Deuteronomy 4:9-14 Bible Study | Episode 846

January 6, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 4:9-14 Bible Study | Episode #846

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 and welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in Deuteronomy, chapter four, and starting with verse nine. And we're dealing with. We're dealing with a passage that I think is. Is really interesting as far as the way Moses presents this. And. Well, it's just the important principle for Christian living. It says for who we are and how we live our lives. This passage is one of those passages that kind of holds us together. It teaches us one of the principles. Well, I guess the best way for me to describe it in New Testament terms is it's a principle of salvation. And remember, salvation is a. Is a work of God that begins before you ever realize it's beginning because you're born again. That means you're, you're, you're justified before God. You have a. And that, that kicks off the salvation process. And that salvation process begins with God calling us. It begins with us repenting or being converted or turning toward that call. And then we begin a walk of faith. And that walk of faith is our life. And as we walk by faith in our lives, we begin to hear God, we begin to know God. We begin to experience what it is to be a child of God. We begin to experience what it is to have spiritual gifts and, and, and to love those that are not. That are not easy to love. We begin to understand those things and we begin to desire those things. And as that happens, we continue to grow and become. Obviously, there's a lot of struggles and troubles and trials which make us better at it, but this process has to be. This process is not a natural process to our flesh, and it's not a natural process to our soul. And so it has to be. It has to be entered into and engaged. We have to actually act upon it. And so when Moses says this to the children of Israel, as they, as they begin this Journey into the Promised Land. It's real neat how he. He. He lays it out. How he. How he says it here, verse nine, it says, only take care. Meaning you're about to go into the promised land, and for generations to come, you're going to have an opportunity to see the goodness that comes from me. But you got to take care of it. And notice what he says next. He says, and keep your soul diligently, meaning, remember, my soul is the part of me that is really me. It is my mind, it's my thoughts, and it's my passions and my emotions altogether. And my soul is the part of me that God loves. In fact, in Psalms he says, your soul is. Is. Is what I love. Your soul have I loved. And so our soul is the part of us that God loves, that God cares about, that matters to God. And so our soul is the thing we have to hold on to and keep diligently. Notice, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, unless you depart from your heart all the days of your life. Notice. We can't. We easily forget. Our minds easily forget the things that God has done. And this is not something that's new to a believer. We all know that. We know that. We oftentimes, when a circumstance changes, we forget what we already know. We. We forget what God has. Has done for us. We forget what God has prepared for us. We. Our minds, forget it. We move to another place. And so as we move to forget those things, our heart departs from him. As our mind forgets it, our passions, our emotions depart from it. And he literally uses both those words here in the New Testament, the words for soul or cardiac, which is your heart, your emotions, and sukho, your mind, your intellect, your thoughts. It's easy. What happens here is as you forget, as you don't remember the things God has told you, your heart wanders away. And it does. And so Moses says, we got to do things to make sure that our mind doesn't forget and that our heart doesn't wander away. How do we do that? Well, we make them known to your children and to your children's children. One of the ways an adult learns to keep his heart steady or their heart steady is to. Is to teach them to the children of their lives. It makes a steadiness of our heart. It creates a strength in our heart. We keep those things alive in our hearts. And so he says, make them known to your children and to your children's children, how on the day that you stood before the Lord, your God At Horeb, the Lord said to me, gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children. So what he's saying is, make sure you continually gather your children together and teach them and make them learn to fear God. And when we use the word fear here, it's not terror in the. In the sense that we're terrified of him. It's fear in the recognition of how mighty he is and how little we are. It's a recognition of the proper position that God holds. And what is that? Well, he's sovereign. He's over all things. And so it's right for us to, when we consider God, to consider that he's over all things. He's beyond us. He's more than us, he's greater than us. And so he may. He says, the way you keep your heart steady and your mind clear is that you regularly pass it on to those who are younger than you. You regularly pass these things on. That's how to keep. This is what God is saying to Moses, how to keep not only the nation steady, but the individual steady. You pass these things on, he says, and you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven. Notice God's passion for us is a fire, and it burned even to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom. Meaning. Meaning that from the outside, it looks as if it's something not to be had, but on the inside, there's great passion from God, he said, Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. So even though you. It seems like you don't want to have that relationship, you don't want to do those things, even though it seems like that's the case. God speaks to you from the fire. He speaks to you from the place. It doesn't seem like you can go. It doesn't seem like you can actually get there. And then he speaks. He speaks to us, and he says. He says, then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire, and you heard the sound of words, but saw no form. There was only a voice, meaning God is spirit. And we've been talking about that on Sunday morning that God is Spirit and that. That the flesh counts for nothing and that the Spirit is everything. And he says, you heard God's voice, but you didn't see his form. And the reason you didn't see his form is. Because God is Spirit, and he declared to you his covenant, meaning he declared to you his eternal contract with you. He made a. He made a contract with you that is eternal, and he commanded you to perform. That is the Ten Commandments he gave us. He gave us a holy law. He gave us a law that is a law of relationships. If you actually look at it, the first three commandments are our relationship with God, the fourth commandments, our relationship with our parents. And the rest of the commandments are our relationship with others, with the last commandment, dealing with our relationship with ourselves and not coveting and not holding in our heart a desire for that which is not ours. And so it's a law of relationships. Even in the midst of, of the mountain. It's. It teaches us how to relate to God, how to relate to the, our parents, how to relate to each other, and how to relate to ourselves. And so when we, when we study this and when we look at it, we see that God says, keep these things, hold on to them. He says, and the Lord commanded me at that time to teach the statutes and rules that you might do them in the land that you are going over to possess. He says, he taught them to me to teach to you. And then now it's your responsibility to teach them to your children and your grandchildren, to teach them to young people, to make them a part of their regular life, to show them how to walk, to show them how they should live. And those things are powerful things. They're mighty things. They keep our mind and our heart in the right place. And so we have to be diligent. Notice he says in verse nine, keep your soul diligently. Meaning this is a continual process. You can't, you can't step away from it. You can't walk away from it. You have to keep it going all the time. Keep your soul diligently and walk in those things. Because if we, if we do those things correctly, if we do it rightly, well, we're strengthened in our heart. Our mind is focused on the things that are right and the things that are good and the things that are God and our children are blessed by them, and their children are blessed by them. I pray that we do. We continue to hold each other, that we continue to push each other to be diligent in our hearts and our thoughts and not forget what God has shown us. And that's more than just the Ten Commandments. Now. Now you've got the rest of the Bible, you've got the rest of your experiences with God. There's so much of what you've done and who you've been with God that you can relate to someone that you can give over to them, that you can hand down to them that their lives might be changed and that their lives might be grown. These things are important, these things are powerful and these things are permanent. So we need to keep our heart diligently towards them. 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.