Numbers 21:10-20

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every weekday morning you and I, we get together, we have a little bit of coffee, we get into God's Word, we grow in our love for the Lord together. And this year, 2024, Lord willing, we'll make it through the books of Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Hebrews.
Sorry I wasn't here with you yesterday. No excuse. Just got caught up in other stuff and so I didn't get an episode recorded. So hopefully we will be back on track this week. Why don't we have some coffee, we'll pray, and we'll jump into God's Word. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for your word and we thank you for what a blessing it is that you have called us to follow you. Lord, your word is like refined gold, like the sweetest of honey. And you are good to us. Father, we pray that as we read your word this morning, that we would treasure it. Lord, we pray that we would also understand it. But for that, we need your spirit. But please, Lord, help us to understand in Jesus's name. Amen. OK, so we are at Numbers chapter 21, beginning at verse 10, and we'll read through verse 20. Here we go.
Now the children of Israel moved on and camped in Oboth, and they journeyed from Oboth and camped at Ej Abarim, in the wilderness which is east of Moab, toward the sunrise. From there they moved and camped in the valley of Zered. From there they moved and camped on the other side of the Arnon, which is in the wilderness that extends from the border of the Amorites. For the Arnon is the border of Moab between Moab and the Amorites. Therefore it is said in the Book of the Wars of the Lord, Waheb in Suphah, the brooks of the Arnon and the slope of the brooks that reaches to the dwelling of Ar and lies on the border of Moab. From there they went to Bir, which is the well where the Lord said to Moses, gather the people together and I will give them water. Then Israel sang this song.
Bring up a well, all you who sing to it, the well the leaders sang, dug by the nation's nobles, by the lawgiver with their staves. and they and from the wilderness they went to Matanah from Matanah to Nahalil from Nahalil to Bamuth from Bamuth in the valley that is in the country of Moab to the top of Pisgah which looks down on the wasteland Well, that was a mouthful and some difficulties here. So let's go ahead and ask ourselves, A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this and C, what are we called to do? So A, what is this section about? Well, this section is about Israel traveling throughout the Transjordan region.
Right. So so this is mainly talking about you have the Dead Sea kind of at the bottom of the Jordan River. And Moab is just to the east of that, and they're on the eastern side of even Moab, so towards the sunrise, so on the east. So they're wandering in the wilderness, and this is talking about their wanderings and where they were. And so the first part, verses 10 through 15, is really about traveling mainly in that eastern area. And one of the interesting things here is verse 14.
Therefore, it is said in the book of the wars of the Lord. This is the only time that that book is ever mentioned. It's not in the Old Testament. It's just a book of most likely victory songs or maybe epic poems, something like that, that that book is lost. It's actually one of these fun things. The Bible also mentions the book of Jasher.
And so there's other ancient books that God in his providence decided not to preserve. And so we might get a little passage out of it or something like that. But for the most part, It's gone the way of most books that were written throughout all ancient history. They're just, you know, destroyed, decayed, people stopped reading them, whatever, right?
Which is just one of these fun things that, I mean, have this blessing in our lives. And we bind all these 66 books together, but In reality, Genesis is its own book, Exodus is its own book, Leviticus is its own book, Numbers is its own book right there. They were individual scrolls and the Lord preserved each one of these scrolls in special ways that we still have them today.
And so, Anyway, so we have this epic song or poem about the slopes of the brooks that reaches the dwelling of Ar and lies on the border of Moab, right? So that's really verses 10 through 15. And then verse 16 and following, we have their wanderings mainly in the area of the Amorites. And so we're going to come to that, actually why that brings an issue here in verse 21 tomorrow when we pick that up. But God is allowing them to travel both north and south in the borders of Moab, as well as with the Amorites north of them. And so it's giving us geographical markers in that eastern side, on the other side of the Jordan, the Transjordan side, towards the sunrise.
They're wandering around there and there's geographical markers for them. Why do I keep bringing this up, right? Because I think this is a true story. I don't think that this is fake, but this has all the markers of something that's historical, something that's verifiable, right?
We know where Pisgah is. Some of these areas, it's hard to pin down exactly where it is, but we know the brook that goes down the steep ravine that that is the border between ancient Moab and the ancient Amorites. We know where Mount Hor is, right? We know certain ones of these that We're able to pin down and say, there's this general region and this general region, but we know this and we know this because they're real places.
And so this is a blessing for us. It just helps us with, we may not know all the details, but the Lord has preserved enough that we're able to trust his word. We're able to trust that these things actually happened. We're able to take confidence that his people didn't just This is where I'm going to pull us to calling a little bit. I'll let you decide what you're going to underline is the best first, but calling. There is a big school called higher criticism.
And they will look at the Bible and they'll say, well, look, we know that this was written at different times and this was written at different times. And they want to take all the different books of the Pentateuch of the Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
And they want to say, it was really three, maybe four authors who kind of like weave together, like this person wrote some and then another person edited. And so you have the Yahwistic author, they did their things. And then you have the Deuteronomist author and they did their things. And then you have the the Elohistic author and they did their things they wrote and it's just like this mismatch and so they would look at a passage like this and they would say well see like that this is one of these these types of areas and we would say hmm or or it was written by who we think it was written who Jesus seemed to think it was written Moses himself And that this is old man Moses writing things down as he's just about to die. And maybe Joshua, right, when we're talking about Moses's actual death, finishing it off and writing his book next. I think that's most likely the case. But this is the beautiful thing, that the Lord preserves his word. The Lord gives us the scriptures.
And that there's people who would think not just higher critics that way, but there will even be people who will say there was no actual Exodus. No, there were no actual plagues. People say no, there were no actual going through the Red Sea. No, there was no actual, you know, fire and smoke on Mount Sinai. No, there was no actual wandering in the wilderness, right? It was just An indigenous group of people came up in Canaan and they just became almost like the Israelite people.
And we have to say, well, there's no historical evidence for that. But there is a historical evidence for this. What's the historical evidence? The four, five volumes that have been preserved for us telling us this story. So that's what I choose to believe. That's what I'm convinced by the Holy Spirit to believe. Do you believe it? Do you believe that this is historical narrative? It's a great blessing.
Let's pray. Father, we do pray that you would help us to understand your truth. Lord, I can't convince anybody or strong arm them into believing. cannot manipulate them into trusting your word. But Father, that is the work of your Holy Spirit. So Father, I pray this morning that you would please help us to trust in you and to trust in your word. Lord, please let us walk in your ways. Let us trust where you would lead us in Jesus's name. Amen. Well, may the Lord bless you. May you walk in the joy and peace that comes in Jesus Christ. And I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and 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 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue. Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.