The Long Furrow

A farmer was teaching his son to plow. He said “Son, that first furrow you cut in the field is the most important. So get a pole and stick it on the ground at one end of the field where you want to end up. Then keep that pole right between the mule’s ears as you. When you get to the end, it will be straight.”


The son did what his father. He got a stick and set it in the ground where he wanted to end.

The father saw what his son is doing and shook his head. “That pole’s not tall enough. You’re gonna need a bigger pole.”

The son argued. “Maybe you do, with your old eyes, but I can see that well enough. I don’t see any reason for me to have to go find another pole.”

“Suit yourself, but you’re gonna need a bigger pole.”

So the boy started plowing. At first it was easy to keep the pole sight between the mule’s ears. But as he got closer and the day grew hot sweat got in his eyes. As he got closer the angle of the mule got in the way. He lost sight of the pole

“I should have had a bigger pole,” he said.

Young believers think the path is simple--just follow God and obey his commandments. Simple, easy truths owe think sufficient to get us through life,. But we underestimate life’s complexity. Truth is never so easy as that.

Most people think that as long as they start off right, they will end right. But the beginning is not where we get lost. It is middle age and old age where people lose track of the path. We have time to discover our mistakes when we are young. We don’t have time when we are old.

Life is a long furrow. It requires diligence and clarity to keep straight all the way to the end.

Old people, let me ask you--do you remember names and dates better now, or when you were young? Is your eyesight better now, or when you were young? If our memory and our eyesight was better then, what makes us think our memory for God’s truth is any better?

Wisdom does not come with age. Wisdom is enlightened stupidity. A wise man is a fool who learned from his foolishness. If we do not have the courage to be fools, the humility to make mistakes, and the flexibility to change, we will never be wise.

Moses was just such an enlightened fool. Before Israel reached the promised land, Moses got them all together and gave them a five lectures. These are known as the Deuteronomy—the Second Law. The first law was at Sinai, at the beginning of their wanderings. But that was forty years earlier. It was time for a refresher course. The message is the same, but this time it focuses more on motivation. In the promised land everything was about to change, so he had to raised the pole of wisdom higher. Same pole, different circumstances.

That pole is the same now as it was three thousand years ago—love God and keep His commandments. Don’t just love God because feeling without actions is foolishness. Don’t just keep His commandments, because obedience without emotion will never last. We need both—love and actions.

In the audience were people of all ages. But Moses does not address them all. He focuses on his own generation.

(1-7) Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the LORD your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm; the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea as they were pursuing you, and how the LORD brought lasting ruin on them.

It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the desert until you arrived at this place, and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth right in the middle of all Israel and swallowed them up with their households, their tents and every living thing that belonged to them. But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the LORD has done.

It isn’t your children who need this message, but yourselves.

Old people think that older is better. Their music is always better than modern music. Their age was better, their lives were simpler, and their world was safer. Never mind that almost none of this is true, that’s what they believe. Today is not better or worse than yesterday, it is simply different.

The old have the unrealistic expectation that the young are going to listen to them, even though they did not listen to their parents. We learned by making mistakes, but we hope they will learn by listening to our wise counsel.

Quit looking at your kids and start looking to yourselves. Your kids may not know better but you should. Their children didn’t see God deliver them from Egypt, but Moses’ did. They did not see how God punished the wicked, you did. They did not see how God provided manna in the desert and water out of stone, when their stomachs were hungry for bread and their tongue was swollen from lack of water.

This was a critical moment for Israel, just before the entered the Promised Land. It was a time of parting. Moses had been their leader for over forty years, but he was about to leave them and another was about to take over. Along with Moses, went all his contemporaries, his lifelong friends. They may not be dying, but they are about to step into a less active role. Their children will fight wars, face enemies, and slay giants. Whey will fight arthritis, fatigue, and boredom. Each has its own unique challenges.

The end of life is not the time to get our eyes off the pole, to forget the greatness and might of the Lord. Now is the time to shout it from the rooftops, to tell it to or children and grandchildren, to fix it in their minds and hearts. Their promised land is different from ours, but God remains the same. He is the one unchangeable thing in a revolving and evolving universe.

Moses tells us in 8

Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess,

My generation was the “baby boom” generation. That means I was born in the earl Fifties to parents who had lived through the Great Depression and World War II. They had a hard life growing up, and they were determined to make life better for their children.

And we did have it better—we had it better than any other generation in the history of the world. We lived in more luxury than the kings of old. But it was a false luxury, created by parents who sheltered us from the storm. As we grew up, we gradually (and lately) found that life was a great deal harder than we thought it was. We couldn’t spend all our times in bell bottom trousers, singing songs on hillsides with flowers in our hair. Someone had to work to pay the bills. We needed to learn to be strong and self-reliant.

It’s amazing how a few wars a good recession can improve the work ethic of an entire generation. But nothing, no human circumstance can help the person who will not love God and keep His commandments. You cannot change the laws of the universe. Idolatry and immorality still lead to ruin. Godliness, goodness, and love still lead to happiness. Without Godliness and obedience, we will leave nothing of value behind for the next generation.

Moses adds in verse 9 and so that you may live long in the land that the LORD swore to your forefathers to give to them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Retirement is a kind of promised land. We save up all our lives to be able to afford it. Most of us have images of travel, hobbies, free time, sleeping late, and so on. But many of us never live to see that promised land. We don’t save our money. We let ourselves get fat and lazy, until diabetes and heart disease catch up with us. All the time we are saying to ourselves that we have plenty of time to turn around. Tomorrow, we will start to save, not today. Tomorrow, we’ll diet and exercise, not today. Then tomorrow comes and, like the grasshopper, not the and in Aesop’s fable, we have nothing laid up for the winter of our lives.

Even if we take care of our bodies and store up our treasure, we are still not prepared for retirement, unless we are spiritually prepared. We may live on beyond the years of all our contemporaries, but why do we want to? What will we be living for? Life at the end can be a hell and a horror, unless understand its reasons. Life is loving God. Life is keeping His commandments. We can enjoy it to the end, if we know what we are living for.

The next thing he says is more to the old than to the young. 10-12

The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden.

But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.

When you get to your promised land, you are going to have to live differently. While you lived in Egypt, you were slaves, but you were allowed to keep a garden. Your master allowed you to hook your gardens into the Egyptian irrigation system, so you were able to have water in the desert. This gave you some sense of control over your destiny. But the land you are going into is not like that. It’s going to be a lot harder to have gardens. You are going to have to depend upon the rain and the weather. God is going to be your source of sustenance, just like he was in the desert. You are going to have to learn to depend upon Him,

What a parable of age! All our lives we live with the illusion of control. We think that the food on our table is merely there because we earned it, and we think that we will continue to earn our way. No one has to do for us, we’ll do for ourselves, thank you. But this is an illusion. All we do, everything we have is in God’s hands. All of us are one heartbeat away from losing it all and standing before our God.

We don’t like losing control in our lives, but we do. We all do. We actually never had it. So we must come back to the beginning. Love God, and keep His commandments. It is the beginning and end of wisdom.

How high is your pole? How straight is our furrow? Do you still have your eye on God?