The Warning? Prosperity. Prosperity can do that to you, cause you to forget: forget the Lord their God, forget God’s commandments, forget to love their neighbors as themselves. According to Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, there is a spiritual danger in prosperity, and that spiritual danger is amnesia. When times are good…even these days, just a little better, we forget. Throughout the first part of Dueteromony Moses has clearly one central thought on the mind as he speaks to the Israelites. It’s summed up in Chapter 4:9 Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. Guess what! They forgot! O yes, I’m thankful…thankful I have what I have. I use what you have to assist others, to give to others but only after I’m sure that I have enough. Moses calls that self-sufficiency, in other words, not relying on God.
Verses 12 and 13 are clear: “When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold has multiplied, and all that you have has multiplied, then do not exalt yourself. Do you hear that? Do not exalt yourself — do not fool yourself into thinking that you are a self-made success story; thinking, well now look at me, I can give your excess time, money and gifts to who ever you please…and of course withhold as well if you don’t think that it is in your best interest or if you just don’t like how things are going. Do not exalt yourself, says Moses, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid waste-land with poisonous snakes and scorpions. Moses reminds the people that God has led them out of captivity because he knows that they can be seduced into thinking that they are self-sufficient.
Friends, no matter what the world tells you, you are not…I repeat are not to be self suffient that kind of determination, stubborn spirit will land you far from God. God wants underdogs...people who can’t imagine doing any good but making the basket dispite themselves. Think of Moses he made every excuse in the book for not being good enough and yet God used him! When he said in Verses 17 and 18 says clearly, “Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.” Moses was reflecting on his own life! It’s not our power…but God’s gift. And is it about us? Well, you’ve heard it, you’ve preached it, but we all must be reminded of it… It’s not about us, it’s about God!
The Israelites' very existence as a people had depended on God working through the most unlikely persons, the underdogs, to effect deliverance for His people.
