God is > Your Legacy

WELCOME
Pastor Chris Paavola:
Yeah, so thank you guys for your support to make that trip happen. It was a great time, man, for those kids. Two of my kids went on that trip actually too, and when they got back they slept for like 14 hours straight. It was not tired, okay? Anyway, but no, they had a wonderful time. Scripture calls these moments where faith is fanned into flame, and that’s how I would describe my kids coming back. They’re just excited about the faith, they’re excited about what God is doing and their life, and you come back thinking about life differently.

LEGACY

And anytime I see a video like that, I immediately think about legacy because I don’t even like calling kids the next generation. They’re the now generation, but there’s the generation after them that I think is the next generation. And as we work to tell kids about Jesus and instill faith in them, it is this idea of passing on the faith, this idea of legacy.
And that’s what we’re talking about today is we wrap up this series on Joseph, this series Greater than that we’ve been in for nine weeks now. Nine weeks we’ve been going through this remarkable life of Joseph and discovering as he does a life greater than we know with a God who’s greater than we know. It’s been awesome. Honestly, I think this is my favorite Old Testament figure because just how rich the story is, and I hope you guys have enjoyed it too. I’m kind of sad that, but all good things got to come to an end. But today when we read the life of Joseph, as we just heard in the reading from Grant, it raises this question of legacy and we start to ask this idea of legacy. And really if you are an active reader of the story, you go, well, what is my legacy?
And you kind of wrestle with that question, man, that’s a big question.

WHAT IS MY LEGACY

FUNERAL
Yesterday we had a funeral and I sat here and I watched people stand at this pulpit reading about their loved one’s legacy. And as they did, man, I couldn’t help but to their words through the filter of today’s sermon and just today’s topic because they were trying to wrestle with what is his legacy? What kind of impact did he have on me? And they were trying to describe his character and his accomplishments. And underneath it all is this, what are we going to take with us after he’s gone? And when we ask what is my legacy? I think this is a question. We don’t have to wait until we’re in the end of life to ask this question. I think he can ask this question at any point because we’re all leaving some kind of a legacy.
But what is the legacy we’re going to leave behind? And it is tricky. I think legacy is a powerful thing. I think at the end of the day, we want to not just leave something for people, we want to leave something in. People make an impact. We want to go deeper than just like, oh, here’s a trinket to remember me by. But I think then there’s a shadow side to the legacy where it somehow is like this allure or this promise of immortality. And I don’t mean to be too grim, but that when we pass on, we somehow evade the permanence of the grave by making people remember us and think of us. And so sometimes we can work really hard for an accomplishment to try to somehow make ourselves a monument or immortalized a little bit. And I’m not sure that’s healthy. But today what we’re going to do is we talk about this legacy.

JOSEPH’S LEGACY
When we look at the life of Joseph, I think Joseph actually gives us food for thought, a new idea that we normally don’t think about when we think about legacy. Joseph introduces this new idea for us to kind of wrestle with legacy and what it means. And so that’s what we’re going to do today is we’re going to just look at two very short verses from the end of Joseph’s life that I think changes the way we think about our legacy. And so to refresh your memory or to bring you up to speed, it’s been nine incredible weeks. But Joseph’s life starts out and his brothers betray him and sold him into slavery. He ends up eventually in prison and he’s miraculously brought out of prison to the palace and becomes the prime minister of Egypt over all of their grain and their inventory and their federal reserve.
I mean, it’s just a remarkable story. And then there’s a severe famine in the world, and Joseph is able, because of his management, he’s able to distribute grain to all the world and save the world from this severe famine. And as he does, so his brothers come from Israel to Egypt to receive grain. And there’s this moment of reconciliation. That was last week. We talked about reconciliation. It was a powerful message or a powerful concept from Joseph’s story of that you can reconcile and what reconciliation requires and that you can forgive somebody without reconciling, but you can’t reconcile without forgiving. It was just important topics, and you can go back and listen to those if you’d like, but it was this moment of reconciliation. And now we read it in today’s story. In Genesis 49, 48, 49 50, Jacob dies. Jacob is the father. So eventually Jacob and his whole family is living in Egypt.
All these brothers who betrayed Joseph and their father Jacob and Jacob dies and the brothers are like Uh, oh. Is this the moment that record recompense is going to happen like the Godfather, right?

20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
​​​​​​​​​​​Genesis 50

Where Michael Corleone after veto passes and then it’s like the bloody Sunday and everyone’s like, they’re afraid that now that the godfather’s gone vengeance is coming our way. And so they’re kind of freaking out. And Joseph has this super interesting response to them. He tells them, “you intended to harm me”, say it:

Response: But God

Pastor Chris Paavola: “But God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” And that gets back to this concept of good has happened or bad has happened, but God works all things for the good of those who love him for his good and his glory and his plan. And there’s this understanding that he’s a part of a bigger picture.
He’s playing a small role. Joseph realizes I’m not the main character. This is God’s story. It’s not about you, Joseph. And he has this understanding that history itself is his story. It’s God’s story of redeeming the world and loving the world and rescuing the world and restoring it. And he understands that it just in part, but he understands that I’m a part of something bigger.

24 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
​​​​​​​​​​​Genesis 50

And you can see that in this response here. And then Joseph dies end of chapter 50. If you have it in your Bible, you can see it. It’s the very end of chapter 50, verse 24, Joseph said to his brothers, “I’m about to die”, say it:

Response: But God

Pastor Chris Paavola: “But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land in the future to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is your God too.
And he’s going to do this thing after I’m gone, this will happen because the story isn’t done yet. He promised this and it will come to pass because God’s not done. I know I am done, but God, he ain’t done but God. And in doing so, Joseph is just raising their eyes to this idea of a legacy that’s bigger than him. And I think if we gave Joseph a microphone and said, Hey, talk to us about legacy and your legacy and our legacy, he’d look at you and he’d say, okay, you’ve been successful, but God is doing something greater than you. Oh, you’ve had a financial setback, you had a health scare. I’m sorry, but God is doing something greater than you trust him. But God.
And I think that’s so fascinating that Joseph just realizes he’s a page in the book. He’s not the book. He’s sitting here working with Pharaoh. Pharaoh is building a pile of bricks in the desert so that you will remember him and Joseph’s like, meh, Pharaoh is great, but God, it’s greater. I see the sphinx, I see the statues and the hieroglyphics and the pyramids, but God is greater than Joseph gets it. Listen, it’s not about your legacy. Joseph is inviting us to be a part of God’s legacy, and that’s the invitation of scripture. Your legacy, it’s yours, but God has a legacy that’s greater than anything you can imagine. And you get to this idea of legacy. And again, it’s this weird thing of we’re trying to preserve our memory and there’s a little bit of fear involved with that. Now, don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t think about the legacy you’re leaving, but I am saying it’s a both hand. It doesn’t have to be either or either God’s legacy or your legacy. But I think what Joseph is inviting us to consider is God’s legacy in your life. Because think about the legacy you can leave.

YOUR LEGACY
ACCOMPLISHMENT
You can leave a legacy of accomplishment, trophy case records, all that kind of stuff. You can make that your legacy. Your life’s work is your accomplishments, your 401k or whatever.
But like Wayne Gretzky just said, after Alex Ovechkin broke the all time goal scoring record, Wayne Gretzky said, eh, records are made to be broken. He just kind of understood that. And quick side note, Wayne Gretzky is the greatest of all time. He’s the goat. If he never scored a goal, he would still be the all time points leader because of his assist. And I said he was the goat. And the other two services, they were like, what about Gordy Howell? After both services, people were like, what about Gordy Howell? And I’m like, listen, red Wings fans, you guys are biased. There’s nobody other than people who live in Michigan who would say that Gordy Howell is greater than Wayne Gretzky. Anyway, so don’t come at me. Don’t at me. Don’t DM me anything. Listen, Wayne Gretzky is the greatest of all time. Alright?
But how different is your life? Because Alex Ovechkin broke a record, really a legacy. His legacy inspires other athletes. Yes, and there’s something to that. But is your life truly any different because of his accomplishment that one day will be surpassed by someone else but God? MONEY

MONEY
Or you could leave a legacy of money. You could. And actually scripture does say it’s to your honor, if you leave an inheritance to your children and that is a good thing. Don’t hear what I’m not saying. It’s a both and not either or. But money is tricky. And you know this, it’s risky.
There’s really not a guarantee what happens with it after you’re gone. There’s not Cornelius Vanderbilt who built a school, he was a railroad tycoon, worth 200 billion in today’s terms, insane. And he leaves his fortune to his children with a very carefully crafted will, but they found loopholes and they squandered his wealth with lavish lifestyle and poor investments. They just didn’t have the same history and education and school of hard knocks that their father did. They grew up in too much opulence. They didn’t understand where he had come from and some of the disciplines he learned along the way. And in 1970, they had a family reunion of the Vanderbilt family, and there was not one single millionaire among them. In fact, dozens of them had declared bankruptcy. See, but God.

CHARACTER
You can leave a legacy of character. And I think it’s good. I think a legacy of character is important, but it needs to be held in appropriate expectations.
I mean, yesterday, like I said, the gentleman, all these people were describing the character of this gentleman and I think that’s good to do. What is their character that has affected me in a positive way? And it’s usually the positive way. Nobody had a funeral complains, right? But they’re describing the positive character traits. But the thing about character is it’s an immediate impact. It’s really hard for your character to impact people who have never met you really hard. It’s immediate. I mean, if you can name all four of your great grandparents, how has their character affected you? It’s a limited reach and we have to recognize that. But God is calling us to something greater, his legacy.
AN ETERNAL LEGACY

FAITH
As I thought about legacy,

LEAVING A LEGACY
THAT LAST’S AN ETERNITY

I realized that scripture is, and Jesus is an invitation to leaving a legacy that lasts an eternity. A temporal legacy is temporary, but an eternal legacy is eternal. If what we believe is true you guys, we believe that the earth and its glory will fade and the words of Jesus, heaven and earth will pass away the song Amazing Grace we sing, the earth will soon dissolve like snow and the sun for bear to shine. It’s all temporary. The pyramids, the statues, the dorms named after donors on college campuses, all of it will fade away.
But God, and you can leave a legacy that lasts in eternity. You can, and I think there’s a few ways that you can do that. So I got to, this is a little inside baseball, sorry, but I got to this point of writing the message and I stopped and I was like, man, how do you leave an eternal legacy? And I kind of went on this detour. If you’re on a highway and you’re 20 miles off route and serious freaking out if you’ve ever, and you’re just like, I got to get back. But I spent a lot of time thinking about this and it’s kind of a hard question to nail down of how do you leave an eternal legacy? And I think if we spent some time on it, we could work through it together. These are three that I came up with. I’m sure there are more, but these are the three that just hit me the most of how you right now and this temporal present current moment can leave a legacy that’s greater than you leave a legacy that lasts in eternity. Leave a legacy for God.

1) PRAY ETERNAL PRAYERS
First is that you can pray eternal prayers. One of our vision statements at the church is that we will be a church growing in prayer. You’ve never arrived. We’ll always be growing just a little bit more in prayer in some way, shape or form. And one of the simplest ways that you can grow in prayer is to start changing the subject matter of your prayer. Start praying eternal prayers. It’s good. Don’t hear what I’m not saying. It’s good to pray for sickness and safe travels and for surgeries. It’s good. Keep doing that, but it’s both and not either or. You can also pray eternal prayers. In fact, you do when you say thy kingdom come, Jesus is trying to raise your eyes to a bigger picture. You can pray about the lost in the community. People who don’t know Jesus. You can pray for mission work being done. You can pray for God to send workers in the harvest. You can pray for your church. You can pray that your church will always have faithful pastors who lead and shepherd the congregation, and those prayers will echo on into eternity. When you pray eternal prayers, your prayers outlive you.
That’s a mic drop moment right there. Your prayers outlive you when you pray Eternal prayers. Wow.

2) GIVE ETERNAL GIFTS
Another way I think that you can leave a legacy that lasts in eternity is you can give eternal gifts every time you make an offering. Don’t underestimate the value of the gift that you’re giving. You’re investing in the building of God’s kingdom. You’re investing in a work that will go on forever. You’re investing in the work of the church. I’ll say this because it just happens, but the gentleman who passed in his will, he left a portion of his wealth to St. Mark and we’re grateful for that. When I first got here, we started having a conversation about an endowment. I don’t like taking legacy gifts like that, memorials like that, and just using them for the moment I feel like they should live on in perpetuity. And so we have an endowment and we’ve got a policy now that any gifts, memorials we receive or any gifts from a will, will go into our endowment where we use the interest and we continue to use that interest to pay for the work of the ministry if we need to.
I think that’s awesome. That’s a way of honoring somebody’s legacy, honoring a gifts and living and using the residual on that. I think it’s awesome. And so if I’ve never said this directly to you, let me just say that we would be honored for you to include St. Mark in your will, and I promise you, your gifts will live on for decades because we’ll put it in an endowment, and that’s investing in eternity, the work of ministry for years to come.

3) HAVE ETERNAL CONVERSATIONS
A third way that you can give and make leave a legacy that last in eternity is to hold eternal conversations. Y’all don’t believe the lie that the two things you shouldn’t talk about at family get togethers is politics and religion. Religion don’t believe it. It’s a lie. Faith is not private.
It’s personal, but it’s never meant to be private. Quite the contrary. It’s supposed to be very public. You’re supposed to be very out there talking about Jesus with anyone and everyone who will listen. That’s why we’re here today is because there’s a group of people who dare to talk about Jesus. Scripture says we should shout it from the mountaintops, from the rooftops. Tell anyone in the alleyways, highways or byways, tell them about what God has done. Tell them about Jesus. Do not be afraid. Scripture tells you to pray for every opportunity to speak to people about Jesus. You don’t have to. Jesus juke every conversation. That’s where someone’s talking about like, oh, this is delicious. And you’re like, yes, but Jesus is the bread of life.
Don’t be that guy. Don’t do that. That’s not what I’m saying, but I am saying pray for the opportunities. Look for opportunities to talk about Jesus in a natural way. It’s not coed, it’s not forced, it’s not argumentative, but talk about Jesus with people who also follow him and grow. And that’s why we have small groups so you can be in conversation and small groups kick off in the fall. There’s a little plug for it. Or with people who don’t go to church, your friends who don’t yet know the grace of Jesus in their life, talk to them. If you don’t have friends who don’t know Jesus, find some and talk about Jesus and the resurrection. Let it just saturate every part of your conversation.

TRACY
This week we celebrated a baptism of a young lady named Tracy. It’s a powerful moment. She’s here today. We should congratulate Tracy on her baptism. It was awesome. It was awesome. And when you read scripture, here’s what it promises about that moment. It says that in the waters of baptism, we pass from death to life. Our sins are washed away. We’re born again. We go from lost to found perishing to saved that in these waters, God adopts us as his child and we are sealed with an inheritance that will never fade God’s legacy. I mean, if what we believe is true, if the words of scripture are true, that’s what it says happens in that moment right there. It’s why we talk about baptism all the time. In fact, next week we’ve got another baptism right here at the 11 o’clock. Make sure you’re here, not 11:00 PM 11:00 AM stuff.
She sent out invitations and it was 11:00 PM and I’m like, I’m not going to be here at that time thinking in 11:00 AM We’re excited about that moment, but that moment happens because it’s somebody talked to Tracy and had an eternal conversation. What I love about this picture is you’re zoomed in and you see what’s happening in the moment, but just there in the background, if you zoom out, there’s a bigger picture, a bigger story to be told. There’s Oralia, her sister-in-law who started coming to St. Mark, worked here, works here as our finance director, and as she started coming to St. Mark, her life just started changing. Jesus started doing something in her life, and then she started talking about it with the people she loves. She dared to hold an eternal conversation with the people in her life, and then the more she talked about it, there was this event coming up where we tell you guys, invite your friends who don’t go to church.
This is a fun event. And they come and they see that we’re not crazy. And so she invited Tracy. Was it the Women’s Mother’s Day event? Was that right? Was it the Mother’s Day event or was it the Christmas event? It was one of the two that you came to. I came here after Christmas. Yeah, so it was the Mother’s Day event, and then Tracy came to church and then she decided to come back. And then at some point, she’s never been in a church in her whole life. She believed in her heart and confessed with her lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and wanted what he promises to give in the waters of baptism because Oralia dared to have an eternal conversation with her.

YOUR LEGACY
Those are three ways that you, my friends, you can leave a legacy that lasts in eternity, pray eternal prayers, give eternal gifts, and have eternal conversations.
And when you do, you are shaping and changing forever for somebody that’s powerful. And when you do, you’ll understand what Joseph knew, that your legacy is one thing, but God’s legacy is so much greater than Lemme pray for us.

PRAYER
Heavenly Father, thank you first of all for Tracy and the work that you do, and we pray for more just like her to be saved. God forgive us for thinking too small about our own legacy, and thank you for this example of Joseph to consider you and your legacy as a part of our own and vice versa. I pray for every person in this room, every person that hears the sound of my voice later on, that you would show us how we can leave a legacy the last in eternity for your good, your glory, your kingdom, your renowned, and it’s your kingdom that we pray for and we pray the prayer your son taught us to pray, saying together, our Father, who arts in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those, he trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Every week we collect an offering.