Numbers 35:1-8 Bible Study | Episode 829

December 12, 2024

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

Numbers 35:1-8 Bible Study | Episode #829829

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's morning Bible study. We're having Bible study a little more early this morning. I've got several things I've got to be doing at 07:00 but it's good to see you this morning. Good to be able to do these Bible studies. Numbers, chapter 35. And it's talking about the cities of the Levites. Now, there's two real sections to this chapter. We'll try to deal with the second section in one day tomorrow, but I'm not sure I will be able to. The Levites were given cities. What does that mean? Well, when the children of Israel took their possession in the promised land, there were twelve tribes that took possession of lands, meaning there were twelve different sections of land. And you're going, well, how? I thought the Levites were a tribe. They are a tribe. They are a tribe unto themselves. Now, Joshua, I mean, Joseph, his two sons are in, in the giving out of land. In the giving of land to the children of Israel, his two sons are listed as two of the tribes. So what you basically do is you've got twelve, you subtract out the Levites as far as getting an inheritance in the land, and you add to the eleven one of the sons of Joseph. So you have Joseph's two sons. Uh, he splits into two and he becomes. Those two are listed. And in the list of the tribes of Israel, you're going to see that, that those two separate lists, um, when, when you are reading, sometimes the list will include Joseph and sometimes the list will include his two sons and exclude the Levites. Now why is that the case? Well, as with most situations where you have a change in names, and that is a biblical idea, you have Abram becoming Abraham, Sarai becoming Sarah, Paul becoming Saul. I mean, Saul becoming Paul. I mean, as you go through, you've got Jacob becoming Israel, as you, as you go through. The original name, when it's used in scripture, is symbolic of the flesh or living in the. Living in the carnal Christian, the carnal life. Okay, so when you're dealing with the symbolism of that, when a person receives two different names, and then afterwards those names are used. The. Whenever the first name is used, it is speaking of their carnal christian life, their original way. They were before God changed them, before they began to walk by faith. The second name is a name that they're given when. When they. When they meet God, when they're changed by God. It's a. It's, you know, when they're. When they're. When their life has been made different by relationship with God, when they repent, when they're converted. Those are the things that. Those are the names that God gives them afterwards. And they're. They're their spiritual names. And that's usually the way I describe it to people. It's their spiritual names. Their. Their names. They have a name that means something. In fact, we're all going to have that. By the way, I have. I have multiple names. My name is Donald Richard Harrison Junior. And people call me Chad. And so you go, how did you get that? Well, if you take the two R's and the I out of Richard, you actually do get Chad. It's a very hard, difficult thing to do. It's a. It's definitely a jumping through hoops thing to do. But. But that's how my mom did it, so that's. That's my name. My name is Chad, and so people call me that, but my given name is Donald Richard Harrison Junior. So when. When you have two different names, you. You say, well, I've got. This is my name. Well, when you get to heaven, God gives you actually another name, and it's a special name between you and him. And in many ways, that's your new spiritual name. Everyone who is. Is in the kingdom has a special spiritual name. We all do. We all do. And so it's not like just some people in the Bible got it and some didn't. It's. It's a foreshadowing of God's spiritual name. And it also helps us kind of see things when we're dealing with certain people, especially when we're dealing with Jacob and Israel. That's one of the names that are used a lot during scripture when it's talking about all the kingdom, all the children of Israel. Sometimes it will call them Jacob, and sometimes he'll call them Israel. When you see that happening, later on in scripture, when you see that going on later on in scripture, you need to notice and take note and say, okay, what's happening there? Well, he's talking about the people of not faith or people of the flesh. And then when he uses Israel, he's talking about them when they're walking in faith. Wow. That's what that means. Yeah, that's, that's what that means. And so you need to, you need to look out for, that is your, especially as you're going through the prophets, because it happens a lot in the prophets. So when they went into Israel, when they went into the promised land, so you have these twelve tribes, two of them being Joseph's sons. When, when they get into Israel, they, the, when they get into Canaan, which is now Israel, when they get into the promised land, they, they, the Levites do not have an inheritance in the land. They have an inheritance in the people. And that seems exactly right. That is a kind of a foreshadowing of pastors or shepherds. And that's what the Levites were to be. They were to be the spiritual leaders of the people of Israel. And so their inheritance was the people and not as much in the land. Now, they did get land. They did have land. They had cities that they owned, that they were their cities, and they owned the land around that city. Not a lot of land, but they owned, they owned several hundred yards of the land around the city. So they actually had a place to raise, raise cattle, raise their, their livestock. So the Levites were not desolate in their ownership of a means of making food. They actually had a place to farm and a place to, to make foods. And we see that. It says, the Lord spoke to Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho, saying that every time it says that, the plains of Moses, moab across the Jordan from Jericho, that's the place they're going to cross over, command the children of Israel, that they give the Levite cities to dwell in from the inheritance of their possession. So their inheritance are the cities. That's the places where people would come and sell their, sell their wares, sell the things that they had made, sell the livestock and the food that they had created. It was a place of market. And the Levites were to control many of those cities, not all of them, but many of them, so that there would be also a spiritual aspect to it. They would be coming together in fellowship. They'd be coming together as the children of God, and they'd be coming together and meet with God's. Well, God's spiritual leaders, he says. And you shall also give the Levites common land around the cities. They shall have the cities to dwell in. And their common land shall be for the cattle, their herds and all their animals. The common land of the cities, which you will give the Levites shall extend from the wall of the city outward a thousand cubits all around. Well, how many is a cubit? A cubits about a foot and a half. So if it's 1000 cubits, that's about 1500ft. That's about 500 yards. So if you think about five football fields long, that's how far out it would extend. It's not a long, long way, but I mean it's a. It's a fairly long way, especially if you take it all the way around the city. It's. It's a good area to farm in. It would be a great area to farm in, especially if the city's not very big. He says, he says you will give this to the Levites and you shall measure outside the city. On the east side 2000 cubits and on the other, on the south side 2000 cubits. And on the west side 2000 cubits. And on the north side 2000 cubits. They shall be in the middle. And this shall belong to them as common land for the. The cities. And I don't know why I said a thousand, but 2000, which, which would be around 3000 yards or I mean 3000ft. A thousand yards. I did the math right. I did the math right. It would be. It would be about three football fields. And so as you're. As you're going around the. The city, that's what they would have. And they actually raised their own produce. They raised their own. They raised their own cattle. They raised their own sheep. They had herds. But now they didn't have necessarily the large areas of land to develop and to have vineyards and things like that. They didn't have that. But they had an ability to provide for themselves their own, their own food. And they did receive food in the. In the offerings and the sacrifices. They did receive food from the people because of the, because of the different offerings that we've been going through in detail over the last two books of the Bible. Now, among the cities in which you will give the Levites, you shall appoint six cities of refuge to which the manslayer may flee. And these you shall add to the 42 cities. So we've got a city for the manslayer. Okay. And they're called cities of refuge. What is that? Well, you have to be at Bible study tomorrow to know that, we'll get into some detail about that. But. But there's six. Six cities of refuge, and then there's 42 other cities. And I know I can do this math. 48 cities. So all the cities you shall, you will give a Levites. In fact, God does the math for me. Shall be 48. Thee shall, you shall give to the common land. And the cities which you shall give shall be from the possession of the children of Israel. From the larger tribes, you shall give many. From the smaller, you shall give a few. Each shall give some of its cities to the Levites in proportion to the inheritance which they received. Now you go, what is God saying here? Did not all the tribes give four? Because it would seem right, you know, 48 divided by twelve is four. No, because some of the tribes would have been a lot larger and have a lot more. More land to get. And so these cities are not going to be arranged, as we have arranged, the states. Each. Each state gets two senators each. Each tribe gets four cities which are owned by the Levites. They're going to be. They're going to be spread out evenly across Israel. They're going to be spread out evenly across the east side of the Jordan and the west side of the Jordan. They're going to be distributed easily for a couple of reasons. First of all, the cities of refuge need to be fairly evenly apart so that a person can flee there if they accidentally kill someone. And that's what manslaughter is. It is an accidental killing that is in some way wrongful. And then you have the cities where the levites would be, and you wouldn't want four in the largest tribe. You would want them to have six or seven levite cities. Why? Because, remember, that's the spiritual hub, and you wouldn't want the larger tribes to have less spiritual influence than the smaller tribes. You would want the larger tribes to have the opportunity to have more. As much spiritual influence for their people as you would the smallest tribe to have spiritual influence. So the smallest tribe might only have two cities the Levites have, and the largest tribe might have six. Why? Well, because God wants to make sure that there's Levites nearby, because levites are going to be a couple of things in the. In the. Well, in the. In their ministry to the people. And. And that's probably the last thing I need to teach you about this, because it's really. This is really informational, because down the road there's gonna. We're gonna deal with cities of refuge, and we're gonna deal with the levite cities, and we're gonna deal with the Levites. We're gonna deal with them all the way up to Jesus's time. So what are, who are the Levites? What do you mean? They're places where they're ministered to. Well, in all actuality, the Levites. And that the idea of the Levites are, is, is kind of the nucleus, the, the nexus, the beginning of our ideas of professions. Now, in our modern time, we have a lot of professions. We have a lot of things that we call professional, their professional jobs. Jobs that are a profession. And the number one is the NFL. No, that's wrong. That is not right. It's not the National Football League, although they're professional football players. And I do watch them. But that's beside the point. Professions. Professions. The original three professions were these, the pastor, the attorney, and the doctor. And in all actuality, the Levites in Israel kind of served as all those. In fact, when the Levites are asking Jesus questions, they could be asking him from a spiritual perspective. But you're going to notice that most of the time, it seems like they're asking them like a lawyer. And that's why they are. That's what they are. The Levites handled the dispensation of justice through the law when someone came to those cities. And that's why it was necessary to have them pretty evenly spread out so that people could come and have, have someone make a judgment about the law as to something that happened in their lives. So the Levites had to function, in many ways as a judicial system. They also functioned as obviously spiritual shepherds. They handled all the meetings together, the gathering together on the Sabbath, the reading of the law, the teaching of the Bible. They did that. That's what they did. So they're spiritual leaders, and they also handled medical issues. They were the ones that you would go to if you had a medical problem. They were the ones that determined who was clean and unclean, and they handled anything medical that went on. So, in all actuality, the Levites would have been in these cities and these places, and they would have. They would have been the people that people came to for justice, legal justice. They would have been placed where people came to for spiritual nourishment, and they would have been a place where people came to, to be taken care of in their physical needs as far as medical help. And so the levites are kind of the beginning, or the beginning or the nexus or the nucleus of our understanding of the professions. And now we have, you know, we have, you know, engineers, and you just start naming them architect. I mean, over and over, accountants, there all kinds of professions that require professional skills. And I would even say some of the crafts, some of the, some of the things that we call trades today, uh, have become so intricate and so difficult that, you know, you have to go through a whole process to learn it. Uh, it, you would be a professional electrician, a professional, uh, plumber, uh, to plumb giant skyscrapers or to, to put the electrical system into a giant prison. Or, uh, you know, all the things that, that we do, those are those, you know, you have to become really good at it, and you have to be very knowledgeable about how to do it. Well, that's what a profession is. And the Levites were the beginning of that. And so these cities, these cities that the Levites had played a major function, a major role in God's ordering of the society that he had, which was the children of Israel. And by the way, God is a God of order. And God is, God does create government so that there would be orderliness to society. And that's the whole purpose of government. He created the church, or his people, or God's people. He created them so that there would be spiritual truth and spiritual nourishment for his people. He created the family to take care of the intimate and the growing needs of a society, starting with the children. And then he created government to create orderliness in the world. And all these are very important. All of them are very important. The family being the most important because it was the first, then that family is a part of the kingdom, and that, that small cell becomes a part of God's body. And so the, the church is, is the next of the importance that we place in our lives. And then, and you go, well, I thought church would be more important. Remember, God's part of our family. He's, we're, we're, he's not just, he's not just part of the church. He's part of your family. And so when you, when you, when you think about it, think about God and your family, and then y'all meet together with the rest of the family members of church, and then you live among a family, which is the society of the community that you live in. And they're a family too. They're just extended. We just keep extending out of, and that's the orderliness that God created for us to live in. What a great God we serve. 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.