Numbers 33:50-56 Bible Study | Episode 826

December 9, 2024

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

Numbers 33:50-56 Bible Study | Episode #826

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, and we're finishing the chapter out. It is after this. This passage, this six verses or seven verses are right at the end of where God describes where the children of Israel went, how they moved through the wilderness. And it is God's instruction for them when they enter into the promised land. And so it is very specific. God tells them exactly what he wants them to do, and then he tells them the outcome if they don't do what he tells them that he wants them to do. And so it is one of those passages that, where God is very straightforward. Now we just need to go through it and explain it and talk about it. Says, now, the Lord spoke to Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan, across from Jericho. Now he's just telling them straight up, I am. I am speaking to you. And this is the entry place. This is. This is the exact location where they entered into the promised land. It is across from Jericho. It is on the eastern side of the Jordan river. It is in the plains of Moabite. We know that they cross over, that they're circumcised, and then they take Jericho in the fashion that the angel of the Lord tells them to take Jericho. But they are. They are exactly where God wants them to be. The promised land is the place of God's spiritual possession, his spiritual growth. It is the spirit filled christian life. And so God gives them instructions about how to take the spirit filled christian life. He gives them direct instructions. Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, when you have crossed the Jordan into. Into the land of Canaan, now they have to cross the Jordan. And we're going to talk about this in some detail later on. But when they cross the Jordan, it's going to be different than crossing the Red Sea. And it's not different in that they're crossing a body of water. It's not different in that it's dangerous. It is different in how they're supposed to do it. When they cross the Red Sea, the Red Sea split, and it was dry land that they could see on both sides all the way to the end. When they cross the Jordan river, it doesn't split until the priest, carrying the ark of the covenant, placed their feet in the water. It does not heap up and, and become dry land until the priest take the step of going into the water. And that was a little bit of problem because that was during flood stage. And so the river was moving very fast. And for us in our modern society, we just really don't have a, have a real good appreciation for the, the dangers of a fast moving body of water because we have bridges over those bodies of waters. In fact, we, we like to go and look at those bodies of water when they're at flood stage, especially in the area that we live in, where we have three dams and the bottom dam, the dam that is in Tallahassee, when there's been a lot of rain and they open up the floodgates, it's a wonder. It's a beautiful sight to see all that water pouring over the dam. I believe that dam is called Yates, but it may be Thurlow anyway, that though that's a beautiful sight. It's a beautiful way. It's just beautiful. See the water at flood stage rushing, but when you're trying to cross that, that's great danger. There's easily. It's easy to lose your life in fast rushing water. It's easy to lose your life in water that is. That is not calm. And, well, it's easy to lose it in calm water, but especially when it's moving fast. And so they had to step out in faith and trust God. Entering into the promised land is an exercise of faith. Entering into God's best, entering into his rest, having and living the spirit filled christian life is an exercise of your faith. It is a. It is a endeavor that requires you to trust God and to hear God's word, believe him, and do what he says. So when he says to them, speak to the children of Israel and say, when you've crossed the Jordan and entered into Canaan, he's telling them, you've got to trust what I say. You got to trust what I say to do. Then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land. Now remember, the Canaanites represent well their, their sin, the sin of the Canaanites. Has reached his fullness. It is in fact, God said he waited until their sin had, had reached its total depravity. It's the worst it could be. And they were involved in, we've just spoken about this. They were involved in human sacrifice. They were involved in all kinds of really, really terrible sexual sin, especially with children and animals. They were involved in all kinds of things that was horrific and terrible. And God says, I want them all driven out. I don't want them remaining in the land. And you need to hear this. You cannot live the spirit filled christian life and continue in worldly sin, in fleshly sin, and you can't do it without spiritual life, which means learning how and really entering the promised land is about learning how to fight spiritual warfare, to learn how to walk in the fruit of the spirit and not be dragged back by the enemy into all the things that are not the fruit of the spirit, whether it be love, not be dragged back into hatred. Learning to love your neighbor as yourself, learning to love beyond your neighbor's capacity to love you. Joy, having God, having the joy of the Lord, not happiness, but the joy of the Lord and not living in anxiousness and not living in grief and sorrow. These things are these, all that is the fruit of the spirit and all that's not the fruit of the spirit. You have to learn how to walk in the fruit of the spirit. And that requires a great, great walk of faith. That's what it requires. And so you can't have you, you can't, you can't allow those things to remain in your life. Now it's a, it's a long journey. It's a hard walk to walk these things out. That's why it's called the promised land. That's why it's called, that's why you have to battle the giants. And the giants are, are the sins of your life, the struggles of your life. You don't, they're not wiped out before you for you. You have to battle them yourself. And notice, notice God's not destroying the egyptian army here. He says, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you have to, you have to go to battle. You have to go to war with your flesh. You got to go to war with the world and worldliness that is a part of your life. It's a, it's a journey. This, this taking the promised land is not instantaneous. It's a continual battle. He says, destroy all their engraved stones, destroy all their molded images. These are all the idols of the world. These are all the symbols of worldly, the worldly life. Destroy those things, he says, and demolish their high places. These are the places where they would have the astral poles, where they would have the places of worship and the places to make sacrifices. This is where they would have sacrificed the humans, especially newborn babies on the altar. He says, you need to destroy these things, remove these things from your life. You shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land who dwell in it, meaning you gotta get rid of them. You gotta drive those, those giants out of the land. You gotta get rid of them. Don't allow them to live near you, for I've given the land for you to possess. He's saying, I'm. I'm giving this for your possession. This is. This is your spirit filled christian life. This is, this is for your benefit, he says, and you shall divide the land by lot as an inheritance among your families. To the larger, you shall give a larger inheritance, and to the smaller, you shall give a smaller inheritance. And there, there, everyone's inheritance shall be whatever falls to him by lot. Notice God's given everybody an inheritance in the land. There's not. There's not going to be anybody that's left out. And if it's a large family, there's going to be enough for the large family. It's a small family. Well, there's not going to be as much, but there's going to be just as much as anybody who is in a large family. This is going to be when you get the promised land, you get the same promised land as everybody else, and you need to hear that now. Is it going to be a unique promised land? Yeah, because the land is unique. One of the things I learned about in the law is it's hard to divide land among, among children. Why? Because no piece of land is exactly the same. And so entering into the promised land is going to be very difficult because it's going to be very unique to you. You, you're going to have your own possession. It's going to be. It's going to be different than everybody else's possession, even though it's going to be the same possession. You go, how is it, how can it be different and the same? What's going to be different in that your unique way of honoring God by your faith and driving out the giants in the land is going to be different than everybody else. You have your own struggles, you have your own sin, you have your own worries, you have your own doubts, you have all the things that you bring to the table, that God is going to teach you how to walk in. But, and so your inheritance is going to be uniquely yours, the same as everybody else, meaning it's the inheritance from God, it's the spirit filled christian life, but very unique to you. And so your family is going to be different than everybody else's family, and your inheritance is going to be in a different location, and yet it's going to be exactly the same in the sense that you're going to have God's very, very best, he says. But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of land from before you, then it shall be to that those whom you let remain shall be irritants in your eyes and thorns in your sides. What he's saying is, is that you're not going to live it out the way it was meant to be lived out. You're going to, you're going to continue to have these irritations, you're going to continue have these pains and struggles because you haven't driven those things out, you haven't removed them from your life, you haven't gotten them out of God's promises for you. And sadly, a lot of christians never, ever really actually enter into the promised land. They never actually go in and take God's possession. They struggle to even consider entering in and fighting these battles. And those who do, many of them leave aspects of the world in their life. They're very worldly oriented. They leave aspects of the sin of the past. They don't confront the struggles, the spiritual struggles that are important. They don't learn to walk by faith and not by sight. They don't learn to walk. They don't learn what it is to know the joy of the Lord or the peace of God, because they continue to feed their anxiousness and their worry and their doubt. They constantly fear the world rather than fearing God. And those struggles are real. But that's the whole point of entering into the promised land so that you can experience God's rest. That's what the promised land is called, God's best. That's what the promised land is called, the fullness of the Holy Spirit. That's what the promised land is called, the spirit filled christian life. That's what the promised land is called. They don't experience those things because. Because they fail to drive out the inhabitants of the land. They fail to take their promises and listen. What God makes you in his kingdom is he makes you his child, he makes you born again, he gives you the fullness of being a part of his family. But in order to experience it in its fullest, you have to honor God by trusting him and walking in it. And when we fail to do that, we oftentimes miss out on, miss out on God's best. We really do. And that's what God is saying to them. He says, and they shall harass you in the land where you dwell. And if you think about it, some of the things that you, those of you who are battling to take the promised land, those things from the past, they do harass you. They do harass you. And so the great movement forward for you is to learn how to walk with God and trust him past those things, past those fears and doubts and worries. You know, you can do that. You should do that. I pray that you will do that. Says in verse 46, moreover. Moreover, it shall be that I will do to you as I thought to do to them. Meaning oftentimes when you remain in the promised land without removing those things, you just slowly sink back into being those things. And those things rule over you. And God says, I'm going to have to drive you out like I drove them out. And ultimately that ends up what happens to the children of Israel. They're taken into captivity. Why? Because they didn't take captive God's promises. They didn't grab hold of the promises that God had for them. Well, I pray that that won't be the case for you and expect it won't. As we study through God's word, God is revealing things to you, showing things. You're growing, you're becoming and you are taking the promised land. You're taking the land that God has for you, your inheritance, God's best, God's rest, the spirit filled christian life. I pray that you'll have it, and you'll have it in its fullness 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.