Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. What's up folks? It's Sunday, so hopefully you are planning to be at church or you've been to church already, and this is just icing on the cake. Yes. Icing on the cake of your normal daily Bible reading. That's right on top of that too, just a, a friendly reminder. This is not the replacement for your Bible reading. This is not like cliff notes audio CliffNotes of the Bible reading. This is meant to accompany your Bible reading to help you with the Bible reading. But if you don't have time to do both, then I would say read your Bible and leave us off because you're gonna get more out of God's word than you are with with us. We're just here to help and help you understand it. So make sure you're spending time in God's word. Yeah, push comes to shove, but ordinarily. If you have time for both, we're a good option. Yeah, no, I, if we do say so ourselves, I mean, otherwise we'd just be wasting our time and we'd just be sitting here. We're not trying to do that. Right. This is the last time we're recording in this office. That's exciting. Wow. Yeah, we're looking forward to that. You guys should come swing by and take a look at it before we leave. Yeah, we're moving on Tuesday, so you've got a little bit of time, everybody. Yeah. We're not gonna be here on Sunday. Nope. Nope, we won't. Yeah. So weekends finishing up my, my son got to pitch in a JV game on Saturday. Very cool. How'd he do? He got, he got the win score, a home run. He did not very good. He did not hit a home run 'cause he was pitching, so that would be hard. Maybe if he did, it would be really impressive. If he could take runs off of the other team. No, he went in, his team was down one, nothing and he ended up going in pitching three innings and they got to win four one. So that was kind cool. Wow. I didn't get to see it, but Matt, Daniel was there, as was Morgan and Hudson was there. That's cool. So shout out to those guys for shout up. Well done. Those are three of your youth leaders. They're supporting one of the the students in the youth group. That's awesome. That's right. Way to go guys. Yeah. But man, the weather's been amazing. Amazing. Yes, it has. Yeah. Which has been a blessing and hopefully it'll stay that way for a while. I don't know. I thought, I thought I saw something about storms maybe tonight Sunday night as you're listening to this wait, that might be rolling in. Wait, you mean the weather's gonna change? Shock. I know. Especially in Texas. So weird. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And yet strangely believable. Yeah. Let's I guess tackle what's in front of us here. We've got a, a pretty. Big situation here in numbers chapter 16, and then number 17 is a little less involved. But number 16 is another doozy. And we're we're coming off of, you remember, just the, the believing the 10 over the, the, the two believing the, the majority of the spies and, and refusing to go in the promised land and the punishment that came there. Things are not gonna get better for Israel in the short term. In fact, they're gonna get worse because here you have somebody stepping up. Cora who notice in verse one is a Levite. And so there's some there's some, I don't know what the word I'm looking for. Specialness. That's not the word I'm looking for. There's some significance. Danger. Yeah. Danger, truth. Dangerous. Just throw more random words out. Grass. One of them will hit goats. Goats. Goats. That's it. That's it. A goat Not the greatest of all time. No, but he's, he's a Levi. He has some. Clout when it comes to the religious system of Israel and yet not what he wants. He not, not satisfied in this position. Right, exactly. And, and similarly, although to a greater extremity to, to what Aaron and Miriam did, they Cora, along with Dathan and a Bym and on, and 250 other men from the people they're gonna challenge Aaron's authority and they're gonna say, why is Aaron the guy? Why can't we be? And so they're going to. Grumble and complain and challenge. And, and Moses hears it. And notice in verse four again, the humility of Moses. He just, he falls on his face. Moses could have bowed up and said, Hey, okay, God, wipe him out right now. But, but Moses grieves and tells them essentially, Hey, you, you don't know what's coming. And, and says, God will choose and he's gonna choose in the morning. And the, the long story short in the, the chapter is God makes it very clear who is his chosen. Authority, his chosen mouthpiece, his chosen priest, and that is Aaron. And he differentiates not only from Cora and Dathan and a Byman on, but also from the 250 men that they had persuaded to join their ranks. And Cora and Dathan and their families, they, they are swallowed up by the ground. In fact, Moses says, look, if, if they don't die in this unique way, then you can know that God's not with us. But if they do, then you need to know that God is with us and that he has made his decision here. And sure enough, the ground opens up and. This is one of those just super difficult sections in scripture because it says the, their family and even the, the part that. That I just, it is just hard is when it says they're little ones with them. Right. And it's, it's all of them are, are swallowed up by the ground there. And you just think to yourself, man, that that's rough. We just talked yesterday or the day before about those 19 and, and under were shown a special mercy from God because they didn't participate in the, the grumbling perhaps, or the refusal to take the promised land the way the others did. Here you have the, the it. It appears the children of these men who were challenging Aaron's authority who are dying. Because of their dad standing up and challenging Aaron's authority. That's a difficult one, admittedly, to, to wrap our minds around Pastor Rod. Do you, do you have thoughts? Do you have answers? Can you clarify? Can you alleviate our consciousness on that one? I can, I can totally alleviate all of your problems. Good. Number one, God is just, and so I always start with that. I always have to remind myself that what I read is always informed by a just and holy God, which tells me that even if I'm particularly perturbed by what I read. There's probably more happening than what's being said. Yeah. And so I trust that God's gonna make the right decision. Now, the scripture here says little ones and I, and I'll note the little ones are for Dathan and a Byram. They're doing something different. It's related to Cora Rebellion, but their relationship to this, I don't know why they stay in their tents. Cora and his gang, they come to the the tabernacle to do the thing with the incense. Yeah. But Dathan and Ab Byron are especially. Rebellious. I'm not sure what to do with them other than they get a different response from God than Cora. Cora's sons stay alive. Yeah. And that's notable because eventually they're gonna be used to write some of the songs that we love. But Dathan and a Byron's family are different, so I have to wonder. Okay. Maybe the little ones are somehow involved. I know it's hard to think about if they're young. The term here is little ones that it, it designates a, a young person, so that's the first thing. Maybe they're involved in ways that I can't see from the text. Number two. If God does take them out. I I have a, a small conviction that for the young, I think God saves them. Yeah. I think God regenerates them and so will not the judge of all the Earth do. Right. It's what, that's what is said about God. And of course the rhetorical answer to that question is, of course he will. Right. So this might bother me, but I entrust their care to God's. To God's justice and his mercy, and I trust him to do the right thing. Even though for me reading it is hard, I trust that he did the right thing and there's their end is better than, than what it would've been otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I'm with you on that. I, I think I agree with the, that take, the, the wives. I, I remember last year reading through one of the commentaries said that when you remember the situation with, in, in, its in the future for, from this point, but we know it because we've read it before Abigail, right. Abigail Nal. At, at some point Abigail separated herself from the folly of nal. She recognized that he was a fool and went and interceded and intervened when David was on his way to, to wipe out Naval and all the, the men in the family. And these women here, at least don't, they don't appear to do that. So I think at least with the wives, it, I, I think we can read some between the lines and see that there's some, they're complicit with this rebellion in, in that sense. They're not coming forward going, Hey, our husbands are, are not speaking for us on this. We, we. Trust the Lord. We, we wanna follow Aaron, we wanna follow Moses on this. So I think with the wives, you can at least get there and, and maybe to your point with, with the kids somehow, but I would agree with you. I think there is that special dispensation of God's grace to save the little ones. Those that that are not able to make that decision. I. To repent from their sins and put their trust in Christ that, at least in today's language, as, as we would define it. And, and that gets to what we talked about previously with the age of accountability. Well, but then you have to think about the fact that in scripture there are evidences that God regenerates people even before they're born. That's the case with John the Baptist. Yeah. Which tells me that there doesn't have to be a traditional walk the altar, throw the pine gun in the fire kind of response. God can create faith in the heart of a person. Which then they will articulate and profess faith in Christ. You have to remember that in our theology. I'm not talking to you, PPG, I'm talking to our listeners. I I was ready. I was gonna remember, oh yeah. Thank you Pastor Rod. Yeah. Now you have to remember that we believe regeneration takes place first, right? Which is to say that God has to make someone alive in order for them to respond to the gospel call. So in that, if we understand this rightly, regeneration happens before. Faith and repentance, which is a big deal. Yeah. 'cause then it puts it all squarely in God's camp. John the Baptist, when he heard about Jesus through his, his aunt Mary, he leaps in, in his mother's womb. Mm-hmm. He's excited. Mm-hmm. And scripture says that he was filled with the spirit of God, even from his mother's womb. That's fascinating to me. And that tells me God's the one behind our salvation. And you might say, well, John's a special case. And that might be the case. That might be the case, but I suspect that God's operating this way. In many ways beyond what we might assume. And so I, I'm gonna take comfort in that. But I would also say on top of all this, this kind of event still happens today. Father sin and the whole family suffers. I. Yeah. That's still taking place every day. Yeah. I mean, so this is a, even though this is a situation hard to read, this is happening every day. Yeah. And I think it's an important for thing, an important thing for us to remember as leaders, as fathers, as mothers, as whatever role that we have to recognize, the people that are underneath our care and provision will suffer because of our sin, or they'll be blessed because of our righteousness. Don't forget that. Yeah. And, and what happens to the rest here with these 250 other men? They've got their sensors and, and they're consumed by divine fire and it's, it's unique. Sound familiar. Yeah. We should know what what happens here because these sensors that are left, Moses takes them and, and under the instruction from the Lord, hammers them as a covering for the altar. In other words, God wanted the people every time they came to the altar to be reminded of this rebellion. Be reminded of what happens when you choose to rebel against God and disobey God. And so they're using this tragic reminder, this painful reminder for the people of Israel to, to. Who tell them, Hey, be careful. Be careful not to challenge and, and, and go outside of the bounds of what God has defined as far as his leadership and his authority here. aNd, and unfortunately that doesn't work. 'cause in verse 41, right after this, the people are grumbling again against Moses and Aaron saying, you killed the people of the Lord. I, I just, it's, it's. You used the phrase that has come to mind so many times recently. My flab is gassed. It's unthinkable. It's inconceivable, and yet. I, I have to guard against my own pride and, and ask myself would I have been there with the masses? Yeah, dude. You'd be with Cora for sure. Thanks, man. Yeah, Moses, appreciate that. I wanna be the pastor. Appreciate that. That's, that's that's encouraging. Just kidding. Yeah. No. And so, God, God's not gonna let this off. He, he sends a plague that wipes out almost 15,000 people in response to this. At the end of chapter 16, and then in chapter 17, chapter 17 is kind of the stamp on this. Basically in chapter 17, God is, is telling the people, look, if, if what I've already done is not enough for you, let me do something in addition to this. And so Aaron's staff has put in, in the the Holy Holies in the tabernacle, along with the other staffs from, from other men in the, the tribes. And, and Aaron staff alone is the one that buds as a sign from God to say he's the one that I've chosen. And again, we think, okay, is that enough? Are the people gonna now trust God now that he's done all of these things? And the answer is unfortunately gonna be no. As we'll see as the, the book of Numbers continues to play out, one thing that stands out to me is that the staff budding is not just a miracle of a branch disconnected from everything being fruitful and productive. That is the miracle for sure. Sure. But I also clocked the fact that there's an appearance of age in this thing as well. That's another miracle that is tied to the creation of the universe. Boom. We believe that it was created ex nihilo and then it was made mature. And for that to happen, people will say, well then is God lying when he creates the earth with the appearance of being billions of years old? And I would say no, because you have a similar situation playing out here, or Aaron staff buds and it produces what looks like was something that took months to produce. He does this overnight. Again, there's a miracle here to say, this is my leader, but the other miracle is that God is able to do what, what in our minds is impossible. It's, and he's not lying. Yeah. He's using it as a sign to indicate you're not alone. I, I'm, I'm the Lord. I'm real. I'm here, the one doing the work, and I'm ordaining in this case, Aaron, as the one to be the leader. Yeah. I, I would agree with you and, and even thinking about that with creation. It, it's not, God didn't create the, the Grand Canyon so that scientists could do their study of the geological layers and try to figure out, you know, carbon dating and, and compression of layers and what age was this and that. He created it so that we would look at it and say, wow. God's massive. God's huge. God's amazing. God's majestic. That's, that's the point. Now, did he know those things were gonna happen? That, that God was going to, that the scientists were gonna study these things and, and draw their conclusions? Sure he did. But he's creating the universe to glorify himself and to give himself glory. And to do that with a parent age is not because he's trying to fool people. It's trying, it's because he's saying, look how, look how strong I'm, look how powerful I'm, look how amazing I am, how big everything is as I create it for my glory. Yeah. And that's not to say that science in and of itself is not helpful when you follow the scientific method. Things all. Science is horrible. I hate science. Right. I could tell that that's what you were saying. I just wanna qualify it a little bit. Yeah. Science is helpful and we're not against science. Christians are not anti-science. It's just that so much of science today, at least what's done in the name of science, it's so. anti-Christian, anti scripture, anti-God, that we have a hard time swallowing some of the presuppositions that go into their calculations. And this is what makes it hard to be a Christian today, right? And still be thoughtful and careful and nuanced, is that we want to embrace what is genuine general revelation. Hmm, that's true. We should say, Hey, go to the ant o slugger. That's what the proverbs say. In other words, he's saying go to general revelation and learn from it. There's our endorsement for science. We should do true genuine science. The challenge today for you is not to be bamboozled by their presuppositions. Maybe their calculations are accurate. Maybe their thinking is somewhat accurate, but don't be tricked by what they're bringing into it. Yeah. They're not just telling you, here's the way that science works. They're also bringing in Darwinian evolution. They're bringing an absent God worldview. Yep. There's a lot of problems with that and it takes a wise Christian. To be able to take the meat, spit out the bones. 'cause there's a lot of bones. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Everything. And that's why I can't remember who it is. I don't know if it's Turk or somebody else, but especially when we get into the realm of creation, everything is a theory because it's not repeatable. Right. Right. Nobody can repeat the creation acts. And so whether you're embracing evolution or creationism as, as we do. It's, it's a theory at the end of the day. And, and we have to, even as Christians, I say that to Christians too, to say, we've gotta hold that loosely and know that we, we can't wrap our minds around everything that took place in creation. We can try to understand the scriptures as best as we possibly can, and we should, and we should. But at the end of the day, you know, I, I, I can't pretend that I know exactly what creation was like. Right. I have my convictions again based on the scriptures. But we have to hold it loosely because it's not repeatable and we're not God. We can't recreate that. And there's also I mean both positions, the God worldview and the anti-God worldview are positions of faith. Totally. I think that's what you're getting at. Yeah. We're people of faith and we acknowledge that. Yep. What I wish honest scientists would do is say, well, this is as much faith as your guys. We just believe in chance and randomness and infinity beyond us. It. It's almost ridiculous because at least we're honest about it. We believe in what the word of God says. They believe in what the word of science, capital s as in idolatry says and and promotes. The thing is, it's not genuine science because you can't test it. You can't repeat it. This was Ken Hamm's argument against Bill Knight, the science guy, when they had that debate. I don't know, five, 10 years back. Yeah. His argument, Kens. Was essentially there's observable science that you can do today that's repeatable and then there's non repeatable science that this is what you guys are calling your science. And, and we, we would re reject that and say, you can't say that this is the same level as A squared plus B squared equal C square. They're not the same thing. Pyre and theorem bringing that out, nobody had that on their, no one did. On Bingo card. Bingo card. No, that's true. Yeah. Well, and and Turk has that book that he wrote, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. And that's his, that's his his thing. There is, his point is, man, it takes more faith to be an atheist when you consider, and he provides some apologetic arguments there than it takes to be a, a follower of Christ. Anyways, y'all let's pray and then we'll be done with this this episode. God help us to have humility when we read about things like this and, and to think to ourselves, but for the grace of God, go, I. Lord, we want to be careful to recognize and realize our own human frailty and our dependence upon Christ, our dependence upon the spirit, to walk by faith and to trust you and not to rebel against you, not to go outside the bounds of what you've set and what you've declared. And so help us to be humble in that I pray, and that we would continue to have that consistent dependence upon you. So we ask this in Christ name, amen. Amen. Keep reading your Bibles. Tune it again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you then 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.