This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to hope alive, applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today, in Jesus name.
Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in numbers, chapter two. Numbers, chapter two. And we're studying through the book of numbers. And as we covered a whole chapter yesterday, we're going to do the same thing today. And there's a reason for that. And the reason is just, there's a couple of things. First of all, a lot of names, a lot of tribes. We know the different tribes of Israel, but a lot of names and a lot of tribes. And as we begin to study through and think through this, there's a couple of things about this. Basically, what this is about is Moses says, and we said in verse one, and the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, every one of the children of Israel shall count by his own standard. What does that mean? Well, there's going to be a standard, and. And that standard is going to represent your tribe or your family. Basically, your tribe is, is the group of people that you came from. And. And that is, that is their family that would go all the way back to Jacob's sons, the twelve sons of Israel. And you go, there's actually 13 mentioned here. That's right. They're broken into Moses, two sons. One of the tribes is broken into two. And there's a lot of that going on. We'll go over that later on as we study through scripture. And when I say a lot of it, there's a little bit going on because one of the tribes ceases to exist as far as being named and it's replaced. But we'll deal with that anyway. You're with your family. You're with the people that you came from, and you're going to move with them. Now you go, well, why would that? It says that they're to stay beside the emblems of his father's house. They shall camp some distance from the tabernacle of meeting, meaning they're going to be, they're going to be in order away from the tabernacle of meeting, and they're going to camp that way, uh, he says, and each time they move, uh, they're going to, uh, they're going to camp in that direction. And so, um, and so when, when they come together each evening as they move out as an army, and when I say as an army, remember, number one, uh, they count the military men. So the reason it's organized this way is because it has a military purpose, meaning if they encounter someone that is going to attack them, they want to know exactly who they have, where they're at, how many of each tribe soldiers are there and available. And so they're moving out as an army. And this is, in essence, this is a effort and a organizational structure, by God, for logistical movement, and that's what they're doing. And you go, well, what do you mean by that? Well, remember, no army affections without proper logistics. An army throughout history has always had to have a plan for obtaining and feeding the soldiers, a plan for how to move out, a plan for how to organize defensively as you're moving, because that's when you're most vulnerable, is when you're moving. And so an army must be logistically sound. And you go, well, how do you know about that? Well, I was a transportation officer, actually, in the United States army. And so that's basically what I was taught to do is my training in the army was logistics. It was, it was the movement of soldiers and people to different places and on the battlefield that is very important. And the ability for an army to move, an ability for an army to, for the commanders of an army to have control over that, over their units and be able to move them to the places they need them to be at the right time and at the right moment during the battle is very, very important. And so you must have planning, you must have organization, and you must have discipline. You must do it disciplined. And so he says here, God says you're going to move out by your standard. You're going to move out with your family, and when you camp, you're going to camp with your family. So we know where everybody's at and we know what we have everywhere, so that when we need to make those decisions, we can make those decisions in the right way. Now you go, well, that's boring. Well, you know, I can go through all the, all the names, and by the way, you go. And basically, God says he wants Issachar and he wants ZeBulun and he wants Reuben, he wants all them on the west. In fact, I mean, sorry, he wants Judah, he wants Issachar and he wants ZeBulun all on the west. And you go, what does that matter? Well, there's an interesting thing that's going on here because you got to do the math. He tells them, I want the leader of the tribe. He gives the name of the tribe and then he gives the number of soldiers or number of men a fighting age of each tribe. East. Well, he starts with west, north, east and south. And he gives the numbers and he wants them as they move, they're going to camp that way. And then the tabernacle is going to be right in the middle and it's going to be some distance from the tabernacle, meaning that the, the tribes are going to, they're not going to be packed around the tabernacle when they camp. They're going to be packed. They're going to be. They're going to be set up as tribe, tribe, tribe in a, in an order in a row outside and they're going to be a little bit away so that if anything happens and anybody attacks, they'll have some distance between them so that the other tribes can move up and support the tribes that are being attacked. All right, now you go, well, that seems very boring, too. It's boring unless you do the math. And, and I never say that anything in the Bible is, you know, just by happenstance, everything that God has written, everything that God has said is important. In fact, in fact, we're coming to understand that our universe is, is created by, by language. It's created by the word. And we also know that life is found in a word. You go, what are you talking about? Well, we understand that our DNA is literally a series of four letters in a proper order and it's billions of them in a row. And if it's not done right, we don't exist. But each one of those DNA strands is, in essence, a language is a word. And so when you're studying the Bible, don't take anything in it as insignificant. And I'm not going to take this as insignificant, I'm just going to show it to you. And as you look at it, it may cause you to be so excited. For some people, for some people, it may cause them to wonder and to think. And for other people, they may say, well, that's just, that's just by happenstance, it works out that way. But if you do the math, if you, if you do the math, there's going to be three tribes on each side of the tabernacle. He starts. He starts and says, with the west, and then he moves around until, I mean, starts with the east, and then he moves around to the north and then to the west and then to the south. And if you add up the number and the numbers he gives us, remember, he doesn't say the number of people. He says the number of fighting men. So that would give you an idea of the size of the pilot population of each tribe. We talked about that yesterday. As you're studying it and looking at it, you'll see that the eastern tribes number somewhere between 240 and 250,000 fighting men. There's just a number of them. And then as you work your way around, you find that the same is true for the north. And the southern tribes are about the same size, and they're somewhere around 200. They're not quite 200. There's somewhere around that. And then when you figure out, you get all the way around to the west, and that's the last one mentioned, when you get to that, you realize that it's the smallest group and it's really actually smaller than the others by about, well, about 15%. So if you were to see them, if you were to see the tribes of Israel from Google Earth, by the way, it didn't exist back then. I know we're so dependent on it now, but it didn't exist back then. If you were to look, look at them from a mountaintop, maybe look at them from afar off as they camped and as they moved, you would see what is today. We recall a cross. It would look very much like a cross as they moved, because they moved in that order. They didn't move along the wagon train. They literally got up and moved in that direction and in that way. Now, I'm sure as they pass through mountain passes and different areas of countryside, they would not look exactly like a cross. But each evening as they camped, they would camp in an orderly fashion, like a military like. Like soldiers should, with the tents all dressed right dress. And it would look like from afar off, it would look like a cross. Now you go, well, what kind of cross? Well, the cross you think of today, you know, long bottom two sides are not quite as long to where the arms would be. And then the head area, the area above the head is the smallest of all. That's what it would look like. And you go, well, I don't know that Jesus was crucified on a cross that looked like that. And you could be right. Because truth is, there's three different types of crosses that. That people think could have been the type that Jesus was crucified on. First one is a capital t. It wouldn't even have a headpiece to it. No, no headpiece at all. Now, the problem with that is, is that they hung a sign above his head. And so the likelihood that Jesus was crucified on a t or a capital t cross is very unlikely. The other cross that Jesus could have been crucified on is actually not a cross. It's just a pole. It's just a tree. And they would have put his hands above his head and nailed his hands to the tree together above his head. Now, that was a way people were crucified. And obviously, you could put a sign above his head, Jesus, king of the Jews, you could have done that. But it kind of negates the whole understanding of the word cross, because that's not a cross, that's just a capital I without the top and the bottom. It's just a line, really. So if it's a line, it's not a cross. And so the reason we settled on the belief or the understanding that Jesus was likely crucified on a t or a small t cross is because it's a cross and it needs something above it for Jesus, for the sign to be placed. And so it's the most probable that he was actually crucified on a small t cross. And that's how we get to that. That's how we get there. Now, that's just deduction, by the way. That's just, that's just deducing from the information, taking all the information that God gives us and then saying, okay, we weren't there, so. And nobody said it was definitely capital t or small t or, uh, just one line, just one pole there that he was hung on. Uh, seeing how they wouldn't say that. And by the way, it make it very difficult for them to put him on the cross without it being at least a t, because first they would want to nail him to the crossbar and then pull him up by a pulley system. And by the way, who was crucifying Jesus? It was the Romans. And remember, of the peoples of the ancient world, the greatest people of logistics were the Romans. If you ever study their, uh, their movement, that the way they operated, the way their army functioned, how they. How they left a place and broke down a camp and then set up a new camp, literally, it is an amazing process. And, uh, there's some YouTube videos out there. You could watch if you want to see that. But, uh, the truth is, is that, um, they would have wanted to crucify people, uh, in the most efficient manner possible. And the t cross is the most efficient manner to do that also. And so, um, so when, uh, I read here and I do the math, and I realized that the, uh, that the head part of the t would have been to the west, and the, uh, longest part would have been to the. To the east, but not too long. And then the, uh, other two sides, the north and the south, are about the same size. I realized that maybe that wasn't happenstance. Maybe when God gave them how to move out, he was trying to tell them something that, you know, you don't really even realize until you get on this side of Jesus. And that is a pretty neat little aspect of scripture that kind of says that, you know, maybe God's winking at us every once in a while from his word, saying, look here, I'm going to show you something, and if you think that I can tell you this, God does definitely reveal things in the intimate and the small. The things that don't even seem like anything all of a sudden are everything because God's in the middle of it. And so if that's how you believe about this passage about numbers, chapter two, that all these tribes and how they moved out and all their leaders and being with their standards, if you just think this is God being logistically sound in the book of numbers, well, you wouldn't be wrong. He is. He's. He's definitely knows what he's doing and he wants things done the right way. And so if you're. If you're inclined toward that, and it is the book of numbers, so it would be in mathematical perfection that God would do things. But if you really like the pictures and the paintings of scripture, which are there, also, wouldn't it be neat to fly over it in a helicopter and see what it looked like? I think it probably would have been a couple of million people. Easily a couple of million people, because, remember, there's 600,000 men from 20 to basically 60 years old, so maybe even as many as three or 4 million people moving through the wilderness. Logistically sound imperfection. Looking like a cross. Would have been a neat sight, wouldn't it? Does God wink at you in the little things each day? I think he does. Are you watching for them? Are you just, you know, passing them by? I'm afraid I miss them many times. How about you? I hope not to miss them as much as I used to. As I get older, I hope to see them more and more each day.
As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today, in Jesus name.
