Numbers 20: 1-13

“Then the children of Israel, the whole congregation, came into the Wilderness of Zin in the first month, and the people stayed in Kadesh; and Miriam died there and was buried there. ² Now there was no water for the congregation; so they gathered together against Moses and Aaron. ³ And the people contended with Moses and spoke, saying: ‘If only we had died when our brethren died before the Lord! ⁴ Why have you brought up the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness, that we and our animals should die here? ⁵ And why have you made us come up out of Egypt, to bring us to this evil place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates; nor is there any water to drink.’

⁶ So Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the door of the tabernacle of meeting, and they fell on their faces. And the glory of the Lord appeared to them. ⁷ Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ⁸ “Take the rod; you and your brother Aaron gather the congregation together. Speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will yield its water; thus, you shall bring water for them out of the rock, and give drink to the congregation and their animals.”

⁹ So Moses took the rod from before the Lord as He commanded him. ¹⁰ And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock; and he said to them, ‘Hear now, you rebels! Must we bring water for you out of this rock?’ ¹¹ Then Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their animals drank.

¹² Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe Me, to hallow Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.” ¹³ This was the water of Meribah, because the children of Israel contended with the Lord, and He was hallowed among them.”

What we are about to explore today is one of the saddest accounts, in my estimation, in the Bible. As we continue our journey to see that Jesus is the whole story of the Bible, we come to this account. The next generation of Jews are ready to enter the Promised Land. As you will recall, about 40 years prior, God had brought the people, led by Moses to the edge of Canaan. They sent in 12 spies, one from each tribe, and they surveyed the land. They concluded it was beautiful BUT that there were giants in the land and that God had brought them there to kill them.

We see this played out in Numbers 14: 1-4;

“’So all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron, and the whole congregation said to them, ‘If only we had died in the land of Egypt! Or if only we had died in this wilderness! Why has the Lord brought us to this land to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should become victims? Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?’ So they said to one another, ‘Let us select a leader and return to Egypt.’” 

So, over the next almost 4 decades, the people who refused to enter the Promised Land died off, and now it is their children who are going to inherit the place they refused. The sad part is that the children are more rebellious and defiant than their fathers were. They learned well from their parents how to complain and to rebel against Moses. So here we are in the Wilderness of Zin, and there is no water.

These people form a rebellion against Moses and Aaron; they accuse them and God of bringing them here to kill them of thirst. They want to go back to Egypt. These people have not lived in Egypt for almost 40 years. They do not have a clue what Egypt was like; many were not even born there. But they had heard their parents talk about Egypt, and they had grown to ‘love’ Egypt.

Poor Moses and Aaron were at they’re wits end and cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed up and gave them very clear instructions. In verse 8, God tells Moses to ‘speak to the rock, and give drink to the people.’ Moses, in his anger and frustration derived from dealing with these people, hit the rock, and even though the water did come out, Moses and Aaron paid a great price.

Moses and Aaron were NOT allowed to enter the Promised Land; they both died before entering. They had disobeyed God in this, and God refused to let them enter. At first it sounds like a harsh punishment for these men; though they were sinners like you and I, they had served God faithfully in terrible situations for decades, and now God seems to have no mercy for them. What gives here?

To truly understand this, we need to turn to 1 Corinthians 10: 1-5;

“Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. But with most of them, God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.”

The Rock that ‘followed them’ according to Paul was Christ. It was a picture of Christ, and Jesus was only struck (sacrificed) once for all. From now on, we need only to speak to Jesus for living water. Jesus died once for all; He will never submit to public execution again. Thus, the first time they needed water for the first generation, Moses was told to strike the Rock, see Exodus 17:6;

“’Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock in Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.’ And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.”

But after that, all that was needed was for him to speak to the Rock. Jesus is everywhere, and He is the whole story of the Bible. God could not allow Moses, yes, even Moses, to mess with the truth and the picture that was being shown. So, Moses and Aaron were not allowed to enter the Promised Land.

There is a sobering lesson to learn here for Pastors and leaders, and all of us in general; keep your emotions in check. The decisions you make while angry can affect a lot of what God allows in your life. All too often we use anger as an excuse to do sinful things; and these things, while being forgivable by God, leave scars that God cannot overlook, thus the consequences have to be played out. And when it comes to the picture of Jesus and the salvation that He purchased for us, that picture cannot be marred, not even by Moses. God graciously allowed Moses to see the Promised Land before he died (Deuteronomy 32:52), but I am sure that he would have preferred to lead the people over the Jordan.

As under-shepherds, we are to serve the people of the Lord, His flock. Sheep are stubborn, and we should see and appreciate that. If we allow the actions of the people to control our emotions, we will find ourselves coming under God’s judgment over and over again and maybe even losing the privilege to be an under-shepherd. True discipleship is tedious and dirty; it can be frustrating and unscripted. It is often filled with the ‘one step forward and two steps back’ movements.

And then, one last observation: parents, your kids are watching what you do in private. The generation that entered the Promised Land learned to complain and rebel from their parents. They heard their private conversations and overheard that they loved Egypt; they saw how they loved the world system that had killed their children and made them slaves. They preferred to be slaves and have food given to them rather than to be free and trust God.

Sadly, many of us live the same way today. They had passed these traits on to their kids. What are you passing on to your kids?

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

Exodus 13:21

I hope that you are enjoying this journey about Jesus in the Old Testament. Recently, I have been seeing a few short videos where this fellow reads Old Testament passages like Isaiah 2, 9, 53, or Zechariah 12 to Jewish people, and they assume, because it mentions a Son, that it is the New Testament. When they find out it is the Old Testament, they are astonished; some are still in disbelief.

But over the years, I have met a few conservative Jews who have come to see and know Jesus as their Messiah. I love talking to these Jewish brothers and exploring the stories of the Old Testament. Some are astonished that I know the Old Testament, understand the picture of the feasts, and other things that we chat about. This is not to boast; I am surrounded by Godly men who love the Bible, and we discuss it as often as we can.

The point is that the Bible is about Jesus. It is about His plan of redemption for us and for Israel, and for the whole world.

Today, we are going to see Jesus in another part of the Bible that many of us have read through, but we do not think that Jesus is the story and the picture here. He is!! I did not put the reading in the text as usual because it would take up a large part of the lesson space. Rather, I encourage you to read the passage maybe once or twice to get the details.

There are two parts to what we will observe today; one is the actual configuration of the tribes as they assembled after each trip that they took. If you will recall, they journeyed from place to place for 40 years in the Wilderness. God provided them with a cloud by day to guide them and a pillar of fire by night to provide light and protection.

Exodus 13:21, “The LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to lead them on their way during the day and in a pillar of fire to give them light at night, so that they could travel day or night.”

Once the cloud stopped in a place, the task of setting up camp began. God had laid out a specific way that they were encamped; it was not a haphazard just set your tent up kind of system. The tabernacle was the center of the camp; it was set up by the Levites and the families entrusted with the care and transportation of the Tabernacle. Then the tribes would set up in order. There were three tribes each to the north, east, west, and south. They never swapped; the order was the same each time.

Once they were set up, if one were to go up on a hill or a mountain and look down on them, they would see the form of a cross. Yes, the place for sacrificing is at the center, and the picture of a cross is there. There was never a doubt, never hesitation as to what would be happening to Jesus. The cross was there even in the wilderness. The cross was there at the Passover, and it was there every time they set up the camp.

The second part of what we will be looking at is the standards or the flags that were visible at the site of each encampment to the north, south, east, and west. Each tribe had their own standard, but over the 4 divisions, there was a ‘superior’ standard that marked each collective encampment. The Rabbinical tradition tells us that there were 4 standards or flags that were shown by the 4 leading tribes for each section as they set up. At the website, Biblefragrances.com, we see this laid out for us.

Neither the Mosaic law, nor the Old Testament generally, gives us any intimation as to the form or character of the standard (degel). According to rabbinical tradition, the standard of Judah bore the figure of a lion, that of Reuben the likeness of a man or of a man’s head, that of Ephraim the figure of anox, and that of Dan the figure of an eagle; so that the four living creatures united in the cherubic forms described by Ezekiel were represented upon these four standards.

Jewish tradition says the “four standards” under which Israel encamped in the wilderness, to the east, Judah, to the north, Dan, to the west, Ephraim, to the south, Reuben, were respectively a lion, an eagle, an ox, and a man, while in the midst was the tabernacle containing the Shekinah symbol of the Divine Presence.

These four images are repeated for us in the scriptures in Ezekiel and in Revelation; in Ezekiel 1:5 and 10, we see these verses: “And out of its midst [is] a likeness of four living creatures, and this [is] their appearance; a likeness of man [is] to them,” ….. “¹⁰ As to the likeness of their faces, the face of a man, and the face of a lion, toward the right [are] to them four, and the face of an ox on the left [are] to them four, and the face of an eagle [are] to them four.’

Then in Revelation we see this reference: Revelation 4: 6-7, “and before the throne [is] a sea of glass like to crystal, and in the midst of the throne, and round the throne, [are] four living creatures, full of eyes before and behind; and the first living creature [is] like a lion, and the second living creature [is] like a calf, and the third living creature hath the face as a man, and the fourth living creature [is] like an eagle flying.

These images are repeated over and over again in the scriptures, and they all paint a picture of an aspect of who Jesus is. Jesus is the Lion of Judah: in Revelation 5:5, we see Jesus called the Lion of Judah. “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecy that Jacob gave to his children in Genesis 49:9-10. Judah is promised an eternal lawgiver, and that their sceptre would never depart from the tribe; it has not in Jesus and the oldest living male of the tribe of Judah from the line through Mary, who still has the right to sit on the throne of David.

The tribe of Reuben had the image of a man on his standard; this was the reminder that Jesus would come as a Man. In Romans, He is called the Second Adam. Romans 5:12-15, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned— (For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.”

The standard of Ephraim was the Ox, and of course, Jesus is our sacrifice, the one whose blood washes away our sins. 1 John 1:7, “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” Also see Acts 20:28, Colossians 1:20, Ephesians 1:7, and Hebrews 9:14; these are just a few of the verses about Jesus’ blood washing away our sins.

The last standard is that of Dan, the eagle. This one threw me for a bit, and in Numbers 2:25, see that Dan is situated to the North of the camp. The eagle is a sign of judgment. In Acts 17:31, we see this verse: “For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” The judge is the one whom God has raised from the dead. Other verses that show Jesus as the judge: Acts 10:24, Matthew 25:31-32, John 5:22, and Matthew 16:27. These are just a few of the verses that show Jesus as the Judge of the earth.

Jesus is the story and central character of the Bible. The Jews had the pictures in the wilderness, but they refused to see, and they are still blind today.

Open your eyes; Jesus is the entire main and central character of the Bible. Is He the main character of your life and mine?

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario