Deuteronomy 9:7
Remember this, and never forget how you provoked the LORD your God in the wilderness. From the day you left the land of Egypt until you reached this place, you have been rebelling against the LORD.
Sermons
God Provoked At HorebR. South, D. D.Deuteronomy 9:7
Profitable RemembranceT. Kidd.Deuteronomy 9:7
Self-RighteousnessJ. Orr Deuteronomy 9:4-7
Human Memory a Repository of GuiltD. Davies Deuteronomy 9:7-17
Humiliating MemoriesR.M. Edgar Deuteronomy 9:7-29














The memory of man is a book of God; and, though the entries may be temporarily obscured, yet the light of eternity will make them all legible. The present tendency of sin is to weaken memory; its effect, to obliterate recollection. Our profoundest gratitude is due to the man that reminds us of our falls.

I. REMEMBER SIN IN THE LIGHT OF ITS OBJECT, VIZ. OF GOD. Discourtesy to a king is a graver offence than discourtesy to an equal. Sacrilege is worse than common theft.

1. This was sin against a known God. The evidence of his existence had been made as clear to them as noonday. The main attributes of his character had been plainly revealed, especially power and justice and goodness. They could not wear a mask of pretended ignorance.

2. He had been to them a most generous God. For their release signal power had been displayed. The course of nature had apparently been interrupted. To deliver them hosts had been destroyed, and the majestic hand of God had supplied their daily meal.

3. He had been a much-suffering God. They had been like petulant, discontented children; and he had been to them a pitiful and indulgent Father. In the midst of needful supply they had been basely unthankful. They had wounded him in the tenderest parts of his nature, insulted his majesty, spurned his laws, and covered him with contempt. Yet he had spared them. He had imposed on himself strong restraints, so that righteous anger should not break forth. The noblest features of human love are but feeble reflections of his patient compassion; and against such a God their sin was hurled.

4. He had been a God in covenant with them - their God.

II. REMEMBER SIN IN THE LIGHT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. We perceive things best when placed in absolute contrast.

1. There was the sin of inattention. God had deigned to speak, but they "would not hear." The ear had been fashioned for this special end that they might hear God's voice; they had abused and injured the delicate faculty. They that will not hear shall not hear.

2. There was the sin of ingratitude. We can conceive of no baser sin than this. 'Tis a double crime - a violation of heart and conscience.

3. There was the sin of disbelief. The God of truth had promised, but they had treated his word as a lie. They had enjoyed ocular demonstration of his faithfulness, yet they trusted their own fears and fancies rather than their God.

4. There was the sin of overt rebellion. They professed to regard God as their Leader and King; yet, as soon as service was irksome to flesh and blood, they resented his authority. Once and again they chose human leaders in opposition to the Supreme King.

5. There was the sin of self-will. Their characteristic sin was "stiff-neckedness." "Our wills are our own," said they in substance; "who is Lord over us?"

III. REMEMBER SIN IN THE LIGHT OF SPECIAL PRIVILEGE.

1. Theirs was sin against the light. While others had only the light that comes through nature, they had possessed the light of special revelation. They had not appreciated the light. In various measures they had preferred the darkness.

2. It was sin against the inner light of conscience - sin against personal convictions of duty. They had trifled with the regal voice of conscience, and bribed it to be silent. They had encouraged appetite and passion to speak, and their clamorous voices had prevailed.

3. Theirs was sin against faithful warning. The penalties of contumacy had been prominently set before them. The hints of nature and the dark presages of conscience had both supplemented by the clear announcements of Divine warning. For the fascinating fruit of present pleasure they risked expulsion from the garden - loss of the great inheritance.

4. It was sin against covenant engagements. They had made an overt treaty with God to serve him. When the Voice from heaven had spoken at Sinai, they had quaked and said, "All that the Lord our God shall speak unto us will we do." Every step in their deliverance had been taken on the understanding that they would be loyal servants of the heavenly King. Thus every element of wickedness was mingled in their conduct. And is it not in ours also?

5. It was sin in the very presence of God - sin at Sinai.

IV. REMEMBER SIN IN THE LIGHT OF EXPERIENCE.

1. They had seen the direful effects of disobedience in others. Their eyes had beheld what God did to the Egyptians for their impious arrogance. They had seen their own comrades die for their petulant murmurings. They had seen a host of people slain for idolatry. Poisonous serpents had slain a myriad. The earth had opened and swallowed the sons of Korah. Their own memories contained abundant records that the fruit of transgression was death. Yet they sinned still.

2. They had seen the rewards of obedience among themselves. So long as they had followed the precepts of Jehovah they had prospered. They had sprinkled their doorposts with the Paschal blood, and the angel of destruction had spared their firstborn. They had crossed the Red Sea by a perilous path, and had gained a mighty triumph. They had followed Moses into the wilderness, and had been daily fed by a miraculous hand. It was obvious that obedience secured blessing. They had seen Moses exalted to regal power by virtue of his unwavering faith in God.

3. They had felt the scourge of Divine anger for their own follies. For eight and thirty years they had sojourned in the wilderness beyond what was needful, because they would not believe God's promise. A thousand ills had afflicted them, every one of which was a chastisement for sin. Yet they dallied and coquetted with the accursed thing, as if it were a pleasant toy. And are we any better than they? If unpardoned, memory is preparing a scourge of scorpions with which to chastise us. "Son, remember!" - D.

Remember...how thou provokedst the Lord.
I. The FACT asserted is this: we have provoked the Lord our God. Shall we call to mind the sins of our youth and the transgressions of our riper years? They are a long catalogue, and they testify strongly against us. But as professors of religion, what is the conviction of our minds? Have not our provocations, since we commenced this profession, been numerous and great? Pride: unbelief: unchristian tempers.

II. The EVIL implied in the text is our proneness to forget this fact. "Remember, and forget not." Why this injunction, if the evil were not real? But how is this proneness to forget to be accounted for?

1. Inattention.

2. Light thoughts of sin.

3. Love of self.

III. The DUTY enjoined is: that we remember our provocations. "Remember, and forget not." There is emphasis in this repetition; it implies not only a proneness to forget, but the importance of not forgetting, and having impressed on the heart our provocations against God. What is this importance and its utility?

1. To make us penitent.

2. To keep us humble.

3. To preserve us thankful for mercies.

4. To help our resignation under Divine corrections.

5. To endear the Saviour to us.

6. To convince us that salvation is entirely of grace.

(T. Kidd.)

(in conjunction with Psalm 106:7): — To provoke is an expression setting forth a more than ordinary degree of misbehaviour, and seems to import an insolent resolution to offend. A resolution not contented with one single stroke of disobedience, but such as multiplies and repeats the action till the offence rises into an affront; and as it relates to God, so I conceive it aimed at Him in a three-fold respect.

1. It rises up against the power and prerogative of God. An assault upon God sitting upon the throne, snatching His sceptre, defiance of His royalty and supremacy. He that provokes God dares Him to strike to revenge the injury and invasion upon His honour — considers not the weight of His arm, but puffs at all, and looks the terrors of revenging justice in the face.

2. Provoking God imports an abuse of His goodness. God clothed with power is the object of fear; but as He displays goodness, of love. By one He commands, by the other He courts our obedience. An affront on His goodness and love as much exceeds an affront of His power as a wound at the heart transcends a blow on the hand. For when God works miracles of mercy to do good upon a people as He did upon the Israelites, was it not a provocation infinitely base, a degree of ingratitude higher than the heavens struck at, and deeper than the sea that they passed through?

3. Provoking God imports an affront upon His long-suffering and His patience. The musings of nature in the breast tell us how keenly every man resents the abuse of His love; how hardly any prince, but one, can put up an offence against His mercy; and how much more affrontive to despise majesty ruling by the golden sceptre of pardon, than by the iron rod of penal law. But patience is a further, a higher advance of mercy — mercy drawn out at length, wrestling with baseness, and striving, if possible even to weary and outdo ingratitude; therefore sin against this is the highest pitch of provocation. For when patience is tired let all the inventions of mankind find something further upon which to hope, or against which to sin. The Israelites sinned against God's patience, one offence following upon another, the last rising highest, until the treasures of grace and pardon were so far drained and exhausted that they provoked God to swear; and what is more, to swear in His wrath, and with a full purpose of revenge, that they should never enter into His rest.

(R. South, D. D.)

People
Aaron, Anak, Anakites, Isaac, Jacob, Moses
Places
Beth-baal-peor, Egypt, Horeb, Jordan River, Kadesh-barnea, Kibroth-hattaavah, Massah, Taberah
Topics
Anger, Angry, Arrived, Depart, Desert, Egypt, Forget, Forth, Hast, Mind, Orders, Provoked, Provokedst, Rebellious, Rebels, Remember, Till, Waste, Wentest, Wilderness, Wrath, Wroth
Outline
1. Moses dissuades them from the opinion of their own righteousness
7. Moses reminds them of the golden calf

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Deuteronomy 9:7

     1025   God, anger of
     6021   sin, nature of
     6223   rebellion, of Israel

Deuteronomy 9:7-8

     6218   provoking God
     8670   remembering
     8764   forgetting God

Library
The Hebrews and the Philistines --Damascus
THE ISRAELITES IN THE LAND OF CANAAN: THE JUDGES--THE PHILISTINES AND THE HEBREW KINGDOM--SAUL, DAVID, SOLOMON, THE DEFECTION OF THE TEN TRIBES--THE XXIst EGYPTIAN DYNASTY--SHESHONQ OR SHISHAK DAMASCUS. The Hebrews in the desert: their families, clans, and tribes--The Amorites and the Hebrews on the left bank of the Jordan--The conquest of Canaan and the native reaction against the Hebrews--The judges, Ehud, Deborah, Jerubbaal or Gideon and the Manassite supremacy; Abimelech, Jephihdh. The Philistines,
G. Maspero—History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, V 6

Moses' Prayer to be Blotted Out of God's Book.
"And Moses returned unto the Lord and said. Oh! this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou--wilt, forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray they, out of thy book which than hast written." In the preceding discourse we endeavored to show that the idea of being willing to be damned for the glory of God is not found in the text--that the sentiment is erroneous and absurd--then adduced the constructions which have been put on the text by sundry expositors,
Andrew Lee et al—Sermons on Various Important Subjects

The Blessings of Noah Upon Shem and Japheth. (Gen. Ix. 18-27. )
Ver. 20. "And Noah began and became an husbandman, and planted vineyards."--This does not imply that Noah was the first who began to till the ground, and, more especially, to cultivate the vine; for Cain, too, was a tiller of the ground, Gen. iv. 2. The sense rather is, that Noah, after the flood, again took up this calling. Moreover, the remark has not an independent import; it serves only to prepare the way for the communication of the subsequent account of Noah's drunkenness. By this remark,
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Mount Zion.
"For ye are not come unto a mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that no word more should be spoken unto them: for they could not endure that which was enjoined, If even a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned; and so fearful was the appearance, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake: but ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto
Thomas Charles Edwards—The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Hebrews

The Angel of the Lord in the Pentateuch, and the Book of Joshua.
The New Testament distinguishes between the hidden God and the revealed God--the Son or Logos--who is connected with the former by oneness of nature, and who from everlasting, and even at the creation itself, filled up the immeasurable distance between the Creator and the creation;--who has been the Mediator in all God's relations to the world;--who at all times, and even before He became man in Christ, has been the light of [Pg 116] the world,--and to whom, specially, was committed the direction
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament

Deuteronomy
Owing to the comparatively loose nature of the connection between consecutive passages in the legislative section, it is difficult to present an adequate summary of the book of Deuteronomy. In the first section, i.-iv. 40, Moses, after reviewing the recent history of the people, and showing how it reveals Jehovah's love for Israel, earnestly urges upon them the duty of keeping His laws, reminding them of His spirituality and absoluteness. Then follows the appointment, iv. 41-43--here irrelevant (cf.
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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