God's Bankcard Statement

I work for a credit card company.  I won’t go into the details of my job because I actually want people to read my blog, but if you didn’t know it already the banks that handle your checking and credit cards have a window into your life that most people don’t.   I would consider myself to be a Cincinnati Reds fan.  I feel a certain connection to the team and hope we make it to the playoffs every year.  That being said, I’m not a fan like many people I know.  My fandom is pretty platonic and rarely reaches into my pockets.  It’s very uncommon for me to buy tickets to games and even more so I haven’t spent the $25.00 necessary to get a digital antenna installed to my TV to watch the games on Sundays.   So while I’ll tell most people that I’m a fan (and still consider myself to be one), all someone would have to do is look at my credit card statement to find just how shallow my devotion to Jay Bruce and the boys goes.

Levites or Special Ops?

Looking into what God decided to do with the Levites in the first couple chapters of the Book of Numbers is a bit like looking at His credit card statement.  I find it interesting that in the scenario that the people of Israel were in: where they were walking through a wilderness looking for the land that they were eventually going to have to take by force, that in the middle of this circumstance, God decided to set apart 3.5% of the male population specifically for the purpose of cleaning a Tent.  Where He could have devoted them to special ops training that would enable them to lead the military charge into the Promised Land and to defeat the enemy through combat skill, God decided that He wanted to make sure that there were people who took care of the furniture and utensils of a 15 by 45 foot Tent.

 

God, Israel's new Roommate

 In my view God is doing a couple things here:  First and foremost this is best understood in the context that God for the first time in all of history decided that He actually wanted to live with a group of people.  The Law is a very complex topic, but I wouldn’t consider it an over-generalization to say that God gave Israel a stricter Law than He gave other nations because He decided that He wanted to live there.  And in a way not unlike ourselves, while we wouldn’t consider ourselves indifferent to what someone does in a city 90 minutes away, what we really care about is how our roommate’s behavior affects us.  And in my opinion God was very much concerned with how Israel’s behavior would affect their view of HimHiHi. 

The God who Distinguishes Himself

There is no disputing that God has an incomparably high view of Himself.  He is the Creator of existence.  The very Architect of life and He states that people should worship Him.  He refused to be seen as one who would bend his will at the desire of another.  He wanted to live with Israel, but He couldn’t tolerate being seen as common.  This in my view is why He built a Tabernacle, painted everything in it with gold, covered it ornate clothe and then built a fence around it only allowing a select few to enter.  It’s the reason why He wouldn’t allow people to live within the borders of His camp if they had touched something that was unclean – a point that didn’t communicate that God didn’t love people who were befit with disease (Jesus revealed later that such wasn’t the case), but rather that He didn’t want a generation of primitive understanding to associate Him with anything unclean.  God wanted people to see Him the way He saw Himself and actually was – One who is High and Lofty, who dwells in unapproachable Light, who is entirely perfect and blameless in all His ways; yet who has decided that He wants to live with people.

The Transcendent One

To be honest it wouldn't feel right following one who isn't clean, isn’t blameless and isn’t high and lofty.  God's total unwillingness to compromise Himself is what makes Him transcendent.  In the same way that the relationship decisions that we make define what kind of person we are – we won’t be with someone who treats us like dirt because we are better than that – so God refused to be associated with the lowliness and uncleanliness that besets humanity.  He reached down and built a house there, but it was so that He could call them to a higher place – to the place where He dwells.  This is what it means when God calls Himself Holy – that He is better than, higher than and greater than all things common or profane.