Deuteronomy 8 – Study

For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each passage has a four-Part approach to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Ch.8 – 11   Maintaining a Right Perspective – Initially warnings against materialistic complacency and then self-righteous pride, followed by reminders why they have no room for that, and further  calls to obedience.

Passage: Deut 8:1-10

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 ancestors. 2 Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and 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 ancestors 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 obedience to him and revering him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land – a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; 8 a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig-trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; 9 a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills. 10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

A. Find Out:    

1. What 4 things are promised to follow obedience? v.1
2. What, in general terms, had the Lord done with them? v.2,5
3. How had he done that, specifically? v.3,4
4. What 3 things are they then instructed to do? v.6
5. What is the Lord going to give them? v.7-9
6. What are they to do when they have received all that? v.10

B. Think:

1. How are verses 2 to 4 supposed to encourage them?
2. How are verses 7 to 9 encouraging?
3. What is the point behind all this?

C. Comment:

      Moses is coming again and again to exhort and encourage Israel to keep the Lord’s commands. In fact, more than that, he exhorts them not only to keep God’s commands but learn His ‘ways’ (the ways God works with them, the things He expects, the responses He gives) and also to ‘revere’ Him (v.6). To revere means to honor, esteem, exalt. When they do this they will be responding correctly to God’s greatness and that will help them maintain right actions and keep out of trouble! Both revering and walking in His ways are expressions specifically of a right relationship with God, and that is all important. You can keep the rules (commands) but still have a bad attitude.

      To encourage them to work these three things through, Moses first (v.1) reminds them yet again that keeping God’s commands will a) allow them to live and not be judged and condemned, b) increase and prosper, c) enter into the land, and d) possess the land. Achieving these things is conditional on doing what God says! Next he reminds them of their past (v.2-4) and provided for them, even in the midst of a disciplining process. Finally (v.7-9) he details the goodness of the land they are going to take. All of these things should act as powerful motivators to help them follow the Lord in the way they enter, the way they take the land, and the way they live in it. If only!

D. Application:

1. The Lord is constantly seeking to encourage us in His ways.
2. If the Lord says, “Do this,” it is to bring blessing to us.

Passage: Deut 8:10-20

10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. 11 Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 15 He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. 17 You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ 18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

19 If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. 20 Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God.

A. Find Out:

1. What are they to do and not do? v.10,11
2. What does Moses anticipate happening? v.12,13
3. What does he then fear could happen? v.14
4. What does he remind them the Lord did? v.15,16
5. What does he fear they might say? v.17
6. What have they got to remember? v.18
7. What does he warn could happen? v.19,20

B. Think:

1. What is the temptation Moses is warning against?
2. What will be the truth?
3. How is verse 10 an antidote to that?

C. Comment:

     Moses has just been recounting (v.7-9) the goodness of the land into which they are going and, anticipating that they will follow God’s command, he further anticipates that they will prosper, and in that he sees a great temptation – of coming to a place of complacency where they assume that they are well off because they have worked hard and achieved it.

      No, says Moses, you must realize and continue to realize that any affluence you have is because of the Lord’s blessing. If they fall into that way of thinking they will cease to be grateful and their relationship with the Lord will falter, they will stop keeping his commands (v.11) and may even fall into idolatry (v.19), and if that happens then they will receive the wrath of the Lord and be destroyed like any other false-idol worshipping people.

       What is the remedy for this? It is first to remember all that the Lord has done for them. They are to remember the Exodus and they are to remember the way the Lord has kept them in the desert, providing for them there. The second thing is that they are to maintain a sense of praise for the Lord. When that diminishes in them, they will know that they are on a slippery slope to proud complacency!

D. Application:

1. Do we look at what we are and falsely assume it is because of our work, or do we recognize the goodness of the Lord?
2. Do we maintain a spirit of praise?