# We Just Dont Get It Bishop Barrons Daily Sermon

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 19 Aug 2026, 14 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73911046/we_just_dont_get_it_bishop_barrons_sunday_sermon.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Peace be with you, friends are Our first reading for
[0:02] Speaker 1: this weekend is taken from the wonderful Book of Numbers. Now,
[0:06] Speaker 1: the Book of Numbers is one of the five books
[0:08] Speaker 1: of the Pentateuch or the Torah, the most sacred part
[0:11] Speaker 1: of the Old Testament. I might urge you get out
[0:14] Speaker 1: your bibles and find the Book of Numbers. It's called numbers,
[0:18] Speaker 1: by the way, because at the very beginning, all of
[0:20] Speaker 1: the tribes of Israel are kind of lined up like
[0:22] Speaker 1: an army, and they're numbered. They're kind of organized in order.
[0:26] Speaker 1: That's where the name comes from. The Book of Numbers
[0:29] Speaker 1: has to do, for the most part, with the journey
[0:32] Speaker 1: of Israel through the desert to the Promised Land. So
[0:35] Speaker 1: they've received the Ten Commandments and all of that described
[0:38] Speaker 1: in the Book of Exodus, and now they're making their
[0:40] Speaker 1: way to the Promised Land. That's what it's about. And
[0:44] Speaker 1: as is often the case, during their forty years of
[0:47] Speaker 1: wandering in the desert, the people complain against Moses. Listen,
[0:52] Speaker 1: if only weighed more to eat. We remember the fish
[0:55] Speaker 1: we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers,
[0:58] Speaker 1: the melons, the leak, the onions, and the garlic. But
[1:02] Speaker 1: now our strength is dried up, and there's nothing at
[1:04] Speaker 1: all but this manna to look at. That's a marvelous
[1:08] Speaker 1: little thing, isn't this Like most of us sinners making
[1:12] Speaker 1: our way from sin to salvation, we tend to look
[1:15] Speaker 1: back at our sinful ways and say, hey, wasn't at
[1:18] Speaker 1: least easier back in those days. This journey is too hard. Oh,
[1:22] Speaker 1: I long for the days of old, but I love this.
[1:27] Speaker 1: Our strength is dried up and there's nothing but this
[1:29] Speaker 1: manna to look at. So they're being fed by God
[1:33] Speaker 1: with miraculous bread from heaven, and that's not good enough.
[1:38] Speaker 1: The man is making them sick. It's a beautiful example
[1:42] Speaker 1: of how we sinners just don't get it. We look
[1:46] Speaker 1: back to the ways of sin, we complain against God anyway.
[1:50] Speaker 1: That's typical of the Book of Numbers. But in the
[1:53] Speaker 1: wake of this kind of criticism, Moses says to the Lord,
[1:57] Speaker 1: I am not able to carry this people all alone.
[2:01] Speaker 1: They are too heavy for me. So he's saying, look, Lord,
[2:04] Speaker 1: give me a break here, help me to guide this people.
[2:08] Speaker 1: So God says, Okay, I'm going to take some of
[2:10] Speaker 1: this spirit I placed on you, and I'm going to
[2:13] Speaker 1: share it with seventy elders of the people. I want you, Moses,
[2:17] Speaker 1: to choose the candidates, and then I'm going to give
[2:21] Speaker 1: them some of your spirit to share your responsibility. So
[2:26] Speaker 1: a list is drawn up. The men gather on the
[2:29] Speaker 1: appointed day, and the Lord does indeed send his spirit
[2:33] Speaker 1: and they begin prophesying. We don't quite know what that means.
[2:36] Speaker 1: It's all through the Bible. They begin to speak prophetic words,
[2:41] Speaker 1: they begin to maybe carry on in a kind of
[2:43] Speaker 1: enthusiastic way. Maybe the sort of charismatic movement gives some idea,
[2:48] Speaker 1: But the Bible says they begin to prophesy, which means
[2:51] Speaker 1: they're now capable of sharing in some of Moses' leadership responsibilities.
[2:56] Speaker 1: And you say, okay, it's kind of a prototypical ordination.
[3:02] Speaker 1: If you want is people are formally chosen, there's some
[3:06] Speaker 1: kind of ritual. They gather, and then the Lord sends
[3:08] Speaker 1: his spirit to them and they share in the governance
[3:11] Speaker 1: of Israel. So anyone that's ever been to a priesthood
[3:14] Speaker 1: or diacon at ordination ceremony might recognize the dynamics at play.
[3:20] Speaker 1: But then there's a very interesting little twist to the story.
[3:24] Speaker 1: It has to do with two men. They're named El
[3:28] Speaker 1: Dad and me Dad. They had been on the list
[3:32] Speaker 1: of the chosen, but they didn't show up for the ceremony.
[3:37] Speaker 1: They weren't there. Nevertheless, the spirit descended on El Dad
[3:42] Speaker 1: and me dead, and they began to prophesy like everybody else.
[3:46] Speaker 1: So this caused a little uh ruckus. Someone brings it
[3:51] Speaker 1: to the attention of Joshua, who is Moses' chief aide,
[3:56] Speaker 1: and Joshua comes to Moses full of righteous indignation, and
[4:00] Speaker 1: my Lord Moses stopped them. So look, they didn't come
[4:05] Speaker 1: to the ceremony, they weren't there at the point in moment,
[4:09] Speaker 1: and yet they're prophesying. So this is not right. It's
[4:12] Speaker 1: disrupting the order of the community, to which Moses, exhibiting
[4:19] Speaker 1: extraordinary humility and clarity of vision, responds, listen, are you
[4:25] Speaker 1: jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people
[4:29] Speaker 1: were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit
[4:33] Speaker 1: on all of them? Marvelous, it's a marvelous response. Joshua,
[4:38] Speaker 1: upset that the religious rituals were not properly followed God's
[4:45] Speaker 1: Spirit's operative in it. It shouldn't be do something about it,
[4:48] Speaker 1: Moses saying, what are you talking about. I'd like God's
[4:51] Speaker 1: spirit to be available everywhere. If God's doing this, Praise God,
[4:56] Speaker 1: and let's not worry about it. Now. There are two
[4:59] Speaker 1: things I want us to see now from this kind
[5:02] Speaker 1: of peculiar little story from the Book of Numbers. The
[5:06] Speaker 1: first has to do with God's relationship to the very
[5:11] Speaker 1: rituals and symbols and sacraments that He has determined. Now,
[5:18] Speaker 1: I would challenge anybody who's read the books of Exodus
[5:21] Speaker 1: or Numbers, or Leviticus or Deuteronomy to tell me that
[5:26] Speaker 1: God doesn't care about liturgy, about ritual correctness, about sacramental realities.
[5:35] Speaker 1: We get detailed, and I mean detailed descriptions of exactly
[5:39] Speaker 1: what God desires in his temple, what his tabernacle ought
[5:44] Speaker 1: to look like, how his priests ought to be vested,
[5:47] Speaker 1: how they should be ordained, how people should approach the
[5:51] Speaker 1: sacred space, clean and unclean animals, clean and unclean food.
[5:57] Speaker 1: I mean, the Bible is filled with very detailed prescriptions
[6:02] Speaker 1: from the Lord of how he wants us to go
[6:06] Speaker 1: about our ritual and religious lives. God is not indifferent
[6:13] Speaker 1: to ceremony and to ritual don't believe people that say, oh,
[6:17] Speaker 1: we know who needs all of that. God can be
[6:20] Speaker 1: worshiped out in the woods. And you know, forget all
[6:23] Speaker 1: that old fuddy duddy ritual from the old test No, no, no,
[6:28] Speaker 1: God is intensely interested. Here's something from Thomas Aquinas I've
[6:33] Speaker 1: always loved. Thomas asked the question, why are the sacraments necessary? So,
[6:39] Speaker 1: and let's broaden that. You know, sacraments, liturgy, ritual, all
[6:42] Speaker 1: these sort of physical means by which we cultivate our
[6:46] Speaker 1: relationship to God. Why is all that necessary? His pithy
[6:50] Speaker 1: answer was, because we're not angels. If we're angels, we're
[6:54] Speaker 1: pure spirits. All we need is the Word, and all
[6:57] Speaker 1: we need is God's invisible grace. But I'm a spirit
[7:02] Speaker 1: in this body. I'm an embodied spirit, and so yeah,
[7:06] Speaker 1: I like words. That's why we say all the sacraments
[7:10] Speaker 1: have a form, but every sacrament also has matter. See
[7:14] Speaker 1: color and ritual and gesture and movement and vesture and
[7:19] Speaker 1: all of that matters. Yes, indeed, absolutely, we're not angels.
[7:24] Speaker 1: And so, as I say in our story for today,
[7:27] Speaker 1: you've got something like a formal ordination ritual unfolding, and
[7:32] Speaker 1: God wants it, God approves of it. But then remember
[7:37] Speaker 1: the twist in the story. Nevertheless, God's grace was operative
[7:43] Speaker 1: outside of this formal structure. El Dad and Me Dad
[7:47] Speaker 1: didn't show up, they weren't there for the ritual. Nevertheless,
[7:51] Speaker 1: they receive the gift of prophecy, and Moses says, great,
[7:55] Speaker 1: I'm delighted. Here's something everybody now in theology. It's an
[8:00] Speaker 1: old principle. If you want to find it, you'll see
[8:02] Speaker 1: it in Catechism, paragraph twelve fifty seven. Here's the principle.
[8:08] Speaker 1: God establishes the sacraments of his church. Yes, indeed, he
[8:13] Speaker 1: wants them, he desires them. They're the ordinary means by
[8:16] Speaker 1: which he communicates his grace. Absolutely. But God is not
[8:21] Speaker 1: constrained by his sacraments. He's not limited to the sacraments.
[8:26] Speaker 1: God can operate outside of the formal ritual and sacramental
[8:30] Speaker 1: structure of the church. Why well, because he's God and
[8:34] Speaker 1: He's determined these structures. But he can operate outside of
[8:39] Speaker 1: them if he so chooses. And that I think is
[8:42] Speaker 1: what we're dealing with in this quirky little story of
[8:46] Speaker 1: El Dad and Me Dad. Okay, the second issue I
[8:50] Speaker 1: want to look at, and it's related, is this issue
[8:54] Speaker 1: of envy. I talked about it last week, how envy's
[8:57] Speaker 1: a capital sin. From it flows all kinds of trouble.
[9:02] Speaker 1: The Middle Ages talked about in vidia clericllis clerical envy
[9:08] Speaker 1: as maybe the worst type of envy, the kind of
[9:11] Speaker 1: envy that obtains within the religious context. Do we have
[9:16] Speaker 1: in Joshua's complaint against Moses a kind of in nvidia clericalis? Hey, look,
[9:21] Speaker 1: we were at the ceremony, We followed the ritual precisely,
[9:25] Speaker 1: but yet those people they get the spirit too. Well, yeah, yeah,
[9:30] Speaker 1: God can do what God wants. Why instead of being jealous,
[9:35] Speaker 1: aren't you rejoicing as Moses does? I wish everybody was
[9:39] Speaker 1: a prophet. Well, something very similar on display in the Gospel,
[9:44] Speaker 1: which is why the church couples the Gospel with the
[9:46] Speaker 1: story from the Book of Numbers. Listen, the apostle John
[9:51] Speaker 1: says to Jesus, Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons
[9:56] Speaker 1: in your name, and we tried to prevent him because
[9:59] Speaker 1: he does not follow. And Jesus replied, do not prevent him.
[10:05] Speaker 1: There's no one who performs a good deed in my
[10:07] Speaker 1: name who can at the same time speak ill with me.
[10:09] Speaker 1: For whoever is not against us is for us. What's
[10:17] Speaker 1: John complaining about the same thing Joshua complained about in
[10:20] Speaker 1: the Old Testament. Teacher, Hey, there's someone driving out demons. Well,
[10:24] Speaker 1: that sounds pretty good, doesn't it. This guy's driving out demons.
[10:27] Speaker 1: That sounds like a good thing to do. But he's not.
[10:32] Speaker 1: We try to stop him because he's not one of us. Okay,
[10:36] Speaker 1: he's not one of the formerly chosen disciples or apostles
[10:39] Speaker 1: of the Lord. True. Does Jesus want apostles? Yes? Does
[10:44] Speaker 1: he love the apostolic succession that includes bishops up and
[10:48] Speaker 1: down the ages. Yes, he's all in favor of it.
[10:52] Speaker 1: But can God operate if he chooses to outside of
[10:57] Speaker 1: those formal structures. Yeah, again, Jesus said, don't prevent him.
[11:04] Speaker 1: If he's not against us, he's for us. If demons
[11:07] Speaker 1: really are being expelled, well, then God's grace is operative. Look,
[11:14] Speaker 1: what's the final point of all of this business, I
[11:18] Speaker 1: mean ritual sacrament and liturgy and vesture and all the
[11:22] Speaker 1: formal structure of the church. What's the point that God's
[11:26] Speaker 1: grace might come flooding into the world. Yes, God wants
[11:31] Speaker 1: his church to be the ordinary sacramental vehicle of that grace.
[11:35] Speaker 1: But God can do what God wants. God can operate
[11:38] Speaker 1: outside of those structures. You know what comes to my
[11:42] Speaker 1: mind here is something the Cardinal George always said. He said,
[11:47] Speaker 1: the Catholic Church has all the gifts that Christ wants
[11:51] Speaker 1: his people to have. It's lovely in that the church,
[11:54] Speaker 1: there's a fullness. We have the Word, yes, indeed, but
[11:58] Speaker 1: we also have liturgy, we have sacraments, we have the Mass,
[12:01] Speaker 1: we have the Eucharist, we have honoring of the Blessed Mother,
[12:04] Speaker 1: we have Apostolic succession, we have the papal authority. We
[12:08] Speaker 1: have all the gifts that Christ wants his people to have.
[12:12] Speaker 1: But then Cardinal George added, that doesn't mean that certain
[12:16] Speaker 1: gifts might be better exercised in other contexts. You know,
[12:21] Speaker 1: for example, many Protestant churches you've got preaching that puts
[12:25] Speaker 1: Our preaching the shame. I've read biblical commentaries from Protestant
[12:29] Speaker 1: authors that are marvelous, that have graced me in an
[12:32] Speaker 1: extraordinary way. I've benefited. I think of sermon by Billy
[12:36] Speaker 1: Graham that's brought me. I think some of the grace
[12:39] Speaker 1: of God, Okay, good, maybe some of those gifts the
[12:43] Speaker 1: Catholic Church has the full mass of what Christ wants
[12:46] Speaker 1: his people to enjoy, but some of them might be
[12:49] Speaker 1: better exercised outside that formal context. Okay, who am I
[12:54] Speaker 1: to say no to it? Who am I to complain
[12:57] Speaker 1: about it? Why should I be jealous about it? Rather,
[13:00] Speaker 1: shouldn't I rejoice wherever the grace of God is on display?
[13:06] Speaker 1: So remember the story of El Dad and Me Dad,
[13:10] Speaker 1: and let's overcome any type of ecclesial jealousy that would
[13:15] Speaker 1: put formal structures above the grace of God. The formal
[13:20] Speaker 1: structures serve the grace of God, not the other way around.
[13:25] Speaker 1: And God bless you. Thanks so much for watching. If
[13:31] Speaker 1: you enjoyed this video, I invite you to share it
[13:34] Speaker 1: and to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

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