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Caring for the Next Generation

Thank the Lord that the message doesn't change because God doesn't change. He's eternal and His word will be true and absolute forever, from generation to generation.

 

Psalm 78:1-8 -

1              Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;

incline your ears to the words of my mouth!

2              I will open my mouth in a parable;

I will utter dark sayings from of old,

3               things that we have heard and known,

that our fathers have told us.

4               We will not hide them from their children,

but tell to the coming generation

the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,

and the wonders that he has done.

5               He established a testimony in Jacob

and appointed a law in Israel,

which he commanded our fathers

to teach to their children,

6               that the next generation might know them,

the children yet unborn,

and arise and tell them to their children,

7              so that they should set their hope in God

and not forget the works of God,

but keep his commandments;

8               and that they should not be like their fathers,

a stubborn and rebellious generation,

a generation whose heart was not steadfast,

whose spirit was not faithful to God.

 

Today I'm wondering if we've ever stopped to think about the importance of caring for the next generation.

 

Let's pray together: Father, we thank you that you've given to us exhortation to care for the next generation— not just providing material needs, but providing especially the needs of the heart, the needs of the soul. Thank you, Lord, for the exhortation of your word today as we think about it and pray, Lord, that as we comprehend the importance of caring for that next generation that we would be diligent to heed your exhortation. So now, Lord, we pray you'd bless as we've read your word, as we think about it, and as we seek to apply it, that the Lord Jesus might be uplifted and glorified in our midst. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

 

Henry Brooks Adams was a 19th century historian. I'd never heard of him, but evidently in his day he was a well-known historian and publisher of history books. And at an early age, he started keeping a diary and it's recorded in his diary when he was eight years of age, he says, “Went fishing with father, the most glorious day of my life” and for the next 40 years, he repeatedly made reference to that day with his father as the most glorious day of his life.

 

Interestingly, his father was also a well-known individual named Charles Francis Adams. He was Abraham Lincoln's ambassador to London, a man of prominence in his day. And he, too, kept a diary. Well, that's probably where the son got the idea, saw a father writing in his diary and took up the practice of keeping a diary. And the father’s dairy as well has an entry for that same date, the date that was the son's most glorious day. And so what did Charles Francis Adams write on his diary in that day? He said, "Went fishing, a day wasted."

 

It's kind of sad when you think about that. He did not comprehend that here the impact and the input that he had into the life of his own son, he didn't really value. Now we shouldn't stand in judgment of him. We don't know how he lived the rest of his life, it still brings home to our awareness of the fact that we need to know that God has exhorted us that we never know the missed opportunities to make an impact on the next generation.

 

So I do hope that you value that and you'll take it to heart. So God's word exhorts us to be intentional about the care for the next generation.

 

We'd like to think from Psalm 78:1-8, particularly give us that exhortation that's in many places of scripture. But these verses of the psalm tells us that there's three things that we need to communicate in order to care for the next generation: the wonders, Word, and works of God.


The Wonders of God (Psalm 78:1-4)

 

Psalm 78:1-4 says, “1 Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth! 2 I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old, 3          things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. 4  We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.”

 

Keep in mind that this psalm is speaking of a time when the Israelites had come out of Egypt and certainly they had wonders, didn't they? The parting of the Red Sea was something that never before was seen. How the Israelites were led by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Those certainly were the wonders of God. And the one generation was told to pass on the knowledge of that to the next generation— that God had done wonders that we had not experienced.

 

Well, we may not have experienced wonders like that, but certainly we can think of our world and the wonderful things that God has done in our world. Our world today tries to teach the kids that we all just happened. There was this big bang of this energy. Well, where'd the energy come from? We don't know that, but it happened. That's what the kids are taught today.

 

No, the wonder of God is that he created our world. He created our world, this universe. And he created a wonderful and beautiful world. And he created a world that has intricacies. And these are the wonders of God. And we need to tell the next generation that we just didn't happen here; that we are the direct and deliberate work of God. These wonders that he has performed in our world. We need to point that out to people, need to point that out to the next generation.

 

And not only that, how he shaped history. God shaped and molded history. I'm always amazed when I read of our own country coming to into existence and how a ragtag bunch of farmers and merchants overcame the largest and most powerful army in the world at that time. How did that happen? Well, it's curious that a number of critical events that gave those colonists the victory was the weather. Who controls the weather? And that time after time, weather enabled them to have an advantage. Well, those are the wonders of God that when they needed to move their cannons, the ground froze and they rolled the cannons. This was here in New Jersey, rolled their cannons down to Trenton. And by the same token, when the when the British came after them, they had a thaw and the British cannons got mired in the mud. Isn't it interesting that God let them escape by using ice and thwarted the enemy by using mud? See, the generals didn't do that. That's the wonders of God.

 

So we can see the shaping of our universe. We can see the hand of God in in history. And we need to point these things out as the wonders of God, need to point them out and communicate them to the next generation— the wonders of God.

 

The Word of God (Psalm 78:5-6)

 

We care for the next generation by communicating the word of God. And the primary place the word of God tells us of communicating the word of God, his truth, is in the home. And we see that in um a number of places.

 

We see that particularly in Deuteronomy 6:5-9 where it says, "5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

 

The word of God says that we communicate the word of God to our next generation. You do it in lots of ways. You have symbols in your home. You have things that you talk about in your home about the word of God. The fact that you pray at home. You pray for your meal. Things like this is the way that we communicate the word of God in our home. Home is that primary place. And did you notice as we read that the multigenerational aspect of this says the things that you heard from your fathers, you communicate to the next generation— multigenerational in the home.

 

Somebody once wrote, I don't know who, but somebody said the kind of Christian you are at home is the kind of Christian you really are. We all know that you go in the house and you shut the door and well, you just might be a little bit different person than the people see in public. And if we're all honest, we know that's true. So the kind of Christian you are at home, the way you are with your own children, the way you are with their grandparents, whatever generation you're talking about, it's in the home that it becomes very focal.

 

That's where it begins. God ordained that that it should start that way and we should have that sense in the home and that we are his and we convey that through word and action and everything about our home. We convey that and particularly the word of God. The word of God needs to be something that's in the home. The word of God is something that's read and revered and honored. That's what God has told us to do.

 

And you know this whole idea of communicating to the next generation doesn't only need to be your family. It can be people outside your family.

 

I love this little story that we tell here from time to time. It was the year 1902. And in Metuchen, there was a man named William Crowell. He owned a feed store because people didn't drive cars. They had to feed those horses and they need feed of whatever they had, chicken feed or whatever. In 1902, he had a burden for the children, not just his own. He had a son who at the time was a young adult, but he had a burden that these children of the community should hear the word of God taught. For you see, there were no Sunday schools anywhere in Middlesex County at the time. No Sunday schools. Yes, there were churches, but they didn't particularly have Sunday school to teach the children. And this was his burden, and this was his vision.

 

And so he gathered a group of people around him and they founded a Sunday school. And that Sunday school eventually became a church, the First Baptist Church of Metuchen, by the vision of a man who wanted to communicate to the next generation the word of God. Not just his own family. His son was one of the charter members of the church too. He and his wife and his son and 20-some other people were charter members of this congregation. But it began with a vision. I never met Mr. Crowell obviously, but I wonder what role Psalm 78 played in his burden for teaching children the word of God. He certainly had that burden and sought to communicate the word of God to children.

 

The next generation of believers isn't always somebody that's younger than you. Because sometimes people come to the Lord at an older age, not as a child, maybe even in middle age. And that generation, the new generation of new believers needs to be discipled. They need to be encouraged. They need to have the word of God communicated to them. And we can have a role in that. That can be part of what our lives are all about too.

 

The Works of God (Psalm 78:7-8)

 

We care for the next generation by communicating the works of God in Psalm 78:7-8, “7 so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; 8 and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.”

 

Let’s turn to Psalm 145:3-7, “3 Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable. 4 One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. 5 On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. 6 They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness. 7 They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.”

 

Now we might debate between the distinction between the wonders of God and the works of God. And I guess we don't have to get too hairsplitting in the definition, but to me, the works of God are things that are more personal that God has done in your life.

 

And it takes eyes to see that— to look at life and say, "No, the Lord did this. The Lord helped you in some way" and to communicate that particularly to the next generation as to how the Lord has helped you and the Lord has worked in your life and to develop the eyes to see that God has done something very particular and his works in helping you in your life and give credit and honor to the way God has blessed you and not say that we lucked out on that one.

 

Now when we talk about the works of God, I think we can say there's a personal element of how you know that God has worked in your life and to be very intentional about communicating that to the next generation.

 

Now, it's interesting what follows in Psalm 78. We didn't read the whole psalm, but there's 72 verses to the psalm. We only read eight.

 

Psalm 78:8 it's a pivotal verse in the rest of the psalm. In verse 8, it says, “and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.”

 

And at that point, the psalm pivots and it begins to talk about all of the things of the generations that followed; what the psalmist is talking about— the disloyalty of the people, the murmurings of the people, the meaningless repentance that the people gave, the new beginnings that were short-lived, and the ingratitude. It goes on and on and on.

 

You see, it's a story of generations. Perhaps one generation failed to teach the things of God and another generation failed to heed and obey the words of God. It goes both ways because there were generations that were faithful to the Lord and they taught and the next generation didn't want to hear it and said, "Don't tell me that stuff." And other generations, they had their children, but they strayed from the Lord. And all of the things mentioned from verses 9 through 72 were recorded as people who departed from the Lord.

 

So, it goes back and forth between the generations of those who failed to teach and those who failed to listen. The word of God comes to us and we're told that we should care by communicating the works of God and not forget what God has done.

 

Applications

 

So, let's bring that down to our generation, to your generation. Let's make this personal to us. I'd like to suggest four applications to you depending on which generation you fall into.

 

1.    For the Older Generation – Be Intentional

 

The exhortation that comes to us is to be intentional. You don’t want to get to the end of life and wonder if you talked to them enough about this or teach them enough about that or communicate enough of the wonders of God and the works of God and the word of God.

 

See, you need to be intentional about it. If you're not intentional about it, it won't happen. If you don’t get up in the morning and say, “How can I communicate to the next generation what you mean to me, Lord?”

 

So, the older generation needs to teach intentionally.

 

And conversely, the younger generation needs to listen and learn to follow. So, you see, it speaks to both generations in both directions— to be intentionally teaching and to learn to follow.

 

2.    For the Older Generation – Sympathize with the Younger Generation

 

Sympathize with the younger generation and the world that they're experiencing. The world they experience is not the world you grow up in. The world you grew up in is far different today.

 

So very much the younger generation lives in a in a world of relative truth. No absolute truth. They’re taught that there are no absolutes.

 

“There is no God.” How can there be morality without an absolute God? Without an absolute eternal God, how can you have rules and laws and commandments to obey that are absolute?

 

Sympathize with a generation that's taught that it may be true for you, but it's not true for me, a generation that's told to create their own reality, to create their own version of truth. Truth that may be different for people.

 

Sympathize with a generation that's raised in that kind of an environment.

 

Sympathize with a generation that's told they need to make their own reality. And a generation that likewise has become confused. Confused about their identity. Confused about the pressures of this world. Confused when they perhaps try to

present Christianity and are met not just with indifference but with hostility.

 

Oh, you believe the Bible? How could you believe the Bible? People who believe the Bible are haters.

 

Well, a generation has to grow up knowing that and have pressure of their peers.

 

Older generation, we weren't raised in that environment. We need to have a sympathy for a generation that's raised that way. They have many competing voices and be sensitive to that. That in some ways, your voice is just one of many voices. Ask for God's help to penetrate to that.

 

3.    For the Younger Generation – Learn from the Older Generation

 

Younger generation, learn to learn from the successes and failures of the older generation. Too often the attitude could be that those old geysers don't know anything. Life is different. Life is new. And we live in technology age. And they can't even make the cell phone work, right?

 

I teach high school kids, 12th graders, and the school gives me a laptop. I never had a laptop. What do you do with this thing? I mean, I can type, but I can't type on that flat little board and you got to do all this and that and the other thing.

 

Well, younger generation, you have a little bit of sympathy for an older generation that was not raised with it. I was in the supermarket the other day. There's a little kid who couldn’t even talk yet, sitting in the shopping cart. The kid's got mommy's cell phone and held it up to his ear. He can't talk, but knows what the cell phone is for.

 

Well, the older generation didn't have all that stuff. Have a little bit of sympathy for the world they did grow up in. I mean, they grew up in a world that some of those who are closer to my generation will remember this.

 

When I grew up, we did not just have fire drills. All kids have had fire drills in school, right? Not a single person in this room didn't grow up having a fire drill. How many of you had air raid drills? Yeah, a few of you, right? Air raid drills because we're afraid the Russians were going to unleash atomic bombs on us. And so when you heard it, it was a different siren from the one for the fire drill. You had to learn the difference between the two.

 

When you heard the second one, you crawled under your desk. I have no idea what they thought the desk was going to protect you from. Let alone nuclear radiation. Like the desk is really going to protect you from nuclear radiation. I don't think so. It's going to melt the desk right on top of you. We grow up with that.

 

What's that make you think about the world you grow up in? That certainly was as in every sense of the word as uncertain a world as the young people grow up today.

 

Young people, remember they had that. I guess young people still need to when they turn 18 register themselves with the government. You maybe they don't even think about it. I talk about that to the 12th graders that I was speaking about. When I was your age, you registered and you could be drafted and sent to war. Like it or not, you were going and you only had a couple choices. You either could go to Canada or you could go to the military and go to war. And these students said, "What? Just be forced to have your life interrupted?” That was the world I grew up in. To be against your own desire to be sent somewhere where people were shooting at you.

 

In all of these millennia, the human heart hasn't changed. Humanity is still doing to other people what they've always done for years. They've stolen from them and they've invaded them and they've killed them and you name it. None of that's changed. The cause isn't because there was lack of education or poverty or social pressure. No, it's the sin of the heart that's always been around.

 

And so, younger generation, understand that we all grow up with the same problem. We all grow up with the same sin problem. Younger generation, realize that your older generation grew up feeling some of the same pressures. They were maybe a little different shape or form, but it was the same thing.

 

4.    For Both Generations – Distinguish Between the Changeable and the Unchangeable

 

Now, we all know that certain things change, our styles change, right? When I was 18, we grew sideburns. So, what happened? The middle-aged guys, they wanted to feel young again, so they grew sideburns. And so, the younger generation, they thought, "No, we don't want to be identified or mistaken for those guys, so we grow our hair long." Not me, but grew our hair long. And so the middle-aged guys, what did they do? They grew their hair long, too.

 

When I was 18, I had bell bottom pants. When's the last time you saw a bell bottoms and they were plaid, too, right? Today, you pull them out. Oh, you know, people laugh at you. They laugh you right out of the building, right? I even preached in bell-bottom plaid pants. And that's because all the men in sitting in the pews were wearing plaid bell bottom pants.

 

All that stuff changes, doesn't it? You have all sorts of fashions and hairstyles and whatever.

 

Methods change, right? When I grew up, we didn't have guitars, let alone electric guitars. The piano was acoustic, but the main instrument was a pipe organ.

 

Our methods need to change. Our methods communicate different things, give us different means of communication, and we sometimes we hang on to the old and we don't want to let go of the old. Well, if it's just a method, it can change.

 

There's no harm in changing some methods. But there's some things that are unchangeable. And that is the message that we preach.

 

God is unchangeable. And if God is unchangeable, his Word is unchangeable. And if his word is unchangeable, what we preach is his message.

 

I go every year, for the last 45 years, to Nova Scotia to a Bible camp there and taught kids, taught them the word of God.

Two summers ago, I was in the airport in Halifax and there's this guy and he was flying to Ottawa and his flight was delayed and he's walking around bored as anything and so he starts talking to me. I didn't even have to open the conversation.

 

He starts talking to me “Do you live here or are you going on a trip? Are you on the delayed flight?”

 

I could tell what was the burr under his saddle right away. Anyway, his flight was delayed. Was I on the delayed flight? No. No. “I'm going to Toronto to connect to Newark.”

 

He asked, “Oh, do you live there or do you going on?”

 

I said I said, "No, I come up here every year. I've been doing it for 45 years. Come to this Bible camp.”

 

He asked, “You what? You teach them the Bible?”

 

I replied, “Yeah, I teach them the Bible.”

 

He asked, “And you've been doing this for 45 years?”

 

I answered, “Yes. Yes.”

 

And then he asked me the question, "In 45 years, how has your message changed?"

 

And I said to him, “The message never changes. Yeah, in 45 years, I've had different methods as to how I communicated to them. I've had different methods as to how I would engage their interest and their attention. And those things changed because the kids, over 45 years, the kids change, too. And I noticed it. I noticed how the kids were different. But the message never changes.”

 

And then I said, "Thank you, Lord."

 

And the message is that we need Jesus Christ. Because in all these millennia, the human heart hasn't changed. We fell into sin. Our race fell into sin. And our problem for all these millennia has been our sinfulness, disobeying God and his word. And that we will be judged for our sins. But God, in his love, gave Jesus Christ to pay the price of our sin. And that when we repent of our sin and believe in faith that Jesus is our Savior, the one who gives us eternal life, we will be promised that. And that message never changes.

 

I couldn't thank the Lord enough for giving me an opportunity on a silver platter to explain the gospel to this man because the message never changes.

 

And we need to distinguish between the changeable and the unchangeable. Thank the Lord that the message doesn't change because God doesn't change. He's eternal and his word will be true and absolute forever.

 

So, may the Lord bless you as you take to heart this exhortation from his word to care for the next generation to do so with intentionality. May you take to heart the fact that this is God's word to us and that he has given us his word today to ponder it and to apply it to put it into practice.

 

Inductive Bible Study: Observation, Interpretation, Application

 

 

 Observation: What Does the Text Say?


  1. Who wrote the Psalm?

     

  2. To whom is the Psalm addressed?

     

  3. What is a maskil?

     

  4. What do the verses that follow (Psalm 78:9-72) convey?

 

Interpretation: What Does It Mean?

 

  1. Psalm 78:4 mentions the “wonders of the Lord.” To what does this refer?

     

  2. Is there a distinction between the “wonders of the Lord” (Psalm 78:4) and the “works of the Lord” (Psalm 78:7)?

     

  3. What are the people instructed to communicate to their children (Psalm 78:7)?

     

  4. Where is the primary place for this instruction to take place?

 

Application: How Should We Respond?

 

  1. What are the implications of these commands for the older generation?

     

  2. What are the implications of these commands for the younger generation?

     

  3. What do both generations need to discern about the message communicated and the methods by which the message is communicated?


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