. . .who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel

I understand the difficulty of trying to cover the entire narrative of scripture in 40 days. Obviously some things will be left out. But I'm really disappointed that the powers that be decided to skip from Exodus all the way to Judges. Take some time and go back and dig into those books we missed. Especially Leviticus. It gets a bad rap for being boring, but there is some great truth in there.

With that, I LOVE the book of Judges. I wish that someone would turn it into a series of movies. It is so cinematic, so epic, so amazingly entertaining. It would rival even the Avengers on sheer action alone, much less the faith conversations that would emerge. But, I digress. Don't just read the selected readings if you haven't read Judges before. Read the whole thing. It's amazing. It will change your life. I'm not kidding.

But today, we have the introduction. We have the prologue to the period of the Judges. Joshua has finally led the people into the promised land, but now he is dead and the rest of his generation who witnessed first hand God's miraculous provision. And then we get this statement.

After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. 

 I don't know that is a stronger case for the church's need to be intergenerational than these few verses. Notice what this says, and notice what it doesn't say. It says that they grew up not knowing the Lord or what he had done. It does not say that they grew up knowing God and his power and decided to turn away. As a word of clarification, the Hebrew word translated "know" is the word yada. This is the knowledge of experience. This is first hand knowledge. I'm guessing that this new generation knew all the facts. They probably had heard all of the stories and could recount the chronology of the Exodus. But, they did not KNOW the Lord. They did not have a relationship with him. They did not voluntarily participate in the covenant. This new generation had not EXPERIENCED God.

We need to tell our children the stories of our faith. We need to teach them proper doctrine and all of the facts that God has revealed to us. But, and I think even more important, we need to give them opportunities to experience God, to encounter him and his majesty. We need to, from a very early age, involve them in ministry. Certainly kids need to be ministered to, but much earlier than is common, we need to allow them to minister to others.

I know of a Nazarene church in Yakima that takes every month that has five Sundays and the entire children's ministry makes sandwiches and then goes out to feed homeless people. It all started, not because some adult had a great idea, but because a child was on the way to have lunch at a ministry event, saw someone who was hungry, and gave away his lunch. The adults then came along side the child, offered encouragement and resources and turned a prompting of the Holy Spirit into an ongoing ministry opportunity. If we want something to change, empowering our kids to serve others, to share grace, and to lavish mercy on others is the best way to make sure that they KNOW God.