“1 Be careful to obey every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the Lord promised on oath to your forefathers. 2 Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands. 3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers 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. 4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.
6 Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in His ways and revering Him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills; 8 a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; 9 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.
10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land He has given you. 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. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 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. 15 He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you. 17 You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 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.
19 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. 20 Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God.”
“I would rather be in hell with Christ than in heaven without him,” said Martin Luther. “I would rather be in hell with Christ than in heaven without him.” Now Luther didn’t say that because he was confused about heaven and hell. He was making a point about relative value; Jesus is better than all the gifts Jesus can give. You can understand all the gifts that Jesus can give as heaven, Jesus is better than that. In fact, he is so superior that he outweighs the sorrow of hell. “I would rather be in hell with Christ than in heaven without him.”
Luther was calling us to love God more than we love the gifts of God. That is a necessary word because God gives very good gifts. His gifts are so good that we are tempted to value His gifts above Him.
Perhaps God has brought you here this morning to recognize that you have grown to love His gifts more than you love Him. You would hate to be separated from the good things in life, which makes sense, but perhaps you would rather be separated from God than these good things in life? In other words, you would be more content with being disobedient than you would be with being disadvantaged?
If so, you need to know that if God’s gifts cause you to forget God, you will have neither. If you love God’s gifts more than God, you will lose His gifts and you will be without hope and without God. If God’s gifts cause you to forget God, you will have neither. That is the claim of this sermon.
We see this in three points. First: prior training. Second: the danger of plenty. Third: what’s the worst that could happen? First, in verses 1-5, we see the prior training of the wilderness. Second, in verses 6-18, we see the danger of plenty in the Promised Land. Third, in verses 19-20, we see the worst that can happen when people forget God.
First: prior training. Moses spoke these words of Deuteronomy to people whose lives were about to change in a rather dramatic fashion. They were moving from the wilderness into the Promised Land. In the wilderness there was little food or water; in fact, much of what they did have they received miraculously. By contrast the Promised Land was described as, “a land flowing with milk and honey.” It was a place of plenty. The wilderness was notable for its scarcity. The Promised Land was notable for its plenty.
Human nature says that moving from scarcity to plenty is a good thing and so it is, but what human nature doesn’t see is that moving from scarcity to plenty is also dangerous. When we humans have more than enough, we are quick to forget God. God used the wilderness to train Israel not to forget Him. He used the wilderness to train Israel to remember. Verse 2, “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands.”
In the wilderness, God put His people in situations in which they needed to trust and obey Him to live. He wanted them to learn that lesson because when they entered the Promised Land, even though they would have more than enough, they would still need to trust and obey Him to live. You see that in verse 3, “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers 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.”
The fact that a man could not live by bread alone was obvious in the wilderness because there wasn’t enough bread. It would still be true that man could not live by bread alone once they were in the Promised Land, but it wouldn’t be obvious anymore because there was bread everywhere. The people would need to make it a point to remember that, “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
You might need to remember. Perhaps life is quite good for you right now and you have forgotten how desperately you need God. Perhaps you have begun to think that your salary or your savings will take care of you. Perhaps you have begun to think that you can take care of yourself. If that is the case, recognize that you need God far more than you understand. You need Him just as much as Israel needed Him to give manna every day in the wilderness.
Jesus recognized that. When, after forty days of fasting, he was given a choice between bread from Satan and trusting and obeying God, Jesus choose to trust and obey. He knew that He needed what God could do for him more than what that bread could do for him. Jesus wasn’t ignorant of what bread could do for him. His stomach was as human as yours. He was simply aware of how much more God could do for Him. What you, like Jesus, need most in every situation is to trust and obey the Father.
God taught Israel that lesson in the wilderness. He taught them as an act of discipline. Verse 5, “Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.” Now there is clearly an element of training in the word ‘discipline’; we still use it that way when we refer to self-discipline. I’ll be taking young men through the book Disciplines of a Godly Mansoon enough.
Discipline is about training. There is also clearly an element of love in Moses’ use of the word “discipline” because he compares it to a father-son relationship. There is, however, an element of consequences for sin in this discipline Moses had in mind in verse 5. Israel wandered in the wilderness to begin with because of their sin. They had refused to obey. They were given an opportunity to enter the Promised Land and they refused to obey because they thought they would die at the hands of their enemies. God kept them in the wilderness to teach them that obedience wouldn’t kill them; disobedience would kill them.
I don’t know about you, but I know that I am still learning that lesson. Sometimes I am afraid of obedience; I should be afraid of disobedience. After all the wage which sin pays is death. That was obvious in the wilderness. It would not be so obvious in the Promised Land. The question for you in this moment is, ‘is it obvious to you?’
Disobedience is dangerous. God uses discipline to teach us that lesson. Note the grace of God here; rather than mere punishment, God uses the consequences of our sin to train us. Hebrews puts it this way, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” If you are undergoing discipline from God for some sin this morning, please understand it the way He intends it. He is taking the consequence and using it as training.
God was training the Israelites so that they could enjoy the land. He wanted them to enjoy the abundance of the land while still living by trust in Him alone. We see that in our second point: the danger of plenty.
Now all the good things which we are about to study in the Promised Land were very good. The abundance would be a temptation but that doesn’t mean that abundance isn’t good. You can turn any gift of God into a temptation so if your goal is to avoid anything that might prove to be a temptation, you will become a rather sour person. God gave good gifts to be enjoyed. The gifts are not the problem. Sin is the problem.
God brought Israel into the Promised Land so they might enjoy it. Joy in something good is never the problem; the problem arises when you enjoy what is good and forget God. When life is good, you need to remember that God is better.
The fact that God gives the good things of this life should motivate a man to love Him. Verse 6, “Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in His ways and revering Him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land.”
You can respond to God’s good gifts by enjoying them and forgetting God or you can respond to God’s good gifts by enjoying them and obeying God, or as Deuteronomy puts it, “loving the Lord with all your heart, soul, and strength”. Think of just one thing you enjoy in this life. Maybe it is the feel of the breeze on your face on your boat. Maybe it is harvest time. Maybe it is ice cream. I hope that good gift – at some point – motivated you to love God with all you are.
Let’s look at this good land to see why goodness should motivate love. Moses began by describing the Promised Land in terms of water – “a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills.” Water was scarce in the wilderness. It was, and, of course, is, also absolutely necessary for survival. Something that is absolutely necessary and quite scarce becomes quite valuable.
Now God was about to provide His people with something absolutely necessary for life and He was about to provide it in abundance. Each drink was to motivate love for God. Each field irrigated was to motivate love for God. Israel marveled when God brought water out of a rock in the wilderness; they would have been wise to marvel daily at the water in the Promised Land. In the same way, you don’t need a miracle to motivate you to love God. The water you drank this morning is motivation enough.
Moses continued to speak about the abundance of the land in terms of food. He spoke of, “wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey.” Now the very fact that, that list might not seem impressive to you is a sign of how very blessed you are. I dare say that you have far more than, “wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey” in your house right now, which means that you should be even more motivated to love God than that first generation in the Promised Land.
The food to be enjoyed in the Promised Land was startling to the Israelites who had eaten only manna and quail for decades. The food which is available to you in America in 2019 would be staggering to them. Look at these pictures on the screen. This is Boris Yeltsin, the then leader of the USSR, touring a supermarket in Texas. He told the Russians who were with him, ‘if their people, who often must wait in line for food, saw this, “there would be a revolution.”’ That food was staggering to those Russians. It was enough to make them love capitalism and in fact Yeltsin brought about economic changes in the USSR. The abundant food in the supermarket was a motivation to love capitalism. The abundant food of the Promised Land should have been more than enough to motivate Israel love God. The abundance that you enjoy should be well more than enough to motivate you to love God.
That list of food contained more than merely food. There were also other necessities and luxuries. Olive oil was useful, according to one commentator, for, “cooking, lighting, ointments, perfumes, cosmetics, and lubrication.”
God cares about such things. God cares about you and I having what we need for life, and He enjoys giving us more than we need. Don’t fall into the foul trap of thinking that God is less generous than you would be if you were Him. Jesus knows your heart and he knows God’s heart and this is was his comparison when it comes to generosity, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him.” The most generous person you know is a miser compared with Jesus’ Father.
The Promised Land was a place of abundance. In many ways, it was a return to Eden. They were both well-watered, which was rare in that locale. They were both supplied with more than enough food. Moses made clear that they were both teeming with precious metals. The new creation is described much the same way. Like Eden, the Promised Land and the new creation are environments of tangible generosity in which everything God’s children saw should serve as a motivation for gratitude and obedience. We look back on Eden and ask, ‘why did Adam ever disobey?’ We look back on the Promised Land and ask, ‘why did Israel ever disobey?’ You are to look at God’s generosity in your life and ask, ‘why do I ever disobey?’ You are to look forward to the new creation and ask, ‘why do I ever disobey?’ Verse 10 is the proper response to plenty. “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land He has given you.” God’s generosity should motivate love for God.
God’s generosity is most clearly seen in His Son. Paul hit the nail on the head saying, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will He not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” If God gave the greater gift, He will certainly give the lesser gift. The Promised Land is a rather small gift compared with Jesus. Having all things is a rather small gift compared with having Jesus. If you have Jesus, you know the generosity of God and that should motivate love on your part.
That, however, is not the only response to God’s generosity. Adam and Eve responded differently to the generosity of Eden. Moses warned Israel against responding differently to the generosity of the Promised Land. Look at verse 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. 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, 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.”
It seems that the only way to enjoy God’s gifts without becoming ungrateful is by obedience to God. It is obviously true that obedience flows out of gratitude, but Moses seems to be saying that gratitude also flows out of obedience. There is something about keeping God’s commandments that enables you to see how much God has given to you. In other words, there is something about refusing to steal that makes you grateful for what you do have. There is something about refusing to lie that makes you thankful for the truth. There is something about obedience to God that makes you thankful for God’s gifts.
The best way for you to prize God over His gifts is to obey God. The best way for Israel to prize God above everything in the Promised Land was to obey God. That’s not how we tend to think about it. We tend to think that the best way to prize God above His gifts is to reduce our joy in His gifts. Some Christians go so far as to seem almost ashamed to enjoy anything lest they prize it above God. The best way for you to prize God over vacations is not to feel bad about vacations. The best way for you to prize God over vacations is to obey God. The best way for you to prize God over your boyfriend is not to pretend your boyfriend isn’t awesome; the best way for you to prize God above your boyfriend is to obey God. Your obedience both displays and preserves the priority you put on God.
When, by contrast, you prize God’s gifts about God, you do so because your heart has grown proud. You see this proud heart in verse 14, “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.” It seems that a man can grow proud as a result of grace. The Israelites would eat food from fields they did not work. They would drink wine from vineyards they did not plant, and their hearts would grow proud. They would receive gift after gift from God and their hearts would grow proud as if they earned it and could control it. The human heart is so deceitful that it can grow proud as a result of receiving grace.
Moses wanted to make clear that having more than enough can be a very dangerous thing. Remember where you live and hear that again: having more than enough can be a very dangerous thing. You live in a land of affluence. You live in a land of affluence that has, by and large, forgotten the Lord. There are few more pointed words to our culture than the following, ‘You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth.’
You live in a culture in which, by and large, the population loves the gifts and gives scant obedience to the Giver. You live in a land in which most people would far rather live in heaven without Christ than in hell with him. The ingratitude which Moses warned against is as normal in this culture as water is to a fish. Forgetting God while loving His gifts has become normal. That is very dangerous. We see that in our last point: what’s the worst that could happen?
Most people don’t seem to think that forgetting God while enjoying His gifts is all that terrible of a thing to do. People rarely think that anything common is a terrible thing to do. It didn’t seem that people would think it was all that terrible of a thing to do in the Promised Land and so Moses said, “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 worst that can happen if a man forgets God while enjoying His gifts is that, that man will wind up with neither God nor His gifts. In fact, that is what will certainly happen if a man forgets God while enjoying His gifts.
God had given Israel a clear picture of this in the conquest of the Promised Land. They had witnessed the destruction of people who refused to obey the Lord. Those people had enjoyed God’s gifts, but they felt no obligation to the Giver. If Israel did the same, they would lose not only the land, but they would lose God Himself. CS Lewis put it this way, “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”
It is possible that someone in this sanctuary will receive neither heaven nor earth unless a change is made. It is possible that someone listening will receive neither God nor His gifts unless a change is made. You might be forgetting God even as you enjoy His gifts for this brief season. Be sensible. If a man told you that he preferred your gifts to you, you would be offended. Your preference for God’s gifts above Him is offensive to Him. If you keep living this way, you will receive nothing. You won’t have heaven without Jesus. You will have hell, full stop. You will have neither God nor the gifts of God.
God warns you to avoid such an end. This Scripture is proof. The warning at the end of this chapter is not a sign that God wanted or wants anyone to perish. It should be clear that this warning is given for the purpose of preventing harm not causing harm.
God gave this warning because He wants you to enjoy good things. This passage is filled with good things, but the best of them all is God. Jesus makes that clear. It stands to reason that the message brought by Jesus would be the most important message there could ever be. Jesus didn’t come to make any of the gifts of God known, as spectacular as they are; he came to make God known.
If you prized God the way Jesus prized God, you would live like Jesus. Sin found no root in Jesus’ heart, in part, because he found the Father supremely worthy. Jesus enjoyed the good gifts of this life, but he never thought that any of them could compare with his Father and so he never chose anything over his Father. Living like Jesus involves valuing like Jesus. Value God above His gifts. Know that the man in hell with Jesus, so to speak, is far more satisfied than the man in heaven without him. Know that in reality the man in heaven is the most satisfied not because he has heaven but because he has Jesus. Amen.