The Lutheran Hour
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"On the Way, Already Home"
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Text: Numbers 9:18
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Mom is sitting in the front passenger seat of our 1985 Ford Bronco. Dad is driving and the Bronco is full of stuff, from floor to roof, packed. We’d spent all day yesterday packing. We cleared out the house, said goodbye to friends. We were moving. Again.
Inside our truck’s metal cab, on the interior roof above us, there are magnets, magnets that form an incomplete map of the United States. Each state is its own magnet. Each magnet represents a state we’ve lived in or visited. This is move number nine for us, so there’s a whole of mess of magnets up there, 37 or 38 of them.
The phrase, “Join the military. See the world,” doesn’t hold true for everyone, but it did for my dad. He’d traveled internationally and moved his family all across the lower 48. Moving, for me and my older brother, was usually an adventure, or just an excuse to order pizza while mom and dad packed the kitchen. But this move was different. My brother would be starting high school in the fall. And it was the start of sixth grade for me. We didn’t want to leave. We liked where we lived. We had friends.
At some point, mom turns around. Maybe she sees the forlorn looks on our faces. She leans back toward us and whispers, “Boys, don’t look now, but we’re being followed.” I sit bolt upright. Who is after us? Why were they following us? What did they want? Were they spies? Kidnappers? International terrorists? (Okay, I watched too many movies as a kid.) Slowly, I turn my head, to see what was following us. It was our moving trailer.
“Gotcha,” mom says. It was the lamest mom-joke you could imagine. And maybe the funniest thing I’d ever heard. Even dad cracked a smile. We were still on the road, on the way, but somehow, I was already home.
Moving. It’s what we do. Some of us more than others. Maybe you’ve lived at the same address your whole life, from the time you were born. But we all move eventually, cross country, across the ocean, across the street. Maybe it’s an adventure, or a trial, or a reason to eat out, or a little bit of all that. Maybe it means saying goodbye, letting go of what you know, purging what we don’t need. “Why do we need all this stuff?” is the question every mover asks. When we move, we don’t have a clue what we’re getting into, but we start over, grow, become new people.
And if we never move, never change, never are forced to adapt, we stagnate, stiffen, calcify. And sometimes the best remedy is simply to move, to get up and go. As physical therapists tell us, “Movement is medicine. Motion is lotion.”
Recently, I watched the movie Moonrise Kingdom by Wes Anderson. One of the characters, played by Bill Murray, feels stuck, stagnant, calcified. You watch him and get the impression that he’s lived his whole life in this small town, and he’s not going anywhere. He’s the dad of the family. He throws himself into his work. He’s unhappy in his marriage. His daughter runs away. One night he’s lying in bed, staring at the shadows of the trees, shaking in the wind. He says to his wife, or maybe to no one in particular, “I hope the roof flies off and I get sucked up into space … to be better off without me.”
Sometimes you can get lost even when you stay in the same place. And sometimes, just getting up and going somewhere, anywhere can help.
You remember that scene from the movie, Forrest Gump, when Forrest is sitting on the front porch, feeling sorry for himself. His mom had just died. The woman he loves left him. He doesn’t know what to do. So, he just starts running. He runs to the end of the road, to the end of town, to the end of the county, across the state, all the way to the ocean. He runs for three years, two months, 14 days, and 16 hours. And for some reason, what he’s doing seems to make sense to people. He gets company along the way. Remember? He gets a whole tribe following him, like the children of Israel, following Moses in the desert. But in this case, there’s no destination, no Promised Land, just motion.
One day, Forrest stops. A hush falls over his tribe. They await a word from their leader. He says, “I’m pretty tired. Think I’ll go home now.” And he leaves. Somebody calls out, “Now what are we supposed to do?”
You can lose your way when you stay in the same place. But even if you’re moving, it may not be toward home.
This truth about our human situation is addressed in the Bible. People in the Bible are almost always on the move—east of Eden, out of Egypt, toward the Promised Land, from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. God never seems to let His people stay put, at least not for long. But the movement God is most concerned about is not geographical, but relational. God created us for movement toward Him in faith, faith He gives us as a gift. God created us for movement toward our neighbor in love. The same love He gives us even when we’re stuck in our sin.
God’s design for humankind is not stagnation; nor is it motion for motion’s sake. God made us to be at home in the dynamics of faith and faithfulness, always in motion, in faith toward Him, always setting out to serve the people around us. But you know how it goes. We get lost or distracted trying to find ourselves. We get stuck feeling sorry for ourselves. We get buried under all the stuff we’ve hoarded trying to fulfill ourselves.
God created us for movement—in faith toward Him and in love toward others. So, the Bible is one, long trip log. There are changes in scenery, magnets added to the map, but it’s not about the place. The place makes no difference if your faith is in the wrong person. And so the journey we’re each called to make is from the dead end of trusting in ourselves, or trusting in some other finite creature, to the expanding horizon of trusting our Creator, following His lead, loving like He loves. And the vehicle, the means of conveyance, the way to get there, is the Word, God’s Word.
Here’s how it happened in the Old Testament, in the book of Numbers, or as it’s called in Hebrew, “In the wilderness.” The book of Numbers is a travelogue of God on the move with His people, on the way out of slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness to the Promised Land. The book records changes in scenery and setting, but geography is not the focus. Instead, it’s the people’s faith. Faith is the move that matters. And your faith is in whatever your heart and mind and hopes are moving toward. What you’re moving toward, that’s what you’re putting your faith in! If your faith is in yourself, your ideas, your stuff, then you’re moving toward death, separation from God, hell. But if your faith is in God, you’re moving toward life, true life, eternal life.
So, God, in Numbers, helps His people move toward Him. Numbers, like the rest of the Bible, shows how faith comes. It comes by the Word, by listening to every word that comes from the mouth of God.
In the wilderness, God made His Word visible. God told Moses, their leader, to set up a special tent, a tabernacle it was called, a dwelling place for God in the middle of wherever the people camped. And a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night appeared over the tent—a cloud that reached down from heaven to earth. Through the cloud and the fire and the tent, God made His Word visible. Sometimes, God’s Word came directly, audibly. And this terrified the people. Maybe God’s voice frightened them because in their hearts they were still trying to hoard a little faith in themselves, like we all do, a few scraps of confidence in what we think we can count as our own.
But when God’s Word is present, and where God’s Word is present, faith in ourselves must be burned up, sacrificed on the altar. God’s Word reduces our misplaced self-confidence to ashes. God made these faith dynamics visible in the sacrifices He instituted through Moses, as described in the book of Numbers, and in the book before it, in Leviticus. But all of it—the cloud and fire, the sacrifices and rituals—everything was always to make the Word visible—to purge the people, to prepare them, to move them from that dead-end that is faith in themselves, to the horizon that is faith in God and love towards neighbor.
Listen to how it’s said in Numbers 9:15-23: Now, on the day that the tabernacle (the dwelling place) was set up, the cloud covered the dwelling, the tent of the testimony, the place purged by fire and sacrifice, the place where God spoke with Moses face to face, like a man speaks with his friend, the cloud covered that dwelling place. And in the evening, it was still there over the dwelling place. It looked like fire until morning.
So it was, continually, the cloud covered it by day, and it looked like fire at night. And when the cloud lifted from over the tent, after this, the people of Israel moved out. And in the place where the cloud rested, there they stayed; they set up camp.
By the mouth of the LORD, by the Word of the LORD, the people of Israel moved out, by the Word of the LORD they stayed, all the days the cloud rested over the dwelling place, they stayed. If the cloud stayed a while, over the dwelling place many days, the people of Israel kept the LORD’s watch, they did not move out. And if it was a few days that the cloud was over the dwelling place, by the Word of the LORD they stayed, by the Word of the LORD they moved out.
Sometimes the cloud remained from evening until morning. And when the cloud lifted in the morning, they moved out. Or if it was a day and a night, when the cloud lifted, they moved out. Or if it was two days, or a month, or a longer time the cloud remained over the dwelling place, dwelling there, the people of Israel stayed, they did not move out. But when it lifted, they moved out. By the Word of the LORD they stayed, by the Word of the LORD they moved out. They kept the LORD’s watch by the Word of the LORD, by the hand of Moses.
That phrase, “by the Word of the LORD,” is repeated seven times in these nine verses. Some translations say, “by the command of the LORD.” The original Hebrew text says, “by the mouth of the LORD.” The phrase emphasizes the bond, the familial bond God establishes between Him and His people. It’s not just a command. It’s assurance and invitation. It’s a cleansing fire, a purging promise, a tender word, like a mom teasing her sons with a lame joke at the outset of their ninth move, making a home for them on the way through a word.
This life is movement because we’re not yet where we’re supposed to be. And the “where” is not merely geographical but relational, familial. You and I are in the right place; we are home wherever and whenever God’s Word is at work in us, moving us deeper in faith, further up and further out toward our neighbors in love. God is the One who moves. God moved to make a home for us. God moved, not just in fire, in cloud, and tent, but in His personal Word, Jesus, His Son.
In one of the New Testament biographies of Jesus, the Gospel of John 1, it says that God’s Word became flesh and made His dwelling place among us. Literally, it says He “pitched His tent.” He set up His tabernacle among us. It’s a reference back to the book of Numbers. It means that in the Person of Jesus, God made His Word visible, findable, hold-onto-able, because He loves us. He loves you. He loves you even more than your mother does. He proved it by sacrificing His life for you on the cross. Jesus became the sacrifice to purge you of that misplaced faith. And He rose from the dead to move you into camp with His people. And by His Sprit in us, He follows us, He fills us, and forwards us on the way through the wilderness to the Promised Land of God’s new creation.
Jesus leads today by His Word. He still makes His Word visible in the community of people who camp around His Word. He is visible in the bread and wine of holy Communion. He is present in the water and promise of Baptism. In the conversation and encouragement of fellowship Christians, He makes Himself findable, hold-onto-able.
Jesus Christ, the Word of God, is present in all creation, but He wants us to find Him in this community. As Martin Luther preached 500 years ago, “I might find [Christ] in stone, in fire, in water, or even in a rope, for He is certainly there, yet He does not wish that I seek Him there, apart from the Word, and cast myself into the fire or the water, or hang myself on the rope. [Christ] is present everywhere, but He does not wish that you grope for Him everywhere. Grope rather where the Word is, and there you will lay hold of Him in the right way. Otherwise, you are tempting God and committing idolatry [that is, worshiping a god of your own making]. For this reason, He has set down for us a definite way to show us how and where to find Him, namely the Word.”i
Turns out, mom was right. We were being followed. We are—followed, flanked, filled, and forwarded on by God’s Word, still on the way, but home, already. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
i Martin Luther, “The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ – Against the Fanatics,” Luther’s Works, Volume 36: Word and Sacrament II. Ed. Abdel Wentz and Helmut Lehman (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1959), 342.
Reflections for September 28, 2025
Title: On the Way, Already HomeMark Eischer: You’re listening to The Lutheran Hour. For FREE online resources, archived audio, and more, go to lutheranhour.org. Once again, here’s Dr. Zeigler.
Mike Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. I’m visiting with Professor Reed Lessing. He teaches courses about the Bible and Christian life at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Welcome back to the program, Reed.
Reed Lessing: Good to be here with you, Mike.
Mike Zeigler: Reed, you’ve got a new book out. It’s titled Hope in the Wilderness: Practical Insights from the Book of Numbers, which we’ve been discussing here on the program. So let’s talk about that first word, hope. What makes hope an appropriate response to the book of Numbers?
Reed Lessing: Roughly at the turn of the millennium, around 2,000 B.C., God gave Abraham a promise in Genesis 15 that his descendants would inherit the land of Canaan in about 400 years. I mean, we actually have the number there. So there’s the hope. See, the hope is built upon a promise God gave to Abraham, and the promise cannot be broken. God actually seals this promise in Genesis 15 in blood. So we see the promises God gave to Israel, and these are our promises. We too have sure and certain promises of God’s heavenly promised land, in Christ Jesus. He says, “I go to prepare a place for you,” in John 14, and that promise is sealed in the blood of Christ. So, hope-we 21st century people-we have hope in our wilderness because the promises God made to Israel in the Old Testament are sweeter and greater and more profound through Christ in the New Testament.
Mike Zeigler: In the commentary, you say that Numbers, along with this hope, paints a beautiful and captivating portrait of Jesus. And in the message today, I mentioned how Numbers helps us see Jesus as the fulfillment of that tent, that tabernacle and the cloud and the fire that led God’s people. What are some other ways that the book of Numbers helps us see Jesus more clearly?
Reed Lessing: Just take a cursory look at Numbers, we would see predictions and patterns and the presence of Jesus, as you indicate through the tabernacle in John 1:14, “the Word tabernacled among us.” So we see the presence of Christ through the tabernacle and the pillar of fire and pillar of cloud, even through the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Numbers 10. We also see one of the most stellar events in the Old Testament, which then is going to be the foundation for the most famous verse in the Bible, right? John 3:16, “God so loved the world that He gave us one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Well, what’s the background of that? What’s the context? It would be Numbers 21:4-9, where Moses lifts up the serpent in the wilderness and all who look at this serpent are saved from the snake bites. The last time we talked, we were talking about blessings and curses. Here it is again. Another just very captivating portrait of Christ would be in the Balaam-Balak cycle. Throughout really numbers 22 through 24, we see a number of descriptions of the coming Messiah. Perhaps the most famous one would be in Numbers 24:17 where Balaam, of all people, says, “I see Him,” (he’s talking about Christ), “but not now. I behold him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” Wow! So, the star out of Jacob and the scepter, all of this is going to point backwards to the first promise of a King coming, a king with a ruling scepter, in Genesis 49 and pointing then forward to the magi in Matthew 2, who follow the star to see the infant Jesus. And what is this King going to do? He’s going to crush and break down God’s enemies and the people of God’s enemies. That’s how verse 17 in Numbers 24 continues. There’s more. There’s more. But that’s just a little tip of the iceberg, right?
Mike Zeigler: Just a little, right. So, just thinking about those two examples you’ve mentioned, the serpent on the pole, and again, Balaam’s curses being turned into blessings. It makes me think of this sermon I was reading by Martin Luther. I quoted part of it in the sermon today, but one part I didn’t quote was, he says that God is the sort of person who does what is foolish in the world’s eyes. And this seems to be very much the case here, that God would use curses and make them blessings. He would use an instrument of death for life. That’s a beautiful … again, the part of that portrait of who God is, through Jesus.
Reed Lessing: No doubt about it. God delights in using small people, small events, small things, five loaves, two fish … I go back to this verse a lot in 2 Corinthians 12:9, where God says, “My power is made perfect in weakness.” And if you want a summary of the Bible, and if you want a guide for your life, that’s a pretty good verse. God’s power is made perfect in weakness. And another way to say that is going to James 4, [or] 1 Peter 5, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Numbers 12:3, where it says Moses is the humblest person on the face of the earth. So there you go! The lowliest, the lowliest. And you can see that really throughout the book of Numbers.
Mike Zeigler: Well, thank you so much for being here with us. So, if you needed another reason to go and read the book of Numbers, and with the help of Dr. Lessing’s book, titled Hope in the Wilderness, you’ve got this beautiful picture of Jesus. What more reason do you need than that? Thank you again for joining us, Dr. Lessing.
Reed Lessing: Thank you, Mike.
Mark Eischer: Dr. Reed Lessing holds the Edwin and Esther Laatsch Chair of Old Testament Studies at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota. His book, Hope in the Wilderness: Practical Insights from the Book of Numbers is available from Concordia Publishing House.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Lord, Thee I Love with All My Heart” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.