Summer 2025 | Pass It On - Deuteronomy 6 | July 20

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North Carolina, where we live as real people who are a part of a real family

serving a real God in the high country.

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Let me pray for us. How about that? God, we thank you.

We thank you for being here today with us. and you promised that you would never

leave us, you would never forsake us.

And we just celebrate your continued

persistent presence that never turns away, that is always with us.

Whether we feel it or not, Lord, we rejoice and we remind ourselves of that truth that you are here.

And we are so grateful for that, God, that we have the constant companion to

walk with us through life, to empower us by your spirit, to help us move into

the person that you've created us to be.

So this is all for you. And we just pray that as we hear your word this morning,

that we would receive it in our hearts, in our minds,

that you would form us, God, that you would form our thoughts,

that you would form everything about us,

that we, our lives would just be saturated with your story.

The story of a God who loves and created us to be loved and to love and who

has pursued us to the very end,

to the greatest depths that we might get to live in your presence, God.

So we thank you. We praise you. We pray that you would enable us to pass that

story on to future generations. Amen.

So, let me start out with this. There was a man in 1874 named Richard Dugdale,

and he was commissioned by the New York State Department of Correction to go

into the prisons and these reformatories,

as they called them, places where criminals were either housed or went through

programs to reintegrate them into society.

And as he was doing this study for the state of New York, he noticed a particular family.

Well, what he discovered was a family. He realized that there were these people

who would get picked up by the same people over and over again,

different people that would come and pick up different groups of people.

And what he realized is that this was a large family, uncles,

cousins, brothers, brothers.

And so he, upon realizing that there was this large family who many members

had found themselves in these state institutions, he set out to kind of ask this question,

could criminality and this object poverty be traced through families,

through family systems, through hereditary, through environment, through society?

Like what is what's the factors in this this

this family that he observed and he called them the jukes

that was not their real name but he he called them this

and and over the years this has been sensationalized to like one progenitor

that is called max jukes who wasn't a never real person and like it's just been

sensationalized to make a point but the real study he was able to trace somewhere

around 700 members of this family that he called the Jukes.

And he traced them in regards to where they were, what they did,

what they were dealing with in life, and found 29 of these relatives,

of these 700, had been convicted of crimes.

128 were prostitutes. 140 were on the public welfare system.

Seven were murderers. 60 were habitual thieves.

So he traced this lineage and discovered that from whatever family line existed,

there was something that had kept a lot of these members of family within the system.

And by contrast, what several people have noted over the years is we can actually

look back 100 years before that and look at a family who also had a lot of children.

Of course, the famous Puritan theologian, Jonathan Edwards.

He and his wife had 11 children, so quite a large family.

And of these 11 children, as the descendants spread on as well in the same way,

and the hundreds, you find something very different.

You find among their descendants were one U.S.

Vice president, which was his grandson, three U.S.

Senators, 100 plus lawyers and judges, 60 plus doctors, 13 college presidents,

100 plus missionaries, ministers, and professors,

many people who were college presidents, as I mentioned, and within a different

system altogether, you might say.

And so Dugdale's conclusion, I'm going to take these off, this is ridiculous.

Dugdale's conclusion was not that there is something hereditary with regard

to either criminality or to success, you might call it, or at least generational

wealth or whatever it may be,

What he ended up concluding is whatever is inherited, whatever environmental

factors there are, his eye was always on reformation.

So his conclusion was that can these factors be changed?

Can generations be changed? Not can we just assume who the criminals will be

based on their family lineage and their environment, but can we affect a future generation?

So this isn't about biology it's not about really

it is about environment and the home to a degree

because what it's about is the formation of our hearts and formation of our

minds the formation of our children the formation of generations to come everyone

is forming someone whether you have children whether you've never had children

whether your children are grown you all of us are forming someone.

And it could be our parental relationships. It could be our neighbors.

It could be our co-workers. It could be our friends.

Our lives have an effect that goes beyond ourselves.

And as we think generationally this morning,

what I want us all to realize is sort of this idea that every person,

every group, all of us must assist in the preservation and transmission of God's

revelation to the next generation.

We must all be a part of God's word moving out and the story being told from

generation to generation, not just the generation below us, but for generations to come.

In this study that Dugdale did, 700, I just messed my hair up.

700 relatives stretches multiple generations and the effects of what we do right now,

will last for generations to come that we can't see beyond.

And so your legacy, as we call it, your legacy isn't about leaving something

behind. It's not about making sure your kids have a 401k or retirement.

It's not making sure that your kids have a trust fund or a house that you leave

them or on the opposite side, medical bills to pay for.

It's not about what you leave behind with regard to stuff or money.

It's about what you're placing within them.

It's about the way that you're forming their hearts. And again,

this goes beyond children.

It's most applicable today as we talk about children directly,

but your legacy in the lives of those around you,

those whom you love and those who you spend the most time with is not about

what you contribute into them physically or monetarily or materialistically.

It's about what you are placing and forming in their hearts.

In 2 Corinthians 3, verse 2, it says, The only letter of recommendation we need is you yourselves.

2 Corinthians 3:2

Your lives are a letter written in our hearts.

Everyone can read it and recognize our good works among you.

Clearly, you are a letter from Christ showing the result of our ministry among you.

And this letter is written not with pen and ink, but with the spirit of the living God.

It is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts.

So legacy isn't about what you accumulate. It's about what you're writing in

the hearts of those around you. And I can't help but think about that.

There's an old hymn called The Love of God, which one of the lines talks about

if the ocean was filled with ink, and if every reed or star was a pen,

and if every person on earth was ascribed by trade to write the love of God

above on the parchment of the sky,

it would bleed the oceans dry.

And the scroll couldn't contain all of it even though it fills the entirety of the sky.

And this letter, this paper is people.

And the ink is the love of God that we write on their hearts and that the spirit

within us uses to write in their hearts. And so the ink is your life.

The paper is the people around you in this metaphor.

And so that's why, again, we're kind of anchoring this, the entirety of this

idea this morning about the fact that we should be invested in the transmission

of God's word. of his story for generations to come.

The next generation, the generation behind that. We have to think beyond what

we can physically see and what we can imagine.

And so what we've been talking about to you up until this point with this summer

series idea that we've taken a break from Acts to do is this idea of soaking

in the word of God, being saturated by the word of God,

being filled with his word that our thoughts would be replaced by the thoughts of God.

And what we meditate on most is not the desires of our own heart, but on His Word.

And so Eugene Peterson, you might know him as the person who wrote the message

translation of the Bible.

He's a pastor. He passed away a few years ago, I think. But he said that discipleship

is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less

and less attention to our own.

And so that's what we've been circling around, replacing our thoughts with God's

thoughts, letting scripture inhabit us, letting it get into our bones.

This is the idea we've been circling.

But here's where we need to get to this morning, that reading the word of God,

saturating ourselves in what he says, isn't just about us.

We read and we saturate ourselves and we meditate on God's word for others as well.

It's not just of benefit to us, but as we immerse ourselves in God's word,

we're not just stockpiling knowledge. We're not just learning more things.

The Bible actually says that as we learn more, we heap on ourselves a greater

responsibility, right?

So we're not just acquiring knowledge. What we're doing is allowing the word

of God to transform us and allowing it through us to transform others.

So we have to get to this idea that it's not just for our benefit.

In 2 Timothy 2, it says that, Paul says, what I have taught you in the presence

of many witnesses, pass on to reliable men and trust it to these other people, pass it along.

That scripture is meant to be received, but it's not just meant to be held onto.

It's meant to be given. It's meant to be passed on.

And so when you study the word of God, when you meditate on it,

when you let God's thoughts inhabit you, what you're doing in a sense is in

the same way that you would prepare a meal to deliver to someone else.

You're preparing this meal in an act of self-giving love. Right?

You're thinking about, I think about whenever, hopefully this isn't,

I guess we got Maddie's about to give birth again, but,

I was going to say, I was preaching, I was prophesying this over a few of you

ladies. You're going to be done, right, Sarah?

But when we have children, right, we get together, we prepare meals.

And we do this in love and preparation for the families that we're preparing it for.

So I imagine Maddie will have meals prepared for her in the time leading up

to the birth of her second child.

We do this as an act of self-giving love. And this is the same way as we study

and as we meditate on scriptures.

We do it not just for our own benefit, as a way of self-giving love.

Paul tells us in Colossians to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly so

that we might teach and admonish one another.

It's not just so that we can hold it in, but so that we can benefit others.

And so this is a picture of a word-saturated community that encourages and that

builds one another from the love and word of God that overflows within our hearts.

Which brings us to sort of a phrase that's a little bit of a cliche,

but it does have some ring of truth to it.

And it's this, it's that you may be the only Bible someone ever reads, if that makes sense.

That as we soak ourselves in scripture and we let God transform us more and more into the person,

to reflect the person of Christ in our life, that the word of God made flesh,

Jesus becomes flesh again as he incarnates himself through the way that we treat each other.

That when Jesus left the spirit, essentially what he commissions us to do is

to carry on his mission, to let him saturate our lives and bring his word and

mission and kingdom to other people.

So God, Christ incarnates himself through us, through his followers and his continued presence.

And so we're not reading for ourselves. We're reading for our kids.

You're reading for your neighbor. You're reading for your coworkers.

You're reading for your community around you.

That's why this is so much more important than we believe when we allow ourselves

to fall out of a rhythm of regularly being saturated with the word of God,

because we're all being formed by something.

So if we're not purposefully pursuing

the word of God, what we're doing is allowing other things to form us.

That's why it's so important, because it's not just about us.

It's about for generations and generations to come.

And all that connects to that core idea that every group must assist in the

preservation and transmission of God's revelation to the next generation,

that all of us are responsible for passing on the word of God.

So that brings us to our text this morning, which is Deuteronomy chapter 6.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

If you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and open up to that.

It's the first nine verses of the book of Deuteronomy chapter 6.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

It says, now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord

your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which

you are going over to possess it,

that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son,

by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I commanded you all

the days of your life, that your days may be long.

Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with

you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord, the God of your fathers

has promised you in a land flowing with milk and honey.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.

And with these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children. You 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, You shall bind them as signs on your hands, and they shall be

as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

So in this part of the story, Israel is camped on the edge of the promised land.

Moses is giving them his final commands.

This is what Deuteronomy is all about. He's retelling the commandments of the

Lord and this big dialogue just before they enter into the promised land.

He's passing this information along to people who were very young or perhaps

just born when they were first issued.

The generation before them had passed away. They were disobedient.

They refused to trust in God.

And so they have passed and their children haven't inherited the promise.

And so Moses is preparing them. He wants to remind them that this is what it

looks like to be God's covenant people.

As you enter to the land, this is how you obey.

This is how you teach God's word and pass it on from generation to generation.

Don't be like the generation before, circling around the desert,

not trusting God, not living in God.

With your eyes turned back towards Egypt, press on to what God has given you

as you inherit this land.

In a couple of chapters previously, Moses says, therefore,

you shall keep these statutes and his commandments, which I command you today,

that it may go well with you and with your children after you,

and that you may prolong your days in the land that your Lord God is giving you for all time.

And so as you enter this land, remember the Lord your God.

Remember all that he has passed on to you and who he is and tell that story

from generation to generation.

This section of scripture, specifically that second half that we read,

is called the Shema and it's part of one of the most important scriptures in the Jewish faith.

It's repeated still to this day by devout Jews morning and night.

And there's more to it than just these verses. It's kind of an amalgamation

of several different passages of scripture.

But the key part of it is this second half where he says, Hear,

O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

And often what would happen is the rabbi or whoever else is reciting this in

Hebrew would cover their eyes as they would say, Shema Israel,

Shema Adonai Eloheinu, Eloheinu, Eloheinu, Echad.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

This is, again, one of the most important scriptures in all of the Jewish faith.

And Shema, what the meaning is, translated, we have that here,

O Israel, but it's more than just the auditory recognition or recognition of a sound.

It is an intention of listening, an intention of thought.

It is not just taking it in, but it is walking in obedience from that word.

So that's why it's so important. And it's interesting that Jesus himself pointed

to this as he's questioned about what the greatest commandment is.

He says that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your mind, with all your strength, with all your soul.

And in the Matthew, I think it's the Matthew passage where he quotes this.

It says, he starts off, the most important is this, hear, O Israel,

the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with

all your heart, mind, strength, and soul. It is the core of what faithful living is.

It is the core of everything that flows from the spirit of God.

That faith is not just compartmentalized, but it happens everywhere in our walking,

in our sitting, in our coming, in our going.

Deuteronomy 6-7 gives this vision of faith that is woven into everyday life.

That as valuable as our time together this morning is, and as valuable as Bible

studies are, and your family devotions, which are all of immense value.

Another very valuable thing that we overlook too often is the in-between moments.

The moments that we give little attention to, but are perhaps forming those

around us more significantly than we realize.

When you're going on a family walk or a family hike, this is Moses' way of saying,

all the time, everywhere, with everyone.

All the time, everywhere, with everyone. Faith isn't something you do occasionally.

It is a definition of what your life is to be, just throughout the real messy

and beautiful thing that we call life.

And so every now and then, I have a real proud moment of parenting.

It doesn't happen very often, but occasionally it does.

And I've told this story before, but earlier this year, Kane and I got up early

and we hiked to the top of a mountain, and it was grueling.

It was five miles up. It was 4,000 feet up.

It took us two and a half hours just to get to the top.

The first third was the most difficult. It was the steepest,

and it was also dark, so that didn't help.

But the difficulty didn't abate as we got closer.

In fact, it's the closer you get to the end that you think about turning around the most.

And this is my moment of proud parenting. As we were struggling and as Canaan

was reaching his limit and wanting to turn around, my thoughts turned to the word perseverance.

And so I was able to share, what does perseverance mean?

And I encouraged Canaan by talking about that word and the fact that in life,

we're going to be tempted to give up on God.

That we're going to be tempted to believe that this God thing isn't working out for me.

It's not making my life easier. It's not giving, getting me the things that I want.

And so our temptation is to go and do it our own way.

In life, we're going to be tempted with regard to that. But the Bible says that

those who persevere to the end will be saved, that we shouldn't give up.

So I asked him, what does that mean?

And I can't remember exactly how the conversation played out,

but the realization is if we are called to persevere, then we are going to want to give up a lot.

We're not going to be instructed to persevere if the road is easy because we're

not going to be tempted to give up.

So we're going to be tempted to give up on God a lot, but those who persevere to the end will be saved.

So when we walk and when we sit, when we go about our way.

When we rise, when we sleep, may, may the word of God be always on our lips

and always on our hearts.

And may we be ready and may we be actively speaking and communicating and sharing that with others,

that we would make it a habit to share the word of God in every situation,

which I feel like is something we all can probably improve on for sure.

I can speak for myself. You won't always get it right.

You're probably going to make mistakes.

We shouldn't wait till we have a perfect.

Gospel presentation in mind because we're never going to be perfect in that.

What people are going to remember as well is not your perfect elocution.

It's not going to be your perfect word choice.

It's going to be your intentionality and your consistency over time.

That's what people are going to remember more than the fact that you may or

may not get it perfect or right every single time.

And I have two, I have two stories as we keep going.

One is I heard about this just a few weeks ago.

It was a parenting conference and a dad was teaching this session.

I don't know what the session was about, but he's teaching it. And his kid was,

one of his children was in the crowd and the son stood up and he said,

dad, I don't know if you remember this, but this is one of the most significant

events that happened in my life.

One night, I think that's wind, not thunder.

One night, I asked you a question.

And even though you had to go to work early the next morning,

even though you had meetings, even though it was an important day,

you stayed up with me till 3am talking about that question.

That one event that the dad probably forgot was one of the most significant

forming events that happened in this kid's life,

that he would sacrifice his time and not dismiss him and stay up to discuss

a question about like girls or something when he was in middle school.

So something that could have seemed insignificant made one of the most significant impacts on him.

Another story to share is I was riding in a taxi in Moldova with Mac Brock's dad.

Mac Brock is like a famous Christian singer. He was part of Elevation.

His dad was one of the board of directors of our mission organization.

So I'm taking him and another guy into the city to just like shop or something.

Me and the other guy were fairly young, had young kids.

And so he's giving parenting advice, I suppose.

And he was saying that he asked his son and daughter, I think he has two kids,

he might have more, it's been a long time, but he asked them when they were

adults, is there anything that you feel like we need to ask forgiveness for?

And he also asked them, what is it that you remember most?

And he said, the things that they brought up that hurt them the most were none

of the things that he thought he was gonna have to apologize for.

And the things that impacted them the most were things that he felt were insignificant

or had forgotten over the years.

So all of the things that he refused to give himself grace for in raising his

children were things that never crossed their minds and they never thought about.

But all of the things that were most significant to them, whether good or bad,

were things that he had no recollection of.

And so the things that we pass on, we pass on through our consistency and not

always through getting it right.

We pass it on in our willingness to be present with those that we love.

This goes beyond children as well.

Those that we give our attention and time to, even if it seems insignificant to us at the time.

So Moses tells us to bind the word of God on our hands, to write it on our foreheads,

to scratch it into our doorpost.

This is not just about religious symbolism, as we might say,

this is internalization. of the word of God.

Make it a part of you. Make it be closer than the breath in your lungs.

That everything you do, everything your hands touch, that the word of God would affect.

That everything you think, everything that happens between your eyes would be

touched and affected by the word of God.

And so some Jewish families took this so literally that they would put these

boxes on their foreheads that they would strap it to.

And usually it had like the Shema or something in it, and they were called phylacteries.

And Jesus talks about this as well as he sort of chastises the Pharisees in

the New Testament and the Sermon on the Mount.

And even in Matthew chapter 23, he says it as well.

Matthew 23 · chapter mention

He says that they do all of their deeds to be seen by others,

for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.

At some point, they were building these large boxes to put on their heads to show how holy they were.

And so Jesus, of course, condemns this practice, but he's not condemning,

He's not condemning the reality behind it. What he's condemning is the false

spirituality that's presented in it.

Instead, what he turns to is the fact that God is looking to his people to be

so affected and eternalize his words so much that they would live it out.

That it would be on their minds, in their thoughts, that it would be in their

hearts, that it would touch all that their hands set to do.

That word of God would affect everything. And so the point is not formation.

Sorry, the important thing is not performance, it's formation.

And so God isn't looking for people who look like they know scripture.

He's looking for people who live it out, whose lives are directed by it.

So this is an invitation for us to memorize scripture.

Not just to do it by ourselves, but to involve other people,

to memorize it with our children, to memorize it with our small groups,

to speak it over one another.

One simple verse a week, one truth written on your hearts, spoken from your mouths.

The idea is that we would not stop reciting the story, that we would live it,

that we would embody it, that we would pass it on.

And God is telling these people this on the edge of their inheritance,

as they're about to enter the promised land.

What he's emphasizing most at this time is that the commandments that he has

spoken to them would follow them in.

In fact, that they would be before them, guiding their steps.

Jake talked about this last week as we heard the word of God instruct us to meditate day and night.

And as Joshua takes the people in, God doesn't give him a strategy for war.

What he tells them is to meditate on the word of God day and night,

to let it follow you, to let it precede you, to let it surround you, to let it saturate you.

In other words, don't just carry the word of God with you, but carry it in you,

in your bloodstreams, in the rhythms of your heart.

And what I find most interesting about Moses' instructions to the Israelites.

God's instructions to Joshua as he tells him to meditate day and night,

is that it's not most about the commandment itself, like do this, don't do that.

What is preceded by and what is filled with is who God is.

That the instruction is not just, not to read the Bible prescriptively.

Okay, I have to do this. Now I have to do this.

But our instruction is to read the word of God descriptively.

Later in this chapter, just a few verses, it'll says, when your sons ask you

in time to come, what is the meaning of the testimonies and statutes and the

rules that the Lord, your God has commanded you?

So these instructions, what's the point of them?

Then you shall say to your son, we were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt.

The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

The Lord showed us signs and wonders, great and grievous against Egypt and against

Pharaoh and all this household before our eyes.

And he brought us out from there that he might bring us in and give us the land

that he swore to give to our fathers.

So that when those who don't know, ask you, you tell the story of who God is and what he's done.

When someone asks, what are all these prescripted commands about? Why am I doing this?

You don't say, because the Lord told us, you say, this is who God is.

I talk about, or I think about discipleship a lot with regard to breathing.

And I've mentioned this before, but we breathe in from God's spirit.

We breathe in from God's word.

We breathe in from the life that he gives us. But if we only breathe in, then we're going to die.

We have to breathe it out as well. We have to pass it on. We do that by sharing with others.

I thought about, you know those see there's always a scene

in some movie where they're underwater and somebody has to kiss the

other to give them breath right we just watched a

movie called hit pig which jenny found i don't know it's some

ridiculous cartoon but the pig and

elephants who are the main characters in the story do this twice they they keep

each other alive by breathing through their similarly similarly shaped noses

this is what discipleship is that we breathe life into one another as we are

breathed into by the word of God.

As I thought about that, I thought about the fact that maybe one reason that

we don't talk about God and his word with the amount of frequency that perhaps

it should bring is that if we're honest with ourselves in the depths of our being,

maybe we aren't really wowed by God.

Maybe the love of God and the grandeur of it has not been fully impressed upon our hearts.

Maybe we don't really understand.

If we think about it, how does it feel for us to share a bit about the love of God?

To say, isn't God's love just so amazing how He loves us so much with someone,

with our own family members?

How weird it is for us to kneel and pray in our house for fear that someone

might walk in and see us, how awkward it is, how uncomfortable it makes us,

how when we say things like that to people, how like, oh, isn't God just so great?

How disingenuine it feels in our hearts. I remember back in the day,

we're talking about generations, back in the, it's probably early 2000s,

not 90s, but Jesus culture was a big thing and they would do these big conferences.

Inevitably, one of the singers would probably pray or say some sort of word in the middle of a song.

And there's this one particular thing that Jenny and I can still remember whenever

the song comes on, Kim Walker's singing, and then she starts praying.

And she goes on this rant about how the love of God changes us, right?

And so she's saying, the love of God changes us, and we're never the same.

We're never the same when when the love of God changes up, when we experienced it.

And if you've experienced the love of God, and you would know because you'd

never be the same. You'd never be the same.

And then she goes, and if you haven't experienced the love of God,

you better just brace yourself because he's about to blow in this place.

And it's, you know, it's funny because we're usually, we're not there in the

live event and it's a recording and we're listening to it now years later.

But like, that's the question, just asking, right?

Like, are we not the same because we haven't really experienced the love of God?

We haven't encountered the love of God because if we've encountered the love

of God, we'd never be the same.

Have you breathed deep of his spirit into your lungs until you don't care about

the same things anymore, your desires, your priorities, your conversations,

the same conversations we have?

I'm tired of the same boring conversations. How was your weekend?

Did you do anything fun? What are you planning to do this summer?

Oh, that sounds fun. That sounds interesting. You go have a good rest.

I'll ask you about it when you come back.

I'm tired of these same conversations week after week.

All of us who are breathing of the word of God are called to preserve and pass

on his word for generations to come.

Even if your kids are grown, even if you've never had children,

we have spiritual children, spiritual grandchildren, spiritual nieces and nephews,

spiritual brothers and sisters.

We're called to pass on the word of God. What is your legacy going to be?

And you might say, we already do this. We pray, we read scripture, we do our best.

And so I say, praise God, keep going.

But for me and for others that I know, even in our attempts to say we already

do this to the best of our ability, what that really means sometimes is we don't

do it very well or consistent.

That even our own struggles to read the word of God daily, our children aren't seeing us saturated.

The ones we love aren't seeing ourselves saturated. And the danger isn't that we're going to quit.

The danger is that we're going to be complacent, that we're going to coast today,

and that our comfort will slip into forgetfulness.

As the word of God stops being on our lips because of life is full and urgent at many times.

Deuteronomy 6, 10 and 12, the verses following say, And when the Lord your God

brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham,

to Isaac, to Jacob, to give you,

with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all the

good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig,

and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant.

And when you eat and are full, when you are comforted by life and all of its blessing,

take care lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt,

out of the house of slavery.

It's the idea that every generation, all of us, is only one generation away of forgetting the Lord.

We're only one generation from His story ceasing to be passed along.

And so my exhortation is not for them this morning, it's for us,

that we would not stop, that we would not shrink back, that we would not coast,

that we would realize the importance of what we do today, even in the in-between

moments, has lasting impact for generations to come.

For your children, for your children's children, for their children and those that come after them.

I just have a couple quick things and we're going to wrap up. But.

Following this generation, following Joshua leading the people,

we get the book of Judges, which the resounding word of Judges is that everyone

did what was right in their own eyes, that they forgot the word of the Lord.

And we read this in Judges chapter two, that after Joshua sent the people away,

each of the tribes left to take possession of the land allotted to them.

The Israelites served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and the leaders who outlived him.

So those who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel.

Verse 10, it says, After that generation died, another generation grew up who

did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel.

The Israelites did evil in the Lord's sight and served the images of Baal.

They abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors who had brought them out of Egypt.

They went after other gods, worshiping the gods of the people around them,

and they angered the Lord. They abandoned the Lord to serve Baal in the images of Ashtaroth.

The people revered and served the Lord as long as Joshua and the people that

were his trusted advisors and generals were alive.

But when that generation had passed, no one kept the story going.

And the next generation turned away.

Joshua told the story. Some of his people told the story, but I guess they didn't

teach the next generation how to tell the story.

Let's not let this inheritance of faith die with our generation.

This isn't just about parenting.

It's about building a gospel legacy that outlives us.

It's about shaping a people whose lives declare the truth and the beauty and

the necessity of God's word in our lives.

So that those not yet born will set their hope in him.

Maybe that's what we have to think about, even more so than our own children.

If we think about those not yet born, then maybe the way we parent our own children

will even be more of an investment because it's important for them to pass the

story along and not just for us to tell them the story.

Psalm 78 says this, literally, verses four to eight.

We will not hide these truths from our children. We will tell the next generation

about the glorious deeds of the Lord, about his power and his mighty wonders.

For he issued his laws to Jacob. He gave his instructions to Israel.

He commanded our ancestors to teach them to their children so that the next

generation might know them.

Even the children not yet born. And they in turn will teach their own children.

So each generation should set its hope anew on God, not forgetting his glorious

miracles, not forgetting and obeying his commands.

Then they will not be like their ancestors, stubborn, rebellious,

and unfaithful, refusing to give their hearts to God.

It's not just about telling the story. It's about the next generation telling the story.

It's about equipping it's about passing it along because whether we like it

or not and in the moments we think it's happening the least they're watching and.

Not just those who are young, but those who you see regularly,

those who you do life with, those who you pass, they're watching and they are

internalizing and they are observing.

And when we soak ourselves in the word of God and we saturate ourselves in his

word and his presence, we do it so that the future generations won't forget.

There's a lot riding on this, more so than our own belief, our own,

our own struggles, our own lies that we tell ourselves.

There's more riding on it than just fighting those lies with the truth.

There are generations riding on our actions of faith this morning.

So Lord, help us as we began with thanks, thanking you for all that you've done,

all of those glorious wonders.

Help us share the story and equip our children to share the story,

that they would equip theirs to share the story and pass it along,

that your name may be glorified among the nations through the generations.

We would comprehend the depth and the importance, the weight,

not that we would be discouraged by our failures.

As I mentioned, we need to have grace for our failures because chances are the

kids aren't going to remember those things. The people in our lives aren't going

to remember those things.

They're going to remember the things that we never thought of.

So not that we would be discouraged, but that we would be encouraged into action,

that we would not coast, that we would not fall back, that we would not rest,

but that we would be vigilant.

And it starts by soaking in the word of God ourselves, that we would see the importance,

that we would think less about our own righteousness and think more about your righteousness,

that we would stop thinking about our efforts and what the Bible calls these

filthy rags of our own work.

It starts there.

What we have to see that the importance of that moment, that dedication,

letting the gospel infiltrate and change all that we are, the importance of

that doesn't stop with us.

And we're all called to be part of that preservation,

that transmission of the gospel message, of the story of a God who loves so

deeply that he sent his son to die for us,

to suffer the death that we deserve, because he loves us.

The God who is the good shepherd who goes everywhere where the sheep have wandered

to bring them home that we would be so saturated and filled with that message,

that it would ooze out of everything that we are every conversation, every moment,

we take captive every thought we take captive every opportunity that the glory

of the Lord might be known for generations to come.

Music.