The Second Generation Syndrome – 1 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

Kids, they always seem to know more than their parents until they grow up. What's true for families is also true for nations. As we run the race of life, let's avoid the pitfalls of the past. Today, a look back to allow us to look forward. History need not repeat itself. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, you're beginning a series you've called We've Been Down This Road Before. Tell us why the Book of Judges is where you found this teaching and why your first message is all about the Second Generation Syndrome.

You know, Dave, it's so important for us to recognize that in history, history does repeat itself. And one of the most difficult tasks that we as parents have is passing our faith along to our children. You know, when you're in a relay race, the passing of the baton is the most dangerous place. The baton can be dropped.

Someone can perhaps then pick it up. But at the same time, we have to recognize that the Book of Judges especially emphasizes that believers often do not pass on their faith. That's why this series is so important. We've been down this road before, but the question is, what have we learned in the past that will help us in the present?

Let's listen carefully. History teaches us that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, nor acted upon principles deduced from it. Those are actually the words of Hegel, the great German philosopher. And if you know anything about Hegel, you know that the principles that he deduced from history we do not agree with. But it has been frequently said that the only thing that we really do learn from history is that people do not learn from history. And if that's true, the question is, why would I begin today a series of messages on a historical book?

And the answer to that question is that we hope to see a miracle here. We are going to learn from history. And we are going to be changed by history because this is God's history that he is allowed to be written in his word. And as we look into history, we are going to be looking into a mirror. And in that mirror, we are going to be seeing ourselves.

We're going to be seeing our nation. But thankfully, we're also going to be seeing God. And when we think of it, there is no book possibly in the historical books of the Bible that so mirrors and so shows us parallels to what is happening in our world today as the ancient book of Judges found in your Old Testament. The book of Judges will teach us about repentance, about leadership, about God's will. And it's going to give us insights into God's relationship with people that may be surprising.

It may stretch our theological boundaries when we begin to see how God interacts with people when they are obedient and when they are disobedient. The book of Judges is called Judges because as Israel was going through a difficult period and they would cry up to God, God would raise up deliverers, both men and women, people who would stand in the gap, people who would come at a great moment of need, and they would provide leadership. Now, in those days, there was no king in Israel. And so judges were God appointed leaders who would help the people win battles and then would stay with them until that judge died. And as we shall see, the book of Judges covers about 300 years of history.

There is within it a cycle. The reoccurring cycle is apostasy, slavery, repentance on the part of the people, deliverance, and then the whole cycle repeats itself six times in this book. Now, when we open the book of Judges, of course, our sensibilities in some instances may be offended because you remember when they came into the land, it was God who said, I want you to wipe out the Canaanites. And people read this today and they say, well, this was ancient. This is certainly pre-Christian.

And most assuredly, this could not be the God of the New Testament commanding such a cruel barbaric act. We need to keep in mind, first of all, that times were different back then. God was dealing with the nation Israel as a nation. Today he is dealing with us as people scattered throughout the world, actually, as Christians scattered in different countries. And so his relationship with us is indeed changed. We are not given these kinds of commands today. But in those days, there were these pagan nations called the Canaanites who were inexplicably irredeemably evil.

And we shall point that out from time to time in this series of messages. And you have to keep in mind that the God in which most Americans believe is not really the God of the Bible. He's a domesticated God. He is a God that is more tolerant. He's a God who can put up with all these things. And we don't understand that he is indeed the same God yesterday, today, and forever. But his means of dealing with us today has changed.

But in the end, he's not changed his opinion about sin, about righteousness. And in the end, in the final time, his judgments shall show him to be the same God as the God of the Old Testament. Now, what I'd like us to do, and I do invite you not only to open your Bibles and to read along with me, but we are going to be looking at specific sections in the book and we will not be reading it all, obviously. And I want you to take your Bibles home and read the details. Spend some time in the book of Judges in the next several weeks, reading, pondering, thinking, read ahead from where we are in these messages.

And in this way, all of the pieces of the puzzle will come together for you. But chapter 1 opens with victories that were won under Joshua, but also many defeats that were won, or lost, I should say, among the different tribes. Now, keep in mind, Joshua came into the land. He divided it in two. He spread to the south.

He spread to the north. And you have the Canaanites being taken care of, in some instances exterminated, but pockets of resistance remain throughout the land. And God decreed that it would be so to keep his people humble and in some instances to use those Canaanites to defeat his own people. The lessons that we shall learn will be surprising indeed.

But I want you to notice the failures of the people, the half-hearted victories. If you read in chapter 1, for example, verse 27, it says, but Manasseh did not drive out the people of Beth-shan. Verse 28, when Israel became strong, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor, but never drove them out completely. Verse 30, neither did the Zebulun drive out the Canaanites. Verse 31, nor did Asher drive out those living in Akko and Sidon. Verse 32, and because of this, the people of Asher lived among the Canaanite inhabitants of the land, and neither did Naphtali drive out those living in Beth-Shemesh. Verse 34, the Amorites confined the Danites to the hill country, not allowing them to come down into the plain.

Who's in control here? It's the Amorites that are controlling the Danites, which was one of the tribes of Israel. You see here that there is a balance of power taking place, a shift in power, that Israel that was dominant is beginning to lose one battle after another through half-hearted obedience to God, and as a result, God is going to lead them into discipline.

The applications of this book are not only national, as we shall see, though they are that, but they are very personal, they are very pointed, they are very individual. All of us struggle with sin. Those of you who may be struggling with specific sins of addiction, I want you to know that this book speaks to your situation, to our situation as a country.

What a book this is, the book of Judges. Now all that background leads me in the first message in this series, and the series generally is entitled, We've Been Down This Road Before. But specifically this message is on the second generation syndrome. And for this we turn to chapter 2, and I want you to notice four characteristics of the second generation syndrome and its application to us today. There's so much that we could say about the introduction to chapter 2, about the angel coming, and we'll be referring to the message that the angel brings in a different context.

But I'm going to pick it up at verse 10, because this becomes now the plan of the whole book of Judges. After that the whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, this is after Joshua and Caleb and those about whom we know so much, and another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. What is the first characteristic of the second generation syndrome? It is that they enjoy inherited benefits. They run on the capital of those before them. They are blessed with things for which they did not have to work, for which they did not have to fight. What was this generation blessed with, this second generation that forgot the Lord? They were blessed with the covenant that God made with Abraham, because God said, Abraham, I'm going to give you a land and it is going to be yours and your descendants after you. They were inheritors of that blessing.

When God came to Moses and when he revealed himself on Mount Sinai and the people stood back and God said, I am making a covenant with you and I will bless you if you obey me. They inherited this second generation, inherited the blessings that came as a result of Moses, as a result of Joshua, because of Caleb, men like that, they inherited the covenantal blessings. They inherited their portion of the land.

They did not have to fight for their territory. Their fathers had fought for it and they were now enjoying that part of the land. A second generation inherits the blessings and the benefits of those who preceded them.

I'm thinking, for example, now I'm talking personally at Moody Church. It's difficult to make generalizations regarding generations because we have so much diversity, which is of course the very thing that we want because the body of Jesus Christ is diverse. But I think of my parents brought up in the Ukraine, German people, but in the Ukraine and in World War I, because of the fear that the Germans might side with Germany in its war with Russia, they became refugees. My father's family goes to Afghanistan.

My mother's family goes to Siberia. Suffering along the way, relatives dying, babies dying, adults dying, what a life they lived. They came to Canada and I then am the inheritor, the inheritor of benefits and blessings that I did absolutely nothing to receive.

All that I had to do was to be born in a country where there were so many blessings and so many opportunities. So you have generation to generation. One generation sees the struggle, the next generation comes along and benefits from that struggle. But the problem is that in the process of benefiting, oftentimes their hearts are turned from the Lord and they go an entirely different direction. And I've been told by experts that I'm too old to be thought of as a baby boomer. I don't know where in the world they draw that line.

I think they put it in the wrong place. But what happens is, you know, the baby boomers, they have benefited from those who've gone through struggles, those who have gone through wars, those who lived through World War II and in some instances World War I. And now the baby boomers, they can have some leisure time and leisure money. Then the baby boomers give rise to the busters and the busters have even more time. They can actually party. They can go to spring break. And when you get to people like the Generation X, now you have young people who are expecting that this is part of it.

You not only get a car when you're out of college, you're supposed to get one for graduation day out of high school. And on and on, the expectations continued. And what does it say about this second generation? They forgot the Lord God.

Let's go to a second characteristic of the second generation syndrome. They redefine their understanding of God. It boils down to a theological issue. They redefine their understanding of God.

Now let's look at the very next verses, 11 to 13. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord their God of their fathers who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the people around them. They provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.

And what are we talking about here? Well, they forsook the Lord. Why did they change gods? Well, you have to understand Baal, it even says here plural, Baals. Baal was kind of a local deity.

And so one Baal may have responsibility for the weather, another for the responsibility in another area, in another place. I saw the god Baal with my own eyes many years ago when I was in Lebanon and we went to Baalbek. There was the god Baal. At the end of the tour, you see all these pillars that go to heaven, high, ruins, unbelievable what people have built.

And then they said it's the end of the tour. It's now time to see God. Well, I have to tell you about this Baal. He was about three feet high. He was actually a very small Baal. Chiseled out of stone, obviously the weather had done its work on him. He needed a facelift clearly. He had a smirk on his face, same one that he had thousands of years ago.

He hasn't changed his expression and that was Baal. You say, well, Pastor Lutzer, why would someone choose Baal, Asheroth, the god of fertility, the god of sex, the god of violence? Because these gods did not care whether you slept with your girlfriend before you married. As a matter of fact, these gods didn't care if you slept with all kinds of people. These gods said it's okay to go on spring break and to get drunk and to be immoral.

That's fine. And so what the people said is, you know, Jehovah certainly is against this. He doesn't want to put up with this, but Baal lets us do it. In fact, in those days they had what was known as sympathetic worship. Sympathetic worship meant that the best way to worship your God is to act like your God acts. And Asheroth and Baal loved immorality.

So catch this. You could actually attend a worship service that was an orgy. You could get drunk.

You could do whatever you're like. And the gods said, it's okay. They said, we're okay.

You're okay. So the younger generation said to themselves, we are no longer going to follow the Lord God. You know, all these strict rules.

Don't do this. That's ancient. What we want is a God who is more in line with our desires. Now here's something that you must take note of. It would have been one thing if they'd have said, okay, we're going to leave Jehovah and we're going for Baal and Asheroth.

It didn't quite work out that way. What they said is we're going to continue to worship the Lord God, but we are going to do that. Bringing in all the worship of the pagan gods and we'll still call it Jehovah's worship.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're still really worshiping Jehovah, but you see the way we're worshiping him is through our desires and through our new gods. It's all part of that. We're not turning our back on God.

No, we're just making him more relevant to where we are. And so they worshiped the Lord God. You say, well, Pastor Lutzer, isn't that nice that we don't worship Baal? The Bible says in the book of Ezekiel that the Lord is saying they have set up idols in their hearts and have worshiped them. Any conception of God that allows you to violate the teaching of the scripture is an idol. And so you can see today in America, we've got all these idols, all these gods redefined according to our own desires, aspirations, wishes and hopes and dreams. And so everybody's got his God. And so I've got my little God over there. My God would never allow this to happen over here. And my God is not that strict. My God is this.

My God is that. Because everybody's defining God and they're leaving the Lord God Jehovah, but they're still calling him God. They're still calling him Jehovah. But the definition has changed. Characteristics of the second generation.

They enjoy inherited benefits. They redefine their understanding of God. A third, they become enslaved to their desires. The desires that they follow now become a noose around their neck. Notice what the next verses say.

I'm picking it up at verse 14. In his anger against Israel, the Lord handed them over to raiders who plundered them. Now, I wonder if your theology can handle this.

I wonder if you're up to being able to accept this. God sold them to their enemies all around them whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them. Just as he had sworn to them, they were in great distress. God says, I am going to strengthen your enemies against you because you've turned your back on me. So what is the consequences of their disobedience?

They begin to serve these other gods and remember God's means of discipline. God always says, if you want to sin, I'm going to let you sin. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to let you sin to your fill until it ensnares you, enslaves you, drives you, controls you until you get absolutely desperate, unable to function anymore. And then suddenly you cry up to me and say, God, whatever it is that you ask, it matters not at last. You have my attention.

Well, once again, I want to have a personal word with you. This is Pastor Lutzer. I want to thank the many of you who help us get messages just like this to millions of people around the world. When I think of the Ministry of Running to Win, it's not the ministry of a man or a church or an organization. My dear friend, it is your ministry. Were it not for all those who supported the Ministry of Running to Win, we of course would not be able to get the gospel of Christ to so many.

You would not be hearing the messages that you listen to. Thank you in advance for helping us. Now I have some very exciting news. We are beginning what we call our matching challenge. Generous donors have said that they are willing to match whatever is given up to $90,000.

What that means in practical terms, of course, is that $50 becomes $100, $100 becomes $200, and of course you can do the math. Would you help us? Would you go to our website, rtwoffer.com, or call us at 1-888-218-9337? We need people just like you to stand with us as we get the gospel of Christ to so many.

Once again, rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. And whatever you give, your gift will be matched by some special donors. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. On today's Running to Win, Pastor Erwin Lutzer brought part one of The Second Generation Syndrome, the first of 12 messages on the topic we've been down this road before. This is Dave McAllister. What's so bad about inherited blessings? Next time, find out as you listen to part two of The Second Generation Syndrome. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.