Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. What's up folks? We are back with another episode here and a couple things that we wanted to mention yesterday that we didn't get around to, so let us make sure that we hit those. Number one. We are just so excited to be in the office, by the way, you, hopefully you'll give us some grace. We were, yeah, we are still. Happy belated birthday to Kelly Smith, our admin here at the church. We love you, Kelly, and we're so grateful for all that you do for us. You work so hard for us and we're we're thankful for that. So happy birthday. Hopefully you enjoyed the day yesterday and you, I think you told me you're going out to celebrate on Friday, so we're still within the window. Wouldn't the birthday week? I think a month is probably acceptable. Okay. You can wish someone a happy birthday. Okay. Alright. Fair. Yeah. So happy birthday. Happy birth month, Kelly. Yeah, there we go. And then the second thing is, y you may be out there seeing some people walk around, they've got some smudges on their forehead. You're like, Hey you got, can I get that for you? You got something right, right there. So you lick your thumb and then wipe it off their head? Yeah. And then they're like, no. Blessing is gone. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and Ash Wednesday's not something that we. Celebrate. In our tradition, though, it is celebrated by some in the evangelical churches, you'll see some celebrate. It's mostly a Catholic tradition, though. The Episcopalian church also participates, I believe. And it's to mark the beginning of a period called Lent And Lent are the 40 day fast period leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection. It's it's meant to anticipate. The the coming of Easter. And so Lent is a period of time. Typically, you'll see people fast from something. They won't fast from all food for 40 days 'cause that's not healthy for anybody. But they will fast from technology. They'll fast from their favorite, fast food. They'll fast from something that is a reminder of sacrifice. And it was 6 0 1 ad around there that. Lent officially came into practice and Pope Gregory was the one who really moved the target on that and established it and established Ash Wednesday at the same time. So this traces back to 6 0 180, so about 1,420 years, give or take that we're talking about here, still doing it and people are still doing it today. And so if people doing it, it's probably a sign, good sign, good indication that they go to the local Catholic church would be my guess. And feel free to ask them Hey. Tide would. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me about the mark on your head. I know it has to do with Ash Wednesday. What's the significance for you? It might be, yeah, when you came in, I asked you and you were like, I don't know. Actually was like, I don't know. I fell, did it? I just fell in the mud. I got up and it was there, and I was like, I'm just gonna leave it. But yeah, ask 'em don't shy away from that. And that might create some really good, interesting conversations with your neighbors. I agree. And this is one of those things that I, we don't do it to what you just said, but I wish we did. I like the symbolism. I like having physical markers of, and granted, of course this could become something other than what it should be, and it becomes just a show of pietism as opposed to actual pietism. Yep. But I wish there were more markers in our faith. Not necessarily that I'm looking for smells and bells, but just more things like this that were communal and public and more obvious. I grants, I'm not gonna do it, I'm not planning on doing it. I'm not gonna do it to my kids. But I wish there were more things like this for us. So it's, in other words, it's not necessarily a sin. We don't need to confronts people and be like, you work idol in. Yeah. You're clearly practicing workspace righteousness. Totally. Repent. Believe. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. I think that's something that I think there's even honestly and we don't support this movement, but the emergent church. Was a lot of people who wanted that feeling of the ancient brought back into modern Christianity. They wanted, they were dissatisfied with the Bible church movement, which was a lot of, the same things. We have our own liturgy and they were bored with the liturgy of the modern Bible church or the modern, megachurch Baptist church. Yeah. And they wanted that. Experience with the ancient. And so there was a lot of an appeal towards those things. So I get that desire the symbolism there. Yeah. Even crossing ourselves that, that you may wonder, that seems like a Catholic thing that people do bef when they get outta the pew and it is. But that emerged from the desire to make sure the cross was always before us. That was the idea of the cross being made. There was, I want the cross before me as I go. Yeah. Which is a good thought in and of itself. It's just become a kinda a process of going through the motions. And the same thing was true with the tassels. On the robe. We talked about this. Jesus himself wore tassels, but they worked. Functionally the way they were supposed to. They drove his heart to prayer, to recognition of who his father was. And the truth is that we just, man, it's hard to do that for us. Yeah. It's hard to do that with the signs and symbols. Yep. Totally. Totally. And then the third thing that we missed yesterday was we wanna give a special shout out to some guys that really helped us a ton in this office move. So Steve Yang, Danny Mayer. Ramin. Ramin was here. And then just helping us with the office itself. With internet. We had John Kingsolver. We had Matt Perales, we had Rob Kelly Danny and Steve were there too for that again. Yeah, it was a whole slew of people that really made this move possible and helpful. Thanking who blessed our hearts. Yeah. You guys are awesome. In fact, we're using wireless internet right now that is running. As smoothly as possible because of our guys that did that for us. And thank you so much, guys. Yeah. What a blessing. We didn't ask them. No they said basically, can we come and help you guys? Yeah. And we're like you don't have to. There's not a lot of stuff. If you really want to, we basically discouraged them and we're coming. We're gonna help you. We're gonna bless your socks off, then we're just gonna leave. Which is exactly what they did. And they, I You got in that fight with Danny? I did. You punched him and he punched back and then we shook it shook hands like brothers, and then kept on moving. Yeah. It was great. Yeah. Thank you gentlemen. We're just so grateful for you guys. You possessed the very attitude that we would love to replicate among our church. Just that add apa any place, any, anytime. Wait. Lemme do it again. Any place anything, any place, any add apat, the lyric app, habitat, app habitat, whatever it is, that thing you guys possess. We're grateful to you guys and grateful for you guys. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Hey, let's jump into our text for the day numbers 26 and 27. At 26, we get another census. And what's changed is about 40 years, 40 years after the first one and the first, this one was also taken to gauge military readiness. Except this time it was gonna be significant because this is that next generation up. This is the generation that didn't die in the wilderness. This is the generation that is gonna take the promised land. And so we're counting people again here and we're counting those of 20 years and up trying to gauge. Okay, who's ready to go to war? Who's ready to go to battle? And we find in numbers 26 51, there's our massive number again, the total number of military age men, 601,730. So what this tells us is there hasn't been a massive change in the population of Israel, which you would expect if half the population about or thereabouts was gonna die off because of their disobedience to the Lord. Yeah. What's about that? They've been replaced by the next generation. And so you've got, basically the numbers remaining the same because God took out one generation and replaced them with the next generation. And so if this is the 601,000 that we think it is we're again looking at a number close to 2 million. But it may be, like we said, LF could mean clans. It, there are, there may be other explanations, but here it is, 601,730. Yeah. One thing to note most commentators will note this for you, but you'll note that all the numbers that we're looking at are round. Yep. They're round numbers, which gives us an indication that these are probably not meant to be precise documentations of the numbers of Israel. Accurate? Yes. And we've come across this before, accuracy, but not precision, at least not Western 2025 precision. The numbers that they're reporting are accurate. They are probably good approximations for what they were doing. Maybe they were organized by clans and by tribes by military units perhaps. But the numbers, as you'll see here, these are not inaccuracies. I don't care what your atheist friend tells you. These are reliable representations. Yeah. Of the numbers of people that were there. Now we still have to do a little bit of homework here and say, okay, what numbers. What do these represent and how do we understand them best? Yeah, but they're accurate. They're reliable. That's my point. Yeah. Yeah. Note numbers 26 64 through 65. Just a reminder here of the totality of the punishment here. It says in 64, but among these, there was not one of those listed by Moses and Aaron, the priest who had listed the people of Israel and the wilderness of Sinai. For the Lord had said of them, they shall die in the wilderness. So the Lord fulfilled his word, he fulfilled his promise. They were all gone, and now they were set being set up to, to take the promise. Un surprised. Yep. Chapter 27. Then we get into initially a situation with the daughters of and this guy's name Zha. Zilo Z Zha. Yeah. That's how the guy said it on the Bible app. There we go. Zalo had, I'm gonna go with that. Yeah. Son of Heifer. Anyways Z Lofa had man, some of these names he. Yeah, maybe he's a cow, maybe distant relative of the cow. Maybe the red, not as long as he is not the red one. O Yeah. Anyways, these daughters come forward and they say, Hey our dad didn't have any sons. He's gone and we don't want his name to disappear, and we don't think it's right for his name to disappear, just because he didn't have any sons. And so the people seek the counsel of the Lord. And it's determined that, yeah, okay we think we agree with you. And so these daughters are granted their, the portion of the tribe, of their, the tribe that they belong to, that their dad belonged to. So it's an interesting situation here where God provides for these young women to make sure that they would have a stake in the land even though they didn't have any brothers and their father had passed away. The rest of this chapter then verses 12 through 23, you get Joshua. Joshua is introduced. Moses is given an opportunity to see the promised land from in verse 12. And he is allowed there to witness what the people are gonna go in and take the thing that he had been laboring for his whole life, but. Again, because of his unfaithfulness, he's not gonna enter there, he's not gonna take advantage of it. He's not gonna be in there. In verse 16 through 17, we see here Moses has a concern for the leadership of the people. And so asks the Lord that he would appoint another one after him. This is evidence of a good leader. He cares about what's coming next. He's not just about his own empire and his own brand, his own kingdom, but he's thinking about what's, who's next up. And so Moses. Seeks the Lord's wi wisdom and guidance on that. Joshua is selected, he's described as a man in whom is the spirit. Now, we talked about that with yesterday with BAAM here. I, I think we still have to apply the same principles. This is not the indwelling of the spirit in a regenerative sense, but this is gonna be more of a significant. And longer term indwelling of the spirit than Balam experienced. And so Joshua possesses the spirit for the task at hand, which is gonna be to lead the people into the promised land. And his leadership is gonna be different from that of Moses. He's gonna possess some of Moses' authority, but he would not commune with God face to face. We read about that in verses 19 through 21. So Moses was gonna stand out as unique. Still, and that's why I think the writer of Hebrews doesn't say, Hey, Jesus is better than Joshua. Jesus is better than Aer. Jesus is better than Aaron. I think he, he highlights Moses 'cause Moses was unique in the fact that he got to see and interface with God face to face. Not so with Joshua here, but still Joshua's gonna be a godly leader who takes the people into the promised land. I really appreciate the fact that Moses is the one who comes to God about this. You highlighted this, but this is so important. Moses. God knows. God knows. God knows that they need leadership. So it's not like. Moses is reminding God, right? God knows. And yet he allows Moses to take the initiative and take the first step to say, Lord, they need leadership. Who will you put in my place? Who will you allow to take the mantle of leadership going forward? And I think that speaks a lot to the way that leaders today should think about their role. They think about their succession plan. I think there's always a good. Impulse to say I'm not the Lord's final authority over anything. Yeah. Yeah. Therefore, there should always be a plan of what happens if you die. Hope that's not too crass, but we ought to be thinking about the fact that we're not gonna be around for forever. It's a wise parent, a wise pastor. It's a wise leader who makes provision for the people that they love before they die, and that's exactly what Moses is doing here. I think that would apply to simple things like, man, if you're overseeing a family, it would be a good thing to have life insurance unless you have a really. Large nest egg. It'd be good thing to to sock away some cash for your kids for things like, I don't know, burying you perhaps. Or maybe you take care of it yourself. You buy your own burial plot and you buy your own casket so that they don't have to worry about that. As they mourn your loss, you'll have taken care of some of the small things. I think this is the heart of a leader. He cares for his people. He's caring that they have provision for the next phase after he leaves. That's a good leader. That is a good leader. Are you trying to suggest something? Are you trying to say, I need to, so when you die, pastor pj, I will name the church pastor PJ Bible Church. Yeah. No, and it's worth us thinking through that and honestly right now I don't think too deeply about that because I know if I get hit by a bus, we've got you completely able to take the reins. And what if for both in the car? Then we drive together on occasion. Then it's Mark, or then it's, yeah, I guess it's true. Then it's one of our wives. We're gonna just go egalitarian. All right. I'm sure that'll go over real well. I'm sure. Church. I'm kidding, Jeff. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. All right. Hey, let's let's pray in. Is the radio right in the email before we even publish it? Too much googly. He senses it right now. Senses unorthodox, teaching. Let's pray. God we pray that you would keep us faithful. We joke about it, but we know that but for the grace of God, could we drift and we wanna be faithful to your word. And so help us to do just that. We want to be wise and we want to be those that are preparing the next generation. And part of that includes thinking about the future leadership. And so help us to know how to do that as individuals, as families, and certainly as the church goes as well, we want to be a faithful church for multiple generations. If you don't send Christ back first, we want Compass's Bible Church to be here for decades upon decades and we recognize that's gonna be new leadership eventually, and we just pray that it would be a faithful lampstand for its entire time. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Hey, keep you in your Bibles. Tune it again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye y'all. Bye.

Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of the daily Bible podcast. We hope and pray this has been a blessing to you and your time in the word. If it has, if you would subscribe to this podcast, leave a like, leave a comment and share it with some friends and family. That would be awesome. If you need more information about Compass Bible Church here in North Texas, you can go to compassntx. org. Again, that's compassntx. org. And we'll be back with you tomorrow for another episode of the daily Bible podcast.