Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hey, hey, hey, hey. We are back on a Friday. It is Friday. In fact, we get the keys to our brand new office today, so that's kind of exciting for us. At least. Don't know for everybody else, but it's a big day for us. Yeah, we're gonna give you a little tour. On the Instagrams and we get there. So just log on right now and start watching and wait until we wait for, yeah, wait for the video to drop. We're just gonna walk you through it. We're gonna walk you through the old one too, because we want you to have a, a sense of comparison, right. So we'll do both. That's the thing. Someone texted me recently and wants to know what our current office looks like 'cause we sold it a certain way and they wanna see it now. So we're gonna show it to them and then we're gonna show you the new one. And you'll see why we feel so excited about the upgrade. Yeah. We, is everybody gonna be here tomorrow as far as our, our staff? 'cause that helps you feel the weightiness of, of what we are currently in. That's true. I, I don't know. That's true. We, they won't, they won't be able to see when everyone's here. When everyone's here. It's very, very tight. We have six full grown adults. In a very tight space. Well, yeah, five in Louis. I, I had the same thought. I just didn't know if I was gonna put 'em on blast on the podcast, but hey, I guess Go for it. No, we're looking forward to that. It should be a good time. Man, the weather has been incredible recently, which has been awesome. But it's that weird time where Texas, the, the businesses switch over to air conditioning and they do so a little bit too soon. Because it's, it's warm outside, but it's not quite warm enough to go inside and feel like you wanna be chilled and in air conditioning yet. So we're, we're in that like, bring your winter coat with you inside when it's 75 degrees outside. I prefer that. I'd prefer that. I'd rather be able to put on a coat and feel comfy that way than feel like I'm stuffy. Yeah, I, yeah, I guess, I guess, although, yeah, we were just at Starbucks yesterday for our meeting and you're like, it's nice and warm in here. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, yeah, I guess I, I, that's true. Hypocrite. I guess it depends on my mood. I'm trying to think back to why I said that. What, what happened, what were we doing there? We, we had our meeting there and you sat down our, our shepherding meeting, our, you and I, our pastors meeting that we have every week. Yesterday, yeah. Yesterday as people are listening to this today. It was today. Did I say that today? But it was, yes, you did. I, I didn't say warm. This is great content. No, you did, you said it's warm. You said it feels good in here. It's warm. I like that. And then, then you sat down right by the window. Yeah, it's true. I don't think I said that a hundred percent. I do not think I said that. I don't know if, because I, I remember looking around and acknowledging the area, and I think I, I was noticing how packed it was. Maybe you misheard me. No. Said, because we were talking and walking. I don't know if I said that. No. 'cause we, we, no, we said warm. I doesn't, that doesn't sound like me. All right. Well, whatever. Anyways, this is how we tackle every problem. If there's ever a disagreement. That's exactly what it sounds like. The end of it is always, well, whatever, whatever. And then we move on. Hey we have, speaking of a problem not a problem, but a question, and it's a thoughtful question and it was written in by somebody who listens to us on the regular here. And so he wrote in to ask about our Old Testament reading, specifically in this portion of of our Old Testament reading. It, it seems like there's a, a key component missing when we think about the rest of Revelation. So you think about the New Testament and even parts of the Old Testament, the latter parts of the Old Testament, where you begin to get into this understanding of life after death. And this, this person who, who listens Tim, he, he wrote in to say this. He said, Hey, there's a, there seems to be a gap where in the first. Portion of, of scripture here. There's, there's really not much written about eternity. He says The concept of eternity is crucial to our New Testament understanding of God's judgment, of sin, his love, his grace towards us, and the promises of God through Jesus Christ. True. Absolutely. And he said, since God is unchanging, what do we do with the lack of revelation regarding eternity to Israel, the patriarchs, and even early humanity. And there's, there's more to the question, but, but that's the gist of it there. And, and it's a great question and he and I have kicked around some, some conversations on this clearly not to the point of, of satisfaction because it's, it's a, it's a difficult one. Pastor Rod, I'd love to get your thoughts on that and then I can shed some light on, on some of the things that I've mentioned. Yeah. So I guess part of my question for. For Tim or anyone who's struggling with this. 'cause there's a lot of things that we read that are just not easy. But I would wonder, okay, what's, what's the, what's the pain point? There's a lot of reasons you could say that There's pain when you think about the lack of conversation about eternity, and I suppose part of it would be maybe someone doesn't know that what happens after death is a permanent fixture that you can't transcend it. Maybe that's what's happening. There's, there's lots of ways to approach this, and I think part of this is that maybe we're bringing something to the conversation that. That ancient near Eastern mindsets wouldn't have struggled with May. Maybe they didn't have to be told that there was an eternity because they already assumed it. Israel is not the only religious people. Of course they're the only true religious people. They're the only ones who know Yahweh. But to to have this mindset that there's an afterlife and that that afterlife is a long time, perhaps even. Per permanent and infinite. I, I don't know if that's unique or novel to Israel, so maybe God didn't have to specify it in the way that we need it today. And in particular, the New Testament, which is what he brings up, the New Testament. There's a lot more inks spilled on that. A lot more clarification. And we've talked about progressive revelation before and that God doesn't tell us everything. On the front end, but he tells us what we need to know. He tells us what he thinks is prudent and wise to give us, and that's a big part of this conversation for me. What God tells us, he tells us at the right time and in the right way. He doesn't over overspeak. Neither does he unders speak, but he doesn't say more than what he needs. He chooses in his infinite wisdom. What makes the most sense to tell somebody at any given. Space time and space in human history. So I'm gonna rely on the fact that God decided as a father looking at his son Israel and saying, what do, what do they need to know and saying, I'm, I'm gonna tell them this much and not that much. And I wonder, I suspect that in the, in the ancient mindset, this, this wasn't a, an earth shattering thing. In fact, they, they talked about it as shol the grave. They never gave an indication that they thought someone could transcend it or that they could come back from it, which is why it was so unique and so novel when, when people started talking about resurrection. On top of that you don't get the mindset that justice and God's wrath being poured out was in some way mitigated in the afterlife. Now, now granted it did develop, but I think you see so many hints, if not pretty clear articulations of what the afterlife is, although it's more in the New Testament grant that Yeah, and, and I would agree. I think his pain point specifically, he says, he says, I really struggle with this. When I think about the human implications of it, by the time we get some clear revelation about eternity later, in the Old Testament, roughly half of human history has already occurred. Real people with souls minds, families, responsibilities, and dreams have been living and dying in a world that has eternal consequences, yet with very little true knowledge about it. So I, I think that pain point is, is the, the souls, maybe it's this idea then that like, oh, so it's the aborigines, you know, the, the guy in the middle of. Australia, who will probably never hear the gospel, never have an opportunity to respond to Yahweh. But we're gonna get to an interesting character later on whose name is Baam. Yeah. You have Bala and Balu. And this is interesting because he shows up outta nowhere. Yeah. And we don't know. He knows, or at least knows about Yahweh though, which tells me that I wonder, and this is, this is me speculating, I'll just be honest about that. I wonder if there's a, a way that God communicated with people. That didn't always include Israel and Moses and the Pentateuch. And not to say that I think God operates in different religions. I'm not saying that I think he only reveals himself as Himself in the same way, through the same God, Yahweh through Christ. But that it wasn't just Israel that knew about him. Yeah, I don't, I can't explain that. I can't explain Melek. I can't explain Balam and Bak. I, there's a lot of things I can't explain, but they're there, which tells me that God wasn't just working through Israel. They were his primary instrument, but not his only one, which is interesting all by itself. Right, and, and that was even his intention was Israel would be a light for the nations. He wanted Israel to be a missional people. And I'm not saying that's how Baam and or Bailiff found out about this, but it, that was God's desire. I think the, the pain point here is yes, but God, it wasn't the Aborigines because God's not necessarily speaking to the Aborigines. God is speaking to Israel. And yet not speaking about this to Israel. And so it's the question of, okay, why would he go through the leaps and bounds that he goes through to speak to them, to enter into these covenant relationships with them? So my take was this, similar to what you said, I think eternity was a, a prevalent concept at the time. Even look at at Egypt, from which. From once they came, they, they were building pyramids there for what purpose? To be the tombs of the, the, the Egyptian kings. The Pharaohs. And what would Egypt do with their pharaohs? They would pack in there all of their possessions, and they would pack in their food and they would pack into their other things for their life after death. There was a concept of, of life that would transcend the grave. And I think that that was true not only for Egypt, but you saw it in other ancient near Eastern religions as well. And so Israel would've. As, as a part of that, I mean, their roots. Remember Abraham was called out of a pagan religion when, when God summoned him that their roots were in the, that pagan realm. And so there was a concept even there. And, and where did that come from? That's an interesting question, right? Because eventually all, ultimately all of these pagan groups and religions came from the descendants of, well, Noah, after the flood, but. Prior to the flood, Adam and Eve. And, and so at some point in time there was something that God c communicated to the earliest people about life after death that seems to have, have transcended over time. The, the hard thing for us and the, the thing that is, is uncomfortable here in, in, and granted in, in Tim's questions here is, is that it's, it's white space. You know, one of the other things he and I were talking about this this week, you know, Moses heard a lot from God that we don't have written down. And we have the things written down that God wanted written down and preserved. But if Moses was regularly going in before the the Lord and speaking to him as a man, speaks with a friend face to face, there was a lot that God told Moses in those interactions, in those meetings that maybe that had something to do with eternity and life after death and things like that, that we don't have written down in the word of God. But that. Perhaps Moses was communicating to the people there. So we're gonna read about Cora's Rebellion in the not too distant future. Did did Cora know that there were gonna be eternal consequences for his sin? It's, it's possible. I, I don't know. Did Nate Abba, who know that there were consequences for breaking God's law they knew that there were consequences? Did they know that there was eternal ramifications at stake? That's where the, the pain point does exist, and, and there is no. Nice, neat. Tie a bow on this question. It, it's a tough one, but I think we need to remember that because God is immutable, he is unchanging, he's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow that we can trust that he, he was communicating what, to your point the people needed to know and understand at that time. And I think that's, that's significant for us to, to trust in when our own human logic and, and reason maybe bumps into that glass ceiling, so to speak, of thinking, man, I, I feel like I should know more than I do, but I don't. Fully understand what's going on. Good question though, Tim. I, I appreciate it. I appreciate you wrestling with the text and, and with the, the passages here. I think this is a question maybe we have or maybe we haven't had I, I don't know. Maybe you've thought about it. You haven't thought about it. But it's, it's good for us to wrestle with, with some of the hard things and not just to write 'em off and shrug 'em off, but hopefully that's not what you're hearing from us as, as we answer this question. Well, let's jump into our. Reading for the day, which is numbers 11, 12, and 13. Numbers 11. Here we have Israel doing what Israel does well, and that is grumbling. They're, they're complaining. They're, they're grumbling this time because they want meat. They're sick of the manna. So you remember, they were hungry. God said, here's manna, and they were thankful for that for a little while, but now they're done with that. They're, they're wanting some substance. They're wanting protein. And so they're grumbling, they're complaining, they're, they're arguing. And and, and at the same time as all of this is happening Moses is realizing the limits of his ability to spiritually govern and lead all of the people. And so God initially agrees to give the people what they want, but I. Warns them as a, as a good parent would do, Hey, you're gonna have this and you're gonna have so much of it, you're gonna hate it eventually, this is gonna turn into something that you hate. 'cause I'm gonna give you what you're craving, but show you that, that you're, you're craving your lust, your desires are, are really not good in the first place. So that meat is gonna end up being something that, that they're gonna end up detesting. But at the same time, then he uses these circumstances to. Cos Moses to, to select, or, or the Lord provides rather 70 men from among the elders of Israel to share the spiritual leadership of the people with him. And so that happens the meat does show up here, and God also at the same time decides to punish the people by sending a plague to, to punish them for their guilt and grumbling against him. So we get an interesting juxtaposition in this chapter of God's mercy and his judge judgment, his justice at the same time as it plays out in the bestowal of the, the meat with the people. Yeah. I think it's important that we notice that God really hates our grumbling. Yes. And it's hard to understate that God is really displeased when we. Showcase his defiant and belligerent attitude for the good things that he gives us. And in fact, Israel had no reason to complain. And you could say something as, as much the same for Christians and more so to say, we have no reason to complain. Everything that we have that is good is a gift, and we should never find ourselves complaining. And I, man, I, I feel the pain of that as I say it because I. Complain quite a bit. I often have to edit myself and call it out. Like, okay, I'm just complaining. I need to stop. 'cause God hates it. He, he despises it. Their profound lack of gratitude. You read it and you're appalled by that, and rightly you should be, but you should really be appalled when you complain against God. You should feel the same kind of righteous indignation against your own complaining as you do for Israel. And if you're like me, you read this and say, man, how could you do that? What's wrong with you guys? If our lives are written on pages for people to read, they'd say the same thing about us. So before you point fingers at them, notice that you got a couple pointing back at you. And be sure to check your own heart. Make sure that you're not grumbling against the Lord. Clearly. He does not like it. Yeah. Moses' humility, I think is also something commendable in this chapter. On the flip side, that which is, is not commendable. The grumbling, I think what is commendable is his humility. Look at verse 29. Joshua, the son of done, the assistant Moses. Comes up when some others are prophesying and he says to Moses, Hey Lord Moses, my Lord, stop them. Stop them from doing this. But Moses said to him, are you jealous? For my sake, would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put his spirit on them? And so this is part of, as, as Moses is sharing the spiritual oversight and spiritual lead with people in the camp. Joshua is jealous for his, his his ra rabbi, his teacher, if you will, his his discipler. And he says. Moses, do something. Stop them. You're the leader. And Moses has the humility to say, no, no, no. God can use who he will in this and don't be jealous on my sick. I wish that everybody would have such spiritual insight and and abilities there. I. Well, chapter 12, then we get more grumbling in complaining, and unfortunately this time it's gonna come from two of the people closest to Moses, at least Familially, and that is Miriam and Aaron. So his siblings grumble against him and complain because of, it says in the text, because of the Cushite woman whom he had married for, he had married a Cushite woman. So they. Look at that as a flaw in Moses and they say, Moses, you did wrong in this. Has the Lord only spoken through you? W why not us? Why can't we be the, the spokespeople here? And God responds by calling them on account on that and basically saying he's gonna, he's gonna deal justice in the severe sense and, and Moses intercedes. And intervenes. And, and, and yet it's important here to note that God is affirming Moses' leadership with the people. He says in verse six, if there's a prophet among you, I the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision. I speak with him in a dream, not so with Moses. He's faithful in all my house. The writer of Hebrews is gonna pick up on that and say, Moses was faithful in the house. Jesus is faithful over the house. Verse eight, with him, Moses, I speak mouth to mouth clearly. We were just talking about that just a minute ago. That, that this intimacy between God and Moses, but. Aaron and, and Miriam, they're gonna be spared, and yet they're gonna be punished. Miriam is gonna be made lepers and she's gonna have to be outside the camp for seven days. And and that's gonna be her punishment for challenging Moses's leadership here. Yeah. I wonder if the call out about his wife is, is likely a pretense. They're finding a reason to accuse him, and this is the best that she could come up with, and it seems like she's the one who leads the charge because even though both Miriam and Erin are mentioned, she's the one who gets. The plague. She has the lepers disease where she's punished for this. But I, I think it seems like, yeah, whether his wife was Ethiopian or something else, a cushite it seems like it's just a smokescreen. What's interesting to me is that God says something that stood out to me and it, and it struck me like lightning. 'cause I thought, oh man, there's things in here that I have not seen before. You just quoted it here in verse six. If there's a prophet among you, I the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision. I speak with him in a dream. Who is he talking about? Who is the Lord referring to? There are prophets among Israelites that have no record in the account, to my knowledge. I mean, you have Miriam, she's mentioned, maybe he's talking about her, but he's saying. There are prophets among you, and this is how I interact with them. And it seems like he's talking to them about like, this is, don't you know this? This is the way things are. And so he's revealing to them or reminding them of how he's operated with the, the prophets. And he says, but I'm different with Moses, which I find fascinating. Again, as we think about the future and how God governs Israel and how he's interacting with them, there's so much in here that you take for granted. And so much that we just kind of gloss over. And I think that's pretty important. That's an important phrase there. 'cause that tells me there's other prophets. Yeah. There's other people in the camp that have a connection with God. They're not like Moses, but they have a prophetic connection with him. Well, and and that goes back to chapter 11, which is what Joshua was concerned, was verse 25. The Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the 70 elders. And as soon as the spirit rested on them, they prophesied. And then verse 26, 2 men remained in the camp, one named Elda and the other named me dad. And the spirit rested on them and they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent and they prophesied in the camp. And that's what causes Joshua to go up and be like, Hey. Yeah. And I wondered, so I, I, I remembered that connection. We just read it and I was thinking, okay, is, is, is that it, is that all he has in mind? I, I don't know. And that's a possibility. It's the most, it's the closest thing in the text that gives us that, the same word. So maybe that's exactly as you're referring to, but, but maybe not. Right. I wonder if there's a context or a pretext a context would be a better word. I wonder if there's a context where this had been taking place in some small measure. Yeah. Yeah. It is a good thought. Yeah, j just the, the uniqueness of, of reading through it, time and time again, different things are gonna jump out to us. Yeah. In fact, I, I can't remember off the top of my head. I, I don't think this, well, and we know it's not because he married Zipporah back in, in Midian, so this seems to be another wife. I don't think either that or, or, or not, or there's a, I, so I read about this. I, I think Wenham talks about this, not Paul Gordon. Not Paul, but Gordon. Yes. Maybe his son is named Paul. Yeah, I, I think he talks about this and suggests that maybe the. The graphical, the geographical, geographical designation is somehow synonymous, you know, same word, different, you know? Yeah. Same place, different wording. Maybe that's it. Either that or it's a second wife, which would be interesting as well. Yeah. Well, the Midianites were laundering people. They were nomadic. Mm-hmm. So she could have been called a midianite as a general category. Right. More specifically Cushite Kush. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting fascinating things to to work through chapter 13. Then we get the spies. The spies are gonna be sent into Canaan and if you have read through the Bible before, you know how this is gonna work out. But the SP's initial goal, their, their initial job, one man from each of the 12 tribes, they're gonna be sent into spy out the Promised Land. I. And all, but Joshua and Caleb are gonna come back with a report that is slanted one way, and Joshua and Caleb are gonna come back with a, a, a different kind of a report. And that that report is found in the second portion of chapter 13 here. And the, the, the 10 are, are gonna come back and say, we can't do this. There's no way those, there's inhabitants of the promised land. They're way too big. We can't tackle them. We can't overcome them, and yet Caleb is gonna be the one who is gonna be the mouthpiece between him and Joshua, and, and he's gonna stand up and say, no, let's do it. We're able to do this because the Lord is on our side. So. This is gonna set up something that's gonna happen in tomorrow's reading with regard to to the, the consequences of this bad report. But God wants them to go spy it out to be able to say, Hey here's the promise land. Let's go do this. And instead they come back and the majority of them say, we can't do this, and yet Caleb and Joshua say, no, we, we can do it. We can make it happen. So people wanna know where the Nephilim come from. Genesis chapter six, verse four. That's where we're initially introduced to them. They're wiped out with the flood. Genesis chapter nine, and yet here we see them again in numbers 13. Do you have any thoughts about that or, or how we should understand this designation about the Nephilim? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of possibilities that exist. It, it could be that the term had taken on a generic. Meaning for those that are enormous, those are large people. That are large people. Yeah. You know, we, we joke about without being negative, right. It doesn't mean that someone's demonic Right. Or anything like that. We're not talking down about people. Right. It could have been just like, man, they're the nephilim, they're huge. Right? Yeah. And, and it doesn't mean that they're the same as those in Genesis six four. It also could have been that this happened multiple times. That, that there were, there was another instance wherein you had, again, the same situation taking place. We don't have that recorded. I don't know that I'm as. Much in in favor of that as, as much as this being a general term, but it's, it's possible that it could have happened again. And that's what we're reading about here. I, I read a, a, a way to approach this that I like the most. And just because I like it doesn't mean it's true, but I think it, it tracks. I, I, I'm, I. I read, and this makes sense that the characters who are talking about these guys are likely using that term as a, as a way to exaggerate the people that they saw. Yeah. They're afraid. They don't want people to go there, and so they're pulling out all the stops, as it were to say, look, don't go. The nevol are there, and it's just these, these guys are giants. You know, one of those kinds of things that people say when they're trying to discourage others from doing something. I think that that carries some water because the characters are the ones who are saying it. The Bible's not saying that they're right. They're communicating what they saw. And they're communicating it from fear, which tells me, I wonder if they even saw the Nephilim in the first place, or if they even saw, you know, something akin to them. They're just saying, these guys are huge. Don't go, you're gonna get eaten, swallowed up alive, that kind of thing. I think that one makes sense to me. Yeah, they, they're qualified here in the text. Now this is part of the original text, so this is not a parenthetical statement on the E ESV PO point, but there's a parenthetical statement there. That was part of the, the original, the Sons of Anac who come from the Nephilim. So that, that's, that's a little bit more difficult because. Yeah, because it, it's, it's telling us who they're referring to. Right. But I still, I still think that the characters who are saying that, I mean, yeah. I guess Moses could be, could be adding his editorial remarks about this. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's true. That's a fair point. Yeah. All that to say, this is another one of those mysteries as we read the text, but does it change the, the general tenor of what we're reading or, or the point of it. No. No, not at all. Yeah. Let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. God, we thank you for your word and and, and we admit our limits in understanding and we trust that there will be a day when we are with you in eternity where we will be able to ask our questions and get them answered because you are a God of, of of, of. Truthfulness and, and you are a God who is immutable the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. So God, we wanna be wise students, even as we talked about last Sunday, we wanna be perpetual learners and we wanna ask the hard questions and dig deep and not be afraid to ask questions. But God, we, we know that there's gonna be some things that we won't know until we are in your presence and are able to ask and understand with minds that aren't broken and fallen and, and corrupted by the fall. So God give us the patience and in the meantime, the faith to continue to, to move forward as, as followers of of you even as we at times encounter the darkness of our, our own limits and our own understanding. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Keep bring your Bibles tuning again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye bye.

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