Reading Numbers for God’s Mission

I recently saw an internet cartoon panel of three frenzied church people approaching their pastor. The first says, “Why study the book of Numbers?!” The second says, “Thirty-six chapters of self-centered people who whined every time they didn’t get their way!” The third says, “Give us something relevant!”While Numbers may prove to be one of the more challenging reads in the Old Testament, this image cuts to the quick of what makes Numbers necessary as we understand our place in God’s mission in the world.

I’ve spent enough time both as a human being myself and working with other human beings in ministry to know that every single one of us has a big red button in our lives with the label “self destruct.” When we’re left to our basest instincts, despite our best of intentions and the communities that love us, we can’t help but mash that self-destruct button as often as we can. The 2018 film Annihilation is such a poetic exploration of all the ways we sabotage ourselves. And at its core, so is the book of Numbers.

Numbers isn’t a simple, accessible read. It’s a compilation of census records, additional laws, and short stories about Israel’s losing its way in the desert. When we read Numbers, we may actually feel like we’re getting lost in the desert ourselves with Israel. Maybe that’s part of the intent. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. Here are some things to keep in mind as you read Numbers.

Numbers is about arranging our lives with God at the center.

The book of Numbers is a divine story. It communicates to us what kind of God that God is. At the same time, Numbers is a deeply human story. It illustrates the profound frailty of humanity. Even these people who have witnessed firsthand God’s victory over Pharaoh and the literally earth-shaking presence of God at Mount Sinai, have a really hard time getting along with God.

Numbers continues the narrative thread of Exodus and Leviticus. The people are at the mountain. God shows up to live among them. Now what? The administrative details that open the book (and give the book its name in the Christian tradition), show how the nation is to physically order itself around God’s presence in the tabernacle. God is to be the very center of the community. What might that say to us, whether we’re considering urban planning, the layout of our house, or even planning our schedules?

We should never forget that reading Numbers is a cross-cultural experience. This isn’t a work produced by, nor for, contemporary Western people. We need to put our imaginations to work to think, as best we’re able, like the characters of these stories. What does it mean to unlearn a whole way of life and say “yes” to this God who rescues you from literal slavery? How do you make this God the very center of your community?

Numbers in the story of Israel.

Our story is the story of the Church. And the story of the Church is the story of Jesus. The story of Jesus is the story of Israel. The story of Israel is the story of the God who made the world and is putting it all back together again.

What kind of God that God is like is being established in the books of Moses, and Numbers plays a part in this bigger whole. Genesis tells the stories about the original family tree of Israel. Exodus is about a group of slaves rescued by God and how God comes to live right in their midst. Leviticus is like the instruction manual for what Israel does now that the Creator of the universe lives like a next-door neighbor. Numbers is an anthology of stories of the forty years in the wilderness. And Deuteronomy retells and repackages the whole story in anticipation of God fulfilling his promise to Abraham.

Genesis 12 hovers in the background throughout Numbers. God promised Abram a piece of land that his family could call home. In what should be a journey of a couple of days, if they’d taken a direct route, Israel (and the name means “God-Wrestlers”) wanders in circles for 40 years. Numbers is how they get from God’s deepest revelation at Mount Sinai to the doorstep of the Promised Land on the plains of Moab.

Numbers and the wilderness.

A common theme in the writings of classic spirituality is the wilderness. “If a man wishes to be sure of the road he’s traveling on, then he must close his eyes and travel in the dark,” writes the 16th century, Spanish mystic San Juan de la Cruz. He’s famous for calling this spiritual wilderness, “the dark night of the soul.” Throughout human history, the wilderness has come to mean a place free from the distractions of the world, where, in our silence and solitude, we experience a heightened awareness of God’s presence.

Leading to his public ministry, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, a symbolic parallel and embodiment of Israel’s journey. The prophet Hosea likens the imagery of the wilderness to God’s honeymoon with Israel, a place of deep intimacy. The psalmist recalls the profound hurt and disappointment of God because of Israel’s stubbornness in the desert as an example of what not to do. The author of Hebrews riffs on this same psalm to explain how God’s good intent for us is rest, shalom, even when we hold it at arms’ length.

None of us, even with our experience within church life, is immune from the temptation to say “no” to God and hit the big red self-destruct button. We may teach Sunday school, go on mission trips, have a quiet time every day, but we never graduate from the possibility of saying “no.” But God is ever-present and ever-faithful. It is because of God’s commitment to us that we can say “yes,” that we can nurture habits to be “in Christ,” as Paul calls it. Numbers teaches us how the wilderness can be our place of decision. The wilderness is never the end of the story.

Numbers and God’s mission.

Here’s one of the big takeaways of Numbers: God never quits on his people. Yes, there are consequences when we say “no” to God, and those consequences are real. An entire generation of Israel missed out on seeing the Promised Land. But never does God abandon the project of leading a people out of the wilderness into a place of their own. God is—has been and always will be—faithful.

God is on a mission to make everything new, to unravel once and for all the work of Sin and Death in the world, to dismantle forever the big red self-destruct button of every son of Adam and daughter of Eve. Immersing ourselves in the story of Israel portrayed in Numbers invites us to take a sober look in the mirror to examine all the ways our own stubbornness gets us lost in the wilderness. It’s a humbling moment when you find your own voice among those of the Israelites, waxing nostalgic about all your pre-salvation hurts, habits, and hangups: “Can’t we just go back to Egypt, to the way things used to be?”

Reading Numbers can be an awkward reminder for us that, as the Battlestar Galactica line goes, “All of this has happened before, and all of this is happening again.” All the stubborn, rebellious ways of saying “no” to God still exist in our communities of faith today. Underneath it all, Numbers constantly invites us to say “yes” to God in all the ways God is at work in the world around us.

If you want to go deeper, you should check these out:

Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone by John Goldingay

The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament by Sandra Richter