SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome. I'm Cliff Hedges. This is Pastor Cliff's Notes. This is a podcast where we are studying the Bible. We're working our way through the book of Numbers. Today is episode 1629, and we're looking at Numbers chapter 15, verses 32 through 41. So God has brought the Israelites to Kedish Barnea at the edge of the land of Canaan. The twelve scouts traveled through the promised land and brought back their report. They said that the land was plentiful, but the cities were large and fortified, and there were giants in the land, and the people rebelled. God said that the generation that had been counted in the census of chapter one would not go into the promised land. They would spend forty years in the wilderness, and that generation would die in the wilderness. Then chapter 15, God's been giving more instructions about how to live in the land of Canaan. He reviewed some details about sacrifices and firstfruit offerings. Continuing in that today. So we're in Numbers 15, verse 32. While the Israelites were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. So this is right after the instructions about sacrifices for sin. And now we're going to see an example of dealing with sin. So they're still in the wilderness, and they find a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Well, this is a problem, because they've been told don't do that. Back in Exodus 35, starting in verse 1, Moses assembled the entire Israelite community and said to them, These are the things the Lord has commanded you to do. For six days work is to be done, but on the seventh day you're to have a holy day, a Sabbath of complete rest to the Lord. Anyone who does work on it must be executed. Do not light a fire in any of your homes on the Sabbath day. Pretty straightforward. So this guy's gathering wood on the Sabbath day. First off, there was the command do no work. He's doing work, gathering firewood. And why would you be gathering firewood unless you intended to light a fire? And that was specifically called out in verse three of Exodus thirty-five, do not light a fire. And that seemed to be the reason he was gathering firewood. So we've got pretty much a double sin here of the man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Verse 33. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses, Aaron, and the entire community. They placed him in custody because it had not been decided what should be done to him. Well, I think we just read there, it said he must be executed. But here it says they're not sure. Is this the first person to ever be caught doing this? Is this the first time since the whole event at Kadesh Barnea? So there's questions here. We don't know why exactly, where there's not sure what the method would be to execute him, the place, by whom. But there's a question. So Moses talks to God. Verse 35. Then the Lord told Moses, the man is to be put to death. The entire community is to stone him outside the camp. So the entire community brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death as the Lord had commanded Moses. Now, your first thought here, this seems harsh for such a seemingly minor offense. Well, is it? This was no accident. We just had last time these sins that could be atoned for through sacrifices. And a lot of it was the whole of issue was unintentional sin, where you found out you really had violated God's law, but you didn't really mean to. This was no accident. He didn't just trip and fall on some sticks, and when he got up, there were sticks in his pocket. No, he was purposefully violating the Sabbath. It was a Sabbath. Everybody knows it's a Sabbath. There's no manna that comes down on the Sabbath. Everybody's doing the things you're supposed to do on the Sabbath with is nothing. And he's out gathering firewood. So he knew it was wrong. And this would be what we call a high-handed sin. And we saw that at the end of the passage we looked at last time, verses 30 and 31. It said, the person who acts defiantly, and that is a translation for high-handed, whether native or resident alien, blasphemes the Lord. That person be cut off from his people, he will certainly be cut off because he has despised the Lord's word and broken his command. His guilt remains on him. So that says that he's to be cut off from the people. And then back at what we saw in Exodus 35, he's to be executed. So the real offense here is defiance of God. Because what he's saying is, I know God's rules, I know God's commands, I know what's going on. I choose to go out and gather firewood, and presumably to light a fire and let everybody see the smoke from the fire. This is a high-handed sin. Defiance of God. And so they consult with God. God said, No, you need to take him outside to camp, cut him off from the people, and stone him to death. Now, what would a New Testament application of this be? Well, we're told how to deal with sin in Matthew 18. If somebody is sinning were to go to that person and talk to them with the goal of restoration, the goal of repentance, the goal of bringing about reconciliation, and we try to resolve it. And then we go through steps, we keep trying to solve it and take it to more serious responses to the sin until the point where it comes before the whole church. And the instructions from the Lord are and if the person continues to act in defiance of God, that's not the exact words used, but that's what it basically is saying, then you're to remove them from the church. That is, cut them off from their people. And so we have a similar kind of thing still, even in the New Testament, of sin will not just be ignored. Now, what about the whole idea of Sabbath breaking? And so we see this is a serious sin here, breaking the Sabbath. What do we do with that from a New Testament perspective? We've talked about this before. Remember, the Sabbath is the sign of the Sinai covenant, the covenant given through Moses on Mount Sinai to the Israelite people. That covenant, the sign of that covenant is the Sabbath. Every Saturday you observe the Sabbath as a reminder of the covenant you were in with God. Well, we're no longer under that covenant. We are under the new covenant, covenant of the blood of Christ. And so we're not under the rules of the Sabbath any longer. And so Sabbath breaking, that's not an issue for us. But sin, it is still an issue for us. Continuing in Numbers 15, verse 37. The Lord said to Moses, Speak to the Israelites and tell them that throughout their generations they are to make tassels for the corners of their garments and put a blue cord on the tassel at each corner. Okay, this seems to be kind of out of the blue here, no pun intended. But blue is an important color in use at the tabernacle. It's an expensive dye. Why blue? Well, be careful, we're not told why. A lot of people think, well, that was a sign of royalty, and it's a symbol of uh the Lord is our king. Maybe, but we're not told. We're just told to do it. Or they were told to do it. And the reason, verse 39, these will serve as tassels for you to look at so that you may remember all the Lord's commands and obey them and not prostitute yourselves by following your own heart and your own eyes. Well, the interesting little comment there. He also talks about prostituting them by chasing after foreign gods. But here he says, following your own desires is prostituting yourselves from God. And so the whole point of these tassels is to remember the Lord's commands. That's immediately following the part about the Sabbath breaking. Just to remind you that you're in a covenant relationship with God. Verse 40. This way you will remember and obey all my commands and be holy to your God. 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. Now it doesn't make the same kind of sense to us as it did to them, but the hem of a garment was a bigger deal way back when. Remember the story in 1 Samuel 24, where David and his men are hiding in a cave, and King Saul, who's chasing David, comes into the cave to relieve himself, and David sneaks up and cuts off a piece of the hem of Saul's garment. Then after Saul leaves, David feels really guilty because he has basically disrespected the king by doing this. And David confesses what he has done to the king. That's because the hymn of the garment's a big deal. And so the tassels on the hymns are to remind them that they are God's people. Everywhere you go, you got these tassels. You see them all the time. You know, they're always coming into your field of view, and they're just to remind you. You belong to God. You are God's people. One way maybe to think about it for us is people have their favorite sports teams, and you wear a t-shirt with the sports team's emblem on it, or colors, or hat. And that's a way of identifying with your favorite team. And this is a way of identifying with God. God's people wear these tassels on their hemns of their clothes, on the corners of their clothes. That's what God's people do. And every time you see them, you're reminded, we are God's people. What's the New Testament example of this? It's a baptism. The whole reason we are baptized is to symbolize that we now belong to God's people. We identify with God and the people of God. So it's just a mode of identification. And for them, a reminder. A reminder that you belong to God, and as a result of that, you obey what God said to do. Thanks for joining me. Join me again next time so we continue working through numbers.