Let's take a journey through the book of Deuteronomy. I want to show you how God's message to hearken is interwoven throughout everything that happened to Israel.

Deuteronomy 4:1 sets the tone of God's recurring message to Israel:

Now therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments, which I teach you, for to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers giveth you.
(Deut. 4:1)

What was Israel's part to fulfill in order to go in and possess the land? They had to take the basic Bible course to victory; they had to hear and do.

The children of Israel were learning the same lesson that we have to learn today: every time they held back from obeying God, they gave defeat a place in their lives. On the other hand, every time they stepped forward by faith and did what God told them to, they gave victory a place to manifest. It was—and is—just that simple.

Keep therefore and do them [God's statutes]; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.
(Deut. 4:6)

Keep God's words and do them. That was to be the key to Israel's demonstration of divine wisdom and understanding in the sight of all nations.

God told His people exactly how to live, what to do, what to eat, how to conduct themselves, how to worship and how to give. He wanted them to stand out as something special because He wanted every nation to know that there was a God in Israel. He wanted His people to be a witness to Him.

If you are a parent, you should understand God's desire. Don't you want your child to stand out as someone special? You don't want your child to be backward, weak and defeated. No, you want your child to shine! You want him to be a winner.

Well, God feels the same way. He wants His children to have the best, be the best, love the best, obey the best and hear the best.

So in this scripture, He tells Israel how to shine. Keeping and doing the Word would be their demonstration of wisdom—the one thing that would cause other nations to say, "This is a wise people."

But it couldn't be a haphazard effort. In Deuteronomy 4:9 and 29, God tells the children of Israel what it would take for them to walk in wisdom and to make their way prosperous:

Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons....

But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.
(Deut. 4:9, 29)

In order to make God's Word work for themselves, the Israelites would have to be diligent about letting God be God in their lives. They would have to seek Him with all their hearts and souls.

The same is true today. We have to be diligent in order to live a bold lifestyle of faith, because the world around us is going in a different direction. For each of us, obeying God's Word has to become our whole life.

God has to be the first thing we think about in the morning and the last thing we think about at night. His ways have to find place in our hearts until everything we do—even the little things—are overshadowed by the Word of God.