Let us pray. Father God, we come before a text that often has led to confusion. And yet through the power of your spirit, there is a clear message to be received here. And so we ask that you bless us with the power of your spirit so that we can hear your word this morning. We ask this in Jesus name. So I changed. Some of you in reading, I'm sure, chapter five are going, why did you change? Change the passage. You know, we've spent many a times talking about certain themes in this walk in the wilderness, in this exodus journey. But I want us to appreciate something I don't believe we've really appreciated to this point. And the best way I can explain it that I could come up with is to talk about Cosmo. And on Costco in general, although I do like Costco in general, I think we stopped at every Costco along the way in our trip to Canada. Just so you know, they serve poutine there and they have these really great waffle cone ice cream, but their pizza is terrible. Absolutely awful. It's sugary. It tastes like, yeah, it's awful. But I actually want to specifically speak about my hometown Costco, which is the Pops Town Costco. And when I go into the Potsdam Costco, I go in and I shop and I think nothing of it. I think nothing of the fact that in the short distance away is a nuclear power plant. is a nuclear reactor that actually, if I get closer to it, there would be a point where all of a sudden, probably where Jim might work, where I would start to think about the awesome reality of the power of this structure. Normally, I just go to Costco and I leave. And then if I was within the facility, there would be a Killington, which in one sense, there is no return. that the force and the power of the core of that nuclear reactor is so strong and so powerful that it just would end me. Here we saw in chapter three of the reading the fact that God has created a Levitical priesthood, and we've talked about the fact that this Levitical priesthood was a type and shadow for what God ultimately wanted for all of these people, that they would be a priesthood of believers, both men and women coming together and being a priesthood, a kingdom of priests in one sense. And so that's been the background of this passage. And yet, here at their moment, in this story, at this place and time, the reality is... The center of the camp, the presence of God, is one that if the Levites don't follow instructions, if those around the camp don't follow instructions, would consume them by God's power. They would be consumed by the holiness, by the glory, by the presence of God. This is something that Adam and Eve, before they fell into sin in the garden, they never had necessarily this kind of appreciation for the power of God, and yet even when they fell into sin, when sin entered into the world, they were afraid, and they sought covering, and they sought to create distance between them and God, so much to the point where God says, basically, we are all of you. And so I was going to connect the Levitical priesthood, the Nazirite vow, and kind of show how the Nazirite vow was an early precursor to kind of becoming this idea of priestly, of being set aside. And the Nazirite vow was a vow that both men and women could... There is a reality in which God has... I've lost my train of thought. All right, where was I? I was in sin, okay. Don't, sin. No, so we have to deal with the reality of sin. So at the beginning of chapter five, we're dealing with the first four verses of something we've already talked about. We've talked about leprosy. We've talked about, we looked at Leviticus and the individual who had just a little bit of leprosy and went to the high priest and say, hey, you know, I got a little leprosy on my arm. What was that person pronounced by God in Leviticus? Unclean. Whereas the individual who was covered in leprosy, the spots had turned white, they could not deny it, they could not hide from it. that person was pronounced clean. And so the first four persons are God reminding people that leprosy is not allowed in the camp. And the thing about leprosy is it was outward. As we talked about it, you could smell leprosy, you could see leprosy, you could, you know, it changed the eyes, it changed the body, the body decomposes. The stench could be smelled for multiple football fields, a leper could be smelled by. So it was obvious. Even our sermon, the word we considered last week, you know, we talked about the public square. And in the public square, there is a litany of issues every week that is very clear that these are public sins. I mean, this week they handed out gold medals for men hitting women in the face and called it women's boxing. It's disgusting. It's awful. And it's obvious. It's leprosy. It's easy to spot. But the thing about chapter five of Numbers is really from verse five on through the end, which I believe is verse 31, is the matter of secret sins. Of those quiet sins. Those sins that are a little easier to not wanna talk about. Really, secret sins are sins in which we can maybe feel like we can get away with it. Nobody notices, it's a little less clear. Should we confess for that? Should we repent for that? But the problem is you have God now at the center of camp, and just as he can't accept the outward sin, he also needs to deal with the inward sin. This nuclear reactor who, a power obviously infinitely more powerful, he cannot have sin in his midst. And so he in this chapter is presenting a way for these people that are on the pathway to a kingdom of being a kingdom of priests to deal with not just the exterior of the body, not just the obvious overt sins, but also those quieter sins that we keep and we hold on to. Those sins that really the fear of man might prevent us from saying. rather than the fear of God allows us to proclaim and to own up to and admit to. And so that's really when we're looking at verses five onward of chapter five, what we're gonna be looking at. And the reality of this chapter is that it's rich in imagery, rich in illustration. Actually the images in both the woman and the husband in going before the priest of adultery, but also the earlier verses five through 10, or there are words here, rich that carry on through the entirety of scripture. And we should appreciate that. Now, when looking at these secret sins, God says to Moses, starting in verse 6 and 7, the following, So, any of the sins people commit by breaking faith with the Lord, and that person realizes his guilt, he shall confess his sin that he has committed, and make full restitution for his wrong, adding a fifth to it, and giving it to him whom he did the wrong. God is really getting at the dilemma of secret sins. The thing about secret sins is that general rule is we can kind of, again, get away with them. And we can often even justify them as born out of a habit or born out of a personality or, you know, it doesn't hurt anyone else. And yet, in secret sins, there is a danger of our consciences being seared. the pressure of shame, the pressure of the fear of being exposed often will have our secret sins kind of linger. And this is, it's really secret sins that are the kinds of sins that shock people out of hand. It's the kinds of sins that shock congregations, or households, or communities, or even in the political square, where often there has been a habitual period hiding sins like this, of not confessing them to the Lord and confessing them also to, and let me be clear, you don't need to broadly confess all secret sins, but the Bible has an idea of poignantly and wisely confessing sins. But these kinds of sins are sins that God needs to have dealt with in his camp. And notice from verse six, who do we break faith with when we commit secret sins? according to the word of God, we break faith with the Lord. I think of David's declaration in Psalm 51, verse six, when he says, against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, that you may be proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. It wasn't that David, if you walked up to him when he was confessing in Psalm 51, his sin against Uriah, the sin of adultery, the sin of adultery that led to his son's death, that David wouldn't have appreciated the fact that he sinned against Iran, that there were actual life and death consequences for his son. It's not that he wouldn't realize that, but David understood in Numbers chapter 5, verse 6, and that any sin, no matter how great or small, is always a sin in which we are breaking faith. In one sense, we are that, you know, the young child always in a lock with the Lord. where we're constantly saying, oh no, I think my way is better. I think my way is the way to go. And we have a word from God that says, that's not the way you should go. That's not the way you should show your faith, display your faith in the world. And when we have these sins, we basically sin against him in that way. And so these are, again, The difficult sins. Well, a creator like Fr. Sinatra can make the idea of, I did it my way, sound great to our ears. I love that song. The reality is every sin is us breaking faith with a God who wants us to live his way. And the danger of secret sins is no one knows but us and God, and we get too comfortable with them. Now something else I want us to appreciate about verses 6-10 is how broadly this category of secret sins can apply. Because it's really any sins that break faith with God. A lot of people get confused because the last couple verses imply a financial restitution. And yet, the list of what qualifies as secret sins is long indeed. Here's just some of them. Pride and self-righteousness. gossip and slander, judging others harshly, envying others' spiritual gifts or roles, lust and pornography use, dishonesty and financial manners, addiction to substances and behaviors, harboring resentment and unforgiveness, neglecting the things of God privately, emotional or physical affairs, misuse of power or authority, materialism or greed, neglecting family responsibilities due to over-involvement of other activities, spiritual apathy hidden by religious routines. And so when you're stuck with the realization of just how many kinds of things fall in this category, It becomes, in one sense, overwhelming. And yet, here is where the passage then speaks of an atonement. Actually, in the Hebrew here, this language of this passage is very much legal language. It's courtroom language. And the irony of it is, you know, I'd watched quite a few in my life, Matlock episodes. I'd never really watched Law and Order and the 5,000 variations of it. I watched a little bit of Perry Mason. I never saw someone go on trial for gossip. And yet here, God is speaking about these secret sins and he's speaking of them in a legal manner. And yet in his speaking about them in a legal manner, he is still offering an atonement, an ability to be forgiven of them. And yet that forgiveness comes at first confessing with God and making restitution where restitution is appropriate. And again, it's not really a financial restitution because, you know, I've had people that have resolved financial debts of the academy in life. They're not the most heartwarming situations in my life. Actually, the greatest moments of character are when individuals have desired to walk the godly path of confessing sin and resolve a spiritual matter, a relational matter. These sorts of things are the greater of the gifts. And so realize the principle here, when God is speaking about giving back more than basically what you took away, there's a wisdom principle in there. It's overwhelmingly showing the fact that you have repented of this secret sin. And so that's at play here. And so if you didn't have a person that you could rectify the situation with, God tells you, go to the next of kin. Well, the next of kin's gone too. Then take it to your high priest. And of course, we know as New Testament believers that Christ is our high priest. But secret sins also have another hurdle. While it definitely takes an act of God, and I believe verse six shows this, of God through his spirit strengthening someone in order to reconcile when it comes to secret sins, there's also one who receives the repentance. There's also one who receives the confession. And we are a people who our Lord and Savior has taught us to pray in a pattern with regularity. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Oh my God is gracious and your God is gracious and he is merciful and he is forgiving. When people come and confess their sin, And so realize when we live in community and people come and they confess and they repent, that's only half of the side of the coin, right? That also when people sin against us, when people wound us, that we have to be ready with an open hand to receive their repentance. And so secret sins have a powerful kind of, and I think some of this can be sometimes the surprising nature of them, a difficulty, but we need to also be a people who not only can repent of our secret sins, but receive repentance from others of theirs as well. And so God implores us to confess our sins in this passage. And then we get to verse 11, right? And verse 11 just through 31 sounds like this confusing, arcane mess. And yet, it's beautiful. It's beautiful, it really is. Stay with me on this. And again, as I told you, there's tons of biblical symbolism in this chapter. Let's just look at some of them in these verses that we're about to look at from 11 to 31. There's a husband and a bride. There is jealousy, there is dust. There is a water that brings deliverance for the righteous. There is also a water that brings judgment for the wicked. There are offerings made. There is an unfaithful wife and a curse that affect her ability to basically produce generationally. And yet there is a faithful bride and she will be blessed and able to conceive and basically able to have a progeny after her. And so the situation starts with a husband who suspects a wife of adultery, and there is no evidence or a witness. And let me say, as a pastor, the human mind is a very powerful thing. That's why we have to be so careful what we put into it. When the human mind has made a decision on something, and is unwavering in that decision, that is a very difficult bond to break. I'm gonna have to be vague, but there is a time in ministry where I saw one spouse divorce their other spouse because they had convinced themselves that one morning, as that spouse was driving someone to work, that they had committed adultery. Years of tears and devastation fall. Eventually the divorce was finalized. And the spouse who wanted the divorce because they had in their mind decided, and I really think they were 100% wrong, had decided this had happened, they got their divorce. And then they proceeded to go out and get revenge as the world gets revenge. And they found the emptiness of that jealousy, and they found the hollowness of that jealousy. And then amazingly, by the grace of God, they found a spouse that was willing to remarry them, forgive them, and they are married again today. all because the powerful seed of doubt was planted in a mine. And yet, because in this situation, one spouse stayed grounded in the gospel, they were able to make a way forward and to reconcile their marriage. And so God knows this about us. God knows that our mind has suffered from the fall. Our mind struggles with jealousy. Our mind struggles with these kinds of things. And so he created a way in which the dilemma of jealousy could be brought before him and taken care by him. Now let's look at some of the images of this ceremony. The husband would bring the brine, he would bring her with a grain offering, and he would bring her to the priest. And the priest would receive the grain, and he would receive the bride, and he would begin mixing the dust of the tabernacle floor into an earthen vessel with water and the dust of the floor. Now, what was constantly spilling on the tabernacle floor? Starts with a B. Blood. And so you now have this earthen vessel filled with water, blood, and dust. What are we made out of? Dust. and the priest has the grain, which makes the bread, and his vessel. And he unbinds the bride's hair. Why does he unbind the bride's hair? Because to unbind the hair in the Jewish world, and you can see his places like Leviticus 10.6, 13.45, and 21.10, was one of two things. there is either in unbinding her hair, it's a sign of a woman in mourning, or it's a sign of a woman in her disgrace. And the irony of this charge of jealousy is that either in a human implications, this woman is currently mourning because she was brought down here because her husband has thought the worst of her, even though she has been faithful. And so she's in mourning. or she is about to be exposed as a harlot, and in her harlotry, she has basically been shown to be unfaithful. Either way, the unbinding of the hair really is, in one sense, one of two of you are going to be right or wrong. And then the priest administers an oath to the woman. And the oath makes clear if she's innocent, she'll be unaffected. If she's guilty, she's going to be cursed with physical ailments. And it reads as follows. If no man has lain with you, and if you have not turned aside to our cleanness while you were under your husband's authority, be free from the water of bitterness that brings the curse. But if you have gone astray, though you were under your husband's authority, and if you have defiled yourself, and some man other than your husband has lain with you, then the Lord make you a curse and an oath among your people. When the Lord makes your thigh fall away and your body swell, may this water that brings the curse pass through your bowels and make your womb swell and your thigh fall away, and the woman shall say, Amen. Amen. And then the woman drinks the water, and the priest takes a portion of the grain offering and burns it in fire. And if innocent, the woman is unharmed and able to conceive, And if guilty, the woman experiences painful symptoms and becomes unable to continue having children. And what of the husband? If the man was right to be jealous, only she bears iniquity. Now, right about now, some of you are thinking, what in the world is this? Well, what's the emotion again that sparks this moment? Jealousy. Jealousy. Now jealousy is one of those emotions, not that God has emotions like we do, but God sometimes speaks to us what's called anthropomorphically. But he will reference himself being jealous for us. God will reference also himself being a husband and we his bride. And God uses waters for good, but he also uses waters for judgment. These people would have known that. They would have known the reality of Noah and the story of Noah, and how the water became a vessel to save one family, but a vessel of judgment for others. But also, they were the people that walked through the Red Sea, that were saved by the water, and yet saw others crushed by the watery judgment. By the way, that same Red Sea is what the Apostle Paul will link baptism to in 1 Corinthians chapter 10. that Red Sea kind of idea. Waters of judgment for some, that's why judgment is worse for those who have heard the light of Christ, have testified that they believe in Christ, and yet were found to be false believers. Waters will save some and crush others in this judgment with this woman. And so again, the biblical symbolism here is right. And so who is the great high priest we go to, according to scriptures? It is Jesus. He is our great high priest. And if Jesus were to ask us, you know, there's always those questions, like if you were to die today and stand before me, Matthew chapter 20, with the sons of David, the mother is busy trying to figure out the seating arrangements of heaven. And Jesus alludes to Numbers chapter five, when he states the following, But Jesus answered, and I'm reading the NLT because I prefer its translation here. But Jesus answered by saying to them, you don't know what you're asking. Are you able to drink from the bitter cup of suffering? I am about to drink. And they replied, of course, in all their zeal, oh yes, we're able. No, no, we're not able to drink from the bitter cup. They hadn't been enlightened by the spirit yet. Later on, six chapters further in Matthew, on the night he was betrayed in the agony of the garden, Jesus said to his father, remaining in the NLT, chapter 26, verse 39, it says to us, he went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, my father, if it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine. You see, Jesus knew you and I are harlots. He knew you and I would be destroyed in wrath. He knew you and I and ourselves would be unable to help generations that preceded us, because we've been unfaithful, unless we receive mercy for our harlotry. And so instead of letting us go into the judgment and drink down the bitter cup, he drank down our judgment instead. So that in the shadow of Calvary, we see the ultimate fulfillment of Numbers 5. There on a rugged hill, our Savior stood as a faithful husband to an unfaithful bride. We, in our sin and our rebellion, had played the harlot, turning from our first love to embrace the idols of this world. The bitter cup of judgment rightfully belonged to us, a poison so potent that it would dam us to hell. But Jesus, in his love, stepped forward. And with hands that formed the universe, he took a hold of the terrible cup, the very cup that would have caused our bodies to swell with the poison of sin and our souls to waste away in guilt. He then lifted it to his own lips, and the nails pierced his flesh, and he drank deeply of our shame, for our betrayal and cosmic infidelity. The cup that should have exposed our guilt instead revealed his unending grace. In that moment, the bridegroom took upon himself the adultery of his bride. The innocent became guilty so that we, the guilty, could become innocent. And now cleansed by his sacrifice, we stand before God, no longer accused, no longer under the curse, but beloved and accepted. The bitter waters have now become the fountain of life. And in place of judgment, we receive a bridegroom who has given us an internal inheritance, all because Jesus, our faithful Lord, drained the dregs of the bitter cup that was respectfully ours. Amen? Amen. Let us pray. Father God, How great a cost it was for you to create a kingdom of priests. How great a cost it was to create your bride, the church. Help us in our heartland tree. Help us to love the bridegroom who drank down the bitter cup of poison so that we could be forgiven by your grace. And help us to share with others Help us to be unashamed of calling others to receive the full forgiveness of sin that we have through you, our Lord and Savior. Amen.