Numbers 33:1-4 Bible Study | Episode 824

December 5, 2024

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

Numbers 33:1-4   Bible Study | Episode #824

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 33. It is a. Well, it's a fun chapter. It's an interesting chapter in that it carries us through the journey from Egypt to Canaan. It is, it is. It goes through a lot of locations and things like that, but I want to break it down and go through it a little step by step. I want to spend a few Bible studies going through this passage, and the reason I want to do that is because, uh, well, well, I guess the best way for me to do it is just to do it, and then you'll figure out why. Because, uh, it is, it is one of those things where, uh, it's important to review what God has done. Uh, and especially this story. And I've said this many times as we've been going through this Bible study, uh, the, the preeminent, overarching story of the Old Testament is God delivering his children out of Egypt. It is the story that sets the course of history. It is the story that gives us all the foreshadowings of God's plan through Jesus Christ in the New Testament. It is the preeminent story of the Old Testament, revelation of God to his people. And studying this story and going through this story and reviewing this story in your mind helps you understand how God relates to you in the New Testament. My father said many, many times, you cannot understand the New Testament until you know the Old Testament. And you can understand things about the New Testament, but you can't understand the New testament in its full context until you understand the Old Testament. And if I'm going to understand the Old Testament, I must understand the story of God delivering his people out of Egypt, because Egypt is a picture of the world. God delivering his people out of Egypt is a picture of God delivering us from the world and from the bondage or the slavery of sin through the blood of the lamb and into his promised land. That is God's plan in the Old Testament, literally, for his children. And it is his eternal spiritual plan for his children in the New Testament, not just in the physical sense, but in the spiritual sense. And so by going through the story, which, by the way, God does it himself in the Bible, he, you know, he tells us the story over several books. He, you know, tells us the story step by step, and we get to numbers 33, and God says, all right, let's go through the story again. Why? Because the story is the story of God's work, and redemption is this redemptive work toward us. You know, there's even old him. I heard an old, old story. Why? Well, because a savior came from glory. This is a redemption story that foreshadows that savior story that came from glory. And so there's a lot of rhyming going on there. I didn't intentionally do that, but I was a poet and didn't know it, I guess. And so the story of Jesus is foreshadowed here, and we really kind of see it at the very start. It says, these are the journeys of the children of Israel. And by the way, you need to tell, you need to tell your story to yourself. Sometimes your story, you go, well, why my story? Well, because your story is a story of redemption. It is, no matter who you are, if you have been redeemed by Jesus Christ, your story is a story of redemption. And your story is going to be very similar in, in many ways to the story of the children of Israel out of Egypt. It's going to be. It's going to be, well, directly correlated with the story of Jesus redeeming his people through the cross and out. Out of the tomb. And so your redemption story is a story that needs to be told to yourself for sure, so that you can remember what God has done specifically for you. And so if God's going to do it with the children of Israel, then he's going to retell it, and it's going to be told again in scripture. He's going to retell it and retell it. Shouldn't he do that also with, with his redemption story with us? The answer is yes, he should. We should always retell the story of God's plan of redemption for our lives. We could should tell it over and over and over again. And so, uh, these are the journeys of the children of Israel who went up out of the land of Egypt by the armies, under the hand of Moses and Aaron uh, what now? Notice they. They leave Egypt. Not as someone is escaping. They leave Egypt victorious. They're, uh. They're victorious over sin and death. They're victorious over the world. Um, notice he doesn't present them as escaping Egypt. He is presenting them as victorious over Egypt. They did not escape Egypt. God conquered Egypt through the plagues and through his judgment of their gods and of the world, he's victorious over. So you went out of the land of EgyPT. These are the journeys. Children of Israel, who went out of the land of Egypt by their armies under the hand of Moses and Aaron. Now, moses wrote down the starting point of TheIr JOuRnEY at the command of the Lord. Notice God told them to write these things down. Remember these things, know these things. So moses is. He's writing these things down. And by the way, what he wrote down is the, uh. Is the outline of genesis, exodus, leviticus, numbers, AnD deuteronomY. The story of leaving Egypt starts with Exodus, but he writes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers, and deuteronomy. ANd we're 80% through those books as we go on our journey through scripture. We started in the book of psalms, and now we're at numbers. By the time we get through deuteronomy, we will be 30% of our way through the Bible. We'll be 30% of our way through scripture. It's likely to be a 15 to 20 year journey, but we're already five years in. And so as we're studying this, Moses was told to write these things down, and he did. And then ultimately, that's the pretext for the pentateuch, the five books of the Old Testament that start the Old Testament, the story of God and his redemption of his people. And so these are the journeys according to the starting points. They departed from Ramses in the first month. He tells us who the. Who pharaoh was. Ramses. Now, there were a few ramses, so they, you know, there's discussions as to which Ramses it was, but. But that's not relevant to God. Ramses is a picture of Satan. And he. They departed from Ramses in the first month, meaning they're out from under Satan's control on the 15th day of the first month. By the way, he's telling them the dates for Passover. By the way, God's calling his shots with this. We're going to talk about that in detail tomorrow. But when I say God's calling his shots, God's telling you in detail where. What happened, when it happened, how it happened. So, historically, you can go back in, you can go back archaeologically, we can go back historically and figure out what's going on and when it happened. And by the way, this is an historical event that God tells them where they went. All the places exist. He tells them who pharaoh was. This is a pharaoh. He tells them how it happened to. And we do know that there was a great collapse of the egyptian society after, after some major event. Now, a lot of historians won't say after Israel left Egypt, but it's after Israel left Egypt that Egypt had a societal collapse and really had an empire collapse. It says, the children of Israel went out with boldness in the sight of all the Egyptians, meaning they didn't sneak out in the middle of the night. They left early in the morning. Boldly, they, they pillaged the Egyptians. The Egyptians gave them their gold and their silver and their clothes and said, will you please leave? Get away from us. Your God has totally defeated us. We want you gone. We want you out of here. They became a stench in the nostrils of the Egyptians. Why? Because not only because of the plagues, but at the end, because. Because Pharaoh had hardened his heart the last five times. They had lost the firstborn of all their, all their families and all their livestock. And so they're going out, the children of Israel are going out under the stench of the death of the Egyptians. Why? Because God triumphed over sin and death. And that's the picture of Jesus. It's just a straight picture of Jesus. God is triumphant over sin and death. He is victorious over those things. And how is he victorious through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Not the death, not the burial, but the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He's victorious over those things. And so when you're, when, when God takes us through this story from Genesis all the way to deuteronomy, he stops at certain points in time to says, let's review the story. Why? Because it is his story of redemption. He is overcoming sin and death. They go out in their armies, victorious in boldness, they overcome the Egyptians. For the Egyptians were burying all their firstborn, whom the Lord had killed among them. Also on their gods, the Lord had executed judgment. God's saying right here, I I have overcome them. I have defeated. I am victorious over them. Now a lot of people say, well, why does it got to be that way? Well, that's the way it is in human history. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death. We sin. Through one man, sin entered the world, and through him, death is what Hebrews tells us. God's desire is not for eternal death. God's desire is not for there to be separation and loss of life. In Jesus was life, and that life was the light of men. That's what John one tells us. But man chose not God. Man chose his own will over God's will. And when we choose that, we choose death. God did not just leave us in that. God gave us a way out. God made us victorious out of that. How did he do that? Well, he overcame the world. He overcame Satan. He put to death, the Bible says, he who had the power of death, and he arose from the grave, death himself. He experienced death himself, victorious over sin and death. And so God originally gives us a picture of that, a foreshadowing of that in this great, triumphant Story for the children of Israel. He gives us that. And then he says, I am the one who has conquered death and sin. And he's presented that way. He's presented that way in the book of the revelation as he begins his plan to redeem the whole earth, to set all of creation back in order. He's the lamb that was slain and now is alive again. He is the victorious one. So we can go all the way from Genesis, all the way to the book of the revelation. The story keeps getting told over and over and over again. God's plan of victory over death and then his gift of eternal life and his gift of faith to us, that we might trust him, that we might glorify him, that we might walk with him. And the world is passing away. But the plan of God and the story of God is never passing away. It's not going away. And so they march out in their armies. They go boldly out of Egypt, having pillaged the world, and the Egyptians are burying their firstborn. Why? Because if you remain in this world of sin and death, it will. It will ultimately destroy you. Who wants to stay in that? Who wants to live by that? Nobody. So I pray that as you think about this on this Tuesday morning, that you will, you will consider the great work of God, which is told over and over and over again in his word, in different stories, in different pictures, in different ways. He continually relates to us the story of his redemption, and that redemption is ultimately in Jesus Christ. 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 n