What legacy are we leaving for our children?
What legacy are we building for our children? As one trouble after another crashes down on the Christian church, and with the fabric of society fraying at unthinkable rates, we want to call onlookers to see our distress and mourn with us. Yet more pressing than that, we want others to escape this sorrow and suffering. We want others to avoid making the same mistakes as we did, mistakes which in hindsight were inevitably going to bring moral and spiritual devastation in their wake. Indifference to basic truths about God and salvation, carelessness about morality, bad attitudes towards fellow-believers — surely anyone could have predicted that the church would only bring trouble on itself and end up hopelessly ineffectual as a force for good in society? David Dickson listens to Jeremiah as he mourns in the book of Lamentations. As we see in the following updated extract, our biggest concern should be to hand on intact to our children the best of what God has given us, so that they would never have to suffer the painful consequences we have experienced because of our lack of commitment to the Lord.
The recognition of justice
See how the church stops her mourning for the devastation she sees wherever she looks. It is by acknowledging that all that has come on her is deserved, and that God has acted justly. The best way to stop fretting and murmuring when we are stricken is to look to God’s righteousness and His judgments and our own part in bringing these righteous judgments on ourselves. This is the only bridle which holds us back from maligning God. It’s when a sinner doesn’t see sin and just deservings that he frets and thinks he is harshly treated, whereas if sin and a righteous God are seen, he would be quiet even if the judgment was heavy.
See too how the church wants others to be made wise by what has happened to her. She justifies God in the hearing of all the people where she was. “The Lord is righteous, for I have rebelled against his commandment” (Lamentations 1:18).
Those who are penitent are willing that God would be restored to His honour, even if they smart for it and bear their shame.
They also want others to be made wise by what has stricken them. Indeed, they would be content for as many to know about their repentance as knew about their sin.
The voice of grief
“Hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow” (Lam. 1:18). It is as is if she said, “Come and see the heaviest sorrow that any man or woman ever had. Come and be witness of the saddest grief you ever saw, for my virgins and young men, the hope of my posterity, are cut off” (v.18). Her sorrow is such that whatever people or nation sees it, they would be affected by it, and in fact be astonished and wonder at it.
Those who are experiencing grief and sorrow for affliction think that others who hear and see it should feel it as deeply as they do themselves, or at least recognise the weight of the trouble they feel.
In this, we should take note of the opinion of the afflicted, for it one thing to see and hear grief, and another thing to feel it. Those who only hear trouble told rarely take it up, and they don’t take it to heart. But those who feel the trouble have a different view of it. Therefore, don’t be surprised, when you are under heavy sorrow, when others see it and yet don’t grasp the half of it. The way you judge of it has been made more acute by feeling it. Have patience then, even if they don’t pity you, and even if your sorrow is augmented by those who should assuage it, for they are not in your shoes.
If you are in the company of those who are under heavy grief, take your time to weigh their grief, so that you may comfort them for what sharp sense has taught them. Sharp sense may bring the burden to your comprehension, and lead you in to bear the burden with them, and to be a member which shares the feeling in the body of which Christ is the head. Weigh their troubles carefully, so that you may get good yourself. For even if they are none the better of your pity, you may be the better of apprehending their situation, for the situation that is theirs today may be yours tomorrow. This is why Solomon said it was better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting (Eccles. 7:2).
The concern for the following generation
We can learn from the fact that the church counts the captivity of her children and young people the greatest measure of her grief. It wasn’t so much her own present grief that affected her as the misery she saw coming on her children. What does it matter, she thinks, that an old tree is cut down, if a new plantation rises in its place? What does it matter that she is experiencing misery, if things will go well with the church in the time to come? What does it matter, as long as the memory of a church was not to be cut off? But now, with her young men being led into captivity, there is no hope of a church in the time to come, for there is no one to instruct them how to be fit members for another plantation of a new church.
We should be more sorrowful that religion is going to decay before our posterity gets a grip of it, than for any evil that can come on ourselves. Even the worldly hold their posterity dear to them — they go to great lengths to get something to leave to their bairns. Far more, we should be careful that the gospel will be continued to our posterity.
Just think what will become of our children if the gospel is removed, the Bible closed, heresy and error replacing it. The thought should make us fear and lament. Indeed, it is a heavy lamentation and a heavy challenge to this generation that they care so little for their posterity. How many educate their children in the knowledge of the truth of God? the fear of God? They don’t stop to consider that by this failure they murder their children and cut off the hope of a church in the next generation. They don’t realise they are making Satan’s dreams come true and contributing to the demolition of Christianity. Some people amuse themselves by teaching their children ribald jokes and filthy entertainment and sayings, and so send them off as apprentices to Satan, when all their attention should be given to joining them to God. They may even have made a promise in baptism to bring them up in the fear of God, yet when the children reach sixteen years of age, they haven’t taught them the basics of the gospel, or if they’ve gone so far as to teach them the Lord’s Prayer they haven’t told them the meaning of it.
The value of faithfulness
This grief of the church for the generations to come should be a lesson to all those of us who have any position in the church or society, to keep out by all means the corrupting influences that keep wanting to creep into the church. What you think of as indifferent and tolerable, those who come after may think good and expedient, and so, by what you’ve done, a door is opened to Satan and his followers. Why is it that the faithful ones prefer to expose themselves to any amount of trouble and damage in the world rather than let the least corruption into the church? Because they are thinking of posterity. Because they are afraid of betraying the Lord’s work by their own deeds. Don’t let anyone call them pedantic sticklers, because these ones have a special eye to the Lord’s work, and all they want is that when they are dead and gone, they will be able to pass on the vessels of the Lord’s house with the full weight which they received.
Let us have a care for our posterity and our children, to bring them up in God’s fear, lest they have the grief of seeing them cut off by the sword and going into captivity. If you neglect this, it is only righteous of God that your children will be made not yours, because you haven’t been striving to make them His.
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