Numbers 9

The story of the Passover event and the institution of the commemoration of this great redemption has already been told in other places. The command to keep the Passover is retold in this chapter because life does not always work out as we might like.

God had given two inflexible commands: the Passover had to be kept on a specific day every year and it could not be kept by those who were unclean. Yet the Lord would be surprisingly flexible, and men would be able to keep the Passover in the second month rather than the first because their contact with a dead body or their presence on a long journey prevented them from participation in this important celebration at the commanded time.

This was one of God's surprises. The Lord, who is inflexible in His demand for perfect holiness, somehow finds a way to accommodate our weaknesses, our tragedies, and even our heartfelt desires. This is our God. We need to follow Him in helping weak and harassed people among us and all around us. He gives us many a fresh start.

This did not in the least mean that God had abandoned His standards. All of the laws concerning Passover had to be kept. For example not one of the bones of the sacrificial lamb could be broken.

God would not accommodate a person's mere preferences. If a person did not come on the first month at the right time because of some casual personal reason, that person would be cut off from the community of Israel.

The Lord, the Son of God, became our Passover Lamb. In accord with the Scriptures, not one of His bones was broken. He met all the holy requirements of His Father when He redeemed us through His own blood. Because of His great work, and because of Him alone, we have abundant forgiveness and even divine accommodation to our weakness.

How are we then to live as followers of this Lamb? We must be led through this life by the Spirit of God. Only through this work of the Spirit graciously applying the holy Word of the Lord will we know what to say and do. The essential for us is God.

Like Israel in the wilderness, we move when God moves, and we stop when He stops. We should not pretend that our navigation through this perilous world is a simple matter of using our understanding in following a list of written instructions. There is more to wisdom than an inflexible application of established commands. The Lord must lead.

He will not lead us against His own Word. Yet we will never be able to navigate His will through the mysteries of life without a living Guide.