Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Your Past Shapes You | Torah | Numbers 26, 27:12-23

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

The problems you face are often rooted in your past. Have you dealt with your past? What was your family like? How has your culture shaped you? In today’s episode, Patrick uses Numbers 26,27:12-23 to discuss how your past affects your present. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Numbers 26,27:12-23

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. As a pastor, you spend a good amount of time counseling people in their time of need. And so perhaps it's no surprise that I've met a lot of married couples who are going through a lot of tension and challenge in their relationship. And oftentimes, by the time people come to me, they're at the point where they're at their wits end. They don't know how to solve the problem that they're facing. And one of the most common themes I've seen over and over again is that the problems we face are often rooted in the past. I think about one couple. There was a husband who grew up in a family where you never talked about your problems.

In fact, you never confronted anyone. If there was a problem, you would be as passive aggressive as possible. You'd find a way into the back door to make your problems known to everybody else in the room. And so when he got married, he never expected to discuss problems deeply. He thought that if there was something wrong, there would be a sly, passive, aggressive remark to make it clear. But his wife came from a very different environment. In her family, it was high conflict almost all the time. Her parents fought with each other. They yelled.

And of course, this made her feel very insecure as a kid, but it also taught her a pattern of communication that if you want your needs to be heard, you have to shout about them. Otherwise, they'll be ignored. If you don't yell, you might be trampled upon. And so when they got married, as you can imagine, she had that kind of conflictual style. She would get angry. She'd raise her voice. And when this happened, he was so not used to it that he would just shut down. He wouldn't be willing to engage. And if he wanted to make a point, he would often be passive aggressive about it. But that would go over her head. And so their communication style was constantly conflicting. Neither one of them had a healthy way of communicating with the other.

And so as we sat there and we met, they thought it was weird. But one of the first questions I asked was tell me how your family communicated. And as she unpacked her story and as he impact his story, they found understanding with each other. They began to realize that the other person wasn't a monster, a monster who shut down and closed off and wouldn't connect, or a monster who always yelled and got angry. Both of them were just a reflection of the families that they came from. And they were bringing those families into the room into their marriage. And of course, that's true of all of us. Past generations have tremendous impacts upon the present. You are who you are because of the family that you were a part of, because of the culture that you've grown up in. And that's true.

in ways that you probably don't understand, ways that you haven't fully comprehended. And oftentimes, the conflict that we have with others interpersonally is rooted in the fact that we came from different backgrounds. The book of numbers really is a book about generations and generations. It opens up with a census of the generation that left Egypt, that God rescued from slavery. And it ends with a sentence as well of the next generation, their children. And in between, you already know what happens. There are rebellions. There are dark moments. And because of the their rebellions. The older generation wasn't allowed to go into the promised land. That was something that would be left for their children. When we get to Numbers 26, there's another census. And again,

this is the census of the next generation, of the next chapter in Israel's story. But what I find so interesting is that, yeah, this chapter can be a little bit boring. You know, you have stuff like this. These were the clans of Rubin. Those numbered were 43,730. The son of Palu was Elieb, and the sons of Eliaab was Nemuel and Dathan and Abiram. And it keeps going on and on like that. But it's numbered. But what's so fascinating to me is that as we get this census of the next generation, the narrator continually points backwards to the previous generation, to the stories that shaped those generations. For example, that passage continues. These are the same Dathan and a Byram, who were the community officials who rebelled against Moses and Aaron and were among Kora's followers when they rebelled against the Lord. It's almost as if the narrator is saying, yes, we have a new generation. And yes, the old generation has passed away. They have died. But don't forget this.

The older generation is still with you. The stories of your family are still with you. And if you're not careful in this new generation, you will repeat the sins, the failures, the bad patterns of the past in the present. It's not just the story of Cora and his rebellion. The narrator goes on to tell the story of Nadab and Abayhu, who dishonored God's holiness by bringing an unauthorized fire into the tabernacle.

Again, it's as though the narrator is saying, the past is always with you. your family is always with you. Have you accounted for that? And yet, this is not a hopeless message. The past may be set into stone. You can't change the past, but the future is not set in stone. The future still stands open before us. And so the narrator is telling the people who are reading this. Yes, these things happen, but you need not repeat them. Back to that couple who I spent a lot of time with counseling. As we met in the future, they began to try some new communication strategies. They sat down and they said, how do we want our family to communicate?

How do we want to make sure that we don't repeat the passive aggressiveness of the husband's family or the overaggressiveness of the wives family? How can our family be different? How can we communicate in love? How can we be clear when we have a problem, not passive aggressive? How can we try to not elevate our voices and get angry, but instead engage in helpful dialogue when we are facing problems in our relationship? Have you accounted for the past in your life?

Have you thought about the ways that your family, your parents shaped who you are in the present? Maybe it's the way they communicated, or maybe it's the way they connected. Maybe your parents were distant, and so you find it difficult to connect with people around you, people at work, your children, your wife, or your friends at school. Or maybe, on the other hand, maybe your family overconnected. Maybe your family was full of codependent relationships. And so you found yourself as a kid having to be the one who is constantly comforting your mother, or you are the one who is constantly having to talk your dad back from the cliff.

And now everywhere you go, you're looking for codependent relationships where you think it's your responsibility to moderate other people's emotions, to help them feel good and okay with their life. How is your past and past generations shaping the present? Pressing a little bit further than this. Past and present generations, it's not just in families. This has to do with whole societies. And this is something that our culture right now is really wrestling with.

How do we deal with the fact that in American culture, outside of living memory, there was a history of slavery, and within living memory, there was a history of discrimination? How does a new generation deal with those past realities in the present? A friend of mine is a black pastor, and he took a job in Birmingham, Alabama. And this came as a shock to his mom, because his mom was a little girl when there was a church bombing in Birmingham that killed four little girls. And when this happened, it was a traumatic event for her. and she swore to herself in that moment, I will never set foot in that city. There is something deeply wrong in that city. She was a devout, Jesus-loving woman, and yet she could not go to Birmingham. And so when her son was asked to take this job, he actually had several offers. Initially, he said,

no, I don't think I can go to Birmingham. But upon the second offer, he prayed about it, and he realized this is a new generation. That doesn't mean that the past sins aren't present. It doesn't mean that they don't have present implications. Instead, he was saying, our new generation, we have to tell a new story. We have to pray for racial unity. We have to seek healing where there is hurt. And so he came in and he took that job precisely because he saw that the future is not written, that when we are working alongside Jesus, there is always hope. If you're listening to this, you're a part of the next generation. Whether you're a baby boomer or Gen X or Millennials or Gen Z, we always think about the young ones as the next generation. There's a real sense in which we are a generation together and collectively.

And because we follow Jesus, we can have hope for the future. In Numbers 27, it tells the story of three women, the daughters of Zalafahad. And these daughters, they had been disenfranchised. Whereas everybody else was getting land in the promised land, they didn't because they didn't have any brothers. There were no male descendants of their father. And so they go before Moses and they say, hey, this isn't right. And Moses, he hears them. And he comes before Yahweh. And he comes before Yahweh. And He says, Yahweh, what do you think? And Yahweh says in Numbers 277, what Zalafahad's daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property as an inheritance among their father's relatives

and give their father's inheritance to them. As though Yahweh is coming in and saying, there is a new generation, there is hope for the future, give them the land, give them the property, and let them do good things with it. Let them bring shalom with it. Christians should not be hopeless people. We're in the middle of a very hopeless political. time where both sides in some sense are longing for the past or living in the past. Maybe on the right it's a longing, a nostalgia for the past, for the way things used to be. Or maybe on the left,

it's an accounting for the past and saying, we can't move forward because of all these past sins, but Christian should step into the gap and say, yes, the past is with us. Yes, the past has implications. No, we don't want to live in the past. And yet we won't let the past and its sins define us. There is hope. We can move forward. What will you do in your generation? How will you be faithful in your generation? How will you be careful to not let the sins of the past shape your present? How will you tell the new story that God wants to tell through you? Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter.

Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.