Nepaug Bible Church - http://www.nepaugchurch.org - Pastor's Sermon Notes - http://www.nepaugchurch.org/Sermons/zz20120624.htm

THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION
Numbers: Lessons From Spiritual Casualties And Conquerors
Part XLIV: Trusting God's Use Of Trials For The Godly In An Evil Era
(Numbers 30:1-16 with et al.)
    Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

    A question we face today is why devout believers in Christ, people who are committed to heeding God's Word in an era of great spiritual darkness, are allowed by God to face difficult personal trials:

    (1) We certainly live in a spiritually dark era:

    (a) The June 18, 2012 USA TODAY, p. 6A cited Dick Polman in The Philadelphia Inquirer as writing: "Sunday [June 17] (marked) the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in . . . [It] conditioned Americans to distrust their government . . ." adding we thus "tend to conflate relatively small furors with big scandals . . ."

    Though members of the media charge the Watergate cover-up with influencing Americans overly to distrust the government, officials today keep giving them cause for such distrust: Dan Stein's article, "Block this defacto amnesty," on the same page of the paper observed that after President Obama gave "what amounts to defacto amnesty to upwards of a million illegal aliens," he cited these self-contradicting words the President spoke back in March of 2011: "With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that's just not the case because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed . . . For me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president."

    (b) Spiritual darkness affects the religious realm, too: Charlie Sheffield's article, "Why many Mormons are fleeing their church," Ibid., p. 7A, noted the Mormon Church's reluctance to affirm homosexuality has led many Mormons to leave it, and Neil Steinbring of Glendale, Wisconsin, in a letter to the editor (Ibid., p. 6A) shows some Catholics share this view as he wrote: "Those who bully gays . . . learn their hatred . . . from my own Catholic Church, whose leadership . . . swim in an ocean of theological purity where gay marriage is concerned but ignores [sic] the inclusiveness . . . of the Gospels."

    (2) However, almost every Sunday, I record pastoral prayer requests on my worship bulletin cover involving believers in our body who stand against such sins and unholy ecumenical alliances, but who face difficult trials in their lives!



    Thus, we ask, "Why does God allow upright believers to face intense trials in an era of great spiritual darkness?!"

    Need: "Why does God let the devout face trials in an apostate era?!"

  1. Like our question above, Numbers 30 on women's vows that comes after Numbers 29 on Israel's feasts at first view seems inexplicable!
  2. However, the historical context links these chapters, teaching God lets the godly suffer trials in an apostate era to counter its evil:
    1. We before learned that the last feast in Numbers 29, the Feast of Tabernacles, predicts Christ's world Messianic Kingdom of blessing.
    2. That Kingdom would come via the Davidic monarchy, 2 Sam. 7:4-17.
    3. Yet, just before David's time, Israel's leadership had become corrupt:
      1. 1 Samuel 1:3; 2:12-17, 27-34 shows Hophni and Phinehas, sons of Israel's high priest, Eli, abused God's sacrifices and practiced pagan cultic immorality, Bible Know. Com., O. T., p. 434-435.
      2. With its corrupt spiritual leaders at the tabernacle, Israel's society was amoral, and Judges 21:25 claims: "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes."
    4. Thus, God needed a man in the influential place of the tabernacle who was yet unpolluted by its priests , a force for starting an upright Davidic kingdom, so Numbers 30 links with Numbers 29 as follows:
      1. To obtain the right man, God wanted a mother to be willing to give up her little son to be raised by Him in the tabernacle.
      2. To that end, she had to face a trial so intense, she would vow that if God gave her a son, she would return him to God at the tabernacle to function as a lifelong holy man, a Nazirite, Num. 6; Judges 13.
      3. However, in a culture where a woman's words were not weighty as were a man's words, God needed statutes that gave a woman's vow credibility by its being sanctioned by an appropriate man.
      4. Thus, Numbers 30 directs that if a woman made a vow, her male head, be it a father or a husband, either had to confirm or annul it.
      5. Numbers 30 thus follows Numbers 29 on Israel's feasts, in part as God knew a certain woman under trial would make such a vow at a family sacrificial feast at the tabernacle, cf. 1 Samuel 1:1-8, 9-11.
      6. Then, before her time, God had Samson's parents make him to be a lifelong Nazirite, setting a pattern this woman could heed, Jud. 13.
      7. Then, when the woman Hannah came on the scene of history, God closed her womb (1 Sam. 2:21) to where her husband would take a second wife, Penninah, and sire children by her, 1 Samuel 1:1-2.
      8. Penninah was jealous of Hannah because she was the more loved wife, so she made life so difficult for Hannah that nothing Elkanah, Hannah's husband, could do would comfort her, 1 Samuel 1:3-8.
      9. After years of trial, after a family tabernacle sacrificial meal, Hannah finally stood up, and, to avoid fueling Penninah's abuse, silently prayed, vowing that if the Lord gave her a son, she would give him back to God as a Nazarite for life, 1 Samuel 1:9-11.
      10. The nearby high priest saw Hannah move her lips but not speak, so he scolded her, presuming she was drunk, 1 Samuel 1:12-14.
      11. Hannah explained that she was not drunk, but was praying in great distress, petitioning the Lord, so the High Priest predicted God would give her what she had asked of Him, 1 Samuel 1:15-18.
      12. Hannah's vow was made silently without her husband's awareness, so he had to confirm it to heed Numbers 30. Thus, when she told Elkanah of her vow, he in faith confirmed it, making the Biblically appropriate sacrifice as if it were his own vow, 1 Samuel 1:19-23.
      13. After God gave her a son that she named Samuel, Hannah gave him to the high priest in fulfillment of her vow, 1 Samuel 1:24-28.
      14. Then, to guard the boy Samuel from the corruption of the priests around him, God revealed Himself to the boy, parenting him, and warning him of judgment on the priests around him, 1 Sam. 3:1-21.
      15. Samuel we thus reared directly by the Lord to be a holy man, and was used of God to lead Israel through Saul's dysfunctional reign as king until Samuel anointed David as king, 1 Samuel 4:1-16:13.
      16. In summary, then, the Numbers 30 rules for a woman's vow gave Hannah opportunity to be used of God toward starting the Davidic Kingdom predicted in the Numbers 29 Feast of Tabernacles!
  3. In the BROADEST SCRIPTURE CONTEXT, God used Hannah's actions even MORE EFFECTIVELY for the Messianic Kingdom:
    1. Hannah's 1 Samuel 2 prayer offers the Bible's first reference to an anointed ["messianic"] king (v. 10b, Ibid., B. K. C., O. T., p. 434), and the term "anointed" is translated "Christ" in the New Testament!
    2. This prayer also gave the format Messiah's Mother Mary would use for her Magnificat regarding His birth, Bible Know. C., N. T., p. 206.
Application: (1) May we trust in Christ as Savior to become a child of God, John 1:11-12. (2) If facing a great trial in an apostate era, know that God is preparing us to be or to influence others to be so separate from sin that He can use it to counter apostasy in our era!

Conclusion: (To illustrate the message . . . )

 (1) In our sermon introduction, we noted a number of people are leaving the Mormon Church because it has been slow to condone homosexuality, and that even some Roman Catholics are opposed to their Church leaders' "theological purity" in countering this same sin!

Then, after our morning service last Sunday, a member told me how a pastor of one of America's largest evangelical churches has refused to take a negative stand on this sin. He is apparently afraid of offending some and turning them away from his church!

Well, for a number of years, we have presented the theological problems of not only the Mormon and Roman Catholic churches, but also of this particular evangelical pastor's teaching and practices. Accordingly, we have taken stands against their errors and against fellowship with them as a body due to such errors, and that at times under costly trials.

However, we are now being blessed for having done so! With the tendency for some Mormon, Roman Catholic or evangelical folk who have been conditioned to sanction the error in their churches opposite the authority of Scripture, their sense of right and wrong has now been compromised enough that they think homosexuality is acceptable. To the contrary, having taken our stand to heed God's Word now acts to preserve us from having to struggle over whether the issue is right or wrong, for passages like Jude 7 and Genesis 19:1-28 reveal God outright condemns this sin.

(2) After typing up these points in this sermon conclusion section last Tuesday, I shared its contents with a Church member, and she replied, "It makes me feel safe to be at Nepaug: since we as a body have already taken stands in past trials to heed God's Word, those very stands now guard us from having to struggle over issues that other religious churches and even some evangelicals have to face!"



So, like Hannah of old, may we respond to the trials God lets us face by yearning for greater holiness, greater separation from sin and error, that we might be useful tools of God in an unholy world and era!