Numbers 13:26 Bible Study | Episode 760

September 6, 2024

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

Numbers 13:26  Bible Study | Episode #760

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 13. And we're getting the report, the report from the spies that went into the land. And this is really kind of straightforward. It's not. There's not a lot of nuance in this. Oftentimes, as leaders, as leaders study this, they look and say, okay, would there been any way for Moses or I or Caleb or Joshua to convince the people to do what God said do? And here is the answer to that question. The answer to that question is no. The answer is no. And the reason the answer is no is because people are sheep, and they follow as they will and they do as they will. One of the great sayings that I found in life is people do what they want to do. So if you ask, well, what does this person want in life? What do they do? Well, just look at what they're doing. What they're doing is what they want to do. They may, for a short time and a short season, because of dire consequences or dire circumstances, they may, for a momentary time, do what they don't want to do, but they generally going to do what they want to do. I may, for a short season, for a short period of time, eat vegetables, but I don't want to eat vegetables. I don't. And so eventually, I'm going to stop eating vegetables and start eating everything else that I like to eat. Why? Because I do what I want to do. That is what my. My will has to be bent towards something else in order for me to change how I am living my life, how I'm doing things. And something has to cause that to take place. Something has to come into my life and bring that about. Now, can God change the hearts of people? Yeah, he can. Can God change the will of people? Absolutely can. Does he do that regularly? He does that. Does he do that instantaneously. In some, in some matters, he does. In some matters, he, he instantaneously changes somebody totally and completely. But generally speaking, people are changed over long periods of time. And if you want to guide a group of people, as it were, into the promised land, and that would be the picture here, but if you are guide people into God's best, it generally takes a period of time of growth, and you can actually, you can actually see that growth taking place as you look back. But while you're in the middle of it, you feel like nothing's happening. You feel like this is craziness. This is stuff that, why am I wasting my time doing it? Why am I doing this? Trying to help people to get to the best. And in the days and weeks and even months model, you go, I don't even know if we're, I don't even know if we're even having any effect at all. But then you look back over years and you realize, wow, what an impact. Because the hearts of men and women generally change slowly, slowly over time. And the thing that changes the hearts of men is, like we talked about last Sunday, the roads of life, the words, the word of God, Jesus, the, the, the word made flesh. That's what changes the hearts of people. That's what makes, makes life different. And it does it over a long period of time. It is a steady flow of change that is not quick. You do not turn aircraft carrier around crouply. It takes a lot of ocean to turn an aircraft carrier around in. Likewise, the hearts of people take a while for them to turn completely to where they need to be. You do, like I said, there are situations where the circumstances and the consequences of a person's will in life necessitate quick change, or there'll be death soon. And those things, those people, the miraculous changes. But generally speaking, no, generally speaking, you don't change people's hearts in a matter of just a few months or years. It takes years and years to change their hearts. 18 months is a year and a half. You can see a lot of growth in somebody's life looking back over a year and a half, but ten years, you can see unbelievable change take place. And so when they came, it says now, they departed and came back to Moses and Aaron. It's verse 26. And all the congregation of the children of Israel in the wilderness of Paran and Kadesh, they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Now notice they're, they're presenting their, their findings to the people, not just to Moses and Aaron, but to everybody, to the whole congregation. Why? Because everybody's got to go in. Everybody's got to go into the promised land. Then they told him and said, we went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. What they're saying is. Don't you hear me? They're saying God was right. God was right. God told us it was a land flowing with milk and honey, and it is a land flowing with milk and honey. And by the way, I'm not against milk, honey, or fruit, just vegetables, all right? And we didn't nuts in vegetables here. Nevertheless, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. Well, they're going to need large cities, and they're going to need them to be fortified. Why? Because they got a lot of people. Moreover, we saw that the descendants of Anak there. Now, Anak is a road that is. This is the first time that this actual hebrew word is used. It's going to be associated many times when you look it up with the nephilim that are found in the book of genesis. And the reason it's associated with it is because the word nephilim is going to be used here, and it's going to be used in terms of giants. Okay? Now, the Nephilim in Genesis, or the. Or the race of humans that were, as it were, the Bible says the sons of God and the daughters of men had relations, and their descendants were the Nephilim. Now, I believe those were the people that God was killing in the flood and that he was destroying them, and that their spirits remained unclean spirits, and they're what we call the demonic today. But. But they were giants back then, when they. When they lived as humans on the earth or human angel hybrids on the earth. But now, as we're studying this, Anak was a person. Anak was a human being. Anak's gonna be used a lot more than Nephilim in the rest of scripture. And Anak was a very large human being, a giant human being, you know, seven, 8910 foot tall human being. And so his children were giants also. Now, there's some archaeological evidence of giants. There's a lot of archaeological evidence that was found back a couple hundred years ago on up into last century of people that were really large human beings. And we tend to be growing pretty large human beings today. And so we had somebody close. We're closing in on having eight footers in the NBA. So it's not like this is so far beyond what we, what we understand to be giants. We're not that far away, even in modern times. So it says they were. They were the descendants of Anak were there. Now, you gotta remember now, the Jews are probably the average height of a jewish man is not probably all that much more than 5ft. So if you said there are people that are seven and 8ft tall, you're talking about people that are on a scale of almost twice their height, but weight wise, probably three or four times. And so they all giants to them. The Amalekites dwell in the land, also to the south, and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, along the banks of the Jordan. So you've got all these ites, and I'm going to call them that for many, many years to come as we study through scripture. You've got the Amalekites, the Hittites, the Jebeshites, the Amorites and the Canaanites. And you go, well, which one of them are really important? Well, the Amalekites are going to be a problem. The Hittites are going to exist for a long, long time. They're actually a. They're actually an empire that exists from the northern part of Israel all the way up into Mesopotamia, all the way up into the Levant. I mean, they reach all the way almost to modern Greece, the Constantinople, up into regions of, whether it's modern day Iran, Syria. They are a empire that exists and a warlike empire, it says. And the Jebusites, who are not going to be as big a problem, the Amaleites, who are going to be initial problem real quick soon. And the Canaanites, who are the people that dwell along the sea and are soon going to be replaced by a race of people that are even bigger than them. And as you kind of go through this, you've got several groups of people, the Canaanites being definitely the worst because they practice human sacrifice, all these people on the land, and they were there. So we've got a land flowing with milk and hunting, and it has fruit, by the way, and just letting you know. And it's got fortified cities, very large cities, and it's got all these groups of people, many of them like people, many of them going to cause them problems even before they go into the promised land. And it says, and it says then Caleb, verse 30, quiet to the people before Moses. Why? Because the hearts of the people are not yet bent toward doing God's will or hearing God's will in their life. They're nothing. They're not. We can see that in how they acted when they got to the mountain. We can see how they acted before they crossed the Red Sea. We can see that in the way they've acted since then about. About food, about locations, about how they were moving, what they were doing. We see that consistently in the less two years or less that they have been under the guide, under the protection, under the leadership of God in the wilderness. Their hearts are not bent toward hearing God. In fact, they didn't even wanna grow up on the mountain to meet God. So their hearts are not bent toward God. They're not at all. At all. They're not bent toward God. And when they hear that, God is told them exactly what is true, that it is a land flowing with milk and honey that passed over them, and all they hear is sons of Anak, Hittites, Amorites, amalekites, Canaanites, and giant fortified cities. That's all they hear. That's all they hear. And the reason they hear that is because they're still slaves to this world in their. In their. In their physical being outside of Egypt. They're no longer slaves. But in their hearts, they still have allowed the world to. To enslave them. They're still slaves to the world in their heart. And they're not trusting God. And two years of miracles, two years of sustenance, two years of revelation, have not fixed it yet. Have not fixed the problem. That's why anybody who shows up to church to be fixed immediately, in just a few weeks, is going to generally, like I said, there are situations where the circumstances are so dire that they have to have God right now in fullness. But those situations are very rare. That's why, if you're willing to really grow a people that. That learn to trust God and learn to walk with God, it is a long term process. It is a. It is a. Not a monthly or weekly, not even a yearly process. It is a decade and generational process. And it's something that. That has to be done not just by one person or one leader, but has to be done by a multitude of leadership. And so, understanding that no one person can totally bring that about. And if it's done in a very quicker hyper way, generally speaking, over time, we've seen this to be true. It falls apart. It has to be done long term. It has to be done by a group of people who are willing to trust God for a long period of time, generationally almost. And to see great things from God over that time period, to remember them and to help those who are coming along behind them to walk in the same way. It is a difficult thing. And how do I know that? Because in verse 31, it says, but the men who had gone up with him, the leaders, I want you to hear me. Not, not just the common Israelite out there in the wilderness, but the leaders said, we are not able to get the people, for they are stronger than we. And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, the land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants. And all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. They're giants. This is where it's used, that word. Nephilim. They're Nephilim. There. There we saw the giants. The descendants of Anak came from the Giants. And we were like grasshoppers in our own sight. And so we were in their sight. What he's saying is, we're Hobbits. We were tiny people compared to them. And I, they invoke the idea of the, they invoke the idea of the methylam. They invoke the understanding that they come from this guy named Anak, these giants. And they were giants. And there were giants in the land. Even for hundreds of years later, we have David killing a Philistine giant who took over the land of the Canaanites when, when they were gone. We, we see that regularly. That's not something that's, that's not understood here, okay? That it is true that they were, there were giant people in the land. But notice we can't overcome them. Well, you, you couldn't deliver yourself out of Egypt either, but God did. You couldn't sustain yourself in the wilderness, but God did. You couldn't reveal God's word to you, but God did. And they are continuing to work off of what is my will, what is my vision, what is my understanding, how I see the world and not how God sees the world. And two years of seeing the miraculous, the powerful, the sustaining, the revelatory understanding of God has not changed the people's hearts. Even the leadership of the people's hearts. That's done. It takes time, takes a long time, takes a steady hand, a steady source of leadership for a long period of time to get there. Joshua is going to be around 40 years later to lead them into the promised land. So if that tells you how long it takes for somebody to get them into the promised land. That's how long it takes. It takes a long, steady leadership base of people who trust God, who believe God, who walk with God, who see God moving, and know that it is God, who trust God to bring about generational, powerful, world changing leadership. And it just, it is, it takes a long time. And so what is the whole point of this? Well, the point of it is, is that if you want to see something like this happen, you gotta invest in it for a long period of time. It can't be something that's a fly by night. I know we want quick fixes today, but that just doesn't work. We want quick, quick answers, but that just doesn't happen. It's going to take, it takes long periods of time. You go, well, I don't have many years. That's good, that's not a bad thing. That's, that's a good thing. Uh, you know, by saying that, that you're going to have to invest the rest of your life into it. Okay, well, I made that decision when I was 21, and I've been investing for 31 years into this type of thing. 22, I guess. So it's 30 years I've been investing my life in, into, to this thing. And I plan to, if I get 30 more, which probably for a giant like me, I probably won't lift my heart, I'll probably give out before that. But if I get 30 more years, and the next 30 years will be invested the same way, why? Because the work that we do of faith is not just temporal in this moment, it is eternal. And so we ought to invest not just for what we see, but what we understand God to do with our faithfulness in the generations to come. And so that's what we're going to be in the business of doing. That's what I'm going to be in the business of doing for the rest of my life. For the rest of my life. And I pray that that'll be the case for you. I've seen many, many come before me that does it. And I expect that there'll be many, many come after me that do. I do not have a perspective to think that all is lost. In fact, I feel like all is found and we just need to walk in it. And if we'll do it well, and we'll do it for a long period of time, what mighty and great things will we see? I say we'll see the promised land. I know we will. These folks won't, but we will.

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.