You guard your soul. How do we guard our soul?
The first way that we're given is by submitting it to the word.
Obedience to his revealed will is submitting your heart and
your soul to the word. And so that this passage at the
end of a sermon, it's appropriate and the end of most
messages are Ted talks or sermons or whatever you listen
to. They have what's called a, a
peroration, which is an intense emotional appeal where you're
trying to get people's hearts to do the thing to, to be obedient
to God's will. And we hear these in in Joshua
and in the prophets. And I want to point out Joshua
has one I'll read in a minute a very famous and strong paration.
Where does he get his words? His mentor is Moses.
Remember that he, Moses is dying.
He's handing it over in this very passage to Joshua.
And you say, where does Joshua get words like, As for me and my
house, we will serve the Lord. That's he gets it from right
here. His model is Moses.
This is Moses's peroration, that these words are similar to
Joshua's in 2415 where he says, choose this day whom you will
serve, whether the gods your father served in the region
beyond the river or the gods of the Amorite, and whose land you
dwell. But As for me in my house, we
will serve the Lord. We will serve Yahweh.
And we confess as a church that God rules and reigns in our
hearts and in our lives through an open Bible.
And so he's telling you, open God's Word and study it.
Guard your soul by submitting yourself to the Word.
And when it says something wholeheartedly, do it.
Resolve to do it. And remember, this is what you
signed up for. It will cost you everything to
follow the Lord. Moses says plainly in verse 29,
If you search for God with your whole heart and your whole soul,
you will find Him. If you seek after Him with any
less, you will seek and you will never find.
You seek after God with all of your heart and with all of your
soul. Deuteronomy 439 Know therefore
today lay it on your heart. The Lord God is in heaven, there
is no other. Therefore keep His statutes and
His rules. And as you go into verse 2, he
begins to say this, this is what I'm talking about.
What does it mean? He goes into detail about what
it means to keep the statutes and to guard your hearts.
Verse 2, he says you shall not add to the word that I command
you, nor shall you take from it that you may keep the
commandments of the Lord that I command you.
And he he says in verse 5, there's a hind eye it as he says
the statutes and the rules. It's it's two ideas that are
expressing 1 concept. This is the revealed will of
God. God has made his will known and
you keep it. That's what it means to call him
Lord. Whatever he reveals, we obey.
And so essentially what God is saying is I've said what I've
said, I've said what I said. Don't add to it.
And so put a burden on the people that I never meant to be
there. Set burdens on the people that
they never, I never intended and neither take away from it and
remove my obligations from the people.
That's where we're errors on both sides.
And we're very quick to be like Augustine.
When we see something that we don't like, you know, we might
confess. Yeah, I want to follow the will
of God. I want to be free from my sexual
temptation. And then Augustine said, Lord,
make me chaste, but not yet. We take away the obligations
that we don't see fit. And you know, the, the problem
is not with Israel hearing the word, but Israel doing the word.
And when we come into counseling situations, we've been trained
in our, in our counseling to say, you know what, what's this,
this problem in your life? Is it primarily because of a
problem with hearing the word or is it primarily a problem of, of
doing the word? And that's, that's a very
important question to ask. Is it is your knowledge of God
deficient? Do you need to hear?
Is the problem that you're, you're Bible ignorant?
Or is the problem that you, you've heard it, but you, you
just can't get yourself to do it?
Is it hearing or doing and you come to Israel here.
Truly the problem is hearing the this generation has passed away.
We're making God's word known to the next generation and he's
saying you're going to hear and therefore do it in our
generation, in our context, the issue is not primarily one of of
hearing. We've heard, we know the the
issue is doing. The issue is doing the word.
We have to set our hearts to doing it.
The revelation of God is not deficient.
Your heart is deficient. We have to submit your heart and
your will to the word of God. The Pharisees were were guilty
of violating this verse. They loved to add to God's word.
You know those 633 some some requirements or laws.
That's not enough. My people need to be extra holy
right? They need to go above and beyond
to be more sanctified and God says don't add to my word and
and neither. I think that's actually what
Ecclesiastes is saying when he says don't be overly righteous
right? Don't go beyond what God has
written and in the same way, don't take away because God's
word is supposed to cost you something, right?
Don't make me make me chase the Lord, but not yet.
No, don't take away from his revelation.
If if you, you guard your soul by not adding to God's word, for
that would be legalism. And you guard your soul by not
subtracting from it, for that would be selective obedience.
And this, this concept is so important that if you Fast
forward all the way to the final verses of the Bible, this is how
the Bible ends in Revelation 22. What does he say?
Don't take away anybody who takes away from my Word.
I will take away hit from His inheritance in the tree of life
and anybody who adds to it. I'll add to him the plagues that
are written of in this book. Surely the Lord is coming soon.
Amen. Come Lord Jesus, and that's how
it ends. So you hear the warning and the
severity of it. God has said what He said and
moving on from that, a second way we can guard our soul is by
not being a forgetful hearer. You can look down to verse 9.
Skip down to verse 9 and look with me at this verse.
That's where he says, only take care and keep your soul
diligently, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen,
unless they depart from your heart all the days of your life.
And so he's saying, don't we don't add to God's word.
We don't subtract from God's Word, neither do we forget it.
We have to remember it. And so here's the illustration
you can put in your head to remember it.
Moses carved God's revelation into stone, but that doesn't
connect it to the hearts of the people.
And so they they have the revelation and now they have to
carve the revelation into their own hearts.
They have to meditate on it. They have to read it, they have
to study it. The same could be said for you.
God has written in His Word, His revelation.
Now you have to take that word and write it into your heart.
And that's why every time, if you ever come to me for
discipleship, for counseling, I hope this is true for you and
your relationships. You're not going to leave with
some obligation without some obligation to say here's your
homework. Read these verses, meditate on
these verses, journal these verses, memorize these verses
because we're we're taking it off the page and writing it onto
our hearts so that we can keep them and not forget them.
Another way we could use the language of of Moses.
Here is James 122. How does James say it?
But be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving
yourselves. If you hear it and don't do it,
you're deceived. The one who looks into the
perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer
who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his
doing. Deuteronomy 46 Keep them and do
them. Deuteronomy 49 lest you forget,
this is Moses way of saying, but be doers of the word.
Don't be a forgetful hearer and not hearers only.
Verse 9 continues, only take care and keep your soul
diligently. I want to emphasize that word
diligently. There's there's an effort
required in this, but I also want to emphasize the word only
only the word only is the word rock in Hebrew and it's
restrictive in the sense of meaning.
If you're going to forget everything else, don't forget
this. Don't forget Sinai, don't forget
Horeb, don't forget where you made a covenant with your God.
Don't forget where he was there in the fire and in the smoke and
you were terrified and he revealed himself to you in a in
a mighty way. Don't forget your covenant.
And the great warning to Israel here is the warning of
forgetfulness. Disobedience is letting the
thing slip from your heart. And don't forget that
disobedience is forgetfulness. And so to kind of counter their
forgetful nature, he reminds them in verses 10 to 13 of this
unforgettable experience, How could you forget Mount Sinai?
That's what he's saying. Some of them were were still
alive. They're there.
They've they've heard the stories.
How can you forget this experience with a massive
consuming fire, It says, reaching to the heart of heaven
and lightnings and Thunder. It goes on.
And he says, and death to any man or animal who approached the
mountain. Read with me about this
experience. What do you want you to
remember? Beginning in verse 10?
How could you forget? It says how on the day that you
stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me,
Gather the people, that I may let them hear my words, so that
they may learn to fear me all the days they live on the earth,
and that they may teach their children.
And you came, and you stood at the foot of the mountain, while
the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in
darkness, cloud, and gloom. And the Lord spoke to you out of
the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words,
but he saw no form. There was only a voice.
And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded to
you perform. That is, the 10 commandments.
And he wrote them on 2 tablets of stone.
Some would say, by the way, there's 2 tablets of stone
because there's the first five commandments, our obligations to
God. Second five commandments,
because of our obligations to one another.
Some would say the Ten Commandments, there's 2 copies,
one for God and one for us. But whatever it is, I want you
to remember Moses has the the testimony of that he's carrying
the physical evidence of this was when God spoke, He gave us
this tangible remembrance. And I want you to think back
too, because we are forgetful hearers when God reveals himself
to us. There have been times in your
life where God has revealed himself to you and there are
times when his Providence was unexplainable by any other means
than you saying God reigns. He's been so near to you and
he's been so real to you. And when things go hard and
things get, you know, we, we slip on and we haven't had a
miraculous experience like that or an experience like that in a
while. We forget and we forget those
times. He was so faithful.
And so my command to you too, is, is remember, remember his
faithfulness to you. Remember his Providence when you
knew there was a God in heaven, when he saved you when he was so
tangible and real. And they're carrying that in the
10 commandments that promised to him.
So he's saying, keep your eyes on the goal, lest you become a
forgetful here. Keep your eyes lest you forget.
When I was a barista in three years, one of the few things I
learned during that time at the gathering place was if you're if
you're carrying a cup of coffee and you're looking at the cup of
coffee, you're going to spill it everywhere.
But if you're carrying an over full cup of coffee and you're
looking at where you're going, you will never spill it.
And it's a silly illustration, but it's, it's, it's what he
say. You're keeping your eye on the
goal. You're seeking God and his will
and his righteousness. You're not looking at yourself.
You're focused on him. And when you're focused on him,
it will spare you from all kinds of heartache and consequences of
sin. It doesn't mean life's going to
be easy, but it means you're going to be spared from a lot of
unnecessary sanctification. There's two ways to get to
heaven. I like to say when you get to
the end of Deuteronomy, we'll see this.
There's the easy way you cooperate with the will of God,
or there's the hard way where He has to bring His rod.
I prefer, I would recommend keeping your eyes on Him,
submitting yourself to His will. You'll spare yourself from all
kinds of heartache and disaster. Here's the ask of you, verse
one. Study God's revealed will.
Verse 2. Keep the commandments.
Verse 6. Keep them and do them.
Verse 9. Keep your soul diligently.
Verse 7, we get a new obligation.
It's not just guard your own heart, guard the souls of your
children. Verse 11, not just your soul,
not just your children's soul, the soul of your grandchildren,
your children's children. This obligation is beyond you.
And one of the questions that we've been asking as elders
recently is we see the need for theological education of our
children. It's everywhere in Scripture.
We understand what we're diligently doing this, but what
is our requirement for the theological education of the
children in our community and the people in our community?
That's a much harder, harder question.
And Deuteronomy has has a lot to say about this.
There's a remarkable and repeated emphasis on theological
education to children. And it begins right here in
verse 9. This is the first time he talks
about our children. And you're going to see in a
minute we'll survey the book. And he says over and over and
over, this isn't optional. You have an obligation to your
children and your children's children.
Head of households, listen to this.
This is your responsibility. Mothers, listen to these verses
and Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 6, six to seven, You are to teach
these things diligently to your children.
There's that word again. Deuteronomy 620 to 25.
As your children ask you questions, you were to provide
answers. Deuteronomy 11, you were to
instruct your children as you walk along the road and when you
lie down and when you get up and you were to post the words of
the Bible on the doorposts of your house and on your gates as
you're going, you are to teach them.
Steve Clover, are you in the room?
What's Deuteronomy 2929? The secret things belong to the
Lord. That's right.
We all will know that we love that verse because that's when
we don't understand something. We're like, well, the secret
things belong to the Lord. But what's the second-half of
that verse? But the revealed things belong
to us and to our children forever.
We teach this to our kids. Deuteronomy 3111 The law has to
be read to the people. What does that mean?
It clarifies that he says assemble the men and the women.
We are great at that, and the little ones and the sojourner
within your towns, that all may hear and learn to fear the Lord
your God and be careful to do all the words of the law.
So he says you, when you gather, you get the men and you get the
women and you get the children and you get the vulnerable
people and you all gather and you open up the Word and you
preach it. But it makes this emphasis and
it says that your children who have not known may hear it
actually makes an emphasis here on our kids.
What does it look like to guard the souls of your children?
Just practical things. If you've never thought through
this, if you're new to this, if you don't know how to get
started, you, you could take a podcast, take something like the
Bible Project and listen to it in your car while you're taking
them to school. It's not you're, you're adding
something to your, your routine that you're already doing at the
dinner table while everybody's gathered.
When you pray, just read a few verses out of a gospel and allow
your children to ask questions and and talk about it.
Memorize a verse with your family.
Find a verse that's prophetic for where your family is right
now and memorize it as a family. Sing catechism songs at bedtime
so that they can know Westminster Shorter Catechism
question #39 listen to them as you go to bed and as you pray.
Read a book like Pilgrim's Progress.
Go to the bookstore. It's full of children's books
where there's adventure in action and fun and theology.
These are not optional things. This is not optional.
So I asked fathers, how are you setting the theological
foundation for your children and mothers?
How are you diligently training your children in the faith?
And he goes on. He doesn't just talk to the
parents. Grandparents, how are you doing?
A lot of you will remember they've passed away, which is
tragic, but many of you remember Jack and Gloria Brown.
He used to be in this church and they would right here.
Jack used to kiss my wife on the cheek every week and wink at me
just to get her eyes out of me. Every Sunday I went into their
house and they left an impression on me.
Went to their house one time and they had all the pillows, the
blankets, all the couch cushions off the couch and they were on
the floor re enacting Esther with their grandkids.
That's how it's done. Grandparents.
They're on the floor playing, teaching the Bible to their kids
as they play. It's wonderful.
And I have to confess to you that the first verses that both
of my daughter's memorized were not given by me or Jamie.
The first verse that they ever memorized came from Gigi.
And if you want to know the verse, you can look down to
Deuteronomy 429, the first verse they ever learned, almost
verbatim, the words of Jeremiah 2913.
You will seek the Lord your God and find Him when you search
after Him with all your heart and with all your soul.
So hopefully that stays with them forever.
Thank you, Gigi, for doing that with my kids.
That verse is communicating our whole hearted devotion, sincere
worship, holy, with undivided loyalty.
We guard our hearts with the Word of God.
And remember, if you're not seeking God with all of your
heart and with all of your soul, you'll inevitably become
distracted. You'll become complacent.
You'll become comfortable. And when that happens, this is
where we asked the second question that I want to answer
today. What are we to guard our souls
against? And the answer there is much
simpler. You are guarding your heart
against idols. You're guarding yourself from
idolatry. And it's helpful to remember as
as we begin to ask this question, that your heart is a
garden. Think of Hosea 10/12 Sow
righteousness, reap steadfast love.
Your heart is like a garden. And So what?
What happens to a garden if you neglect it?
You have to be diligent about it or the weeds begin to creep up.
And the longer you let those weeds creep up without taking
away, the, the bigger they get, the more of a nuisance they get.
And I wrote here in my notes that there's more varieties of
idols in our heart than there are varieties of weeds in the
Oklahoma and spring. So remember that as you drive by
an unkempt lawn. And it's true.
One of the most famous quotes in all of history.
And we'll we'll quote it every time we come to a passage like
this on idolatry comes from Calvin where he says our heart
is a factory for idols. There's so many.
They don't always get revealed to us until things get hard, but
we are continually finding things to worship.
You can see it with me, read with me beginning in in verse 3
of Deuteronomy 4. He says your eyes have seen what
the Lord did at bail payor for the Lord your God destroyed from
among you all the men who followed the bail of payor.
Do you remember the story we read out of Numbers 25?
That disgusting story? But you who held fast to the
Lord your God are all alive today.
See, I have taught you statutes and rules as the Lord my God
commanded me, that you should do them in the land you're entering
and to take possession of it. So he he's drawing this
juxtaposition between true worship and life and false
worship and death. And the the contrast is, is
painted graphically because Moses is recalling what happened
again a few weeks ago at Baal Payor where the Israelites
engaged in sensual Pagan Canaanite rites.
Were they engaged in sexual activity with Moabite women?
And we say, how dense of a generation was that?
How dense is our generation? How dense was that generation?
When they're on the brink of the promised land, they've almost
served out the generation the 40 years.
And in the weeks before they go, they go and they look to bail
for his blessings and his protection and his benefits.
And Numbers 25 recorded that God sent a plague on the idolaters
and 24,000 Israelites died. It's a horrible story.
What did Paul just teach us in Ephesians 5 except sexual
immorality and all impurity and covetousness must not even be
named among you as is proper. And you see that here.
Disobedience to the law brings destruction and death.
His application is choose life that you might be blessed.
Hold fast to the covenant, be loyal and faithful to the
covenant because he says all those who are faithful to the
covenant are still alive and they are alive even to that day.
Jesus again, Matthew 1917, if you would enter life, keep the
commandments. This is why Moses says in verse
6, the essence of wisdom. If you want to live
successfully, if you want to live well, if you want to be
blessed, the essence of wisdom is living according to God's
will. Because if you don't guard your
heart against idols, we think we know.
I've gotten sanctified to the point that I could never fall
into some kind of horrible idolatry or some kind of
horrible sin. And we say, yes, absolutely you
can. If you do not guard your heart,
we are not exempt from the most terrible kinds of sin.
We have to be diligent. We have to guard our souls.
We have to protect ourselves with the word.
Only take care and keep your soul diligently.
The human heart's a factory for idols, which is why John ends
his first epistle. How does first John end little
children keep yourselves from idols, End of book, right.
Little children keep yourselves from idols.
And so in, in, in moments of comfort, you know, we believe
that our souls are free of idols.
And then hardship and trials come and then idolatry becomes
more tempting. Something, some terrible trying
thing comes on us like infertility.
And all of a sudden then all of the quasi magical practices of
the pagans don't seem so far fetched, right?
Then superstitions don't seem far fetched because we're
desperate and we want this so bad that we'll begin to seek it
however we can seek it. We can make an idol out of
anything. We make idols out of comfort
saying, Lord, I'll do anything for you so long as I remain
comfortable. Or we make an idol out of
safety, Lord, I'll do anything for you so long as it will keep
me safe. When comfort and safety aren't
bad things, but they're not priorities.
And we hear it in our prayers. When people go out to the
mission field and we forget and we neglect to pray that they
push back darkness and the gospel would go forward and we
instead pray, Lord keep them safe, which is a great prayer.
It's not the priority or money. How quickly we forget God when
he gives us a measure of wealth and we think that money is a
gift and not a stewardship. Moses is going to teach us this
in chapter 8. Beware lest you say in your
heart my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this
wealth. You shall remember the Lord your
God, for it is he who gives you the power to gain wealth.
Your money comes from God, power, success.
I'll mention one more fame. Who doesn't want to be somebody?
We don't want to be like Paul says in Thessalonians where we
work quietly in obscurity and we work diligently with our hands
to make our living. You know, we want to be
somebody. We want people to know who we
are. You go to to George Mueller, who
was kind of forced to a hand to mouth existence as he was caring
for all these orphans. And people would come to him and
they would tempt him and they'd say, we will give you all the
money you'll ever need if you would just put our name on the
on the front of your building. And we need to remember this
principle because he said to everyone who who asked this God
is the only patron of these orphans, right?
I'm not putting your name on this building and where your
name is going to be associated with these orphans.
God's name alone is going to be associated with these children.
And so the same is true here. This will be my response if you
ever come and say I'll do whatever you want as long as
you'll put my name over the new building or over the Sunday
school class. And I'll say God's the only
patron of this church. God's the only patron of our
children. You don't need fame.
You don't need your name attached to the good thing that
you do. What if you do something that's
great for the Kingdom of God, but it condemns you to
obscurity? That would be OK, and that would
be good for your soul. Remember all of these idols that
we're so tempted toward as we read Deuteronomy 1012 to 13.
What does the Lord your God require of you summing up the
whole book? To fear the Lord your God, to
walk in His ways, to love Him, to serve him with all your heart
and with all your soul and to keep the commandments and
students of the Lord which I'm commanding you today for your
good. These and not idols are our
focus. It's it's the job of the
leaders. I, I lean on you leaders to keep
these things in the eyes of the people and to be bold according
to these and ask of or would be idols instead of idolizing
comfort, say what can I do on behalf of the Lord which might
make me and my family uncomfortable or asking of
safety and the idol of safety. What might I do for the Lord to
expand his Kingdom where I'm going to have to lean on him for
his protection or idolizing fame?
What can I do to make his name great, which might make my name
nothing? And so against all the so-called
gods of the ancient world, against the all the the gods of
this world, all these gods are tangible that he's talking to
them. The the idols made of wood.
God says, when I spoke to you it I was not a piece of wood.
I was not I spoke to you and there was no form.
It was light which casts no shadow, He says in verse 15, You
can read it with me. Watch yourselves carefully.
Why, since you saw no form on the day the Lord spoke to you
out of the midst of the fire. God is a consuming fire, it
says. He is immaterial.
He is spirit. We worship Him in spirit and in
truth. There's nothing that a little
piece of wood or a piece of gold or a piece of plastic or a piece
of silver can do. He says, I had no form.
He does not share His glory with another Scripture says God says
there's 10,000 things that are going to distract you and
compete for his attention and his glory.
Don't forget God and inevitably sink into the worship of idols.
Keep the main thing, the main thing to say.
What is the main thing brings us to the final question we're
going to ask. Why do we guard our hearts?
He answers for the sake of our
mission. What's the goal of the church?
What's the goal of the people of God?
Was it always been Isaiah 11/9? That the knowledge of the Lord
shall fill the earth as waters cover the sea?
That's the mission. Habakkuk 214 For the for the
earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the
Lord. As the waters cover the sea.
We make the will of God known, His goodness and his greatness
to all creations, so that all might bow the knee to him and
fulfill his will. That's worth putting down your
fame, right? That's worth your money, that's
worth your power and your comfort and your safety.
That's worthy of your undivided loyalty.
The the knowledge of God might be known.
And, and how do we do it? Remember the great themes of
Deuteronomy. How do we make the will of God
known as the water covers the sea?
He says it's theological education, the Bible and
theology known to our children and our children's children.
And we live it out and we teach it.
And it's caring for the vulnerable so that we just, we
say not only the words of God, but we display the ethics of God
so that when people see us, we invite their comparison.
As you'll soon see, we, we invite comparison.
And when they compare, their righteousness and their justice
fall short. And they want what we have
because ours is divine and revealed.
Theological education, caring for the vulnerable and advancing
the gospel. That's what you were made to do.
That's what you were born to do. Keep your eyes on that
Deuteronomy 46. You can read with me in the
context of this mission. Keep them and do them for that
will be your wisdom and your understanding.
Here it is in the sight of all the people when they hear all
these statutes, they'll say, surely this is a great nation
and a wise and understanding people.
The rabbi's would say of a verse one that it means study.
We're, we're studying and writing this law on our heart
and then we keep it and then we do it and we live out our faith.
Deuteronomy 28 says the same thing as verse 6.
If you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in
his ways, all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are
called by the name of the Lord. So Daniel Block says fans
advertise their favorite sports teams by wearing hats and shirts
and scarves and key chains and bumper stickers.
And they do all of this to advertise their name.
And he says, but the people of God advertise their God not with
Christian evangelistic T-shirts or crosses or Hebrew tattoos,
but with righteousness and obedience to the law of God.
That's how you advertise the Lord right says the Old
Testament law explicitly invites and even welcomes public
inspection and comparison that Israel's law would be found
superior and to in wisdom and injustice.
We're going to look at this more deeply next week but you could
say our society, the Western society is built on the
foundation of God's law summarily comprehended in the 10
commandments and so where does the where does the world want to
live Do they want to live in the West where we we practice that
your punishment must fit the crime and where everybody is
equal dignity and worth because we're all made in the image of
God. Do you want to live in a society
like that, or do you want to go live in a Muslim society or in
India in their caste system? You make a comparison, it
invites a comparison. What's better, what's more
righteous, what's more just? Meryl says these statutes would
do more than merely provide guidelines for successful life
in the land. By obeying them, God's people
would also display before the nation's what it means to be the
people of the Lord and have him in their midst.
The wisdom of God has to be seen in your life, not only in us as
a church, you as an individual, or I guess even us as a nation
as we embody these things, but you.
And as an individual, you are inviting inspection and
comparison. And people need to look at your
marriage and say that's better than mine.
What do you have that I don't? And the opposite is also true.
Paul says, because if they look at your life and they see your
angry response to stimuli and they see your greed and your
idolatry, and they're going to say, I want nothing to do with
God. Paul says they're going to say
the name of God is going to be blasphemed among the Gentiles
and it's going to be because of you.
We're inviting as a people inspection in comparison.
So we want to say, I want nothing to do no, I want nothing
more than to do the will of God. That's that's what's at stake.
The world's watching. One more point I want to make is
that we see in the the 10 commandments, we'll look at this
next week that there are certain rights and obligations that
Yahweh has as our creator and our Redeemer.
One of them is the right to proper representation.
God has an innate right to proper representation.
Israel bears His name. You are a Christian and you bear
God's name. He has a right to you
representing Him well. He has given you His glory.
Christian is from the word Christianos in Greece, which
Greek which literally means follower of Christ.
If you take His name, you reveal His glory.
Take His commandments, keep His commandments.
Do not forget them. Verse 39 No.
Therefore today lay it on your heart.
The Lord God is in heaven, there is no other.
Therefore keep His commandments and His statutes.
So you don't have to be a Bible scholar to understand what this
passage means. This is so simple the children
can understand it. Listen to verse one, he says
study the statutes and the rules that I'm teaching you.
Verse 2, keep the commandments of the Lord your God.
I'm commanding you. Verse five, I've taught you
statutes enrolled so that you should do them in the land that
you are entering. Verse 6, keep them and do them,
for that will be your wisdom. Verse 9, take care and keep your
soul diligently. Verse 14, that you might do them
in the land that you're going to possess, and you go all the way
down to verse 40. He ends this whole section.
He ends his sermon with this great command.
Therefore you shall keep his statutes and his commandments,
which I command you today, that it may go well with you and your
children after you, that you may prolong your days in the land
that the Lord your God is giving you for all time.
I end with this last thought because the author of Hebrews in
chapter 12, verses 28 to 29, he's meditating on this exact
passage, these very verses. This is where it says the Lord
God is a consuming fire. He's jealous, not in a petty
sense, but in that it's his right that he received glory
from us. And as the author of Hebrews is
meditating on this, he gives us one final application as he
records these words. Therefore, let us be grateful.
Let us be grateful for receiving a Kingdom that cannot be shaken.
And let us offer to God acceptable worship with
reverence and with awe. For our God is a consuming fire.
Please pray with me. Lord, we, we don't even know
what this means that you're jealous.
Now. We're jealous for so many
things. Lord, may we be jealous and
zealous for your glory. And Lord, we know it's not
written in this passage. It's not the emphasis.
We, we remember that there is so much grace when we fall short.
But Lord, may we live according to this.
You've made it so clear in your revelation.
We want to, we've heard it, we want to do it.
You've said keep the commands, study them, take them off of the
page and write it on our hearts. Lord, we know that this is only
something we can do by your Spirit.
Give us resolve, give us determination.
Give us the willpower to do this, to not just hear the
words, but to to write it on our heart.
Not only our hearts, our children's hearts.
Not only that, but that we would take responsibility for our
children's children that your name might be made great on the
earth. God, we love you.
We thank you that you've spoken. The ears of your servants are
listening. Lord in Christ's name, Amen.
Thanks for listening. To learn more about Heritage
Church or if you'd like to respond to this sermon, visit
our website at www.heritage Shawnee dot.
Org.