In 1848, James W. Marshall discovered gold in California and launched what would be known as the “California gold rush,” during which hundreds of thousands of people flocked there from around the world in the hopes of striking it rich. A few decades later, George Carmack and Skookum Jim found gold in the Klondike, sparking another mass migration which would eventually see over one hundred thousand people head to Canada and Alaska to seek out the fortunes hidden in the hills.

What ties these two events together? Obviously, the fact there “there’s gold in them there hills!” It didn’t matter how far away it was, people were willing to uproot their entire lives, sell everything they had, and travel around the world at the hope of being one of the few to make their fortune mining for gold. Once they knew it was there, that is.

Up until that point, California and Alaska probably seemed like obscure, remote destinations—not the kind of place you’d reorder your entire life in order to go prospecting. But once the news hit that there was, indeed, gold in them there hills, well then, all bets are off. It might be remote, but it’s no longer obscure. The takeaway is simply this: sometimes you can find gold in the most obscure places.

That is certainly true for the book of Numbers, which is already somewhat of an obscure book about which I’ve written several posts already. But even within this fourth book of the Bible, the passage I have in mind seems even more obscure.

Chapter 10 of Numbers is the closing portion of “Act 1” of this epic narrative. It describes how the people set out from Mt. Sinai after spending eleven months there following their departure from Egypt. But before they depart, God commissions Moses to construct two silver trumpets.

Now, on the surface it would appear that these trumpets had two pretty straightforward, practical functions. For one, they were to be used whenever the congregation as a whole, or its representative leaders, were to be assembled before the tent of meeting (Num. 10:4). Second, they were to signal the whole congregation when it was time to break camp and embark on the next leg of their voyage across the wilderness to the staging ground for their upcoming invasion of Canaan (Num. 10:5–7).

Why was all this necessary? Well, if you had read the first few chapters, you’d know that this wasn’t some small group of ragtag Bedouin desert nomads. The military-age men of this newly-founded nation numbered over six-hundred thousand, which means that there were upwards to one and a half to two million people all told who were encamped at the base of Mt. Sinai. That’s a sea of humanity living together. They needed to move together and travel together. They needed a way of organizing their movements and departures in a systematic way so that it wasn’t mass chaos. The trumpets were (literally!) instrumental in making that happen.

But the function of these trumpets extended beyond that. Even after the people were to enter the land, these trumpets would continue to be used. For one, they would be used to signal major festivals and celebrations in the national religious calendar of Israel (Num. 10:10). But they were also to be used for national defense. When a foreign incursion occurred and the people were under attack, the priests were to sound an alarm with the trumpets. Of course, this had the practical purpose of alerting everyone to the present danger and mustering defensive forces.

But the trumpets had a unique, spiritual function as well. It says, “When you go to war in your land against the adversary who oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, that you may be remembered before the LORD your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies.“

What’s interesting here is that the trumpet here functions as a kind of “remembrance.” It’s a signal that goes out that acts as a kind of national invocation of God to act on behalf of his people. Ronald B. Allen writes,

“In this way the blowing of the trumpet is seen to be analogous to prayer, a means of participating in activating the will of God. . . . By blowing the trumpets before the battle, Israel could confidently expect God’s active presence in the battle scene. The blowing of these trumpets prepared the people fore the presence of God.” —Ronald B. Allen, “Numbers,” in The. Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Numbers–Ruth, rev. ed., ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 2:178).

That is to say, when the people heard the trumpet, it acted as a kind of reminder to everyone that the Lord was with them and was on their side. It was like an unspoken prayer pleading with the Lord for his strength and help.

Now, what strikes me about this is just how gracious the Lord is to provide such a simple, straightforward reminder to His people. What I see in this so clearly is the gracious condescension of God, who knows our weaknesses and our tendencies. He knows that in moments of stress and conflict and danger, we tend to zero in on what’s right in front of us. And as we do that, the bigger context becomes foggy. We see the earthly threat, but we forget that there are spiritual realities.

I think we can all agree that if we were awakened in the dead of night by the sound of broken glass, and the realization hit us that there was an intruder in the house, our thoughts would naturally revolve around the immediate: where’s the gun? where’s the kids? how to I keep myself and my family safe? These are all natural reactions to earthly threats. Nothing’s wrong with that!

But what I do think God wants us to remember is that while there are earthly realities, there are corresponding spiritual realities that we can’t ignore or forget about of treat as if they are irrelevant to these moments. God wants us to remember that He is “our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble” (Ps. 46:1). He wants us to be comforted by His rod and staff when we talk through that dark, dangerous valley (Ps. 23:4). While we look for that firearm in the lockbox, we should also be seeking Him and His protection.

The trumpets did that for Israel. As they sounded their sharp, piercing alarm, it reverberated across the city as a reminder that people were to keep their eyes above the horizon on God who was with them.

One practical tool that many dog owners use as a way of training and controlling their pets is an e-collar. It’s kind of like a cordless leash. The dog wears a radio-controlled collar, which can be activated by the owner in order to bring the dog back to its owner. Now, why would this be necessary?

Well, dogs have an interesting habit of developing severe tunnel vision, particularly when certain instinctive behaviors are activated. Maybe it’s a squirrel running down the road, or a boy on a bicycle going by that initiates an instinctive prey drive. Or maybe its another dog. In these cases, dogs have a tendency to fixate on that one thing and tune out all other stimuli, which is why even a dog with strong recall training might not even notice that its owner is screaming for it to come. It doesn’t even hear the screams because it’s so zoned in on the other dog.

That’s where the e-collar comes in. The e-collar circumvents this naturally “zoning” tendency and breaks through to get the dog’s attention. It might use a sound to do that, or a vibration, or the pressure of an electrical stimulus. But the collar wakes the dog up, breaks the “spell” and alerts the dog to its owner’s commands.

The trumpets worked a lot like that with Israel. When the pressure was on; when the enemy was near; when the danger was close—when the people naturally would be focused on the earthly reality—the trumpets woke up the people and reminded them that there is a spiritual reality to this event as well. They were God’s people, and He was with them, and He would fight for them.

And so, in this one small, obscure little passage about a couple of trumpets used by Israel in the wilderness, there’s actually a profound statement on the graciousness of God to give us the tools we need to counteract our own human tendencies, and a reminder that nothing is “purely earthly” in this life. Every event, from the most mundane, to the most urgent, has spiritual ramifications, and we must not let the urgent reality of the earthly obscure the spiritual reality of the moment.