The Family Letter

I did this sitting on a small stool at the front of the church. I did not add anything else, and I took my place when finished.

You have heard it said, “Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.”

I want to tell you a story this morning of a land long ago and far away. It was a land that had been occupied by people for many years, a people who lived off the land. But a new people came to it’s shores one day, seeking to make it their own. Many of them were Christians, fleeing persecution or seeking a place where they could practice their Christianity freely.

When they arrived at this new land they were overjoyed, for it was an amazing land. It was fertile and life was wild and abundant. There was room for all, for not only their generation but for generations to come. They were able to plant crops and raise livestock. They were well fed and able to support their families.

They gave great thanks to God for guiding them there, and for giving them all they had.

Over the years the people continued to multiply and spread throughout the land. They continued to raise crops and livestock, and to have families. They lived quite richly and gave thanks to God for it all.

As time went on, the people filled the land completely, from north to sound and east to west. Indeed it became more and more crowded. They began to leave their simple ways, and to forgot more and more about God. The rich became richer at the expense of the poor. Before too long, only very few cared for the poor among them, and the poor became very poor indeed.

Very few remembered to give thanks to God any longer… After all, it was through their own toil that they gained wealth and food and health and happiness. What had God to do with all that?

After several centuries the land itself began to fail. It no longer provided in abundance. There was very little left that was wild. Their neighbors on the north and west envied their wealth and disliked their arrogant ways, and decided to invade. Long wars began, and many of the people died in those years.

Eventually the land itself failed, the land was invaded and destroyed. Even those who were once rich had nothing.

And the people looked to God and demanded to know why God had forsaken them.

Prophets rose up in those days, and were heard reading from the scriptures that their ancestors had brought to this land:

Moses said to all Israel: This entire commandment that I command you today you must diligently observe, so that you may live and increase, and go in and occupy the land that the LORD promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember the long way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

Therefore keep the commandments of the LORD your God, by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the LORD your God for the good land that he has given you.

Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." But 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. If 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. Like 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.

END