Generational Vision
A
Sermon on Deuteronomy by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church Manhattan KS, June 2006, revised on 02 June 2013 for the baptism of Margaret Prudence
Wilson.
I. Introduction:
Illustrations that “There is a bigger Picture”
- In the Broadway play, Fiddler on the Roof, there is a scene where Tevye, the
main character (who is a dairy farmer), is encouraged by his wife to pay a
visit to Lazar Wolf, the town butcher (who wants to marry one of Tevye’s
daughters).
Tevya, however, has not been clued in
to Lazar’s interest in his daughter; he thinks Lazar just wants to butcher
one of his cows. The conversation goes like this:
Lazar : “Tevye, I suppose you know why I wanted to see
you.”
Tevye: “Oh yes, I do. But there is no use talking
about it.”
Lazar: “Tevye, I
understand how you feel, but after all, you have a few more without her.”
Tevye: “I see. Today you want one; tomorrow you may
want two.”
Lazar: “Two? What would I do with two?”
Tevye: “The same you do with one.”
Lazar: “Tevye, this is very important to me.”
Tevye: “Why is this so important to you?”
Lazar: “Frankly, because I’m lonely.”
Tevye: “Lonely? Lazer,
what are you talking about? How can a little cow keep you company?”
Lazar: “Little cow? Is that what you call her?”
Tevye: “What else should
I call her? That’s what she is! Lazer! What are you talking about?”
Lazar: “Don’t you know?”
Tevye: “Of course I know.
We’re talking about my new milk cow, the one you want to buy from me!”
Lazar: “A cow? A milkcow
to keep me company?” *laughs* “I’m talking about your daughter!”
- Tevya didn’t understand the big picture. He
thought they were talking about an everyday business transaction of
selling a cow, and almost missed a very important once-in-a-lifetime
occasion of giving away his daughter in marriage!
- When it comes to evangelism or having children, a
similar problem can happen. We can get caught up in the day-to-day
business and miss the big picture of the staggeringly-glorious outcomes
that could result years into the future.
- In evangelism, we tend to focus on bringing
another person to the point of a decision for Christ, get them to attend
church, maybe get them reading their Bible, then move on and try to get
someone else to pray the sinner’s prayer, forgetting the amazing potential
for that first convert to make disciples themselves which could get you multiplying
disciples rather than merely adding them one by one. Please
understand, I’m not knocking evangelism, I’m just saying that discipling
new converts and coaching them to the point where they can share the
gospel themselves and make disciples themselves is more strategeic than
abandoning your evangelistic contacts after they have prayed the sinner’s
prayer.
- We do the same with
our gardens. Every spring we go to the store to buy seeds for our garden,
even though last year we grew fruit and vegetables that were brimming with
seeds. If we had known how to save them properly, we could have had an
abundance of seeds to plant the garden for the next year. Instead, we
throw the seeds away or eat them all up.
- And think about how we Americans raise children. Once
our careers are established, we have ourselves a couple of children, put
them in an educational institution, make sure they are part of a church
youth group, and assume that since they are part of the younger generation
we will never be able to understand their culture, and we just hope they
will say the sinner’s prayer at some point like we did. Again, don’t get
me wrong – I’m not criticizing schools or youth groups; what I’m
criticizing is the way Americans by and large resign themselves to losing
relationships with the younger generation and don’t try to bridge the
generation gap.
- I contend that this way of thinking is missing
the big picture. I believe God doesn’t want to save individuals. I believe
God wants to save individuals plus their descendents!
When
God saves someone, He is not intending to pour His grace just into that person
– pouring water into a stagnant lagoon, but rather to open up the headwaters of
a new river for His love to be poured out on many generations to come.
Does the Bible actually say that? Yes! This principle
is all over the book of Deuteronomy.
II. Context
and text
- By the time of Deuteronomy, God’s promise to
Abraham had been fulfilled in the development of many descendents –
millions of people now in the nation of Israel, and
- The generation that Moses had led out of Egypt (and to whom Moses first delivered the Ten Commandments) had died off (except for
Joshua and Caleb).
- Now the second generation of Israelites
after the Exodus are about to enter into the land of Canaan under Joshua’s
leadership.
- “Deuteronomy” means “Second-Law.” In the book of
Deuteronomy, Moses is preaching his last sermon to the children of the
people who had received the Ten Commandments at Mount Siaini, and he is giving them the law again.
- Read Deut 4 (My translation)
1 And now, Israel, listen to the statutes and to the
judgments which I am teaching y’all to do
in order that y’all will
live and go and take possession of the land
which Jehovah, the
God of your fathers is giving to y’all.
2 Y’all must not
add onto the word which I am commanding you,
and y’all must not
take away from it
in order to
[properly] keep the commands of Jehovah your God,
which I am commanding
y’all.
3 Your eyes saw
what Jehovah did in Baal Peor, for Jehovah
your God destroyed from your neighborhood all the men that walked after Baal
Peor.
4 Yet y’all who are
sticking with Jehovah your God, you all are [still] living today.
5 See, I taught
y’all statutes and judgments just like Jehovah my God commanded me,
therefore they are to be
done in the neighborhood of the land
to which y’all are
going there to possess it.
6 Now, y’all shall
keep and do this
because it is your wisdom
and your understanding to the eyes of the peoples
which will hear
all these statutes and say, ‘This great nation is just a wise and understanding
people!’
7 For to which
great nation is God near like Jehovah our God is [near] to us
in all our appeals to
Him?
8 And to which
great nation belongs righteous statutes and judgments like all this Law
which I am presenting
before y’all today?
9 Just watch out
for yourself and really keep watch over your soul,
otherwise you will
forget the things which your eyes saw,
and otherwise they
will go away from your heart all the days of your lives.
Make known to your
children and to the children of your children
10 the day when
you stood before Jehovah your God at Horeb,
when Jehovah said to me, ‘Assemble
the people before Me, and I will make them hear my words
such that they
will learn to fear me all the days which their lives are upon the earth,
and they will
teach their children.’
11 And y’all came near
and stood at the base of the mountain,
and the mountain
was blazing with fire up to the heart of the heavens
[with] darkness, cloud, and fog,
12 and Jehovah spoke to
y’all from the midst of the fire,
(You heard the sound of
words, yet there was no body for you to see – only a voice.)
13 and He declared to
y’all His covenant,
in which He
commanded y’all to do the ten things,
and He wrote them
upon two stone tablets.
14 And Jehovah commanded me during that time to teach
y’all statutes and judgments
for y’all to do them in
the land which y’all are going over there to possess it.
15 So y’all must really
watch out for your souls,
for y’all did not see a
body at all
on the day Jehovah
spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire.
16 Otherwise y’all will mess
up
and make for
yourselves a carving of a body of every image of
a figurine of a man
or a woman,
17 a figurine of
every [kind of] cattle which is on the earth,
a figurine of
every winged bird which flies in the heavens.
18 a figurine of
everything that crawls on the ground,
a figurine of
every fish which is in the waters below the surface of the earth.
19 and otherwise your
eyes will rise up to the heavens
and see the sun
and the moon and the stars – all the army of the heavens,
and you will be lured
away, and you will worship them and serve those things
which Jehovah your
God allocated to benefit all the peoples under all the heavens.
20 But as for y’all, Jehovah got y’all and brought
y’all out from the iron furnace of Egypt
in order to be a people
belonging to Him for an inheritance, as it is this day….
25 When you give birth to children and grandchildren,
and y’all are long-termers in the land,
and y’all mess up and make carvings of figurines of
everything
and do what is evil in the eyes of Jehovah your God
and make Him angry,
26 I have called the heavens and the earth to bear
witness with you today that
y’all will surely perish
quickly from the land
which y’all are
passing over the Jordan there to possess it;
y’all will not have
extensive time upon it, for y’all will surely be annihilated.
27 And Jehovah will scatter y’all among the peoples,
and y’all will be left
few in number among the nations into which Jehovah will drive you.
28 And there y’all will serve gods made by human hands
– wood and stone
which do not see
and do not hear and do not eat and do not smell.
29 Then y’all will seek Jehovah your God from that
place,
and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your
heart and with all your soul …
31 For Jehovah your God is a compassionate God:
He will not let go of
you,
and He will not mess you
up,
and He will not forget
the covenant of your fathers which He swore out to them…
37 Now in succession, since He loved your fathers, He
also chose his descendants after him,
and He brought you out from Egypt before His face with
His great power
38 to dispossess for you
great and populous nations from before your face
in order to cause
you to enter –
in order to give
to you their land to be an inheritance, as it is this day.
39 And you must know today and you must think it over
in your heart
that Jehovah Himself is
The God in the heavens above and over the earth beneath;
there is not another.
40 And you must keep His
statutes and His commandments which I am commanding you today,
which will be good for
you and for your children after you,
also in order that you
will have extensive time on the ground
which Jehovah your God is
giving to you for all time.
I want
to prove from Deuteronomy my thesis that God has an interest not only in
you but also in your children, then I want to show from Deuteronomy how
to go about protecting the interest God has in your children.
III. God’s
Covenant applies to successive generations in the O.T.
- In Deut 4:37 and its
context, we see God
acting presumptively with at least five generations: “Now
in succession, since He loved your fathers, He also chose his descendants
after him[1],
and He brought you out from Egypt before His face with His great power”
- First is the forefather whose “seed” was chosen
after him. In most English translations the singular “him” in the original
Hebrew is changed to a plural “them” in order to flow better in English,
but in Hebrew the pronoun is singular, (“him”) referring to Abraham, the
first man chosen (Gen 18:19) to experience God’s love, after the creation
of the nations at the tower of Babel, the first to be called “the friend
of God” (James 2:23).
- But in choosing to love Abraham, God says in
this verse that He also chose to love “his seed/descendants/offspring
after him,” speaking of the “fathers” of the children of Israel whom
Moses is addressing, those fathers who had been slaves in Egypt but whom
God had delivered from that “iron furnace.”.
- Now Moses is
addressing a third generation, which is the “you” in this verse,
also chosen by God to be in a special relationship of closeness to God
and blessing in the terms of this covenant that God made at Horeb when He
gave the Ten Commandments.
- And, of course, it
doesn’t stop there. God forsees in vs. 26-28 the failure of that
generation to be able to even keep the first two commandments –
they are going to fall into idolatry, so God promises to punish a future
generation for failure to walk in faithfulness to the covenant that He
didn’t make with them but which He made with their fathers! These
descendents will be held to the terms of the covenant made with their
ancestors, and they will be “annihilated” and “scattered among the
nations.”
- But then God promises in vs.29-31 to show “mercy”
to an even more distant future generation that finds itself in exile
among foreign nations and that turns away from idolatry to live in faithfulness
to the terms of the covenant God made with their distant ancestors.
- Do you see how God thought and acted
intergenerationally in the Old Testament? When God made a covenant with
Abraham, God did not make it just with Abraham, but intended it for all
Abraham’s descendants too.
- The book of Deuteronomy is full of this concept of
God’s covenants applying to subsequent generations, for instance:
- 6:3 Hear
therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with you, and
that you may increase greatly, as Jehovah, the God of your fathers,
has promised to you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
- 7:9 Know
therefore that Jehovah your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps
covenant and lovingkindness with them that love Him and keep His commandments
to a thousand generations
- 8:18 But
remember Jehovah your God, for it is He that gives you power to get
wealth; that He may establish His covenant which He swore unto your
fathers, as at this day.
- 9:6 Know
therefore, that Jehovah your God is not giving you this good land to
possess it for your righteousness; for you are a stiffnecked people… (Moses’ prayer to God follows) 26 Your people and Your inheritance,
that You have redeemed through Your greatness, that You have brought
forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand. (Note
that the children are called God’s inheritance. God is claiming the
children as His! Not because
they have done anything to deserve it but simply because He wants to
redeem them.)
- 10:15 Jehovah
had a delight in your fathers to love them, and He chose their seed
after them, even you above all peoples, as at this day.
- 29:14,
15 Neither with you only do I make this covenant and
this oath, but with him that stands here with us this day before Jehovah
our God, and also with him that is not here with us today… 22 And the generation to come, your
children that shall rise up after you, and the foreigner that shall
come from a far land… (Chapter ends
with the following summary statement) 29 The secret things belong unto
Jehovah our God; but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to
our children. (Do you think I am
remiss in connecting verse 15 with verse 22? Hold that thought until we
see Peter quote this very passage and make this connection in the book of
Acts.)
- 30:6
And Jehovah your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your
children, to love Jehovah your God with all your heart, and with all
your soul, that your may live. (Although
the Jews physically circumcised their male descendants, this promise is
that God will perform the spiritual counterpart of removing the fleshly,
sinful nature from the hearts not only on those who return to Him
but also on their children. This is N.T. language!)
- Now here’s an important
question: Is all this presuming that descendants have a special
relationship with God just for the Old Testament, or is it still operative
today?
- A comprehensive answer to this question would
take more time than we have to give it this morning, but let me point you
to one passage in the New Testament where the Apostle Peter quotes this
principle from Deuteronomy when addressing a group of new converts to
Christianity:
IV. Application
in the New Testament to an international audience.
- After
Jesus died to pay for our sin and rose from the dead and ascended into
heaven and sent His Holy Spirit to the church on earth, we read in
Acts 2:37b-39 [They] said
unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And
Peter said
unto them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus
Christ unto the remission of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of
the Holy Spirit. For to you is the promise, and to your children,
and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God
shall call unto Him.”
- Here, Peter
quotes from Deuteronomy 29, connecting verse 14 with verse 22, “Neither
with you only do I make this covenant and this oath, but with… the generation
to come, your children that shall rise up after you, and the
foreigner that shall come from a far land.” Peter says that God’s covenant-making
arrangements are going to work in the church age like they did in the Old
Testament: the promises are for you who believe, and for the children of
believers, but it doesn’t end with your relatives, the promise of the
Gospel can also be passed on to outsiders whom God calls to Himself and
brings to faith in Jesus!
- When
God saves a person, He is not creating a new dead-end for His blessing but
a new headwaters for a new river for His blessing to be poured out into
the world!
V. How to protect God’s interest in your children:
If God claims our children and grandchildren as His
special interest, then we must work to promote God’s interest in our children.
What does Moses’ sermon teach us about how to set our children up to follow
God?
1. Teach your children God’s ways – then teach them to
teach their children!
- Deut
4:9b Make known to your children and to the children
of your children the day when you stood before Jehovah your God at Horeb,
when Jehovah said to me, ‘Assemble the people before Me, and I will make
them hear my words such that they will learn to fear me all the days which
their lives are upon the earth, and they will teach their children.’
…13 and He declared to y’all His covenant, in which He commanded y’all to
do the ten things, and He wrote them upon two stone tablets. Since your children are going to be held to the
terms of the covenant, you’d better clue them in on what the covenant is!
Tell them about that covenant-making ceremony at the foot of Mt. Sinai when God gave you the Ten Commandments. Tell them what the Ten Commandments are
and what they mean, just like I (Moses) did. Impress this upon them so
that they don’t become cursed as covenant-breakers!
- And
notice who is supposed to be doing this spiritual teaching: the fathers
and grandfathers! It’s all throughout Deuteronomy:
- Deut
6:6 And these words, which I command you this day, shall
be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently unto thy
children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when
thou walk by the way, and when thou lie down, and when thou rise up. And
thou shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for
frontlets between your eyes. And your shall write them upon the door-posts
of your house, and upon your gates…
20 When your son asks
you in time to come, saying, “What do the testimonies, and the statutes,
and the ordinances mean, which Jehovah our God commanded you?” Then you
are to say to your son, “We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt: and Jehovah brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand…”
- This is repeated word-for-word in Deut
11:19 And you shall teach them to your children,
talking of them, when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way,
and when you lie down, and when you rise up…
- Deut 31:10-13 “…every
seven years, … you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, the men and the women and the little ones,
and thy sojourner that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that
they may learn, and fear Jehovah your God, and observe to do all the words
of this law; 13. and that their children, who have not known, may
hear, and learn to fear Jehovah your God, as long as you live in the
land where you are going over the Jordan to possess it.
2. Obey God
Yourself
Why? Hypocrites lose their children’s faith.
·
Deut 4:39-40 And you must know today and you must think it over
in your heart that Jehovah Himself is The God in the heavens above and over the
earth beneath; there is not another. And you must keep His statutes and His
commandments which I am commanding you today, which will be good for you and
for your children after you...
There is a connection between you keeping
God’s statutes and it going well with your children after you. We also see this
throughout Deuteronomy in places like:
·
Deut 5:1ff And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them,
"Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing
today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them. (10 Commandments follow.)
- Deut
6:1-2 "Now this is the commandment, the statutes
and the rules that Jehovah your God commanded me to teach you, that you
may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it,
that you may fear Jehovah your God, you and your son and your son's son,
by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all
the days of your life, and that your days may be long.
- Your
children notice your speedometer; they know what you’re
watching on screen even if the door is closed; they hear what you say in
your unguarded moments. You can’t fool them if your faith is not real, and
you can’t expect true faith to rub off on them if your faith is fake.
- So,
TEACH your children/grandchildren how to relate to God, OBEY God yourself,
then:
3. Remember God –
Create ways to remind yourself of Him
·
Deut 4:9 Just watch out for yourself and really keep watch
over your soul,
otherwise you will forget the things which your eyes saw,
and otherwise they will go away from your heart all the days of your lives.
·
Deut 6:12 Take care lest you forget Jehovah, who
brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. (How do we “take care”?)
- Deut 7:18 …you shall remember what Jehovah
your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt...
- Deut 8:2-3 you shall remember the whole way
that Jehovah your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness… He
humbled you and let you hunger - and fed you with manna...
- How can you keep from forgetting
God?
- Make a visual reminder
like a plaque on a wall of your home or office. (Alabama Chief Justice
Roy Moore made a monument of the 10 commandments to remind himself and
others that the foundation for his job is God’s law),
- Keep holidays
(Israelites celebrated Passover to remember their deliverance from Egypt,
they later created a holiday called Hanukah to celebrate deliverance from
the Greeks, and the Gospels indicate that Jesus even observed Hanukah, so
you can make up your own holiday to keep something special that God did
in the memory of your family!),
- Write a history of
what God has done in your life in a photo album or a diary.
Preserve these things so they are not forgotten!
- TEACH, OBEY, REMEMBER, and
finally:
4. Destroy the
things that will tempt your children away from God
- Deut 4:3 Your eyes saw what Jehovah did
in Baal Peor, for Jehovah your God destroyed from your neighborhood all
the men that walked after Baal Peor. You
know what happened at Baal Peor? That was where Balaam told the Moabites
to send their women out to seduce the Israelite men sexually and also to
get them to worship their Moabite idol named Baal Peor. God struck 24,000
Jews dead with a plague as a result, and you know what stopped God from
killing any more of the men with the plague? It was the zeal of Phinehas
the priest who enthusiastically fought against this terrible idolatry. If you don’t destroy the things
that will lure your children and grandchildren away from God, they will be
ensnared.
- Deut 4:15-19 So y’all must really watch out
for your souls, for y’all did not see a body at all on the day Jehovah
spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire. Otherwise y’all will
mess up and make for yourselves [idols]… and otherwise your eyes will rise
up to the heavens and see the sun and the moon and the stars – all the
army of the heavens, and you will be lured away, and you will worship them
and serve those things which Jehovah your God allocated to benefit all the
peoples under all the heavens.
- Deut 7:1-5 When Jehovah your God brings
you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and
clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the
Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites,
seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves, and when Jehovah
your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote
them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and
show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your
daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for
they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods.
Then the anger of Jehovah would be kindled against you, and he would
destroy you quickly. But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break
down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their
Asherim and burn their carved images with fire…
Deut
7:25-26 The
carved images of their gods you shall burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or
the gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared by
it, for it is an abomination to Jehovah your God. And you
shall not bring an abominable thing into your house and become devoted to
destruction like it. You
shall utterly detest and abhor it, for it is devoted to destruction.
- Deut. 12:2-3 You
shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall
dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and
under every green tree. You shall tear down their altars and dash in
pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down
the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. Cf. Deut
13:12-17
- This is violent language because it is a spiritual war.
- Each one
of you has to discern what things will lead the next generation astray and
get those idols out of your house. Our kids may not be tempted to bow down
in front of carved figurines, but there are many other things (and
persons) that are worshipped today.
- We will
all probably come up with slightly different lists of what we want to keep
out of our house, so we need to be gracious with other Christians and not
assume that just because you see something as a threat to your
children’s faith that your standards must therefore be imposed upon all
Christians.
- Some
things I think we can all agree upon are to keep our children from being
discipled by non-Christian teachers,
- and to
carefully control the entertainment that comes into our home –
books, movies, magazines, music. All too often these media carry
powerfully convincing appeals to your children to follow the religion of Secular
Humanism or other popular religions.
- Another
thing that can cause our children to stray is busy-ness. If you
are too busy at work and at watching the news and they are too busy
with school and sports for you to teach them when you sit down to eat and when
you sit around in the living room and when you walk by the way (or drive
around) and when you go to bed and when you wake up, then you need to go
to war against the busyness in order to preserve the lives of your
children for God!
VI. CONCLUSION
·
Do you want to be clueless like Tevya
or great like Moses?
·
Are you a dead-end lagoon or the
headwaters of a new river of God’s grace flowing into the world?
·
Are you thinking only for yourself to
meet your needs, or are you laying the groundwork for future generations to
follow God?
·
I challenge you to be people of
vision who will build a legacy that will grow and multiply and fill the earth
with the godly generations that God wants!