Word of Salvation – March 2014

 

Numbers 31 – LESSONS FROM JUDGMENT

By Rev. John Westendorp

(Sermon 31 in a series on Numbers)

Scripture Reading: Numbers 31.

Singing: Book of Worship 436 / 517 / 322 / 67

 

Introd: Many of us here will still remember the horror of the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Hutu militia massacred some 800,000 (mainly) Tutsis over just 100 days.

That number is equal to the population of 8 cities the size of Toowoomba… all brutally murdered.

A year later the world was horrified at another shocking instance of ethnic cleansing.
In Bosnia the Serb army executed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys,
Another 25,000 were forcibly deported – mainly women and children and some elderly men.

As if we haven’t had enough horror another genocide has been taking place in Darfur.
That genocide has already claimed some 400,000 lives and displaced 2½ million people.
Meanwhile the Sudanese government continues to resist any intervention.

Here in Number 31 we have a whole Midianite tribe wiped out
It’s estimated that some 60,000 Midianites were killed that day. And not just men.
Women and children and tiny babies are killed. Just 32,000 virgin girls are spared.

What makes the Rwandan genocide wrong… and the Bosnian genocide wrong but Numbers 31 right?
Why does genocide in Darfur horrify us but we read Numbers 31 without batting an eyelid?
What a horrible chapter. Here is God-approved ethnic cleansing… with Moses a war criminal.

A] SOME ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS.

1. It’s important for us to get a handle on this chapter because if it doesn’t offend us it offends others.

Many people who read this chapter of Numbers blame God for the carnage.
On the Internet you can find a number of web-sites that quote this chapter… negatively!
They conclude: “If this is the God of Christians then I don’t want a bar of Him thanks.”
One of them even claims: This is worse than Herod’s massacre of the boy babies in Bethlehem.

So one of the main ways of resolving Numbers 31 is to blame God.
And that happened already in the early years of the Christian church.
There was a guy called Marcion back around 140 AD who tried to deal with this.

He said: The solution is easy. The God of the OT is a different God to the God of the NT.
The OT God was a jealous and judgmental tribal God of the Jews.
The NT God is the loving God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that loving God of the NT rescues us from that terrible God of the OT.

Well, you may not like Numbers 31 but you can’t play off the OT against the NT.
The early church didn’t accept Marcion’s answer – in fact they excommunicated him for it.

Thomas Jefferson – one of the founding fathers of the US – also blamed God.
He said that the God of Moses and the OT was cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.

In our own day Physicist, Richard Dawkins, deals with this in his book The God Delusion.
He says: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it: a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak: a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser: a misogynistic homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal… malevolent bully.”
(Page 31)

That’s an atheists view of the God who we are here to worship today. So how do we deal with that?

2. Of course not everyone wants to blame God. Some people blame Moses.

Even some Christians take that approach… the really gruesome part of this story was Moses’ fault.

These people point out that this story takes place in violent times.
And they claim that everything that happens in the first part of the story is fairly common.
This was the general way warfare was practiced in the ancient near East.
You can find many writers who confirm that this was common practice.

They killed all the males… they burnt the cities… they kept the plunder.
So all that is left after the battle is scorched earth and lots of dead bodies.
Except, of course, the women and children – they are taken captive.
And all of that – we are told – was common practice in their world at that time.

But then we get that surprising reaction of Moses.
Moses and Eleazar the priest and the leaders go out to meet the army outside the camp.
And we half expect Moses to compliment the army on a job well done.
But that is just what doesn’t happen.
Instead Moses goes right off his brain… he loses it and gets really angry.

So Moses intervenes.
And some claim that Moses goes further than God wanted Israel to go.
In verse 1 Israel is told to go to war against Midian… to attack and punish them.
But now Moses orders all the women killed… and all the boys – babies included.
And the only ones he spares are young girls who are not yet married.

These folk who blame Moses are ready to put him on trial for war crimes.

This is ethnic cleansing at it’s worst. This is blatant, hard-hearted vindictiveness.

But if we’re at all tempted to think that, then we need to notice that God is silent about it.
In the book of Numbers the Lord God is very quick to speak when things are not right,
Here God’s silence speaks volumes. Moses and God do not have different agendas.

3. That still leaves one other way that people have tried to get around Numbers 31.

That is to spiritualise this chapter.
If we do have to accept this then only in terms of the harshness of those times.
But even then we shouldn’t take it literally… it’s really just a teaching story.

These people do what Muslims do when they spiritualise the Koran’s teaching about Jihad.
Islamic teaching about Jihad is that Muslims must fight against their enemies in holy war.
But that’s not politically correct today so many moderate Muslims spiritualise this.
The enemies they are to fight are spiritual enemies… and to fight for good morals.

So here in Numbers 31 is an allegory… or an acted out parable.
What it is saying to us is that we need to be ruthless in fighting our spiritual enemies.
Our warfare against the Devil is to be like carrying out a genocide.
Our battle against the temptations of the world are like ethnic cleansing.
You don’t keep anything alive… it’s got to be radical.
After all, didn’t Jesus tell us that we need to put our old self to death?

But that’s not the answer either.
There is no indication in this chapter or later in the Bible that we should take it that way.
This is a very real event that happened in real history.
Okay, there are certainly lessons to be learnt from it… even for us today.
But we may not play down the literal meaning and spiritualise it just to defend God or Moses.
So we must find some other answers to defend and explain this story.

B] SOME BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVES.

1. Notice please that God does not merely permit these events – God orders them.

Verse 1 begins as do so many other stories in Numbers: with God speaking.
The Lord said to Moses, “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites.”
God initiates this whole chain of events that we have here in Numbers 31.

The problem with blaming God for the carnage in these verses is our defective view of God.
People act as if man has rights that God must respect. God must fit our preconceived ideas.
But then God is no longer the Sovereign ruler of heaven and earth and all things.
He’s no longer the God who does what He wishes with what He has made.
Instead God jolly well ought to fit in with our standards of decency and kindness.

Okay! But how can the God who said, “You shall not kill!” order the slaughter of these Midianites?

Here we have to face up to the matter of justice… and particularly God’s standard of justice.
Today we have a very weakened sense of justice.
When someone commits a crime we fine them or lock them up to teach them not do it again.
IOW the general goal of sentencing someone today tends to be corrective.
We even call our prisons “Correctional Centres”.

God’s justice here has a different focus.
It’s not to prevent them from doing something wrong in the future – although it will.
But it’s because they did something outrageously evil in the past.
This punishment in Numbers 31 is not corrective… it is retributive.
That’s not always so… when God punishes believers it’s to discipline them.
But here the Midianites come under God’s judgment as a payment for their wickedness.

We also see that all of this is God oriented in what happens to the spoils of war later.
It is shared between the soldiers and the rest of the people. But more than that.
A certain percentage of both shares of the booty is to be given to God to honour Him.

2. It’s also helpful to consider this chapter in context of corporate and national responsibility.

Today we have a very individualistic view of life… the ancient world had a stronger sense of community.

Let me explain it this way.
We in the Reformed Churches are strong on the Biblical teaching of the covenant.
It’s the teaching that God deals with families… not just individuals.
He is the God of parents and their children. God blesses whole families for the faith of parents.
Well, that covenant concept holds true for unbelievers too.
Faith runs in families but so too does evil. God judges whole families for the sins of parents.

Let me give you a practical example of the way that works out in practice.
Our family moved into an empty house in Geelong so that I could study at the RTC.
While we were moving our furniture in a neighbour’s pre-schooler came over to watch us.
He proudly announced how his daddy had dug up some trees while the house was empty.
And that those trees were now growing in their backyard.

But something worse struck me even more.
The language this young pre-schooler was using made my hair curl.
Do you know where he got that from? I found out the next day when his dad called.
This lad was implicated in the sins of his father. Proud of his theft. Obscene in speech.

That’s why those Midianite children died. They were implicated in the horrible sins of their parents.

That puts the sparing of 32,000 girls into some sort perspective for us. That was an act of grace.

3. This takes us to the heart of the issue. You cannot understand Numbers 31 apart from Numbers 25.

There we have the story of the horrible sin of the Midianites.
On a massive scale they enticed Israel to sin against God in two ways.
By getting them to join in with the worship to the fertility God, Baal-Peor.
And by getting them to indulge in an orgy of sexual immorality with their women.
They did that deliberately – on the advice of Balaam – to destroy Israel.
And it almost succeeded – 24,000 Israelites died as God struck them with a plague.

It’s perhaps a little hard to imagine the seriousness of that sin in Numbers 25.
This was not just a minor sexual indiscretion.
The death of 24,000 Israelites would seem to indicate that it happened on a massive scale.
It would be a little like thousands of HIV positive women deliberately seducing men.
Intentionally infecting them with AIDS to lead them to their destruction.
And all of that took place in a religious context – sexual promiscuity was part of their worship.

All of that was a spiritual strategy by the enemy to ruin the work of God.
It was to stop these people becoming the nation of God’s people in the Promised Land.
IOW: this was part of the battle between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan.
Only if we see that will we understand the severity of God’s judgment in Numbers 31.

It’s because this was a spiritual warfare that the army is led by Phinehas, the priest.
The same man who had so courageously halted the plague in Numbers 25.
And Phinehas takes into battle some of the sacred objects of the tabernacle.
That highlight that this is a continuation of what happened in Numbers 25.

In fact, ultimately what is at stake here is the coming of God’s Messiah, Jesus Christ.

That’s why we have this horrible chapter. God is fighting it out with Satan for the salvation of the world.

C] LESSONS FROM JUDGMENT.

1. Once we’ve put Numbers 31 into perspective we can consider some lessons from this chapter.

The first lesson I want to draw is that there is a line running through all God’s judgments.

God is a holy God who must judge sin… and He does… over and over again.
So this judgment of the Midianites in Numbers 31 is part of a bigger picture of judgment.
That picture begins with a man and a woman banished from a beautiful garden in Eden.
It continues right thru another horrible judgment in the flood of Noah that destroyed thousands.
And it is all going to end in that great end-time judgment in the book of Revelation.

So if you think that what is here in Numbers 31 is bad… then you ain’t seen nothing yet.
God is a just God and He must and He will punish all sin committed against His holy majesty.
All God’s judgment in the Bible prefigure that great but horrible end-time judgment.

You may think that this is fine because you go to church… you read your Bible.
Well, let me remind you that judgment always begins with God’s household.
A plague destroyed 24,000 Israelites who had participated in the sin with Baal Peor.
That plague struck quickly and decisively.

This is why the apostle Peter says:
“For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it begins with us,
what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (1Peter 4:17)
We need to make sure that we have our own house in order and obey the gospel.

Of course judgment didn’t stop with Israel. They were judged first but then the Midianites too.

IOW: those who reject God because He doesn’t conform to their standards will by judged too.

2. There is a second lesson we can learn from this judgment of Midian.

Over and over in the Bible God uses human instruments to bring judgment.
In Isaiah 10 God calls Assyria ‘the rod of my anger’.
God later used the Babylonians and Nebuchadnezzar to punish the nations.
IOW: God often works out His judgments through people.

Here in Numbers 31 and later in the book of Joshua God uses His own people as His instrument.
Here it is to put an end to the treachery and evil of the Midianites.
Later – on the other side of the Jordan – it is to put an end to Canaanite culture.
Their evil had reached a level where God was not prepared to put up with it anymore.

Okay. So what’s the lesson in that?
Twofold. First God rarely strikes people dead with a lightening bolt of fire from heaven.
But He does strike people through what others do to them.
That’s the context in which Peter speaks about judgment beginning with the household of God.
Peter’s context is the persecution and opposition that the early Christians faced.
Through that judgment God was sorting out His church.
Through that persecution He was weeding out the hypocrites from the true believers.

But there is a second aspect to humans being God’s instruments. That is that we shall do the judging.
And then I’m referring especially to the end-time judgment.
God is going to involve His own people in a big way in the final judgment.
Jesus told His 12 disciples that they would sit on 12 thrones and judge the 12 tribes of Israel.
Paul once told the Corinthians to stop taking each other to court.
And the reason? He tells them they should be capable of sorting out their own problems.
And in that context he adds: Do you not know that we shall judge angels? (1Cor.6:3).

I’ll even go further. Here Israel shared the spoils of war.

So too one day we will share the spoils of the great judgment at the end of the ages.

3. There is one other lesson to take up… and it’s at the same time a key to understanding this story.

The final lesson is that in the light of God’s holiness all our lives are forfeited by sin.
The destruction that these Midianites were subjected to… is what we all deserve.
We have all offended against the holiness and majesty of God. We all deserve destruction.

That comes out in one lovely angle to this story right at the end.
They count the 12 thousand soldiers that went to war and they discover that not one is missing.
Some people have tried to use that to prove that this story is not true.
Ridiculous. Twelve thousand Israelites wage war and not a single Israelite soldier dies.
That just proves that this is a made up story to serve as a parable of our spiritual warfare.

No! This is God’s amazing care for His own special people.

And we understand why special gifts of gold are brought as a thank offering to the Lord.
But please notice that these gifts are brought as an offering of atonement.
IOW These soldiers realise that they too are imperfect and in need of forgiveness.
They understand that they too – by nature – live under the judgment of God.

That’s what many of the critics of this chapter have never understood.
They have the idea that we human beings are basically good and God should be impressed.
In contrast these Hebrew soldiers understood that they needed atonement.

That makes us realise the ultimate importance of what God is doing here.
He is making sure that Israel will survive and will enter the promised land.
No Midianite will stop history from moving on in such a way that Jesus will be born.
God’s Messiah came and delivered us from that great judgment at the end of the ages.
Full atonement has been made. Let’s then show our gratitude by living to God’s glory. Amen