Numbers 15: After Failure, God Still Wants You

In Hebrew, the Book of Numbers is called "In the Wilderness." That is what this book is all about. It picks up where Exodus left off. We are on our way to the Promised Land. Along the way, there are many lessons to learn about trusting God and believing for miracles in every area of life.

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Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Big Idea: After Failure
• 0:37 Community, Newsletter, and Shared Reading Vision
• 1:19 Setting the Scene: Israel’s Failure
• 2:26 Numbers 15: Offerings and Hope for Tomorrow
• 5:15 Unintentional vs Willful Sin: The Way Back
• 7:15 Sabbath Violation Case and Consequences
• 8:22 Tassels as Daily Reminders of Obedience
• 10:35 Mercy After Failure and Prayer
• 12:28 Blessing and After-Show Tease

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hey everyone and welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. In this podcast, we will be breaking down the Bible one chapter a day. Whether you are a new believer or have been following Christ for a while, we believe that you will learn something new and fresh every single day. So thank you for joining us. Let's get into breaking down the Bible together.

SPEAKER_01: 0:23

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. I'm your host, Pastor Brandon, and today it's really encouraging. I really love the idea, the big idea. Even after we fail, God still wants us. We're going to dive into that just a moment. But as always, if you like what we're doing here, make sure you like the videos, you subscribe to the podcast, and make sure and share this with somebody as we are reading God's word together. And I'd love you to do me a favor. Go over to my blog at brandoncannon.com and subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I'm slowly trying to figure out. I used to do this, uh, do something different with it, but I'm slowly trying to figure out how to move it over to just really being focused on the podcast and providing you extra resources. So if you want to dive deeper into the different things, we can do that and trying to work on a way for us to really create a community. I have this dream. What if we could create a community of people that the goal of our entire just community together is reading God's word every day? Wouldn't that be amazing? I would love to do that. I'd love to do it with you. So as we get ready to read God's word, I want to just talk about this idea of what happens after failure. I know many of us maybe have never done that before, but what if? Have you ever failed at something? You've let someone down, you've disappointed somebody, and then after that failure, you have to see them again. Let's say that you were supposed to, I don't know, you something big was happening, and instead of coming through, you fell through. It didn't happen. And then you see them at the grocery store, or you see them at school the next day, or you see them at church, and it's awkward. It's like, uh, you know, what do you do? Well, now that the nation of Israel, if you remember in chapter 13, they said we can't take the promised land. Chapter 14, they about kill the people who say they can, and God says, Okay, fine, I'm gonna give you what you want. You don't want to go in the promised land, you're not gonna get to go to the promised land. Your judgment is you're gonna spend 40 years in the wilderness. Well, now it's awkward. But God is still wanting to find them a way to still worship. And so he's gonna give them laws concerning the offerings now in the wilderness so that they can continue to worship him and come back to him. And I love the big ideas, even after failure, God wants us. Let's read this together. Numbers chapter 15, verse 1. Then the Lord said to Moses, Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. When you finally settle in the land I'm giving you, you will offer special gifts as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. Now pause. God is saying, Yes, you failed, but one day you're gonna make it. I still believe this young generation is gonna make it. And when they do, this is how you worship. I love that. God still wants you. These are the gifts that may take form of burnt offering, a sacrifice to fulfill a vow, voluntary offering, or an offering at any of your annual festivals. They may be taken from your herds of your cattle or your flocks of sheep or your goats. When you present these offerings, you must also give the Lord a grain offering of two quarts of choice flour mixed with one quart of olive oil. For each lamb offered as a burnt offering or a special sacrifice, you must also present one quart of wine as a liquid offering. If the sacrifice is a ram, give a grain offering of four quarts of fine choice flour mixed with a third of a gallon of olive oil, and give a third of a gallon of wine as a liquid offering. This will be a pleasing aroma to the Lord. When you present a young bull as a burnt offering, or a sacrifice to fulfill a vow, or a peace offering to the Lord, you must also give a grain offering of six quarts of choice flour mixed with two quarts of olive oil. Give two quarts of wine as a liquid offering, this will be a special gift, a pleasing aroma to the Lord. Each sacrifice of a bull, ram, lamb, or a young goat should be prepared in this way. Follow these instructions with each offering you will present. All of the native born Israelites must follow these instructions when you offer a special gift as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. And if any foreigners visit you or live among you and want to be present as a special gift as a pleasing aroma to the Lord, they must follow these same procedures. Native born Israelites and foreigners are equal before the Lord and are subject to the same decrees. That's amazing, by the way. This is a permanent law for you, to be observed from generation to generation. The same instructions and regulations will apply both to you and to the foreigners living among you. Then the Lord said to Moses, Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. When you arrive in the land where I am taking you, you and you eat the crops that grow there, you must set aside the sum for a sacred offering to the Lord. Present a cake from the first of the flour you grind, and set it aside as a sacred offering to the Lord. As you do with the first grain from the threshing floor throughout the generations to come, you are to present a sacred offering to the Lord each year from the first of your ground flour. But suppose you unintentionally fail to carry out all of these commands that the Lord has given you through Moses, and suppose your descendants in the future fail to do everything that the Lord has commanded through Moses. If the mistake has been made unintentionally and the community is unaware of it, the whole community must present a young bull for a burnt offering as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. It must be offered along with this prescribed grain offering and liquid offering and one male goat for a sin offering. With it the priests will purify the whole community of Israel, making them right with the Lord, and they will be forgiven. For it was unintentional, and they have corrected it for their offering to the Lord, the special gift and the sin offering. The whole community of Israel will be forgiven, including the foreigners who live among you, and for all people who are involved in the sin. If one individual commits an unintentional sin, the guilty person must bring a one-year-old female goat for a sin offering. The priests will sacrifice it to purify the guilty person before the Lord, and the person will be forgiven. The same instructions apply both to the native-born Israelites and to the foreigners living among you. But those who brazenly violate the Lord will, whether native-born Israelites or foreigners, have blasphemed the Lord, and they must be cut off from the community. Since they have treated the Lord's word with contempt and deliberately disobeyed his commands, they must be completely cut off and suffer the punishment for their guilt. So notice what God is saying is, is He's saying, if you do these things, or when you get into the promised land, do these things so that we can worship. And even then, even in that moment, you're still going to make mistakes. And if you do it unintentionally, then here's a way back to me. If you do it intentionally, we're also going to have a way for you back to me or a way to get out of my presence. But still, I'm going to continue to do business with you. Even after you fail, God wants you. Now, sometimes there's going to be people that are going to test God. You know, maybe that's been you. I know it's been me at times. And even in this, sometimes people are going to test the Lord. Well, watch what happens when they do. Here's what the Bible says. One day, while the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they discovered a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. The people who found him doing this took him before Moses, Aaron, and the rest of the community. They held him in custody because they did not know what to do with him. Then the Lord said to Moses, The man must be put to death. The whole community must stone him outside the camp. So the whole community took the man outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as the Lord had commanded Moses. Now, that seems kind of harsh, right? He's gathering wood. But it's not just the wood. Number one, it is the idea of setting a precedent that God really does mean what he says. And here's the thing it would be different if God had never told them what to do. Now you imagine, let's say you're working at a job somewhere, and one day your boss comes up and fires you out of nowhere. And he's like, wait, wait, what do you why did you fire me? Well, we're supposed to leave at 5 and you left at 4 30 yesterday. Oh, I I didn't know. No one ever told me. Too bad. Well, that would be unfair, wouldn't it? I mean, yeah, you broke a rule, but you no one no one told you. Well, God's word lays out clearly what you're supposed to do. You know, but they weren't listening. And that's why it even said that they went and brought him to Moses and Aaron because they didn't know what to do, because they wasn't they weren't listening, but they still knew what to do. This guy knew, but he chose to do wrong anyway. And what God said was, if you do the crime, you have to do the time. And so that's what happened. And so the Bible says in verse 37, then the Lord said to Moses, Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. Throughout the generations to come, you must make tassels for the hems of your clothing and attach them with a blue cord. When you see these tassels, you'll remember and obey all the commands of the Lord instead of following your own desires and defiling yourselves, and you as you are prone to do. The tassels will help you remember that you must obey all the commands and be holy to your God. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and I will be uh and I and might that I might be your God, for I am the Lord your God. Now, the reason why I was stumbling over those words is I forgot to bring my prayer shawl with me. Now, it's another story of another day, but I do not have a Jewish drop of blood in my body, but I was raised with a lot of Jewish culture, and that's another story of another day. But one of the things that I had is I had a Jewish prayer shawl. And Jewish prayer shawls, they actually still have these different tassels, and they have different knots and wrappings around them that represent the different laws of God. There was so many laws, there were so many knots for the for the Ten Commandments, so many other laws for the so many other knots for the culture, kosher laws and different things. And what it was is when you would pray, you would hold on to these tassels, reminding you that God's word is true, and it would remind you to always obey God's law. So even when you were praying, you will hold these tassels as a reminder that God's word is true and God's word is to be followed. And so even to this day, they have these beautiful tassels, and they got the one blue cord that was in it, and they would have to go and they would have to get this special die to die this one string, what it was cords of string, to have this, and they would have all these different knots to represent the different laws of God. So even today, if you look at an Orthodox, practicing Orthodox Jew, you will see these tassels, and now you know what they are. They were all the way back in Numbers chapter 15 that says, Hey, I don't want this to happen again. Here is a way that you can remember. So notice God is saying, I don't want you to break my laws. I don't want to be separated from you. I don't want judgment to come. So from now on, I'm doing everything I can for you jokers. So now I want you to put these tassels on your clothes. And the whole reason why is the next time you think about gathering firewood and you trip over something, you look down, oh, there's a tassel. What's the tassel? Oh, the tassel reminds me about the oh, it's a Sabbath day. I need to not collect this firewood because God don't want to kill the fool. He doesn't want to. But here's the thing even after failure, God still wants you. The nation of Israel just got through doing the worst blunder ever. And the very next chapter, God's like, you know what? Even after failure, I still want you. And one day you're gonna enter that promised land. And when you do, here's how we're gonna do life together. Here's how we're gonna worship. And there's still folks that don't want to do what I gotta say, and I'm still gonna deal with them, but even after that, put tassels on your clothes. Because I don't want to be a God of judgment. I want to be a God of presence. I want to be there with you. And I wonder if God's saying that to us today. Maybe you've experienced a failure in your life. You know what God would say to you? I still love you. I haven't given up on you. You may have to pay the penalty for the crime or the sin that you have committed, but it doesn't change how much I love you. I still love you. So God's been talking to us. Let's talk to him in prayer. Let's read our verse and we'll be done for the day. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you, God, that even after failure, you still love us. I pray, God, that in all things we'll always come back to you and realize that your mercy is enough for us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. God's Word says in Numbers chapter six, may the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord show you his favor and give you his peace. Now, today we're gonna end our normal time together, but after this, sometimes I want to do a little bit of an after party, a bit of an after show. And what that is, is for those of you who are coming for the daily Bible reading, you can just kind of end now. But for some of you who want to dig a little bit deeper, I want to give you some resources and some tips and some ideas to dig deeper in your walk with God. So for today, I'm gonna say goodbye. But after this, I'm gonna find a way to kind of end this and start an outro so that we can talk about this. Because I got a lot of resources. I got a lot of things I'd love to give you if you want to dig deeper in God's work. Here's the thing the more you dig, the more you find. But that's for later. For today, I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for Numbers chapter 16.