Please speak peace to our anxious hearts. We incline our ears to hear your words of truth. Amen. Well, since I am the new youth guy, I figured that I would preach a sermon on generational wisdom. Every generation has its new idiosynchrosies, its new little things. I like to show how they’re different from those who’ve come before. And so often there’s these new words that come out. So I looked up some of the recent words that have entered into the dictionary the last couple of years. Skibbdi, Busson, Mid, Biohacking, and I think my favorite, the Lulu. So if you don’t know what those words mean, go find a 15-year-old and ask them. But there is a word that is old and very familiar to all of us. But at one time, it was a new word as well. That word is teenager. Teenager entered the dictionary in the 1950s. Now, there’s always been a generation between mothers, fathers, and sons, and daughters, and passing on things, and a little bit of rebellion, and ever since the fall of mankind, right? But something new happened in the 1950s. I think three factors converged into this new teen culture.
First, you had this universal education that brought all teens together and segregated by age, and they were hanging out all week. Second, there was a great economic boom in the US, and suddenly, families had disposable income. There was jobs, plentiful everywhere, jobs for 15, 16, 17-year-olds. And so now these youth are flush with cash. And what do they want? Cars. Cars is freedom. You could go and hang out with your friends anytime you wanted. Those things, school, this disposable money and cars, they came together into this new fusion of this youth, teenage culture. And it didn’t take very long for marketers to realize, There’s all these youth without a lot of bills, with lots of money just looking to spend it. And so they started catering to the youth culture. And if anything, I think that trend has just built and built and built to the point where that’s almost the leading force in fashion in all kinds of ways in our culture. We’re often led by the youth culture. But with this youth culture also came this rebellious spirit. It’s like the throw off the shackles of our parents and find a new way and look to what’s new instead of what’s old.
So instead of inclining their ears to adults, to mature, to bosses, they inclined their ears to one another. And the voice of their own age became more and more loud. So if anything, I think these trends have just accelerated, and this youth culture has heightened this separation between generations. And so we live in a time with lots of intergenerational conflict. We are struggling to pass, especially the faith onto our young. So I’d say in the 21st century American Church, we are hemerging our young. Wasn’t that long ago when most of the youth would grow up and join the church and be a part of it. And these days it seems like it’s just the reverse. And honestly, that breaks my heart. And I think I’m not the only one in that. But the good news is that God is stronger than these cultural forces, right? God is stronger and he has a plan. He has a different plan for his people. It’s the church. So the Lord is redeeming an intergenerational people to pass on the faith to a thousand generations. So for our part, we need to intentionally strive to pass on the faith.
So this involves all sides. So as we go through this passage this morning, I’m going to focus first on youth and speak a little bit more directly to you. And then we’re going to talk to adults a a little bit. And then lastly, I want to take our eyes off of ourselves and look to the works and what God is doing. So first, youth, I encourage you, incline your ears to listen. Psalm 78, it’s a wisdom Psalm. At 72 verses, it’s one of the longest Psalms. Asaph, the writer, he recounts the history of Israel. But it’s not just history, it’s history with interpretation. And so Asaph draws out these lessons of history for us. So we’re just going to focus on the introduction this morning, which dispenses this intergenerational wisdom. So let’s look at verse one. It says, Give ear, ‘Oh, my people to my teaching. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. Incline your ears. It’s like, turn your heads to listen. Strain your neck. Hang on every word. Is Israel is continually described as a stiff-necked people. They refuse to turn and listen to God. They refuse to submit. One thing that drives me crazy is when I’m talking to my kids and they turn and walk away.
I don’t know if you’ve experienced that. And I think, where in the world did they get that from? And then I realized that my wife is talking to me and I go and throw something in the trash and I’m doing the same thing. The apple doesn’t fall far from the trees sometimes. So parenting, maturing has a way of growing us up, exposing our own faults. We all need to strive to incline our ears, catch every syllabus. It’s like listening to an audiobook. I don’t know if you experience this, but usually when I’m listening to an audiobook, I’m doing something else. Maybe it’s mowing the lawn, something like that. And I I half listen to the book. But if there’s something really good, it’s really meaty and I want to remember it, I know that it’s just going to go in one ear and out the other. I’m not going to remember it. And so I have to slow down and I relisten to it over and over and then write it down. If I want it to stick, I have to write it down. We have to do that with the Lord’s teaching. Incline your ears, turn your head, look at it.
Seriously study it, write it down. Asaph, he goes on, verse 2, I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings from above, things that we have heard and known that our fathers have told us. The parable, the dark sayings that he goes into he spends 64 verses on them. He’s explaining, retelling Israel’s history. But it’s not just a simple retelling. It’s an apologetic of how the inconsequential tribe of Judah ascended to prominence within Israel. For most of Israel’s history, Ephreum is the major tribe. They are the prominent ones in the conquest of the promised land. Joshua came from the tribe of Ephreum, but they were unfaithful. And so God sovereignly chooses Judah and King David to replace them. The gospel of Matthew, Jesus, he tells a string of parables about the Kingdom of Heaven. Matthew 13: 34, he quotes this verse from Psalm 78. Matthew says, All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables. Indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet. I will open my mouth in parables. I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.
Jesus’s parables, they both revealed and concealed his kingdom. Throughout the Gospels, he loved to say, he who has ears, let him hear, or he who has eyes, let him see. He wasn’t talking about our physical ears and eyes. He was talking about our hearts. Do we have humble hearts? Do you have a teachable spirit? Most of the crowds, they probably went and listened to Jesus and they thought, wow, that was amazing. No one has ever spoken spoken like that guy before with the authority that he has, the healings and the miracles that he did, amazing. But then if you went back and asked him a couple of days later, what did he say? What did he mean? I bet most of them Wouldn’t have a clue. Most didn’t have ears to hear. They didn’t have teachable hearts. The parables, the mysteries of scripture, they are invitations to seek the Lord, to seek understanding. Those who are proud and have it all figured out, do they really need to seek it out? They already know everything. They miss the kingdom. Jesus reveals the truth to those who are teachable, humble, hungry for the truth. Just ask yourself this morning, are you teachable?
Are you hungry? Or do you have all the answers already figured out? I think true knowledge is humbling. You talk to someone with a deep knowledge in their field of expertise, and it’s amazing the depth and the things they know. But then maybe you talk to them about something that’s outside of their field, and it’s like, Well, I don’t know about that. They know that they don’t have that depth in everything. True knowledge is knowing we don’t know all of it. I know. I’ve studied and poured over scripture. I know a little bit. There’s so much more depth. I remember my mom, she put up a sign when I was growing up. My brothers and I, we were probably teens, and it said, Teenager, quick, get a job, move out, and pay your own bills while you still know everything. I could never figure out why she I didn’t put that up. It didn’t make any sense. But for the youth, it is easy to judge. You get a little bit of knowledge, and we think we know a lot. It’s easy to dismiss people. It’s easy to look at people who are older in the faith.
And you can find a critical flaw if you look. We all have weaknesses. We all have things we’re struggling with. And you can use that and you can And you can use that as an excuse. I don’t have to listen to anything they say. That’s not a teachable spirit. The life has a way of humbling us. When I was young, I thought that I would easily make millions of dollars. And I wasn’t very smart because when I sent a call into pastoral ministry, maybe I thought that would still happen. I did not go into the prosperity gospel, so big mistake. Life has a way of humbling us. Do we have ears to hear? Incline your ears to listen. I think one of the problems is that we sit in church every week and we sit there passively, and I do this too sometimes, is expecting to be fed, Spoon feed me, or we don’t have very much expectation that we’re actually going to need this in our daily lives. I remember back in a chemistry class. By the way, I struggled. Chemistry is not my thing. I can’t take chemistry. Sorry. For all of you are chemists out there.
God bless you. But We had a monotone teacher. It was hard, and I would listen. I just would not get it. I thought that I was getting it because I was listening to the words that were coming out of his mouth. But the proof was when he had to stand up and go to the back and do the lab? And I realized, Oh, I really need to be listening to this. And I would be clueless. And I would just be watching around what everybody else is doing, and they’re pouring something and I’m grabbing something without a clue what I’m doing. Sadly, It took several times of that to happen before I realized, I think I need to write this down. When he’s talking, I have to take notes so I can go back to it. Sermons, Sunday schools, Bible studies, this isn’t just obscure, useless stuff. They’re crucial for life. I think we get lulled into sleep because there’s no test at the end of the week. In school, there’s often a test. You have to memorize it and study it so then you can quickly forget it afterwards. There’s no test like that built into life that we see coming.
Life is a test. And you don’t necessarily know you need it until you need But life does come. It’s like an athlete who puts their whole life into their sport, and then her knee is blown out, and that’s the end of it. Or it’s someone who puts their life into amazing financial success, and they get what their dreams are, what they hope for, but it pulls them away from God into the riches of the world. Life is a test. It comes at us with full force. We desperately We need these truths. They are life for us. So youth, humble yourselves. Seek the wisdom of the words. Seek the wisdom of those who are older. And those of you who are older adults, tell of what you’ve heard. Verses 4 through 5 says, We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the 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 their children. Adults, we are called to tell the coming generation. We’re called to teach our children, pass down the truth.
It’s referring back to Deuteronomy 6. Moses, he commanded the people, You shall teach these words diligently to your children. Shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise. And that’s just a snippet from the passage. We’re called to pass down the faith all times of day through daily life. Verse 6, That the next generation might know them, the children yet abhorne, and arise and tell them to their children. Again, this is woven into our daily lives. We need to have the Ten Commandments woven into our hearts. There’s a chilling Verse in the beginning of the Book of Judges, Judges 2: 10. And it says, And that generation were gathered to their fathers, and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done in Israel. Let me just pause for a moment. I want you consider what that means. This is an absurd statement. A generation rose up that did not know the Lord. Their grandparents were slaves in Egypt. Their grandparents saw the 10 plagues. They crossed the Red Sea.
They were fed manna from heaven. They saw and heard God’s thunder on Mount Sinai. They received the 10 Commandments. They followed God in a pillar of fire and cloud. And think about the parents. The parents following Joshua, they entered the promised land. They saw the walls of Jericho fall. They saw miracle after miracle. They saw the sun stand still in the sky for a day. They personally witnessed all those things. And then their children did not know the Lord, the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. That is a massive failure. You didn’t tell your kids about the Red Sea. You didn’t tell your kids about the walls of Jericho? It’s no wonder that the Osalmus attacks the fathers of Israel, verse 8, 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. Those generations, they experienced the mighty works of God and completely failed to pass it down. And just to prove the point, Asaph goes on from there, 58 more verses of their failures and unfaithfulness. He’s saying, Don’t be like that.
Pass it on. Tell the next generation the glorious deeds of the Lord. It starts in the home. As parents, We need to make sure that the knowledge, the fear, the love of the Lord is a priority in our houses, that it takes precedence over our careers, over sports, school, recreation, you name it, that God is number one. We have to continually find creative ways to pass on the faith and show that it’s a daily reality in our lives. Now, I’m here as a youth and family pastor to help out, but honestly, I’m not the answer. That’s going to fix everything for your kids. Parents, I’m here to walk alongside you. I’m here to pastor your youth, but this is something that we will do together. As a pastor, I have some influence. You have a great amount of influence. You speak much louder, and we want to come together with a one voice in raising up godly men and women. Honestly, I have to admit that this passage, as a dad, this passage cuts to my own heart. Why did I pick this out? Maybe because I’m the one who needs to hear this. This is how I’ve been feeling convicted I know for me, family devotions, it’s easier for me to get up here and preach than it is to do a family devotion.
There’s always excuses. I’m tired, it’s late. My mind is filled work. Maybe it’s feeling tension with my wife or she’s feeling tension with me. The kids are loud and it’s bouncing around. I can just go through another day. There’s no deadline on this. These are the really important things, but they’re never urgent. And so they get pushed down and pushed down and pushed down until they’re almost gone. Those are all real challenges, but we have to push through it. It’s so critical. We They have to find ways that work. Some might be discussing the sermon over lunch, coming back to it, making sure, are you listening to this? Let’s talk about it. Go over what they went over in Sunday school. Talk about it. Go deeper with it. Apply it to their hearts. Share what you’re learning. I struggle to do this. Share what God’s doing in your heart, what he’s teaching you in scripture. Let that be a way to enter into conversation with them. Read Bible stories together. Read them before bed. Pray with each child before bed. You have to find ways to pass on the faith. One of my favorite quotes from seminary, and hopefully it’s not the only thing that stuck, but one of the professors, Dr. Jimmy Egan, he said, blessed is the man who never stops starting family devotions.
Blessed is the man who never stops starting family devotions. So important. It’s worth pushing through. The American church, are hemorrhaging our youth in this cultural moment. Again, it used to be in our culture that there was expectations for people to go to church. And for anyone who was meek, weak, or marginal in the faith, there was social pressure and expectations, and it would stay in church, and then at some point it would click in and it would take root. These days it is just the opposite. There’s cultural expectations not to go to church, things pulling us away from church. And so the default is to not continue. And so we have to fight against that. I think we have to think about this as a people, as a church as well. This is parents, this is us as individuals. But honestly, as a reformed community, we have some of the best tools and the best theology to push against this. We look at ourselves as covenant families, right? God has put us into families, transmit the faith. We are a covenant family, a covenant community, which means that we willingly desire and agree to pour ourselves into one another.
As a people, we say we’re going to look after our youth. We’re going to know their names. We’re going to volunteer. Honey is trying to get extra volunteers to be subs in the Sunday schools. Might be once or twice in the year. Sign up. I encourage you. It’s a way to get to know them, to know some names. It’s a great way to serve. I’m looking for help doing a youth group as a team and ministering and discipling teens. Come join me. We need to pour ourselves into the young. That’s the best investment that we can make. The Lord is redeeming an intergenerational people. It’s a people that spans the centuries. Verse 4 says, But tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might, the wonders that he has done. Verse 7, So that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his Commandments. Our message isn’t how great we are. It’s not how much we have it together or we have the best theology or the best church. It’s not that we’re superior to everyone else or that God loves us more.
We are not the heroes of any of these things. Asaph, he tells how badly that the Father’s got it wrong. Ephreum fails. What’s God’s answer? Grace. He raises up the tribe of Judah. He raises up King David. We worship a God of glorious deeds. God is the hero. We worship God who exalts the humble, who looks after the weak, who redeems the slave. He took a nation of slaves and miraculously gave them their own land. God led his people in a pillar of fire and cloud. He is the God who comes into history and he shows up powerfully. He’s the God who enters into our lives and redeems us and fixes us. You think about all these glories that these Old Testament saints saw, none of them compare with the glories of the New Testament. That God didn’t just send a prophet, but he sent his son. God became enfleshed incarnate to die for us. By his power, he took the symbol. It was a symbol of terror. It was a symbol of the deepest shame, a symbol of evil, and he turned that symbol, the cross, into the symbol of hope and life. That’s what a powerful God can do.
He can take death and turn it into life. So we worship a God who does glorious deeds, so that they should set their hope in God. He is the hero. We need to tell that. Over and over and over. That’s what our youth needs to hear. He is our hope. I encourage you, incline your ears. Pay attention. Lean your neck in. Tell it to the next generation. Start a family devotion. I’m speaking to myself. Start it again. It’s important. Even if our culture does crazy stuff or wherever they go, we will not because we are rooted and tied as a covenant community to the character and purposes of God. Amen? Let’s pray. Father, we thank you that you are a God of glorious deeds, that you do not stand silently back and ignore everything, that you are not deaf and mute and blind, that you are a God who knows every thought, every deed, every action. You are intimately involved in everything in our lives. That you show up and you work powerfully. We thank you for the powerful work that you have done in your son, that you have turned death to life. We pray for that life in our lives, and we pray for that life in the lives of our youth, our sons and daughters, the community around us.
We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.