Transcription

Connor:
You’re listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun and practical ways.

Chris:
Hey everybody, welcome to The Bible Guys.

Jeff:
Well, this better be either fun and or practical.

Chris:
Well, yeah, and exciting. Yes, that’s right. Yeah, exciting ways. Which, by the way, exciting ways, is that what he said?

Jeff:
In fun and practical ways.

Chris:
Oh, I see, I see, yeah. I’m not listening to our own Roland. So, hey, my name is Chris. This is Jeff. And today we are diving into the book of Numbers. But before we do that, we have a segment called Mailbags. Mailbags! This is from Lisa D.

Jeff:
Hi, Lisa.

Chris:
So you probably have an answer wrapped up your head. It says, obviously this is what Lisa says, obviously, besides the Bible, obviously, obviously what is a book or a movie or a TV show that had a big impact on you? Uh, well, you can probably, you probably have 10 answers as terms of books. Probably.

Jeff:
I would say, uh, the original Looney tunes. Yeah.

Chris:
By the way the original Looney Tunes was gruesome. I know I know I mean there’s great.

Jeff:
They held nothing back, buddy Yeah, it was anvils and yeah Yeah, explosions. Well.

Chris:
I mean worse than that They didn’t care man

Jeff:
But good classical music. Good classical music. Nothing like a little Tchaikovsky to soften the blow.

Chris:
Well, Bugs Bunny. So let’s start with the book.

Jeff:
Lord of the Rings for me. The entire, everything from The First Hobbit all the way through The Silmarillion. So all seven books. Okay.

Chris:
Yeah. All right. Um, so for me, goodness gracious, it’s really hard to pick one. Um, but, uh, but I’ll go, obviously since I’m the movie guy, I’ll pick a movie and on, honestly, I’m, I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I’m going to go with the old, uh, the count of Monte Cristo. And the reason why is because it really, truly did make a profound impact on me. Because it was a story that had absolutely everything. It was a story that wasn’t about faith, it wasn’t a Christian movie, but yet the entire thing was about faith. And it had, you know, is God fair in the whole thing? It had revenge. It had, you know, human tendency to want to, you know, doubt God, forget God, run away from God, can’t escape God. All of that stuff is in there, you know, sort of intertwined with adventure, love story, plots, surprises. I mean, you know, great acting. It was awesome.

Jeff:
So I mentioned Lord of the Rings, and it was about the adventure, and it’s the battle between good and evil, right? That was a lot of that, and the struggle. So I enjoyed those. So you were talking about revenge, and that immediately made me think of the impact that the Princess Bride has had on me.

Chris:
Yes! Yes!

Jeff:
Right, so revenge, right? That’s a… Hello, my name is Genjigo Mitoya.

Chris:
That’s right. You killed my father, prepare to die. And you’re like, stop saying that!

Jeff:
Inconceivable. means what you think that means.

Chris:
Well, you could probably quote that old movie. So yeah, I’ve seen that quite a few times.

Jeff:
So what else has had an impact on me? So from a serious standpoint, I would say Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, which, by the way, I loved his Chronicles of Narnia books, too. I read all those as a kid. But yeah, C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity just gave me a logical apologetic for, you know, it’s not unreasonable to be intelligent and a person of faith at the same time. And he was the first writer that I ever read that caught my attention that way.

Chris:
I would say I read a lot of Christian books, obviously, over the years. But I would have to say the one that has impacted me the most based on what I do for a living would have to be Communicating for a Change by Andrew Stanley, because it reshaped my entire thinking in such an unbelievably drastic way about the way to communicate. And it also resonated with the fact that I believe and still believe that it’s the most effective way to reach people who are not close to God or far from God, because, you know, you already have the Christians. As soon as you open your mouth, the Christians are already, you know, dialed in. And so the idea of even trying to capture the attention of those who are far from God was a brand new concept for me. And I had never really considered that in my communicating. So it was great.

Jeff:
That’s powerful. I thought that was a really good question. Yeah. It’s a great question. Do you have any more, any other ones that jump out at you? So you mentioned books, you mentioned movies. How about TV show?

Chris:
Yeah. Um, you know, there’s been so many, it’s just unbelievable. Um, but, uh, honestly I would say I, I appreciate almost more than anything, the, the kind of stuff that it’s the opposite of you, what your preference is the shoot them up, you know, kind of, uh, like I like parenthood. Yeah. I thought parenthood was just an unbelievable, uh, reality sort of thing. There was what, six or eight seasons, whatever it was. And it was just, it was just a family who, uh, they were just a big mess and they loved each other dearly. And there was always good that came out of it. So it was just like, it was so relatable because we all are a mess. And I think that at the end, you always saw the good come. And even though it wasn’t necessarily a Christian, um, in fact, it was not a Christian, uh, series at all, but it’s so profound in the way that we are supposed to, you know, endure. And it was a Christian show without trying to be a Christian show. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I thought, I thought that was really impactful for me. Oh, good.

Jeff:
Yeah. Well, there you go. You got books, movies, and TV shows.

Chris:
There it is. Good question, Lisa. Yes. Yes. And so, um, yeah, I mean, I, I, I’m trying to think of more, but I don’t think we should spend any time, any more time on it because I’m starting to, my brain’s going with all these different responses.

Jeff:
I got tons of stuff to say. Right. I’ve watched so many shows.

Chris:
Yeah, I have. Okay, so we are going to be diving in to Numbers. Now, we touched on Leviticus for a couple of podcasts. We hit it on Friday. We hit it on Monday, which was yesterday. And if you’re following day by day, today is Tuesday, and we are jumping ahead to Numbers chapter 11.

Jeff:
That’s correct. So there’s so much more to have talked about in the book of Leviticus, right? The Levitical law, so much of what drove the general religious portion of the society of Israel is out of the book of Leviticus. And Jesus is the fulfillment of the book of Leviticus, right? So all those Levitical laws, all those sacrifices, all those sacrifices for atonement, everything, Jesus is the fulfillment of the book of Leviticus. So while Leviticus can seem tedious, it just shows the thoroughness of what God did in Christ. You and I think, oh, it’s a day, on the calendar that we happen to celebrate. And in reality, it literally sufficed and solved every issue of humanity’s sin, right? It’s really phenomenal. So that’s what Leviticus is about. Numbers moves into more of the humanity of Israel again, just very similar to the first half of the book of Exodus. And so here in Leviticus, or in Numbers, I’m sorry, chapter 11, we’re going to jump forward and this is, we’re going to read about this. This is a recurring theme that almost never ends in the rest of the life of Moses. Right here.

Chris:
Right. And it never ends in the lives of pastors.

Jeff:
You know, it’s true. Any spiritual leader at all.

Chris:
That’s correct. Because there’s always new people, right? That’s right. There’s new people coming in. There’s always new complaints.

Jeff:
So God has been providing for the people of Israel as they’re wandering around, trying to head towards the promised land. He’s been dropping manna from heaven. The word manna means What is it? What is it? That’s what it means. And it was sweet. It was fulfilling. It was sufficient for everything that they needed for life.

Chris:
And we don’t even really know the consistency of it.

Jeff:
We don’t even know what it was. I think it was probably like a box lunch. You think so? Like a happy meal? Yeah, like a Chick-fil-A box. Right. Just fall from heaven with one of those chunky chocolate chip cookies in it. Yeah. Maybe so. You never know. You never know. Nice Diet Coke. Whatever it was. You can’t prove it wasn’t.

Chris:
Or it could be like tabooey.

Jeff:
It could be. But, but so it was some kind of a cracker thing, some kind of a bread thing. It was something like that. Anyways, miraculously every day, all the food they could eat, God’s just dropping from heaven from them. Right. Right. But the Bible says, Don’t mess with God.

Chris:
I mean, I’m sorry to laugh there, but holy cow, it’s blazed. His anger blazed.

Jeff:
Wow. We don’t care for how you’re taking care of us. God’s like, oh yeah? Right. So it says, then the people screamed to Moses for help. And when he prayed to the Lord, the fire stopped. And after that, the area was known as Tibera, which means the place of burning, because fire from the Lord burned among them there. Then the foreign rabble who were traveling with the Israelites began to crave the good things of Egypt. The people of Israel also began to complain. Oh, for some meat, they explained. We remember the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt. We had all the cucumbers and melons and leeks and onions and garlic we wanted, but now our appetites are gone. All we ever see is this manna. The manna looked like small coriander seeds and it was pale yellow like gum resin. The people would go out and gather it from the ground and they made flour by grinding it with hand mills or pounding it in mortars. And then they boiled it in a pot and made it into flat cakes. These cakes tasted like pastries baked with olive oil. The manna came down on the camp and the dew during the night. Sound like croissants. Yeah. Isn’t that what it sounds like?

Chris:
I’m not a chef, but sure, sure, sure.

Jeff:
Some kind of French pastry kind of a thing. Anyways, Moses heard all the family standing in the doorways of their tents whining, and the Lord became extremely angry. Moses was also very aggravated, and Moses said to the Lord, why are you treating me? Your servant so harshly. Have mercy on me. What did I do to deserve the burden of all these people? There it is. Did I give birth to them? Did I bring them into this world? Why did you tell me to carry them in my arms like a mother carries a nursing baby? How can I carry them to the land you swore to give their ancestors? Where am I supposed to get meat for all these people? They keep whining to me saying, give us meat to eat. I can’t carry all these people by myself. The load is far too heavy. If this is how you intended to treat me, just go ahead and kill me. Which is unbelievable. Do me a favor and spare me this misery. Let me jump just a couple more verses because it says, And the Lord said to Moses, gather before me 70 men who are recognized as elders and leaders of Israel. Bring them to the tabernacle to stand there with you. I’ll come down and talk to you there. I will take some of the spirit that is upon you. I will put the spirit upon them also, and they will bear the burden of the people along with you. So you’ll not have to carry it alone, which is part of God’s solution. Yeah. So from this point on, this is what they do all the time is just complain.

Chris:
It is. It is a very well-known favorite passage of pastors. Yes. Right. Just kill me. Just kill me. So, you know, obviously we’re joking, but sometimes it can feel this way. And you know, what’s so funny is It’s like, so I’m sure you started in smaller churches, right? Oh, yeah. Just like I did. And I spent my first seven years in ministry. Actually, after college graduation, I was a pastor before that. But when I was when I was actually graduated from college, my first church, I was there for seven and a half years. It was 180 people the day I started and it was 180 people the day I left. And yet we had grown by leaps and bounds.

Jeff:
Boy, you had impact, didn’t you?

Chris:
Well, I did. I did. But anyway, the point is, is that, uh, it’s like, it’s like we just saw this turn, you know, I, you know, anyway, it doesn’t matter. The point is, is that, um, some of the smaller church experiences to this day are some of the best experiences of my life. Like, I mean, they’re just wonderful, right? But at the same time, they can be the most taxing. Absolutely. Right? Because for some reason, that whole small church experience is like all 200 people plus had access to me. Yeah. And then, and it’s, and all of a sudden you’re the only answer to everything, right? And so it’s like, so sometimes the smaller the church is, the more burdensome it can be, because now all of a sudden you as the pastor have to go to every funeral, every wedding, every hospital visit, every counseling session. You’re doing everything, right? Because you’re not quite big enough to, you know, to sort of disperse, which is exactly what God’s answer is, isn’t it? Yeah. Right. So we find ourselves in the first 15 verses.

Jeff:
Share the responsibility, share the load. Right.

Chris:
But we find ourselves like Moses, like, oh my goodness, like, come on.

Jeff:
You’re getting free food and you’re mad about it.

Chris:
Right. Right. Well, you know, I mean, as a foodie, I could understand what they’re saying, right? We had fish, we had garlic, we had onions, we had leeks, we had all these different things. And now we have, what is it? Well,

Jeff:
And that’s the only thing that we have. So it’s so funny because it says, we used to have, we remember the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt. For free. Was it free? Yeah, right. Was it free? I’m pretty sure, what was it you were a, what’s the word I’m looking for? Slave.

Chris:
Right, right. Nothing’s free, buddy. Nothing’s free.

Jeff:
And so they’re thinking about all the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic. And they’re forgetting about the whips and the chains and the making mud bricks with no resources necessary to do it. The beatings, the oppression, the abject poverty that they were living in. Right. And now they’re free people able to determine their own futures. But no, we miss the watermelons. That’s what we miss.

Chris:
You know, there’s a sermon in there too, isn’t it? Because like, you know, when we, when we are rescued from our lives, from our old lives of sin and destruction and all these different things, if you’ve lived life long enough without Christ, you sort of had that story, right? You experienced life without Christ. Sometimes if we miss that old life, we seem to only remember the fun part of it or the good part of it, I guess I could say, right? The experiential part. And yet we don’t miss, we don’t remember the misery. We don’t remember the change of the whips or the slavery. We don’t remember the depression or the emptiness or how about this, the consequences, right? We don’t remember all that. And so what we do is, you know, some of us who like to go back and dip our toe in the old lives, we think we can do it better this time because we can just, you know, experience what we want to experience without the consequences, without the bad part. But that’s not the way that life works. Right? Right. Life without God is not something that we want to toy with. And you can try and you can try to do it with, you know, you may think you’re successful at it, but in the end, you’re going to find that in this life, and especially in the next, you’re going to be pretty empty.

Jeff:
Romans 12 tells us that we need God to renew our minds, right? And we need to have a new way of thinking. I had a friend several years ago, a number of years ago, that he, about my age, so in your age, so we graduated when Guns N’ Roses was really hitting it, right? So it was Bon Jovi and Guns N’ Roses were the two big rock bands back in the day. And he said, you know, I found this dad, he was about 11 or 12 year old boys. And this dad told me, he said, I’ve had to quit listening to Guns N’ Roses and Bon Jovi. I’m like, why? He said, I only listened to it while working on my car out in the garage. But he said, dude, I start remembering like, you know, when I was kind of buck wild. And he said, it was always like fist fights and drinking and carousing and chasing the girls. And he said, I start telling the stories. Oh, let me tell you, because the boys go, oh, this is cool music, dad. Oh, this is what we used to listen to when I was in high school, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff, right? So then he’d start telling stories about being a tough guy and about fighting and about, you know, first time I smoked a cigarette, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. Next thing you know, his 11, 12 year old boy getting in trouble at school, starting to fight. He tried his first cigarette and he’s like, what are you doing, man? It was in this short little window of time. And the little boy, his argument was, dad, you did it.

Chris:
And you made it sound great.

Jeff:
It sounded amazing. Right now, he also spent several nights in jail. He had a whole bunch of hangovers. He really messed up a lot of his life early on in his life. But at that point, all he could remember was like those fun moments. He didn’t remember the fallout and the tragedy of the rest of his life at the time. And he’s like, I had to turn it off. I can’t listen to that music in my garage anymore, because every time I listen to that music, it takes me back there. But I only remember the good, the fun side of it, not the bad side of it. And that’s kind of where it is here. They remember the watermelons and the garlic, but they don’t remember the slavery. And so they’re complaining. They’re whining. We just want some meat. Where’s the meat? And Moses is like, God, I can’t put up with these people a minute. Just kill me. If you don’t kill me, I’m going to jump off a bridge.

Chris:
I remember my pastor in 1989 preaching this exact passage. And guess what he called the message? Where’s the beef?

Jeff:
Where’s the beef? 1989. That’s clever.

Chris:
Yeah. So for those of you who are super old, like us, you remember that old Wendy’s commercial, where’s the beef back in the day? And this is them, this is, you know, the crowd of Israel saying, you say, I just want some meat. Where’s the beef? And it was actually, just like the commercial, it’s a whole sermon about complaining. But at the same time, again, we have to realize that, you know, it reminds me of the scripture where the Apostle Paul goes to God and says, you know, can you take my affliction from me, whatever afflicted Paul? And what does God say? God says, well, my grace is sufficient for you, right? For my power is made perfect in weakness. And so God may, you know, not necessarily give us exactly everything that we want, but we have to realize we’re a whole lot better off with God, you know, with our affliction, you know, that we hold and the things that we face than we are with a life without God. That’s for sure.

Jeff:
I also wonder how often we miss the miracles because we get used to the miracles. We miss the miracle of the sunset, sunrise. We miss the miracle of experiencing real love from your child or your spouse or your grandchild or something. We miss so many amazing miracles, and then we want God to do more miracles. I need another miracle. I need you to do something amazing. We can’t just rely on the miracle he’s already done for us. We can’t. Why? Why do we do that? Right? And so it actually makes God mad too. So it makes Moses mad, it makes God mad, it makes them both mad. Every morning they drew back their tent doors and they witnessed a miracle, but then they begin to feel like that wasn’t enough and they felt it was their right to have more. And talking about spiritual entitlement, a lot of times we begin to feel the same way. God, you’ve done amazing things for me. I feel like I deserve more. How come you didn’t heal that person? How come you didn’t answer this prayer? How dare you? And this is really where they’re at, is they’re looking miracles right in the face. they’re not even seeing them anymore, and they’re irate with God that he’s not doing, how dare he not do more miracles, specifically the miracle we’re demanding, which is meat. And a lot of times we do that with regard to our unanswered prayers. We forget the fact that God has answered so many prayers.

Chris:
You know, that reminds me of a sermon that I did in the past where I bring up like four suitcases, like the baggage that we carry around. In fact, we did this. We did this at a series that we did called Baggage, remember? At Heritage Church. But anger, you know, we carry around anger, we carry around greed, we carry around guilt, we carry around jealousy, were the four that I kind of put up there. And anger says, you owe me, right? You owe me an explanation. You owe me a debt. Guilt says, I owe you. And then greed says, I owe me. But then jealousy says, God owes me. And that’s really profound. Because that’s really the heart of comparing ourselves and looking at others. What does the Bible say? Comparing ourselves and measuring ourselves among ourselves is not wise. And that’s what we do. We say, God, I’m your faithful servant. I’ve tried to serve you, and I’m looking around, and other people have garlic. Other people have leeks and onions, right? You bless other people with things that I want, and yet I’m your servant. So, you know, why are you unfair, God? Be kind to your servants. And by the way, there’s a lot of people that are there. There’s a lot of people that are there. It’s like, God, throw me a bone, right? But that’s really what it is. It’s not that we you know, then we’re reminded that God’s grace is enough. His grace is sufficient. We’re reminded of the miracles of life. We’re reminded of everything that we do have. But we’re wanting, geez, just a reasonable amount of what that guy down the street has, right? All my friends have this, and yet I don’t have this. You know, and really what it comes down to is it’s saying, God, you owe me. Yeah.

Jeff:
Yeah. So, you know, in Philippians, Paul says in the King James, he says, For I have learned whatsoever state I am therewith to be content. And there is something about this, that their lack of contentment caused the rage of God against them. Blazed. Right. It was blazing against them. Blazing. And I wonder, how much blessing we really do have in our life, but we can’t see it because we’re resentful or we’re angry or we’re jealous about a thing that we do not have and we’re blaming God for it. And I wonder how much struggle and extra heat we have in our life because we’re not thankful for what we do have. We’re just grumpy about what we don’t yet have and God hasn’t given to us yet. And I don’t think that that’s an excuse or reason to not keep pushing forward and bettering our lives. We just can’t be resentful or angry towards God about it, right? And I wonder, I just wonder sometimes, how often are the fires in our life the result of a lack of contentment and thankfulness? Because when the people do come to God in thankful ways, God blesses them. Right? So you either have, Moses is going to end the book of Deuteronomy with, I’m going to give you a choice between life and death. Oh, that you would choose life. Right? There’s a better way to go than this resentful, jealous way that is so natural for us. The better way to go is having a contentment and a thankfulness for what God has done and then let him keep showing up and blessing us in that context rather than taking the heat of our own jealousy and resentment.

Chris:
Yeah. So let me, uh, let me sort of tag onto that thought. We could wrap up with this cause we’re at our time. But, um, what you just said, I just saw an Instagram really literally last night as I was scrolling, you know, and just right before I go into bed, I just scroll for about 15 minutes or so. And, uh, and there was a celebrity and this person was Reese Witherspoon. I mean, I don’t care. I’ll just tell you it was, what’s the big deal. But anyway, but she said that, uh, she had heard somebody that day, uh, change the word have to get. And it’s like, Oh, I have to watch my grandkids today. And then, and then he says, you know what, I’m going to change it to, I get to watch my grandkids today. And he says, and I get to breathe and I get to do this and I get to do this. And she says, if we just change the haves to gets, that’s a whole different perspective on the day. And it’s just one word. And I just thought that was a really cool thing.

Jeff:
And we can shift from the rage of God to the blessing of God, the favor of God.

Chris:
There it is. All right. Well, that’s all of our time. So we will see you next time, hopefully, on The Bible Guys.