How to Be Loyal to God’s Words | Joshua 23

OK, in light of the technical difficulties we've had already,

I just want to take a moment to pray against any others and get

our hearts ready for the Word. Would you join me one more time

as we pray? Lord, we are grateful to worship

you. We are grateful to be here and

we just ask for all distractions, everything that

could pull our attention and our eyes and our hearts away from

hearing what you have to say to us in your word.

I pray God that you would shield us from it and that God wherever

wherever we find ourselves in our journey with Jesus today

here God that we would be able to listen to what you have said

in a book we call the Bible a book you have given us a book

that you wrote so that we could know who you are.

It is yourself revelation to us so we could have hope, we could

be covered, we could be changed. And I pray God, you would change

us today. That you'd bring heat where

hearts have grown cold, you'd bring light where minds have

grown dark. God, would you speak to us today

in Jesus name? Amen.

Amen, Lord. Yes.

Protect the screen, protect the microphone, and make sure no

chairs get broken or nothing like that to God while you're at

it, You know what I'm saying? Hey, we're going to be in Joshua

Joshua 23 · chapter mention

chapter 23. That's page 197 of the Bibles in

front of you. If you don't have a Bible,

consider that your Bible. Now you can have a Bible.

It's just on the one and the seat in front of you.

Please generally take that and take that home with you.

We'd love for you to have a copy of God's work.

That's what we're talking about today is how to be loyal to

God's words. We've been in this book of

Joshua written by the title character Joshua, describing

what happened for as the Israelites left Egypt and

wandered the desert, how they crossed the Jordan River and

took hold of the promised land known as Canaan.

And for 23 chapters, we have been all around this theme of

land and victory and conquest. That's what the book of Joshua's

about. It's in your Bible with the

theme of land. But the book has an aim point.

It actually has a target that it wants to hit in your heart, in

my heart, in any heart. Who would read it?

And it's not just about land and victory.

The aim of Joshua is your loyalty, your allegiance, our

commitment to God, that as we read about people and nations

rising and falling in the Israelites marching forward, the

response in the reader supposed to be, Oh my gosh, I need to be

loyal to this God and to what he says because without it I am

hopeless. Without it, I am a fool.

Joshua's helping us see that our aim point needs to be loyalty,

and we're good at loyalty. When I was growing up, my

friend, his dad worked for Gatorade and he had like what I

would call the coolest job in the world.

Preston mentioned the salt director, which is a close

second, but this is first. He worked for Gatorade in the

90s and his job was to present the Gatorade High School Athlete

of the Year. He would go and give them that

award. So Gatorade would put him on a

plane and he'd go and fly and he'd meet this young kid from

Wilmette, Wilmington, NC, named Michael Jordan.

Yeah, he, he met Michael Jordan in the 80s and 90s.

Like, hey, why don't I give you this?

In the 90s, he got to meet Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning.

And this is my best friend's dad.

And I see pictures on the wall. I'm like, who are you?

Who are you? And and what what job is this

that you get to go parade around with athletes?

What would that meant, though, being a Gatorade worker, is that

he had to be loyal to Gatorade. So at times we'd go to

restaurants and he would go to go get a Powerade.

Like somebody would go get it. He'd go absolutely not, not, not

what I'm paying for dinner tonight.

We are not having Powerade. You'd go to their basement

fridge. Yeah.

Basements are a thing in Illinois.

You'd get there. And in their basement fridge,

there'd be no such thing as any Coke products of any kind

because Gatorade was owned by Pepsi.

So there'd be copious amounts of Gatorade.

No Coke, just Pepsi. I prayed for them on the on the

soda department because Pepsi's definitely inferior.

Sorry if you work for PepsiCo and you're here today, but the

reality was, is that his allegiance was to Gatorade.

His loyalty was to Gatorade. He was going to be committed to

Gatorade even it meant he didn't get to have a refreshing energy

drink at the at the gas station or at the ball field that their

family adopted loyalty to a drink.

Now, loyalty to a drink is one thing, but what God is asking of

us, what He's inviting us to really today is loyalty to the

living water of God's Word, the nourishment and the joy and the

energy and the vitality that comes from drinking from God's

words. Now, obviously, I'm speaking

metaphorically, not literally here.

There's no literal drinking of God's words.

However, I believe that is our invitation that Joshua 23 is in

our Bible so that we could see how to be loyal to God's words.

We're in Joshua 23, verse one. I want to show it to you in

three ways today, how to be loyal to God's words.

It says this a long time afterward, meaning a long time

after chapter 22, a long time after the half tribe of Manassas

and the other two tribes east of the Jordan River, after that

whole conflict thing where they're departed but united.

After that whole thing happened that we learned about last week.

After that happened, a long time afterward and indefinite time

later, when the Lord had given rest to Israel from all their

surrounding enemies, and Joshua was old and well advanced in

years, Joshua summoned all of Israel, its elders and heads,

its judges and officers. And he said to the leadership, I

am now old and well advanced in years, and you have seen all of

the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your sake.

For it is the Lord your God who has fought for you.

Behold, I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your

tribes, those nations that remain, along with all the

nations that I've already cut off from the Jordan to the great

sea in the West, the Mediterranean.

The Lord your God will push them back before you and drive them

out of your sight, and you shall possess their land, just as the

Lord your God promised you. Therefore, be strong to keep and

to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses,

turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left.

How are we going to be loyal to God's words with these 6 verses?

I want to summarize it like this in an application point saying

it has defined loyalty as God does.

How are you going to be loyal? Well, you have to at least

understand you have to define loyalty as God defines loyalty

because we might have misdefinitions of loyalty, we

might misunderstand loyalty, and we might think we're being loyal

to God's words, but God actually has a way that He describes

loyalty to us right here in these 6 verses I think are

really helpful. Jot down this definition.

You'd like to take notes that loyalty is believing in God's

words to the point of keeping all of his words.

It's not just believing in them as a concept.

It's not just saying like, hey, that's a good book, He was a

good teacher. It's believing them to the point

of keeping God's words or another word for that is obeying

God's words. We believe in God's words to the

point of keeping all of his words, keeping every single word

that he has said. John 1415 says this, that if you

love me, you will keep my commandments.

Later in that same chapter John writes in verse 21, Whoever has

my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.

John 1510 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in

my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide

in His love. Keeping God's commands are a big

deal because God keeps God's commands that there isn't a

single promise he has overlooked.

There's not a single command that is undone that everything

that God says gets done. And Joshua, he is old in his age

here. Look back at verse one and

Joshua was old and well advanced in years.

We learned in the next chapter he's about 110.

Is that old? Yes.

Say turn your neighbor and say real old.

Yeah. I'm not trying to live to 111.

If I'm 110, right, He's 110. He's like, hey, I'm going to

tell you guys something obvious right now.

I am really old and well advanced in years.

And he's going to get all the leaders like, hey, I want to

give you like, a deathbed speech right now.

I want to tell you what I've learned over the course of my

life. And these are his last words to

the people of Israel after being their leader for a number of

years. He's like, hey, here's something

very important I need to leave you with.

And so in this farewell speech, here's what he starts with.

He says, and you have seen all of the Lord your God has done to

all these nations for your sake, for it is the Lord your God who

has fought for you. What's Joshua saying is that

loyalty to God, that according to God, loyalty is doing what

you said you would do, doing what is asked of you.

Remember, Joshua's a war hero at this point.

He actually has a good grid for what it looks like to have a

command and to go obey a command.

And so God has given him commands and he's done the

commands. And guess what?

He's watched God win. He's watched them God fight for

them. He is basing our definition of

loyalty off of who God is and how he is defined.

Loyalty, it's doing. It's not just believing the

words, it's doing and keeping the words you said The Lord our

God is loyal to his words. Not even one has been

overlooked. That every single command God

gives, no matter how insignificant it might seem, is

a significant one, no matter how much you might disagree with it,

is a good one. So loyalty to His words has to

start with understanding what loyalty is according to God.

Loyalty to God is not like how many of us follow sports.

Some of us follow sports, and this is OK in the realm of

sports, but stick with me here. Loyalty for many of you to

sports is what I would call a bandwagon sports fan.

That is not the way I operate with sports.

I just need you to know that there's no such thing as picking

A-Team for like a year then jumping to another team like

you. It's like a wife.

You get one team per life per sport.

OK? Like that's how I think about

sports, that you don't just get to jump.

There's no bandwagoning. There's a loyalty.

You have to be in the suffering like when the Bears win the

Super Bowl one day, hopefully next year when when that

happens, guess what? I have suffered for the sake of

the Chicago Bears. I have endured, I have cried.

I've done all kinds of because that's what a die hard fan would

do. And I think some of us were like

here today and we're we're hearing people like talk about

God and we're and we look at like religious people, like man,

they are so intense about following Jesus.

There's so intense about the Bible.

What if I told you that's actually how it's supposed to

look like that it's not meant to be a casual fanship.

It's most meant to be a loyal followership.

A die hard nature to giving your life to God.

A fan fits the Bible into their life and a loyal follower gives

their life to the Bible. If the Bible is just like, it

just kind of fits into your life, you you might put it in a

bio on a social media, you might have read it once or twice, but

it is not the orientation of your life.

Your life isn't arranged around God's words.

Listen to me. You're missing the point of why

it was given to you. It was given to you as a gift,

so you could know what God has said, you could know who He is,

you could know what He's done for you, and you could believe

His promises, just as the Israelites did.

We cannot treat God's commands as optional to obey.

We give our life to his words because he's demonstrated that

his words are good words. They're words for our good.

They're words for our pleasure, our delight.

They are good words for you. And so when he says to flee

sexual immorality, to run from it, to flee from all that he

calls sexually immoral, that's not overrated.

When God says do not be drunk, it's not.

The next time, I'll take it easy.

Because we're loyal to his words, because we defined what

his words mean. We define what loyalty means.

It's keeping his words, what he's asked of us.

When the Bible says, this one caught me this week.

Do all things without grumbling and complaining.

Ouch is right. Ouch is right.

We define loyalty as God does. We see it as God sees it.

And guess what? It gives us a heart to keep his

words. And we won't do this perfectly.

We will do this progressively. We'll never get to the point

where we perfectly obey all God's words.

Thanks be to God for Jesus, who kept every word God has given

him so that we don't have to keep it perfectly.

But guess what? We will do it increasingly.

We will be increasingly loyal to God's words because we've

defined it as God defines it. We will see like how Joshua did

that. We could be like verse 6.

We would be very strong to keep and to do all that is written.

Now up until this point, the Canon of scripture, the the book

itself was just Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and

Deuteronomy. So he's saying, hey, go, go,

obey all that God has written, but guess what?

He's written a little bit more for us now and it's closed.

This is this is the Canon that we have.

This is what we're intended to follow.

But maybe this week you would search, you would search and you

would ask and you go, hey, what is God asking me to do?

What's the next step of obedience he's asked me to take?

And I think if you want to be like Jesus, you want to be

conformed to the image of his Son.

If you want to be like God in that way, guess what?

You're going to be a person who's faithful, who's loyal in

keeping what God has said to do. That's the first thing.

The second thing, if we're going to be loyal, and this is the big

point, this is where I think the text is really centering.

It's the emphasis of what, chapter 23?

It's this idea that we're going to cling to God's words like our

life depends upon it. We're going to cling.

We're not just going to keep and define God's word as God defines

loyalty. We are going to cling to God's

words like our very lives depend upon it.

Like if I were to throw you into the Mission Impossible scenario

where the clock is ticking and the bomb is going and one of the

characters is talking you through how to defuse the bomb,

how would you hang upon every syllable that they said in

defusing the bomb? Cut the red wire or the green

wire? Oh, the red wire.

OK, double checking the red wire.

Yes, the red wire. OK, we're gonna cut the red wire

now. That's how serious clinging to

God's words is. This word that we're going to

find together in this section of the text.

This word clinging, it's the idea of gluing your ear to the

word of God. It's sticky.

It's Velcro. It's binding.

Look at what the Bible says in verse 7.

We're turning aside from it, neither to the right hand or to

the left, but that you may not mix with these nations,

underline that. We're going to come back to that

in a second, remaining among you, or make mention of the

names of their gods, or swear by them, or serve them, or bow down

to them. But you shall cling to the Lord

your God, just as you have done to this day.

One man of you puts to flight 1000, since it is the Lord your

God who fights for you, just as he promised you.

Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God.

For if you turn back and cling to the remnants of these

nations, there's that word again remaining among you and make

marriage with them. So if you associate with them

and they with, you know for certain that the Lord your God

will no longer drive out these nations before you, that

there'll be a snare and a trap for you, a whip on your sides

and thorns in your eyes until you perish from off this good

ground that the Lord your God has given you.

Do you see the situation here? The severity that, that right

now they're, they are clinging to God.

So God is fighting for them. But there will be a moment where

if you are not clinging to God, He stopped fighting for you.

That in pride you oppose the God of the universe himself.

And so he's asking us. He's calling us to clinging to

the very words of God. Clinging is interesting to me.

It that word cling, It's the same word used in Genesis

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2 and it says a man shall leave his wife and mother

and cling to his wife, that he should leave his father and

mother. Excuse me, I said wife and

mother. That's weird.

Father and mother and cling to his wife that it's that same

word. It's that level of covenant,

that level of promise, that level of relationship that we're

clinging to one another. We are clinging to God's words

like in a marriage and clinging is for a party of 2, not for a

party of three. We do not mix.

Do you see that verb in your Bible there?

Look back at verse 7 that you may not mix with these nations

that God takes seriously who we marry for this reason, because

the person that you share a bed with is the person you share the

most beliefs with. The person you share a bed with

is the person you're going to raise kids with.

The person you share a bed with is a big deal to God.

That is because it's going to inform your perception of who

God is. And so he doesn't want the

Israelites to not marry because of they're from another nation

or anything like that. It's because of their beliefs

that they're going to worship idols and they're going to make

them, serve them and bow to them and listen to them and live for

them. And God knows that that is the

way of destruction. It'll destroy your life.

So he says, hey, do not go marry these other nations.

Do not mix with them like this. He echoes it in the New

Testament that as a believer, we are not to marry an unbeliever.

In fact, listen to me, college students and single people in

the room do not if you are a Christian, do not marry an

unbeliever that bluntly, I'm going to say it.

Do not do it. Do not start dating an

unbeliever. Do not start considering

marriage an unbeliever that God would call that foolishness.

They will steer you towards idols, and idols are things they

get. They're good things that often

we make God things. And they have ears but can't

hear you. They have eyes but can't see

you, hands but can't help you, feet but can't walk with you.

Why would you turn to them? And if God is a thing you're

clinging to most in this world, why would you cling to someone

else who's not going to help you cling to Him?

Because we need to cling to Him and His words like our lives

depend upon it. Clinging is for a party 2, not a

party 3. Clinging is also not weird.

It's wonderful. Here's what I mean by that

clinging. I think some of us think of like

the Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn movie with the stage 5 clinger.

When we hear that term, we, we think of people who are overly

attached. We think of people who are like,

wow, there's they're a clinger. They're sticking to me a little

too much. They're the, I can't get rid of

them. They are a little bit too much

to deal with. Clinging has a bad connotation

because of over attachment. But listen to me, you can't

overly attached to God. You can't it's actually

impossible. He's the best thing for your

life. The closer you are to him the

better you are that the nearer you are to him the better your

life goes. But we can detach from God.

We call this self-reliance or independence.

Like, INDEPENDNT, like independent DJ Khaled would be

the best. Like we think to ourselves, man,

I would just be better if I wasn't clinging to God, if I had

no one to cling to. And that's where it gives.

The third thing, clinging is not optional.

You are going to cling to something.

You're like, yeah, I'm not clinging to God like you're

talking about, Brandon. I'm not, like, married to God in

this way. I'm not taking him serious

enough. Sure, but I don't know that I

have to because I'm not clinging to anything else.

Incorrect. Look back at the Bible with me,

verse 8. But you shall cling the Lord

your God, just as you've done to this day.

For the Lord your God is driven out before you.

Great and strong nations. Jump down to verse 12.

For if you turn back and cling to the remnant of these nations

remaining among you, and make marriages with them, verse 13,

know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive

these nations out from you. What's the text implying here?

That verb is used again for a reason.

It wants you to see that clinging is not optional.

You will cling to the remnant or you will cling to the Redeemer.

You will cling to something. Your heart was made to worship.

It was made to attach. And so you will find something

to attach to. It might be someone or

something. The something might be status,

it might be wealth, it might be your work, it might be a

relationship, it might be something, but you will find

something to attach to. And God is saying, don't cling

to that, don't attach to that, don't glue yourself to that.

It leads you to a place you don't want to go.

Hurt and heartache, devastation and brokenness.

The only hope we have is clinging to God and His words.

That independence from God has a cost.

So I would just ask you today, like where in your life, because

you're evaluating your own leadership of your life.

When you've self LED, you haven't appealed to God's words

to lead you. You haven't appealed the sound

counsel to lead you. Like where has that gotten you?

When you've just listened to your own heart and your own

mind, has it gotten you to good faces and places?

My bet is, is that the more you look at your life and the more

you look at leadership decisions you made for your own life.

And if you kept that pattern up, it would get you to a bad spot.

I was listening to comedian talk about this.

He said, man, I'm a bad leader of my own life.

I think I'm wise. I think I'm smart.

And then I make a decision and it blows up in my face.

That's what independence gets. You cling to the words of God

like your life depends on it. What do you cling to besides

Jesus? What is the thing that you cling

to, that you hold tightly, that you've glued yourself to, that

you're known for? Part of loyalty to God's words

is being known as a person who clings to them like our life

depends on it. So when you are clinging to God

like your life depends on it, why is it then that you're

clinging to Him? Search your heart.

When you do cling to God, it's because a crisis hit.

Is it because things aren't going your way?

It's because your comfort got rocked a bit.

That's a gift from God to help you cling to Him.

Good preaching and. When you're not clinging to God,

why not? What is it that you're looking

for? We need to cling to God's words

like our life depends on them. Third and finally, Joshua is

going to help us see that if we don't cling to God's Word,

there's a warning that if we don't cling to them, if we don't

keep them, if we abandoned them, we will watch everything fall

apart. How to be loyal to God's words?

It's not abandoning them. It's not putting them on the

shelf. It's not putting them as a part

of our life, it's giving our life to his words.

Verse 14 and now about to go the way of all the earth.

I'm 110. I'm a geezer.

I'm ready to die. And you know in your hearts and

souls, all of you, that not one word has failed.

Of all the good things that the Lord your God has promised

concerning you, not even 1.1 drop one iota.

Not a single promise of God has failed the Israelites.

He's wiped out and given them the good ground He promised

them. He's beaten walls and warriors.

There's nothing that can stand against him.

Not one of the promises of God has failed concerning you.

All have come to pass for you. Not one of them has failed.

But just look at verse 15. Just as all the good things that

the Lord God has promised concerning you have been

fulfilled, watch this, so the Lord will bring upon you all the

evil things until He has destroyed you from off this good

land of the Lord God has given you.

If here's the condition, if you transgress the covenant of the

Lord your God which commanded you, and serve other gods and

bow down to them. Then God's anger will.

Be kindled against you, and you shall perish quickly from off

the good land that He has given to you.

This too. Is a promise from God.

A sobering. 1A Heavy one, but a real one.

It would be unloving of me to not tell you about this other

promise that if we transgress, if we sin against God, guess

what? Destruction would come, death

would come, the anger of God against sin, the justice of God

against sin would come. But listen to me.

The love of God has revealed something better.

Joshua's in the front of your Bible because it's foreshadowing

for us, the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ, that Jesus name,

Yeshua. It's it's another version of the

name Joshua. And so this chapter is saying,

Hey, here's the what of his warning.

We need to keep God's words the where of his warning?

Like where do we need to keep God's words everywhere.

Why do we need to keep God's words?

Because we're going to cling to God's words always.

We're going to cling to something else and we cling to

something else. It's going to lead us to a place

we don't want to go. And if we are clinging to God

everywhere, keeping his words, then when do we need to do that?

He's saying right now. Because he has a who?

For this morning in mind, and it's you and me.

That if we abandoned. God's words we will watch

everything fall apart. The next book in your Bible is a

book called Judges. And judges.

Judges 2:10

Chapter 2, verse 10, Here's the next generation.

Here's what it says. And there arose another

generation who heard this speech from Joshua after them, who did

not know the Lord or the work that He had done for Israel.

That it can go that. Quick that this generation can

know God, and the next generation can miss the mark

entirely. They don't even know who God is.

It can happen that quick. And the reason that happens is

because our loyalty to God's words can come to an abrupt halt

in our life. We can stop being loyal in an

instant. We can abandoned them.

And watch everything fall apart. The book of Judges is a warning

for all of us, saying, hey, if you abandoned God's word, here's

what's going to happen. Everyone's going to do what's

right in their own eyes. Meaning there is.

No definition of truth, there's no definition of justice,

there's no definition of right and wrong.

There's just anarchy and chaos. Sounds a little bit like 2026 in

some ways. That's what's going to happen.

If we don't keep God's words, it's going to happen for our

kids in the world that we're building for them.

If we do not bow to the Word, if we abandoned God's words for

other words, listen to me, that's what's going to happen.

And I don't want that. World I don't want to raise my

kids in a world that where people bow to the world instead

of the word. That that's actually who?

We are as a church family that we are a people.

Guess what that went? That's why we're bold with the

Bible is that when the Word and the world disagree, I'm going to

pick what the Bible says. I will not abandon what God has

said. You will not abandon what God

has said. Why?

Because we're people who are loyal to God's words.

We're going to explore them. We're going to devour them.

We're going to eat them. We're going to chew on them.

We are going to read them and learn them and know them.

We are going to have people who grow in God's Word together.

We won't abandoned. This book ever.

And if we do, permission to fire me?

It's just the way. Of how God wants us to live our

lives. Depend upon it.

What I think is interesting. Here in the text, is it, like I

said, it is foreshadowing Jesus Christ and Joshua.

Here he's saying he's on his deathbed and he's exhibiting

loyalty to God's Word so that we could understand that Jesus was

loyal onto his deathbed as well. Don't you see the wonder of it?

Jesus's loyalty to God's words never faltered.

It never failed. His righteousness actually paid

for all the times we're going to be disloyal to God's words.

You aren't going to keep God's words perfectly.

You are going to struggle, you are going to sin, you are going

to suffer. You are going to experience all

that the fallen world has to give.

But guess what? You have a Saviour who is loyal

to God perfectly. You have a Christ, you have a

Messiah. You have.

Good news is that you don't have to be perfectly loyal to God's

words because there was somebody who was for you and he went to

your place on a cross to die for your sins.

He rose again, conquering sin and death forever, all so that

you could be counted loyal before God.

That even the most disloyal among us, the ones who have

sinned the most and been disloyal the most to God, listen

to me. You could be called.

Loyal. Not because of anything.

You've done, but because of what he's done.

His. Deathbed was not the end.

He's not dead. He's alive.

He kept his word again, and on the third day he was raised

according to the scriptures. And right now he is ruling and

reigning and calling to many of you right now, saying, guess

what? Come be loyal to me.

Come be loyal to my words. Come, cling to them.

Come keep them. Come do them.

Because that is the hope of every single human heart.

God is calling you. Today he's drawing you in and

he's saying, listen to me, cling to me.

Stop clinging to your work, Stop clinging to your status.

Stop clinging to the words of that podcast and start clinging

to my book. Be known as.

Being loyal to that above all else, that's one of the best

reputations you can have, is a person who is loyal to God's

words. That people can guess.

What you're going to think about things.

Why? Because they know you're loyal

to the book. That you've pledged.

Allegiance to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords that you

committed your way to Christ. You cling to Christ above all

else. And that means you won't.

Abandoned them because he won't abandoned you.

Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, says this, that the existence of

the Bible as a book for the people is the greatest benefit

which the human race has ever experienced.

Every attempt to belittle it is a crime against humanity.

Don't belittle your. Bible, pray and ask God for you

to crave it. To be faithful.

To it to. Find areas where you're.

Not obeying and keeping it, He'll show you.

My pastor growing up. He would say often when he'd get

into the pulpit, he'd say this is my Bible.

I am who it says I am, I can do what it says I can do, and I am

going where it says I'm going to go.

This is my Bible. This is my.

Bible, Why don't you? Actually, why don't you grab

your Bibles? Whether it's on a phone or on a

Bible, let's say it together, This is my Bible.

I am who it says I am. I can do what it says I can do.

I'm going where? It says I'll go.

Let's be loyal to it. Let's pray, Lord, thank you for

your book. Thank you that it's a book for

us, that it isn't just for us for now, but God is your words

that are enduring forever. Then in Psalm 1. 19 You say that

the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul that the

testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple, but the

precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart, the

commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes that the

fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever, that the rules

of the Lord are true and righteous.

Altogether more to be desired are God's words than gold, even

much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the drippings of

the honeycomb. Moreover, by them your servant

is warned, and keeping them there is great reward.

Who can discern their own heirs? God, declare us innocent from

our hidden faults. Keep us back from presumptuous

sins. Let them not have dominion over

us anymore. Then we shall be blameless and

innocent of great transgression. Let the words of our mouth and

the meditation of our heart be acceptable in your sight, O

Lord, my rock and Redeemer. God, will we believe in God's

words like that? That if somebody were to offer

us a pile of gold or a pot or a pile of Bibles, we take the

Bible because we believe in the value in the treasure of it.

It would be the thing we cling to, our security and our rest

and our joy wouldn't be in our bank accounts or our follower

counts, but it would be in the reality that there's a God who

has spoken and that he has been loyal to us.

He has been faithful to us to give us a book where we can know

Him and love him and cherish him.

God, would you be our treasure. And would your words.

Not just collect dust on our bookshelf, but would we actually

cling to them? Like a rock.

Climber climbing the side of a wall, free soloing.

Would we hold them fast? Hold them strong?

God. Would you hold?

Us in the meantime. Until that day when we're.

Made perfect and perfectly loyal.

We'll be faithful. We'll be loyal because you're

worth it. So God help us to not just

believe that these are your words.

But would we keep them? In Jesus name, Amen.