Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello, y'all. Hey PR, I've got a question for you. No, it's burning on people's minds. Okay. It's not quite the burning of the bosom, but it is it is on people's minds I'm sure, because it's in the headlines and I think it would be helpful for us to address. I don't think we've talked about it recently, but over in the measles have entered North Texas. Close. Close. It is health related. I want to talk about the Pope, so. Over in the Vatican or in Rome right now, the Pope has been admitted to the hospital and is battling pneumonia, and people are saying, man, the Pope is gonna kick the bucket soon. That's probably not what they're saying. They're saying things like that. Yeah. That, that he could die. Meaning they, they probably are not using the, the euphemism of, of kicking the bucket but they're saying he could die. Help maybe some of our people who tune in and listen to this do, should we as Christians. What, what? What's our response to this? Should we react to this? Should we care about this? Is this something that has any bearing on us whatsoever? How do we process when a lot of people are saying Catholicism, Christianity, and, and now you've got the Pope and the Pope is dying. I. It's on the, the headlines. We've probably got coworkers talking about this at work, maybe, or we've got Catholic friends, Catholic family. How should we as Christians navigate the the Pope's health crisis? I'm gonna partially punt and say you should listen to people like Dr. Moler in the briefing on the regular basis, because he talks about stuff like this and he often has a helpful framing of the subject matter and how to think about it, what it means for us as Protestants. And that would be my first point of encouragement. Please listen to Dr. Mueller's briefing. It's usually really insightful. Secondly, I would say that we're not Catholic. We don't submit to the Pope. We don't receive funds from the Vatican. We don't believe in Catholic theology. And so for us, it's just like any other religious leader. In some ways, we're gonna say, well, that's interesting. I'm gonna pray about that perhaps, and, and hope that God uses that for the glory of his name and the good of his kingdom. But he doesn't have a, any massive ramification for us. But it does have a ramification for our Catholic friends. It has ramifications for people that used to be Catholic. I suppose they're thinking about this and wondering what it, what it has. What meaning it has for the rest of the church. And the answer is really not a lot. It let's not, let's not be crazy here. The Catholic Church is powerful for sure. They have tons of money, tons of real estate. And Pope Frankie has been kind of a, a bad thing for us. Yep. He's offered so many different hot takes that were just not good. He has endured same sex, same sex marriage. He has encouraged the further left trajectory of the Catholic church as a whole. That is the Roman Catholic Church. I'm not a fan. I'm just gonna tell you. And the the hubbub. The scuttlebutt is that he's already got his successor in mind, in place to take the helm. Should he expire. Now, if that's the case, if he, if it's a hand selected Pope, Frankie choice, then we shouldn't expect the Catholic church to go to the right. We're gonna expect further left, which is what we expect going forward. Is that, is that, I thought they had to do the, the con Yeah. And the smoke, the, the cardinal. Yeah. Hey man, they, they, they play politics in, in a different way. Interesting. But it is, I mean, that's on the, that's on the horizon. And if that is the case, as people are speculating that it is, well then we shouldn't expect much of a change. But I guess this is the point I. And I'll in here, we, we should pray any movement like this is, it's a big deal. You know, new president, new Pope Pope's a bit different because he usually does more than four years, but these are powerful figures among the most powerful in world history. And therefore, we should care about it. We should pray about it, but I wouldn't be too concerned about it affecting your backyard. Yeah. And, and this is obviously the undercurrent. The, the, the question underneath this, which is not our, our subject matter for today, is the relationship between Catholicism in general and Christianity. And maybe at some point in our DBR this year, it would be good for us to, to address that. And I think it's, I important for us to be discerning on that. There's some good resources out there. I, I would echo your encouragement to listen to Moler. I think Dr. Moler does a great job. On on laying out a lot of these issues. And it does come up quite often because he, he does tackle the headlines. He does. And so often things like this find themselves in the headlines. And certainly if Pope Francis dies, then you are gonna find Mueller addressing that. So if you, you, if that happens in the next couple weeks, couple days tune into the briefing, especially the, the day or two after that, because I, I guarantee you, Dr. Mueller will be addressing what's gonna happen in the, the fallout from that. Indeed. Well, let's jump into numbers 18, 19, and 20. Numbers 18. Here are instructions for the Levites as to how to receive the various offerings and what they were allowed to eat and who was allowed to eat it. And also in this chapter, the, the Lord makes clear what that they were to receive no inheritance in the Promised land because God himself was gonna be their inheritance. Instead, they would be supported by and provided by or for, by the, the tithes of the people. The, the people would bring their tithes and offerings and the, the Levites would receive those and be supported by that. So kind of laying out the, the boundaries of the Levis here and talking about again, what they can and what they can't eat, and how they're to be supported and what to expect when they get to the promised land. Numbers 19, we get the red heifer, which I don't, have you ever seen a red heifer passed around? Can't say that. I have, I I did consider Googling it when I came across it this time. It's gotta be like a, just a, a very auburn colored heifer. I, I imagine it's not, yeah, that's right. I mean, I guess in my mind I can visualize one more brownish maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Auburn a good color, like Aaron's gout, like Kool-Aid. He's like, oh yeah. And he's dying. The heifer over in the, the corner, only like. I don't know. Only a part of our audience knows that Yeah. That reference. Exactly. Well, the rest of 'em are like, what in the world? Yeah. That's a drop. You can edit that. Yeah. Anyways, the Red Heifer the, the red Heifer was to be selected and killed and burned completely. So this is unique note that they're burning this thing pretty much completely. And it's ashes. Were gonna be taken outside the camp to a. Clean place. And that's another distinction here, that the other times we see references to something being taken outside the camp. It's gonna be taken outside the camp because it's defiling otherwise, and they don't wanna defile the camp. Well, these ashes are gonna be kept outside the camp in a clean place, and these ashes are going to be combined with water, which would then be sprinkled on anyone who had become ceremonially defiled. So the heifer was sacrificed, was burned completely, and then the, the ashes were used in combination with water as a part of the ceremonially ceremonial cleansing ritual. And if that person was not sprinkled with that water, they were not cleaned. And in fact, if they refused it. Altogether they were gonna be cut off from their people again. So the Red Heifer, again, part of God's laws and rules and regulations as far as how the people were to be cleansed from their, their ceremonial defilement chapter nineteen's important too, because you have to remember that at this time in their history, they're preparing to wander the desert For 40 years, there's going to be a lot of death. This whole generation has to die out. Now remember, there are about 2 million strong. If we're trusting the numbers as what they are and we're just taking them at face value, we're looking at about 2 million people here, maybe two and a half. Yep. That means. Several mil, several millions, several Lots of people are dying all the time. Yeah. So chapter 19 is an expedient way of dealing with death for those who are defiled by some kind of death. If someone dies in the tent or someone dies here, you come in contact with the dead body. This is a way to expediently purify somebody without going through the same rigmarole that would be required under normal circumstances. So I think this is a mercy of God to say, here's a more efficient way to deal with this, and you're gonna deal with it a lot. There's gonna be a lot of death, and we're gonna read about that. Speaking of in chapter 20. Yeah, yeah. Chapter 20 is a, a tragic chapter, another tragic chapter. It seems like we're compounding these things in the book of numbers. And here you've got the, the initial tragedy in verse one of the death of Miriam. And it's, it's noted, but it's, it's not, there's not a lot of, of inks filled on it. She dies and, and then they kind of move on, and, and that's common. It's, it's almost. It's almost stands out as, as a flashing sign, how little people talk about death in the grieving process. For the most part, in some of the key figures in the, the Torah. They die and then they move on and, and it's like, okay, next up, let's keep going with the, the account here. Well, Miriam Moses' sister she dies and she's buried. They're in the wilderness in, in in Kadesh. From here verses two through nine, the, the people find themselves thirsty and so they are grumbling and they're complaining again, just like they always do, and they're lamenting. Saying again, here again, Egypt was better would that we were back in Egypt, would that we were back in, in our enslavement. And so God. Calls Moses and tells Moses and gives him specific instructions to do something different than he had done previously. Previously, when God wanted to provide water for the people, he said to Moses, you should strike the rock here. He tells Moses, and this is super important. Speak to the rock, tell the rock to pour forth water and the rock will pour forth water one verses 10 through 13. Moses does not heed the Lord's instructions, but in fact, disobeys the Lord. And strikes the rock instead of speaking to it. And as a result, because of this because as, as the text says, Moses did not believe and did not uphold the Lord as holy in the eyes of the people, he was not gonna be allowed to enter the promised land. So the, the, the, the pri the wilderness generation, they've already forfeited their rights 20 and up. But Moses was still in the running to enter the promised land. Even though he was in that 20 and up category, he was still exempted. He was still gonna be in the promised land until this, at this point. And notice the reason being because he, it's, it's the con, it doesn't say this in the text, but the concept is, is blasphemy. He did not uphold, he did not hold as. High and holy and exalted Yahweh, the Lord in the eyes of the people. His disobedience of the Lord was to blaspheme the word blaspheme means literally to take that which is exalted and make it common to bring it low, and that's what Moses did with God because he did not obey him word for word. Everywhere else that you look in the, the, the wilderness wandering. So far it's been as the Lord commanded Moses, as the Lord commanded Moses as the Lord commanded Moses. This jumps off the pages Moses' disobedience. And it's gonna cost him terribly. Verses 14 through 21. Then the people continue the, the journey and they come to the Edomites. And so when you see the Edomites here, you should think about Esau. And so Esau, this is why it talks about the, that Israel and talks about Israel as, as the brother, their brothers, because they. Had descended from Jacob, Jacob and Esau. They were brothers together. Here's the Edomites. And they asked them, Hey, can we get some safe passage through your land here? And instead of providing that safe passage, perhaps still smarting a little bit from forfeiting the, the birthright and the blessing. They refuse to allow the Israelites to, to pass through, not just once, but twice here. And so the Israelites are gonna be forced to go out and around and, and bypass the the Edomites there. And then verses 22 through 29 you've got more death. And this time it's, it's not Miriam, but it's Aaron and there's more here because of the role of Aaron. And so Aaron dies and he has to give his, his position, so to speak. Or Moses does his position, his role as high priest to the next one in line. And so that is gonna be what, what's gonna happen there in verse 28. We find out that that's gonna be eliazar. So Eliazar takes the high priestly garments and dawns them as his father. Dies and is buried there in the, the wilderness. They do mourn for this one for 30 days. This is unique and this is interesting. I don't understand why we mourn for so few days and I guess even for our president, you get one day. It's a national occasion, but interesting nonetheless, that it's 30 days. I'm surprised by that. We don't do that. We don't. Although, yeah. Yeah. I, I don't know why I, the immediate family I would say was probably like, yeah, we've got 30 days plus, right? Yeah. But I. Yeah. By extension, you know, those outside the family certainly don't you get into Jesus Day. There's professional mourners at that point. Yeah. I mean, come on, you're paying actors to come and mourn for your family. Right. That's a, that's interesting. Yeah, and so, so foreign to our culture. I mean, we don't treat death. Half the way they did, and they were far more used to it than we are. We're so anesthetized from it because we don't see it. We try to isolate it, keep it in only in a certain place. And man, I think it's helpful. In fact, I was driving by a church not too long ago and they had, they had tombstones or gravestones in, in front of their church or the side of their church at least. And I thought, man, that is a, a bit eerie, but I could get behind that. Yep. I would love to have you buried in front. Maybe at the front door whenever the time comes, whoever goes first, we should be somewhere near the front. Maybe the, the headstone is actually cut out to the shape of your head. That would be really cool. We need a facility to be able to do that. Oh, we're working on it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you challenged me to preach a sermon recently with my epitaph, my, my headstone up on the stage with me. I mean, I thought it was a good, it's a great idea. It is a great idea. I'm just gonna stand by that. Fair enough. Fair enough. Alright, Hey, let's pray and then we'll be done with this this episode. God, we thank you so much for Word. And we want to be careful not to blaspheme, not to bring you down, not to treat you as common when you are exalted. And we can do that by failing to maintain a high view of you. That's one of our distinctives. And so help us, Lord, to be a church that does that well, that holds you high, that exalts you and does not compromise on that. And so we ask that you would help us towards that End of Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Keep reading Bibles and tune it again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you 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 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.