INTRODUCTION
• SLIDE #1
• I think all of us either have, are, or will deal with hardships in our life.
• When we are a Christian, these times can be confusing to us because we have the idea that belonging to Jesus somehow shields us from hardships in life.
• Either while you are in the midst of a time of hardship, or sometime after, have you ever wondered what God is trying to accomplish as a result of your hardship?
• I bet we all have wondered or are wondering that right now.
• Today as we continue examining God’s deliverance of the nation of Israel from the clutches of the Egyptians, we move back a few chapters in the book of Deuteronomy to chapter 8.
• Remember, Deuteronomy covers the month of history leading up to the Israelites forty-year wait to get into the Promised Land.
• Also, remember that the book of Deuteronomy is the history of three sermons that Moses delivered to the people just before his death and the nation's entry into the Promised Land.
• The context of today's message is that Deuteronomy 8 is amid the second sermon Moses conveyed to the people, “What God Expects of Israel.”
• In this part of the message, God touches on the issue of the hardships the nation dealt with during their wandering through the wilderness for forty years as a result of being denied entry because of their disobedience.
• What we will understand today is that God tests our hearts through hardships as well as through abundance.
• We live in a world that will test us, and God will use those times to help us to see how much we need Him as well as a couple of other things we will examine today.
• Today we will be in Deuteronomy 8:1-20.
• Let us begin today in verses 1-3
• SLIDE #2
• Deuteronomy 8:2 (CSB) — 2 Remember that the LORD your God led you on the entire journey these forty years in the wilderness so that he might humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.
• SLIDE #3
SERMON
Hardships are allowed in life to…
I. Humble our heart.
• As we have discussed, the Israelites faced a forty-year-long hardship of wandering around in the wilderness because of their lack of faith and disobedience toward God.
• God had been faithful to deliver the nation out of the grips of Egyptian slavery.
• God was providing for the Israelites and was protecting them, yet when it came time to possess the Promised Land, the nation refused to take possession of the land because they feared for their lives and wanted to return to a life of slavery in Egypt.
• Sometimes in life, our hardships are self-inflicted as was the case for the Israelites, and other times hardships tormented us through no fault of our own.
• In verse two, from which the bones of our message today is built, God said that He led the nation on the entire forty-year journey for three reasons, one of which was to humble the people.
• So, when we face hardships, God can use the hardships to humble us.
• One thing we need to understand concerning the thought of being humbled.
• The word Humble is not used in the sense of “humiliate” but means to make the people submissive and teachable, to get rid of their proud sense of self-sufficiency as they endure all sorts of hardships.
• Hardships can re-center our focus on God.
• God was seeking to help the people understand that He was with them and that they could trust Him.
• Look at verses 3-4
• SLIDE #4
• Deuteronomy 8:3–4 (CSB) — 3 He humbled you by letting you go hungry; then he gave you manna to eat, which you and your fathers had not known, so that you might learn that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. 4 Your clothing did not wear out, and your feet did not swell these forty years.
• He did this by allowing them to hunger and then to be fed by the miraculous supply of manna (Exod 16:1–30; Num 11:4–9), an act so clearly supernatural that the people had to recognize that it was all of God and not of themselves (v. 3; cf. Exod 16:32). Merrill, E. H. (1994). Deuteronomy (Vol. 4, pp. 185–186). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
• When God is trying to humble us, He tries to do so for our benefit. It is not about forced submission, He could do that, it is about wanting what is best for you.
• Look at verse 16 with me.
• SLIDE #5
• Deuteronomy 8:16 (CSB) — 16 He fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers had not known, in order to humble and test you, so that in the end he might cause you to prosper.
• Notice that Moses tells the people once again that God wants His people to prosper, God wants to cause them to prosper!
• We have stories in the New Testament that reflect the same issue of being humble before God and giving God the glory for His blessings upon you. Luke 12:16-21.
• One thing that hurts us is when we are so stuffed with pride, that we forget who provides for us.
• When we are full of pride and self-sufficiency, we will never be submissive to God’s Will nor will be teachable.
• There are times, such as what happened to the nation of Israel, that God brings on a hardship to wake us up, there are other times when hardships blindside us out of nowhere and in either case, God wants us to humble ourselves and turn to Him, to lean on Him, to have faith in Him.
• Let’s turn back to verse 2 again.
• SLIDE #6
• Deuteronomy 8:2 (CSB) — 2 Remember that the LORD your God led you on the entire journey these forty years in the wilderness so that he might humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.
• SLIDE #7
Hardships are allowed in life to…
II. Test our character.
• In verse two, we see a second thing that God seeks to accomplish through our hardships, He is testing us, or testing our character.
• God wanted the people to see what they were made of.
• The people endured trying experiences because God wanted to learn their motives and their loyalty to him.
• “Test” here does not mean “tempt.” It means to see what one is made of.
• When the chips are down, what will you do, where will you go, who will you turn to?
• God led the Israelites through their long and arduous desert journey to humble and test his people.
• He wanted to see what was really in their hearts and if they would remain faithful to him when it was difficult (v. 2).
• When we go through difficult or pressing times, we are being tested or squeezed, emotionally, relationally, financially, even physically. And when we are squeezed, what’s deep inside comes out.
• In suffering or pressure, if we trust God, trust, praise, and peace will be what comes out.
• If we don’t trust God or if we have points of weakness in our trust for God, complaining, whining, and hopelessness will come out.
• In sports, we see this a bit when it comes playoff time, some players who are otherwise good players fold under the pressure while others who may not be so talented excel in the spotlight.
• When the hardships of life put the squeeze on us, we will see what comes out.
• Look at verses 5-6.
• SLIDE #8
• Deuteronomy 8:5–6 (CSB) — 5 Keep in mind that the LORD your God has been disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. 6 So keep the commands of the LORD your God by walking in his ways and fearing him.
• Verse six transitions to the next section by picking up themes from verse one. If Israel were to pass the testing, she must exhibit covenant loyalty by obedience. This would enable her to walk in God’s way.
• We pass the test when we stay faithful to God, even when it does not seem logical to do so.
• Remember Job? He lost everything, yet he stayed faithful, and God rewarded him richly for that faithfulness.
• Let’s look at verse 2 one more time.
• SLIDE #9
• Deuteronomy 8:2 (CSB) — 2 Remember that the LORD your God led you on the entire journey these forty years in the wilderness so that he might humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.
• SLIDE #10
Hardships are allowed in life to…
III. Know what is in our heart.
• The third objective we see in verse 2 is to know what is in our heart.
• To know what was in your heart: the purpose of the hardships was to reveal their disposition and will, especially to find out whether or not they would obey God’s commandments (see 4:2).
• Hardships will reveal what is in our heart.
• Our heart will reveal itself in a couple of ways, the first one is the issue of obedience learned from discipline.
• It is difficult to overemphasize the importance Moses puts on obedience in Deuteronomy.
• It was obedience to the covenant law that demonstrated Israel’s love for God, her fear of God, her loyalty to the covenant, and her wholehearted devotion to God.
• Obedience would remind Israel of God’s grace, love, and faithfulness. It would also protect her against apostasy (the real impact of “forgetting”; see on 4:9 and cf. 4:23, 31; 6:12; 9:7) Hall, G. H. (2000). Deuteronomy (p. 169). Joplin, MO: College Press Pub. Co.
• God also wanted to use the time in the desert to teach and to discipline his people (v. 5).
• Discipline isn’t necessarily equivalent to punishment; instead, the biblical concept of discipline can be understood as training, like an athlete who disciplines his body through practice and repetition.
• Jesus took all of our punishment (God’s judgment on our sin) in his own body on the cross.
• Yet we still have to learn and be trained, just as Jesus did. Even Jesus learned obedience by what he suffered (Hebrews 5:8).
• Therefore, we are to endure hardship as discipline, trusting God’s heart as a good and perfect Father (see Hebrews 12:7–11).
• Our discipline will help us to be obedient.
• Verse 5 speaks of the fact that God disciplines as one would a son, and the result of that is for us to want to obey God as found in verse 6.
• The other issue that reveal our heart is, will we forget God when things get better? How will we respond when God blesses us?
• Look at verse 11
• SLIDE #11
• Deuteronomy 8:11 (CSB) — 11 “Be careful that you don’t forget the LORD your God by failing to keep his commands, ordinances, and statutes that I am giving you today.
• How we deal with prosperity will reveal a great deal about our heart and our humility.
• Moses knows that the transition from the desert to the bountiful promised land is going to happen soon (vv. 6–14), and he is warning God’s people not to become spiritually apathetic when they are out of the desert and in a more comfortable place.
• Similarly, when we are desperate for God's presence in seasons of hardship, we may be more likely to engage faithfully with Bible study to seek God wholeheartedly out of a sense of survival.
• But when things become more comfortable, we also have a tendency to abandon spiritual disciplines, such as seeking the Lord through prayer and fasting.
• We need to heed this warning and make sure we remember what God has done so that we can remain faithful and hungry for him even when we are walking in abundance.
CONCLUSION
• It is not fun when we get hit with hardships, especially when we are blindsided by one.
• We know that Romans 8:28 tells us that all things work for good to those who are in Christ, so when hardships beleaguer us, we need to know that at a minimum that God is looking for humility, also to test our character and to see where our heart is concerning Him.
• We must seek God wholeheartedly in good times and bad.
• God is with us in both, we just have to trust Him enough to know He keeps His Word to us when we are in Christ!
