Deuteronomy 18:1-8 Bible Study | Episode 911

 April 7, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 18:1-8   Bible Study | Episode #911

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.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. 

Please follow us:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church

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 18.

We'll work through chapter 18, maybe even get into 19 this week. But we are,

we are studying. Well,

Moses tells them about the Levites. How, how. How do we deal with the Levites? And Levites are the priestly class. They are. And when you say priestly class for a lot of people, that, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Maybe may. It doesn't. Doesn't really resonate because you. In the United States, in the south, and where we're studying the Bible,

if you come from a predominantly Catholic background or from a Catholic area of the country where there's a lot of Catholicism, well, you would kind of understand the priestly class because the Catholics have priests and the priests serve as the leaders of the church.

And they are really, really heavily tied, not just to their congregation, but they're tied the. The Roman Catholic Church in Rome. And so communities like that would really, really have a understanding of a priestly class in, in.

In our communities, not as much we understand pastors, but they take on many, many forms and, and they're a part of many, many denominations. And so the way that looks in, in different churches can be very different.

Very. It can vary a whole lot. And I say that,

believing that that's probably a good idea. It's probably good to have all the different ideas and denominations and understandings and, and things like that. Not, not in the sense of division, but it's always good to have,

have the church set up so that it reaches a broad, broad stroke of people. And, and, and each church should be in the effort of trying to figure out,

trying to figure out how to speak to the community that they're in. Every, Every church ought to be doing that. And you go, well, we gotta. We got the same message.

Yeah, we do, but Paul said, I become all things to all men, that by all means some might be saved. And what he's saying is, I understand,

I begin to understand the culture so that I can use the word of God, you know, as a, as, as a, as a workman approved. I can use the word of God to reach that culture, to reach that group of people, to reach the soc you live in.

And the priestly class, really,

this is something that would help you understand it. The priestly class really was the first profession.

And what I mean by that, well, we, we use the word professional a whole lot now and, and especially in the south, professional means a professional football player or basketball player, maybe a baseball player,

and used to be, when, when Tiger was really doing well,

a professional golfer. But, but the professional idea was that you're no longer an amateur, you're a professional. And you, you are, you are highly qualified in that area. And historically this, this passage begins the priesthood class and actually begins the, the, the priest profession, the pastoral profession, and also the legal profession.

And then finally the historic three professions were the priest or the pastor,

the attorney or the lawyer or judge, both, and then finally the doctor. And so these professional class have their origins with this. And so understanding how they set it aside so that it could develop the priestly class, you're going to see that both priest and attorney kind of grow out of this.

It says the priests, the Levites, all the tribe of Levi,

notice he first calls them the priest, then he calls them the Levites. When you say Levite in the New Testament in Jesus's time, you are literally talking about really an attorney, somebody who was an expert in the law.

So you had, then you had a family or a group of families that were Levites who ran the priesthood. And then you had Levites who kind of handled the legal system.

And the legal system being the law right here. So they're very tied together,

but very similar, but very different. He says the priests of the Levites, all the tribe of Levi, shall have no part nor inheritance with Israel. They shall eat the offerings of the Lord made by fire and his portion, meaning they didn't have a inheritance in the land.

They had inheritance in the towns and in the cities.

They had the real estate within the walls of the city and some land to form outside the city. But mainly they didn't have an inheritance in the land. Now, interestingly,

the most expensive property would have been the property in the city,

as it is in every society. So God gave them a value, but he did not give them inheritance in the land. And that's a picture of the promises of God.

They were to live off of the worship of God. And so they're to have all the offerings made by fire and his portion. Therefore, they shall have no inheritance among their brethren.

The Lord is their inheritance, as he has said to them, meaning God took care of them. God is their inheritance. God handled,

making sure they were okay. And this shall be the priest due from the people, meaning their right from the people. From those who offer a sacrifice, whether it's a bull or a sheep, they shall give to the priest.

The shoulder, the cheeks, the stomach. They get a portion of the actual sacrifice to sell in the market, to eat with their family,

to do with as they saw fit in order to continue them being able to live. The first fruits of your grain and your new wine and your oil.

So they get the offerings from the bull and the sheep. They get the offerings from. And by the way, grain offering, wine, a libation offering. It's a liquid offering.

Your oil would have been a libation offering. And the first of the fleece of your sheep. You shall give him notice. Even the wool from the sheep,

they get the first fleece from any sheep they got. For the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes to stand to minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons forever.

Now,

as far as this concerned,

you need to hear this. It is right and proper for a pastor or minister to benefit financially from the service they render to the church.

That is a clear understanding.

You don't have to assert your right. But as a pastor, you have a right to benefit from the ministry that you do to the church.

Now, I'm going to tell you that I don't do that. But. And I have some specific reasons, just because of my past and my history, that I don't do that.

I read that the reason I don't comes from a lot of things the Apostle Paul says about his laboring so that the church did not have to take care of him.

But every time he brings that up, every time he mentions it,

he asserts that he has a right to it.

And there is a right to it.

If someone ministers before you, someone serves as in the office of a spiritual leader, which is a pastor.

If they serve in that office and they serve well, they have a right to get paid. They do. And that's a Old Testament principle that we find here in Deuteronomy.

And even prior to this, when God first set it aside of the Levite classes throughout the Old Testament. And it's throughout the New Testament,

and it's in the teachings of Jesus, and it's in the teachings of the New Testament Epistles. There is a right to be able to live,

have a living off of leading a congregation. Now, the smaller the congregation and the smaller the setting, the less there's going to be for you to be able to live off of.

But there's still a right there, he says, for the Lord, your God has chosen him out of all the tribes to stand to minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons forever.

So even though I don't take one, we do pay some of our pastors.

And why? Because they have a right to. And if they have that need, then they have a right to ask to be paid. They have a right to ask to be compensated for their labor, for their service.

That would be in so many ways wrong for us not to do that in not only Scripture, but the way we've ordered our society from Scripture. It would just be wrong for someone to have to give their labor and not benefit from it at all.

When we operate in faith, we get a benefit from it. And you need to hear that.

We don't act in faith to get the benefit, but all faith brings benefit. Why? Because when we trust God,

God's a source of all good things. And so when we trust him, we open the door to those good things. And so when a pastor is getting paid, and I'm probably speaking more for those who are watching this,

maybe now that are not a part of the Lake Community Church, or maybe they're watching this and they're, they. And it's 10, 15 years from now. Listening to this. It is important that you understand that there is a right for a pastor to earn a living, a wage for his labor.

We, we do not muzzle the ox, meaning we don't not pay the ox for the labor he does. Why? Because you'll kill the ox. Okay. And, and so you can't do that.

That's a economic principle that comes from biblical principles.

It's layered upon layered of right to do. And so we should always make sure that we compensate those who have the need to be compensated as pastoral leaders of the church.

So if a Levite comes from you,

from any of your gates, from where he dwells among all Israel and comes with all the desire of his mind to the place which the Lord chooses, meaning he comes to Jerusalem, then he may serve in the name of the Lord his God,

as all his brethren, the Levites do, who stand there before the Lord. They shall have equal portion to eat beside what comes from the sale of his inheritance. And what he's saying is that if you come there and they did they come to Jerusalem and they began to not only serve as priests in the temples,

but they also began to serve as servants of the law, which is what we're studying right now. And so those professions began to develop in Israel and they had some rudimentary development in different types of ways throughout the world.

And then because of, because of the teachings of the, of scripture,

when the Romans became Christian, when the Roman,

when the the Roman Empire began to take on these teachings of the New Testament, it began to codify into. You had a,

a professional class of priests and a professional class of attorneys. Now do I think it's great to have a professional class in the sense of keeping it professional. You know, I have some worries about that in the way we've done it, especially because we kind of get back into Romanizing or catholicizing the clergy class,

the clergy.

I think there has to be some separation from that.

But it's a biblical principle and it's a principle that you kind of have didn't have to have in the back of your mind. And I have it all the time in the back of my mind.

Even though I don't take it. I understand that there are those who need it and should I should take care of those who do because we A workman is worth his wage.

And that's scripture.

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.