In the sermon 'Psalm 78: Building a Heritage of Faith' by Jeremy Lyerla, the emphasis is on the importance of passing on a spiritual heritage to future generations. The sermon draws from Psalm 78 to highlight the necessity for intentionality in teaching the next generation to place their hope in God, personally embrace the gospel, practice God's commands, and protect their hearts from rebellion. It stresses that building a heritage of faith is a continuous and deliberate effort, requiring parents, grandparents, and community members to be active participants in educating the young. The sermon also warns of the consequences of neglecting this duty, as illustrated by the historical failures of Israel's northern tribes. By teaching future generations to rely on God and internalize the gospel, a lasting legacy of faith can be established.

Be going through the text there today. Psalm 78, starting in verse 1. I'm not going to read the whole Psalm very lengthy. I'd encourage you though, later in the day, to go back and read through the Psalm and yeah, you'll be very encouraged. Psalm 78 verse 1.

Things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and His might, and the wonders that He has done. He established a testimony in Jacob, and he appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our fathers to teach their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments, and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your Word.

We thank you that your Word does not return void. We thank you that your Word is powerful and active. And we thank you that it does not rely upon man for your word to be effective. And so we ask you today as we gather to hear your word that your spirit would be here teaching us, instructing us, molding us, and making us more like Christ. And so we ask you for this gracious working because we are in Christ.

And so it's in His name that we pray, amen. Well, what kind of heritage do you want to leave behind? When you die, What do you want your heritage to be? Or a better question is, what kind of heritage are you currently passing on? You see, passing on a heritage is a lifelong endeavor.

It's not just something that you do when you die. All week long, you have been leaving behind a portion of your heritage with everyone you have come in contact with. We often think of leaving behind an inheritance, like lands, monies, wealth, But Psalm 78 focuses on God's command to leave a heritage, and that heritage is a heritage of faith. And so Psalm 78 is a powerful and sobering and hope-filled reflection on generational faithfulness, but also generational failure. So, Asaph wrote this psalm, and Asaph writes this psalm not merely as a historical record, but he writes it as a warning and as a call to covenant faithfulness to pass on a heritage of faith.

And so he rehearses through this whole psalm the stories of Israel's past, and he does that to teach a lesson to Israel's current generation, but also their future generation. Well, why does he do that? Well, because what one generation predicts, the next will likely forsake. And so Psalm 78 begins with an appeal to listen and to remember, not just for information's sake, but for salvation and transformation. It commands us to pass on the glorious deeds of the Lord so that future generations would know Him and love Him and obey Him.

It commands us to pass on a heritage of faith. And Asaph confesses here in verse 4 of our passage here. He says, We will not hide them from their children, But we will tell the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord. And now in our passage today, verses 5 through 8 really summarize how they were going to carry out this passing on of this heritage of faith to the next generation. Really, these verses, mainly verses five through eight, they provide a blueprint, a blueprint for passing on a heritage of faith to the next generation.

You see, if we want to build a heritage of faith, We need to teach the next generation four things according to this text. We need to teach them to place their hope in God. We need to teach them to personally embrace the gospel. We need to teach them to practice his commands. And lastly, to protect their hearts from rebellion.

But this kind of heritage doesn't happen by accident. It must be intentionally built, brick by brick, life by life, word by word, thought by thought, over the course of an entire life. You see, without this intentionality, we will still pass on a heritage, but it will not be a heritage of faith. And so Psalm 78 calls fathers. It calls mothers, grandparents, teachers, siblings, peers to take serious the passing on of our faith for the sake of their generation, the coming generation that's coming up behind them.

But also it says in verse 6, for those generations who aren't even born yet. So let's dig into Psalm 78 and consider how to build a heritage that endures. And the first point is, again, to build a heritage of faith, we must first teach the next generation to place their hope in God. And we get that from the first part of verse 7 in our text. He goes through, starting in verse 5, talking about he's been given this testimony that Israelites have, so that they should set their hope in God.

You see, God graciously saved his people from Egypt. He gave them his law to be lived out with grateful hearts, but it wasn't just for them. It was the whole of God's people, even those not yet born. You see, our God, who is our heritage, has given us a heritage of faith. And we are to pass that heritage on to our children.

And that heritage is told us that it's our children in Psalm 127.3. He says, children are a heritage from the Lord. God has commanded that we pass on to our children the heritage we received, and that's God Himself. And so Psalm 78 is calling the Southern tribe, and it's calling us to remember the command of God to take seriously this passing on of our faith to the next generation. And The first foundation of that heritage, she says here, in the first part of verse 7, is that they should set their hope in God.

Now, let's be honest. We often place our hope in all of the wrong places. Maybe that's just me, but you're human, so I'm probably thinking it's probably the same. But we place our hope mistakenly a lot of times in ourselves. Maybe it's in our education or our degrees.

Maybe it's in the economy. Maybe it's in relationships. But we all know, if you've lived very long in this world, that these things eventually fail us. And that's why we must model and teach to the next generation only God is worthy of our trust, only He is worthy of our hope. Now the people of Israel had every reason to hope in God.

He delivered them from Egypt. He parted the Red Sea and brought them through. When they were in the wilderness, he provided food for them. Their clothes never wore out. He provided them with water.

When they finally went into the land, he gave them the law. So they had all of these blessings. They had every reason to hope and believe in God. But the northern tribes eventually turned away. They abandoned their hope in God.

And in doing so, they failed to teach their children to trust Him. They failed to pass on their heritage of faith in God. And the result was spiritual decline over the generations. And ultimately, it was the ruin of the northern kingdoms. Now, does this sound familiar?

Like Israel, we too have been delivered from slavery to sin. We've wandered through this wilderness we call life where God has sustained us in many, many ways, many miraculous ways. He's provided for us. He's led us. He's forgiven us.

He's shown us mercy when he didn't have to. You see, we are surrounded ourselves with covenant blessings. But how easy We shift our hope away from the God of the blessings to our bank accounts, to our plans, to our health, to our economy, to a political party. Like Israel, if we are not intentional, we'll trust in anything but God. And when we do this, we teach our children to do the same.

If we teach our children to put their hope in anything other than God, it too will have generational consequences. Isn't this why we're seeing the unraveling of our Christian heritage in this country? We have failed to teach the next generation to set their hope in God. Well, Psalm 78, it's a wake-up call. It's a wake-up call particularly to fathers, but it applies to everyone, to mothers, to grandparents, to teachers, to siblings, to co-workers, that we are commanded to pass on to the next generation a hope and a trust and a confidence in God.

And so like the psalmist, we're passing down more than just a story about what God's done. We're passing on a spiritual heritage. And that heritage is rooted in this confidence in a faithful covenant-keeping God. And so we must teach the next generation to fix their eyes on God, to hope in Him, to avoid the dangers and the pitfalls of placing their hope in anything else. Let's show the next generation what it's like.

What it's like to hold fast, to trust God when life is going well, and even when it seems like our lives are falling apart. Because to be honest, our lives are often falling apart. So let's teach him that our God is the God of providence and that He can be trusted no matter what may happen in our lives, because everything that comes to us flows from His fatherly hand. Isn't that what we learn in the Heidelberg Question 27? What do you mean by the providence of God?

Well, that the Almighty, everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were, by His hand He upholds and governs everything, if you will. And then at the end it says, And all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand. Well, that's great. That's a great idea, a great thing to think about. And so the author of the Catechism next asks, Well, what is the advantage of knowing this?

Well, that we may be patient in adversity, thankful in prosperity, and that in all things that befall us, we can trust and have confidence in our God. Well, if we want to build a heritage of faith, we must begin by teaching the next generation to place their firm trust, their hope in this God of Providence. Well, secondly, to build a heritage of faith, we must teach the next generation to personalize the gospel. Look at the second part of verse 7. He says there, to teach them not to forget the works of God.

You see, if we want to build a heritage of faith, we need to teach the next generation to personally embrace the saving work of God, to make it their own. What are these works? Well, God's deliverance, God's mercy, God's faithfulness throughout redemptive history. For Israel, those works were clear. Again, God rescued them from slavery to Egypt, which is a picture of deliverance from sin.

He parted the Red Sea and brought them through the Red Sea. He baptized them, if you will. He provided for them in the wilderness. He gave them his law to live a life of gratitude, blessing, and flourishing. He brought them into the promised land.

He could bless them no more, really, in this side of heaven. And these are the gracious works of salvation that surrounded Israel. But here's the tragedy. The northern tribes, they never personalized it. The northern tribes were born into the covenant.

They grew up hearing the stories of what God had done. They lived in the blessings that flowed from God's faithfulness to His covenant, but they did not set their hope in God. They didn't mix what they heard with faith. That's what Hebrews says in Hebrews 4, too. It says, For the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, but the word that they heard, they did not unite it with faith.

You see, it's not enough for them to know what God had done for them. It wasn't enough. They had to still place their faith in the God of the covenant blessings. And so it is for us today. It's not enough simply to know what God has done for us in Christ.

It's not enough for us to know the gospel. We must believe it. It's not enough to be around the gospel. We must receive it. You must own it and personally embrace what Christ has done for you.

Let's bring it home a little closer. Some of you here today grew up in Christian homes. You've been surrounded by the truths of the Word of God. You've heard how God saved your parents and maybe your grandparents. You've seen faith model in others around you.

You've heard from as early as you can remember that you're a sinner, but God sent his son to not only pay the penalty for your sin, but to even give you his righteousness if you would only believe in him. And so the question isn't, have you heard the gospel? The question is, have you believed it? Have you made it your own? You see, secondhand faith is not saving faith.

The northern tribes had all the covenant advantages of being born into the people of God, but they rejected the God of those blessings. And the psalmist, Asaph, in Psalm 78, he's warning the southern tribes, don't repeat their mistake. Don't assume being near the truth is the same as trusting in it, living it and making it your own. Don't assume that the next generation is going to just simply embrace it. This is not just a warning for the next generation.

It's a warning for all of us. It's a warning to parents, to grandparents, to elders, to teachers, that if we want to pass on a heritage of faith, we need to first make sure that we have embraced it ourselves. And so we need to ask ourselves, have I truly set my hope in God? Have I truly embraced what Christ has done for me, or do I only admire it from a distance? Can those around me tell that the gospel is my gospel, as Paul proclaimed?

This is my gospel. It's not just the gospel. It's my gospel. And often the people closest to us, our children especially, our spouses, our friends, they can see where our true hope lies. Brothers and sisters, Let's make sure we have the gospel because only then can we effectively pass it on.

I like what Thomas Brooks, one of our Reformed forefathers, has said. He encourages us to preach the gospel to yourselves. Apply the promises to your own souls. The promises are not only to be looked at, but to be lived upon. This is the call.

Don't just pass on gospel stories. Pass on a gospel that has changed you. Let them see it lived out. Let them see that it sustains you, it comforts you, it leads you. Because only then will the next generation know that the gospel is not just history, it's life.

Only then will they see that it's the greatest heritage that they could ever have been given. Well, so far we've seen that to build a heritage of faith, we must teach the next generation to first place their hope and confidence in God and second personally to embrace the gospel make it their own But faith as we know in God and embracing the gospel hope must also take shape in daily life And so now let's look at what it means to teach the next generation to practice God's commands, to live out their faith with obedience and love in all of life. And that's our third point. And that is to build a heritage of faith, we must teach the next generation to practice God's commands. And you see that in the last part of verse 7.

He says, but to keep His commandments. You see, if we want to build a heritage of faith that lasts, We can't stop with telling the next generation just to hope in God or even to receive the gospel personally. No, they must also be taught to walk in obedience, to practice God's commands as a way of living a life of gratitude for all that He has done for them. Jesus boldly stated, if you love Me, you will keep My commandments. So what does it look like to pass on God's commandments?

Well, it begins with knowing that this has really been the responsibility through all of time of God's people. We read this morning Deuteronomy 6, 7, where God tells the fathers and the people of Israel to teach his word, his law, diligently to the children. He says, when you're sitting, when you're walking, when you're lying down, when you're writing up. And what this tells us is that this is not just a casual instruction. It's an all encompassing integration of the Word of God into all of life.

And Paul echoes this to the Ephesian Church in Ephesians 6, 4. It says, fathers, bring your children up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. Well, now when we look at the northern tribes of Israel, we see that they tragically failed in this calling. And what was the result? Well, as you go through Psalm 78, you realize that it says in there that they did not keep God's covenant.

They refused to walk in His law. Well, how did that happen? Well, it's the same way that it happens today. The generation before them stopped studying God's Word. They stopped living out God's Word, and eventually they stopped teaching what they didn't believe in the first place.

But why did they stop believing in God's word? Well, often it begins when the people of God mix their fate with the world around them. And this is what happened with the northern tribes of Israel. They mixed God's truth with the world's lies. We read in 2 Kings 17 verse 33, So they, Israel, they feared the Lord, but also, but also they served their own gods after the manner of the nations.

You see, they likely feared the discipline of God, if we want to be honest. And so they still virtue signaled to their religion. They still had the vocabulary of religion. They still spoke the name of the Lord, but their hearts were divided. They tried to blend God's commands with their culture, and the word became diluted in their minds and in their hearts.

And when the word of God fades in the life of a people, and their consciences and their lives begin to be aligned with the world, the next generation ends up refusing to walk in God's ways. They reject what the previous generation hypocritically embraced. Well, how do we avoid this as God's people? Well, I think we follow the pattern of Ezra in Ezra 7-10. This is one of my favorite verses.

It says, favorite verses, it says, For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach his statutes and his rules to Israel. See, this is a biblical pattern, to study the Word, to do the Word, to live the Word, and then to teach the Word. You see, if we skip step one, the studying, we end up passing down a shallow knowledge. If we skip step two, doing it, living it out, we end up passing on hypocrisy. And nothing kills faith in the next generation like hypocrisy.

More atheists come from Christian homes with parents who say one thing and live another than from any other home. And So the question is, what are we passing on? Are we passing on a faith others can see in us? Are we saying we believe one thing and showing them that we believe something completely different? Or are we showing them that God's Word is something we obey?

God's word is something that we can form our lives to out of gratitude for what He's done. You see, people, again, know what you believe, especially your kids. You can say whatever you want, but your kids know what you believe. And so if we want to teach the next generation to prioritize and practice God's commands, we must live it out first. Our example is our most powerful teaching tool.

So study God's Word, live it, teach it to them with your life, and then teach it to them with your lips. Let them see in us what it looks like to walk in God's ways, to live a life of blessing and flourishing as we conform all of life to God's Word. This is the heritage of faith we are commanded to pass on to the next generation. Well, so far we've seen that to build the heritage of faith means teaching the next generation to place their hope in God, to personally embrace the gospel, to practice and live out God's commands. But even with all of that, we all know that life is full of temptations and trials.

And that's why the final piece of our heritage to pass on is helping the next generation learn how to protect their hearts. Look at verse 8, Well, the psalmist looks back on Israel and he laments. They were stubborn and they were rebellious. They were a generation whose heart was not steadfast. They were a people who did not protect their hearts nor teach the next generation to do so.

And what was the result? Well, you learn from the Psalm 78 as you go through that they didn't walk in God's ways. They didn't remember his power. They didn't remain faithful to the covenant. This is more than historical observation.

Asaph is giving southern Israel and ourselves a warning. The northern tribes taught the next generation basically to abandon their heritage by their example. They modeled rebellion. They modeled a hard heart. They modeled what it looks like to refuse correction, even in the face of God's blessings.

And verse after verse through Psalm 78 just drives this point home. In verse 17, it says, "'At all these things that God did for them, yet they still sinned more against Him.'" Verse 18, it says, "'They tested God in their heart.'" Verse 32, "'In spite of all of this, they still sinned. Verse 37, their heart was not steadfast. And then in verse 56, they tested and rebelled against the Most High God. The highest level of treason that there is.

This is what happens when the heart is left to itself, unprotected, unconformed by the Spirit and the Word of God. We must take the protecting of our hearts serious because we come into this world with broken messed up hearts. That's what we learned from Jeremiah 17, 9. The heart is sick, it's desperately wicked, seatful above all things. Who can even understand it?

And so we're born into this world with a bent toward rebellion. And we don't want to be told to do anything. If you have teenagers, ask your teenager. They really don't want to be told to do anything, but that's just human nature. The rest of us just hide it really well.

But we're prone to hardened hearts. Zechariah 712 tells us that Israel, They made their hearts diamond hard so that they wouldn't hear God's word. Diamond hard. Well, in light of this, God calls us to teach the next generation, guard your hearts because everything in life flows from it. Is that what we learn in the Proverbs?

Keep your heart with all diligence, for from it flow all the springs of life. Well, Psalm 78 is telling us that one of God's means to passing on the heritage of faith is that the previous generation is telling the next generation, hey, your heart's broken. Protect your heart. And this is not a one-time task. It's a daily, deliberate spiritual work.

Heartwork is the hard work. It's easy to conform our lives to behavior that's acceptable in the Christian community. But the most difficult work is the hard work. That's why John Flavel says this. He says, The keeping of the heart is a work of such difficulty that it is like the hardest duties of religion.

It requires more inward labor than all of the outward duties in the world. Well, so how do we go about this daily work of guarding our hearts? Well, we begin by cultivating spiritual habits that orient our hearts toward God as believers. We plead for a clean heart with David. Create in me, O God, a clean heart.

Give me a trembling heart that you would look to me, the one who is humble and contrite and who trembles at your word. Give me a heart that aligns with your word, as the psalmist says in Psalm 1, 1959. I considered my ways and I turned my feet to align with your testimonies. Oh God, give us meditating hearts, one that meditates day and night on your word. Give me a heart that stores up your word that I might not sin against you.

Give me a heart of single devotion, like in 1 John 5, to keep my heart from idols. But let's be honest, we cannot do this in our own strength. This isn't a pull up your bootstraps kind of work. The transformation of the heart is beyond us. We must have, we don't just need, we must have supernatural help.

And praise God, he has promised exactly that to us and to our children. We read in Deuteronomy 30 Verse 6, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that they may live. We all know the passage out of Ezekiel where God says I will give you a new heart and I'll put a new spirit within you. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statuary." See, he will cause us to will and to do for his good pleasure. See, the hope of our children and for ourselves is not merely better behavior, but new hearts.

Hearts born by the Spirit, shaped by the Word, guarded by the Spirit of God. And these hearts are to be kept in step with the Spirit. There is both the divine and the human involved in this heart work. And that's why Paul goes through this in Colossians 3, talking about putting to death, putting off, mortifying the old man and putting on the new man. And this, working together with the Spirit, is a gracious, ongoing work.

And the Spirit is helping us. He's walking with us. He's transforming us and conforming our hearts to the likeness of Christ. What a heritage our God has given to us, the promise of new hearts for us and for our covenant children. Only God can enable the next generation to not be like their fathers, a stubborn, rebellious generation.

Well, as we close this morning, I want to bring you back to one central question. What kind of heritage are you passing on? Psalm 78 is more than a history lesson. It's a summons. It's a call.

It's even a command to build a heritage that lasts beyond our lives and that will endure into eternity. And so let's close with this, that if we are to build a heritage of faith, We need to do so by teaching the next generation to place their hope in God, personalize the gospel, practice His commands, and protect their hearts. This heritage of faith, it doesn't begin with us, But God wants us, He wants you and me, to pass it on to the next generation. And by God's gracious working, may this be true of us and our generation and the generations that come after us. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your goodness to us. We thank you that we are standing on the shoulders of faithful men and women who have passed down to us a heritage, spiritually and nationally. Father, let us not take for granted our responsibility to sustain that heritage and to pass it on to the next generation. We pray that you would quicken the hearts of ourselves and that of our children, that we would be faithful to you, that we would not be stubborn and rebellious, but our lives would glorify the Father in heaven, and that we would be your hands and feet in this world, telling everyone the good news of our God and King. We ask you for this grace in Christ's name.

Amen. Thank you.