Two Cycles: What You Live, They Inherit

So if you travel through parts of Europe, you'll see something

striking. There are massive, beautiful

church buildings, centuries old places that were once filled

with worship, with singing, with hearing of the word.

But if you walk around them today, many of them are empty.

Many of them have been turned into museums.

Others have been turned into cafes, restaurants, some even

apartments. One of them that that came to my

mind was Saint Anthony of Padua. Park now is turned into a

climbing gym and you get to see the beautiful stained glass

windows as you scale the rocks. And it is easy for us to think,

man, that could never happen here, not in the USA.

But the reality is something similar is already happening.

Thousands of churches every year close their doors.

Depending on what statue you look at, anywhere between 4000

to 10,000 churches yearly close their doors, whether by just not

having enough, whether by unforeseen circumstances or just

the fact that they drifted from their first love.

And it, and it has to, to bring up this question in our mind, is

what happened? Because Christianity doesn't

just disappear overnight and what happens quietly and it

happens across generations. You see, one generation follows

after the Lord, the next one just kind of assumes the Lord.

And then the next one leaves completely.

Not because God failed, not because the truth disappeared,

but because our hearts were prone to wander and we failed to

teach the next generation something that was once real,

that was no longer remembered, no longer lives, no longer

passed on. And if we're honest, that kind

of drift doesn't just happen out there.

It happens in here. It happens in your homes, it

happens in our routines. It happens in our own hearts.

And that is exactly what Moses is addressing in Deuteronomy 6.

Israel is standing at the edge of the promised land.

They could, they can see it inside.

They're about to step into a blessing that they did not build

homes, they didn't fill vineyards, they didn't plant.

And Moses knows something. He knows that the greatest

danger that Israel's going to face is not the enemies outside,

but it's what's it within them, the drift within their own

hearts that in the middle of blessing they might forget the

Lord. And if they forget the Lord, it

won't just affect them, it will affect the next generation.

And so the main idea this morning is, is the direction of

your heart determines the direction of your life and the

faith of the next generation. Read with me in Deuteronomy 6,

starting in verse 10. It says then when the Lord your

God brings you into the land that he swore to your father's,

to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you with great

and good cities that you did not build.

And a house is full of all good things that you did not fill,

and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive

trees that you did not plant. And when you eat and are full,

then take care lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of

the land of Egypt, out of the House of slavery.

It is the Lord your God. You shall fear, Him you shall

serve, and by his name you shall swear.

You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples

who are around you. For the Lord your God in your

midst is a jealous God. Let's the anger of the Lord your

God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face

of the earth. You shall not put the Lord your

God to test as you tested Him at Massa.

You shall dig diligently, keep the commandments of the Lord

your God, and His testimonies and His statutes which He has

commanded you. And you shall do what is right

and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with

you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land

that the Lord swore to give to your Father's by thrusting out

all your enemies from before you, as the Lord has promised.

When your Son asks you in time to come, what is the meaning of

the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our

God has commanded you? Then you shall say to your son,

We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought us

out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and

wonders great and grievous against Egypt and against

Pharaoh and all his household before our eyes.

And He brought us out from there that He might bring us in and

give us the land that He swore to give to our fathers.

And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the

Lord our God and our good always, that He might preserve

us alive as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for

us if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord

our God as He has commanded us. You see, Israel is still

wandering in the desert, but the Promised Land is closer than

ever. And, and Moses shows us that

there are these two cycles that we can live in.

And the first one is this cycle of drift when God is forgotten.

And listen to how Moses sets this up in in in verses 10

through 11. And when the Lord your God

brings you into the land that he swore to your father's, to

Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give you with great and good

cities that you did not build, houses full of all good things

that you did not fill and cisterns that you did not dig,

and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant.

And when you eat and are full, he sets up the beginning of this

drift cycle. It's this, this reality of

there's blessing. And when blessing happens, it

can it can lead to forgetting. He says everything that you're

about to enjoy. You did not create.

You didn't build the cities, you didn't fill the houses, you

didn't plant the vineyards. You just got to enjoy them.

They were already there for you. They were spoils of the war.

And over and over and over again, Moses presses the truth.

You did not. You did not Why?

Because Moses is trying to anchor their hearts and grace.

You see, the blessings that they're going to enjoy in the

Promised land are gifts that they receive, not gifts that

they earned. And yet here at the height of

God's provision comes the warning.

Moses says care, take care, lest you forget the Lord.

You see, as Moses is speaking, this should stop the Israelites.

One would expect Moses to warn these people of hey, there's

going to be enemies that we're going to have to deal with,

there's going to be war, there's going to be suffering.

But instead he says, no, take care that you would forget, that

you would not forget the Lord. Instead, he warns them about

this prosperity and the danger that it can bring as they go

into the promised land. He warns them about forgetting

God in the middle of blessing. One of the most dangerous

moments in your life, physical or spiritual, is not when you

are empty, but when you are full.

You see, as one commentator notes, the danger of the land is

not just its idols, it's its abundance.

Because abundance can quietly shift your dependence away from

God. And Moses is saying you're about

to go into a land with houses that are already built, water

that you don't have to dig. This repetition was to keep

Israel from taking credit for what only God has done.

And then he presses it even further.

When, when everything is handed to you, when when you step into

blessings you did not build, you can lose sight of the God who

gave it to you. Because you see, when you're

empty, you know you need God. And all of us know that we've

had, we have experiences of that in our life of when we are

empty, we know we need God and we run to him and we are

desperate. But when you're full, it becomes

very easy to live like you don't need God, not intentionally, not

not consciously, but subtly. You stop praying the prayers

that you used to pray. You stop depending like you used

to you. You stopped trusting what you

can't see and and trusting what you could.

And this is not a subtle drift that Moses is.

This is this is a subtle drift Moses is trying to get apart.

He's saying Israel didn't wake up one day and say, you know

what, I'm done with God. No, the drift begins much

quieter than that. It begins when you start

enjoying the gift instead of remembering the giver.

And so blessing leads to forgetting.

And Moses is not talking about forgetting God.

He's not saying the Israelites have this memory loss.

What he's saying is it's covenantal language that that we

have looked at all throughout Deuteronomy up to this point of

they are forgetting redemption. They're forgetting that they

were once slaves in Egypt and God brought them out.

And sadly, Moses doesn't just warn them once.

We're going to see in a couple weeks in Deuteronomy 8, he says,

take care lest you forget your Lord, lest when you have eaten

in our full, your heart be lifted up and forget the Lord.

This is saying you're full, you're satisfied, you're

successful, and then your heart quietly begins to lift away from

God. And just a few verses earlier,

we saw that God commanded you shall love the Lord your God

with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your

strength. And now Moses is warning them

here, Hey, pay attention to your heart.

Blessings can lead you to forgetting God.

And when you forget God, your heart begins to loosen its grip

on him. And once your heart loosens its

grip on God, it's, it stays empty.

And then it will reach for something, which leads to the

second part of this cycle of, of blessing leads to forgetfulness.

Forgetfulness leads to idolatry. Notice what he says immediately

in verses 13 through 14. He says it is the Lord your God.

You shall fear him, you shall serve, and by his name you shall

swear. You shall not go after other

gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you.

Moses is going back to that 10 commandment language.

He's rephrasing the first two commandments of you shall have

no other gods and you shall have serve no idols.

And don't miss what Moses is doing here.

You see, in the Hebrew, God's name is the one that comes

first. And So what it's doing is he's

literally saying, Yahweh, you shall fear, you shall serve, you

shall swear by his name. And so he's front loading this

whole sentence with God himself. And he's saying because this is

not about behavior, it goes back to allegiance, goes back to

loyalty. Moses gives 3 words.

Fear, serve, swear. Those are all covenantal

language. To fear him just means you

Revere him above everything else.

To serve him means you belong to him and you seek his good.

And to swear by his name means your life is anchored in Him.

This is total life allegiance that Moses is telling them.

And here is why that matters. It's because Israel already

knows what it means to serve under a master, right?

They they were just in Egypt serving under Pharaoh being his

slaves. They knew what it was like to

wake up every day and to belong to someone who demanded

everything and gave nothing back.

And now God brings them out, and he says, you are not free to

belong to no one. I brought you out so that I can

bring you in. You are now mine.

But here's the difference. Pharaoh enslaved them, God

redeemed them. Pharaoh took from them, and God

gave to them a land that they did not build.

Pharaoh ruled through oppression and God rules through covenantal

love. So when Moses is saying, hey,

fear God, serve God, swear by his name.

He's saying don't drift back to the thing that was taking life

from you because the reality is you will all serve someone or

something. We are created beings to

worship. And when our heart loosens its

grip on God, there is going to be something that is going to

fill that spot. And if you don't intentionally

worship God, you will replace Him with something or someone

else. And here's the hard part.

Most of the time it's not something that's evil.

It normally is something that looks normal.

Career, comfort, reputation, sports, entertainment, friends,

your spouse, your kids. We replace God with something

else and say that this is now my idol.

And these are things that are not bad in themselves, but they

become ultimate in our heart. As John Calvin said, the human

heart is a perpetual factory of idols in Israel.

Moses is saying is you are not immune to this, but I can't help

but think that Moses is is sharing this warning with all

these things in his mind that he's watched the Israelites

struggle in and we could be here all morning talking about how

Israel drifted from the Lord in the stories of it.

But remember Exodus 32, Moses had gone up to the mountain to

hear the Lord and the Israelites got bored and they were like,

man, I don't think Moses is coming back.

So what do the Israelites do? They go to Aaron and say, hey,

Aaron, will you? Will you build us a, a God so

that we can worship him and we can dance around him because we

don't know if Moses is coming back.

You know, these are the same people that saw the Red Sea part

and that was not long ago. They had seen God deliver.

They had seen the pillar of smoke and the pillar of fire

leading them. Yet now they're over here saying

let's dance around this golden calf they forgot and they were

placed and Moses warns them to not go after other gods.

You see, this is more than just bowing down to statues.

This, this language of go after is the direction of your heart.

It's saying, what? What are you moving towards?

What are you chasing? What are you building your life

around? It looks like trusting yourself

more than God. It looks like building your life

around comfort instead of obedience looks like longing for

what God has already called you out of.

So let me ask you what what do you run to when life gets hard?

What do you rely on when you feel uncertain?

What? What do you fear losing the

most? Because the answer to that,

those questions, that's what your heart's going after.

And Moses adds something that should have sobered Israel and

should sober us. He says, for the Lord your God

in your midst is a jealous God, lest the anger of the Lord your

God be kindled against you and he destroy you from off the face

of the earth. Hear me, This is not petty

jealousy. This is not a jealousy of a weak

king. This is the jealousy from the

righteous king who brought you out.

He's telling you so. This is the the rightful king

who brought you out of Egypt. And what he is saying is I will

not share you with anyone. He's not introducing a new idea.

He's taking them back to Mount Sinai in Exodus 20, three

through 5, where he says, you shall have no other gods before

me. Don't make any carved images,

nothing on my likeness. You shall not bow down to them.

For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.

He will not share you. In other words, this has always

been about exclusive devotion. This is the jealousy that a

husband has for his bride, that he will not share you with

anything or anyone because he alone is God.

He alone saved you, he alone brought you out of bondage and

he alone is worthy to be praised.

To go after other gods is not just a a bad day, it's a

betrayal of the rightful king who demands your allegiance.

And so when God is forgotten, he is replaced.

And when you don't trust him, you start demanding that he

prove himself to you. Notice the third part of the

cycle. Idolatry leads to testing.

Idolatry leads to testing. And as, as the heart goes after

other things, it leads to this, this moment of, of questioning

God and not in a rightful way. But Moses brings up a, a not

great story of Israel. He brings them back to Exodus

17, back to NASA, where these the Israelites are thirsty and

they say and they, they complain like man is, is the Lord really

among us? Like, is he really for us?

But don't miss what's happening here.

When I, when I've read this in the past, I was like, man,

that's it. That's an honest question.

They're walking around the wilderness.

They're thirsty. They're like, OK, what are we

doing? But this is not an honest cry

from the Israelites. No, God has already delivered

them from Egypt. They've already seen the Red Sea

split. He's already provided for them

again and again. And yet the Israelites demand

proof. Why?

Because once your heart has shifted to something else.

God is no longer the one you trust.

And when you don't trust him, you start putting him to the

test and you start putting him on trial and and to to test God

is not just asking questions. It's OK to to ask questions from

the Lord. This word to test is to demand

that God prove himself according to your expectations.

It's to demand him to do something contrary to his nature

and character. To test God is really saying,

hey, if you are really good, then do this.

If you are really with me, then then show up like this.

And if we're honest, we do this more often than we think.

This is not just an Israel problem.

This is an US problem. This is a me problem.

This is a you problem, you see, when life doesn't go the way you

expected, what do you do? When prayers don't get answered

the way that you hoped, when circumstances feel uncertain,

you begin to question God. Are you?

Are you really good? Are you really for me?

Are you really there? And once you get there, once you

get to the part of can I really trust you?

Once God is no longer trusted, drift is not far behind.

You see, the Israelites had forgotten God.

They had made themselves their their idol and now they are

demanding God to do something for them.

When God has forgotten, you no longer trust Him and therefore

you test Him. And this is reinforced in the

New Testament when Jesus in the wilderness in Matthew 4, Satan

comes to him and tempts him with this very thing.

He says, hey, if you are the Son of God, just just throw yourself

down because surely God will save you.

In other words, Satan says force God to prove himself.

It's the same temptation Israel faced at Massa.

Is the Lord really with me? Will he really come through?

And Jesus answers by quoting Deuteronomy 6.

You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

You see, where Israel failed, Jesus remained faithful.

Like think about that. Israel has seen the Red Sea and

still tested God. Jesus was alone in the

wilderness, hungry, thirsty, alone under pressure.

And yet he trusted his Father completely.

Because Jesus didn't come just to teach you what to do.

He came to show us what to do. Where you question, he trusted.

Where you demanded he submitted and where you drift, he stood

firm. And that's why this matters so

much, because the cycle Moses is warning about is the exact place

where your hearts are prone to fail.

Like we just sang. And we are prone to wander,

prone to leave the God that we love.

And and so it leads us to the final aspect of this drift,

which is disobedience. This is not necessarily dramatic

rebellion, but it's slow, it's quiet, and externally everything

may look fine. Why?

Because Israel's still going to be in the land, he says.

I'm going to give you the land. That's I guarantee that.

I promise that to your father. So you will live in the land.

But how depressing would it be to live in the land and not have

the heart to live in the land, to still have their heart back

in Egypt, back to the things that God had redeemed them from.

He's saying yes, you will be in the land because I promise that.

But you'd only be in the land externally.

Internally, your hearts would have been moved.

It's like 1 commentary said their bodies were in the

wilderness, but their hearts were still in Egypt.

They had moved physically, but their hearts kept drifting

backwards. And Jesus gives us one of the

most sobering pictures of this cycle in Luke 1732.

It's just three words. Remember Lot's wife?

What happened to her? Well, God was rescuing her.

He was pulling them out of judgement and leading them to

safety. And she looked back.

It was turned into a pillar of salt.

You see, she didn't run back to Sodom.

She didn't openly reject God and just run back to what she

wanted. No, she looked because her heart

was still there. Her body was leaving, but her

heart was still in Sodom. That is the drift that Moses is

warning the Israelites about. A heart that is still attached

to what God has called you out of.

He's saying don't let your heart drift.

And church hear me, this is the danger for you.

You can still show up. You can sit in the Pew week in

week out. You can sing the songs, you can

listen to the sermons. You can serve and look fine

externally. Yet internally your heart has

moved away from God. So where is your heart looking

back? Where were you tempted to

return? Not physically, but in your

desires. Back to old patterns, back to

old sins, back to old comforts, back to your old identities.

What has God called you out of that your heart still longs for?

Drift begins when your heart starts looking somewhere else.

And here is the cycle. Moses warning Israel blessing

leads to forgetting God, then to idolatry, then detesting, and

then drift from God and left to our own selves.

This is the natural direction of the human heart.

We will naturally be on this cycle, a cycle of drift, a cycle

of finding something else to replace our love for the Lord.

And this is true of Israel and this is true for you.

There is no middle ground. You are either drifting from God

or you are standing firm in Him. And if that is where Moses would

have stopped, this would just be a warning to your life.

But he doesn't stop there because this doesn't just affect

you, it shapes what comes after you.

And He shows us something even more weightier.

The cycle of drift doesn't just affect the Israelites hearing

the instruction. It doesn't stay contained to

their life. It shapes their future.

The hinge verse in this whole section is verse 20.

When it says when your son asks you in time to come, not one

sentence changes everything. It means the condition of your

heart today becomes the starting point of someone else's faith

tomorrow. Moses is about to show them that

they are not just living for themselves.

They are setting a trajectory for the future generation, which

leads us to the second point this morning, is that your

worship shapes the next generation.

This is the hinge of the whole passage.

It ties it together. And as I look at verse 20, when

your son asked you in time to come, I'll be honest with you.

This part of the passage hits me differently now than it used to

before I had kids. I've always known this was true.

I was serving the youth. I was unstaffed, so I knew that

this was a responsibility to teach the next generation.

But the moment Judah entered our life, the moment Silas came

after this part in Deuteronomy no longer became just like, oh,

yeah, that's part of my job or I know that's a responsibility.

But now I have little eyes watching my life and there are

questions coming in and and Judah is getting to an age where

he's asking these questions. Why do we do this?

Why can't we just go to play space on Sunday?

Why do we even come here? Why does this matter?

Is this real? And I am realizing more than

ever, they are not going to be shaped by what I say.

What they're going to be shaped by is what do I love?

What do I prioritize? What do I live like my faith is

real. What do they just hear Dad at

night reading the Bible stories going through the motions and

that's not just true for me. Parents, you feel the weight.

You don't get to press pause on that responsibility.

And even if you're not a parent, your life is still shaping

someone some little eye is looking up to you going.

I want to model my life around them because this is what the

people of God do. Faith is always meant to be

passed on and lived out. That's why Moses says when your

son asks, it's not if, but he says when.

Because Moses is not just concerned with the heart of

Israel's people today, He's concerned with the future.

He's concerned not whether this this next generation is going to

inherit the land, because they will.

He's concerned with whether the next generation will know the

Lord that gave them the land. And all throughout this chapter,

he's been pressing this. There was one God.

He alone is worthy, and he alone is to be praised.

And so the word he says, it must be on your heart.

It must shape your life. It must fill your home, right?

You shall teach them diligently to your children when you sit,

when you walk, when you lie, when you rise.

This is not occasional instruction.

This is a life where God is constantly brought into view to

the next generation. A word of God is meant to

saturate their home. And so when we get to verse 20,

this is this is not a new idea. This is the expected outcome of

a life lived out for the word. And now Moses says when that

kind of life is being lived, when your son asks not if, but

when your son asks Chevy parent in this room.

A little side note, this is not a new development in parenting.

Kids have been asking why since the beginning of time.

And many of us laugh because we know it.

Remember serving at summer camp and they're like, there is no

dumb question. I was like, that is not true

because I have two little ones that asked why questions over

and over again. Some of you probably said that

today as we were going to church.

You were like, I don't want to answer this.

And there might be this temptation in that moment.

Us parents, we love to say, because I said so now that might

get you through the moment, but it doesn't address the heart.

It doesn't fix the situation and Moses is going to hit on this

because he said, hey, when your son comes and asks this question

of what are these statues? Why do we follow the Lord?

Most commentators said the natural flow of thought would

have just jumped straight to verse 24.

Hey, dad, why? Why do we follow God?

Because the Lord said so. You see that the sons, they're

noticing something in the life of their parent that is

different than the culture. You see a faith that is visible

will be questioned. A faith that is visible will be

questioned. No obedience equals no

questions. Because he's saying, hey, the

next generation is watching. They are listening.

They are forming their understanding of God by what

they see in you. So they ask, hey, what is the

meaning? They're not wanting the rules.

They're asking, hey, why do we live this way?

Why does this matter? Why?

Why don't we go to play space on Sunday instead of church?

And here is the weight of it. If they don't physical doesn't

answer this question, something else will.

Moses knows that they are about to enter a land filled with

other gods, other values, other stories.

And if the people of God are not intentional to teach the next

generation why we follow after the Lord, He knows that someone

else will. They will be shaped by

everything around them. And so this is not teaching

information. Moses is addressing forming a

worldview in your in the next generation that knows the God

who saved them from Egypt. If they only inherit the

commands without the understanding, they will

eventually abandoned both. And this is not unique to

Deuteronomy. This is the pattern of

Scripture. God's works are meant to be

declared from one generation to another.

Psalm 145 six. They shall speak of the might of

your awesome deeds. Psalm 78 four.

We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming

generation the glorious deeds of the Lord.

Psalm 78 seven. So that they should set their

hoping God and not forget the works of God.

Because what you worship will shape what they inherit.

If the cycle of drift continues, if God is forgotten in your

life, then what gets passed down?

Not intentional rebellion, but silence.

Parents stop talking about God, Homes grow spiritually quiet and

kids grow up without context of the God who saves.

They may know the rules but they don't have the reason why and

eventually they don't know God. That's Israel's history.

Judges 210. It's one of the saddest verses

in all of Scripture, in my opinion.

It says in all that generation also were gathered to their

fathers, and there arose another generation after them who did

not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

Joshua had just died, and now we have a generation that raises up

that does not know God. And if you're familiar with the

story of Judges, it gets really bad.

Not because God failed, not because the truth disappeared,

but because the story was no longer told, explained, and

understood. So Moses presses into them

before they even enter the land. Do not just obey, teach, do not

follow, explain. Do not just carry the commands.

Pass on the meaning on why we do it.

While we are not entering the land of Canaan, we are living in

a world filled with competing voices, competing truths,

competing identities, competing gods, and they are all coming

after the next generation. Look around at the kids in this

room. The world is coming after them

and telling them lies. And if we do not teach them,

Moses says we will have a generation that does not know

God. We are one generation away of if

if we just assume that they'll know the command has not

changed. The New Testament picks up this

same responsibility. Ephesians 6 forefathers bring

them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, and

even it goes beyond the home. What you have heard from me

entrust the faithful men. Second Timothy 22.

The pattern is the same. Truth received, truth lived,

truth passed on, and Moses is making something clear to Israel

and to us today. The responsibility is not

optional. So it's not a thing.

We sign a waiver and say, yeah, I'm going to opt out on that

class. Parents, this is primarily

yours. You are the frontline disciple

errs. You are the ones that answer the

why. You connect obedience to who God

is and what he has done and you do not outsource that.

As Wright points out in his commentary, God is forming a

nation by forming households, parents.

What that means is you are ordained to be the primary

teacher of your kids and as someone that feels the weight of

that, you can go in confidence knowing that God gave the kids

to you, nobody else. He said you are to teach them.

But it doesn't stop there. The people of God also share the

responsibility. Notice he didn't just pull in

all the people that have that have kids.

He's he's teaching the whole Israelite community.

And So what that means for us is the people of God are the ones

that preserve the truth. They model faithfulness.

They guard against idolatry because every generation is

either passing down truth or losing it.

God's design is multi generational faithfulness

through both family discipleship and community reinforcement.

That's just design for the body of believers is that the parents

are teaching it. And then us, me, Amy, all the

teachers in, in Sunday school, all the adult teachers, all

we're doing is reinforcing what parents are to be doing.

We are one generation away from forgetting God.

And so because Moses doesn't just assume the question, he

gives the answer, If this is the cycle of drift, how do we break

this? And Moses doesn't point to tell

Israel, hey, try harder. What he does is he points them

to remember which point #3 is the cycle of remembering when

God is rehearsed and passed on. See, Moses gives the answer to

the son's question, and for me it was, it was a striking 1.

Moses doesn't answer with a rule.

He doesn't say because God said so.

He doesn't say because this is what we do, because really, in

my understanding and my thought was moral obligation to an

imperative God should be enough to elicit obedience.

But all of us have kids in the room.

We understand that that is not true.

In other words, we think, hey, yeah, just since God said so, do

it. And in the language of a parent,

hey, because I said so. But this is not what Moses does.

Instead, Moses answers the question with a story that yes,

the commandments and the statutes and all that is wrapped

into it, but he he answers the sun with a story, and it's the

story of redemption he begins. As one commentary has said, this

is the most concise but comprehensive summary of the

Exodus. It is the Gospel of the Old

Testament in a nutshell. And so he begins by saying, we

were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt. We were once in bondage.

We were once helpless, bound. There was no way out.

We could not fix ourselves. But then God stepped in and he

rescued us. He brought us out.

God acted, God intervened, God delivered us from Egypt.

And then he continues and says, he shows signs and wonders to

Egypt, and God exercised his judgement on Egypt, and then he

brought them out to bring them in.

God didn't just save them from something.

He says, Son, he brought us out of Egypt so that we could be

brought into the promised land, from slavery to promise, from

bondage to belonging. And then the Lord commanded us

to keep these statutes, keep these rules, keep all the

commandments. After deliverance came the

commandments, and that order matters.

God did not save Israel because they were good.

He saved them and then gave them the commandments.

Redemption, then obedience, grace, then response.

And then he says the fruit of that will be righteousness, not

because they earned it, but but as the fruit of trusting God in

walking in his ways, Right? Do you see the pattern?

This is the opposite of the cycle of drift.

That was forgetting God, idolatry, testing, and then

drifting. Now what we see is it starts

with remembering. They've got to remember that

they were once slaves. Then they worship the Lord has

brought us out. They trust the Lord has brought

us in to something and then they obey the Lord has commanded keep

these statutes and then they pass it on.

Then you shall say to your son, we were Pharaoh's slaves.

Do you see this? This is how Israel is to break

the cycle of drift. And sadly, they don't many, many

moments in their life that we, if you read the Bible, you will

see Israel fails to do this. And when they fail to remember,

when they fail to worship, when they fail to trust, when they

fail to obey, when they fail to pass it on, it leads them into a

cycle of drift like we saw at the beginning.

But the beauty of this is this is not just Israel's story.

This is the gospel. We were once slaves to our sin,

in bondage with no way out, no way to get us out.

Ephesians tells us that we are dead in our sins and trespasses,

that we were once that way. But then God stepped in.

God intervened. God put on flesh and live the

life that we were supposed to do.

He didn't come with plagues and signs.

He didn't come with all these commandments.

He came with his Son, God, put on flesh, dwelt among us, live

that perfect life that we were supposed to.

He was obedient when Israel failed, He when we forget, He

remembered. When we drift, He stood firm.

And then the beauty of it all is he.

He took the exodus and like magnified it and He went to the

cross and He bore the sins that and He bore the death that we

deserved, and the wrath of God was poured out.

The thing that was meant for us, the cup that was meant for you

and me, God took it on himself and He died so that through Him

you could be brought out, and not just brought out, but

brought in. He does not leave you alone and

you're wandering. He says, I have brought you out

of bondage into my family, brought into forgiveness,

brought into life, brought into relationship with God.

And so when Moses says you were once slaves, that is the shadow

in the gospel is the fulfillment.

So when your kids ask, when the next generation comes up to you

and asks, hey, why do you follow?

You don't start with rules. You start with the gospel.

You start with Jesus of this is who I was, this is who I was in

bondage. But then God stepped in and he

redeemed me and he saved me. And This is why I follow him,

because obedience is not the basis of righteousness, it's the

expression of devotion. We obey not because we get

something from it, but it's because it's the only logical

response to the sovereign Lord who paid for our sins.

Why would we not obey? And so Moses has shown us 2

paths, 2 cycles, 1 begins when you forget God, the other begins

when you remember him, when you obey, when you trust, when you

worship. And some of you in this room,

you, you hear these words of slavery, bondage, redemption,

deliverance, and, and maybe you just always thought that was for

someone else. But the reality is apart from

Christ, that is all of us, we are not as free as we think we

are. We are bound in sin.

We are under its weight. We cannot fix ourselves.

We cannot free ourselves. And the bad news is you deserve

death. But the good news of the gospel

is that there is life in Jesus. The good news is that God does

not leave his people there. He steps in.

And if you have never trusted him, this is where your response

begins. Not with trying harder, not with

cleaning yourself up, but with surrender, with faith, with

saying God, I need to be rescued because I cannot do it myself.

And for those of you who do know him, this passage should press

you in a different way because the question is not have you

been brought out, but what are you passing on?

Because your life is not neutral.

It is shaping someone. It is forming someone, it is

teaching someone. And so parents, you feel that.

So let me ask you a question that has been on my heart this

week is, are your children learning from your words, from

your example, from your experiences, your expectations?

Are they learning that you care about nothing more than this,

that their lives would be fully spent for the Lord Jesus Christ?

Do they know clearly, consistently, unmistakably that

that your greatest desire for them is not success?

It's not comfort, it's not reputation, it's not a good job,

it's not marrying the right person, it's not even about

making you proud, but your greatest desire for them is that

they would belong fully to the Redeemer and live for His glory.

The Lord has been wrecking my heart this week with this.

That is, that is something that we pray with Judah and Silas

every night. It's not that, oh man, they'd be

amazing, man, which we want that, but we pray that God, you

would bring them out of their bondage, that they would follow

after you. That is our greatest desire

because they are asking and any of the even if they don't say it

out loud, they're asking you what will you give them?

What will you give them rules or will you give them a reason?

Will you give them expectations or will you give them the story

of their Savior and church? This is not just on parents.

We are a people. We are called to preserve the

truth, to model faithfulness, and to pass it on to the next

generation. Everyone of you in this room is

shaping someone. So what does your life make

clear about him? If someone watched your life

closely, what would you say? What would they say you worship?

What would they say matters most in your life?

Because whatever that is, that is what you are passing on.

So maybe for you the response is simple.

You need to remember again, you've been drifting, your heart

has been pulled in other directions and today the moment

is to come back. Maybe for you the response is

repentance. The there are things you've been

going after. There have been parts of your

heart that you have given to something else that you need to

go back and trust God. Maybe today is the moment to

turn. And maybe for you the response

is responsibility to stop assuming faith will just carry

over and start intentionally passing it on in your home and

your conversations in your life. And maybe for some of you, this

is the moment you trust Christ for the first time.

So as we respond now, as Jeff comes and leads us in a time of

response, don't just think about what you've heard.

Think about what your life is becoming, because the question

is not what do I believe? The question is, what will the

next generation inherit from me? Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your word.

God, I thank you for this warning that Moses gave the

Israelites years and years ago, but it's still true for us

today. Now, God, our hearts are still

prone to wander. We are still guilty of, of, of

falling away from our first love and putting other things in, in

your place. And God, I am thank, I am so

grateful that that the story did not end for Israel in Egypt, but

that you brought them out. So that means that you came and

you stepped in because God, we know that that the Scripture

tells us that all of us have sinned and we've fallen short of

the glory of God and that the punishment of that is death.

And the beauty of the gospel is that you paid it, God.

So I pray for the hearts in this room that don't know that that

they are still living in bondage to whatever sin has a hold of

them. I pray that your spirit would

break those chains and deliver them.

And God, I pray for the one that's drifting, the one that's

forgotten you, the one that's that's bought into the lies of

the world. I pray that you would use this

morning in your word to bring them back to you.

God, man, we go live out what we know is true.

See you name we pray, Amen. Thanks for listening.

To learn more about Heritage Church or if you'd like to

respond to this sermon, visit our website at

www.heritageshawnee.org.