The Way to Blessing (Numbers 5:1-6:27)
Hospitals used to be one of the most dangerous places for women to give birth. This was the case at the Vienna General Hospital in the 19th century, where as many as one in six mothers died in the maternity wards. Then, a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis was given charge of one of the wards. He observed that the maternity ward run by doctors had a much higher mortality rate than the ward run by midwives. It turned out that doctors would go straight from the morgue to the maternity ward without first cleaning themselves. So, Dr Semmelweis established a simple rule: every doctor coming from an autopsy must first wash their hands before tending to a mother. Mortality rates in the maternity ward fell sharply. Dr Semmelweis discovered a simple but effective way of avoiding the spread of infections from the dead to the living.
Today, we understand the importance of preventing cross-contamination. It is a basic principle of hygiene: Do not mix clean and dirty. Do not throw soiled laundry in with clean clothes. Do not wear dirty shoes into the house. Do not mix raw and cooked food. Covid-19 taught us the importance of quarantining ourselves from others.
The nation of Israel in the Old Testament also had to learn about the dangers of cross-contamination. But God’s concern was not with germs or bacteria. No, it was with spiritual purity. Israel had to learn not to mix the clean with the unclean, the holy with the unholy. This was for Israel’s own protection. Like cross-contamination in the maternity ward, it was dangerous and deadly to mix the clean with the unclean, the holy with the unholy. Two of Aaron the high priest’s sons had already died because they offered unauthorised fire before the LORD. As Israel prepared to journey to the promised land, this fundamental question had to be answered: How can the holy God dwell with the people and go with them?
Cleansing and consecration lead to blessing.
Why does this matter for us today? We want to be blessed by God. But how will the holy God be with us and for us? How can we approach Him? Numbers 5-6 tells us how we are to come to God that we might be blessed by Him. This is the big idea: Cleansing and consecration lead to blessing.
Cleansing (Num 5:1-31)
So far in the book of Numbers, Israel has been preparing for the journey to the promised land. A census of the fighting men has been taken. Instructions have been given to organise the twelve tribes in the camp and on the march. God is among his people, symbolised by the location of the tabernacle at the centre of the camp. The tribe of Levi, which includes the priests, has been put in charge of the tabernacle. Everything is in place. But before Israel sets out, the people have to be purified for God’s presence. So, Numbers 5 and 6 contain laws for cleansing and consecration.
I used to work as a journalist. A part of my job involved interviewing government leaders. To get a meeting with them, I had to go through proper channels and follow proper protocol. I could not just casually wander into their office as I felt like it. Similarly, we cannot come to God however we please. True worship must be on God’s terms, in the way He makes possible. This is the purpose of these laws: To reveal how God can dwell with us. Numbers 5 puts forth three sets of cleansing laws, each introduced by this phrase: “And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying…” (Num 5:1, 5, 11).
God is not like us — He is holy; we are not. God made us in His image, but we have all sinned. So, if the holy God is to be with us, we have to be cleansed of our sins. Otherwise, God’s glorious holiness will utterly overwhelm us. Do you make light of sin? For some, “sin” is a term reserved for char kway teow or chocolate cake. To speak of people as “sinful” sounds harsh and judgemental. But God wants us to think rightly about sin, so that we know why we need cleansing. These laws reveal the nature and consequences of sin: Sin defiles; Sin must be paid for; Sin will be found out.
First, we need cleansing because sin defiles. Look at Numbers 5:1-4. God commands Israel to remove from the camp any person who is ritually unclean. This includes those with various skin diseases, those who suffer from an abnormal discharge of blood or other bodily fluids, or those who have contact with dead bodies. While this law may make sense for the sake of public health, that is not its concern. God tells us the point of this law: It is that they may not defile their camp, in the midst of which I dwell. It is to ensure Israel’s purity, so that God can be with His people.
Diseases, discharge and death made a person ritually unclean. The Old Testament law used these physical symbols to illustrate the spiritual truth that sin defiles. It makes us impure and unclean. So, the defilement of sin must be removed from us if God is to dwell with us. What does this mean for us? Individually, God calls us to repent of our sins. To turn to God, we must turn away from sin. We should also be repenting as a church. God calls us to help one another fight sin and to grow in holiness. We ought to care about the purity of the church. So, we practice biblical church discipline to call a straying person back to God. Because God dwells among us, we cannot be indifferent to sin. We should lovingly confront sin among us, for the person’s good and the church’s holiness.
Second, we need cleansing because sin must be paid for (Num 5:5-10). The focus shifts to how we are to deal with sin. Numbers 5:6 tells us that sin breaks faith with the Lord. Sin is unfaithfulness — we have not been true to God. Instead of loving and worshiping Him, we have turned away to serve ourselves and our idols. Sin steals from God, robbing Him of the worship He is due.
Sin also affects others. In these verses, a man or woman has sinned against someone else. This person may have committed theft, robbery or fraud. When he realises his guilt, how should his sin be dealt with? He is to confess his sin. To confess means to agree with what God says about our sin. We do not deny it, disappear it, or discount it.
Sin has two dimensions, vertical and horizontal: It is against God and against others. Sin is a failure to love God, as well as to love others. To address the horizontal dimension of sin, the offending man is to make full restitution for his wrong, adding a fifth to it and giving it to him to whom he did the wrong. This is one of the signs that confession and repentance are genuine. Our actions back up our words. We must put right the wrongs we’ve done. If we have stolen, then we should pay back what we have taken plus 20 per cent. Our willingness to make amends shows we are truly sorry for the hurt and harm we have caused. In the New Testament, when the dishonest tax collector Zacchaeus repents, he says to Jesus, “If I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” If you have sinned against someone, how would you put things right?
Sin is also against God. By rebelling against the One who gave us life and made us for His glory, we rightly deserve to die. The wages of sin is death. But God, in grace and mercy, provides atonement through sacrifice. The guilty person offers the ram of atonement to die in his place, so that he can be forgiven. To be cleansed, our sin must be paid for through the death of a sacrificial substitute.
Third, we need cleansing because sin will be found out. No one else may know your secret sins, but God will call you to account. Numbers 5:11-31 describe a test of marital faithfulness. Two possible scenarios are presented in Numbers 5:11-14: In one case, a wife has committed adultery and been unfaithful to her husband. He suspects his wife of infidelity, but there is no evidence. As Numbers 5:13 says, the sin is hidden, undetected, and there is no witness. Notice how Numbers 5:12 says she “breaks faith with him”. This is the same phrase used to describe sin in Numbers 5:6. Sin is spiritual adultery. Sin is not simply breaking a law; it is a personal offence against a personal God. Like adultery, it strikes at the heart of the relationship between God and us. He set his love on us, that we might love him. But sin spurns God for other lovers. We promiscuously pursue idols like work and wealth, success and significance, pleasure and power, comfort and control.
In the second case (Num 5:14), a husband is jealous of his wife though she not defiled herself. In both cases, a wife’s guilt or innocence must be properly established. The rest of chapter 5 carefully lays out the process to be followed. A wife must be given the due process of justice. The just God cares about how we treat one another. As God’s people, our relationships—especially our marriages—are to reflect his faithfulness and righteousness. The jealous husband must not take matters into his own hands. When we are wronged, we are to entrust ourselves to God who judges justly. We trust that sin cannot remain hidden; it will be found out.
In Numbers 5:15, the process begins with the man bringing his wife to the priest, along with a grain offering of barley flour. The act of offering shows that the husband submits to the Lord, who is represented by the priest. No oil or frankincense is used because these signify joy, whereas the aim of this procedure is to bring iniquity to remembrance, to bring sin to light.
Next, the priest is to prepare a cup containing a mixture of holy water and dust from the tabernacle floor, which symbolises God’s holy presence. God is present to give judgement. The priest sets the woman before the Lord with her hair unbound, a symbol that she may be unclean. In Numbers 5:19-22, the priest makes the woman take an oath to accept God’s judgement: If she is innocent of infidelity, then she is free from (the) water of bitterness that brings the curse. If she is guilty, then the Lord will bring a curse upon her. Her body will be affected and she will be unable to bear children. We must be especially careful here to not over-generalise. To be childless does not mean we are under God’s curse. This is a specific consequence tied to a specific case.
Having taken an oath, the woman is to then drink the water of bitterness that brings the curse. There is nothing magical in the water itself. Rather, it is God who causes the effect on the woman, depending on her guilt or innocence. Look at Numbers 5:27-28: If the woman is guilty, the water that brings the curse shall cause bitter pain. She shall become a curse among her people. If she is innocent, then she shall be free and shall conceive children.
Sin must be rooted out. Hidden sins must be brought to light.
This law reflects God’s concern for marriage, which pictures His relationship with His people. God cares about our marriages because they say something about how He loves us. God is jealous for our purity. Like a loving husband, God cannot do nothing if we stray from Him. Therefore, sin must be rooted out. Hidden sins must be brought to light. Just as a wife’s adultery will be dealt with, so unfaithfulness to God will be judged. We may be able to hide our sins from others, but we cannot hide from God. He sees. He knows.
Consecration (6:1-21)
If God is to go with Israel and dwell among them, then the nation must be purified. Numbers 5 shows our need for cleansing because sin defiles, sin must be paid for, and sin will be found out. Along with the need to turn from sin comes the call to turn to God with wholehearted devotion. With cleansing comes consecration, which is the focus of most of Numbers 6.
The phrase “and the LORD spoke to Moses” in Numbers 6:1 introduces a set of laws concerning Nazarites. Who is a Nazarite? The name comes from the Hebrew word meaning “to separate”. Verse 2 says a Nazarite is either a man or woman who makes a special vow to devote themselves to God for a specific period of time. In the Old Testament, the prophet Samuel was dedicated by his mother at birth to be a life long Nazarite. He was a good example of someone consecrated to the Lord. Samson was a Nazarite too, although he was a bad example.
Nazarites are meant to show the other Israelites what it looks like to be consecrated to God. Remember what God said to Israel in Exodus 19: “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” The rules for Nazarites resembled those for the priesthood, with one striking difference: While the priesthood is for men only, both men and women can be Nazarites. Although the Nazarite vow is voluntary and temporary, it points to how all of God’s people are to be wholly devoted to the Lord all the time. Therefore, a Nazarite portrays a picture of an ideal Israelite. Nazarites exemplify what it means to be a part of God’s people.
Although Christians do not have to make Nazarite vows, these verses teach us what consecration means. They reveal, firstly, that consecration is complete. Look at Numbers 6:3-8, which list the conditions for commitment. To be a Nazarite, a person must vow to separate from three things: alcohol, haircuts, and corpses. These symbolise how all of life is devoted to God. By abstaining from alcohol and even from grapes, raisins and anything else produced by the vine, a Nazarite is submitting life’s pleasures to God. Do not misunderstand: God is not a killjoy. He wants us to be genuinely happy. God must be our chief joy, not the world’s passing pleasures.
Hair is a symbol of the life of a person. By avoiding haircuts, a Nazarite is committing his or her life to God’s rule. Our life is not our own; we are to live for the Lord, our redeemer. A Nazarite also committed to not go near any dead bodies, not even for the funeral of a close family member. This is a powerful statement of their complete commitment to God. Remember Jesus’ words to the man who said, “Let me first go and bury my father”? Jesus said, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.” God must come first. Our commitment to him must be complete.
Secondly, the law of the Nazarite also reveals that consecration is costly. Numbers 6:9-12 give instructions for what to do when the Nazarite vow is broken. For instance, if someone suddenly dies next to a Nazarite and defiles him, what should he do? He must be cleansed through sacrifice. Atonement must be made. He is to bring two birds as a sin offering and a burnt offering. He also needs to bring a one-year-old male lamb for a guilt offering. What is more, the commitment clock resets. He must restart his period of consecration from the beginning.
What about when a Nazarite completes the duration of his vow? He cannot just drop everything and return to life as usual. No, he must also follow certain procedures for de-consecration (Num 6:13-20). He has to offer all kinds of sacrifices: a burnt offering, a sin offering, a peace offering, a grain offering, a drink offering and a wave offering. Only then is he released from his Nazarite vow. What is more, these are just the basic requirements. Look at Numbers 6:21. If a person can afford it, he should feel free to offer to the Lord more than what the law requires.
Our commitment to God is costly.
These verses show us how our commitment to God is costly. As David said, “I will not offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” God calls us to spend ourselves for His sake. Be generous and open-handed with God. Everything we have comes from Him anyway. What do we have that we have not received?
Here is where I think the principle of the tithe can be unhelpful. We may be tempted to think: What is the minimum I can give to God? That is the wrong question to ask. I believe this is a reason why the New Testament does not speak of tithing. Instead, we are exhorted to be generous because God is so generous with us: “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” (2 Cor 9:7-8). Surely, God deserves our everything, not just 10 per cent of our money. Therefore, by the mercies of God, present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship. Love so amazing demands our life, our all.
Blessing (Num 6:22-27)
For God to dwell with His people and to bless them, they must be cleansed of any defilement and be wholly consecrated to him. Cleansing and consecration lead to blessing. So, the Lord blesses Israel at the end of chapter 6. But, as the rest of the Old Testament shows, Israel’s story is not one of triumph but of stubborn sin, repeated rebellion, and faithless failure. The Israelites will be defiled. They will sin against God and wrong one another. They will be unfaithful to God. Notice also how the Nazarite law focuses more on what to do when the vow is broken or ended. The Nazarites were supposed to be examples of devotion to God. But even they will fail. Their commitment will end. If this is true of the Nazarites, how much more the rest of the Israelites? Israel’s failure reflects our inability to cleanse and consecrate ourselves to God. The Old Testament law tells us how we can be blessed, but the law on its own does not enable us to do what it requires. It holds up the standard of God’s perfect holiness and shows us how we fall short. If we are honest, we will acknowledge that we are more like the unfaithful wife in Numbers 5 than the committed Nazarite of Numbers 6. We deserve the curse, not the blessing. How, then, can we be blessed?
Notice how the blessing is introduced in Numbers 6:22 with the same phrase as the previous laws: The LORD spoke to Moses. The God who gives the law is the same God who blesses. He intends good for His people. Reading the laws, we may come to the mistaken conclusion that God is hard and harsh. Nothing can be further from the truth. His posture towards his people is full of love, grace and mercy. Yes, we will fail to obey God’s law. But this should drive us to God, not away from Him. Go to God, who will do us good. His purpose is to bless His people.
In Numbers 6:27, God says He will put His name on the people of Israel and bless them. Belonging to God brings blessing. We are blessed because God graciously makes us His own, not because we have earned His favour. God blesses His people through the high priest He has appointed. Moses is to instruct Aaron and his sons to bless the people of Israel in this way: The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Notice the repetition. The LORD is mentioned three times, emphasising how he is the source of blessing. The three-fold mention of “the LORD” hints at how we are blessed by the Triune God — Father, Son and Spirit. It foreshadows the famous benediction in 2 Corinthians 13:14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Israel is reminded that true blessing comes only from the LORD, not from any idol. The LORD is God’s personal name. He has entered into a covenant relationship with his redeemed people. The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Each line in the LORD’s three fold blessing is like a repeated melody of a grand symphony. With each repetition, the melody grows richer, fuller, louder, until it climaxes in the third line with the blessing of shalom, peace. Let’s look at each line in turn.
The LORD bless you and keep you. God provides and protects. He will lead and feed Israel all the way to the promised land. He sustains our life, giving us our daily bread. More than that, the Lord keeps us from danger. Later in Numbers, the Lord guards Israel by thwarting Balak’s plan to harm them. The Lord turns cursing into blessing. The LORD make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. What is the basis of our blessing? It is not by our efforts to keep the law, but by God’s grace alone. He shows us favour not because we are deserving, but because he is good. On our own, we will fail to cleanse and consecrate ourselves. So, look to the LORD, who can wash away our sins and make us holy. The Lord smiles on us. Beloved, what comfort and assurance to know that the Lord is pleased to bless us. He is willing, not reluctant or grudging. The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. When we are angry with someone, we turn our face away from that person. We do not even want to look at them. But here, the Lord turns His face to His people. This is astounding. In Exodus 33, the LORD told Moses, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” So, God hid Moses in the cleft of the rock. He could only see God’s back after he had passed by.
Through Jesus, God has made His face shine on us. We know God by knowing His Son.
To be blessed is to know God face-to-face. But how can we see God’s face and live? He must graciously make Himself known to us. The law reveals that God is holy and we are not. The law tells us we need a Saviour. Praise God, for he has drawn near to us first. We behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, took on flesh and came to dwell among us. In Him, we see the glory of the Father, full of grace and truth. Through Jesus, God has made His face shine on us. We know God by knowing His Son.
Through Jesus, our great high priest, God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. Jesus can make us clean. During his earthly ministry, Jesus was not ashamed to be a friend of sinners. He drew near to the unclean. Instead of them defiling him, he cleansed them. Jesus healed the lepers. He healed the woman with a discharge of blood. He raised the dead. Jesus went out of the camp to pay the penalty for sin. He suffered the shame of the cross, dying in the place of guilty sinners, so that we can be forgiven and made right with God if we believe in Him.
We have broken faith with God. We are all spiritual adulterers. But Jesus is the faithful Bridegroom who loved His church and gave Himself up for her. He drank the bitter cup that should have been ours. In faithfulness to His Father, Jesus prayed, “Not my will, but yours, be done.” He redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. Jesus bore the brunt of God’s wrath, that we might receive the blessing of God’s grace. For our sake, Jesus consecrated Himself to God. He is the true Nazarite, perfectly holy and wholly devoted to God. His commitment to the Father’s will was complete and it cost him everything. Jesus humbled himself by obeying the Father to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Holy and unholy do not mix. Cross-contamination is dangerous and deadly. But thanks to Jesus, we have cross-salvation. His blood washes away the guilt of our sins. In Christ, we are cleansed and consecrated to God. We are transformed from sinner to saint. God puts His name on us and makes us His own. In Christ, we are blessed. Have you come to Jesus for cleansing and consecration? He is the only way to blessing. Trust in Him and live for Him.