When you add up not only the numbers that are given, but you make allowances for the women and the children, there were getting on for, if not more than, eight thousand of them. It’s not an enormous number.
There is a great deal to learn from that, because those Levites are pretty much like us. We are very slow at times to see needs and respond to them, and we have to be persuaded. And it's the same of the ministry. There are many people: they feel a sense of responsibility, a call – young man, sometimes – to serve the Lord, and they shrug it off, and hang back. They are fearful of it for a variety of reasons. But there is some heart in them, and happily some can be persuaded to stand out and to lay down their lives and to be ready to be proclaimers for the Lord. We are rather like these reluctant Levites, and it is interesting to see it brought out in the record here.
Sometimes the leaders in the church, the office bearers come behind the members in zeal for the cause – those perhaps who have the advantages, maybe the more professional among the membership. For a full half-century there has been a lack of emphasis on Christian service for all. Pastors won’t stop and ask what percentage actually serve. We cannot force people to serve God – it must be voluntary – but we must show it is the will of God for his people.