November 26, 2017 Deuteronomy 8:7-18 COJLBC Remember the Lord! by Mark Jarvinen 7 For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, 9 a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10 And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. 11 Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, 12 lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, 13 and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, 15 who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, 16 who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end. 17 Beware lest you say in your heart, My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. 18 You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. (Deuteronomy 8:7-18 ESV) Throughout the decade of the 70 s I supported myself through college and seminary by working for Mr. Greenhill as a groundskeeper. His magnificent property, located in Rolling Hills Estates, CA, overlooked Redondo Beach and from its lofty vantage point allowed me to see for miles up the coast. The view was breathtaking. Mr. Greenhill came from a poor family that moved West from Indiana in the Depression years to find a new life. His story is 1
one of hardship and deprivation in his early years, to incredible wealth and luxury in his later years. The problem was that while Mr. Greenhill s beginnings were humble, he no longer was! He believed it was only through his own cleverness and self-effort that he had achieved success. In Deuteronomy 8, Moses challenges Israel to remember the lean years of their wilderness wanderings as they now prepared to enter the land flowing with milk and honey the Promised Land. Moses admonition to the people was to stay dependent upon God in the humble recognition that all that they have is a gift from Him. Remember the Lord, he said. As 21 st century Americans, we too are called to remember the Lord. Our economy is currently enjoying the second longest bull market in history and compared to the rest of the world we enjoy relative prosperity. As individuals, we may not feel prosperous, as we compare ourselves with our neighbors, but to have food in the refrigerator, clothes on our back, and a roof overhead is to have it better than many people in this world. If we take our eyes off the Lord, self-sufficiency, entitlement, and pride set in and a spirit of ingratitude begins to rule our lives. As a result, we fail to enjoy the abundant blessings God has prepared for us and lose our perspective on our reason for living. As was true for the Israelites of old, we too must Remember the Lord: 2
I. As the Source of Our Provision II. As the Subject of Our Praise I. REMEMBER THE LORD AS THE SOURCE OF OUR PROVISION. As it says in Deuteronomy 8:7, For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land. After describing the bounty of the land, Moses concludes in v. 9 by saying it will be a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing;. Notice who gets the credit for the Israelites entering into this good land - For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land. This Promised Land of almost unimaginable prosperity was about to become theirs, however, not by their own initiative. God was the source of their provision. The recognition that all we have comes as a gift from God is a basic assumption of Scripture and necessary for maintaining a spirit of gratitude and dependence upon God in the midst of prosperity: I love, for example, I Timothy 6:17, which says: Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is uncertain, but to put heir hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Now it s true, we work hard for our money, and daily bread doesn t normally rain down from heaven like manna from the sky. Since Adam s fall into sin in the Garden of Eden mankind has had to work for a living by the sweat of his or her brow. However, the sweat of 3
our brow sometimes gets in our eyes and blinds us to the fact that daily bread and all that we have is first and foremost a gift from God. As v. 18 of our text suggests, it is He (the Lord) who gives us the ability to produce wealth. Therefore, ultimately He is the source. Acknowledging God as the source of our provision puts us in position to express our gratitude in praise and leads to my 2 nd point II. REMEMBER THE LORD AS THE SUBJECT OF OUR PRAISE. Deuteronomy 8:10 says, When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Recognizing God as the source of provision should logically lead us to praise and thanksgiving. That s precisely where it led our Pilgrim fathers. In 1623, William Bradford, the leader of the Plymouth Colony issued the following proclamation: Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with ye wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29 th, of the year 1623 there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to Almighty God for all His blessings. It s a battle to honor God as the source of our many blessings since most people know how hard they are working to maintain their standard of living. But that s when pride sets in. That s the point at which we may say to ourselves, as Israel of old once said, My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me (Deuteronomy 8:17). 4
Furthermore, it s not a great big leap to go from the I did this myself mentality to the I deserve it because I m wonderful, frame of mind when it comes to material prosperity. We live in a world that conditions us to the I deserve it mentality, which prods people s sense of entitlement and fuels our American economy. Did you know that America holds approximately 5% of the world s population, but controls ½ to 2/3 of the world s resources, and overspends personal incomes by an average of 10%. In the words of our text, we Americans have eaten and are satisfied. That is precisely the time when we tend to forget the Lord. Prosperity tends to dull our sense of gratitude. It s easy to stop praising the Lord for what He has provided when we have it so good. Listen to vv. 12 14 of our text: when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, What was true for the Israelites in Moses day is still true today. Human nature is still selfish. We tend to forget the Lord. We must still be admonished to give thanks. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln established our national day of Thanksgiving. He originally intended this day as a day of repentance and prayer, because he feared that the ravages of the Civil War were God s punishment for our nation s sins of ingratitude. Lincoln wrote: We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our 5
hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Lincoln s words still sound forth a clear warning to us a little more than a century and one half later. Lincoln said, We have forgotten God. We must pay heed to the key words of Deuteronomy, Remember the Lord. Remember the God who remembers you. Remember that God is the giver of all gifts. Remember to thank God for His gifts. CONCLUSION: When we forget God, our focus turns inward. preoccupied with ourselves and our own comforts. We become We become arrogant and selfish. We take pride in our accomplishments. Our desire for worship deadens. Our heart for the lost grows cold. We lose our sense of identity as God s people. As Deuteronomy 8:18 says: But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, AND SO CONFIRMS HIS COVENANT, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today. When Israel entered the Promised Land, God s promise to them was fulfilled, their identity as a people was established as God s covenant was confirmed. Israel would be blessed so that they could be a blessing to the nations. God s redemptive plan for the world would be fulfilled through them. As believers today, we have been grafted into this people of God for the same purpose to be a blessing to others. That s why we must remember God that we too might be a blessing to others. Call to mind that God is the One who first 6
remembered us - the God who provided a Savior who died for us in spite of our self-centeredness and pride, and loves us even when we forget His goodness and provision in our lives. We must remember the Lord, who in spite of our deficiencies, redeemed us by the blood of His Son and made us His people, that we too, like Israel of old, may give thanks and be a blessing to others, even as we have been blessed. A-men. 7