Birth Order

I grew up as the eldest son of my family. There were three sons and three daughters born to my parents. The first daughter was stillborn. I have a sister older than me. There were situations that arose all the time where it was great being up at the top of the birth order because we got to go first. There were times when I really wanted to go last. My older sis and I ended up being the de-facto leaders among our siblings.

The Lord gave instructions to the leaders of Israel about how to camp around the tent of meeting (aka Tabernacle). He put the leaders of the families in four sections to surround the four sides of the tent. Check this out….

1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron: 2 ‘The Israelites are to camp round the tent of meeting some distance from it, each of them under their standard and holding the banners of their family.’ (Numbers 2:1-2 NIV)

As I read through the rest of the text in chapter two I noticed that the Lord actually didn’t use birth order to line up the Israelites. I’m not sure of His criteria, but He actually chose a lead family and added two of the tribes to that so that North, South, East & West were covered. The tent of meeting was surrounded. Joseph who was sold in to slavery and later saved his family from famine actually had two sons and they were counted as two of the sons of Israel. The Levite family were not counted or treated as a regular family group as they were responsible for the spiritual leadership of the tent of meeting. They were responsible for setting it up and tearing it down when they traveled. The Levite family was also responsible for sacrifices and the day-to-day spiritual leadership serving the priests.

I know that birth order is significant in some family and less important in others. I realized that birth order in God’s family is totally different. For example, I know people who have been Christ followers for years but they look and act like spiritual babies. Quite frankly they wear the name Christian, but are not in actual daily pursuit of God’s heart. I do believe it’s a choice that they made to remain a “baby”. The Word speaks of believers starting out on the “milk of the word” and then advancing to the “meat of the word”. (Hebrews 5:11-14) I remember as a student pastor this was actually very noticeable as some of the older students in my minister were more spiritually strong than people who had been in church for years. Serving in church is not synonymous with spiritual growth. It seems like churches make leaders from the people who’ve been there the longest with little concern over spiritual depth. I believe that God looks at birth order way different. He knows the heart of a person. He knows if their heart is good or bad. Behavior usually reveals the heart, but not always. Some do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

God’s birth order is based largely on the obedience found deep in my heart. He is also not about power and authority as much as He is about serving in humility. His birth order is quite different than a regular family birth order. I’m not going to worry about who’s first in the family; I just want to be obedient when He calls me to action.

Pressing On!

Dwayne