Remember Jesus!

Could you imagine the stories you would have heard growing up if you were born while on the wilderness journey?

If you aren’t familiar with the story, God’s people were enslaved in Egypt for over 400 years. He hears their cries and sends Moses to free them. It took miracles and plagues to come upon Egypt for a chance to escape.  

They were free! They witness God’s power and might first hand. Of course, they quickly forgot. He promised to see them returned to the land He promised in the very beginning. This land would prove to be occupied and those who just saw God’s power at work, became frightened. They chose not to continue into the Promised Land.  

So, instead, they were destined to journey in the wilderness for 40 years until a generation passed away. Then it was time to enter the Promised Land again.

And God gives them a warning.

11 But watch yourself! Don’t forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commands or his case laws or his regulations that I am commanding you right now. 12 When you eat, get full, build nice houses, and settle down, 13 and when your herds and your flocks are growing large, your silver and gold are multiplying, and everything you have is thriving, 14 don’t become arrogant, forgetting the Lord your God:

the one who rescued you from Egypt, from the house of slavery;

15 the one who led you through this vast and terrifying desert of poisonous snakes

and scorpions, of cracked ground with no water;

the one who made water flow for you out of a hard rock;

16 the one who fed you manna in the wilderness, which your ancestors had never

experienced, in order to humble and test you, but in order to do good to you in the

end.

17 Don’t think to yourself, My own strength and abilities have produced all this prosperity for me. 18 Remember the Lord your God! He’s the one who gives you the strength to be prosperous in order to establish the covenant he made with your ancestors—and that’s how things stand right now. (Deuteronomy 8, CEB)

God gives them this warning, because He knew they were going to forget Him. He knew they would see their houses, and forget the struggles that allowed them to be there. They forgot God’s part in it all.

They turned from relying on God to relying on themselves, even worse, thinking they accomplished it all in their own strength.

This happens to us, as Christians, today too. We look at our lives and think, “I’m not that bad. I’m a pretty decent person. I’ve done fairly well.”  

We don’t say it out loud, but we all but say to ourselves, “No wonder God loves me!”

And yet, the Gospel is clear. We don’t earn God’s love. We have to remember this.  

When we think we can earn God’s love and forget what we have been given, we will struggle to see others the way God sees them. Remember, our starting place is the same as everyone else’s, while we were still enemies before God.  

6 While we were still weak, at the right moment, Christ died for ungodly people. 7 It isn’t often that someone will die for a righteous person, though maybe someone might dare to die for a good person. 8 But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us. 9 So, now that we have been made righteous by his blood, we can be even more certain that we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. 10 If we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son while we were still enemies, now that we have been reconciled, how much more certain is it that we will be saved by his life? 11 And not only that: we even take pride in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one through whom we now have a restored relationship with God. (Romans 5, CEB)

This is why Jesus tells us to love our enemies! He chose to love you!

Blessings,

Pastor Matt