Deuteronomy chapter 4, and I
want to just read four verses to you tonight. This is a very
interesting chapter. It deals with a lot of things.
I remember making the statement to you when we began the study
of Deuteronomy that you won't find any sacrifices in this book. You won't find any ceremonies.
We saw that somewhat in numbers. We saw a lot of it in Leviticus. But this is about the Word. This
is about the commandment, the statutes of the Lord here in
Deuteronomy. Let's read the first four verses
in Deuteronomy chapter 4. Now therefore hearken, O Israel,
unto the statutes and to the judgments which I teach you,
for to do them that you may live and go in and possess the land
which the Lord God of your fathers gives you. You shall not add
unto the word which I command you, Neither shall you diminish
aught from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord
your God, which I command you. Your eyes have seen what the
Lord did because of Baal Peor. For all the men that followed
Baal Peor, the Lord thy God hath destroyed them from among you.
But you that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every
one of you this day. This word hearkened here in verse
1. It's a very, very important word.
It's used many, many times in the Old and the New Testament.
Something like 199 times or so. Several times this word is used.
It means to listen to, to give attention to, to hear intelligently,
to believe, to receive, to consider, to consent to, to commit to,
to obey. So that's a very important concept,
isn't it? To hearken. Hearken unto what? What are we to hearken unto?
What are we to listen intelligently to? What are we to consent to
and bow to and believe and obey? Well, he tells us here in verse
1 and 2, the statutes and the commandments, the word and the
judgments of the Lord our God. And he tells us here why we're
to hearken. He tells us that in verse 1,
that you may live and go in and possess the land which the Lord
God giveth unto you. Why is it important? Why is it
so critical for us to have the Word of God and hearken unto
it? And it's so critical. That's
what He was teaching them. This is what got the last generation
of the Jews in trouble. They hadn't hearkened. They didn't
hearken. They didn't believe the Lord. They didn't submit
and believe His Word. He's warning this generation.
He's encouraging them to hearken. Hearken. Now, why are we to take
this Word so seriously and hearken to God's Word? Because within
the Bible, there's words and commandments that bring death. There are words in the Bible
that bring death to us, that bring condemnation to us, as
well as words of lie. Now listen to this. The law of
Moses is in the Bible, isn't it? It is here in the Bible. And yet the law of Moses is called
administration of death. By the law is the knowledge of
our sins. We are commanded by this law
to do certain things, and when we do these things, then we live. But you and I are fallen sinners. We've been stripped of any strength
to do anything. So what the law commands us to
do, we cannot do it. And because we cannot do it,
we are condemned. We're condemned. were judged
and were guilty. Romans 3.19 says, Whatsoever
the law says, it says to them who are under the law, that every
mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before
God. Cursed is every man who continueth
not in all things written in the book of the law to do them.
So there is words in this Bible that when you read them, they
will judge you. They will condemn you. they'll
show your guilt before God. Instead of giving you life, they'll
pronounce your death. To hearken to the law of Moses
means that we hear what it's saying to us. We hear what it's
saying to us, we're aware We have the intellect, we have the
understanding to know what the law requires of us, and we consent
unto it that it's good, that it's right, that it's just, and
we confess our guilt before it. That's what it means to hearken
unto the law of Moses. That we refuse, that we turn
from it, as a way of salvation, as a way of life, as a way of
acceptance with God. Now that's what it means to hearken
unto the law. It means we hear it. We'll look
at this later on in this chapter. And we can sin unto it, that
its judgment upon us is a just judgment. What else do we hearken
to then? If we hearken to the law and
confess our guilt before it and turn from it and seek salvation
through another means, what means do we turn to? Well, in this
book, in this Bible, we not only find the law that judges us and
condemns us, but we find the gospel, don't we? We find the
gospel of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. These are the words
of life. The words that I speak unto you,
they are life. Moses' law is a ministration
of death. The gospel gives us life. The gospel gives us salvation
and forgiveness of sin. These are the words which Christ
speaks to us in the gospel. The gospel tells us of what somebody
else has done for condemned sinners. those who are condemned under
the law of Moses, the gospel tells us that somebody else has
come here to this earth and did for us and for the law what we
could not do for ourselves. Somebody has fulfilled the law
on our part. Somebody has satisfied its demands. And now we hearken to this gospel
and it brings what to us? It brings life. It brings the
spirit of adoption. It brings a cleansing, a salvation. It seals us until the day of
redemption. The law was given by Moses. We've hearkened to that haven't
we? We've read about the law in the Old Testament as well
as the New Testament. We understand what the law is
about. It's administration of death.
The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ. That's why we need to hearken
as we read God's Word. Because it has these two covenants,
doesn't it? And if we don't hearken, if we
don't consider diligently and intelligently what the Bible
is teaching us, we're going to be worse than confused. We're
going to be seeking life from a law that's just meant to kill
us. Not one to free us, but one to condemn us. In Luke chapter
10, you remember the story about a lawyer who came to the Lord
Jesus Christ. And he stood up, the scripture
says there in chapter 10 of Luke, tempting the Lord. He stood up
tempting our Lord, and he asked Him and said, Master, what good
thing shall I do? What shall I do that I might
inherit eternal life? And remember what the Lord Jesus
said to him? What does the law say? What is written in the law? Do you understand the law? Have
you ever hearkened to the law? And he says, I know what it says.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all
your mind, all your soul, and all your strength, and your neighbor
as yourself. And the Lord said, you venture
rightly, this do, and you shall live. This do, and you shall
live. That man wanted to argue. He
said, who is my neighbor? Who is my neighbor? All he wanted
was an argument, wasn't it? He didn't want to hear. He didn't
want to hearken. He didn't want to understand
what the law was about. He wanted to fuss. He wanted
to debate. Disdo and thou shalt live. That's
nothing to debate, is it? That's just a fact. That's just
a fact. He willing to justify himself
said, who is my neighbor? Let's argue about this. Let's
talk this out. You know the Word of God isn't
given to us to debate, is it? It's not given for us to sit
down and argue about. It's given to hearken to. It's
given to listen diligently to. It's given to consent to and
to understand and believe it. And that's what we see when we
look at the Law of Moses. We consent unto it that it's
good, that it's holy, and that we're sinners, and it condemns
it. But in this Bible, we have the Gospel. You remember in Matthew
chapter 9, when the Lord Jesus was here upon this earth, there
was two blind men. And they were following him,
saying, Thou Son of David, have mercy upon me. And he went into
the house and sat down, and they followed him into the house.
I can just almost see him come through the door, filling the
way. Where did he go? Where did he go? Somebody said,
He's right over there. Jesus, Thou Son of David, have
mercy on me. And he said to those men, Do
you believe? Now, here's the gospel. Do you
believe that I am able to do this for you? That's the gospel,
isn't it? That's the gospel. You can't
do it for yourself. Nobody else can do for you what
you need and must have if you ever see. Do you believe that
I am able to give you your sight? Well, that's a good question,
ain't it? And they said, yes, Lord, we believe. Now, here's
the question for us. Here's the gospel. Do you and
I believe that Jesus Christ by himself could fulfill his own
law, that he could do what we poor
fallen sinners cannot, that he actually did it? Lord, I come,
your law is within my heart. That he actually, from the cradle
to his grave, loved God with all of his heart, mind, soul,
and strength. And I'm telling you, he loved
his neighbor as himself. He never hurt anybody, did he?
He went about doing good. He fulfilled the demands of the
law. Do you believe I'm able to do
this? You know what religion is telling us in our day? Not
by himself. Not apart from me. I've got my
part to do. God expects me to do something.
That's not to hearken, is it? To hearken to the law says we're
guilty. To hearken to the gospel says
somebody else did it Himself. Do we believe Him? Do we believe
that Jesus by Himself bore the penalty of our sins upon Calvary's
tree? The equivalent of eternal punishment
in three and a half hours upon the cross? Do you believe I'm
able to do that? Do you believe that I'm able
to take all I am as the mediator, all I've worked at in the way
of righteousness, and put it on your account? Do you believe
me? Do you believe I'm able to do
that? That's the gospel, isn't it? And to hearken to that is
to say, yes, Lord, I believe. I believe. and give up our all
to that, to receive that, to believe that in our souls, to
hearken, to hearken. The Bible is one of the most
dangerous books in all the world if we don't hearken to it. There
have been men in our lifetime that have been responsible for
the death of literally thousands and thousands of people. And
I bet you look back through the centuries of the history of this
world, from the New Testament on to now, and hell is populated
with people who had a man that stood before them and read out
of this book. But he lied to them. He did not
rightly divide the Word of Truth. I've been there, haven't you?
That's one of the things that I've told you so often that concerns
me. When I open this book, am I getting
the true sense of the Word? It's dangerous if we don't hearken. To hearken means to read it with
intelligence, to read it with understanding, to consent to
the truth of it, to believe it. If Israel was to live, and go
in and possess this land that the Lord gave to them, they must
hearken to the word of the Lord. It would have been impossible
for them to have gotten to that land without hearkening to the
word of the Lord, His statute and His commandment. We saw the
first generation didn't make it. And if you and I are to have
eternal life, If we are to be possessed of the graces of the
Holy Spirit and live in hope of heaven at last, we must hearken
unto the word of God which he spake by his Son, the Lord Jesus
Christ. We have this word mentioned again.
Hold that right there just for a minute. Look over in the 18th
chapter of Deuteronomy. Look in Deuteronomy chapter 18. And look in verse 15. Deuteronomy
chapter 18 and verse 15. Look in verse 15. The Lord thy
God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee of thy
brethren. He's going to be like unto me.
We know who this is because the New Testament tells us, don't
we? It's Jesus of Nazareth. Unto Him shall you Harken, say
that word again, unto Him shall you hearken. According to all
that you desired of the Lord your God in Horeb, in the day
of the assembly saying, Let me not hear the voice of the Lord
my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, lest I die. That's the law, wasn't it? That's
where they got the law on Mount Sinai, Mount Horeb. And the Lord
said unto me, They have well spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a prophet
from among their brethren, like unto me, and I will put my words
in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I command
him, and it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken
unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require
it at his And Peter quoted this verse,
and he said it would come to pass that whosoever will not
hearken unto the voice of this prophet, he's going to be destroyed
from among the people. So how are you and I saved? How
are we possessed of life and a hope of heaven at last? By
hearkening unto the words, the gospel, of our Lord Jesus Christ. Listen to what he said in John
chapter 5, verse 22 and 25. He that heareth my word, and
believeth on him that sent me, he hath everlasting life. My words are spirit, and they
are life. And those who hear my words,
those who hearken to my words, They have everlasting life. And
listen to this, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall
hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall
live. There's life in His voice. Everywhere we see that. Those
that are in the graves shall hear His voice. What is His voice? It's not an audible voice, is
it? We don't stand out here with our ears up towards heaven. waiting
for an audible voice. What is his voice? It's his word. It's his gospel. He speaks unto
us through his gospel. My sheep hear my voice. They hear my gospel. They hearken
unto my gospel, and I give them life, and they shall never perish. The Lord said in John 14, 23,
If any man love Me, he will keep My word. That's it. You know what that word keep
means? It means to hearken. It means
to hearken. He's heard it. He believes it. He understands it. He retains
it in his heart. He refuses to let it go. It's
words of life to him. The Word is a road map. That's
the way I love to look at the Word of God. It's like a road
map, isn't it? If you're going some place, plans to travel,
you didn't go without a road map, did you? It'd be silly to
take off to a place without a road map. Wouldn't you hate to be
out going to a location, not know where you're going, just
take off? Wouldn't have any hope of getting there, would you?
Not have a road map. If you're lost, and you're out
on the road somewhere, what's the first thing you do? You pull
over to the side, you reach in your little door, pull out your
map, and you find out where you are, don't you? You start looking
on there and examining, and finally, right here I am. Right here I
am. Highway 127, just out the dams
of Kentucky. Yep, I know where I'm at now.
And here's where I'm going. I'm going to Jamestown, Tennessee.
So I need to go south. There where I am, I was lost,
but now I know where I am. I know how to get where I'm going
to. I remember, I remember when I went and got me a Bible. And
I opened the Bible, and it showed me exactly where I was. I remember so well where I was
seated in my kitchen when I opened that Bible and turned it to Romans
chapter 2 and verse 5. And I found out just exactly
where I was. After your hardness and impending
heart, you're heaping up wrath unto the dead rat. And that scared
me to death. That's where I was. But the Lord
didn't leave me there. He opened my heart in time to
see Him, to know Him, to be free from the condemnation. Now I
can open this Bible up and know where I'm at now. I can turn
to Romans chapter 8 and say, right here is where I am now.
I can find myself now. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them who are in Christ Jesus. The Word of God is our road map. It would be awful to go to a
town that you never heard of, had no idea where it was, north,
south, east or west, or what highway it was on, and not have a map to tell you or
show you where it was. That would be awful, wouldn't
it? That's why we're to hearken, to hearken. The only way for
us to be saved from our sins and to have a sure hope of heaven
at last is to hearken, is to hearken. That brings us to verse
2. Look back over in Deuteronomy
chapter 2. I stress that because verse 2, it shows the importance
of verse 2. Look in verse 2, Deuteronomy
4. You shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither
shall you diminish from it That you may keep the commandments
of the Lord your God, which I command you. Boy, you find that again
in the Old Testament. You find it. That's the last
thing, isn't it, that we're warned about and instructed in the book
of Revelation, chapter 22, verse 18 and 19. Don't add anything
to my word. Or don't take anything from my
word. Wouldn't it be awful? Can you imagine the confusion
and the danger if someone had the ability to mess with these
road maps. Can you imagine everybody getting
a map and somebody had the ability before you got the map to put
roads that really weren't on there? Intersections that really didn't
exist? Towns that had never been farmed? Adding these things to a road
map? And you get there to the intersection, 500 miles away,
and say, right here we've got to go left on Highway 555, and
it didn't even exist? And then you have to stop in
all your utterly confusion, say, I can't even get there from here. You can't get there with this
map. It's been added to. What about people taken away?
What if they could take away from the Word? The Jehovah Witness,
they couldn't take the King James Bible. Well, they couldn't take
the NIV or any of them. So you know what Jehovah Witness
did? They made their own. If you ever
look at a Bible Jehovah Witness used, it's a world translation. And what they did in their translation,
they went through every place that they could find that spoke
of the deity of Jesus Christ, that He is actually God, and
they took it out. They just took it out. They explained
it away. Jesus Christ to them is at best
another God. That's what they call Him. They
call Him another God. John chapter 1 verse 1 and 2. See why the Word is so important. It's our road map. It's never
to be added to and never to be taken away. But you know, we
just don't do it by leaving out sentences or phrases or changing
words or adding to it literally. I know of a fellow, and I've
told you about this fellow. He used to be a friend of mine.
He's a free will Baptist preacher. And I was in his presence one
time in a worship meeting and was having some controversies
about election and predestination. And he got up and took his Bible
and run with chapter 8 and read the first 28 verses. And skipped
verse 29 and 30 and finished the chapter. Do you think anybody
would be so bold as to do that? To leave out? What did he just
do? He did just exactly what the
Lord told him never to do. He took away, didn't he? He might
as well have went ahead and just got his scissors and cut that
out and said, we don't need this. We don't want this. Let's eliminate
it. Don't add to it and don't take
it away. You know why I love our King
James Version. Remember when Brother Larry told us about our
translators and how they translated the King James Version? You know
one thing I love about the King James translators as opposed
to the modern day translators? The King James translators, they
handled this word with trembling. They were scared to death. That's
why they had their committees and others to come along after
them and check them. They prayed about it. Don't let
us error. This is your holy word. Don't
let us add anything or take anything. They trembled at it. The modern
day translators, they come along and brag about their degrees. Brag about how able they are. And I use these translations
to study by. But I tell you, I don't have
much confidence in the translators. Don't take anything away because
I've given this Bible to you. I've preserved it to you. This
is your road map. There is no sure way to heaven. Who are we to trust, brothers
and sisters, if we don't have God's infallible Word? What are
we to believe? What are we to do? How do we
know our way to heaven? Are we going to ask man? Poor people we are if we have
to resolve to ask in man the way to heaven. But God's not
left us there. Bless His name. He's given us
His Word. And He's warned every man, don't
you take from it. And don't you add to it. And
here in verse 3 and 4, He gives us two examples. He gives us
an example of those that didn't hearken. And He gives us an example
of those who did. Look here at what He says. He tells them to hearken. He
tells them to don't add to his word, don't diminish from it.
And then he says, your eyes have seen what the Lord did because
of Belpheor. All the men that followed Belpheor,
the Lord God destroyed from among the people. You and I studied
about that. Remember Balaam? Remember he tried to come and
curse the Lord's people and the Lord wouldn't curse them, the
Lord wouldn't hearken. So he went back down and told Balak,
the king, that hired him to curse him. He said, God won't let me
curse him, but I'll tell you what you can do. You can get
a bunch of pretty women and you can entice them and get them
over to worship idols. That's what they did. They enticed
them to come over and worship Baal Peor, and the Lord destroyed
24,000 of them. He killed. Why? Because of idolatry. But he said there in verse 4,
But you that cleaved unto the Lord your God, every one of you
are alive this day. That's a good example, ain't
it? Those who hearken and those who hearken not. One of the strangest
things that's taken place in our country today, right before
our eyes, and it happened, I guess, without us even realizing it. We call ourselves the United
States of America. You know where we got that name?
We got it from our forefathers. Our forefathers set up, they
framed a constitution. That's why we call them the framers.
They sat down and wrote out a constitution. The powers that belong to the
federal government, the powers that belong to the state, the
powers that belong to the people, and so on. And without us even
knowing it, you know what we've done? We've lost our government. If our forefathers came back
today, they wouldn't even recognize what kind of government we have. I don't recognize I saw a little
book the other day, The Constitution, and it was just a little thin
thing, just a few pages, and I thought, I'm going to read
through that thing. And I sat down and read through The Constitution.
I don't even recognize, I kept thinking, what in the world,
what kind of a government do we have? We don't go over this
anymore, and yet we call ourselves what? The United States of America. I said all of that to say this. I bet you if the apostles were
here today and some of our early church fathers, they would not
recognize what is going under the heading and title of Christianity
in our day. See what I'm saying? You can,
in our day, profess in Christianity. nominal Christian, whatever you
want to call it, to profess in church. There has never been
an organization, or a club, or a nation that was more unfaithful
to its constitution, or charter, or whatever you want to call
it, as professing Christianity has been to the rule of our Lord
Jesus Christ. And yet, it calls itself a Christian. You can believe anything today.
You can think anything. You can do anything. You can
live any way. And yet you're offended if anybody
questions your profession. That's your Christian. Now is
that not the truth? And yet the Bible is so clear
on this point. That there are those who will
not hearken. And there are those who do hearken.
And those who will not hearken and submit to the gospel of Christ
and believe it and follow Him, they're wicked. And God's going
to destroy them. And there are those who do believe
the gospel. They do cling to Jesus Christ.
And those are the people the Lord is saving and will save
at last. There's a distinction between
the wicked and the righteous. There's a distinction to be made
between believers and those who believe not, those who hearken
not and those who hearken. But we've all but done away with
that distinction. Well, you haven't. You haven't.
I'm not talking about you. You haven't. But as we look around
us in our society, society has. And you know one of the reasons
they have? The professing church has encouraged them to do it. I wonder, these 24,000 people
that the Lord destroyed, I just wonder what you would have heard
when you went to their funerals. Can you imagine? Now these were
good people. These were God's children. And they're in heaven today with
Jesus. They're in heaven with Jesus.
They were idolaters. God destroyed them. And they're
in heaven with Jesus? That's what this generation would
have said. That's what the preachers of this generation would have
told them. But here the Lord makes a distinction, doesn't
He? Those who joined themselves to Belpheor, those who would
not hearken, those who would not hear, He destroyed them. It's only those who cleave to
the Lord. I am not saying, brothers and
sisters, I am not about to say that a believer is perfect. I'm not saying that our obedience
is perfect. I'm not saying that at all. When
we talk about cleaving to the Lord, I'm not saying that we're
to the point that we know that sin, we know that sin nature
is in us. Every one of us, every night,
when we bow our heads before the Lord, one of the things that
we acknowledge, Lord, we're unprofitable servants. We've done only that
which was our duty to do, and in that we've found all kinds
of sin mixed with it. We're not talking about perfection.
But we are talking about this. The bent of your life. The desire
of your soul. is to plead to Jesus Christ to
be saved by Him. And never to sin against Him. And to repent when you do. And
you grow over your sin. You grow over your disobedience.
And you will find you out here living a lifestyle, living a
lifestyle of idolatry. But you'll find a Christian,
a believer, cleaving to the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to read
you one scripture in closing. We'll close with this. Look in
Acts chapter 11. Look in verse 19. It's Old Testament doctrine. that those who hearken, they
cleave. And that's the New Testament doctrine. We cleave. Verse 19 of Acts chapter 11.
Now when they were scattered abroad upon the persecution that
arose about Stephen, they traveled as far as Pharnassee and Cyprus
and Antioch, preaching the word to none but the Jews only. And
some of them that were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when
they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching
the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was
with them, and a great number believed, and turned unto the
Lord. They hearkened. The tidings of these things came
unto the ears of the church which was at Jerusalem, and they sent
forth Barnabas, that he would go as far as Antioch, who, when
he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad. and exhorted
them all that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto
the Lord." They would cleave unto the Lord. Can you imagine
yourself being in a swift river of water, drowning, and there's
one log to save your life? What would you do? You can be proud loose from that
vision. Here is where we have our assurance,
where He is. We cleave to Him. We cleave to
Him. To be saved by Him. Cleave to
the Lord with purpose of heart. You know something, brothers
and sisters, if I'm not saved by Jesus Christ, If I'm not saved
according to His word and His gospel, then I won't be saved.
Because I've denied all other ways. I'm pleading to Him alone
to be saved. I've turned loose to everything
else. If He don't save me, I won't be saved. But you know something? Every one of you, every one of
you without exception, who pleads unto Him, You'll be saved. Every one of you? Every one of
you. That's what Moses said, wasn't it? That's assurance,
ain't it? That's assurance. Old Brother
Scott Richard said somebody asked him, is Christ enough? If He's
all you've got, He is. And if He's all you've got, you're
cleaving to Him, aren't you? And those who cleave to Him will
be saved by Him. They'll be saved by Him. Hey.