32 ¶And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day.33 And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation.34 And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him.35 And the Lord said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp.36 And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the Lord commanded Moses. (Numbers 15:32-36)
Perhaps
it is disturbing to us today to read that a man was stoned for gathering sticks
on the Sabbath. In our society the
punishment seems out of all proportion to the crime. However, as we have pointed out before, the Lord meant the
Israelites to be a holy people and gave them commandments with particular
penalties attached, and they had agreed to abide by that law, which meant that
if one among them decided to break it, that person had to suffer the
penalty.
We
live in a society that does not take seriously the commandment to keep the
Sabbath holy, and if we see Sabbath-breaking as no big deal, that shows we have
allowed that attitude to infect us.
For us to become more holy, we need to change that attitude. While we do not inflict the death
penalty upon those who break the Sabbath, I think this story should be
instructive to us about how important it is to the Lord that we keep the
Sabbath holy.
There’s
an interesting thing that happens in these verses after the penalty is
inflicted.
37 ¶And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,38 Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a ribband of blue:39 And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them; and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring:40 That ye may remember, and do all my commandments, and be holy unto your God.41 I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the Lord your God. (Numbers 15:37-41)
The Lord gives a
commandment to Moses that the Israelites make fringes on the borders of their
garments and put a blue ribbon upon this fringe. The purpose of this fringe and blue ribbon is for them to
see it and remember all the commandments.
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Why
this commandment now? It is
possible the Lord wanted everyone to remember
the commandments themselves instead of going around looking for people to catch
and accuse for sin.
I had
to ask myself, why did the Lord want to use fringes
to teach the Israelites? The Lord
often uses symbols to teach important lessons, so how was the fringe supposed
to teach them?
I
started thinking about what this fringe was. Fringes are essentially a collection of threads. Each thread might represent a
commandment. Lots of threads, lots
of commandments.
Then
I started thinking about where this fringe was to be. It was to be always
attached to their clothes on the borders. It could be said to be part of their clothes, but it didn’t
really have much function in actually covering their nakedness.
That’s when I started to understand. The Lord meant for the fringes on the
borders of their clothes to represent the commandments, so what did that mean
their clothes represented? The
Atonement of Christ, which covered them. They were supposed to remember that
Christ’s atonement covered their sins like their clothes covered their bodies,
and that keeping the commandments was always
supposed to be attached to being covered, just like the fringes were
commanded to always be attached to their clothes.
The
fringe also taught proper perspective about the relative importance of the
commandments compared to the atonement of Christ. If you just had the fringe, that alone wouldn’t help cover
nakedness, just like keeping the commandments wouldn’t do anything to help do
away with sin. But keeping the
commandments always had to be
attached to coverage by the atonement.
Understanding this better makes me kind of want to put a fringe on my clothes.
that ye seek not after your own heart and
your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring – This particular principle
behind the fringe of commandment is very helpful to remember. The commandment is something that is
supposed to help us know the will of God.
It may feel really nice to do just what we want all the time, but sooner
or later that kind of life will come to misery. The commandments, on the other hand, help us avoid that
misery and bring us to happiness.
This resonated with me recently as I realized that I had been going
after my own heart and will too much and it wasn’t making me happy.
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