Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the daily Bible podcast. Hello and Shalom. Yes. Shalom. Why are we shaloming? Is it because we're in the book of numbers now? No, no, I'm Jewish. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you remember this. That's right. I did the 23 and me and it showed that I am very small percentage of Jewish and we don't even need to discuss the number. We just need to know that it's the fact. I am Jewish. I'm probably from the tribe of Judah. Okay. And I just, you're a lot of other things too, I imagine. And yet I don't hear you talk about the other things that you are important. No, no. Same way that you talk about being Jewish. Sure. I'm the other things too, but it's like I don't know. I don't, I don't like to. Play the card too hard, you know, I just want people to know that i'm jewish You're part of the the priesthood of god. You're the the people for his own I suspect a couple judeites and a couple levites probably married and eventually down the line the gomez family arrived here We are. Yeah. Yeah, just like god Just like god. Yeah. Yeah Evidently, well, there we go. Hey. Yeah. Good. Yeah. No, I we're We're not I don't know where I was going with that. You, you were going somewhere. Where are you going with that? No, I was going to say, I have a special surprise that I have. I forgot today. Yes. That I just, I can't wait to share it with you guys. It's, it's special and I got it for my birthday and I think it's going to make me a better podcaster. That's my, my suspicion, at least for part of the Bible, a better student of the Torah. That's for sure. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, we were talking about it today as we're recording it Saturday. As you guys know, we're recording a little bit earlier, but man, it's nice outside and it's still like 40 something out there. That's how you know you've acclimated. Yeah. When 40 degrees is like, wow, it's really nice out. That's how, you know, you're no longer in California. Oh man. This last week was brutal. I love cold weather, but even I had this last week, I was like, I'm over it. It's too cold. Well, it was stands to reason if we have it for long enough, we'll feel like, oh man, 15 degrees a day. It's really nice outside. Let's go and play. Yeah. Pass. Well, as long as there's no wind, the wind chill is what feels the worst. If you don't get wind, it's actually not too bad. And that's why today is so nice because there's no wind. No wind. I went to the gym today. I was going to go run on the treadmill and I walked in and you're flexing on us right now. Yeah, I am. Everybody and their mom was on the treadmill. So I was like, okay, well, I guess there's no treads and I don't want to actually lift weights because that's not who I am. So you need to start doing that. I do. I just do it at home. Anyways. So I walked back outside and I was like, actually, it's not too bad. So I went for a run outside. Wow. On Preston road. Nope. In my neighborhood. In your neighborhood. Yeah. All right. Passed by some other people running. Yeah. On your left? No. On your left. On your left. Don't you do it! Yeah. Anyways. So it's a, it's a beautiful day. Baseball's back. My, my son Luke is playing baseball. My son John just finished at basketball. Wow. Sports fam. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of the four boys, one, one. And my daughter made the tennis team, dude. Wow. Yeah. Annie made the tennis team. Good for her. She did. Yeah. What a rocket, Annie. Yep. So you should make cards for the, for the season of life. That'd be fun. You know, you get a picture, put it in a baseball card. That's always fun. I've never done that, but now that I say that out loud, I might do it. Cause that does sound cool. Get a picture, put it in the baseball. So you know how you can like a, it's like an Etsy project. You can make a baseball card of your kid. Yes. Put their stats on the back and all the fun things. Yes. You should do that. Okay. Yeah. Surprising. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. When I was growing up, it was the, the big deal was you got your pictures taken with your baseball team and then you could buy the sports illustrated cover version of it. Oh, that's cool. So it would read sports illustrated and then you'd be the cover athlete. That's pretty fun. That was fun. You can still do that. I thought it was fun. You should do that. We, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we would do a lot of other things if we had less kids. Yeah, but I think that all the time Yeah, when we multiply it by five, we're like, yeah Never mind. Yeah Yeah. Anyways, hey, let's jump into numbers brand new book. Let's do it for us Numbers is what your English Bible reads and it's from the Septuagint title, which is arithmoid, which is, you probably hear the word arithmetic in there. It's a Greek word and it points to the numbers. And we draw that from the census that are census size since cease, since he sees since I, that are taken since I sent it in a season in, in chapters one through four. And then also in chapter 26, but a lot of it is not necessarily dealing with that. I think you brought this up. Just tongue in cheek on a recent episode, you said that the Hebrew title. So tell us a little bit about the Hebrew title for this book and why maybe that's the better title for us than numbers. Well, they call it in, in the wilderness. And then of course it draws from the fact that you spend a lot of time in this book, looking at how they interact with one another and the Lord in the wilderness, it's all their wilderness journeys. You're going to find out where they failed, where they didn't do well. There's a couple of bright spots. But largely you're reading about their journey through the wilderness. This is where God judges them because of their obstinance. And that's primarily what the book is about. So I understand why we call it numbers and it certainly fits. There's a census to Sensei that, that govern major sections of the book, but it stands to reason that that's not really the theme of the book. It's just kind of the background, the context, but the numbers are, they do matter, they are important and they're kind of problematic. We've kind of breached this before PPJ, but let's. This dialogue and discuss some of the options when it comes to reading our Bible and walking away with these numbers. These numbers seem problematic. For, for, for some close Bible readers, if you're reading your Bible closely and carefully, the numbers might be alarming. Why might that be the case? Yeah. Well, if you look in, in the count totals come in, so 20 through 46 of chapter one, they're going through and basically what's happening here in the opening chapters, they're taking. A census account of all of the military aged males. They want to know who's going to be able to go to war if they need to go to war. And at the end of that, they come up with the total being 603, 550. That's a number similar to what we've read before in the book of Exodus, as far as those that came out of Egypt with the Israelites. And so that's a massive number. When you consider these are just military aged men. These are not, this is not the total population now. And so if you take that number and you extrapolate out what that would look like. I think I saw somewhere, somebody said that would mean the average Israelite woman would have had over 20 children which is enormous. Well, compared to, yeah, the firstborn situation, which we haven't got to yet, but where the Levites were substituted. Yeah, so there, there's a problem there. Yeah, that's an issue. What else? And then just the idea that, that Israel was said to be one of the smaller nations. And so the Israelites, it was said that there were others in the promised land more numerous or greater than they. And, and so some of it is we have to define terms and it's difficult for us to define the term of what is, what is meant by these nations were greater versus what is meant by these nations were was smaller or less significant because you can take that a couple of different ways. Sure. But when you think about if Israel is 2 million people and there were nations larger than that within the promised land, the promise land is not a large area. Israel geographically is not a large space. And so you run into problems of going, how could the land sustain that many people in In that region. So that's another big issue. There's just accounting for that. Yeah. Scripture says that they are fewest in number. I think Deuteronomy says that if I'm not mistaken. So that seems to be an issue given the numbers that we have here. And also given the fact that we have a little bit of information about how large those peoples were at that point in time, if they're fewest in number at about 2 million people total, well, then it, then you start to ask, well, then how large were there? They're, they're, They're neighbors to the North Southeast West and you start to say, okay, this probably is not what's happening here. So good Bible readers. It's in your ESV You'll see some options here in your ESV study Bible. Yeah, I don't know if dr. MacArthur does anything on that side He probably doesn't deal with that. But I have an ni ni V What's it called? Systematic theology study Bible something like that Anyway, it also offers some approaches to how Bible reading works Scholars who are conservative, who love their Bibles and agree that God could do these things. It's not a matter of whether he could have sustained them for two for 40 years, 2 million people. But the answer, the question is, what does the Bible tell us? Right. That's the question. We're not Questioning inerrancy or not questioning infallibility, we're saying, what is God telling us in his inerrant and infallible board? And that's a fair question. Given what we know here and what scripture says about itself, they're fewest in number, and yet they're 2 million in number. Yeah. Well, what are we working with here? So what do you tend to land on when it comes to dealing with these numbers? How do you approach them? I, I don't know if I can embrace the 2 million number. But, but we're, we're tied because there's a reason why there's not another solution that's common out there. Well, real quick, everything provides difficult. Can you just touch on a few other solutions? I know one of them is saying this, these numbers are symbolic. They're, they're symbolic numbers. They're meant to communicate something else. And so you offer gematria, which is ascribing certain Meanings to each number and saying, Oh, look, this number corresponds to this, this number corresponds to that. That gets dangerous. Obviously. There's also another way of looking at it in terms of it's numerical, but it's also associated with astrology, not astronomy, not astrology. Yeah. Wrong one. Astronomy. I forget how that one works, but there's an, so the looking at numbers and saying they're not, they're not, They're not literal. They're symbolic. Right. And then another option is that they're hyperbole. They're meant to be hyperbolized. They're meant to signify something by their hyperbole to showcase God's faithfulness. That's another option. Of course, taking them literally a lot of scholars will do that. I think that's how the ESV study Bible lands. They say, we're just going to say, this is, this is it. Yep. Right. The LF that's another one. Yeah, yeah. The word thousand can also mean tribe or clan. And I think when we talked about this in Exodus, I referenced in your faith life study Bible, which if you have a faith life account is free for you. Faith life being the parent company of Logos. You can get that. You can get that. Download the app. It's really good. It's a great study Bible. I, I'm, it's one of my best resources and it's free and it gives me access to other resources. It leads me to other resources, which I also find valuable as well. Right. They've got an article and it's connected to this verse in numbers verse 46 in chapter one, which has that 603, 000 in it. It's the same article I referenced earlier in the book of Exodus written by Michael Heiser. He talks about some proposed solutions there. And one of them he mentions is that the word thousand in Hebrew LF can also mean tribe or clan. So rather than reading 603, 000 people, it's 603 tribes or clans. And I, that one's probably the one that's the most palatable for me because I feel like that one. still allows for a pretty safe and rigid literal reading of the text rather than saying, well, this is hyperbolic, or they were trying to demonstrate something dealing with the stars or anything else like that. I think that one still allows us to read the text and hold to a plain reading of the text, but just question, okay, does this mean clans or does this mean thousands? And so if it's clans, well, then you can deal with a number that's Less than two million people by quite a lot if it's thousand that's when we we get into trouble Yeah, man, that's it's and it's hard to wrap your mind around this because we're not ancient Israel The ancient Israelite mindset is not ours. We're looking at the text in 2025 after the scientific revolution the Industrial Revolution We have just we have so much more baggage that we bring to this and that means okay We have to we have to be careful Think the way that God spoke to them and try to the best we can to put ourselves into their sandals Which takes just so much effort. So I agree from my 2025 vantage point it seems like okay Maybe the best way is to look at Ella the word for the thousands and saying maybe God was trying to communicate something else Yeah, but but when you have numbers like this six hundred three thousand five fifty, it's it's hard to say. Okay. Well Maybe it's 603 families, 603 elephs tribes with 550 each. Is that, yeah, it's, it's complicated. There's no easy solution to this. It's messy. It's messy. And at the end of the day, it doesn't change anything. It doesn't change the point, right? It doesn't change point. Doesn't change anything doctrinally. This is not something going, aha, here's an error in the Bible. Throw your Bible away. It's totally not that at all, but there's one group that's exempted here, and that is the Levites and they're left out and we're going to find out that they're left out because they're going to have a unique role in a specific purpose. But before we get there, which is going to be tomorrow's episode in number chapter two, we get into the camping, how these these groups, how these families, how these tribes would camp around the tabernacle, what that was supposed to look like. And so this chapter details how they were to set that up, the order in which they were to break it down and set out again, they were to go out in a specific order. It's not whoever wanted to go first could go first. Judah was to be the leader. They were to be the first ones out of the camp and it references here, the standards or the banners under which each family was to gather. And so those standards or banners would have borne the family crest for each tribe. And so regardless of our true numbers, whatever they are, this was a large encampment. And so having these banners set up would have been super helpful for the average Joe Israelite to go, wait a minute, where, where's, where's Joseph? Where's Benjamin? Where's, where, where am I supposed to be? Right. Oh yeah. Over there. Okay. We're over there right now. And so there's an order here that God is prescribing for his people, even in how they set up their camp around the tabernacle. And it all concentrates around the tabernacle to, to what your point was. They're all organized around the tabernacle. Now let that set in upon you. God doesn't do anything. God doesn't do anything by mistake or accident. He's intending to communicate something even by the way that he arranges them. It's, I mean, I don't know how far you can go and saying, well, look, it's a crucifix. It's a cross of some sort. Is God alluding to the fact that someday there's going to be a Messiah that draws them all together? Maybe harder to say that for sure, but at the very least, he's saying central to their identity is the fact that God holds the worship of Yahweh is central to their existence and their, their standards. Their setup. All reinforces that. What a cool thought. So cool. And it is so applicable and relevant for us today. Totally. I mean, the temptation, especially in our area, I mean, let's be honest with ourselves is that, that we take our relationship with, with God, we take the church and we make it, we set it up as camping around our family. That the family's at the center and that that's what the most important thing in my kids activities and in Our plans and our desires. We're making baseball cards over these guys, right? Yeah Illustrated covers man people But it's so easy for us to to put the church on the outside as just something else that just Is meant to revolve around us just like we put our kids academics and athletics and everything else. And it's like, Oh yeah, I've got the church over here too. And that's not God's desire. Acts 2028, Christ died. He shed his blood for the church. He didn't shed his blood for our kids sports teams. He didn't shed his blood for our family vacations. He didn't shed his blood for the zip code that we live in. He shed his blood for the church and has called us to love the church as the bride of Christ. So yeah, I think there's something to, to for us to stand up and take note of in 21st century America about this and say, okay, maybe we should rethink that a little bit. Yeah. Brief suggestion here. I think it would be really good. I'm not a big decorative person, but I think it'd be really good if our house is all communicated. What is central to our family's existence now, wherever you live, whoever you are single married family with kids, without kids, you can still. Put signals and signs in your home, in your car, anywhere that you exist to say, my life's about this one thing. Make it about Christ. Make sure people know that. Yeah. Speaking of which, I say this on the podcast so that we get some accountability here. We need to get extravaganza signs for our yards. Oh yeah. We had those last year. We do. We got to get those ordered. It's Meghan Hatton. Pronto. We also need, I requested signs with your face on it that say you're invited. I haven't seen those. I don't know what happened to him. I thought you said we ordered a million. I told Kelly, make sure you don't, I mean, make sure you by no means order. Don't order any of these millions of these. I don't understand how the could have been any less clear than that. I don't understand either. So we, yeah. Yeah. So maybe next year. Okay. All right. Well, that's, that's the opening to the book of numbers. We got a lot in front of us still. We're going to hit tomorrow into some of the firstborn. We're going to talk about the redemption of the firstborn. We're going to talk about the Levites and how all that relates. And so this is a great book. Don't don't lose heart here because you're looking at a bunch of numbers. Know that this is such a good book for us. It pertains to so much of the history of Israel. So important for us. So keep, keep with us, keep reading. This is part of the story of God's people here, and there's a lot for us in it. And so let me pray. And then we'll be done with this episode. God, we pray for that mindset, that humility to come to the text not in judgment over it, thinking that it's, it's not entertaining us enough, or it's too confusing for us to gain anything from this, but to come to the text as living and active, which you tell us your word is to come to the text as something that's useful for training us for righteousness, that we might be equipped for every good work. As you tell us in your word, that it is, And so we want to have that, that mentality, that mindset. So give us the humility to sit under the tutelage of your word by the spirit as we come to it every single day. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Keep reading your Bibles and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the daily Bible podcast. Bye folks. 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 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.