Numbers 7-11
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Numbers 7-11
Numbers 7-11
Last week in our marathon introduction to the book of Numbers, we left off in a significant spot at the end of chapter 6, so lets look at that again, chapter 6:24...
24 “The Lord bless you and keep you;
25 The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you;
26 The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.” ’
27 “So they shall put My name on the children of Israel, and I will bless them.”
Let’s pray - give us greater understanding of who you are God.
Couple of reasons why I wanted to review this. First, it is just an awesome benediction, but if you were here last week, you’ll remember that the book of Numbers describes the wilderness wanderings of Israel as they left captivity in Egypt and made their way to the promised land. A mass migration of people that should have taken only a few weeks, dragged on for 40 years, and of those men that were of fighting age, age 20 and above, only two, Caleb and Joshua made it into the promised land, the rest perished in the dessert. If you remember, last week, I said the saddest thing about it, was that it never had to happen! It was the result of disobedience, complaining, and murmuring against God.
Even so, this blessing that we just read was given to Moses from God, with instructions to pass it on to the priest Aaron and his sons for it to be used to bless the children of Israel. I read it again, as a reminder that regardless of what circumstances may appear, it is the heart of God to bless His people. He loves to bless His kids, He loves for leaders to have the heart to love and bless the people.
You guys remember that God gave them a plan of order, and so that a numbering of the people or a census could be taken, they were organized into 12 tribes with leaders being placed over those tribes. That is how their camp was set up, with the tabernacle set in the middle, God being the center of their lives, and the twelve tribes being ordered around the tabernacle. With that, lets look at chapter 7...
2 Then the leaders of Israel, the heads of their fathers’ houses, who were the leaders of the tribes and over those who were numbered, made an offering.
3 And they brought their offering before the Lord, six covered carts and twelve oxen, a cart for every two of the leaders, and for each one an ox; and they presented them before the tabernacle.
So for every leader there was an ox, for every two leaders there was one cart.
These things were distributed among the families in the tribe of Levi to help them do their work of the ministry. Some of the jobs of the families were just to carry the furnishings of the tabernacle from place to place as God directed the people to move, by a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day…verse 7..
7 Two carts and four oxen he gave to the sons of Gershon, according to their service;
8 and four carts and eight oxen he gave to the sons of Merari, according to their service, under the authority of Ithamar the son of Aaron the priest.
9 But to the sons of Kohath he gave none, because theirs was the service of the holy things, which they carried on their shoulders.
Remember there was specific instructions for carrying the Ark, there were rings in which they inserted long poles, and it was to be carried by the sons of Kohath. Then each of the leaders gave an offering for the dedication of the alter…vs. 10
10 Now the leaders offered the dedication offering for the altar when it was anointed; so the leaders offered their offering before the altar.
11 For the Lord said to Moses, “They shall offer their offering, one leader each day, for the dedication of the altar.”
There offering was …verse 13...
13 His offering was one silver platter, the weight of which was one hundred and thirty shekels, and one silver bowl of seventy shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary, both of them full of fine flour mixed with oil as a grain offering;
14 one gold pan of ten shekels, full of incense;
15 one young bull, one ram, and one male lamb in its first year, as a burnt offering;
Numbers 7:16–17 (NKJV)
16 one kid of the goats as a sin offering;
17 and for the sacrifice of peace offerings: two oxen, five rams, five male goats, and five male lambs in their first year...
If you look down through the rest of the chapter, each tribe gave the identical offering, and they are all recorded here for us in the same exact way. And although I’m not going to read them all to you tonight, I want you to notice that God felt it worthy to record every single one in the Scriptures. We might see it as wasted space, I’m a bit surprised over the years that the publishers haven’t just replaced it with a ditto! All that I want to point out is that God noticed, he remembered, and recorded it. How we give to God and honor what He has told us matters greatly to Him. Even when we don’t give more than everyone else, or the same as everyone else, or even when times are lean like the widow in the NT that could only give two mites. God sees all that we do for Him, even when it is not acknowledged by man…down to verse 89...
89 Now when Moses went into the tabernacle of meeting to speak with Him, he heard the voice of One speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the Testimony, from between the two cherubim; thus He spoke to him.
It is so important that our leaders are leaders that hear from and spend time with God. If you that are listening on line have not yet found that, keep looking. Look for a place that you can worship in person with a community that is led by people that the most obvious thing about them is that they spend time with Jesus and are led by the Spirit of God…I love that passage in Acts 4...
13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.
It is not degrees on the wall, our job is to spend time with Him and lead others into that same kind of relationship…Chapter 8
1 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying:
2 “Speak to Aaron, and say to him, ‘When you arrange the lamps, the seven lamps shall give light in front of the lampstand.’ ”
3 And Aaron did so; he arranged the lamps to face toward the front of the lampstand, as the Lord commanded Moses.
Always in the OT, the priests had to be made clean before they could offer sacrifices on behalf of the people, but here we seen something that is similar to what we might do today to ordain someone into the ministry, or like we see in Acts 13:2-3
2 As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”
3 Then, having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away.
Here in the book of Numbers it is just done differently…look at verse 7...
7 Thus you shall do to them to cleanse them: Sprinkle water of purification on them, and let them shave all their body, and let them wash their clothes, and so make themselves clean.
verse 9
9 And you shall bring the Levites before the tabernacle of meeting, and you shall gather together the whole congregation of the children of Israel.
10 So you shall bring the Levites before the Lord and the children of Israel shall lay their hands on the Levites;
11 and Aaron shall offer the Levites before the Lord, like a wave offering from the children of Israel, that they may perform the work of the Lord.
Bulls were then offered as a sacrifice to atone for the Levites and to set them apart for the work of the ministry…verse..24...
24 “This is what pertains to the Levites: From twenty-five years old and above one may enter to perform service in the work of the tabernacle of meeting;
25 and at the age of fifty years they must cease performing this work, and shall work no more.
26 They may minister with their brethren in the tabernacle of meeting, to attend to needs, but they themselves shall do no work. Thus you shall do to the Levites regarding their duties.”
Remember last week when we read about the Numbering of the men of Israel those in the tribe of Levi were numbered differently, because they were not to go out to war. right they counted them from the age of one month and up, and they were to serve in the work of the ministry from age 30-50. But here we see that their formal service actually began at age 25 with a formal apprenticeship for 5 years, before their official duties in serving God’s people began. Chapter 9 begins with instruction to celebrate the passover celebration that we talked about some on Sunday morning. It begins...
1 Now the Lord spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying:
2 “Let the children of Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time.
3 On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight, you shall keep it at its appointed time. According to all its rites and ceremonies you shall keep it.”
If you read down they did keep the passover as they were instructed, but afterward, there was a problem. Some of the men came to Moses to let him know that when the passover was celebrated, they could not participate because they had been defiled from having contact with a dead body. So they weren’t able to keep it according to all its rites and ceremonies, so what should they do.
Moses didn’t just make something up, but basically said, I don’t know, let me ask God....verse 9
8 And Moses said to them, “Stand still, that I may hear what the Lord will command concerning you.”
9 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
10 “Speak to the children of Israel, saying: ‘If anyone of you or your posterity is unclean because of a corpse, or is far away on a journey, he may still keep the Lord’s Passover.
11 On the fourteenth day of the second month, at twilight, they may keep it. They shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
So if there was a reason that they were unable to participate during the first month, they were still required to keep the passover and were able to celebrate. If you look down at verse 15 we get an explanation of how the people were directed to move while in the wilderness...
15 Now on the day that the tabernacle was raised up, the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the Testimony; from evening until morning it was above the tabernacle like the appearance of fire.
16 So it was always: the cloud covered it by day, and the appearance of fire by night.
17 Whenever the cloud was taken up from above the tabernacle, after that the children of Israel would journey; and in the place where the cloud settled, there the children of Israel would pitch their tents.
18 At the command of the Lord the children of Israel would journey, and at the command of the Lord they would camp; as long as the cloud stayed above the tabernacle they remained encamped.
So when the cloud moved, the people moved, when it stayed put, they stayed put. God was leading and they were to follow Him and remain in His presence. Chapter 10 begins...
1 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying:
2 “Make two silver trumpets for yourself; you shall make them of hammered work; you shall use them for calling the congregation and for directing the movement of the camps.
They didn’t have radios to communicate with with the fancy secrete service style ear pieces that Nick makes our guys wear so that he could have one…You’ve got over a half a million men plus women and children, and they needed a way to communicate. So the trumpets would be used to call the people to the center of the camp to gather at the tabernacle, and they were used, to direct the traffic, to tell which tribe to move where, it was actually a pretty through means of communication. If they had to go into battle, they could alert everyone, and tell the tribes on the East side to advance, and direct things like that. If you are familiar at all with end times prophecy, you know God is not finished with announcing things with the blow of a trumpet. Look down to verse…10
10 Also in the day of your gladness, in your appointed feasts, and at the beginning of your months, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; and they shall be a memorial for you before your God: I am the Lord your God.”
11 Now it came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, that the cloud was taken up from above the tabernacle of the Testimony.
12 And the children of Israel set out from the Wilderness of Sinai on their journeys; then the cloud settled down in the Wilderness of Paran.
So things are set up, order has been established but now it is time for a move, as God is directing them toward the promised land…so all that we read about, the instructions that the tribe of Levites had been given, it was now time to put there learning into application. So if you remember, Aaron and his sons would go in an cover up the things that needed to be covered up, and the different families would come in and get the things that they were to transport, and only those things, and only transport them exactly as they had been instructed. Time to be doers of the Word, I’m sure it was an exciting time, and they began the journey to the Land God had promised…God is moving, but the resistance by some has begun. Look at verse 29..
29 Now Moses said to Hobab the son of Reuel the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law, “We are setting out for the place of which the Lord said, ‘I will give it to you.’ Come with us, and we will treat you well; for the Lord has promised good things to Israel.”
30 And he said to him, “I will not go, but I will depart to my own land and to my relatives.”
31 So Moses said, “Please do not leave, inasmuch as you know how we are to camp in the wilderness, and you can be our eyes.
32 And it shall be, if you go with us—indeed it shall be—that whatever good the Lord will do to us, the same we will do to you.”
I love this leadership of Moses. He knows God is leading them, God is talking to him, He is directing them in visible ways, both to Moses and the people, but Moses knows he is not a one man show. That God has given him men around him that possess skills that he simply doesn’t have, so rather than just throw his hands in the air and say, well God’s got this, He recognizes that God gives us brothers and sister that have different gifts than we do to help us get to where we’re going....so he doesn’t just accept a no when he knows that God can use his father-in-law…verse 33
33 So they departed from the mountain of the Lord on a journey of three days; and the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them for the three days’ journey, to search out a resting place for them.
34 And the cloud of the Lord was above them by day when they went out from the camp.
35 So it was, whenever the ark set out, that Moses said: “Rise up, O Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered, And let those who hate You flee before You.”
36 And when it rested, he said: “Return, O Lord, To the many thousands of Israel.”
Chapter 11 If you read through this book, starting in chapter eleven you will see, chapter after chapter, 11, 12, 13, all the way to chapter 20 and it doesn’t end there... you see this pattern where people take their eyes off of God and put them on their circumstances and the murmuring begins. They begin to look at their situation in life, the landscape in front of them, and forget where God is taking them. Just as this was an issue for them, it is an issue for us today. We forget that when we whine and complain about our circumstances, that we are murmuring against the one that is in control of all things. We forget that God has saved us as an end times people and in one sense, all that He has promised has already been accomplished, and in another sense, we haven’t quite arrived yet to the promised land. So like the children of Israel who were a people between lands, we are a people today that are living between the times. As Gordon Fee puts it, we are in the already/but the not yet. Romans 8:28
28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.
I may not love the situation I am facing today, the obstacle I’m looking at, but God is in control of it all and He is using it in my life. Before we move through this and look and some of the patterns that emerge, I want to remind you that God does not change, He’s not like us. He’s omnipresent, He’s omniscient, or all knowing, certainly not like us, and He is immutable or unchanging. He tells us that in Malachi 3:6
Malachi 3:6 (NKJV)
6 “For I am the Lord, I do not change; Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.
Later in this same book in chapter 23 we read...
19 “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
What does it mean to repent? To change, right. Some say to change direction, but it is really to change our minds…that’s what we do when we repent, we change our minds about Jesus…We change, God does not...all that to say, there is a pattern in the next several chapters where it looks like God and Moses are playing good cop and bad cop. The people complain, God gets mad and is ready to smoke them, literally in some cases, and then Moses steps in and begs him not to and is the hero.
What do we call it when we talk to God? Prayer right? Several of you have learned that when we talk to God, it so often is not about good cop and bad cop, or us trying to force Him to change His will, but under the new covenant that we are under He writes His will on our hearts, and prayer often times is more about changing our will to meet His. So we know that God is a God of justice and about a 1,000 times in the book of Numbers, he probably should have smoked them all, or it would have been just if He had, but through the prayers of Moses, He gets to demonstrate that He is also the God of mercy and hears our prayers for intercession…chapter 11
1 Now when the people complained, it displeased the Lord; for the Lord heard it, and His anger was aroused. So the fire of the Lord burned among them, and consumed some in the outskirts of the camp.
2 Then the people cried out to Moses, and when Moses prayed to the Lord, the fire was quenched.
3 So he called the name of the place Taberah, because the fire of the Lord had burned among them.
Now you would think that the people would learn a quick lesson here, or learn from the lessons of others…they complained, the fire of the Lord roasted some of them, Moses prayed and the fire was quenched…verse 4..
4 Now the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving; so the children of Israel also wept again and said: “Who will give us meat to eat?
5 We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic;
6 but now our whole being is dried up; there is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes!”
Couple of things quick here, notice it says the mixed multitude? This was not purely a group of 100% full covenant people of God. They were part Egyptian part Israeli, but they weren’t all in, some of them were just along for the ride. Something was going on and they wanted to be a part of it sort of, but not fully commited. Not so unlike the church today. Jesus said that even until the time of the final harvest there would be wheat (the real deal) and there would be tare, weeds that looked like the real thing. Like when people run across a hard time in life so they decide to add a little Jesus. But they come with a taste of the world still in their mouths and keep looking back, instead of to the promises God has for those that follow Him.
One of the other things that happens when we are discontent, is that just a laughter can be contagious, so can contention and murmuring. As Moses began to go through the camp, he could hear the families crying about it and actually standing in the doors of their tents crying…and it effects Him and it looks like the weight of leading the people of God is taking a toll...look at verse 10...
10 Then Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, everyone at the door of his tent; and the anger of the Lord was greatly aroused; Moses also was displeased.
11 So Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You afflicted Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all these people on me?
12 Did I conceive all these people? Did I beget them, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a guardian carries a nursing child,’ to the land which You swore to their fathers?
13 Where am I to get meat to give to all these people? For they weep all over me, saying, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’
14 I am not able to bear all these people alone, because the burden is too heavy for me.
15 If You treat me like this, please kill me here and now—if I have found favor in Your sight—and do not let me see my wretchedness!”
Moses says God, I just can’t do it anymore. you delivered them from Egypt, now they want this, and they want that. They’re crying about meat, I’m in a desert, where am I going to get them meat to eat?!? And God answers him...
16 So the Lord said to Moses: “Gather to Me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tabernacle of meeting, that they may stand there with you.
17 Then I will come down and talk with you there. I will take of the Spirit that is upon you and will put the same upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, that you may not bear it yourself alone.
18 Then you shall say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the hearing of the Lord, saying, “Who will give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt.” Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat.
19 You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days,
20 but for a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have despised the Lord who is among you, and have wept before Him, saying, “Why did we ever come up out of Egypt?” ’ ”
I like it. But Moses didn’t it was more like, now God why would you say that? Remember you made me count them, there’s over 600 thousand carnivores here with nothing but meat on their minds, what am I going to do…look at God’s response in verse 23
23 And the Lord said to Moses, “Has the Lord’s arm been shortened? Now you shall see whether what I say will happen to you or not.”
God says what did I say I will do? Then that is what I shall do. I think we should all read this everyday, probably multiple times a day. God says the how doesn’t really matter, if I said it, it is so. Moses do you know who you’re dealing with? Do you know who I AM? We look at our circumstances and we think impossible, no way, can’t happen. We might not say it out loud, but inside we are thinking my circumstances are bigger than my God! Has the Lord’s arm been shortened? How big is your God? Do you trust Him?
24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord, and he gathered the seventy men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tabernacle.
25 Then the Lord came down in the cloud, and spoke to him, and took of the Spirit that was upon him, and placed the same upon the seventy elders; and it happened, when the Spirit rested upon them, that they prophesied, although they never did so again.
They began to speak forth the Word of the Lord, they prophesied. Now we will be talking much more about this over the next several weeks on Sunday mornings. God knows all things including the future, so prophecy can have a predictive aspect to it, but that is not always the case. The New Testament gift of prophecy that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians, is not necessarily predictive; it can be, but for the most part, it is just speaking forth the Word of the Lord to the church for edification (building up), for comfort, for exhortation (intense encouragement - come on, you can do this).
So these guys are prophesying, and then a kid runs in and tells on two guys that remained in the camp. Basically, hey Moses there’s two guys out here prophesying, out of bounds, they’re not following the rules. Joshua picks up on it in verse 28...
28 So Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, one of his choice men, answered and said, “Moses my lord, forbid them!”
29 Then Moses said to him, “Are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!”
Now this wasn’t really a bad thing on Joshua’s part, he is Moses’ assistant, and as such one of his primary concerns it the ministry of Moses. He knew God had chosen Moses and anointed Him for ministry to the people for such a time as this. That God had called Moses to lead the people. These other guys weren’t with the 70 elders when the Spirit of the Lord had come upon them. Were they a threat to the ministry, would they somehow undermine the leadership of Moses?
I’m just saying Joshua was one of only two that were allowed to enter in, so we give him the benefit of the doubt here. And Moses shows no fear of them, not out of pride or arrogance, but He trusts God and he trusts these men. He knows they have been filled with the Spirit of God and men and women that are truly Spirit filled, will never be divisive or undermine those that God has put in leadership. Moses who is ready to pull his hair out here, says Joshua, nothing would be better if the Spirit of God was poured out on all His people, my job would be so much easier,...and everyone who has ever been in ministry in any capacity, said amen!
So the wind began to blow and basically it started to rain quail. Because of the winds they were forced to fly close to the ground, and the people could just bat them out of the air…verse 30
30 And Moses returned to the camp, he and the elders of Israel.
31 Now a wind went out from the Lord, and it brought quail from the sea and left them fluttering near the camp, about a day’s journey on this side and about a day’s journey on the other side, all around the camp, and about two cubits above the surface of the ground.
32 And the people stayed up all that day, all night, and all the next day, and gathered the quail (he who gathered least gathered ten homers); and they spread them out for themselves all around the camp.
Someone way smarter than me has calculated that 10 homers of quail would have been hundreds of gallons of quail, but by weight about 1900 birds, for the loser, the one who collected the least. You think that might have been enough? We are so ridiculous when we allow ourselves to be ruled by our lust. They spread them all out to dry, just in case they couldn’t get a thousand or two down before they spoiled, and lets look what happened…33
33 But while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was aroused against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very great plague.
34 So he called the name of that place Kibroth Hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had yielded to craving.
Kibroth Hattaavah – which means “Graves of Craving.” How many people in our day have had their cravings, their lusts, become their grave? This was a taste of God’s judgement, but it was also an opportunity for those that survived to learn that the people of God are not to be ruled by their appetites, their flesh and cravings for physical or emotional desires should not overrule the spiritual in their lives, because sin leads to death.
That’s a good stopping point, lets pray.