Numbers 13:1-2 Bible Study | Episode 757

September 3, 2024

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

Numbers 13:1-2    Bible Study | Episode #757

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.

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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 13. Numbers, chapter 13. And we are dealing with, well, the spies going into Canaan now, oftentimes. I know, I know. One of the misconceptions that come from this passage is that the spies were sent by Moses or somebody. Somebody sent the spies, and the spies went in to determine whether or not they should go in. And then obviously, they didn't do what God said, and so somehow they messed up by sending the spies. Well, that's not really the case. And we see that in verse one, it says, and the Lord spoke to Moses saying, send men. Despite the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel from each tribe of their fathers, you shall send a man, everyone a leader among them. Now, I will deal with leadership in the Bible study tomorrow as we talk about the different spies, they're sent out. But the main thing I want to talk about before we ever go into this is that God told them to send spies into the land. Now, if you remember back when, when they were at the mount, at Mount Sinai, and Jethro, the father of the father in law of Moses, was there, and they were getting ready to go, and he was going to go back to his own people, go back to the Midianites. Moses convinced him to go with him. And the reason he convinced him primarily to go with them is because Jethro moved the land, who moved the regions. They were good women and the path that they should take. And so he was a great source of information, a guy for them to go through the wilderness and in the middle of prayer is where they were. And they needed somebody who kind of had an idea about the land, idea about any way through mountains or desert passes or all the things that you would naturally need from someone who was going to help you go on a journey. And that's exactly what Jethro did. Jethro stayed with them and helped them as they made their way toward the promised land. Now, once they get to the promised land, once they get to the Jordan river, they really don't have anybody to tell them, you know, where to cross, how to go in, what to do when they get there. And exactly, you know, a line of attack, a way to plan out the journey. And we're not dealing with just a few people. You're dealing with literally millions of people. And you want to be able to do it in a way that is a way that is effective and a way that is quick and easier. And so obviously God wanted them to send some people in to spy out the land, okay? To spy out the land and how to go in God. Don't you hear me? We oftentimes. We oftentimes think that faith is blind. Faith is not blind. We do not have a faith that's blind. We have a faith that is based off of something. And that faith that we have is based off of God's word and his revelation to us. Okay? We're not trusting in nothing. We're trusting in a revelation that has been given by God, an understanding, a knowledge that God has given us, has provided to us. And in that knowledge and in that understanding, we trust in him. And then as we trust in him, we act upon what he said. But it's not blind. Now, if you don't believe in God, if you don't believe that the people who wrote the Old Testament, New Testament and heard from God, well, then you would consider us to be doing this blindly. You would be saying, well, Christians believe in a God that they have no reason to believe in. But each one of these stories, each one of these books of the Bible, each one of the events that take place in history, we can prove historically happened. In fact, archaeology every day proves that the stories of the Bible, that the events that take place in scripture, that the locations of scripture are absolutely true, they were there. These things did happen. And the people of those times, because of the nature of the events, attributed them to God. Now you might find some naturalistic reason why these events happened or things happened in this way. You may come up with your own reasons why it was possible outside of God, but the people who were experiencing these events attributed them to God. They were attributable to God and they trusted God and believed God for what he said. And that's where we get our faith. That's where we, we get our belief system. Now, the natural world the scientific world oftentimes wants to say that they're based off of facts and knowledge and we have a faith in something that's not real. It's a blind faith. Well, I could go through many things that we blindly believe to be true in science that we just trust is, and then we jump off of that into studying and coming to knowledge about the results of those things, but we blindly believe that they happened and we don't know the cause or the reason for them. Well, the events of going into the promised land were not based off of blind faith. They were based off of revelation from God. God told them that he was going to, before they ever went into Egypt, that he was going to give them this land flowing with milk and honey. He told them when he delivered them from Egypt that they were going to go into the desert, that they were going to meet with him, and then he was going to give them this land flowing with milk and honey. And then after he'd given them his revelation, he took them to the land and sent spies in so that they could plan their journey into the promised land. And he told them to prepare to go in. All these things that God did, all these events that took place are events that show that God had a plan. God is, God is actively revealing himself and revealing his plan to them and asking them to prepare to act upon that revelation, which is faith, which is what we call faith. Faith is we hear from God, meaning we get revelation from God, we get understanding from goddess. We believe it and then we act upon it. And the acting upon it sometimes requires you to plan to do something requires you to prepare to do what God has told you to do. And that may be prepared spiritually, that may be preparing physical, that may be preparing mentally to do what God has asked you to do. But ultimately you have to trust in God's revelation. Well, the, the people that were dealing with these things, the people that were preparing to go in, the twelve spies who were going to go out in and prepare the land, I mean, and spy out the land, they, they were asked to go and check it out and tell them to tell Moses, tell Aaron exactly what the land is like as far as hills, mountains, regions, waterways, water system. He, they were going to spy out a journey to go into the land. Now, when you're dealing with revelation from Goddesse, the leeway is not to figure out whether or not to do what God says. That gives you leeway to figure out how, how you were supposed to get that done. God wants you to join him in his revelation, he reveals it to you and he wants you to join him by acting upon what he's revealed to you. But in this situation, he didn't tell them to go in and figure out whether or not they should do it. God said he told them to go out, go and spy out the land leaders among his people to go and spy out the land and bring back the information about how they are going to go into the land. I want to ask you today, when you get revelation from God, do you consider whether or not you are or are not going to do it, or you can, or do you consider how this can be done? Now, some things that God reveals to you, he's got to do totally himself. He's got, he's got to step in and take over. There's sometimes when you go to God and you go, God, I cannot handle this. I don't know exactly what to do. I know that your promises say this, this and this, and then I, and so I believe in those promises and I'm placing this on your altar. I'm giving it to you and I'm saying, you've got to handle this because I have no answers. I have no way to handle this situation. If you need me to do something, if you want me to act in some way, please let me know. But for right now, I'm going to. I'm going to do, I'm going to do what, what I'm supposed to be doing, and I'm going to let you be God. That happens a lot. That happens often. And then as things go wrong, God reveals to you what, how he wants you to be a part of what he's doing in your life. That happens regularly and often by God. That being said, you're not giving God something and saying, I'm going to decide whether or not to be a part of what you're doing. You're giving it and saying, God, you've got to be God. Now, oftentimes God wants us to be a part of what he's doing. He's revealed to us how he wants to us act, who he wants us to be, how he wants us to live out his life in the road that we're in. And he gives us instructions, you be doing this, you act upon this, you work this out. Well, many times. That takes some planning, some organizing, some preparation. We do that all the time in the church. You do that all the time in your life. But it doesn't mean that you're trying to decide whether to do or not to do what God has laid on your heart and prepared you to do. That's not, that's not what you're doing. What you're doing is preparing yourself to do what God has told you to do. If your heart is such that you're never really acting upon God's revelation to you, then your ability to hear God and the commonness of having a revelation from goddess is going to be greatly diminished. It's going to drop a lot. You're not going to have as much revelation from God because your heart is bent toward disobedience. Your heart's bent toward not how to do what God has asked me to do, but whether or not I should, whether or not I will, whether or nothing I perceive that I can. And that is going to leave you at a place where you rarely see the hand of God at work. You rarely have the opportunity to, to refine and build your faith, and you rarely ever see God move. And that oftentimes can cause bitterness in a believer. And that bitterness is the result of not God's revelation, not God's plan for their life, but it, it is based off of your unbelief. And so I say to you, as you're, as you're thinking about entering the promised land here in numbers 13, is your heart beat toward the promises of God, bit toward the revelation of God naturally moving toward what God has told you to do? Or is your heart bent toward your own personal understanding, your own will, your own way, and determining whether you will or will not do what God has revealed to you? If you have a heart that's meant that way, you have a hard heart. And you need to ask God to break that for you. You need to ask God to, to change your heart and to change the way you deal with him and the way you act upon what he reveals to you. And God will do that. God will come in and soften your heart. God will come in and show you the goodness of his revelation, and God will help you understand him in fullness and truth. I pray that you'll do that. I pray that you'll look around and see that that's possible and should be. I pray that you'll act upon that. And I pray God will reveal himself.

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.