Deuteronomy 8:10-14 “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws, and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God…”

There are three potential problems with our prosperity that Moses either implies or directly identifies. The first is its negative effect on our prayer life. “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God,” he urges. Praise the Lord your God. That’s a kind of prayer. You might think it would flow naturally from our happy circumstances and prosperous condition.

But you know from experience that is not always, or even usually, the case. Be honest. When is your prayer life usually better, more regular, more fervent–when your life is purring along with no stress or worry, or when your world is caving in around you? Don’t you find yourself on your knees begging him for help in a crisis, but maybe going days without talking to him when all your needs are met? We are like the college kid who only calls home when he needs money. In our prosperity it is easy to forget to talk to God, and not talking is never good for a relationship.

Second, we get careless about keeping his commandments. Forgetting the Lord your God is practically the equivalent of “failing to observe his commands, his laws, and his decrees.” We have all known the spoiled rich kid who sees himself a little above the law. The rules are meant for lesser creatures who can’t buy their way out of trouble. He’s a common character in movies or literature. We see them on the news, too. A lawyer defended one spoiled rich kid by saying he suffered from “affluenza.” The uglier and darker truth is the way our own prosperity begins to erode the seriousness with which we take God’s law.

Third, all of this is symptomatic of the way prosperity can corrupt our hearts: “…then your hearts will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God.” Our proud hearts get the idea that we are naturally superior. Our wealth gives us the illusion we don’t need God. When prosperity makes us proud, our need for God is hard to see, and it is easy to forget the Lord your God.

We may be tempted to think, “At least I’m just a middle-class person. I probably don’t have to worry about this too much.” Take a moment with me for a brief reality check. Anyone who makes $34,000 a year is in the top one percent of income worldwide. Half of the people on the planet bring home less than $1300 a year. The poorest 5% of Americans earn, on average, the same as the richest 5% of people living in India.

This isn’t to say that our prosperity is immoral. But few of us can say that we haven’t tasted the prosperity Moses describes. Our food, our homes, our wealth, our possessions generally dwarf the experience of the richest Israelites 3000 years ago. The temptation to put all our focus on these things and forget God still haunts us today.

Though we may forget God, that doesn’t mean he has forgotten us. Prosperity itself is evidence of his loving attention. He is still providing for us, much more than we need.

Evidence of his love and attention appears even more clearly in the riches of his grace. Moses could speak to Israel’s prosperous future only because the Lord had rescued them from the slavery of their past. We anticipate an even more prosperous future in the abundance of heaven, because the Jesus has rescued us from the poverty of hell and the slavery of our sin. Praise the Lord for his goodness! Do not forget his greater gifts.