“AND IT shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into the land... to give thee great and goodly cities,... and houses full of good things... vineyards and olive trees,... when thou shalt have eaten and be full; then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.”
Moses here tells the children of Israel of the good things that awaited them in Canaan, and that when they came in and possessed the land they were not to forget the Lord who gave them all these blessings. How needful this admonition then and now! How easily any of us forget the Lord when we have plenty of good things, though it is then that we should be most thankful to Him for them.
God knew the hearts of His people, how quickly they would forget Him; and our hearts naturally are no better. The very fullness of the blessing might cause forgetfulness of the gracious hand that provided it all.
The sin of Sodom and that which brought on her destruction, we learn from Ezekiel 16:4949Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. (Ezekiel 16:49), was “pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness,... neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and the needy.” Pride, luxury, idleness and moral corruption are found together in man’s history. This will characterize the last days of Christendom, and as we see the state of things in the world and in the professing church, we are made to feel how near we are to the end.
Trial and want are often used to awaken in man the consciousness of his dependence on God. Anything that God is pleased to allow to come into our lives to keep us dependent upon Him we ought to be thankful for.
Thus Israel was warned beforehand, that they might fear the Lord and sware by His name. God who loved them was a jealous God, jealous of their affections, so they must choose between His love which meant so much to them and His wrath which would be their destruction.
“Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God.” v. 16. This is what Satan sought to get the Lord to do in the temptation in the wilderness. But the Lord met the tempter with this very word of Scripture, saying, “It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the LORD thy God.” Men may put a man to the test to see if he is honest or trustworthy, but God is not one to be put to the proof by man in this way. Faith knows that God will do all that He has said He will do, and that He will take care of the one who trusts in Him.
They were not to tempt the Lord as they had done at Massah in the wilderness, when they wanted water and said, “Is the Lord among us or not?” They knew He had been among them surely but in the trials of the way, when there was no water, in their unbelief they spoke as if He had left them to perish. How it must have pained the heart of God, so loving and so faithful, to have His people murmur against Him thus. Yet how it must wound the heart of our blessed Lord when we fail to count on Him at times and even wonder if He has forgotten us! No! Never will He forget or forsake us. May we confide in Him and trust in His love more and more as the days go by.
ML-12/22/1974