1461 - "The Age of Manhood in the Scriptures" Numbers 1, 32:11-13

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1461. We are making our way through the books of Torah. And we're learning about sacrifice and the great story of the blood river, the crimson river that runs from Genesis to Revelation. And we have been talking about the various offerings and sacrifices. Now we're going to move into the book of Numbers out of Leviticus and learn about how God prepared his people for redemption. Over and over again, God was merciful and kind and gracious as he always is with his children, and he gave the Israelites chance after chance, and he showed mercy over and over again toward them because it seemed that they were constantly rebelling. Sound familiar? The Lord told the children of Israel, I did not choose you because you were the greatest. I did not choose you because you were the largest in number. As a matter of fact, you are a stiff necked and stubborn people. Often people have asked me through the years, Pastor, why do you believe that God chose Israel? Well, only God knows that. But I can tell you I'm as puzzled as to why God chooses any of us for salvation and to show his mighty arm when we are as rebellious as we are. The best among us are rebellious and self willed and selfish. But I believe God said what he did about Israel and chose Israel, if not for the very reason, certainly as an ingredient in the reason that he might show his grace and magnify his grace above all else. God said about Israel they are the most stubborn and stiff necked people on the planet. Now he didn't use those words, but he did use stubborn and stiff necked, and that they were rebellious always, that they were disobedient always. But isn't it wonderful that God is able to overcome where sin abounds grace much more abounds. And so I want us to talk about the wilderness and the wilderness wanderings. There'll be a podcast in the future on the wilderness itself, and I want to get you ready for that. You see, God leads us in the wilderness experience. I have noticed in the Bible in studying the Torah as I have, that there is a legitimate wilderness, one that God leads you into. And then there is an illegitimate wilderness, that is one that we choose to walk through out of rebellion. Now even in the illegitimate wilderness, that is one that God did not choose for us, but we chose out of our own rebellion, that God does not ever waste a wilderness experience. You see, from the time they got through the Red Sea until they got to Sinai, that is a legitimate wilderness experience that God led them through so he could show his mighty arm, so he could show that he could provide water where there was no water, where he could provide food where there was no food, where he could provide meat when there was no meat, and where he could show himself strong to his people, yet in that legitimate wilderness that God led them into, instead of rejoicing and trusting the Almighty God who had brought them out with a strong and mighty arm from Egyptian bondage, yet they rebelled against God over and over again. And when he led them to Sinai, they stayed there for a year. And God taught them and helped them, and yet they rebelled over and over again. But then they went into another time of wilderness, and in that wilderness God prepared them for worship. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. But then there was a period when he brought them to Kadesh Barnea that once again they chose wrongly, and they had to wonder for forty years for a particular reason. God actually gives us the reason. Now in that forty years, he did a lot of miraculous things. He taught a lot of lessons to the generation to come. But as we'll see today, God had a purpose in those forty years of wondering because he needed to get rid and let die out the generation that led in the rebellion against him. And so let's go back to Numbers chapter one and let me put it together for you the very best that I can. The Scripture says in Numbers chapter one, a year after Israel's departure from Egypt, the Lord spoke to Moses in the tabernacle. It was the tabernacle in the wilderness of Sinai on the first day of the second month of that year. From the whole community of Israel, record the names of all the warriors by their clans and families. List all the men this is very important. List all the men twenty years old or older who are able to go to war. This is the age of manhood in the Scriptures. You need to write this down. This is consistent and confluent all the way through the Scriptures. Twenty years of age, not sixteen, not twelve, not eighteen, not twenty one, but twenty. God sets that. God knows the human mind and brain and body, and he says men are men at age twenty. The day that they turn twenty, they are under a different accountability. And that is the day that God looks at them not any longer as a young man, but as a man ready to go to war. God specifically set that date. Now, God didn't just say it once. I want you to look at chapter one of Numbers, not just verse three, but look at what he says beginning at verse 17. So Moses and Aaron called together these chosen leaders, and they assembled the whole community of Israel on that very day. And all the people were registered according to their ancestry by their clans and families, and lit look at this. The men of Israel who were twenty years old or older were listed one by one. Look at verses twenty and twenty-one. This is the number of the men twenty years old or older who were able to go out to war. Look at verse forty five. They were registered by families, all the men of Israel who were twenty years old or older and able to go to war. Now this is what God said. I didn't come up with that, and you didn't either. It's what God said. The scripture says that God made a difference between those who had turned twenty and those who had not. Because there is a different accountability. Not when my sons turned twelve, or sixteen or eighteen, or twenty one did I talk to them specifically about manhood. Oh I did. But when they turned twenty, the day that they turned twenty, I told them I said, God looks at you in a different accountability than he did before this day. And let me just say a word here parenthetically if I could to both men and women, dads and moms, but especially to the women. When your son turns twenty years of age, you need to stop talking to him like he is still a teenager. Now I know I'm married, I have two sons. The oldest of my children is a boy, and the youngest of my children is a boy, and we have a girl in between. And so I talked to both of them. And I have told my wife over and over again, I have shared this with other women, stop talking to these boys in the way that you do after they turn twenty. Now you need to be careful before that time, but certainly after twenty, and when I have said that to women, often they'll say, Well, if they're gonna act like a sixteen year old or a twelve year old, I'm gonna talk to them like that. Well, you don't have that right, you don't make that call. God does. Because if God holds them to a different standard, we do. We must. And God will listen when we do. Now, if your child is acting, if your son is acting, if that twenty year plus is acting like a sixteen year old, then you need to talk with him as a man and let him know that God is holding him to a different accountability, and so are you, and you're no longer going to talk to them as a child. Many times they'll say, Well, uh, I'm not a kid anymore, and you can say, That's right, and God is going to hold you responsible. You're not gonna get by with what you got by with before. We do this in every area of life. I mean, it's cute when we're saying to a five-year-old, now say thank you, honey. Uh, they gave you something, now say thank you. But now when they're 10 and you're still saying that, that's a little bit overboard. When they're 16 and you're still saying, now what do you say? Something's not right with that child. And you need to help them to understand they've got a different responsibility year by year, but when they turn twenty, God says, I'm looking at you different. Now, lest you think that's only here, it's not. In Numbers chapter thirty two, God said about those who rebelled in the wilderness, God said of all those I rescued from Egypt, no one who is twenty years old or older will ever see the promised land. The land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for they have not obeyed me wholeheartedly. The Lord was angry with Israel and made them wander in the wilderness for forty years, listen until the entire generation that sinned in the Lord's sight had died. No one was to go in the land who was twenty years of age or older when they rebelled against the Lord at Kadesh Barnea, and at all the times of rebellion prior to that. Now listen, this is very important. This is a big age. You see, to be a priest, and if you look through numbers you will see this, that a priest, the people that were in Aaron's family that were going to be priest and serve in the tabernacle, all of them had to be numbered, not twenty and above, but thirty to fifty. Why? Because they couldn't start into the priesthood until they were thirty, and they had to retire at fifty. Those were the prime years. And they could not any longer be a priest at that age at fifty, they had to retire. The Levites could start at twenty five, those who were not ministering in the tabernacle proper could start at twenty five. But now listen, even King David and his influence with God and all that God allowed David to do, even to eat the showbread when he was hungry, which was reserved for the priest. Now listen to this. This is amazing to me. David could not even lower the Levitical service of those who were twenty five any lower than twenty. Why? Because they were considered in a different accountability factor before that. Search it out in the scriptures and you'll see this. David lowered the age of the Levites' service because they needed more to twenty and above, not twenty five and above. Because there had to be a level of manhood and maturity in order to serve as a Levite. This should tell us something about serving as a man of God in the pulpit. I can tell you I started as pastor when I was twenty two and I was way too young. And I made a lot of decisions, I well made a lot after I was twenty five and thirty that were crazy too and foolish. But during those first few years, I am just so I'll always be grateful to Haywood Baptist Church in Haywood, Oklahoma, for their great patience with me over those years. I look back at some of the things that I said, Lord have mercy. And all of us have done that down through the years, not just in our twenties and thirties and forties, but on we make all kinds of crazy uh statements and do crazy things and make bad decisions, but oh my goodness, at that age, you don't know whether you're fish or foul sometimes. You say, well, what about Spurgeon? Well, you're not Spurgeon. There's a meteor in the night like Spurgeon that comes from time to time, but that's few and far between. What about David Brainerd? Well, you're not David Brainerd. All of these things I've heard over the years, and I'm just saying to you, God's the one that says there needs to be a certain maturity level. So men, I hope you'll talk with your sons. Ladies, I hope you will talk with your sons when they're past twenty as men, not as boys, even if they act like it. You talk to them as men, because you don't have any right if God talks to them like men and God holds them accountable as men, you don't have any right or authority to change that and say, Well, I know better, I'll talk to them the way I want to. Well, you better watch it or you'll get in trouble with the Lord. It's just his grace that he doesn't descend to grade any of us all the time because of our own uh selfishness and thinking we know more than God. All I'm saying to you is this is part of the reason why God took them through the paces that he did in setting up the tabernacle, getting people numbered, knowing who was who. And tomorrow we're going to talk about the first four chapters of numbers and how God set up the organization for worship. You see, organization is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end. And the reason we organize the church is so that we can do the service of the Lord. I know what people say, well, I don't like the organized church, I don't believe anything. God is a God of order and organization, whether you like it or whether I like it. So we need to like it because God does. Does it become cumbersome? Does it become an end in itself sometimes? Yes. But we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Well, I'll leave it there. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.