“The people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the LORD which He had done for Israel. Then Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of one hundred and ten. And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.” Judges 2:7-10

It is said that the lessons of history are that we don’t learn the lessons of history. How often have peoples and nations repeated the mistakes of previous generations.

In a relay race, the crucial moment is the passing of the baton. Runners must pace one another and match speed in that crucial moment when the baton is passed. Should the baton be dropped, the race will likely be lost. Similarly, the faith of one generation is easily lost if the next generation does not take the baton and run with it.

The gospel of John primarily focuses on a generation that did not firsthand experience the life of Christ on earth. John, writing near 100 A.D., was the sole surviving apostle. An entire generation of firsthand witnesses to the resurrected Christ was dying off; the possibility of “dropping the baton” was very real. Speaking to Thomas, the disciple who was in unbelief until he touched the physical resurrected body of Jesus, Jesus’s words echo down to us: “Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed” John 20:29.

There is a prescribed formula in scripture for “passing the baton” to the next generation, and it is found in Deuteronomy 6:6-7 “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.”

As one generation faithfully conveys the faith to another, it is an important safeguard against repeating the mistakes of the past in forsaking the faith.

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