SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: I have the privilege of receiving a number of emails this time of year from our missionaries and local ministry partners, thanking our church for the support, the financial support and otherwise throughout the year.
SPEAKER_00: And so I just, on behalf, they say, tell you thank you.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm telling you thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your generosity.
SPEAKER_00: And I would urge you to continue to be generous as we approach the year's end.
SPEAKER_00: The last handful of days are certainly the biggest in terms of giving for the year for many different organizations, including the church and including this church.
SPEAKER_00: So as you would consider being generous, would you also uh in other areas would you also remember uh to be generous here?
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: I want to turn our attention to Deuteronomy chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: And as we do, uh remember this is the last Sunday of this year, and as is practice, we remember God's faithfulness to us over the past year as we uh worship the final Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: And um uh before we before we read the text, we're gonna read it today in two parts.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to uh reflect for a minute by um by saying anytime anytime we go through difficulty in life and you come out on the other side, it's always really tempting to forget what that difficulty was like once it's no longer with you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I gave this as an example uh somewhat timidly.
SPEAKER_00: I meant to ask Kim beforehand uh if this is in fact what it's like.
SPEAKER_00: So I asked uh all of the uh ladies who are moms in the room in the first service to nod if I was on track and to shake their head if I was off track.
SPEAKER_00: And as I even got into it, I realized how silly it was for me not to ask beforehand.
SPEAKER_00: But um uh if you think about it like a uh a mother who has just given birth to her child that is preceded by months of pain and discomfort.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, everything that's associated with pregnancy, all the difficulty that's associated with all the pain, all the doctor's visits, everything that goes along with it.
SPEAKER_00: And then in that um, and even in the birth process, the extreme pain of that moment, that at least it seemed, um, once she held our child, it was like all the difficulty for the moment was forgotten.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00: Some are like this in the first service.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, for the most part.
SPEAKER_00: You get the idea.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, anytime we go through any kind of difficulty, any kind of uh pain, any kind of suffering, it's really easy on the other side to want to say, I don't want anything to do with that anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And so we move on with it as quickly as we can, and we forget how God was faithful to us in the midst of it.
SPEAKER_00: And I would urge us not to do that this year.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I would say it this way How can we be really careful to not forget God when the future is bright?
SPEAKER_00: How can we be really careful to not forget God when the future is bright?
SPEAKER_00: The people of Israel in Deuteronomy chapter 8 have at long last, after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, come to the edge of the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: There is no one alive that is older than 60 years of age, except for Moses, Joshua, and Caleb.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone's of that older generation, everyone's parents had perished along the way in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: And they've come at last to the edge of the promised land, a place that they no longer have to wait for God's provision to provide water out of a rock or manna daily on the ground, but water will be flowing in streams and rivers, there will be abundance of fruits and wheat and barley, and they will never uh run short of uh bread and all kinds of abundance.
SPEAKER_00: And on the brink of entering the land, Moses preaches Deuteronomy, which is a sermon in its entirety.
SPEAKER_00: And in this particular part of his sermon, he says, remember God's faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be really easy to forget God's faithfulness when there is such abundance and the future is so bright, but we have to remember God's faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Because he's faithfulness to us in the difficulty and in abundance.
SPEAKER_00: If you're note takers this morning, those are your two points.
SPEAKER_00: Remembering God's faithfulness, one, in times of difficulty, and two in times of abundance.
SPEAKER_00: The times of difficulty are described in the first six verses that we'll read together now.
SPEAKER_00: The whole commandment that I command you today, you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers.
SPEAKER_00: And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.
SPEAKER_00: And he humbled you and let your hunger uh and let you hunger and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Your clothing did not wear out on you, and your foot did not swell these forty years.
SPEAKER_00: Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you.
SPEAKER_00: So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him.
SPEAKER_00: We're called to remember God's faithfulness in difficulty because he is with us in the midst of the difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2 tells us explicitly that he's with us.
SPEAKER_00: You shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you.
SPEAKER_00: He's with us in the midst of the difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: We remember the the backstory to all of this.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the people of Israel have come out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: They have crossed the Red Sea, that God parted, they've come to Mount Sinai, they've received the Ten Commandments, they've journeyed on to the edge of the Promised Land.
SPEAKER_00: And there, right on the edge of entering the Promised Land, God instructs Moses to send in spies.
SPEAKER_00: And the spies go into the land and they they spy out the length and the breadth of the land.
SPEAKER_00: How big is it?
SPEAKER_00: They measure it, they take all kinds of notes, what kind of people are living in it, what kind of food is present, what kind of resources are there, and they come back after 40 days of spying out and they say not gonna work.
SPEAKER_00: The people are too big for us, forgetting just how big God is.
SPEAKER_00: The people are too mighty for us, forgetting that God parted the Red Sea before them.
SPEAKER_00: The people will destroy us forgetting that God enclosed the Red Sea over uh the people uh over the Egyptian army.
SPEAKER_00: God won't protect us forgetting that God had stood between them and the Israelite, them and the Egyptian army with a pillar of fire by night and smoke by day.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, Because you are unfaithful, I will let you wander in the wilderness one year for every day spent spying out the land.
SPEAKER_00: Forty years of wandering for 40 days of spying, unfaithful spying, until every person of fighting age that's over 20 years of age dies in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: But I will be with you.
SPEAKER_00: That's what verse 2 says.
SPEAKER_00: The whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that we're to remember that even in the difficulty, God is with us.
SPEAKER_00: That He was with Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Think of that.
SPEAKER_00: Most of them were children.
SPEAKER_00: There's not a person in the crowd except for Moses, Joshua, and Caleb, they're over 60 years of age.
SPEAKER_00: Many of them are children, the oldest is 60.
SPEAKER_00: All they have known is God's presence with them in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: Remember my faithfulness, he says.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that even in the difficulty, I have been with you.
SPEAKER_00: How might we remember God's faithfulness to us even in the difficulty?
SPEAKER_00: There have been people either in this room or in the room earlier or watching uh the earlier live stream that have heard that will hear this message that haven't hugged their parents since February.
SPEAKER_00: And the difficulty that's associated with that.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's not you and you don't know what that's like, but imagine what that's like.
SPEAKER_00: There have been, there are people in this room, there are people at the earlier service or watching the having watched the live stream that had to drastically reduce their business and lay off many, many, many, many people that work for them.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe take pay cuts, go without a salary for a while.
SPEAKER_00: Totally changing their lifestyle.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you haven't had to do that, but imagine the difficulty of that.
SPEAKER_00: There are people that have lost loved ones in the midst of it, that have had to have funerals in the midst of it.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's not you, but imagine what that's like.
SPEAKER_00: There are people in this congregation that have loved ones in the hospital even now.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's not you.
SPEAKER_00: But imagine the difficulty of that.
SPEAKER_00: But if it has been you, or whatever the difficulty has been for you, God has been with you.
SPEAKER_00: He still is with you.
SPEAKER_00: How might you remember that?
SPEAKER_00: One story I heard uh just this past week was of a of a lady who said at the during the first online worship service, which would have been in March, uh her kids uh during the service uh colored and painted a cross, um, and that she took those crosses for each kid and she put them up in the in the window in her kitchen to remind herself of God's faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: And over the months, the sun has faded and crisped those uh pages.
SPEAKER_00: And so, not wanting to lose those, she framed them and wrote the year 2020 and put those frames, uh, those pictures of their crosses in their playroom to remind her and to remind them in their young age and as they grow older that how God was with them in the midst of difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: What practical things might you do to remember God's faithfulness?
SPEAKER_00: See, remembering, friends, is an active thing.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to do things so that we remember.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's like the craft.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's making a journal.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's taking a picture and putting it on the screensaver on your telephone or on your computer.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, we have to we have to remember God's faithfulness that he's with us in the difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: And not only is he with us in the difficulty, but his word promises us that he will not waste the difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: And that's really important to see here.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2 is really action-packed.
SPEAKER_00: You shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments or not.
SPEAKER_00: And verse 5, know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the whole time in the wilderness, God was training his people when they or we might be tempted to think, oh, it's just a waste of time.
SPEAKER_00: It's just suffering and it's difficulty and it's all they had.
SPEAKER_00: But God says, no, no, I'm not going to waste it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to teach you.
SPEAKER_00: Even when you may think it's hard, in the hard, I'm going to teach you.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to think about it like this.
SPEAKER_00: Let's suppose the same person has two different uh ways of earning a living right out of college.
SPEAKER_00: Let's say when you come out of college, what are you, 21, 22 years old, something like that.
SPEAKER_00: And let's say that person gets hired by a venture capital firm and it's a really big firm, and right at 21, 22 years old, they're given the salary of a managing partner at 65 years old.
SPEAKER_00: And not only that, they inherit at the same time just a boatload from their family.
SPEAKER_00: Or another way of earning an income, let's say that same person, instead of that track, on another track at the same firm is given the very lowest entry-level position, earning just barely enough to make it month to month.
SPEAKER_00: Which would I was gonna say which would you choose, but I'm not gonna say which would you choose?
SPEAKER_00: Which do you suppose would learn more?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's easy.
SPEAKER_00: They would learn to budget more, they would learn what it means to give sacrificially because any amount of giving would hurt.
SPEAKER_00: They would learn to depend on the generosity of others and the church family.
SPEAKER_00: And the other one might be full, but those different nuances they wouldn't learn because abundance was there.
SPEAKER_00: If you'll allow me, God is doing in something very similar with the people of Israel here.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, look, all these years in the wilderness is not some cosmic show that I'm just I've cocked up for my entertainment.
SPEAKER_00: So I can just sort of sit back and say, isn't this fun watching them sort of go move stones here and move stones there and move stones here and move them back again?
SPEAKER_00: He says he's with them.
SPEAKER_00: Why is he with them?
SPEAKER_00: Because he's training them.
SPEAKER_00: What is he training them to do?
SPEAKER_00: To love him more than things, to love and long for his word, to know that everything that they that they have comes from his hand.
SPEAKER_00: So that when they go into the land and the abundance is great, they may not be tempted to forget.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the year, it's really important to take a moment and reflect.
SPEAKER_00: Not that, not that January 1st everything's gonna be different.
SPEAKER_00: It's not.
SPEAKER_00: But at some point, some we will move through whatever this is, I suppose.
SPEAKER_00: All indications seem that way.
SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, we're gonna be really tempted to just say, you know.
SPEAKER_00: I got a I got an ornament this year.
SPEAKER_00: I'm really big, I'm bashing ornaments this year.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry for that.
SPEAKER_00: I actually really like Christmas ornaments, but this year I got an ornament and I threw the ornament away and I had to, I said that at the first service, had to apologize into the screen because the person that gave it to me didn't know that I'd thrown it away.
SPEAKER_00: Um uh and it was more of a, you know, it was a joke anyways.
SPEAKER_00: And it was it was words shaped like a Christmas tree, words uh, you know, that were sort of written in big font reducing to smaller font and and a Christmas tree.
SPEAKER_00: And the bottom was 2020, and then the next word was COVID in all caps, and it was like masks and then social distancing.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the top was like a syringe, and I was like, I don't want this stupid thing.
SPEAKER_00: Who wants to remember that?
SPEAKER_00: Notice in the text, God isn't saying, remember the lizards and the dragons and the rocks and the wilderness and the sand.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, remember that I led you in those things.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what the text says.
SPEAKER_00: I know that we haven't uh read it yet.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what the text says in verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: Who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying remember the the stuff.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, remember me and the stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Not only am I with you, but I'm not gonna waste the stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna use it to make you more like me.
SPEAKER_00: Because we need to remember God's faithfulness in difficulty, but secondly, in abundance as well.
SPEAKER_00: The abundance is described in verses 7 through 14.
SPEAKER_00: For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains of springs, flowing out on the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper, you shall eat and be full, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he's given you.
SPEAKER_00: Take care, lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes which I command you today.
SPEAKER_00: Lest when you've eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply, your silver and gold is multiply, and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
SPEAKER_00: We're to remember God's faithfulness in abundance, because when it when we experience times of abundance, our pride tempts us to forget.
SPEAKER_00: That's what verse 14 says when it says, Lest your heart be lifted up.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means.
SPEAKER_00: You begin to think, oh, I did this.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're the heroes.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, look what we've accomplished.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, look how I've made it through.
SPEAKER_00: And you forget.
SPEAKER_00: I was uh recently involved in a very heated debate about which Rocky movie was the best.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I'll put the debate aside for the moment and remind you of the third Rocky movie.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the third Rocky movie?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, no?
SPEAKER_00: So uh the third Rocky movie now pictures Rocky Balboa, a once unknown, undiscovered, nobody uh boxer who now, five years after defeating Apollo Creed, is now the champion of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And he's very rich.
SPEAKER_00: And long gone are the days of unorthodox hard training.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the getting up before dawn?
SPEAKER_00: Remember the scene where he drinks the raw eggs?
SPEAKER_00: And everybody's like, what is he doing?
SPEAKER_00: And he's chasing chickens in the cold, and but now he's in this plush mansion with swimming pool and he's training on his own time.
SPEAKER_00: And remember he has to fight Clubber Lang?
SPEAKER_00: Remember who Clubber Lang is played by?
SPEAKER_00: Mr.
SPEAKER_00: T, which is perfect.
SPEAKER_00: And remember what happens?
SPEAKER_00: He loses.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Well, his trainer, Mick, told him what was gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: He lost his edge.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because of pride.
SPEAKER_00: If you'll let me.
SPEAKER_00: God is saying to the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: When you come into this good land, the response that I long for, verse 10, is that you bless me, that you worship me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm giving it to you.
SPEAKER_00: It's a gift for me, it's a good gift for me.
SPEAKER_00: It's not bad.
SPEAKER_00: The riches and the inheritance and the abundance and all it's very good, and it's my gift.
SPEAKER_00: But you'll be really tempted to think, once those gifts multiply, that you did it.
SPEAKER_00: And the way that you'll know that that'll happen is that you'll forget me.
SPEAKER_00: Your pride will allow you to forget me.
SPEAKER_00: How will you know you've forgotten me?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you'll stop coming and offering sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: You'll stop coming and gathering for corporate worship in the in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: You'll stop gathering together as a covenant community.
SPEAKER_00: You'll stop keeping my rules.
SPEAKER_00: You'll stop keeping my commandments.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll forget when you should have remembered.
SPEAKER_00: So what does he say we ought to do?
SPEAKER_00: We're to be faithful to remember his commandments.
SPEAKER_00: What's one way that we can battle pride in the midst of abundance?
SPEAKER_00: If God sees fit to bring about prosperity to us, and prosperity, hear me very clearly, is never promised in God's word.
SPEAKER_00: But if prosperity, God sees fit to provide prosperity to his people, and a sense of normalcy returns, and restaurants are filled again, and the only and small business owners only have really small things to worry about all the time.
SPEAKER_00: And things are back to the way that we imagined them to be.
SPEAKER_00: And sanctuaries are filled again, and masks are off, and we're having parties at friends' houses.
SPEAKER_00: One way that we can battle pride is not forgetting to gather together and to give really sacrificially.
SPEAKER_00: Why those two things?
SPEAKER_00: Because they both involve giving of yourself.
SPEAKER_00: They both are a reminder that what you have isn't done because you've gotten it, but it's a gift.
SPEAKER_00: So we remember God's faithfulness because of our pride, but we're in abundance.
SPEAKER_00: But remember God's faithfulness in abundance also because of the promises that God makes.
SPEAKER_00: Our pride, God's promises.
SPEAKER_00: There are two promises on display here.
SPEAKER_00: I'll read the second one first, the promise of warning in verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: If you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.
SPEAKER_00: Like the nations the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.
SPEAKER_00: It's a real warning, and that's what happened.
SPEAKER_00: The people of Israel entered the land, they forget the Lord because of their pride, they go after other gods, and he delivers them into the hands of other nations.
SPEAKER_00: And it happens over and over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: But there's another promise that comes right before that in verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth that he may confirm his covenant he swore to your fathers, as it is to this day.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a promise of warning on the one hand, and a promise of covenant for God to be with his people on the other.
SPEAKER_00: How can those two things find their completion?
SPEAKER_00: How can those two things be true?
SPEAKER_00: Because of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is the place where God's promise of warning and wrath of sin meet God's promise to always be with his people.
SPEAKER_00: That on the cross, God took the wrath towards all of mankind because of their sin, and he poured it on his son, who died on our behalf, so that we might forever be kept in God, so that we might not realize the promise of curse, but only the promise of blessing.
SPEAKER_00: But our eternal hope is not in a syringe.
SPEAKER_00: The vaccine is not our hope.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: Because he's with us in difficulty, to not waste the difficulty, and the cross is the example, par excellence at that.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know what's gonna happen in 2021.
SPEAKER_00: Probably a lot of the same, candidly.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we'll move through it and into more sense of normal.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe God will see fit that we do not.
SPEAKER_00: But I know one thing that one day God will remake this earth, and we will live and reign with him forever.
SPEAKER_00: And all the sickness and all the sorrow and all the sadness and all the pain and all the suffering and all the death will be over.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll be with God.
SPEAKER_00: So what must we do today?
SPEAKER_00: Remember his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, would you enable us to remember your faithfulness to us in difficulty or in abundance?
SPEAKER_00: Whatever, O Lord, you have for us, it's good.
SPEAKER_00: Not because we're good, but because you are.
SPEAKER_00: And we pray, Lord, that uh even as I say these words, you would help even me to believe them.
SPEAKER_00: And even as these dear friends hear these words, you would help them to believe them too.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that the truth of them does not rest on our ability to hold fast to them, but rather in you.
SPEAKER_00: And we pray it in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.