Introduction
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other 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 hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. (A. Lincoln, Proclamation of a day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer, 1863.)
This is the attitude of humanism. This attitude relegates God to a place of unimportance in our lives. Its philosophy is, “I have done great things today. I will do greater things tomorrow.” Such an attitude of pride calls for repentance.
This is what we will see today in the text of Deut. 8:6-20. In this section we see God speaking to the nation of Israel. He has just given them the greatest commandment (Deut 6:4-5 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” )
He had just said they were a chosen nation not because of anything they had done but because He loved them and that He is a God who keeps what He says He will do. (Deut. 7:7-9 “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,”)
Now in this chapter we see God saying that they are to keep the whole commandment that He commands them. They are to remember the whole way of the Lord how He led them for the last forty years in the wilderness wanderings. This humbled them and tested them.
He let them suffer in hunger to humble them and make them totally reliant on Him alone. He gave them manna from heaven so they would know that all they received is from God alone and that one lives by what He does and says.
Their clothing did not wear out. Their feet did not swell and become crippled. God did all this to show them His power and show them that He will discipline all who are His if they do wrong.
They wandered for forty years because they disobeyed Him when He had them set to go in and take the land. The 10 spies gave a bad report and they turned and rebelled. God punished them for this but now He is about to send them into the land.
What is being said here is that When you are blessed and full do not forget that GOD DID IT, NOT YOU.
We must not let the gratitude fade out and replace it with a self-lauding, self-congratulatory, or self-righteous mindset. We must always remember that God Brings Us In, Every Blessing is His Blessing, and that He Will Discipline all who are His.
Let us now read God’s Holy Inspired Word. Deut. 8:6-20 will be the text today.
What we see in this text is three sets of Remember commands from God.
The first is:
Remember: God Gave it to You (6-10)
We see in these verses the way to remember who gives the blessings. God says to the Israelites that they “shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God.”
If we continually live our lives in a way that remembers and honors God and His commands, we will not forget the blessings and what He has given us.
Look at all the amazing blessings that He gave the Israelites.
A land with plenty water, plenty of crops, a land where they will lack nothing.
They will eat and be full and because of this they are to bless the Lord.
Many may be thinking that this is easy. When we have plenty we are in joy and comfort and it is easy to bless and praise the Lord.
Yet, this is not correct. When we are in comfort and ease and plenty, is when we will forget God and think we have accomplished all that we have.
This is just like the quote from Abraham Lincoln I started with today. “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven…But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us.”
This is what prosperity does to us. We forget that God did it, not us. God gave and blessed us with what we have. We may have worked hard and earned it but God gave us the ability to do so.
We are much like some horses I have had.
They were good horses while they were being worked. They would do everything I asked and needed without any issue. I would not have to do much to remind them or to encourage them, they knew what to do and did it.
But, then they would get turned out for a while to rest and get fattened back up, a reward for their hard work. They would get fat and slick and looking good. Then I would get them back to go back to work.
Well, they had grown independent in their time in the good land. They would not want to work, they would not want to come in to be caught, they would act stupid saddling, they would run backwards when trying to load them in a trailer, and some would try and kill me once on their back.
They did not handle prosperity well. They forgot who provided that prosperity. They forgot whose they were. They had quit walking in my ways and became independent minded.
You see, they had decided that the carefree life was theirs and not a reward to them. They had decided that it was all about them and nothing else.
This is what God is warning against in these verses. He is saying to keep what He commanded and walk in His ways because He is who gave them what they were getting.
It is not them or anything they did, but it is all God who did it.
That is why in verse ten He says “you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.”
Shall bless the Lord. When we do that in all we have always for all we have we will:
Remember: God in Your Fullness(11-16)
When all is good is when many forget the goodness of God. They will call to Him and desire Him in everything when times are hard, but when good, they soon forget.
We all do this and that is why God said here “Take care lest you forget.” “Lest when you get full…and when your herds and flocks are multiplied…then your heart will be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God.”
In 15-16 He goes through the hard times He led them through. How he carried them. Just like He did in Deut. 7:7-9 “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,”
And in Deut. 8:3-4.
He did the work. He carried them through and placed them where they are at.
We see in these verses some interesting things too.
He carried them through the wilderness. This wild and scary land of the unknown. God moved them through it with ease. He protected them in it. He sheltered them in it. He parted the Red Sea for them to cross and collapsed it on the Egyptians.
He took care of them when the fiery serpents came for their own sins and wickedness. Num. 21:5-9 tells the story of them challenging Him and Moses. Blaming them for bringing them into the wilderness to die. These serpents came and many died but when they cried out, God made a way for them to live and get free from death and suffering. We read in verse 7-9, “So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”
God cared for them immensely during their wilderness wanderings. He made water from a rock for them so they could live. He did many mighty miracles for them, yet He still knew they needed to continue in what He taught them lest they forget.
Who, then, are we to say we will not forget in our abundance? Who are we to say we have the whole Bible to read and let us know and we will not forget?
These people saw miracle after miracle and they forgot over and over again when they were still in the struggle. What would make them any different then in the good?
The answer is nothing. They would get fat and full, which is exactly what we see happen to them, and forget God.
That is the same thing that will happen to us if we do not continually thank God for everything. And thank Him all the time, especially when we are doing good.
If we do not continually seek Him and praise Him and thank Him for everything, then we may very well fall just like the Israelites did then. I say this because we know they went through many stages of self-reliance and failures only to have good when they relied on God alone and praised Him alone.
Let us take as a case study America.
We have been tremendously blessed. We have great wealth and power. We have had much prosperity.
Yet, America is getting more ungodly every day. We have turned our back on God in many areas. Even so far as to make up nonsense such as separation of church and state. We have removed God from everything and have begun to condemn God in many areas.
America has gotten fat and slick like my horses I spoke of. America has forgotten that God is supreme and it is because of Him why we have anything at all.
Let us not forget that just because we may be doing good too. We need to stay reliant on God in all things lest we forget.
We need to also:
Remember: God Will Discipline (17-20)
This final remember in this chapter is a stern one and one that should sober all of us.
It is seen clearly in verse 19, “if you forget your God and go after other Gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.”
He goes on to say like the other nations that He made to perish before them. The Lord destroyed many other nations before the Israelites and He is saying He will do likewise to them for their forgetting that their power and might and blessings were from God alone.
We have seen this in many different areas in Scripture.
We see it keenly with Nebuchadnezzar in Dan. 4:29-33 he had a dream about a tree being chopped down and a metal ring placed around it. He saw this and wondered about what it meant. Daniel told him that the tree with all the animals hiding in it was him. But the cutting down and the banding it and him having his portion with the wild beasts for seven periods was for him if he did not break from unrighteousness.
He did for a time but his prosperity got him again and he bragged saying “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?”
He then received exactly what Daniel said he would as the text tells us, “While the words were still in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, “O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.”
And this was right then, “Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.”
He had been warned about his arrogance going before Him and not being thankful. He took it all as His accomplishments. He was brought low for that.
Why do we think we would be any different? Why would we think we could get away with something like this too?
We cannot. We need to always remember no matter how big or powerful we are that we need to thank God for everything always. We need to give Him glory in all things. We need to remember Him in everything we do because without Him we do nothing.
We need to heed the four warnings we see in these verses.
- We need to be aware of our thoughts and watch out for ourselves saying our blessings are because of us or what we do or have done.
- Warned to remember it is God who has given us what we have. We need to bless Him always for these gifts.
- Warned that if we fail to honor God we will seek out other gods and worship them (i.e., ourselves, money, fame, power, or any number of other gods).
- The final warning is that if we fail to heed these the Lord will discipline those who become dependent on themselves as the source of their own blessings and begin to worship those gods.
God has warned us, let us always remember who blessed us and continues to bless us.
Let us never grow to full that we turn away from Him and turn to ourselves or false gods.
Let us never forget that GOD DID IT, NOT YOU. Let us never have the Great Gratitude Fade Out.
Conclusion
Sometimes we as Christians need to stop along life’s road and look back. Although it might have been winding and steep, we can see how God directed us by His faithfulness. Here’s how F.E. Marsh described what the Christian can see when he looks back:
The deliverances the Lord has wrought (Deut. 5:15).
The way He has led (Deut. 8:2)
The blessings He has bestowed (Deut. 32:7-12).
The victories He has won (Deut. 11:2-7).
The encouragements He has given (Josh. 23:14).
When we face difficulties, we sometimes forget God’s past faithfulness. We see only the detours and the dangerous path. But look back and you will also see the joy of victory, the challenge of the climb, and the presence of your traveling Companion who has promised never to leave you nor forsake you.
Just as we do this in difficulties, we need to do the same in abundance.
We should always be looking at God and what He has done or is doing for us. Let us always give Him thanks for what He does for us. We are never doing too good to thank God nor are we ever too far down not to thank God for His love and mercy. Always give all glory and honor to God in all thanksgiving and praise.
