Deuteronomy 11:21 That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.
Yesterday I was privileged to preach in a church that I had been in numerous times before as a kid. My dad is an evangelist and had held revival meetings there. It is always shocking to me to go back to churches I visited as a child. The last time I was there the pastor was, of course, old enough to be my father, and now the pastor is younger than I am. How things change! Suddenly I am in the place my parents were in, my parents are in the place my grandparents were in, and my kids are in the place where I was when I was a kid.
Something I am reminded of from reading Deuteronomy 11 is that you are the one living in the now. Regardless of how old you are, a grandparent, a teenager, or someone in between, you are the one living in the now. In Deuteronomy 11:21 Moses is telling the people to store up God’s truth “that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers.” The three generations here are “you,” “your children,” and “your fathers.” That is important to remember.
God had said in Deuteronomy 5 that He had made His covenant not with their fathers but with them. Now God had made a covenant with the fathers, but the point is that it included them. Moreover, their fathers at this point had died. All the people of the previous generation, except Joshua, Caleb and Moses, were gone. God is saying, “Whatever the previous generation knew, you are the ones living now, the ones to whom I am giving this land now.”
In Deuteronomy 11:2 Moses reminded the children of Israel, “And know ye this day: for I speak not with your children which hath not known…” The children did not know what God had done in the past. They weren’t there. God is telling them that their parents are gone and their children were not there when they were growing up, so they are the ones who are relevant in what God plans.
Deuteronomy 11:7 says, “But your eyes have seen.” They were the ones who were to take responsibility. Their parents, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others, had been given a promise by God, but their parents were gone. Their children would develop the land that they had not yet inherited, but were too young to do anything at the moment. The children of Israel whom God was addressing were the ones living in the now. That is why the Bible says “therefore” in verse 8. He is basically saying, “Because you are the ones living in the now, you have a choice. If you do right, you will prosper. If you do wrong, then you will not.” There is an “if/then” proposition that is given in much of the rest of chapter 11.
Deuteronomy 11:19 says that they were to teach their children. We can be very prone to blaming our parents or giving up the responsibility of our kids, and neither one is a good place to be. Both are excessive. Do our parents have any effect on what we are now? Of course! Do our children have a free will? Of course! But that does not absolve us of the responsibility of where we are now. You are the one living in the now whether you are fifteen or ninety-five. There are people who came before you and there are people who will most certainly come after you. The point is to learn from your past and to teach for the future but to live right now.