TO TELL THE COMING

To Tell the Coming Generation To Tell the Coming Generation Sean Lucas

For my first full-time ministry position, I served as a summer youth pastor at Chicago Corner Christian Church, Harrisburg, Indiana. The pastor under whom I served (and who would do Sara’s and my wedding a couple of years later) taught me so much as we went through the paces of ministry together that summer. Above all, I had the great joy of serving children and students; whether through activities or Bible studies or Vacation Bible School, my main objective was to tell them about Jesus, his faithful love, and his welcome for those who believe.

After I graduated from college, I came back to that same region to serve with Child Evangelism Fellowship as the East Central Indiana director. Sara and I were newly married and lived in New Castle, Indiana; my ministry was much the same as what I had done before: Backyard Bible Clubs and Vacation Bible Schools, telling children about Jesus with a wordless book that preached the Gospel to them.

I mention this because these two first ministry experiences drilled into my heart something fundamental about ministry: one of our key tasks is to tell the coming generation about Jesus. And so, I am passionate about children’s and student ministries, about our covenant children being in worship with us, and about growing up the next generation of faithful Jesus-followers.

That passion is not mine alone, of course: it is the Bible’s passion too.

One place where that becomes clear is Psalm 78. One of the longest psalms in the Bible, stretching 72 verses, Psalm 78 is a historical psalm, meant to convey God’s faithfulness to his people through all of their sin and failure. But who was this song for?

To be sure, it was for the adults as they sang, reminding them of the failures of their parents and grandparents. It wasn’t primarily for the adults, however, but for the children: “We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the

coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders he has done” (Psalm 78:4). And as this song was sung and as the children learned it, the expectation was they in turn would “arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God” (Psalm 78:6-7).

In other words, the church’s mission is not simply geographical, but generational. Any church that fails to teach the next generation—even if they do short-term missions and plant churches and fund seminaries and all the rest—has failed in the “big fundamental.” We are called to tell the coming generation.

What are we to tell? We are to tell his glorious deeds (4). In Psalm 78, among the glorious deeds to recount were God dividing the Red Sea and leading Israel through (13); God leading his people with the pillars of cloud and fire (14); God splitting the rock at Massah and Meribah so that his people might drink (15-16); God providing manna and quail (24-27).

But the most glorious deed of all was that God, “being compassionate, atoned for their iniquity and did not destroy them” (38). There the psalmist refers to God’s forgiveness extended to his people after the golden calf incident. Yet we have a more glorious deed of atonement to tell: that God himself in Jesus Christ came and atoned for our iniquity through his death on the cross. Over and over, we use the entire Bible to tell the coming generation about God’s glorious deeds.

We are also to tell about his law (5). God has entered into a relationship with us, which we call his covenant, taking us as his people so that we might take him as our God. And he has given us his Word as a light to our feet and a lamp to our path, one that teaches us about God’s will in nearly every life situation in which we find ourselves. If the first words our covenant children should hear from us are “Jesus saves,” then surely the next words they should hear are “the Bible says.” God’s glorious deeds and his perfect law—these are what we are to tell the coming generations.

And who knows— maybe in telling the coming generation, we might be telling the next pastor of Independent Presbyterian Church. Prior to my dad’s conversion, we were essentially a pagan family; but I’ll never forget as a nine-year-old showing up to Vacation Bible School, which was my first real exposure to church. The first Bible stories, the first verses memorized, the first missionary stories— all happened at Woodside Chapel, Fanwood, New Jersey, in summer 1980. I would never be serving you as your pastor today if it hadn’t been for a children’s ministry, committed to declaring the glorious deeds of God and his good way.

To tell the coming generation—that is our call, that is our privilege. If the first words our covenant children should hear from us are “Jesus saves,” then surely the next words they should hear are “the Bible says.” God’s glorious deeds and his perfect law—these are what we are to tell the coming generations.