Will Our Children Have Faith? (2)
Notes
Transcript
Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
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.
He established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
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;
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.
In spite of all this, they still sinned;
despite his wonders, they did not believe.
So he made their days vanish like a breath,
and their years in terror.
When he killed them, they sought him;
they repented and sought God earnestly.
They remembered that God was their rock,
the Most High God their redeemer.
But they flattered him with their mouths;
they lied to him with their tongues.
Their heart was not steadfast toward him;
they were not faithful to his covenant.
Yet he, being compassionate,
atoned for their iniquity
and did not destroy them;
he restrained his anger often
and did not stir up all his wrath.
He remembered that they were but flesh,
a wind that passes and comes not again.
Scripture: Psalm 78:1-8, 32-39
Sermon Title: Will Our Children Have Faith?
Brothers and sisters in Christ, one of the most common topics of discussion among Christians in particular today centers on the question: “Will our children have faith?” Maybe you have read the book “Almost Christian” or heard of the National Study of Youth and Religion conducted in the early 2000s observing the generation that is now primarily in their twenties whose faith tended to be summarized in the concept of “moralistic therapeutic deism.” This concept of beliefs entails that God is really nice, he expects humans to do good and be happy, and he only steps in when he needs to. When that study was done about a decade ago, 40% of this group attended church regularly.[1] But about two years ago, in a survey conducted by the Berkley Center at Georgetown University, researchers found that only 25% of people in this age group, my age group, go to church weekly; 43% rarely if ever go. At religious schools the numbers are a bit better, 45% go weekly, and 13% of those at public schools. When they were kids, only 11% of those surveyed did not affiliate themselves with a faith practice, but now 25% consider themselves unaffiliated, not anchored to any religious tradition.
Those are sweeping statistics taken from a national study across many denominations and traditions, so while it may be frightening we might wonder if the same is true for churches that we and our families are familiar with. I believe the question does hit closer to home when we think about the experiences of our families and that we see in our churches. It is a question that makes its way into our minds and maybe our conversations when the children who it seems we baptized just last week are now teenagers. It comes up when the cute kids that we drove to their first day of school eighteen years ago are all of a sudden graduating from college and searching for what is next. It rushes in when the sweet innocence of our son or daughter, our grandson or granddaughter, changes to rebelliousness, which for some is a very short phase and others a longer, drawn out, phase of pain and high consequence. The question becomes audible and visible when the declaration “I don’t want to do my chores” becomes an argument followed by a slammed door. When foul language becomes common in the music being listened to as well as in regular conversations. When mom, dad and anyone else that could offer a positive influence gets pushed to the fringes of or out of the lives of a young adult, the question comes out in worries and in prayers. “Will our children have faith?”
Family, teachers, Sunday School leaders, Cadets and GEMS facilitators, prayer partners, and pastors all run across this question at some point. For some, what is meant is, “Will our children go back to attending church?” We locate having faith and worship attendance as two sides of the same coin. Some might say, “Don’t worry; the kids need freedom to explore and grow into their faith.” Freedom can be good; it can help young people and young adults look at why they have been raised in a church or why they have attended in the past, what they believe about God and his work and why they should believe in him, but I don’t think the reason of “freedom” eases the parent who calls their son or daughter halfway through a semester at a college, many hours away from them, and when asked where they went to church this morning get the response, “I slept in again, I have to do homework tonight, maybe I will go next week.”
During the Reformation, Martin Luther wrote that in order to know where Christ and his faith were, you have to know his believers. The church is the company of believing people; outside of the Christian church there is no truth, no Christ, no salvation. John Calvin reasoned that if God is our Father, then the church must also be a mother. Orthodox Christian belief, as we confessed in our catechism answer, recognizes the work of the Son of God and the Holy Spirit to produce faith, and then unite believers to the community of faith; to share in Christ as well as to use our gifts for the service and enrichment of others.
I don’t want this to be just a lecture on church attendance tonight, and I also want us to be careful with making saving faith equivalent to the attendance of worship services. It is appropriate to acknowledge where we are today and what our tradition holds, but I believe by dwelling on God’s people throughout history we can find a hopeful way forward. I invite you to look with me, if you have your Bibles open, at our reading. In verses 4-6, the psalmist writes, “We will not hide [the things told to us by our parents] from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done… [The Lord] commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so that the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children.”
One of the most vital callings of God to his people is the passing down of the knowledge of God and his wondrous covenantal acts with humanity and his creation. In looking through just the first five books of the Bible, we find accounts like in Genesis 9, when after the flood God tells Noah, “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you…a covenant between me and you, for all generations to come.” In Genesis 18, when God instituted circumcision through Abraham, he promised, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be a father of many nations…As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come.” In Exodus 12, God provides and calls the Israelites to celebrate the Passover, the practice which included children asking their parents why they did this. In Deuteronomy, Moses is preparing the people as God is about to bring them into the Promised Land, but first, God seeks to remind them of the journey and his commandments as we read in chapter 6, “so that you, your children, and their children after them may fear the Lord as long as you live… Impress [these commandments] on your children. Talk about them when you [sitting at home, on the road], when you lie down, and when you get up.” When they ask what all of this is about, their parents were to tell them the story of God saving his people from Egypt.
Throughout the history of God’s people, God works are not just for one person, one household, or one generation; the actions and faithfulness of God were to be passed down. They were not some fairy tales or good campfire stories, but real experiences of how God cared for those he loved and how he guided them. The psalmist goes on, in verse 7, to explain why this passing down through generations is so important: “Then they (the next generations, the children to be born) would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.” For Israel in this psalm, the teacher answers the question of whether or not their children would have faith, including both trust and obedience, with an emphatic, “Yes!”
The children, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will have faith because the generations have passed down the message as God has commanded them to do. We are told what it looks like when faith is absent in verse 8; to sum it up, do not be like the past, do not be stubborn, rebellious, disloyal, or unfaithful. So we can draw out what it looks like to have faith: to be gracious, obedient, loyal, and steadfast; these attributes come about because God’s children remember what he has done. Not only can the psalmist affirm that generations will have faith even when there is disobedience among them because of God’s promises and activity, but so too can the audience affirm this because they know and will not hide how God has shaped their families and that which has been passed down to them.
The psalmist continues by describing the unfaithfulness, the sin, the grumbling of Israel in the verses we didn’t read which is not to minimized, even as God led them, gave them water, manna, and meat. God’s hate for the sins of his people led to the display of his just wrath at times; he struck down some of the people by way of natural disaster and sent opposing armies to defeat them. He kept them in the wilderness, and then we come to this section starting with verse 32: “In spite of all this, they kept on sinning; in spite of his wonders, they did not believe. So he ended their days in futility and their years in terror.” This was a people who from all accounts is weak when it comes to knowing their identity. They ran after other gods, they doubted that the God they had seen work for their good was really with them or at least felt that God should provide for them, a mentality that looks like their neighbors where the pagan gods and idols were believed to dictate the fruitfulness of life.
The people of Israel who were taught about believing in God in their youth continually decided to go astray and were punished. Yet when discipline came about, they knew well enough to come back. Verse 35 holds the testimony that was never forgotten, “They remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer.” These were a people who could trust God, but were prone to fall off the wagon and give lip service, returning the ways of their fathers. However, as God’s people, the promises remained; God was merciful, forgiving, willing to restrain his anger. What a big picture of God’s grace that is; he cherished Israel so much that they could completely deny him and he still remains gracious and full of compassion.
I invite you to join me in dwelling on verse 39 for a moment. “He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.” It is interesting if we are to look at the human part of faith as remembering what God has done and what he has promised to do, faith handed down through a strand of memories and testimonies; now God also is written about as “remembering.” In dwelling with the gift of faith he has given to his people, in his mercy, God recognizes their flesh, their mortality. God is eternal, but humanity will die, and if it is up to them, they will not have a second chance. This verse is not trying to deny the resurrection that all humanity will experience, rather if God wipes the people out for how rampant unbelief was in Israel, then the covenant he has made with his words “forever” will be void. God grieves the path of destruction that Israel sows, he is angered by their testing, but he loves them and therefore continues to uphold that which he has established. Praise be to God that while his people are invited to a big part in the passing down of faith, it does not rest solely in our hands!
But what about today, brothers and sisters? What about us, a people in a much different time, living as God’s people but no longer defined by a particular lineage, will our children have faith? I pray that the answer is yes. While the public research conducted over the last decade may appear gloomy, it is not far from typical and I think that goes all the way back to the Israelites. Rebellion is not something reserved to the homes of non-believers; each of us may have a son or daughter, a brother or sister, a close friend maybe even ourselves to look at and honestly say that at some point his, her, their or our faith was wondered about by someone. God allows his people the freedom to go out like dogs on those retractable elastic leashes. However, it does not please God when we wander off onto someone else’s property; it definitely cannot please God when we try to turn around and control or limit where he goes in our lives. Praise be to God, that he still holds on, he watches over where we go; he never loses track and he works all things for good.
As you hear this message, with these references about “children and young adults,” it can just as easily include our children that may be in their 30s, 40s, 50s, or maybe even older. The “child” that comes to mind might be your parent, your friend, or your co-worker who you would love to parent spiritually. There are some of you who might not have children, but God has or is leading you to pour your life into others. There might be others who have come to the faith not having been brought up in a Christian home; praise God, be encouraged to witness with your family!
As we consider the passing down of faith from one generation to the next, there is also a challenge; this is especially for young people and young adults, but just as easily might include adults and our wise elders. If you have never really considered what it means to have faith; maybe you’re at one of the Christian schools, you come to worship every week, you’re in one of the Youth Groups, you confess Jesus died for you, but you have never truly wondered why all of this matters, why have my parents brought me up this way, is it just about having eternal life and not experiencing pain or torment for eternity; if that describes you, I want to encourage you to talk to your parents or to someone you trust or who is a spiritual role model. Find time to talk to Pastor Aaron or Paul or Marlin; if you have never really considered it, ask someone why they love God and why they love the church, both South Olive and the broader family of God.
What is amazing and helpful for us to always keep in mind is faith is not an entitlement, not a possession like anything else, not something we earn or necessarily can even call our own. Faith is a gift from God. It is a belief and a way of living that is communicated to us through the covenants made by God. He does not change, he never leaves his people, and that may be the most striking thing when we consider the imagery of the Old Testament. No matter how many times Israel turned away, how far they strayed from God, the stories continued and faith was passed on. The hope that we have as believers, whether we have been born and raised in the church, whether we have gone away and come back, or if we’re the first generation of hopefully many to come, God has always been and has never had to reveal himself completely anew. Stand firm that the faith inspired in us by the Holy Spirit and assured by the promises that have passed down through the ages will continue to go forth in us and our children. Amen.
[1] Millennial Values Survey Report