What Do We Really Owe Past & Future Generations? (Chester UMC)

Spoiler alert, if you haven't read the Bible yet, this is a

spoiler. Abraham and Sarah die.

They died. Abraham and Sarah died, which

which you know, on one hand is obvious.

On the other hand, you know when you're when you're reading a

book and you finally get to two of the main characters and you

spend a lot of time on them and then they just up and die.

I mean, it's like watching the Game of Thrones or something and

what happened here? People are dying.

Abraham and Sarah died as significant as they were, as as

important as they were in the history of God's people and

God's dealings with all people. And in fact, you know, I heard

years ago, some people, someone say that that history, if you

break it down, is his story. And I think that's, I think

that's true. And, and this is part of God's

story and Sarah and Abraham played such a crucial role in

that. And at this point in the

Scripture, we haven't heard more about anyone else, even people

like like Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and Noah.

We didn't get this much time and energy and text devoted to them.

And then they die. They die.

Abraham who and and Sarah, who were the father and mother of of

many nations, who through their descendants, all the nations of

the world would be blessed. They died.

And at the point that they died, they had one son of that

promise. Now there were other children.

There was Ishmael, but Ishmael was Abraham's son, not Abraham

and Sarah's son. And God's blessed Ishmael and

his descendants. But Isaac was the only son of

the promise Abraham. Abraham had a lot more kids

after Sarah died, and good, bad or ugly in that they also are

not children of that promise. And at the time when Abraham

died, he sent all of his other kids away from where Isaac was.

But but Isaac was it. Isaac was all that there was at

this point, the only child of the promise.

And now they're gone. Now they're gone as important as

they were. And in, in terms of our

perspective, as long as they lived.

Sarah 127, Abraham 175, that's longer live than anyone I've

ever known. They actually lived very short

lives compared to some of their ancestors.

Are you aware that Abraham's ancestor Shem, Noah's son, one

of Noah's sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth is still alive when

Abraham dies? He outlived Abraham by 25 years.

Shem was alive for another 25 years after Abraham died.

Abraham, from the perspective of his own family tree lived a

pretty short life and his wife Sarah even shorter.

There is a reality that I think is important for us to grasp and

how the Bible tells us God's story and the story of God's

people and all people on this earth.

And, and that that is even the people like Abraham and Sarah

who have a relatively large part to play, have a very small part

to play in some respects. And the story goes on even after

they die. Every one of us, we all have, at

least we've all got a couple of things in common.

But one of the things we all have in common, every person in

this room, no matter your background, no matter your

education, no matter your income level, we're all going to be

pushing up daisies one of these days every.

And that's true of all of the folks in the world around us.

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are going to die and get put in a

grave just as surely as you and I will.

Donald Trump and and, and, and Vladimir Putin and Zoran

Mandami, I'm going to pronounce his name wrong.

Every single one of them is going to die.

We're all going to die. We have a role to play in God's

story, but it's important for us to remember that our role, yours

and mine, is a small one. It's a small one.

Now that truth can lead to a way of thinking that that is

commonly called nihilism or nihilism.

The either pronunciation is correct.

I'll probably use both at some point during the sermon.

Nihilism it's it's the belief that, you know, we're really

only here for a very short time in the grand scheme of things,

we have little or no impact on the grand scheme of things.

Life is is therefore meaningless.

There is no purpose. And and so we can either eat,

drink and be merry or tomorrow we for tomorrow we die, or we

can rob, kill and plunder, for tomorrow we die.

And it doesn't really matter. There's no meaning, there's no

purpose. Nihilism is a growing

philosophy, again, particularly among younger generations in the

world today and particularly in the Western world.

And it's a very problematic philosophy to say nothing that I

do matters. There is no point.

If there is no point, then I can do anything I want or nothing at

all, because who cares? Within his story, within God's

story and the story that we are sharing in as followers of Jesus

Christ, as spiritual descendants of Abraham and Sarah, we can

pretty easily reject nihilism. Easily in the sense that that we

know. We know that there is purpose in

life. There is meaning in life, the

role that we have to play in God's story.

It might be small in the grand scheme of things, but it still

is important. There still is purpose.

One of the other things that we know from this story, as we hear

of Sarah and Abraham's life and everything that happened before

them and all that happened after them, is that we, like they, owe

a great debt, a great debt to the generations that have gone

before us. Were it not for Abraham's

ancestor, Noah, Abraham and none of them would have been alive.

Were it not for the faith of Seth, were it not for the the

work and the faith and the lives and the passing on of faith and

and an understanding of God from generation to generation to

generation. How would Abraham known who was

talking to him when he heard that voice that said go to a

land that I will show you. He could have only recognized

that voice if he'd been taught to recognize that voice.

Sarah could only have known that that voice was God's if she had

been taught to recognize God's voice.

They owed a debt to the people that had told them the stories

of all the years that had gone before.

Of how God rescued their ancestor Noah and his family.

Of how God accepted Abel's offering.

Of how God blessed Cain and how God blessed protected Cain even

in his sinfulness. And how God blessed Seth.

And how God blessed and cared for and showed mercy and grace

to Adam and Eve even in their sin.

Without all of those stories, how would they have known that

they could trust God? They owed a debt to the people

that have gone before them. And another thing that we share

with Abraham and Sarah is that we have a debt of responsibility

to the people that will come after us, too.

We owe them something as well. Abraham and Sarah, they were

very clear. You know, they frankly,

obsessively, perhaps knew what neurotically and at times

pathologically concerned to protect their son Isaac, even at

the expense of the other children.

The other children were sent away.

Isaac was left in the promised land.

Isaac received the bulk of Abraham's wealth.

When Abraham died, they knew that the promise was coming

through Isaac. They felt they owed it to Isaac

to give him as good a start as possible in his life of faith

with God after their deaths. They owed it to the future to

leave a legacy to their son Isaac.

They had a responsibility in that.

Had they not, we would not be here today.

We owe them a debt as our ancestors.

This, this reality that we live in, that the story we are in,

it's a long one. It's been going on for thousands

and thousands and thousands of years.

It's a very long story, and each of us plays only a very small

part, but every small part has purpose and importance and

significance. So on the one hand, we have to

deflate our egos. It doesn't all depend on any of

us. It doesn't all depend on all of

us gathered in this room in this whole county.

Here's a quick, brief question for you.

Can you tell me the first name of your great, great, great,

great grandfather? There will be a day when no one

left on this earth will remember my name or yours.

And if they read it on a plaque someplace, they'll go, who was

that? And someone will say, I don't

know. They gave a donation.

I guess we have a small part to play, but even the small parts

are important parts. We owe a debt to the past and

those who went before us. That's part of our reality.

That's part of being part of a long story is knowing that it

doesn't begin with us. None of this began with us.

This building didn't begin with us.

The worship that we do doesn't begin with us.

The truth that we teach didn't begin with us.

The culture that we live in didn't begin with us.

Everything good thing that we have, we've received from God

and much of it has come to us through the generations of

people who have gone before and, and, and, and at times, well,

always imperfectly. They passed and shared and lived

out their faith and taught their children or their grandchildren

or other people's children and grandchildren.

And so we're here. We're here.

Part of the reason I'm here is that my grandmother, my mom's

mom, grew up in the Methodist Church in the hills of West

Virginia and, and my dad's family grew up in the Catholic

Church. Dad grew up in the Catholic

Church and I knew I was going to be a pastor and I knew I wanted

to get married, so I didn't go be Catholic.

Why you're stuck with me today? My grandmother, my grandmother

who raised her family in Beach Hill United Methodist Church,

and then my parents who raised me up and Rodney United

Methodist Church. And now here I am in Chester

United Methodist Church. Actually, Rodney just still

called it method. Their dishes didn't even have

United on it. They had the old dishes from way

back when. We'll get to that in a minute

too. But we owe a debt to the people

have gone before us and we have a responsibility to the future,

to those who will come after us. We have a responsibility to

leave them a legacy we have. And that that legacy, it, it, it

touches on every aspect of life, from physical environment to

political to cultural to faith, which touches on all of those

other things. Family.

We have a responsibility to those who will because the story

doesn't end with us. Their, their theology and A and

A and a very strong emphasis on end times thinking sort of

exploded in the church about 200 years ago, which is a long time

in one sense. But in the story, grand story is

just a, you know, a fraction of time.

It was like yesterday in terms of the grand story of faith.

And in that theology was, was about how, how Jesus is going to

come back. And it's probably going to be

really soon. And every, every generation was

like, oh, we're reading the signs.

It's going to happen in just a few years.

All of the signs are here. And after 200 years of, of all

of the signs being here, we're still here and one of the Jesus

is coming back. We'll talk about that in a

minute. Could be 10 minutes from now,

could be 1000 years from now. We don't know.

One of the problems with becoming obsessed with the

notion that Jesus is coming back soon is that we forget how

important the future is after we're gone.

That our children, we need to live in one respect, as if Jesus

is coming back tomorrow. And we also need to live at the

same time as if our great great grandchildren will still be here

and, and what world are we leaving them?

We have a responsibility to the future and to those who are

coming after us. But what do we really owe to the

past and future generations? This is an important question

because here's the thing. Recognizing and honoring the

past and remembering that we didn't get here on our own and

we owe a debt to history and the legacy that we have been left

can become obsessive and neurotic and even pathological.

There's more important things than holding on to the dishes

from 50 years ago. The easiest way to see this is

what back in the 80s and 90s were the the many in the church

called the worship wars. Anyone lived through that and

remember all of that And maybe it it kind of went around

Chester. I don't know.

I was in some churches where where my goodness, we brought a

drum kit into the sanctuary and you thought it the hell little

broken loose. How could it be church with

drums in the sanctuary? We got this whole book of hymns.

These are perfectly good songs. We don't need to learn.

We need to pass on the faith of our fathers.

We don't need all of these new songs, which is a bizarre thing

to say in a Methodist Church. And they would say it talking

about all of these wonderful songs that Charles Wesley wrote

that are in our hymnal, the founders of Methodism.

These are the songs we need to be singing.

That's how we pass on our legacy.

Well, no, but it's one way. Another way to pass on the

legacy is to remember that part of our legacy is that we wrote

new songs. And when we write new songs,

we're living out our legacy as surely as when we sing the old

songs. We're living out our legacy.

We owe a debt to the past and to those who have gone before us.

But if we rigidly cling to past systems and ways of doing things

and manners and buildings and books and hymnals and everything

else, if we rigidly cling to those things, then we're no

longer paying the debt that we owe to the past.

We've we've become obsessed with the past and dependent in a way

that isn't healthy. We can do the same thing with

the future. We can become neurotically or

pathologically obsessed with, with what's going to happen in

the future. Oh my goodness, with with global

warming and, and AI and and and all of the wars and all of the

fighting and all of the division and the politics, what's it

going to be? It's going to be terrible.

It's going to be awful. Everything's going to fall

apart. Yet probably not.

Probably not. And if we can obsess about those

things, we're forgetting a few. We've forgotten a few of the

things we need to obsess about if we're going to obsess about

like things like gene editing and cloning.

See, everyone seems to have forgotten about those weird

things with the rise of, of artificial general intelligence,

you know, when we can have designer babies in a few years

down the road and, and we can clone people and, and what's,

what's it all? What we we don't know.

We really don't know what the world's going to look like 100

years from now. But if we get so anxious and

neurotically obsessive about it and an impending disaster, we

have stopped being concerned for future generations and we've

just gone off the rails and we're actually leaving a legacy

of fear that doesn't help anyone.

So what do we really owe past and future generations?

What do we owe them? Sarah and Abraham passed on a

legacy to Isaac. What legacy do we need to pass

on? We need to honor the past

without trying to rigidly preserve it or repeat it.

The number of times I've said this in churches over the years

used to have to say it a lot. I don't need to say it very much

anymore because I think most folks, people realize it now is

the 1950s and 60s are not coming back.

They're not. It will never be 1965 again.

That bothers my dad to no end. He believes no good music was

written after 1965 and nothing written and played on electric

guitar can be good. When Elvis and Buddy Holly died,

there was no more good music. We can't rigidly preserve it.

Anything living changes. So trying to rigidly preserve

the past and hold on to it and cling to it in that way is no

way to have a legacy. We need to honor it without

religion, rigidly trying to preserve it.

And, and there's a sense in which we owe the future

generation something similar, one of the greatest.

There are three things Aubrey read this morning.

There are three things that endure, 3 things that will never

pass away. Faith, hope and love.

Abraham and Sarah left the legacy of faith in Isaac.

One of the first things that we see happening in Isaac's life,

in fact, the first thing we see happening in Isaac's life after

Abraham dies, is God saying to Isaac, I've got you.

Just like I had your dad in the very next chat.

I think it's the very next chapter.

It's the one we're preaching on next week.

Anyway, God comes to Isaac and says there's going to be a

famine. But don't fret, don't worry.

Don't run away to Egypt. I'll take care of you right

here. And Isaac believed him.

Isaac trusted in God because Abraham and Sarah had left him

this legacy of faith. He had grown up knowing.

Whatever else happens, you can depend on God.

Whatever else might be happening in the world around you, whether

it's politics, whether it's bad neighbors, whether it's

deception and betrayal and deceit, whether it's coming from

inside the family or outside the family, you can depend on God to

do what He says He will do. Trust God in every circumstance,

no matter what's happening. I'm the again, I don't want to

preach next week's sermon today. It's I've been waiting for years

to preach the sermon. I haven't had a chance to preach

it. I'm going to be honest with you.

Part of the reason why we're preaching all the way through

Genesis is so I can preach the sermon this happening next week.

So I haven't been able to make it fit into any other sermon

series ever so that we'll just do the whole book then I can do

it. But it's about this legacy of

faith and Isaac knowing, knowing that God will provide for him

and care for him. I got to think that one of

Isaac's most potent memories was lying on the altar that he'd

helped his dad make, with his dad standing over him with a

knife, ready to plunge it into his heart, and God stepping in

and sparing his life. I don't know what that does to a

person. Never been in that situation

before, but the fact that Abraham listened to God, that

and in so many other circumstances must have stuck

with Isaac because that's how he lived, listening to God,

trusting in God. This is what we owe our

children, a legacy of faith for us to teach them and share with

them the stories of God's faithfulness, not just to the

people in the Bible, but in our own lives.

This is what God has done in my life.

This is how God has cared for me and your, your, your, your, you

know, your mom, your dad, your grandparents.

This is how God has provided for our family.

These are the things that This is why we know we can trust him

and why you can trust him too. We owe our children that legacy

of faith, and part of that means living by faith now, actually

living out that faith, living like we can trust God.

We owe our future generations this legacy of faith.

We owe our future generations a legacy of hope.

Abraham and Sarah died with hope.

My goodness, how could they not have hope after what God did for

them? A baby at 100 and Abraham at 100

and Sarah at 75 years old and this promise that took years to

fulfill and God fulfilled it. And then dying, knowing if God

can do that, God can do anything, passing that on to

their son. Son, one of these days God's

going to bless the whole world through our descendants.

That's the hope that we have. I know you own no property other

than a burial site. That's the only land they own

Where where the where Abraham and Sarah were buried.

They were visitors everywhere else they went.

They had no king backing them up.

They had no political system on their side.

They had no one enforcing rules to protect them and provide for

them. They were living as strangers in

a strange land. But they had this hope that one

day they would have a land that all of that land that currently

belonged to other kings and other kingdoms that didn't give

two wits about their God. It was all going to belong to

their descendants. It was going to be a picture of

God's Kingdom here on earth. They had hope that the future

would be better, and not better just in some sort of material.

We'll have more money and we'll have more security, but it will

be gooder that the goodness of God and the power of God and the

reign of God would be seen in that place.

And they passed that hope on to their Son.

Frankly, I think this. Is one of the most important

things we can be passing on at this time.

Again, when nihilism is on the rise in the world, which says

there is no future, there is no hope there.

If there's no purpose and there's no meaning in life, then

there is no reason to hope in anything.

We're here by accident, will one day be scattered around the

universe as Adams, who really cares about anything else.

There is no hope for anything meaningful or good.

There is, there is. One day God's Kingdom will come

on this earth just like it is in heaven.

One day every wrong will be put right.

One day justice will reign and the poorest of the poor will be

treated with all the dignity and honor of the richest of the

rich. And every tear will.

Be wiped away and everyone will have enough to eat and everyone

will be treated with dignity and respect and everyone will know

in their bones their self worth and their place and their

purpose. There is hope.

For the future, we can't make that happen.

We don't have that power. We play a very small role in all

of this. God can make that happen, and

God will make that happen. And we know that because God has

always been faithful to His Word in the past.

And so we leave. A legacy of hope to future

generations. And finally, we owe future

generations. The most important thing we owe

them is a legacy of love. How can our kids?

And our grandkids believe that God loves them if we don't love

them. How can the people?

In the neighborhoods around us and in the classrooms and the

schools and the workplaces, How they can they?

How can they ever believe in a God that loves them if we who

claim to follow that God are not loving them?

We owe people a. Legacy of Love.

It is so much. Harder to have faith and hope

when you'd feel when you don't feel loved if.

You feel no one. Loves you and no one cares about

you, then what is there to hope in?

If no one loves and no one cares, what is there to believe

in? We owe them patience.

And kindness and gentleness and goodness.

We owe them mercy and compassion and forgiveness.

Because we have received. That from God and from those who

have gone before us. And we owe the.

Future generations to pass that on.

I got a music video I want to play.

I want to make sure everything's plugged in.

Plugged in going to turn up the volumes up.

We'll see if it plays the first time.

I, I didn't think of playing this song for this sermon till

this week. If you listen to this song and

you go, I can sing that, let me know.

So then because I want to, I will use this song again next

year and I would rather have someone singing it live.

It's a little different. It's this is a statement I never

thought I would utter 20 years ago.

These words would have seemed nonsensical to me.

Some of the best Christian music out there right now is from

Jelly Roll. Words that never used to go

together. Jelly Roll is a person.

I have no idea. I I'm assuming that's not what

his mom named him. I don't know whether he goes by

Jelly or Mr. Roll among his friends, but he's been through

some stuff and he writes some beautiful music of faith.

And in this business of what we owe to our future generations, I

think he captures beautifully. And this song he's written

called My Cross. Let's listen to it together.

Your blood is my. Blood him.

Poison runs deep. Knowing your minds get the hell

out of me. Because hurt is a sickness, and

trauma is too. 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.

I hope the apple falls far from the tree and the sins of the

Father stop right here with me, because that's my cross to

carry, my cross to heal my pain to bury, not yours to feel.

I pray every day I can love you enough.

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. That's my cross to carry my

scars to heal my pain to bury, not yours to feel every day I

can love you enough. So my cross The Cave won't be

yours to pick up, Won't be yours to pick up, won't be yours to

pick up. Yeah, that deserves.

A hand. There is so much in that song

at. The end of the.

Day if for the generations that come after us, if we can deal

with our own stuff. So we're not just.

Passing it on down the line and. We'll never get perfect.

With this. I think sometimes.

At least in my life, I didn't even realize how much stuff I'd

had till I'd already passed it on to my kids.

A whole bunch of it. But this is aspirational.

For us to deal. With our stuff and whatever

generation we are in. So that our kids.

Can start from standing on our shoulders rather than us

standing on theirs. Rather than us just.

Taking our pain and laying it on top of them.

We deal with our pain so that they can move on.

They'll have their own pain to deal with.

We don't have to worry about that.

There's enough pain to go around.

For us. To live in that faith, to live

in that hope, to receive into our lives that love and

forgiveness and let that heal and transform us in meaningful

ways so that we can pass on that legacy of faith, hope, and love

to our children so that when they realize how much stuff

they've got. They know how to find the.

Healing. They need to.

That's what we owe. That's what.

We owe to the. Past, and that's what we owe to

the future, to live in the faith, hope and love that we've

received and to pass it on to our children and the folks

around us. In Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.