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 Leviticus, chapter 26. Got two more chapters to go before we finish the book of Lamentation, Leviticus. But we are. We're in one of those passages that I. That I really would love. It's one of those Bible study passages where you just kind of read through it and understand God's kind of pouring out his heart. He's just saying, this is. This is how I want things to be. This is how I want, want us to live. And when he says us, he means us living together. He wants us to walk with him and have relationship with him, and he's going to bless us. And this whole chapter is about God's desire to bless his people, but it's also about the consequences of not walking with him, meaning what's going to happen to his people if they choose to chase after their own ways and chase after other gods and do other things. So there is a long section of how that affects you, how the cursings of not being with God, because you're going to walk in bondage to something. He delivered people out of Egypt, and so they were in bondage there. And he understands that if they don't walk with him, they're going to be in bondage to something else. And so we'll spend some days on that. But I want to read to you what he kind of just says, if you'll do this, you know, he's given them, you know, 25 chapters of things to do. But, you know, sometimes it just gets down to the fundamentals. Sometimes it just gets down to the basics. And oftentimes, I found in life, people get real focused on the. On the things that matter very little, and they don't emphasize the things that matter the most. And God wants to emphasize the thing that matters the most. And what that is, is their relationship with him. He says in verse one of 26, you shall not make idols for yourselves. Neither carved images nor sacred pillars shall you rear up for yourselves. Meaning don't worship anything else, nor shall you set up engraved stones in your land to bow down to it. He says, for I'm the Lord, your God. He's saying, don't worship other things. Worship me. I'm, I'm the Lord, your God. I'm your God. Don't, don't get focused on those things. Then he says, if you walk in my statutes of my commandments and perform them, meaning if you just walk with me, I mean, that's, that's the whole point here. That's the whole picture. It's not a picture. He didn't say if you do my statutes, he said, if you walk in my statutes. Which means this is a process. This is, you walk with me through my statutes and my commandments, things I've told you to do. You're not, it's not going to be, it's not going to be easy to do them all. You're not going to do them really well. But if you walk with me in them and walk with me through them, I'll teach you how to do it well. I'll teach you how to do it rightly. I'll teach you how to do it in a way that's going to bring about my best in your life. He says, then I will give you notice. He says, if you'll just walk with me through these things. And, you know, that seems very easy, because it is. Christ said his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And it is easy in light. If you'll just walk with him each and every day, each and every hour. If you're trying to do all the stuff rather than walk in the relationship, you're likely going to fail. But if you walk in the relationship, he'll slowly teach you how to live the life. And that's what God is saying to his people right here. He says, if you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and perform them, then I'll give you rain in its season. And the land shall yield its produce, and the trees and the field shall yield their fruit. What he's saying is, I'm going to send the rain, I'm going to send the, I'm going to send my blessings to you, and you're going to have what you need in due season, not, not in other times. But I'm going to give you what you need at the right time. He says, your threshold shall last till the time of the vintage. And the vintage shall last until the time of the sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land safely. What he's saying is each season is going to have its fullness, and I'm going to, I'm going to make sure that you have something every season. And you go. I don't know exactly what that's talking about. Well, what he's saying is that you're going to take care of your wheat and the threshing floor, and it's going to, you're going to have plenty until the bendage comes, meaning when you gather the fruit in and then when, when you're done gathering the fruit is going to be time to sow. And by the time the sowing is over, you're going to be threshing again. What he's saying is life's going to go good. It's going to be, it's, the seasons are going to be full. You're going to, you're going to have my best year after year. Not perfect, not, not going to be always easy, but, but every steady, steady life. You know, I read somebody this morning saying, I'm just tired. I'm wore out. I know you are. I know you are. And listen, they're going to be seasons where you are tired and you're out from walking and trying to do the right thing. That's going to happen. But, but it sure is a lot steadier and, and your feet are on a lot more even ground when you walk with God rather than always being tossed about. Because when you're, when you're living with the world, you know, it's just always throwing you back and forth. It seems like you're getting slow from one side of the ship to the other or, or the land just keeps giving under you and, and you keep falling down and rolling down the hill. God says, if you'll do this, listen, I'm gonna give you a steady seasons. I'm gonna let you, I'm gonna let you move through life evenly and easy. And let me, let me say this. It's not gonna be just making it through. It's going to be, it's going to build seasons of blessing. He's saying, I'm going to give you the sowing, I'm going to give you the threshing, and I'm going to give you the vintage. It's going to be uphill, gonna be a little bit uphill climb, meaning you're gonna be heading toward the best all the time, he says. He says, I'll give you peace in the land. You know, a little bit of peace is a powerful thing. He says, you shall lie down and none will make you afraid. You know how many of y'all have spent a lot of your life fearful of something this or that or the other fist? Fearful of missing out on God. Fearful of missing out on what life has to offer. Fearful the missing of something happening terrible to you or your family. Well, God says, I'm going to make you not afraid. And I'm going to tell you I've learned if you'll walk with God, fear, fear does begin to subside if you're walked with God. Long periods of time, courage and power come and fear ceases. Not saying the enemy doesn't come every once in a while to scare you doesn't come every once while you have that feeling of panic. But you learn that that's usually not anything major. It's usually not the enemy. He says, I'll rid your land of evil beasts. What he's saying is I'm going to get rid of all the things that have in the past caused you so much trouble. I'm going to rid yourself. It says, if you're walking my statutes, I'm going to get rid of those things out of your life. They're slowly going to be removed from anywhere near you. I'm going to get them way out, away from you and, and you're not going to have to worry about it. And he says, and the sword will not go through your land. Meaning I'm not, you're not going to have great loss. You're, you're not, if you think about this, this is some really good stuff. He says, he says you will chase your enemies and they will fall by the sword before you, which means he's going to make you victorious. He's not only going to give you peace, he's not only going to protect you from the evil beast, he's not only going to make sure that each season comes in and you have the best from those seasons. He says, listen, I'm on, I'm going to make sure that you're victorious. He says five of you shall cause a 101 hundred of you shall put 10,000 to flight. What he's saying is you're going to be overcomers and conquerors. You're going to win battles that should never happen. I mean, five beating 101 hundred, beating 10,000, that's, that's a pretty powerful promise, not something that he's not proven to be able to do in the, in the books before this, but, but a promise for you also. Wouldn't you like to have a victorious life? The kingdom is about victory. The kingdom is about victory over sin and death. The kingdom is about victory over the suffering and pain of this world. And let me say this, the kingdom is about serving a finished and powerful and mighty lord, and that's Jesus. And so he says, I'm going to make sure that you're victorious. Well, we had a promise. He says, for I will look on you favorably and make you fruitful, multiply you and confirm my covenant with you. He says, when I think about you, I'm going to think about you favorably. What does that mean? Well, that means he likes you. Remember that. God likes you. I say a lot of times, God loves you, and he does. He loves you a lot, but he likes you a lot. He really does. He looks at you and he thinks, I really hadn't understood what it means to just look at something and be just favorable for, toward it as much as I have in the last year and a half with my granddaughter, when I just see her, I just look favorably upon her. You know, I just, I just think she's just wonderful. She's apple in my eye. I think she's, she's just fabulous. And the more now I think about God, he, he looks at us that way. We're just, you know, we just think we're great. No matter what kind of bad condition we find he finds us in. He just thinks we're wonderful. Why don't you think about somebody in your life? If you have, if you have a guy, had somebody like this, then it's going to make it even more sweet that God treats you that way. But think of somebody in your life who just always was favorable towards you, just always thought you were something else and was very sweet and wonderful towards you, and then you multiply that a billion times, and that's God. That's God for you. He says, I'm gonna look favorably on you, and I'm gonna make you fruitful and multiply you and confirm my covenant with you. Meaning he's gonna constantly be telling you how he's not just gonna make you walk through this life and, and perform, he's gonna, he's gonna constantly be telling you how great you are and how much he, he's excited to be your God and you to be his people. And he says, he says, you shall eat the old harvest and clear out the herb because of the new. What he's saying is, I'm not going to let anything that you have rot. I'm going to make sure that you get to eat everything that I've given you. I'm going to make sure that you get the fullness of my blessing. He says, I'll set my tabernacle among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. What he's saying is, I'm going to dwell with you. I'm going to be around you. I'm going to walk with you. Tabernacle means to live with you. He says, my soul, my will is not going to be mad with you. It's not going to hate you. It's going to always love you. He says, I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people. Well, I mean, there's nothing better than that promise. He says, I'm going to walk with you, and you're going to be mine. I'm going to be yours. He says, I'm the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and you shall not be their slaves. He says, I'm going to set you free. I'm going to make you free to be what I made you to be. I'm going to make you free to experience the life that I made for you to have. I'm going to give you my best. He says, I've broken the bands of your yoke and made your walk upright. He says, I've broken you out. You're no longer under that anymore, and you should know that. And if that's not good enough passage right there to. To get you going, I don't know. I don't know what is. I think if that don't get you going, your crankshaft's messed up. You just can't be cranked up. That being said, so many of us do struggle with the path, and the walk doesn't seem easy at the moment. But trust me, if you'll just hang with God, it will be. It will be over time. And you'll wake up one day and you'll be bigger and stronger, greater than you were before, and things will be better than you could imagine. And so I pray that that'll be the case for you. I expect it will be. It's the promises of God. So it's going to be you just be faithful to walk with him. He'll always be faithful to walk with you.
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.
