Holy and merciful God! What are all our words, and what would our most fervent thanksgivings and praises mean compared with what you have done, are doing and will still do for us and with us?—compared with the new covenant, in which we all may already take our place?—compared with the grace by which you will put your law within us and write it upon our hearts? Enter our hearts! Clear away whatever might prevent you! And then speak further with us—lead us further along your path, the only good path: even when after this we once more separate, to return each to his own solitariness and tomorrow to his work!

So further your work outside this building also, and in the whole world as well! Have mercy on all who are sick, hungry, exiled or oppressed! Have mercy on the powerlessness with which nations, governments, newspapers and alas! Even the Christian churches, with which all of us face the sea of guilt and trouble in the lives of present-day humanity! Have mercy on the lack of understanding because of which any of the most responsible and powerful of men see themselves driven to play with fire and to conjure up new and greater dangers!

If your word were not at hand, what would be left for us to do but despair? But your word in all its truth is at hand and so we cannot despair, and we may and indeed we want to feel assured, so that even if the earth is moved under our feet, all things in their entire course are in your strong and loving hand and at the very last we shall be allowed to see that you have reconciled us and our dark world to you, that you have already brought its salvation and its peace despite all men’s arrogance and despair: in Jesus Christ your son, our Lord and Savior, who died and rose again for us and all men. Amen.

So let’s put Paul to the test and examine Numbers 1 – 2; a chapter fraught with boring information, organized in an equally boring fashion, recorded in painstaking detail, revealing astoundingly repetitive language in a book that does a job of often doing the same thing merely to get people ready for a big walk in the wilderness toward the Promised Land. What can we possibly see there that is important for our experience?

Then the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying…

Thus the sons of Israel did; according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so they camped by their standards, and so they set out, everyone by his family according to his father’s household. —Numbers 1:1, 2:34

The first thing we see, spread across these chapters (and functioning as a backdrop throughout the entire book of Numbers) is that the movements and activity of the Lord’s people is predicated and dependent on the Lord’s calling, mandates and instruction (Numbers 3:1, 4:1, 5:1, 6:1, 7:4, 8:1, 9:1, 10:1, 13:1, 14:26, 15:1, 16:20, etc). It is the Lord who calls them, it is God who gathers them, it is God who commands them, it is God who instructs them, and it is God who they are to obey—even when the command is something as innocuous as a census (Num 1:2, 4:2, 26:2-4). The Lord calls, they act. The Lord speaks, they are to listen. The Lord commands, they are to obey. The Lord moves, they are to realize it and follow (Num 2:17).

“Take a census of all the congregation of the sons of Israel, by their families, by their fathers’ households, according to the number of names, every male, head by head from twenty years old and upward, whoever is able to go out to war in Israel, you and Aaron shall number them by their armies. “With you, moreover, there shall be a man of each tribe, each one head of his father’s household….So Moses and Aaron took these men who had been designated by name, —Numbers 1:2-4, 17

Second, we see that the children of Israel were organized by name of their familial leaders and those households. This tells us that the people knew their heritage and pedigree—they knew their family name. It was the thing that defined them and it was the thing that uniquely defined them as part of something greater than themselves This didn’t only apply to the regular tribesman, it applied to their leaders (they knew they were head of house—Num 7:2),  it was also something that concerned the Levites (Num 3:15, 20, 30, 4:2). They all knew who was the name of that defined them and their family.

from twenty years old and upward, whoever is able to go out to war in Israel, you and Aaron shall number them by their armies. —Numbers 1:3

And

These are the ones who were numbered, whom Moses and Aaron numbered, with the leaders of Israel, twelve men, each of whom was of his father’s household. So all the numbered men of the sons of Israel by their fathers’ households, from twenty years old and upward, whoever was able to go out to war in Israel, even all the numbered men were 603,550. —Numbers 1:44-46

Third we should notice that these people weren’t merely organized by family for the sake of knowing their general household—these people were organized for a purpose. They were to be ready to fight, gathered as a fighting force. The numbering was of those who were actively able to go out to war.

Now the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “The sons of Israel shall camp, each by his own standard, with the banners of their fathers’ households; they shall camp around the tent of meeting at a distance. “Now those who camp on the east side toward the sunrise shall be of the standard of the camp of Judah, by their armies, and the leader of the sons of Judah: Nahshon the son of Amminadab, and his army, even their numbered men, 74,600. “Those who camp next to him shall be the tribe of Issachar, and the leader of the sons of Issachar: Nethanel the son of Zuar, and his army, even their numbered men, 54,400. “Then comes the tribe of Zebulun, and the leader of the sons of Zebulun: Eliab the son of Helon, and his army, even his numbered men, 57,400. “The total of the numbered men of the camp of Judah: 186,400, by their armies. They shall set out first. —Numbers 2:1-9

Forth, the people are organized in such a way that they not only know who they stand with (their familial name by pedigree), not only did they understand the purpose of their stand (by army, ready to battle), but they also knew that where they stood. One group, the foremost group consisting of the tribes of Judah (as a first) followed by Isaachar and Zebulon: they stood right in front of the opening to the tent of meeting, at the East. Going clockwise around the tabernacle, each of the remaining tribes camped by three around the tabernacle knowing where they stood and knowing the importance of that position.

“The sons of Israel shall camp, each by his own standard, with the banners of their fathers’ households; they shall camp around the tent of meeting at a distance. —Numbers 2:2

Fifth, the children of Israel weren’t camped in an arbitrary fashion: they were camped around what was central to their experience. For, it was in the center, in the tabernacle, that the children of Israel offered their worship (Num 7), gathered in the congregation (Num 10), worked with God (Num 8), dealt with the matters of life and practice (Num 5), dedicated to the Lord (Num 6) and received instruction as to where to camp, where to move, and what to do during their festivals (Num 9). They walked surrounding the center (although Numbers 10 seems to hint that the tent of meeting was alone on the vanguard—I don’t think that’s necessarily the case but it may have happened on one occasion) with the intention of protecting it if anything came too close. They would fight and die defending the presence of God in their midst.

Five points (1: dependant on the calling and speaking of the Lord; 2: organized by their pedigree; 3: for the purpose of doing battle; 4: knowing where they were to stand and 5: around what was central to them—the presence of God in their midst) that have direct correlation with our own Christian experience.

For we discover in the New Testament that although the Israelites were walking toward an inheritance, we as Christians are also walking toward an inheritance which is incorruptible, undefiled and doesn’t fade away. Indeed, the book of Ephesians might even echo some of these themes—itself being a book concerned for the walk of Christians (Eph 4:1).

We notice that believers also find their calling and gathering and purpose and instruction by the Lord. For it is according to his purposes that we have been chosen to be holy and blameless before him (Eph 1:3-4) and to walk in the good works which he has set up before us (Eph 2:9-10). He knows the path, he knows the difficulties and he calls with the end goal of having us walk rightly.

We see that believers are organized by pedigree. I don’t mean by my last name or by your last name, but rather by the name and pedigree into which we have been adopted as sons (Eph 1:5) through Jesus Christ. Other portions of Scripture would call us sons according to Promise (Gal 3), heirs with Israel (Eph 3:6), even Sons of Abraham in some sense—but we are ultimately the Sons of God (Rom 8:14), coheirs of Christ (Rom 8:17). Indeed, it is Christ Himself, speaking to Mary and sending back a message who makes the connection of our new pedigree and heritage clear when he says:

…but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.’ ” —John 20:17

We realize that believers are organized ready to fight. Paul would tell believers that they’re not merely fighting a battle against flesh or blood, but against principalities and powers. It’s a spiritual war which results in believers needing to be spiritually armed for battle. Sword in hand, shield on arm, breastplate worn, helm at the ready, waist girded and feet covered—all ready for a battle. The attacks might be a personal attack via the wiles of the devil, but with prayer and supplication making our prayers known for the protection and benefit of the saints (Eph 6:10-18) and the expansion of the Gospel via the Church’s workers (Eph 6:19-21)

If we look about us, we are confident on what we stand. That same chapter where Paul speaks about being ready to fight, he talks about standing firm against the devils scheme, against him and at the ready (Eph 6:11-14). And yet, we can only stand like that because we have both been called in Christ, built up in Christ and given a future in Christ as an administrator (Eph 1:9-10) to the full stature of Christ (Eph 4:13) as adults (Eph 4:14).

Why? Because we are standing on and around what is to be central in our own experience—the presence of God in our midst. We’ve been gifted by Christ, empowered by God, baptized in the Spirit, and fit together with Christ as our source of direction and power. We are the ones that Christ, who is the light of the world, can say “You are the light of the world.”(Matt 5:14) So we must prove our calling in our walk, being blames and without reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation (Phil 2:15).

Thank God for recording this example in Scripture, yes, this organization of the tribes (Numbers 1 and 2)—as such we see the importance and lessons for our own situation: we know our calling, we know our family name, we know what we’re ready for, we know where we’re to stand and we know what is central to our situation: the Lord in our midst.

Progressive Dispensationalism
If there is a category 1 offender, it is this one. When people hear the term, in-and-outside Dispensational circles, they hear “This is a New Form of Dispensationalism that has progressed in a lot of its understanding”. In fact, some Covenantal Theologians on the popular level have made a point of hanging on to the terminology in their effort to prove Traditional Dispensationalism wrong.

But Progressive Dispensationalism is still very much Dispensationalist—the reason they use the term “Progressive” is to speak about how their view of the dispensations (most count four) progress instead of having the crisp ending that some dispensationalists would underscore on their charts. The reason? The Covenants have some underlying connection that find their root in the promises to Abraham.

What’s funny about this is that most Dispensationalists say the same thing but have balked at some of the conclusions the PD’s have been making.

Indeed, academia was so upset with the terminology from Blaising and Bock that they started using Normative Dispensationalism and Traditional Dispensationalsm while fudging the detail that they were already a revised version of Scoffieldien Dispensationalism and that Darby Dispensationalism.

New Covenant Theology
Folk hear this and they tend to assume that this is a new version of Covenant Theology. Quickly, when Cocceius drew his conclusions defining Covenant Theology, he did not say that the Covenants in Scripture are the way history is divided (I say this because some have mistakningly thought that because Covenant Theology uses the word “covenant” that therefore Dispensationalists don’t use that term.): instead he saw a Covenant of Works (in the Garden) which resulted in the fall and a Covenant of Grace exemplified in each Covenant—including the Mosaic Covenant—for redemptive.

New  Covenant Theology, noting the redemptive language of the New Covenant (Jeremiah 33) draws a distinction in regards to the Mosaic Law. That, they might say, is part of the Covenant of Works—it is not redemptive; the New Covenant is. Sure, their underlying structure looks more like Covenant Theology but it’s not a new version of CT.

New Calvinism
This is used mostly on the popular level and honestly, I don’t know why. They’re just as Calvinistic as any Puritan, they emphasize the sovereignty of God just like any of them, they’re strict five-to-seven pointers with the best of them and yet, they try to differentiate themselves by wearing jeans, talking about how they interact with society and some of them using foul language. I guess Marc Driscoll tried to make some big difference but the stuff he’s talking about doesn’t affect the central tenants of Calvinism…so why use the label “New” at all? At least the labels up top made sense in their usage and wound up not being about advancing the system—but this one just ignores the system altogether and says something about the adherents.

Keep this piety of my faith undefiled, I beseech you, and let this be the utterance of my convictions even to the last breath of my spirit: that I may always hold fast to that which I profess in the creed of my regeneration when I was baptized in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, namely, that I may adore you, our Father, and your Son together with you, and that I may gain the favor of your Holy Spirit who is from you through the only-begotten. He is a suitable witness for my faith who says: ‘Father, all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine,’ my Lord Jesus Christ, who always abides as God in you, from you and with you who is blessed forever and ever. Amen