the next generation

(Judges 1-2)
Judges begins with an Israel in transition.  Under Joshua’s leadership, they had succeeded, took possession of the land (soberingly, by force most times), and they prospered in the blessing of the Promise God had made long ago.  But Joshua had died.  The entire generation who had worked so hard to stake out their place in the Promised Land, they too had died.  And though God’s Word tells us that they had been faithful, we are told that the generation that followed “didnt know God.”

We arent told the circumstances as to what had happened.  Perhaps it was complacency.  Perhaps they felt, having all they had needed and were promised, they didnt need God anymore.  They got out of the habit.  They grew lax–lost the passion.  Whatever the reason, an entire generation passed while the next passed forward without knowing God.

They worshiped convenient gods.  They did their own thing.  They lived off the prosperity of the land.  They were fine, even without God.  But God makes a hard decision, decides not necessarily to abandon the people but to quit providing for them as God had in the past.  If the situation is that the next generation, spoiled off of what God did through and for their ancestors, were simply living off the accomplishments of the past and felt they had no need of God, then God would set up a situation where they might feel otherwise.  God decides to no longer drive out their enemies or remove the obstacles in their way but leave them right there, for the people to face–hopefully with faith.  And it is only when we face such obstacles–our own obstacles–that we scour the depths of our faith.

Recently I’ve been having the “youth” talk with various members of my congregation.  We are like a lot of churches out there, finding ourselves competing for the attention of young families and youth.  There are a lot of churches out there who are succeeding in reaching the youth of their church, but a lot of mainline churches like ourselves are struggling not necessarily in planning programs but in getting youth there. 

I dare not lay blame, for I have seen the social demands that raising children today puts on parents.  “I fell like a taxi service.”  “I’m coaching two teams.”  “Today, it’s volleyball; tomorrow, piano; I cant even remember what we have to do the evening after that, but it’s something.”  But as a pastor, I know that we are failing and that we are slowly drifiting towards a situation like that in which Judges begins–an entire generation that I fear are knowing God less and less, if not all.

I dont have the answer.  I know as a church we have to be creative.  We have to work with parents and their schedules.  I know that we have youth who split time between two parents.  I know that there are certain elements of other events that the church used to fill for people–the need for friendship, for working together towards an end result.  I know all of these things.  But I dont want an entire generation to go without knowing something about God, about how the Holy Spirit can help youth find their place in the world, how the Grace of Christ can keep them on track. 

We can do better.  We need to.

Sermon Illustration for November 8th, 2009.

In preaching about gratitude during our annual stewardship campaign, one of the points I wanted to discuss was giving our of our abundance.  And I came across this amazing story about how someone (who happened to be eleven) fought to give people out of an abundance he noticed was just going to waste.  Click below to meet Jack Davis.

11-Year-Old’s Idea May Become Law – ABC News

clearing the trees / as for me and my family …

(Joshua 16-24)
clearing the trees
While Joshua was assigning inheritances to the tribes of Israel, the tribe of Joseph came and said, “Really, thanks for our portion, but it’s just not going to give us enough room.  We need more.”  Joshua said, fine.  “You can have that portion up on the hill.”  “But it’s covered with trees,” they answered.  “Well, go clear them off,” Joshua told them.

As we’ve learned from the battles, and here with the tribe of Joseph, God isnt going to hand our lives to us.  Life isnt a Pepsi machine that you never have to put a quarter in.  It isnt a portrait we just have to sign our name to.  Isnt a home already built and furnished.  That life which has already been prepared is that Eternal Life we will receive.  God has taken care of the afterlife–we have to take care of the now-life.

We cant just sit back and think everything will be taken care of.  We have a lot we have to take care of in our lives.  Being a We arent M&M’s after our baptisms, candy coated so that we dont melt in the hands of life.  Our baptisms are a work in progress.  Our faith is a maturation progress.  We are not immune from sin or from struggle.  It takes work; there are a lot of trees we need to clear along the way to receive the portion God has promised us.

We cant just show up to worship on Sunday (or every other Sunday) and think, “Well, my spiritual life’s covered.  I did some singing; did some praying; heard a good sermon.  I’m set.”  Worship is in some regards the least important thing we do as Christians, for noone Monday through Friday knows you went to worship, except those who were there with you, or sat immediately around you.  Maybe we should pass out stickers like they do when you give blood–”Be nice to me, I went to church.”  It doesnt work like that.  Instead, whether or not you worshiped–whether or not you are a Christian–is seen not in the pews, but on the street–in the cubicle.  When share your faith, when you show your faith in service, when you combat negativity, when you refuse to go along with the crowd, when you encourage the downhearted, when you cry with, laugh with, when you exude the light of Christ wherever you find yourself.  Worship helps us figure out how to do that, but it isnt complete unless it is acted upon.  Worship is only the staging ground of faith; life is the battlefield (thank you Pat Benetar).

as for me and my family …
Announcing his retirement, Joshua gathers all the people of Israel and preaches his final sermon.  He wasnt much for words–that was more Moses’ call.  Joshua was a man of action.  But here he delivers his longest sermon in all his story.  And he lays it all on the line, telling the people the choice is there.

“Now’s the time to make a choice.  If you want to follow other gods–gods you think will serve you better–then do it now.  Go ahead, choose them.  Choose them now.  But as for me and my family, we’re choosing God!”

It’s one of my favorite lines in all of God’s Word.  And talk about motivation.  Joshua is genius here.  He motivates his people to action by telling them they cant do it.  “You cant choose God.  You cant serve God.  You cant follow God.  So go ahead, just follow the other ones.”  What happens when you tell people they cant?  They either cower and accept what you say, or if they’re made of God-stuff, they prove you wrong.

Now’s the time to make yr choice.  If something’s working for you, then just keep doing it.  If not going to church is working for you, then fine.  If not believing in God is working for you, then just keep not-believing.  If doing things your way, heedless of the needs or feelings of others, then just keep ignoring them or tromping all over them.  If it’s working for you, then fine.  But as for me and my family, going to church works for us.  There we have people who care about us enough to pray for us.  There we laugh, we sing together, we read the Bible together and learn something that gives a sense of purpose in life as we bind the broken and store up for ourselves treasures of heaven.  Believing works for us, because it gives us an eternal optimism, a source of hope in hopeless situations, a feeling that every morning, regardless of how the previous day went, that we can do better.  We like trying to do what we can to address the brokenness in life–helping our neighbor, encouraging our neighbor, trying to make our immediate area a better place for everyone.  We’ve learned to care whether or not people are grieving, people are lonely, people are discouraged so we try to comfort and grieve with them, we bring them a smile by going to visit someone, and we are always the biggest cheerleaders of others.

We’ve made our choice, and we’ve chosen God.  You do what you want.

this one always gets me

This one always gets me.  Some hand choir and a song from Casting Crowns.

sticking to your guns

(Joshua 12-15)
Peterson says that Caleb “sticked to his guns.”

He had come to Joshua to request his inheritance of the land.  He reminded him that he was once a spy for Moses, and he did his job well.  He was the one who scouted out the Promised Land.  And he tells Joshua that everyone else was discouraging the people.  As they went along, we can imagine the topic of many of their discouraging conversations: “This is the land God was talking about?”  “What sort of God would lead us all this way for this?”  “Moses was full of it.  Joshua’s no better.  We should just stay on the other side of the river.”

But Caleb said that he stuck to his guns–he stuck with God.  And he refused to say a discouraging thing, even if he may have been discouraged at the work he discovered on their expedition that would face them in taking possession of the land.  No, Caleb would neither bad mouth God or discourage the people.  He was the portrait of optimism, always smiling–always thankful–always assured that they could because God would.

We know them.  Friends, family … ones who are always down on a situation, who never have a positive or optimistic thing to say.  They corrupt our mines and sap our wills to achieve.  They’re in our workplace; they’re in our churches; they’re on our televisions, on the radio–preaching their sermons of bad news–and they not only hold us back, they hold God back.

Moreover, they’re in our head.  That voice that tells us we’re not good enough, it cant be done, we dont have what it takes.  Impossible, that banned word in our vocabulary.

Their isnt room for pessimism in faith, or it’s not faith at all.  Faith by definition is the hope beyond hope; hope in the hopeless; optimistic beyond reason; it’s called the Good News.  And as long as we surround ourselves with negative people and buy into what they’re saying, we suffer–our faith suffers, and we render God powerless to do anything with or through us.

So we must make a commitment like Caleb did to “stick to our guns;” to stick with God.  The Bible tells us that Caleb was with God one-hundred percent, no matter what others said.  And so should we.  Always smiling.  Always with our chins up.  Always being the one in any situation that maintains that sense of possibility.  Always looking for the silver lining.  Never giving up, or giving in to the atmosphere of discouragement that others populate with their negativity.

As persons of faith we are hopefully optimistic in all things because we choose to see God there.  And wherever God is there is always goodness, their is always newness.  God is the Eternal Optimist, believing in us even when the voices around us discourage us.

Stick to your guns and stay positive, just like Caleb.

collaterally damaged

(Joshua 9-11)
Abraham was promised land,
descendants, and a great name.

Moses was promised a land,
flowing with milk and honey.

It all sounded so serene,
so perfect, within arms’ reach.

But the land wasnt a gift;
not something to be given
so much as taken, by force.

The land wasnt this vast space:
miles and miles of miles and miles.

Full, already occupied;
people had called it their home.

Want to know how they had felt?
Ask native Americans.

They were the Canaanites of
our land of promise, and look
what happened to their people.

Hard passages to ignore,
the beginning of promise.

Instead of war, Peterson
translates it the “holy curse.”

There is curse in some blessing.
Collaterally damaged.
 

doing what God has done

(Joshua 1-8)
Doing now what God has done,
just doing it diff’rently.

Before, God parted the Sea,
and the people remembered—
they remembered the Red Sea,
though none of them cross’d over;
that was their parents’ journey,
their parents’ God-miracle.
Theirs was the Jordan River;
it piled up like a wall,
upstream, with the priests standing,
feet on dry ground, Ark in hands.

The Red Sea parted before;
the Jordan piled up this time.
God does what God will do, but
it looks different for each.
The Lord still works miracles,
they just look diff’rent each time.
Whether it’s waters parted,
or piled up, the miracle is
the same.  God’s people still cross
on dry ground. 

Whether it’s a
sea or a river, you too
will cross on dry ground, waters
parted or piled up, depends
on who, on where, or on what-
ever you face; do not doubt
because what God has previously
done is the seed of faith that
we see flower in our lives
when God leads us across dry
ground after taking care of the
waters in whatever way
God sees fit to do for us.

Doing now what God has done,
just doing it diff’rently.

our God is striding ahead

(Deuteronomy 31-34; Psalm 91)
“Be strong. Take courage. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t give them a second thought because God, your God, is striding ahead of you. He’s right there with you. He won’t let you down; he won’t leave you.”
Deut. 31:6 (MsgB)

Our God is striding ahead
of us, already crossed
the river that flows in front
of us, already standing
on the other shore, calling
to us, “Come on, cross over!”

Our God is striding ahead
of us, the God of past and
present AND future, the God
of ages past and ages
to come, the God who has been,
who is now, and who will come.

Our God is striding ahead
of us, but we stand grounded,
feet firmly planted, but not
in the good way–stagnate and
complacent we stand on the
near shore while God stands yonder.

Our God is striding ahead
of us, but we won’t risk our
lives.  Better to be safe than
truly blest as God would bless
us were we to cross over,
get our feet wet, and climb up

the other bank where God waits.
The river, a great divide,
the great obstacle that stands
in the way of who we can
be, who God calls us to be,
of who God sav’d us to be.

One bright morning, when this day is over
(I’ll fly away).
To a place on God’s celesital shore
(I’ll fly away).

Our God is striding ahead
of us.  Consider not the
rapids, consider not the
whitewater peril or the
snapping jaws of pirana,
consider only the Grace,

for the Lord God has parted
the water, has cross’d over
Godself, and stands where you can
stand, and calls from where you can
be, if only you take the
first step, and get yr feet wet.

choice

(Deuteronomy 28-30)
our choices determine who we are,
they define how we live,
the direction our lives take.

our choices seem many,
but are actually few.
everything does boil down

to a life and death decision,
blessing or curse,
God’s way or the highway.

i’ve said it before
that it’s all a game
of chutes and ladders,

one choice takes you higher,
another brings you lower,
God marked the beginning

and the end,
promising that God would
keep you on the board.

our choices determine who we are.
i am where i am because
of the choices i made,

some good, some bad,
sometimes blessed,
otherwise cursed—

more of the former
than the latter,
all b/c of my choice.

not w/o help, of course,
God telling me like
the israelites:

over here!
listen!
no, not that way!!!!

i’ve set before you
life and death,
blessing and curse.

you choose!
and why would you choose
anything but?

our choices determine who we are,
and for the most part
i am blessed.

leave some for others

(Deuteronomy 21-27)
Leave some for others.
Dont strip yr fields bare,
but leave some for them.

God told the Israelites that while they were harvesting their fields, trees, and vineyards not to stip them bare. If after they had harvested they realized that they had left a few stalks, a few olives, some fruit, they werent to go back and get them. They were to leave them for the stranger, the traveller.

If I won a million dollars tomorrow, I wouldnt go through it all. Sure, I’d first pay off some debt, the mortgage of my home, invest some, save some, but I wouldnt spend it all on myself. Instead, I’d leave some. I’d set up a scholarship fund so that a couple of deserving, though financially challenged youth could go to college. I’d completely rent out a Frisch’s for the night and invite anyone to come for Big Boy’s and strawberry pie (pumpkin, I guess, this time of year). I’d set up a program in the public schools to teach youth how to manage their money. I’d give more than a tenth to my church. And I’d keep preaching, teaching, and visiting. I love that, so why would I stop?

What I wouldnt do for a million dollars right now, thinking on all these things …

What would you do with yours?

Leave some for others.
Dont strip yr fields bare,
but leave some for them.