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Bible preaching from the pulpit of Choice Hills Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina
Take your Bibles, please, and turn to the book of Psalms and the Psalm 78.
Psalm 78.
And I know that you all have been having your family focus for the month of August.
And so the pastor had asked me to continue with that theme, and I'm happy to do that.
There's so much in the Bible that gives us teaching and encouragement in our family relationships.
And so I want to look at this passage today in Psalm 78.
And we'll read it in just a moment.
And I'd like for you to note especially the frequency that we see this word of generations, generations.
And that's what we want to talk about this morning.
You know, there's a lot of talk in the culture today about generations.
You know, I'm sure if you're here this morning, you probably know which generation you're part of.
They talk about the greatest generation, and that was my grandparents' generation.
Then you've got your baby boomers, and I'm sure we have some. I don't know if we have
a lot of greatest generation folks with us anymore, but definitely in this crowd, we
have some baby boomers. We've got some Generation X. We've got some millennials, and now we've
got, what is it, Gen Z, And now I'm hearing people talk about Generation Alpha
and I'm not exactly sure about what all that has to do.
But of course, people use it as memes
and stereotypes and things like that.
I'm a millennial and I want to tell you guys
that this year was the very first time
I ever tried avocado toast, okay?
And I liked it, but of course I would because I'm a millennial, right?
And so, yeah, a lot of people like to use these stereotypes as a bit of a joke and to give people
a hard time, and sometimes it ends up degenerating to criticizing other generations or maybe just
kind of this fixation, well, I'm the way I am because of my generation, and I'm messed
up, this, that, and the other thing.
But the Bible talks about generations as well, not in a way of putting people into cubby
holes or stereotyping them, but I believe the Lord wants us to have a generational mindset.
So that's what I'd like for us to look at this morning, is developing a generational
mindset.
to look at this morning is developing a generational mindset.
Let's read in Psalm 78.
I'm sorry, Psalm 78.
We'll read the first eight verses to begin with.
Give ear, O my people, to my law.
Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in a parable.
I will utter dark sayings of old,
which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord,
and His strength, and His wonderful works that He hath done.
For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel,
which He commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children.
That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children.
That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.
It might not be as their fathers a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God. Let's pray together before we get into the message.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this opportunity you've given us to be here in your house,
to be gathered together, met together, your children.
And Lord, I pray that you would now speak to our hearts,
that you would be leading all of our hearts and minds.
Help me, Lord, to bring the message that you have for us this morning
and help each one of us to be obedient and responsive to thee.
We pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.
be it in response to Thee.
We pray this all in Jesus' name.
Amen.
This passage we've just read,
it's a teaching psalm that was given by this man Asaph.
And we talked in Sunday school a bit
about the music ministry in ancient Israel.
And this is meant to be a teaching psalm.
And here the psalmist, Asaph, he's
reminding these people about some things. And specifically, to try to help them understand
this generational mindset. And he gives them this reminder here. In verse 5, he said,
he, which is the Lord, he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in
Israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children.
I'd like for you to notice, first of all, in this passage, that there is a generational
mandate, a generational mandate that we need to acknowledge. And here this man Asaph,
he's reminding these people as he begins to speak, and this is quite a long psalm and we're not going
to read the whole thing, it's 72 verses, but as he begins to speak, he reminds them first of all about
a commandment that God had given to the children of Israel. He said God established a testimony,
God has pointed a law and commanded our fathers to make them known to their children. So I want us to hold our place here in Psalm 78,
but I want us to go back to this law that he's referencing,
and that's in Deuteronomy 6.
And I believe that you all have already spent some time looking at this passage,
but it merits another look.
Deuteronomy chapter 6,
as Moses was reiterating the laws of the Lord
to the children of Israel.
In Deuteronomy chapter 6,
we'll read a few verses starting in verse 3.
It said,
Here therefore, O Israel, observe to do it, that it may be well with thee, that ye may increase mightily We'll read a few verses starting in verse 3. It said, And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart,
and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children,
and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house,
when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, when thou risest up.
And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand,
and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
Thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house
and on thy gates.
Here's this generational mandate
that the Lord was giving to the children of Israel.
He said, listen, I want you to hear these laws.
I want you to take these laws in.
I want you to practice them.
And of course, the first commandment here
to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.
But he said, but not only that,
not only do I want you to keep the laws, not only do I want you to keep the laws,
not only do I want you to understand the laws,
I want you to pass them on to the next generation.
You need to teach them.
You need to speak of these to your children.
You need to have them around your house
so that the next generation will also understand the laws of the Lord.
Turn over just a few more pages to Deuteronomy 11.
Deuteronomy 11, verse 18.
Very similar passage, just a few chapters over.
Moses is still exhorting the people,
and he reiterates this thing once again.
Verse 18, Deuteronomy 11, 18.
Therefore shall ye lay up these words,
my words, in your heart and in your soul,
and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes,
and ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them,
when thou sittest in thine house, when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine house, and upon thy gates, Here it is again.
So look, take these in.
Understand them for yourself, but then teach them to your children.
Communicate them on to the next generation.
We find this emphasis all through Scripture.
I won't read all the verses, just one more in the Psalms.
I'll just read very quickly for you.
Psalm 145, in verse 4 it says,
One generation shall praise thy works to another
and declare thy mighty acts.
So here's this generational mandate.
And that's something that the Lord is commanding
to all each one of us.
Is to try to pass along the truth that we've received.
Try to pass along what we know about the Lord
and His commandments to the next generation. If you'll look back in Psalm chapter 78, where
we started, there's several ways that the psalmist is encouraging us to try to pass God's
word on to the next generation. As we begin, we see he's saying, give ear.
He says, incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth.
I will utter dark sayings in verse 3, which we have heard and known our fathers have told us.
And one of the ways that we can pass on and fulfill this generational mandate is with the words of our mouth. He said, I'm going to open my mouth. I'm going to say something. I want you to
hear what I have to say. He said, I heard it from my father. My father told me. And folks,
each one of us have the commandment to do our best with our words to pass on the knowledge of Christ
and the knowledge of the Lord to the next generation.
Let me ask you, do you speak about the Lord in your home?
Are God's mighty works upon your lips?
Is the Word of God upon your lips?
Is that something that you share and you speak about in your home?
It ought to be.
That's part of the mandate.
You shall speak of them to your children.
And I want to broaden that as well.
There are some of you in here today,
and you have a family with young children or maybe a little bit older children,
and you have an opportunity to literally speak of the Lord to your children.
Perhaps your children are out of the home.
Perhaps you have a chance to interact with your grandchildren.
Perhaps you are in a situation where there's younger believers around you.
And you have a chance to speak and to transmit that knowledge of the Lord
to the next generation.
We have a mandate to pass it along by the words of our mouth.
I will speak about the Lord.
We look on to verse 4.
He said, we will not hide them from their children,
showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord.
Here's this idea of showing.
Showing the praises of the Lord.
Showing His strength.
Showing His wonderful works that he hath done.
You know, by all means, we ought to have God's name and his works upon our tongue and upon our lips and using our words.
But more than that, we ought to be living in a way that shows God's power.
To be living by faith, to be making decisions that will put us in a position
where our children and those who are around us
in that next generation,
whether it be our physical flesh and blood descendants,
whether it be another spiritual generation that's coming up,
that they will not just hear our words,
but see our lives.
Say, wow, I saw God work in my parents' life.
They prayed and God answered their prayers.
They stepped out in faith and God met their needs.
They stood for Christ when other people were turning their backs on Him
and God stood by them and sustained them and was faithful to them.
Folks, are we living in a way, not just our words, that's important, that's where it starts,
but are we living in a way that will show to the next generation what God can do? I want the Lord
to show forth His power in my life so that the next generation, my children, my church,
people around me will see God is real. There's an experiential side to this.
Showing God's works to the next generation.
Look down in the passage again, verse 5.
He established a testimony in Jacob,
appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our fathers
that they should make them known to their children
that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, He said, we need to tell.
We need to show.
He said, we need to make known.
You know, there's a lot of ways we can understand this word know. He said we need to make known.
You know, there's a lot of ways we can understand this word know.
It does a lot of heavy lifting in the English language.
In some other languages, you can kind of break it up a little bit.
Cambodian is one of those languages, Khmer language.
You can know how to do something.
You can know a piece of information.
Or you can have a relational knowledge.
And that's something we want to pass all of that on to the next generation. He said, I want to make this known to the next generation that they might put their hope in God. Folks, as we think about the next generation, the generation that's coming after us,
we need to speak of the Lord.
We need to show His power in our lives
by the way we live and the way we follow the Lord.
But we need to lead them to a personal knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ as well.
There's no greater privilege
than taking along the next generation,
teaching them the truths about the Lord,
but leading them and encouraging them to put their faith in Jesus Christ
and their trust in Jesus Christ.
I heard someone say one time, God has no spiritual grandchildren.
No spiritual grandchildren.
You know what? My children don't have any special
relationship with God because I know the Lord and because I've trusted with God. I've trusted in the
Lord Jesus Christ my Savior. At some point, each one of them is going to have to make that decision
to trust Christ for himself. This is something I have to really emphasize
to our folks over in Cambodia
because they have this idea, you know,
they were born a Buddhist.
They didn't have to trust in Buddha.
They didn't have to do some sort of, you know,
join the Buddhist temple.
They didn't have to do anything to become a Buddhist.
Their parents were Buddhists.
They were born Buddhists.
Their kids are born Buddhists and so on and so forth.
And I have to really encourage it and say, look, you're a Christian now, you've trusted in Jesus Christ,
you've come out of Buddhism, and you have a kid now who's been born since you trusted in Jesus
Christ. And praise the Lord, that young child will never be involved in Buddhism, Lord willing,
and never be involved in the spirit worship and the idol worship. But that does not mean that they already have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
And what we're doing with this next generation, we can't make anyone get saved.
We can't push anybody and say, you have to say this prayer.
You have to.
But we can bring along that next generation, whether that's our own biological children,
whether it's that next generation of people that we have influence on around us,
and try to bring them to the place
where they too can put their trust in Jesus Christ.
He said, we want to make this known to the next generation
so they can put their hope in God.
And notice this, verse 6,
that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born,
who should arise and declare them to their children.
And so this generational mandate is not just that we get it, okay?
And I certainly hope that everyone here today would say,
Brother Matt, I know the Lord Jesus Christ.
I have a personal relationship with Him.
I've asked Him to forgive me of my sins and be my Savior.
And that's where it has to start.
It's a personal matter.
But this generational mandate is that
once we know Christ,
and once that's become personal for us,
that we're going to pass it on to the next
generation. But not just pass it on to the next generation. He said, we want the generation to
come to teach it to their children. And so our mission is not just to say, well, I've got it.
And our mission is not just to say, well, I've got it and I've passed it on to the next generation. Our mission is to get it and pass it on to the next generation
and prepare them to pass it on to the next generation.
We're not just, can I say it this way?
We're not just trying to make disciples.
We're trying to make disciple makers.
That we want the people that we're influencing today
to be able to go ahead and do the same thing
for their next generation.
And this was God's plan for the children of Israel.
He said, this is going to be an intergenerational thing.
It's going to pass from one generation to another,
to another, to another.
And I want you all to live and speak
and have a relationship with the Lord
in a way that it will continue to be passed down on the line.
This is the generational mandate that God has given.
Now, not only does He want us to acknowledge this mandate,
but here in the Scripture we see that God wants us to avoid some generational mistakes.
Avoid some generational mistakes. We read verse 8 a
moment ago. In contrast with what we just talked about, a generation that sets their hope in God,
verse 8 says that they might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright,
and whose spirit was not steadfast with God.
And here the psalmist is drawing on actual historical examples.
You know, Moses had given this command to people
who are very familiar with what happens if it's not passed along.
The story is found for us in Numbers chapter 14, and I'm not going to spend too much time
reading in that passage because I believe most of us would be familiar with this narrative.
As the children of Israel had left, God had redeemed them out of Egypt
and had brought them through the Red Sea and had brought them through the wilderness.
They had met with the Lord on Mount Sinai.
They had received the commandments of God.
And they have come now to the very borders of the promised land, the land that flows
with milk and honey, the place that God had intended to bring them to.
They sent out 12 spies to spy out the land.
They came back.
Perhaps you know the story.
They say 10 were bad and 2 were good, right?
Two spies who trusted God, Joshua and Caleb,
they said this place is great.
God has such blessings prepared for us.
He's going to help us. He's going to go with us.
Ten spies said, this place is horrible.
We're going to be devoured by this land.
There's giants. There's walled cities.
There's no way that we can do this.
And so this generation of people here,
who've seen all of God's mighty works,
who've walked through the Red Sea,
who've heard God's voice,
literally, giving the Ten Commandments
from Mount Sinai.
They have to choose what they're going to do.
And they chose unbelief.
And they chose rebellion.
In verse,
Numbers chapter 14, just if I read the first couple verses here, it says
all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried and the people
wept that night and all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron
and the whole congregation said unto them, would God that we
had died in the land of Egypt or would God we had died in this wilderness
wherefore hath the Lord brought us into this land to fall by the This is a pretty pathetic picture, honestly.
Here they are on the brink of what God has for them,
and they literally spend all night just crying over the thought of what God is asking them to do.
But lest we should be too hard on the children of Israel, we're susceptible to the same mistakes and the same weaknesses that they had.
They made a horrible choice not to follow the Lord and not to go into the promised land.
And they made these generational mistakes.
Number one, this short-sightedness.
They did not think about the consequences of their actions.
They were completely consumed with the here and now.
What's going to be comfortable?
What's going to be convenient? What's going to be convenient?
What do I want to do right now?
Going into Canaan was going to be hard.
They were going to have to fight battles.
They were going to have to meet obstacles.
They were going to have to live by faith.
And in their short-sightedness, they said,
no, we don't want to do that.
And that very same danger can afflict us today, that we get short-sighted, that we forget
that God wants us to have the long view and the generational view, and we get just sucked into
the here and now. What's going to benefit me? What's convenient for me? What do I enjoy? What's
comfortable for me? And we abdicate that generational mandate for the sake of short-sightedness
and our immediate benefit and our immediate satisfaction.
Another generational mistake I believe that we can make
is to get completely focused on our generation.
You know, fear feeds off of fear.
And you have this generation of people
who instead of being influenced by the Lord,
instead of being influenced by what God had commanded them to do,
they looked at these ten spies
and they allowed that to influence their worldview.
And folks, we have a generation around us in this world
who is more than happy to try to influence our worldview
and to make us think in certain ways
and make us feel in certain ways.
And it is not ways that honor the Lord
and it is not ways that will lead
to us passing the truth on to the next generation.
will lead to us passing the truth on to the next generation.
We have to avoid these generational mistakes.
I think it's so interesting in this verse as we just read, that one of the reasons they gave for not obeying the Lord was the next generation.
Look at verse 3.
He said,
Wherefore hath the Lord brought us unto this land to fall by the sword,
that our wives and our children should be a prey?
He said, if we do what God's telling us to do,
something bad is going to happen to our children.
They're going to be captured.
They're going to be captured. They're going to be enslaved.
And one of the mistakes that this generation of Israelites fell into
was misguided priorities for the next generation.
Their biggest priority for their children
was not that their children would know God's law. Their biggest priority for their children was not that their children would know God's law.
Their biggest priority for their children was not that they would show God's mighty works.
Their biggest priority for their children was not that they would put their hope in God.
Their biggest priority with their children was to say,
Well, I want to keep them safe.
I don't want them to encounter these difficulties.
I don't want to put them in this situation.
difficulties. I don't want to put them in this situation. And they had priorities for that next generation that were different from what God had for them. And it led them to
make a horrible, horrible choice and a horrible, horrible error. The world today wants to give us a different vision for our children.
Wants to give us a different vision for the next generation.
To say that the thing that is the most important is that the next generation should find themselves.
And be able to express who they truly are.
That they should be able to have safety and comfort.
And I'm not saying that all of those are bad things,
but that is not the priority that God gives for our children
and for the next generation in Scripture.
And when these people began to take a different view,
they began to get their own, just their own immediate desires involved in
it. They began to get the wrong vision for their children. They chose to disobey God, and they
brought that entire generation under judgment to where they were forced to wander in the wilderness
for 40 years, to where that generation did not enter into the promised land
and did not enter into God's rest
and did not enjoy His blessing.
Folks, let's try to avoid these generational mistakes.
If we allow the world
and their priorities and their vision
to influence us,
we will be going right down the same road
as our Israelites did.
We've got to turn our backs on that
and embrace the generational mandate
that God has given to us.
So we said this morning
we want to think about this idea of
developing a generational mindset.
So what can we do
to adopt a generational mindset?
We know what the Lord wants from us.
We know some of the pitfalls.
So here's a few things that I believe could be helpful for us
as we try to adopt a generational mindset in our own lives,
in the life of our family.
And the first thing would be continuing.
Continuing.
There may be folks here today, and you have a godly heritage.
You have parents, a parent, maybe grandparents, some mentor in your life who really poured into you, who spoke those words into
your life, who exemplified, who showed you the works of God, who tried to lead you to
a relationship with Jesus Christ.
And you have somebody in your life, I'm so thankful that I had the privilege of growing
up in a Christian home.
My parents were both first generation
Christians just a few years before I was born. They got saved and they were trying to follow
the Lord. And when I came along and my brothers and my sisters, they worked hard to teach us
about the Lord, to keep us in church, to have times of prayer in the home, to have times of Bible reading in the home,
to try to show God in their lives.
They weren't perfect,
but I appreciate so much the things they poured into my life,
and I can look back now and see the influence of that.
And I want to try to continue those things for my next generation, for my children, for the people that I have influence over.
Maybe you have the same experience.
You have people in your lives who have poured into you and who have done this, who took this generational mandate seriously.
And you have the opportunity now to say, I'm going to continue this.
There was things that I received that I want to pass on.
We prayed in the home when I was a kid, and I want to pray with my children.
We had a time of family devotions in my home,
and I want to have family devotions with my children.
I want to continue that.
Keep it up.
God wants this chain to continue and to go forward.
Maybe you're here today. You say, Brother Matt, I'm already trying to do this in my family. Well, I Maybe you're here today.
You say, Brother Matt, I'm already trying to do this in my family.
Well, I want to encourage you today.
Keep doing it.
Keep at it.
Continue at it.
There's nothing.
There's no substitute for consistency and faithfulness over the long run.
Just keep doing what you're doing.
Keep taking this seriously.
Keep pouring into that next generation
because this is what the God has given us to do.
So maybe today you just need to continue
what you've been given, what you've been doing.
Maybe you're here today, you say,
well, maybe I need to start something.
Maybe I need to start something new.
Maybe you're here today, you didn't have
a Christian family. Maybe you didn't
have Christian parents, or maybe
the people who maybe could have
poured into you didn't really take that much
didn't take it seriously.
You have the chance today
to start something new.
To say,
even though people that was around me didn't do it,
I'm going to do this in my family.
I'm going to take the time with my kids
to make sure that I'm speaking of the Lord,
to make sure that I'm showing them His mighty works.
And you've got to be intentional.
It doesn't happen by mistake.
You've got to decide and say, I'm going to make this happen.
There's going to be a time.
There's going to be a place.
This is what we're going to do.
To carve out those times and say, I'm going to start this with my family,
with my children, with my grandchildren, with the next generation.
And we have this mandate on a spiritual sense as well.
A verse that helps us understand that this isn't just a flesh and blood mandate,
but is a spiritual mandate is in the New Testament in 2 Timothy 2.
2 Timothy 2, it says, verse 2,
it says,
The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses,
the same commit thou to faithful men,
who shall be able to teach others also.
And there's that exact same pattern,
that intergenerational mandate to say,
you got it, pass it on to somebody else,
and help them to be trained to pass it on to somebody else.
The very same thing that is supposed to be happening with the next generations of our children.
He said this is a spiritual mandate as well.
This ought to be happening in our churches.
And so you're here today.
You say, well, I don't have kids in the home anymore.
I don't really have any young people around me day by day
that I can invest in that next generation.
Well, maybe you need to start by finding somebody in the church.
Maybe somebody who's not yet in the church,
to say, I'm going to take this person,
they're my next generation.
And I'm going to try to help this,
I'm going to pour what I've received into this person
and try to help to turn them
into somebody who can reach the next generation.
So maybe you need to continue today. Maybe you need to start something new today.
Maybe part of your generational mindset
is you've got to break some generational
mistakes. People talk a lot today about
generational trauma and this idea that the mistakes of the
past generations can have ripple effect on many generations to come, and I believe that's true.
But yet the Bible makes it clear that we don't have to let the previous generation define us.
that we don't have to let the previous generation define us.
That the mistakes of those who came before us don't have to predetermine us.
To say that we have to sour,
and that we have to get bitter,
and that we have to follow in those same mistakes.
Verse 8 in Psalm 78, we read it, I'll read it again.
That they might not be as their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation that set not their heart or right, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God.
He said, we want to teach them so they won't follow in the bad example of their ancestors.
And the amazing thing is, that is exactly what happened.
There was this generation who stood on the brink of blessing and the brink of obedience
and turned back and said, no, we're not going to do it.
And they were doomed to wander for 40 years in the wilderness.
But the amazing thing is,
their children were the ones who went into the promised land.
Their children watched them.
They saw them, that they were stubborn and that they were rebellious
and that they suffered the judgment of stubborn and that they were rebellious and that they
suffered the judgment of God and that they did wrong. And their children at some point
must have decided, we're going to break this cycle. We're not going to keep up with this.
And that was the generation that crossed the Jordan River. That was the generation that
marched around Jericho. That was the generation that marched around Jericho. That was the generation
that inherited houses that they hadn't built and vineyards that they hadn't planted and
fields that they hadn't planted. They received all these blessings from the Lord because
they did not have to follow the bad example of those who had gone before them. They didn't have to follow in those generational mistakes.
The Lord wants us to lift up our eyes and to have this generational mindset.
You know, we sung in the song service about Christ's soon return.
And we certainly believe that the Lord could come at any time,
that His coming is imminent.
And I believe that sometimes there's a risk of us saying,
well, Jesus is coming back any day, so nothing really matters.
We just got to hold out a few more days,
just kind of keep up with the status quo until Christ returns.
And the truth is, folks, we have no idea how much longer we have. It could be today. It could be
a thousand years down the road. This is a single day to the Lord, right?
So what we have to do is we've got to live and we've got to plan as if we've got to keep the next generation going
and the next generation going and the next generation after that in our families and in
our churches to keep the word of the Lord going forward to keep the work of the Lord going forward.
So I ask you this morning as we close, who is your next generation?
Maybe it's your own children. Maybe it's someone else in the church. Someone
else in your extended family. And how can you adopt this generational mindset today?
Maybe the Lord's speaking to you this morning about some things you need to resolve that
you're going to continue and keep going forward with. Maybe this is not something that's been a part of your life,
but the Lord wants you to start something new today.
Maybe you've let the mistakes of those around you
or your own mistakes to hold you back,
and it's time for you to make a break and say,
I'm going to break this cycle by God's help.
I'm going to start something new.
May the Lord help each one of us to get this generational mindset that he has for us.
Let's pray together.