What is the antidote to idolatry? Jonathan was just a couple of generations after Moses. He succumbed to the lure of idolatry by pursuing a career over his calling and managing shrines that rivalled the true house of God in Shiloh. This slide into apostasy, where everyone did what was right in his own eyes, happened rapidly. D.A. Carson once wrote, One generation knows the gospel, the next assumes it, and the third loses it.
Nowhere is this better seen in Scripture than in Moses’ family. Doesn’t this tell us how vital the teaching of God’s Word is? Jonathan’s generation did not know the Lord, a problem pointed out at the beginning of the book. It is critical that we invest in the health of the next generation of the church by teaching and modelling God’s Word. How is that with you? How are you passing on the Word to the next generation? Are you yourselves, as parents, office-bearers, growing in the Word? Are you studying it? There is no such thing as idling, as being in neutral, spiritually. You’re either going forward or in reverse. Being in the Word is key to moving more and more away from the foolishness of idolatry, as you prostrate your heart before the living God.
30 And the people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves, and Jonathan the son of Gershom, son of Moses, and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.