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 three. Numbers, chapter three. And this is a chapter about God taking the Levites in place of the firstborn of all the tribes as a first fruits offering. Now, we got to deal with several things in order to really get an understanding to this. Some of the things that are preconceived notions that you have in scripture that you'll hear oftentimes, and it'll keep you from really getting to the core of what God is trying to teach us in the New Testament through the book of numbers and through the Levites and through his plan. So I want to read some of those preconceived notions. First of all, the office of priest, the office of king, the office of prophet. In the Old Testament, those are three offices. And anytime you have threes, you always think of the image of God. God is one single God in three persons. And so whenever you get that number through, you're always thinking of the image of God, how God exists. And also you think about how we exist because we are made in his image. And so those offices in the Old Testament reflect different aspects of God, and they reflect different aspects of how we live. And so oftentimes what you'll hear is, well, the priest in the Old Testament represent the pastors of today, and they do. But that's a very limited group of people that they represent, and they represent more than that. We are all the priesthood. The whole body of Christ is the priesthood. We are the. We are the complete priesthood where in fact, we're a holy priesthood. As Paul says, as John says in the revelation, we're a kingdom of priests. We are the priesthood. And why? Because priests have access to the throne room of God. They have access to the propitiation spot over the walk of the covenant. We have access to that spot ourselves. We have the ability, because inside of our very hearts is God's holy spirit. And there is that propitiation spot that lives inside of us where the eternal meets the physical, because we have eternal life. All right? Now, I know I've explained that before in many ways, but I always have to put it out there because never know when somebody's listening to it for the first time and never know when. When somebody needs to really hear that you are. You have access to God. You are a priest. You. You don't need a priest to go to God. You don't need an intermediary between you and God because you have an intermediator, and he was God. You've got Jesus if you want to get to the father. No one goes to the father except by me. That's what Jesus said. You've got an intermediary. And that intermediary is God himself also. Okay? So you don't have to have somebody glitch you to God. God has made a way for you to be there yourself. Now, understand, that's important. Second thing is, in the Old Testament, there were a lot of different types of offerings, and we dealt with that because we've already been through Leviticus. We just got out of Leviticus. And if you want to know about all those offerings, they're in there. But those offerings represent all kinds of spiritual things. That's why the book of Leviticus is important. You learn to. How you're. To live your life as a living sacrifice. In fact, that's what the New Testament says. We're. We're not. We're not. We don't have to die. There's no more. There's no more lead for shedding of blood. The. The blood price has been paid. But our lives are a living sacrifice, a living offering, a living act of worship. And learning how to do that is sometimes difficult. And the pictures of the Old Testament help us get those ideas and get those understandings. And so oftentimes we think, well, we're just supposed to give God some money. And that's not untrue. That's. That's true. But it's. It's not. It's way more than that. It's way, way more than that. And I try to make sure we teach that at lake community church. But, you know, I try to make sure we, we understand that even on this Bible study, which I know a lot of people watch, that are not lake community church people. And so I want you to understand that giving to God of your life is far more than giving everybody now, where your treasure is, there, your heart will be also. So God, make sure that you get part of your finances so he can be lord of your finances, but he also wants to be lord of your time. He wants to be lord of your resources. He wants to be lord of your gifts. He wants to be lord of your spiritual gifts, your talents. He wants to be lord of all those things. He wants to be in charge of it all. And so, you know, it takes, you have to, you know, as you're, as you're thinking through these things, as you're studying through these things, you got to realize he, he wants to be lord of all those things. And so in the Old Testament, there is, uh, there is this idea, this offering. Uh, you go, well, how do we get percentage, pastor? Well, it's, it's the tithe. Okay? And tithe literally means 10th. The 10th of what God gives you. He wants you to give back to him so he can be lord of your finances. But there's many, many more offerings in the Old Testament. Some of them are pictures of Christ's sacrifice, but many of them are real important to understand so that you fundamentally, as you're living your life, you're fundamentally placing God in the right place. And none of those offerings is the first fruit offering. And that means that we give God the first of whatever we're doing. When we do something different, new, important, we give God first of it. We, we let him have the first benefit of it. And the reason is, is that kind of goes back to my sermon last Sunday, the understanding that, as John said, God made everything. And I'm talking about John the Baptist as written by John the apostle. And that's in, at the end of chapter three, you know, God, God made everything, and anything that I have that is good is good from God. Anything that I have that is positive or good is from God. And so I need to treat it that way. And so I. The first fruit offering is really a recognition of God being in charge and good for everything. He's perfectly given me all the best that I have, and anything that I have is his. And so that means all that I have is his. But when I give him my first fruits offering, what I'm doing is I'm recognizing that fact. I am going to God and saying, hey, God, listen, I know you're in charge of everything. I'm thankful, I love you. I appreciate it. I would not be anything without you. And here's the first of what I have maybe, maybe produced with my own hand, with my own labor with my own will, with my own desire. This is the produce of my hand, and I want you to have it. And that's good and pleasing. Perfect. God. Now, God wants the first fruit of everything, because we don't just give him the first fruit when we like to or when we want to. He wants the first fruit of everything. Why? So we recognize that he's in charge. And that's really helpful for us because it also oftentimes leads us down the right path to understand that, you know, when I give him the first fruits of everything, well, he gets to be in charge of everything, which means I'm going to be blessed by everything he does, which is something you really want. You want it to happen. And so the first fruit would include, um, uh, my, my money, my finances, if I'm a farmer, the produce of my land, if I'm a her, some kind of sheep herder, if I have animals, the first fruit of that, or also the first fruit of the room, which would be my first child. And so God wants the first fruit of everything. And he wanted the first fruit of Israel. And so he says, he says, I am going to take the first fruit of everything. But he didn't take the children. What he took was a tribe. He set apart a tribe. And that's what chapter three is about. The sons of Aaron. He took the Levites, the sons of Aaron. And he made Aaron's two sons that were alive that didn't, weren't killed by the fire. When they offered strange fire to God, he took them and made them under Aaron. And they would be the high priest after Aaron. And then he took all the levite clans to serve in the tabernacle. But later they would serve in each town and village as priests for those people. And so the levite tribes were spread all throughout Israel. And they were in every town. And they would have land within the city walls, within the town walls, and they would, they would serve as, as the priest there. They would give them the people, God's word. They would minister to the people. They would handle sickness and all the things that go on and all the law that we've already covered in exodus and Leviticus, and some of it's going to be in deuteronomy, where they handle all that kind of stuff. And they are the first fruits. Now, God set them aside, and so as you go through, you know, verse five, he, he brings them all in and he sets them aside, and, and they take a census of them starting in verse 14. And, and they number them out and then they figure out, okay, this is the number of Levites that we have. And then they go, okay, and they go by every family. And there's, there's a bunch of them. I mean, a, a whole bunch of Levites. But there's not as many Levites as there are firstborn children. So because they take a sense of that also because we're going to start out, notice we're starting out, they're about to go into the promised land. They're headed toward the promised land. They're leaving Mount Sinai. They're going to take a census of the firstborn children in the land. And once they take that census, remember we're talking about millions of people. The first moon for that year was about twice as many as the Levites. And that's what you see here. They come in there and they've said, okay, we've got, we've got these many. We're going to dedicate the Levites to this work. And that's what they do. They anoint them. And that's another thing that people get wrong. We think that it's just the pastors that are anointed. Okay, just, and then you go, who are the pastors? Well, the guy in front on Sunday. Well, there's other people called to pastorate or we're talking about them. What about the ministers? What about the decanad, the deacons, the ministers, those who are serving different groups of people out there meeting different needs out there. That's what the deacons originally did. They made sure that the gentile, the gentile widows were taken care of. That was a specific group that were taken care of. And we have lots of ministers that minister in all kinds of areas. What about them? Are they anointed? Then before you know it, you realize, you know what? We're all anointed. We all have the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Paul says that you. Do you not know you have the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, I got it. I'm the anointed. I'm, I'm a Levite. Okay? We're all Levites. And so, and so once we realize that, that we have the power of the heavenly Spirit, we have the presence of the Holy Spirit with the gifting of the Holy Spirit, with the direction of the Holy Spirit. And we walk by faith, each and every one of us. Once we realized all that, very powerful. Very powerful for you to walk in that and to realize that. And so they anointed them with oil. You have been anointed with the oil of. You've been anointed. With the oil of gladness. You're the priesthood. They set them apart. But there weren't enough Levites to meet the need to meet the number of firstborn through millions of people. Twelve other tribes. Okay, they weren't there. Weren't there. Okay, they're not. They're not enough. So what do we do? Well, we go to each tribe and rather than take their first born children, half of them, they paid. They paid a price. They. They paid an offering. Now notice that rather than giving the children, they gave an offer. That may seem trivial. It's not something. It's not. It's not. We're not trying to get into legalism. It was just. This seems natural, you know? I don't know that if I'm. If I'm a. Let's say that I've got a woodmill over there and I'm real wood. I don't know that you need to bring a truckload of wood each year to the church and drop it off in the front yard. What do you do? Well, probably ought to sell it and then bring the money. That makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah, makes sense. Okay. All right. Now, if there's some of the church needs, you might bring, it might. Might be something that you create. Produce. So we had, we had a. We have needs in the church. And maybe, maybe you do plumbing and you plumb the church out. Well, that would be a first fruits offering. That would be offering him first of your labor. That could be. That could be that kind of offering for you. I don't know. Remember, we're living sacrifice. I don't know how it works for you, but. But remember, when God tells you to give to him so that you know, he's in charge, you know, it takes a little work to do. You gotta figure. You gotta figure out what that means for you because you're a priest, because you can go to talk to God yourself. Isn't that cool? Isn't there a lot of liberty in that? Isn't there a lot of freedom in that? There really is. You mean I don't have to, I don't have to go the preacher and him calculate out what percentage I'm supposed to give this week? No, no. And I'm not gonna do it anyway, so, I mean, don't come to me and do that. All right? Now, I'm really good with the mass, okay. And I can do. I can do it all in my head, but I ain't doing it for you like that? You know why? Because that's not between me and you. It's between you and God. And. And I want you to give to God what God wants you to give to him. And then, and then you're going to be in great shape, and I'm going to be excited for you, and that's just what it is. And for some people, it might be the widow's mic just a little bit, because she doesn't have anything. For some people, that might be a tremendous amount, and you just got to figure it out. You got to work it out yourself. And so what they do, they bought. They bought the, uh, they bought that, uh, that, uh, first fruit offering out, not with, uh, their children. They. They gave silver. And silver is the picture of the blood price. It is. It's the picture of Jesus was bought with 30 pieces of silver. It's the blood price. Now, silver is a important metal in scripture. So is gold. Gold's royalty. Silver is the price of sin. It's the price. It's the blood price. And so they brought in, I mean, that made a bunch of them. I mean, one, it was 1365 shekels of silver, which is a lot of silver. And then they gave that to the priest, and that's what kind of began funding the ministry of the priesthood in the Old Testament. They didn't just start out with a tabernacle that they take down and put up. They didn't have the Levites, didn't have flocks and herds, and they didn't have vineyards and fields, but they received food that they offered as sacrifices, and they received finances when people sold their first fruits and brought them in, and that kept going on all the time. And it's a pretty neat story, and that's how God does things. And so I want you to think about that rather than think about, I gotta give God some money, and it's just gonna be painful for me. Think about, is God the lord of your finances? If he is, then what would he have you give him for you to understand that, for it to be evident in your life, and whatever that is, give it. And nobody's going to be going around doing accounting on it. My wife this year decided cut back on doing tax returns and doing accounting for small companies. And so she's just doing it for family and friends, very close family and friends. She's not going to be doing that accounting for Yida. We're out on that. We just want you to go to God and spend time with him and see what he says. And whatever he says, I'm going to tell you as your pastor and friend, you all do what he says because he's a good, good God and he's a great friend, and he's lord of everything. And you sure want him to be lord of all what you got. And that's a southern phrase. You want him to be lord of what you got.
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.
