Deuteronomy 18:9-14 Bible Study | Episode 912

 April 8, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 18:9-14  Bible Study | Episode #912

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 18, verses 9 through 14. And what we're dealing with this morning is God giving Moses instructions on what to tell the children of Israel not to get involved in or, or even take up,

or even touch or even mess with, not. Not to get involved with when they enter into the promised land. Now these, these things are interesting to me. They're pretty regularly a part of many Christians lives, not all of them, but some of them.

And they are one of those things that God says is an abomination.

And what does that mean? That means it's a detestable act. God is totally anti.

Whatever he calls an abomination,

what it is, it's horrid to God. It's detestable.

Just because it's Old Testament and Old Testament law does not mean that the things that he talks about here are not detestable to God in the New Testament. It just means that we're not under the law.

We're supposed to follow the Spirit. And I guarantee you the Holy Spirit is not going to lead you into these things.

So you're not. You have a freedom in Christ, but you need to understand that freedom is to. That freedom is to be led by the Spirit to allow you to learn how to walk with the Holy Spirit.

And so when, when you're coming up to these things, you just need to know that they're detestable. They're things that the Holy Spirit is not going to lead you into.

It would be as if God gave you an angel from heaven, a guardian angel that you actually knew, stood there, you talked to, spent all day with. Well,

do you think that an angel from heaven, one of God's angels who is holy, would be involved in these things? If he wouldn't, then that's probably a good idea that you shouldn't be involved in those things.

If he would just totally shy away from them, totally get away from them, then you know that that gives you an understanding. You know that this is probably something I ought to look at.

I ought to say, wow,

probably not. Now, the first one is obvious,

and it's the reason why God destroyed the Canaanites and he allowed their abomination or he allowed their wickedness to reach its fullness before he gave their land to the Jews, to the Israelites.

But he calls it an abomination. And it's pretty straightforward. He said, when you come into the land which the Lord your God has given you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations.

So do not follow the abominations of the nations or the people that live in the promised land. Now,

there shall be found among you.

There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire. Now what does that mean?

It means to be burned as an offering to idols.

It means to be human sacrifice to an idol. And you go, well, did they do that? Yes. The God was named Molech.

The best way for me to describe him to you is he had a dog face.

If you watch the Ten Commandments, the old movie the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston,

if you remember when the Pharaoh's son dies,

the child dies, and he carries the child in, in front of his wife.

He places the child on a God's arms there in the temple. And that God is the Egyptian version of the Canaanite God Mole.

He is a God of.

He's, you know, God of the underworld. And what they would do was they would.

They would, you know,

set a fire under his arms, these, this God's arms, and get his,

you know, his arms, which were made of metal,

white hot. And then they would sacrifice children on those arms. They would, they would pass them through the fire.

They would burn them alive. Really. And,

and he, he says that is detestable to him. And obviously it's detestable.

However, it is a. It is something we don't do in this fashion, but we do even now with, with our unborn children. And so he says, do not make your sons or daughters pass through the fire, which means be.

Be offered as a sacrifice on the altar of Molech, he says, or one who practices witchcraft.

And this is. I mean, it's just. It's what, it's what it is, it's. It's witchcraft. It's, it's,

it's. It's It's a dark spiritual matter, he says, don't be involved in that. Or soothsayers, meaning somebody who's a fortune teller, who, who, who, who tells you your fortune, you know, palm readers, things like that, he says.

Or one who interprets omens. And this is, this is someone who, who is, you know, giving you interpretations of, of, you know, you saw a dog run across the road, that kind of thing, he says.

Or sorcerers. And the very similar ideas as to witchcraft, however, in the New Testament,

sorcery or,

or, you know,

something like that is the word pharmacy. So usually this has a connotation of some kind of drug induced trance to get into a drug induced trance in the New Testament.

And you say, well, the New Testament deals with drug abuse. Yeah. In fact,

the word that sometimes is translated either sorcerer or witchcraft in the New Testament is the word pharmacy. The word we get pharmacy from pharmaceuticals and it is, it deals with a religious practice that also involves the abuse of hallucinogenic drugs.

And they had that back then. They still had that problem back then. And they had people who were drug addicts back then.

Not to the level we have today. And why not? Well, they didn't have the ability to produce the drugs we have today.

But there was, he said, don't be involved in that, he said. Or one who conjures spells,

tries to come up with ways to put people in a, you know, put a hex on somebody, put people in a magic spell, he says, or mediums, meaning somebody who tries to conjure up the dead or be an intermediary between the spiritual and the physical or spiritist.

And that's very similar to mediums. Or one who calls up the dead. These are, this is a whole category right here. Medium, spiritist, or one who calls up the dead, he says, just don't have anything to do with those people.

He's pretty clear. He says that's not something that Christians do. We don't, we don't, we don't call up the dead. Okay. We don't do mediums. We don't deal with things such as this.

We don't, we have access to God himself. We don't need these things. And, and we're not going to find out anything that we could not find out from God in his spirit.

We're not going to find these things anywhere else. And so he says, have nothing to do with them. None of these, none of these.

Don't offer your children as sacrifices. Don't be involved in witchcraft. Don't be involved in Soothsaying or interpreting omens or sorcery. And some of these have the connotation of drug abuse or one who conjures spells, mediums or spiritists or anyone who calls up the dead have nothing to do with them.

Stay away from it. Any of that kind of stuff. He says, for all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord. Now, I want you to hear me.

That idea did not change from the Old Testament to the New Testament. God didn't somehow become something different. These things are still abominations to God. They are. He says they're abominations.

Don't do that,

all right? And, and that would be something that I probably ought to consider as a believer myself today. Just don't be involved in that kind of stuff. He says, and because of these abominations, the Lord your God drives them out before you.

He's saying, I'm driving these nations out of your presence. I'm giving you their land because they're involved in these things.

That, that would all lead you to an understanding of how God sees these things. He's saying, the reason you're getting their land is I need them to not be on the earth.

I need you to get rid of them. And why? Well, because that was a major. Well, where Israel is, has always been a historically major point of connection between Europe,

Asia and Africa. And so you have all these, all these things going on in this, in these crossroads here. And God says, I don't want that. I want the center of the world to have the light of my presence there.

So don't be involved in that kind of stuff,

which causes you to have problems. By the way, that angel I was talking about,

if you understand that God does have us have his angel armors ministering to us are not angels ministering spirits to minister in the saints of God. They know what all this stuff is.

They've been around the whole time. They've seen all this stuff, okay? They know what it is. So you acting like it's nothing now because, you know, don't get into all that.

It is something he says, you shall be blameless before the Lord your God. Don't get into these things. For these nations which you will dispossess, listened to soothsayers and diviners.

But as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such for you. What he's saying is these nations listen to these people. They, they allow these things in, he says.

And they're not for you,

he says, but as for you God has not appointed such for you, meaning this is not for you. This is not something you ought to be involved in.

Now, like I said, this is Old Testament law. And God's giving His people instructions. But these are instructions that directly correlate to God's character and his nature and who he is.

And when, whenever we have an Old Testament law that gives us a clear indication of God's nature and the things that God sees as outside, clearly outside his nature, well, we probably ought to identify those things in our lives and say, okay, we're not going to have anything to do with that kind of stuff,

okay?

And when I do that in my own life, it causes me to remove some things, cause me to get some things out of my life.

Because these things easily creep in. They're from the world, they're from the enemy, and they. They are destro. Instructive as to your walk with God because they lead you into all kinds of other things.

And ultimately they led the Canaanites into human sacrifice, namely child sacrifice, which God says is the reason why he wanted them utterly destroyed.

God does not. It is detestable to God the taking of innocent life.

It is detestable to Him. And so that's why they were driven out. And so for you who are, in your modern ways of thinking, think that God was somehow wrong for doing that,

I will tell you he was not. He was not wrong for doing that. And they were detestable to Him. And they did need to be removed from the earth because they were an abomination.

They, they. They were sacrificing their own children to their gods.

And that is detestable to anyone who has any sense of what is right.

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.