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Good Friday morning to you my friends.
May I begin with a question for each and all of us?
What is your IDENTITY?
Not what your drivers license says, not even your birth certificate.
When you look into the mirror and look deeply into your own eyes, realizing there is no other person on this planet exactly like you. . .who are you…really? What defines you, what describes you, what drives you?
When you sit quietly, contemplating a sunrise or sunset, and you consider the passing of time and the duration of your lifetime, and what you hope people will remember about you, when you’ve been in eternity for a while. . . what comes to your heart?
When you consider what today, this week, this summer is all about for you. . .
WHO are you? WHAT is God’s purpose for you now, at this time in history and how does your life story fit into the much bigger story God is writing through all time?
We’ve been following the story of Moses and 2 million runaway slaves, in the Bible book of Exodus. They’ve been camped at the foot of Mount Sinai for several months and have yesterday completed the erection of the Tabernacle, the “Tent of Meeting”, and the anointing cloud of God’s Presence, has settled on it. All through the night, last night, the Golden Menorah Lampstand was lit, inside the “Tent”, and the pillar of fire was hovering over it. God is among His people. . .but they still feel like runaway slaves!
So will you join me on a brief journey, following Moses and these people, to see what happened next in their adventure? I think we’ll see that it speaks profoundly to you and me, today, and our journey…our search for identity!
Numbers 1:1 tells us Moses went into the “Tent of Meeting”, that very next day, after constructing it, to meet with God, and God gave him instructions to “Take a census of the whole Israelite community by their clans and families, listing every man by name…”. WHY?
IDENTITY is a big deal isn’t it? Being able to answer the question “who am I”, is fundamental to life for every person. That’s why when a person discovers they’ve been adopted, very often a deep inner desire wells up in them, to trace their roots, and find their birth parents… to discover their true identity.
Do you remember, Exodus 12:38 told us, that on the night of their Passover flight out of Egypt “Many other people went up with them…” But the census God calls for here, in Numbers 1, was NOT to include these ‘other people’. They were ‘aliens’, ‘foreigners’ among the Hebrews.
God wanted Moses & the Hebrews to have a clear sense of IDENTITY. True Hebrews, after all, could trace their heritage all the way back through one of Jacob’s sons, to Isaac and then to Abraham, and the miraculous beginning of this nation of God’s people! As you’ll see in Numbers 1, this census was also for the purpose of identifying those able to fight, if need be, to defend this huge refugee city.
Most all of us, my friends, probably live in a planned neighborhood. Before our home was there, someone laid out a plan where our street would be, and the fire hydrants and sewer lines and electric and fiber optic lines. A plan was made to accommodate lots of people where you and I live, in an orderly fashion, and aren’t you glad?
Perhaps you’ve been thinking about 2 million runaway slaves, scattered all over the place, as they moved from Egypt to Mount Sinai? Numbers chapter 2 gives us the ‘city plan’, not only for living at Mount Sinai, but especially for moving the entire city and all their belongings and animals… in an orderly fashion. God knew they be doing a lot of that over the next 40 years!
So, first a census to identify clans and families, then an orderly arrangement of all the tents, by clans & families. Read Numbers 2 in amazement my friends! If you can imagine, it’s kind of like a huge pizza pie… with the “Tent of Meeting” in the center, and each of ‘tribes‘ of Israel fanning out from there, in a very orderly pattern, and each under their own “tribal banner”. Can you picture it?
Remember Jacob and his two wives Rachel & Leah, and their two servant girls, whom they gave to Jacob to bear children for them in their sterility? (Genesis 29:31-30:24) Eventually Jacob had 12 sons and one daughter! One of those sons Joseph, was very special to Jacob, and was presumed to have been killed by a wild animal, when in fact he was sold as a slave by his brothers, (Gen. 37) and he eventually became Prime Minister of Egypt, responsible for famine management (Gen. 41). Jacob and his starving family moved to Egypt at Joseph’s request (Gen. 46&47) and his large family settled there, in ‘the best of the land of Egypt’, never to return to Canaan. Near his death Jacob announced Joseph’s two sons Ephriam and Manasseh would be reckoned as his, and thus you see in Numbers 2:18-20, Ephriam and Manasseh are listed as having ‘tribes’, like all the other sons…we now understand.
Did you notice vs. 33 in Numbers 2? “The Levites (family of Levi) were not counted along with the other Israelites, as the LORD commanded Moses.” Do you wonder why?
Look at Numbers 1:47-51. . .what do you see? The descendants of Levi, the Levites, were set apart by God as a special family, for special, spiritual responsibilities. Moses was instructed by God to “…appoint the Levites to be in charge of the Tabernacle of the Testimony – over all its furnishings and everything belonging to it. They are to carry the Tabernacle and all its furnishings, they are to take care of it and encamp around it. Whenever the Tabernacle is to move, they are to take it down, and whenever the Tabernacle is to be set up, the Levites shall do it.” Do you see their IDENTITY? The family of Levi was privileged to be the ONLY people,who could dismantle, transport, and re-assemble the Tabernacle of God, the “Tent of Meeting”!
Did you notice where the Levites were privileged to camp? Closest to the Tabernacle, all around it!
I wonder if you remember a New Testament person, whom we first meet by introduction as a Levite, and who played an important role in the story of what happened in the Jesus movement in Jerusalem, after Jesus returned to heaven? This man even was very strategic in the multi-ethnic church in Antioch, (Acts 11) and he was sent with Paul on the first cross-cultural missionary journey, in Acts 13. Do you remember him? Here’s how we first meet him… “Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the Apostles called BARNABAS…” (Acts 4:36) Remember him now? This Barnabas, was able to trace his family heritage all the way back to Mount Sinai and Numbers 2! Think of that friends!
May I point out one other thing? Notice Numbers 2 not only tells us the arrangement of the thousands of tents in this refugee city, it also explains HOW 2 million people will move, in an orderly parade, from one place to another, following God’s cloud! Do you see the Tabernacle will be transported in the middle of this moving city? (Numbers 2:17) Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at God’s plan for how this “Tent of Meeting” was to be disassembled, transported, and re-assembled, and who had the remarkable privilege to care for this unique place of encounter between God and His people!
Now in closing today, I’d like to ask you to think back…to all the places you’ve lived in your life. What was it like for you in each place? Remember moving there and the hopes and dreams you had of what living there would be like? Remember your house, your neighborhood, the neighbors? What brought you great joy there? What reputation did you build in each place by how you lived there? What legacy did you leave behind when you packed up and left and moved on to another place?
Can you imagine the difference between how these Hebrew runaway slaves had felt, living scattered around the base of Mount Sinai, and now in Numbers 2, living according to tribes, and clans and families, under their tribal banners?! Can you feel their newfound sense of IDENTITY, of family heritage, of unity? Can you imagine the evening family stories around the campfire as they discovered long lost distant cousins they never knew?
May I urge you to finish today by reading Psalm 78:1-8! It calls us to understand the power of IDENTITY and passing along family heritage identity from one generation to another… especially family SPIRITUAL identity! How has that worked in your family my friends, as it was passed to you? And how have you passed a spiritual identity to your children and grandchildren? May I urge us to each take a few moments right now, to pray for our families, scattered all over the place, and ask God to keep showing us, how we can build a God honoring, Family IDENTITY, and heritage to pass on to the little ones, even those not yet born!
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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