Loading summary
Transcript28 lines
- [00:00]
Unknown Speaker
Hey, Bible nerds.
- [00:01]
Dr. Manny Arango
This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey.
- [00:26]
Unknown Speaker
To all my fellow pastors, I've got a question for you. Does your city know that your church exists? Listen, I get it. You're preaching, you're leading, you're discipling, you're doing ministry. We are in the same boat. And let's be honest, social media and marketing, not your strong suit. Not mine either. And that's probably the last thing on your mind. And that's why we chose to partner with Church Candy Marketing for our church Plant the garden. We out here y'all. They help churches get more actual guests walking through the doors on Sunday without.
- [00:59]
Dr. Manny Arango
Your eye having to stress over ads.
- [01:01]
Unknown Speaker
Or algorithms or trying to crack the social media code. Right now, Church Candy is helping nearly 400 churches reach their communities with simple invite ads. And it works.
- [01:11]
Dr. Manny Arango
It's super effective. I can tell you from firsthand experience.
- [01:14]
Unknown Speaker
So if you're tired of being your city's best kept secret, how about you do this? Go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a free consultation book a discovery call. Their team will break it all down and show you how to start seeing new faces at your church this Sunday. I'm in the trenches with you trying.
- [01:35]
Dr. Manny Arango
To grow the church.
- [01:36]
Unknown Speaker
And how about we just start a whole campaign? No more empty churches. So let's partner with Church Candy and get our churches full.
- [01:43]
Dr. Manny Arango
The glory of Jesus. Let's go. It is day 119. If you've been rocking with us for 119 days straight, shout out to you. We are making our way through the wilderness as is the Hebrew name for the Book of Numbers. And if you haven't done the reading for today, then pause the audio, stop the video, go do the reading. This content is not designed to be a substitute for reading the Bible, but a supplement to reading the Bible for those of you who have done the reading for the day. Sad, sad reading, sad reading lot. We we got, we got the first of what's going to be like a three tiered rebellion. So let's jump into some context clues. Okay, first of all, there are 10 tests or 10 times that the Israelites have tested God and 10 times where Yahweh has tested the Israelites. Yahweh Testing the Israelites is great. Like, that's good. God tests people so that he would have an experiential knowledge of who they are. So when God tests us, it's not because he believes that we're going to fail because he wants to actually experience a relationship with us, but when we put God to the test, that's not a positive thing. In the Bible, the only time that's used positively is in Malachi when God is talking about tithing and he says, hey, put me to the test in this. It's the only time that we get invited to test God. Any other time when we put the Lord to the test, it's because we don't trust him. We don't believe in what he has to say. So this is what numbers chapter 14 is gonna say. It's gonna say that there's 10, 10 tests, okay? Numbers, chapter 14, verse 22, says, this is Yahweh talking to Moses, says, not one of those who saw my glory in the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, but who disobeyed me and tested me 10 times, not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their ancestors. Not one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it. So based on parallelism, right? Tested me and treated me with contempt are used in a parallel way. Because for Yahweh, those things mean the same thing.
- [04:02]
Unknown Speaker
Okay?
- [04:03]
Dr. Manny Arango
To not respond in faith, to not believe, to treat God with contempt, to test the Lord. If you think about Jesus and the in Satan in the wilderness, okay? Don't put the Lord your God to the test.
- [04:16]
Unknown Speaker
Okay?
- [04:17]
Dr. Manny Arango
So like, take God at his word, believe that what he says is true. So what are these 10 tests? Well, here's the reason that this falls into context. What are the 10 tests that happen in the wilderness? Well, seven of these tests are in the Book of Numbers. We've already looked at a couple. We'll look at a couple more. But seven of these tests are in the Book of Numbers, where the other ones, you guessed it, they're in the book of Exodus. So we got three in the book of Exodus, seven in the book of Numbers, for a total of 10 tests. Ten times where the people of Israel, lacked faith, didn't believe, and put the Lord their God to the test. Last thing for, like, context is that the next three tests that we're gonna see. Okay, so in terms of review, we had complaining in Numbers, chapter 11, verses 1 through 3, where the outskirts of the camp got burned. Then second, we the people want to Quail, and God then sent the plague, and then Miriam and Aaron opposed Moses. So we already have three negative instances already, okay? And we're about to get three more. Now, here's what you need to understand in terms of context, like what's happening on just a literary level. So remember the concentric circles we talked about? We said that in the same way that there's the wilderness, then a garden, then Eden, and then the Tree of Life, that those concentric circles are happening with the encampment of the tabernacle, because the tabernacle is in New Eden, okay? Now, we said there's the wilderness, and then there's the tribes, and then there are the Levites, and then there's the tabernacle. And even within the tabernacle, you got the outer court, the inner court, the holy of holies. So we've got concentric circles where the glory of God is emanating from the center of these concentric circles, okay? The next test that we're gonna look at is a test where all the tribes are gonna fail, okay? Each tribe sends a representative into the land to spy out the land. They're gonna come back with a negative report when they should have come back with a positive report. Then the next failure that we're going to see is one of the clans of the Levites is going to rebel against Moses and Aaron. As high priests, we're going to look at that probably tomorrow. And then last, Moses and Aaron are going to fail, okay? And Moses is not going to be allowed to go into the land. So you see how the tribes fail. The Levites failed, and then Moses and Aaron failed, okay? So we're gonna see failure at every ring of our concentric circles. So as you're reading through the narrative, that's just context. A, there are 10 tests, seven of which are in numbers, three of which are in exodus. Second, there are, out of those 10 tests, seven of which are in the book of numbers, three of these tests or failures, three of these narratives are actually going to be based on the concentric circles of a hierarchy. So the people are going to fail all the people from all the tribes. Then there's an infighting within the Levites, and then lastly, Moses and Aaron are actually going to fail. So that's all of our context. That's all the context we need. Let's get into some nerdy nuggets. When we get into numbers, chapter 13, Moses is going to send out 12 spies to spy out the land, okay? The word choices in numbers, chapter 13 are designed to parallel the this test of sending out the spies to the test of Genesis chapter three with Adam and Eve. These tests are designed to parallel one another. Number one, the land of Canaan is described as a garden with fruit. And who's been in a garden with fruit? That's right. Adam and Eve were in a garden with fruit. Is the garden occupied or unoccupied? It's occupied. There's a serpent in the garden. There's animals in the garden that were there before Adam and Eve were there. And the inhabitants of the garden, AKA the serpent, is a test for Adam and Eve. How they engage with this pre existing inhabitant of the garden is gonna determine whether or not they're gonna have life or death. Well, the spies are going into a land that's inhabited or uninhabited. Ah, it's inhabited. It's inhabited by Canaanites. And how they engage or how they allow the presence of these inhabitants to affect them is going to decide whether or not they get life or death. Next, Moses sends out the spies to look at the land. To look and then agree with Yahweh. Okay, go survey the land. See if it's pleasing to the eye. Okay, see if it's everything that God has said that it is. Is it good or evil? And they don't agree with Yahweh. They agree with themselves. They go and they do what they think is right in their own eyes. This is very much like Adam and Eve seeing the fruit of the Garden of Eden. And they judge for themselves. Ah, we know God said, wait, but we want to do this now. Now we have a story in numbers where God is saying, go. And they're like, nah, we don't want to go. It's funny, my son right now is at an age where he just loves the word no. He loves saying, no, it doesn't matter what you say. And so sometimes I'll trick him. So I'm like, you want to give Daddy a hug? He's like, no. I'm like, do you want to wash your hands? He's like, no. And then I'm like, you want ice cream? He's like, no. And then I'm like, gotcha. You know, and it doesn't matter what God says. It's like, hey, do you want to Wait Is like, now. Do you want to go now? The issue is actually not the tests themselves. The issue is submission. A heart of surrender to what Yahweh is saying. That our default setting as humans is to disagree with whatever he says. And we have to by a Process of sanctification change our default setting, saying, God, I delight in you. My desire is in you. I believe what you say. If you tell me what that. If you tell me that the COVID of this book is pink, I'll believe it's pink Because I simply agree with you. I agree with what you have to say. So in the same way that the serpent is an inhabitant of the garden, giants are an inhabitant of the land. Now, the land has fruit. Let's kind of talk about the fruit that the land has. The land has grapes. This should make us think of Noah in the vineyard. The land has pomegranates. What is the temple decorated with? Pomegranates. And the land has figs. And what do Adam and Eve cover themselves with as they sin against Yahweh? Fig leaves. Okay, so the. The land of Canaan is supposed to really make us realize, ah, there's another tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil test. There's another Eden test right here for a different group of people. And in the same way that Adam and Eve failed, that there's going to be a failure here. I'll read this straight from my notes. The spies are entrusted to discern if the land is good. This is a callback to the test of Adam and Eve. The last time humans were asked to judge if something was good or not was in the garden. Not necessarily the last time, because Sarah looks at Hagar and says, it's good. She's good, right? She's pleasing to the eyes. This happens. This happens over and over and over again. It's a cyclical issue of humans looking at things and judging whether or not they're good, but not judging it based on the way that God would judge it. This is an opportunity.
- [12:03]
Unknown Speaker
Okay?
- [12:04]
Dr. Manny Arango
The spies going into the land is an opportunity for humanity to redeem themselves. But they don't. They not only took grape clusters, they took figs, which is another reminder of the fall of humanity in Genesis chapter 3, 3, verse 7, which says, Then the eyes of both of them were open and they realized they were naked. Then they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. They also brought back pomegranate. Pomegranates which are intertwined all through the tabernacle. So tons of creation in Genesis 1, 2 and 3 in Eden language in this test, when the Bible says the land of milk and honey, that's actually not literal. There's two layers of meaning here. Here's the first one is that milk would be a form of domesticated abundance, okay? Milk is something that you get when you domesticate animals and it's flowing with milk, which means we've got abundance from the domestication of animals. And then honey is something you get in the wild, okay? So you have abundance when it comes to just produce from the wilderness, okay? Which means you have domesticated abundance and wild abundance. And just think about this. That means the garden is going to produce and the wilderness surrounding the garden is also going to produce. Next layer of meaning is that the land is full of cows and bees, okay? Milk and honey. The other layer of meaning, sorry, I said there was two, but there are actually three. The last layer of meaning is that you don't just get the things you need, but you get the things you want, okay? Milk is something you need. Honey is something that's sweet, okay? So milk is for strength and honey is for pleasure. It's for enjoyment. And God is saying, I want to provide for you in such a way that I don't just give you the things that you need, but I want to give you the things that you also desire, the things that you want. Because remember, I'm the God that is I invented sex and I invented taste buds. Like, I want you to enjoy life. I just don't want the enjoyment of life to turn into bondage. I don't want the enjoyment of life to turn into a something that. That keeps you a slave, okay? I don't want you to be a slave to pleasure, but I do want you to experience pleasure.
- [14:23]
Unknown Speaker
Bible nerds, I have an announcement. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos releases May of 2025 and pre orders are officially open. When I began to learn Genesis in its proper context, I learned that the creation account is not primarily about God creating something out of nothing, but rather God bringing divine order to the chaos of the cosmos. That one nugget was a game changer for me because I've been preaching to all the kids in my youth group that peace was a solution for their anxiety. But really God's solution to chaos is never peace, but rather order. Peace isn't something that you stumble into, is something that you intentionally step into and that starts with aligning your life with God's order. I think that this book is a game changer. It's nerdy, it's practical, it provides a very contextual understanding of the book of Genesis. And if you grab a copy, you'll learn why there's a huge dragon on the COVID Head to the link in the show notes to pre order or head to crushingchaos.com to see the really dope trailer that we made for this book. I think it's time for you to crush the chaos in your life. And that starts with grabbing a copy of this book.
- [15:31]
Dr. Manny Arango
Now back to the podcast. All right, the spies come back after 40 days. And after 40 days they come back and 10 individuals have a negative report. Two individuals have a positive report. Also, there's a callback to the flood because the descendants of Anak are here. We cannot open up this can of worms because the flood was supposed to wipe out all the Nephilim. But clearly the flood does not wipe out all the Nephilim because we get descendants of the nephilim here, which are the Anak or the Anakim. I would cover something like that in a full course cause that's pretty dang on detailed. But there actually are very, very, very reasonable explanations. And I don't know if you remember the flood movie that came out maybe, I don't know, eight, nine years ago, and all these Christians were up in arms about, you know, it's not accurate and blah, blah, blah, it's not biblical. Well, actually it was just super Jewish. And according to Jewish tradition, there are characters that snuck onto the ark and then that's how Jews explain how the descendants of Anakim survive past the flood. So anywho, that is deep into the woods of nerdom. We're not gonna necessarily go there for the sake of just keeping this episode short and concise. But the people come back, 10 have a negative report, two have a positive report. And of the 12, the 10 that have a negative report are able to sway the entire community against what God has spoken. So they don't have faith that they can take the land. They do not believe that God is going to be faithful and they want to go back to Egypt and they rebel. So we are going to get a full scale rebellion of the people of Israel. Here's where we're going to get judgment and mercy. So the judgment is now going to be, all right, you're not going to enter into the land. However, God is not going to allow the disobedience of people to derail his plan. God has a plan. So he says, all right, great, y'all aren't going to go into the land, but your kids will. So they spent 40 days mapping out the land, spying out the land. And now the people, since they are being led astray and don't believe in what Yahweh said, since they want to treat Yahweh with contempt and test him. He's just going to have them wander around for 40 years.
- [18:10]
Unknown Speaker
Okay?
- [18:10]
Dr. Manny Arango
So now they have to wander for 40 years based on the 40 days that the spies were in the land.
- [18:16]
Unknown Speaker
Okay?
- [18:16]
Dr. Manny Arango
So for every day that the spies were in the land, seeing, beholding what God wanted to do, but not believing.
- [18:24]
Unknown Speaker
Okay?
- [18:25]
Dr. Manny Arango
Beholding but not believing, now the people are going to have to spend a year for every day spies were in the land, beholding but not believing. Also, it just is going to take 40 years for all of them to die. Okay? 40 is the number biblically for a generation. Because of technology and because of globalization of the world, generations are becoming shorter and shorter. And so, yes, it makes sense that in this time period, a generation is 40 years. Nowadays, generations are way, way, way, way shorter. I have friends that are not friends, but I know people who are 20 years older than me, and they are from a totally different generation. But because of the disobedience, God is going to give them judgment, which means they're all going to die in the wilderness. But he's also going to give them mercy and allow their children to go into the land. So that is the first of three major rebellions that we're going to look at. All right, let me give you timeless truth, okay? Gave you a context, clues, gave you some nerdy nuggets. I'm going to give you timeless truth now. Timeless truth comes out of numbers, chapter 14. Because now once they get the verdict that they're gonna die in the wilderness, they, like, change their mind. They're like, oh, wait, wait, wait. Actually, we do. We do wanna go. Okay? It says this in Numbers 14:39. When Moses reported this all to all the Israelites, they mourned bitterly. So they're. They're. They're clearly upset. They realize what they've done is wrong. Early the next morning, they set out for the highest point in the hill country, saying, now we are ready to go up to the land the Lord promised. Surely we have sinned. But Moses said, why are you disobeying the Lord's command? You're just making this worse. You've already missed it, man. Okay, I'll say it this way, and this is my timeless truth. The opportunity of a lifetime exists for the lifetime of that opportunity. They had an open window where they could go into the land, and they blew it. And now they're just like, oh, no. Okay, we're ready. Let's go.
- [20:27]
Unknown Speaker
Psych.
- [20:28]
Dr. Manny Arango
We didn't really mean it.
- [20:29]
Unknown Speaker
We. We want to go.
- [20:30]
Dr. Manny Arango
And Moses like, why are you disobeying the Lord's command. This will not succeed. Verse 42. Do not go up because the Lord is not with you. You will be defeated by your enemies, for the Amalekites and the Canaanites will face you there because you have turned away from the Lord, he will not be with you, and you will fall by the sword. Nevertheless, in their presumption, they went up toward the highest point in the hill country, though neither Moses nor the Ark of the Lord's Covenant moved from the camp. Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in the hill country came down, attacked them, and beat them down all the way to Hormah. What's ironic is that they've beaten the Amalekites previously, but not this time, because they never beat the Amalekites on their own strength anyway. Ain't it crazy how when God is with us, it's like we can become convinced that it wasn't God, but it was actually us? And then we actually attempt to do things without God, only to find out it was never your gift that made you win or successful. It was always God's grace. And so my timeless truth for us is, don't rely on your giftedness. Please rely on God's grace. This is true for me as a communicator. Preaching and doing it well could convince you that, oh, my gosh, it's. It's about what I learned in my homiletics class, or it's the stuff that I bring to the table and all it takes is for God to go. All right, try preaching without me then. And you realize that, yeah. The skills that I have mastered over the course of the last years is. Is not what breaks strongholds. It's not what causes hearts to become soft and ears to go from deaf to being able to hear and eyes to become unblinded. The spirit of the living God does that. And God has humbled people in the past, and he still humbles people today and reminds them that without him, they cannot be successful. Does not matter who they are or how gifted they are or how powerful they are or how much strategy they have or what they've mastered. Without God, you will fail. That is a guarantee. So that's my Thomas Truth for the day. Hey, tomorrow we're diving into day one. 20. We're going to look at the next rebellion, which is infighting between the Levites. And I can't wait to see you if you're on a streak. Good job. I'm so proud of you don't break your streak. If you're not on a streak, you can always start one. All you gotta do is listen. Two days in a row and you're on a streak. Guys, I love you so much. I'm proud of you. Till tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department Podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram at the Bible department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.