“10 When the Lord your God brings you into the land He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, 12 be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
13 Fear the Lord your God, serve Him only and take your oaths in his name. 14 Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; 15 for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and His anger will burn against you, and He will destroy you from the face of the land. 16 Do not test the Lord your God as you did at Massah. 17 Be sure to keep the commands of the Lord your God and the stipulations and decrees He has given you. 18 Do what is right and good in the Lord’s sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land that the Lord promised on oath to your forefathers, 19 thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the Lord said.”
Are you thankful this morning? Maybe thanksgiving comes easy to you today. Maybe you felt the truth of Psalm 100 when you came through those doors, “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name for the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness to all generations.”
Maybe you are currently sensing the truth of that; maybe not. Maybe this morning finds you rather unthankful—unthankful on Thanksgiving. This might be your worst Thanksgiving to date. Maybe you’ve got a family crisis. Maybe you are anxious about the future of this nation and the sort of world your kids of grandkids will live in. Maybe you’ve had more than enough of this pandemic. Maybe you see absolutely no reasons for thanksgiving today, but you can’t avoid thinking about giving thanks because it’s Thanksgiving. It’s hard to sing Thanksgiving hymns when you’re not thankful. Maybe these words stuck in your throat a few minutes ago, “Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices, Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices; Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today”—sentimental shlock.
If so, some background on that hymn might help you. It might help you rethink Thanksgiving. That hymn was written during a pandemic. It was written during the black plague of the 17th century. It was written by a German minister named Martin Rinkaart. Not only was Germany in the midst of a plague, it was also smack dab in the middle of the thirty years war. That’s one of the reasons I had the 1863 Civil War Thanksgiving Proclamations read—that was smack dab in the middle of our Civil War. Now the thirty year war and black war and plague were so atrocious that the German population dropped by almost two-thirds, from sixteen million to six million. 2020 has been rough but the American population hasn’t dropped from 330 million to 110 million. Every family in Germany was doubtlessly affected multiple times over. They had funeral after funeral—big caskets and little ones. Rinkaart was the only minister left alive in his city to care for all the bereaved, sick, and dying. That was the situation in which Rinkaart wrote, “O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us, with ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us, to keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed, and free us from all ills of this world in the next.”
This isn’t a hymn of thanksgiving that only works in sunshine and happiness. This is a hymn of thanksgiving that works in sorrow. Rinkaart didn’t write it because he enjoyed that season of his life. He wrote it because he had a bigger picture of God than we often do. Rinkaart remembered God, and remembering God is essential for thanksgiving. That’s the claim of this sermon: remembering God is essential for thanksgiving.
We will see this in three points. First: don’t forget God. Second: a warning from God. Third: a promise from God. We see the call not to forget God in verses 10-12. We see a warning from God in verses 13-16. We see a promise from God in verses 17-19.
First: don’t forget God. Our passage from Deuteronomy follows on the heels of one of the best-known and best-loved passages of the Old Testament. This is the one that parents would and should teach their children. “Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” This is a thoroughly God-centered manifesto for individuals, families and churches—every line of life is to connect back to God.
Rinkaart did that. He remembered God. We often forget God in the mix of life. We tend to think that remembering God in real time is extra-credit rather than absolutely essential. These words from Deuteronomy remind us to remember God. Moses spoke them because he knew how easy it was to forget God. He warned Israel not to forget God when life was good; verse 10, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”
If you want to remember God like Rinkaart, you need to remember Him when life is good too. Israel would come to enjoy blessing after blessing from God, but they wouldn’t see any reasons for thanksgiving. Plenty of full hearts are utterly thankless. Israel began to take what God gave them for granted, which should sound familiar to anyone who knows his own heart. They would begin to focus on what they lacked. Israel would try to satisfy these desires, or maybe they called them “needs” by way of other gods, or today you could use the words “goods and services” or “experiences”. That’s what it means to forget the Lord. It isn’t a failure of memory—“the Lord? I’ve never heard of Him”—Israel still knew about the Lord; they just forgot Him when it came to anything that mattered. Can you see yourself there? We know about the Lord, but how often we fail to remember Him in anything that matters.
Remembering the Lord is part of thanksgiving. Martin Rinkaart remembered in the midst of war and plague, “Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things has done.” Do you remember when life is good? If so, it is only because you are choosing to remember. You are choosing to remember that you, like Israel, live in a terrain of grace. You live amid good things you did not provide. Think of the greatest blessings in your life. You didn’t make your loved ones happen. You didn’t make what you cherish most, and if you did make what you cherish most you know that is a pretty sad state of affairs. The best parts of life are gifts and they come from God. Now that is true for every human alive, but as a disciple of Jesus, you actually know where those gifts come from. You know the Giver personally. You know him because of particular gifts that you enjoy. You have been reborn by His Spirit. You have been adopted into His family and are invited to His table, which is far more sumptuous than any Thanksgiving table. That is all grace. You added nothing to the process that made that happen other than your sin. It’s all grace. You need to choose to remember that like Israel had to choose to remember that when they came to inherit houses they didn’t build and fields they didn’t till. Your subconscious will never bubble that up. It has only ever bubbled up shame, self-accusation, and regret. You must choose to remember God. You must choose to remember the Giver. Rinkaart did that.
Moses told Israel to remember the Giver, “be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” Enjoy the gifts. Remember the Giver. Being thankful for family is right. Being thankful to God for His kindness in providing you a family is better. Being thankful for a job is right. Being thankful that God has given you a job by which you can do something useful is even better. Remembering gifts is good. Remembering the Giver is even better; it is essential. Failing to remember the Giver leads to trouble. That’s our second point: a warning from God.
A warning might seem misplaced on Thanksgiving Day. After all, holidays are happy days, right? Actually, holidays are holy days—that’s the etymology of the word. That makes a warning quite proper today. Failing to give thanks to God is dangerous. If you want to see the alternative to thanking God, look at verse 14, “Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you; for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and His anger will burn against you, and He will destroy you from the face of the land.”
Following other gods was the DNA of thanklessness. As we will see in Jeremiah in the new year, “My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken Me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” We are all satisfaction seekers. Either we will be satisfied by God and be thankful or we will follow after other gods because we are thankless and unsatisfied, to use the words of Deuteronomy, or we will follow after the ways of the world because we are thankless and unsatisfied, to use the words of the New Testament. Each of us is making a choice. Today, Thanksgiving Day, is a reminder to seek satisfaction in God and what He gives like Rinkaart did.
You can see what the alternative looks like in the book of Judges. Israel didn’t listen to Moses’ warning. They looked for satisfaction elsewhere. Life went very, very badly. You can look at the culture around us, which is very much like the book of Judges. Life is going very, very badly for these poor people.
That’s the story of sin. God warns us and when we ignore His warnings life goes very, very badly, and if you think your life couldn’t go worse, it certainly could. Life could always get worse. We will see that next Sunday evening in our study on hell. The prophets and apostles didn’t warn against sin because they were holier than thou. They didn’t warn against sin because they were judgmental. They warned against sin because they loved people and didn’t want life to go very, very badly for them.
If you are still confused about God’s warnings, please recognize that the same Father who gives these warnings also gave His Son. The Father of Jesus is the Father who warns. If you are thankful for Jesus, be thankful for the warnings too. They are designed to help you preserve for you what Jesus died to give you. The only answer is to hold on like Rinkaart; thank God for all you can. Rinkaart did that because he had a promise. That’s our final point: a promise from God. We just spent 22 weeks studying the promises. Here’s another one; verse 17, “Be sure to keep the commands of the Lord your God and the stipulations and decrees He has given you. Do what is right and good in the Lord’s sight, so that it may go well with you.”
Now we have the rest of Scripture to help us understand what, “Do what is right and good in the Lord’s sight, so that it may go well with you,” means. We have the rest of the verse to show us that in this context it referred to inheriting the land. We have Romans 8 to show us what it going well with us means that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ—including sickness, persecution, poverty, and death. Our assumptions about what life going well us means don’t help us Scripture helps us. Let’s take the clearest Scriptural example of what it means. Let’s take the life of Christ because no one better exemplifies what it means to, “do what is right and good in the Lord’s sight,” and therefore no life is better suited to help us understand what, “so that it may go well with you,” means.
So ask yourself, in what way did Jesus’ life go well for him? To cut to the heart of the matter for us—if the goal of life is to live the American dream, which we Americans tend to assume that it is, how well does it go for Jesus? Well, the Son of Man had no place to lay his head and his only belongings were divided by the government upon his death, so it’s safe to say, “not very well.” If you think Jesus is a special case, take a look at Paul or Peter or John or Moses or Jeremiah or Ruth or Mary. Perhaps we don’t have the best sense of, “Do what is right and good in the Lord’s sight, so that it may go well with you,” means because we have been formed by human stories rather than God’s story.
We were taught what it means. If you came when Deon Wynia spoke, you learned what it means. You learned that the goal of life is to trust God to work out our lives on His terms. You and I tend to want God to work out our lives on our terms. We insert obedience into the divine vending machine and receive life on our terms. Jesus wanted the Father to work out his life on His terms, “yet not my will, but Yours be done.” So, how did the Father work out Jesus’ life? If you are thinking death, you are not thinking far enough. “God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” You can’t see that’s where Jesus’ life was heading in Gethsemane. You can’t see that’s where Jesus’ life was heading at Golgotha. The Father did, and he was working out His Son’s life on His terms. You can’t see how God is working out your life on His terms right now. You are still in the middle of the story. You need to keep trusting that God meant what He said in Deuteronomy 6:18, “Do what is right and good in the Lord’s sight, so that it may go well with you.”
If you are a Christian, everything about your life hinges on the promises. If the promises fail, you are left with nothing. If the promises are kept, you have everything. Jesus is the proof that they will be kept, “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?” Now that is a little more uncomfortable than viewing God as a divine vending machine, but it is a little more uncomfortable because it requires faith, and we are all so good at avoiding faith, including, and perhaps especially, us religious people.
Faith is rarer than we would like to think. It is precious. You see it in action in the middle of a deadly war and plague in these words by Rinkaart, “Oh, may this bounteous God through all our life be near us, with ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us; and keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed; and free us from all ills of this world in the next!” That verse ends with the promise of the new creation—the Promised Land of verse 18 which we inherit if we trust and obey. Those lyrics are nothing but promises trusted.
Now maybe, like Rinkaart, that is all you have this thanksgiving. If so, be thankful for those. If you have more, be thankful for that too. Amen.