Remember when you were a little child and you received a gift or a kindness from someone, and your parents needed to prompt you to say “thank you”? Being quite young, you needed to be taught proper manners. Hopefully those lessons stuck and we are polite, prompt to tell others thank you. Yet it is amazing how many people have quickly forgotten those lessons! The one that gets forgotten the most is God. In his final lessons to the people of Israel before they entered the Promised Land, Moses is instructing them not to forget the Lord God, for He is the one who has given them everything they had while wandering in the wilderness, and everything they will have in their new home. As we look into this passage, let’s also remember to be a grateful people, thankful to the Lord for all He has given us.
We tend to remember the good things and favors we do for others. Those don’t slip our minds easily. Yet how easily we forget what God has done for us, and “thank you’s” are slow to come. Moses knew how the Israelites were, and knew that they would be quick to forget all that God had done for them. He was not going into the land with them, and would not be there to instruct them, so he urged them to remember the Lord God (vs. 2). We need to be constantly recalling what God has done for us. We easily remember so many other things, many of which don’t really matter. Why do we so easily forget the blessings God gives us?
One thing that Moses didn’t want the people to forget was God’s guidance and leading every day through the wilderness for the past forty years (vs. 2). If it wasn’t for His care, protection, and provisions they would never have made it through. There were times that He needed to test or discipline them, yet His love and care was always there. God promises to be there and lead us, too, throughout our life, even when we walk through seemingly wilderness periods. He may test us to see whether we will obey him even when things are difficult. When we look at how the world is today, all the difficult and scary things happening, believers can and should be thankful that we have the Lord Jesus with us each day, to carry us through. We don’t need to try and struggle through on our own.
Moses reminded the people that the Lord also provided food for them every day (vs. 3). Naturally this is something that we need to be thankful to the Lord for. Obviously, physical food is important. However, as we read in this verse, God’s Word, our spiritual food, is even more important. It provides eternal life. Physical food will only nourish our physical lives, which may, if we’re lucky, last 80 or 90 years. Jesus quoted this verse to Satan when he tempted Him in the wilderness (Matthew 4:4). Satan tempted Jesus to turn the rocks He saw into bread to satisfy His physical hunger. However, Jesus knew that life is more than satisfying physical appetites. Real life comes from total commitment to God. He knew that our spiritual life is nourished from God’s Word. The Bible is the Word of God. It does not just contain the Word of God. It is the very Word of God.
As we continue in our Scripture, we read that Moses reminded the people that God provided for all of their needs (vs. 4). He provided their clothing. He provided for their health. These were miraculous provisions. How many of us have clothes that we wear on a regular basis that are 40 years old? Not many of us do. Aside from the changing fashions over the decades, most clothes wear out after a few years, and we need to discard them. The clothes that the Israelites wore the day they entered the Promised Land were clothes they had brought with them when they left Egypt, and they still looked brand new!
The Lord also promised that His love and care would continue on as they entered the land of Canaan (vs. 7-10). Moses enumerated the food, water, and raw materials that God would give them, for which they needed to be thankful to Him for. Do we remember to give the Lord God thanks for all the many blessings He has bestowed on us, or are we forgetful, thinking that we obtained all we have through our own industriousness? As Moses admonished the people in verse 10, we too need to not forget God when our needs and wants are satisfied. Remember to thank Him!
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