

Ironically, the Israelites responded to this demonstration of beauty and life with the fear of death. They said to Moses, “Behold, we perish, we are undone, we are all undone. Everyone who comes near, who comes near to the tabernacle of the LORD, shall die. Are we all to perish?” (17:12, 13). In one sense they got the message. Their cry was a repudiation of their earlier assertion that all are holy and can safely approach the presence of God. Now they rightly feared approaching God. Yet they failed to see that this holy God whom they could not approach had graciously established a means in the Aaronic priesthood through which sinners could safely approach God and not die (17:10). God’s purpose for his people was resolutely good: his goal for their lives was not death but life. They needed to wake up and smell the sweet scent of almond blossoms: in spite of their rebellion, the Lord was watching over them for blessing.

There is a profound lesson for you and me in the blossoming of Aaron’s staff. In the first place, like the Israelites we need to see that by ourselves we are unfit to stand in the presence of a holy God. We are nothing more than dead sticks, fit only for the fire. Without God’s promise of grace we too would be forced to cry out, “We will die! We are lost, we are all lost! Anyone who even comes near the presence of the Lord will die.” We are not by nature holy or naturally part of the Lord’s people. We are dead in our transgressions and sins (Ephesians 2:1), without hope and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12). Yet the Lord is able to take dead sticks and bring them to life and make them fruitful under his blessing.

How did he do that? Ultimately it was not through Aaron and his line. Aaron was a great blessing to his people, an intercessor whose incense offering halted God’s judgment in its tracks and made a separation between the living and the dead. Yet Aaron himself was a sinner, ultimately unable to enter the Promised Land. His offspring faithfully served as priests, offering sacrifices on behalf of the people and teaching them God’s Law. Yet all of their ministry was provisional, temporary, until the coming of God’s new covenant in Jesus Christ. Aaron’s blossoming staff pointed beyond himself and his offspring to the Messiah to come. Jesus is the great High Priest who, through his personal holiness and ultimate sacrifice on the cross, enabled the blessing of God’s favor to be poured out on all of his chosen ones.


THROUGH DEATH TO FRUITFULNESS

Yet if Aaron’s staff was distinguished as the chosen one of God’s blessing through the marks of life and fruitfulness, Jesus was distinguished at the end of his earthly ministry as God’s chosen one by the signs of God’s curse.

  For he grew up before him like a young plant,
  and like a root out of dry ground;
  he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
  and no beauty that we should desire him.
  He was despised and rejected by men;
  a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
  and as one from whom men hide their faces
  he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
  Surely he has borne our griefs
  and carried our sorrows;
  yet we esteemed him stricken,
  smitten by God, and afflicted.
  But he was wounded for our transgressions;
  he was crushed for our iniquities;
  upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
  and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:2–5).

Jesus didn’t merely straddle the line between life and death; he himself entered the grip of death to free those who were rightfully death’s captives. He took upon himself Aaron’s curse, the curse deserved by all the rebels for their grumbling. It was not just their curse that he took, however. More importantly, it was my curse. I too am a rebel and a grumbler. I too question the Lord’s wisdom and his ways in choosing some for particular earthly service or blessing that he has not chosen to give to me. I too grumble about the judgments that he chooses to execute (or not to execute) on others. Yet Christ has taken all of those sins of mine and has borne them on the cross, despising their shame, so that I might ultimately taste the blessing that God has in store for his people. In Christ, God testified to his chosen priest with an absence of glory and a cursed death on the cross, so that through that death his unholy people might be made holy. In so doing, he removed the power and sting of death once and for all.

There at the cross we see the true wideness of God’s mercy. He does not admit all into his presence indiscriminately, ignoring their sin. Rather, he welcomes in all kinds of sinners as they trust in Christ and have their sins paid for at the cross. The way of salvation is as wide and as narrow as Christ. There at the cross, fearful rebels find peace with the Lord whom they spurned, in spite of their sin, and are safely drawn into intimate fellowship with him through Christ. Now, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, we are able to do what Old Testament believers could not: we can draw near to God’s presence with boldness. However, the self-righteous who stubbornly refuse to come to God through Jesus find no way into his life-giving presence.

What is more, in the resurrection of Jesus we see the almond branch blossom. Spring is in the air in the empty tomb: in Christ’s rising, the firstfruits of the harvest of eternal life have appeared, and their scent is unmistakable. Death is clearly defeated, its power broken. It is only a matter of time now before the full harvest of God’s blessing is experienced. God is watching over his people to bring them into his presence forever.

Here is the final answer for our grumbling. The Law that says, “Do not grumble” is not ultimately able to transform us and change our hearts. The Law can bring the judgment of death, which can restrain grumbling, but it cannot cure it. It has no power to redeem grumblers and bring their grumbling to a permanent end. Grumbling and rebellion can only be overcome as we contemplate the cross. As we look on the awesome judgment of God that took place there on all unrighteousness, will we still say, “All of God’s people are holy and can enter God’s presence just as they are”? Surely not. The cross demonstrates the necessity of the cleansing that only Jesus Christ can give.

When we think about the way the Lord dealt with his own Son in order to make us holy, will we murmur and rebel against his ways in our lives that have the same design? If he did not spare his own Son but freely gave him up so that we could receive blessing and life, how will he not along with him give us everything we need? When we see that the Lord’s purpose for us is blessing, a purpose that is assured in the resurrection of Jesus, why then do we still doubt his goodness? The Lord will accomplish his purpose to sanctify us, one way or another. Some of those ways are intensely painful, to be sure. Yet as we stand before the cross, are we really able to say to the Father, “No, Lord, this is too painful. I cannot bear this. It is too much”? How can anything be too much when it is compared to the searing loss that the Father endured at the cross to make us holy? As Samuel Rutherford put it, “The weightiest end of the cross of Christ that is laid upon you, lieth upon your strong Saviour.”

We are so blessed in this new-covenant era, for we no longer have a mere sign of God’s commitment to bless us. We have something better than a flowering staff that sits mutely in front of the symbol of God’s presence, the ark of the covenant. That staff spoke eloquently of God’s set purpose to bless his people and transform their grumbling hearts. Yet how much more effective and eloquent is the reality to which the staff pointed. The reality that we have been given to ponder is our great High Priest, Jesus Christ, standing in the heavenly Holy of Holies, interceding for you and me day by day. In the death of Christ, God assures us of his settled purpose for our blessing. In the resurrection of Christ, he assures us that the almond is already in bloom: our final salvation is near. In Christ, the Lord has indeed put an end to our grumbling, and in its place he has given us abundant life in all its fullness. Faced with the reality of the cross and the empty tomb, may we let our grumbling die away, lost in an upswell of wonder, love, and praise.


Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 209–217). Crossway Books.

Distrust of those who are in charge is a widespread phenomenon. It is easy to stir up dissension against those in authority, especially when life is difficult and progress is slow. The fans of professional sports teams with losing records often want the managers fired. Aspiring politicians regularly harp on economic difficulties as they attempt to unseat the incumbent. Sometimes the criticism goes deeper and seeks to overturn the existing order completely and replace it with a new and different authority structure. There are indeed times when a change in personnel or the system is justified. Many such revolts, however, are generated by the wrong motivations and aimed at the wrong targets.


KORAH’S COMPLAINT

Numbers 16 shows us just such a revolt against the leadership in Israel. It was a revolt that combined together two distinct groups of people. On the one hand there was a group made up of Korah and the Levites, while on the other were Dathan and Abiram, who were Reubenites, along with 250 chiefs of the community (vv. 1, 2). Each of these groups had its own distinct target within the authority structures of Israel. Korah and the Levites challenged the religious leadership of Aaron, while Dathan and Abiram with their followers assaulted the civil leadership of Moses. It is not perhaps coincidental that these two groups rebelled together because the Kohathite Levites, from whom Korah came, camped to the south of the tabernacle, on the same side as the Reubenites (2:10; 3:29). We could therefore call this incident “The Southside Rebellion.”

The first volley in the assault came from Korah and the Levites. They said to Moses and Aaron: “You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD? (v. 3). They sound thoroughly modern in their denunciation of the narrowness of Moses’ religion. You can almost hear them say, “I like to think of God as a kind and welcoming God, whom anyone can approach at any time.” However, their argument here is a classic case of a false conclusion constructed on a true premise. It was certainly true that the whole community of Israel was holy: God had called them to be “a kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6). It was also true that the Lord was with the Israelites: he had promised to dwell in the midst of them and be their God (Exodus 29:45). In fact, those were precisely the points that the Lord himself had underlined in the regulations concerning tassels at the end of the previous chapter. The tassels were designed to remind each Israelite of their holy status and calling as part of a nation of priests, consecrated to God (15:40) and of his commitment to be present with them (15:41). Yet that high calling on the life of every Israelite did not mean religious egalitarianism, in which everyone had precisely the same status and responsibility before the Lord. There was still an authority structure set in place by God, in which those he had chosen and called had leadership positions.

The truth that a common high calling from God does not eliminate distinctions within society should not have come as a surprise to the wilderness people of God. They should have remembered the intense care with which the Lord arranged their stations around the tabernacle in the opening four chapters of the book of Numbers. There the Lord assigned each tribe and family to a particular place in his economy. Some were assigned places of greater honor (and greater responsibility) in his service, while others had lesser roles. Those places did not necessarily reflect natural precedence or personal giftedness. In some cases, as we saw, past sin or faithfulness had an ongoing impact on a family’s destiny, and yet the decisive feature in every case was the Lord’s will. The Lord assigned to all their place in his community, and to rebel against that structure was to rebel against the Lord.

The rebellion in Numbers 16 is exactly that—a frontal assault on the order established by God at the time of the census. That becomes clear when you look more closely at those taking part. The ranks of those rebelling are drawn from the first of the Levites to be counted, the Kohathites (4:1–3), the first of the people to be counted—the Reubenites (1:20, 21), and those who were doing the counting—the leaders of the community (neśîê hāēdâ; 4:34). What is particularly striking about this group is that the rebellion does not come from the lowest rungs of Israelite society but from the higher rungs. Bearing in mind that status around the tabernacle goes downward as you travel clockwise, from east to south to west to north, it is noteworthy that this is not a northside but a southside rebellion. It is not those at the bottom of the heap who rebel against God’s order but those who are close to the top and who think they ought themselves to be at the top. This marks an escalation from the earlier grumbling that originated among the marginal riff-raff (11:4): now grumbling has infected the center of the camp.

This fact further highlights the deceptive agenda in Korah’s speech. As a southsider, part of the leading clan of the Levites, he didn’t really want all social order eliminated: he would actually have had more to lose than most Israelites from such an egalitarian leveling. While declaring all Israelites equally sacred before the Lord, what he really wanted was access for himself to the group that would be above the rest, the priesthood (16:10). Likewise, the Reubenites held a privileged place in the Israelite community; yet that was not enough for them. It still rankled them that their premier place as firstborn of Jacob’s sons had been stripped away because of Reuben’s sins. Like the pigs in George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm, the southsiders wanted a society in which everyone was equal, with some people (themselves) being “more equal” than others.


MOSES’ RESPONSE

Moses’ response to this rebellion was to fall down on his face, a posture of submission before the Lord and of appeal for divine assistance.2 This is how Moses responded to several of Israel’s rebellions in the book of Numbers (14:5; 16:4; 20:6), which itself was a mark of his meekness. Even when he himself was under attack, he didn’t immediately lash out at those responsible but instead first took his concerns to the Lord. This is a model for all leaders who find themselves under attack. Such assaults are an almost inevitable part of ministry, as people who are disgruntled with the leadership attack it verbally and in written form. It is easy to respond in similar fashion, but that simply escalates the conflict. It is far better to take the complaints before the Lord and fall down on your face before him. Sometimes there will be sufficient truth behind the allegations, however exaggerated their tone, that repentance on the part of the leaders will be necessary. At other times the allegations will be completely unfounded, but even then it is best to place the matter in the Lord’s hands rather than seeking to respond on our own.

When Moses did respond, it was with a challenge to Korah to put his claims to the test and let the Lord demonstrate whom he had chosen to draw near to him as a priest. Korah and his followers were instructed to come before the Lord the next day with incense burners and fire, and then the Lord would show everyone who his chosen priest was (vv. 6, 7). The form of the test should have sobered Korah and his followers, for it should have reminded them of the fate of Nadab and Abihu. Those sons of Aaron were legitimate priests who were allowed to burn incense before the Lord, yet they made the mistake of being careless about where the fire to ignite the incense came from. They used unauthorized fire—fire that was not from the altar—and they paid for their mistake with their lives (Leviticus 10:1–3). If that was God’s attitude to those who were authorized to approach him when they were careless, what will happen to those who approach him presumptuously? How will they escape? Their ultimate fate, being consumed by fire from the Lord (16:35), should be no surprise to those who have followed Israel’s story carefully thus far.

Moses also uncovered the true nature of the target of their rebellion: it was not Aaron but the Lord himself they were challenging (v. 11). As Levites, the Lord had assigned them a position of honor and responsibility, doing the work of the tabernacle and ministering among the community (v. 9). Yet because they were not content with the place they had been assigned, Korah and his followers were seeking a place they had not been assigned—namely, the priesthood.


THE DESIRE FOR LEADERSHIP

The desire for a leadership position can sometimes be a dangerous thing. The humorist Douglas Adams observed in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job.” In other words, those who desire most intensely the ability to wield power are also the most likely not to wield it well. This can also be true in the church. Some people aspire to positions of authority in order to lord it over others, not so they can serve others. If Korah’s and the Levites’ desire had simply been to serve the Lord and his people, their present position would have given them plenty of opportunities to do so. They didn’t need to be priests to be servants. However, they thought that the position of the priests had more prestige and standing than theirs did (not to mention more income), and so they coveted it. In the process, though, they were rebelling not just against Aaron and the other priests but against the Lord who had assigned Aaron and his family to that position.

The fact that there is an authority structure set in place by God is true in his New Testament people as well as in Old Testament Israel. God promised his people in Jeremiah 3:15 that in the days to come, “I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding.” This promise has been fulfilled in the church in the provision of elders to lead God’s people as shepherds. So in 1 Peter 5:2, 3, Peter appealed to the elders of the flock to which he was writing that they should “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care … not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock” (NIV). Likewise, Paul charged the Ephesian elders, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). God has thus appointed a structure in the church, with leaders and followers; the church is not a democracy. The elders are to be leaders in the church, acting as shepherds of his flock. They are to guide and direct the flock from the front, leading the way rather than lording it over the sheep in their common calling as disciples of Jesus.

If this is true, then we need to be similarly careful about those who desire leadership positions in the church. It is certainly not wrong to aspire to lead God’s people. In fact, Paul commends just such a desire in 1 Timothy 3:1. Yet those who desire to lead should be examined and tested, not just so their abilities and gifts can be discerned, but so others can discern as far as possible their hearts and motives. Character is far more crucial than knowledge or gifting, important though those are. Do such persons simply long for the prestige of the title of elder or pastor, or do they have a genuine desire to serve God and his people? Have they demonstrated that servant attitude already, doing the work of ministry without the title? Are they as ready and eager to do the most humble aspects of the work of the church—setting up and taking down chairs, serving refreshments, visiting the sick and elderly—as they are for positions in the public eye? Finally and most profoundly, is the mark of God’s call to ministry evident in their lives, so that God’s people have been convinced they fit the Biblical qualifications? It is a fearful responsibility to lead God’s people, and not one to be taken up lightly.


DATHAN AND ABIRAM’S COMPLAINT

The second complaint came from Dathan and Abiram and was directed against Moses himself. They refused to meet with Moses and flung his own words back in his face. Moses had said to Korah in essence, “Isn’t it enough that God gave you Levites the work of the tabernacle?” (v. 9). Dathan and Abiram said to Moses, “Is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness?” (v. 13). The heart of their complaint was that Moses had not delivered what he promised. Instead of bringing them into a land flowing with milk and honey, the land of Canaan, they argued, he had brought them into a wilderness that made the land they left, Egypt, seem like a land of milk and honey (vv. 13, 14). They asked, “Will you put out the eyes of these men?” (v. 14), which is an idiomatic way of saying, “Can you make us blind to the realities we see around us?”3 In other words, “You may have tricked everyone else into blindly following you, but we see clearly what you have done.” They were arguing that Moses had deliberately deceived the people for his own ends.

Dathan and Abiram were people who were disappointed in God. Their experience of his way had not lived up to their expectations, and so they took their disappointment out on the leaders of God’s people. Once again, even though Moses was their ostensible target, it was the Lord against whom they were really in rebellion. The Lord was the one who brought them out of Egypt, not Moses. He was the one who made the promise to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, a promise that could have been fulfilled by now were it not for the unbelief of the people. The reason their present circumstances were so dire was the result of their own sin, not the failure of Moses or of the Lord. Nor had Moses himself profited from his position: he had not taken anyone’s donkey, nor had he wronged anyone in any other way (v. 15). Their accusation was without foundation.

In fact, even though they rebelled together, the charges leveled by Dathan and Abiram were fundamentally different and more sinister than those brought by Korah and the Levites. Korah’s complaint at least presupposed the existence of the Lord and sought higher status within the covenant community. Dathan and Abiram, on the other hand, made no reference to the Lord in their complaint. In fact, they assumed the nonexistence of the Lord, or at least his practical irrelevance.5 They assumed that Moses was the key figure, a magician who had made startling claims but then was unable to deliver the impressive trick he had promised. While Korah assumed that leadership was all about status and privilege, Dathan and Abiram declared that it was about power and pragmatic effectiveness. None of them understood Biblical leadership, which is about divine calling to service.

The same misunderstandings often rear their heads in the contemporary church. Some want leadership in the church for the prestige it brings, and some are quick to criticize if results seem less impressive than another church down the road. Biblical leaders, however, serve because God has called them to that position and recognize that sometimes even those whom God has called may not see dramatic visible results. The prophet Isaiah had as clear a call to preach from the Lord as possible, yet in the very next breath he was informed that few would respond to his ministry (Isaiah 6:9, 10). Pragmatic thinking will often find godly leadership unimpressive. This should not surprise us or dishearten us, for we follow the way of the cross, in which God’s power is made all the more evident by the personal weakness of those whom God has chosen as his leaders (see 2 Corinthians 4:1–11). Our shortcomings make the glory of God’s grace shine out all the more clearly.


GOD’S RESPONSE

The result of the opposition of the southsiders was to bring the whole assembly of God’s people into danger. Korah had claimed that every one of the Israelites was holy and could approach the presence of the Lord. Yet the Lord himself had said that anyone apart from Moses and the priestly tribe of Aaron who approached him would be put to death (3:38). Those who believed Korah’s words would inevitably find death instead of the freedom that he claimed to bring. That is always the way it is with sin: it offers freedom to those who are “liberated” from God’s Law, but in the end all it delivers is death. At first it seemed that the death penalty would be exacted on the entire assembly, but then Moses and Aaron fell facedown once more before the Lord and interceded for them (v. 22). They asked the Lord, “shall one man sin, and will you be angry with all the congregation?” They asked the Lord for an opportunity for the people to distance themselves and their families from the rebellions of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.

That is exactly what they received. The Lord instructed the assembly to move away from the southsiders’ camp (v. 24). Those who distanced themselves from this rebellious spirit would live, while those who identified themselves with the rebels would die, along with their families. Moses warned the people that the earth would swallow up Dathan, Abiram, and Korah, along with their wives and their children and their little ones (vv. 23–27). That was exactly what transpired (vv. 31–33). The Lord demonstrated graphically that he is neither dead nor irrelevant but is capable of bringing those who show him contempt into judgment (v. 30).


COVENANTAL RESPONSIBILITY

This form of judgment also demonstrates the principle of covenantal responsibility, whereby the sins of the family head are charged also to his children. Here the sins of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram had fatal implications not just for themselves but for their whole families, from infants on up (v. 32). There was no “age of accountability” below which the children were spared. All those who were in the families of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram were judged together and died together. They paid the penalty for the defiant sin of their family head. Yet covenantal responsibility flows in a positive direction as well, conveying life as well as death. The infants of the other families camping nearby were not consulted by their parents before being dragged away; yet they were brought to safety through their parents’ actions.

The covenantal nature of this separation between life and death is itself a small-scale reenactment of the grand covenantal separation that will take place on the last day. There will be only two family groups in that final judgment—those who are in Adam and those who are in Christ. Those in Adam, who have only been born once, have received his sinful nature and the condemnation that accompanies it (Romans 5:12–14). They are destined for death because of Adam’s rebellion, which they have themselves reenacted in their own lives from the moment of birth onward. However, those who have been born a second time by the Spirit of God are in Christ and receive from him his perfect nature and the justification that accompanies it (Romans 5:18, 19). What is more, the promise of this life-giving Spirit is given covenantally, not just to believers but to believers and their children (Acts 2:39). When we baptize our children, we are, as it were, dragging them away from the rebellion of Korah and his followers onto safer ground. We are signing and sealing to them the covenant of grace, warning them of the danger that hangs over all who are in Adam and pointing them to the precious promises of life in Christ. We are telling them that these promises are made to them and are theirs as they trust Christ and submit their hearts to him.

What is more, in the mercy of God the negative covenantal connection is not unbreakable. Even though Korah and his family were swallowed alive and 250 of his followers were burned up by fire from the Lord, not all of Korah’s descendants perished. In Numbers 26, when the second census is taken, it becomes clear that even though Dathan and Abiram were completely cut off and left without descendants, this was not the case for the line of Korah (vv. 9–11). How can this be? The only explanation for this phenomenon is that some of Korah’s family broke out of their natural covenant loyalty to their father and crossed over to the other side. They joined the rest of the community in leaving the tents of Korah, and so they lived when the rest of their kinfolk died. It is the same way with you: even if you do not have believing parents or family members, there is no reason why you should die with Adam. The grace of God is extended to you too, summoning you to come out from those who are condemned to eternal death. The doorway to life is open to you too in Christ: come into his family, receive his righteousness, and you too will live.


GOD’S LEADERS CONFIRMED

If the swallowing alive of Dathan and Abiram and their families was visible disproof of their claim that the Lord was either dead or irrelevant, then the fire from the tabernacle that consumed Korah’s 250 priestly pretenders was visible disproof of Korah’s claim of priestly equality (v. 35). He had said that all Israel was holy and could safely approach the Lord; yet when the claim was tested, it was found false. Only those whom God had chosen could approach him safely; all others would die, just as he had warned them earlier (3:10, 38). The remains of the bronze censers with which they had tried to offer incense were hammered into an overlay for the altar of sacrifice as a permanent reminder of this state of affairs (v. 39). Only the one whom God had chosen could draw near to him. There is no truth in the claim that all roads lead to God. Apart from the one he has chosen, all roads lead to a consuming fire.

The conclusion of the passage shows us clearly the falsehood of the charges against Moses and Aaron. Far from being just like everyone else, Aaron was indeed distinct from the community, called by God to a special role, not so he could lord it over the community but so he could serve. As priest he was the mediator for all, not their master. Far from bringing the community from the land of life to death, Moses was the one who repeatedly saved the community from the judgment of God’s wrath. Far from being an ineffective and irrelevant deity, the Lord was the one who could and would carry out his judgments of death on those who showed contempt for him. Yet at the same time he is also a gracious God who spared the undeserving, or the whole community would long since have been terminated. Far from people needing to have their eyes blinded to believe the truth of these things, you would have had to be blind not to recognize them. God’s sovereignty was vindicated, and the leaders he chose were affirmed.


A BETTER MEDIATOR

Yet Israel needed a better leader than Moses and a more powerful mediator than Aaron. Moses was in the end unable to bring his people into the Promised Land because he had sins of his own. Aaron could stand before the Lord and intercede, but he could not bring spiritually defiled people into God’s life-giving presence. All the bulls and goats he offered and all the incense he burned could not effect the radical change they needed in their standing before God. The formula that Paul pronounces in 1 Corinthians is not, “As in Adam all die, so in Moses and Aaron all will be made alive” (see 15:22). The leadership of Moses and Aaron points us beyond themselves to the one who was yet to come.

Jesus took upon himself all of the guilt that we inherited from Adam, along with that which flows from our own sins. As Paul put it in Romans 5, through the disobedience of one man, Adam, sin first entered the world, and along with sin came death (v. 12). But now through the obedience of Jesus Christ, the second Adam, God’s gracious gift of life has come into the world (Romans 5:15–17). On the cross Jesus, the holy one, experienced the burning fire of God’s wrath against all that is unholy. The one who of all people had the most right to draw near to God met the fate of those who are by nature excluded from God’s presence. Death swallowed him up as he descended into the grip of the tomb for three days. In fact, we could say that the fate that the rebellious sinners experienced in Numbers 16 was his fate, even though Jesus had not rebelled as they did.

Why should holy Jesus share the fate of the unholy at the cross? The reason is simple. He covenantally identified himself with sinners, sharing their destiny so that they might by grace share the destiny that he had merited through his perfect obedience. His death was the fate I deserved for my rebellious heart. He took on himself my judgment, and he transferred to me the vindication he had earned. He went down to the dead, so that in him I might ultimately ascend to the true promised land of milk and honey, Heaven itself. If it were true that all are equally holy and can approach God in themselves, why would the death of Jesus be necessary? The cross would have been a wasteful tragedy. Yet if his death is absolutely necessary for us to be made holy, how could any of us presume to approach God by any other way than through his blood?


THE ANSWER FOR JEALOUSY AND PRAGMATISM

Since God has loved us and gave himself for us, how then can we rebel against the leaders whom God has appointed and thus show contempt for him? Are you jealous of the positions others have in the church? The cross is the answer for our jealousy that others have been given gifts and positions in Christ’s church that we have not. At the cross Jesus purchased us to be his servants, giving him the absolute prerogative to assign us our places in his kingdom, be they small or great. As we contemplate the cost of the cross, we recognize that great suffering and responsibility often goes hand in hand with great privilege in God’s kingdom. There is therefore reason to thank God if he has given us a less challenging and exalted calling than he has given to others. It is our glory to be found obediently doing what God called us to do, whether that task is small or great.

The cross is also the answer to our doubts about the Lord’s presence and effectiveness in our lives. Like Dathan and Abiram, we may sometimes question the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We perhaps expected greater successes or more comfortable circumstances, and so we ask, “What is life doing with me? Why is my situation so much worse than it used to be or than I think it ought to be?”

These questions are not wrong in themselves, but they can easily spill over into an angry resentment toward God and those he has set in authority over us. The reality is that in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, God is neither dead nor absent. Life is not doing anything with us; it is the sovereign God who is doing something with us. The cross reminds us that whatever the difficulties of our present situation, God does care about us. Whatever people may have done to us, God is still in control.

When we seek to discern in the light of the cross what God is doing in and with us in the midst of many challenges and disappointments, our grumbling hearts are reminded that these circumstances too are part of his perfect sanctifying program for us. The Lord knows our strengths, and he knows our weaknesses. He knows the means by which he will ultimately present us to himself as part of his spotless church. In the meantime it is our glory to submit to his direction and leading, through those who in his wisdom he has placed over us, whether the paths he leads us along pass through sunny meadows or steep and winding trails. In the light of the cross we may be confident that in the end he will indeed bring us to the place he has prepared for us, where all of our disappointments will be over, transformed by the joy of his presence.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 199–209). Crossway Books.

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.

NUMBERS 13-14

The course of history is littered with “almost” victories. These are battles that could probably have been won, yet some small failure changed the direction of events. The Battle of Gettysburg would have been a very different affair if the Confederate forces had pressed on and occupied the high ground of Little Round Top at the end of the first day, when it was still open. The Battle of Waterloo could easily have gone the other way if the French had succeeded in capturing the crossroads of Quatre Bras. One small misstep for man, but a giant leap in the direction of history.


CONTENDERS AND DEAD-ENDERS

The same may be true in the lives of individuals as well. In the movie On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando played a promising boxer who bowed to Mob pressure and intentionally lost an important bout in return for a small payoff. Years later he was still wracked by the effect that loss had on his life, cutting short his boxing career. Now instead of being a sports superstar he was just another dock laborer, condemned to a dead-end job. His whole existence was summed up in one immortal line, “I could have been a contender.” Having lost his opportunity through one bad decision, could he ever recover it? His once-hopeful life seemed destined for emptiness.

Perhaps that is where we find ourselves. We may be wrestling with a decision that still has to be made, the consequences of which will be lasting. Or maybe we have to decide whether or not to resist the pressures that the forces of evil are exerting on us; it has yet to be determined whether or not we will be a contender. Or we may be struggling with the ongoing effects of a bad decision we made many years ago, the fruit of which is still very much in evidence in our lives. In our case the question is rather, what hope is there for failed contenders? The answers to these questions are addressed in the narrative of Israel’s wanderings in Numbers 13, 14. When the end of their journey seemed to be in sight, the Israelites snatched defeat from the jaws of victory through their unbelief, going from contenders to dead-enders without a blow being struck.


SCOUTING THE LAND

At this point in the story, Israel stood on the brink of entering the Promised Land. The Lord had faithfully brought her out of Egypt and through the wilderness, and now the land of Canaan lay in front of them. He then commanded them to send out a task force to examine the land, made up of representatives from each of the twelve tribes (13:2). Unlike the two men Joshua would later send to Jericho, these men were not really spies in the technical sense of the word. There was no attempt at concealment on their part, which would in any event have been difficult with such a large party. Rather, they were scouts sent out to gather data on the land to be taken, prior to the anticipated military campaign.1 They were to report on the nature of the land and its inhabitants and to bring back a sample of its fruit (13:17–20). The goal of their mission was not to decide whether entering the land was possible or desirable: the Lord had already reminded Israel that this was the land he was giving to them (13:1). All they had to do was receive it as a gift. Nonetheless, any major military undertaking requires good intelligence so that the best strategy can be evaluated. God’s promise did not eliminate the need for responsible action.

In many respects their trip was a success. The scouts were able to roam the whole land from the southern end, where they entered it, all the way up to the northern border at Lebo-hamath (13:21). The main focus of their time was spent around Hebron (13:22), an area that resonated with memories of historical events that should have stimulated their faith. This was the place where the patriarchs were buried, a place as central to the history of their nation as Plymouth Rock or Fort McHenry are for the history of the United States. There they should have been reminded once again of God’s promise to give this land to Abraham and his descendants and of God’s faithfulness in fulfilling his promises thus far. He had brought them out of Egypt and made them into a great nation, just as he had promised Abraham (Genesis 15:5, 13–15). Certainly the scouts saw for themselves the abundant fruitfulness of the land, in the shape of a single bunch of grapes that was so large it took two people to carry it, along with pomegranates and figs (Numbers 13:23). For forty days they traversed the land safely, scouting it out without opposition or apparent danger.


TWO REPORTS

At the end of that time the tribal representatives brought their conclusions to Moses and the people. Like many committees, they couldn’t reach a consensus and so returned with a majority and a minority report. The facts were not at issue between the two sides. Everyone agreed, on the one hand, that the land was fertile and prosperous and, on the other, that its inhabitants were a powerful force to be reckoned with. The key difference between the majority and the minority was where to put the “but” in their report. For the ten-man majority, the defining “but” was the people who inhabited the land. Every part of the land was occupied; all four of the major geographical regions—the Negeb, the hill country, the area beside the sea, and the Jordan valley—had inhabitants who were powerful and lived in large, fortified cities (13:28, 29). There was no uninhabited portion where they might comfortably occupy the land without opposition. They saw the fortifications of the cities, which were indeed substantial. Archaeological explorations suggest that the walls of these cities were thirty to fifty feet high and fifteen feet thick.2 What is more, the men who lived in the land looked like giants to them, like the Nephilim of old, who were mighty and fearsome warriors (see Genesis 6:4). Who could hope to prevail against such opposition? In comparison to these enormous giants, the scouts felt like grasshoppers (13:33). Grasshoppers were the smallest edible creature in the ancient world.3 So we could perhaps render their thoughts into a modern equivalent by translating it as, “We felt like shrimps!”

There was a minority report to be considered as well, however. Joshua and Caleb saw exactly the same sights as the other ten did but drew different conclusions. Caleb blurted out the summary conclusion of their assessment: “We should definitely go up and take possession of the land, for we are certainly able to do so” (13:30).4 Joshua gave the expanded version of their report in chapter 14. He started out with the basic facts: the land they surveyed was not merely good but “exceedingly good” (14:7). He didn’t contest the powerful nature of the inhabitants of the land; yet the defining “but” in his report was not the size of the opposition but the presence or absence of God’s favor. If the Lord was pleased with them, he would lead them into the land and give it to them (14:8). Far from the Israelites being at risk of being turned into shrimp cocktail by the Anakites, it was the inhabitants of the land who were on the menu: they would be food (leḥem) for the Israelites to consume (14:9). Their gods could not protect them against the Lord; their shelter was gone (14:9). So long as the Israelites did not rebel against the Lord, they had nothing to fear from the inhabitants of the land.


WHY THE DIFFERENCE?

How could these two groups come up with such different assessments of the same facts? The answer is not hard to find. The majority completely left God out of the equation. They described the land they toured as “the land to which you [Moses] sent us” (13:27), not “the land the Lord is giving us” (compare 13:2). They saw the size and number of the inhabitants of its cities and concluded, very reasonably according to their presuppositions, that invading that land was impossible. With such adversaries and with their own limited resources, they felt they had no chance of being a contender. Like the Israelites who centuries later faced another giant foe, Goliath, they looked at the odds stacked against them and saw a task that was too great for ordinary humans to tackle. They forgot the Lord, and so they feared their enemies.

Joshua and Caleb, however, looked at precisely the same facts but from the perspective of faith, not unbelief. Joshua’s very name expressed his faith in the Lord. His name at birth was Hoshea, “salvation,” but Moses gave him the name Yehoshua or Joshua, “the Lord saves”—a small shift, yet a crucial one (13:16). It is one thing to have faith in salvation. That may simply represent the generic hope expressed in a thousand Hollywood movies that if you only believe strongly enough, something will turn up at the crucial moment. It may simply be faith in faith, belief in the power of believing. The name Yehoshua, however, expressed the specific hope that at the crucial moment someone would turn up. Joshua had faith in the saving presence of the Lord, Israel’s God.

That specific faith in the Lord’s presence and favor with his people was what drove Joshua and Caleb’s interpretation of the facts in front of them. They saw the same warriors as the majority did, protected by the same city walls, and yet concluded that those pagan nations not only could be but must be defeated. Like David facing Goliath, they saw their opponents according to a true scale. The difference between the majority and the minority reports was simply that the minority included God in their calculation. David saw Goliath not as a giant to be tackled by a small and ill-equipped shepherd boy but as a wild animal who had reared up against the sovereign Lord and would inevitably face the deadly consequences. So too Joshua and Caleb saw the inhabitants of Canaan merely as mighty obstacles that God would inevitably overcome so his purposes could be fulfilled. The Lord who had parted the Red Sea in front of his people would not abandon them now. Giants may seem enormous from the perspective of the shrimps, but comparing them with the power of the Almighty tends to cut them down to size. If you fear the Lord, you will be free from the fear of your enemies; if you forget God, you will inevitably fear men.5


THE EYE OF FAITH

The same is also true in our experience. If we simply consider the obstacles that face our churches or the difficulties that we face as individuals, it is easy to conclude that we are overmatched and must inevitably fall short and fail. Humanly speaking, that may be an accurate assessment of reality. We have all sometimes felt like grasshoppers surrounded by giants on all sides. Our lives are full of impossible challenges, humanly speaking. Do you or I have the power within us to bring our neighbor to faith in Christ or to persevere in a difficult relationship at home or at work or to conquer a personal besetting sin? Humanly speaking, none of us do.

However, the eye of faith recognizes that in this world, reality is not accurately measured whenever we are “humanly speaking.” This is God’s world, in which his Word and his promises must ultimately prevail. No matter how great the opposition, if the Lord is pleased with us, our future is assured. If God is calling a neighbor to himself, then even our weak and fumbling words can be the door to eternal life for him or her. If the Lord strengthens us, then not only can we endure a difficult relationship, but we can shine within it as beacons of godly, self-sacrificial love. If God is at work in our hearts, we have not only the hope but the assurance that one day we will be done even with our most pervasive besetting sins. This knowledge is the bedrock that has enabled the saints of the past to endure great persecution and to step out in radical acts of faith and obedience. Humanly speaking, Joshua and Caleb’s actions may have looked utterly foolish; but God was pleased with them, and so they endured. They feared God, and so they were freed from the fear of men.


THE IRRATIONALITY OF UNBELIEF

Unfortunately, the response of the people of Israel was not faith in the Lord but grumbling and rebellion. Instead of being motivated to obey, they sought to stone Joshua and Caleb for their words of faith (14:10). They believed the assessment of the majority report and grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said,

  Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt? (14:2, 3)

They were even ready to elect a new leader and go back to Egypt, reversing the whole course of the exodus. This entailed a complete rejection of the Lord and of Moses, a rejection of the salvation the Lord had promised them and the mediator he had chosen to lead them.

Notice, though, how fundamentally irrational their unbelief was. The majority report was logically flawed. Contradicting the good report about the nature of the land that the scouts gave Moses at first, the majority spread a bad report among the people, saying that the land devoured those living in it (13:32). Yet in the very next breath they went on to describe its inhabitants as giants! Think about that for a moment. How could a barren land produce such fearsomely well-nourished inhabitants? It doesn’t add up. Nor does the complaint of the people make any more sense. How could it be better for them to have died in Egypt or in the wilderness than to face death at the hands of the Anakim? Is certain death sooner preferable to possible death later? Does it make sense to believe that the Lord poured out earth-shattering plagues on Egypt, parted the Red Sea in front of his people, and then fed them miraculously with manna in the wilderness only to have them fall at the hands of the inhabitants of the Promised Land? Does God do one dramatic series of miracles in the lives of his people only to fail at the last hurdle, leaving them tantalizingly short of what he promised? That doesn’t make sense.

Isn’t our unbelief equally irrational though? We believe and proclaim that our God created the universe out of nothing; yet we find it hard to believe that the results of a particular medical test belong to him. We believe and proclaim that our God directs the courses of kings and nations and that he has transformed our own dead hearts into living, responsive flesh; yet we find it hard to believe that he can bring our stubborn friends and neighbors to faith in himself. We believe and proclaim that our God entered history as a baby in Bethlehem; yet we find it hard to believe that he is active in our own personal history, holding our hand through the events of this week and the next. We believe and proclaim that he suffered on the cross for our sins and rose again triumphant from the grave to free us from our sins; yet we find it hard to believe that this particular sin of ours could ever be forgiven or that the power of that sinful habit could ever be broken. Our unbelief is always fundamentally irrational, a sinful refusal to fear God, which results equally inevitably in a sinful fear of people and circumstances. It is as irrational for us to cling to our unbelief as it is for a drowning man to cling to a heavy stone.


GOD’S VERDICT ON ISRAEL

The decisive verdict in this story in the book of Numbers, though, was not Israel’s verdict on their God but his verdict on them. Ultimately their fate rested not on what they thought of him so much as it did on what he thought of them. Just as there are two verdicts by the scouts on the land, so there were two verdicts by God on his people—an initial verdict of judgment and a final verdict of salvation.

The initial verdict of God was the threat of death upon the whole people and a new beginning for Israel through Moses. God declared in his wrath:
 
  How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they. (14:11, 12)

This was not the first time that God had made such a threat. He said the same thing to Moses in Exodus 32:9, 10 after the incident with the golden calf. Had the Lord really intended to carry through such a judgment on his people, he could easily have carried it through immediately. Given their persistent infidelity, Israel would hardly have had grounds for complaint. Yet in both places it is striking that God spoke the threat to Moses instead of executing it at once. It is almost as if God was cuing Moses to intercede on behalf of his people so that they might be spared.6 In each case that is exactly what Moses did, and the threat was then (partially) lifted. Through the intercession of Moses, lives were spared—if not the lives of the adult generation, at least those of their children, and their children’s children who were as yet unborn.


INTERCESSION

The intersection of God’s eternal sovereign will and our prayers of intercession is, on some levels, a profound mystery. The best theological minds through the ages have had difficulty in expressing fully how a sovereign, eternal God can listen and respond to the prayers of temporal human beings while still carrying out all of his holy will exactly as he designed it from all eternity. Yet the reality and effectiveness of intercession on behalf of others is a constant Biblical theme, albeit one we are far more likely to confess with our mouths than act on consistently. The Bible tells us that the non-Christian world around us stands under God’s judgment of death. They have earned the verdict of eternal separation from God as the wages of their “God-free” lifestyle. Yet it also states that by means of our intercession, we may see some of those prisoners freed from condemnation. By the power of prayer, sinners are brought from death to eternal life. If we really heeded the cues that follow from that Scriptural truth, how much more time would we spend on our knees daily, interceding for our friends and neighbors?

Moses’ prayer of intercession was based on two equally fundamental Scriptural truths: the requirements of God’s glory and God’s merciful nature. He pleaded for his fellow-Israelites first on the basis of the requirements of God’s glory (14:13–16). If the Lord were to blot out the Israelites at this point, the Gentile nations around them would misunderstand his reasons. They had heard that the Lord’s name was linked with this people, that he had brought them out of Egypt, and that he had gone through the wilderness with them. If God were to kill them now, the nations might think it was because he was unable to bring his people into the land, and they would be confirmed in their unbelief. The Lord’s glory might be tarnished.

Second, though, Moses pleaded for the people on the basis of God’s mercy (14:17–19). He quoted the Lord’s own description of himself from Exodus 34:6, 7: the Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love, and forgiving sin and rebellion, yet not leaving the guilty unpunished. He does not falsify the Scriptural record by only quoting the first half of God’s self-description. On the contrary, Moses acknowledges that the Lord is a God of both justice and of mercy; yet he asks that in accordance with his great ḥesed, the Lord’s covenantal faithfulness to his people, he would be reconciled with them in spite of their continuing record of sin.

Both of these motivations should feature prominently in our own prayers of intercession. Why do we ask God to respond to our prayers? It is “for your name’s sake,” so that he might receive the glory he deserves. Why do we ask him to change our neighbor’s heart toward him? It is so that the Lord might be glorified by another soul captivated by his beauty. Why do we ask him to strengthen our churches and add new people to them? It is so that we might more adequately and fully declare his praises in those places. Why do we ask for victory over our sins? It is so that our hearts might be more free to glorify him and delight in his presence. Praying for the sake of God’s glory will dramatically reshape what we pray for and the way we pray for ourselves and those around us.
What is more, if we ask, motivated by God’s glory, we will also be comforted when he does not answer our prayers in the way we had hoped. If God is more glorified in my continuing weakness, suffering, or even failure, then my prayer has nonetheless been answered when I remain weak or suffering. If God is more glorified by enabling me to rejoice in him in spite of a door being closed in front of me or a deep longing in my heart going unfulfilled, then my prayer for his glory has been answered. If God is more glorified by my failure than he would be by my success, then my prayer has been answered even when my best endeavors to serve him have been shipwrecked. If God is my servant or my partner, then my failure means that God has let me down. However, if God is my Master who does all things for my good as well as for his glory, then I can know that he has a glorious purpose in even the most inglorious circumstances of my life. It would be perverse indeed for me to pray for something and then complain because God gave it to me wrapped in a different form from the one I had anticipated.


JUSTICE AND MERCY

We should also pray with awareness of God’s nature as a God of both justice and mercy. Often we tend to reduce God down to our size in one direction or the other. Either we conceive in our minds a God who is all justice, ready to condemn us for the least infraction and uncaring about the fate of those whom he created, or conversely (and more commonly in our culture) we think of God as being all love and compassion, easily placated by a cursory nod from us in his direction while we continue to live our lives in rebellion against him. Neither of these pictures is Biblical. God is indeed slow to anger, compassionate, and gracious toward those who are his people. Yet he is also a God of flaming and uncompromised justice who cannot simply ignore rebellion and sin. We must recognize both aspects of God’s character in our prayers: he is a God who has the right to condemn us to eternal judgment with perfect justice, yet has also promised to be a faithful and loving God to all who come to him through faith in Christ. He has promised to be our God and the God of our children after us and the God of all those whom he calls to himself (Acts 2:39). That is the basis for our bold and passionate intercession on behalf of the children of believers and for others around us who do not yet know him, asking God by his grace and mercy to call them too into a living relationship with himself.

God’s mercy does not eliminate justice in his dealings with Israel. The Lord responded to Moses’ intercession by agreeing to continue his relationship with this people, as Moses requested. Nonetheless, his passion for his glory meant that he could not overlook their sin. This generation that saw his glory in the exodus and yet still did not believe would end up given over to a fitting punishment (14:21–35). Would they rather die in the wilderness than enter the land? So be it; that would be their fate (14:29). Would they rather go back to Egypt than enter the Promised Land? So be it: the next leg of their journey would be back toward the Red Sea rather than onward to Canaan (14:25). The children whom the parents feared would become slaves would be the ones who would experience the freedom of life in the land, while the older generation would die out over forty years in the wilderness—one year for every day of the scouting party’s journey (14:31–34). Out of the original generation, only Joshua and Caleb would live to see God’s promise fulfilled. The remainder of the scouting party were immediately struck down with a plague, a kind of firstfruits of the larger judgment to come (14:37).

If God is a God of justice as well as mercy, though, how can any of us survive? The people of Israel were not radically transformed by their experience of the Lord’s mercy. Even though they mourned bitterly, they were far from repentant in their hearts. They were sorry for the effects of their sin, but not for the sin itself. You can see that was the case from the fact that their very next act was a continuation of their unbelief. Instead of following the Lord’s instructions and setting out back toward the Red Sea, they set out to try and take Canaan in their own strength (14:40). In spite of Moses’ warning that they would not succeed, they set off presumptuously to try to reverse the judgment on themselves. Earlier they refused to enter the land because of unbelief; now they tried to enter the land out of unbelief. Unsurprisingly, they were frustrated and ended up beaten back by the inhabitants of the land (14:45). Without the Lord’s help, they should indeed have been afraid to take on the giants who occupied the land.


MERCY AND FAITHFULNESS

What could God do with such a stubborn and rebellious people? How long would he continue to bear with a people who showed him such contempt? The answer is, however long it would take to accomplish his sovereign purposes and fulfill his promises. He would not abandon them but would instead do exactly what he had promised. This is good news for us too. We also daily fail to obey him, choosing to believe in the promises of our idols rather than in the word of the living God. We too daily fail to attempt the things he has commanded us because of unbelief. We too daily set out to try to accomplish all manner of good things, but in our own strength, without his presence, as if it didn’t really matter whether we had God’s blessing or not. We too daily seek to confront our sins, husband our wives, parent our children, pursue our careers, and build our homes on the world’s terms, or in accordance with the Lord’s terms but without the Lord’s presence. We truly deserve nothing other than God’s judgment and contempt.


THE TRIUMPH OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS

Yet such is not what God has shown us. God’s mercy and faithfulness triumph even over our persistent sin. Instead of condemning us for our unbelief and putting us to death in the wilderness, he has taken our faithlessness and laid it on Jesus Christ. This sacrifice is how the Lord can be a God of both justice and mercy. At the cross, mercy and justice joined hands as God’s glory was made manifest most fully. Jesus Christ, our faithful pioneer, walked through this sin-tangled world with perfect righteousness not for forty days but for thirty-three years. In so doing, he earned life through his faithfulness, not just for himself but for all those who are united to him by faith. In his perfect life, God’s righteous demands on us are satisfied. In his substitutionary death, God’s justice is satisfied, and at the same time his mercy is displayed to outcasts and rebels. Everyone who looks to him and cries out in the wilderness, “Lord Jesus, be merciful to me, a sinner” finds in him God’s invitation to eternal rest. That offer is open to you, no matter who you are or what you have done. You don’t need to strive in your own strength any longer or to lament the depth of your failure. You are indeed no contender in the fight for eternal significance and never could have been, but Jesus Christ has contended for you and has won the victory on your behalf.

If that is true, what opposition in this world shall we fear? If Christ has completed the pilgrimage on our behalf, what can successfully stand in our way as we follow in his footsteps? If the Lord is pleased with us, for Jesus’ sake, then no giants can bar our passage to Heaven, no walls can keep us from our heavenly inheritance. Unbelief is the only thing that can bar our access into Heaven and our enjoyment of peace along our earthly pilgrimage. Yet if Christ walks with us every step of the way, we will have a firm foundation for bold living and faith-filled obedience. Lord, we believe—help our unbelief! Ravish our hearts with such a grasp of your glory and goodness that we are overwhelmed by your presence. In the words of John Bunyan, may it be said of us:

  Who would true valor see,
  Let him come hither;
  One here will constant be,
  Come wind, come weather;
  There’s no discouragement
  Shall make him once relent
  To be a pilgrim.

  Whoso beset him round
  With dismal stories,
  Do but themselves confound—
  No lion can him fright;
  He’ll with a giant fight,
  But he will have a right
  To be a pilgrim.

  Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
  Can daunt his spirit;
  He knows he at the end
  Shall life inherit.
  Then fancies fly away,
  He’ll fear not what men say;
  He’ll labor night and day
  To be a pilgrim.


1 Jacob Milgrom, Numbers, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), p. 100.

2 Ibid., p. 105.

3 Ibid., p. 107.

4 My translation; the words “definitely” and “certainly” reflect strongly emphatic Hebrew forms.

5 See Edward T. Welch, When People Are Big and God Is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1997).

6 So Milgrom, Numbers, p. 109.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 167–177). Crossway Books.

The course of history is littered with “almost” victories. These are battles that could probably have been won, yet some small failure changed the direction of events. The Battle of Gettysburg would have been a very different affair if the Confederate forces had pressed on and occupied the high ground of Little Round Top at the end of the first day, when it was still open. The Battle of Waterloo could easily have gone the other way if the French had succeeded in capturing the crossroads of Quatre Bras. One small misstep for man, but a giant leap in the direction of history.


CONTENDERS AND DEAD-ENDERS

The same may be true in the lives of individuals as well. In the movie On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando played a promising boxer who bowed to Mob pressure and intentionally lost an important bout in return for a small payoff. Years later he was still wracked by the effect that loss had on his life, cutting short his boxing career. Now instead of being a sports superstar he was just another dock laborer, condemned to a dead-end job. His whole existence was summed up in one immortal line, “I could have been a contender.” Having lost his opportunity through one bad decision, could he ever recover it? His once-hopeful life seemed destined for emptiness.

Perhaps that is where we find ourselves. We may be wrestling with a decision that still has to be made, the consequences of which will be lasting. Or maybe we have to decide whether or not to resist the pressures that the forces of evil are exerting on us; it has yet to be determined whether or not we will be a contender. Or we may be struggling with the ongoing effects of a bad decision we made many years ago, the fruit of which is still very much in evidence in our lives. In our case the question is rather, what hope is there for failed contenders? The answers to these questions are addressed in the narrative of Israel’s wanderings in Numbers 13, 14. When the end of their journey seemed to be in sight, the Israelites snatched defeat from the jaws of victory through their unbelief, going from contenders to dead-enders without a blow being struck.


SCOUTING THE LAND

At this point in the story, Israel stood on the brink of entering the Promised Land. The Lord had faithfully brought her out of Egypt and through the wilderness, and now the land of Canaan lay in front of them. He then commanded them to send out a task force to examine the land, made up of representatives from each of the twelve tribes (13:2). Unlike the two men Joshua would later send to Jericho, these men were not really spies in the technical sense of the word. There was no attempt at concealment on their part, which would in any event have been difficult with such a large party. Rather, they were scouts sent out to gather data on the land to be taken, prior to the anticipated military campaign. They were to report on the nature of the land and its inhabitants and to bring back a sample of its fruit (13:17–20). The goal of their mission was not to decide whether entering the land was possible or desirable: the Lord had already reminded Israel that this was the land he was giving to them (13:1). All they had to do was receive it as a gift. Nonetheless, any major military undertaking requires good intelligence so that the best strategy can be evaluated. God’s promise did not eliminate the need for responsible action.

In many respects their trip was a success. The scouts were able to roam the whole land from the southern end, where they entered it, all the way up to the northern border at Lebo-hamath (13:21). The main focus of their time was spent around Hebron (13:22), an area that resonated with memories of historical events that should have stimulated their faith. This was the place where the patriarchs were buried, a place as central to the history of their nation as Plymouth Rock or Fort McHenry are for the history of the United States. There they should have been reminded once again of God’s promise to give this land to Abraham and his descendants and of God’s faithfulness in fulfilling his promises thus far. He had brought them out of Egypt and made them into a great nation, just as he had promised Abraham (Genesis 15:5, 13–15). Certainly the scouts saw for themselves the abundant fruitfulness of the land, in the shape of a single bunch of grapes that was so large it took two people to carry it, along with pomegranates and figs (Numbers 13:23). For forty days they traversed the land safely, scouting it out without opposition or apparent danger.


TWO REPORTS

At the end of that time the tribal representatives brought their conclusions to Moses and the people. Like many committees, they couldn’t reach a consensus and so returned with a majority and a minority report. The facts were not at issue between the two sides. Everyone agreed, on the one hand, that the land was fertile and prosperous and, on the other, that its inhabitants were a powerful force to be reckoned with. The key difference between the majority and the minority was where to put the “but” in their report. For the ten-man majority, the defining “but” was the people who inhabited the land. Every part of the land was occupied; all four of the major geographical regions—the Negeb, the hill country, the area beside the sea, and the Jordan valley—had inhabitants who were powerful and lived in large, fortified cities (13:28, 29). There was no uninhabited portion where they might comfortably occupy the land without opposition. They saw the fortifications of the cities, which were indeed substantial. Archaeological explorations suggest that the walls of these cities were thirty to fifty feet high and fifteen feet thick. What is more, the men who lived in the land looked like giants to them, like the Nephilim of old, who were mighty and fearsome warriors (see Genesis 6:4). Who could hope to prevail against such opposition? In comparison to these enormous giants, the scouts felt like grasshoppers (13:33). Grasshoppers were the smallest edible creature in the ancient world. So we could perhaps render their thoughts into a modern equivalent by translating it as, “We felt like shrimps!”

There was a minority report to be considered as well, however. Joshua and Caleb saw exactly the same sights as the other ten did but drew different conclusions. Caleb blurted out the summary conclusion of their assessment: “We should definitely go up and take possession of the land, for we are certainly able to do so” (13:30).4 Joshua gave the expanded version of their report in chapter 14. He started out with the basic facts: the land they surveyed was not merely good but “exceedingly good” (14:7). He didn’t contest the powerful nature of the inhabitants of the land; yet the defining “but” in his report was not the size of the opposition but the presence or absence of God’s favor. If the Lord was pleased with them, he would lead them into the land and give it to them (14:8). Far from the Israelites being at risk of being turned into shrimp cocktail by the Anakites, it was the inhabitants of the land who were on the menu: they would be food (leḥem) for the Israelites to consume (14:9). Their gods could not protect them against the Lord; their shelter was gone (14:9). So long as the Israelites did not rebel against the Lord, they had nothing to fear from the inhabitants of the land.


WHY THE DIFFERENCE?

How could these two groups come up with such different assessments of the same facts? The answer is not hard to find. The majority completely left God out of the equation. They described the land they toured as “the land to which you [Moses] sent us” (13:27), not “the land the Lord is giving us” (compare 13:2). They saw the size and number of the inhabitants of its cities and concluded, very reasonably according to their presuppositions, that invading that land was impossible. With such adversaries and with their own limited resources, they felt they had no chance of being a contender. Like the Israelites who centuries later faced another giant foe, Goliath, they looked at the odds stacked against them and saw a task that was too great for ordinary humans to tackle. They forgot the Lord, and so they feared their enemies.

Joshua and Caleb, however, looked at precisely the same facts but from the perspective of faith, not unbelief. Joshua’s very name expressed his faith in the Lord. His name at birth was Hoshea, “salvation,” but Moses gave him the name Yehoshua or Joshua, “the Lord saves”—a small shift, yet a crucial one (13:16). It is one thing to have faith in salvation. That may simply represent the generic hope expressed in a thousand Hollywood movies that if you only believe strongly enough, something will turn up at the crucial moment. It may simply be faith in faith, belief in the power of believing. The name Yehoshua, however, expressed the specific hope that at the crucial moment someone would turn up. Joshua had faith in the saving presence of the Lord, Israel’s God.

That specific faith in the Lord’s presence and favor with his people was what drove Joshua and Caleb’s interpretation of the facts in front of them. They saw the same warriors as the majority did, protected by the same city walls, and yet concluded that those pagan nations not only could be but must be defeated. Like David facing Goliath, they saw their opponents according to a true scale. The difference between the majority and the minority reports was simply that the minority included God in their calculation. David saw Goliath not as a giant to be tackled by a small and ill-equipped shepherd boy but as a wild animal who had reared up against the sovereign Lord and would inevitably face the deadly consequences. So too Joshua and Caleb saw the inhabitants of Canaan merely as mighty obstacles that God would inevitably overcome so his purposes could be fulfilled. The Lord who had parted the Red Sea in front of his people would not abandon them now. Giants may seem enormous from the perspective of the shrimps, but comparing them with the power of the Almighty tends to cut them down to size. If you fear the Lord, you will be free from the fear of your enemies; if you forget God, you will inevitably fear men.


THE EYE OF FAITH

The same is also true in our experience. If we simply consider the obstacles that face our churches or the difficulties that we face as individuals, it is easy to conclude that we are overmatched and must inevitably fall short and fail. Humanly speaking, that may be an accurate assessment of reality. We have all sometimes felt like grasshoppers surrounded by giants on all sides. Our lives are full of impossible challenges, humanly speaking. Do you or I have the power within us to bring our neighbor to faith in Christ or to persevere in a difficult relationship at home or at work or to conquer a personal besetting sin? Humanly speaking, none of us do.

However, the eye of faith recognizes that in this world, reality is not accurately measured whenever we are “humanly speaking.” This is God’s world, in which his Word and his promises must ultimately prevail. No matter how great the opposition, if the Lord is pleased with us, our future is assured. If God is calling a neighbor to himself, then even our weak and fumbling words can be the door to eternal life for him or her. If the Lord strengthens us, then not only can we endure a difficult relationship, but we can shine within it as beacons of godly, self-sacrificial love. If God is at work in our hearts, we have not only the hope but the assurance that one day we will be done even with our most pervasive besetting sins. This knowledge is the bedrock that has enabled the saints of the past to endure great persecution and to step out in radical acts of faith and obedience. Humanly speaking, Joshua and Caleb’s actions may have looked utterly foolish; but God was pleased with them, and so they endured. They feared God, and so they were freed from the fear of men.


THE IRRATIONALITY OF UNBELIEF

Unfortunately, the response of the people of Israel was not faith in the Lord but grumbling and rebellion. Instead of being motivated to obey, they sought to stone Joshua and Caleb for their words of faith (14:10). They believed the assessment of the majority report and grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said,

Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt? (14:2, 3)

They were even ready to elect a new leader and go back to Egypt, reversing the whole course of the exodus. This entailed a complete rejection of the Lord and of Moses, a rejection of the salvation the Lord had promised them and the mediator he had chosen to lead them.

Notice, though, how fundamentally irrational their unbelief was. The majority report was logically flawed. Contradicting the good report about the nature of the land that the scouts gave Moses at first, the majority spread a bad report among the people, saying that the land devoured those living in it (13:32). Yet in the very next breath they went on to describe its inhabitants as giants! Think about that for a moment. How could a barren land produce such fearsomely well-nourished inhabitants? It doesn’t add up. Nor does the complaint of the people make any more sense. How could it be better for them to have died in Egypt or in the wilderness than to face death at the hands of the Anakim? Is certain death sooner preferable to possible death later? Does it make sense to believe that the Lord poured out earth-shattering plagues on Egypt, parted the Red Sea in front of his people, and then fed them miraculously with manna in the wilderness only to have them fall at the hands of the inhabitants of the Promised Land? Does God do one dramatic series of miracles in the lives of his people only to fail at the last hurdle, leaving them tantalizingly short of what he promised? That doesn’t make sense.

Isn’t our unbelief equally irrational though? We believe and proclaim that our God created the universe out of nothing; yet we find it hard to believe that the results of a particular medical test belong to him. We believe and proclaim that our God directs the courses of kings and nations and that he has transformed our own dead hearts into living, responsive flesh; yet we find it hard to believe that he can bring our stubborn friends and neighbors to faith in himself. We believe and proclaim that our God entered history as a baby in Bethlehem; yet we find it hard to believe that he is active in our own personal history, holding our hand through the events of this week and the next. We believe and proclaim that he suffered on the cross for our sins and rose again triumphant from the grave to free us from our sins; yet we find it hard to believe that this particular sin of ours could ever be forgiven or that the power of that sinful habit could ever be broken. Our unbelief is always fundamentally irrational, a sinful refusal to fear God, which results equally inevitably in a sinful fear of people and circumstances. It is as irrational for us to cling to our unbelief as it is for a drowning man to cling to a heavy stone.


GOD’S VERDICT ON ISRAEL

The decisive verdict in this story in the book of Numbers, though, was not Israel’s verdict on their God but his verdict on them. Ultimately their fate rested not on what they thought of him so much as it did on what he thought of them. Just as there are two verdicts by the scouts on the land, so there were two verdicts by God on his people—an initial verdict of judgment and a final verdict of salvation.

The initial verdict of God was the threat of death upon the whole people and a new beginning for Israel through Moses. God declared in his wrath:
 
How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they. (14:11, 12)

This was not the first time that God had made such a threat. He said the same thing to Moses in Exodus 32:9, 10 after the incident with the golden calf. Had the Lord really intended to carry through such a judgment on his people, he could easily have carried it through immediately. Given their persistent infidelity, Israel would hardly have had grounds for complaint. Yet in both places it is striking that God spoke the threat to Moses instead of executing it at once. It is almost as if God was cuing Moses to intercede on behalf of his people so that they might be spared.6 In each case that is exactly what Moses did, and the threat was then (partially) lifted. Through the intercession of Moses, lives were spared—if not the lives of the adult generation, at least those of their children, and their children’s children who were as yet unborn.


INTERCESSION

The intersection of God’s eternal sovereign will and our prayers of intercession is, on some levels, a profound mystery. The best theological minds through the ages have had difficulty in expressing fully how a sovereign, eternal God can listen and respond to the prayers of temporal human beings while still carrying out all of his holy will exactly as he designed it from all eternity. Yet the reality and effectiveness of intercession on behalf of others is a constant Biblical theme, albeit one we are far more likely to confess with our mouths than act on consistently. The Bible tells us that the non-Christian world around us stands under God’s judgment of death. They have earned the verdict of eternal separation from God as the wages of their “God-free” lifestyle. Yet it also states that by means of our intercession, we may see some of those prisoners freed from condemnation. By the power of prayer, sinners are brought from death to eternal life. If we really heeded the cues that follow from that Scriptural truth, how much more time would we spend on our knees daily, interceding for our friends and neighbors?

Moses’ prayer of intercession was based on two equally fundamental Scriptural truths: the requirements of God’s glory and God’s merciful nature. He pleaded for his fellow-Israelites first on the basis of the requirements of God’s glory (14:13–16). If the Lord were to blot out the Israelites at this point, the Gentile nations around them would misunderstand his reasons. They had heard that the Lord’s name was linked with this people, that he had brought them out of Egypt, and that he had gone through the wilderness with them. If God were to kill them now, the nations might think it was because he was unable to bring his people into the land, and they would be confirmed in their unbelief. The Lord’s glory might be tarnished.

Second, though, Moses pleaded for the people on the basis of God’s mercy (14:17–19). He quoted the Lord’s own description of himself from Exodus 34:6, 7: the Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love, and forgiving sin and rebellion, yet not leaving the guilty unpunished. He does not falsify the Scriptural record by only quoting the first half of God’s self-description. On the contrary, Moses acknowledges that the Lord is a God of both justice and of mercy; yet he asks that in accordance with his great ḥesed, the Lord’s covenantal faithfulness to his people, he would be reconciled with them in spite of their continuing record of sin.

Both of these motivations should feature prominently in our own prayers of intercession. Why do we ask God to respond to our prayers? It is “for your name’s sake,” so that he might receive the glory he deserves. Why do we ask him to change our neighbor’s heart toward him? It is so that the Lord might be glorified by another soul captivated by his beauty. Why do we ask him to strengthen our churches and add new people to them? It is so that we might more adequately and fully declare his praises in those places. Why do we ask for victory over our sins? It is so that our hearts might be more free to glorify him and delight in his presence. Praying for the sake of God’s glory will dramatically reshape what we pray for and the way we pray for ourselves and those around us.

What is more, if we ask, motivated by God’s glory, we will also be comforted when he does not answer our prayers in the way we had hoped. If God is more glorified in my continuing weakness, suffering, or even failure, then my prayer has nonetheless been answered when I remain weak or suffering. If God is more glorified by enabling me to rejoice in him in spite of a door being closed in front of me or a deep longing in my heart going unfulfilled, then my prayer for his glory has been answered. If God is more glorified by my failure than he would be by my success, then my prayer has been answered even when my best endeavors to serve him have been shipwrecked. If God is my servant or my partner, then my failure means that God has let me down. However, if God is my Master who does all things for my good as well as for his glory, then I can know that he has a glorious purpose in even the most inglorious circumstances of my life. It would be perverse indeed for me to pray for something and then complain because God gave it to me wrapped in a different form from the one I had anticipated.


JUSTICE AND MERCY

We should also pray with awareness of God’s nature as a God of both justice and mercy. Often we tend to reduce God down to our size in one direction or the other. Either we conceive in our minds a God who is all justice, ready to condemn us for the least infraction and uncaring about the fate of those whom he created, or conversely (and more commonly in our culture) we think of God as being all love and compassion, easily placated by a cursory nod from us in his direction while we continue to live our lives in rebellion against him. Neither of these pictures is Biblical. God is indeed slow to anger, compassionate, and gracious toward those who are his people. Yet he is also a God of flaming and uncompromised justice who cannot simply ignore rebellion and sin. We must recognize both aspects of God’s character in our prayers: he is a God who has the right to condemn us to eternal judgment with perfect justice, yet has also promised to be a faithful and loving God to all who come to him through faith in Christ. He has promised to be our God and the God of our children after us and the God of all those whom he calls to himself (Acts 2:39). That is the basis for our bold and passionate intercession on behalf of the children of believers and for others around us who do not yet know him, asking God by his grace and mercy to call them too into a living relationship with himself.

God’s mercy does not eliminate justice in his dealings with Israel. The Lord responded to Moses’ intercession by agreeing to continue his relationship with this people, as Moses requested. Nonetheless, his passion for his glory meant that he could not overlook their sin. This generation that saw his glory in the exodus and yet still did not believe would end up given over to a fitting punishment (14:21–35). Would they rather die in the wilderness than enter the land? So be it; that would be their fate (14:29). Would they rather go back to Egypt than enter the Promised Land? So be it: the next leg of their journey would be back toward the Red Sea rather than onward to Canaan (14:25). The children whom the parents feared would become slaves would be the ones who would experience the freedom of life in the land, while the older generation would die out over forty years in the wilderness—one year for every day of the scouting party’s journey (14:31–34). Out of the original generation, only Joshua and Caleb would live to see God’s promise fulfilled. The remainder of the scouting party were immediately struck down with a plague, a kind of firstfruits of the larger judgment to come (14:37).

If God is a God of justice as well as mercy, though, how can any of us survive? The people of Israel were not radically transformed by their experience of the Lord’s mercy. Even though they mourned bitterly, they were far from repentant in their hearts. They were sorry for the effects of their sin, but not for the sin itself. You can see that was the case from the fact that their very next act was a continuation of their unbelief. Instead of following the Lord’s instructions and setting out back toward the Red Sea, they set out to try and take Canaan in their own strength (14:40). In spite of Moses’ warning that they would not succeed, they set off presumptuously to try to reverse the judgment on themselves. Earlier they refused to enter the land because of unbelief; now they tried to enter the land out of unbelief. Unsurprisingly, they were frustrated and ended up beaten back by the inhabitants of the land (14:45). Without the Lord’s help, they should indeed have been afraid to take on the giants who occupied the land.


MERCY AND FAITHFULNESS

What could God do with such a stubborn and rebellious people? How long would he continue to bear with a people who showed him such contempt? The answer is, however long it would take to accomplish his sovereign purposes and fulfill his promises. He would not abandon them but would instead do exactly what he had promised. This is good news for us too. We also daily fail to obey him, choosing to believe in the promises of our idols rather than in the word of the living God. We too daily fail to attempt the things he has commanded us because of unbelief. We too daily set out to try to accomplish all manner of good things, but in our own strength, without his presence, as if it didn’t really matter whether we had God’s blessing or not. We too daily seek to confront our sins, husband our wives, parent our children, pursue our careers, and build our homes on the world’s terms, or in accordance with the Lord’s terms but without the Lord’s presence. We truly deserve nothing other than God’s judgment and contempt.


THE TRIUMPH OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS

Yet such is not what God has shown us. God’s mercy and faithfulness triumph even over our persistent sin. Instead of condemning us for our unbelief and putting us to death in the wilderness, he has taken our faithlessness and laid it on Jesus Christ. This sacrifice is how the Lord can be a God of both justice and mercy. At the cross, mercy and justice joined hands as God’s glory was made manifest most fully. Jesus Christ, our faithful pioneer, walked through this sin-tangled world with perfect righteousness not for forty days but for thirty-three years. In so doing, he earned life through his faithfulness, not just for himself but for all those who are united to him by faith. In his perfect life, God’s righteous demands on us are satisfied. In his substitutionary death, God’s justice is satisfied, and at the same time his mercy is displayed to outcasts and rebels. Everyone who looks to him and cries out in the wilderness, “Lord Jesus, be merciful to me, a sinner” finds in him God’s invitation to eternal rest. That offer is open to you, no matter who you are or what you have done. You don’t need to strive in your own strength any longer or to lament the depth of your failure. You are indeed no contender in the fight for eternal significance and never could have been, but Jesus Christ has contended for you and has won the victory on your behalf.

If that is true, what opposition in this world shall we fear? If Christ has completed the pilgrimage on our behalf, what can successfully stand in our way as we follow in his footsteps? If the Lord is pleased with us, for Jesus’ sake, then no giants can bar our passage to Heaven, no walls can keep us from our heavenly inheritance. Unbelief is the only thing that can bar our access into Heaven and our enjoyment of peace along our earthly pilgrimage. Yet if Christ walks with us every step of the way, we will have a firm foundation for bold living and faith-filled obedience. Lord, we believe—help our unbelief! Ravish our hearts with such a grasp of your glory and goodness that we are overwhelmed by your presence. In the words of John Bunyan, may it be said of us:

  Who would true valor see,
  Let him come hither;
  One here will constant be,
  Come wind, come weather;
  There’s no discouragement
  Shall make him once relent
  To be a pilgrim.

  Whoso beset him round
  With dismal stories,
  Do but themselves confound—
  No lion can him fright;
  He’ll with a giant fight,
  But he will have a right
  To be a pilgrim.

  Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
  Can daunt his spirit;
  He knows he at the end
  Shall life inherit.
  Then fancies fly away,
  He’ll fear not what men say;
  He’ll labor night and day
  To be a pilgrim.


Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 167–178). Crossway Books.

In the last study we looked at an outbreak of grumbling in the midst of God’s people—a sin that we said would never be included as one of the Seven Deadly Sins, but one that nonetheless had deadly consequences. Many of those who grumbled lost their lives as God judged them for their sin and as Moses, who was himself caught up in their sin, failed to intercede for them. You might think that a series of events like that would have such a sobering effect on the community at large that no one would dream of grumbling about anything, at least for a while. Unfortunately, that was not the case. As the philosopher Hegel once astutely observed, “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” He could have been writing the epitaph of Old Testament Israel—and perhaps our epitaph as well. The reality for us is that we too often fail to apply the life lessons with which the Scripture presents us, only recognizing our mistakes after we have made them yet again.


GRUMBLING DRIVEN BY ENVY

What more do we need to learn about the sin of grumbling? Here in Numbers 12, though the sin is the same, the dynamics of grumbling are different. The occasion for the grumbling in chapter 11 was the difficulty of life in the desert. When life was hard for Israel, the temptation was to idealize the “good old days” of the past and then to complain about the present. The root of their grumbling at those times was unbelief that doubted the reality of the future promises of God and despised the goodness of the present provision of God. In this case, however, Miriam and Aaron grumbled not because they compared their present to an imagined golden past but because they compared their situation to that of someone else, in this case Moses. The root of their sin was not so much unbelief as it was envy.
Like grumbling, envy is an underrated sin today. Grumbling is perhaps our national pastime, but envy is the motor that drives our economy. Many television commercials work because they stir up envy in our hearts. We are encouraged to envy our neighbors’ car, our neighbors’ house, even things as trivial as the fluffiness of our neighbors’ towels—which is, of course, due to their using the right fabric softener. We are constantly urged to envy anything our neighbor has that we don’t. In our culture the commandment is no longer “Thou shalt not covet anything that belongs to thy neighbor” but rather “Thou shalt covet everything thy neighbor has, and thou shalt acquire as much of it as thy credit cards will permit.” Envy is no longer viewed as a sin but as a civic virtue.

Miriam and Aaron were sucked into grumbling through the path of envy. They set themselves and their situation side by side with that of Moses and found cause for complaint. Miriam was the chief instigator in this sin. Her name is listed first, and the Hebrew verb used at the beginning of Numbers 12 is feminine. Once again, though, grumbling proved to be contagious. Aaron too was caught up in the sin of grumbling along with his sister.


THE GROUND OF GRUMBLING #1: MOSES’ MARRIAGE

The first ground for their grumbling was that Moses had married a non-Israelite, a Cushite (v. 1). Cush in the Old Testament describes two separate locations: Ethiopia and Midian. Therefore, this could potentially be a reference to Zipporah, the Midianite girl whom Moses married before his return to Egypt (Exodus 2:21). However, the fact that the narrator takes the time to confirm the accuracy of their charge that Moses had indeed married a Cushite suggests that Moses had taken another wife more recently, either after the death of Zipporah or in addition to Zipporah.1 Clearly, though, the issue was the fact that Moses’ wife was not an Israelite and that Miriam and Aaron started speaking against Moses because of it.

Notice that Miriam and Aaron didn’t talk to Moses about the problem. Nor did they talk to God about the problem. Instead they simply grumbled about it, complaining to anyone who would listen about Moses’ unfitness to be the sole leader of the people. In that way they began to feel superior to Moses. This is a classic pattern, for us as much as for them. When there is an issue between us and someone else, it is much easier simply to grumble about the other person instead of going to him or her and seeking to resolve the issue. Biblically, though, the right thing to do when you see your brother or sister caught in a behavior that seems to you to be sinful is to go to him or her and raise it with him or her privately (see Matthew 18:15). Such persons may not know that their behavior is wrong or that you find it offensive. Much of our grumbling about others would be choked off at the source if we just committed ourselves to solving interpersonal problems in a Biblical manner, going first to the offending party and seeking to resolve the issue with him or her.

When we bring our concerns to another person, though, we need to be aware that sometimes the problem is with our conscience and not with that individual’s behavior. In this case there was no dispute as to the facts: Moses had indeed married a Cushite woman. The dispute was whether that was a problem. Miriam and Aaron thought Moses’ behavior was wrong, while Moses thought his behavior was appropriate. Which of them was right? In terms of the Law of God, marrying a Cushite was not a sin. At this point in the Bible there was no explicit prohibition in God’s Word against marrying outside of Israel. Yet, equally, there were plausible grounds for Miriam and Aaron’s concern. Israel had already been warned of the danger of intermarrying with the Canaanites when they came to live in the Promised Land because of the danger of being drawn away from worshiping the true God to follow idols (Exodus 34:14–16; Deuteronomy 7:3, 4). Marriage outside the covenant community was not forbidden (except for marriage to the tribes that occupied the land of Canaan); yet it was potentially risky behavior. There was the inherent danger of marrying someone who might not share your spiritual values. The key point is that it was not forbidden by God per se. Perhaps Miriam and Aaron would have claimed simply to be concerned for Moses’ spiritual welfare, but the fact is that they sought to safeguard it in the wrong way, by expanding the scope of the Law beyond what God had decreed.


DANGER: LEGALISM AT WORK

This kind of legalism continues to be a problem for the church. Out of our zeal to keep and protect God’s Law, we can easily surround it with all kinds of human traditions and regulations that may in the end choke out the intent of the Law in the first place. In our zeal to protect ourselves and others against the flood of sex and violence that the entertainment industry churns out, some would impose a complete ban on watching movies and reading novels where the Scripture does not. In an attempt to keep the Sabbath a special day for the Lord, we can surround it with so many restrictions that it becomes a day more reminiscent of the emptiness of Hell than the joys of Heaven.

What is more, we can easily confuse our personal interpretations of God’s Law with the Law itself, so that we look down on anyone who seeks to obey God’s Law in any way other than the way we deem “correct.” If we have the power to do so, we may then bind the consciences of others to do as we say. If we don’t have the power to compel others to follow us, we may look down on them as “unspiritual” and may then gossip and grumble to others about these people’s “deviant” behavior. In either case we have set ourselves up as masters and judges of others in a realm of which God alone is Lord and Judge.2 Christian liberty—the freedom to apply God’s Law in good conscience, untrammeled by the traditions and teachings of men, however well-intentioned—is an important Biblical principle.
How can you tell if you have fallen into this kind of legalism? The classic fruit of legalism is a judgmental attitude that feels proud of our law-keeping and looks down on others who don’t do things in the same way that we do. Miriam and Aaron didn’t simply think that marrying a Cushite was unwise—they felt they were better than Moses because they had more “kosher” relationships. If you think more highly of yourself than others because you don’t drink or smoke or watch certain forms of entertainment, then you are likely in the grip of this kind of legalism. Ironically, even the law of Christian liberty can become its own legalism, so that some believers look down on those who don’t exercise as much freedom as they do!

A true love for God’s Law, however, seeks to find the best way to obey God’s Word in our own lives and to help others discern for themselves what obedience would look like in their situation. True love for God’s Law never leads to pride because the more we understand the searching depths of God’s Law and its thoroughgoing claims on our hearts, the more we see the depths of our own sinfulness. And the more we recognize our own sinfulness, the more grateful we are for the good news that the perfect righteousness of Christ has satisfied the claims of God’s Law upon us. We stand before God accepted on the basis of his obedience, not our own. So where is there any room for pride?


THE GROUND OF GRUMBLING #2: LEADERSHIP ENVY

The second ground for Miriam and Aaron’s grumbling exposed the real issue in their hearts, however. The fact that the Cushite marriage was a smoke screen for their real concerns can be seen from the fact that God didn’t even address it in his response to them. The primary issue was the question, “Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” (v. 2). Here the note of envy comes out clearly. Moses had a unique place of leadership in God’s people (in spite of Miriam’s and Aaron’s thinking of his marriage as dubious), but they felt they should share that place because they too had received God’s revelation.

Perhaps this complaint was triggered by the events in the previous chapter: Moses had grumbled about his unique leadership role, and the Lord had responded by empowering the seventy elders with the gift of the Spirit (11:25). In a sense, then, the Lord had himself demonstrated that Moses was not entirely unique, and therefore Miriam and Aaron felt the time was ripe for a little more recognition for themselves. Perhaps what really chafed was that in response to that issue the Lord had chosen the seventy elders to assist Moses, and not Miriam and Aaron! In any case, the heart of their grumbling was envy: God had dealt with someone else (Moses) in a way that they felt was better than the way he had dealt with them—even though they had not married outsiders, as he had.

Envy is a potent source of grumbling in our lives as well. We too grumble because our lives aren’t as good as we imagine someone else’s to be. In envy-driven grumbling, the same two steps pertain in our case as in the case of Miriam and Aaron: we first compare ourselves to others and declare ourselves better than them, and then we compare our situation to theirs and complain because our situation is not as attractive as theirs is.
As in the case of unbelief, our perception may be a long way from reality. In the first place, our claim to be better than the other person may be based on false standards, on legalism rather than on a true assessment of God’s Law. In addition, though, our assessment that someone else’s situation is better than ours may also be flawed. In the last chapter Moses would probably quite happily have given Miriam and Aaron not only a share of his authority but all of it! He might well have said to them, “Take these people, please! Be my guest! You lead them, and I’ll go back to taking care of a few sheep. That is a much easier calling.” In fact, we might be surprised how often the very people whom we envy would actually envy us as well. That is because envy downplays everything that is positive about our situation and emphasizes the negative, while doing the opposite about the other person’s situation. Married people may envy the freedom of single people, while those who are single envy the connectedness of families. Those with important and demanding jobs may envy the lighter load of those with a simpler schedule, while those who feel stuck in a rut may envy the significance of doing a job that really seems to matter. Envy rarely sees things as they really are.


THE CURE FOR ENVY-DRIVEN GRUMBLING

If the cure for grumbling rooted in unbelief is faith, then the antidote for grumbling rooted in envy is contentment. Contentment is not a naive closing of the eyes to the difficulties that face you in your situation. Rather it is a solid assessment of who you are in Jesus Christ and a sure confidence that, no matter how difficult your life may be, it comes to you personally from the hand of your sovereign heavenly Father.

The first step toward contentment is knowing who you are in Jesus Christ. Who are you? You are an unprofitable servant, deserving eternal judgment, saved by God’s grace and mercy alone. The great saint John Newton, author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” certainly understood who he was. He had inscribed on his tombstone: “John Newton, Clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.” The knowledge of who he was gave him the humility and godly contentment that breathe through all of his writings.

The Apostle Paul knew the path to contentment through accurate self-knowledge. That is why he declared to the Corinthians, “what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). The first half of the verse doesn’t strike us as too bad: we surely want to proclaim the lordship of Christ over all things. However, the second half hits us where it hurts: “we proclaim … ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” We would typically much rather proclaim ourselves “your leaders for Jesus’ sake” and take center stage in the church. However, that is not Paul’s approach. He understood that in Christ’s kingdom, leadership means service.

If we truly understand that we too are simply unprofitable servants in God’s kingdom, how can we think of ourselves as better than those around us? Are we free from certain sins that embroil others in their grip? It is only because God in his grace has kept us out of the grip of those sins or has released us from them. It is not us; it is all his work. Are we more accepted by God because of our law-keeping than they are? Certainly not. If we are able to come into the presence of God, it is on the basis of Christ’s merits alone, not ours. So why do we think we are better than them? If we are not better than them, though, what basis do we have to envy their situation? If we recognize that we truly deserve eternal judgment, how can we be discontented with our present circumstances? Is our present life really hellish? Or is it, in fact, the perfect program of sanctification for our souls, designed personally for us by the God who is working all things together for our good? If that is true, then everything we face—good or bad—must be part of that sovereign plan. Why would we long to exchange our perfect plan for someone else’s plan of sanctification? Their plan may look easier to us, but even if it is (and remember, appearances can be deceptive), it wouldn’t meet our needs. Godly contentment cures envy-driven grumbling.


MOSES AND THE PROPHETS

The grumbling of Miriam and Aaron was not answered by Moses. His behavior in this chapter is a living affirmation of the narrator’s description of him as more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth (v. 3). Moses knew who he was before God; so he didn’t feel the need to stand up for his own rights and status. A servant doesn’t feel the need to fight for the right to bear a towel. It is only when we misconceive Christian leadership as being like the world’s model that we start to defend our turf. Instead, it was the Lord who heard the words of Miriam and Aaron and responded to them, just as he heard the earlier grumbling of the Israelites and responded in judgment (v. 2; see 11:1). The Lord summoned all three of them to the entrance of the tent of meeting, where he separated out Aaron and Miriam, summoning them forward to hear his words. Don’t miss the irony in the Lord’s way of dealing with them here. They had claimed to hear God’s words just as Moses did: now they would indeed hear the Lord’s words, but only words of judgment.

The Lord’s words to them first of all affirmed the fundamental difference between the revelation that he gave by Moses and that which came through all of the other prophetic mediators. To the prophets, God’s word came in visions and dreams (v. 6), in riddles rather than in clear speech (v. 8). But the Lord spoke to Moses clearly, face to face (literally, “mouth to mouth,” as in the ESV), not in such obscure forms. Such clear revelation by God through his servant Moses demanded their submissive respect rather than any arrogant claim of equality (v. 8).

This passage is very important for our understanding of the Scriptures as a whole. It teaches us that not all Scripture is equally clear, nor is it all to be interpreted in the same way. Sometimes you will hear people insist that prophetic books like Daniel and Revelation must be interpreted exactly like the rest of the Bible, by means of “plain, literal interpretation.”3 Thus whenever the prophets speak of Israel, these people say, they can only mean literal physical Israel, not the church. When they speak of a final battle with participants from particular named countries, that must mean a literal battle with precisely those nations. There isn’t space here to explore fully this issue, but it is important to see that this passage in Numbers teaches us that this is explicitly not the way the Bible teaches us to read the prophets. On the contrary, we should expect the prophets to contain much that is difficult and obscure (visions and dreams), in contrast to the clear and straightforward manner in which we read the writings of Moses in the Pentateuch.4


MOSES AND JESUS

There is another even more important implication of this passage though. If it is true that the revelation that came by Moses demands our reverent submission, how much more must that be the case now that we have the whole of God’s revelation in the Scriptures? The writer to the Hebrews reminds us, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (1:1, 2). In other words, the revelation that we have available to us in the Scriptures is even greater than that which came by Moses, because it includes God’s Word to us through his Son, Jesus Christ. Moses was a faithful servant of God, but Jesus is the Son, and he speaks with all of the authority of the Father (Hebrews 3:5, 6). So how shall we escape God’s judgment if we rebel and speak against Jesus Christ since he is so much greater than Moses? We have the full and final revelation of God in the completed Scripture, which demands our submission. Our hearts must be content to bow before it, accepting whatever it teaches as the undoubted revelation of God’s nature and his will for our lives. To speak against the Scripture is to speak against the authority that God himself has instituted.


JUDGMENT AND MERCY

Such acts of rebellious grumbling against the Lord lead to judgment. They certainly did in the case of Miriam and Aaron. Miriam, as instigator, was struck with a skin disease so that her skin became like snow—white and flaky (12:10). The punishment fitted the crime. She grumbled against Moses because he had married a Cushite, a woman who would likely have had darker skin than the Israelites, whether she was from Ethiopia or Midian, and God turned her skin as white as snow. In addition, her complaint was that she and Aaron too had equal access to God as channels of revelation: her punishment was a disease that excluded her permanently not merely from God’s presence but from the community of God’s people.5 Now there was certainly no chance of her ever being regarded as the equal of Moses in appearing before the Lord.

The folly of Aaron’s claim to equality with Moses was similarly exposed by the Lord. Faced with this judgment on his sister, Aaron could not go directly to God to seek its removal by himself. Instead he went to Moses to ask him to intercede for her (v. 11). Miriam’s fate depended on the intercession of the one they had wronged. So Aaron went to Moses and requested that this state of living death, like that of a stillborn child,6 might be removed from her.


THE INTERCESSION OF MOSES

How would you have responded to Aaron’s request? How do you respond when someone who has wronged you and gossiped against you comes to you to confess his or her sin? Many of us might have been tempted to rub in the appropriateness of the judgment that Miriam was facing. Not so Moses. Instead he did exactly as Aaron had requested, bringing Miriam’s need before the Lord. Notice how this confirms the reality of what the Lord had earlier told Miriam and Aaron: God not only spoke to Moses—he listened to him as well. They had a face-to-face relationship (see v. 8).

Yet in this case Moses’ intercession was only partially granted. Miriam was healed of the disease immediately, yet still had to remain outside the camp for seven days, the normal period of shameful quarantine that defilement through skin disease carried with it. Her sentence was reduced but not entirely removed. The parallel that the Lord makes between her state and that of a woman disgraced by her father shows that the issue here is not cleansing as such but bearing shame. She had to bear the disgrace of her actions for a limited time; after that she could be brought back into the camp, her sin fully atoned for. Meanwhile, the entire community put their lives on hold until Miriam was restored (v. 15).


GRACE SHOWN TO GRUMBLERS

Miriam received mercy from the Lord: she didn’t have to bear the full consequences of her actions, which would have left her permanently in the realm of death. However, she didn’t receive the same level of grace that you and I have received from the Lord. She bore her own disgrace outside the camp, but our disgrace has been fully taken from us in Jesus Christ. Our grumbling, whether flowing from unbelief or from envy, deserves nothing less than permanent death. We too should be shut out of the camp of God’s people, for our souls are defiled by the reality that skin diseases pictured for Israel. We are stillborn creatures, spiritually speaking, our wholeness eaten away by the cancer of our sin from the moment we are born. How can a holy and pure God welcome such horribly disfigured and malformed creatures into his presence?

The answer is that he has taken our disfigurement into himself in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. His perfect, pure wholeness was taken and dragged outside the camp, there to be maltreated. They disfigured his appearance with whips and with thorns; they pierced his flesh with nails and a spear. None of that awful abuse could match the experience of being disfigured with the load of our sin that he bore, however. Was he not the one with whom God spoke face to face from all eternity? Was he not the one who saw the Lord more clearly than any created being? Yet on the cross he became the one abandoned by God, the one spat upon by his own father. All of this was because he was bearing the solemn burden of our sin. He endured the pangs of death in the grave three days before he was brought back in triumph, before he emerged from the tomb victorious, interceding for those who grumbled against him and wronged him.

What is the cure for the grumbling that flows from envy? It is the cross. There God paid the price for your unworthy soul and for mine. There he purchased us back to be his servants, weak and feeble though we are. When we contemplate the greatness of his grace to us in the cross, we cannot doubt that he has our best interests at heart in the way he has brought our circumstances together, even though they are different from the circumstances of others around us. If God did not spare his own Son but freely gave him up for us, then what do we really think he is holding back from us (see Romans 8:32)? If you have been grumbling against others, come before God and freely confess your sin. Ask Jesus Christ to intercede for you with the Father. He will bring your case before the throne of God himself, and God will hear him and answer his pleas for you. Remember God’s grace to you at the cross. Let that remembrance transform your perspective on your situation into a fresh contentment with God’s plan for your life and a new determination to submit yourself to the direction of his Word, fully and completely.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 157–167). Crossway Books.

Grumbling never gets much attention as a problem. Grumbling is not one of the traditional seven deadly sins. In fact, it probably wouldn’t make it onto the list even if the list were expanded to include the fifty deadly sins. Nobody ever goes to see a counselor and says, “Help me! I’m addicted to grumbling.” There are no meetings of Grumblers Anonymous or twelve-step programs designed to cure the condition. This is certainly not because of a lack of people who suffer from the problem. Which of us has never grumbled about something in this life? We grumble about our politicians and car mechanics, our jobs and our homes, our spouses and children.

Perhaps we assume that since we all do it so often, grumbling can’t really be so bad. It is virtually our national pastime, so engrained that it has even been described as a “God-given right.”1 Only rarely is grumbling recognized in its true seriousness. In this study we will see the power of grumbling, the deadly consequences of grumbling, and God’s true remedy for grumbling. Grumbling is here exposed in all of its destructiveness; yet the good news of the Bible is that grumbling’s complaint will not be the last word.


SCENE ONE: A CAMEO PICTURE

The story unfolds in Numbers 11 in two related incidents. There is a brief cameo scene in verses 1–3, recounting the events that took place at Taberah (“burning”), followed by a much longer and more complex scene in verses 4–35, recounting what transpired at nearby Kibroth-Hattaavah2 (“graves of craving”). These two scenes work in tandem, with the second scene providing a contrast to the paradigm laid out in the first.3 As a paradigm, the first scene is stripped down to its most basic elements. First, the people grumbled against the Lord (v. 1), and he responded with anger and fiery judgment. There we see grumbling and its deadly consequences. Yet when the people cried out to Moses, he interceded with the Lord on their behalf and the judgment ceased (v. 2). Only the outskirts of the camp were consumed. There we see the remedy for grumbling: the effective intercession of the mediator God has appointed. In other words, the first scene shows us that grumbling is a sin that has potentially serious consequences, but those consequences could be averted by the intercession of Moses.

This cameo scene shows us that what is at stake in this chapter is not just the sin of grumbling. It is also the role of Moses as a prophet. An important part of the work of a prophet in Old Testament times was to intercede for the people. On the day when the Lord’s judgment was about to be poured out on his people, it was the prophet’s calling to stand between the people and their God, averting God’s wrath by intercessory prayer. This was hard and dangerous work, a task compared to standing in the breached wall of a besieged city, the most dangerous position in an assault (see Ezekiel 13:5; 22:30). Yet without faithful prophets, the people’s future would be bleak indeed. As the archetypal prophet, the pattern after whom all other prophets were framed (see Deuteronomy 18:15), Moses had both the ability and obligation to approach God and intercede for the people. This is exactly what he did at Taberah.


SCENE TWO: GRUMBLING IN FULL FLOWER

With that information as background, we are now ready to look at the second and much more complicated scene in the latter half of Numbers 11. Once again the story begins with grumbling. In this second scene, the power of grumbling becomes much clearer. The grumbling started with “the rabble,” the riff-raff (hāsapsup),4 who lived on the fringe of the camp (v. 4). This is the mixed multitude of all nationalities who came out of Egypt with God’s people but had never fully assimilated and taken on Israel’s values and standards. The grumbling then spread from the riff-raff to infect the rest of the Israelites (v. 4). Soon everyone joined in. The content of the grumbling also becomes clear in this episode: it is no longer simply the difficulty or “misfortunes” (literally, “evil,” rā) of the wilderness (v. 1), but rather the recollection of the supposed goodness of Egypt. In the imagination of the people, Egypt was now transformed into the land flowing with milk and honey—or at least the land of free fish and varied vegetables—cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic (v. 5). Meanwhile, the people complained that in the wilderness all they had to taste and look at was boring old manna (v. 6).


THE CONTAGIOUS NATURE OF GRUMBLING

Their complaint exposes a pair of important lessons about the sin of grumbling. In the first place, grumbling is extremely contagious. It is an infectious disease that is easily passed from one person to the next. It typically originates among those with little or no spiritual insight, but it can easily be passed on from them to the whole community and draw in those who ought to know better. This is true in our setting just as much as it was for them. Grumbling is a sin you can catch from others, which means that you need to be careful who you spend your time with and how you spend your time with them. I’m certainly not suggesting that you should cut yourself off from everyone who lacks spiritual maturity, but in such relationships you should certainly be aware of who is influencing whom.

The contagious power of sin means that ministry is always a messy business. One of the challenges that Israel faced constantly was balancing on the one hand their calling to incorporate Gentiles into the community of faith (as with Hobab in Numbers 10:29–32) with the danger on the other hand that such people would bring into the community their flawed worldviews and perspectives and end up leading Israel astray. That remains a challenge for the church, doesn’t it? We are certainly not free to cut ourselves off from those who most need the gospel—after all, Jesus came to call the sick, not the healthy (Matthew 9:12). Our calling as the church is to be a spiritual emergency room, not a spiritual health spa. Yet at the same time we need to recognize the dangers that come with our calling and be on our guard against the spiritual diseases that can so easily infiltrate and infect our community. In particular, we need to watch out for the communicable disease of grumbling.


GRUMBLING AND UNBELIEF

The reason why grumbling typically starts with those who have little or no spiritual insight, those on the edge of the community, is because the root of grumbling is unbelief. The vision of the grumblers was fatally flawed. Their perspective on both the past and the present was distorted. The past suddenly became a golden age in which everything had been wonderful: “Egypt! The old country! That glorious place of fish suppers and great salads! How green was the grass in the Nile valley!” Now one might well ask, “If it was really such a wonderful place, why were they so eager to leave it? What about the harsh taskmasters of Egypt, the endless making of bricks without straw?” (Exodus 5:6–21). Their memory of the past had become strangely forgetful, developing strategic holes.

Not only was their memory of the past selective and flawed, so was their perspective on the present. We might paraphrase their grumbling like this: “If I see one more piece of manna, I think I’m going to be sick. Manna, manna, manna—that’s all we ever eat anymore. Manna is boring, unattractive, and tasteless. We want some other kind of food.” That was their skewed perspective on God’s provision, and lest we be deceived into having some sympathy for them, the narrator takes the time to challenge each of their assertions in turn.

First, he points out the fact that the manna was not unattractive; on the contrary, it looked like bdellium (v. 7), a prized substance that was one of the products of the area immediately surrounding the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:12). The Israelites didn’t have to pay for the manna either: it came down free every night, along with the dew (v. 9). Nor was it boring: it could be prepared in a variety of tasty ways—ground or boiled or baked (v. 8). Given the opportunity, an ancient cooking magazine could surely have produced an issue entitled “365 Ways to Cook Manna!” Finally, far from being tasteless, it was extremely appetizing (v. 8). The NIV’s description, “like something made with olive oil,” or even that in the ESV, “the taste of cakes baked with oil,” doesn’t sound nearly as mouth-watering as it should. Much better is the translation, “it tasted like a pastry cooked with the finest oil” (HCSB). It may have looked somewhat like porridge, but it actually tasted more like the most delicious donuts. It was indeed “the bread of heaven,” as Psalm 78:24 (NKJV) calls it, the original angel food cake! This is the food that was not good enough for them!

Isn’t this what grumbling always does? Grumbling distorts your vision. It reimagines the past as a golden land, it despises the good gifts that God has surrounded you with in the present, and it completely ignores God’s promises for the future. That’s why I say that the root of grumbling is unbelief. Grumbling is an unbelief that robs you of your joy. It is the exact opposite of faith, which sees the past and present with clear eyes but has its gaze joyfully fixed on God’s promises for the future. Faith believes God’s promises to be certain, no matter what difficulties the present may hold.

This also explains why grumbling is so contagious: when we talk to people of faith, we find that strengthens our faith, for we begin to see the world through their eyes. However, when we sit with people caught in unbelief, it is very easy to have our own perspective skewed. We too can start to think more highly than we should of the past and more critically than is accurate of the present. We too can start to say, “Before I became a Christian, how easy my life was. I didn’t have to get up on Sunday mornings or give my money to the church or get along with all these people. But now—oh, how awful it is! My life is more than anyone should have to bear.” Or we may say, “Before I got married or had children or moved to my present town, my situation was so much easier and better than it is now. How miserable my life has become!” Or perhaps, “When I was in such and such a church, what a wonderful place it was. We had none of the problems there that we see with this church.” In reality, though, your past was almost certainly not as rosy as you remember it, nor is your present quite as bleak as you may think it to be.


GRUMBLING AND FAITH

But what if it we are in dire difficulties right now? Let us suppose, just for a moment, that the past really was better than life is now and that our present is truly miserable in comparison. What then? The eye of faith is fixed not in the past, nor in the present, but in the future, on the glorious things that God has promised his people. That is where solid and lasting joy comes from, unaffected by the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Imagine that Egypt was indeed a fine place to live and that the manna in the wilderness was truly miserable fare. So what? The Israelites needed to remember that they were only camping out there on the way to the land God had promised to give them. The wilderness was not their home.

This is how faith conquers the temptation to grumble. Faith laughs over short rations and hardships because it remembers that the present is not all there is. These present difficulties will only make the final rest all the sweeter. The tougher the climb, the sweeter is the rest at the top of the mountain. The more limited the food at the campsite, the better the steak tastes when we finally return to civilization. When we flew home after two years in Liberia, we stopped overnight in Amsterdam. What I remember vividly is the breakfast buffet the next morning, stuffed with all kinds of food that we hadn’t tasted for two years. Even ordinary things like fresh milk tasted so sweet because it had been so long since we had enjoyed them. Faith remembers how to look forward to the buffet! When your eyes are fixed on future glories, present trials become not only bearable but ultimately inconsequential. Faith is what conquers grumbling and leads to a life of joy.


THE GRUMBLING OF MOSES

Yet grumbling is such a powerfully contagious sin that in the wilderness it even infected Moses. Faced with a weeping people, Moses himself was caught up in the spirit of grumbling. He didn’t grumble about the food but about the people: they were an evil5 and a burden to him (v. 11). He said to God in essence, “What did I do to deserve this? Why should I be weighed down with them? Am I their mother or their nurse? Where can I get meat for them all? I cannot carry such a burden, so you might as well put me to death right now” (vv. 11–15).

In the Hebrew original, in these five verses of complaint Moses refers to himself no fewer than twenty times. This is not coincidental. Whereas faith looks to God, unbelief turns in on ourselves and our inability. Moses’ thinking had become just as skewed as that of the riff-raff, completely focused on his present pain and oblivious to the Lord’s promise of protection and provision. Instead of taking his burden to God and asking for strength, he grumbled about it. Instead of trusting God to do the good things for his people he had so confidently asserted in the previous chapter (10:29–32), Moses questioned God’s ability to do what he had promised and to provide the meat that the people craved (11:21, 22). How could even God provide meat for such a vast army? Moses was caught up in unbelief.

The result of Moses’ unbelief was that instead of interceding for his lost and straying people, he joined them in their sin of grumbling. This is a common temptation for all those in leadership over God’s flock. When the sheep are unwilling to be led in the way they should go, it is easy for us to become frustrated with them and grumble about them. However, when we grumble about our flock, we are merely revealing the unbelief in our own hearts. We have failed to believe that God will sanctify our sheep in his time. Often it is our pride that has been challenged, for we are used to taking the credit for whatever progress our flock is making. If we have faith in the efficacy of God’s sanctification program, however, and remember that it is his work through and through, we will intercede for our errant sheep instead of grumbling about them. Instead of fuming over our assignment, we will pray for our people patiently, confident that God will work in their hearts in due time to accomplish all of his purposes for them and for us.

Moses’ failure to intercede for his people posed a serious problem for Israel. In the paradigm scene, the Lord became angry and judged the people, but Moses interceded on their behalf. This time, though, there was no intercession, no one to turn away the Lord’s anger. What would happen to the grumblers if there was no one to intercede for them? Would Moses and the people all have to die for their sin?


JUDGMENT AND GRACE

What happened was a unique combination of judgment and grace, both for Moses and for the people. On the one hand, God gave the grumblers exactly what they wanted. Moses got the help he asked for, and the people got their meat. Yet the apparent similarity highlights the ultimate difference. Moses got what he sought in a way that combined judgment and blessing, while the people’s answer was entirely judgment.

Let’s look first at the way God dealt with the grumbling Israelites. They wanted meat? God gave them meat, more than they could ever have believed possible. Moses might not have been able to imagine where enough meat could be found to feed such a multitude, but God’s power was not limited by Moses’ lack of faith. The Lord simply sent a powerful wind that drove in vast flocks of quail that rained down all around the people (v. 31).6 Even those who gathered least collected ten homers (roughly sixty bushels, or more than enough to fill a pair of fifty-five-gallon drums). God never does things by half measures. The people got exactly what they asked for. Yet at the same time this demonstration of God’s power was a curse, not a blessing. Even while they were taking the first bites of their longed-for meat, the Lord’s anger burned against his people and struck down those who had had the craving for meat. They saw the demonstration of God’s power but did not live to enjoy it.

Is it too strong to say that God deals with some people in the same way today? He apparently gives to some people everything they ask of him: fame, wealth, health, and a life of ease. The psalmist saw wicked people in his day who were prospering and thriving, and it almost caused his faith to stumble (Psalm 73:2–14). But then he came to understand that though the present might seem to hold everything these people wanted, God had placed them in a slippery location, and their final destiny was death (vv. 18, 19). One of God’s most profound judgments on lost sinners is to give them everything they ask for. They are on a smooth road to destruction, with nothing to turn them around.

Yet God didn’t deal with Moses in that way. Even though Moses sinned by grumbling and though his sin would have ongoing repercussions, God dealt with him graciously. He was not struck down for his sin. Why did God deal with Moses differently from the riff-raff? They all grumbled, and they all doubted God’s Word and his goodness; yet God’s answer to the request of Moses was ultimately a blessing both to him and to the people, whereas in the case of the others the answer to their request led simply to death. The answer is that God’s grace was shown to the one he had chosen. It is not that Moses was better than the others, but rather that God’s purposes were better for him. God had chosen Moses and was gracious and merciful to him, but he showed no mercy to the others, to the outsiders. That is God’s prerogative. None of them deserved God’s mercy. Yet God is sovereign: he has mercy on whom he will have mercy and hardens those whom he will harden.

What that means is that you and I, as believers, do not have to fear that if we sinfully grumble and demand the wrong thing from God, it will lead to our destruction. If we have trusted in Christ, then we have been chosen by God for good purposes—for blessing, not curse. God is at work in us to make us holy and to present us before him blameless; having begun that good work, he will not abandon it, even though we sin (Philippians 1:6).


THE SHARING OF LEADERSHIP

Yet we still cannot take the sin of grumbling lightly. Both judgment and blessing are evident in the way that God dealt with Moses. Moses wanted someone with whom to share the burden of leading the people. God gave him what he requested in greater abundance than he could have imagined. God took from the Spirit he had placed on Moses and transferred part of it to the seventy elders (vv. 17, 24, 25). When they received the Spirit, they prophesied briefly, demonstrating that they had been empowered for leadership alongside Moses.7 Nor was the Spirit shared merely with those who were present with Moses at the time. It also fell on two other elders, Eldad and Medad, who were nowhere near Moses but were in the camp (v. 26). They too prophesied, showing that the work of the Spirit could bypass Moses altogether. God could pour out his Spirit on anyone, whenever and wherever he chose.

No wonder Joshua was concerned by this turn of events. He understood clearly the implications of this: if the Spirit could descend on anyone anywhere, then Moses’ unique role as prophetic mediator in the community might be compromised. Such a sharing of the Spirit that was in Moses necessarily diminished Moses. It is no coincidence that from this moment forward in the book of Numbers, the question of Moses’ leadership of the people became an issue. Recognizing what was at stake, Joshua urged Moses to take action immediately to stop this turn of events (v. 28). Moses, however, responded to God’s dealings with him with greater spiritual maturity than Joshua. He was not concerned about his own status, and instead of worrying about the judgment aspect he focused rather on the blessing that God was bringing. He said in essence, “Joshua, don’t worry about my reputation. Even if God bypasses my leadership altogether and gives all of God’s people gifts of leadership, that would be a wonderful thing” (v. 29). Moses had started thinking like a believer again: instead of grumbling, he was content to believe that God would work all of this together for his good.


NEEDED: A BETTER PROPHET

If even a godly leader like Moses gets angry and upset with God and grumbles, requiring God’s mercy and grace, then we need someone better than Moses to intercede for us. We need a better prophet—someone who will not only intercede for us consistently when we sin but who himself will take the wrath of God in our place. We need someone who can bear the burden of the leadership of his people on his own without growing weary and frustrated. We need someone who can stand in the gap and take the punishment we deserve. We need Jesus.

Jesus is indeed a better mediator than Moses. He does not give up on us after the first incidence of grumbling. He does not need seventy helpers to share in the ministry of intercession, for he possesses the Spirit in full measure. He is never too tired or cranky to intercede for us but, on the contrary, always intercedes on our behalf (Hebrews 7:25). This is illustrated by the events of his final night on earth. As he looked around the table at the last supper, he was surrounded by men who would either betray him or abandon him in the hours ahead. Instead of supporting him in prayer, they would fall asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane. Had I been in his position, I would surely have grumbled about the disciples I had chosen. Yet even when Peter cockily asserted that he would never deny Jesus, Jesus did not grumble. Instead he simply said to Peter, “I have interceded for you.” His High-Priestly prayer of John 17 is an extended intercession for these soon-to-be-unfaithful followers—and for us as well, who are no more reliable than they. Where Moses grumbled, Jesus interceded: he is indeed a better mediator than Moses.

What is more, Jesus himself bore the judgment curse that we deserved because of our grumbling and unbelief, and in exchange he gave us the blessing that was his by rights. Are you a grumbling unbeliever? I know that I often am. Because of my grumbling unbelief, Jesus went to the cross where he experienced the full weight of the Father’s wrath against sin. Through his uncomplaining and faithful obedience in draining the cup of undeserved suffering, Jesus earned the Father’s favor on my behalf. It is his sacrifice that enables a just and holy God to show me undeserved mercy and grace instead of the eternal death that I deserve by nature. Jesus earned that grace on my behalf, and in him I receive it free of charge.

If that is so, how can I grumble any longer? If my God has loved me that much and has paid that price to redeem me from my lostness, how can I complain about the rations he has provided along the way? How can I moan about the company and the conditions of service when Jesus has gone through the valley of death and separation from God on my behalf? God has been so faithful and so good! Keeping your eyes fixed on the cross will surely inoculate you against the temptation to grumble.


THE ANSWER TO MOSES’ PRAYER

What is more, in Christ the prayer of Moses has finally been granted. Moses longed to see all of God’s people filled with the Spirit, and on the Day of Pentecost that dream came finally true (Acts 2:14–41). Since Christ’s ascension into Heaven, the Spirit is shared not only with seventy elders but with all believers, Jews and Gentiles alike, as many as the Lord God calls to himself. That means that if you are a believer today, you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The gift of the Spirit empowers us for witness. When the Holy Spirit came on the elders, they prophesied, bringing God’s truth to bear on those around them. For them it was only a partial, temporary experience, a sign to the community of the Lord’s presence and work. For us, the Spirit’s work is permanent, an ongoing sign of the Lord’s presence and activity in our hearts. The Holy Spirit gives each of us power to witness to him, enabling us to speak to those around us about their need of a Savior and God’s provision in Christ. Grumbling and its root, unbelief, are not the only contagious things in Scripture. Faith is also contagious, and we are called to be carriers of faith, passing on the truth to everyone with whom we have contact. Whom do we plan to infect with the gospel this week? Like the common cold, the gospel is not passed on from a distance but through personal contact and close relationships. We must pray and plan, therefore, for opportunities to spread our faith to all those with whom we come into contact.

The gift of the Spirit also means that we have all been empowered to intercede for one another. One of the great works of the Spirit in the New Testament is teaching us how and for what we should pray (Romans 8:26). The Spirit takes our ill-formed requests and makes them presentable before the presence of God himself. Moses couldn’t carry the burden of intercession alone. It was too great a task for him. So, too, the work of interceding for one another in prayer is not simply a task for the pastors and elders of the church. It is a work in which we can all join. Young people are not too young to pray for their friends and for others in their church. Some older believers may be physically unable to perform other ministries, but they are never too old to intercede. Why don’t you make a list of five people for whom you will commit yourself to pray regularly? If you change the list every month, then every year you will pray for sixty people. Imagine the impact that such prayers will have, both in your church and around the world.

Unbelief works itself out in grumbling, which leads to judgment and death. Faith works itself out in thanksgiving and intercession, which leads to blessing and hope. Praise God for the gift of his Son, whose death frees us from the consequences of our unbelief. Give thanks for the gift of the Spirit, whose ministry enables us to be intercessors. Live with faith in God, looking to his promises, crying out to him on the basis of them, and grumbling will find no soil in which to take root in your heart.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 147–156). Crossway Books.

NUMBERS 9:15-10:36

Starting something new can be a nerve-racking experience. Whether it is stepping out on the first day of a new school or a new job or trying to make a new set of friends when you move into a new community, that which is new often makes us afraid. Our children sometimes find these occasions especially daunting. Many a parent’s heartstrings have been tugged as their prospective kindergartner sobs, “Come with me, Mom …” As we grow up, we realize that Mom and Dad can’t always be there to help us over the hurdles of life, but that doesn’t keep us from sometimes secretly wishing that they could be. How comforting it would be to have the constant presence of someone who really knows what they are doing with us as we launch out into a particularly challenging new venture!


A NEW START

Israel was on the verge of a new start here at the end of Numbers 9. They were about to set out from Mount Sinai where they had been camping for almost a year. It was there at Mount Sinai that God gave them his Law and the instructions for building the tabernacle, as we see in the book of Exodus. It was there that he taught them about his sacrifices and the priesthood, as recorded in the book of Leviticus. It was there that he arranged the camp and prepared them to set out on this journey, as we have seen already in the book of Numbers. Now it was time for the talking and preparing to end and for the action to start. It was time for the Israelites to put their feet into motion and begin the journey into the wilderness, marching toward the Promised Land. That was a challenging prospect for Israel. There was so much that was unknown. Where would they camp? What would they eat and drink? When would they get there? Would their mission be a success? There must have been quite a few uneasy hearts in the camp.


GOD WITH THEM

There was one thing that was not to be an unknown, however. They wouldn’t have to go into the wilderness alone: God was going to go with them. The central focus of the second half of Numbers 9 is to underline the connection between the cloud and the tabernacle. The tabernacle was the visible symbol of God’s presence in the midst of his people, the tent of their heavenly King at the center of the camp. It was not just an empty symbol, however: it was inhabited by the cloud of God’s glory that descended onto it on the very day it was first set up (v. 15). This descent of God’s glory demonstrated that God would indeed dwell in the midst of his people. What is more, the book of Exodus ended with the recounting of the same event (40:34–38). By repeating it here, the narrator is linking this new journey into the wilderness with the journey in the book of Exodus that took them to Sinai in the first place. Just as God had accompanied them out of Egypt on the way to Mount Sinai by means of the pillar of cloud and fire, so now the same pillar would rest on the tabernacle. God was indeed present with his people. Here was comfort for uneasy hearts.


GOD LEADING THEM

God was not just present with his people as an observer, however. He was not just along for the ride, or even sitting in the copilot’s chair. God was going to lead them into the Promised Land. By means of the cloud, the Lord would tell Israel when they were to set out and when they were to camp. He would decide how long they were to remain in a particular place, whether one night or two days or a month or a year (9:22). The Lord would guide them and direct them on every leg of their journey. In fact, to make sure that you don’t miss this point, the narrator labors it somewhat in 9:17–22. Essentially, all he is saying in these verses is, “When the cloud moved on, the people would set out, and when the cloud stopped they would camp”—yet he takes six verses to say it, utilizing almost every possible permutation. By means of this repetition, he stresses the fact that on this march there was no room for creativity and individualism on the part of God’s people. There was no place for fussing and crying out, “Are we there yet?” What they had to do was watch the cloud and follow carefully wherever it went. It is not coincidental that the phrase “at the command of the Lord” occurs seven times in verses 18–23.1 The narrator wants us to be aware that this journey is at the will of the Lord himself and under his direction every step of the way.

Now it might seem as if such an obvious marker of the Lord’s leading as a fiery cloud would be evident enough that all could follow it directly, but that was not the case. Getting such a large number of people ready for the march was no easy undertaking. This should not come as a surprise to those of us who are parents. I find it a major challenge to get five children up and out of the door to school in the morning, let alone an enormous nation. What is more, as we saw in the earlier chapters, the people were not to progress forward as a disorganized rabble but as a disciplined body, an army arranged by tribes and families (see Numbers 2). Achieving this kind of order would have required significant coordination. For that reason God commanded that the actual instructions for the people to move out were to be mediated through the priests by means of the silver trumpets (10:1–7). These special trumpets were not employed as musical instruments but as signaling devices, just as the military used to employ bugle calls to direct the actions of troops on the battlefield. The priestly trumpet calls were the signal for the various sections of the camp to set out on their journey, so that everything could be done in good order, exactly as God had commanded them.


THE SILVER TRUMPETS

At the same time, we need to notice that the use of these trumpets was not simply a convenient signaling device, one that could equally well have been replaced by an alternative method of getting the word out, such as semaphore flags or carrier pigeons. The second part of the passage about the trumpets reminds us that these trumpets would continue to have an ongoing use in Israel: this was to be “a perpetual statute throughout your generations” (10:8). After the journey through the wilderness was over and the people had entered the Promised Land, these trumpets were still regularly to be used for two events: warfare and worship. They were to be sounded whenever the people went into battle (10:9) and whenever they gathered for their festivals (10:10). At the sound of the trumpet, the community would gather together either to fight or to fellowship in praise. The trumpets would issue a continuing call to exercise obedience to God’s demands.

The sound of the priestly trumpets was not simply a rallying cry to bring the people of God together either. The sound of the trumpets also brought them to the Lord’s remembrance (10:10). As well as being a call for the people to come together and act as one, it was a cry to God to come and act on their behalf. Whenever the Israelites faced their enemies, they could sound the trumpet and know that God would remember them and come to their aid (10:9). Whenever the people brought their offerings at the great festivals, the priests could sound the trumpet and know that God would hear from Heaven and pay attention to their offerings (10:10). Their sins would be forgiven, and their acts of worship would be received and accepted. So the trumpets not only called the people together to renew their obedience but reminded them and assured them of God’s continuing presence and favor toward them. It is not coincidental that these themes of presence and obedience are the same themes that we saw highlighted at the end of Numbers 9.

The note about the continuing function of the trumpets thus says something profound and enduring about the nature of the journey on which Israel was embarking: the wandering people of God were about to begin a pilgrimage that would revolve around the twin themes of warfare and worship. That pilgrimage would continue even after they had entered the land. What is more, God’s presence and their obedience were absolutely necessary if these tasks were to be carried out successfully.


THE WANDERING PEOPLE OF GOD

This observation points us toward the way in which this passage addresses us in our contemporary setting. For we too are the wandering people of God, as the book of Hebrews reminds us, located between our exodus from the bondage of sin and death and our entry into the promised land of Heaven. We too face a daunting journey through the wilderness, surrounded by hostile terrain and many enemies. We may not literally travel through a land without water and food as they did or face the prospect of fierce battles against well-equipped enemies, but we too have many struggles in this world. We should have no illusions about the difficulty of our pilgrimage. This world is not our home, and it is frequently not a hospitable environment for believers. Jesus puts it this way in John 15:18–20:

  If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: “A servant is not greater than his master.” If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

Since this is the case, what is needed if you are to survive the pilgrimage and make it to the other side of the wilderness? You need exactly the same two things they needed: you need the presence and favor of God with you, and you need to obey his directions.


GOD WITH US

The first thing you need to endure this wilderness is to know God’s presence and favor with you. This presupposes, of course, the fact that God is not equally present and favorable toward everyone in this world. The Canaanites were religious people, many of whom doubtless sincerely believed in their gods. Yet the decisive difference between the two nations was ultimately this: God had chosen Israel and called them to be his people, while he did not choose and call the Canaanites. God certainly didn’t choose the Israelites because they were better than the Canaanites—that becomes clear enough as the book of Numbers unfolds. Nor were the Canaanites innocent bystanders, good people who wished they too could be included in God’s people but were excluded by a harsh decree. On the contrary, they were sinners whose sin had now reached its full measure (see Genesis 15:16). God had good reason for bringing judgment upon the Canaanites. What is more, those Canaanites who wished to switch sides and abandon their idols in favor of the true and living God could do so at any time, and by God’s grace and mercy some did. However, as long as the Canaanites remained faithful to their gods and were strangers to the Lord, they would receive no favor from God. For them, his presence was something to be feared, not something to be sought.
So too in our context God’s presence and favor is not equally bestowed on all. It is true that none of us deserve God’s presence or his favor. By nature we are all just like the Canaanites: aliens and strangers to the true God whose whole lives are committed to serving something or someone other than him. Yet in his mercy and grace God promises both his presence and his favor to those who come to him by faith in Christ. As Paul puts it in Romans 5:1, 2, “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.” What Paul is saying is that we didn’t always have peace with God or access to his presence, but now we have both of those things through Jesus Christ. As he goes on to say three chapters later, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). God’s wrath remains on those who are alienated from him, but there is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ. On the contrary, they now experience peace and fellowship with God.

Do we know God’s presence and favor? If God’s presence and favor are vital for life and if they are not for everyone, then that is a crucial question for which to know the answer. When we stand before God, are we trusting in whatever goodness and righteousness we can muster? There is no peace in that affirmation. Peace, the absence of condemnation, the experience of God’s favor—these things are only to be found by pleading the righteousness of Jesus Christ in our place. If our hope is resting on the righteousness of Christ, then we have the favor of God and the presence of God with us right now.

Jesus promised his disciples his presence and favor when he said, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). We often look to that verse as encouragement in the work of missions and evangelism, and appropriately so. It is the assurance that as we go and share the good news with those around us, God will go ahead of us, touching hearts and lives by his Spirit before we even open our mouths to speak. However, there is more to the verse than that. When we trudge through some of the weariest valleys of life, this verse assures us that Jesus is there with us. When we face uncertainty in relationships and are not sure if we can trust someone, Jesus is there with us. When we feel ready to faint and give up because of the painful difficulty of life, Jesus is there with us. The one in whom the glorious presence of God took flesh and dwelt on earth has promised that he will constantly be with us by his Spirit: he will never leave us or forsake us, no matter what life may throw at us.


OBEDIENT LIVING

The second thing you need in order to endure this wilderness is obedience to the Lord’s directions. The Israelites were to take their cue from the cloud and follow its leading. So, too, you and I are to take our cue from God’s Word, the Scriptures, and to follow its directions. Which directions? All of them! There are no commands in God’s Word that are irrelevant or negotiable; there are no proposals or suggestions, only commands. However, let me highlight two particular areas where we need to obey GodWord that are particularly relevant to this passage. First, we need to hear the trumpet call to come together for spiritual warfare instead of fighting as individuals. I’m not talking about declaring some kind of evangelical jihad on the non-Christian world around us. I’m talking particularly about the spiritual struggles that each of us faces individually and together as a society. Often we try to face our struggles on our own. We live after all in a culture that cherishes individualism. Yet we are to be a community of believers, a family of God’s people, a military unit that fights together and is committed to the policy, “No man left behind.” When one person hurts, we all hurt; when one person rejoices, we all rejoice.

In order for that policy to be a reality, though, we need to be involved with other believers outside the setting of church on Sunday morning. There are a variety of ways to build those connections. It could be an evening Bible study or singing in the choir or participating in the youth group. We all need to find a context in which we come together with other believers to build deep and strong relationships. We need to make a space in our life where we encourage them and they are able to encourage us in our daily warfare.

We also need to work together if we are to make an impact on the society in which we live. We are called to be salt and light in our community, acting as a preservative against rottenness, as well as communicating the gospel (Matthew 5:13–16). If we only act as individuals, our influence is limited; but when we come together, we can have a bigger impact for good. Once again there are a variety of ways in which we can have that impact on the surrounding culture. But in order to maximize our impact we need to be called together to fight as a unit, not as a disorganized group of individuals.


WORSHIP AND FELLOWSHIP

In addition to coming together to serve one another and to fight together, we also need to hear the trumpet call to come together for worship and fellowship. Perhaps the most important thing we do as God’s people is to come together to worship God. The world certainly doesn’t think so. The world thinks we are wasting our time when we come together to praise and exalt the Lord, and it asks us when we are going to get busy doing something useful. In reality, though, there is nothing more useful in all of the world than singing God’s praises and studying his Word. This is what reorients our thoughts in the right direction and empowers us for renewed service by filling us with an accurate understanding of who God is and what he is doing in this world. Activity is good, but it has to be activity that accomplishes something real. It is not enough simply to start marching and to determine the destination later: you have to know where you are heading before you get underway. Scripture is both where we receive our marching orders and where we are reminded what we are marching toward.


WHEN WANDERING DAYS ARE DONE

The third point we need to be reminded of, though, is that our wandering is not forever. Israel would one day hang up their marching boots and enter the Promised Land. It would take them a long time to get there because of their sin, but eventually they would reach the goal that God had set for them. One day, too, Israel would be able to hang up their swords and their spears, at least temporarily, when God gave them rest from their enemies all around during the reign of King David ( 2 Samuel 7:1). However, even when their wandering was done and their warfare was finished, they would never leave worship behind.

So too for us, the trumpets that we now hear summoning us to spiritual warfare and spiritual worship are not the only trumpets there will be. One day the final trumpet will sound, announcing the definitive arrival of God’s presence on earth (1 Corinthians 15:52). This time it will not be in the form of a fiery pillar or as a baby at Bethlehem, but in the triumphant return of Jesus Christ to establish the new heavens and the new earth. The final trumpet will sound, and the dead in Christ will rise, and those believers who are still alive will be caught up into his presence (1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17). Then our wandering and our warfare will finally be over, replaced forever by worship. But for all those who do not belong to Christ, that day of God’s presence will be a day of great fear and anguish. They will hear the dreaded words, “Depart from me, you cursed” and will be sent out of the presence of God into the blackest darkness forever (Matthew 25:41).

Now is the time to bow the knee to Jesus. Now is the time to hear and heed the trumpet call to worship him joyfully, trusting in his righteousness and rejoicing in his grace. Now is the time to celebrate his mercy, that he would choose a foul sinner like me and call me to serve him and fellowship with him forever. Now is the time to delight in the words of forgiveness and acceptance: “There is no condemnation; you have peace with God through Jesus Christ!” Now is the time to revel in his presence with us, and to recommit ourselves to full obedience to his leading and direction. Don’t wait until you hear the final trumpet: the trumpet sounds for you today to summon you to enter into his presence and bow down.

A Good Beginning

In life we can learn many extremely valuable lessons from the successes and failures of others. Over the course of my wandering years I have been part of many churches around the world. Each of them had its own distinctive strengths and weaknesses, and I would say that I have learned something from each church. The most valuable lessons, however, came from the churches at the extremes of the spectrum of health: I have learned most from the churches that were the healthiest and from those that were the most dysfunctional, while I learned rather less from the churches in between. In the healthy churches, I observed the shape of the faithful and skilled practice of ministry, while from those at the other end I discovered the painful consequences that ensue when ministry is not done well. Both lessons have been immensely useful to me in my own ministry!


FIRST IMPRESSIONS

In this passage in Numbers 10 we receive our first impression of Israel on the march, and what we see is entirely positive. They began the journey so well. In fact, if they had continued in the same way that they started out, they would have been in the Promised Land within a few short weeks. First impressions can be deceptive though. As we will see, things began to unravel in short order as the journey continued. Nonetheless, it is important to notice the fact that Israel began well. This shows that the problems that subsequently developed were not due to ignorance on Israel’s part or a lack of clarity on the Lord’s part. God was faithful to do what he had promised, and the Israelites knew exactly what they ought to do. The problems that would soon emerge were thus entirely their own fault.

As we follow the wanderings of the Israelites over the next few chapters, we will encounter both positive and negative lessons. We will see their faithfulness and their unfaithfulness, and the consequences that flow from both attitudes. The first lessons we will see though—the ones we will look at in this chapter—are the ones that result from the good beginning that they made. These lessons provide a positive paradigm for us to follow in our own wilderness journeys.


A LIFE OF GOD-CENTERED PILGRIMAGE

The first point to observe is that at the outset Israel understood that the wilderness life is to be a life of God-centered pilgrimage. It is camping out, not coming home. This is perhaps an obvious point, but we should never overlook the obvious in the Bible. The Israelites were on the march from Mount Sinai to the Promised Land. The Lord had brought them out of Egypt, but they had not yet received their inheritance in the place that God had promised to give them (v. 29). In the meantime they were not to settle down while they were in the wilderness, nor were they to expect to enjoy all the comforts of home there: they were simply camping.

Now, I have to confess that I am personally not much of a camper. My idea of enjoying the great outdoors is throwing open the window of my comfortable hotel room and taking in the stunning view and fresh country air. I find it difficult to understand why anyone would voluntarily give up a comfortable bed, properly cooked food, and easy access to drinking water. The whole idea is rather a mystery to me—unless, of course, you are going somewhere special and this painful inconvenience is the only possible way to get there.

So too the Christian life is rather a mystery to many people. Why would anyone endure the things that many Christians voluntarily endure? Some go on missions trips, paying good money to work hard for the sake of others in a hot and humid climate instead of lazing on the beach with a good novel. Many Christians spend their free time meeting with other believers to discuss the finer points of the Bible and theology instead of watching television or talking about sports. They give generously of their time and money to support the work of their church instead of using it to create a more comfortable lifestyle for themselves. In some countries Christians even endure time in prison and lay down their lives for the sake of the name of Jesus. Why would anyone do these things? Isn’t that a waste of your life? The whole idea is rather a mystery—unless, of course, we are going somewhere special and this is the only possible way to get there. We need constantly to remember that the Christian life is a journey, a pilgrimage, which necessarily involves discomfort and suffering. It is a journey whose sacrifices only make sense in the light of the outcome.

On that journey the people were arranged around the symbol of God’s presence, the tabernacle of the testimony (v. 11). The tabernacle was the tent of their heavenly King, the Lord, a King who was not merely present with his people when they camped but also while they were on the march. Whether in camp or on the march, the tabernacle and its holy objects remained at the center of the community, carried by the Levites between the tribal groupings (vv. 17, 21). Calling it “the tabernacle of the testimony” reminded Israel that inside the tent were the most sacred objects from Israel’s sojourn at Mount Sinai, the two tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments, the official treaty documents that ratified the covenant between God and his people. It drew their attention to the promises that they had made to God at Mount Sinai, as well as those that the Lord had made to them.

Nor were the people simply gathered around the tabernacle in an unruly mass. On the contrary, they were arrayed exactly as God had instructed them back in Numbers 2. The arrangement by which the Israelites camped was the same arrangement by which they marched, according to the Lord’s commandment. At the beginning of the journey no one among the Israelites said, “Why do you have to spend so much effort in telling us exactly where we should stand? Let’s just love the Lord and march however we like.” They understood that there is no conflict between love and careful obedience. If they loved the Lord, they would be eager to do exactly what he had said. Nor is this perspective simply an Old Testament view of what God expects from his people. Jesus himself said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Obedience in the Christian life is never an option for the exceptionally spiritual: it has always been a mark of the believer’s true love for the Lord. At this initial stage of the journey, this attitude also marked out the Israelites.


A LIFE OF CONSTANT WARFARE

Second, the Israelites also understood that wilderness life is a life of constant warfare that can only be won in God’s strength. This is evident even in the ordering of the march: the Israelites were arranged by military divisions under their various tribal standards, as if marching out to war (vv. 12–28). Leading them from the front on the initial three-day leg of the journey was the ark of the covenant, which represented not only God’s throne but his chariot as well (v. 33). God was going to be their advance guard in the forthcoming conflict.

As a reminder of the true nature of their wilderness life, every time they broke camp, Moses would say, “Arise, O LORD, and let your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate you flee before you” (v. 35). “Arise” here isn’t just a request to God to get up and get going, as you or I might shout, “Rise and shine” to our children in the morning. The Jewish commentator Baruch Levine translates it, “Attack, O Lord!” It is a word that is sometimes used in military contexts as a summons to begin the assault (see Judges 5:12).1 Moses is thus invoking the Lord’s warrior presence with them in the conflict with their enemies.

The same theme reemerges in the words that Moses would say whenever the ark came to rest because the cloud had stopped moving: “Return, O LORD, to the ten thousand thousands of Israel” (10:36). The New Jewish Publication Society translation renders the Hebrew more literally, “Return, O Lord, you who are Israel’s myriads of thousands.” When it came to fighting, the Lord himself was the countless thousands of Israel, the decisive contributor to their victories. As long as the Lord was fighting for them, Israel’s victory was assured, no matter how heavily outnumbered the Israelites were by the opposition.

This is a truth to which many of God’s people have testified. In the nineteenth century, the pioneer missionary Mary Slessor went undaunted through the dangers of the African jungle to bring the gospel to unreached tribes in the Calabar area of Nigeria. Many of those to whom she went had had little or no contact with white people. Some were cannibals, while on other occasions she physically stood between two warring tribes to keep them apart. When asked how a single woman, once described as “wee and thin and not very strong,” could go where she went, she simply replied, “God and one are always a majority.” It doesn’t matter who is against you if God is on your side—or, more precisely, if you are on his side.

The same principle also operates in the opposite direction, however. If God is not with you, then it doesn’t matter how many people you have fighting for you, defeat is inevitable. The psalmist stated this clearly: “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1).


A TRUTH TO BE REPEATED

This truth is not exactly a profound and obscure Biblical insight that can only be discerned after years of intricate research in the original languages. It is a central Biblical teaching. So why did Moses feel the need to repeat the formula in the people’s hearing so often? It is certainly not because otherwise God might forget to go with them on their journey! Rather, Moses asked God to go and fight for the Israelites every time they set out as a reminder to himself and to his people. He knew that God’s people constantly need to be reminded of this reality. Is the same not true of us as well? I know that it often is for me. I constantly forget that my pilgrimage is a fight in which, unless the Lord wins the victory for me, all of my best efforts are in vain. How many things in my life would be different if I remembered that truth!

If I remembered this reality, I would pray more and be more constant in invoking God’s aid in my struggles. I would awaken every morning crying out, “Rise up, O Lord! Protect me against my enemies and against temptation. Walk with me throughout this day!” I would go to sleep at night asking the Lord to remain with me, thanking him for his sustaining presence and power throughout that day. Moment by moment, in between rising and resting, my thoughts would return repeatedly to the Lord to invoke his presence and his power with me.

If I remembered this reality, I would be less puffed up with pride when life goes well. On the Sundays when my ministry is a blessing to people, I would recall that it is the work of the Lord’s Spirit that changes hearts and lives, not my carefully crafted words. When my life is relatively free from dramatic sin, I would be aware that this faithfulness is not the product of my matchless devotion to the Lord but his gracious preservation of my wandering soul.

If I remembered this reality, I would panic less when the struggles of life become intense and I feel myself to be utterly out of my depth. The truth is that I am constantly out of my depth in life and ministry, even when it comes to the tasks that are most familiar. I can easily put together a series of words that will fill up half an hour on Sunday morning, but in my own strength I am unable to write a sermon that will break the stony hearts of unbelievers and touch afresh the lives of the saints. Only God can do that. The same is true of my parenting. I can discipline my children and assure a certain level of outward conformity to polite moral codes, but in my own strength I can never show them the depth and gravity of their sinfulness and their desperate need of Christ. Only God can do that. Whenever I feel competent to cope on my own in this life, it is a delusion. Indeed, God in his mercy often chooses to take us through those deep waters where our lack of capability becomes most evident to our naturally blind eyes, in order that we may recognize what is always true: unless the Lord goes ahead of us and fights for us, we are utterly defeated. Like the Israelites, I need to be reminded constantly that this wilderness life is a conflict that only God can win.


DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY AND HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY

At the same time, this truth does not mean that we simply sit back and wait for God to do everything. Sometimes people fear that a focus on the need for God’s work in our lives will lead to passivity on our part. If we believe in the sovereignty of God in all things, won’t that lead us to neglect outreach to unbelievers and the pursuit of holiness in our own lives? Nothing could be farther from a Biblical position. There is no conflict between absolute trust in God’s work and responsible human activity on our part, a theme that finds expression in this passage in the invitation to Hobab to accompany the Israelites (vv. 29–32). Commentators are divided over this little incident. Some see it as evidence of a lack of faith on Moses’ part. Why should he invite Hobab to be the eyes of the community, finding good camping spots for them in the wilderness, if the Lord had promised to do that for them?4 Isn’t that a sign of unbelief?

The text itself, however, doesn’t seem to place a negative light on the request of Moses. Rather, I think the commentators’ problems flow from the fact that they are placing a false dichotomy between divine guidance and human responsibility. Biblically, these things belong together. Trust in the Lord as divine builder and guard does not exempt the laborer from building or the watchman from keeping his eyes open (Psalm 127:1). In the same way, the request for Hobab’s assistance is not a mark of a lack of faith in God’s guidance on the part of Moses but simply the wise use of the gifts and abilities of another in service of the Lord’s people. Moses recognized that Hobab might be the means by which God’s provision for their needs would come to expression. In this life of warfare, even though victory can only be won in the Lord’s strength, sometimes his strength is ministered to us through the very ordinary means of the people he has placed around us with exactly the combination of gifts and abilities that we need.


FINDING REST

The third truth that Israel needed to remember on their march is that even though the wilderness life is a pilgrimage and a war, the goal of the pilgrimage is neither constant traveling nor constant conflict, but rest in the land God had promised. The reason the ark went ahead of them on their travels was not simply to protect Israel from dangers and enemies but to find for them “a resting place” (v. 33). This was the goal of the whole pilgrimage, to find a place of rest in the land that God had promised to give them.

This loss of perspective is what so often discourages us in life, isn’t it? We forget that we are only camping here, only passing through on our way to eternal glory. We start to believe that this world really is all there is, and so we grumble about our accommodations and our food here. The conversation between Moses and Hobab shows us what it means to keep our eyes fixed on the goal. Moses didn’t invite Hobab to join him on a miserable trek through the apparently endless wasteland that stretched out before them. No, he invited Hobab to look beyond the wilderness and join Israel in coming to the land where the Lord had promised good things for his people. What is more, when Hobab initially declined, saying that he would rather return home to his own land and his own people, Moses continued to press him, affirming that Israel would share with him whatever good things the Lord gave them (v. 32). In effect, he invited Hobab to join the spiritual descendants of Abraham, who left his home and his people by faith, seeking a city with foundations that God had promised him.

Is that where our eyes are fixed? When someone asks us why we are followers of Jesus, what is our response? The answer is certainly not because since the time we became Christians our lives have begun to work out more successfully. I cannot say that God always gives me everything I want or think that I need, nor does he always make my life run smoothly and easily. What I can say, though, is this: God has promised me eternal life in his presence, a place where I shall stand before him forever and do what I was created to do, which is to worship him. God has promised us that in view of the glory set before us, this is the very best life we can experience in this world. Eternal life will make worthwhile whatever losses we have to suffer in the present. What is more, the Lord has promised his presence with us in the midst of all of the present difficulties of life. Eternal life in Christ has already begun, but only in part. Even for the most fortunate, rest is only partially tasted in this world: the best is always yet to come.


INVITING OTHERS TO SHARE GOD’S REST

This should not only be where our eyes are presently fixed but also where we endeavor to get others to fix their gaze. Moses really cared about what was best for Hobab, and so he boldly invited Hobab to join the covenant community on their journey. Hobab was not an Israelite. Moses could simply have said, “You go your way, and I’ll go mine,” especially when Hobab initially declined his invitation. Hobab did not respond to Moses’ words by immediately pleading for the opportunity to come along with Israel. He was certainly no Ruth, crying out, “Where you go I will go.… Your people shall be my people and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). In fact, we never do find out for certain whether Hobab came along with the Israelites or not.6 What we do see, though, is Moses’ passionate desire that the Gentile next door should be included in the family of faith.

We need to have the same passion for our “outsider” neighbors. Moses knew that to be in the wilderness with God’s people was better than enjoying the comforts of home and family because of the rest that God had promised to his people. We should be able to say the same to our family and friends. We must have a passionate desire for them to come to know God and walk with his people, a desire that keeps on inviting them to become part of God’s people. We should long for them too to join us on our pilgrimage. If we do not, it is most likely because we have lost the conviction that God’s rest is the only true good in this world. If God’s rest is indeed the best this life has to offer, then even though it may be costly for someone to acquire it, it is worth the price. That is the point of Jesus’ parable in which he compares the kingdom of heaven to a pearl of great price. Whatever it costs, the pearl is worth the price (Matthew 13:45, 46). So too, if you and I believe passionately with all of our hearts that God is the only good in this world, and if to be in his presence for all eternity is our supreme desire, then that belief will spill out of us into all of our conversations and our relationships. Friends, neighbors, family—yes, even our in-laws—all will know what is most important to us, and by the grace of God some may be added to the pilgrim people of God.


THE TRAILBLAZER

Yet there is a problem with this picture, isn’t there? The people of Israel began well, but they couldn’t keep it up. Moses himself began well, but even he did not make it all the way to the Promised Land. So what good is holding up the ideal beginning of the Israelites and saying, “Be like this” if even they couldn’t carry it off? If they sinned and grumbled, led as they were by the ark of the covenant and the fiery cloud of God’s presence, what hope is there for us? If the lesson of this chapter is, “Be like the Israelites,” that simply leaves us depressed and condemned by our own inability to do what we ought. A perfect model is of no use to radically imperfect people like you and me.

What we need is someone to journey through the wilderness on our behalf and to be faithful throughout the journey. That, according to the book of Hebrews, is exactly what we have in Jesus. He is “the trailblazer and perfecter” of our faith (12:2). As God, we could truly say that it was Jesus who led Israel on their journey through the wilderness.8 However, it is in becoming man that Jesus has most profoundly traveled the road through the wilderness before us as the ultimate pilgrim and warrior. After his baptism, Jesus went out into the wilderness, where he bore all of Satan’s temptations in full force—a force we have never known because we always give in long before the real test comes (Matthew 4). In his humanity, Jesus faced the wilderness test and passed it by faith. He confessed his dependence upon his heavenly Father moment by moment, even though he was himself God in human flesh. He kept his eyes fixed on the rest that was set before him, the joy that would arrive through bearing the cross. Jesus sought constantly to bring others too into this rest, crying out, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He has demonstrated and accomplished the life of faith in this fallen world, all the way to an obedient death on the cross. He didn’t just begin well; he ended well, seated in triumphant victory at the Father’s right hand.

The result of his obedience is that now my rest is won. He blazed the trail and lived the perfect life of faith in my place. Now when God looks at me, he sees the perfect obedience of Jesus, not my flawed efforts. If my salvation depended on my own best obedience, then I would be utterly lost. I might start well, but I would never carry it through. It wasn’t enough for God to bring Israel out of Egypt, give them his Law, point them in the right direction, and say, “Now go, capture the Promised Land.” They might begin well, but they would never carry it through. A trailblazer alone would not be enough. More still is necessary: God needed to do everything required for my salvation, and that is exactly what he has done in Jesus.

What is more, Jesus took on the wilderness “for the joy that was set before him,” the writer to the Hebrews tells us (12:2). Think about what love that demonstrates! What was “the joy that was set before him”? It was the prospect of our salvation! It was the glory that would redound to God himself—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—through redeeming lost humanity. God loved you enough that he sent his Son into this wilderness world, into the realm of temptation and sin, into the arena of sickness and death. That thought was what sustained Jesus through his darkest hours of suffering—the knowledge that his suffering would mean your salvation. How awesome is God’s grace!

Fixing our eyes on the rest that God has promised thus means nothing more and nothing less than fixing our eyes on Jesus. He is the beginning of our faith and its end. He is the one who has accomplished our salvation and the one who now applies it to us by his Spirit. He is the one who promises to go with us on our journey and the one who has already gone ahead of us, scouting out the next steps in our lives. He is the one who fights our battles for us and assures the victory of all those who are in him. He is the one to whom we are to point our neighbors and our friends and say, “Here is rest for your soul. Come with me and meet this glorious Savior. Come and share the good things he has promised to all those who belong to him.” He himself is the joy that is set before us, the joy into which we will finally enter in fullness and completeness when our wandering days are done.


Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 129–146). Crossway Books.

NUMBERS 9

Law. It has a very negative ring to it, doesn’t it? It sounds like rules and regulations, which we naturally hate. We instinctively respond, “Don’t tie me down! Don’t tell me what to do or who to be!” We want to define ourselves and do whatever we wish. Mercy and forgiveness, on the other hand, are very popular. Everyone wants to be allowed to fail, to escape the negative consequences of our actions, and to be given a second chance. Nowhere are these diverse attitudes more apparent than in the spiritual realm. As soon as you talk to people about God and God’s Law, the questions and opinions flow. Do you want to start a heated discussion at your place of work or school? Just ask the question, “Is God a God of rules and regulations, or is he a God of grace and mercy and love?” and sit back and watch the results. That’s a question about which everyone has an opinion. Even those who don’t believe God exists have ideas about what kind of God he ought to be if he did.

Many of those ideas revolve around the relationship between law and grace, obligation and mercy, regulation and forgiveness. Some people describe their understanding of a God who is almost all justice and obligation, with very little mercy and grace. Others (a much larger group) urge a view of an easygoing God whose obligations and regulations are fairly negotiable, swamped by his general beneficence toward mankind. Many would depict the Old Testament view of God as the former, an unbending, harsh, legalistic God, while suggesting that the New Testament shows us a kind, loving, and merciful God. That’s not a new idea. It goes all the way back to the second-century heretic Marcion, who wanted to separate “modern” New Testament Christianity from its “old-fashioned” Old Testament roots. Whatever your view, though, clearly the relationship between law and grace, between God’s justice and God’s mercy is an important one, and one that this passage in Numbers 9 is going to clarify for us in some remarkable ways.


THE GOD OF RULES AND REGULATIONS

The first thing this passage confirms for us is that God is indeed a God of rules and regulations, a God who is concerned about precise obedience. God spoke to Moses and commanded the Israelites to celebrate the Passover (v. 2). It was not simply an invitation to join him at the temple of their choice if they felt like it. God commanded them to celebrate the Passover. This was the first month of the second year of the exodus; so it would have been the first time that the Israelites celebrated the Passover after the original historic event of the Passover meal. God was reminding them that this meal had not been instituted simply as a unique event but as an annual celebration, a lasting commemoration for the generations to come (see Exodus 12:14).

Nor were the Israelites free to improvise and innovate when it came to the manner in which they celebrated the Passover. God had told them when and how they were to celebrate the Passover: in the first month from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day, they were to eat bread with no yeast. At the end of that time, each family was to take its own Passover lamb and slaughter it, collecting the blood. They were to smear the blood on the top and sides of the entrance to their house (Exodus 12:22), and then to eat the body of the lamb inside their safely marked houses. They were not to break any of its bones (Exodus 12:46). Nor was this simply a mime show. Unlike circumcision, which demanded no comprehension from those taking part, the children participating in this ceremony were expected to ask questions and to understand the answers. They would ask, “What does this ceremony mean?” and receive the answer, explaining the significance of the Passover as a reenactment of the great act of deliverance by which God’s people were redeemed out of Egypt (Exodus 12:26, 27).

The proper and precise celebration of the Passover is thus very much the focus of the opening section of Numbers 9. God told the people not simply to celebrate the Passover but to celebrate it at the appointed time, in accordance with all of its rules and regulations (vv. 2, 3). The Israelites could not celebrate the Passover however they felt led—for example, with lox and bagels rather than lamb and matzos, or on the night of the fifteenth rather than the fourteenth because the fourteenth was always their night for going bowling. It was not enough to do what God had asked in some vague way. Precise, detailed obedience was necessary on the part of Israel, and precise, detailed obedience was what they delivered. We are told, “according to all that the LORD commanded Moses, so the people of Israel did” (v. 5). The same concern for rules and regulations emerges again at the end of our passage (v. 14): the resident alien who lived among Israel could also celebrate the Passover (if he had been circumcised; see Exodus 12:48), but he too must follow all of its rules and regulations.


THE PRINCIPLE OF PRECISE OBEDIENCE

Here, then, is our first principle from this passage: in serving God, precise obedience to all of his rules and regulations is necessary. This is true in all of life: in every area we are to be governed by God’s rules and regulations, by the richness of God’s revelation of his will for our lives in his Word, the Bible. I am to obey God in everything—in the words that I say, in my conduct, even in the thoughts that I think. Even brushing my teeth or choosing whether to buy a new car or one that is used are acts that are governed by his Word in a general way.

However, it is particularly true that our worship of God is to be governed by his Word. After all, God has a lot more to say in his Word on the subject of worship than he does about tooth brushing and car buying. One of the principles that is to govern the church in our worship, just as for their Passover, is that we are always and only to do what God has commanded in his Word. He has not simply commanded us to worship him and left it up to us to decide how that worship is to be offered. On the contrary, when we worship him we do so according to all of the rules and regulations in his Word, seeking carefully to do not only what he has commanded but to do it in the way that he has commanded. This is the principle that is often called “the regulative principle of worship.”1 We don’t do anything in worship simply because it appeals to our emotions or to our culture or because it is traditional. We need to have a good Biblical reason for why we do everything that we do in worship.

Now, of course, just believing in the regulative principle of worship doesn’t solve all worship issues, any more than agreeing with your daughter that she should dress in accord with Biblical guidelines tells you exactly which outfit she should wear today. Some forms of attire are obviously clearly excluded by the Biblical requirement of modesty. It is not hard to reach agreement that extremely revealing necklines and ultrashort skirts do not meet the Biblical test. Other outfits will be more debatable. Biblical modesty does not mean, at least in my judgment, that girls need to dress like transplants from the last century. Different families will sometimes come up with different guidelines and different judgment calls. The important thing, though, is that having agreed on the basic principle with your daughter, you have a basis on which to have good discussions and reach godly conclusions.

It is the same way with worship.2 Some churches that affirm the regulative principle of worship may do things in worship that make me uncomfortable, while others may interpret the Bible in ways that are more restrictive than my understanding. Yet if we agree on the principle that in worship we only do what God has commanded and absolutely nothing else, no matter how well-intentioned, then we have a basis to sit down and talk and seek to reach a fuller awareness of what the Word of God actually says.

That is the principle that governs the worship at the church I pastor: we will only do what God has actually commanded us in his Word. Because of this commitment, we don’t do some things that you will find in many other evangelical churches. At the same time, our worship is not necessarily the same as every other Reformed church: the regulative principle of worship does not necessarily lead to cookie cutter conformity. Whatever we do in worship—or don’t do—we believe we have a Biblical reason for it. Behind all of the specifics is the bigger principle that in worship we only do what God has commanded us. The God of the Bible is a God to whom specifics matter, a God who is concerned about rules and regulations, about precise obedience to his commands.


THE GOD OF SECOND CHANCES

Yet the focus of the passage as a whole is not simply on the fact that God is a God of specifics who expects his rules and regulations to be observed precisely. It also shows us a second principle—namely, that God is a God of second chances. The center of the chapter addresses the situation of a number of Israelites who were unable to take part in the regular Passover meal because they were ceremonially unclean. That was a severe problem since taking part in the Passover was not an optional activity. You couldn’t just say, “Oh well, I’ll catch the fun next year.” On the contrary, anyone who did not partake in the Passover was to be excluded from the community (Exodus 12:19, 47). It was not that this group of people had willfully ignored the Passover command or even carelessly neglected their duties. They had come in contact with a dead body, either accidentally or as a matter of necessity, and so were unable to partake at the regular time (9:7). What were they to do? Must they be excommunicated from the Lord’s people?

That was the issue that these men brought to Moses, which he in turn took to the Lord (v. 8). In response to their inquiry, the Lord gave an additional commandment that addressed not only this situation but others that were like it. The question they had asked concerned only those who were ceremonially unclean through contact with a dead body (v. 7). The answer was broader, however, addressing also those who might be unable to keep the Passover because they were on a long journey (v. 10). In other words, God used this specific incident to address a wider issue in worship.

What was the Lord’s response? In the first place, notice that the solution to their problem was not to pretend there was no problem. God didn’t say to them that exact obedience doesn’t really matter, provided their heart was in the right place. The Lord didn’t permit these men to participate in the Passover in an unclean state, nor did he let them celebrate it at whatever time they may wish. Yet at the same time, he recognized that precise obedience is not always possible in a fallen world, and so he provided for a second-chance Passover, an “irregular” celebration. This second-chance Passover was to be celebrated exactly one month after the first and was to be observed in accordance with all the same rules and regulations (v. 11). It was the same precisely observed Passover, simply one month later. What is more, this second-chance Passover was only for those with a valid reason for not observing the Passover at the proper time. Those who had no excuse and simply failed to observe the Passover at the time when they ought to were still to be cut off from the community (v. 13).


THE IRREGULAR PRINCIPLE

This irregular principle of worship (and, more broadly, of life) is very important to our thinking as Christians because in a fallen world we often find ourselves in situations where precise obedience to God’s Word is simply impossible. Sometimes our past sin places us in a situation where there seems no way to get from where we are to where we ought to be. Perhaps a man married someone who is not a Christian, even though he knew it was wrong to do so. Now he finds himself stuck in an awkward situation, unable to do everything God’s Word requires. Or perhaps a wife finds spiritual leadership in her home thrust upon her because she’s married to an unbeliever (what the Bible calls “an unequal yoke”). If God were simply a God of rules and regulations, such persons would be without hope. Yet because God is the God of second chances, there is hope for them. They can repent of their sin and find a way back to an obedience that is as close as possible to what it ought to be. God’s grace is sufficient for all of us.

Perhaps you find yourself on the horns of a dilemma because of the general fallenness of the world and the complexities of life. Starting a new church involves all kinds of irregularities. Biblically, churches ought to be governed by a plurality of elders (see Titus 1:5). That is undoubtedly the right way to do things, and wherever possible it is the best way to plant a church as well. Yet in a new church you cannot always have multiple elders present from the outset. Sometimes the church planter is effectively alone in spiritual oversight, a kind of local pope. Is that the right way of doing things? No. However, if you only ever did things the “right” way, many ministry opportunities would be lost! Is it wrong to sometimes have a church under the oversight of a single church planter? No, it is not wrong, but it is irregular.
Sometimes a tribe of polygamists comes to faith in Christ. It is not Biblical for a man to have more than one wife. Yet if the husbands put away their multiple wives, these women may be left facing shame, poverty, and isolation. One solution is to recognize this as an irregular situation: those who have married multiple wives in the past can keep them and continue to provide for all of their needs, but no more polygamous marriages are permitted within the church. Over the course of time the situation gradually moves from irregular to regular.

The irregular category bridges the gap between right and wrong by recognizing that there are some situations where pursuing one Biblical principle and meeting people’s needs necessarily brings you into conflict with another Biblical principle. The solution is neither to declare the Biblical principles irrelevant, as liberals would, nor to declare people’s needs disposable, like the Pharisees. It is rather to seek God’s direction and to do the best you can in the present circumstances, while moving as quickly as possible toward fulfilling all of the Biblical principles. As this passage shows us, God is not just the God of rules and regulations, but the God who extends grace and mercy into the messy world of reality.


GRACE TO THE ALIENS AND STRANGERS

Further, God’s grace is not simply extended to his own people, to the descendants of Abraham. That brings us to the third principle in this passage: God’s grace reaches out to include the aliens and strangers among his people in the Passover meal (v. 14). Think about the profound symbolism of that inclusion. The Passover meal was the celebration of God’s redemption of his people out of Egypt, in faithfulness to his promise to Abraham. God had obligated himself to deliver this people and to give them a land in which to live. Yet he had no obligation to anyone beyond the boundaries of that family. He had made no promises to these aliens and strangers of the kind he had made to Abraham. Yet even those who by birth were outsiders to the covenant could be included in his people and celebrate the Passover. All they had to do was to come by faith and receive the covenant sign of circumcision in order to be received into the covenant community. Then they too could eat the Passover meal, with all of its symbolism.

This is a principle that we saw graphically depicted for us recently in my church through the baptisms of three children adopted from other countries. By nature these children were outsiders to God’s promises. They weren’t born into the homes of believing families. Left to themselves, they might each have grown up as outsiders to the gospel, never even hearing about faith in Jesus Christ. Yet by God’s grace they have been brought into the covenant community, just as our natural-born children are. When they are able to understand and profess the reality of that redemption for themselves, they too can partake in the new-covenant meal of the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, God’s gracious inclusion of aliens and strangers into his people covers most of us. Hardly any of us are by birth children of Abraham. Yet God in his mercy and grace has reached out more widely than simply to Israel with the gospel. He has brought those who were once far from him into his kingdom as his sons and daughters.


LAW AND GRACE

How can this be though? How can one God be a God of rules and regulations, a God who insists that we worship him in strict accord with the principles laid down in his Word, and at the same time also be the God of mercy and grace who gives second chances and includes aliens and strangers? Is God schizophrenic, unable to make up his mind whether to be strict or to be merciful? Certainly not! Nor is this a contrast between a rule-making God of the Old Testament and the gracious God revealed in the New Testament. Both aspects of God’s character are here in the Old Testament. The Passover itself shows us how God can be both the God of absolute obedience and of grace and mercy. At the first Passover, one life was substituted for the life of another. The Passover lamb took the place of the firstborn son and enabled him to live through its death. Nor was it an even exchange. You couldn’t just take a mangy and worthless lamb and offer it as your Passover lamb. It had to be a lamb without any spot or blemish, perfect in every way, without a broken bone even in death. Yet your firstborn son didn’t have to be perfect at all: whether he was a little angel on the one hand, or a rambunctious, self-absorbed hellion on the other, his personal holiness had nothing to do with his life being spared. All he needed was the faith to be inside the house that was daubed with the blood of the perfect lamb.

No wonder Paul calls Jesus Christ “our Passover lamb” (1 Corinthians 5:7). For Jesus Christ is the reality to which that Passover lamb pointed year after year. The Passover lamb testified to a salvation that came by grace through simple faith to sinners. It pointed them to God’s commitment to save a people for himself by the perfection of a substitute, someone who would fulfill all of God’s rules and regulations in their place, enabling God to extend his grace and mercy to them. It spoke of a cosmic second chance for unclean humanity—that even though in our first parent, Adam, we all sinned and therefore deserve God’s rejection and his wrath, in Christ we receive his mercy and his blessing. All we have to do to receive forgiveness is place our faith in Christ.

Does that mean, then, that it doesn’t matter how we live because Christ has done it all for us? By no means. Those who received a second-chance Passover were not to be emboldened to sin by that opportunity. On the contrary, as they sat down to eat the body of their Passover one month after everyone else, their hearts should have been stirred to such thankfulness for the Lord’s mercy and grace that they resolved to live lives of new obedience to all of his rules and regulations. It is no coincidence that the Passover feast combined the sacrifice of the spotless lamb with a period of abstention from anything containing leaven. Leaven, with its association with change and decay, was a natural symbol for sin, corruption, and death. Those who are redeemed from death by the lamb should be eager to flee from sin and death. This is the connection that Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 5:7, 8: “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

God’s rules and regulations are nothing less than his wisdom written down to guide and guard our hearts and lives. There is therefore no conflict in the end between God’s precise demands and his loving-kindness. He has fulfilled the Law’s demands for us in Christ and thereby enables us to come to him with reverence and delight and profound wonder. We who once were aliens and strangers, completely separated from his people, have by his grace and mercy been grafted into his people. We who are God’s second-chance people by grace should as a result be eager to worship and serve this God according to all of his revealed will, so that he might receive the praise and glory that is due him.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 121–128). Crossway Books.

NUMBERS 8

The relationship between form and function has been a classic debate in architecture for most of the last century.1 Which is more important—the shape of a building or the function that it has to serve? Is architecture “art for art’s sake”? Or is architecture constructing the best possible structure to achieve a given purpose? In fact, choosing either extreme ends up in architectural disaster. If architecture is simply “art for art’s sake,” you end up with architecturally striking buildings that are incredibly impractical. Woody Allen once parodied this kind of approach by imagining what would happen if your dentist were to take a similar view of reality: you would end up not with the orthodontic work you needed but with the shape of teeth that he thought best expressed his art!2 On the other extreme, though, if architecture is simply about function, you end up with boxlike, soulless structures of the kind that characterize the worst modern housing developments. It turns out that in architecture you cannot simply choose either form or function to the detriment of the other: both need to be taken into account.


FORM AND FUNCTION IN THE TABERNACLE

The same is true of God’s perfectly designed building, the tabernacle. Everything in the tabernacle had a practical reason for existence; everything had a function. At the same time, however, every piece of furniture also contributed in some distinct way to the larger message that the tabernacle was intended to convey; it had a particular form. If you focus entirely on the function of the furniture, you may miss the significance of its form and the message it was intended to convey. On one level, for example, the table in the Outer Sanctuary was simply a table: it functioned as somewhere to put the twelve loaves that were set before the Lord each day. It was never just a table though. The twelve loaves it held in front of the Lord also represented the daily offerings of each of the tribes of Israel. Equally though, if you focus entirely on the form of the furniture, it is possible to read too much into every little detail of the tabernacle’s construction and furnishing. To see an example of this, listen to what one ancient commentator said about the table of showbread in the Outer Sanctuary:

The table made from acacia wood is the Holy Scripture composed out of the bold words and deeds of the holy fathers. In showing us what the joys of eternal blessedness might be and how they might be attained, it surely supplies us with the food of salvation and life. This [table] has length, because it suggests to us perseverance in religious undertakings; width, because it suggests the amplitude of charity; height, because it suggests the hope of everlasting reward.

Actually, it seems to me, the table has length and breadth and height in order to serve its function as a table, somewhere to put the bread. Yet at the same time, the table has its own place within the symbolism of the tabernacle. It is not simply a practical accessory. It has both form and function.


FORM AND FUNCTION IN THE LAMPSTAND

In the same way, the lampstand of the tabernacle, which is the focus of this passage, had both form and function. It had a practical purpose: to give light in the Outer Sanctuary. There were no windows in the Outer Sanctuary, and there were thick, heavy curtains all around it. The priests who ministered day by day at the altar of incense and the table of the showbread needed to have some light to work by, and the lampstand provided that light. Yet the lampstand was never just a utilitarian light: they couldn’t simply have replaced it with a bank of fluorescent tubes. It had a form that conveyed a message of its own, a message that comes to expression in the opening verses of Numbers 8.

Numbers 7 ended with Moses meeting with the Lord in the tabernacle. God conversed with Moses from his invisible throne above the cherubim on the ark of the covenant, and Moses responded (v. 89). God was dwelling in the midst of his people, and the tabernacle had been inaugurated, and its operation was beginning exactly as God had commanded. As part of that inaugural instruction, God commanded Aaron to set up the seven lamps on the lampstand in such a way that they faced forward and threw their light in front of the lampstand. The design for the lampstand had been given to Moses back in Exodus 25. However, now that it was time for the lampstand to be put into action, God was insistent that the lamps should face forward and shed their light forward. Why is that small detail important enough to require its own passage? To understand that, we have to understand what the lampstand symbolized and what stood in front of it and was to receive its light.

What did the lampstand symbolize? It symbolized God himself. That is why this piece of furniture was made out of pure gold, hammered into shape (8:4), unlike all the other objects in the Outer Sanctuary, which were made of wood and merely plated with gold. It had seven lamps on it, symbolizing the completeness and perfection of God’s presence. This symbolism is confirmed by the description of the function of the lampstand. It was to “give light,” exactly the same Hebrew word that the priestly blessing used of God’s face shining upon his people (6:25). The light of the lampstand thus represented God’s favor or blessing shining out into the darkness.

Where, though, does this light shine in Numbers 8? It is to shine forward, on the area “in front of the lampstand,” upon the place where the table of the showbread stood. Again, this table had on it twelve loaves representing the offerings of the twelve tribes of Israel. That is surely why this note about the lampstand follows Numbers 7, where all twelve of the tribes presented their offerings to the Lord, and the Lord accepted them. What we see in Numbers 8:1–4 is a visual metaphor. What the priests declared in the words of their benediction, the lampstand of the tabernacle proclaimed as a daily reality: the light of the Lord’s blessing rested upon all of the tribes of his people, making their offerings acceptable in his sight. God’s love and acceptance of those who were his was depicted at the very heart of the tabernacle.


THE LIGHT OF GOD’S BLESSING

So what though? It is all very well to say that the Lord’s blessing rested on all of his people in the days of Moses, but all these years later we don’t have either a tabernacle or a lampstand. What are the implications of this passage for us as New Testament believers? The answer is that we have the reality toward which the tabernacle lampstand pointed. Jesus Christ is himself the one in whom the light of God’s blessing shines upon all. He embodies in himself the visual depiction of God’s favor resting upon his people. That’s the point that John makes in the opening words of his Gospel: “In him [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). That’s why the angels told the shepherds at his birth, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:14). Or as Jesus himself says later on in John’s Gospel, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Jesus is the light of God’s favor shining in the world.

Right away we need to notice two things about the fulfillment of the Old Testament image in Jesus. On the one hand, the fulfillment is more extensive than the image. In the Old Testament image, the light only shone on the twelve loaves of bread, representing the twelve tribes of Israel. God’s favor and blessing was limited in the Old Testament era, primarily directed to the children of Abraham, just as he promised Abraham in Genesis 12. Others could come and join them and be incorporated into Abraham’s family, even in the Old Testament era, but these were relatively few and far between. With the coming of Christ in the New Testament, however, the boundaries upon which the light shines have expanded. Jesus is not simply the light of his own people, but the light of the world! In Christ, the blessing of God extends more broadly than ever before, including those who in the past were not part of God’s people. This too was anticipated in the Old Testament. The Lord said through the prophet Isaiah, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6). In Christ, that “light for the nations” has appeared.

Yet at the same time as the fulfillment in Christ is wider than the Old Testament image, it is also narrower. In Christ, blessing comes to the nations; yet at the same time many of his own people rejected him and missed the blessing. As John put it, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11). Nor was it only his own people who rejected him. Jesus tells us, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). God’s blessing is not automatic: it has not only to be given, it also has to be received.


THE DIVISIVENESS OF THE LIGHT

What that means is that the coming of Christ into the world is necessarily a divisive thing. Light has a way of revealing the truth in all of its beauty or ugliness. For the weary traveler lost in a blizzard, a light up ahead is a welcome sign of hope that draws him toward it and the life it represents. For the cockroach, however, light is an unwelcome reality. Cockroaches much prefer darkness to light because of the nature of their nefarious activities.

So which are you—weary traveler or cockroach? Your true nature is exposed by your response to the light, to Jesus. If Jesus draws you irresistibly and if you find in him life and hope and peace, then you are shown by that response to be a weary traveler. But if you will have nothing to do with Jesus, if you regard him as an irrelevance at best and a positive danger at worst, then your cockroach nature is on full display. Don’t be surprised by that reality. The truth is that each one of us is by nature a cockroach at heart! We all once loved darkness rather than light. Only the transforming power of the Holy Spirit moves us to faith in Christ and gives us a new heart that delights in the light. The glory of the gospel is that God has taken us out of our natural darkness into light. As 1 Peter 2:9 says, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” It is God’s transforming grace alone that enables you to delight in the light by dealing with the sin that makes you want to hide. Cockroaches are rightly afraid of being stepped on, and until their nature is changed they will always be afraid of the light. God’s transforming grace calls you to come out of your dark corner into God’s wonderful light. Lay down your inner darkness and the sinful actions and thoughts and attitudes that have marked your life, and come into his wonderful light. Abandon your efforts to please God in your own strength, and receive the free gift of life that God offers you in Christ. Those who are indeed God’s people come into his light.


THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF THE LIGHT

Yet God is not done with us when he brings us out of darkness. He also wants to transform our darkness into light and set us on fire with his glory, making us lights to the world around us. In the book of Revelation, Jesus Christ stands in all his burning glory in the midst of the seven churches of Asia Minor, which themselves are represented by lampstands. Do you see how amazing that image is? The lampstand was the representation of the glory of God shining out in blessing on his people. In the Old Testament it became an image for the temple, the place from which God’s glorious blessing flowed out to his people (see, for example, Zechariah 4). Yet now in this New Testament era, the places from which God’s glory flows out to the world are the very real, very flawed churches. We are the lampstands. Christ stands in the midst of the churches, and so they shine out his glory to the watching world. Our task as the church is thus to be the images of Jesus, showing forth his glory to the community around us.

That is why in addition to saying, “I am the light of the world,” Jesus also said, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). To whom was he talking when he said that in the Sermon on the Mount? We tend to read his words individualistically, as if I personally am to be the light of the world. So the old children’s song runs: “Jesus bids us shine with a pure clear light / like a little candle burning in the night. / In this world of darkness, Jesus bids us shine / you in your small corner and I in mine.” That is not what Jesus is saying though. What he actually said was, “You [plural] are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” I can no more individually be the light of the world than I can individually be a city on a hill. Both images are corporate: it is as the church that we are the light of the world, shining out God’s glory together. As Jesus comes into our midst as his people and inhabits our church, his glory shines out from us to those around us.


LIVING LAMPSTANDS

So how does the church, as a living lampstand, shine God’s light to the world around us? The first aspect of being a lampstand for our world is being a channel of God’s blessing to those around us. That is the point of Jesus’ analogy: as the light of the world, or the city on the hill, we are to let our light shine before men so that they may see our good deeds and praise our Father in Heaven. Are we that kind of channel of blessing to the community around us? Do people see our good deeds and praise God? Or do we instead have our light hidden away under a bucket where no one can see us? Are we a lampstand whose light shines forward and out, communicating God’s blessing toward where people are? If God were to remove our church from the community, would anyone notice? If our churches no longer existed, would anyone mourn our disappearance? If not, then we have to ask ourselves to what extent we are shining out the light of God’s blessing to our community.

Second, though, the church as a lampstand is to challenge our community. Light and darkness can never peacefully coexist. They are always in competition, always seeking to drive one another out. You cannot have light and darkness comfortably side by side. So if we are faithfully to be a lampstand in a dark world, we are going to be an annoyance to some people. Do we as the church bother anyone because our light gets in their way? Would anyone in the community actually celebrate our disappearance because it gives them more room for their darkness?

These are pretty challenging questions, aren’t they? In many cases the church has very little impact on the community, either for blessing or as a challenge. For the most part the community is pretty well able to ignore us and pretend that we don’t exist. They drive past church signs on Sundays, but those are rather easy to overlook. For the rest of the week, perhaps nothing that we do catches their attention. Could our churches really be called the lights of our community, lampstands that impact the wider area?


Perhaps we can’t yet be called “the light of our city,” but nonetheless that is what Jesus is calling us to become. Perhaps we are numerically weak, short on resources, with little in ourselves to offer our community. That doesn’t excuse evading our calling, however. In fact, it’s not a bad thing to recognize how weak we are, provided at the same time that we recognize God’s power to take weak people like us and set them on fire for the gospel. It is not a bad thing to recognize that we have nothing to bring to this task of reaching our community if at the same time we also recognize that God has all of the necessary power. His glory is always made perfect in weakness; his richness is made clear in the midst of our evident poverty.


THE SOURCE OF OUR LIGHT

It is thus good to look around you and see that God does not have much to work with here, so long as we remember the power of this God who is at work in and through us. As Paul reminded the Corinthians, the God whom we serve is the same one who first called the light to shine out of the darkness at the beginning of creation (2 Corinthians 4). If God can make a world like this without any raw material, he can surely build a church out of miscellaneous sinners that his grace has called together to impact our community. He can take our corporate chaos and turn it into light and life. It is not just creation that evidences this truth either. His vast power has also been made clear in our own spiritual journey as he called us personally out of the darkness into “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). If God is able to create a universe out of nothing and to rescue and regenerate dead sinners, he can surely work through nothing people like us to accomplish his purposes of impacting the world around us.

God promises to supply the power for us to be what he calls us to be as we wait upon him in prayer and supplication. The more we are aware of our own weakness and neediness, therefore, the more we will be inclined to throw ourselves down and beg for his strength. The people were commanded to bring the loaves to place on the table. Aaron was called to set up the lamps just as God had commanded him. However, the reality to which those lamps and loaves pointed—the blessing of God shining upon his people—was not in Aaron’s power to kindle. Only God could do that. So as you and I look outward at the vastness of the task that faces us if we are to be God’s lampstands in our communities, we are not to be overwhelmed by its size. We are not called to be God: God himself will do that. However, we are called to do what he has commanded us to: taking out the light of God’s blessing to our friends and neighbors, sharing the love of Christ with them, and pointing them repeatedly to the grace of God.

We are therefore to be communities where God’s grace is most evident and welcoming, inviting strangers to God to become his friends. We are to be communities that are impossible to ignore, where an inexplicable light beams out, constantly confronting people with changed lives through the gospel. As we do what God has commanded, we can be confident that we will see him do what he has promised—opening up closed hearts, breaking down stubborn defenses, and enabling dead sinners to emerge from the darkness and become part of his people. Some will celebrate the light of blessing that we bring; others will reject us and the One who sent us. If we are faithful, however, no one will be able to say on the last day that they knew nothing of God’s light. The light of Christ will shine forward into the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 107–113). Crossway Books.