Title Remember God (Deuteronomy 8:11-18)
remember God
Deuteronomy 8:11-18, the twelfth (Thanksgiving) Sunday of Creation, November 20, 2011
wilderness and Canaan
Remember Jehovah
What does it mean to remember God? It means knowing who he is. Who is he? How does he rule the world? According to the writer of Deuteronomy, the Lord God is the One who gives us the power to live in the world (v. 8b). It is the source of life. You can't be proud if you actually know that. Going further, he does not absolutize all the possessions and achievements he has earned through hard work. We do not absolutize our wealth, our academic achievements, our arts, and our children. If there is another master, how can he be the master? Today is also Thanksgiving. It is a season to take seriously the fact that all food that comes out of the earth is a gift from God, and that he is the owner. Knowing that, you cannot think of monopolizing food.
Although I preach like this, it is not easy to think of God as the Lord and giver of life. We instinctively focus on ourselves. Self-focus, self-interest, and self-pity dominate our subconscious mind. You don't know how tenaciously it follows us. It's like a shadow. No matter how hard you try, you can't remove it. So Augustine saw the essence of sin as pride (hubris). It means that we cannot get rid of it by our efforts. At this point, our fate is in a dilemma. We can't go back and forth between our self-interested human nature and God's word to remember the Lord our God. Sometimes it seems that he has his heart completely devoted to God, and at other times he seems to focus only on himself. These two facts may overlap. It may come and go like a pendulum.
How to get out of this dilemma? You can't completely escape it until you die. We can escape only when we become completely new creatures, that is, when we change into a living being that is completely different from what we have now. It is possible in the end through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. We wait for that time. Along with us, all creation in the world awaits that time of salvation. We, who are still living in the era before the end, have no choice but to live with this dilemma. I don't mean to resign. It's about acknowledging reality. We must face the reality accurately and remember Jehovah our God in a constructive manner as we await the end of life. That's the best.
Remembering God in a structured way is acknowledging that the source of life is God, as I just mentioned. To put it more specifically, ‘memento mori’, that is, remembering death. This is an existential question and confession about where life came from and how that life is perfected. We know that Jesus Christ is the only one who overcame death. God did it. To remember this fact is to remember God. Through this memory, you will be spiritually humble no matter what your circumstances, and of course you will participate in the wonderful blessings of God. Amen.