Deuteronomy 4:32-40 Bible Study | Episode 849

January 9, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 4:32-40  Bible Study | Episode #849

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 4. And after yesterday when God warned them to not follow after other gods because they quickly be removed out of. Out of the promised land, which is, which is the truth. We do not. We don't, do not heed his voice, meaning hear it and do what he says. Oftentimes people think heeding is a bad thing. Heating is actually part two of the parts of step, the steps of faith. I hear and I. I believe and I act. It's actually really all of it. It's, it's. It's hearing his voice and doing what he says. And then after that, God gives a reason. Why. Why should you listen to God's voice? Why should we do those things? Well, because of what he's done, because who he is, and that's important. And so Moses makes sure that the children of Israel understand that about him. And that's what this passage is about. I think it is a powerful passage just to ponder, to think about God. And it's a powerful passage to teach us. Why. Why, why all this? Well, verse 32 says for ask now of the days of the past that are past which were before you. Meaning you need to think about what has happened. You need to know. You need. Well, you need to know history. A lot of people hate different subjects in school, in my profession, in the legal profession. A lot of lawyers will tell you the reason they went into the legal profession is because they don't like math. But usually they do like history or English or things like that. A lot of people don't like history, think it's boring. Well, the thing about history is, especially as far as the Bible's concerned, as far as God's concerned, he's the author of history. And so even though we think others make history, the truth is that God is History. God is the author of all things, and so he's author of history. So when we're, when we're thinking about history, we should, we should consider those things. He's sovereign over all things. No. No power rises or falls, except that it be by his will and by his divine plan. He designed the earth to ultimately glorify him. And the earth does ultimately glorify him. So he says, for now, ask of the days of the past which were before you since the day the God that God created man on the earth and asked from one end of heaven to the other whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of. Meaning from the day God created man on the earth till today, has this thing ever happened? And he's talking about the children of Israel for you, Since God made man, has anything as great as what God has done for the children of Israel ever happened? Notice what he says. Did any people ever have the voice of God speaking out of the midst of fire as you have heard and still live? Meaning, has anybody actually heard the voice of God and still lived? And the answer is no. The answer is no. They not heard. They'd not heard the voice of God speaking out of the midst. No people. No people group. Now, individuals may have heard from God, but no people group and individuals may have actually dealt with God, but no great people group has ever heard from God out of the midst of the fire and lived. That's. That's not ever happened. Or has any God ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation? Meaning has anybody. Has God ever gone in and delivered a group of people from the midst of another nation which has enslaved them? And that's what's happened here. God had brought the Jewish people, brought. Brought the Israelites out of Egypt out of bondage and caused them to be able to escape that bondage. But he did more than that. He did more than that. He says. He says. Or has any God ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation by trials, the plagues that he sent, by signs and wonders, and by war and by a mighty hand and by an outstretched army, or by great deeds of terror, all of which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? What he's saying is he did these great signs to prove that he's God in front of you. Has God ever done that before? The answer, no. No, God had never done that before. And so they were. They were special to God and they are special because they'd seen God. They'd seen God deliver them out of Egypt. He says to you, it was shown that you might know that the Lord is God and there's none beside Him. There's no other beside Him. This was done to prove to you that God's God. And many times when I'm preaching from the New Testament, I go back to the Old Testament, especially this great story of the Old Testament. And when I say the great story, I mean the overarching story of the Old Testament, which is God delivering His people out of bondage and slavery into. Into a. Into the wilderness where He, He. He led them to understand who he is and then into the promised land. That is the overarching story of the Old Testament. And by the way, it is a picture. It is. It is the. It is the foreshadowing of the redemptive story of Jesus Christ. It is the primary story of the Old Testament, and it is the foreshadowing of the story of Jesus Christ. So he says to you, it was shown that you might know that the Lord is God and there is another, no other beside Him. Out of heaven he let you hear his voice, meaning he spoke to you out of heaven that he might discipline you, meaning that he might change you, that you might become what you should be, that you might know him, he says, and on earth he let you see great fire, and you heard his word. Out of the midst of the fire, God has spoken to them. God has revealed Himself to them. He's divinely let them know who he is, he says. And because he loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out of Egypt with His own presence by his great power, driving out before you great nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in to. To give you their land for an inheritance. It is this day. Know therefore today and lay it to your heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on earth. Believe beneath. There is no other. He says. He says, listen, because you've seen these things, you need to recognize that God. There is no other God but Him. He is the only God. Now let's bring this to. You know where we're at today, who we are today. You know, when God moves in your life, there's a reason for it, there's a purpose for it. Now you say, well, he's not, you know, made the Nile river red with blood. He's not done that for me. No, not, not, not particularly that. But God has done big things for you in your life. Great things for you in your life. And he's done some great things that you don't even know about. But, but he's done some great things in your life to bring you to the point where you would actually, you know, be listening to a Bible study, be seeking him out, be showing. Be wanting to know him, wanting to understand what's going on. You know, you don't. You don't sit down and listen to a Bible study on Deuteronomy unless you really are interested in knowing what God's doing. Interesting. In understanding God's Word in its depth and its completion. If that's the case, then the reason you're wanting to know that is because God's doing big stuff. He's doing big things in your life. And, and, and when we look back over time and we really kind of ponder history, history of the nation of Israel, history of the church, history of Jesus Christ, we see big things. But then when we narrow it down to our own lives and we realize some of the things God's done, some of the big things God's done in our life, when we narrow it down to that, we realize, you know, I need to remember those things. I need to ponder those things. There's a reason why Moses is bringing it up, because remembering those things allows you to move past any fear. It allows you to move past any shame, any condemnation, and realize, you know, God still at work, still doing the delivering thing in my life. He's bringing me to big places and great things. He's showing himself to be God in my life. He's showing himself to be great in my life. And I should think about those things. I should ponder them. I should remember him. I should. I should in my own heart say, oh, I get that. I see that. I know that. Because when we do that, when we. When we ponder the great things that God has done, it strengthens us. I recall the story of David. We'll get to it eventually down the road. But the enemy had come in and raided their camp as they had gone out to do battle with. With the Philistines. And when he got back to camp and the Midianites had raided and taken his camp captive, and his men actually were talking about, should they kill David because he'd allowed this to happen to their people. His mighty men wanted to kill him. The Bible says that he put on the ephod, which is the, the. The priestly garment that represents a right to go and speak to God personally. Face to face is the. It represents all of Israel really. And he put the Ephod on. And the Bible said he strengthened himself in the Lord. What did he do? Did he just have a big hype session with God? No, no. What he did was he went to God and remembered all that God had done before so that there would be a great expectation of God being God again in his life. He went, even though he's in great anguish and great sorrow, he went to God and said, God, what am I to do? And God strengthened him. He strengthened himself in the Lord. God told him to get up and go. In fact, David said, should I get up and go or should I sit here and watch? And God said, get up and go. Go do it. Go handle it. And he did. And they overcame the Midianites and took back all their family and all their children. And all that the Midianites had stolen and all that the Midianites had, they took it all. They destroyed them. It's a great story for a lot of reasons, but it's a great story in that it's kind of an understanding of sometimes you gotta have a session like this. And that's what Moses is doing. He's having a session where they remember what God has done. We need to remember those things. And what's cool about us, for us, is that we can remember what God's done in our own personal lives. And then we can remember what God has done throughout Scripture. Because we've got story after story after story after story of God showing himself to be God, of God showing himself to have a plan, of God showing himself to be a redeemer, of God showing himself to be in. To teaching us to be overcomers. And we have those stories. We have those stories in our lives. Even if we're in the midst of a failure today, we have those stories in our lives. We have. We have the true story of redemption that's always going on. That's always happening, that God is always doing. We always have it. It's always right there before us. And. And as we have those things, as we watch those things, as we see those things, we get blessed. We were blessed by who he is. And so as we. As we get to Deuteronomy, chapter 4, and Moses is giving instructions to the. To the young people are about to go into the promised land, to the people who did not refuse to go in, He. He says to him, he says to him, remember the things that God has done. That's what he says in verse 30, I mean, 40. Therefore you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I Command you today that it may go well with you and with your children after you, that you may prolong your days in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time. Notice he's given them the land for all time. Not for some time, for all time. You got some questions about what's going on in the Middle east today, just read this verse. It's theirs for all time. Not for some time, but for all time. When God gives you something, his gift and call is irrevocable. When God calls you by your name to come and walk with him, his calling is irrevocable. He does not. The theological terminology is without repentance meanings he will not repent from it or turn away from it. Irrevocable is my favorite way of saying it because I'm a lawyer and it means to you cannot revoke it. You can't call it back when you offer something to someone until they accept it as a contract, you can revoke it. But when God gives you a gift and a call, he can't revoke it. It's not in his nature to revoke it. He does not revoke that which he yields and calls. And so when God calls us, his call is irrevocable. And when he gives us anything that's irrevocable, also he does not repent from it. He gives it to us. And so he wants to prolong our days in the promised land. He wants us to walk in power before him. And he wants us to have those things that he is he has set aside for us since the foundation of time. And sometimes you just need to sit down and have a session with God about the things that he's done in the past so that you can remember he's the type God that does those things and you can step into your future. We ought to always do that in times of trouble and struggle. Remember, God does big things. We should seek out to have those big things in their completion in our lives. To see the hand of God at work in our lives, to search for it and to ask 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.