Four* Pointer

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 32 (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:05:00 +0000

Numbers 32:1-5—1 Now the children of Reuben and the children of Gad had a very great multitude of livestock; and when they saw the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead, that indeed the region was a place for livestock, 2 the children of Gad and the children of Reuben came and spoke to Moses, to Eleazar the priest, and to the leaders of the congregation, saying, 3 "Ataroth, Dibon, Jazer, Nimrah, Heshbon, Elealeh, Shebam, Nebo, and Beon, 4 the country which the LORD defeated before the congregation of Israel, is a land for livestock, and your servants have livestock." 5 Therefore they said, "If we have found favor in your sight, let this land be given to your servants as a possession. Do not take us over the Jordan." Jazer was a city in the land of Gilead, and Gilead was an area to the east of the Jordan River between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee (known at the time as Sea of Chinnereth), and laid to the south, the west, and the north of the land of Ammon. (Do not think Jazer lent its name to the Al-Jazeera media network, as it is based in Qatar on the Arabian Peninsula.) Gilead was a grandson of Manasseh (see Numbers 26:29; 1st Chronicles 2:23). The land of Gilead is mentioned several times in the Old Testament.

The first time we read of it is in Genesis 31, where we read about Jacob fleeing from Laban after Jacob had taken all the best cattle from him (Genesis 31:1-25). The next time we read of Gilead is in Genesis 37, when Joseph’s brothers sell him to the Midianites. Joseph was the next-to-last son of Jacob, and Jacob loved him more than his other sons, since he was born in Jacob’s old age. This made Jacob’s other sons jealous, and when Joseph came to them one day in the land of Gilead, they first plotted to kill him, until the words of Judah convinced them to not kill him but rather sell Joseph to the Midianites. This could have been all that we read of Joseph, if God did not use him to save the people of Israel alive. We read in Genesis 37:23-25—23 So it came to pass, when Joseph had come to his brothers, that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors that was on him. 24 Then they took him and cast him into a pit. And the pit was empty; there was no water in it. 25 And they sat down to eat a meal. This shows how cold and ruthless the brothers of Joseph were, and how much they hated Joseph. They threw him in a deep, dark pit, which had probably before been a well (And the pit was empty; there was no water in it). And what did they do after this? They sat down to eat a meal. Who could do such a thing? What would harden the heart of someone to the point that they would cast their own brother into a pit then not only sit down, but eat a meal? And while they were eating, what do they see? A band of Ishmaelites—descendants of the son of Abraham who despised Isaac—comes by and they talk about selling him into their hand. So they sold him to foreigners (note—verses 27-28 list both Ishmaelites and Midianites. Midian was another son of Abraham, the fourth son of Abraham with his second wife Keturah. The Midianites and the Ishmaelites were neighbors, both dwelling to the north of the Gulf of Aqaba, between the Arabian Peninsula and the mainland of Asia, to the southeast of modern-day Israel. So it would not be uncommon for them to be in a caravan together), thinking they would never see him again. They sold off their own flesh and blood, then he was loaded up to be carried off to who knows where? Well, God knew where they were taking Joseph. They were taking him to Egypt, where he would eventually be second-in-command to Pharaoh, and his actions would save alive Israel and his other sons, Joseph’s brothers, and all the people with them.

Joseph would show his brothers that he harbored no ill will toward them when they apologized to him and sought his forgiveness. Genesis 50:15-18—15 When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "Perhaps Joseph will hate us, and may actually repay us for all the evil which we did to him." 16 So they sent messengers to Joseph, saying, "Before your father died he commanded, saying, 17 'Thus you shall say to Joseph: "I beg you, please forgive the trespass of your brothers and their sin; for they did evil to you. "' Now, please, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of your father." And Joseph wept when they spoke to him. 18 Then his brothers also went and fell down before his face, and they said, "Behold, we are your servants" (see Genesis 37:5-9). They realized their sin that they sinned against Joseph in selling him into slavery. But they were looking at their actions through human eyes. But God used their actions for his glory. You might even say that God planned these things. After all, they just happened to be in Gilead when Joseph just happened to come along at a certain time and the brothers just happened to throw him in a well and sit down and the band of Ishmaelites and Midianites just happened to come along at just a certain time and… You get the idea. With God, there is no such thing as coincidence. If God has a plan, He will work things to make that plan happen according to His good will and pleasure.

We read again of Gilead at the end of 1^st Samuel, and the death of King Saul. In 1^st Samuel 31, we read of the battle between the Philistines and Israel. This battle took place on Mount Gilboa, which is located in the land of Gilead. The prophet Samuel has told Saul that the kingdom would be taken away from him because of his offering that was in opposition to what God had commanded (1st Samuel 13:9), saving alive King Agag of the Amalekites and the spoils of that battle (1st Samuel 15:9) and enquiring of the Witch of Endor (1st Samuel 28:8-11). We don’t read much about this battle with the Philistines, only that they shot arrows at Saul which pierced his armor and wounded him grievously (1st Samuel 31:3). Saul would then ask his armor bearer to slay him with his sword, so that Saul may not die at the hand of the uncircumcised Philistines. The armor bearer would not harken to the command of his king, so Saul fell on his own sword and died in Gilead. The Philistines found Saul’s dead body, and strung up his head and his armor in their city. This gave great joy to the enemies of God. But isn’t that always the truth? When a person of God falls, the enemies of God rejoice. Herodias, the daughter-in-law of Herod, rejoiced when she received the head of John the Baptist (see Matthew 14:11; Mark 6:28).

And like the disciples of John the Baptist who took up the body of their teacher and buried it (see Matthew 14:12; Mark 6:29), the men of Gilead took down the body of Saul from the Philistines and buried it. 1st Samuel 31:11-13—11 Now when the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, 12 all the valiant men arose and traveled all night, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth Shan; and they came to Jabesh and burned them there. 13 Then they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days. As much wrong as Saul had done, he was still the king chosen by God, and his body deserved to be treated properly.

David, his successor, knew this, which is why he gave Saul and his sons a proper final burial. 2nd Samuel 21:12-14—12 Then David went and took the bones of Saul, and the bones of Jonathan his son, from the men of Jabesh Gilead who had stolen them from the street of Beth Shan, where the Philistines had hung them up, after the Philistines had struck down Saul in Gilboa. 13 So he brought up the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son from there; and they gathered the bones of those who had been hanged. 14 They buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son in the country of Benjamin in Zelah, in the tomb of Kish his father. David saw Saul, even in his worst actions, as the anointed of God, as did the men of Gilead.

In this ignominious fate of Saul there was manifested the righteous judgment of God in consequence of the hardening of his heart. But the love which the citizens of Jabesh displayed in their treatment of the corpses of Saul and his sons, had reference not to the king as rejected by God, but to the king as anointed with the Spirit of Jehovah, and was a practical condemnation, not of the divine judgment which had fallen upon Saul, but of the cruelty of the enemies of Israel and its anointed. For although Saul had waged war almost incessantly against the Philistines, it is not known that in any one of his victories he had ever been guilty of such cruelties towards the conquered and slaughtered foe as could justify this barbarous revenge on the part of the uncircumcised upon his lifeless corpse. (Keil and Delitzsch)

Numbers 32:6-15—6 And Moses said to the children of Gad and to the children of Reuben: "Shall your brethren go to war while you sit here? 7 Now why will you discourage the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land which the LORD has given them? 8 Thus your fathers did when I sent them away from Kadesh Barnea to see the land. 9 For when they went up to the Valley of Eshcol and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, so that they did not go into the land which the LORD had given them. 10 So the LORD's anger was aroused on that day, and He swore an oath, saying, 11 'Surely none of the men who came up from Egypt, from twenty years old and above, shall see the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because they have not wholly followed Me, 12 except Caleb the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, and Joshua the son of Nun, for they have wholly followed the LORD.' 13 So the LORD's anger was aroused against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the LORD was gone. 14 And look! You have risen in your fathers' place, a brood of sinful men, to increase still more the fierce anger of the LORD against Israel. 15 For if you turn away from following Him, He will once again leave them in the wilderness, and you will destroy all these people."

While the people of Israel are in Gilead in Numbers, and the last of the people that stood in the way of the people of Israel from entering Canaan had been defeated, all that was left for them to do was to cross over the Jordan River and take the land of Canaan. But the tribes of Gad and Reuben (who would be joined later by a half-tribe of Manasseh) saw that the land would be good for grazing the flocks and herds, and wanted to stay there. They did not want to go over into the land that God had promised them; they wanted to graze their animals in Gilead. They knew what God had promised them, but they did not want that. They wanted a land where they could prosper with their flocks and herds. Much like Lot, who wanted the good land (Genesis 13:10-11), not realizing how that would bring strife to the people of God for centuries to come (for the land he chose included Sodom and Gomorrah, which would be destroyed by God. After this destruction, his daughters would get him drunk and lay with him. The children born of these encounters were Ammon and Moab). And like Lot, they would be surrounded by those who despised YHVH, for this was the land of Bashan, king of the Amorites. And they would meet a not unexpected fate because of this. 1st Chronicles 5:3-26—3 The sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel were Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi…6 and Beerah his son, whom Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria carried into captivity. He was leader of the Reubenites…9 Eastward they settled as far as the entrance of the wilderness this side of the River Euphrates, because their cattle had multiplied in the land of Gilead. 10 Now in the days of Saul they made war with the Hagrites, who fell by their hand; and they dwelt in their tents throughout the entire area east of Gilead. 11 And the children of Gad dwelt next to them in the land of Bashan as far as Salcah…16 And the Gadites dwelt in Gilead, in Bashan and in its villages, and in all the common-lands of Sharon within their borders…18 The sons of Reuben, the Gadites, and half the tribe of Manasseh had forty-four thousand seven hundred and sixty valiant men, men able to bear shield and sword, to shoot with the bow, and skillful in war, who went to war…23 The children of the half-tribe of Manasseh dwelt in the land. Their numbers increased from Bashan to Baal Hermon, that is, to Senir, or Mount Hermon…25 And they were unfaithful to the God of their fathers, and played the harlot after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them. 26 So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, that is, Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria. He carried the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh into captivity. He took them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river of Gozan to this day.

They took their eyes off the promises of God and set their eyes on their immediate perceived needs and their immediate comfort. And because they took their eyes off God and His promises, they were indeed blessed for the time being, as their tribes and their flocks and herds grew, but ultimately they were hamstrung by their perceived needs and their comfort. They thought more about their sheep and their cattle than they thought of God and His promises. The promises of the world are fleeting; the promises of the world are here, right in front of our face, for but a moment, then are dissipated in a vapor, never to be seen again. But the promises of God are eternal, they never change, and they are sure and steadfast. That is the theme of the entire first chapter of 1^st Corinthians. The knowledge of the world is finite; the knowledge of God is infinite. The world is often unfaithful; God is forever faithful. The world is fractioned and divided; God is One. The wisdom of this world is fleeting, vanishing; the wisdom of God is greater, and ever present. The world favors the pretty, the wise, and the mighty. But God… 1st Corinthians 1:27-29—27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen…29 that no flesh should glory in His presence. The tribes of Gad and Reuben and the half-tribe of Manasseh didn’t want that ugly old land of Canaan that God had promised. They wanted the lush greenery of Gilead. They didn’t want to fight with and for the people of God, they wanted to lean back and just raise their cattle and their sheep.

But aren’t we guilty sometimes of the same thing? We don’t want to wake up on a Sunday morning and get the kids ready and shower and shave and get dressed to go hear a speech about the Bible, because that is hard. We want to sleep in; we want to relax and watch TV. We don’t want to read God’s Word, because that is hard. We would rather read a new novel or a comic book. We certainly don’t want to study the Bible, because that can take time away from our social media time. “So was there something wrong with these folks wanting a land that was suitable for grazing their animals?” No, not inherently. For they were not the only tribes to own flocks and herds. But it’s as if they did not trust the promise of God, to bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey.

And God knows what might have been their portion in the land of Canaan—it might have been even better than what they had in Gilead! 14 “And look! You have risen in your fathers' place, a brood of sinful men, to increase still more the fierce anger of the LORD against Israel. 15 For if you turn away from following Him, He will once again leave them in the wilderness, and you will destroy all these people.” In short, these people were complaining because it would be harder to cross the Jordan River and fight the people of the land of Canaan than to just stay where they were. Moses tells them as much, that this was what they wanted. They did not want to do the hard thing that would have given them something better than what they then had. They just wanted to take it easy, no matter how it turned out for the rest of the people. He even tells them that if they stayed where they were they would not turn away from the land they were promised, rather they would turn away from following Him. What was Canaan? It was the Promised Land. Who promised it to them? God. So, while it was not wrong for them to want a land where they could raise their flocks and herds, it was wrong to forego a promise made by God. As we saw before, this was the land of Bashan (land of the Amorites), and they simply stayed there, and did not drive out the inhabitants. These inhabitants worshipped Ba'al and Dagon, and would eventually entice these three tribes to worship these false gods. And because of this, God would raise up Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria, to take them away captive in the year 734BC—12 years before King Ahaz and the northern kingdom of Israel was taken captive and led into exile by Shalmaneser, and a full 147 years before the southern kingdom of Judah was taken captive and led into exile by Nebuchadnezzar.

Part 2 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 28-30 (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:28:00 +0000

Numbers 28-29 detail offerings that were to be given at different times during the year. Numbers 28 is a recapitulation of the offerings commanded in Exodus 23:14-17; Exodus 29:38-42; Exodus 31:12-17; and Leviticus 23:1-44.

Numbers 29:1-6—1 “And in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work. For you it is a day of blowing the trumpets. 2 You shall offer a burnt offering as a sweet aroma to the LORD: one young bull, one ram, and seven lambs in their first year, without blemish. 3 Their grain offering shall be fine flour mixed with oil: three-tenths of an ephah for the bull, two-tenths for the ram, 4 and one-tenth for each of the seven lambs; 5 also one kid of the goats as a sin offering, to make atonement for you; 6 besides the burnt offering with its grain offering for the New Moon, the regular burnt offering with its grain offering, and their drink offerings, according to their ordinance, as a sweet aroma, an offering made by fire to the LORD.”

Numbers 29 outlines the sacrifices which were to be given in the seventh Month of the religious calendar, but the first month of the secular calendar. This is known as the month Tishri. There are many “new years” in Judaism, and they are explained on the website Judaism 101:

Judaism has several different "new years," a concept which may seem strange at first, but think of it this way: the American "new year" starts in January, but the new "school year" starts in September, and many businesses have "fiscal years" that start at various times of the year. In Judaism, Nisan 1 is the new year for the purpose of counting the reign of kings and months on the calendar, Elul 1 (in August) is the new year for the tithing of animals, Shevat 15 (in February) is the new year for trees (determining when first fruits can be eaten, etc.), and Tishri 1 (Rosh Hashanah) is the new year for years (when we increase the year number. Sabbatical and Jubilee years begin at this time).

(https://www.jewfaq.org/rosh_hashanah)

The 1^st of Tishri was called יוֹם תְּרוּעָה (Yom Teruah, “a day of sounding the shofar”) or what we now know as רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה‎ (Rosh Hashanah, “head of the year”) and is still celebrated by Jews around the world. The month Tishri falls around the Gregorian months of September and October, and the command here to celebrate is an echo of the command given in Leviticus 23:24-25—24 "Speak to the children of Israel, saying: 'In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a sabbath-rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. 25 You shall do no customary work on it; and you shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD.'" So how is Rosh Hashanah celebrated?

It is still observed by abstaining from work, and is still treated as sacred and holy by Jews. Another custom is dipping apples (or bread) in honey, as a symbol of the hopes that the new year will be sweet. If bread is used, it is not like the bread we would but in a loaf from a store. This bread is called “challah”, and is a round loaf, as opposed to the oval loaf it is normally made as. The round shape is to symbolize the cycle of life from one year to the next. Prayers are spoken from a prayer book called the Mahzor:

The prayer book for the High Holidays is called the Mahzor. Three unique sets of prayers are added to the morning service during Rosh Hashanah. These are known as Malkhuyot, which address the sovereignty of God, Zikhronot, which present God as the one who remembers past deeds, and Shofarot, in which we stand in nervous anticipation of the future.

(https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/rosh-hashanah-101/)

So are we as Christians, as some claim, to keep this Feast of Trumpets, this Jewish New Year? Are we to keep the feasts outlined in the Old Covenant? No we are not, for they are part of the Law, and Christ has fulfilled them all. Matthew 5:17—“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” There are some who claim that we are still bound by the Old Testament Law, that we are to follow every jot and tittle of it or we are damned. And they completely miss the work that Jesus did. He has set us free from that Law by fulfilling every requirement of that Law. So they work and labor and sweat for no reason, they deny themselves of different foods, they set their calendars for days and months, they bind themselves up in needless regulations instead of believing what Jesus said, that He fulfilled the Law for us. How many times do we read the words of Paul, that Hebrew of Hebrews, that we are not bound to the Law any longer. Romans 8:1-2—1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. The law could make no man righteous before God, since the Law only pointed to how sinful we are (Galatians 3:11)—it was our guide until it was fulfilled by the only one who could fulfill it (Galatians 3:24-25). Colossians 2:16-17—16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths,17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. Romans 14:4-8—4 Who are you to judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand. 5 One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. What was Paul’s rebuke of Peter, recorded in Galatians 2? That while Peter was preaching freedom in Christ to the Gentiles, he was leaving them and sitting with the Jews and observing their rules when they came along (Galatians 2:11-21). There are many Peters today—those who claim to love Christ with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, yet deny the freedom He bought for us. They worship Him with their lips, but their heart is far from Him, not believing that He delivered us from a rigid obedience to new moons and Sabbaths.

“But didn’t Paul says that to the Jews and to those under the Law he became as a Jew and as one under the Law?” But what does the apostle mean by those words? Simply this: that he showed the Jews and those under the Law how the Law pointed to Christ. “But what about when he had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3)?” Good question. And John Gill answers it:

Wherefore having a mind to take Timothy with him to be assisting to him in the preaching of the Gospel, in point of prudence he thought it proper to circumcise him, that he might be received by them, and be the more acceptable to them; who would otherwise have taken such an offence at him, as not to have heard him: thus the apostle to the Jews became a Jew, that he might gain and save some, for they knew all that his father was a Greek; and that therefore he was not circumcised; for a woman might not circumcise, because she was not a fit subject of circumcision herself; though in case of necessity circumcision by women was allowed of

Yes, he had Timothy circumcised, but it was not because he felt obligate to under the Law, as the Jerusalem Council had just decided in Acts 15 that it was not necessary to have him circumcised. It was he might by all means save some (1st Corinthians 9:22), that by doing so he might have an audience with them and save some. He did not, as Peter, shrink away from them and live under the Law in front of the Jews, but rather showed them that Timothy was not saved by being circumcised, but that he was saved whether circumcised or not. “So if someone wants to observe Rosh Hashanah, simply because they choose to, are they not saved?” On the contrary. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord. If one wants to observe it to celebrate the goodness of God and if it helps them in their repentance from sin, then they are free to do so. But let no one lead you to believe that you have to observe it in order to be saved, as he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. Let us now move on to Numbers 30.

Numbers 30:1-16—1 Then Moses spoke to the heads of the tribes concerning the children of Israel, saying, "This is the thing which the LORD has commanded: 2 If a man makes a vow to the LORD, or swears an oath to bind himself by some agreement, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. 3 Or if a woman makes a vow to the LORD, and binds herself by some agreement while in her father's house in her youth, 4 and her father hears her vow and the agreement by which she has bound herself, and her father holds his peace, then all her vows shall stand, and every agreement with which she has bound herself shall stand. 5 But if her father overrules her on the day that he hears, then none of her vows nor her agreements by which she has bound herself shall stand; and the LORD will release her, because her father overruled her. 6 If indeed she takes a husband, while bound by her vows or by a rash utterance from her lips by which she bound herself, 7 and her husband hears it, and makes no response to her on the day that he hears, then her vows shall stand, and her agreements by which she bound herself shall stand. 8 But if her husband overrules her on the day that he hears it, he shall make void her vow which she took and what she uttered with her lips, by which she bound herself, and the LORD will release her. 9 Also any vow of a widow or a divorced woman, by which she has bound herself, shall stand against her. 10 If she vowed in her husband's house, or bound herself by an agreement with an oath, 11 and her husband heard it, and made no response to her and did not overrule her, then all her vows shall stand, and every agreement by which she bound herself shall stand. 12 But if her husband truly made them void on the day he heard them, then whatever proceeded from her lips concerning her vows or concerning the agreement binding her, it shall not stand; her husband has made them void, and the LORD will release her. 13 Every vow and every binding oath to afflict her soul, her husband may confirm it, or her husband may make it void. 14 Now if her husband makes no response whatever to her from day to day, then he confirms all her vows or all the agreements that bind her; he confirms them, because he made no response to her on the day that he heard them. 15 But if he does make them void after he has heard them, then he shall bear her guilt." 16 These are the statutes which the LORD commanded Moses, between a man and his wife, and between a father and his daughter in her youth in her father's house.

“If a man makes a vow to the LORD, or swears an oath to bind himself by some agreement, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.” When a person took a vow to the LORD, it was a very serious matter. In the tragic case of Jephthah (Judges 11:30-40), he makes a vow to YHVH that he will sacrifice the first thing that comes to meet him when he returns home. Of course his daughter meets him first, and because of the vow he made to God, he has no choice but to sacrifice her. When the Gibeonites ask Joshua and the people to make a vow to save them from harm (albeit under false pretenses) and they made said vow, they could not go back on it, since they vowed to God (Joshua 9:15-27). Even in the New Testament, we read of Jews who wanted to kill the apostle Paul, that they made a vow to God that they would neither drink nor eat until Paul was dead (Acts 23:12-24). We read there that Paul was secretly taken away safely, but we read no more about the men who bound themselves by their oath. We can only speculate that either (a) they died of thirst and starvation, or (b) they went back on their vow to God. And even today, if we take the witness stand in court, and we swear that we will “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God”. When Presidents are sworn in to office, they take what we call the “Oath of Office”, in which they swear "that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God." Now, in each of these last two cases, these oaths have been broken by some who make these oaths, and they will have to answer to none but God for breaking these oaths.

3 “Or if a woman makes a vow to the LORD, and binds herself by some agreement while in her father's house in her youth, 4 and her father hears her vow and the agreement by which she has bound herself, and her father holds his peace, then all her vows shall stand, and every agreement with which she has bound herself shall stand. 5 But if her father overrules her on the day that he hears, then none of her vows nor her agreements by which she has bound herself shall stand; and the LORD will release her, because her father overruled her.” This passage is speaking of a girl (or woman) who makes a vow while still living under her father’s roof. Her father has the right to uphold or to nullify the vow that she has made. This does not take away the girl’s freedom to make a vow, it simply adds a layer of protection to her, for young women may make a vow rashly and later regret it. But her father can overrule her, if she vowed rashly, and nullify that vow. If, on the other hand, her father deems her vow to be legitimate, he can hold his tongue and allow her vow to stand. “So why isn’t this safeguard there for boys or men living under their father’s roof?” Because under the Law, boys were to be taught the importance of vows under the Law. Deuteronomy 6:6-7—6 “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.” Boys, being taught the Law, were expected to have a firm knowledge of the Law, and everything contained therein, and thus if they made a vow, it was binding upon them and they could not be released from it.

Girls, on the other hand, were still under the care and protection of their father, and their oath could be abrogated if their fathers decided so. Only he has to decide on the day he hears it. Why? This prevented her from seeing that the vow was too great, and she could not keep it, and the father simply saying, “Well, she can’t keep her vow, so I release her from it.” The same was true in the case of married women and their husbands. 6 “If indeed she takes a husband, while bound by her vows or by a rash utterance from her lips by which she bound herself, 7 and her husband hears it, and makes no response to her on the day that he hears, then her vows shall stand, and her agreements by which she bound herself shall stand. 8 But if her husband overrules her on the day that he hears it, he shall make void her vow which she took and what she uttered with her lips, by which she bound herself, and the LORD will release her…13 Every vow and every binding oath to afflict her soul, her husband may confirm it, or her husband may make it void. 14 Now if her husband makes no response whatever to her from day to day, then he confirms all her vows or all the agreements that bind her; he confirms them, because he made no response to her on the day that he heard them. 15 But if he does make them void after he has heard them, then he shall bear her guilt.” What are the vows we exchange when we get married? “Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband…to love, honor, cherish and obey…’til death do you part?” In the eyes of God, when we exchange vows we are making a covenant with God that we will become one flesh with the person and we will stay in that covenant until separated by death (Which is why in a wedding the bride’s family sits on one side and the groom’s on the other, and the couple, once they are married, walks between them, thus ratifying the covenant, as a covenant in olden times was ratified by the slaying and dividing of an animal and the two parties walking between the two halves [see Genesis 15:9-21]). So in the Old Testament, the wife was to be under the care and protection of her husband. Now the husband, being cognizant of the regulations contained in the Law, was on his own when he swore a vow. “If a man makes a vow to the LORD…he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.”

Part 2 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 27 & 36 (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:52:00 +0000

So what happens to those who are teachers and preachers and pastors who deliberately teach wrongly, or who sully their name with some sin? They are removed from their office. In March of 2004, Carlton Pearson, a popular Pentecostal preacher, began preaching a “gospel” of universalism—that Hell is not real and that everyone will go to Heaven. He was removed from the pulpit. In the early 2000s Ted Haggard was one of the most popular preachers in America. In 2006 it was revealed that he had paid a male prostitute for sex and was using meth. He was removed from the pulpit. Also in the early 2000s, Mark Driscoll was an influential pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA. In 2014 he was found to have committed abusive behavior in his church . He was removed from the pulpit. Time would fail us to speak of Perry Noble, Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, Bill Hybels and Steve Lawson. Suffice it to say that these are examples of what Jesus meant when He said “2 For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. 3 Therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops” (Luke 12:2-3).

Numbers 27:15-23—15 Then Moses spoke to the LORD, saying: 16 "Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, 17 who may go out before them and go in before them, who may lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the LORD may not be like sheep which have no shepherd." 18 And the LORD said to Moses: "Take Joshua the son of Nun with you, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him; 19 set him before Eleazar the priest and before all the congregation, and inaugurate him in their sight. 20 And you shall give some of your authority to him, that all the congregation of the children of Israel may be obedient. 21 He shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall inquire before the LORD for him by the judgment of the Urim. At his word they shall go out, and at his word they shall come in, he and all the children of Israel with him—all the congregation." 22 So Moses did as the LORD commanded him. He took Joshua and set him before Eleazar the priest and before all the congregation. 23 And he laid his hands on him and inaugurated him, just as the LORD commanded by the hand of Moses. Moses shows his tender love for the people in desiring for them to have a strong leader as they go into Canaan. And that leader is Joshua, the man whose book bears his name. If you read the book of Joshua, you will see the man as the one who led Israel into battle against all the land of Canaan and subdued it (by the hand of God) and gave the people rest. And under his leadership, the land had rest from war (Joshua 14:15).

Does God like war? What is war, after all? Is it not conflict between people who are made after the similitude of God? Does it not cause death and destruction and disease? What is there to like about war? We read in 2^nd Samuel about how Abner had killed Joab’s brother Asahel, when he told Asahel to stop running after him. It does not appear that Abner wanted to kill him, but in the heat of battle it is either “kill or be killed”, and since Abner did not want to be killed, Abner struck him in the stomach with the blunt end of the spear, so that the spear came out of his back; and he fell down there and died on the spot (2nd Samuel 2:23). Asahel would not cease pursuing Abner, so Abner stuck out his spear and Asahel ran into the blunt end of it, and he was so fleet of foot that it went through his abdomen and out through his back. Abner, the son of Ner (which is what the name Abner means, literally), King Saul’s Secretary of Defense (if you will) called out to Joab, who held the same position under David, and asked him how long the bloodshed would continue between the two houses. 2nd Samuel 2:26—Then Abner called to Joab and said, "Shall the sword devour forever? Do you not know that it will be bitter in the latter end? How long will it be then until you tell the people to return from pursuing their brethren?" Abner did not want war, especially between fellow Israelites.

Sometimes, however, war is necessary. There arose a fellow in Germany in the 1930’s who wanted to spread war all across the globe in order to bring about his vision of a perfect people. Should we have not engaged in that war? Should we have let his war machine devour the planet and kill everybody who did not fit into his small vision? Does that mean God liked that the world waged war? No. But it was necessary. On the other hand, does God want us to be passive in the face of growing threats to men’s freedom? Also no. CS Lewis, in his book “Mere Christianity”, says that while he sees war as an evil, it is a necessary evil:

Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment—even to death. If one had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy. I always have thought so, ever since I became a Christian, and long before the war, and I still think so now that we are at peace. It is no good quoting “Thou shalt not kill.” There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew. All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery. When soldiers came to St. John the Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: nor did Christ when He met a Roman sergeant-major—what they called a centurion. [. . .] We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy it.

And if our conscience says that if a man wishes to impose his own brand of evil on the world, that man must be stopped by any means necessary. Joshua’s conscience told him that if anyone opposed God and was occupying a land that God has promised to his people, those opposed to God must be destroyed. He was commissioned to lead the people into Canaan and wipe out the peoples who inhabited it. And that is just what he did. He led the people in battle against the idolatrous people of Canaan and the people of Israel conquered the Canaanites. And Joshua gave the people rest from the pagans.

Now while Joshua gave the people rest, this was only a temporal rest, for the idolatry of the people still surrounded them. He was a type of the coming Christ, who would give the people of God eternal rest—not from the world surrounding them, for that world will always be with us. Jesus told His apostles in John 19:15—“Because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” As long as we live in this world, the world will hate us who believe in Christ. That is to be expected. The world is beholden as slaves to Satan. He has blinded the world to the truth in Christ, and they serve him and want nothing to do with God. They are as the Canaanites and Moabites and Ammonites who hated the people of Israel, and seek to destroy us out of this world. So long as we are in this world, the world will hate us as it hated Christ. But we have peace within us, because this Christ has promised us rest from our adversaries—not man’s peace, while we are in the world, but peace with God, which is the only peace that really matters in the end. JC Ryle says:

For one thing, persecution is the cup of which Christ Himself drank. Faultless as He was in everything, in temper, word, and deed,—unwearied as He was in works of kindness, always going about doing good,—never was any one so hated as Jesus was to the last day of His earthly ministry. Scribes and High Priests, Pharisees and Sadducees, Jews and Gentiles, united in pouring contempt on Him, and opposing Him, and never rested till He was put to death. Surely this simple fact alone should sustain our spirits and prevent our being cast down by the hatred of man. Let us consider that we are only walking in our Master's footsteps, and sharing our Master's portion. Do we deserve to be better treated? Are we better than He? Let us fight against these murmuring thoughts. Let us drink quietly the cup which our Father gives us. Above all, let us often call to mind the saying, "Remember the word that I spake unto you, The servant is not greater than his Master." For another thing, persecution helps to prove that we are children of God, and have treasure in heaven. It supplies evidence that we are really born again, that we have grace in our hearts, and are heirs of glory: "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." Persecution, in short, is like the goldsmith's Hall mark on real silver and gold: it is one of the marks of a converted man.

The writer of Hebrews says, in Hebrews 4:8—For if Joshua (KJV—Jesus) had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. In Hebrews 3-4 the subject is the rest for the people of God, and how the people who rebelled in the Wilderness never saw rest because of their rebellion and their hardened hearts. For forty years they wandered, all those who complained against God, and they died in that wilderness, and their children entered the land promised to them. Then when they entered that land, they had to fight against those pagans who lived in that land. But that was not an eternal rest, for they had to contend with the neighboring nations who worshipped idols and which always polluted the true worship of the True God. And as you read through the Old Testament, you see this crop up time and time and time again. There was never any rest for the people of God under their kings. Until their true King came along, who came to give them eternal rest. And if we are in Christ, we will have that rest. Hebrews 4:9-11—9 There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 10 For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. 11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. Let us be ever diligent of the rest that Jesus has promised us—not as the temporal rest that Joshua gave them, which they soon abandoned after his death (Judges 2:10-12)—but the rest offered by our Sovereign Lord, who told us in truth that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30).

John 16:33—“In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” What words of comfort are these! That we need not attempt to overthrow the works of the wicked one ourselves, for Christ has already done so! Should we be slothful in this world, and simply lay back and let those who slander and blaspheme the name of God have their way? Should we not rather seek to tell the world of the greatness of God and show forth the goodness within us? Peter tells us in 1st Peter 3:14-16—14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed. "And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled." 15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; 16 having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. We do not seek to defend God. We seek to defend the reason of the hope that is within us. Charles Spurgeon once said, “The Word of God is like a lion. You don’t have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself.” God is more than capable of defending Himself. He can (and will) bring about sore retribution to those who oppose Him. Will that dissuade them from accursing Him? No, they will still rail against the Sovereign. Revelation 16:8-11—8 Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. 9 And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory. 10 Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. 11 They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds. These men who assailed the name of God, even after being struck with heat and pain, will not give glory to God, but will oppose Him even more because of His wrath that is poured out upon them.

“So why do we need to tell people about God if they’re only going to continue to blaspheme Him?” First, we warn them because some of God’s elect may be with them, and have not yet heard the truth of God, and if they are elect, when they hear the truth they will obey the truth. “But what will happen to those who do not obey?” What do you think will happen to them? They will face the wrath of God, and be sent to their eternal destruction. Which is why we need to let the truth of God be known, that they may rest in the eternal rest that Jesus gives us, and not the temporal rest that Joshua delivered. While Joshua did indeed work mighty works of God, he did not give them the rest that only Jesus can give. “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” If we are in Christ, and He has overcome the world, then guess what? We too will overcome the world through Him. Like the people Joshua led into Canaan, we will be beset by those who hate and despise us for believing in God. We will be surrounded by the spiritual descendants of Canaan and Moab and the Amorites. We will not have rest in this world, but we will have eternal rest in the world to come, where we will bask in the glory of God the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Come unto Me and rest;
lay down, thou weary one, lay down
thy head upon My breast.”
I came to Jesus as I was,
so weary, worn, and sad;
I found in Him a resting place,
and He has made me glad.

(“I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say” by Horatio Bonar)

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 27 & 36 (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 15:05:30 +0000

Numbers 26 is the second census that was taken of the people of Israel, so we will skip to Numbers 27, which we will study along with Numbers 36 which brings closure to the episode cataloged in this chapter.

Numbers 27:1-4—1 Then came the daughters of Zelophehad the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, from the families of Manasseh the son of Joseph; and these were the names of his daughters: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. 2 And they stood before Moses, before Eleazar the priest, and before the leaders and all the congregation, by the doorway of the tabernacle of meeting, saying: 3 "Our father died in the wilderness; but he was not in the company of those who gathered together against the LORD, in company with Korah, but he died in his own sin; and he had no sons. 4 Why should the name of our father be removed from among his family because he had no son? Give us a possession among our father's brothers." So many people who don’t want to believe the Bible like to claim that it subjugates women. On the contrary, the things contained in the Bible are for the protection of women. “Well what about in Deuteronomy 22:28 where it says that if a man rapes a virgin he is to take her as his wife? How does that protect the woman?” Good question. Basically, this command (which is an echo of Exodus 22:16) is not talking about rape. It is to prevent a man from sleeping with a damsel, knowing that he will have to pay her father and marry her, never being able to divorce her. In other words, God is telling this man “If you want her, you will have to take her for life, her and her alone.” Just look at the verses previous to this, Deuteronomy 22:25-27—25 “But if a man finds a betrothed young woman in the countryside, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. 26 But you shall do nothing to the young woman; there is in the young woman no sin deserving of death, for just as when a man rises against his neighbor and kills him, even so is this matter. 27 For he found her in the countryside, and the betrothed young woman cried out, but there was no one to save her.” If the woman was not married or betrothed, the man who sleeps with her must marry her. If the woman was betrothed or married, her rapist must die. So yes, there were protections for women.

Our text today gives us another example. The daughters of a man who died without any sons to inherit his land asked what would happen to them in the Promised Land, if they would have any inheritance. After all, inheritances of land were passed down through the sons. Zelophehad was a descendant of the tribe of Manasseh, and a grandson of the man Gilead (from whom the land of Gilead gets its name). Understanding the family tree as we read it in 1st Chronicles 7:14-15 is a bit tricky. The majority of translations (including the KJV, given here) render 1st Chronicles 7:14-15 (KJV)—14 The sons of Manasseh; Ashriel, whom she bare: (but his concubine the Aramitess bare Machir the father of Gilead: 15 And Machir took to wife the sister of Huppim and Shuppim, whose sister's name was Maachah;) and the name of the second was Zelophehad: and Zelophehad had daughters. In the NKJV we read 14 The descendants of Manasseh: his Syrian concubine bore him Machir the father of Gilead, the father of Asriel. 15 Machir took as his wife the sister of Huppim and Shuppim, whose name was Maachah. The name of Gilead's grandson was Zelophehad, but Zelophehad begot only daughters. And in the NET (New English Translation) we see 14 The sons of Manasseh: Asriel, who was born to Manasseh's Aramean concubine. She also gave birth to Makir the father of Gilead. 15 Now Makir married a wife from the Huppites and Shuppites. (His sister's name was Maacah.) Zelophehad was Manasseh's second son; he had only daughters. In verse 15, the word “second” in the KJV, the word “grandson” in the NKJV and the phrase “second son” in the NET are translated from the word הַשֵּׁנִי (sheni) which usually means “second (ordinal number)”, but can also mean “another; other (something as distinct from something else)”. Scholars are divided and perplexed by the phrase “the second” (or “grandson” or “second son”). Keil and Delitzsch only guess at it; the Pulpit Commentary also. The Biblical Illustrator and even John Calvin are silent on this. Even great Jewish writers like Abraham Ibn Ezra, Maimonides and Josephus are also silent. This being the case, we cannot be dogmatic about it, but should only join these brilliant minds in their perplexity and silence.

Let us suffice it to say that the name of Gilead's grandson was Zelophehad. But Zelophehad did not have any sons, only daughters. Since daughters were not yet given the right of land inheritance, would they have anywhere to live? Would they wander around homeless? Or would they marry into another tribe, and their father’s name simply be blotted out? These daughters had questions, and they were not afraid to ask them. But they did not do so in a harsh manner, but were tender and inquisitive in their asking. These were indeed children of Israel, being of the tribe of Manasseh, the son of Joseph, the son of Jacob, and as such they deserved to be cared for as children of Israel. And their concern for their father’s name is to be commended. So Moses had a quandary to figure out. And what does he do? He did what he always did: he took the matter to the One who could give him proper counsel.

Numbers 27:5-11—5 So Moses brought their case before the LORD. 6 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 7 "The daughters of Zelophehad speak what is right; you shall surely give them a possession of inheritance among their father's brothers, and cause the inheritance of their father to pass to them. 8 And you shall speak to the children of Israel, saying: 'If a man dies and has no son, then you shall cause his inheritance to pass to his daughter. 9 If he has no daughter, then you shall give his inheritance to his brothers. 10 If he has no brothers, then you shall give his inheritance to his father's brothers. 11 And if his father has no brothers, then you shall give his inheritance to the relative closest to him in his family, and he shall possess it.'" And it shall be to the children of Israel a statute of judgment, just as the LORD commanded Moses. God always has an answer, always has a solution that will work out for the good of His people—even if it does not appear to be immediately for their good. It did not seem good at the time when God caused the people of Jerusalem to be carried away captive to Babylon because they had progressed further and further into idolatry, and had broken the covenant that God made with them, and risked being cut off from Him eternally.

And He tells them through the prophet Jeremiah that this captivity will be for a short while, in order to bring them back to God. Jeremiah 27:17, 21-22—“17 Do not listen to them; serve the king of Babylon, and live! Why should this city be laid waste?...21 yes, thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning the vessels that remain in the house of the LORD, and in the house of the king of Judah and of Jerusalem: 22 'They shall be carried to Babylon, and there they shall be until the day that I visit them,' says the LORD. 'Then I will bring them up and restore them to this place.'” This was for the good of Jerusalem, that the idolatry would be blotted out and the city renewed. We see later that this captivity would be but for a season, and God would raise up a king in Babylon who would set them free to return to their land and worship Him. He would later say in Jeremiah 29:10-12— 10 For thus says the LORD: “After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place. 11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.” And He did what He said He would. He raised up Cyrus, king of Babylon, who wrote a decree that all the people of Israel should return to their homeland. And here in Numbers, He gives a less severe command—He gives a command that yes, the daughters of Zelophehad should be given a portion of land among their uncles, and the inheritance that would have gone to any brothers (had they had any) would go to these daughters.

And in future cases, the same thing would happen. But if the man died childless, his land would pass to his brothers. If he had no brothers, the land would pass to his uncle(s) on his father’s side. If he had no uncles on his father’s side, it would go to a near kinsman. This, of course, brings us to the case of Ruth. A little background—Naomi and Elimelech were Ephrathites who lived in Bethlehem Ephrathah in the land of Judah. Elimelech dies, and their sons Mahlon and Chilion took for themselves wives, Moabitesses from the land of Moab—one named Orpah and the other named Ruth. “But I thought men of Israel were not supposed to marry Moabite women?” True indeed (Deuteronomy 23:3). But read on. Mahlon and Chilion died, leaving Naomi not only as a widow but also having no sons (like Zelophehad and like the Shunammite woman in 2nd Kings 4:1 and like the widow of Nain in Luke 7:12). Ruth was also made a widow by this. Does she remain in Moab as Orpah did? No. What does she tell Naomi when she said she would go with her? “For wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God, my God” (Ruth 1:16). She made a vow that she would worship YHVH, Naomi’s God. In the Mishnah (a collection of rabbinical commentaries on the Old Testament) we read in Mishna Yebamot 8:3(I) that “The male Ammonite and Moabite are prohibited from entering the congregation of the Lord, and the prohibition concerning them is forever. But their women are permitted forthwith”. So the prohibition was against the Moabite males from entering the assembly of Israel, not the Moabitesses. (Remember also that the people were to bring the young women of the Midianites into the camp after they had slain the men, women and boys in Numbers 31). She returned with Naomi to Bethlehem Judah, and gleaned the wheat fields to support Naomi and possibly find a husband. A husband from the people of Israel. So God used this marriage by Naomi’s Israelite son to this Moabite woman to bring the Moabitess into the land of Israel and, as you may know, she was one of the ancestors of our Lord (Matthew 1:5).

Eventually, Ruth is smitten with a man named Boaz, a kinsman of Elimelech. And Boaz is smitten with her. And he takes Ruth to be his wife. But there is a matter of a piece of land that must be redeemed. Ruth 4:3-6—3 Then he [Boaz] said to the close relative, "Naomi, who has come back from the country of Moab, sold the piece of land which belonged to our brother Elimelech. 4 And I thought to inform you, saying, 'Buy it back in the presence of the inhabitants and the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, redeem it; but if you will not redeem it, then tell me, that I may know; for there is no one but you to redeem it, and I am next after you.'" And he said, "I will redeem it." 5 Then Boaz said, "On the day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you must also buy it from Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to perpetuate the name of the dead through his inheritance." 6 And the close relative said, "I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I ruin my own inheritance. You redeem my right of redemption for yourself, for I cannot redeem it." Naomi had sold a piece of land, and since her husband and her sons were dead, and since (ostensibly) Elimelech had no brothers, the right to redeem it then went to his nearest kinsman. Since this nearest kinsman declined to purchase it (since he would also have to raise up seed with Ruth, according to the rite of the Levirate marriage [Deuteronomy 25:5-10]), he then transferred the right to redeem to the next-in-line, which was Boaz, who then raised up seed with this Moabitess. Ruth 4:13—So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife; and when he went in to her, the LORD gave her conception, and she bore a son. This son he named Obed (Ruth 4:21). Obed had a son he named Jesse. And Jesse’s son? That would be David (Ruth 4:22), who would become the favorite king of Israel, and a man after God’s own heart.

We see the inheritance given to the daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers 36:1-13—1 Now the chief fathers of the families of the children of Gilead the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of the sons of Joseph, came near and spoke before Moses and before the leaders, the chief fathers of the children of Israel. 2 And they said: "The LORD commanded my lord Moses to give the land as an inheritance by lot to the children of Israel, and my lord was commanded by the LORD to give the inheritance of our brother Zelophehad to his daughters. 3 Now if they are married to any of the sons of the other tribes of the children of Israel, then their inheritance will be taken from the inheritance of our fathers, and it will be added to the inheritance of the tribe into which they marry; so it will be taken from the lot of our inheritance. 4 And when the Jubilee of the children of Israel comes, then their inheritance will be added to the inheritance of the tribe into which they marry; so their inheritance will be taken away from the inheritance of the tribe of our fathers." 5 Then Moses commanded the children of Israel according to the word of the LORD, saying: "What the tribe of the sons of Joseph speaks is right. 6 This is what the LORD commands concerning the daughters of Zelophehad, saying, 'Let them marry whom they think best, but they may marry only within the family of their father's tribe.' 7 So the inheritance of the children of Israel shall not change hands from tribe to tribe, for every one of the children of Israel shall keep the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers. 8 And every daughter who possesses an inheritance in any tribe of the children of Israel shall be the wife of one of the family of her father's tribe, so that the children of Israel each may possess the inheritance of his fathers. 9 Thus no inheritance shall change hands from one tribe to another, but every tribe of the children of Israel shall keep its own inheritance." 10 Just as the LORD commanded Moses, so did the daughters of Zelophehad; 11 for Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, were married to the sons of their father's brothers. 12 They were married into the families of the children of Manasseh the son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in the tribe of their father's family. 13 These are the commandments and the judgments which the LORD commanded the children of Israel by the hand of Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan, across from Jericho.

If a case like this arose in the future, and a daughter of one tribe married a son of another tribe, the land inheritance would go to any sons this couple might have, and would therefore then belong to the tribe of the man the woman married. This could lend itself to great confusion among the people, and land would be swapped among tribes until the land was nothing more than a hodge-podge of different tribes and they were all mixed up together. So to stop this from happening before it started, God gave Moses a command: The daughters of Zelophehad were to marry within the tribe of Manasseh so that the land they were given would stay in the tribe of Manasseh.

Part 2 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 25 & 31 (Part 3)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 16:42:48 +0000

Then the attack against the Midianites comes in Numbers 31:1-7—1 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 2 "Take vengeance on the Midianites for the children of Israel. Afterward you shall be gathered to your people." 3 So Moses spoke to the people, saying, "Arm some of yourselves for war, and let them go against the Midianites to take vengeance for the LORD on Midian. 4 A thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war." 5 So there were recruited from the divisions of Israel one thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. 6 Then Moses sent them to the war, one thousand from each tribe; he sent them to the war with Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, with the holy articles and the signal trumpets in his hand. 7 And they warred against the Midianites, just as the LORD commanded Moses, and they killed all the males. The zeal that Phinehas had when thrusting his spear through Zimri and Cozbi stirred up the people to attack those who had tempted them into idolatry. Let’s think about how far these people had come. They were once slaves in Egypt, unskilled in war, only in trodding out bricks and erecting monuments to the Egyptian gods. They had been brought through the desert where they grumbled and complained incessantly. Now, some 40+ years later, they defeat the army of Midian. They had overcome their feebleness through the power of the Hand of God. Now, consider yourself. You too were once a slave. A slave to sin. Maybe it was a great sin, maybe not. But you were, nonetheless a slave to it. You were far off from the Kingdom of God. But now, you are a different person, a new creation, reborn in the image of Christ. Ephesians 2:13—But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Romans 6:17-18 (ESV)—17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. (I like the ESV translation of this passage better, as it gives the true translation of the Greek word δοῦλοι (douloi), which means, literally, “slaves”). But now we are kings and priests to God, no longer slaves to sin. Were you a drunkard? You are now a prince. Were you a harlot? You are now a princess. Were you once living in the gutter, your life filled with nothing, only looking for the next day or the next bottle? Forget that, you are now a child of God. Attack the Midianites of your flesh, kill it, and remember who you are now! The Biblical Illustrator says this:

It is instructive to compare this warfare of the children of Israel with their earlier battles. There are many points of difference between them. In Egypt, when surrounded by their enemies, they were not called to fight. They were quite unprepared for war; but God fought for them, and they were still, and held their peace. Then again, subsequently they were attacked by the Amalekites. They did not begin the encounter, but only repelled the attacks; whereas on this occasion Moses said unto the people “Arm some of yourselves for war, and let them go against the Midianites to take vengeance for the LORD on Midian.” Their earlier encounters were all in self-defence—their later ones were aggressive. Here, then, we cannot but discern a mark of progress in Israel’s history. At first, when they were weak, and without experience of God’s power and unchanging love, they were more passive. Now that they had been formed into a more compact body, and trained to arms, and still more, had experienced the power and faithfulness of God, they were called to be aggressive, to attack and destroy the enemies of God. Now, we think, that this progress in Israel’s history is typical in the Christian life. In the first beginnings of the spiritual life the young Christian’s mind is chiefly passive. God’s work is to show him his own needs and what are his enemies. The very spirit of the gospel is aggressive, not in a worldly sense, nor indeed in the sense in which it was true of Israel, but in a higher and holier sense; for it is a spirit of faith in God-a spirit of holy jealousy for God’s glory—a spirit of deep compassion for perishing souls.

Numbers 31:8—They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of their slain, Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. And they also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword. The man who would not curse Israel, but who led them astray another way, dies at their hands. What a fitting end to the man who led the people of God away from Him and into the degrading sin of sexual immorality mixed with idolatry! The people of God executed the justice of God by running a sword through this wretch. He had seen the goodness of God; he had seen that God would only bless them; he saw how great their numbers were. But instead of joining with them and becoming part of the people of God, He chose the riches of the world instead of the riches of God. Like Haman, who devised ill against the people of Israel and wound up being hanged on his own gallows, so Balaam devised evil against the people of God and was pierced through with a sword, thus bringing an end to his miserable life. Like Sanballat and Tobiah devised evil against Nehemiah and those who were rebuilding Jerusalem, only to see their feeble deeds come to naught, so this man, who sought to bring an end to Israel, saw his plans come to naught. And like our Adversary, who walks about like a roaring lion, seeks to bring down those called by God, he will be brought down to the Bottomless Pit and, finally, to the Lake of Fire. There is no way to defeat God. He cannot be dealt a blow that will not be turned around a hundred times—nay, a thousand or million or more times—harder on the one who tried it.

Numbers 31:9-18—9 And the children of Israel took the women of Midian captive, with their little ones, and took as spoil all their cattle, all their flocks, and all their goods. 10 They also burned with fire all the cities where they dwelt, and all their forts. 11 And they took all the spoil and all the booty—of man and beast. 12 Then they brought the captives, the booty, and the spoil to Moses, to Eleazar the priest, and to the congregation of the children of Israel, to the camp in the plains of Moab by the Jordan, across from Jericho. 13 And Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the congregation, went to meet them outside the camp. 14 But Moses was angry with the officers of the army, with the captains over thousands and captains over hundreds, who had come from the battle. 15 And Moses said to them: “Have you kept all the women alive? 16 Look, these women caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the incident of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. 17 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. 18 But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately.” After the slaughter, the people gathered up all the prisoners of war—an action which angered Moses, as these were of the same women who led Israel into idolatry. Why would they keep them alive? But don’t we sometimes do the same thing? We keep some reminder of our past in our possession, some reminder of the good times we had when we were slaves to sin and apart from God. “Oh, what’s it going to hurt?” 1st Corinthians 10:12—Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Do you think Satan needs more than a little sliver of room to worm his way back into our lives? Open the door, even a crack, and he will burst through and make one regret giving him even the slightest foothold. Ephesians 4:27—Nor give place to the devil. The word translated “place” is the Greek τόπος (topos), and means “opportunity, power, occasion for acting.” Paul is warning us to not give the Devil an opportunity, to not give him an occasion for acting in our lives. Jesus warned us in Matthew 12:43-45 (and in Luke 11:24-26)—43 "When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. 44 Then he says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. 45 Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first." Do not think you are stronger or smarter than the Devil. He has been around for far too long, and remember he convinced one-third of the angels to follow him in rebelling against God. Knowing that, what do you think your chances are against him? Just ask Eve how trying to outsmart the serpent worked out for her, for Adam, for all mankind.

“But they killed women? And children? What kind of a God commands that?” The kind of God who wants us to put sin far away from us. When they brought the women and children back, it may have been out of mercy. But they did not think ahead to what might happen if these were allowed to remain with the people of God. The women, we know, would have led more men astray. The boys? They would have grown up bitter, resentful of the men who killed their fathers. You want a villain origin story? Isn’t that how they all begin? “But what about where Moses says in verse 18 ‘But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately’? Isn’t that permitting child marriage and pedophilia?” This is an argument we need to be prepared for, as the enemies of God will use this. So, different translations do render הַטַּף בַּנָּשִׁים (hatap bannashiym) as “young girls” or “women children”. And that is, indeed, the literal translation of this verse. But to claim this gives a green light to pedophilia is not warranted by the text. Nowhere does it say they are to take them as wives or concubines. And with there being a dearth of commentary on this verse, I’m going to give you my take on it, which may or may not be the best. But here goes: The young women—and yes, even young girls—who had not known a man intimately were to be taken in to the congregation, raised as an Israelite, and even used to perform tasks. When they became older they could be married, but nowhere—NOWHERE—does the text say ANYTHING about using these girls for sex. If anything, this was mercy. Their mothers were killed; their fathers were killed; if they had brothers they were put to death. They would have been left to fend for themselves in the desert. Instead, they were brought into the fold of the people of God, and raised in the Covenant of God.

The rest of the chapter deals with dividing up the spoils of war and the distribution of those spoils and the tribute to God. The only passage we will touch on in Numbers 31 is Numbers 31:48-50—48 Then the officers who were over thousands of the army, the captains of thousands and captains of hundreds, came near to Moses; 49 and they said to Moses, "Your servants have taken a count of the men of war who are under our command, and not a man of us is missing. 50 Therefore we have brought an offering for the LORD, what every man found of ornaments of gold: armlets and bracelets and signet rings and earrings and necklaces, to make atonement for ourselves before the LORD." Twelve thousand went to war against the Midianites, and twelve thousand returned. God knows how to save His people. The same can be said of those who trust in Christ. Jesus is our Good Shepherd, and none of His sheep will be lost. Does a Good Shepherd let any of His sheep wander off? Or when He sees that sheep wandering, will He not go and bring it back? Yes, He will bring it back. Matthew 18:12-14 (echoed in Luke 15:4-6)—12 "What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying? 13 And if he should find it, assuredly, I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. 14 Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish." Is your will greater than God’s will? Can you stray far enough from Jesus that He will let you go merrily on your way to Hell? Some say “Well, you can walk away from God and lose your salvation that way”. No, my friend! He is The Good Shepherd, and when He sees you going astray, if you are truly His, then He will run to you to bring you back to Himself! He will leave the 99 sheep who are staying to go get the one who is straying (Matthew 18:12-13; Luke 15:4-7). The Father knows all that He has given to His Son, and will not allow any of them to be lost!

Loving Shepherd of your sheep/all your lambs in safety keep;

Nothing can your power withstand/none can pluck them from your hand.

May they praise you ev'ry day/gladly all your will obey,

Like your blessed ones above/happy in your precious love.

Loving Shepherd, ever near/teach your lambs your voice to hear;

Suffer not their steps to stray/from the straight and narrow way.

Where you lead them may they go/walking in your steps below;

Then, before your Father's throne/Savior, claim them for your own.

(“Loving Shepherd of Thy Sheep” by Jane Leeson)

Father, help us to always remember Your goodness and Your faithfulness in all our battles, knowing that You will come for us when we stray. Help us to always put to death sin in our mortal bodies, to put to death the old man and to put on the new man. Help us to not cling to those things that would take us back to who we used to be, but help us to remember that we are a new creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works. But in our hatred for sin, let us always remember mercy in our dealings with those who do not know You.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 25 & 31 (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:04:02 +0000

Numbers 25:6-9—6 Then behold, one of the sons of Israel came and brought to his relatives a Midianite woman, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the sons of Israel, while they were weeping at the doorway of the tent of meeting. 7 When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he arose from the midst of the congregation and took a spear in his hand, 8 and he went after the man of Israel into the tent and pierced both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman, through the body. So the plague on the sons of Israel was checked. 9 Those who died by the plague were 24,000. So this man of Israel, while all the people were still weeping for the men who were slain due to their idolatry, brings in a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the sons of Israel to further pollute the people with sexual idolatry. Why were the people of Israel told to not intermingle with the people of Midian? Well, for one, although Midian was indeed descended from Abraham he was from Abraham’s second wife Keturah (Genesis 25:1-2). He was not the son of the promise God gave to Abraham, but from when Abraham went beyond what God had given him (it is another warning against polygamy). Second, the people of Midian (and Moab), while worshipping YHVH they also worshipped Ba'al-Peor. So any kind of mingling with them provoked YHVH to anger. Additionally, many of the Middle Eastern pagan religions were rife with sexual rituals as worship of the fertility gods such as Ba'al and Asherah. Bernhard Anderson in “Understanding the Old Testament” (p. 189) says

In Canaanite religion, sex was elevated to the realm of the divine. The divine powers, it was believed, were disclosed in the sphere of nature—that is, in the mystery of fertility. The gods were sexual in nature, and were worshipped in sexual rites.

And even though this man had seen what was done to those who joined themselves to the idolatry of the people with the Moabite women (who themselves had joined with the Midianites against Israel) he still brought this woman in to lie with her. If we were to read on into the book of Joshua, we would see that even then the people had not cleansed themselves of this sin. Phinehas tells the Gadites, the Reubenites and the half-tribe of Manasseh in Joshua 22:17—“Is the iniquity of Peor not enough for us, from which we are not cleansed till this day, although there was a plague in the congregation of the LORD?” Though the people were delivered from the punishment for their sexual idolatry, that sin obviously still lingered in the hearts of some of the people.

But how many times do we see this happen? We are warned against sin, we even see the effects of sin on others, but we still plunge headlong into it. When we see this happen we must do what we have to in order to purge this sin from our numbers. Which is what Phinehas does here. 7 When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he arose from the midst of the congregation and took a spear in his hand, 8 and he went after the man of Israel into the tent and pierced both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman, through the body. This is not the last time we will see the people of God kill those who worship idols. Ehud straps a sword onto his thigh and slays Eglon, king of Moab in Judges 3:12-31. In 1^st Kings 18, we see the contest between Elijah against the prophets of Ba'al on Mount Carmel. We see Elijah’s sacrifice accepted by God and the sacrifice of the prophets of Ba'al rejected. Elijah even soaked his sacrifice in buckets of water to show that it was not the heat of the desert sun, but rather it was God who sent fire down to consume his sacrifice. And what does the prophet of YHVH command? 1st Kings 18:39-40—39 Now when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, "The LORD, He is God! The LORD, He is God!" [literally, “YHVH is God! YHVH is God!”] 40 And Elijah said to them, "Seize the prophets of Baal! Do not let one of them escape!" So they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and executed them there.

In 2^nd Kings 10 King Jehu (not to be confused with the prophet Jehu in 1^st Kings) has all the house of Ahab slain, and says in 2nd Kings 10:16-17—16 Then he said, "Come with me, and see my zeal for the LORD." So they had him ride in his chariot. 17 And when he came to Samaria, he killed all who remained to Ahab in Samaria, till he had destroyed them, according to the word of the LORD which He spoke to Elijah. He calls all the prophets of Ba'al into the temple of Ba'al and has them put on their priestly garments in order to finally rid Israel of all the last vestiges of Ba'al worship. Then in 2nd Kings 10:23-28 (NASB)—23 Jehu went into the house of Baal with Jehonadab the son of Rechab; and he said to the worshipers of Baal, "Search and see that there is here with you none of the servants of the LORD, but only the worshipers of Baal." 24 Then they went in to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings. Now Jehu had stationed for himself eighty men outside, and he had said, "The one who permits any of the men whom I bring into your hands to escape shall give up his life in exchange." 25 Then it came about, as soon as he had finished offering the burnt offering, that Jehu said to the guard and to the royal officers, "Go in, kill them; let none come out." And they killed them with the edge of the sword; and the guard and the royal officers threw them out, and went to the inner room of the house of Baal. 26 They brought out the sacred pillars of the house of Baal and burned them. 27 They also broke down the sacred pillar of Baal and broke down the house of Baal, and made it a latrine to this day. 28 Thus Jehu eradicated Baal out of Israel. So yes, he wiped out all vestiges of Ba'al worship, but did so under false pretenses. Was he right to do it like this? Probably not. Was it right for Rebecca to trick Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing under false pretenses? Probably not. But if God has an end in mind, He can use the cunning and trickery of men to make it happen. Doesn’t mean we can go about doing likewise, but it does explain what our Lord meant when He said “Be wise as serpents” (Matthew 10:16). And what did God promise to Jehu for his zeal in removing Ba'al worship from Israel? 2nd Kings 10:30—"Because you have done well in doing what is right in My sight, and have done to the house of Ahab all that was in My heart, your sons shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation."

Unfortunately, Jehu did not go far enough. While he did indeed wipe out all the priests and prophets of Ba'al, there was one step he didn’t take. It was the step that even some of the better kings in Israel and Judah did not take. 2nd Kings 10:31—But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the LORD God of Israel with all his heart; for he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, who had made Israel sin. What were the sins of Jeroboam? He divided the kingdom (1st Kings 12:25), set up golden calves in Bethel and Dan (1st Kings 12:28-30), let anyone into the priesthood who wanted to be a priest regardless of whether or not they were of the tribe of Levi (1st Kings 12:31), and he prescribed a feast similar to Passover, except instead of the 14^th day of the seventh month, this was on the 15^th day of the eighth month (1st Kings 12:32). In other words, he directed the people away from the true worship of the true God. And what was the cause of the sins of Jeroboam? That Solomon did the same thing by marrying foreign wives and setting up houses and shrines for them. Instead of thrusting a spear through the heart of sin as Phinehas did, he made a bed and laid down a pillow for it. And this sin carried grievous consequences for the kingdom for years to come.

Those who died by the plague were 24,000. We don’t see a plague mentioned, but this text tells us that God sent a plague throughout the people and killed 24,000. Paul reckons the number at 23,000 (1st Corinthians 10:8). “Ha! See! There’s a contradiction!” No, it is not a contradiction. Paul was a devout Jew before he met Christ, and would no doubt have known what was written. You must remember that Paul was taught by none other than Christ Himself (Galatians 1:12, 17). He was no doubt given the number of people that died by the plague—the exact number—and reckoned it differently than did Moses. John Wesley supposes that Moses gave the maximum number while Paul gave the minimum. So the number of people who died of the plague was somewhere between 23,000 and 24,000. But let us not lose sight of the warning Paul gives us. Let’s put 1st Corinthians 10:8 in its proper context. 1st Corinthians 10:5-8—5 But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. 6 Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. 7 And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play." 8 Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell. Here the apostle is linking sexual immorality with idolatry, a practice common in the city of Corinth at that time (as it was in the days of Numbers with Ba'al). He was telling these Gentile believers to not be caught up in the sexual immorality of the pagan temple worship, but to keep themselves pure and worship God alone. These Corinthian believers were, as were the people of Israel, surrounded by those who worshipped other gods and were being tempted to join with them in their idolatry. And the apostle closes this particular section by warning the people in 1st Corinthians 10:11-14—11 Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. 12 Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. 13 No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. 14 Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. Flee from idolatry. Don’t become fascinated by it, don’t dance close to it, and don’t even consider it even for a moment. FLEE from it. Don’t bring it into the worship of God with you, and if it is brought in by others, get away from it. Gouge out your eye, cut off your hand if you have to. What did God do to the people in Numbers? Why does Paul bring it up? All these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition. They happened to them to serve as examples of what would happen to us!

Numbers 25:10-13—10 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 11 "Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath from the children of Israel, because he was zealous with My zeal among them, so that I did not consume the children of Israel in My zeal. 12 Therefore say, 'Behold, I give to him My covenant of peace; 13 and it shall be to him and his descendants after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and made atonement for the children of Israel.'" God commends Phinehas for his zeal in dealing with gross idolatry and wickedness. But in reality, it was not any zeal that Phinehas himself had, but it was God’s zeal which He put upon him. “He was zealous with My zeal among them, so that I did not consume the children of Israel in My zeal.” Just as God put upon the seventy elders of Israel the same spirit that He put on Moses (Numbers 11:24-25). Ger de Koning in his King Comments has this to say:

There is a man, an Israelite, who defies the judgment that has been carried out. He ignores God’s judgment and, with incredible hubris, brings a Midianite woman to his brothers. This is not just any sin. It is a frontal attack on the true, high and pure service to God. With his deed he slaps God’s face and he is not interested in anything that he does to his brothers with his deed. His brothers mourn about the situation and he indicates with his deed that they are behaving overly dramatic. So he defies God and despises the crying people.

God gives us a zeal for the things of God and causes us to finally bow our knee and confess that He is Lord over all. On the other hand, we cannot be zealous for the things of God unless we are given the Spirit of God. 1st Corinthians 2:14—But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God…nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Up to this chapter in Numbers God had destroyed countless people by His own hand, and now He is giving that power over to His people. He had commanded Moses to hang the men who had committed sexual idolatry and now He had given Phinehas the desire to fulfill God’s wrath in slaying these two who were having sex in the man’s tent. They wanted to be joined together—and Phinehas made sure they would stay that way. This is a warning to us, that we should be careful when we join ourselves with another. 1st Corinthians 6:15-16—15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! 16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For "the two," He says, "shall become one flesh." When we lie with another we become one flesh with that person. When we take our marriage vows, often the officiant will say “what God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” Phinehas has given us a clear picture of this principle, and has joined this man and this woman together—in death.

And because of this zeal, God made a covenant with Phinehas that his descendants would be priests to God perpetually. “It shall be to him and his descendants after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood.” The priesthood that was initiated with Aaron would continue on through his grandson Phinehas. We see that Phinehas was the chief of the Korahite Levites in 1st Chronicles 9:19-20. (Yes, although God brought Korah himself down to Sheol, yet Korah had sons who survived to the time of the temple, and even served it.) He was also an ancestor of the scribe Ezra (Ezra 7:5). And before we go any further, allow me to clear up a passage that could cause some confusion. Judges 19-21 we read the disastrous account of the Levite and his concubine and the aftermath thereof. We come across a curiosity in Judges 20:27-28—27 So the children of Israel inquired of the LORD (the ark of the covenant of God was there in those days, 28 and Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before it in those days)… The Book of Judges chronicles about 450 years in the history of Israel. So either Phineas lived to be about 500 years old or there is something that needs to be studied more. The events in this section of Judges occurred much earlier than it is written—and this is just a guess—probably sometime around Judges chapter 2 or chapter 3. But it had to have happened sometime within about 20 years after the death of Joshua.

Numbers 25:14-18—14 Now the name of the Israelite who was killed, who was killed with the Midianite woman, was Zimri the son of Salu, a leader of a father's house among the Simeonites. 15 And the name of the Midianite woman who was killed was Cozbi the daughter of Zur; he was head of the people of a father's house in Midian. 16 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 17 "Harass the Midianites, and attack them; 18 for they harassed you with their schemes by which they seduced you in the matter of Peor and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a leader of Midian, their sister, who was killed in the day of the plague because of Peor." Because of the heinousness of the indiscretions of the people, brought on by the temptations from the Midianites, God commands Moses to attack the Midianites and wipe them out. Today we do not kill someone because they cause us to sin. Rather, we should be killing the flesh in us that is causing us to sin. In his book “On the Mortification of Sin”, John Owens writes

Indwelling sin is compared to a person, a living person, called “the old man.” He has his way of thinking, his tendencies, his wisdom, craft, subtlety, and strength. This old man, says the apostle, must be killed, put to death, mortified. That is, the old man’s power, life, vigor, and strength, his ability to produce effects, must be taken away by the Spirit. In fact, it is to be “crucified with Christ” as a good thing. We, as the “old man,” are said to be “dead” with Christ. When we are resurrected in Christ and regenerated, a principle contrary to the old man, one designed to destroy him, is planted in our hearts. But the whole process towards perfection (Christ-like behavior) is carried on by degrees all of our life.

We do not look to kill those things or people outside of ourselves that lead us to sin. What we really need to kill is—well, us. As the main verse for the theme of his book, Owens uses Romans 8:13—If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. You could say that the Midianites represented our flesh, the Israelites the spirit. If our spirit is going to live eternally with God, we must put to death our flesh. Is that difficult? Yes. Find anyone in the Bible who did not have a difficult time overcoming the flesh. You won’t find anyone. Even the ones we don’t read much about were fighting battles we couldn’t begin to imagine. Consider the case of Zacchaeus in Luke 19. He was a tax collector, a practice highly criticized among Israelites when Jesus walked the earth. He could not go back and undo all the wrongs he had perpetrated on the people. But he put to death the deeds of his flesh, and recompensed for what he had done. Luke 19:8—"Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold." He went forth in the newness of his new life in Christ. As Zacchaeus did, so we too must thrust our spear through that old man, put him to death, lest he raise his head and lead us back to our old ways.

Part 3 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 25, 31 (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 17:05:00 +0000

We will group Numbers 25 with Numbers 31, as they both tell of the sins of the people with the Midianites and the battle that followed.

Numbers 25:1-3—1 Now Israel remained in Acacia Grove, and the people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab. 2 They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. 3 So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel. The name Acacia Grove is rendered in many other translations as Shittim. And the words Shittim and Acacia are synonymous for a tree that grows in the Middle East. What Balaam was unable to do, the people did themselves. Balak wanted Balaam to curse the people, but they indeed cursed themselves by committing harlotry with the women of Moab and by playing part in the idolatry of Ba'al. And it is a great example of how we should not mingle with the ungodliness of the ungodly lest we get caught up in their ungodliness and turn from God to worshipping idols. Josephus writes of this incident in his “Antiquities of the Jews” (Book 4, chapter 6, paragraph 9):

Now the young men were induced by the fondness they had for these women to think they spake very well; so they gave themselves up to what they persuaded them, and transgressed their own laws, and supposing there were many gods, and resolving that they would sacrifice to them according to the laws of that country which ordained them, they both were delighted with their strange food, and went on to do every thing that the women would have them do, though in contradiction to their own laws; so far indeed that this transgression was already gone through the whole army of the young men, and they fell into a sedition that was much worse than the former, and into danger of the entire abolition of their own institutions; for when once the youth had tasted of these strange customs, they went with insatiable inclinations into them; and even where some of the principal men were illustrious on account of the virtues of their fathers, they also were corrupted together with the rest.

This would become a common theme under the kings of Israel and Judah—that a king would arise who “did evil in the sight of the LORD”. Kings who were supposed to lead the people in righteousness and reserve worship for God and God alone, would turn from Him and worship Ba'al and Asherah, knowing full well that these types of idol worship would lead to ruin for their people. Solomon, the wisest man ever, was drawn away like this. 1st Kings 11:1-4—1 But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites—2 from the nations of whom the LORD had said to the children of Israel, "You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods." [Deuteronomy 7:3-4] Solomon clung to these in love. 3 And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. 4 For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David. “If Solomon was so wise, why did he turn away from the command of God and marry these women that God said not to marry?” That is the power of the flesh. Just as Delilah turned Samson away from God to be strong in his pride, so these women turned Solomon away from God. It is what the Apostle John refers to as “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life” (1st John 2:16). Ironically, Solomon would write, in Ecclesiastes 10:1—Dead flies putrefy the perfumer's ointment, and cause it to give off a foul odor; so does a little folly to one respected for wisdom and honor. For all of Solomon’s wisdom, his folly brought about the ruin of his kingdom.

A modern-day example of this would be a man I greatly admired, a wise expositor of Scripture, and a man who was even a Dean at John MacArthur’s seminary and a fellow at RC Sproul’s Ligonier Ministries. Steve Lawson confessed to having a five-year affair. In his words it was non-sexual (he referred to it as a “relationship” rather than an “affair”), and until proved otherwise we should believe him. That still does not excuse his behavior, as our Lord told us in Matthew 5:27-28—27 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not commit adultery.' 28 But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Even if he did not have sex with the woman, he had already committed adultery with her in his heart. Instead of getting away from the tent of Korah (Numbers 16:24) or plucking out his eye that was causing him to sin (Matthew 5:29), he allowed himself to be caught up in a sin that cost him dearly. He had written several books, had been preaching for several years, and had been teaching the word of God rather well. But he allowed himself to get too close with a woman, and for that weakness he has disqualified himself from being an elder.

“Getting back to Solomon. He had all these wives and concubines. And he was used greatly by God. Doesn’t that mean that polygamy is okay?” No, it does not mean polygamy is okay. If you read on, you will see that God was definitely not pleased with him marrying all these foreign wives. For had they not turned his heart away from God, and turned him to worshipping idols? How does one think God is pleased with that? And we read of God’s displeasure with him the in verses following. 1st Kings 11:9-11—9 So the LORD became angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned from the LORD God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, 10 and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not keep what the LORD had commanded. 11 Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, “Because you have done this, and have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant.” The kingdom was indeed given to his servant Jeroboam, who caused Israel to sin a grave sin, a sin so grievous that God would attach it to the name of Jeroboam thereafter. The “sin of Jeroboam” is mentioned in 22 verses in the Bible. It was the penalty God placed on the people because of Solomon’s sin. Now, do you see that God did not approve of his polygamy? It is as Job when he said it best. “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). In giving the kingdom to Solomon, God was glorified. In taking the kingdom away from Solomon, God was glorified. Blessed be the name of the LORD! Much of Solomon’s writing is ironic considering this. As he wrote in the verse from Ecclesiastes earlier, so he writes in Proverbs 6:23-29—23 For the commandment is a lamp, and the law a light; reproofs of instruction are the way of life, 24 to keep you from the evil woman, from the flattering tongue of a seductress. 25 Do not lust after her beauty in your heart, nor let her allure you with her eyelids. 26 For by means of a harlot a man is reduced to a crust of bread; and an adulteress will prey upon his precious life. 27 Can a man take fire to his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? 28 Can one walk on hot coals, and his feet not be seared? 29 So is he who goes in to his neighbor's wife; whoever touches her shall not be innocent.

Do not think we are immune from falling into the same snare that caught Solomon and that caught Steve Lawson. It is the reason that Paul wrote in 2nd Corinthians 6:14-16—14 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people." We are human. We are fallen creatures. We can fall into sin just as easily as anybody. And it happens more frequently the closer we are to that sin. It is no trifling thing, even though there are many “pastors” these days who not only will not speak about sin (I’m talking to you, Joel Osteen), but will make excuses for sin and discount its harm. But sin IS harmful. Not only does it harm the person, it harms the name of God and the name of Christ. Look what it did to Solomon. Look what it did to Ahab. Look what it did to Steve Lawson. Do not think for a moment that sin is a harmless thing. And do not see how close you can get to it. Without going over the line because, trust me (no, rather, trust God) you will cross that line. And apart from God’s Holy Spirit, there is no going back. Sin is a terrible cliff to plunge over. John Bunyan wrote “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners” as an autobiography of his spiritual journey through his life. And in on place early on in the book he wrote:

Again, when as sometimes I have been about to preach upon some smart and scorching portion of the Word, I have found the tempter suggest, ‘What, will you preach this? this condemns yourself; of this your own soul is guilty; wherefore preach not of it at all; or if you do, yet so mince it as to make way for your own escape; lest instead of awakening others, you lay that guilt upon your own soul, as you will never get from under.’ But, I thank the Lord, I have been kept from consenting to these so horrid suggestions, and have rather, as Samson, bowed myself with all my might, to condemn sin and transgression wherever I found it, yea, though therein also I did bring guilt upon my own conscience!…It is far better that thou do judge thyself, even by preaching plainly to others, than that thou, to save thyself, imprison the truth in unrighteousness; blessed be God for his help also in this.

This was a man greatly used by God, a man who eschewed sin, who thought of himself as “The Chief of Sinners”! May we all think of ourselves in like manner!

“So what do I do if I do sin? Am I then cast off from Christ forever?” No, absolutely not! We have an advocate between God and us, and His name is Jesus Christ (1st Timothy 2:5; 1st John 2:1). How many times will God forgive us of our sins? It would not be wise to test His patience, but He will forgive us more times than there are sands in the sea. Are you in Christ? Then for the rest of your earthly life and for all eternity you shall be in Christ. Is Christ less than a perfect Savior? God forbid! Hebrews 10:14—For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. Being perfected, can you make yourself unperfected? Can you undo what Christ has done? Can you uncomplete Christ’s complete sacrifice? He did not cry out “TETELESTAI!” for nothing.

Lifted up was He to die

“It is finished!” was His cry

Now in Heav’n exalted high

Hallelujah! What a Savior!

(“Man of Sorrows” by Philip P. Bliss)

Do not think you are worse than the worst sinner. Do not think you are further away from the grace and mercy of God than the man who sought letters to go through Damascus delivering up the saints to their deaths! This same Savior who called that man to be His Apostle is also calling you to follow Him and be saved from your sins! Who can forgive the one who joined the worship of Ba'al in Peor, who bowed down to idols and who previously aroused the anger of God.

But this mercy was not here shown, as God demanded He be worshipped exclusively. Numbers 25:4-5—4 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Take all the leaders of the people and hang the offenders before the LORD, out in the sun, that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel." 5 So Moses said to the judges of Israel, "Every one of you kill his men who were joined to Baal of Peor." The killing of those who joined themselves to Ba'al is reminiscent of the command to kill those who did not return to God after the episode with the Golden Calf in Exodus 32:27. God considered this episode so grievous and so heinous that He wanted the people to fully embrace the punishment thereof. Previously He had burned the outskirts of the camp, slain the people Himself while they were eating quail, opened up the earth to swallow Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and sent plagues among them. Now, He wants the people to understand His red hot hatred of sin by executing the punishment themselves. This was no mere complaining about the hot and dry desert and lack of water the people were guilty of. This was full on idolatry with pagans they were guilty of. And the people needed to understand the consequences. The leaders of this rebellion—not a rebellion against Moses as the mouthpiece of God, but against God Himself and His rule—were to be hung up “out in the sun, that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.” This is a kind of an illustration of Hell. In the full face of the desert sun, they were to be hanged from a tree to show forth the fiery wrath of God for all to see.

God expressed a similar sentiment when He told Josiah what He would do to the idolaters in Judah in 2nd Kings 22:17—"Because they have forsaken Me and have burned incense to other gods that they might provoke Me to anger with all the work of their hands, therefore My wrath burns against this place, and it shall not be quenched."' The wrath of God is always described in terms which imply fire. God said of those who afflict the widows and orphans in Exodus 22:24—“My anger will be kindled, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.” Hell is the ultimate expression of God’s wrath, a fire which will burn continually and shall destroy all who work iniquity. Many claim that Hell is not real, and if it is that it is not the eternal burning that it is. Progressive “pastor” Rob Bell says

“At the heart of this perspective is the belief that, given enough time, everybody will turn to God and find themselves in the joy and peace of God’s presence. The love of God will melt every hard heart, and even the most ‘depraved sinners’ will eventually give up their resistance and turn to God.” (Love Wins, p. 107)

This thinking goes against the Scriptures that speak of everlasting torment. It also makes Jesus a liar. Matthew 25:41, 46—41 "Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels…46 These will go away into eternal punishment." Mark 9:43-48—43 "If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, 44 [where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.] 45 "If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than, having your two feet, to be cast into hell, 46 [where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.] 47 “If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell, 48 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.”

Some say that Hell is a metaphor and that Gehenna (“hell” in verse 47) was simply taking about a place where garbage and waste were burned. Gehenna (Valley of Hinnom) was indeed a place where the fires were constantly burning because of all the waste dumped there. But how does a burning pile of garbage have power over men’s tongues? James 3:6—And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell [Greek, Gehenna]. James is here not talking of the physical organ, the thing that makes speech possible. He is talking of the desire of the tongue to say things that are not good. And that desire is inflamed by the fires of Gehenna, by Satan and his angels to defile us. And yes, the tongue defiles the entire body. Otherwise Jesus would not have said that it is what comes out of a man that defiles him (Matthew 15:11; Mark 7:20). We need to be careful for every word we speak, lest we defile ourselves and bring shame to Christ.

Part 2 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 22-24 (Part 3)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 15:43:00 +0000

Numbers 23:25-30—25 Then Balak said to Balaam, "Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all!" 26 So Balaam answered and said to Balak, "Did I not tell you, saying, 'All that the LORD speaks, that I must do'?" 27 Then Balak said to Balaam, "Please come, I will take you to another place; perhaps it will please God that you may curse them for me from there." 28 So Balak took Balaam to the top of Peor, that overlooks the wasteland. 29 Then Balaam said to Balak, "Build for me here seven altars, and prepare for me here seven bulls and seven rams." 30 And Balak did as Balaam had said, and offered a bull and a ram on every altar.

Then Balak said to Balaam, "Neither curse them at all, nor bless them at all!" Still not satisfied and still not convinced that God would not allow Balaam to curse Israel, Balak tells the prophet, in a way, to stay neutral and to not say anything against the people of God. How curious are those who hate the people of God, that they want the people of God to die, and when God does not cause that to pass, they are outraged that God would not destroy His people! Well did David write in Psalm 2:1-3—1 Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? 2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, 3 "Let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us." The proud boast in their heart that we who have humbled ourselves before the LORD are stupid and weak, that we do not know how to think for ourselves and we blindly follow some Sky Daddy (their term) because we are dumb sheep. Here are some of the things they say about us.

Carl Sagan

You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep-seated need to believe.

George Carlin

Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! ..But He loves you... and HE NEEDS MONEY!

Richard Dawkins

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

The nations rage! They claim that the people of God are delusional and that we worship nothing. Or that we worship a man in the sky who wants nothing more than to send us to eternal fiery torment because we wear a shirt made of a cotton/polyester blend. They do not want us to be blessed or cursed—they just want us to be quiet. But…

"Did I not tell you, saying, 'All that the LORD speaks, that I must do'?" What were the Apostles told in the Book of Acts? 27 And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest asked them, 28 saying, “Did we not strictly command you not to teach in this name?” (Acts 5:27-28) These Jews were acting more like the Gentiles who opposed God, seeing as how they set themselves up against His Christ. They did not want the Apostles to proclaim the name of Jesus, in direct opposition to the commands they had received from Christ. And what was Peter’s reply? Acts 5:29—But Peter and the other apostles answered and said: “We ought to obey God rather than men.” The council no longer spoke for God. The Sanhedrin, even before Christ’s death on the cross, believed they were speaking for God. They handed out judgments as if they were doing so in righteousness and for the glory of God. They held this belief even after it was apparent that God accepted Christ’s sacrifice and they were no longer in charge. But that did not stop them from usurping authority over the people in order to reap the financial rewards. Peter’s reply was a dagger in their heart, although they did not think so. He was telling them that they were merely men, and they were not to be obeyed above the obedience that God requires.

Martin Luther answered the Diet of Worms similarly. They had charged him with speaking against the church and the penalty for that was death. Was he speaking against the church? Only the Roman Catholic “church”. But he was not speaking against Christ’s church. He was not speaking against God or His Christ. He was speaking the truth from the Bible, demonstrating to Pope Leo X and Emperor Charles V that any power does not lay in the bosom of Popes and cardinals, but in the One True God. He did not start out to break away from Rome, but rather to correct their blatantly egregious teachings on Indulgences. But Rome didn’t appreciate someone coming between them and the people’s money, so they pushed and they pushed, and eventually they pushed too far and the Protestant Reformation was born. And in his last statement at the Diet he said these famous words:

Since your most serene majesty and your lordships require of me a simple, clear and direct answer, I will give one, and it is this: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures and by clear reason—for I do not trust in the pope or councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves—I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted. My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.

Who is responsible for the Protestant Reformation? No one but the Roman Catholic system itself! Peter, Martin Luther, Stephen, Jan Hus, and so many others whose blood has become the seed of the church, lived and died by one simple credo: “All that the LORD speaks, that I must do.”

28 So Balak took Balaam to the top of Peor, that overlooks the wasteland. 29 Then Balaam said to Balak, "Build for me here seven altars, and prepare for me here seven bulls and seven rams." 30 And Balak did as Balaam had said, and offered a bull and a ram on every altar. Peor is slightly north-northwest of Pisgah, east of the northern end of the Dead Sea. It is better known by the name Ba'al Peor. It is the place where the people will commit a grievous sin in Numbers 25, but we will look at that when we get there. So Balak builds Balaam seven altars (again) and sacrifices on these altars (again), hoping that this time, his wish will come true. Didn’t happen the first time, didn’t happen the second time. But by golly, this will be the one time it happens! But he couldn’t get it through his head that no matter how many times he tries to get Balaam to curse the people of Israel, God will not let him. Just like when your kids keep asking you for something that will do them harm—and you know it will do them harm, but they don’t know that; they think you are just trying to keep them from having a good time. Balak did not understand that if, instead of trying to curse the people of God, he had simply given then permission to pass through the land, things would have been okay. The only reason the people fought and defeated Sihon king of the Amorites and Og of Bashan was because the people were attacked first. Whenever they came to the border of an area, they sent messengers to ask permission and that they would not turn to the right hand or the left. But, alas, Balak kept at it and kept at it and kept at it. But…

Numbers 24:1-9—1 Now when Balaam saw that it pleased the LORD to bless Israel, he did not go as at other times, to seek to use sorcery, but he set his face toward the wilderness. 2 And Balaam raised his eyes, and saw Israel encamped according to their tribes; and the Spirit of God came upon him. 3 Then he took up his oracle and said: "The utterance of Balaam the son of Beor, the utterance of the man whose eyes are opened, 4 the utterance of him who hears the words of God, who sees the vision of the Almighty, who falls down, with eyes wide open: 5 How lovely are your tents, O Jacob! Your dwellings, O Israel! 6 Like valleys that stretch out, like gardens by the riverside, like aloes planted by the LORD, like cedars beside the waters. 7 He shall pour water from his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters. His king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted. 8 God brings him out of Egypt; He has strength like a wild ox; He shall consume the nations, his enemies; He shall break their bones and pierce them with his arrows. 9 He bows down, he lies down as a lion; and as a lion, who shall rouse him? Blessed is he who blesses you, and cursed is he who curses you."

This song from Balaam almost reads like one of David’s Psalms or the Song of Solomon. Balaam, too, saw that any effort to curse the people of Israel would not succeed, so instead he speaks this beautiful song. He sees that this is not just a great gathering of people; this is a great gathering of God’s people. And when God’s people are gathered together, it is indeed a great thing! When Christians are gathered together, we are celebrating and giving to God what is due to Him. It is as the first of the Old Testament sacrifices ascending up to Heaven, a sweet aroma to God! Songs and hymns are sung, prayers are lifted up, the Word is preached, and the love of the saints toward God is poured forth, downtrodden ones are lifted up. What could be more blessed! Hebrews 10:24—And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. Galatians 6:2—Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Romans 10:15 (quoting Isaiah 52:7)—How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things! And our gathering together here on Earth is but a shadow of our eternal gathering in the New Jerusalem! We will be gathered with not only those we know, but those we read about who, through the millennia, have put their trust in God and worship Him as God! We will see Abraham and Jacob; Moses and Aaron; David and Solomon; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; Peter and Paul; Polycarp and Anselm; Martin Luther and Jan Hus; John Calvin and Theodore Beza; Jonathan Edwards and Charles Spurgeon; John Wesley and George Whitefield; and so many others! And best of all, we will be in the presence of God Himself, and our Lord Jesus Christ. Even those we disagree with on certain matters will be there. George Whitefield and John Wesley were diametrically opposed concerning the issue of predestination versus free will in terms of salvation. When asked if he would see Mr. Wesley in Heaven, Whitefield is quoted as saying (something to the effect of), “No, I won’t. I believe his mansion shall be so close to the throne of God I will not be able to approach it.” May we all be as charitable to those with whom we disagree!

Numbers 24:10-11—10 Then Balak's anger was aroused against Balaam, and he struck his hands together; and Balak said to Balaam, "I called you to curse my enemies, and look, you have bountifully blessed them these three times! 11 Now therefore, flee to your place. I said I would greatly honor you, but in fact, the LORD has kept you back from honor." Again, the thinking of the world, that if one follows God and does not have an abundance of the world’s riches that his life is somehow less than ideal. That is the thinking of all the hucksters on TBN who fleece the people for their money, promising them health and wealth and prosperity if they will send these charlatans their money. It also teaches that if there is sickness in your life or your family’s life, or if you are not wealthy (by the world’s standards), your faith is lacking. That’s right. They teach that if your mother gets cancer, it is your fault. This heresy has been promulgated by men (and women) like Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin, Paul and Jan Crouch. And what do these also have in common? They’re all dead. Must be they didn’t have enough faith!

Paul’s teachings are directly opposed to this kind of thinking. 2nd Timothy 3:12—Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. Philippians 4:12—I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. 1st Timothy 6:6-10—6 Now godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. 8 And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. What should we do instead? 1st Timothy 6:11— But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness. Jesus warned us that as Christians we will not have an easy life. John 16:33—“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation.” When you see Kenneth Copeland or Jesse Duplantis on your TV smiling about how rich they are, remember that it is not God who made them wealthy, but rather the devil. They are rich because they have twisted the word of God to get people to send them the money that has bought their mansions and jet planes.

Numbers 24:12-19—12 So Balaam said to Balak, "Did I not also speak to your messengers whom you sent to me, saying, 13 'If Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the word of the LORD, to do good or bad of my own will. What the LORD says, that I must speak'? 14 And now, indeed, I am going to my people. Come, I will advise you what this people will do to your people in the latter days." 15 So he took up his oracle and said: " The utterance of Balaam the son of Beor, and the utterance of the man whose eyes are opened; 16 the utterance of him who hears the words of God, and has the knowledge of the Most High, who sees the vision of the Almighty, who falls down, with eyes wide open: 17 ‘I see Him, but not now; I behold Him, but not near; a Star shall come out of Jacob; a Scepter shall rise out of Israel, and batter the brow of Moab, and destroy all the sons of tumult. 18 And Edom shall be a possession; Seir also, his enemies, shall be a possession, while Israel does valiantly. 19 Out of Jacob One shall have dominion, and destroy the remains of the city.’" We have spoken of the fates of the Edomites and Moabites HERE and HERE, so let’s move on.

Numbers 24:20-24—20 Then he looked on Amalek, and he took up his oracle and said: "Amalek was first among the nations, but shall be last until he perishes." 21 Then he looked on the Kenites, and he took up his oracle and said: " Firm is your dwelling place, and your nest is set in the rock; 22 nevertheless Kain shall be burned. How long until Asshur carries you away captive?" 23 Then he took up his oracle and said: "Alas! Who shall live when God does this? 24 But ships shall come from the coasts of Cyprus, and they shall afflict Asshur and afflict Eber, and so shall Amalek, until he perishes."

Amalek. The first we read about the Amalekites is in Genesis 36:12, where he is listed as a grandson of Esau by his son Eliphaz through his concubine Timna. Which shows that it is not always a good idea to skip the genealogies in the Bible. The Amalekites were the first peoples that the Israelites fought after leaving Egypt. We see them the second time in Exodus 17:8—Now Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim. This was the battle where Joshua and Caleb held up Moses’ arms so that God would give them the victory. God tells the people of Israel to wipe them out completely in Deuteronomy 25:19—Therefore it shall be, when the LORD your God has given you rest from your enemies all around, in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, that you will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget. We read that this is going to happen in 1^st Samuel 15, when Saul defeats them once and for all. Unfortunately, Saul makes a bit of a boo-boo in doing so. 1st Samuel 15:1-3—1 Samuel also said to Saul, "The LORD sent me to anoint you king over His people, over Israel. Now therefore, heed the voice of the words of the LORD. 2 Thus says the LORD of hosts: 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. 3 Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" Samuel had anointed Saul as king over Israel. The people have what they were clamoring for—a king, just like the Gentile nations (1st Samuel 8:5). And for this kingly duty he is to wipe out the Amalekites, man woman and child, for their attack against the people of Israel in Exodus 17. Kill all the people, kill all the cattle and all the sheep and all the goats, everything. And most of all kill their king. Wipe them all out for their attack on the people. But…

1st Samuel 15:7-9—7 And Saul attacked the Amalekites, from Havilah all the way to Shur, which is east of Egypt. 8 He also took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. 9 But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed. There is an old saying, that “partial obedience is disobedience”. But Saul didn’t see it that way. He thought he did good by keeping the choice stuff and the king alive, that they could be sacrificed to God. 1st Samuel 15:20-21—20 And Saul said to Samuel, "But I have obeyed the voice of the LORD, and gone on the mission on which the LORD sent me, and brought back Agag king of Amalek; I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. 21 But the people took of the plunder, sheep and oxen, the best of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice to the LORD your God in Gilgal." “I obeyed, it was these people that didn’t!” Sounds familiar, doesn't it? "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate" (Genesis 3:12). “They said to me, 'Make us gods that shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him'” (Exodus 32:23). It’s always somebody else’s fault, isn’t it. We can’t take accountability for our own sins, we have to blame someone else. And that is what Saul does here. It is his own fault and disobedience that the commands of God were not carried out to the fullest, but he blames others, showing that he was a weak-willed and people-pleasing king, instead of the king devoted to God that the people wanted and heeded. John Darby says:

Our excuses, even when true, only condemn us. Saul, not having faith, not looking to God, fears the people more than God. What a slave is the unbeliever! If not the slave of the enemy, he is that of the people whom he appears to govern. Saul, unfaithful to God in the midst of the people, and surrounded by blessings from Jehovah, is at length deprived of the kingdom. No humiliation, no brokenness of heart-he confesses his sin, hoping to avoid its punishment; but, unable to escape it, he entreats Samuel to honour him in spite of it. Samuel does so and then forsakes him. Everything changes now, and David appears on the scene.

And just as Moses was denied entrance into the Promised Land for his disobedience in striking the rock at Meribah-Kadesh (Numbers 20:11-12), so Saul would be removed as king over Israel because of his disobedience here. Obedience to God is no trifling thing. We should not be looking for loopholes when it comes to the things of God, for He is not as one who simply sees the outward things, but sees inside us. Yes it is true, as George Carlin said, that we believe in a God who “who watches everything you do, every minute of every day.” And he would have done well to believe in Him too, for he is now learning that that God is real, that He is not just some “man in the sky” who gives us a wink and a pat on the back when we disbelieve and think of Him as less than who He is. He is finding out that yes, that “man in the sky” will indeed “send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time.” If one does not show Him the reverence He is due, that person will also learn that hard lesson.

Numbers 24:25—So Balaam rose and departed and returned to his place; Balak also went his way. This is not the last we read of Balaam. In the next chapter we will see that although he did not pronounce a curse upon Israel, the people were their own worst enemy and fell into idolatry themselves. He did not need to curse them—they could do that themselves, thank you very much. When it says that Balaam rose and departed and returned to his place it does not mean that Balaam went home. This is better rendered in the International Standard version as Then Balaam got up, returned to his country. For as we will see in Numbers 31, he took some of the Midianites and caused the people of Israel to commit idolatry against God. Keil and Delitzsch say:

It is possible, however, as Hengstenberg imagines, that after Balaam's departure from Balak, he took his way into the camp of the Israelites, and there made known his prophecies to Moses or to the elders of Israel, in the hope of obtaining from them the reward which Balak had withheld, and that it was not till after his failure to obtain full satisfaction to his ambition and covetousness here, that he went to the Midianites, to avenge himself upon the Israelites, by the proposals that he made to them. The objections made by Kurtz to this conjecture are not strong enough to prove that it is inadmissible, though the possibility of the thing does not involve either its probability or its certainty.

We will read more about that when we get there.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 22-24 (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:58:38 +0000

Numbers 22:36-41—36 Now when Balak heard that Balaam was coming, he went out to meet him at the city of Moab, which is on the border at the Arnon, the boundary of the territory. 37 Then Balak said to Balaam, "Did I not earnestly send to you, calling for you? Why did you not come to me? Am I not able to honor you?" 38 And Balaam said to Balak, "Look, I have come to you! Now, have I any power at all to say anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, that I must speak." 39 So Balaam went with Balak, and they came to Kirjath Huzoth. 40 Then Balak offered oxen and sheep, and he sent some to Balaam and to the princes who were with him. 41 So it was, the next day, that Balak took Balaam and brought him up to the high places of Baal, that from there he might observe the extent of the people. Balaam was indeed a prophet, one through whom God spoke. And Balak thought Balaam was coming to him to bring him good news that he had cursed the Israelites. So he made a great sacrifice, while at the same time being miffed that Balaam had not come sooner. But what does Balaam tell Balak? "Look, I have come to you! Now, have I any power at all to say anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, that I must speak." Even this pagan spoke only what YHVH put in his mouth. He knew that YHVH was the Almighty God over all creation, and despite living in the pagan land of Moab, he knew that Chemosh could not work the wonders that YHVH could do. Could Chemosh put a message in a prophet’s mouth? Could Chemosh cause a messenger to stand before a donkey and turn him to the side? Could Chemosh cause that donkey to talk? No, he could do none of these things. And Balaam knew this. But YHVH could do these things, and Balaam also knew this.

This was one of the problems the people of Israel faced in the land where they were. They were beset on every side by nations who worshipped idols. Edom with Qos, and Egypt with its pantheon, to the south. The Amorites to the east with their pantheon. The Hittites with their pantheon and the Ammonites with Molech to the north. The Moabites with Chemosh. The Jebusites with Sedeq and Salem. Then you had the Ba'al worship going on in Canaan, the land they were to settle in. And you can see they were surrounded by pagan worship. And it continued until the days of the early church. The Greeks had their gods, the Romans had theirs (which were just Greek gods co-opted by Rome). Paul would tell the men of Athens, who had built an altar to “An Unknown God”, that they worshipped Him even though they did not know Him (Acts 17:23). It was better, to the Athenian mind, to set up shrines to gods they didn’t know than to offend them by leaving them out of their pantheon.

So it was, the next day, that Balak took Balaam and brought him up to the high places of Baal, that from there he might observe the extent of the people. Much like Satan took Jesus high upon a hill that he may show the Son of God all the kingdoms he would give Him, if only He would worship the serpent of old. Well did our Lord call him “a liar and the father of it” (John 8:44). And here, Balak shows that he too is a liar, showing this man who spoke the truth from God all the land that Balak would rule over if only Balaam would curse the people of Israel. A thought that would be echoed by our Adversary in Matthew 4:9—“All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.” Satan is indeed the god of this world (2nd Corinthians 4:4), the Prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2), the Accuser of the Brethren (Revelation 12:10). But that is the limit of his power—this world. He wanted Jesus to lay claim to this world and all its limitations, rather than the Kingdom of His Father, and all the precious souls with it. He wanted Jesus to worship him instead of His Father. Which is what Balak was telling Balaam here. “Don’t listen to what YHVH says. Curse these people and look at all the land we will possess!”

Numbers 23:1-10—1 Then Balaam said to Balak, "Build seven altars for me here, and prepare for me here seven bulls and seven rams." 2 And Balak did just as Balaam had spoken, and Balak and Balaam offered a bull and a ram on each altar. 3 Then Balaam said to Balak, "Stand by your burnt offering, and I will go; perhaps the LORD will come to meet me, and whatever He shows me I will tell you." So he went to a desolate height. 4 And God met Balaam, and he said to Him, "I have prepared the seven altars, and I have offered on each altar a bull and a ram." 5 Then the LORD put a word in Balaam's mouth, and said, "Return to Balak, and thus you shall speak." 6 So he returned to him, and there he was, standing by his burnt offering, he and all the princes of Moab. 7 And he took up his oracle and said: "Balak the king of Moab has brought me from Aram, from the mountains of the east. 'Come, curse Jacob for me, and come, denounce Israel!' 8 How shall I curse whom God has not cursed? And how shall I denounce whom the LORD has not denounced? 9 For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him; there! A people dwelling alone, not reckoning itself among the nations. 10 Who can count the dust of Jacob, or number one-fourth of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my end be like his!" No matter how many times Balaam went to God to receive a word, it always came back the same. “You shall not curse Israel”. One cannot undo what God has done. We do not have that much power or authority. If God says something is done, it is done. If He says something is going to happen, it is going to happen. We obey kings and presidents because of their position. We yield to law enforcement officers because of the power they hold. If any of these says “so let it be done”, it should be done. How much more should we listen to and obey the Creator of everything! And not only that, should we also not believe Him? He told Abram in Genesis 12:3—“I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you.” What we see Balaam speak to Balak may not be the extent of everything God said to Balaam. He may very well have included these words He spoke to Abram.

And God met Balaam, and he [Balaam] said to Him [God], "I have prepared the seven altars, and I have offered on each altar a bull and a ram." So Balaam asked Balak to prepare seven altars. Balak most likely thought they were to be altars to Chemosh, but Balaam meant them for sacrifice to YHVH. Doesn't that so often happen? What the ungodly mean for bad, God turns it around and uses it to fulfill His own plans? Jacob snatching the blessing from Esau. Joseph’s brothers selling him to the Midianites. In fact, after Joseph and his brothers bury Jacob and his brothers think the worst is about to happen and that Joseph will exact revenge, he tells them “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive” (Genesis 50:20). And here, what Balak means for evil, God means it for good.

9 “A people dwelling alone, not reckoning itself among the nations. 10 Who can count the dust of Jacob, or number one-fourth of Israel?” The Apostolic Bible Polyglot renders verse 9: “For from the top of mountains I shall see him; and from hills I shall pay attention to him. Behold, a people alone shall dwell, and among nations they shall not be reckoned together.” The Jewish Publication Society translation says: “For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.” Different translations render this verse differently than others, and the divide is about 50/50. This last rendering is closes to the original intent. Balaam had to be on the top of the highest rocky jut to see the vastness of the nearly one million people. Yet this people would live “alone”, as they would be a self-contained group. And they would not be “reckoned among the nations”; they would not be as the other nations, worshipping false gods and being part of their rituals (for the time being, anyway)—they would be holy, set apart to God for His purposes.

“Who can count the dust of Jacob, or number one-fourth of Israel?” “Just one quarter of their population has to be a quarter of a million people! Who can fathom such a great nation!” What was considered to be one of the surest signs of blessing from a deity in the Middle East at this time? Children. So obviously the people of Israel, as the thought went, must have been highly blessed to have had so many children that their numbers would swell, even in the desert. The same could be said of national Israel today. Is there a nation of Hittites? Of Moabites? Of Jebusites or Edomites? All these nations have gone under and exist only in books and in studies of archaeology. Yes, Egypt remains, but the Amorites and Canaanites are gone, save for a few pockets here and there. Yet “Who can count the dust of Jacob?” Did not God tell Abram that his descendants would be “as the dust of the earth; so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants also could be numbered” (Genesis 13:16). Next time you go to the beach, pick up a handful of sand. Then count the number of grains of sand, if you are able. That is how numerous the descendants of Abram have been, are, and will be. As I said before, if God says something is going to happen, it’s going to happen.

Numbers 23:11-24—11 Then Balak said to Balaam, "What have you done to me? I took you to curse my enemies, and look, you have blessed them bountifully!" 12 So he answered and said, "Must I not take heed to speak what the LORD has put in my mouth?" 13 Then Balak said to him, "Please come with me to another place from which you may see them; you shall see only the outer part of them, and shall not see them all; curse them for me from there." 14 So he brought him to the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah, and built seven altars, and offered a bull and a ram on each altar. 15 And he said to Balak, "Stand here by your burnt offering while I meet the LORD over there." 16 Then the LORD met Balaam, and put a word in his mouth, and said, "Go back to Balak, and thus you shall speak." 17 So he came to him, and there he was, standing by his burnt offering, and the princes of Moab were with him. And Balak said to him, "What has the LORD spoken?" 18 Then he took up his oracle and said: "Rise up, Balak, and hear! Listen to me, son of Zippor! 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? 20 Behold, I have received a command to bless; He has blessed, and I cannot reverse it. 21 He has not observed iniquity in Jacob, nor has He seen wickedness in Israel. The LORD his God is with him, and the shout of a King is among them. 22 God brings them out of Egypt; He has strength like a wild ox. 23 For there is no sorcery against Jacob, nor any divination against Israel. It now must be said of Jacob and of Israel, 'Oh, what God has done!' 24 Look, a people rises like a lioness, and lifts itself up like a lion; it shall not lie down until it devours the prey, and drinks the blood of the slain."

"Please come with me to another place from which you may see them; you shall see only the outer part of them, and shall not see them all; curse them for me from there." Balak thought that by seeing their entire number, Balaam was afraid to curse Israel for their vast numbers. He thought that if he saw just a tiny fraction of them, he would be more inclined to lay a curse on them. So he takes the prophet to the top of Mt. Pisgah, also known as Mt. Nebo. From here, Balaam could see a small sliver of the people, and Balak thought that here his wishes would come to fruition. But, alas…

“God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent.” So many skeptics and liberals and progressives try to use this verse to say that Jesus was not God. “It says in Numbers that God is not a son of man! How can Jesus be God if He is called ‘The Son of Man’?” The fact that this question even needs to be answered is frustrating. Balaam is not talking here about Jesus. This is not the Book of Mormon where things were written into the text in 1820 in order to fit in with biblical history. Balaam here is talking about the only One the Jews knew as God, that being the Father. Jesus had not been born yet, and would not be for another 1400 or so years. So no, when Balaam said this, Jesus, even though He did exist (John 17:5), had not yet become incarnate and was not, yet, Son of Man. (There is debate about if He was Son of God at this time, but we will leave that to the philosophers). What Balaam is saying here is this: That God is not a man (sorry not sorry, Mormons), and He was not born of a man, but that He has existed forever (Psalm 92:1), that He is dependent upon nobody for His existence, that He does not change His mind 100 times in a day as man does.

“But doesn’t it say in some places, like before the flood and after the repentance of the people of Nineveh, that God repented (Genesis 6:6 (KJV); Jonah 3:10)?” And here we go again. Answering questions from people who have never read or studied the Bible and who do not want anything to do with reading or studying the Bible. Does God know the end from the beginning? Absolutely. Isaiah 46:9-10—“9 Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, 10 declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure'” So why would God change His mind? “Then why do we pray?” EM Bounds said in his book “The Reality of Prayer”,

The law of prayer, the right to pray, rests on sonship. “Our Father” brings us into the closest relationship to God. Prayer is the child’s approach, the child’s plea, the child’s right. It is the law of prayer that looks up, that lifts up the eye to “Our Father, Who art in Heaven.” Our Father’s house is our home in Heaven. Heavenly citizenship and heavenly homesickness are in prayer; Prayer is an appeal from the lowness, from the emptiness, from the need of earth, to the highness, the fullness and to the all-sufficiency of Heaven. Prayer turns the eye and the heart heavenward with a child’s longings, a child’s trust and a child’s expectancy. To hallow God’s Name, to speak it with bated breath, to hold it sacredly, this also belongs to prayer.

Prayer is how we conform our will to God’s will. It is how we seek God for how to live our lives according to the way He wants us to live. It is not so we can get great riches and fame; it is not so we can make a happy life for ourselves according to how the worlds views happiness. True happiness and joy come from being accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6)—not by health, wealth or prosperity.

“God is not a man, that He should lie.” And of course we know that God cannot—not merely that He does not—lie. He cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18; Titus 1:2). That should be to us the most comforting of all of God’s attributes—that He is faithful and just, even when we are not faithful. We lie, we cheat, we defraud our neighbor. And He knows this. And yet He is patient with us. Oh, the eternal patience of God! We get angry and yell at our children when they misbehave. We get angry when someone cuts us off in traffic. We talk ill of others when they do us wrong. Yet God—they very God to whom we owe our lives—does not cast us aside when we do those things that grieve His heart. In his song “Unchanging One”, Todd Agnew sings:

You know when I wake, when I rise

When I pray, when I curse You

And You love me the same

And You know when I stumble and fall

And You're there through it all

The only Unchanging One

And let’s clear up one more fallacy: The “Ransom Theory” of the Atonement. This is the mistaken belief that God gave up His Son as a payment to Satan to let His people free. This theory says that Adam and Eve’s sin caused all of humanity to belong to Satan, which is far from the truth. According to this theory Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was a trick played out by God, knowing that Jesus would rise from the dead. God said to Satan that He would give him a sacrifice for our sins, but then He yanked that sacrifice away with the Resurrection. Robin Collins describes it thusly:

“Essentially, this theory claimed that Adam and Eve sold humanity over to the Devil at the time of the Fall; hence, it required that God pay the Devil a ransom to free us from the Devil's clutches. God, however, tricked the Devil into accepting Christ's death as a ransom, for the Devil did not realize that Christ could not be held in the bonds of death. Once the Devil accepted Christ's death as a ransom, this theory concluded, justice was satisfied and God was able to free us from Satan's grip.”

First of all, this theory makes God a liar and deceiver, and He is neither of those things. Second, God owed Satan nothing. This theory was espoused by Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, St. Basil the Great, and even such great theologians as Athanasius and Augustine. You even see it played out in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by CS Lewis. Here are some quotes from the early proponents of this theory.

Origen:

“But to whom did He give His soul as a ransom for many? Surely not to God. Could it, then, be to the Evil One? For he had us in his power, until the ransom for us should be given to him, even the life (or soul) of Jesus, since he (the Evil One) had been deceived, and led to suppose that he was capable of mastering that soul, and he did not see that to hold Him involved a trial of strength greater than he was equal to.”...“It is clearly shown that a certain spirit, from his own (free) will and choice, elected to deceive, and to work a lie, in order that the Lord might mislead the king to his death, for he deserved to suffer.”

Gregory of Nyssa:

“In order to secure that the ransom in our behalf might be easily accepted by him who required it, the Deity was hidden under the veil of our nature, that so, as with ravenous fish, the hook of the Deity might be gulped down along with the bait of flesh.”

However, William Lane Craig rebuffs this theory (as did the church as of the writings of Anselm in about 1000AD):

“As Origen’s statement revealed, the fathers typically thought of this arrangement between God and Satan as a very clever ruse on God’s part. He tricked Satan into making this exchange. You see, as the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God could not possibly have been held captive by Satan. But by his incarnation – by becoming a man – Christ appeared to be just as weak and vulnerable as other human beings who were under Satan’s control, and it was only after the captives had been freed by Satan that the Son of God manifested his full divine power by rising from the dead and breaking the bonds of death and hell and thus escaping from Satan's power.”

God did not use deceit to buy us out of Hell. His Son came as a substitute for us, paid the penalty we owed, bore the punishment we deserved, and God laid His hands on Him and transferred our sins to Him, and gave us His righteousness. 1st Peter 2:24—Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed. Hebrews 9:28—Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. He bore our sins with His one sacrifice, took His blood into the Holy of Holies in the Heavens, made propitiation for us and cleansed us from all unrighteousness!

Drooping souls no longer mourn/Jesus still is precious;

If to Him you now return/Heaven will be propitious;

Jesus now is passing by/Calling wanderers near Him;

Drooping souls, you need not die/Go to Him and hear Him!

He has pardons full and free/Drooping souls to gladden;

Still He cries—“Come unto me/Weary, heavy-laden!”

Though your sins, like mountains high/Rise, and reach to heaven,

Soon as you on Him rely/All shall be forgiven.

Precious is the Saviour’s name/Dear to all that love Him;

He to save the dying came/Go to Him and prove Him;

Wandering sinners, now return/Contrite souls believe Him!

Jesus calls you, cease to mourn/Worship Him; receive Him.

(“Heaven is Propitious” by Thomas Hastings)

“He has not observed iniquity in Jacob, nor has He seen wickedness in Israel.” “Whoa! What about all the times Israel grumbled in the wilderness and incurred His anger?” Yes, this is a difficult passage on first glance. That is why we do not simply do a cursory reading of Scripture, but exposit it so we can better understand it. This is not talking about individuals, since we have seen in Leviticus all the things that needed to be done to expiate sins and the Day of Atonement. Here Balaam is talking about Israel as a nation—the nation has not turned to other gods, the nation has not cried out to Ba'al or Chemosh. As a nation, Israel is righteous before God, and they belong to Him. Have individuals in the nation sinned? Yes. Have individuals in Israel complained when things didn’t go their way? Yes. Has the nation of Israel ceased to be a nation before Him; has Israel as a nation turned to worship other gods or commit other abominations that the surrounding nations have done? No. That is an important distinction. That of the difference between the nation of Israel and individuals in the nation. So what does this mean for us as Christians? The key phrase we need to remember is “in Christ”. If we are saved, we are in Christ. Romans 8:1—There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. 1st Corinthians 1:30—But of Him you are in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28—There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:13—But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. John 17:21—“That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us.” “So we are in Christ; what does this have to do with this passage in Numbers?” Only everything!

God saw no iniquity in the nation of Israel. Does God see any iniquity in Christ? So if we are in Christ, will God see iniquity in us? Were not our sins forgiven as Jesus hung on the tree? Was He not offered up as a substitute for us? Galatians 3:13—Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. 2nd Corinthians 5:17, 21—Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new…He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to Earth, took our sins upon Himself, gave His life and His righteousness to us, and took upon Himself the curse and the sin that was ours. He was not a ransom paid to Satan then snatched away by a deceitful God. He was our Substitute.

Part 3 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 22-24 (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 17:00:00 +0000

Numbers 22:1-6—1 Then the children of Israel moved, and camped in the plains of Moab on the side of the Jordan across from Jericho. 2 Now Balak the son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites. 3 And Moab was exceedingly afraid of the people because they were many, and Moab was sick with dread because of the children of Israel. 4 So Moab said to the elders of Midian, "Now this company will lick up everything around us, as an ox licks up the grass of the field." And Balak the son of Zippor was king of the Moabites at that time. 5 Then he sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor at Pethor, which is near the River in the land of the sons of his people, to call him, saying: "Look, a people has come from Egypt. See, they cover the face of the earth, and are settling next to me! 6 Therefore please come at once, curse this people for me, for they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them out of the land, for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed." The next three chapters deal with the prophet Balaam, who was sent by Balak, another king of Moab, to curse Israel. Balak had seen how the people of Israel had defeated the armies of southern Moab, as well as Sihon king of the Amorites and Og of Bashan, and decided war with the people of Israel was not his best course of action. And we will see how even the hiring of Balaam did not work out for him the way he intended.

First, let’s clear up one geographical question. Some translations, even some of the better ones, translate verse one in a manner similar to this: Then the people of Israel set out and camped in the plains of Moab beyond the Jordan at Jericho (ESV). This could give the impression that the people crossed the Jordan River and were encamped at Jericho, which was in the land of Canaan. This could thus lead to the question, “If God told Moses he would not enter the Promised Land, then why did he wind up in Jericho, which is in Canaan?” That would be a good question. This is a matter of translation, and there are some translations that render it better than others. The NASB renders Numbers 22:1—Then the sons of Israel journeyed, and camped in the plains of Moab beyond the Jordan opposite Jericho. The Bishop’s Bible says And the children of Israel departed and pitched in the fieldes of Moab, on the other side of Iordane from Iericho. The God’s Word Bible renders it Then the Israelites moved and set up camp across from Jericho, on the plains of Moab east of the Jordan River. Suffice to say, the people of Israel were still on the east side of the Jordan River, in the northern part of the land of Moab. Kinda like Point Roberts, WA. It is part of the state of Washington, and within the borders of the United States. But it is separated from the rest of the state by the Strait of Georgia, and there is no ferry service across the strait. So to get from Point Roberts to Seattle, you must first cross into Canada, then back into the United States.

The Expositor’s Bible describes the land:

While a part of the army of Israel was engaged in the campaign against Bashan, the tribes remained "in the plains of Moab beyond the Jordan at Jericho." The topography is given here, as elsewhere, from the point of view of one dwelling in Canaan; and the locality indicated is a level stretch of land, some five or six miles broad, between the river and the hills. In this plain there was ample room for the encampment, while along the Jordan and on the slopes to the east all the produce of field and garden, the spoil of conquest, was at the disposal of the Israelites. They rested therefore, after their long journey, in sight of Canaan, waiting first for the return of the troops, then for the command to advance; and the delay may very likely have extended to several months.

And since they were stationed along the banks of the Jordan River, guess what else they had? WATER! They wouldn’t have to complain about having water, for it was there for the drinking, running, living water!

2 Now Balak the son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites. 3 And Moab was exceedingly afraid of the people because they were many, and Moab was sick with dread because of the children of Israel. Just as I said last time about the people of Jericho learning of how mighty was the God who fought for Israel, so first Balak and the people of the Moabite plains were sore afraid of Him. So rather than use a military strategy against them, Balak devised a stratagem based on their following God. He would hire a prophet to curse them and stave off an invasion by Israel. They did, indeed, fear God. There was a fear of God before their eyes. And if they had approached Moses and submitted themselves to YHVH, and kept His commandments, they would have had peace. But how often do those who do not want to submit to God find ways to oppose Him and store up wrath for themselves?

Numbers 22:7-14—7 So the elders of Moab and the elders of Midian departed with the diviner's fee in their hand, and they came to Balaam and spoke to him the words of Balak. 8 And he said to them, "Lodge here tonight, and I will bring back word to you, as the LORD speaks to me." So the princes of Moab stayed with Balaam. 9 Then God came to Balaam and said, "Who are these men with you?" 10 So Balaam said to God, "Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, has sent to me, saying, 11 'Look, a people has come out of Egypt, and they cover the face of the earth. Come now, curse them for me; perhaps I shall be able to overpower them and drive them out.'" 12 And God said to Balaam, "You shall not go with them; you shall not curse the people, for they are blessed." 13 So Balaam rose in the morning and said to the princes of Balak, "Go back to your land, for the LORD has refused to give me permission to go with you." 14 And the princes of Moab rose and went to Balak, and said, "Balaam refuses to come with us." Moab entered league with Midian, a tribe which was located to the southwest of the Dead Sea. The thought, I suppose, was to box Israel in between the two nations and, once (so they thought) the Israelites were cursed, it would be no great things to defeat them. About that whole “cursing Israel” thing…

Balaam was indeed a prophet, even a prophet who was recognized by God. And here we see that Balaam, although a Moabite and hired by the Moabite king to curse Israel, does not initially go against the word of God. The princes of Balak offer him a large sum of money to call down a curse upon Israel. But what is his response, after talking with God? And notice, there is no hint of insolence in Balaam’s words when he is talking with God. He tells the princes "Go back to your land, for the LORD has refused to give me permission to go with you." For any rational human being, this should have been the end of things. But calling Balak rational would not be a correct assessment of his mental state. Had the people of Israel made any kind of threatening movement towards him? No. They were simply hanging out by the Jordan River, waiting to cross it into Canaan. But Balak didn’t care, he wanted them gone. But he was afraid to engage them in combat after they had destroyed Sihon and Og. So now, since Balaam has returned and told him that he could not curse Israel, he starts to panic a bit.

Numbers 22:15-19—15 Then Balak again sent princes, more numerous and more honorable than they. 16 And they came to Balaam and said to him, "Thus says Balak the son of Zippor: 'Please let nothing hinder you from coming to me; 17 for I will certainly honor you greatly, and I will do whatever you say to me. Therefore please come, curse this people for me.'" 18 Then Balaam answered and said to the servants of Balak, "Though Balak were to give me his house full of silver and gold, I could not go beyond the word of the LORD my God, to do less or more. 19 Now therefore, please, you also stay here tonight, that I may know what more the LORD will say to me." So after he has told Balak that he cannot curse Israel because God prevented him from doing so, Balak doubles down and sends even more princes and more money to him, in an effort to persuade Balaam to transgress against what God has said. But again, Balaam stands his ground and says even if Balak offered all of his wealth, he cannot go against God. So he tells the princes to stay the night with him again while he goes and talks to God. And I suppose Balaam could have sent away the princes and been done with the whole matter, but we see how he equivocates and even (perhaps) hopes that God will give him a different word. As if he was perhaps double-minded. James 1:8 (KJV)—A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. And Balaam will find that out next.

Numbers 22:20-22—20 And God came to Balaam at night and said to him, "If the men come to call you, rise and go with them; but only the word which I speak to you—that you shall do." 21 So Balaam rose in the morning, saddled his donkey, and went with the princes of Moab. 22 Then God's anger was aroused because he went, and the Angel of the LORD took His stand in the way as an adversary against him. And he was riding on his donkey, and his two servants were with him. Now this is a confusing passage. In verse 19 God says to Balaam to go with the princes, then in verse 20 He is angry because he went with the princes. So something must have happened between God telling him to go with the princes and him actually going with the princes. The best hypotheses I have seen say that in this meantime Balaam took the money from the princes and this was the reason for God’s anger. Which would make sense of 3 New Testament verses which paint Balaam in a less-than-favorable light. 2nd Peter 2:15—They have forsaken the right way and gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness. Jude 1:11—Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. Revelation 2:14—“But I have a few things against you [the church at Pergamos], because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality.” FB Meyer wrote that:

If only Balaam had abided by his first answer to Balak’s request, he would have been saved from the disgrace and suffering which ensued. But he seemed to think that it was possible to alter God’s mind; hence his request to the second company of messengers that they give him time to ascertain God’s will. Already that will had been clearly made known to him; what object had he in pressing for a further response? When, finally, he was told that he might go, he rose up in the morning, saddled his ass, and started post-haste. He was trying to serve two masters-to speak as God bade him, but to please Balak and pocket his gold. How many agencies God uses to arrest our evil courses! Peter specially refers to this incident. Many cries are raised to stop the boat that is caught in the rapids above Niagara! Thus the way of transgressors is made hard by the love of God!

CI Scofield:

In Numbers 22:12 the directive will of Jehovah is made known to Balaam, in Numbers 22:20 Jehovah’s permissive will. The prophet is now free to go, but knows the true mind of the Lord about it. The matter is wholly one between Jehovah and His servant. The permission of Numbers 22:20 really constitutes a testing of Balaam. He chose the path of self-will and self- advantage, and Jehovah could not but gravely disapprove. The whole scene, Numbers 22:22-35 prepared Balaam for what was to follow.

So yes, God allowed him to go, but did not want him to go. He already had his answer once, but allowed himself to be played along with wealth. How many times does God need to say something for it to be true? But he stepped further away from the commands that God had given him. It is no different for many people today, who creep away from the fences God has put up to keep us away from sin. Hebrews 1:13-2:1—1 But to which of the angels has He ever said: "Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool"? 14 Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation? 2:1 Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. Let us always hold fast the words given to us, lest we slide away, by little and little, away from the goodness of God.

Numbers 22:23-33—23 Now the donkey saw the Angel of the LORD standing in the way with His drawn sword in His hand, and the donkey turned aside out of the way and went into the field. So Balaam struck the donkey to turn her back onto the road. 24 Then the Angel of the LORD stood in a narrow path between the vineyards, with a wall on this side and a wall on that side. 25 And when the donkey saw the Angel of the LORD, she pushed herself against the wall and crushed Balaam's foot against the wall; so he struck her again. 26 Then the Angel of the LORD went further, and stood in a narrow place where there was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left. 27 And when the donkey saw the Angel of the LORD, she lay down under Balaam; so Balaam's anger was aroused, and he struck the donkey with his staff. 28 Then the LORD opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, "What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?" 29 And Balaam said to the donkey, "Because you have abused me. I wish there were a sword in my hand, for now I would kill you!" 30 So the donkey said to Balaam, "Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden, ever since I became yours, to this day? Was I ever disposed to do this to you?" And he said, "No." 31 Then the LORD opened Balaam's eyes, and he saw the Angel of the LORD standing in the way with His drawn sword in His hand; and he bowed his head and fell flat on his face. 32 And the Angel of the LORD said to him, "Why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out to stand against you, because your way is perverse before Me. 33 The donkey saw Me and turned aside from Me these three times. If she had not turned aside from Me, surely I would also have killed you by now, and let her live."

Do you not find it odd that Balaam answered his donkey when it spoke to him as if it were a natural thing? Think about it. You’re riding along the path on your donkey, it bucks against you, so you strike it. Then the third time you strike it, the donkey turns around and begins talking to you. And you answer! This is one of those places where the skeptic discards the Bible. “A talking donkey! And in Genesis a talking snake?? Nope, not gonna believe this! Next thing you’re gonna tell me an angel slew 200,000 soldiers in one night!” That is because they do not want to believe in a God that can do things in His Creation that we as humans do not understand.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is probably the most famous scientist of our day. And although he does not classify himself as an atheist (he calls himself an agnostic) and consistently argues against the existence of God. He has said in the past, “‘God’ is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.’” But did the scientists like Michael Faraday and Johannes Kepler not believe in God simply because they were scientists? No. Kepler wrote, “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.” These were men upon whose shoulders Neil deGrasse Tyson purports to stand. But he says of them, “They [scientists of centuries past] call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.” Almost mocking them for their faith. But that’s what he does. But these men knew the truth and sounded forth the truth of Psalm 19:1—The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. But alas, The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God" (Psalm 14:1). And here is Balaam arguing with his donkey, knowing that it was God who was speaking through his donkey. And let us remember the words of our Lord. Luke 19:39-40—39 And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, "Teacher, rebuke Your disciples." 40 But He answered and said to them, "I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out." And you could say the donkey was smarter than Balaam in this instance. The donkey saw the Angel of the Lord, and bowed himself to it. Well did Isaiah say in Isaiah 1:3—“The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib; but Israel does not know, My people do not consider.”

But we could probably cut Balaam some slack as he did not see the Angel in the road. Then the LORD opened Balaam's eyes, and he saw the Angel of the LORD standing in the way with His drawn sword in His hand; and he bowed his head and fell flat on his face. How many times do we see in the Scriptures that God opens people’s eyes to see what is right in front of them. When Jesus is sitting with the two travelers on the road to Emmaus, and He is talking with them, and they do not know that it is Him, we see in Luke 24:30-31—30 Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight. God hid Balaam’s eyes from seeing the Angel until the appropriate time. And when his eyes were opened he realized the wrong he had done. Numbers 22:34-35—34 And Balaam said to the Angel of the LORD, "I have sinned, for I did not know You stood in the way against me. Now therefore, if it displeases You, I will turn back." 35 Then the Angel of the LORD said to Balaam, "Go with the men, but only the word that I speak to you, that you shall speak." So Balaam went with the princes of Balak. God repeats what He told Balaam when Balaam went with the princes of Moab. Only this time, Balaam knew better. Kinda like when God called Jonah to go preach to Nineveh, and instead the prophet got on a boat headed to Spain. God sent a great fish that swallowed him up, took him back to where he started from and spit him out onto the dry land. And what did God say to Jonah once the fish spit him out? Jonah 3:2—"Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you."

Part 2 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 21 (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 17:22:49 +0000

Numbers 21:21-26—21 Then Israel sent messengers to Sihon king of the Amorites, saying, 22 "Let me pass through your land. We will not turn aside into fields or vineyards; we will not drink water from wells. We will go by the King's Highway until we have passed through your territory." 23 But Sihon would not allow Israel to pass through his territory. So Sihon gathered all his people together and went out against Israel in the wilderness, and he came to Jahaz and fought against Israel. 24 Then Israel defeated him with the edge of the sword, and took possession of his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, as far as the people of Ammon; for the border of the people of Ammon was fortified. 25 So Israel took all these cities, and Israel dwelt in all the cities of the Amorites, in Heshbon and in all its villages. 26 For Heshbon was the city of Sihon king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab, and had taken all his land from his hand as far as the Arnon. So the people are on the border of Moab and the Amorites. They need to continue northward to the land to which God has called them. To do so they must pass through the land of the Amorites. Now to take a little side trip, the term “Amorites” is a bit tricky, as there is not a land named “Amor” as there is Moab or Edom. If you look back at verse 13, it mentions that the Arnon River is the border between Moab and the Amorites. This is because the Amorites were an amalgamation of people of the Babylonian empire. If you look to find a region called “Amor” or anything similar, you will not find it. According to the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia:

Assyriological discovery has explained the varying use of the name. The Hebrew form of it is a transliteration of the Babylonian Amurrū, which was both singular and plural. In the age of Abraham the Amurru were the dominant people in western Asia; hence Syria and Palestine were called by the Babylonians “the land of the Amorites”… The use of the name “Amorite” in its general sense belongs to the Babylonian period of oriental history.

(https://timeintheword.org/2017/03/09/warning-moab-and-ammon/)

At any rate, the people of Israel need to pass through this land to get to their ultimate destination. But there is a problem. Sihon would not allow Israel to pass through his territory. Once again the people are rebuffed from passing peacefully through a particular piece of land (see Numbers 20:20-21). But this time things are different. Whereas when Edom refused them passage and the people simply went around that land, here a battle is engaged. So Sihon gathered all his people together and went out against Israel in the wilderness, and he came to Jahaz and fought against Israel. Why would Sihon do this? In part to (at least partly) fulfill what God said in Genesis 15:13-16—13 Then He said to Abram: "Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. 14 And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. 16 But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." Here we see God give a prophecy to Abram that his descendants would dwell in Egypt as sojourners, would serve them for 400 years, that God would judge Egypt, and in the fourth generation after they leave Egypt they would return to the land of the Amorites. And this delay would be because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Which answers the inevitable question, “Why would God lead them to lands where they would have to fight?” Why would He do that? So that the iniquity of the Amorites would be completed. Why would God command Jeremiah to prophesy, knowing he would be cast into a deep well? Why would God lead Paul to Lystra and Derbe, where he would be stoned with stones to within an inch of his life? Why would He lead the remaining Apostles to lands where He knew they would be martyred? Why would He lead Jim Elliott to the Waodoni people, knowing he would die before he would ever meet them?

First, so His gospel could be proclaimed. Second, to fill up the iniquity of those who oppose Him. Matthew 23:31-32—31 “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt.” The Pharisees had many more sins to commit before they had finished filling the cup that their father began with. There is, for each one who is opposed to God, a measure of guilt they must fulfill. And this measure must be filled. And God will leave these people on the earth until this measure is filled. “But that’s not fair! That’s not the God I worship! The God I believe in wants everyone to be saved, and would never want anyone to sin!” Well, that may be the god you worship, but that is not the God of Scripture. God says many times, from Genesis to Revelation, that there are measures of sin that must be fulfilled. Revelation 14:18-19—18 And another angel came out from the altar, who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, "Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe." 19 So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. What does the angel mean when he says “the grapes are fully ripe” but that the sinners have filled their cup with sin to the measure which God has decreed, and the time has come for them to be gathered and cast into the winepress of God to receive their eternal due?

And here we see the onset of the kings of the Amorites completing the measure of their sin. First by Sihon, then by Og od Bashan. Numbers 21:33-35—33 And they turned and went up by the way to Bashan. So Og king of Bashan went out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. 34 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Do not fear him, for I have delivered him into your hand, with all his people and his land; and you shall do to him as you did to Sihon king of the Amorites, who dwelt at Heshbon." 35 So they defeated him, his sons, and all his people, until there was no survivor left him; and they took possession of his land. I'm skipping ahead a few verses, but we will come back to those verses in just a bit. In the Old Testament we see Sihon and Og mentioned together in the same verse 9 times. These were the two kings of the Amorites who tried to destroy the people of Israel when all they wanted was to pass through the land. And it was because of the defiance of Og that the iniquity of the Amorites was completed, their cities destroyed, and all their people killed. As Matthew Henry wrote in his Concise Commentary, Those not awakened by the judgments of God on others, ripen for the like judgments on themselves. Og had not learned from the defeat of Sihon; he thought himself and his soldiers better than these pesky slaves. And he learned the hard way—as did all the people “What do you mean ‘all the people’? Do you mean women and children as well?” Yes, women and children as well. For they were not spared when God commanded the people of Israel to destroy a people. Deuteronomy 3:3, 6—3 “So the LORD our God also delivered into our hands Og king of Bashan, with all his people, and we attacked him until he had no survivors remaining…6 And we utterly destroyed them, as we did to Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children of every city.” Was this destruction any worse than the eternal fate that awaited them? These were women of peoples that were opposed to God and worshipped idols. The children, had they grown to adulthood, would have also worshipped those same idols. “How do you know that God wouldn’t deliver them the way He did Rahab or Ruth?” Well, He didn’t. Which speaks to the election by God. He saved some from their heathen people and the damnation they would have experienced. But others He didn’t. Why? His election and purpose.

Even the people of Jericho were not as brazen as Og. Did the people of Jericho go out to battle the people of Israel as they marched around the city? They indeed tried to capture the two spies, but as the people were led by the Levites around the city, did their men go out with swords against them? Joshua 2:9-10—9 and [Rahab] said to the men: “I know that the LORD has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of you. 10 For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. No, the people of the city were terrified of them. Then Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho, and the walls came a-tumblin’ down!

One last thing about this passage. Then Israel…took possession of his land from the Arnon to the Jabbok, as far as the people of Ammon. The Ammonites and the Moabites were descendants of Lot. After God rescued them from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the daughters of Lot were under the assumption that they and their father were the last people on Earth, and it was up to them to repopulate the planet. So they got their father drunk and took advantage of him. Genesis 19:36-38—36 Thus both the daughters of Lot were with child by their father. 37 The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab; he is the father of the Moabites to this day. 38 And the younger, she also bore a son and called his name Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the people of Ammon to this day. God had delivered Lot from the sinful city, only to see his wife look back fondly and turn into a pillar of salt, and for his daughters to conceive children by him who would grow into two nations that were enemies of the people of God. Both of these tribes settled in the area we now call Jordan. Both of these peoples were assimilated into the Roman population by the time of Christ’s arrival. The city of Amman, that capital of Jordan, derives its name from them, as they lived mostly in the northern part of modern-day Jordan.

And the Moabites? Well, one of them is an ancestor of Jesus. Ruth 1:3-4—3 Then Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died; and she was left, and her two sons. 4 Now they took wives of the women of Moab: the name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth. Matthew 1:5-6—5 Boaz begot Obed by Ruth, Obed begot Jesse, 6 and Jesse begot David the king. Ruth, the Moabitess, was the grandmother of King David. “But how could this be, when it says in Deuteronomy 23:3—‘An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the LORD forever.’?” This is one of those places where you have to put it in context and look at how it was written in its original language. In the Hebrew, the words “Moabite” and “Ammonite” are in the masculine form. In other words, Israelitish women were prohibited from marrying Moabitish or Ammonitish men, but Israelitish men could marry Moabitish or Ammonitish women. This was to meant to keep the Israelitish stock pure, since children were considered to be descended from the father, and to have the father be of a heathen nation would be an abomination to God. John Gill:

An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord…Or marry an Israelitish woman, as Jarchi, and so the Targum of Jonathan, "the male Ammonites and Moabites are not fit to take a wife of the congregation of the Lord;'' for the Jews restrain this to men, because it is, as Aben Ezra observes, an Ammonite, not an Ammonitess, a Moabite, not a Moabitess; they allow that females of those nations might be married to Israelites, that is, provided they were proselytesses, as Ruth was.

Numbers 21:26-32—26 For Heshbon was the city of Sihon king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab, and had taken all his land from his hand as far as the Arnon. 27 Therefore those who speak in proverbs say: "Come to Heshbon, let it be built; let the city of Sihon be repaired. 28 For fire went out from Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon; it consumed Ar of Moab, the lords of the heights of the Arnon. 29 Woe to you, Moab! You have perished, O people of Chemosh! He has given his sons as fugitives, and his daughters into captivity, to Sihon king of the Amorites. 30 But we have shot at them; Heshbon has perished as far as Dibon. Then we laid waste as far as Nophah, which reaches to Medeba." 31 Thus Israel dwelt in the land of the Amorites. 32 Then Moses sent to spy out Jazer; and they took its villages and drove out the Amorites who were there. Verses 27-30 is a song sung by the people of Israel after they defeated Sihon. It is a song of almost mockery, as the song went up that Chemosh, the god of the Moab could do nothing to protect the Moabites from the people that YHVH fought for. This is a common theme throughout the Old Testament, that the gods of the pagans are helpless against the one, true, Living God. Because they are mute idols, unable to stand before the one true God.

(https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2685112991572544&set=pcb.2685123044904872)

When the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant, they set it next to their idol Dagon, thinking they would just add one more god to their collection. But, alas! 1st Samuel 5:2-4—2 When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon and set it by Dagon. 3 And when the people of Ashdod arose early in the morning, there was Dagon, fallen on its face to the earth before the ark of the LORD. So they took Dagon and set it in its place again. 4 And when they arose early the next morning, there was Dagon, fallen on its face to the ground before the ark of the LORD. The head of Dagon and both the palms of its hands were broken off on the threshold; only Dagon's torso was left of it.

The ten plagues that were visited upon Egypt under Pharaoh were God’s way of saying their gods were useless. And let us not forget the challenge of Elijah against the prophets of Ba'al atop Mount Carmel. They cut up their sacrifice, they gouged themselves, they danced and cried all day for a god who would not answer. I like the way the ESV renders 1st Kings 18:26-29—26 And they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, "O Baal, answer us!" But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made. 27 And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, "Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened." 28 And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. 29 And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention. Did Elijah feel pity for them? Did he sympathize with them? Did he offer them any relief? No. And for good reason. Paul would write that we should avoid those who bring a different message than belief in YHVH. Galatians 1:8—But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge says this about calling on gods who cannot hear and who cannot answer:

Such were the absurd and degrading notions which the heathens entertained of their gods. "Vishnoo sleeps four months in the year; and to each of the gods some particular business is assigned. Vayoo manages the winds; Vuroonu the waters, etc. According to a number of fables in the Pooranus, the gods are often out on journeys or expeditions." Ward's Views of the Hindoos, vol. ii. p. 324.

Jeremiah the prophet warns the people about making for themselves idols of wood that are powerless to do anything to affect their lives. Jeremiah 10:3-6—3 For the customs of the peoples are futile; for one cuts a tree from the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the ax. 4 They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with nails and hammers so that it will not topple. 5 They are upright, like a palm tree, and they cannot speak; they must be carried, because they cannot go by themselves. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor can they do any good, 6 Inasmuch as there is none like You, O LORD (You are great, and Your name is great in might).” And no, he wasn’t talking about Christmas trees!

Even today we have some who set up dumb idols and ascribe to them the attributes of Almighty God. Look in any Roman Catholic “church” and you will find there idolatry. Statues of Mary with candles and incense before them. Names of dead saints upon the doorposts. Prayers being said to those who cannot hear them and can effect no change in the person’s circumstances. Strings of beads to remind the people of what they are supposed to ask of the one who is indeed worthy of our gratitude but can in no wise do anything for the people who chant her name in vain. This idolatry is found not only here in the United States, but in Mexico, in South America, in Italy and many other countries where they cut down a tree, decorate it with silver and gold, and fasten nails and hammer it so it does not topple. They worship bones and pieces of wood. John Calvin, in his “Treatise on Relics”, famously said “In some places there are large fragments of Christ’s cross, as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poitiers, and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load.” And they “venerate”—believe it or not—what they believe to be Jesus’ foreskin. And so many are swept up into this idolatry because it has marks and appearances of holiness. But Paul warned Timothy of this. In 2nd Timothy 3:5 he warns us that there will be those who will have the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. And the robes and the vestments and the stained glass all look so holy and religious. But do they address prayers to God? Do they ask Him for forgiveness for their sins? Do they call upon Him to deliver them from evil? Is their Rosary to guide them to God through Jesus Christ our Lord? No. They are no different than the people of Moab who called upon Chemosh to ask him for victory over the Israelites.

Lord God, Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth. Please guide our hearts to worship You and You alone. Let us not put our trust in those who cannot hear our prayers, but let our prayers rise to You, that You may hear our petitions and supplications, You being the only One who can hear them. Let us look unto Christ, the Author and Finisher of faith, not depending on our own merit or our own works, which we do not do in order to be saved, but because we are saved. May we always look to You to be our Guide and our Help in the difficult times, and our Joy and Peace in the good times.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 21 (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:00:00 +0000

(https://i0.wp.com/www.biblestudywithrandy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/arad.gif?ssl=1)

Numbers 21:1-3—1 The king of Arad, the Canaanite, who dwelt in the South, heard that Israel was coming on the road to Atharim. Then he fought against Israel and took some of them prisoners. 2 So Israel made a vow to the LORD, and said, "If You will indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities." 3 And the LORD listened to the voice of Israel and delivered up the Canaanites, and they utterly destroyed them and their cities. So the name of that place was called Hormah. The people have lost their High Priest Aaron, they have mourned for thirty days, and now they are attacked for simply travelling. Let’s look at a couple of the names here. Arad was a city in the southern part of Canaan, making this the first conflict the people had in the Promised Land. Atharim was not a city; the Hebrew הָאֲתָרִים means, literally, “spies”. In fact, verse 1 is better translated in the ESV When the Canaanite, the king of Arad, who lived in the Negeb, heard that Israel was coming by the way of Atharim… or the KJV And when king Arad the Canaanite, which dwelt in the south, heard tell that Israel came by the way of the spies… So they were going up the same route the spies took in Numbers 13. So The Canaanite king heard they were coming up the same way the 12 went up before, he sent his army out against them and took some of them captives. Then Hormah (חָרְמָה, “devoted”). We saw back in Numbers 14 after the Israelites’ failed attempt to take the land after complaining about the spies’ report. Numbers 14:45—Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and defeated them and pursued them, even to Hormah. So what we see here is this: The king of Arad fought against the Israelites, who were coming up the same way as the spies in Numbers 13 and defeated them. The people of Israel, who were slowly learning to trust in the Lord (though not fully, as we will see in a bit) called upon the Lord to deliver this people into their hands—something they should have done before instead of going into battle in their own strength—and this time they defeated the Canaanites and devoted the land to destruction.

I said the people trusted the Lord but not fully. We see that in the next few verses. Numbers 21:4-9—4 Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses: "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread." 6 So the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died. 7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD that He take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. 8 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live." 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. We see, yet again, the people complaining. They wanted God to win their military battles for them, but they did not want to live their lives in accordance with His will. Much like the people in Israel at the time of Christ. They wanted a Messiah who would cast off the shackles of Rome from their feet, but not one who would show them how to live according to God’s will.

(https://biblicalanthropology.blogspot.com/2020/11/tracing-israelites-travels.html)

Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. This would be a long and treacherous journey. And the people did have some right to be discouraged. After all, they had to return south to the Red Sea then go around the land of Edom in order to go north again. This would have added hundreds of miles to their journey. And the land they were trekking through did not have food or water in amounts to sustain the people. So they get a little perturbed and lash out at God and Moses for their troubles. But aren’t we often guilty of that very thing? Don’t we often lash out at God because He puts some kind of obstacle in our lives? We want the road to be smooth and easy, yet God makes it more difficult than we want it to be. And we get mad because our happy little life we wanted for ourselves isn’t so happy for a season. Instead of complaining, we should be trusting God to get us through the very obstacle He has put up.

Don’t be discouraged by these words, my friend, because the Apostle Paul endured the same thing. 2nd Corinthians 12:7—And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Saul of Tarsus was living what many would call “the good life”. He had position, wealth, etc. Everything a person could want. But he did not know Christ. Then Christ met him on the road, and his life got turned upside down. He went from being well-respected among his Jewish peers to being nearly killed by them. But God saw him through it. And Paul could have bragged about it. But rather than allowing him to do so, God put something in his life to teach him humility. A thorn in the flesh. And Paul didn’t like that, 2nd Corinthians 12:8—Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. But just to show Paul that He is who He says He is, Christ tells him in 2nd Corinthians 12:9—"My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." And that is what God was trying to teach these stubborn Israelites. That He is most glorified when He brings them through trials, and He is more able to display His power by leading them through these difficulties.

But they didn’t want to learn this way. They wanted to go the easy way. They wanted the well-watered plains like Lot. So they complained…yet again. So how does God respond? He sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and many of the people of Israel died. They sinned by complaining against God, so God punished them. The words translated as “fiery serpents” is the Hebrew הַנְּחָשִׁים הַשְּׂרָפִים (saraph nahas, “fiery serpents”).We get “seraphim” from saraph. The seraphim of course are angels, like what Isaiah saw in Isaiah 6:1-2—1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. 2 Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings… So these serpents were sent by God to bite the people and kill them for their insolence. And what was their only remedy? So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived. To look on the serpent that was lifted up. Think about this for a minute. They were being pursued by things that could kill them, and to avoid death they had to look upon the thing that was like those things.

Centuries later, that bronze serpent still existed and had never been done away with. Unfortunately, it was being used as a talisman or an idol. 2nd Kings 18:4—He [Hezekiah] removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan. By the time of Hezekiah’s reign the worship of God was falling apart, and the people had resorted to worshipping not only Ba'al and Asherah, but also the very thing that saved the people’s lives in the wilderness. They viewed it as a sort of good luck charm; much like the people did the Ark of the Covenant in 1^st Samuel 4. They did not see it as simply a tool God used to glorify Himself among the people, but they viewed it as God Himself. Don’t think the worship of icons ended there, as the Romanists have done so with the saints and with the Virgin Mary. They build altars to them, they light candles before them, they offer up prayers to them instead of to the only One who can bring true life. They affix crucifixes to the wall and bow to them, thinking they are doing some great reverence to God, when they are simply carrying on the idol worship that Hezekiah threw down. And don’t think this is limited to the Romanists. We Protestants too often set up pastors and teachers as objects of, if not outright worship, then at least near-worship. Written by Joseph Exell in the 19^th Century, The Biblical Illustrator has shed light on the Scriptures for many, and does so here. This is what he has to say about the people’s idolatry that Hezekiah threw down:

There is much idol-breaking to be done in the Church of God. When God gives a man to the Church, fitted for her enlargement, for her establishment, and her confirmation, he gives to her one of the richest blessings of the covenant of grace; but the danger is lest we place the man in the wrong position, and look to him not only with the respect which is due to him as God’s ambassador, but with some degree of—I must call it so—superstitious reliance upon his authority and ability. In the Christian Church there is, I am afraid, at this moment too much exaltation of talent and dependence upon education, I mean especially in reference to ministers. Just the same also may be said of human eloquence. Continuing still our remarks with regard to the Christian Church, I will further remark that much superstition may require to be broken down amongst us in reference to a rigid adhesion to certain modes of Christian service. We have tried to propagate the truth in a certain way, and the Lord has blessed us in it, and therefore we venerate the mode and the plan, and forget that the Holy Spirit is a free Spirit.

Bring that into the future by a few more centuries. We are constantly being pursued by sin. As God told Cain, “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it” (Genesis 4:7). The desire of these fiery serpents was for the people. The desire of sin is you. But as they ruled over the serpents by looking at the one that was lifted up on a pole, so do we rule over sin by the One who was lifted up on a tree. The one who was made like the sin that pursues us. Jesus was made sin by God by having had placed upon Him the sins of His elect. 2nd Corinthians 5:21—He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. By His one sacrifice, and by believing in the One who made that one sacrifice, by looking to the Author and Finisher of faith (Hebrews 12:2), we can rule over the sin that pursues us. It was for this reason that our Savior told Nicodemus “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14). And again He says “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself” (John 12:32). “Are you comparing Jesus to a serpent, or sin?” No, but I am saying He was made like that sin. Galatians 3:13—Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. And all we have to do is look to Him, call upon Him, and we will not die the second death because of the sin that pursues us! “But it takes more than faith. Have you not read that James said faith without works is dead?” Of course I have. And I have written about it here.

Numbers 21:10-20—10 Now the children of Israel moved on and camped in Oboth. 11 And they journeyed from Oboth and camped at Ije Abarim, in the wilderness which is east of Moab, toward the sunrise. 12 From there they moved and camped in the Valley of Zered. 13 From there they moved and camped on the other side of the Arnon, which is in the wilderness that extends from the border of the Amorites; for the Arnon is the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites. 14 Therefore it is said in the Book of the Wars of the LORD: "Waheb in Suphah, the brooks of the Arnon, 15 and the slope of the brooks that reaches to the dwelling of Ar, and lies on the border of Moab." 16 From there they went to Beer, which is the well where the LORD said to Moses, "Gather the people together, and I will give them water." 17 Then Israel sang this song: "Spring up, O well! All of you sing to it—18 the well the leaders sank, dug by the nation's nobles, by the lawgiver, with their staves." And from the wilderness they went to Mattanah, 19 from Mattanah to Nahaliel, from Nahaliel to Bamoth, 20 and from Bamoth, in the valley that is in the country of Moab, to the top of Pisgah which looks down on the wasteland.

(https://www.bibleodyssey.org/map-gallery/moab-map/)

Okay, so there are several places here, the majority of which we will not concern ourselves with, but some we will. From there they moved and camped on the other side of the Arnon, which is in the wilderness that extends from the border of the Amorites; for the Arnon is the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites. The Arnon is a river that begins in the desert east of the Dead Sea, begins flowing in a northerly direction, then empties into the Dead Sea. Today it is referred to as the Wady Mujib. A wady is an Arabic term for a geographical feature in the Middle East that we would call an “intermittent river”—during the dry seasons it is a dry bed, but flows with water in the other seasons. So two things we can gather from this is (1) they must have crossed during the dry season so as not to be swept away by the current, and (2) they must have crossed in a place where the Arnon was flowing northward, as the Arnon Valley becomes a steep-walled ravine once it makes its turn westward. Moab laid to the south of the Arnon and the Amorites to the north of it. This will become more important in the next few verses following this passage. Currently, however, it still functions as a boundary between two governorates in the nation of Jordan, the Karak and the Madaba Governorates.

(https://biblehub.com/atlas/full/valley_of_the_arnon.htm#google_vignette)

14 Therefore it is said in the Book of the Wars of the LORD: "Waheb in Suphah, the brooks of the Arnon, 15 and the slope of the brooks that reaches to the dwelling of Ar, and lies on the border of Moab." What exactly is this “Book of the Wars of the LORD”? Well, that is a mystery. Many Jewish scholars believe it to be a book of songs sung by the Israelites that were written down to commemorate His victories for the people of Israel over her enemies. Professor Edward Greenstein writes (https://www.thetorah.com/article/what-was-the-book-of-the-wars-of-the-lord) :

Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089-1167) in his commentary suggested that the reference is to an ancient and now lost written source describing the various battles fought by the Israelites against their enemies. R. Joseph Bechor Shor (12^th cent.) and Ralbag (R. Levi ben Gershom, 1288-1344) offer the same understanding. That this document is a collection of war and victory songs in which the deity is the hero is also shared by modern scholars such as Jacob Milgrom and Yitzhak Avishur in their Olam HaTanach commentary (ad loc.), and Philip Budd in his Word Bible Commentary (ad loc.) [See, e.g., Philip J. Budd, Numbers (Word Biblical Commentary; Waco, TX: Word, 1984), pp. 238-39.]

We do know that it is mentioned in the extra-biblical and non-canonical Book of Jasher, and is thought to have been compiled by Moses and Joshua. Alas, it is lost to us today. Whatever it was it does give us some insight into how the Pentateuch was formed. It was not a scroll that Moses carried around and wrote down when something happened. It was put together at a later date using smaller written pieces and some oral tradition. Should this be concerning to us? No. For we know that God spoke to the authors of Scripture what to write (2nd Timothy 3:16). If the Bible was nothing but a fabrication of man, it would have included more—and in some places, less—than what we have. But God (I love that phrase!) led the writers of Holy Scripture what to include and what to leave out.

16 From there they went to Beer, which is the well where the LORD said to Moses, "Gather the people together, and I will give them water." 17 Then Israel sang this song: "Spring up, O well! All of you sing to it—18 the well the leaders sank, dug by the nation's nobles, by the lawgiver, with their staves." (Verse 18, KJV—The princes digged the well, the nobles of the people digged it, by the direction of the lawgiver, with their staves). This place Beer (בְּאֵרָה, a well) is not to be confused with Beer-la-hai-roi (בְּאֵר לַחַי רֹאִי, Well of the Living One Seeing Me) mentioned in Genesis as the place where Hagar fled from Sarai. This Beer the people are at now is to the east of the Dead Sea, whereas Beer-la-hai-roi was located to the west of the Dead Sea, between Kadesh and Bered (Genesis 16:14). So they are at a place called “A Well” and they sing a song of celebration, which may also be evidence that they were here in the dry season. And rather than have to have Moses call upon God to provide a miraculous stream of water from the rock or the dry ground, God has already supplied their water from a well. So who are the nation’s nobles referred to here in verse 18? Is it the leaders of Israel, namely Moses and Aaron? Is it the nobles of the land of Moab, or the Amorites? I believe this was dug by the people of Israel by order of Moses from God. This is really the first time when the people have complained about the lack of water, done something about it themselves, and been happy about it.

Part 2 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 20 (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 21:42:00 +0000

The hostility between the Israelites and the Edomites would last for years, until at last King David put Edom under Israel’s control. 2nd Samuel 8:14—He also put garrisons in Edom; throughout all Edom he put garrisons, and all the Edomites became David's servants. But, again, as we see in so much of Israel’s history, this too did not last. For we read in 2nd Kings 8 that Joram becomes king of Israel (this was after Israel and Judah split), and Joram was a king after the ways of Ahab his father, and did not do what was right in the sight of God. And he attacked Edom, after Edom established a king for themselves. 2nd Kings 8:21-22—21 So Joram went to Zair, and all his chariots with him. Then he rose by night and attacked the Edomites who had surrounded him and the captains of the chariots; and the troops fled to their tents. 22 Thus Edom has been in revolt against Judah's authority to this day. For Edom’s rebellion, God sent word by way of the prophet in Ezekiel 25:12-14—12 “‘Thus says the Lord GOD: "Because of what Edom did against the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and has greatly offended by avenging itself on them," 13 therefore thus says the Lord GOD: "I will also stretch out My hand against Edom, cut off man and beast from it, and make it desolate from Teman; Dedan shall fall by the sword. 14 I will lay My vengeance on Edom by the hand of My people Israel, that they may do in Edom according to My anger and according to My fury; and they shall know My vengeance," says the Lord GOD.’”

This tension between the people of Edom and the people of Israel continued for many years. It got to the point that God gave His prophets messages to give to the people concerning Edom. Obadiah 1:18—“The house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame; but the house of Esau shall be stubble; they shall kindle them and devour them, and no survivor shall remain of the house of Esau,” for the LORD has spoken. Malachi 1:2-4—2 "I have loved you," says the LORD. "Yet you say, 'In what way have You loved us?' Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" says the LORD. "Yet Jacob I have loved; 3 but Esau I have hated, and laid waste his mountains and his heritage for the jackals of the wilderness." 4 Even though Edom has said, "We have been impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places," thus says the LORD of hosts: “They may build, but I will throw down; they shall be called the Territory of Wickedness, and the people against whom the LORD will have indignation forever.” And God finally dealt the death blow to the land of Edom, although we don’t read about it in any of the canonical books of Scripture, but in the Apocryphal book of 1st Maccabees 5:3—Then Judas [Maccabee] fought against the children of Esau in Idumea, and them that were in Acrabathane: because they beset the Israelites round about, and he made a great slaughter of them. While Judas Maccabee may have been the overall ruler of the people, the military campaign against the Edomites was carried out by a man named John Hyrcanus. He led the battle and subdued the Edomites circa 120 BC. The victory was such that they forced the men of Edom to be circumcised and become Jews. Flavius Josephus writes in his Antiquities of the Jews (Book 13, chapter 9):

Hyrcanus took also Dora and Marissa, cities of Idumea, and subdued all the Idumeans; and permitted them to stay in that country, if they would circumcise their genitals, and make use of the laws of the Jews; and they were so desirous of living in the country of their forefathers, that they submitted to the use of circumcision, and of the rest of the Jewish ways of living; at which time therefore this befell them, that they were hereafter no other than Jews.

Unfortunately, this was not the last we heard from the Edomites, for a man was born in Idumea, whose father was an Edomite, and he would come to be king over the Jews. The man’s name was Herod. Yes, Herod the Great, who was king at the time of Jesus’ birth, was an Edomite, as were his sons. Which may explain why the Herods were so incensed that the child born in Bethlehem was celebrated as King of the Jews. “So how does an Edomite wind up being King over Israel?” Remember, at the time of Jesus’ birth Judea was under Roman occupation. And Herod was a very shrewd man. He was also a friend of Rome. And he was wealthy. Wealthy enough to buy the kingdom. Josephus (Antiquities, Book 14, chapter 14):

[Mark Antony] was very ready to give him [Herod] the assistance he desired, and this because he called to mind the friendship he had had with Antipater because Herod offered him money to make him king, as he had formerly given it him to make him tetrarch, and chiefly because of his hatred to Antigo he was very ready to give him the assistance he desired, and this because he called to mind the friendship he had had with Antipater because Herod offered him money to make him king, as he had formerly given it him to make him tetrarch, and chiefly because of his hatred to Antigonus; for he took him to be a seditious person, and an enemy to the Romans… And this was the principal instance of Antony’s affection for Herod, that he not only procured him a kingdom which he did not expect, (for he did not come with an intention to ask the kingdom for himself, which he did not suppose the Romans would grant him, who used to bestow it on some of the royal family, but intended to desire it for his wife’s brother, who was grandson by his father to Aristobulus, and to Hyrcanus by his mother,) but that he procured it for him so suddenly, that he obtained what he did not expect, and departed out of Italy in so few days as seven in all…when the senate was dissolved, Antony and Caesar went out of the senate house with Herod between them, and with the consuls and other magistrates before them, in order to offer sacrifices, and to lay up their decrees in the capitol. Antony also feasted Herod the first day of his reign. And thus did this man receive the kingdom, having obtained it on the hundred and eighty-fourth Olympiad, when Caius Domitius Calvinus was consul the second time, and Caius Asinius Pollio [the first time].

In fact, the entire family was in Rome’s back pocket. No wonder Christ referred to Herod Antipas as “that fox” in Luke 13:32!

Numbers 20:20-29—20 Then he said, "You shall not pass through." So Edom came out against them with many men and with a strong hand. 21 Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his territory; so Israel turned away from him. 22 Now the children of Israel, the whole congregation, journeyed from Kadesh and came to Mount Hor. 23 And the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron in Mount Hor by the border of the land of Edom, saying: 24 "Aaron shall be gathered to his people, for he shall not enter the land which I have given to the children of Israel, because you rebelled against My word at the water of Meribah. 25 Take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and bring them up to Mount Hor; 26 and strip Aaron of his garments and put them on Eleazar his son; for Aaron shall be gathered to his people and die there." 27 So Moses did just as the LORD commanded, and they went up to Mount Hor in the sight of all the congregation. 28 Moses stripped Aaron of his garments and put them on Eleazar his son; and Aaron died there on the top of the mountain. Then Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain. 29 Now when all the congregation saw that Aaron was dead, all the house of Israel mourned for Aaron thirty days.

Again, this Aaron, who was the first high priest over the people of Israel, gets a very short notice of his death. So as we took a brief glimpse at the life of Miriam at the beginning of the chapter, let us end the chapter by examining the life of Aaron. He was three years old when Moses was born (Exodus 7:7), and we first see his name mentioned in Exodus 4:14 when God tells Moses that Aaron will be his mouthpiece, since Moses expressed reluctance at speaking to Pharaoh. And we see Aaron called a prophet by God in Exodus 7:1—So the LORD said to Moses: “See, I have made you as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet.” And most times when you see Aaron mentioned, Moses is mentioned with him. That is how closely these two were knit together. They are mentioned together 295 times. It is Aaron who cast down his rod at Pharaoh’s feet and it became a serpent (Exodus 7:10). It is Aaron who took his rod and smote the waters of the Nile to turn them to blood (Exodus 7:20). It was Aaron who, with his rod, smote the dust and turned it into lice (Exodus 8:17). So many times Aaron was faithful to do the commands of God and to glorify Him in Pharaoh’s sight. However…

In Exodus 32 we see just how human Aaron was. Moses is up on Mount Sinai as God is giving him the law for the people. He is up there 40 days and 40 nights. The people start wondering if he is going to come back down. They have not seen God, only the smoke and the fire on the mountain. But in Egypt, they could see Ra. They could see Osiris. They could see Isis. But they could not see יהוה‎. And since their leader is on the mountain, they turn to the one they believe to be the second in command, that being Aaron. They want a god that will lead them, and more specifically a god they can see. Exodus 32:1—Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." And in the same way that Adam did not correct Eve when she took and ate of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, so Aaron does not correct the people of their folly here. Rather, Aaron said to them, "Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me" (Exodus 32:2). This man that God used so many times in speaking to and against Pharaoh had now cast in his lot with the people who were so fondly reminiscing of the gods they had in Egypt. They had forgotten יהוה and now wanted a god they could touch and see and feel. Abraham knew the God he could not see (Genesis 13:4). Isaac knew the invisible God (Genesis 25:21). Jacob knew God (Genesis 28:13). Joseph knew God (Genesis 39:4).

But now these people had been in servitude to Egypt and Pharaoh for 430 years, and had forgotten the name of God, and only knew of the dumb idols worshipped by Egypt. Aaron, who should have corrected the people and given them hope in the Living God, instead went along with their foolishness and made a golden calf. And it happened in the most peculiar manner! Exodus 32:24—And I said to them, 'Whoever has any gold, let them break it off.' So they gave it to me, and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out." Yep, just threw all the precious metal into the fire and *POOF!* This fully formed calf miraculously popped out! Not only that, he laid the charge at the people’s feet (Exodus 32:22-23). If this sounds familiar, it should. Genesis 3:12—"The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree." Both Aaron and Adam were in position to prevent grievous sin, and instead of doing so they brought the sin full circle (see also Exodus 32:25).

And this is why Jesus is our better High Priest, one who is fully submitted to the will of the Father, and who has never disobeyed nor has even thought of being disobedient. Hebrews 9:26-28—26 For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; 27 who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people's, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. 28 For the law appoints as high priests men who have weakness, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints the Son who has been perfected forever. The Levitical priests were set apart from their brethren, but Jesus was set apart from all Creation, as He did no sin, nor was guile found in His Mouth (1st Peter 2:22; Isaiah 53:9). He would not have fashioned the Golden Calf simply by the whims of the people; He would not have quarreled with Moses about who was greater. In fact, He calmed such a spirit among His apostles. Matthew 20:26-27—26 “Whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. 27 And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave.” As humble as Moses was, our Great High Priest was even more humble, and humbled Himself to death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). May we be as humble as He, and serve one another in love.

Brother, let me be your servant/Let me be as Christ to you.

Pray that I might have the grace/To let you be my servant, too.

We are pilgrims on a journey/We are brothers on the road.

We are here to help each other/Walk the mile and bear the load.

I will hold the Christ-light for you/In the night time of your fear.

I will hold my hand out to you/ Speak the peace you long to hear.

(“The Servant’s Song”, Richard Gillard)

The next important event in Aaron’s life is when he strives, along with Miriam, against the leadership of Moses due to Moses’ Ethiopian wife (Numbers 12:1). Now we see here in Numbers 20 that Aaron is about to die and his mantle passed to his son Eleazar. We will see God make a covenant with the house of Eleazar in Numbers 25, so we will not go into that now. Let us focus for a moment on Mount Hor. It was, according to most experts, to the northeast of Kadesh, on the edge of the land of Edom (but not within its boundaries), in the land of what we now call Jordan near the city of Petra. There is another site that some have thought to be this Mount Hor, and its location is near the Israel-Egypt border (the position of historian Henry Clay Turnbull), while yet another hypothesis says it is near Medina in Saudi Arabia. Most evidence points to the Petra location. We will read of yet another Mount Hor in Numbers 34, but we will address that when we get there. At any rate, it is only mentioned a few times in the book of Numbers, and nowhere else in Scripture. It is only noteworthy as the place where Aaron died and was buried. But, as they have done so often throughout their history, this was appropriated by the Muslims, who built a mosque at its summit atop an old Byzantine church.

So we see at the beginning of Numbers 20 Moses’ sister dies, and at the end of the chapter his brother dies. Most men would have thrown in the towel and called on God to choose someone else to take his position. But not Moses. He was a most humble man (Numbers 12:3), fully submitted to the will of God and whatever He had planned for his life. As we should be.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 20 (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 18:31:00 +0000

So in Numbers 16 we read about the rebellion of Korah and Dathan and how they were destroyed for their insolence. In Numbers 17 we read about how God showed that Aaron was High Priest as decreed by God. In Numbers 18 we saw the sacrifices the priests were to bring to purify the priesthood following the rebellion. In Numbers 19 we saw the commands concerning the red heifer. And no we read Numbers 20:1—Then the children of Israel, the whole congregation, came into the Wilderness of Zin in the first month, and the people stayed in Kadesh; and Miriam died there and was buried there. Wait, what? That’s it? That is all we read about the death of Moses’ sister? That she died and was buried? Let’s see some more about the life of Miriam.

The name Miriam (מִרְיָם) is Hebrew for “rebellion”. And this name fit the woman well, for we see from the earliest account of her life that Miriam played a vital role in rescuing Moses from the death prescribed by Pharaoh and helping Israel escape the servitude the people were in. Had she not been there at the time when Pharaoh’s sister was bathing, and had she not convinced Pharaoh’s sister to keep the child alive, the people would not have been delivered from the hand of Pharaoh. So she was actually responsible for Moses even being alive to lead the people of Israel. We first see Miriam in the second chapter of Exodus. Exodus 2:1-9—1 And a man of the house of Levi went and took as wife a daughter of Levi. 2 So the woman conceived and bore a son. And when she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him three months. 3 But when she could no longer hide him, she took an ark of bulrushes for him, daubed it with asphalt and pitch, put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river's bank. 4 And his sister stood afar off, to know what would be done to him. 5 Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river. And her maidens walked along the riverside; and when she saw the ark among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it. 6 And when she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby wept. So she had compassion on him, and said, "This is one of the Hebrews' children." 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you?" 8 And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Go." So the maiden went and called the child's mother. 9 Then Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages." So the woman took the child and nursed him.

But did the people think her to be their deliverer? Did they erect altars to her, to call on her as their deliverer? No. The people were not to follow her or to revere her more highly than they ought. The same can be said of the virgin Mary, whose name in Hebrew would also be “Miriam”. Yet she did not rebel, but rather submitted to the will of God in bearing the One who would lead us out of our servitude to sin. Was she important? Yes, and to say otherwise would be folly. But she, like Miriam, should not be elevated above her station.

The next time we see Miriam is at the other side of the Red Sea, after it had parted and the people of Israel walked across on dry land, and the Egyptians who pursued them were swallowed up by the waters. Exodus 15:20-21—20 Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took the timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. 21 And Miriam answered them: "Sing to the LORD, For He has triumphed gloriously! The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea!" This is called the “Song of Miriam”. Some claim that the “Song of the Sea” (Exodus 15:1-18) was also sung (and perhaps led) by Miriam, and there may be some evidence in the Dead Sea Scrolls that support this position. The evidence is limited, so we will not delve further into it, as it would only be speculation. Then we next find Miriam complaining with Aaron about Moses’ position as prophet and her being cursed by God with leprosy in Numbers 12, which we have already seen. And now we read about her death and burial. It is interesting to note that when we do read about Miriam there is almost always water involved. When Moses, as a baby, is set upon the water; after the parting of the Red Sea; and here in Numbers 20. Here we see water surrounding the events of her life (and death) as well. Numbers 20:2-5—2 Now there was no water for the congregation; so they gathered together against Moses and Aaron. 3 And the people contended with Moses and spoke, saying: "If only we had died when our brethren died before the LORD! 4 Why have you brought up the assembly of the LORD into this wilderness, that we and our animals should die here? 5 And why have you made us come up out of Egypt, to bring us to this evil place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates; nor is there any water to drink." This is almost an echo of what happened after the parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of the Egyptian military in Exodus 15:23-24, when the people complained because of the bitter waters of Marah. The Wilderness of Zin is indeed a desert, located in the northeast section of the Sinai Peninsula, about halfway between Paran and Canaan. At this point, the people sound like your kids when you take them on a long trip and they keep asking “Are we there yet?” No, the people were not yet in the Promised Land, but—as they have been told before—they were getting there.

(https://www.thetorah.com/article/solving-the-problem-of-kadesh-in-the-wilderness-of-paran)

They were at a place called Kadesh Barnea. Now, allow me to do some explaining here, because it can get tricky. We also read of a place called Meribah Kadesh—this is, from everything I have read, the same place. The word “Meribah” (וּמְרִיבָה) is Hebrew for “strife” or “contention”, and “Kadesh” (קָדֵשׁ) is simply the name given to the area. It was also called “Massah” (מַסָּה, “temptation” or “testing”) by Moses in Exodus 17:7. So, we have Massah, and Meribah Kadesh, and Kadesh Barnea, which are all the name of the same place. It was where the people of Israel were when the twelve spies came back from Canaan in Numbers 13:26. So why the different names? Well, in those days, people and places were given names according to their chief characteristic. The name “Moses” (מֹשֶׁה, Hebrew “Moshe”) means “drawn”, corresponding to his being drawn from the water. Exodus 2:10—So she called his name Moses, saying, “Because I drew him out of the water.” Kadesh received the names “Meribah” and “Massah” in Exodus 17:7 because the people complained against Moses for the lack of water. So he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the contention of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the LORD, saying, "Is the LORD among us or not?" We will see in Numbers 32 the name Kadesh Barnea as the name of the place.

So this is not the first time the people have been here, and like the first time, the people complained about the lack of water. Only this time, the results are different than before. In Exodus 17:6, when the people complain about having no water, God commands Moses to strike the rock. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock in Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink." And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. This time, God commands Moses to speak to the rock. Numbers 20:8-9—8 "Take the rod; you and your brother Aaron gather the congregation together. Speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will yield its water; thus you shall bring water for them out of the rock, and give drink to the congregation and their animals." 9 So Moses took the rod from before the LORD as He commanded him. So far so good. God commanded Moses to take his rod in his hand, which Moses does obediently. But here is where Moses defies God, and his frustration with the people boils over, and his obedience is incomplete. If he had only spoken to the rock as God commanded, all would have been okay. But he didn’t. As you have noticed throughout the book of Numbers, the people complained a lot. Their complaining even irritated Moses a bit in Numbers 11, and in response he cried out to God in Numbers 11:11—“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?” This was almost a plea of desperation, borne out of his inability to give the people what they wanted. And it was almost a question of whether he was really the one to lead these people. Yes, he was a humble man (Numbers 12:3), but his humility made him almost too humble. And at that time, God was patient with him.

But now, his humility gave way to anger, and instead of being a tender shepherd coming to them with a staff to lead them, he came to them with a rod to rebuke them in anger. Numbers 20:10-13—10 And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock; and he said to them, "Hear now, you rebels! Must we bring water for you out of this rock?" 11 Then Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their animals drank. 12 Then the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, "Because you did not believe Me, to hallow Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them." 13 This was the water of Meribah, because the children of Israel contended with the LORD, and He was hallowed among them. It wasn’t because of Moses striking the rock that God told him to speak to that he was not allowed to enter the Promised Land. The striking of the rock was simply the outward display of what was inside him. Does God say “because you struck the rock you will not enter Canaan”? No. "Because you did not believe Me…you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them." His striking the rock was a manifestation of his unbelief. Yes, it may have been a momentary bout of unbelief, but Moses was not an ordinary man. He was the prophet of God to the people, and should have never had even a moment of unbelief. Thus, he was not allowed to lead the people into Canaan. He could lead them to the border, but not into the land itself.

“Just for one moment of weakness?” Yes, for even this moment of weakness welling up into anger. For he, being a prophet of God, had the responsibility of leading the people and displaying for them the qualities God desires in His people. Consider the Prophet who was like unto him (Deuteronomy 18:15). Imagine if He had a moment of unbelief. Imagine if He let His emotions get the better of Him. “But what about when Jesus flipped over the tables in the Temple (Matthew 21:12; Mark 11:15; John 2:15)?” Yes, let’s consider that. Did Jesus do that out of anger? Yes. Was His anger swift and did He simply lose His temper? No, on the contrary. He was very deliberate in His anger. John 2:14-15—14 And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. 15 When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables. The Apostle tells us in his account that our Lord had time to braid a whip of cords; He had time to think about what He was doing. And He did so, not out of a quick flash of temper, but out of a desire for purity in the house where God had put His name. John 2:17—Then His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up." His desire for the holiness of God to be upheld was what drove Him to flip the tables and to cast out the money-changers. In Moses’ case, he was simply angry, and did contrary to what God commanded him to do. And if God didn’t punish him, what kind of message would this send to the people? But His punishing of Moses caused the people to fear Him and He was hallowed among them.

Psalm 106:32-33—32 They angered Him also at the waters of strife, so that it went ill with Moses on account of them; 33 because they rebelled against His Spirit, so that he spoke rashly with his lips. Another way to look at it is this: It is possible that Moses was not striking just any rock, but it could be that He was striking the Rock--Christ. “Okay, you lost me with this one.” Please, hear me out. 1st Corinthians 10:1-4—1 Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, 2 all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. “But rock is a fixed thing, and now we are supposed to believe that the rock was Christ and walked along with them?” Not quite. It is true, rock—bedrock, πετρα (petra)—is fixed and immoveable. And it did not so much as move, but stayed fixed with them, and so it could be said to “follow” them. And water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their animals drank. “So you’re saying that Jesus was a literal rock?” In a way. For the water came flowing out of the rock. And if you remember what we said in Numbers 19 about flowing water, how it was also called “living water”, and remember what Jesus told the woman at the well in John 4:14, It is not a stretch to say that Jesus, who told the woman that He would give living water to any who asked, also provided the people of Israel with this living water. Joseph Benson said, “A manifest type of him, the Rock of ages, who, being smitten in his death and sufferings, poured forth streams of redemption, grace, and heavenly blessings, which follow his people through all this wilderness, and will end in rivers of pleasure at the right hand of God for ever.” The living water Christ gives is not like what the people in the desert drank, or what the woman was drawing up from the well, and thirsted again. He gives us living water which will never run dry!

Numbers 20:14-21—14 Now Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom. "Thus says your brother Israel: 'You know all the hardship that has befallen us, 15 how our fathers went down to Egypt, and we dwelt in Egypt a long time, and the Egyptians afflicted us and our fathers. 16 When we cried out to the LORD, He heard our voice and sent the Angel and brought us up out of Egypt; now here we are in Kadesh, a city on the edge of your border. 17 Please let us pass through your country. We will not pass through fields or vineyards, nor will we drink water from wells; we will go along the King's Highway; we will not turn aside to the right hand or to the left until we have passed through your territory.'" 18 Then Edom said to him, "You shall not pass through my land, lest I come out against you with the sword." 19 So the children of Israel said to him, "We will go by the Highway, and if I or my livestock drink any of your water, then I will pay for it; let me only pass through on foot, nothing more." 20 Then he said, "You shall not pass through." So Edom came out against them with many men and with a strong hand. 21 Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his territory; so Israel turned away from him. This was a very common custom at the time, and even today, to seek permission from a kingdom in order to traverse their land. Today we see nations ask permission from other nations to use, not only their land and sea routes, but even their airspace. It can be seen as, at the very least, a breach of protocol, and at worst an act of war, for one nation to take a shortcut through a country’s land, or even their waters or airspace without permission.

Here we see another important event in the history of Israel, the refusal of the Edomites to permit passage of Israel through the land of Edom. The Edomites were the descendants of Esau, the brother of Jacob. Esau, who was also called Edom (Genesis 25:30), established a land to the south and to the southwest of the Dead Sea. And we read about Esau meeting Jacob as Jacob left Laban after making a covenant with him in Genesis 31. Jacob was preparing to enter the land of Seir, where Esau was living. Jacob gets scared, knowing how he weaseled Esau out of the blessing of Isaac as well as the birthright. So he splits up his company, sends one half one way and Jacob goes the other way with the rest of his company. When he finally meets Esau, he bows his face to the ground and calls himself Esau’s servant (Genesis 33:3). And Esau could have been rightly incensed at seeing his heel-catching brother, as he was when Jacob stole the birthright from Isaac, and Esau said in his heart, "The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then I will kill my brother Jacob" (Genesis 27:41). But what do we read of their reunion? But Esau said, "I have enough, my brother; keep what you have for yourself" (Genesis 33:9). Esau had been blessed with wealth and camels and wives, and no longer held a grudge against his brother.

But that peace did not last. As the people of Israel were preparing to leave Kadesh, they were preparing to head north, a trek that would have necessitated their travelling through the land of Edom. And they would have passed through the narrow northwest sliver of Edom, not very long at all, even for their large numbers. Now, they would not have taken the King’s Highway, as this passed on the east of the Dead Sea, but rather one of the other well-trodden highways in the area. But whereas previously, Jacob feared Edom, now Edom feared Jacob, as the king said "You shall not pass through my land, lest I come out against you with the sword." He thought that Israel would try to fight them as they fought the Amalekites, and as God had defeated Egypt. This denial of passage would cause Edom to be despised in God’s sight. What peace the brothers themselves may have had between them was now supplanted with hostility between their descendants.

Part 2 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 19 (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 16:32:00 +0000

I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! (Romans 11:1). God is not through with Israel. And He never will be. Jeremiah 31:37—Thus says the LORD: “If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says the LORD.” Has all of space been explored? Has anyone been to the center of the Earth? No, they haven’t. And so, God has not cast away Israel from His sight. And again, in echoing this sentiment, Paul calls on the words of the prophets in Romans 11:2-4—2 God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel, saying, 3 "LORD, they have killed Your prophets and torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life"? (1st Kings 19:14) 4 But what does the divine response say to him? "I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Ba'al." (1st Kings 19:18) 5 Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace. God made a covenant with the people of Israel; He separated them from the Nations, and set them apart as His. Are we to now believe that God has simply washed His hands of this nation that He called His? What kind of unfaithful God would He be if He could just simply ignore this people He called to Himself? No, He could not.

So then, what are we to make of the Apostle’s words? Simply this: while God has not done away with Israel, He has nonetheless called on Gentiles to also be His people. Romans 11:17-20—17 And if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, 18 do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you. 19 You will say then, "Branches were broken off that I might be grafted in." 20 Well said. Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Yes, salvation has come to the Gentiles (Acts 28:28). And why? But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. (Romans 11:11) Does this mean that the entire tree was cut down? God forbid! Do not say that God has cast the entire tree into the fire, for saying this could not be farther from the truth. For if He did, He would have to assign the entire human race to the fires of Hell. Which He would be right in doing, had He not first marked out a particular people as His own, with whom we are now grafted into that olive tree, that all, both Jew and Gentile, may become partakers of Christ, there being no division between the two, but all being one in the same olive tree. So then, what does this have to do with statutes in the Law that are called “statutes forever”? This: these statutes were fulfilled in Christ. “I came…to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17). Since these statutes have been fulfilled in Christ, and He is such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens (Hebrews 8:1). And because He is a High Priest forever, both for Jew and Gentile, He is to this day and for always fulfilling the commands of the Father. Thus we can say that these “statutes forever” are being fulfilled, and will be fulfilled, until the end of the ages in Christ Jesus our Lord!

Numbers 19:11-22—11 “'He who touches the dead body of anyone shall be unclean seven days. 12 He shall purify himself with the water on the third day and on the seventh day; then he will be clean. But if he does not purify himself on the third day and on the seventh day, he will not be clean. 13 Whoever touches the body of anyone who has died, and does not purify himself, defiles the tabernacle of the LORD. That person shall be cut off from Israel. He shall be unclean, because the water of purification was not sprinkled on him; his uncleanness is still on him. 14 This is the law when a man dies in a tent: All who come into the tent and all who are in the tent shall be unclean seven days; 15 and every open vessel, which has no cover fastened on it, is unclean. 16 Whoever in the open field touches one who is slain by a sword or who has died, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. 17 And for an unclean person they shall take some of the ashes of the heifer burnt for purification from sin, and running water shall be put on them in a vessel. 18 A clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in the water, sprinkle it on the tent, on all the vessels, on the persons who were there, or on the one who touched a bone, the slain, the dead, or a grave. 19 The clean person shall sprinkle the unclean on the third day and on the seventh day; and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, wash his clothes, and bathe in water; and at evening he shall be clean. 20 'But the man who is unclean and does not purify himself, that person shall be cut off from among the assembly, because he has defiled the sanctuary of the LORD. The water of purification has not been sprinkled on him; he is unclean. 21 It shall be a perpetual statute for them. He who sprinkles the water of purification shall wash his clothes; and he who touches the water of purification shall be unclean until evening. 22 Whatever the unclean person touches shall be unclean; and the person who touches it shall be unclean until evening.'”

In this passage we see the uncleanness of death and how it could make anyone even in the general area of it unclean. And why? Because death comes about because of sin. Romans 5:12—Death spread to all men, because all sinned. So the person who was even in the vicinity of death had to be purified before he brought his sacrifice, lest he defile the Tabernacle. By “Tabernacle” is not to imply simply the tent itself, as no one but a priest could enter it, but rather the entirety of what is called the Tabernacle—including the outer court where the people brought their sacrifices. If anyone unclean were to enter in, they would defile the Tabernacle of God. The penalty for that would be that the person would be cut off from the people. In other words, they were to be put to death.

In order to be made clean, the person had to have the ashes applied to him on the third day and the seventh day after he became defiled. And how would they purify themselves? They would take some of the ashes of the heifer burnt for purification from sin, and running water shall be put on them in a vessel. Another picture of Christ. “How so?” In John 4:10, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water." The phrase “living water” is υδωρ ζων (hudor zoe) in the Greek. These same Greek words are used in the Septuagint in Numbers 19:17 to translate the Hebrew Phrase מַיִם חַיִּים (chiim mayim, “running water”). And the word חַיִּים (chiim) is from the root word חָיָה (haya, “to live”). From this word we get the Hebrew word יהוה‎, which comes into English as “YHVH”. The water they were to add to the ashes of the red heifer was living water, running water. Just as the water that Jesus gives us, the living water, is water from God, cleansing us and purifying us.

We have been reconciled to God, cleansed by God, purified by God, atoned for by God, justified by God—so that He may have for Himself a special people, made up of Jew and Gentile, from all parts of the world, from all different backgrounds, from the gentlest and humblest beginnings and from those who spent years blaspheming His name. Who else but God could make such a thing happen!

Long my imprisoned spirit lay/Fast bound in sin and nature's night;

Thine eye diffused a quick'ning ray/I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;

My chains fell off, my heart was free/I rose, went forth and followed Thee. [Refrain]

No condemnation now I dread/ Jesus, and all in Him is mine!

Alive in Him, my living Head/And clothed in righteousness divine,

Bold I approach th'eternal throne

And claim the crown, through Christ my own

(“And Can It Be That I Should Gain” by Charles Wesley)

Finally, we must ask a question: “Why a heifer? A heifer is female, and all the other offerings are male. Why would God choose a female animal to purify those defiled by death?” This is a question that we could ponder for ages. One thought I had was that it pointed to Mary, being a young woman no man had known intimately. It could point to her, but not all aspects of the red heifer point to her, as she does not purify (although she brought forth the One who does purify). It could also represent the church, the Bride of Christ. The ashes of the heifer were burned with the cedar, scarlet and hyssop, possibly signifying the Bride being identified with the destruction of the Son of God. Many times in the New Testament we see language of us dying to our old self with Christ. Romans 6:3—Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 1^st Corinthians 15:35-36—35 But someone will say, "How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?" 36 Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. So why would God call for this female animal to bring forth purification? We may never know.

Let me finish up by talking a little more about the red heifer and the Third Temple. Jerusalem is a city hotly contested by Jews and Muslims. Each side thinks that their side is the rightful recipient of it. This is not an issue that can be resolved quickly, or politically, as this is not a political issue, but a theological one. And until the world leaders realize this, no amount of negotiating and hand-shaking will change anything. This goes back even farther than the time of the Crusades, when the forces of Christendom wrested control of the city from the Muslim Seljuk Turks. This is an issue that goes back thousands of years to the days of Abraham. See, it is believed that Arabs are descended from Ishmael. And we know that Jews are descended from Isaac. Ishmael is considered by Muslims to be an ancestor of their prophet Mohammed. When we consider that the Qur’an states that it was Ishmael that Abraham was told by God (Qur’an, “Allah”) to sacrifice on Mount Moriah—what many refer to as the Temple Mount (הר המקדש, har hamakdash), and we add to that the fact that the Al-Aqsa mosque (The “Dome of the Rock”) sits atop this hill, and it would be atop this hill that the Third Temple would be built, we can see why tensions would be high concerning any attempt to displace this mosque with a Jewish temple.

So, should we be eagerly anticipating for them to find the tenth red heifer? Is that something we should be hoping will happen? Well, no and yes. While on the one hand it will begin what will turn into a worldwide war, and cause death and suffering for millions—perhaps even billions—of people, it will also mark the beginning of the end, and the return of Christ will be close at hand. And with His return will come our final redemption, when we will all be taken up to the New Jerusalem, which will never see either war or poverty, neither disease nor suffering. Revelation 21:3-4—3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. 4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."

Lo! What a glorious sight appeared/before admiring eyes:

The former things all passed away/the former earth and skies.

From heav’n the new Jerus'lem came/for Christ, as bride prepared.

A voice resounding from the throne/these wondrous things declared:

"Now God has come to dwell with men/and moved his blest abode.

His people they shall be at last/and he shall be their God.

His gracious hand shall wipe the tears/from ev'ry weeping eye,

For pain and grief shall be no more/and death itself shall die."

The One who sat upon the throne/said, “I make all things new!

Write down the words that you have heard/for they are firm and true.

It is all done, and by my pow'r/is paradise restored.

I am the First, and I the Last/the one eternal Lord.”

Those are the words of another great hymnist, Isaac Watts, from his hymn “The Glorious Reign of Christ on Earth”. Yes, in those last days the Earth will groan as a woman in labor. But when those days have been completed, the Earth will rejoice, knowing its redemption is drawing near, and both we and it will no longer be under the curse, for we will all be with God and His Christ, to live in the presence of the glory of the Lamb for all eternity!

Lord, we thank You that You have not left us in our former state, that we should live in the sin and death we were formerly in, but You have made us partakers with Christ of Your glory! Help us to always pray for the peace of Jerusalem, but let us also remember that Creation must experience the birth pangs of the return of our Lord, to redeem all Creation unto You, that we may no longer suffer poverty or disease, and especially not death! For Christ has defeated death, and given us the victory through Him!

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 19 (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 16:21:00 +0000

The ordinance of the Red Heifer

Numbers 19:1-10—1 Now the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 2 "This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD has commanded, saying: 'Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which a yoke has never come. 3 You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, that he may take it outside the camp, and it shall be slaughtered before him; 4 and Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger, and sprinkle some of its blood seven times directly in front of the tabernacle of meeting. 5 Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight: its hide, its flesh, its blood, and its offal shall be burned. 6 And the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet, and cast them into the midst of the fire burning the heifer. 7 Then the priest shall wash his clothes, he shall bathe in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp; the priest shall be unclean until evening. 8 And the one who burns it shall wash his clothes in water, bathe in water, and shall be unclean until evening. 9 Then a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and store them outside the camp in a clean place; and they shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for the water of purification; it is for purifying from sin. 10 And the one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until evening. It shall be a statute forever to the children of Israel and to the stranger who dwells among them.

The ordinance of the red heifer has come up frequently in the news lately, as the Jews have been diligently searching for a suitable one for years, even going so far as to import several from Texas into Jerusalem so they may begin the process of building the Third Temple. And every time they have gotten close to finding one, they notice one little flaw that excludes it from being qualified. “What is a heifer, anyway?” Simply put, a heifer is a female cow that has not yet given birth. The red heifer prescribed here would not be red as in scarlet, but rather a brownish-red color. And it had to be without blemish “What would be a blemish?” Even something as simple as two white hairs growing next to each other or a total of three white hairs growing anywhere on the cattle would be enough to disqualify it. Any kind of eruption in the skin or eyes or any sickness would also disqualify it. And there are many Jews who are scouring the world looking for this elusive perfect beast without blemish. So what would happen if they did find one? Well, that’s where things get complicated.

If they did find a perfect red heifer (אֲדֻמָּה פָרָה, para adumah) without spot or blemish, the calls would immediately go out to begin working on the Third Temple in Jerusalem. And that would cause a great controversy, and possibly even widespread war in the Middle East. You see, the Jews would want to build this temple atop Mount Moriah, where Abraham took Isaac to sacrifice him (Genesis 22:1-14). And the Muslim Al-Aqsa Mosque (also known as the Dome of the Rock) sits there now, as a Muslim holy site, and the surrounding Muslim nations would not be happy if Israel razed it to build their Jewish temple. One can only imagine what would happen as a result of this. All the Muslim nations would not cease to attack Israel. Even Muslims living in other countries would attack individual Jews simply for being Jewish. It would be chaos around the globe, simply because someone found a cow. But we will not speculate at this time, but rather simply study the text.

By reading the text, we can see how diligent must the priests have been to find a specimen that would fulfill all the requirements. This, as all of the priestly work, was no easy task, as they had to examine every little inch of any candidate. If they found two or three white or black hairs; if they found a speck in its eye, if a yoke had even been placed on it; if there was anything whatsoever that made it not perfect, it was not perfect. Period! The Jewish scholar Maimonides said that between the time of the giving of Torah until the destruction of the Second Temple, only nine red heifers were used. This does not necessarily mean that only nine have ever existed, but that only nine were ever used:

Nine red heifers were offered from the time that they were commanded to fulfill this mitzvah until the time when the Temple was destroyed a second time. The first was brought by Moses, our teacher. The second was brought by Ezra. Seven others were offered until the destruction of the Second Temple. And the tenth will be brought by the King Moshiach (Messiah); may he speedily be revealed. Amen, so may it be God’s will. (Maimonides, “Laws of Parah Adumah”)

If only he realized that King Moshiach has already come! Hebrews 9:13-14—13 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

“Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring you a red heifer without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which a yoke has never come.” Not only was this heifer to be a perfect specimen physically, but it could not have been used for common work. Again, separating the holy from the profane. If it had worn a yoke that would have made it a common specimen of cattle, and could not have been used for holy purposes. Just as the Levites were set apart from their brethren to perform the holy duties of the Tabernacle, and just as the requirements of clean and unclean animals and the prohibition against wearing mixed fabrics were also pointing to the people being separate from the surrounding nations, so this red heifer was set apart to be used for purifying. And since nothing impure can make anything pure, this animal had to be pure. Which is why God lays out these specific rules for this beast.

“3 You shall give it to Eleazar the priest, that he may take it outside the camp, and it shall be slaughtered before him; 4 Eleazar the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger, and sprinkle some of its blood seven times directly in front of the tabernacle of meeting.” What would happen was Eleazar would take the animal outside the camp, along with the other priests, and they would slay it before Eleazar. The High Priest was not to slay it, but rather it was to be slain in front of him. He would simply be there to supervise. The blood was to be sprinkled seven times in front of the Tabernacle as a reminder for the priests that they were also sinners, and they needed to be cleansed before they could cleanse others (see Leviticus 8-10). That before they entered into the Holy Place, they would be reminded that they must be pure and undefiled. And that if they were not, their life would be the penalty they paid. And if that penalty were not paid, and the priest was not atoned for, he could not enter the presence of God.

“Then the heifer shall be burned in his sight: its hide, its flesh, its blood, and its offal shall be burned.” The priests would burn the whole thing. It was not to be cut up, it was not to be apportioned. It was not even to be washed. Think about that. An animal that was to be used for purifying was not to be washed. But it was not the animal itself but rather the ashes of the burned carcass were to be purified with running water, which we will see later. But here we see another foreshadowing of Christ: slain outside the city of Jerusalem, in the sight of God the Father, and the wrath of God coming down like fire from Heaven and consuming His Son. Especially when we join these words to the next verse, in which God instructs Moses that Eleazar shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet, and cast them into the midst of the fire burning the heifer. To miss the Cross in this verse is to miss everything. For what is added to the fire? Wood and hyssop and scarlet. The wood of course is the Cross, the scarlet represents Christ’s blood. But what about the hyssop? John 19:29—Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. So we have the slaughtered animal (Christ), the fire (God’s wrath), the wood (Cross), the scarlet (Christ’s blood) and the hyssop (the vinegar given to Christ). Luke 24:27—And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Galatians 3:24—Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. Again I say, the Law points to Christ!

7 “Then the priest shall wash his clothes, he shall bathe in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp; the priest shall be unclean until evening. 8 And the one who burns it shall wash his clothes in water, bathe in water, and shall be unclean until evening.” In gathering up the ashes of the heifer, the priests were in fact handling the products of death, which defiled them. Therefore they would be unclean until the evening. If the Law said that touching anything dead made the person unclean, how much more will we, touching anything sinful—we being a holy priesthood—become unclean? Let us, rather, abstain from the death that comes from sin, that we may remain clean in God’s sight, being always ready to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1st Peter 2:5). For if we are in Christ we are holy—that word “holy” (Hebrew קֹדֶשׁ (qodesh), Greek ἅγιος (hagios)) meaning set apart, sanctified, consecrated to God. Think about that! If you belong to Christ, you have been set apart to the God of all Creation, you belong to Him, you are His, and He will guard you and protect you. He will safeguard you through this life, even if you do stumble into sin, and keep you in His mighty hand because of the sacrifice of our great Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Guide me, O my great Redeemer,/pilgrim through this barren land;
I am weak, but you are mighty;/hold me with your powerful hand.
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven,/feed me now and evermore,
Feed me now and evermore.

(“Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” by William Williams)

9 “Then a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and store them outside the camp in a clean place; and they shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for the water of purification; it is for purifying from sin. 10 And the one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes, and be unclean until evening. It shall be a statute forever to the children of Israel and to the stranger who dwells among them.” Look at the first part of the text. “Then a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and store them outside the camp in a clean place.” It speaks of a man who is clean taking up the remains of the sacrifice and putting them in a clean place, one which has not been touched by anything dead. Luke 23:50-53—50 Now behold, there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and just man. 51 He had not consented to their decision and deed. He was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God. 52 This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. 53 Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock, where no one had ever lain before. The man taking up the ashes of the red heifer were a type of Joseph of Arimathea taking up the body of the perfect sacrifice for sin and laying it in a new tomb. “And they shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for the water of purification; it is for purifying from sin.” Which is a picture of how Jesus now sits in the holiest of temples, seated at the right hand of God, ever living to purify us from sin and to keep us holy who love and worship Him!

Now, let’s think about the last part of this passage, where God says that “It shall be a statute forever to the children of Israel and to the stranger who dwells among them.” It says many times in the Law that certain aspects and commands in the Law will be “a statute forever”. Does this mean that we are to keep these statutes forever, and if so, if we do not conform to these statutes, are we then cut off from God? God forbid! Remember two things about these statutes: (1) these were made to the people of Israel at a certain time, and (2) this was the Old Covenant, which the people forsook, which God overlooked for a time, but finally made a New Covenant for all His people, both Jew and Gentile—not only the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—but as it is written, "And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, Who shall stand as a banner to the people; for the Gentiles shall seek Him, and His resting place shall be glorious" (Isaiah 11:10). The Apostle Paul echoed this sentiment when he said 6 But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, 7 nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, "In Isaac your seed shall be called." 8 That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed (Romans 9:6-8). The New Covenant has indeed been made with Israel—not Israel of the flesh, but the Israel of faith.

Part 2 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 18 (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 17:31:41 +0000

Numbers 18:20—Then the LORD said to Aaron: “You shall have no inheritance in their land, nor shall you have any portion among them; I am your portion and your inheritance among the children of Israel.” The Levites were the only tribe allowed to do the work of priests. Likewise, they were the only tribe to not be allotted a portion of land. So where did they live? Did they sleep around the Tabernacle? No. They were given cities within the land of each of the tribes. Six of these cities were what were called “cities of refuge”. These were cities men could flee to if they killed a person accidentally (Numbers 35). We will see more about them when we get there. In Numbers 35:6, it says they were to have an additional 42 cities, bringing the total number to 48 (4 in the land of each tribe). They owned nothing. No land, no cattle, no grain fields. Nothing. Why? Because they had the Lord for their inheritance. They did not own cattle, for they received of the sacrifices of cattle. They owned no grain fields, for they received of the Grain Offerings that were given. They did not own olive trees, for they received of the oil given in sacrifice. They were to live in cities they did not own. This was another type of sacrifice for the people, giving up land for the service of God.

So outside of the sacrifices (which may not be enough to support the entirety of the Tribe of Levi), how were the Levites supported? Numbers 18:21—“Behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tithes in Israel as an inheritance in return for the work which they perform, the work of the tabernacle of meeting.” Okay, so here’s another controversial opinion: are we 21^st Century Gentiles commanded to tithe? No, we are not. Tithing is mentioned in the New Testament, but it is never commanded. “So you’re saying that Christians should not give anything at all?” Did I say that? No, I did not. I said we are not commanded to tithe. Many churches would disagree with that, and many lay people, but it is the truth. “But what about Malachi 3:8-10? That says by not tithing, you are robbing God.” Yes, it does. But is Malachi in the New Testament or in the Old? Yes, it is in the Old Testament. Were the people still under the Law? Yes, they were. So then that does not apply to the New Testament church. “But Jesus commended the Pharisees for tithing of mint and anise and cumin! (Matthew23:23 and Luke 11:42)”. This is also true. But again, were the people not still under the Old Covenant? Yes, they were. They were doing that which was prescribed in the Law. But the New Covenant had not been initiated yet, so they were doing that which was right and lawful. “But what about Hebrews 7:8-9? Where it talks about Melchizedek receiving tithes from Abraham?” Again, tithes are mentioned, but this passage does not speak of tithes being commanded from the New Testament Gentile church. Did Abraham give tithes to Melchizedek? Yes. And where did he get those tithes to give to him? From the spoils of war when he fought the kings of the East (Genesis 14:1-24). Have you fought the kings of the East? Do you have spoils from war? Then this passage does not apply to you. Besides, where did the tithes go? To the Levites. So if you’re going to tithe, find a Levite and give him your 10%. “So should Christians be giving?” Yes. And we find the principle in 2nd Corinthians 9:6-7—6 But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. And who do we give to? We give in Christ’s name, but where do we give our money? Well, wherever God leads us. Some give to the church, that they may disperse it to various needs. Some give to different charities, that they may help as they are led. Some give privately, helping family and friends and neighbors. But wherever you give, don’t do so because you feel that if you don’t, God will rain death upon you. Rather, give because that is what God wants us to do, and it helps our fellow man. All the Earth belongs to God (Deuteronomy 10:14), and if you ask, He will guide you and direct you to give where it is needed. A great resource for learning more about this subject is “A Guide to New Covenant Giving” by Jim McClarty of Grace Christian Assembly (the PDF can be downloaded here:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://salvationbygrace.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/grace_giving.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjjuauS5e2IAxWJM9AFHdEKLW4QFnoECBMQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0bVE5PDymXSMBhTOPdqGv5).

Numbers 18:22-24—22 “Hereafter the children of Israel shall not come near the tabernacle of meeting, lest they bear sin and die. 23 But the Levites shall perform the work of the tabernacle of meeting, and they shall bear their iniquity; it shall be a statute forever, throughout your generations, that among the children of Israel they shall have no inheritance. 24 For the tithes of the children of Israel, which they offer up as a heave offering to the LORD, I have given to the Levites as an inheritance; therefore I have said to them, ‘Among the children of Israel they shall have no inheritance.’” As we saw before, the Levites did not have a land inheritance as did the tribes of, say, Issachar and Zebulon. They were given cities in which to reside, but were not apportioned a specific amount of land. We will see in Chapter 35 that six of these cities were to be set aside as “cities of refuge”, where a man who committed what we would call involuntary manslaughter could flee for safety, and they were given 42 other cities. Why? Because, as God said, “I am your portion and your inheritance among the children of Israel”. They had something better than land; they were in the hand of God, to go between Him and the people, and to make intercession for the people. They were truly God’s chosen ones, the ones He had redeemed from all the people of all of the redeemed people of Israel—the redeemed of the redeemed, if you will—to be His special people.

“Hereafter the children of Israel shall not come near the tabernacle of meeting, lest they bear sin and die”. God warned the people thus so that they knew, under no circumstances were they to come to the Tabernacle on their own, but were to bring their sacrifices to the Levites to offer them up for the people for the forgiveness of their sins. Today, we have One who offered up one sacrifice for sins (Hebrews 10:12), and that is the only sacrifice that God will accept. There is nothing we can offer that will satisfy the righteous requirement that God demands (and deserves). In the Parable of the Wedding Feast (Matthew 22:1-14), Jesus tells a parable about a king who threw a banquet for his son’s wedding. He invited many prominent people to this banquet. When they decided the minutiae of their lives were more important, the king sent his servants to round up whomever they could find. All who came in wore the robes the king gave them. Except for one man. He decided he did not need to be clothed with what the king was offering. What happened to him? Matthew 22:13—“Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness’”. We who are clothed in the righteousness of Christ (2nd Corinthians 5:21), however, are invited to feast with Him at the table of His Father (Revelation 19:7-9) at the wedding feast He will prepare for the Bride of His Son!

Christ today spreads a banquet of mercy,

And his servants invite to his home;

Sinner, all now is ready and waiting,

On the highways of sin cease to roam.

Slight no longer the kind invitation,

And the message of mercy we bring;

O accept now the bounty of Jesus,

And sit down at the feet of thy King. [Refrain]

Still the Spirit so tenderly woos you,

And the Bride full of love, echoes, “Come;”

Him that heareth and will, whosoever,

Let him come to the heavenly home

[Refrain]

Out on the highways, into the byways,

Over the mountain, over the sea,

Carry the message, tell of salvation,

Ring out the tidings, “Mercy is free.”

(“The Gospel Invitation” by Horace Lincoln)

We can not only approach the Tabernacle in the Heavens, we can even go near the very throne of God, as we have been clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And we do not come meekly, as a dog that has misbehaved and fears reprisal from its owner. No, friend, we come as a son who comes to the Father of Mercies, knowing that we who are in Christ will have our pleas for forgiveness heard by our Faithful and Merciful Father, who will extend to us forgiveness for our faith in His Son—that Son who will not allow even one of His sheep to be lost—that we may come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need! (Hebrews 4:16)

Numbers 18:25-32—25 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 26 "Speak thus to the Levites, and say to them: 'When you take from the children of Israel the tithes which I have given you from them as your inheritance, then you shall offer up a heave offering of it to the LORD, a tenth of the tithe. 27 And your heave offering shall be reckoned to you as though it were the grain of the threshing floor and as the fullness of the winepress. 28 Thus you shall also offer a heave offering to the LORD from all your tithes which you receive from the children of Israel, and you shall give the LORD's heave offering from it to Aaron the priest. 29 Of all your gifts you shall offer up every heave offering due to the LORD, from all the best of them, the consecrated part of them.' 30 Therefore you shall say to them: 'When you have lifted up the best of it, then the rest shall be accounted to the Levites as the produce of the threshing floor and as the produce of the winepress. 31 You may eat it in any place, you and your households, for it is your reward for your work in the tabernacle of meeting. 32 And you shall bear no sin because of it, when you have lifted up the best of it. But you shall not profane the holy gifts of the children of Israel, lest you die.'"

The people gave their tithes to the Levites, as the Levites did not own flocks or herds or fields. Did that exempt the Levites from giving? No. They were to take their tithes, take a tithe of those tithes, and give them to God. These would be counted as a Heave Offering. “What is a heave offering?” The Heave Offering was not a separate offering, but part of the Peace Offering (and other offerings as well). Leviticus 7:29-32—29 "Speak to the children of Israel, saying: 'He who offers the sacrifice of his peace offering to the LORD shall bring his offering to the LORD from the sacrifice of his peace offering. 30 His own hands shall bring the offerings made by fire to the LORD. The fat with the breast he shall bring, that the breast may be waved as a wave offering before the LORD. 31 And the priest shall burn the fat on the altar, but the breast shall be Aaron's and his sons'. 32 Also the right thigh you shall give to the priest as a heave offering from the sacrifices of your peace offerings.'"

So why are they called “Wave Offerings” (הַתְּנוּפָה, tenuphah) and “Heave Offerings” (תְּרוּמָה, terumah)? Allow me to explain. These were not separate offerings, but described how the different parts of the Peace Offering were to be given. The Wave offering was the whole Peace Offering. When the Wave Offering was given, what would happen was the offeror would hold the Wave Offering in his hands, and the priest would put his hands underneath, and they would wave the offering from side to side, signifying peace between God and man, and that the whole of the Earth belonged to God. The Heave Offering was lifted up and down, the person confessing to God that it was from His hand, given to the person, and the person was giving it up to God in the person of the priest. Think about it. The Wave Offering was moved from side to side, the Heave Offering was lifted up and down. Side to side and up and down. Make these motions with your hands and what do you get? Looks like a cross, yes? Matthew 5:17—“I did not come to destroy [the Law] but to fulfill.”

The signs pointing to Jesus are found all throughout the Law. The blood on the night of the first Passover (Exodus 12:7) was to be placed on the vertical doorposts and the horizontal lintel. The Wave Offerings and Heave Offerings were moved side to side and up and down as a foreshadowing of the Cross. When we get to the brazen serpent in Numbers 21, we will see that that too was a foreshadowing of Christ on the Cross. Which is why we must not only read the Law, but study the Law, that we may see that Christ was not any kind of Plan B by God, but was foreshadowed even in the earliest sections of Scripture.

Lord, let us never trifle with Your Word or with Your holiness, knowing that You are the infinite God who created the heavens and the Earth. May we separate ourselves from the profane things, and always seek Your righteousness, which comes only from Christ. And may we always be looking for Christ, the Author and Finisher of all faith and be ready for His anticipated glorious return!

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 18 (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 17:19:55 +0000

Numbers 18:1-7—1 Then the LORD said to Aaron: "You and your sons and your father's house with you shall bear the iniquity related to the sanctuary, and you and your sons with you shall bear the iniquity associated with your priesthood. 2 Also bring with you your brethren of the tribe of Levi, the tribe of your father, that they may be joined with you and serve you while you and your sons are with you before the tabernacle of witness. 3 They shall attend to your needs and all the needs of the tabernacle; but they shall not come near the articles of the sanctuary and the altar, lest they die—they and you also. 4 They shall be joined with you and attend to the needs of the tabernacle of meeting, for all the work of the tabernacle; but an outsider shall not come near you. 5 And you shall attend to the duties of the sanctuary and the duties of the altar, that there may be no more wrath on the children of Israel. 6 Behold, I Myself have taken your brethren the Levites from among the children of Israel; they are a gift to you, given by the LORD, to do the work of the tabernacle of meeting. 7 Therefore you and your sons with you shall attend to your priesthood for everything at the altar and behind the veil; and you shall serve. I give your priesthood to you as a gift for service, but the outsider who comes near shall be put to death."

We are still in this section from Numbers 16-18, and wrapping up the damage that was done by Korah, Dathan, Abiram and the other 250 men with them, who challenged God’s way of doing things, and who thought they knew a better way. So basically, the priests had to start all over again in making the Tabernacle and themselves right before God before they could perform their rites in making atonement for the people and their sins. “You and your sons and your father's house with you shall bear the iniquity related to the sanctuary.” How had the Tabernacle been defiled, seeing as how Korah and company would not even draw near it? By the golden censers, which had been held by the rebels. Because these were defiled, and even though they had been melted down, the gold was used as a covering for the altar to remind the people that it is God who makes the rules (Numbers 16:38-40). So they had to be purified, and atonement had to be made for them. Those who did not fear Him did not understand the awesome power and glory and majesty of God. They were even more ignorant than animals. Isaiah 1:3—The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib; but Israel does not know, My people do not consider. Even the ox and donkey know that God is God, but Korah and company had forgotten their God and all the works that He had done for them. And they rebelled against Him, had taken up the consecrated incense censers and because these rebels had touched them, the censers were defiled and atonement had to be made for them. Even the censer used by Aaron, for his was one with the defiled censers, and was now impure.

“And you and your sons with you shall bear the iniquity associated with your priesthood.” Korah was a Levite, and thus was part of the priestly service. Because of his rebellion, all the priestly class were now defiled in the eyes of God, and the entire class had to be made pure because of his sin of defiance against God. The High Priest had to make this atonement, which is another reason God made Aaron’s rod to bud (Numbers 17), to show that he was the one to expiate their sins. He was the High Priest, the only one who could go into the Holy of Holies to make atonement for the priests. “Also bring with you your brethren of the tribe of Levi…They shall attend to your needs and all the needs of the tabernacle.” Besides the work of the High Priest in atoning for sin, there were other duties that had to be performed in the work of atonement. There being other miscellaneous deeds to be done, which if the High Priest performed them would run the risk of becoming defiled, these tasks were left to the Girgashites and Merarites. They would attend all the needs of the tabernacle, for example bringing in the animals for sacrifice, cutting them up and carrying out any offal or any part of the animal which was not to be placed on the altar.

But, God set limits for what these assistants could do and where they could and couldn’t go. “They shall not come near the articles of the sanctuary and the altar, lest they die—they and you also.” Yes, Aaron was in a high position. But with that high position came high responsibilities. He had to make sure that no one, not even another Levite, came near to the Holy of Holies. Because not only would that man die, having transgressed the command of God, but also Aaron, being over the work of the priests. Remember, this was a very delicate time in the people’s relationship with God. They had just had an open rebellion against God, and after the instigators were swallowed up by the earth, the people accused Moses and Aaron of killing Korah and company. Which led to God sending a plague which killed 14,700 people besides the original rebels. So the people, and the priests, had to tread lightly and do all that God said the way He said it should be done. Even Aaron was not immune to God’s wrath, so he made sure that everything was done the right way.

“And you shall attend to the duties of the sanctuary and the duties of the altar, that there may be no more wrath on the children of Israel.” God is love (1^st John 4:8). Too many people think that He is only love. They do not like to think that He is a wrathful God. But He is. And Korah’s rebellion incited that wrath, and it still hung over the people. But God can control His wrath. Ever know someone that has an out-of-control temper? One who, once they get wound up, can’t control themselves, and they just go into a berserker rage? That is not God. God knows how to control His anger, and how to save the righteous while punishing the wicked. Matthew 25:31-32—31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.” He will take those who fed and clothed the poor and naked and welcome them into His kingdom, and will take those who ignored and oppressed the poor and hungry and cast them away from His presence. So even though His wrath hung over all the people, including the priests, He stayed it so that atonement could be made for the Tabernacle and the priesthood. “But what of the one who believes in Christ and lives a godly life for, say, fifteen or twenty years, and goes back to his old ways?” Jesus spoke of these people first in the parable of the sowers. God will let them grow for however long, and will judge them just as one who never believed. Matthew 15:26-30—“26 But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. 27 So the servants of the owner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?' 28 He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' The servants said to him, 'Do you want us then to go and gather them up?' 29 But he said, 'No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.'” These, even the ones who grew for fifteen or twenty years, were ones who were not planted by God. Matthew 15:13—“Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.” He will pluck out the ones whom He did not know, but will gather His elect into His barn.

“Behold, I Myself have taken your brethren the Levites from among the children of Israel; they are a gift to you, given by the LORD, to do the work of the tabernacle of meeting.” Here we see another picture of Election—Here, God is electing a certain family to give as a gift to the High Priest, for the ministry of the people to God. We now have a greater High Priest, One who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens (Hebrews 8:1), to whom the Father gives a people as a gift. And it doesn’t matter what family we descend from. We could be Levites, or Gadites, or Gentiles. Just as God chose the Levites as a gift to the High Priest Aaron, so now God chooses people as a gift to give to the Great High Priest Jesus Christ. This is a somewhat controversial position to hold these days, but I do believe it is correct. For anyone to believe, faith is a gift given to us, it is not something we do on our own (Ephesians 2:8-9). For we were dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1), and could do nothing to effect any faith toward God. Why? Because there was nothing inside us that wanted God. So He had to choose some to be saved, and predestined them to believe. And just as the Levites had to be purified to be given to Aaron, so we too need to be purified to be given to our Great High Priest. Which is why Paul says in Romans 8:29—Whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. He took us out of the muck and mire we were trapped in because of our sin, washed us, gave us a new heart, wrote His Law on our hearts, gave us faith to believe, and gave them to Christ as a gift for what He did on the Cross. And although I believe this to be true, there are some who do not. And that is okay. When we stand before the Bema of Christ, He will not ask us “Do you believe in Election?” He will simply ask us if we believe, and when we say “Yes, I believe!” He will usher us into the Kingdom of God! What a joyous Day that will be!

“I give your priesthood to you as a gift for service, but the outsider who comes near shall be put to death.” If it wasn’t clear enough from what happened to Korah and the other rebels, God lets it be known here, in no uncertain terms, that only the family of the tribe of Levi shall come near to the Tabernacle. Earlier we saw that only certain members of certain families of the tribe of Levi could even touch the tools used in the priestly service, and if any member of a family not specified touched them they—and Aaron—would die. Here we see that if anyone of any tribe got too close to the Tabernacle, God would cut them down as well. Now, here we need to share the words of Peter, regarding our standing in Christ. He is our High Priest, but guess what? We are priests! 1^st Peter 2:9—But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. The Apostle is echoing the words God spoke to the people in Exodus 19:6. We are a gift to Christ, just as the Levites were a gift to Aaron! Imagine that! When your day is not going well, remember that you are a gift to Christ! Nothing could ever be better than that! And why are we called to be Christ’s? That you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. So that we may show Christ to the world. That we may proclaim the God is God and Christ is Lord. Can you think of any greater calling in life? Being a doctor? Christ is the Great Physician. A lawyer? Christ is or Advocate and Mediator. No matter what profession you can imagine, being called to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ is far better than any!

“But look at the text! The outsider shall be put to death!” That is why God chose and purified us! So that He would not give His Son a defiled people, but a holy people. And nothing can separate us from Christ (Romans 8:1, 38-39). God the Father has given us to Christ as a gift, and He does not take returns. Once you are in Christ, you cannot be taken out of Him! “But you can apostatize! You can fall from grace!” Friend, if God would cast a person away who has run to Jesus for salvation, then we could not call Him a faithful God. Besides, if you try to walk away, Jesus will come and bring you back (Matthew 18:12-13). And if a person professes faith, for even a number of years, and falls away, that person was never given to Christ by the Father. “If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?” (Luke 11:11). In this verse, Jesus is telling the people about God giving good gifts to people. How much more will He give His son even greater gifts! Will He give His Son a gift that He knows will be defective? When God saves us, we are no longer outsiders, but rather brothers and sisters in (and of) Christ. And we can go to the throne of our God at any time. Hebrews 4:16—Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Paul Kretzmann—

In all hours of trial and affliction, then, when we feel so sorely in need of some comfort that cannot be challenged and doubted, we have this fact to rely upon, that our High Priest has perfected a full and complete reconciliation, and that God no longer is angry with us, but will accept us with all the kindness of a fatherly heart and give to us all that we need for the enjoyment of eternal bliss in His presence. Thus both the assurance of pardon and of divine assistance is ours, and we may go on through life in the cheerfulness of faith, knowing that the rest of the Lord awaits us at the end of the course, when He takes us home.

We need an appointment to see a doctor, or mechanic or plumber. But we can go to God at any time, day or night, no matter where we are, and hold an audience with the great Creator and Lord. The One who is sovereign over all creation will always hear the prayers of His children. What a mighty God we serve!

Numbers 18:8-19 outline what things of the sacrifices belong to the priests, what was to be redeemed, etc. Before we pick up with verse 20, however, I do want to touch on a phrase in Numbers 18:19—“It is a covenant of salt forever before the LORD with you and your descendants with you.” Salt is mentioned frequently in Scripture. In Leviticus 2:13, God tells Moses that when a meat offering is made to Him, it must always contain salt, for salt not only adds flavor, but also preserves. When one is making a ham from a pig, how do they preserve it? By burying it in salt. If you’ve ever had country ham, you know that not only is it very salty, but it is also shelf stable, meaning it can be left out at room temperature for a long time without spoiling. That is because curing with salt removes many of the impurities that can cause the meat to spoil. In Leviticus, the salt was added to the offerings as a way to prevent them from spoiling in the harsh desert heat. But what of the “covenant of salt”? It was a sign that the covenant that God made with the people of Israel could not putrefy and spoil, and would be an everlasting covenant. It is as the covenant that Abijah reminded Jeroboam of in 2^nd Chronicles 13:4-5—4 “Hear me, Jeroboam and all Israel: 5 Should you not know that the LORD God of Israel gave the dominion over Israel to David forever, to him and his sons, by a covenant of salt?” This too was an everlasting covenant, one which Jesus continues to fulfill, being the Son of David.

And what is that salt? What is the salt that was added to Christ’s sacrifice to keep His kingdom pure? It is we who believe. Jesus says, in Matthew 5:13—“You are the salt of the earth.” We are in Christ, preserving His kingdom until His return, and keeping ourselves unspotted from the world (James 1:27). “But what if a Christian falls away from the faith?” Well, first, a true disciple of Christ cannot fall away from the faith; a true Christian will be kept by our good and faithful God (Philippians 1:6; Hebrews 10:14). Those who claim to be Christians but are in fact false converts, Jesus addresses at the end of Matthew 5:13—“But if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.” That salt is one that was impure from the beginning, and was not good for taste or preservation. Adam Clarke shared an insight into the saltiness of salt, and how salt can lose its saltiness, that I have always remembered:

That this is possible in the land of Judea, we have proof from Mr. [Henry] Maundrell, who, describing the Valley of Salt, speaks thus: “Along, on one side of the valley, toward Gibul, there is a small precipice about two men’s lengths, occasioned by the continual taking away of the salt; and, in this, you may see how the veins of it lie. I broke a piece of it, of which that part that was exposed to the rain, sun, and air, though it had the sparks and particles of salt, yet it had perfectly lost its savour: the inner part, which was connected to the rock, retained its savor, as I found by proof.”

“What does this mean?” Simply, that in order for us to retain our saltiness, we must remain close to the Rock that is Christ, to not go wandering near the tents of Korah and Dathan, to stay in the Word and to not stray from the Good Shepherd. Otherwise, we are “good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men” and we will bring shame upon the Kingdom of God.

The first mention of salt that is of great importance is in Genesis 19:26, when Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at the demolished cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. “Why was she turned into a pillar of salt?” Perhaps so that Jesus would have an object to point the people to, as He did in Luke 17:32—“Remember Lot’s wife”. He is telling the people to not look back fondly upon their former sinful selves, but to look forward, with Christ, to the coming Kingdom of God. To put Jesus’s words in context, Luke 17:31-33—31 “In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. 32 Remember Lot's wife. 33 Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” He is talking here of the times of His return, and those who would rather hang on to the fleeting pleasures of this life, rather than looking forward to Eternity in the presence of Almighty God. When there are people telling Him that they will abandon all to follow Him, He warns them in Luke 9:62—"No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." In other words, “Do not mourn for your former days, when you enjoyed the luxuries of the life, while neglecting God. Once you have begun following Me, do not yearn for the former days, when you did what you wanted without your conscience bothering you. Follow Me”. We should all remember Lot’s wife, and the dire consequences that will overtake us when we forget Him and look back at the pleasures of our former sins.

Part 2 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 17

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 17:55:00 +0000

Numbers 17:1-7—1 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 2 "Speak to the children of Israel, and get from them a rod from each father's house, all their leaders according to their fathers' houses—twelve rods. Write each man's name on his rod. 3 And you shall write Aaron's name on the rod of Levi. For there shall be one rod for the head of each father's house. 4 Then you shall place them in the tabernacle of meeting before the Testimony, where I meet with you. 5 And it shall be that the rod of the man whom I choose will blossom; thus I will rid Myself of the complaints of the children of Israel, which they make against you." 6 So Moses spoke to the children of Israel, and each of their leaders gave him a rod apiece, for each leader according to their fathers' houses, twelve rods; and the rod of Aaron was among their rods. 7 And Moses placed the rods before the LORD in the tabernacle of witness.

Numbers 17 could be considered a continuation of Numbers 16, and in fact Numbers 16-18 could be considered as one unit. Here we see God finally putting to rest any question about who is the High Priest. Not only by the negative sign of destroying Korah and company, but by a positive sign that Aaron was High Priest. They were to gather twelve rods, one from each family, and gather them together inside the Tabernacle so God could show whom He had called as High Priest. He had shown, in Numbers 16, was not High Priest, now He is going to show who was High Priest. And it shall be that the rod of the man whom I choose will blossom.

Numbers 16:8-11—8 Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses went into the tabernacle of witness, and behold, the rod of Aaron, of the house of Levi, had sprouted and put forth buds, had produced blossoms and yielded ripe almonds. 9 Then Moses brought out all the rods from before the LORD to all the children of Israel; and they looked, and each man took his rod. 10 And the LORD said to Moses, "Bring Aaron's rod back before the Testimony, to be kept as a sign against the rebels, that you may put their complaints away from Me, lest they die." 11 Thus did Moses; just as the LORD had commanded him, so he did. Eventually, Aaron’s rod was to be placed inside the Ark of the Covenant, along with the Two Tablets of the Law and a pot of manna. This was a picture of the Christ to come. The Roman Catholics think of Mary as the new Ark of the Covenant because she bore the one who was High Priest, Prophet and King. And they are sadly mistaken. Was Mary a blessed woman? Yes, for God chose her to bear His Son, the One who would bring salvation. But Mary is not the new Ark of the Covenant; that title belongs to Jesus. What was held in the Ark of the Covenant? Three things: The ark of the covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which were the golden pot that had the manna, Aaron's rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant (Hebrews 9:4).

The two tablets of the Law. Christ lived under that Law, kept that Law, and was the fulfillment of that Law. Matthew 5:17—“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” He did not come to open up the floodgates of sin; He did not come to make every device of a man’s heart acceptable to God. He came to live under the Law, to carry it within Himself, and to fulfill every word which was written about Him. And He is the fulfillment of that Law for all those who believe in Him. The God’s Word Translation (not a literal word-for-word translation, but a thought-for-though translation) renders Romans 10:4—Christ is the fulfillment of Moses’ Teachings so that everyone who has faith may receive God’s approval. That is essentially what this verse is saying, that Christ has fulfilled the Law in our place, and we receive the fulfillment of that Law by faith in Him. What could we possibly do to earn such a reward? There are not enough good works to do in the entire world to merit any kind of favor from God! We are saved by faith alone, in Christ alone. Titus 3:5—Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. The Law was against us, there was nothing we could do against that Law, and it condemned us. And Christ, who is our life, took upon Himself the burden of our sins, that we may be found approved of by God, apart from the works of the Law or any “good works”, for that matter. Romans 8:2-4—2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. “The Law was weak? How?” Because of the flesh. The Law only prescribed sacrifices that were to be carried out after the person sinned, it could not prevent them from sinning. Just like laws against murder and robbery cannot prevent people from committing these crimes, but only prescribes a penalty to be served after the crime has been committed. God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh. He condemned His Son to die in order to take away the penalty we owed because of our sins. So that that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who…walk... according to the Spirit.

Mary, blessed as she was, contributes nothing to our salvation. Yes, she bore the One who would save us from the wrath of God, but there is nothing about her herself that is in any way involved with our salvation. We don’t pray to her, we pray to God. We do not look to her for our salvation, we look to Christ. She has passed, she was not “assumed to Heaven” as the Romanists say. She died just like anyone, having fulfilled her role in bringing forth the body of our Lord.

Aaron’s budding rod. What we see here in our text in Numbers 17. Just as God chose Aaron to be the High Priest of His people Israel, so He sent His son to be the High Priest of our confession (Hebrews 3:1). We will see more of Aaron’s and the priests’ responsibilities in Numbers 18. But let us focus on our Great High Priest. We see in Hebrews 4:15 why He came in the flesh. Hebrews 4:15—For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Was Christ tempted with sin? Absolutely. Was Christ tempted by sin? Absolutely not. “What’s the difference?” you ask. If your friend tries to get you to run to iniquity, he may dangle some hope before you that you will somehow benefit from it. But in Christ, you know that what they are doing is wrong, and will only turn out to your hurt. He is tempting you with sin, but you are not tempted by it. Take Aaron, the High Priest of our passage in Numbers. Was he tempted to sin? Yes. Did he sin? Yes. When the people did not know Moses’ fate when he was on Mount Sinai, they prodded Aaron into making a golden calf that they could worship. And what did Aaron do? Did he rebuke them, and let them know that only YHVH is God? No. He took their gold, and as he told Moses, he “cast it into the fire, and this calf came out!” (Exodus 32:24). “Can you believe it? Out of that molten mass of gold, this calf just *POOF* appeared!” No, it didn’t just appear. It was fashioned by the hand of Aaron, a man who should have known better. But our great High Priest knows better! What was His goal while on the earth? To glorify God. John 17:1— “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You”. He did not come to glorify Himself, but to glorify the One who sent Him.

Hebrews 5:4—And no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was. Aaron was the one chosen by God to offer up sacrifices for the sins of the people that the other priests could not. And making his rod to bud was a work of God that no man could work. Could a man make not only blossoms but full, ripe almonds grow on a rod that was cut off from the tree? And overnight, no less? This is the work of a God who creates. Just as at creation He did not create eggs, but birds; He did not create fish eggs, but fully formed fish; He did not create calves but fully grown cattle, and He did not create a baby, but an adult Adam from the earth. And here, He caused ripe almonds to grow from a stick taken from a tree. And He showed the people that they do not decide who will be High Priest, but God calls the High Priest.

The pot of manna. When the people were in the wilderness, and cried out because they had nothing to eat, God caused manna to come down at sunset. The people were to gather for themselves one omer, that nothing be left for the morning, and they were not to gather on the Sabbath. And what happened? Exodus 16:18—So when they measured it by omers, he who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack. Each person had exactly what they needed; no one had any more, and no one had any less. This was another sign Christ explained to the people. In John 6, a multitude of people were gathered to hear Him, and it was near twilight. There was not enough food to satisfy the people, so what did Jesus do? He had the people sit down, He took the 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread, then He blessed it and broke it, and fed the thousands that had gathered. The people came back the next day—to hear more of Jesus’ teachings? John 6:26—“Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” They wanted another free meal. But Christ answered them well (as always). He let them know that He understood what was in their hearts, and that He did not come to simply give them free food, but to give them food that would never perish. John 6:49-50—49 “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. 50 This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.” Our lives are about more than eating and drinking, but about glorifying God and being in His presence for eternity. What eternal good was the manna to the people? They ate it, and what happened the next day? They ate it again. They had to eat it every day in order to survive their life on Earth. But what happened to them eventually? They “ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead”. It could only sustain them while they were living on this rock; it could not give them eternal life.

But Jesus taught them something better. He said “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever” (John 6:51). This must have been a hard saying for the people to understand. “Live forever? How can someone live forever and not die?” But He was not talking about physical death, everyone will experience that. He was talking about spiritual life; eternal life lived in the presence of God. And it is the spiritual bread that Christ gives us. John 6:52—The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?" Jesus answered them, but did so in the way He always answered those who questioned Him with ulterior motives (Proverbs 26:4-5). He did not give them a direct answer, but rather a parable. Was He saying you had to eat His literal flesh and drink His literal blood? Of course not, and it is foolishness to think this is what He was saying! This was a parable, a truth hidden beneath a story parallel to what He was teaching. For if He was saying that the people needed to drink His literal blood, then the Jerusalem Council was lying (Acts 15:29). No, He was teaching them something hard to understand for a reason: those who believed Him would understand, but those who did not believe would not understand. Hebrews 6:4 speaks of those who have tasted the heavenly gift. Did they eat this gift? No. But the Writer uses this metaphor to describe those who have had some experience with religion, even salvation, but go looking for something else to do what only Jesus could do. He is the true Manna, He is the One who can give us eternal food and drink, He is the only One who can sustain us forever at the table in New Jerusalem. From the hymn “The Marriage Supper” by Carrie Breck:

Oh, the bride shall shine in bright array/With her tears all forever wiped away–

There will be a great rejoicing on that day/At the great marriage supper of the Lamb

From all sin forevermore released/They will come from the west and from the east,

For all nations will be gathered at the feast/Of the great marriage supper of the Lamb

We shall praise him by the crystal tide/When the Lamb that was slain is glorified

And the ransomed church of God shall be the bride/At the great marriage supper of the Lamb.

That is when we will feast with our Lord who ransomed us, who gave His life for us, and who gives us meat to eat and wine to drink at the marriage supper of the Lamb!

Numbers 17:12-13—12 So the children of Israel spoke to Moses, saying, "Surely we die, we perish, we all perish! 13 Whoever even comes near the tabernacle of the LORD must die. Shall we all utterly die?" What was one of the first lies ever told? “Thou shalt not surely die!” (Genesis 3:4). Here, the people put forth a lie that was the opposite of this, “we shall surely die!” This was an echo of when they were at the base of Mount Sinai, when God said “Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death” (Exodus 19:12). They were under the impression that if they even went near the Tabernacle, God would cut them down. This was not the case. They could not go into the Tabernacle, and certainly not the Holy of Holies, but as long as they stayed outside the tent, God would not strike them down. It is also an echo of Eve’s argument to the serpent. Genesis 3:3—“But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'” Did God tell her she could not touch the fruit? No. Did God tell the people they could not come near the Tabernacle lest they die? No. Perhaps they were afraid because of the punishments God had inflicted upon them because of their various rebellions. Now, they were afraid to even put God to the test, lest they incur His wrath. Was it necessarily a bad thing for them to stay as far away from the Tabernacle as they could? No. But it could have prevented them from bringing the offerings they needed to in order to stay God’s wrath.

It’s not a bad thing to set up boundaries and fences against sin. Will God be angry if we stay farther away from sin than may be necessary? No. No one has ever been condemned to Hell for being too far away from sin! And sometimes, we need to set those fences even further back from sin than may be necessary. Jesus even warned us we may need to cut off our hand or gouge out our eyes to keep us from sin (Matthew 5:30, 18:8; Mark 9:43). Is this going too far? Is it too much to mutilate ourselves to keep us from sin? Well, as RC Sproul once said, “What’s wrong with you people?” Jesus said “it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell” (Matthew 5:30). If you are in Christ, and destined for an eternity in the presence of the Father and the Lamb, then go maimed and blind, rather than going into eternal destruction with all your limbs and both eyes. Now, did Jesus mean we should maim and blind ourselves to keep us from sin? No. He was telling us to cut away anything that may lead us to sin. If one of our temptations is drink, and our route to and from work takes us by a bar, find a different route. If we are tempted by someone we work with, maybe we need to find a different job. There is always a way to avoid sin. 1st Corinthians 10:13—No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. Stay close to God, do not fear to call on Christ. Do not avoid drawing near to the Tabernacle, in fact run to it! Run to the One who will save you from your sins. Run to the One who can give you eternal food to eat and eternal drink to drink. Run to the One Whose arms are open wide to accept any who call on His name. From “Untitled Hymn” by Chris Rice:

Weak and wounded sinner/Lost and left to die

Oh, raise your head for Love is passing by

Come to Jesus

Come to Jesus and live

Now your burden's lifted/And carried far away

And precious blood has washed away the stain

So, sing to Jesus

Sing to Jesus

Sing to Jesus and live

And like a newborn baby/Don't be afraid to crawl

And remember when you walk sometimes we fall

So, fall on Jesus

Fall on Jesus

Fall on Jesus and live

Come to Jesus, sing to Jesus, fall on Jesus, cry to Jesus, dance for Jesus, fly to Jesus—and live!

Father, may we never be afraid to run to the arms of our great High Priest for forgiveness of our sins. May we always cling to the One who tabernacled among us, who ever lives to make intercession for us. Thank you for this eternally wonderful gift, that we may taste of His glory and be saved from Your wrath. Help us to avoid the pitfalls of our flesh, that we may ever live to glorify You!

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 16 (Part 3)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 16:43:00 +0000

Numbers 16:36-40—36 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 37 "Tell Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, to pick up the censers out of the blaze, for they are holy, and scatter the fire some distance away. 38 The censers of these men who sinned against their own souls, let them be made into hammered plates as a covering for the altar. Because they presented them before the LORD, therefore they are holy; and they shall be a sign to the children of Israel." 39 So Eleazar the priest took the bronze censers, which those who were burned up had presented, and they were hammered out as a covering on the altar, 40 to be a memorial to the children of Israel that no outsider, who is not a descendant of Aaron, should come near to offer incense before the LORD, that he might not become like Korah and his companions, just as the LORD had said to him through Moses. The golden censers, although carried by ungodly men to rebel against God, had nonetheless been consecrated to God, and were to be reserved for the service to God. Because they presented them before the LORD, therefore they are holy. Since they had been profaned by not only these men, but by their ashes that were left after God burned them, they could not be used for the ministry of reconciliation, but they could not simply be discarded. So Aaron’s son Eleazar forged them into a covering for the altar, to remind the people that it was God who determined who would be priests and prophets, and that only men from the tribe of Levi were called to be priests. And when they see this plate, they would also be reminded of the judgment that God delivers to those who mock Him. So that every time the people came to bring a Burnt Offering, and every time the priests burned these offerings, they would remember that it is God who makes the rules, and not man.

And after this incident, the people never complained, and went happily forward toward the Promised Land. Right? Numbers 16:41—On the next day all the congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron, saying, "You have killed the people of the LORD." What more can I say about this? These people never stopped complaining! He led them to the Red Sea, where they complained and God delivered them. They complained because there was bitter water at Marah, and He made it pure. They complained because there was no food in the Wilderness of Sin, and He gave them manna. They complained because the manna spoiled overnight, even though they were told not to keep it until morning. They complained because no manna came down on the Sabbath, even though they were told that would be the case. They complained because there was no water at Rephidim, so He made water come from the rock. They complained against Him and convinced Aaron to make the Golden Calf. They complained against Him at Taberah, until He had to burn up the outskirts of the camp. They complained because “all we have to eat is this manna!”, so He sent them quail. They complained because, even though the report came back that it was a good land God was leading them to, “we looked like grasshoppers compared to the people there!”

And even now, when God displays His holiness and wrath and destroys those who would seek to usurp the callings of Moses and Aaron, what do the people do? They complain. And even now, are we any different? We go through one trial, and God delivers us. Then we have another trial come up, and what do we do? We complain. We often forget the goodness of God, that He will bring us through trials and deliver us, maybe not in the way we want, but in the way we need. James 1:2-3—2 Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. And recall, patience is a fruit of the Spirit. If you have God’s Holy Spirit living in you, God will use the trials you go through to produce the fruit of patience. And if we have patience, the world will know we truly belong to Christ.

Numbers 16:42-50—42 Now it happened, when the congregation had gathered against Moses and Aaron, that they turned toward the tabernacle of meeting; and suddenly the cloud covered it, and the glory of the LORD appeared. 43 Then Moses and Aaron came before the tabernacle of meeting. 44 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 45 "Get away from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment." And they fell on their faces. 46 So Moses said to Aaron, "Take a censer and put fire in it from the altar, put incense on it, and take it quickly to the congregation and make atonement for them; for wrath has gone out from the LORD. The plague has begun." 47 Then Aaron took it as Moses commanded, and ran into the midst of the assembly; and already the plague had begun among the people. So he put in the incense and made atonement for the people. 48 And he stood between the dead and the living; so the plague was stopped. 49 Now those who died in the plague were fourteen thousand seven hundred, besides those who died in the Korah incident. 50 So Aaron returned to Moses at the door of the tabernacle of meeting, for the plague had stopped. Had Moses killed Korah and Dathan and Abiram? No. How had these 250 men perished? Moses did not part the earth and cause the men to fall into it. Moses did not send fire down from above and consume them. These men did dot perish by the hand of Moses, but by the wrath and power of God.

So really, the people were not complaining against Moses, but against God. And it is the common theme of atheists today. “See that? God is a vindictive, bloodthirsty monster who is full of nothing but petty anger, and wants to hog all the glory! And He doesn’t exist so I hate Him!” Makes as much sense as these people and their constant complaining. But here we see the difference between offerings made by the ungodly versus offerings made by those whom God has chosen. What happened to those who offered incense with Korah and Dathan and Abiram? The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up… And a fire came out from the LORD and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense. Those men were destroyed by the hand of God. Why? Because they offered up incense wrongly, and like Nadab and Abihu, God had to show that His ways are the only ways. But what happened when Aaron offered up incense? Did the earth open up; did fire come down from Heaven to consume him? No. The plague was stopped. Simple. A man of God offered up prayers to God for the people and God stayed His wrath because of that. And just as Jesus asked forgiveness for the very ones who drove the nails (Luke 23:34), so here Aaron seeks God’s face to grant forgiveness to the very ones who were just complaining against him. We read about the humility and patience of Moses, but let us also remember the patience and humility of Aaron.

And even the atheist, whose heart is set against God and His people, is not far from the love of God. “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30). Does Paul catechize them? Does he go into a long soliloquy about all the things he must do to be delivered from the kingdom of Satan to God’s? Does He go point-by-point through a long list of good deeds he must do to earn the favor of the Almighty? No. His answer is quite simple. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 16:31). We humans make things so complicated. Do you want to be saved from the wrath to come? Believe. Do you want to be delivered from your sins? Believe. Are you sick and tired of being held down by the weight of the burden you carry? Believe. As Alistair Begg said of the man on the cross to the right of Jesus, how do we get to Heaven? “The Man on the Middle Cross said I could come”. Just as the people in our text had a High Priest who would seek atonement for the people, so we too have a High Priest who ever lives to make intercession for us (Romans 8:24; Hebrews 7:25). But how do we make known to Him the things we need? Friend, remember, He is God. He is our Father. He knows what you need before you even ask (Matthew 6:8, 32; Luke 12:30). “But I never know what to say”. Doesn’t matter, He knows! And if you do not know what to say, the Holy Spirit does. Romans 8:26—Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Think on this: we have a great and faithful Father, who knows how to give good things to His children (Matthew 7:11; Luke 11:13). We need the good things He gives. And not only do we ask Him, but we have the Holy Spirit asking and our Great High Priest Jesus Christ asking as well. Friend! What more could a person need? What better way to finish up this chapter than to quote from Charles Haddon Spurgeon, from his sermon “The High Priest Standing Between the Dead and the Living” (Numbers 16:47-48):

Well, you note again that Aaron, in thus coming forward as the deliverer and lover of His people, must have remembered that he was abhorred by this very people. They were seeking his blood. They were desiring to put him and Moses to death, and yet in spite of all thoughts of danger, he snatches up his censer and runs into their midst with a Divine enthusiasm in his heart…Into the midst of the crowd he boldly springs. Most blessed Jesus, You might not only think thus, but, indeed, You did feel it to be true. You did come unto Your own and Your own received You not. ..Jesus, You were willing to die a martyr, that You might be made a sacrifice for those by whom Your blood was spilt. Jesus transcends Aaron—Aaron might have feared death at the hands of the people—Jesus Christ did actually meet it. And yet there he stood even in the hour of death, waving his censer, staying the plague and dividing the living from the dead.

Father, let us never seek for ourselves an office or a mantle that You Yourself do not give. Let us never seek greater for ourselves than what You will. May we always fear You, that that fear may keep us from sin and pride, that we may not be puffed up, that we may always be humble in Your sight. May we always flee from those who would lead us into sin and rebellion and death. May we never complain against You, even when things are at their worst, so that we may always see You as YHVH-Yireh, the One who provides. And may we always see Your justice as perfect, consuming all your foes, those who run to do iniquity and cause You name to be blasphemed.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 16 (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 16:54:00 +0000

Numbers 16:15-19—15 Then Moses was very angry, and said to the LORD, "Do not respect their offering. I have not taken one donkey from them, nor have I hurt one of them." 16 And Moses said to Korah, "Tomorrow, you and all your company be present before the LORD—you and they, as well as Aaron. 17 Let each take his censer and put incense in it, and each of you bring his censer before the LORD, two hundred and fifty censers; both you and Aaron, each with his censer." 18 So every man took his censer, put fire in it, laid incense on it, and stood at the door of the tabernacle of meeting with Moses and Aaron. 19 And Korah gathered all the congregation against them at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Then the glory of the LORD appeared to all the congregation." We see so many times in the Pentateuch God making a distinction, a separation, a sanctifying of His people from sinners. The commandments about foods? To establish distinction. The commandments about fabrics? To establish distinction. Everything in the Law was to either show what God thought to be sin or to establish the people as distinct and unlike the neighboring nations. This is another place where God wants to show that He will decide who does what, how His people are to be led and by whom, and that, in the end, He is the Sovereign who will make the ultimate decisions.

Moses understood this. He understood and obeyed what God had commanded. He was the one with whom God spoke face to face. "Do not respect their offering. I have not taken one donkey from them, nor have I hurt one of them." He took nothing from these, and thus was under no obligation to favor them in the slightest. He has also done them no harm, showing that they could bring no charge against him. Moses was only devoted to one thing, and that was the glory of God. “Do not respect their offering.” Do not accept their incense, for it is as that of Nadab and Abihu. It is polluted by their pride and arrogance in their thinking that they know how to perform worship better than God does. It would not be a sweet aroma to YHVH, but rather a foul stench which would come up into His nostrils. As the works of man’s hands in exchange for salvation cannot appease the wrath of God, Moses cried out to God that He not accept the offerings given by these men who rebelled against God. As Paul would say in Acts 20:33—I have coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. Paul accepted no money as a gift for himself from anyone, just as Moses accepted nothing from these men of Korah.

So every man took his censer, put fire in it, laid incense on it, and stood at the door of the tabernacle of meeting with Moses and Aaron. Korah and company still had a chance to end this, to admit that Moses and Aaron were the ones chosen by God, and God would have passed over their temporary ignorance. But no—they pressed on, they took up a censer, put hot coals in it, and then the holy frankincense which God commanded, and went to the Tabernacle, to see which group God would choose. Korah and company did not even think that what happened to Nadab and Abihu would happen to them. At this point, the die was cast, and Korah and company were about to cross their Rubicon. The battle lines were drawn, each side was arrayed for the fight, and they were about to see whom God had chosen. And as it says in verse 17, it was 250 against 2. Again, God doesn’t care about the numbers. It could have been all 600,000 against 2, and God wouldn’t care. As Robert Hawker once said, “It is really astonishing, considering the badness of their cause, that Korah and his party should have been willing to put things to such an issue. But, Reader! When our hearts are hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, what judgments of GOD do we not brave? How often hath my stubborn unsubdued nature gone about to establish my own righteousness, instead of seeking the righteousness of GOD my Saviour?” Korah and company had seen the many miracles God had wrought, and still decided to fight against Him. They were as the men of Sodom groping at Lot’s door.

Numbers 16:19-27—20 And the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, 21 "Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment." 22 Then they fell on their faces, and said, "O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and You be angry with all the congregation?" 23 So the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 24 “Speak to the congregation, saying, 'Get away from the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.'” 25 Then Moses rose and went to Dathan and Abiram, and the elders of Israel followed him. 26 And he spoke to the congregation, saying, "Depart now from the tents of these wicked men! Touch nothing of theirs, lest you be consumed in all their sins." 27 So they got away from around the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; and Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the door of their tents, with their wives, their sons, and their little children. Think of what went through Moses’ mind when God said this. He knows from these words that things are not going to end well for Korah and Dathan and Abiram and the other 245 men with them. “Separate yourselves”. “Get away from them. I’m getting ready to do something to them that will not be pleasant, and I don’t want you to be caught up in it.” He told Moses that He would consume them in a moment. It was going to happen quickly, and there would not be time for anyone nearby to get out of the way of it. And what was Moses’ and Aaron’s reaction? Did they say, “Yes! Can’t wait for this!”? Did they say “Good, they’ve got it coming!”? Did they say, “Come on God, I hope you punish them severely!”? No. They fell on their faces. Do we sometimes laugh, or at least snicker, when an unbeliever meets their demise, knowing that at the next moment they will be face to face with Almighty God, having to give an account for their lives and knowing they will be naked before Him, with nary a plea? Moses knew, from hearing what God said, that this would be the case for these men. It doesn’t say so in the text, but God may have given Moses a vision of what was going to happen.

And he did not want this burning wrath of God to fall on the entirety of the camp. "O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and You be angry with all the congregation?" Would He be right to be angry with the whole of the people? Wouldn’t be the first time, and would not be on the biggest scale. Romans 5:12—Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin. Did you or I receive a direct command from God Himself? Were you or I commanded not to eat the fruit of one particular tree? No. But Adam was. He heard from God Himself that he was not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of God and Evil. But when Eve succumbed to the first lie (“Hath God indeed said?”), she gave to Adam to eat. But rather than correcting her and instructing her that they should not eat of that tree, he ate anyway. And what happened? One man sinned, and God was angry with all of humanity. “Shall one man sin, and You be angry with all the congregation?” Moses here echoes Abram’s prayer to God in Genesis 18:23—“Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked?” Would He have been right and just to do so? Of course. Would He have been right and just to not do so? Of course. What was the final verdict? He destroyed the entire city, after Lot and his family were escaped from there. Moses and Abram, the men with whom God spoke most closely and as friends, were devout men of God, who sought always, with few exceptions, to live the way He wanted them to. And when they failed, they asked for forgiveness and repented of their sins. They were righteous men, who sought to please God. And what do we know about the prayers of a righteous man? James 5:16—The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Phillip Schaff wrote, “Prayer, in order to prevail, must proceed from an earnest heart, and be made by a righteous man; that is, by a good, sincere, true-hearted man.” Moses was such a righteous, good, sincere, true hearted man.

“Speak to the congregation, saying, 'Get away from the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.'” Words that are echoed, to a degree, in the New Testament. These sinful men in our text represented sin, and Moses pled with the people to flee from them, lest they be caught up with them. We are encouraged as believers in Christ to avoid sin, to not look long at sin, and even, in one verse, to flee from sin (1st Corinthians 6:18). A man who is considered to be a faithful man of God has recently been found to be in an “inappropriate relationship” with a woman who is not his wife. We don’t know everything this entails (God knows), but one thing can be assumed: he was near to sin, he saw sin, and did not remove himself from the situation until it was too late. He was near to the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and instead of fleeing he kept himself nearby and got caught up in their sin. Much like Solomon, the wisest man ever, whose wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David (1st Kings 11:4). I call this “The Solomon Paradox”™: how the wisest man ever did some of the dumbest things. David, the man after God’s own heart, was not immune from the desires of the flesh. 2nd Samuel 11:1-4—1 It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. 2 Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold. 3 So David sent and inquired about the woman. And someone said, "Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 4 Then David sent messengers, and took her; and she came to him, and he lay with her. David could have had any number of wives and concubines. But instead, he took his friend’s little ewe lamb, and killed him for it. And in all three of these cases, the consequences were visited on the men. David’s son Absalom laid with his concubines; Solomon’s son Jeroboam led all Israel to sin; and Steve Lawson has lost his ministry. Because they did not flee from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram.

Unlike the members of the people of Israel who did get away. So they got away from around the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. What instruction do we read in Revelation 18:4—And I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.” These people removed themselves from the tents of Korah and company, and the angel in Revelation 18 warns the people to come out of Babylon the Great. Why? “Lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.” Do not be near to unbelievers when they are doing what is contrary to God, lest you be caught up in their malicious deeds. 1st Corinthians 15:33—Do not be deceived: "Evil company corrupts good habits." There is no clearer example of this than in Proverbs 1:10-18—10 My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. 11 If they say, "Come with us, Let us lie in wait to shed blood; let us lurk secretly for the innocent without cause; 12 let us swallow them alive like Sheol, and whole, like those who go down to the Pit; 13 we shall find all kinds of precious possessions, we shall fill our houses with spoil; 14 cast in your lot among us, let us all have one purse"—15 my son, do not walk in the way with them, keep your foot from their path; 16 for their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood. 17 Surely, in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird; 18 but they lie in wait for their own blood, they lurk secretly for their own lives. Remember being in high school, maybe hanging around with an unsavory bunch? They liked to do things and go places they shouldn’t be? You decide to tag along one day. And they start breaking windows at an old, abandoned business. Suddenly the police arrive. And whether you were sharing in their hooliganism or not, guess who gets scooped up and put in the back of a cruiser? Then you had to call mom and dad to explain. If mom and dad were good parents, you got punished. Is God a good parent? When those who despise Him do something abhorrent to Him, they may think they are being crafty and secretive, but God sees all, and they lie in wait for their own blood, they lurk secretly for their own lives. They are heaping up wrath for themselves.

Numbers 16:28-35—28 And Moses said: "By this you shall know that the LORD has sent me to do all these works, for I have not done them of my own will. 29 If these men die naturally like all men, or if they are visited by the common fate of all men, then the LORD has not sent me. 30 But if the LORD creates a new thing, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the pit, then you will understand that these men have rejected the LORD." 31 Now it came to pass, as he finished speaking all these words, that the ground split apart under them, 32 and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the men with Korah, with all their goods. 33 So they and all those with them went down alive into the pit; the earth closed over them, and they perished from among the assembly. 34 Then all Israel who were around them fled at their cry, for they said, "Lest the earth swallow us up also!" 35 And a fire came out from the LORD and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense. The moment of truth. The moment when two men of God would stand against 250 prideful men of their father the devil, to see which one God would choose. And it is clearly shown here that it is God, in His will, not man nor the will of man, who chooses prophets and priests. These men, who thought of themselves as something, were brought down into the depths of the earth to make this very thing known.

There are many today who reckon themselves to be prophets, who speak great swelling words that are contrary to what God has said. They tell people that they will be rich and prosperous, that they will never be sick, that if they just believe enough, they can have more health, wealth and prosperity than they could ever imagine. And of course they draw big crowds, because they tell people what they want to hear. These are the ones that Paul warned us about in his second letter to Timothy. After all, who wouldn’t want to hear smooth words of flattery, that everything that comes into our lives will be good and smooth? 2nd Timothy 4:3-4—3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. It is no different today than it was then, and has been no different at any point in between. How many times in Israel’s history did the people turn away from God to worship Ba'al or Asherah or Molech? And today, how many times do people turn away from God to follow a god of their own choosing? In both instances, these were nothing more than worshipping the flesh. People don’t want to hear hard truths, when the lies are so much easier to hear and to tolerate. And these are the things these modern-day “prophets” are spewing to the people that follow them.

But what will happen to these “prophets”? What will be their destination once their flesh fails and they go down to the grave? It will be as these, when the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the men with Korah, with all their goods. And will they be alone in their torment? No, they will be joined by all those who followed them, who came to them with itching ears, who followed their Godless teachings, and who did not follow the ways of righteousness; who saw Jesus as an ATM to give them all they wanted, and who gave God no glory, but served and worshipped their faith in themselves and sought to create for themselves a life of luxury and ease. All those with them went down alive into the pit; the earth closed over them, and they perished from among the assembly. John Piper said rightly about this ungodly health, wealth and prosperity “gospel”—

“I don’t know what you feel about the prosperity gospel—the health, wealth and prosperity gospel—but I’ll tell you what I feel about it—Hatred. It is not the gospel, and it’s being exported from this country to Africa and Asia, selling a bill of goods to the poorest of the poor: ‘Believe this message and your pigs won’t die and your wife won’t have miscarriages, and you’ll have rings on your fingers and coats on your back.’ That’s coming out of America—the people that ought to be giving our money and our time and our lives, instead selling them a bunch of crap called ‘gospel.’”

Instead of telling people the truth—that we are all sinners in the eyes of God and we need the righteousness of Christ to be acceptable to the eternally holy and righteous God—they are telling people that Jesus only came to make their lives more comfortable, to give them material riches and not that He came to give them eternal riches in Heaven. What good will their material wealth be to them once they are standing before Almighty God, who will ask them why He should let them into His Kingdom? Instead of thinking that our faith will make us rich in this life, let us consider the eternal riches that Christ can give us if we repent of our sins and turn to God and ask forgiveness for our sins! And let us see Christ as the one who will lead us through pain and heartache, when our faith is not enough to prevent calamity from befalling our family.

“I’ll tell you what makes Jesus look beautiful,” Piper told them. “It’s when you smash your car, and your little girl goes flying through the windshield, and lands dead on the street . . . and you say through the deepest possible pain, ‘God is enough.’”

1st Timothy 6:7, 10—7 We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out…10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

Those who prop themselves up falsely as prophets will meet an eternal fate that will be unimaginable. Not only will they die, as all men do, but they will be judged more harshly than any sinner, since he (or she) took upon himself (or herself) a mantle reserved for those whom God actually called. God is not slack, and He will punish them in due time when He is ready. And God is not to be mocked, as He will visit on all who mock Him a punishment beyond anything one could imagine. Jesus had stern words for such. Matthew 7:21-23—21 “Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' 23 And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'” Even those who do “good things” will not be forgiven of their sins by the “good works” that they have done, but only by faith in Christ and love for God and neighbor.

And those who support and prop up these false prophets, there end will be the same. And a fire came out from the LORD and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense. Not only were Korah and Dathan and Abiram pulled down into the earth, but those supporting them were burned up with fire. Another warning to not be caught up with those who are rebelling against God. Even after seeing the wonders that God had done among them and for them, they still kept groping at the door. We are warned about men like these in Titus 3:10-11—10 Reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition, 11 knowing that such a person is warped and sinning, being self-condemned. The Apostle John would not even suffer his disciples to be under the same roof as a known heretic. In his work “Against Heresies”, Irenaeus wrote—

There are also those who heard from him that John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing, exclaiming, "Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within." And Polycarp himself replied to Marcion, who met him on one occasion, and said, "Dost thou know me?" "I do know thee, the first-born of Satan." Such was the horror which the apostles and their disciples had against holding even verbal communication with any corrupters of the truth.

Let us always flee from those who preach heresy, and run to Christ, the only one who has words of eternal life! (John 6:68). 2nd Peter 2:1-3—1 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. 2 And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. 3 By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber. Those who flatter you with smooth words easy to hear and to digest will bring you down into judgment with them!

Part 2 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Tedstament Law--Numbers 16 (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 17:26:00 +0000

Numbers 16:1-3—1 Now Korah the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, with Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men; 2 and they rose up before Moses with some of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty leaders of the congregation, representatives of the congregation, men of renown. 3 They gathered together against Moses and Aaron, and said to them, "You take too much upon yourselves, for all the congregation is holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?"

Ever see the movie “The Ten Commandments”? Used to watch it every Easter when it would come on ABC. And every Easter, Charlton Heston led me to the Lord. Haha. Well, when I started studying the Bible, I realized the movie wasn’t really true to the Scriptures in some areas. This is one of those areas. Dathan was played by Edward G. Robinson, and in the movie this episode we are looking at took place right after the Golden Calf episode. So the writers kinda mixed up and muddled up the sequence of events for dramatic license. Just wanted to get that out of the way. Here we see again a murmuring against what God has commanded. He put Moses in charge, and Aaron as the High Priest. But this band of rebels was not happy with that. They looked at Moses and Aaron as taking these mantles upon themselves. "You take too much upon yourselves…Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?" And they were not happy at how Moses and Aaron were running things, and this band thought they were just as entitled to run things as Moses and Aaron. But that is not what God commanded. God had a certain way He wanted things done, and these men were rebelling against that command. And we will see the consequences of his actions later. Suffice it to say it is never good to rebel against what God has ordained.

So what can we learn from this today? We learn that God has set up an organization for how He wants the church set up. We find this organization in Ephesians 4:11—And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers. Notice what Paul says. He Himself gave some to be. In other words, God is the one who appoints those who are apostles, prophets, etc. Those who are in these positions, and are truly apostles, prophets, etc., do not take these mantles upon themselves. But don’t we see Korah’s type of rebellion today; when a member of a church thinks he (or she) can do a better job than the one pastoring that particular flock, and decides to plant seeds of doubt among the members? Again, a pastor also does not (or should not) take that office upon himself lightly. For if a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work (1st Timothy 1:3). The amount of time involved in shepherding a flock—the time spent studying the Scriptures for what the people need to hear, the time visiting the sick and infirm, the time spent in meetings to determine how to spend the church’s funds—is more than many can bear, more than any rabble-rousers can imagine, and can take a toll on that preacher and his family. It is no small thing to shepherd a flock! So you can only imagine the tolls it took on Moses and Aaron top lead almost a million people from Egypt, through the desert, to the land God promised them. Which is why God was so patient with Moses in the times he cried to Him and bemoaned his situation—it was no small thing to lead this group of grumblers and backbiters, when there were scarce resources and there was scorching heat and the threat of those in the surrounding land to come upon them.

But Korah thought it was. He and those with him thought they could lead this mass of people through the desert just as well as Moses could, and that anyone could minister to God as well as Aaron did. Numbers 16:4-7—4 So when Moses heard it, he fell on his face; 5 and he spoke to Korah and all his company, saying, “Tomorrow morning the LORD will show who is His and who is holy, and will cause him to come near to Him. That one whom He chooses He will cause to come near to Him. 6 Do this: Take censers, Korah and all your company; 7 put fire in them and put incense in them before the LORD tomorrow, and it shall be that the man whom the LORD chooses is the holy one. You take too much upon yourselves, you sons of Levi!" In verse 7, Moses turns Korah’s argument back on him, by saying that Korah and his band have taken too much upon themselves. And he’s right. When it says in Numbers 12:3 that no one was more humble than Moses, that was the absolute truth. And he had to be. A man who was proud in his heart could not lead this bunch of grumblers through the desert, or his pride would puff him up and he would leave them all behind and take God up on His offer to wipe them all out and start over with that person. And what glory would God get out of that? (Numbers 14:13-19).

And in keeping with this idea, what is the first thing Moses does when Korah makes his claim? So when Moses heard it, he fell on his face. So many of us would be angry with these people, since God just told them in Numbers 14 that because they have grumbled against Him so many times that they would not enter the Promised Land. This time, it wasn’t grumbling because of food or water or the giants in the land, it was the grumblings of a handful of men who let one thing overtake them: pride. And if Moses was a prideful man, he and Korah would end up throwing hands against one another. But what does Moses do? He humbles himself and bows his face to the earth and instantly gets a word from the Lord, that they should let God decide who the Prophet and High Priest really are. That one whom He chooses He will cause to come near to Him. Here again we see the principle of Election, that God chooses who will be His and who will be chosen to perform the duties of ministering between the people and God, as Moses says again in verses 6-7—6 Take censers, Korah and all your company; 7 put fire in them and put incense in them before the LORD tomorrow, and it shall be that the man whom the LORD chooses is the holy one. In this way, Moses was letting Korah and company know that he was not making the decision, but God.

Remember back in Leviticus 11, when Nadab and Abihu brought a different incense to burn before God, and He burned them up on the spot? Wasn’t Moses that did that, wasn’t Gershom, wasn’t Eleazar. It was God. Why? Because they did something in a way that God did not approve of. And in the same way, Korah and company were to bring a censer of coals and Aaron was to bring a censer of coals, and God would make the decision. Many people these days think it is some kind of badge of honor to say “Only God can judge me!” And they say it in an almost prideful manner, as if God will excuse their sins. But when someone says “Only God can judge me”, they should be ready for Him, because one thing is certain—He will!

And Korah decided also to cast his lot on his own righteousness, rather than acknowledging that He chose Aaron to be High Priest. And even today, we have those who will rail against God’s people, thinking that they themselves are better than the people of God. Paul says in Romans 8:33—Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Korah laid a charge against the men God had chosen, and thought he could get away with it. How brazen must he have been! How prideful! To think that God would turn His back on the man He chose to be High Priest, and accept this prideful man who boasted against God’s elect! This even more clearly emphasizes the point made in Numbers 12:3, that the man Moses was very humble!

Numbers 16:8-11—8 Then Moses said to Korah, "Hear now, you sons of Levi: 9 Is it a small thing to you that the God of Israel has separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to Himself, to do the work of the tabernacle of the LORD, and to stand before the congregation to serve them; 10 and that He has brought you near to Himself, you and all your brethren, the sons of Levi, with you? And are you seeking the priesthood also? 11 Therefore you and all your company are gathered together against the LORD. And what is Aaron that you complain against him?” Korah and company thought it was an easy task to lead almost one million souls from Egypt, to Sinai, around the Sinai Peninsula, through the Wilderness of Paran, to a land which the people did not know. And from the human side, Korah and company were treating their election by God as a minute thing—that God had chosen them to be His, that God had chosen them to perform their assigned duties in the Tabernacle, that God had chosen them to act as mediator between the people and God. And now they want more? Now they want to be the ones in charge of the Tabernacle? A position that God Himself chose Aaron for, flawed as he was? This rank jealousy coming from Levites, the ones who were to stand before God and present unblemished sacrifices. How could they stand before God with such a heart polluted by the same sin that caused Satan to be cast out of Heaven, when he declared 13 “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:13-14). What do you read over and over again in this passage? I…I…I…… And just as it was Satan exalting himself above the seat of God, here we see Korah—not Moses and Aaron—exalting himself and those with him above the judgment of God.

”Therefore you and all your company are gathered together against the LORD.” Ouch. This would have been the time for Korah and company to fold their hands and admit that they were in no position to question God. They could have, as Moses, fallen on their faces and begged forgiveness from the Most High, and they may have been struck with leprosy or may have incurred some other punishment from God. As Jesus said of the two sons in Matthew 21:28-31—28 "A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, 'Son, go, work today in my vineyard.' 29 He answered and said, 'I will not,' but afterward he regretted it and went. 30 Then he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, 'I go, sir,' but he did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?" Here, we see that God had two sons—Moses and Korah—We know Moses did the will of God. And here, Korah could have been like the first Son in Jesus’ parable—going against the will of the Father, then regretting it and submitting to God’s will. But he didn’t. Much like the wicked men of Sodom in Genesis 19:11, they kept groping for the door of sin and like the men of Sodom, they would face consequences. Well said is it in Proverbs 16:18—Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Dathan was a prideful man, and he (and those who followed him) would experience a fall like no other!

Numbers 16:12-14—12 And Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, but they said, "We will not come up! 13 Is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, that you should keep acting like a prince over us? 14 Moreover you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor given us inheritance of fields and vineyards. Will you put out the eyes of these men? We will not come up!" Again we see the longing for slavery. Edward G. Robinson—I mean, Dathan—and Abiram saw their time in bondage as a time of freedom. They could eat what they wanted, they could do what they wanted, they could play however they wanted—all they had to do was dance in the mud and put up statues to honor the pagan gods. Just like today, when we come to know Christ and even confess Him as Lord and Savior, and something comes up that tests our patience, or is disagreeable to us, we can be tempted to seek to go back to the mire we were taken out of, because we see that as easier than following Christ and accepting of the trial we are in. Or we are tempted by something we used to enjoy, and we think “ya know, if it wasn’t for Jesus, I could enjoy that again.” Instead of seeing that trial or temptation as a way to show that we are actually in a better place than we were in, and to give God the glory we see it as God not being fair, and we say that God has not made our lives easier. But here’s the problem—knowing Christ and following Him may not bring instant joy and deliverance from trials. In fact, the trials may become more intense, But don’t let that dissuade you from following Him. Rather, we should use these trials as a way to depend on Him even more. James 1:2—My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials. Are you in a financial bind? Ask God how to get through this. Do you have wayward children? Ask God to set them on the correct path. Did you lose your job? Ask God where to seek employment and follow His guiding. But in all these things, ask that His will be done (Matthew 6:10), because His will may be different than your will.

And be patient. James 1:3—Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. This was one thing Dathan and Abiram were sorely lacking in. “You have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor given us inheritance of fields and vineyards.” No, they had not come to the land flowing with milk and honey—YET. But they would get there! And it would be a far better place than their time in bondage in Egypt! It has been said that every prayer of the saints is heard by God, and He answers them all. Sometimes the answer is “yes”, sometimes the answer is “no”, sometimes the answer is “wait”. Galatians 5:22—The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering… Patience. Wait on the Lord. David says this in Psalm 27:14—Wait, I say, on the LORD! In our day and age it is hard to be patient. So many things and people around us demanding our attention. So often we are out somewhere and we are behind a slower car, or an elderly couple in the aisle or the checkout at the grocery store. Or maybe we have to wait for five seconds for someone to move out of our way. Our reaction can show who we really are. Do we get angry, and huff and puff? Not only is that impatience, but also displays a bit of pride. “Where I have to go is more important than these people!” Perhaps by slowing you down by five seconds, God may be saving your life! In her song “Granny’s angel”, Nicole C. Mullen posits such a thought in her song “Granny’s Angel”:

Stuck in traffic, at a quarter ‘til nine

Shirley’s cursin’ “Oops! Is that fatal wreck on my side?

No compassion, ‘cause she don’t realize

Had she been any earlier

BOOM! It would have been her life

Thing is that no, the people of Israel were not in the Promised Land. But they were getting there. Wait, I say, on the LORD! Abraham Kuyper once said “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” Not only does that speak of all of the physical universe, but it also speaks of time. There is not a year our month or week or day or hour or minute or second over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, “Mine!” God could have very easily stopped their mouths and their grumbling and complaining but He didn’t. Why? I don’t know, but He had His reasons. More than likely, He was weeding out those whom He knew were not fit for the Promised Land. Just like when He told Gideon to not go against the Midianites and Amalekites and people of the East with the 32,000 or the 10,000 but only the 300 faithful men.

Not only was He weeding out the unfaithful and backbiting, He was also doing it for His glory. See, God does not get glory in victory by large numbers, but by strengthening the hands and minds of the few. Remember, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, the whole city celebrated. By the time He gave up His life, the city had turned on Him. In the old hymn “Man of Sorrows, What a Name”, P. P. Bliss states:

Lifted up was He to die;

"It is finished" was his cry;

He was lifted up on the cross by those who opposed God. Forsaken even by those who followed Him and knew Him as the Son of God. Only John was left, and Jesus sent him away as well. As Isaiah said, 7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted…He was led as a lamb to the slaughter…8 He was taken from prison and from judgment…For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken (Isaiah 53:7-8). What glory could come from one Man, beaten and mocked, dying alone on a cross, put to shame for the world to see? Well, this was not just any man. This was the holy, righteous, perfect Son of God. And what had He done that was deserving of death? Why was He beaten and mocked? What blasphemy had He uttered? Oh no friend, it was not because of any sin He committed, for the Son of God did no sin, nor did He even think of doing any sin. In fact, He was put to death for us. For you. For me. For your neighbor. And God took His Son, battered and broken, from the tomb, raised Him up to sit at His right hand, to rule over all creation. The hymn goes on:

Now in heaven exalted high:

Hallelujah, what a Savior!

When he comes, our glorious King,

All his ransomed home to bring,

Then anew this song we'll sing:

Hallelujah, what a Savior!

How dare any of us think that just because He has not yet returned that His promise is null and void? How dare we think that just because we are still stuck on this rock that our lives are for naught? We have the promise of our risen Lord that He will return, and that every eye will see Him, that the mouths of the unbelieving will be stopped, and that we who Know Him will be brought safely into our promised reward. But we have to be patient, and Wait, I say, on the LORD!

Part 2 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 15 (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 15:45:00 +0000

Numbers 15:32-36—32 Now while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. 33 And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation. 34 They put him under guard, because it had not been explained what should be done to him. 35 Then the LORD said to Moses, "The man must surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp." 36 So, as the LORD commanded Moses, all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him with stones, and he died. The seventh-day Sabbath was a token of that Old Covenant that God had made with the people of Israel (Exodus 31:16-17—16 “Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath…17 It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever”). Picking up sticks was considered, by God, to be doing work. This man was doing work on the Sabbath, which God had forbade when He spoke the Ten Commandments to Moses (Exodus 20:10). He proceeded to pronounce the punishment for working on the Sabbath in Exodus 31:14-15—14 “You shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. 15 Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death” and Moses spoke to the people the punishment in Exodus 35:2—“Work shall be done for six days, but the seventh day shall be a holy day for you, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death”. So this man had heard that the Sabbath was a day of rest on which no work was to be done, lest the person die. Yet he still chose to violate that sign and sin against God, for which he paid the price with his life. When God gave the people manna in Exodus 16, Moses told the people quite plainly to not go out to gather on the seventh day. And what did some of them do? You guessed it. So why did God not call for their death, but did command that this man be put to death? Because the Law had not been given yet. Would He have been right and just in putting those people to death who gathered manna on the Sabbath? Yes. But He had not yet given the commandments about the Sabbath, so while He was angry with them, He did not destroy them.

Let’s fast forward about 1500 years. Christ is walking through fields of grain with His disciples. Mark 2:23—Now it happened that He went through the grain fields on the Sabbath; and as they went His disciples began to pluck the heads of grain. Did Jesus rebuke them? Did God command that they be stoned with stones? After all, they were (according to the Pharisees) doing work on the Sabbath. Mark 2:24—And the Pharisees said to Him, "Look, why do they do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?" Well, they had a point. But their zeal was misplaced. The disciples were not performing work simply for the sake of performing work. They were hungry, and did as prescribed in Leviticus 19:10, and gleaning from the corners of the field. And Jesus, God in the flesh, was there with them. He rebuked the Pharisees by calling to mind what their favorite king, the ancestor of Christ Himself, had done in 1st Samuel 21:3-6, in eating the Bread of Presence, which was only for the priests, which David was not. Now, let me clear up a difficulty with this text in Mark. In Mark 2:25-26, Jesus says 25 “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those with him: 26 how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the showbread…?” Yet the text in 1st Samuel 21 says that Ahimelech was High Priest. “See? Ha! There’s a contradiction right there!” A contradiction which, if the text was altered by “corrupt copyists” as the skeptics like to say, could have been easily been altered. But it is no contradiction. For Jesus is not saying that Abiathar was High Priest at the time, only that this incident happened in the days of Abiathar. For shortly after this, his father Ahimelech was slain by Saul at the hands of Doeg (1st Samuel 22:18). So yes, David ate the showbread in the days of Abiathar (who was more closely associated with David than was Ahimelech), but Abiathar was not yet High Priest.

So the question remains “what does the Sabbath mean today? Are we, as grafted-in descendants of Abraham, obliged to keep the seventh-day Sabbath?” The short answer is “no”. Which begs the likewise short question “why?” Because that Sabbath, which was the sign of the Old Covenant, has been done away with (as has circumcision) along with that Old Covenant. So which day do we consecrate as our day of rest? That would be what was called the “first day of the week” in the New Testament. We see this in the Book of Acts, where the disciples met on the first day of the week. Acts 20:7—Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread. They met together to break the bread which represented the body of Christ. They did this in remembrance of Him, to stir up the memory of the sacrifice of our Lord. It tells us in Colossians to not let any man hold over our heads that any day of the week is above another. Colossians 2:16-17—16 So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, 17 which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. Paul says again in Romans the same thing. Romans 14:5-6—5 One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. Justin Martyr, in chapter LXVII of his First Apology, wrote that we should come together to remember our Lord on the first day of the week:

On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given…

Ignatius in Chapter IX of his “Letter to the Magnesians”, said,

If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death—whom some deny, by which mystery we have obtained faith, and therefore endure, that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only Master—how shall we be able to live apart from Him, whose disciples the prophets themselves in the Spirit did wait for Him as their Teacher? And therefore He whom they rightly waited for, being come, raised them from the dead.

[…]

The prophets were His servants, and foresaw Him by the Spirit, and waited for Him as their Teacher, and expected Him as their Lord and Saviour, saying, “He will come and save us.” Let us therefore no longer keep the Sabbath after the Jewish manner, and rejoice in days of idleness; for “he that does not work, let him not eat.” For say the [holy] oracles, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread.” But let every one of you keep the Sabbath after a spiritual manner, rejoicing in meditation on the law, not in relaxation of the body, admiring the workmanship of God, and not eating things prepared the day before, nor using lukewarm drinks, and walking within a prescribed space, nor finding delight in dancing and plaudits which have no sense in them.

Numbers 15:37-41—37 Again the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 38 "Speak to the children of Israel: Tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a blue thread in the tassels of the corners. 39 And you shall have the tassel, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the LORD and do them, and that you may not follow the harlotry to which your own heart and your own eyes are inclined, 40 and that you may remember and do all My commandments, and be holy for your God. 41 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the LORD your God." The tassels (צׅיצׅת, tzitzith) on the borders (פָנָף, kanaph) were to be made on the four corners of their garments. These were to remind the people of the commandments that God had given them that they may be set apart from their neighboring nations and be seen as holy to God. By the time Jesus came, however, those who wanted to appear more righteous that others had forgotten that principle, and made their tzitzith (κράσπεδον, kraspedon in the Greek) larger and larger so they might appear more righteous to the people. Matthew 23:5—“But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders [κράσπεδον, kraspedon or פָנָף, kanaph] of their garments.” They did not want to be seen as simply holy, they wanted to appear to be super-holy. It wasn’t that they wanted to look at their tassels, rather they wanted others to see their tassels and be impressed.

Here is a neat little note about the borders of the garments. In Hebrew, the word “borders” (פָנָף, kanaph) can also mean “wings”. The woman with an issue of blood in Matthew 9:20, Mark 5:25 and Luke 8:43 though within herself, “If only I could touch His garment, I will be made well”. And in Matthew 9:20 we see that she did indeed touch the hem, or border, of His garment. Why is all of this so significant? In Malachi 4:2, the prophet says But to you who fear My name The Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings. Malachi was not talking about wings like a bird. He was talking about the פָנָף (kanaph) of the garment of the Sun of Righteousness, our Lord and God, Jesus Christ. So she was really thinking, “This is the Sun of Righteousness foretold by the prophet Malachi. And in the borders (“wings”) of His garment there is healing! If I could only touch it, I will be healed of this dread condition that no physician could help me with, but this Jesus, the Great Physician, can heal me completely!” Let us all reach out to touch, not only the hem of Christ’s garment, but Christ Himself. He is our Lord and Savior, our God in the flesh, who tabernacled with man for 33 years, and who shed His blood as the sign of the New Covenant. Let us not look to a certain day of the week as our Sabbath rest, but rather to our true Sabbath rest, who has taken our burdens upon Himself and has given us His burden yoke, which are easy and are light.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 15 (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 17:30:00 +0000

Numbers 15:1-13—1 And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2 "Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: 'When you have come into the land you are to inhabit, which I am giving to you, 3 and you make an offering by fire to the LORD, a burnt offering or a sacrifice, to fulfill a vow or as a freewill offering or in your appointed feasts, to make a sweet aroma to the LORD, from the herd or the flock, 4 then he who presents his offering to the LORD shall bring a grain offering of one-tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with one-fourth of a hin of oil; 5 and one-fourth of a hin of wine as a drink offering you shall prepare with the burnt offering or the sacrifice, for each lamb. 6 Or for a ram you shall prepare as a grain offering two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with one-third of a hin of oil; 7 and as a drink offering you shall offer one-third of a hin of wine as a sweet aroma to the LORD. 8 And when you prepare a young bull as a burnt offering, or as a sacrifice to fulfill a vow, or as a peace offering to the LORD, 9 then shall be offered with the young bull a grain offering of three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with half a hin of oil; 10 and you shall bring as the drink offering half a hin of wine as an offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the LORD. 11 Thus it shall be done for each young bull, for each ram, or for each lamb or young goat. 12 According to the number that you prepare, so you shall do with everyone according to their number. 13 All who are native-born shall do these things in this manner, in presenting an offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the LORD.'"

Here, God is retelling the requirements for sacrifices that were to be prepared when they came into the Promised Land. Let’s define some of the measures which are stated that we do not use today.

· The ephah. An ephah was a dry measure, used to measure out flour or wheat or barley or similar things. It is equal to about 22 liters of liquid measure, or about 3/5 of a bushel dry measure. (One tenth of an ephah would be the omer, about 2 liters or 2 quarts.)

· The hin. About 4 liters or one gallon. So a fourth of a hin of oil would be about a quart.

With these measurements in mind, we can figure out the various measures described in the text. So first, when we see 4 then he who presents his offering to the LORD shall bring a grain offering of one-tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed with one-fourth of a hin of oil; 5 and one-fourth of a hin of wine as a drink offering, he is to bring about 2 liters of flour with a quart of oil for the grain offering, with a quart of wine for a drink offering if they were bringing a sheep (or kid of the goats) or livestock. 6 Or for a ram you shall prepare as a grain offering two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with one-third of a hin of oil; 7 and as a drink offering you shall offer one-third of a hin of wine they were to mingle 4 quarts of flour with about 1-1/2 quarts of oil for the grain offering with about 1-1/2 quarts of wine for the drink offering. 8 And when you prepare a young bull (a calf) as a burnt offering, or as a sacrifice to fulfill a vow, or as a peace offering to the LORD, 9 then shall be offered with the young bull a grain offering of three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with half a hin of oil; 10 and you shall bring as the drink offering half a hin of wine, they were to bring 6 quarts of flour with 2 liters of oil for the grain offering, with 2 liters of wine for the drink offering.

These were meant to show that they were still God’s people. God was not through with the people of Israel, He would still accept their sacrifices and they would still be His, even though they would not enter the Promised Land. Just as it is today. As Paul says in Romans 11:1—I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! Some today say that God is through with Israel, that because they crucified His Messiah, that God has cast them off. How absurd! God made a covenant with Abraham, and reminded the people of Israel that it was an everlasting covenant, and said through the prophet, in Jeremiah 31:35-37—35 Thus says the LORD, Who gives the sun for a light by day, the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, Who disturbs the sea, and its waves roar (The LORD of hosts is His name): 36 " If those ordinances depart From before Me, says the LORD, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before Me forever." 37 Thus says the LORD: “If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done,” says the LORD. One may say “But what of the New Covenant spoken of in Jeremiah 31:31, and again in Hebrews 8:13? Doesn’t this mean that God has done away with them?” What they are really saying is that God lied when He spoke the words of Jeremiah 31:35-37. Rather, He established a New Covenant, just as He said He would. A new and better covenant. One in which the people no longer had to appear with the blood of bulls and goats, but one where God appeared with the blood of His Son, that no longer were His laws written on stone tablets, but in the minds and on the hearts of the people (Jeremiah 31:33).

“But look at Israel today. They do not follow Christ. In fact, they despise anyone who speaks and preaches in His name!” Do not confuse the physical nation of Israel with the people of Israel. If the New Covenant was with a physical nation, then why did He allow the Romans to destroy the temple in Jerusalem? Why did Jesus say "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here" (John 18:36). And now His kingdom does not reside in one earthly place, but He has set His name on those who put their faith in Christ. And in all actuality, the New Covenant is an improvement on the Old Covenant. But why a New Covenant? One reason for this New Covenant is that the people of Israel, who at one time said “Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations” (1^st Samuel 8:5), later said “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15). They had thrown off God as their king (1^st Samuel 8:7), and had bound themselves under an earthly king. This was the natural end of their desire for a king besides God. And it necessitated a New Covenant, since they had broken the Old Covenant time and time again. They thought that they could sin and chase Baal and Ashtaroth, then bring a sacrifice for their sins, and this would please God. But what does Hosea say? Hosea 6:6—“For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” Hosea 8:13-14—13 “For the sacrifices of My offerings they sacrifice flesh and eat it, but the LORD does not accept them…14 For Israel has forgotten his Maker.”

And yes, the physical nation of Israel has forgotten the Lord who spilled His blood at Calvary. But that does not mean that God is done with them. Has God cast away His people? Certainly not! Paul was Hebrew, and in the New Testament, he still calls them God’s people. Why? Because He is not through with them. Otherwise, why did he say in Romans 11:4-5—4 But what does the divine response say to him? "I have reserved for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal." 5 Even so then, at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace. Why would God remember the people who broke covenant with Him? Why would He continue with a people who have sinned against Him and shed the blood of bulls and goats to try to please Him? Why would He not just cast them all aside and take to Himself a new people? Because there are some of the descendants of Abraham who do embrace Christ, who do see Him as their Messiah, no matter what their family says. In other words, there is a remnant according to the election of grace.

And that is the message God is conveying in our text in Numbers 15. There were those among the half-million or so people who did not complain, who kept God as the center of their worship, and who did not complain and murmur and grumble. Speaking to Moses, He said “I have pardoned, according to your word” (Numbers 14:20). But because these were included in the crowd of people, they were prohibited from entering Canaan. Except for Caleb the son of Jephuneh and Joshua the son of Nun, you shall by no means enter the land which I swore I would make you dwell in. (Numbers 14:30). The people said that their children would be prey in the wilderness (Numbers 14:3), when in fact they would be the ones to see the good land that God had promised. God is not one to forget His promises, like the promise He made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to bring His people into a good land.

Numbers 15:14-16—“‘14 And if a stranger dwells with you, or whoever is among you throughout your generations, and would present an offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the LORD, just as you do, so shall he do. 15 One ordinance shall be for you of the assembly and for the stranger who dwells with you, an ordinance forever throughout your generations; as you are, so shall the stranger be before the LORD. 16 One law and one custom shall be for you and for the stranger who dwells with you.’” To show that those who came up out of Egypt with the people of Israel were not to be counted any differently, and to show that all His people are equal in His sight, He made it known to the people here (as He did in Exodus 12:49) that those who were circumcised in their flesh and were counted as the people of God were to follow the same commands as those who were born descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These were what were called previously the “mixed multitude”, who were of unknown origin but were not of Israelite stock. In other words, they were Gentiles by birth.

Today, how are those who are Gentiles by birth brought into the Kingdom of God? The same way as the one who is a Jew by birth. By the blood of Christ. Ephesians 2:11-14—11 Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands—12 that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation. Do not think that Jews are saved one way and Gentiles another way. For One law and one custom shall be for you and for the stranger who dwells with you. There is only one way we will live in the presence of our Lord who bought us, whether we be Jew or Gentile. That is through the blood of Jesus, whose blood bought all whom God purposed to come into His Kingdom, no matter what their tribe, tongue, nation, or kindred. All who are His are one, and all who believe are counted as descendants of Abraham. Galatians 3:28-29—28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. Do you doubt that? Put that doubt away, for John the Baptist even said the same thing in Matthew 3:9—“Do not think to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.”

“So how is it that those who are Gentiles by birth should be counted as Abraham’s seed?” I’m glad you asked. Even though you didn’t. But you should have. Paul, the Hebrew of Hebrews tells us in Romans 11:24-25—24 For if you were cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, who are natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree? 25 For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. The wild olive tree is the Gentiles, while the cultivated olive tree—the one which God chose and groomed for millennia—are the natural seed of Abraham. And by Christ we of the wild olive tree have been grafted in to the olive tree which God chose and groomed and fertilized from the time of Abraham. And if anyone thinks they are better than the Jews of God’s olive tree, let them think again. Romans 11:20-21—20 Do not be haughty, but fear. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either. As I have said before, and will most likely say again, let us never think better of ourselves than we ought. God did not spare those who were natural descendants of Abraham, for they sinned in slaying the Lord of Glory. Do you think we are any different? Are our sins better than theirs? No, our sins are not better than theirs. All sin is sin. Do not think that God will spare anyone who, although they did not crucify Christ, still hates that name and persecutes those who call on it.

Numbers 15:17-31 is a reiteration of the sacrifices for the sins committed in ignorance which were covered in Leviticus 4:14-21, you can read more about them HERE.

Part 2 next week

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Numbers 14 (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Four Pointer) — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 17:45:00 +0000

There are the eternal consequences of not believing God and rejecting Him. What were the temporal consequences for the people of Israel? “They certainly shall not see the land of which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who rejected Me see it.” The people were led by the hand out of bondage. God showed them signs that He was with them and was doing great things for them. He gave them signs and wonders to show them that He is God and should be trusted and worshipped as God. Yet what did the people do? They complained. They murmured. They grumbled. They were not happy with the lot that God had cast for them, so they cried out that they wanted to go back to the taskmasters. So God said, “Fine. Those who have not trusted Me, those who have complained about being brought out from under the whips, those who want their old life as slaves, they shall not see what I have promised and will die before they see the Promised Land.” This is a foreshadowing of what will happen, eternally, to those who reject Christ. He came to Earth, clothed in human form, lived a perfect, spotless life, performed many miracles, raised the dead, cleansed the lepers, died on the Cross and was raised from the dead, and was seen by over 500 witnesses. Yet many still do not believe. They reject Him, they mock Him, scoff at Him. They would rather live in their lost state than to bow the knee to the One who died for them.

They don’t believe the words of Holy Writ, that the words testify of the God who became flesh to take away their sins. They would rather remain a slave to sin. See, in this life, every single person ever born is a slave. You are either a slave to Satan and sin, or you are a slave to Christ and righteousness. Romans 6:16—Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? This is one of those places where Paul quotes Jesus, although not verbatim. Jesus Himself says that while we are still in our sinful state, we are slaves to sin. John 8:34, 36—34 Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin…36 Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” Paul says almost the exact same thing in Romans 6:17-18—17 But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. 18 And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. Before we knew Christ as our Lord and Savior, we were slaves of Satan. We carried on however we liked, we ran around, cussed, swore, maybe drank or did drugs. Peter speaks of these things in 1st Peter 4:3—For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles—when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. But then the Holy Spirit gets ahold of someone, changes them on the inside, makes them love the things of God and hate the things of the flesh. We learn that the things we used to do when we were slaves of sin were displeasing to God. And we begin to embrace the things that please God. We are, as Paul wrote, a “new creation” (2nd Corinthians 5:17). We look back at our former self and think “why did I do those things?” Our goal now is not to please our flesh or to please others, but to please God.

Caleb understood this. Numbers 14:24—“But My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land where he went, and his descendants shall inherit it.” Just as there are few that find the narrow way today, there were even fewer of the people of Israel who saw the Promised Land. Why? Was he better and more intelligent than the others? No. He had a different spirit. What spirit was that? The Holy Spirit. It made of him a different man, just as it makes believers today different people. Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon on this text entitled “The Believer a New Creature”, said:

“The affections being changed, the whole man is on the way towards a great and radical renewal, for now the emotions find another ruler. The passions, once rabid as vultures at the sight of the carrion of sin, now turn with loathing from iniquity and are only stirred by holy principles. The convert grows vehement against evil, as vehement as he once was against the right. Now he longs and pines after communion with God as once he longed and pined after sin! The affections, like a rudder, have changed the direction of the emotions and meanwhile the will, that most stubborn thing of all, that iron sinew, is led in a blessed captivity, wearing silken fetters. The heart wills to do what God wills. Yes, it wills to be perfect, for to will is present with us though how to perform all that we would we find not.”

But once we know the truth, we must be careful that we do not use our newfound position in Christ as a way to mock non-believers for their ignorance of God and Christ. In the same sermon, he said “A man may be changed from one sin to another—from reckless profanity to mocking formality—from daring sin to hypocritical pretension to virtue. But such a change is as very far from being saving and not at all like the work which is called a new creation.” When we see our salvation as something we did by reciting a prayer and going to church, we run the risk of looking down our noses at those who used to live just as we did. We can be like the Pharisee in Luke 8:11-12, when we should be more like the Publican in Luke 18:13. We should see our salvation as something that God wrought in us, that He, for whatever reason (I do not know, God knows, to quote Paul) He saw fit to place in us a new heart, to write His laws upon that new heart, and to make a new creation out of us. And although God turned away these people from the Promised Land for rejecting Him ten times, how often are we to forgive a brother who sins against us? Seventy times seven times (Matthew 18:22). In fact, I dare say God has forgiven each one of us seventy times seven times just this morning alone!

Caleb understood who God is when those around him did not. And this is what spurred him on through the desert—across the blistering sands, in days of hunger and thirst, when everything in him may have been longing for bread and water, for melons and leeks and garlic and cucumbers. But he did not allow his flesh to be overcome by these longings. His eyes were on the promise God set out before him. Millennia later, Jesus would speak about not desiring to go back to the slavery of sin, and to keep moving forward to what God has in store for us. Luke 9:62—“No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” He gave us a warning in another place about the consequences of forgetting the goodness of God in rescuing us from unrighteousness and instead looking back to the things that He rescued us from. Luke 17:32—“Remember Lot’s wife”. Let us never look back fondly of our days as slaves of Satan, but always remember we are slaves of God. Let us not be as the unbelievers, but, in lifting them up to God, let us look kindly upon them, praying for their salvation, and looking forward to the reward God has in store for us.

Numbers 14:25, 40-45—25 “Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwell in the valley; tomorrow turn and move out into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea”…40 And they rose early in the morning and went up to the top of the mountain, saying, "Here we are, and we will go up to the place which the LORD has promised, for we have sinned!" 41 And Moses said, "Now why do you transgress the command of the LORD? For this will not succeed. 42 Do not go up, lest you be defeated by your enemies, for the LORD is not among you. 43 For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and you shall fall by the sword; because you have turned away from the LORD, the LORD will not be with you." 44 But they presumed to go up to the mountaintop. Nevertheless, neither the ark of the covenant of the LORD nor Moses departed from the camp. 45 Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who dwelt in that mountain came down and attacked them, and drove them back as far as Hormah. (In verses 25-39, God restates the fate of those who rejected Him and complained against Him.)

Here we see an example of what can happen to a new believer, when they think they can make up for their past sins by performing actions which are not sanctioned by God, and can ultimately lead to disastrous ends. Instead of going in the way the Holy Spirit leads, and just trusting in Christ for their salvation, thinking that God’s grace isn’t enough and they have to do something to “earn” their salvation, the person decides they know better and they plunge headlong into some endeavor that can, potentially, lead them away from God. Likewise, the people in Numbers were instructed by God to go by way of the Red Sea. He had a particular way He wanted them to go, because of their disobedience. He did not order them (and did not want them) fighting the Amalekites and Canaanites in the valley; He wanted them to just go their way by the Red Sea. Why? Perhaps as a reminder of the sea He parted and brought them through on dry land.

Doesn’t He do that sometimes? When we are foolish and rebellious against Him, doesn’t He bring to our mind something great He has done for us, just so we can remember who He is? He doesn’t want us to fight a battle, He just wants us to be still and know that He is God (Psalm 46:10). But the people didn’t do that. They had battled the Amalekites before (Exodus 17), and they beat the Amalekites. Surely they can beat them again! Just one problem. In that battle, they had Moses and Joshua to go with them. And, most importantly, they had God fighting for them. This time, they did not. Neither the ark of the covenant of the LORD nor Moses departed from the camp. This time they were on their own. And what happens to the people when they fight a battle alone, without God on their side? They get throttled. Just like anyone trying to fight a spiritual battle without God is going to get throttled. Why? Well, just as the Amalekites and Canaanites were experienced in battle and the people of Israel were not, Satan is experienced in spiritual battles, having lived for thousands of years and being of a stronger spirit than any human being who does not have the Holy Spirit going into that battle. Besides, Satan has an entire band of demons he can call and they will fight battles for him. How often do new believers—and mature believers sometimes—think they can beat Satan through their sheer willpower or smarts? They think Satan gives up more easily than he actually does. And things go about as well as expected. “Do not go up, lest you be defeated by your enemies, for the LORD is not among you.”

Luke 11:24-26—24 "When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' 25 And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. 26 Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first." Why does the person fall? Often they forget to ask God’s help. Often, the reason can be summed up in one word: pride. Proverbs 16:18—Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Paul warns us to not think more highly of ourselves than we ought. 1st Corinthians 10:12—Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. And perhaps a lack of repentance. A lack of humility. A lack of the fundamental understanding of who God is, which they had displayed before them ten times that we know of. But they were determined they were gonna show God that they knew better, that they could defeat their enemies all by themselves, that they didn’t need God fighting for them, because they were enough. The truth is, they were not enough. We are not enough. Those we call “mighty men of God” are, as Paul Washer says, “only weak, pitiful, faithless men of a great and merciful God”. In the words of the Old Testament scholars Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch—

But instead of bending penitentially under the judgment of God, they resolved to atone for their error, by preparing the next morning to go to the top of the mountain and press forward into Canaan. And they would not even suffer themselves to be dissuaded from their enterprise by the entreaties of Moses, who denounced it as a transgression of the word of God which could not succeed, and predicted their overthrow before their enemies, but went presumptuously up without the ark of the covenant and without Moses, who did not depart out of the midst of the camp, and were smitten by the Amalekites and Canaanites, who drove them back as far as Hormah. Whereas at first they had refused to enter upon the conflict with the Canaanites, through their unbelief in the might of the promise of God, now, through unbelief in the severity of the judgment of God, they resolved to engage in this conflict by their own power, and without the help of God, and to cancel the old sin of unbelieving despair through the new sin of presumptuous self-confidence—an attempt which could never succeed, but was sure to plunge deeper and deeper into misery.

Nevertheless, neither the ark of the covenant of the LORD nor Moses departed from the camp. Perhaps this is the reason the Israelites thought it would be a good idea to bring out the Ark of the Covenant when the Philistines were defeating them in battle in 1st Samuel 4:3-5—3 And when the people had come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, "Why has the LORD defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the LORD from Shiloh to us, that when it comes among us it may save us from the hand of our enemies." 4 So the people sent to Shiloh, that they might bring from there the ark of the covenant of the LORD of hosts, who dwells between the cherubim. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God. 5 And when the ark of the covenant of the LORD came into the camp, all Israel shouted so loudly that the earth shook. They thought of the Ark of the Covenant as a sort of good luck charm that would help them turn the tide and defeat the Philistines. But what they did not take into account was that Eli, who had judged Israel forty years (1st Samuel 4:18), had never corrected his sons from the evil they were perpetrating in taking away God’s portion from the sacrifices of the people. This was near the end of the period of the Judges, when every man did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25). Eli was one of those, and allowed evil to continue, unlike those such as Gideon and Ehud and Othneil, who led the people to repentance and favor with God. Which is why the wife of Phinehas, son of Eli, said when the Ark was captured and her husband and his brother killed, that "The glory has departed from Israel!" (1st Samuel 4:21). Let us never see God as one who will simply grant our wishes, which would make us sovereign over Him, but rather let us follow the lead of YHVH and do what is right in HIS eyes, that we do not fall into the hands of the evil one.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.