Deuteronomy 29:10-19 Bible Study | Episode 948

May 28, 2025

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

Deuteronomy 29:10-19  Bible Study | Episode #948

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 29.

And God's making his covenant with his people. He's renewing his covenant. And you know, every time I say that in my heart it is, it just. There's, there's some joy in there because God is the God of.

Well, I hate to say the second chance because most of us need more than a second.

It's, it's not like it's, it's not like the,

the buffet table at, at Golden Corral. We don't need seconds. We need thirds, fourth, fifth, sixth. We need God. We need God to step in and be patient with us.

And, you know, I found that with, with most anything that's very difficult. In fact. In fact, that's what we do when we practice things.

Anything that's difficult requires a lot of effort, a lot of energy. It requires a whole lot of doing it over and over again. To do it well and to do the promises of God, to do the goodness of God, to do the life that God has given us.

Well, it takes a lot of work and a lot of practice, especially considering how saturated we are with this sin nature and how difficult the world is because of the sin that's in the world, just the sin that's all over around us.

And so God's a God of second chance. And this new covenant is,

this new renewing the covenant that he does with Israel, you know, he's doing it with children of Israel that,

that have lived through.

Most of them were children when they came out of Egypt and,

and their parents died in the wilderness. But, you know, they, they, they, they,

they, they didn't know these things. They, they're not, they're not the ones who,

who, who rejected God.

Some of them are on up into their years. I mean, you know, because, you know,

everybody under A certain age wasn't.

They weren't gonna be killed,

but they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years so that the older folks died off. And so these people did.

Some of em remember Egypt, a lot of em remember Egypt. A lot of em remember being attacked by tribes along the road,

by the different battles that were fought.

All these things are taking place such that these situations they remember, but they don't really know.

And God has them stand before him and says, okay, here's the covenant I made with your parents.

Now I'm making it with you.

And God does that with his people. And he's making that covenant with his people all the time.

What I love about it is how God arranges them to make the covenant with them.

Who he calls, who he says,

come before me.

And I want you to note who. Who he says, come before me. He says, all of you stand today before the Lord your God,

your leaders, your tribes, your elders, your officers, and all the men of Israel. Now, that's who you would expect to be there, right? That's. That's the people that you would expect to be there.

The leaders. The, you know, the. The mayors and the city councilmen and you know, the legislators and, you know, the. The,

you know, the head of law enforcement and you know, just all the. All the leaders. But it's more than that.

Verse 11 says, your little ones and your wives,

okay, and that's your family. He says, also the stranger who's in your camp,

meaning the people that are around you. The. The people that are not necessarily from the line of Abraham,

but they have.

They have become a part of the people.

From the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water.

He's talking about the servants that you have and the people that work for you, the people that do things for you.

And you go, well, we don't have that anymore. Yeah, we do. Yeah, you do. A lot of you have people who cut your grass. I mean,

a lot of you have people that cut your hair. You don't cut your own hair.

We go to people for all kinds of services. I mean, we are a service.

We are service economy.

There are a lot of people who serve us in different ways. He said, I want them out there in front of me too.

That you may enter into a covenant with the Lord your God and into his oath, which the Lord your God makes with you today.

What he's saying is,

I want to make a covenant with everyone.

And understanding that everyone is a part of this promise, you need to have your children there all the time to see what it is to worship God. I'm gonna tell you,

those are powerful memories.

How many folks do I know and how many folks do I deal with and how many people are actually in our church that have those powerful memories of their childhood?

Maybe they didn't worship God for parts of their adulthood.

Maybe they wandered away.

But those powerful memories of their childhood worshiping God brought them back to where they should be, brought them back to where they needed to be.

And so those things are important, Those powerful memories are important.

And the realization that everyone matters. And when I say everyone,

I'm talking about the people that you don't like. I'm talking about the people that you. You've had some kind of falling out with in the past.

You know, I remember as a young man thinking when I had a fallen out with somebody, well, they're just gone, you know, they're out. They're. They're forever. They're never, we're never gonna.

Never gonna have anything in common again. You know, they're gone,

you know, and cutting them off mentally from my future.

But as I've grown older, I realized that people change. Things change in people's lives. God is moving all over the place, all around me.

And a lot of times those people that I thought were cut off are not cut off.

Those people that I thought were separated are not separated.

In fact,

many of them have become my friends and my close personal friends in, in my. In my older years.

And so, you know,

I need to realize that. That God's at work all around me in the hearts of people everywhere I go,

and the ability to recognize his work in their lives.

Because I'm looking, because I got my eyes open,

because I can see.

I'm not blind Bartimaeus before Jesus. I'm blind Bartimaeus after Jesus. I'm the one who can see Him. I understand. I have the ability to see God at work around me.

And when I open my eyes to see those things, I realize that he's at work all around. He says that he may enter into a covenant with the Lord your God and into his oath,

which the Lord your God makes with you today, that he may establish you today as a people for himself and that he may be God to you, just as he has spoken to you and just as he has sworn to your fathers,

to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. What he's saying is, I want to be your God. I want to have relationship with you.

We want to be connected.

Now this is the story of the whole Bible.

This Whole story of scripture.

God wants to glorify himself. He wants to make himself known to people and to his people.

And who is his people? Well, they're the ones that he works in their lives, in their hearts.

They're his people.

And it doesn't matter where they come from or who they are. I make this covenant and this oath not with you alone,

but with him who stands here with us today before the Lord our God,

as well as him who is not here with us today. He's saying, I'm doing this all the time.

I'm not do. I'm not just doing the it with all the people that are standing here before me today.

I'm doing it for those who are not here.

For you know that we dwelt in the land of Egypt and that we came through the nations which you passed by and you saw their abominations and their idols which were among them wood, stone, silver and gold.

So that they.

So that there may not be among you a man or woman or family or tribe whose heart turns away from the Lord your God to go and serve the gods of these nations, and that there may not be among you a root bearing bitterness or wormwood.

What he's saying is,

I want this covenant to be for everybody.

I want it to be for all of us so that you don't have people turning away.

And remember, that covenant is ultimately.

It is ultimately the New Testament law of the Spirit, which is to love God, love your neighbor, and love each other.

And you can't get past that.

That is one of those hills to die on,

one of those fundamentals of the faith.

And those of us who consistently regularly live by that and don't allow bitterness to grow up in our heart.

Bitterness toward who? Well, toward God first,

but toward others.

Don't let that bitterness grow up.

And he uses the wormwood illustration,

which has a whole lot of biblical.

We deal with it in the book of the Revelation.

But at its core, wormwood was a wood.

It actually is the word Chernobyl in Russian and was a wood that, you know, worms bore through.

But if you take the connotation of its use in other languages,

it's radioactive. It's deadly.

And really, that's. Bitterness is deadly.

And a lot of people got a lot of bitterness in their heart. And you know what?

They walk in death each and every day, even the redeemed they do,

he says. And so it may not happen when he hears the word of this curse that he blesses himself in his heart, what he's Saying is, is if you let a word of bitterness grow up in you,

if we be who we're supposed to be,

people won't,

people won't let it happen that they,

that they allow this bitterness to grow up and that they feel blessed by that. They feel okay with it,

he says, saying, I shall have peace even though I follow the dictates of my heart.

Meaning they'll realize that, you know,

it's not good for them to do what they want to do,

living according to their will. And their way is destructive.

God says,

let's not do that. Let's not make that happen.

Then he uses this great illustration as though the drunkard could be included with the sober.

And that really is funny if you think about that, you know, I mean, how many times have you been in that situation where somebody was just knee walking drunk and they wanted to act like they were like everybody else, but they're really not.

They're not. They're not the same.

They can't do the things that the sober people can do in the room.

And even though they try to, they just lost in it.

And isn't that what it's like for people who do not have the life of God truly living out of them?

Isn't that truly how it is?

You may have the life of God in them, but they've just not let it become who they are. They've not walked in that covenant.

Now remember, this covenant is the covenant of the law. It's the covenant of Moses. It's a Mosaic covenant.

But the rules and the parameters by which we live out these things are the same.

And so the Mosaic law may be the Mosaic law, but we're under the covenant that fulfills all these covenants and all these laws.

That is the covenant relationship that's through Jesus Christ.

And so we can live out the life that's in Jesus through the law of love, through the covenant made by him with us.

And so as we, as we go through this week, as we prepare to be God's people today,

we need to.

We need to remember that God's at work all around us and what a special place and time he's given us to live in.

I pray that,

that you'll realize that and that you'll see it around you and that you'll seek after the goodness of God that comes from walking by.

Faith 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.