Numbers 2:1-34
Believers are not called upon to cross the "wilderness" on their own. In order to give them the realisation that they are a people, a family, the Lord gathers them around Himself. Let us picture the camp of Israel. The LORD is in the midst of it; the ark is there; the cloud of His glory rests on the tabernacle. Around it everyone has his assigned place. First the Levites, then, in an order where their own choice had no part, the twelve tribes camping by groups, three under one banner, at each of the four points of the compass. God is a God of order (1 Corinthians 14:33). In His sovereign wisdom He has "set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him" (1 Corinthians 12:18). He has fixed the place where He wants each of His own to be. May He help us to be found there! Many Christians have set up banners according to their own idea or to their convenience. The name of a man or a doctrine is for them like a flag, a rallying point which marks them out from others. God does not recognise such denominations, such banners deployed by man. He only recognises the Centre which He Himself has established: Jesus, "the true tabernacle", gathering together the children of God scattered abroad, the One who is called "the chiefest* among ten thousand" (Song of Solomon 5:10).
*Note: The word translated "chiefest" in the A.V. has the real meaning of "lifted up as a banner" (JND note).