Today’s reading: Deuteronomy 8; Revelation 8
First off, can I just say how satisfying it is to me whenever I am on a reading plan and the chapter numbers I am reading line up with one another??? It’s not quite as satisfying as when the chapter numbers line up with one another and with the day number, but that generally only happens for a bit when you start a new plan in January and you get that sweet sweet couple weeks of reading chapter 1 on January 1st, chapter 2 on January 2nd, and so on until the inevitable, sad day when you have to read two chapters from the same book in a day and your plan just might as well be over for all the joy that is lost that day… Anybody else? Or is this just a me thing…?
Anyway, on to Deuteronomy 8!
Moses’ warning not to forget the Lord once they are rich and satisfied is always an important and timely reminder. On the one hand, some of what Moses is talking about is very specific to Israel and would be a mistake for us to read as though everything true of, or promised to, Israel, equally applies to us. But on the other hand, we can certainly draw parallels and application from their circumstances even if we are not under the same promises.
This whole warning is couched in where God has brought them from and the covenant He made with their fathers. The reason Moses is warning them about a future time when they are settled, well off, satisfied, and secure is that God has promised these things to them. God is taking them to this land and has promised to grow, protect, and prosper them in the land, so long as they remain loyal to Him, and so Moses is looking forward to the day when these promises all come to pass as he lays out this warning for Israel. So Moses calls them to remember, on that day, where they came from and all that God has done to bring them out from slavery and to bring them into that rich land, and also to remember that He Himself declared that He would give them all of these good things. This collective memory is intended to protect them, both individually and as a nation, from forgetting God in their richness and satisfaction, and thinking they have accomplished these things for themselves rather than remaining grateful and loyal to the One who has given them everything. This culminates with the warning that if they do forget that it was God who gave them these things and turn to the gods of the nations instead, all their wealth and satisfaction will melt away as God destroys them from the land just as He did the peoples before them.
Now, before we talk about how we can be taking this warning to heart, it’s worth pointing out what should be very obvious, that we are not Israel. And even if someone reading this is an Israelite, you are not an Israelite on the verge of entering the promised land and acquiring these promises. God nowhere promises to prosper every Christian. Nor does He promise that He will ensure things go well for us. Paul tells us in Romans 8 that God will work all things for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, but that is very different from God making all good things happen to His people. It is in the context of “the sufferings of this present time” that Paul makes this statement, so he is necessarily not saying God will guard us from bad things. Paul is saying there that God will use all things, good and bad alike, for ultimate good in the lives of His faithful people. But that is the closest we come, as Christians today, to the promises of goodness, richness, and prosperity that God makes to Israel entering the promised land. We also have not been rescued from Egypt, fed manna in the wilderness, etc., so we don’t have the same things to look back on as Moses is calling the Israelites to remember.
But with that said, there is still a really important reminder for us in this. It is so much easier to see our need for God and to recognize His hand and provision in our lives when we are suffering or in need, but then, just as Moses warns the Israelites about, it is easy to forget that need and stop looking for and recognizing His hand and provision when we are comfortable and content.
There are two things that stuck out to me from this this morning. The first is that we all need the same kind of backlog with the Lord that Moses is pointing Israel to, and then we need to actively cultivate and maintain that backlog. If you have a relationship with the Lord through Jesus, God has been at work in your life in ways that you can look back on and see. Some of us might recognize more of His hand in our lives, and others less, but all of us can look back on the God who has drawn us to Himself and praise Him with grateful hearts for taking the initiative and adopting such an unworthy sinner into His family. And then no matter how well or poorly things might be going for us at any given point in time, we need to hold tightly to that backlog to remind us of the goodness, kindness, and love of our God, even if we are struggling to see it in that moment.
The second thing that struck me this morning is that everything we have is from God. Even though we are not Israel, and God has not promised to prosper us, the fact of the matter is that whatever we do have, whether much or little, is from God. No matter how much we want to claim it as the result of our own hard work and perseverance, He is the one who created us and enabled us to have the very work ethic we are leaning on. All of it ultimately comes from God, and that means a couple things. It means, on the one hand, that we, like the Israelites, should not get haughty, thinking we have accomplished it all on our own, and forget the God who personally knit each one of us together. But it also means, on the other hand, that what we do have is not our own, but is a stewardship from the Lord, and we need to view and use it accordingly. Quite to the contrary of growing satisfied and haughty in our abundance, we should be humbled by the Lord’s blessing and ask what it is that he has given it to us for in the advancement of His purposes and His kingdom.
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