You Who Held Fast To The Lord Your God Are Alive Today

So this morning we're going to be continuing in our study of Deuteronomy chapter 4. And in our text, Moses recounts an event that had happened just a few months before where God purged thousands of Israelites out of the nation. And the reason he did this is because they had joined together with the people of the land that they were in and worshipping idols. This can be the sort of passage when you read about, oh, the people were worshipping idols and then God struck them down and it's just like lots of neat kids Bible story. But it's more than a kid's Bible story. It's a story for us as adults, as Christians, to understand and to grow and to be helped by. And so my hope is that God will help us to see the temptations and the sins that we find in this passage, the ones that evoked God's wrath and that are still around today, and that he would help us to resist them through faith in his word. My hope is that his word doesn't just wash over us and we go, oh, well, there you go. But that we would see it and go, in what ways?

Am I in danger? And that we would flee from it. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter 4? This is verses 3 through 6. It is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Your eyes have seen what the Lord has done in the case of Baal Peor. For all the men who followed Baal Peor, the Lord your God has destroyed them from among you. But you who held fast to the Lord your God are alive today, every one of you. See? I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it. So keep and do them. For that is your wisdom and your understanding and the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. This is the word of the Lord. And you may be seated. So does anyone know off the top of their heads what happened at Baal Peor? Eric does.

I'm realizing as we study these first few chapters of Deuteronomy that the book of Numbers is a really great help because it often recounts in more detail what happened and what Moses is just kind of pointing back to and reminding them of in the book of Numbers that's recorded. So I'm going to read to you a couple of the beginning of Numbers chapter 25 where this account of the case at Baal Peor was taking place. There's a little more detail here. So this is Numbers 25. First few verses. It says, while Israel remained at Shittim, which is a city, the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab. For they invited the people to sacrifice to their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and the Lord was angry against Israel. So that's just sort of the description. They're kind of camped out. They're hanging out with these inhabitants, the daughters of Moab.

And they join in with their idol worship. It says, And in the sight of all the congregation of the sons of Israel, while they were weeping at the doorway of the tent of meeting. When Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw it, he arose from the midst of the congregation and took a spear in his hand. And he went after the man of Israel into the tent and pierced both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman through the body. So the plague of the sons of Israel was checked. Those who died by the plague were 24,000. Okay, so this is what happened at Baal Peor. When Moses says in passing, you remember, you saw what the Lord did. This is what he's referring to. Just a few months previously as they were journeying, heading up toward the eastern side of the promised land and around the Dead Sea to go into the promised land, they travel through Moab. And we're not told here in Deuteronomy about all of this, but like I said back in Numbers,

We read a little more. They were going through, they were camped out, and while they were there, the people of Moab were worshiping. And it says, you know, in here it says Baal Peor. In Numbers it says Baal of Peor. One of the things that you should know is Baal or Baal is just a word that's used in Scripture. We often think of it as being a name or a particular identifier, and that's not what it is. It just means God or standing. And so you have Baal this and Baal that, and basically it's... It's the people in the land saying there's a God and we don't know a lot about him, but they have some awareness that they ought to worship. And so they have their Baal. They have their God. They have their idol that they worship. Sometimes it's in the form of a little statue and other times it's other things. You might think of the Israelites when they were at Mount Sinai. They made themselves a Baal, so to speak, in the golden calf.

They said, we're going to worship the true God, but we're going to worship him with this image or with this thing as a representation of them. And so it was very true at this time that the Israelites who had joined in this worship didn't necessarily see their joining into this worship as a rejection of God, but just a way of worshiping their God where they were. But God doesn't view it the same way. He doesn't look at it and say, yeah, that's fine. That's okay. Worship me through whatever idol is handy at the time. So these people join themselves with the daughters of Moab. They're led astray. They're enticed. They see them worshiping. They see them eating. And so it says the Israelites join themselves. And the Lord was angry. And then the Lord tells Moses, what's he supposed to do? Kill him. Kill him. And then all of the people are weeping at the tent of meeting. You get the impression that the Lord has said this to Moses. Moses has made this declaration. They're now weeping at the tent of meeting. And then this guy who didn't hear the thing.

who came with this Midianite woman, this woman from another land. He didn't hear what had happened, and so he just comes walking right into the church, so to speak. And Phineas runs him through, kills the man and the woman in the tent of meeting, in the house of worship. And it says that this act by Phineas, and that's just one, you get the impression that this thing that Phineas did was sort of the spark that lit the fire, because he kills two people. But it says that there were 24,000 killed. That what he did was sort of the spark of it, the initial act that led to the cleansing of the people, the checking of the plague, the 24,000 dying. This would have happened probably two or three months, perhaps, maybe as much as six months, depending on how quick they're traveling. Just before Moses is saying, this wasn't distant memory, this was recent memory. This had just happened.

And so we're left saying, well, why did Moses bring this up? Like, it's not the sort of thing you'd want to remember, this massacre of all of your kinsmen, your countrymen. Why would Moses bring this up? Well, he brings it up because the Israelites, like us, are very quick to forget and slow to obey. Do you like to be reminded of things? Do you like to be reminded of your duty? When your boss says, hey, I want to come talk. Hey, can I talk to you for a minute? And then you say, yeah, sure. And then you come in and he says, hey, I want to talk to you about what I need you to do this week. And the first thought is.

You told me this already. And you're left wondering, like, why is he telling me again? Well, why is he telling you again? Why do you moms tell your kids again? Because you know that they forget. You know that they need reminders. You know that the consequences of their, if they fail to do what you want, the consequence of their failure will be worse than the reminder. It's better to be reminded than to fail and then be judged for it. It's kinder. It's merciful. It's gentle and gracious. And so God is being merciful. Moses is being merciful in bringing this dark event back up and saying, you do remember that, right? Let's remember that. Let's not do that again. That's a kindness. Another way of getting at it is to say, if Moses had not reminded them and they had just gone into the land and they had gone after some other God, what would God have done to them?

He would have done the same thing to them again, wouldn't he? Or something like it. He would have judged them. And so in being reminded of what had just happened, the Lord, through Moses, is trying to avert a future judgment, a future calamity. In this instance, there were thousands of men who were killed. When you've seen someone disciplined in your life, maybe it's a sibling, maybe it's a co-worker, What do you think when you see somebody disciplined? There's generally two responses. One is, yeah, they deserved it. Often little kids feel that way. They look at their siblings being disciplined and they say, yeah, yeah, he got what he deserved. They were the ones who went and told on him. Did you know that he was doing this? Because they wanted to see it. They wanted the discipline. But we all know that there's something foolish in that kid who goes and tattles on everybody else. It's not that they shouldn't.

help their siblings to obey. But you know if there's something foolish in them, if they look at their siblings and go, I'm so glad I'm not like them. Dad, Mom, you should deal with them because they're naughty. What's that kid missing? In a lot of ways, he's like the rich young ruler who comes to Jesus and says, what do I have to do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says, well, you know the law. What's it say? And he rattles off some of the Ten Commandments. And Jesus said, yeah, you're doing well. That's good. How are you doing? He says, well, I've done all that.

And Jesus says, oh, there's just this one other thing. Take all that you have and go and sell to the poor and follow me and you'll have treasure in heaven. That young man, that rich young ruler was lacking a self-awareness that's really necessary for us to have. It's the same ignorance that young children have when they come and they want to point out other people's failures and say, you need to punish him, daddy. They need a spanking. Don't let them go. They can't have ice cream after dinner, whatever the thing is. They're lacking some self-critical capacity that's really important. And so we want to teach them not to look down on other people because what they're missing in all of this is that they could just as easily be disciplined. That they've done things. They may not have done that one thing at that one time, but they certainly have done stuff that's worthy of discipline. And so in this instance, when the Israelites are being warned as they're about to go into the land, you remember this happened? Then they've gone into these battles that they've won over Sion and Og and these different kings.

where the Lord's preserved them. This passage tells us, he says, that all of you who are alive have held to the Lord, every single one of you. There's this very clear line of whom God has preserved and whom God has judged. And so I want to ask you, of the ones that God has preserved, did he preserve them because they didn't have any sins? No. They had plenty of sins. And it would be helpful for them, those who have sins, to be reminded as they're going into a greater temptation, a more intense battle, as they cross over the Jordan, that their sins are present and still a danger to them. And many of them, I believe, would have had that knowledge themselves, would have thought, man, the Lord struck him down. I don't know why he didn't strike me down. Look at the things that I've done. That's a good thought for us to have as Christians. When we look and see other people disciplined, first of all, we shouldn't broadcast it and talk about it and say, oh, did you see and did you notice? But we should take note of it because God habitually in Scripture,

tells us the sins and the judgments against those sins of other people, and he tells us those things for our benefit. In fact, he commands us to discipline, for the church, to discipline people in public so that it'll be a help to everyone else. Okay? In 1 Timothy 5, verse 20, it says, And you're left being like, why would you do that? And he says, So much of our sins, so much of what we... what we do, and even the judgments that we face, we want to keep them private. We want to keep them hidden. We want to say, okay, well, if I do something bad, then I don't want anyone to know about it. And if I face a consequence for my sins, then I want that to be private too. But that's not God's way with us. He often shows our sins and our judgment, the judgments of our sins, to other people for their benefit so that they can be reminded, so that they can see and avoid.

And so when we see someone else being disciplined, like these that Moses are speaking to in this passage, you remember your brothers, all those ones who went after Baal Peor. You remember they were all killed. See them and remember them so that you don't follow after them. It's a lesson that we need to learn and be reminded of. In 1 Corinthians 10, verse 11, Paul's writing about the Israelites who grumbled and complained as they left Egypt. And he says, and there was a number of them were judged and were killed. And he says, now these things happened to them as an example. And they were written for our instruction. They happened as an example and were written for our instruction. God has a way of reminding us and showing us, even through other people's failures, he shows us our sins and our weaknesses and our dangers. You know, when we come to a wedding, one of the things that you often are to be reminded of in a wedding is the vows that the husband and the wife take.

Because you're married, so you took those vows. So when you come to a wedding and you hear a couple making those vows, you go, oh yeah, those are my commitments. Those are our commitments. This is what we're doing. When you come to a baptism, you hear the professions of faith and you hear the vows being taken. And you go, I'm baptized. I'm under those same obligations. I have those same commitments. And the Lord's made those same promises to me. And those warnings, those apply to me too. This is just the way that God reminds us of our obligations. So when we read a story like this, and by the way, when you read a passage like this in Deuteronomy, and you say, it says, you've seen what the Lord has done in the case of Baal Peor. If you don't know what he's talking about, go figure it out.

It'll only take you a minute. If you want to know how to figure out, like, I don't know, I wouldn't even know how to begin. Just go to Bible Gateway or Bible Hub or Blue Letter Bible or some website that has the word Bible in it. They'll have a search bar. And type in the word Baal Peor and hit enter. And it'll show you all the places that phrase turns up in Scripture. And when you see it show up like two or three times in one chapter, go, I bet that's what they're talking about, and go read it. Okay? That's all that's going on here. That's all I did because I'm going, well, I don't know what exactly he's talking about. He's referring to something they would have known about, but how can I be helped and understand this passage if I don't know what he's talking about? So I need to go read and figure out what happened. What are they all aware of that I need to be aware of? These are the things that we need to do when we read Scripture. Otherwise, we're not going to make connections to the passage. We're just going to be like, oh, that was for a different time and a different people, and I don't know what they were talking about.

Especially in the Old Testament, this is a habit that you need to cultivate when you read it. And it takes time. It takes energy. And over a lifetime of reading and doing this sort of cross-referencing in your brain, you're going to create a sort of a spider web of knowledge of things that are connected to each other. This is how we grow in our knowledge and understanding of God's Word. If we just read this and are like, oh yeah, sure, something happened that apparently wasn't good because God destroyed a bunch of people. There's a lot more that can be learned, a lot more help that we can have if we'll become students of God's word. And so I encourage you and exhort you, you should do that with these kind of passages where there's things you don't know. It's very easy to look at other people being disciplined and to think simply, well, they deserved it. And the reason I didn't get disciplined is because I don't deserve it. And to that thought, I ask you this question. Do you suppose that the 18 on whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them?

were worse culprits than all of the men who live in Jerusalem? Now, some of you know that what all I'm doing is reading to you a question that Jesus posed in Luke 13 and a couple of other places. Do you suppose that those people who died when that tower fell were worse than you? Do you suppose that God's judgment broke out on them and not you because you're better than they are? It's a real temptation that we face and that we have to deal with. And Jesus answers his question by saying this. He says, I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. And so when we read Scripture and when we have examples going on around us of God's discipline of people, and it's worth noting, God's discipline of people rarely comes like a lightning bolt from heaven. It's almost like a joke. If someone blasphemes and we're like, I don't want to stand here, you might get struck by lightning, that type of thing, it's almost a joke because we don't really expect it to happen. But God is in the business of disciplining us and dealing with us. He just doesn't do it so miraculously many times.

He does it through our bosses. He does it through our spouses. He does it through our parents. He does it through our children. He does it through our siblings. He does it through our pastors. He does it through all kinds of ways. He's pushing us. He's exhorting us. He's correcting us. He's leading us. And so we need to be paying attention to those things. Then Moses goes on and says to the people, but you who held fast to the Lord your God are alive today, every one of you. One of the things we learn from this is that God preserves his people and takes good care of them.

He knows his children and he protects them from his judgment. And it's not because they aren't sinful. I'm afraid that too often when we live our lives, we think that sin is just not as constant and as deep-rooted in us or in the people around us as it actually is. And it's really why we're so frustrated all the time with other people and why they're so frustrated with us all the time. is because we just think sin should just be, like we know it pops up once in a while and we know it's there, but it's just, when it gets to be too constant and too regular and too frequent, we just throw our hands up in the air and we say, why do you have to be like that? Why don't you just stop? Why can't you just stop? Why do you do that? Well, in a very real sense, we can't. There's a lot more sin in us that Jesus died for than we care to acknowledge or to admit. And so when God protects us from his judgments,

like he did with these who were alive to that day, it wasn't because they were better than those who he struck down. It wasn't because they hadn't sinned, though they hadn't sinned in that way. It said of them that they held fast to the Lord their God, that they saw the conflict and saw their kinsmen, their countrymen going after this idol, and they said, no, we're not going to do that. And so there's a reality of being, not just going along with the crowd. That's important. Here in this passage, they were saved. They're alive to this day because they didn't go along with the crowd, with the 24,000. They saw something that was wicked and they said, no, no, we're going to worship the true God. We're not going with you and eating and worshiping and bowing down with them. Do you ever have to say no to other Christians who are doing things or saying things or participating in things that you go, no, that's not right.

Christians, we shouldn't be doing that. Have you ever said, no, I'm not going to do that to other Christians when they're doing it? We should be. We should be. In some ways, you could read this passage as a compliment. But you who held fast to the Lord are alive this day, every one of you. And it is, in some sense, a commendation or a compliment. They actually did well. But it's more than a compliment. It's really a reminder that God is bound to them and that they are bound to him. In effect, what he's saying is, you've held on to me at that point. Remember what happened back there? You followed and trusted me then, and I saved you. I didn't kill you. Stay close to me. Draw near to me, and I'll draw near to you. As you go into this land and into this battle, you need to continue to trust me. You need to continue to follow me. You need to continue to worship me alone. When God is merciful to us, when he doesn't deal with us as our sins deserve,

We shouldn't take that as a sign of his indifference towards sin. We ought to take it as a reminder that he loves us and that we have obligations to him. He doesn't love us so that we can do whatever we want and whatever seemed right to us or whatever was popular. He loves us so that we'll worship him and lead others to do the same. He says to them, see, I have taught you the statutes and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me that you should do thus in the land which you are entering to possess it. He tells them, listen, you're about to, in some sense, you are about to grow up, so to speak. You're about to have freedoms and something you've never had before. That's what the land was to them. They had never had a land. For over 400 years, they'd lived in Egypt, in Goshen.

but they lived there as captives and then their captivity became hostile toward the end. Then they've gone out and then they've wandered for 40 years. They've never had a place of their own, okay? They've shared a bedroom, so to speak, up to this point. And they're about to go out and get their own place. And in effect, what God is saying to them here is all those things that I've told you and I've taught you and I've trained you in all of these years, now it's going to matter because you're going to be in a context where you're going to have a lot more freedom and a lot more.

ability to do well or to do poorly. I've taught you these statutes just as the Lord my God commanded me that you should do them in the land where you're entering to possess it. All of this preparation, all of this training, all of this practice has been so that when you go into the land, you'll do well. And you won't forget all of the training and all of the statutes and all the commandments that God has taught them over these years. And this really is an exhortation to you who are young and who've grown up in Christian homes or who are going about to go out. It's important that you not shed all of the things that you've been taught and all the things that you've been given and all the instruction that you've received. Those of you who are parents, you think, oh, my kids go out and it's going to be my fault if they fail. And I want to say to you, it's not always the parent's fault when the kids reach the age of maturity and then they fail. It's very possible that they would say, you know what, yeah, I was told all of that, but it...

I don't care. That's what Moses is warning them against here. Don't take all the things that you were told and that you were taught and that you were instructed and set it aside. Don't do that. And that message could just as easily be said to children and to parents as their children mature and as they grow. Kids, don't forget what your parents taught you. Don't forget what your Sunday school teachers taught you. Don't forget what your Bible teachers taught you. They didn't teach you for no reason. They didn't teach you so that you could regurgitate the verse and get the candy. They taught you as a means of protecting you and training you to serve God when you get older and are on your own. So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding. Now Moses does something interesting here, I find very interesting. He makes this pivot, and it's not a pivot that I would have suspected or anticipated.

He's telling them, remember what happened back here at Baal Peor? You need to make sure you do all this stuff. And then he pivots to like, and if you do it, then all the other nations are going to say, wow, you guys are very wise. And he pivots to like, what other people are going to think of them or about them based on their obedience or not to these commandments? One of the things that we can learn from that is that God's law makes us wise. So keep and do them, he says, them being the statutes and the judgments of the Lord God. So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding. There are many things that pass for wisdom. There are many things that seem to be wise. But the only true wisdom is wisdom that agrees with God's law. And more and more in our day, this is going to be something that you're going to have to figure out as a Christian. Okay? Because what is wise is not necessarily what is expedient. And what is wise is not necessarily what's possible.

And what is wise is often not what is popular. And so when those things come to a head and you have to choose wisdom or expedience or wisdom or what's popular or wisdom or what's possible, my exhortation to you is to choose what's wise. Okay? Choose what's wise. Choose what agrees with God's law. Because in keeping and doing those statutes and those commandments, you'll find wisdom. Outside of God's wisdom and his law, there's nothing but foolishness. And there's plenty of that in us and in our society to go around. As God's people, we should be choosing what God says is true and what God says is wise. This will be your wisdom and your understanding. Leave aside your own ideas about what's wise and what's good. A lot of what we talk about in our church, whether it's manhood and womanhood or marriage or child rearing, The reason we talk about it is because everybody has ideas in society about what a man is, what a woman is, what their priorities should be, how their marriages should function, what role kids should play or do play in it, whether you even have them, and then how to raise them and how to train them and how to educate them. And it just goes on and on and on. And everyone's trying to figure it all out. My contention is the answers to those questions were given a long time ago in God's Word. And so when we come to speak about...

what is a man or what is a woman or what is marriage or what about children and how you should train them. I'm not trying, the elders aren't trying to say, we're smarter than everybody else, so listen to us. All I'm trying to say is, here's what God has said about those things for literally thousands of years. And I don't think we should cast out his wisdom and plant something else in its place and see if it does any better. So keep and do them. That is your wisdom and your understanding. When you can't figure out how to sort out a conflict in your marriage or what to do with your children, I mean, one example of this would be spanking your kids. It doesn't work. You ever thought that? It doesn't work. I know every one of you moms have thought it. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. And then the husband comes in and he's like, well, you don't spank them hard enough or you don't do it off enough or you didn't do it early enough in the day. And then we're off and we're fighting. And then we wonder about whether it was a sleep schedule or maybe there was a reason the kid was struggling.

You know, they're teething or they sleep or they got a food allergy or, you know, the schedule is a Sunday. There's all these reasons, you know, and we can't quite all sort it out. And it goes on for weeks and months and years. The kids grow up and you can't figure out what's going on. But the one thing we do know, spanking didn't work because we tried it for two or three days and it didn't solve all our problems. So we give it up and we're like, well, maybe timeout's better. Maybe my kid just needs more encouragement. Maybe my kid has low self-esteem. And my whole job as a parent is to build up their self-esteem. So that's our whole job. We're not going to spank them. We're not going to tell them no. We're not going to address the issues, the chaos, the mess, any of that. We're just going to do this other thing. And I'm left going, what did God say to do?

It is amazing. It's the one thing God said to do is the one thing we're like, I don't think that works. I'm willing to try anything else that has no proven track record. It's like saying there's a mutual fund that has 50 years of above average production, but I'm going to put my money in crypto. It's that unproven, and yet we do it every day. And we make arguments about why it's so great and why it's so good, and depending on how you squint your eyes and look at it, you may be able to make the case. But could we please stick with God's wisdom here when it comes to our children? You understand that disciplining kids is just one example. We could go on and we could multiply different examples. But could we please stick with God's wisdom when we have questions? We would be so much better off and God would be much more glorified. God's law is what makes us wise. It is our wisdom and our understanding. He says that...

That is your wisdom and that is your understanding. And then he says, in the sight of people, the peoples, who will hear all these statutes and say, so what's going to happen? He says. Moses is saying, here's what the future is going to be. If you'll keep and you'll do these things, other people are going to notice it and they're going to develop opinions about it. Okay? They're going to see the way that you live. They're going to see the choices you make. They're going to see the priorities you have because it's observable. And they're going to say something good, which is these people are wise and smart. That makes sense. This is not the same as saying that, well, let me say this another way. The people, the nation's observation is not based on the Israelites talking constantly about their wisdom. It's based on their adherence to the wisdom, okay? The things that are good, the things that are true, the things that are right,

the things that are appropriate, the things that actually govern our lives, they actually produce an observable result, right? You can tell. So what happens, what do people do when the fruit doesn't match, isn't what we want it to be? What happens is the chatter starts to rise. We start to talk more about and justify more the things we're doing and why it's good and why it's necessary and why it's appropriate. And the reason there's so much talk about it is because the good fruit's not bearing itself out. It's not becoming manifest. A lot of people, here's an example. Probably rubbed some of you the wrong way, but that'll be all right. A lot of people blame public education for the reality of their children not continuing in the faith as they reach the age of majority. Now, I'm not here saying that public education is great and wonderful and it poses no threat to your kids. That's not what I'm saying.

But what I am saying is there are things that have way more impact on your children than where they go to school. Way more impact. And you know what those things are? You. You have way more impact on your kids than their teachers in school. Unless you decide not to have any impact and not to talk to them and not to process what they're dealing with in school and the kids they're around and the things that are being said. If you say, I want to send them to a school where I can be hands-off and I don't have to deal with any of that stuff.

then what you said is, I'm absent as a parent. I'm going to neglect my children. And then when the bad report card comes home, not for the kids, but for me, I'm going to blame somebody else. And it shouldn't be that way. It shouldn't be that way. We have to take responsibility for our own actions and for the fruit that they produce. What would happen if the Israelites didn't keep and didn't do these things? What would the nations observe? Would the outcome be the same? Would they look at the nation of Israel and say, they're really wise? They wouldn't. They wouldn't look and say, oh man, look at these guys. They're really smart and they're really wise. They'd look at them and say, they're just like us. Should it be that the world would look at Christians and say, they're just like us? What a shame that would be. What a shame that is. So instead of talking about what's wise and what's good and who's right and who's wrong, we should content ourselves.

To serve God according to his law over our whole lives and trust that it'll bear the good fruit that he says it will bear. And that other people will come to see it. And even if they don't understand why, they'll say, you all seem to love each other. Have you ever had someone say to you, your kids are well-behaved? You must have gotten lucky. I remember one time, it was years ago. I don't remember where we were at. We were out somewhere. And someone made some comment to that effect with our, and I said, it's because we spanked them. I just smiled real big, and it's because we spanked them. We love them. We know better than they do what's going to make them happy and be good for them, so we make those decisions for them, and we expect them to follow us. We're smarter than they are. And the person didn't know what to say. They're like, oh, that's awkward, you know. But we should say stuff like that because we should do stuff like that. What was I saying in that moment? We try. We don't do it perfectly. We try to do what God says is right.

And lo and behold, you're observing some good fruit. You and your husband seem to love each other. You seem to have a good relationship. If that's said of you, it's not because you guys are just good people and you chose well and you like the same kind of music and movies. It's because you worked at being a faithful husband and you worked at being a faithful wife and it bore good fruit and other people saw it. I often say to couples when they're getting married and they're in their engagement, they're worried about the in-laws. In-laws can create pressure. And I say, you know, If you're a fool, if you're a bad husband, if you're a rebellious wife, whatever the concern is, if that's true, it'll become obvious in time. And all of your talk against it won't matter. We'll just know in five to 10 years what the truth is. It'll be evident. We'll reap what we sow. And so I tell them, don't worry about it. Don't worry about what other people think or what other people are saying or what other people are worried about. You focus on serving God according to his word.

and trust that it'll bear good fruit and it'll be evident to the people who think otherwise. And if it's not obvious to them, it's because they're suppressing it and ignoring it. Just don't worry about what they think. Stop trying to perform. Even though they're looking, even though the nations were going to watch the Israelites and come to an opinion about it, Moses doesn't say, you should obey God so that they'll have this opinion. He says, if you obey God, then they will have this opinion. But don't do it for them. Do it for the Lord. Sometimes wisdom, And obedience to God is evangelistic. Sometimes the word gets out. Do you remember Solomon, wisest man that ever lived, right? Do you know that there was tell of his wisdom that had spread far and wide, spread all the way down to Ethiopia, all the way down to the queen of the south or the queen of Sheba. His wisdom, his rule, his justice, the reports of it had spread.

In 1 Kings 10, it says this. I'm picking up in the middle. This is verses 6 and 7. But this is the account in 1 Kings 10 where she hears about his wisdom and she goes, I've heard such things that I'm going to come and see if it's true. So she travels with all these gifts and all this stuff all the way up to Israel to see Solomon and to question him. And her goal was to question him and to ask him hard, hard moral questions, hard, difficult stuff. She's going to try to see just how wise he was because she was wise. And she was a ruler, so she wanted to test him. And so this is what she says. She says, it was a true report which I heard in my own land about your words and your wisdom. Nevertheless, I did not believe the reports until I came and my eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told to me. You exceed in wisdom and prosperity the report which I heard. So she had heard that he was wise.

And she said, yeah, I don't believe it. I'm going to go see it for myself. These people are exaggerating. So then she comes up and she runs him through the ringer. And then she's impressed by him and she says, yeah, they didn't even do it justice. Typically people exaggerate these stories, but they withheld. They didn't know the half of it. And this is an example of a wise king being observed and being reported on far and wide. Do you believe that that happens? If we leave aside nations, maybe that's too big and too much to get a hold of for ourselves. Maybe it's too far, requires too much faith and may take too much time for us to think that America would become a place where she would be known for her wisdom and her understanding. But can you believe it for your family? That your family or that your marriage or that your children would become known for wisdom and for understanding?

That they would say, when someone comes and asks a question, they'd say, you should go talk to them. They're very wise. I've seen it happen, but it takes time. It takes time. We don't have many gray hairs in our church, but we all know gray hairs that are wise. And when I say gray hair, I don't mean it as a pejorative or anything demeaning. I mean to say that their gray hair is their glory. It's their wisdom. What is it that leads us to trust them? and to want to hear what they have to say. It's very simple. They've lived a life seeking to serve God, and you've seen the fruit of it. The fruit's not perfect. They're not perfect. They've had troubles. They've made mistakes. They've sinned. But on the balance of it, of their lives, they strove to keep God's law and to do it. And the fruit of it became evident to everyone.

That should be your aim. So in this passage, it starts out with people saying, that's not our aim. We like the daughters of Moab. And there was a guy who'd gone off and gotten himself a Midianite woman. And you just get the impression that there was a lot of adultery and fornication going on. Because it says that it was the daughters of Moab that enticed them. And that the man who came back brought a Midianite woman. That there was a problem here. But there was a group of people who were like, yeah, we're going to do what we want. And God judged them for it. But there was another group of people who served God and who held fast to him. And God preserved them and God blessed them. And it was them who went into the promised land and not the ones who wandered off. The ones who wandered off died or were destroyed. And so we should give up talking about what's wise. We should give up.

trying to prove to other people and ourselves our schemes and our plans. Solomon told us there's nothing new under the sun. And so our wisdom shouldn't be new and innovative. It should be old and proven. Restore to me the ancient paths, O Lord. Show them to me. So that in time, we'll be the ones, having held fast to the Lord, we'll be the ones that people will say of them, they're wise and they have understanding. They serve the Lord well. And we want to become like them. That is the ultimate, that is the final sort of culmination of all of this, is that the nations are going to look and they're going to observe and say, they're wise and they're just. And they're going to say, we want to become like them. Some people will say, we want to kill them. And other people will say, we want to become like them. We should strive in our lives to want other people to emulate us because of our obedience to God. Make that our aim. Let's pray.