The fear of God does not come naturally to human beings; it must be learned through Scripture, worship, and the hard knocks of experience.

God warned Israel, "And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it" (Ex. 20:25). To pollute something is to make it ordinary. God insists that any approach crafted by human ingenuity will produce a worship system just like all the pagan systems in the world. In other words, it will be common or profane - just like everyone else's paganism.

Spiritual leadership ought to be given to those who have proven themselves under stress.

God chose Israel not because they were superior but because of what He could do through them for others.

Before we can pray for God's blessing, we should ask ourselves if our disobedience could hinder his blessing.

Religious truth is not false for being narrow any more than mathematical or scientific truth is false for the same reason.

Israel's [as well as our] enjoyment of the land is contingent on their behavior. Blessings or cruses lie before them; the choice is theirs.