All right, that is enough. I think we've done what? Half an hour or so, give or take here, of these various general introductory topics, authorship dating, title structure, the literary genres and context, the chronological context. I think you get a good picture of what's going on there.
Let's spend the rest of our time talking about the major overarching theme, the golden thread that runs throughout all of this book. And that golden thread is the wilderness. This is what I titled this Bible study, encountering God in the wilderness. This is so, so, so, so important.
This is how you have to understand this book of numbers. And I would even argue Exodus, Leviticus, numbers and Deuteronomy altogether, because the wilderness is the place of testing and encounter with God. If you go and read the rest of the Bible, you're going to find the wilderness is a central location in so many stories. All right, now I'm rewind a story a little bit.
Moses is a shepherd in the wilderness for 40 years when he encounters God in the burning bush. Right, we're going to be reading in this book, how Israel's in the wilderness for 40 years. You've got Elijah the prophet is in the wilderness here at Mount Sinai. We'll talk about that in a much later time.
Elijah is in the wilderness. John the Baptist is in the wilderness preparing the people for the Messiah. Jesus is in the wilderness as well with the temptations of the, of the temptations from the devil. You would even argue that Paul goes into the wilderness.
That's again, we have to lay out his chronology at another time. The Paul goes into the wilderness after his conversion. The wilderness is the place of testing and encounter with God for them as well as for us, metaphorically and sometimes even literally. Okay, so here's a quote for you that I think is great.
We're going to unpack this in the next couple of pages. The quote says in this desert, sorry, I beg your pardon, in the desert, Israel received the loving protection from the Lord. But the time in the desert was also a time of divine testing and discipline. The desert was therefore also a powerful reminder of the need for Israel to live in fidelity to its covenant promises and its love for the Lord.
End quote. All right, that actually comes from the Bible dictionary. That is a great overview, a super great overview. God brings him into the desert as we're going to see with Hosea Yom and share a bunch of verses with you.
He brings them into the desert to enter into a covenantal relationship with them, to love them, to protect them. But in so doing, it's also a time of testing and discipline because in the desert, what happens? I don't know if you've ever been to a desert before. I grew up in California, spent, you know, various times in Arizona and Nevada.
I've been spent plenty of time in the in the wilderness of Colorado, not like camping or anything because I'm a smart man. At least I'd like to think so. Don't go camping out in the wilderness because the point of the matter is you can't find water. It's hard to find food.
You're struggling with the the elements. It's hard. It's very hot. It's very, very cold at night.
You're stripped of all your creature comforts. I mean, you're really, really humbled in the wilderness. All of our illusions of control and self-sufficiency are stripped from us very, very quickly. I mean, if you're camping or hiking, which I know many people like to do, I didn't do it because I'd rather camp in a more lush area.
But that's just me. If you're not careful and you don't provide, you're going to run out of your provisions. And what it teaches you is I got to trust God. Will God take care of me?
What is God's will for my life? That's why the wilderness is so crucial. You're not in control. And the sooner we realize that we're not in control and that God's in control of everything, we must trust him, the sooner we're going to have peace.
It's easier said than done as we're going to see in the book of numbers, but we're also going to reflect on our own lives. It's easier said than done. But our life is a wilderness wandering. This is going to be the great typological theme that we're going to see.
Our life is a wilderness wandering. And in life, sometimes we're humbled, we're disciplined, because God teaches us, look, we're not in control. And we need to rely on our heavenly Father in his loving protection. And so all these things that happen to the Israelites in the book of numbers is precisely to teach them God's love and to teach them that they depend upon God as their heavenly Father.
This is what Moses says very explicitly in Deuteronomy chapter 8. I've reproduced the quote here for you. This is a very powerful section of the book of Deuteronomy. And he says in chapter 8 verse 2 and following, he says to the Israelites, you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness.
Why? That he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that a man does not live by bread alone, that man lives by everything that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. That sounds familiar, right?
That's what Jesus quotes to Satan in the wilderness. There's a reason for that. We'll get to that in a second. Anyway, it goes on.
Moses says, your clothing did not wear out upon you, your foot did not swell these 40 years, know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. That is so beautiful. You like highlight all of that in your Bibles. It's so powerful.
So the Lord Moses says, led you into the wilderness. Why did it test you to humble you? He says humbled twice. Why?
Because we're prideful and so are we all this is spiritual typology and go on and on and on. As I probably will, making connections to our spiritual life to this Lenten journey that we have, well, we'll talk more about Lent a little bit, but really our lives in general in the spiritual life, pride is at the root of all sin. Pride is when we say, I don't need God, right? I'm good on my own, right?
Or even worse, there is no God or even worse. God is full of hate and full of wrath and vengeance. All we accuse God of all these things. We need to be humbled.
If we're not humbled, we're not going to learn what God wants to teach us, which is, you know, among other things, the greatest thing is how much he really loves us and wants to provide for us. So he says, he humbled you. He tested you to teach you that life is more than just bread. Life is about the bread of life.
Life is about the teaching of the Lord that comes out of his mouth, right? Oh, there's so many great things here, right? Man is not led by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. We live on more than just physical sustenance.
We must have spiritual sustenance as well. And so God provided all these miracles for them. It's really quite incredible if you think about it. Their clothing didn't wear out and their sandals didn't run out, right?
You know, I can't even, I just bought some shoes for my son as a matter of fact. I can't get six months out of a pair of shoes before I got to buy new ones for my son, right? It's just maybe the material they're making, they're making shoes out of lately, but I think it's a miracle to have clothing and shoes and sandals that didn't wear out after 40 years. That's amazing.
Their feet didn't swell. You know, all of this stuff because God disciplines Israel. And the same thing is true with us. God lets things happen to us in his permissive will to humble us.
We live in a fallen world, thanks to Adam and Eve. That's the reality of the matter. We live in a fallen world and horrible things happen. You know, whether it's moral evil or physical evils, you know, someone sins against us directly or I don't know, just an accident happens, whatever.
We live in a fallen world and the Lord allows these things to happen to us, tumble us, to test us, to know what's in our heart. Are we going to cling to God or are we going to curse God or are we going to accuse God? This is also very, very, very relevant to us. The Lord disciplines us, a good father disciplines his child.
Now, unfortunately, the world out there today, if they see a father legitimately disciplining his son, not abusing his son, but disciplining his son out of love. Unfortunately, in this very permissive world that we live in, that father is accused of abuse and that father is accused of all kinds of things. The same thing happens with people with God. God disciplines his children and too many people say that's an abusive father and he's not abusive.
He just loves us and he wants us to mature and to grow. So you can see, you can see how much is in this quote where I do it on in chapter eight versus two through five. All right, so this is why God allowed it to happen to bring brought into the wilderness. And so in point being your notes here, Israel's brought into the wilderness back even in Exodus to enter into this divine covenant with God.
That's the whole story of Mount Sinai, Exodus chapter 24, and even the chapters that preceded it with the Ten Commandments, all of these happen because God says, I love you, you're my firstborn son. I want you in a relationship with me. I want to give you my own life. And so we're going to establish this covenant.
I can't repeat everything that I said in the book of Exodus, but that's essentially what's going on. I want to be your spiritual father. I want to be your divine bridegroom. And so they blow it with the golden calf and there's all this rebellion and everything.
And it really becomes a tragedy and unravels. But all of that is meant to point forward to the new and definitive Exodus that will take place where a new Moses will deliver the new Israel, the new people out from bondage to Satan sin and to death. Everything that happens in the Exodus story, as I'm not packing the bottom of the page, is super, super typological for the true Exodus that really matters to be liberated from sin and to be able to spend eternity in the true promise land of heaven. Okay, but to do that, God wants to bring his people to the wilderness.
Okay, and this is not just me saying that. This is the prophet saying it. One of my favorite passages in all the prophets, this from Hosea chapter two verse 14 and following. There's a lot of amazing things here, but let me read this for you.
And you're going to see what I'm talking about. God wants to fix what we screwed up. And he's going to refresh and renew new creation imagery is going to be part of this everything in the new Moses. So let me just shut up a second.
Let me read to you this fantastic beautiful quote. Have it fun. I hope you are to all right. So it says, therefore, and this is God speaking to Israel, okay, through the Prophet Hosea.
Therefore behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her vineyards and make the valley of acor, a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. And in that day says the Lord, you will call me my husband, and no longer will you call me my ball or ball.
Because I will remove the names of the balls from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more. And I will make for you a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land. And I will make you lie down in safety.
I will espouse you forever. I will espouse you in righteousness and injustice and steadfast love and mercy. I will espouse you in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord." End quote. I got chills just reading that.
Oh my gosh, it's so beautiful. So what is happening in here in just a nutshell? What's happening here is that God is saying to the Prophet Hosea, I brought you to the wilderness once when you were young. In the days of your youth, I brought you out of the land of Egypt and to the wilderness and had a covenant with you.
But unfortunately, you went after other gods. There's this great theme that we're going to see over and over again about spiritual harlotry. You went after other gods. You forsook me, your divine husband, and went after these other balls or balls, like Lord or Master.
This ball is also a king and my God. So you left me and went after them. However, I'm going to call you back. I'm going to call you back into the wilderness again.
And in that day, you're going to call me your husband once more. The divine bridegroom will be me once again. I'm going to make a new covenant on that day. And I'm going to renew everything.
So the language here about, you know, there's going to be a new covenant with the beast, the field, the birds, and the creeping things. That's all echoing Genesis chapters one and two. God is going to bring about a new creation with a new covenant by bringing them into the wilderness yet again. And in that day, he will espouse his people in love and justice and mercy so that they would know him.
Now that word, no, yeah, dah, is really important. I've talked about this a ton, a super ton in the books of Exodus and Leviticus. So yet, the Lord is not just head knowledge, it's relationship knowledge, it's covenantal knowledge. He's going to call his people back again.
Okay. So this is this one example from the prophets on how God will bring his people into the wilderness to encounter. So the people will encounter God in the wilderness once more through this new covenant. Are you with me?
All right. That's what's happening. So the rest of this lecture is going to be all about how this is fulfilled in Christ and the church and in our spiritual lives because the theme of encountering God in the wilderness is true for them, but it's true for us individually as the church, all in imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ. All right.
So that's what we're going to do now. Let's look at of Jesus, of the church, of our Lenten journey, of obedience and disobedience in the wilderness. That's what we're going to do here for the rest of our time. Let's start with Jesus.