Deuteronomy 16:13-17 Bible Study | Episode 905

March 28, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 16:13-17 Bible Study | Episode #905

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 16,

Deuteronomy, chapter 16, and verses 13 through 17.

We're dealing with Feast of Tabernacles. Now, remember, Moses is not telling them all that they're supposed to do during the feast of Tabernacles. He's already, he's already written that down.

That's already in the.

In the stew. It's already, it's already prepared. He is just telling them that they need to do these feasts. And he. Well, you know, the truth is he's given them a little bit of word of instruction about their attitude toward the feast and how they're supposed.

Supposed to approach the feast. And you go, well, I don't. I don't know why,

why that's super important. Well, I would say to you that oftentimes you can know what you're doing, but if you do not know why and how you're supposed to do it, meaning you don't understand the purpose of it in the sense of how this is supposed to affect me and other people,

then oftentimes what you do will be ineffective. You may know what to do, but if you do not do it with the underlying principles that make what you do important, you'll miss out on it.

You just miss out on it. And oftentimes I think we do that with our own worship. And so when we look.

And I'm not talking about us as a church, Lake Community Church, but I'm talking about us as a people, as the body of Christ, as the church,

as the church international, the church all over the world.

When I think about the church, oftentimes I think about the days and times in my life where I did church, but I did not engage in church.

I did worship. I was in worship, but I did not. I did not focus my heart and My mind on the reason why God made worship while we were there.

And so I missed out on it. And, and, and missing out on God is a,

well, it's a fatal thing. It's just. This is terrible. It's, it's something that is,

is highly destructive. And, and, and, and, and really,

it's really sad if you want to know the truth. When, when a person's missing out on God,

they're really, really what they're doing is missing out on life. They're missing out on, on the hope that they could have. And it's. When we think of people who are lonely, people who are separated, people who are, are living in shame and worry and doubt.

When we think about those things,

all those things are, they're the opposite of God's nature, His, God's plan, God's will. And so they have to be in some way missing God in this. And we want for ourselves, we want for our family, but we also want for other people that they would find the peace,

the joy, the power that comes from knowing God. And so these feasts were designed to perpetuate in the people these understandings, not only these big understandings of God, but this understanding of the joy and the, and the excitement and the power that comes from coming together as a people and worshiping God and experiencing his presence.

And, you know, I guess I should have said that first. Experiencing his presence, it's. Is important.

So the feast of Tabernacles is interesting. We're here studying in Deuteronomy just a few weeks ago,

before we got to the woman called in adultery in chapter seven in John, Jesus is at the feast of Tabernacles. And that's where he stands on the last and greatest day of the feast and says,

all who are thirsty, let them come to me. It's a great proclamation of his messiahship, of his lordship, of his love for his, for God's people and his message to them.

On the last and greatest day of the feast, when everybody was expecting to have the picture that normally was poured out each day, they were expecting it to be empty.

And it was. And that is a point that points them to the God's not finished in that work and he's going to send a Messiah. And Jesus standing up in that silent moment where literally thousands upon thousands of people are quiet and you can hear a pin drop.

And he stands and says to them, if any of you are thirsty, let them come to me.

And he says,

I'm going to give you a wellspring, a river of Living water.

And that's what this feast is about. This feast is about celebrating God. If you study it, it really has been neat to kind of go back through it again as an older man and really get down deep into it, realizing they took the court of the Gentiles, this big outer court out there,

and they made it into a stadium. They made it into a stadium, really. They had these holes in the walls where they would put these. They place these,

you know, I guess stadium seats. They, you know, run them into the wall and they'd hold up and then the women and the children would be all around and the men would be dancing and they started the feast and they would go.

They would start in the afternoon and they would celebrate God all through the night, which is really a picture of us as the church, because we're celebrating God all through the darkness.

And finally, when light broke the next morning, the priest would go and dip the water from the cistern that was right below the gate nearest to the court of the Gentiles.

He'd walk up and celebration be going on. And he pour that water libation, that water offering out. And it'd be a great time of celebration till the last day. And so it was a great, great feast of celebrating God, which is really a picture of what we should be doing.

We're the New Testament church. We've got the river of living water. We've got the relationship with Christ. We, we. We've got the. The promise of this feast, which is that a Messiah would come to deliver us.

So we've got this.

So this picture of this feast that's going on here, well, it's for us. It's for you. It's for you. And so it says, you shall observe the feast of the tabernacle, seven days when you have gathered from your threshing floor and from your winepress, and you shall rejoice in your feast.

Notice. So they're supposed to celebrate it once they have gotten their full measure of the threshing floor. That would be the wheat, the bread, the bread of life and the wine press.

When they've got all the wine and it's been made and it's been fermented and it's ready to go, which is a picture of the goodness of God. So you got the bread of life and the goodness of God.

And when that's full, fully come in when it's fully available, that's when you celebrate the feast. That's us. That's us. It's a direct picture of us. It's a direct picture of the New Testament church.

We're supposed to be a church of celebration.

Do you understand that? We are supposed to be a church of celebration.

We're supposed to come and celebrate who God is.

And let me say for us Southerners, we know how to celebrate. We do it on Saturday, we need to do it on Sunday. Okay? We know how. We know how to rejoice in the victory that is ours on the football field on Friday nights and Saturday.

We know how to do that. But we need to know how to rejoice in the victory that is eternal, that comes from God. And we need to do that on Saturday.

He says, and you shall rejoice in your feast. Remember, they danced all night, they celebrated all night. And who were the primary people that were dancing? The men. The men were.

They were celebrating together. You and your sons and your daughters, your male servants and your female servants. And the Levite, the stranger and the fatherless, the widow with who are with within your gates.

Notice everyone is supposed to engage in this. This is a whole, A whole people celebration. It's a celebration that involves everyone.

Seven days you shall seek keep this sacred feast to the Lord your God in the place where the Lord chooses, which is Jerusalem. Because the Lord your God will bless you at all you produce and all the work of your hand so that you surely rejoice.

What he's saying is I want to bless you. I want to bless you and in what you. In the product of your labor. I want to. I want to bless you in the outcome of that product.

I want to bless you in,

in your life, in your family, in your. In your. In your work. I want to bless you in every aspect of your life. I want to be a blessing to you so that you surely rejoice.

And so experience in his presence is what the feast of Tabernacles is about. Now he says, he says that because we've gone through the feast of the Passover feast, the feast of weeks, now we've gone over the feast of Tabernacles.

He says three times a year all your male shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which he chooses.

What he's saying is we gotta all come together at the feast of unleavened bread, at the feast of weeks, at the feast of Tabernacles. And they shall not appear before the Lord empty handed.

What he's saying is the men need to come and worship. Now you go. Well, what about the women? Is God forgetting the women? No, the women want to do this you know, I've been pastoring for 30 years.

Women, women. Motivating women is not hard in the church. It is not hard. Women desire to see God move in their families. Women decided desire to see God moving in their community, to see God doing great things around, around their families.

That is, that, that's not something that, it's something that, it's a blessing God has given them. Men oftentimes don't or don't even realize what's going on around them spiritually.

And, and, and, and, and that's a picture for us. It is definitely a picture for us. And God wants to make sure that, that the men are engaged in this.

And so why does he, what does he do? He says, he said he didn't even say the women got to come, although they do. I mean, you know, I imagine at the feast there were more women than men for sure,

but all the women got to come. He says, you got to appear before the Lord. You've got to come and show up. You got to be a part. And I would, I say that I lead myself.

I think the pastors of our church lead, the elders of our church lead, the ministry leaders of our church lead. That are men.

We show up, we're there. You show up, you be a part.

You are chosen and you are picked for who you are.

Okay. God is, God has delivered you. He's called you, and you need to show up. Men need to show up and they don't need to be.

And when you show up, you can't just show up. You gotta show out. You gotta do what you're supposed to be doing. And he's saying to them, the male shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which he chooses at the feast of unleavened bread, at the feast of weeks,

at the feast of tabernacles. And they shall not appear before the Lord empty handed, meaning they gotta show up with, with, with, with what God has told them to do, prepared to do what God wants them to do.

Now that involves sacrifice, sure. That involves offerings, sure. But I think it's more than that. I think, I believe that this is talking about. You show up prepared to be who you're supposed to be at these feasts.

All the, all of God's people are going to come together in Jerusalem. It's a long journey for many of you. You show up prepared to give a sacrifice. You show up prepared to worship before God.

You show up prepared to offer yourself as a living sacrifice to him. You show up prepared to give him the honor and the love and affection that God's people should show up to give him.

And you give him that in front of all the people.

You humble yourself and you give God what he deserves in front of all the people, which is also a sacrifice of praise.

Every man shall give as he is able,

according to the blessings of the Lord your God, which he has given you. Now, that's interesting. What he's saying is, if God's blessed you more, you ought to do more.

And that's true. That's true. We as a church have always done that. I've always said there are certain people in church who. Who can't give to this. Or maybe you can only give a little bit.

The amount doesn't matter. What matters most of all is that you're giving from the abundance that God has given you. And if you're in a time of need and a time of want, then you don't have an abundance to give.

But if you have an abundance to give, you need to be giving. You need to be opening your heart up, and you need to be giving all of it. And that's not just your money.

In fact, mostly it's not your money. In fact, I figured out the money comes when the person gives their heart to God in worship. The money comes when. When a person gives their life to God in their work and in their labors each day as they live their life.

When they live their life, a life glorifying to God. When they do that,

well, you know, God blesses them, the money's fine. It's not even issue. The kingdom is built. And praise God. We're in a church where we see that going on. You can see that happening.

You can obviously see that happening in the lives of the people around us. And so I think these feasts are great. And I really, really think they're great for us as a church.

Not just Old Testament Jews. This is great for us, too. And I think that as we study through them, it's great that Moses came in and said, listen, these are the principles, these things.

See, I know you know what to do. Now I know. Now I know. I want you to know how and why. Okay? I want you to know. I want you to know how you all show up in your heart and your mind.

I want you to know why we're doing them. We're doing this because. Because God is God and we are his people. And he deserves our praise. And we need it.

We need it. We need to have these times together. We need to have this time of celebration.

Wow. What a fun. What a fun Bible study through this. Tomorrow we're going to deal with the very end of chapter 16 and then we'll move on to chapter 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.