Deuteronomy 13:12-18 Bible Study | Episode 894

March 13, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 13:12-18  Bible Study | Episode #894

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, Ronnie, chapter 13. Deuteronomy. Easy for me to say, chapter 13. And we're finishing the chapter with a pretty timely and stark understanding of God's view of societies or. Or nations or locations, locales, and the corruption that can easily take over those areas. I like to read it to you at the start. It says, if you hear someone in your cities, which the Lord your God give you to dwell in, saying, corrupt men have gone out from among you and entice the inhabitants of the city. Notice. It says, corrupt men have gone out from among you and entice the inhabitants of the city, saying, notice, this is not foreigners. This is not people from. Not from that area. This is people. This would be Israelites saying, let us go and serve other goddess which you have not known. Then you shall inquire, search out and ask diligently. Notice. He says, there's gotta be a process to this. And if it is indeed true and certain that such an abomination has been committed among you, you shall surely strike the inhabitants of the city with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying it and that is in it and its livestock with the edge of the sword. And you shall gather all its plunder into the middle of the street and completely burn with fire the city and all its plunder. For the Lord your God. It shall be a heap forever. It shall not be built again. So none of the accursed things shall remain in your hand. That the Lord may turn from the fierceness of his anger and show you mercy, have compassion on you and multiply you, just as he swore to your fathers, because you have listened to the voice of the Lord your God to keep all his commandments which I've commanded you today, and do what is right in the eyes of the Lord your God. I want you to notice that, that he is saying that there's a process, but there is, there is a, a definite prohibition against cultures, societies, cities here turning toward corruption and turning away from God that, that there's consequences to that. And we do not live in, we do not live in Israel. This is not our, this is not a, a directive that we're supposed to carry out in detail in our own, in our own societies today. But it is definitely a prohibition and it's a definitely a warning notice. Corrupt men have gone out from among you and enticed the inhabitants of your city. Usually that's a corrupt group, a corrupt organization, a corrupt, a corrupt institution that, that will cause a nation, a state, a city, a community to go astray. And, and the corruption of that organization or that group of people eventually leads to the total corruption of, of the inhabitants of the whole city and ultimately leads to the destruction of the whole city. Now, this is, this is a clear, you know, we can look back and this is a clear warning from God that when you have corrupt institutions, there needs to be inquiry about that. They need, needs to be searching those things out, meaning finding out what's really going on there. Needs to be asking some diligent and important questions. And then when you realize that that corruption is going on, it needs to be totally wiped out. It needs to be totally removed from the institution or the government or the, the agencies that are causing these things to take place. This is, this is very timely. It is very, very obvious that God could be speaking to us today. We do have institutions and organizations that have been corrupted by godless people. And when I say godless, you say, well, Pastor, what are you talking about? Well, I'm just talking about people who come from a godless perspective. And by the way, Marxism and all the offshoots of Marxism, communism, socialism, fascism, by the way, fascism is Marxism also. They're all godless because Marx was godless. And they come from the perspective that mankind can somehow pull himself up from his corruption, which is clearly antithetical to Christianity and antithetical to the teachings of Scripture. Mankind does not redeem itself. God redeems mankind. God gives mankind the best. God gives mankind hope. God is the source of light. Man is not the source of light. Man has no way to even comprehend what light is and how light actually operates. Light travels at such a speed that it's even hard for us to identify. It took. It took a long, long time for us to even figure out how fast light actually is. We are so separated from who God is. And so corrupted that man cannot. Man does not progress. All you have to do is look on the news each day around the world. All you have to do is look at the hostages that were released this weekend and see that man. Humanity has not been, is not been progressed. Humanity's still as corrupt as it's ever been. And that corruption when, when God's people are trying to walk in the redemption provided by him, the salvation. And that's what's going on for the children of Israel. They were saved out of Egypt, they were redeemed by the works of God and they were brought into his best or his promised land. And, and when, when you have whole institutions corrupted by godlessness and, and you go, well, they were chasing after other gods. Those gods are not real gods. They're dead gods. Those gods cannot speak. They're not real. And godlessness is, is the chasing after anything that's not the one true God. And when you have that in institutions, those institutions corrupt the society as a whole. They easily do. And there's really not any way to get around that. That's an obvious. That's obviously true. And it happens, it happens over and over and over again in societies that have chosen the corruption of godless Marxism. **** Germany, Communist Russia, Communist China, Communist North Korea, Communist Cambodia, over and over and over again. Marxism. Godlessness leads not only to the destruction of the society, but leads to the destruction of its people. And listen, God gave them these clear instruction to remove it from their own society so that they would not. They would not be corrupted by it. But I want you to notice God removes those corruptions himself. He slowly destroys those corruptions because that corruption, that corruption ultimately ends in death because it's not from God, it's not light. And he told the Israelites, you know, if you find, if you diligently search and you find out that they're those who've led people to, to go after other gods which are not true gods, that you don't leave that corruption there. You seek it out, you root it out and you remove it and you remove it permanently. And so those who would whine and wail and cry about us calling out what is corrupt and what is wrong, what is evil in our society just really do not understand the, the terrible and pervasive nature of sin. That, that is obvious and obviously against Scripture. And by the way, if you have religious leaders who tell you that God's word does not say what God's word clearly says, that's corruption also. And so we're not on A crusade to try to root these things out in our society all the time. But we do have leaders that will rise up and do that, and we need to support them. And we as the church need to be light in the darkness. But we also cannot tolerate that which is evil, that which is sin, that which is wrong. Now, we all are sinful. We all struggle with it. We all have our tendencies toward it in our own unique way. But it's not helpful for anyone to be told that their sin is okay. It's not helpful for you to tell me it's okay. It's not helpful for me to tell you it's okay. What is helpful is to tell you that there's a way out, there's a way to life and truth, and that's Jesus. And so we don't sugarcoat the struggle of sin, but we also don't reflect upon it. We point to the cross and to Jesus Christ. Now, for their society, they were going into an area where the corruption of worshiping false gods, in fact horribly, horribly corrupt and evil gods was, was an issue. And Moses said, you got to get rid of it fast as you can. It's. It's a virus that will kill you quickly. And so that. That's true of sin in our own lives. We need to get rid of it as quick as we can. Now you can't get rid of it by the law and you can't give it. Get rid of it by following some code. You have to get rid of it by walking by the Spirit. The Bible says, live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. And so our answer is, our New Testament answer through the finished work of Jesus Christ, is to teach people to walk in communion with God by walking in the Spirit and the Holy Spirit. And so there's where the hope is, there's where the life is, and that's where we're supposed to be. But don't get all bent out of shape, don't get nervous or upset when those among us who I believe some God's put in those places to remove the corruption of our society are actively removing that corruption. Because when that corruption is being removed, we're better off 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.