Do We See Any Gospel Connections in the Book of Numbers?

Okay, let’s be honest. The Book of Numbers could use a new marketing campaign. Does anything sound more boring than a book of numbers? Yet, the book of numbers is one of the most theologically rich books in the Bible. It is here that we find so many connections to the gospel of Christ. 

Yes, there are some rather laborious sections where we read about two God-ordered censuses throughout the land. It’s a bit like reading a phone book in those chapters. And I suppose when they were creating titles for this in English, they were so impacted by having to read through these that they decided to call this the Book of Numbers. But in the Hebrew, it’s called “In the Wilderness.” And these sections are some of the most exciting in all of the Bible

It is here in the wilderness, as is so often the case, that the beautiful story of the gospel of Jesus Christ will emerge. 

How Do You Find the Gospel in the Old Testament? 

I suppose before understanding how to find the gospel in the OT, it’d be helpful for us to define the gospel. The simplest definition is one given by JI Packer: God saves sinners. If you’d like to put a bit more meat on your gospel presentation, I use two different frameworks with four points each. The first is God—Man—Christ—Response. The second is more of a story: Creation—Fall—Redemption—Glory. 

The first presentation centers upon God’s character and how humanity fails to meet God’s holy standard, as such the judgment of God is upon us. But the good news is that Jesus Christ fixes this by fulfilling what is required through his life, death and resurrection. Our only fitting response, then, is to respond to Him in repentance and faith. When this happens, we are united to Christ and his record becomes our record. 

The second presentation centers upon the overarching story of the Bible. God lovingly created us to love Him and enjoy Him forever. We were made for rest, rule, and relationship. But we made shipwreck of this, and so rather than having the blessings of obedience we are under the curse of disobedience. Rather than having peace (rest), purpose (ruling), and healthy relationship we often experience the opposite. Ultimately, we are alienated from God. But thankfully God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to bear our curse and to fulfill what God intended for humanity. As such we now experience the blessings of Jesus’ obedience in our place. He restores the rest, rule, and relationship we were created to enjoy. Someday everything will be ultimately restored and we will live in a new heaven and a new earth. 

We could write entire books focusing on these various themes of the gospel. But every gospel story follows this basic skeleton. No matter where you find yourself in the Old Testament (or the New Testament) you can find one of these various threads. Every place in Scripture is either telling you something about God, something about our rebellion, something about His rescue, or something about our future restoration. If you can spot this, then you can fill out the rest of the story. 

How Do You Find the Gospel in Numbers?

The Book of Numbers is really a travel story. Now, if it’s a travel story through the cornfields of Kansas, you can’t fault the editor for thinking “Book of Numbers” might at least hit the math-nerd demographic. But it’s not that kind of travel story. It’s one filled with life and death survival stories. You can’t exactly call a book boring that has stories about food falling from the heavens, people following a pillar of fire, water gushing out of a rock, and woven throughout is an intriguing spy story. 

In the midst of all this excitement is also a story about the gospel. It’s a story that each of us feels in the fiber of our being. It’s about finding a home. Of getting back to a place where we can enter into rest. 

In the book of Genesis, we see humanity kicked out of the Garden of Eden, a beautifully enclosed place where all the wild things were kept out. Chaos might swirl around, but in the garden of God there is peace and tranquility. It’s a land flowing with milk, honey, and all the great things which life can bring. 

But Adam and Eve, through interacting with a cunning serpent, engaged the wild things and ended up bringing instability into the Garden. It had also infiltrated their own hearts. As such, they couldn’t stay. They had to be exiled — out to where the wild things are — into the place of unrest, the place that they had foolishly chosen. 

Yet God, in His mercy, enacted a plan to a redeem and restore a people to Himself. And we see in Numbers little seeds of that plan. It’s God bringing His people into the Promised Land, but God doesn’t take the direct route. He brings them on a perilous journey where each step of the way they’ll have to trust in God to take care of all the wild things.

Can God set a table in the wilderness? Can we trust God with the uncertainty of starvation? Can we trust God when we are dying of thirst? Can we trust God with direction? Can we trust God with provision? Throughout Numbers we see that for the most part, the people don’t get it. They don’t pass the test of the wilderness. Rather than chiseling the wild things out of their hearts and bringing about a trust in YHWH, it seems to embitter them and cause them to want to go back into Egypt — a place perhaps safer, but the place where the wild things rule. 

They spend 40 years wandering in the desert. God still provides for them, but He loathes that generation. Israel was tested in the wilderness and she failed miserably. She showed that she would rather be fed than fathered. (I am indebted to Russell Moore for this language.) This was evident throughout all her history. Yes, there were some Israelites that got it. But as Paul says, “not all Israel is Israel.” And those that were slain in the wilderness because of their wicked hearts never entered the Promised Land.

But the Lord promised that there would be a day when hearts would change. In the time of the prophets, the wilderness took on a little different meaning. Out of the wilderness would come hope. There would be one that would proclaim the word of God and would prepare the way of the Lord. 

We see this in Mark 1. Mark begins his gospel in a strange way. No birth narrative; Mark begins in the wilderness. He starts by quoting 3 Old Testament texts from Malachi, Isaiah, and Exodus. Mark wants us to start in the desert. He picks out these OT passages that talk about hoping springing from the desert.  

And out of the desert comes a strange guy with a strange diet. And he’s proclaiming repentance and a new day that is dawning. And then we read of the baptism of this Jesus of Nazareth. And a voice from heaven says, “This is my beloved Son.” 

He has the same identity as the people in Exodus. Remember what the Lord said to Pharaoh. “This is my beloved Son, let him go that he may worship me.” And here is this beloved son in the water, being baptized — identifying with his people. And now notice what happens next. Mark tells us, “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” In the same way that Israel came up out of the waters of the Red Sea and into the wilderness — so also Christ, the true Israel comes up out of the waters of the Jordan and is driven in the wilderness.

Why? 

Because Jesus too must endure the wilderness test. Does he want to be fed or fathered? And you see this in Matthew’s account of the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4. Jesus is in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights (the same time given to the spies in Numbers, and perhaps corresponding to the forty years in the wilderness). Listen to Matthew 4:3 and the voice of the tempter: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” If Jesus is like Israel, then he is hungry. He wouldn’t care how he is fed or whose hand it comes from. He would simply command the stones and they’d become loaves of bread. 

But Jesus succeeds where Israel — and all of humanity — would fail. He says, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” In other words, “I don’t want provision unless it comes from the hand of my Father. He is sufficient. He will sustain. His food is better than any that this world has to offer.”

The other temptations are much the same — they are highlighting a different angle of the central question. Does Jesus want to be fathered or fed? Does he want to do things the Lord’s way or does he merely want to do things? 

Jesus succeeds where every one of us would have failed. We have not conquered the wilderness, we cannot. Apart from the Lord our hearts are such that we just want provision. We don’t care how we get it. And because of our wicked hearts every one of us should be like the Israelites — dropped dead before we ever enter the Promised Land. We can’t past the test. 

But Jesus Christ did. He is our wilderness provision. This is the gospel. We can see this highlighted in many places in Numbers. I will highlight one. 

Where Is the Gospel in Numbers 21? 

Numbers 21 is one the stories which Paul references in 1 Corinthians 10. It’s another one of those places where the people are frustrated and complaining. They are once again clamoring for the security of Egypt. They do not like God’s provision. They do not like the daily discipline which manna requires. They don’t want that kind of a dependent relationship on God — they prefer a different kind of security. The security of slavery. A strange security, indeed. 

They basically say to the Lord, “We hate your provision God. This food is terrible. We liked Egyptian slavery better than you.”

The Lord responds by sending fiery serpents among them. He gives them what they are asking for — serpentine rulers. And they do what snakes do, they bite the people. And the people started crying out to the Lord as they are prone to do when they get into danger. The Lord provides a gracious remedy, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 

It’s astonishing, really, that God would give this means of rescue. These hard-hearted and stiff-necked people are given a rescue plan. And thousands of years later he’d do it again for sinners of all stripes.  

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:14-16). 

Christ has been lifted up. Look and live. Don’t look at your wounds, the bites from the serpent, your wilderness stupidity. He has set up a way of refuge. Turn to Him. Christ alone provides rescue from our wilderness wanderings. 

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