Today’s passage is Numbers 6:1-12. The Lord tells Moses that those who make a vow as Naririte must not eat or drink anything made from grapes, avoid alcohol, and must not cut their hair during the time of their vow. They cannot go near anyone’s dead body and if they do, they must shave their head, make atonement and sacrifices to priest for that sin and start their time again.
Touching Dead Bodies
At first it seems unfair that a Nazirite has sinned just because he’s in the presence of someone who suddenly dies. Is it his fault for being near someone who has a stroke or heart attack or perhaps is shot or stabbed? How is that a sin?
Context is everything.
The Nazirite has taken a vow of dedication to the Lord.
When we take such a vow, there is naturally an appropriate environment to live and work in.
That environment excludes vineyards, wineries, breweries, distilleries, liquor stores, bars, liquor-serving restaurants, sports stadiums, rock concerts, nightclubs, and so on. To be in such places is to put yourself in the way of direct temptation. It is to put you in an environment where life-threatening accidents and events occur. Such environments are contrary to your vow to God.
I am an athlete and I like to read books because I love learning new things.
Throughout my life my normal environments have been recreation centres and libraries.
Because neither one satisfies me completely, I have always needed both. It’s hard to get into trouble by exercising or playing sports or sitting in a library reading a book.
Since my late conversion, I have always gone to good churches, which are the best environments for dedicating yourself to God because there you have a spiritual community.
Despite these good environments, however, I still managed to wander into temptation and fall to sin.
Except for my present wife, none of my girlfriends nor my first wife were athletes or dedicated pursuers of knowledge, although they liked to read, but mostly novels.
Except for my high school girlfriend, my girlfriends and first wife were all heavy drinkers. Even though alcohol interfered with my sports and my reading, I drank too. Thanks to alcohol I crashed my motorcycle and did myself considerable damage. I chose my environment and touched the dead body of the world.
When I chose drinking and adultery during the last months of my first wife’s death, I chose an environment totally contrary to the Lord even though I went to church twice a week at the time! I had lost my dedication to God, the one I made at my conversion and initial church going.
I still exercised and I still read books but I was chasing fantasies, not God’s kingdom, and until a visiting friend told me how much I was drinking I didn’t see it. Touching dead bodies was my normal.
God in his mercy pulled me out of that environment with disaster, hardship and suffering.
He shaved my head through the loss of my job and the loss of the fantasy family I was chasing.
He took me away from family and friends and work in elite schools.
He took away my money, leaving me just enough to rent a room in the YMCA, a recreation centre across the street from the city library.
He showed me a church to pray in every day. I drank water and tea. I worked out and swam every day. I walked ten miles a day. I read hundreds of books in the library where, on the internet computer there, he showed me a job in Korea that brought me to my new wife and Wooridle and years of hard training, repentance and atonement that continue yet as I learn to see my sins more clearly and myself more objectively.
The purpose of life is holiness.
Application: share my story with a suffering student teacher and invite her to Wooridle
Lord, let me renew my dedication to you every day.
