Gratitude and Stewardship

My text for today is found in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 8.

Now, there are parts of Deuteronomy that don’t exactly apply to us today. It was written at a certain time in Israelite history, shortly after God had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and just before they were to enter the land of Canaan, a land in which they had never lived.

Much earlier, God had promised to be the people’s God, and they would be his people. When God said that he would be their God, what did he mean? It meant that the people would look to him for the things that other people looked to their gods for: protection, blessings, and guidance in life. They wanted to be in harmony with God, and God gave them guidance on how they could do that.

They needed guidance about the land, about social organization, about worship practices, and a whole host of other things. Now, some of the details don’t apply to us—our agricultural seasons are quite different, and even the role of agriculture in our society is quite different. And Jesus gives us a harmony with God far better than the old rituals ever could.

But many of the principles we see in Deuteronomy are still valid for us today. We still look to God for protection, blessings, and guidance in life, and I think we can see some important principles in Deuteronomy chapter 8. Let’s start in verses 7 through 9:

The LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.

How many of you here today were born here? Let’s see your hands… Now, the rest of you, how many of you came here of your own free will, because you thought it would be better to live here?

Well then, you – and that’s me, too – will find it easy to see yourself in this verse. God has brought us into a good land, a land of aqueducts going through the desert, a land where water is now so plentiful that people spray it on grass just so they can cut the grass and throw away the clippings. God has brought us to a land with Ralphs and Vons and Costco and Ranch 99, where there is so much food that the main health problems in this nation are caused by eating too much.

Even with all this eating, we still produce a lot more wheat and barley and rice than we need, and the U.S. is a big exporter of food. We have vines and fig trees, pomegranates, apples, pears, peaches, strawberries, olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil, safflower oil, honey, sugar, molasses, corn syrup, iron, copper, steel, aluminum, titanium, and a whole lot more.

Food is actually so abundant here that no one measures wealth in terms of food anymore. To the ancient Israelites, food was the chief measure of blessings. Today we have so much food that we measure blessings by other things. Things we take for granted now used to be indicators of wealth. Only rich people had telephones, only rich people had radios, only rich people had cars, only rich people had televisions, only rich people could fly in an airplane, only rich people had cameras and cell phones.

The things that used to be considered blessings have now become common in families officially classified as living in poverty. God has brought us to a good land, a land where bread is not scarce and you will lack nothing.

And for those of you who were born in California, God has brought you here, too. You have all this stuff, too, so the words of Deuteronomy can apply to you, too. Notice what it says in verse 10:

^{Dt 8:10} When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you.

When you have eaten so much that you have to loosen your belt, when you have so much stuff in your house that it gets cluttered, then what should we do? We should praise the Lord for the good land he has given us.

I notice in the verse here that it talks about being satisfied – and it makes me think that in America today, people often are not satisfied. We have plenty to eat, but we want beef instead of chicken, we want steak instead of hamburger. We eat until we are full and then we want dessert. We have eaten but are not satisfied.

We want a Lexus instead of a Ford, we want Nike instead of Kmart, we want cable TV and wide screen TV and broadband – and if we ever get satisfied, then the advertising industry will encourage us to want something more. And through credit cards, we can get it today instead of waiting until next year. But the Bible says that if we have enough to eat and enough clothing to wear, we should be content. We should praise God for the good stuff that he has given us.

Those of you who have come from other nations should realize that not everyone in the world has all this stuff, and we should appreciate it rather than taking it for granted and assuming that it is just part of ordinary life. It is not part of ordinary life – it is part of the luxury that we have here in the wealthiest nation on earth. We have an extraordinary life, with unusual privileges, no matter whether we compare ourselves with ancient society or with the majority of people on earth today. We should not take it for granted.

Notice verse 11: “Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day.”

Now, what Moses feared has come to pass. The richest nations on earth are also the ones where Christianity is declining. The United States isn’t the worst nation in this regard, but even so, as our wealth goes up, our interest in worship is going down. Not only do people fail to observe God’s commands, they have even lost sense of right and wrong. They are shocked when they find out that some people think sexual perversions are wrong, they are shocked when people expect autobiographies to be true, and they are surprised that anyone pays all their taxes.

They expect the good life to be given to them whether they live a good life or not. John Q. Public expects Walmart to honor its promises even when John Q. Public does not honor his own promises. He will get royally upset when the toaster doesn’t work, even when he calls in sick to go play golf. Or he will complain that the church is irrelevant, when he himself is doing nothing to contribute anything to society. He is a leech who is not satisfied with the abundance he already has.

Notice what Moses says to people like that, in verses 12-14:

Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, ¹³ and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, ¹⁴ then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

Yes, when your job is going well and your hourly wage keeps going up, and your income taxes get more complicated, beware, lest you forget the Lord your God, who brought you into this land.

Now, how do people “forget” God? It seems to me that the first part of the memory to go… is the checkbook. God doesn’t get mentioned very often in the checkbook, he doesn’t get mentioned very often when it comes to planning our expenses, he doesn’t get mentioned very often when it comes to setting up a budget.

Young people want to go to college so they can get a good job and earn a lot of money. Why do they want a lot of money? So they can pay lots of taxes? I don’t think so. What’s on the top of their list for spending that money on? It’s a good house, a good car. It’s fine wine, and eating out. It’s nice clothes and top-of-the-line electronics. It’s about filling our houses with more stuff, and then getting a bigger house to put all that stuff in, and then stuffing it even more. And God isn’t anywhere in this picture.

Now, rich people aren’t the only ones who forget God. Poor people who want to be rich forget him, too. People who set their hearts on a bigger house, a better car, or better electronics, or more stuff, don’t always keep God in the picture, either.

Biblical Hebrew is a very practical language. When it says “hear,” it means more than receiving the sound waves – it means taking action on what the words mean. If you hear what I say, then you will do what I am recommending. When it says “see,” it means more than rays of light on your eyeballs – it means understanding – do you see what I mean? When the Bible says that we should know God, it means more than being aware of who he is – it means being in a good relationship with him.

When the Bible says “remember,” it means more than being reminded of a fact we had forgotten. It means to take action on something. When it says in Exodus 2:24 that God remembered his covenant with Abraham, it does not mean that God had forgotten about it and some angel had to remind him. No, what it means is that God started to take action on his covenant with Abraham, and he took action by bringing the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. When it says “remember the Sabbath day,” it means more than just remembering which day of the week it was – it meant a change in behavior.

And in the same way, when Moses says that we should not forget God, he means more than our mental awareness. He means actions that show that God makes a difference in our lives. It means that we do not live the way that everybody else does. It means that God has a place in our homes, a place in our hearts, and a place in our checkbooks. God is not just someone we give lip-service to – we let him be our God, our priority, our Lord and Master who can tell us what to do.

Notice what Moses says in verses 15-16:

^{Dt 8:15} He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. ¹⁶ He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you.

Those were the details for ancient Israel – God brought them through difficulties into the promised land. For us today, the details might be different, but the principle is the same: He lets us go through hard times, and yet he gives us what we need. He may humble us and test us, but it is all for a purpose: So that in the end it might go well with us. God can use our trials to make us better people.

God does not put up with us for his own benefit. No, it is always for our benefit. That’s the kind of God he is. Even the commands and instructions we don’t like, are really for our good. We may not see it at the time, but his restrictions are the guidance we need to stay away from things that will hurt us.

For example, he made sex for a certain purpose, and he tells us that if we try to use it for something else, we will get hurt, or we will hurt other people, and we won’t get the blessing that he designed sex to be. Another example: He tells us to tell the truth, because he knows that lies hurt people. He tells us that we shouldn’t even desire to hurt our neighbor, because that kind of thing destroys society.

And in the same way, he tells us that we should share some of the wealth that we have. God doesn’t tell us this for his own benefit – he tells us this for our own good. Anyone who keeps everything for himself, who gives only when he expects to receive something in return, is a leech. It is better for society, and better for us, if we become generous. We might end up with less stuff, but we will end up with more blessings. It is better to die as a generous person, than to die as a stingy one.

We have to remember that life is a gift, and all the stuff involved in life is also a gift. We can enjoy it for a time, but we can’t have it forever. God gives us blessings so that we can share them with others. He has a purpose for those blessings, and if we try to use them for some other purpose, it won’t work very well. Notice what Moses says in verse 17:

^{Dt 8:17} You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” Or, It is my diligence and my hard work that have gotten me this far. It is my cleverness, and my social skills, that have helped me have the good life.

Verse 18: But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.

Remember the Lord your God, and remember the fact that he has something to say about how we use our wealth. And the word “remember” does not mean just something in our minds – it should have some results in our lives. If God gives us the ability to get wealth, then we need to remember him in the way that we use that wealth.

Now, some of you might be thinking, “I don’t have wealth. I barely have enough to scrape by. My family is always asking me for money, and I have to give them as much as I can, and that doesn’t leave any left over for God. I have enough to eat, but I am not satisfied. I won’t give anything to God unless he gives me more than I can spend.”

O, my friends, I don’t think that will ever happen.

The truth is, that I don’t think there is anyone here who can’t afford to give anything at all. And yet I also know that some people don’t give anything at all, and it is quite likely that some of those people are here today. There are teenagers here who give more than some adults do.

God gives us the ability to get food, clothing, and the luxuries of life, and we are to remember him in the way that we use these things. We need to remember his generosity to us by becoming generous ourselves. We should become more like he is.

If he gives us more, we should give more – and one way to ensure that we do this is to give a percentage of our income. We don’t just give when we happen to have something left over. No, we have planned ahead of time to remember the source of our money. These blessings are not just for ourselves – they are to share with others, and we are to give financial support to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We who receive have an obligation before God to give, and this is for our own good as well as the good of others.

Think of it this way: Do you have more money now than before you came to California? Has God brought you into a good land for you to spend it all on yourselves? Of course not.

Ask yourself two questions:

Do you have more now than what you used to have?

And, Do you give more than you used to?

When financial blessings increase, our generosity should increase, too. Some people think that a percentage approach to generosity is legalistic. It can be. But it seems like the other approach, more often than not, turns out to be giving God our leftovers. And as we listen to the advertisements and we want more and more for ourselves, there is less and less left over, and in our actions we have forgotten God.

For some of us, the question boils down to this: Which is more important to us: Spending money the way we want to, or remembering God with some of what he gives us? We need to remember that he is the one who gives us everything that we have, and we need to remember him in practical ways, in terms of the way we use the blessings he gives us.