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Sermon Text: Deuteronomy 8:10-18
10When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. 11Be 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. 12Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14then 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. 15He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. 17You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18But 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 ancestors, as it is today.
Be Careful to Remember the Lord
- When He Gives
- When You Give
As I prepared the message this week, I found myself remembering back to the day that I paid off the last of my student loans. It was not too long after I graduated from the seminary. Knowing myself, I’m sure as I clicked the button to make that last payment, there was a little swell of pride within me that thought, “I’ve done it! I’ve paid it off- 4 years of college and 4 years of seminary. There’s a country of college graduates out there drowning under a pile of debt, but not me. Mine is paid off! (and I gave myself a nice little pat on the back).
Apparently the 22 years of Christian Education in WELS grade schools, high schools, and ministry training schools that had been provided to me, wasn’t enough to squelch the streak of pride within me that needed to declare exactly what Moses knew 3500 years ago I would probably want to say, [When you find yourself enjoying what God has blessed you with] “You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” (8:17) “I’ve done it!”
But to say those words is to forget a whole story about how that bill came to be paid off, like the fact that I had parents who worked long hours and paid more than a pretty penny each month to provide me with the opportunity I had to study for ministry, not to mention the generous people across our synod which very well could have been some of you, who sent their money to support worker training at our seminary and college, And yes, there was a decent chunk of that debt which I paid for by working a part time job or working during the summer, but it was the Lord who gave me a body and the ability to earn a paycheck. Yet it was the Lord who played the crucial part in my journey, as he moved the hearts of my parents and his people to provide and support me. That’s really the main point of Moses’s words today, which serve as our sermon text. Be careful to remember the Lord, 1) When he gives, and 2) When you give.
Let’s catch up really quickly to where we are in the context. Moses is delivering his farewell speech to the people he has led through the wilderness for 40 years. They are on the verge of entering the Promises Land, the land of Canaan which God had promised to give to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Moses during this part of the speech has been reminding them to remember and not forget that it was “the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land…He brough you water out of hard rock. He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known.” (Deu. 8:14-16).
If you think of the time period during Moses’s life, that probably is the most jam-packed time period of the Lord’s epic miracles and signs and wonders the world has ever seen. There was the 10 plagues and the parting of the Red Sea, and the miraculous manna and quail and water from the rock. There was one miracle after another of this saving deliverance, and now he was going to finish it off by conquering the promised land for his people and giving it to them.
Then Moses lays out the temptation that they are going to face as recipients of all of these great blessings, kind of like a kid opening a present and running off to play without saying thank you. When God gives you all this, you’re going to be awfully prone to just walk off into the Promised Land and forget who gave it and who got you there, but do not forget the Lord! “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God. (8:10,11). Moses is so adamant about this because it really is a matter of the heart. “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, then your heart will become proud, and you will forget the Lord your God. (Deu. 8:12-13).
Think about how easy it is for the heart to become proud. Isn’t that what it just loves to do—to take credit for something when the credit belongs to God—whether it’s how we were saved, or how we came to be in the stable situation we’re in, or how our student loans got paid off, or how the money got be in our bank account. Moses was speaking to the Israelites, but, Oh man, do these words apply to 21st century Americans!
It’s kind of like the whole philosophy of the American Dream. If you google, “What is the American Dream?” and the little AI overview that comes up at the top says, “The American Dream is the belief that anyone in the United States can achieve success and prosperity through hard work and determination.” The core idea of that is that your effort and self-determination will lead to your success. Now don’t hear me wrong. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t work hard. The Bible tells us to do exactly that, “Whatever you do, work at it will all your heart, as working for the Lord.” (Colossians 3:23).
What I am pointing out is this: when we work hard and enjoy success, who will be the first in line to take the credit? Me! My effort. My determination and grit. Look at this money I’ve earned, this financial security I’ve achieved, this retirement I’ve saved for. I’ve done it. And now we’re right back where we started today. What did Moses say? “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 gives the ability to produce wealth.” We must set aside that bravado and 1) remember the Lord when he gives.
Moses recounted those things for the Israelites. Let’s take a moment to recount for ourselves and add to ledger what God has given and done in the 3500 years since Moses. The Lord continued to remember and bless his people, in spite of their forgetfulness. The Lord remembered the oath he swore to Abraham, and he delivered what he promised- the One promised to bless all people. So the Giver of all things gave up his one and only Son, Jesus who become poor for our sake, so that through him you and I might become rich, not in money, but in salvation. And the Son, who was given into the world, also gave himself up for the world, so that you might receive the forgiveness you couldn’t buy with your money, and the righteousness you couldn’t earn with your hard work and determination.
And the content of this incredible plan, this good news of great joy, God has given to you when he placed you in the arms of your parents, or when he sent someone into your life to share it with you. And the assurance that this all really is for you is another precious gift God gives you when the water washes your head in holy baptism. And he continues to bless us with the gift of his very body and blood to eat and drink forgiveness as we remember all he has given and shed for us. This is not a boring story to remember. This is a thrilling page turner to review, and a privilege to remember the effort and lengths to which God went to make you his own.
And all of that remembering comes before we say a word of praise about how God has blessed me with my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my mind and all my abilities, and how he preserve me by providing clothing and shoes, food and drink, property and home, and everything I need to keep my body and life. So we return to our theme, be careful to remember the Lord when he gives, praising him for all that he has given!
Part 2. Moses also directs their hearts to another way of remembering the Lord—not just when he gives, but also when they give and 2) when you give. Moses told the people, “Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws, and decrees that I am giving to you this day.” (8:11) Their whole life and all their thoughts and words and actions would be an opportunity to give their obedience, honor, and love back to the Lord. One of the most practical ways that God had put into place to help remind people to remember him on a regular basis was his command to give on a regular basis. A little later on in the speech, Moses tells them, “Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year.” (Deu. 14:22). Set it aside “so that you may learn to revere the LORD your God always.” (14:23).
Did you see what that “setting aside” does? The act of giving an offering teaches us to revere and remember God. How does it do that? Every time I receive a paycheck or a gift, I could think, “Well here’s the 8 things I’m going to spend this on for my life until it’s gone.” But when God adds 1 more category in there for an offering, it’s not because he’s hard up for money or he’s just wants to make sure he gets his cut. Think about it, he’s the God who said, “Let there be!” and then created all the gold that exist on earth. His bank account isn’t going to overdraft if we don’t pay up.
Giving is not so much for his good, as it is for our good. He wants us to remember that everything came from him, and by returning a portion of it back to him, we are expressing our trust in him to keep on giving and providing for us. It’s a test God uses to train our humility and strengthen our faith and reliance on him, and when he increases our faith, he also increases our duty and ability to put him first. Giving provides the opportunity for the prideful, me-first heart to have a change of heart and say, “I don’t need to keep every last dollar I make as if this might be the last blessing God ever gives me and I’ve got it make it last.”
Instead, our hearts can say, “God has been gracious and generous, and I trust his promises to take care of me, and so I can part with this money, I can give it back to him, I can support the work of his kingdom, I can share it with those who are struggling. God will use it for his good and gracious purposes.” Remembering the Lord when you give is an exercise God uses to demonstrate to us the transformation that he’s brought about in us.
So to this very day, we give cheerfully, generously, proportionately to our income, not under the obligation and threat of the 10% tithe from the Old Testament law. Those obligations have been fulfilled and cancelled in Christ. Instead, you and I can participate in the grace of giving that springs from the joy of belonging to God who has given us the privilege to share in and support his work of saving sinners.
When I think back to my own story, I think about the approximately $80,000 dollars that my parents gave in support of my Christian Education and training for ministry, on top of their regular offerings. Then I think about the day they got to see me installed as a senior vicar at my home church, where they had brought me to baptized and confirmed, where they had taken me every Sunday. That day was only two weeks before the Lord took my Mom home to heaven, and on that day she wasn’t missing 80 grand. It was a day for all of us to remember what the Lord had done for us, and the great privilege we have to give our lives in return, all to his glory. Amen.