Deuteronomy 14:1-2 Bible Study | Episode 895

March 14, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 14:1-2 Bible Study | Episode #895

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 14. And there's a lot here. Here Moses is, remember, he's giving his farewell address. He's explaining a lot of things to the children of Israel before they go into the promised land. He is preparing them to enter into God's best. But remember, while you're entering into God's best, you're battling the forces of darkness. You're trying to figure out how to live in a land that is in essence, a spiritual place. And that's what the Spirit filled life's about also. It's about spiritual. It's about living the spiritual life. It's about living the life that the Holy Spirit guides you and leads you in. The New Testament tells us to live by the Spirit and do not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. And so what scripture's teaching us is to live by, live by the word of God. And so when we're reading the Old Testament and let me say this, all of us go through this, all of us do. We can become, especially when we get really fired up about chasing after God, we can become legalistic, meaning we can take some of these things in the Old Testament and make them, make them rules for living. But remember, we've got rules for living. And we were given, we were given a preeminent number of them, 10 of them. And Jesus clearly explained in the Sermon on the Mount how impossible it was to live by those, to live completely by those things. Because the sin wasn't in the activity. The sin was in the heart. And so the spiritual Christian life is a difficult journey to go down. It's difficult because we have, well, we have commandments, we have rules, we have things that God has given us that kind of clearly give us a roadmap in how we should live. I mean, we have those things. But also we have to learn to learn the principles and apply them in a world that doesn't look similar to the world that existed back during maybe the times of Moses or the times of Jesus. We've got to be able to apply them to situations that may not be all that easy to. Well, I mean, it just really not all that easy to say, okay, we're doing this this way. You go, how do I apply? Well, that's why we live by the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit leads us and guides us in the midst of these struggles that we have, these difficulties that we have. And so in chapter 14, verse one, and he's going to go into clean and unclean meats. He's going to go into tithing and things like that in this chapter. But he starts out by saying, you are the children of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourself nor shave the front of your head for the dead. Now you go, what is that? Well, you know, we don't have, I mean, we can't come along and go accurately tell you exactly what all that is. We can give you rudimentary understanding. There were some pagan practices that went on and that were spiritual in nature. And those pagan, excuse me, those pagan practices involved cutting yourself. They involved shaving of the head, probably shaving of the top of the head, probably very similar to what the monks did in the, in the, in the dark to Middle Ages. And so, you know, the shaving of your head, the, the cutting of your skin. You know, Leviticus talks about not tattooing yourself as the, as the heathen does. And so if you're, you know, if you're a young Christian and Leviticus says don't tattoo yourself, then, you know, that's no tattoos. If, if you're trying to live legalistically or, you know, cutting yourself, that is, you know, that's altering your body in some way with, with cuts and then, and then shaving your head. Well, that's not permanently altering anything, but it can look different than the normal person. And you're going, well, what does all this matter? Well, what is. You take the principle and you apply it to today. And so what is the principle? Well, the principle is be careful that you don't look too much into faddish. And I'm going to use that word, it's fads. In the modern fads of whatever they may be, they may be some kind of artwork on your body. It may be some kind of surgeries that you can have. It may be, you know, may May even be, you know, some kind of cosmetic stuff that goes on. He, he says, he says, you know, don't do that to look like them. Now you go, well, is it, are you saying, Pastor, you can't have tattoos? No, I'm not really saying that at all. I, I don't know. You might want to have, if you're in the army, you might want to have an American flag on your shoulder. If you're, if you're involved in something and you want to have a cross on your back or on your ankle or something like that, I'm not telling you that that's wrong. It's not because, remember, we're not carrying the law forward, we're carrying the principle forward. And what I would say was, if you're going to do something like that, you have to first sit down and go, okay, is this something that I'm trying, you know, that I feel like might be dishonoring to God? If not, if it is, then obviously no. Is this something that I think would be something that I'm going to want and it's going to be desirable next year, five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now? If yes, then, I mean, there's nothing, you know, we're, we, we have freedom in Christ then go ahead. You know, if you're, if you, you know, if you're an Army Ranger and you want to put a Ranger tab on your shoulder and you know you're, you're going to spend 25 years of your career doing that, well, then, I mean, that's probably something that points to part of your life. If you're in I. And I'm using the military because you, that really, in the past is where tattoos really began in our culture and our society. Whereas military men wore them. It used to be before World War II that, I mean, World War I that military men wore beards, wore long beards, lots of long beards. But World War I changed that, and it changed it to a very clean, cut, shaven face. Why? Well, because mustard gas, we began to gas each side and you had to wear a gas mask. And the gas mask needed to seal against your skin and you couldn't have a lot of hair on your skin. And so military men went from being in, you know, in the Civil War and the Spanish American War and all those wars wearing these beards and looking like the Old west to what we would say military men look like in World War II, which was very clean shaven. Those were all cultural things that were necessary for War. And it was a definite change in the way. In the appearance of men. And you go, why are you telling me that? Well, because, you know, obviously if you're going to go to war and they're going to be firing mustard gas at you, you want to shave your face. Okay. And so it may. May be something that culturally says it's the right thing to do to have a beard now all of a sudden, culturally is the right thing to do, to have a shaven face. That changes things. Things change all the time. Women's fashion definitely changes all the time. And so there's some women's fashion that I think, you know, obviously women are going to want to wear clothes that are fashionable at the time. I would just. When I'm picking my clothes, I'd pick stuff that I think was, you know, something I would enjoy wearing at the time, but also would be, hon, God, I wouldn't wear the outfit that the woman wore at the Grammys or whatever it was recently where she wasn't really wearing any clothes at all. That's not honoring to God. But, you know, you have to ask those questions. And in asking the questions, who do you ask? We don't ask your pastor. That's not who you're asking. Who are you asking? You asking God? You're living by the principle of live by the Spirit. Allow the Holy Spirit to show you these things. And for one person, just like eating food sacrificed to idols in Corinthians for one person, maybe I don't eat food. Sacrifice to idols as they had to deal with at the Corinthian church. And for others, it's not a stumbling block for them. Maybe getting a tattoo on your leg is something I don't want to do. I don't think that's going to be honoring to God. Down the road. Another person might see it as totally honoring. And so we live by the Spirit and we allow each other to try to figure those things out as they walk with God. Maybe you wear a fashion, maybe you don't wear a fashion. Maybe. Maybe you cut your hair in a certain way. Maybe you don't cut your hair in a certain way. And each. Each person has to figure out this principle because he said, you're the children of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourself or shave yourself. Shave your head for the dead. For you are holy people to the Lord your God. And the Lord has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all people who are on the face of the earth. Notice he's Saying, you know, you're my special treasure. So I want what you do to honor me. Now, you know, we've got a Secretary of Defense, our Pete Hexith, he was just lambasted for this. And it's a huge tattoo. It's a. It's a. From. From the Middle Ages. It's a. It's a tattoo that's. It's a Christian artwork, really. And he's got it. Is that right, Pastor? For him to have that? I don't know. I'm not Pete. He's got to decide that, and he did, and he's got the tattoo. It's not, it's not, it's not for us to go around and, and police these things for others, but it is for us to police it for ourselves with the Holy Spirit. And some things you might choose to do, and some things you might not. And as you choose to do those things, what you want to do is you do not want it to distract you from your walk with God. And in fact, if you do it, you would much prefer to enhance your walk with God. So what is that? Well, I don't know what it is, and I don't know what's going to be happening five years from now or 10 years from now or 20 years from now, and somebody listening to this Bible study down the road, everything might be totally different. You might need to. Every, you know, person might need to shave their head for some reason, or maybe, maybe every person, including all men, need to wear hair all the way down their back. I don't know what's going to be happening years from now. And I don't know what the fashions or what the different things are going on. But I do know this. If it's a pagan practice, if it's associated with something that's not godly, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't be involved in that. That's, you know, basic fundamental principle. And then I'd move on from there. Is this something that is distracting from my walk with God? Is it going to be in my way in the future? Is it something that's going to be glorified to God down the road? Is it something that I feel like is going to be good for the kingdom? And once you come to those conclusions as you walk by the Spirit, you're going to hear the Holy Spirit lead you and guide you in those things, and you're gonna. You're gonna do well by doing those things. You're gonna do well by doing those things, not by not by. Not by living by some rule, but figuring it out for yourself. And the rule is, and there is a rule, live by the Spirit. Live by the Spirit, Live by the Spirit. That's the rule. Let the Holy Spirit lead you. And when we do that, we'll probably all look a little different. You might wear jeans, I might wear slacks. You might have a tattoo on your ankle. I might put one on my nose. I don't know. I don't think I will. But I might. You never can tell. Might be good. And you go, pastor, you just making fun now. Yeah. Because I don't. I can't tell you what the Holy Spirit's leading you to do. And that's one of the cool things about being a Christian and being a pastor. You realize I have a job to feed the sheep. I have a job to lead the sheep, where I think God is opening doors for us to do great ministry. But I do not have the job to micromanage your life. I definitely don't have that. And I don't want it either. I think that God uses unique people in unique ways to do unique things. And I know this for sure. I've been around a lot, a lot, a lot of fired up on fire Christians, and none of them look the same. They just don't. Christianity is a heart matter at its outset and fundamentally throughout its life. And then it manifests itself in so many powerful, unique ways in the world we live in. And so don't go back to the Deuteronomic or Levitical law and make a bunch of rules, because I don't think anybody nowadays cuts themselves or shaves for the dead. But if they do, if they do, if you run across somebody that's doing that, don't join them, probably.

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.