Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Will the Next Generation Follow Jesus? | Torah | Genesis 26:1-33

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

Who is responsible for the next generation's faith? Parents? The church? Should kids just learn from their parents' mistakes and failures? In today's episode, Keith uses Genesis 26:1-33 to discuss the importance of passing on the baton of faith. Listen to learn how to pass the baton in your own life. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Genesis 26:1-33 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. In a relay race, the four fastest runners don't always win. The winning team is the one that gets the baton around the track the fastest without that baton ever touching the ground. Now, passing the baton from runner to runner is crucial, and that's why teams spend so much time practicing the handoff. Christians are in a relay race. We're passing something far more precious than a six-inch metal tube.

The baton that we're passing is faith in King Jesus. He's the only good and wise king. The responsibility of every Christian, of every church community, of every parent is to hand off our faith in Christ to the next generation. Judges chapter 2 verse 10 says this. After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. A whole generation grows up that knows God but doesn't know God,

that has head knowledge but not heart knowledge. They knew of God, but they didn't know God in a personal, life-changing way. Who dropped the baton? Well, the emphasis here is on the adults, the parents, the church community. They're the ones that failed to pass on their faith to the kids. The church is only one generation from extinction. Now, I don't say that to be an alarmist. I'm just saying that's the challenge that every generation faces.

If we drop the baton that God has given us, maybe it will be written about our kids that they never knew the Lord or what he had done. We're in the middle of a series through the book of Genesis. Abraham and Sarah have passed the baton of faith to Isaac, and Isaac briefly takes center stage before passing the baton on to his more well-known sons, Jacob and Esau. Isaac lived a long life,

but Genesis 26 is the only chapter in the whole book that is devoted to him. It's the only chapter in which Isaac takes center stage. That means there's something in the story that's really important for us to know. So let's unpack the story a little bit, and then come back and talk about our responsibilities to pass the baton of faith to the next generation. Genesis 26 starts with this. there was a famine in the land besides the previous famine in Abraham's time and Isaac went to King Abimelech of the Philistines. This is like Groundhog Day. It's like the same thing playing out again

because if you've been with us through the book of Genesis, it all sounds so familiar. Isaac is facing the exact same challenge as Father Abraham faced. Abraham faced a famine. He refused to trust God to provide instead went down to Egypt. And because Abraham was afraid, that Pharaoh would mistreat him, he told his wife Sarah to pretend like she was his sister. Now, Isaac finds himself in similar circumstances that his dad did. And you're wondering, what is Isaac going to do? Verse 2. The Lord appears to Isaac and says, don't go down to Egypt. Live in the land where I tell you to live.

So you can see what's happening. Isaac is starting to head down the same road as dad did. He's starting to head down to Egypt. God intercepts him and in a blunt way tells him, look, that's a really bad idea. God warns him to not repeat the sins of his father. I bet God's warning really gets Isaac's attention and gets him back on track, right? Not so much. Verse 7.

When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, she's my sister because he was afraid to say she's my wife. He thought, the men of this place might kill me on account of Rebecca because she is so beautiful. Wow, Isaac did the exact same thing as Father Abraham did in spite of God's warning. Just like Abraham sinfully refused to trust God's provision in the middle of a famine and instead headed down to Egypt. So Isaac refuses to trust God and follows in his dad's footsteps by lying about his wife and exposing her to great harm. Verse 8 tells us that after Isaac has lived there for a while, Abimelech, who's the king of the Philistines, looked down from his window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebecca. But remember, Abimelech thinks that Rebecca is his sister.

I'm sure he's looking down and going, what kind of redneck family is this? So Abimelech calls Isaac up to him, and he says, look, really, she's your wife, isn't she? Why in the world did you say that she was your sister? And Isaac tells him, because I thought I might lose my life on account of her. So at one level, this is a story for parents and children, right? To the parents it says, what you do and how you live will inevitably affect your children, either for good or ill. It tells parents, look, you have the power to lead your kids toward Jesus or away from them.

And to children, it says, learn from your parents' successes and their failures, from when they follow Jesus and when they don't. Learn from their example, whether it's good or bad. The reality is that parents are a powerful influence, usually the most powerful influence in the life of a child. But where the power comes from might surprise you, because the power of a parent does not lie in being a perfect parent. Sometimes you read a Christian parenting book,

and you just feel under the pile because it sets a standard that seems impossible to attain. And then sometimes we put on ourselves a lot of pressure to be perfect parents. Why do you think that is? Why do we put so much pressure on herself? Because we love our kids? Well, yes, I'm sure we do. With very few exceptions, every parent wants the best for their kid.

Nobody comes home from the hospital saying, I can't wait to screw this kid up. But is it possible that some of that pressure we put on ourselves to be perfect parents is more about us than them? Well, either way, it might comfort you to know that the Bible doesn't record any perfect parents. I've looked, but I can't find any. You might ask about Joseph and Mary. They raised Jesus.

He turned out okay. You're right about that. But they had an advantage that none of us had, and that is that they had a sinless child. And don't forget, when Jesus was 12, they lost him for a whole day. Here's the point. Parenting is hard. Families are messy. Parenting exposes all your idols.

You have control issues? Well, it turns out your child has a vote that you can't control. You love your comfort? Well, if so, your child's needs will seem like a hassle to you. You want to be respected and thanked? I don't know too many kids who understand or appreciate all their parents do for them. Most of us didn't appreciate what our parents did for us until we were parents ourselves and gained some perspective. You love your freedom?

Well, there are no off hours to being a parent. No vacations. You're always mom or dad. In one sense, that's fantastic. Being a parent is a blast. It fulfills God's mission and plan for our lives and for the world. But in another sense, it's exhausting. Being a parent can be overwhelming.

Anyone who declares that they know the secret to parenting either just had their first baby or just graduated from Bible College with a degree in youth ministry. The reality is parenting is difficult. But God sent them home with you. Right? I mean, God sent them home with you. I remember when I took my first child home, I was leaving the hospital. expecting the alarms to go off. I mean, did they really expect me to take care of this kid?

Didn't I need to take a test or something to prove that I was able to do it? See, one important question we have to answer is who has primary responsibility to teach my kids to follow Jesus? I think a lot of us say that's the church's job. That's why we take our kids to church. And you can see why parents think that way. If your kid needs help in math, you hire a math tutor. If your kid wants to learn an instrument, you sign them up for lessons, maybe with a piano teacher. If you want your kid to be in competitive sports, maybe you put them on a team and you think of the coach as the one who trains and coaches them toward being good in athletics. So if you want to teach your kid about faith, or you want to teach them about Christianity, if you want them to follow Jesus, then you send them

to the church, right? Well, wrong. That's not how God designed it. When it comes to faith, God has entrusted the primary responsibility to parents. In Deuteronomy 6, God tells parents to impress God's commands on their kids, to talk about them when you're at home and when you're on the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. And that makes sense, right? Because parents are with their kids a lot more than the church is. Well, if the power of parents isn't in having it all together, where does their power come from? Well, Deuteronomy's said that the power comes from God and works through engaged relationships. By talking about God, by living out your faith together in daily life, it's about a relationship, it's not about a class,

but it's about engaging with kids, not just being in the same room with them or the same car with them. It's a relationship, not a formula. The Bible doesn't call us to be an expert on parenting. It doesn't call us to get more committed or more organized or to stop making mistakes or to make more lists or to enroll our kids in more activities. It calls us to have a genuine relationship with our kid in which faith in Jesus is a normal part of life, a normal part of our conversation. The problem is that a lot of parents who attend church with their kids on Sunday don't discuss their faith Monday through Saturday. If you're a parent or grandparent following Jesus, engage with you. your kids, engage with your grandchildren about your faith in Jesus. Read the Bible together, pray together, sing Christian songs together, talk about challenges they face, talk about your

struggles with them. That will help them follow Jesus more than anything else. If you're not a parent right now, maybe the best thing that you can do to pass the faith on to the next generation is to volunteer in your community or volunteer in your church. Because God calls all of us as a community to pass on the baton of faith to the next generation. No one gets to opt out of that responsibility. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week. It'll challenge you to grow in your faith, give you interesting background on today's passage, and a lot, lot more. Just click the link in

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