Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / February 8th, 2015 | Route 66 - Numbers

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February 8th, 2015 | Route 66 - Numbers · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:09
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to those of you at the Mulvain building, at the College Avenue building, or listening elsewhere.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: I missed that uh that bumper last week.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Um I was I I I was at a delightful little church called Christchurch, Somerset West, suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, and I gave the Leviticus message that I'd given here two weeks ago.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: But no bumper video, because they're not doing Route 66, you're just doing that one.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: So I get up and and and forgot for a moment that it was a Church of England, so you need to be a little bit more sedate.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: So um, but but had a great time, and but it's wonderful to be back.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: And I think the best way uh to begin uh this message is to offend a number of you by sharing with you uh some Marine Corps slogans, bumper stickers, and posters.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
1:11
SPEAKER_00: Uh Marine Corps when it absolutely positively has to be destroyed overnight.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: Or this poster, uh this bumper sticker, it's God's job to judge the terrorists, it's our mission to arrange the meeting.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: Um hold your applause, they get worse.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: Question to a marine sniper: what do you feel when you shoot a terrorist?
1:37
SPEAKER_00: A slight recoil.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: USMC providing the enemies of America an opportunity to die for their country since 1775.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh and Ronald Reagan's famous quote: some people spent an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: The Marines don't have that problem.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: And then somebody shared with me uh uh the joke or the story about the um drill sergeant, Marine Corps drill sergeant, who just super chewed out one of his cadets.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: Just blasted him.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: And as he was walking away, uh the drill sergeant said, I guess when you're that when you die, you'll come back and dance on my grave.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: And the cadet said, Not not a chance, sir.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: No, sir, I would never do that, sir.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: I promised myself that when I finally got out of the army, I would never stand in another line.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, listen, after studying the fourth book of the Bible, and if you're visiting with us this morning, uh the we are doing a series called Root 66, because there are 66 books in the Bible, and we have done Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: This morning we come to the book of Numbers, and after having a little extra time, even to study the book of numbers, I uh I have concluded that the people who understand this book the best might be people who have served in the military, which is why I shared with you uh those Marine Corps slogans.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Now I myself have not.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm uh at uh Wheaton College, I was in ROTC, Reserve Officer Training Corps, for two years and was on the rifle team uh and got to be a platoon sergeant, but then then stopped.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: And so I never had, like most of you, had any experience in the military.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: But I find that the book of numbers is is is is is written to a people who, God says, need to think of themselves with the kind of order, uh, discipline, rank, authority, chain of command that you and I think of as appropriate to the military.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk to you about that this morning.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: For me, uh the theme of the book of Numbers is in the wilderness, we are fickle, but God remains faithful.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: Would you recite that with me for a second?
4:01
SPEAKER_00: That's significant.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: In the wilderness, we are fickle, but God remains faithful.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: Numbers is uh the title comes from a Greek word uh from which we get arithmetic.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: But the actual, if you open a Hebrew Bible, the title of the book is uh Bimidbar, which is in the wilderness.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: That's that's the title of the book.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: And this book uh is all about the wilderness, uses the term almost 50 times out of the 300 in the Bible.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: And and so I think the theme of this book is in the wilderness, we're fickle, but God remains faithful.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: Now, I uh some of you understand that my purpose in this series is not to do book surveys.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: Book survey uh is what you do in Bible college, maybe seminary, where you cover the stories in a book and the outline of the book and so forth.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: That's sort of what I've done for you on the first side of the study sheet.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: That's a survey.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: But but it seems to me that what God wants us to do in a church setting is to present uh an expository message.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: That is a sermon based upon the central theme and the ideas of the book, a message from God to each of us that we can take home and apply to our lives.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: And and so that's this is the theme, the single theme that I think pertains.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: Here's the problem I have.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: As I think about presenting a book to you, I realize that many of you have not had the opportunity in the last week or two to read through the book of Numbers.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: And some of you are pretty new to the whole uh Bible thing anyway, and so I want to take a few minutes real quickly here and do a survey.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: That is to sort of give you the background, the you know, set the scene and the setting of numbers in time and space.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and if you know all this stuff, it won't last long.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: The setting goes like this it's it's been a year uh since uh the Exodus happened.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: That is uh the great defining event on the Jewish calendar, in which in 1446 BC, give or take, uh Israel was freed from the land of Egypt where they had served 430 years in bondage, okay?
6:12
SPEAKER_00: And so they are set free and they come southwest across the Red Sea.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: This is all in the book of Exodus, two books ago, and they cross over into the wilderness of Sinai.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Now, because there are two million of them, that's a lot of people, it's an estimate, uh, it took them two months to get down to Mount Sinai, just that distance there.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: And there at the that's the traditional site and possibly the real site of Mount Sinai, there in the Sinai Peninsula.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: So it takes them a couple of months to get to Mount Sinai, and there, and this is still in the book of Exodus, the glory of God comes down on the holy mountain.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: And and Moses goes up into the cloud, and God hands him uh the two tablets, the decalogue, the tablets of the law, the Ten Commandments, and then dictates to him uh the rest of the laws.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: And so Moses writes those down.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: But God says, amazingly enough during this time, I want to travel with the people of Israel.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: I want to come down and actually travel with them so that I can bless them, and that means you need to build me a special place, a tent of meeting, a tabernacle.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: There'll be a most holy place, a holy of holies, a small little room there.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Put the Ark of the Covenant in there with the Ten Commandments, Aaron's rod, and so forth, and I'll dwell there in my glory.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: And then a holy place, which you'll be signified, and then an outer court, and that's where the bronze altar will be, and you'll you'll you'll do offerings and I'll forgive you for for your sins and so forth.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: We talked about that uh two weeks ago, book of Leviticus.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: And God said, I need to give you instructions.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: Here's how you build this.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: And so for the next 10 months of the first year upon coming out of Israel, uh, out of Egypt, they built the tabernacle.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
7:56
SPEAKER_00: And as they approached the first year anniversary, they had they completed it.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: And God said, Okay, I want you to dedicate this on New Year's Day.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm what we would call New Year's Day on the first day of the first month of the second year after they after you've come out of the land of Egypt.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: And so they did.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: They have a dedication ceremony, and and we're at the end of the book of Exodus now.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: And at that point, the glory of the Lord, we call it the Shekinah, came down and filled the tabernacle, the most holy place.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: It's just a remarkable event.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: And so that's the end of the last chapter of the book of Exodus, and you come to the book of Leviticus, and God says, now here's what you have to do to stay holy and have your sins forgiven so that so that so that you can keep me with you, and so forth.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: And and that brings us to the book of Numbers.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: And we're one year in, okay?
8:50
SPEAKER_00: And and the story of the book of Numbers, and I'll summarize this in a survey very quickly, uh is at the bottom.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: Take a look at the, well, at the top, the key verse, by the way, is a verse that every parent here should handcuff your children to the bed until they memorize this.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Say it with me.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: Be sure your sins will find you out.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: Need to say that with a little more venom and vigor.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: Keyword wilderness.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh the outline at the bottom, uh, we now get to the first ten chapters of the book of Numbers, all right?
9:25
SPEAKER_00: And in the first 10 chapters, God says, you guys are a mess.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: There's two million of you.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: You're all spread around.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna order you up.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be a Marine Corps sergeant now, and I need you to get in order.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: And so God blesses them.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: He says, I want you to count yourselves, I want you to register yourself, I want you to arrange yourselves in a military discipline, I want you to camp in a certain way.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: I want the 12 tribes arranged around my tabernacle, 3, 3, 3, 3.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: That's chapters 1 through 10, okay, as we're doing this survey.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: We're going quickly.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: And then in chapters 10, 11, and 12, he says, okay, we've done this.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: And and on the it took them about two months, okay?
10:04
SPEAKER_00: And on the on my birthday, my birthday happens to be February 20th, if they used today's calendar, which they didn't, it'd be on my birthday.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: That God said, Okay, it's time to move.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: In the second year, second month, 20th of the month, the cloud was lifted from over the tabernacle.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: So the cloud of God's presence, remember, cloud during the day, fire at night, that cloud lifts, which means it's time to go.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: And Moses would yell out, uh, you know, uh, Arise, O Lord, and let your, you know, and it's victory over the enemies.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: Because the whole thing is like a military precision, military order type thing.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: And they'd start marching.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Moses, Aaron, the priests, the Levites, and all of the people.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
10:43
SPEAKER_00: So they set out and they head north toward Kadesh, which is the s, which is just at the south of the promised land, okay?
10:51
SPEAKER_00: That's the border.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: So they set out and they head north toward Kadesh.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: And on that first leg of the journey from Sinai to Kadesh, it's not a pretty sight.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites whine and complain about everything.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: They complain because it's too hot.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: They whine because they don't like the menu, which is free food provided by God called manna from heaven.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: And they don't like it, they don't like the fact there's no meat and so forth.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: But they finally get to Kadesh.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: And here at Kadesh is the turning point of the story and the turning point of the book of Numbers.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: The Lord said to Moses, chapter 13, 1 and 2, I want you to send men, one from each tribe, to scout out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: And so he picks 12 men.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: These 12 men go, they spend 40 days, and they come back, and ten of them gasp.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: We can't go up against this people because they're stronger than we are.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: The land of ours its inhabitants.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: They're giants, we're like grasshoppers, we're gonna be dead, they'll squash us.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: And two of the spies said, No, no, no, you guys, you remember God's gonna give it to us.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: You're crazy.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: We have God on our side.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: By the way, who were those two spies?
12:01
SPEAKER_00: CJ, C stands for?
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Caleb and Joshua.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: And so they go, come on.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: But the people are swayed by whom?
12:10
SPEAKER_00: People are swayed by the ten.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: And so the people of Israel unanimously go, we quit, we're not going up in there, uh, we're done.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: And so God said, Okay, you are.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: You are done.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: He says in 14, 28 through 32, as surely as I live, I'm gonna do to you.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: This is a Holman Christian standard, I will do to you exactly as I heard you say.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: Your corpses will fall in this wilderness.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: All of you, 20 years old or more, because you've complained about me, I swear that none of you will enter the land I promise to settle you in except Caleb and Joshua.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna bring your children, whom you said would become plunder of the giants, into the land you rejected, and they will enjoy it.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: But as for you, your corpses will fall in the wilderness.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what happened.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: It's exactly what happened.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: This is point three on your outline at the bottom.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: For the next 40 years, God leads them here and there through the wilderness, but never up towards the promised land, and they that whole older generation dies off.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: And during the 40 years, they are a fickle people.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're obedient, more often than not, they're whining and complaining and rebellious.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: But finally, and this is point four on the outline, after 40 years, starting in chapter 20, God leads them in a march toward the promised land.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: He takes them up and around south and then east, and then he camps them on what are called the plains of Moab, overlooking the Dead Sea and the Jordan.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: They can look over and see the city of Jericho, and he says, You hang out here, and when it's time to cross, I'll let you know.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: And it's at that point you have in the last uh dozen chapters of Numbers, you have some of the amazing stories of a guy named Balaam.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: Remember the talking donkey?
13:56
SPEAKER_00: You ought to read the story.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: Chapters 22, 23, and 24.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: This pagan prophet comes from the east, is hired to curse Israel.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he comes up with these most amazing prophecies that do everything but name Jesus Christ personally, that include the Messiah and everything else.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: Just remarkable stuff.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: And so that's how the book ends.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: On the border of the promised land, and that's the next thing that's going to happen in the book of Joshua, is they're going to move in and conquer the land.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: And that is a summary of the book of Numbers.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Now, that's the background.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Now, what is it that I think God wants us to get out of this book this morning?
14:35
SPEAKER_00: What are the themes of the book?
14:36
SPEAKER_00: And those are on the back of your sheet.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: This is this is the sermon, this is the message, okay?
14:41
SPEAKER_00: And there are three points to it.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: And the first point is you are here.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: Wilderness.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: Chapters 1 through 10.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: As I've told you before, this book is all about the wilderness.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: Wilderness is defined, by the way, uh sometimes we confuse a little bit with desert, but it's it's a place where you it's it's primarily for flocks.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: You cannot cultivate good ground.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: You you tend flocks of animals, doesn't have very much rainfall, very few trees, little vegetation.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but this is the place God said that Israel was going to be for the next 40 years.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: And what I want to say to you is it is the place that God has you and I in for all of our Christian lives.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: Ian Dugood put it this way in his commentary on Numbers, the story of the book of Numbers is written to a people whose lives are lived between their redemption, Exodus, and its consummation, between the Exodus and the Promised Land.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: They live in between the times, and their present experience is not one of the fullness of salvation, but rather of the wilderness along the way.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: You see, the wilderness is a place of transition, both for Israel as well as for you.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: Your whole life, the whole book of Numbers, can be expressed in three short prepositions.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: Out, in, and into.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: That is, God brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt with a view to one day going into the promised land.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: But now, in the meantime, they are in the wilderness.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: Dear friend, I hope God has brought you out.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: That is, at one point you were in the land of Egypt.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Speaking Jewishly here, that is, you were in bondage to the Pharaoh and to sin and wrath and death and all of those things.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: But at some time in your life, if you have looked to heaven, thought of the Christmas and Easter stories, and trusted Christ, then God has brought you out of the land of Egypt.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: And one day he promises he will take you into the promised land.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: He'll take you into Canaan, he'll take you into heaven.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Presently, though, your Christian life is lived in the middle.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: Or someone is written in the middle of the middle.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: And you and I are stuck in this sort of wilderness, so that.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean, have you ever wondered why life is the way it is?
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Why why the food isn't better?
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Why you get sick, why your loved ones die, why things don't work out.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: Or if they work out, they work out for a while and suddenly they crumble.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever wondered about that?
17:40
SPEAKER_00: Could it possibly be that you're not yet in the promised land?
17:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm bound for the promised land.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm bound for the promised land.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: Who will come and go with me?
17:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm bound for the promised land.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: But right now, the world's not my home.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm just a passing through, right?
17:56
SPEAKER_00: My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: So if if you feel as though life isn't quite the way you want it, welcome to the wilderness, for that's exactly where you and I are.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: We are in the in part.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: We've had the out part, looking forward to the into part.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: But like the nation of Israel, we are living in the middle part, in the in part, in the wilderness.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: Now, to have a picture of it right up in front of you, you see they've come out of Egypt.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: They will eventually go in the land of Canaan, but presently they and you and I are in the wilderness.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: And so I look at the book of Numbers as this remarkable story of living in the wilderness in between our past redemption and our future consummation.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: Are you with me?
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Question.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: Are you in transition?
18:54
SPEAKER_00: I write this because I was I was just down with uh Christian leaders, one pretty much one from each continent.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: One uh one Christian leader from Great Britain, one from Australia.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: I was representing the United States.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: There was just seven of us or so down in South Africa, and we were discussing it.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: The amazing thing is, every single one of us is in a major transition stage in our lives.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And I'm guessing that somewhere in some part of your life you're in transition.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: You may be like the folks, I've had several folks come up to me this morning and say, I'm in transition, crying.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: I I'm in transition.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: I've just this week lost my job.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: Some of you may be uh coming from another city or moving to Topeka, you're in transition.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it funny how every transition makes you feel so unsettled and uncomfortable?
19:43
SPEAKER_00: But they do.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: Some young people here have two of life's major transitions ahead of them.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: What are they?
19:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, one is choosing college, move from high school to college.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: What a major transition because you're scared, you know.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: That decision turns around in some cases and makes you.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: And then there's the transition between singleness and marriage, right?
20:07
SPEAKER_00: What more important transition is there than the transition between being single and being married?
20:14
SPEAKER_00: Others of you have other transitions, transitions between relationships, transitions uh, you know, from you know, into caring for your parents or caring for your grandchildren.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: But you and I live our lives in transition, and that's simply the way God has designed it.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: I hope you've read the book Pilgrim's Progress.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: Used to be read more than any other book, but the Bible for hundreds of years, written by uh John Bunyan in the 17th century.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but this is a story of a pilgrim who comes out of the city of destruction, and he's looking forward to going into the celestial city, and the whole book is about him walking up and down the lanes of life, going through the slew of despond in the wilderness and so forth.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: He is living the life that every pilgrim, every Christian lives.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: It is a life in the wilderness, it is a life in transition.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: Much as you may not like it, God says, that's where you are.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: The question is, will you trust me, will you obey me during this transition?
21:18
SPEAKER_00: Number two, the wilderness is, and this is one of the major themes in this book, though you may have never heard it before, it is the single most important contribution the book of Numbers gives to the Bible.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: The wilderness is a place of order, a place of oysters.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: Why I began with those sad jokes, you know, military jokes.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: The book begins, the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: Take a census, blah, blah, register those who are 20 years old by their military divisions, so everyone who can serve in Israel's army.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: At the end of chapter one, he says they were all registered.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: They came to 603,550.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: That's why we estimate two million total.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: We go.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Each of those guys was married and had two kids.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: Wild estimate.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: 52 to 54, God says, okay, now I want you to camp by these divisions.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: What he's doing is he is blessing them by imposing a kind of military order and discipline upon them, so that instead of you know being like a huge messy closet, all of a sudden everything is in the right place, everyone is in order, and God says, That's a blessing I give to you.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: You may not like it, but we all need structure, order, and discipline.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: Now, I share this message with some trembling a little bit because I know that this message goes over far better in third world countries overseas, or if I were giving it 500 years ago than it goes over today in the West.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: Right?
22:52
SPEAKER_00: Because we are, if anything, in love with rebels today.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: And I confess I was rooting for the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars, weren't you?
23:01
SPEAKER_00: I hope you were, okay?
23:03
SPEAKER_00: But we love rebel without a cause, James Dean.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: Or we love, we do not like, we are highly suspicious of authority figures and heroes.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: We have bought into this sort of a this modern sort of experiment that everyone should be a shepherd.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: And so we have gotten rid of the shepherds and somehow have confused ourselves into thinking that if we can do away with the shepherds, that all of the sheep will automatically become shepherds.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: But losing the shepherds doesn't make sheep anything but sheep.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: And so we end up being conformists and doing what everyone else does, and forgetting that every single ordered group, whether it's the mafia with their bosses or whether it's the royal family in Britain, has authority figures, has kings and queens and a synod and the legislators, and the House of Lords and a House of Commons and judges and so forth.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: And in every country but the West, up until now, you even today, you will go into third world countries, India, Morocco, Pekwan.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: Nearly every house has a picture of the king or the ruler of some kind up on the wall.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: And you don't want to sit there at dinner and make fun of them.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: That's what we do in America, you know.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: But you don't do that in most countries.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: And God, the whole book of Numbers is with the perspective that order and authority and a chain of command and rank is a good thing, that order is a blessing from God and not something to be knee-jerk rebelled against.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: Is that clear?
24:43
SPEAKER_00: So that's why I'm a little nervous about sharing this with you, but but that's why I shared the military thing, because even in America, if you join the military, you know immediately you were buying into this whole idea of rank and chain of command and so forth, right?
24:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh back Revolutionary War times.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh George Washington really liked this Baron, uh, the Steuben guy.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: And so he had a, he hired him to write up regulations for the order and discipline of the troops of the United States, published Washington, so many copies of this that every soldier could have one, so that there's still a number of the originals around today.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: And that's what God is giving his people in the book of Numbers, chapters 1 and 10.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: He's giving them a kind of military discipline and order, and he considers it, since he's a God of order, to be one of the greatest blessings he could possibly give them.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
25:40
SPEAKER_00: He says, on the east, I want Judah, my favorite tribe.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: The east is the best, you know, major side.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: Essacher Zebulul.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: In the south, I want Reuben with Simeon and Gad.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: In the west, I want these three tribes.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: In the north, I want these three tribes.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: But listen, as a buffer between me, because I'm like plutonium, I'm a consuming fire, you don't want to get too close to me.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: I want the Levites.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: They're no longer a tribe.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: I want them surrounding me as a buffer between me and the rest of the tribes.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: And notice he says in chapter 2, 1 through 9, I want all of you guys to camp in this way around the tent of meeting, quote, at a distance from it.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: Now this is very interesting and very important.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: He says, you got three tribes on either side, but they have to be at a distance.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: I want the Levites to separate me from them.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Or else I'm going to burn them up.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: And among the Levites, we're going to have also special rank.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: That is, the priests are that group, small group of the Levites, and they are the only ones who get to handle the holy things inside the temple.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: And among the priests, there is also a hierarchy.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: There's Aaron and his sons, the high priests.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: And even higher in the hierarchy, above Aaron and is going to be Moses.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: And Moses is the only one with whom I will speak face to face as a man speaks with his friends.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: And in that hierarchy, I want you to understand that chain of command.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: By the way, some modern scholarly books put it this way: there were concentric circles in numbers.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: And in the smallest circle, in the very middle, is the Holy of Holies, where God Himself dwelt.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: Then you have the rest of the tabernacle, then you have the Levites in their order with Moses, then Aaron and his sons and the priests, followed by the Levites with all of the people outside.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: And here's the interesting thing about the book of Numbers.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: And that is that protection works one way and blessing works the other.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: God says, Joe Israelite out there, you better not break through the concentric circles, better not rebel against this and demand that you bust right into the tabernacle, or you will die.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: These circles are for your protection from me.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, if you will stay in the order that I have given you, the blessing will come out from the middle and spread all over you.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: So that's what he says.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: On the one hand, he says this chapter one, at the end, the colored verses don't have the time.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Any unauthorized person who comes near the tabernacle will be put to death.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: And he ends so that no wrath will fall on the Israelite community.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, if you will stay where I have placed you, then Aaron and his sons will bless you.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: And this is the great blessing, still used every day in Israel and around the Jewish world.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: It's just this beautiful, it's the ironic benediction.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: The Lord bless you.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: Can you say this with me?
28:43
SPEAKER_00: The Lord bless you and keep you.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: The Lord lift up his countenance, that is, look with favor on you and give you shalom in this way.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: So this is how God blessed his people and also protected his people.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: But the wilderness then becomes something else as a place of testing.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: And the test is, will you rebel against this order?
29:10
SPEAKER_00: Will you in envy say, I'm as good as that person you've put over me?
29:15
SPEAKER_00: And will you rip a hole in this order and break through the concentric circle to try to get higher?
29:22
SPEAKER_00: That's the test.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: Wilderness has always been a place of testing.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: It's where Jesus, remember, was tested by Satan and all of the great people.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, many of the great people, saints down through history, have said this is this was the great place that God took them out in the wilderness.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: And this is where God tested them.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: So that's the first point.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: And the first point, and that'll be the main point, I'll go quicker on these other two, because I see I only have uh nine minutes left.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: But the first point is is that the wilderness is the place where you're at and I'm at, and it's a place of transition, right?
29:58
SPEAKER_00: And it's a place of testing to see if we will follow the order.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem is that we're fickle.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: Open your Bible.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: I don't have this on the screen.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: You'll actually have to use a Bible for this.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: Numbers chapter 16.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: Because the amazing thing about this book is every single one of the concentric circles was rebelled against, was broken down.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: Three of them were broken down in this one chapter.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: It's the most famous, the sinner of the book, Korah's Rebellion, it's called, number 16 and 17.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read some selected verses, but you'll get a clear picture.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: You'll get a clear picture of rebellion here.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: Number 16.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Korah, son of blah, son of the son of Levi.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: So he's a Levite, but he doesn't get to actually handle the holy things, and he's upset at that.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: He goes, How come I just have to carry stuff?
30:50
SPEAKER_00: How come I just have to sweep?
30:52
SPEAKER_00: You know?
30:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm as good as any of the priests.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: I deserve to have a better role.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: So Korah rebels.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: He became insolent.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm reading verse 1.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: He rose up against Moses.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: With them were 250 Israelite men, well-known community leaders, not just religious people.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: Now, community leaders appointed members of the council, they came as a group to oppose Moses and Aaron, and they said to them, You've gone too far.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is with them.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: Why then do you set yourselves above the Lord's assembly?
31:21
SPEAKER_00: When Moses heard this, he reared back and slugged them right in the kisser.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, he doesn't, does he?
31:28
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this amazing?
31:30
SPEAKER_00: He fell face down.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: What a wuss.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: Right now, if I'm betting on Moses or the rebels, I'm putting money on the rebels.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Because the leader is down there on his face.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: But you know why it turns out he's on his face?
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Because he knows that God, God is the one who appointed him the leader.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: And you don't get in, if you're a leader, you don't get in a fight with the people who are rebelling against your authority.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: You don't sit there and start screaming at your kids because they're rebelling against your authority.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: You see, what you do is you do what Moses did.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: God appointed me this authority, therefore I'll go to him.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: And then Moses says, he said to Kor and his followers, the Lord says, in the morning he'll show who belongs to him and who is holy.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: And he will have that person come near him.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: The man he chooses, he will cause to come near him.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: You, Korah, you do this.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: You take those censures.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: You want to be a priest?
32:19
SPEAKER_00: Take censors and tomorrow put fire and incense before the Lord and try to offer them.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: The man the Lord chooses will be the one who is holy.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: You Levites have gone too far.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: And Moses said to Korah, listen, you Levites, isn't it enough for you that the God of Israel separated you from the rest of the Israelite community and brought you near himself to do the work of the Lord's tabernacle and to stand before the community, minister to them?
32:40
SPEAKER_00: He's brought you and all your fellow Levites near himself, but now you're trying to get the priesthood too?
32:45
SPEAKER_00: It's against the Lord that you're doing this.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: Why are you grumbling like this?
32:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll jump clear down because of time to verse 31.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: So the next morning comes, and Korah and all these other guys, they have their senses, they're going to play priest.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: And it says, as soon as Moses had finished saying what he said to them, the ground underneath Korah split apart, and the earth opened its mouth, major earthquake, and swallowed them with their households and all Korah's men and all their possessions.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: They went down alive into the grave with everything they owned.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: The earth closed over them and they perished and were gone from the community.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: At their cries, all their Israelites fled, shouting, Earth's going to swallow us too.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: Not only do you have an earthquake, then for the other 250, these are community leaders, people from Reuben.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting, by the way.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: So you can see how rebellion sort of seeps.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: There's a trickle-down theory of rebellion.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, it affects the people around you.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: So you have the Reubenites, and they get consumed with fire, they're offering incense.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: And then you have in verse 42 the rest of the people, the assembly, they all jump on Moses and Aaron as well.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: These are just Joe Israelite, and they they say, uh, verse 41, they grumble against Moses and Aaron.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: You've killed the Lord's people.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: So now the Lord sends a plague, and 14,000, verse 49, 700 people die from the plague.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: God's very serious about this.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: In fact, when Moses' own brother and sister, chapter 11 and 12, Aaron and Miriam, they say, Moses, how why should you be at the very top?
34:25
SPEAKER_00: We should be up there with you.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: What did God do?
34:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he gave, he's he sent leprosy for a whole week.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: God's very serious about this, and he says, you know what, there's a spirit of rebellion in all of us, but you need to know that I take that very, very seriously.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: Point number three, but God, thank God.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: The major theme of Numbers is God remains faithful.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: There are times in this book where he says, I just want to burn them all up and start over.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: And Moses says, No, you don't.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: And so God remains faithful.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: We repent, God restores us.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: As Paul says in 2 Timothy, if we are faithless, God remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great to know because you, like I, have rebelled against him.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: We've gone our own way, we have fought against those people who are above us, we have mocked our authority figures, we've tried to climb higher up the ladder before God gave us that rung.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: And God says, don't do that.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: Just just wait.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Don't be like that 30-year-old woman in Rhode Island who bit her principal.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, and slugged him in the face, and one of the policemen came, bit him as well.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: Great incisors on that gal.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: Just because, just because he he was putting your 11-year-old there in middle school under discipline.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: I wonder where he got that attitude.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: You know.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: Wasn't it amazing, by the way?
35:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm a Mutiny on the Bounty fan.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: The fourth Mutiny on the Bounty movie came out a few years ago.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: Anthony Hopkins was the leader.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: All the others, of course, sided with the first mate who was rebellious, sided, looked at the whole thing through the seaman's eyes.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: Astonishingly, in the in the most recent movie, Anthony Hopkins.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: It looked at the whole thing through his eyes.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: And it looked at the rebels for what they were.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: Rebels against authority.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: This is an amazing idea, but that's what God says.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
36:25
SPEAKER_00: Rebellion in the book of Numbers is the second greatest sin.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: Behind only idolatry against me is rebellion against my authorities.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: The Daily Nebraskan uh carried a sad story.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: Several years ago, a senior uh student up in Nebraska would write articles in the in the newspaper, University of Nebraska, uh, against he primarily was against uh seat belts.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: He said, you know, the government's opposing things on us, and I hope the rest of you will join me.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm never gonna wear a seatbelt again.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna defy the government, I don't care what they say.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: And it was it was sad to read this story.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: Last night, Derek, last name, a 21-year-old senior student, University of Nebraska, was killed in his Ford Explorer when slid on icy I-80 and flipped over a number of times in the ditch, and not wearing a seatbelt, he was thrown.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when you flirt with death, you find that death has something far more serious than flirting on its mind.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: And when you flirt with rebellion against God, you find that you don't tug on Superman's cape.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: That you don't mess with him.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: And I'd like to give you, I'd like to give you some specific suggestions.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: Three.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: Three specific, in fact, they're not suggestions.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: These are part of the Ten Commandments this morning.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: So I would urge you to do these three things this week.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: I have a mean cat on there because each one starts with the letter C, A, or T.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
38:07
SPEAKER_00: Number one, confess.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: That's so you'll remember them.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: Number one, confess.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: Listen, confess your tendency to rebel against order and authority.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't care how good a person you are.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: Study was done Youth Worker magazine recently.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: They interviewed just hundreds of kids who 10 years after high school are following the Lord and they're looking for something in common.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: You know what they found?
38:28
SPEAKER_00: They found two things in common.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: Number one, every one of them had parents, Christian parents, who were living authentic lives.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: And number two, they found that every single one of them had rebelled against that authority for a period of time.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: We all have this tendency to rebel.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: Confess that to God.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: Confess that, maybe even naming someone in your church, in your school, at your workplace, or in the government that you speak again.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: Number two, ask God to show you where you need more order and discipline in your life.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: Ask Him.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, listen, I was driving in this morning and God spoke to me very clearly.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: And he said this: He said, I want you to tell people that if they ask me where they ought to have more order and discipline in their lives and they do not feel like I answer them, they are to turn to their wife or husband this week and ask them.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh number three, thank an authority figure God has placed over you.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: Thank, find an authority figure God has placed over you and tell them that you appreciate them.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: Will you do that?
39:31
SPEAKER_00: My time's up.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this book.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for these dear people.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: Pray, Heavenly Father, if anyone's come out of Egypt this morning, I ask, Lord, that you'd give them great joy, despite the fact that they're now in the wilderness.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: Reveal yourself to them in a mighty way.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: Bless them.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, uh, for all of us who've been struggling around in this uh transition period, I pray, Heavenly Father, for these dear folks in transition.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: Enable them, Lord, to trust and obey and submit and submit.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the authorities that you have put over us, and especially for you yourself, your son Jesus Christ, supreme authority.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming.