For All The Bean Counters and Mathematicians

Leviticus 4:46-49 says, “So Moses, Aaron and the leaders of Israel counted all the Levites by their clans and families. All the men from thirty to fifty years of age who came to do the work of serving and carrying the Tent of Meeting numbered 8,580. At the LORD’s command through Moses, each was assigned his work and told what to carry.
Thus they were counted, as the LORD commanded Moses.”

Observation: The book of Numbers deals with…numbers. There was a lot of counting going on. Here we see that those men from the tribe of Levi (the Levites) were set apart for a special duty. They were essentially responsible for the tabernacle and worship duties towards God. Moses’ responsibility was to do a head count and hand out jobs to each group. Once Moses knew how many men he was dealing with he would have a better job managing the roles and responsibilities.

Application: I’ve got to be honest here, at first reading it’s difficult to figure out how I can apply Numbers 3-4 to my daily life. But you have to remember that something as simple as knowing what and who you got so you can accomplish something was sort of invented by God through Moses for the benefit of the Israelites. So there is a certain beauty here. Some people get numbers, their life is numbers, they love numbers. Other people could care less about numbers, they don’t understand numbers, and it shows in their finances. It doesn’t really matter if you are a mathematician or not, you need to know a little about numbers so you can better manage your life. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. And if you can’t measure what you have, you can properly manage it. So I guess my application for this passage is that there is something beautiful about counting and knowing what you are dealing with. Weather it is your personal budget, or you are a manager of people, or whatever, you need to know what you are dealing with to be a good steward of what you have been given. Moses was being a good and obedient steward with the people he had. He measured the numbers, assigned the jobs, manged the people, and was found obedient in the process. Cool.

Prayer: God, teach me the importance of knowing what you have entrusted me with so I can be found obedient and responsible. Make that true in my personal life and my professional life.