The Book Of Numbers | A Journey Toward Human Freedom Under God's AuthorityExemplo

"Prepared for War"

Four hundred years of compromise, sin, suffering, and darkness at the hands of evil slave masters left Israel torn and tattered. Four hundred years of broken hearts, defeat, failure, and bondage left them imprisoned to themselves.

Israel’s journey is not unlike our own. Before the love of Christ saves us, the Scripture tells us we are bound and slaves to sin. We too tend to isolate ourselves in our shame and pull away from God’s authority as we seek out other “masters” that only enslave us further. When God saves us out from underneath our own bondages, our preference is still to do things on our own.

This is why the first thing God commands us to do when we are saved is to be baptized. Baptism is a symbol of our unity with Christ and of the reality that we’ve now been added into his family. God did the same for Israel. His first step in bringing them out of slavery and into freedom was to bring them into a community. 

In beginning, starting with the heads of the households, the men, the God of Heaven reestablished the protection of the home first—a protection that had been broken down underneath bad authority. Extending out from the nucleus of a family-like-center, a true community formed, as clusters of extended families grew for the purpose of greater support and connection. This ultimately resulted in the formation of tribes. Over all of this were the heads of the home, the leaders of the family, and the head of the tribes. Leaders over the families’ provided restored safety and allowed for a family of families to grow.

God did this in similar fashion in Acts when he began the church with his disciples. They met house to house and were trained to plant churches starting with individuals, who would then redeem families, and then would gather together as small local bodies (churches). 

God rehabilitates our bound heart first by freeing us to be a part of a community. This community has real leadership, real authority, and real governing rules in order to ensure our safety and growth in the Lord. God retrains us through his law and Word, and he assembles us, like he did Israel, into a family of families in order to receive the shelter and safety we need as we step out together into the hostile environment of the world.

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