Day 91/365- Judges 2:10, 17

"One Generation"

After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel.
Yet Israel did not listen to the judges but prostituted themselves by worshiping other gods. How quickly they turned away from the path of their ancestors, who had walked in obedience to the Lord 's commands. (Judges 2:10, 17 NLT)

The last verse of Judges is one of the saddest verses in the Bible & characterizes the condition of God's people. Judges 21:5 says, "In those days there was no king in Israel & everyone did what was right in their own eyes."

The people loved the Lord & followed him all the days of Joshua & the elders that served with Joshua. After their death, just one generation later, the people stopped following the Lord. Judges 2:17 marvels at how "quickly" the people had abandoned the Lord for other gods. All that the Lord had done for them seems waisted. The parting of the Red Sea is forgotten. The ten plagues are no longer remembered. The Passover is not practiced. The tabernacle lies empty. God's people do not know God.

This did not happen in 2,000 years of decline. It did not take place over 100 years of compromise. It happened when one generation assumed that the next knew the Lord. They did not pass on their faith to the next generation. They did not tell the stories about how the Lord brought them out of slavery, preserved them in the wilderness, fed them with manna, & gave them water from a rock. They did not pass on how God parted the Jordan River, broke down the walls of Jericho, & gave them an inheritance all their own. They simply failed to pass on their faith to the next generation & one generation was all it took to create a pattern of ungodliness that persisted for centuries.

We cannot overemphasize the importance of passing our faith to the next generation. If our kids grow up in our homes & know how to throw a ball, calculate math, recite poetry & literature, & develop a career but do not know Jesus then we have failed. Jesus is not a item on our calendar or a weekend activity. He must be the center of our world! We must lead our homes & families to follow him in a love relationship or who knows what the next generation will be like? Who knows if they will be kingdom minded? Who knows if they will have a heart for the nations? We don't need moral kids that turn out to be good citizens. We need an army of Jesus followers who are living their lives for him. All of this starts at home. We are always just one generation away from walking away from the Lord.