OK, we're in Deuteronomy chapter six, I'll just pick up reading in verse one. Now, this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, you and your son and your grandson all the days of your life and that your days may be prolonged. Therefore, hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you, a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
So it shall be when the Lord your God brings you into the land of which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. to give you large and beautiful cities, which you did not build houses full of all good things, which you did not fill you now wells, which you did not dig vineyards and olive trees, which you did not plant when you have eaten and are full. Then beware, lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. You shall fear the Lord your God and serve him and shall take oaths in his name. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you.
For the Lord, your God is a jealous God among you. Lest the anger of the Lord, your God, be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the earth. You shall not tempt the Lord, your God, as you tempted him in Massa. You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord, your God, his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you.
And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord. that it may be well with you and that you may go in and possess the good land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to cast out all your enemies from before you, as the Lord has spoken. When your son asked you in time to come, saying, What is the meaning of the testimonies, the statutes and the judgments which the Lord our God has commanded you? Then you shall say to your son, We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and wonders before our eyes, great and severe against Egypt, Pharaoh and all his household.
Then he brought us out from there that he might bring us in to give us the land of which he swore to our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord, our God, for our good, always that he might preserve us alive as it is this day. Then it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe All these commandments before the Lord, our God, as he has commanded us. Amen.
Introduction
In the last couple of weeks, we noticed the central confession of Israel's faith found in verse four hero, Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. And then in verses five to nine is the response to that confession. You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul. and with all your strength. You are to internalize it.
You are to delight in it. You're to diligently teach others. And it is to pervasively influence every area of community life, every area of family life, every area of individual life. You shall bind them.
Verse eight, there's a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. That highlights the individual responsibility. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house, the family responsibility and on your gate. Societally, the word of God was to influence the law of God was to be the foundation of Israel.
And so that is the Shema. the confession, the proper response. And now there are several warnings that God gives through Moses as they prepare to enter into the land. In fact, verses 10 to 25 are potential dangers and necessary precautions.
Three Dangers in the Land
There are three potential dangers that the children of Israel would need to be on guard against. And then there are necessary precautions, things that they were to implement, things that they were supposed to do so that they could successfully guard their hearts from falling prey to these dangers. Now, of course, we know as we go through history or as we begin to leave the book of Deuteronomy, we will see that they fell prey. They did fall into. these particular dangers.
So this isn't all just a bunch of hot air. God through Moses knows what God knows what's going to happen. He speaks to those issues to try and alert the people. So the potential dangers facing the covenant community in the land versus 10 to 16, as I mentioned, there are three.
And
Danger One: Forgetting God in Prosperity
the first is the danger of forgetting God because of prosperity. the danger of forgetting God because of prosperity. That's found in verses 10 to 13. Notice the promise is reiterated. So it shall be, verse 10, when the Lord your God brings you into the land of which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you this particular land.
That is very, very specific and conspicuous throughout the narrative. We are never to forget that this land acquisition was not because Israel worked hard for it. This land acquisition was not because Israel was the smartest nation on the face of the earth and figured how to get the people out of the land. This land acquisition was purely and completely according to the sovereign pleasure of God Almighty.
He made a covenant with Abraham He reconfirmed that promise, or he continued that promise along with Isaac and with Jacob, and now it has come to fruition. This whole system, this whole book, everything that we find here, which incidentally helps us with verse 25 as well, when they speak about their righteousness. We cannot minimize the reality that everything that is taking place is according to the gracious plan of Almighty God. The covenant promise of God is the foundation of Israel's redemption and their subsequent possession of the land.
So it was the Lord God Almighty who brought them out of the land of Egypt. It is the Lord God Almighty who has promised to give them the land of Canaan. And it is the Lord God Almighty who brings them into that place and conveys this benefit upon them. Notice he describes the land versus 10 B to 11.
And there's a parallel here tells us what it is and how they didn't achieve it. That's conspicuous. The author, God, ultimately through Moses, wants them to remember this was a gracious deposit on behalf of a gracious God. Large and beautiful cities which you did not build.
Houses full of good things which you did not fill. You know, Wells, which you did not dig vineyards and olive trees, which you did not plan. So you see, there is a conspicuous emphasis in here. It is God's grace that is responsible for their possessions.
It is not their hard work. It is not their ingenuity. It is not their military strategy. It is not their ability.
God has graciously given them these things. that are in the land. And this then highlights just how wicked the sin is. It highlights how grave and severe the sin is. God gives them these things.
God blesses them with large and beautiful cities, with houses full of good things, with hewn out wells and vineyards and olive trees. And instead of waking up every morning and thanking God for what they have, they come to the place where they actually forget God. They actually begin to think that they've acquired these things without the help, without the sovereignty, without the gracious deposit of God Almighty. Alan Harmon says they are reminded that their possession of the land and its contents was all of grace.
And the adjectives used large, flourishing, emphasize the bounty of God to his people. I mean, look at what they have inherited. Look at what they have received. Doesn't this underscore just how bad the sin is when they forget God?
It's akin to the Christian today who has been, by God's grace, called out of darkness into marvelous light. The Christian who has been washed in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Christian who then lives as a practical atheist. As if there is no God. As if God is not responsible for our salvation.
Forgetting the very God that brought us out of darkness. Forgetting the very God that blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Notice that he then highlights the potential for danger. You have your cities.
You have your houses. You have your hewn out wells. You have your vineyards and your olive trees. Now, notice the end of verse eleven when you have eaten and are full, which is God's intention.
He's not about, you know, minimizing the blessings God made man put him in a garden and told him he could freely eat of every tree in the garden, save the one God is not stingy. God is not Ebenezer Scrooge. God wants his people to eat. He supposes he he infers he realizes. that when they enter into the land and there is bounty and there is goodness that they will in fact eat and they will be full.
But here then comes the warning. When you have eaten and are full, then beware lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. This is one of the problems that prosperity can bring. We know we've seen this recently in our studies in the Sermon on the Mount.
But I know that we referred to Proverbs chapter 30, that great statement of Proverbs chapter 32 things I request of you. Deprive me not before I die. Remove falsehood and lies far from me. Give me or then give me neither poverty nor riches.
Feed me with the food allotted to me, lest I be full and deny you. Lest I be full and forget God. Lest I be full and just assume the reason I have bounty is because of my hard work, because of my ingenuity, because of my industry, because I live next to a Costco or a Walmart or a Superstore. We need to guard our hearts against falling prey to this particular temptation that would face Israel when they would enter into the promised land, and certainly must face us living in a land of prosperity.
I mean, we live better as middle-class people than the kings of the ages past, save the ones with all the gold and silver and all those sorts of things. Flushing toilets and running water and refrigeration and air conditioning and coffee makers and all those things are luxury items that the people in the past never, ever possess. And we would be fools to think that our prosperity does not dull us to the reality that we have a sovereign God who provides every last jot and tittle of those good things we possess. Beware, lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage.
Meredith Klein said this such. is human perversity that Israel, satisfied with the material plenty of a plundered culture, would be inclined to honor the vain claims of their victims' idols and to forget the claims of their own God who had saved them from Egypt and given victory in Canaan. just read that again. Such is human perversity that Israel satisfied with the material plenty. All of these cities, all of these houses, all of these, you know, wells, all of these vineyards and olive trees satisfied with that material plenty of a plundered culture. would be inclined to honor the vain claims of their victims' idols, the deities of the heathen, and to forget the claims of their own God who had saved them. Christopher Wright says, fullness, this is very Davis-ish, if I may add.
He says, fullness, or perhaps Davis is Wright-ish, Fullness can lead to forgetfulness, especially forgetfulness of where they came from and what Yahweh had rescued them from, the land of slavery. We need to be on guard that our fullness does not lead to forgetfulness. You see, the same sorts of dangers that confronted Israel as they entered into the promised land are the same sorts of dangers that confront the true Israel of God, the Church of Jesus Christ, when we live amongst plenty. There are all kinds of things vying for our attention.
It's not wrong to work hard. It's not wrong to make money. It's not wrong to do those lawful things God has called us to do. Do not leave here saying, oh, we've got to take a vow of poverty or a vow of celibacy or all those things that the monks do.
I'm not saying that at all, but I am suggesting that we need to be mindful of the potential danger that is there and take active steps to resist the temptation that affluence brings to the people of God in specifically North American culture. Remember, Paul writes to Timothy and he tells him how to instruct the rich in the church. He doesn't tell him, you know, Timothy, just tell everybody to get rid of everything they've got. Tell them to take a vow of poverty, to shave their heads, put on orange, you know, sheets and go bang tambourines at the airport.
That's not what he says. He tells him very specifically, verse 17 of first Timothy six, command those who are rich in this present age. I've always found this to be interesting as a sideline note. Command that.
Very often rich people are the leaders, rich people are the ones who command others. Paul tells Timothy, who probably didn't make near the money that these rich people made, you command them that this is the way they are to use God's money. You don't let them tell you what they're going to do in terms of this, that, and the other. Now, I'm not suggesting that the man of God is involved in everybody's details, but it's an intriguing use of the word.
Command those who are rich in this present age. Again, not get rid of it, not sell everything you have, not leave your house, but those who are rich in this present age, they're not to be haughty. Riches bring a haughtiness. An accomplished man, very often, Demonstrates his accomplishments.
We need to be mindful of that. And by the way, I don't think of anybody here picking on anybody here. I really am absolutely not. So don't get that in your mind.
Oh, he's got this worked in for me. No, it's in the text. I thought we should spend time here. So not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God.
There's that whole God and man thing. Right. Money has got me this house. Money has got me this car.
Money has got me. No, no, no. Wait a minute. Back it off.
Back it down and reflect upon reality. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. Everything belongs to God. What you possess is as a steward.
God has entrusted it to you. Never forget that we are prone to focus on the gift and forget the giver. Paul says, don't let them do that. Don't trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God who gives us richly all things to enjoy.
You see, he's even realizing you don't have these things so that you can grimace when you use them or or feel guilty. If God has prospered you and blessed you, it's not wrong to smile when you eat a good meal. It's not wrong to rejoice in the kindness of God. In fact, as we work our way through Deuteronomy, that's an indictment upon the people.
They will go into the land and they won't be thankful to God. They won't rejoice in God. He doesn't send you into this land with all this bounty and say, just go in there and be miserable. No, go in there and rejoice, eat to the glory of God, drink to the glory of God, enjoy things to the glory of God.
But the temptation is to forget the giver and focus on the gift. He gives us these things to enjoy. He then says in verse 18, let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come. that they may lay hold on eternal life. So there is a real life danger about with reference to forgetting God because of prosperity now built in right here in verse 13 is how we are to respond to this.
What is the proper response with reference to large and beautiful cities, to houses full of good things, to hewn out wells, to vineyards and olive trees? The proper response isn't, we're going to go back. We're going to leave the promised land. This is too nice, God.
We can't have this. I think I sometimes function that way. Maybe it was my Roman Catholic upbringing, but guilt played heavy in my upbringing. Everything.
I felt guilty about everything. There's a temptation and a tendency in some people to feel so guilty about stuff. I don't want to use it. That's not the instruction.
You're going to go to these cities. You're going to go to these houses. You're going to have these vineyards. You're going to have these olive trees.
The proper response is to fear God. When you go into that land of Canaan and you reap the benefit, you reap the bounty. Notice what verse 13 says. You shall fear the Lord your God.
When you go into that land and you are enjoying the blessings, you respond properly to the God of heaven and earth. You revere him. You honor him. You adore him.
You glorify him. You praise him. You acknowledge his handiwork. You acknowledge his kindness.
You acknowledge his mercy and his grace. You acknowledge your nothingness beforehand. You acknowledge the fact that everything you possess, everything that he has given, is by a gracious deposit from the hand of a merciful God. This is the way you were, the way Israel was supposed to respond when they found themselves in Canaan reaping the benefits of things that they had no part in building.
Notice not only fear Yahweh, but serve Yahweh, serve him. You think he gave you those cities and those houses so you could just sit back and forget him? No, he gave you those cities. He gave you those houses.
He gave you those wells. He gave you those vineyards and olive trees so you could serve God. And there's a sharp contrast here. There's a sharp contrast between 12 and 13.
Notice the end of 12. Lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. You shall fear the Lord your God and what serve him. Serve him.
The people went from slavery in Egypt to a new kind of slavery. The root word in 12 and 13 both is the same. The idea here is that they have transferred from the ownership of Egypt to the ownership of God most high. Craigie says both words are derived from the same route and contrast vividly the old and new masters of Israel.
You see, it's never a question of slavery versus non-slavery. It's always a question of whose slave will you be. And when God liberates them from Egypt, and puts them into the land of Canaan. They are to fear him.
They are to rightly think of God. They are to rightly relate to God, and they are to serve him. They are to be his vassals. They are to be his subordinates.
They are to be his loyal subjects. They are to use those benefits and those gifts that God has conferred upon them for the glory of God in the service of God. You see the beauty of this. He says, this is what you're getting.
This is how you may be tempted to react by forgetting God. But don't do that. Do just the opposite. Not only should you not fear God, beware lest you fear him, but rather you should fear him.
Rather, you should serve him and rather you should swear oaths in his name. That's the last part of verse 13. You shall take oaths in his name. Meredith Klein again said swearing by Yahweh's name was in effect a renewal of the oath of allegiance which ratified the covenant.
So every time you swore in the name of God. Now we're not talking about curse words. We're not talking about you hit your thumb with a hammer and you let fly. No, it means swearing oaths, lawful oaths as the Bible sets before us.
He says it was, in effect, a renewal of the oath of allegiance with which ratified the covenant. So when you go into that land, don't forget God. When you go into that land, fear God. When you go into that land, serve God.
And when you go into that land continually, when you're swearing oaths to this God or in the name of this God, what you are doing is ratifying or renewing or reviving within your own soul and mindset this covenant that you are in with the living God. It's a beautiful section. He doesn't say get rid of everything. Fill in the wells and start over again.
I mean, it's always amazed me, you know, the people that oppose sovereignty. How do you get past the fact that God took a people who no doubt worked hard? I mean, those canines, they were wicked, but they worked hard. They built cities.
They built houses. They dug out wells and they planted vineyards and all of trees. God then tells the people who are no more righteous. He tells the people who are not more numerous.
He tells the people that are not, you know, more in number to go in and take their land. That's what I'm giving to you. How do you not see sovereignty in that? How do you miss that if you're an opponent of sovereign grace?
God says to one people dispossess the land of that people. And I want you to take what they've built hard or they've built with their hard work. It's an amazing display of the sovereignty of God here. So that's the danger of forgetting God because of prosperity.
Danger Two: Forsaking God Through Idolatry
Notice secondly, verses 14 and 15. The danger of forsaking God because of idolatry. Notice in verse four, you shall not go after other gods, the gods of the people who are all around you. That is the command to avoid idolatry.
Now, again, this temptation would be real. The people of Israel are told to go in and dispossess the land. God knows good and well they're not going to dispossess the land. What happens when you don't dispossess the land?
Well, eventually you become friends with the people that you should have dispossessed. Unfortunately, eventually you start marrying people that are a part of the people that you should have dispossessed from the land. See, when you become their friends and when you become their husbands or their wives, it's not long before you're bowing with them to their God. You see, bad company does corrupt.
We need to guard our hearts. We need to make sure that we're not going after the other gods as well. They would live in neighborhoods. I don't know if they look like neighborhoods today, but they would see their neighbors praying to bail or praying to the other gods that they would get rain upon their crops.
Again, the tendency would be within the heart of depraved man that Calvin says the heart of man is an idle factory. When you see someone committing idolatry, hey, what are you doing there? Well, I'm praying to Baal because he's the storm god. And when we pray to him, he causes rain to fall upon our cross and we get a bounty.
You ought to try it. Well, the non-confessional Israelite, the one who is not living consistently, has not responded properly to the Shema. He hasn't taken heed to these particular warnings. What does he find?
He ends up finding himself bowing down, praying to Baal that Baal would rain on his crops. And then the neighbor says, oh, there's this other thing that we do in order to get Baal really to start raining on our crops. We have sex with other people because that's what primes the pump, so to speak, with reference to Baal. When he sees us doing these things, then he really goes into action.
That's how Baal worship functioned. It was sexual in nature, and the people would engage in sexual immorality such that they would hope Baal would reciprocate and bring blessing upon their crops. You see, there is a slippery slide or a slippery slope here. God says, do not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you.
The Israelites would fail to dispossess the land of Canaanites. They would befriend the Canaanites. They would eventually bow down with the Canaanites to the gods of the land. This is why later in Deuteronomy 12, there will be centralized worship. a central place for worship.
Why the people of God would have to go to the tabernacle and to the temple? It was to try and avoid and try and help prevent them from engaging in idolatry that would be the natural inclination and tendency. And then he gives the reason for the command. And this shouldn't surprise us if we've been reading Deuteronomy, we've already seen this in Deuteronomy 4.24 and in the second word in Deuteronomy 5.9.
Notice in verse 15, after the prohibition against idolatry in verse 14, there is the reason stated. Four, the Lord your God is a jealous God among you. The Lord your God is a jealous God among you. He's already stipulated that the Shaman necessitates that the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.
Remember, he's incomparable. He is unique, but as well, he is solitary. He is alone. He is singular.
There are no other gods. so that when we go after other gods, we provoke the jealousy of Yahweh. And we certainly don't want to do that, because notice what he goes on to say in verse 15. Lest the anger of the Lord your God be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the earth. I don't think this is expulsion from the land, though that would certainly happen.
He's talking about being destroyed from the face of the earth. We need to understand how idolatry provokes the Lord our God. I mentioned Deuteronomy 4.24. We can read that.
It says, For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. So, both concepts are present here in verse 15. He is jealous and he is a consuming fire, lest the anger of the Lord your God be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the earth. Again, the modern application of this is we need to guard ourselves against idols, whatever those idols might be.
Now, they could be legitimate things. Sometimes people take a good thing God has given and make an idol out of it. Right. What do you mean?
Yeah, we all know that, don't we? God gave good gifts, according to Paul in first Timothy six, that we should enjoy them. But rather, we become enslaved by them. And those things that are to be tools and resources and blessings and benefits to lead us to a deeper appreciation of our great God, to lead us to fear him and to serve him and to swear oaths in his name, are those things which ultimately become enslaving to us.
We need to guard our hearts against the idolatry of the land, of the peoples around us.
Danger Three: Testing God in Difficulty
And then the third. danger, the third potential danger facing the covenant community in the land is the danger of testing God because of difficulty. Verse 16. You shall not tempt the Lord your God as you tempted him in Massa. Now there's no paragraph break in the in between 16 and 17.
I think 17 goes with or summarizes the entirety. I think verse 16 stands alone. That's sort of my impression at this particular time. We'll just take up verse 16 here.
You shall not tempt the Lord your God as you tempted him in Massa. Remember who said this or who quoted this was Jesus. when he was being tempted in the wilderness by the devil. The testing here, the idea here, is test. I want to quote Christopher Wright again.
He says, the Hebrew word does not mean to tempt someone by trying to entice them to do what is wrong, but rather to test or prove whether someone will really do what they say. This is precisely the nuance of the people's challenge at Massah. You can go back there for just a moment, Exodus 17. This is what's in being referred to Exodus 17, beginning in verse one.
Then all the congregation of the children of Israel set out on their journey from the wilderness of sin, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped in Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore, the people contended with Moses and said, Give us water that we may drink. So Moses said to them, Why do you contend with me? Why do you tempt the Lord?
The people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, Why is it you have brought us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock, excuse me, with thirst? So Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, What shall I do with his people? They are almost ready to stone me. The Lord said to Moses, Go on before the people and take with you some of the elders of Israel.
Also take in your hand your rod with which you struck the river and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock in Horeb and you shall strike the rock and water will come out of it that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. So he called the name of the place Massa and Meribah because of the contention of the children of Israel and because they tempted the Lord, saying, is the Lord among us or not?
You see, that's the issue. Is the Lord among us or not?
The Sin of Testing God at Massah
Back to Deuteronomy six. Verse 16, You shall not tempt or test the Lord your God as you tempted him in Massa. Again, Christopher Wright says, This is precisely the nuance of the people's challenge at Massa. This God, Yahweh, can he do what he promised?
Is he really competent? Is he really with us? Such testing of Yahweh flows from a lack of belief in his words. and comes despite the fact that this people has witnessed God's previous faithfulness. This kind of hardship is commonly induced by need and hardship, and this warning comes.
I'm sorry, this kind of temptation is commonly induced by need and hardship, and this warning comes because life will not always be as idyllic and effortless as pictured in verse 11. So you see, there's going to be a day when you're large and beautiful cities have problems. Your house is full of good things run low. Your well's dry up and your vineyards and olive trees die.
What is going to be your response? Where is God? Where is the Lord? This is the sort of testing, the sort of tempting that they would be prone or they would be tempted or induced to engage in.
Do not tempt him or test him as you did in Massa. Don't question his veracity. Don't question his word. Do not question his covenant promises.
Do not question his faithfulness. When you go into the land, When there isn't great benefit, there isn't great plenty. You need to guard your heart against this temptation to to mumble, to grumble, to whine and to complain. Israel tested God at NASA in a time of hardship.
So you see, I think the new covenant or our sort of application to this don't tempt the Lord your God. As you tempted him in Massa, when trials come, when hardships come, when difficulties arise, do not immediately conclude. God has abandoned you. God has left you.
Or where is the Lord? Or can he handle these particular things? You need to be faithful. You need to be solid.
You need to be steady. Far too often, brethren, and I've seen this in my own life, I've seen it for 15 years pastoring people. I've seen it for 20 years as a Christian. We are governed by our emotions and governed by our circumstances.
God calls us to be governed by his word, not our emotions, not our circumstances, because our emotions and our circumstances go like this. When we're down, we have no thought of God. When we're up, he's our best friend. Governed by the word means we have a steady, constant dependence upon him.
We don't call him into question. We don't ask whether he's there or not. We know he's present. We know he's true.
We know as he has spoken according to his word. This is the temptation that they are being warned about. Do not tempt him, do not test him as you did at Massa. Is the Lord among us or not?
You see, built in to such a statement is that God is only there when it's good. That's that's wicked. Some people who go through trials and difficulties can testify on the other side, God was there in those trials and difficulties. We are not to judge the Lord by feeble sense.
We're not to say, well, as long as everything's going well, then I'm going to be God's. You know, I'm going to I'm going to be a fan of God. But as soon as those things dry up, soon as my well no longer gives me water, my vineyards no longer yield fruit. Soon as that happens, this is going to be my retort.
Is the Lord among us or not? Implicit is we'll only serve you, God, as long as you keep the gravy train flowing. Will only serve you, God, as long as my marriage is happy. I'll only serve you, God, as long as my children obey.
I'll only serve you, God, as long as my parents give me what I want. I'll only serve you, God, as long as I'm pleased with the church service. I'll only serve you, God, as long as my business prospers. But as soon as there's any trial or any difficulty, the temptation wells up, is the Lord among us or not?
That's wicked. He says, don't do that. Beware of this. This is a temptation.
This is a potential danger that you will face in the land. It will not always be this rosy environment. There will not always be happiness and joy on every front. There will be times of trial and difficulty.
How will you respond to that? See, what's so faulty about a health, wealth and prosperity gospel, what is so faulty about a gospel that is no gospel that promotes happiness before the glory of God, is that as soon as anything hard comes to a man or a woman who supposedly has faith in Jesus, they're shattered, they're gone, they're destroyed. We cannot do that. Just recently posted on our blog a quote from Machen that speaks to this.
Jay Gress of Machen, and I think he's spot on with this. He says, We value God solely for the things he can do. We make of him a mere means to an ulterior end, and God refuses to be treated so. Such a religion always fails in the hour of need.
If we have regarded religion merely as a means of getting things, even lofty and unselfish things, then when the things that we have been gotten are destroyed, our faith will fail. When loved ones are taken away, when disappointment comes and failure, when noble ambition ambitions are set at not, then we turn away from God. We have tried religion. We say we have tried prayer and it has failed.
Of course, it has failed. God is not content to be an instrument in our hand or a servant at our beck and call. He is not content to minister to the worldly needs of those who care, not a wit for him or a bit for him. Has it ever dawned on us that God is valuable for his own sake, that just as personal communion is the highest thing that we know on Earth, so personal communion with God is the sublimest height of all.
If we value God for his own sake, then the loss of other things will draw us closer to him. We shall then have recourse to him in time of trouble, as to the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
Faith Grounded in God's Word Alone
That is absolutely perceptive that I wish every Christian could read, think about and get it in their heart. That's the focus. That's the thrust. That's the intent here in verse 16.
Don't tempt him. Don't test him. Don't base your relationship on your emotions, your happiness, your getting us your success, your circumstances. It is to be grounded solely in the word that God, the Lord has spoken.
God, the Lord, who is truth, who cannot lie. We need to believe it. We need to say with Job, though he slay me, yet will I trust him. I mean, that is genuine faith right there.
When things are dark, bleak, depressing, and down, and you say with Job, though he slay me, yet will I trust him.
Review and Application
So those are the potential dangers in the land that they would face. I don't want to rush through the necessary precautions to be employed, because I think those actually deserve a bit more attention. So let's just review what we've looked at. The three particulars.
One, the danger of forgetting God because of prosperity. Two, the danger of forsaking God because of idolatry. Didn't really develop that one too much because it just recently preached on Romans 1, the effects of idolatry and its effects. Just think, anything not God can be an idol in your life.
And again, legitimate things, right? You know, sometimes people put their children before God. Sometimes people put their spouses before God. Sometimes people put, obviously, their possessions before God.
They put their leisure before God. They put their recreation before God. They put their success before God. They can put anything and everything before God.
It's not just sticks and stones and totem poles and, you know, the sorts of idols that we imagine when we think of that word idolatry. It could be sexuality. It could be power. It could be prestige.
It could be any number of things. Again, what is an idol for a particular man is what is in his heart, and we need to understand that we need to identify those things in our lives that we need to avoid that we need to resist that temptation and then the danger of testing God because of difficulty. We need to guard severely against that in a very me-oriented generation, a me-oriented society. We often think that me comes first.
And he doesn't come first. We want God to come first. We want him to be glorified. We want to trust in his blessed word.
Well, I'll close in prayer and then turn this off and then we can have some discussion.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank you for this. Your word and God, we acknowledge and we would even confess these things. These dangers are real dangers. They're not some made up things that Moses on the Mount tried to use to manipulate people or control people.
Certainly, God, prosperity and affluence can infect and affect the soul in such a way that we have a tendency to forget you. We know as well, God, the temptation, the tendency to idolatry in our hearts. John writes his first epistle and signs off, little children, keep yourselves from idols. Father, help us to guard our hearts in this regard.
And as well, Father, help us not to test you or tempt you and doubt your word and and be governed by our emotions and be governed by our circumstances. But may we be governed by our our our Bibles, by knowledge of who you are, Lord God, and that we would trust in you in the good times and in the bad times. And I pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.