-  2008 North American Bible Conference    December 28, 2008     And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.  John 3:14-17   The Meaning behind Numbers as They Appear in the BibleIn previous lectures, we have taken a look at the life of the man by the name of Abraham and through it we have examined the spiritual and physical incidents that he experienced. When Abraham was old, he had Isaac, the son that had been promised, and even after Sarah died, he had more children over the course of several decades. The Israelites also walked a similar path to that of Abraham, going through similar experiences in the course of their history. Abraham lived a life of glory, having several children in his old age even after he had Isaac. This, too, is reflected in the history of the Jews as they handed Jesus Christ over to be crucified and yet God did not forsake this nation, but rather watched over them to the end. This is all hidden away within the writings of the various prophets in the Old Testament. We also reflected on ourselves as individuals. We had life in our flesh, but we were living our lives aimlessly and we were living in a dead state, even though we seemed to be alive, and then we found Jesus Christ through the words of the Bible. We came to know the love that was poured out upon us through the blood of Christ that was shed for us, and so we have been able to live blessed lives. We have also considered how, just as the vitality of the nation of the Jews continues to the end, as born-again people, we need to live for the sake of the gospel until the end of our individual lives, and as we do so we receive physical and spiritual blessings. Now let’s consider the Israelites after the time of Abraham when they received the law and one person in particular who was at the center of the receiving of the law. That person’s name was Moses. If you look at the sermon given by Stephen in the book of Acts, you find that he stated precisely the number of years that Moses lived. Moses lived a life that was divided into three forty-year periods. For the first forty years of his life, he was raised as a prince in the palace of the Pharaoh in Egypt. Then, after he struck and killed an Egyptian, he escaped into the wilderness of Midian and there he spent the next forty years. Then, following God’s command to lead the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, he returned to Egypt and led the Israelites out into the wilderness where he spent the last forty years of his life. He died at the age of 120, not being permitted to enter the land of Canaan (see Acts 7). When Moses went up Mount Sinai in the wilderness, he received the law. This is recorded in the latter half of the book of Exodus. When you look at the order in which the law is set out, you find that God first gave Moses instructions regarding the tabernacle. The law also includes many other regulations as well, but it begins with the tabernacle. It is also worth examining carefully the order of the events, beginning with the feast of the Passover, and then the law being given through Moses and then being passed on to the Israelites. In this way, Moses performed his role of receiving the God’s commandments and passing them on to the twelve tribes, and then his life came to an end. The many events that occurred within Moses’ life also have a very close connection to our lives. Moses lived in Egypt for forty years, in the wilderness for forty years and in the wilderness of Sinai for forty years. Let’s consider this in regard to ourselves as individuals. It is within the mysterious wisdom of God that a person comes into being, takes form and is born into this world. When the seed of a man and a woman meet to produce a child, that child spends about forty weeks in its mother’s womb and then it is born into the world. Why is it that in order for a child to be born into this world it takes forty times as long as the six days of creation plus one day of rest when God created the heavens and the earth? Could this just simply be a coincidence? The number forty, which appears in various places in the Bible, can be seen as a number that tests many people before something new happens. When Noah was faced with the flood, it rained for forty days and forty nights and the waters below the ground also burst forth (see Genesis 7:12). When Jesus came to this earth to carry out His ministry, before He began His work, He fasted for forty days and forty nights and then He was tested (see Mark 4:2). And then Goliath, the Philistine, cursed God for forty days and after that he died, killed by a stone from David’s sling (see 1 Samuel 17:16). Yet, God does not only introduce these numbers within the Bible; they also come into our lives which move in accordance with the words, “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” We cannot help but acknowledge that the truth of which the Bible speaks is inseparable from God’s providence of the world, His providence of history and His providence of the life of our flesh. Moses lived three forty-year periods. Why three? He could have lived for eighty years and died, or he could have lived for 160 years and died. A person who was blessed as Moses was could have lived for about two hundred years, but he lived for 120 years, and as we see from Stephen’s sermon, Moses’ life was divided into three sections, each of them being exactly forty years long, and then he left this world. Why was that? What is the significance of the number 3?When we think about the number 3 in the Bible, the first person we think of is Jonah. Jesus said, “No sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah,” and “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (see Matthew 12:39-40). Similarly, Jesus rose from the dead in His eternal body three days after He was crucified. On one occasion, when He was alive in the flesh, He appeared in the temple and cried out to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). Also, it was through the fellowship of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit that the human body was created in this world as the Bible says, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Our life is the same. A person spends the first forty weeks of life in his mother’s womb. Then he is born into this world and lives one generation. It does not end there, however; our lives must be prepared in order to pass through the third door and be able to enter the time that is called eternity. We live our lives encased in our flesh as is explained so thoroughly in the Bible and in accordance with the method set out in the Bible. In particular, the Bible says that “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” and one of the components of that blood is the red blood cells, which live for 120 days. For 120 days, the red blood cells produced in the body run their course through the body, return to the heart and flow to the lungs where they are replenished with oxygen before racing around the body. Then in the end, as the apostle Paul testified, “I have finished the race” (2 Timothy 4:7), when they have finished their race, they lose their color and are eliminated from the body with excrement. Yet, interestingly, the red blood cells are replenished three times in the course of a year. Could this just be another coincidence? As we live through a year, we may simply think that 365 days have passed, but in that time, the red blood cells in our bodies have been replenished three times. It is like three complete changes of clothing. We live year by year in this way and then we depart from this world. The number 12 also appears as one of significant numbers in the Bible. There are twelve tribes of Israel, and there are twelve nerves that connect the human brain to the face. Is this just coincidental?When we consider how our bodies are formed in this way, the attitude and the manner with which we look at the Israelites should be solemn. The blood flows through my body and in this way my life is maintained and my knuckles, joints and muscles move, following the commands of my brain. It seems as though my brain is giving all the commands, but the Bible tells us that behind the brain there is the blood which contains the life of the body and embraces the spirit, and this blood speaks to the brain. The history of the Israelites presents a similar image as does the Church that appears in the New Testament.   The Significance of the Temple that Appeared in the History of IsraelMoses was on Mount Sinai receiving the commandments from God for a period of forty days. At that time, the first thing that Moses received from God was the ten commandments, written on tablets of stone. Moses came down the mountain with the stone tablets, but because he had been away for so long, the Israelites had made a golden calf and were worshiping it. When Moses saw this, he broke the stone tablets. Then Moses went up Mount Sinai again and received a second set of stone tablets from God. The first and second sets of stone tablets are a shadow of the first covenant and the new covenant.When Moses received the second set of stone tablets, he received detailed instructions from God. First, he received instructions regarding the Ark of the Covenant in which the tablets were to be kept. If you look at the order of God’s commands, you can see that they are not haphazard. First He told Moses to make the ark of the covenant. When people construct a building, they begin with the outside and work inwards, but God explained the tabernacle beginning with the inside and working outwards. This is the difference between man’s way and God’s way. This tells us that while people look at outward appearances, God looks first at the heart.After explaining the ark of the covenant, God explained the mercy seat that was to be placed on top of the ark and curtains for the most holy place in which the ark of the covenant was to be placed. Inside the ark of the covenant there were the stone tablets on which were written the ten commandments, which are a symbol of God’s word. Outside the most holy there were the altar of incense, the table with the showbread and the golden lampstand. This part of the tabernacle was called the holy place. This entire tabernacle consisting of the most holy place and the holy place was located in a court which was surrounded by curtains of fine white linen. The priests of the Israelites had to proceed from east to west, passing through three entrances: the entrance to the court, the entrance to the holy place and the entrance to the most holy place. God said that the three entrances were to be made of the same materials and in the same design. All these are symbols of the body of Jesus Christ.So what about our physical bodies? As we read the Bible, we find that it says something deeply significant about one particular member of the body. In Matthew chapter 11 verse 15, Jesus Christ said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” Can you block your ears without using your hands? We can close our eyes and stop breathing through our noses without using our hands, but we cannot block our ears without our hands. In Old Testament times, people did not have Bibles as we do now, made of paper, leather bound and with the chapters and verses numbered to make for easy reading. In those days, the high priest would read the scriptures to the people and they would listen. Then one day, Jesus came and said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” The Bible also says, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). Of course, today each of us has his own Bible, there are many people who have been born again while reading the Bible, and we have come to realize many things through reading the Bible. Just as He commanded Adam from the beginning, the Bible contains the words that “God said …” We are able to hear the words of God. Our fate is decided depending on whether or not we observe the words of God that we hear in this way.How are our ears formed? There is the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. The outer ear is the external part of the ear, or the pinna. Sounds travelling in the air collect at the pinna and enter the circular ear canal. The sounds enter the ear in this way, and then hit the eardrum, which consists of three thin layers of muscle. This, too, is not coincidental. I came across this in a medical book, and I was amazed when I read it. As the sound vibrates the ear drum, its frequency changes and it moves into the middle ear. In the middle ear, there are some small bones and these, too, are three in number: the malleus, the incus and the stapes. Passing along these three steps, the sounds enter the inner ear where the cochlea is waiting. In the cochlea, there are three chambers. Whenever sounds move, their frequency changes to enable the auditory nerves in the brain to understand. All this happens in an instant.The ear consists of three parts: the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. There are three thin muscles in the outer ear. There are three bones in the middle ear. And finally, there are three chambers from which the sounds are delivered to the brain. Could this all have come about by chance? Was there a lengthy process of evolution through which the amoeba became the ape and the ape became the human being, and by some coincidence there happens to be three muscles, three bones and three chambers in the various parts of the ear? This is definitely not how it happened. God has made my ears open in order that the world of God might become engraved in my brain, my conscience, as is His earnest desire. Just as the Israelites had to pass through three entrances in order to enter the most holy place where God was and in order to come before the words of God’s commandments, the mystery of the body is also contained in these two ears that we have. We cannot block our ears even if we want to, and God is speaking continually. Is this just coincidence?The Bible says that the life of the flesh is in the blood. In view of this, what does the blood have to do with the ear? When sounds arrive in the cochlea, the final chamber, their frequency also changes there, causing waves in the lymphatic fluid. These waves indicate to the auditory nerves what kind of sounds have come in. If the sound is not a good one, the brain gives the order to cover our ears or orders the face to turn a little pink. If the sound is pleasant, the brain orders a smile or the secretion of adrenaline. When such a hormone is produced upon hearing some good news, a person who had been despondent may spring to his feet. It is as the Bible says, “As cold water to a weary soul, so is good news from a far country” (Proverbs 25:25). Our bodies are indeed formed in a deeply mysterious way. The way our bodies are formed is not at all different from the way in which the Israelites worshiped God. The twelve tribes set up camp around the court of the tabernacle, three on each of the four sides. These twelve tribes later accomplished the history of the nation of Israel and established a kingdom, and even now this nation still exists in the world as the country we called Israel. But, how do we, as Gentiles in the flesh, see this? We can see clearly from the Bible that in order to receive the blessing that comes down from God, Gentiles must first know about the twelve tribes of Israel and the tabernacle that they had amongst them. In order to understand the tabernacle, we should keep in mind that they had to go through three entrances, and only when they did this did they find God. In the same way, we come to know through the Bible about the history of Israel, about our fate as seen through that history, about Jesus Christ as He appears within that history, and we come to realize that through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ who came in the flesh, the blood that He shed can now give us life through the living words of the Bible that we have before us. The sequence is set in the same way.It is also the same as the way in which the body of a child growing within the mother’s womb develops through the blood within the child’s body. The child’s blood forms its body. The cells continue to increase in number and as they form the necessary organs, the child’s body is completed. In a similar way, everything within the history of Israel began through the commandments of the law that God gave to Moses. This was the life force within Israel. It stemmed from the deepest place within the holy of holies and gradually made its way to the outside. So if you carefully examine the history of Israel?the history contained with the Old Testament?we can see how a tribal nation became a fully-fledged nation through the generations of Abraham and Moses in accordance with God’s plan and His word, much as a child is born, grows and matures. Then as the nation entered the age of the king by the name of David, we can see it appearing in its maturity. Israel grew to become a mature body at the center of which lay the words that God gave to its. This, too, reflects the words, “The life of the flesh is in the blood.”So, if we carefully examine the words, “The life of the flesh is in the blood,” we can see that just as there is life in our bodies because of the blood that flows within us, we also need the flow of blood within our spirits. Blood is upholding our flesh, but what is upholding our spirits? It is the words of the Bible which is open in front of us. The Bible says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). It is the word of God that is the mediator between our spirits, which have become separated from God through Adam’s disobedience, and the Holy Spirit of God. So, through God’s word, in the course of our lives we come to know many things, have fellowship together and make an effort to spread God’s word to those who do not know it. The words, “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” do not just end there; they also contain the tremendous secrets that appear within the Bible as a whole. Thus the history of the Israelites continued through Moses, through the law and through the efforts of the Israelites to adhere to and keep the law. As you read through from Genesis to Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua, you can see this nation growing little by little. When you see children every day, you may not notice them growing, but when you look at photographs of those children taken one or two years previously, you may think, “They were just babies then.” You do not notice the growing process as it is happening, but that does not mean that it is not happening. In the Bible we see how God caused the gradual growth of the nation of Israel through the method He had set out, from the time when He called a man by the name of Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans until it became a nation of people who had received His law. At the center of this nation there stood a man by the name of Moses. Having received the commandments on Mount Sinai, Moses led the Israelites through the wilderness for forty years. Moses lived in this world for 120 years. In the end, Moses died in a place from which he was able to see the land of Canaan. Joshua, Moses’ successor, led the Israelites into the land of Canaan. After entering the land, the Israelites faced tremendous battles. As the twelve tribes of Israel began to destroy the Gentile nations living in that land they fought endless battles. Then the twelve tribes divided up the land they were to occupy. After this came the era of the judges. Well-known people like Samson and Gideon lived at that time. One day at the time of Samuel ? the last of the judges ? the Israelites demanded a king. They noticed that all the nations surrounding them had kings, but they did not have one so they asked for a king of their own. God already knew that the Israelites would do this. He said that when they went into that land, they would most certainly abandon Him, their true King, and ask for another king. In this way, they received a king by the name of Saul. After King Saul was dethroned, David, a man from the tribe of Judah, became king, just as Jacob had prophesied to his sons. David earnestly desired to build a temple to replace the tabernacle that God had given to Moses and Moses had built, but God did not allow David to do this and permitted him only to make the preparations for the temple. From a humanly perspective, it must have been really disappointing. It would have been tremendous if a great figure like David had built the tabernacle. Yet David had not been able to build the sanctuary. David was similar to the tabernacle. The inside of the tabernacle shimmered with gold and all the utensils were made of gold, but the outside was a covering of badger skins, a material that was able to overcome the severe conditions in the wilderness. From the outside, the tabernacle did not look particularly impressive. This represented Jesus Christ, the Man who was to suffer, the One who came to this world in order to die, and His body which was not impressive in appearance. David, too, shed much blood in battle and God did not give him permission to build the temple.It was after that that Solomon built the temple. Solomon, who built the temple, does not present an image of Jesus who suffered and died, but is rather a shadow of Jesus Christ who will come in glory as the King of kings. So Solomon was qualified to build the temple. The history of the Israelites continued as a kingdom with the temple that Solomon had built at its core. Solomon’s temple was destroyed, however, when the Israelites were captured and taken as prisoners to Babylon. After that, the Persian Empire ruled over that area, and with the permission of King Cyrus, the governor Zerubbabel returned to Jerusalem with many elders and rebuilt the temple. Then, about 30 years before Jesus was born, a man by the name of Herod further decorated the temple in order that he might look good in front of the people of that region. It was when the temple was in this state that Jesus came and said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up … But He was speaking of the temple of His body” (John 2:19, 21). In this way He appeared before us. In this way, the history of the Israelites was established and unfolded with the temple at its center. We come to know this through the Bible. When Jesus spoke these words regarding the temple, He was saying that His flesh is central to us who believe in His death and His blood and are growing together, united by love. Through the words of the Bible, we have come to believe and trust in Jesus in our hearts, but the Man by the name of Jesus does not only have a spiritual existence; He actually came to this world in the flesh, delivered up His body to be crucified, and shed His blood, which contained eternal life, for us. The words, “The life of the flesh is in the blood,” were accomplished through Jesus’ death on the cross. The words, “Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it,” (Song of Solomon 8:7)

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