The Cross Orlando Values: lineage II

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0:00 with a bunch of different colors in it, just a little square rectangular format. format because it had such good memories. a kid when I stand on the floor mat and have to do the laundry. I have things that you inherit and find ways to wrap them into your life. to hold on to those pieces of who you're becoming.

0:33 and I want to think about that. we've been going through our core values, story, piece, lineage, and life. and last week we started talking about what we mean when we say lineage as one of our core values. and this week I want to kind of wrap that up. we've been looking through to get through story, piece, lineage, and life. we've been working through a section of Paul's Letter to the Church in Rome. the sections of chapters 4, 5, and 6. if you want to turn there, there's paper copies of the scriptures on the tables around you.

1:08 Romans comes after Acts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, and then before the letters to the Corinthians, before 1st and 2nd Corinthians. so Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians. Romans chapter 4, 5, and 6. lively kids back there. we got lively kids back there today. this is part of our lineage.

1:43 I'm throwing me off. I want to hear what they're learning. so we've been talking about these story, piece, lineage, and life. and story. one of the things that's been sticking with me from this core value of story is that Christ conquered the world fully on the cross and then waited for Paul to go around and tell the world about it. that the work of the cross was complete except for the work of telling people that the story of Scripture is carried on in our stories.

2:23 that our stories are significant and they carry forward the story of Scripture. and then we talked about that on this side of that cross, the presence of God brings peace for us. and so that we have the capacity to cultivate peace here together and then to carry that peace in the places where we move in the world. and then last week we started talking about this lineage and the thing that's been sticking with me about the lineage that we have is that it comes from the person of Christ.

2:59 we talked about how maybe unique but core and important it is that our King Jesus arrived at a particular place in history. that Jesus is Jesus Christ of Nazareth born in Bethlehem that he suffered under Pontius Pilate. that he was born given birth through the Virgin Mary.

3:32 that he was cousin to John the Baptist and nephew to Zachariah and Elizabeth. that Mary Magdalene was his friend that John and Paul carried on his teaching. and we looked at that section in Acts where they are called Christian for the first time. and we realized that Jesus didn't start that but as the church was developing, as the people of God were taking up the teachings of Jesus and applying it to their unique situations in life, they turned to specific people.

4:07 that it wasn't readily apparent the best way to apply the teachings of Jesus to the circumstances of life. they had to look to Paul and to Barnabas so that as the church was developing in Antioch they didn't just all do what occurred to them. they went and found Saul of Tarsus and said Saul come and explain to us the best way to live. this is important for us as lineage is a core value. it says we are not the first ones to follow the way of Jesus.

4:37 as we gather we have the Holy Spirit as our teacher but we also have an inheritance of faith that's come down through the generations. that we would do well to lean on. it will not readily occur to us the best way to apply the teachings of Jesus to our life. we'll have to lean on the lineage of faith that we have. it's a core value of us as the cross Orlando here gathered together. it comes out again in Romans chapter 5. we'll just look at that same section.

5:11 we're just a minute. Romans chapter 5 and verse 18. just to remind us therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men. so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men. one trespass leads to condemnation and death for all men.

5:46 so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for everyone. the one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men. and we know that when Paul uses the word life he has this full understanding of life. one of the most animated sections in Paul's writings is when he's writing the letter to the church in Galatia. and he says I have found that the fruit of life with the Spirit of God is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

6:26 I've discovered a whole new source of life inside of me. he says I can feel the life according to the Spirit and the life according to my flesh at war inside of each other. and so when Paul writes to the church in Rome and he says there's one act of righteousness committed by one person that means life for all. he means a particular sort of life. but from that point from the one act of Jesus of Nazareth going forward everyone now has access to a different sort of life.

7:01 one characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. how is your life of the Spirit going? okay if I had to describe, if I asked you to describe, don't describe your life but if I asked you to describe your experience of life, how are you experiencing being alive right now?

7:45 and I asked you to use emotive words. what are the feelings you're most acquainted with in being alive right now? Paul exclaims I have found love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. this is your inheritance passed down in the lineage from Jesus of Nazareth to you.

8:23 because of his one act of righteousness you have access to life characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. it is your inheritance passed down through your lineage. so why when I think I get some of those words some of the time?

8:56 but I was noticing more gray hairs on my head the other day and definitely in my beard. and I'm not getting younger but I'm certainly not that old Nathan. that my beard would be as gray as it is brown. one of the things it's not new but it's relatively new. at one point in my life people would have described me as fairly carefree.

9:34 actually I was carefree in a way that came out as very silly all of the time. I am silly way less often. one of the new things I'm having I'm acquainted with in this last really season of life. so less than 10 but more than five years is like I'm acquainted with stress.

10:10 in this last season of life is the first time ever that I've had periods where it's hard to sleep. because I have things like problems that I don't know how to solve or I've put off solving. I'm anticipating problems that haven't arrived yet. I'm feeling like I'm not all the way who I ought to be. I'm acquainted with emotions I'm saying I'm familiar with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

10:43 but I am also familiar with stress, anxiety, fear, just sadness, isolation. I am familiar with the life that I inherit from Jesus of Nazareth. I'm also familiar with this other life over here. come down from some other lineage. and so as I think about the lineage what we're inheriting it occurs to me that part of the reason that I know both of them and not just one

11:27 is the messiness of life. I was thinking about the mechanical way that the teachings of Jesus are passed on. in college I studied the world religions. I was a religion major at the University of Florida which has asked you first to take basic intro to all the major world religions and then you can follow some kind of I really liked the philosophy of religion

11:58 so I took a lot of classes around the philosophy of what religion is. but I took intro classes to all of them and one spot that was really interesting was my intro to Buddhism class because we were talking about the idea that in pure Buddhist thinking nobody, the idea would be to get to Nirvana but nobody really knows what Nirvana is. it's this realization through meditation that you have no soul that at your core you're the same as everything else.

12:34 I said what happens when someone achieves Nirvana? he's like we don't know for sure but the tradition says they disappear. they are removed from the cycle of rebirth and death from the cycle of samsara and they go to Nirvana wherever whatever that is. they're gone. sitting under a lotus tree meditating, hitting it and that's it.

13:05 isn't it interesting that Jesus comes back in his resurrected body? and if you read the beginning of Acts it says he teaches his 11 what it means that he's in charge of the reign of God is here now. he tells them hey I'm in charge here's what that means. meet me on the hill in Galilee where I taught you so many times. he told me in there and he leaves and they stay here.

13:37 it's not interesting. he comes down out of heaven makes a special visit down out of heaven to call Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. flips him around helps him realize who he is and then leaves and leaves Saul here. to fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ. and he has to deal with the problems of the world. and so that they are applying the teachings of Jesus very mechanically from one person to the next.

14:09 we talked last week about how in the very first century most of Paul's letters are written between 40 and 80 maybe even 70 AD. he's writing letters because we talked last week about how Bahi and Barnabas go to Antioch because so many people are taking up the way of Jesus that they need someone to explain how they would live with this teachings of Jesus. and so Saul and Barnabas are there and they're making full explanations and they decide that they can no longer be called Jews because the Jews are trying to kill them.

14:45 and there are some distinctions between the Jewish people and the followers of the way of Jesus so they developed the word Christian there though Jesus never used it. and Paul stays there for a couple of years and then goes around and starts other churches in Corinth in Ephesus. several churches in the province of Galatia. and then he writes letters back this is over decades so that by the time 30, 40, 50, 60 AD Paul has walked around Asia Minor started several churches and begins writing letters.

15:21 our New Testament is him trying to tell people how to apply the teachings of Jesus to their life but Paul doesn't get to all of the questions. isn't that interesting? Paul doesn't get to all of the questions so that the church has to gather together like in 200 through 100 years and begin to spell out an understanding of how God relates to humanity in three persons. God the Father creates God the Spirit enlivenes and empowers and God the Son saves and they develop this notion of the Trinity to explain how God is dealing with people in the story of Scripture but previously to that it had never been said out loud the question hadn't presented itself.

16:05 shortly after that there was a guy Marcian who said that that the God of the Jewish Bible the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament. and the church assembled had to come together and address an idea that no there is a unified God through the whole thing where do we find it. right before the fall of the Roman Empire Augustine had to explain to people that the work of God is one sided. there was a group of people called the Pelagians that were sure that we didn't need the Holy Spirit to act out the good works of faith.

16:41 that we could do it on our own. and as that question began to present itself Augustine had to come back and explain a different way. why is it important to not think like the Pelagians or like Marcian to own the doctrine of the Trinity. I grew up part of my lineage is very Lutheran. I mean all of my lineage is Lutheran.

17:21 I remember when I was younger than Wes I was maybe five or six years old I grew up in Lake Mary and I began to realize that people didn't all go to the same types of churches. I thought that was really interesting nobody knew what a Lutheran was in my class. they didn't know and there was a lot of Catholic people and a lot of folks from southern Baptist churches and I remember asking my grandma that same grandma whose floor mat I have one time she came down to visit and I asked her what kind of church she goes to.

17:52 we go to a Lutheran church what kind of church do you go to the question was so absurd I remember because she laughed at me. I said what kind of church do you go to she thought it was hilarious. Of course she would go to a Lutheran church I grew up very Lutheran as long as my they there has been a Lutheran pastor in our family since they came over from Germany in the mid 1800s right. Very Lutheran. There's a lot of beauty in that lineage but what has happened in the Lutheran churches there there can be an assumption that you believe the right doctrine because the right doctrine is right and everyone else is wrong.

18:29 That the point of understanding why we're not Pelagians why we like Augustine why Luther is the right evolution of Augustine that says salvation is by grace through faith alone why that's important is because it's the right answer. That's not helpful. We take the doctrine of our lineage we are in line with Paul and Augustine and Luther because on the other end of it we find life.

19:05 Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness. The hard work of continuing the lineage of faith is not in becoming something it's in believing something. Look the lineage of faith you have inherited is scandalous that God would love you regardless of the choices that you've made. That as you sit here today he could love you no more or less than he already does.

19:40 That you cannot disqualify yourself from his favor neither can you earn his gift your inheritance. This is scandalous and it is hard for you and I to believe. We'll need the faith of our fathers to apply it to every situation. It will be hard. I don't know what challenges your faith the most.

20:14 I don't know what undermines your fruit of the spirit your love joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. I don't know what undermines those things for you but I am hoping that you would have the capacity this morning to entertain the idea that to the degree that you are missing those in your life the substance of your faith is undermined.

20:46 I know that stress that keeps me awake at night is an evidence that I'm believing that my future depends on me in a way that is not helpful counter to the lineage of faith that I come from. I know that as I face anxiety relationships trying to control the emotions of the people around me trying to get them to love me or to care for me trying to get them to not feel bad and feel I know that I am owning an inappropriate responsibility to them that I can trust them to God.

21:23 I hope that today we can be people who recognize that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control is our inheritance coming down from the work of righteousness of Jesus of Nazareth. And to the degree we're missing out on it we are abandoning the lineage of faith that has come down to us through generations. Let me pray that we could be those people today. Hey Lord, make us people who apprehend the faith of the generations before.

22:01 It teaches to grab hold of our lineage from Paul and Augustine and Luther and Jesus that has life abundant life to the full and an inheritance with you. To just to live out of that lineage of faith today and this week and to settle for nothing less. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.