Numbers 15:1-41 (NLT)
1 Then the LORD told Moses,
2 “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. “When you finally settle in the land I am giving you,
3 you will offer special gifts as a pleasing aroma to the LORD. These gifts may take the form of a burnt offering, a sacrifice to fulfill a vow, a voluntary offering, or an offering at any of your annual festivals, and they may be taken from your herds of cattle or your flocks of sheep and goats.
4 When you present these offerings, you must also give the LORD a grain offering of two quarts of choice flour mixed with one quart of olive oil.
5 For each lamb offered as a burnt offering or a special sacrifice, you must also present one quart of wine as a liquid offering.
6 “If the sacrifice is a ram, give a grain offering of four quarts of choice flour mixed with a third of a gallon of olive oil,
7 and give a third of a gallon of wine as a liquid offering. This will be a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
8 “When you present a young bull as a burnt offering or as a sacrifice to fulfill a vow or as a peace offering to the LORD,
9 you must also give a grain offering of six quarts of choice flour mixed with two quarts of olive oil,
10 and give two quarts of wine as a liquid offering. This will be a special gift, a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
11 “Each sacrifice of a bull, ram, lamb, or young goat should be prepared in this way.
12 Follow these instructions with each offering you present.
13 All of you native-born Israelites must follow these instructions when you offer a special gift as a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
14 And if any foreigners visit you or live among you and want to present a special gift as a pleasing aroma to the LORD, they must follow these same procedures.
15 Native-born Israelites and foreigners are equal before the LORD and are subject to the same decrees. This is a permanent law for you, to be observed from generation to generation.
16 The same instructions and regulations will apply both to you and to the foreigners living among you.”
17 Then the LORD said to Moses,
18 “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. “When you arrive in the land where I am taking you,
19 and you eat the crops that grow there, you must set some aside as a sacred offering to the LORD.
20 Present a cake from the first of the flour you grind, and set it aside as a sacred offering, as you do with the first grain from the threshing floor.
21 Throughout the generations to come, you are to present a sacred offering to the LORD each year from the first of your ground flour.
22 “But suppose you unintentionally fail to carry out all these commands that the LORD has given you through Moses.
23 And suppose your descendants in the future fail to do everything the LORD has commanded through Moses.
24 If the mistake was made unintentionally, and the community was unaware of it, the whole community must present a young bull for a burnt offering as a pleasing aroma to the LORD. It must be offered along with its prescribed grain offering and liquid offering and with one male goat for a sin offering.
25 With it the priest will purify the whole community of Israel, making them right with the LORD, and they will be forgiven. For it was an unintentional sin, and they have corrected it with their offerings to the LORD—the special gift and the sin offering.
26 The whole community of Israel will be forgiven, including the foreigners living among you, for all the people were involved in the sin.
27 “If one individual commits an unintentional sin, the guilty person must bring a one-year-old female goat for a sin offering.
28 The priest will sacrifice it to purify the guilty person before the LORD, and that person will be forgiven.
29 These same instructions apply both to native-born Israelites and to the foreigners living among you.
30 “But those who brazenly violate the LORD’s will, whether native-born Israelites or foreigners, have blasphemed the LORD, and they must be cut off from the community.
31 Since they have treated the LORD’s word with contempt and deliberately disobeyed his command, they must be completely cut off and suffer the punishment for their guilt.”
32 One day while the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they discovered a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day.
33 The people who found him doing this took him before Moses, Aaron, and the rest of the community.
34 They held him in custody because they did not know what to do with him.
35 Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must be put to death! The whole community must stone him outside the camp.”
36 So the whole community took the man outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as the LORD had commanded Moses.
37 Then the LORD said to Moses,
38 “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel: Throughout the generations to come you must make tassels for the hems of your clothing and attach them with a blue cord.
39 When you see the tassels, you will remember and obey all the commands of the LORD instead of following your own desires and defiling yourselves, as you are prone to do.
40 The tassels will help you remember that you must obey all my commands and be holy to your God.
41 I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt that I might be your God. I am the LORD your God!”
Throughout their 40 years of travel in the wilderness, there was a very positive benefit in their relationship to God. All of their movements were dictated by Him as they were made to be aware of His presence in the Ark and the tabernacle. Those who remained after the dying off of all those who had rebelled against God had grown to honor and require God in their daily lives. The whole nation was forced to collectively rely on God as their Source and Way.
Now, though, they would be dispersing into their allotted portions of the Promised Land, no longer dependent on a cloud and pillar of fire, but vulnerable to their own whims and the influence of surrounding nations. How easy it would be for them to lose honor and deference to the One who had delivered and provided for them. Their need for God’s presence and reliance would not diminish, but the perception of this would be greatly challenged by the very blessings that came with the Promise. To maintain His awareness, protection, and provision would require rituals and sacrifices that daily kept awareness of Him in their focus in honor.
There is a wonderful place of freedom found in the presence of the Lord for all who call on His Name. Like Israel, however, there is a tendency for the very blessings in Christ to divert from awareness and honor of Him and for there to be a waining of intimacy in relationship. There are, though, rituals and sacrifices that when developed into a way of life will maintain focus and deference on the One who never recedes in His requirement for our lives. Devotions, prayers, repentance, and working for His kingdom on a daily basis form a barrier and defense against the danger of a cooling relationship and even departure from the realm He has designed to bless. This will not be a falling into meaningless religious tasks, but, when integrated into passion in relationship, will be most effective in stoking the flames of intimacy with the One who will never draw back from His daily faithfulness towards us.