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Do Not Forget the Lord
Do Not Forget the Lord Deuteronomy 8:1-20 Key Verse: 8 :11 “Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.” Last week we studied a passage that many non-Christians and Christians alike find very difficult to accept. Many people ask themselves, how could an all loving God call for the complete destruction of seven entire nations? These people forget that God is not only all loving, He is also completely just and righteous as well. As we studied, God had given those nations more than four hundred years to repent of their wickedness and detestable idol worship practices and yet they did not. What’s more God had chosen the Israelites to be His chosen possession to reveal His glory to all people on Earth. God needed the Israelites to be set apart as a people holy to the Lord their God. As such, they could not let themselves become infected with the detestable practices of the people living in God’s promised land, so God promised to drive out those nations before the Israelites. Everything that was done, was done according to God’s perfect plan – in that plan there are no mistakes. In today’s passage the Israelites are commanded not to forget about the Lord their God. Once God had brought them into the Promised Land and they began to enjoy the richness of that land, they could easily forget that everything was done by God’s work and was not done by their own power or strength. In this passage we are reminded of sinful man’s short memory and our false pride in things that we claim to have accomplished. We must remember that on our own we can do nothing; it is only by the grace of God that we have anything at all. May God help us to always remember what He has done for us so that we may never forget Him and fall away from the His commands and decrees which He has given us to carry out in this generation. May God bless our study today, open up our hearts and grant each of us one clear word of God. First, remember how the Lord led you (1-9). Look at verse 1 “Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors.” Moses begins this chapter with a very clear command to the Israelites to follow every command that that the Lord their God had given them. As I have said time and time again over the past several weeks, God requires a wholehearted devotion to Him and His words. It is not good enough just to follow some of God’s commands while neglecting those that we don’t like or that may seem burdensome to us. The book of Deuteronomy is a series of Moses’ final speeches to the Israelites before they enter the Promised Land. In these speeches, Moses goes over and summarizes the law for the Israelites, urging them time and time again to hold strictly to everything that God had revealed to them at Mt. Sinai. However, I think it is very important that we look at the context of Moses words to “Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today.” These words immediately follow chapter 7, in which the Israelites are instructed to completely destroy seven nations from the face of the earth along with all of their idols and religious artifacts. As we studied last week, these specific commands might have seemed very harsh for many of the Israelites to accept, but God had His reasons for giving them these commands. God always has his reasons and those reason are always perfect. Let’s take a close look at verse 1b. “…so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors.” This command of God, which seems so harsh and even cruel, was given in order to bless His chosen people. God wanted them to be able to take complete possession of the land that He had promised on oath to their ancestors. But God wanted even more than this; He also wanted them to be fruitful and increase greatly in that land. God also wanted to keep them pure as His chosen people. He did not want them to be infected by the detestable religious practices of the people of that land. That was why they had to keep every command that Moses had given them that day, and that included the command to completely destroy those seven nations. Someone may ask, how could they keep such a command? Look at verse 2. “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.” The secret to keeping all of God’s commands is actually very simple. All the Israelites needed to do was to remember what God had already done for them. God had led them around in the wilderness for forty years in order to humble them and remind them to carefully keep all of His decrees and commands. Remember that those forty years of wandering in the wilderness were a result of them disobeying His command to go up and take possession of the land. God gave them forty years of training to teach them this simple fact – they must keep all of God’s commands and decrees whole heartedly. Verses 3 and 4 tells us a little bit about this wilderness training. “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.” The point of the training is summed up in the first three words, “He humbled you.” Humility is also a key to obeying God’s commands. As we will see later, pride is sinful man’s downfall and it causes us to forget the Lord our God and to think that we can actually accomplish something on our own. We cannot accomplish anything on our own. Everything is the gift of God. For the Israelites, God taught them where real food came from by causing them to hunger and then feeding them with mana from heaven. Not only did this teach the Israelites that the blessing of physical food comes from God, but it also taught them that real food is every word that comes from the mouth of God. Jesus learned this lesson well and He used these very words to defeat Satan’s first temptation, when he faced His own time of trial in the wilderness. Secondly, God provided for their clothing needs. This may not seem like a lot, but they were wandering around in a wilderness for forty years. If their clothes had worn out or their feet began to swell due to bad shoes, many more of them, especially the weaker women and children, would have died in that wilderness. As it was, God spared them from this simply by taking care of their clothing needs. Through this I learned that God is a God of details and we never have to worry that God will not provide absolutely everything we will need to complete the tasks and the commands He has given us. Verse 5 reminds us again why God had the Israelites wander around in the wilderness for forty years. “Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.” They needed discipline because they had disobeyed God. Like a son or a daughter who disobeys their parents, God did just discard the Israelites and choose another people. He loved them and He corrected them through loving discipline. The book of Proverbs says it this way, “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.” (Proverbs 3:11-12). After quoting this verse from Proverbs, the author of Hebrews reinforces this idea by saying “Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.” (Heb. 12:9-10). Discipline is not a bad thing, especially when it comes from God. In this case, God was disciplining the Israelites so that in the future they would, “Observe the commands of the Lord your God, [and walk] in obedience to him and [revere] him.” It is very important to never lose sight of why God was saying these things and doing these things to the Israelites. Verse 7-9 remind us of God’s ultimate purpose in all of this. “For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.” God’s ultimate purpose is always to bless His chosen people. As I studied this passage, I was reminded of just how timeless God’s words are. These words were spoken over four thousand years ago to a people far removed from us, yet I believe these words are intended for each one of us sitting here today. I believe with all my heart that God chose us before the creation of the world to be His chosen people in this generation. As such, He commands us to follow every one of His commands and decrees. He commands us to do this, not to burden us, but to bless us. To lead us into the land that He has promised to give us for all eternity where we can live together with Him. Like the Israelites, I believe that we must all go through our own type of wilderness training. Training in which God will humble us and teach us that all blessings and everything we need in this life come through Him. It is training that will help us to observe His commands and walk in obedience and reverence to Him. Sometimes, this training is not pleasant at all, but we must always remember the words of the author of Hebrews,”…But God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.” Second, do not forget the Lord your God (10-20). In verses 10-20 Moses gives the Israelites and us a very strong warning about forgetting the Lord our God. In these verses, we learn the root cause of such forgetfulness and we must be very careful to avoid this. Let’s begin by looking at verse 10-11. “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.” Verse 10 begins by telling us the right attitude we should have at all times, but especially when things are going well for us. Quite simply it says that we should be thankful to God when things are going well. The Israelites had just finished forty years of wilderness training where they did not have rest nor were they satisfied. But now, God was leading them into a good land, full of all kinds of good things; a land where they were going to enjoy good food, rest and they would be satisfied. The key for them was to be thankful to God for all of this. God knew the weakness of sinful man. He knew that when times get good, sinful mankind tends to forget about the Lord, so God warned them very clearly in verse 11 not to do this. Instead of forgetting about God, they should be thankful and rededicate their heart to observing His commands and laws. Someone may ask, why does sinful man forget about God when things begin to go well for them? The simple answer is this – sinful man is proud. Look at verses 12-14. “Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, 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, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” Pride is the downfall of all sinful man. Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Pride causes people to forget what God has done for them and God knows this, so in verses 14-16 Moses lists five things that God had done for the Israelites. God had 1) brought them out of slavery in Egypt, 2) led them through a vast and dreadful wilderness, 3) protected them from venomous snakes and scorpions, 4) gave them water to drink from a rock, and 5) provided them with food by giving them mana from heaven. God had done all of this to “to humble and test [them] so that in the end it might go well with [them].” As I said before, God was working for their good, to bless them and not to curse them. God wanted them to be humble and simply remember what he had done for them. Yet God knew the tendency of sinful man. Look at verse 17. “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’” Sinful man, always thinks that they are capable of doing something on their own, but in reality they are not capable of this at all. God had been training the Israelites for forty years, trying to teach them that everything comes from God. God rescued them, guided them, protected them and gave them food and water every day, and yet he knew that when they found rest, good food, wealth and were satisfied, they would quickly forget about Him and think that they had done it all on their own. Their problem was that they didn’t learn verse 18 from their training. “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 ancestors, as it is today.” The key to this verse is that it is God who provides us with the ability to do anything. This is a concept that most people today refuse to accept. As a people we are being overrun by our sinful human pride. We look around at all the wonderful things we have invented that make life so enjoyable and easy: things like, cell phones, cars, airplanes, movies, beautiful homes and apartments, big screen TVs, golf courses, etc. Then we think that we have accomplished all this on our own. However, that is not the case at all. It is all a result of the one-sided grace of our God. He is the one who has given mankind the ability to understand the world that we live in so that we can make all those things. More than that, it is God and God alone who created the universe in such a way that we can understand it and have the materials to build these things. People forget all about the creation and simply marvel at the things they have made. It is a form of idolatry and it all springs from pride. We must remember that everything comes from God. Even the rain that grows the crops that we depend on for food is God’s great gift of common grace to all people. Do you realize that God has even provided us with a way to thank Him and remember Him at least two or three times every day? I’ll bet each of you eats two to three meals every day. Well each of those meals is God’s gift to you and it is a reason to remember Him and thank Him for what he has provided. We must never forget that we can do nothing on our own. Every ability that we have been given to do anything has been given to us by God. We should always remember Him and be thankful to Him for providing us with whatever ability we have. This chapter ends with a very strict warning not to forget the Lord. Look at verses 19-20. “If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God.” The consequences of forgetting the Lord are most severe. In fact, this is a matter of life and death and it must be at the forefront of our hearts and minds at all times. Today we thought about why God trained the Israelites for forty years in the desert. It was so that they would carefully observe His commands and walk before Him in reverent obedience. It was also to humble them and help them to remember that every blessing comes from God. Ultimately, God wanted to bless them, but He did not want them to become proud and forget that every good blessing comes from the Lord. May God help us to remember Him always and remain thankful to Him at all times, especially when we are living under His blessing. |
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