Deuteronomy 15:19-23 Bible Study | Episode 902

March 25, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 15:19-23  Bible Study | Episode #902

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 15. Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, chapter 15. And we're dealing with a principle in scripture, a principle that God has given us, that I think he wants us to learn from and really develop a mindset out of.

And that's the mindset of the first fruits, meaning the understanding that everything that happens has its orientation or its beginning with God, meaning God is in the midst of it.

And you go, well, even the bad stuff. Well, sure, even the bad stuff. Because God allows certain things to happen to you in order for you to grow through them.

There are. There are certain things that must take place in our lives that, that cause us to change, cause us to grow, cause us to develop. And if they don't take place, if they don't happen in our lives, then,

well,

we would never grow.

We would never grow and become. If we did not do those things, if we did not. Did not have those things happen. And you can think about the difficult stuff as far as school, taking that terrible class in college, or as far as maybe physical activity.

You know as well as I do, in order for you to really actually get any benefit from exercise, it's gotta hurt some. I mean, you've got to do something that brings you to a place where it's.

I mean, it's physically painful. Whether it's a place where you feel like you can't breathe so that you can develop that lung capacity, or a place where you feel like you can't lift one more ounce of weight so your body can begin to develop that.

That strength and that. That consistent strength that. Well, I mean, you just be able to. To lift more and more weight. And if you. If you don't go through those processes and those are physiological processes, you're.

You're not going to grow. Well, if you, if you go through the process of dealing with God in the ways he's trying to grow you and mature you, you're going to miss out.

And one of those processes is a recognition of his divine work in your life, his work going on around you,

and the realization that God is underlying everything that happens in my life. God is authoring my life, and I want to see him in it. I want to trust him in it, and then I want to join him in it.

I want to see him trust him and join him in the things he's doing in my life, in the life that I'm living.

I want to know his presence that way. And so if we're not doing that, we're missing out on God. And oftentimes we're missing out on the reason for the things that go on in our, in our walk, in our life.

And so how does he do that? Well, in the Old Testament, there's the principle of the first fruits, meaning every time something happens,

you give God the first of that, you give God the best of that, the first and the best of it. Why do I do that? Well, I give God the first because I recognize that he's the initiator of all things.

He's the One who's initiating my life.

And when I do that,

and I do that regularly as I think through what God's doing, as I do that, and I do that regularly, all of a sudden what I'm doing is I'm not only recognizing him being the author of those things, I'm making Him Lord of those things.

I'm giving him what is due him as being the Lord of all things. And he's the Lord of my life. He's.

I'm ascending to his position as that. And so when you read this passage, that's what's going on here. He said, all the firstborn males that come from your herd or your flock, you shall sanctify to the Lord your God.

You shall do no work with the firstborn of your herd, nor shear the firstborn of your flock. Meaning you give God the first of everything, the first of everything that happens for you.

You give God, you and your household shall eat it before the Lord your God year by, in the place which the Lord chooses, you and your whole household are going to enjoy the benefit of it.

But notice you're going to sanctify it to the Lord and then you're going to join the benefit of it. But in enjoying it together, you're going to recognize God's position in the process.

He's the first. He's the one who makes things happen. He's the initiator. He's the one who makes all things come about. And so he says, what you do is you sanctify everything that's first to God.

And let me say this.

This principle has caused me in my own life to look for God to be moving in the first things,

to want to be a part of initiating first things, to want to be a part of God doing a new work, doing a new thing in the world.

It has caused me to search out and actually look around and see what God is doing new and want to be a part of being in that new thing. Why?

Because God's doing new stuff all the time now. Does that mean we get rid of the old stuff? No, no, no. We keep working in those things, keep doing those things.

We keep enjoying those things, and we keep. We keep functioning in those things. But God does new works all the time. God's in the business of doing the first fruits, the first of something.

And when, when. When God's in it, I want to be in. When, when I see God moving, I want to jump on and move with that. And so this principle has become one of those just kind of guiding things that happen in the back of my head.

It's not something that's first all the time. It's not something that I'm thinking about each and every day. It's the thing that I just, in the back of my mind go, oh, I see that.

That's a, that's. That's. That's a new opportunity. That's a. A new day happening. That's something big going on for the first time for this person or this, this life. And, and I want to feed into that.

I want to invest into that. It may be a new family. It may be a. A new business venture. It may be. It may be a new.

A new work being done in the church. Whatever it is, I say to myself, I want to have. I want to have a part in that. And I may not even be, you know, especially in the church.

The church has gotten so big with so many ministries going on. There's no possible way for me to be involved in all of that. It's just not. It's not even, not even reasonable to even think that I could.

But I do want to invest something in them. I do want to give them some. Give them some encouragement. Maybe, maybe I want to. Maybe I want to invest, you know, some of my resources into those new ministries.

Maybe I want to invest some time and actually seeing what's going on and being a part of it,

no matter what it is. That mindset of being, wanting to see God moving regularly and increasing his movement, that momentum that moves forward constantly, wanting to see that and be a part of it's important.

And he says each year, notice this is a time sensitive thing. He says, every year, every year, the first fruits, you dedicate that to God, you, you turn around and give that to Him.

He says, and, and if you do, you know you're going to be, you're going to be blessed by it. He says, but, but if there's a defect in it, meaning it's lame or blind or has a serious defect, you shall not sacrifice it to the Lord.

You're right. What he's saying is, is, you know, sometimes it's not, sometimes the first fruits, not, you know, it's not, not going to work out. Not all things are going to work out.

Not all things are going to be make it sometimes, sometimes they're not. They're going to sing like they're not going to make it and then they do make it. But, but he,

he says, you know, not everything is going to always be perfect. And so many times the reason people don't want to get invested in and give their lives into and looking for the, the new things that God, God is doing is because they see so, so many of them not make it.

Well, the fact that things don't make it is true, doesn't mean that I should push it aside and only, you know, only invest in, or only spend my life in the things that continue on because some of those things are continuing all past their time, past the time of God's blessing,

past the time of God's anointing. I mean, it just happens that way. And I don't want to be investing in that which is decreasing. I want to be investing that which is increasing.

And so, you know, if I'm going to invest my time and my energy, my efforts, my thoughts, my life into things, I want to, I want to for sure invest in things that are God's doing and moving in.

And the things that I definitely know are timeless, meaning God's not going to change those things. Those things are clearly in his word.

I'm going to invest my life in those things.

But I'm definitely going to be looking around seeing for new opportunities for God to be doing something, look around for God to be moving in the hearts of young people in wanting to do and be a part of this ministry, of that ministry,

wanting to do a new work in their friend base, in their community. I want to see that and I want to invest in it. I want to invest in it over and over and over and over again.

And if I don't invest in it,

I'm missing out. I'm missing out on them. He says you can eat those within the gates. The unclean and the clean person alike may eat it as if it were a gazelle or deer only you shall not eat its blood.

You shall pour it on the ground like water. And what he's saying is you need to do it always the right way. That's something that God had already instructed them about, pouring the blood on the ground.

And you can eat certain unclean animals. You just can't offer them as sacrifices to God.

You can't eat the gazelle or a deer,

not that they're unclean, but that they're not animals that are sacrificed to God. I guess I used the wrong word there.

They're just animals that God is not required for sacrifice. You can eat the first fruit that is lame or has some defect. You can eat them like a regular animal that I've allowed you to eat, but you can't treat them like they're something special.

And you know what? Sometimes that happens. Sometimes that just happens. In life, things don't work out.

But when we're looking for God all the time,

we tend to find Him.

When we're searching out God all the time,

we tend to locate Him.

And when you are regularly in your mind seeing God move around you,

you are going to be involved in kingdom work, you're going to be involved in the good things that happen around you,

and you're going to begin to hunger for it. And I've been around a lot of people that were much older than I am, and I know I seem old Today, in my 50s, but much older than I am, that were spent their life looking for God in things all around them and investing themselves in those things.

And let me tell you something.

It's powerful to invest. It's powerful to see that. It's powerful to be a part of that. And it's encouraging. And it causes you to be a hopeful person,

and it causes you to be an expectant person. And so this principle of the first fruits, and you see it all the time, especially in the Pentateuch, especially in the first five books of the Bible, you see it all the time.

And you're going to see it later on, we're going to run into stories later on that bring this up too.

You begin to be expectant to see God doing new things. And he does new do new things. He does them all the time. And so I pray that you will see that yourself 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.