Deuteronomy 27:1-13 Bible Study | Episode 943

May 21, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 27:1-13  Bible Study | Episode #943

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, chapter 27.

Deuteronomy, chapter 7, verses 1 through 13.

And this is a neat passage, is neat for a couple of the reasons. First of all, first of all, the biblical scholars, you know, the, the actually when you talk about biblical scholars, they fall into two categories, and it's interesting that they do.

One of the categories is believers, and the other categories is non believers. They don't believe and they study biblical text and they. And they have biblical criticism.

And then, and then the biblical scholars that believe have faith,

they look at the text and they are reasonable, trying to figure out what arguments and what understandings are right and proper and good.

And this whole event,

and the event is the blessings and the cursings.

It is where half of Israel were on the slopes of Mount Ebal and the other half are on the slopes of Mount Gerizim.

And they are speaking blessings and cursings back and forth to each other. What they're basically doing is Moses is commanding Joshua to go over.

And when he goes over and he gets to Mount Ebal and Gerizim to recommit to God.

Well, what is taught in the Old Testament, what is taught in the Pentateuch, the law.

And they much like a football stadium when you, orange, blue,

you know, whatever, whatever.

When you're in a football game, they holler back and forth to each other. You know, their chants back and forth. Well, that's what's happening here,

except for it's the blessings of God and the cursings of God, the things not to do and the things to do when you go into the land that God has promised them to have.

The interesting part about the biblical scholars is, is that most of the biblical scholars who did not believe in the Bible, did not have faith,

believe that this story that we're about to read was mythological.

And they believed it for a long, long time.

In fact, they believed it all the way up until the 1980s, which is generally speaking, within the lifetime of about half the people that I'm talking to.

They didn't believe this existed until the altar described to be built by Joshua,

told by Moses to be built,

was found on Mount Ebal in the early 1980s.

And better than that,

a artifact was found there, a metal artifact which actually had,

I think, a cursing. I think it had a cursing on it.

And so the, the altar that was found there is called Joshua's altar. And the, the place that it was found on was right there, ready, readily available to be found,

except that it sits in a place that,

that has changed hands between Palestinian, Egyptian, Israeli governments. And so it wasn't a place that was easily searchable. The archaeological archaeologists were going to have difficult time getting us doing a search there.

But,

but it was a, it was a great place of, is a great place to search, to search for,

for,

for this story,

which they knew where Mount Gerizim and Mount Eba was. They just, the archaeological archaeologists never, ever were able to get there.

When they got there, they found, well, exactly what the Bible says. And even the stuff that they found dates back to the Bronze Age collapse, which happened around 14, 1500 AD.

And so it's neat that when we read this, this story,

which for a long, long time was thought to be mythological by a lot of biblical scholars,

now we have direct archeological evidence that the Bible is absolutely true. Again, again, again, again.

It happens all the time.

When they go looking for whether or not the Bible is true about something, they always end up finding a lot of evidence that it absolutely is true.

And so we can trust in Scripture. Now,

what's going on here? Well, Moses is telling Joshua, when you get in the promised land, you're gonna get all the people together and they're going to chant back and forth or they're going to yell back and forth to each other, blessings and cursings so that they all hear it,

so that they all repeat it with their own mouths. That's very important. Confessing with your mouth, confessing with your mouth the lordship of God and believing in your heart that God has the power to raise the dead.

That's the New Testament principle. But it's still a principle in the Old Testament, the way God's made things to work.

If you confess with your mouth something that God has said, you are confessing his lordship.

Okay? And then if you believe in your heart that God has the power to enforce it. Which would be here would be the blessings and curses in the New Testament.

It'd be. It'd be the promise of his redemption and the promise of his new life.

But if you, if you, if you, if you believe those things,

well, then this is a great story.

It says now Moses with the elders of Israel, commanded the people, saying, keep all the commandments which I commanded you today. All right? He's telling them to keep the commandments.

And it shall be on the day when you cross over the Jordan to the land which the Lord your God is giving you. He keeps saying that you cross the Jordan to the loyal land God's giving you.

That's being repeated over and over so it sticks in your brain.

God's given it to me. It's God who does it. I do what God says. I cross the Jordan. I do what God says.

That you shall set up for yourselves large stones and white. Watch them with lime,

giant white stones. You shall write on them all the words of the law when you have crossed over, that you may enter the land which the Lord your God has given you.

A land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord God your father promised you. He says it again now. He says it's a land flowing with milk and honey,

and I promised it to you there. Sh. Therefore it shall be when you have crossed over the Jordan, that on Mount Ebal, you shall set up these stones which I command you today,

and you shall whitewash them with lime. You shall set up this altar which we find.

All right? And there you shall build an altar to the Lord your God. By the way, the. The. The altar that was built had a altar that was built over it afterwards.

And the stones that were used were white watch limestones.

And there you shall build an altar to the Lord your God. An altar of stones. You shall not use an iron tool on them. Meaning they're not to inscript the stones.

They're not to use an iron tool to write the words in the stone. They're to write them basically to paint them on there.

Okay?

So the stones don't have the writings on them in the sense that they have a metal inscription on them,

by the way,

God instructed them to do that. Because if you wrote the stones with metal, that would be the work of man.

When God gave Moses the ten Commandments, he wrote them with his finger.

And so God doesn't want you to think that they're man made laws, that they come from man. God wants you to understand that his word comes from him.

You shall Build with whole stones to the altar of the Lord your God and offer burnt offerings on it to the Lord your God.

Notice there's a place for burnt offerings, interestingly, lots of bones found there of burnt offerings. Lots of burnt bones found at that site where there was offerings being made.

You shall offer peace offerings and you shall eat there and rejoice with the Lord. So this is a fellowship place. This is a place where we meet with God and fellowship with him and know what his blessings are and what his curses are.

And you shall write very plainly on the stones all the words of the law.

So you have an altar built later, an altar built over that altar with these giant stones which would have been the stones that they whitewashed with lime. And they wrote the, the, the law of Moses on those stones.

They didn't write them in, they didn't etch them in the stones, they wrote them with.

Then Moses and the priest and the Levites spoke to all of Israel, saying, hey, take heed and listen, O Israel,

this day you've become the people of the Lord your God. Wow, what a great pronouncement that is.

You have become God's people.

You're going. And what makes them God's people? Well, you've become God's people because you're not only the ones he's delivered out of Egypt, you're not only the ones who gave the law, but now you're a people who are able to walk in that law, walk in that revelation, walk in that trust,

and cross over the Jordan,

which makes you fully operational as someone who is redeemed by God for his purposes, because you're willing to go over by faith.

Therefore you shall obey the voice of the Lord your God,

faith by obedience,

and observe his commandments and his statutes, which I command you today.

Then it says, and Moses command the people on the same day, saying,

these shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people when you crossed over the Jordan, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin. So six tribes on Gerasene then. And these shall stand on Mount Ebal to curse Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.

So you've got on both sides of both sides, the two mountains facing each other.

They're going to yell back and forth, blessings and cursing. So they'll be in their ears, they'll be out of their mouths, and they'll speak God's blessings and curses to each other.

So everybody knows what's going to give you God's best and what's going to bind you up or curse you and keep you from having God's best.

And so tomorrow and the next day, we're going to talk about these blessings and cursings and we're going to talk about how,

how God's people spoke them to each other.

And we're going to talk about how, how,

how God relates those things to us and lets us know that we, we stand on the precipice of his great blessing.

However, if you do not walk by faith,

you're bound up by your flesh in the sin that you walk in.

And that's the way it goes.

It's an interesting, really a cool passage of scripture and because of the history of us finding these stones in this altar exactly where God says,

it's just an assurance, a blessed assurance that when God promises me all the things he's promised me, including the great promise of his son, King Jesus,

I can walk in them and I can have his very, very best.

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.