Sermon Tone Analysis

Big Idea: God is shaping His people to value obedience over instant self-gratification using a 40 year road trip in the wilderness.

Picking any one particular passage and trying to see the whole from it is impossible.

To properly understand the book of Numbers, you must see it through the lens of the movement of the people from Mt. Sinai to the Promised Land.

We see a recurrent cycle of Rebellion-Judgment-Salvation that God operates through to shape His people.

We have two choices: First, we can rebel against God.

God will honor our decision to make our own way but that way is hard and always leads to our judgment and death.

Or, we can trust in God and find life and satisfaction.

We are all on a journey and God is shaping us into people of obedience just as the Israelites.

We do not have to experience the same repeated cycles of rebellion and judgment to find salvation…we have the choice to choose obedience as we trust in God as our leader.

I want to see if you guys can finish this sentence for me...

It’s not about the destination but the____________.

Here is the deal…that quote is only true if the journey is pleasant right?

Who in here has a terrible road trip story?

Tell the story of our road trip across the united states.

Why do I tell you this?

When a road trip is awesome, there is nothing quite like the experience.

When it is terrible, you will never forget the lessons you learned…like don’t leave your luggage unzipped in Arkansas in the middle of Brown Recluse season.

Or, don’t take an entire handful of laxatives in the middle of the South Dakota Badlands dessert (that comes from part of the story that wasn’t shared).

I really like the road trip metaphor.

This idea that life is a journey really conveys so much truth.

You see:

Our character, minds, bodies, and souls are shaped by an accumulation of experiences over time.

Do diet pill bit…we love the idea of something instant like that…and yet…explain long term faithfulness to diet, exercise, and rest is the real key.

The accumulation of little healthy choices over a long period of time is the only real way to make lasting change.

Now, we know this truth but I just wanted to remind us of it because the book of Numbers is like the worst road trip in the history of road trips.

And the best terrible road trips are other people’s terrible road trips because I didn’t have to live it to learn the lesson.

Like, if you guys travel through the south in late spring…keep your luggage zipped up.

Or, don’t take laxatives in the middle of the desert where you are an hour from the nearest restroom and be sure to check that the urgent care you are about to visit is in your insurance network…btw military folks…national park urgent cares aren’t covered by tricare…I know because we visited like three of them.

Here is the deal…I’ve always said there are two types of people…touch stove or watch someone touch stove bit...

God is using lessons learned for an entire generation of people on the worst road trip or journey ever to teach all of us some very important lessons.

Lessons like: How do we follow God when the future seems uncertain?

Whose wisdom do we trust when conventional wisdom comes up short?

What does it look like to live a life completely in-step with and following after God? Perhaps my favorite is this: If we aren’t leaning far enough forward that if God doesn’t show up we will fail, are we really even living in faith?

And here is the choice…you can either choose to make the same mistakes as those in the book of Numbers and experience the same judgment and consequences, or, you can learn from those.

I think these are just a few of the majorly applicable life questions that the book of Numbers addresses.

But in order to see them, we have to remember something I taught you back in like week two of this series: We have to know the original intended audience or we will be prone to miss some of the beauty that Numbers is trying to communicate.

The book of Numbers was written to the Joshua generation to teach them how to trust in God and follow His leadership.

Explain who the Joshua generation is…the generation that will possess the promised land.

This generation was about to be put in a place where every single step they took was going to be life and death.

They were an untrained and largely unarmed group that would have been easy pickings for even the smallest nation and yet God was bringing them into a land to fight against nations and armies much larger and more skilled in battle than them.

In chapter five of the book of Joshua, we get this story about Joshua meeting this random man the day before their first major battle in the land…explain commander of the Lords army bit...

Where do you think Josua learned this response from?

I think he learned it from right here in Numbers chapter 14 verses 27-34

Moses sent twelve spies into the land to check it out before they came in to take it over and the only two that came back trusting God’s plan were Joshua and Caleb…these men watched an entire generation die over the next forty years of wilderness wandering.

They watched an entire generation touch the stove so that the next time Joshua runs into the commander of the Lords army his response is: As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.

The book of Numbers is written for us to take the same exact lesson from it.

Before we watch an entire nation touch the stove in the Story Overview, however, I want us to look at our study concept for the week:

Study Concepts

Do different genres are read different ways bit...

The book of Numbers is primarily narrative and to properly read a piece of narrative, the story arrangement is key.

We have seen this before even just last week and it actually was an enormous key in understanding the book of Leviticus.

I didn’t draw much attention to how that process works last week, I just simply showed it to you through how the book was arranged.

This week, I want to dive a little deeper and give you a couple of concepts to help you see that for yourself.

Numbers isn’t just narrative, though.

It falls into the sub-category of historical narrative.

We have to understand that:

We typically view history from a secular or, human perspective and yet, Numbers is rooted in theological history as it views past events through God’s perspective.

READ:

Here is what I mean by this.

Modern historians do not invoke the mind of God to explain the origins of the Second World War: rather they look to the economic crisis of the 1920’s or to the psychological make-up of Hitler and the social climate following the first great war.

In discussing historical events the Bible does not ignore human agency, but it is much more interested in the relationship of God to events, and in how his purposes, often declared in advance by prophets or dreams, were worked out in the life of Israel.

Numbers is a prophetic or theological history in that it interprets Israel’s founding events in terms of God’s promises made to the patriarchs.

It offers an explanation of Israel’s situation that is based on these events and shows through its exposition of the law how Israel must behave in the present, if she is to hold the land of Canaan promised to her ancestors.

You see, while poetry is primarily concerned with involving all of your personhood into the story (that is to say your intellect, your emotions, and your senses) narrative conveys its message primarily through details and storyline.

The problem is that details and storyline are at war with one another.

Details want to draw you into the particulars of a story, while at the same time, the stories arrangement is conveying a truth on a much larger scale than any of the particular details can communicate.

END READING

To properly read narrative, we must constantly be evaluating the details of each story within the context of the overall storyline to see how they support the larger message.

That may have been confusing so let me explain.

We actually have no problem doing this when it comes to modern literature.

We will read a story and come to details we don’t fully understand or that even may be presented as a mystery we will just keep on reading with those details in our mind.

We can do this because we understand that good writing will clear up any unclear details or mysteries in time if we just zoom out and consider them in light of the overall context that will be made clear as we read more.

Its like when you are reading a book and all of a sudden a character who you’ve not previously met just starts talking and you can tell there is a huge back story there and that they are important to the overall plot.

We don’t let the unclear details of that characters origin story freeze us do we?

No! We understand that we just have to zoom out, keep reading, and we will understand those details as the narrative progresses.

For some reason though, when we read biblical narrative, we have the hardest time with this.

We will come to a single passage or story within a book and not understand what is going on so we stop and zoom in closer to comb through the details like a detective to see if we can get a clearer picture.

Stop! Don’t do that.

Rarely will we find resolution for our questions by approaching the text that way.

All of this to say, when you don’t understand something in narrative texts, in particular the book of Numbers this week, zoom out and continue reading with those details in mind.

Don’t lose sight of them.

Don’t lose focus on the overarching story because you get tripped up in the details.

But at the same time, don’t abandon the details because they are the key to understanding the theological truth within the overarching story.

Clear as mud?

I think the best way to show you what I mean is for us to just dive into the text for this week in our:

Story Overview

In English, we call the fourth book in the Torah Numbers because of the two census’ that act as book-ends at the front and back of the story.

This is a real shame because I think that many people avoid the book of Numbers simply because of it’s name.

In the past few weeks alone, I have had three different conversations where people said that exact thing to me in fact.

In the Hebrew Bible Number is called Bamidvar (במדבר) which means: “In the Wilderness.”

Personally, I think that is a much more rad name and it drives at the heart of what Numbers is actually all about.

If you avoid Numbers because you are afraid of all the different census’ then you will actually miss what is one of the wildest roller-coaster rides in the entire Bible.

The Numbers narrative is recounting Israel’s journey from Mount Sinai to the Promised land.

The book is arranged like this:

INSERT PICTURE ONE HERE

Explain that picture…

Now, if you picture that chart like the vehicle that moves the storyline along, then here are the wheels that the vehicle sits on:

INSERT PICTURE TWO HERE

The book of Numbers should be seen through the recurring cycle of Rebellion, Judgment, and Salvation.

The road trip from Mount Sinai to Canaan should have only taken about two weeks, and yet the journey takes them 40 years.