Numbers 30:1-2 Bible Study | Episode 817

November 26, 2024

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

Numbers 30:1-2  Bible Study | Episode #817

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 30, made with all the revel numbers, chapter 30. And we are in the first couple of verses, and the old chapter deals with vows. And you go, well, what are you talking about, vows? Most of the time, when you use the word vow, in our modern culture, people think about wedding vows, and what they really are are, they're unsolicited or unprompted promises that are made. Really, the hebrew word here means to sow or to scatter. It means to something of value into the. Into the ground so that it can grow. And it is a. It is understanding that a lot of young christians, a lot of young believers think that that's really how you deal with God, is to make unsolicited vows, to go to God and say, if you will do this, I promise to do that if. And really, oftentimes, what you're doing with God is you're asking God to do something, and you do something, and you all make a contract to compact with each other about the situation or whatever is being struggled with. And so, in many ways, it is not. Well, it's not the way God really would like to deal with us. He would not like for us to make unsolicited vows to him, make unsolicited vows to our relationship with him, because God wants to lead us into things, and then when he reveals us something, that we trust him with it, and then we walk in it. Now, that. That is different than a vow. A vow is, I say, I'll do this, Lord, if you do that, or I'll do this, Lord, I make this vow to you because I want. I want this result to take place. And really, what you're doing is you're trying to manipulate or control God into doing what you want done by you doing something right. And it just really is a wrong understanding of how God wants to relate to us. It's not a powerful understanding of it. Now, when we make unsolicited vows, like marriage vows, those would be good things. We want two people to come to each other and promise to love each other without there being any preconditions to it. There are great situations where vows are important, where vows have great value for us because we still stand up and say, we want to do this for this group of people, or, we want to do this for this organization, or I promise to give, you know, 20 hours a week to accomplish this task or bring about this result in my community. Now, those types of vows are, I mean, they're really great vows. They're an overflow of our heart's desire toward good or big things. Some vows that we make are not, you know, I promise I'll never do this. You know, and, and before you do it, you're back doing it again. I'll never, I'll never, ever trust this or I'll never, ever help this or that. And those vows are often made emotionally, and they're made out of anger and they're. And they're. And they're not godly in any way. And any vow that you make that's not from God, that's nothing. That's not, that leads you. That's not been led, you've not been led to by God. Those vows are of no value. They have no kingdom value, and usually they're of no value to you or anybody who's affected by them. And so when we're talking about vows, we're talking about unsolicited promises made to God. And like I said, those things are nothing. Well, they're just not. They're not the way God. God is wanting to lead us through life. He doesn't want us to make unsolicited promises. He wants us to make. He wants us to make promises. He wants us to make agreements with him. He wants us to come to, you know, it's even deeper than just making an agreement. It's not a contract in that sense. Sure, we're in covenant relationships, which is a spiritual, eternal contract, but. But it's not, it's not so cold as an agreement to do something so that God will do something for you. We're in a relationship, and in that relationship, God wants us to. God wants us to hear his voice and allow and walk through life with us. So it's not, I promise to go and do this, Lord, if you'll go and do that, it's really, Lord, I'm going to walk with you today and you show me the way, and I want to live it out and walk it out in my own life. And so when Moses speaks about this, he's going to, he's going to be, he's going to be pretty hardcore about it, and rightly so, because if you're going to do this, you need to stay true to your word. I mean, if we're going to make a vow to God, you know, we, we obviously want to, want to not lie or not. Well, I couldn't say mislead goddess, because you can't mislead God. He knows whether you're going to keep your vow or not. And see, that's really kind of the foolishness of it. It's not wise or even smart to promise what you can't keep and what God knows you can't keep. It's really destructive to the relationship and it's destructive to you. Moses spoke to the heads of the tribes of the people of Israel, saying, this is what the Lord has commanded. Meaning I'm going to tell you this. This is what God has said. If a man vows a vow to the Lord, meaning he stands up out there in public and says, I promise to do this for God, he vows a vow to the Lord and swears an oath to bind himself by the pledge, meaning he, he swears he's going to do it. If a man vows to do that or swears an oath to bind himself to a pledge, he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth. Meaning if you stand up in front of everybody and you vow to do certain thing, you're going to be held to it by God and by God's people. That's why he's placing this in numbers. Numbers, chapter 30. He's gonna, he's, he's, he's gonna say, if you're gonna stand up in front of everybody and make these vows, make these high promises to God and make them in front of everyone, you're gonna be held to them. You're gonna be held to them by God, and you're gonna be held to them by the congregation, by the people who have heard you make the vow. Now, in today's society, that really isn't something that happens very much, is it? The truth is people stand up and make vows all the time that they don't carry through on. And oftentimes these vows are made for their own, you know, to lift themselves up in the eyes of others made for their own edification, made for their own promotion. I would say to you that the best way to live through life is to not live through life making vows to God is to live through life trusting God because vows are so cold and they're so nebulous. The only vows I can think of that I think are of really, really great importance. Importance are the marriage vows. Other than that, I would tend to shy away from vows and place my emphasis on the relationship. God desires for us to know him, not to promise things that we can, might or might not complete, but promise to trust him and to walk with him. And if we, if we trust and walk with him, well then, then, you know, we've, we've probably, we've probably put ourselves in a position not only to honor him with our lives, but we put ourselves in a position to get things done. Because when we're walking with God and we're trusting what he says, he's usually making sure we're doing it the right way. And you know, doing it the right way is a powerful thing. It's a life changing thing, it's a world changing. It helps those around us. So I pray that you'll kind of shy away from this. It's in scripture because Moses wanted to make sure that there wasn't a culture of people and God too, standing up and making these promises and not living up to them. He's basically saying, if you make this promise we're going to make sure you live up to it. Let's just make our promise this each and every day. We're going to do our very very best to trust in the Lord. We're going to try to hear his voice, we're going to try his, hear his word. We're going to spend time searching after him and his will and then when we feel like we found it we're gonna walk in it as hard and as great as we can and in the end we're gonna know that God's gonna bring about the best and the greatest results from that. And that's the stint of our vow. Trust God to love God and to love each other.

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.