"How soon they forget!" That is more than just a clever saying, it is the truth. Sports fans forget that their team won last year when they begin to lose this year. Children forget the sacrifices their parents make for them. Students forget what teachers taught them. We forget faces, dates, places, and even the names of old friends. But fortunately, most of what we forget is not all that serious. For many of us forgetfulness is just one of many signs of aging.

Three elderly ladies were sitting, chatting about various things. One lady says, "You know, I'm getting really forgetful. This morning, I was standing at the top of the stairs, and I couldn't remember whether I had just come up or was about to go down."

The second lady says, "You think that's bad? The other day, I was sitting on the edge of my bed, and I couldn't remember whether I was going to bed or had just woken up!"

The third lady smiles smugly. "Well, my memory's just as good as it's always been, knock wood." She raps the table. With a startled look on her face, she asks, "Who's there?"

Problems of memory though come not only through advancing age, but are endemic in us all. Scripture calls us to remember for an important reason. Sir Thomas More said, "The world does not need so much to be informed as to be reminded." So the Bible says again and again "Forget not!" and "Remember!" To remember is a key theme throughout Deuteronomy and central in our passage this morning.

1 Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers.

2 Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.

3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

4 Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.

5 Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.

6 Observe the commands of the LORD your God, walking in his ways and revering him.

The call to remember in verse 2 is a command to meditate on who God is. To remember is not so much a warning to master a wealth of facts about God as it is a reminder of the awful possibility that we can forget our dependence upon Him. The word means to meditate, recollect, confess, proclaim.

The command to remember here is given as the Israelites are poised to possess their inheritance, the land of Canaan. There existed the very real possibility that they would cease to remember all God did for them as they found they no longer had to depend on Him for everything they had. When they enjoy the wealth of the land He provides for them, they will forget it came from Him. It is ironic that we may find ourselves forgetting Him because of the many blessings that He has given us. When our hands are full we forget the lessons we learned when our hands were empty.

For forty years the nation of Israel wandered in the wilderness with little or no possessions. Each step of the way they had to depend totally on God to provide and meet their needs. Now they were ready to enter into the land of milk and honey, the promised land where they would settle down and enjoy the blessings of God. When we have little we live in dependence on God. When we have much, in our prosperity it is easy to forget God.

The reason they must remember is that the command to remember in verse 2 gives the means by which they can obey the command in verse 1. Our passage opens with the oft-repeated warning to be obedient to God’s commands. There is a benefit which follows: "so that you may live, increase, enter and possess the land..."

But the benefits listed are not enough to create obedience. The land was promised by God on oath to their forefathers. The land is theirs to possess, a word which includes the idea of an inheritance. Grace flows through this. God promised the land and it will be theirs as an birthright. But in order to take it they must remember who has given it to them.

There is a definite theological pattern established here. God promises on oath in the form of a covenant which results in inheritance. But in order to receive the inheritance, they must know and believe it is theirs to be had; opponents must be faced but still the inheritance is theirs.

Hear what one wise commentator wrote 300 years ago: "God never permits any tribulation to befall his followers, which he does not design to turn to their advantage. When he permits us to hunger, it is that his mercy may be the more observable in providing us with the necessaries of life. Privations, in the way of providence, are the forerunners of mercy and goodness abundant."

Before we can ever obey, we must see that whatever we are and whatever we have is from God alone. We must see our need; we have to come to the end of ourselves first.

It understandably follows that God shows us our need in order that He might show us His goodness. He places us in those circumstances we consider awful so that then we can better see His power at work. He causes hunger so that He can feed. The test not only reveals what we are really like inside, but it also shows what God is really like. What was it God wanted them to remember?

What God desired to teach may well be a familiar verse. We’ll look later at how Christ used this verse while in the wilderness for 40 days He was tempted by Satan. But here in this context, which will help us understand better what Matthew describes, we need to be clear what this does not mean.

This is not saying that we must not be concerned with our physical needs, that food and drink do not matter, for we must be somehow spiritually aloof to those issues.

Rather, what God desired to teach the Israelites, what they had to remember, what we must remember, is that all we are, all we have, is dependent not on our own resources, but on God alone. What verse 3b says is not so much a contrast between the manna and God’s Word, but a climax moving from the supernatural provision of food to the supernatural revelation of God’s will.

"Everything going forth from the mouth of God" includes the declaration of God’s promises, the claims of God’s covenant, the guidance of God’s Law, the articulation of God’s purpose for creation and humanity. Words that promised bread came from the same mouth that promised much, much more.

God’s Word which formed the universe is the same divine Word which commanded our first parents to obey. Interestingly, it was the relationship of God’s Word and food that got us all into the same trouble. Our sin in the Garden was rejecting the wonderful provision of a bountiful garden in order to taste and eat the only thing which God forbid. Here in the wilderness God provides food in abundance in a form never seen before; still the people questioned His goodness. Again, the first temptation of Christ was with regard to food, seeking to sow doubt whether God’s promise would come true. In a positive sense, we take and eat the Gospel when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Rather than seeking to feed ourselves, rather than rejecting God’s gracious gift and seeking to supply our own needs, God invites us to a table where we can eat our fill, where He will satisfy us far more than we can imagine.

The trouble is we so often indignantly imagine that we can take care of ourselves that we do not remember God’s grace in the times of our greatest need or in times of wonderful plenty.

One afternoon a shopper at the local mall felt the need for a coffee break. She bought herself a little bag of cookies and put them in her shopping bag. She then got in line for coffee, found a place to sit at one of the crowded tables, and then taking the lid off her coffee and taking out a magazine she began to sip her coffee and read. Across the table from her a man sat reading a newspaper. After a minute or two she reached out and took a cookie. As she did, the man seated across the table reached out and took one too. This put her off, but she did not say anything. A few moments later she took another cookie. Once again the man did so too. Now she was getting a bit upset, but still she did not say anything. After having a couple of sips of coffee she once again took another cookie. So did the man. She was really upset by this - especially since now only one cookie was left. Apparently the man also realized that only one cookie was left. Before she could say anything he took it, broke it in half, offered half to her, and proceeded to eat the other half himself. Then he smiled at her and, putting the paper under his arm, rose and walked off.

She was steamed. Her coffee break ruined, already thinking ahead of how she would tell this offense to her family, she folded her magazine, opened her shopping bag, and there discovered her own unopened bag of cookies.

Verse 5 puts our suffering in context. It is not as though the evil of suffering is inherently good. We do not believe we may call something as horrible as a child’s death a wonderful blessing or a tumultuous marriage a good thing. But God works all that so that we may be disciplined. It is no coincidence that being a disciple and being disciplined come from the same word.

Those events in life which force us to come to the end of ourselves and see God’s hand of mercy are but evidences of God’s Fatherly care. Don’t let the family language pass you by.

4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

5 And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,

6 because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son."

 
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?

8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.

9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live!

10 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.

11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12:4-11

The tough times we endure are not outside the sphere of God’s knowledge; even more, they are a part of His plan to remind you of His care. More than that, in the difficult times God is at work in you as a father trains and disciplines his child. Difficulty in life is not an evidence of God’s absence, but of God’s presence. Discipline is not a sign of His hatred, but His love. He is forming you to be like His own Son, who suffered in His Incarnation for you, through His death purchased your redemption. The greatest evil this world has ever seen, the murder of God’s own Son, is the means by which the greatest good has ever been achieved. So in your life, God seeks to make you like His Son.

We must remember God’s goodness to us, even in the difficult times, for it is then that we see how He continually gives us what will benefit us at that time. Even in midst of horrible tragedy, God’s hand in providence still bears the kindness of provision, sustaining us for another day. It is in those circumstances that we begin to see that the God who gives us breath and life, gives us commands for our good. Our obedience flows from gratitude of a loving God.

The Israelites faced an uncertain future. How could they be certain they would make it? God points to the seeming failures of the past to show them that in their failure He remained faithful. The Puritan preacher Stephen Charnock reminded his friends who were suffering fierce persecution in the late seventeenth century that "If we did remember his former goodness we should not be so ready to doubt ... his future care." Moses tells the Hebrew people that those forty years in the desert had been difficult years, but not wasted ones. Disobedience had kept a whole generation out of a land they might have enjoyed, but God had been with them just the same. When people grieve Him, He does not utterly forsake them. If rebels run away from Him, He lovingly pursues them, as Bunyan reminded us, "with a pardon in his hand." God's people looked forward to a rich and prosperous land ahead, but they must not forget that God had also been good to them in the barren desert. They had learned lessons there which prosperity could never have taught them. Through those bleak wilderness years, He had been like a compassionate father who occasionally has to discipline his children for their own good. Some lessons can only be learned in trouble.

I could end here by encouraging you to take strength in trials, to hold on when the going gets rough. But as Deuteronomy 8 tells us, God tested Israel to know what was in their hearts. How well did they do? If we read the entire account, not very well. They failed continually. Their hearts were hard and they constantly complained. If they, who received manna in the morning and quail in the evening, water flowing from a rock when they were thirsty, if they had a difficult time knowing that God’s Word is to be obeyed, how can spiritual misfits like us ever pass the test?

The answer is found in one who passed the test for us, one who knew that life is not about bread which we create on our own. Life in all its aspects, physical and spiritual, the good times and the bad, all comes from our God. That one was likewise put to the test in a wilderness as He was led there by the Spirit. Hunger set in and the tempter went to work: "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." "Take care of yourself, be self-sufficient," was the temptation. To this Jesus Christ responded by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3: "Man does live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God."

He succeeded where we always fail. So often we run to our own sufficiency, our own resources. We see in Christ’s temptation not a role model for us to try the next time we are faced with difficulty. It is not a lesson on how to try harder next time we are tempted to sin, for that is the sin it condemns, a sin of self-sufficiency. Rather, since Christ succeed where we have failed, we now can place our trust in Him who withstood the temptation none of us ever could.