Deuteronomy 17:8-13 Bible Study | Episode 909

April 3, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 17:8-13  Bible Study | Episode #909

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 8 through 13.

You know, as you're going through Moses instructions, obviously he's going to deal with a lot of.

He's going to deal with a lot of things that we have even to this day.

I was so,

I guess amazed in law school how much of what our legal system is based on is directly, I mean, just directly attributed, attributable to Scripture.

It's amazing how much our law comes right from the Bible. And a lot of the particulars of the law come from the Old Testament, come from Moses the Lawgiver. That's why.

And many don't know this, on the front of the Supreme Court building,

right there in the top, as part of the edifice of the building, right there in front,

there is a big. Well, I guess they're statues.

I'm not good with art, but they're statues.

They're right there above the entrance to the building and the primary statue right in the middle is Moses and the Ten Commandments.

Why? Because really for Judeo Christian law, Judeo Christian history,

Western culture itself,

our laws arise from the. The Bible and primarily Moses himself. And so when we're, when I'm studying this, when I'm looking at this, it is, it's amazing. And for me,

this passage is, you know, it's one of those passages that kind of hit home to me, especially because, you know, I've just been placed in a position of being a judge if a matter ar.

Which is too hard for you to judge. Verse 8. Now that's a big if. Notice it starts with if a matter arises, which is too hard for you to judge,

between guilt of bloodshed, between one judgment or another, or between one punishment or another,

matters of controversy within your gates.

Now, I want you to notice that these are matters of Controversy, Some of them are criminal matters. Bloodshed,

you know, guilt, things like that. That would definitely be a issue of. Well, it's just an issue of criminal law. And there might be some.

There might be some argument about that. And obviously you need to have some system for dealing with disputes as far as criminal matters. But some of this is not criminal matters.

Between one judgment or another, between one punishment or another, that's a. That would be obviously,

probably criminal. But it could be somebody wronged someone civilly. Matters of controversy within your gates,

then you shall arise and go up to place which the Lord your God chooses. Meaning you're supposed to go to Jerusalem to get an answer for this. Now,

for criminal matters, obviously there always needs to be some kind of system in which people have a right to be heard. People's rights are protected. And by the way, that's.

That's what's going on here. God's beginning to set up a system where people's. People have rights and those rights are protected. But in civil matters,

oftentimes I find that, that if. In a civil matter is a big if.

What I mean by that. Well, generally speaking, if people try to. If people want to,

they can settle matters, they can work things out.

I found that as a lawyer,

I've always been able to, generally speaking, be able to work things out. Especially if on the other side there is another attorney who likes to work things out.

There's always a way to work things out. Now, when I work things out, that doesn't mean I get everything that I want. That just means I get what is satisfactory to me for me to leave the situation.

Meaning that we work things out in such a way that you are well enough satisfied and that I'm well enough satisfied to work things out and to. And to come to a conclusion of the matter.

Oftentimes, oftentimes that means that I have to give a little. And oftentimes it might mean that I don't even. I don't even believe that, that I got what was right.

What it means is, is that I'm willing to settle. And I found that if people are willing to work things out, usually they follow what they decide to do, meaning if they have an agreement, they usually will live up to that agreement and it doesn't have to go anywhere else.

Usually they agree and they do what they say they're going to do and they're going to finish it out. It's the people who cannot, who are unwilling.

Maybe they feel like they're just. And they're right and the other is not. Oftentimes it is, they want their way and they're going to have their way one way or the other.

And those people usually in the legal system find themselves in a position where they're not satisfied with what happens. In fact, they're never going to be satisfied because they want what they want.

And it doesn't really matter how that affects anybody else. People like that are going to struggle in the legal system. Usually they're going to struggle in any system, but they're definitely going to struggle in the legal system.

And,

and those who commit crimes, generally speaking,

they. You have two categories there. You have the person who, who admits that they did it. They come to. They come to a place where they say, in their heart, you know, I should not have done that.

And usually those people are the people who can be, who can be helped. What I mean by helped. Well, they can be helped to become better people. They can be helped to become better than what they are.

And they're. By the situation. The ones who, who can accept guilt are the ones who are really a danger to society. And so when we have these situations where you actually have to go before a judge, which, by the way,

is not a lot,

I would say it's not a lot at all. I would say that most of the situations that could become a legal matter in the world that we live in don't become legal matters.

Why? Because it's expensive, it costs a lot, and oftentimes you don't get the end result that you want to. Why don't we get the end result that we want to in legal matters?

Well,

let's just be honest about this. Let's say that somebody comes to me and they have a dispute over an automobile. Well, I'm going to tell you I'm good at something.

I'm really good at automobiles.

As a judge,

these are the things I know how to do really well about automobiles. Well, I know how to put gas in them. I know how to crank them and drive them.

I know how to take them to the shop to get them worked on, and I know how to pay for them. I'm really good at those things. I can pay for them.

I can take them to be worked on. I can put gas in them and I can drive them. Other than that, I don't know anything about a vehicle. I don't know a whole lot about a car.

If you open the hood up, I could probably point the major parts of it, but that's not all that big a deal. If you put A person in front of me, I could point to their head and their legs and their arms.

I know their major parts, their torso,

but that doesn't mean I know how that operates either. And so if you come to me with a medical matter or a car minor and then you two are experts on it because you've worked on cars forever and ever and you have a matter between you, then you're going to have to explain that in such a way that I understand it and come to a just conclusion about it over your,

your actual expertise in the matter.

Well, in some ways that's foolishness.

Why would you come to me and ask me to be a judge between you when you two are the experts on the matter and you ought to work things out and generally speak speaking in that regard.

People do. Why would you come to a non farmer and ask them to deal with a farm matter? Why would you come to a non engineer and ask him to, to.

To decide on the engineering matter? Why would you do that? You wouldn't do that.

And. But we do that in our legal system all the time. We take things to attorneys who are experts in the law, who have been made judges. We take them to those people and make them make decisions about things that they're not expertise, they don't have expertise in.

And you have to make them experts by your testimony such that they can make a good decision.

Not a bright idea. You ought to work it out. And the truth is most things ought to be worked out.

And then when we come to criminal matters, there needs to be a figuring out of whether or not we need justice or whether or not we need mercy to help this person figure out their life and move forward and become a better citizen, a better part of the community.

He says, if you can't work it out, and you shall come to the priests, the Levites and to the judge there in those days, inquire them and they shall pronounce upon you the sentence of judgment.

Meaning you go to Jerusalem and Jerusalem is going to decide whether or not what you're doing is right or wrong and they're going to make a decision about it. Notice doesn't mean they're an expert in the matter.

Doesn't mean that they're going to make the right decision. They're just going to make a decision. Notice, he says, they're going to pronounce upon you the sentence of judgment.

That means they're going to give you a judgment and you're gonna have to live by that judgment. Be better off working that out. Rather than bring it to the judge, you shall do according to the sentence which they pronounce upon you in that place which the Lord chooses.

Notice once, once you come to that place, and, and you ask for. For a judgment. And I say this all the time, especially in civil court,

saying, once I decide it's going to be over,

you're gonna have to live with it.

And, and so do you really want to go through with this or do you want to go back in the back of the courtroom and try to work it out?

He says, you, you shall live according to sentence,

and you shall be careful to do according to. To all that they order you according to the sentence of the law in which they instruct you, according to the judgments which they tell you you shall do.

You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left from the sentence which they pronounce upon you. Notice this is getting pretty content. God's saying, listen, once you go to Jerusalem, and once they pronounce sentence, you're going to do exactly what they say.

And if you don't do what they say, well, it's going to get bad. And how do I know that? Well, I know verse 12. He says, now the man who acts presumptually, meaning he presumes that he's higher than God, he's higher than God's law,

he's higher than the government, he's higher than the courts. He says, the man who practice presumptuously and will not heed the priest who stands to minister there before the Lord your God, or the judge, that man shall die so you shall put away the evil from Israel.

What he's saying is, if you're going to act like you're above the law, you're going to act like you're above the courts, you're going to act like you're above what God has put in place, then we're going to take you out because we can't have that type of person in our communities.

Wow,

that's pretty stark judgment. It is.

We don't do it quite like that anymore. Okay, but there are some major civil penalties for not doing what God says. I mean, not doing what the courts say. In our modern times, you can go to jail for not following a court order,

you find yourself in contempt of court, and you can spend a good bit of time in jail, a long period of time in jail,

he says, and all the people shall hear and fear and no longer act presumptually.

This is one of those passages that, you know, it just kind of resonates with me because I do this regularly now. I've been doing it for a long time as a lawyer now I sit in another position, but it's still the same.

I see it all the time. People who can't get along and who can't do right have to come before a judge and decisions have to be made. And once those decisions are made, they're made.

They're difficult to overturn and rightly so. And so when we look at this, I say, you know, it's neat how this could be written 3500 years ago and be so relevant to today.

But you know, God's eternal, which means he lives in all times at the same time.

So he kind of knew today was coming when yesterday happened. In fact, he knows about both of them at the same time.

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.