Numbers 1:1-16

Hello, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to coffee and devotion. It's for every day you and I we get together. We have a little bit of Coffee. Coffee, tea. What is this called? Cranberry juice, juice, milk. I don't know what you're having, but welcome to 2024. And this year, Lord willing, we're going to continue on and we're going to make it from Leviticus or from Numbers through Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Hebrews. No, I know Daniel. No, Daniel. Maybe another time. No, what now? Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Hebrews. So, we're going to wrap up the Pentateuch and then look at the kind of the New Testament interpretation of the Pentateuch in the book of Hebrews. So, let's have some coffee, we'll pray, get into God's word. Cranberry juice. Okay. Okay. You guys ready to pray? Lord, we thank you so much for this day. It's a blessing to get to come to your word. And so, Father, we thank you for that. And we pray that you would please help us to read it and to understand it and that you would apply it to our lives in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so we are at the book of Numbers. So, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. Okay. So, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. Numbers, Leviticus. Numbers, Leviticus. That's all my pictures. Leviticus, Numbers. Numbers. Good job. Numbers, chapter 1. Well, where is mine? Well, keep that there. That's for family worship. You don't want to pull that up. Okay, we'll find back your spot. Oh, there it is. There's 54 verses? Well, we're only going to read the first 16 verses of Numbers, chapter 1. Okay. I want to read all the verses in this book. Nope. Just from here to here. All right. So, actually, when I was looking at the Bible plan, there's going to be sometimes we'll read a bunch of verses and sometimes it'll be pretty short, but most of the time pretty short. Okay. So, here we go. Ready? How about I read hmm All right, Deborah, you want to read verses 1 through 4 and Nathan you want to take a shot at 5 and following and when you give up you can let me know? Sure. Okay. And then when do I give up? Uh How how far Well, how about you read verse 5 then if you want to read? How far are we going? We're only going to verse 16. Okay. Verse 18. You're going to read this when it's your turn. Now, the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the tabernacle 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, "Take a census of all the congregation of the children of Israel by their families, by their fathers' houses according to the number of names, every male individually from 20 years old and above who are who are able to go to war in Israel. You and Aaron shall number them by tribe, each one the head of his father's house." No he's No, no. You and Aaron shall number them by their armies and And with you there shall be a man from every tribe, each one the head of his father's house. Okay. And then verse 5. Those No, these. These are the names of the men who shall stand with you. All um From Reuben, Eleazar. The son of Ad- Shedeur. Okay, Nathan, want to pick up at verse six. From Simeon, Shelumiel, the son of Zurishaddai. From Issachar, Nethanel, the son of Zuar. From Zebulun, Eliab, the son of Helon. From Joseph, Elishama, the son of Ammihud. From Benjamin, Abidan, the son of Gideoni. Zebulun. From Zebulun, Eliab, the son of Zebulun. From Zebulun, Eliab, the son of Helon. From Joseph, Elishama, the son of Ammihud. Elishama. The son of Ammihud. Ammihud, yep, good job. From Manasseh, Gamaliel, the son of Pedahzur. From Benjamin, Abidan, the son of Gideoni. Gideoni. From Dan, Ahiezer, the son of Ammishaddai. From Asher, Pagiel, the son of Ocran. From Gad, Eliasaph, the son of Deuel. From Naphtali, Ahira, the son of Enan. These were the chosen from the congregation, leaders of their father's tribes, heads of the divisions in Israel. All right, so the Lord spoke to who in the wilderness? In the wilderness. Moses. Saying, where what were they? In the desert of Sinai. Well, they're in the desert of Sinai, and where does God speak to them? or speak to Moses? The tabernacle, good. You guys want to know what the name of this book in Hebrew is? Nope. Bamidbar. From the wilderness or in the wilderness. And so yep, the fourth book of Moses called Numbers, that's right. And so he's talking to them in the second month in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt. So this is uh one year and a month later. So now it's 13 months after they had come out of Egypt, right? So now the tabernacle is built, the priesthood is established, right? They have all these things going for them. And in that year, what does God tell Moses to do in verse two? Take a census, that's right. And notice who are they counting in the census? Every single person? Male. All the males of Israel. Every male of Israel? Like even Daniel and you would be counted? Yep. Nope. No. Oh, all the people All the people that can go to war. Yeah, from 20 years old and above, all who are You can't go to war. And all and able to go to war, right? So they're going to go to war. So they're taking a it's almost like yeah, good job. It's almost like they're taking a census of the war, right? So So now Now they need to do that. So in verse uh three, halfway through it says you and Aaron shall number them by their what? You see it? Father's house. Nope. Verse three, very end of verse three. Number them by their Armies. Armies, right? So it's almost like each tribe is its own army. Right? And so they're going to Because like if you if it's like uh if you don't know how much someone has, it's kind of pointless to say. It's kind of pointless. Let's say you wanted to spawn the smallest army and then you send out the biggest cuz you don't actually know which how many people you had in each army. Yeah, right. So they need to know how big the armies are. Good. And also they need to need to know how respectful they are. Okay, yeah. And so notice what it says, and with you there shall be a man from every tribe. Each one the head of his father's house. So that's where verses 5 through 16 are. It's who are these different heads of the tribes? So So you notice it starts with Reuben, who is Jacob's firstborn. And Reuben, from the tribe of Reuben Reuben, you have their leader Elizur. And then you have Simeon. And from the tribe of Simeon, you have Shemuel, the leader of Simeon. And then from Judah, you have Nahshon, the leader of the tribe of Judah. And then from Issachar, that tribe, you have Nethanel. And then from Zebulun, you have Eliab. And then the leader from Joseph, notice it said Joseph has two tribes, right? Because Jacob adopted Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. So from the tribe of Ephraim, you have the leader Elishama. And then from the tribe of Manasseh, you have Gamaliel. And then you have the youngest brother from the tribe of Benjamin, this is where King Saul would come from, you have Abidan. And then from the tribe of Dan, you have Ahiezer. And then from the tribe of Asher, you have their leader Pagiel. And then from the tribe of Gad, you have their leader Eliasaph. And then from the tribe of Naphtali, you have the leader Ahira. And so those are the different tribes. There's a Wasn't it Naphtali? Joseph's sister-in-law? No. No. No. No. These are These are all the the men, all the children of Jacob. But there's one child missing of the tribes of Jacob. Levi. Levi. Good. Good catch, right? There's no Levi. Why do you think Levi isn't counted? job is their job is the priests. Yeah, their job is the priests. Isn't that interesting? That they're they may be exempt from being sent to being in the census. So these were chosen from the congregation, leaders of their fathers' tribes, heads of the divisions of Israel, right? So you have each tribe and they've got their leader and their leader is going to help Moses and Aaron count their different tribes. And so the rest of are the most of chapter 1, the rest of it, we're going to look at those different tribes and how big those tribes were. So Well, we'll find that out next time. it's called the book book of Numbers. Do you see why it's called the book of Numbers? Yeah, well that's that's why its English name is that. Well, what do you think that this teaches us? Or maybe what I should ask, what do you think is the best verse to summarize this? Five? I think maybe four or five. Okay, Daniel likes verse five. I think that's cuz you read it. I like four. Maybe it's verse four and we'll do verse two shall be. I like verse one. What? Or verse verse one and two, sorry. Take the census of the congregation of the children of Israel by their families. Right? Cuz I think that's what a huge part of Numbers is. You like verse five, too? Well, what do you think How does this apply to us? What do you think, Deborah? I How does this apply to the church today? Sometimes we have spiritual wars. Okay, there might be spiritual warfare, okay? And sometimes it's helpful to know what some people's weaknesses and some people's strengths are. Okay, maybe you need to know who are the what the strengths and weaknesses of the people are. the most respectful? Okay, you might need to know who the most respectful people are. Because if they're not respectful, they might not be able to go with the army. They might be like, "Oh, that was a flag. Bye-bye-bye." Okay, yes, so everybody knew who the who the heads of the of the tribes were, didn't they? They knew who the the leader was. Yeah, I'm I'm reminded of what happens in the book of Acts, where they number the they know the number of people who become Christians. And it seems like they have a list of of who who's in the church and who's not. All right, do you think we have that type of list today? I don't know. Well, we can't say for the whole church, but guess what I do have. For this church? I have a list for our congregation. Who are the people who are communicant members and who are the people who just come to worship, but aren't members? Uh you can go around the church. The the former Presbyterian church people probably figure that out because Yeah, we do that every year. We keep a census of of kind of general numbers of the congregation, right? It's helpful for many, many things. But you know who else I think has a a list of names? I think God does. Right, because he has a the book of life. Right? He knows whose names are written in the book of life and whose names aren't. He has a book of everything. And the adjectives, and if one's on on the stronger things, they cross that off. Yeah, right. He knows who's in his book of life and who's not, right? So, do we want to be found in that book of life? Yep. Yeah, we absolutely do. And how do you think we we are found in that book of life, numbered with the people? I believe in God. By having faith in Jesus Christ, right? Okay, let's go ahead and pray, okay? Lord, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for Jesus Christ. We thank you that you know your people by name. You count every hair on our head and know every person who belongs to you. Lord, we pray that you would help us this year to understand your word. In Jesus' name, amen. May God bless you. May you know that Jesus Christ You count the hairs on my head. May you know that Jesus Christ knows you and loves you. And we'll see you next time. Bye. Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon RP Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, sharonrpc.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10:00 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.