Welcome to the first study in the book of Numbers and as you can see we went and got a backdrop with a bunch of numbers of course in the English language. This is the book of Numbers taken from the Masoretic Hebrew text in our perfect translation of the book of Numbers found in the King James Bible. We'll be sticking to the text. We won't be correcting or pretending to correct the Bible, pretending to know Hebrew like those fake Hebrew scholars out there. And we also won't use a counterfeit or alternative text or use the corrupt new versions and pretend to know Hebrew and that sort of thing. But as always, we're going to start off with a hillbilly holla going out to Sister Stephanie Rake. Is your hillbilly holla? And for those of you new to this, these studies, we do a hillbilly holler at the beginning. I'm a transplanted hillbilly from the hills of Southern Ohio. Used to walk out my front door and see the hills of Kentucky right over the Ohio River. Grew up that way. And we never forget where we came from. So there's your Hebrew as we get into our study with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you, Lord, for another opportunity to start another book, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and now Numbers, being able to go verse by verse with the help of the Holy Spirit. We just ask you continue to help us. In Jesus' name, amen. So as we get into numbers, there are a lot of people that skip this book, and there's others who just kind of nitpick and read here and there. We believe that we want to go through every word. We're going to do that, but there's times where we're going to read portions without much or any commentary because there's just no reason for it. But we do want to begin by reading God's introduction to the book of Numbers. And then as we get into it, we'll give you more background information and that sort of thing. But God starts out using Moses to write in Numbers 1, 1 through 3. It says, And the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of the congregation on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying, take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by their house, or by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their poles, from 20 years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel, thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies. So if you read that closely, you can see what we're told. This book begins as Moses has now led them into the wilderness of Sinai, and the tabernacle has been erected. And so later you're going to come across some things that will show you that this isn't written in chronological order, which means it's not in the order of the events as they happened. And you have to take careful note of those things if you don't want to get confused. Anybody who's read through the Bible at least a few times makes that connection because it's obvious. And we'll point it out when we think of it as we go through. But this is the second year as it says of the wilderness journey and God's talking to Moses inside the tabernacle and It's a little over two weeks Since the second Passover, so this is the The second year after they came out of Egypt should be the second Passover since they left Egypt. I guess you'd number that and say it was the third Passover altogether. And the first day of the second month, it says, it's not easy to remember, but it's good if you can remember that we said that the first month is Nisan. But then it's also later known as Abib. Language changes and the Bible just gives you the exact information Language changed when they went to Babylon a lot of the names of the months were changed just like today Christians still use the pagan names of the days of the week and of the months on our calendar and so that happened to the Hebrews. Go to 1 Kings 6.1 and 1 Kings 6.37. You'll see that the second month was the only name I can find. Tell me if I'm wrong. I looked real hard. The only name I can find other than calling it the second month is to call the month Ziph. Now, I just want to say there's some people say, well, I just believe we should call the months the first month, second month, third month, and the days of the week should be the first day, second day, third way. Well, the third day. You can try that if you want. Let me know how that works out. No one else will know what you're talking about. Or at least they'll have to think about what you're saying and figure it out. And the Bible uses these names. So if it's wrong, then the Bible would be wrong and you're holier than God in that case. So if you want to use that, that's fine, but don't act like it's a requirement of scripture. So the Passover that I just referred to, the second year after they came out of Egypt, it doesn't happen actually until chapter 9, even though it comes after what we're talking about here, chronologically it came before. So what we're reading about numbers 1 and then the Passover well, I've got the reference here. You can tell by the way it sounds when I read it Numbers 9 1 & 2 says and the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the first month of the second year After they were come out of the land of Egypt. Well, this is the first Day of the second month of the second year, but it's first the book of Numbers. It's told first. I hope that's clear to you. Trying to bring some clarity and sometimes I wonder if it may confuse people. But if you think about what I just said, go back and play it over if you need to. Anyway, God is telling Moses to count all the males. This is very important. And only the males 20 and up and only 11 of the tribes. And that's very important. I mean, it's very important if you take Bible study seriously. You can sort of average out each, let's say dividing the total number by 80. as the total is from 20 to about 100 years old, we'll say. Well, we know it's from 20 up, but there would have been a lot of people living beyond the normal age at this time. So we take for granted it's from about the age 20 to age 100, and then multiply that number that you find by 20, and you can tell how many more males there were under the age of 20. In other words, you take the whole number from the age 20 to 100. You would divide that by 80. because there's 80 years represented from the age 20 to 100. Then you multiply that number that you get by 20 because it's from age 20 down. And that tells you how many males that there were under the age of 20. And then when you take the whole number of all that and divide it by 11, that tells you how many were in each of the 11 tribes, which the Levites would have been, on average, about that many. This isn't precise. way to come up with the total number of those in Israel, but that's a good way of checking it out. So the numbering in Exodus 38 wasn't quite the same, by the way. Some of you were with us when we went through the book of Exodus, because it was more of a collection taken for the tabernacle, and this is after the tabernacle is built and it's in Sinai and it's erected and everything. But it does say there, it's something that I want to cover before moving on, it says, shall number them by their armies. And that tells us why. it's 20 on up males only, because this is for the purpose of knowing how many fighting men and how many would be total, how many of each tribe. And that's just a very important thing. If you're ever gonna face battle, you need to know how many men and you need to know what kind of equipment and that sort of thing. So that's why this is being done. Verse four then says, and with you, there shall be a man of every tribe. every one head of the house of his fathers. Now, you can just read past this as I've done many times, but if you sit and think about what we just read, it may not sound important to you, but put yourself in their shoes. One man is going to represent the entire tribe and tens of thousands of people under you as you represent them. It's like being elected governor of a small state here in the United States of America. These men that are going to be chosen to be the head of each tribe are sort of like the 12 apostles. There's going to be 12 of them, one for each tribe. And we know that of all the disciples of Jesus Christ, all the followers of Jesus Christ for 2,000 years, those 12 minus Judas plus Paul is the standard we always think of when it comes to following Christ. And so the thing is, we only memorize the name of the tribe. We still don't memorize the names of these men like we do, hopefully, try to memorize the names of the apostles. And I have to go over and over. I always leave one or two out. And don't feel bad if you do. And the same thing with the tribes of Israel. It's hard for me to retain all 12 perfectly. I'll not think of it for a few weeks. And then when I try to, I leave one or two out. If you're imperfect like me, then don't let it get you down. But the point is the effort. The effort to learn these names it helps your Bible study and it pleases God and that's what it's all about Doing all for the glory of God by the way. I've been asked why Jesus didn't choose an apostle from each tribe You know you think about that would have been neat and he could have but He didn't. I don't know why, except that I could only imagine that maybe the early church would have then tried to build a system on that and would have had important people out of each tribe, like the Pharisees or men like Diotrephus who like to have the preeminence. They'd be trying to set up a new religious system. You'd have 12 denominations for each tribe or whatever. You say, well, look how it ended up. Yeah, it did end up that way, but it was all man's doing. If God had done this, people would have said, well, God did it, you know, so that's why we have to accept it, even though they're all corrupt and everything. The way God set it up was there wasn't a particular tribe Associated with each apostle and there were no Denominational divisions Paul said we're not to say I am of Paul or I am of Apollos or anything like that I am of Peter you're not supposed to do that and people still do that to this day by the way and They don't realize how carnal they are But So with all the division you do see you can't blame God for it. It's man's fault and By the way, they would have been setting up one for each tribe. They probably would have acted like the archbishops or the bishop or the superintendent. Some churches have presidents. I think the Southern Baptists do and that sort of thing. So that may be why Jesus didn't pick one from each of the tribes. And we do see something similar in the Roman Catholic Orthodox and other Protestant denominations, but that's not God's fault. So now let's just read these names. Let's go from verse 5 through 16. And these are the names of the men that shall stand with you of the tribe of Reuben, Eleazar the son of Shadur. verse six the tribe of simeon. I'm not going to say the tribe of because the bible just says of simeon but you understand when it says of fill in the blank that's a tribe of simeon shalumiel the son of zerushadai verse seven of judah neshon the son of aminadab verse eight of issachar nethaniel the son of zuar verse nine of zebulun Eliab the son of Helam. Verse 10, of the children of Joseph, of Ephraim, Elishamah the son of Amahud, of Manasseh, Gamaliel the son of Padazer, and again because Leviticus isn't included in this Joseph gets counted but he's got his two sons are given a position as Tribes even though they're still part of Joseph. So it's like Joseph a and Joseph B Ephraim and Manasseh verse 11 of Benjamin Abaddon the son of Gideon I verse 12 of Dan a he's er the son of Amish a die and verse 13 of Asher Pagiel the son of Akron verse 14 of Gad Elias F the son of duo and Verse 15, of Naphtali, Ahira, the son of Enan. And then verse 16, these were the renowned of the congregation, princes of the tribes of their fathers, heads of thousands of Israel. So of all these, a couple million at least, we'll get back to that, but of these couple million people, then these 12, addition to Moses and Aaron and the some of the other priests these were the big cheese of the whole country so it's a big deal being chosen like that and probably not one in a million Bible students actually remembers those names I just read off if even that many but you'd better believe when it happened it was a big deal so now from verse 17 onward is where I'm just going to say it to let spiritual infants and toddlers get really bored, and they start to yawn and doze off, and then they don't read it. Even mature Christians have trouble not dozing off and falling asleep sometimes and reading some of these passages, which is why you should get the proper rest and not wait until it's bedtime and you're about to fall asleep before you try to do Bible study. But we're just going to read this. Again, this is a long passage we're going to read. Verses 17 through 43. And there's not much to be said if something comes to mind I will as we're reading along But we believe that every word of God is pure and that every man should But every man should live by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God Matthew 4 4 so here goes beginning verse 17 and Moses and Aaron took these men which are expressed by their names and Verse 18, and they assembled all the congregation together on the first day of the second month, and they declared their pedigrees after their families by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from 20 years old and upward by their poles. As the Lord commanded Moses, so he numbered them in the wilderness of Sinai. Verse 20, and the children of Reuben, Israel's eldest son, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, by their poles, every male from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war. Now just stop for a second. That just shows you how precise these things are. And it's a real thing. This isn't mythology. Anybody says, the Bible's a book of mythology. They're purely ignorant or they're liars. Mythology isn't going to give you such specific accounts and reckonings of genealogies as we see in the Bible over and over. That's why those genealogies are so important. You should at least read through them. Picking up verse 21, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Reuben, were 40 and 6,500. Verse 22, of the children of Simeon, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, those that were numbered of them, according to the number of the names, by their poles, every male from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war. Verse 23, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Simeon, were 50 and 9,300. So there's a lot of words here we're going to repeat in every section. But again, it's because this is basically a legal document. This is a legal rendering that we're reading. Verse 24, of the children of Gad, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, repeating every time. This is why they're being counted males only from 20 on up. Verse 25, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Gad, were 40 and 5,650. Verse 26, of the children of Judah, this is the tribe of Jesus, by the way, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war. Verse 27, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Judah, were threescore and 14,600. By the way, in my Bible, I actually write out in our way of writing the number off to the side. There's nothing wrong with doing that. Verse 28, of the children of Issachar, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Issachar, were 50 and 4,400. Verse 30, of the children of Zebulun, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war. Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Zebulun, were fifty and seven thousand and four hundred. Verse 32, of the children of Joseph, remember what we said about Ephraim and Manasseh, of the children of Joseph, namely of the children of Ephraim, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war. Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Ephraim, were 40,500. and then the part B of Joseph. Verse 34, of the children of Manasseh, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war. Those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Manasseh, were 30 and 2,200. This is a fulfillment, by the way, of Jacob's prophecies about Ephraim and Manasseh that we'd studied back in Genesis chapter 39. Continuing, verse 36, of the tribe of Benjamin, this is where King Saul would come from, by the way. By their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Benjamin, were 30 and 5,400. And by the way, King Saul and Saul who became the Apostle Paul, both were of the tribe of Benjamin. And there's others important that we don't have time to get into. Verse 38, of the tribe, or of the children of Dan. Remember Jacob said his rider would be thrown, and in Revelation chapter seven, the tribe of Dan is missing from the list of the tribes of Israel. But here, verse 38, of the tribe of Dan, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, Verse 39, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Dan, were three score in 2,700. Verse 40, of the children of Asher, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Asher, were 40 in 1,500. Last but not least, then, in verse 42, of the children of Naphtali, throughout their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those, verse 43, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Naphtali, were 50 and 3,400. So that's 603,550. We'll call it 600,000 to be conservative. That means that there were about 7,500 males of every age. That would mean that there were a total of about 150,000 if that average held true for all the males under the age of 20. That's a total of 750,000 males, a total of 1.5 million people in all, but that's kind of a lowball number. That's a conservative number, and some people put it closer to about 2 million. But we also then have to account for the tribe of Levi that wasn't numbered, but if you take the 1.5 million divided by 11, that means the average size of those tribes is 1.65 million. I'm sorry, you would take, the total then would be 1.65 million because the average would be the 1.5. So in addition to that, and I hope I read that right, I've got the numbers here. I'm gonna read it. If you also account for the tribe of Levi, which was not counted, dividing 1.5 million by the 11 tribes counted, then, We come to a total of about 150,000, I think was what it came up. Yeah, 150,000 was the number added to 1.5 million. Our lowball conservative estimate is that there was 1.65 million people with Moses at this point. Some people put it closer to 3 million. And we want to add this the 1.65 million includes what we call it the Bible calls the mixed multitude Acts 12 38 says a mixed multitude went up also with them and flocks and herds and very much cattle so nearly 2 million people at the very least think of all the animals in the In most families and have goats and cows and sheep and all that so now Moses explains the situation with Leviticus from verse 47 to 49 but after the Levites after the tribe of their fathers were not numbered among them For the Lord had spoken unto Moses saying only thou shalt not number the tribe of Levi neither take the sum of them among the children of Israel and we'll see in chapter 3 why God did that but verse 50 says but thou shalt appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of testimony and over the vessels thereof and over all things that belong to it they shall bear the tabernacle and all the vessels thereof and they shall minister unto it and shall encamp around about the tabernacle. So no one but Levite males who are clean between 20 and 50 were, and they couldn't be mentally or physically handicapped, took part in that. And with that, we're gonna close out the chapter, reading verses 51 through 54. And when the tabernacle setteth forward, the Levite shall take it down. And when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levite shall set it up, and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death. Verse 52, And the children of Israel shall pitch their tents, every man by his own camp, and every man by his own standard, throughout their hosts. Numbers 153, But the Levites shall pitch around about the tabernacle of testimony, that there be no wrath upon the congregation of the children of Israel. and the Levites shall keep the charge of the tabernacle of testimony. Verse 54, and the children of Israel did according to all that the Lord commanded Moses. So did they. So you'd have Levites all around the tabernacle in the middle and the tribes outside of that as we close. Until next time.