Numbers 5:1-4 - Living life scrupulously.

God must be the center of the life of His people. We see it in the way God had the whole camp of Israel set. The Tabernacle was placed in the center of the community. It indicates that worship of God must be central in the life of God’s people. The nation was to be a worshipping community having God’s presence in focus. As God’s people, like Israel, we must factor God into everything we do. However, we are aware that being fallen people, keeping God in focus is not our natural tendency. So God had to leave instructions on how to do life in His presence. The whole instruction must take into consideration that at the root of everything is the fact that God is holy. His instruction we know is: Be holy even as God is holy. Hence any contaminant that can affect life with God has to be dealt with. Numbers 5-6 leave us with instructions on how to deal with sin in our lives.

In the book of Leviticus God had already given more detail on how to deal with the issue of the unclean, such as a person who had contracted leprosy, or had a discharge, or had touched a dead body. In these first four verses of Number 5, God in a thumbnail reiterated how to deal with the unclean again. They had to be put out of the camp. The reason is stated in the last part of verse 3. It says, “…that they may not defile their camp, in the midst of which I dwell.” This is the crux of the whole matter. The whole purpose of God is not so much about the alienation of the unclean from God, but that the issue of sin is so deplorable that it must not be allowed in the presence of God.

Leprosy, bodily discharges, or touching the dead are likened to the sinful things we commit that reflect the remnant of the sinful nature in our lives. Like these conditions, the wrong things we do are but manifestations of the sinful nature that we still need to deal with so that they will not become an impediment to our access to God’s presence. We need to be spiritually scrupulous in our life with God. Learn from Psalm 139: 23-24 where David contritely cried:

Search me, O God, and know my heart!
    Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting!