Deuteronomy 9:4 Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee
Yesterday I read the story of a lady who is 114 years old. She made news because of her great age. What caught my attention was the title of the news story, which was something like, “God Has Kept Me Alive.” She acknowledged God as granting life to her for 114 years. On one hand, that is an amazing accomplishment. On the other hand, it is a wonderful gift of God and His grace. Here is a woman who has not just lived long, but has obviously lived well. She is a person who has a grateful heart.
I think that is generally the case when you look at people who have lived long. They are people who have the right frame of mind, people who are generally grateful. Of course, there are cranky old people who may be younger than we think, and there are people like George Burns who smoke cigars, drink bourbon, and live to a great old age. But generally speaking, people who live long take care of their bodies, souls, and minds. When you think about it, what joy would there be in living 114 years if you felt cranky toward everyone, entitled to everything, like everyone had passed you over, as if God had forgotten you.
One of the themes in Deuteronomy 9, as in the previous and following chapters, is “remember.” It is a matter of perspective. If you think right, you can feel right. You will never feel as you should if you do not think as you should. So, Deuteronomy 9 is God’s recounting through Moses the events of His dealing with the children of Israel. What you find is that gratitude is getting over yourself. It is realizing you are not the only one in this universe and there is a God in Heaven. Gratitude in one perspective is just getting over yourself.
First of all, get over yourself in regard to your own power. Verse 1 says, “Hear, O Israel: Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven, a people great and tall…” He goes on to talk about great giants and great walls. The great giants were a threat; the walls were a barrier, yet God went before them. God gave them this land. They did not gain it because of their power. In Deuteronomy 8:17-18 God reminds them in time to come when they had taken the land to beware lest they think to themselves, “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.” No, God had done that.
There is a story, and I won’t get it quite right, but the gist of it is that a woodpecker was trying to make a hole in an old hickory tree. He had been trying to make a hole for days, and one day after he left the tree there was a straight-line wind, a complete blowdown of that whole section of the forest. The next morning, he came back to that tree and saw the entire forest of trees in the area knocked down. He became pretty smug. He thought, “Wow, I’ve been working on this tree and the whole forest is down.” He flew back to his bird friends, gathered them together, brought them back to this blowdown, and said, “Gentleman, behold.” It was as if he thought he had done this, but it was the wind that had.
So many times, we have things in our lives that we think, “Gentleman, ladies, behold,” and we are totally oblivious to God’s power and grace in our lives. Our health, our bodies, the situation to which we were born, the power we have, and our opportunities are from God. It is a dangerous thing indeed to compare our power to that of other people. Power is something that is relative unless we are talking about God, who is the omnipotent possessor of power. So, gratitude is getting over yourself. It is realizing that whatever you have there is more than just you.
Second, you see the same principle when it comes to our virtue. Verse 4 says, “Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee.” Verse 5 says, “Not for thy righteousness…but for the wickedness of these nations.” Sometimes we say, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” That is the natural question. We rarely say, “Why has God given me life? Why has anything good ever happened to me?” We are bent that way because we expect the good and begrudge the bad. That is natural.
In verse 7 Moses goes on to say, “Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst the LORD thy God to wrath.” He gives a list of areas where they had been sinful. So, gratitude is getting over yourself, your power, and your virtue.
Two kinds of virtue you should look out for are relative virtue and secret virtue. By relative virtue I mean that you look at other people and think, “I am better and more noble than they are.” Anyone can find someone who is not as virtuous as they are. What does that say? That does not say where you are before God or how you compare to God. Anyone can go to the wrong side of the tracks to someone who is in the depths of sin and say, “I’m doing better than they are.” That is not the point. The point is gratitude. “But for the grace of God, there go I,” as someone has said. So relative virtue is a danger. It is a misperception of ourselves.
Secret virtue is that virtue where we do something good, maybe we give to someone in need or help someone, and it is two virtues because we have done it and no one knows about it. With our friends we think, “I’ve done a good thing and I haven’t told anyone about it. I am not just good, I am really good. I’m better than they are.” Don’t forget the fact that they may have done something good that you don’t know about.
Strangely enough, we remember every good thing we have ever done, but we have a hard time remembering any bad things we have done. We can get into all kinds of sin that no one knows about, but what we highlight in our lives is the good things we do that no one seems to recognize. The bottom line is that when I am grateful, when I realize there is a God in Heaven, it puts perspective on my power and on my virtue.
Deuteronomy 10:22 ends this section by saying, “Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.” God did that, not for their virtue or power but by His grace. So, the people who are happiest, healthiest, and most beneficial to others are people who think right and therefore feel right, people who are grateful because gratitude is getting over yourself.