Thursday, January 30: Judges 2-passing the faith along.

Yesterday ended with many tribes not clearing the land of the Canaanites, which God had commanded. Today the chapter opens with God angry with them because of the sin of disobedience.

My immediate thought was that God is angered by disobedience. Yes, disobedience has consequences.

Then I kept reading and verse 10 struck me as a partial ‘why’ the people were acting as they were. After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.

The disobedience of Israel was not simply that they didn’t dislodge the Canaanites, but that the next generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel. Those words are quite an indictment!

It is not even that the next generation rejected the Lord, but that they didn’t even know Him. The fathers and mothers were not teaching, and apparently not living, in a way that would teach the children who the Lord was. And there is a veiled comment that they weren’t observing the regulated feasts either. Since the feasts, in and of themselves, taught who the Lord was.

I immediately shifted to our world.

·         Am I teaching the next generation who the Lord is and what He has done with my words and with my actions?

·         Do I celebrate Christmas and Easter in ways that communicate the message of the Lord?

Lord, I want so much to honor You. Am I honoring You in effective ways? Do my words match my actions? Does my life match Your teachings? Do my celebrations of Your feasts celebrate You, who You are, and what You have done? Or do they celebrate the secular ways of my culture?

Help me, Lord, to discern answers to these and similar questions in order to change my life to be more faithful. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.