Enjoying God’s Gifts through Covenant Faithfulness

Introduction

Over the last two weeks we have considered the practical steps of what it means to hold fast to God and secondly, how to learn from God’s school of providence. Now in this morning's passage, Moses brings both of those lessons into the next stage of Israel’s life.

They were about to enter into a very good land. They would have homes, fields, vineyards, livestock, and food. Those were blessings they could rightly look forward to. God was not asking them to pretend that the wilderness was just as pleasant as a settled home and a productive farm. It wasn’t. Not by a longshot. He was giving them something good - very good. And later we will be singing an inspired Psalm that asks for God's blessings. That's totally appropriate.

But with added blessings come new temptations. In the wilderness they had been tempted to complain because they lacked certain things that they really, really wanted. In Canaan they would be tempted to drift from God because they already possessed so much and wouldn't sense their need for Him. And we can experience both temptations, can’t we? We can become resentful when we have too little and self-satisfied when we have plenty. There are dangers on either end.

So here is a question to keep in mind as we work through this passage: When God answers your prayers and gives you something good, does that gift help you to hold fast to Him? • You prayed for a job. You got the job. Wonderful. But what has happened to your relationship with God since He gave you that new blessing? That is kind of question that this passage is addressing. • You prayed for a husband or a wife. God answered that prayer. Has your marriage helped you to serve Him more faithfully? And if not, why not? • You prayed for some relief from financial pressure. He gave you that relief. Are you more thankful now? More generous? More willing to trust Him? Are you now a better steward than you were before?

Those are the kinds of questions this passage puts before us. And I have divided it into five points.

Let God’s past faithfulness move you to present obedience (vv. 8–9).

Verse 8 introduces the first major point. It says,

“Therefore you shall keep every commandment which I command you today, that you may be strong, and go in and possess the land which you cross over to possess…”

That word “therefore” connects this passage to everything we studied last week. The previous forty years were filled with lessons designed to mature them and draw them closer to the Lord. And now Moses says, “Therefore.” In other words, what are you going to do with what you have learned? God had not taken them through forty years of schooling merely so that they could tell their grandchildren interesting stories. Those stories mattered. We don't ever want to get tired of hearing stories from past generations. But those lessons should now produce the strength to take on further responsibility.

Let me use an ordinary illustration. Suppose a father spends months teaching his son how to drive. They practice braking, parallel parking, making turns, watching traffic, and responding to hazards. Eventually the day comes when the son says that he thinks he is ready to drive on his own. And so the dad lets him. But two weeks later you find out that he is drag racing on the streets with a friend, and drinking and driving. Has he really learned the lessons? No. He can repeat rote answers, but he has not embraced them. That is not Biblical learning.

The same thing can happen spiritually. We can make it through a wilderness season and not outwardly rebel like Dathan and Abiram did. But we still complain about what we don't have, like many in the previous generation did. Have we learned our lesson? No. So is God going to trust us with further blessings when we aren't using the current blessings responsibly? No. God is not an irresponsible parent; He knows what we can handle.

So let me ask: What has God’s past faithfulness prepared you to do now? What new duty is in front of you? And how are you embracing it? Are you postponing doing it because fear (or something else) is hindering you? Ask God for a teachable heart.

And notice that Moses says to keep “every commandment.” We tend to become selective, don’t we? We are quite happy to obey commands that fit our temperament or reinforce what we already want to do. But the commands that inconvenience us can easily get pushed aside.

The second half of verse 8 shows us what God's goal was in the wilderness lessons. He says, "...that you may be strong, and go in and possess the land which you cross over to possess..." Responsible obedience makes us strong enough to be trusted by God with the next stage of responsibility and accompanying blessing. You don't give a toddler a pocket knife until he is ready to responsibly use it.

Yet Christians frequently don't translate the same logic into how they respond to God. Let's make this personal. You prayed for a job, and God gave you one. How are you serving God with that job? You prayed for children. How are you raising them? You prayed for greater financial stability. Are you a faithful steward of that new financial stability? If you do not translate God's generosity to you into grateful stewardship, you may find God eventually clamping down on how much He is willing to let you continue to steward. In other words, He is going to take your blessings away. It makes logical sense, yet so few Christians consider this when God starts removing things from their lives. They just complain. They don't ask, "Hmm. Why has God removed this from my life? Is it possible that I have not been faithful enough with past blessings? Is it possible that I am not spiritually ready to handle additional blessings, and He needs to put me through more training."

The main application of verse 8 is that answered prayer opens up a new field of obedience and responsibility. Too many commentaries that treat the Mosaic covenant as lacking grace and being a mere republication of the covenant of works simply explain this as the mechanics of covenant conditions - obey and you will have blessing; disobey and you will lose blessing - as if God is an ATM or a bank. But that misses out on the relational dynamic that Moses has been giving in the previous context. Just as a parent is not going to give a pocket knife to a three year old, or a skill saw to a five year old, God is not going to bless us with things that we cannot yet handle. The goal of obedience to all God's commands is maturity or growing strong so that we can take on the next stage of blessing and responsibility. With obedient maturity comes the ability to handle increased blessings. The past forty years had matured this generation to the place that they were finally ready to inherit the land by dependence on God’s grace. They were an incredible force under Joshua and Caleb. And the New Testament uses them as an illustration of faith and grace, not a covenant of works. So the question is, "Have you grown strong though God's school of providence that we looked at last week - strong enough to be entrusted with more blessings?"

Verse 9 continues:

“…and that you may prolong your days in the land which the LORD swore to give your fathers, to them and their descendants, ‘a land flowing with milk and honey.’”

This is giving them a longterm view. Each generation after them would need to gain the same maturity. Just as God had trained them in the school of providence (the theme of the previous verses), they would need to diligently train the next generation how to maintain those blessings. How many good kings in the Bible failed to do this with their children because they were too busy managing the blessing of being a king? They failed to imitate God in the training of their children, and its no wonder that their children turned out poorly. To the degree that each generation after them would learn the same lessons and gain the same stewardship heart, they too would continue to be blessed. But the book of Judges demonstrates that this did not automatically happen. It requires diligent training of our children, and giving our children the tools to diligently train their children. That will be the subject of verses 18 and following - that we will look at in the future.

But I don't want you to miss the goodness of God's gift of Canaan. It is described as being a land flowing with milk and honey, which emphasizes the generosity of God. He loves to bless His people. He is not stingy. And His ethical commands direct His people toward a good life under His care. So I could summarize the first main point by saying that receiving a blessing brings responsibility for its proper use. Marriage, children, property, employment, and other blessings should all be enjoyed under the authority of their Giver.

Recognize that a better situation still requires continuing dependence (vv. 10–12).

In verses 10–11 Moses describes the difference between the agricultural life they had known in Egypt and the life they would soon experience in Canaan. Some people have been confused by these two verses and wonder how it relates to the theme of this pericope, but hopefully I can show you the logic behind it. It says,

“For the land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot, as a vegetable garden; but the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven…”

I'm not going to try to settle the debates you find in commentaries about exactly how they watered the Egyptian fields “by foot.” One commentary says that it "refers to the large pumping wheels worked by foot to draw water from the Nile [River] for the gardens."¹ Others think - no, those pumping wheels didn't get invented until centuries later, and that this simply refers to the foot-dug irrigation ditches that brought water to various fields.² Thompson gives another theory when he claims,

"The water was lifted from the river by a simple arrangement of a container at the end of a balanced pole, the shaduf, and poured into larger channels from whence it ran into a complex of smaller and smaller channels. As various areas received sufficient water the small channel was closed off by pushing earth across it with the feet. Subsequently, water could be admitted to the same channel by kicking away the small blockage of earth.³

And there are other theories. But everyone seems to agree that it took a lot of ingenuity and a lot of work to bring water from the Nile into the fields throughout Egypt. As Craigie points out, "virtually the whole Egyptian agricultural system depended on irrigation," with the focus being on trusting human ingenuity.⁴ In contrast, Canaan depended upon God to bring rain. Israelites would still have to work. They would sow, cultivate, and harvest. So Moses is not promising a land where farmers could sit on their porches and watch everything happen without labor. Verse 14 specifically says that they would need to gather the produce.

But the point is that they could not manage the clouds like they could manage the water in Egypt. A farmer could prepare his ground beautifully. He could put in his seed at the appropriate time. He could work hard and make wise decisions. But after all that, he would still need something that he could not produce. He would need rain. It was a land that was perfectly designed to teach them trust in God.

That is a very useful reminder for us. We should work diligently. We should plan wisely. We can use technology. But there are things essential to the fruitfulness of our work that still remain beyond our control.

And sometimes we imagine that if we could just reach the next stage of life, we would finally be secure and could manage things on our own. That's some people's definition of security - to get to a place where I can manage things on my own. • “If I can just finish school… • “If I can just get a better job… • “If we can just pay off this debt… • “If I can just get the children raised…”

Now, any of those developments may bring real relief. And it is perfectly appropriate to thank God for that relief. But each new stage brings its own brand new needs, doesn’t it? There is never a time in our lives when we graduate from needing to trust God. Israel would leave the wilderness, but they would never leave their need for God. And neither will you.

But verse 12 makes that dependence deeply comforting. It's a beautiful description of God's care. It describes Canaan as:

“…a land for which the LORD your God cares; the eyes of the LORD your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year.”

Their need would be continual, and His attention would also be continual. God would not bring them into the land, congratulate them on their arrival, and then lose interest in them over time. No. Their sowing, their growing seasons, their harvests, and their ordinary daily lives would remain under His watchful care. God cares about mundane things like that.

That develops what we saw last week. God’s faithfulness is present in the ordinary provisions that become so familiar we hardly notice them. And familiarity can make us careless about thanksgiving and sensing our dependence upon God. We turn on a faucet and water comes out. Elijah will testify that we shouldn't take that for granted. We receive another paycheck. We go to the store and find plenty of things to purchase. Those are ordinary things. But ordinary provisions still come through God’s providence and blessing.

So we should cultivate the habit of recognizing God's provision in each of them. We should also cultivate the habit of bringing our needs to Him before we have exhausted every other option. How often do we calculate, worry, make calls, make contingency plans, and run through every possible solution in our minds before finally saying, “Well, I suppose we should pray”? No. Our planning itself needs to start with prayer. Prayer should be the natural expression of our dependence upon God from beginning to end. We know the One whose care extends from the beginning of the year to its end.

But I do want you to notice something very interesting about verse 12 that I have not yet found anybody commenting on. I don't know why, but to me it seems obvious. It says that God bestowed special care upon the land long before Israel entered into it. It's very clear that they were not in the land yet, but God's care was presently upon it. Let me read that again. It says, "a land for which the LORD your God cares; the eyes of the LORD your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year." Why would God bestow such care upon the land when God-haters occupied it and needed to be expelled from it? Are we to assume that Canaan had not had its share of famines in the past? No. Genesis is clear that Canaan had experienced both prosperity and famine. Are we to assume that God's eyes are only upon Canaan but not upon other lands? No. His eyes move to and fro upon all the earth, and every land experiences His sovereign rule. So what is He saying here? I believe God is saying that He had bestowed special care upon Canaan prior to Israel's coming because he wanted Israel to inherit a bountiful land that was teaming (absolutely teaming) with good things. As Proverbs 13:22 words it, "the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous." Just because God blesses pagans does not mean that He approves of pagan activities. Some people feel guilty using computers and other technology that was developed by pagans. I don't. This verse indicates that you don't need to feel guilty. God sometimes bestows special care upon pagans and their technology because He is preparing their dominion for good uses down the road. We've already seen that in Deuteronomy 6, where He said this:

“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, hewn-out 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.

Likewise, in Deuteronomy 8:6-11 he said,

“Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil 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. When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you.

We should not automatically assume that because God has blessed pagans with technology, that He approves of their lifestyle or worldview. But neither should we assume that we must reject their technology because they developed it with bad motives. God may well be storing up the wealth of the wicked for the righteous to inherit. The physical goodness of the land that pagans enjoy may be the only goodness they enjoy for eternity. It's a mercy from God that should lead them to repentance, but apart from regeneration, it won't.

Now, let's contrast God's bestowal of good things upon pagans who don't deserve it with God's disciplines upon His own people that we will shortly be looking at. God will go on to remind Israel that He will withdraw His blessings from His own elect if they fail to obey Him. Why? He didn't always do that with pagans, so why would He do it with believers? Well, He does it because He cares more about His own children and their character than He does their physical comfort. And God deliberately brought them into a land that could not be irrigated as easily as Egypt was so that they would learn to depend upon Him for rain and other blessings. This was a land that required faith in God's provision of rain in its season. And God's watchful care for the land meant that Israel could only find blessing when it walked hand in hand with their watchful God.

Well, let's move on.

Love and serve the Lord in the ordinary work through which He supplies your needs (vv. 13–15).

Verse 13 says:

“And it shall be that if you earnestly obey My commandments which I command you today, to love the LORD your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul…”

We will see that verse 14 gives the "then" of blessing. In logic we speak of the "if" clause as the protasis (or antecedent) and the "then" clause as the apodosis (or the consequent). If P then Q. And we shouldn't rush past the "if" clause too quickly. There is an "if" condition that is placed upon believers that is often not always placed upon unbelievers. Because God cares for us, He is not going to give us a gift of a metaphorical gun if we only have the metaphorical maturity of a two-year-old. He's a careful parent. He wants us to mature, and we can't mature without learning obedience.

But notice too that they could serve God with ordinary agriculture. Some Christians have a very narrow view of serving God. They think that serving God must mean being involved in church activities, or perhaps going on a mission trip. Those can certainly be forms of service. But we can also serve Him in the ordinary responsibilities He gives us throughout the week.

You can serve Him while repairing your car, carefully going over your budget or your YNAB accounts, caring for children, preparing a meal, or doing the work your employer has assigned to you. The question is whether you are doing that work under God's authority and with a desire to please Him. For example, are you honest with your employer? Are you diligent? Do you treat people justly? Does your boss trust you when he is not around to watch you? Are you willing to obey God when disobedience appears more profitable?

Suppose a business owner realizes that being completely honest with a customer may cost him a substantial sale. That is a real test. He has bills to pay. Perhaps employees depend upon him. He may feel considerable pressure. And at that moment, “serve Him with all your heart” becomes very concrete. Can that business owner trust God enough to tell the truth? The Lord’s service reaches into precisely those decisions. Or as another example, when you sell your car, do you hide the fact that there are two major repairs that are going to be coming up on that vehicle and hope that the buyer won't notice? So take seriously the "if" clause.

Then verses 14–15 describe the "then" of His provision:

“…then I will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil. And I will send grass in your fields for your livestock, that you may eat and be filled.”

That is a beautiful description of the generosity of God. We should allow that generosity to register with us. Sometimes Christians speak as though enjoying a good meal and drinking a glass of expensive wine on a date with your wife is somehow spiritually suspicious. "Surely that money should have been spent on something better - perhaps giving to missions." But, while God does indeed want us to be generous, He does not want us to feel guilty when we enjoy His good gifts. Those of you who are stingy with yourselves need to take this to heart. Though the second tithe was not mandated by God for poor people, most of us are not technically poor (Biblically speaking). For most people, God established spending a second 10% of your income on vacations (you know - the seven festivals to Jerusalem were high vacations), on fine food at Sabbath meals, and blessing your family with comforts that were out of the ordinary. And if you were particularly wealthy, you would spend some of that second 10% by blessing other people with vacations, help with medical bills, gifts, or other blessings. So the first 10% went to the Lord (was given to the Levites in the local synagogue) and the second 10% went to blessing your family and other families with good things. And we will look at that second tithe later on in Deuteronomy. But God knows that He had to command that second tithe because so many of us would otherwise be stingy with ourselves, with our families, and with others. Moses presents eating and being filled as a blessing from God. Our family is going to go on vacation to Branson tomorrow. Don't worry - we will be back on Saturday, but we are not going to feel guilty about enjoying that vacation. We can receive that blessing with gratitude.

But think too about the supply chain mentioned in verse 14 and the first part of verse 15 in order for the food to make it to your table to eat. There was soil. There was water. Some farmer had to grow the food. Somebody had to transport it. God gave you some means of obtaining it - perhaps through a store. There was refrigeration (which required an electric grid), and then somebody prepared the meal (which required fuel). You could spend the whole meal tracing the providences behind it and still fail to count them all up. That gives us plenty of reason to give thanks to God for His providence.

And notice that God gives rain “in its season.” His provision includes timing. God's timing is perfect. The early rains helped begin the agricultural season. The latter rains helped bring the crops toward maturity. The farmer needed God’s provision at both ends. We often recognize our need for God at the beginning of something. We pray earnestly for our children when they are in the womb, but do we continue to pray for them as they grow up? We pray when we start a business or enter a marriage. But we need Him to sustain those responsibilities too.

Parents, you need God's wisdom long after your child is a toddler. Husbands and wives, you need Him after twenty years of marriage. You need His grace throughout the whole course of your life.

But notice also the balance between divine provision and human effort that is once again repeated. In verse 14 he says, "then I will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil." God gave the rain, but they were still responsible to gather the harvest. He's not going to bless laziness. So work faithfully. Pray throughout the work. And enjoy the fruit of your labors with thanksgiving.

Moses gives four warnings against the slippery path to apostasy (v. 16).

But Moses has barely finished describing this beautiful scene of satisfaction before he gives a warning - a warning that includes four signs that we are on a pathway to apostasy. Verse 16 says,

“Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them…”

There are four dangers in this verse that I want us to consider.

First, beware of a deceived heart. Moses starts with the heart, proceeds to turning aside, then serving other gods, and finally worshiping them. Why does he start with the heart? Matthew 15:19 says, "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies" and other evils. They start unobserved within the heart long before others notice the outward expression. If you are not crucifying adultery in the heart, it may eventually manifest itself in actual adultery. And notice that something is happening to the heart - it is being deceived by something. Who deceives the heart? I believe demons often do. They prompt our hearts with temptations to give in to lust, self-pity, pride, fear, lack of trust, bitterness, or other sins that grieve the Lord. Demons know that if they can get us to grieve the Holy Spirit, we will lack grace needed to stay on the straight and narrow. So they seek to convince us that sin isn't so bad. Or it could simply be that introduce doubts that kill our faith - and Scripture says that whatever is not of faith is sin. Or it could be to make us so busy that we forget the Lord. I didn't write down who said it, but someone once said, “An empty stomach can tempt us to doubt God. A full stomach can tempt us to forget Him.” The heart is a complicated part of us - and we need to constantly be on guard against the deceiver who seeks to get at our hearts. Don't ever take heart-sin lightly. Don't coddle it or even ignore it. Crucify it the moment it raises its ugly head inside of you.

Deception affects how we interpret things. We begin believing something false about God, about ourselves, or about what we need. Perhaps we begin thinking, “My security depends upon keeping this person happy - no matter what he asks me to do.” And before you know it, you are being controlled and manipulated by that person. Or, it could be, “I cannot afford to be generous.” Or, “I have worked so hard that I deserve this pleasure, even though God forbids it.”

We can produce very persuasive arguments within our hearts when we want to excuse a cherished sin. And that is why we need God’s Word to examine our thinking. We need to be willing to hear correction. Proverbs 4:23 says, "Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life"

Second, beware of turning aside. People don't instantly turn to other gods. Their downward slide starts long before that. They turn aside from their spiritual disciplines, turn aside from their first love for the Lord, turn aside from thankfulness, turn aside from responsibilities, turn aside from listening to God speaking to us through the Scriptures. The first turn can actually look quite small.

Let me give you an example of how subtly this can happen in ordinary life. A man prays for a better job and gets it. And he is very thankful. But the job becomes increasingly demanding, and he starts neglecting his devotions. He tells himself, "It's just temporary." Then work begins crowding out worship and responsibilities at home. Again, he tells himself that things will eventually settle down. Eventually, when someone raises a concern, he becomes defensive, and says, “You don’t understand the pressure I’m under.” Now, granted, the pressure may be real. But what has happened here? The blessing itself that God gave to him is beginning to govern the man who received it. His decisions are increasingly shaped by preserving the blessing rather than obeying the Lord who gave it. So the second step downward is turning aside. And that turning aside can be ever so subtle.

Third, beware of serving other gods. In verse 13 they were to serve the Lord. Here they serve rival gods. Given the vast superiority of Yehowah over all of the other gods, this is astonishing - that Israelites would ever want to serve other gods. Yet it happened over and over again in Israel's history.

You may think that you don't follow other gods, let alone serve and worship them. But keep in mind that the apostle John even told the Christian Jews of his day in 1 John 5, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." You need to understand what a shocking statement that would have been to those Christian Jews. "Why would John say that to us?" Outward idolatry was an abomination to Jews in John's day. They weren't even tempted by it. They prided themselves in avoiding even the remotest semblance of idolatry - at least with stone and wood idols ever since the Babylonian captivity. There probably wasn't a Jew in Christ's day who would say, "Oh yeah, I'm an idolater. I serve other gods." But John said that even regenerate Christian Jews could fall into idolatry. In fact, Os Guinness, in his book, No God but God, points out that our hearts are idol factories, and idolatry and polytheism is one of the most pervasive sins in the evangelical church. Once you have your eyes opened to it, you see it everywhere. In his book, Idols for Destruction, Herbert Schlossberg defines idolatry as "any substitution of what is created for the creator" (p. 6). A political party that cannot be challenged (because if you challenge some issue of your party, the other party might win) has become an idol. Reading Scripture through the eyes of psychology rather than reading psychology through the eyes of Scripture can easily make psychology an idol. David Wells demonstrates that even a lust for academic respectability can be an idol. He speaks of the D-Min-ization of the ministry alluding to the rush for doctorates of ministry by pastors. Why? Does it really help them in their ministry? Most doctorates don't. In fact, I would argue that most doctorates make pastors academic and irrelevant. They are simply status symbols so that others can call them a doctor (like the Pharisees wanted to be called rabbi) - "Dr. Kayser." No. I am Phil, or elder Kayser if you prefer. Don't think that verse 13 only applies to ancient Israel. We too must beware of the subtle ways that we can serve other gods - even if we don't yet worship them.

The fourth step downwards is to be consumed by anything but God. The movement in verse 16 ends in worship. The thing drawing us away begins receiving the devotion that belongs to God alone. Worship describes a state of being that is given over to those things - consumed by them. When a blessing begins to govern the person who receives it, that blessing itself has become an idol that is worshiped. So here's my question: "What things so consume your inward desires that you are willing to consistently neglect God-given responsibilities in order to maintain your heart's desire?" Even if the thing that consumes you is lawful in itself, the very fact that it displaces your loyalty to God makes the blessing into a god or an idol. It is something that has captured your worship. A good gift becomes spiritually dangerous when preserving it takes precedence over obeying its Giver.

Take seriously the authority of the Giver to withdraw His gifts (v. 17).

But praise God! Verse 17 shows that God loves us enough to remove the things that consume us and that keep us from loving and obeying Him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Verse 17 concludes our pericope by warning:

“…lest the LORD’S anger be aroused against you, and He shut up the heavens so that there be no rain, and the land yield no produce, and you perish quickly from the good land which the LORD is giving you.”

Our God is a jealous God, and He does not take kindly to spiritual adultery. Moses describes divine anger, withheld rain, failed production, and rapid destruction from the good land. These are covenant judgments, not merely agricultural accidents. Their severity exposes the folly of serving the blessing rather than the God who gives blessings. But interestingly, those very judgments are also blessings in disguise. They uncover our blindness and reveal how far our hearts have slid from the Lord. And we don't want our hearts to slide from God. So those disciplines are good.

But the encouraging thing is that if we repent, God restores us and makes us new. The key to reversing this downward slope is repentance. It is so easy, and yet it is so hard. And its usually pride that makes it hard and keeps us from repenting. We fear what other people will think about us if we repent. Oh!!! - it did my heart good at presbytery to hear the mutual vulnerability that the pastors had with each other. In many denominations you are not going to have that. But it is healthy. And it is my prayer that everyone in this congregation would increasingly show the same vulnerability, love, patience, mutual encouragement, counseling, and compassion. And repentance is one way of showing such vulnerability.

In any case, God’s generosity should produce gratitude and reverence. We must resist the assumption that past blessings guarantee continued prosperity if we are living in deliberate disobedience. God loves His true children too much to continue blessing them when they deliberately sin against Him. He loves us too much. In contrast, He has no problem with continuing to shower fake Christians and Canaanites with good things. But He loves His true children too much to continue showering them with blessings if those blessings will keep drawing their hearts away from Him. So He will drop the hammer at some point. So it is much better to repent earlier rather than later - after He's dropped the hammer (after a lot of damage has happened).

There are a couple of caveats that I want to make. First, don't blame riches, delightful food, beauty, or anything other than your own heart for this downward slide. It's not the fault of the riches that you have backslidden. Notice again how Moses describes the land. It is a “good land” that the Lord is giving them. There was nothing inherently wrong with the land or the riches that came from it. It was good. Put the blame where it belongs. The downward slide begins with how your heart responds to His blessings.

A second distinction is that we cannot look at every drought, every sickness, or every financial loss today and claim that there must be a sin that caused it. There is a whole book of the Bible written against that false assumption - the book of Job. We saw last week that affliction can have several purposes in God’s school of providence. A faithful believer may suffer greatly. Job did. Those catastrophes were not because of any sin in him. We must let Scripture govern our interpretation of suffering.

But those two qualifications should never make us dismiss this last warning. We should examine ourselves when He brings affliction to see if perhaps there is perhaps some sin that He is disciplining us for. If God reveals sin, we should confess the sins that His Word exposes. And we should trust Him where His purposes remain hidden (as they did for Job).``

Conclusion

But let's not end with the negative. This passage actually focuses on the generosity of God. He loves to delight His people. We are going to be singing a Psalm that thanks God for many of His good gifts. It's OK to pray for such gifts - so long as our intention is to use them to His glory. Tell Him that you want to use those blessings faithfully, but that you would rather lose those good things than to have them come between you and Him. God's gift of Himself to you is the greatest gift of all. And if some lesser gift is beginning to grab your heart in a way that makes you drift from God, ask God's forgiveness for idolatry. He may well let you keep the good gift now that you recognize the danger and now that you want to be a good steward of the blessing. God loves to bless His people with wealth - if that wealth would be used for Him. He loves to bless His people with children, if we will be faithful stewards of our children. He loves to bless us with houses, if those houses do not have a stronger grip upon our soul than God Himself does. This passage calls us to respond to God’s generosity with obedience, dependence, love, service, and watchfulness.

And sadly, if you are honest, you will recognize that every one of us has failed on one or more of those points. We have forgotten mercies. We have taken gifts for granted. We have allowed good things to compete with the Lord. We have excused disobedience because we were afraid of losing something that we wanted.

So we need more than a New Year's Resolution to do better. We need Christ. Jesus perfectly obeyed His Father. He served Him alone. When Satan offered Him the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worship, Jesus refused. His allegiance never shifted. He never traded good gifts for God. And if you are united to Him, He can give you that same heart. At the cross Jesus bore the curse His people deserved. We come to Him for forgiveness, and we come to Him for the Spirit’s renewing power.

That is the foundation for taking these commands seriously. We can confess our failures honestly because there is forgiveness in Christ. We can begin obeying again because He generously supplies grace.

Let me leave you with one practical assignment. Choose one blessing God has given you. It might be your marriage, your children (that's a hard one), your employment, your health, or some beautiful opportunity. Thank Him specifically for it and acknowledge that to be a good gift. But then tell Him, "Lord, I don't want this good gift to come between you and me. Every day I want to bless you by blessing others through this gift. I want to use this good gift as You desire. And I would far rather than you take this good gift away from me than that the gift cause me to drift from You. How do You want me to use this gift? How can I use it in a way that draws me closer to You? Where do I need to change? I want to be faithful with what you've entrusted to me.” Can you do that? If you think you can't, you are already on step two of this downward slide into apostasy. Take that seriously. You are already turning aside, and you need to ask God for the grace to be willing to give your Isaacs to the Lord. If you commit your blessing to the Lord in this way, you will be able to take the next step of obedience that He shows you from His Word and the blessings that generously accompany it. May each of us be able to be trusted by God with more of the good things of life. Amen.