Lest you forget

6When Joshua dismissed the people, the people of Israel went each to his inheritance to take possession of the land. 7And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel. 8And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. 9And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash. 10And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

11And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. 12And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger.
     - Judges 2:6-12, ESV

The people "who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel" "served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua. The generation "who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel" "did what was evil in the sight of the Lord" and "provoked the Lord to anger."

Let this be a lesson to us. God tells us a lot about who he his by what he has done. We can learn propositional truth by reading Ephesians 1 or Romans 9. How much better, though, to hear of God's election of Abraham and his faithfulness in delivering Abraham's descendants from the Egyptians? We can read James 1 and be encouraged to see the joy in our struggles, or we can read in the Book of Genesis and see how Joseph handled trials greater than anything we will likely face, because he trusted in God who was faithful to him. Our children will also have greater success learning these stories than they do apprehending doctrinal truths as presented didactically in the New Testament.

When we (and our children) don't know what God has done, we are prone to idol worship because, in our ignorance, we believe that any god will do. In fact, this is the anthem of our generation. We need to be reminded, perhaps by stories like the one found in 1 Kings 18:20-40, that there is only one God deserving of our worship.