8 You must carefully perform all of the commandment that I am commanding you right now so you can live and multiply and enter and take possession of the land that the Lord swore to your ancestors. ² Remember the long road on which the Lord your God led you during these forty years in the desert so he could humble you, testing you to find out what was in your heart: whether you would keep his commandments or not. ³ He humbled you by making you hungry and then feeding you the manna that neither you nor your ancestors had ever experienced, so he could teach you that people don’t live on bread alone. No, they live based on whatever the Lord says.^{[a] 4} During these forty years, your clothes didn’t wear out and your feet didn’t swell up. ⁵ Know then in your heart that the Lord your God has been disciplining you just as a father disciplines his children. ⁶ Keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him, ⁷ because the Lord your God is bringing you to a wonderful land, a land with streams of water, springs, and wells that gush up in the valleys and on the hills; ⁸ a land of wheat and barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land where you will eat food without any shortage—you won’t lack a thing there—a land where stone is hard as iron and where you will mine copper from the hills. ¹⁰ You will eat, you will be satisfied, and you will bless the Lord your God in the wonderful land that he’s given you.

Against wealth and overconfidence

¹¹ But watch yourself! Don’t forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commands or his case laws or his regulations that I am commanding you right now.

³⁶ “I have a witness greater than John’s testimony. The Father has given me works to do so that I might complete them. These works I do testify about me that the Father sent me. ³⁷ And the Father who sent me testifies about me. You have never even heard his voice or seen his form, ³⁸ and you don’t have his word dwelling with you because you don’t believe the one whom he has sent. ³⁹ Examine the scriptures, since you think that in them you have eternal life. They also testify about me, ⁴⁰ yet you don’t want to come to me so that you can have life.

⁴¹ “I don’t accept praise from people, ⁴² but I know you, that you don’t have God’s love in you. ⁴³ I have come in my Father’s name, and you don’t receive me. If others come in their own name, you receive them. ⁴⁴ How can you believe when you receive praise from each other but don’t seek the praise that comes from the only God?

⁴⁵ “Don’t think that I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, the one in whom your hope rests. ⁴⁶ If you believed Moses, you would believe me, because Moses wrote about me. ⁴⁷ If you don’t believe the writings of Moses, how will you believe my words?”

¹⁵ Make an effort to present yourself to God as a tried-and-true worker, who doesn’t need to be ashamed but is one who interprets the message of truth correctly.