Service to the Lord

Numbers 8:5-26

Numbers 8:5–26 LEB

5 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, 6 “Take the Levites from the midst of the Israelites and purify them. 7 So you will do to them, to purify them: sprinkle on them waters of purification, and they will shave their whole body and wash their garments. 8 And they will take a young bull and its grain offering of finely milled flour mixed with oil, and you will take a second young bull as a sin offering. 9 You will bring the Levites before the tent of assembly, and you will summon the entire community of the Israelites. 10 And you will bring the Levites before Yahweh, and the Israelites will lay their hands on the Levites, 11 and Aaron will offer the Levites as a wave offering before Yahweh from the Israelites, and they will do the work of Yahweh. 12 And the Levites will lay their hands on the head of the one bull and offer it as a sin offering and the other one as a burnt offering to Yahweh, to make atonement for the Levites. 13 And you will present the Levites before Aaron and before his sons, and he will offer them as a wave offering to Yahweh. 14 “And you will separate the Levites from the midst of the Israelites, and the Levites will be for me. 15 And after this the Levites will come to serve at the tent of assembly, and you will purify them, and you will offer them as a wave offering. 16 For they are given to me exclusively from the midst of the Israelites. I have taken them for myself in place of the firstborn of every womb, every firstborn from the Israelites. 17 For every firstborn among the Israelites is mine, both humankind and animal. On the day I destroyed every firstborn in the land of Egypt I consecrated them to me, 18 and I have taken the Levites in the place of every firstborn among the Israelites. 19 And I have given the Levites; they are given to Aaron and his sons from the midst of the Israelites to do the work of the Israelites in the tent of the assembly and to make atonement for the Israelites, so a plague will not be among the Israelites when the Israelites come near the sanctuary.” 20 And Moses and Aaron and the entire community of the Israelites did to the Levites; everything that Yahweh commanded Moses concerning the Levites, the Israelites did to them. 21 And the Levites purified themselves, and they washed their garments, and Aaron offered them as a wave offering before Yahweh; and Aaron made atonement for them to purify them. 22 After this the Levites came to do their work in the tent of assembly before Aaron and his sons. Just as Yahweh commanded Moses concerning the Levities, so they did to them. 23 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, 24 “This is what is for the Levites: those twenty-five years old and above will come to help with the service in the work of the tent of assembly; 25 and those fifty years old will return from the service of the work and will serve no longer. 26 They can attend their brothers in the tent of assembly to keep their responsibilities, but they will not do work. This is what you will do concerning the Levities and their responsibilities.”

I have already read this

The substance of this section is parallel to what we have already seen in chapters 3 and 4

It deals with the choice of the Levites for service in the sanctuary, in place of the firstborn of the people, and the duties binding upon them.

This is not a matter of repetition

For as the Old Testament scholar Martin Noth remarks, “The Levites are conceived of as an offering brought by the Israelites at God’s command. This is a novel idea, going beyond anything in chapters 3 and 4. This is not a reason for the peculiar position of the Levites, rather is that position presupposed and interpreted in the sense of their specially belonging to Yahweh, an idea which, for its part, is now based on a dedication on the analogy of a sacrifice.”

Earlier we see how the Levitates were destined by God. Now we see the Levites actual committal to this consecration.

This is where the Levites actually commit to God.

The value of this passage is here we see the Levites actually entering into the true destiny of God’s service that they have been Called.

How many times have you heard God’s called, but O’h The Joy when you actually do the call of the Lord.

Become the Sacrifice

The regulations for the Levites are les stringent than for those of the priest. The Levites were to take care of the temple but not all were “Priest”.

The Levites were cleaned. They were designated as the offering of the whole people by the symbolic ritual of laying on of the hands.

Think about the power of Laying of hands.

Healing, Hurt, Appointment, Power. Your hands have the power to heal and the power to destroy. And it all depends on how you lay your hands. Think about a woman raped or child molested or a person abused. Life destroyed by the laying of hands. or the man appointed to position, power of the HS upon a persons life. Before we send a missionary we lay hands saying we will be there to support you, you represent all of us as we go to the world. Power in hands.

The Levites represent the living sacrifice. they were to complete the transfer of themselves to the Lord with a sin offering and a burnt offering, laying their hands on the animals in the same way as hands were laid on them by the Israelites.

God has chosen us in Christ for a destiny not only of salvation but also of service, and His ringing summons to us is to throw in our lot with His work, identifying ourselves with it and committing ourselves irrevocably to it.

We are to be the living sacrifice as we pick up our cross.

We are called to Belong

The Levites were called to be the belonging of the Lord. We too are to belong to the Lord. We are to belong to His Kingdom not to the nations of this world.

The whole point of their calling to be God’s people was that they should not be like the other nations, but rather be God’s peculiar people, separated unto Himself, with different standards, ideals, and patterns from those of the peoples around them.

This separated existence to be regarded as cramping or restricting.

It was the opposite for the Levites, for God said to them that He was their inheritance (cf. Deut. 10:9), just as He had said earlier to Abraham, “I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward” (Gen. 15:1). God is no man’s debtor. Those who, called to a one-track life, respond with wholehearted devotion live life most fully, and most interestingly, too.

How often do we make people feel like they don’t belong?

Next Steps

The man who takes up the cross and follows Christ lives in the will of God for the service of man. As the Son of God placed all the resources of His glory at the disposal of man’s need, so every disciple abandons all to God for the blessing of man. He is God’s steward, and the sphere of his stewardship is in the sin and sorrow of the world. He becomes a coworker with God in Christ Jesus.

Bearing the cross, we weep over the world sin. We carry the world’s shame, minister to the world need. laying down our life for the world’s salvation.

Have you taken up the cross?

The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 4: Numbers The Purification of the Levites

Have we returned to the world as Christ came to it? Do we weep over it, pray for it, live for it, die for it? It is for these the cross stands, and without the cross we cannot be Christ’s disciples.6

Bibliography

Philip, James, and Lloyd J. Ogilvie. Numbers. Vol. 4. The Preacher’s Commentary Series. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc, 1987.

Martin Noth, Numbers: a Commentary, Old Testament Library (London: SCM Press, 1968), p. 67.

From the chapter entitled “The Way of the Cross,” in Humanity and God by Samuel Chadwick, The Expositor’s Library (London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d.).