Today’s Daily Office comes from Deuteronomy chapter 8 verses 11 through 20:
11 Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. 12When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, 13and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, 14then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, 15who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid waste-land with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, 16and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. 17Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth.’ 18But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today. 19If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. 20Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.
Before the Israelites entered the Promised Land, God gave them instructions on how to live when they crossed the Jordan and came into their own. The gravest danger they faced was not the enemies of other nations. It was the temptation they would face in taking the resources of this new land, acquiring all its wealth, then totally forgetting that it was God who lead them out of Egypt. For then they would begin to think that they had delivered themselves, earned everything they had either by brawn or brains, and could therefore justify leaving their neighbors
Behind. Then they would begin to set up an economic system just like the one they left — one built on dog eating dog exploitation.
“Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth. But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.”
God instructs the Israelites to remember once they come into the Promised Land that they did not simply pull themselves up by their own bootstraps without help. They didn’t even have boots! God delivered them. They were slaves; and the LORD delivered them from Pharaoh in Egypt. And now they had a responsibility remember to make sure Pharaoh stayed in Egypt. For he should have no place in the Land of Promise.
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