Everybody Is a Priest | Episode 10

Our podcast this week was about how Adam and Eve were “priests” in Eden.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I haven't seen the movie Tenet, Christopher Nolan movie. He's always playing time and all these weird things, but you kinda have to watch it multiple times. I get the impression they don't follow like a normal beginning, middle, end, and the meaning is in the arrangement. And that's definitely how the Bible is. And we just don't read like that.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

All right, welcome back to the Year Through the Bible podcast. My name is Rodney Adams. I'm the executive director at Asbury Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and you are?

SPEAKER_00 0:29

I'm Andrew Forrest. I'm the senior pastor here, and we're gonna talk about numbers today, the book. Okay. Numbers. Yep, let's do it. I was talking to my family last night about how weird it is that we have adopted that our English Bibles have the Greek names of the books, which is weird. And then Deuteronomy is obviously a Greek second law, because Moses, the first generation dies off, Moses gives the law again. So like the Ten Commandments are in Deuteronomy a second time. Okay. Uh Genesis, it's Greek. The word Greek, uh Leviticus is Greek. Um Exodus is Greek, but numbers is English. And in Greek, I looked it up last night. It's arithmoi. Like number it's the word numbers. Isn't that weird that like we took the English name of the Greek title of the book for one of the books of the Torah and the other ones we all take the Greek names instead of the Hebrew names?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yeah. Why? And it's definitely not the Hebrew name. Right. Like it's not even, it's not even close. Right, so it doesn't make sense. I know. That kind of I mean, that brings up an interesting question. Okay. This is a pastoral question. So earlier in the um year, we had some folks ask some questions like, well, what kind of Bible should I buy? Yeah. You know, what translation, whatever. You're a very learned uh pastor. You've been to seminary, you study these things, you um have studied Greek, you've studied Hebrew, um, as pastors often do. But almost nobody, like, okay, we start over. Anyone can get a Bible at any time. Right. And it's in in English. But so much of the scriptures are opened up to you by understanding the Greek and the Hebrew. Yeah. So you need the pastors of our churches and the seminary professors and the teachers to help us interpret kind of fully. So let me just get your opinion. How limited are you in in understanding what the Lord is going after and what the Lord wants if you only ever read in the English and you don't have someone to help you with things like this, with the the Greek and the Hebrew? How handicapped really are you as a Bible reader without ever um getting the Greek and the Hebrew?

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Here, I think it'd be a little bit like black and white versus color. I think you totally get what you need. I I I could you could read an English translation your entire life and you would get what you need, but you would miss some of the richness of it, maybe. You get the main points, I think.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Like I was talking to, so my the thing that I don't get, and at some point we want to have like a translator on here or somebody. I don't get what why translators make certain decisions. So here's my go-to example of this. We've talked about this, we may even talk about this on the podcast. The ark in Genesis 6, 7, 8, and 9 is the word Teva. It's only ever used one other time in the Bible in Exodus chapter 2 when it is used for Moses' basket. I don't get why they didn't translate it ark there. I don't understand that. Because it it changed the whole story. If Noah is in the same box that Moses is in, it like makes it so much more richer. And I don't understand that. Have you ever looked into it? Has anybody ever given some kind of explanation? A lot of these things. So last Sunday I talked about Tyndale and the scapegoat. Probably a lot of things go back to the first English translations and the words just got entrenched and we didn't want to move, change it for some reason. I don't know. But that's like a weird one for me. Here's another one in numbers later on. In fact, I don't have a computer here, so I'll have to look real quick. But in numbers later on, they come up against the Kenites, K-E-N-I-T-E-S. Okay. Okay, in English Bibles. And it's not the word, it's the exact same word as the descendants of Cain. It's Cain's name in Hebrew. Like it's not in Hebrew, the word is not spelled Cain. Cainites. But it's the exact same word. It's the Cain, the Cain people. So when you're reading the English Bible, you just hear the Kenites. So you don't get the connection. You never get it. Right. The reason that connection matters, we actually uh it's gonna be a number, it's in numbers. The reason that connection matters is because when they go into the land, this is numbers, what do we mean, numbers 13 or 14? When they go into the land and they're all freaked out at how big everybody is, remember what they say? Here it is. Uh this is this is Numbers 13. Numbers 13, verses uh the end of 28 and then 29, etc. The descendants of Anak are there, verse 29, numbers 13, the Amalekites are there, Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, the Canaanites. And the Caleb goes, We can do it. It's not bad. And then they go verse 33, verse 32. Actually, the land swallows up its people, and everyone there is really big. And we saw Nephilim there. Well, there's that weird passage in Genesis 6. In fact, let's turn to it. This is Genesis 6:1. Very strange, weird stuff. When man began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose. The Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh, his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them. They these were the mighty men of old, men of renown. That little comment, the Nephilim were on the earth then and afterwards. So that immediately raises a problem, which is the problem of the flood. Well, is the flood a complete global catastrophe, cataclysm, or is it a localized flood? Like does it cover the entire Middle East, or does it cover also Australia? Right? That's the question. So the it is not only modern people who ask this question, the Bible raises it. So we have two issues already. The Nephilim show up later. Well, were they washed away or not? And the descendants of Cain show up later. Well, were they washed away or not? And which is it, right? Yeah. Uh we're we're going on a long rabbit trail here, but you asked about the Bible. You know what it is? I I've read, and you have too, some of the great novels, like in um in translation. Like I've read the great Russian masters in translation. Crime and Punishment. I've only read it in English.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

It's incredible in English. It's so, it's amazing. But I can't imagine you really get what's going on. And I remember I had a Russian literature class in college, and I remember that the professor would often say, actually, this would be better translated like this, to get the full thing of it. So it's probably like that. You get it, and it's moving, and it's powerful. And and God has made his word be possible to be translated. That's the whole point of it. That's one of the beauties of the gospels that can be translated, but you're still going to miss certain things. Yeah. Anyway, I would love to talk to translators about things like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

It's so weird. It also makes me wonder. So last week I said on this podcast that the more you read the Bible and the more you pick up the details and the more you see the hyperlinks, the smaller the Bible gets. It almost makes me wonder if the difficulty of the Bible is not just that it's ancient and in different languages and whatever, but there's some self-inflicted stuff here too, like some translation things that probably could actually make it a little bit easier. I mean, I'm not a translator, so I have no idea. But so like um, this is one thing that I worry about a little bit. We had uh Dan Ehrman on last week, who's our Tindell guy, and and he brought with him um a bunch of NLT Bibles for our staff, the New Living Translation or whatever. And supposedly it's at a sixth grade level, which is totally awesome for sixth graders or for or for fifth graders or whatever. But it makes you wonder what did they think was the right um watering down or simplifying or whatever that that made that translation, and then what things got lost that actually would be helpful to a sixth grader or something like that. I'm not criticizing, it's just I'm really interested in this all of a sudden because the more we get into this, the more I realize there's more going on than what we're able to see in English.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Yeah, I heard uh the guys in Bible Project were talking about a thing. I was listening to an old episode, and they were talking about how the Bible demands so much of its readers. Like it's really true, it's really expecting. So famously, T. S. Elliott writes his his great poem, The Wasteland, which has all these illusions, just everything of Western civilization. He and he is a brilliant guy, and he adds all these different things in there. And it's it's not easy to get. In some ways, the Bible is like that. Like it's demanding a lot, it's expecting. It's not and all great art does this. I've talked about this a lot, but the Bible particularly does this, it's asking a lot of you. And then there's the cultural problem. So here's another issue. A guy asked us on Wednesday morning in Holy Communion about the numbers, the numbers in numbers.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

And it just seems like so. Look at this. Turn to Deuteronomy. Um, this is Deuteronomy, what is it, Deuteronomy 7? Look at look at the what what's said to them? Deuteronomy seven uh Deuteronomy 7-7. Okay. Actually, we'll start at Deuteronomy 7.6.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Deuteronomy 7.6. You are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love upon you and chose you, for you are the fewest of all peoples. All right, so then so we learn that they're the smallest. So then we have this list of the other nations. And when we use the term nations in the Bible, the word nation doesn't mean nation state like government, it means like people group, like tribe or something, right? They we learn that there's all these other nations there, the Amalekites, the Jebusites, all these people. Well, when you add up the numbers in numbers, it's like two million people, something like that. So then if you take that and think, well, it's like they've done the math, it'll mean like there's probably at least like 21 million people in the modern area of Palestine-Israel kind of stuff. And it's like, well, how would that possibly work? That's so many millions of people. A lot of people. Yeah, right. Yeah. And so uh, if we turn to 1 Chronicles 12, I was reading about, I was reading an article about this today. 1 Chronicles 12. And this guy just said, look, look how it works here. 1 Chronicles 12. Okay. Uh okay. It's about David's uh awesome warrior guys. All right, look at this. 1 Chronicles 12, 8. From the Gadites there went over to David at the stronghold in the wilderness, mighty and experienced warriors, expert with shield and spear, whose faces were like the faces of lions, and who were as swift as gazelles upon the mountains. Okay, no problem. We totally get the point. They're not actually, they don't actually look like lions or like gazelles. Right. Yeah. Now that seems obvious, but look at the next part. Verse 14. These gate, these Gadites, they're officers. The least of these guys was a match for a hundred men, and the greatest for a thousand. So one guy could take on a hundred, and the best guys could take on a thousand. That seems a little bit of an exaggeration, just right? And then turn down to verse 33. Out of Zebulon, there's 50,000 of these guys ready for battle. And that that, you know, this are these numbers. Okay, so we take with no problem the idea that the earlier places are places where they they're not, it's meant to be hyperbolic for a reason about who they are. But then we get to the numbers, this is why we get in so much trouble. We don't really know when they're giving us numbers exactly always what they're trying to tell us. Yeah. So are the numbers and numbers meant to be the way that we would report them in a newspaper? And the reason I'm trying to raise this is not because we don't take the Bible seriously. We're trying to take the Bible seriously on its own terms. I think that's a category, by the way, that the American church is not used to. It's either liberal progressives who just discount the scripture, or maybe like a fundamentalist reading that's like like a literalist.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

It's this, it's that. Right. And if it's if it's if they say this, but it's actually that, it's a lie, like it, like it, it just people can't get around it. Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

So, all right. Uh so Genesis 2.4, the summary statement. Genesis 2.4. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Well, we've just been talking about the whole seven-day thing in Genesis 1. And then the summary statement kind of says it kind of happens in a day. Now you could twist that and say, well, it means the first day or something. I I I my point is that it's not as it's not as clear as it seems when you're willing to kind of take the glasses off and try to think, what is the scripture trying to tell me? Not to I want it to tell me.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah. Well, one of the things that you talked about, we had an all church Bible study um recently that you taught. And one of the things you talked about was the chiastic structure to the Torah.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

One thing that we know that Hebrew writers do is the structure is something they're telling you sometimes. Right. Where they'll have a though the way the sentences are structured are not necessarily chronological. Right. Sometimes there's chronology in them, but but the arrangement of the paragraph or the point is the thing that they're telling you, right? The middle point is the thing they're trying to point at. Right. So, but we don't write like that. No. We maybe we use um, maybe we use in our synonym in our paragraph structure, we use sometimes structure to help us tell stories, but we don't do it like that. Not like that at all. And I bet there's a lot of stuff that we just we dismiss because we don't, we, we just can't get out of our chronological sort of reading of things.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Yeah, I don't, I don't think we we we don't hardly do that at all. I haven't seen, I haven't seen the movie Tenet, the Christopher, I haven't seen any Christopher Nolan movies other than the Batman. But aren't the he's always playing with time and all these weird things. You kind of have to watch it multiple times. And I don't know if these movies are good or bad, but I get the impression they don't follow like a normal beginning, middle, end.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

And the meaning is in the the arrangement, something like that. And that's definitely how the Bible is. And we just don't read like that. And so that so that's kind of goes back to your translation question there. I think maybe the black and white and the color is helpful because when you read people who are really experts in it and they can point out the playing with the names, the Hebrew people they love that they love messing with letters, they love changing one letter and like means a thing. They love numbers and numbers of words that's like really important to them. Like, what's the seventh word here and this eighth word there and that kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Which we just don't think like that.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Yeah. So well. All right. Let's get back to numbers, but I want to read this sentence that um that you pointed out in 1 Chronicles 12, 13, or 33, because it's just so awesome. Of Zebulun, 50,000 seasoned troops equipped for battle with all the weapons of war to help David with singleness of purpose. How awesome is that little, that little these guys are all these guys are ready to go. They're all in. Yeah. All right. Where do you want to start in numbers? What's interesting to you?

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Okay. This has been really fun for me to kind of kind of put this together. The idea that every human being is supposed to be a priest. And that's what's happening in Eden. So he says to them, and you've been under keyed on this recently, he says to them at Mount Sinai, you're going to be a kingdom of priests. You and a priest represents God to the people and the people to God. You minister, you kind of lead in, you lead in praise. So, like humans are supposed to lead the whole non-human creation in praise in God on that ultimate seventh day on that old thing. So this is kind of cool. This is another language thing. So go to Genesis 2.15. Genesis 2.15. This is about uh the creation of the man. Genesis 2.15. The Lord God took the man out of the and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. So very specifically, he's supposed to work it and keep it. Well, that language comes up again in Numbers chapter 3, verses 7 and 8. Now it's slightly out of order and it's a different English translation, so you miss it. But the Levites are are brought up to kind of take care of all the all the tabernacle stuff. They shall keep, this is Numbers 3, 7, they shall keep guard over him, over Aaron, as they minister. So it's the same words. The word minister is the word work. And I wish they hadn't changed it. And the word keep is the same. So in Genesis 2.15, to keep it, to work it and to keep it. And in Numbers 3, 7, 8, it's to keep it and to work it. Same thing. So this idea that, and this is we talked about this in talking about Exodus, all the identic imagery of the tabernacle makes it clear the tabernacle is meant to be like Eden, but then you flip it around. Eden is meant to be a temple. It's like a living temple. The whole creation is the temple filled with the glory of God. And human beings are meant to minister and keep it and take care of it. And so that's why Aaron, his whole getup, not on the Day of Atonement when he's in ugly clothes, but his whole getup is this shining thing with all these precious stones and gold and it's all shining. It's like this radiant human, which is what Moses becomes on the mountain. Yeah. Isn't that cool? That's cool.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Yeah, it makes complete sense that like we're all supposed to be um like part of the priesthood. So the the big reformation point about the priesthood of all believers, which often can be taken to be an anti-clerical point of view, like we shouldn't have priests. I don't think that's that's right.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

But the reformation was correct in the sense every person in Christ is meant to be a priest of the Lord. Like take care, minister and care for his stuff and praise him.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Yeah. It's cool. So, okay, every human is made in Christ's image. And in theory, or not in theory, how should I say this? We're all made in the image of God, placed in the garden to work it, but not everybody does, because not everybody is in Christ at this point. Right. So our job, God wants, God wants us as those who are in Christ to, we know our responsibility to tend to the garden and to work it and to keep it, and also to help bring others into that life. Right. Right. So into so what's interesting here is I was thinking about the um like the the timing of coming out of basically the timing of of the Exodus, Leviticus. Um, they're at the base of Mount Sinai for like a year. Right. And they kind of learn. It's almost like they're training, like they learn their, they learn the law, they learn the the they learn how everything's supposed to work, and now they're gonna pick it up and go where there are people, where there are other people at some point. They're in the wilderness, but like it's like slowly more people groups are sort of added around them. Yeah. So it kind of made me think there's this training now happening. They're in like, they're back in the barracks, they're like isolated under Mount Sinai, God's telling them everything, they're learning how to do it, he's giving them the whole thing, and then they spend a year there, basically running that play. And now it's time to pick it up and go take it, take it out. Is that happening?

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah, I I think, well, it doesn't ultimately happen really. They kind of screw it up, but I think that's the point. And this is where a study, we mentioned study Bibles. This is where our study Bible with pictures is really helpful because to me, it's just really helpful to see the splayed out camp with the temp tabernacle in the center, like the Garden of Eden, tree of life is in the center, the Levites are around it, and then you have the tribe spread around it. And so you see the picture, like they're like this or they were a rabble. Now that this orderly nation, it's pretty cool. They have laws, they have order, and then God says, Okay, we're gonna go now. I like your imagery. It's like they've been trained.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

It's like they're yeah, it's like there's steps to this thing. Right. They receive the law, they're at the base of Mount Sinai with the Lord, they're they're there for a period of time, and then it's like, okay, I'll pick up your stuff and go. We're gonna do it again over in this wilderness or that. And I want and I I want you to bless these people. Yeah. Now it's time to go be who I've trained, trained you to be, but now with them. Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

This is maybe where uh the language of like the chosen people and like the enemies is bad because the people are these other people groups are enemies in that they might reject the grace of God. But God's purpose is actually, he's trying to save them. He wants to use, he doesn't want to use Israel to wipe out all the other nations. He wants to use Israel to bring the nations back to him. Now, part of that, there will have to be war because some of these people want to kill God's people and it doesn't work. But like, they're not really adversaries.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

I wonder if that's what Paul's getting at when he says your battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers, the principalities, the spiritual forces of wickedness in Ephesians 6.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Well, I mean, I don't want to take this too far, particularly in present day, because I don't want to get in trouble with the language here, but we've talked about the whole clean, unclean thing in the last. Maybe there's um there's less a moral, there's less a moral issue with those who are not in Christ than they're just not, they're not, they don't know their right hand from their left, they're not ready to be in Christ. Yeah. Like, and yes, the Lord quote meets me where I am, but it but not with the intention. Of just leaving you there, but to like to bring you into his life and raise you up and grow you up and purify you, get that stuff off of you. You know what I mean? Yeah. So we often make it a moral thing, like these are the good people, those are the bad people, but ultimately they're just not ready to be in the presence of God. But but but they're welcome into the presence of God.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Yeah, they have to do the things he wants them to do.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

And it's our job to bring them in.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Tell them and let them know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, my wife said to me, uh, she said that maybe she was like, maybe even the language I use the language of fitness maybe on the podcast. I don't know. She said almost like you almost want to talk about unready. Like, because unready doesn't have any moral complaint at all. It's like, I just got out from uh, I was cutting the grass, I'm all sweaty, I'm not ready to go to my daughter's house. Right, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah, let me take a shower first.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Let me brush my teeth first. Uh okay, so I was gonna go somewhere. Do you want to go somewhere? I was gonna go to numbers 13.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Okay, go for it.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Spies. I just think this is cool. Uh I may talk about this in another context. So the spies show up, and ten of them are all upset. And then Caleb. Joshua, in this little narrative, is not the one who's speaking real strongly, but you get the sense that Joshua's on Caleb's side. But look what the guys say. This is so cool. Talk about foreshadowing. Verse 32, Numbers 13, 32. They brought to the people of Israel a bad report in the land they had spied out, saying, the land through which we have gone to spy it out is a land that devours its inhabitants. Okay, so then I don't know if you caught this. When the when the sons of Korah, when the Kor when when Korah rebels. Okay, so I didn't get this until recently. Aaron's people are the priests in that they literally are in the actual sacrificial deal. The Levites are like caretakers of it. They like work for Aaron. This is what I was about to ask when you were going here. So we're on the right track. Okay, so I never really picked up on that. I guess I never I'm just learning stuff about the Bible all the time, I guess. Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

So um, what are the differences between Aaron's guys? So there's Moses, then there's Aaron's guys, Aaron's son, Eliezer, is kind of like his little chief of staff. Yeah. There's Levites, the way that they're named in here, and then there's Nazarite vows. Yeah. So, like, can you help kind of parse out real quick what what's the priestly order here? What is happening here?

SPEAKER_00 24:24

So the only guys that are doing the actual sacrifices and handling the stuff are Aaron and then Aaron's sons. Okay. So in the Bible, they'll talk about the Aaronic priesthood, like A-A-R-O-N-A. Yeah. I didn't, I never picked up on that before. It's a pretty small group of guys. Well, it would have been four. Yeah, no, and not two of them. Yeah. Well, or there's two sons, I think. So there's, I think at this point, there's Aaron and two living. Elias are and the other guy. Yeah, I forget his. There were there were four. There were four. Yeah. Now there's two. Right. Or Aaron and two more. Yeah. Then God gives all the Levites. So keep in mind that Aaron and those guys are Levites. Remember, Moses is a Levite. Yeah. God gives the Levites two Aaron's people to basically to work for Aaron. And their job is everything regarding the uh the temp, the tabernacle, but they're not doing the sacrifices. It's a really narrow thing for Aaron's guys. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Is this this is like an elder deacon thing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Where I never thought of that. Aaron, Aaron, his, and his sons are like elders. They're their job is preservation of the ritual, the ritual, the we would say like word and sacrament or something. Yeah. Like they're really doing the spiritual heavy lifting here. And then these other guys are like doing the work of the ministry. They're like, they're like making the ministry work. Well, and they're really careful.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

They travel. Yeah, they can travel. So check this out. This is this is number 16. Now Korah, he's the son of Isar, the son of Koath, son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram, they're the sons of Eliab. And Ohn, he's the son of Peloth, sons of Reuben. They took some guys. They came before Moses, the number of the people, 250 chiefs, good guys, like important guys. Verse 3. They came against Moses and Aaron and they said, Hey, this is ridiculous. You have gone too far. For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them. And the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord? And Moses, he just is like, This is gonna be really bad. So he falls on his face. So what the what what and then uh uh they complain about him in verse 12. This they act like that Moses is is stealing from them, which is in Moses look at Moses, verse 15, chapter 16. Moses says, Moses was very upset and said to the Lord, do not respect their offering. I have not taken one donkey from them, and I've not harmed one of them. Moses is all ticked at them for like accusing him. So the but here's here's my point. So these guys are our Levites, but they're like, why do Aaron's people and Moses' people, why does Moses think he's hot stuff? Yeah. We're Levites, we're just as good. So here's what happens, though. This is what's funny.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

So Moses and Aaron are like the first mega church pastors.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Yes. Yeah. And every that people resent them. The colleagues resent them. Yeah. Who do you think you are?

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Okay, so look at this. Verse 31, so talking, happening things. As soon as he had finished speaking these words, this is number 1631, the ground under them split apart and the earth opens its mouth and swallow them up. Oh man. So I guess what I'm thinking of is that's just ironic to me that the spy said this is the land that eats people, and the land ends up eating these the rebellious guys of Korah.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Which is a pretty serious and all of Israel who were around them fled at their cry, for they said, lest the earth swallows up. And fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men offering the incense.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Jeez. I know. I heard Tim Mackey point out, and this is very, really helpful to me, that the rebellions are moving closer and closer to the center. So you have the spies and the people worrying about getting into the land. So that's all the way on the outside. One rebellion. Next rebellion among the Levites. Right around the tabernacle. And then the final rebellion is with Moses himself when he refuses to handle the staff the appropriate way and hits the rock. And it's like right in the middle. Once again, you have God's people, and they they just can't be faithful. I feel bad for Moses, by the way. I love Moses. I've really liked Moses this time reading through it. He has a hard job. He has a really hard job. I love him. He's just a cool guy. I feel really bad that he screws it up with the uh with the the water and and uh this is in um where we hear uh chapter 20. Yeah, chapter 20. I feel terrible for him. Yeah, how he doesn't strike the rock. And either God is really short-tempered and unfair, but that doesn't fit with the Lord's character anywhere else. Or it's like at this point, Moses is like, I'm gonna do whatever I want to do. I mean you can imagine Did you ever do firearms training of your Marines? Did you did you or is there or there were their instructors who are directly over that? No, I did it. So the guys go back to the range and they've already been going to the range, and then they break all the rules, they just do whatever they want. They move the muzzle all around. Yeah I'm gonna stand, I'm gonna shoot over his shoulder. I'm gonna stand over his shoulder or something. Yeah. What would be a rule on a fire on the range that was really strict at the Marines that maybe is almost seemingly too strict that you didn't need to do it, you'd think? Like what would be like that kind of rule?

SPEAKER_01 29:37

There's actually a lot of admin like on a range. So calling it, so every military base has uh what's called range control, and they control access to the ranges. You have to call them when you want to go hot. Like that's when you're that's when you're shooting live ammunition, you have to call them and tell them that you've gone cold, you have to submit all this paperwork, you have to be, I mean, it is it is a duty. I mean, it is terrible. And there are a lot of seemingly bureaucratic things that you have to do in order for range control to do its job that seems really stupid on the ground. Like we're professionals, like we know how to do this, but obviously they're there for a reason. Yeah. Like any bureaucratic thing, kind of like running a stop sign or something, or like nobody's around. Like I can run a stop sign if I want. It's kind of like that kind of stuff. So maybe there are times where maybe you just get weary, you're tired, you've been dealing with this for a long time, you need to go back out and qualify, qualify in a certain way, you forgot to do it, whatever. And you just kind of like, I'm just gonna.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Yeah. So you so you as a junior officer, maybe let's do this. You're just like, I don't want to, I don't need to fill the forms. I don't need to do that. I don't need to let them know the guys know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Let me tell you how that where this takes root, and maybe this is something that's here. When you grow resentful or bitter, that you're constantly someone's thumb is constantly on you and you're tired, you're hungry, whatever. And then you you've seen this in organizations where maybe there forms like a little us versus them, like in a team. Like a team is sort of thinks that they're smarter than the leaders of the organization that kind of forms this little counterculture, this anti-culture. I've definitely been part of that. Yeah, so um maybe like that, where there's almost the reason you are trying to do what you want is actually irrelevant. You're just part of this little like anti-culture that I'm gonna do whatever, I'm gonna do what I want. You're like establishing your dominance or your thing.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

And I wonder if that's what's going on with Moses. And it makes me sad, but when Moses is like, God tells him, I need you to speak to the rock, do it like this, and Moses is like, uh, hey, I've done this before because this is it's already happened. Part of the chiastic structure is there's already been a moment with Moses providing water at God's command. Moses doesn't do what he God asked him to do. And so the Lord seems really harsh. The Lord says verse 12 to both both of the guys, Moses and Aaron, because you didn't believe me and keep me holy, you're not gonna go into the you're not going to the promised land with the group. And it seems harsh, but maybe Moses was just like, he's kind of a little bit grumbling in numbers and kind of like, God, would you what'd you do with these people? Why'd you give them to me? And maybe it was just like, it was that was it.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Well, okay. And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, this is verse 12, because you did not believe me, believe in me to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I've given them. So um God is saying, You did not uphold me as holy, meaning I'm not like you. Yeah. We're not, we're not like we're not equal partners in this deal. What I asked you to do is not a suggestion. Right. Like you, it's more like that on this like it actually doesn't matter if you knew how to get water out of this thing. You didn't uphold me as holy and do the thing I asked you to do. I need complete and there's a reason for it. Obedience. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Like like rules on a on a hot range. Yeah. Yeah. I love Moses, but it makes me sad there. Uh I don't know. I mean, maybe we should wrap up here. I don't know if there's any quick questions we want to hit, but there's just a couple of fun things in numbers. Maybe at a future episode we'll get this, the bizarre episode in numbers 21 of the bronze serpent, which is very strange. And Jesus references that in his famous passage in with Nicodemus in John chapter 3.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

So this is a hyperlink that I thought was cool. I'm gonna read another part of the scriptures, and then you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna see it in numbers. We've already seen it. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna read it here. Where are we? So if you go to Revelation, chapter one, John writes this little prologue, and then in I believe it is in chapter where are we? It's chapter one, verse Let's just start at verse 17. So he just had a vision of Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Right? John had a vision of Jesus. The hairs of his head were white like white wool, like snow, his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. And in his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. Now here we go, verse 17. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead, but he laid his right hand on me, saying, Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold, I'm alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death in Haiti. Write therefore the things that you've seen, those that are, and those that are to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches. And then the golden golden lampstand language is all throughout the book of Revelation. So now if you go back to Numbers eight, now the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to Aaron and say to him, When you set up the lamps, the seven lamps shall give light in the front of the lampstand. And Aaron did so, and he set up his lamps in front of the lampstand, as the Lord commanded Moses. And this was the worksmanship of the lampstand, hammered work of gold. From its base to its flowers, it was hammered work according to the pattern that the Lord had shown Moses. So he made the lampstand. And I just so in eight, there's one lampstand with seven lamps. But in Revelation, there's imagery of the lamps, the lampstand going all the way back to the tabernacle is is a vivid image that is used in Revelation, but it's to signify the churches. Yeah. I thought that was cool. Yeah, it's cool. I don't know if that's I don't know how to deal with that other than that, but um there's stuff like this all over.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Well, I mean, one practical thing is there's no way to understand Revelation without knowing the Old Testament. Yeah. Yeah. The whole thing, right? You would you wouldn't get the lampstand imagery.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

Yeah, no, it's the tabernacle. Oh, yeah. But you're right, I like that. Like, why have it there if it's obviously if it doesn't. Yeah, let's maybe take one New Testament question. Let's see, let's see what where this goes. You can start flipping to the book of Mark while we're while I'm trying to read this question out. Sam sends us in. Sam, I love you. I'm gonna paraphrase your question because you there's a lot of uh question marks and quotation marks here. Uh in Mark 7, verses 27 and 29, can you please help me understand this a little better? So this is the story of the um Syrophenician woman, the um um yeah, Syrophenician woman. She's called something else in one of the other gospels. Canaanite woman. Was Jesus testing the faith of this woman? Was this a teaching lesson for his disciples? What does the term dogs mean? Even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs. This whole thing kind of seems pretty harsh, like pretty abrasive. So what's what's the what is going on in this particular uh part of Mark?

SPEAKER_00 37:11

I don't think that she's testing, that he's testing her faith. I think, I think the second part of Sam is saying that it's a teaching point. There's a lot of weird teaching lessons here, including 4,000 people are fed after there's been 5,000 people fed. And then the the two-stage healing of the man that's blind, Jesus heals him halfway. He goes, I see men like trees walking, and then she heals him another time all the way. And he's trying to teach the disciples about seeing clearly, I think, and trusting him. And because it says in Mark that they didn't understand about the feeding because their hearts were hard, uh, right? And they don't get that. So I think that's what's happening here. So they're outside of Israel. She's a Gentile. Jesus' first ministry is to restore Israel, and then through Israel, the rest of the world. That's God's plan from the very beginning. Abraham's family, through them, the whole world. And so she's asking him, and she knows he's a Gentile, and he says you're a Gentile. And he's like, you know, you got to take care of your own stuff first. She and then she goes, Yeah, but hey, if there's extra, give it to the dogs. She's she's awesome. Yeah. I like her. Yeah. And then of course he does it. So I don't think he's trying to pick on her. I think he's trying to teach a lesson to the disciples about the importance of um of how God is going to restore Israel and through Israel the world.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

Yeah, I was thinking earlier, and I don't want to go too far with this, but this story is also in Matthew, and I think it's interesting the order that these stories are told. So in Matthew, at least, it's in the very middle of the gospel. It's like it's like dead center of the gospel of Matthew. Matthew 16, maybe? Matthew 16, 14, 15, 16, something like that. And they start on the west side of the lake in Jewish territory or northwest kind of side of the lake, and he feeds the 5,000. There's 12 baskets left over, and everybody and everybody would know that that's a there's some Jewish numerology kind of going on there. People would know what that is. And then the the Pharisees are given a hard time, like after that. And then they go up to Tyre and Sidon. He does this thing with this woman. Um, he seems to be showing the disciples that the faith of this Gentile woman, there's something there with that. Then they go to the other side of the lake, to the Decapolis, to the Gentile side, and then he feeds 4,000 over there. I just think that there's a little, there's like a little story arc there, like a little mini story arc playing there where he feeds the Jewish side, they kind of grumble a little bit. He goes up and has this, has this interaction with this Syrophoenician woman's faith. Then they go over to the other side and feed the Gentiles. Thought that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Yeah, it is cool. By the way, how interesting is it that Marx is Syrophoenician and Matthew calls her a Canaanite, which is obviously kind of an antiquated term at this point.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

Right? But he's trying to like you. Yeah, he's making a point.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. I think that's probably it for today. Um keep keep asking your questions. Go to year through the Bible.com. It really, really helps us to know what you care about, um, what's interesting to you as you're reading through our um one year Bible plan. Um, you can ask anything about the Bible. We may or may not get to it on the podcast, but we're trying, like we're trying to get to them here on the show. Um, but go to the year through the Bible.com, ask questions, find resources, uh, stay up to date, stay current. If you're behind, uh you can read today's reading. And then if you've got extra time, you take vacation from work, uh, you can uh go back and get caught up. But uh that's it for today. I'm Rodney Adams. I'm Andrew. All right, see you next time.