Numbers 29:12-40 Bible Study | Episode 816

November 25, 2024

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

Numbers 29: 12-40 Bible Study | Episode #816

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 28. Numbers, chapter 28. And it is the. The feast of tabernacles. The feast of booths. Well, tabernacle and Booth really doesn't tell us what, what. What this is about. It's really kind of. I guess if you want to use a modern word, it's the feast of tents. It's where they came together and lived as they lived in the wilderness. And for the people that are receiving this, this is just natural for them. But for the people that would come hundreds and even thousands of years later, this would be a very special time to remember back when the children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness and didn't have a home. And it was a very, very important place. I did want to give a little bit of an update on Pastor Terry as we get started with it. The doctors came in and said that the systemic infection that he was being treated for, which was in several locations, he had pneumonia. He has pneumonia, and he has a urinary tract infection that the antibiotics were not treating, that they. They're telling. They moved him to palliative care, which means that they're making sure to keep him comfortable, but he is not anymore. They're not trying to drive back the infections because they're. They've just overcome him. And so we're just in a wait and see. He's at Baptist south and be in prayer for him and his family. That being said, we are in the feast of tabernacles, and it's a very neat time. In fact, soon on Sunday morning, we'll deal with that feast and Jesus pronouncement at that feast, which is a very powerful moment in the life of Christ, and an announcement of Christ as being the Messiah. Not the Messiah that they wanted, but the Messiah that God had planned for them to have. It is a important feast for the children of Israel in that it is celebratory. It is really, really celebratory. And now all the feasts are celebratory. Every time God does something, we celebrate, even with Pastor Terry, as God prepares him for a move to his permanent home. It's a time of celebration. And so those things are oftentimes bittersweet in that the time that was spent in the wilderness is a bitter, bitter time. It's a difficult time, but there's a sweetness to it, because without the wilderness, you can't get to the promised land. And in many ways, life is that way. Life is a bittersweet thing. It's a walk through the valley of the shadow of death. And so as we walk through the valley where death is all around us, death is constant. Death is used by this world to control us. The truth is, death has no control over us. It has no sting. It is a move, quite literally, it is a move from the physical encumbrances of this life to the eternal life that Jesus has already provided us. Jesus says, present tense, those whom the Father give me a gives me meaning presently right in this moment, whatever moment that is. Those whom the Father gives me, I give them eternal life, which means I give them the life that is beyond space and time. It is not inhibited by space and time. It is the life that God lives. And he says, I give them eternal life. They don't possess it on their own. They don't attain it by their own works. I give it to them because the Father has given them to me. And so this passing through is going to be celebrated. In fact, the eternal life that we live in, Jesus Christ, is going to be celebrated. It is going to be celebrated how we lived our lives. Oftentimes, believers believe when they get to heaven, God's going to judge them, and he's going to judge them for all the bad things they've done. And that's just not biblical. That's not a correct understanding of the New Testament. God's not going to judge us for our sins. Those sins have been paid for. Those sins are not remembered against us anymore. They're, they're removed as far from us as the east is from the west, meaning they just don't, they, they're not, they're not in existence as, as, as it relates to us now. They are remembered because they're remembered against Christ. And Christ has overcome them. On the cross, he bore the sin and shame of the cross. He bore the sin of the whole world. To the cross. And so all that sin has been put. Well, it's been paid for and it's been paid for, and it is remembered against him to his glory, to his honor, the way he ought to be. And so this passing through this life is going to be remembered eternally. It's going to be. It's going to be a very important part of our eternal existence. It's going to be really who we are. And so, just like the feast of booths, and we'll spend a couple of days on this, just like the feast of booth. It is one of those things that we will celebrate. And you go, well, what are you judged on when you get to heaven? Well, you're not judged on your sin. You're judged on your faith. And what I mean by that. Well, the works that your faith produces. And by the way, faith without works, James, the brother of Christ, the apostle James, the one, the just, who is the leader of the church, one who came and tried to pull Jesus away, thinking he was crazy with his mother one time, the one who didn't believe on Christ until after his resurrection. James says faith without works is dead, which means that faith that does not produce anything is not real. It's not alive. It doesn't exist. It is separate from God. Faith without what we do really doesn't matter. And so when we get to heaven, God is going to judge us on how much. And remember, faith is to believe. It's to hope. But probably the best way to describe it is to trust. The word faith means to trust. And God says, if you live your life trusting me, there's great reward. If you live your life trusting me, you make great. Well, you change the world you live in. If you live your life trusting me, you make a difference in the world around us. And he said, James says, faith without faith without action, can't do anything. Well, that's obvious because faith does do things. It does something. Faith changes things. Faith makes us alive. And so, as they're in the wilderness and they're struggling with this, learning about God, struggling with trusting God to fight the giants, struggling with trusting God for their food, for their sustenance, for. Well, for their shelter, in fact, the feast of boosts is about, well, their tents, their shelters. In fact, for thousands of years, they will go and live in tents during this week and celebrate what God did in the wilderness. Well, that's what new ways we do now. We celebrate what God does, and we're going to celebrate eternally. What God does is we live in these tents. Well, you go. What tents? Well, first of all, our bodies are called tents or temples or tabernacles. So the faith that we act upon in these tents that we live in, these bodies that we live in, is going to be celebrated. Faith that we live in these temporary buildings that we call homes is going to be, is going to be, be rewarded. The faith that we live by in these temporary buildings we call churches is going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be celebrated, it's going to be remembered and it's going to be rewarded. And the Bible calls that the be my seek judgment. It's the judgment of the faithful. It's the judgment of those who have trusted God and walk by faith. And there are going to be some who done a lot of trust in goddesse, but they have trusted him, and that is the evidence of their salvation. Faith is the evidence of God at work in your life. It is what shows everyone that you are a believer, that you are someone who trusts God. And so when we step before God, he's going to take all the works of our lives, all the outcomes of our lives as believers, all of them. And by the way, that's going to happen in an instant. Oftentimes we think, well, when you die, do you wait on everybody? There's people in heaven waiting on you? Not really. Not really. That's not the way I see it. If I have eternal life, that means I step from the physical, temporal world into a spiritual, uninhibited world by time, which means that when you die, you step into eternity and you step into a timeless place where the spirit life is there. And so in many ways, even though we live in this temporal world, when we step out of these bodies, we will step out into eternity. And as far as eternity is concerned, even though it's not time oriented, if we all step out from this physical life at a place in time, but we step out into eternity, which is timeless. We literally step out into eternity altogether. And that is the neat thing about what it is to be like God, what it is to have God's life, to have eternal life. And so I believe that when you shut your eyes to this physical world for the very last time, when you open your eyes, we all open our eyes together in the kingdom of God. We all open them together at the same time in eternity with eternal life. And the first thing we do is the, is the feast of the lamb. We have a party, a great party, a party of a relationship, a party of relationship with God and each other. And every great party has a time where gifts are given and God brings us before his throne and rewards us for our faith. What a great day that will be. So as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we walk by faith. We enter heaven by the work of faith that Jesus did trust in his father's plan and suffering the cross. And then when we get to heaven all together, we celebrate our faith and we remember walking in these temporal bodies. What a powerful, wonderful plan God has for us to be dead in the bodies, to be present with the Lord. That's what the Bible says literally means. I die now and I'm literally in his presence. I step from the physical, temporal world that is judged by time and space to a spiritual existence in heaven that is not confined by time or space. And we all go together. We all go together.

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.