Army

This week's Sabbath reading portion takes us to the beginning of the fourth Book of the Bible. We call this the Book of Numbers, but the Hebrew title of this Book is B'midbar, meaning "in the wilderness", which is taken from the first verse of Chapter 1. So the first four books of the Torah in Hebrew are: B'reshiet, meaning "In the beginning", or Genesis, Sh'mot, meaning "Names", or Exodus, Va'yikra, meaning "And He called", or Leviticus, and now B'midbar, "in the wilderness", or Numbers. From the beginning of Numbers, the LORD ordered Moses, while the Israelites were in the Sinai wilderness, to take a census of every male twenty years old and over: "...all who are able to go to war in Israel. You and Aaron shall number them by their armies (saba - host, war, army, battle, appointed time, soldiers, go out to war, organized for war)." (Num. 1:3). The Israelites, who had been slaves in Egypt for over four hundred years, and certainly without having been trained to be warriors during their slavery, had faced enemy kings, and the trained armies of those kings, both before, and after they would enter the Promised Land of Canaan. The name and character of the LORD is as the Leader of warfare, Jehovah Sabaoth, the LORD of hosts, the LORD who commands armies as Scripture says: "The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is His name...Your right hand, O LORD, has dashed the enemy in pieces. And in the greatness of Your excellence You have overthrown those who rose against You." (Ex. 15:3, 6-7). The LORD revealed Himself to Joshua, who would lead the Israelites after the death of Moses, as "a Man...with His sword drawn in His hand", saying, "...as Commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.'...Then the Commander of the LORD's army said to Joshua, 'Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy." (Josh. 5:13-15). When Jesus returns, He doesn't come alone: "...His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean (see Rev. 19:7-8), followed Him on white horses...He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS." (Rev. 19:11-16). Did you think that we, as believers in Christ, are not called to war? Paul wrote: "...Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us..." (Rom. 8:36-39). However, our warfare, as well as our armor and weapons, are not physical, but spiritual, and not against flesh, but against spiritual powers (2 Cor. 10:3-6). However, the LORD's armies in the Book of Numbers have much to teach us, even as the LORD taught them. Each tribe, or division (Num. 1:16), had its own leader specifically appointed by the LORD, and each tribe was to camp under its own identifying standard and emblems (Num. 2:1-2), yet it was to be a unified army under the LORD as its Commander. As the divisions of the armies encamped, they were assigned placement to the north, south, east, and west, with the tabernacle of meeting at the center. The Levites were to encamp nearest to and surrounding the tabernacle (Num. 2:17). From above, the configuration of the camp would be in the shape of a cross, and they would move out from camp in this same configuration. Even the furnishings within the tabernacle were placed in a cross formation, so it became a cross within a cross. The LORD positioned Himself right in the middle of His armies. The greatest challenge to these armies, was not any physical enemy, but the knowledge of, and obedience to, the LORD as their Commander and their only source of victory. The same is true for us today, I think. In another reading from this Sabbath, David, who was a great warrior himself, prayed to the LORD to be saved from the wicked and the workers of iniquity (Ps. 28:3). David declared in his spiritual warfare: "Blessed be the LORD because He has heard the voice of my supplications! The LORD is my strength and my shield; My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped...and with my song I will praise Him. The LORD is the strength of His people, and He is the saving refuge of His anointed. Save Your people...shepherd them also, and bear them up forever." (v. 6-9). David was a soldier/king who understood that it is the LORD who delivers the offense and defense in warfare. In another portion from this week's sabbath reading, the LORD prophetically calls upon a new kind of army. Can you guess who they are? The reading is found in the prophet Hosea, whose name means "salvation". Hosea ministered prophetically in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, also called Ephraim, when the nation was divided into two kingdoms. At the beginning of his prophetic ministry, the LORD told Hosea to take a harlot for a wife, which would prophetically reflect Israel's harlotry in her marriage relationship with God. Hosea took (aleph-tav) Gomer for his wife. Her name means "complete, finish, to end either in completion or failure". Her father was named Diblaim, which means "two cakes, press together a cake of figs, conjoined with, dwell with, dwell together". We can see that the prophet is marrying a harlot, but from her name, and the name of her father, we can also see that something is being established here. Two things are being joined or pressed together to make something complete. Ezekiel prophesied of two sticks being joined together into one also (Ezek. 37:15-20). Then Hosea, "salvation", had three children with his harlot wife, Gomer, meaning "completion" as mentioned above. The "completion" meant here may, on one hand, signify the fullness of the judgment that God was ready to bring to the northern kingdom of Israel because of its faithlessness to Him. In another way, the meaning of the "completeness" of Gomer's name may point to the special work that God was planning to bring a restoration and completeness to Israel, as the LORD prophesied later in Hosea, as we will see. One child was to be named (aleph-tav) Jezreel, which means "God will sow/scatter". Jezreel refers to the place where Jehu had King Ahab's seventy sons killed in Samaria (2 Kings 10:11). When Jehu became king in Ahab's stead, he was as wicked as Ahab had been, and here in Hosea, God promises to end his family's reign in Israel, which was fulfilled when the northern kingdom of Israel went into captive exile to the Assyrian conquerors. Their sins, violence and idolatry caused them to lose the battle with the enemy. They forgot that the LORD is the center of their victory. As the meaning of Jezreel is "God will scatter", the LORD would scatter the inhabitants of northern Israel from off of their land. The LORD said of Jezreel: "I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, and bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel....I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel." (Hos. 1:4-5). As the LORD promised to break their bow, He was removing their own military power from them, and leaving them defenseless before their enemy. Jezreel and the valley it occupies played a role in many battles throughout Israel's history, and is believed to be the valley in which Armageddon, the prophesied end-time war, will occur. Both battle, bloodshed and judgment are associated with this place. Next, an (aleph-tav) daughter was born to Hosea and Gomer. The LORD told the prophet to name her Lo-Ruhamah, meaning "not having obtained mercy". The aleph-tavs connected to some of the words in these verses are, as the first and last Hebrew letters, a form of The Alpha and Omega in Greek, by which Jesus identified Himself in the Book of Revelation. Whenever we see the aleph-tav combination of Hebrew letters associated with a written word, it brings a special significance. Finally, a third child, a son, is born who was to be named Lo-Ammi, meaning "not a people". As the LORD judged northern Israel to Hosea, He then prophesied its great restoration. Instead of "Not a people", and "not having obtained mercy", the LORD said: "Say to your brethren, 'My people', and to your sisters, 'Mercy is shown'. Plead (rib - plead a cause, strive, contend, grapple, to pull) with your mother, plead;...Let her put away her harlotries from her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts." (Hos. 2:1-2). The meanings of the children's names are changed, and they are to plead and contend with their mother, Israel, represented by Hosea's wife, Gomer, pulling on her to turn from her harlot ways, and go back to her first husband, the LORD her Salvation. (Hosea 2:7). Because of this, the LORD will "allure" His harlot wife into the wilderness (midbar: see above) to remove her from those things that draw her away from Him. The LORD planned to get His wife, Israel, alone. The LORD prophesied to Hosea that He would restore Israel to one who is His faithful betrothed (Hos. 2:14, 20). The LORD will answer the heavens, and cause the heavens to answer the earth. "The earth will answer with aleph-tav grain, with aleph-tav new wine, and with aleph-tav oil (yishar/sahar - oil, anointed, fresh new oil, to shine/press oil, glisten). They shall answer Jezreel ("God will sow/scatter"). Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth, and I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; Then I will say to those who were not My people, 'You are My people!' And they shall say, 'You are my God!" (Hos. 2:21-23). The three things mentioned in the verses above: the grain, the new wine, and the oil, not only represent the LORD's renewed blessing and favor upon the land, but the spiritual blessing of restoration and communion, salvation and the glory of the anointing, and the Anointed One of God, the Messiah, or Christ in Greek. There was a prophetic warfare (pleading, contending, pulling) entered into through the naming of the three children of Hosea, but their names also represented another hidden participant in this spiritual warfare for the restoration of Israel. As we look at the names of these children, we are reminded of a scripture from Peter regarding those who have received salvation in Christ: "But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who one were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy." (1 Peter 2:9-10). Paul referred directly to the verse above from Hos. 2:23 when he wrote: "...that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy...even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles? As He says also in Hosea: 'I will call them My people, who were not My people, and her beloved, who was not beloved. And it shall come to pass where it was said to them, 'You are not My people,' there they shall be called sons of the living God." (Rom. 9:23-26, Hos. 2:23, Hos. 1:10). We have a warfare role to play, as Hosea's children did, in the restoration of their mother, Gomer, who represented the wife of God gone astray, Israel. As believers in Christ, we do not replace Israel or the Jewish people, but we are spiritually joined with them as brethren, which completes both of us. One is incomplete without the other. As God promised, "All Israel shall be saved...that through the mercy shown you (meaning the Gentiles) they also may obtain mercy." (Rom. 11:26-31, Isa. 59:20-21). Paul makes a direct connection here between our salvation through Christ, and Israel's. This also is the spiritual warfare to which we have been called. The joining of Jews and Gentiles together in salvation will be nothing short of "...life from the dead...remember that you do not support the root (the Jews), but the root supports you." (Rom. 11:15,18). Although Jesus stated clearly: "I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," He then also ministered to a Gentile woman who cried out to Him in desperate need of a healing miracle for her daughter (see Mt. 15:21-28). From the double presence of the Cross within, and encamped around, the tabernacle "in the wilderness" that was set in the middle of the "armies" of Israel, to the prophetic warfare children of Hosea, to the spiritual warfare written of by the apostles, to the armies that accompany the return of Christ, the scarlet thread of salvation joins Jews and Gentiles together, as is the will of God through Christ. If you would like to learn more about this very special purpose in the "army" of God, you can pray with me: "Father, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God of Israel, lead us in the restoration and salvation work that You have established through Your Son, Jesus, for Jews and Gentiles alike to be joined together into one new man (Eph. 2:12-18). Bring this completeness to Your Body, Your army in the earth, as it is written in Your Word. Fill us with Your Holy Spirit, because as always, You are our victory, You are our strength, and we praise You. We ask these things in Jesus' name. AMEN."