And the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, Every one of the children of Israel shall camp by his own standard beside the emblems of his father's house. They shall camp some distance from the tabernacle of Eden. On the east side, toward the rising of the sun, those of the standard of the forces with Judah shall camp according to their armies. And Nachum, the son of Ammonadab, shall be the leader of the children of Judah. was numbered at 74,600. Those who camp next to him shall be the tribe of Issachar, and Nathanael the son of Zuar shall be the leader of the children of Issachar. And his army was numbered at 54,400. Then comes the tribe of Zebulun, and Eliab the son of Helion shall be the leader of the children of Zebulun. And his army was numbered at 57,400. all who are numbered according to their armies of the forces with Judah, 186,400. These shall break camp first. On the south side shall be the standard of the forces with Reuben according to their armies, and the leader of the children of Reuben shall be Eliezer the son of Shadur, and his army was numbered at 46,500. Those who camp next to him shall be the tribe of Simeon, and the leader of the children of Simeon shall be Shelmuel the son of Zereshaddai, and his army was numbered at 59,300. Then comes the tribe of Gad, and the leader of the children of Gad shall be Eliezer, the son of Ruhl, and his army was numbered at 45,650, all who were numbered according to their armies of the forces with Reuben 1,450. They shall be the second to break camp. And the tabernacle meeting shall move out with the camp of the Levites, in the middle of the camps as they camped, so they shall move out everyone in his place by their standards. On the west side shall be the standard of the forces with Ephraim. And according to their armies and the leader of the children of Ephraim shall be Elishama the son of Amenhud, and his army was numbered at 40,500. Next to him comes the tribe of Manasseh and the leader of the children of Manasseh shall be Gamaliel, the son of Barahuzar, and his army was numbered at 32,200. Then comes the tribe of Benjamin and the leader of the tribe of Benjamin shall be Abidon, the son of Gideonih, and his army was numbered at 35,400. all who are numbered according to their armies of the forces from 180,100. They shall be the third to break camp. The standard of the forces with Dan shall be on the north side according to their armies, and the leader of the children of Dan shall be Ahiazar, the son of Amishadab, and his name was numbered at 62,700. Those who camp next to him shall be the tribe of Asher and the leader of the children of Asher shall be Hagiel, the son of Okron, and his army was numbered at 41,500. Then comes the tribe of Naphtali, and the leader of the children of Naphtali shall be Ahirah, the son of Enon, and his army was numbered at 53,400. All who are numbered in the forces of Dan, 157,600. They shall break camp last with their standards. These are the ones who were numbered of the children of Israel by their father's house. All who were numbered according to their armies of the forces were 603,515. But the Levites were not numbered among the children of Israel, just as the Lord commanded Moses. Thus the children of Israel did according to all the Lord commanded Moses. So they camped by their standards, and so they broke camp, each one by his family, according to their father's houses. Let us pray. Father, we ask that as we come to your word that you would give us ears, that this seeming tedium would be, as you say, your very words of life, that we would see them as they are, your word to us, that we might know you and that we might know the very essence of your being and what you have for us. that we might not be dismayed, that we would not be turned back because of the words on the page, as the Church Fathers said, the disgust that many have in this, but that we would see Christ as He speaks. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. These opening chapters of Numbers have long been a graveyard in people's reading of the Bible. They get to it and they're like, why do I care? Why would I want to know where they are and what they're doing? And believe me, every time I read this, I'm not, these are not alien feelings for only those be here, that you might repent of that, that I might repent of that, that we would see and search and treasure out what God is saying to us. Too often, there's a rush for the equivalent of scriptural junk food for the soul. And I don't mean there's any such thing as junk food in scripture. But what we're looking for is those passages in scriptures where we can look at say, ah, I got this. And there's times where you need that. There's times where you need that. But here's the thing. How will you know what you need if you don't know what's there? It's like going into somebody else's medicine cabinet to try to find the medicine you're looking for. Everybody's got weird stuff. I've not been in your medicine cabinets, but I'm just gonna guess that there's stuff in there that people are gonna like, Why do they have this in their medicine cabinet? But you know where it's at, so you can find it when you need it. And so we are in passages, and we go to these passages because God has given us richly. And we're looking for that quick buzz when there's stuff here that will give us a foundation to not be moved in the day of evil tribes. C.S. Lewis once wrote an introduction to Athanasius on the Incarnation. We're not just where it's at. It doesn't matter what you write it on. But he's talking about that junk food look versus that which is substantive. And he wrote, For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books. And I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find the quote, nothing happens when they sit down or kneel down to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand. And so we see that God is giving us this very thing in a tough pit of scripture. The varieties of scripture are all given according to God's wisdom and we must see what it is that he says to us in all parts. You have 66 pastures, as it were. And when you only feed in three, they're going to be grazed over and they will not speak to you everything that you need. It's kind of like in a diet. If all you eat is one type of food, you are going to have vitamins and minerals missing from your diet. I don't care if you're eating the healthiest layer of spinach all the time. If all you're eating is a spinach, first of all, you're going to lack joy in your life. But second of all, you're going to lack other vitamins and minerals that you need. You need a full diet. You know the old saying that those who don't eat bacon live 15 years longer, 15 miserable baconless years. Likewise, those who stick I love you, and this is what you need. And why do I keep doing this? Because I see the same thing that you do. It's like, why do I care how many people were in Asherah that they were camped on the north side? What's that got to do with me living in Wishaw Falls? But the issue is, we're looking for a quick hit, a quick fix. And we need to slow down when we read our Bible. wrong fix. So, to that end, we will look at what Christ says in this. Don't worry. We're not going to. Um I mentioned in Sunday school, you'll find these books where they'll say, well, there are 517 tent pegs in the tabernacle which equals 517 this, that, and the others. Hebrews says it best. Says, they have all the stuff but we can't go into that detail. We to get into the minutia but we are going to see what it is, why it is, for example, Gad, Reuben, and Simeon in the southern camp and what God is doing in his ordering of the church. Our outline this morning is the camps and identity. The camps and identity. So, we're going to look at the camps, big picture again, 30,000 feet. And so, again, when we come to our Bibles, we are looking for that quick fix, and yet, I see it every so often when I'm on Facebook, they'll show this picture that's a map of the interconnection of the words of the book. So, it's showing how Ezekiel, little, you know, yes, I know Ezekiel's my major prophet, how to understand Ezekiel, you need the other 65 books. And likewise, just the interconnection, we'll see that even the ordering of these camps is related to the lives of the patriarchs and the blessings that Jacob gave to them. The problem why we have this experience when we come to these passages is a modern problem, a modern problem in which we think of the Bible as a religious book. And by religious book, we've our culture freights that with, you know, almost like we should have a an acid trip where we should have a Bible trip and it should give us this trip to the fantastical. But God is not about the fantastical. He's about your life now and how it works out structurally now. Now the Psalms, we can do that, oh yes, when I was in the miry pit, or when I was exalted, and on and on and on. And the American clamor for how-to guides also sabotages our ability to do this when God is showing us the structure of his reality, because we have to step back. What is the tabernacle? What is it? Now, there are many correct answers, don't worry, I'm not But for our purposes here, especially as we think about the structuring of the campus, it is a map of the entirety of creation. Creation as it's meant to be. It is a cosmic map. And the ordering of the Levites and the 12 tribes is an extension of that map of the cosmos. So that the idea that there are 186,400 men of war on the east side, know, is not inconsequential but that doesn't mean we we have to do anything numerological or fancy with the 186,000. Why why does it mention the eight 186,400 men? There were 186,400 men in the army. There's no, oh, we we can connect it to this, that, and the other. This is not conspiracy theory readings of the Bible. This is, had you been on at the plane at the base of Sinai and When the tribes start moving around to go into their new alignment, you would have been able to go through, if you've been able, and count 186,400, obviously rounded. And so, while it can, and often it just seems this haphazard layout, You know, I have a Levite, so I'm gonna put the Levites right around the center part. I'm not really, I didn't like Bob, and he's in Dan, so I'm gonna put them at the very back so they have to eat all the dust as we're marching. It's, you know, we can see that type of motivation, but this is God, who is the God of order, who's setting this out. Even the groupings of the four camps follow a logic given both the order in which Jacob married his wife of his sons. So, for example, the firstborn is Reuben. The pride of place is in the east. Where's Reuben go? He goes to the south because he's disgraced. Ah, the nextborn is Simeon. Levi, he's disgraced, but because of what the tribe of Levi did at the Golden Calf, God chooses them and puts them to guard the town. And so now the oldest born of the sons of the concubines gets to come in for the troops the sons of Rachel and then the three. See, it's it's that structure moving clockwise. It works this way but why Judah at the front? Because Judah is the one who gets the firstborns right. He is the one from whom the Messiah is gonna come and where do you enter the tabernacle? On the east. So Judah becomes, you know, besides being the largest of the tribes, becomes the guard of the guards of the entrance to the tabernacle. And so we see the structure is detailed to demonstrate the meticulous care in which God is structuring his work and his people. He connects what is a seeming chaotic birth order of 12 sons back in Genesis into the very structure of the camp and the marching army of his hosts. So what? Okay, that's neat. Okay, now what? So what? There's some grouping that God made. What's that got to do with Livingstone? What's that got to do with me? What's that gonna do for me when I wake up at 3 a.m. on Wednesday going, huh, how can I handle this problem? Well, not every passage of scripture will handle every situation, but we have to have every part of scripture because we'll have every part of life. There are many churches, and I do mean true churches, where the gospel is preached, the sacraments are administered, discipline is exercised, that have all kinds of confusion and delay, to quote Thomas. Again, so what? order and structure, even though God has set them in order and structure. But that does not invalidate what they are. Now, are you talking as we think about what is the church and what God is doing? So, we see here the visible church on earth in ancient Israel, made up of the ancient people of God. The church in its many forms and workings is pictured there to an extent, and so we see that it is not unusual, it is not outside of the realm of how God works to have what we are going to read in the rest of the book, but yet God is still the one who sets the structure. And just as your life, when filled with admixture, becomes chaotic and disordered, so too churches become disordered and chaotic. So you're in Asher, and you decide, I don't want to be on the northern camp, I want to be in the southern camp. Well, you're in the northern camp. You're in Judah, you say, I don't wanna be in the front, I wanna be in the back. You wouldn't want to, because then you get to eat the dust of all the millions of people marching. But again, so what? but let's think about what is our identity and what is the identity of the sons of say, Reuben and Simeon, those disgraced sons. So we see that the camp is ordered and structured and God is working this out both in how they are to camp when the glory of the Lord stops in a place and then when they are to set out how they are to do it, including that he tells us where the Levites sort of fit into the structure. So that's how the camp is, but what about their identity? So you're a descendant of Reuben and Simeon. Does that mean you won't be disgraced as Reuben and Simeon were always disgraced? No. Yes, they're on the south side. Yes, they're with Gad who got to come up a notch because of where Levi went, as it were. Yet, we see even here that God is working things out. Think about what Israel was at this point. If you ask people, what was Israel? And they'll often say, a royal priesthood and a holy nation. And if you're reading in Exodus up to the golden calf, you would be correct. But from the time the golden calf on, Israel is never referred to as a royal nation, as a holy priesthood. The next time you'll find your Bible is in 1 Peter 2, 9. And so we see that Peter refers to the church in that manner, but there's something changes with the rebellion of the golden calf, that the Levites take that priesthood up, and there's a change. And that works out well for the Levite, I mean, Simeon And Levi, remember, because of what they did at Shechem, lose their birthrights. They lose their inheritance. So Simeon will be planted in cities roundabout in Judah and will be absorbed within Judah. So they're gonna be absorbed with Judah. Levi will get cities for Levi spread throughout. the land, but they will not have their own land. It's only because of their office as Levites and priests that Levi will continue in that way as a distinct tribe. Now, as you think about, yes, he structured that, but is there any, is there any, like, as it were, heading in front of the line because you're from Reuben versus you're from Asher, your gang? No. But God has taken what was a mixed multitude and is now setting it in order. That's what God does. He orders. He is a God of order. He is not a God of just do what you will. By ordering the mixed multitude, the camp, that camp out of Egypt, God is in effect giving shape to the distinctions within the people of God. Not distinctions of order or magnitude, but in distinctions in function. that they might all work together as one. Think of what we read earlier, 1 Corinthians 12, the body, that there needs to be in a body, you have hands, you have feet, you have arms, you have legs, you have eyes and ears and tongues and mouths. And so that Christ is by his work, just as he did Israel, functioning and giving identity in the church to those different parts. We read it, but I'll read part of it again. For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one spirit we are all baptized in one body. So he is taking this mom, if you will, that came out of Egypt, and giving it structure, that it might function as a holy nation. And yes, as I know I've said, isn't used but yet it is his nation that his name is upon and his his dignity is tied up with in a light manner in his church. And so, he is in a light manner doing that with his church just as Christ died for the sins of his people. Christ who is risen is building his church by placing in in the church. There's a place for self. There is no place for self-determination in the body of Christ. Just as there is no place for self-determination in Israel. Reuben couldn't say, I'm going to go up with Dan. Gad couldn't say, I'm going to take Levi's spot in the midst of the camp. They each went where God had ordered them. The children of Israel did according to all that the Lord commanded. one by his family, according to their father's house. And so we see that there is that discontent that often follows when people say, oh, if only I were this. I mean, think about every person who goes on social media. I was just, this week, ran across this thing, talking about how the way social media works is you get four or five posts that are designed to make you angry, than one that is like some feel-good story about a family adopting a bald eagle who becomes the family pet who rescues their pet dog. And then you're gonna get a nap. It's designed, this feedback loop. And when we use haphazard standards, which turns out aren't as haphazard as we think, we end up leading astray, whereas when we follow God's ordering and structure, we find there is peace and joy. We find the design of Christ is there for the purpose of his glory. And so as we strive to see what Christ is doing in his church, we come back to doing as he has ordered and doing as he has ordained and not striving after our own ends. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for Christ. We thank you that he has given us that calling to be a part of his body. And we ask, O God, that you would grant unto us your mercy and grace in his name. Amen.