Westside Camps

Hey, hey, good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day you and I, we get together. We have a little bit of coffee. We get into God's word and we grow in our love for the Lord together. In this year, 2024, Lord willing, we're going to make it through Deuteronomy, or Numbers, Deuteronomy and Hebrews. Still going to take me a while to get that off the tongue. Why don't we have some coffee? We'll pray and we'll continue to look at the camp of Israel.
Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day. Once again, you are a amazing God, gracious and full of loving kindness. Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit would please help us. Teach us this morning to understand your word in Jesus's name. Amen. Alright, so we are at Numbers chapter 2. Numbers chapter 2.
We've already looked at the camp of Judah and those other two camps, Zebulun and Issachar, who are on the eastern side. And then yesterday we looked at the camps to the south, Reuben, Simeon, and Gad, and then Levi in the middle. And now we come to the next part, verse 18 with Ephraim. On the west side shall be the standard of the forces with Ephraim according to their armies, as the leader of the children of Ephraim shall be Elishamah the son of Ammihad.
And his army was numbered at 40,500. Next to him comes the tribe of Manasseh. And the leader of the children of Manasseh shall be Gamaliel, the son of Pedasher. And his army was numbered at 32,200. Then comes the tribe of Benjamin. And the leader of the children of Benjamin shall be Abidin, the son of Gedioni. And his army was numbered at 35,400.
All who were numbered according to their armies of the forces of Ephraim one hundred and eight thousand one hundred. They shall be the third to break camp. So again, remember, these are as they are camping and then when they break camp, the order that they're marching. And so this is the third camp. The third camp is led by Ephraim.
I'm going to reach down here and I'm going to pull up something. I think these are very helpful. Right. So give me one second. And one of the things that you're going to find very helpful as you go through these is, I'd encourage you to just pick up a study Bible. I've looked through a number of different study Bibles that I have and almost every single one of them has some type of, now I'm not, I don't think I'll get in copyright trouble for something like this, a picture of these camps.
Right? So you're able to see where they're camping, right? And so God, God had an order for where people were and why they were going to be there and how this was going to happen. Right? And so this is what we see is these camps around. And this is exactly in line with what we find in other countries, writings of different wars that they went on. And as I talked about where their different armies camped, and this is one of the things I love about the Bible, right? This is true. history.
It's not mythology. It's not made up. Now, people are going to argue about the numbers, whether the word thousand just means a camp and they want to reduce the number of people, or if, you know, they want to say that this was just rhetorical devices to inflate the numbers to show the grandeur of Israel or maybe to keep his promise to Abraham. I think these are big numbers. I think it's real. I think there's many times that we want to have this view that we know everything that was going on in the ancient Near East And so we're able to see, oh, these people, they just inflated all their numbers and stuff. Or they were real.
I'm of that camp. I could be proved wrong and I'll let the Lord prove me wrong if that's the case. But what I do know is that this is a massive army, so much so that the people in Canaan are worried about it. And here the Lord has a camp. He's in the middle of them, and he's the one who is putting the different tribes in their places. So this is the third camp to march out.
So first is Judah, and then after that is Reuben, and now comes Ephraim after the tabernacle. And so that's the order they're marching. Again, I would encourage you to pick up a study Bible, look it up, and it's helpful to, I think these are helpful to actually see, just like it was helpful to kind of look at some pictures of the tabernacle when we were going through that. Well, let's go ahead and pray.
Father, we thank you so much that you are the Lord of hosts. Lord, you commanded the armies of Israel, and you command the legion of angels. And Father, you are our Lord, our master, our commander-in-chief. And Father, we thank you that you have sent us Jesus Christ, who indeed is the head. Lord, we pray that as we go underneath his standard, as we fight for him, Lord, that we would walk in your ways, knowing that you are the one who musters together your forces.
And you have called us your people. You have redeemed us. In Jesus's name. Amen. Well, may God bless you. May you walk, knowing that you are going in the footsteps of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. May you walk in the light, as He is in the light. 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.