Deuteronomy 2:10-25 Bible Study | Episode # 841

December 30, 2024

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

Deuteronomy 2:10-25   Bible Study | Episode #841

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 will 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 Deuteronomy, chapter 2. And now we get to a. Well, the first part of this chapter deals with God telling the children of Israel where to go as far as their journey to the promised land. And it describes the Ammonites, it describes the Moabites, the people that come from, well, cousins, family members, family members from way back Lot. Lot's descendants and Esau's descendants. And God tells them not to go and take anything from them, not to harass them. We're just going to pass them by. We're just going to move on and pass them by and, and, and not have anything to do with them. And then there is a long passage here and it deals with giants. The best, the best way for me to describe it is giants. And by the way, that's not something that's new. There's obviously what is called in, in Genesis. There are, there are giants that are mentioned in Genesis. They're called Nephilim. And there are giants that are mentioned here, and there's giants that are mentioned. When they went out and spied the land, the 10 spies that didn't want to go in said there were giants in the land and they couldn't overcome them. And really that was. The whole point, is that even though they said the land was good, that God was right, the land was good, they couldn't overcome the giants. And so they couldn't go into the promised land. Basically, they couldn't have the promises of God because there were giants that they were going to have to overcome. Now you go. You go, Pastor. Well, what about the giants? Well, I don't. I can, I can explain to you the Nephilim in Genesis, but I've already explained that. You can go back and study that. I can explain to you the giants here in the sense of they thought of them as giants, but we really don't have any information other than they thought them as extra large people. Now, the people back then would have probably considered me a giant. Okay. Uh, the average height of a man probably was five two or five three. I'm six foot four. Uh, they're, they're probably the average weight of a man back during these times was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 120, 130 pounds. I easily am twice that size. So there's a, There's. When you say giant, there is an element of perspective on that. If you say giant and you're on an NBA basketball team, well, that would have to be 12 or 15ft tall. But if you say giant and you're dealing with a gymnastics team, which gymnasts have to be generally small in order to do some of the things they do, then a giant would be me. And so I'm not sure what a giant means here, and I'm not sure that that's really the whole point of the matter. The point of this passage is to explain to them that fighting giants and taking on giants is not something that's uncommon and it's not something that hasn't happened in the past. That's really the point of this passage. This passage is telling the children of Israel that Esau and his descendants had to take on giants, and Lot and his descendants had to take on giants. And if they had to take on giants and they overcame them, you can also, because they were overcoming these giants, because they were taking the land I had promised them. Now, if you want a one for one correlation, that's a perfect correlation, what he's saying is I gave a group of people my promises, and in order to take those promises, they had to take a land that was filled with giants, that was going to. Going to obviously keep them from taking that land. They were going to. They were going to stand up against them because they lived there and they did it. And these people that did these things are relatives to you. In fact, not only are they relatives to you, they. They are part of scripture also. We know who Esau is. We know who Lot is, and we know their family became great. We know these things. And so God's saying, when you face the giants of your life. Sure. Or is it the first time you face the giants? Yeah, it is a lot of times. A lot of times, yeah. It's the first time you face that giant, but it's not the first time that giant's been faced. It's not the first time that Issues been. Has been brought up giants. Giants in our lives. Issues in our lives that are huge, huge issues. And that's what the Promised Land is about. Because you can't have peace and have those issues. You can't have prosperity and have those issues. You can't have the goodness of God and have those issues, because those issues are the things that are keeping you from all of God's best. And so, as a part of becoming like Christ, we have to overcome those giants. Now, Christ overcame the sin of the whole world. He's not asking us to do that. He's already redeemed us. We don't need that. But what we do need is we do need to overcome the giants that are in our lives. And in order to do that, well, we've got to. We've got to face them. And let me just read it, because it's real. It's kind of interesting if you read it from that perspective. It says the Enum had dwelt there in times past, a people as great and numerous and tall as Anakim. And you're going to see Anakin mentioned a lot. He was apparently the leader of the giants, and they were called the Anakim after him. These giants that lived in the Promised Land, you say, Pastor, are they Nephilim? Not sure. I'm not even sure that that really matters. What matters is, is that they are a problem because they're giants and they have been a problem in the past. They were a problem for the children of Israel's forefathers. They were problem for the children of Israel's parents who decided they didn't want to go in the Promised Land. He says they were also regarded as giants. And that word is Rafaam. It means really large people, like the Anakim. But the Moabites called them Eman, meaning, notice he's telling them the Moabites called them something else. But they're the same thing. And oftentimes we. We want to make our giants out to be something unique. And you call them something else. But the truth is they're giants that other people have faced also. He says the Horites formerly dwelt in Seir, but the descendants of Esau dispossessed them and destroyed them from before them and dwelt in their place, just as Israel did to the land of their possession, which the Lord gave them meaning just exactly the way they were supposed to. This is the way it was supposed to work. Now, verse 13. Now, Moses is speaking to him directly now. Rise and cross over the valley of Zared So we crossed over the Valley of Zared. Notice God. We're intermixing Moses, giving them instructions and then commentary on what happened. It's really kind of like a movie, he says. And the time we took to come to Kadesh Bardim until we crossed over to the Valley of Zared was 38 years. Meaning it took a long time to wander in the wilderness. Until the generation of the men of war was consumed from the midst of the camp. Just as the Lord had sworn to them. Meaning that all the men who could fight had to be had. Their lives had to come to an end. Because they refused to enter into the promised land when God gave them the order to enter in. This is a problem. This is something you need to recognize. Refusal to deal with the giants will result in you living in the wilderness. Refusing to deal with the giants of your life will result in you living in the wilderness. For indeed, the hand of the Lord was against them. To destroy them from the midst of the camp until they were consumed. So it was when all the men of war had finally perished from among the people. The Lord spoke to me, saying, this day you are to cross over to our the boundary of Moab. And when you come near to the people of Ammon, do not harass them or meddle with them. For I will not give you any of their land of the people of Ammon as a possession. Because I have given it to the descendants of Lot as a possession. And why? Well, here's why. That was also regarded as a land of giants. Lot's land was a land of giants. Giants formerly dwelt there, but the Ammonites called them Zamzuman. So giants for the Moabites, giants for the Ammonites, giants for Lot, giants for Esau. Giants everywhere. They got different names for them, but they're the same problem. What are these? I don't know how big the giants were. I don't know that answer. I. Your giants are your giants. My giants are my giants. They're all giants. They're all problems. And they are given to us to overcome so that we can glorify God with our lives. He says a people as great and numerous and tall as Anakin. There's Anakin again. He says, but the Lord destroyed them before them. And they dispossessed them and dwelt in their place. Notice. Ammonites dispossess them. Moabites dispossess them. Just as he had done to the sentence of Esau, who dwelt in Seir when he destroyed the Whole rights from before them, they dispossessed them and dwelt in their place. Notice he's saying, I'm telling you, Esau did it, Lot did it. You can do it. It's been done. It's. It's not something new. Oftentimes when we face these things, we think it's something new, but if we look around, we say it's not something new. We all have to face our giants, he says they dispossess them and dwelt in their place even to this day. And the avim who dwelt in the village as far as Gaza, the Captorum who came to, who came from captor, destroyed them and dwelt in their place. Not only did did. Did Esau's family dispossess them, not only did Lot's family dispossess them, but the captorum dispossessed them. We don't even know who they are. We have a feeling they might be the Philistines, but we don't know who they are. The point is that some of the issues that we face in our lives that we need God to overcome, even people who are not God's people may overcome them. Substance abuse, you just keep naming them all kinds of struggles of life. There are even people who are not believers who are able to overcome them. But when we trust God, we overcome them fully and completely to an end. And God is telling them, rise up and take your land. Rise up and take hold of God's promises. And that's not an easy thing. And as a pastor mainly, I spend most of my time encouraging people to trust God and become who God wants them to be. And I spend most of my time as a human being trying to take on my giants and become who I'm supposed to be. And so it's not like I'm on this journey just trying to tell people what to do. I'm not a coach on the sidelines. I'm in the game too. We all have our giants. We all have our struggles, we all have our difficulties. And we all have our cross to bear. Meaning we got to take up our cross and follow him. We have to sacrifice ourselves, but we also also have all have a unique ability that God has given us. God's made us for to glorify him in these meaning. We can prove that God can take the broken, the messed up and he can overcome with them. And these giants are the way God kind of proves that these giants are. Well, I mean, they're the way God says to everybody every Individual. These giants are the ones are the way God says to them, look, I, I can do this for you. It's really how God strengthens your faith. He gives you giants to overcome you overcome them. You realize, you know, God's greater than we, we ever imagined he could be. God's way greater than we could ever imagine he could be. And our lives are better for it. Our lives are more complete for it. And God is glorified by. So when we talk about the giants of Genesis and the giants of Deuteronomy and the giants that are here and there and everywhere, when we talk about these things, we do have to open our eyes and say, okay, who are my giants? What promises God got for me that really caused me to have to go through a giant to get there? And when we, when we, when we do that, we, we glorify him because we prove that he is an overcoming God and he can overcome with even the most difficult of children and the most difficult of situations. So we should, and we can, and we will. And that's really what Moses is telling them. Look, we're fixing to go and face giants. You're, you're about to do it. I'm not going to get to go in, but you're going to face the giants. Listen, you're not the first ones to do it. You won't be the last ones either. We're today even talking about them. But you've got to do it because that's what you were made for. You were made to be the light of God. And that light doesn't run from giants. It doesn't. As you go today, I pray that.

The Lord will bless you and keep you you. That he'll make his face to shine upon you. And that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.