Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 2, 2023 | Numbers - The Point of Purity

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April 2, 2023 | Numbers - The Point of Purity · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to see all of you.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thankful for the ability to see all those kids coming through for Palm Sunday.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's just a wonderful reminder of sort of the next generation of people who love Jesus, and I like seeing that.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you have been following after Jesus for a while, there's probably a question that you've asked yourself before, which is, how can I have a closer relationship with God?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a question that has been asked since the beginning of time when Adam and Eve walked in the garden.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: They say, How can I have a closer relationship with God?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's the question that the random Israelite would have asked as he or she stares at the tabernacle with flames rising high above it, and the Levites who are guarding it, knowing that their sin and the holiness of God could not mix.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: How can I have a closer relationship with God?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth of the matter is that it's both relatively simple and very difficult to accomplish because it is based upon our abilities to and desire to use the Holy Spirit within us to live a holy life.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: You see, we're when we talk about the book of Numbers, which is where we're in this morning, verse chapters five and six, there's a challenge that we have, which is we recognize that we are people.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you're with us last week, we talked about worshiping a holy God.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we said, okay, well, we worship this holy God, and we recognize that we are unholy people, and that poses a problem.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that problem was bridged by Jesus Christ as he died on the cross for our sins and forgave us.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, we recognize that in our day-to-day lives, there is still often that question which comes to mind that is, then what how can I have a closer relationship with God?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because he still feels so far away at times.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're looking at this morning.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll give you a, I wouldn't say a warning, but like a heads up.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you read chapter 5 of Numbers?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Good on you, by the way.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you did, you know what we're about to talk about, and it's a little odd.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Chapters five and six, God is going to give the Israelites four commands.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: These four commands are joined together by the beginning that says either God instructed Moses or God spoke to Moses.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then Moses goes on and shares this information.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And these four things in chapters five and six, they might seem like sort of random commands.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're not.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: What God is doing is we are in the very final stages of preparation before the whole camp moves up from the base of Mount Sinai and starts heading towards the promised land.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so these are kind of the like, do you have everything packed sort of announcements that God is giving to them?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to look at these four things that God is going to remind them of, remind the Israelites, and see how we might have a closer relationship with God if we can follow the principles of them as well.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if you will, go to go with me to Numbers chapter 5, and we'll begin in verse 1.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is the shortest one, and then we'll kind of get longer from here.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord instructed Moses, command the Israelites to send away anyone from the camp who is afflicted with a skin disease, anyone who has a discharge, or anyone who is defiled because of a corpse.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Send away both male or female, send them outside the camp, so that they will not defile their camps where I dwell among them.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites did this, sending them outside the camp.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites did as the Lord instructed Moses.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, chapters five and six, like I said, kind of at a first glance, have this grab bag of instructions.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: But each one of them is necessary for understanding what it is like for us to live a holy life.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because the point that I'm going to try and bring home this morning is that the way that you have a closer relationship with God now is by living a holy life in the desert.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Living a holy life until God calls us home to the promised land.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: That is what it means to have a closer relationship with Him.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And these sort of rules for holy life that I'm going to give you, the first one has to do with this idea of being clean and unclean.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: If that's unfamiliar to you, it's pretty frequent language in the Old Testament.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked about it a lot back in Leviticus.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, the whole thing was about being clean and unclean.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: But essentially what it's talking about is says that there are things, God is clean in the sense that he is ritually pure.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing evil, there is nothing bad, there is nothing impure about God or the things around God.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then you look at the Israelite camp and you say, well, there's a lot of stuff that's not good there.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of things that God has said that in order to protect his people, they need to stay away from so that they can have this close relationship.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And anything that reminds us of the fallen world that we live in, the sinful world, those things are unclean.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: So for instance, here there are three things listed.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you have skin diseases, if you have discharges, which kind of gross, but anyhow, and then if you touch a dead body, which is also gross.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So just gross stuff.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do any of these things, though there's a much longer list back in Leviticus, all of those things are stuff that doesn't belong in heaven.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Dead bodies don't belong in heaven.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Disease doesn't belong in heaven.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Discharge does not belong in heaven.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so what's happening is already God is trying to transform, and this is going to become very important later on.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're studying for the test, the Israelites are trying to emulate what God's ultimate kingdom is going to look like.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing that belongs in the camp is something that is unclean.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Everything unclean must be sent out.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, well, where do they go?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not if you were unclean, you just were like kicked out forever.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: But you would camp outside of the gathering of Israel, and then you would go through this process, which Leviticus describes for sort of cleaning yourself, and then you would come back and you'd join everyone else.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: This though presents what I would say the first and might be the hardest step in living a holy life for God because it's the one that really begins the whole process.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's that everything unclean must be removed from the camp.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: You say, well, what is the camp?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: The camp is your life.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: The camp is my life.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we don't follow the same rules as the Old Testament for what is clean and unclean.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: I would still recommend that you don't go around touching dead bodies, right?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, what is clean and unclean really just becomes what does God call sin?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: What does God call sin, and what are the sinful things that we have allowed into our camp?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: The first step in living this holy life and drawing closer to God is removing anything that is unclean from our lives.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you look at this, the hard part is there's no one size fits all, right?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: For every single one of you and for me, there's a different, convicting list of statements that need to be enacted in order for me to really purge my camp of unclean things.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is for you.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: It could be addiction, it could be an affair, could be TV shows or movies that you watch that are filled with lust.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a heart of gossip, it could be that you love to lie, it could be a schedule that is too busy to be able to consistently worship, it could be that you steal chapstick every time you go through the Walmart checkout line, right?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, that is your thing or thing.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the things which you must focus on.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: The first step in answering the question of how do we draw closer to the Lord our God as we live a holy life, and that and the first way we do that is by removing everything unclean from our camp.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: As we move on into verse 6, excuse me, verse 5, uh we'll begin, we see the second thing that God has instructed the Israelites to do.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord spoke to Moses, there it is again, tell the Israelites, when a man or woman commits any sin against another, that person acts unfaithfully toward the Lord and is guilty.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: The person is to confess the sin they have committed, he is to pay full compensation, add a fifth of its value to it, and give it to the individual he has wronged.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: But if that individual has no relative to receive compensation, the compensation goes to the Lord for the priest, along with the atonement ram, by which the priest will make atonement for the guilty person.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Every holy contribution the Israelites present to the priest will be his.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Each one's holy contribution is his to give.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: What each one gives to the priest will be his.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: The most important part of this section comes at the very beginning.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: God says, Tell the Israelites, when somebody sins against somebody else, that person acts unfaithfully toward the Lord and is guilty.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is the really transforming element of this passage is that when somebody sins against somebody else, and in this case, what they're normally looking at is they've stolen something, they've wronged them, they've harmed their person or their property in some way, thus the like 20% compensation.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless, somebody who has broken a relationship, the way that they are supposed to think about it is not that they have hurt that person, but that they have actually wronged God.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is a very, very deep understanding to say that when we sin against other people, we are now sinning against God Himself.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: These individuals have taken an oath, they've broken that oath.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so what does God say to do?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's three steps.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is they are supposed to announce it publicly, right?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that uh per one of the people in that group would be the one that they had wronged.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just go like your best friend and be like, publicly, I'm saying that I'm wrong.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: The point is that you would go to a group of people and you would admit that you were at fault, that you were the guilty party, you were the offender, and the offended one, the victim, is in that group.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Second, you would make right by it and go above and beyond.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't just say, okay, I said I was wrong.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Are we good now?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: But you do what you can.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, God gives a specific amount.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: He says, if you stole a donkey, I don't know how you give 20% of a donkey, if you stole a hundred shekels from them, you give them 120 shekels back.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: You go above and beyond what was called for to make this relationship right.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then, only then, is when you go to the Lord and you ask for forgiveness for what has been done.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: This reminds us a lot of something that Jesus says in Matthew 5.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are offering your gift on the altar, and there you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: First go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: What's really amazing about this passage, too, is that there are there are a lot of places in the Bible where we talk about and are identifying with those who have been wronged.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: We are the victim.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: We are the ones who have been persecuted against, we are the ones who have had injustice done to them, we are the ones who are afflicted, so on and so forth.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And here is a passage directed specifically towards the offender, the one who is guilty, the one who has done a wrong to another.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that Christians do that, I'm sure, right?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: But God says, if you are the one who has done this, you should have a very, very heavy weight placed upon this sin because you have not just wronged a friend or a stranger.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: You have wronged God Himself.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So God says you go through this process, and that process is important.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we might say, well, why, God, would you not just, I mean, a second ago we said, anybody who was unclean, we just boop, bob them out of the camp until they come back in.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is there not some sort of process like that?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think God's heart is seen here, right?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: God says, No, my desire is that those who have a break in the relationship that it would be restored.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it cannot be restored by simply washing themselves as somebody who touched a dead body would do.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: But no, this is something that can only be healed in the relationship.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that is when the scab and then the scar and then the resolution comes.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: This reminds us of our second holy life rule, which is that holy relationships are how we draw closer to God.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sins against others become sins against God.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: We can't put them in a separate box.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: The relationships that you have with other people in your life, the quality of those relationships impacts the quality of your relationship with God.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, well, I don't know about that.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't really follow.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what I'm saying is not that you can't have a good relationship with God if everybody around you is difficult.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: But remember what we're looking at here.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: The one who is the offender is going to have a harder time connecting with God and developing a close relationship with them if they are refusing to admit guilt, refusing to accept the fact that they were wrong and make a restitution for it.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're not talking about the victim.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about the victimizer, which we have all been in various situations.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: To that person and to those of us, we say there are relationships in our life that we have harmed, that we have hurt, and we must go and we must make them right.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean for you?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: For some of you, it's an apology, but I think you would be surprised at what an admission of guilt would look like in a relationship that you thought was sort of past the brink.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: What it would look like to go to somebody that you don't have a good relationship with because of a fight, because of something that they think you've done, and to just say, I was wrong.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And how that weight that is lifted off of your shoulders because of that and that resolution, you're going to realize how much closer you are now to God.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: The second holy life rule to draw closer to God, we must have holy relationships is true no matter the person on the other side of that complaint as well.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is important is that we admit that we were wrong.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that through those relationships, we draw closer to God and appreciate the forgiveness that He provides through Jesus.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Third, we move on now to the one that uh let's just say, if you read chapter 5 ahead of time, you probably had questions for me about.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is how it begins, and then I'll explain some.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord spoke to Moses, speak to the Israelites and tell them if any man's wife goes astray, is unfaithful to him, and sleeps with another, but it is concealed from her husband, and she is undetected, even though she has defiled herself, since there is no witness against her, and she wasn't caught in the act, and if a feeling of jealousy comes over the husband, and he becomes jealous because of his wife who has defiled herself, or if a feeling of jealousy comes over him and becomes jealous of her, though she has not defiled herself, then the man is to bring his wife to the priest.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: That was one sentence, in case you didn't know.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what's going on.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's a ritual that's being presented here in basically the rest of chapter five.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: That ritual has to do with two situations.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: The first situation is a woman, a wife, who sins against her husband, and therefore the Lord, by committing adultery, but there's no witnesses.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: If there were witnesses, this is sort of a different flow chart, okay?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: But there's no witnesses, and so we are not able to make judgment according to the Mosaic law, because it is not fair to call somebody guilty based upon the accusation without witnesses.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's one case.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: The other case is of a wife who has not had an affair and she is completely innocent, but her husband is very jealous.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so he goes to the priest and he's like, I'm pretty sure, you know.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so this what happens is this awkward couple, right, comes together and they go before the priest, and then there's this sort of ritual that they go through, which includes the priest administering an oath and then writing this oath on a on a scroll, and then this water sort of like washes the uh the ink off of the scroll into this water, and then the woman drinks the water, and then that basically determines the guilt.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, what is going on?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is Monty Python, does the witch float kind of stuff.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: So here's actually what you need to know.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna talk a lot more about this in the podcast because it's really, really interesting.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you might be surprised, the details of this story do not matter for the lesson.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: What is happening here is you have two situations where only God knows the answer.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: You have two situations where if the woman has successfully hid her affair from her husband, and then you have the one, the husband who is jealous and her his wife is uh innocent, only God knows the answer to that question so that justice may be applied.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so what happens and should be seen here is that they are bringing a situation to God that only God can administer justice for.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a whole lot, there's a whole nother conversation into this about how that is not how anybody else in the ancient world handled justice, especially against women, that they were going to be able to be harmed or something like that.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: There was a practice where if this same thing was suspected in another Middle Eastern area, that they would, um, the woman would put her hand in boiling water, and if she was hurt, then she was innocent, and if she wasn't hurt, then she was guilty.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or excuse me.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I messed that up.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: If she wasn't hurt by the boiling water, she was innocent.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: If she was hurt, she was right, she was guilty.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're like, well, I have a feeling that the end result of most of those cases was that the woman seemed pretty guilty, right?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: So what we have here, you might look at these and want to connect it in the same way and say, well, that that's it seems so antiquated.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Really, what it is, is God saying, I'm going to get into the like nooks and crannies of life in the Israelites and make sure that the justice of my kingdom is being done in a way where everybody who is guilty is actually guilty.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so what that does to us is it reminds us that God is the ultimate judge of your life.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter what happened or who was saying what when they came before the priest.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: The priest is acting sort of as the conduit for God's judgment there.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you might say, well, hey Connor, I'm not really sure how what does it mean to have a closer relationship with God is answered by God is the ultimate judge of your life.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great question.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I mean: there is no lie in your life that God does not know the truth of.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: There is no face or mask that you put on for the world around that God does not see through.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing in your life, including everything in your heart, that God does not know.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: He knows all.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, and that should be a sobering thought for some of us.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then at the same time, though, there are some of us who have lived this life of generosity and mercy and gratitude in a way that we weren't seeking to be known or receive recommendation by anybody else.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And God sees that too.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: He sees the prayers that you give for those who you've never met before.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: How you're on your hands and knees praying for the church, for the lost.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: How you are generous, how you are kind.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you follow what Jesus says, that you make sure that your right hand does not know what your left hand is doing.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you feel lost there, and you say, Well, Lord, it seems like I'm doing all of these things for your kingdom, and in my worst moments, I wonder if it's ever worth it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because God is the kind of God that knows all, you and your secret things that you have done for him for the good will be made known.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: That should be a comfort for you.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, based upon the fact that we say that God is the ultimate judge of our lives, what that does to your personal relationship with him is it says there is at least one being in this world where there is no gap in our relationship.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's complete trust.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing that is hidden and, in fact, that is liberating in the way that I might relate to God.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: When I go to him with my prayers, he says, I already know.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear what you're about to say, because that's kind of part of the deal.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I already know what you're gonna say.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: How comforting is it that we have a God because He is a righteous judge, because He knows all, that we can be completely open, completely honest, and understand that He accepts that.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: To me, that leads to a closer relationship with Him because I know I can't hide anything, and therefore I don't need to hide anything from Him.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Living a holy life, drawing closer to God, is remembering that there is a holy judgment, that He is the one that at the end of all days, at that point, it is only facts that are presented.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's no good argument that is going to sway the king of the universe in his judgment.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: That helps us draw closer to him.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth and finally, and this actually takes up the entirety of chapter six, though we're only going to look at a small section, we get our last holy life rule.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord instructed Moses, speak to the Israelites and tell them when a man or woman makes a special vow, a Nazarite vow, to consecrate himself to the Lord.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: So a Nazarite is somebody who takes a specific and voluntary commitment to go above and beyond all of the rules in the Mosaic covenant.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: The three things that define their life are going to be that they do not drink or eat anything from the vine, so anything to do with grapes.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: They are not going to cut their hair, and they are not going to get close at all to a dead body.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're already not supposed to touch one in the Mosaic law.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: But a Nazirite, if they say, I'm going to do this, what that means is even if their mother, father, sibling dies, they can't go to the funeral because that is too close to a dead body.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now you might say, all of that seems pretty intense.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: What's the purpose?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the purpose is that it's a voluntary commitment to God, like I said, to go above and beyond, so that even above the Israelites who are supposed to be set apart from everybody else in the world, you are then set apart from the normal Israelite.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: And your duty, part of your job, is that it says you are consecrated.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: You are set apart for special service to the Lord.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: There are a couple people in the Bible who we know were Nazarites and had taken at least part of this vow.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: The first would be Samson, though he's not the best example because he broke all three of the rules, but nevertheless.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: You have Samuel, who was a contemporary of Samson.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Samuel was the advisor to King Saul and the one who anointed King David.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have uh John the Baptist.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist had taken the Nazarite vow.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why he had crazy long hair, right?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is because he was holding to this.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: So the Nazarites are like the people in your elementary school class who reminded the teacher that you had a quiz that day.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: They are the kind of people who are like, I know that we've got all of this to do, and I would love it if we had a little bit more.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: They are the ones that I think you could make a strong argument for were the most holy people in the camp.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: They had not only lived up to the Mosaic Law, at least for a time, or at the, I think maybe it's to say they cared the most about following the Mosaic Law because they recognized that their service to the Lord was predicated upon following it line by line.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got these Nazarites, okay?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: But then look at this next part here, a little bit down, beginning in verse 13.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to what has to happen.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is the law of the Nazarite.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: On the day of his time of consecration is completed.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: So when the vow is finished, he is to be brought to the entrance of the tent of meeting.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's the tabernacle.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: He is to present an offering to the Lord of one unblemished year old male lamb as a burnt offering, one unblemished year old female lamb as a sin offering, one unblemished ram as a fellowship offering, along with their grain offerings and drink offerings, a basket of unleavened cakes made from fine flour mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers coated with oil.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: The priest is to present these before the Lord and sacrifice the Nazarite's sin offering and burnt offering.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: That is a lot of offerings, right?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: That is basically the book of Leviticus that they are now presenting to the Lord.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what's so interesting: is that if you were to guess that there is anybody in the Israelite camp who would probably be able to say, I think I'm good not doing a sacrifice today, it would be the Nazarite, the individual who is so dedicated to God's purposes that they are seen as being consecrated and set apart even from the Israelites, okay?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then here they go before the priest because even they have to present a sin offering.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Even they are ones, despite their work and their effort, they have still fallen short of God's commands.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: They are still not able to enter into the holy place because they are sinful people.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: This gives us our fourth and final rule for this morning, which is that our best efforts still fall short of God's standards.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you'd say, okay, again, Connor, not the most uplifting rule you could give us and how we can draw closer to God.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, nay.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is encouraging, and here's why.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is liberating not only to know that God knows everything I could possibly tell him, not only that he knows everything in the depths of my heart, but that my relationship with him at a foundational level is not based upon how hard I try.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because if it was based upon how hard I try, I'd be sunk.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: The hard thing, though, is that realizing that no amount of hard work is going to make your relationship with God a holy one, that is a very hard truth for some people to accept.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it is normally hardest for the individuals who have not had that many difficult things happen to them in life.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: The ones where they normally have gotten most of the things that they have wanted when they wanted them.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: They have been very successful in their jobs or in their personal lives or what have you.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And they are normally, not always, the ones who think that they could go to God with a really good resume and squeak in.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, there's no going to God and being like, from 2012 to 2015, I was the VP of holiness in my life.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And God's gonna go, oh, you know what?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, we've been waiting for you.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Our best efforts still fall short of God's standards.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, because of what I'm about to say too, when it comes to Jesus, we are then able to engage in this life with God, this question of how can I have a close relationship with him, knowing that it is not based upon us, it is based upon him, and that is the comforting part.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's no amount of your hard work that lets you scale the walls of heaven.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, God's kingdom is filled with a lot of very unholy people who said they couldn't have a relationship with him without Jesus.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: God's kingdom is not filled with many people who said they didn't need Jesus and got in anyway.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how it works.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this week, um, this Sunday, obviously it's Palm Sunday, where we celebrate that 2,000 years ago Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, fulfilling prophecy, where the people of the town, awaiting his arrival, laid down palm branches and said, Hosanna, this is the king of Israel.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then less than a week later, he was crucified as a criminal.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: What God did on the cross and what we celebrate at Easter a week from now, that was a complete change in the relationship that God was able to have with his people.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing has been the same ever since.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, that's something that even the Israelites in numbers were not aware of yet.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they were aware of the promises of Abraham, that from his seed the world would be blessed.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they still had to believe by faith in the promises of God, but they did not know about the Messiah yet.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: That is our privilege.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, our relationship with God, and this is kind of where we separate, our relationship with God is different than the one that they had in Numbers.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: The similarity is that we are not in the promised land yet.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: The similarity is that we are not in heaven, they were not in the promised land, and so there's still greater things to look forward to.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that's the same is that we are all going through the desert.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: We are all walking through this life that is difficult and is prone to all of those unclean things, disease, death, famine.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: We walk through a life that is filled with pain and hardship, we walk through a life filled with broken relationships, we walk through a life filled with all of the things that make it so hard to live a holy life.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the difference is that when Jesus died on the cross, that made our relationship with God a holy relationship.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: If we trust in Jesus as our Savior.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you believe in that, you are seen as righteous, not because of your hard work, but because of your faith.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: You are seen as holy, not because you are holy, but because Jesus was holy.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: You are seen as clean, not because you are clean, but because Jesus was clean.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was the one who did not deserve the punishment that he took on the cross.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, we have this relationship now that is based upon God's grace and mercy to us.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yet at the same time, and the thing that I want to drive home to you this morning, though, is you can still have a closer relationship with God than you do right now, based upon your desire to walk a holy road.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you might say, well, that that seems to contradict what you're saying.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: As somebody at the end of the first service said to me, they said, What I took away from your message was, heaven is great, but what about right now?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, that's a really good summary of what I'm trying to say.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Probably should have had you up here.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: My point is that there is so much to be gained in your present relationship with God.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you simply view Jesus as a get out of jail free card and you're just biding your time until heaven comes, you are missing out on the opportunity to have a close relationship with God.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: And for some of you, you know what I'm talking about because that's what it feels like.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I'm saying here is not that you get into the gates of heaven by being holy, or by your own hard work, rather, in being holy.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: But while we're walking through the desert, in the time until we get to be with God fully, what we are trying to do is imitate heaven.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let me show you what I'm talking about in the final passage this morning.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: And as I read this from the book of Revelation, I want you to think about all the things that we've been talking about over the last couple weeks, the words and phrases, and how similar it sounds to what heaven is going to be like.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Revelation 21, verses 3 through 4, and then also verse 27.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Then I heard a loud voice from the throne Look, God's dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and will be their God.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Death will be no more, grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing unclean will ever enter it, heaven, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those written in the Lamb's Book of Life, in Jesus' book of life.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds quite a bit like what we've been talking about.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: God says, I'm gonna dwell with my people.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be with them.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: They will be my people, and I will be their God.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: And in so doing, I'm gonna give a list of sort of rules and commands, because we are supposed to be set apart from the world around us.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And where are those rules and commands coming from?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're supposed to imitate what heaven is gonna look like.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: You do this in your own homes in a different way.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: You love the beach.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's probably some room in your house that has a jar of shells and a photo of a framed lighthouse or something like that.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're a big fan of the mountains or the cabin, I'm sure you've got a pillow somewhere that says gone fishing with a trout that is bigger than you have ever caught.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably on your phone or your laptop got pictures of someone or something that you would like to be close to at that moment or be reminded of.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: We put all over our lives things that remind us and draw us back to beautiful things, comforting things, wonderful things.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's what our life right now is supposed to look like.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is supposed to, in the way that we are doing it, remind us of what heaven is going to be like.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because of that, that is why I think I am able to say that your relationship with God is based upon faith and grace alone.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, if you want to have a closer relationship with him now, you make your life and you mold your life to look a little bit more like heaven.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: That is how you might draw closer to him.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: How do we have a closer relationship with God by living a holy life in the desert?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: When it's time to get to the promised land, when God calls you home, whenever that time is, you are no longer going to have to wonder about what it's like to have a closer relationship with God or yearn for those things because you are with Him fully.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Unmitigated access to the King of the universe.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: You get that because of Jesus.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Until that time, though, and until God calls us home, we are supposed to live a holy life.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it is hard because living a holy life is difficult.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: But the final thing I'd leave you with, though, is that if you would like to have a closer relationship with God, you have everything that you need already to accomplish that.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because you have the Holy Spirit within you.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: God has given every believer the Holy Spirit, which means you are empowered.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: You are given the strength to be able to do all of the things that we have talked about, to remove sin from your life, to have healthy relationships, right?
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: To understand what it means to have this true relationship with God.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: But there are some of us who have just not accessed that, who have not tried to live and walk with the Spirit, and instead we have just said, I'm just going to wait until the end.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the sad thing is that we fail to live up to the things that God has called us to do.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: We fail to make an impact for his kingdom when we refuse to walk by the Spirit.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: Walk by the Spirit, make an impact for his kingdom, and have a closer relationship with God.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: That is available to you now, today, because of his mercy.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come before you and recognize that God, you are good and far better to us than we deserve.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And God, as we look to you, we recognize how far we have fallen short.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: For Lord, you are holy and we are not.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: But God, by the blood of your Son, Jesus Christ, we have been made clean.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: We have been made holy.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we are counted as righteous.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: And for that, Lord, we thank you.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we will thank you until the end of our days for something that we cannot even comprehend.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: But God, I also ask that you would help us to have a closer relationship with you.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that God, by the power of your spirit, that you would convict us and you would reveal to us the power that has been resting within us all of this time to be able to accomplish the things that you have called us to do.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, not that we can get into your gates by hard work, but Lord, that we might be with you even now because we have decided to live a holy life based upon the cross of Jesus Christ.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's in his name we pray.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'd invite you now to take the elements for the Lord's table.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say also that this week, Holy Week, is a is a really special week to celebrate this kind of thing because it is on Thursday night of this week when Jesus had the Last Supper with His disciples, later on that evening being arrested, then going through an unfair trial, and then being crucified.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then three days later raising again.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: But at that last supper, Jesus was telling his disciples what was to come and what we would base the foundation of our faith on until he returned, which is his body and his blood.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if you believe in the body and blood of Jesus, I would invite you to take communion with us.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, for I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, This is my body, which is for you.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way also, he took the cup after supper and said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: We also proclaim your life, Lord.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we are thankful for the gift of the cross that we did not deserve and do not deserve and will not deserve.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yet you gave it to us freely because you desire, Lord, to have that closer relationship.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: God, thank you for the gift of salvation that is found on the cross.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you for the life that is found through the resurrection.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: And God, as we go out this week, might we think about those things more often than we normally do?
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: And God, might we also think about what it would look like to be empowered by the Spirit to live the kind of life, Lord, that you have called us to, so that we might do much for your kingdom and have that closer fellowship with you while we are all wandering in the desert and until we get to be home with you completely.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also invite you to invite somebody to our Easter services this week.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: There are Saturday and Sunday.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can find those times online.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.