5 He established a decree in Jacob,
Psalm 78:5-7 (NRSV)
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
to teach their children;
6 that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and rise up 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.
Jody has given me verses this week that relate to fatherhood. I’m not sure I’m up to the task of presenting a picture of good fatherhood, but I’m going to try.
I’m not starting with one of the verses she provided, however. I won’t tell you what the final “verse,” better described as a task is, but I’m going to schedule that one to publish on Sunday morning. Today I want to introduce this series with a thought from my Sunday School class yesterday.
We’re looking at what I call landmarks for Bible study, and the landmark today is the call of Abraham. The call of Abraham provides some interesting thoughts. In working with these landmarks, I point back to the one before, in this case the flood, and forward to the next, the exodus from Egypt. This provides us with parallels, similarities and differences, that help us understand the overall story.
We sometimes take Bible stories in isolation. This come naturally, because we have an hour for Sunday School (or less), and each story can take up that much time and more. But there are patterns in the broader layout of scripture. In fact, it’s good to look at Bible books in the context in the canon, because the Bible as a collection is what we hold as the standard.
Now here’s the pattern we observed. We have a perfect creation, and then the fall. Genesis 5 presents 10 generations, and then Genesis 6 tells us that everyone’s thoughts were only evil continually. Noah was found righteous, and chosen for salvation on the ark.
Following this story we have 10 generations again in Genesis 11, and then in Genesis 12 we have Abram called. God doesn’t make any claims about how righteous Abram is. He just calls him, and Abram goes. But Joshua, in his farewell speech (Joshua 24:2) tells the Israelites that their ancestors, including Abram (or Abraham–Joshua uses the new name God gave him) “worshiped other gods.”
What does this show us?
First, please don’t spend time on debating the chronology. Let the story speak. Ten generations lead to a point where knowledge of the true God has almost disappeared.
It’s worthwhile to consider the difference in God’s response in these two cases, Genesis 6 and Genesis 12. But what interests me here is the way the two genealogies emphasize the loss of the knowledge. This should have been transferred through the patriarchal line, father to son. This was the plan to maintain knowledge of God.
It didn’t work.
We observe this throughout the Bible story. The High Priest Eli’s sons were not like him, but were evil, and their father failed to change this (1 Samuel 2). Following this, even though Samuel himself had received a word from God (1 Samuel 3) regarding the situation, Samuel’s own sons did not follow in their father’s steps, but “took bribes and perverted justice” (1 Samuel 8:3).
The pattern continues in the Kings of Judah. Israel has a fairly steady decline morally. Judah, on the other hand has good kings followed by bad kings. Manasseh, possibly the worst king of Judah, was the son of Hezekiah, possibly the best (2 Kings 21).
Why doesn’t this work?
We’re often told that all this was the result of a failure to discipline these children, to make them behave properly. If they had just trained them to strict enough standards, surely they wouldn’t have turned away later. If the patriarchs had just spent enough time making their heirs memorize the full history of their family line, they would surely not have failed.
History is filled with “disciplined” children turning away from the ways their parents intended to teach them. Passing along ethics and good behavior can be a very difficult task. Indoctrination can fail very quickly when the child is presented with other ways of thinking. Many parents think that secular colleges rip away the faith they have so carefully inculcated in their children.
In most cases, indoctrination will fall to the opportunity to think freely. More importantly, indoctrination won’t provide a framework for that thinking.
My parents, when they were in their seventies, came to me and apologized. What for? They said that they had failed to present God’s grace to me in word and action. They regretted this aspect. They did not regret missed opportunities to indoctrinate me more. They regretted to presenting God’s grace to me.
At the same time, I can testify that they got a number of things right. Most importantly, they lived and publicly testified to their faith.
Now when I say “lived and publicly testified” I don’t mean that they read me Bible stories and expressed their belief in these stories, though the did that. What I mean is that they not only said they believed in prayer, but they prayed regularly. When I couldn’t find them after lunch, I knew they would be in their room, praying together, as they did three times per day.
They told their own stories, often interesting stories of their lives, but they testified in these stories to God’s action. I knew that faith was important in their lives because that was how they lived.
Now please don’t create a checklist of things you need to do to show by your life that your faith is important. That’s where God’s grace comes in. (Well, also before that and after that!) Look to your own experience with God, not to a set of checklist items that will convince others. If God is guiding you, it will be obvious, even in your imperfections.
And if God is guiding you, if God is important to you, if you’re looking to God’s grace for yourself, it will be obvious to those who observe. Let others observe in you the continued story of God’s grace in action. Most importantly let the next generation observe it.
And let this not just be about physical generations. Think spiritual generations. We need to be passing on our life’s experience to those younger in the faith or needing spiritual guidance. Too often experienced believers gather with others of similar history and inclination and don’t spend time with the less experienced.
“Tell your children,” is the call.
Who will you tell?
(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)
