Numbers Chapter 15: Offerings of Thanks; Offerings for Unintentional Sins; But NO offering for Unintentional Sins; and the Tassel on the Garment
Numbers 15:1-41
Day 62. Social Media cops are taking down everything that they disagree with. And more importantly, anything that disagrees with their approach to fighting Covid-19. People continue to ignore the restrictions, the face penalties, and they sue the governments involved. The whole world is in the same storm together on a tumultuous ocean and unfortunately the entire crew and most passengers are drunk out of their minds. We press on, living one day at a time. Trying to be influencers as best we can and allowing God’s Word, as we continue our study in Numbers, to influence on. Read on.
The Passage
Chapter 15, verses 1-21 are instructions from God for Moses to share with the people with respect to various offerings of Thanksgiving to the Lord to be made when they reach the Promised Land.
Verses 22-29 covers offerings to be made for when they “unwittingly fail and do not observe all these commandments” which the Lord spoke to Moses for the people. These are the offerings of Unintentional Sins.
Verses 30-36 cover what happens when people do “anything defiantly” in opposition to the all the commandments God has given Moses for the people of Israel. Basically, there are to be no offerings for them, and they are to be “cut off from among (His) people”. Verses 32-36 within that section describe the stoning of a man, with Moses’ approval, after checking with God, because he had been found gathering wood on the Sabbath.
37 The Lord also spoke to Moses, saying, 38 “Speak to the sons of Israel, and tell them that they shall make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and that they shall put on the tassel of each corner a cord of blue. 39 It shall be a tassel for you [a]to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, so as to do them and not [b]follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you played the harlot, 40 so that you may remember to do all My commandments and be holy to your God. 41 I am the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt to be your God; I am the Lord your God.”
Footnotes
Footnotes
- Numbers 15:39 Lit and you shall look at it
- Numbers 15:39 Lit seek
Thoughts on the Passage
God continues to remind His people that they will reach the Promised Land as He had stated and that when they did, they were to offer various offerings of thanks unto Him. Many of the same rules and criteria that were expressed earlier are also offered here.
The same is true for those offerings to be made when they realize they unwittingly sinned against one of God’s commands. The involvement of the priests remains critical in making these offerings. Chuck Smith reminds us that even these sins require forgiveness.
In the passage, we see that God remains strong on His penalty for wilful disobedience of His known commands. These sinners were to be “cut off” from His people. Now let us stop and think for a moment. Have you ever willingly, and knowingly, committed such a sin? I know I have. I can also tell you that for many of us not committing a sin wilfully that we know is a sin is a battle for millions every day. In the Old Testament, God says that we would be cut off. Has that changed because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ, because of His paying the penalty for all our sins?
I think it has. But that does not mean that God is happy with our actions. And if you are in that group of millions, you know that you’re not happy with your actions either. You feel defeated and sense that you’re moving backwards rather than growing in the Lord. In short, you feel awful. And you know that God has given you the power to overcome that sin. All you have to do is face it in that power. You need the willpower and for some, the self-discipline to say “no”. In the end, however, I believe if you blatantly reject God – even the God you once adored, you will be rejected by God. He is not a fool to be played with. Needless to say, most commentators are silent on this issue.
In the days of the children of Israel in the wilderness, God stuck to his word, as we see in the stoning of the man who collected wood on the Sabbath. A commandment had been broken and the penalty had to be paid. David Guzik writes,
“This was so all would know that the social order and law of God are more important than any individual's "right" to attack or destroy that social order or law of God.”
And that, especially today, where the world screams for its rights and fairness and equity, etc., is so hard for even some Christians to accept. But accept it, we must.
But God did not leave His people without a means of remembering the commandments. In the last part of this passage, God tells them and their future generations to wear tassels on their garments. Looking at those tassels with the blue ribbon attached would help them follow God’s commandments and not follow after “they own heart” and their “own eyes”. And again, He tells them why – because He brought them out of Egypt and because He was and is their God, and ours. Today, in many of coats of Jews, especially the Orthodox Jews, we see coats with a blue ribbon at the bottom.
Guzik, however, warns us, as Jesus warned the Pharisees and Sadducees in the New Testament, that this “reminder” may be ill-meant. He writes:
We might imagine an Israelite being tempted into some kind of sin, and then catching sight of his own distinctive garments - reminding him of who he is, and reminding him that others can see who he is: A child of God, and not a child of the sin he is contemplating. In this sense, Christian theme clothing and jewelry and such can indeed serve a purpose. Such things can remind us of who we are and provide a kind of "walking accountability" for our conduct. However, man's instinctive pride always has a way of perverting such good and holy commands of God; in Jesus' day, He directly rebuked the abuse of this command among the religious elite, speaking of how they would enlarge the borders of their garments (Matthew 23:5), making the tasseled area as conspicuous as possible, as an ostentatious display of their "holiness." The same can also be said of today's Christian theme clothing and jewelry; it can also be abused in the same self-righteous, hypocritical manner.
As many passages in Scripture, especially in the Old Testament, we are often presented with challenges as to their correct application for us today. This is one such passage. Clearly, it is important to remind ourselves that these instructions were for the original Chosen People as they were being prepared to be a great nation. Not everything applies to us. We are to search for and reap the key principles and teachings only.
Bottom lines for this passage for me at least are as follows:
1. God will deliver on His word.
1. God will deliver on His word.
2. We are to be offering thanks to God for His delivered promises.
3. We are to seek forgiveness for sins we committed unwittingly.
4. We are to refrain from wilful sins.
5. We are to do all we can to help us remember God’s commandments.
Those are big lessons from such an otherwise unexciting passage.
It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.
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