In May of 1996 I moved with my wife and 3 small children to England where we spent the next 5+ years as I served as youth minister in a C of E parish. Part of the calling to England was the realization that very few young people in England were exposed to the gospel or the church. The community we served had public and private schools and lots of potential to reach children and youth. Because of an old English law requiring collective acts of worship in the schools, students had assemblies every week which were meant to provide religious content. I had the privilege of speaking at assemblies in multiple schools and getting to know a lot of the kids. 95% of those kids had never attended church. For one of the schools, I hosted field trips where the year 7’s (think middle school) would come to our church for a tour. I learned from doing those that the handful of kids that had actually been in a church building were there for a baptism, wedding, or funeral. They all knew people who went to church – they were called grandparents. The average child or teen thought that church was for old people because the only people they knew that went to church were grandparent age.
Now, given that England has a rich Christian history, one needs only go back a few generations to a time when the average Brit was in Church on Sunday mornings. That raised for me the question of what happened to cause such an exodus from the church over just two generations? The answer is found in the Psalm that we are going to look at this morning. In the closing years of the 20th century when I lived in England there were startling statistics about the vast dropout of youth from the church that had been going on for decades. They attributed the decline of the church to secularization and didn’t know what to do about it. One of the things that evangelical churches began to do was hire youth ministers. So, I was the first one hired at my parish and the third full time youth worker in a diocese of over 300 parishes. Within a decade there were at least 20 full time youth ministry professionals in the diocese. However, looking back, I believe that there was another angle totally missed that potentially could have reversed the trends. I’ll come back to that in a moment.
The Pinetops Foundation released a report a few years ago titled “The Great Opportunity”. They did extensive research throughout the US and across the denominations to see how they could best support the church in the future. They concluded that the church in America faces a great opportunity for evangelism over the next 3 decades. They project that over 1 million youth at least nominally in the church today will choose to leave each year for the next three decades. 35 million youth raised in families that call themselves Christians will say that they are not by 2050. The report came out before Covid which we know accelerated the drop out of nominal Christians from our churches. The research on 2020 shows that our younger generations saw the largest drop in attendance and the fewest returns. Are we now in the same sort of exodus from church among younger generations that the UK saw in the 2nd half of last century?
The opportunity that the UK missed relates to the Psalm we are going to study and to the whole point of Grand Camp. It is a vital opportunity that has the potential to change everything. That opportunity is about grandparents leaving a spiritual legacy. Think for a moment about what you want your grandkids to remember you for. It wasn’t long after I became a grandfather that I started reflecting on the legacy of my father and father in-law on my kids. My dad was a wonderful loving grandfather who adored his grandkids, but they knew little about his faith. My desire is that my grandkids know that I love them but that I love God more. I want to be for them someone who shares stories of the things that God has done both in my life and in history. I want my legacy to be a spiritual legacy as much as anything else.
Psalm 78. (specifically verses 1-8)
This Psalm is a historical Psalm recalling events from Israel’s past. Specifically, it covers selected events from Moses to David. The whole of the Psalm’s purpose is seen in these first 8 verses. It seeks to recount these events so that future generations will learn the lessons of the past and not be unbelieving and rebellious like the generations described in the Psalm. The Psalm type is a maskil which likely means that it was meant as instruction or teaching for wisdom. It was written by Asaph, who was a Levite and a music leader in the service of King David, speaking to God’s people.
A Maskil of Asaph.
Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
“Listen up!” His use of “O my people” indicates that he views them in a loving way and considers himself one of them. He is declaring that he is about to speak important truth. It’s like when a parent says to their child, “Listen to me!” it implies obedience. Asaph is talking about an active, eager and responsive listening which results in learning and obedience. He wants his listeners to put forth some effort. “Don’t just sit there. Stretch out your ears towards me, lean forward in your chairs and catch every word.”
I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
A parable is a teaching device. It is a story with a spiritual meaning or application.
We are familiar with parables as a teaching tool that Jesus used frequently. Dark sayings is less familiar to us. It’s often translated as “riddles” or “mysteries”. These are not obscure or unknown because the next line tells us they were heard and known. Yet pastor John Piper suggests that the psalm is a parable and a riddle not because the whole thing is a made-up story, but mainly because it poses two profound riddles: Why was Israel so incorrigibly rebellious, and why was God willing to return again and again to help them?
Asaph sets out the history of Israel as a parable, as a story with a lesson to be learned. Verses 1-8, the verses we’re looking at today, are only the introduction to the Psalm. The rest of the Psalm recounts the history of Israel — from their going out of Egypt, to their entering of the Promised Land, to the reign of King David. What was the lesson that Asaph wanted his readers to learn?
things that we have heard and known,
that our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children,
but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.
Asaph wants us to learn the vital importance of passing along our spiritual heritage to our children. This is the legacy that we are to leave. The verb “hide” in this verse has a very specific meaning. It means to keep something back, to refuse to make something known. When someone is asked to testify in court, they are charged to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” We are to be witnesses to the work of the Lord in our lives and in history.
This raises a question. Why in past generations did parents keep their faith to themselves? As I’ve thought about this, I have two reasons that come to mind. One is cultural. In some places parents and grandparents did not speak openly of their faith – it was considered a private matter. The other I suppose is cultural in a different way. My parents considered it the job of the church to teach us the Bible and form our faith. We went to Sunday School for our Christian education.
The world has changed. We can no longer do as generations before us have. Faith must be discussed in the home. We need to reclaim the habit of teaching kids from early on about the things that God has done. If we hide the revelation of God from our children, we do them a grave injustice. Spiritual nurture is their proper inheritance from us. Our children & grandchildren’s true inheritance from us should be the knowledge of God and his will.
And it’s important to note what Asaph emphasizes in terms of what must be told to the coming generation. He does not start with what we must do to obey God but rather what God has done because of his love for us. This is an important distinction to notice. Our legacy is not to be about causing our grandkids to be obedient to God as if they could somehow become good enough to earn a spot in heaven. That would have an opposite effect. Rather we are to tell of the goodness of Jesus, the love of the father, the power of the spirit and what God has done to make it possible for us to enter heaven.
He established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
Often Psalms will convey the same idea in two sequential statements. Sometimes those ideas are in one sense the same and yet different. I think that is what we have here. What is the law and the testimony referred to in verse 5? Exodus 31:18 tells us. And God gave to Moses, when he had made an end of speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God. But the tablets don’t start with the list of ten commandments. They begin like this: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
God established a testimony in Jacob. We learn a lot about the character of God from his interaction with Jacob. And after Jacob wrestles with God, he is given a new name – Israel. So, the verse is referencing both a person and a nation who have received both testimony – meaning the glorious deeds of the Lord, and the law. The law refers not merely to rules but all the truths that God has revealed in scripture. Jesus tells us that all the Law and the prophets point to him. Law is common shorthand for the Pentateuch. (1st five books)
So when Asaph says God established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, he means that God has testified about what HE has done and about what our response should be. A simple way of thinking about this is to say that we are to teach the works of God and the word of God.
that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments;
There is no guarantee or promise made here about the faithfulness of future generations. We teach and they might know and put their hope in God. Without us teaching it’s extremely unlikely that future generations will know about God and put their hope in him. We want to see three outcomes from passing our faith. We want them to put their hope or trust in God. We want them to remember the works of God. We want them to keep God’s commands.
It’s worth noting that the Psalmist takes this at least four generations to emphasize the continual nature of passing faith generationally.
and that they should not be like their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation whose heart was not steadfast,
whose spirit was not faithful to God.
The section ends with a warning not to repeat history, a history full of stubborn rebellion, fickle hearts, and unfaithfulness. It is astonishing to look at the unfaithfulness and rebellion we see in the OT at times among people who were eyewitnesses to powerful and miraculous works of God.
A few practical thoughts to wrap this up.
Leaving a spiritual legacy is something we should start early. The easiest starting point is reading stories from the Bible or good Christian story books.
Other ways we create a spiritual legacy:
Caring conversations. We ask questions to learn what their joys and struggles in life are and then talk that stuff through with them. Grandparents have a unique opportunity to affirm kids, to let them know of the good we see in them and attribute that to our creator. We can provide insights as to how God wired us, assure them with biblical truth, and encourage them. We can be safe people for them to talk openly to and because their world is so different to ours, we get to be the curious ones learned about life from their perspective.
Rituals and traditions. You will hear of more about these this week, but this is about using family gatherings to be places of traditions, particularly around holidays. It might be specific prayers said at meals, devotions after dinner, or more unique traditions that we create along the way.
Serving together. Whether it’s missions or service projects or just serving in our church or community, drawing our grandkids in to help is huge. It impacts on at least two levels. One is that grandkids often love to be helpful. They get to join in with you serving the needs of others and that is often received as an honor to them. Another is we are modeling servanthood in the kingdom. We get opportunities to share with them why we do what we do. We can communicate to them that we serve others because God loves them too.
The ultimate key to leaving a spiritual legacy is to be so overflowing with God’s love that we cannot help but for it to leak out of us. How do we nurture that in our lives? Looking back in the Psalm… the first instruction from Asaph was to listen. We need to be people who listen to the Lord. There are two ways we want this to be ongoing in our lives. One is regular reading of scripture. Our lives need to be listening to God through his word. The second is listening for opportunities and prompts from the spirit. If we are always seeking to catch those moments where we can help our grands see God, we will find them.
I have been urging people in our diocese to pray for younger generations and urged clergy to consider adding a prayer to their Prayers of the People on a regular (perhaps weekly) basis in your congregation. Many have taken up the challenge. I’ll close with the prayer I have been circulating.
Lord, we pray that the truth that has been entrusted to us and the lessons we have learned will not be hidden from the next generation. Grant us every grace we need to make known to our children, even the children yet unborn, the path that leads to life.
Make us a generation of parents, grandparents, and church members who will teach younger generations your ways and how to walk according to the truth, so that they might set their hope and confidence in you and not forget your good works. May we be a generation who brings good news to each successive generation so that all may know your truth and the gospel of grace. Amen
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