Author: Randall Smith

“Why can’t I get this stupid car to start!” she cried, as she watched the minute hand moving, step by step, to the killing of her new job. She knew that if she was late again, it was over. Tears ran down her cheeks as she cried out to God, angry that He didn’t seem to listen to her. “Why won’t you help me?” she said bitterly. “Just when I get my hopes up, they are smashed again – by things I can’t help!” …This wasn’t the beginning of her story – that was long before. She grew up in a good home, and learned right from wrong. She left one day in a rebellious rage – convinced that she could make it without the rules in her life. Her choices alienated her friends and hurt her family – but she was determined to live on her own by her own rules… She would make life accept her directions. The problem quickly became apparent… life wouldn’t cooperate. People didn’t give her a fair chance. Some took advantage. Cash tapped, the car couldn’t be fully maintained. Now she was living with the results of a broken car – and that was killing her chances at getting the cash necessary to have the car fixed properly. She felt sick, but couldn’t afford a doctor or the medicines to get better. She had dreams, but was watching them slip away. All the while, she kept any sense of a walk with God and His Word at a distance – somehow thinking that He would be too busy to notice her choices, or that she would be strong enough to pull off life without His help. Thoughts of Him only came in these angry and disappointed moments… Discontented with her life, the road back to Him was as clear as ever – but she seemed more willing to believe the lie that she could make it on her own, than the truth. She needed to come back to His arms, and surrender her stubbornness. Here is the truth:

Key Principle: Much of our pain is because we don’t want to do what God has made plain to us that we should. Even more pain is caused by our refusal to recognize God’s redirection back to Him.

I am going to challenge in this lesson an assumption. Many assume that people are NOT SURE that what they are doing in their self-made lives is wrong. The Bible poses a number of stories that seem to identify the problem – not as much one of ignorance – as one of defiance. To be sure, some are ignorant of His will. Still others, however, have been carefully taught truth. They simply refuse to believe that life is as the Bible describes it, and life’s purposes are as the Scripture defines. They believe they have found another way to a meaningful life… and they continue in that belief even when it is apparent to those watching that it is not working. The live in a self-made delusion created by their will overpowering the truth around them.

Our text in this lesson illustrates the problem of listening to God, as well as blaming Him for our choices. There are a series of short stories lumped together here. The first story is very short – just three verses. The story helps frame a very basic truth. Let’s identify that truth, then take a few moments to set that teaching into the wall of the bigger truths in the background of the Word of God….The text opens with…

Story One – A Provided Victory: God heard the cry of those who were willing to do His will – and gave them provision.

The Problem: An enemy threatened:

Numbers 21:1 When the Canaanite, the king of Arad, who lived in the Negev, heard that Israel was coming by the way of Atharim, then he fought against Israel and took some of them captive.

The people had been refused by Edom to pass through their territory along the journey (it is not clear in the timeline if this already happened, but it appears as though it did). That isn’t so unreasonable. Not everyone wanted a large army and a massive encampment of people to pass by their cities – and the Edomites were clear on that point. Now Israel journeyed north and east through the basin called the Negev. The open plain exposed them to the local population that also mistrusted their intentions. Arad saw a threat and attacked – getting some hostages to question about the plan. If they knew the whole truth and told the whole truth – that God had promised the land to them after they WIPED OUT the people of the land – this would have done nothing to make Israel’s trip through the land more peaceful.

The Prescription: A prayer was offered:

21:2 So Israel made a vow to the LORD and said, “If You will indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities.”

Facing the loss of their brothers in the hostage situation, and recognizing that they would certainly be forced to fight or take flight back to the uninviting wilderness of Zin, the people came to a standstill. They could not go forward, and they did not want to go back. At that moment, someone came up with the startling idea to LOOK UP! When the people turned to God, they did it in harmony with a request that was EXACTLY what God told them to do originally. They were now prepared to take a “baby step” of obedience.

Don’t forget this truth: God is invested in helping His people when they are invested in obeying His commands. When we are angled to DO what God said we should – God is motivated to help us get it done. In our study through the Gospel of John, we saw this repeatedly in Jesus’ statements made on the night of His betrayal:

• John 14:13-14 ESV: Whatever you ask in My name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in My name, I will do it.

• John 15:7 ESV: If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

• John 15:16 ESV: You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give it to you.

• John 16:24 ESV: Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

• John 16:23-24 ESV: In that day you will ask nothing of Me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, He will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

Did Jesus have a stuttering problem? I mean, why did He repeat this line so many times in one night as it is recalled by the Evangelist in the record? The answer may be simpler than you think.

The men needed the most basic lesson that could be offered to them: “God is willing to work through you, if you are willing to let Him do it.” As a Pastor and a Christian leader, I am completely convinced that many people don’t see that truth. They don’t understand that God is ready, willing and eager to work in and through them. Repetition is needed when stubborn disbelief must be battled.

The converse is also true. God has little vested interest in making a success of the thief’s prayer life. People sometimes make the mistake of thinking that God wants us to have everything WE want to have – but that is not the case. God is not interested in feeding our desires to fulfill our own dreams without Him. That is both bad for us, and unhelpful to accomplishing His purposes. Selfish prayers are simply verbalizations of a selfish heart – and that isn’t what God is trying to build in us. Here, God helped them do what God had already told them to do.

The Product: The Lord heard and delivered:

21:3 The LORD heard the voice of Israel and delivered up the Canaanites; then they utterly destroyed them and their cities. Thus the name of the place was called Hormah.

This is one of the most elemental lessons that even the youngest follower of God experiences. It is NOT the sum total of growth – it is a mere first step. That first step is this: “When I walk according to God’s revealed will – He may offer success as an encouragement to help me move forward in the journey.” There are other factors we learn as we grow – like the work of the adversary to discourage us even when we do right, or the work of growing in trust of God’s Sovereignty when good actions bring results that look bad in the short term… those truths are also taught in the Word. Yet, in the life of the weakened and discouraged believer – sometimes God drops back to the most elemental lesson: I DO care that you tried to do right, and I will offer you encouragement through the results. This short three verses are a reflection of that truth.

The “Provided Victory” above was a sample lesson in God’s encouragement. It is an important truth to help encourage us, but it is not the WHOLE truth concerning how I should view God, merely an important piece of the puzzle. Because I have become aware that some will pose their circumstances against this truth and be quick to dismiss it if their circumstances don’t work exactly that way, I want to stop for a moment and put that truth into the wall of larger balancing truths for God. To do that, I invite you to look at a few verses in Ephesians chapter two.

Paul pointed out to the Ephesians 2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” (Eph. 2:1-3).

Pick out three words that are voices of betrayers in the passage… world, prince and flesh.

Now consider this: When we say the words: “Walk with God!” we have a specific meaning in mind. To walk with the Master is to obey Him, to carefully heed His Word on the issues of our life. It isn’t just some sentimental feeling that Jesus is with us – it is a deliberate invitation to God to journey with us through life- side by side. It means we are seeking to understand the voices of our three opponents that pull our heart from God’s direction – the fallen and misguided world, the inner longings of the selfish flesh, and the deceptions of God’s arch enemy.

First, there is the fallen world around us. Many are the voices that will offer counsel on the sacredness of being personally happy – even if that includes abandoning the hard work of building a good marriage and family, and the steadfast commitment to our own promises. A rising tide of voices will tell you that your sexual identity is in no way linked to your physiology – but a matter of how you feel about yourself and others around you – in spite of the fact that God formed your body to fit a plan He has for you. A worldly choir can always be found to sing the praises of selfish thinking – how to love myself, pamper myself and place my own needs above others around me. These are the voices of a fallen world that has lost the heart of Jesus.

How can I say that? Because at the core of Jesus’ heart was the honor of His Heavenly Father above His own desires. Deeply intertwined in that was also His deep hunger to rescue the unlovable – those of us who mutinied against His Father. In other words, Jesus loved His Father’s honor and His Father’s creation MORE than His own comfort and His own exaltation. Any fair reading of Philippians 2 must conclude that Paul called on the believers at Philippi to “have the same set of values as Jesus Himself did when He left the comforts of Heaven and chose a low place”. The “other-person-centered” life of Jesus was a pattern to stand squarely against the self-orientation of our age. This is called the Christian life – following the pattern of Jesus in direct opposition to the thinking of the world around us. This is an essential part of what we mean when we say “walk with God”. The destination of such a journey is HIS HONOR, not our comfort. Following Jesus means doing what is best for THE OTHERS AROUND US and not what would make us more comfortable.

Next, we said there is also the constant nagging of the fallen flesh within. The world’s appeal is on the outside – but the flesh hungers from within. It rationalizes selfishness and its appetites are ever drawn to wanton disregard for God’s boundaries. We want what God says we must walk away from. For some it is improper controls at the buffet line. For others it is improper use of our bodies in sensuality. For still others it is the stubborn resistance to let God control the decisions of our lives. Following Jesus means ceding control of choices within to the Spirit of God, based on careful study of God’s revealed Word, and humble submission to the principles found within it.

Finally, there is the deception efforts of the Devil. God’s enemy hates Him, and hates those who follow Him. He is a roaring lion (trying to make us afraid by the sounds he makes) and at the same time he represents a true danger. He seeks to destroy the believer. He cannot MAKE you sin – but he can dangle enticement at key moments of weakness. He cannot DESTROY your spirit and its living connection to God – but he may have permission to harm your body. As Warren Wiersbe pointed out when he studied the four times Satan showed up in the Hebrew Scriptures:

• In the case of Eve he wanted her to grow IGNORANT of God’s will (he asked her “Has God really said…?”).
• In the case of Job he wanted him to grow IMPATIENT with God’s will (he struck his body and family).
• In the case of David he wanted him to grow INDEPENDENT of God’s will (he called on him to count the people in a census to illustrate his might).
• In the case of Zechariah he wanted him to bring INDICTMENT of God’s will (he saw a vision of the High Priest Joshua with dirt all over him – showing God chose a defective man).

The point is this: you may do GOOD (and walk carefully according to God’s Word) and things may work out. When that happens – REJOICE and thank God for the encouragement. At the same time, recognize that you may do GOOD and carefully follow God’s Word and things don’t seem to go well. If that happens, it may be that your flesh is blinded by an inner hunger – and you aren’t seeing it properly. It may be that you have listened to the voices of the world around you and you cannot hear the truth about the results of your sacrifice. It may be that God has allowed His enemy to test you. Life isn’t as simple as “I paid my bills on time, and now good things should happen to me.” Yes, there will be benefits to doing right – but there may be other factors that cause your roof to leak or your car to break even if you paid all your bills on time and helped little old ladies across the street.

The bottom line is that mature believers don’t DO RIGHT just to GET GOOD RESULTS. That would be all about US.

A mature believer does right (follows God’s Word) because it honors God. That is today’s blessing, and its own reward. If things work out – all the better. If they do not – we can seek God about the trials of life and He has promised to clue us in as to what He is doing. James made that clear. While we seek Him on these things, we should take joy that He is happy we did right because our heart was aimed at making Him smile.

The lesson of Numbers 21:1-3 is that God may offer encouragement when we do right – and in any case it is what we are CALLED to do. Moving on, there is another lesson God taught the people.

Story Two – A Planned Defeat: God heard the people when they were unwilling to be content in in their own choices – and He gave them more trouble.

The problem: Discontent (This wasn’t external – but inside the camp):

21:4 Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient because of the journey.

The geographic statement reveals that the people went on the south road toward the Red Sea in an attempt to flank any army that would meet then in Edom. They swung south and then east to bypass the protected areas by going far into the desert plateau. The strategy was a sound military one – and it showed both ingenuity and forethought. At the same time, the problems of water, heat and discomfort would have made this a very tricky choice, and God never told them to take the long way around.

In the verses just before He made victory possible when they cried out to Him and sought to do His exposed will – but that didn’t keep them DOING it. They decided to go around, and they complained about it as if God MADE them do it – and MADE it harder on them. Their hardship came from their choices – not His direction. Yet, they forgot that – and blamed Him!

Have you ever done that? Have you made a choice to buy a car without a single breath of prayer, and then cried out to God, “Why did You do this to me?” when you were sitting in your driveway late for an appointment with a car that was broken… again? Did you ever shake your fist at God and tell Him that you “just don’t understand why relationships don’t work for you” when you get involved with people that are well outside of what God’s Word says you should be looking for?

How often even believers make choices that are not in harmony with God’s Word, and then become quickly discontented when the choices don’t work out. It is funny how we think. Perhaps when we do right and get right – we may quickly start to think that we somehow deserve blessing because it came from our faithfulness. In almost the next breath, we think that if we choose outside the lines of God’s stated principles – God is to blame when things don’t “work out”. “If God is good, why am I going through this?” Perhaps the answer is as simple as “God didn’t want you to choose what led you into the situation”.

In the case of Israel, He got blamed for a choice that He never encouraged, and an issue He was never consulted about.

The Prescription: Complaint (speak against the leadership of Moses and care of God):

21:5 The people spoke against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food.“

As the people left the point of entry the spies reported from, the Lord kept meeting Israel’s most basic needs, but He didn’t seem to be coming through with the abundant life they truly wanted and felt they were promised. They were quick to complain. What they seemed to have forgotten was that grapes WERE GROWING JUST FINE – back where HE TOLD THEM TO GO. Because they chose to turn another way – they found none of that blessing and then complained as if God was “holding out on them”. He wasn’t – they were holding out on Him. Let me illustrate the problem:

You have just won a vacation to a wonderful resort – all expenses paid. Dinner shows, meals and accommodation are all included. They even included in the package not only air tickets, but a beautiful red convertible to drive for the holiday. This has the potential to be a wonderful vacation. You study the brochure and look at the pictures – you can hardly believe how beautiful the place is. You get on the plane on the appointed day and fly there with your spouse, and pick up your rental car. You follow the map to the entrance of the resort. Just as you reach the resort, you decide to turn opposite the signs go into a wooded area across from the entrance. In the woods you see an abandoned shack. Instead of going back to the resort entrance, you and your spouse spend the whole vacation in the misery of an abandoned shack. When you get home, you write to the company and complain that none of the amenities you expected were in the shack, in spite of the fact that you chose not to go where you were told. Is it there fault?

Many times our failure to obey brings hardship, as God’s richest blessings go untouched and untapped by the wayward. In the place of His praise comes our complaint – in the place of His peace comes our unending turmoil. The lesson must be learned anew – what I have comes from God’s hand. The right course of action is to acknowledge that, and follow His direction. All other courses bring pain.

The First Product: Pain (The problem was a proper perspective – so God “refocused” them with troubles).

21:6 The LORD sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.

It seems sometimes the only way for God to get us to reverse wrong-headed course on the journey is to put a wall in our way that makes us stop and recognize how obstinate we are truly becoming. My dad used to say, “We spank even for bad attitude!” He knew that sometimes we just couldn’t seem to shake off the nasty, sour heart without the assistance of an outside source of encouragement to reconsider our mouth and our defiance. Sometimes a good whack was in order. He seems to have gotten the idea from the Bible, of all places!

While some may be sitting here thinking God isn’t acting in a loving and caring manor, let me challenge you with a thought.

Calgary Canada is in the midst of a gripping flood. If a man decided to jump into the water that was raging from the floods and he drowned, would you think this was a result of the water’s evil, or the man’s poor choice?

I don’t want to sound insensitive, but very often as a society we create our own troubles by deliberate departure from what God’s Word has stated is the right way to operate a society. The same is true in our homes, and in our personal lives. Let me be incredibly deliberate: When you choose to commit adultery – the pain to your family is not God’s doing. The snakes lived in a desert they were not commanded to be in. Their choice to enter that desert and not follow God’s direction led them to the fiery serpents.

True, the text is clear God sent the snakes – and that fact alone causes some people to cry out “foul!” because God is not subject to their inept view of love that has been misshaped by the modern definition of “tolerance”. It is equally clear WHY God sent these serpents. The people were NOT in the right place, and they were NOT following God’s instructions. People don’t normally fall from a ledge they don’t climb! I am not suggesting that innocent people don’t get hurt – I am suggesting that guilty people get hurt all the time – and they cannot blame God for putting them in harm’s way when that was their defiant choice. That blame ignores the core problem- rejection of the truth. This is why we have created a nation of victims – because we refuse to take responsibility for our choices.

The children of Israel KNEW what God wanted – but they didn’t choose to do it. That put them in the wrong place and opened the door to pain they would not have otherwise known.

God did not bring the serpents because He was mad at them, but because He wanted to underscore again the truth: When we walk in disobedience, we open the door to greater and greater suffering. This pain was real, serious and deadly to some – but it saved many others. Keep reading.

The Second Product: Repentance. The people got the message – guilt wasn’t buried deeply.

21:7 So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people.

Whether we admit it aloud or not, often we know EXACTLY what we are doing that is displeasing to God – but we don’t admit it until troubles pour in. Those troubles – as serious and painful as they are – are not to scar and wound us – they are to “fix” the problem within. The only solution is repentance, and the call to repentance is prompted by trouble.

Forgiveness had to be orchestrated by God – but responded to by men.

21:8 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery [serpent], and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.” 9 And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.

Up went the pole – the symbol of God’s solution to the sinful rebellion. He provided a place of healing, but they needed to respond to it – or die in their pain. We could spend hours here, but any student of the Bible gets the point. We caused the sin and the pain that came with it, and God provided a place of healing and resolution.

A Pattern of Renewal: God redrew the pattern before His people – follow Me and I will give the lands and people over to you.

The rest of the passage details a series of camps and battles:

Numbers 21:10 Now the sons of Israel moved out and camped in Oboth. 11 …from Oboth [to]… Iyeabarim, …opposite Moab, to the east. 12 … they set out and camped in Wadi Zered. 13 … they journeyed and camped on the other side of the Arnon, … in the wilderness that comes out of the border of the Amorites, … 16 From there [they continued] to Beer, that is the well where the LORD said to Moses, “Assemble the people, that I may give them water.” 17 Then Israel sang this song: “Spring up, O well! Sing to it! 18 “The well, which the leaders sank, Which the nobles of the people dug, With the scepter [and] with their staffs.”

The chapter ends with a story of military victory over the Amorites – God keeping His promise to cause the people of the land to flee before Israel. Israel enjoyed victory, because they were back on track. Angry and rebellious hearts were softened by snake bites. They got the point…

Much of our pain is because we don’t want to do what God has made plain to us that we should. Even more pain is caused by our refusal to recognize God’s redirection back to Him.

To close this lesson, let’s sit with Jesus one night. He was chatting with a Pharisee who had real questions about a walk with God. Rome ruled Jerusalem, and they made life difficult. The Temple had corrupt powers pressing for ungodly actions. Nicodemus wasn’t sure why God wasn’t stepping in… Jesus told him that God WAS… and the message was RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. Jesus told him that he needed a NEW LIFE:

John 3:7: “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ …9 Nicodemus said to Him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? … 14 “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.

Jesus said that He would be lifted up for the sins of people. He would be like the bronze serpent on the pole. God provided a way to take away the sting and death – but men had to respond. Their response would determine their healing.

It was the comedian Rodney Dangerfield that coined the phrase: “I don’t get no respect!” He was born Jacob Rodney Cohen, November 22, 1921 and died in California on October 5, 2004. He developed hundreds of monologues on the theme of being disrespected. Early in the 1960’s, with a divorce at his back, debts mounting, and no opportunities to move forward in show business, Rodney figured out that his problem was that he didn’t have a persona on stage that people could identify with – one that would distinguish him from similar comics of the time. He began to develop a character for whom nothing goes right – with the chief cause a lack of respect for him. Brought on as a last minute replacement on the Ed Sullivan show, his fortunes turned in a few months. By the 1980s he had a number of film roles, including Easy Money, Caddyshack, and Back to School. He is remembered for famous one liners like:

• I get no respect. I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous – everyone hasn’t met me yet.

• I get no respect. My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said okay, you’re ugly too.

• It must be true that I am ugly… I have never gotten any respect. When I was born I was so ugly the doctor slapped my mother… and countless others…

I mention that comedian, because he drilled in his monologue a complaint that God had long ago with His own chosen leaders of His people – and one He may have with us – God gets little respect! “What?” you reply. “Don’t we build church buildings in His honor, sing praises to His name, and spend hours listening to messages from His Word?” Perhaps we do, but that isn’t the sign of respect and honor God truly wants. He isn’t in this to be the center of the newest hymnal, nor to have more buildings built in His honor. The Creator of the Grand Canyon doesn’t need US to figure out how to put some rocks together and make something beautiful in His honor.

Here is the truth: God doesn’t measure our reverence for Him by the number of dollars we give, the hours of sermons to which we give attentive ear, nor the care with which we practice our ministry work for Him. God measures reverence by the care we give to following His Word as He gave it. When we ignore His Word, or when we relax our ears from carefully listening and in turn ease away from bringing our hands to strict obedience to what He has commanded – we show Him supreme disrespect.

Key Principle: When we don’t follow God’s Word carefully, we show that we don’t truly hold Him in the high place He belongs in our life. He is not MORE to us if His Word is not MORE to us!

The story in our lesson is NOT about the children of Israel, but about two GOOD men and their SIMPLE sin. It is about the LEADERS that no longer took special care to listen to God’s Word carefully, but relaxed their obedience – and thereby showed a lack of real respect for God.

How did Moses and Aaron lose the sense of AWE of God’s MAJESTY? How did God’s Word become something that was casual and able to be take lightly?

The answer is found in the fact that they gave greater regard to their circumstances than to the Holy Words of the Lord above. Note the context, because that has much to do with the problem. Moses and Aaron lived with:

The Problem (20:1-5)

Disregard: For one thing – it came at a time when Moses and Aaron had gone a long way with God.

Numbers 20:1 Then the sons of Israel, the whole congregation, came to the wilderness of Zin in the first month;

A careful reading of Numbers 20-21 shows this section to detail the last stage of the journey of Israel – from Kadesh around Mount Seir to the heights of Pisgah, near the Jordan, and the various incidents connected with that journey (compare Numbers 33:37-41). This is near the end of Moses’ life – and thirty-eight years into the trip. The opening comment mentions a “first month” – which must be compared to Numbers 33:37-41 (cp. Num 20:28).

In the end, we can see that thirty-seven years has passed, and Moses and Aaron have been at it a LONG TIME. More than thirty years has passed since Numbers 13 and the spies incident.

• People have lived their whole lives after the departure from Egypt.
• Many younger men know little of God’s miracles by experience – they know by Word alone.
• Moses has been in charge as long as they have been alive – and people that have contended for leadership have been put down – time and again.

The biggest issue is not the OUTSIDE WORLD, but what is going on INSIDE the leaders. They have gotten used to the title – and they have become complacent about the PERSON they serve. Familiarity brings contempt.

Here is a warning: When you have a long history with God, when you have walked a long path, and you accept that God need not throw lightning bolts to be firmly believed by you – you do not require signs and demonstrations of His might any longer. He has done the marvelous in front of you – and you believe His Word without the fireworks. At the same time, we must learn that is becomes necessary in that time to work not to lose the AWE of the Creator and His deep relationship with us. Like any relationship, it is easy to “settle in” and eventually lose the driving passions of youth –that is not unusual. Yet, in losing the passion and zeal that comes with stirring miracles and Divine displays, we should at the same time be gaining a depth of love and understanding of God’s greater purposes – but that is not always the case. In our loss of passion, we can also lose AWE – a sense of the sheer MAJESTY of our Creator and His love for us.

Moses and Aaron became USED to a relationship with God, and a ministry for God. They grew into thinking of themselves as PARTNERS and not servants. That seeded a subtle disregard in their heart. They no longer saw their intense NEED of God for every decision, every hour. As they “owned” their part as leaders – God lost the dedication that marked the days of their desperation years before. DISREGARD was the one problem –and it had very clear four very symptoms:

Discomfort: The people were now facing the “hard” desert at Zin:

Numbers 20:1 Then the sons of Israel, the whole congregation, came to the wilderness of Zin in the first month;

Things grew particularly tough! None of the desert experience was EASY in our modern sense of the term. Time went by SLOWLY in the camp. Days were intensely hot, and nights were often uncomfortably cold. Much of their day was taken up by dealing with the needs of survival. The weather and MOLD were as much an enemy as a neighboring tribe. The leaders were aging – they had been at it for an entire generation – and Moses recognized that he wasn’t getting any younger. It is quite possible that Moses felt the time drawing near to his own end (perhaps Miriam and Aaron were showing signs of their demise) and began moving the people toward the closer position. The problem is, that was a more uncomfortable and difficult place.

Central Sinai is not what the pictures often show. Southern Sinai is the rocky and mountainous part. The softer beds and sands are found in the center of the peninsula, where Wadi el-Arish offers sandy stretches on either side of the wadi (dry river) bed. Pitching a tent in el-Arish is MUCH easier than in Zin – where the rock IS the surface of the ground. Driving spikes for a tent in Zin is nearly impossible… it is a hard, hot and hostile environment – even by wilderness standards.

Disillusionment: The loss of Miriam:

Numbers 20:1b “and the people stayed at Kadesh. Now Miriam died there and was buried there.

Personal pain stung the leader. Moses lost his companion, friend and sister. His link to his family was growing thinner – and that made it an especially painful loss. The tenderness of a sister was lost – and the memories of a lifetime of camping trips couldn’t make up for the sense of deep loss.

Beyond that pain was the realization that the team was aging and dying out. Moses was attending more funerals and doctor appointments than anything else in his schedule. Life seemed to be more about maintenance than excitement. What started as powerful flashes of God’s power now seemed to be dying out in a whimper at the grave side.

Desperation: severe shortage of water:

Numbers 20:2 There was no water for the congregation…”

God’s care seemed lagging. Again the issue of water that plagued Moses’ entire journey reduced the loyalty of his people to a hostile and complaining lot. Who could blame them? They were thirsty, and the God of all provision didn’t seem to be watching. With the personal loss of Miriam, Moses may have felt the lack of water more than in the past. Death had left its sting, and Moses was nursing a hurt in the face of non-stop complaints.

Disputes: the people came against the leadership.

Numbers 20:2b “…and they assembled themselves against Moses and Aaron. 3 The people thus contended with Moses and spoke, saying, “If only we had perished when our brothers perished before the LORD! 4 “Why then have you brought the LORD’S assembly into this wilderness, for us and our beasts to die here? 5 “Why have you made us come up from Egypt, to bring us in to this wretched place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, nor is there water to drink.”

Listen to their complaints.

• First, we should have died trying to enter the land like our brothers who snubbed God’s direction and charged in! (20:3).

• Second, why did YOU bring us here to THIS wasteland? (20:4).

• Third, why did you MAKE US leave Egypt (a place of abundance) for this wasted and dry place? (20:5)

Discord was rising. The people were hurt, and as so often is the case – “Hurt people hurt people!” They lashed out against Moses and Aaron, because they couldn’t slap God in the face at the moment of their intense thirst. The older among Israel’s children KNEW Moses didn’t cause the trip or the lack they now faced – but there were many present who had not seen God’s hand in their generation. Yesterday’s powerful display became old news – and the current generation could not live off of the passing generation’s lessons learned in the blowing of the wind across the water, or the fire falling as a guardian before the face of Pharaoh. Without a new display, the miracles of God would swiftly become tales of mass hysteria. They needed a fresh move of God if they were to be stilled in the face of their startling lack.

Are we really so different? When God led a handful of people safely through storms of the Atlantic Ocean, they fell on the beach and knelt on the sands of the New World. They came, according to their own words, to both escape persecution of their religious faith and to bring the Gospel to the red man. Most of what we know about the Pilgrim expedition, and their original “Thanksgiving” of 1621 comes from original accounts of the young colony’s leaders, Governor William Bradford and Master Edward Winslow – from the quills in their own hand. They tell a tale of marvelous provision of a personal God, His Divine intervention at every turn of the journey. That tale has been reduced to a godless version for our contemporary school children that still get a day of Thanksgiving off of school – but don’t have a God to go with it – at least not one endorsed in our educational system. We did not begin where we are – and neither did the people in the Sinai so long ago…they needed a fresh fire from Heaven – as often so do we!

Note also that the people brought up the ONE TIME when people simply threw the leadership of Moses overboard and went off to defeat the Canaanites. The scene was particularly painful to Moses – though for much of the crowd is was as distant as Richard Nixon and Watergate – an old scandal only addressed by grey-headed pundits.

There it was – a time of particular toughness, when the leader was in pain, the needs were abundant and discord was growing in the ranks… Moses was looking for a way to get out of leadership and find a retirement home to check into – he was empty inside and surrounded by an angry and thirsty mob. His companion was an old man with a stick – and things didn’t look like they were going particularly well.

The Reaction (20:6-13)

First, there was the “appearance” of worship (20:6-8).

Take a moment and look at the next paragraph – because what it reveals may surprise you. Moses REACTED in frustration rather than responded in worship. He ACTED OUT rather than withdrawing to God for a time of healing. Initially, that is not what it looks like. Watch Moses and Aaron go into the doorway and drop on their faces… and God showed up with more instruction. That looks like worship, doesn’t it?

Numbers 20:6 Then Moses and Aaron came in from the presence of the assembly to the doorway of the tent of meeting and fell on their faces. Then the glory of the LORD appeared to them; 7 and the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 8 “Take the rod; and you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water. You shall thus bring forth water for them out of the rock and let the congregation and their beasts drink.“

Come on, can’t you hear the keyboard playing in the background, the lights low in an intense moment before God? They approached, they acknowledged God’s holiness and their broken condition, and God’s manifest presence appeared before them. His Word came. It was not uncertain or garbled – it was specific and measurable. God told both men to assemble the people, speak to the rock cliff before them, and have on the ready ways to collect a flow of water. God made clear HOW they were to do what they were about to do. Don’t skip the details here – they are at the heart of the story. God’s work, done God’s way was about to supply God’s people. All looks right – but that is because we cannot see the heart of the leaders. We see only the appearance of worship – not the place where it MUST OCCUR – in the human heart. Surrender was not present, only the physical signs of it. Knees were bent, but hearts were not yielded – and that is show without substance. The God who hung the stars is never impressed with a man’s ability to put on a show.

Let me say it with unmistakable clarity – the service is not where we can see if one truly worshipped. It is seen in the life AFTER the worship time. It is seen in what the person who fell, cried, sang and held their hand high with their BIC lighter raised and lit before God – did AFTER they left the room. One can have an EXPERIENCE of the soul – the part of me that is emotionally affirmed – but not have a real move of God within. That can only be tested by my obedience to God’s command and call.

Second, there was “selective” obedience (20:9-13)

Again, I am choosing my words carefully to reflect the issue that God made clear in His response. Look at what Moses did in the face of God’s revelation:

Numbers 20:9 “So Moses took the rod from before the LORD, just as He had commanded him; 10 and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock. And he said to them, “Listen now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?” 11 Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank.

Moses stepped out between the rock cliff and the assembly. He had in his hand the rod of God’s revealed truth. God popped buds from a dead stick years before to show a sign of endorsement of the Aaronic priesthood. Now the stick that was once a symbol of LIFE and ENDORSEMENT would become a tool for disobedience and sinful display in the hands of a hardened veteran leader who was not listening carefully to God’s Word anymore.

Listen to the tenor of Moses’ speech before he slammed the rock. He called the people REBELS. That was true – but not terribly understanding in light of the current troubles. The people were THIRSTY, and the canteens were empty. Yes, they said some harsh things to Moses, and their hearts were not right. In his stung state, feeling the loss of Miriam, perhaps he took things more personally. At the same time, Moses had many times in the past pleaded with God to save them – and now he seems too disgusted and too tired to care if they perished or not. Leadership wore him down. The faces of his friends had disappeared, and their children had – one by one – replaced them in the camp. He was surrounded by strangers – old and exhausted.

Moses didn’t speak to the ROCK – he spoke to the people. He didn’t speak to the CLIFF – he smacked it with the holy symbol of God’s endorsement. He didn’t do it ONCE – he did it TWICE. He got the desired result – water flowed… but he did it with all the stiffness of his younger self – striking down the Egyptian in the city long before. His will prevailed over God’s will – and that made clear that his time with God just before was not one of surrender – true worship – but one of a perfunctory visit to the Almighty in the face of a camp crisis. It was his moment on the capitol steps, singing with Congressman and Senators “God Bless America” when the pain of the nation gripped them after 9/11. The “worship” was verbal not “cardial” – as the heart was not moved beyond emotional stirring into the realm of the spirit – where surrender to God actually occurs. Worship only occurs when surrender occurs. There is no other form of true worship.

Why strike the rock? As we have seen on other occasions, the place where sedimentary rock and metamorphic rock (like granite) joins can become a place of water storage in the desert. Moses knew that. I have seen it, and watched a Bedouin guide get water by striking a rock in the desert. I have seen a wilderness camp instructor do the same thing in western Pennsylvania. Moses did what he KNEW, not what he was TOLD. He did the right thing the wrong way. He relied on his ability not God’s miraculous power. Only God could get the water by speech.

Finally, there was God’s Offense (20:12-13).

That’s right. God got offended. Listen to what the Most High said to His servant gone AWOL in heart:

Numbers 20:12 But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.” 13 Those [were] the waters of Meribah, because the sons of Israel contended with the LORD, and He proved Himself holy among them.

You didn’t BELIEVE Me. You didn’t TREAT ME AS HOLY right in front of My people…Now look at the END of verse 13. God PROVED Himself HOLY among His people by excluding the leaders from entering the Promised Land. The penalty is SO VERY BIG, that we have to spend a moment here and reckon the scene. God wasn’t impressed with the prayer time, or the bowing – if it did lead to LIFE CHOICES of obedience. Time in church won’t make God happy if the Word that you hear there doesn’t change your life choices. If the revealed truth of God is not followed – the sheer reverence we are to have for Him is not real. God knows that when we surrender, we walk according to His desires. When we do not – we walk according to our own plans. How can it be measured? The answer is found in the text. When we don’t heed the Word of God, we snub the claim of God to lead us – and we take the throne to ourselves – doing things the way WE THINK they should be done. In that moment of decision, we supremely disrespect God, and He is aware of the decision as well as the disrespect. It is not simply the decision God responded to, but the self-willed heart that produced it.

Let me ask a pointed question: We have engaged this lesson by choice. Are we willing to embrace the truth of it? Is it not plain that what God truly wants from His people is their careful observance of His Word, and then a vigilant obedience to that Word? If that is the case, then we will only be able to judge whether or not we worshiped in this hour by the care we take to perform what God has instructed in the coming hours. We are not working FOR His love – but rather working BECAUSE we recognize His Majesty, His uniqueness, His absolute and distinct right to have control of the daily life choices of His followers. Here is the real question: Is Jesus in charge of us? If not, there are some results we should anticipate…

Three Results (20:14-29)

Moses heard God’s punishment at Meribah – that neither he nor Aaron would see the Promised Land before death. There appears no reaction in the text. Moses kept going with the plan to get the people home. If he felt remorse and pain, it is not contained in this record. What IS contained in the three stories of results is that things didn’t go as Moses planned them.

Delay of the Progress (20:14-21)

Numbers 20:14 From Kadesh Moses then sent messengers to the king of Edom: “Thus your brother Israel has said, You know all the hardship that has befallen us; 15 that our fathers went down to Egypt, and we stayed in Egypt a long time, and the Egyptians treated us and our fathers badly. 16 But when we cried out to the LORD, He heard our voice and sent an angel and brought us out from Egypt; now behold, we are at Kadesh, a town on the edge of your territory. 17 Please let us pass through your land. We will not pass through field or through vineyard; we will not even drink water from a well. We will go along the king’s highway, not turning to the right or left, until we pass through your territory.'” 18 Edom, however, said to him, “You shall not pass through us, or I will come out with the sword against you.” 19 Again, the sons of Israel said to him, “We will go up by the highway, and if I and my livestock do drink any of your water, then I will pay its price. Let me only pass through on my feet, nothing [else].” 20 But he said, “You shall not pass through.” And Edom came out against him with a heavy force and with a strong hand. 21 Thus Edom refused to allow Israel to pass through his territory; so Israel turned away from him.

Moses sent for permission to pass through Edom, east of the Dead Sea, to allow the children of Israel to get OUT of Zin and move to a position perched over Canaan in the east. God’s plan was to have the land east of the Jordan partially settled with Israel, but Moses didn’t seem to know that.

Moses sent a messenger with a plea and a history of the people (20:14-17). Edom flatly refused (20:18). Moses responded with an offer of payment for passage (20:19), but this was summarily rejected as well (20:20) and this response was underscored by a sizeable force sent to end the discussion. Moses withdrew, and the people were back in the tough landscape of Zin, walking in REVERSE of their goal. Water or no, that cannot have been an easy march with that crowd!

Diversion of the Prize (20:22-24)

Numbers 20:22 Now when they set out from Kadesh, the sons of Israel, the whole congregation, came to Mount Hor. 23 Then the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron at Mount Hor by the border of the land of Edom, saying, 24 “Aaron will be gathered to his people; for he shall not enter the land which I have given to the sons of Israel, because you rebelled against My command at the waters of Meribah.

Time passed. After a period back in Kadesh (far west of the Edomite mountains) Moses directed the people BACK to the edge of Edom. The Edomite army was back home at their farms by then, but Moses felt the urge to push again to their border. It may have felt like thrashing around to his followers. When they reached the border of Edom, God spoke again to Moses and Aaron. Mount Hor is situated “in the edge of the land of Edom” (Numbers 33:37). Since antiquity, writers like Josephus identified that mountain with one called today Jebel Nebi Harun (“Mountain of the Prophet Aaron” in Arabic), a twin-peaked mountain about 5000’ above sea level in the Edomite Mountains (east of the Arabah valley). Even today the summit has a shrine called the Tomb of Aaron, which may cover the grave of Aaron.

The bottom line is that uncertainty and meandering accompanied the delay that resulted from the leaders outward show of worship without inner surrender. The people withdrew, the people returned, the people didn’t know what would be next. Vision dies when worship fades. Direction becomes uncertain when obedience becomes lax. Many a movement, and many a ministry can testify to the pattern illustrated on the slopes of Mt. Hor long ago. The prize of the Promised Land was no longer the destination – for Aaron the destination was replaced with the grave. –as it has for so many movements and people who wouldn’t take God’s Word seriously. Surely Aaron would have died one day, but the commentary on his life that accompanied that death would likely NOT have been a penalty for disobedience as it was here.

Death of the Partner (20:25-29)

Meandering Moses now faced a third penalty – another sting from death:

Numbers 20:25 “Take Aaron and his son Eleazar and bring them up to Mount Hor; 26 and strip Aaron of his garments and put them on his son Eleazar. So Aaron will be gathered [to his people], and will die there.” 27 So Moses did just as the LORD had commanded, and they went up to Mount Hor in the sight of all the congregation. 28 After Moses had stripped Aaron of his garments and put them on his son Eleazar, Aaron died there on the mountain top. Then Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain. 29 When all the congregation saw that Aaron had died, all the house of Israel wept for Aaron thirty days.

The camp was broken-hearted, and weeping could be heard from the tents round about. There was no good way to say goodbye to his brother – that is certain. Yet, the taste of death is all the more bitter when it comes on the back of hardness and disobedience. Moses and Aaron never crossed into the Promised Land in this life – they never reached their full potential following God. What more could they have done for Israel during the early days of the conquest? Would the period of the Judges have been so dark so quickly had they entered and established the people? We cannot know. What we CAN know is this: When we don’t follow God’s Word carefully, we show that we don’t truly hold Him in the high place He belongs in our life. He is not MORE to us if His Word is not MORE to us!

Gordon Dahl once said, “Most middle-class Americans tend to worship their work, work at their play, and play at their worship.” I simply argue that worship is a dangerous playground. When the writer H.G. Wells said, “Until a man has found God, he begins at no beginning and works to no end!” he set the stage properly. I was meant to WORSHIP – and that happens when I take His Words seriously, and then follow them carefully.

Did you ever get BENCHED by your coach? One of the most emotionally challenging times for any athlete is the time they have been “benched”. This is a time to watch, encourage those on the field and stay engaged… but that is hard to do. Bench warmers invariably become critics, especially if they are benched by the coach for reasons that are not mutually agreed. Why bench a perfectly good player? Sometimes they are ineligible to play at that moment because they have an attitude problem. Perhaps they have been so overstressed physically, the coach has decided a break from the game will prevent a breakdown in their body. In any case, the best athlete’s know they cannot run “wide open” all the time without breaks, and they aren’t necessarily the most qualified person to know when they need to be set down for a time. Athletes have been known to continue to unwisely play with injuries rather than go to the bench. Benching is part of the coach’s job. Here’s the problem: bench time will only truly help if they will truly use that time to recoup their energy, and restore their vigor for the game ahead. Bench time doesn’t change our attitude, it just gives us time to think about it. The choice to change is ours.

That is perhaps a “cryptic way” to introduce the story of our text in Numbers 19. God benched workers in His service, and they hadn’t done anything disobedient or wrong – He simply took them out of the lineup and called them “ineligible” for a time. One Biblical term for this ineligible state is the Biblical term “DEFILED”. Especially for modern Christians, we need to recognize the ancient context for this term. For many Christians, they read the term “defiled” in the Bible and ALWAYS think of it as a reflection of some specific sin committed by the defiled one – when that is often not the case. Sometimes God set aside an obedient and committed follower for the purpose of giving them specific time to renew their walk with Him while He cared for the physical, spiritual and emotional effects that living in a fallen world had on them.

Key Principle: God knows how to bring comfort, but we don’t always know how to receive it. We must carefully open our hearts to God’s “washing and waiting” work, when God benches us, to be fully restored and equipped to face the future.

This will take a few minutes to develop in our text, but if we are patient, there is great reward in this truth. God knows there are times in our lives that we need to get alone with Him and have Him bind up the wounds of our hearts from dealing with the blistering effects of sin – both in our world and in our lives. As we seek to understand this truth, let’s divide the text of Numbers 19 into three parts:

• Numbers 19:1-6 is the pattern of redemption – the ultimate payment for sin and its effects that must be judicially cared for before the face of a righteous God. Without the payment of sin’s debt, there is no washing and no resolution.

• Numbers 19:7-19 offer the practice of benching – some examples of specific cases of defilement. These offer a reminder that we have specific times in our lives that we need to stop, wash and wait. They aren’t about OUR sin, but about the fact that we live in a FALLEN WORLD. That reality, along with the reminders of our frailty, must remind us that we have times when God will bench His followers – because they need time off with Him to be restored.

• Numbers 19:20-22 contains verses that offer some purposes of benching – general defining statements that help us recognize the purposes God had for giving this law to our older brother Israel.

Again, not to confuse you, but to offer clarity, let me state two very important underlying assumptions of this study:

• First, modern believers who came to God through Jesus are not legally in view in the physical practice of the commands of Numbers. I am not a Jew, and I was not at Sinai making any covenant agreement with God – even in seed form. My ethnicity, so far as I know, had me physically in the loins of another people at the time. I am not suggesting that God wants us to kill bulls outside the camp. I am saying that He commanded Israel to do so, and then included the record of it in the Scripture. Since, as Paul reminded Timothy of old that “all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for doctrine, reproof and instruction”, we are looking for eternal principle in temporal law. In other words, what is revealed about the character and desires of our Changeless God in the actual and specific laws He gave to Israel of old? That is the point of the study. We don’t want to SPIRITUALIZE away the fact that they were told to kill bulls, we want to see the patterns in it that God intended us to see – so that we can address in our lives the things that move our Father’s heart.

• Second, we absolutely recognize that PART of the purpose of the laws given by God was for dealing with health issues: bacteria and disease spread in a people that did not know have access to our modern physical sciences and hygiene. We must make that point strongly. God told them what He told them, in part, to help them keep from spreading rampant disease amongst the camp of Israel (and later the nation of Israel). The fact is, though, that not all the laws that protected against the spread of disease are limited to that singular application of the text. Let’s take a look…

The Pattern of Redemption (Numbers 19:1-6)

In our last Numbers lesson, we spent time reviewing the incredibly important pattern found in the first part of this chapter. Again, we didn’t spiritualize away the bulls, but showed carefully that writers of the Christian Scriptures dropped back to the explanation of Numbers 19:1-6 to show how Messiah fit a pattern of redemption.

Take a look at the verse to renew our thinking…

Numbers 19:1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 2 “This is the statute of the law which the LORD has commanded, saying, ‘Speak to the sons of Israel that they bring you an unblemished red heifer in which is no defect [and] on which a yoke has never been placed. 3 You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and it shall be brought outside the camp and be slaughtered in his presence. 4 Next Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times. 5 Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight; its hide and its flesh and its blood, with its refuse, shall be burned. 6 The priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet [material] and cast it into the midst of the burning heifer.

When looking closely at the opening verses of the chapter, we made the points that:

• God defined what sin is and how to fix it. He did it throughout the Bible. Sin isn’t a behavior deemed by popular culture to harm humankind (in their ever-changing and limited moral mindset) – it is the violation of the stated will of the Creator of the Universe. In other words, if you dismiss a personal Creator, you open the floodgates to consensus morality. That is why modern men are swift to dismiss the Creator from the room.

• The sacrifice was to be made under the auspices of the priest, and outside the camp. The writers of the Gospels kept this pattern in mind when they highlighted the place and personnel involved in the Crucifixion story (as we saw in our earlier lesson).

• The sacrifice was to be made of a faultless bull, and it was to be totally destroyed – in that case reduced to ash. Both the guiltlessness of Messiah and the total forfeiture of His body followed that pattern.

• The accompanying of hyssop, purple cloth and wood all played a role in the sacrifice – something the New Testament writers point out in the scenes of Messiah’s death. There was a cross beam carried by Simon the Cyrene. There was a purple robe placed on the bleeding body of Messiah. There was a hussop brush hoisted to His mouth on the Cross.

The essential truth each point illustrated was simply this: God carefully offered both the instructions for a specific sacrifice, and a pattern for the future solution for sin that He eventually provided in Messiah’s coming and dying for us. Jesus came to replace Levitical “atonement law” with “total and complete justification”. As the writer of Hebrews argued, Sin was cared for ONCE FOR ALL at the Cross. It was a place of gruesome pain, foul smells, horrid punishment and bloody death. Messiah gave His life for us, and that satisfied God’s judicial requirement for redemption from the mutiny with God and brought the one and only escape from personal payment for sin by substituting Jesus in our place. The only continuing need we have is to ACCEPT THE GIFT. Without doing that, the gift lay in front of men and women, with no one choosing to unwrap it and take it as their own. Only acceptance of the gift activates the effect in an individual life. As one guy said recently: “You gotta grab it and keep it to call it your own!”

That was the pattern aspect of the Red Heifer’s sacrifice, and the application of it – as New Testament writers appropriately did –in the sacrifice of Messiah. That was a model that was to make the coming of Messiah’s story more evident as it unfolded. At the same time, the original purpose of the sacrifice was to gain the ash that had its own purpose in the story.

Follow the ashes back to the original story – and that will open the door to the second part of the chapter… The truth is disclosed that there were BENCH TIMES God has planned for followers to experience.

These were NOT because that follower had sinned – but because MAN HAD SINNED, and they lived in a fallen world that was swallowed up by the effects of the mutiny…

The Practice of Benching (Numbers 19:7-19):

God brought cases of defilement that required BENCHING of His followers. First, let’s establish that a believer could be BENCHED without doing wrong – because that needs to be demonstrated from the Scripture. Pick up the reading in Numbers 19:7-10:

Numbers 19:7 The priest shall then wash his clothes and bathe his body in water, and afterward come into the camp, but the priest shall be unclean until evening. 8 The one who burns it shall also wash his clothes in water and bathe his body in water, and shall be unclean until evening. 9 Now a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place, and the congregation of the sons of Israel shall keep it as water to remove impurity; it is purification from sin. 10 The one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening; and it shall be a perpetual statute to the sons of Israel and to the alien who sojourns among them.

Note the three men that were defiled and in need of “bench time” in the verses.

• First, there was the PRIEST that had followed every requirement of God’s stated law in verses 1-6, but had HANDLED AN ANIMAL AS IT WAS SLAUGHTERED. He was to WASH and to WAIT until that evening (19:7).

• Next, there was the one who BURNED the sacrifice. He also obeyed, but he HANDLED THE CARCASS of the animal – and he was due to WASH and WAIT until that evening (19:8).

• Third, the man who GATHERED up the ashes of the red heifer when the fire completely consumed the animal was to do his work gathering and storing (19:9) and then he was to WASH and WAIT until the evening (19:10).

What is CLEAR was that ALL THREE were walking in obedience and doing what God told them to do. None of them were held back from doing God’s work because they were in sin, or walking opposed to God’s stated intent. In other words, you don’t have to be DOING WRONG to get put on the BENCH for a period of time by God.

If it wasn’t sin, then let me ask: “Why were they “benched” for a time?” One could argue effectively that the first two handled something that was a health hazard. That was much less likely to be the case in the third man – who was dealing with the ash, as opposed to the carcass. Handling ashes was far less likely to cause specific bacterial danger. What if the issue wasn’t simply bacteria? What if the health hazard was only PART of the picture? What if handling something sacred, something so sobering, so intertwined with the lost state of mankind had its own need to sit on the bench and reflect awhile? Keep that thought for a moment and then recognize why the ashes were to be kept. The were a solution for defilement both for Israel and those who lived among her. The ashes would be used to purify those defiled.. and the preparation of them was a HOLY ACT. It was surrounded in sober and careful practice, and followed by a “time out” of reflection and waiting.

Let me posit this: Even when you are walking in obedience to God, there are times when you will handle the issues related to and resulting from the mutiny since the “Fall of man” in very specific ways. In times like that, God may bench you for a time so that you can be comforted by Him and regroup under His gentle hand.

Remember the penalties of “the Fall” in the Garden back in Genesis 3:7?

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. 8 They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” 11 And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom You gave [to be] with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

What came from the fall was:

• LOSS of INNOCENCE – “eyes were opened” (3:7a),
• DEATH of intrinsic positive SELF IMAGE – “knew they were naked” (3:7b),
• SHAME – “covered themselves” (3:7b);
• DISTANCE from God – “hid themselves” (3:8)
• GUILT – the FEAR to be seen of God – “I was afraid because I was naked” (3:10).
• BLAME: Man tried to blame the woman (3:12)! Woman blamed the tempter (3:13)!

Coming out of the Garden in chapter three, humankind encountered a new world. The rules were different from the ones that humanity was created to live within. Adam, his wife and his children were faced with adapting to a world that was alien to them. The distance created by rebellion left a vacuum in His heart that was shaped like God, but could quickly be filled with a self-enthroned man. Man lacked the intimate and loving work of the Father within, and he would face moment by moment the choice of yielding to God’s hand or being full of self.

Yet, something even more powerful came into being as a result of the Fall… Bigger than shame and guilt, more powerful than the urge to blame…blistering forth came the shackles of death, and the grief of separation. In fact, in the background to that cataclysmic moment, you can hear the words of Scripture in the anthem behind the scene… (Ezekiel 18:4, 20) “The soul who sins will die.” DEATH came from the Fall. Paul wrote it to the Romans: “The wages of sin is death…”

Look back in Numbers 19 for cases that defile – REASONS WHY ONE WAS BENCHED FOR A TIME:

• One who handles a dead body, as in Numbers 19:11 The one who touches the corpse of any person shall be unclean for seven days. 12 That one shall purify himself from uncleanness with the water on the third day and on the seventh day, [and then] he will be clean; but if he does not purify himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not be clean. 13 Anyone who touches a corpse, the body of a man who has died, and does not purify himself, defiles the tabernacle of the LORD; and that person shall be cut off from Israel. Because the water for impurity was not sprinkled on him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is still on him. Very likely, this directed our thoughts back to the loved ones who carefully washed and prepared their brother, sister, mother or father for the grace. They hadn’t sinned; they were doing what they should do. At the same, the sinful state of fallen man brought death, and handling death brought time on the BENCH.

• Those in the locus of the dead are defiled, even if they didn’t touch the person, as in Numbers 19:14 This is the law when a man dies in a tent: everyone who comes into the tent and everyone who is in the tent shall be unclean for seven days. 15 Every open vessel, which has no covering tied down on it, shall be unclean. Though the people in view were likely not those who handled their loved one’s body, they lived in the place where the loss was felt sorely. They watched and waited, as their loved one slipped away. They were BENCHED as well for a time.

• One who handles the remains of the dead are defiled as in Numbers 19:16 Also, anyone who in the open field touches one who has been slain with a sword or who has died [naturally], or a human bone or a grave, shall be unclean for seven days. In view here may be one who happened upon a fallen one – whether they knew the person or not. It also regarded one who plowed up bones in a field, even if they didn’t know at the moment why these bones were present. They were BENCHED.

All three of these people – the one who handled the dying or cared for the body of their loved one, the one who lived in the place where their loved one died, and the one who happened upon the remains of one – whether they knew them or not – were all defiled. Again, there clearly was a health issue here – at least in the first two cases – but that doesn’t seem to be the whole story. Handling dried old bones presents very little danger more than the handling of other dirty and old objects. It seems like God wanted to say something MORE than just – “Get clean or you will spread disease!”

Let me offer a few observations without going very far from the text itself.

• First, passing through the end of life with a loved one is obviously exhausting and heart rending. The process of death is neither pretty nor a light-hearted matter. I am in that room often. It is HARD. It is SAD – in the best of circumstances. Even among believers, it feels terrible to know that they will not be a part of our daily lives this side of Heaven. The plain fact is that although “absent from the body, present with the Lord” is our loved one – we MISS THEM TERRIBLY. I sit with dear friends that have lost the other half of THEMSELVES. They struggle to smile because the pain is so real. They don’t lack faith. They just miss their loved one. Life isn’t the same on a planet that only has memories of them. I love my life here, but I admit that as the years pass, it gets harder as the shepherd in a place where I bury so many of my close friends… it comes with the work. You take the blessings with the challenges – that is life!

• Second, dealing with death, no matter how long we anticipate it – is a shock to our system. Grief is a PROCESS, and it doesn’t move by quickly. The deeper the love, the longer the grief. The five stages of grief defined by behaviorists are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These are the way we learn to cope with the one we lost – and no stage is simple. People are complex beings, and grief is a deep process. It comes in waves, and often creates inner turmoil that is incredibly unsettling – even to the most balanced among us.

Here are three simple truths that I believe can be gleaned from the BENCHING or DEFILEMENT text:

• There is a specific time – immediately following the strain and shock of the death of a loved one – that we should NOT try to move on. In the text, there was a specific week of “down time”.
• There was a specified process to get “cleansed” during that time. This is both physical and hygienic, and spiritual. The down time was not just to CRY, but a time to seek God and receive comfort from His hands. That is why the defilement was considered a SPIRITUAL MATTER – not just a physical threat to health.
• There was a limit of time to be set aside. NO ONE thinks that grieving could have been completed in a week – NO ONE. The point is that there was to be an end to TIME OFF and TIME AWAY from the community. Everyone knew how long it was. There was no confusion of expectation. You took the week off, and you went through the process, then on the eighth day – still with a hole in your heart that missed your loved one – you GOT UP AND WENT BACK TO YOUR LIFE.

If you don’t hear carefully, what I am saying will sound COLD, and UNCARING. If you hear what I believe is part of the intent of the text – I think you will see that is NOT the case…Look for a moment at the verse that remind us “How to get clean” in defilement among our ancient brothers:

Numbers 19:17 Then for the unclean [person] they shall take some of the ashes of the burnt purification from sin and flowing water shall be added to them in a vessel. 18 A clean person shall take hyssop and dip [it] in the water, and sprinkle [it] on the tent and on all the furnishings and on the persons who were there, and on the one who touched the bone or the one slain or the one dying [naturally] or the grave. 19 Then the clean [person] shall sprinkle on the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day; and on the seventh day he shall purify him from uncleanness, and he shall wash his clothes and bathe [himself] in water and shall be clean by evening.

Note there is a specific number of days and a specified process. The fact remains that you cannot control the grieving process, but you can keep yourself from withdrawing back inside like a turtle in the midst of danger. There is a way that you can eventually get moving ahead in your life.

There is always a temptation to retreat from people in the pain process. God specified how long you should collapse into His arms, and when to get up. Never ending dramatic displays of pain were not acceptable. There was a process – a very painful process – but one that God brought by His own hand to comfort our broken hearts.

The Purposes of Benching (Numbers 19:20-22)

God didn’t create legislation without intention and purpose. He offers a command – but He also teaches us about ourselves, and our world. The end of the passage says:

Numbers 19:20 But the man who is unclean and does not purify himself from uncleanness, that person shall be cut off from the midst of the assembly, because he has defiled the sanctuary of the LORD; the water for impurity has not been sprinkled on him, he is unclean. 21 So it shall be a perpetual statute for them. And he who sprinkles the water for impurity shall wash his clothes, and he who touches the water for impurity shall be unclean until evening. 22 Furthermore, anything that the unclean [person] touches shall be unclean; and the person who touches [it] shall be unclean until evening.‘”

• Clearly, the text says that the mentioned cleansing process is REQUIRED. (19:20).

• In addition, the ramifications of being lax in this area are much bigger than just ONE FAMILY. It will affect the WORSHIP CENTER (19:20b).

• The condition wasn’t just related to the DESERT experience – they would carry it as a law for all their generations (19:21).

• Benching for defilement was God’s idea – and God’s prescription for those who were in contact with the extremity of the results of the Fall.

Let me suggest that God had a very important principle He wanted to communicate:

God knows how to bring comfort, but we don’t always know how to receive it. We must carefully open our hearts to God’s “washing and waiting” work, when God calls on it in us, to be fully restored and equipped to face the future.

In our rush ahead and “never look back” society, we forget how important a process of getting through the difficult times can be.

If we don’t take the time to receive God’s comfort and grow through the process – it will leave a scar on our lives. It did on mine, because I was too young to know this truth when it happened… I am reading from a People Magazine article called: ”The Birth of a Settlement” (November 1982) by James R. Gaines

James wrote: “Last July 2, a 27-year-old American emigrant living in the West Bank settlement of Tekoa was murdered. His name was David Rosenfeld. By nightfall, a young Arab from the tiny village of Ferdis had confessed to the killing. The next morning Israeli soldiers blew up the home of another suspect in Ferdis, Muhammad Ali Mubarak, 26; a dozen members of his family, including his father and mother, were committed to the streets…Born in Philadelphia, David [Rosenfeld] graduated from George Washington University with a B.A. in history in June 1979. That summer, two days after their wedding, David and Dorit Rosenfeld emigrated to Israel. Dorit’s first impression of Tekoa was dispiriting: She found it isolated, grim. But David saw in it every settler’s vision, the reclamation of his biblical homeland. An instant convert to the cause, he took to it with a convert’s zeal: He spoke to friends of the lush vegetation that would one day be coaxed from the barren hills that stretched out in every direction from his perch atop the Herodion, and as supervisor of that out-of-the-way site he dreamed of vastly expanding tourism… David was stabbed more than 80 times that morning. He had left his Uzi submachine gun at home. A few minutes later a young American archaeologist, Randy Smith, found him lying face down in the ticket office of the Herodion in a spreading pool of blood. Numbed by the sight, Smith found himself absently counting the wounds in David’s back. The young soldiers who came to the scene tried vainly to resuscitate David but soon gave up, sickened and openly weeping.”

I was arrested for a time, but after I was released later that day I went back to work. I shouldn’t have. Healing was required. I just didn’t know it. Psalm 126:5 says: “Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting. 6 He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying [his] bag of seed, Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves [with him].” Someone reminded me recently that: “It is helpful to remember that it is not the SORROW but the SOWING while weeping that brings forth future sheaves.” There is a process of washing and waiting – and then there is the working while weeping. Eventually, if we allow God to deal with our pain, we will feel it slipping ever so slowly away…

When I was a kid, I liked to build models. I especially liked building ships, planes and World War II reconstructions. I could spend hours putting a battle scene together, only to rip into it like the scars left after actual warfare. I lived in my imagination, and recounted battles of long ago. Some were real battles that I read about – others were a product of a pre-teen lost in a vision of the his own little plastic world. It wasn’t until a few years later I got firecrackers, and then things really got interesting… but that is for another time. I confess that I learned a great deal by observing models – and it seems that is something I was made to be able to do.

Whether on the shop floor or in an art class, God made many of us to pick up patterns and reproduce by models. Like many men, I confess that I often didn’t follow the directions – rather I looked at the picture on the box. I wanted my copy to look like the one on the box – because that is what I bought. In the store, all I had was the picture on a box, and that was the pattern in my mind. The value of seeing a complete version in a picture was that I could recognize when I made my copy successfully.

God also loves models. He paints pictures of spiritual truths, and shares them with us – so that we can celebrate His unfolding plan with Him. He gave models to Israel long ago that help us know about the way He accomplishes things in men – like redeeming a lost man or restoring a fallen brother. These patterns are often more clear later in Scripture – because God’s story is progressive. He sometimes introduced something into the Scripture, and only many years later cleared up why that element was necessary. The text we are studying in our lesson today is one of His most elaborate models — that of the “Parah Adumah” – or the “Red Heifer”. This picture showed how God modeled restoration for the defiled – and redeemed the filthy. The model vibrantly pictured the coming plans of Redeemer – and left us with a picture on the box to look at when Messiah came to redeem and restore.

Key Principle: God planned very carefully the details of our redemption – and offered pictures long before to make the process clear.

The fact is that salvation and reconciliation to God had a pattern long before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. God didn’t leave man guessing – He offered the general model of the sacrificial system to help us understand substitution and atonement. He also offer a model in the form of one specific sacrifice- the Parah Adumah. The pattern of that sacrifice was so clearly a pattern of future redemption, that details of it became important to the story of the Good News (Gospel) account. Let’s look at the text and draw out the sketch to be filled in with the Gospel details.

Pretend that Numbers 19 is a “paint by numbers” pattern. God drew out the black and white lines, and then later added the colors in another time, on the hillside called Calvary…

Underlying the pattern is this: God demonstrated in the pattern that redemption and reconciliation to God were essential – because of an internal nature of continual mutiny and rebellion.

God established clearly that people cannot and will not follow rules – and will not act in a way that honors His moral authority over their lives. We are born with a desire to do things our own way. Isaiah knew it, and wrote the words of the Lord in Isaiah 53:6 “All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.” Listen to those words carefully and you will hear the pattern… All men and women do what they CHOOSE, but God took the pain of that mutiny and the effect of that rebellion – and placed it on HIS OWN SHOULDERS. Those who know God because of the choice to give our lives to Jesus understand this clearly. Isaiah prophesied of something that has changed our lives.

The very first part of the Bible is the Law – but one of the major features of reading the Torah (the Law) is that it clearly established the lines of acceptance and violation – and like the fingerprints left on the wet paint with the sign “DO NOT TOUCH” – the Law made clear man was badly broken inside. The Law offered standards – in part – to visually help us all understand that we don’t do what God said – even when it is clear – because we DON’T WANT TO. That was Paul’s point in Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—13 for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law.”

Don’t get lost in the verbiage. Paul said that one man mutinied in the Garden, and passed that fallen and broken state to all his children. One outcome of that rebellion was immediate separation from God – a broken relationship that separated us from spending an eternity with our Creator. Physical death of the body is a mere symbol of a spiritual reality – things are broken since the Fall. Yet, without the Law, it would NOT have been clear how broken man truly is. The fact is that we are optimists about ourselves and our own intentions. The Law showed that we simply WON’T do right. We just CAN’T on our own. That wet paint sign is too tempting. That speed limit sign is for other people. We know better… or at least we live like we do.

Our story in Numbers is a great sampling of human failure!

Walk back into the story of the Israelites in the desert we have been following. Constant rebellion made Moses’ life ridiculously difficult. Think back over the last few chapters:

• First, the spies were sent into the land, and their negative report left Israel in tears (Numbers 13). God promised them the land – and FEAR kept them from obedience. Disappointment set in.

• Next, growing out of disappointment came the sore of open INSURRECTION that pressed Moses to fall before God to defend the people and keep them from summary judgment – but in God’s patience the people only stepped up rebellion further! They rushed hastily into the land against Moses’ clear command. It was a disaster. The people of God were routed and the enemies of Israel were celebrating and picking up the spoils of war (Numbers 14).

• In the wake of that awful decision to fight without God’s direction and presence, God regrouped the people with Moses and presented some NEW LAWS. These were meant to both encourage the people that they WOULD be entering the land, and warn the people that future rebellion would need to be faced soberly, with the consequences of sin clearly outlined (Numbers 15).

• No sooner had God offered encouragement, then (in Numbers 16) another leadership rebellion pushed the camp into chaos. The text recounted first how Moses dealt with rebels, and then how God dealt with them. This rebellion left no body bags or burials, the earth SWALLOWED the rebels up in one moment.

• By Numbers 17, God used the staff of a man to show His power, direction and approval. God used a stick to show endorsement – bringing empowering new life and productivity to a dead stick.

• In Numbers 18, the issue came up a third time — WHO WOULD LEAD THEM. By that point, the text was clear – people didn’t like God’s choices for them – they wanted to make their own. Are we really any different? I don’t think so!

Five chapters, three open rebellions, and earth swallowing and body bags… you would think anyone reading this account would stop right now and evaluate their walk and their obedience… but most of us pass by these images like a traffic accident on the highway. We know the results of rebellion MAY someday befall us, but we keep driving along, hoping that it won’t happen today… The setting of the sacrifice of Numbers 19 is clear – we need God to step in with answers to our sin-sick nature – or we won’t be able to change. If God doesn’t clean us up, we won’t get clean – period.

Zoom into Numbers 19 and pick out with me some of the elements of this paint by numbers sketch, so we can fill in the colors with later Scripture:

Element One: Sin violation is both an issue of sacred and secular authority –

It simply cannot be relegated to only one. Note the opening in Numbers 19:1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying…”

In Numbers 19:1, after wave upon wave of flagrant rebellion, God spoke to both the civil leader (Moses) and the religious leader (Aaron) to directly answer the rebellious violations in the camp.

He didn’t divide religion from state laws – because it isn’t really possible to do so. We need to be clear here…It is a foolish errand to attempt to divorce religion from the state – simply because state laws are formed as a reflection of moral precepts that are deeply rooted in religious life.

Americans today aren’t truly trying to separate church and state- they are trying to replace WHICH “church” the modern state follows. They prefer the moral relativism of today’s experts in atheistic humanist lab coats, not what appears to be archaic Biblical precepts. When people argue for “separation of church and state”, they are not arguing that NO moral precepts under gird civil law, they are arguing that they don’t like the moral precepts upon which our laws have historically been based. They chip away at the foundation, supposing they are gaining more personal freedom by dislodging the Biblical root of our jurisprudence.

With each decade we spend more and more to keep ourselves safe in a society that cannot agree on the simplicity of what is “good” and “right”. We cannot agree on the most basic protections and principles. In our unbounded celebration of growing American diversity, we seem to have lost our essential core value system – and we cannot find common ground with our own founders.

In point of fact, all laws are rooted in moral principle – and the modern attempts are nothing more than merely dislodging the Biblical foundation and replacing it with a new national religion – naturalistic humanism.

I am not arguing that there is no difference between the law of the state and the Bible, I am arguing as did President Washington – that state morality was intended to be rooted in Biblical precept. He said: “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.” (George Washington). Those who long to preserve the Biblical foundation to our state heritage are not trying to change the country – we are resisting the replacement of the ethical system upon which our laws are based.

Element Two: Both sin and its remedy is defined by God.

The standard is inscribed by God’s Word – not by popular opinion. Numbers 19:2 “This is the statute of the law which the LORD has commanded, saying…”

Men will never figure out what is RIGHT and GOOD without God. We cannot see the truth in the fallen world, because all creation has been affected by the Fall. In a recent defense of homosexual unions, one so-called “Christian” author claimed in an interview that since “such things happen in nature” it must be against the natural order to forbid such unions. The author has overlooked two important truths:

• First, Romans 8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. In other words, you cannot get a clear picture of what God intended by looking at a fallen world that is waiting to be fixed by God.
• Second, because of the sin nature, we all want to NATURALLY do things that the law must not sanction. Lust is natural, so restriction is both warranted and helpful. Laws are intended, in many cases, to BLOCK us from doing what we would do if we could.

The point is this: only GOD can be trusted with the answer to where we are today. We are broke inside, and increasingly, as we stray from Biblical moorings in society, we are broke on the outside as well. The answers are not found in NATURE, nor are they found WITHIN MAN – they are found in God’s Word. He created all things, and He knows both their PURPOSE and their DESTINY.

Element Three: God has provided a way to fix what is broke in man.

God provided a substitute to die in our place outside the camp. Numbers 19:2 “…‘Speak to the sons of Israel that they bring you an unblemished red heifer in which is no defect [and] on which a yoke has never been placed. 3 You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, and it shall be brought outside the camp and be slaughtered in his presence.

The paint by numbers line sketch is simple here. There must be an unblemished substitute that is killed outside the camp under the authority of the Priest of the people.

The Gospels unfold the gruesome story of Jesus before Annas, then the High Priest Joseph Caiaphas and a court of the Sanhedrin early one Friday morning two thousand years ago. Blindfolded and slapped by Caiaphas’ men – Jesus was eventually remanded into Roman custody before being nailed to the Cross outside the city wall of Jerusalem.

The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews fills in the color on the sketch in Hebrews 13:11 “For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest [as an offering] for sin, are burned outside the camp. 12 Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate. 13 So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. 14 For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking [the city] which is to come.”

The author called the early Jewish followers of Jesus to STOP trying to fit in to the world about them, and take on the reproach of the Savior. Embrace the reality: we don’t fit here anymore. We aren’t called to be popular – we are called to be Christ-like. His most important contribution to mankind was made OUTSIDE the walls of the city – in a place of filth and sorrow. He was our substitute, and His life was take because of our sin. That is an essential element of the Gospel: God sent His Son to fix what we could not repair given any amount of time or effort. On a hill outside the ancient city of Jebus, Abraham took his son Isaac and offered him up to God. On another hill nearby – outside the city called by that time Jerusalem – God offered up HIS SON. The first time the sacrifice was stopped, the second time it was NOT.

Element Four: Total faith in the offering set up by God was ALL it would take to fix the problem.

God didn’t tell them to make the offering and then set out to please Him by building a great Temple or helping a little old lady across the camp’s major camel traffic lane… What God provided was complete. Numbers 19:4 Next Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times.

Eleazar took a small amount of the blood from the animal onto his fingers and sprinkled it toward the very heart of the camp, where the Mishkan – the “Tent of meeting” stood. He didn’t do it once – he was commanded to be careful to do it SEVEN TIMES. You needn’t look hard in the Bible to find out that God likes the number seven. The Bible opens with the story of the complete cycle of the week in Genesis 1:1-2:3 – the story of the seven days. Pass the Torah and its many references to the Shabbat every seventh day and pause to look at Joshua marching around Jericho for seven days, complete with seven blasts on the trumpet on the seventh pass of the seventh day. Pick up Joshua 6 and you will read these words:

Joshua 6:4 “Also seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark; then on the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. 5 “It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up every man straight ahead.”

We could go all the way through the Bible, where we would finally end in Revelation with a judgment of seven seals in Revelation 6, followed by seven trumpets in Revelation 8-9 and seven bowls in Revelation 16.

Here is the point: Seven was the perfect number of completion. It was the JUST RIGHT that Goldilocks was searching for in the den of the bears. It was COMPLETE.

Element Five: The solution was in death and a blood sacrifice.

Sometimes in our modern world, that offends our sensitivities. We are, thankfully, a “save the whales” community. We don’t kill animals just for the fun of it. There are sportsmen – but they will tell you that they do not attempt to be cruel to the prey in the hunt. Focus on the end of verse four and the phrase: “…sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times.”

Blood was the perfect cleansing solution. It came from a young cow that had one color hair and never had a yoke placed upon it, nor was she ever calved. The sacrifice was PURE and UNBLEMISHED – spotless of its own accord – and cut open and bled. Again the line sketch is filled in with color much later by the writer to the Hebrews in chapter 9:

Hebrews 9:11 “But when Christ appeared …12… through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? … 19 For when every commandment had been spoken by Moses to all the people according to the Law, he took the blood of the calves and the goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20 saying, “THIS IS THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT WHICH GOD COMMANDED YOU.” 21 And in the same way he sprinkled both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry with the blood. 22 And according to the Law, [one may] almost [say], all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”

The life blood was the highest price one could pay. When you give up your life, you give all – and that is exactly what Jesus did. Nothing less than a full and complete sacrifice would do in God’s system of dealing with rebellion.

Let me be clear: Someone will pay for your sin. It will be YOU in eternal judgment, or it will be JESUS covering you with His blood because you CHOSE to trust in Him and Him alone for your salvation. There are no other options.

• You cannot work your way in: For Ephesians 2 expressly says: 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, [it is] the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

• You will not “will power” your way to doing right deeds to balance the scales in your favor. Romans 5 states our position without Jesus very clearly: 6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. We, apart from the work Jesus did at the Cross for us – are completely HOPELESS and HELPLESS.

We must never fail to be absolutely clear about this ONE THING: Jesus is THE Way, THE Truth, and THE Life. He said it clearly in John 14:6 “No one comes to the Father by but me!”

Element Six: Tossed into the sacrificial fire were reminders of the sickness of man and the prescription for the cure.

Number 19 continues with a strange mentioning of some items that were tossed into the fire as the sacrificial red heifer was reduced to ashes in a fire. Numbers 19:5 “Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight; its hide and its flesh and its blood, with its refuse, shall be burned. 6 The priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet [material] and cast it into the midst of the burning heifer.”

The animal was thoroughly inspected. The Mishnah reminds that even two hairs of another color would disqualify the animal for sacrifice. The heifer was fully inspected, and being found blameless – it was put to death. Luke reminds us of that scene in the sacrifice of Jesus, where He was found guiltless – but nevertheless killed… Luke 23:4 Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no guilt in this man.” 5 But they kept on insisting, saying, “He stirs up the people, teaching all over Judea, starting from Galilee even as far as this place.“

The animal was slaughtered, and the carcass was burnt, but the bones were not broken, reduced by the fire itself. John 19:36 made the point that at the death of Jesus “For these things came to pass to fulfill the Scripture, “NOT A BONE OF HIM SHALL BE BROKEN.”

While the heifer was burnt, the priest would tossed in cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet into the sacrificial fire. These three elements are not only found HERE, but also in Leviticus 14:4 as part of the cleansing and restoration of a LEPER.

• The cedar was an important wood in ancient times – possessing resistance to disease and rot. It is impossible to know what kind of wood the sacrifice of Jesus took place upon – but it is no stretch to understand that a piece of WOOD was prominent in the story or redemption at the CROSS>
• The hyssop was used to offer Jesus a drink on the cross (Matthew 27:48), but was a poetic expression in the Bible for cleansing – as in Psalm 51:7, when David said “purge me with hyssop” — admitting he was a bad as a leper. It was used to put the blood of the lamb on the door post at the Exodus.
• The scarlet was the color of the mocking “king’s robe” put on Jesus at His torture by the soldiers (Matthew 27:28). A cloth of the wealthy, Luke reminds us that Pilate and Herod Antipas became friends over the JOKE of King Jesus passed between them that day.

The object is not to become obsessed with symbolism, but it is also to be able to understand the connection between the model and its fulfillment. God knew what He was doing from the beginning of Creation – and we can trust the plan is unfolding as He planned.

Babbie Mason wrote these words, “God is too wise to be mistaken. God is too good to be unkind. When you don’t understand and can’t see His plan, when you can’t trace His hand, TRUST HIS HEART.” This is one aspect of properly understanding the wonder of God’s Word.

God planned very carefully the details of our redemption – and offered pictures long before to make the process clear.

Let me close this lesson with a word of warning. God unfolds His plan over ions of time – but you and I don’t have eternity to make up our minds to follow Him. We live, staring in the face of a ticking clock. The days of our lives are numbered, but unknown to us.

There is a fable which tells of three apprentice devils who were coming to this earth to finish their apprenticeship. They were talking to Satan, the chief of the devils, about their plans to tempt and to ruin men. The first said, “I will tell them that there is no God.” Satan said, “That will not delude many, for they know that there is a God.” The second said, “I will tell men that there is no hell.” Satan answered, “You will deceive no one that way; men know even now that there is a hell for sin.” The third said, “I will tell men that there is no hurry.” “Go,” said Satan, “and you will ruin men by the thousands.” (William Barclay: The Gospel of Matthew, vol. 2 [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975], p. 317. From a sermon by Matthew Kratz, The parable of the Faithful & Wise Servant, 7/17/2010)

The most dangerous delusion is that delay is acceptable because there is plenty of time.