The Role of Judah and Levi in God's Plan

In this passage in Deuteronomy, Moses is giving his final blessing to the people of Israel. And here he's doing it by tribes, by the different groups that are a part of the nation of Israel. And with each one of them, he's giving them a blessing, a blessing that identifies something about them that is going to be significant. And I want to read, before I turn to that section, from 1 Corinthians, where the Bible talks about how the people of God are formed. In chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians, Paul is addressing a church that's in conflict. They're fighting with each other about different things. And he's trying to help them understand the nature of the people of God. And in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, he said, The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts, and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we are all baptized by one spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free. And we were all given one spirit to drink. And I'm going to skip down a little further. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of us is a part of it. And in the church, God has appointed, first of all, apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, those speaking in different kinds of tongues, are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, do all work miracles, do all have gifts of healing, do all speak in tongues, do all interpret, but eagerly desire the greatest gift or the greater gift, which is love. That starts chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians. But the passage I want to emphasize is that in the work of God's kingdom, he has different people who have different assignments and different functions. And in this passage in the Old Testament, as Moses is giving his blessing to the people, he's addressing particular tribes. Now not individuals now, but tribes. And each of the tribes had unique places of service in God's work, so that each tribe, as in the New Testament, each one of us as individuals have spiritual gifts, and we have a function within the body of Christ. So in the Old Testament, each of the tribes had a particular role to play in the family of God. And that's what he's talking about. Now I want to start with verse 7 of chapter 33. He said, and this he said about Judah, Here, O Lord, the cry of Judah, bring him to his people, and with his own hands he defends his cause. O be his help against his foes. Now to Judah, he's talking about the role that Judah is to hold in the family of Israel. And his description of what he wants is to let the, help us to see the role that Judah would play. You'll notice in verse 7, first he identifies Judah, Here, O Lord, the cry of Judah, bring him to his people, with his own hands he defends his cause. In this appeal, he's talking about the role that Judah is to play. Judah has a position where he is a helper in battle. He's one of those who is to be a part of the army that God has assigned to defend the nation of Israel. So he asks, O Lord, the cry of Judah, bring him to his people. Now if you read, if we went back to Numbers chapter 2, there is a description that God gives about the role that each of the tribes was to play. And in that role, chapter 2, verse 9, it says, All the men assigned to the camp of Judah, according to their division number, 186,400, they will set out first. What he's saying is, when the people of Israel moved, the first tribe that was to start was the tribe of Judah. So when the battles were to be fought, the first tribe in front was the tribe of Judah. So the blessing that Moses gives to Judah is to say, you're going to be in the front of this fight. Every battle that's fought in the land of promise, your tribe will be the very first ones to engage in the battle. So he asks here, his blessing to them, hear, O Lord, the cry of Judah, and bring him to his people. So when Judah would go into battle, he asked, his blessing to them was that God would hear their cry for help because they were leading the battle and fighting. You know, when the first wave of people go, they're the most likely to be killed. And so he is blessing them that in the battles that come, they would have protection by God from the enemy. And then he says, hear their cry that they may be brought back home. Bring him to his people. The second thing he blesses them about is to say to God, would you protect them even in the battle so that as they cry for your help to be able to deal with the battle and survive what's taking place, that they might be able to return to their family. And then he asked in the third sense, third item, he urges God's help for them and what they have to do. With his own hands, talking about God now, he defeats them. He defends them. O be his help against his foes. So this cry is sort of a cry of the leading military wing of the army. Judah is to be in the front. They were one of the smaller tribes and they were in the southern part of the holy land. Later when the two kingdoms split up, there were ten in the north and two in the south and Judah was one of those, the area where Jerusalem was. So the blessing that Moses gives, he says in the battle for the holy land, to be able to accomplish the purpose of God, I want you to protect those who are most vulnerable who are out in front. I want you to hear their prayer that they might be protected and defended and bring them back home safely. And I want you to be able to make sure that they receive the help from you, your power. They're not going to be able to succeed without the power that you give them. In this very simple description of what God asks, as we apply that to the way we live our own lives, we see that oftentimes we do find ourselves in circumstances when we serve God that difficulty comes to us. Sometimes it's because of the things other people do to us. Sometimes it's because we're struggling with our own ability to be able to serve God and we run into problems that seem overwhelming to us. Sometimes it's because Satan really attacks us and we find ourselves weak and vulnerable to the things he's doing to us. This prayer for Judah is a prayer that God answers about this people that are facing spiritual battles. We don't always know what to do about the things that are around us. We have things in our job that sometimes we don't know how to handle as a follower of Christ. Sometimes we have family and neighbors that are in conflict with us. Sometimes we have circumstances that seem overwhelming to us because we don't know what to do. When you're facing spiritual battles, this is the issue that Judah is blessed by by Moses. Now Moses is not praying for us in this situation, but he's letting us know how someone prays who finds himself struggling with spiritual difficulties. First we can ask God for help in whatever kind of circumstance or battle we find ourselves. The second thing we can do is we can ask God to lead us safely through the difficulties that we're facing. And the final thing that he shows that we can ask is that God would provide the strength and wisdom we need to be able to face the issues we're facing. God wanted his people to have victory. He was leading them to the promised land. God wants every one of us to be able to have spiritual victory over the struggles that we face. That's his concern for us. So he teaches us here how we can pray for the very things that we need. When we face difficulty, he wants to help us, he wants to provide what we need, and he wants to give us the victory. But he wants us to be able to know that the victory comes by his power, his wisdom, and his strength. The second group that I want to ask us to look at tonight is in verse 8 of chapter 33. This is about Levi. About Levi he said, Your Thuman and Urim belonged to the man you favored. You tested him at Massah. You contended with him at the waters of Meribah. He said of his father and mother, I have no regard for them. He did not recognize his brothers or acknowledge his own children, but he watched over the word and guarded your covenant. He teaches your precepts to Jacob and your law to Israel. He offered incense before you and the whole burnt offering on your altar. Bless all his skills, O Lord, and be pleased with the work of his hand. Smite the loins of those who rise up against him, and strike his foes until they rise no more. Levi was one of the unusual tribes, and the longer blessing that comes to him here, and the tribe's first responsibility was to be able to take care of the two items that the chief priest carried all the time. Actually it was the Urim and the Thumam. It was the Urim first, but for some reason in this section he's called the Thumam first and the Urim second. We don't even know what these really were. The best guess is they were something like we would say dice, where they had sides on them, and the priest whenever he was trying to figure out the will of God would take these and roll them on the ground, and the combination of whatever was on the sides of them would direct whether it was yes or no, whatever they wanted to do. And the priest had these all the time in him. Now they didn't have the Holy Spirit like we have the Spirit of God, and so they were limited simply to two things, that is the law that God had given them and the teachings of the prophets. And so whenever they came to decisions about battle or about their life, these Thumam and Urim were means whereby God would control them so that when they were thrown it would give the direction that God wanted them to take. And the priest had those at all times. What he's asking for, the Levites were to say your Thumam and Urim belong to the man you favored, that God had favored Levi and trusted him with the ability to be able to determine the will of God. Now we don't have, when you become a follower of Christ, a pair of dice that we give you and say whenever you want to know what God wants, you shake them and roll them on the ground, and if two of them come up yes and you know it's yes, or two of them come up no and you know it's no, we don't have those to give you. Sometimes we think that would be better than what we have, but it's not true. For what God has placed inside of every believer is the Spirit of God, so that the very Spirit that guided Christ is resident in every follower of Christ. And when we have an issue that we want to make a decision about, we can ask God to reveal that to us, and the Holy Spirit of God guides us. In the Old Testament, when they rolled the dice on the ground and tried to make a decision, there was a physical thing they could look at. Sometimes we think the physical things are better for us than the spiritual things because they're more concrete and they're outside of us. I remember growing up as a boy looking for the will of God thinking, you know, it would be so much easier if God would just write a letter and mail it to me and I could open it up and it would say, okay, this is what you're supposed to do, sign God. Then I would have some concrete circumstance in which I could make a choice. But what I've discovered as I live the life directed by Christ is that sometimes you don't even know how to ask the right questions. You don't know when you're in a circumstance what the decisions are that you really need to be making. And what I've found is that sometimes God guides us by the presence of the Holy Spirit within us so that we're going about making choices and decisions, and then we look back and we see that he has guided us to make the right choices and the right decisions, and we weren't even aware of it at the time. We didn't know to stop and throw the dice. We were just living like we thought we should, and God just provides because he guides our choices. See, that's one of the things God promised in his covenant. I will guide you. In the Old Testament, it was the Thummim and the Urim that he used to guide them. But now the Holy Spirit is within us, and because you read the Bible and because you listen to Sunday School lessons, preaching, other people talk about their experience with God, you learn something about how you should live. And as you're living this, unconsciously, God is guiding you, helping you do the things that are right and make the choices that are right. As you look back, then you see, I've made these choices and here I am now, and I'm right here where I am because God has guided me here, and I wasn't even conscious of it. Sometimes it's contrary to what we think we want to do, but we find ourselves right there where we should be, and we didn't even know how we got here. The point here is, in his people, God wants us to have guidance, spiritual guidance. In the Old Testament, it was sort of an archaic way. In the New Testament, there's a more powerful way, that is, the Spirit of God guides us, the Scriptures guide us, the people around us help us to learn how they've discovered God's guidance and will. So all of these things provide for us. So his prayer for Judah was that God would hear his cry and bring him to his people so that his decisions would be appropriate and beneficial to all the nation of Israel. With his own hands, he defends his cause. Excuse me, I've written on the wrong line. Your Thummim and Urim belong to the man you favored. You tested him at Massah. This was a time in the Old Testament whenever the people of Israel were without water. And they were complaining to God. And Moses hit the rock with the stick and water gushed out. Then he says, you contended with him at the waters of Meribah. And this is a passage in Exodus chapter 20, verse 32, where God is again at this place where the people of Israel were upset about God's leading and guiding them. They weren't sure about whether or not he was taking care of them. Exodus chapter 32, verse 26 through 28. Moses saw that the people were running wild and Aaron had let them get out of control. So he became a laughing stock to their enemies. So he stood at the entrance of the camp and said, whoever is for the Lord, come to me. And the Levites rallied to him. Then he said to them, this is what the Lord of God of Israel says. Each man strap a sword on his side, go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, killing his brother, his friend, his neighbor. The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about 3,000 people died. Then Moses said, you have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he blessed you to this day. This was an event in which the people of Israel rebelled against God. They built the golden calf while Moses was up on the mountains talking to God. When he came down, the people had rebelled against God and instead had built an idol. And the people of Israel had started worshiping a piece of metal in place of God. They'd rebelled against his authority. So they'd made it clear that they were not willing to follow God. God needed purity among his people. So he asked the Levites to cleanse the nation of those who were his enemies, who had turned against him. And so they went among the people with their swords, killing those who were followers of the idol and saving those who were followers of Christ. That's why he says here, at the time of the water, you tested them. And at the time of the rebellion against you, they contended for you. They took your side and stood for you. And so because of that, he gave the Levites a special place. Now what he's talking about, the tribe of Levi, their loyalty to him, their loyalty that was available, they were ready to do whatever God wanted, even when they were put in a position where they didn't have enough water to live, they didn't rebel against God. When it came to a time when people were deciding, do we want to follow God or not? All those who were not followers of God, they were willing to stand by God even if it meant leaving their families or destroying or killing their family. Now we don't think very well of the circumstance where someone is asked by God to kill their family members. But what was taking place is the very thing that happened in the New Testament too. When Jesus called people to follow him and they said, wait a minute, I'd follow you but I have my family, my father to bury. And Jesus said, if I call you to follow me and you look back at your family, you're not worthy of the kingdom of God. He asked us to put the priority of obedience to God above everything in our lives, even the greatest and the most important relationships that we have. Obedience to Christ is more important than any other relationship in the world. That's what he was talking about with the Levites. You have shown that you're more dedicated to me than you are to any other relationship that you have. And so because of that, he lifts them up as an example to the people of Israel in terms of their loyalty. Loyalty to Christ takes a precedence. And all the way through the teachings of what Jesus gave to his disciples when he asked them to follow him, they had to leave their families to come and follow him. When he called disciples to be a part of his followers, they had to make a choice between him and their jobs and their relationships with others. It's an example of the loyalty that God expects from those who are his followers. So you have faced the trial. You face the issue of saying, am I going to be faithful to God or faithful to my family? It's the most important relationship that we have. And he said, he said, this is he's talking about Levi. He said of his father and mother, I have no regard for them in comparison to what he has for God. He did not recognize his brothers in that special tie over his relationship with God or even to acknowledge his own children. But he watched over your word and guarded your covenant. God asked for the most ultimate commitment to him that a human being can give. You must love me with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind more than anything else in the world. He does not allow us to place him in second position because he is God, the ruler of the universe. And the loyalties that we have to God have to be greater than the loyalties we have to any person in any kind of human circumstance or situation. He teaches your precepts to Jacob and your law to Israel. The second job that the Levites had is they were to be teachers of the law. Whenever the law was given, the Levites were to learn the law and they were to be people who were experts in the law. The nation depended on the Levites. And if the Levites failed to do their job in teaching the law, then the people would not know what God wanted them to do. So the teaching of the law was a critical element of their task or their responsibility. In Hosea chapter 4, when the prophet was talking about the condition of Israel, he pointed to this. Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge to bring against you who live in the land. There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying, murder, stealing, adultery. They break all bounds. Bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this, the land mourns. And all who live in it waste away. And the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying. But let no man bring a charge. Let no man accuse another. For your people are like those who bring charges against a priest. You stumble day and night, and the prophets stumble with you. See, he's pointing to the reality that the condition of the people of Israel is partly due to the fact that those who should bring the message of God were not doing it. So I will destroy your mother. He's talking about the land. My people are destroyed from the lack of knowledge, because you have rejected knowledge. I also reject you as my priests, because you have ignored the law of God. I will also ignore your children. The more priests increased, the more they sin against me. They exchange their glory for something disgraceful. They feed on the sins of my people and relish their wickedness. And it will be like people like priests. I will punish both of them for their ways and repay them for their deeds. They will eat, but not have enough. They will engage in prostitution, but not increase, because they've deserted the Lord to give to themselves to prostitution, to old wine and new, which takes away the understanding of my people. And they consult a wooden idol and are answered by a stick of wood. The spirit of prostitution leads them astray. They are unfaithful to their God. He talks about the condition that Hosea found in his time, and he lays the blame on this, on the priests, the Levites. Their responsibility was to teach the law, that the people might know how they should live. Most of the problems that people talk about in our culture, the condition of our society, come as a result of people not obeying the instructions of God. If you look at anything you see on television, we were talking about the condition in Ferguson, Missouri. If you look at what takes place, if everybody involved in this did the things that were right, there would be nothing there. It is our failure to do those things that brings so many of our problems. And when people talk about our culture being so different than it was years ago, maybe they're right or maybe they're wrong, but it is certainly clear that our country does not have people that are as literate about the teachings of Christ and the Bible as they have in past times. And when you don't know what's right and wrong, you can't make choices about what's right and wrong. And the failure to the church to be able to teach our culture what's right and what's wrong is a tremendous problem for us. It's a problem because the teaching has failed. It may be that preachers and teachers don't teach the right things, and it may be now in our culture that people don't want to learn. We have a lot of Bible study times when not very many people in our church come. But he lays the blame in the Old Testament on the priests because the priests in their own lives failed to live according to the things that they knew were true. What God is teaching us is we must not only learn what he wants to do and put it in practice, but it is our responsibility to teach it. That's why we place such emphasis in our Bible teaching program. We start with our children to be able to teach them the things that are right and true. I went to one of our ladies that brought her child to Bible school, and they were coming out of Wal-Mart, and there was a display where they had a t-shirt that said, You're number one. Something like that. And this little girl, I think she was in the five or six-year-old group, and she pointed that to her mother, and her mother said, No, that's right, honey, you're number one. And she said, No, Mommy, God is number one. When you're five or six years old and you've already discovered your place in the world and God's place in the world, you have a really strong way by which you can find guidance. Step by step as a person starts with that one idea, and then they learn what God wants them to do, they build in their life the boundaries that allow them to stay within the parameters God has for them. And once they stay inside those parameters, then God is able to do for them what He wants to do. The priest failed in the Old Testament. They didn't have the Holy Spirit. They didn't have the Scriptures. It was the Levites who knew the Bible who were responsible for doing it. And their failure to be able to teach the people. There was one period in the history of Israel when they lost the Bible. They didn't even have one. That's how much the Levites failed God. And we are bound to be able to say that the key ingredient we have is to make sure people know what is right in God's eyes and what's wrong in His eyes. And teaching that is critical, for in that we fulfill the mission that God gives us. The blessings that Moses asked for his people was that the Levites would do their job. That they would give the people the tools to know right from wrong what God's direction was and that they would have the Word of God hidden in their mind and heart. And now, we are the priest of God. First Peter says that we are the holy priest of God. Each of you who know the Word of God is responsible for sharing it with people around you. So they can know by what you say and how you live, the path that God has to lead them to life in its fullest. You bow your heads please for a moment to pray. I'd like you to ask God to give you guidance in the choices that you are making tomorrow. And to help you discipline yourself to read what the Bible says and your passion to put it into practice. You are the Levite now. And when you fail in your job, you bring upon yourself the curse of God. Because he's counting on each of us to fulfill the responsibility he's placed to us. So Father, we hear the blessing that Moses gave to the Levites, that they'd be faithful in helping people know your will and your direction. That they would be faithful in passing on the instructions that you gave. That their passion for you would be greater than any other human loyalty. Help us to have these qualities, to be the priest that you've called us to be. In the name of Christ we ask it, amen.