Numbers 14:39-45 Bible Study | Episode 766

September 16, 2024

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

Numbers 14:39-45  Bible Study | Episode #766

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 14, and we're finishing the chapter this, this morning. It is probably of all the Bible studies that we do as far as entering into the promised land and the children of Israel refusing to go. And God's judgment because of that is probably the most difficult one. And it's difficult because really a lack of understanding, I think, by us, of God's value. He places on his promises to us. God wants to give us a the very, very best. There's nothing. We hear a lot of negative about the prosperity gospel in the sense that people just, they call it, name it and claim it, blab it and grab it and things like that. And the truth is that a lot of that prosperity gospel, it is a lot of saying, God's going to give me this, that and the other, and not really having a biblical context for it or taking it way farther away, outside the bounds of scripture. But God does. God does want to provide us healing. God does want to take care of our needs. God does give us, as Paul says, he gives us wealth and he gives us times of want, meaning. There are seasons where we're going to be doing really, really well, but there are also seasons of want where we need to trust him. And so all these seasons of life do happen. But God's desire is for us to be thrilled by his spirit and to enter into his best. And that does mean we're going to have to battle the giants, because the giants are in the land. The land's flowing with milk and honey, but there are giants there. They're not wrong. The children of Israel are not wrong about recognizing that there's giants there. But those giants are for us to take down. Those giants are for little David to slay. They're for us. They're for us to learn to act and be and walk in God's strength and his power and his purpose. And so those giants are not giants for the purpose of our death and destruction. They're giants that are for the purpose of our training, not our growth. And so when you're, when you're going into, when God is leading you into the spirit filled christian life, I want you to hear me. It's very important to him that you go, it's very important to him that you be in the, in that life. And a refusal to go in is just not okay. And for me, I guess, is, you know, always try to associate these things with my own life. And you should, all of us should, these ideas and understandings. Because, because I'm going to tell you they're in scripture, because God is with each individual person. He is leading us through this process. Now, the process doesn't change. The person is different. And so therefore, how that plays out in your life is going to be different for every person. But that doesn't mean the process is different. That just means, you know, how the acts are worked out, how the different lines are read. You know, each person lives, you live your own, you live your own spiritual journey, your own spiritual movie. And so how it's played out now we went through it is, you know, it's different for every one of us because we're different actors and we live in different environments and we have different, different, other supporting actors in our life. And so it's not gonna be all the same. But the process is same. The God leading us into his very best is the same. It just how we work it out within ourselves is very different. And understanding that, I look back and I remember when I told my parents that I trusted in Jesus at eight and that I wanted to be baptized. Well, back then we were in a baptist church. I grew up in baptist churches, and you had to go to down front and tell everybody. And that in baptist churches they consider that your public profession of faith or the people do, whether the leadership of the church does or not, it's, it's kind of, they do call it your profession of faith. But, but really, baptism is the public profession of faith. That scriptural, scripturally, you being baptized is your public profession of faith. And so I was afraid to be up in front of people. Uh, fancy that. I didn't want to be up in front of people. Fancy that too. Uh, God has basically made me do it the rest of my life. Uh, uh. So, uh, it's one of those things that I just have to do all the time. Now, uh, and have grown used to it. But back then, I was very fearful of it. And my father told me, well, listen, if you don't have what God wants for you, you're going to have to be bold. You have to, you don't have to quit your crying, quit worried about being in front of people, and you're gonna have to be bold in your faith and walk forward. If you say you trust Jesus, you got to go up there and tell everybody you do. And that was really a hard thing for a father to say to an eight year old, but it was the exact right thing for a father to say to me. It was. It was the perfect thing to say to me because he was teaching me that the christian life requires a boldness of faith, and it requires an expectation of God's best. And so we're not totally, you know, as I said earlier, the understanding of God's best and his desire for us to have strength, wealth, prosperity, he wants us to have those things. Now, what? They. They don't. It's not. That's not the manna from heaven, okay? The manna for heaven from heaven is just sustaining. In order for you to have those things, you do have to walk in faith, and it doesn't mean that you're going to have them all the time, because sometimes you got to fight the giants. It just means that God's going to lead you to it eventually. He's going to lead you to those things. You're not going, you're going to have health, but you're not going to live forever. You're going to have wealth, but you're going to have seasons of want. You're going to have. You're going to prosper in the place God's planted you. But there are going to be some droughts, and they're going to be some seasons that it rains too much and you don't get enough. You don't get enough sunlight. Those. Those times are going to happen. Those seasons are going to happen. They make you stronger, they make you better. And so when that happens, you got to understand it. But God's not going to be okay with you not going into the promised land. I want you to hear me. He is not going to be okay with it. He is going to leave your carcass in the wilderness if you don't go in. And once you've rejected it, once you've decided you're not going in, it's a tough thing to live the christian life after that. It's a real difficult thing to live the christian life after that, because that is the essence of the christian life. And there are a lot of people who say, I'm not going in. And that happens all the time. And then they decide to go in on their own accord and in their own will, and then their own way, they decide to do it the way they want to do it, not the way God's told them to do it. That's what happens with the children of Israel, says in verse 39. Then Moses told these words to all the children of Israel, and the people mourned greatly. And they rose early in the morning and went up to the top of the mountain, saying, here we are, and we will go up to the place which the Lord has promised, for we have sinned. Now, I'm not saying that people who don't go into the promised land don't know that they're acting in unbelief. They do. They just don't go. They don't go. So I don't have any, any other way to explain that or describe that other than they just don't go. He says. And Moses said, now, why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord? For this will not succeed. Notice God had already told them that he'd already given them his judgment about their unbelief. And so once he gave it, he gave it. He says, you can't go up. Do not grow up, lest you be defeated by your enemies. For the Lord is not among you. Notice going into the promised land is something that is led by the Holy Spirit. It's not something that's led by you. Aren't you with me today? You can't come up with your own plan to live the spirit filled christian life. It has to be led by goddess, and you have to learn to walk in it. And with Jesus, he is the God of the second chance for sure. But listen to me. There may be a season, and there may be a long season in your life where you reject God's plan, his will for his very, very best. And you spend a good long while wandering around. And. And so when you get a revelation from God, when you get a direction from God for your life, you need to go. You need to go and go quickly and don't look back. Don't question it. Just go. Because a lot of people spend a lot of time spiritually wandering because they don't go. God said, do not go. I mean, Moses told them, do that. Go, lest you be defeated by your enemies. The Lord is not among you for the Anakites and the Canaanites are there before you, and you shall fall by the sword because you've turned away from the Lord. The Lord will not be with you. And Moses is telling them, look, you had your chance to go in and now you're not going to end right now. You're not. You can't. You can't do it in your own flesh. A lot of people want to have the spirit filled christian life and want to have their own will also. And you just. There's just nothing. They don't go together. You've got to learn to hear God's word. You've got to learn to hear his revelation to you, his revelation through Jesus, through his word, to your personal life. You've got to believe it and you got to act on it. And when you live a lifestyle that is that way, that's what you do. That's how you try to find him. Well, God eventually leads you into powerful, powerful things. I want you to hear me. Very powerful things. But you gotta learn to do it when he says, do it when the opportunity is now. And the failure to do it will lead to wandering. And you trying to do it in your own power and in your own way will get you hurt. It will. I think about the seven sons of Siva in the book of acts. You know, they heard people going and driving out demons in the name of Jesus. And, you know, they, they decided, they try to use those words. So they went in and they were going to drive out a demon. And, you know, he says, you know, I know Peter, Paul, all that. The demon says, I know the guys you're, you're trying to act like, but I don't know you. And the Bible says he drove them out without their clothes. He whooped them up and drove them out the house. You gotta. The spiritual journey is a personal walk with God. And you can't go up and just fight the Anakites on your own and the Canaanites on your own. You gotta let the Holy Spirit lead you through it, it says. But they presumed to go up to the mountain top. Nevertheless, neither the ark of the covenant nor the Lord Moses departed from the camp. Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who dwelt in the mountain came down and attacked them and drove them back as far as Horma notice. They decided they'd go up and fight and they got whooped. They got. For those of you not from Alabama, they got, they. They were defeated. That. That's what getting whooped means. They did. They didn't make it. And so as you. As you consider this, have you ever been whooped spiritually? The reason you got whooped is because you were not being led by the spirit. You were fighting spiritual forces without spiritual leadership, and you can't do that. You've got to be led by the Holy Spirit. And I'll tell you, as a pastor, that's an important understanding for me. I have to go. Okay, sure. Do I have all the authority of Christ? Absolutely. Do I have all the power of God available to me? Yeah. Am I. Am I a kingdom leader? Absolutely, I am. I got all of that stuff. Then the real question comes down to, is this what the Holy Spirit's telling me to do? Because remember, if the Holy Spirit's not leading in it, it will not work. The Holy Spirit's not guiding you. You're just playing games. And so when we come to this passage, when we kind of come to this place, in this setting, the final understanding is be led by the Holy Spirit. The primary understanding at the very start of the Bible study was to be what? Led by the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit leads you to something, walk in it. It has great consequence that you do, and it will have great consequence if you don't. You wouldn't be listening to this Bible study unless you were interested in being led by the spirit. You wouldn't do it. You would just, you know, be getting up and heading off in your day and leaving God behind. But you've apparently not that I'm God, but you've apparently wanted to engage in some spiritual understandings and talking, speaking and listening. That means you. You want to be led by the Holy Spirit, well, do this, please. Allow him to lead. You don't just wander off and do your own thing. And the failures to be led by the Holy Spirit in the past can't be overcome by just going back and doing what the Holy Spirit said back then, because the circumstances have changed. Let the Holy Spirit lead you today, and he will lead you into health and wealth and those things with some seasons of struggle and battle and maybe even some sickness. And ultimately, he will lead you into his best. And that's what we want. We don't want health, wealth, and prosperity. We want God's best, which may be different places for different people.

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.