Numbers 34:1-15 Bible Study | Episode 827

December 10, 2024

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

Numbers 34:1-15 Bible Study | Episode #827

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 34, and it is the boundaries of Canaan. This is a. This is an interesting study for me because I love geography. If you're not a geography aficionado, if you're not somebody that loves geography, it might be a little bit boring, especially because there's a strong likelihood that you really don't know what the boundaries of is modern day Israel are. And so you don't realize that Israel is just a tiny little slither, uh, in, uh, sliver in, uh, the Middle east. It is. It is just a small little area, uh, no more than. No more than a hundred miles across, uh, at. At the top and. And really a little bit. A little bit. Maybe. Maybe slightly more at the bottom, but. But very, very small. A couple of hundred miles long, uh, north to south, but. But not wide at all. Not wide at all. And. And the truth is, is that is not the land that was promised to Abraham in the sense of it is way less than the land that was promised to Abraham. And it is even less than the land that it was promised to Israel here in chapter 34. It is. It is a much smaller area. However, there is a little bit more land in the south that Israel controls today, but a lot less land than in the north where God gave Israel control. Although interestingly enough, Israel in times past, especially during the last lebanese conflict or the last conflict with the country called Lebanon, that is north of Israel, which is really a small country that used to be a haven, used to be a. A wonderful place where Jews, Muslims, and Christians all live together in harmony. But once. Once the terrorist organizations, the islamic organizations that run those areas, came in, they started, uh, driving out the Christians and the Jews. And then. And then a war. War broke out, and, uh, the Christians fought them, uh, pretty tooth and nail, until, uh, finally they, uh, they capitulated. And then. And then Israel, uh, came in and created a buffer zone. And so, um, that area there is a. A river that runs, uh, near what used to be ancient tyre inside. And they're actually still there. The river that runs kind of in between those two is a buffer zone. And you'll notice that Israel is beginning to, even today, beginning to move into that buffer zone and take over that area to keep, well, keep Hezbollah from lobbing rockets into Israel and to keep them from, especially lobbing rockets at their capital. And so Tel Aviv, which is. Which is not. Which is in the northern part of Israel, Jerusalem's in the southeastern part of Israel. It is not in the deep south, but it is pretty far south in Israel. And then. And then what they call the west bank is the area that is next to the Jordan river on the east. And then you've got Gaza, which is. Which is a even smaller slither of land. And it is a sliver of land. It is just to the south and west of Israel at the bottom near the egyptian border. And so these areas, these areas, Israel also took an area called the Golan Heights. And the Golan Heights is a huge plain that is a plateau up above what is modern day Israel, north of the Sea of Galilee. And we've been talking about the Sea of Galilee. Jesus walked on water there. It is a plateau that is north of Israel there. And they took that from the Syrians. In all actuality, they took that from the Syrians, based off an egyptian lie. When Israel took that, during the six day war, the egyptian Egyptians attacked Israel, and they wanted the Jordanians and the Syrians to attack them also. And Israel wiped out the army, or, I mean, the air force of the Egyptians in like, one day, I mean, really, in like a few hours, they wiped out the egyptian air force. But the Egyptians told the Syrians and the Jordanians to attack because they had planes over over Jerusalem, meaning they had air cover, they had air superiority over Jerusalem, and so that they ought to attack. And the Jordanians did attack, and they lost what we call the west bank, which would be the western side of the Jordan river. They lost from Jerusalem all the way to the river. And the Syrians attacked, and they lost what is called the Golan Heights, which is a. Which is a very strategic and important strategic area up in the north. And interestingly, when they lost that, they, Israel went back to its original boundaries that are found in chapter 34. It says that the Lord spoke to Moses saying, command the children of Israel and say to them, when you come into the land of canaanite. This is the land that shall fall to you as an inheritance, the land of CANaan to its boundaries. Your southern border shall be the wilderness of Zin along the border of Edom. Edom. Then your southern border shall extend eastward to the end of the SaLt SeA. So basically, it was the land. It was the territory of Edom. And it is in the south. It's in the south near what is the Sinai peninsula. It's also near. There's a port that is at the very end, is really at the end tip of a. Of a small little inlet that goes out to the Indian Ocean. That port is a little bit south of this area. So Israel actually controls an area that is. That is a little bit bigger than what is described here. And it goes all the way, basically, not totally, but basically, to the Egyptian border along the Mediterranean Sea. And their border now starts at that port and goes up to the tip of the egyptian territory on the MediterrAnean Sea along the canal there. That was built by the British and taken over by the Egyptians back in the 1950s and sixties. There was actually a big war that was fought over that, the Suez canal. That that canal is the border between Israel and Egypt even today. Or it's kind of the border. There's supposed to be a no man's land territory there, but nobody ever lives by that anyway. This border is the only border where Israel has more territory today than God gave them when they entered into the promised land. As for the western border, and this is the easiest border in Israel, it's the. This, the great sea is the. It's the Mediterranean Sea. This shall be your western border. So Israel's western border is the Mediterranean Sea. They're supposed to reach all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. The only area that they have not controlled historic, historically is the Gaza Strip. But Israel is slowly taking control of the Gaza Strip. And there's every effort to cause a ceasefire so that they don't have total control of that area. But Israel's not going to allow Hezbollah and the terrorist group that attacked them back around easter of last year, back around Passover last year, they're not going to allow that to happen again. And so they are completely annexing, taking away the Gaza Strip, which, by the way, they ought to. And it says, and this shall be your northern border. From the great sea you shall mark out a border line to mount Hor. From mount hor you shall mark out your border. This is verse seven to the entrance of Hamath. Then the direction of the border shall be towards Zidad, and the border shall proceed to Zipron. And it shall end at has has our enon. This shall be your northern border, by the way. These places, several, many of these places, we know where they're at. We know we have archaeological evidence to indicate where they are. And this is an area that is about halfway up into what is considered modern day Lebanon. And it's a little bit north of the river that Israel has used as a buffer zone between them and the Lebanese, uh, the lebanese militias that have run Lebanon for the last. Well, I've run Lebanon really for most of my life, for the last 30 or 40 years. And so, uh, this. This area is a really, really neat area. It's, uh, it's, it's a buffer zone. And Israel is not going to allow, uh, the, the Lebanese to control that area. And they're slowly to. They're slowly and surely I beginning to take that back. And I think there'll be a. A minor war just like the one in Gaza today. There'll be a minor war in which Israel will reassert its control of that territory, even though it gave it up trying to seek peace about ten years, 1015 years ago, maybe 20. And the Lebanese don't want peace. That is the key to this. Israel offer, always offers land for peace. And the Lebanese will take nothing. The Muslims will take none. They want Israel destroyed and all the Jews killed. And so there are two major jewish populations in the world. Israel has about seven and a half to 8 million Jews in its country. And the other great population of Jews is in the United states, where the United States has about 8 million Jews. So in all actuality, you know, the, the, the United States probably has a few more jewish people than the actual state of Israel. And other than those, uh, you know, 15, 16 million Jews, there's about a half million Jews that live elsewhere in the world. And so, uh, Israel and the United States are the two major places where jewish people have felt safe to live, uh, since World War two. And that's why they have come here over the last 200 years and have gone to Israel in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 43. And so those prophecies and God's word is being fulfilled. It says, you shall mark your eastern border from Hazar Inan to Jephthahna. The border shall be going go down the east side of ain, and the border shall go down to reach the eastern side of the sea of Chenareth. The border shall go down along the Jordan, and it shall end at the salt sea, this shall be your land, which is, it surrounds with its surrounding boundaries. Basically it's a big cutout of the plain that the golan heights, uh, uh, feeds into. It is. And then it goes down to the, this sea and you go, why does this sea have so many names? It's called, it's called the, the Sea of Galilee, the sea of generic, uh, the, it's called a lake some places. Why is it called so many, so many names? Well, I don't know why. But the great salt sea, we do know what that is. That is the dead Sea to the south. And we know the Jordan river because it's always called the Jordan river. So we know this border and we know that Israel now occupies a great deal of the territory to the north, some of it disputed territory, but great deal of the territory to the north which God gave Israel back 3500 years ago. We have the boundaries of Israel that God gave them 3500 years ago and that they possessed 3500 years ago. It says then Moses commanded the children of Israel, verse 13, saying, this is the land which you shall inherit by lot which the Lord has commanded to give to the nine tribes and to the, and to the half tribe. Remember, uh, two and a half of the tribes are going to be on the other side of the Jordan river. He says, for the tribe of the children of Reuben, according to the house of their fathers and the tribe, tribe of the children of Gaddaf according to the house of their father have received their inheritance. And the half tribe of Manasseh has received its inheritance. These two tribes and the half tribes have received their inheritance. On the side of the Jordan, across from Jericho, eastward toward the sunrise. So the territory that we see that is spelled out in chapter 34 of the book of numbers is in almost completion is the territory that is controlled by Israel in the days we live in today in 2024. That's amazing. There is hardly a nation in the world that controls the area that they controlled 3500 years ago. And there are no nations that lost it for 2000 years and now control it again. They're not any in the world. The nations that I can say to you exist today, that existed back then in some form or fashion are Egypt, Persia or modern day. What it's called is Iran, parts of China, and I guess you could say India. Although India has never been a, a consolidated nation until, until the last hundred, 150 years. That's it. That's all there is. None of those nations ceased to exist and then came back into existence 2000 years later. Not a single one of them. It's pretty amazing what God can do. It's pretty amazing that I can look at something that was written 3500 years ago and apply it directly to the times that I live in right now. In a geographical sense. Amazing. We serve an awesome job.

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.