Another "Boring" Bible Book That Deserves More Attention
It counts for more than you think
A few months ago I wrote on how, despite being “The Bible’s Most Disrespected Book,” Leviticus contains a number of valuable lessons. But if Leviticus is the most disrespected, its successor, Numbers, might be the most ignored. Leviticus is often where Bible reading plans go to die, meaning Numbers doesn’t even get a chance.
Even its name is boring. We call it Numbers because it features two censuses of Israel, and to be fair, those sections can be about as dry as the Sinai wilderness from which the Israelites set out. But in between the bookkeeping at the bookends, some absolutely incredible events occur that give us valuable insights for living the Christian life today.
Why Numbers Matters
God’s Character on Display
God kills a lot of people in the book of Numbers. I mean a LOT. And while the atheists often point to Joshua and Israel’s conquest of Canaan to argue that God is cruel, most of the deaths in Numbers occur among His own people.
God caused the ground to swallow people up, sent deadly serpents to tear through the camp, put plagues on the people, and killed some by fire. And, most notably, He cursed everyone above 20 years old to wander for nearly 40 years as they cost themselves a chance at the Promised Land.
None of this was due to Him being a petty God with a temper problem. As we’ll discuss below, it is abundantly clear just how wicked the Israelite people were. And on the heels of Leviticus we are well aware of the incompatibility of a holy God and a sin-soaked people.
Still, we also see God’s mercy. He didn’t kill the faithless generation on the spot. He continued to feed them abundantly and cared for them until the last one had passed away. He stayed His punishments in response to Moses and Aaron’s intercession. Israel deserved far worse than what He gave.
So, we see His severity and His kindness at the same time—living up to what He had declared about Himself to Moses after the Golden Calf incident (Ex. 34:6-7).
We have to get rid of the soft Marcionism rampant in Christianity that says God “lightened up” or something after Jesus’ arrival. He is the same severe, gracious, holy, loving God He was then, and we would do well to respond appropriately. How much of the common casualness and flippancy toward God would go away if we realized He is still just as wrathful as He was when He opened the ground and let it devour entire families? How much more appreciative would we be for His grace and mercy?
A Compromised Generation
It becomes abundantly clear throughout the book that the people of Israel had let themselves become Egyptians spiritually, and they weren’t ready to convert. Just as Egypt wasn’t deterred by God’s plagues on them, so this generation of Israelites were so stiff-necked that even seeing severe, horrifying punishments resulting in tens of thousands of casualties never got them to repent.
When given the opportunity to take the land that had been promised to their people since Abraham, they were faithless and missed out (14:1-10). On top of that, they doubled down on rejecting God’s promise by attempting to mount a return to Egypt (14:3-4). When they missed out, they tried to reject God’s punishment and tried to go in anyway (14:39-45). Over and over they made it clear they thought they knew better than God. Unsurprisingly, they ended up worshiping foreign gods yet again (25:1-2).
Yes, it was a punishment that they were denied Canaan, but it also works out in that the land did not need to be settled by spiritually adulterous people who refused to revere God even in the face of extreme miracles.
As I wrote last week on spiritual adultery, every generation is faced with the same test Israel failed: will we adapt to the Godless people around us, or will we live separately by faith in God? It would be hard to claim that the word “Christian” in our day evokes the idea of a noticeably distinct people.
We’re often told to be nice, charitable people (which is great), but the world actually values those qualities. Those won’t be what sets us apart. What sets us apart is a refusal to bow to the gods of the age such as individualism, feminism, scientism, sexual deviancy, and a general refusal to act, think, and speak like the world… and that’s what makes the next point so important.
The Purification of God’s Chosen People
God’s people would not purify themselves of their idolatry and faithlessness, and as we learn from Leviticus, such disobedience cannot stand in His presence. So, something had to give—and it did. This is why an entire generation had to die, tens of thousands of them in brutal fashion, before He would fulfill the promise of Canaan.
But though He is more than capable of protecting His own holiness, God wanted leaders who would join Him in purifying the people.
Interestingly, Genesis ends with Joseph making the sons of Israel swear to carry his bones from Egypt to the Promised Land when the time came (Gen. 50:24-25), and the book of Joshua ends with the fulfillment of that promise (Joshua 24:32). Narratively, that places the sin of Peor (Numbers 25) as a watershed moment. Everything before then featured Israel’s faithless generation kicking and screaming in disobedience. Afterwards, it was mostly smooth sailing all the way through the conquests of Joshua. The tide of faithless Israel was finally stemmed and the quest took a positive turn beginning at the moment Phinehas killed a fornicating Israelite man and Midianite woman (25:7-8).
As graphic as the story may be, Phinehas was immediately blessed by God for his actions (25:10-13). And, it was precisely because “he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the sons of Israel.”
I’m telling you, one of the best things the church can do today is to read that chain of events over and over until it sets in.
No, God is not calling us to stab anyone with a spear. But He does want us to be jealous for Him, and He wants us to help atone for our people by refusing to allow wickedness in His sight. In other words, He wants men to take up the challenge of keeping the church pure.
We can’t expect success while the church is compromised by the gods of the age, and neither should we expect that to change until we stop allowing Him to be disrespected. This won’t be easy. But we do it because it is right and because we fear God—not because it’s popular.
Can you imagine how much flack Phinehas’ decisive action might have received?
“Wow, Phinehas. I mean, I agree with you opposing them but I don’t agree with how you opposed them.”
“What are the Moabites going to think when they see a priest impaling people? We have to think about our witness.”
“God called us to love them, not stab them.”
And yet, God was honored by His actions. If we want God’s favor, we should learn the importance of righteous zeal and jealousy for God.
Practically, this means tearing down the world’s strongholds from the pulpit and following it up with proactive, loving, decisive discipline (2 Corinthians 10:3-6). Like Phinehas, we should refuse to allow anyone to regularly dishonor God and still think themselves part of His people.
Putting the 3 Together
God is holy and will act in defense of His own holiness. A faithless, compromising people will not stand in His sight, but a people who get serious about treating Him as holy will thrive.
Since, in so many cases, we have allowed ourselves to become a worldly-minded people, our #1 focus right now should be to purify the church. We make all these big plans to evangelize our communities and the world at large, and yet we continue to decline and struggle. Sometimes it feels like we’ve been wandering in circles for a generation or two. Numbers makes the solution clear.
I genuinely believe if church leaders started to discipline disrespect and disobedience even so mundane and commonplace as sporadic church attendance, in short order you’d start to see radical growth in the church. But it’s going to take more Phinehas’s to make it happen. Will we have the courage to learn the lesson of the book of Numbers?
NOTES
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Great post!
Great post Jack!