Pass It On

Many fathers, if you ask them what they want to leave their children, might talk about practical things: a paid-off house, a college fund, maybe a piece of land or a family business. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things. 

But let me ask dads today: if your children inherited everything that would set them up financially for their life, but none of your faith, would you call that success? 

This is Moses’ chief concern in Deuteronomy 6.  What will Israel pass on to future generations?

We are continuing our series in Deuteronomy, titled “Choose Life.”  The title of my sermon this  morning is “Pass It On.”

It has been 40 years since Israel was led out of slavery in Egypt; now, finally, they are preparing to enter the land God has promised them.  Deuteronomy is Moses’ farewell speech to the nation he has led all 40 years.

Our key verse and the theme for all of Deuteronomy is …

Deut 30:19 (CSB)—I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live,

God says to the Israelites, “I want you to prosper. I want the good life for you.”  How does that happen?  When you obey God and keep His commands.  

Now, He says, “I’m leaving you with a choice.  What will you choose, life or death?”

Moses encourages the Israelites to choose life, for themselves and for whom else?  Their descendants.

He realizes the choices the people make today are going to not only determine the future for the current generation, but for generations to come; for their sons and daughters, their grandsons and their granddaughters. And that is the charge he will give them in chapter 6.

Deut 6:1 (CSB)—“This is the command—the statutes and ordinances—the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, so that you may follow them in the land you are about to enter and possess.

What are “the commands, the statutes and ordinances” Moses is referring to?  In chapter 5, Moses reiterates the commandments that God gave Israel when He made a covenant with them. We all know them as the 10 Commandments.

The ten commandments God gave Israel are these:

Then Moses says:

Deut 5:32-33 (CSB)—“Be careful to do as the LORD your God has commanded you; you are not to turn aside to the right or the left. Follow the whole instruction the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live, prosper, and have a long life in the land you will possess.

I was talking with a friend this week, and he said something that made a lot of sense to me about these commandments that God has given us.

He said I see God’s commandments as a wall.  Some people see the wall as keeping them from something; keeping them from having fun, or putting a damper on their lives.  But what God really intends is that these commandments be a wall to protect us.  

To protect us from the results of sin.  To protect us from doing things that will only bring us pain and heartache.  The commandments are a wall; a wall of protection.

If you want to read a beautiful picture of this, read Jn 10.  There, Jesus says he is the gate of the sheep pen of protection for his sheep.  Our enemy, the Devil, is a thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus said I have come to give you an abundant life.  What is the source of this abundant life?  We find abundant life when we allow Jesus to lead us into protection through our obedience and by following Him.

Now that we understand the context, we can better grasp what God is telling His people through Moses in chapter 6 when He tells them to

Love God Completely

Deut 6:1-3 (CSB)—“This is the command—the statutes and ordinances—the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, so that you may follow them in the land you are about to enter and possess. Do this so that you may fear the LORD your God all the days of your life by keeping all his statutes and commands I am giving you, your son, and your grandson, and so that you may have a long life. Listen, Israel, and be careful to follow them, so that you may prosper and multiply greatly, because the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey.

The commands I am giving are for you and to your future generations.  When you follow them, you will prosper.  Then Moses says, following them is an expression of love towards God.

Pastor Jason unpacked this for us last week when he talked about the Shema, the Hebrew prayer that comes from this passage in Deuteronomy.

Deut 6:4-5 (CSB)—Listen, Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

This prayer, called the Shema, which means “listen” in Hebrew, every Jew recites in the morning and evening as a reminder that God wants all of us, every part of us.  

How many of you have watched any of the World Cup games? This weekend, Stacey and I went to the Crooked River outside of Prineville.  But on Friday morning, we drove back into Prineville, and we watched the USA vs. Australia game.  What a game!  The skill required to play soccer at that level demands serious commitment and dedication.  It requires focus and hard work.  The payoff for all that work is that you get to compete at the highest level of competition.

That is what God is calling us to when He says we are to love him with all of our heart, soul, and strength.  Full commitment and dedication, and the payoff, He says, is abundant life, not just for you but for your children and your grandchildren.  

And then, Moses says in order to pass it on, you have to …

Make This Love a Part of Everything.

Deut 6:6-9 (CSB)—These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates.

Repeat these commands, teach these commands.  One translation says to impress these things on your children.  The Hebrew word here carries the idea of sharpening, like you are sharpening a blade in order to cut something into a surface so it stays, so it’s permanent. 

And then Moses describes when the conversation happens: sitting at home, walking on the road, lying down, waking up. In other words, all the time. He’s not talking about a family Bible study or Sunday School class. He’s referring to the ordinary moments of ordinary life, always pointing back to God. The goal is not a child who knows all the right answers; it’s a child who has absorbed a way of seeing the world.

More is caught than taught. This is definitely true when it comes to faith. Children are watching constantly. What does Dad do when things go wrong? How does Mom talk about money? How do they talk about other people? The command to talk about these things when you sit, walk, lie down, and get up is a command to make faith a part of the atmosphere in your home.

If you haven’t been teaching your kids, consider the Chinese proverb that says, “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time is today.” We can all think of things we should have done twenty years ago. But the second-best time to do it is now. And if your kids have grown up and moved out of the house, there’s always grandchildren, nieces, nephews, or neighbor kids, or kids here at New Hope with whom you can share the Lord.

For those without children, the command to pass on our faith isn’t only for parents. That is why one of our values here at New Hope is community. In a community, every adult has a part in forming the next generation — through mentoring, or teaching, through the example of a lived faith, through the care you show to the young families and children of New Hope. The Shema was spoken to the whole community of Israel, not just to the parents.

The foundation for modeling your love for God is remembering God’s love for you.

Remember God’s Love for You.

In vs. 10, Moses will begin to describe the good things the Lord has prepared for them as they enter the promised land and the blessings they will enjoy as they take possession of it.  Then he gives them this warning:

Deut 6:12-15 (CSB)—be careful not to forget the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery. Fear the LORD your God, worship him, and take your oaths in his name. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you, for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God. Otherwise, the LORD your God will become angry with you and obliterate you from the face of the earth. 

People often have a hard time rectifying the God that Moses talks about here and the God that John talks about when he says …

Jn 3:16-17 (CSB)—For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

What happened?  What changed?  Nothing happened. Nothing changed. 

God is the same today as He was yesterday.  He does not change.

The difference is Jesus.  God came to earth and became one of us.  He was beaten, abused, and then murdered on the cross.  He paid the price for our disobedience.  Instead of God’s wrath for sin being directed toward us, He directed it upon Himself, because of His love for us.

Not only is God the holy, perfect judge, He is also the loving Father.  And the moment we believe that Jesus is God’s only Son and we believe what the scriptures tell us about Him, the Father no longer sees our disobedience but Jesus’ obedience.  Instead of our sin, He sees the righteousness of Jesus.

But don’t think God’s attitude towards sin has changed.  It hasn’t. That is why Paul says: 

Rom 6:1-2 (CSB)—What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Sin undermines our ability to pass on our faith — which is exactly why the story we tell our children has to include not just God’s commands, but his rescue.”

How God empowers you, through the presence of the Holy Spirit in you, to deal with the sin we all struggle with and how you respond to God’s love for you, is the story you are to pass on to future generations.  I’m not just talking to dads here, moms, grandparents, etc., this is for you too — your story matters just as much.

We all need to …

Tell the Story of God’s Love

Deut 6:20-21 (CSB)—When your son asks you in the future, ‘What is the meaning of the decrees, statutes, and ordinances that the LORD our God has commanded you?’ tell him, ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand.

The question Moses anticipates isn’t a Theological question but one every kid wonders: why do we live this way? Why do we do what we do? What’s all this for?

How does Moses say to respond?  He doesn’t say, “explain the doctrine of covenant theology to him.” He says, “tell him a story.” We were slaves. God set us free. He brought us here. That’s the answer. Not a sermon but a testimony.

I think perhaps we get this backward sometimes. We think the way to pass on faith to the next generation is to make sure they know the right answers, the right doctrine, the right verses, the right arguments for why the Bible is true. All those things matter. But Moses says the foundation isn’t simply knowledge. It’s a story. Here’s what God did. Here’s where we were, and here’s where he brought us.

So let me ask you a question this morning, especially you dads: when your kids ask you why our family does what it does — why we go to church, why we pray before meals, why Dad reads his Bible, why we live the way we live — what’s your story? What’s the “we were slaves in Egypt” in your life?

Moses ends this section of his farewell speech similarly to how he began.

Deut 6:24-25 (CSB)—The LORD commanded us to follow all these statutes and to fear the LORD our God for our prosperity always and for our preservation, as it is today. Righteousness will be ours if we are careful to follow every one of these commands before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us.’

Three things: prosperity, preservation, and righteousness. A life that flourishes. A life that’s protected. A life that’s right with God. That’s what’s on the other side of loving God completely, making that love part of everything, remembering where it came from, and passing the story on to the next generation.

The reality is, though, that none of us does this perfectly. None of us loves God with all our heart, soul, and strength, every day, without fail. None of us has made faith part of every ordinary moment the way Moses describes. None of us remembers God’s love as consistently as we should. And if we’re honest, some of us haven’t told our kids the story yet. Maybe we’ve been waiting for the right moment. Maybe we didn’t think it mattered as much as it does.

That’s why we need Jesus.

When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was. He quoted this exact passage. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And then he did something we could not: he lived it. Perfectly. Completely. Every day, every moment, every ordinary detail of his life pointed back to the Father. And then he went to the cross and took the judgment our failure to love God deserved.

So when verse 25 says we’ll be counted as righteous if we obey — here’s the good news. Through Jesus, that righteousness isn’t something we earn. It’s something we’ve been given. We are not saved by how well we do Deuteronomy 6. We are saved by the One who did it for us, and who gives us his righteousness as a gift.

That doesn’t mean Deuteronomy 6 no longer matters. It means we’re free to pursue it — not out of fear of obliteration, but out of gratitude for a love we didn’t earn.

So here’s what I want to leave you with this morning, especially you dads in the room. The most important thing you will ever leave your children isn’t in your will. It’s not a paid-off house, a college fund, or a piece of land. It’s whether they know the God you know. It’s whether they’ve watched you love God with everything you have. It’s whether they’ve heard your story.

This is, in part, what it means to choose life. So, choose life today. And then make sure the people who come after you know what you chose, and why.  And when we do that, we will be sure to pass it on.