Deuteronomy 7:1-8 Bible Study | Episode 869

 February 6, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 7:1-8  Bible Study | Episode #869

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 7. We try again this morning. Yesterday I started and I got a couple of minutes in and realized that I was, I was doing the Bible study on my own personal page and, and I've already done that once in the last month or so and I decided that that was, that, that was something that I, I didn't need to have all the Bible studies in different places.

So I, I, I dropped back in back and punted. And uh, I'm back again this morning. Interestingly, as I was coming to do the Bible study, I know I don't do a lot of personal stuff, uh, in the morning, but u in, in my neighborhood decided to be there on my back deck or, or down below in the, in the bushes down below.

Several deer, three or four squirrels were just having a fit on my back deck and, and I'm sure there were raccoons and possums and everything else running around too, but, but it just seemed like everybody in the world was back there having a fit and having fun.

And so I just uh, I had had to jump up real quick and, and run them off and they ran off. They were afraid. I don't know why. But we're in, we're in Deuteronomy chapter 7.

And it is, it is one of those passages that I really think you need to read as a believer because it is a, it is a, it is a passage that give you some historical context as far as how the children of Israel see the world, how the Jewish people in Israel even today see the world.

And it gives you some insight into that, but it also gives us an insight because remember, the Old Testament is our spiritual or stories, true stories, but, but stories nonetheless that give us pictures of New Testament understandings and the understanding of, of the relationship we have with God.

In our covenant relationship with Him. And remember, Jesus is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament cov. He's the sixth covenant. He is the fulfillment of all the covenants. He is the fullness of man come the God man come to, to fulfill the promises of God in the Old Testament.

And other than the Davidic covenant, all the other covenants have already been given. All the other covenants have existed. The Adamic, the no Attic, the Abrahamic and the Mosaic covenants.

All, all four of those covenants are with, and so now.

And the Davidic covenant has a lot to do with the Holy Spirit and with God coming and tabernacling with us and, and his promise of His Son. And so Jesus is kind of the, the prophetic fulfillment of that.

He is the prophetic fulfillment of that. And so when you're, when you're understanding God's telling his children what they must do, their mindset, how they ought to see things, how they ought to see things in their, in their lives, in the way they function as a people in the promised land, is a great understanding.

If you take the principles there and you add them to your life, you realize that's why God says some of the things he says in the New Testament. And that's why Jesus is the way he is.

And that's why we should live a life that is a certain way. And, and, and, and it is spelled out by God in scriptures. And so when you have Deuteronomy chapter 7, it says when the Lord God brings you into the land which you go to possess, notice God's bringing us into his promises and we have to possess them there.

There's a necessity. That's what their parents messed up with. They will refuse to go in and take possession of God's promises. How do I possess it? By faith. I hear God, I believe God.

I act upon it. I possess what he gives and, and has cast out many nations before you. Now notice he's saying he is, he's, he is going to subdue and cast out nations that are more powerful than you.

He's going to provide an opportunity for you that you could have never provided for yourself. And we know that's the case with, with the finished work of Jesus Christ. He can't provide.

We could never provide ourselves an opportunity to be redeemed from sin. He says the Hittites and the Girkashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the parasites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.

Seven nations greater and mightier than you. I always Call them the Ites, all the Ites.

And, and those are seven nations, each one of them that is stronger than them. Meaning God is going to depose or remove completely because number seven is the number of completion.

He's going to remove all these nations from them, and he's going to give them this land.

He says, you shall make no covenant with them.

He says, and, and when the verse 2 and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, no short, nor show mercy to them.

Now remember that God had, had. Had lingered in his destruction of these peoples until, until the fullness of their wickedness was complete. Meaning, meaning that their wickedness when, when the children of Israel went into Egypt was not at completion but over the, over the, over the, the past four centuries, they had moved utter to utter wickedness, which included human sacrifice, which included infant sacrifice and, and all the decadence that could come with that.

And he said, he, he said when their wickedness was full, he was going to give that, that land to his people and remove them and destroy them. And so God says, I'm going to destroy that wickedness.

Now what's the New Testament principle? Well, the New Testament principle is, is that God is here to remove. Not God or wickedness, he is, and he's here to remove it from your life.

And in order to take possession of the promised land, there has to be a cleansing of your heart and your mind and your soul. There has to be a change of who you are.

There has to be a new you come into existence. And so the old has passed away. The new has come.

You have a new, a new spirit. You have opportunity for your heart to be changed, for your mind to be focused on God rather than focused on the flesh.

And you can put to death the things of the flesh. And, and so he says, you shall make no covenant with them, no short, no show nor show mercy to them.

You shall not make marriage with them. You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons. What he's saying is we, we can't marry.

We can't marry the world with God. We can't. There's, there's no tying them in. And marriage is a tying in. And, and, and when I'm doing marriage counseling, first of all, I don't marry people who aren't Christians.

I mean, they can, that if you're not a believer, then you, you can be married, obviously. But I mean, you, you need to, you know, Use the worldly system. Marriage in the context of the church, in the context of, of believers, needs to be marriage between two believers.

That's spelled out in scripture that not be even unevenly yoked. Do not marry an unbeliever. That spelled out in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And you got to remember, this is not about race.

And oftentimes we try to make it about race. Race is a, is really a modern construct. Okay? They didn't understand race. They understand people groups and different tribes and nations, and they might have different colors and shadings and all that kind of stuff, but what, what they understood was, is that I am not to intermarry with these people who are not worshipers of my God.

But by the way, there are people of different colors that are Jews in this, in this setting and, and people that may not have come from the, the line of Abraham, but, but they have joined in the worship of Yahweh and, and they have joined them in the land of Goshen, in the land of slavery in Egypt, and they've been delivered out of Egypt.

And so this has nothing to do with race. This has something to do. This has everything to do with. You shall not marry those who are not worshipers. My. You.

You don't marry people that are not my people.

Why? Because that, that brings in everything that can possibly be destructive for not only, not only the, the people of Israel, but also for you.

That unevenness will be a constant thorn and a constant struggle. And there are a lot of people who, who, who experience that and know what I'm talking about. And many, many are heartbroken and distraught over it even today.

And I deal with that. Many, many, many, many people struggling with a being being married to an unbeliever. And it's, it is a struggle. And once you're married to him, you have to stay with them unless they want to leave.

And, and so it's. It. You have to give them love and give them grace and the whole nine yards. And it's, it's a struggle. And so this is a great commandment he gives them.

Don't do that. For they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other goddess, other gods, so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you.

Suddenly what he's saying is you're going to eventually be, be drawn to those things. And you know as well as I do, when your children marry and they start making their own families, those of you who have children that are doing that, and I'm Right in the midst of it right now that they are going to marry each other's, you know, backgrounds, cultures, family, they're going to marry them together.

And if they're married to someone who doesn't have a knowledge of God, doesn't chase after God, doesn't seek after God, they drag your child away from God. And you see that too.

And I deal with a lot of grandparents and parents who struggle with that also. And those, all those things are important, and they're real important. Teach your children to marry believers, to marry those who, who, who know, know Christ.

If you have that struggle today because your children are doing otherwise, pray for them.

Be love to them. Be, be hope to them, because they, they're. They, they are in a dangerous position. And we know this, we know this in many, many ways. But thus you shall deal with them.

You shall destroy their altars and break down their sacred pillars. He's talking about their places of worship. Cut down their wooden images and burn their carved images with fire. What?

He says, get rid of them. Get them out of here. Don't. Do not leave the vestiges of paganism, of, of worship of other than the one true God. Do not leave that around.

And we know that if you leave it in your life, it's just going to fester. And we know that, all of us know this. For believers, that you're doing this Bible study, I mean, you're seeking after God.

It's obvious. I mean, nobody gets up and listens to me in the morning unless they're, you know, they have a genuine desire to seek after God. It's not like I'm that dynamic.

And it's not like I'm flashy or I tickle the, the senses. But, but we talk about God's word this in the morning. And, and if you're that type of person, you've got to seek God out on these things.

These things are powerful understandings, he says, for you are holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself. Notice God's chosen and pulled them out and taken them to, to be a part of Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples of the face of the earth.

The Lord did not set his love on you, nor choose you, because you are more in number than any other people. For you were the least of all peoples. God didn't choose us because of something that was innately good about us.

He chose us because he loves us, he says. But because the Lord loves you and because he he would keep his oath, which he swore to your fathers. And the Lord has brought you out of out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh, King of Egypt.

Notice he's saying I didn't pick you because there was something innately special about you. You don't have to make yourself okay with me. I chose you because I love you.

And, and, and I want you to choose to walk with me and be separate.

Be in the world, but not of the world. Be different.

Be different for me. And if you'll be different for me, you'll see, you'll see my best. You'll see, my goodness. You'll see the, the, the, the things that are, of the kingdom and the things that are, are life changing and powerful.

And so when we're studying through this and when you're thinking through these passages, think about how the Jews would have taken it when they first heard it. The, the children of, the children of Israel that God delivered out of Egypt.

How would they have taken it? How would later generations read this? And why would they be maybe zealous for God because of this? Because God says, for you are a holy people to the Lord your God, the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself.

That would make you very zealous for God, that that would make you want to serve God. And then, and then when, when you think about that, think about God's people and, and, and when in the times of Jesus and them searching for the answer, them searching for hope and then finding them in him.

And then, and then throughout the, throughout the last two millennium as, as the word of Jesus Christ has gone around the world, think about how God, if God's people have gone back to this passage in Deuteronomy and realized, you know, this is a, this was a plan that goes back, goes back thousands and thousands of years.

In fact, scripture tells us it goes back to the foundation of time and then, and then the realization that you're a part of that and that you ought to, that you ought to be excited about it and that you ought to rapture.

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.