February 4,, 2007 Epiphany 5C

Sermon Title: “Receive Your Inheritance”

Series: How to Have a Happy New Year

Text: Jeremiah 1:4-10, Psalm 71:1-6, 1 Cor. 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30

Dr. Steve Jackson

NewSong Community Church

Delivered on February 4, 2007

 

“See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” Jeremiah 1:6

 

Receive Your Inheritance

On this first Sunday in February we’ve come to the last of four messages in our series titled “How to Have a Happy New Year.” I realize we have some guests here today so let me catch everyone up on what we’ve been talking about thus far. The gist of the series is that most people make resolutions of some kind when a new year rolls around. This year I am suggesting to our congregation that instead of making financial or physical resolutions, we should consider making some spiritual resolutions. It’s an idea that is supported by Scripture. 1 Timothy 4:7-8 teaches that physical training is of “some value” but training in godliness has value for “all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

 

So far I have suggested three things that we should do as we begin 2007. The first of these is to RECOGNIZE GOD in all the ways he’s active in our lives. I pointed out how so many times God is doing all sorts of things in our lives, guiding us, protecting us, teaching us—and yet we’re often oblivious to his presence. We should begin looking for him and recognizing him in all the ways he is working in us, and through us, and around us; particularly in those areas of our lives where we’d least expect him to show up.

 

The second thing I suggested is to REALIZE YOUR GIFTEDNESS. By that I mean we should make every effort to discover, develop and deploy our God-given abilities in the world. Specifically I’m talking about the ways God has gifted us spiritually to serve him and others as we follow his plan for our lives and for the world he created.

 

Two weeks ago I offered a third thing to do as we begin a new year which is to READ YOUR BIBLE. I spoke about how everything we need to know in order to live our lives in this world, and to get into the next one, is contained in the Holy Scriptures, and even though we have amazing freedom and access to those texts we often either ignore them, or don’t understand what we’re reading.

 

Today, the fourth thing I want to talk about for us to have a great 2007 is to RECEIVE YOUR INHERITANCE.

 

Have you ever daydreamed about how wonderful it would be to receive a huge inheritance? I’ll admit it, I have! I’ve pictured it in my mind. I’m sitting in some lawyer’s office and the lawyer clears his throat and he begins reading a last will and testament. And when he gets to my name he says, “And to my beloved son I leave $25,000,000.” And immediately I’m thinking of all the ways I’m going to spend all that money. Anybody else ever do that?

 

Well, I don’t know about your family situation, but that will never happen to me. All my grandparents have been dead for years and I didn’t inherit anything from them. And unless my parents have been awfully good at hiding it, I’m not counting on retiring any time soon with what they may leave me.

 

That’s not to say I haven’t inherited some wonderful things from my parents though, don’t get me wrong. I have inherited some things from them. For instance I inherited good genes that have led to my having excellent health for most of my life. I’m also told I have something of their personality—little parts of each of them. I'll leave it up to you who know them to decide whether that’s blessing or not! I also feel blessed to have had the opportunity to live all over the world since I grew up in a military family. And perhaps most important of all, I believe I’m a Christian today largely because my parents brought me up in the church. Truth is, I grew up in a happy, safe, loving home so in that sense I received a wonderful inheritance from my earthly family; perhaps you have too.

 

But any human inheritance pales in comparison with the inheritance we who are believers have in and through Jesus Christ. The Bible assures us that as children of God, adopted into his family by our baptism, we have a glorious inheritance.

 

Peter describes this inheritance this way: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:3-4).

 

No matter how wonderful any earthly inheritance might be—no matter if it’s possessions, good looks, talent, whatever—our glorious inheritance from God outshines them all. Not only that but it’s the only one that’s eternal, imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.

 

And yet, our inheritance is often forgotten, or left unclaimed, or ignored. I’m reminded of a story about famous publisher William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was a multi-millionaire, one of the richest men of his time. He was also a prolific art collector. One day he heard about a certain piece of art that was available and he so he sent his agent to go and locate the piece and purchase it. Many months went by and his agent finally came back and said “I found it.” And Hearst asked, “Where?” And his agent answered, “You have it, you’ve owned it for years.” It turns out that several years earlier Hearst had bought the piece, stored it in his warehouse, and then forgotten about it.

 

What I want to challenge us with today is the fact that though few of us are as wealthy as William Randolph Hearst, and few of us have warehouses of valuable artwork that we’ve forgotten we’ve purchased, we do have a glorious inheritance that is ours that I fear we may be allowing to go forgotten, unclaimed or ignored. I want to challenge us today to receive that inheritance, to begin living today as though we are children of the King.

Let me ask you something. Do you think you would be living your life differently if your last name was Gates and your dad’s first name was Bill? Or what if your last name was Windsor and you had brothers named William and Harry? (Yes, Prince Charles does have a last name, it’s Windsor.) Or what if you were an athlete and your last name was Manning and your father’s first name was Archie? Do you think you’d have some kind of genetic advantage if you decided to play football? Would you be playing checkers instead of football? No…hopefully you’d receive your inheritance, you’d claim it, and you’d be living up to what’s been given you.

 

The same idea, magnified a million times, is what happens with us as children of God if we fail to receive our inheritance. We struggle through life, spiritually speaking, living a hand-to-mouth existence. The good news is, God has a glorious inheritance for you and for me – we simply need to claim it and begin living up to our heavenly birthright. You and I are children of the King! We are princes and princesses. I want to challenge us to begin living that way, starting today.

 

The texts we read today each have something to teach us about this inheritance, and about how important it is for us to receive it. About how God wants you and me to begin walking in that inheritance. I hope you noticed the common thread of children and their inheritance through these texts…Get out your Scripture inserts and let me walk you through a few of these valuable lessons about receiving your inheritance.  

 

SOMEONE WHO DOES NOT RECOGNIZE IT

In the first passage, from Jeremiah, we see a situation where someone does not recognize his inheritance. At least not at first. Look at verse six, Jeremiah says, “Ah Lord God! I do not know how to speak for I am only a boy.” Let me pause right there. Jeremiah uses his youth as his excuse for not receiving his inheritance. Many of us have made excuses for why we can’t, or won’t, receive the mantle God is placing on our shoulders: Moses’ excuse was that he was “slow of speech” Isaiah said, “I am a man of unclean lips.” Mary, the mother of Jesus, said “How can this be?” Peter claimed he was, “too sinful.” When Jesus volunteered to go to the centurion’s house the centurion claimed he was “not worthy.”

 

But look at the Lord’s response to Jeremiah: “Do not say, “I am only a boy”; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.’ Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow.”

 

Now that’s what I call an inheritance, Jeremiah was appointed over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down…. And yet he doesn’t realize it. He still thinks of himself as a little boy.

 

Here’s the lesson for us in this passage. It’s not about who you are (a little boy, a stutterer, a sinner). What matters is whose you are, namely a child of God. That’s because as a child of God you have all the resources you need to accomplish whatever it is God is calling you to do. You are a child of the King!

 

I remember telling a story in a sermon a few years ago about a crowd of people standing beside the Mississippi River way back at the turn of the century as a riverboat paddled by majestically. Suddenly a little boy in the crowd began waving furiously and motioning for the boat to pull over to the bank. A grown man standing near the little boy pushed the boy’s arm down and said, “Son, that boat’s not going to stop here, those are busy people headed to New Orleans, and besides, there’s not even a dock here if they wanted to stop.” Well imagine the man’s surprise when the paddleboat let out a loud whistle with it’s horn, reversed it’s huge engines and began making its way to the bank. As the boat drew near they dropped a plank and the little boy scrambled onboard. As they pulled back out into the main channel of the river the man called out to the little boy, “How did you know they would stop?” The little boy replied, “Oh that’s simple, Mister. My dad is the captain!”

 

And that’s how it is with us – our “Dad” is the captain of the ship and he has appointed us “over nations and kingdoms.” Let’s receive our inheritance and stop thinking about our lives based on what we can do or our abilities and instead remember whose we are: We are children of the King! You have a glorious inheritance. The sooner you begin believing that, the better off you’re going to be. God has things for you to do and he’s equipped you to do them. So start living as a prince or a princess of his.

 

SOMEONE WHO DOES RECOGNIZE IT

The Psalm of the day (Psalm 71:1-6) gives us an example of a someone who does recognize his inheritance. Look at verses 5 and 6, “For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it is you who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you.”

 

You see, again we have a reference to childhood and the wonderful inheritance we have. Notice how at first the Psalmist is crying out to God for help and deliverance. He’s practically pleading with the Lord as if he’s almost forgotten his inheritance for a moment. He cries out, “Let me never be put to shame…deliver me and rescue me…save me…rescue me from the hand of the wicked…”

 

But then, in verses 5 and 6 we see a shift in the tone of the Psalmist. He seems to remember, “For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it is you who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you.”

 

The lesson from the psalmist is that sometimes when we face enemies, or crises, or threats, it’s easy to take our eyes off the Lord and instead to focus on the gravity of the situation at hand. It’s easy to let our circumstances get blown all out of proportion and to take our eyes off God and onto ourselves. This is depicted as happening frequently in the Psalms. But then, thankfully, there is that turn where the Psalmist realizes, “Wait a minute! I’m a child of the King! God has never let me down before. Not since the day he pulled me from my mother’s womb. There’s no way he’s going to let me down this time!” As you read the Psalm you can almost sense the fog of circumstance, doubt and disbelief dissipate as his faith shines through, burning off the fog of doubt. I recall telling another story in a sermon once about Native American (Indian) boy who was ready to begin the rituals leading to his being considered a full-blown warrior, even though he was still only the tender age of about 8 or 9. One of the rituals involved being blindfolded and then led several miles out into the woods and left so he had to make his way back to his village all on his own. He was told to count to 100 before he removed the blindfold and when he did remove it he realized it was already getting dark. Brave as he was, it’s a frightening thing for a little boy to be left in the woods overnight and then to have to find his way back to the village. All through the night he heard animal noises and he was frightened to death. But then as dawn broke and he continued to scan the nearby trees and brush for a wolf, or a bear ready to attack, he thought he caught sight of the buckskin pants of another Indian. He would have cried out but he was afraid it might be a warrior from another hostile tribe. And so he began to make his way back. Several times he thought he saw the other warrior again. But each time he did he felt calmer and calmer about the presence of the other man. He finally made it back to his camp and it was only years later that he realized that the other warrior was in fact his own father, watching over and protecting his son each step of the way.

 

Don’t let your imagination or your doubts or fears carry you away. God is here, you have a glorious inheritance—part of which is the promise, “Never will I leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5 quoting Deut. 31:8).  In times of trouble remember what the Psalmist said and keep your eyes on the Lord remembering his great mercies to you, “since he took you from your mother’s womb.” You and I have a glorious inheritance—receive it!

 

OTHERS DO NOT RECOGNIZE IT

So far we’ve seen a situation where a person does not recognize their inheritance, and then one where they do. Skip down on your Scripture inserts to the passage from Luke and you’ll see a situation where others do not recognize your inheritance. Look at the end of verse 22. There we read the response of the people in Jesus’ own hometown, in his own “church” so to speak, in response to him after he read and interpreted the Scripture. Do you see what they said? “Is not this Joseph’s son?” Isn’t that the carpenter’s kid?

 

Jesus’ own family and friends don’t recognize his inheritance, they see him only as the child of Joseph, his earthly father, not the Son of God, his heavenly Father. Jesus goes on to explain why this is so explaining that, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” They know him too well to ever believe he could possibly be the Son of God.

 

Some of you have probably faced the same thing in your own walk of faith. Maybe you went back to your old home town for the holidays, or perhaps you went to your high school reunion, and something came up about your faith…I don’t know, maybe you asked if you could pray for someone, or maybe you said you wanted to get up and go to church, or maybe it was some behavior you abstained from with the old gang that you used to do with them, and you got those looks like, “Who does she think she is, Ms. ‘holier-than-thou?’” Has that ever happened to you?

 

If you’re a believer long enough, and if you are living your faith out openly like you should, it’s going to happen. People aren’t going to recognize your inheritance. They’re going to think you’re an imposter, a fake, a fraud. It got so bad in this story about Jesus that his “friends” actually tried to throw him off a cliff and kill him. Hopefully it didn’t, or won’t get that bad in your situation.

 

The lesson for us here, when others don’t recognize our inheritance is implicit in how the story closes. In verse 30, we are told that Jesus simply, “passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” In other words, he didn’t judge them, or curse them, or even correct them. He simply, and humbly moved on.

 

I will never forget my own call to ministry out of the Cumming First Methodist Church. I was on their committee called the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee that was the liaison group between the pastor and the church. In fact I actually chaired that committee. I had been a member of the church for a few years, the people on that committee had seen me at my best and at my worst. We had a struggle in the church over whether our pastor should stay or go and things got out of hand and, to be honest, they got pretty ugly. Things were said in anger by me and by others that should not have been said. I eventually resigned from the committee. Now, less than a year later, my life had changed completely. My first step towards ordination was to gain the blessing of that very same committee (God has a very interesting sense of humor). Talk about humbling…To make a long story short, I answered their questions and, I suppose, barely squeaked by to qualify for ordination, but I’ve never looked back. Even though some of the folks on that committee did not see my inheritance, I know it is real and I’ve never doubted (some of you may still doubt!). I simply moved through the midst of them and went on my way. I don’t judge them, or curse them, or worry about them. I know my inheritance. My conscience is clear.

 

WHEN YOUR INHERITANCE IS UNCLEAR OR YOU ARE CONFUSED

And speaking of clear, the last Scripture I want to mention is the Epistle, 1 Cor. 13, which teaches us what to do when your inheritance is unclear or you are confused. Notice that this passage also has a mention of childhood. Verses 11 and 12 read, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been known.”

 

Here Paul admits that sometimes things aren’t clear; we see “dimly” now. But he goes on to promise is that one day we shall see things clearly – “face to face” as he puts it. What a relief to know that someday things will be crystal clear for us concerning this inheritance.

 

This past Christmas my family was badgering me so much to get a high-definition television I finally caved to their pressure and purchased one (that’s a joke). I brought it home and installed it all by myself. After all, Circuit City wanted $500 just to install it! Well, I had it up and running in no time and felt so smug that I’d saved all that money. I couldn’t believe the difference in the clarity of the picture. It was a amazing. The only drawback was I wasn’t getting a few of the higher channels I was supposed to get. So I called the cable TV company and they came out last week. Do you know what they discovered? I wasn’t getting the channels because I’d hooked the TV up wrong and so I couldn’t receive any high definition programming. All the time I’d been thinking my picture was so much clearer it really wasn’t, it was the same as before. But then, when the guy did hook it up right, it truly was amazing. The clarity was amazing.

 

If you multiply the clarity of that HDTV image about ten million times it might start to approach how “clear” things are going to be someday concerning our inheritance in Christ. It will be greater than the difference in those old grainy black and white TV images from the fifties as compared to the brilliant high definition signals of today. We’re going to see and understand everything. Then, as Paul puts it, we will know fully, even as we have been known.

 

The lesson here is that we should continue to grow up and mature in our faith (as Paul says, put away childish things). As we do we can be confident that someday we will understand perfectly what God was up to in our life. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to find out what God had in mind in some situations he allowed me to be involved with in my life.  

 

Let me close with a story told by my preaching professor, Fred Craddock. He and his wife were vacationing in the Smokey Mountains of East Tennessee. They stopped one evening to eat when an older gentleman approached their table in introduced himself and started chatting and in time the inevitable question arose, directed at Craddock, “What do you do” “Well, I teach in a seminary.” “Oh, you teach preachers! I've got a story about preachers.”

 

Well the last thing Craddock wanted in the whole world at that moment was to listen to some old guy tell a “preacher story” – he’s heard plenty, but he politely let the man continue.

 

He said, “I was born back here in these mountains but my mother wasn’t married and the shame of that fell on her and it fell on me. The children at school had a name for me and it hurt, and it hurt very much. During recess I would go hide in the weeds until the bell rang. At lunchtime I took my lunch and went behind a tree to avoid them. When I went to town with my mother the men and women would stare at her and then at me. I knew they were trying to guess whose I was. It was painful. About seventh or eighth grade, I began attending church. The preacher of the little church I attended frightened me and yet I was attracted to him at the same time. He had a face that looked like it had been quarried out of the mountain. He thundered! I was afraid people would say, “What's a boy like you doing in church?” So I just went in time for the sermon and then I'd rush out. One Sunday, however, some women had clogged up the aisle and I couldn't get out and I began to panic and I was just certain someone was going to confront me and ask, “What's a boy like you doing in church?” And then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw the chiseled face and boring eyes of the preacher. He called out to me, “Say son, don’t I know you? Whose boy are you? You're a child of ah… You're a child of ah….Ah, wait, don’t tell me.” And the preacher said, “You're a child of God. I see a strikin' resemblance!” And then he looked me right in the eye and he swatted me on the bottom and said, “Now go claim your inheritance, boy!”

 

But the story doesn’t end there. Craddock looked at the old man and said, “What's your name?” He said, “Ben Hooper.” “Ben Hooper?” Craddock repeated. Then he remembered! His father had told him about the time the people of Tennessee had elected an illegitimate governor named Ben Hooper.

 

Here was a man with little or no earthly inheritance. He didn’t even have an earthly father—at least not one who would claim him as his own. But he because he heeded the wise and kind words of a preacher a long time ago when he was a little boy, and because it didn’t matter “who” Ben Hooper was but “whose” he was, he came a long way.

 

And so now let me say to you what that preacher said to that little boy, “Go, receive your inheritance…and do it today.” Let’s pray.