East Side Camps

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day you and I, well, every weekday you and I, we get together. We get into God's word. We have a little bit of coffee and we grow in our love for the Lord together. And this year, 2024, Lord willing, we're going to make it through Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Hebrews. It's going to take me a while to say that, but Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Hebrews. So glad to be with you this morning. Let's have some coffee.
We'll pray and we'll get to God's word. Let's pray. Father, you are an amazing God, generous and merciful, abounding in love and kindness. Father, we pray that you would please help us to understand your word. Lord, we pray that you would please be merciful to us, teach us and be gracious to us. In Jesus' name, amen.
All right, so we are at Numbers chapter two. Numbers chapter two, and we're gonna beginning at verse three. If you were here with us yesterday to see Ellie creating a lot of noise and being very fun, you know, she was talking a whole lot about just how she, right, we have different camps. And in these different camps are, where are they gonna be? And God's gonna be in the middle, they're gonna camp around it. And so as we're working through the book of, or chapter two of Numbers, that's what we're looking at is, where these different camps are around the tabernacle. So, we're gonna start with verse three. On the east side, toward the rising of the sun, those of the standard of the forces with Judah shall camp according to their armies.
And Nashon, the son of Amminadab, shall be their leader of the children of Judah. And his army was numbered at 74,600. Those who camp next to him shall be the tribe of Issachar. And Nathanael, the son of Zuar, shall be the leader of the children of Issachar. And his army was numbered at 54,400. Then comes the tribe of Zebulun. And Eliab, the son of Helen, shall be the leader of the children of Zebulun. And his army was numbered at 57,400. all who were numbered according to their families of the forces with Judah 186,400.
These shall break camp first. So this is the eastern camp, right? You're going to have the tabernacle in the middle. And on the eastern side, you have three different tribes who are kind of camping together. You have Judah first, and then you have Issachar, and then you have Zebulun. Those three tribes together make up 186,400. This is going to be the advancing army. So as they go and as they march out, it's going to be the first camp. And that's going to be the one to the east from the rising of the sun.
And these three tribes. This lines up with what Abraham told his son Judah. It's not going to be Reuben who's the most important, leading the entire army out, but it's going to be Judah in who would be the scepter and who would rule. And so interestingly, that's what's going on here is the eastern three tribes are led by Judah, and they're numbered 186,000.
I mean, that's a lot of people. This is not a small number of people. I'm of the opinion that these numbers are actually accurate, that this is true because I think that Moses wrote this and he wasn't writing figurative narrative. I think he was writing the truth here about what was being taught. And so there's 186,000 just of these three tribes on the Eastern side.
So, What's the best verse to summarize this? Well, I would underline verse 9. What does this teach us to do? What are we called to do? How does this show us Christ? Well, I think this shows us the covenant faithfulness, right? That God made to Abraham. that he was going to make him into an amazing nation. And now just three of his son's peoples, right? 186,000 people. This is huge numbers. God was faithful to his promises, but he also was faithful in Abraham's blessing of Judah. This was coming true.
Now it's still going to be a while later. I mean, hundreds of years later before King David emerges. But I think here we see just a taste of that lion who would come from the tribe of Judah, that they would be the advancing army and that the first army to pack out, that's where the king would come from. And that's where our king comes from. That's his lineage. They came from Judah. And so God is faithful to His covenant. God's faithful to His promises. And God is working even here to show that He was going to bring an anointed one.
And so I think this is a beautiful passage. It doesn't just say this out clearly, but this is where we see just glimmers of hope, shadows of what would come to fulfillment in the beauty of Jesus Christ's incarnation and of His rule. So let's go ahead and pray. By the way, thank you so much for raising up these three tribes, for giving to them the patriarchs and the covenants and the promises, and for even bringing this tribe to a prominent role, and using that role even here as we see, that eventually would bring our Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray that we would live our lives knowing that you keep your promises and that you are a wonderful God. In Jesus' name, amen. May God bless you. May you walk knowing that the Lion of the tribe of Judah has emerged. He goes out first. He has conquered our enemy, even death and sin itself. He's our king and you can follow after him. He's in our midst. All right, I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue. Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.