Deuteronomy 16:9-12 Bible Study | Episode 904

March 27, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 16:9-12  Bible Study | Episode #904

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.

Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are In Deuteronomy, chapter 16, verses 9 through 12.

Excuse me. This passage is the passage where Moses is telling the children of the children of Israel who are going into the promised land. He's telling them how to celebrate the feast.

Now, he's not going into great detail,

he's already done that.

That's already in scriptures, but he is reminding them to keep the feast. He's reminding them that when they go into the promised land, that they need to keep these feasts and that they need to make sure that they remember.

And that's the whole point of feast, is to remember what God is doing and to expect the things that God has promised. Now I'm going to say that again because I had to clear my throat.

The point of the feast is to remember what God has done and to expect the things that God has promised in the future. And so it's a double edged sword.

It's important for you understanding your past, but it's also important for you to be prepared for your future.

Now the Feast of weeks is what we call today. Most, most Christians know it better today as Pentecost. And Pentecost mean pena, meaning 5, 50,

Pentecost meaning the 50th day. And it's really the 50th day after Passover.

And that's because after Passover they would have gone out and began to harvest. They'd begin to begin to work the fields, begin to do the things that were required to bring in a harvest each year.

And so Pentecost would have been 49 days then the next day, which would have been 50 days after the feast. And the reason we remember Pentecost is because, you know,

Pentecost plays an important role in the book of Acts in chapter two,

where at Pentecost,

the Apostle Paul preaches.

He preaches to the. Well, to the Gentiles.

I mean, to the Jews in Jerusalem, and there's Gentiles there also. And at that point,

the Holy Spirit comes down and they speak in languages that are not known to them. I believe that they're speaking in languages that are known to the people around them who may not speak their language.

And they hear the gospel, they hear the good news. And when they hear the good news,

they turn and receive that good news.

They receive Christ. And there's a great outpouring not only of the Holy Spirit, but there's a great harvest of believers which create a great base of support not only for the Christian faith in Jerusalem, although there were about 500 people that were believers at that time.

It creates a great harvest of believers in Jerusalem, and it begins to spread the good news around the world, because a lot of these people are not from Jerusalem. And they go out into the world and they begin to tell the story of Jesus because of the events of Pentecost.

So that's just a real rudimentary explanation of Acts Chapter two. There's a lot that goes into it,

and that's not really what the Bible study's about this morning, but we will get into it in the future.

So the passage here is telling them how to celebrate it and remember. It's for you to remember the past and to be expectant or get ready for what God is going to do for you in the future.

And those are important principles, because God is the God of yesterday, today and forevermore. He is the great I am, he was, he is, he ever shall be. He is the transcendent God, meaning He transcends time and space.

He is beyond time and space. He exists in all time and all space,

singularly on his own,

without having to move through them. He exists in them. And so understanding that, understanding that that's who God is, that he exists in time and space,

beyond them, as a creation. Understanding that is highly important when you are dealing with God telling you to remember things and telling you to expect things. Because for him, the remembering and the expecting are all together.

And for us, we should act that way. We should act that the things that God has done, he shall do. The things that God shall do, he has done. He is doing those things for us.

He, he has completed those things. That's how Jesus could be slain from the foundation of time. Because it was a certitude to God, because God was already in not Only the foundation of time.

But he was in the time of Jesus's crucifixion, and he was in the end times, all at the same time. And so understanding that,

you see that when God says, you shall count seven weeks for yourself, begin to count the seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the grain now, meaning, begin to count the seven weeks from the time which would be right after the Passover,

from that time until seven weeks and then the next day which had been Pentecost, 50 times 50 weeks, 50 days. Then you shall keep the feast of weeks to the Lord your God with a tribute of freewill offering from your hand.

Meaning you're going to give God freely from your hand.

So how much? What do you give Him?

Whatever you're led to. And even in this, you begin to see God beginning to show us how to. How to listen to the Holy Spirit.

He's beginning to show us how to understand the Holy Spirit.

What am I supposed to give God?

Whatever I lead you to. How am I supposed to do it? The way I tell you to do it. Now, see, in the New Testament, often, and we'll get into legalism in the New Testament trying to make the tithe a legalistic offering.

If you're trying to figure out a percentage with God, you're missing out on the whole point. Okay? The point is God is God of everything.

What I need to be is. I need to be in the center of his will as far as my life is concerned. So I give to God whatever He requires because I'm not worried about what is mine and what is his, because what is mine is his.

What I'm concerned about is that I'm not concerned that God has access to my finances. I'm concerned that I have access to his largest, his best.

And it's hard to get that for you until the Holy Spirit just reveals it to you. The important part of who I am as far as my finances are concerned or my gifts to God is not how much God has access to my stuff, it's how much I have access to his stuff.

Okay? They're not comparable. My stuff is nothing.

My stuff in the scheme of time and space is meaningless. It's nothing but what God has. What God has done, what God shall do. What God is doing today. What God is doing today is important for me.

And so I need to have access to what he's doing, not him. Have access to my bank account.

Okay? So my bank account is just a minute,

finite nothing portion of God's plan, but my access to his accounts, my access to his best, my access to his largest, and he's the owner of all things, is very important for my future.

It's very important for who I am and how I see things. And so with the Feast of Weeks, he's beginning to teach them that you give God, you hand over to God whatever you freely understand that the Holy Spirit's leading you to give.

It's a free will offering.

And you go, well,

how do we have free. We have free will to chase after God once we're born again. That's the part of the. See, we get to join God in our salvific process, in our sanctification.

We join him with our faith, we trust him and we walk with Him.

We don't do anything to be born again, and we don't do anything to be glorified. He's got to do those works. He's got to do the calling and the justifying and all that kind of stuff.

But I do get to freely follow after him in as much faith as I can muster to trust Him. And the same is true with your finances, if you ever really begin to think of it that way.

And sadly, a lot of believers never do. And maybe because the church limits us, because we start talking about, you need to give this offering, that offering, and this percentage and that percentage, and all four.

You know, it. You're headlong into trying to mete out what I'm going to give God and keep for myself.

And, you know, there's a lot of. There's a lot of.

There's a great pastor joke about that. And I guess I ought to tell it here. You know, it is funny.

You know, one pastor said that, you know, I take the offering and I go outside and I draw a circle on the ground and I throw up. They throw the offering from the offering plate into the air.

And whatever lands inside the circle, I keep. And whatever lands outside the circle, God gets. And the other pastor next to him said, no, you're doing it all wrong. I do the circle, but everything that falls outside the circle, I keep.

And what everything falls inside the circle, God keeps. In the third pastor says, you know, y'all are both doing it wrong. I go outside and I throw it up in the air, and whatever God wants, He keeps.

And everything that falls to the ground, I consider mine.

It's a funny joke. It is funny.

But, but, but in some ways, that is even an element of trusting God and recognizing God, being over all things.

It is how we oftentimes consider God, meaning that God is somehow trying to cut in on what I got,

and he's not. He doesn't need what you got.

He.

I mean, when I say that,

I mean it. I've said it many times in my life. And the older I get, the more I realize he. He does not need what I have at all. And he's not interested in it.

He's interested in me.

And what I need is access to him.

And the only way for me to get access to him is to let go of the things of this world and grab hold to the things that are eternal. And that's how we got to live our lives.

That's why how we. That's. That's how we should live. We should live that way. So he says. He says you should offer a free will offering from your hand which you shall give to the Lord, your God, who blesses you.

You should just give it to him. Give him whatever, Whatever. Whatever's there. Just get. Let God have it. Okay? And, And. And you go, well, I got to feed my children.

Yeah, we'll keep my face. I got to pay my rent. Okay, that. That's right. You know, there are some people that can just give just a little. The widow's might is that story.

They. They just got this much to give. Does God receive that as. As. As. As a. As a great act of faith? Absolutely, he does. Absolutely. And then there's others that can give, you know, huge swaths of their income to God.

And does he consider that great act of faith the same as the widow's faith? The exact same.

The issue is, like I said, not your percentage of. Of your income to God.

The issue is your percentage of who he is to you.

And that's where life's found, and that's where rejoicing is found. And that's what verse 11 says. You shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and daughters, your male servants, your female.

It's hard to rejoice if I'm trying to divvy up money, right? When we count the money, there's not rejoicing.

But when we're counting God's blessing, his plan, His. His. His acting in my life, there's great rejoicing. You shall rejoice before the Lord, your God, your sons and your daughters, your male servants, female servants, the Levites.

Who is within. Who is within your gates? The stranger and the followers. He stay in everybody, the widow who are among you. These are people who have nothing. The fatherless and the widow.

Why should they rejoice? Well, because you're given to them, too. You're taking care of them, he says, the strangers and the fatherless, the widows who are among you at the place where the Lord your God chooses to make his name abide.

And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and you shall be careful to observe these statutes. What he's saying is you need to remember where you come from so that you can have a real expectation of.

Of how great it's going to be where you're going.

You need to celebrate God in your life,

and part of that's free will, giving him access to your life.

And you need to.

You need to do that with your whole family. You need to do that with all that you are.

And you need to remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that God has given you instructions on how you should live. And that's one of. This, is one of those instructions.

If. If this Bible study has touched you, I would. I'd like it or share it or whatever,

but the main thing is, is that I would like it with God and I would share it with my friends that, you know, God is really. I don't need him.

I need to worry about him having access to what I have. I need to worry about what access I have to what he has.

And, you know, when you start really living life that way,

the access gets greater and greater 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.