The Curious Case Of Eldad And Medad
May 11, 2008
24So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. 25Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again. 26Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. 27And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.” 28And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!” 29But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” 30And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.
Numbers 11:24-30
For the past few weeks on Wednesday nights, we have been studying weird stories of the Bible. And if we’ve learned anything at all, which is questionable, it’s that the Bible has plenty of weird stories from which to choose. One day after church, little nine-year-old Billy was asked by his mother what he had learned that morning in Sunday School. Billy thought for a minute and he said, “Well, Mom, our teacher told us how God sent Moses behind enemy lines on a rescue mission to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. When Moses got to the Red Sea, he had his engineers build a pontoon bridge, and all the people walked across safely. And then, Moses used his walkie-talkie to radio headquarters and call in an air strike. They sent in bombers to blow up the bridge and all the Israelites were saved."
Billy’s mother put her hands on her hips and she said, "Now, Billy, is that really what the teacher taught you?" And Billy said, “Well, no, Mom, but if I told it the way the teacher did, you'd never believe it."
Little Billy may not have been exactly honest, but he was on to something. Some of the stories in the Bible are weird. In fact, some of them are so weird that they’re downright hard to believe. Take our passage of Scripture this morning. My guess is that very few of us in here are familiar with the curious case of Eldad and Medad from Numbers, Chapter 11. Just the names alone are weird…Eldad and Medad. I kept trying this week to come up with a good joke about those names and get ready, because this is the best I could do: Imagine that Eldad and Medad are two British guys. And they’re walking down the street one day, when along comes a third fellow. And the third fellow turns to Eldad and he says, “Excuse me, sir. Is that your father?” And Eldad says, “That’s not me father. That’s Medad.”
I told you it wasn’t good. But the first thing that should jump out to us about this story is that any names are mentioned at all. Because if you read Exodus, and Leviticus, and Numbers, and Deuteronomy, you will discover that there are very few individuals mentioned. The exception to the rule is the leaders: Moses, Miriam, Aaron, and Joshua. They get mentioned a lot. But the rest of the Israelites, the ones who were wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years, we never get to meet many of them by name. To quote the late, great Richard Nixon, they’re the silent majority. The Israelites are rescued as a group, they complain as a group, and they die as a group. It’s a herd mentality. There’s just not much in the Bible about individual personalities during this period of time.
But here in Numbers 11, that pattern is broken. And we have this story about two individuals…Eldad and Medad. And if you paid attention when I read the passage earlier, you will have noticed that Eldad and Medad already stick out a little bit from the crowd. For starters, Eldad and Medad are part of this group of seventy elders that Moses calls out to the tent. Now, we know what the tent, right? That’s what we call the tent of meeting or the tabernacle. It’s where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, with the Ten Commandments. It was the holy place, the place where God’s presence dwelt among the Israelites. And because it was so special, only the VIPs like Moses and Aaron got to go into the tent of meeting on a regular basis.
But on this particular occasion, Moses had called seventy of the elders of Israel together for a tent meeting. And it’s important to know the reason why. It wasn’t in the verses I read earlier but if you look back at the passage that immediately precedes this one, you’ll find that Moses was having a little talk with God. Moses had what my mother would call the “little red hen syndrome.” Y’all know what that is? Little red hen syndrome is when you do everything yourself because nobody will help you. And back in verses 11-15, Moses goes to God and he says, “Listen, I am tired of hearing these people complaining all the time. They get manna, but they want meat instead. And I’m getting sick and tired of doing everything for this group of big babies. If I have listen to their whining one more day, you might as well kill me.”
Now personally, I can’t imagine what it must be like to lead a group of people who are so ornery and so obstinate that you just want to die. But that’s what Moses felt like. And so, God said, “Moses, I’m going to do two things for you. I’m gonna send you some meat, so the people will stop griping about their food. And I also want you to gather together seventy of your best leaders, because I’m going to pour out my Spirit on them, and that way you won’t have to do everything by yourself anymore.”
Which brings us to our passage for today. Moses has gathered the seventy elders out at the tent and sure enough, right on cue, God comes down and his Spirit descends on the elders. All except for two. Guess who isn’t there? Eldad and Medad. They’re supposed to be a part of the group, but Eldad and Medad just don’t fit in. Verse 26 tells us that they among the elders who were registered, and yet they remained in the camp.
Now, we don’t why Eldad and Medad stayed back when they were supposed to be out by the tent, getting filled up with the Spirit. Maybe Eldad had an ingrown toenail. Or maybe Medad was dealing with a stubborn goat. Or maybe they were just watching the tumbleweeds blow by out in the desert. We don’t know. But whatever the case, Eldad and Medad were not where there were supposed to be to receive God’s Spirit.
But here’s the great part of the story—Eldad and Medad received the Spirit anyway. Right there in camp, they started prophesying. And it didn’t take long before some boy ran out to the tent and told Moses what was going on. “Moses, Eldad and Medad aren’t following the rules. They’re prophesying in camp!”
Does that sound familiar? There’s one of those types in every group. “Point of order, point of order…you can’t do that…it’s not in the church manual.” That’s who this guy in verse 27 reminds me of. It’s the person who is such a stickler for the rules that they fail to see God’s Spirit moving right in front of them. And this morning, I’m afraid that includes many of us in here. “Point of order, point of order!” For far too long, many of our churches have operated more like bureaucracies instead of a group of people who are led by the Spirit. We’ve been tied down to our rules and our regulations. We’ve got manuals, and we’ve got constitutions, and we’ve got bylaws, and we’ve got committees. We’ve got more red tape than the city of Portsmouth. Visit some of our business meetings and you’d think we were passing a major piece of legislation.
Somewhere along the way, we got caught up in the notion that the way to run a church is to come up with a bunch of rules and stick to them no matter what. It reminds me of the story Bo Prosser told last year when he came to visit Park View. Bo said he was once a guest preacher in a small church in south Georgia. And he said right before he got up into the pulpit, one of the little old church ladies came up to him and whispered in his ear, “Do you think you could announce that we still need one more person to be on the transportation committee?” And Bo, being Bo, asked the little old lady, “Well, what does the transportation committee do?” And the lady said, “Nothing.” So, Bo said, “Well, why don’t you change the church constitution and get rid of the transportation committee?” And the little old woman just looked at Bo in amazement and said, “Honey, you don’t understand anything. It’s a lot harder to change the church constitution than it is to find one volunteer to do nothing.”
Isn’t that just like the church? “Point of order, point of order! We can’t do it that way…that’s against the rules. We’ve never done it that way before.” That’s exactly what’s going on in this passage. The young man in verse 27 is speaking for a lot of us in here. “Eldad and Medad, they can’t receive the Spirit inside the camp—that’s supposed to happen out by the tent. Eldad and Medad, they’re prophesying where they’re not supposed to prophesy.”
Just think about how we’d feel if somebody came in here during our morning worship and held their hands up in the air while we sang hymns. We don’t go in for that kind of thing here at Park View. Oh sure, we think its fine to feel the Spirit move; you just gotta do it within our guidelines. You just gotta do it in a way that works within our rules and our programs and our order of worship. Within those boundaries, the Spirit’s okay. But if you start straying too far outside the norm like Eldad and Medad did, it leads to problems.
Consider the way we handle visitors here at Park View. For a long time now, we’ve been talking about wanting new people in our church. And whenever we do get a visitor, we tell them that we’ve got an adult choir, and we’ve got Baptist Men, and we’ve got meals on Wednesday nights. And as long as the visitors fit in to any of those things we’ve already got planned, they’re going to do just fine.
But let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that some visitors to our church don’t fit into the programs we’re already offering. Are we going to tell them to go somewhere else because we’re not going to change the way we do it here? Or is it possible to be the kind of church in which we wait to see where the Spirit is leading people before we pigeonhole them into our own programs? Is it possible that the Spirit might be moving in ways other than what’s listed in our bulletin under weekly opportunities?
You see, I believe that many of us in here have gotten confused over the years. We’ve been mistaking the way we do church for church itself. Y’all hear that? We have mistaking the way we do church for church itself. But the truth is, the church can never be confined to just one set of rules and guidelines. Because the church operates under the leadership of the Spirit. That’s the story of Pentecost. It’s the story of Eldad and Medad. Rules and regulations are fine, but at the end of the day, that’s not how we make our decisions as the people of God. We must remain open to the movement of the Spirit.
And that makes us uneasy. Because we like that feeling of control. Boy, I know I like the feeling of control. I like to know what’s going to happen in worship. I like to know how things are going to go at the business meeting. I don’t like spontaneity. I’m a stickler for the rules. I’m a “point of order” kind of person.
And the prospect of letting things just happen randomly under the guidance of the Spirit scares me just as much it scared Joshua in this passage. If we start letting people prophesy wherever they want to, what’s next? Clapping during worship? Heaven forbid! We can’t let things get of control.
At least, that’s what we think. What we don’t realize is that for the church, things are never under our control. We are a people led, guided, and inspired by the Spirit. And the Spirit of God cannot be confined to a particular set of rules. The Spirit of God cannot be confined to programs or traditions. We’ve gotten so used to the way that we do church, we’ve forgotten that it isn’t necessarily the same way the Spirit does church. The Spirit overcomes all the boundaries we set up and moves wherever and whenever it pleases.
Now, don’t misunderstand me. This morning, I am not suggesting that we throw away the church manual. I am not advocating for total chaos in the way we make decisions. But I do think that we need to stop substituting the way we do church for the church itself. I think we need to stop acting out of our fear that things might change and realize that this church has never been under our control in the first place.
You see, when we’re led by the Spirit instead of a bunch of rules and traditions, strange things are gonna start happening. We going to start doing things we’ve never done before like calling a 25 year old as pastor. We going to start doing things we’ve never done before like housing the homeless in our fellowship hall. A church that’s led by the Spirit is never gonna know exactly what’s coming next. So, if you thought that Eldad and Medad were weird, you just wait. AMEN