Chapter 15: Desert, Snake Pole and Promised Land
Israel's Astonishing Journey to the Promised Land
We now move on to the book of Numbers. This is a fascinating book that continues the Garden to Garden journey through the Bible. When Numbers opens, the Israelites have been camped at the base of Mt Sinai for about a year. Israel now has all the ceremonial, moral, and governmental rules in place to function as a society set apart by God.
Numbers opens with a statement that is easy to miss if we don't understand the Bible as a cohesive whole.
Numbers 1:1
The LORD spoke to Moses in the tent of meeting in the Wilderness of Sinai, on the first day of the second month of the second year after Israel's departure from the land of Egypt:
The key point there is that God spoke to Moses in the tent of meeting, the tabernacle. When Leviticus opened, it started with these words: 'The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting.' The point is, God and Moses can now speak together, the tabernacle system worked, and God is now living in the middle of his people. Now that the question of God's presence with his people has been sorted out, the book of Numbers tells us about the journey Israel undertakes to get to the promised land.
The book itself is structured around the journeys Israel takes, with break periods in between.
Preparation
The first 10 chapters of the book revolve around God preparing Israel to enter the promised land. There is a census, which helps us understand how large Israel has become. God gives Moses instructions on how to arrange the tents and tribes of Israel, with the tabernacle at the center of it all. Again, this shows us symbolically that God is now living in the middle of his people. The Passover is celebrated a second time, and then Israel packs up their belongings and heads from the base of Mt Sinai to the wilderness of Paran.
First Journey
It is in this journey section (Chapter 10:11-12:16) that human nature comes to the forefront again. The people complain against Moses, they complain about the food God miraculously provides for them, and Moses' own siblings, Miriam and Aaron, complain that they aren't as important as Moses.
What we are supposed to see is that even though Israel is finally on the way to the promised land, even though God continues to graciously supply everything they need, the human heart rebels against him. There is a deep-seated brokenness in the human heart that needs to be fixed, and this brokenness is not cured by God living in the middle of the camp, and it is not cured by pursuing the dreams of a nation. There is a deeper need to be changed from within that all human beings display.
40 Years in the Desert
The third section covers Chapters 13-19. In this section, we read the Sunday school-famous story of the twelve spies who infiltrate the promised land to go and scout it out. They return with marvelous reports of the fertility and richness of the land God had promised to Israel, but 10 out of the 12 spies argue that the people are too strong for them to overcome. This again shows how easily God's people forget. It has only been a year since they escaped from Egypt, it has only been a short time since they celebrated the second Passover, and yet the spies argue that despite the fact that God had saved them from Egypt, despite the fact that God had walked them through the Red Sea, despite the miraculous food and water God had provided for them in the desert, and despite the very presence of God who now lived in the literal center of their camp, these people were too strong for them. Critically, in Chapter 14, the people hear this report and the whole community unravels. In rebellion, the people say to each other, 'Let's appoint a leader and go back to Egypt.'
As a result of their rejection, the Lord declares that the current generation of Israelites will not enter the promised land. They would wander in the desert for 40 years. This was not merely a punishment; it was a recognition that the heart of the nation itself was turned against God. A friend of mine once put it this way:
'It only took God one night to get Israel out of Egypt, but it took 40 years to get Egypt out of Israel.'
Journey 2.0
The fourth part of the book (Chapter 20-22:1) recounts the journey Israel takes as, after 40 years of wandering, they finally approach the promised land. During this journey, both of Moses' siblings died, reminding us of God's declaration that only the next generation of Israelites would enter the promised land. Israel ends up camped outside the borders of the promised land, on the fields of Moab.
Preparation 2.0
The final section of the book (Chapters 22:2-36) describes what happens while Israel is camped out on the border of the promised land on the fields of Moab. During these chapters Israel is once again preparing to enter into the promised land and we see the same two themes we saw in the first preparation section.
First, God is determined to bless his people. We see this because the king of Moab, a man named Balak, hires the prophet Balaam to curse Israel. Balaam tells the king that he cannot curse Israel because God has blessed them, but the king insists that Balaam try, and so after a bit of back and forth, Balaam goes to the king, gets up, and pronounces blessing after blessing over Israel. Three times the king tries to get Balaam to curse Israel, and three times the prophet blesses Israel. Finally, Balaam pronounces an oracle that predicts the destruction of Moab instead. Through all this, God makes it very clear that he is with his people and he is determined to fulfill his promises to be their God.
The second theme is that Israel’s hearts are still broken. While God blesses Israel through the prophet Balaam, some Israelites start worshipping some of the false gods of Moab. These Israelites are ultimately killed and don’t join the rest of Israel entering the promised land, but this event hints at the fact that even though Israel is about to enter the promised land, the same heart issues remain.
Nevertheless, now that a new generation of Israelites has been born, God commands Moses to take a second census of the people. This new generation of Israel gets ready to invade the promised land, and a few battles are fought, and Israel starts to conquer and settle into the land God has promised to Abraham. At last, it seems that the promises made all the way back in Genesis 15 are coming to fruition!
The point
Now we have to ask, how does this point us to Jesus? The book of Numbers is all about God's faithfulness despite Israel's unfaithfulness. God had made a threefold promise to Abraham: that he would make him into a great nation, that he would give his descendants the promised land, and that he would bless the whole world through Abraham's offspring.
Clearly, Israel is now a great nation, so the first part of the Abrahamic covenant is complete. The second part is about to be fulfilled – Israel was about to enter the promised land and take possession of it. But Numbers hints at the third part of the promise in a number of places. During Balaam's oracles, God declares that one day 'A star will come from Jacob,' and that this king would bring justice to the world. This is a clear picture of Jesus, who would one day come to bless the nations. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is also described as a greater version of many of the events and characters that occur in Numbers. John says Jesus is the Moses, and that in the same way Moses prayed for and interceded for Israel, so too Jesus intercedes for us. Just like Moses was a shepherd, so too Jesus is called the good shepherd. In John 19:36, John says Jesus is the true Passover lamb. Jesus is the living water that sustains us eternally, just like the water God provided miraculously for the Israelites in the desert. Jesus is the bread of heaven, far more satisfying than the heaven-bread God provided the Israelites in the form of manna.
Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, is the story of the bronze snake. So what happens in chapter 21 is that once again, the people are complaining against God because they are sick of being in the desert, and they complain about the miraculous food God has been providing for them. So the Lord sends poisonous snakes through the camp, and many Israelites were bitten and died. Moses prays for the people, and God tells Moses to make a bronze snake and mount it on a pole, and anyone who looks at the pole will be saved from the poison. Moses does so, and the people are saved.
This is a strange story when we don't understand it as part of the bigger picture of Scripture. Everyone who reads their Bible will instantly recognize that the snake is an image of sin and evil. The snake reminds us of the Garden of Eden. So why would God choose to raise up a snake as the image of salvation? Why did the people have to look up in faith to a snake on a pole to be saved?
It would not be until about 1500 years later that the answer would become clear. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21.
He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
And some people still say that the Bible is just a collection of stories with no unifying theme... Bah, I say to them!