Sermon for Flinders Park Church 23rd Feb 2020
There are two things that expose what is in the heart of a person: difficulty and prosperity. Both issues are found in Deut 8. In the first half of the chapter, Moses asks the people to look back on and remember the difficult time that occurred in the wilderness and in the second half he exhorts them to look forward to the wonderful fulfilment of promise that was about to happen. We know that both difficult times and times when things are going really well will happen in our lives. Each comes with particular temptations and dangers. We need to know how to respond in both situations. In both difficulty and in prosperity we are to remember the LORD.
Moses begins by exhorting the people: “The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers” (8:1).
As with the rest of Deuteronomy, Moses’ argument in this chapter is intended to prepare the people of Israel to obey the commandments of God. Here he uses the singular expression “the whole commandment” as if there is only one command. There are many commandments but, as James reminds us in his epistle, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it” (Jas. 2:10 ESV). The Law is of a piece so Israel had to keep all of it. That was the appropriate response to the fact that the LORD is their God.
Although Christians are not obligated to obey every part of the Law of Moses, Paul reminds us, “Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it” (Rom. 8:12 NIV). To put this another way, our obligation is to obey the Spirit of God. A Christian is a person who has faith in Christ and that faith expresses itself in obedience to God’s word. As we consider the rest of the chapter, let’s keep that in mind.
Moses goes on “2 And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. 4 Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the LORD your God disciplines you.”
The first part of the argument is a reminder about the past. Israel had been wandering around the wilderness for 40 years at this point in time. For the last 38 years they wandered in circles because of their failure to obey God and enter the Promised Land. But during the first two years the wandering was not because of their sin. Either way they were led by the LORD during this long time in the wilderness. They were not abandoned there. The LORD fed the people when there was no food. He did not merely feed them, he gave them water when there was no water. He miraculously made their clothes last for forty years without wearing out. He also kept them from getting physically sick in the wilderness. The physical health God blessed them with is summed up in “your foot did not swell”.
There was nothing happenstance about being in the wilderness all that time. It was part of God’s careful plan to teach the brand new nation of Israel to trust and obey him. The whole experience was an opportunity for Israel to demonstrate faith in their God. It was a test to expose the things in the heart. It was a time deliberately set apart by the LORD so that he could humble them and test their hearts. How did he test Israel? He did this by making them hungry and then giving them manna to eat. If the people were not hungry, how could God show them his provision for their needs? The lack exposed their grumbling hearts and showed that they did not trust the God who had brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm just a few weeks earlier.
This was not just about God demonstrating his power, but and his faithfulness. Human beings need more than just life’s physical necessities. We all need to eat or we will die, but Moses tells Israel that they need more than bread alone to live. Physical life is not enough. We need spiritual life also. We need the word of God. If God does not speak to us in his word then we are just dead men walking. The whole point of the miracles that were experienced in the wilderness wandering was to turn the people towards the word of God as true and trustworthy. If they did not trust the words God spoke to them they would not obey him. Sadly, their lack of trust in God’s word was evident on multiple occasions recorded in Scripture.
Nothing exposes the heart quite as much as difficult circumstances. It is easy to say, “I trust God” when everything is going well and you lack nothing good. But times of difficulty will expose what is truly in your heart. It may well be that you and I have no idea of the things that are in our own hearts. We need to experience hard times for these things to be brought into the light. Hard times might be financial difficulty or losing a job or being abused by someone on the street for no reason or perhaps being betrayed by someone close. Grief and loss expose the heart in this way also.
The question that we must always ask ourselves when something difficult comes into our lives is whether or not we will trust the word of God. In our case the word of God is recorded in the Bible. I lost my job at Tabor recently and I had to work hard every day to be obedient to God’s word in the way I responded that event. I could respond by being angry and bitter or I could do what God says. Colossians 3:13 exhorts Christians: “bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Romans 12:19 is similar: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” Deliberately being obedient to these two verses helped me to get past the anger and bitterness.
That has been my struggle. No doubt at some point something difficult has come or will come into your life: poverty, sickness, pain, emotional hurt. Whatever that difficult thing is, it will expose something about your own heart. The right response is to trust God’s word because it always is more important than the physical immediate needs that we have. It is more important to be obedient to God than to be rich. It is more important to be obedient to God than to be popular. It is more important to be obedient to God than to have the dream job. It is more important to be obedient to God than to get ahead of others in whatever sphere you are in. Every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is more important. It is life for us.
We can be confident as God brings difficult things into our lives, and he will do so, that he does this because he loves us. Sometimes it can feel like the opposite. We often ask, What did I do wrong that this happened? But “as a man disciplines his son, the LORD your God disciplines you.” God’s discipline is good because he only disciplines his legitimate sons not those who do not belong to him (Heb 12:7-8). His discipline is for our good because it makes us more like his Son, Jesus Christ.
Hardship is often part of life, and we must remember what God teaches us in this time and how he draws us toward faith in his word. But prosperity is also part of life sometimes. Moses had the people look backwards and remember the lessons of the past, and the verses that follow he has them look forwards.
“6 So you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. 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.”
What was to come for Israel was a new situation. They had been in the wilderness for a very long time. Yet ahead of them was the Promised Land. And that land was amazing. It had all the things that a people might want: water, valleys, hills, trees and fruit and plenty of food, and mineral resources. It was a land of abundance in comparison with the wilderness of scarcity. In that land the people must obey their God and bless him for his great blessing.
The description of the Promised land reminds me of Western Australia, with its abundant mineral wealth in the north and fantastic farming land and wine country in the south. This state we live in is the best place in the world from my perspective. We live in a financially blessed country. We are all wealthy by the standards of most of the world. Some of us are wealthy by the standards of this country. Because we live in such a wonderful place, we must pay attention so that we are not overtaken by the same temptation that Moses was warning Israel about in this passage.
Moses knew that the wilderness experience was a test, but the abundance of the land they are about to enter produces tests of its own. So he warns the people:
“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.”
This is the second kind of temptation or test. When the life Israel has is utterly materially blessed and abundantly so, there is a good chance that they will see nothing but the wealth and forget the God who gave it to them. All the difficulties of the past will be forgotten. But they are not supposed to forget what happened in the wilderness because there were lessons learned there about the God who rescued them from Egypt. There were lessons learned about God’s faithfulness and provision. Hardship tends to get people calling out to God in some way or other. But prosperity tends to lull people into ignoring God. The more material blessings multiply, the more there is a temptation to forget all about the God who gave them.
Moses warns then, “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’” The most dangerous temptation is that pride and self-sufficiency will replace faith in God and thankfulness to him. Israel would conquer the peoples of the land because God promised them victory. Then they would enter the Promised Land and eat food from trees they did not plant, harvest crops in fields they did not sow, live in houses they did not build. The only reason that they would experience this material blessing was because the LORD gave it to them. But how easy would it be to think that they had worked hard and deserved it all. Yet that was not true. God is the one who gives the power to get wealth. Without him, Israel would not have received all that material wealth. That is why they were told to beware.
It is easy to get to the place where you take for granted all the wealth that surrounds you. Before we can say “boo” to a goose, our corrupt hearts start to lay claim to the blessing as something we did ourselves. Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9 ESV). In other words, you can’t trust your own heart. It will tell lies to you. How easy is it for us in this wonderful country to think that we have all this because we deserve it and others don’t? We all worked hard and so it was our hard work that made us rich. Other people are poor because they don’t work hard. This is hubris! Material blessing comes from the LORD and not because we deserve it.
Although the contrast that Moses makes is between the scarcity of the wilderness and the abundance of the Promised Land in terms of material wealth, we might consider this lesson in terms of other kinds of prosperity. Sometimes life is going well. Perhaps you found a new job or there was reconciliation between friends or family. Perhaps your health is good or even just that you have had opportunity for a nice holiday. Good things in life, including wealth, can cause us to forget all about the God who gives every good gift. We can get lazy in our spiritual walk and stop praying or only pray sporadically because there is no trouble to ask God for help with. When there is a crisis many people turn to God to ask for help. But when everything is great we often just ignore him.
Moses knew that forgetting the LORD was a danger for the good times ahead so he left one last solemn warning.
“19 And if you forget the LORD your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. 20 Like the nations that the LORD makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God.”
The history of Israel makes it clear that she did go after other gods and serve them and worship them. The result was exile from the land. The northern kingdom was exiled forever. The southern kingdom was exiled for 70 years and many never returned. Moses was not exaggerating when he said that destruction would follow them if they did not obey the LORD their God. It happened to the nations that lived in the land before Israel (Lev 18:27-28) and it would happen to them if they did not heed the warnings Moses gives in this chapter.
We must also take heed of this warning. It would be wrong to say that people can be neutral towards the true God. Forgetting the LORD your God leads to going after other gods. People will worship something because that is the nature of being human (Rom 1:18-23). So either your give your life fully over to the true God, in difficulty and in prosperity, or you will give your life over to a false god. The false god might be trust in money or self-preservation or self-dependence. It does not have to be another religion. The consequence of following after false gods is destruction. There is only one place to find life, that is, Christ. He is our life (Col 3:4). Destruction comes to those who do not follow him. We can choose the narrow gate that leads to life or the wide gate that leads to destruction. Don’t choose the wrong one (Matt 7:13-14). God can destroy both body and soul in hell (Matt 10:28).
Conclusion
We have all lived long enough to experience both kinds of tests, the test of scarcity and the test of prosperity. Times of difficulty and times of ease both expose what is in our hearts (v 2, 17), but in different ways. Hardship may expose the fact that we do not trust that God will provide for us. It will expose any false beliefs we hold about God and his faithfulness. Will we trust in God’s word and his promises in this situation? Will we compromise by disobeying God’s commands in order to try to get the things we need? Jesus did not. He refused to turn stones into bread when tempted by the devil in the wilderness (Matt 4:3-4) but responded, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by ever word that comes from the mouth of God.”
When our lives are peaceful and prosperous and nothing is going wrong, then what? Do we abandon prayer because there is no crisis? Do we begin to think that we deserve this and that it happened all by our own efforts? Or will we remember the LORD our God and continue to worship him only instead of worshiping our own cleverness or our capacity to make money?
Whichever time of testing we find ourselves in, whether scarcity or prosperity, let’s remember that these both come from the hand of God. Give thanks to God because he is good. Bless him for his blessings. Bless him also for the hardships. Job provides us with a good example in this regard. When he lost all that he had he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:20 ESV). Whatever happens, know that it is God’s good discipline that tests us to expose our hearts and bring us to a place of trust in him and his word.