Thoughts on Numbers 17 & Hebrews 11

Today’s reading: Numbers 17; Hebrews 11

Thoughts on Numbers 17

Numbers 17 seems a little odd at first blush because it seems to be addressing a conflict that we never see arise. Moses has the head of each tribe bring his staff, engraved with his name, to the tabernacle to be left overnight in order that God might show which man He has chosen by making his staff sprout. God says this will make the grumbling of the people cease, but what grumbling are we talking about?

The obvious place to start with this is the immediately preceding context of Korah’s rebellion in Numbers 16. Korah and his retinue of 250 men were evidently all from the tribe of Levi, because Moses rebukes them for not being content with the service of the tabernacle and wanting the priesthood also. God ordained Aaron and his sons to be priests, but the tribe of Levi as a whole was chosen by God to have responsibility for the holy things and to assist the priests in their duties. The Levites also got to camp closest to the tabernacle with the other tribes spread around the perimeter of the camp. So the non-Aaronic Levites still enjoyed a special status in the worship of Yahweh, but they were not content with that role and wanted the priesthood for themselves.

With that as the backdrop, I think we can safely infer that the Levites weren’t the only ones envious of the priestly role as we get into Numbers 17. If the Levites, who already enjoyed this unique role were discontent and wanted the priesthood too, how much more the “mundane” tribes with no special role in the tabernacle services at all!

So what I think is happening here is God heading off discontent before is grows into rebellion. There were clearly grumblings of discontentment among the people, we are told as much directly, but there doesn’t seem to have been any organized rebellion along the lines of Numbers 16 from the other tribes, at least not yet. I think this is why, unlike in Korah’s rebellion, nobody dies in Numbers 17. The people, after the budding of Aaron’s staff, are terrified that they are going to get killed for it (probably because they just saw 250 men struck down by the Lord), but none of them are.

Ultimately I think this is an act of mercy on God’s part. I think God knows the people are nurturing discontentedness about not having access to the priestly role, and this is God giving His people a warning not to let that discontentment foment into rebellion against Him. They are all in the incredibly unique and privileged position of being part of His chosen people, and that should be enough. So here God is giving them a glimpse into how such a rebellion would turn out without having to actually face the consequences of fully turning against Yahweh.

What a good God we have, that He was proactively leading these men to guard against the sinfulness of their own hearts so that they wouldn’t have to face the consequences of their sin like Korah and his company did.

Thoughts on Hebrews 11

Hebrews 11 is often referred to as “The Hall of Faith” because the entire chapter is the author listing off figure after figure from the Old Testament who stood as a worthy example of faith in Yahweh. But there is also in this chapter, especially as we get near the end of the list, a good litmus test for how well we understand biblical faith. That litmus test is how jarring we find it to be when we read names like Rahab the prostitute, Gideon, Barak, Samson, and Jephthah in that list as examples of faith worthy of emulation.

These names tend to be jarring in this list because they aren’t really the kind of people you would hold up as Godly examples. You have incredibly sinful people in this list like Rahab, who was a gentile and a prostitute; Samson, who violated every aspect of his Nazarite vow, got involved with foreign women, etc.; and Jephthah, who sacrificed his own daughter after returning home victorious. Along with the incredibly sinful people in this list, you have people who would not take God at His word and trust Him, like Gideon, who over and over makes God give him signs (sometimes multiple times) before he’ll trust and follow Him; and Barak, who refused to go when called unless Deborah went with him. And yet, despite their sinfulness and their slowness to listen and trust God, they are included by the author of Hebrews as exemplars of the faith.

When I first came to faith in Christ, this whole chunk of the list was a problem for me, but especially the sinful ones. I had come to understand the gospel, that we are saved by grace through faith apart from our works, but in my heart I was still clinging to this idea that I had to make myself worthy of salvation. I knew I couldn’t sin my salvation away, but every time I would fall into some more egregious sin, I would feel this overwhelming sense of God’s disappointment and displeasure with me. I mentally understood the grace of God freely given to me in Christ, but that understanding had not worked its way into my heart, and so I still felt like my relationship with God was contingent, in some way, on my performance. And in that place, seeing Rahab, Samson, and Jephthah in Hebrews 11 was beyond jarring. Rahab, okay, I could accept that maybe after Jericho she gave up the prostitution and lived a godly life; she did end up in the line of the Messiah after all, so sure. But I could not wrap my head around how such overtly and carelessly sinful people as Samson and Jephthah could be held up as examples of the faith…

As I grew in my own faith though and began to understand and appropriate the radical love and grace of God that is found in Christ, and as I grew to understand that I am significantly more sinful and rebellious than I had ever really even given myself credit for, and yet God adopted me into His family in Christ despite that, the sinfulness of Rahab, Samson, and Jephthah became less and less of a problem for me when I would read their names in this list.

But that still left Gideon and Barak. Isn’t faith about trusting God and doing what He says? How can Gideon be an example of faith when he puts God to the test twice with the fleece before he will trust Him? Or when he has to go down to overhear a dream at the enemy camp before he will trust God can deliver them into his hands? And how can Barak be an example of faith when he refused to go unless Deborah was willing to go with him?

But this also isn’t what biblical faith is about, is it? What does the author say at the beginning of the chapter before he dives into the list? “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” He does not say that faith is consistently listening and trusting God from moment to moment, but it is a settled conviction about where we are going and who we are going there with. I really like the way Dr. Michael Heiser describes biblical faith as “believing loyalty to Yahweh.” Biblical faith is believing in and aligning yourself with Yahweh, over against the gods of the nations, and trusting in Him for salvation. This was faith in the Old Testament, and this is faith in the New Testament, now with Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as the focus of our faith, but it is now, and has always been, a question of believing loyalty.

And when we take that view of faith, then Gideon and Barak both make sense to see in this list. Gideon lived in a community of Baal and Asherah worshipers, and even though he was scared and did it at night, he tore down the altar of Baal and the Asherah that was beside it, even though the men of the city wanted to kill him for it. He was fearful and hesitant to trust God on multiple occasions, looking for signs before stepping out in trust in a given circumstance, but never once did Gideon’s loyalty to Yahweh waver. Never once did he start looking for purpose, meaning, or salvation somewhere other than the God of Israel. 

Hebrews 11 isn’t a list of fictitious characters who were morally upright and always trusted and acted on God’s word the first time every time. Hebrews 11 is a list of real people with real struggles and flaws, with real sin and timidity, but who never lost sight of the God who is worthy of our believing loyalty, no matter what pressures they faced to the contrary.

And this is the kind of faith we still need today. Not a faith that is contingent on how well we are or aren’t doing, or how much we do or don’t trust God in a given situation, but a settled conviction that, in Christ, we are the Lord’s, and, as His children, we will be with Him for eternity in glory. It is exactly this kind of faith which leads us to grow in holiness and to grow in trust, but it is a faith that is not contingent on those things.

Praise God that He holds up such messy and fickle people, people a lot more like us than we’re maybe comfortable admitting, as examples of the faith that He is calling us to!