One Generation From Extinction

ONE GENERATION FROM EXTINCTION

Judges 2:6-15

INTRODUCTION

A. HUMOR:

1. Someone has said, “Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.”

2. You spend the first two years of their life teaching them to walk and talk. Then you spend the next sixteen telling them to sit down and shut up.

3. The main purpose of holding children's parties is to remind yourself that there are children more awful than your own. We child proof our homes, but they still get in.

4. Mothers of teens now know why some animals eat their young. Grandchildren are God's reward for not killing your own children.

B. TEXT

6 After Joshua had dismissed the Israelites, they went to take possession of the land, each to their own inheritance. 7 The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. 8 Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of a hundred and ten. 9 And they buried him in the land of his inheritance, at Timnath Heres in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. 10 After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. 11 Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. 12 They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger 13 because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. 14 In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. 15 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. Judges 2:6-15

C. THESIS

1. This passage tells the unbelievable account of how a nation which was totally committed to God – in one

generation – walked away from God and became an idolatrous nation.

2. They then lost the Lord’s protection and began to have troubles and war on every side and were the losers.

3. There’s an eerie parallel in America where it’s beginning to look like the same thing might happen. That’s why we MUST contend for a spiritual revival!

4. The title of this message is “One Generation From Extinction.”

I. HOW URGENT IS THE NEED?

A. CURRENT ENVIRONMENT

1. 2 Tim. 3:1 says, “…in the last days, perilous times shall come.” They certainly have: especially perilous times for raising kids.

2. Modern Problems Our Youth Face:

a. Violence at School d. Peer pressure

b. “R” on TV e. Drinking/ Drugs

c. Serious STD’s f. Gangs

3. TERRIBLE SOCIAL POLICIES

a. Atheism is the Law of the Land; keep God out of schools, courts, Gov’t, policy decisions.

b. No Moral Boundaries officially; situation ethics.

B. NEED FOR FATHERS TO BE FATHERS

1. Many boys today don’t know what it means to be a man because they don’t have a man in their lives. Sadly, children will go to bed tonight without saying goodnight to their father because he just isn’t there.

2. Nearly one-fourth of America’s children live in mother-only families. 35% of these children never see their father and 24 percent see their fathers less than once a month.

3. In addition to no male at home, most males are taught by a woman at school. So how are they going to interact with positive male role models? How will these boys learn what it means to be a man? From television? Movies? On the street?

4. Even in homes where the father is present, research shows that the average father spends less than 10 minutes a day one-on-one with his child.

5. So it’s no surprise that there’s such gender confusion today! Now it’s not hard to figure out what your gender is; you were assigned that by God before birth. The Bible says that God made them “Male & Female.”

6. Former Johns Hopkins Hospital psychiatrist-in-chief Paul R. McHugh, M.D., says that 'Gender confusion' is a temporary mental disorder. If left alone, 70 percent to 80 percent of children who reported transgender feelings spontaneously lost those feelings later (Vanderbilt University and London's Portman Clinic). A 30 year study in Sweden of transgenders showed that 10 years after gender reassignment surgery, a sizable % of patients began having mental problems and their suicide rate went up 20-fold. http://www.onenewsnow.com/culture/2015/04/30/prominent-md-gender-confusion-a-fleeting-mental-disorder