Lineage: Deuteronomy 6

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0:00 It's fun to see all those kids have a good crew. We have good volunteers too. If you didn't know, we have high schoolers that work with the preschoolers and then parents who volunteer and work with the elementary schoolers. If you want to get on that list, let me know. You don't have to have kids to be on the list if you just like kids. So the rest of us we're going through here, these six weeks leading up to Lent. We're going through these four core values that we have laid out for us as a church story,

0:32 peace, lineage, and life. And we spent two weeks on story three weeks ago. So we talked about how all of what we understand, know, believe, and learn about God. We take out of the story of Scripture rather than read our notion of who a God ought to be and read that into Scripture. We look at what God has done in the world and from what God has done learn who God is. And then our story inside of that, recognizing that God is active in our story and our story takes place

1:04 in the larger one. And then last week we talked about peace. And that one has been sitting with me. I love the notion that peace is not the absence of conflict or hardship, but the presence of a God who takes care of us, who provides for us. And so that we might have faith that are peace that confounds the world when we have faith

1:36 in the God that is real. And last week we were talking about how that faith comes by hearing and how God works proximately through things. So when we put ourselves in places where we might hear the gospel, we get the faith that gives peace, peace that transcends understanding. And this week we wanna talk about lineage. And there's a lot of ways we could think about lineage and I was just thinking about lineage as another one of those words that maybe maybe we don't use a lot if you don't know what images

2:10 or ideas, the notion of lineage conjures up for you. For me the first thing that comes to mind is family lineage. But I also can think about, I have a lineage in my fandom. So I grew up, we played a lot of sports growing up, but we didn't watch a lot of sports growing up. And so there wasn't, we weren't a family where there was like football on TV a lot.

2:41 I watched every baseball game I could, but we didn't have cable. So it was like you had to catch the one that Fox aired on Saturdays, you know? And that was it, that's all the kind of sports that I watched growing up. And so when I went to University of Florida, it was more because I thought UF was the coolest school, not because I necessarily was like interested in their football team. And so my freshman year I lived on campus and just bought enough tickets to sell on the street, to pay for other stuff.

3:11 I didn't go to any games my freshman year. And then just before the tickets went on sale for my sophomore year, I met this girl. And she was like completely into Gator football. She had grown up in a family that was all about Gator football. And we were talking, I was meeting her, she was like, do you go to the football games? And I was about to say, well, not really, when she's like, I'm going to everyone I can. And so I was like, me too, right?

3:45 And I mean, it's so much so I didn't know there were conferences in college football. I had to fake and learn what a conference was and that there was conferences in college football. I had to learn the rivalries. Like I knew the positions, right? But I didn't know about college sports. Meghan taught me everything about college sports, right? And welcomed me into a lineage of Gator football fandom, right? Multi-generational family.

4:17 And there's even little rivalries in the family, which part of the family loves Alabama and comes from Alabama and which part, it's all in the SEC, you know? But so we have lineages that we're a part of we're things that are passed down. I was thinking that in my, the other lineage that I kind of have is like cars. Like there are fables about cars in my life. My family where, you know, there's a love of Studebakers that my dad's dad had

4:49 or there's an approach to cars that we have where you treat a car like a tool rather than a jewel, right? It's like, it's something that you're working with, not something that you're admiring and something that you're working on and just gets you from A to B, not something that's a status symbol. We have this relationship. Lineage is a thing that we interact with in life, I feel like. You maybe have some lineages that you're a part of with your work or your family with the things that you're a fan of,

5:20 with the clothes that I was talking about, clothes that have memory. I feel like some of my T-shirts have a lineage, right? Like I remember the thrift store I was at in college when I got the more Powell family reunion T-shirt and I love it. People ask me, am I part of the more or the Powell family? Not at all, but I love the thrift store T-shirt, right? And I still have it and wear it regularly. Clothes have lineages. Sometimes your jewelry might have a lineage. It was passed down and you can tell a story that you're a part of because you wear this piece

5:50 of jewelry that someone else wore. Meghan's engagement ring has a diamond that belonged to her grandmother, right? And that story carries on in Meghan lineages. A thing we interact with lineages all over the place. And so why would we put lineage as a core value for us? Well, of course it's because we're not the first ones to gather around the gospel like this, right? We come in this like long line of people.

6:25 And actually I remember a moment when that occurred to me. I after I studied religion at University of Florida, mostly because it was the most interesting classes I could find. I learned part way through my freshman year that if the class was an interesting, I couldn't motivate myself to go. And that's bad because you'll fail classes if you don't go, right? But the religion classes were interesting. I would go. And then I got done with religion and I knew by then that faith was such a core part of my life

6:56 that I wanted to figure out how to integrate it into all my daily activities. And I wasn't sure I was gonna be able to pastor a church. I felt like I was a little bit weird to be able to do that. So I went to seminary not prescribing my future just thinking it was the next step in integrating faith in my life. But I remember a moment for me where I thought I can dedicate my life to keeping the church alive until Christ comes back. And it was when I was like, if something in a history class,

7:27 I can't remember the exact conversation, but I can remember the shift in my brain that occurred where I realized that to be a Christian person is not to agree with a set of doctrines. It's not as though there are a list of propositions at the end of the Bible in which you must answer appropriately. And then if you just check the right boxes, you're a Christian person. When it occurred to me that to be a Christian person is to join this like group of people

8:01 keeping alive the teachings of a person until his return. And that those groups of people have existed in every country across every political line, under every regime, in every economic system. These people have existed through hardship and plenty, through ease, through comfort and discomfort, right? In every race and nationality, these people have existed keeping alive the teachers of the person. I thought, I would like to be a part of that. That sounds fantastic.

8:32 That's what I would like to give. That's the lineage that we're a part of. And today I wanna just break down a little bit of it. And the best place to start the lineage that you and I are a part of, at least the best place for us this morning, it could be debated, is in Deuteronomy chapter six. You know where that is? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers, Deuteronomy, in your paper copies. Deuteronomy chapter six.

9:05 At this point in the story, Moses, that great leader of Israel, is about to walk off into the sunset. It's a crazy story, but Moses literally, he just walks up onto a hill, looks at the promised land, and then the scripture says he's buried by the hand of God, but nobody ever finds his body. It's interesting, you remember the story about Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration when he goes up to the Mount of Transfiguration, he's floating up above the ground and he's blinding white, he's transfigured light

9:35 with the presence of God, and there's two people that appear next to him, Moses and Elijah. These are the two people that we don't have clear death stories. Actually, Elijah, we know he was taken up into heaven in a whirlwind. Moses, he kinda says he was buried by the hand of God, but nobody ever found the body. So there's this speculation among the church that Moses and Elijah never died. They just went up to be with God. Moses is about to walk off into the sunset to go be with God, however he's gonna be, but before he walks off into the sunset, he kinda preaches Deuteronomy to Israel and says,

10:08 hey, remember it's Deuteronomy, it's like the second giving of the law, the second law. And so he kind of recapitulates or re-announces all of the things that he has been teaching them over the 40 years, he's been leading them, tries to encapsulate all the conversations he had with God as a man, so he's another man face to face. And in Deuteronomy chapter six, he gives us one interesting little phrase, kind of like a phrase that I just gave to the kids

10:41 that kind of roots us, but if we start at verse one, we'll gain up to it in verse four. Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the Lord, your God commanded me to teach you that you may do them in the land to which you are going over to possess it, that you may fear the Lord, your God, you and your son and your son, son, by keeping all the statutes and his commandments,

11:11 which I commanded you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long here, therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you in the land flowing with milk and honey. Verse four, here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your might,

11:41 and these words I commanded you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk to them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes, and you shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates. He's talking about the importance of these commandments

12:13 from God, but he kicks it off with this phrase, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, which becomes this cornerstone phrase for the people of God. Has a special name, they call it the Shema, the clear command of God, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. The other thing that I love about, I love first that it says the Lord our God, the Lord is one. There is one God to whom we look for all things.

12:45 This is a key characteristic of Israel. You don't have to go to one God for your fertility and one God for your crops, one God for protection from enemies, and one God for money. You just deal with one God for life, provision, protection, for future, for all things. Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, over all things. The other thing I love about this passage that becomes key for the people of Israel

13:19 is the admonition to teach it to their children. Key to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Israel and the church is his commitment, not only to us, but to the generations to come. So this Shema then becomes the kind of refrain. If you go forward into Mark chapter 12, Jesus quotes the same thing.

13:50 Jesus in Mark chapter 12, and one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another and seen that he answered them well, they asked him, which commandment is the most important of all? Remember that now the chief, chief, priest, and the scribes are watching Jesus. Jesus is this rabbi that's been moving around Galilee and gaining a reputation, but he's a little bit of a wild card and they are trying to vet him out.

14:23 And in their mind, if he has the right answers, then he knows all the right things. So they're trying to trip him up and see if he answers rightly all the time. The chief priest in the scribes. And remember that they knew the Old Testament well, by the time the first century, throughout Israel, throughout the Old Testament, the Israelites didn't treat the scriptures well always. They lost it at some times, they disregarded it at other times, but by the first century, there was a whole group of people who had the whole Old Testament memorized,

14:54 who knew it well. And this little phrase, the Shema, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, had become key by first century. They could summarize all the law and the prophets in this great command. And so they knew if a rabbi knew anything, if they came to him and said, what's the greatest commandment, he would have some answer in that ballpark, right? And so, and then the teach scribes came in and they heard them disputing with one another and seeing that Jesus answered them well, they asked him, which commandment is most important of all?

15:27 And Jesus answered, the most important is, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. And the second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, there is no other commandment greater than these. I think it's like kind of amazing that that command endured until the time of Jesus.

16:02 Remember what they went through, like, I mean, Moses is after Abraham, so they're through one period of slavery, but in between Moses, saying the Shema and the second giving of the law, and Jesus in the first century, quoting it, a lot happens to Israel, right? They are, they conquer lands, and then they are conquered by other nations, multiple times, they have a couple of good kings and lots of terrible kings.

16:34 They ruin and desecrate the temple, the temple is destroyed, and the temple is rebuilt. They're exiled, and they return from exile, and among all of this, they lose the scriptures, they uncover the scriptures, the prophets condemn, the prophets tell of delivery. And through all of this, through migrating nations, through decimated, through people groups, through killings and burnings, through conquerings, and being conquered, still they teach this Shema

17:07 to their children. They write it down when a few cultures were literate. So that by the time Jesus gets to the first century, it's still understood, the thing that Moses gave back in the second giving of the law, that there's something key in what we believe, that the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we love the God. They have preserved something that is true against all odds, I'm saying.

17:39 This is some kind of legacy that perseveres despite failure and lack of faith, despite opulence and great wealth. This faith endures among a group of people and makes it to first century. So that Jesus picks it up. And you and I can know it and believe it. Jesus is Lord.

18:10 Or the Lord our God, the Lord is one. It evolves into the phrase we gave the kids in the first century then, right after the ascension of Jesus. I mean, early, we could go a couple of places, if you look actually in Acts, we're going to the right in Acts chapter 16. In Acts, there's this crazy story, Acts chapter 16.

18:44 Paul and Silas are like, I mean, they're preaching, and by the time in Acts chapter 16, if they were to stay in Jerusalem, they have problems with the Jews. So the Jews are mad that the way of Jesus is evolving the historic faith in a way they don't like, and they're worried about undermining systems that they've built. And so pre-truist teachers and followers of Jesus in Jerusalem and Israel are being persecuted.

19:16 But Paul and Silas have a different problem. And actually in Acts chapter 16, there's this woman who's like a medium who can prophesy the future. And she's walking around following Paul and Silas and saying, these people are prophets of the most high God, they're the real deal. And she's saying it over and over again, and it's bothering Paul and Silas because for over a day, she's walking around behind them yelling that these people are the real deal. And so finally, he looks at him

19:46 and he casts a spirit out of her and she stops being able to prophesy the future. And the people who owned her, she was a slave and were selling her prophecies to make money, got mad. And so they threw Paul and Silas in jail. And so Paul and Silas are in jail because of the miracles that are happening around them and God comes in to free them miraculously. So there's a lot we could catch up to. But in Acts chapter 16, verse 31, I just wanna show you that things are starting to evolve from the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

20:19 Verse 30, the jailer, then he brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? They're standing there in jail and the guy who's in charge of the jail, can't believe they haven't left. And they're like, we're free no matter where we are. And he says, what must I do to be saved? And they spoke the word of the Lord to him, or before that, verse 31. And they said, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. They started to simplify this,

20:50 connect this idea of Lord master one in charge with person Jesus of Nazareth. It starts to come together in that early church so that if they, someone says, what must we do to be saved? They have a ready answer, whether they're Paul or Peter, whether they're in Israel or in Rome, whether they're speaking to Jews or to Gentiles, that this phrase now is starting to be the evolution of the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

21:21 Jesus is the Lord, right? Jesus is the Lord. It comes up again in Romans when Paul writes his letter to the church in Rome, but the place I want you to really look because I love it is 1 Corinthians chapter 15. He's trying to settle, he's trying to, in 1 Corinthians, he's trying to pull the church and Corinth together. You're separating factually, following different teachers, different ideologies,

21:53 and he's trying to pull them together and he does it a couple of different ways. And in 15, he's describing this thing in 15 verse one, he says, now I would remind you brothers of the gospel that I preached to you. He's like, no matter the teachers, you have the same gospel, the gospel which I preached to you, which you received and in which you stand and by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. Verse three, for I delivered to you as a first importance

22:24 what I also received. Remember the path of Paul. Paul is a Hebrew of Hebrews. He went to like the Harvard for Pharisees if Harvard only accepted 12 people. Like the top of the top. He's written letters off the cuff to the church which the church immediately recognized were brilliant and carried the spirit of God so they made copies and sent it all over Asia Minor until by 300,

22:56 everybody had copies of these letters. So it was canonized in scripture. And for 2000 years we've been trying to understand the genius that falls out of Paul's brain, right? Remember Paul, he's the Hebrew of Hebrews and he's walking on the road to zealot and meets Jesus and goes to Antioch and spends three years in Antioch unraveling what it means that what he thought was true has evolved and somewhere among the Christians in Antioch, the headquarters of the early church, he gets told this thing. So then when he comes to the council in Jerusalem

23:28 before he goes out on all of the missionary journeys around Asia Minor, he's carrying the thing that the people of God have already started circulating. We're pretty sure he wrote this letter to Corinth in the 60s. And I mean like not 1960, 060, right? And he said he's writing a letter about something that happened before that. So previous to 60, remember Jesus ascended somewhere in the 30s.

23:59 So somewhere between 30 and 60 in that 30 year period, they have started to circulate a phrase already that encapsulates the teaching of Jesus. So much so that Paul learned it before he went on his missionary journeys and took it with him on his missionary journeys and preached it in Corinth and he's gonna give it to us right here in the letter. That's why I love this so much. It's like you guys, this is not a dead tradition.

24:30 This is a living lineage in which we take our place today. Here in Orlando, persevering in the faith, carried by the story. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Jesus is Lord, look at what Paul says. Okay, for I delivered to you as a first importance, what I also received that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried,

25:00 that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the 12. And then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, to one untimely born, he appeared to me for I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called apostle because I first gave the divis, so I was talking about. Okay, did you catch that first part though?

25:31 For I delivered to you a first importance what I also received, that's what he was taught early on, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried and raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to the apostles. But this early formulation becomes the apostles creed. By 70 AD they're starting to use what we spoke last week when we baptized the Crandall baby, the apostles creed,

26:02 they're starting to use early formulations of it by 70 AD. They don't agree on the New Testament until 300. I'm trying to tell you that this book is good because it tells us a story of things that happened, but you and I are not members of a book, remembers of an unbroken lineage of people connected to the person Jesus of Nazareth, who is Lord? The Lord our God, the Lord is one, Jesus is Lord. Crucified, died, buried, resurrected and ascended,

26:36 coming back at the appointed time. And that lineage of people has been building a tradition in which we are a part. The apostles creed was the first formulation of the teachings of Jesus. What do we believe? We believe in God, the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, right? In Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, he was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered in the pot, she found the crucified, died and was buried. He's sent into hell. Third day rose again from the dead and said they did to heaven, sits at the right hand of God.

27:06 From whence he will come to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end, right? And the apostles creed then, when the time is right, when the questions emerge, when the challenges of life are such that we need more answers, Nicene Creed arrives. And the church altogether say, ah, Nicene Creed, this gives us a fuller understanding, protects the Shema, Jesus is Lord, the apostles creed in keeping with those three and the scriptures,

27:39 describes more fully the faith of this lineage of people. And when the Nicene Creed can't cover it, when questions arise, the challenge and confuse and confound and say, what is it that we believe? The Athination Creed emerges. Have you read the Athination Creed? It's way longer, right? And when those three aren't enough, then the Augsburg confession emerges to defend the reality of the gospel.

28:12 And then the one we teach our kids is the small catechism. We gotta understand how does God come to us in a way that is helpful. This is what we mean when we say lineage is important. That it's not, it's not, it's not, just me and God, or worse, it's not just me and the Bible.

28:44 No, it's us together with the testimony of generations before, gathered together as the assembly of saints, awaiting the return of Jesus, who is Lord? The Lord our God, the Lord is one, all of us together with tradition and hope. I was trying to figure out how to impress on you that we are a part of a living tradition. And I think the creeds are the key, man.

29:15 Because of what I just got really excited about, I'm freaking, if you can't tell, I love the Apostles Creed. I love the simplicity, the complexity, but I also love the historical context. I love what it tells us that before we could agree on the new books of the New Testament, we could agree functionally on the teachings of Jesus, assembled and boiled down into the Apostles Creed. It means that we are a living tradition, not a dead agreement to a book, but that that tradition isn't done. I listened to this one little interview,

29:47 at least once a year, usually on the Saturday before Easter. It's an interview with this church historian named Jaroslav Pelikan, curious, anybody heard his name? Jaroslav Pelikan, yes. Jaroslav Pelikan, he went to the seminar I went to, then became Eastern Orthodox, he's dead now, but he was brilliant. And he wrote this book called The Need for Creed. Well, he wrote this book called Creeds, did this interview called The Need for Creeds. And then there they asked him, he said there's over 1,000 Christian Creeds.

30:19 And you can find creeds that are explanations or explications of the Apostles Creed into the context in which they live. That the tradition is living and alive and that new questions arise that must be addressed, new contexts that must be explained. Somebody asked him what his favorite creed was, I wanna read you his favorite creed. It's from the Maasai people, which is like a tribe in Southern Africa, I think, maybe central.

30:51 Okay, this is the Maasai creed. We believe in one high God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on earth. We have known this high God in darkness and now we know him in light. God promised in the book of his word, the Bible, that he would save the world and all the nations and tribes. We believe that God made good his promise

31:24 by sending his son Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh. A Jew by tribe born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross and died. He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him.

31:58 And on the third day he rose from the grave and ascended to the skies, he is the Lord. We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him and all who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love and share the bread together in love. To announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again, we are waiting for him. He is alive, he lives, this we believe.

32:28 Amen. Come on. We are part of a lineage. The cross, we believe that we are part of a long lineage, that we are a continuation in a line of people across every tribe, nation, under every government, in every economic system, keeping alive the teachings of Jesus until he comes back. It's core to us and it is comforting. It is good news for you to know, whatever trial or hardship,

33:01 whatever difficulty you come across, you are not alone in it. Let's pray that we might believe that. Hey Lord, thank you for the testimony of the people gone before, thank you for the creed and for the hope for the future. Be with us, remind us of our faith and tie us to our lineage. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.