“The presence of Yahweh … reorients everything.”

I think a lot about the moment described in Revelation 7:9

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.

However, I have to admit that most of my focus has been on the multitude. I long to see people from different backgrounds unite for one purpose. It’s a beautiful picture and it makes God’s glory that much brighter–that he is the God of many nations.

What I often overlook is who is at the center: the Lamb. The nations are only united because of who the Lamb is and what he has done for them (for us).

This morning I discovered “Jesus at the Center” in another, somewhat unexpected passage: Numbers 2.

1 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 2 “The people of Israel shall camp each by his own standard, with the banners of their fathers’ houses. They shall camp facing the tent of meeting on every side.
…
17 “Then the tent of meeting shall set out, with the camp of the Levites in the midst of the camps; as they camp, so shall they set out, each in position, standard by standard.”

Again, normally when I read this passage I focus on the people: the long list of instructions of how the Israelites are to camp and move around the wilderness. I missed the theology. I missed the “divine in the details.”

Dr. Mark Awabdy makes the theological significance clear in his recent commentary on Numbers:

There are two ways to interpret Num. 2:17: (1) the sanctuary and not the king is to be the center of Israel’s society; or (2) in light of the glory of Yahweh that fills and appears from the meeting tent, Yahweh is the king who has taken up residence in the center of his people’s military encampment. Either way, if Yahweh not only possesses Israel as his people (Lev. 20:26) but also created the heavens and earth (Exod. 19:5; 20:11; 31:17), then wherever he pitches his tent becomes the axis mundi (axis of the world), a continuum that extends from heaven through earth and into the abyss below. When encountered in history or grasped by faith, the presence of Yahweh in time and space reorients everything.

Mark A. Awabdy, Numbers, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament

“The presence of Yahweh … reorients everything.” Our fears. Our priorities. Our gaze. Our worship. Our lives. The history of the world.

Awabdy continues:

The dwelling place of God is no longer a chosen mountain, tent, or temple but is the incarnate Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth. God’s glory no longer inhabits the most holy place, but by the Spirit indwells, both individually and collectively, his new covenant people, the church. At the same time, the Son today is physically with the Father, interceding for his holy ones and preparing a place for them, while the sealing “Holy Spirit … is the down payment of our inheritance, until the redemption of God’s own possession” (Eph. 1:13–14 NET, italics mine). In other words, both the Son and the Spirit together are even now orienting us toward the consummation of all things, when God will come to live forever, tangibly and geographically amid his people in the new Jerusalem of the new heavens and the new earth.

Mark A. Awabdy, Numbers, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament

What an incredible God we worship!

May my life be oriented afresh around his healing, life-giving, glorious, divine presence.