Deuteronomy 8:11-14

We will go through a few more areas where God employs the phrase, “house of bondage,” as a warning against being enslaved again. The next one is in Deuteronomy 8:

There is a similar passage in Deuteronomy 6:10-12, which also warns against forgetting God as one’s life improves on a material level, and thus, when there appears to be less of a need to depend on Him. When our physical needs are less pressing, it is easy to forget about the Supplier of our needs. It is easy to forget where we came from. It is not a coincidence that as the prosperity and standard of living in the Israelitish nations have increased that God has been increasingly forgotten, just as these passages warn.

Notice, though, that the warning is not that those who have been delivered would forget that God exists. That is not in view here. One’s worldview can retain God as the Creator and Savior, and yet He can still be forgotten in the way one conducts one’s life. We see this in verse 11 with the two-letter word “by.” We forget God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes.

Again, this is what we see in the Israelitish nations. Income, material goods, and comfort are increasing, and Jesus is named and claimed by cultural Christianity, but in practical fact He is forgotten because His commandments, judgments, and statutes are ignored. It is evident that the people do not fear Him and do not feel the tremendous gravity and awe of the great Creator. In everyday practice, He is forgotten. Remember, our God is not what we say we worship, but what we serve. Our God is that to which we give our life.

For the true God to be our God puts us under obligation to live His way. If we deviate from that way, then, as He defines it here, we have forgotten Him. And the awful irony is that people have said they feel “free” when they reject God’s law. They no longer feel constrained to live His way. But what that means is that He really isn’t their God. If His instructions feel like a burden, it indicates the heart is inclined to a different god.

Deuteronomy 8:10-14

On the world scene is the American system; its democratic republicanism, with a capitalist policy of business. You hold out hope of unlimited reward for hard work. The main fear being demotion, or financial loss. There is a great deal of incentive in this system, because it plays on human nature’s lusts. But it tends to produce wealth, while producing something else that is not very good.

God warns through Moses that uncontrolled materialism will erode away spiritual values by actually elevating the individual’s importance in his own eyes. From this we learn a lesson that is applicable to the family, too. Israel and Judah both fell during periods of great prosperity, but with little loyalty or allegiance to the One providing the prosperity—God. This loyalty erodes, because the system tends to promote a grasping, self-interest while at the same time producing a fearful resentment that one has not more, and the fear that one might not get more.

Deuteronomy 8:11-19

Now I think it is pretty easy to read this and just think, how could these idiots forget any of that? They literally were guided by a pillar of fire at night and a cloud of smoke by day and watched all of these miracles happen. But it is, of course, always easiest to have perspective on someone else's situation than it is on our own. And of course I think we often forget that as spiritual Israel, we are also very much susceptible to that Spiritual Alzheimer's in our own walks.