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Introduction: Welcome to Expound our weekly worship and verse by verse study of the Bible.
Our goal is to expand your knowledge of the truth
of God as we explore the Word of God in
a way that is interactive, enjoyable, and congregational.
Skip Heitzig: So, turn in your Bibles to the book of Numbers, chapters 2 and 3. We have
two chapters before us tonight, by the grace of God,
and only by the grace of God [laughter], but we
will see. Let's pray together. Lord, one of
the hardest things we discover to do in our culture
is to concentrate on one thing for any period of
time. We are so distracted with texts and e-mails and tweets and Instagram
pictures and the like, it is hard for us to
get passed addiction to our own technology, and to sit
and study the Bible, especially an Old Testament book like
the book of Numbers, seems like a daunting thing. But the hunger that is represented
by all of us here, and those joining online, those hearing
us by radio live, we're humbled by it.
And we ask for your Holy Spirit to ultimately be our
director, our teacher, and to fill our hearts with hope
as well as instruction. We seek to learn and to
know what is meant by every verse of Scripture, line
upon line, precept upon precept, verse by verse, chapter by
chapter. Thank you that you afford us a country like
this where we have the freedom to assemble and the
freedom to worship. We pray that it would be pleasing
to you, and we pray that you would speak to
us, in Jesus' name, amen. In chapter 2
it's all about management, in chapter 3 it's all about
ministry, and so much of ministry is management. God is going to arrange and
manage the tribes, the millions of people that are out
there in the wilderness, and then he is going to
speak to those who are in the ministry; so, management, chapter 2 and
ministry, chapter 3. Allow me to introduce you to three
million people who are out in the desert at Mount
Sinai, three million of your new best friends. How's that?
And we're going to look at them sort of from
an aerial view beginning eastward and then moving south and
then west and then north, clockwise. It might be helpful
to you, those of us who live here in Albuquerque,
to just sort of visualize like we're dealing with, first,
the northeast heights. And you can picture people that are
gathered there in the northeast heights. And then we're going
to move down to the south valley in our study and
see the tribes that are gathered in the south valley.
Then we're going to cross the Rio Grande river and
deal with the west side, out in the west side,
Paradise Hills, and even on over into Rio Rancho, and,
finally, north, where we'll deal with Bernalillo, and the people
who are in camp there, and even at Sandia Reservation. And
so, to sort of picture it that way, and we'll
see what's going on here. The children of Israel were encamped
in the Wilderness of Sinai, before they marched, now for
about twelve and a half months since they left Egypt
in the Exodus. They have been there camped
at Mount Sinai, and it's all about, it has been
about, and it is about now preparation. God is preparing
them though move forward and march, to go on a hike
from Mount Sinai to the border of the Promised Land, Kadesh Barnea,
and on into the land where they will settle in.
And they will have tribal allotments, property that will be
given to each individual tribe. According to the book of
Deuteronomy, it's less than a two-week walk from Kadesh Barnea
or from Mount Sinai to Kadesh Barnea.
But it's going to take them about forty years because
of the wandering, going around in circles for a number
of reasons that we will see. But all during this
time before they walk, before they march, before they go in,
God wants them to sit still and get prepared for it.
So often we don't like to prepare. We're good about
moving. We're not slow to go, and we hate to
wait. "But those who wait on the Lord will renew
their strength." And before God sends you he will often
prepare you. And part of the key
is learning to love the process. Paul said, "I have
learned in whatever state I am in to be content."
I can tell that some of you, just by your
body language, have a problem with contentment, a problem with
waiting. Some people can't wait to get married. They say, "I'm
getting so old; I've gotta get married soon. I'm gonna turn
into an old maid. I'm already eighteen." [laughter] They're single and they can't wait
to get married. Unfortunately, I meet people
who are married and they wish they were single. That's
why I advocate single people mingling with married people and
vice versa, because they need to read that in the
other segment of the population. "Oh, yeah, I remember wanting
to get married so bad I could hardly stand it."
And the single person seeing the married people, "Boy, they
don't seem too excited about being married this week, do they?
This is a big daunting commitment, isn't it?"
The Lord wants us to find him in that period
of waiting and to enjoy---if you're single, enjoy being single; if your
married, enjoy being married; if you're waiting on the Lord for
something, enjoy the process of whatever he's teaching you. Let
him prepare you and you'll march soon enough. So, we
have the tabernacle. Okay, you're in a helicopter right now, and you're above
the city, you're above the encampment, you're above Mount Sinai,
or, if you will, Mount Sandia, [laughter] and you're looking
out over that large valley. And right
in the middle of the encampment, the center part of
town is the tabernacle. Around the tabernacle there are four
distinct encampments. First of all, closest to the perimeter of
the tabernacle are the Levitical families. On the eastern side
you've got Moses and Aaron. On the south you have
a particular family of the Levites called the sons of Kohath
or the Kohathites. They're down south right next to the
tabernacle. On the west side of the
tabernacle, opposite the opening, are the sons of Gershon or
the Gershonites, all part of the Levitical family still. And
then to the north on your way toward Santa Fe,
next to that tabernacle is the family of Merari. So, Kohath, Gershon,
and Merari, all families of the Levites, camped around the
tabernacle. Then after that you have the tribes of Israel
divided into four camps. There are twelve tribes; there are
four camps. Each camp is how many tribes? Three tribes.
So, on the Sandia Mountain side, up in the northeast
heights, on the east side of the tabernacle---again, the east side of the
tabernacle is where you go in, it's the opening, it's
the doorway---you have three tribes: Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. Then you move south. Now you're
in the south valley, and you have the tribe of
Reuben and Simeon and Gad, those three tribes. And then
you go out to the west side now, and there
on the west side there are three more tribes, the
third camp, the tribe of Ephraim and Manasseh and Benjamin.
And finally you move north on the road toward Santa
Fe, and there camped around the tabernacle, around the Levites,
the fourth and final encampment with three more tribes: the
tribe of Dan, Asher, and Naphtali; making a total of
twelve tribes. Now just keep that in mind, and you
have a map---yes, you do. You have a map that sort of shows that to
you, and we'll make reference to that again.
So in chapter 2 we notice this: "The Lord spoke
to Moses and Aaron, saying: 'Everyone of the children of
Israel shall camp by his own standard,' " or logo
or insignia, some representation of that tribe, "'of his father's house;
they shall camp some distance from the tabernacle of meeting.'
"Remember, it's the Levitical families and Moses and Aaron that
will be right around there, and the camps will be
out from there. Now we have the
eastern encampment. " 'On the east side, toward the rising
of the sun, those of the standard of the forces
with Judah shall camp according to their armies; and Nahshon the son
of Amminadab shall be the leader of the children of Judah.' "
The east side was the place of honor; the place
of honor, because it is the opening of the tabernacle.
It's the only way you get into the courtyard is
from the east side. You can't enter it from the
west, the north, or the south. You
can only come in one way, and that is where
Moses and Aaron are camped, and three tribes: Judah, Issachar, Zebulun;
under the banner, the mask of Judah, which is the kingpin tribe, the head tribe,
the anchor tribe. I find this so beautiful because Judah
is not the largest tribe by itself. However, it is in
the place of honor, and I believe it to be
prophetic because we know that the Lord Jesus Christ, Israel's
Messiah, will be born from the tribe of Judah. He
is the "Lion of the tribe of Judah." That's the
lineage that he comes through. Now here's
something to keep in your mind: the emblem, we believe,
the standard, we believe, the insignia, the logo, if you will,
of the tribe of Judah we believe to be a
lion. And we believe the flag was the green color
with a lion embroidered on a green flag. Now, we
say that because Bible commentators by the name of Keil
and Delitzsch who have done extensive research with the rabbinical
traditions, according to the rabbinical traditions say that the insignia
of Judah was the lion on a green flag. So,
just keep that in mind. That's what
you would see as you would look toward the east,
three tribes, but one insignia that you would see closest
to the tabernacle, and that is, the flag of the
tribe of Judah, because that's the anchor tribe. Beginning in
verse 10 we move south. We're in the south valley
now. " 'On the south side shall be the standard
of the forces with Reuben.' " So it will be Reuben's
standard that will anchor the other tribes that are with
Reuben, Simeon, and Gad. Again, according to Keil
and Delitzsch, the flag on the south side was a
red flag with the insignia or the logo of a
man. So we have a lion, and we have a
picture of a man on a flag. That's the southern encampment. And the numbers are given
in verse 16, then beginning in verse 18---see, we're moving
pretty quickly through this because I'm giving you the summation
of it. In verse 18, now we're on west side,
the west side of the Rio Grande.
You're looking now over Paradise Hills. And what else is
out there? Well, Rio Rancho is a little bit farther north,
but what else is out there? Ventana Ranch, is that---anything
else? Taylor Ranch, there you go. All those places you're
looking at now in your mind's eye, it's the west
side of the tabernacle. " 'And on the west side shall
be the standard of the forces with Ephraim according to
their armies.' " So, you're going to
look and see the flag of Ephraim, next to him
will be Manasseh and Benjamin. Again, according to Keil and Delitzsch,
the flag on the west side of the tribe of
Ephraim was a gold flag with the logo, the insignia,
the picture of a man. A lion---no, not a man, an ox,
a calf. I just said a man, that's south. That's
the red flag. So, you have a lion, you have
a man, you have an ox or a calf; a
calf of an ox. That's on the west side.
Now we move to the northern encampment. Verse 25, " 'The
standard of the forces with Dan.' " So, Dan, that's the kingpin tribe, that's
the anchor tribe, along with Asher and Naphtali on that side. " 'Shall
be on the north side according to their armies, and
the leader of the children of Dan shall be Ahiezer
the son of Ammishaddai.' " Again, according to those two
commentators that I mentioned, and some taters are just more
common than others. But these two commentators Keil and Delitzsch say that
flag on the north was a white flag with the
standard of an eagle. So, you have four
flags, and wherever you were with those millions of people,
because of the organization and the arrangement of the tribes,
you could tell where you are. Because on one side
you had the flag of a lion; on the other
side you had the flag of a man; on the
other side you had the flag of a calf or an ox; on
the other side you had that of an eagle. And
the numbers are given in verse 31. Now
in verse 32, as we sum this up in this
chapter, "These are the ones who were numbered of the
children of Israel by their fathers' houses. All who were numbered
according to their armies of the forces were six hundred
and three thousand five hundred and fifty." Now, remember these
are the men in the census from twenty years old
and upwards to fifty who were fighting men. They could
all engage in warfare. So, you add
this number of fighting men to other men, to aged
people, to children, and to women, and you have a
pretty sizable group out there in the wilderness. Notice this
though, because it'll be important for the next chapter, the
ministry chapter: "But the Levites were not numbered among the
children of Israel." They will be numbered in the very
next chapter, but not in this census that is taken.
"Just as the Lord commanded Moses. Thus the children of
Israel did according to all that the Lord commanded Moses;
so they camped by their standards and so they broke camp,
each one by his family, according to their fathers' house." Judah, a lion;
on the west side, an ox; on the south side,
a man; on the north side, an eagle. Now, I
keep bringing this up, because what I think what we
have here with the tabernacle is a picture of the
throne of God. Follow me here. Do you
remember in Ezekiel, chapter 1, the prophet sees this wild
vision of a portable, a mobile throne? God speaking from
this vaulted throne, but these creatures that have wheels, this
contraption that has wheels and that can move, and there
are four living creatures, four angelic creatures with wings and eyes and hands---weird
vision. But there were four faces on each one. Interesting
what those faces are: a lion, a man, an ox,
and an eagle. We fast-forward to the
book of Revelation where John in chapter 4 is caught
up to the throne of God, and he sees this
glassy sea, twenty-four elders who throw their crowns down upon
the glassy sea, and four living creatures with interesting faces:
face of a lion, face of an ox, the face
of a man, and the face of an eagle---like Ezekiel and like the tabernacle setup
in the book of Numbers. If you have
ever wondered, "Why are there four gospels? Why not three
or two or eight? Why four?" Well, what is interesting
is that Matthew, writing for the Jewish people, quoting Old
Testament Scripture, portrays Jesus Christ as the fulfilling Prophet, the King of the
Jews. This is the King Messiah fulfilling the Old Testament
prophets, he's the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the
one who would fulfill all of the kingly, messianic prophecies. Mark portrays Jesus
a bit differently as we saw in our last study.
It's a very fast-moving book, words like "immediately," "immediately," "and," "but,"
"then." And as you read the book of Mark, at
least when I read it through, I sort of feel
like I'm panting every chapter, because it moves so quickly.
Because Mark is portraying Jesus as a servant, like the
animal of servitude, the calf, the ox, beast of burden
moving quickly, carrying the load. You come
to the gospel of Luke, and Luke portrays Jesus in his
perfect humanity, using over and over again the term "the
Son of Man," "the Son of Man," "the Son of
Man." And then, finally, you get to the gospel of
John, which is Jesus soaring as the Son of God
like the eagle. John says, "Many things did Jesus in
this book that are not written, but these are written
that you might believe that Jesus is the Son of
God, and that by believing you would have life in his name." The
deity of Christ is hailed in the gospel of John
like none of the other gospels. And
so you have it again---the lion, the ox, the man, and
the eagle---laid out foursquare around the tabernacle, a picture of
the throne, a picture of Jesus Christ, a beautiful, emblematic
picture. Also, something else as you look at the graph we're going to
put up again: the tribe of Judah. along with the
other two tribes that kept toward the east---okay, so you've
been on Sandia Mountain. And you're taking
a helicopter over it. And you see Judah and the tribes Issachar
and Zebulun. On those three tribes have a conglomerate of one hundred eighty-six
thousand of those fighting men. It is proportionately a larger tribe than
the others. And so, if you just divide it by
population, it would look like this. And it's interesting what
you're looking at---a cross. Now, I don't want to
get too beneath the surface here, but all I can
say is I see when I read things like this,
I can just picture the Holy Spirit smiling as he
drops all of these fingerprints, these clues that we piece
together. And we go, "Either that is the craziest coincidence, or
this is God's providence as he weaves it together---a picture of the throne,
a picture of God's majesty, a picture of Jesus Christ."
Now we come to chapter 3. If chapter 2 was
management, chapter 3 is ministry, and it's about the priesthood.
The priests were representatives. They represented the people to God.
Later on the role of the prophet will arise in
Israel, and the prophet will be different. The prophet will
represent God to the people. "Thus saith the Lord," the prophet will
say. He'll be God's mouthpiece, God's spokesperson representing God before
the people, before kings. The priests take
a different role. They represent the people before God. And
so the high priest would wear on his shoulder two stones, a
stone on each shoulder: six names on one stone; six
names on the other stone; the names of the tribes of Israel;
bearing them on his shoulder, bearing the weight, the concerns,
the issues of the people before God. That's the role
of a priest. The high priest will also wear over his heart a breastplate
with twelve stones, each stone representing one of the tribes
of Israel. So, over his heart, praying
for the people, loving the people; being of service to the
people, the stone on the shoulders; loving on the people,
the stones on the heart---that's the role of the priest. He's a representative of
the people before God. Now he has a couple of
other roles too. Let's just piece them together. According to
Leviticus, chapter 10, one of the roles of the priest
is to teach people the Law of God. So they will have a role of
the teacher, mentoring people, explaining to them God and his
laws, his requirements. According to Deuteronomy, chapter 17,
they will have another role, and that is of a judge.
They will adjudicate cases in the community. So, they have
a very diverse role and a very important role among
the children of Israel. What's interesting about the priests, and
the whole family, the tribe of the Levites, is when
they get into the land, they won't have a portion
of the land. There is no land allotment for the
tribe of Levi. Instead they will be given cities, Levitical cities
that will be interspersed between all of the other tribes
of Israel. They'll live in cities, but
they won't have their own land, because their inheritance, their
portion is the Lord himself. They will be full-time in
ministry in the things of God, in the articles of the tabernacle.
Something else about the priests is what they wear. They wear holy garments. They're holy men wearing holy garments.
There's linen trousers, and there's a certain getup that they wear,
the priests, and then the high priest has his own
deal going. So they have clergy clothes. Now let me just
say that it is my belief that there is no
need for clergy clothes today, because there is no priesthood
as such today. I know that there are some churches that
believe in priests. I came from that background. But because
of what Jesus did on the cross as our great
High Priest, he is the only mediator between God and
man, Paul says. There's no need for me to go
to another human being to represent me before God.
"There's only one God and one Mediator between God and men, the
man Jesus Christ," that's Scripture. So there's no hierarchy. I
know that some clergymen like to wear certain garments, collars, robes.
When I first moved to Albuquerque, I had a well-meaning
clergyman know that I was starting a church, and he
had pity on me, because he saw me, he saw how
I was dressed. And I haven't really
changed my style of clothing all that much. And he looked at
what I was wearing and he just thought, "This poor kid
needs a robe." [laughter] So he came to me and
he said, "I'd like to buy you a minister's robe."
And I was very polite, but I declined. You know, I'm thinking about this. I said, "I
just can't get into wearing a dress, man. It's just not---it's just
not my deal." [laughter] When I was
growing up in the tradition that I came from, the
Roman Catholic tradition, my mom was hoping that one of
her four boys would become a priest. My two oldest
brothers went to seminary, Catholic seminary, got their education, and wore the clergy gowns
as seminarians and a collar. And they just looked---we used to see them,
they were down in San Diego, and they just looked
so holy on the weekends when we saw them. It's like, "Wow!
I know those are my brothers. They're not holy, but, boy,
do they look good." [laughter] But they
never finished and they never got ordained as priests. And
my brother Bob joined the Hell's Angels. [laughter] He was
the third one. And so I was the last hope
that my mom had of becoming a priest. And then
her hopes were dashed when I---well, what she called "became
a Protestant." And I got saved when I watched Dr.
Billy Graham, and I joined a Bible study, and a
Christian commune, and then a very different kind of a
church than what she was used to seeing.
And she just thought, "Oh my goodness, he was my
last hope. I wanted him to be a priest and he's become a Protestant. [laughter]
So one day after I read the book of First
Peter, which we're studying on Sunday, I came to her and
said, "Mom, I just want you to know that your dream
has been fulfilled. I'm a priest." And she looked at me strange. And I quoted what
it said, " 'You are a chosen generation, a royal
priesthood, God's own special people set apart to proclaim his
praises who has called you out of darkness into his
marvelous light.' Mom, I'm a priest!" Didn't go over that
well. [laughter] "Now these are the records of
Aaron and Moses when the Lord spoke with Moses on
Mount Sinai. And these are the names of the sons
of Aaron: Nadab, the firstborn, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar." They
had four boys as well. I would have been Ithamar, I
was the fourth on the list. "These are the names
of the sons of Aaron, the anointed priests, whom he
consecrated to minister as priests. Nadab and Abihu," the first two,
number one and number two, the two oldest, "had died
before the Lord." Remember when we studied that?
"When they offered profane [or strange] fire," or another translation, "unauthorized fire,"
"before the Lord in the Wilderness of Sinai and they
had no children. So, Eleazar and Ithamar ministered as priests
in the presence of Aaron their father." One of the
things I love about the Bible is that it never
seeks to conceal the flaws of those that it writes about,
its heroes, its stars, its ministers. Here
in the ministry there were two men that if a
modern biographer were making a book about his family, he
may not even want to even mention the two guys
that sinned and God killed. He might just say, "You
know, we have a family and we've been priests for
a long time, and let me just tell you about
the two priests that made it big." But the Bible
never conceals the flaws even of its heroes, which helps
authenticate the veracity and the validity of Scripture. It tells you who they really were.
You think that Abraham had a huge, humungous halo? Are
you kidding? Abraham was somebody who lapsed in his faith.
Isaac was somebody who lied and deceived. Moses was a
guy who complained and disbelieved. David was a dude who
committed adultery and killed people, and yet he was called "a
man after God's own heart." Heroes, but all of the warts,
all of the flaws that are mentioned. These two men died
in their ministry before the Lord because of their sin.
I love photography and I've done photography, an amateur level, for many years.
And there's one particular photographer I was always drawn to who took pictures many,
many years ago called Yousuf Karsh. He used large-format camera.
And he would position his subjects, most of them very
famous, like Winston Churchill, with a harsh light, high contrast,
and position their faces often times where it wouldn't hide
their flaws, like if they had a mole or a wart, but
actually accentuate it. One of the reasons
he did this is to bring these famous people down
to a normal level for people who would view his
photographs. And you look at them close and you study
the definition and the detail of those large eight-by-ten negatives, and
you go, "That dude looked like that? Man." And it
makes you feel really good about yourself. [laughter] I love
those kind of pictures. It's honest photography. There's no Photoshopping
back then, no concealing of the flaws. So, I love
that the Bible does this. On the
other hand, we have in the death of these two
priests that we have already studied, and we just see
the mention of it here, we see the importance of
something that is often neglected in ministry. It's called the
fear of the Lord, the fear of the Lord. "The
fear of the Lord," the Bible says, "is the beginning
of wisdom." It's "the beginning of knowledge." There is often
times in ministry a sad lack of the fear of the Lord. And after a while
people in the ministry are full of themselves. They believe
their own press. They start getting a celebrity kind of
a status. They start losing accountability, and they forget the
fear of the Lord, as these two here did. They
forgot about it. "Nadab and Abihu had
died," verse 4," before the Lord when they offered profane
fire." What is that? Well, we can't be certain, but
the NIV calls it "unauthorized fire." We don't know exactly
what they did, but the guess is God had prescribed,
if you remember, that the priest had to follow a
very rigid, detailed set of commands to light incense. They
couldn't just pull out a match or a cigarette lighter and light
the incense. They had to take a coal,
a special coal from off of the brass altar in
the courtyard where animals were sacrificed, a live coal that
was perpetually kept burning while the children of Israel were camped. They took a coal
and they brought the coal from off the altar of
sacrifice, and they brought it near before the Lord, and they
put incense on that coal. It is believed that these
two guys wanted to take a shortcut.
"Why should I go all the way out there and get
a coal, there's a coal right here? Let's just use
this, or let's make up our own and get a
different source of fire," to make it easier, to make it more manageable, and sort of
a shortcut to get the job done, to light the
incense. So, it is believed that they took fire, unauthorized
fire from another source rather than the source God specified,
the altar of sacrifice. And God struck them dead---taking shortcuts,
being lazy. My dad was big on
a work ethic---get up early, work hard---and he instilled that
in us. And he could tell if we were slacking
off. And I really honestly to this day appreciate that kind of work ethic.
But I don't like to see laziness, especially in the ministry.
I remember something by Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and it's a
quote I have almost memorized, but it's just stuck in
my mind. He said, "If you plan
to be lazy, there are plenty of avocations in which
you will not be wanted; but, above all, you are
not wanted in the Christian ministry. For he who finds
the ministry an easy life will discover it will bring a hard death."
Air force pilots have a little saying: "There are old
pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no
old, bold pilots." Get the meaning? If you're a bold pilot, you
take shortcuts, you take risks, and often because you do
that your life expectancy is cut short.
You can get into an accident much quicker by being
too bold. You won't become old. Same with the priesthood;
there are old priests and there are bold priests, but
there are no old, bold priests. These two priests were
a little too brash, a little too bold, taking a
shortcut, getting too close to the edge, and God killed them.
Which brings up a very important question: Does God still to
this today? Well, no, not in the
same way. And aren't we glad? I am. I'm so
glad for God's mercy. I love the Scripture that says,
"His mercies are new every morning." Awesome! Tomorrow morning I got
a whole new boat load. I'm gonna need it. However,
as I look through the Scriptures, it would seem that
there were special times in which the Lord acted in
this kind of a judgment at the beginning of certain
times. Here was the beginning of a theocracy, God dwelling
among his people in the tabernacle. Later
on will be the beginning of a monarchy under King
David. And as the ark is being brought up to
Jerusalem, one of the fellows, to keep the ark steady, named Uzza,
puts out his hand to steady the ark, so that it
won't fall over. But he's not supposed to touch the ark, the Levites, the
priests are to guard it. But this dude just being
practical, being pragmatic, so the thing won't spill out on
the ground, touches it with his hand---God strikes him dead.
Then in the book of Acts, chapter 5, there's Ananias and Sapphira
who lied to the Holy Spirit and they're struck dead.
So, at the beginning of a theocracy, at the beginning
of the monarchy, and at the beginning of the New
Testament economy God showed himself to be holy and to
demand holiness. And though that was a one-time deal, and
that wasn't repeated except at those special times, later on
we read in the book of Frist Corinthians where Paul
writes about the Lord's Supper. And he
says, "You know, in your own church," he writes to
the Corinthians, "many of your people are sick and have
even died because they have not discerned the communion service
correctly, the Lord's body." So, the idea is that God
was showing in that Gentile territory that God demands holiness,
and showing him to be pure and holy and something that---a standard
that he demanded. So at special times the Lord showed
up and the Lord did this. Well, it happened to
these two. "The Lord spoke," verse 5, "to
Moses, saying: 'Bring the tribe of Levi near, and present
them before Aaron the priest, that they may serve him.
And they shall attend to his needs and the needs
of the whole congregation before the tabernacle of meeting, to
do the work of tabernacle. Also they shall attend to
the furnishings of the tabernacle of meeting, to the needs
of the children of Israel, to do the work of
the tabernacle. And you shall give the Levites to Aaron
and his sons; they are given entirely to him from
among the children of Israel.' " The
work of the tabernacle was too big and too daunting
a task for just the priests, just the family of Aaron or the Kohathites and Merarites and Gershonites
to handle. They needed the whole tribe of Levi. All
of them had to be given to them for the
work to guard the tabernacle from people who just want to come in and
go, "I just want to go in and talk to
God in the Holy of Holies." "Uh, no. God will
kill you if you do that. Stay back."
Also, they were given, the Levites were given to the
priesthood for miscellaneous items: to carry, and to manage, and
to do work that the priest themselves couldn't do. I
find a corollary in the New Testament. Who's our great
High Priest? Jesus Christ, it's always the right answer, Jesus
Christ the great High Priest. Do you know that the
Father gave you to Jesus? And just like the priests were given the Levites
to aid them in the ministry, the Father has given all of you, all of us
to Jesus Christ. In John, chapter 17, what's called
the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, he says, "Father," Jesus
says, "Father, I have manifested your name to those that
you have given me out of the world. For they
were yours, but you have given them to me." God
the Father gave you to Jesus to work with him
in some form of ministry. It's a beautiful thought---we are colaborers
with Christ. " 'And you shall appoint," verse 10, " 'Aaron
and his sons, and they shall attend to their priesthood; but
the outsider who comes near shall be put to death.' " Now, something
I just want to make mention of we saw it in
Exodus, but I don't know, that was like fifty-five years
ago when were in Exodus. It was a while back.
In the book of Exodus, chapter 19, God made a
statement I want to just bring you back to in your mind.
He said to the children of Israel, his people, "I
want to make you a kingdom of priests," a kingdom
of priests. And one of the things we read in
the Old Testament is that God's desire was that the
children of Israel be a light to the Gentile nations,
to bring Gentile, nonbelieving, pagan nations to the light, the
glorious light that Israel enjoyed, to bring them to Israel's God---a kingdom of priests,
the whole nation a priesthood. But what
happened is they began turning inward, inward, inward, became very closed.
So, when you read the New Testament, the scribes, and the Pharisees, and the Sadducees, you see how narrow-minded
they were and legalistic they were. They had become so inward,
they hated unbelievers. They didn't even want to touch them
or walk down the street where they were. That was
never God's desire. God's desire is that they turn outward, not turn
inward. I brought a book with me that
I mentioned a while back, and I bring it again
tonight just to share with you something that reflected my
own heart. And I'm just going to read a paragraph.
It's a book called What They Didn't Teach You in Seminary by James Emery White. And he talks about
in a chapter called "Forever Young: A Tendency of Churches,"
he said a church that is left to itself will
naturally turn inward. "A church, left to
itself, will naturally turn inward, which is why it takes
a disproportionate amount of leadership energy to keep it turned outward.
I do not have to spend any effort to get
people to have their needs met, to take a class
they're interested in for spiritual growth, or to worship enthusiastically
to great music they like. But it takes an enormous
amount of effort to get people to die to themselves
in order to reach out the others---not simply to invite
others to come, but to sacrifice themselves in ways necessary
for growth." And then he writes, "Another natural
descent involves becoming outdated. Left to itself, the church will
find itself frozen in time in terms of decor, style
of music, technology, message topics, and methodology." Do you know
that when I first introduced screens into the sanctuary here
at Calvary, I was inundated with letters saying, "You are
so worldly allowing technology, movie screens, to be brought into
the church." We were putting words to songs up, but they
just couldn't get passed the idea of technology and screens
in a church. So, we've always had
complaints like that. But then he says this: "But the
most overlooked and least discussed natural flow---and perhaps the most deadly---is
that if let to itself, the church will grow old.
Why is this the most deadly? Because if you grow
old, it is almost certain that you have turned inward
and become outdated. And that means you have started the
death spiral." And then he gives research, LifeWay research,
of the Southern Baptist Church. And the "Southern Baptist membership
will fall by nearly 50 percent by 2050 unless the aging
denomination reverses a fifty-year trend and does more to reach
out to young adults. According to the research, 'The difference in
the mean age of Southern Baptists versus the United States
population shows the Southern Baptist Convention members older, especially since 1993.'
"Some blame this on secular society; some blame traditional approaches
to ministry; some blame new forms of individualism that lead
Christian adults away from institutions in general; and some blame
the lack of evangelism. But here's the truth," he writes,
in closing, "the natural flow of the church is to
skew old. Left to itself, that is what it will do. It will age.
You take your hand off that wheel, and that is
what will happen." Now, I am an aging
person. When we started the church, we were in our
twenties. And some of you remember, "Oh, those choruses that
we used to sing, there's just so---oh I love them
and I miss them." Well, when we sang them, we
got flak then for singing them. When Calvary as a
movement first introduced the kind of "modern worship" in the 1960s
and '70s that it did, it got written up and bad-mouthed
by every church and every Christian magazine in the country.
Now, you notice that things change a little bit around
here. "I don't know if I like those changes with
the kind of music and the lights and the volume." Let me just
speak something candidly to you: I am assuming that most
of you love the Lord, that you are saved, that you
know him. And I'm assuming that you have a heart for
the lost. Now, I don't know that to be true.
If you don't, you're really in trouble. But I'm assuming
you know the Lord, you love the Lord, and that you have a heart
for the lost. I believe that some
of you also are lamenting the fact that your kids
or grandkids are not following Christ maybe like they once
did, and you wish that somebody would reach out to
the youth. Well, that's one of the things we try
to do with events, with certain outreaches we have, and with
styles of music is to reach young. Allow me the
opportunity to reach the young. And if
that means you'll have to make a sacrifice so that you don't turn inward,
and maybe get a pair of earplugs, or put up
with something, overlook something. But I'll tell you what, you're
kids and grandkids will think it's cool. And by all
means, and any means, I want to reach to the
next generation and the next generation and the next generation. [applause] So,
just as Israel turned inward and made that mistake, and
God said, "Okay, you won't be a nation of priests,
here's the priesthood to represent." I'm praying that we will
never turn so inward that we're only thinking about "our
experience and worship and the songs that I like," rather
than turning outward and bringing people to church, and bringing our kids in, and doing evangelism.
That will be on our palette front and center. And
I got on a soapbox, so I took a little
bit of time. " 'So you shall appoint Aaron,' " verse 10, " 'his
sons, they shall attend to their priesthood; but the outsider
who comes near shall be put to death.' " Do
you think God was serious about this? Oh man, you
get into the book of First Samuel and you discover
that the Ark of the Covenant was stolen by the
Philippines and taken down to Ashdod. Did I say Philippines? [laughter]
You didn't read that when they actually took the ark
over to the Philippines? There's some people who
believe the Ark of the Covenant is there today, just
like they do in Ethiopia---the Philistines. If you're Filipino forgive
me. I didn't want to say that your people stole God's ark. [laughter]
But the Philistines did take the ark, and they brought it to Ashdod,
and they put it in the temple of Dagon their god. And
the next morning they saw the statue of Dagon was
on its face, as if it were worshiping the ark
of God. So, they stood the statue
back up, and the next day it was down again.
This time the head and the hands were off. Then
God struck the people of that city with tumors. And
they got so upset because they were dying off, they
decided, "Let's send the ark over to Ekron, another Philistine
city. It's like, "Wha---what are you thinking?" They send it to another city.
The Ekronites said, "What? What are you doing by sending
the ark of God to us? Do you want to
kill us?" So they sent it down to Beth Shemesh,
another Philistine city. And because those people looked in the ark, they died.
God took this seriously. Worship was carefully prescribed.
"Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'Now, behold, I
myself have taken the Levites from among the children of
Israel instead of every firstborn that opens the womb among
the children of Israel. Therefore the Levites shall be mine, because all
the firstborn are mine. On the day that I struck
the firstborn of the land of Egypt, I sanctified myself
to the firstborn in Israel, both man and beast. They shall be mine: I am
the Lord.' " Let your mind go back
to the book of Exodus, the tenth plague, the death
of the firstborn. Because of the death of the firstborn of Egypt, God
claimed all the firstborn of the children of Israel. "They
are mine. I want your kids, the firstborn in your
family." There were twenty-two---well, I'll just read it. Verse 14,
"The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness, saying: 'Number the children
of Levi by their fathers' houses, their families; you shall
number every male from a month old and above.'
"So Moses numbered them according to the word of the
Lord, as he was commanded. These were the sons of
Levi by their names: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari." Now of
all of these priestly families there's going to be twenty-two
thousand in the tribe of Levi. It's the smallest tribe. If you go down
to verse 39, it says that. "All who were numbered of the Levites, whom
Moses and Aaron numbered at the commandment of the Lord,
by their families, all the males from a month old
and above, were twenty-two thousand." Now, again,
that's just the males, but it represents the smallest tribe
in Israel. The family of Kohath and the family of Merari
and the family of Gershon all had different jobs, tasks
in the tabernacle. The Kohathites, the sons of Kohath, they
took the articles. They were in charge of the articles
of the tabernacle: Ark of the Covenant, altar of incense, golden
candlestick, all of those altars, golden altar of incense, etcetera.
That was their job, to manage it, maintain it, transport it---that's Kohath.
The Gershonites which camped west of the tabernacle, they were
in charge of all of the curtains, and all of
the hangings, all of the skins that covered the Holy
Place and Holy of Holies. And, finally, the sons of Merari who camped
north of the tabernacle, all of the infrastructure they were
in charge of: the poles, the sockets, the boards, the pegs.
They had to transport that. They're counted; their duties are
given. And then, verse 40, "The Lord says
to Moses: 'Number all of firstborn males of the children
of Israel a month old and above, and take the
number of their names. And you shall take the Levites
for me---for I am the Lord---instead of all the firstborn among the children of Israel, the livestock of Levites
instead of all the firstborn among the livestock of the
children of Israel.' And Moses numbered the firstborn among the
children of Israel, as the Lord commanded him. And all
the firstborn males according to the number of the names a month old and above,
of those who were numbered of them, were twenty-two thousand
two hundred and seventy-three." These are the
children born in the twelve and a half months that
they left Egypt and were at Mount Sinai. Those are
the firstborn in that tribe, the number is given: twenty-two thousand
two hundred and seventy-three. The tribe of Levi is twenty-two thousand. So, there's
two hundred seventy-three more of the firstborn than of the
tribe of the Levites. You understand that? So, they have
to be redeemed somehow. So, watch this:
verse 46, " 'For the redemption of the two hundred seventy-three of
the firstborn of the children of Israel, who are more
than the number of Levites, you shall take five shekels
for each one individually; you shall take them in the
currency of the shekel of the sanctuary, the shekel of
twenty gerahs. And you shall give the money, with which
the excess number of them is redeemed, to Aaron and
his sons.' So Moses took the redemption money."
Verse 50, "From the firstborn of the children of Israel he
took the money, one thousand three hundred and sixty-five shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary."
So, twenty-two thousand Levites took the place of the twenty-two thousand two hundred seventy-three firstborn
who were born in that twelve and a half months. God substituted the tribe of Levi to minister before the Lord
in exchange for those that he claimed to be his,
because of the tenth plague in Egypt, the death of
the firstborn. Follow me? But there's a
difference of two hundred seventy-three. So God let them be
redeemed by five shekels apiece, or a total one thousand three hundred sixty-five shekels, which is equivalent
of one hundred seventy pounds of silver. That's going to
go to the tribe of Levi for the continuation of
the tabernacle. And we finish it out, verse 51, "And
Moses gave their redemption money to Aaron and his sons,
according to the word of the Lord, as the Lord
commanded Moses." The priests, as we close,
the priests had different instructions than the rest of the
people. Why? Because they were the priests. They were servants
of the Lord. They dealt with holy things. They had
a certain level of integrity, of accountability, of holiness above
the rest. The book of James says, "Be not many
teachers, for you will receive the greater condemnation," or in
our translation, "a stricter judgment." This is so important.
Later on you're going to read about, in your Old
Testament, the sons of Eli the priest Hophni and Phinehas. Not only
did they take shortcuts, they took the best of the
offerings that should have been sacrificed to the Lord. And they put a meat hook
in the pot, and they took the best meat home
for themselves, causing the children of Israel to hate church,
to hate the sacrifices of the Lord. And Eli the
priest stood by and did nothing. So God sets a
higher standard, and we'll finish out with these families and
tribes next time we meet. Let's pray together.
Father, we are amazed at the idea of holiness. These
were to be separated men, set apart for a very,
very unique kind of a calling, showing us that the
worship of God is never to take a secondary place, but a
primary place. To you it was all important. It was
prescribed a certain way. It was to be done a
certain way. And so, Lord, I pray that for us
worship would never be secondary, our mind would never say, "Oh, they're just
singing songs, I can come later." But
to come and sit in your presence, and using the
vehicle of music and song to pour out our hearts a sacrifice of praise. And through
the ministry of the Word, which is part of worship; and the
ministry of prayer, which is part of worship; and the
ministry of song, which is part of worship, our hearts
would be brought into communion with you, and be right with you.
I pray, Father, that we would be kept from turning
inward, and look to a world that doesn't know you,
and to a generation that we don't want to lose,
bringing Jesus to their level. We're fishers of men, Lord, show us
to be creative with the bait, to honor you and
glorify you with the songs and worship experience that we
have, but to reflect the joy that we should have
in your presence. And that it would draw men and
women to yourself, in Jesus' name, amen.