3-2-25 - Do Not Forget The Lord

Well, it's good to be back with you guys this morning. I feel like I haven't been preaching in like a month. And I know that's not true, but it's been hit or miss with Eric preaching and then pastor Bailey preaching, and then I was gone last week. I'm glad to be back with you this morning. And to be back in the book of Deuteronomy chapter six.

This morning's passage is a simple warning against forgetting the Lord. It says really simple things like, do not forget the Lord. You and I remember the things that are important to us. We don't have any trouble remembering the things that are important to us. So the things that have made an impression upon us.

Even if they were decades ago. We can all think back to our childhood and remember things clear as the day as bell. As you know, clear as as can be. Like it was yesterday. But it was so long ago.

When it comes to the word and to the Lord, our temptation to forget him, to be dull of hearing is ever present. We might wanna say that this is that our difficulty is because of the pressures that we face. Because of all the burdens that we carry. Because of all the responsibilities that we have. But the true reason that we are so quick to forget the Lord is that our desires overtake us and rule us.

We take for granted the things that the Lord gives us. Thinking that we've earned them ourselves and that we deserve them and that they're ours and that no one can take them away from us. This morning as we studied the text before us, I hope that God will help each of us to see the many blessings that he's given to us. That we not take them for granted. And also, that he would discipline our hearts to be grateful to him.

And that he would help us remember him every minute of every day. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter six verses 10 through 15. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. About when the Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to you to give you great and splendid cities which you did not build and houses full of all good things which you did not fill And Hune Sisterns, which you did not dig. Vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant and you eat and are satisfied.

Then watch yourself that you do not forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall fear only the Lord your God and you shall worship him and swear by his name. You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you. For the Lord your God is in the midst of you. The Lord your God in the midst of you is a jealous God.

Otherwise, the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled against you and he will wipe you off the face of the earth. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. I'm glad to be back in Deuteronomy.

And I wanna start here at the beginning of this passage. He says, then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to you. I want to focus on this idea of giving. We've talked about it a lot. It's been a theme in the early chapters of Deuteronomy that all of the Israelites have has been given to them.

To remember what's going on here. You remember that Deuteronomy is the second giving of the law and was given after the forty years of wandering in the wilderness. But the constant refrain here is they're about to enter into the land is to remember all that God had done for them. And even in this passage, he says, remember that you were that God brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And you have to think what that might have been like.

What would it have been like to live in to live in Egypt at the time of their departure, leading right up to God rising up? Would have been an awful place to live. It would have truly been slavery and bondage and death. Fighting amongst themselves, being abused by the by the Egyptians, being made to to build, bricks with no straw. Was a hard and difficult time for the people of God.

And so they cried out to God and they asked that he would deliver them. And then he rose up and he answered them in the form of sending plagues on the land of Israel for a period of time, culminating in his deliverance of them out of Egypt. And as they left Egypt, they left with the wealth of Egypt. And as they left Egypt, they left with the Egyptian army with Pharaoh and his hordes chasing them to kill them and to take back their wealth. But God would have none of it.

As Israelites were backed up against the Red Sea, literally an ocean, there's no swimming across it with all of your women and your children and your animals and your belongings, backed up against the Red Sea And Pharaoh's army coming, they're going, we're gonna die. That was their perspective and for God it was no no difficult thing to part the waters of the Red Sea to allow them to walk across on dry land, keeping them safe only to consume their adversaries behind them, destroying Pharaoh and all of his armies. It's a great day of rejoicing. Moses sings a song about it. You remember that they're on their way to to Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai to worship.

That's been the whole pretext of of their leaving and their departure of Egypt. Can we go out a three days journey into the wilderness to worship God? Pharaoh says, no. No. We need to go.

And he says, no. We need to go. He says, no. Eventually, they go and they go out to Sinai and they worship God and there, they agree to be God's people. And they say, we're going to do all that you command.

Only to break that covenant before they'd even left the foot of the mountain making a golden calf. It didn't take them long to break their word. Then God brings them through the wilderness and up to the border of Canaan. And they're fearful. They don't wanna go in.

Because there's giants that live there. So they send spies into the land and the spies come back and they say, it's a land flowing with milk and honey. Truly it is. It's a fat land. But those cities are tall and the and the walls are are fortified and there's giants.

And if we go into that land, we're going to be destroyed. And so that fear caught and spread among all the people of Israel till the point that they refused to go in and the Lord's anger was kindled against them. And he struck down all of the men over 20 years old in that time and he says, no you won't go in. This generation is an unfaithful generation. They're rebellious generation.

Their children will go in. But you, you'll all die in the wilderness except for two men, Caleb and Joshua. And so they spend at the Mount Sinai before that, they're given the law. All of the book of Deuteronomy given to them at that time. They go up to the border.

Their faith fails. Fear takes over and then they're they're sent wandering for forty years. Now they've come back forty years later with all of their fathers and grandfathers gone. They come back to the border of the land and Moses again repeats to them this law. I mentioned in a previous sermon that with all of the unfaithfulness in Israel, if it were up to us, we simply would have not given them the land.

We wouldn't have given them the good thing. We'd say, no. You've been so unfaithful and you're you're so, unable to do what's required of you. We simply won't give it to you. We're gonna withhold it until you demonstrate competence and the ability to succeed.

But here, Moses warns him. He says, your God is bringing you into a land which he swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to give you. Now I'm going and rehearsing the history of Israel up to this point to realize, so that you'll realize they didn't deserve this land. They had not shown themselves worthy. They were a ragtag bunch.

They had been unfaithful in many, many ways. Any good thing that they had was given to them by God, not just this land, but everything that they had. But we don't think that way. We think much more like the the man, that James tells us about in chapter four of his epistle. He says, come now.

This man says, come now you who say, today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit. This is how we think. We think of life as being an easy thing. I'll do this and then I'll get what I want. But the thing we never remember is that even the ability to do this thing is a gift from God and a blessing that we've not rightly earned and don't properly deserve.

Israel forgot very quickly their bondage in Egypt that they were slaves And how they had no hope of freedom until God rose up and delivered them from that bondage and gave them wealth. And now a land. And so Moses warns them, don't forget the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Even though those who are standing there then were not those who had been at the at the mountain or who had been in Egypt. Enough time had passed.

They were not to forget what God had done for them. We're very quick to forget. And this forgetfulness of ours is damnable. It's damnable. Because what it produces in us is a constant wandering away from God.

We constantly are wandering away from him. Because we don't remember what he's done for us. Rather, we think in terms of these terms. What has he done for me lately? I've got a list of things that I want, things that I expect, things that I believe I'm entitled to or deserve.

And is he going to give them to me or has he or when will he? Because I'm been keeping track. It's not in our nature to keep track and to remember the things that the Lord has done for us. You know, it seems simple. It seems childish to be thankful for something that happened long ago.

But if it's the Lord who's done it for us, we should never forget it. In Calvin's sermon on this text, he said this concerning this point. He said, men will never sufficiently perceive themselves bound unto God until they be utterly bereft of all their merits. And that it be showed to them that they have not anything of their own to bring. But that it is God which does all, not of duty, but of goodwill.

Men must be fully persuaded of that or else they will never duly perceive themselves to be bound to God. It's our remembrance that binds us to God. Our remembrance of what he's done for us. How else do we get through the burdens and the trials that we carry in this life? If we have no memory of God's faithfulness in the past, how are we to to persevere through the burdens that are present?

We can't. We don't. So the Israelites had forgotten. They were quick to forget his mercy. When they looked at the prospect of going into this land, they were still fearful And they were still ungrateful for all that God had done for them.

You and I, we tend we don't know, we're not the Israelites. We don't have a land. This land we live in wasn't promised to us by God. And yet, here we are. But this the promises and the and the and the reality that they lived in, it's not exactly the same for us.

We don't have a land flowing with milk and honey that's given to us as Americans. But we do face the same temptations that the Israelites did on this day, which is to be forgetful and ungrateful toward God. To live as though his mercies are old and distant as opposed to new to us every morning. Instead of waking up in the morning and being thankful for God giving us life and breath and food and shelter and work and family, we wake up and think, oh, my knee hurts. I have to go to a stupid job to deal with these snot nosed kids.

My husband doesn't appreciate me. My wife doesn't respect me. These were our thoughts. And you do realize these are the thoughts of a very ungrateful and hard heart. But we write it off simply as, I'm not a morning person.

I need my coffee first. But I ask you, does your coffee make you grateful to God? These people did not deserve or earn what they were about to receive and neither do we. Though we live like we do. Now, here's the real problem.

When you reject the things that God gives you, little things that he gives you, those little things you take for granted, you're establishing and and and increasing a habit and a way of thinking in your heart and your mind that says, I don't receive things from God. I demand things of God, but I don't receive things from God. The things that I have, I get for myself. And when we do that, we reject the grace of God in salvation. Because if you're a Christian, I mean to tell you, you're a Christian because you received something that you didn't earn or deserve or even want apart from God working in you.

Now you might wanna quibble and say, no. No. No. I did I do want it. I did want it.

And I said, no. The testimony of scripture is that you were dead in your trespasses and sins. That you had no desire to serve God. You were his enemy. Until he got a hold of you.

Until he awakened you to spiritual things, until he opened your eyes to see. And I want you to know that if he's given you his son and he's given you faith in him, you ought to receive it with gratitude. Not just in the moment, but for the rest of your life. For the rest of your life, we ought to be thankful for the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. But we forget it.

Or we feel entitled to it. Or we think that, we earned it. Now we may not use the words of of we earned it or we deserve it, but our ingratitude tells a different story. Our forgetfulness tells a different story. None of us like being needy.

None of us like being dependent. Independence is the thing that we all ought to strive for. You know, that's why we despise little babies, disabled people, and old people. What do they all have in common? They're dependent.

They're not strong. They're not able to do for themselves. They're weak and needy. And often they're very upset. Maybe not the babies.

Because they don't know any different. But those who are impaired in some way. Those who've who's who's strength and and and faculties have have left them. They become very angry. You and I, we would rather go without before we would ask for help.

Because we don't want to receive free things. Has anyone ever offered you something and you refused to take it? I can't accept that. I could never accept that. Well, now listen.

If you're greedy, then perhaps that's the right response. But I would I would suspect that many of us, it's not our greed that keeps us from accepting it, but rather it's our pride. We don't want to be indebted to anybody. We don't want them to have done something for us that we couldn't do for ourselves. We'd rather have the need go unmet than simply to ask for help.

And that is a little picture of our hearts. And what I mean to tell you is if you won't accept kindness from other people with gratitude, then you really ought to ask yourself the question, will you accept anything from God? Or do you just want to have a transactional relationship with him, where you do things and you deserve things? We have to see this in our own hearts. When you need help, nothing is wrong.

Okay? When your little kids need you at 2AM, nothing is wrong. Though you despise it, nothing is wrong. Though you're inconvenienced by it, nothing is wrong. When you're sick and you need someone to do something for you, nothing is wrong.

When your coworkers have to work late because you didn't come to work today because you were sick And they have to pick up your slack. Nothing is wrong. But we get upset about it, don't we? When we get when someone's independence slips, even just for a minute, and we have to support them, we get frustrated about it. But if we really believe that we're poor, needy sinners and we're not able to bring anything to God to satisfy him or to earn us his his pleasure or his grace, then we really do need to learn to receive what he gives to us with open hearts.

Just like they're going to receive this land. God was giving Israel a land that he had promised to their fathers. They had not worked for it or developed it. It was prepared for them and their part was simply to receive it from God as a particular blessing. Have you ever thought about it for a second?

What is the creation mandate? In the garden, Adam and Eve were given work to do. What was their work? Be fruitful and multiply. Rule over the the fish of the sea fish of the sea and the birds of the air.

Right? Take dominion. All of this this uncultivated, undeveloped land. Go out, bring order to it. Plant gardens.

Build houses. Build cities. Dig wells. Create and establish life in order and peace where there's disorder. What is Israel being given here?

They're being given all of this stuff and they didn't have to do any of it. Not one bit of it. Great and splendid cities that you didn't build. Houses full of all the good things which you did not fill. Hewn cisterns which you did not dig.

You do realize at this time and in that part of the world, water was a limiting factor. People would fight and kill over water and over wells. Because those wells and that water represented the ability to exist and to be sustained. You'll receive hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant. How long does it take a vineyard to produce grapes, so you have something to drink?

For how long does it take an olive tree to produce olives? So that you have oil. Didn't work for any of it. It's all given to them. It's just all given to them.

Now, you might think, but look at that and say, well, then they should be a very grateful people and a very a very contented people. And he says, you will eat and you will be satisfied. And he says, well, here's the thing. When you're comfortable and when you're wealthy, especially if you didn't work for it yourself, there's going to be a temptation that arises. It's this ingratitude.

This entitlement. You won't realize where it came from. Could you imagine being given a furnished house full of all kinds of good things that was given to you? What would you do when you walked through the house and opened the door and looked around the corner and found good things. You ought to praise God for it since he's the one who gave it to you.

You ought to do that in your own homes when you walk through the doors. And you ought to look and see, look at all that God's given to me. Israelites were going to be in danger. They were going to take this for granted. They were going to overlook all of God's provision.

Take it for granted Simply do what they wanted to do instead. They weren't given thorns and thistles. They weren't giving a given untilled ground. They weren't have being made to contend with wild beasts. And you might object and say, Yeah, but they had to they had to wipe out all of the people of Canaan.

And I just simply ask you, Who was it that wiped out all of the people of Canaan for them? You see, we always think that if there's work to be done, it's us that does it. Why have to do that? Why have to do? What I have to do?

You wouldn't do anything if it wasn't for God's kindness to you. You really you really have to come to believe that. And when he blesses you, and when he gives you good things, it's not because you deserved it. Have any of you ever asked yourself, where would I be if God hadn't got a hold of me? Like, what would my life be like?

What was the trajectory of my life? And maybe it's an easier question for those of you who didn't grow up in the church to answer. It's very clear to me what I would have become, what trajectory I was on, where I was headed. What did God save you from? What sorts of pains and sorrows and heartaches and destruction did he pluck you out of?

Maybe you grew up in the church and you're like, I don't know. I think I've just always been pretty good. And I'm like, then you are very ungrateful. You're very ungrateful Because you think that that immense blessing of God, that you deserve it. Must be better than the guy next to me.

This wealth transfer that's going on that God has done for his people, first in Egypt and now in Canaan, is astounding. The amount of blessing and wealth and good things that God is giving to the his people. And remember what kind of people they are. It's astounding. And so contrary to what we would do and how we would think.

You really do see the mercy of God in giving them this land. And the patience of God in him warning them. When you eat and you're satisfied, then watch yourself. That you do not forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. Blessings from God ought to produce incredible gratitude and generosity.

The sad thing is instead of producing that, it often produces entitlement and pride. Those who receive such gracious and and and bountiful gifts from God really ought to be the happy happiest, most contented people on earth. They ought to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength without any encumbrance. And yet they tend to be the most grumpy people, the most arrogant people, the most boastful people. If you were to ask today who ought to be the happiest people in the world, it ought to be American Christians.

It really ought to be. It really ought to be the happiest, most contented, most, joyful, most worshipful people that have ever existed. Is that how you think of American Christians? It's astounding how much that's not true of us. We are grumpy and arrogant and boastful.

We fight and we argue and we bite and devour. Anyone who's not like us and even people who are like us, if we're irritated. Some of us attribute our wealth and our comfort to our own wisdom, while others attribute it to the genetic superiority of their fair skin. But it's wicked and it's ungodly. Whatever wealth or wisdom or comfort that you have, and you have it, there's no one in this room who doesn't, whatever wealth and wisdom and comfort that you have is the direct result of God having blessed you.

It's not because of who you are or what you've managed to do. You know, we often think of poverty and persecution as being, dangerous and bad for us. A threat to our soul or our spiritual well-being. But I believe that wealth and comfort are far more corrosive to our faith and more deadly and detrimental to our souls. What I tend to find is that poor people are much happier people and more grateful people.

Because they're more humble people. Because they have more humble means. What does the poor man do when he has nothing else to nowhere else to turn? What does the persecuted man do when his back's up against the Red Sea? He cries out to God for deliverance and help.

Whereas the comfortable man or the wealthy man never has occasion to cry out. Because he has no needs. You remember the story of the, the man who built bigger barns? I wanna read it to you from Luke chapter 12. Jesus tells this parable.

He says, beware and be on your guard. Remember? Sounds just like, just like this passage in Deuteronomy. Beware and be on your guard against every form of greed. You know, you wouldn't think of the Israelites as being greedy, but I think they were greedy.

Beware and be on your guard against every form of greed for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions. And he told them, Jesus told them a parable saying the land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself saying, what shall I do since I have no place to store my crops? Then he said, this is what I'll do. I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones.

And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come. Take your ease. Eat and drink. Be merry.

But god said to him, you fool. This very night, your soul is required of you. And now who will own what you have prepared? So is the man who stores up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. You know, if that parable didn't end the way it did, we would think that rich man was doing really well.

We'd want to be like him. If I could have a problem in this world, I wish that my problem, I wish I had rich people problems. I wish my problems were, I don't have enough places to store all my wealth. I wish that was my problem. But god said to him, you fool.

What's required of you? You've not given. And so comfort and wealth are dangerous. And each one of us is comfortable and wealthy, so we are in danger. The same danger that the Israelites were in here.

Now you might chafe at me saying you're wealthy. You might be like, no inflation's kicked my butt the last couple of years. Just like everyone else, you might think I don't have enough. But really what you mean is, I don't have as much as the people I next door. You remember independence is the thing that we all idolize.

The thing that we all strive for. And so being dependent upon God is beneath us. Having to wait literally for him to provide the things that we need is humiliating. So we don't do it. It's a dangerous way to live.

Wealth and comfort, taking for granted all that you've received. It really does cause you to forget God. And that's why Moses warns them not to forget God. He gives them the blessing, and then he warns them. Will you hear the warning?

Then he goes on and he says, you shall fear only the lord your god. What else might they fear? What had they feared previously? Well, they'd feared the people who lived in the land. They'd feared death.

They feared suffering. And he says, no, no, no. You shall fear only the Lord your God and you shall worship him and swear by his name. Who else would they worship? Who else would they swear by?

Well, the gods of the people around them. Do you not face these temptations? Am I the only one who wants to fit in and wants to live just a normal, acceptable, reasonable life. I don't think I'm the only one in this room. I think we all want to.

And we're willing to set forsake our God and all that he's given to us to attain it. You shall fear the Lord your God alone, and you shall worship him and swear by his name. You shall not follow after other gods. Any of the gods of the peoples who surround you, for the Lord your God is in the midst of you. He's a jealous God.

And so it's an interesting thing that goes on here. God gives them this blessing, puts them in a place where they have to live by faith and not by sight. We'd all like to have to live in a place where everything was easy and simple. But actually going into this land and having to be devoted to God was a very difficult thing to do. It was a hard thing to do.

We'd like to just live in a in a in a place where everyone's the same and everyone has the same stuff and everyone, plays by the same rules. But he gives them this good land, this blessed land. He puts them in a dangerous spot. And then he warns them and says, I'm a jealous God. And as you go into that dangerous place, you're going to face temptations, and you will need to rely on me and me alone.

We could multiply examples of over the the history of Israel of the ways in which they didn't do that, Where they turned to mediums and spiritists and other other lands and other people to deliver them. How they forsook their only their god and didn't care that he was a jealous God. If you want God to be pleased with you, then you have to fear him and serve him. You have to trust him. And when things get hard and we're all prone to think that when our life gets hard, it's hard in a way that excuses our unbelief.

Like, our burdens are special. They're they're heavy and they're heavy because we're the ones carrying them as opposed to our neighbor, our friends, our coworkers, our brothers and sisters here at church. Our burdens are special burdens, heavy burdens. Our past is is reason enough for our misbehavior. Do you think that when you stand before God, that excuse will work?

When you stand before God and you have to give an account and all of the hidden things and all of the visible things and all of the secrets and all of the all of the things that con that that that make up your life, when all those things are laid bare and put on the table before the judgment seat of God, if the excuse that you tell yourself today won't justify your actions at that time, then you ought not to believe it now. If God won't accept the excuse, you ought not to accept the excuse. Well, that's a heavy burden. And I'm like, do you trust God that he'll provide for you? Do you trust that he'll be with you if things are difficult?

Or do you order your life around comfort and wealth and ease? Are you greedy for those things? God warns us that if we are and we give ourselves to them, that his anger will be kindled against us and that he'll wipe us off the face of the earth. You may say, well, he said that to the Israelites. He didn't say that to us.

He's gonna wipe them off the face of the earth because that's what their sins deserved. And they go, do our sins deserve any less? If we forget him and we forget his kindnesses and his blessings, do you know what else you'll forget? You'll forget his warnings. Because that's what it means to forget God.

You'll forget both the good things that he's given to you and you'll forget the warnings that are meant to protect you. That's what a warning does. When parents, when you warn your children, why do you warn them? Isn't it because you love them? Isn't it because you want to protect them from harm?

But the warning is constraining. The warning says no. The warning says you may not. Your kids like when you warn them? Yeah.

Okay. Fine, dad. Oh, your mom goes again. We never see warnings as a as an act of love. God warns his people to not trust in and hope in and become accustomed to the comfort and the wealth that they're about to receive.

Otherwise, they'll forget him, and then he will cut them down. So I ask you, did God cut them down? Did he discipline them? He did. And the most profound discipline that he did for them was when he when he sent Jesus into the world.

That was the most profound discipline of them. He rejected them. He cut off the natural branch and said, no, we're going to graft in these other people. You and me, unless you're a Jew. It's the most profound discipline and and downgrading he could have done.

Because they'd rejected him. Eric read to us from John five today about their rejection of Jesus, the Jews' rejection of Jesus. It's a wicked rejection, and it's it's not stopped causing them problems. The danger for us is that we would think we're better than them. But how does Paul reason in Romans?

If he cut off the natural branch because of their rejection of him, don't you think he'll cut off the the engrafted branch if they reject him as well? This warning is not just for them in that time. This warning is for us now. But if we forget God's blessings, we also forget his warnings and we think, no, he wouldn't do that to me. It's a dangerous place to live.

We would do better to take inventory of God's blessings and consider how they how we take them for granted and how they tempt us to forget God, the one who gave them to us. And we ought to make a point in prayer and in conversation to acknowledge God's blessings in our life, around our dinner tables, around the lunch tables, at work, at family gatherings. Do you talk about the blessings God's given to you? It's one of the best ways to keep them from corrupting you is for you to always be reminding yourself where they came from and who gave them to you. Instead of saying, well, I got this with my own hand and look look at how the people respect me and love me because of it.

What do you have that you didn't receive? Paul asks. And if you received it, why then do you boast as though you didn't receive it? Paul asks. You say, because we're proud and we've forgotten the one who gives us all good things to enjoy.

And so if God's given you good things, give glory to God. Worship him because of what he's given to you. There's no one in this room who can't testify to God's faithfulness and goodness to them. Even if you're an unbeliever, you should be able to say how God's been merciful to you. It ought to cause you to worship him.

It should be evangelistic to consider the mercy of God to you. In conversation, if you're a Christian, as you talk to unbelievers, you ought to talk to them about how good God's been to them. They'll be glad to talk to you about how un, unfair God is. And you ought to stand and say, no. No.

No. No. No. No. God's given you so many good things.

So many good things. And you ought to worship him because of it. You see, we have to get this this way of thinking down into our hearts. It should be right at right there, right at the surface. Look what God's done for me.

Look what he's given to me. Look what he saved me out of. You have unbelieving families who didn't grow up in the church, just look at their life and see what God saved you from. You're not better than them, but man was God merciful to you. Why would you forget that?

If you've grown up in a home that's full of divorce or full of substance abuse and God saved you out of it, you should praise God for it from now until the day you die. Look what he saved you from. If God's given you a good spouse, and I mean by good spouse, I don't mean someone that you always like or get along with. But I mean a faithful spouse, someone who who who seeks to love God just like you do and falters in all the same ways you do, but though they fall, they get up again and they try to serve God, then you ought to praise God for them. Not just when they're doing all the right things, but because of what God's done for them and in them.

How about your kids? How about your grandkids? It's easy to say what our kids weaknesses are, what our kids failures are, and what their shortcomings are. It's easy to blame ourselves or to blame our spouse or to blame society or the kids they go to school with or whoever. Are your kids not a blessing?

Has God not used them to shape you and mature you and grow you at 2AM? Our god doesn't sleep. Do you ever need him at 2AM? You should be able to look through your whole life and points to the blessings that God has poured out on you. And that ought to lead you to remember him and to praise him and to serve him alone.

It ought to take all of the shine off of the fleeting pleasures of sin and everything that the world has to offer you. It ought to make it dull. This is what it means to enter into the land and to receive all of the good things that you didn't work for, earn or deserve. You have these things. So don't forget God.

Remember him or he'll take it away. That's what the passage says. And he would be right to do so. And within his, his purview to to take away from those who've who've who've demonstrated their hard heartedness and ingratitude and to give it to those who will praise him. That's what he did in Egypt.

They were hardhearted, so he took all their wealth and gave it to his people. The people of Canaan were a terribly wicked people. And so he took all of their wealth and their cities and their vineyards and all this stuff and he gave it to his people. What has he given you and will you praise him for it? That's the question.

Don't forget the Lord. Let's pray.