This Week's Focus Passage

This Week’s Focus Passage: Judges 2:10 ‘And there arose another generation after them, that knew not

This Week’s Focus Passage: Judges 2:10

‘And there arose another generation after them, that knew not Jehovah .’

    Let us consider this 2nd chapter of the book of Judges, verses 6 through 12:

    6. Now when Joshua had sent the people away, the children of Israel went every man unto his own inheritance to possess the land. 7. And the people served Jehovah  all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of Jehovah that he had wrought for Israel. 8.  Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Jehovah, died, being a hundred and ten years old. And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, on the north of the mountain of Ga-ash. 10. And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, that knew not Jehovah, nor yet the work which he had wrought for Israel.—Judges 2:6-12 [American Standard Version-1901].

    What could have been—and perhaps, should have been—high-lighted, is that which is found in the tenth verse, namely, And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, that knew not Jehovah, nor yet the work which he had wrought for Israel.

    Why would we highlight this particular verse? Well, contrast this verse, the tenth, with the seventh verse of this pericope, where the history—the inspired history—has informed us that the people served Jehovah all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of Jehovah that he had wrought for Israel.

    In these verses, it is clearly set before the reader, the incredible difference, that had taken place in such a short period of time. The time that it took for Joshua to pass from the scene, along with the time that it took for “all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua” to transpire. We are also reminded that the days of Joshua, the son of Nun, were “a hundred and ten years.” If we keep this in mind as an average term, or time, of an individual life, in that particular age, we may then imagine that not more than one more generation of one hundred and ten years would have passed before the conclusion of the lives of the elders that outlived Joshua. So then it appears that it may, fairly, be said that this is something of a “generation gap” spoken of. What has happened in this relatively short space of time? How is it that we have such an apparent transition between the generation of Joshua, along with the elders that outlived Joshua, and that generation that arose after them? That answer to that issue may found in the book of Deuteronomy. While we are not contending that our idea is possessed with any certainty, it is nonetheless very suggestive for that end. In the book of Deuteronomy there is, what many may be inclined to refer to as instruction given for the people of God to give attention regarding the raising of their children: 

    Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God is one Jehovah: and thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou riseth up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates.—Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

    Again, we must ask the question: what brought about this great change between the generation that Joshua and the elders that outlived him belonged unto, and the generation that followed? This generation of whom it is spoken, “that they knew not Jehovah,’ what happened? We would suggest, at least the possibility, that perhaps this exhortation from Jehovah, through His servant Moses, in Deuteronomy 6:4-9, may have been largely set aside. The passage speaks primarily, does it not, about the Word of God. We are reminded of the words of David, the sweet psalmist, in Psalm 119:11, where he has written, Thy word have I laid up in my heart, that I might not sin against thee. And is that not the crux of Deuteronomy 6:4-9? When it has been exhorted through Moses, that we ought to lay God’s Word upon our hearts, that we should teach God’s Word diligently to our children; that we should talk of God’s Word continually, when we sit and when we rise up. That we should bind His Word to ourselves and to our children, writing them upon our door-posts, even. Is it not possible, perhaps even likely, that when the following generation does not know Jehovah; does not know God the Father, the Creator; does not know His Son, Jesus Christ, that it is because this generation has failed much in setting Him before them?

Ronald Reagan, speaking at his California gubernatorial inauguration, on January 5, 1967, uttered these now famous words, as he referred to ‘freedom.’ He said, speaking of the wonder of freedom, as we may speak of the wonder of God’s Sovereign Grace, “Freedom is a fragile thing, and it is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Allowing, of course, the infinite distinction between the freedom of men, and the Sovereign Powerful Grace of God, is this not at the very least something of a parallel? Can we not see in the case before us from Joshua 2, that, humanly speaking, there is some parallel reality here? Is there not a sense in which the Gospel, in a particular geographical location, even in a particular family line, could be no more than one generation away from extinction? 

    We may read, in the Scriptures themselves, perhaps more especially, in the books of 1st and 2nd Kings, where we learn of the many different kings, and the repeated alternation of rulers. We read of the abominations of many of them, most pointedly, the kings of Israel that, from its beginnings with Jeroboam, who directed the people under his rule, into false worship. This false worship, with its manmade idols from Dan to Bethel, and its false priesthood established by Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, and carried on by his successors, until it reached something of a climax under King Ahab, whose wife, Jezebel, even had her own 400 priests of Baal. How many individuals were led astray by these ‘kings’? Entire families following the false worship of false gods, and the idols of golden calves set up at Dan and Bethel would surely have come about because of the neglect of the admonition of Deuteronomy 6. They had ceased to set the Word of God before their households. There was thus a vacuum created, we might say, in the hearts of this people. Jeroboam provided for that vacuum with false worship toward idols of his own making, which he had devised of his own heart [1 Kings 12:33]. Is this not likely what has happened in our country and many others, around the globe, that have ceased to set God before the eyes and hearts of their families? Is this not the reason that, in so many instances; another generation has arisen that know not Jehovah, nor yet the work that He has wrought through His Son, Jesus Christ?

David Farmer, elder

Fellowship Bible Church

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