WILDERNESS WARFARE
[p. 159] WILDERNESS WARFARE
Numbers 31: 1 - 7; Numbers 31:48 - 54
It is well known to us that the book of Numbers is distinctively a wilderness book. Being written like the other scriptures for our admonition, it particularly affords instruction as to exercise and conflict. The fact that the tabernacle was set up and the mind and heart of God disclosed, and that the people had moved on in the light of what the mountain of Jehovah represented, necessarily brought out the opposition of the enemy. You will recall how that, having remained in camp before the mountain of Jehovah for a long period, they set forward from that mount and the ark went before them to search out a resting place; and as the ark moved, Moses said, “Rise up, Jehovah, and let thine enemies be scattered”. Thus the ark went before to scatter the enemies; the enemies being known to be there, they had to be scattered, in order that the people should pass on. We may reckon on this scattering of enemies, beloved brethren; indeed we could not be in the wilderness for God apart from it. It is the knowledge that the Lord goes before — indeed, has gone before — and that no enemy can stand before Him, which gives us resource.
But whilst this is so, we have to learn to heed the enemy; we have to learn war. You may remember that, at the outset, the Lord would not lead them by the way of enemies that they should not see war; He did not lead them the way of the land of the Philistines lest they should be discouraged. God graciously takes account of our capabilities, and He does not allow us to be tempted above that we are able. Nevertheless we have to learn war, otherwise our names will not appear in the book of the wars of [p. 160] the Lord. The book of Numbers speaks of this book. We have all to face the solemn fact that identification with the testimony in this world involves warfare.
In the first great conflict, after the children of Israel came out of Egypt — the conflict with Amalek — God said that He would make war with Amalek from generation to generation. The believer has to learn what that means, that there is to be continual warfare with Amalek. Now this conflict with the Midianites affords perhaps the best illustration we could get of the nature of wilderness conflict. The conflict has its individual form and its collective form. The war with Amalek was an individual matter; it was a hidden thing. Some of us young people are engaged in it, and at the same time may maintain an outwardly placid exterior. We are engaged in continuous conflict within, with the flesh. It began, you will remember, after they had drunk of the water from the smitten rock. They drink of the rock, and immediately Amalek attacks, that is to say, as the young believer understands that he has the Spirit, and drinks of the Spirit, the enemy would attack him through the flesh. The conflict goes on, and there are certain features indicated in the chapter in which it is recounted which are most important to understand; I name two — intercession and purity. Moses hands are uplifted, supported by Aaron and Hur; that is to say, you have the element of purity introduced, as well as that of priesthood and intercession. Hur means purity. It is therefore a question of your motives. You may not be intelligent as to the flesh that is working in you; you are painfully aware of it, but you do not understand its character and working. The apostle says, “I myself with the mind serve God’s law; but with the flesh sin’s law”. He carefully distinguishes his mind from the flesh in him, for he says, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man”.
[p. 161] Now the battle with Amalek is a continuous one, for the Lord announced that He will carry on that conflict from generation to generation. I say particularly to young people — see to it that in your minds you are pure, and be the conflict what it may, that your conscience is good. There is a beautiful word in John’s epistle: “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin”; it does not say sins there; it refers to the evil present in us, of sin in us, and yet the conscience can be perfectly at rest through the precious blood of Christ. It cleanses from all sin, so that the enemy is defeated. If he can succeed in creating in you a bad conscience because of the existence of sin in you, he deceives you, but the answer to all his promptings is that wonderful statement, “The blood ... cleanseth us from all sin”, and thus we are preserved in fellowship; “we have fellowship one with another”.
Now this conflict with Midian may be taken, as I have said, to fully represent wilderness warfare — warfare which comes in not only after the drinking of the smitten rock (Exodus 17), but after the drinking of the well at Beer (Numbers 21); that is to say, it comes in after the believer has formally recognised the Holy Spirit here. “Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it”. It contemplates the saints as collectively possessing the Holy Spirit, and accordingly the enemy attacks first in a spiritual way, and then through the flesh. Now Balaam represents the enemy’s strategy from the spiritual side. You will all remember how Balak employed this man of religious reputation to curse the people, that is to say, to move God against them. Now think of the boldness of our adversary; we must not under-estimate satanic power and boldness; we may be assured of it that he stops at nothing. Contemplate the boldness of the enemy in attempting to turn the mind of God against His people; it is a blind, futile effort, nevertheless it is a [p. 162] bold effort, an effort that reminds us of the nature of the adversary that we have to deal with. Israel had had opportunity to know God for forty years. And what a God! He said, “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself”; and at the close it could be said that their raiment waxed not old upon them, neither did their foot swell these forty years; that was the God whom the enemy now endeavoured to turn against His people.
Let us be assured that that can never succeed. I know of nothing, in a way, that gives such stability to our souls as the knowledge of the unchangeableness of God. What He was for me in the cross He is today, beloved. It is the God whom we know in Jesus that Satan endeavours to turn against us, but it is impossible, and so in Romans 8 we read, Nothing shall separate us from the love of God. “I am persuaded”, says the apostle (mentioning all the things that might be employed to turn God against us or separate us from Him), that nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”.
Now are we all assured of this? I know of nothing that gives such stability to one’s soul as the knowledge of God; and the knowledge of God means that you know Him, not only in His righteousness and in His power, but in His love; “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us”.
When the truth of the elect of God enters my soul, it makes a mark that never can be erased. Think of belonging to the elect! “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” God’s elect! It is a challenge; it refers to Balaam’s effort. Whilst the challenge is unanswered and unanswerable, at the same time we have to face the conflict and the boldness of the enemy. Hence in Numbers 25, after Balaam’s prophecies are recorded, in which God’s mind in regard of the people is set forth, you have the renewed effort of the wicked one. He says, If I cannot do anything against them before God, I can work through their flesh, so he taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols and to commit fornication. That, beloved friends, is where we are exposed. That is where, alas! we are vulnerable, and so there is the warfare of which I have read.
Some of us here have been recently occupied with the thought of the family. We have noted how the believer’s household could contribute to the house of God — a most interesting consideration. You recall how the principle of the household runs through the book of Genesis; how, when Methuselah was born to Enoch, Enoch began to walk with God, “And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years”, we read; that is, if a child is given, the thought comes into the soul of the man of faith — I must walk with God now if that child is to be for God; and if he is not to be for God, it were better that I never had him at all. But the possibility is that the child is to be for God, and if so, I must walk with God. So Enoch walked with God for three hundred years. What a long walk it was! But what an opportunity for Methuselah to see his father walk with God all these years. He lived six hundred and odd years after that, but in those three hundred years when he saw his father walk with God, what an opportunity he had to be a man of God! He did not see his father die; Enoch was not, for God took him. What light for Methuselah, and what light for all the children of believers if their parents walk with God.
Now the principle of the household is carried through to Noah. He found favour with God, and God told him to prepare an ark for the saving of his [p. 164] house, and on the principle of faith he did so, being moved with fear. But Noah in the end did not control himself, and we cannot hope that our households will contribute to the house of God unless we know how to rule ourselves. Noah failed; he could not govern himself, but God had the thought before Him, and He never gives up a thought of His, hence He appears to Abraham. The first divine appearance that we get recorded in Scripture is the appearance of God to Abraham. He appeared to him, and the appearance implies that an impression was conveyed. So we find that Abraham commanded his household and his children after him to keep the way of Jehovah; that in which Noah failed found its answer in Abraham, so he became the friend of God. Then it says he dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob. Now what we find in regard to the Midianites is that they had goodly houses, dwelling places which were ornamented. Abraham dwelt in tents; that is to say, he maintained the pilgrim attitude and life — he dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob. Thus what we find with Jacob is that he learned from Abraham, and that he dwelt in tents; he was “a plain man”. The man who is a plain man, dwelling in tents, is the man to whom the house of God is disclosed. Jacob lighted upon a certain place, and lay down in the place to sleep; he dreamed, as he lay on the earth, with a stone for his pillow — suited attitude to the circumstances — that a ladder was set up, and the angels of God ascended and descended on it. He awaked, and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place ... How dreadful is this place!” But it was the house of God.
Now he is the progenitor of the twelve tribes, of the family in connection with which the house of God should be found, and so, as he dies, he crossed his hands wittingly in relation to his children. He has the house of God before him, he has light in his soul;
[p. 165] he knows what God has in His mind. God has a house before Him, and Jacob says virtually, If they are to be in the house of God, they must be there on the principle of divine sovereignty, and not on the principle of nature. One of the things that has wrought more havoc in the house of God than anything else is the entrance of the influence of natural family relationships. We have to learn to cross our hands if our children are to be in the house of God; they must be there according to God, and not according to nature. I cannot bring them there. I may place them in the presence of the house, but I cannot bring them in; the assembly is God’s sphere, and the Lord Jesus is Son over it. If my children are to be in it, they must be in it according to His appointment, and not according to mine. I remember a brother saying that as a father he would like his children to be in fellowship, but as a brother in the Lord he could not recommend it. He “crossed his hands”. In Jacob we have the principle passed on to us as to how we may contribute, through our households, to the house of God.
Then we find that same spirit in Joseph. He brought up children, his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh; he “saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation: the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were brought up upon Joseph’s knees”, Genesis 50: 23. Then the next great principle that is brought out comes in in connection with the midwives; Exodus 1. They were faithful; they feared God and God took account of it, and dealt well with them and made them houses; not that they were intelligent as to God’s thoughts, but at that time Moses was born. It was what God had before Him. His parents saw that he was exceedingly fair, so by faith they hid him three months. In chapter 6 the Spirit of God gives us the genealogy of Jacob’s sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi — and then we get no more; we arrive [p. 166] at Moses and Aaron, the sons of Levi, that is to say, we now arrive at the great product of family exercises in the two men that were to be employed of God for the deliverance of His people. Further, we get in the same chapter, in addition to these two men, that Eleazar took a wife, and Phinehas was born — the javelin man, the spiritual leader in this conflict of which I have read; so that Phinehas also is in that way a family product, a product of unspeakable value in the house of God.
He appears in connection with this war of which I have spoken. It was he who took a javelin in his hand, when a sin was perpetrated before Moses and in the sight of all the congregation (Numbers 25); the very presence of God was flouted by the open character of the evil, and Phinehas takes a javelin in his hand, and by his zeal for God the plague was stayed.
I speak of all this so that we might see the possibilities of the family line. But the solemn thing is that whilst there are all these possibilities, yet where sin is sanctioned and where the principles that govern the house of God are not maintained, the guilt of Balaam finds a ready response in the recognition of family status and social intercourse. I speak in a simple and practical way, but unless we learn that our households are to be on the principle of death and resurrection, we shall allow in them what the teaching of Balaam can effect, namely, intercourse on social ground and not on spiritual ground.
I want to show you now in a brief way how the war was carried on. Notice the recurrence of the word ‘war’ in the passage I have read (chapter 31). I want to point out first of all that the officers — captains of thousands — who had led in the war come to Moses and say, “Thy servants have taken the sum of the men of war which are under our charge, and there lacketh not one man of us”. It is a very great result if a man is not lost — wounded he may be,
[p. 167] perhaps, but yet preserved. I desire specially to call attention to that, because in conflict the desire to get rid of certain ones is sometimes present. But the leaders say, We have not lost a man. I would like to have that before me; there must not be a man lost. We get a perfect answer to this in 1 Corinthians; the greatest offender is preserved; indeed, the apostle had to urge them in the second letter to restore him. He is not lost. The thought that Paul had at the outset was that the flesh might be destroyed but that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. We do not want to lose anyone, but if we are to have them, we must have them in self-judgment, in unsparing self-judgment, for that is how we are to be together. So the officers say, We have made a count, and we have not lost a man. To my mind that is a very great point. It should be before us, dear brethren. The exercises will go on while we are down here — exercise and conflict, but we should have this great principle before us, that in the war no one must be lost. As it was said to Paul, “And lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee”, Acts 27: 24.
One other thought: the conflict results in contribution to the house of God. Read verses 50 - 53. We see there the aggregate of the spoil, but the aggregate is made up by each one taking spoil for himself. What have you got for yourself? What have you got out of it? Every exercise that comes up is intended to issue in spoil, and it is for each one to get something for himself; then we can count and see what the aggregate is. So we read that Moses and Eleazar the priest took the gold of the captains of thousands and of hundreds, and brought it into the tabernacle of the congregation. The company is all the richer for it; the exercises result in the enrichment of the company. If not, the conflict, so far as you are concerned, is in vain; but if I have [p. 168] gained, and each one in the company has gained, there will be an aggregate which will be an enrichment, and a memorial for the children of Israel before the Lord. This applies to the present time; there is a memorial for us before the Lord. It humbles us to think of the conflict, but we may rejoice in the grace that has enabled us to gather spoil, so that the company is enriched.
Through the war we gain spiritually, but this is as we recognise that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal; we must learn to disregard all carnal weapons. As I learn war, I become one of the warriors of the Lord in the wilderness conflict; at the same time I gather spoil, I become spiritually enriched, and as each of us is spiritually enriched, the company is enriched, and there is a memorial in the company before the Lord.