Deuteronomy 5:23-33 Bible Study | Episode 863

January 29, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 5:23-33   Bible Study | Episode #863

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 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 would 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 at the end of the chapter. And oftentimes as we're studying through Scripture, especially when we're studying through Deuteronomy, you, you sometimes, you just lose the context.

You forget what's going on prior to and after. And, and that, that is sometimes very destructive to your really reading of the passage because you, you, you don't realize that the context of the passage is what's going to give you the information, let you know what's actually happening.

And so in reading this passage, in reading the book of Deuteronomy, you have to always remember Moses is talking to the children of, the children of Israel who came out of Egypt.

So he is, he is speaking to those who weren't old enough to go up on the mountain.

They may have been alive going through the Red Sea, but they were probably being carried by their mothers. They, they, they did live in Egypt, but they didn't. Don't remember living in Egypt.

They're not, they don't. That's not something that was, that was a part of their, their, their memory right now. It's not their present memories that matter. They, they are, they are doing the things that they do normally in the wilderness.

Their norm is the wilderness. Their norm is not Egypt. Their norm is not seeing these mighty sites. Their norm is the presence of God being with them at the tabernacle.

Their norm is dealing with these nations around them that are afraid of them because they're so numerous. But they don't really have a homeland. They're really in an area that's not sustainable in the sense of they're gonna, they're.

If they stay where they are in the Sinai wilderness, they're going to be no bads forever. They don't have a homeland where they actually control an area that they could actually live for a long period of time.

Now, God has already given them the promised land 400 years before this, 500 years before this. The promises that were given to Abraham actually are like six, seven hundred years before this.

So they have all the promises of go, God out there. They have all the, all the works of God around them. They, they have God's. God's at work in their presence.

And so when, when, when Moses is telling this story to include giving them the ten Commandments, when Moses is telling them this story, he's telling them in the context of their parents and what their parents did.

Now, one of the things you can't do is you can't fix the mistakes of your parents. You can't do that.

But you can recognize the mistakes, recognize the things that they've done. And especially where it comes to, as we talked about pretty, pretty extensively in this Bible study, especially while we're dealing with Deuteronomy, you can deal with the sins of your father and mother in the sense of, you can evaluate your father and mother, your parents, your grandparents, with a lot of grace, giving them grace for the times and the seasons they lived in, but realizing that they were, let's say, you know, my, my grandmother on my father's side was a very nervous nilly in the sense of.

She was, she was anxious. She was anxious about things and fearful.

That's not an ugly thing. I love my mama. She was a great lady.

She was, she was a wonderful grandmother.

But she was very fearful and anxious. And I know that my dad was fearful and anxious because he grew up with her. Now, was he as fearful and anxious as she was?

No. But was. Did he have that, could you see that in his life? Yeah. Did that get passed on to the. His children? Sure, they did, because we grew up with it.

We grew up in that. Not as much as grandmother, but a little bit with father. And so that's with me. So me being full of grace and evaluating those things, it's.

It's an issue.

So I got to deal with it. And that's true of really everything that goes on in your life. You can just do that. You can go through. Okay, why am I, why do I struggle with this?

Well, first thing, go look and see where you came from.

And by the way, sometimes you can see where you came from and you can see how your parents mitigated from their grandparents. Like, my father was not as fearful and anxious as my grandmother.

How was that? Well, probably from God's word, probably from growing in his faith and in his walk with God, he realized that to be fearful and to be anxious about all these things was painful and devastating and struggle.

And he could see that in his mother. And he probably. He probably allowed his faith, his trust in God to mitigate that, to. To lower the. The damage that comes from that.

That's probably what he did. I'm not saying that's for sure, every bit of it, but, yeah, that's how it works. And so when we look at our parents, when we look at our, our background, the, the we.

We need to see the good things that God has given us from our family. I have a heritage of faith, which is a wonderful thing. I have. I have many, many blessings that have been passed down from.

From not only my parents, but my grandparents and their. Their parents, my great grandparents, Great, great blessings that have been passed down. But you do, because, you know, obviously in Exodus and Deuteronomy, God says, you know, the sins of the father passed to the second third generation.

I need to really kind of look at it and go, I need to look at it and go, okay, yeah, I see that. And I don't want to pass that down to my children.

Now. The problem is, is that my children are already out of the house.

And so in some ways, some of those things that I was dealing with as a young adult and learning to not walk in as much as a young adult still in some ways got passed.

And remember all those things. The sins of the father passed to the second third generation. Remember it Always the next. The next line is, but the grace of God's to a thousand generations, meaning when you start adding God's grace to these things, it's not a, you know, two or three generation issue.

It becomes a. A permanent grace issue that God works out for a thousand generations. Meaning once, once you add grace to it, it, it. It begins to really move toward God and toward God's best.

And so that's important. That's important that, that we do that. And so when we're reading this passage and I'm gonna read it in detail and just kind of go through it, it's important to see that Moses is telling them that in, in the context he says.

So it was when you heard.

Now he's placing them in the, in the shoes of their parents. He's selling, telling them, as a nation. You heard this. So it was just like if I was talking about, you know, the, the founding of our country.

So you as a nation were doing these things. Well, we weren't Doing it. I mean, that was 250 years ago, 275 years ago, 300 years ago. You know, it was a long time ago.

We weren't doing it, but, yeah, we. We as a people were doing it. He says, so when you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness while the mountain was burning with fire, that you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders.

Meaning? Meaning that they came to the foot of the mountain. They didn't come up onto the mountain, but they came to the foot of the mountain, which means that it wasn't like they were unwilling to even deal with God.

They weren't rejecting God. They just weren't dealing with God the way God wanted them to deal with him. The way God had revealed that he desired for them to deal with him, which would mean he wanted to speak with the children of Israel, just like he spoke with Moses face to face.

He wanted intimate relationship with all of them. And you said, surely the Lord our God has shown us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice from the midst of the fire.

We have seen this day that God speaks with man, yet he. Yet he still lives. Okay, We've seen that God can speak to us and we can survive, but that doesn't mean that we want him to do it regularly.

I mean, really, that's what happened here. That's really what went on. He said, you know, we know that God speaks to us. I mean, we don't want to do it all the time.

And that's what happened.

And Moses is telling them that. And that's important for them to get that. They. They really. They really kind of, you know, didn't want a full measure of God.

We know we can speak from the fire now and that people can hear God and not be killed now. Therefore, why should we die?

For the great fire will consume us if we hear the voice of the Lord our God anymore, then we shall die. What they're saying is, is we've heard you now gotta.

We gotta have some intermediary between us and you.

Wow. Really? Really? Because what that means is, is they went a ways to God, but they weren't willing to go all the way to God. He says. He says, for who are there of all flesh, who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the midst of the fire as we have and live?

You go near and hear all that the Lord our God may say and tell us all that the Lord our God says to you, and we will hear it and do it, what he says is, Moses, you go up there and talk to God.

Now, if Moses, a fleshly man, could go up there and talk to God, they could go up there and talk to God. And by the way, it reveals an aspect of the human nature that causes problems in, in Christianity, and it causes problems in church.

It's a sin nature.

People want other people to go speak with God and come tell them what God says.

Okay, and what happens is that obviously you've got bold young men who God calls to the ministry, and then they go and they speak with God and they deal with God and they regularly deal with God and then they come and speak as if they have authority.

Just like, you know, they marveled at Jesus, they marveled at the disciples. They marveled over time just throughout Scripture, marveling, marveling, marveling that these people, unlearned men in acts. How, how do these rednecks from Galilee know all this stuff?

Well, because they talk God, you know, how did, how did Moses know all this stuff? HE stutters. Talk to God. You just keep going through Scripture. How does you know.

How's the, you know, Israelites from Israel? How do, how do they know these things? How can, how can they do this? How can they be in this, this, this furnace over here and, and still live?

Well, they talk to God. They talk to you. All of them talk to God. All right, and then what do we, what do we do? We place those men on a pedestal as if they are God and they're not God.

And that's the problem. When you put someone between you and God as an intermediary for you, between you and God, you're not talking to God face to face. You're talking to somebody who's flawed and who's likely to fail you in some way.

Just being honest. That mean that's me and, and that. That's anybody who is trying to teach you or guide you to God, whether it's your Bible study teacher, whether it's that older lady that's kind of mentored you through life, whether it's, I mean, whoever it is, when they've helped you try to get to God, try to learn how to deal with God and work with God.

When you get to that place, you begin to want them to tell you what God says.

And that is the fatal flaw of, really, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the New Testament.

You say, well, I thought the fatal flaw was when they, when they sinned in the garden. Yeah, that, that was a pretty bad one. But the fatal one, the One that makes it where it's really hard to.

To really experience God in its fullness. The way he wants us to experience him is their failure to really go and deal with God themselves personally.

And that's what the whole New Testament's about. I mean, Jesus says, I know no longer call you servant. I call you friend. Because the servant doesn't know his master's business, but you know my business, so you know, you're my friend.

All these intimate relationships that we have in life, Jesus is the embodiment of those. What he's saying is, I want to be. I want to be close to you.

And the children of Israel said, now you go up there and talk to God. Then the Lord heard the voice of the words when they spoke to me. And the Lord said to me, I've heard the voice of the words of these people which they have spoke to you.

They are right in that, in what they've spoken. I mean, they're right in that, you know, I am powerful and, and they, they're right in saying that they can hear my voice.

And, and that they, they now they know that you can actually hear the voice of God. He says, oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear me and always keep my commandments.

What he's saying is this, that would be fine. All this would be fine if they had a heart that wasn't prone to wander away from God. They would hear God's commandments, they would do them, and everything would work out great.

But that's not what's going to happen. You can't walk. You can't have the law, the Commandments and walk in them. You will not do it. That's what he's saying here.

You will not do this. You will not walk in the law. You won't do it. It's not possible.

Okay. He's saying, look, I wish they could, but they can't. I know because I made them and I know what's going on around here, and they can't do that. I wish they could.

I wish I could give them the Commandments and they walk in the statutes, and they had a heart of faith and they would do it all the time, and they never wander away from it.

I wish that that's what would happen when this happens, but it's not.

The answer to that is, but it won't. It won't happen.

He says, go and say to them, return to your tents.

He said, let's just read 29 again. Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear me and always keep all my commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever.

Go and say to them, return to your tents. But as for you, stand here by me and I will speak to you all the commandments, the statutes and the judgments which you shall teach them that they may observe them in the land which I'm giving them to possess.

And what he's saying is, okay, you stay here, Moses, because you will speak with me face to face. You were willing to come upon the mountain, remember? Moses was willing to go see this mighty work, this burning bush, this bush that burned but wasn't consumed.

Moses was willing to go into the presence of God.

When God said, take off your sandals, for this is holy ground, he didn't kick off his sandals running away, okay? He took off his sandals and he entered into the presence of God.

So Moses was willing to do that. And so God says, but they're not going to be willing to do that. Okay? But as for you, you stand here and I'll tell you all the precepts for them to live by.

But they're not going to do that. They're not going to do it. And it's going to going to require something else. The law is not going to be sufficient for them.

It's going to be sufficient for proving that they can't do it, okay? That's what the sufficiency of the law is going to be for them. They can't do it, okay?

Therefore, you shall be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right or the left. Moses saying, don't turn from what I'm telling you that God said, but you would have been better.

But why wouldn't you been better off to hurt it yourself?

Yeah, they would have been, but they didn't.

You shall walk in all your ways which the Lord your God commanded you, that you may live, and that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which you shall possess.

He's saying that God wants you to be blessed by him. And the only way for you to do it now is for you to follow the commandments because you don't have the personal relationship.

But there's another way. The fullness of the law is embodied in the final covenant, in the final sacrifice. And that is Jesus Christ.

And he makes it a way so that you can actually be intimate and close to God. Because God goes from living in a tent made by men Living in a building, a temple made by man, to living in the hearts of individuals.

And so now I can draw near to God if I want to, because he's in me. He's inside of me.

He's. He's a part of who I am.

And that's how we get through the intermediary issue. And by the way, the intermediary issues is interesting as I think about it.

You know, in my. In my whole career, there's always.

There's always an intermediary issue. There's an intermediary issue between financial transactions. There's an intermediary issue in regard to. To, you know, the legal system.

You know, it'd be better off if you go in front of any good judge, they'll say, you know, it'd be better off. Y'all go and handle this and come to a.

A reasonable settlement of the issue. Because you don't want me to make the decision. Because if I make the decision, you're not going to like the decision. And every time that happens, it's true, nobody ends up liking what he said, but they'd been better off coming to their own agreement so that they could live by it.

And I think about that all the time. All the time. Marriage relationships, need of counselor. We always are looking somebody to mediate our problems.

And the truth is, God is the ultimate mediator. God's the one who ultimately fixes those issues. And.

And. And if you want to really know what it is to spiritually have life, you got to deal with the intermediary, and that is Jesus Christ, which means you got to go into the throne room and talk to God personally, and Jesus is right there.

And the Holy Spirit, the Godhead, is available, but you got to go do it.

And the sad part of the Old Testament is that they would not go up that mountain.

So we have to have all the other stuff that happens from now till we get to Malachi.

And then finally, we have an intermediary who comes, who we can actually have personal relationship with Him.

He is the promised one. He is Emmanuel.

God with us 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.