After the Wilderness | Deuteronomy 8:10-14

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

As you’ve heard a couple times already my name’s Jessica Rust. I’m one of the pastors here at Cell Fellowship, and over the last few weeks, we’ve been exploring in this series, what do we do with those wilderness seasons of life? Those seasons where God maybe seems distant or silent, seasons of struggle or questioning or lack.

We’ve asked questions like, what’s the role of lament in the wilderness? How do I trust in the wilderness? Is the wilderness in and of itself just God’s punishment or judgment in my life? And today, we get to finish the series by talking about what do we do when the wilderness ends? Let’s see. We’ll see what the other stuff is when I turn on my slide clicker.

There we go. How do we take the lessons of the wilderness with us when we leave the wilderness? And to be honest, when Aaron asked me a few weeks ago or months ago, “Can you preach this particular sermon?” I thought it was a great idea ’cause I can preach and go on vacation, and that is really great timing for me.

So I said yes enthusiastically. But then as I started doing more preparation, I had one of the most uncomfortable realizations I think you can have as a preacher. I realized I don’t think I know how to preach this sermon. I understood the topic perfectly fine and what I was supposed to be talking about, but I realized that I wasn’t sure I knew how to leave the wilderness anymore.

My family’s been through a pretty long wilderness season, about 2020 to 2025, somewhere in there, we’ve been walking through the wilderness. That just never seemed to end and just got worse and worse as time went on. And as much as I wanted the wilderness season to be over for the whole time, at some point, I also got acclimated to the wilderness.

At some point, I pitched a little tent next to a sad tree in my soul and- … just started to believe that this was just always how life was going to be. So if I don’t know how to leave the wilderness, how am I supposed to talk to you about leaving the wilderness, right? So I prayed a desperate preacher prayer of, “God, I really need you to show me how to get out of the wilderness before July 5th.”

We’ll see if He answered that prayer by the time the sermon’s over. But as I kept preparing to preach, I came to think that maybe my struggle wasn’t so different from the struggle of the people in our text today. Maybe I wasn’t the only one a little unsure of what life outside of the wilderness might look like.

So before we get to those people in that text today, let’s take a moment to pray. Father God You see us in and out of the wilderness

You know the preparation that we need

You know what we need to hear today. Prepare our hearts to hear you. In your name we pray, amen There are many stories of wilderness experiences in the Bible. Jesus spends time in the wilderness. John the Baptist lives in the wilderness. Elijah meets with God in the wilderness. But probably one of the most famous stories of wilderness experiences is the Israelites wandering through the wilderness for forty years.

The story that takes up so much of Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. We see God take this people that He’s already called to be His people out of slavery in Egypt and bring them out of captivity. We see them take a long way round through the wilderness because God knows that they’re not quite ready to enter that new season that He has for them yet.

They need a little more time of training and growth and understanding what freedom and Him might look like. We see God’s presence with them, with a pillar of fire by night and cloud by day, not just to show them where to go next, but to remind them that He is with them. We see the provision of manna and water and quail, like Aaron talked about a couple weeks ago.

And we see struggle and rebellion that ultimately extends the wandering to forty years. We see a whole generation pass away in the wilderness. And it’s at this point, when their wilderness experience is almost over, but not quite, that we get to our passage for today in Deuteronomy eight. And the whole book of Deuteronomy is essentially Moses’ leadership farewell speech to the people of Israel.

He knows at this point he’s not going with them into the Promised Land. He knows that they’re going on without him, but he wants to do everything he can as their leader for so long to set them up for success, to prepare them well when they enter that land. So throughout the book of Deuteronomy, he unpacks this choice that he foresees is going to be before them as a people when they get into the land.

This choice between life and death. He sets it up at the very end of the book in Deuteronomy thirty. “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.

For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Because Moses knows that just getting out of the wilderness, just making it from one season to another, doesn’t guarantee life to the full. He knows that getting out of the wilderness is going to bring its own challenges.

So with that, if you’re able, let’s stand for the reading of God’s Word in Deuteronomy 8

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 the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. 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.

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. Your clothes did not wear out, and your feet did not swell during these forty years.

Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in obedience to him and revering him. 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, a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil, and honey, 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.

When you’ve eaten and you’re satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he’s given you. 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. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all that you have is multiplied, 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.

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. 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.

You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 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. 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.

Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. So over and over again, as Moses encourages and prepares the people of Israel to leave the wilderness and enter the promised land, he tells them, “Remember.”

This command theme of re-remembering shows up five times throughout this passage, either the positive form of the command, remembers, zakar, keep in your mind, or don’t forget shakhach, put out of your mind. It shows up in verse two, “Remember, keep in your mind, how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years.”

Verse 11, “Be careful that you do not forget, that you do not put the Lord your God out of your mind.” Verse 14, “Then your heart will become proud, and you will put the Lord your God out of your mind. You will forget the Lord your God.” Verse 18, “Remember the Lord your God. Keep God in mind.” And verse 19, “If you ever forget the Lord your God, if you ever put God out of your mind and follow other gods, you will surely be destroyed.”

In Deuteronomy 8, remembering is the practice that will keep the Israelites grounded as they leave the wilderness, both in the m- literal sense while they cross over the Jordan River into a new geographical location, and in the metaphorical sense as they leave the season of wandering and survival and enter a season of settledness and stability.

So why not obedience though? Because we hear remember over and over, but we also heard the command to obey over and over. So why isn’t obedience the central point of what M- Moses wants them to do in the new land? And really, in this context of Deuteronomy, obedience and remembering are intertwined, like strands in a rope.

They both matter, but remembering is the foundation, and obedience follows. When I was growing up I would read this series of books called Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. And like an American Mary Poppins, she would show up and help bewildered parents teach their children life skills like keep your room clean, have table manners, don’t lie to pretend you’re, that you’re sick so you don’t have to go to school, stuff like that, with a little bit of magic and some unorthodox methods.

And the details that stuck with me about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, besides the rhyming name, was her upside-down house. This is the best picture I could find of it. Apparently, they’ve updated the series since I was eight. And this is such a fun detail for a magical children’s character to live in an upside-down house, right?

But in reality, to actually live in a house like that would be a problem. It wouldn’t feel super sustainable to have your foundation up above you while your house is balancing on the apex of the roof, right? It would be very hard to live in a sustainable way if that was your setup. You need the foundation.

You need the whole rest of the structure, but you need the foundation to be in the right place in order to live comfortably and sustainably in this home. And in the context of Deuteronomy eight, remembering is the foundation. Obedience is the rest of the structure. It matters, it’s important, and we’ll keep talking about it later, but it flows out of, it builds off of, the remembering that Moses is commanding his people to do.

So what is it that the Israelites need to remember? What do they need to keep in their minds as they move into this next season, and what do we need to keep in our minds? What do we need to remember? I think that’s actually another upside-down house question. What matters? It matters in the passage. It matters to Moses.

It matters to Israel. It will matter to us. But what isn’t the foundation. Who is the foundation? The what God has will follow And there’s one more thing that we need to keep in mind as we go back to this passage. When we talk about remembering, keeping in your mind, we need to make a cultural mindset shift from our mostly Western American context to a Hebrew cultural context and cultural mindset.

When we think remember, our initial assumption is something along the lines of mental recall. Think about God for a little bit if you’re gonna remember God In the Hebrew mindset, and in Deuteronomy especially, the remembering that Moses is talking about here isn’t bring God to mind once in a while, recall Him like the contents of a flashcard.

It’s more of a consistent, everyday, long-term remembering and keeping with you that’s a little more closely symbolized by a wedding ring. The point of a wedding ring is to have this constant reminder with you every day in every situation that you’re wearing it of what you vowed and promised when you got married, and in a sense, you carry the person with you that you made those vows to.

It’s like this constant drumbeat of remember what you promised, remember what you promised, remember who you promised to when you’re wearing your wedding ring. And Moses’ encouragement to remember to the people of Israel is along those same lines. Remember what you promised. Remember what you promised.

Remember in every day and every way who you promised to. He’s already unpacked this throughout Deuteronomy before we get to Deuteronomy eight, and one of the most famous examples this, of this is in Deuteronomy six in a passage called the Shema. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

These commandments that I give to you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

This is what Moses means when he says remember. In every day, in every aspect of your lives, keep God in your mind, pursue God and walk with Him, not just in a mental assent kind of way, but in this relational way that consumes your whole life So who is this God then that Moses wants the Israelites to remember in Deuteronomy 8 and beyond?

If the who is the foundation, if God is the foundation, what is His character? Let’s go back to Deuteronomy 8, and as we go through it again, let’s listen for the kind of God that Moses wants the Israelites to remember. Listen for who this God is that Moses is talking about.

Be careful to follow every command I’m giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these 40 years to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commands.

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. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these 40 years.

Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. Keep in your minds that the Lord your God is a present God. He didn’t leave you to wander in the wilderness or to just waste away in slavery for years. He went with you. Keep in mind that the Lord your God is a God who sees.

He saw your hunger. He saw your thirst. He provided what you needed day after day to keep going the whole time. Keep in mind that the Lord your God is a God who teaches and trains you, like we talked about a couple weeks ago in Hebrews 12. Not like an angry parent, but like a loving parent who knows what you need and knows what’s best for you Verse six.

Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in obedience to him and revering him. 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. A land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil, and honey.

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 Keep in mind that the Lord your God is a faithful God. He fulfills the promises that He’s made. He is able to be relied on, and He is trustworthy

Verse 10. When you’ve eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land He’s given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe His commands, His laws, and decrees that I’m giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud, and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt and out of the land of slavery.

Keep in mind that the Lord your God has already shown you how to live. He’s already told you what it looks like to love your neighbor, to worship Him alone. He’s not expecting you to just figure it out on your own. He’s shown you His heart Verse 13. He led you– or 15. Oh I guess we’re skipping a couple chap- or verses.

“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. 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.

You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.'” 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. 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.

Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God. Keep in mind that the Lord your God has given you this land. He will fulfill His promise, not because you deserved it or earned it, but because He is faithful and gracious. And keep in mind that the Lord is your God.

The gift that He’s giving you isn’t simply the land in and of itself. It’s not the settledness and stability that you hope to find there. It’s not anything else that might be waiting for you. The gift is God’s presence with His people. Keep in mind that He will go with you, and that He is offering you life in every season if you will keep walking with Him So in light of who God is and the primacy of God’s character, what else does Moses encourage the Israelites to remember, to keep in their minds as they prepare to leave the wilderness?

This is where the obedience piece comes in. This is where the what follows the who God has asked something of his people. He’s not just there to help them get out of the wilderness and then go on their way and enjoy their life. He does have a way for them to live He does expect obedience then, but obedience rooted in this knowledge, relational knowledge of who He is.

And the obedience then reinforces the understanding of who He is in the daily remembering and living and walking with Him.

And this is Moses’s encouragement To remember God, to keep God in your mind day in, day out, regardless of where He has you, regardless of your season, is to embrace life that only God can give. To put Him out of your mind, to turn to self-sufficiency, to worship other gods, to place what is around you above the place where God belongs, is ultimately to turn the Promised Land into another wilderness, and ultimately to choose death as a people So that’s the story of the Israelites.

Moses tells them to remember. Remember not just what to do in relationship to God, but who God is, keeping the who as the foundation of their lives in this constant way as they walk into the promised land. But what does that actually mean for us who aren’t making a literal road trip out of a desert?

What about those of us who are still in those wilderness seasons of our lives, and remembering seems like a burden on top of just trying to survive? What about those of us who are out of the wilderness season and in a more settled promised place? I think actually the answer is the same in both seasons.

Whether we’re struggling in the wilderness season or enjoying a settled season that feels like promise and refreshment, or somewhere in between The call in every season is to remember, to keep God in our minds. To remember that He walks with us in the wilderness, even when He seems silent, because He is a God of presence and grace and love, a God who sees.

To remember that He doesn’t abandon us to just deal with more settled, prosperous seasons on our own. He’s not a God who’s only found in the wilderness. He’s a God of every season, and we always have the invitation to walk with Him, if we’ll accept it. The details might look a little different in and out of the wilderness.

Your circumstances will probably be different in and out of the wilderness. Your need is probably more obvious to you in the wilderness But in every season, we’re called to remember who we’re seeking and to accept His invitation to walk with Him, and the what will follow So did you really get yourself to church on a holiday weekend just to hear the preacher say, “Keep pursuing Jesus at every season”?

Yes, you did. Yeah. And doesn’t that sometimes feel like a little bit of a cop-out answer? Because isn’t life harder than that? And aren’t we supposed to do something with that? Life’s not that simple, right? And just keep following Jesus can appear like a simple answer

But here’s the thing It’s good to want a what to do. It’s good to want to know the lesson of the wilderness. It matters. It’s part of the structure of our house, metaphorically that’s our life with God, right? But I think that the lesson in and of itself is not the point of the wilderness. All of the what’s and the practices that are good and meaningful and important, and that we should do and will reinforce this memory of who it is that we follow.

All the prayer, all the scripture reading, all the showing up in community even when you really don’t want to be around other people. All of the meeting with a counselor or parenting practices or whatever it is that you wanna throw in there. Those are good and beautiful things, and yes, keep doing them.

But they are not the point of life with God. All of the what’s won’t actually bring that life to the full that we might be looking for when we’re looking for those perfect things to do. The what’s won’t get us out of the wilderness by themselves And sometimes focusing on the what

is actually easier and more simple than looking at the who that’s behind them Butts are controllable Looking at who? Looking at the living God risks relationship. It risks having to believe and trust that God sees you and knows your circumstances, and isn’t answering the way that you want him to or thought he would be It risks your future.

It risks your hopes

But it’s that full life transformation that we are invited to day in and day out That is our lifelong call if we’re gonna follow Jesus. The lesson is not the point of the wilderness. God and the invitation that He has for you to do life with Him and be transformed into that person in His way, in His heart He desires you to be, is in the end, the point of the wilderness.

All of the what’s, thanks Allison, all the what’s aren’t the point of life with God. God is the point of life with God. All of the practices aren’t gonna bring you the life of stability and promise that you are seeking. God alone is the one who can give that life to the full

When I prayed that desperate preacher prayer that I talked about at the beginning of the sermon, my prayer was, “God, I need you to show me how to come out of the wilderness before July 5th.” What I meant when I prayed that prayer was, “God, I don’t get this lesson yet, and I need you to teach me the lesson so I can get it right and take it into the next season with me and do that season right.”

Whatever it was you were trying to teach me in those years of illness and depletion and disappointment and silence and chronic illness and chronic injury and depression and anxiety and all the other things that happened, God, I don’t get what you were doing and what it was for, so I need you to tell me so I can then go tell other people with this nice narrative arc of how God showed up in my life and have something to say in a sermon And I don’t really have that lesson yet.

He’s putting it together. It’ll come. The what to do with that whole season will come. But I am learning That it’s not just about the what we’re supposed to remember. It’s about remembering who was there all along, taking his hand, and walking with him into the next season And I think that’s the invitation that he has for you too, if you’ll accept it We’re gonna close our service today, fittingly enough, with a practice of remembering.

We’re gonna close our service with communion, where we remember Not just what it is that we do once a month at church, but who this God is behind the practice. Who this God is that we follow and worship here. This God who created the worlds beautiful and good, meant to follow His way and His heart forever.

This God that we rejected. We rejected His faithfulness, His goodness, His character. This God who did not leave us and abandon us there in this wilderness of our own making, but who made a way through His life, death, and resurrection to restore that relationship

As you come forward today and take the elements, there’s tables at the front, tables at the back

Don’t just let this practice be a what? Take time to sit with a God who sees you and who loves you. Take time to reflect and remember today. When you take your elements whenever you’re ready, you can eat the bread at any time, but we’ll take the cup together.