One Hour. One Book: Numbers

numbers is essentially a story with the ingredient of the spicing up of civil code of law numbers is primarily angled at three stages of the book and how the law will match those three stages now you know that the civil code of law is exodus twenty twenty-one twenty-two and twenty-three the Covenant performance in 24 but it's also inclusive of the lessons they picked up along the journey which is the time period from the time they leave Mount Sinai to the time they get to the death of Aaron the death of Moses and the readiness to enter the land so it's that time period Exodus gets you to the mountain of the law and then tells you what they heard from God at the mountain of the law so Exodus gave you the journey in Exodus 1 to 19 to get you from Goshen Egypt to Sinai desert then in 20 to 23 the law 24 the covenant that yes we will do we will be dependent upon God the declaration of dependence if you will and then in 25 to 40 Exodus tells the story of what God told BET's Alejo and his team to build as a replica of the tabernacle in heaven as one is to be done on earth that would they would carry with them for the next several hundred years until there was the development of a temple so basically from 1445 all the way down to 968 BC Israel's needs in terms of their ritual requirements to observe the commands will be found in the tabernacle not in the temple and the temple will be erected by Solomon and that will be after he rises to power in first Kings chapters 1 and 2 the rise of Solomon and by 6 through 8 actual making of the temple and God shows up in first Kings eight all right now the important thing is this numbers is going to tell us the story we parked at the end of Exodus with the tabernacle but numbers picks up ten whole chapters of the preparation and census to leave Mount Sinai now that we're ready to go how do we get wagons to move wagons ho but it's more than that those first ten chapters is also the stories of working together and it's going to outline what to put into our pack what should we have with us and and how do we organize the nation around the priorities of identity and strength of the family centrality of worship and the necessity of training or education God said I'm going to take a rabble and turn them into a nation and frankly in the last part of chapter one he what he does is are in Chapter one and two what he does is say I want you to circle the wagons around three priorities and one of them has to be the family it's absolutely important that you understand the family the nuclear family and how it works second he says I want you to understand the centrality of worship and reverence of God in your heart and chapter two makes the point also you have to have you have to have proper education or you don't have a future now look at those three things for a minute chapter two I need to understand family I need to understand reverence and worship I need to understand how to educate or mentor the next group what we're gonna call discipleship look at what the enemy has attacked in our own nation family and the whole idea of what a family is is being rewritten godlessness remove worship from the center let's not even have Ten Commandments hanging in our state capitol because you know the sky will fall on us if we don't have a humanist manifesto in its place and the third one necessity of training the next generation you want to know where ever things being undone it's being undone in education that's where it's being undone and from the time you know we spent a couple of hundred years as a nation and somewhere in the 1960s and 60 and 61 a group of educators got together and said you know what the problem is there's way too much god there's way too much religious foundation what we need is to teach more how to think we got new math from that but we also got social sciences and the re-engineering of the American mind now that would be a tragic heavy terrible blow to you but you don't have a nation you have a God your primary place to serve Him isn't about which flag is over you it isn't about which system of government is over you you serve the Lord of all nations and so you don't get caught up in whether or not then we're not here to save America from stupidity we're here to save Americans from sinfulness and we just need to get back on our task and do what we're called to do now what's interesting is in the framework of the preparation to move from Sinai there's also this census they count them and in the beginning of the book way it gets the book numbers because they're count them now the Hebrew title for this book is it is actually a whole it's by middle Ternes it has nothing to do with numbers the Greek title is a riff Moy from which we get the word numbers and the Latin Vulgate when Jerome did his title he picked up the Greek title and called it numeri and we got from that numbers the point is that the book itself isn't primarily about the census but the census is an important part so here's what I want you to do on the cover sheet of numbers write numbers 1 and numbers 26 those are the two censuses that are the activity of the book that is that in numbers 1 it tells you how many started off from Mount Sinai and in numbers 26 it tells you how many got to the land of Moab and got to the land of Transjordan and we're ready getting ready to go in and what you'll find is that the first was taken in the second month of the second year after the Exodus and the second census was taken in the fortieth year after the Exodus and when you count those out you will find that they are all about the number of fighters that are possible in the army of Israel meaning 20 years of age and older people who can fight you'll see that in numbers 1 1 to 4 you'll see it in numbers 26 1 to 4 they're counting something specific the purpose of those 2 censuses is to tell you this God replaced a generation so that by the time Moses got to Transjordan at the end of the Book of Numbers he looked out on a crowd and they were a crowd of strangers but here's the weird part they had the faces of guys he knew from earlier how many of you thought it was strange how much the younger George Bush looked like the older one I want you to feel what Moses felt he looked out on the crowd and he saw faces that were familiar but they weren't their faces they were the faces of their fathers he outlived a whole generation and then he finally buried his brother the high priest and by the time they were ready to go over into the land Moses frankly wasn't wrestling with God to go one of the gentle things that God does in the aging process as he takes one friend after another until we're looking at a room that we love but a room of strangers the hard things that Moses fought together with with Aaron he buried with Aaron and Eleazar and the sons didn't have all the experiences their father they may have had his nose but they didn't have his experiences so in the first 10 chapters I want you to feel that there are a couple of things going on principles of working together the whole idea of tough choices and how to make tough choices this is all still parked at Sinai for 10 chapters in the beginning of the book and then they had to learn a defense plan without a defense plan there were going to be dead meat when the Midianites came upon them God hung them up in the desert kept them in the heat gave them certain problems like a Midianite or let's say a malachite attack why did the Amalekites attack well in part because God was trying to teach them how to do warfare so that when they got to the Canaanites war was something they understood it's something they practice for it's something they knew how to organize so the 10 chapters in the beginning of numbers literally says this is how the camp should march this is how you hear the call to war from the silver trumpet at the front gate of the tabernacle this is who marches first then second then third then fourth clockwise around beginning in the east going to the South going to the West going to the north the tribes organizing the camper to fall out in this order this was let me say it this way ten chapters of boot camp it was boot camp it was learning how to to fall out and fall in and take up camp and move camp they weren't doing it yet they were learning how to do it you get to chapter 11 and they go on the eleven day walk chapters 11 to 13 in numbers tell a story that's critical for your understanding after they had 10 chapters of getting ready and learning how to work together then in Chapter 11 they said all right wagons ho and everybody starts moving and then they get into a leadership problem they're not even far into the desert and already the people are whining and complaining about leadership all of a sudden they're starting to go we don't have water we all have what are we going to do and they start leaving the boundaries of Egypt passing by the gods that are on the border stations of Egypt and they start complaining and start getting the willies because now they're leaving the gods of Egypt and those are the only gods they ever knew for less the last 10 generations of slaves and now what are we going to do and Moses says you're going to follow God takes them up to cutter's Barnea and when they get up there all of a sudden they have to learn a lesson he dispatches in 13 and 14 of numbers he dispatches the spies and when he says them the spies and when he sends the spies they go up into the land and they come back now you know this story since you were a kid ten spies said no two spies said go right and you got Joshua and you got Caleb and what you have are these two that stand up and say this is what the Lord has said and the basis of their argument was not that the report of the ten was false but that the report of the ten was focused on the wrong thing because you can't see faith through fear and by the way you don't see fear through faith if God said go then not going is disobedience if God said go and we died then that's God's plan because that's what he told us to do but if God said go and we don't that's our plan and we're gonna pay for everything we do and so what happens is there's this awkward dance where they learn that God is for us when we are for his plan and that's a really important factor for a believer you know when you don't follow him he's not for you he's for you when you listen to him but when you decide to do the opposite listen if the goal means that I get the ball and go to that goal line I will score what I do if I turn around and run the other way I will not why because I'm not following the plan I'm going the other direction and so they have to learn now chapters 11 to 20 give you a snapshot in a series of camps but really what it is is Sinai to Mount Nebo it's mountain to mountain Mount Sinai to Mount Nebo and the point of the story is this there's a series of leadership and obedience struggles in that part of the story and it's because they missed an opportunity window somewhere in 13 I want you to write the words in chapter 13 opportunity window some of you are going to find that your opportunity window will appear in the next two years of your life knocking on your life will be your life's partner you will have the opportunity to step into that relationship and the enemy will make it tough to do something will come up a distraction of another opportunity a better looking opportunity something over here guys all I can tell you is every single time in my life God was calling me to do something the enemy was calling just as loud for me to do something else I'm gonna tell you everything is direction or distraction those are your only two options and what happens is in the direction of God the enemy sends a distracting voice and it's hard for you to figure out which he wants you to do buy don't buy Mary don't marry career not career in every opportunity that comes up in your life you're gonna find that there's an opportunity window in numbers 13 the opportunity window was well you've walked 11 days I'm ready to give you the land are you ready to follow me there answer no okay then you can have the forty year plan it's a lot harder a lot hotter a lot less enjoyable and during the plan from eleven to twenty here's what I want you to see the people will incessantly complain because God isn't delivering the promise why because the promise is being delivered in the land where he told him it was supposed to be there were perfectly good grapes growing where they were supposed to be but they weren't where they were supposed to be so all of a sudden they're going we don't have any grapes well of course they're up there where I told you to go do not expect the blessing of God when walking in the place God told you not to be and that in 11 to 20 will be leadership and obedience struggles based on the opportunity of wind window of 13 and 14 that's within the 11 to 20 story it's wrapping - the choice then the opportunity window then walking away from the choice and the 40 years that happens in replacement of the finish of the 11 day journey they could have been done right there they could have been done right there by the way you're gonna see the same pattern happen again it's called Matthew in Matthew's Gospel Jesus will come as a king and he will stand in front of Israel and he will offer them a kingdom and he will say to them you can have it and they will say no thank you and he said fine then you can go through the long program that will include another dispersion a terrible period of tribulation and when you finally are ready to bow then I'll come back and get you again it's pictured here already it's duplic it's a duplicate picture of something offered as a kingdom of blessing that doesn't get taken and then the hardship comes in tribulation comes because it doesn't get taken only to find out that when they finally get backed up to the wall and they cannot find a way out on their own that coming through the clouds is one who saves them okay so there's a pattern here now when you get to chapter 21 to 36 the third part of this book is the part lessons about deception one of the problems is that they get to the edge of the land they go instead of going up from the south they go all the way around the Dead Sea and when they come up alongside the Dead Sea they have to fight battle upon battle they get pretty good at defeating people God gets pretty good at showing up and knocking down the pins in front of them and here the bottom line is now they're stalled in the third box is preparation to enter the land in 21 to 36 but the preparation is mostly the interesting part about this story and you've been hearing me speak on these stories more recently if you've been part of the Sunday morning chrome the interesting part about this story is there a whole series of lessons of deception where the locals import false prophets and try to get the people's heart torn away the most effective attack against Israel was foreign women they were willing to stand up against false teaching but they weren't will to stand up with sexual purity so the age-old way the enemy takes you down shows up in 21 to 36 as the deception comes into their lives and all of a sudden there would await girls and end up falling before pagan gods they have to learn how to follow after God when it's so so hard for them to say no and that's going to be the big central part what's pretty important here is that since the number is all about numbers and since numbers is all about the number I guess I should say one of the things that we made you aware of earlier was that word Elif Elif is the word that is the problem in the book the word Elif may mean bands clans tribes families thousands when the translators decided to choose the Hebrew word and make it thousands what they did was created the huge number of people that you have that is millions upon millions here but internal to the text there's two problems number one it doesn't match the size of the tabernacle or the size of the camp in order to get the carcass of the animal outside the camp it's physically impossible to get those carcasses outside I land mass where there's three to five million people okay second the internal argument of the word Elif doesn't seem to hold up when it comes to the Book of Joshua when they're sending people up to I and they are routed at AI and we looked at that earlier my point is only this I can't pass by numbers and say that there's without saying that there's a problem with the number in numbers the problem is if I miss translate a word I can create a problem and then I have to put out a whole bunch of emails showing how God sent you know 46 railway cars of bread every day to feed them in the desert and what we're doing is we're creating our problem and then we're solving the problem you cannot take people to twelve wells at aleem and and get them from empty canteens to where all of them water in a single night you can't pump water out of the hand bucket that fast so there's a problem with the numbers as they are and I would just argue that that if you make the term in army units that is bands instead of thousands that the number of people that are passing through the wilderness is probably under a hundred thousand maybe closer to fifty thousand and by the way that's not an easy task one of the problems we have as Americans is we think if every if it's not a huge number it's not as cool but I would just remind you that when god I went when Jesus spoke and said Lazarus come forth everyone else remained dead that didn't make it less a miracle okay both if twenty people would have come out that have been more Resurrection than one yeah but you're missing the whole point God either has the ability to do it with fifty thousand or five million or fifty million or he doesn't but there's a geographical problem also in the text I've walked every bit of this you can't fit five million people in that desert they don't fit so while we're out there bloviating about how we're sure it should be thousands and not bands just know they can't actually physically stand on the piece of property you gave them okay look when you come to a conclusion in your biblical study that no longer works in the physical geography of the earth you might want to reconsider whether or not your translation is done properly is what I'm saying okay it's offensive to some people for me to suggest that some of this narrative has been mistranslated but I'm just going to tell you you don't have a solution to it if that's not the case all right so the Book of Numbers then takes me all the way up until the last chapter of numbers and in the last chapter of numbers we get into this really sticky situation about inheritance because they've been going on and on about inheritance and the problem is you have two different principles the principle that a woman should be turning over her inheritance to her husband when she marries and a problem of a collision with another principle which is that the land has already been specified as to which tribe goes into it and the book ends with this kind of weird statement but it's actually a very important statement the important statement is this one two principles of God's Word collide one with the other has to sort out which of the two principles is more important than the other so the more we sin the more we take principles of God's Word and put many of them into play and some of them are going to be more important than other principles and it's going to be wise leaders prayerful leaders God dependents spirit dependent leaders that are going to be able to sort out which of those is the more important principle one of the problems we have in the church today is that as we reduce our knowledge of the text and as we reduce our ability to manipulate and handle the scripture properly we find ourselves in a position where when principles collide we don't know what to do but numbers 36 closes with a very intimate account of how to deal with a collision of principle so the Book of Numbers then took me from the preparation of the census at Sinai to the 40 years of the journey when you go to Exodus you will not find but a few camps when you go to numbers that's where most of the camps are so the actual movement of the forty years is in numbers but Exodus and numbers were essentially to tell one story and that was from Goshen Egypt to the edge of the Jordan River coming into the Promised Land the story is in Exodus and numbers and the Civil Code is not only found in 20 21 22 23 of Exodus it's also found in numbers chapter 5 numbers chapter 6 numbers chapter 15 numbers chapters 28 29 and 36 chapters in numbers for chapters in Exodus 10 chapters are the civil code of law or how to get along on our camping trip for 40 years in the wilderness don't lose heart I'm coming back I went away to find the place Patel and I'm me I'm coming soon so leave the light on if you're ready

Channel: One Hour. One Book.

Views: 18,845

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Id: uJiC-Gv9t50

Length: 24min 59sec (1499 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2014