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Colin Smith: I would expect him to say, "When this happens, be thankful. Lift up your hands in praise." Wouldn't you expect him to say that? That's not what he says.

He says, "When this happens, when you find yourself in the city, when you become a property owner, when you find that you have a job that gives you an income," verse 12, "be careful."

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible Weekend with Pastor Colin Smith. Colin, anytime success comes, there obviously can be a temptation that comes along with that.

Colin Smith: Yeah, that's right, and I think it's all the more subtle because we don't see it. If you lose your job, you naturally will say, "My faith's been tested. I've really got to trust the Lord and look to Him and pray," and so forth.

But suppose you get headhunted. Suppose you double your salary. Suppose you get some great promotion. Are you going to think at that moment that your faith is actually being tested? Probably not. You're going to say, "Hallelujah, this is marvelous and God is smiling on me."

Actually, you may be facing the most subtle test. That's what we're seeing in Deuteronomy: that when God blesses you, when the church grows, when your children are believing, when you prosper, these are the places where there is a very subtle test that comes to your character and to your faith. This is where pride can get in. This is where you can lose the sense of your own dependence upon God. We're going to look at the subtle test of success today, and if we're forewarned, we'll be forearmed when we come to face it.

Steve Hiller: Well, we're going to look at that in the book of Deuteronomy. We begin a message called "The Subtle Test of Success." Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: If you would open your Bible at the book of Deuteronomy, we're going to begin at chapter six, although we'll be focusing in a few moments on chapter eight. But I want to begin from chapter six and verse five, that really is the central or focal core verse in the whole of the book of Deuteronomy. In fact, you could say it summarizes the whole message of the Old Testament Scriptures.

We've been thinking about it together. The sum of everything that God asks of His people is that we love Him with all our heart and our soul and our strength. The reason that He asks this of us, of course, is that He has first loved us. The Son of God loved me, the Son of God gave Himself for me. He wore the crown of thorns, He went to the cross, and now He calls us, His people, to enter into a covenant of love and of loyalty and to live for His glory. Love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Last week, we looked at the impact of this because Deuteronomy's a very practical book. What is the impact of loving the Lord with all your heart on family life? We saw that while some parents may fear that if you love the Lord with all your heart, that in some way this will harm the children, what we learned last week is that if you live for the family, you will lead your family into the desert. But if you live for the Lord, you will point your children to the promised land.

Today, we're continuing to look at the impact of loving God in the whole of life. Moses turns next to how loving God with all your heart will have an impact on how you view your possessions, your wealth, your success, all that is yours. Or perhaps to put it more accurately, what we're really going to look at is the impact of your possessions on your love for the Lord.

I want you to see that that's exactly where Moses goes as he is giving the message that we have here as the book of Deuteronomy. If you have chapter six open in front of you, you'll see verse five there: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." That's verse five. Then verse six through verse nine, Moses goes on to speak about the impact of this on family life, which we looked at last week. Then notice what comes next.

Verse ten: "When the Lord your God brings you into the land He swore to your fathers," so when you come to the promised land, "and when you then eat and when you are satisfied," Moses says, "be careful. Be careful when you come into this promised land where you are going to have an abundance of good things. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."

This is a warning here. Be careful. He's saying, "Watch out." There is a particular danger that you are going to encounter as God's blessing flows increasingly into your life. Let's look at this together, shall we? What Moses is saying to these folks on the edge of the promised land is, "Please understand this: a great change is going to happen in your life. You are going to enjoy the blessing of God in ways that your parents never knew, and this blessing of God is going to come to you in three distinct ways."

First, you're going to have opportunity that your parents never knew. Notice verse ten: "You'll come into a land with large and flourishing cities that you did not build." You see, cities are a place of opportunity. Cities have infrastructure. Cities have large populations. Business thrives in the city. Cities are developed, they're built over decades and even over generations, but here are people who are going to have the opportunity of life in cities they did not even build. Enemies are going to be cleared from these cities and God's people are going to have as their inheritance cities that they did not build. These will be great spheres of opportunity for them.

So, here God takes people from the desert, where there is no opportunity really to develop anything very much, and He puts them in a place of extraordinary opportunity in cities that they did not build. Not only will they be surrounded by the opportunity of the city, but secondly, they will have the gift of property. Verse 11: "You will have houses filled with all kinds of good things that you did not provide."

When you come into the land, what happens as you read the story and follow it in the Bible is God apportions to each tribe, each clan, each family, land that is theirs as an inheritance. Think of this: their parents had lived in tents in the desert. Now, suddenly, every one of these families entering into the promised land is given a home.

Think about this, folks: a home and no mortgage. What do you think about that? Given a home, you, your family, as your possession in perpetuity. You never paid a penny for it, not a cent. This is what's going to happen. So, you see what Moses is saying? There are wonderful days ahead of you. The blessing of God that you're going to experience looks like this: you're going to have all the opportunity of the city and cities you did not even build. You are going to receive houses, and they're going to be given to you, you're not going to have any mortgage. Sounds very good news indeed.

Think of it: their parents came out of Egypt with what? Nothing. Now, suddenly, property, they're property owners. So now there's going to be an inheritance that's going down from one generation to another. This is altogether different. It is the blessing and the gift of the Lord. So, you're going to have opportunity, you're going to have property. Thirdly, you're going to have income. "Vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant," verse 11.

Vineyards and olive groves here, and there are other examples later in the verses that we'll see, pomegranates and all kinds of good things in this land. Vineyards and olive groves are just examples. The point here is that you will have not only the means of supporting your family in terms of growing food, you'll have more than that. You will have the means of generating an income. You have land, you're able to sow, you will be able to plant, you will be able to harvest. You will not only have food, you will be able to generate an income.

Here is this marvelous promise of God to these people on the verge of the promised land. Look, a great change is coming in your life. All you've ever known is living in a tent, you've never really had any possessions to speak of. Now, you're going to go into the promised land. You're going to become a property owner. You're going to have the opportunity of the city. You are going to be able to generate an income.

Now, here's the surprise. I hope you have your Bible open in front of you. Chapter six and verse 12. Moses says, "When this happens," now what would you expect him to say next? I would expect him to say, "When this happens, be thankful. Lift up your hands in praise." Wouldn't you expect him to say that? That's not what he says.

He says, "When this happens, when you find yourself in the city, when you become a property owner, when you find that you have a job that gives you an income," verse 12, "be careful. Be careful." In other words, he's saying this great change that is going to bring you into a different and an obviously better situation will harbor a great danger for you. That is why I've called the message today "The Subtle Test of Success."

Steve Hiller: And we'll continue that message in just a moment. You're listening to Open the Bible Weekend with Pastor Colin Smith, and our message is part of a series on the book of Deuteronomy called Take Two: The Power of a Fresh Start.

If you ever miss a broadcast in our series, come and listen online at OpenTheBible.org. You can stream the program or you can download an MP3 for free. Again, that's at OpenTheBible.org. You can also listen through the Open the Bible app, which you'll find at your app store, or you can order a copy of this entire series, Take Two, on CD. Ask about that when you call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365, or you'll find ordering information online at OpenTheBible.org. Back to the message, here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Now, please turn over a page to Deuteronomy in chapter eight, where Moses develops and explains why it is that the blessing of God carries within it a hidden danger. He explains here in chapter eight that when you experience the blessing of God, and it's the same for us today, one of two things will happen.

The first he explains from verse six of chapter eight, and it goes like this: when you experience the blessing of God, it can intensify your gratitude. It can increase your love for the Lord. It can bring you into what I'm going to call today the circle of praise. Here's what it looks like, I want you to see it in the Bible right in front of you.

It begins in verse six with fearing the Lord. You see what he says there? "Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in His ways and revering Him." Remember, we've been saying all through this series, we are to fear the Lord as we love Him, we are to love the Lord as we fear Him. That means we're to give weight to Him in all of our ways and in all of our choices, we're to hear what He says and we're to do what He commands.

Now, says Moses in verse six, if you fear the Lord, then he says, as God's blessing comes, this is what it will look like. See the description again of God's blessing in verse seven to nine. The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land. Now he describes it: a land with streams and pools of water, springs flowing in the valleys, hills, a land with wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates and olive oil and honey, a land where bread will not be scarce, you'll lack nothing, a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.

Now, he's saying if you fear the Lord, verse six, if He carries weight in your life, then when the blessing of God comes, as you come into this promised land, what will happen? It will lead you, verse ten, thirdly, to praise. See, when you have eaten and are satisfied, "Praise the Lord your God for the good land that He has given to you."

You see, this is a circle of praise that he's describing right here. If you fear the Lord, then when His blessing and His abundant goodness is showered into your life, you will begin to say, "Well, now everything that I have comes from His hand. Apart from His abundant goodness, I'd still be stuck in the desert." This very act of praising God will in turn lead you back to the Lord.

So verse 11: you will not forget the Lord. If you fear the Lord, His blessing will lead you to praise Him, and the very act of praise focuses you again on the Lord so that you do not forget Him and so the whole circle of praise continues. Friends, that's where we want to be, isn't it? We want to live in the circle of praise as people who fear the Lord, so that when His blessing comes into our lives, we recognize that blessing for what it is, that leads us to praise, that causes us not to forget the Lord, that causes us to continue. Perhaps it's a spiral rather than a circle. It's moving us forward in a life of praise and in a life of gratitude to the Lord.

Now, I want you to notice what Moses says next. He says, verse 11, "Be careful that you do not forget the Lord," verse 11, and then verse 12, notice this very important word: otherwise. Otherwise. You see, what he's going to tell us now is that it is possible to get out of the circle of praise and to live in an altogether different way in relation to the blessing of God. So, let me describe the otherwise circle for you now. I'm going to call this the circle of pride, the circle of pride.

It begins here in verse 11: if you forget the Lord. Now, to forget the Lord doesn't mean to forget that He exists, it simply means that you no longer have Him in mind. It means that as you're moving through your life, you don't see His hand in the good that is happening to you in the way that perhaps you once did. If you forget the Lord, then here's what will happen: God's blessing will come, verse 12 and 13.

This is very significant, isn't it? God gives material blessing to those who forget Him as well as those who fear Him. Remember the Bible says that God makes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on those who hate Him as well as those who love Him, His enemies as well as His friends. Here's another group of people now who are forgetting the Lord, but they're still experiencing His blessing.

Verse 12: "When you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and your flocks grow large and your silver and your gold increase and all you have is multiplied," if you forget the Lord and you experience His blessing, what will happen? Well, what will happen then is, then your heart will become proud, verse 14.

If you forget the Lord, here's the circle of pride, then His blessing will not lead you to praise, it will lead you simply to pride. You will take credit to yourself, and that will then intensify your forgetting of the Lord because you say, "Now, this is marvelous. You see what I've been able to accomplish." So while praise leads you back to the Lord because your eye is on Him, pride leads you away from the Lord because your eye is on yourself.

That takes us to verse 17, which completes this ugly circle in which the person who has forgotten the Lord and been blessed and therefore thought that it was his or her own doing says to himself, "My power and the strength of my hand have produced this wealth for me." So, I have done this, you see.

So here is the subtle test of success. This is the great danger that lurks in every blessing, that if we forget the Lord when His blessing comes into our lives, we get the sense that somehow this came from our hand, that it came from our strength. Moses says, "Now when you come in to experience the abundant blessing of the Lord, be careful. Be really careful." It's like a big danger sign. Watch out! Because when God blesses you, you are going to go into one of these two circles. It'll either be one or otherwise, verse 12, it will be the other.

Now, let's pause now that we've learned the principle from the Bible and apply it to ourselves. What this means for us, folks, is something like this: when you move into that new home, there is a temptation that you will face. When you graduate with that degree, there is a spiritual danger for you to overcome. If your salary moves from five figures to six figures, there is a subtle test that you will face. You cannot avoid it.

These things are all good gifts from God's hand, and if they are received, they are to be welcomed, they are to be celebrated, and we are to remember that the blessing comes from the Lord. But Moses says to us, "Be careful. Be on your guard," because every blessing from the hand of God carries within it the subtle test of success.

This is counterintuitive. It is the opposite of what we normally think. It is instinctive for us to think that the time that is dangerous to your faith is when you're sick. But actually what Moses is saying: "Be very careful when you're well. That's the time you're more likely to forget the Lord. You'll pray when you're sick."

The time of your greatest testing may not be when you lost the job but when you gained the job. The time you are most likely to grow cold in your walk with the Lord is not when your stocks are going down but when your stocks are going up. Students, if you are getting straight A's, you may be in greater danger of spiritual pride. Satan may be more active in tempting you right there than if you got a B or a C.

This is why Moses is saying, "Be really careful," because whenever you are granted success, and that is a good and a wonderful thing, it carries within it the subtle test of spiritual pride. By the way, remember this when you are tempted to envy someone who has more than you. You're tempted to envy someone who has greater opportunity, someone who has a larger property, someone who has a bigger income.

Don't wish yourself into another man's temptation. You don't know what kind of steward you would be. The very fact that you are struggling with some degree of envy may suggest that in fact you would not be the best steward of it, and that it may be God's kindness and mercy that is keeping you protected from the ravages of this kind of temptation. From everyone who has much, much will be demanded, and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, from him much will be asked or required.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Open the Bible with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called "The Subtle Test of Success." It's part of our series Take Two: The Power of a Fresh Start. You know, you've been shaped by the faith and the tendencies and the fears of your parents, but now maybe you're on the threshold of something new. God is calling you.

Well, in the series Take Two, Pastor Colin Smith is showing us God's word for His people on that threshold of something new. You're going to find out what it takes to break free from the patterns of your past and become a person of faith on a mission. If you miss any broadcast in our series Take Two, you can listen online at OpenTheBible.org, or you can order a copy of the series on CD when you call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365, or you'll find ordering information online at OpenTheBible.org.

Open the Bible is a listener-supported ministry, that's just what it sounds like: it's your generosity that allows us to continue bringing you Pastor Colin's teaching. As you give a gift of any amount, we'd love to send you a copy of Pastor Colin's brand new 30-day devotional book called Grow in Love. Colin, what's one thing that you'd like people to take away from this book?

Colin Smith: Well, I think that most of us feel that we need to grow in love, especially when it comes to loving those with whom we deeply disagree. But here is the question: do you think it's possible for you to become a more loving person than you are right now?

The thing is, if it simply depended on what you can generate from within yourself, the answer would have to be no. Our love would depend on our experience and if we hadn't been well loved by others, we wouldn't be able to give love to others. But the good news is that love really can be learned. It's possible to grow in love and God's Holy Spirit is given to every Christian believer for this purpose.

So, the thing I'd want people to take away from this is the wonderful hope that as you experience the love of God poured into your own heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, so you will be better able to love others really well.

Steve Hiller: Well, we want to send you, as our way of saying thank you for your financial support, a copy of Pastor Colin's new book Grow in Love. You can find out more online at OpenTheBible.org, or you can give your gift over the phone by calling 1-877-OPEN-365. Again, that's OpenTheBible.org or 1-877-673-6365.

For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time. Open the Bible Weekend is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

At Open the Bible, we're grateful for like-minded organizations committed to sharing the gospel around the world. To that end, I'd like to commend the work of Global Fingerprints. In the book of James, God calls us to help orphans in their distress. That's a clear command, but it's not always clear how we should obey it.

This is where Global Fingerprints comes in. Through Global Fingerprints, you can sponsor a vulnerable child to help meet their physical needs and ensure they hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. I want to commend Global Fingerprints to you. They're focused on equipping the local church to care for children and where there is no church, they help to plant one. If you'd like to help a vulnerable child, you can find more information on Global Fingerprints at our website, OpenTheBible.org/GF. That's OpenTheBible.org/GF.