After the amazing victories of the time of Joshua, the era of the judges begins with the statement that "another generation arose after them who did not know the LORD" (Judges 2:10). This sad assessment is the reason for what we read about in the rest of the book, a cycle of defeat and disobedience. Our families too can fall into this trap, if we raise a new generation in our own homes who do not know the Lord.

I spent a couple months teaching through the Old Testament, a survey of the Old Testament, and I told everyone something that I'm sure most of you have observed, that the historical books, with a few exceptions such as Ruth and Esther, largely lead into the next book. In other words, one historical book concludes, and the next historical book picks up where that previous book left off. But there's one change between two books that I consider to be so dramatic or so significant, you could almost think you missed something. You could look at the transition that takes place between the books of Joshua and Judges. If you want to go ahead and open to Judges 2, we're gonna look at one verse there.

Joshua is largely a book of victories, right? Israel is moving through the Promised Land and they are defeating one nation after another. It's largely victory after victory after victory after victory in the book of Joshua. And then you move into the book of Judges and what? What is it?

Almost the opposite, right? It's a cycle of failures. Yeah, Joshua victory after victory after victory, judges failure after failure after failure, defeat after defeat after defeat. One verse in the book of Judges that reveals why this took place if you look in chapter 2 verse 10 with me. And all that generation, this is the generation in the book of Joshua, also 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 for Israel." And that verse right there gives you a nice succinct understanding of why that transition took place between the books of Joshua and Judges.

Or this verse right here captures why the nation of Israel moved from victory after victory after victory to defeat after defeat after defeat and we get it captured for us in these words. Let me just read it One more time. After that generation, the generation of the book of Joshua, were gathered to their fathers. There arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that He had done from Israel. And I think this is a very powerful, important verse for us as church leaders for the season, the day in which we live, to understand why God's people would move or transition so quickly like that.

The verse tells us two things what's wrong with this new generation. What's the...this can be interactive, we're a smaller group. What's the first thing we see wrong with this new generation they didn't know the Lord we're told right there you don't have to infer it it's not implied it's directly told to us that this generation did not know the Lord, let's understand what this does and doesn't mean. It doesn't mean they didn't know of Him, right? They were not talking that far removed from the plagues that had been unleashed on Egypt and the Red Seas being parted and manna coming down from heaven and so forth.

And so it's not to say that they didn't know of him, it's to say what? They didn't know him relationally or personally or they didn't know him salvifically. It's to say, this is Old Testament language for a salvific relationship, to say that people know God or God knows people and to say the Israel didn't know God is to say that they didn't know him. The nation of Israel was filled with many unbelievers, many unsaved people this generation who didn't know the Lord personally. What's the second thing listed?

What's the second thing wrong? They didn't know his works. They didn't know what he had done for the previous generation. Again, I don't think this can be as literal as it sounds. I don't think this means they didn't know about the plagues on Egypt, because even the Canaanites did.

Right? You know, Jericho was locked up. Even pagans knew what God had done to Egypt. So I take this to mean that they didn't know those things themselves. They didn't know the power.

They had not witnessed it as the previous generation had. Their parents knew these things and the great things that God had done, they had experienced them, but then this other generation was able to come up who did not have that familiarity or those experiences with God's greatness and as a result they apostatize. Third, although it doesn't say it right in these verses I think because of our familiarity with the end of Joshua and the previous chapter, we know that part of this apostasy is also attributed to the compromise that even began in Joshua's day at the end of Judges regarding the nations in Canaan and what didn't happen with them. What didn't happen with them? What did Israel not do with them?

Drive them out completely. So they were mostly obedient. They had victories over them but then did not exterminate at them as they had been commanded. I think it's in Deuteronomy 7, Numbers 15 perhaps, when God says that there would be a thorn in your side and they would plague you and afflict you. And so the third reason that Israel failed, although it's not recorded in this verse, was they had been partially obedient, they had not driven out the Canaanites as completely as God had commanded.

So those three things, which is kind of half of them in mind, they didn't know the Lord personally, they didn't have a relationship with him, they didn't know the things that the Lord had done, and they had compromised in their obedience at the end of Joshua and then the judges the previous chapter discusses that. So the question is what can we learn from this account? Something that's unfortunate is probably the neglect of the Old Testament. I mean it's almost ironic to talk about this. We're talking about the problem associated with not knowing what the Lord had done for Israel and many Christians today don't know what God has done for Israel because they don't know what?

Because they don't know the Old Testament, right? And so The question is what can we learn from this and we don't want to say Well, we're the church and this is Israel so we can't learn from them first Corinthians 10 Romans 15 says that all of these things happened to Israel for what reason? As examples for us, for our admonishment and instruction to teach us and to warn us on whom the ends of the ages have fallen, it says. And so the question isn't can we learn from this, the question is what does God want us to learn from this? And when we see so dramatic of a change in God's people from victory to defeat, it tells me that there is a considerable amount that God would have us learn from this.

So three things we can learn from Mr. Olds' failure. First it says they didn't know the Lord. I just want to ask, I would genuinely like to hear your answers to this if you're a pastor or an elder or you're a deacon or you're a home fellowship leader. What do you desire for your people?

And that could just be the people under your under your care. What do you desire for your people that God's allowing you to shepherd? What do you desire to see with them? Go ahead and you just poured out some answers. I get you started strong marriages, right?

Family dislike? You kind of jumped Right? Family dislike? You would know the Lord and become like your son. You kind of jumped right to the...

Thanks. You sort of ruined what I was trying to do. We want healthy, strong churches and joy and peace. We want a good witness to the community. We want our people to serve.

We want them to be loving. We want them to be generous and giving. We want these healthy families. But I would say all those truly pale in comparison to them knowing God, them knowing Christ. No matter what things we might desire for our people if we lead a home fellowship or we shepherd a church, if it's strong marriages, strong families, even that pales in comparison to what must be our primary desire for our people that they know Christ, that they know the Lord, and that they love Him and are serving Him.

And I don't mean knowing Him intellectually or knowing of Him, because that was the failure with Israel. They didn't have a relationship with him. I'd go so far as to say, if we were able to say all these great things about our congregations, that the marriages are strong and the families are strong and they're generous and they're servants but we can't say that they know Christ, then we really have nothing to boast about. Our congregations have nothing to boast about. And I say that because Jeremiah 9 23 says, God says, Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me.

And so I'm sure most of us we love teaching the Word. In other words, we love telling people about God, teaching people about God, but we have to have a strong burden for our people to know God personally and have a relationship with Him, not just an intellectual or academic pursuit for them. So I know we can't change people's hearts. I'm sure we wish we could, whether it's our own children, you know, you wish you could just reach into their heart and save them and plant the gospel there. We have that same desire with our congregations that we wish we were the Holy Spirit, we wish we could save them.

Sometimes I'm sure if you've been a pastor very long you're talking to someone, you'd almost like to just grab them by the shoulders and shake them. Shake the Holy Spirit into them or shake them into being Satan, you feel so unable, you know, so inept and really incompetent regarding being able to see someone saved. But what we can do is we can preach the gospel. We can be those watchmen that are sharing the gospel faithfully. I will say, my oldest is 12, I never had any idea that so much of my family worship would be the gospel.

I have these plans to go through Chronicles, I have these plans to go through Luke's Gospel, I cannot tell you how many times our family studies are derailed to discuss the Gospel again and praise the Lord for that. As many times as my family wants to talk about the Gospel, we will talk about it. And my thought, the reason I'm sharing that with all of you, is my thought to myself was, if I should be this comfortable so frequently sharing the gospel with my children, then shouldn't that also be the case with my spiritual children, or the congregation that God has given me. And so I think we should never tire of preaching the gospel to our congregations. We should never tire of that or think that it's only the responsibility of an evangelist.

And second, we can model faithfulness. Now, I know we obviously all fail and are unfaithful in respects, but hopefully by God's grace we might be shepherds or leaders that people can see Christ through. And so when we fail to share that, humbly ask for forgiveness, acknowledge that to our congregations, but by God's grace that they might be able to see Christ through us because we are the individuals that God has allowed to be up front and the tremendous responsibility that comes with that. And so the other way to preach the gospel to our church families is to, by the very best working of God's Holy Spirit in our lives, look like Christ as his under-shepherds to our congregations. Second, it says they didn't know the work that the Lord had done for Israel.

We want to make sure our families and churches know the work that God has done for Israel by teaching the Word faithfully. Generations are coming up or have already taken place that are just like the generation in Judges 2. There are generations in our day and there have been generations over the past centuries that are just like this generation in Israel's in Judges 2 that did not know the Lord and what he has done for Israel and that's simply because churches don't want to teach the Bible. Why don't they want to? I'll just ask you, why do you think churches don't want to teach the Bible?

Because it won't draw any believers. What? Because it won't draw any non-believers. It's not attractive. It's not popular.

It's not popular. It doesn't entertain It is not glamorous enough It's offensive if I tell these people that their centers who need a Savior they might not come back next week. So I need to tell them good things about themselves. I need to make them feel good about themselves and build their self-esteem. It's too boring.

It's too boring. It's not relevant. It doesn't have application for today. And I suspect I'll get an amen when I say this but brothers you're with me when I say that it's almost every week that I'm reading God's Word and preparing for my sermon and I can't help but think of how relevant it is for what's going on in my life my family my church and so the ignorance of the person who says that the Bible is not relevant today, it's astounding to me, but we think they, you know, they won't come back if this is all that we're giving them. If they just get this and so as a result There are some number of things that are replacing the simple preaching of God's Word, because that's not enough.

What are some of the things that are replacing it? It could be videos, right? It could be social media. It could be whatever dog and pony show has to be introduced to keep our people's attention and to make the service attractive to them. And you'll typically see this in congregations where they're always having to kind of improve their game.

If they did this last year at the Christmas program or did this last year at the Easter service, they got to be bigger and better the next year. And if you're preaching God's Word, you never have to improve on it. It's not saying you're not going to prove as a preacher, but if you're giving people God's word, you never have to go through that struggle. The only struggle is, God, what do you want me to share from your word? But you don't have to think about more lights, more camera, more action.

And for the regenerate, they are hungering and thirsting. There is a deep hunger and thirst in many people for the plain, simple preaching of God's Word. For the children of God, they are hungering and thre—that's why the even just a few people came here today to go to Pastor Kerry's church said, I am so thankful to find a church and what they really meant was that preaches God's Word. No dog and pony show, nothing flashy or extravagant. And so when the Word is preached, it has to be attached in these churches to something in the culture to be contemporary.

And I don't mean when pastors equip their churches that they don't deal with the culture or deal with the issues around them. I mean that's actually what this conference is the next two days, right? What I mean is you have pastors and they want to tie their sermons to the newest movie or the newest television series or whatever it is that's popular or relevant happening around them, some celebrity, some sports team, because the word is not enough. And one of the problems with this approach is you end up with a lot of people who think they're Christians and they know more about the Avengers than they know about Christ. They know more about different things happening in the culture than they know about God's work for Israel in the Old Testament, and as a result they look exactly like this generation in Joshua's day.

The third thing for Israel is they were influenced by the nations that they didn't drive out. Those nations ended up being a thorn in their side. Israel was drawn to their idolatry and that produced Israel's apostasy. And I would just say this, just like Israel was influenced by the nations around them, are churches today influenced by the culture or the world around them? Yes.

It's the exact same thing. Just like Solomon says, there's nothing new under the sun. So exactly what happened with Israel in the Promised Land, being influenced by the culture, or the world around them, which was the Canaanites that hadn't been driven out, there are churches that are equally influenced by the world and the culture that surrounds them. The conference tomorrow and Saturday is going to deal with some of these issues. Homosexuality, egalitarianism, the denial of the gender roles, the denial of the plain teaching of God's Word, that He's made us male and female, denial of many of these simple truths.

And so here's kind of what I would say. If these truths—and this is— I haven't heard all the messages for the next two days, but this is my suspicion. Nobody is actually going to be saying anything truly profound in the sense that they're going to be saying something that you can't see plainly in God's Word. Anyone who stands up tomorrow or Saturday is going to be telling you what is plainly spoken through God's Word. There's nothing that you're gonna have to sift through some number of verses to find some deep truth Because God has revealed it right there.

And so here's the reason I'm saying that If these truths are so evident or revealed plainly through God's Word the words that are gonna be coming forward over the next two days Well, then where is the world or where is the church getting the teachings that it's embracing? Clearly not from Scripture, because the teachings in Scripture are plain, from the world, or from the nations around us, like Israel was getting their teachings from the nations around them. And so the real tragedy is not that there is homosexuality in the world. That's not the real tragedy. I mean, you only make it to Genesis 19.

It's only a few chapters after the flood. You think the flood would have shaped everyone up, right? You only move a few chapters forward and you've got Sodom and Gomorrah. You've got drunkenness, you've got incest. All these terrible sins, so we see them very early, they've always plagued us is my point.

Anything we're talking about the next few days has plagued us since creation. So that's not the shocking part. The shocking part is we're seeing those things in churches. We're seeing them creeping into churches. The homosexuality, the egalitarianism, the denial of the gender roles.

And I think that's where we have moved beyond what to God as he looks down. I mean, I don't know what he must think, but I don't know how he feels about the homosexuality he sees in the culture, but I guess it must grieve his heart terribly when he sees it in the church. The denial of male headship in the home and in the church, the denial of gender roles. We've reached the point now where not only is there confusion regarding genders, but there's a denial of them completely where a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man and not only that we can reward people who commit this grievous sin. Men who might who might you know emasculate themselves can be given awards for their courage.

So that's where we're at. And you see this sort of tolerance creep into the church. And so the question is, how did the church come to embrace these unbiblical practices and truths? They followed the world. We've let these come in so to be relevant or to be contemporary, even some of you who are talking about what you love about NCFIC, the same thing that I love about NCFIC, is holding to biblical truths and the conservativeness, the morality that's presented so clearly in God's Word when it's becoming harder to find churches or organizations that will will take those hard stands.

So Scott asked me to give you a strong charge and now we've reached that. This is my charge for all of you. Do your part to raise up a generation that knows the Lord and the work He's done. I'll just put you right back into Judges 2 10. If you need to read that verse, you can read it a hundred times and it becomes more encouraging I think each time you read it, more challenging.

Let's do our part as leaders in whatever sphere God has called us to raise up a generation that knows the Lord and the work that He has done. And we can do that three ways which we've been talking about. We can preach the gospel faithfully. We can teach the Word faithfully, which is to say, teach what God has done so that we know His works and so that our people know His works. And then third, keep the world out of our churches.

Keep unbiblical teachings and practices out of our churches as it becomes even harder to resist. I mean legislation comes down. Legislation comes down that is going to talk about what we can't talk about in our churches. I just think it's going to get harder to hold to some of these biblical truths. For the most part, I don't know, if I say, hey raise your hand if you're a persecuted pastor look around we're not I don't think we're persecuted I can stand up and I can preach very boldly behind the pulpit about homosexuality or whatever I'd like the very worst thing is someone might not come back the next week.

Any thoughts or questions? That's the charge that I have for you. Do your part to raise up the generation that knows the Lord and the work He's done. All right, God bless you guys. Thank you for the privilege of sharing.