Deuteronomy 8:6-10 Bible Study | Episode 874

February 13, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 8:6-10   Bible Study | Episode #874

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.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. 

Please follow us:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church

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 8. Deuteronomy, chapter 8, verses 6 through 10. And as we study through this, in all actuality, oftentimes we, we, we focus in the church on, on dealing with people who are struggling with things.

I mean, and who's not really struggling with things. You have, you have people who may not be struggling with anything personal, but they're struggling with other people struggling with things.

You know, you might have someone who's, you know, gotten their children out of the house, they're doing great, they've got grandchildren, and then, and they're earning the most money they've earned in their whole life, which is normal for someone in that age.

And then their parents get sick. Their parents are struggling. And so they're not struggling, but their parents are struggling and they're struggling with their parents. And so, you know, oftentimes we deal with the struggle in church.

But I will tell you this, that the thing that causes people to really, to miss out on God a lot and to wander away from God is usually not the struggle.

The struggle oftentimes brings you closer to God because you don't have an answer and you can't find within yourself an answer. And there's one thing that I have found that is almost that is real difficult for people to open their eyes and to see that God is a need for their lives, and that is wealth.

And the thing that causes Christians oftentimes to wander away from God and to fall into the struggle is prosperity. And you go, well, aren't those two separate things? No, not necessarily.

Prosperity can be. Things are going well in your life, and it can involve money, but it, it mainly just involves you doing well and you being more prosperous than you were before, having more resources, assets, opportunities, all kinds of things.

Way more prosperous than you were before.

And those things are. Well, they're powerful.

Wealth itself can change a person and can make them such that they're cold toward God, cold toward God's Holy Spirit, cold toward God's will.

I've definitely seen that in my ministry, where you're just dealing with a group of people who really don't need.

They don't feel like they need God.

And even one of the churches in the book of the Revelation, he says, you say you're rich, but you're really blind, poor, naked, pitiful.

And he's telling them, your wealth is fleeting, your wealth is a hindrance to you. And then he recommends that they purchase from him, meaning they take what they consider of such great value of the world, and they purchase, they sell out on that, and they purchase from him.

You know, save for their eyes and clothing, for their, for their sinfulness and all, you know, it's a problem. It's a problem for wealth. I mean, even Jesus said, you know, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle and a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

And there's all kinds of interpretations about that. And we could go into that and spend a couple of days on Bible studies about that, about what that really means. But let me tell you what it really means.

It means if you are wealthy, it's more difficult to realize that you need God and everyone needs God, just not everybody knows it. And so it's very difficult for you to do that.

Now, for Christians who walk with God, there is, there is something that's going to happen for you. Okay? You're, you're, you're struggling with.

All the things that you struggle with when you enter into the kingdom are going to be less now. You may trade them for new struggles which are, are, are an indication of God's working in your life.

You, you, you trade the, the struggle to survive for the struggle to grow there. That you trade for trade. And the struggles that you trade for are great.

They indicate to you God's presence and his power and his movement in your life. So I'm not saying that Jesus said, in this world, you will have trouble, but do not fear.

I've overcome the world. It doesn't matter whether you're a lost person, you're going to have struggle. If you're a believer, you're going to have some struggle. Why? Well, because God's going to trade the struggles of the lostness of your life.

He's going to trade those struggles for, for the things that cause you to Grow the salvific process. Really, he's going to, he's going to trade, trade those things for you so that you can really kind of figure out you got to grow, you got to grow up.

And so, and so when we, when we talk about this, there are, there are great struggles that come from that. And oftentimes what happens is, is you do begin to prosper.

And remember, I'm not talking about wealth, I'm talking about prospering. You do better, you do well. You begin to not have those, those life or death issues as much. And, and you begin to have these, these things that, that are indications that, you know, God's poured his blessing out on you.

And what happens then?

Well, you get focused on the blessing rather than the blesser. And before you know it, you begin to wander away from God. And verses 6 through 10 is an explanation of what God's going to give them.

He's defining the promises that he's going to give them in the promised land. And they are very material because God does materially bless his children. He does. When you begin to walk with God, you're going to see prosperity.

Why? Because you're really going to engage the life that God always meant for humanity to have. You're gonna, you're gonna engage the freedom that comes in Christ Jesus. You're gonna, you're gonna engage the life that is in him.

And now in you, you're gonna, you're gonna engage, you're no longer gonna be chasing after the things of, of yourself and your own, your own wickedness, but you're gonna be chasing after the things that are good things from God.

And there's gonna be good that comes from it. There's gonna be prosperity. You're gon.

It's hard to get people to realize, you know, if I'll chase after God over a long period of time, you know, after, after a couple of years, you look back and you'll go, it seems like you're not moving at all.

And then you look back and realize, wow, you know, I am moving. God really is, really has been blessing me and I've really, I've really, my position in life has changed a lot.

And that's because, you know, when you engage that life and that, and that will, that is, it's his and not yours. You know, you're going that only goodness that can come from it because you were engaging the source of goodness.

And so he says, therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God to walk in his ways and to fear Him. Meaning you're going to walk by faith with Him.

You know, you're going to hear. Hear his revelation.

You're going to walk in that revelation and you're going to. You're going to realize his, that he's sovereign. You're going to realize that healthy fear of God that, that realization that he's.

He's God and you're not. And that's the fear of the Lord. It's the beginning of understanding, it's beginning of wisdom. So he says, for the Lord, your God is bringing you into the land.

And notice he says, it's a land of brooks and water and fountain and springs that flow out of the valleys and the hills. What he's saying is, you're not going to worry about water.

Why? Because I'm a wash in the Word. There's going to be washing that goes on in the Word. You don't have to worry about water.

The water is a picture of the cleansing of the Holy Spirit. It's also the refreshing of the Holy Spirit. You're going to be refreshed.

Your life is going to have some. You know, when you used to have all that hopelessness, not going to be hopeless anymore. You're not always going to be, you know, excited and fired up.

You're going to have times where you struggle.

But you have a source of hope and you have a source of strength, and you have a source of joy. And so there's going to be some that in the land you're going into, there's going to be a chance for refreshing.

There's going to be a chance to be refreshed. Okay, notice a land of wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, palm granites, a land of olive oil and honey.

And I can go into what all these represent, but they are the blessings of God. Wheat and barley, you know, represents the revelation of God, the Word of God. Vines and fig trees, that, that represents the goodness of God.

The vineyards and, and, and the fruit of the fig tree is representation of the goodness of God. And pomegranates, they, you know, goodness of God. And then land of olive oil and honey.

Olive oil's power of God. Honey is the, the deep understandings of God. The really, really knowing, Knowing God, right? And he's saying, I'm gonna give you food that is. And if you'll read this list of food, I mean, it's, it's, it's a sustaining diet.

It's something that you're gonna, you're not gonna have to worry about where the next source of hope comes from. You've got it right here, you've got all the food you need.

You're not gonna have to worry about manna from heaven. I'm gonna give you a land that, with your, with your engaging your faith and trusting me and working it, it's going to produce a blessing to you and to your family, and you're not going to worry about that.

He says, a land which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you'll lack nothing.

That's pretty good.

And, and, and when a believer comes to God and begins to walk in that, and they get that prosperity oftentimes, what do they do?

They go back and reinvested in the world and, and God says that, says, why would you do that? But we do, we do. And I see a lot of believers and it happens a lot.

They, they start walking with God, they start expansion, his prosperity. They start heading back toward the world. They take that prosperity and say, I'm all, I'm going to go and get what I used to want out of the world.

And he says, a land whose stones are iron and out of whose heels you can dig copper. And that's a source of power.

Iron and copper, you know, those were the strength of militaries. In fact, we even name ages in history past the Iron Age, the Copper Age, the Stone Age. Why do we call them that?

Well, because the, the, the, the societies and the, and the nations or people groups that gained strength and gained, gain power during those times, they used that either stone, iron, copper, they use that brass, they use that for their military.

And it was evidence of their strength, how much they could mine and use to create military equipment. That's just a historical fact. But what God's saying is, I'm going to make you, I'm going to protect you.

You're going to have protection of military strength, and I'm going to give you a land that provides that protection. So I've got a land that's going to give me refreshing, it's going to give me a continual source of the cleansing of God.

I'm going to have a land that gives me not only the food that I need, but it's going to give me more than the food that I need. It's going to give me the power of God and the goodness of God.

I'm going to have a land that doesn't have scarcity to it. It's an abundant land. It's a land that's going to provide everything that I need and I'm going to have military strength.

I'm going to have the power of God available to me. And he says, when you notice verse 10, when you've eaten and are full, then you bless the Lord your God for the good land which he has given you.

What he's saying is, don't walk away from it. Don't, don't step away from it. And you know, as we, as we get to the end of the year here, we oftentimes do step away from it.

I see it all the time. And then they fall back into what they used to be doing. And as they fall back into what they used to be doing, they slowly sink into the despair and the destruction that plagued them before.

And they have to remember God and come back to Him. And, you know, that's a natural process. I'm not saying that. I'm not condemning those who do that. I'm telling you that that's the natural process.

And you've got to remember God. He said, when you've eaten your full, when you realize that you're walking in the blessing, you need to bless God, you need to praise God for it, and you praise God for the land which he's given you.

And you need to recognize that. And you know, oftentimes we have in our worship service two altar calls. The first one is to prepare to hear the Word. It's in the picture of the temple or the tabernacle.

It's your bringing yourself as a living sacrifice. So you lay yourself on the altar, and that's all the struggles that you have and all the blessings that God's given you.

You're laying those things on the altar.

And then the second one is where you go into the Holy of Holies and you've heard from God and you. And you covenant with God to do what he has told you to do personally.

He's given you his revelation through His Son, and he's applied it to your life during the worship service. And then he says, go out and do these things, be this person, grow in this way, get away from this stuff, whatever he's told you to do by his revelation.

And you covenant with him to do those things.

The first altar call is an altar call that is for laying down the things of the world, washing off the, the dust of the world. When Jesus washed His disciples feeds for washing that off.

And it also can be a time for great, you know, blessing God, realizing God's done some great stuff for you, and you come into the altar for to honor him with a blessing and that's a good way to stay in the midst of his will is to continually recognize the source of, of the goodness that you are experiencing.

And so you ought to spend time blessing God for, for the source of the blessing that he's giving you to experience.

And, and ultimately that's what God's saying here. I'm fixing to give you some really good stuff.

You have to learn to use it and to use it well. Do it so that it works well for you. And, and he's saying, I want you to. I want you to experience my best.

And so I pray that that'll be the case for you as we head into 2025, that you will see the blessings of God that are in your life, that you'll recognize them for what they are and that you'll bless God for them so that you might experience them more and more fully 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, and that he will.

Give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.