Numbers 14:5-10 Bible Study | Episode 762

September 10, 2024

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

Numbers 14:5-10  Bible Study | Episode #762

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 a numbers, chapter 14, and we're dealing with the. Well, really, what it is is just another rebellion. It's rebellion of God's people against God's plan. And that's hard to say. It's a rebellion of God's people against God's plan. And it's not like this is one of those hidden gems that God has that you have to really chase after. This was like an open plan. This was not a. This was not a plan that was hidden. It's not a plan that was difficult to find. This is not a plan that required a lot of effort. In fact, it was a plan that required no effort in the sense of they didn't have to do anything to get themselves in a position to receive the plan. Now, what they did have to do is they did have to go into the promised land and trust God and trust God above their own fear. And. Okay, they didn't. They didn't do that. They. They didn't at all. And for me, when I read this, there's all kinds of things that go through my head as a pastor, as a leader, as. As understanding leadership, and understanding pastoring churches, which is. Which is far different form of leadership than anything that you have out there, because you're dealing with a group of people that are. Generally speaking, you're dealing with a group of people that are far less knowledgeable about what's going on spiritually than you are. However, they are totally free to choose where they go and whom they listen to. And when they have that freedom, they wander around just like sheep are want to do. They wander around and they listen to all the voices out there, including. And this is the thing, because they don't really know. They don't have ears to hear all the time. They wander and they listen to the world a lot more than they listen to those who are trying to relate God's word to them or the Holy Spirit himself, they just struggle with that. And when you're dealing with people who are free to come and go, they're volunteers. You gotta add on to the top of that. This is really passionate for them. This is really something that they care about a whole lot. People care about their faith a lot. And even if they don't know really how to exercise it or really know what it's all about, it means a lot to them, obviously. And that would be something that would. That's. That's not a negative, that's a positive. But when you're. When you're able to wander and when you're ahead, when you're unable to really discern between what is from God and what is from the world, and you're really passionate about it, you can really, your emotions can, as it were, run amok. And as they run amok, the emotion that the enemy tends to use the most is fear. And as fear, as fear rages through the population of sheep in a. In a certain pasture, that can cause them to just head off in directions and make irrational and rash decisions that ultimately are to their detriment. And ultimately, what happens is there are spies that are sent by God's direction. They come back, and ten of them basically say, it's everything that God said it was, except for we can't defeat the people that live there because we're not big enough. We're not strong enough, we're not powerful enough. They have better. They are bigger, and they have better strongholds, and there's just no way for us to defeat them and to say, no, we need to go into the land, and we need to listen to what God said. He didn't bring us here to fail. Now, rationally, when you just step back, God has done greater than defeat. He's defeated the Egyptians, which were the hegemonic power of the day. They were the group. They were the people. They were the time, they were the people that were the most powerful in that region of the world. Even the Hittites, who we see in the land, who were in the northern portion of Israel, even the Hittites had trouble with the Egyptians. And God defeated the Egyptians without the Israelites doing anything. He defeated the Egyptians through plague and totally destroyed their economy, totally destroyed their society, such that they told the children of Israel to get out and to leave. And yet the children of Israel don't understand that. And that is not having eyes to see or the ability to take what God has done in the past and call, correlate that with what God is doing in the present. And that is a spiritual gift. That's the ability to see what God has done in the past in his revelation to you in the past and apply it to what's going on in the present and expect that the same would happen because you have really, what is the same. You have the same ingredients, you have worldly situations in which God is interacting with his people to bring them through same situation, just different circumstances. The ability to correlate that and to understand that the wisdom that is required for that. A lot of believers, just for whatever reason, have not put them in a position so that they can begin to see life that way. And so when you have, you have. And these people are believers. I mean, they left Egypt. They went through the, they went through the blood and they went through the baptism and they, and they met God at the mountain and they trusted him. They just not willing to do what God has ultimately planned for them to do, which is a more difficult task in that. Now, God defeated the Egyptians. Now he's going to use me to defeat the Canaanites. And I just prefer him to just do what he did with the Egyptians and let me have it. But God doesn't want that. And I want you to hear me. God doesn't want that. What does God want? God wants you to learn to be as he is, because you were made in his image and likeness, and you were made to glorify him by representing him in his creation. And so that means that there does come a time when you have to learn to act as Jesus did. As the apostle Paul says, we got to do that. We got to. And John the apostle says, we got to walk as Jesus did. We got it. We got to be as he is. And they didn't. Verse four, you know, it said, they said to one another, let us select a leader and return to Egypt. Let us return to Egypt. What a. What a devastating spiritual statement that is. What a, what a devastating spiritual statement it is when a believer out there returns back to the world. And then Moses and Aaron fell on their knees before. Fell on their faces before the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel. And this is. This is the word for prostrate yourself. This is the word for worship in the old testament. One of the words for worship in the old testament, there are four of them, and they fell on their faces. It's a symbol of humility. It's a symbol of, I can't believe you're doing this. Please don't. It's begging, really. Please don't do this. And notice joshua, the son of nun, and Caleb, the son of jephunnehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes, they ripped their garments, which is a picture of total distress and total displeasure. And they spoke to the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, the land we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. What they're saying is, God has said, this is true. What he has told us is true. God's not led us astray. He said, he says, if the Lord delights in us, then he will bring us into the land and give it to us, a land which flows with milk and honey. What he's saying, if God, God. If God takes pleasure in us, if he delights in who we are and wonder, how do we please God by faith, he said, you know, that these are understandings that they had in the Old Testament. These are understandings that we see in the New Testament. They don't change. God delights in us, takes pleasure in us. How does God take pleasure in us? Well, by faith, he takes pleasure in us. He says, if God delights in us, he will bring us into the land and give it to us. And the land is flowing with milk and honey. A land that's flowing with milk and honey, he says, and only do not rebel against the Lord. Direct rebellion against God's revealed will. That's what's going on. And sadly, and I said at the very start, leadership requires you to learn how to lead people, to get past their fear and walk by faith. It's very difficult, very, very difficult thing to learn how to do. You got to lead them. You can't drive them. You can't drive them like cattle. They'll even panic worse if you do that. You have to lead them to a place where they walk by faith and not by sight, where they trust God based off of his revelation and based off of his prior activity in their lives, so that they will go and do things that seem like they're new things, but really what they are is just an extension of trusting God as they've done in the past. And to, to do that in a, in a way that gets them to experience God's best is a real test of leadership. It's a real test of leadership because, remember, they can just wander off, which sheep do really a whole lot. That's one of the problems with being a shepherd. As they wander off and, and a lot of times they wander off and you can't get them to come back. And so all that going on makes it very difficult. And then when you have the total panic of, we can't do this, people will get all up in their feelings and before you know it, they will have run off from what God's doing and be back, right back in the middle of the world. They'll just head right back to Egypt. He says, you know, Joshua and Caleb said, don't rebel against the Lord nor fear the people of the land. Notice faith over fear that. What are they, why are they, why are they in their feelings? Why are they, why are they fleeing from God's will? Because they're afraid. And I'm going to tell you, that is so true of God's people in so many categories and in so many ways. They're afraid. They're afraid and rather than standing, they run. Rather than chasing after God's will and walking in it, they flee back to what they remember or know are familiar. And those familiar things are not good for them because they're the world, he says, for they are our bread. Their protection is departed from them. He says, we can eat them, we can eat them up. We can. They're going to be easy to take their protections, depart from them. What? What protection? We're the protection of the enemy. The world and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them. Do not fear them. Hmm. I can identify with this. I really can and I do. For those of you who are listening and you can begin to identify, then you've probably walked through some of this with people and walked through their attraction back to the world and walk through their fear of walking by faith into things that they've not seen before that they don't have a clear understanding of, he says, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them all the congregation said, stone them with stones. They don't stone. Joshua and Caleb. Now, looking on back, looking back at that, it seems absurd that they would do that, but in that moment seemed reasonable to the people to do it. We, looking back, see Joshua and Caleb as mighty figures of faith in human history, mighty figures of faith in Christendom, mighty figures of faith in Judaism, mighty people of faith that did great things and, and are in the hall of fame. We see them that way. But in the moment, you know, the jewish people just wanted to, they wanted to stone them. They want to take them out. Why? Because they love the world more than they love God's will. Now, I want you to notice this is a positive for the leaders, God's presence. Now, the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of meeting before all the children of Israel. You know God. If you're a leader of God's people and you, and you lead them in the direction that they should go, you are taking God's revelation and you're giving it to them. You're taking God's word and you're feeding it to them, and then you're leading them to be people of faith. If they don't follow, if they don't listen, if they're not willing to do it, I want you to hear me. You have a defender for yourself also, and that's the Lord God himself. And the Lord's going to appear in the tabernacle of meeting and he's going to handle his people. And I want to tell you, I've been in this situation also. And God does do that. Now, it's not always good for the people because they're in direct rebellion against God. But when you do right, you have no, you have no reason to fear the world and you have no reason to fear man. When you lead correctly and when you, when you give a clear vision of the truth of God's word, there's no need to fear the world and there's no need to fear men, even God's people, because, uh, well, they don't walk in the power that you do because you're walking by faith. And when you're walking by faith, there's really no reason to fear at all. There's just an anxious expectation of God's best being available in, in the next few moments. Don't you hear me? There's an anxious expectation of God's best being available in the next few moments. That's, and it might not happen in the next few moments, but you expect that God's going to show up, and he does. He always does. And those of you who are hearing this, and you've, you've experienced that, you know it. And so you become even more bold and more powerful because you've heard God. You know the revelation of God. You've, you've had God give you those secret understandings and that secret. And when I say secret, it's not secret. It's available, but it's not available until you walk through it. Those, those, those deep things that abide in you deeply and forever, and nobody can take them away from you. Those things were placed there by God's revelation and leading you through them, and you walked in faith through them and you received them. And when you received them, well, there's just not a whole lot better than that. And you realize that they're never going to be able to stone you. They're not going to be able to get rid of you. They can't get rid of you. They didn't make you, and they can't break you. God made you. And God's the only one that can take you out. And he takes you out on the day he planned to eternity past to take you out, but he don't take you out, he just takes you to him. So to live as Christ, to die, is game. It's all good for those of you lead. And you struggle with this, and this seems to be so hard. And this passage is just kind of a defining moment for your ministry. I want you to hear me. It's the defining moment of everybody's ministry. You're not the only one. You're not the only one who's, who's experienced this. You're not. In fact, I'm quite sure after 30 years of walking through it and studying it and thinking about it and reading scripture, I'm quite sure that every leader of God's people has a day like this. And it's a good day. It's not good when you're going through it, but it's a good day because it teaches you not to trust in God's people. But you trust in God and you lead God's people. You trust in God and lead God's people. For those of you who are learning how to do this, I'm excited for you because you'll become a mature person of faith who doesn't need a teacher. You'll have the Holy Spirit, you'll sit under teaching and you'll grow from it, but you don't really need it anymore because you walk by faith yourself and those are good things. This day seems to be a terrible day, and it is. It's going to cause 40 years of people dying in the wilderness. And let me tell you, this has been going on since way back then, 1300 years before Christ, and it's going to keep on going on, but it doesn't have to go on for you. You can have God's abundance and God's best, and you can have it when you walk by faith and trust him. And I had that expectation for those who are listening. I do. I know that you're chasing after him and you will find him.

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 nam