The Budding of Aaron’s Rod

I don't know, son. Well, good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. It's where every weekday morning you and I get together, have a little bit of coffee, we get into God's Word, and we go in love with the Lord together. And this year, 2023, we'll make it to the books of Numbers, Deuteronomy, Hebrews. Good job. All right. We'll have some coffee. We'll pray. We'll get into God's Word. Want some coffee?
I asked you if you wanted anything before we came in. All right. I wanted nothing. All right. We're at Numbers chapter 17. See, I drank nothing either. All right. This is a really cool story. I love this story. Numbers 18? 17. All right. Why don't you want to read the first half or the second half? 1 through 7 or 8 through 13? I think I'll do 8 through 13. Okay. And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, Oh, did we pray? No. Oh, we should pray. Lord, thank you so much for giving us your Bible. Thank you for time to spend with Nathan and to read your word. And we pray that you would please help us. We pray that we would understand your word and we pray that your spirit would apply the truth in it to our lives in Jesus's name. Amen. Okay.
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, and get from them a rod from each father's house, all their leaders according to their father's houses, twelve rods. Write each man's name on his rod, and you shall write Aaron's name on the rod of Levi. For there shall be one rod for the head of each father's house. Then you shall place them in the tabernacle of meeting before the testimony where I meet with you. And it shall be that the rod of the man whom I choose will blossom. Thus I will rid myself of the complaints of the children of Israel, which they make against you.
Moses spoke to the children of Israel, and each of their leaders gave him a rod apiece. For each leader, according to their father's houses, twelve rods, and the rod of Aaron was among their rods. Then our aunt Moses placed the rods before the Lord in the tabernacle of witness. Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses went into the chapel of witness, and behold, the rod of Aaron of the house of Levi had sprouted, and put forth buds, and produced blossoms, and yielded ripe almonds. Then Moses brought out all the rods from the Lord, Two, all the children of Israel, and they looked, and each man took his rod. And the Lord said to Moses, Bring Aaron's rod back before the testimony to be kept as a sign against the rebels, that you may put their complaints away from me, lest they die. Thus did Moses, just as the Lord had commanded him, so he did.
So the children of Israel spoke to Moses, saying, Surely we die, we perish, we all perish, whoever Whoever even comes near the tabernacle of the Lord must die. Shall we all utterly die?" Okay, so you remember what happened in chapter 16? The sons of Korah, what did Korah and his followers do? They were like, why is Moses going to be the head honcho? And then it was against Moses and Aaron, and then the second part of chapter 16 was when the congregation then comes and they tell Moses, you're the one who killed them.
And the Lord appears again. And there's a plague that starts and the Lord tells Aaron, go out with a censer, make an atonement for them so they don't all die. Right. But still like fourteen thousand of them like that die. I can't remember the number off my head. But there's there's tens. There's almost like the town of Burlington dies. And now the Lord speaks to Moses after that. And what's the Lord do?
He says to put wads in the tabernacle, each one, like, so would there be like a lot of, so there's like a lot of Levi and a lot of, what was the other wad? Well, you can have like one rod for Nephtali, one rod, one for Levi, one for Asher, one for Zebulun, one for Joseph, one, well, you would have it for Manasseh and Ephraim, right? And so you would have one rod for each of the families, one for Benjamin and, right, so their names are written on each of them, one for each tribe or family, right? But on the one for Levi, whose name is written on it? Aaron.
And what does the Lord do to show he's the one who chooses who's going to be the leader? um he makes it produce food yeah have you ever seen a rod right a staff that all of a sudden comes to life and produces flowers and almonds uh no no what's the only way that that can happen um through milk Yeah.
Now, the interesting thing is, right, the Lord says, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this to show that I'm the one who's in charge and I'm the Lord's the one who's who's making all this happen is his doing. Right. The interesting thing is, most of us, we read the story and we go, oh, man, yeah, yeah, the Lord's in control. Right. That makes sense.
But how did the people respond? Did you catch that? Nope, you read it at the very end verse 12 After after buds and after they see that staff surely we die we perish we all perish Come near the tabernacle of the Lord must I shall we all utterly die? What do they think They don't believe God they don't love God This is why this generation was going to die in the wilderness. Right.
Because even though they had God's redemption, even though that they had been purchased out of Egypt, they had seen all the signs and the wonders of the plagues on Egypt. They'd come out of Egypt. They had walked through the Red Sea. They'd been at Mount Sinai. Now they've seen these miracles after miracles, after miracles, divine judgment, divine judgment, divine judgment.
Now. Even after God has shown them Aaron's my man, he's the priest, Does everyone believe? Nope. We're just going to die. They are going to die. Because they wouldn't believe in the first place. Yeah. Does it seem like they love the Lord? No, right. They want their power. They want to be priests. Some of them want to go back to Egypt. They don't even want to be in the wilderness.
Isn't that interesting? Do you think that that could be similar to sometimes even in the church? Do you think that there are it's OK, you can just see. Do you think that there are people who, even though they go to church? They don't actually love the Lord. Do you think that there could be people in the congregation who don't actually want to do things the Lord's way?
And we might scratch our heads like, right? Why are you even here? They may love the people. They may love the families. That's one of those things we have to wrestle with. Have you heard me talk about this with you before? It's one of the things I challenge kids on, don't I? Yep. I challenge adults with it too.
Don't just be here because it's a social club. We're here because we love the Lord. If you don't love the Lord, just be honest about it. But if you do love the Lord, it's good. He's got good promises. So who's our high priest now? God. No, Jesus. Yeah, Jesus is, right? Where's his tabernacle?
11. How do we know that God chose him to be our priest? Because... Well, he says it in the book of Hebrews, that's right. But he showed it too. Two different ways he showed it. Was it because Jesus died on the cross? Well, that was his sacrifice and God accepts that, right? He rips the veil from the top to the bottom. So the sacrifice is accepted that that old priesthood is done. How do we know that Jesus's priesthood is established?
What do you think? Because he's raised again from the dead and he ascends into heaven and he sits down at the right hand of God the Father, he's entered into the heavenly tabernacle, and he sits down and he ministers for us now. So when you pray, the Holy Spirit is working in your heart, takes your prayers, gives them to Jesus. Jesus makes them perfect and he brings them to the Father. We know because Jesus is in heaven, because he was raised again from the dead, ascended up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God, we know that he has a priesthood.
If you don't believe the resurrection, though, Does that cause some theological problems? Then did we have a high priest who was accepted? No. No, right? If the resurrection is false and Jesus is just dead and God didn't actually accept his sacrifice, what am I as a priest? If we don't believe the ascension into heaven, what problem does that cause? That he's not in heaven as the high priest. Yeah, that he's not in heaven as a high priest, right? Then the book of Hebrews is wrong. And if we don't believe that he sat down at the right hand of God, what problem does that cause?
That maybe there's another Godhead. Maybe there's a different Godhead. Maybe we have all of this wrong. You can't just pull things out. People have tried to do that before. And it leads them to kind of spiritualism without biblical faith. But if we're if we're honest, some of these things are hard. But if we're honest with ourselves and we say, no, no, we're people of the book, we believe the words on these pages and we trust them. It gives us great joy. Because if it's true, man, it's good.
Are you ready to pray? Okay. You want to pray this time? What do you want me to do? Okay. Thank you for a good day. Thank you for a day that we can walk to your glory. And please help us to have a good day and be productive. And please help us to practice what we've learned today.
In Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Well, may that great shepherd of the sheep, Jesus Christ, encourage you that he is our great high priest. He's made perfect atonement and he lives to make intercession for you. And he's coming again. We'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.