S E59: Bite-Sized Biblecast | Sneaky Disobedience | Numbers 20:1-13

If you only have a couple minutes for scripture today, I got you.

Welcome to today's bite size Bible cast.

We are in a place you maybe have not been yet this year unless you are doing a listen or read through the Bible program.

We are in numbers today.

We're starting in verse one, going through verse 13.

I am reading out of the ESV and the people of Israel, the whole congregation came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month.

And the people stayed in Kadesh.

And Miriam died there and was buried there.

Now there was no water for the congregation.

And they assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron.

And the people quarreled with Moses and said, would that we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord.

Why have you brought the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness that we should die here, both we and our cattle?

And why have you made us come up out of Egypt and bring us to this evil place?

There is no place for grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, and there is no water to drink.

Then Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the entrance of the tent of meeting and fell on their faces.

And the glory of the Lord appeared to them.

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, take the staff and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron, your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water.

So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle.

And Moses took the staff from before the Lord as he commanded him.

Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock.

And he said to them, here, now, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?

And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice.

And water came out abundantly.

And the congregation drank and their livestock.

And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.

These are the waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarreled with the Lord.

And through them he showed himself holy.

This is one of those stories that has always struck me and I fully, that pun intended as just really intense.

I've always wondered, and I've never really taken the time to dig through and read through the story and kind of look up some of the original words until today I was reading it.

Part of my Bible study is going through scripture in a year.

And so we're reading through numbers right now.

Which little fun story?

The other day I was scrolling on Facebook and came across a post in one of the Christian wife groups that I'm in.

No, it was a group for a planner that I've used, the Passionate Penny Pincher Planner, which is fantastic, by the way, if you are in the market, if you actually need a new planner, it breaks down all of your household tasks.

And at the bottom of your list of household tasks, there is a scripture passage.

And someone in the Facebook group didn't know what the scripture passage was.

It was like, it just said like numbers four through six or something.

And so they had taken a picture of it and asked in the group and we're like, what does this mean?

What do these number?

And so someone was explaining, oh, like, you must not be familiar with the Bible.

This is giving you a little bit of scripture to read each day.

But by the way, numbers is probably not the place to start if you are new to the Bible.

And at that exact moment, I was listening to the Book of Numbers, I use the YouVersion app and I'll just kind of play it and listen to it because that's a lot easier for me, brain wise and attention span wise, to be able to kind of listen and do other things.

And so that just kind of, that was funny for me.

I'm like, oh, I'm literally listening to the Book of Numbers as I'm coming across this discourse about the Book of Numbers.

But anyways, there were a couple of things that stuck out to me about this passage that I want to talk about.

Because at first glance, you see, okay, God told Moses to bring water out of the rock, and Moses brought water out of the rock.

And now God's mad at him for doing what he said.

But when we look closer, we see what this is really about.

So I'm going to read the passage again of what God said and then what Moses actually did with the context of the Israelites are hungry, they are thirsty, they are grumpy, they really want some fruit.

If you notice the things that they mention not being able to have.

So in this evil place, there is no place for grain or figs or vines or pomegranates.

These are all crops.

These are all things that take a while to grow.

And they are not in an established place by their own actions because they just were like, oh, actually, we don't really want to go fight the Canaanites.

We're scared.

They had the opportunity to go into the promised land and go to a place where they were going to be Settled and able to set up crops and vineyards and grow fruits and all of the things.

But through their own actions, they're not able to do that.

And so they are complaining about this.

Very valid complaint, though, that they don't have water.

You know, something that's a little bit essential for life in every single form.

So what God does is tell Moses, take the staff and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron, your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water so you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation.

So God's telling Moses to go, use your words.

Tell the rock to produce water.

And it's going to.

But what does Moses do?

Let's pipe down a little bit further.

So then he goes, they gather the assembly.

They're all standing before this rock.

And he lifts up his hand and he's like, here, now, you rebels.

Shall we bring water for you out of this rock?

So clearly, we can tell by his words he's not having a great time.

He's kind of had it.

If you are a parent or if you have worked with children or really headed up any group where people are acting in an unruly fashion, you know how you can get to that point where you're, like, almost talking through your teeth, right?

Where you're like, if you guys don't listen, I think we've all been there where you're just like, I am just done.

These people are not listening.

I don't know what else I'm supposed to do.

I am at the end of myself.

Clearly, this is where Moses is.

But what does he do?

Does he do what God told him to do?

Does he go, okay, rock, give us water?

No, no.

First he gets sassy.

First he allows his anger to cause him to speak.

He calls the people rebels, which is kind of a fair criticism, honestly.

But he's using his words to vent his frustration and then to give himself credit for what's about to happen.

So he mouths off back at Israel.

And then he says, let me find it here.

Shall we bring water for you out of this rock?

He has this beautiful opportunity to go, you guys, I hear you.

First of all, this is because of your own issues.

This is because you disobeyed God that we are not in a place with water and vineyards and all of that.

That is your fault that that did not happen.

But also, even in our disobedience, look at how wonderful our God is in providing for us despite our disobedience.

He has this awesome opportunity.

God Sets him up beautifully to be able to meet the people's needs and bring glory to God.

But Moses takes this opportunity to vent his frustration and give himself credit for this miracle.

Now, it's not completely clear here if we, the we that he's mentioning is referring to himself and Aaron kind of more general, if he's just kind of like lumping God in there, like, hey, me and God are going to give you water.

We're not 100% sure, but we know that he includes himself in there.

And then to bring it all together, he doesn't just use his words like God told him to.

He takes his staff and he strikes the rock not once, but twice.

And again, if you have ever been in that place of being so fed up with the people that you are supposed to be leading or hurting or like directing to do something, if you've ever been in a group project in school and people aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing, you can likely relate to this.

But he is in such a position of power, and most importantly, he is in such a position to guide the people's hearts and how they view and interact with God.

And this is where he misses the mark.

So then, as a result of all of this, Moses is not allowed into the promised land.

God is like, okay, you know what?

You have royally screwed up this situation.

So now this intense price to pay.

Moses, who has been leading these people, who has been guiding these people, who has been giving everything within himself, it's very clear in scripture that Moses mental health throughout this process is not great.

He is struggling.

He does, to his credit, ask for help, but he is really struggling.

He has poured everything he left a life of luxury and royalty and having access to everything and everyone and every resource and every amenity and luxury he could possibly want.

He has left that and poured himself into guiding these people to get them to this promised land.

And now, because of his pride, because of his anger, because of his lack of self control, now he doesn't get to experience the end result of all of his life's work.

God does, in a little bit, have some mercy on him and allows him to go up onto a mountain and slowly see into the promised land before he dies.

But he doesn't get to experience what he has been working for his entire life because of this instance of anger, pride, and inability to control himself.

And reading that today, something that seems so small and so insignificant, like, you could very succinctly word this as like, okay, so Moses obeyed a little bit differently than God told him to.

And now he's not allowed to enter the promised land.

It gets into a serious heart issue because it is about so much more than just doing things a little bit differently than God told us to.

Because why?

Why are we doing things differently than God told us to?

And ultimately it comes down to a pride issue.

Ultimately it comes down to thinking that our way of doing things is better than God's way of doing things.

Ultimately it comes down to thinking that venting our frustration, getting some relief from our anger, being able to kind of let loose a little bit ourselves is more important than executing things the way that God told us to.

My husband and I just had a conversation with our kids this past week about, hey, here's why it's so incredibly important for you to listen to me and trust my assessment of things over yours.

My son, he's four and he is a little firecracker, let me tell you.

And we have been having some issues with him lately where sometimes most of the time he is the sweetest little guy.

You ask him to do something, he's like, okay, mom.

But every once in a while he started to have this issue where he just will go fully into shutdown mode and just go, no, I'm not doing that.

And if you try to impose a consequence, he's like, no, that's not happening.

And so after some of his emotions had kind of died down a bit, I sat him down and I was like, do you know why it's so important for you to trust me and listen to me, even in things that feel silly to you?

Because there's going to be situations where it is a lot more serious.

And I gave him the example of, okay, if you are playing in our driveway and I can see that there's a car about to turn in and hit you, and I tell you to move and your response is to sit and question me or just not do what I said.

That's dangerous for everyone involved.

You could be in serious harm's way just because you wanted to stop and question me and make sure you were on board with what I was telling you to do before you did it.

And so we're able to tie these things back and go.

It's not just us that you have to listen to.

This is how we have to operate with God as your parents.

We are answering to God.

It's not that we're grown ups and so we get to do whatever we want.

We don't have to listen to anyone.

We also have the same dynamic with God.

And we're trying to teach our kids that they also need to have that dynamic with God.

And as we are raising them, they're going to be grown ups someday.

And we want them to be good grownups.

We want them to be strong grownups.

We want them to be be functioning and healthy and thriving and able to live the life that God has for them.

And that starts with us as parents setting the example.

So I have a couple questions for you today to kind of think through or I would highly recommend breaking out your journal and journaling.

I was doing some journaling on this and I highly, highly recommend getting a little tactile with it, writing it out.

However, if writing is a little bit much for you or you kind of get distracted when you're writing, another good option is either to do a voice memo on your phone.

You can send a voice memo to a friend, you can record a voice memo to yourself, you can break out your notes app and do voice to text.

There's so many different options.

Even just sitting and thinking through the questions here is going to be beneficial for you.

So I always start my quiet time with asking God, what do you want me to know today?

So I would encourage you sit, find a little bit of peace.

As much peace as you are reasonably able to find.

Today I had the benefit of all my kids are at school.

School.

My husband's downstairs working and it's just quiet.

The only sounds are really are the water flowing through our radiator or our.

Yeah, the, the boiler goes to the radiators and so that's like very calming.

But find as much peace as you can and just ask God, what do you want me to know today?

And then specifically where am I in the way of my obedience to you?

What is in the way of my obedience to you?

How am I tweaking my obedience to fit my desires and what I think is right and what I want over what you want for me.

So whatever variation you want to do of those, I'm thinking of creating a worksheet to go with each of these bite sized Bible casts so that you can kind of have the journaling page in front of you with the scripture with the questions with some space to journal.

So let me know in the comments if that's something you would be interested in.

But take some time today and kind of think through that.

I would encourage you to read the story in your own Bible and break out your journal and kind of dig in.

But even if this is all you had time for today, you have accomplished something.

And that is something to be proud of.

That is something to take and use as momentum to keep building.

Keep building into habits that are going to bring you to being the person that God created you to be and having the relationship with him that he desires to have with you.

So I am so glad that you joined me today.

It would mean a lot to me if you would rate the podcast on whatever podcast app you are listening to.

All of these videos are uploaded to my podcast podcast, which is the True Grit Podcast with Rachel Grit.

I always end up saying the word podcast like four times in one sentence when I do these outros, so I'm trying to figure out how to kind of like dial it back a little bit.

But yeah, you can find the link to the podcast to different resources.

I have different journals and things available on my website.

All of that can be found at the link over in my profile.

So definitely take some time to go and check those out.

Share this if you found it helpful and I will see you in the next one.

Bye.