Revering the Word
Numbers 36 Advocating for yourself and being self-sacrificing.
Good morning everyone. This morning we are in Numbers chapter 36. And this is the last chapter in the book of Numbers. I hope you've enjoyed this journey through Numbers. I truly have. And we're going to close it out today. Let's begin. In the heads of the Father's households of the family of the sons of Gilead, the sons of Makr, the sons of Manasa of the families of the sons of Joseph came near and spoke before Moses and before the leaders, the heads of the Father's households of the sons of Israel. And they said, "The Lord commanded my Lord to give the land by lot to the sons of Israel as an inheritance." And my Lord was commanded by the Lord to give the inheritance of Zellio Fad, our brother to his daughters. Now you might recall that this came up earlier in the Bible in Numbers chapter 27. This man had passed away and he had no sons. And they were wondering about what to do with his inheritance. Moses brought that case before the Lord. And God said to him that if everyone has died, all the sons, then you shall give the inheritance to the daughters. So now this inheritance is going to go to the daughters. And what they're concerned about is that when they enter the Promised Land, everyone is going to get territory based on the 12 different tribes. And you're going to get a different territory. Well, now if these women marry outside of the tribe, then there's going to be some problems with the inheritance. And a family could actually, or a tribe could actually lose the inheritance that went to Zellio Fad's daughters, because then they marry into a different tribe. And so these people are advocating for themselves and saying, "Hey Moses, we're going to have a future potential problem here with the inheritance. And what should we do about it?" And it's interesting what's said here. So in verse 5, then Moses commanded the sons of Israel according to the word of the Lord. So he got wisdom from God saying the tribe of the sons of Joseph are right in their statements. This is what the Lord has commanded concerning the daughters of Zoleo Fad, saying, "Let them marry whom they wish, only they must marry within the family of the tribe of their father. Thus no inheritance to the sons of Israel shall be transferred from tribe to tribe. For the sons of Israel shall each hold to the inheritance of the tribe of his fathers." So it was actually a neat thing in that the daughters were going to get the inheritance, which wasn't typical. He typically would fall to the sons, but because there were no sons, they made this exception back in Numbers 27. But they didn't really anticipate this future problem. So to solve it, marry whoever you want, but you got to stay within your tribe. Now there was a lot of people in each tribe. So there was a lot of, there's going to be a lot of men to choose from. But this way they wouldn't have the problem with the inheritance. One of the things I think is interesting is going back to Numbers 27 where this happened. Let me read it to you. Then the daughters of Zoleo Fad, the son of Heffer, the son of Gilead, the son of Makr, the son of Manasah, the families of Manasah, the son of Joseph, came near. These are the names of his daughters, Malal, Noah, and Holga and Milka and Tizra. They stood before Moses and before the priests and before the leaders and all the congregation at the doorway of the Ten of Meaning, saying, "Our father died in the wilderness, yet he was not among the company of those who gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korah. But he died in his own sin and he had no sons. Why should the name of our father be withdrawn from among his family because he had no son? Give us a possession from among our father's brothers so Moses brought their case to the Lord." Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, "The daughters of Zoleo Fad are right in their statements. You shall surely give them a hereditary possession among their fathers and brothers. You shall transfer the inheritance of their father to them." So what I'm seeing here, which is really cool, is that the Lord God and Moses in leadership allows people to advocate for themselves and to advocate towards fairness. It's really important. My dad was struggling a little bit with his health. Hopefully we're getting that under control. But if you were, say, home and you're sick and you don't advocate for yourself and you don't try to get an appointment or try to see the correct specialist and say, "Hey, I really need to get in and ask questions and make sure you tell them your medical history or things like that." If you don't advocate for yourself, you might just suffer. You might just deal with the difficulty that you're going through because you're not advocating for yourself. It's really important. You'll hear that in the medical field, how important it is to have someone advocating for you or for you to advocate for yourself. There's something to be said for that. Here we see it in two different instances. In Numbers 27, the women, they come before Moses and the priest and say, "We think we have a case here. We want to make it known to you." And Moses listened, God listened, and they got an inheritance. Well, in this case, someone perceived a potential problem in the future and they came to Moses and advocated for themselves. God heard it from Moses and said, "You know what? They're right." I think that's just really cool. At times in life, you're going to have to advocate for yourself. This is interesting, though, because we've also seen in the book of Numbers that sometimes not everything's going to be fair. One of the tribes wanted to stay on the other side of the Jordan. They didn't want to go into the Promised Land. One of the concerns was, "Well, maybe they don't even want to fight with us." And Moses said, "Well, we'll give you this land on the other side of the Jordan as long as you come and fight with Israel to take the Promised Land." But they were able to leave their women and children behind and they didn't have to cross the Jordan and take the risk of what that might have been like. So, in some ways, it could have been deemed that that wasn't fair. But yet, we learned that although there came close to being some problems, and we talked about that in the book of Joshua later, there wasn't. They handled it well. They honored the Lord. And even though something wasn't exactly equal for everybody, they all got along. And so, what am I trying to say? Trying to say that it is okay to advocate for yourself and to advocate for fairness, but sometimes, too, you're going to have to let yourself be taken advantage of if you want to put it that way in order for there to be unity, because it's not always going to be fair. So, the thing is, is yes, advocate for yourself, but then let's say something in your mind isn't fair. You feel like you're not being treated fair. Sometimes you got to just suck it up and say, you know what, this isn't what the Lord had for me, and I'm going to learn to be okay with my perception that things aren't fair, but it's okay to advocate for yourself first. Let's take you to a passage in the book of Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus shares something like this. Listen to what he says, you have heard that it was said this is Matthew 538, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you, do not resist an evil person, whatever slaps you on your right cheek turned the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you, take your shirt, let him have your cloak also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Overforces you to go one mile, go with them too, give to him who asks of you and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. Now, you know, we're looking at one verse and you can't, you know, make all of your theology based on a verse. Now, I don't just go around asking people to slap me on the other cheek. However, the principle is there, meaning if you're going through life and sometimes something's not fair or somebody asks something of you and you might be put in the position, you know what, where God wants you to give that for his glory. And God wants you to just be self-sacrificing for his glory and realize that you know what, you're not going to be here forever, you can't take everything with you and you might as well just go ahead and give that be generous and bless somebody else, even if it seems like maybe it's not fair. So, isn't that interesting, you know, I think a lot of times there's lots of things like this in the Bible that you can't just look at it one way that we need to have the Lord's wisdom and discernment. Advocate for yourself, advocate for fairness because sometimes you're the only one who's going to advocate for you and that's okay. But if things aren't going your way, you know, consider, consider that it might be an opportunity just to be self-sacrificing and to give to others or to not have to insist on fairness and build unity with the people around you, even though maybe it's not fair and there's something holy and good and right about doing that. So, may the Lord give us spiritual discernment on how to respond to every situation. Well, there's always something good, isn't there, that we can take from the Word of God? I've felt like there's been so many lessons that have been a blessing to take in from the Book of Numbers. Hey, have you ever gone on your podcast app and liked this show or, you know, reviewing the Word? Would you consider taking a moment to do that to go ahead and give it a rating and hopefully give it a good rating because what that does is it gets it out to more people and it raises the chances of someone else finding out about reviewing the Word, which can then help them find out about our Lord Jesus and growing the Word, because it's liked by you, the algorithm, so to speak, will raise it up so that more people will find it. So, listen, I would appreciate you taking a moment to do that, and I look forward to continuing our journey through the Word of God and, you know, let someone know about it, let someone know that hopefully this is benefiting you. And I hope the Word continues to get out, it clearly has, the show is growing, the number of people listening is growing, and praise God for that, that's what we want, we're supposed to go make disciples of all nations and this is just one way we're doing it. Thank you for your partnership with me and let's keep going, let's keep on keeping on in the Lord and growing in Him. God bless you all.