Deuteronomy 7:12-16 Bible Study | Episode 871

 February 10, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 7:12-16 Bible Study | Episode #871

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 Morning Bible study. We are in Deuteronomy chapter 7, Deuteronomy chapter 7 and verses 12 through 16. It is God well illuminating, spelling out his promises.

He's already told, told the children of Israel Moses has about God's command to keep his commandments, to keep his will, to keep his ways.

Oftentimes we get caught up in, in the actual physical word that we're translating rather than trying to think about, okay, what is the thought here? And by the way, that is the revelation of God is the thoughts of God because the human, the human language is limited and God is not limited.

So when I'm thinking about God's word, I need to think about exactly what he said. And because we don't know Greek and Hebrew, sometimes it's hard. That being said, I always tell people, blueletterbible.com

will help you with that. If you want to know language, you can go on there and you click on the verse, and when you click on the verse, it will bring up all the words.

And when it brings up all the words, you can look words up especially to get some context for how they're used in the rest of scripture, that words used in the rest of scripture and, and then how it's, how it is translated in different places because that lets you get an idea of the idea.

And really that's what God has given us. He is giving us his heart. He's given us the ponderings, the thoughts, the understandings of his existence, who he is. And so when you're reading God's Word and when you're studying God's word, that's what you're doing.

You're getting the heart and the ponderings and the thoughts of God. And as you get those things, as you get the thoughts of God, as you understand those things, oh, well then, then you, you, you know God, you.

And that's what God's words all about. That's what God's revelation to us is all about, that we might know him and that he might be intimate with us and know us.

And so when we're reading, when we're reading the God's Word, when we're studying it, we want to get the heart of God. And, and that's the heart of this passage is his blessing.

It says in verse 12, then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them. Notice he uses the word judgments here. Earlier. He's used statutes and commandments.

In fact, the verse before it, he says, he says, therefore you shall keep the commandments, the statutes, the judgments which I give you or command you today to observe them.

What he's saying is he uses three words in a row there, three Hebrew words in a row there. And he is telling us that these are what I'm telling you to do.

These. You can take it as a commandment, you can take it as a statute. What is a statute? Pastor well, the, what we call the Code of Alabama, meaning the laws of Alabama, the statutes, the individual code, the individual law that is written is called a statute.

And it's, it refers to what, what the, the government of Alabama says should be done in this situation. And remember, statutes don't necessarily have to be a law against be a criminal law.

It can be a statute on how a governmental organization runs. It can be a statute on how taxes are going to be collected. It can be a statute about all kinds of things.

And so when we have, when we have a statute, when we have his judgments, meaning he's taken a situation and he's given us the judgments that we have. And by the way, all these are legal terms.

He says, he says, you keep my judgments, meaning when you're reading in the Old Testament, a situation happened, and then God said this ought to take place or do this.

What he's saying is I'm applying my character, my nature, in my commandments and in my statutes, and I'm giving you judgments where you can see, okay, this is what happened.

And so this, this is what God said do. And, or this is what God said according to his will or his statutes to do, and boom, I'm doing them, okay?

And, and that's the whole reason for studying God's word and reading God's word on a regular basis. That's the whole reason for it.

So that you can, you can kind of know how God sees the world. You can know his thoughts. You can know his, his heart and, and we know that by what he says, what he tells us to do.

He says, he says, if you, if you listen to my judgments and you keep them, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which he swore to your fathers, meaning he's going to give you all his promises and then he's going to give you mercy, man, and he's going to give you that which you don't deserve.

You. You didn't do anything for. It's not, it's, it's not something that you earned. I'm going to give it to you because you know, I'm going to give you my mercy.

And he says, and he will love you and bless you and multiply you.

Notice he's saying, I'm, I'm going, I'm going to love you and I'm, I'm going to bless you and I'm going to give, make. I'm going to multiply him. I'll make more and more and more of you and, and notice straight that he starts out with his promises saying I'm going to keep my covenant covenants and I'm.

And I'm going to give you mercy, but I'm gonna love you and I'm gonna bless you and I'm gonna make there to be more and more of you. And I really do believe the having of children, the growing of your family is a blessing from God.

It is a blessing from God. And everybody knows when you have one of those little ones, it is a blessing. And he says he will also bless the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your land, the.

Your grain. Notice he's going to not only give you more children, but he's going to give you more produce from your land. He's going to make your land very productive.

Your grain and your new wine and your oil, the grains a picture of the word of God.

The wine is a picture of the goodness of God. The oils picture of the power of God. I'm going to increase your cattle and the offspring of your flock. Meaning I'm not only going to bless the wombs of.

Of your women, but I'm gonna bless the wounds of your female animals. I'm gonna make sure that you get an increase of your cattle and an increase of your flock and the land which he swore to your fathers to give you.

He says, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make sure in that land that you're getting all the produce. A. Over an abundant supply of produce. I Think about when in the 18, late 1800s, when Mark Twain went to Israel and, and he, he went to all these places that we read about in the Bible, and they were desolate and they were, they were, they were, they were empty.

No one was there. There was no people there. There were just a bunch of Bedouins that wandered around. Not. And when I say a bunch, I don't mean a lot of them.

I'm just saying here and there you would see some Bedouin herdsmen. But all these cities and these places where God gave them the blessing were desolate. They were completely desolate.

And then, then not long after that pogrom happened in Europe and Israel, the Israelis began to, the Jews began to go back to Israel and that was. The speed of their return to Israel increased over time.

And there were, there were many others who went to that land in the late 1800s, and they saw nothing. And it was, it was, it was a desert. It was nothing.

And then as, as, as the, as the persecution of the Jews came, they, they began to go more and more into Israel and they began to, to be in the land that God promised them and they produced.

The land became a beautiful, wonderful farmland. It is, it is, it is, it is a. Now they have a, they have a water canal that links all the available water sources from the north to the south.

They, they, they have, they have vineyards and, and grasslands and, and it is a beautiful land. Now, in, just, in just about 130, 140, 150 years, it's been transformed. Why?

Well, because God's people heard his commandments and they began to do what he said and, and they began to come together. And, and when you go to Israel, the Jews in Israel are even the ones that are not necessarily conservative Jews.

They, they are biblically. They, they're biblically knowledgeable and they, they, they worship God.

They worship the God of the Old Testament. They don't know Yeshua. They don't know Jesus as well, but you know, they do know Jesus. They just, they're just not made Him Lord yet.

But, but the land is, is back being what it was, a bountiful blessing to them. Why? Because God's a God of his promises, and those promises are not the gift.

And the call of God are irrevocable. And when God gives you a promise, it's a gift he gives you. You didn't earn it. You didn't. You didn't deserve it. When he gives you that gift, he keeps it.

And when you don't walk in his statutes and his ways, you lose it. But that doesn't mean you lose the. You lose the gift. You lose the result of the gift.

You lose the. The result of the promise. And, and God says, I'm. I'm going to keep my promises if you do what I say. If you do, I've commanded you.

If you do what I've judged you, if you do do what I've told you.

If you do my heart. I will do my heart to you. He says, you shall be blessed above all people. There should not be a male or female barren among you and among your livestock.

And the Lord will take away from you all sickness and, and will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of the Egyptians which you have known, but will lay them on, on all those who hate you.

Notice, he says, I'm going to take care of you, and I'm. I'm going to make you well. I'm going to make you strong. I, I think about that even in regard to our church and, and we, the first five years of our existence, we, we didn't have anyone pass away.

And we went through the, the.

The pandemic during that time period had no one in our church pass away.

I really think that was a promise of God to give us strength and to give us moving forward an opportunity to, to grow and to become a plant with deep roots and, and the ability to, to do big things.

And you go, well, and then, then, then the question always comes, why is he taking folks now? Well, you know, God won't. God gets chance. Take the ones he. He really likes a whole lot home.

And we've lost several, three or four over the last six months. And, and each one of them a servant of God. Each one of them loved God with everything they had.

And that's, that's a powerful testimony also of a life faithfully lived in, in the. In a kingdom that was worked on and built, uh, by people of faith. And then, and then, uh, and then God calls them home.

He said. He said in verse 16 also, you shall destroy all the peoples whom the Lord your God delivers over to you. Your eyes shall have no pity on them, nor shall you serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you.

What he's saying is, is you do what's right and you take my promises. And you don't allow the things of this world or the kingdoms of this world or the ways of this world to dissuade you or take you off the path that he says for you.

You keep walking that path and you keep doing what God has told you to do and he's going to give you over and abundantly more than you ever could imagine.

And he's going to keep his promises with you. And so I would say to you this morning, especially as we head into the holiday season, pretty heavy here, I would say to you that, that God's promises are yes and Amen.

They are true.

He keeps them who? Those who persevere and walk with him day and night. He keeps his promises. He's a promise keeping God. He's going to do the big things for you.

You've got to learn to trust him and you got to learn to walk in his will and his way.

And I expect you to do that. I expect you to do that. I expect you to have his best and to know him and to be his, his people because you seek Him.

And if you seek me.

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.