Congolese Service

Introduction

When I was in college, I remember spending my weekends at retreats for high school students. I taught the Bible in small groups and, occasionally, I was the speaker for the event.

I remember, on one occasion, I was 19 years old, and I driving home from one of these conferences. I looked down at the gas gauge in my car, and I realized that I didn’t have any gas. It was late at night, and even worse, I did not have any money. At these small churches, sometimes I would receive a small gift from the church, but often, I received nothing. This had been one of those occasions.

I remember pulling into the gas station, and pulling out a bag in my glove box that had several dollars worth of change in it. I walked inside the gas station, emptied the change on the counter, and started counting out the money I had to get a few dollars worth of gas to get home. I sheepishly grinned at the clerk, put three dollars worth of gas in my car, and drove home.

I remember getting home that night, tired, a little embarrassed, and without a single penny to my name. But as I jumped into bed that night, do you know what I also experienced - JOY. Pure, unchanging joy.

A joy in having taught the word of God.

A joy in having seen God move.

A joy in simply serving God without any expectation.

A joy in getting the opportunity to minister to people.

And most of all, a joy in worshipping Jesus and living my life for his purposes.

The joy of walking with Jesus and serving Jesus was all I needed.

I wish, as a pastor who has walked with Jesus almost 15 years from that point, that I could say every day is that way for me. Unfortunately, some days it isn’t. As I was assigned this passage, the Lord convicted my heart. While we may say, “Life gets more complicated as we get older, the reality is that life doesn’t.” We need to simply walk with Jesus.

In the passage I want to read today, the people of Israel are about to enter the promised land. Moses, knowing what prosperity will do to one’s spiritual life, warns them.

Prosperity can be used by you for the sake of the Kingdom of God, but it can also be a great distraction from the work God has for you.

Read Deuteronomy 8:11-14

Deuteronomy 8:11–14 ESV

“Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,

Explanation

I have found that people have one of two natural dispositions about their circumstances in God. Either they cling to God in the hard seasons or they bless God when life is good.

Some people very naturally cling to God when live is hard. When you are sick or a family member dies or your pay check isn’t making ends meet, it is very easy for you to remember that God is all that you need.

Some people very naturally bless God when life is easy. You give all the glory and thanks to God when your dinner table is full and everyone in your family is happy and healthy. But when life gets bad, you turn from God.

One of the most dangerous moments in a persons spiritual life is when their circumstances switch from one to the other. When we are prosperous and become poor, OR when we are poor and become prosperous.

And the problem with thinking that one is better than the other is the reality that God met the Israelites both in the desert AND the promised land.

What can we do when we walk out of moments of hardship into moments of prosperity?

We must be watchful.

The passage says to “take care.”

Taking care means to be careful.

When life gets easier, you can easily get distracted.

When we have little, we know that God is all we need. But the richer we grow the less we think that God is all we need and we begin to add more and more and more to what we think we need from God.

Eventually, we realize that we did not add those things to God, but rather, we replaced God with those things.

We must remain dependent upon God.

You are no less dependent upon the Lord in your prosperity than you are dependent upon the Lord in your poverty.

God gave the Israelites the promised land no less than He gave the Israelites the wilderness. And God used both of those experiences to refine them.

It is interesting to note that the Israelites fell away from God not in the wilderness but in the promised land.

We must be certain that created things, idols, do not keep us from God.

Nothing in the list that Moses gave the people of Israel in these verses is a bad thing.

They are all good gifts of God.

However, our natural inclination as sinful man is to take the good things that God has created for us and use them for our purposes instead of His. Therein lies idolatry. Elevating gift above giver.

We worship the giver and not the gift. We worship Jesus and not the things he has given to us.

We must remain humble, knowing that everything we have comes from God and not from us.

Deuteronomy 8:14 “then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,”

Pride causes us to think that our circumstances are our own making.

You may work hard for what you have, but ever gift - you brain, your hands, your feet, your eyes - they are given to you by God alone.

Invitation

Jesus is better than the life you can built from yourself.

Give God the glory - not your gifts.