And Grace Will Lead Me Home

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We find ourselves at the threshold of another year, and this is typically the time where we begin to review and renew. Reviewing what happened and renewing resolve for yet another year. If you’ve been listening to the radio this Christmas, I’m sure you’ve heard the guilt inducing lyrics from John Lennon, “So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, and a new one just begun.” Can you feel your chest tighten? Time’s running out! I can think of all the pounds I’ve added, the money I’ve overspent, and the time I’ve wasted! But, ooooh, not this year, this year is going to be different, because I am going to do xyz and prosperity will sure to follow!” Sound familiar? Have you noticed that this happens a lot?
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Or maybe you are thinking differently about the future because things look brighter. Perhaps you see the early indications of the market pointing to a better year. We can think that our country has finally been reclaimed and only prosperity awaits!
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Deuteronomy 8points us to think differently about the new year and the best way to live in it. Both of these attitudes point back to ourselves as the masters of our fate, and what our passage is here to tell us is this is a very dangerous way to think about the New Year. Let’s find a better way to think and live in the new year.
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The Cure for Prosperity is Remembrance
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Right at the beginning, we are told to obey God’s commandments and remember God’s care. This book is Moses’ final words to the people of Israel as they are about to enter the Promised Land after wandering in the desert for 40 years. This hasn’t been an easy journey, but it is about to be over. Before we even talk about what good is coming, they are told upfront that it is critical that they are to obey every commandment God has for them, as it is emphatic in the original language (Woods, Deuteronomy, Tyndale). We often forget that there are two words to emphasize there in verse 3. It isn’t just that we live by every Word that God speaks, but EVERY WORD, that God speaks.
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Don’t discount the blessedness of simple obedience to God’s commands. Believe it or not, those commands there are for your good, and you have no idea how much you need them. One scholar put it this way: “To eat and drink is merely to exist; only as men and women receive and obey God’s truth can they really ‘live’ as God intended—lives which bring them lasting satisfaction and eternal security.” (Brown, 120) Too many of us live like we don’t have souls. Yes, physical nourishment and proper sleep is important, but you can have those things and just exist. If you want to live as you were meant to, you need this Word.
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God will do whatever it takes to teach you this. God isn’t leading you to a hard life for its own sake. He is leading you through a hard time in order to know God’s good commands. That’s exactly what verse three says. One scholar put it this way: “The Lord may be using such events to ‘discipline’ us, to show us how much we have been relying on our own resources, or how prayerless we have become, or how we have allowed our lives to be determined by materialistic values, and a host of other things. Testing times are learning times. Writing from his prison cell in 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, ‘Much as I long to be out of here, I don’t believe a single day has been wasted … something is bound to come out of it … We shall come out of it all much strengthened.’” (Brown, 121)
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Some of you have had an extremely difficult year. But it isn’t a waste. Some of you have lost a loved one (and death isn’t the only way to lose a person) only to find that God will never leave you. Some of you are losing your ability to see, and that could be to show you that all of life is lived by faith and not by sight. None of that is meant to minimize what you are going through; it’s hard! But “Some lessons can only be learnt in trouble.” (Brown, 120). This is going somewhere. “The Puritan preacher, Stephen Charnock, reminded his friends who were suffering fierce persecution in the late seventeenth century that ‘if we did remember his former goodness we should not be so ready to doubt … his future care’.” (quoted in Brown, 119). God will take care of you because He has.
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Jesus knows how hard this is. This passage contains one of the verses that Jesus quotes to Satan. Satan tries to get Jesus to doubt what had just been said to Him. The Father had said, “You are my Beloved Son,” and what does Satan say? “IF you are the Son of God, make these stones bread.” The subtle lie here is that if Jesus was really God’s Son, then where is the provision? The Father is either forgetful or a liar. Either way, bread isn’t here, so just make some. You don’t have to wait for the Father. I love what one scholar said about that passage: “When he was hungry, Jesus trusted his Father to supply the food, but, if not, he would not adopt the devil’s suggestions.” (Brown, 121). This is the example for us. We will be told all kinds of things that aren’t true, that God explicitly said aren’t true, that deep down we know aren’t true, but unless we are careful, we will still believe them. Remember and obey.
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But what happens when He blesses?
The Danger of Prosperity is Pride
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As we move into the second half of the chapter, we are told of all the wonderful things that God has in store for the Israelites. Food beyond comprehension, natural resources, and the hope of a future. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
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But there is a new challenge. There is the challenge to remember to never forget. This is the danger of comfort. What makes comfort dangerous is you begin to forget God.
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When you were a toddler, how many times do you think you asked your parents for something per day? The answer is billions. You saw your need, so there was no forgetting about your parents or the ability to call them when there is a problem. Once you get older, though, you begin to have a few things figured out (or at least you think you do), and what happens? You start to forget. You stop calling. You really don’t even notice until something blows up in your life.
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This happens even more so with God. Once you begin to think about how much you’ve grown this year, how much you’ve gotten done, the things you’ve finally got straightened out, oh, watch out. Beware! You’ve begun to lift up your heart. What does it mean to lift up your heart? It means to put it in the place where God should be. A lifted up heart, a prideful heart believes that everything that it has was created by its own work. Who needs God when the money is doing well? Who needs God when you’ve finally “figured out who you are”? Who needs God when the country is stable again? We all do.
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In order to fight this, we have to recognize that we are all susceptible to it. And it isn’t prosperity’s fault! After all, God is the one who grants these things! The proper purpose of prosperity is praise! That is what we see in verse 10. God gives all of these gifts so that we might praise Him! And when He withholds something, it means that He is giving us something else.
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If you’ve got a particular sin that you are struggling with, might I suggest interrogating it? What I mean is, see if you can figure out what you are forgetting about God that is leading you to this sin. Sure, we can say that we spend too much money because we are selfish or greedy, but that doesn’t go far enough. You are also forgetting that your joy and fulfillment comes from Christ not stuff. Instead of trying to scroll past that “buy now” button by saying, “Don’t be greedy,” instead say, “Look at how much God has given to me. Look at what God Himself is to me.” Tie your sin to what you are forgetting about God and what He commands you to do.
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But how do we remember to even do that? How do we keep our minds focused where they need to be? How can we remember to remember?
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Well, God has given to us a sacrament to do just that. We are going to approach the Lord’s Table here in a few moments, and one of the things that you will hear many times in the liturgy is “do this in remembrance.” Now, there is more than just remembering, but it isn’t any less. When we come to this table we are reminded of what Jesus has done for us in the past and proclaim that work until—what?—He comes again. Our sin is forgiven, and there is a land coming, a future coming. Yet we can be so weighed down from troubles AND triumphs that unless we regularly remind ourselves, regularly come face to face with Christ by faith we will forget. And once we forget, disobedience is never far away. (Brown, 123).
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Maybe you are here today looking back over this year with regret. Perhaps you think that it hasn’t necessarily been wasted with troubles but has been wasted with sin. Listen to these words of comfort, “Moses tells the Hebrew people that those forty years in the desert had been difficult years, but not wasted ones. Disobedience had kept a whole generation out of a land they might have enjoyed, but God had been with them just the same. When people grieve him, he does not utterly forsake them. If rebels run away from him, he lovingly pursues them, as Bunyan reminded us, ‘with a pardon in his hand’. (Brown, 119) That pardon is carried by a nail-pierced hand, family. So if you realize you’ve got to get back with it, simply remember and obey. I don’t mean earn your way to heaven. I simply mean remember the way God uses the word “remember.” It isn’t just calling it to mind. It means living like this is true. Pardon is here for the asking. Turn from your sin, repent, and put your faith in Christ. It will never be perfect repentance or perfect faith, but it is towards and in the Perfect Savior. Live like that is true. Live like the Father loves you, like the Son has died for you, like the Spirit lives within you. Remember and in that knowledge, obey with joy.
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Work Cited 
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Raymond Brown, The Message of Deuteronomy: Not by Bread Alone, ed. J. A. Motyer and Derek Tidball, The Bible Speaks Today (England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993).