VISION SERIES: Make All Things New
TEXT: Judges 2:6-11
MESSAGE: Encouraging The Next Generation
Q: Who has been a positive spiritual influence in your life?
“I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.” — 2 Timothy 1:5
“For a long time, the church declined and no one really cared…And now people are seeing the decline and saying, ‘Wow, this is really becoming a problem now.’ We have reached an inflection…” — Ryan Burge
TEXT: Judges 2:6-11
“It took only one generation for the memory of the great things God had done for Israel under Joshua to grow dim, and with it true knowledge of God himself.” — Barry Webb
“Chapter 2:6–3:6 is a second introduction to the book of Judges, which is best read parallel to 1:1–2:5. But it is not only an introduction: it is a summary of the whole book. In it, the narrator lays out the cycle of Israelite spiritual experience which we will see repeated through the book. And, while 2:4–5 offered some hope for Israel’s future, as the half-hearted people wept at their disobedience and offered sacrifices to God, this second introduction, by taking us further in time, ends on a much more depressing note about the spiritual state of God’s people (3:5–6).” — Timothy Keller
Q: What does spiritual influence look like from Generation to Generation and what can we learn from today’s text? Well, we see three stages in today’s text: (1) Flash back (2) Critical Moment (3) Flash forward
- Flash Back (v. 6-7)
“When Joshua dismissed the people, the people of Israel went each to his inheritance to take possession of the land. 7 And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel.”
“…the crucial factor was that there were still in Israel a personal knowledge of the Lord’s redeeming work, and people who had directly experienced the rescue from Egypt and the moulding of a new nation.” — Michael Wilcock
- Critical Moment (v. 8-9)
“And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. 9 And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash.”
- Flash Forward (v. 10-11)
“And 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. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals.”
“It is always impossible to lay blame neatly when one generation fails to pass its faith on to the next one. Did the first generation fail to reach out, or did the second generation just harden their hearts? The answer is usually both. Mistakes made by a Christian generation are often magnified in the next, nominal, one. Commitment is replaced by complacency and then by compromise.” — Timothy Keller
TAKEAWAYS:
- Reflect back on all God has done
- See the opportunity we have right now
“The most pervasive and common thread of our autopsies was that the deceased churches lived for a long time with the past as hero. They held on more tightly with each progressive year. They often clung to things of the past with desperation and fear. And when any internal or external force tried to change the past, they responded with anger and resolution: “We will die before we change.” ― Thom S. Rainer, Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 12 Ways to Keep Yours Alive
- Prepare the next generation
“Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, 2 and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done?” — Judges 2:1-2