Forgetfulness
“Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God…. you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth.” — Deuteronomy 8:11-14,17-18
Feed me with the food that is my portion,
That I not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the LORD?”
— Proverbs 30:7-9
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
— Matthew 6:24
Reflection:
The enemy of man is not what you think. It is not primarily the devil. It is God’s over-flowing bounty of goodness! Remember Adam. God placed him in a paradise of pleasure.
He took one of Adam’s ribs and produced “fire woman” who lite Adam’s altar. Adam was giddy like a schoolboy after receiving this “hot” woman from God! And then what happened? Adam blamed God’s over-flowing bounty of goodness for his sin!
“The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.”
— Genesis 3:12
In other words, Adam is saying “the greatest good and pleasure you have ever given me — “fire woman” - is responsible for my sin against you.”
We see this over and over and over again in the Scriptures. Prosperity breeds indifference to the God - who gives it without measure - and instead of turning outward to God in thanksgiving, we turn inward on ourselves, saying “My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth”, and voila, we’re back to square one once again - Babel, Egypt, Sodom, Rome and first century Jerusalem!
“Lot lifted up his eyes and saw all the valley of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere—this was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah—like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt as you go to Zoar.”
— Genesis 13:10
Egypt and Sodom were like the Garden of Eden - which was “well-watered” by a spring and a river - producing a paradise of prosperity and delights. And it was in this prosperous environment that the first humans rebelled against God, and produced the “iron furnace” of Egypt and the “exceeding wickedness” of Sodom and Gomorrah, and It is this same environment that has produced the abominations of modern America. Just look at what the Lord’s prosperity and blessing can do!
God is good all the time.
All the time God is good!
“He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
— Matthew 5:45
If you think I’m pulling a rabbit out of my hermeneutical hat, check out this description of Sodom before the Lord had to do His “strange work” and destroy her.
“Behold, this was the guilt of Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy.” - Ezekiel 16:49
We usually think that Sodom’s grave sin was sexual perversion. But that was only a symptom of a graver, more “exceeding wickedness” which was thankless prosperity causing “incurvation” on themselves. God gives so that we can share with others who are more in need.
“He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need.”
— Ephesians 4:28
If we work hard and are blessed by God with prosperity, it is for the purpose of sharing with others in need, not to expend it all on ourselves and our respective “bucket lists”.
It was this “incurvation” in Sodom that resulted in the sexual abominations that marked their depravity. (Ezekiel 16:49-50)
The Apostle Paul testifies to this in his magisterial letter to the Roman church when he writes:
“For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
— Romans 1:21
For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.”
— Romans 1:25-27
First there is God’s sheer goodness. Then there is indifference and a failure to stop and say “thank you”. This lack of good manners produces idolatries of every stripe. And when idolatry is fully matured, it produces sexual abominations, and all manner of assorted evils which follow:
“being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful.”
— Romans 1:29-31
Did you know that the first time the Lord God judicially declared something “evil” - as the supreme Judge who sits at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil - was with regard to the “intentions” of human beings? God evaluated and judged many things “Good” in creation: “the light was good”, “the land (which produced bread and wine bearing plants) was good”, “the sun and moon and stars (which act as clocks and govern the sky and life on earth) are good”, and of course, man and woman in paradise (stewarding all that God had made) was “very good”. But, after man forgot about God and His Word in the Garden of delights, the Scripture records God saying this:
“Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.…. and the LORD said to Himself, “the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth…., Now the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the LORD.”
— Genesis 6:5, 8:21, 13:13
This is the Bible’s hard pill for a proud, boasting humanity to swallow. We are born with evil intentions and thoughts. Even David recognized this about himself when he sang:
“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.”
— Psalm 51:5
We are all conceived as a “brood of snakes”, double tongued with twisted and ulterior motives. We make a pretense to seek goodness and truth, but that is our camouflage. And there is no greater camouflage for us to hide behind then the “forms of godliness”. This means that it is in the center of the Garden of prosperity that the snakes like to congregate, waiting to strike. It is no accident of prophecy that our Blessed Lord Jesus became “a snake on the pole” amidst the congregation of gathered snakes. God is so good and compassionate that He willingly entered the snake pit and got bitten and poisoned with our “venom”. When we see God’s sheer goodness and love against the backdrop of what we did to Him on that cross, then we begin to see just how bad we all really are. God exposes our charade by objectifying our sin in the public spectacle of the cross. And by exposing it in the broad daylight of His holiness, He then crushes it. This is our salvation. The King becomes the “snake” that gets crushed, and we become sons and daughters of God!
Remember, the king in the Bible who did the most evil in the sight of the Lord God was named “Manasseh” which translates as “forgetfulness”. We must NEVER forget or become indifferent to what God did for us on that cross when He became crushed for our sin so that we can become blessed and prosperous in His goodness.
Now, here is 50 million dollar question: Will this act of the sheer goodness of God and Gospel prosperity AGAIN produce thanklessness and a more exceeding and abundant evil in man on earth before He returns?