Living in God’s Presence

On Monday of this week, Paul and I went to Boise, went to Boise Town Square, haven't been there for a long, long time, and I found myself wandering into Yankee Candle, and this young bubbly girl just pops up from behind the desk, and she looks at me, and she says, what's your mission? And I said, told her what I was looking for, and I thought to myself, wow, you are perky. Good for you. We could use more of that in this world. Second thought was, that is a great way to find out what I'm looking for. So much more imaginative than, is there anything I can help you find, right? And so then as I'm looking at what I went in there for, I began to over spiritualize the ordinary, which I do regularly, and I thought to myself, that is one of the best questions anyone has asked me in years. What is your mission? And you know what? We should ask ourselves that regularly. We should say, what is my mission? What am I here for? It's an excellent question. Once we get saved, it is the most important thing that a Christian should be focused on. Now what does God want me to do? Well, today's lesson is titled, Living in God's Presence, which will describe the next stage of Israel's journey, the first stage of their journey. Hearing God's Word ended rather poorly when they lost sight of who they belonged to, and they reverted back to the ways of Egypt. It's a sad time because God had decisively delivered them so that to be his, to be distinct for a purpose. With his words, he explained to them how they should live in response to his deliverance. With his words, he explained that he wanted to dwell with them, and how Moses was to make the tabernacle in order to accomplish that. With his words, God gave Moses the law, which was further instructions for proper worship and proper living that we found in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. And then as we closed last week's lesson, we closed Exodus. Good job guys, 20 chapters last week. As we closed that, the glory of the Lord filled the temple, and now we're on the next phase, living in God's presence, because there he was with them. So these 10 chapters now for this week help us to understand that they were being made ready for their mission, and they were still going to need to pay attention to God's words as he brought order and organization to their mission, so that they can live in his presence and enjoy his presence. Now Numbers itself is a book of order and organization. It begins with the census, it ends with the census. And I want to begin at Numbers chapter 1. I want to read those first three verses again.

Verse 3 tells us,

Tuck that away. Now when you studied the first chapter, you learned a lot of things. You learned that the sons of Jacob had grown from 12 of them back in Genesis, now to 600,000 of them. And that's only the men that were 20 years old and up. So if we added all the men, and then all the women, we have a lot of people. I like to usually say there was 2 million or so people in that group. And this also excluded the tribe of Levi, according to verse 49, they weren't counted. So 1 12th of them weren't even in that number. So it's a large group of people. But we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit because that census was the first day of the second month. And I like to do things in order because I kind of like am a calendar oriented person. And so I want us to go back to the first day of the first month. It's also convenient for us. Here we are in early February, so we can conveniently look at this if we wanted to get a perspective that mattered to us from, say, January 1st to February 20th would be the seven weeks. There are seven weeks from the time that the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle to the time when they moved out. And that's what we're studying in these 10 chapters, those seven weeks. Okay? Okay. I am a person who likes dates. I like lists. I like putting things in order. I love order. Maybe you do too. There was a time in my life that I think I allowed people to convince me that order and spirituality were on different sides of the seesaw. That was before I began really studying the Bible. And then I realized God loves order. They go together. They are not separate things. Some people might make you think that spirituality means like a free-spirited, never, you know, just willy-nilly whatever. No, no, no, no. We find, especially in this lesson, God loves order maybe more than I do. So Numbers opens, and God takes this unorganized mob of 2 million people, and what does he do with them? He counts them. He orders them. He tells them where to camp. He explains to them who is to do what in regard to the tabernacle when they need to move it. So a lot of order going on. And guess what? You guys, they listened to God this time. They had a problem last time listening to his words, and this time they listened. And that discipline stuff, that really works, because this time they did what he said. So in your study guide on page 27, I tried to kind of put the order to how these seven weeks went, and I'm just going to put a slide up, too, that will show that to you in an abbreviated way. Again, it is the second year, first month, the first day there was the tabernacle was set up, and the cloud covered the tabernacle, and that is how we closed the book of Exodus. And then starting on that day, in number seven, we learned that the tribes began to bring their offerings, one tribe each day. So we have that going on from the first day, second, third, right to the twelfth. And then it seems to me, although it doesn't say, so I put an asterisk on the chart there, it seems to me that the thirteenth might have been the consecration of the Levites because that is the next chapter, Numbers chapter eight, but it doesn't tell us that, but I tucked it in there. And then we do know that the Passover was on the fourteenth because that is the way God instructed them. So between the first day and the fourteenth, we kind of get an idea of what they were doing, how things were going. And the next time marker that we see in the passages that we studied is the second month, the first day, all right? God orders a census. And that is how Numbers began. That's what we just read. That happened on the second month, the first day. And then the other time marker that we studied and put into our chart was that Israel left Mount Sinai on the twentieth day. And so those are the two areas that I really want to go over in this teaching time is the census. And I'm going to include the mission of the Levites with that. And then I want to go over the day that they left. All right. So let's start with the census. Israel was not only to just be counted, they were also given a specific arrangement for the camp. Everyone was assigned a certain place. I wonder if they just loved their assignment. My experience in life has been as soon as you begin to organize people and tell them where they are to sit and stand and eat and sleep, they suddenly develop a desire to do it in a different place than that they've been told. However, this seems like it all went very smoothly. So either we're spared from those details or that discipline stuff really worked and they were ready to just do what God told them to do. The census for the general population was a head count to the men, 20 years old and upward for the purpose of war. That is what this passage told us, because there were going to be battles to fight once they went into the promised land. And you listed all those tribes. You listed the numbers in your study guide on the arrangement of the camp. And so I really don't have anything more to say about that. What I want to talk about is the one tribe that was excluded. And so in your Bible, Numbers 1 verse 49 tells us,

At least they were not to have a census in the same way and for the same purpose as the people of Israel. Verse 50 tells us,

In other words, only the Levites were to carry and take care of and camp around and take down and put up the tabernacle. They were the only ones. So what about the rest of the nation? What were they to do? Verse 52.

And in case you didn't catch it the first time, 53 tells us,

Did you get a clear understanding of the job of the Levites through those passages? Absolutely. Distinctive work that God had chosen for them. And we got a very good visualization of that on the chart in our study guide because the presence of God dwelling with sinful man would require some special care. Now, the Levites did have a census, ultimately, but it was for a different purpose than war. Their census included a different amount of people. It was all the males from one month old onward. And the purpose was for making an exchange. And so I want to read about that. We are in Numbers chapter 3, verse 40.

And you shall take the Levites for me instead of all the firstborn from among the people of Israel. And verse 43 tells us that the firstborn males now amounted to about 22,000 plus, OK? So the exchange that was intended was all the firstborn males in exchange for the Levites. All right, so what's up with this? Let's walk back in time to our last Bible study in Exodus. And the night of the Passover, when all of Israel was sheltering under the blood of the Lamb, and the plague came upon Egypt, and all the firstborn were struck down, all the firstborn of Israel were spared. They were saved. God saved them, and so now God owned them. They belong to him. I'm just going to put this on the slide so that you can stay in numbers in your Bible, but look at this. Exodus 13, 13 says, every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem. And this is because all of the firstborn among the livestock was to be sacrificed to the Lord, but we don't sacrifice human beings. So all the firstborn sons shall be redeemed. And then the next verse told them, now when your children ask you, what is this all about? Here's what you're supposed to say to them. By a strong hand, the Lord brought us out of Egypt when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, and the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt. Therefore, I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that first opened the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem. And so this was now to be a tradition, a teaching moment, to explain something to all their children, to explain who they belong to. Did we not learn last week how important it is to remember who you belong to? And so this was a tool to continue to explain. We belong to the Lord, and this is one way to remember that. So how does it relate to our present passage? Okay, all of these firstborn males belong to the Lord, and now God has a purpose for them because there is a need for there to be a boundary around the tabernacle. And so I suppose he could have taken all those firstborn males and say, so if you're a firstborn now, you come and live close in around the tabernacle. But that could have proved a little awkward in family situations. So it's kind of like this. Count all the firstborn males, count all the Levite males. I think we're gonna be pretty close. Let's exchange one for the other, and I'll take all the Levites, and they will live around my tabernacle. And the mamas were also happy because the families were able to stay together because now a tribe was serving the purposes that the Lord had intended. But it was an exchange, and you know God exchanges things, doesn't he? That's why we're even saved is the great exchange. And so we see that here. In Numbers, again, three, verse 45, we see this,

And then they worked out a redemption price with money for the little remainder that was unequal there. Now, I wanna say something about this. It was a year ago when God said, all the firstborn belong to me because I have spared them. But he didn't give all the information of what he was gonna do with them and all of that. It took a whole year. Now, now God begins to unfold more information. That happens over and over in our life. God gives us something, he points us in a direction, he shows us a level of obedience, and he said, this is the way it is to be done. But we don't have the whole story yet. We just need to trust him that he knows what he's doing, and we need to obey. Perhaps in our life, he will unfold more of the story, and we'll see more information. We'll go, that was so smart. I'm so glad you thought of doing it that way. Maybe we'll never know, but that's certainly what happened here. They didn't have all the information a year ago, but now they had a little bit more. So what we did now in our lesson is we broke down the tribe of Levi. There was three clans, Gershon, Merari, and Kohath, and I just wanna quickly kind of review what specific tasks were given to those specific tribes. Gershon was required to deal with all the fabric-y sort of things, the curtains, the tent, it's covering, screen for the entrance, the hanging of the court, and the son of Aaron, the priest, Ithamar was to make sure that it was done properly. He was to oversee their work, and for this job, they were given two wagons and four oxen. And then Merari, the clan, was in charge of more the lumberish kind of things. They had the frames of the tabernacle, the pillars, the bars, the bases, the cords, and all of that kind of thing. And again, Ithamar was to oversee and make sure it was done the way it was supposed to be done and for that work, because it's a heavy load and quite awkward, they were given four wagons and eight oxen, and then Kohath, the tribe of Kohath was in charge of all the tender things, the inner things. They were to put poles through the table for showbread and to carry that on their shoulders. They were to put poles through the golden altar and to carry that, and it was Eleazar, the priest, who was to come in and cover everything appropriately because only the priests did that. And then the tribe of Kohath was to carry those tender inner things that represented the Lord. They were to carry it by hand, no wagons, no oxen. They were to carry it close and carry it carefully. And so it seems a little technical to have gone through all this, but we learn so much by looking at their assignments, don't we? What things do we learn? Number one, God didn't treat everyone the same then and he doesn't treat everyone the same now. And the sooner we grip that, the sooner we can get the struggle of comparison out of our mind. God loves everyone the same, but he gives, you went through the New Testament verses, didn't you? God gives gifts as he determines. Jesus told the parable of the talents. You get one, you get two, you get five. Distinctions as he chooses, and that's what we see with the different clans of the Levites. Second thing we learn is that God gives what we need for our mission. Pastor Chuck used to say, where God guides, God provides. And that is a Bible truth. The Levites who were to carry heavier, more awkward loads were given the carts, the wagons, and the oxen for that purpose. And those Levites who had tender responsibilities to carry personally needed to use their own bodies, their own shoulders to do it. And you know what? For us, sometimes we have tender burdens to carry that must be carried alone. We, there are some burdens that can be shared and there are some burdens that can only be bared. Is that right, tense? I don't know. But it is a truth. Sometimes, have you ever looked at someone else's life, maybe another woman, and you go, I could never do what she's doing or I could never go through what she's going through. And you know what? You're right, you can't, you'd die. God hasn't given you that burden and God hasn't given you the tools for that. But God will give you the tools for your burden and he will give you what you need for the mission that he has set you on. Last thing we learn from this, it is our task to merely be faithful with our assignment, with our mission. We can't be tempted around, tempted to look around and compare others. And you know, this is week three and week six, that very thing will happen. It's gonna be a sad week to see what happens when people compare. All right, now the. Last thing I want to do is spend time thinking, visualizing the day that Israel sets out, okay? Pressing toward their mission that God has given them, because God has told them all along where they're headed. There's no surprises. That is one thing God clearly explained to them. And in your study guide, I broke it down to the sights and the sounds and the prayers. And I'll go through those three things, and I'll start with the sound. The sounds of Israel moving toward their mission. In Numbers 10, it told us all about the trumpets that were to be used to summon the congregation and to signal to the tribes to set out and to be gathered together. And then later on, it was also used for feast. And it was the priests who were to blow those trumpets. Now, imagine you're Israel, and you're sitting around, and you've been told the signal. And the trumpet sounds, and you go, it's time to go, right? It makes so much sense what Paul told the Corinthians. We shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable. It's time to go. It's time to move out. Isn't that awesome? Adds a whole other layer to that. So the sight of Israel moving out on their mission, as someone could have viewed it, if there was a helicopter flying over, it was ordered and it was organized. I picture what it was like when they left Egypt. They were a mob when they left Egypt. They didn't just get up and leave and elbow each other and that. No, no, no. God had put order to it. We see here that there was three tribes, and then a group of Levites, and three tribes, and a group of Levites, and then six tribes. It was ordered and it was organized, because God is a God of order. And then the prayers while Israel moved on their mission. And I want to talk about two. I want to talk about the blessing of the priests and the prayer of Moses. I'm not altogether sure that the blessing of the priests belongs here. I'm just putting it here because it's a good companion verse right here. But what I'm talking about is the priestly blessing that we read back in Numbers chapter six. And I would like you to flip back to that in your Bible. Numbers chapter six, starting at verse 22. This is a reminder that God is a blessing God. If you're not careful, there's so much volume given to do it exactly the way I say. Do it according to the model I've shown you. And that's important. And we see that. But the reason I want to camp on this is because this gives us the understanding and the balance that we crave as human beings. We crave for God to pursue, for God to bless. So let's look at it. The Lord spoke to Moses, speak to Aaron and his son saying, thus you shall bless the people of Israel. In other words, Aaron and your sons, this is the way I want you. This is my instruction to you. This is how you are to bless Israel in my name. Okay. This way. Verse 24.

A blessing is prosperity and to cause you to prosper and to keep you is to cause you to be protected. Verse 25.

A shining face is a smiling, affirming face. When I teach, I'm always scanning the room for smiling, affirming faces. But that's my weakness. But still, this is what God is saying. The Lord make his face shine upon you. That's his heart. I want to smile over you. Verse 26.

And peace isn't merely the absence of war. Peace is a state of rest. Remember, that's where we're headed. To rest. Love it. So they shall put my name upon the people of Israel and I will bless them. This is my heart. This is my character. This is what I want for my people right here. And so priests, you do this. It doesn't say when or how often. I like to picture them doing it all the time, but certainly when they're moving. And then the other thing that we did see in connection with their move is the prayer of Moses. Numbers chapter 10, verse 35. It said,

And when it rested, he said,

And that is what Moses had developed to pray regularly at the regular occurrence of the ark moving out. And he was expressing his confidence that God would do exactly what he said he was going to do. So just to close this up, the main theme of this week, again, was titled Living in God's Presence. How do you live in God's presence? And what is your mission? Those two things go together. They need to be woven together. I'll give you one answer to the question, living in God's presence. An awareness of his presence gives me the ability to do my mission. An awareness of God's presence gives me the ability to do the mission God has sent me on. How do we develop an awareness of God's presence? It seems a little vaporish sometimes. People will say, and it's a good thing to say, it's very good. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Just keep looking to the Lord. That's very, very good. But to me, it's a little vaporish. What does it mean and how do I do that? This is what I learned from this. In Numbers 2.2, the Lord said,

That is their position, face the tent of meeting. I wanted you to see that visual of this encircling around the presence of the Lord. They were not to set up their tent and face the wilderness. They were to establish themselves facing the presence of the Lord. We have tents, do we not? Paul calls my body my tent. My tent needs to be facing the presence of the Lord, figuratively, literally facing the Lord. That is how I hold on to an awareness of the presence of the Lord. This morning I got up, of course, you know, this study in my mind, Lord, I choose to face you. I'm facing you so that whatever happens, my eyes are on you. So I hope that this visual gives you something to hold on to. When you say the words to someone else or someone says it to you, just keep your eyes on the Lord. Oh, right, my tent, looking at him, all of us surrounding the Lord. That is how we are to live, living in God's presence. And there's a couple things that that helps us. It helps us to do two things. Number one, minimize how much we're looking at ourself. And don't we all need to minimize how much we are facing ourselves, right? And then it helps us to remember who we belong to. That is so important to be facing who we belong to. Who owns you? The Lord owns me. And so we need to face him. So ladies, what is your mission? If you go into Yankee Candle and Boise Town Square and the perky little clerk says to you, what's your mission? You can look at her and say, well, let me tell you, I know exactly what my mission is. Father God, I just pray that you would help us to maintain an awareness of who we belong to. Keep our eyes fixed on you, Lord. Help us to focus on our mission, to let the other things just go by the side. And Lord, it's all about you. Father, I pray for my sisters as we discuss now. And I pray that you would really just enrich our understanding even further. In Jesus' name, amen.