Deuteronomy 4:25-31 Bible Study | Episode 848

January 8, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 4:25-31   Bible Study | Episode #848

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 Churches morning Bible study. We are in Deuteronomy, chapter 4, verse 25, and we come across a passage that is both prophetic and. When I say prophetic, I'm talking about prophetic as far as Israel is concerned. It is a really important passage as far as that's concerned. And it is a great passage to teach us and using Israel as a model to teach us things. And it is something that I just think we need to dig into and allow the Holy Spirit to guide you in your thoughts and in your hearts as you're, as you're hearing what God said, He said he's been talking to them about entering into the promised land. And he says when you father children and children's children, meaning through the generations that are to come. And by the way, any mature Christian ought to consider the generations, that is something that is a important consideration for the church. A church that does not consider the generations to come, the church that does not spend its time making. Making those things of utmost importance, is a church that will suffer great loss. There'll be, there'll be nothing after them. Because. Because God is in the business of continuing his legacy in the world and passing Him Himself down from generation to generation. And one of the, one of the most important things the church does is pass Jesus on to others. And the others that are most important to anybody is the others that are the. The generations that come after you. And if that's not the case, then I, you know, even people who don't have children consider their nieces and nephews and, and the children of their family members. They consider them very special and very important in their lives. Why? Because they're the generation to come. You don't even have to have children to value children. You, you. It is one of those things that, especially for believers, I've noticed, it's a Important. It's an important asset. And it's a realization of they're the carrier of the treasure of God. They are the treasure of God and they're the carrier of it. And they're the increase that we get. And so he says, when your children, when you father children and children's children, meaning having grandchildren, have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making carved images in the form of anything and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke him to anger, meaning if you make, if you make idols in this land by the way they do, they do that, they end up acting this way. But he's given him a word of prophecy. He's telling them not to do that. He's telling them to keep him as their God, to worship him only. That's, that's one of the ten Commandments. And he's telling them, place your primary focus on me. And oftentimes when we're raising children, we want our children to enjoy and have great, a lot of opportunities. And we treat the opportunities as more important than their opportunity to know and have a relationship with God. And I'm going to tell you that is just foolishness. That it is foolishness. The, the, the placing something as more important than God for your children is foolish now to not allow them to do things and to grow and have opportunity. Because you say that, you know, I'm, I'm trying to raise them up in the, in the, in the admonition of the Lord, but you're not actually allowing them to understand and live and function and, and become someone of character and importance in the community. That's another thing. So you know, there's two side it, there's those who just never ever allow their children out anywhere to actually hone the skills of being in the world, but not of the world. And then there's those who think that something in the world is more important and has more long term value for your children than God. And there's a happy medium there. You need to have your children involved in things that are going on around them so that they can learn to interact with the world and be alight to that world. And you also need to make sure that nothing in your children's lives and in your life is more important than a relationship with God. That's modeled out by being in the presence of God, being with God's people and being in church. Do not place idols before them that are made by human hands. And by the way, anything that's made by human hands is flesh and it's going to perish. It's of no value. And so oftentimes we, that's a, I'll say it's not an easy, it's not an easy balance being to stay on. It's not easy to figure that out. It's a, it's not easy to know exactly whether I'm doing it right or wrong. And oftentimes we suffer as our children grow older because we question how well we did it. Well, and you do it oftentimes when you're really young. But the main thing is, is to say, okay, I'm going to make sure that my children see me modeling a relationship with Jesus Christ and a walk with Jesus Christ and a consistent one, a regular one. Where I am in church, where I am with the body of Christ, where I am seen worshiping regularly, where I am putting them in a position where they can hear God's word. That's an important thing. And nothing should come in between that. Then during the other, listen, that doesn't happen every day and all week, but during the other times of the week. Then I also allow them to have opportunities to experience being in the world so that they can begin to understand how the world operates. So that they can begin to understand the dichotomy between God and the world, so that they can make those understandings cemented in their heads and they can live them out in their lives. And you can't do that by sheltering them from the world. And you can't do that by making idols of the world for them. And so he says, if you do that and you do evil in the sight of the Lord so as to provoke him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today. What he's saying is I'm going to call creation against you. What you think you're doing is not going to work out. I'm going to call heaven and earth against you and that you will soon utterly perish from the land and that you are going over the Jordan, that the one you're going over to the Jordan to possess, you will not live long in it. But it will utterly. But will be utterly destroyed. Now this has got a physical picture and it's a word of prophecy for the Jews, but it also is a spiritual picture for us. Meaning you can live the spirit filled Christian life and chase after God. But if you don't do this, this thing, it will not be passed on to your children and it will not be passed on to Your children's children. And remember he talks about that, that I have an impact on my children and I have an impact on my grandchildren. And I need to make sure that I, and perhaps even your grandchildren, great grandchildren. But, but I need to make sure that I, this is a constant process in my life from the time I become an adult, that the children of my family and the grandchildren of my family and the great grandchildren of my family have an opportunity to see godly people walking before them who are chasing after God, who are worshiping God, who are being changed and being motivated by godly principles. They need to see that regularly in their lives. And then they need to be put in positions where they can take those principles and apply them to the world and to their life so that they can be in the world and not of the world. Okay? The only way they can be in it and not of it is they've got to be in it. You got to get them, give them chances to be a part of what's going on around them. And if they're, the only way for them to not be of it is that they have God to walk them through that so that they know that they are tied to something higher and beyond themselves. But if you do not do that, if you do not know that he says, you're going to be utterly perished from the land, you're going to perish from the land. You're not going to have that spirit filled Christian life for you or for your children or great grandchildren. If you do not do that, that's what's going to happen. It's going to destroy that line. It's going to cut off that access that God wants us to have, the very best that he has for us. And so our activities need to be focused in that direction. And if we don't have children and we don't have grandchildren, you need to adopt those children and grandchildren. What I mean by that? Well, there's children in the church. You need to, you need to, you need to treat them as treasure for you. These things, these are, these are, these are the holders of our legacies. They carry their legacy forward. So many times I deal with churches that people are in churches that they're. Their focus is not on children. No. And it's focused on so many other things, most of it physical things, things that don't matter. And there's an emptiness to them. There's not any power in there. There's not any purpose, there's not any sense of eternality in them. And it's Painful it is. And by the way, he told them that you're going to utterly perish from the land. He says you will not live long in it. Meaning spiritual Christian life is not something that's lived long in. If it's not. If it's. If you don't live in it. Meaning you don't walk it out. You don't hear God's voice and believe him and act upon it. You can't, you can't live in the. You can't live in the promises of God and not. And not act out the promises of God, he says, and the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. Well, that actually happens. I mean, that's actually true for today. I mean, he was talking to a group of people that were somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,4 million people at this time, fighting men, somewhere in the neighborhood of under, slightly under a million, which would, you know, you kind of extrapolate that out and it's probably somewhere in the neighborhood. If you take the young men that are not fighting age and the older men who are older than fighting age and then add the women to that number. You know the numbers probably there were somewhere probably around 3 or 4 million Jews at this time. There's only 18 million Jews in the world today, 20 million at the most. Was God's word true? Yeah. Did he scatter them among the nations? He sure did. Were their numbers low? Yeah. And by the way, that's what, that's what happened to the European Christian church. They, they made idols for themselves and they're scattered and not, not, not many in population, he says. And they. And, and there you will serve gods of wood and stone and the work of human hands that neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. What he's saying is, when I scatter you, you're going to be out there with, with the people who don't know me. But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. Here's the promise that comes back in. Once you realize the situation you've made for yourself, you'll seek him and find Him. And he says, he says, I'll be found if you seek me out. And when you are in tribulation and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice. This is a, this is a clear prophecy of what actually is taking place in Israel today. What a. What a beautiful prophecy to. And they hold on to that. This is. This is one of the passages that the Jewish people hold on to today is as their promise that God would bring them back. And he has. He says, when you are in tribulation and all these things come upon you in latter days, you will return to the Lord and your God. Lord your God. And obey his voice. For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them. Meaning that God's going to work out his will and his way. But you have a responsibility yourself to build treasure in heaven, to build treasure for the future. You got a huge responsibility for that. And the way that's done is to walk in the land properly. When God gives you the big things and gives you the big opportunities, we need to grab hold of them. And it doesn't matter what your age is or where you find yourself in this process. You need to grab hold of those great opportunities that God has given you. You need to grab hold of them, you need to chase after them. You need to make yourself bound to those things. And you need to expect that God's going to keep his promises. And if we don't, we don't remain very long. I pray that that'll be the case for you, that you will remain a long time. I expect that you will. We don't study the Bible this early in the morning and not want to put it to work in our lives. So as long as we're diligent in knowing him and diligent in making him known, we will be blessed. 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.