THROUGH THE BIBLE - Numbers..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Let's read it together, paying attention to each one of the words, and with reverent hearts before our Lord. Numbers chapter 27.

Then drew near the daughters of Selophehad, the son of Hefer, son of Gilead, son of Makir, son of Manasseh, from the clans of Manasseh, the son of Joseph. The names of his daughters were Malah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. And they stood before Moses and before Eliezer, the priest, and before the chiefs and all the congregation at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, saying, Our father died in the wilderness. He was not among the company of those who gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korah, but died for his own sin. He had no sons.

Why should the name of our father be taken away from his clan because he had no son? Give to us a possession among our father's brothers. Moses brought their case before the Lord. And the Lord said to Moses, the daughters of Zelophehad are right. You shall give them possession of an inheritance among their father's brothers and transfer the inheritance of their father to them.

And you shall speak to the people of Israel, saying, If a man dies and has no son, then you shall transfer his inheritance to his daughter. And if he has no daughter, then you shall give his inheritance to his brothers. And if he has no brothers, then you shall give his inheritance to his father's brothers. And if his father has no brothers, then you shall give his inheritance to the nearest kinsman of his clan, and he shall possess it. And he shall be for the people of Israel a statue and rule as the Lord commanded Moses.

The Lord said to Moses, go up into this mountain of Abarim and see the land that I have given to the people of Israel. When you have seen it, you also shall be gathered to your people as your brother Aaron was, because you rebelled against my word in the wilderness of Zin, when the congregation quarreled, failing to uphold me as holy at the waters before their eyes. These are the waters of Meribah, of Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin. Moses spoke to the Lord, saying, Let the Lord, the God of the Spirit of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord might not be as sheep that have no shepherd. So the Lord said to Moses, Take Joshua, the son of Nun, A man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him.

Make him stand before Eliezer, the priest, and all the congregation, and you shall commission him in their sight. You shall invest him with some of your authority, that all the congregation of the people of Israel may obey. And he shall stand before Eliezer, the priest, who shall inquire from him by the judgment of the Urim before the Lord. At this word they shall go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he and all the people of Israel with him, the whole congregation. And Moses did as the Lord commanded him.

He took Joshua and made him stand, before Eleazar, the priest, and the whole congregation. And he laid his hands on him and commissioned him as the Lord directed through Moses. Amen. This is the word of the Lord, beloved of Christ, brothers and sisters and friends, and whoever is within the sound of my voice. We continue, by God's grace, with our study through this Book of Numbers, and as we have been doing it through the whole Old Testament.

Now, by God's grace, we arrive to this chapter 27. And as we have mentioned in the past many times, there is a sense in which this Book of Numbers can be seen from different perspectives. And one of those perspectives from which we can establish the context of this book is from the perspective of just two generations. the older generation, the old generation, the Exodus generation that was liberated from the land of Egypt, and then the younger generation who will be the ones that indeed make it into the promised land. We know that our older generation will not make it into the promised land because of the judgment of God that came upon them, because of their disobedience and their lack of faith.

And the promise of the Lord is indeed going to be accomplished and fulfilled with this younger generation. So if we were going to see this book of Numbers, we could see it just from that simple perspective. There is an older generation and there is a newer or the living generation that is going to make it into the promised land. Both of them are sustained by the grace of God. One of them disobeyed and had unbelief and received the judgment.

But that which is going to happen to the living and the enduring generation is only because of the enduring grace and mercy of the Lord. And in that context, in that overview of this book, we arrive to this chapter 27, in which, in a sense, from chapter 26 commences or begins with those stories and those narratives that are going to be particular and going to go precisely to this newer living generation that is going to make it into the promised land. Now, the chapter that we have in front of us, Beloved of Christ, chapter 27, simply put, has two stories. Two stories. If you have there your Bible with different titles, you would see that those two stories are given a title.

We have the Daughters of Selophihad, and also we have the story of the succession, if that is a word in English, of Moses, or the appointment, better, of Joshua to replace Moses. We have these two stories, the story of the daughters of Selafihat, and then we have the story of the appointment of Joshua as the one that is going to replace Moses. In the case of the story of the daughters of Selafihat, we have a very interesting case, what they call a precedent or case law. Pay attention to this. Many times the Lord God of Israel gave to Israel laws just directly from His mouth.

But also many times the Lord is going to use cases or situations like the one that we have here with the daughters of Zelophehad to give a statue or a rule that is going to be given for the people of Israel. In this case, with the daughters of Zelophehad, the rule or the statute that is given to Israel from this case or from this story is the one of inheritance. The daughters of these men come to Moses and say, my father, he died, he did not commit the sin of Korah, but he died in the wilderness and he did not have sons. And because he did not have sons, then the inheritance that belongs to him is going to be lost because he only had daughters. So the case is brought before the Lord, and the Lord decides that from this point onwards, when a man dies with no sons, who will be the ones that inherit and receive the land, the land is going to be passed to the daughter, and if he doesn't have a daughter, to his brother, and so on, and so on, and so on.

We have a case law. We have a situation that has taken place and the Lord has given a law to the people of Israel that from this point onwards, this is the way that you're going to deal with the land that is going to be passed from generation to generation. Story number one. Story number two that we have here in this book is the appointment of Joshua as the one that is going to replace Moses as the commander, as the leader of the people of Israel. Moses had seen and the judgment of God had come upon him in a way in which he was going to be prevented from entering into the promised land.

He's going to make it in the promised land, but not with his body. He's prevented from entering into that promised land. So he's just given a view of the land that he strongly desired. He's going to die. And when he dies, Joshua is going to be the one that is going to receive the authority and the power from Moses in the Spirit of God, of course, so that he will be the shepherd or the commander of the people of Israel, taking them into the promised land.

Two simple stories that by just simple reading, as you have done it with me, we can just understand those things that we have just read together. Now, what are we going to do with these two stories? Beloved of Christ, I just simply want us to take these two stories and by analyzing them and studying them together, I want us to have a better or a deeper understanding of the promise of God. God has given a promise to the people of Israel. That promise is that He liberated them from the land of Egypt and He's going to take them to a promised land, right?

That is the promise that was given in Exodus chapter 3. What I want us to do is just take these 2 stories that we have read and I have briefly explained. to understand better or deeper the promise that God has given to his people. That is the only thing that we're going to do. Understand better or deeper the promise that God has given to his people from these two stories that we have before us.

Now, why is it important that we analyze or that we study together from this chapter the promise of the Lord and that we try to understand it better or deeper? Because, beloved of Christ, the promise that God gave to the people of Israel under the Old Covenant is a shadow of the promise of eternal life that God has given to His people under the New Covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ. Israel, in a sense, is a shadow or is a type of the people of God under the New Covenant, the church. Or the wilderness, this wilderness time, in a sense, is a shadow of the pilgrimage that the New Covenant believer has through this world until you die or you're taken up to glory. These are shadows that you can see in the Old Covenant.

The Promised Land, the one that they were going to conquer and enter into, in a sense, is a shadow of the new heavens and the new earth that are promised for the New Covenant people. You can read Hebrews chapter 4, you can read 1 Peter chapter 1, and you can read extensively through the New Testament, specifically in 1 Corinthians chapter 10. And then you will see that that is how the apostles use the story of the people of Israel. So understanding, beloved of Christ, the promise that God gave to the Old Covenant people serves us and helps us in the sufficiency of Scripture to understand better the promise that God has given to His people under the New Covenant. You're with me, right?

Very good. How are we going to do that? How are we going to understand better the promise of God given to the old covenant people and then take from there to understand better the promise that God has given to the new covenant people? I'm just simply going to present to you two characteristics of the promise of God that are clearly observed, clearly seen in the chapter that we have just read. I'm going to give you not one, but two characteristics of this promise of God given to the Old Covenant people of Israel.

And once we study them, analyze them together here, then we can take them and understand better the promise given from God to the New Covenant people. Two characteristics. The first one. The first one of those characteristics of the promise of God given to the Old Covenant people is, in the word, inheritance. Inheritance.

The promise that God gave to the people of Israel was not only a promise of land. That promise takes the form of an inheritance. Every time that we hear this promise of, I'm going to take you out of the land of Egypt and I'm going to bring you to a land that is flowing with milk and honey, that promise, as we progress through Exodus and Leviticus and now in Numbers, takes the shape and the understanding of inheritance. That is, that the people of Israel were going to inherit a land. Now, God could have chosen, could have done different ways to give this land to the people of Israel.

He could have just simply allocated, take that portion of land and give it to them. But when the Lord speaks about their arriving into the promised land, He uses the word, inheritance. And this is very important. This is very important because when the Lord explains and assumes that what the people of Israel are going to receive is an inheritance, this requires that we understand that God is the owner of that land. Now, we know that God is the creator and that he owns the world, right?

But there is a particular ownership of God to this particular land of Israel. So every time that the Israelites will come into the land and then they will overcome and defeat the Canaanites and all of these peoples and then remove them and utterly destroy them, it's not that the Israelites are taking the possession that belonged to the Canaanites, but rather that they are receiving the inheritance from the Lord. We understand that. I suppose this is just a simple concept of inheritance. Father passes on to his daughter or son or family that which belongs to them.

Now, the most important part of this inheritance, beloved of Christ, is precisely that. That the Lord expected that to whom He originally gave that land, that that land was going to pass through generations and be a witness or a token to the fulfillment and the faithfulness of God. Think about this and then you will understand the complaint of the daughters of Zelophehad. Every time that a person, oh, let's say better, that in the beginning a person receive an allocated portion of that land given as an inheritance, that family will have to pass that land to his son and pass it through generations and through generations and through generations to come. That piece of land will be a testimony to that family and to the whole people of Israel that the Lord 100, 200, whatever amount of years ago was faithful to fulfill his promise because we are inheriting this piece of land that was given to our forefathers.

You understand what I mean, right, beloved? So this is very important. We are seeing this as an inheritance. Now, there's something very interesting about this inheritance. Pay attention to this.

This inheritance is given to the people of Israel in at least two ways. One way that is general and one way that is very specific. General is in which Israel receive as a whole the land of Israel. So all Israel, they receive the land of Israel. They inherit from the Lord the whole land of Israel.

But there is another sense. There is another sense in which the people of Israel receive the land in a more specific sense. And that more specific sense is that God distributes that land for every tribe or every clan or every even family. Be with me, beloved of Christ. That inheritance was passed from the Lord to the people of Israel in a general sense, giving that land to all Israel, but also in a very specific sense in which each tribe or each clan will receive a portion of this land.

This is very important. Because once the people of Israel take ownership of the land, they would have opened their eyes and then to see the vast land of Israel. And that would have been a testimony and a witness to the fulfillment of the promise of God, in a general sense. But in a more specific sense, Each family or each clan or each tribe would have seen the allocated portion of land that was inherited to them. And that would have been a testimony of the inheritance that they particularly receive personally in a very individual way if you want a community sense from the Lord.

This is my land, people from Judah will say. We live in Israel, but this is still my land. And then from this story of the daughters of Zelophehad, we can see that the Lord wants and desires to preserve that principle. that the land will be given to all Israel, but that that land is going to be distributed by the tribes and the clans, and then each family will have their portion. And even in the end of this book, in chapter 36, from the daughters of Zelophehad, we are told that we are instructed that the people of the tribes of Israel are not to take possession of each other's land, because it belongs to them.

That is this inheritance. Not only that, beloved Christ, but there is a very interesting aspect of this inheritance for the people of the Old Covenant. And that is that they received the ownership of this land by faith, but the possession of this inheritance was by obedience. Pay attention to this. They received the ownership of this portion of land by faith, but they took possession of the inheritance by obedience."

How do we know that? We know because here we have daughters of Zelophehad who have not seen the land, who have not experienced the land, who have not visited the land, yet they are coming before Moses with a complaint about property. Right? They're saying, our dad died without a son and we deserve to have a portion of the land. So they know that the Lord, by faith, has given them a portion of the land.

Yet, the ownership of this land is still in need of being taken possession. And possession of the land only happens in the Old Covenant through obedience. You will see that in the book of Joshua. When they are entering into the promised land and for them to take the land, they have to obey what the Lord says. Utterly destroy them, utterly destroy them, utterly destroy them.

And when they don't do, Then they are unable to take full possession of the land and Joshua is even going to die and they have not taken full possession of the land that God had promised them. In the Old Covenant, then the ownership is taken by faith and the possession of the land was by obedience. First characteristic or aspect that I wanted you to see from this promise of God is that it's given through inheritance. Inheritance. Second aspect of the promise of God under dual covenant that I want us to see here from the chapter.

The second characteristic of the promise of God is that that inheritance is given through a mediator. That inheritance of the land, in this case, it's not always a land because for the Levites, it was a portion of the Lord, but let's just take it, generally speaking, as the land. The inheritance of the land was to be given to the people of Israel through a mediator. And that mediator was meant to be a shepherd to the people of Israel. That mediator was to be a leader, using the language that we have in chapter 27.

That was the role of authority of this mediator, through whom the inheritance was going to be given to the people of Israel. There is another very important characteristic of this mediator. And that characteristic is that these men, in this case Moses or Joshua, are not indispensable. Is that a word? Indispensable?

Moses and Joshua are not indispensable. The giving of the promise requires the role of a mediator, but the mediator that was under the old covenant, the person as such, was not indispensable. How do we know that? We know that because Moses will die. And the giving of the promise for the people of Israel is not contingent upon Moses entering into the promised land.

He dies, the mediator dies, and now the role is passed on to another who is going to take them into that promised land. So we have, according to the things that this person here has said from chapter 27 in the book of Numbers, that the promise of the Lord under the old covenant given to his people is a promise of a new land that is to be received through inheritance. And that inheritance is given to the people of Israel in a general sense namely to the whole people of Israel, but also that is to be given particularly and specifically to tribes and to clans and to families. And that that inheritance is going to be a token, a witness through the generations that when we look back, or the people of Israel look back, that the Lord has fulfilled His promise and that He has been faithful to give to the people of Israel this promised land. Now, also we have that the accomplishment of the fulfillment and the receiving of that inheritance takes place through a mediator.

Because we know that it was Moses that took them out of the land of Egypt. And it's going to be Joshua, the one that is going to take them into the promised land. Very good. That is everything that this chapter says. Now, how are we going to take that into the New Testament?

We're just going to allow the Apostle Paul to speak to us about how this inheritance in the Old Covenant, now it is to be understood under the New Covenant, under the person of Jesus Christ, this glorious inheritance. So we're going to come to our Bibles, to Ephesians chapter 1. And Ephesians chapter 1, and actually I could take you to so many other passages that speak about this reality. But I'm taking you to Ephesians chapter one now to read a glorious passage. And may the Lord give us light to speak from this.

Ephesians chapter one. And we are going to read, beloved of Christ, brothers, sisters, friends, everyone who is within the sound of my voice in reverence to the spirit of Christ, in reverence to our triune God. In light of the things that I have just said and that I have tried to show you from Numbers 27. Let's read together. Asking the Spirit of God to teach us and instruct us in these words.

Ephesians chapter 1 verse 11 through 14. In Him, this is speaking of Christ. In Him, We have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him, who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ may be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were zealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance, Until we acquire possession of it to the praise of His glory. Beloved of Christ.

Under the new covenant. Under and after the cross of this glorious Savior of ours, Jesus Christ. the obtaining of the promise of God was not contingent upon the life of a person who was going to die, but rather that promise rested and was established upon the eternal life of Jesus Christ himself, so that by having faith in him, we will have certainty that we are going to make it to the promised land. Moses and Joshua were the servants of a promise of a land that they had never visited. That's why they sent spies to go and see the land.

But this Jesus Christ who came from heaven, he's not only the guarantee in his spirit of the promise, but he's the substance of the promise himself. And He's the owner of the promised land. And for that reason, the obtaining of the inheritance under the New Covenant requires that we will be united to Him whose life is eternal and who is the substance of the glorious promise of the inheritance. Beloved of Christ, under Jesus, we do not inherit new heavens and new earth. We are not expecting the fulfillment of a promise as if we were desiring eagerly new heavens and new earth.

New heavens and new earth are the environment in which Jesus Christ dwells with his people. And the reason why the new heavens and the new earth are satisfying and beautiful and perfect, it is not because things were made new, but because Jesus Christ is there. So, beloved of Christ, in Jesus Christ, by the resurrection from the dead, we have an inheritance that, according to the Apostle Peter, is called a living hope. This is reserved and kept in heaven for us. This is incorruptible and defiled and does not fade away.

And those who, by grace through faith, are genuinely united to Jesus Christ are kept and preserved by the power of God through faith. and the inheritance that we have in heaven is not only general new heavens and new earth but it's also specific because if you are genuinely in Christ you are going to be given a new body and a name that only he knows so that when you are in heaven praising the Lord is not by virtues of the glories of the new heavens and new earth by the virtues also of the new possession that He has given you in a new tent. The tent that you have, independently of how old you are, how strong you are, is going to pass away. And because of Christ, we will be given a new tent, a new tabernacle that will abide until eternity. And in eternity, when we see ourselves, we will have our bodies, our soul, as a witness and a testimony that Jesus Christ will fulfill his promise.

And when we open our eyes to see the new heavens and the new earth, our hearts will naturally and organically explode in glories to the Savior saying, worthy, worthy, worthy is the lamb who came to die for us and to rescue us from the death that we deserve and to take us into the glory of his presence. This is the glory of the promise of God. that was temporal and limited under the old covenant, eternal and glorious in the new covenant. Why? Not because of new heavens and new earth, not even because there's no presence of sin, but rather because in new heavens and new earth, righteousness dwells and his name is Christ.

May you be found in that your faith, the genuineness of your faith on that day might be for the glory and the praise and the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ who saved us. Amen.