Deuteronomy 12:1-7 Bible Study | Episode 887

March 4, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 12:1-7 Bible Study | Episode #887

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 12. We were supposed to be there yesterday, but in the morning, as I was finishing up shaving, somehow I cut my nose, and it took me 45 minutes to get it to quit bleeding. You say, pastor, do you shave your nose? No. And that's what made it so weird. I. I cut my nose on the side right over here, and I never shaved there. I don't know how I did that. But, you know, sometimes in the morning when you're in a little bit of the fog, you. You do do things that you don't realize. And I do know that I wake up a lot of mornings with injuries I didn't have when I went to bed. I think that has to do with me being older. But it is. It is good to get to God's word this morning, get a time of studying with it. It says in. In chapter 12, these are the statutes and the judgments which you shall be careful to observe. Now, remember, we. We talked about how many different words that. That Moses will use to talk about the revelation of God. God revealing himself. And he may do it in a statute, meaning saying, thou shalt not commit adultery or whatever. And then you have a judgment where God says, this is how you do these things. That's taking his truth and applying it to the world. And so there's a difference between a statute and judgment. And then you've got precepts and you've got revelations, and you've got prophecies and all these things. When you go through all the ideas, all the different ideas that are used, all these different words, what they're really doing is that God is expressing his revelation to us. And that revelation is a neat revelation because human language is limited in how much it can give us. And so God reveals himself and what he created. He reveals himself in the actual embodiment of himself and his son, King Jesus. And so Jesus is the man of full manifestation of God. He reveals himself by his spirit to our spirit in our own heart and soul. And so he says, you need to follow everything. And when God shows you something, and this is the general principle that Moses is saying, when, when God shows you something, you need to observe them, you need to keep them, you need to hold on to them, you need to notice them, recognize them in the land which your God, the F of your fathers, is giving you to possess. He says, when you get into the promised land, remember all the things that have been said to you, all the things that have been expressed to you, all the things that he's told, taught you so that you might understand all, all the days of your life on the earth. What he's saying is live them out. Live them out for the rest of your life. Now notice you shall. This is a commandment. You shall utterly. And I know that because legally, when it says shall, that's usually a order in the judicial system. That'd be an order of the court. It'd be an order that has to be followed. You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess serving their gods on the high mountains and on the hills and under the green tree, meaning all the places that they have to worship their gods were to be knocked down and destroyed. Utterly destroyed. Not, not kind of destroyed. Utterly destroyed. And you just shall destroy their altars and break their sacred pillars and burn their wooden images with fire. You shall cut down their carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God with such things. Mean, don't take the things that were worship of these pagan and in many ways demonic gods because. And when I say many ways, they were these, these either fallen angels or demonic gods. You're, you're, you're to, to not take those things and worship them in any way or in, and use anything that they did use to worship them. Why? Because they are utterly evil. And they, they, they're not to be associated with God. And you go, well, you know, we're doing the, you know, we're, we're, we're honoring God with, with this stuff. Who, who, who knows and who cares? Well, first of all, God knows. God said, I don't want you to worship me with anything that has to do with them. Don't worship me with them. Why are they evil? Well, they're evil because they're not for me. And they're evil because of their practices. In fact, the, the wickedness of these people had to come to their full, fullness before God would allow the children of Israel to enter into the Promised Land. And that wickedness included all kinds of depravity. It included all kinds of worship that was horrific. Child sacrifice, human sacrifice. He says, I don't want to be worshiped with that at all. I don't want to have anything to do with that. And, you know, that seems reasonable if you're, if you're just looking at it from a God perspective. I mean, why would you want that? You. You wouldn't, you wouldn't want to have anything to, you know, when you started dating your spouse, you don't want them to keep anything around that has to do with their former boyfriend or girlfriend. I mean, you don't keep that in the house. Y'all don't have that in, in, in your bedroom, a picture of, of that person. Why. Why would you do that? You wouldn't do that, in fact, that you usually total. Kind of get rid of all, all. All items that have anything to do with that person. So there's no remembrance of them. Why? Well, because the relationship that you have is the important one. That's the one you're feeding into. That's the one you're giving your life to. Well, if we do that in the very mundane ideas of relationships between human beings, why wouldn't we do that with God? We would, and it makes perfect sense that we would. He said, but you shall seek the place where the Lord your God chooses. Which meant God was going to choose a place for them to worship. And we know where that is. It's in Jerusalem. It's on the Temple Mount. God sets that all up. We're going to go through a whole lot of things that happen. And to make that happen, it's going to be the special place. It's going to be place where all nations can know God and for God can be seen in his fullness. He says all out of all the tribes to put his name for his dwelling place. And there you shall go. Meaning he's going to pick one place out of all the places in promised land. And that's the place where you're going to go. Now, they're not going to keep this. They're going to begin to worship on, on the Samaritan mountain in Samaria. And they're gonna, they're gonna chase after other gods and they're gonna do this. But God's Order to them His. His. His commandment to them. His. He said, you shall utterly destroy those places and you shall not worship those gods or use anything that they worship. And you're to worship me the way I desire to be worshiped. Why? Well, because God is holy. He knows. He knows how to do holiness. God's righteous. He knows how to do righteousness. God is good. He knows how to do good. And so if I'm unrighteous, unholy, and my heart is bent toward wickedness, then I need to be instructed as to how to worship. Instructed as to where to worship. Instructed how God desires for me to approach Him. Why? Because he's gonna. He's gonna put me in the right position. He's gonna. He's gonna have me approaching him and, and, and, and coming to know him in the perfect way so that I can, you know, I can glorify him properly. He says, there shall take. You shall. There you shall take your burn offerings, your sacrifices, your ties, your he offerings. These are talking about all the offerings that we did did in Leviticus and Numbers. He said, you're going to take all those, your freewill offerings, your firstborn of your herd and flocks, and there you shall eat before the Lord your God. Meaning those sacrifices are going to be made there. You're not making them other places. This is where I'm going to meet with you. And by the way, you go, well, we don't do that now. Right? Because God has moved from dwelling in buildings made by human hands to dwelling in the hearts of men, making a place for him to dwell with us by giving us a new human spirit, giving us a new heart, and placing his Holy Spirit, his dwelling place inside of us. But the temple in the Old Testament is a picture of that, and it's a representation of that. It's a physical manifestation of God's will so that we can see the spiritual truths that we're to live by as Christians in the New Testament. That's why we study this. He says, and there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice in all which you have, which you have put your hand, you and your household, in which the Lord your God has blessed you. What are they rejoicing in? What they rejoicing in things they did to serve God. That's what they're rejoicing in. They're rejoicing in the things they did to know God and to chase after God. That that's what the rejoicing is all about. And so when You're. When you're studying through this and when you're thinking about it and when you're considering, it would make sense that we would do things God's way. God knows how we should do these things, and he wants us to do them his way. And so I think that is one of those. Once you really think about it, it's just common sense. And. And so you go, well, how do I do that? Well, study the Word. Remember he's given us these precepts and these laws and these judgments and these understandings and these revelations. Why? So that you'll begin to know Him. And as you begin to know him, you begin to realize that. That he's in the midst of making Himself known, revealing Himself to you and revealing his will and his way for you. And as you do that, you get good at doing what he's asking you to do. And remember, God's forbearing and he's loving and he understands that we come to this in total darkness and ignorance. And he wants us to learn from Him. And that means to listen to His Word and sometimes listen to even fallible human beings like myself express His Word and then allow the Holy Spirit to teach our hearts. And I pray that'll be the case for you all the time. And God does that work all the time in the hearts of men so that he might glorify Himself. And so you are his glory. And I pray that you'll learn to do that and walk in that.

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.