This morning's message from God's word comes from Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 10 through 25, and you'll find that on page 151 in the Blue Bibles. Deuteronomy 6. We continue in our series through Deuteronomy chapters one through 11. Remember that here Moses is speaking to Israel and he's getting them ready to enter the promised land. And in last week's passage, we saw Moses saying. To obey God's word, to meditate on it, lay it up in your heart, mix it into your life. And then this week we get the negative side of that teaching, which is to guard against things that pull you away from the Lord. Now, Israel's history illustrates that on the whole, in the long term, by and large, they did not listen to these warnings, but they were in fact pulled away from the Lord. But in due time, as we've seen, God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to keep the law perfectly for us, Galatians 4.4. And Jesus did listen to God. And during the time of his ministry, Jesus Christ was tempted to sin. The devil tempted him with three temptations. And with each of those temptations, Jesus responded with a quote from Deuteronomy. Two of those quotes occur in today's passage. So what we're actually going to do this morning, keep your finger there in Deuteronomy, but turn forward in your Bibles to Matthew chapter four, that's on page 809 of the Blue Bibles, Matthew chapter four, verses one through 11. We're going to read the temptation of Christ, and then we'll go to Deuteronomy, and you'll see the connection then as we read from Deuteronomy. So first of all, Matthew chapter four, starting at verse one, this is God's word. Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, if you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. But he answered, it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you. And on their hands, they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, again, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, all these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. Now turn back, if you would, to Deuteronomy chapter six, and we will read from verse 10 to the end of the chapter, and this is our text for the message today. Deuteronomy six, starting at verse 10. And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant, and when you eat and are full, Then take care, lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve, and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the people who are around you, for the Lord your God is in your midst For the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God. Lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you and he destroy you from off the face of the earth. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested him at Massa. You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you. And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers by thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as the Lord has promised. When your son asks you in time to come, what is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you? Then you shall say to your son, we were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household before our eyes. And he brought us out from there that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always, that he might preserve us alive as we are this day. and it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord, our God, as he has commanded us. Here ends the reading of God's holy word. Let's pray. Dear Father in heaven, we thank you for this clear instruction from the scriptures and we pray that you would use it to draw us to truth and to righteousness and above all to reliance on Christ as our savior. We ask these things in his name. Amen. Are you the kind of person who locks your doors and locks up your stuff? I bet the answer to that question depends on your life experiences. As I look back on my life, I can remember for instance, having three of my bicycles stolen, starting at an early age, bikes stolen, and one bike smashed by a very scary person. So that's my record, four bikes, and therefore I am the sort of person who locks up my stuff and locks the doors, and because I do believe that these things do happen, and they've happened to me. Your relationship with God is the most precious thing you possess. That is your most precious possession. That God has taken possession of you and has given himself to you to be your possession. And what God is telling us in this passage through Moses is there are forces at work against that precious possession. And therefore you need to be on guard against those forces. And then furthermore, at the end of the text, You need to be upholding God's word for that is what God uses to guide you and to safeguard you on your way through this earthly life. So two points this morning. First of all, we're going to talk about a couple of different threats to your relationship with God. And then secondly, uphold the word of God, which is your safeguard. So first, two threats to your relationship to God. The first one is the threat of prosperity, and that is in verses 10 through 15. This emphasis, the threat of prosperity, comes up more than once in the book of Deuteronomy. It will come up at length again in chapter 8, but Here's the setting. Israel is about to succeed beyond their wildest dreams. They are going to gain not only a good land, but as Moses says, good houses full of good things and good fields. And these cisterns, these water tanks dug out of the rock and all these things that other people work to develop, they're gonna walk right in and take it. They're going to eat and they're going to be full. Is there anything to matter with being full? Is there anything to matter with being comfortable? The answer is maybe. And we could express the danger by saying that more people are killed by sofas than by rattlesnakes. What do I mean by that? Anybody will avoid stepping on a viper, right? But the couch just pulls you in. And there you sit, and what are you doing? Well, you're probably stuffing junk food in your face, and you're watching TV, and you're not getting your exercise. And sure enough, over the long haul, lots of that can have pretty serious side effects, right? Killer couch. So it is with the comforts of Canaan and Moses here, of course, is not concerned about the lack of physical exercise or anything like that. They'll get plenty of exercise, but he's concerned about the kind of spiritual health of the people because this is going to be a comfy land. Back in the wilderness, they had very little. And they were depending on God day by day for the manna that fell from the sky. They were trusting him. And so what Moses says in verse 13 was very obvious to them. Of course, they must fear God. Of course, they must serve him alone. They knew it. But soon they're going to have great fields. And Moses is saying, don't let your hearts Don't let your hearts get attached to these possessions and comforts. And then he goes on immediately to say in verse 14, beware of worshiping other gods. So you can understand how these two dangers of prosperity and idolatry go together because they'll go into the land. They had almost nothing. Then they're going to have lots of stuff, great fields, And when, for instance, the rain doesn't fall on their precious fields, they're going to be tempted to worship other gods. They're going to be tempted, for instance, to sacrifice to Baal. Have you ever wondered, as you read through the Old Testament, what was the attraction of Baal? Why do they keep going to Baal? Baal was supposedly the rain god. All their neighbor, the Canaanite neighbors believed it. And there they were in an agricultural setting where they depended on the rain to fall. Rain meant food, it meant eating. And so to sacrifice to Baal was going to be more tempting the more they had. So do you see the trend there? I will be willing to serve anything that will keep my comforts going. So Moses links these things by putting them next to each other, the danger of prosperity and comforts and the danger of idolatry, they really do go together. I think we know how this hazard works, right? I mean, you have, you've probably felt this yourself, where for instance, God provides you with a job. But then you start seeing the job as your provider and you start throwing all your energy and everything you have at the job and serving that, right? You start serving the gift instead of the giver. God gives you friendships, but then perhaps you're willing to do anything to make those friendships keep going and get your friend's approval. God blesses you with recognition. but then it becomes something you serve and seek after. So this can happen with almost any form of prosperity, blessing, or success. And this is what Moses is warning about, prosperity becoming a threat, because we start guarding our prosperity when what we should be doing is guarding our relationship with God. So we'll talk about the solution to that threat in a moment, that's the first threat. The second one is this, in verses 16 to 19, a spirit of entitlement Entitlement means thinking that God owes you something. Verse 16 says, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested him at Massa. And if you go back to Exodus chapter 17, you will find out what God is referring to. In Massa, a place in the desert, they run out of water and they put God to the test. They don't humbly ask for water. They put God on trial, as it were. They demanded of it. They demand that of God. They say, give us water. They put him to the test. You're not supposed to boss God. Verse 18 follows up with what they ought to do. Quote, do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord that it may go well with you. In other words, you focus on what God tells you to do, don't focus on what you're telling God to do. First obey God and then trust him to bless you. That's pretty basic, but I think this spirit of entitlement is something that can creep up on us. We can know that we've been infected with a spirit of entitlement if we ever get to the place where we feel that God is not keeping up his end of the bargain. When we find ourselves saying something like, Lord, I have served you, and I don't really think that I deserve this, whatever this may be. Or I think I deserve more of that. People with a spirit of entitlement tend to hold grudges. That's another way of recognizing the spirit. A spirit, a demanding spirit against God tends to go with a grudging spirit against people. Just like at Massa, Israel, technically they were complaining against Moses. They had a grudge against Moses, but their real complaint was with the Lord. And so it is with us, too. At the bottom of our bitterness, whether it's against people or against God, is the thought that I deserve better. Where's my water? To put it positively, the more we trust God's providence, the more we can rely on him, even though it's hard, the more ready we will be to forgive other people. So we're not to boss God or demand things of him. Now you can reverently insist that God keep his promises. The Bible says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Or Jesus said, I will never leave you. I go to prepare a place for you. And those are promises, and you can expect God to fulfill those. You can kind of wave that at the Lord, in a sense, and say, cash this. It's his promise. You have a right to, in a way, insist upon it, trust in it, maybe I should say. He gives you that right. But with regards to other things, like three squares a day, a wonderful family, a good health, a thrilling job, all those things we want, God never promised them in this life, and to think he has or expect him to deliver these things is a great hazard. And Moses warns us against that hazard, a spirit of entitlement. So dangers of prosperity, spirit of entitlement. Looking at this passage on its own terms, we can see that for human beings, blessings are problematic. First of all, we could say on the biggest level, mankind forfeited blessing by falling into sin. So by nature, none of us can demand blessings of God. But then we see here in the people of Israel, God redeems them and he starts working in the nation and blessing them based on the Messiah to come. And yet they have a terrible time handling their blessings. Prosperity throws them off. Or they demand things of God, they put him to the test. And we can see those same things, the same struggles in ourselves. Who is going to say, I have never been a slave to my own comforts? Who is going to say, I have never had a demanding or grieved spirit against God? We all struggle with that. And so, and yet we all hope to be blessed, right? So we hope to be blessed, but we seem to not be able to handle blessing. What's the solution? And the solution is what we started off with, the obedience of Jesus Christ. Did you notice in Matthew's gospel how it said that Christ went into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights? In the desert for 40 units. See, God sets that up so it will trigger in our minds, comparing it to Israel, who was in the desert for 40 years. And as we see Jesus go into the desert and be tempted, notice, among other things, he gets very hungry. It's parallel. We see Jesus being tempted, and the question is, will Jesus be obedient? Will Jesus have learned the lessons of Deuteronomy? In other words, will Jesus succeed where we fail? And just think about this briefly this morning, just to see the glory of your Savior. So we idolize prosperity. We get pulled in by the couch, as it were. We love our comforts and we start serving whatever we think is gonna be nice for us. And here the devil offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world. All the kingdoms of the world if you'll fall down and worship him. Do you see that temptation? To serve whatever you think is going to give you blessing. And Jesus has this temptation in the greatest magnitude you can imagine it. That is prosperity, or at least it looks like it. But Jesus says, paraphrasing verse 13 of our passage, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Perfect response, perfect. Do you see our savior in his obedient glory? He loves his father and he realizes that his father is worth more than all the kingdoms in the world. Perfect response. With respect to a spirit of entitlement, Satan tells Jesus to jump off the pinnacle of the temple. Basically, you're worth it, Jesus. You're the son of God. I mean, you should be able to jump off that pinnacle and more or less insist that God save you, that he provide you with an angel parachute because you're good enough and you deserve it. And Jesus says, quoting verse 16, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Perfect response. It is a blessing. It is a blessing to have a perfect savior because we need one. Again, we do at times worship our own comforts or lust after our own success. Or we feel that we deserve good things. What a blessing to have Jesus Christ come, standing in our place, and actually overcome these great temptations. He covers us with a robe of his own righteousness when we trust in him, and he washes away our sins through his shed blood. So, saved by Jesus, we have a real encouragement to heed these warnings. I imagine Israel hearing these warnings and kind of, you know, gulp, swallowing hard and thinking, okay, I'll try to do better than they did at Massa. I'll try my hardest. I hope it works. But see, where you are in history, you know that Jesus Christ came and he didn't just try, he did it, and he did it for you. And that is the basis of your righteousness. His shed blood washes away your sins as you trust in him. So do you see the truth? You are standing in a strong place, saved by such a savior, the one who has succeeded for you, covered with his blood and his righteousness and filled with his spirit. And so we can hear God's word this morning and really take warning and step forward strongly in obedience and say like the Apostle Paul said in Philippians, I know how to be abased or to abound. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Whether you have a lot or a little, whether you are laughing or you're crying, you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. You are rich in him. You are saved by him. And you stand in him, your righteousness. So knowing Jesus is a huge encouragement to step forward strongly in obedience and really hear these two warnings. So that's the first thing, these two warnings. Secondly, uphold God's word, which safeguards us. God gives us his word to keep us on the right path. And God talks about staying on the right path back in chapter five, verse 33. So God gives us his rules, his warnings, his promises. And Moses anticipates that someday the young people of Israel are going to ask, what are the meaning of these rules? Tell me again, dad, why are we doing this stuff? And I think that is really one of the big questions of our day. Because here we live in a culture where Christian practice has faded and we have been going on inertia for a number of generations, I would say, in kind of Christian-ish practice. But now at this point in time, people are really saying, why are we doing this again, right? Why is this right and why is that wrong? I mean, if there's no good reason for all these rules, why not just kind of throw them out and make our own rules, right? So people are asking this very question today. And in itself, it's a good question. We should know why we're doing what we're doing. And there's various answers to the question, but here in this passage, God through Moses gives you two reasons why we keep God's rules. First of all, we keep God's rules because we look back in history. And we see, as Moses says in verses 21 through 23, we see how God has rescued us. So he points them back to Egypt and he says, look, you're to tell your kids, we people of Israel were slaves in Egypt, horrible time, but God stepped in with his mighty power and he delivered us. Why do we follow these rules? Why do we believe these promises? Because God saved us and we are loyal to our rescuing God. That is the first reason. Put that in a New Testament context. We have already seen that this rescue from Egypt is a kind of picture or illustration of the saving work of Jesus Christ. Christ has come to deliver us from our greatest enemies and to lead us into freedom. He saves us from our sins. He leads us into God's favor. Why do we follow the Bible? Because Jesus saved us. He saved us. And when you look at his death, you see a picture of what our sins deserve and the great trouble we're in. When you look at his sacrifice, you see the great love of God and the lengths he will go to save his people. Why do we believe the Bible? Because we are redeemed by Jesus Christ and we are loyal to Jesus. That's the first reason we follow God's word. We're loyal to Jesus, our Savior. The second reason, so that's a reason we have as we look into the past, but then we also look into the future and we see the blessings that God has in store for us. Moses says here in verse 23, God is leading you into the land he promised to your fathers. And here's the vision in verse 24, they're going to follow God's word, they're gonna fear him, and God is going to bless them. And God is going to, Moses says in verse 25, this will be your righteousness. It doesn't make sense, as we have seen before, to understand that, that they are going to gain or keep the land by their own righteousness. They would have not made it one inch into that land if they were operating on a strictly legal basis. I take verse 25 to mean, well, kind of like what Jesus said about hearing the words, well done, good and faithful servant. As they go into that land and they serve God and they fear him, he is going to be pleased with the work that he sees he's doing in them. So that's the vision. As we've seen, God sets up this promised land as a picture or illustration of where he's taking all of us. We are all going to live with God. We are all going to this heavenly country. We're going to inherit a land where it will be well with us, God will preserve our lives, and he will make us perfect in righteousness, and we follow the word, we follow the word because as Psalm 119 says, his word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path that God uses to shepherd and guide us to that final great destination he's taking us to. And so it's with good reason that the scripture calls God's word a lamp In Psalm 119, scripture also calls God's word a sharp sword in Hebrews. And the truth in the Gospel of John, lamp, sword, truth. By this word, God protects you. By this word, he guides you. And the way you discover the effectiveness of the word is that you read it and you use it. In other words, take out the lamp, draw the sword, put it to use, and you will see it is exactly what God says it is. It is a guide and a protector that he uses to get us where he has us going, which of course is the reason the world and the devil so fiercely attack God's word. You're trying to snuff out that lamp and knock that sword out of our hand and kind of lead us defenseless and directionless, either by getting us distracted to all our pleasures and whatnot, or getting us discouraged, or by ridiculing God's word and seeking to make us lose our confidence in it. So God's word is always in that sense under attack. But no light shines like the word of God. No weapon pierces like that sword. If you use it, you will know exactly what I mean. So hold it fast. So summing up what we've seen this morning, your relationship with God is extremely precious. It is worth guarding. It's worth more than all kingdoms of the world. So resolve by God's grace that you will not be distracted from the Lord himself. You can make that resolution with great confidence, knowing that Jesus Christ has gone before you and he supports and undergirds all of your efforts. And secondly, renew your commitment to following God's word, because it is by that word that God leads you onto your final inheritance through Christ your Savior. So that's the message from God's word this morning. Let's pray and ask for his blessing on it.