This sermon was preached at St. John's Lutheran, Karoonda (9am).
Intro:
Ever heard the quote “Why do we have two ears but only one mouth?
So that we would listen more than we talk”? Well you can do the
same thing with Little Red Riding Hood: “Grandma, what big teeth
you have.” “All the better to eat you with”. Well, Moses
gives us two questions with even better answers: Why do you have a
good harvest and a full belly? To bless the Lord (because v 10 says
“And
you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for
the good land he has given you.”). Why do you
have an empty belly? To trust in him (because v 16 says “[the
Lord] fed
you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that
he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end.”).
So Moses
is preparing the children of Israel to cross the Jordan River and
enter the Promised Land. He's preparing them that when they have a
good harvest there, God has a purpose for that. But he's also
reminding them of the hardships they experienced in the wilderness,
that God had a purpose for that too.
But that
purpose was never to forget him. Moses says, “Take
care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his
commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you
today, 12
lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and
live in them, . . . then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the
LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of slavery”. Moses says that the Lord
would give good harvests, but not so that the people would forget him
and turn to other gods.
A full
belly is actually a very common false god. It you have a full belly
then you say that there are no other needs in the whole world. So on
Harvest Thanksgiving, one thing that should be talked about is
hunger, because hunger shows you that there is more to life than the
good gift of the harvest.
When
Moses writes that the people are not to lift up their hearts, that's
because he's describing an act of faith. But it's not an act of
faith in God. It's an act of faith in yourself. Lifting up your
heart to yourself is to trust in yourself, anything you have or can
do, because it's the opposite of bowing before the Lord, for he is
your God and he is your maker.
Lifting
up your heart is to be full, but not just a full belly. To be so
full as to reject the gifts of God's Word, the forgiveness of sins,
and all the gifts and promises of the Lord is an especially nasty
idolatry. It is the lie that is the death of faith for the Church.
Lifting up your heart means not believing God's promises. And not
believing God's promises also breaks the first commandment. You may
say, “I haven't found any other gods”, but you have been too
sluggish to care one little bit about God's promises that are found
nowhere else than his Word!)
The purpose of a
full belly is to bless the Lord, as Moses said. And the purpose of
an empty belly is to trust in the Lord, as Moses also said. To bless
the Lord is to confess that he is the source of all blessing.
Sometimes you put in all the hard work and the harvest is good.
Sometimes your neighbor comes to you and says “I've just got too
many sheep. Please just take 50 of them off of my hands.” Maybe
that never happens, but sometimes things just fall in your lap that
you haven't worked for at all. Dr. Luther talked about this when he
said, “these [good things] are simply blessings
of God sometimes through our efforts, sometimes without our efforts,
but never from our efforts and always given out of His free mercy.”
See whether you worked for it or it fell in your lap, God gave it to
you equally in both scenarios. The vocation of farmer means a lot of
hard work, but it's only done in its fullness by bringing in the
harvest with rejoicing, by blessing the Lord. And it's funny how we
do this at the end of service, not just for food but for everything
when we say responsively, “Let us bless the Lord.” “Thanks be
to God.” There's a purpose to that. This ties us to the OT people
of God and makes Moses' words apply to us, for they are words of
thanks and trust in all of God's promises.
The purpose of an
empty belly is to trust in the Lord. This means that you do lift up
your heart, but you lift it up to the Lord, and not yourself. And
that's why we say it responsively before Holy Communion, “Lift up
your hearts.” “We lift them up unto the Lord.” Because of
texts like Deuteronomy 8, this part of the Communion liturgy is
something you just can't get rid of. It should be there every time.
Lifting up your
hearts to the Lord is an act of faith. It says that, just like for
the children of Israel, even if there is nothing, God will make bread
come from heaven and water come from a rock. So the Christian says,
“Even if I starve, I have received some water that is a miracle
(Holy Baptism), and bread from heaven (the Lord's Supper).”
That's because
after the sermon and before the Lord's Supper you should be hungry.
You should hunger and thirst for righteousness – the forgiveness of
sins generously given through bread and wine. To trust in God is to
trust in him whether full or hungry. Dr. Luther said about the
children of Israel, “In abundance they are to
recall how once in the midst of want they were nourished by the Word
with manna; they are to ponder this example and teaching again, and
learn to trust in God for some other reason than that they have
enough, are satisfied, and their belly is well provided for. Trust
based on that is not a trust in God but rather in wealth and gifts
which have been received. Because of such trust they forget both true
trust and the Word of God, and never learn to have faith in God when
they are in want. As I have said,
it is a great thing and the work of
a rich spirit not to forget God when affairs prosper, and to conduct
yourself, with Paul, as if you had nothing, to use the world as if
you did not use it (1 Cor. 7:30–31), to know how to endure want and
to abound, to know how to be low and to be high (Phil. 4:12), and,
with the prophet, not to attach the heart to wealth when it abounds,
and not to become vain (Ps. 62:10) but to cling to God alone.”
This applies also
to the whole Christian Church – that you would not act as if you had
nothing when you have something (when you have the Word and promises
of God), and that you would not act as if you had something when you
have nothing (that you would not forget the Gospel of Christ
crucified for you, for you don't trust in God because you have enough
money to keep the doors open but because the Lord has spoken by his
Word).
Transition:
For remember your great need. You have forgotten God (for you have
sinned)! And your eyes have been lifted up (and away from his
promises)! Moses says it best, “Beware
lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have
gotten me this wealth.' ”.
But,
The God
who gives you the harvest (or not) is the God who gave his Son to die
on the cross for you (not a maybe – for sure!). The harvest exists
to point to God's covenant, “x”. God's covenant is all of his
promises, and all of his promises are in Christ Jesus. The blessing
of the produce of the land is given so that you may see that God
confirms his covenant (given to Adam and all the patriarchs) –
which is Christ crucified for you. So that when you look at the
cross of Christ, you see all of his promises for you: “though your
sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” “As far
as the east is from the west, so far does he remove your
transgressions from you.”
God
hasn't forgotten you. God is and promises to be your God (he's a
better God than your belly). For Jesus to die on the cross is for
him to say that you have done nothing good but he will do your good
and everyone else's so that he might give you all good things and the
good thing: forgiveness of all your sins.
Christ
has raised you from the dead in holy Baptism. Christ fulfills his
covenant by justifying you by the means through which the Holy Spirit
works. You have been sluggish with the Word but God keeps speaking
his promises.
Conclusion:
The
harvest may be good or bad, but we give thanks that the cross of
Christ is good.
Most of the time at Harvest Thanksgiving we don't talk about bad
harvests because we don't want to think that they could happen. But
God's Word through Moses is not to forget him in good or bad for he
won't forget you, for the cross of Christ is where you can trust in
all his promises and bless him for all his good gifts: the
forgiveness of all your sins. Amen.
