Deuteronomy 8 | How Much Is Enough?

Hello everyone.

This is Pastor Benjamin.

You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando.

At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.

For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Would you pray this aloud with me?

Holy Spirit, make us hungry for your word, that it may satisfy us, lead us, and bring us life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

If you're able Amen.

If you're able to stand, please continue for the reading out of Deuteronomy.

And as you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what is in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Your clothing did not wear out on you, and your feet foot did not swell these forty years.

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the 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 in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper, and you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

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.

Lest when you have eaten and are full, and have built good homes and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply, your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart will 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.

Beware lest you say in your heart, My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.

You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers as it is this day.

This is God's word.

You may be seated.

The reason why that matters is because Americans often remember the 1950s as the golden age of middle class prosperity.

Now, caveat, not for everybody, not for all Americans.

This was before the civil rights movement.

Okay, so not everybody looks fondly on the 1950s, but there is this kind of American cultural nostalgia for that decade, which is strange because by almost every material measure, Americans are far more prosperous today than we were in the 1950s.

Let me just give you a few.

Okay?

Some of us feel the pinch in our grocery bills with inflation, but listen, 29% of the average household's budget in 1950 went to food versus 13% today.

So I tell you those, there's many more, but why is it that the 1950s seem like this era that Americans can often long for?

Morgan Hausel has a book called The Same as Ever, and he he answers it like this.

He says, There's no such thing as objective wealth.

Everything is relative, and it's usually relative to those around you.

He goes on, he says, How we answer the question, what does life owe me?

What should I expect?

It usually comes subconsciously or not, it usually comes from looking around us, seeing other people, and going, What do other people like me have?

Why don't I have that?

So the issue is the gap between 1950s and today is that we look around ourselves and we see everybody else seems to be doing better than us.

Social media does this to us.

And so we feel like we're doing worse today than they were there and then.

But by every metric that I've got here, we've we're doing far better.

So this actually raises a surprising question, which is how much is enough?

How much is enough?

It's a question I think is worth wrestling with.

And one of my favorite definitions of enough is this enough is what you have minus what you want.

Because what it does is it addresses that it the only problem is not found in what you have, it's actually found sometimes in what you want.

Your desires might be defunct.

That might actually be the problem with your feeling that you never have enough.

And so listen, Deuteronomy 8 is a chapter in the Bible where God is forming his people to be faithful when they have nothing and when they have everything.

And so I want to ask that question: how much is enough?

And I've got three points.

First, trust God when you don't have enough.

Thank God when you have more than enough.

Remember God when you think you're enough.

Look with me if you have a Bible or a device or the worship God, get Deuteronomy chapter 8 in front of you.

Deuteronomy 8 · chapter mention

And let's look at how we trust God when we don't have enough.

Look at verse 1.

Deuteronomy 8:1 says this the whole commandment that I command you today, you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers.

Deuteronomy 8:1

You see, God's intention for his people is that they will live and multiply, they will go in, they will possess.

But the question in this text is, can they handle the abundance of the promised land?

And so, before God brings Israel into the land, he leads them through the wilderness.

And we'll see why in verse two it says this and you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart.

Okay, we're getting a God's eye view on the 40 years in the wilderness.

From heaven's perspective, what was happening to Israel in the wilderness is they were being tested with the intent to humble them.

Now, we often hear about God testing people, and we think about it like college entrance exams.

We think about like the GRE or the SAT or something like that.

And we think that the way God tests is it's it's pass and you're accepted, fail and you're rejected.

But listen, God's tests are more formative than they are summative.

Can I get an amen for my educators in the room?

You know what I'm talking about.

So listen, there are two types of tests in scripture, though.

And they look like this.

One type we call a trial, the other type we call a temptation.

Same root word in Hebrew and in Greek.

God tests you, quote, to know what is in your heart.

Satan tempts you to draw your heart into evil.

God tests us to try us like gold in a furnace, Satan tempts us to trap us like a bird in a snare.

You see, even in Eden, God gave Adam a test.

Why?

Because without the test, Adam could be innocent, but he could not be good.

He could not be good.

And so Adam was tested with food, Israel's tested with food, the Lord Jesus will be tested with food, and that's what we see in verse 3.

It says this, and he humbled you and let you hunger.

And fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know that he might make you know.

Listen, hunger, counterintuitively, hunger may be God's provision.

He let you hunger.

We think that God teaches us by addition, but often God teaches us by subtraction.

Said differently, the desert disciples by taking away.

And the text here says that He let you hunger, because there's something that Israel could not learn, something they needed to know, but could not know any other way but through hunger.

Now, some of us are in a wilderness season right now, and you feel acutely, viscerally, you feel what's been what feels like it's been taken away.

You you're acutely aware of your lack or your loss right now.

And you've been asking the question, God, when will you give me what I want?

When will you give me what I need?

And and I just want to submit from this text, maybe the question should be, Lord, what do you want me to know?

What are you teaching by taking away right now?

In verse 3, it goes on, it says, That he might make you know.

Here's here's the lesson, that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

There is a knowledge of God that is impossible to know except through depending on God.

Said differently, there is a knowledge that can only be gained by experience that can't come through mere instruction.

And I think we actually have a good definition of secularism in our text here.

Secularism teaches that man lives by bread alone.

That's a good summary of what that means.

We live in a cultural moment.

We live and move and have our being in a world that says, I can explain my life without reference to God.

Somebody has called this a self-sufficing humanism.

That defines our cultural moment.

And so one pastor said it like this by his testing, God is proving to us that he is more real than we ever thought, and that by his grace we can become more real than we ever thought.

Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

So as we internalize the words of God, as we take them in, as we inwardly digest them, the promises of God begin to energize our life.

I want to I want to make that plain how that actually works.

Some of you in here deal with chronic anxiety.

And in there's a verse in Isaiah 26, verse 3.

Isaiah 26:3

Might write that down.

And here's a promise.

It says, You keep him, you keep her in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because they trust in you.

And so this is what that might look like.

Lord, I'm setting you before me right now.

I want you to be bigger in the windshield of my life than whatever anxiety is causing me to future trip about.

And you begin to pray into Isaiah 26, verse 3.

Isaiah 26:3

Or maybe you're like me and you find yourself with decisions that make you feel out of your depth often.

And you take up James chapter 1, verse 5.

James 1:5

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him.

I love that.

I don't know if you're like me, but I often feel this sense of I ought to know.

I ought to be able to figure this out.

And James tells us the Lord doesn't reproach you like you reproach you.

He's not ashamed of you because you don't know.

He's like, You're finite.

You are not omniscient.

I am.

Ask.

I give generously.

So we take up James 1 and we we pray that back to him.

So, Lord, I need more wisdom than I have right now.

I don't know how to go forward unless you lead me here.

But some of us maybe it's not decisions, it's actually discontent that's plaguing us right now.

Hebrews 13, verse 5, it says this, be content with what you have, for he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.

Hebrews 13:5

The principle beneath that text is if you're dissatisfied with what you have, recall to mind that the Lord has given him himself to you.

And if that's true, you have enough.

How much is enough though?

That's the question that we're wrestling with right here.

So, New City, what I would love is for us to be a living, breathing experiment that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

We can we can live like this as we metabolize the promises of God into everyday life.

Now, notice everyday life is important because sometimes we think this is grandiose and miraculous, and it is miraculous, but it actually shows up in the everydayness of everyday life.

Look at verse 4 with me.

Your clothing did not wear out on you.

How many of y'all are wearing things that are 40 years old right now?

Okay.

Their clothing did not wear out for 40 years, and your foot did not swell these 40 years.

Anybody ever gone on like a weekend hiking trip?

Day one, you like crush it.

Day two, you wake up with blisters.

Day three, you're like, I need a hell of a get me out of here.

40 years their feet did not swell.

I asked my uncle who fought in the Vietnam War, I was like, hey, tell me about the war.

What was it like?

He was like, one thing you had to do is change your socks every moment you could because wet socks meant no skin on your feet.

Listen, this is not a small thing, but pay attention to the Lord's attentiveness to the details.

He cares about the feet of slaves.

I set you free from Egypt.

I'm leading you in the wilderness, I'm gonna bring you into the promised land.

I care about the details, your clothing, your footwear.

How beautiful it is that the promises of God are for the mundane, the everydayness of life.

But often the temptation in the wilderness is to say, if God loved me, why would I be here right now?

But sometimes the the miracle of the wilderness isn't escape from the wilderness, it's it's simple provisions that enable you to endure, like food and clothing and footwear.

The text goes on in verse 5, it says, Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you.

Like a good father, God is initiating his sons and daughters into maturity.

And this is why this matters.

When we hear discipline, we often think punishment.

But in scripture, I want when you hear discipline, I want you to think training for reigning.

That's a summary of God's vocation for human beings.

In the beginning, he intended for us to be rulers over earth.

We squandered that calling, but he's trying to help us to reclaim that calling.

And the only way to enable us to become the kind of people he can entrust with his power to do what we want to do is if he disciplines us.

Now I didn't misspeak there.

He wants your wants, you to become the kind of person whose character or your wants begin to align with God's will.

And he can empower you to do what you want to do.

The only way to do that is by disciplining us.

In his book, The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter says this new research shows that depression, anxiety, and feeling like you don't belong can be linked to being untested.

To being untested.

God is a good father.

Verse 16 says that he might humble you and test you to do you good in the end.

Now we have got to enter in the father heart of God here for a moment because God knows that life east of Eden is hard.

And the temptation for parents, because you love your children and you don't want them to feel pain, is you shield and shelter them from the harsh realities of life east of Eden.

The problem with that is it's a good desire, but a bad strategy.

A better strategy is what's called progressive overload.

You give them daily doses of difficulty such that they begin to be strengthened over time because they have to face the real world as it is.

And if we don't do that, if we're not disciplining our children like the father disciplines his people, what ends up happening is you have a child that grows up, not knowing life is hard, and they spend all of their days chasing comfortability.

What a waste of a human life.

But listen, like a good father, God is initiating his sons and daughters into maturity.

What does that maturity look like?

Look at verse 6.

So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him.

The fear of the Lord is a very important concept in the whole Bible.

And one way you can define it as the fear of the Lord is to live all of life with a Godword orientation.

That's the fear of the Lord.

And that's actually how Moses writes this chapter.

If you look back over verses two through six, look who the subject of Israel's survival is.

God led you, God humbled you, God tested you, God fed you, God clothed you, God disciplined you.

You see, Israel's survival in the wilderness is a case study that God is faithful to his word.

One of my favorite case studies is a guy named George Mueller who built his life around that conviction.

Some of you know the story.

He cared for more than 10,000 orphans by prayer alone.

He raised millions of dollars without asking anyone except for God for money.

He never took out a loan, never went into debt, and had 68 years where he took no salary.

And yet neither he nor one orphan even ever went hungry.

In his journals, he's recorded over 10,000 answers to prayer.

And then this is what he says about all of that.

He says, I'm not a super Christian.

This is the normal Christian life.

He says it like this stand still in the hour of trial, and you will see the help of God if you trust in him.

But we so often forsake the ways of the Lord.

That's what verse 6 says, in the hour of trial.

And thus we forsake the food for faith.

The means whereby our faith may be increased is lost.

Did you catch that?

George Mueller said the food for faith is trusting God when you don't have enough.

But Moses knows that it's not just the test of poverty, it's also the test of plenty that we have to pass.

So look with me at the second point, which is we want to thank God when we have more than enough.

Look at verses 7 through 10.

In these verses, Moses uses the word land seven times.

That's the number for completion, fullness, abundance in the Bible.

And so let's just look at the lyrical list of abundance that God is going to give to his people in the land.

Look at verse 7.

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs flowing out in the valleys and the hills.

Remember where they've been.

Verse 15 says, The great and terrifying wilderness, thirsty ground where there was no water.

These people have spent 40 years in the desert.

Their tongues are parched.

And the Lord is saying, I'm going to give you a land with Gatorade flowing through the rivers.

It's going to be amazing.

It goes on in verse 8.

It says, A land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranate.

What is a pomegranate?

They'd had to ask that question.

Remember, they grew up 40 years in the wilderness.

This generation only knows the wilderness.

They probably have no idea what a pomegranate is.

But the Lord gives us far more than we could ever ask or imagine.

And he goes on, he says, A land of olive trees and honey and a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing.

How much is enough?

How about no scarcity?

How about enough to go around?

How about life without lack?

I just want you to rest in those words for a moment.

Pause.

Receive them.

You will lack nothing.

That's God's intent for his people in the land.

That's what he longs for for us.

But there's something interesting in the next verse.

At the end of that verse, it says, A land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper.

That's interesting.

God gives them the land, and yet they still have to dig.

You see, the land is not only naturally abundant, but it is culturally latent.

What do I mean by that?

There's a journalist named Ken Myers who says culture is what we make of the world.

And he means it in two senses.

You see, we take the world and we, the material things in the world, and we make things out of them like teapots and Teslas.

But we also take the world and we make meaning out of it, like poetry and paintings.

You see, God's provision does not eliminate human work, it makes human work possible.

And so we see here, Israel will plow and plant and mine and manufacture, but everything, even that which is man-made, is God given.

This is important because both nature and culture, raw materials and manufacturing come from God.

And now Moses ends this section in verse 10.

He says, And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land.

Here's the words He has given you.

Good land.

This is what he's given.

And so, what should all this fullness produce?

Verse 10 says, You shall bless the Lord your God.

Gratitude is meant to follow gift like thunder follows lightning.

This is the intent of God in his generosity towards us, is that we just simply receive it with open hands and say, Thank you.

Thank you for all that you've given.

Fullness is only completed in thankfulness.

G.K.

Chesterton has this great line.

He says, The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.

You see, some of us hear what Moses is talking about here, and we think, yeah, that's nice when they have no scarcity, but that's not my life right now.

Listen, I understand it.

In fact, I've been journaling around a question lately.

Here's the question: What is my irreducible minimum for joy?

What is my irreducible minimum for joy?

And sadly, my list is longer than I wish it was.

Comfort, full belly, nobody crossing my will, like those kind of things.

But I would love for that list to be shorter.

I'd love for enough to be enough.

Corey Tinboom has this amazing moment where she learned her irreducible minimum for joy in a Nazi concentration camp.

And she was in an isolated cell by herself, and she began to thank God for a little line of ants that marched through her cell that she believed God sent to give her company.

That's a pretty low irreducible minimum for joy.

I want to get there.

But you can begin here.

I have a breath.

Thank you, God.

I'm alive.

Thank you, God.

I receive what I did not create.

I have breath that I cannot manufacture.

I have grace that I could never earn.

I can bless the Lord in all of that.

And so we thank God when we have more than enough.

But Moses knows there's a danger here.

The same abundance that should produce thanksgiving can also foster forgetfulness.

Look with me at verse 11.

This is the third point.

Remember God when you think you're enough.

Verse 11 says, Take care lest you forget the Lord your God.

The word forget shows up three times in this chapter.

Verse 11, verse 14, verse 19, the word remember shows up two times.

This is a significant theme in Deuteronomy 8.

You got to understand though, forgetfulness is not mere amnesia.

It's not like Israel's gonna go from Yahweh to Yahoo.

Come on, I like that.

That was, I worked hard on that line and just like full sended it, and it was terrible.

I'm sorry.

To forget God in Scripture, to forget God is to explain your life without reference to Him.

Let me say that again.

To forget God is to explain your life without reference to Him.

That's why abundance is so dangerous.

You see, spiritual decline rarely begins with open rebellion, but rather with functional forgetfulness.

Who is God?

What has He done for me?

Look at verse 11.

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.

Lest when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied.

Remember, verse one said, This is what God wants for his people.

Go, live, multiply, possess the land.

I'm giving you good things.

He wants this for them, but there's a danger inherent to it.

You see, the wilderness had obvious dangers, snakes, thirst, hunger, scarcity.

The promised land has less obvious dangers like houses and herds, silver and gold, full bellies.

Scarcity threatens your body, but surplus threatens your soul, and Moses knows it.

Which is why it can be tempting to think, well, in the future, when I've got enough, that's when I'll be faithful.

And Moses is saying, No, no, no.

Actually, when you have enough, you're tempted to be forgetful.

And so, how is your fullness causing forgetfulness right now?

Like, what area of your life do you feel like I'm good?

I got enough.

And you've just kind of sat back and forgotten where it all comes from.

This looks like verse 14.

It says, Then your heart will be lifted up and you'll forget the Lord your God.

In Scripture, the heart of the problem is always a problem of the heart.

And the problem of the heart here is what's described as a heart that is lifted up.

It's a self-appraisal that has a sense of, I'm good.

I've got this.

I can handle things on my own.

This is where I get this phrase of remember God when you think you're enough.

And you look at the sequence in the text: full stomach, full house, full bank account, lifted heart, forgotten God.

That's the danger.

Verse 14, it says, 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.

It's been said that every civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

What are the obvious things for Israel?

Here's a good one.

How did we get here?

400 years in slavery, 40 years in the wilderness, now we're in this land of abundance.

How did we get here?

And they forget.

Because in their prosperity it conceals what the wilderness revealed, which is you were slaves, and God made you sons and then gave you everything you ever needed.

And yet you forget the Lord your God.

Verse 16, who 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.

Here's what the Lord wants.

Rather than a heart that is lifted up, a high heart, he wants a heart that is lowly.

There's somebody has said there's three reasons to be humble if you're a believer in Jesus.

Here they are.

You have a reason to be humble because you're a creature, you're a sinner, and you're a saint.

You're humbled as a creature because you're totally dependent.

You're humbled as a sinner because you're totally depraved, but you're humbled as a saint because you're totally delighted in.

This is what God uses hunger to teach his children.

He teaches them to be humble before him.

And then if you just ask an old saint in the room, you say, Hey, um, tell me about some of your wilderness seasons, they will tell you, you know, I wouldn't wish my wilderness seasons on anyone, but I also wouldn't trade them for anything.

Because it's the season where the Lord loved me enough to humble me and to teach me, I'm a creature, I'm a sinner, and I'm a saint that's beloved by God.

Goes on in verse 17, beware lest you say in your heart, that's self-talk in the Bible, lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.

Again, here's where I get this point.

Remember God when you think you're enough.

What story does your wealth tell you?

Now, if you're in this room, you are probably in the top percentage of wealthy people on planet earth now and forever in human history.

So, what story does your buffered self tell you?

About the world, about God, about you see, remember to forget God is to explain your life without reference to him.

And I want to slow down on verse 17 because something, Moses is doing something here.

This phrase, say in your heart, shows up in Deuteronomy 7, 8, and 9.

These three chapters, back to back to back.

There's something going on in the overarching section of Deuteronomy.

It's three stories that we tend to tell ourselves.

The first one, Deuteronomy 7.17, says this if you say in your heart, these nations are greater than I, how can I dispossess them?

In Deuteronomy 8.17, it says, Beware lest you say in your heart, My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.

In Deuteronomy 9.4, it says, Do not say in your heart, it is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land.

Three stories.

Let me summarize them like this.

I can't because I'm so weak.

I did because I'm so strong.

I received because I'm so good.

All three are temptations to tell ourselves that story when we look at our wealth, or we look at ourselves, we have a sense of sufficiency on our own.

They all make the same mistake.

They leave God out of the explanation.

Here's a better story to tell yourself.

It's actually a prayer, I challenge you to pray.

It's found in Proverbs chapter 30, verses 8 and 9.

Proverbs 30:8

It goes like this Give me neither poverty nor riches.

Feed me with the food that is needful for me.

Here's why.

Here's the dangers.

Lest I be full and deny you and say, Who is the Lord?

Sounds like forgetfulness, right?

Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.

In other words, the empty can forsake God and take all that they need.

The full can forget God and take all the credit.

They both have the same underlying problem, which is self-sufficiency.

Now, to forget God is to explain your life without reference to him.

My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.

Do you see what they did?

They turned the phrase, the Lord gave into I got.

That's the temptation.

Moses tells a different story in verse 18.

You shall remember that the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.

This is remarkable.

It's one thing that the Lord might just give them straight up the resources that they have or need.

It's another thing that he's saying, I gave you the ability to work hard to get the resources that you have and need.

You know, plenty of us in this room have been given a lot by the Lord.

We live with a level of abundance.

And Moses didn't say you didn't work hard for that.

Moses went deeper.

He said, You're forgetting to explain your life in reference to God, who gives you power to get the wealth that you have.

All that you have is a gift, even your ability to work hard to get the things that you've been given.

This is a depth analysis here.

It's not a surface, superficial telling of all that you have in your life.

And lest we think forgetfulness is a mere lapse of memory, Moses said forgetfulness is functional idolatry, so severe that in verse 19 and 20 it says, You shall surely perish.

Look with me at the verse 19.

And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.

Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.

Israel says, My power has made me something, and God warns, Forget me, and you will become nothing.

You will perish, you will come to utter destruction.

So listen, in scripture, this is a warning.

In scripture, most people fail the test of prosperity.

Adam failed in Eden, Israel failed in Canaan, Solomon failed in Jerusalem until someone didn't fail.

Many of you know Deuteronomy 8 3 is quoted in the New Testament in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke.

In Matthew 4, Jesus is in the wilderness and he's hungry 40 days without food.

And in comes a snake and says, Why don't you just turn those stones into bread?

To which Jesus replies, quoting Deuteronomy 8, verse 3, it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Deuteronomy 8:3

Jesus refuses to live without reference to God.

Jesus is the better Adam, he is the better Israel, and he is the better you.

He succeeded in the garden, he succeeded in the wilderness, and he is succeeding in your life too.

Jesus was tested in every way that we are, yet without sin.

He hungered and he thirsted and yet he still trusted God.

He was offered riches and power and glory, and yet he still remembered God.

But listen, Jesus is not just our example, he's our savior.

So I want to go back to my question: how much is enough for God?

You see, God has a requirement over your life.

It is personal, perfect, perpetual obedience.

How are you doing?

Are you enough?

But listen to me.

God our Father looks on the Lord Jesus Christ and he says, enough.

He sees the obedience of his life and his death, and he says, enough.

Fully sufficient.

George MacDonald said, God is easy to please but hard to satisfy.

And yet Isaiah 53 says that Jesus will look on his own suffering and he will be satisfied.

You see, Jesus alone is enough.

And if Jesus is enough to satisfy the infinite heart of God, is it possible that Jesus is enough for you?

You see, even right now, the competing voices, the voice of the Holy Spirit and the voice of the unholy serpent.

And what it sounds like is the Holy Spirit's always trying to get you to turn your eyes away from yourself to Jesus.

And what Satan does is he wants us to regard ourselves instead of Jesus.

Satan whispers, your sins are too great for pardon.

You don't trust enough.

And here's the insidiousness of Satan's four-tongue accusations.

They're true enough.

They're true enough to be believable, but they are not the whole truth.

Because Satan wants you to focus on you and to see whether you're enough.

And you will never find comfort or assurance by looking at yourself to see if you're enough, because you are not enough.

But the Holy Spirit comes and he turns your eyes entirely away from yourself.

And he tells us that, yeah, you're right.

We have nothing to commend ourselves to God.

But unlike Satan, the Spirit comes along and he tells us there is one who is enough.

Jesus Christ is all in all.

There's enough for you in him.

There's enough.

Your feelings and doings and prayers will never be enough.

But you can look outside of yourself and ask that question, how much is enough?

And you can look to Jesus Christ and say, that's enough right there.

And when we do that, when we realize that enough is when we have minus what we want, we can turn to Jesus.

We can pray, oh Jesus, would you take what you want, but just leave me yourself and I will have enough?

Let's pray.

I want to step right into the prayer of response here.

So I'm gonna, I'm just gonna prompt us through these three points.

And I'm gonna invite you to respond from the heart in prayer.

Father, you are the giver of all good things, including tests, including your leading us in seasons of wilderness.

I pray for my brothers and sisters, and we pray now, Lord, would you give us faith to trust you when we feel like we don't have enough?

We confess our temptation to grip so tightly with our fists around all that we have.

We open our hands and we say, take what you will, leave us yourself, we'll have enough.

Thank you for the very breath in our lungs that can respond and return in praise.

Thank you that you have given us more than enough.

We receive everything from your hand.

We have nothing.

And yet all we can offer is a simple thank you in reply.

Some of us in here have a self-sufficiency that's either led to despair or to arrogance.

And Lord, in this moment when we feel like we are enough or aren't enough, we simply remember you, God.

We set the Lord Jesus always before us.

I praise you, Jesus, for your all sufficiency.

You are enough.

Amen.