Numbers 34:16-29 Bible Study | Episode 828

December 11, 2024

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

Numbers 34:16-29 Bible Study | Episode #828

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. We're finishing the chapter out, and then we'll only have two more chapters left before we move to Deuteronomy and the last book of the Pentateuch, the last book of the. Of the writings of Moses, and begin our process of moving through Joshua and entering the promised land, taking the promised land, which is going to be a lot of fun. Deuteronomy is a great book. It's going to give us a lot of insights. I'm looking forward to our. Through the Old Testament as we journey through the New Testament on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. It is. It is. It's been a lot of fun. And, you know, life really is a journey. It is in every possible way, including our relationship with God. It is a journey. We walk through our relationship with God in everything that we do, everything that we do each and every day. And so, as we study through God's word, and as we study through. As we study and eat the bread of life each and every day and take that in, we learn, we grow, and we become. Sometimes we experience and go through things that we never imagined we would. Sometimes we go through things we never wanted to. And sometimes, a lot of times, God leads us through things that are amazing and wonderful and teaches us how to love deeper and walk closer to him and to others. And so, as I'm thinking about this and we're getting to the end of this book, we get to another list, another list of names. And these are the people that God said, verse 16. And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, these are the names of the men who shall divide the land among you as an inheritance. And what does he do? Well, he goes through some names. Now, of all the names that are on here, there's three of them that you would recognize. As we've studied Eleazar, who is the priest, and Joshua, the son of Nun, who is one of the ones who went into the promised land and scouted it out. He also was the one who went up on the mountain with Moses as kind of a guard for him. And then Caleb, the son of Jephuna. Caleb was the older Mandev who, along with Joshua, encouraged the people to enter the promised land, encouraged the people to do what God had asked them to do. And so when you're studying through these, these books and you get to these lists, the lists are important because, well, I mean, who of us wouldn't want our name to be written in the Bible? It is a. It's an exciting thing. You've got Simeon and you've got. You've got Benjamin. I mean, Shamu from Simeon. You've got Eladad from Benjamin. You've got Buki from Dan. You've got. You've got. From the tribe of Manasseh Hanil. You've got. From the tribe of Ephraim Kimul. You've got. From Zebulun elephant. Notice it's always a problem for me. It's always a difficult path for me to. To call out these names from Issachar Paltiel and then from Asher Ahihud and from Naftali Pada hill. Not easy to say. None of them are easy to say, but they're all in here. They're the people that God wanted to break up and decide who and what the inheritance of the land, how to do it evenly, really. That's what they were doing. They were dividing up the land evenly. Now, I want you to notice a few things because I think they're very, very important about this. First of all, I want you to notice that there's not a singular person making all the decisions. And, and, and as far as leadership is concerned, you know, I spent my life in not an intentional study, but in many ways a forced study on leadership. Uh, and you go, what are you talking about, pastor? Well, the truth is, is that, uh, in my growing up years, uh, I was in many ways, you know, thrust into positions of leadership that I really didn't, uh, in my. In my personality, in my desires, I am very introverted. Uh, not super introverted, but I don't. I would prefer to be long. Uh, a lot. I really desire that. Sometimes I even. I tell folks all the time, if you see me riding around at lunchtime, sometimes it's just to get away from people. And it's not cause I don't love people. It's just my personality just doesn't love to be around people all the time. I love to be alone. I love to be in solitude. And so when I was growing up, I didn't want to be in charge of anything. And it just seemed like I was athletically, I was not the boisterous leader, but I always seemed to be the captain of this or on that team. And that really, in many ways, irked me. I did not want to do that. And then, and then as I was growing up, I took a ROTC scholarship as a part of my, as a part of the money that I used to pay for college. That was a experience in leadership, because obviously they're teaching you how to be an officer in the military, and I was an officer in the military as a, as a reservist, didn't do a super lot. Of all the people who've ever served in the military, my service was definitely not anything, not 1oz of anything. That was super exciting, although I did get to learn about leadership, and I would say the things that happened in my life as far as that's concerned. And then, since then, I've owned businesses. I've been part of a lot of organizations where I, they desired for me to be the leader. And, and especially in, in ministry. I have, I have, well, for almost 30 years now, I've been doing leadership and ministry. And so in many ways, I was forced to know what it was about, forced to understand it, forced to look at it and to know what's going on and to know why things are happening and, and how leadership affects those things. And one of the things that I have for sure found out and figured out as far as leading God's people. And by the way, the, the pastoral leadership position is one of the most difficult positions there is in leadership in the world. And you go, what? That don't seem like it is. Well, it, well, it really is. Military leadership, it's, it's difficult to lead in a setting that is so likely for people to lose their life. You carry a whole lot of responsibility, but the actual act of leading is not very hard because the military teaches people to follow their leadership. And so in the military, you know, you follow the orders of your superior or there are great and dire consequences to it. So in the purest form of leadership, it is a little bit easy in the nuanced and powerful forms of leadership which change things. Obviously, being a military leader is a difficult task, but leading a business, I mean, you can lose a lot of money if you fail to be a proper leader in any kind of business organization. And then as you get into organizations that are volunteer oriented and the church, even though we're not volunteers, because we are the kingdom of God people, and their willingness to be a part of a local congregation is at its core. You have to choose to, it's a volunteer position. You have to choose to want to serve God and want to be actively a part of it. Now, the cool thing is you got the Holy Spirit that's pushing people to be apart and to do and to act and to do the things that God desires and to be a part of what God is doing in a local setting. But that leadership is difficult. It's not easy. And to do it well, you really have to understand leadership. You have to understand how to lead people. And one of the things that I have learned about leadership, that's very difficult, very hard, because I am such a, in many ways, a loner personally. One of the things that is important is the dissemination of leadership. The more people who are involved in leading, the, the more dynamic and the more powerful the organization is. By the way, our military is probably one of the best militaries in the world at doing that. We, we, we. When we have a military plan, that plan is passed down all the way to the privates. And so if, if the. If the platoon leader and all the sergeants are dead, a private is going to know what the mission is and they can carry out the mission. And that's what made even, even the dropping of soldiers into Normandy at D Day such a powerful thing for the United States military to do. Because we were one of the few militaries back then that allowed privates to make decisions about the mission that they had to perform. A lot of places and a lot of leadership in military organizations around the world do not push down responsibilities of getting the mission done beyond the officers and sometimes beyond the generals and colonels. And so dissemination of leadership can make an organization very powerful and dynamic. By the way, let's just go for our. As we're thinking about this and studying through it and realizing that God told them to ask these men to divide up the land, he didn't just say, okay, Joshua, and you, Eliezer, and maybe Caleb can join in. He didn't say, let's. Let's take these guys and let's divide up the land and go with these three. He divide. He chose a large organization to begin to divide up the land, to do it rightly. And so, as you think about that, is God's leadership, is it is it disseminated among more than one? And the answer is yes. Yeah. In fact, God himself exists. His very existence is communal relationship. Y'all know that. If you think about it, God exists in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Well, that means he could exist in a communal relationship. God's very nature is relational. God's very nature is, is. And now is. There is our hierarchy. Sure there is. The father ultimately makes a decision. And you see that in what he created when God made the family, there has to be one that makes ultimate decisions. Now, those decisions in the family should be, should take into consideration all the understandings, desires, the best of everybody involved. And oftentimes those decisions will be decisions that are made in concert with each other. But if somebody's got to make a decision because it's right now, and the decision has got to be made right at this moment, there's only one that makes a decision. That's the biblical model. The father, ultimately, his will has to be done. And so it is with the heavenly father. That is a leadership. That's, that's a form of leadership. It's communal. It is, it is, uh, it's, uh, where there, there's a consensus that you figure out what is God's will. And by the way, the New Testament, uh, teaches us this, and the Old Testament's teaching us this. Uh, the, the dissemination of leadership, meaning, meaning that the leadership shouldn't be all in one person or a small group of people, is a biblical concept of. You see that throughout scripture. You see it all the time. When Moses was having to handle all the, all the issues of the people, his, his father in law came along and said, this ain't good for you, Moses. You need to appoint people to be over these people. Notice a dissemination of leadership when, when all the power is held in one place and in one person, or in one place in one small group of people, things don't work out there. There has been philosophers trying to figure out how is the best way to lead, to lead a people, to lead a nation. And one of the ways I studied when I was in college was the Greeks felt like there ought to be an oligarchy, a group of the very smartest and best, and they make the decisions for everyone, and a large group that decides everything. But we found out that that doesn't work either. Oftentimes that tends to corrupt people, and oftentimes when you have just a small group of people making power, making powerful decisions, all the power eventually rests in one person, and that's not good. In fact, our nation's not, not set up that way. In the federal government, there's supposed to be three, three reservoirs of power. The executive, the judicial and the legislative branch. Those are residues of power, those places. And they're supposed to be co equal branches. Notice, even our founding fathers understood biblical principles. In fact, most of what they did was based off biblical principles. And they understood that power needed to be diffused. And by the way, they did it in a very biblical fashion. They, they did, they diffused power between three groups. And you, that's a direct correlation with the Trinity and, and God's, God's the Godhead. And then, you know, even in, even in the Old Testament, power was in the king and the priest and in the prophets. And so we, we see that throughout scripture. We see, we see as God, as God shows us his full revelation. If you just do the study of leadership, you realize that there needs to be a lot of leadership, a lot of leadership in order for the people to prosper. There needs to be a lot of people that are taking on roles of leadership and responsibility. And I want you to hear me. The word responsibility is important there. When you take on that role of leadership, you're responsible for it and, and you're responsible not to the other people as much as you are to God. When you take on a leadership responsibility in the church, you're responsible to do the thing as to the Lord. And so oftentimes, people who do the very, very best in church leadership are the people who are doing their very best to, to honor their lord. And that's how leadership ought to take place. That's how leadership ought to be done. I praise God that I serve at a church that's got a lot of leaders. We have several pastors. We have, I mean, dozens of ministers, people who take leadership roles in the ministry, in the hands and feet of the church, out there in the community, and also within the walls of the church. We have a lot of leaders and we are in the process of reimagining the different roles that can be played and also thinking about what needs to be done in the future. And we're going to need a lot more leaders, a lot more people who take on those responsibilities and say, I'm going to do this. I don't serve God in this area. I praise God that God's sending those people, and I praise God that he gives us the opportunity to know it and to act upon it. So as we move forward, we realize that God has a lot of people that he wants to place in command. As verse 29 says, these are the ones the Lord commanded to divide the inheritance among the children of Israel in the land of Canaan. He he gave us a commandment. And that commandment places us in command of God's plan and says, go and do. And so I pray that we will be a people that goes and dos the things or does the things that we should be doing. Praise God that we have that possibility.

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.