Numbers Introduction • God’s Unfolding Plan Through the Wilderness

I'm real happy this morning to begin the next segment of our Old Testament study, the Wilderness Way. This is going to be a study of the nation of Israel from the base of Mount Sinai, where they received the Ten Commandments, all the way to the banks of the Jordan River, where they're going to be positioned then to go into the Promised Land, but that's the book of Joshua. But that's where we're heading. And this is a really distinct time in Israel, really like none other this time. And in a lot of ways, I feel like it parallels the time in a Christian's life when they receive Christ, and they begin, because they've been delivered from sin, and they begin to walk with the Lord. They begin to know who the Lord is. They begin to trust Him, have faith in Him. And that is an exciting and glorious and terrifying time in a person's life, because we have so many questions. What do I do now? And what do I do next? Is God trustworthy? Will He leave me in this desert? Will I succeed in this Christian life, or will I fail? And so, to be overly dramatic and borrow from Charles Dickens, this was the best of times, and it was the worst of times, right? Wilderness Way is our title, because you know me enough to know that whenever an alliteration can possibly be used, I will do it. So that's why it's called Wilderness Way. But I always like to share with you a few titles that didn't make the cut. The first one, a great title for this Bible study, would be The Art of Contented Living, because that is one thing we will definitely see in this, learning to be content and satisfied with what is going on in our life. Another great title would have been Walking with Eyes of Faith, because that is what God was calling Israel to do, and you may know they had some failures along the way, but it's also what He calls us to do in our journey with Him, walking with eyes of faith. How to Squeeze a Two-Week Trip into 40 Years. That is another great title for this, because it wasn't supposed to be that way. And finally, Who Really Wants to Wear the Same Shoes for Four Decades? A little bit of an inside joke there. If you know the scripture, Moses had told them in Deuteronomy, he said, I led you through the wilderness, and your clothes didn't wear out, and your shoes didn't wear out for 40 years. But who wants to wear? See, do you have any shoes from 40 years ago? See, I would have been like two. Of course, I wouldn't fit into them, but that was a joke, you guys. Everybody's processing. What that means is you don't do math very quickly. But in this Bible study, we're going to cover a good amount of history, but you know what? The New Testament tells us that this is more than a history lesson, because the Apostle Paul said these things took place as examples for us. So I want to whet your appetite for what kind of things are examples for us in this. What do we expect to learn? We can expect to learn to have eyes of faith when our future looks uncertain and fearful, to realize that complaining is contagious. We catch it from other people, and we can give it to other people. And how to contain that? Living a life of satisfaction with what God has given us. Living a life of contentment with what God has not given us. Understanding the underlying dangers of impatience, not waiting on God. Relying on God's mercy. I like this one when we get to this. Relying on God's mercy to help us keep going in times of grief. And we're going to see Moses model this for us. And then lastly, comprehending the types and the echoes of the coming Messiah all throughout this journey. So every step of their journey, every step of Israel's journey, has meaning for every step of our journey. Their journey began with deliverance, and so does ours. They were delivered from the helpless and hopeless situation that they found themselves in when they were slaves in Egypt. They were delivered from that. And as we trust Jesus, we also are delivered from the bondage that we are in, the effects of sin that we have in our life. And then God brought them to Mount Sinai. This is where we finished our last study, where God showed them who he is, and he explained to them to get to know him better. And to know, to tell them how they can live in response now to that deliverance. They have been delivered, so how should they live in response to that? That's what God was explaining to them. To honor God and honor people around them. Same thing happens in our life. We are delivered from sin, we become saved, and then God, through his spirit and through the word, begins to express to us now, how can you live in response to what I have done to you? How can you honor me, honor people, love God, love people around you? And then God was taking them now and pointing them in the direction to flourishing, saying, I have a place for you. I've prepared this place, this land of promise, where you will find victory and rest. And God does that in our lives as well. That is part of our journey. The life of abundant living. That's what Jesus said. I have come that you would have life and you would have it to the full. Some translations say, I come that you would have life more abundantly. That is where God is pointing us once we get saved on our journey with him. Abundant life of victory and rest. And I'm going to use those two terms, because the promised land isn't heaven. The promised land is while we are still here, but it is characterized by a life of victory and a life of rest. Victory doesn't mean that we're sinless. It doesn't mean that we never lose a battle again. What victory means is that we are trusting in the power of a life that is surrendered to God. We are trusting in the power of God to live a life surrendered to him. And rest does not mean the absence of trouble. What it means is the presence of Christ in our lives. Have you learned that in life? I can do so many things with Jesus with me. So, but yet did you know that it is possible for a Christian to be delivered and still live in the desert? It is possible to remain there, to remain a wilderness Christian. Did you know that the wilderness is not a super pleasant place to live? And God did not intend that for us. He intended better things for us. So, in the same way that God guided Israel through the wilderness into the promised land, he also wants to take us through on our pilgrim journey, through our wilderness and into that land of abundant living. And so I I want that to be kind of the foundation of our Bible study, is that's the direction that we're pointed. That abundant living is where we can be busy doing what God created for us to do. We are his workmanship created to do good works, right? So, my hope is that by the time we're done with this study, we will take inventory of our spiritual lives and wherever we find ourselves desert dwelling, that we will trust in the Lord to bring us through that. So, let's dig in. You can open your study guides to page six. I did a few little fill-in-the-blank things, mostly just to keep you awake. So, I might point out when we get to those, and I might not. That's the keep you awake part. So, you have to just say, oh, is that a fill-in-the-blank there? But we want to always start by reviewing where we've come from in our Old Testament because the Bible explains the, here's the first fill-in-the-blanks, the unfolding story of God's plan. If you wanted to define the Bible in just a few short words and say, what is the Bible? It is the unfolding story of God's plan. That is what the Bible teaches us. It began when God created a place for people and then he created people to inhabit that place. And he wanted, he did that to have fellowship, to be connected. That was God's heart from the beginning in creation, was to have fellowship with who he created. But you know that those first people became corrupted by sin in only two short chapters of the Bible. So, the remainder of the unfolding story tells about God's rescue mission. Now, because the corruption of sin caused the plan of fellowship with God not to be able to happen, Adam and Eve could no longer have true fellowship with God the way that he wanted. And we cannot have fellowship with God in his original intention. And so, we have the whole Bible that tells about God's rescue mission. And all along the way, particularly as we study the Old Testament, you know what we see on every page? We see whispers, God's majestic whispers of who the hero will be. Who's the hero of this rescue mission? Just like a good novel that foreshadows and you get a hint of what's going to happen or a good movie and you go, he's important. I better remember that because that's what reading the Old Testament is. It foreshadows the hero of God's rescue mission. So, here's where we've come from in our Bible studies and women of the word in general. Genesis, we studied Adam and his descendants, Noah and his descendants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who was renamed Israel, 12 sons, and where did they end at the end of Genesis? They ended in Egypt, which turned into a bondage, a hold for them. And so Genesis was the study of God's people from Eden to Egypt. And then we went to Exodus and we studied God's deliverance of those people and he raised up Moses to be the deliverer. And after a couple hundred years, he brought all those people out of slavery in Egypt to the place that he first appeared to Moses and said, I'm going to do this right at Mount Sinai. And he gave them the Ten Commandments to reveal his character so they could know him better. And that is the history of God's people from Egypt to Mount Sinai. And so now we come to Numbers, which will chronicle a 40-year journey from Mount Sinai to the banks of the Jordan River. So I've sort of given us some geographic boundaries to hang our information on. And by the way, did you know it wasn't supposed to be 40 years? You knew that, right? That wilderness was a fairly small region. Actually, it should have taken even a large group of people a couple of weeks to go through. Moses himself in the beginning of Deuteronomy says this should have taken us 11 days. So it wasn't supposed to be that way. The answer to the question, why was it 40 years, is one of the compelling themes in Numbers and something we're going to really rest on. And we can't really blame Israel for turning it into 40 years because we see that in ourselves as well. We could ask ourselves the question and say, why is it that it's taken 5 years or 10 years or 20 years for me to learn to walk with eyes of faith, for me to learn to get over my stubbornness, for me to learn, you get it? And so we won't be too hard on them because we understand the plight of human beings living with a sinful nature. But we want to tackle some important information in the book like we always do when we start a new book. So first, let's talk about the author. Who is the author of the book of Numbers? The author is Moses. He is well-recognized to have penned the first five books of our Bible. The first five books of our Bible have a name, actually a handful of names. We call them most frequently, we call them the Pentateuch. That comes from the Latin, penta, meaning five, written on five scrolls, all written by Moses. The Jews call it the Torah. Those are somewhat interchangeable. Also, it can be referred to as the law. Jesus referred to it when he talked about the law and the prophets. The law in that context, meaning the first five books of the Bible, I'll probably mostly say the Pentateuch. And those five books, if you add up the chapters in them, in the law, in that part, it comes to 187 chapters. Now the wilderness journey part that we are studying this 40 years is 117 of those 187 chapters. Since you guys aren't very good at math, I'll just tell you right off. That's about two thirds of the chapters are on this wilderness way. Now think about that a little bit. I kind of reviewed, I brought us forward to where we were. Genesis took up 2000 plus years. The first part of Exodus, getting the people out of Egypt and to Mount Sinai was another couple hundred years. So let's just round it off and say that the first 2,500 years of human history only takes up one third of the Pentateuch and the next 40 years takes up the other two thirds. I bring that to your attention to think about the weight that is given to this in scripture. There is a lot of, I like to call it Bible real estate given to this. Lots and lots of chapters just for this 40 year period from Exodus 20, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, all in this relatively small timeframe that shouldn't have even been 40 years. It should have been about 15 months. And so that tells me something when I see that in the Bible, when I compartmentalize it like that, I say, huh, that's probably pretty important. There's a lot of stuff there that I should soak in. That's why we're doing this. The title of our study is Numbers, but it actually begins in Exodus chapter 20, but I just felt like it was awkward to put a title Exodus chapters 20 through 40 and Numbers. And so it's just Numbers, but just know that we are picking it up right at the base of Mount Sinai in Exodus chapter 20. The book of Numbers gets its name from the first two verses of Numbers, and I'll just read Numbers verses one and two to you and emphasize that it says, the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the tent of meeting on the first day of the second month in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt saying, verse two, take a census of the congregation of the people of Israel by clans and by father's houses All right. So verse two, where it says, take a census or number the people. That is where the title from the Latin comes from. When we say it is the book of Numbers number, the congregation, however, in the Hebrew, it literally means in the wilderness, which we saw in verse one, when it said the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness. That's why I picked up Wilderness Way for our title, because this is a story about what happened in the wilderness. The numbering of the congregation happens once at the beginning and once at the end, and that's really not the theme. The theme is in the wilderness, and so I like that part. What was the purpose of Moses writing this? Well, the purpose given to Moses by God was to write a history of God's interaction with man, with his creation, from creation right up until the time that Moses dies. That was the purpose given to Moses. And you know what? Israel needed a written history of where they came from and what God's plan was for them. You know what? We need a written history of where mankind came from and how it all fits together. So this is a really important purpose. And then secondarily, there's a couple more purposes that I thought of. Secondly, for us to understand the foreshadowing of the Messiah, like I said, the whispers of the hero of God's story of redemption. And we see this all over scripture. By the time we are done with eight weeks, we should have a long list of everything that we see Jesus in, foreshadowing of God's Messiah. And lastly, the purpose of studying numbers is this journey helps us understand our own pilgrim journey. Because each one of us is on a pilgrim journey from the day that we get saved to God is wanting to take us to that abundant life, flourishing victory and rest. And Paul wrote to the Corinthians, and he said, these things were written down as warnings for us on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. We'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment. I want to talk about the method for this Bible study. Because you might ask yourself, wow, she says, we're doing a lot of chapters. How in the world are we going to squeeze that into eight weeks? And so here's what our method will be. The study guide is broken down into five-day-a-week study. And so budget your time that way so that you can carve out five little time frames. Some of you like to just bust it through. That's okay. You can do that too. At the end of the fifth day, there's another page and it says questions for thought and discussion. I wanted to point that out to you so you don't miss it. Because it's going to have some good things for you to discuss at your tables. No writing scripture this time, because 37 chapters is way too much to write out. So you don't have to write out scriptures. Once we get to Numbers 11, we're going to come out of warp speed and we're going to study verse by verse. But until then, from Exodus 20 to Numbers 11, we are going to go event by event. And that's how we are going to get this all accomplished. Next week, in fact, we are going to start, as you begin your study right now, we'll do Exodus 20 through 40 all in one week. We'll talk about that in a minute as well. And then the week after that, we will get to Numbers. Okay, lots of history. Does history change us? Does history change us? History, I feel like, is merely information. It is the application of history is where we find the transformation. It is an applying history. So yes, history does change us, but only if we suck it in and allow the Lord to transform us through that. So that is why studying the book of Numbers is important. That is why the Bible takes so many chapters to record this journey and that's why also there are so many parts of our Bible that refer back to this wilderness journey. It is astonishing. Maybe you've never made a list like I had never made a list before of all the places that talk about this. So I just want to share a few of them with you so that you get the same picture that I have of how many places in the Bible talk about this. For example, the Psalms, more than this, but Psalm 67, 95, 105, and 106, 135, 136 all recount the wilderness way. The wilderness years are woven through the prophets, the writings of the prophets. John, when he said in John chapter 1, he said the word became flesh and we probably know it dwelt among us. You would finish the sentence that way, but you know what it says? The word became flesh and tabernacled among us. John was giving us that look back to the wilderness tabernacle when God wanted to dwell with his people and he says now the word became flesh and tabernacled among us. Isn't that sweet? If I said to you what is the most popular verse in the Bible, what would you say? Absolutely, John 3, 16, most famous verse. Two verses, do you know what's right in front of that when Jesus is talking? He talks about Numbers chapter 21. He says, as Moses lifted up the servant in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Jesus pointed to the wilderness journey to make the statement that the whole world knows, even if someone doesn't know their Bible very well. Stephen's speech before he was stoned in Acts 7, he reviewed the golden calf and the tent of witness. The writer to the Hebrews explains more to us about entering into that rest and both Jude and Revelation talk about Balaam's heir, which we will get to. The Bible is filled with references back and forth to this time period. Have I convinced you yet how important this is? I hope so. So on your study guide look at page 7 and I printed out what Paul told the Corinthians about this. You can read the entire thing on your own. I won't read through the whole thing, but I'm going to bookend this Bible study with that inspiration from 1 Corinthians. Drop down to verse 11. And Paul said about the wilderness journey, he said, now these things happen to them as an example. But they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed, lest he fall. Do you see that word? Therefore, there's something that we need to do with this information. And so Paul was explaining to this even partly non-Jewish audience that what was written then about them was really has meaning for us now, for us today. And so as we always do in our Bible studies, it's very important then for us to ask. We read the scriptures and we say, well, now what is this saying? What does it say? And then we pause and we say, now what does this mean? And then there's the take heed part, lest you fall, take heed. What does it mean to me? How does this change my life? What do I do with this information? And that is the transformation that we get by applying it to our lives. All right. Just in closing here, I got one last disclaimer that I felt like I needed to do before you start your lesson next week in Exodus chapter 20. I want to tell you that we are not going to study the wilderness tabernacle in depth. Okay. And that might disturb some of you as you start studying and you're going to say, she just glazed over this, you know. I want to tell you it's intentional. Okay. And it's not because the tabernacle is not important. In fact, it's because it's too important to fit into the context and into the framework of this particular Bible study. Perhaps the Lord will allow us to come back as a supplement and do a study just on that alone. But we are not going to look at the bronze basin and the candles and all of that. We are not going to be able to do that. However, we are not going to glaze over the purpose of the wilderness tabernacle. And I want to whet your appetite for this week by just saying this. Okay. God was expressing in its existence, in the tabernacle's existence itself, he was expressing his desire now to come and be among his creation. This is new since Eden. All of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, God didn't come and live with his people. This is a new thing. And so the tabernacle expresses that. And God was expressing in its design, in the instructions that he gave to Moses. In its design, he was expressing that living a holy God dwelling with sinful man was going to take something pretty special. It was going to take atonement for the sin of man. Sinful man cannot dwell with a holy God. It requires special attention. But God, the point is that God wanted then and he wants now to fellowship with his people. Sometimes, you guys, we get so busy on our horizontal, the things that need to be done, what needs to be fixed, where we need to go, what we need to buy. And Bible study is a great way to lift up our eyes and say, God, you're crazy about me. You wanted to come dwell. You were crazy about Israel. You wanted to dwell with them. You made a way, even back here, to point to the better way that would be Jesus that would fulfill all of this. So, God still desires to dwell among his people. And the perfect sacrifice in his son satisfies God's justice and his mercy. And he's the hero of our story. And it is Jesus Christ that enables us to dwell with God because his spirit is in us, in this tabernacle. So, I hope you have a great study as you get started. I'm going to pray for all of us that the Lord will just open our eyes as we get into his word this next eight weeks. Father God, we thank you so much. Lord, it astonishes me that you allowed your words to be transmitted through the generations, through these thousands of years, Lord, that we're sitting here today. And we can go and look at your word and begin to have a vision and an understanding of what your heart was way back then. And what you said in motion. Lord, how much you loved those people and you wanted to be with them. You wanted to take them into the land of promise, take them into the land of abundance, of flourishing. And Lord, we know in our head that's what you want for us too. So, I ask, Lord Jesus, that you would open up our heart to those same truths. Lord, lift up our eyes to the truths of your intentions for us as we study, that we would each individually be drawn closer to you, be setting our face into that land of flourishing, into the land of abundance, Lord God, where you provide us both the victory and the rest that we need in this lifetime. And I thank you, Lord God, in Jesus' name, amen.