Wesley Memorial Church (High Point, NC) Sermons & Podcast

All people sit in one of three chairs: we know God (a first generation faith), we know about God (a second generation faith) or they don't know God or even about God (third generation).

Listen as Rev. Clark Chilton leads through Joshua 26, Judges 2 and Genesis to learn more about these generational handoffs and how God wants all people to sit "in the first chair".

If you need prayer or want to make a commitment to Jesus Christ, please contact us at wesleymemorial.org

FULL TRANSCRIPT

so last week we heard about generational um handoffs we just all saints sunday it was time to hear about uh those who've gone before us and how what we have as christians is really given to us by generations before us a great cloud of witnesses that what we believe in the gospel is nothing new uh but it is our turn and every day is our turn to be the church just as the generations before us have done and today what what happens is the generational handoffs every single one is that once it gets handed off to you uh you want you maybe you went with mama to church when you're a child and what have you and and you grew up into it and here's what happens it either becomes yours it crystallizes it becomes personal it's it's your faith it's not grandma's faith it's yours now or what happens is you do the post-modern thing is where you say well that was their truth that was their understanding but now i have mine and therefore uh and that's okay because that's a good place to start it's a good place to start it's not a great place to to end the life of faith to really be living a life of faith based on maybe how you understood jesus as a child or you've watched jesus from a distance or you've engaged with christianity from through proxy through other people through other generations and you essentially remember the version of jesus you left off with if that's you you remember sort of middle school jesus maybe you went to youth camp and we had soda and we played crazy games and and someone threw cheetos at somebody or whatever and that was your understanding of jesus or maybe it was youth camp jesus and we sang songs around a fire and uh we had a good time or it was i'm enduring church in a pew jesus and i can't wait to get out of here uh you know we all have those things that we left maybe you left off that version of jesus when you were a kid and and maybe now you're becoming an adult a lot of adults do that when you start to have children you want to get back into church and things like that and that's great but that's that's what we almost would call second generation faith i've got three chairs up here first second and third and then many people i believe we're all in one of these three chairs we are in the first generation faith where we have we own it we we know god we know jesus we want to follow him with all of our lives you have the second generation seat which is i know of god it was my grandma it was it was important to her so i would go so you know the things of god but you don't really know christ and then there's the third generation chair which is like you don't even know what you don't know you you don't even know the things of god or you haven't admit even have a memory of the things of god not a judgment but all people are in one of those three places so it begs a big bigger question of how do people in general move from a chair to a chair what moves you from a three to a two what what what causes your faith to become personal that you would move from two to one what what is it that happens in a metaphysical way that you can't see that makes it become a first generation faith not an inherited faith well we're going to take a little journey through the bible as you would expect in church and we're going to be going through the book of joshua we're going to go to judges and then we're going to go to genesis so if you brought your bible you can open up to joshua 24 it will also be on the screen and we're going to start our journey there about this generational handoff the importance of having a first generation faith and um joshua chapter 24 we know that joshua was a successor of moses that he was going to follow he was one that led the people in into the land of promise moses didn't get there he got to the mountaintop he saw it then he dies and god essentially buries him which is kind of a beautiful language in deuteronomy 34 but then josh was the one that leads the people we know the song joshua fought the battle of all right i think they sang that last week upstairs with the children so joshua goes into the land of promise land was part of the inheritance back then that was part of the inheritance of faith was in getting land not so much today but it was back then and so each tribe of israel was going to go into the land they're going to get their apportioned land that was part of their inheritance well then in joshua 24 joshua calls all the tribes together for basically a big family reunion a big convocation and they gather in a land a place called shechem and shekham uh was centrally located so they could get to it easily from where they're all spread out and so he gathers them all together and they have this big meeting with all the tribes and throughout this chapter he he goes through the an oral tradition as they would do through the nation of israel and all that god has brought them through for exodus and all those things and then he says these words in verse 14 now therefore revere the lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the river and in egypt and serve the lord now if you are unwilling to serve the lord choose this day whom you will serve whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond false gods the river or the gods of the amorites and whose land you are living but as for me and my household we will serve the lord so we all we know this as for me my household we will you know because of hobby lobby right it's

it's everywhere seated on t-shirts seen on coffee mugs you've seen it you know wherever uh we have these cute little sayings in the christian church i i heard one yesterday that i'm gonna use a lot it's um god loves you and i'm trying

i'm never gonna forget that one um but this question of as for me and my household we will serve the lord this is really a legacy question isn't it it's joshua saying to the people okay what are you going to do because i have a feeling some of y'all are in chair too and i hope some of you are into chair three me and my house we're in share one this is what we're gonna do we're gonna serve the lord this is our purpose we're going to they're going to own our faith today we're not going to follow the false gods that we just left this is what we're going to do so what are you going to do choose this day you call it like a shechem moment so he goes on joshua 24 and he he says are you going to do this and the people say yes we're going to do it and joshua says no you're not you're not going to do it. and he says are you going to do this and they say yes and he says no you're not you're not going to do it. then a third time they finally affirmed their commitment where it says joshua said to the people your witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the lord to serve him and they said we are witnesses then put away the foreign gods that are among you and incline your hearts to the lord the god of israel the people said to joshua the lord ought guard we will serve and make we him we will obey so joshua made a covenant with the people that day and made statutes and ordinances for them at shechem this is an important place joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of god and they took a large stone a stone of remembrance what you call an ebenezer in hebrew and set it up there under the oak in the sanctuary of the lord joshua said to all the people see this stone shall be a witness against us for it has heard all the words of the lord that he spoke to us therefore it shall be a witness against you if you deal falsely with your god so joshua sent the people away to their inheritances so this is the second moment are you moving from chair to chair one nation of israel what are you going to do today now not what did your granddad do but what are you going to do and then it goes on in judges chapter 2 the story picks up in judges chapter 2. you had no idea the old testament was so entertaining did you it picks up the family reunion ends in judges chapter 2 verse 6 and the the people are sent away to their apportioned land and this is what judges then says in verse 7. the people worship the lord all the days of joshua so joshua lived a long time and all the days are the elders who outlived joshua so we have a generation after joshua the people would serve the lord and be faithful to him who had seen all the great work that the lord had done for israel in the exodus son of none the servant of the lord died the age of 110 years so the people were faithful to joshua's generation and the generation after joshua but then something happens in verse 10. that's very telling and it's where we are now in the church in the united states which is this there arose another generation who did not know the lord or the things of the lord they had no memory of god verse 10 more moreover the whole generation was gathered to their ancestors this is my emphasis and another generation grew up after them who did not know the lord or the work that he had done for israel so here's what's happening the kids are now adults the kids have grown up and they've moved on they don't know god or the things of god they don't even have a memory of god so they are now officially in chair too they are residing in that place and they're getting awfully close to chair three generation three is followed and they are definitely there what's happened here is this legacy of faith this generational handoff has essentially failed and the people don't remember the lord so why do i keep talking about this well there's lots of reasons for one if you're here and you're a believer many of you are you want to leave a legacy of faith for your family right for your children you know we want to leave more legacies more than stuff you know i don't know if our kids want our stuff my kids probably won't want my stuff but you have to deal with your stuff after their parents are gone that's good but but they need something more valuable right than just what can be perishable on earth we want to leave something that lasts forever this this this uh inheritance of the faith in god is is critical but it's hard because you can't make your kids believe anything right duh i mean remember that david's son um the rehoboam the bible says he's one of the worst people who ever lived that's that's david if david can't get it right what hope do i have but here's here's the answer though yeah you can't make your kids believe anything but you can be you can't influence let them hear you pray let your children see you weep let your kids hear you read see you read the bible i've i've said this stat before but over all the kids that grow up in a youth group situation in a church which is millions of kids across the united states i think like 60 percent of them when they get into college leave their faith behind that was my well more or less that was my story too for many years but of those numbers that return to their faith of their youth eighty percent of them that return there's one there's one um thing that would make that happen and it was if mom and or dad continued on in their uh journey with god he continued to go to church continue to be faithful 80 of the time the kids return to the faith that they grew up with on that one principle is that incredible so that's why i'm talking about this is because these generational handoffs are key and you can't control it but consistency and authenticity is powerful stuff you know most people today will hear about the gospel and jesus and love and eternal life and they'll think well i don't know if i believe that or not but they'll look at people like me and you and go well if it's real to you i might believe it right if you believe it then i'll listen authenticity goes a long way with people and it should because you can't undermine someone's testimony it's the most powerful weapon maybe one of the most powerful weapons we have um to spread the gospel so we're going to go back to genesis and we're going to look this generational handoff as well with abraham we know abraham's definitely in chair one right isaac and jacob now if you look at abraham he's the father of what the muslims would even call him the father of their faith

abraham had two sons isaac in in ismail ishmael and uh is through ishmael muslims believe that's who muhammad would come through and of course uh through isaac would come the jewish nation so we know abraham's a big deal abraham's definitely in chair one but even he had a difficult time crafting a legacy of faith for his son isaac because they were nomadic his people the first thing abraham would do when he arrived at a new location was abraham would build an altar and he would offer a sacrifice to the lord and then he would dig a well you see it over and over again alter well i'll take care of i'm going to focus on god first and honor him first and then we're going to take care of the animals and the people we're going to dig a well and they would move they'd follow the water because they had thousands of animals and that's what they would do they were nomads a lot of people hundreds of times not hundreds dozens of times move alter well over and over isaac we see in the book of genesis initially would never build an altar not interesting he would move his people and then he would he'd dig a well but he wouldn't honor the lord and then in genesis um 20 chapter am i on genesis 26 and verse 24 eyes god gets a hold of isaac when isaac's about 60 years old and this is what it says the very night the lord appeared to him and said i am the god of your father abraham do not be afraid for i am with you i will bless you i will make your offspring numerous for my servant abraham's sake so what does isaac didn't do he builds an altar he never done that before when he prays earlier in genesis isaac prays oh god of my father abraham he doesn't say my god he has an inherited faith he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't know god and then god in his grace gets a hold of isaac and appears to him literally and then in that moment isaac moves from the second chair to the first year and from an inherited faith to a first generation faith and then he immediately goes to that place of worship that's why when you're not a believer worship doesn't really make a lot of sense does it you know you can see it on people's faces i've been in churches for many many years now and you'll see people that are in worship services that don't really know what's going on they'll just kind of stand there you know and just kind of watch and and i get that you know we're all in different places on that on these chairs and that's okay but that's why because well if you don't really know who jesus is and the beauty of who he is then worship doesn't really make a lot of sense so here's what happens with isaac isaac was in chair two he goes to chair one very quick summary isaac has a son jacob now jacob is firmly in chair three jacob's name meant deceiver jacob never built an altar jacob would steal water from other people and steal their animals so jacob was way way off from where he needed to be here's what happens in genesis 35 god gets a hold of jacob and appears to him in a dream and says this to him god said to him your name is jacob no longer shall you be called jacob this is such a jesus thing to say isn't it he changes his name you're not i'm not going to call you jacob anymore but israel shall be your name so he was called israel god said to him i am god almighty be fruitful and multiply he's saying the same thing he said i abraham and isaac a nation and a company of nations shall come from you and kings shall spring from you the land that i gave to abraham and isaac i will give to you how good is god how faithful is god that jacob was a wicked man firmly on chair three and god in his mercy appeared to him and said i don't want you to be there i want you to be here jacob i want you to move over the seat to shuffle over a little bit jacob so what does jacob do in verse 14 jacob set up an altar in the place where he'd spoken with him a pillar of stone and he pours an offering on it and poured oil on it and jacob called the place where god had spoken with him bethel so he builds an altar and then he digs a well a lot of christians today we're all about digging those wells first aren't we we're not honoring the lord before we take care of our own business you can do that but a lot of the life of faith and discipleship is simply reorganizing your priorities it is simply reorganizing your loves in the right order and it's god and then everything else and when you do that you're not you're not giving less to the people you care about you're actually giving them more so here's here's the crazy part when jacob moves from chair three to chair one and he digs a well where does he dig the well shechem this is the first this is the place where in joshua the people would gather and have their second moment and joshua would say to them what are you gonna are you going to go and share one nation of israel or are you not the very place now jacob's well still exists in the west bank still there which is amazing you fast forward hundreds of years from the story of joshua to the story of jesus and jesus goes to that same well and the heat of the noon of the day for a drink he goes out of his way actually to go into what was then samaria because he's seeking after a certain woman a samaritan was a half gentile and a half jew they're a half breed they're cast out they're unclean you don't get he went out of his way to go see this woman this well jacob's well and it's the bible tells us that jesus went to this well and it's in a place called psychar another that's a greek word another word for psycho is shechem and it's from this place that jesus would announce his identity and his ministry to the world it's through this one woman this unseen outcast woman that he would announce to the whole world what are you going to do god loves you are you going to be in chair 2 your whole life are you going to be in chair 3 your whole life it's from this place that jesus would announce the greatest work of redemption of god ever and to call not just israel to repentance but everybody and he does it at jacob's will we're all in one of three's three chairs people in the second chair we we grew up okay y'all in the in the 1960s i think it was like 80 percent of american population went to church right i talked to somebody a few weeks ago who said when they pulled out of their driveway around here to go to church on sunday morning everybody was leaving at the same time it was it's like the truman show or something like you would see all these cars it's not that way anymore it's just not most people in our culture today not a judgment on a scale of 0 to 10 10 being very christ-like or something like that zero just not knowing anything most people are at zero most people aren't even in chair three they're like in chairs 79 okay and that's okay i was in chair 80 all right but the question is how do we get people to move from zero to a one because we're talking about stuff sometimes to the culture that they just don't even care about i didn't care about it before i knew christ right how do we get people to move from chair three to chair one chair two to chair one see it's the same answer the same message today god has for his people which is what will you do today as for me in my house joshua said i'm going to serve the lord and i know many of you in this room would affirm that there's also people in this room that i know are here i know you are and that's okay but god doesn't want you to stay there if maybe you're here and you you don't know anything about anything and that's okay too god loves you just where you are but he doesn't want you to stay in these places because because you're you're missing out on intimacy with god you're missing out on knowing peace of god and that's where free will comes in the key question when it comes to leaving a personal legacy of faith is you can't leave a legacy of faith if there's nothing to leave right if you only have an inherited understanding of who christ is then how are you going to leave that to your children eventually when they have kids it might fade away john wesley had the same revelation when he was a young man he realized he was an anglican priest and then you know he was ordained but he realized he was acting on inheritance faith in his head but god hadn't changed his heart and until god did that he wasn't going to fully understand what all this was about

what's tipped the scales for people thousands of years throughout history to move from these places to this place it always started with the leadership it started with i can't control what you're going to do but i know what i'm going to do right you all have people in your lives that man i wish they would get saved i wish they would come to know the lord man it's sort of like that christian gossip like hey we need to pray for so and so and let me tell you why you're right and then you kind of slide into a prayer request right you know what would tip the scales is when you start decided today i am going to own my relationship with god it's the most serious question there is there's nothing bigger there's no bigger question to answer i said this before the biggest question is in life is what am i going to do with the person of jesus christ and the second question is if you do marry who will you marry that is the second biggest question but what you do with the message of the gospel god wants all people to be in that first generation of believers he really does but he gives us choice he gives us free will

i was thinking about the miracle of this week of turning water into wine in the new testament and as jesus first miracle uh it happened pretty soon after he announced he spoke to the samaritan woman at jacob's well and it's at the wedding of cana and they run out of wine so mary knowing that her son is pretty special comes to him and says jesus will you do something about this and he says woman what what do you want me to do and he said okay tell your servants to go fill up jugs of water now when i say jugs of water it was hundreds of gallons of water that's a lot of work that's a lot of effort to prepare the water and these similar sort of jars and then bring them here and then we through the miracle and the wonder of who jesus is he turns it into wine not just crappy wine but the good stuff the good stuff because that's who god is god brings the good stuff y'all god doesn't sheep and you can't outgive god you can't

that's the definition of blessing when you go above the expectations right whatever expectations we have of god is here if your expectation is up here he's here he's always going to be better than you can imagine whatever your idea of god is it's bigger whatever your understanding of god's love is it's bigger and so they're probably like okay this crazy guy's asking us to bring him water okay whatever but they did it in faith and they brought water to him here's what i'm telling you that many people today in our world they want jesus they want his miracles they want to know peace in their lives they want to have peace with god they want to believe i want to believe as my grandfather did i want to know god in that way but i don't

we want jesus to do the miracle but sometimes he asks us to fill the jar in expectation to participate in our own transformation before he will and sometimes filling the jar is just as simple as praying a prayer of faith leaning forward to god and expectancy trusting that he's going to do what he said he's going to do everyone needs this sort of shechem moment where you are no you know you're here and god says i want you to go here but you have to you have to come forward in faith for me to catch you and he will

like isaac and jacob built an altar god wants us to build that altar in our heart

and to know and to be draw near to him and when we do that god will meet you there he will meet you there as we go into this time of prayer let's close our eyes and bow our heads i encourage you to ask yourself that the love of god is here and now in this place and if you are in that second chair then you know you're in the second chair

say to god god i want to trust you to move into the first chair i know i've been messing up i know i'm not where i need to be

and my friend

the presence of the holy spirit will will help you he's always been there he's never left your side he never left isaac's side he never left jacob's side he never left the side of the samaritan woman he never did

jesus said i've not come to condemn the world but to save it he has not come to condemn you he's come to redeem you and when you bow down and admit your dependence on him he will lift you up and give you honor he will pick you up and put you in that first chair and then you have something to leave to your children you have a legacy of faith to give away to bless that when you pray over your children it's going to be from your heart

or your grandchildren

it's god in this moment may you make a miracle in us it's a miracle really we're even here today god it's a miracle we were alive it's a miracle we have breath to breathe

come holy spirit make new wine out of us god

When Moses died in Deuteronomy 34, Joshua became his successor to lead the nation of Israel. Listen to learn more about how we can apply some of Moses' influence in our own lives today.

The Myth of More and Mine - Rev. Dr. Ken Lyon

How should we manage our appetites (financially and otherwise) in a healthy way? Listen as Rev Dr Ken Lyon preaches on the story of the rich young ruler and how limiting our appetites can lead to spiritual vigor and freedom. 

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