Numbers 4:29-33

Hey, good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day you and I, we get together. We have a little bit of coffee. We get into God's word and 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. So glad to be with you today. Let's have some coffee. We'll pray and we'll get into God's word. Let's pray. Father, you are an amazing, remarkable, wonderful God. We thank you for waking us up this morning, for giving us the blessing of being able to read your word. Please help us to understand it. Please apply it to our hearts. Please let us live it in our lives in Jesus's name, amen. All right, so we are at Numbers chapter four, beginning at verse 29. Numbers chapter four, beginning at verse 29.
As for the sons of Marari, you shall number them by their families and by their father's house. From thirty years old and above, even to fifty years old, you shall number them, everyone who enters the service to do the work of the Tabernacle of Meeting. And this is what they must carry as their service for the tabernacle of meeting, the boards of the tabernacle, its bars, its pillars, its sockets, and the pillars around the court with their sockets, pegs, and cords. With all their furnishings and all their service you shall assign to each man by name the items he must carry. Well, we need to ask ourselves our daily three questions. A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what do we call to do in response to these? So A, what's this about? Well, this is the last of the three sons of Levi, right?
We talked about the Gershonites the other day, the kids and I, we talked about the, uh, the, well, we've talked about, sorry, I talked about the Kohathites and we talked about the Mararites. The Gershonites. And now we're at the Mararites. There you go, right? So we have three sons, three different families of the tribe of Levi. They're being numbered here in their years of service between 30 years old and 50 years old. And now we're at the Mararites. And what's the Mararites' job?
Well, they get to handle all the hardware. We've already talked about this before. This is kind of a more detailed list. And so they're carrying all the stuff, they're doing all the bars, all the sockets, all the hardware for the tabernacle. That's their job. Chapter 7 is going to tell us they need four ox carts to be able to actually carry all this stuff.
And so they have this job and their supervisor, just like the Gershonites, is Ithamar, right? And so this, he's the one who's kind of overseeing to make sure that these Levites are doing their job. So this is still part of the census of Levine describing their job. So we got their camps before, you know, on the north side and on the south side, on the west side with Aaron and Moses on the east side. And then we got their order in the marching and stuff like that. And then we've now gotten all the details of all the different jobs they have when they're traveling with the tabernacle.
So what's the best verse to summarize this section? Well, in my Bible, I probably would just underlined verse 29, right? As for the sons of Moriah, you shall number them by their families and by their father's house. And then probably verse 31, because that starts talking about the stuff that they're supposed to carry, what their job is.
What are we called to do? Well, this is a very similar application as last week. The reason why I split it up like this is so that way we have a little bit of a break instead of reading the huge long chapters I tried to limit down for us this year. But that means often our calling is overlapping with previous. that each one of us has a place to serve. It was actually a huge blessing of mine to hear the children talk about different ways in which they serve. And each one of them have found kind of their own niche, their own giftings, their own callings, and they do different things.
So maybe the Lord has blessed you in his church to be somebody who's an encourager. Use your gift of encouragement. Maybe he's given you the gift of artistic talents. Use it for his glory. Maybe he's given you the gift of being able to help people financially, help others who don't have their needs.
Maybe there's widows around you who are lonely and you have spare time. Maybe you can go care for them. Maybe, you know, there's a whole bunch of people who just need prayer, but you find yourself often in your home alone. pray for people in the church? Maybe you find yourself that you have gifts with computers and with different administrative tasks or something like that.
Do you use it for the benefit of the church, of God's glory as well? Now, all those things can be used for his glory outside of the church also, but just specifically here from this passage, this is the Morarites, what's their job? They're Levites and they're doing this service for the Lord. Now the Lord's going to give them their own cities and they have their own lands they're going to have to take care of and their own houses are going to have to take care of as well. But the point is that here, this is their blessing. And he's called us to live our lives as a living sacrifice. How do we serve him? What are the ways in which you can care for him? And in the meantime, also be loving your brothers and sisters in Christ and serving them.
Let's face it, without the Levites, tabernacle doesn't work. Without the priests, tabernacle doesn't work. Without the members of the church, there is no church. And so we need, we need each other. Let's spur each other on toward love and good deeds. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for you. Lord, you have given us this shadow, this type in the tabernacle, but it's pointing us to something far greater. Lord, you have given us a heavenly tabernacle with a high priest, Jesus Christ, who is better than Aaron, better than his priesthood, and a better tabernacle ministering with better sacrifices. Lord, you have given us a glimpse of even a better glory. Father, we pray that we would live our lives serving you, using our talents for your kingdom and your glory. Help us, Lord, we pray in Jesus's name. Amen. May the Lord bless you. May you walk in the joy that comes from Jesus Christ and the peace that his Holy Spirit gives you. 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.