Friday 5 April 2013

"...For It Was Founded Upon A Rock": The Helix Ianthina

There's a very cool thing that has come out of some studying that I've been doing.  It's something that I don't ever remember any pastor teaching, and I would like to share that with you, most excellent Theophilus. 

Numbers 15 appears to have a number of topics that all may seem like separate issues (i.e. the offerings, the "one law", the guy who gathered sticks, and the blue ribbon on the clothes).  But to me they all form one big lesson.  Jesus, in a different format, covered every point of that big lesson in The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).  The point in particular that I like is the statement that Jesus makes at the end of the sermon that the person who does these things is like a wise man who built his house upon the rock, so that when the storm comes, the house will not fall.  What is He saying here by this statement though?  He's saying, if you do what God commands, you will be protected, and will not fall. That is to say that the commandments of God were meant for your protection!

How many times have you heard a parent say "my rules are for your protection" or "this is because I love you"?  Well this is what Jesus is saying at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, and it is also what is being said with the figure of the blue ribbon at the end of Numbers 15, as we will see. 

But first, the connection of the subjects.  The offerings in the beginning of Numbers 15 show that you may freely give God love offerings of good works (as symbolized by the bodies of the animals) as large as you wish; the bigger the offering, the more consideration, wisdom, grace, love and joy should go with that offering, hence the larger portions of flour, oil, and wine.  (This concept is similarly described in the Sermon on the Mount in Jesus' parables of the salt and the light).  Second, we have the statement that there is one law for all people.  This is no big difficulty to understand.  Having different sets of rules leads to confusion, and God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33).  Period.  (This is illustrated by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount by stating that not one jot or tittle of the law will pass until all be fulfilled, which is really to say until the end of time because the law prophesied to that day.)  Third, the man who broke the law was "cut off" from the People.  Why?  The law had just been given to the People and the man showed that he was more interested in his own good than following the law.  This is dangerous to the whole congregation, and it is better to have him out of the congregation than to put it in jeopardy.  (Was this illustrated in the Sermon on the Mount? Yep.  The illustration of cutting your hand off or plucking your eye out, as applicable on the level of how the law applies to the whole house or congregation, is to say that if you have rebels in the congregation looking out for their own good and jeopardizing the wellbeing of the whole, it is high time to flush them out rather than to suffer the loss of the congregation [i.e. the whole "body of Christ" - 1 Corinthians 12:27].  Conversely, it is possible to accept them back again after they have learned their lesson, but not until that time. That's proper discipline.)  And lastly, the blue thread to remember the commandments of the Lord.  This is my favourite part, and why I set out on this post.  The lesson here comes not so much from the colour of the ribbon or how it is obtained, but from the nature of the very animal that the colour came from itself.  This is a neat study in biology.

The colour blue that was used to dye the ribbon came from a sea shell that the Hebrews called chelzon, and that Gesenius' Lexicon calls helix ianthina: or simply, a sea snail.  The shell of the snail would be ground up and added to water to make a beautiful royal purplish (hyacinth colour) dye.  This was then used to dye the ribbon that would be sown into the fabric of the Hebrew clothes to remember the commandments of the Lord.  But what was the purpose of that shell on the sea snail itself?  It was for the snail's protection.  It was the snail's "house".  It was the protection that the animal needed because, without it, the snail is a very very fragile creature.  It carried this shell around with it wherever it went, like an outer garment, just like the Hebrews would carry around the reminding blue ribbon on the outside of their clothing everywhere they went.  The fact that they were to use this ribbon to remember the commandments of the Lord was to say, "These rules that you must remember are for your protection because I love you;" just like the shell is used for the snail's protection, a protection that it abides in.  That's a cool lesson.  Did Jesus also teach this in the Sermon on the Mount?  Absolutely, in the illustration of the wise man who built his "house upon the rock" by doing the commandments of the Lord, which protected him from the storm to come.

Fantastic.  I love that God created biology and science, and I love it when they come into the lessons that are taught in the Bible... for our protection.  God bless.