Overview of Numbers, Adult Discipleship Class

we talked about the book of Leviticus. This week we’re picking up with the book of Numbers. So if you’ll turn to the book of Numbers, it’s the fourth book of the Bible, fourth book in the Pentateuch, the fourth book Moses wrote. The book of Numbers is where we’re going to be today.

I guess a big question that we should ask before we go to any book in the Old Testament or any book in the Bible for that matter is why this book? Why did God inspire this book? Why is this in our Bibles? What’s the meaning, the purpose, what’s the message of this book and how does it apply to our lives? And it’s good to ask that even with numbers. Last Thursday, some of my students reminded me that the book of Numbers is great for pickup lines or for asking someone out on a date. Because you can get the book of Numbers and say, hey girl, I’ve been looking in the book of Numbers and can’t seem to find yours. But the hope is we’ll find a more deeper meaning, and I’m also not going to reveal who shared that pickup line with them in Bible class at Olive Tree.

But the book of Numbers is where we’re at today. Book of Numbers, once again, fourth book. If we were to think of a theme for the book of Numbers, we can assume it to be the God who expects faithfulness. I don’t take these themes myself. These are themes that other men more wise than me have come up with, but accurately represent the book. In our study of the Old Testament, we’ve talked about how we want a God-centered view of the Old Testament. It’s very easy to be man-centered, or humanly speaking, centered, rather than looking at God as the main character of the Old Testament, though he is. And so our theme for the Book of Numbers is the God who expects faithfulness from his people, Israel.

Like I said, the author is Moses. You can look in later. A couple verse references are numbers 33-2 and 36-13. The date that this would have been written would likely be in between 1446 and 1406 BC, after the book of Exodus and likely right before the book of Deuteronomy. But the book of Numbers is where we are at today.

But in order to understand Numbers, we have to understand what’s come before, right? The book of Genesis, for instance, if we were to look at the name of the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, literally translated is, in the beginning, right? The book of Exodus is, and these are the names. Or we had mentioned it could be now these are the names, but the implication is and these are the names. Starting with the word and as the title is implying that this is meant to be connected to the book before. And in the book of Leviticus is called in the Hebrew Bible, literally translated, and he called. Once again, connecting Leviticus to Exodus. And so in order to understand where we are at in numbers, we need to review what has already taken place in the Old Testament, right? What have we learned so far?

In the book of Genesis, we have learned many things, but one of the main themes of the book of Genesis is that God is creator, right? That famous verse, Genesis 1, 1, in the beginning, God, what? Created the heavens and the earth, right? Exactly. That’s where we start our foundation. Our foundation assumes the existence of God. It doesn’t seek to have some sort of elaborate argument for the existence of God, showing that everyone already believes in God’s existence. I was talking with a friend a couple days ago about atheism. We were at a graduation. a secular university, and cringing at some of the speeches, which I’m sure some of you have certainly experienced as well. We were learning all sorts of stuff about intersectionality, about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and all of that. And I was just talking about atheism with them. And I think it’s a true statement that even though the atheist claims to not believe in God, God doesn’t believe in atheists. And that’s what Genesis 1-1 establishes for us.

And not only did he create everything, but there was only one God. Moses is writing to the Hebrews who have just left Egypt, right? And in Egypt, they did not serve the true and the living God. They served a plethora of false gods. Um, at least most of them likely come from that culture. And so they need to be reminded that there is one God who’s created everything, including them, including everything they see. And it’s all powerful and also is good. We see that in creation, right? God created creation in the six days of creation and saw it was what? Good. And then after the creation of humans, right? It was what? Very good.

Humanity was the culmination of his creation. The creation of his image bearers who were to represent his authority and sovereign power over all the earth, right? His commands to them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, right? To exercise dominion over creation. In humanity’s exercise over creation, albeit stewardship, right, not ownership, but in exercising authority over creation, we represented his image.

We represented his image back in the good old days, or maybe the not so good old days. A long time ago, in that same context, whenever a king went and conquered a land, he would establish his image. Whether that be a boulder with his name inscribed in it or a statue and what that represented is where his statue was, there he had authority. So we saw that with the creation dominion mandate that God was exercising and demonstrating his authority over all the earth.

But what happens in Genesis 3? The fall, right? The fall. Exactly. Sin and death enters into the world, and relationship with God is fractured, and even with fellow men, right? Adam and Eve, right? But God gives hope, and I mentioned that last week. In Genesis 3, even in the midst of cursing the ground, even in the midst of declaring that work is gonna be difficult by the sweat of the brow, right? Pain and difficulty and childbirth. Even the battle of the sexes, right? Your desire will be for your husband and yet he will rule over you. God gives hope in that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. Genesis 3.15. Right? That someway, somehow, one will come who will destroy Satan forever and reverse the curse.

And so, the rest of the book of Genesis, and subsequently the rest of the Old Testament, the rest of history leading up to what Pastor Ron preached about today, there was this look for this seed, which over time, this seed of the woman was more fully revealed. Right? It’s more fully revealed. Think of it like, almost like a puzzle. The outside of the puzzle is being filled in, right? I mean, does everyone in here, when you do puzzles, you start with the outside, right? Everyone? Am I right? Okay. Because it’s so difficult, right, if we do it the other way around. And so it doesn’t mean, even though not everything is revealed about who this will be, which we know is the Lord Jesus Christ, right? Even though everything isn’t revealed in that seed of the woman promise, that still is true, true facts that are the outside of the full picture. And the full picture will be filled in as redemptive history takes place.

So then after that, we have the foundations of the world, right? After the fall, sin is propelling, spiraling downward in a negative way. We think of the flood, right? The thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually. So God judges the world with a global flood and saves a remnant, Noah, and then blesses him and then promises in the Noahic covenant or promise that he would never flood the earth the same way again.

After that though, does sin stop? No, even with Noah, unfortunately. And over time, eventually we get to the end of the foundation section of Genesis chapter 11, culminating in the tower of battle, right? Where humanity was rebelling against God and God graciously and mercifully confused their languages to thwart the spread, the rapid spread of sin that was spiraling out of control. That’s the first foundational section of the Old Testament.

But then after that, Genesis 12 through 15, we talked about a few times ago, is the beginning of what is known as the patriarchal history. In other words, the history of the fathers, right? The history of Israel, where God calls a specific man to be the father figure, the patriarch of his future nation. Who is that? Abraham, or Abram and then Abraham, right? Okay. Exactly.

God promises Abraham three things. In the Abrahamic covenant, we talked about this, it’s like a treaty, a promise that he made to Abraham. Three components of that promise. Do any of you remember any of the three? Yes? Seed, yes, blessing, and? Land, right? I know they don’t talk about that at TMS any, do they? No, I still have Dr. Twist’s English accent going in my head after learning all of that. Yeah, land, descendants, or seed, and blessing.

So in other words, Abraham’s descendants would be promised a land that God would give to them. That they also would be promised descendants, that their population would increase greatly, or seed. And then in blessing. And the blessing component can be seen in a variety of different ways. Blessing to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob immediately, right, in their lives. They were blessed tremendously. There also is the blessing of Abraham and his descendants in the form of Israel. We think of Leviticus 26, which we talked about last week. And then Deuteronomy 28 in the future, blessings for obedience as a nation. That could be characterized as part of it.

In Abraham and his descendants, all the nations or families of the earth would be blessed. There’s another promise God gives, which culminates in Jesus Christ, as the Gentiles are brought in towards salvation, that all the nations of the earth are blessed from the descendant of Abraham, that is Christ. But also, the ones who bless Israel will be what? blessed, and the ones who curse Israel will be what? Cursed.

So many factors, but these promises are the foundations for the Old Testament. And so in order to understand why things take place the way they do, and to have a very God-centered view of the Old Testament, we need to remember his promises. Because God’s promises are based upon not necessarily the people so much as himself, right? And does God’s character ever change? No, neither do his promises, right? Us as believers take great hope in his promises because his character doesn’t change and his promises are based upon his character.

So then the rest of the Old Testament is constant questioning, is God still faithful to the Abrahamic covenant? Is he still faithful for his promises for land, seed, and blessing? Which then brings us to the book of Exodus, right? We have that amazing Isaac, God’s blessings to Isaac after Abraham, Abraham’s son, Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, the Joseph narrative. Remember that classic, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. In the end of Genesis, we’re forced to reckon with the existence of evil in the world, but even in the midst of evil, God is not thwarted. And we’re called to champion His goodness, knowing that He is faithful to His promises, not just because of evil, but in spite of it.

So that brings us to Exodus, right? Israel is now in what country? Egypt, right? Egypt, and everything’s just sunshine and rainbows there, right? No, no, right? We see that they’re in slavery. The Pharaoh sends to power that does not know Joseph. And I don’t think that’s like an intellectual knowledge. I don’t think that some way, somehow they could forget about the second most powerful man in Egypt at that time. I think it’s a lack of respect or recognition. And so he decides, he sees the population of Israel is growing or decreasing. Growing, right? Or I guess increasing and decreasing if we want to be more fancy. And what does he want to do? He wants to stop them from growing, right, by inflicting them with slavery because he’s worried that they could join their enemies and take over Egypt. Or maybe it’s just threatening propaganda. Whether he really believed that, we don’t know, but that’s what the text says.

But when he inflicts them with this slavery, what happens to the population? It grows even more. The text itself says that, right? They multiplied exceedingly great so that they filled the land of Egypt. It’s an amazing thought because that isn’t natural growth, right? We talked about the baby boomer generation being natural growth. You remove the affliction of the war, what happened to the population? Spiked massively, right? Here it’s the opposite. Affliction is added and yet the population is growing. Which goes to show this isn’t a natural growth, this is a supernatural growth, which is tied directly to God’s faithfulness and his promise to Abraham towards the descendant or seed blessing of the Abrahamic covenant. The promise that he would make a great people for himself.

So that’s the book of Exodus. And then God raises up a deliverer, Moses, who then goes and he uses to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt through a variety of plagues. And then after the Red Sea, we remember that amazing thing, incident, and how God destroyed the Egyptian army and saved his people. He brought them then to a certain mountain. Any of you remember the name of that mountain? Sinai, right? Mount Sinai. And there he made with them what’s known as the Mosaic Covenant or promise. I think it’s better represented as really the Sinatic Covenant, more of like with Israel rather than Moses himself.

But there he gives them two roles, tells them, I have, you know, I brought you out of Egypt to worship me. And in worshiping me, you’re gonna be two things to the nations. Do any of you remember those two rules in Exodus 19? Kingdom of priests and a holy nation. In other words, as you worship me, the true and the holy God, totally other, and all the fake gods of the nations, you are to live holy as well. You’re not only to worship a God who’s totally different, you’re to live differently.

And in so doing, you’re going to be different than the rest of the nations. That’s a good thing, because I’m going to bless you when you do that as a nation. And as I bless you, your role in the earth is going to be sort of like a light to everyone else, the darkness of the nations, that they’ll see the way that I bless you as Israel, and then they will come to me. That’s how Israel was operating in the Old Testament, as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

Remember, we distinguish between priest and prophet, right? A prophet brings God to who? The people, right? Through revelation, through God’s word. The priest brings the people to who? God, right? And so as a kingdom of priests, they were to bring the peoples to God. And if we were to fast forward to the future, the best part of the nation of Israel operating in that role in Old Testament history would be Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. when she comes and sees the way God has blessed Israel tremendously, and admits that God has blessed them, and praises Him for it, even though that’s short-lived.

So, kingdom of priests and holy nation, gives them the law in Exodus 20, or the Ten Commandments, and the law comes with that. But what’s the problem with Israel? Are they completely obedient? They don’t operate as a kingdom of priests and holy nation. Immediately after that, we see they, after Moses is up for 40 days and 40 nights, what do they create? An idol, the what? Golden calf.

I don’t know if I mentioned this in this class back when I was in LA for jury duty. Oh, wonderful thing. That was so great. In the middle of a graduate school semester, you know how terrible that would be? Missing three weeks of Greek, having to try and explain it to our professors and keep up on homework. But I remember walking down to downtown LA to the courthouse. And on the courthouse, there were three statues. The first one from right to left, if you were walking right to left, which is how I walked. There was one of like a revolutionary, and it said the Declaration of Independence underneath the statue of the revolutionary. The next one was of a guy in chain mail, and it said the Magna Carta. And the last one, the foundation for all of them, in LA, mind you, was Moses. And it said Mosaic Law underneath. There’s actually two of them. I saw another one in the city square of Moses that was gold, too. It was amazing. I want to get on the list for when you guys tear down that statue, please bring it to me. I’ll take it, right? But on the statue, if you looked closely enough, under his feet, you could see him smashing a golden calf, the golden calf, or like a cow. And it was so cool. Oh, it was so awesome.

Anyway, that’s kind of besides the point. Golden calf, this is a problem. The people, even though they’ve left Egypt, right, and slavery under the Egyptians, they haven’t left slavery to sin. They still have this problem, slavery to sin. And they disobeyed God in that. And as a result, the question at the end of the book of Exodus is, how can a holy God, who is totally different, dwell in the midst of sinful, unholy people?

The whole end of the book of Exodus talks about the specifications of the tabernacle, which is the dwelling place, the special dwelling place of God in the midst of the people. And the answer we get to the question of how can a holy God dwell with sinful people is in the book of Leviticus, right? We talked about that last week. That’s the answer to that question at the end of the book of Exodus. These aren’t random. They’re all tied together, conveying the same message, Moses writing all of them.

And in the book of Leviticus, we see that the way to God in the first section of the book of Leviticus is through appropriate worship, right? As the people exercised faith, they would sacrifice according to God’s specifications, revealed in the book of Leviticus, and that in that, that would be the way to God. And we learned about Nadab and Abihu, right? Wonderful couple fellows. Yeah, unfortunately, they got fired from their jobs. Quite literally. And after that we see God’s serious about holiness.

And so we see that holiness also isn’t just about the way to God, right, through appropriate sacrifice. But the second portion of the book of Leviticus is the walk with God. through an obedient lifestyle. We see all these random laws and we’re wondering, like, okay, mixing two different fabrics, why aren’t we allowed to do that? Why can’t I enjoy my crustaceans or my bacon? Like, what’s going on with that? Or why couldn’t we breed two different types of cattle? And at a momentary glance, they might seem random, but all of them are actually a blessing to Israel Not only just maybe from a health perspective, which I don’t think is the main point. I think you can eat bacon worshipfully to the Lord now and not feel too worried about that.

But the point was that they would be holy and not like the rest of the nations. They wouldn’t drink blood, they wouldn’t do all of these things, which the other nations likely practiced and engaged in. And so by not doing that, it would separate them further, so there would be no temptation to fall into idolatry, right? Like the golden calf incident. There’s actually a really interesting motif or theme throughout the Old Testament of you become like what you worship. There was a guy who wrote a book about it, and you can see in God’s description of Israel that when they worshiped the golden calf, they were a stiff-necked people. like a disobedient calf. They had become just like what they worshipped.

Later on in the book of Isaiah too, you know, having eyes but not seeing and ears but not hearing. They’re now just like the idols that they worshipped, rather than holy, like worshipping the holy God. And so at the end of the book of Leviticus, we see a very important chapter in chapter 26, which then promises Israel blessings for obedience and curses for what? Disobedience. This is foundational for the history of Israel as a nation. How are they doing? The rest of history in the Old Testament will allude to that one way or another.

And the big test after the golden calf incident is now going to be in the book of Numbers. The name Numbers itself, the Hebrew name is actually in the wilderness, if we were to translate that literally. But the name numbers comes from the Greek translation, the Septuagint of the Book of Numbers, and it comes from a word that we get our word in English arithmetic from. And it is talking about numbers with reference to censuses taken. If we were to split up the book of Numbers into two different sections, we could split it up into the first section being the first generation of Israel, which is chapters 1 through 25, and the second section being the second generation of Israel, chapters 26 through 36. Once again, numbers, censuses, first generation, second generation.

God is faithful to his promises, even in the midst of the people’s unfaithfulness.

So we see at the chapter one, if you have a title on chapter one, it talks about the census of Israel’s warriors. Towards the end of that, in verses 45 and 46, we can do the math, that this is probably somewhere around 2.4 to 2.5 million people now. Once again, is God faithful to the Abrahamic covenant? Yes, right? The promise of many descendants. We already see that. In fact, Moses even mentions that in the book of Deuteronomy.

But around 2.4 to 2.5 million people, if you estimate 600,000 men, 600,000 wives for those 600,000 men, and roughly two children for each couple. It’s an amazing, staggering amount of people. God is, once again, he’s faithful to his promises.

So then they have an arrangement of the camps, right? 2.5 million people, only a small portion of people don’t have to worry about not running into each other. Just kidding, they do. And that’s why they’re talking in chapter two about the arrangement of the camps. Chapter three talks about the Levites and the priesthood, the very important helping the people with their worship.

Duties of the Priests, verses 25 through 39. The Redemption of the Firstborn, verses 40 through 51. We have these people, the Kohathites, specifically in chapter four, and it talks about their duties. And then the Gershonites and the Merorites, and it talks about defilement. Then there’s that, in chapter five, in that adultery test, I’m kind of skipping through some stuff to get to the most important things with the time that we have.

Chapter six is important. It’s the law of the Nazarites. This is important to remember with the account of Samson, right? Certain things about, it’s like fasting, setting oneself apart for God and worship, not out of command, bless you, but specifically just because they wanted to worship him with that. Verses 22 through 26, such an amazing, amazing passage. I’ll read it briefly of chapter six.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to Aaron and to his sons saying, thus you shall bless the sons of Israel. You shall say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace.

And on top of maybe thinking of Kerry Jobe music when you hear this, something significant about this verse itself is one of the oldest biblical texts, in fact, the oldest biblical text and amulet that we found is of this verse specifically. It’s amazing. Once again, just confirming what we already know.

But in chapter 7, it’s very similar to what I mentioned in Leviticus. Even the priests themselves and leaders also need to make offerings, need to sacrifice because they are sinners as well. Verse 89, big chapters, chapter seven. It said, now when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with him, with God, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony between the two cherubims. So he spoke to them, or to him. Really cool. Talks about cleansing the Levites in chapter 8, the Passover in chapter 9, as well as the cloud covering the tabernacle. Once again, the special dwelling place of God. There’s other things about worship that come as well.

But in chapter 11, we see that the people are super grateful for everything, right? And they aren’t quick to forget. No. And it’s so easy, I noticed, too, in reading the Old Testament, to be like, what are these people doing, right? They just got delivered from Egypt. Like, how could they forget all of these things? But I think it’s kind of a helpful reminder that that’s the nature of our human hearts. It’s easy to forget the things that God has done in our lives. And if we were back then, perhaps we would be no better. And apart from God’s grace, we certainly wouldn’t be.

But the people complain to God in the midst of dwelling in the wilderness. And it said that, and when the Lord heard it, in chapter 11, verse one, his anger was kindled and the fire of the Lord burned among them and consumed some of them, the outskirts of the camp. They also complain, they complain out of being greedy desires, verse four says, wanting meat to eat, not just manna that God had given them. And so God eventually answers that, but he does not endorse the complaining.

Moses complains himself in verses 10 through 15. We see that, which shows that Moses is no better than the people. This is going to be very important, especially when we realize that Moses won’t enter the promised land, but will die off with the first generation of Israel. However, God gives him 70 elders to assist him. other leaders in Israel to help kind of carry the load. Once again, 2.5 million people. It would be very hard to just constantly be hearing everything that’s going on with everyone.

And then God says that he’s going to give, like meat to eat, in verse 20 says, he’ll give a whole month until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you. What a wonderful illustration. Because you have rejected the Lord who is among you and you have wept before him saying, why did we ever leave Egypt? The problem isn’t that they were hungry, it was that they were complaining to God as if he hadn’t already given them everything they needed.

Many things, more complaining. There’s chapter 12, Miriam and Aaron complain as well. Verse three I find is funny and I mean, I want to spend more time on this verse. I’m just kind of thinking through it. But it says in parentheses, Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any other man who was on the face of the earth. And who wrote numbers? Moses, I just find that funny. I need to think through that a little bit more. But anyway, it’s just amazing when Aaron and Miriam complain, God makes Miriam leprous, leprosy, and God takes it away eventually to show that they aren’t to complain.

Then we have chapter 13, we have the spies viewing the land. God tells Moses in verse two, send out for yourself men so that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I am going to give to the sons of Israel. Notice, it’s not I might give, it’s I am going to give to the sons of Israel. If we think back to the Abrahamic covenant, those three blessings and promises, which one of those three is that one there? The land, right? I’m faithful not only to the population, not only to blessing, but also to land itself.

And we see the names of the different spies. A couple that, the one that I want to point out is verse six. You see from the tribe of Judah, Caleb, he will see the promised land as the one of the people of, and Joshua as well, the first generation that survived. Verse 16, Moses called Hosea, the son of Nun, Joshua. Joshua is introduced, Moses’ eventual successors. The people though are afraid, they see these Canaanites and they’re worried. Verse 30 though, Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, we should by all means go up and take possession of the land, for we will surely overcome it. Once again, it shows his faith in the midst of the unbelief of the rest of the spies.

But then the rest of the men are worried and act in unbelief. And because of that, God judges them. Chapter 14, the people rebel again. And this once again, there’s this constant theme of even though God is faithful, the people are unfaithful. Moses then after they are unfaithful and rebelling, pleads for the people in verses 11 through 19. citing God’s promises. And he once again, in verse 12, I want to point this out. This is a common question. God says, I will smite them with pestilence and dispossess them, Israel, and I will make you, Moses, into a nation greater and mightier than they. There’s a very similar account in Exodus 32 where God basically says the same thing, which would God still be faithful if To Israel, if he were to judge everyone for the sin that they had committed, and they deserve judgment for, and made a nation of Israel out of Moses.

Yes, it’s not meant to be a trick question. He still would be faithful in that because Moses is once again one of the descendants of Abraham. And yet Moses pleads with God and he once again cites the revealed character of God that God revealed in Exodus 34 in verse 18. The Lord is slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty. And then once again, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations in a corporate Israel context. not a specific individual sense, not today like some sort of worry about generational curses like, oh my goodness I don’t know if I had some great-great-great-great grandfather in the KKK or something like that and I’m somehow still messed up by that.

No, instead what it’s talking about Israel specifically that when they would be disciplined according to Leviticus 26 standards of curses for disobedience on the nation that the generations after would be impacted by that. So, the Lord, once again, He pardons and rebukes is the title of the next section, verses 20 through 38. And then it’s like, then Israel decides to, even though the first generation is now not going to be allowed to enter into the promised land, they decide to, in their own strength, disobey God after already disobeying God. Verse 40, they say, here we are, we have indeed sinned, but we will go up to the place which the Lord has promised. So after God has already revealed that they aren’t to be allowed into the promised land, that first generation, They then decide to go up, and as a result, some of them failed in that, the ones who went there.

There’s many more laws for Canaan, which once again, I want to remind you of the purpose of these laws. Leviticus sometimes, like I said, it seems random, but these laws were intentional. because of religion and culture being so intertwined. The people were not to practice the same practices as other cultures because of how intertwined religion was with them, in the same way that they were to expel the peoples from the land, the land of Canaan, so that they wouldn’t fall into the same idolatry, also as they exercised God’s judgment on those nations. The Sabbath is holy. There’s an example of that. God tells Moses in verse 37 and 38 of chapter 15, speak to the sons of Israel and tell them that they make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and that they shall put on the tassels of each corner a cord of blue. It shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord so as to do them and not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you have played the harlot, spiritually speaking.

So, you know, the Bible isn’t preaching here, follow your heart. You hear that all the time, right? In our culture, follow your heart, follow your heart. You know, no, the heart is deceitful and wicked, right? And this is what he’s talking about. Follow the commands of God, not your own heart. Now, just because of the limited scope of our time, we have lots of other things that take place. And I would highly commend steadying the Book of Numbers. There’s more complaining that takes place. The second generation is going to be the ones that are allowed to enter into the land. But in the midst of Israel’s disobedience, there’s this king named Balak who tries to hire a man named Balaam, which maybe some of you have heard of, to try and curse Israel.

But Balaam, in chapter 22, you can find this. Balaam is not able to, even though he’s a false prophet. Verse 12 of chapter 22 says, God said to Balaam, do not go with them. You shall not curse the people for they are blessed. Once again, is God faithful to the Abrahamic covenant? Yes, he is, right? We have that amazing account of the angel and Balaam and his donkey. Yeah, I don’t know if he sounded like Eddie Murphy, but I would wonder what the donkey’s voice sounded like. There are many components of Balaam’s prophecies found in chapter 23. Once again, verse 8, how shall I curse whom God has not cursed? Verse 9, behold a people who dwells apart and will not be reckoned among the nations, holy nation, who can count the dust of Jacob or number the fourth part of Israel, verse 10, that’s part of the seed promise, God’s faithful.

We see in verse 19 an important reminder about the character of God. God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should repent or regret. He’s totally, completely sovereign. But we see in the most important part of the book of Numbers, if you don’t remember anything I tell you, is from Balaam’s prophecy, Numbers 24. Verse 17 is the specific verse I want to focus on, because I want us to think about the Old Testament context and what this would have done to the original audience. Balaam’s prophesying about Israel, and he says in verse 17, I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. A star shall come forth from Jacob. A scepter shall rise from Israel and shall crush through the forehead of Moab.

Now it’s really easy to read through this and not see too much of what’s going on, but if we remember what’s already taken place, what God has already revealed in the book of Genesis, we’ll see this is a foundational moment, right? When we see the end of this, crushed through the forehead of Moab, or Moab being one of God’s enemies, what does that sound like? Yes, exactly, right? The seed promise in Genesis 3, right? That the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.

But then a couple lines above that, or actually the clause above it, a scepter shall rise from Israel, reminds us, this is gonna be harder, of what promise in Genesis, it’s towards the end. Genesis 49, Jacob is blessing his sons, and he blesses Judah, and essentially prophesies and says that the scepter shall not depart from Judah. So in other words, there will be a ruler that will come from Judah, whose reign will know no end.

And what Balaam’s doing, as God is working through him, not because he’s a bad prophet, but in spite of it, is he’s connecting Genesis 3.15 with Genesis 49.10, saying, you know that seed of the woman that’s to crush the head of the serpent? That’s the same person, the one, the ruler from Judah, who will reign forever.

We learn more about that as Old Testament redemptive history goes on, as we get this 2 Samuel chapter 7, Davidic covenant, promise to David that one of his descendants would rule forever, and eventually fulfilled, as we know, in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But it’s just such a fascinating thing, because now we’re starting to realize, okay, who’s going to reverse the curse? And the focus, once again, is on Jesus now. And there’s more that could be talked about, and we don’t have time, about Israel’s sin, Israel’s unfaithfulness.

But in chapter 26 and onwards, the focus is now the second generation. The first generation is dying off, has died off, is not going to enter into the promised land. But now chapter 26 through 36 talks about a new generation that starts with the census. The text itself is showing it. and now sets Israel up for conquering the promised land.

Only Israel’s supposed to remember one thing when they conquer the promised land, and we’ll see that in Deuteronomy, is what are they supposed to do with the nations? Are they supposed to leave them in? No. Why? It’s not because of melanin color. It’s not because of some weird neo-Marxist colonial worldview, whatever. No, that’s not the reason why. The reason why is because the religion and culture is so intertwined that the nations worshiping false gods coming into their nation as Israel and staying in the land would have a corrupting presence.

And so the book of Numbers looks forward to Moses’ final address to Israel before they enter into the promised land, which we get in the book of Deuteronomy. But it also points us to the even bigger picture of the one who would come to crush the forehead of Moab, whose reign would have no end, the ruler from Judah, who we know is Jesus Christ and we celebrate this time of the year.

Let’s pray. Lord, thank you so much for your word. Lord, we even see in a book like Numbers that it points very clearly and directly to you. As a reminder, Lord, that the reason why we love you is because you loved us first, that you had a plan of salvation, that Lord, the Bible reveals you as the lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world, that this wasn’t plan B, that took place to demonstrate your glory to everyone and showing your love for undeserving sinners like us.

I pray, Lord, that as we go into this week, that we would think more of you, as Pastor Ron mentioned, that we would be reminded again for the reason why we celebrate Christmas in this season, that in the midst of the hustle and bustle of gifts and going places and white elephants and get-togethers and different Christmases with different sides of family and all sorts of different things, that we would remember and keep the main thing the main thing, that it’s all about you.

We thank you for crushing the head of Satan, for reversing the curse, and for the great hope, as we sang about today, the foretaste of deliverance, seeing your resurrection, that one day we will be without sin, that we will be like you in that way. And that on that day, there will be a perfect kingdom of priests and holy nation that will be without sin, that will operate perfectly and demonstrate your glory throughout the whole universe.

We long for that day, but we thank you for the present. And it’s in your name we pray these things. Amen.