All right, all right, join the Journey family, friends, and guests. You're listening to Join the Journey

podcast with your host, Emma Daughter. Thanks for joining. Today, we're reading numbers 33 through 34,

but we're going to be focusing on chapter 34. And the question is, what can we learn about the

boundaries God sets?

Now, as a fifth grader, I used to get to roam the streets of my neighborhood with my friend

Brittany. And the best part about it was that Brittany had an electric scooter. And since we were

tiny fifth graders, we were both able to easily ride on it together, which was amazing.

We felt like we had so much

freedom and thought we were so grown up, driving, driving, and doing air quotes, all over the

neighborhood on that scooter. But our parents, they set boundaries. We were never allowed to leave

the neighborhood. And here in Numbers 34, we're seeing the Lord lay out the

boundaries for the people of Israel. We read in verse two, give these instructions to the Israelites.

When you come into the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as your special possession,

these will be the boundaries. So for starters, we've got to understand what Canaan is. In the 15th century,

Canaan was a widely recognized geographic region. Historians have primarily learned about it

through Egyptian texts, so we know at some point in time, in history, Canaan was likely under Egyptian

control. Now, extra-biblical written works,

meaning historical texts outside of the Bible, don't lay out Canaan's boundaries as specifically

as the Bible does, but, or however, historical texts generally describe Canaan with the same geographic boundaries as the Bible does.

That said, we've got to remember that Canaan was and is a very real place.

It can be easy to kind of think of it as this make-believe land from the past, but it's a very real region of land. And God told Israel he was giving them Canaan,

this very real place as a special possession. The NIV reads that the land would be allotted

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