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Listen to sermons from Christ Covenant Church in Charlotte, NC and Pastor Kevin DeYoung.
Sermons
Tom Groelsema | Remember
Sunday Morning, November 9, 2025
Given by Tom Groelsema | Executive Pastor
Christ Covenant Church
Remember
Sermon Text: Deuteronomy 8
Please turn with me in your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 8. Last week we finished up our series on Ezra. We're kind of in an in-between right now, this Sunday. Next Sunday is the Faithful Conference, and I think Kevin has a short series heading towards Advent. And then, come the new year, we'll enter into a longer series again. But this morning we're turning to Deuteronomy 8. And I chose this passage because, thinking about Thanksgiving coming up in just a couple of weeks, and hoping that this text would be a trigger for us – a trigger for gratitude, a trigger for realizing that all of our needs are met by the Lord. And so we give thanks to him for that. Before we read together, let's pray and ask for the Lord to help us as we study.
Father in heaven, as we sang that song just a moment ago, and we think about how you fed your people, Israel, with manna in the wilderness. So we pray, Lord, that you would feed us this morning, not with manna, of course, but with the Lord Jesus, the bread of life – with his word, which curbs our hunger, satisfies our thirst. And so we pray, Lord, that we would now feast at the banquet of your word, and God you would satisfy us. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Deuteronomy chapter 8. Listen carefully to God's holy word:
“The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, 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. Your clothing did not wear out on you, and your foot did not swell these 40 years.
Know, then, in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you, so that you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates. A land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper, and you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Take care, lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and statutes, which I command you today, lest when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions, and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you to do you good in the end.
Beware, lest you say in your heart, "My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth." You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he might confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers as it is this day. And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.”
Well, dear people of God, Sheri and I were with some friends recently, and we were talking about a wedding that we had been at some years ago. And Sheri asked me in this conversation – she said, "Where was that wedding again? Was that wedding at so and so's farm?" And she was asking me the question, and I said, "I don't remember. I mean, that was, for me, like probably 50 weddings ago, right? But I don't remember." And then she asked a different question, and I had no memory of the answer for that question. Some husbands have hearing problems, right? You get in this conversation with your wife, and hey, I told you to do that. No, you didn't tell me that. Yes, I told you that. No, you didn't tell me that. And back and forth it goes, right? We call this selective hearing. Well, maybe there's something like selective memory, or at least a fickle memory, right? This happened. I don't remember that happening at all. And friends, what a gift – to be more serious – what a gift a good memory is.
There's some of us who are even here this morning who are walking through the valley of memory loss. Maybe it's yourself. Maybe it's somebody that you love. And what a hard road that is, because the loss of memory sometimes means the loss of basic functions. Somebody doesn't know how to tie their shoes anymore. Sometimes people forget how to eat. Loss of memory also means a loss of relationships. You're in a marriage, and there's this memory loss, and you don't relate to each other the same way anymore. Yes, husband and wife still, but maybe your spouse doesn't even know your name. And people of God, when your memory fails you, what a hard thing that is, but when your memory fails you spiritually, it is just as devastating. The Bible, over and over and over again, calls us to remember things, or puts it sometimes “don't forget.” So listen – Psalm 103:1-2, “Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and” – what? – “forget not his benefits.” Don't forget them. And it goes on, of course, the psalm goes on – benefits like he is the one who forgives all your iniquities and heals all your diseases. Don't forget.
Or listen to Proverbs 3:1 – “My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments. For if you forget, your heart may stray. Do not forget, my son, my teaching.” Or this simple one, Luke 17:32 – “Remember Lot's wife.” Don't forget what happened there. Don't forget how, when Sodom and Gomorrah are coming under destruction and they're fleeing, Lot and his wife are fleeing, that she turned around and looked with some affection on those cities. Do not forget that. It's a warning to us. Remember that. You see, what remembering does – remembering has a way of keeping us on track with God. Remembering is vital to living for God and loving God. And that comes out strong, not just in the scriptures at large, but it comes out strong in the book of Deuteronomy, a book of covenant renewal. The word “remember” used 16 times – more than any other Old Testament book besides the Psalms and the book of Ezekiel. It also uses the word “forget” often – 10 times – more than any other book besides the Psalms in the Old Testament. And it's prominent in this chapter. I don't know if you caught that as we're reading through this chapter this morning, but five times the Lord either says “remember” or he says “do not forget.” You see, remembering is crucial and central to living faithfully in covenant with God.
And that's what this chapter really is about. It's about covenant faithfulness. Israel was at the edge of the Promised Land. They had been delivered from Egypt. The Lord had brought them through the wilderness, and now they're standing at the edge of the land of promise, ready to take it – this land that God has sworn to their forefathers – and before they enter, the Lord has just a few final words to them. And one of those words is this: be careful how you go about living when you enter the land. The Lord's been with you through all this time, and now, here comes this new chapter. Be careful how you live. Do you notice that in verse one? The whole commandment that I command you today, you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. Fruitfulness in the land connected to obedience to the commands of God. “This whole command that I command you” – what is that command? Go back a few chapters in chapter 5, the Lord gives the decalogue – the Law – a second time. A little closer, chapter 6, the Lord gives the greatest command: love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all of your might.
I think that's the command that's here. This whole command to love God above everything, with all that you have, be careful to do it. Some authors have said this, that chapter 6 through 11 in Deuteronomy is really just an unfolding of that greatest commandment. And if that's the case, where is chapter 8 in that? It's right in the middle, isn't it? It's at the very center of it. This chapter – all about loving God with all that you have – your heart, your soul, your mind. And again, how is Israel to do this? They're to do this by remembering. Do not forget. If you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments, you will perish – the end of the chapter. Remember, so that you will obey.
Now, there are three things in this chapter that God would have us remember in order to obey his commands and to love him with our heart, soul, and mind. Here's the first. God says, "Remember the hand of the Lord in the wilderness.” Remember how the hand of the Lord was with you in the wilderness. This is where the chapter begins, after that opening call to be careful to do the commands of the Lord. Verses 2-6, there is a rehearsal of how the Lord was with his people in the wilderness. Those 40 years of desert, those years that sat between deliverance from Egypt and, as it were, glory, or the Promised Land that God had promised them. And we know something about the wilderness, don't we? Even the wilderness as it's found in the scriptures – it was a brutal place, a place of heat, a place of hunger, a place of death. We're not going to touch upon that this morning. Pastor Bruce is going to be preaching Psalm 90 tonight – those years of death in the wilderness. And God gave his people, here in this chapter, a detailed description of the trials of the wilderness. You can see these in verses 14 and following. Moses says to God's people, "God led you through the great and terrifying wilderness." People of God, it was a desert with no horizon, as it were. The horizon was just more desert. Come over the crest of a hill, and there's more desert and more desert and more wilderness and more wilderness. 40 years of this, everywhere you turned. It was a home of fiery serpents and scorpions. Think about this. You never knew if you crawled into your sleeping bag at night as an Israelite, and maybe there's a scorpion at the bottom of it to sting you. Or step in the wrong place in the wilderness, and you might die. It was thirsty ground, the text says, where there was no water. So, a threatening place.
But friends, in addition to all these things, what Moses reminds Israel of more than anything is this, that the wilderness was a place of testing. In other words, there was a purpose to the wilderness. There was a design to the wilderness. God was up to something. something in the wilderness in the lives of his people. And there are two things that particularly stand out in our passage. First of all, God was acting and moving to humble his people. You see this in verse 2. You shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart. Why was there so little to eat or so little to drink in the wilderness? Why did God have his people hunger and thirst? And the answer is this, that God was busy stripping away the props that his people leaned on in daily life that might lead them to trust in things other than the Lord. Right? When you got food to eat, what do you trust? Well, it's the next meal. But here, God was testing them. God was humbling them. God was stripping them of things in the wilderness in order to see where their heart was. Would they lean upon him? The test was to make them stronger. The wilderness was designed to help them to become more dependent upon the Lord. God was at work in the wilderness.
And the other thing that God was up to was that he was disciplining them. This is what is said in verse 5: “Know, then, in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord disciplines you.” Now, so often when we think about discipline, of course, we think about it only as punishment, right? Somebody has done something wrong. Discipline comes. You're punished for that. And it is true that the wilderness was a consequence of Israel's sin. 40 years in the wilderness, paralleling the 40 days that the spies had gone out and covered the land and roamed around the land and come back with this report of unbelief, this faithless report. Yes, God was disciplining them as a result of their sin. But the discipline of the Lord for his people wasn't just punitive. It wasn't just to punish them, but there was corrective action involved. God was correcting them. Here, discipline was a proving, a shaping of their faith. And where did it emanate out of? It emanated out of his love. This is because he loved them. He's at work in their life because he loved them. And this is why the Lord was disciplining them. The book of Proverbs, in Proverbs 3, says, "My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father, the son in whom he delights." This is a sign of the love of God for his people. And God is saying through all of this, remember, You’ve got to remember. Remember, I did not abandon you in the wilderness. Remember those wilderness years, and I was not rejecting you. That is not what the desert or wilderness was about. I love you. I was teaching you, humbling you, teaching you to lean on me, breaking your self-reliance, miraculously causing your clothes not to wear out, your feet not to swell. I was at work, teaching you that you need me, causing you to realize that I am your sufficiency. I am your provider. I am your protector. I was teaching you, as Jesus would quote centuries later, that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. You need me. You need my word. The call, the challenge, is to keep my commands – commands that have been spoken by the Lord.
It's the word of God, and God himself, who is life. And this is what Israel needed to remember about those wilderness years. There's one Puritan who put it like this. He says, "The Christian is bred by the word." That's true, right? That's where we find our birth. It's by the word of God, our spiritual birth. “The Christian is bred by the word, and the Christian must be fed by the word.” It's our very beginning. It's what's given us new life, and it's also something that we must feed upon continually. We need it more than the bread we're going to eat at lunch today. Far more.
People of God, what has the wilderness taught you? When the Lord says, "Remember my hand in the wilderness?" – what has the wilderness taught you? John Piper said, "No one ever said that they learned their deepest lessons in life or had their sweetest encounters with God on the sunny days. But people go deep with God when the drought comes in the wilderness. Have you found that to be true? When is your prayer life most fervent or regular? Is it when life is just humming along and things are going well, or is it when the Lord takes you through the wilderness? And often true for a lot of us, it's in the wilderness we know we need God, and we flee to him. Or when are the promises of God sweetest to your soul? Is it when your cup is overflowing? Or is it when you find yourself in the darkness of suffering? Sam Rutherford said, "When I am in the cellar of affliction, this is when I look for God's choicest wines." When we're in the cellar of affliction, there is when we see the choicest wines of the Lord. It's true that we would just as soon forget the wilderness. If you're in it today – I don't want to remember that. Or you've been through a hard time in the past. That's not really what I want to look back on.
We want to forget the wilderness, but the Lord says remember. Look back – can you see my hand at work there? It is not an easy lesson to learn. Even Moses said this to Israel. It is a lesson to be learned in the heart, he says in verse 5. This is beyond, you see, something mental. This isn't just like, oh yes, I can think about this intellectually. This is a lesson that sinks deep. It's a matter of conviction, a matter of assurance. The Lord says in verse 16, this humbling, this testing, it was to do you good in the end. We got to remember that, that the Lord is out to do us good in the end. The wilderness – those years are painful. They're hard. And yet the Lord is work to do something in the end that is good. This is almost kind of an Old Testament version, isn't it, of Romans 8:28; or it reminds us of what God says in Hebrews 12, that “no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful, but in the end, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who are willing to be trained by it.” It is no fun in the moment. We don't have to say that this morning – “yay for the wilderness!” No. But God says, "Remember, my hand is at work." And friends, where have you seen that?
Second, we're to remember the hand of God in the land of plenty. Remember the hand of God in the land of plenty. And this is where the chapter goes, verses 7 and following – this wonderful description of the Promised Land. Israel was able to see it, just over the Jordan. And this land that God was going to give them is everything that the wilderness was not. The desert was dry. But look at verse 7: the Lord is going to bring you into land of brooks of water, of fountains, of springs that flow out in the valleys and the hills. The desert was sparse. Nothing grows in the desert. But the Lord is going to bring you into a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, olive trees, and honey, a land in which you will eat bread. The desert is a place of scarcity, but no scarcity, or lack of scarcity, in the Promised Land. Rocks and hills and stones that, even those, are pregnant with blessings. Truly a good land. This is where the Lord was bringing them. And friends, of course, this is the kind of land we hope for, isn't it? This is where we want to live our lives. Kids are doing well in school, getting a promotion at work every now and then. Our marriage is solid, enjoying a vacation. 401 is growing at a steady pace. No significant health problems. The neighbors are nice. Kind of like the t-shirt that we see every once in a while, right? Life is good. Life is good. This is what we hope for. This is where we want to live. And how blessed we are when this is true.
And it's at this very point, however, that the Lord says to Israel, and he says to us this morning, "Beware.” If this is your life, beware, because, you see, plenty is a test that is as great as problems. Perhaps, in fact, this is a bigger test for us, when life is well rather than when we're in the wilderness. Because when there's problems, we might feel a test – our hearts are unsettled. But when we're living in a land of plenty, we're unaware. Life is humming along. But God says to us, there's a very real and present danger. Right after the description of the land in this passage, the Lord says in verse 11, "Take care lest you forget the Lord your God." All these things are coming, but take care lest you forget God.
What are the things that make it easy for us to forget the Lord? I think there's a few things spelled out in our passage here. One might be polluted worship. This comes toward the end of the passage, verse 19: “You may forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them.” So, we attribute sometimes, don't we, power and strength to other gods that function in our life. It could be power or sex or money or security or comfort or the need for recognition, but all these other things that we lean upon and depend upon other than God, and we forget the Lord. Because the source of my strength in life is that you like me more than God and his pleasure. Pace – the pace of life sometimes makes us forget God. God says verse 12, "When you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, that's when you're going to forget the Lord." And what's just being described here is normal life – normal things of life. We go about building our house. We go off to our job. We go to school. We study. We play some pickleball. We, you know, whatever we do, right? We're just busy, busy, busy, doing normal things. But it's those normal routines of life as we grow busy with them, sometimes there's little room for God, and we forget him.
Or how about pride? When you prosper, verse 14, your heart may be lifted up, and you will say, verse 17, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. It's my wisdom, my savvy investing, my degree, my hard work – all of that has got me where I am today. Oh really? And you will forget that it is the Lord who makes you multiply and prosper.
And then there's prosperity. Verse 13 – when your herds and flocks multiply. Hear the repetition in this verse: when your herds and flocks multiply, when your silver and gold multiplies, and all that you have multiplies – it's all growing and growing and growing and growing. Our portfolio is getting bigger and bigger, and we're getting more and more and more prosperous. That, as much as anything, will cause you to forget the Lord. John Calvin said, "Prosperity intoxicates almost all of us." We get drunk on prosperity. People of God, what does God want to teach us in the land of plenty? Well, in the wilderness, he wants to teach us humility. He wants to teach us dependence.
And I think it's in the land of plenty, he wants to teach us gratitude. Learn how to be grateful. Learn where the blessings have come from. Give thanks to God. Bless his name. Praise him. Verse 10 says it: when you eat and are full, you shall bless the Lord for the good land that he has given you. Friends, gratitude is front and central in what it means to be a Christian. Gratitude is not kind of a fringe virtue. Gratitude is not sort of a second tier, a characteristic that ought to be part of the Christian life, but it is front and center. It is fitting and the essential response of those who have been saved from their sins is that they are people of gratitude, people who overflow with thanksgiving. Because you see, when gratitude is missing, our view of God and our salvation is dim. When gratitude is missing in our life, we are not in line or in tune with the tremendous blessings God has given us in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we drift from God and from loving him as we ought.
Proof of this is in Romans 1. Romans 1 describes the darkness of the human heart, the depravity of mankind, of people who do not know God or live for God. And it says, “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.” If we were to say this morning that gratitude is front and center in the Christian life, what is the thing that is missing in the heart of somebody who doesn't honor, exalt, praise, worship, love, adore God? They are ungrateful. They don't see it, you see. They don't see that their life is to be a response of gratitude for all that God has, because God is missing from the picture. And so, why give thanks? It's just the opposite for us. If God is your God, and God has redeemed you, and God has saved you, what else can you do but live a life of gratitude? And it's not just for our salvation, but for blessing after blessing. All the things that Israel had in the Promised Land or all the things in the land of plenty that God has poured out upon us. What is he teaching us? What are we to remember? Lord, it's all come from your hand. Thank you.
One more lesson: God says through Moses to Israel – says to us this morning – remember, then, finally, the hand of God in your redemption. Again, there's a covenant context to this text. There's the giving of the law a second time. God's law is a covenant document. Here's what God has done for you: he has taken you out of the land of Egypt. Now, here's your response – here's how you go about living in service to him: you keep his commands. There's covenant blessing here in this text. Don't forget that the land that God was giving to Israel was a land that had been promised to Israel – had been sworn to their fathers, their forefathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Here is the land that will be yours, and God can remind his people of that. The whole reason for the land is God is faithfully – covenantally faithful to them. And his promises were being confirmed.
There are covenant curses. So that's what these last two verses in the chapter are about: if you forget the Lord your God and you go after other gods and you serve them and you worship them, you'll perish. Here come the curses of the covenant: do not obey, worship something else – you will die. But what I'd like you to see in this chapter is the covenant name. Ten times the name “Lord” is used, and nine of those 10 times, it is “the Lord your God.” Who is the Lord? Your God. Your God. Your God. God simply could have said, "Remember your God” or “Don't forget your God," but no: remember the Lord your God, don't forget the Lord your God – over and over and over again. Most of us know this already, but that name “Lord,” it's the covenant name of God: Yahweh. God's covenant name, his name of relationship, his name of steadfast love. Remember who he is. He is your God, the God that has saved you and redeemed you. The God who has entered covenant with us. The God who fulfills his covenant with us through his son, the Lord Jesus.
You see, when you have a relationship with God through Christ, everything changes, or at least it should. Everything ought to change about the way that you go about looking at life. If we keep our eyes on Christ, we'll be able to see our seasons in the wilderness differently. Because we have Christ, I know I have a father who loves me. He has not walked away from me in the trials. He is there. He's shaping me, molding me, through those trials. And as we keep our eyes fixed on Christ, we'll realize that every blessing that we've been given is ours, from our Father through Christ. All the blessings that you experience today: yours through Christ. And as we set our hearts on Jesus, there's no room for pride or self-dependence. All those things, they're antithetical to the gospel, right? God opposes the proud who think they are self-made, but he gives grace to the humble.
All this is true for us in Christ, because Jesus prevailed where Israel and we fail. We forget God. He never did. Even when he, himself, was in the wilderness, tempted by Satan to turn stones to bread, when tempted to rely on himself, to rely on his own power instead of the Father – no, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And he took the threats and curses of the covenant on himself, as he gladly went into the wilderness of the cross, rejected by men, forsaken by God, so that we might know his love and respond with joy in a life of obedience and service to him. And the result of all of this is that because of Christ, we can know that God will never forget us. We may forget God. We’ve got to be prompted to remember. But he will never, ever forget us.
Isaiah put it so beautifully: “Can a woman forget her nursing child? Even these may forget, but God says, ‘I will not forget you, for I've engraved you on the palms of my hands.’" And so, people of God, remember, as we're moving towards Thanksgiving, take some time to remember. Remember that God is at work in the wilderness for your good. Remember God's open hand, if you're living right now in the land of plenty. Remember he's given his son to save you. And then finally, remember that one day the wilderness will be over. We will not be between Egypt and the Promised Land any longer. But the Lord will say, "Enter. It's yours. Enter into the joy of your rest, into the ultimate land of plenty, where there are pleasures at his right hand forevermore.” Let's pray together.
Father, we are a forgetful people sometimes. We do pray, Lord, that you would give us grace through the help of your Holy Spirit and your word to remember – to remember how you've been at work in the wilderness of our life, in the trials, in the troubles, in the pain, in the problems, working for our good. Help us to remember you in the land of plenty, when our cup is overflowing, not to have a proud heart that raises itself up and says, "Look what my hands have gotten me." But help us to remember, Lord, that you're the giver of it all, so to bless your name. And then, Lord, let us remember that all of this is true – through it, Lord, to see that you've given us your one and only son – the covenant keeper for us – so that we might know you as our Savior and Lord and Father and God. We pray all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.