This was Supposed to be Our Job

Scripture:
He planted a witness in Jacob,
set his Word firmly in Israel,
Then commanded our parents
to teach it to their children
So the next generation would know,
and all the generations to come—
Know the truth and tell the stories
so their children can trust in God,
Never forget the works of God
but keep his commands to the letter.
Psalm 78:5-7

Observation: The psalmist opens this psalm by even saying his is thinking deeply about a proverb, and then goes into a discussion on the Shema. That specific passage tells Israel to listen, that the Lord is all powerful, and they are to love Yahweh with all their heart, soul, and strength. The next instruction is that this is a lesson that is to be taught continually to all generations. It is to be discussed at the dinner table with the family, and with others while out walking about. It is to be considered as the very first conversation in the morning, and the very last conversation at night. It is vital that parents teach it to their children.

This psalm states why this is important ... so the next generation will know and love the Lord as well. They will learn to trust in the Lord when they are young, and experience that trust as they mature. With personal experience, they can move beyond just the stories of God's work in the past, and receive God's works in their lives as a personal experience. Then they will pass this to the next generation.

And therein lies the problem. When a generation fails to inform the next, the second generation turns away from the Lord, and then the next generation has no one to teach them. This was the spiral that happened in Israel during the Judges, overcome by the reign of David and Solomon, but re-initiated with Jeroboam, resulting in the future total destruction of Israel. When a generation fails, it is hard to recover.

Application: It's pretty clear we are into this downward spiral here in the "western" world, as our younger generations have almost no thought of the Lord or of Jesus, have no context for any kind of faith, and may even consider "religions" to be hateful. And it's not their fault. We have failed them, as the generation that was to teach them in our homes every day. Very few of us did.

I could say we need our 'David' to arise, but Jesus is the living line of David that now rules the world, and to whom we should be pointing the young. I could say we need leaders to help in pointing the way back to Jesus, but those leaders themselves have proven to the problematic humans, full of major shortcomings.

My generation - and maybe the generation before - have failed at our job, and the way back from that failure is now clearly very difficult. We need Jesus himself to intervene.

Prayer: Lord, we need you. Our youth and young adults do not know you, and it isn't their fault. Yet they are trapped in wrong thinking, controlled by an evil they don't even acknowledge. For their sake, we need you Jesus. Amen.