Numbers 30:3-16 Bible Study | Episode 818

November 27, 2024

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Numbers 30:3-16  Bible Study | Episode #818

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had 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. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

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. This morning, Bible study. We are in numbers, chapter 30, verses three through 16. You go, well, why do you. Yesterday you moved through just two verses, and now you're going to move through, well, 14 verses. Why the difference? Well, the first two were dealing with men and the second two are. And the second 14 are dealing with women. There's a lot more to the vows for women because interestingly, even though in our modern times we hear that this is not true, interestingly enough, the Bible was one of and the most important document to value women, to value women as far as their purpose in the kingdom, purpose in family, purpose in community, purpose in the nation of Israel. And it is the first place where you see women taking on roles. One of the first places, historically, you see women taking on roles of leadership. You even have women in the book of judges leading the nation of Israel. You're going to see women throughout scripture honored and put in places where they are protected and the general memories of society, the way society works and operates during the a time period that was 3000 to 3500 years ago, God puts, God put some restrictions on how you can treat women and gives them a lot of opportunities that were not, well, really weren't in existence for women back during that time period. In this situation, you're dealing with really two things that God is doing. First of all, God is saying that vows made by women to the Lord, in the sense of how they bind them and are going to be held accountable for them, are not the same as for men. And that is for two reasons. First of all, it is for the purpose of protection, so that the society, the culture, the government, you know, the governing body of Israel, the way Israel operated as a governing body, because it was male led, would not be able to come down on women as was usually the culture back then, farther than men, men were supposed to bear the brunt of the issues of the time. They were supposed to handle and be and bee responsible for the bad things, the things that did not work out. And women were not going to be thrust out there as the reason of the cause for the troubles of God's people unless, unless one of them actually was the cause. And God did not want women to be used as the issue and be used really as the punching bag. And so earlier in numbers, you see where a group of women come when they're dividing out the land and say, you know, if our, if we, if our parents have, if our father and mother have no male heirs, why should that pass from our family to someone else? Shouldn't it go to us? And Moses inquires of the Lord and the Lord says, they're right, they're absolutely right, the land should go to them. And so you have female ownership of land, which is a huge step back in. Well, like I said, 3500 years ago, 1500 years before Christ, you have a huge step and women have an ownership here. The principle that's at stake and the principle that needs to be understood is that women are under, under the covering and are necessarily need to be protected by their family members. And what that, what does that mean? Well, a lot of women, you know, our modern society said, well, I don't need the protection of a man. Well, I'm going to tell you, back then, you did need, you did need a system by which the women were protected, because in most cultures they were just property. They are not presented as property in the Old Testament. They're not presented under God's law as property. They presented as an important part of God's kingdom and God's family. And so they necessarily, necessarily, when a young woman was born, she wasn't just going to be taken by anybody. She was under her father's protection. And her father had a duty and responsibility to protect her and to make sure that she was not misused or mistreated and so she would be under her father's protection. Likewise, once she got married, she'd be over, under her husband's protection. And they were really, the word is called covering. They were under their father and mother's, their father and husband's covering. The husbands and the fathers had a duty and a responsibility to make sure that their mothers, their wives, their daughters, their sisters were not mistreated by other people and they would be under the covering of their father and their husband. And you even see some of the sons of Jacob getting into some real trouble because their sister was raped, and they went and killed everybody in a village. And we've been through that in Genesis. But the jewish people believed in the value of women and the importance of a father and a husband being a protector or a cover for young women especially. And so you see that here, that they're not going to be bound by the laws so harshly and strongly as the men are. They're not going to be held to the same standard, because God knew if he placed them in the same standard, they would really be held to a greater standard. And you do see that in society, you do see where you have a certain law, and then women are the ones who bear the brunt of it. They bear the, they paid the most price for it. And you really see that in a lot of cultures that are supposed to be religious. It says, if a woman vows a vow to the Lord and binds herself by pledge while within her father's house in her youth, notice if she's a young lady and her father hears of the vow of her pledge by which she says she has bound herself and says nothing to her, then all her vows shall stand, meaning there's a filter there. There's someone there who's going to make sure that their daughter is not being coerced into making a vow, and he's going to have a veto in this if he said, but now if he doesn't say anything, her vow shall stand, and every pledge by which she has bound herself shall stand. But if her father opposes her, on the day that he hears of it, no vow of hers, no pledge by which she has bound herself shall stand. And the Lord will forgive her because her father opposes her, which means God's not going to hold her responsible for the vow if it goes through the filter of the one who is supposed to be her protector, says that that's not going to happen. Notice you have really, a modern day, we use this principle a lot. You're not held to what has happened when you're held to, when you know, and the standard is here, if the father finds out about it, on the day he finds out about it, he can break that vow. And the reasoning break that vow is because he's got a duty or responsibility to take care. Well, he's got a duty, responsibility to take care of his daughters. And so if the vow, if he sees the vow as something that was not between her and God, not an important thing between her and God, but something that maybe was a little bit off or a little bit coerced, he doesn't, he doesn't allow that vow to take place if she marries a husband while under her vows. And remember there that marriages took place in the mid, not a lot early, but mid teen years. So you still got young women being married. Makes a vow and an utterance of her lips by which she has bound herself, and her husband hears of it and says nothing to her. On the day that he hears, then her vow shall stand, and her pledge by which she is bound herself shall stand. But if on the day of her husband comes to hear of it, he opposes her, then he makes void her vow that was on her and the thoughtless utterances of her lips by which she bound herself. And the Lord will forgive her. Notice there is a understanding that the older person, the person who is responsible, can break the vow here. And you go, well, weren't they all young when they got married? No, not necessarily. Usually a woman in her mid teens would marry a man in his mid twenties. And I know in modern culture we think that's just terrible, but that's really been going on for the last, you know, around 3400 years. Only in the last, really only last 50 to 100 years. Is that not true? I say it all the time. If you look in high school yearbooks, especially in Pastor Terry's day, Pastor Terry married Miss Diane while she was a senior in high school. And we even talked about that. There was even a discussion of that by their daughter at the celebration service for Pastor Terry. If you looked in high school yearbooks back in the 1940s and fifties, you would see that maybe a third to a half of the young ladies in a senior class were married. They were married women. And usually they married someone who already had a job, already had a, had set himself up in a career. Usually they were 34567 years older than them. So, which means if you were 16, you might marry someone who's 23, 24 years old. And there's nothing that's, that's not, that's not that. That's a cultural thing that you're dealing with if you've got an issue with it. Because I'm gonna tell you for the, you know, the last four millennia that's gone on, and the older person is the responsible person in that relationship, which would have usually been the husband who was six, seven years older, older than his wife, and he had a duty not to allow her to be misused. That's a covering. That's a. Well, that's a powerful thing. God gives us covering, and he models that for us, and we should be the covering for others. Pastors are coverings for the church. Fathers are coverings for their daughters. Husbands are coverings for their wives. These things are important, he says. But any vow, verse nine, of a widow or a divorced woman, anything by which she has bound herself shall stand against her. Why? Because usually those women are old enough to be able to understand what's going on around them and to make, if they're going to make a vow, they understand the implications and the complications and the difficulties of it, and they were willing to do it, and they're old enough and mature enough to be able to handle it. And if she vowed in her husband's house, or bound herself by pledge with one oath, and her husband heard of it and said nothing to her and did not oppose her, then all her vows shall stand. In every pledge by which she has bound herself shall stand. He's just saying. Generally speaking, if a wife makes a vow and her husband hears it and he doesn't say anything, then that vow stands. But if her husband makes the null and boil on the day of null and void on the day he hears them, then whatever proceeds out of her lips concerning vows or concerning her pledge of herself shall not stand. Her husband made them void, and the Lord will forgive her. Any vow and any binding oath to afflict herself, her husband may establish, or her husband may make void. But if her husband says nothing to her from that, from day to day, then he establishes all her vows. Notice he's got a veto. But if he doesn't do anything, then he establishes it, and so it says. But if he makes them null and void after he has heard of them, then he shall bear, he shall bear her iniquity, meaning that he's responsible for it also. So when the vow's made here, the husband is responsible for it. I think that's really interesting. God's saying, listen, husbands, you've got a covering responsibility. And by the way, if your wife makes a vow and you don't operate in your covering, then she's responsible for the vow and you're responsible for the vow. That didn't happen to the men, that they're not responsible. No other man is responsible for another man's vow. But here, God's saying, you have a duty here of covering. A father has a duty of covering. A husband has a duty of covering. And if there is a vow made that you do not spend a little time considering whether or not that was a vow made properly by your daughter or your wife. And one, that one, that one that was in her best interest, one that was from God, rather than maybe one that was manipulated by someone else. If you don't spend time making sure that you investigate these things, then when the vow is set in stone, it's going to be set in stone with you, too. It says, but in 15. But if he makes them null and void after he's heard of them, then he shall bear. Then he shall bear her iniquity. If he doesn't handle it, he bears it. These are the statutes of the Lord commanded Moses about a man and his wife, and about a father and his daughter while she's in her youth, within her father's house. Notice, this is not a. This is not negative toward women. This is a. This is God doing what God does, which is protect those who are weak and vulnerable. And God is making sure that he sets up a cultural standard for the jews, that they are to make sure that they take care of. And we're not talking about weaker mentally, we're talking about weaker physically. He says. He says, we. I'm going to set a standard up that men are to be coverings for the females in their household, and they have a duty and responsibility to use their physical strength to protect the women that are in their family, that are in their kingdom, and that are in their society. And God does this throughout scripture. And he recognizes women of great value, women who do great things of faith. The. The number of women that are mentioned in the Bible as faith actors, as faith leaders, as faith, as kingdom builders. Great, great list throughout scripture. A list that. Probably not quite as long as the list of men, but a very comparable list. And I would say. I would say that. That anybody who says that the Bible is anti woman just really hadn't studied or to read it. And God definitely has an understanding of how he made women and his purpose for women in his plans for this world. He has great. He placed great value on them. Even our Lord Jesus Christ had many women who were followers of him and him, and regularly a part of his house and intimates in that they were friends and that they sat at his feet and listened to him teach, which was not common for rabbis back then. And so throughout scripture, we see God loving women, God protecting women, and God making sure that women are valued for what their value is in society, in the church, and in the family. So I love these passages when we come across them, that we hold them out and say, see here, this is how God views and loves women.

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.