Numbers 11:1-3 Bible Study | Episode 744

August 15, 2024

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Numbers  11:1-3  Bible Study | Episode #744

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. 

Please follow us:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church

Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to hope alive, applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today, in Jesus name.

Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in numbers, chapter eleven. Numbers, chapter eleven. And we're in one of those folks passages where I get to brag on the church I pastor, but also I get to deal with one of those issues that comes up oftentimes for young believers. And really, that's what's going on here. And it's about, well, complaining about your circumstances. And it says, now the people complain. That's verse one. And it displeased the Lord, for the moon heard it, and his anger was roused. So the five men burned among them and consumed some in the outskirts of the camp or consumed in the outskirts of the camp. That means then the pe. And then the people cried out to Moses. And when Moses prayed to the Lord, the fire was quenched. So we call the name of the place Tabera. And that means. And that means to. That means burning. And he says, because the fire of the Lord had burned among them. Now, this is a good subject to come. Come up to. Any pastor who's pastored for long periods of times in multiple places knows what it means to deal with the people that are a complaining people. No pastor that I met of that hasn't been in just one place. And most of them, even if they've been in that one place, is not built with a complaining. That being said, I praise God that I'm not in that situation today and that I am at a church that has a population that is running after God and running after maturity. And in fact, that is the issue here is maturity. Because understanding the position that you find yourself in in the kingdom of God would naturally and innately lead you to not complain. In fact, it would lead you to be joyful and joyous as to who you are and where you are and how you find yourself eternally in the kingdom of God. And you go well, I've got things to complain about. Well, I mean, I'm sure in, from a worldly human perspective you do. Everybody does. But we're not talking about a worldly human perspective. We're talking about a kingdom perspective. Now, for the children of Israel, this is important. They're complaining because things are not exactly the way they want them to be. Now, they fail to realize, and this is two years later, two years after being delivered out of Egypt, they're no longer in slavery. They're no longer having their children wiped out by pharaoh on a whim. They're no longer building pyramids and constructing wealth and privilege for a king that. That gives them nothing and in fact, takes from them. They are no longer under the subjugation of the enemy. They're no longer under the subjugation of Satan, which is really what the picture, what pharaoh is a picture of. They're no longer under the power of Satan. They are free. They are free. They've been set free, and they've been brought by the power of God into the wilderness. Now, is the wilderness a difficult place? Yeah, certainly is the promised land. And neither one of them are near as bad as Egypt. Neither one of them are even comparable to Egypt. Why? Because in Egypt, you have nothing. You are nothing and you will never be anything. That's where Egypt is. And if you are in the world, the truth is, no matter how much you feel like you've attained to, no matter how much you feel like you have, you are nothing. You are, you are going to. You are going to pass away. All that you pile up as far as resources or money or currency or valuable things is going to be passed on to someone else. It's going oil. It may be wiped out in a moment. Even though you feel like you are free. And we definitely are free in our country, compared to other countries, we have been starkly reminded that totalitarianism and the control of the state still exist and can easily exist in our country also. You are not free. You do not have total freedom. The government can step in and take. We've even seen in the last few years, a government on our border just frees the bank accounts of people and take their money, take their money and never give it back because they spoke out against their government. So these understandings are true today. You are not truly free. You are not truly from a wealthy perspective. You're not truly wealthy because the wealth is fading. It goes away just as quickly as you build it up. You are not truly happy or joyful in the world because the things that make you joyful in the world are empty. But you act out of a kingdom if you're born again, if you're part of the body of Christ, you're a part of a kingdom. And the work you do has eternal significance. And the life you live can bring true, real, deep, joyous journey that comes from knowing that you have a God who loves you and knowing that you live among the people who care for you and that you can care for them and that your investment of your life is going to matter. It's going to matter now, and it's going to matter eternally. It's going to matter in the world that we live in. And it's going to matter in the, in the life that we live now today, even though it is passing away so, so quickly. And you go, well, I don't, I don't think my life's fast. It is. Trust me. I'm, I'm, I'm on the, I'm on the other side of the hill. That's the hill that you go over when you're old, right? You know, you're, you're topping the hill, boy. I topped the hill a decade ago and now I am on my way down the other side. Life is fleeting, but, but life can be really, really, really good and eternal when we invest in God's kingdom. And so a lack of perspective, which usually comes from a lack of maturity, causes people to murmur and complain rather than cause them to invest in what's been given to them. And by the way, what was given to the children of Israel in delivering them out of Egypt was not something they deserved or earned. They did not earn that. God did it because he chose them, because he loved them, because he wanted to bring them out and make them a great people. He wanted to make them a light to the world, a shining light on a hill. That's why he delivered them out. He loved them because their forefathers had walked by faith. They had trusted God and believed God, and God created him as righteousness. And he loved them because of their faith and because he chose them well. The sounds true today. The same is true today. You don't deserve anything that you have. You don't deserve to live in a country that was based off of christian principles. And the freedoms that we do have that are enshrined in our founding documents come from biblical understandings. You don't deserve that. You didn't earn that. You were just born into it, okay? You don't deserve to be delivered from your sin. You don't deserve to have your sin atoned for and paid for. You don't deserve to be, have been set free in Christ and have true freedom in Christ, a freedom that even though it may cost you one day your life or it might cost you great sums of wealth in this world to build that kingdom. You know that any investment made in the kingdom of God by faith is eternal and will always be there and will reap great remove. You don't deserve that. You didn't learn that. You didn't do anything further that. And so murmuring and complaining about your situation is, at its very core, a lack of perspective that comes from immaturity. We have nothing to complain about. Even in the worst situations of my life, I have nothing to complain about. There's no reason to complain. We've got an older gentleman in our church who is one of the pillars of our church, Herb Sparzer. If you ask him how he's doing, he says blessed. Now, he's not just using that as a slogan. He's living that as his life. He is. He knows he's blessed. You know how he knows he's blessed? Well, he grew up in, he grew up under the control of **** Germany. He was a child when the, when the Nazis came into Austria. And he knows what it is to be under the rule of evil. He knows what it is to starve and to be hungry. So when he got to come to this country and be educated and grow a business and have a family, he's blessed. He's very blessed. But even in the midst of living in **** Germany and under the oppression of the **** regime, he was still blessed when he had God. When you have God, you blessed. Why? Because no issue that you face in these physical bodies that we live in, no problem that we come up against is permanent. It's just temporal. It's just temporary. Right now, it might lead to death, and then I have eternal life. It might not lead to death and make, it might strengthen my faith, and then I have greater faith, which means I have greater, greater eternal wealth. So really, the truth is there's nothing to be, there's nothing to be complaining about. There's no reason to complain. And so it displeases God, especially when he's done so much for us. They complain it displeased the Lord. So what did he do? He sent the fire. Now, remember, the fire is the Holy Spirit, and the fire burned around them. You know what it did? It burned off all the edges. It burned off all the problems. It gave people a perspective, you know? And the Holy Spirit does that. The Holy Spirit does that by showing you the goodness of God, but also the Holy Spirit does that map by making you realize what you could be and what you could be is lost. What you could be is destined for a worse than the situation that you are in this earth. What you could be is separated from God. What you could be is on a road to hell, to separation, to lostness, to death, and you're not. And so the very fact that you're not on that road, the very fact that you've been redeemed by the blood of the lambda, the very fact that Jesus Christ, he suffered death for you, physical death, so that you could have eternal life, the very fact that that's the case, you have nothing to complain about. Nothing to complain about. You might have issues that you got to deal with. You might have to have to walk a road of faith. That's hard. Sure, you might have to, you might have to struggle in the world that we live in. You might even one day have to give your life for the gospel. That may be the case, but there's no complaints in that. In fact, there's no complaints at all in that. In fact, that is a, well, that's the joy of being a believer, that's the joy of being in Christ, is that we know that even though we lose loved ones, even though friends of ours may move off and we be separated from them, we know that even though we lose things in this world and walking in this world cost us some things and giving to others may hurt us or cause us problems or be destructive toward us, we know that in the midst of all that, in the midst of all that struggle, in the midst of all that difficulty, in the midst of all those problems, we know that we have eternal life, we know that we have a well of living water inside of us, we know that God is working his ends out, and those are for our best. And so the circumstance I find myself in today will ultimately end in the very best for the kingdom of God and for me. And so I can find joy and peace in that. And the fire of the Holy Spirit refines me and makes me more and better and strengthens the faith that God has placed in me and gives me the right perspective on life. And any believer that has a mature perspective on life rarely complains of, because there's really nothing to complain about. You have Jesus. If you have Jesus, you have all things because he has made all things. All things were made by him. Nothing that was made was not made by him. So if I have him, I have everything. If I don't have him, I don't have anything. And that which I do have will be taken. So I praise God. I've got him. And in him I've got everything. Which means I've got you, you've got me, and we've got him. And he's given us his kingdom. We ought to walk in it and be blessed by it. And there's great joy in that when you gain the maturity to have the.

Right respect as you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today. In Jesus name.