You Shall Not Add To The Word Nor Take Away From It

So this morning, we're going to be returning to the book of Deuteronomy at the beginning of chapter 4. This chapter begins with an exhortation to the people of Israel, sort of a common refrain that's been going on and will continue to go on throughout the book of Deuteronomy, which is to listen and to remember and to obey God's law and his judgments. And the reason that they're exhorted this way at this point is so that they will be able to take possession of the land. You remember that they're about to go over the Jordan River and go into the land of Canaan. Their wandering of 40 years in the wilderness is coming to an end and they're about to go into the land that was promised to them many years before and that they failed to go into 40 years previous to this.

And so after this exhortation to listen, Moses warns them not to mess with God's word. Don't play with it. Don't trifle with it. Don't add to it. Don't take anything away from it. And he tells them that if they tamper with God's word, the result will be that they're not able to obey him. They're not able to do what they should do. And so my hope this morning is that God will help us as we listen to and remember his word, that we wouldn't forget it. I don't want us to end up like Israel. I don't want us to wander. If we take the word of God seriously and consider all the stuff they've been through these previous 40 years, or if we know the history, what they were going to go through once they were in the land, I don't know that any of us would say, you know what, man, I wish I had lived in the time of early Israel. I wish I could have been there with them. Now, maybe we would have liked to seen when they went through the Red Sea and seen the Egyptians all swallowed up. Maybe we would have thought that was neat.

But would you have wanted to live in that culture in that time? Would you have wanted to be married and raise your kids in that time and say, this is where I want my kids to grow up? You'd be like, no. Well, my hope this morning is that we don't, through ignorance, end up doing that same thing. So may the Lord help us. Would you please stand as we read the word of God now? From Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 1 and 2, this is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I am teaching you to perform.

so that you may live and go in and take possession of the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you. This is the word of the Lord. And you may be seated. As I said, this idea of listening is a central theme in Scripture. If you were to go online and to look up the word listen or hear or remember or give attention or take to heart, you'd realize that God's people are always being told to do this. Listen, remember, pay attention, don't forget. And since it's such a common theme, we realize that there's something true about us, which is that we're inclined to forget. What do you think when you talk to your kids or maybe a coworker and they've failed in some way and you come to them and you say, hey, why didn't you do the thing? And they say, oh, I forgot.

Is it a common thing that people say? How about you wives when you go to your husbands? I forgot. It's a common thing that happens. We forget. Maybe we call it forgetting, but sometimes maybe we ignore. Or maybe sometimes when we listen, we're just like, yeah, you know, we may not say it out loud. We don't say it with words, but we're just like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. This is common with us. This is what we do. You ever talk to your kids and they're kind of looking at you and they're like, uh-huh. And he's like, you know. Maybe you don't know with your first kid. Maybe you think better of them. But as they get older and as you have more, you can tell it's not going in. They're not getting it. They need to be told. They need to be reminded. They need to have the thing you're telling them impressed upon them. This is important. And that's what's going on in this passage. This is important. Listen. Listen. What is the purpose of listening? So that you'll remember. Maybe you've had kids and you said, hey, honey, come here. I want to tell you something.

And you're going to tell them two or three things, go do this, then go find that, and then bring me that other thing. It's a normal thing that happens with kids. Annie's like, no, your kids aren't old enough yet. That's okay. Someday you'll be like, I'm going to give them a list of stuff. But they don't do it. Like, they're like, you say, hey, come here. And you're like, hey, can you go get me? And before you even have the thing out, they're like going. And you're like, they don't know where it's at. They're going to bring me the wrong thing. Like, they're not tracking with what's being said.

And so when Moses says to the people, listen, he's not just saying, like, stand here and be quiet. He's saying, like, shut off all the distractions, turn off the thing you were thinking about, and pay attention. It's important that you pay attention. It's not okay for you to forget. We need to remember. You know, we live in a time where remembering is not necessary. We don't have to remember anything anymore. Why don't we have to remember things now? Because you've got the internet at your fingertips. You don't have to remember anything. We just look it up. Google remembers for us. We start typing in the question and it says, oh, you already asked me this question. Let me remind you of what you looked up last time. We don't have to remember anything. My contention is that if you don't remember things, you're stupid. That remembering is necessary, okay? Maybe a way of getting at this or pointing this out is, By asking this question. So if Google remembers for us, if you had to rate like how trustworthy a Google search is in terms of giving you good answer, how trustworthy is Google? Are you like, well, it said it on the internet, so must be it. Now we could get into a discussion and be like, well, it really depends on what you're asking it. Like if you're asking, you know, how do I change the tire? Where's the battery at in my car? Probably going to find me, put the right year and make a model. It's going to tell you the right place.

You know, it's under the passenger seat or it's under the hatch in the trunk or, you know, it's old car, it's under the hood in the front. You know, it would be accurate. But you realize there are things you could ask Google and they're not going to give you a reliable answer. You ask them a health question, good luck. Good luck. You ask them a spiritual question, uh-uh. You ask them a moral question, it's just not trustworthy. It's just not a trustworthy place to rely on. Memorization or remembering is a necessary step or component in our growth as Christians. Memorization and our ability to say back or to live out the things we've been told is the evidence that we actually did listen. With our kids, we all kind of chuckle and we're like, yeah, they, you know, they're like, did you hear what I said? You know, we said our house, we say, hey, we need you to respond back.

It's just required at our house. If we tell you to do something, you have to say, yes, okay, all right. There has to be some verbal acknowledgement. So the words didn't just go off to the staircase and wherever they went. Did you hear me? Yeah, I heard you. Okay. Then if they come back and they didn't do what was said, they go, yeah, but you said you heard me. You said you listened. You said you could do it. So Moses tells them, you need to listen. You need to pay attention. You need to overcome and work to discipline your distraction, your indifference, your forgetfulness. Now, I pointed earlier to some things that go by as forgetting that may not be forgetting. I said, you know, sometimes we ignore or we dismiss things that are said. Why might we dismiss something our boss says or our spouse says or God says? You don't have to think too hard because you don't like what they say.

We are very likely to forget the things we don't like. What are the things that your kids forget? Kids are a good example. They never forget if you said at some point, like if today is Sunday, if you tell them, hey, I'll tell you what. I'm only going to tell you once. And I'm not going to yell. Not going to care whether you're paying attention. We're going to go out for ice cream on Thursday. You'll never have to say it any louder than that. You will never have to repeat it. You won't have to set a reminder on your phone so that you remember because they want to remember that information, right? That's important to them. They're like, you said something I like. Now, if you had come to them and said, hey, on Thursday, I need you to do the laundry. They're going to remember. Oh, no. And if you come to them and you say, did you hear that I said you need to do the laundry? Oh, yeah, yeah, I heard you. And then Thursday comes and Thursday goes and you get up Friday and there's no clean socks.

And you come to them and you say, why did you forget? And they'll say something like, I couldn't find the laundry detergent, so I decided not to do the laundry. They'll have some excuse or some silly thing, like some really like surmountable, like something you can get over really easily. And they're like, oh, I couldn't do it because I forgot, you know. It wasn't important to them. We tend to forget the things that we don't like. Because if we remember it, then we're responsible to do it. So why are we so inclined to forget Scripture, to not listen to Scripture when it speaks? Well, because Scripture counsels us and exhorts us in a way that's contrary to our nature. Scripture is not always telling us, hey, we're going to get ice cream on Thursday. Scripture is often telling us, you need to do laundry on Thursday, so to speak, right? I'm not talking about laundry. The Bible doesn't say anything about doing your laundry. But it does tell us things that we go, oh.

I don't know if I like that. I don't agree with that. That's going to be hard. That doesn't sound like any fun. And this is true even for Christians. There's a battle constantly in the hearts and in the lives of Christians to be putting to death their natural affection, the things they are naturally inclined towards in favor of the things that God says they should do or be or say or think. And so we have to always be fighting to bring our hearts into conformity to God's statutes and judgments. And the first battle in that war is to listen. You cannot do what God says if you don't remember or haven't heard what God says. We're toward the end of Pride Month right now. How are Christians supposed to think about that? What are Christians supposed to do with that? Are we supposed to be proud of it and affirming of it? Are we supposed to pick it and preach and oppose it? Are we supposed to just go on our own way, keeping our heads down and just hoping that it just doesn't bother us and we just look forward to July?

What are we supposed to do? How should we think about it? What should our disposition be? What should our response be when we see rainbows all over everything that's around us? We're all sitting here going, well, I don't think it's good. If you're a student of Scripture, you know more than that. Not only is it not good, it's destructive. And not only is it destructive to the person, but it's an abomination to God. Okay? Sexual sin is an abomination to God. And he doesn't wink at it. He doesn't throw parades for it. He does not affirm it. He doesn't say, that's great. You do you. None of that. And you go, well, if I'm to speak or even to think along the lines of the way God would view this, that's going to create conflict for me. I was listening to a podcast a month ago or so. And this friend of mine's podcast, he was interviewing a guy who had been hired at Amazon and had moved up the ranks at Amazon. You know, some in a different state.

and he was a Christian, and Amazon wanted him to go to this pride rally. This was years ago. They wanted him to go to the pride rally, represent Amazon as an employee there. It was just part of his job. So what's he supposed to do? He's a Christian, and his bosses want him to go do this thing. What's he supposed to do? The question before what's he supposed to do is, how's he supposed to figure out what to do? If he doesn't know what God's Word says, then he'll just go, well, I guess I need to. Do what my boss tells me to do. I don't personally agree with it or I don't personally affirm it, but I just need to go do my job. But this man did know what scripture said and he went to his boss and he said, hey boss, I'm not in charge of what Amazon decides to promote and be in favor of and support. Those aren't my decisions, but I'm a Christian and I can't go do that in good conscience. I'm not going to go do that. And his boss, his immediate boss was sympathetic to him. I completely understand.

His boss's boss was not sympathetic. He's like, go or you're out of here. So he was out of there. So he lost his job as a result of it. Did he do the right thing? I think he did the right thing. I think he did the Christian thing. There was a personal cost to him. Now, was it easy? Would that sort of thing be easy? If you were in those shoes, would you say, yeah, this will be simple and easy and I can just find another job and all will be well? I think most Christians would not respond that way. They'd say, no, no, no, I've got a family and I've got kids and I've got all these things that I have to be prioritizing over and against what the Bible says. I'll tell you about being a Christian. If you trust God's word, your life does become simpler. Simpler, not simpler in the sense that the conflict is taken away, but simpler in the sense that how you're to conduct yourself in the midst of the conflict.

God says one thing. And it's not as though the world or unbelievers all say one thing together and agree, and you just have to choose between the two. You can either trust what God says and do what God says and remember what he says, or you can try to figure out how the constellation of pressures that you will endure, how to please them all. And you won't be able to. It's impossible better than for us to go with what God says, to remember and to listen to his statutes and to his judgments. And Paul says, listen to them, those things which I am teaching you to perform. Our listening is not simply something we're supposed to keep in our head, okay? Jimmy Carter, years ago, probably before most of us were born, I won't make you older people raise your hand, were you around when Jimmy Carter was president? But one of the things Jimmy Carter was known for was saying that he privatized his faith as a president. He was like, my faith and my convictions are...

They're mine. They're sincerely held personal beliefs. But I'm going to build a firewall. They don't affect how I'm going to do my job. And that was a failure. That was not right. No one else, I'll put it this way, no one else is making those promises. Muslims aren't making that promise with their sincerely held religious convictions. If they get to be into the government, they want their laws and their faith. They want it protected. They want it supported. They want it upheld. Atheists, same thing. Secularists, they want what they believe, what they say. This is what's true. This is what our lives should be about. They want it enforced on other people. They don't have any question about it. But Christians, we have this weird thing because the Bible tells us to love people. Somehow we're not supposed to. Somehow love is like morphed into meaning like you can't say no and you can't believe and say what God says if it's offensive because that's inappropriate. And I'm here to tell you that's not true. Last week, if you were here for Father's Day, we looked at Hebrews.

And at the very end of that text that we looked at, it says all discipline is not joyful but rather sorrowful. We were applying it to children and raising them. We're like, no kid likes to be disciplined. No kid likes to be told no. They don't like to be spanked. And you as a parent don't even like doing that stuff. It's not like, oh, and this is great. But you realize that afterwards, it produces good. And so you go through the hard, you go through the conflict, you go through the difficulty because you know on the other side of it, there's peace. This is what God promises us. But if we forsake his way of doing things and we say, I'm not going to listen to you because that would be costly, then we're just adrift trying to please who knows who. And the target's always moving and changing. And so we ought to be listening to the end that we would then do what God says. Listening leads to our performance. Okay? In Acts 21,

Paul was preaching in Athens, and the Athenians were described as being a people who were in love with, or always spending their time doing nothing other than telling or hearing something new. And we have that temptation in our day today, where we listen, like if we read this passage and it says listen, we're like, I listen a lot. I listen to hours of podcasts in a week, and I listen to books, and I listen to, and I'm always listening. I'm curating what I listen to, you know? I have these many hours of driving in a week, so I need to find that many hours of things to listen to. We listen and we listen and we listen. But the question is not whether we listen, but whether we act based on what we heard. The Athenians didn't act based on what they heard. They just liked to listen. And that's not what Paul's saying here. That's not what Moses is saying here. He's not saying, listen, just listen, just listen. He's saying, listen so that you can act.

in accordance with what you've heard. The Athenians didn't do that. They weren't believers. When Paul came and spoke to them, they were like, hey, we're going to listen to you some more because you actually expect us to do something. Some of them got very upset at the things he was saying. Others said, we'll listen to you again. This idea of listening and performances shows up in a couple of other places. In James 1, verse 25, it says, but one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides in it by it, not having become a forgetful hearer, but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does. So the listeners described, and there's two types of listeners. There's the guy who listens but forgets. He's a forgetful hearer, James calls him. And then there's another guy who's an effectual doer, meaning someone says, jump, and he says, okay. Someone says, will you help? And he says, yes. This man, the effectual doer, is blessed in what he does. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7, 24, Jesus says this, therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them.

may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And this is at the beginning of his discourse on the two men comparing the one who built his house on the rock and the one who built his house on the sand. And he says, one stands and one falls. The one who stands is the one who listens and acts. The one who just listens, there's no foundation. And so when difficulty comes, when conflict or storms, in that analogy, when they come, they fold. Listen to the statutes and the judgments which I am teaching you to perform. So that you may live and go in and take possession of the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving to you. This has been the goal, that they would go in and take possession of this land for a long time. And God had been preparing them to receive it. Are you guys familiar with the phrase or the concept of trust fund babies? I don't know that any of you are trust fund babies. I don't think you are, but you understand the concept. What is a trust fund baby? Not all at once, James.

okay so someone someone someone who's born into wealth and the sort of wealth that means they just aren't ever going to have to work okay they're just going to inherit all this stuff around what's that Levi a spoiled brat okay I got you yeah sure well that's what I'm getting that's what we're driving at here is if you're going to be given something an inheritance or a good thing those who are not prepared to receive those good things often are squander the thing they've been given and are not moral good people. They're not Christians because they weren't prepared to take care of or to manage the thing that they're being given. And so all of Israel's history up to this point has been a preparation. There was this good thing that they were going to get, this land, this land that flowed with milk and honey, this land that was fertile, this land that was going to be theirs. They weren't a nation.

When they went to Egypt, they were Jacob's sons. And they went because of a famine. After they'd sold their youngest, you know, they told Joseph into slavery. They didn't go as a nation. They went there. They multiplied. They became a nation. God called them out. And it's like, well, where do we live? We lived as slaves in Egypt. They had no other place and no other home. And God says, I'm going to give you a home. I'm going to give you a place. It's going to be a good place, a fertile place that's yours. Were they ready to receive it? They weren't ready to receive it. When they got to that land 40 years before this account here in Deuteronomy, when they got to that land the first time, they went in and they looked and they went, oh, no, no. It's a good land, but there's bad guys there. There's big guys. There's giants. They're just going to kill us. And they get angry at Moses and say, why did you bring us out here just to die? Why would God do this to us? Well, the answer to that question is to prepare you, to enter in, to train you, to equip you.

Those who are just given good things without the preparation of how to manage them will be the first to squander them and to waste them. And so all of this wandering in the wilderness, we can look at it both as a judgment of God against the people's fear and their rebellion against them and to prepare as a preparation for the next generation who would go in. What did they need to learn? What were they being prepared to do? What did they lack? What they lacked? very simply and very importantly, was submission to God's will. That's what they lacked. They just weren't willing to do what God said. They didn't even want to hear it. And remember, that's not the time in history where we go, yeah, I'd like to live there. That would be a good place to raise my kids. What was their problem? They wouldn't take God at his word and submit to him. And so he entered into a season, a generation of training.

And basically what he was doing was whittling them down and weakening them to the point where they didn't have any fight left in them to resist what he was saying. Now, you may not like me saying that training goes that way, but we see that happen in other places. If you've been in the military or if you know someone who's been in the military, what happens when they go to boot camp? I mean, what is the very first thing they do? They don't let you sleep and they can make you incapable of moving. It is so difficult physically. They just make you want to quit.

They tear you down to nothing. And then they build you back up. They had to get, they had to, all the pride you came in, all the strength you had, your husband, you know, you grew up. Like all of that had to die. All of the, you're good at this and you're strong and you're going to, you're going to be the great. No, we're just, we're just going to reduce you to a heap. And then we piece by piece will put you back together the way we need you to be. And that's what God's doing with his people, Israel. He's breaking them down to where they'll finally.

Do what God told them to do. There was no way in their own wisdom or in their own strength and in circumstances they could have imagined that they were going to go in and displace the Canaanites. There's just no way they were going to get to where they thought that was possible. And so God was preparing them and preparing them and preparing them. Listen to me. Remember the statutes. Do what I say so that you may go in and take possession of this land. In chapters 2 and 3, this refrain of fear that had been constant with them was still present. And so God is disciplining them and preparing them not to give in to their fear, but to submit to him, to trust him. And so the question to you is, has God done that to you? Has he broken you down to where you're like, I can't, I don't have anything else. Whatever you want me to do now, Lord, I've tried all the running and the resisting and all of my own way of doing things.

If you know how I became a Christian, that's the summary of how I became a Christian. I was really smart. I used to be strong and I was into bodybuilding and I was good looking and I had all these things going for me. And I was headed to hell. And I was making a mess of my own life and the lives of the people around me. And over the course of about a year, God just kept showing me who I was and what I was and what I was doing and what it was going to produce in my life and the lives of other people. Got me to the point where I said, listen, I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. I'll do what you want. It's all that's happening to them here. Have you had that happen? Another way of asking the question is, where are you fighting with God? In your heart, where are you fighting with God? At what point do you say, maybe even only to yourself, you say, I am not going to do that. That is unreasonable. That is out of the question. That is not going to be the way it goes.

If you have that disposition toward things that God has said in his word are required of you, you're going to lose that battle. And the sooner you realize that resisting God and fighting with him, the sooner you realize that's a losing endeavor for you, the better. I think a lot of times we get that way because we are just scared of losing control, losing our grasp on things. We think, if I can just manage it to get this part that I like, then it'll be okay. But if God's answer to that is, no, that's not for you, then it's our place to submit to that and to remember that he said it. Otherwise, we're fighting against him and we're rejecting. We're not listening. Resisting God often makes you very miserable. It makes you really miserable, okay? I'm not talking about the appearance of things. If you were to go down to the pride parade, That was a few weeks ago. Everyone there looked like they're having a really good time, but they're not having it. They're not really happy. Dan was telling me, I don't know how many years ago it was, you were at a hospital for some reason and couldn't get in. Oh, was it you, Levi? It was, yeah, you were there together. And it was during the pride parade, and all there was was a bunch of people all beat up and battered and bruised.

All the homosexuals and LGBTQ people were all there, and they weren't happy anymore. The reality of what went on in their homes, and statistically, if you look, they're the least happy people. Mentally, they have the most mental health issues. If you look at the suicide rates, the domestic violence rates, the thing they're presenting is not the truth. Not happy. And the reason they're miserable is that they're in rebellion against God. And to the extent that we also rebel against God, we inflict misery on ourselves. And then we blame God for it. James chapter 4, verses 7 to 10, it says, Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable, mourn, and weep.

Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into gloom. And it's like, that is one of the sections of scripture I really don't like. I actually don't like reading that. Whenever that shows up in our service as like the call to confession, I'm like, why do you have to read that? That's my honest response to it. I don't like being told that stuff because it talks to me about me, about what I'm like and what I should be doing and what I'm not doing. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord.

And he will exalt you. It's actually a sweet ending. That as you go through the training and the discipline and the shame of it all, that if we submit to it and God brings us to the other side of it, then he promises to exalt us and to raise us up and to remove our sins from us and to give us joy, real joy. So we're to listen. So that we're able to do what God says and to receive the things that he gives to us. As he prepares us to receive those things, it's going to be hard. Then Moses gives them an exhortation after this. He says, you shall not add to the word which I'm commanding you nor take away from it. So there's two simple things that Moses forbids. Don't add to it. Don't take it away. But before we get to those, I want to note to you that Moses says that he's the one commanding that. Okay.

There's a sentiment today amongst Christians or amongst people who are religious that they want to deal directly with God. They say, like, me and God, I have a relationship. There's a lot of motivation to have a personal relationship with Jesus. And I'm not here to tell you that that's impossible or not a good thing or anything like that. We do have a relationship with Jesus. Scripture describes him to us as our brother. Describes God to us as our father. We have relationship directly with God. But note here that Moses says, I'm commanding you these things. What I find to be true is that there's a direct correlation between those who only want to deal with God directly. They tend to be the people who are the weakest Christians, if they're Christians at all. They never find that God disciplines them when they deal with him directly. They're not happy people. They're not obedient people, maybe is a better way to say it. Because in their conception of dealing with God,

They say, well, it's just between him and me. And if I have peace about what I'm doing, then there's peace between me and God. I was just having a conversation with this guy. I love him. He's probably, I think he's 75. This guy I play pickleball with. And he showed up. He's old and he's not a Christian. And we were talking. And I've been trying to get him to come to church for years. And so pray for Mike. But I was sitting there talking with the... Another Christian friend of mine that was actually the guy who owns a company that just painted the church. We're sitting there talking and Mike walks up. And Mike always teases me about being a pastor. And he says, I'm good with God. You know, I'm, you know, me and the big guy upstairs, you know. And I said, Mike, you're just crazy. You do not have peace with God. He's like, well, I know you think you're real judgmental. I'm like, I'm not real judgmental. I'm just telling you that your perception of God, whom you don't worship or you don't obey. Like, I know what your life's like. I'll spare you guys the details, but Mike does not live a Christian life.

Like, I know the details of your life, Mike. You're not a Christian, and God doesn't have peace with you. And just because you have a sense of calm doesn't mean God's happy with you or content with you. He says, well, you're just real judgmental. You just like to judge me. You just like to pick on me, man. And he's saying this in a friendly way, but teasing me and basically trying to tell me to, you know, he's trying to shame me just enough to get me to be quiet. And I said, Mike, it's my job to make judgments and to say the things that are obvious. I'm a pastor.

Like, you don't have peace with God. I said, Mike, if you want, I said, come to church. Why don't you come to church? I've invited him to church so many times. Just come. He's like, well, I'd be, would I be accepted there? And I'm like, yeah, we're all sinners. What do you mean? Like, you think I'm different than you? I'm not different than you. Come to church. Now, why am I telling you that story? Well, because Mike wants to relate to God on his own. He wants to rely on his own sense of it. And I said to him, I said, you know, Mike, eternity hangs in the balance of whether you're right or wrong. And I'm telling you, you're wrong.

And I don't want you to be wrong on this. And so I, in some way, inserted myself into between Mike and his perception of his relationship with God. And I said, no, Mike, it's not the way you think it is. That's what Moses is doing here. He says, I commanded you. I'm commanding you. He could have just said, God has said, God has said. And there's plenty of places in Scripture where it says that God spoke. directly, you know, hear the word of the Lord. But here Moses does something that's sort of off the beaten path. And he says, I'm commanding you. God's raised Moses up to be the intercessor, to be the priest, to be the leader of the people. And since God's raised Moses up, he actually expects the people to listen to respect Moses directly. Because Moses is standing in the place of God as his mouthpiece. And so we shouldn't reject those whom God has raised up.

to keep watch over us and say, no, no, no, you don't have any place or bearing in my life to say these sorts of things to you. The ironic thing is, if you as a Christian were to go and say something to an unbeliever, they'd say the exact same thing to you. Who are you to say to me? I'm a Christian. That's actually the answer. I'm a Christian. And so we shouldn't be ashamed of speaking God's truth and to own it ourselves, to not hide behind God or to hide behind his word. We should own it. Moses says, I'm commanding you. Don't add to it.

Don't take away from it. Now, this is the first time where we're told in the chronology of Scripture not to add or take away. But this is a constant warning throughout Scripture. And what does it mean? Like, why would we want to add? Why would we want to take away from Scripture? Well, I think what God is saying here really simply when he says, don't add to my word and don't take away from it, is he's saying, let me speak for myself. Let me say what I mean. You don't need to change and trim and add and take that part away. Just let me speak for myself. Have you ever had that impulse before? Someone's talking for you. Maybe someone told you. I remember when we first met, I was like, Martin, just be quiet. Like, let them talk for themselves. Like, let them speak. God's saying, I want to speak for myself. You don't need to change what I have to say. You don't need to add it. Only harm is going to come if you start messing with the things I have to say. Thinking that you know better how to package it or better how to say it.

how to make it go down more smoothly. God says, I'm going to speak for myself. Don't moderate me. Don't explain it away. Don't change it. Don't do it ever. As an aside, this is why the Bible translations that we use are really important because none of us are reading Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic Bibles. We're reading English translations, which means that somebody... took from that language and put it into English. And what they did was they took to say, we're going to tell you what God says and we need them to. I actually think when people are like, well, we need to go learn Greek and we need to go learn Hebrew and we need to go back and do that stuff all of ourselves. I think you're crazy. Do you know how hard it is to learn, to meaningfully learn another language and the nuances of it? There's people who do it for, it's their life's work to learn these things. And the idea that you could go take a couple of years of Greek or Hebrew and comprehend.

A whole other culture and language is quite beyond us. We're actually dependent on the people, on translators to tell us what God's word said. And so what we should want when we read scripture is a translator who has a principle and a commitment to saying, we're not going to change what God said. We're just going to tell you what he said. And if it's offensive or if it's unpopular today, that's not our problem. We actually want translators who say, it's not my problem to make you feel comfortable with what God said. Sadly, many translators today are translating. in a way that takes into account whether it's going to sell, okay? It's not the main point of the sermon, so I'm going to leave it there. If you want to talk to me more about that, I'm happy to. There are translations that are better than others, okay? And there's no perfect translation. We use the New American Standard 95 here that was done in 1995. It's not a perfect translation. It's a faithful translation. There are other translations that have different problems but are still generally faithful.

But it does matter. There are some translations that make a point of saying, no, we're just going to communicate to you sort of the sense of what God said, but we're going to keep the particular words and all that to ourselves. We wouldn't want to bother you with that. I don't think we should be letting them speak for God. Let him speak for himself. Don't add or take away from it. So what sorts of things get added? What sorts of things get taken away? Is it random? No. Interestingly, the things that get taken away. or the things that get added, are always the pinch points or the conflict points with our society. They're the things that would cause offense. They're the things that we don't want to deal with. Things that we don't want to own. Paul warned us in 2 Timothy, he says, in the later times, men will no longer endure sound teaching, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they'll accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires. Meaning, they're going to want to be told certain things, and they're just going to go searching until they find someone who will tell them what they want to hear.

The question is, is what that we want to hear what God actually said? That's the question. So what do we add? Well, whatever's popular, whatever's acceptable, whatever's fashionable, whatever will remove the conflict or the difficulty. That's what's added. What's taken away? The friction, the turbulence, the places where it's in conflict with society. Those are the things that we sort of diminish scripturally. One of the things, if I were to go into like, into the reformed circle. We're reformed Christians, right? And we're Calvinists and we have certain concepts and beliefs about what the Bible teaches. What's real popular amongst reformed people that's showing up that's new that's become really important? I'll give you one example. Men needing to exercise and work out. It's really become a really important thing that men do. Now, I've talked about this before. I'm not here to tell you you shouldn't exercise or you shouldn't be fit. We actually live in a day that's way more sedentary than Times before, that's what happens when you become rich, is you don't move and you don't have to work and you don't have to as harden physically. And we have lots of different types of food. So there's a consideration for health here. But I was having a conversation with another pastor about this. And he said, well, Christians are supposed to be physically strong. And I said, where in the world in Scripture do you get this idea that we're supposed to be physically strong? And he's like, well, it's the Apostle Paul, man.

He was a tent maker. I said, Apostle Paul looked just like everybody else in his day. He was trying to figure out how not to die and how to preach the gospel. And he went without food and he went without sleep and he got beaten. Physical strength just wasn't his thing. In fact, he was unimpressive to look at. Now, we might look at him and say, that dude was strong. But he was strong because he was a tent maker, not because he spent all his time in the gym. Not because he had this principle of I need to be physically strong. And I realize that bringing this up is one of the things that is a discussion in our circle. I wouldn't do us any good if I talked about the discussions that don't pertain to us. These are the questions that we have. Should we go to the gym? Should we exercise? Sure, be healthy. Go do that stuff. Do it so you can live longer and be a better husband and father and can play with your kids. I'm all for it. Go do it. My son's waiting for me to get my membership so I can start going to the gym with him, okay? So I'm not here to say this is all bad.

I could do with a little bit of it, okay? But these are the things that we fight about. We really, really fight about. And when I said to him, like, where in Scripture do you get this idea that this is what was held up as the thing that we are supposed to aspire to? It's always at the top of the list of what it means to be a Christian man. You're supposed to be buff. You need to be physically strong. And I've asked my son who likes to lift weights. I'm like, why do you always want to lift weights? He's like, well, so I can defend my family. And I'm like, that's what guns are for.

The biggest, strongest guy doesn't have a defense for a gun. Like, I mean, seriously. If you actually want to defend your family, that's what your phone is for to call the police, and that's what your gun is for. Muscles don't stand up. They don't get there. And he just looks at me. He's 17. He's like, well, whatever. And I'm like, well, we can whatever, but I'm telling you, there's so many things that we add to Scripture. And they're the things that are comfortable, the things that are popular, the things that would gain us attention. They're the things that make us look good. It's like if we're Christians, we feel like anything that we care about or want to do, we have to have like a Christian principle from Scripture somewhere about it. And so like if we were to use the weightlifting thing, like they'll say, well, the Bible does say that bodily discipline is of little benefit. Like, see, it's worth a little bit. And I'm like.

he wasn't making that argument that like you should do a little bit of it. He was actually comparing it to spiritual discipline and saying that's far better. And if you really want to know what he was talking about, he was talking about guys who were treating their body harshly. When he's talking about physical discipline, he was not talking about bench presses and deadlifts. He's talking about people who were disciplining their gluttony or disciplining their lusts and their desires by harsh treatment of their bodies. Not sleeping, but praying. Not eating, but fasting. Those sorts of things. That's what was particularly in view in that passage. And so we shouldn't add to what God says. And we should be able to, and we should listen when God says something that we don't like. I think one of the sweetest things that we can say as Christians is, you know, there are things in Scripture that I don't naturally like. And I would not naturally choose if it were up to me. It doesn't make sense. It's not popular. But God said it.

So I'm going to order my life around it. What is a man? What's he supposed to be like? What is a woman? What's she supposed to be like? What's a husband? What's a wife? What are parents? What is marriage? All I'm arguing for is that we leave aside all of the additions and subtractions of the world and take what God says and say, that's it. He tells me what I am as a man. And he tells me what I'm not. Life is a lot simpler that way. And so we have to leave behind this idea that when we read scripture, if our first impulse is to say, well, that doesn't mean fill in the blank. God can't require that of me. I shouldn't have to. When we hear those things or feel those things inside of us, I think we should stop a minute and go, wait, where'd that come from? What if it does mean that? What if it means exactly that?

And the problem is not with what was said or what God required, but the problem is with me and my unwillingness to do it. What needs to change? The word? God's word? Or us? We need to change. We need to change. To be a Christian is to be saved from your sins. And to become like God. To become like Jesus. To become a Christian is to... Leave aside all of the things that you've come up with on your own and take hold of the things that God has said. As contrary to your nature or to society as they might be, listen so that you're able to perform, so that you're able to take possession of the land, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command to you. I'll end with this. God was giving the people a good land and he told them how to, and they didn't earn it.

They didn't deserve it because they'd suffered. He was just good to them and giving them a good land. But they didn't do well with it. And the reason they didn't do well with it was because they didn't care to listen and they didn't care to obey. If we're God's people, then we should care to listen and we should care to obey. And we should trust that God is honored and glorified and that he'll bless us. Remember that James said that it's the effectual doer, this man will be blessed. Now, if I were to ask you, do you want God to bless you? Who'd say no?

I mean, I suppose there's unbelievers or there's atheists who'd say, no, no, I don't even believe in that, so no. But I think if you're here and you make some claim to being a Christian, you say, yeah, I want God to bless me. And they say, okay, well, this is how. This is how. He blesses those who listen and who obey. Let's pray.