Deuteronomy chapter 12, if you'd
like to turn there with us. Thank you, David. I want us to begin reading, maybe
down through verse 14. Begin in verse 1 and read down
through verse 14. I've just about quit apologizing
for going so slow. There's no sense for me to keep
doing that, because I know I'm not going to change. Once this
gets started in the book of me going so slow, I can't get out
of it. I was looking today and had occasion to look back at
some of the messages where we went through Ephesians. And I
think there's about 120 messages on the book of Ephesians. And
I'm afraid the same thing is going to happen with Deuteronomy.
So I hope you're not sitting there thinking, oh no. We'll
be going slow, okay? So let's begin in verse 1 and
read. And just get some thoughts. out
of some of these verses. These are the statutes and judgments
which ye shall observe to do in the land which the Lord God
of your fathers giveth thee to possess it all the days that
ye live upon the earth. Ye shall utterly destroy all
the places wherein the nations which ye shall possess serve
their gods upon the high mountains and upon the hills and under
every green tree. And you shall overthrow their
altars, break down their pillows, burn their groves with fire,
and you shall hew down the graven images of their gods and destroy
the names of them out of that place." Boy, that's radical,
ain't it? What about a radical religion now? That's radical.
"'You shall not do so, though, unto the Lord your God. But unto
the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your
tribes to put His name there, even unto His habitation shall
you seek, and thither shall you come. And thither you shall bring
your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, and your tithes,
and your heave offerings of your land, and your vows, and your
freewill offerings, and the firstlings of of your herd and of your flocks. And there ye shall eat before
the Lord your God, and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your
hand unto you and your household wherein the Lord thy God hath
blessed thee. Ye shall not do after all the
things that ye do here this day every man whatsoever is right
in his own eyes. For ye are not as yet come to
the rest and to the inheritance which the Lord your God giveth
you. But when ye go over Jordan, and dwell in the land which the
Lord your God giveth to you to inherit, and when he giveth you
rest from all your enemies round about, so that ye dwell in safety,
then there shall be a place which the Lord your God shall choose
to cause his name to dwell there. Thither shall ye bring all that
I command you, your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes,
and the heave offering of your hand, and all your choice vows,
your offerings, which ye vow unto the Lord. And ye shall rejoice
before the Lord your God, you, and your sons, and your daughters,
and your menservants, and your maidservants, and the Levite
that is within your gate. Forasmuch as he hath no partner
in earnest with you, take heed to yourself, that thou offerest
not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest. But in
the place which the Lord shall choose in one of your tribes,
there shalt thou offer thy burnt offerings, and there thou shalt
do all that I command thee." Well, the beginning here is something
of a new section. In the first eleven chapters,
The Lord has been stressing, and I think you and I have noticed
this, the necessity of their obedience. We even entitled one
of our studies, Trust and Obey. But here in chapter 12, he gets
more specific as to what those statutes are. Before, he stressed,
Obey my statutes, obey my judgments, obey my laws, my commandments.
And now in the twelfth chapter, he begins to specify what some
of those judgments are, what some of those statutes are. And
I think as we read and study this chapter here in the weeks
ahead, we'll probably see the importance of why he stressed
obedience to God's Word in these first 11 chapters. And I think
probably you have a hint there in verse 2 and verse 3. It wasn't
going to be easy in this land. When they took possession of
the land of Canaan, their faith in God, their worship, their
service to Him would be seen for what it really was. And how
was it going to be seen by all those heathen that was around
the land of Canaan, and probably in the land of Canaan too? How
was their religion going to be viewed? Very, very strict. Well, you fellows are very narrow.
You fellows are uncompromising. You going to destroy all of these
altars? You going to burn down all of
these groves? What kind of fanatics are you?
How mean are you, fellas? And therefore it was of the utmost
importance, and this is why Moses kept stressing to them chapter
after chapter after chapter, obedience to God's Word alone. That's what he says there in
verse 1. These are the statues and the judgments which you shall
do in the land of Canaan. And then he begins to name them.
Verse 2. Destroy their altars. Destroy their gods. The Lord
has spent 40 years humbling these people and teaching them and
preparing their hearts for this new land. And all this teaching
and all this humbling was to bring them to this one place.
To have this attitude. Reverence. regard for God's Word,
that they would render unconditional obedience to His Word without
any hesitation. That's what it was going to take
to be in this land, wasn't it? To obey His rules, His laws,
and His statutes. So as you and I have been studying
the last while, we're going to see here why it was so important.
Look back with me just a second. Let me just stress some of the
things that he had been teaching them. Look in chapter 8 in verse
2 and 3 when I tell you he had spent 40 years humbling these
people and teaching them to reverence His Word, to fear His Word. And
let me just remind you, look in chapter 8 and look in verse
2. Now shall remember all the way which the Lord your God led
thee these 40 years in the wilderness to do what? To humble thee. To humble thee. To prove thee
to know what was in your heart, that you might know it. God knowed
it, didn't He? Yeah, He knew it. They might
know what was in their heart. Whither thou wouldest keep His
commandments to know, and He humbled thee, and suffered thee
to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not,
neither did thy fathers know, that He might make thee to know.
That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God doeth man live. And think of all the ways that
he humbled them to make them obedient to his word. He kept reminding them, look
here in chapter 7 and verse 18, kept reminding them of his judgments. Boy, that's a humbling thing,
ain't it? Can you imagine how this humbled these people when
they remembered his judgments and they saw many of them? Look
what he said in verse 18. Thou shalt not be afraid of them,
chapter 7, verse 18, but shalt well remember what the Lord thy
God did unto Pharaoh and to all Egypt. The great temptations
which thine eyes saw, and the signs, and the wonders, and the
mighty and the stretched out arm whereby the Lord thy God
brought thee out, so shall the Lord thy God do unto all the
people of whom thou art afraid." The judgment of the Lord. It was these very young people
here that witnessed the Lord when He delivered those two great
kings of the Amorites into their hands. Og and Sihon. And it says here in chapter It's
well in chapter 11. You can see it in chapter 11.
You don't have to turn over that, but you can read it. He told
them of Corrie and Dathan that rose up against Moses to try
to thrust themselves into the priesthood. And he reminded them
how he opened up the earth and swallowed them. And why did he
do that? Not just to bring judgment upon
those wicked men, but to teach his people to be afraid of his
judgment. They feared Him. They had reverence
for Him. He reminded them of how He had
slain Averant's two sons. Remember that? They offered the
strange fire before the Lord, and fire went out from the Lord
and slew them and burned them up. They witnessed that. And
He humbled them. He humbled them. Boy, they got
it in their hearts. Buddy, you better be careful
the way you worship God. You better be careful the way
you serve God. He is a just God. When you go into His presence,
you better find out what He requires. He's a just God. He can do you
great harm. He's a jealous God. He's jealous
of His worship. So He taught them those things. They feared the judgment of God. And we do too, don't we? We do
too. A man that don't fear God, a
man that don't fear the judgment of God, is a man who has no grace
in his heart. The fear of the Lord. But something
else he taught them, look here in chapter 7. In chapter 7 of Deuteronomy, and
look in verse 6. Boy, he taught them something
else. And I tell you this, not only
the fear of God, but how God loved them. He taught them how
He loved them. He taught them that. How He had
chosen them and redeemed them from the house of bondage. This
got in their heart. Boy, when this gets in your heart,
you'll just fall in love with His Word. Then you can live by
it. Look here what He tells us in
verse 6. Thou art an unholy people unto
the Lord your God. The Lord thy God hath chosen
thee, He's chosen thee, to be a special people unto Himself
above all the people that are upon the face of the earth. Boy,
that's humbling, ain't it? He humbled thee. Isn't it a humble
thing when you think that God's chosen you? The Bible says He
chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. He has
from the beginning chosen you to salvation. That's a humbling
thing. Why in the world would He choose
people like us? Why would He choose them? Well,
they were a great nation. They were mighty. No, they weren't.
They weren't. He goes ahead and tells them
that. Look at it in verse 7. The Lord did not set His love
upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than
any people, for you were the fewest of all people. He didn't
choose you for that reason. But look in verse 8, that because
the Lord loves you. That's where he traced it to.
Where do we trace God's election of us to? His love. He loved
us and chose us. Nobody can find any fault with
election. That is your fine fault with the Father's love, the Lord's
love. He loved us. Because He loved
you and because you would keep the oath which you have sworn
unto your father, that the Lord brought you out with a mighty
hand. And look at this, He redeemed
you out of the house of bondmen from the hand of Pharaoh, king
of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord
thy God, He is God. The faithful God which keepeth
covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments
to a thousand generations. Look in verse 11. Thou shalt
therefore keep the commandments and the statutes and the judgments
which I command thee this day to do them. Boy, they had every
motive, every motive to fear him, to love him, and to serve
him, and to take his word as their rule of faith. The Lord
provided them manna from heaven, water from the rock, raiment
that never grew old on their backs, His presence to guard
them and guide them. They had His manifest pleasure
when they obeyed Him and sometimes His heavy hand when they didn't.
For forty years He prepared their hearts to fear Him and so reverence
His that they would yield unconditional obedience unto him without hesitation. That's what he had taught them
for this forty years. Why did he do that? Because when
they came to the land of Canaan, they would have one rule to live
by. One rule to live by. Here's how
necessary it was for him to humble them and teach them to fear him
Because when they came to the land of Canaan, they'd have one
rule to live by. What was it? His word. His word. Now that'd be easy. That'd be easy. If they could
set in their sealed houses and go out and draw a fresh bucket
of water out of those coal wells, run down to the orchard and get
them some fruit and vegetable, run back into their sealed houses
and take it easy, then I tell you it wouldn't that easy in
the land of Canaan. They're going to tear down altars.
They're going to destroy false gods. They're going to burn the
groves where they worshiped, up on the mountains. It's going
to be tough. And how were they to endure the
criticisms that came against them from the heathen round about
them? When they said, you guys are
just too narrow. You're mean. You're hateful.
Why don't you integrate with us and all of us get together
and worship? We've got many gods. Bring your
god and we'll all get along together." How were they to answer such
things? How were they to endear the criticism without willing
before them? One way. One way. God has spoken. That's it. That's it. We've got one rule that we live
by. God has spoken. They had many gods, you see.
Israel had only one God. They had many gods, many altars,
many groves, many names of their gods. And Israel come in, and
God had given them the Word that says, Here, old Israel, the Lord
your God is one God. One God. And there's the conflict
then. There's the conflict. These Canaanites, they all lived
together and all of them were happy. I mean, it was just a
small country. You've seen it on your map. My
goodness, it's just very narrow. It's not too many miles long.
They had seven nations living in that little place. All of
them had their own gods and they got along pretty well. Because
they all were in darkness. But when Israel came in, the
children of light, they had no fellowship. Because children
of light have no fellowship with children of darkness. And there's
where the conflict began. And how were they to take the
criticism that they had of them? One way, they had to have this
holy reverence of God's truth. They had to have this love for
the Word of God. That's the only way they could
endure what they were going to have to endure, do and live as
they were going to have to do and live without being ashamed.
God has spoken. God has spoken. C. H. McIntosh said this. He was
talking about the Lord teaching them to deny self-will. Boy, their father was Seth Will.
That was their whole problem. Seth Will, unbelief. C. H. McIntosh was talking about
the Lord breaking them from Seth Will and waning them from trust
and inhuman reasoning. And this is what he said. He
had some interesting things to say about this. He said, Seth
Will will be always, Seth Will will be allowed to operate if
Seth Will be allowed to operate. Let me get it right. If self-will
will be allowed to operate, if blind reason is permitted to
speak, the heart will send up its endless questionings. As each divine instruction is
laid before them, some fresh difficulty will present itself
as a stumbling block in the part of simple If self-will is allowed
to rule, if reasoning is allowed to interject its opinions and
its reasons, every time God says, do this, you will have some fresh
difficulty suggesting you better think about that. You better
reason that out just a little bit. You imagine when the Lord
called Abraham from Assyria to Canaan and told him to get out
from his father's house. And you remember what was said
in Hebrews 11, Abraham went out not knowing where he went. I
wonder why he did that. I wonder why he didn't begin
to reason. How poor is he? How rough is the way? Is there
any well? Do you have a map? How many guards
do we have to take? I want to think about this. That's reasoning, ain't it? Reasoning. Why did he leave Mesopotamia,
his house and his land, however much he had, his father's house,
and come into a land that he'd never seen and knew absolutely
nothing about? I tell you what, let me tell you the way Stephen
said it. And I think this explains to
us why he did what he did. Stephen made this statement in
Acts chapter 7. The God of glory appeared to
Abraham and said, Get out. Oh, that explains something,
doesn't it? The glorious God appeared to Abraham. We don't
know how He appeared to him. We don't know if He appeared
to him in a dream, in a vision, in some mysterious way He appeared
to his conscience, his spirit? We don't know. But God made Himself
known to Abraham as the glorious God. And then He said, Get out
of your father's house and come into the land of Canaan. And
He went out. I'm just saying there is a preparation of the
heart before we will fear the Lord, before we will be convinced
and persuaded that His Word is the only rule for us to live
by. We talk about, Paul said, no
man, the fear of God is not before their eyes. That's the truth.
And that means the fear of His Word is not before our eyes.
We have no reverence for His Word. We don't tremble at His
Word. So the Lord has to prepare our
hearts. Now, I'm thankful He doesn't
take 40 years to prepare our hearts. Man, He can do it in
a flash, can't He? But you know He has to do it.
The preparations in the heart of man is of the Lord. And to convince us that we have
one rule to walk by, and that's His Holy Word, He has to prepare
our hearts for that. C. H. McIntosh went on to say
this about submitting to the Word of the Lord as opposed to
human reasoning. Here is what he said. He said,
What? It may be asked, may be said.
Are we not to use our reason? If not, to what end then was
it given? To this we have a two-fold reply. In the first place, our reason
is not as it was when God gave it to us. We have to remember that sin
has come in. Man is a fallen creature. His
reason, his judgment, his understanding, his whole moral being is a complete
wreck. And moreover, it was the neglect
of the Word of God that caused all this wreck and ruin in the
beginning. And then, in the second place,
we must bear in mind that if reason were in a sound condition,
it would prove its soundness by bowing to the word of God. But it is not sound. It is blind. Our reasoning is utterly perverted. It is not to be trusted for a
moment in things spiritual, divine, and heavenly. Therefore, what
was Israel's only rule of faith and practice, God has spoken. Not reasoning, though it may
seem so sound, God has spoken. Now listen to this. What great
confidence and peace of heart, peace of conscience, each of
us can have when we simply stand here to let the infallible Word
of our God be our guide in all things that pertain to our faith,
what we believe, what we practice at home and abroad, and God Himself
will help us and be our hope and be our deliverer. Now, that's
what we have if we take the Word of God as our only rule in faith
and practice. We have peace. Everything is
certain. We can live with confidence in
the Lord that He's our help and our hope. But if we forsake the
Word of God, what do we have left? Reasoning? Whose? Yours or mine? Or some
wise person? Everything becomes uncertain,
doesn't it? That's why He humbled them.
That's why He taught them to fear Him. and to take his word
and tremble at it. You remember when Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego stood before that image that Nebuchadnezzar had
made and everybody else was bowing down. Boy, the music was playing
and fire burning in the furnace and everybody was bowing. But
these three guys They stood up. They didn't hunker down and try
to hide beside somebody else and say, Lord, forgive me, I
don't want to be, you know. No, man, they stood there. These
fellows ran to the king and said, you've got three guys over there
that's not bowing to your image. Well, why didn't they bow to
his image? They were told not to. Who told
them that? God. Where did God tell them
that? Don't make any images. Don't
bow down to any image. You've got one God to worship.
And boy, he got so mad, the king got so mad, he brought him up
there and he said, I'm going to give you one more chance. They said,
we don't need another chance. That's what they said. We don't
need another chance. We don't mean to interrupt your
program, but we thought this thing out. We're not careful
to answer you, okay? We will not bow to your image.
We have one God that we worship. We worship according to the rule
of His Word, and everything else is idolatry, and we're not idolatrous. We won't bow. If God's pleased
to deliver us from your furnace, that's all right. He will deliver
us from your anger. And with that, the king and the
rage cast them into the furnace. But what happened? We know what
happened, don't we? I tell you, we stand upon the
authority of His Word. We've got peace. We've got confidence.
Everything is certain. If we forsake that though, everything
is uncertain. Everything is uncertain. We sometimes quote Luther, Martin
Luther, when he stood before the council and they told him
to recant. We quote just a part of what
he said. He said, I cannot. I cannot recant. God help me.
But here is another portion we very seldom quote that he made
this statement to, my conscience is held captive to the Word of
God. I cannot recant. I shall not
recant. Here I stand. I can do no other. God have mercy upon me. My conscience is held captive
to the Word of God. Christianity is the most narrow
religion in the world. Now that's a fact, isn't it?
If we don't realize that, then we've not read the Bible. We
talk about Islam. Well, Islam is a cruel religion.
That's a cruel religion. They cut people's head off. But
Christianity is the most narrow religion that this world has
ever known. And we could quote several scriptures
to prove that right quickly. But here's the problem, you see.
The world don't like this. The heathens don't like this.
And they're all the time trying to get us to change it. But I
tell you, if the church changes that, if the church gets to the
place where, and I'm talking about the professing church,
where she's ashamed of that, she's ashamed of being called
too dogmatic and too narrow and too closed-minded, and she wants
to open up the way a little wider, when the church gives up this
narrowness, these dogmas, This straightness, this straightness,
it'll cease to be Christianity. Now it will. It will. That's
what the world wants, you see. The world's always wanted that.
That's what the devil himself wants. There were seven nations
in this land of Canaan, and all of them had different gods and
different names and different orders. All of them. But Israel had one God. and one
rule. And they were to go in there
and stand against these seven nations and destroy their altars
and the names of their gods and burn down their groves because
they had one God. Not many. One God. What does
Paul say? The Apostle said, he says to
the heathen, to them that believe not, there are God's many and
Lord's many. But to us, There is one God,
and one Lord Jesus Christ. Now, one last thing, and we'll
close with this. I wanted to say something about
this, because this has crept into the professing church in
these last days, and that's this theory of evolution. Why has that crept into the churches
of one kind or another? There are so many kinds and types
and colors of evolution. But some of it has crept into
the professing churches. You would be surprised, I guess
all of us would be surprised, if we realized how many professing
Christians do not believe in the miracle of a six-day creation. that God spoke all things into
being by the word of His mouth. That's what makes it so miraculous. Let there be light. And what
happened? There was light. How long did
that take? Probably not. Eleven hundredths
of a second. That's what Kodak tells us it
takes us that long to blink our eyes. I thought about how long
it took. Let there be light. And there
was light. Let there be and there was. Let
there be and there was. For six days He created everything
in heaven, everything in earth, everything in the sea. And He
rested the seventh day. And if you and I can possibly
look at Exodus chapter 20, where Moses said of the Lord in six
days, I created the heavens and the earth and the sea and all
the emblem is and rested the seventh day. And we can look
at that and without any regard say, well, that could have been
over millions of years. Now, brothers and sisters, that's
a blatant disregard of God's Word. And if anybody can do that,
I'll tell you the cause of it. It's nothing but blatant unbelief. And one more step down is nothing
but blind atheism. And that's where the professing
church is headed today, is to atheism. Because if you give
up miraculous, immediate, divine
creation of all that is around us in this universe, then you
give up miraculous redemption. Because our Creator is our Redeemer. But I tell you what's happening
today, and it's so sad. Some of you may watch Bill O'Reilly. I watch him quite often. There's
a man on there, he's a Jew. Bernie Goldsberg. Bernie Bernard
Goldsberg is his name. And he was making a statement
the other night, what fools they are. Neanderthals, that shouldn't
even have the right probably to vote, who believe in a six-day
creation. That who believe that the dinosaurs
and men live together. That the earth itself has to
be millions or hundreds of millions of years old. Who said it? Smart men said it. Wise men,
scientists say that. And who are we to say that it
was created in six days? Who are we? That's what they
said to Israel. Who are you fellas? That you're
coming in here and destroying these altars. And burning down these groves.
You're maniacs, you Nathaniels, you fools. What kind of people
are you? You're so unkind and rude. And when these great men, when
these wise men make these statements that they make, what happens
to the professing church? It just wilts. It just compromises. And why? Why? Let's just be honest about it. I'll tell you why. There's no
grace in their heart. They've made a profession of
God But they don't know Him. They may read the Bibles, but
they don't tremble at it. They're ready to just give it
up and reason it away themselves, or have somebody to reason it
away for them. But I tell you, when God teaches
us to fear His Word, but we tremble. We tremble. Take His Word. Don't listen to these smart men.
You see your calling, brother? Not many wise men after the flesh,
not many mighty, not many noble are called. What do they do? They usually deny His Word. You
don't have to listen to them. You say, well, I can't prove
them wrong. Yes, you can. I know nothing about science.
I don't either. But I know something about this Bible. I know a little
child can read it and say, Thou hast created all things. That's
in heaven, in earth, in all the places. That's how we refute this. Why
you fellas tearing down our altars? Because God told us to. Why don't
you fellas worship our gods? Because God forbids it. And we
fear our God. That's why we do what we do.
That's why we practice what we practice. Because we're afraid
not to. And we love our God. We love
the way we worship. We serve Him because we fear
Him and because we love Him. We don't mean to be mean. We
just want to be honest. We want to be truthful. I remember
when one of the neighbors, some of you were here, when one of
our neighbors came in and she was upset with us because she
found no pictures of Jesus. I didn't want to hurt her feelings.
I think probably did, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings, but
I told her the truth. God tells us not to make any images, any
likeness of anything in heaven. Where Joe and I used to go, we
had this large picture. They called it Christ, the picture
of Christ. I never thought anything about it until one of the elders
got up one night. You might remember this. And
he says, you know, I just feel so unworthy I just can't hardly
look upon that picture without feeling ashamed. And I thought
to myself, what? What? And what did we do? Some of us
laid it aside. And that's what we do, isn't
it? We're not perfect. God have mercy on us. If the
Lord showed us our sin, we'd almost despair. But when we come
to the light of something, we come out of it, don't we? I imagine
we're still so wrong about some of the things we believe, some
of the things that we practice, but when the Lord shows us in
His Word, we come out. And then we patiently and lovingly
help others to come out. That's what we do. We don't need
to be mean. We just have a rule to walk by.
That's God's Word. That's His Word. Well, may the
Lord bless His Word to you. Any questions, any comments before
we close?