Do Not Forget The Lord

we're going to be returning to Deuteronomy chapter 8. And the last time we were in Deuteronomy was almost a month ago. And we saw a couple of things I want to remind you, sort of prime the pump, if you will. We saw that Moses was testifying about how God brought Israel through the promised land. And there was a couple of things he made mention of. The first was that he brought them through and that he caused them to suffer hunger. that they didn't have food, and that God did that to test them, and that that test was meant to do two things. It was meant to humble them, and it was meant to confirm to them that God would be with them and care for them. The famous quote that Jesus makes when he's being tempted in the garden is that man does not live by bread alone. That phrase came from earlier in Deuteronomy chapter 8, where that was the lesson that the Israelites were being taught through their hunger.

And while the Lord was making them hungry and teaching them to trust him when they were without, he was also doing things that were merciful and gracious. The two examples he gave were that their feet didn't swell and that their clothes didn't wear out because they were traveling and they didn't have means to make their own clothes again as easily. And so even while they were hungry and traveling without a home, he was merciful to them and he was teaching them to trust him. He fed them with manna and he kept them. And then Moses tells them, sort of foreshadowing, he says, this way you've been living and you've been learning to trust me. In scarcity, it's not always going to be that way. You're about to enter a land of abundance. You're about to have all kinds of stuff that you didn't grow or build or cultivate. And he warns them, he says, don't let these things lead you astray. Instead, once you've eaten and once you've been satisfied, which is a sweet kindness from the God, from Lord, when we're satisfied. As I was preparing, I was thinking about when we pray for our food.

And many times we pray at the beginning of our meals, at least that's what we do at my house. And then I thought, what I think what this passage was teaching us is also that we ought to pray at the end of our meals and thank God for it, you know. Nevertheless, the lesson was whether you have a little or whether you have an abundance, we ought to rely on the Lord and we ought to bless the Lord. And so this morning, our passage warns us not to forget the Lord. When we have an abundance, These are the times when our hearts are led astray. The comforts of life grow up around us and they choke out our love for the Lord. And so as we study our text this morning, this danger is what we have to recognize and avoid. And so my hope is that God will help us to see the ways in which we've forgotten them. I hope there's no one here this morning that says, I haven't forgotten the Lord, but rather will say, Lord, help me to see the ways in which I've forgotten you and keep me from it and bring me back to you. Would you please stand now as you read the word of the Lord? It's from Deuteronomy chapter eight.

verses 11 through 14. It says, Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his ordinances and his statutes which I am commanding you today. Otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied and have built good houses and lived in them and when your herds and your flocks multiply and your silver and gold multiply and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So our passage is opened with this exhortation and closed with the same one. Beware not to forget the Lord. Beware not to forget the Lord. And so this is an exhortation for us to remember the Lord. And there are two parts to obeying this command that I can see. How do we avoid forgetting the Lord? Well, the first is to praise him for all that he's done, which may seem sort of,

juvenile or elementary, you should thank God for the things that he does in your life. He tells us in verse 10, just before this passage, he says, when you've eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God in the good land which he has given to you. And so when you're satisfied, when you've eaten, when you've received from the Lord's hand the things that you need, the result of that should be that you praise God, that you thank him for what you have. And that, from the very beginning, begins to do business with our own inclinations and our own hearts and our own temptations. Because that's not a natural response, actually. It seems natural that if someone does something nice, or if the Lord gives you something, that you would be thankful for it. But have you ever done something for someone and not had them do the simple task of saying thank you? Did it offend you? Have you ever forgotten to say thank you? Forgotten. Chosen not to say thank you. Been too busy with something to...

to return and say thank you remember the 10 lepers that jesus healed what was significant about that that only one of them came back and did what thanked him for having healed them the rest of them took the blessing and just went and showed themselves to the priest and went back to their life and so we realized that this this thanking god for his work in our life is not something that comes naturally to us many times i think that's because when good things happen to us we think well Yeah, that's how it's supposed to go. It's supposed to work like that. If I work hard, good things happen. But as we study our text, we're going to see the multiplication of their gold and their silver and of their flocks and all that they have. We're going to address the question of how exactly that multiplication happens. But suffice it to say for now, you and I ought to be thanking God for the things he gives us in our life, for the provision that he provides.

Even when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, when they were hungry, when they were homeless, when they were fearful. You remember, they wandered 40 years because of their fear. When they were dying because of their faithlessness and unwillingness to go in. They had occasion to thank God. When they were hungry, what did they say? Moses, you brought us out here to die. Take us back to Egypt where at least there was meat in the pots. We're hungry. as though Moses had done something wrong to them and had gone, oh, you're right. We don't. Somehow the Lord delivered us with all of the wealth of Egypt out of their hand and across the Red Sea on dry ground only to bring us out here for us to starve. And so he gives them food, manna, come down from heaven, of which our passage or our chapter earlier than this says that that manner of provision was something that neither they nor their fathers knew. It was something that was unprecedented.

Do you think they praised God for manna? I don't know that they praised God for manna. In fact, I'm pretty sure, at least over the long haul, they didn't, because what was their complaint then after they had manna? We have no meat. We have no meat. We're out here just eating this stuff, this bread, basically. We have no meat. So what's God do? Gives them meat until, as the Scripture says, it's like coming out of their nostrils. Gives them meat. And what you realize is that these people who are receiving this exhortation, are not by nature a thankful, grateful people. That they take what comes to them, whether it's deliverance from Egypt with all of Egypt's wealth, the destruction of their enemies in the Red Sea, there are these times where they praise God. You remember Moses sang a song of praise and thanksgiving on the shores of the Red Sea. And the people sang along with him, but it wasn't long after that they were scared, they were fearful, they were ungrateful. They'd forgotten all that God had done.

They'd cease to give praise to him. Have any of your kids at the dinner table, when it's something they're not particularly fond of, kind of wrinkled up their nose at the idea of thanking God for it? Do you notice those sorts of things? I notice it. We notice those sorts of things. Like, oh, we're having Indian curry tonight. No one's that hungry, you know? I don't care if you're hungry. I want to know if you're thankful. It doesn't take a lot for us to not be thankful. Another way of saying it is we have really high expectations. for what we're entitled to or what we deserve. And so we forget God all along the way. And so the first thing to do is to praise God. Now, one of the things I want to say about thanking God is that I don't want that limited in your minds to only thanking him for the good stuff. Because that's the natural inclination is like, oh, well, we should be thankful and be thankful for the good things that God gives us. Yes, I'm not here to say that you shouldn't be.

But what I'm pushing you toward is being thankful for all things that come to you from the hand of God, even the difficult things. Listen to these words. This is from Luke chapter 6. And this isn't about thankfulness, but it is about reciprocity. And I'm afraid that that's how we tend to approach thankfulness. In Luke chapter 6, verses 32 through 34, it says this. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. So there's this idea of like, if Lord gives me what I want, then I thank him for it. But the whole point of that passage in Luke is to say, you haven't even begun to love if you only love people who love you back.

You haven't even begun to do it. And so thankfulness, similarly, isn't even begun if we only thank God for the good things he gives us, that we grumble and complain whenever the difficult things come. The Lord, when he provided manna, should have received praise. Not because manna is the best, yummiest, most nutritious food in the world. No one's arguing that. But it's better than starving, and it's directly from the Lord's hand. It's a miraculous provision, and they could... only bring themselves to gather more than they were supposed to and to complain that they had no meat. Ugh. Do you do that? Do you thank God for manna, for Indian curry, for rainy days when you have to work outside, for sickness on a busy week or car trouble? You're like, crazy. Seriously, you want me to thank God for that? And I'm like, I do. I really do. Because God is intimately involved in the lives of his people.

Working in ways that we don't often identify or recognize or acknowledge. But there he is doing it. And we really do have to discipline our propensity to only find the misery in it. Or the part that isn't quite the way it should be. You ever had a fight with your spouse? Husbands with your wife? And you go, I may have screwed up entirely. I mean, I may have tried to do the loving thing. I may have completely struck out. Like I tried and I just screwed it all up. But I did try. And I would like an acknowledgement somewhere that effort was made. Because I don't always make effort. Conversely, have you husbands ever been jerks to your wives because she's trying to be respectful or trying to point something out, trying to figure it out, but she didn't say it just right. And you're like, well, you didn't say it the right way. It's so pathetic. It's like she's trying. Like, can you not be thankful?

Can you not be thankful? No, I can't be. She didn't think highly enough of me. Well, maybe you think too highly of yourself. It really is a question what the minimum threshold is before we'll be thankful. It's not just like that we get like normal things. It's like we have to have better than what everyone else has before we're like, I'm thankful. Shame on us. Shame on us. We forget the Lord. You know why thankfulness is so hard to demonstrate? It's because it's a gift of the Holy Spirit. It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit's work in the lives of his people. Gratitude is a Christian virtue. It doesn't just exist out there in society. It doesn't grow natively in our hearts or in our world. It's something that God weaves into the hearts and lives of his people. I'm not talking about simply saying thank you when someone does something for you, but when you are truly thankful, you know.

Many of you know that we were just on vacation and we had a bit of excitement, or my wife did. And the excitement was I was in northern Minnesota, Canadian border, making my way back to northern Wisconsin. Vanessa was making her way from Indianapolis up. So I had like a seven-hour drive on a Friday. She had a six-hour drive, or no, a nine-hour drive. So we were way far apart. And just about exactly halfway through her trip. Up there with seven kids that she'd been taking care of by herself for a week because I was gone with the four oldest boys on this canoe trip. The Myers, whose van we were borrowing, died in Rockford. No, the Myers didn't die. Our van is in the body shop being repaired from an accident from about two months ago. We were borrowing the Myers van. The Myers van quit. And it quit in Rockford at like three o'clock on Friday afternoon.

Four or five hours from here, four or five hours from where she was going in Wisconsin, 11 hours from me. You want to start your vacation that way? Well, I'm helpless. I barely have cell phone reception. I can't do anything. Nothing. And what happens is we're trying to figure out what to do. And it's not like, well, how are we going to, it's like just how are you going to get anywhere? You can't call an Uber for eight people. I mean, even at that level, it's like this isn't going to work very well. and we'll look for a hotel room. No hotel rooms, right? No room for us at the inn, because there was a concert or something going on in Rockford, Illinois. Rental vans. Turns out they don't just keep a whole fleet of 12- and 15-passenger rental vans sitting there for the Abusaras. Maybe tomorrow. And we don't know anybody in Rockford. So what's supposed to happen? Like, what's going to happen? This was just, what, a week and a half ago? No, two weeks ago, because we actually had a week of vacation.

So what happens is we get angry, we get frustrated, we feel helpless, as any of you would have in the same situation, I assume. And we don't know what to do. And I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to get back to Wisconsin at midnight and I'm going to find my wife a hotel somewhere down there and I'm going to drive and we're going to rent and we're just going to figure this all out. It's just a mess. It's just a mess. And then... And my wife calls and says, I've got a friend who lives two and a half hours away who will come pick us up, and we can stay at their house, and then we'll figure it out tomorrow. And it's like, okay. That's not an ideal situation, but that's the best we've got. And then she calls and says, hey, you know, Kevin and Rachel are willing to, they have a friend who has a van. I don't know the Henrys. I know them. They're sweet people, I guess, very sweet people, who have a big van, and we can just grab it and bring it up to you.

It's like five hours away, and it's what, six o'clock at night, something like that? I don't know. We're in central time over there. Anyway, Kevin and Rochelle go on a road trip, an overnight road trip to help our family. And they get there at midnight, and Kevin moves all the stuff into the other van, out of the Meyers, into the other van, and Vanessa drives another five hours up to where we're at, and she gets there just about the time the sun's coming up. And it's about the time you guys got back home. So how do we respond? Misery? Anger? Frustration? Gratitude? All of that. But gratitude. Thankfulness for the Lord acting. Because I didn't have a solution, you know. And the Lord provided. And he provided through Kevin and Michelle and through this other family. And what are we supposed to do? We're supposed to praise God and thank him for it. What if what had happened, like, not in Rockford, Illinois, but like...

30 miles away from Rockford. I don't know if you've been to Rockford, but there's nothing 30 miles either direction from Rockford. It's middle of nowhere, southern Wisconsin, or middle of nowhere, northern Illinois. There's nothing. But the van died in Rockford. Vanessa heard something going on and got on an exit ramp calling Daniel. The auto shop was two miles away. The police gave Vanessa and the family a ride over to the body shop. The body shop guy gave Vanessa and all my kids a ride to the McDonald's play place. McDonald's gave my wife free soda and ice cream, which sometimes you're not as thankful for at 9 o'clock at night, right? They let her stay after closing until Kevin and Rochelle showed up. They closed at 11. They didn't get there, you know, they didn't get there till midnight. Like, there's a lot to be thankful for, and we are thankful for, and we still are trying to figure out what we're going to drive after we return this other vehicle. Like, but it would be really easy for us to just focus on or to tell the story of

how miserable the whole situation has been. There have been a lot of hangups and headaches and setbacks and all of that. That's all there too. But we as Christians ought to make a point of thanking God for all of the kindness in his provision in life's troubles. Otherwise, we've just forgotten him when it comes to the day-to-day stuff of our life. That story is an extraordinary example where you really do feel helpless. And for all of our connectivity and our phones and our people, it's like we don't know what to do. And I am not in a place. to help in any reasonable amount of time. So was the Lord in it? Yes, he was. And did he protect my family? Yes, he did. And did he provide for us? Yes, he has. And has it caused us a bit of tension? Yep, that's true too. But are we going to not thank God for the things he does in our life? As I said, thankfulness is a gift of the Holy Spirit. And it's one thing to simply say thank you and another to be truly grateful. And so we ought to thank God in all of our situations.

trusting that he has a good purpose in it, many times when we don't see what that good purpose is, all we can see is doom and gloom and misery and sorrow and grief and frustration. Even if you can't see the good in the moment or after the fact, the question comes down to, do you believe that your God is good and that he cares for you in every circumstance and knows how many hairs are on your head, whether there are a bunch or none? This is not something that you can just will yourself to do. You need the Holy Spirit to give you a heart of thankfulness so that you don't forget him. This is what Israel needed as they went into the promised land with all of the abundance. After all of the scarcity, they needed to remember and they needed to praise God. Thankfulness, when you see it out in the wild, is such an uncommon grace that we don't trust it when we see it. Another way of saying that is when someone is thankful,

And you know the whole story, and they're just saying, well, here was the good stuff. What do you think? Do you think things like, yeah, but it's going to get hardened later. Do you think that's just a show? Do you think they're just ignoring and suppressing the truth? Do you think they're in shock? They haven't appreciated the gravity of their situation. Do you discount? gratitude when you see it in other people because it's so extraordinary. I think we do that to get ourselves off of the hook of having to be grateful in difficult situations. We just don't think it's real. It's just a counterfeit. And I'm here to tell you it's not a counterfeit. It's real. Are there hardships in the midst of gratitude in difficult situations? Yes. But if gratitude can't overcome that, then God hasn't given you the gift.

But if he has given the gift, then it will overcome it. And there will be gratitude. And the gratitude doesn't have to say there weren't hardships or there weren't frustrations or there weren't sins. But gratitude will say that God was good to us, undeserving sinners in the midst of it. And for that, we praise him. So that's the first part in not forgetting the Lord. Praise him for all that he's done, whether it's comfortable or uncomfortable. The second part in avoiding forgetting the Lord is obedience. It says, beware that you do not forget the Lord your God. And then he says, by not keeping his commandments and his ordinances and his statutes, which I'm commanding you today. And so one of the ways, the second way that we remember the Lord is by obeying the Lord. Remembering the Lord requires full engagement. It requires us remembering what's required of us, what God has commanded of us in every situation.

You know when difficult things happen, you often ask yourself the question, what did I do to cause this? And when something good happens, you say, here are the things I did to cause this. And you ask yourself when the good things are going on, what does God require of me in this good situation? Or in that difficult situation, what does God require of me in this situation? You see, those questions remember the Lord. But the question in the difficult circumstance about why did God let this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this? That's a question that's built on the foundation of forgetfulness. Forgetting all that the Lord's done for you up to this point and just saying my interaction with God is only here and now. It has no history and it has no future. It only has a present. It's a miserable way to live. It's an unfaithful way to live.

On the other side, if when good things happen to you, you wander and you fall away, you've forgotten the Lord. As he tells Israel, your flocks and your herds are going to multiply. Your silver and your gold, they're going to multiply. All that you have is going to multiply. We have to recognize that when we have an abundance, the universal temptation is to forget the Lord. And you just go, well, look what I've got. Look at this. Isn't this nice? Did you know that in the Old Testament, I'm sure we'll come to it as we get through Deuteronomy, there were all kinds of offerings. There were offerings for atonement, offerings for guilt, and offerings for uncleanness. There were also free will offerings. Sort of an interesting offering. It's an offering that is just like what it says it is. It's not required. It's not mandated.

It's not, and this is how you will do. I mean, there are ways appropriately for it to be offered. But a free will offering is just something that the people would do as an expression of their gratitude to God. They would come and they would offer up sacrifices and offer up the good things that they had, a portion of them to the Lord, just as a thank you. It's sort of like a tip when tips aren't required. You know, we live in a world where tips are becoming just expected in many places. And I'd argue in places where, They haven't historically been expected. But there are places where tips are not customary. A free will offering is like giving a tip in that situation. That's gratitude. That's saying, I've been given an abundance. I have a blessing. I have more than I need and certainly more than I deserve. And what I want to do is be a blessing to other people. I want to give just some of what I have away, back to the Lord through whatever means.

seem appropriate to us. So what does God require of us in good situations? That we be grateful and that we bless God. That we offer of ourselves and of our belongings and of our resources a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. I want to point out another thing too about obedience. Obedience is rarely difficult. I mean, if you think about the things God calls us to do, it's not hard stuff. Like the whole first half of the sermon has just been about being truly thankful. I'm not asking you to run a marathon. Like that would just be flat out impossible, right? For probably most, if not all of us, just get out there and run a marathon. Just couldn't do it. Probably couldn't walk it. But true heartfelt gratitude, is that so hard? Is patience hard? Is it a hard concept? Is being patient hard? We're all like, it is really hard to be patient. And I know it's actually.

really hard to be patient, but it's not because patience is so unheard of. It's because of our weakness. Be quick to listen and slow to anger. Is that hard? Is it so hard to just don't say it? Just don't say it. Just listen. Is it hard? Is the concept of forgiveness hard? Is it hard to understand and go, oh, so someone did something wrong? And then I say, I don't hold that against you anymore, I forgive you. Is that a hard, it's not like calculus, right? It's this pretty simple concept, but it's so difficult. What I want to point out is that obedience is not difficult because the things God requires of us are so impossible to do. They're so difficult because of how sinful we are, how weak we are, how much of our desires and our flesh control us.

That's why it's so hard to hold our tongue when someone says something we don't like. That's why it's so hard to work a full day. Most obedience isn't too strenuous or difficult. In fact, Jesus tells us as much in Matthew chapter 11. He says, What is his yoke? The yoke of obedience. Doing what God says. His commands are not grinding us into the ground. Our resistance to them and the subsequent discipline that comes upon us because of it, that's what grinds us into the ground. And so Moses tells the Israelites, when you have an abundance, beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments. You see, the goal of your life ought not to be comfort and ease or wealth or even health.

The goal of our lives as Christians ought to be to serve God and to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength in every circumstance that we find ourselves in. Sometimes those will be circumstances of manna in the wilderness, and sometimes those will be circumstances of 21st century America, which is to say, abundance. But in both those circumstances, and any that we find in between ourselves, we're not without our obligations to obey God. Just because you're healthy doesn't mean you don't have to praise God. Just because you're wealthy doesn't mean you don't have to praise God. Just because you have a good job or just because you have children or just because you got married or just because of whatever doesn't mean you don't have obligations to the Lord, to serve him, to obey him. So why don't we obey God more? Turns out we're a lot weaker than we thought. For all of our well-laid plans, we have real trouble keeping up with them. And it doesn't take much to put us off our,

Off our path. Maybe I'll ask the question another way. If you think of the ways in which you disobeyed God this last week, the ways in which you sinned, did you give yourself to those sins because of how difficult and costly obedience would have been? Was it just too hard? I doubt it. None of us were facing jail time. No one, to my knowledge, was in danger of even losing their job last week. Certainly not death or imprisonment, right? No, it's much more likely. That the reason we didn't obey God was simply because we were unaware of our obligations or we were aware of them and didn't care. Obedience was beneath us. We didn't see the utility of obeying. In fact, many times I think the reason we don't obey God and remember him in that way is because we don't see the purpose in it. Well, what's it going to get me if I do? If I'm patient, if I'm merciful, if I'm forgiving, how's that going to benefit me? And if we can't see immediately...

The benefit of it, we go, well, then I don't, that's just, it's not worth it. It doesn't make any sense. No one else does. If you think that way, if you live that way, then you really are going to miss out on all the blessings that come from obedience. They really are hidden from you. And it's God's wisdom that they're hidden from you. They're hidden from you in the same way that his truth was hidden in parables. So that he would receive glory when those who listened by faith and obeyed by faith would then receive the benefits of having trusted God. And so many times our lack of obedience is just a lack of faith. We go, I don't think that that's going to work. To which I'd ask you, does your way work? Are all of your plans going how they're supposed to? Does your marriage look the way it's supposed to? The way you thought it would? The way it wanted it to? But you've got the obedient kids, right? Because you watched all the older people screw it up. You knew what you were doing. I'm happy for you.

We ought to remember the Lord by obeying the Lord, which means that in every circumstance, whether we're in a season of manna or a season of abundance, we ought to be asking the Lord, what do you require of me in this situation? What does faithfulness to you look like? And Lord, help me to restrain my desires and discipline my will and submit it to your word. The rest of the passage talks about the abundance that they lived in. You've eaten, you've satisfied, you've built good houses, you've lived in them. Your herds and flocks have multiplied. Your gold and silver has multiplied. All that you had has multiplied. How is it that all that multiplication happened? Here's an example from Scripture. You remember when Jacob went to work for Laban because he wanted to marry Rachel? And then Laban pulled a fast one on him after seven years of labor and says, well, it's not our custom to marry off the younger before the older, so here you go. And he married Rachel, who was, as far as we can tell, not attractive and not...

Desirable. And then he says, well, it's going to, Laban tells him, well, it's going to take another seven years of labor for you to marry Rachel. And so, but after a week, you can have her as your wife. But you do have to work these seven years. And so Jacob's working the seven years, and then he gets Leah, and then the seven years, and he's getting Rachel. And in the middle of it, he's like, he's like, I got to, at some point, I'm going to leave, right? I'm going to need to go back to my home country. I need to get out of here. but I need something to go with. Like I've been working in increasing your, I'm really paraphrasing and kind of working through the story pretty quickly. But he goes to Laban and he says, you know, I've been working for a long time for you and I've really increased your wealth all these years, but it's coming to the time where I need to leave and I need something to take with me. So can we work out an arrangement? And so they come up with this arrangement where Jacob says, I'm gonna take all the goats and the sheep.

herds, I'm going to take all the speckled and the mottled and the striped ones and we'll leave you all the solid colored ones, all the pure ones. And Jacob's, and you puzzle about it because then when they come to eat and he sees the strong ones, he takes these strips of wood. He takes these branches and he strips the bark off of these different types of wood and then he puts it in the water when the strong ones come because he wants, because they breed when they come. And so he's like, some, I know it's kind of crazy. and he puts it in there, and all of a sudden, all the speckled and the mottled and the striped ones are increasing, but he doesn't put the sticks in there when the weak ones come, and they breed, and those are the pure ones. Those are the white ones. Those are Laban's. And so this goes on for years and breeding cycles and all these types of things, and it turns out that this arrangement is Jacob gets to take all the speckled and the mottled and the striped ones, and Laban gets to keep all the pure ones and all this, but somehow Jacob's game in the system, right? And you start wondering, like, what's...

Is there some special mineral? What kind of wood is that? Maybe if I put it in my water, like, you start to wonder these questions. Why is it? Because it doesn't make any rational sense. It's just like, okay, is this sorcery? Like, what is going on here? Do you know what the answer is? God blessed Jacob. It had nothing to do with those stupid sticks. Nothing at all. God blessed Jacob because he loved Jacob. And Jacob had been faithful to his word at this point. anyway, with Laban. God bless them. It didn't have anything to do with these crazy sticks. I have no idea what, apparently, the commentaries I've read said that, you know, in Israel, or in Jacob's land, it wasn't Israel at the time, the speckled and the mottled sheep were more desirable. They just thought they were prettier. And so he wanted those ones. And then he's got this whole plot and scheme about how to, I don't know what. Why did it work? Because God blessed them. That's it. That's the whole answer.

It's the whole answer. Why did Israel's herds multiply? Why were they able to mine gold and silver out of the ground and multiply it? It's the same answer. It's because God blessed them. He told them he was going to give them an abundant land, and it turns out, in fact, he keeps his word, and he did. And so then he warns them again at the end of the passage, that when you've received, when you've eaten and you're satisfied, when you've multiplied, When you're very wealthy, don't become proud and don't forget the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. There's this refrain in Deuteronomy about Egypt out of the house of slavery. And the further you get into the land of abundance, the closer you get to it, you'd like to leave behind that bad memory. And God always, and I think wisely, is always using that refrain and reminding them about Egypt, about the bondage, about the slavery. The stuff that they would be inclined to forget. He goes, I don't forget.

I don't forget where you came from. You shouldn't forget where you came from. And so, as God's blessed you today, redouble your efforts to remember him, to obey him, to be humble. Look for ways to serve God out of your abundance. And forget about the things you don't have. If you don't have them, it's because God hasn't willed for you to have them. Or you don't have them because of your sin in some way. I don't know the details in every situation. But if you don't have it, it's because the Lord hasn't given it to you, and it's no excuse for you not to serve him, or to bless him, or to praise him, or to obey him. God's provision and deliverance should always be on your mind. What he's delivered you out of, where you've come from. Have you ever thought back on your life and thought, there was a fork in the road, and I went this way, and all of my life is because I went this way?

But the difference between me going this way and me going that way, I can't really say as to why I went this way instead of that way. But now I look and see that if I had gone that way, it was death. It was just death for me. But God brought me this way. You should remember those things. And you should praise God for those things. You should recognize that were it left to you, you may well have chosen death. But by God's grace, he's brought you to a path of life. and therefore is worthy always and in every circumstance of your praise and of your obedience. That's how you avoid forgetting the Lord. To be fully engaged in every area of your life, realizing that the Lord is there and has blessed you and you're obligated to him, to obey him, to praise him, to testify to him. And so as you go home this week, ask yourself, what has God delivered me from? Where would I be if it weren't for his deliverance?

And then praise him for his mercy to you. Let's pray.