Welcome to the Love and Context podcast, engaging in unscripted conversations with your hosts,
Ben and Spencer.
Whether you're tuning in from your car, your office, your home, or anywhere in between,
we are so happy to have you join us today.
Our mission is simple, to explore the Bible through a powerful lens of love.
Together we'll uncover fresh insights and gain deeper understandings of how we can love
God and love the people in our everyday lives.
So buckle up and join us on a spiritual journey as we discover timeless wisdom that is just
as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago.
Without further ado, let's dive right in.
Welcome to Love and Context podcast with Ben and Spencer.
I'm Spencer.
I'm Ben.
So in case you haven't figured that out yet, or if you're a first time listener, or a first
time watcher, and they're like, who are these very ugly fellows that are going to talk to
us about the Bible?
My wife thinks I'm beautiful and that's what counts.
There was a really funny story about Spencer.
It was about a year ago.
He had a challenge for his kids at Young Life that if they raised a certain amount of money,
he would shave off his beard.
So if you ever wonder what that looks like, it's terrifying.
It is.
Yeah.
So if you're joining us for the first time, we are going through Torah.
We're actually in Numbers and we're going to be in Numbers 20 today.
Just one chapter, guys.
Just one chapter.
I know we have a tendency to cover like four or five chapters at a time.
A couple of the episodes, they may be shorter coming up, but there's these topics we can't
rush past them.
They need their own time and they only need their own subjects.
So these may be a little bit shorter episodes, but based on our amount of we talk, I'm going
to guess that it's probably not going to be the case.
Find out.
Yeah.
By the way, I wanted to address something that I got the comment from my listener.
They made a comment and I told them I was definitely going to talk about them on the
podcast.
So here we go.
I mentioned that when they were listening through and apparently they were just like
crushing through them, like multiple episodes at a time, they said that we tend to say you
have to, you must, you gotta, like on a very frequent basis and we're going to keep doing
that.
Always just know that we're-
Your listener.
Continue to enjoy.
Continue to enjoy because we're going to say things probably incorrectly at times.
Here is a, we're actually in a different location.
Hopefully we're going to see how the lighting works out here.
Yeah.
We haven't actually posted the first episode.
In fact, if you watch the first episode and you watch this episode, you're like, they're
wearing the same thing.
That's because we recorded them at the same time.
No, we just don't do laundry.
That's it.
Yeah.
You did talk about in your last episode that you only have like five of the exact same shirt.
I do.
I own four of this sweater and it's for a reason.
Yeah.
So I think it was a, it was a story about Daniel Radcliffe when he would go out in public,
he always wore the same thing over and over again so that paparazzi couldn't sell pictures
of him because they couldn't verify what day it came from.
Yep.
Which I was like, that's genius.
Pretty great.
I'm not going to lie.
That's pretty great.
All right.
So this is going to be kind of a little bit of a harder story.
We're going to get into a few things here.
So I'm going to just start reading from here.
I started in chapter 20 and you know what?
We're going to read a good section of it and then come back and talk about it.
Starting verse one, it says, in the first month, the whole Israel community arrived
at the desert of Zin.
That is Zin not sin.
And they stayed at Kadesh.
There Miriam died and was buried.
Very sudden.
Now there was no water for the community and the people gathered in opposition to Moses
and Aaron.
They quarreled with Moses and said, if only we had died with it when our brothers fell
before the Lord.
First time they quarreled with Moses, right?
Yeah.
So you remember we didn't get very far.
This has just happened.
Like this has just happened and Moses and Aaron interceded for them so that they didn't
die there.
Yeah.
Now they go a little bit further and they don't have any water, which to be fair, the
desert is really hot.
We have that shirt available now.
Yep.
I think it is.
It is.
The desert is really hot.
And so like to be fair, no water in the desert is rough.
Yeah.
Right.
And they actually don't complain about water that much in the desert.
I was actually talking with a friend of mine and he was talking about water in the desert
and they said, oh yeah, the Israelites are always complaining about water in the desert.
It's like it only happens like twice.
Right?
They complain a lot in the desert.
Yeah.
They complain a lot in the desert, but they only actually complain about water twice.
The first time was when God had them go strike the rock.
And then the second time is the story that's coming up.
By the way, those stories might be related.
It's entirely possible.
But they are.
All right.
Take a look on here.
It says, they quarreled and said, if only we had died when our brothers fell dead before
the Lord, why did you bring the Lord's community into the wilderness that we and our livestock
should die here?
While they up the ante, the livestock's going to die too.
Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place?
It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates, and there's no water to drink.
It's interesting they talk about grapevines and pomegranates because we just saw that
somewhere.
Where was that?
That was just previous chapters.
When they were going into the promised land, it was grapes, pomegranates and figs.
Yeah.
That's the stuff they brought back.
And they're like, we had all these things in Egypt.
Well, you could have had all these things if you had gone into the land like God had
told you.
Yep.
So Marysus and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance of the tent of meeting and
fell face down and the glory of the Lord appeared to them.
The Lord said to Moses, take the staff and you and your brother Aaron gathered the assembly
together.
Take to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water.
You will bring water out of the rock for the whole community so they and their livestock
can drink.
So Moses took the staff from the Lord's presence just as he commanded.
By the way, staff in the Lord's presence, which one would this have been?
Aaron's staff.
Aaron's staff, the one that just butted.
He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them,
listen you rebels, must we bring you water out of the rock?
Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with the staff.
Their gust out in the community and their livestock drank.
But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, because you did not trust me enough to honor me as
holy in the sight of Israel, you will not bring this community into the land I give
them.
These were the waters of Meribah where the Israelites quarreled with the Lord and where
he was proved holy among them.
Okay.
A lot of sudden shifts in the story.
Right?
We're going to go further than this, but we need to stop and talk about the story.
In the show notes for this podcast, I'm actually going to link a blog that I did on the story
because there's a lot of interesting things that are going on here.
So one of the first interesting things that shows up in ancient Eastern writing, the rabbis
writing is that there's a story that they tell in the Mishnah.
Now remember, if you don't remember, the Mishnah is like Jewish commentary on the Bible.
Right?
And there's a story in the Mishnah that when Moses originally struck the rock, Miriam was
in charge of holding the rock and whenever she would go places, she would sing to it
and water would pour out.
That's why they never complained about water.
Now, that isn't necessarily what literally happened.
It's supposed to drive you to this reality is that as soon as Miriam dies, there's a
problem with water.
So there seems to be some sort of connection there that the text is driving us towards.
Now I'll leave you to wrestle with that.
It is a very interesting thing.
Miriam dies and then there's no water.
Maybe Miriam was in charge of water.
Maybe she was in charge of finding water.
There's a bunch of different things that that could have to do with.
But I do think that that story from the Mishnah is super interesting.
Yeah.
I think most stories from the Mishnah are super interesting because they're meant to
drive you to a textual thing.
So Miriam has died and there isn't water in the desert.
And to be fair, like I said, the desert is hot.
It's real hot.
And they complain about not having water.
It's crazy though, because immediately there's multiple things like, oh, we should have died
when God came against the people.
Oh, we should be back in Egypt.
Oh, if only we had gone into the promised land.
Now the thing we know, because we just read this story and hopefully as listeners, you
just read the story as well, is that most of these things are actually their fault.
Right?
They complained, they didn't go up.
And then they tried to go up when God told them not to and they got their butts handed
to them.
Caleb was the only guy who was like, let's go.
Right?
He was like, let's go get this land.
But it didn't actually work out that way.
Right?
I think that's really telling for what we deal with a lot of times in the church today.
We run into a situation that we're uncomfortable.
And we tend to have revisionist history.
We talked about this towards the end of last episode.
Yep, we did.
I mean, we tend, with that revisionist history, we just tend to make it what we think it should
be or what we thought it should be.
Right.
And not actually looking at what God's plan is.
I had heard a quote and I think it's really good and it's really good for this.
We tend to view history of other people through a lens of distrust.
Like that they were way harsher and meaner than they're supposed to be.
And we always put pain ourselves in the best light possible.
That tends to be how we just look at history in general.
And usually the truth is somewhere in between there.
Yeah.
Usually people aren't as harsh as we remember and we were not as level headed as we remember.
I remember Tara and I, my wife and I, were having this conversation about this meeting
that we were both a part of.
I got out and I was like, yeah, I made sure to keep a level head.
I didn't raise my voice.
She's like, yeah, maybe not so much.
So she had a very different perspective on how I handled that meeting.
Yeah.
And I've had the same thing with my wife where we've come out of meetings and I was like,
yeah, I was really calm and collected.
And she's like, so about that.
Yeah, not so much.
I was like, really?
She's like, no, you were a little bit of a jerk there.
And I was like, oh, okay.
I also have had the one where I said, yeah, I was telling them over and over again that
we need to do this.
And she'll go, you never actually said that.
I think you said it in your head, but you never actually said that out loud.
And people tend to respond to things you say out loud.
So we tend to do that as humans.
We tend to judge everybody else by their actions and us by our intentions.
We tend to do that as humans.
And so when we're examining our lives, where we're at in ministry, where we're at in life,
we need to do a fair examination.
So in response to this, I like that Moses and Aaron's choice is to go to the temple,
go to where God is, fall face down and before him and he appears.
Just bring it before God.
I want to give them large kudos because in a little bit we're going to talk about some
things that don't go so well.
But I want to point out that good leadership, when hardship comes, your first action should
be to pray, should be to seek God, get in the word, seek Godly wisdom.
These are all good things to do when conflict comes.
That doesn't seem to be what we usually do.
No.
We're like, oh, you know what?
I can handle this.
I can deal with this, whatever, this, that or the other.
But the invitation is actually to trust God in the moment, to ask God, like, what are
your solutions?
Yeah.
And then when it continues to fall apart, then we're like, oh, I should bring God into
it.
Yeah.
And it's like, you should have done that two weeks ago.
Yeah.
Or two months ago.
Is there maybe this mentality where we don't want to involve God until it's like really
bad?
Well, we often view our relationship with God as a boss-employee relationship.
As an employee, you want to do the best job possible and you don't want to inconvenience
your boss.
You want to inconvenience your boss as little as possible.
Right.
And so, and if you're doing your best job possible, then your boss is going to essentially
praise you and you'll be like, okay, he's doing awesome.
This is fantastic.
Well, and it also has a thing to do with trust though.
Yeah.
So coming back to this idea that we've talked about repeatedly in the podcast of like, do
you view God through an angry lens?
Right.
If you assume that God's going to be angry if you come and talk to him, then you're going
to try to avoid getting God involved as much as possible and you're going to try to solve
it yourself and try to solve it in your own power.
If you view God as a loving father who wants to see you succeed, you're going to be a lot
more likely that when you run into hardship, you're like, hey God, what's going on?
What should I do?
Now, sometimes he's going to say you need to keep going.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
And what we need to do is we actually need to step into that father-son relationship
or father-daughter relationship where it's like, hey, no, I want to involve you in my
life as soon as something comes up.
Right.
As soon as I can.
You were telling me that story about your daughter and Ling Tile because you were doing
that in your house, Ling Tile, and how she was just insistent that she was going to do
it her way.
So she just learned how to use an impact driver.
And some of you who are listening are like, isn't she five?
I was like, yes, she is.
And some of us who are talking here are like, what's an impact driver?
Yeah.
So she just learned how to use, for Ben's sake, a drill.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Drill.
Heavy power drill.
That's what I heard.
Yeah.
An impacting drill.
Yeah.
She just learned how to use a drill.
And so she was like, I am going to...
We had to fix some floorboards before we could get into the tile.
She's like, I'm going to fix the floorboards.
She's trying to put the new subfloor down.
And I'm like, no, we got to cut it.
We got to cut.
We got to measure.
We have to cut, get the subfloor to fit.
And she's like, no, I got this.
And so then she pulls out the tape measure and she's like, it's 3722 inches.
I'm like, that's not a number to start with.
Why?
Either that or it's a really big number.
Yeah.
Which my floorboards are not that big.
But anyways, it was...
And then she's like, oh, I got this.
And then she would get frustrated.
I was like, oh, I can't do it.
I'm like, okay, well, let me help you and show you how to do it.
And then, no, I got this.
And then I was like, okay.
Right?
Yeah.
You just had to let her go and do it.
Yeah.
And then she's like, I'm noticing where she came and talked to you and you recognize that
she wouldn't learn until she did it herself and messed up.
And a loving father lets you do that.
Yeah.
I let her do it.
I stood there to make sure that she wasn't going to do anything that was going to hurt
her.
Right?
She was using power tools.
So I was like, I'm going to stand there and make sure she's not going to hurt herself.
But at the same time, I was like, all right, you got this.
Go for it.
And then she eventually got to a point where she got frustrated enough where she's like,
all right, dad, I need you to help me.
Right.
And to the point of what's going on in the book of Numbers, this is the invitation from
God is like, are you going to trust me?
Because we talked about over and over again in these last, they're grumbling, they're
grumbling, they're whispering, they're spreading bad reports.
They don't trust God.
No.
Even in the quail, they were gathering 10 times what they needed.
No.
Because they don't trust that the meat's going to be there the next day.
They don't trust that God's going to lead them into the land.
They don't trust that they can fight the Nephilim and the Amalekites and all these different
people.
God's going to provide anything, which is crazy because he's done it over and over again.
And by the way, there are so many churches in America that don't trust.
Correct.
That the Lord's going to do his work.
And they're like, we need to do the work.
Well, and that's a surprising thing.
You have these churches that don't trust.
And then they look at the churches that do and they're like, well, they got to be doing
something like incorrect theologically.
Maybe they're just trusting God and he's blessing it.
Even if they have bad parts, he's blessing it because the gospel is being preached, because
the kingdom is moving forward, because love is adorning their posts.
Right?
And let's be real throughout Torah.
God is blessing Israel.
And not perfect people.
Not perfect people.
He's blessing this grumbling, complaining nation.
Right?
Rightfully so.
Like let's give a little credit to Israel.
Like they were ripped out of the life that they knew.
Slavery.
Yeah.
They were ripped out of it.
They knew that life and then they were thrown into life in the desert as desert wanderers
for a while.
And so they had a very sudden change.
Very sudden.
Very sudden change.
So it's natural to be like, what's going on?
Well, especially when you factor in like, we set slavery, right?
So you know exactly what to expect every day of slavery.
Yeah.
Right?
Like you don't have to guess what's going to happen.
Who's an authority?
Like it's very clear.
God leads a different way.
God doesn't lead with the rod.
He leads with the voice.
Yes.
Which is actually going to bring us into what happens next here.
So let's take a look and see what God tells them to do.
So they go before God, which is the right thing to do.
And God says to Moses, take the staff.
Okay.
We know what he's talking about.
And you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together.
Perfect.
Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water.
You will bring water out of the rock for the community to drink so that they and their
livestock can drink.
Right?
So then let's take a look.
Moses takes the staff, exactly what he's supposed to do.
He and Aaron gather the assembly together in front of the rock.
And then Moses speaks to the people.
Moses wasn't told to speak to the people.
Wasn't told to speak to the people.
He was told to speak to the rock.
And you wonder, you're like, why is that such a big deal?
Well, take a look at what he says.
He says, listen, you rebels, do we have to bring water out of this rock?
Now to be fair, God did say that they're going to bring the water out of the rock, right?
100%.
So he's not misquoting God at that point.
But is this context how God is speaking about them bringing water?
No.
Yeah.
I would suggest that earlier God is suggesting bringing the water as an act of mercy.
Yes.
Act of grace.
But Moses is an act of vindication of, I know better than you.
And so this is what's going to go on.
Right?
And we're going to place you under judgment, Israel, so that you can see, like you're such
complainers that God has to bring water out of a rock.
Right?
You have God saying, hey, I'm going to do this work through Moses.
Right?
And he looks at Moses and says, I'm going to do this through you.
And then Moses gets up there and he's like, all right, do I have to do this?
Those are two very different things.
Two very different things.
And then Moses speaks to the people.
He doesn't speak to the rock.
And then he strikes the rock.
But he doesn't just strike it once.
Twice.
I think the first time he hits the rock and water doesn't come out, he's like, right,
I'm supposed to speak to it.
Right?
Like you think like that was the thing.
Now I have no textual like verification of this, but this makes me think of the book
of Genesis and makes me go back to the garden of Eden where Eve eats and then Adam eats
and then their eyes are opened.
Like sin is realized in that moment.
And so Moses doesn't strike once.
He strikes twice.
Right?
He strikes twice.
Like after God has not moved on the first strike, he strikes again.
Now God honors it and he brings water.
So God is going to pour out his grace even when people abuse how it's supposed to be
done.
Yeah.
And we actually really need to stress this because I think sometimes people misunderstand
this.
One of the reasons we don't talk badly about other people is because we know that God moves
in spite of us most of the time rather than because of us.
Yeah.
And we should be so thankful and grateful that that is who God is.
I remember the story.
We've talked about this before, but Jesus is in Samaria and James and John come in.
They're like, these people don't appreciate us.
Let's bring down fire from heaven.
And he's like, really?
Really?
He's like, yeah, we're not going to do that.
But I'll tell you what, the next day I'm going to commission you to go preach the good news.
Turns out Jesus just has a different way of discipling us than we do.
Yeah.
Right?
And I think we really need to be grateful and thankful that that's who God is.
Yeah.
Because when you look at the story of how Moses handled this, he's like, vindication,
I am going to call you all out.
And God's sitting there and he's like, here we go.
But I'm still going to fulfill my promise.
This also plays back into repeatedly when God says I'm going to take them all out and
then Moses steps in the gap.
This also plays into my perspective theologically that God is inviting Moses into a role.
He's inviting him to be the kind of person who leads with his voice, not with a stick.
Because Egypt leads with a stick.
In fact, we're going to link a show from Baymah talked about the tale of two kingdoms.
Are you going to lead with Shalom or are you going to lead with Empire?
In this moment, Moses chooses Empire.
He chooses to put a story on display and it's just not God's.
And I would postulate that at this point, when God has this conversation, he just realizes
that Moses is not going to be the kind of person that he needs to lead the people into
the land.
And so he says, because you did not trust in me.
Now up to this point, what's been the issue in Israel?
They don't trust with the food.
They don't trust with the quail.
They don't trust with the leadership.
They don't trust with the spirit.
They don't trust, just keep naming it out.
They don't trust the leadership of Aaron.
So the staff is butted.
Now Moses doesn't trust God to lead the way that he says they should lead.
Yeah.
Right.
And God's like, no, because you don't trust me and you're not setting me aside as holy,
you're not making me different than every other God that they've encountered in the
sight of the Israelites.
You will not bring this community into the land I give them.
Now we're going to stick a pin in that conversation because in Deuteronomy, Moses has a different
perspective about why he's not allowed in.
Right.
But right here, this story is you didn't make me holy.
And so you're not going to be the people to lead.
Yeah.
It is actually interesting though, in this text, I was running through it.
It actually doesn't say that Moses isn't going to be allowed in the promised land.
Not directly, no.
Like the implication is there.
And I think God makes it more plain later.
Yeah.
And that's going to come back to this point where we're going to talk about the story
later.
But Moses actually starts asking God, he's like, can't I lead these people?
And he's like, nope, you're not going to go on the land.
And I think that that's a final nail that kind of gets driven in there.
I long maintain in these stories though, that people react very strangely.
Yeah.
The reaction for Moses could have been, you know what, God, you're right.
I didn't lead the way you wanted me to.
And so I'm going to lead them effectively.
And then when you're ready to pass on the leadership, you let me know.
And I was like, I'm really curious what God would have done at that point.
Now there's also one other episode I'm going to link from Baima and that's Josh Basset,
who was actually a guest host.
He's a regular host now.
Like Marty has a bunch of different hosts that host episodes, but he has a really interesting
take on what's going on in the Hebrew here.
And we're not going to get into it, but there's like this thing about the staff and a bunch
of other things.
And I just think it's worth taking a look at.
And I think it's Josh Basset.
I might after this have to eat my words.
Well, it wouldn't be the first time.
Yeah, it wouldn't be the first time we've got to do that.
I haven't actually haven't listened to that episode of Baima.
So yeah, I have to go listen to that.
So then moving on what ends up happening.
He was not proved holy among them.
So then Moses goes and he sends messengers to the Kadesh and the kingdom Eden and is
like, Hey, can we pass through?
And they're like, no, no, you can't pass through our territory.
Right.
You're going to have to go around.
So Israel actually ends up having to go around.
Now I wonder when I read this, if they weren't just trying to take a shortcut, try to get
to the promised land.
Yeah.
Right.
So then it says that the whole Israelite community set out from Kadesh and came to Mount Hore.
At Mount Hore near the border of Edom, the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Aaron will be
gathered to his people.
He will not enter the land I give the Israelites because both of you rebelled against my command
at the waters of Mirabah.
Get Aaron and his son Eliezer to take them up the mountain, remove Aaron's garments and
put them on his son Eliezer for Aaron will be gathered to his people.
He will die there.
Moses did as the Lord commanded.
They went up to Mount Hore in the sight of the whole community.
Moses removed Aaron's garments and put them on his son Eliezer and Aaron died there on
top of the mountain.
Then Moses and Eliezer came down the mountain and then the whole community learned that
Aaron had died and all of Israel mourned for him for 30 days.
So there's two deaths that happened in this chapter.
The first one is Miriam and the big note is there's no water.
Then the second is Aaron is dying and he's passing on his leadership role to his son.
But it says that the entire community mourns him for 30 days.
If you're Moses, how do you feel?
Because it's Moses, Miriam and Aaron.
People have loved Miriam up to this point.
It seems to be the case.
They waited seven days for her because her skin defiling.
It doesn't say that they mourned Miriam.
They just moved on and started complaining about water.
I wonder if that doesn't play a little bit into Moses' frustration about the rebels.
Sister freshly dead.
Nobody cares.
Then almost like a stick it in your eye afterwards is like your brother dies and they mourn him
30 days.
Does my sister not matter?
She's literally the one that chased me down the Nile.
Not to mention, let's not forget that Aaron was the one that God sent to Moses when Moses
was like, I can't do this by myself.
So God was like, here's Aaron.
So Aaron, despite all his flaws, despite all the stuff he did, the golden calf, all that,
despite all of that, he was by Moses' side this whole journey.
He was there to speak on Moses' behalf to Pharaoh.
He was there when they left Egypt.
He was there partying on the Red Sea a whole way.
Other people have died.
Other people have been born in this timeframe so far.
Aaron was there the whole time.
So Moses in a very short period of time, he lost both his right and his left hand.
Not just family, but also leadership.
And not only that, like right in the middle of this, because he lost his temper, because
he didn't actually do what God called him to be, he's not actually being brought into
the promise of what God is doing through the people.
Right?
Like, this is an intense chapter for Moses.
And it's hard because you're looking at this and you're like, okay, Moses is patient with
the people and he goes before God and God defends him and he goes before God and God
defends him, goes before God.
And even in this case, God is defending him once again.
He's going to provide water.
Yeah.
I would challenge anybody listening to this or watching this, go read this chapter with
your empathetic lens on.
And see this guy who lost his family, lost his ministry partners, who lost his co-leaders.
Now he's left on his own is what it feels like.
Now yes, Aaron's son Eliezer is taking up the mantle, but what do we know about Eliezer?
Not much yet.
Right?
At this point in the story, we don't know anything really about him.
We know he's not Nate Eben Abihu.
Yeah, we know that.
He at least knew enough not to go and try to become like God.
Yeah.
He at least knew that much.
That's what we know about him.
We'll learn more later on.
Don't worry.
But at this point, Moses has to be in a spot where he is hurting.
He is in deep, deep pain.
Right?
And what we often do as readers is we just read past this chapter.
We're like, okay, we're like numbers 20.
I'll put another challenge out there.
How many people have a verse memorized from numbers 20?
I don't think I have a verse memorized from numbers 20.
Yeah.
So I could probably quote something that I literally just read.
Same here.
Like I got my Bible open in front of me right now.
And no, my Mac's not my Bible.
I just have Bible open on my Mac.
I would challenge people to read this through the lens of empathy.
This is a heavy, heavy, heavy chapter for a leader.
Yeah.
Like if you're talking in church and let's say you had a pastor who had a ministry team
and that was both his family and his co-ministers and all of a sudden his whole family died
or her whole family died and you're like, oh, okay, great.
Let's go about our day.
It's heavy.
So one of the things I was thinking about when listening to this is I want to talk to
the Christian, to the teacher, to the leader, to the pastor, to the evangelist, to the person
who is walking with God, okay?
Some of you, this is going to hit harder than others.
So just bear with me.
You've had successes in your life.
God's done incredible things, but God handed you something and you fumbled it so badly
that you actually betrayed the very heart of God.
And so that dream of what he was going to do with you is not going to happen anymore.
But God still has things left for Moses to do, okay?
I want you to hear that because God says you're not going to go into the community, but you
still have a role.
You still have a role until Joshua takes them over the sea, over the river.
Moses still has a role.
And so pastor, teacher, Christian, evangelist, whatever you are and you've failed ultimately,
you feel like you've just completely crushed everything you ever had.
God is not done with you.
It's not going to be what it was.
And it might be something completely different than you anticipated, but God's not done with
you yet.
It's time to accept forgiveness and move on.
Leave your past and your past.
By the grace of Jesus Christ, no condemnation sticks with you.
The consequences of your actions, you may or may not be able to have those go away.
You may have to bear them the rest of your life, but Christ goes with you and condemnation
does not follow.
And moving forward, don't try to make it look like what it was.
Because that's not what God had for you.
In fact, I would argue that your mistake is probably going to be the best thing that you
can actually teach to the next generation.
You can acknowledge, hey, this is what happened.
This is how it happened.
And this is how God walked me through it.
So you have an opportunity to actually disciple and raise up future generations that are going
to know how to deal with heartache.
So good.
Just in the Christian life, man, there's just so many things that you can do.
Sin is a fickle mistress and she will devour you.
I remember in the book of Genesis, God says to Cain, sin is crouching at your door waiting
to devour you, but you must conquer it.
And if you don't, you may lose the promise, but there's still a role for you in the kingdom
of God.
Yeah.
We just want to encourage leaders.
It's hard.
It is real hard.
And I think in the church, we have a tendency to build up pastors on pedestals and then
we're surprised when they fall off.
And I want to take a moment and speak to the people who aren't in church leadership, who
just attend church.
The reality of the role that your pastor has taken on is that they're not going to be able
to please everyone.
True.
So Ben and I have been in church leadership a number of different times and I personally
have been able to please every single person.
Yeah.
That's a lie.
Yeah.
I remember one church I was at, it didn't matter how I preached.
There's always people who loved it and there's always people who hated it.
When I led worship, it didn't matter what songs I picked.
There's people who loved it.
There's people who hated it.
It didn't matter how we had the lobby set up.
There's people who liked it.
There's people who hated it.
Right.
And so in one sense, it didn't matter too much because there's always going to be people
who loved it and always people who hated it.
Right.
And so we have to recognize that our church leaders, they've been put in charge of that
church and we need to be encouraging them and building them up.
Going back to last week, if it's not your staff that's butted, then your job is to support
the one who butted.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Right.
If it's not your position and you just have to be okay with where God puts you.
In fact, this comes up multiple times because we go back to Nate Abedabaihu.
They were trying to usurp the role of their father.
Yeah.
Right.
You have Cora and the worship leaders who are seeking to usurp the authority of Aaron.
Yeah.
Right.
This is happening over and over again.
Miriam and Aaron even are upset with Moses because of his wife because they're like,
oh, does God only speak to you?
Doesn't he speak to us?
They're getting intimidated because they're not comfortable with who got his place and
authority over them.
Yeah.
So, the authority being in authority over you, as far as I can tell, Moses is a great
person having authority over you because he's incredibly patient until he wasn't.
Right?
So, it took him years to lose his patience.
Over and over again, he's like, well, I'm just going to go to God.
I'm just going to go to God.
The second that he forgets to go to God, disaster happens.
Yeah.
It reminds me of a story in the book of, I think it was probably the second Samuel, in
a time when kings go to war.
Yeah.
David was at home.
Yeah.
When you're not where you're supposed to be, following the voice you're supposed to follow,
you tend to do bad things.
You were talking about not being able to please everyone.
That's why it becomes so important.
The number one thing we need to do as Christians is be able to hear and respond to the voice
of God.
Yeah.
And that is, depending on how you view theology, that's praying, that's reading your Bible,
that is God speaking to you directly, all of those different things.
Obviously using the Bible as the basis for which all those things are judged.
Most church leaders are trying their best.
Most of them, yeah.
Most of them.
Most of them are trying their best.
Right?
And what I'm not saying is I'm not saying don't ever take things up with your church
leaders.
Right.
Right?
I take things up with our church leaders when needed.
Right.
Right?
I've had conversations about a few different things with them, but I'm always very careful.
I've always very careful to be like, okay, how do I have this conversation in a way that's
going to be productive and helpful all across the board to everybody involved?
Well, there's a difference between having a conversation about legitimate concerns in
a position of love and respect and complaining because you're not getting your way.
Yeah.
Right?
Right.
One of those is very productive and one of them is not so much.
Exactly.
And if you can't figure out which one, I don't know how you got the episode, whatever this
is of the podcast.
Yeah.
That's true.
So that's what we have for you today.
Yeah, next week we're going to be talking about the story of the bronze serpent.
And so I want you guys to not only read that story, but I also want you to read the story
in John 3 when he's having this conversation with Nicodemus because we're going to talk
about both of those pieces and how they interconnect and what Jesus is referencing back to.
Yeah.
Right?
So that should be a really interesting episode.
Yeah.
Well, thanks for listening and watching today.
If you want, you can find us on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Amazon music, a few other platforms
as well.
Those are the main ones though.
If you want to see our faces, YouTube's the way to go.
If you watch one episode with our faces and you're like, I don't want to see those faces
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That's fine too.
They say those guys sound way better than they look.
They sound way better than they look.
You can just listen.
That's totally fine.
So those are places you can find us.
Also TikTok, Instagram, Facebook.
Yep.
You can find us at those places as well.
Don't forget there is a store set up now where we're going to have the shirt.
The desert is really hot.
I've got a few other things on there as well.
So yeah, check that out if you want.
I mean, just in case anybody's wondering how we handle any money that we make off this
podcast is we actually just donate it all back into local ministries in our community.
Correct.
Yeah.
We're doing this because we love talking about God.
We're not trying to make any money.
So any money that you give us actually goes directly to local ministry.
Yeah.
There you go.
So we're doing what we like and we don't need the money.
So yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, until next time, we will see, talk, listen, whatever to you later.
Goodbye.
Right.
That's a wrap for today's episode.
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That's going to be editing nightmare.
Do you think it's weird that in subtle we don't pronounce the B?
I think so.
Yeah.
That's you get your ADD moment.
So do I.
Yeah.
Woo when she does that, she's going to be Magazines podcast.