Sermon Tone Analysis

Numbers: The Wilderness Wanderings

If I were to take a poll this evening among you faithful, those of the midweek gathering.

I’m guessing that there is not a single one among you who would say that Numbers is your favorite book in the Bible.

It is not mine either, but I do believe it is relevant and important, and while I wish we had more than six weeks to cover the book, I know that some of you wish I would just give you a one night overview and call it good.

We are going to work together!

That is those of you that chose to stick it out.

We don’t have time to go through every single verse, and neither of us has the desire to hear me read every single name listed in the numberings of the people.

Amen?

We will cover as much as possible in our time together, and then you may or may not have some homework to read or study on your own, in lieu of having Growth Group homework.

I want to make the best use of our time, so for the note takers.

In the first verse we find the words “in the wilderness” which is where the real name of the book comes from.

In Hebrew it is Be-midbar which means in the wilderness.

Greek translators called it something different and in Latin it was translated Numeri, because the translators focused on the two census that are found in the book, one occuring at the beginning of the wandering and one at the end.

If you’ve never studied the book of Numbers, you are in the majority of Christians.

Quick outline it starts where Exodus leaves off, or about 13 months after the people of Israel come out of the Exodus, when they are led by Moses out of Egypt and are in the wilderness of Sinai.

It begins with Moses setting up the army of God.

Now the first 10 chapters cover the people and events while they are in Sinai, and all that the 1st 10 chapters covers takes place in just a few of weeks.

Then from chapter 10:11-22 the book records them leaving Sinai and traveling all the way to Moab and that takes them 38 years of wandering through the land to get there, a trip that should have taken just a few weeks.

22-36 now the people are at Moab and God begins to judge Moses and judge the people this takes place in just a matter of days, and what we see is that all of those that were 20 and above when leaving Egypt perish because of unbelief and Only Joshua and Caleb and those that were under the age of 20 when leaving Egypt are able to enter the promised land.

Norman Geisler breaks the book down differently.

Chapters 1-10 He labels....

Israel’s direction from the Lord (1-10)

Chapters 11-14 is ...

Israel’s disbelief in the Lord (11-14)

and the final section chapters 15-36 he labels...

Israel’s discipline from the Lord (15-36)

In my mind, here’s both the relevance and the significance....it never had to happen.

It is a story of arrested development in God’s people.

Hindered progress for some, and death for others, all because of disobedience to God, that resulted in them never being able to experience the fullness of what God had for them.

Now before we look at what the Lord said, I just want to point out that Moses has been called to lead the people of Israel, but before you can ever lead in any position for the Lord, first we need to be able to listen.

We need to be hearing from the Lord.

The second thing that we should really be taking note of in this book is how specific the Lord’s directions are.

None of us that are saved, none that have been born again are saved unto ourselves.

We don’t come to God for forgiveness, and then go on our merry little way.

God has a plan and a purpose for all of his children, which we will see over the next several Sunday mornings as we explore 1 Corinthians 12-14 and see that God pour out gifts from the Holy Spirit to each of us, not for us, but for the church that we would use those gifts for the benefit of others.

For the sake of bringing honor and glory to God.

Your life is no longer your own.

That is the deal.

God gives specific instructions to Israel here as he want to be the center of their lives and wants them to be a witness to the entire world as they have come out of Egypt.

As you study your Bible’s more and more you will see that there are several types in the bible, where something is represented by something else.

Egypt in the Scriptures is often a type for what we would call the World.

So this is the first of the numberings in this book, it does not include the women or the children, but only the men that were 20 years old and above, who were able to go to war.

If you go down through the list of names there, you will see that there were 12 captains assigned to oversee the men in their tribes and they listed off all of the men that were included in their families, sounds like it was probably a very long and boring day.

But there are things to learn in their names…skip down to verse 17...

The King James translates verse 17 ...

Much more so back then than it seems to be the case is that names mattered, the meanings of names were specifically chosen for various reasons and the names written here are expressive of the men who held them.

In verse 5...

The name Elizur means "my God is a rock." in verse 6...

The name Shla-meal his name means "at peace with God." so that can make for an interesting study, it’s just not for us tonight.

When we get down to verse 21 we see the beginning of the actual numbering of the tribes...

verse 23...

Another interesting study is to compare the numbers gathered at the beginning of the 40 years of wandering and those numbers gathered at the end.

We almost always see an increase in populations over time, and if you do compare the numbers you will see a couple of the tribes increased, but the overall numbers actually declined.

And so those are the men above twenty years of age, those that were able to go on to war, who entered into the forty years of wandering in the wilderness ...and that whole generation died.

Only two of those men were left to go into the Promise Land.

The two were Joshua and Caleb, the Bible tells us why and I hope to get to that next week, but they were the faithful spies that came back with the good report of the promised land.

Verse 47...

Any idea why the Levites were not to be numbered?

They were to serve as the priest and not go out to war.

The tribe of Levi had as its responsibility the taking care of the tabernacle, the moving of it, the setting up of it and through Aaron and the priests, the services within the tabernacle.

But notice that not all of their duties were what we would typically consider ministry or the work of a priest.

Some of them, there entire ministry was labor.

Their job was to hump stuff from one place to another.

Carry the tabernacle, I am in service to the Lord and the people and my job is to carry this bench or this furnishing as unto the Lord.

When we get to chapter 2 we start to see a little bit of the order of our God....

Now, I don’t really think it is possible for us to envision this type of mass migration of people, maybe we will with the current chaos over our boarders in this country, but chapter 1 told us that there was 603,550 available soldiers over the age of 20 and I have read estimates of the the total population of Israel at this time to be between 2-3.2 million people when you include women and all those under the age of 20.

One of the reasons that God chose the Jews was because He loved them, the Bible tells us that.

But He also chose them to chastise the Gentiles, to be an example to the rest of the world.

God set up the nation of Israel as a Theocracy, a nation led by God and a nation that had God as their center.

In the Bible we get to see the benefits of that, and in real life in America we get to see the consequences on a nation when they turn their backs on God.

Super productive homework assignment would be to sit down with this book and as you read through through it draw out what the camp would have been like with the Tabernacle in the very center.

I’m going to put up a graphic here, but I’m not sure how well it will show up on our screens or for you at home, and I’ll just leave that up there for a while so you can picture what the camp might have been like...

I don’t think you can see the narrative on here, but it says “The Book of Numbers describes the layout of the encampment during Israel's 40 years of wilderness wanderings.

The tribes encamped around the tabernacle both in order to stay close to the tent of meeting and to defend it during attack.

The four sides were surrounded by four groups, led by Judah, Reuben, Ephraim, and Dan.

The Levites - specially chosen to be close to God - camped around all sides of the tabernacle.

So as you read through this chapter also understand the significance of this.

The Tabernacle that represented the place that God dwelt was at the very center of their nation and their lives as a people.

And the cloud, the shekinah glory, rested on the tabernacle during the day and the pillar of fire rested on the tabernacle at night.

So as they set up their tents there was order to it, but also every tent faced the Tabernacle so that as every person would wake up in the morning and look out, they would see the Tabernacle the cloud, reminding them of God’s presence not just as individuals, but as the center of their lives as a people.

Vs. 32...

In chapter 3 the Lord speaks to Moses and instructs him to divide the tribe of Levi into three major the family of Gershon, the family of Kohath and Merari (Mer- R-EE).

Chapter 3 vs. 5

If you guys remember after God destroyed the first born in Egypt he said "all of the firstborn are mine, they belong to me."

But we see that God is doing something different here instead of every family committing their firstborn to the priesthood, God has chosen one tribe, the tribe of Levi.

Look at verse 12

We see another difference between this tribe and the rest.

In all of the other tribes, they counted all of those males that were age 20 and up who were able to go to war, but the Levites were not to go to war so look at vs. 15

Much of the remainder of the chapter lays out their positioning in the camp around the tabernacle...

Again we have already gone over why they are closer and on all sides, but we see something interesting at the end of the chapter with God choosing the tribe of Levi over the first born, look at what He tells them to do...

So they were 273 short

In choosing the Levites over the firstborn of every family, God wasn’t getting His fair share.

So the missing men had to be redeemed.

Look at vs 46...

In chapter 4, God gives specific role responsibilities among the families of the Levites.

Remember that the Levites were counted differently that the other tribes.

Rather than number the men age 20 and up they were numbered from one month and above.

But their responsibilities included all kinds of priestly duties, including lugging the Tabernacle from one place to another so that it would always be at the center of the people.

Since the toddlers couldn’t carry their weight, God again numbered these guys a different way...

So the work of the ministry here began at age 30 and they were done or used in a different capacity when they reached age fifty.