◈Numbers (Unlocking the Bible Series) P1
David Pawson Typing / Christine Source
Strange title for a book and causing the Hebrew at that time because they use just the first words of the scroll and the first words are “Lord said” so that is what this book is called in Hebrew. But again when the Hebrew was translated into the Greek they have to think of a new title so they called it Arithmoi. Well you can guess what that would mean in Greek because from that we got Arithmetic and hence it became The Book of Numbers and I supposed it’s named that because it begins and ends with numbers with two censuses, one of the beginnings of numbers, one at the end. And they were of course for military census. They were for purposes of military conscription and therefore they have only counted the men over 20 who were fighting fit. And the number at the beginning and end of the book is around 600,000 that is how we know there were over two million people if you included the woman and children and all under 20 than you come to figure over of two million plus. But six hundred thousand fighting men. I sometimes use this as a kind of ready wreckner for the strength of the church. How many men are there in a church over 20 who were able to fight for the Lord? It is not a bad test for the strength of the church. But let us look at the census here.
The first census in the first chapter is 603, 550, that is when they left Sinai. At the end of the book another census was taken and it is 601, 730 which is a loss of 1800. But you have to remember those two counting, those two numberings was 40 years apart. Now the numbers have proved a real talking point, it is the book of numbers after all which tells us that there is nothing wrong in counting. All fishermen count and that’s from the day of Pentecost. Somebody said 2998, splash, 2999, splash, 3000. There is nothing wrong with counting. Shepherds have to count sheep, fishermen have to count fish. Sure you have heard of the one fisherman who has caught that big. But by the way it is normal for shepherds and fishermen to count. Nothing wrong with counting unless you are counting for the motivation of pride and that is when King David came and stopped. King David counted his troops after he won the battle. You should count them before. Jesus said no man come to the battle doesn’t sit down first and count his troops to see whether he’s got more than the enemy. So they were counting their troops before battle and numbering the fighting men of Israel before they have to face the enemy.
Now many people say their number is far too large and say the population under the monarchy later was only one million three hundred thousand. They say that the population of is said in the book of Deuteronomy to be much smaller than the Canaanites. Now how big were the Canaanites? It is millions. They say it is impossible for 70 families who came from Egypt to produce this many. They say it is too many for the worldliness of Sinai, there was no valley and the world of Sinai is big enough to contain such numbers. So there have been many, many, objections but we have the word of God saying so and once again you have to make your choice. Do you believe this or not?
I believe God is perfectly capable of sustaining any number of people because He is God. Notice that it is such a similar number at the beginning and the end of 40 years only 18 hundred deference in two million or in six hundred thousand fighting men. Where in Egypt they multiply tremendously from just a few families to two million in four hundred years. I know it is a tenth of the time but it is not even the tenth of the increase. That told us something. One tribe decrease by twenty seven thousand but another increase by twenty thousand five hundred so it even doubt and they finish up at the end of numbers but the same number as they have at the beginning. That tells us that God is not blessing them for where God blesses people multiply. If God blesses a church it gets bigger, if He is not blessing it tends to stay the same. Blessing of God is seen in fruitfulness and there is very little blessing of God in the book of numbers maybe that is why we don’t like it.
But the point I want to make is this, the 600,000 at the end of this book are totally different from 600,000 at the beginning except for two individuals. They have completely changed.
Now crossing those days’ people did not usually live beyond about 60 that is the life expectancy. Moses and Joshua lived 120 that were incredible. At that time 60 would be about the life expectancy of a man and therefore 600,000 men over 20, forty years later have all gone, only two survived, Joshua and Caleb.
So that we do not realize when we read through a book like this we are covering 40 years more on a generations, generations like 30 years. So only two survived and this highlights the major tragedy of this book. I think this is the saddest book in the Old Testament. You might think Lamentation is grim but I think this is the saddest from the point of view of the story.
You see 2/3 (two thirds) from the book of numbers should never have been written. (However it was written). Two thirds of the events described here should never have happened. They are not part of God’s purpose, he never intended the book of Numbers to be written but we have it because the Bible is a very honest book.
So what have happened is the tragedies that they journey from mount Sinai to Kadesh-barnea was the first oasis after the Negev of desert, the first sign of real life and the beginning of the promise land of Canaan. From Sinai to Kadesh it takes 11 days on foot. That is all, less than a forth night and they could have been living on milk and honey and not on what is it, manna. And yet we find that is set of 11 days it took 13,780 days to make it into the promised land.
Now looking at the map this was the directory to 11 days. The route they actually take was to turn away from kadesh and go across this deep valley, this reef valley that goes right down through Africa the biggest crack in the earth surface, and they across that into the mountains, on the other side the mountains of Edom. And then they finish up in Moab on the wrong side of the river Jordan. If you look at it at a distance you would have thought if that is 11 days then it is no more than 2 weeks. But they took nearly 40 years, 38 year and a few month from there(Mt. Sinai) to there(the promised land). Now why was the particular late, difficult piece of country? NO, it was the fact that God did not move and He only moved a little time and He stayed a very long time in each pace and they did not dare move if God didn’t. The pillar of clouds stayed and He literally delayed their journey for 40 years and He told them why He literally delayed them. 'I’m going to slow you up now until every man among you is dead, except two. That is Joshua and Caleb.'
That is pretty touch and it meant that in the entire generation was left doing nothing for the rest of their lives, getting nowhere, doomed to futility which is a very tough sentence and we need to feel it. How would you like to be told you are now redundant until you die and nothing for you to do. Just get up in the morning and go to bed at night. Nothing, nothing to live for, devastating but that is what God did.
Now what happened at Kadesh to cross that? Well if you know your Bible you know exactly what happened. They refused to go in when God told them to and they missed it. The tragedy is there are some opportunities in life; if you miss them you can never have them again. They come oncs and if you do not seise it then God may never give you that chance again. We need to take that seriously. How important it is when God says move, move. When God says go and take something then go and take it otherwise you can spend the rest of your life in the wilderness getting nowhere. Horrible place to be because it is the yokeshire people says 'neither now nor somewhere' one thing or the other they were not in Egypt or Canaan and that is why a lot of Christians are very miserable people because they are in between they got to have a sin but they don’t enjoy that anymore but they haven’t got into the blessing that God has forms they do not enjoy that either. And then nobody as miserable as somebody got out but hasn’t got in. And some people were stuck there for the rest of their lives and die in that miserable wilderness where there is just nothing really happening.
Well that is the tragedy and 2/3 of the Book of Numbers is about the journey from there to there. Which need never have happened and therefor the main lessons that we learned from the book of Numbers are negative. The Bible is a very honest book, thank God for that. It tells you not only about the great successes and virtues, it tells you about the failures and the vices, it tells you about the things that went wrong as well as the things that went right.
And Paul writing to the Corinthians talks about the book of Numbers and he says this, “Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting on our hearts on evil things that they did. These things happen to them as examples and were written down as warnings to us.” Now you could not have a clearer statement of the purpose of the book of Numbers. It may not be popular, you may not enjoy reading it, but it is terribly important because if you do not study history you’re condemned repeating it. In fact a friend of mine has written a little poem that goes “History Repeat Itself. It has to, no one listens.” And there is a very real sense in reading the history of Israel. If you read it properly you will not make the same mistakes that they did. So it is a book about their failures, their follies, their mistakes, even Moses. Moses was not committed to go into the promised land, Moses himself. He did get into it centuries later when he talked to Jesus but he have to wait centuries to get into it because he truly failed miserably at one crucial point as we shall see.
Now that is why we read the book of Numbers and I’m afraid we are reading it to learn from their mistakes and walk when wrong and need not be written about us but it could be. It is a mixture of narrative and legislation but where as in Exodus the first half was on narrative or story and the second half is on law. Here it is all mixed up and it goes from a little bit of story to little bit of legislation back to a bit of story back to legislation.
Now the author of all the laws is not Moses but God. 80 times in this book it says ‘God said to Moses’ and that leads into Law and legislation, the way that is to live. That narrative it says Moses kept a diary, a journal of their travels at the Lords command. He also kept another book called “The Book of the Wars of the Lord” and that was the book of all the accounts of battles they have with other people. They use of those fighting men that they conscript it to the censuses.
◓ Now here is one of the five books of Moses and it is this complete mixed up between legislation and narrative. But before we look at that let us see how it fits in before the four books that Moses wrote about events during his lifetime. Moses led them out of Egypt and all the way in the plain of Moab in the Jordan valley but in a long side of the Jordan. So this covers Moses’ life and you see the book of Numbers covers a huge chunk of that. Probably the greatest part of the 40 years in the wilderness you’ll find in the book of Numbers.
Now notice the red and the green, the red and the green, the red and the green, the red. The red stands for the times when they were camped in stationary. The green describes their travels. So they camped and they traveled, they camped and they traveled, they camped and they traveled. Now the interesting thing is that all the legislation, the laws were given to then while they were camped. And then all the stories of their travel show how they broke those laws. So while they were camped in stationary God told them what they should do but while they moved we have then a story of what they did do which is a little different from what they should.
And so you have a kind of multiple led sandwich.
So book of Exodus 1-11 they are stationed to Egypt,
Exodus 12-18 they are moving to Sinai,
Exodus 19-40 their station is Sinai,
Leviticus 1-27 still in Sinai,
and Numbers 1-10.
So all that is stationary and it is just packed with legislation. God gave them the laws when they are sitting still. So if you like there to still hear from God then they got up to walk in God’s ways only they usually did not. But you see the difference between sitting and listening to God and getting up to walk the way he told us to walk.
Numbers 10-12 then they are in the move again from Sinai to Kadesh, 11 days journey. Kadesh the big crisis occurs and God speaks to them a lot at Kadesh, from chapter 13-20. We are going to look at that very carefully of what has God told to then at Kadesh that is so significant.
Then they are on the move again, Numbers 20 -21, notice that the hole journey was covered only by two chapters, it is really no significance, it is not important to God. Yet there something said in those two chapters we need to learn. And finally they are settled in Moab and they reached the very boarder of the Promised Land for the second time. They were at the boarder then but they did not go in. They are at the boarder again now but now there is the Jordan in flood between them and the Promised Land. They never had that barrier to face have they gone straight in. And Numbers 22-26 are entirely what God said to them while they wait to go in. and the whole of Deuteronomy 1-34 belongs to that same stationary time again. So can you see that numbers has a lot of movements in it? Deuteronomy has nothing, exodus has the first half but here is this clear pattern when they were still God spokes to them and said “Now this is how you should live”. When they got up to move there is when they get into trouble and walk in their own ways instead of the ways of the Lord.
◓ So we have a lot to learn from all this. Let us look first at the legislation in the book of Numbers. That is not the less interesting so I thought we’ll take it first and then we will look at the narrative which contains some fascinating stories.
The first thing that hits us in the laws in Numbers is these are not moral laws or social laws or what we call judicial laws, not criminal laws at all. Now in Exodus they were nut here they are mostly ritual laws, laws about worship. Now in the Law of Moses all these different kinds of law are mixed up. They did not draw the distinction that we draw between criminal law for the state of Canaan law for the church. They did not have that kind of thinking for them all of life was one hope and tomorrow laws and social laws and judicial laws and rituals laws are all mixed up but we tend to compartment to lies in life. We say that is criminal law or this is religious law but they did not do that.
God is interested in all of life and so 80 times God spoke to Moses it says, “mouth to mouth or face to face” very intimate phrase God gave this law very directly to Moses and Moses was face to face with God. We read that when he came back down the mountain his face was luminous, it shown the glory was still reflected in it. He have this intimate face to face encounter with God and God told him all about the construction of the tabernacle all the rest of it and said I am now living among the people.
But there is one huge danger when God came down into the mountain to live in His own tent in the middle of the camp. The danger was that was God so near to them people would take Him for granted. People would become over familiar with God. And when they became over familiar they would lose the reference and respect. God would be too near to them, they wouldn’t feel the gap between they sinfulness and His holiness.
▲1. I feel there is a very, very relevant message somewhere here that we need to listen to. When God is too near we take Him for granted, He is among as. Great! And we become over familiar. Especially we forget His holiness. We think of His love and His compassion and His kindness and His goodness but we overlook His holiness and that is what makes Him different from us.
Well now all the legislation in the book of Numbers, I believe is given to prevent them from losing their reverence for God. And I am going to classify it on 3 headings which we need to remember today. one is carefulness, two is cleanliness and three is costly. And all the laws in numbers can be put on the one of those three heads that when you have God among you, you need to remember first that you still need to be careful how you approach Him, second that you need to be clean when you come to Him, and third that you have to be costly not to be holy yourself.
Now let us look at those three things in the book of numbers.
First when they were camped they had to be very, very careful to camp in the right place around His tent and this was the order that was given in the book of Moses. Each tribe had its own specific allotted place in relation to God’s tent and the entrance to God’s tent. And genuinely speaking, the most important place is straight in front of the entrance and the most important tribe is Judah and they have to be directly always in front of the entrance to God’s place. It would be from the tribe of Judah that later Jesus would come.
Well so Judah had to be in front. Then the importance of the tribe is always in an anti-clockwise direction and we noticed this about the four most important tribes actually have to be at the four corners. The other trines in an anti-clockwise direction of value. There is an order, a hierarchy among the twelve tribes and laid that hierarchy down. He said that it is very important that this four tribes God need them to be the nearest in the four sides of the tent, one off the corner of further off. But between all these twelve tribes ad God’s tent there have to be as it were a barrier of Levites and even among the Levites there are three sub tribes or clans and the different clans have to be in a particular position. Moses and Aaron and the priest had to guard the entrance so that the tent must be here. And across there is a double entrance in the holy place of the Holy of Holies so God is protected by His people.
Now the interesting thing is that archaeologies have found out how the ancient armies camped, how pharaoh camp his different troops and this is exactly the military camp pattern of the ancient Egyptian army which Moses well have been trained in, in the university. But it is as if God is saying ‘my people are an army’ and it is very important that the camp be rightly protected. And when the camp moved it is fascinating, you need to read to read it in Numbers. But some tribes have to go before God’s tabernacle pieces were carried other tribes have to go but they are sort of unpeeled like an orange and they march following each other. So when they got the camp it was simpler so for each tribe to stop and put their tents up. The whole thing is minutely detailed and who had to carry which piece of furniture from the tabernacle and who had to carry the curtain from what order they have to be carried in. everything was so detailed. Well now why is God so Fussy, so particular? Well not only the very efficient as a normal military operation, it is a very efficient way of camping. But He was saying be careful a careless attitude doesn’t have a place in God’s camp. Carelessness is a dangerous thing. If I can dare to put it in a modern world, casualness, any old thing won’t do to God but we are becoming increasingly casual in our culture and increasingly casual in approach to God. Even in such a little thing as getting started in worship it can become so casual that you must drift in to it wondering when it stops.
Now I think with all of this that God is saying to His people now be careful God is in your camp you should do things carefully not casually or carelessly. And therefore there is some of these sins in Numbers which are really sins of carelessness. Carelessness on the Sabbath was punishable by death, just carelessness. Not deliberate sin but carelessness. They were to have tassels on their clothes to remind them to pray. Vows have to be taken very seriously. If a vow is made to God it must be kept. You remember there is a story in Judges about a man who vowed to sacrifice to God that first living thing that he met when he came home and he met his daughter. But a vow made to God must be taken seriously. That is one very interesting qualification of that in Numbers. If a wife makes a vow to God then her husband has 24 hours to agree with it or not. I think that is important because of so many Christian wives have none Christian husbands, it is important. There is occasion here, Christian wife sends us gift for ministry but I always ask have you asked your husband first, is he behind this? It is so important. So a vow made by wife has to be ratified by the husband and there is a 24 hour cooling off period for the husband to agree on what the wife promised to God or not. How careful all this is. We got to do things carefully with God.
▲2. The second thing that comes out to me here is cleanliness. The camp had to be spotlessly clean, these were God’s people. And so even such things as furniture arrangements, careful detail. When you are emptying your bowels take a spade with you and go out into the desert and dig a hole and then cover up your dirt. Keep your camp clean for the Lord. It wasn’t just hygiene that God is interested in. He wasn’t just doing this for germs. It is because He is a clean God in a clean camp. It is important. Can we put up a dirty, uncared for church building? It is a bit an insult to God. That is how He was teaching them to think and so bodily discharges(dung?) where a matter for Lord, of whatever kind. And before they left Sinai, before they went towards the Promised Land God insisted that they all have a bath, that they all clean themselves up. This of course is why in the older days people put some clean clothes for Sunday. Now we are not under that law and so we are not under the law of Sunday clothes. Nevertheless how we appear in worship betrays our inner mind, it says something. Do you see what I mean?
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