Deuteronomy 10:15-22 Bible Study | Episode 881

 February 24,2025

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

Deuteronomy 10:15-22   Bible Study | Episode #881

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 10, in verse 15 through 22 through the end of the chapter. What I, what I find really, really wonderful about this passage is it is one of those passages where you can see God beginning to orient the people of Israel even in the midst of the Pentateuch, even in the midst of the first five books of the New Testament, I mean, the Old Testament.

He is beginning to orient the people toward his New Testament understandings that Jesus is going to give and, and start with the Sermon on the Mount. He. He begins to orient his people back to what, back to what the New Testament is going to ultimately end up teaching.

And it is, it is the idea that, that your heart is what's got to be changed.

The orientation of your life, as far far as your physical activities is, is not what, is not what ultimately is the problem.

Your actions outside your body, the things you do in the flesh are a product of your heart. And ultimately that's what Jesus was teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.

That's Matthew, the first part of Matthew. It is Matthew 5, 6 and 7. You said. Well, I thought it was, I thought it was a lot shorter than that, actually.

When you, if you have a Red Letter Bible, when it starts the Beatitudes, you begin, what is the Sermon on the Mount? And that, that idea is teaching that, sure, the law defines God's character and nature.

The law and the precepts and his commandments teach us who he is. But what's got to be changed is your heart. Your heart is what matters. And ultimately what changes humans hearts is the work of God and the love of God.

And so, so we know that as New Testament Christians. And you go, well, the Old Testament's just about the law and all that kind of stuff. And I would, I would submit to you today as if I was still an attorney, I would, I would submit to you today that, that, that is not the case.

The Old Testament quite clearly begins to spell that out. We understand that God gave us ten commandments. And then he said, he said the greatest law was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.

And, and even though that is, that is a part of the ideas that we get from the first three commandments, it's not spelled out that way. And then, and then he gives us, he gives us another great commandment which is to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Well, that is, is really what the last five commandments are all about, is loving your neighbor as yourself. But it's not spelled out that way. And so oftentimes we get focused on the rules as the rules are written rather than the personhood of God who God really is, who he is by his very nature.

And then by that personhood we can begin to really know God and we have the ability to have our hearts changed so that God really begins to work through our lives.

And let me say this, that is the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is, is for God to have his will and his way in our lives, for his character and his nature to become our character and our nature.

And so when we get to this passage right here in the middle of Deuteronomy, you see really, really God beginning to orient even the Jews before they go into the Promised Land.

He is orient the, orienting them toward a heart change.

Not just a physical change, not just changing what you do, but changing who you are on the inside. Therefore, what you do is just going to be a natural product of that.

And so he says here, he says, the Lord delighted only in your fathers notice what he's saying is God, God cared about your fathers, okay? He cared about them personally.

This is not a, this is not, this is not just a overarching plan that has no, has no relationship involved in it. He says he delighted in, he, he's, he's, and then he says, you got a comma there and it says to love them.

He delighted in them. He loved them. It makes me, it really makes me think of and, and, and it's perfect that they're called the children of Israel. Really makes me think of children.

When you, you ever, you, you know, when you see your children. I, I, I just last night had a, had a new great nephew born and my sister, my sister's first grandchild and you know, she was, she was sent us Some pictures of her holding the baby.

And, and as I, as I looked at that, I can remember my first grandchild being born. And you just delight in them. You love them. It's an eight to you.

Just comes out just part of who you are. Well, that's what God saying, he is, he is toward us. He delights in us.

He thinks it's just wonderful who we are. You go, well, even our sinfulness, remember the sins that we have have been placed on Christ and they're cast as far as the east is from the west.

He does not remember them against us, he holds them against Christ. Because Christ glorified himself by being the sacrifice for that sin. But he holds them not against us anymore.

And he delights in us and he loves us. And he did the same for Israel. And he still does that for Israel, he says, and he chose their descendants after them.

You above all peoples, as it is to this day. Notice he's saying this is not just a temporal love. It's not just a temporal physical activity. He's saying this is something that God's been doing for a long, long time.

This is something that God's been working on for a long, long time. This is a product not of, not of a temporal God, but a God of eternity. God's loved you forever, he says.

He says he loved them then, he loves them. He loves them now. He loves you. He loves you as a product of them. Therefore, circumcise the four skins of your heart and we're going to get into circumcision.

Pretty heavy in Joshua because, well, they're all going to be circumcised, even the ones that are not. But we're going to get into that. But, but circumcision is a picture of a changed heart.

Whenever you see circumcision, circumcision in the Old Testament, you should think of a changed heart. Why? Well, because of this passage. This passage leads us to that understanding. It says, therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart and be stiff necked.

No more meaning. Don't be hard hearted. Don't be, don't, don't, don't just be. This is the way I am. You know, so many times we hear that from people we want to, we want to say it ourselves.

Well, you just got to have to take me like I am. Well, praise God. God didn't take us as we are. Okay? He, he, he changes us. Sure, we come to him as we are.

We come to him as sinners. Come to him struggling, come to him, all those things. But when we get there, he doesn't leave us in it. He doesn't leave us the same way, praise God, he doesn't.

He changes us. He, He's a, He, He's a God that changes us. And so if he's changing us, if he's changing us, we, we don't have to be stiff neck and, and just head in the same direction all of our lives.

We can, we can change course. We can have things be different for us. He says, he says, I don't want you to be stiff necked any longer. I don't want, I want you, I want your heart to be changed.

I want it to be circumcised for the Lord, your God is the God of Gods and Lord of lords and the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes no bribe.

Meaning he says, I'm not, I'm not being partial to anyone.

I love humanity for God so loved the world. Jesus died in John. And then first John says Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. What he's saying is, I mean, I'm showing my love toward humanity and using you as the example.

And really that's what Israel is. Israel's that bright and shining light on the hill there. They're the important example of how a eternal God could actually love humanity. And he chose them out to prove his ability to do that.

He says he administers justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. He says he loves the people that you think are the least you, you think that have nothing.

You think that they're even, even in many ways condemned or they're under, under a curse. And, and, and many, many societies back then saw it that way. If you're, if your father died when you were young and you were orphan, well, orphans were, they were cursed because God looked poorly on them and did not keep their father alive.

And same with the widows and same with the, with the stranger, those who were not from that area. And we know that, we see that tribalism happens all over the place.

It happens in really every kind of culture.

I hate to even use that word because it connotates a racial thing, but tribalism happens just in different groups of people all over the place. It just goes on all the time.

And people hate others because they're not, you know, they're not them.

And so that is not who God is. God. God in, in fact, he, he, he shows how great his love is that he could love that which was clearly against him, clearly lost in sin.

And said, he said, he, he loves the stranger and the straight. He says, therefore love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Notice he's, he's told him, he's told him to circumcise their heart.

Have their heart changed now he's telling them to love others.

The, the ones that we would say were unlovable love other people.

You notice how he's moving them toward a New Testament understanding. He is just sliding them toward the New Testament. He said, you shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve him and to him you shall hold fast and take oaths in his name.

What he's saying is you need to have a bright relationship with him. You need to fear him. You need to be in to walk with him and serve Him. He says you hold fast to that relationship.

You hold on to it and then you make promises to be as he is, take oaths in his name.

He is your praise. He is your God who has done for you great and awesome things which your eyes have seen.

That's pretty cool, pretty cool message he's given them. He's saying, look, you hold fast to God, you chase after him. He's you, he's your praise. He's the one who's your God.

He, he's yours. He's your God. He's your friend. He's your Lord.

He says, who has done for you these great and awesome things which your eyes have seen. And any believer who walks with God long enough is going to see big things God does in their life that going to see them.

Their eyes are going to be open to them and they're going to see him. And if you're one of those that hadn't really seen a lot of that yet, just wait, it's coming.

Just hold on. He's going to begin to show you big things in your life and he's going to, he's going to have shown it in others and that's going to have attracted you to it.

And, and he's going to do that for you too. He loves you just as much as he loves anybody else. Just as much as he loves anybody else. He loves us all.

He says your father went down to Egypt with 70 persons and now the Lord your God has made you as stars in the heaven in multitude. What he's saying is, look, I've blessed you in ways you don't even really think about and realize.

I've blessed you in ways you don't even consider sometimes.

Wow. That's pretty neat, isn't it? It's pretty neat right here nestled in chapter 10 of Deuteronomy. Who reads Deuteronomy? You know and then all of a sudden you go this is New Testament.

This is like Jesus talking.

Well it is Jesus talking. It's God.

So many times we say the God of the Old Testament. Well he's got a New Testament.

He's God of creation. He's the great I am.

He is the Word made flesh and made his dwelling among us.

The glory, the only begotten Son of God, full of grace and truth.

He's fun, he's exciting, he's worth following.

You ought to grab hold to him, circumcise your heart, don't be stiff necked anymore.

He's great, he's awesome. He gives the best to even the weakest.

And we ought to praise him.

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.