Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. What's up? It's Tuesday. It's moving day. Oh yeah, that's right. It's moving day. It is moving day. Yeah. We are at the office bright and early to start packing the truck up and getting everything over. It's gonna take us. I don't know. A good three or four minutes to get to the new place at least. Yeah. And at least that long to load up our stuff. We don't have a lot. No. I got a lot of knickknacks though. I got lots of little things that are gonna, I don't wanna put in a box 'cause it doesn't make sense. We're just driving three minutes down the road. Yeah. So I think I'm just gonna tape it in my little cubby Oh. Cubicle thing or whatever you call that, that rolling thing on wheels of drawer. Yeah. It's made of I don't know, cardboard. Yeah. But it's great 'cause I can tape it and then we can just transport it. And then the little things that we don't pick up, I can just drive back and forth and do, I'm excited about it. Yeah, me too. Yeah, no, for sure. I it's new. It's, I get to rearrange my office with that. I get to arrange office multiple times. Rear no, you said it right. You get to arrange and rearrange to your heart's content. No, far more. You just said on Saturday when we were recording this, that I had left my office, my current office in its current configuration for longer than you thought I would. Yeah. And it actually, this is the one time it landed on something that is the less helpful for me. You don't like it, you're like this, you're like the Israelites. You're grumbling and complaining about my office. No, the circular table that you installed here, which it served its purpose. It's just, it's so small. I have zero. I so if I office is not that big. But when we were using your desk, I had a lot more space to work with. That's true and I miss that is all I'm saying. That was helpful. Okay, that's the one thing I miss is a lot of space. I love Texas 'cause there's a space of plenty, but there's places that you and I are our church space and different things like that. Our office space that are much more constricted. I'll be looking forward to the time when we have ample space, the one we have our own studio where we can record the podcast and where we have our own church gym. And when your office is as big as the gymnasium is at Founders, I might be a tad too small. Just set it in the corner of your desk in the corner. Empty. The rest. I'll just put in there. I put it right in the middle. I'll just sit it right in the middle with a couch right in front. Yeah, that'd be great. Anyways, if you wanna swing by either our new office or our old office today, you might find us out there. Yeah. Sweating a little bit and loading up some material. Come by in your gym shorts. There you go. Come ready to work. Ready to work? Yeah, that'd be great. We'll give you a piece of pizza or something. That'd be great. Hey numbers 21 and 22. Pastor Rod, I've got a question. Alright, numbers 33, 38. Numbers 33, 38. Numbers 33, 38. So I'll wait for you to get over there in your fancy new Bible. It's pretty, it is. Oh, we didn't talk about it. You know what, that was the episode. That, that got cut. That got cut. Was it? Yes, it was. Oh. So doesn't even know what you're talking about right now. Pastor Rod has a very nice new Bible. I do. Yeah. Okay. 33, what now? Numbers 33, 38. Can you read that for everybody? For us? And Aaron, the priest went up to Mount whore at the command of the Lord and died there in the 40th year after the people of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt on the first day of the fifth month. Okay. So we've got 40 years of wilderness wandering. Yep. And this is the 40th year after Israel has come out of the Promised Land or after Israel has come out of Egypt and Aaron's dying in the 40th year. So we've got a lot of the Torah left in front of us, but it seems like we've covered a lot of ground without realizing we've covered. As much ground as we have. Oh, yeah. The episodes move quickly, don't they? Yeah. Because we just read about Aaron's death prior to the, this occasion here, and we don't realize that man, 40 years has gone by since they left Egypt. I think one of our last time markers was they celebrated Passover in the second year after they had left Egypt. That's a great point. And now Aaron's dead and we're 40 years into this thing. Just a time marker there as it's a bridge between last episode and this episode as Aaron died in the last episode there. Yeah. We get so many. Small episodes and none of them are really favorable Yeah. For Israel, but perhaps it makes it a little more palatable when we realize it is over the course of 40 years. Yeah. Maybe God is just taking out the highlights reel, as it were. Or the low lights. Or the low lights. Yep. Yeah. Alright, so chapter 21 chapter 21 the Israelites Return to Horman, where they had been defeated after refusing to accept God's punishment. So you remember they said, nevermind, we're gonna go anyways. And God said, you better not. And then they did. And then they lost. Anyways, they're back there. But this time the Lord was. Was with his people, and they're gonna merge victorious because AAD is gonna come up against them. Now there's some question as to who AAD is, whether it's a geographic region or whatever it may be, because the nation itself was not there at this time. It had been destroyed and defeated long before this and wasn't gonna come back on the scene for a while. So this is probably a more of a geographic. Term to refer to this region than it is referring to as specific people here when we read about the King of iad maybe some of the wilderness Midianites or some other band or tribe of desert people there that were coming up against Israel. But the point is this time God is with his people and he saves them. But again, here comes another low light in verses four through nine. The people after this, they grumble again because that's what they're really good at doing. And they grumble. And again, they say, man, we want to go back to Egypt. Let's go back to Egypt. And so in response, God sends poisonous serpents and these poisonous snakes come into the camp and they begin to bite people and people are dying as they're bitten by these serpents. And they come to Moses repentant, at least apparently repentant here. And Moses intercedes with God. And then you get this bronze serpent that is lifted up on a stick and if the people will look at the stick, they'll be healed. Now Jesus takes this in John three 14 through 15 and associates that as a, an allusion to and a foreshadowing of the cross, that as Jesus was gonna be lifted up on the cross, it was like the serpent, so that if we would look to Jesus, we would be spared. We would be healed. From our greatest problem, which is not a serpent that's bitten us except for the serpent in the garden and the results of that being sin, right? Our sin needed to be dealt with and it was gonna be dealt with by Christ hanging on a tree, not by the serpent hanging on this stick. I. By the way that serpent is going to become a snare to the people of Israel in the future there. And I think that's worth us talking about just the idea of why don't we have more icons? Why don't we have more things that the church would've held onto from the time of the apostles or from the time of Jesus? And I know if you go into some Eastern Orthodox churches or Catholic churches, you're gonna find things like, you'll find a box, a shadow box on the wall, and it's gonna have a splinter and be like, this is part of the cross. Or part of Peter's cross or whatever. But the, I think the temp, the reason we don't have those things, and the reason, for example I, we don't have the arc or the covenant. The reason we don't have these things, I think is because God knows our heart in an act of great mercy. Totally. He prevented those things from being preserved. 'cause the bronze serpent's gonna be idolized by people. I'd understand that. I would have a, if I had, hypothetically speaking a piece of the cross. And I had reasonable confidence. This was the cross that Jesus died on. Yeah. And I see a little blood spot there. I could foresee my heart saying, man, I want to protect this. And there is a healthy reverence. But it probably could turn into worship without even becoming fully aware of it. Yeah. Yeah. Even you just go to, to, to Israel and you walk around Israel and you're like, wow, Jesus walked on these steps. Like you Oh yeah. Your heart is moved. Even just there, just thinking about that. Start worshiping the ground. Right, I get it. I don't think I would do that, but I get it. I get the draw, I get the inclination. We do stuff like that today. It doesn't have to be the cross. We have a lucky rabbit's foot, for instance. Yeah. People would carry that in their key ring back when I was a boy and I'd see that and it was ubiquitous. Yep. People would carry it. 'cause it was good luck. It was one of those weird, like really this thing is a, I never understood it as a child, but now that I'm older. I think we all have those things. Athletes, they have their lucky pair of socks or their routines that they do before they perform. Yeah. We all have these things and I think you're right. The danger is that our human heart is an idle factory, as John Calvin said, and our job then is not to allow those things to ens air us. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. Verses 10 through 20, there we get into some traveling and singing. They're wandering around, they're in the wilderness, and as they're wandering around, they're gonna come across the place where God provided water and they're gonna sing a song about it. Spring up. Oh, and they begin to sing and they commemorate this through song, which is a good reminder of the fact that we have good songs that commemorate God's faithfulness as well, and reasons to be, paying attention to those things and celebrating and remembering those through song as well. Song is important for us. They sang about everything. Yep. Yep. Verses 21 or chapter 21, verse 21, all the way through the end and into chapter 22, verse one. Just continued, four tastes of victory here. The Amorites initially refused passage for Israel. They're defeated by Israel. And then they write another song in verses 27 through 30 to. Remember that victory and then the King of Baan comes out to oppose Israel. But Yahweh tells Israel he's gonna give OG into their hand. And so he does. And Israel defeats and destroys the people of Baan and takes their land as well. So some of the foreshadowing of what's gonna happen when God's people enter the promised land and the conquest of the promised land, we see some of that during these latter years of the wilderness wanderings. Which again if this is 40 years in, I think this is part of God's sovereign plan to prepare his people for what they're about to have to do. Because they're an untested people prior to this they really had, they had lost to the Amalekites, but aside from that, they were not a battle hardened people in any way, shape, or form way. And so I think God is preparing his people to, to enter the promised land by introducing the conflicts like he is here Indeed. Chapter 22. Then we get to Baik and Baalam. This is an interesting chapter and there's some interesting things going on here. It basically records the initial events here of this situation, this relationship God, is gonna be at work here through this Pagan or foreign, this gentile named Baam BIK is this king who summons Baam. And it's interesting here because we've been talking about the numbers. Did you know Pastor Rod, why Bik was afraid of Israel? It says in the text there, because of their numbers. I did see that and how large they were. And perhaps that does give the cre credence to the 2 million number those large, 600,000, numbers that we've talked about, maybe that gives some credence there. Regardless, he's afraid of the people. And so he calls this guy Baam, who was a, an oracle. He was a prophet if you will and says, Hey, I want you to curse the na the people of Israel and. Balam initially says, no, I'm not gonna do that. I can't do that. And then God says, go and Balam goes to do this. And it says that God becomes angry with him. And then we get the whole situation with the angel of the Lord, probably praying Car of Christ and Blum's donkey and the talking donkey there. But pr, why? Why does God say go and then get angry when he goes? Most immediately in the text. If you look at verse 32, notice that the angel of the Lord says to him, why have you struck your donkey these three times? Behold, I have come out to oppose you because your way is perverse before me. So you have a hint in the immediate context that the reason that he's opposed and that God's angry with him is because his heart is wrong. His heart is wrong, and what you have is not only commentary here, thankfully we have some in the New Testament that also tells us that. Bam. Wanted gain. He wanted shameful gain. And so even though you can't see it in his heart, God knows the heart and therefore was able to call him out appropriately and say, you're going for the wrong reasons. I wanted to use you as my tool, but you're going there to get some money. And I wonder, I think he actually did end up with a pocket full of change at the end of it. Because even though he's not successful in initially to do what Balik wants, he does give. Baam does give Balu some good advice about how to ensnare Israel. Yes, I agree with that a hundred percent. What about, the donkey. The donkey talks to him. Does your donkey not talk to you, bro? And Bain talks back to the donkey. Is I just, it just reminds me, man, that the biblical world is vastly different than what we expect it to be. That things happen in weird ways. We're smarter than everybody else before us. Is what we feel uhhuh. And when we read stories like this, we start to say this clearly is legend and it's mythical. This is one of the reasons that atheists argue against Christians because they'll say something like, when have you ever seen any animal, let alone a donkey? I. Say anything more than, ah, one of those things. And a Christian, might get blushed in the face and say I, I don't know. Could God do it though? Yes, he could. We get angry and we'll bark back. But I think the world is more enchanted than we realize. And I don't know all of what that implies. I just know God is a mysterious God. We know so much about him because of his. Revealed these things in his word, but yeah, you and I playfully joke and argue about UFOs. UAPs, what are they? And I like, I'm okay saying, man there's stuff out there that I can't explain that God knows exactly what's happening. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what's happening. I just know that it's entirely feasible that he's doing something that he doesn't tell us about. A talking donkey doesn't concern me. In the biblical worldview, God is able to suspend the laws of nature because they're his laws to do what he pleases. I don't have no, no problem with that. This is not fantasy. This is not us thinking about, fairies and the fay and the forest. We're not talking about anything like that. We're just saying this makes perfect sense in a biblical worldview where God normally, not normally. Lemme try that again. Where God will suspend natural law to make a point. And that's what we have here. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you on that. And I think we see it even reflected in just some of the creative urges of some of the people that have written, some of the great works look at Lewis and the world of Nart that he created with the talking animals and the talking creatures. There, you get some of it in in some of the other the mystical fantasy creatures and things, Aslan as the Christ figure there. Yeah. So I think it's. Within the realm of possibility for us to just say, yeah, God's bigger. And also this is a very, this is not an American culture. This is not a left brain culture in which all of these events are unfolding. This is more of the spiritualized, even animistic at in some regards in the foreign pagan cults and things like that. There, there's, this makes sense in that culture a lot more readily than it would've made sense in our culture today. And I think that's some of what you were saying there as far as. Yeah, we're post-enlightenment. Yeah. We think only the things that we can think around are things that are real and true. In fact, Rene Decart, right? I think therefore I am ergo, what's the rest of the ergo Sume? Something like that. Yeah. Anyway, it's the idea that if we can't rationally understand something, then it certainly cannot. Be true. Yeah. For the Christian, we don't say think first and then everything else we say, what does God say? I know we get into a certain quandary here, it eventually becomes circular reasoning and that's the way highest authorities always work. There always has to be an appeal to that highest authority until you can't appeal any higher. At that point, it must become circular in its logic. Why do you believe this? Because this person says so well, why does that person say so Bec? Or why? Why is it? Why is it true? 'cause that person says so for the Christian, we have to, this is why studying the word of God, understanding it's so challenging and so difficult because we have to put all these pieces together that God has given us, and that's gonna leave us ultimately saying God's word is. True, but it doesn't mean check your brain out. Don't think he wants us to think, but he wants to say to us, ultimately, he's the defining authority of everything that we believe, everything that we think, say and do, he must be the one who's the ultimate reason for which we believe something. Yeah. Yeah. Kogi to or Koto, ergo sum. That was close. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And even the, didn't you study Latin? I did back in. It didn't do anything. It doesn't sound like you, you appreciate that though. It, you're mad about it. I'm not mad about it. It's just not a status symbol. Like we need to get over it. Let's build our bridges and get over the fact that my kid studies Latin. Look, I studied Latin too. Look. Okay. So great. Congratulations. Maybe they want their kids to plan a church. Maybe they do and I worked for Pastor pj, so I think I would've been fine without it. I just, I don't know. I just pulled out the cogito. I appreciate the, that's a good cheese, by the way. I think I probably mispronounced it too. You put that cogito on a good elte. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate the education I had. I just like. It's like we just, that's, yeah. Whatever. I'm gonna start making anti-vaxxers mad. All of a sudden. I need to stop. 'cause measles are on the rise too. Anyways something less controversial. Yeah, man, you were just talking about the highest conceivable authority that, that's part of one of the apologetic arguments for the existence of God too. It's called the ontological argument. If you can conceive of a, of the highest possible being, that is God. That, that, that being. Must exist. And if you can conceive of a, of being more powerful than that being then that becomes God. And it's until you get to the highest conceivable being which just the mind is such an untapped reservoir that we just limit so much. I, that's one of the things I'm looking forward to in eternity more more and more as the older I get, is just the unhindered ability to use our minds to the fullest extent. And, yeah, can't wait to get there. I think. I think we, I don't know. Is it wrong to say? I think we utilize a great deal of our mind power. It's just disordered. And so maybe it's not that we're not using the power, it's that because it's fallen and it still inclines towards sin, therefore it just gets to the wrong conclusions. Yeah. I would like a mind that functions perfectly. Yes, absolutely. But also functions. Perfect union with God's word and God's spirit. That's exciting to me. 'cause then the possibilities are endless. Yeah. Even just retention ability. I think of the movie A Beautiful Mind where they did the graphic where the guy's putting all the equations together in his mind. Yeah. And connecting all these different thoughts. Russell Crow, everything. And, yeah. Some people e even Louis Zuma is one of them. Dude, that guy retains sermons like nobody's business. He comes up to me and reminds me of sermons that I preached in the college ministry back in av that I totally didn't have any recognition. You weren't even there preaching, like mentally you were gone. You'd be like you preached this sermon, you said this and you said this. Ah, I, now that you say that, I remember that, but would never have pulled that outta my memory banks. So anyways, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. God, thanks for your word. We are grateful for it and grateful that you are so much bigger than we are. You would, life would be so boring if you fit into all of our preconceived understandings and expectations, but you are bigger than we are and you do things that we don't understand and we're grateful for that even as sometimes it's difficult for us. And so help us just to trust you in the face of that and to continually trust your word. Is the most clear and direct revelation we have of you, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep reading your Bibles. Tune it again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye 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.