Deuteronomy 25:1-4 Bible Study | Episode 936

May 12, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 25:1-4 Bible Study | Episode #936

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 25. Made it all the way to chapter 25. We.

What. What's been so fun about Deuteronomy as far as studying through it, is how many things relate to our modern culture in such so pointed and direct ways. I mean, just right on the money.

What also has been so exciting is you can see why some of the things that happen later on in Scripture, especially in the New Testament, especially with Jesus, you see why they happened the way they did and things came about the way they did because they come from the Deuteronomic law.

They come from these different rules, these different instructions. The way God revealed himself to the Jewish people, it just has some. It just is really, really good stuff. And then, and then as you're, as you're studying through Deuteronomy, you hit parts that really kind of speak to you, where you're at and are a little bit funny to me and a little bit.

And anytime we're talking about court and courtroom procedures and, and law, I'm going to tell you,

that is the most fun that I can. I can think of. We being in court in.

In the real world is way better than you get to see on tv. I'm just letting you know now, are there times of boredom or the times where you're just working your way through a docket and you're handling decisions and things like that?

Yeah, there's a lot of that. But that moment, that moment where something happens that is, somebody says something that's just so out of line with what you expect, they just.

It is just one of those things where you go, did that really happen? That happens in court a lot. It really does. It happens not. Not every day in court, but.

But a whole, whole lot. And it can be so hilarious. And I'll say this it does happen a good bit, such that when you're, when you're sitting there, you go, this is better than fiction.

And it really is. It's better, it's way better than fiction.

Some of the things that people say, some of the reasons they give for why some of, some of the just brutal honesty that you'll get sometimes in court, somebody will say, tell what, what was the real reason for it?

And you're going, I just, I can't believe it. And by the way, a lot of what you see on tv, most of what you see on TV is made up in order to try to attract your attention.

But what you see in courts, not it is, it is in many, many ways just absolutely hilarious. And, and, and, and it may not be hilarious in the moment, but when you look back on it and think about it and think about how we got to that point where the person said or did something that,

that just makes you want to belly laugh.

Those, those things, those things are, are things to remember for the rest of your, your life sometimes. And so when I get to these and, and that's why lawyers have so many good stories about court.

That's why stories about court are so, so numerous. That's why in our, in our modern culture, the way we tell stories, that's why there's so many courtroom and, and law enforcement and legal,

uh, TV shows and movies. Because it,

when you're dealing with the public and when you're dealing with the public about very, very important issues to them, remember when you're in court, a lot of times that's the worst day in the life of the person that's in front of you.

And I, and I remember that as a judge, I make sure that I know that, that the person that's in front of me is having probably one of the most terrible days of their life.

Because whatever they're dealing with is so important to them and, and so you have to be cognizant of that. You got to realize that when you' with them and when that's the case, they're going to just say, they're going to say whatever they think will help them and they're going to say what the most raw,

basic things that they think or believe or see. And it makes it so much fun. So when I get to this passage is, it is courtroom. It would make our courtroom be,

you would think it'd make it be even wilder, but it really wouldn't because I think it would actually make things not ever happen in the courtroom.

Meaning that they would never, ever really bring their things to court. It says if there's a dispute between men and they come to court,

that the, that the judges may judge them or that they may be. That they may be judged.

That may be the best way for that to be translated because there's a couple words that they add in there to make it sound right. Whenever they come to the judge to be judged and they justify the.

And they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked, meaning the judge decides who's right and who's wrong.

Then it shall be if the wicked man deserves to be beaten. And I, and when I read that,

I just think about. In court, he deserves to be beaten. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He just.

And I, and I say that because,

because people, people who come to court, if they had, if they thought that it was possible that they might be beaten, they would probably settle their things out of court really fast.

And by the way, most all civil cases that are before my court, and by the way, most of the court I do is civil. The only criminal court I do is, is.

Is misdemeanors and felony dockets that have to do with binding a felony over to the grand jury so that they can be moved on to circuit court or deal with a misdemeanor or deal with a traffic,

even though that's not really criminal or pseudo criminal. It's just violations of code. And then, and then I deal with juvenile delinquency, which is juvenile criminal dockets. But most everything else I do is a civil.

It has a civil content to it. It's a civil matter. And when I'm dealing with civil cases,

the first thing I always tell people, and that could be a civil matter that deals with domestic issue. It could be a civil matter, deals with the custody issue, could be civil matter, deals with money.

I tell people all the. That you should come to some kind of resolution yourself. And you go, why should they come? They've brought it to you for you to resolve.

Why should they come to a resolution? Well, it's the obvious answer to that, is because no matter how much. And we're not going to have a long trial, usually no matter how much information I have about that situation, I'm not going to know it as intimately as the two people that are involved.

And they're going to know what a best resolution would be, would look like in most situations better than I would. And so when they're asking me to just rule on what the information I'm going to get in the trial and the law,

a Lot of times I'm not going to get the whole view of what's going on in the situation. So I'm going to be very limited in the way I can.

I can rule. And you'd be better off coming to a conclusion for that yourself. You would be,

because you know how to work it out. You know, a way, you can see ways to work it out that I would not ever see. And so as a judge, it's.

It's just real easy for me to figure out, for you to figure out an answer and come to an agreement together and agree together to work it out then for me.

And by the way, if you come to that agreement and you work it out with somebody, you're far more likely to want to live by that agreement. And that's just.

That's just the way it works. People who agree tend to remain in agreement. People who have judgments against, tend to buck against those judgments. They don't want to have to live up those judgments if they feel like it was not right.

And so when you bring in the beating,

that would really, really bring them to the point where they'd come to an agreement. If there was a possibility of getting whooped,

then they would definitely come to an agreement and there would be a lot less court for me. But this is also here for another reason, and it has to do with Jesus,

and it has to do with giving us a little bit of a groundwork for how Jesus was going to be treated when he was being beaten for our transgressions. By the way, he's not being beaten for his.

He's been beaten for hours. It says, then it shall be, if the wicked man deserves to be beaten, that the judge will cause him to lie down and be beaten in his presence according to his guilt with a certain number of blows.

40 blows he may be given, he may give him, and no more,

lest he should exceed this and beat him with many blows above these,

meaning and your brother be humiliated in your sight. What he's saying is, no more than 40 blows.

And that's exactly what happened to Jesus.

We see that in our.

Well, we see that in the New Testament. We see that happening with Jesus. So you've got. You've got the whole issue of court and how courts run and how we do do things in court.

And then you get down here and you see, okay, why was he beaten with 40 lashes? Well, because the law stated that they could not beat them with any more than 40.

And you go, well, I thought the Romans beat them. That's that's true. But remember, the Romans still tried to live by the Jewish law. And Jesus was being convicted not under Roman law.

He was being convicted under Jewish law. And you go, why is that important? Well,

because Roman law is not perfect. The Roman law did not come from God.

The Jewish law, the Old Testament law is from God. And so Jesus was being. The trial that was being had was between the Jewish leadership and Jesus.

And Pilate was asked to be the judge of that. And he in fact bucked against, did not want to judge between the Jewish people on their Jewish issues, but they forced him to.

And so he did. And his judgment was ultimately to crucify him, because Jesus put him in no other position other than he had to crucify him. And so understanding that, that Jesus was.

Jesus was convicted and condemned based off of the Jewish law, which would have been the perfect law. So Jesus condemnation of sin would have been perfectly done under the perfect Jewish law.

And that's why that happened that way. And so it is.

Now that's a very nuanced Jewish legal analysis of Jesus's death. But Jesus's death on the cross was a payment for the sin of the whole world. And sin defined by who?

Sin defined by God. Sin defined where? Sin defined by God in the Old Testament. So Jesus bore the sin of the whole world because of the violations of humanity's.

Humanity of God's law. And so that's why it happened that way. And he was beaten with 40 blows because that was the Jewish law. All right? And so it says, and by the way, he was hung on a tree because it was shameful.

It was cursed to hang on a tree. And so our sin hung on that tree as a curse against sin. Now, the next verse is just one line, but it's used in the New Testament, so it has a direct correlation in the New Testament.

He says, you shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain. Which means when a animal is working, you should make sure it can eat. It needs to be able to eat.

If it's not able to eat,

eventually it will not be able to. It will not be able to work anymore. And so if you, if you, if you do not pay people what they earn, and this is used in the context of paying spiritual leaders, the pastors of the church.

If you don't pay them at least enough so that they can eat, they will not be able to. They will not be able to work. And so in this passage, you gotta.

You have a clear picture of paying,

paying in people who work for you what is due them. And that's in the New Testament too. And so when we get to this, there's a lot of fun for me as I'm reading about, you know, if, you know, it took, took a wild turn there.

If he judges against you, you can be beaten. If that happened in court, nobody would come to our court. I mean, I'm telling you, my small claims and district civil court would just dry up like a bone.

By the way, child support would too.

They would, they would bring their money to pay child support rather than get beaten and, and it would probably work out better than it does now. But we're not, I'm not, I'm not advocating beating them, but I'm just saying that I might be out of a job if they beat them.

And then you get to Jesus being beaten and understanding that it's under the law. And then you get just this common understanding that if somebody is working and they can't make it financially because you have not paid them enough, then you're violating the law also.

And how many times have I seen churches do that? Too numerous to count. And they get what they deserve when they do that, when they don't take care of the people who are serving them, they get what they deserve.

And that usually is a slow decline 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.