Deuteronomy 5:12-15 Bible Study | Episode 856

January 20, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 5:12-15  Bible Study | Episode #856

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 5, and we're dealing with the Sabbath day. Keeping it holy. It is, it is one of those things that as pastors we could easily beat, beat people over the head with this and tell them that it's one of the big ten, it's one of the big ten commandments, and you need to do it every Sunday. But I won't do that. Even though in many ways as a pastor and I identify with other pastors who feel this way. It is, it is probably the one commandment throughout scripture and throughout the Christian life that people, well, they just ignore. They ignore God saying it. This is if God didn't say it. And so I'm, I'm not going. I'm not going to go at it from that perspective. I'm just not go at it from that perspective. I'm. I'm just going to use some common sense advice. I'm going to start with some common sense advice and then I'm going to compare it to what God's saying here and, and see if it doesn't make sense. This is some common sense advice. When, when I'm doing premarital counseling and when I'm dealing with a couple, and especially when I'm dealing with a couple that wants to have a lot of children, I always talk to them about, you know, working on their relationship with each other. In fact, most of the time, that's what I'm primarily talking about. I'm talking about how, how you keep communication, how you keep intimacy, how you make sure that each other, you know, y'all, you have plans for the future that you, you're working toward common goals, you know, the real, just nuts and bolts things about just having a relationship with God. I mean, having a relationship with your spouse and one of the one of the things that you'll see on these reels on TikTok, I'm sure I don't have TikTok, but Instagram, I'm sure, but I don't have Instagram. You know, all these videos. One of the things you'll see, I'm sure, over and over and over again mentioned is because it's on Facebook, one of the things you'll. You'll see mentioned is a date night. That couples ought to have a date night. Couples ought to have a night where they go out and they spend time with each other. And the whole purpose of date night is to have a relationship with each other. I mean, that's the purpose of it. We do date night because we want to develop and work on our personal relationship with each other. And that's an obvious thing that if you're going to have a dynamic, growing, intimate, strong relationship with someone you got to spend time with, and so then that leads to this. This commandment. That leads to this commandment. And it is. The question has to be, of all the relationships of your life, which is the most important? Of all the relationships of your life, which is the most important. Well, well, obviously of human relationships, the most important relationship of the human sort is the relationship between spouses, is between husband and wife. Why? Because all the other relationships kind of explode from that nucleus. In fact, you know, even when I'm doing wheels for people and they've been married for 60 years, the nuclear relationship right there is the most important one. So when I'm talking to them, it's always this, where do we want our money to go? Well, we always. And it's not even something that is even really discussed. It's just something that comes natural. The first thing is to each other. Meaning if I die, you get it off, you die, I get it off. Then they have a plan for where the rest of the money goes when the last one dies. Why? Because the nuclear relationship there, the most important relationship is the relationship between them. Now, are their children important? Absolutely. In fact, most time they're coming together to take care of their children, to make sure that their children are taken care of and that they have a plan to distribute their assets to their children. Do they care about their parents? Well, if their parents are alive, oftentimes they do. And oftentimes their parents are sitting there, usually only one of them. If they've been married 50 or 60 years and they want to do a will, and, and. And so they're trying to take care of children, nieces and nephews, all the things that are important, those important relationships in life, they're trying to take care of. But the nuclear relationship is the most important one because all other relationships spring from that relationship. And that relationship springs from two nuclear relationships above them. And those relationships are important even if they're broken. They're just really important. So I'll say again, what is the most important relationship in life? Well, it would seem to be that relationship, except that it's not because God exists. There is, there is the spiritual that is beyond the physical. And in fact, the relationship that you have with your spouse is a outgrowth of, of God's work in the world and his desire for relationship with you. And so the most important relationship in the world is a relationship with God. And I think that's obvious for believers. I mean, if you're a Christian, that just makes good sense. If I've got a good relationship with God, usually I'm more equipped to have a good relationship with my spouse, with my children, my co workers, with, with my boss, with my family, all those things. I'm more adept, more apt, more able to have a good relationship with them because I am healthy relationally. Okay, a healthy relationship with your spouse is going to feed down into your children, your family. It's going to help you at work, it's going to help you with your friends. It is. That's true. Well, a healthy relationship with God is going to help not only all those things, but it's also going to help that nuclear relationship with your spouse. And so one of the things we talk about is having a relationship with God. What do you, what do you, how do you understand you can have a relationship with God? How do you walk with God? All those things are important. And if you're not doing those things, you don't have a good relationship. You're not going to have a good marriage. You're going to, you're going to struggle. That marriage is going to have a hole in it and it's going to be a palpable hole. And even though you may love each other, may really look out for each other when you, when God's not a part of it, there just seems to be something missing there. And it's true. And so having said that, having, having come to that conclusion that a relationship with God is important, then the rest of These verses here, 12 through 15, Deuteronomy, chapter 5 makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense when we read it in that constant context. It says, observe the Sabbath day, meaning do your date night, meaning meet with God on the Sabbath. Now, there's a lot of rules that go along with this that the Jews came up with that regulated how to do this. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about these. Commit this commandment. He says, observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy. What he means is set holy means to be set apart. Meaning this is something we're going to do. This is what we do. This is who we are. We have a date night every couple of weeks. We go to church every Sunday. We, we observe the Sabbath. We meet together with God's people, and we meet together with God once a week. We do it. That's, that's just one of those rules that we do. Why? Because that, the, that, that rule helps us have a healthy relationship with God and it helps us have a healthy relationship with other people. If I want to have healthy relationships with other people, I need to have a healthy relationship with my God. It makes me less selfish, it makes me less fearful, it makes me less anxious, it makes me less everything that's bad and makes me more everything that's good. So keep it holy. As the Lord got your God commanded you, meaning God's told you to do. I mean, hadn't I told you to do this? Meet with God, meet with God's people regularly? Six days you shall labor and do all your work. What's God saying? You got, I'm giving you six days to do it all. Do everything you need to do. On this day. I need you to focus on me and focus on relationship. And historically, the church has always done that. Had church. Had church on Sunday morning. Now listen, even in either, even in the deep south here we used to have worship at 11 o'clock. Why did we have worship at 11 o'clock? Well, most of the people were farmers. They were part of an agrarian society. Even if you had a job that wasn't a farm job, you had farm animals you had to take care of. So what did they do in the morning? On Sunday morning? They would get up and handle their animals like they normally would do. Like you had to do every day if you were on a farm. Then they would get inside, they would clean up, they'd put on their best clothes, they would get on whatever they had to ride into town or to the church, which might be as few as several hundred yards away, but might be as long as four or five miles. If they walked to church, they would walk to church, but they'd also carry food. So they would have worship at 11 o'clock. They'd have singing, then they'd have dinner on the grounds. Why? Because they didn't need to have to walk. They didn't want people walking back home, you know, hour, hour and a half, or riding a donkey or riding a horse back home, 20, 30 minutes. And then them having to fix food. Food was already prepared. That food was prepared that morning. And then they would have a meal, have fellowship, talk to people in their community. And then. And then they would maybe even have an afternoon singing where you even feel closer to each other. The kids would play out in the churchyard. They would. They would go around and remember family members because the graveyards were there, they play horseshoes, they do all those things. Then after the singing was over, they'd have a short devotional sermon and they'd head home before dark. And notice all that was that whole day was based off of building relationships, building a relationship with God, building relationships in your community, building relationships with other believers and the kingdom. And then they would go home and do their six days. They do their six days of life and then they'd come back. Now that's in my culture, that's where what would happen here in Alabama, no matter who you were, you were a part of a church most of the time, and you would go and do these things. Why? Well, because that's what we did. We had relationship and we understood that our relationship with God and all the other relationships in the community flowed from that. And so if we didn't do that, we missed out, missed out on a lot. And those type of things are the things that older folks say. I wish we could go back to the old. Wasn't it better in the older days? The reason they would say something like that, it really wasn't better. We didn't have computers, we didn't have all these conveniences, we didn't have these abilities, but we had relationship. We had relationship. That's why they say it was better in the olden days. It really wasn't. There was really nothing technology wise better in the olden days. But what was better is relationships. And an older person saying that is telling you that, I know I've got all these things that make my life easier, but the relationships were better. And that really was the most important thing. He Sundays, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work. And you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any cattle, nor any stranger who is within your gates. That that male servant or female servant may rest as well as you. What he's saying is nobody works. Nobody. Nobody. This is for everyone. And we come up with excuses that are even terrible, worse than this. We come up. Up with excuses that are recreational excuses. We. Well, I had to do this recreationally now. I mean, if you're a nurse or a doctor and you've, you're. You're dealing with people who are imminently sick and. Well, I mean, the Bible, even Jesus told us, you know, if your donkey falls in the ditch, get it out. What does that mean? Well, that means if somebody's, if somebody's in need, a donkey was very important, very valuable piece of property. If it's lost, somebody would have great loss. So. So if you pass someone going to the synagogue and they've got a donkey in the ditch, help them get the donkey out. Why? Because that's life to them. Jesus told us that. We understand that if you, if you're, if you have a job or you have something you do that is life to. Life to someone else, we'll keep doing it. But any other reason not to be with God and not to be with God's people is not a good reason. Because relationships are important. Relationships are important. He says, and remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, meaning you. He's. He's hearkening back again. He's saying, remember you were enslaved to this world. You were enslaved to death. You were enslaved to all the things that are negative and bad. He says, you were slaves in land of Egypt. And the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. He said, I loved you and I delivered you out of Egypt. I delivered you out of this, all this other stuff. He says, and he says, therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. And this is Moses speaking right here, right here at the end. This is him saying it. He says, therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. Why? Because if you don't keep these rel. If you don't. If you don't keep the Sabbath, you really don't. You. You really are not functionally healthily in any relationship. Why? Because if you don't get your, your. Your primary relationships right, the rest of them just seem to not work either. And the primary relationship is between you and God. And secondary relationship is between you and your family, namely if you're older, your spouse, but, but definitely your family. And then, and then it grows out from there. And if you don't have your relationships in line. You don't. You just really don't have anything. And life doesn't seem like it's worth anything either. And so that's why God says, remember the Sabbath. Make sure you do. You observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. Set it apart is something important. And when you think about it that way, you got your lives. You know? That's right. That's exactly right. We do worship, we do fam, we do relationship, we do family. That's what we did, and that's what it's about. And there's nothing better than that. And there's nothing more important. 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.