June 4: Deuteronomy 8
Getting ready for blessing
There are at least two perspectives that are always operating on reality (really three, but that third one is outside of what we’re talking about here). The first perspective is of course our own.
From our perspective, God is always interacting with us, sometimes to bless us, sometimes to chasten, always speaking to us from His Word. This is what we call the “revealed” will of God.
The second perspective is that of God’s secret will. Why is He allowing this? Why does He cause us to experience that? The answers to these questions are found in the “secret things of God” (Deuteronomy 27:27). And because it’s secret, it’s entirely up to Him as to whether He shares it with us or not. Often He doesn’t.
But here in Deuteronomy 8, God pulls back the curtain and tells His people the reason why they went through the wilderness trials after the Exodus:
“. . . that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Deuteronomy 8:2-3
God was testing them and training them, to see if they would be able to handle the blessings of the Promised Land non-idolatrously. The evidence would be that they could receive their blessings with gratitude, not grabbiness (Deuteronomy 8:10).
It turns out that afflictions are trials, but so are blessings. The temptation with wealth is that we might forget the Giver of the blessing and worship the blessing itself. Which then turns into worshiping ourselves, for we conclude that we created all this wealth, rather than gratefully blessing its Creator (Romans 1:25).
President Obama once famously said to business owners: “You didn’t create that.” He was half-right. Yes, we work, but the rain of blessing comes from the Lord. Where Obama was wrong was in his greed to covetously take the blessing God gave to others and redistribute it, which God finds equally odious.
We keep from driving into either idolatrous ditch by receiving blessings with glad enjoyment, gratefully remembering their Giver, with grinning humility. For our God is generous, and our present trials just might be His preparation for future blessing.