Deuteronomy 8:11-20 Bible Study | Episode 875

 February 14, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 8:11-20   Bible Study | Episode #875

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 8. And, well, we've come on one of those passages where, where God is just as straightforward as he possibly can be, about where your increase comes from, where, where.

Where the goodness of life comes from. And it comes from him. And it's obvious, but it's very seductive. It's very seductive in the Christian life. And when I say seductive, I mean seductive by yourself.

You. You seduce yourself. And what I mean by that. Well, let's go back to the. Just one of the original understandings. Everybody in the world worships something.

And those th. That something generally can follow in fall in three categories. Okay, you either worship the one true God that means the God who created everything, or you worship.

You either worship him or you worship something he made outside of yourself. Meaning, you know, the sun, the moon, the stars, the angels, the, the, the demons, the, the, the wealth, power, energy, prosperity, whatever, something that is outside of yourself, something beyond that's not God, but something he made and not you, but something he made.

Okay, so that's, that's kind of clear and, and an obvious understanding, or you worship yourself.

Now, the seductive meaning, the one that is easily done and the one that is easily a problem is those who worship themselves.

And, and that is most people. And that is the seductive aspect of worshiping, of worship for a believer.

It is, it is. It is how even when you're thinking about when Jesus was tempted by Satan, if you'll notice, Satan was asking Jesus to worship him, but he was giving Jesus.

He was offering Jesus stuff that would be for Jesus's benefit. Okay? He was offering him power. He was offering him influence. He was, he was offering him things that, that would have food.

He was offering him things that would been for his benefit, his best. And in a way, Satan was trying to. He was revealing his methodology. He. His methodology is to get you to worship him by getting you to worship yourself, which is really strange.

But Satan does realize that humanity has a innate liberty about us.

We.

We. We are. We were made by God to be free. And so he can't. It's hard for him to enslave us unless we let him enslave us. And so the only way for him to do that is.

Is to offer us things that will that. That. That are appealing to the flesh.

And so when you're a Christian and, and when you're walking with God and when you're seeing God's best go on around you and you begin to see the hand of God at work, you.

You begin to recognize, oh, that's God doing that. Yeah, yeah, God is actually real. God's actually alive God. It's, it's fun, actually, for, for new believers to see them realize, you know, there really is a God.

You know, there's a great hope. And we use that hope in the, in the terms of faith. That's one of the ways you can translate faith. But it's, It's. It's a, it's.

It's the word hope. There's a great hope that, yes, there is a God and that I. And I can have, you know, life and I can be delivered from all this mess that I'm in.

That happens for believers all the time that they want to. They want that hope that when they're, when they first come to Christ, they. They just got to get out of what they're in.

It's just killing them, and they turn toward God. And when they do that, there's a great hope that, that this is the answer. And it is. It is the answer.

Jesus is the. Is the answer. But when they realize in a. In a very concrete way in their lives that God really is at work, I mean, he really is doing this stuff for you.

He really does love you. He really. He really does have a plan for you. I mean, when you start walking down that path with God, you know, you repent and turn from your ways and you turn toward God and his ways.

And then all of a sudden you. You come to the realization, you know, God's really in charge of this thing. He. He really has some good stuff in the world and in life for me to, for me to benefit from.

When you have that innate realization, when that, when that realization begins to permeate your life, the seductive thing is to.

When you begin to see his blessings is to think you did it, which is crazy.

Which is really crazy, but it's true. We do. Well, you know, I help God.

And you don't even say that. You don't even say that out of your mouth, but in your heart. Well, you know, I, I chose you. I chose you. God, I, I, I, I, I was smart enough to decide to walk with you, and you didn't.

You weren't.

You did nothing. You, you did nothing. And the neat thing about that is for a person who comes to that position and then realizes I did nothing, that opens you up to everything in God, in the kingdom of God.

What do you mean by that? Well, when you realize that you didn't do anything and you haven't been doing anything, and you're just, you're just walking with, with God, with, with the king.

You're, you're, you're, you're riding the king's coattails, and you are, when you realize that, then you're open to everything. You get to experience it all.

And you don't. You, you no longer try to in any way receive, give yourself glory in it. You, you, you didn't do it.

I don't do these things. God does them. I, I, he, he does them as a reward to me trusting Him. But, but he doesn't. And that's what this passage really is about.

At the end, when God's trying to get them to make sure that they remember, he says in verse 11, beware that you do not get. Forget that the Lord your God, by not keeping his commandments, make sure that you don't forget the Lord your God, his judgments, his statutes, which I command you today.

Notice he uses that phraseology a lot here, especially in Deuteronomy. Don't forget the Lord your God. Keep his commandments, his judgments, his statutes. What he's saying is, don't try to parse out what God's telling you.

I want to keep his commandments, but you know, this is just a judgment. This is just something God made a judgment about. And I put that aside. Now he says his judgments too.

And by the way, his statutes meaning anything that's ancillary, just anything out there that is a message from God, keep it. To keep his commandments. You know, the big ten, all the other stuff we, we see in Scripture where God says, thou shalt do that, you keep those, you keep all his judgments meaning all, all the things that God has revealed to you about how life is to be lived, how he judges things, how he, how he reasons through things, and, and, and any other, any other revelation that you might get from God is statutes.

Keep them, keep them. He's commanding you to keep them, lest when you have eaten and are full and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them, this God's best right you're seeing.

I'm getting full food, full house. When your herds and flocks multiply great wealth, he says, and your silver and your gold are multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, everything is being blessed, all the blessings.

When your heart is lifted up, meaning when you're happy, you're jubilant, you're joyful over what God has done, and you forget the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage, meaning you're so elated, you're so high on life that you forget that God brought you out.

You forget from where you came from.

It's a terrible thing for a person to forget where they came from, okay? Because if you've gone anywhere with God, remembering where you came from helps you understand the plan of God in your life.

Who led you through the great and terrible wilderness in which you were in which were fiery serpents and scorpions, a thirsty land where there was no water, who brought water to you out of the flinty rock, who led you in the wilderness with manna which your fathers did not know.

And he might humble you that he might test you to do good in the end. Meaning to trust him, to walk by faith. He's saying. He's saying, look, when everything is going good and you are walking in my will and my way, and you're experiencing the blessings of it, don't forget.

Don't forget where you came from. Don't forget what I brought you out of. Because in that is where my glory is. It is.

I can take that God's glory, His greatest glory is to take that which is dead and make it alive. He has power over sin and death, to they take that which is broken, that which is that which is sick, and heal it and make it right, which is his resurrection power, okay?

His great glory is. Is that he is preeminent over all of creation, including he is. He has power over sin and death. He. He. He. He has power over his creation to include power over the results of sin.

And by forgetting where you came from, you. You forget to honor him in that. You forget it. And he says, don't forget that.

Don't forget that.

Remember.

And how do I remember? Well, I keep his. I read His Word, so I have his commandments. I had his judgments. You know, when you know when, when God's calling out to David or Jeremiah, whoever in scripture and they're speaking with each other, those are not commandments, those are conversations, but they involve the judgments of God.

Don't, don't forget his statutes. The little things that you find in proverbs and psalms and you know, Song of Solomon and the little quips that Jesus makes while he's teaching the not, not the, you know, the big points, but the little stuff.

Don't, don't forget that either, because I'm God, I'm telling you this stuff. I'm teaching you this stuff. And, and as you, as you learn it and become it, you're going to be blessed by, and you are, you're going to be blessed by it.

And when you're blessed by it, don't forget who got you there. Don't worship.

You know, Christians are less and less likely as they grow more mature to worship things that are created.

What they really are, you know, prone to is worshiping themselves.

And, and listen, we even have that kind of a nuanced version of that going through the church all the time. You know, when I was, when I was first in the minor ministry, there was a real tendency toward people, you know, the self help, your mindset is what matters, type of, type of teaching that was out there.

And what that is, is just a worship of your own. You know, if you get your mind right, you get God right. No, you get God right and he gets your mind right.

It's seductive, as you could tell. It's just real seductive to be drawn into thinking in some way. You did it. Verse 18 says, and you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth.

Now, I don't like the way the new King James translates this. The word wealth really means he gives you the power to get energy.

If you really took all the way, all the ways this word's translated, it's a very general word, but it, and it's interesting because you have power there. If I was going to translate it.

He gives you power to get power, really, if you want to translate it the way I translate it, and those are two separate words, but he gives you the power to do things, to get things done, to yeah, get wealth, but also to have dominion, have control, have authority, all that kind of stuff.

He gives you the power to overcome. I guess maybe that's the best way to describe it. Gives you the power to have the power to overcome, that he may establish his covenant which he swore to your fathers as it is this day.

What do you. And why does he always hearken back to your fathers? Well, because he wants you to understand that this was a plan that was beyond you so that you don't worship yourself.

It's not a. It's a plan that is been in place beyond you.

And, and really, really, that's important.

I mean, you got to think about that. This. This been going on a long time.

Far before you. Anybody ever, ever would even consider you. Far before your family ever existed, this plan existed. And you were part of the plan.

So that helps you not be so focused on yourself and thinking you did it. Because this plan has been going on for a long, long time.

Then it shall be. If you by any means forget the Lord your God and follow other gods. What is he saying? Worship something else which can be me. I could be the little g.

The little God. I can worship myself and serve them and worship them. I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish. Meaning that's. There's just death in that.

Quit doing that. There's death in that. That's what he's saying.

As the nations which the Lord destroys before you, so you shall perish. Meaning as everybody else goes, you're going to go the same way.

As everybody else goes, you're going to go the same way.

Don't. You don't have to. You're God's people. You don't have to. You don't have to. You're God's people. Don't. Don't chase after that stuff.

So you shall perish because you would not be obedient to the voice of the Lord your God. Notice we go right back to the end. The what? Where. How do I.

How do I keep from doing this? By staying close to God's word.

Staying close to his. What. What do you mean by his word? All of it. The, The. The. The Pentateuch, the five stories of history, Joshua, and. And all of the stories of the promised land, Chronicles and kings about how.

How the people lived captivity, you know, Nahum. I mean, all those stories.

Then, Then you get into. You get into all the poetry, psalms and proverbs, where you have little ideas and understandings that just keep coming up and keep. That just keeps feeding into it.

And then you got the major prophets and, and. And the big picture. God, God, how. How you fall away from God, and then the minor prophets, which give us all kinds of insights into the God's plan for the future.

And, and then you get into. You get to Jesus and, And and, and the Gospels and, and all the teachings of Christ. He says the words I say to you are spirit and life.

And then, and then, then you get to the history of, of the book of Acts, which is just the second part of the book of Luke. And, and God's history of the church.

And then, and then you get into all the epistles where go people that do this. And this is, this is how you should think about this. And, and, and, and then, and then he culminates it with the book of the Revelation.

This house all going to come about all those things, you know, classify them how you want to classify them.

It's the revelation of God. It's, it's Jesus, the Word made flesh.

So we, we have the Word which gives us full revelation of who Jesus is.

He says the only way you can mess this up is to not remain obedient to the voice of the Lord your God, not to listen to His Word.

It's the only way you can mess it up.

You go, I mess it up all the time. I know. I mean you being you messes, messes things up, but it doesn't mess up God because God already knows you or you, God knows when you're gonna, I mean God knows your mess ups.

I mean he, I mean he made a plan to deliver you from, from eons past, since the foundation of the time. He made a plan to deliver you. He knows all of your struggles.

Okay? You can't mess up God's plan for you. You cannot.

What he wants you to do is to learn to walk with him so that you don't even focus on those things. You can't mess up God's plan for you.

You're not in charge, but you can't experience in it in its fullness. And the way you do that is you stay close to him and His Word and praise God.

There's deliverance in that.

I'm not in control. I do not have to maintain control.

Amen.

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.