True Thanksgiving Is Found In Obedience

God Centered Theology

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I want to talk to you today about true thanksgiving is found in obedience.

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I'm not going to talk to you today so much about the what, for we all could spend time and as Michael brought out, the one young lady that went on and on and on and on about all the things she was thankful for.

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Those are certainly important and it is involved in what we do when we are thankful.

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I'm not here to tell you that the what of what we are thankful for is somehow unimportant.

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It is. We need to specifically pray and thank the Lord for specific things that he has blessed us with.

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But what I want to look at is what is beyond the what, what is behind it.

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And that is the why. And the why we are thankful points to the who we are thankful to.

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Now to begin, I want to start talking to you about an atheist. There was an atheist walking through the woods and he was admiring all the quote unquote accidents that evolution had created.

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What majestic trees. What powerful rivers. What beautiful animals.

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This atheist said. Now mind you, the atheist has zero consistency in their worldview to even know what the terms beautiful, majestic or powerful can even have as a meaning.

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But I digress. Now as he was walking alongside this river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him.

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Now turning to look, he saw a seven foot grizzly bear charging towards him.

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He ran away as fast as he could up the path. He looked over his shoulder and saw this grizzly bear was closing in on him.

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Now somehow he continued to run even faster. This atheist was so scared that tears came to his eyes.

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He looked again and the bear was even closer. His heart was pounding. He tried to run faster, but he tripped and fell to the ground.

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He rolled over to pick himself up, but the bear was right over him.

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Reaching for him now with his left paw, raising and his right paw was ready to strike him.

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And it is at this instance that the atheist, and it's always amazing to me how God deniers and the point of extreme anguish and pain have no problem saying,

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God help me, or something good befalls them, they say, oh, thank God. I'm like, hmm, but he says,

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God help. Well, it was about this time that time stopped.

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The bear froze. The forest became silent. The river stopped moving.

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And now a bright light came out of the sky, shone upon this man, and he heard a voice come out of the sky saying, you deny my existence for all these years.

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You've taught others that I do not exist and even credit creation to a cosmic accident.

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Do you honestly expect me to help you out of this predicament?

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Do you honestly expect me to keep this grizzly bear from eating you right now?

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Am I now for some reason supposed to count you as a believer? Well this atheist looked directly into this light that was coming down on him and said,

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I would feel like a hypocrite if after all these years I became a Christian. But instead, perhaps,

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God, you could make the grizzly bear a Christian. Very well,

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God said. So the light went out. The river began to run again.

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The sounds of the forest resumed. And the bear dropped his right paw, brought his paws together, bowed his head and said,

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Lord, for this food which I'm about to receive, I am truly thankful.

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Needless to say, things didn't work out too well for the atheist. I can just imagine a grizzly bear who in better demonstration than some of us at times recognizes, notice he said,

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Lord, for this food which I'm about to receive. The grizzly bear knew who to be thankful to.

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He knew why he was thankful and he knew what he was thankful for. So we can learn a lot from our friendly grizzly bear.

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Why are we thankful? This time of year, we obviously and very rightly spend much time thinking about what we're thankful for.

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I can imagine with inflation being like it is, I mean, I don't know the latest numbers, but a couple of weeks ago,

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I saw that groceries themselves are up about 50%. And of course, I did the math.

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Our little family was spending about $130, $140 a week on groceries at the store.

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Now it's about $220, $240. We might have got it down to $220 this week,

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I think, because we had coupons. God bless Gina's heart. But my goodness, it's just, it is difficult.

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It's tough. And I was listening to one of the, move that out of my way,

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I need something to grab onto here. This is my hold on for dear life wood right here. I was listening to a talk, a teaching the other day where this man who is in Arizona, he's probably,

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I want to say he's right around late 50s, maybe 60 years old, was talking about how, you know, when you survey the last, maybe even going back to the end of World War II, but particularly in the last two to three decades, we have had it made in America.

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We have been pampered to the point that things that should be viewed as blessings, things that are not actually needs, we view them that way.

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To the point that if these things that are blessings are somehow interfered with or taken away, we see it as how the

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Lord has taken away needs when he really hasn't. We really need to stop and reframe our thinking.

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You know, it might be that those of us that will have, you know, for our children and grandchildren and great -grandchildren that will grow up in a harder time may come out being more thankful than we are.

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It certainly is possible. I think that there are many, many people of all ages today that are very thankful.

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But I do see on a larger scale, Christianity as a whole seems to have forgotten why they should be thankful and who they should be thankful to and how they should respond because of that gratitude.

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Because being thankful is not so much a what, but a why. Because true thanksgiving is found, you're going to see this in Deuteronomy chapter 8, it's found in obedience.

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You say, well, that doesn't compute in my mind. I haven't really thought about it that way. Well, we're going to see it.

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Why are we thankful? Because God is good. Why are we obedient to God?

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Because we are thankful that God is good. The one unchanging constant, regardless of your circumstances, regardless of your bank account, and in case some of you don't remember from last time,

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I'm always preaching to myself. Most preachers and my brother down here will tell you, if you've ever taught the word of God, you've probably preached it to yourself a hundred times before it is presented to other people.

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But I'm preaching to myself when I say, when you look at your circumstances, your bank account, maybe the type of car you have, the type of job you have, maybe the house you have or whatever it is, your health, whatever, we tend to view the goodness of God through a lens of what he's done for me.

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The unchanging constant in this universe is that God is good regardless of my circumstances, my bank account, the toys

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I have, the job I have. Now, with our finite minds and our finite experience, we're unable to see that which

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God sees and he be the alpha and omega seeing it all and knowing that all things work together for good.

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What we have to do is define good the way God does. And our ultimate good is to be with him.

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That's why any time when we would be with someone that is either nearing death or is in some type of health crisis, we certainly would ask

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Lord, if it be your will to see this person healed. But we have to recognize is that diseases and cancer and all these things exist for a purpose.

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And that is to bring about physical death. And they have a very good track record. Miracles are unique and rare because they don't happen that often.

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Now, they do happen every day and we largely miss them. But in terms of these grand miracles where someone, you know, say has cancer or some type of health crisis and it's simply removed, the reason it does not happen that often because of the unique nature of it.

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And because ultimately for us, our best good is to be removed from this body and be present with the

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Lord. And so why would God deny us eternity with him, a heaven experience with him so that we could linger here and hurt worse?

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And so sometimes we just need to reframe our thinking. And also in passing,

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I would say that we will not be, in particular, and I can't remember if it's 1

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Peter or 2 Peter, it talks about how as a Christian we are to expect suffering in this world.

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Christians should never experience or encounter suffering and act as if some crazy thing has befallen them.

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Christ says the world's going to hate you because it hated me. The writers of the New Testament tell us to expect suffering.

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So when it comes, James tells us to count it all joy. Now that sounds insane.

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Trust me, I'm a preacher and I'll tell you that sounds insane. But it's what scripture tells us, so it's true.

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It's true even if we don't feel like thinking it's true. You say, well

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Andy, that's very easy when you're, you know, if you're not going through something and you got it made or things are going well for you.

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And yes, I would admit when you're on a mountaintop and things are going well, it's very difficult to understand that.

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We're going to see that in chapter 8 this morning. We're going to see how the mountaintops don't teach you as much as suffering does.

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So as gratitude and thanksgiving, so our gratitude, our thanksgiving, which is based in humility before God grows, what we're going to see is that our obedience naturally grows with it.

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So on the one hand, you have gratitude, thanksgiving, which is a direct result of obedience.

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Obedience to God goes hand in hand. They all grow because we naturally are appreciative.

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We're thankful to God. And in response, the Christian heart naturally wants to obey him and follow him.

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So real and genuine living, real and genuine life comes from trusting

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God and from trusting his words. Now, before we get into the text,

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I want to tell you that we spend so much of our time, so much of our life,

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I'm guilty of it. You no doubt have been guilty of it in your life. And we certainly can gain from those that have learned to master this concept.

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But we spend so much time and so much of our life pursuing the what.

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I want this house. I want this job. I feel like I need this thing, or I want these types of clothes, or what, what, and what, that we forget that we are supposed to be pursuing the why.

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The why and the who behind the why, meaning why are we thankful and who are we thankful to, is so infinitely more important than the what.

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Not that the what is unimportant. We've already covered this. What I'm saying is in comparison to the what, the why we are supposed to be thankful and who we are supposed to be thankful to is vastly more important than any temporal created thing that anything that is created will have an expiration point.

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So we're going to look at this in Deuteronomy 8, and we're going to not spend equal amounts of time on every verse in this chapter.

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So I certainly encourage you to go back and read this chapter in its totality when you have time.

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We're going to do more of a survey. But I want you to first notice in Deuteronomy chapter 8, verses 1 and 2, the reason why we are to be thankful, or the reason why true thanksgiving is found in obedience, number one is because it shows us what's in our hearts.

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Verse 1 says, All the commandments that I am commanding to you today, you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the

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Lord swore to give your forefathers. You shall remember all the way which the

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Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that he might humble you and test you, and to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

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So context. Remember, as we move through Deuteronomy, Moses is reciting and replaying, if you will, the things that God has done.

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In the earlier chapters, you get remembrance and a reciting of how they were about to go into the land, and they said, well, you know, they're bigger than us, they're stronger than us, we don't stand a chance.

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Even though Moses pled with them and says, Lord said he would fight for you just as he's done in the past, just as he will do today, just as he will do in the future.

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They said, nah, we're good, we're perfectly fine right here. So the

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Lord caused them to wander in the wilderness for forty years. Moses was told that he would not be able to go into promised land, that Joshua would instead.

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And so that generation, that sinful generation, was caused to wander. Now, God could have just wiped them all out right then.

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But he said, because of the covenant I've made with your forefathers, I'm simply going to let you wander in the wilderness until that generation gets old and dies off, and then your children and your great -grandchildren will be the ones to go and inherit the land because they will understand the thankfulness and the faithfulness that they should have to me.

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And so we notice here, it says here in verse one that you may live and multiply.

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My friends, it is by the grace of God that we live, we breathe, and we move.

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Everything that we have, everything that we are is by the grace of God. Never make the mistake that you yourself have accumulated your wealth or your things or your what that you're thankful for.

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It is through the grace of God and by the grace of God that we have breath. That is the thing that while we shared a obviously very humorous story about one of our little atheist friends here, that is the one thing that shocks me about the unbelieving community is that they think they somehow owe it to themselves for their existence.

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Many of them think we're just, you know, we're just bags of gas and random accidents. And I'm sorry, but you can have no consistency in that worldview.

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It is only by understanding the grace of God in our lives that we can be thankful for the breath that we have, be thankful for the life that we have.

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And that's what he's saying. These commandments I've given to you, they're not simply for the exercise of me as God telling you what to do.

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And now you have to do it simply because you're my creatures. No, it's for your good. It's so that you may live, so that you may multiply, possess the land as you're supposed to.

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And notice the verse two, you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness.

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By remembering what God has done for us through our obedience, through following his commands, honoring his law, we demonstrate that we have a heart that loves

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God. Notice what he said, I led you in the wilderness these 40 years.

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I want you to remember all the ways that I led you in that wilderness. Why? So that God may humble you, test you, because God, not that God needs to learn anything.

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We reject what is called open theism. Open theism is a heretical doctrine that thinks that God learns as he moves along.

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That is not what the Christian scriptures teach. God doesn't say here through the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit, through Moses, when he says to know what was in your heart. It's not that God's trying to find out what's in your heart.

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This is a common expression that means it will bring forth or it will demonstrate what is in your heart.

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Why do you think we so commonly have said, you've probably heard it your whole life, the cliche, actions speak louder than words.

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Very similar to what's being said here. Although this was, you know, roughly 3 ,400 years before the time we're living here.

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And God's saying that the actions speak louder than your words. So many Christians say, I'm thankful.

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I want to serve you. I want to live for you. And they never do.

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Why? Because they didn't have a heart that loved God to begin with.

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Deuteronomy 6, verses four and five, where it says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one, and thou shalt love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. And this is quoted in many of the gospels.

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I believe it's quoted in actually three of the gospels, if I'm not mistaken, where they ask Jesus, what is the greatest commandment?

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Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Why? Because everything else hangs on that.

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If you love the Lord your God with all of your heart, you will obey him, and you will lovingly follow after him, and he will bless you as a result.

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So number one, it shows what's in our hearts. Number two, because it teaches us obedience.

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Verses three through 10, we ultimately have no excuse. Notice in verse three, it says,

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He humbled you and let you be hungry, fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the

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Lord. Now, most of your English translations in the

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Old Testament, when you see the word Lord in all the letters are capitalized, that's because it's the

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Hebrew word Yahweh. It is Yahweh, the one true God, the God of Israel, that has done these things.

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And notice it says that God humbled you. Why? They needed humbling.

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Remember, they were saying, we don't want to follow God anymore. We don't want to obey the Lord. We've made our own determination about this land.

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We've determined that we cannot conquer these people. We've determined that it'd be a losing effort.

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So we've determined that, you know, while we know he promised us this land, we're good right here.

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They need to be humbled. And I have found, and I have no doubt that many of you would echo this experience in here, that the older I get, the more humility that comes into my life.

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You realize, and then you look back and you see the trajectory of your life going from one of pride into humility.

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Why is that? Well, obviously, when you're younger and you have more strength, you tend to think yourself more immortal.

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They always say that about the teenagers and the young adults that, you know, they go out and ride and do these crazy, stupid things.

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And we're sitting back there thinking, hey, no way in the world I would do that. I'd break every bone in my body.

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Well, as you get older and your mortality becomes more apparent to you, you recognize these things in humility much more.

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And so God says, I wanted to humble you. I wanted to test you. I wanted to make sure that you understood that man does not live by bread alone.

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Why? This bread and this food they partook of, it says they didn't know it.

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Neither did their fathers. That means that they did not get this food on their own.

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It means that it did not come simply because of who they were. It means that God fed them and provided for them simply because he is good and to make them understand that you do not provide for yourself.

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You do not cause yourself to be fooled. You do not cause yourself to have life and have breath.

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Every single thing about your life is coming as a result of what proceeds out of the mouth of the

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Lord, meaning that even if you are the one physically going to work to earn money, to then buy food so that you can partake, it all comes as its foundation from the mouth of the

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Lord that has commanded us to go and to work and to provide and to take care of ourselves and our family.

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We owe it all because the job that we're going to, the money we're receiving, the food that we purchased to consume, we did not create.

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Every single created thing is a result of that which came out of the mouth of the

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Lord when he spoke in the beginning, let there be light. We owe our existence, we owe everything to the power and the word of God.

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And we're not going to deal with this today, but this verse three, you will see repeated in Matthew 4, 4, when

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Jesus is tempted by the devil and he tells him to take the stones and turn it into bread. And Jesus quotes this verse and he says, man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the

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Lord. And so then he goes on in verse four to talk about how their clothing did not wear out, their shoes did not wear out, their feet did not swell or get in any danger.

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They were provided for. And he says in verse five, you are to know in your heart that the

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Lord, your God was disciplining you. And verse six says, you shall keep the commandments of your

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Lord to walk in his ways. He's reminding them you're in this position, you're in this circumstance in which you find yourselves because of your own sin, your own sin and not trusting me and obeying me to begin with.

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And I have no doubt that many of them are probably sitting there saying, we know this to be true because all throughout

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Deuteronomy, Moses quotes to people saying, how better did we have it in Egypt?

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Yes, we were slaves. Yes, we were threatened with death constantly daily if we didn't work.

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But at least we had three square meals a day. Those Egyptians sure did feed us because, you know, hungry slaves don't work as good as full slaves.

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How often do we see them questioning Moses, questioning God, saying we had it so much better and God's telling him, no, you didn't.

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They even question God and think, well, what did God, what is God doing? He takes us to the

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Red Sea, takes us through all these plagues, takes us through all these battles only to bring us out here and just leave us for dead for 40 years in the wilderness.

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They have forgotten why they are thankful. They have forgotten who they are thankful to because all they're focused on is the what and their lack from their perspective.

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He says you need to know in your heart that the Lord your

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God is disciplining you, teaching you to keep his commandments, to walk in his ways. Notice in verse seven, for the

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Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water.

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And over the next couple of verses, he describes this land and all these things it has. He's saying, look,

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I haven't forgotten you. I haven't broken my covenant. My people are still going to go in and take possession of this land.

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And it's a good land. You see, God brings us blessing. He brings us prosperity.

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He feeds us. Every good thing we have is from the Lord. And we are to worship him and give him glory and to live our life in obedience to him.

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So notice on the second point here, our last verse in verse 10, God says, I'm going to take you into this land.

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It's going to be flowing with milk and honey. You're going to have the success. And then verse 10, he says, when you have eaten and are satisfied and have built good houses and lived in them and all these things, he says, you shall bless the

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Lord your God for the good land, which he has given you.

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Notice the response that God commands his people. He says,

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I'm going to take you. I'm going to bring you into the land. I'm going to give you victory over your enemies.

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I'm going to feed you. I'm going to bless you. And when you have been fed, when you are full, when you are satisfied, you will then bless me and worship me and give all soli deo gloria, all glory to God alone.

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This is why the temptation to rob God of glory is such a sinful temptation that we have to fight.

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Why do you think the Bible speaks so often of God hating pride? Because man is puffing himself up and acting as if he is the one by which this has come, which leads us to our final point for this morning.

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True thankfulness is found in obedience, number one, because it shows what's in our hearts, number two, because it teaches us obedience.

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And finally, this morning, as we look to close, because it protects us from disobedience.

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It protects us from disobedience. Deuteronomy 8, verses 11 through 20, excuse me.

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Now, notice here, he says in verse 11, beware that you do not forget the

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Lord your God. And then after that, there's two different places in verse 12.

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Now, it may have a different word depending on what translation you have. In the New American Standard, it says in verse 12, otherwise, and then repeats it in verse 17.

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It says otherwise again. So when the Bible repeats things, it's going to really make a point.

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So the summation of these verses 11 through 20, God is going to go on to say, beware that you don't forget what

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I've done for you by disobeying me. Otherwise this, otherwise this.

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So let's take a look. Verse 11, beware that you do not forget the Lord your

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God by not keeping his commandments and his ordinances and his statutes, which I am commanding you today.

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Otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied and have built good houses, and then he goes on to the next couple of verses to kind of add on and sort of pile on and says, you know, when you've got cattle and you've done this and you've done that, you know, you'll forget.

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Verse 14 says your heart will become proud and you will forget, not the what, but the who and the why.

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You will forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.

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See, they've forgotten how bad it was. They've forgotten what true slavery looked like.

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And he says, if you become proud, if you're not living each and every single day in a continual thanksgiving and gratitude, which demonstrates itself in obedience to God, the temptation and the danger is that you will forget, you will become proud, and you will start to think that you're the one that brought you out of Egypt.

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You're the one that brought you out of slavery. You say, Andy, this context is for these

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Old Testament people and these people that are right in front of Moses. How does this apply to me? You'll forget who ultimately pays your paycheck.

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You'll forget who put that roof over your head. You'll forget who provides you food to eat.

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You'll forget that even in times in my life where I was unemployed and didn't know where a job was going to come through, and then

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God makes it happen. You'll forget these things, and then you'll suddenly go out and try to fix it or make it happen on your own.

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And you'll get prideful and think that I've done these things. I've provided these things, not

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God. He goes on in verse 17 and says, otherwise, hinting and pulling from verse 11, where this paragraph and this new context begins when he warns them not to forget in verse 11.

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Now we come down to verse 17, and he's adding on to this thought, and he says, otherwise, notice here, and I want y 'all to really notice this.

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Go back when you have time this afternoon and count how many times in just this one chapter that God refers to the person's heart, in your heart, so that you'll know in your heart, so that you'll believe from the heart, so that you'll obey from the heart.

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He says, otherwise, you may say in your heart, my power and my strength have brought me this wealth.

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I am man. I am strong. I have built this building. I have done this thing. You know, that pride.

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We sort of make fun of that idea, but is that not what we do? Look at what

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I've accomplished. Look at what I've built. Look at what I've done. That is a danger that creeps into larger churches.

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They may have started out small, and they grow big, and they think, look at this hidden pile we have grown.

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I know you did it, and God will take it down quickly if he has to, to humble you, and to test you, and to discipline you.

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Verse 18, but you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who is giving you the power to make wealth.

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Now, my prosperity gospel heretics out there that teach you that God only wants to make you rich, he only wants to bring you the what in material blessing, hijack this verse out of context and say, see,

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God's giving you the power to make wealth. That's not what this is saying. We interpret scriptural normally based on its context, and the context of this chapter is started back in verse 11 when we're warned not to forget

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God. It's added to when it says, if you're puffing yourself up to think that you made these things, you need to be reminded that if you have them, it's because God gave it to you and not yourself.

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He says, remember the Lord your God, and it goes on in verses 19 and 20. It ends up talking about how, you know, if I have brought to perish these nations that came up against you, all these nations that Israel fought against, and God gave them the victory.

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He says, if I can take them out under your sword, you start thinking that you did it yourselves and you'll perish just like them.

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And we see that. We're obviously, that is a subject and sermon for a whole nother day, but we see that all throughout

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Old Testament scripture, how Israel would get prideful and God would give them over.

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I think particularly Babylonian captivity. How long did Jeremiah and Zephaniah and all these prophets say, it's coming, you sinned, and captivity's coming.

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They're like, all these false prophets say, Jeremiah's lost his mind. Zephaniah, they don't know what they're talking about.

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Peace and safety, everything's great. Uh oh, there's Babylon. We are to remember

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God and not ourselves. So I close with two thoughts for you.

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We need to recognize unbelief in the promises of God causes disobedience and then excuses, and we forget who we should trust.

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We forget who we should believe and most importantly, why we should believe and trust.

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So I want you, as you consider your life, as you consider the season we find ourselves in, and you do, and it's important, do consider the what, what

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God has blessed you with, how he's blessed you. As you consider what you've been blessed with and what you've been through over the past year, don't forget why.

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Don't forget why you have those things. Don't forget why you made it through those situations.

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Don't ever, ever forget that everything that you have and everything that you are is by the grace of God.