There is a somewhat well known statement (in various forms) that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana). The great British leader Winston Churchill expressed a similar idea.
All of these quotes in some form describe the truth that forgetfulness leads to failure. Forget your past, and you will make the same mistakes as your ancestors, or some other fool from back when.
Forgetfulness leads to failure in another way. Forget God, and you will fail into sin and apostasy. If you do not, your children will. After Joshua died, that is what happened to Israel. They forgot God. They did not follow him. They failed. This passage emphasises the importance of not forgetting God in our lives, and teaching and encouraging the next generation to trust in Jesus, their saviour too.
After the ominous warning of God to Israel and their weeping non-repentance at Bochim (vv.1-5), the author of Judges winds back the clock to diagnose the failure of Israel.
To contrast the generations which Judges will discuss, the author reminds us of Joshua’s generation. After the united campaigns to subdue the land of Canaan, Joshua dismissed Israel’s tribes to take possession of the lands which God had given them as an inheritance (v.6).
While we know from reading the Book of Joshua that there was plenty of sin and unbelief, in comparison to later Israelites “the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua” (v.7).
This service was because they “had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel” (v.7). Unlike their faithless ancestors, they had seen God’s great acts as the walls of Jericho came tumbling down and armies took to flight before them, and saw God’s hand working behind it.
That experience affected their hearts and minds, and they served God. It was not just because of Joshua’s leadership, but all the elders who outlived Joshua kept Israel on the straight and narrow.
Joshua, who faithfully served God and Moses and watched his contemporaries die in the wilderness because of unbelief, entered into the Promised Land and was buried in the land God gave him and his family to possess, at the ripe age of 110 (vv.8-9). All those that Joshua led, and who trusted God, likewise went the way of all people and passed away (v.10).
Sadly the next generation were not faithful. “And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel” (v.10). This is not a reference to bad teaching, but unbelief. The previous generation knew about what God had done. They just did not see practical application in their lives. Much like High Priest Eli’s dodgy sons who served in the sanctuary but did not know the LORD (1 Sa 2:12), you can learn about someone and yet not know someone.
The result of this forgetfulness was failure. “The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals” (v.11), the local Canaanite fertility deities who demanded discussing sacrifices and unchaste “red light district” “worship” practices. Handily, they had not wiped out the local populace as commanded, so had good instructors.
Israel abandoned God, the “God of their Fathers” for foreign deities who had not saved them from Egypt, provoking God to righteous and jealous anger (v.12). They forgot God and failed, abandoning God for the Baals and Ashteroth who could not do anything for them (v.13).
The failure of the new generation demonstrates how faith requires more than just knowledge of facts and events. You must also agree that those events have meaning, and place reliance on them in a way that changes how you live. We have no reason to believe the old generation failed to pass on the knowledge of what God had done, but the new generation did not come to experience it as a part of their everyday life; to trust in it.
This shows how important it is to not just teach our kids of God and his rescue mission to save us all through Jesus, but to let them see God working today. Ultimately, it is God who changes our childrens’ hearts to desire a relationship with him, by his Holy Spirit and through the means of grace. We must pray for them to see and believe.
But how does God work today? Through the preaching of his Word. Through prayer. Through the sacraments administered to those entitled to receive them, reminding us of what God has done for us all through Jesus.
How else do we experience God? Through changed hearts, repenting and believing in Jesus. Through lives which become more Christ-like and grace-filled as thanks for God’s forgiveness. When that same love and grace pours out from us to others, including our children.
All these examples show how we can experience God today, tha we and our children do not forget God.
