Deuteronomy 9:7-29 Bible Study | Episode 877

 February 18, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 9:7-29  Bible Study | Episode #877

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 9 and we're starting with verse 7, but we're gonna work our way through the rest of the chapter today.

And the reason why is because really it's Moses giving an account of his struggle with God's people in the wilderness after God had delivered him out of Egypt. And it is a warning to, as we've said before, Deuteronomy is that book that's written to the children of, the children of Israel that God delivered out of Egypt.

It is the ones who were younger, well, that were children, either teenagers or children or weren't born when they were delivered out of Egypt. And it's the end of the 40 year experience out in the wilderness.

And so when you read this, you're reading God talking to the children, explaining to them what's happened, giving them a overview of God's plan, giving them God's word. He's teaching them the law that was given to him.

Them teaching them all the things that's happened. And this is the section where Moses, well, he narrates what his experience was with the children of Israel out in the wilderness.

He's just, he's spending his time telling them the story. He's telling them what happened. And it's neat to get Moses's perspective. Even though I know Moses wrote the previous four books and he tells it, but he doesn't tell it as personal in those stories.

It's more of a historic.

I'm, I'm telling you what happened. And God said and this and that and the other. Here Moses is really given this story from his perspective. He's kind of telling them as he remembers it.

And that perspective can give us insight really into how Moses saw the, the, the depth of the prop, the depth of the, of the issue, and the depth of the depravity of God's people and the, the closeness he felt that God was to destroying his people.

In fact he, he has said that God told him he was going to destroy the people and make a new people for Moses and his family. And so Moses is giving this account and it is.

Well, you know I, I think it's one of those things when you.

We obviously have four gospels that give us four perspectives on the life of Christ. They help us because they really written to four different groups of people. Matthew's written to the Romans.

Mark is written to really the common people.

I could say the barbarian also. It's just very straightforward. And this happened and this happened and this happened and then Luke is written. It's very well written. It's written by a doctor and it's actually a two part book.

Luke and Acts are the same book but they're written to the Greeks and then John's written to the Jews. And so it is written to a culture. Not that you can't get something out of all of them.

You absolutely can. In fact they're all the word of God and they're all powerful and they all teach us, but they also give us perspective, they give us a unique perspective.

And remember God is anything, he is infinite. And so multiple perspectives of God help us understand him. And that's why God gives us four gospels. And I really believe this is why God urged Moses to tell his view of the story.

Say what happened. And so this is what happened. And we're going to just read it real quick. It says, remember, do not forget how you provoke the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness.

What he's saying is don't forget what happened in the wilderness that caused us to be in this position where we waited 40 years to go in. From the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord.

And Moses is telling them you have been rebellious. And you would say well they weren't rebellious, their parents were. That's true. But oftentimes I say to someone, but it's in the DNA.

And what I mean by that is sin is innate to people and it gets passed down. And we know that from both accounts of the Ten Commandments. One where it mentions it right before it and one where it men mentions it right in the middle of the Ten Commandments, that sins of the father pass to the second third generation.

Meaning that we, we pass on our, our failures, we pass on the depravity of sin to our Children and oftentimes we pass it on their unique human beings and it uniquely manifest in them them.

But you can definitely see the similarities. And so when we're studying this, you just see that he said, you provoked God. From the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord.

What he's saying is your hearts have turned from God and he knows that. And also in Horeb, you provoke the Lord to wrath so that the Lord was angry enough with you to have destroyed you.

And this is where they got the ten Commandments. He notice, he said, the Lord was angry enough that he could have destroyed you.

He says, when I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you, then I stayed on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights.

I neither ate bread or drank water. By the way, we believe in fasting for sure. As a church, we're going through a period of fasting here at the start of the year.

But this is a supernatural fast. This is one with no water and no food for 40 days and 40 nights. And why did I say it's supernatural? Because for the most part, if you did a fast like this, it would kill you.

And so this is a supernatural God sustaining fast for Moses. We see Jesus doing it once. We actually see Moses doing this twice in this singular passage. And so we know that God is sustaining Moses in a supernatural way.

Then the Lord delivered to me two tablets of stone written with the finger of God. And on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly, meaning I gave you the whole word of God.

And they were written on these tablets. And it came to pass at the end of the 40 days and 40 nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.

Then the Lord said to me, arise, go down quickly from here, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly. They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them.

They have made themselves a mold and image. And God told him to go down to the mountain because the people had rebelled against him in just 40 days and 40 nights.

Says, Furthermore, the Lord spoke to me saying, I've seen this people and indeed they are stiff necked people. That's hard hearted. Stiff necked. It has the connotation of being. It has the connotation of being rebellious and stubborn.

Okay? And so Moses is definitely he is definitely dealing with them as saying they are. They. They. They don't listen. They don't listen to me. They don't hear me and they don't do what I say.

Moses said, let me alone. That Moses said of God, let me alone. That I may destroy them and blot their name out from under heaven. And I'll make a new nation mightier and greater than they.

And he that. That idea of making a new nation was making a new nation out of Moses.

Just like he'd made the nation out of Abraham. He was going to make the nation out of Moses. So I turned and came down from the mountain. Notice he didn't tell God what to do.

He did what God told him to do. So he turned and came down from the mountain. And the mountain burned with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.

And I looked. And behold, you had sinned against the Lord. Your God had made for yourselves a molded calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you.

Then I took the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes. And I fell down before the Lord as the first 40 days and 40 nights.

I neither ate bread nor drank water. Because of all your sin which you had committed in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and the hot displeasure which the Lord was angry with you.

To destroy you. But the Lord listened to me at the time also. And the Lord was very angry with Aaron. Notice God's anger was with his brother Aaron. And Moses is specifically pointing that out here because Aaron is the chief priest.

Then. Then I look. Took your sin, the calf which you had made and burned it with fire and crushed it and drowned it very small, until it was a fine.

As fine as dust. And I threw the dust into the brook that descended from the mountain.

He's telling. He's giving you the actual things that he did. He. He crushed the. Not only the tablets, but he crushed the rock. And he threw the fine dust into the.

Into the stream, which is a picture of the Holy Spirit carrying that sent away also the tabera at Manasseh, at Kibroth Hattava.

You provoke the Lord to wrath.

Likewise, when the Lord sent you to Kadesh Bardiya, saying this is when they refused to go into the wilderness. He's telling them, there's another time that y'all rebelled against God.

He said, go up and possess the land which I gave you. Then. Then you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God, and you did not believe him or obey his voice.

You have been rebellious against the Lord from the. From the day that I knew you. What he's saying is, you've turned from God every time, in every way since the day I knew you.

He says, thus I prostrated myself before the Lord 40 days and 40 nights I kept prostrating myself because the Lord had said he would destroy you. Why? Because they refused to go into the promised land.

And I can't overemphasize that. Their refusal to go in the promised land and they're creating the golden image, the golden calf at the Mount of God's presence at the mountain where he gave the Ten Commandments, are equally bad.

In fact, the refusal to go into the Promised land is as bad as not going up on the mountain.

And God. Their refusal to not go on the mountain and then their desire to make another God is an affront to God and his goodness and his grace. And then their refusal to go in the promised land is a front to God's plan for them.

And so he says, therefore I prayed to the Lord and said, o Lord God, do not destroy your people and your inheritance, whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

Remember your servant Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Do not look on the stubbornness of this people or the wickedness of their sin, lest the land from which you brought us should say, because the Lord was not able to bring them to this land which he promised them because he hated them, he has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.

Yet they are your people and your inheritance, whom you brought out by your mighty power and by your outstretched arm.

And I think this is real, real important because we get. Moses understandings that. That God's wrath against sin is powerful. And it is. It is. It is perfect and complete.

And Moses is operating in his. In his foreshadowing role as the Redeemer and the deliverer. He is the Lawgiver. He is the Redeemer, the one who brought them out of Egypt, and he delivered them from the hand of Pharaoh.

So he's their deliverer also. And he is foreshadowing one who would come, namely, Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus. He's. He's foreshadowing God's plan to redeem his people. We are that same people.

And that's the whole point of this story is the. The. The nature of humankind has not changed. We have not progressed we're not better than we used to be as human beings.

We are still as replete with wickedness in our hearts as we've ever been. We are, we are continue to be a stiff neck and stubborn people. And God in His infinite goodness and love has redeemed us as his people out of that sin.

And understanding, oftentimes people don't want to spend a lot of time in the Old Testament, but understanding that, that we are still that people.

And we are still, we are still a people that would do the exact same thing in the wilderness that they did. You know, so many times we're reading in the New Testament going, why didn't they figure this out?

Why didn't they do this? Why didn't they do that? And I always think to myself as I hear somebody ask that question, well, I would have done the same thing, Pastor, would you really have done the same thing?

I can't.

The longer I live my life and the longer I know myself, the longer I realize that I'm not any better than anybody else and I'm not any more unlikely to be enticed by sin.

And the wickedness of my heart is an overwhelming force in my life. And if it's not for the goodness of God, if it's not for his plan through His Son, if it's not for the provision of his, of his grace and mercy through, through delivering Me out of sin and providing for me, well, redemption and, and salvation, and then, and then giving me his truth in my heart, if it weren't for all those things, I would be no better than these people, and I would be maybe even worse.

And, and I have, I have no one to, to thank. And no one, no one gets the glory from me not having to endure and live eternally with my wickedness.

No one has the right to take glory for that other than Jesus Himself, and especially not myself.

And so understanding that and coming to that realization in its fullness will bring about, will bring about a humility, a fear of the Lord and a, a help and helps us to know him and it helps us to be changed by Him.

And it allows us to open ourselves up and allows grace to have its full work in our lives, to have Its mercy bring us out of the pit and to have his love and his plan for us, to deliver us to the good things that he asked for us, not because we're good in ourselves, but because he has made us as he is by the finished work of His Son.

And so that is the promise of the Old Testament. It's the promise of the children of Israel in the wilderness and it's the promise of Jesus Christ fulfilled in our own lives.

And it's always good to read these stories because it helps us know that we are in great need.

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.