Go ahead and turn with me to
Numbers chapter 10, if you would, please. Let's begin tonight by just reading
the first 10 verses. Numbers chapter 10, beginning
in verse one. And the Lord spake unto Moses
saying, make thee two trumpets of silver of the whole piece
shalt thou make them, that thou mayest use them for the calling
of the assembly and for the journeying of the camps. And when they shall
blow with them, all the assembly shall assemble themselves to
thee at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And if they
blow but one trumpet, then the princes, which are the heads
of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto thee.
And when you blow an alarm, then the camps that lie on the east
part shall go forward. "'And when you blow an alarm
the second time, "'then the camps that lie on the south side "'shall
take their journey, "'and they shall blow an alarm for their
journeys. "'But when the congregation is
to be gathered together, "'ye shall blow, but ye shall not
sound an alarm. "'And the sons of Aaron, the
priests, "'shall blow with the trumpets, "'and they shall be
to you for an ordinance forever "'throughout your generations.
And if you go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth
you, then you shall blow an alarm with the trumpets, and you shall
be remembered before the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved
from your enemies. And also in the day of your gladness,
and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months,
you shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and
over the sacrifices of your peace offerings, that they may be to
you for a memorial before your God, and I am the Lord your God."
The people of God in the wilderness were to be wholly dependent on
God. As we saw last week in Numbers
chapter nine, the people of Israel moved when the cloud moved and
they rested when it stopped. And there were no exceptions
to that rule. No matter how long the cloud
remained, no matter how long it moved, the people were to
follow it when it moved and they were to rest when it stopped. As we discovered in the last
study, the cloud, without a doubt represents the presence of the
Lord. The child of God always desires
to be in the presence of the Lord. They'd rather not go if
the Lord not go before them. That's what Moses said. You remember
in Exodus, I think chapter 33, Lord, if you don't go with us,
we don't want to go. And that's a good place to be. Lord, if you don't go, we don't
wanna go. It's in his presence, it's the
only place that we can truly rest. And I'm thankful that we
can rest there. In today's world, religion is
just so labor intensive. Always doing, never resting,
and men and women cannot and will not understand the divine
principle of trusting and resting in the Lord Jesus. I grew up
in such a church. It was just always something.
We've got to be doing something. But they never showed me how
to rest. Never showed me how to look to
the one who is my rest. And that's the Lord Jesus Christ. This is something we talk about
all the time. Salvation is not what we do. Salvation is what Christ has
done. A very simple principle, but
you'd be amazed at how few folks know that to be the truth. That's
what faith is. It's simply trusting, relying,
and depending on Christ and the work that he's already done for
us. How do we rest? Well, we cease from our own works
as God did from his when he made the creation. God created the
heavens and the earth in six days and he rested on the seventh.
He ceased from his works, not because he was tired, but because
his work was finished. And that's why you and I can
rest, because the work is done. And that's been the theme of
a lot of our messages recently. Not something that we do that
causes Him to do. No, it's not that either. Both
the resting and the risings of the people of God are ordered
by Him and protected by Him. May God enable us to follow His
guidance and to trust in His watch care over us. That's what
walking in faith is. It's just trusting in Him. In
our text, the Lord here directs Moses to make two trumpets. We
see that these two trumpets were to be made of silver. Very interesting,
I found it that in the Hebrew language, other words for silver
are money, price, valuable, and precious. You see, the chosen
sinner's redemption came at a great price. And I know folks say that,
but I don't know how often they really stop and consider what
that price was. It wasn't a great price to us.
It was a great price to God. And it was not a great price
or great something done by us, but by Christ. And the gospel
of salvation and substitution and sacrifice, you know, that's
what the gospel is. Christ and Him crucified. Christ doing for me. What I could not do for myself.
Christ fulfilling the law and satisfying God's justice in my
place. One who could never, never do
so. Substitution. Oh, I'm so thankful
that the God man, the perfect man did for me what this wretch
could not do for himself. What a valuable and precious
cost. And that being the precious blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the gospel is compared to
silver because like silver, it's fetched out of the minds of the
sacred scriptures and it's priceless since it contains the unsearchable
riches of Christ. We, in our personal study, we
mine the scriptures, we dig and we dig, and we look for those
nuggets of grace and mercy that point us to Christ and his unsearchable
riches. And it's more valuable than silver
and gold. precious stones. You know, when
Peter and John went to the temple at the hour of prayer and that
poor man lay there, the scripture said that he had been lame from
his mother's womb. He had never walked, had never
taken the first step. And as he lay there begging for
alms, he was a beggar. There was nothing he could do
for himself but beg. Oh, that's a good place to be
spiritually, you know. to be lame on your feet from
a great fall as Mephibosheth was. Not able to walk, not able
to take a step, not able to work, not able to do, just beg, just
beg. We're mercy beggars whether we
see it or not. But as he laid there begging,
Peter said, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, I
give I thee. And then he said, in the name
of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk. And that man did. Oh, I
wonder. He would have given all the money
in the world to be able to do that, but silver and gold won't
do that for you. Only the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ will. More valuable, more valuable.
John Gill, comparing the gospel to silver, wrote this. Just as
silver is pure and free from dross, lasting and durable, so
is the gospel. It's free from the debris and
the chaff of human error and inventions, and rightly, it's
called the everlasting gospel. Now, did you also notice, according
to verse two, that these trumpets were to be made of a one-piece
construction? There's no doubt that this one-piece
construction of these trumpets typify the singularity of the
Lord Jesus. Scripture's very clear. For there's
one God, just one, and one mediator between God and men, and that
is the man Christ Jesus. Now since these trumpets were
to be made of a one-piece construction and out of silver, It took this
solid mass of silver. It had to be beaten with a hammer
and to be shaped and formed into the desired state and specifications
that God had given them. Now, we're not told what they
are here, but it was the term of a whole piece here in verse
two is the same Hebrew phrase used in Exodus chapter 25 in
the making of the candlestick. If you can remember back that
far, I had to look it back up. But like the candlestick, these
trumpets were made from a beaten work with a hammer. They beat
on that silver until they formed it into the shape that they wanted
it, the same as they did the candlestick. And what a picture
that is of the suffering of a perfect and pure Christ for His chosen
people. Christ being our gospel message,
He's our sacrifice, and no doubt the good news of redemption.
And this glorious redemption is only made effectual from the
beaten work and suffering of the Lord Jesus. What He sustained
as our substitute and our sacrifice and in and by and through the
shedding of his precious blood. And there are many references
in the scriptures to the great trumpet of God being blown. The preachers of the gospel are
to lift up their voice like a trumpet. to show sinners their perishing
condition and their desperate need to come to Christ for salvation. In Isaiah chapter 27, verse 13,
the prophet Isaiah, with a view to this, speaks of the gospel
day and says, when the great trumpet shall be blown and the
glorious effect of it through grace is causing those to approach
who were ready to perish, What a picture that is of the preaching
of the gospel. John the Baptist was a voice. He was a trumpet, so to speak,
a noise in the wilderness proclaiming, make straight the way of the
Lord. And according to verse two here
in Numbers 10, these trumpets were sounded for the calling
of the assembly of Israel. and for the journeying of the
camps. Now these trumpets typify, as I said, and picture very well,
the preaching of the gospel. For what is the call of Christ's
gospel but a call to the assembling of sinners before the holy God? What is the sounding of the gospel
but his holy word directing us through our journey in life?
In verse three, we're told that if the two sons of Aaron, the
priest blew them, meaning both trumpets, and many believe that
this was with a continued sound, just one long note, all the assembly
of Israel would gather together at the door of the tabernacle.
And at the blowing of both trumpets, Israel as a nation would gather
together to hear what was to be said unto them. But then in
verse four, we see that if Aaron's sons blew but one trumpet, then
the princes only, the heads of each tribe, the head of thousands,
it says, would meet together. And then in verse five, we're
told about the priest blowing an alarm. And many of the Jewish
theologians or historians, including Josephus, believed that this
was the priest blowing broken and single notes in a pattern,
maybe. When the camps of Israel heard
this, all the camps that encamped at the east side of the tabernacle
proceeded forward. Then in verse six, we see that
if the alarm was blown the second time, then the camps on the south
side of the tabernacle were to take their journey. Though we're
not told, it really stands to reason, and again, according
to Jewish historians, believe that the alarm, if the alarm
was sounded yet the third and the fourth time, then the north
and the west nations or tribes would disperse. But in verse
seven, I want you to pay particular notice to this verse, is that
when the congregation was to be gathered together, it says,
you shall blow, but you shall not sound an alarm. There's some
significance to that. When the congregation was gathered
together to worship, to worship, no need to sound an alarm. The
sound of the alarm was never to be used when the assembly
was called together for worship. You see, the sound of the alarm
designated that the people were to be active. They were to be
ready for anything and everything, any incident, every incident,
and self-confident and poised for any situation, whether it
was war or whether it was to pack up the camp and move. And
I was thinking as I read that, modern day religion issues a
call to worship, but they always sound an alarm with it. They
call men and women to activity, to war, to move, to and fro,
doing something to earn, to merit or deserve recognition and acceptance
with God, but not the people of God. When we worship, we rest. We rest at the feet of Christ
like Mary did. We choose that good part that
can never be taken away from us. We listen to the words of
our God and our Savior who gives us confidence and assurance that
Christ has done for us what we couldn't do for ourselves. Boy,
that's where real rest is. I thank God that I'm beginning
to rest. The Lord Jesus told his disciples,
I forget where and which gospel, but he said, let's stay here
and rest a while. That's what we're doing tonight.
We're resting a while. We've come out of this world
in which we live and we come to sit at Christ's feet and rest
a while. Oh, God enables to rest. In order to truly worship a sinner's
got to rest. And they do so, as I said earlier,
by ceasing from their own works and resting in the finished work
of the Lord Jesus Christ. My, my, the trump of alarm was
never used to call God's people to worship. Never. No, not the
alarm. Now, some of you may be thinking,
I did upon first reading this, that it sounds a lot like the
cloud that we looked at last week. It was a cloud, a pillar
of cloud during the day, a pillar of cloud at night. And the trumpet
basically did the same thing, which was to let the people know
when to move and when to rest and when to worship. And if that
is the case, we would ask, obviously, what's the need of the trumpet?
But when you consider, first of all, the placement of the
tents of Israel, the different tribes, and how many thousands
of men and women and children this was, up to two million people. That's
a lot of tents. And they were placed, many of
them were at a considerable distance from the tent or the tabernacle
of testimony where the cloud or the pillar of cloud or the
pillar of fire resided. So in many instances, when the
cloud began to move or when the time of worship was come or whatever,
or time to go to war, those that were a far distance from the
tabernacle, they couldn't see the cloud. So how would Israel know if they
couldn't see the cloud? How would they know what to do?
The answer, they could hear the trumpet. They could hear the
trumpet. And again, what a picture the
blowing of the trumpet is of preaching the gospel. We're blowing
the trumpet. There are none that see Christ
in the glorious gospel of substitution until the great trumpet of The
gospel is sounded and preached. It's then that God gives us life
and he enables us to see what Christ has done for. You'll never
see it apart from divine revelation. Those of you that see it know
that. How often do we read the scriptures
and we look at a verse and we have no idea what it means? Another
time we read it, we think, oh, that's what that means. That's
divine revelation. That's God revealing the things
of Christ to us. And everything concerning Israel's
wilderness journey to the land of promise pictures our spiritual
journey through this wilderness of a world in which we live to
heaven's glory. and every single thing that pertained
to Israel's rest and worship and journey typified and pictured
Christ. The pillar of the cloud, well,
that pictured Christ. The pillar of fire, that pictured
the presence of God. It pictured the Lord Jesus Christ.
They picture and typify Christ. And now these two trumpets of
God, they picture the preaching of Christ and his gospel. And
when response is made to the trumpet, then the cloud is seen
involved. When the gospel of Christ and
him crucified is preached, it's then that Christ is revealed
and seen and followed. How beautiful. is the picture
here. There's no doubt that the gospel
calls and saves and enables chosen sinners to worship the Lord Jesus
Christ. The preaching of the gospel prepares
us for war against our enemies. It suits us with our armor, our
breastplate and shield of faith, our helmet of salvation, our
sword of the spirit, All God's part of God's armor that he equips
us with. Oh, thank God for his gospel
and his word. For just a few minutes, I want
us to consider just a few words here that teach us a great deal
about the gospel that we believe. Obviously, the first word is
trumpet. We've already touched a bit on
it. Verse two, the instrument was used to make a loud noise.
The sound of the trumpet was a message, not a tune. These two trumpets were made
just alike, best I can find. These two trumpets sounded the
same note. In that, we see both the father
and the son. You know, the father sounds this
note. It says, this is my beloved son
in whom I'm well pleased, hear ye him. And then the Lord Jesus
Christ sounds that same note saying, these are the words which
I spake unto you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were
written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms
concerning me. This book's about me. God says,
hear ye him, and Christ says, I'm him. Oh my, these trumpets didn't
have the little valves like trumpets today that you'd push up and
down and it would make different notes. No, these trumpets blew
one note. The note this kind of trumpet
played was determined by the length and the diameter and at
the end of the horn that that horn that flared out, all the
note was determined by those things. But these trumpets were built
the same, to the same specifications, so they blew the same note. And
no matter today who preaches the gospel truth, whether it's
Gene or Larry or me or a guest preacher, Paul Mahan, anyone
else, it's the same message. It's the same note. We blow the
same trumpet, the same note. And as I said a moment ago, the
result of hearing the trumpet was seeing the cloud. And the
result of hearing the gospel is seeing the Lord Jesus Christ. It's by what the world calls
foolishness, is the very thing that it pleased God to save sinners
by, and that's the preaching of the gospel. So the result of hearing the
gospel is to see Christ high and lifted up. Now the second
word is found also in verse two, and that is the word calling.
You see, the purpose of the trumpet was to call. Verse two says that
thou mayest use them, speaking of the trumpets, for calling. The trumpet blown by the priesthood
was a call, and the root Hebrew word for calling is to proclaim. Of course, the calling of the
gospel is to proclaim the person and the work of Christ. Whether
to worship or to journey, the trumpet was the call, the proclamation,
and the gospel is the means by which God calls his elect people. Acts chapter two, verse 39 says
this, for the promise is unto you and to your children and
to all that are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall
call. Romans 8, 29 and 30, you could
quote it. For whom he, God did foreknow,
he also did predestinate. Why? To be conformed to the image
of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
So, with that in mind, moreover, whom he did predestinate, those
whom God predetermined, those who he knew and predetermined
to save, Them he also called. He effectually called. They won't
resist his call. They can't resist his call. It's
irresistible. God's grace is irresistible.
You can't resist it. Oh, you may resist it for a while,
but you're not really resisting it. You're gonna come. Those
whom he predestinated, Them he also called, and whom he called,
them he also justified, he saved. And them he'll also glorify. I love how Jude addresses his
letter. He addresses it to them that
are sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Christ Jesus
and called. You're gonna be called and you're
gonna come. The third word's also found in
verse two, and that's the word assembly. Assembly. Now, men have made that word
a lot of things. But the trumpet is to be used
to call the assembly. The sound of the trumpet when
it was blown in the wilderness, well, it wasn't intended for
the surrounding nations. It was for the calling of the
assembly. It was not for the infidels and the pagans and the
idol worshipers. It was for the people of God.
We preach the gospel, yes, to every creature. That's what God
commands us to do. But we do so looking for the
sheep, looking for the elect and the church of the living
God. And the word assembly can be best defined as a Gathered
congregation. You know, that's exactly what
we are. We're a gathered congregation, a gathered assembly. That's what
we are, brothers and sisters. We're an assembly. We're a gathered
congregation of believers who are part of the same family.
We have the same God. We trust in the same substitute. to put our sin away. We have
the same hope of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the
apostle said, you know that you've passed from death to life by
your love for the brethren. If there's no love for God's
people, there's the love of God's not in you. Now that's just a
fact. That's what the scripture says. Oh, the message we sound is for
all God's sheep, all God's people, and there are sheep that he must
bring, and he will. And he'll cross their path with
the sounding of the gospel trumpet. They're gonna hear that trumpet. The fourth word is ordinance. Most folks think that there are
two ordinances given to the church. I wouldn't disagree with that.
The first is baptism. which is the believer's confession
of their union with Christ. It's the identifying ourself
with Christ's death, his burial and his resurrection. That's
what it pictures. It's a public confession of our
faith in him and we're trusting in his death and his burial and
his resurrection. Should every professing believer
be baptized? Absolutely. Unequivocally, yes. He that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved. And of course, the first thing
somebody says is, well, what about the thief on the cross?
He wasn't baptized. Well, I've said it before, I'll
say it again. If he could have been, he would
have been. You better believe he would have been. If you're
a believer and you can be baptized, you ought to be. And why wouldn't
you want to be? It's professing to the world
that Christ is your only hope. Then the second ordinance, which
we just partook of, is the Lord's table. And that's where the professing
believer confesses that the work of Christ is what they trust
in, that in his death and in his life,
they're the singular cause of our acceptance with God. We partake
of his body, which was broken for us. We drink of the wine,
which represents his shed blood that was shed for us. And we
identify ourselves with him. That's what it is, an ordinance.
But you know, I also believe that preaching the gospel is
a third ordinance given to the church. After all, it is the
command of the Lord, just like baptism in the Lord's table.
The Lord said, preach the gospel to every creature. That's a command. It's the command of the Lord.
And gospel preaching is an ordinance because there's no other means
by which God will call his people and save his people. Paul said,
for though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of. Paul
didn't die for our sins, Christ did. Christ gets the glory, God
gets the glory. He said, but necessity is laid
upon me Yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel. It's
a commandment of God. It's what God called his preachers
to do. And some folks may never hear
the glorious gospel of salvation if they don't hear it from you.
We're all preachers. God has given us all the ministry
of reconciliation. So as God opens doors, may we
go through those doors by his grace and tell others about what
Christ has done for us. That's preaching. Brother Mahan
told me years ago, and he said, to be a preacher, just tell people
what Christ has done for you. That's good advice. If we just
tell other folks what Christ has done for us, that's a good
way to preach. Verse eight, concern. confirms
this, excuse me, it says, and the sons of Aaron, the priests
shall blow with the trumpets and they shall be to you for
ordinance forever throughout your generations. God used these
trumpets here that he had Moses and them make in future times
until the coming of Christ. And God will use the means of
gospel preaching to save the lost until Christ comes again.
His gospel is an everlasting gospel. And then the fifth word
is seen in verse 10, and that's the word memorial. We mentioned
this back when we looked at the Passover again, a couple, three
Wednesdays ago. But just as the ordinance of
baptism and the ordinance of the Lord's table, our memorials, so's the preaching
of the gospel. The trumpets were here for a
memorial. When we preach the gospel, what
we're doing is we're remembering, we're calling to mind and we're
memorializing our great God and the glorious work of redemption
performed by the Godhead in behalf of his people. We're talking
about what God has done for us, not what we're doing for God.
Listen, we've never done anything for God. It's worth talking about. Every single thing that we do
after we've done it, we are nothing yet but unprofitable servants. Preach the gospel, we're remembering
our great God and what he's done for us. In Ephesians chapter
one, verse three, Paul says, blessed be God, the father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings. Now that, those two words are
different words in the Greek. The first blessed there means
eulogize, eulogize God. If you want to brag on somebody,
brag on God. Brag on the Lord Jesus Christ,
not on yourself. Blessed be God and the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Used in reference to God, that
word blessed always means eulogized. The gospel is a memorial of what
God has done for sinners. God is memorialized and eulogized
because he's blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in Christ. What a wonderful thought. And then the sixth word and the
last word is found in verse nine, and it's the word remembered.
The reference to God remembering is that God always, always remembers
His covenant. The blowing of the trumpet, the
preaching of the gospel causes God, if I can use that terminology,
to remember His covenant and save His people from their enemies
because the preaching of the gospel is the declaration of
God's covenant of grace. What shall separate us? Who shall
separate us from the love of God? And Paul goes on to name
just about anything and everything you could think of. And he says,
nothing, none of these things shall separate us from the love
of God, which is where? In Christ Jesus. My, my, I thank
God. I thank God for the trumpet. for us to preach the gospel,
to blow the trumpet in a clear and plain manner that's not misunderstood. I thank God that he's enabled
what the world considers this little nothing other church on
Princeton Pike to have proclaimed the gospel for over 50 years. Thank God for that. The Lord, through our feeble
efforts, has brought many of his sheep into the fold. And
I have great hope and expectation that God will bring more. The
reason I believe that is the sun came up this morning, and
it looks like it's gonna set tonight. And if it comes up again
tomorrow, then I believe that there are still some sheep that
God's gonna bring into the fold. And if he does so, he's gonna
do it by the blowing of this trumpet that we're blowing tonight.
Oh, may God be pleased to make it so. So what do we do? What do we do? Well, I just told
you. Look at verse 10. Also in the
day of your gladness, and in your solemn days and in the beginnings
of your months, you shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt
offerings and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings, that
they may be to you for a memorial before your God. And I am the
Lord, your God." What do we do? Well, when we're glad and when
we're sad, we blow the trumpet. We blow them over our Lord Jesus
Christ. We magnify Him. We proclaim Him. He's our peace offering with
God. He's our sacrifice in which God accepts. So we keep blowing
the trumpet. Keep blowing the trumpet. Keep
preaching the gospel. We keep telling sinners about
our great God. We keep telling them about Christ
our Savior. That's what God has given us
to do. May He be pleased to make it
effectual when we do, only He can. We plant, we water, but
only God can give the increase. May He be pleased to make it
effectual for His glory, our good, and for Christ's sake. And again, we see Christ in the
Old Testament scriptures. It's all about Him, isn't it?
It's all concerning him. Moses, the writings of Moses,
the law, the prophets, the Psalms, they're all concerning me, our
Lord said. Phil, I appreciate your attention.
Father, thank you again for the opportunity to come and to worship
the Lord Jesus Christ, to blow the trumpet and to hear the trumpet
blown. Oh Lord, may you make that One
note of the gospel, effectual to our hearts, calls us to see
our need of Christ, calls us to desire him, Lord. We thank
you for that interest that only you can give. Be with us as we
leave this place. Keep us ever mindful of these
things as we continue to journey through this wilderness in which
we live. Thank you, Lord, for the sound
of the trumpet. We look forward to hearing it
again. It's in Christ's name that we pray, amen.