Job Security

Passage: Numbers 1:47-53

When I worked in a union setting, I learned quickly not to do anything that wasn’t in my job description. It was my job to drive the truck and deliver the product. If I was caught loading or unloading anything on to the truck, I’d risk a verbal beating, if not an outright disciplinary write-up. Why? Because I was infringing on someone else’s job. Within that workplace, everyone’s job was protected by the union. Job security rested in part on the dictum that you were the only one allowed to do your job.

At the beginning of Numbers God gives this kind of dictum about the job description of the Levites. It’s part of the Levites’ God-given job to take down, move, and set up the Tabernacle. No one else is allowed to help them with this job. For some reason this rule is so important to God that he enforces it with the threat of death: If you’re not a Levite and you touch the Tabernacle, you will die.

Why is it so important that nobody else participate in the mundane labor of moving the Tabernacle? After all, this is a very regular event in the nomadic life of the Israelites. It’s hard work. Why not spread it around? Who cares if a non-Levite picks up the occasional tent-peg?

The answer is that the work of the Levites is not mundane. Much of their work is routine, even mechanical: setting up and taking down the Tabernacle and its contents; performing rites of purification; preparing animal sacrifices. But their role is acting as intermediaries between an impure people and their holy God. What’s important is not the work itself, but who’s doing it. The Levites are a class of people who are set apart; a class of people whose only job it is to serve as go-betweens – to stand in the gap between God and his people. God reminds his people regularly that there is a divide between him and them that only he can cross. Moreover, God will cross the gap when his people to adopt a condition of purity – purity of body, mind, and soul. In the course of everyday life, the people are defiled by their own sin and their exposure to a world flawed by sin. It takes time and effort to process that defilement – almost like a detoxification process. God’s purity laws for the Levites demand that they live in a constant state of semi-detoxification. Their everyday existence is one of living apart. They are to remain always ready to be in the presence of their holy God. As such, the Levites are the only ones who can handle the worship space and worship articles. The Levites act as a visible, human buffer between God and the rest of the people. They are a reminder that they live in the presence of a holy God.

As God’s people now, it’s all our job to act as intermediaries between God and the rest of humanity. There’s no special class of Christian. We all have the same job. God’s holiness still necessitates our holiness. Although there is no death penalty for approaching God, we still need to detoxify from the effects of sin to do our job properly. We are called to be holy because we represent a holy God. We are set apart as a visible reminder of the God who lives among us.