What we're talking about today is, is responding to this
question, what do we really owe past and future generations?
Because we do owe past and future generations something.
The reality is we are part of a very, very, very long story.
A story, in fact, that's infinitely wrong long I heard
years ago someone say that history, another way of saying
history is his story, his story being God's story and and God's
story. The story that that we are in is
going to go on forever and ever and ever.
And we're part of that story. But we didn't start the story,
not even the human part of the story.
The human part of the story still alone began thousands and
thousands of years ago and will continue for years after us many
years infinitely into the future because God's Kingdom will have
no end and we didn't start it. So we if we think of of the
story not as a book, but it's a journey that God is taking
humans on this long journey that's going somewhere that will
that will eventually arrive at God's Kingdom.
And then beyond that, we don't even know have any real idea,
but we've started, we've been traveling this road, humanity,
people of faith for thousands of years.
We started well into the journey.
Our lives began well into the journey.
And and that's because of the people that came before us.
And, and our hope is, is that future generations will carry
the story on, will continue the journey after us and be further
down the road than we ever have the opportunity to get.
But what do we owe them? What do we owe the past?
And what do we owe the future? Oddly enough, I think a good way
of looking at this question and thinking about it is to remember
this, that Sarah and Abraham died.
They died. They were main characters in the
story. They they were, they were given
a promise specifically to them. You're going to have a child,
the two of you together in your old age.
It'll be your biological baby. And you will become the parents
of a great nation and all nations of the world will be
blessed through you. And then they died.
And at the point where they died, they had one son, one
child of that promise, Isaac. They called him laughter, 'cause
it was so ridiculous that they had this baby when they were so
old and they just couldn't help but laugh.
And then they died. They had no real estate.
The only real estate they owned that they were able to leave to
Isaac was their burial plot, their tomb.
They were in this land that God had promised him, but that land
still belonged to other people. They had no politicians on their
side. They had no nation making laws
that would benefit them or protect their rights or
privileges or or anything like that.
They didn't have any. It was Isaac out there now with
his wife and Sarah, and Abraham died.
What's the point? Why?
Why does that matter? I think one of the reasons it
matters is this, that Sarah and Abraham dying help us remember
that our part in this story, we're in a story that's been
going on for a very long. It's a long time.
It's a long story. It's been going on for a long
time. And each of us plays a very
small part. Abraham and Sarah, as big as
their part was, they still died and the story went on.
The journey continued. It had been going on for
thousands of years before they lived, and would go on for
thousands and thousands of years after they died.
And the same is true for us. The story was going on a long
time before any of us do our first breath and it will go on a
long time after we've passed. And that should comfort us that
this story is so big and so grand.
And ultimately it doesn't depend on us, not in the sense that we
we can't wreck it. We can't wreck it.
There's a lot of of of fear for the future right now.
And I think a lot of that I was saying neurological this morning
at at least one of the other churches when I meant to say
neurotic. But you know, that's, you know,
either way, not, not a you know, I think the fear is at some
levels neurotic and at times pathological.
We get afraid for the future. Oh my goodness, we got global
warming and everyone's going to die.
We got artificial intelligence and the machines are going to
rise up and everyone's going to die.
And we've got genetic engineering and designer babies
coming and and they're going to wreck everyone.
And it's all off on the politics is terrible and the wars are
terrible and our government leaders and all of these large
corporations run and everything, and it's all going to be awful.
And it's I yeah, I got news for you.
Human beings are not the ones writing this story.
And human beings can't wreck the story.
We can do awful things along the way.
There's no doubt about that. Human beings have been doing
awful things since human beings have been around.
But we can't wreck the story. You and I certainly can't.
We don't have that kind of power.
We don't have that kind of influence.
We play a small part in a very large story.
Now, one of the problems with that, though, any good truth,
and I think that's a good truth, the devil can twist.
And one of the ways Devil the devil can twist that is to say
that it doesn't really matter. What we do makes no difference.
Life itself is meaningless. We're all here by accident.
This universe isn't going anywhere.
Except one day it'll all collapse in on itself and and
we'll just be a collection of atoms scattered throughout the
universe. Nothing that we do will endure.
Nothing that we do will remain. It all comes to nothing.
It's all pointless. There's a philosophy that comes
out of that mindset, A philosophy called nihilism or
nihilism, depending on how you pronounce it, either
pronunciation is correct. And no matter how you pronounce
it, it it, it, it can leave people really messed up, people
that really buy into this, that it's we're all just an accident.
It's all going nowhere and it's all meaningless.
They, they wake up in the morning and there's kind of one
of three things that that drives them.
One is it's all meaningless. Eat, drink, and be merry, for
tomorrow we die. Let's seek pleasure or it's all
meaningless. Ravage, pillage, plunder, maim.
Because it's all meaningless and tomorrow we die.
Doesn't matter what I do. And the third option is why get
up at all? I'll just lie in bed and play
video games because tomorrow we die and it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter. Nihilism is on the rise,
particularly among younger generations.
The sense of pointlessness, one of the beautiful things we have
in the faith that we have received is a legacy from those
who have gone before us, is a blunt and simple refutation of
nihilism. There is a point.
Life has meaning. No matter how small a part we
have to play, we have a part to play, and every part is
important and every part has meaning.
It was a lot of notes in the song that Anne just played and
that we attempted to sing. I didn't do too well either,
John. A lot of notes.
Any one of those notes, if you take it out, you can still have
the song. Doesn't change the fact that
every single one of those notes has meaning and purpose in the
composition. You can take out any one of the
words and still have the song, but each one of those words has
meaning and purpose in the composition.
We had a dramatic example of that at Rock Springs this
morning. We use recorded music there
every once in a while. I don't know why, but every once
in a while it's, it's got something to do with how the
tracks are set up in the lyric videos that I create and I
there's kind of a left and a right track and for whatever
reason, every once in a while it doesn't play one side of that.
And so we only got half the lyrics, and it would be blank,
blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.
It's like the song was still there, but losing bits of it
matters. Every single one of us has a
part to play, a role to play that is meaningful and part of
God's grand and magnificent purpose.
Life isn't meaningless. Life isn't meaningless even with
a small part. And we owe a debt to the past
and those who went before us. We stand on their shoulders.
We started from a place that is miles and miles and miles down
the road from where Adam and Eve started, from where Noah
started, from where Abraham and Sarah started, from where Isaac
started. We're miles down the road from
there as we're going toward this final destination of God's
Kingdom. And we owe a debt to the people
that have gone before us because we didn't just pop into
existence on our own. We are where we are with the
faith that we have because of the people that went before us,
that lived faithfully following God like Sarah and Abraham, not
perfectly, but faithfully who who had hope in the promise that
God put before them. Not perfect hope, their hope
lapsed at times, but they held on to it and who loved as best
they could the people around them.
Again, not perfectly, not perfectly, but they loved.
And they passed that on to Isaac, who passed it on to his
kids, who passed it on to their kids, and eventually it was
passed on to us. We owe a debt to those who came
before. Without them, we would not be
here today. And we have a responsibility to
the future, to those who will come after us.
There was a thought theology that that became popular in the
Western world, particularly it started, I think in Europe and
England, and then became really popular in the United States
around 200 years ago or so. And, and it was a theology
focused on the end times. If you've read the Left Behind
series, it was kind of the apex of that theology.
Jesus is coming back, taking people away from earth, his
faithful people. And you better be ready because
it's happening soon and all of the signs are out there, all of
the prophecies, all this one's fulfilled.
That one's fulfilled. Jesus is coming back soon, going
to take all his faithful people away.
Jesus is coming back not to take us away, but to join us here.
And one of the problems that develop out of the theology that
Jesus is coming back probably really, really soon in our
lifetime and and going to take us all away is that it kind of
leads us thinking we don't have any great responsibility for the
future. Jesus might come back before
this sermon's over. You're like, oh, we got to go
home early. It'll be our real home in the
Kingdom. That'll be awesome.
There's also a possibility that Jesus won't come back for
another thousand years or more, in which case we're leaving a
world to our children and our grandchildren and our great
grandchildren. And we have a responsibility for
the condition of that world, for the condition of the
environment, for the condition of the political systems, for
the state of the culture, for the amount of violence, for, for
the the relative proportions of justice and injustice for the
weakest and most vulnerable people in the world.
We have a responsibility for that now, just like the devil
can twist, we have a smart, small, only a small part to play
into. Your lives are meaningless.
The devil can take this risk, these responsibilities.
We have the debt to the past and what we owe to the future and
twist those into something destructive.
That debt to the past can be twisted into, oh, there's a
truck. Wait, wait, wait.
I'm not sure if it made it all the way back, but there we go.
We have it. We have We owe something to the
past. But it gets twisted when we
think we honor the past by trying to preserve it whole,
intact and unchanged in the present and into the future.
We owe something to the past, but we have to honor the past
without trying to rigidly preserve it or repeat it.
I used to have to say a lot. Back when I started pastoring in
the early 90s, I had to say this a lot.
I don't say it much anymore because I think folks get it.
I think you get it. The 1950s and 60s are never
coming back. The culture, the politics, and
the way church was done in the 1950s and it's never coming
back, never going to happen again.
God does not do reruns. We're going forward into the
future, not backward into the past.
We honor the past, but not trying to make the present or
the future just like the past. Great.
A great snapshot of this kind of problem was the worship wars
that happened back during the 80s and 90s.
Were you all? Were you ever part of the
worship wars? Was that ever a thing?
No, it's OK. Yeah.
I was in a few churches that it
was like, well, are we going to have contemporary praise and
worship, OK, or traditional music and we just sing out of
the hymns. Was in a church.
We put a drum kit in the sanctuary and Oh my goodness,
how could it be church with drums in the sanctuary and and
people got all crazy. We've got these hymnals.
We must sing the hymns. These hymns were good enough for
our parents and our grandparents.
They should be good enough for us and our grandkids and our
children. The wonderful old hymns of the
faith. They are wonderful old hymns of
the faith, but every hymn in every hymnal was once a new
song. And one way we can claim to be
honoring the past is to say we're only going to sing the old
hymns of the past. I've heard that in the Methodist
Church, Charles Wesley wrote lots and lots and lots of hymns.
And like, this is our heritage. We must preserve our heritage.
We need to sing the hymns of Charles Wesley.
You know, another way to preserve the heritage of Charles
Wesley is to write new songs like Charles Wesley did.
I think that the old hymns and the new songs have their
strengths and their weaknesses both.
But trying to preserve, to keep everything like it was in the
50s and 60s is not honoring the past.
It's calcifying it to honor those who brought us here and
continue their faithfulness and their hope and their love into
the future. Those are the things that honor
the past, not trying to preserve the past at some random point in
history. Honor the past without
religionally preserving it. And we owe future generations.
We do owe future generations not, not a neurotic fear about
the future that we pass on to them of how awful everything is
going to be and trying to figure we can't wreck the future, we
can't fix the future. We are not that big, we are not
that strong, we are not that powerful.
But what we can do for the futures is carry on a legacy of
faith, a legacy of faith. Isaac got that from Abraham and
Sarah. Isaac was grew up hearing the
stories. Do you realize I can't, you
know, my family. If, if you have a family that
loves to tell the same stories over and over again, there's a,
there's a, a tree in the backyard that you cannot be in
the back. If you come to visit my house,
my parents house and stand in the backyard, you will not be
back there for more than 10 minutes without my dad telling
you a story about the tree in the backyard.
I know we tell it by heart and the family over and over and
over again. You don't think Isaac heard 1000
times? Do you know how old are you are?
We were when you were born. Do you know Isaac?
It was impossible over and over and over again.
He would have heard that story, passing on the faithfulness of
God. Do you know what God did?
You're a miracle, Isaac. You're a miracle from God.
You're an answer to a promise. God promised something.
Everyone thought it was impossible going to confess,
Isaac, your mom and I, your dad and I thought it was impossible
to, but here you are. He grew up with that faith
passed on to him, the faithfulness of God that kept
the ancestor, his ancestors alive in the ark, the
faithfulness of God and the mercy of God when he didn't
destroy Adam and Eve after they sinned in the garden.
All of these stories over his whole life he heard growing up a
legacy of faith. This is what we owe to future
generations living in faith and sharing those stories with them.
Not sure. The stories of the Bible, to be
sure. The faith stories of the church
that has gone before us, to be sure.
And our faith stories we share to our children who God called
us to do this. God said to do that.
We thought this couldn't, but God did this in our lives.
God did this in our community. God did this in our church.
We can you. You can depend on God.
We know you can because God has been faithful to us over and
over and over again. We owe it to our children to
pass on a legacy of faith following where God leads.
Isaac grew up hearing another story.
You know what, Isaac? We were living up in her on a
year miles from here. God said go.
We said where? God said, I'll tell you when you
get there. And we went and look where God
has brought us. Look where God the dad, Mom, we
don't own any land, yes, but one day it'll all be ours.
All be our children's, your children's.
How do you know? Because God is faithful.
God is faithful. This is the legacy that we owe
our children, living by faith and helping live them live by
faith as well. And we owe them a legacy of
hope. Nihilism says there is no hope
for the future. Other philosophies, whether it's
capitalism or socialism or communism, say there's hope for
the future. If we get the right people in
charge and they can enforce their will, then we have hope
for the future. But we got to keep the wrong
people out of power. The hope is in us.
The hope that we have, that we pass on to our children, our
grandchildren, is that our hope is in God, that if we live
faithfully, God will do what God has promised he will do.
And one day God will wipe away where there's a lot of pain,
there's a lot of suffering, there's a lot of heartache.
One day God will wipe away every tear.
One day God will right every wrong.
One day, all of the folks that our world is keeping down on the
bottom, God's going to lift those people up and give the
poorest of the poor person greater honor than we give to
presidents and business leaders and emperors and Queens and
kings. They will be honored.
They will be lifted up, and our God will do that.
How do you know God will do it? Because God keeps his promises.
And that's what God has promised.
And that is our hope. And what do we do in the
meantime? We leave a legacy of love while
we wait, while we live in faith, while we hope in the future that
God has promised. We love those folks around us
and share with them the love that God has shared with us.
The love that God showed Abraham and Sarah, the love that God
showed Noah and his family, the Gov that God showed Adam and Eve
and even Cain. Preserving their lives,
following the great sins that they committed, caring for them
and giving them a promise, a future, and a hope.
And the love itself is the ultimate act of faith and the
ultimate act of hope that I'm going to love, I'm going to
sacrifice. I'm going to lay down, I'm going
to be patient, going to be kind, going to be compassionate.
I'm not going to keep a record of wrongs.
I'm not going to. I'm going to bear whatever the
world throws at us, believe and hope and endure and love.
And that's how people will know that God loves them if we love
them first, Well, not first, but if we love them too, if we love
them too. Now I've preached, I don't know
how many minutes so far. Enough.
That's what you're saying. I know, I know.
How long have you preached? Got enough?
I got a song I want to play and I've got a lyric video.
So we can and we, I might, I'm going to go to the back and make
sure the volume is up back there.
This is not, this is, I'm about to utter a sentence that 20
years ago would have been totally meaningless and
ridiculous to me. And that is some of the best
Christian music in the world right now is being written by
Jelly Roll. I don't know if you know who
Jelly Roll is. I don't know.
I, I, I've been you. I'm pretty sure his mom didn't
name him. I've been saying this morning
his mom didn't name him Jelly Roll.
And then I found out his mom gave him the nickname Jelly
Roll. I still don't know what his real
name is. I don't know whether he goes
with his friends by Jelly or Mr. Roll, But he he's lived a rough
life and he's come to faith and he's an extraordinarily talented
singer-songwriter. And he's written a song called
My Cross that I'm going to play for us.
And I think that he artistically, and in about two
minutes and 15 seconds, can say everything I've been trying to
say in the past 25 minutes here. So let's listen to this
together. Your blood is my blood, him
poison runs deep. Knowing your minds is the hell
out of because hurt is a sickness and trauma is too.
And I'd rather die than to pass it to you.
Because that's my cross to carry.
My's cross to heal my pain to bury, not yours to feel.
I pray every day I can love you enough so my cross to carry
won't be yours to pick up. I hope to God you don't get my
addictions, don't deal with my demons, make my decisions.
Yeah, I hope the apple falls far from the tree And the sins of
the Father stop right here with me, 'cause that's my cross to
carry. My cross to heal my pain to
bury, not yours to feel. I pray everyday I can love you
enough. So my cross to carry won't be
yours to pick up, Won't be yours to pass down.
And when you make mistakes on your own, I hope that you know
you'll never go through it alone.
So that's my cross to carry, my scars to heal, my pain to bury,
and not yours to feel happy everyday.
I can love you enough. So my cross to carry won't be
yours to pick up, won't be yours to pick up, won't be yours to
pick up. We can't fix the world.
We can't wreck it either. We can't leave our children a
perfect culture, a perfect politics, a perfect society.
But what we need to do is to deal with our own stuff.
Deal with our own stuff so that our children can start from our
shoulders rather than under our feet, so that we can launch them
ahead rather than leading them to be stuck in the past.
This is what we can do. This is the cross that we have
to bear and to carry so that we can leave them a legacy of
faith, trusting in God, obediently hearing God, and
following where God leads with the hope that God will keep His
promises and loving people along the way as best they can.
And they're going to make their mistakes and they're going to
have their pain, but if we can deal with our stuff, then
they'll have less stuff to deal with.
And that's the hope that we have.
We play a small role and the grand, great big story of God.
We play a pretty big role in the people that are in our lives
around us. And to pass them, pass on to
them the faith, hope and love of Jesus Christ is the
responsibility we have in Jesus name, Amen.
Amen.