Deuteronomy 17:2-7 Bible Study | Episode 908

April 2, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 17:2-7  Bible Study | Episode #908

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 17, verses 2 through 7.

Not the most favorite verses of scripture that we can do a Bible study on on a Tuesday morning.

The passage deals with worshiping other gods. And Moses needed to definitely, he needed to definitely warn the children of Israel against this. And God's law provided for pretty stiff penalties about worshiping other gods.

God takes it really seriously.

And I always say, and I think it's important, as we think through these things,

it is important to understand because so many ways and so many. In so many ways and in so many different settings,

we can worship other gods. But the truth is, when it boils down, when you bullet down to who you worship, when those things are things that you're trying to figure out,

the truth is you can boil them down into three categories.

Generally speaking, people worship.

They worship God himself, the true God, Yahweh, the one who made all things and who physically manifests himself in His Son and whose presence is in our lives by the Holy Spirit.

You can worship that God.

He is the God of the universe. He is really the only God,

Big G.

Or you can worship something he made. You might be able to worship, as is mentioned in this passage, the celestial beings, the sun, the moon, the stars, something like that.

You can worship something he made. Maybe the earth,

maybe the place where we live, maybe some aspect, aspect of creation, maybe an animal, maybe, you know, all kinds of things, all kinds of things. Anything that God made, which is everything.

Because all that, all that was made was made by God. And nothing that was made was not made by Him. And that's what John says about Jesus,

that he made all things. And so we. You can worship something that was made that was formed by the will of God, but made by the hands of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.

You can worship Something that God made, which would be worshiping something lower than God. And then the other one who. The other category,

by the way, angels and things like that would also fall in that category. The other category that you can worship is,

interestingly, it's the most seductive category. It's yourself and most people who worship something else other than God. And even us as believers,

if we wander away, generally we wander away to worship something that has attracted us from the world, or we wander away to our own self,

our own self indulgences, our own desires, our own.

We love ourselves more than we love God. And that's a powerful understanding.

That God, when he sent his son to deliver us from sin and death,

the main thing he needed to deliver us from was us.

I need to be delivered from me. And the more God delivers me from me, the better off I am.

He doesn't deliver us from the world. In fact, he says, be in the world, but not of the world. Which means don't place your focus, your life focus on the world and the world's the things that are going on in the world.

Be in the world, but not of the world.

Which means, you know,

allow the world to. To be your setting, but don't allow the world to be your director. And. And that's really an important idea. But. But the truth is, is that I need to be delivered from me into the life God made for me, not the life that I want to live myself.

And so God is pretty stark about not worshiping other gods, especially because they're going into a land where they're worshiping other gods and these gods. The worship of these gods is really, really terrible.

It's a terrible.

It's a terrible practice.

Human sacrifice is involved.

Their worship is.

Is raucous. It is. It is detestable. It's an abomination.

It involves a lot of sexuality. It involves a lot of. It involves a lot of,

well, abuse, abusive people. And so God says, I don't want you to have anything to do with them. In fact, I want you to drive them all out. I want you to get rid of all of them because you should not fall into this.

And so he says, if there's found among you within any of your gates, which the Lord your God gives you, a man or a woman who has been wicked in the sight of the Lord your God, in transgressing his covenant, who has gone and served other gods and worshiped them,

either the sun or the moon or any of the host of heaven, which I've not commanded you and it is told you and you hear of it, then you should inquire diligently.

What he's saying is if somebody is worshiping one of these guides, one of these other gods, and you hear about it, you need to check into it. Now, this is, this is one of those situations where in scripture, God tells the people to inquire about this, to actually do an investigation.

It's, it's, it's one of the, one of the places in scripture where you actually need a detective. You need somebody to go in there and, and figure out whether or not this is actually taking place.

And, and, and,

and the reason is, is that you don't want it to have anything to do with you or your family or your life. You, you want, you don't want that. You don't want this, the worship of other gods to have anything to do with you and your family.

And I, I, you know, you'll, you'll have young families, young mothers and fathers who are very protective of their children. Well, there's good reason to be protective. There is. You can overprotect, you can, you can helicopter over them too much, but when it comes to stuff like this, it'd be really important.

And God says, I want you to inquire diligently about this, not just make an inquiry. He says, inquire diligently and if it is indeed true and certain that such an abomination has been committed in Israel, meaning that somebody's actually worshiped other gods, if it's indeed true that you find out that this has gone on,

then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has committed that wicked thing, and you shall stone them to death,

woman with stones.

That's a pretty stark punishment.

He says the punishment for idolatry, worshiping other gods is death. Now I'm gonna say this. It still is. It still is death. Not physical death, but spiritual death. Worshiping anything other than the one true God causes.

Well, ultimately causes you to be separated from the one true God for eternity.

And so spiritual death is the result of this and a stark result of this. Whoever's deserving of death shall be put to death on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

Now, notice if they're going to do the death penalty. And by the way,

the New Testament provides for it. The Old Testament provides for it. I'm not sure that we do it in a way that it's meant for, which is the death penalty is not meant to, to just put to death the wrongdoer.

It's not Meant for that. It's meant to be a deterrent. I'm not sure in the modern way we do the death penalty that it is anyway a deterrent, but it's still provided for in the Old and New Testament.

You go, well, we're in the New Testament. Is it provided for? Well,

even Jesus when he's dealing with the woman caught in adultery, he provides for that. It is,

it would be within the rights of those who are without sin to stone someone to death. Now, there's only one person who would be able to do that. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't legally correct.

It just means that Jesus wasn't going to be involved in that. That's not what he was here for. And so understanding that it is legally still correct,

Paul asked the question,

did the axeman wield his axe in vain? Meaning the executioner, does he wield his axe in vain? And the answer is, know that government still has the power to,

to pronounce the death penalty on, on people and, and that it is right for that to be carried out. But you know, there's very much higher standard in the Old Testament and in, in our modern court system for someone to get the death penalty.

And in the Old Testament it was, they, they couldn't be convicted for the death penalty on the witness of one person. It had to be two or three others.

There had to be two or three witnesses to, to pronounce it. And, and that seems, that seems like, that, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense to me.

And he says,

whoever's deserving the death shall be put to death on the testimony of two or three witnesses. He shall not be put to death on the testimony of one witness.

Seems reasonable. If we're going to put him to death, the hand of the witness shall be the first against him to put him to death. Now notice this makes it a lot harder.

So if you're going to be the witness against someone for this, you're going to have to be the one that steps out and says they deserve to die.

And that means you got to put some action behind your conviction.

You've got to decide that you really mean business about this and don't play around with it. And I think that is a powerful lesson to learn here. He says, he says, and afterward the hands of all the people.

So you shall put away the evil from among you. And listen, this is spoken of one of those things just like the last,

about bringing God blemish sacrifices. Just like the last section. This section is a stumbling block to Israel.

They do not worship God in the way God has asked them to. They bring him defective sacrifices and they chase after other gods. So even though 17, chapter 17 seems to be one of those chapters that's, you know, really a downer as you kind of go through it.

It is, it's God being loving and saying, these are stumbling blocks, these are problems. These are things that are gonna eventually cause you to, well, you to not be with me, you not to have my best.

And as we said, and we should, we should take, take to heart those things.

Do I offer God the best of who I am? Do I give him my very, very best? And then, then we must ask the question is, am I chasing after other gods?

Am I chasing after worshiping things that are physical that God made or worse?

Am I worshiping myself and chasing after my will rather than God's will?

And if I am I costing myself a lot?

And the answer is,

yeah, you are.

You're missing out on really all that God has ever made for you.

You can't offer him less than the best and expect to get the best back.

And you can't worship other things and expect for God's things to pour down on you.

It's not going to happen.

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.