Numbers 1:2 Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls.
My family and I were recently introduced to a word game. It is basically a game like Scrabble where you have different pieces, each of which has a letter on it and you use those to string together words going left to right and up to down. You win by having the most words that are worth the most points. Each piece not only has a letter, it has a number and those numbers are added to give you your total score at the end of each round. I really enjoyed the game because I happen to like words, but what I found a little difficult was adding up the score because you have to add up your words from top to bottom and left to right. It is a serpentine of letters. It doesn’t sound hard and probably is not, but the letters were a lot easier for me than the numbers. I joked later that it was not a word game but a numbers game. You make words, but then you have to add up the total score. That was work for me.
So, numbers may or may not be your thing, but numbers are important. They are important to life and to God. Think of the importance we place on statistics, polls, and so on. Now, polls can be used to show the truth or to distort the truth, but they are very important right now in American life. The truth is they have always been important. They have always been important to God and there is an entire book in the Bible named…wait for it…Numbers.
Numbers 1 is God commanding Moses in the wilderness of Sinai. Verses 2-3 say, “Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls; from twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel: thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies.” That indicates a little bit of why they were numbered in the first place.
Numbers are important to God. They were to number by family and you see the building blocks of this society in Israel. You have a man and his wife, his family, then the tribe, then twelve tribes in the nation. This was to be organized systematically. They were to take a sum, to add the numbers, of every male of a certain age and a certain ability, the ability to go forth to war.
The point is that without distinctions there are no numbers. We are living in a world where distinctions are being obliterated and there is nothing to count because nothing counts. If I preached a service and someone asks, “How many people were there last night?” I may say, “There were two hundred people” or “There were a hundred men.” Well, you can’t count the number of men unless there is such a thing as a man as opposed to a woman. I may say, “There were a hundred ladies.” There is no way to count ladies if there is no such thing as a lady or if that is something fluid and not determined by God and discernable by science. If I say, “There were fifty children,” that assumes someone is a child by virtue of the number of years they have lived on this planet. If I say, “There were three dogs and three cats,” I am assuming they are not people. They are a dog or a cat and you can number them.
So, without being silly, if there are no distinctions, there are no numbers. They were to number the males of a certain age and certain ability by their armies. Why? There are three things that follow from this. First, sums indicate purpose. Why were they counting? Well, one clue is they were counting those who were able to go forth to war with Israel. So, if I am counting something that indicates there is some purpose afoot. I am counting them for a purpose and for a reason. Some of us don’t even realize we are counting, but all of us are counting something. We are counting the number of days until an event. We count the number of calories we eat or the number of miles walked or driven. All of us are counting something and the sums of what we count indicate our purpose.
Second, purpose indicates direction. If I can determine what my purpose is, then I pretty much know what my direction is. If my purpose is to finish my geometry class, then my purpose and direction is shown to me. I am going somewhere. I want to finish my school year, get my diploma, and have that under my belt for whatever reason. Purpose indicates direction.
Then, direction plus time indicates destination. So, the sum indicates the purpose. The purpose indicates the direction. The direction plus time indicates my destination. That is why knowing what it is that I am counting is kind of important. For instance, at church I ask someone, “How many people are at church?” Some people would think, “It doesn’t matter how many people are at church. We aren’t about numbers. We don’t count numbers. We just care about souls.” We should care about souls, but those things are not mutually exclusive.
If I am concerned about souls, then that is why I am counting the number of people who have the souls. The two go together. One is more important than the other. That is, a person standing before God is much more important than a number I can impress people with, but the number has a place of importance because souls have a place of importance. If I ask you, “What was the offering gathered last week?” you wouldn’t say that dollars don’t matter. No, dollars do matter, so you count them. Do dollars count as much as a soul counts? No! But both are important. A soul is much more important, but my point is that if you are going to count an offering, then you ought to count people.
The bottom line is that what you count determines where you go. If you stop today and think about what it is you are counting, what you count determines where you go. If you are counting your money, friends, or miles, what you count determines where you go. The question for each of us today is, “What counts with me?” If you can determine what you are counting, then you have determined what counts with you. If you have determined what counts with you, then you have an indication of what is important in your life, and that is important to know because it is important to God.