But truly we have done this out of concern, for a reason, saying, 'In time to come your sons may say to our sons, "What have you to do with the Lord, the God of Israel?"'— Joshua 22:24
The other day my 6-year-old was trying to count the days until his seventh birthday. I didn't have a calendar handy, so I let him use the calendar app on my phone to count the days. Before he knew it, his little fingers had scrolled past 2024 into the year 2135 and kept right on walking. (I had no idea Google Calendar even went that far into the future!) But as I got over my surprise, I began to explain to my son how by then he'd most likely not be alive, but that his children, grandchildren, or perhaps even great-grandchildren might be. These are heady thoughts for a 6-year-old whose main calendar interest is how many days until he will get a new Lego set. But while these thoughts might make a 6-year-old's head swim, God has made clear to us that not only is He thinking about the generations, but that He is the God of the generations. In fact, one of the names He gives Himself makes clear that this is a key aspect of His being and relationship to us:
I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. — Exodus 3:6
It's fascinating to me that God identifies Himself to us not just in personal terms as "your God" (Exodus 20:2, Deuteronomy 5:6), but in generational terms (Exodus 3:6). He is the God who has walked through not just the days with us, but through the decades, the centuries, even the millenia with those with whom we share strands of the same DNA.
But He also implores us to think generationally. He calls us to see our own role in the Kingdom as one of multi-generational importance, with an impact that ripples out far beyond the earthly number of our days. In Psalm 78:5-6, Asaph writes:
"He decreed statutes for Jacob
and established the law in Israel,
which he commanded our ancestors
to teach their children,
so the next generation would know them,
even the children yet to be born,
and they in turn would tell their children."
Our mandate to teach the commands of the Lord is for generations yet unborn. This isn't a command simply for parents either; this is for all believers, a generational mandate to pass along our faith.
We are called not just to rehearse the commands of the Lord, but also the deeds of the Lord: those great things He has done. As it says in Psalm 78:4,
we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, His power, and the wonders He has done. — (emphasis added)
In the Israelites' generation it was the events detailed in Exodus: the plagues, a pillar of cloud and fire, the crossing of the Red Sea, water from the rock, manna and quail from Heaven, which are described in detail in this Psalm. But each of us also has a story to tell about God's faithfulness to us in our own lifetime or in the lifetime of our parents or grandparents. I love to tell my kids how God miraculously healed my mom of Polio, or how He provided every penny I needed for a teen mission trip when I had faith, but no time to fundraise. Telling these stories fortifies our own faith and the faith of those who will come after us. Psalm 145:7 says,
"They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of Your righteousness. One generation… to another."
- When our hearts are full of the abundant goodness of God, we naturally want to pour forth that testimony to the generations to come.
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