Sermon Tone Analysis

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...

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...

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..

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

There offering was …verse 13...

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...

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...

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

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

Here in the book of Numbers it is just done differently…look at verse 7...

verse 9

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...

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...

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

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...

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...

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

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..

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

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

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...

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

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..

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...

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?!?