All right now, if we're honest, reading the Bible consistently can be a challenge, but it's never too late to start and we're in this together.

This is the Join the Journey podcast.

Thanks for joining.

My name is Lauren Atkinson on the Join the Journey staff team and I have a quick announcement before we get started.

Yesterday, we mentioned a book that TA has encouraged us to read as we study the Bible together this year.

It's called Christ from beginning to end,

how the full story of scripture reveals the full glory of Christ by Trent Hunter and Stephen Wellum.

And we put the link to that book in the description if you'd like to check it out.

Today, we are reading Numbers 17 through 19.

And for context, yesterday we were reading about Cora's Rebellion,

where the people set themselves against Moses and Aaron.

And essentially, what happened here was a Levite named Cora,

along with a group of other known men, led a revolt with 250 chiefs of the congregation and other Israelites.

Essentially, they thought that Moses and Aaron had gone too far and appointed themselves to be leaders of the people, usurping authority, instead of the Lord divinely

ordaining them. So they rebel against God and his appointed leaders. And the result is that more than

14,000 people died. And so now in chapter 17, we're jumping right in, and God is responding to that

by publicly affirming that he has

divinely chosen the priestly leadership of Aaron and the Levites. And so God tells Moses

to take 12 different staffs, each representing a tribe of Israel with their names written on them,

and he tells Moses to put those staffs into the tent of meaning because he's going

to do something with them. So God says that the staff that will sprout is the one that represents

the people God's chosen to lead the people as priests. So the staff representing the tribe of Levi,

...