Feast and Follow with Knollwood

The Tower, the Table, and the New Jerusalem

Have you ever heard of the concept of a spite house? These are houses that are built for the purposes of upsetting neighbors or making a point. One such house is in Freeport, New York, built in 1906. The builder was a developer named John Randall who didn’t like the city’s idea to make a grid system for the roads. To stop this, he built a house on a triangular piece of land that ruined the symmetry of the roads, a consequence you can still see today, over one hundred years later. There is another one in Boston called the Skinny House. Two brothers got a piece of land, but one was away on military duty. When he came back, he found his brother built a house taking up more than a fair share of property. In response, he built a house right next to his brother's, constructed in such a way to block light from the house! It is so close there isn’t a front door, meaning you’ve got to shimmy your way around to the side door (Source).

In a time before regulation, it was possible to preserve one’s feelings about something for over a century in this country, but this isn’t a new thing. Building something to commemorate an event or a person wasn’t invented in 20th century America. In fact, this goes back nearly to the beginning, all the way to Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel, the original spite house. God’s command was for the people to go out and fill the earth, but they disobeyed this command pretty straightaway with the idea of staying together and building a name for themselves. God is going to intervene with a judgment that is still around even today but will be lifted on that Great Day of the Lord. Today we are going to see God's commandments and judgments produce ultimate good and A broken world is moving towards reunion. 

The Table of Nations

Genealogies are one of the most encouraging sections of Scripture. The reason why that sounds like a funny statement is because we don't read them. We don't think about them. We assume that what we are looking at is a dull list of names that have nothing to do with me or very little to do with the Bible. Sure, names like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob show up, but how often are the Jebusites showing up, and even if it is a lot, what difference does it make? How does knowing Nimrod built Nineveh make a difference to my life? Well, if you aren't paying close attention to all of Scripture, yeah, this won't make a difference to you. But I can tell you that's true of all the Scripture. We come to this gold mine of the Bible with nothing but a pan. We will find riches even that way, but oh how blessed is the man who meditates, who brings the pick axe to open up the ground. We are going to need to do some work, but there is gold even here. 

We have covered genealogies before in our series through Genesis, most recently in chapter 5. There we saw that God was faithful to His promises and His judgments and that walking close with God brings blessing. God promised Eve that she would have children, and sure enough, Eve had children! Adam and Eve were even able to see it come to pass! 

We've just seen some invocations made to God from Noah last week for Shem and Japheth to be blessed and Canaan to be cursed. Well, when we get to chapter 10, it is starting to look like it is going to be a while before we see this. The sons of Ham (including Canaan) are doing pretty well for themselves, while it seems like Shem is taking a minute to get started. 

I can imagine that this is really hitting home with the original audience. The descendants of Shem have just left 4 centuries of servitude to Egypt. While they haven't been serving Canaan, it's not like they've been enjoying power in Egypt. Ham's kids are oppressing Shem's kids. Now, the tables have turned recently, but right now the descendants of Shem are sitting in the wilderness. They've just finished complaining about their food situation, longing to go back to Egypt. They are about to face the sons of Canaan, and they are scared to death to face these people. From their perspective, this is a losing battle, always has been, always will be. But you and I, with the benefit of the rest of history, can learn a lesson here. Let's learn some family history as we discover our two points: God's people don't look like much, but God is faithful to His promises in time.

A Man at Best

While you can make fun of someone like me carrying all these tools just in case, it is no laughing matter that most of us are unprepared for the things that are absolutely going to happen that day. I can tell you with 100% certainty that you are going to face temptations to sin before this day is over. Honestly, I have 100% certainty that you are going to face temptations to sin in the next hour! What are you doing about that? If the answer is, "Not much," then this passage is for you. The horror that sin causes even post-Adam and Eve is worth us pausing. 

We have an example of this very thing before us in this passage. Noah was, as we saw, a man of incredible faith and trust in God. He built a boat in the middle of the land to prepare for a worldwide flood. He did this in faith for 100 years while all the rest of humanity likely hurled abuse and possibly sabotage on his work. Nevertheless, the Lord vindicated him and preserved him and his family through the flood. Upon leaving the boat, rather than bitter and exhausted from the trip, spent the first days after the flood in worship, offering sacrifice to God. 

After that, we have the sad episode in front of us. While sinners drowned in the flood, sin did not. It was still in Noah's heart, too. One scholar put it this way, "'With the opportunity to start an ideal society, Noah was found drunk in his tent'" (qtd in Ross, 212). As it has been said, the best of men are men at best. Adam's sinful nature is passed down to Noah, and as we will see, there will be generational consequences for sin committed here by both Noah and Ham. 

We will be looking at two points today: The best of men are subject to sin and the consequences of sin can last.  

Called to Serve

It seems to be these days we are always in the midst of an election cycle. We rightly see elections of leaders in our country to be important and not to be taken for granted, as it is a right that not every country grants its citizens. It is a right that has been defended at great cost, and it should be counted as an enormous privilege and responsibility to help shape the country we live in. 

 

As true as all of that is, we are on the verge of something far more important that has impact for eternity. Today, we begin the nominations process for the leaders of our church. Far more is at stake than a tax policy. Far more is at stake than just Knollwood’s reputation in the community. Indeed, the reputation of the gospel in our community and our own spiritual formation is impacted by the decisions that we will make in the power of the Holy Spirit in the coming weeks. 

 

Thankfully, God has not left us to formulate the ideal candidate on our own. God has graciously given to us the profile of a church leader that transcends time, culture, and our individual ideals. You will notice that the list God leaves us with here looks quite different than what we might see on a job requirements list today, even among church job postings. There is no mention of a dynamic personality or success in business, or even previous leadership experience except the candidate’s own household. This list recognizes character not class. It requires integrity not innovation. It prizes a grasp and application of Truth rather than a knowledge and appropriation of trend. We’ve seen the danger of ignoring this list and promoting and then shamefully protecting men who did not have the qualities we are about to see today, so with all of this in mind, let us turn to our points this morning which you can see in your outline. Christ wants character in His elders and Christ wants character in His deacons. 

How to be Blessed

Many of us are starting this year with a renewed sense of hope. It’s a New Year. I love new starts. Fresh calendars, new notebooks, new goals, and new equipment to reach those goals from my Christmas haul. “This year is gonna be different,” I repeat from last year, “I can feel it!” That’s asking a lot from a new notebook, calendar, and productivity app, though. Those things can help my mind, but they can’t really change my heart. I want to remind you of something that you need to keep in the forefront of your mind this coming year: blessing only comes from God. Actual, real, long-term blessing (that’s the kind you want) is only going to come from God this year. And really, you can to a certain degree determine how much of a blessing you will receive. Obviously, I am not talking about material prosperity here. You can’t gin up enough faith to make a new car appear in your driveway. You can’t pray a certain prayer and new toys show up in your room. That’s not the kind of blessing I am talking about, nor what this Psalm is talking about. 

Psalm 1 is laying out some wisdom for us that is counter-intuitive, even for Christians. This Psalm is telling us things that we wouldn’t know otherwise without this Psalm’s help. So let’s dive in and find out blessing looks like transformation and blessing comes through the word of God 

Love: The Most Expensive Gift

We say 'I love you,' too much, particularly as English speakers. It's not our fault. English only gives us one word for the most complicated reality in our world. It has become so flat, so overused, that the most common way we see it defined is 'love is love.' What that means, of course, is, 'love is whatever you define it to be.’ For selfish people, that's a great definition. If love is whatever I want it to be, then love revolves around me. But what does God's word say? It says that God is love. That rips the power to define love from us and gives it to Jesus. And, oh, how He has defined it! 

 

We have defined love mostly in terms of what it feels like to us. It’s a very subjective, personal, private, inward thing. It is what happens to me or how I make someone else feel. That way of thinking about love makes it all about ourselves. Everything in love is in reference to me. God defines love in an entirely opposite direction. True, Biblical love is not in reference to your feelings but in sacrificial action towards other people. In order to do this well, at all really, is not to draw from your own well of love. It’s actually quite shallow. You need to draw from love that is coming to you rather than what is inside you, so that is what we are going to be looking at today. 

 

Our main point today is defining love as doing for others what Christ is doing for you. 

Joy, The Art of Self-Forgetfulness

Joy is a serious issue. We give up too quickly on experiencing it, especially if it has been a long time since circumstances have been favorable. I think part of the reason why we give up on it is because we think that joy is optional in the Christian life, when it isn’t. I said at the beginning of this series that the fruit of the Spirit isn’t multiple choice. You can’t decide that you are going to be peaceful without having any self-control. You aren’t going to choose love and leave patience on the table. And you cannot take goodness and leave behind joy. 

 

So is joy just another word for lack of sadness? Well, as I’m sure you’ve heard many times before, joy isn’t just another word for “happiness,” something that changes by circumstances. Jesus wasn’t slap happy all the time, as His weeping before the then-occupied tomb of Lazurus, and the then rebellious house of Jerusalem. Jesus experienced sadness to the point that Isaiah said that He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Yet in all of that, He didn’t fail God’s commands in any way, including this command to rejoice always. 

 

So what is joy? Joy, as we will see in a moment, is happily self-forgetful worship of the transcendent Christ. And this is to be done in all circumstances, even sad ones. How are we to do that? The quick answer is, “Have a good long look at Jesus and what He has done for you.” My old seminary dean once put it this way when defining joy, “Christian joy is marked by celebration and expectation of God's ultimate victory over the powers of sin and darkness, a victory actualized already in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ…" (Timothy George, 401). Christian joy constantly keeps the cross, resurrection, and consummation in mind. 

The Missing Piece of Peace

What is the one thing we are all actually after? Peace. We work hard to earn enough money so we don’t have to worry about life, which is just a negative way of saying that we would like peace. Why do we go to war as nations? Because someone either has upset or threatens to upset peace. Imagine that! War to get peace. Killing each other to get peace. It is the most sought after gift in the world, yet here it is, sitting right in the fruit of the Spirit. It’s not even the first one listed! 

 

Now, what is peace? I imagine that many of you have different answers to what that would mean for you. Some in here, I would imagine, would feel peace if this physical problem would just go away. If only you could hear like you used to, see like you used to, move like you used to, then there would be peace. Peace is found in a return to the past. For others in here, particularly the youth, peace is found in finally reaching the future! If only you could look ahead to see if life is going to be ok for you, you would find peace. For those of us in the middle of those two sections of life, we don’t want the past or the future; we don’t want time to move at all! In fact, if life could just be still for a minute, THEN there would be peace. 

 

All of that is a lie, and it isn’t even the first thing about what real peace is. Those may be pieces of peace, but they are not peace itself or even the things that lead to peace. Peace is a person, the one Who’s arrival caused the angels to sing that verse we’ve just read, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” What impresses angels so much that they would say that? Well, let’s take a look at what peace means. I’ll give it to you up front, and over the course of the next few minutes together, you’ll see it come from the Scriptures. Peace is the feeling of wholeness solely founded on the fact of Christ's work for you.

Gentleness, the Forgotten Virtue (Updated)

Editor's Note: You may have seen an earlier recording sent out this morning that was the wrong recording! Here is the sermon that you were expecting! 

 

We have a complicated relationship with presents at Christmas time, don’t we? We wrestle with the idea that Christmas has become too commercialized and hate that stores have taken the meaning of Christmas from good tidings of great joy to great spending on good toys. That is true as far as it goes, but who can deny how good it feels to give a child a great present that they are so thankful for? It’s a great feeling to do that for adults as well, especially if it is a practical gift that they will use everyday. One of the most useful gifts I got from Abby was an electric kettle. You fill the thing up with water, set it on the little base, turn it on, and in a couple of minutes, you have water heated perfectly for tea or coffee! It is a perfect gift for me that has been going strong for a couple years now. The thing is though, it is so much a part of my everyday life, that I often forget that it was a gift. It just blends into the kitchen. 

I think that is often what happens with the gifts that God gives to us. They are so freely given to us, and often so perfectly suited to our needs, that they just become part of the background of our lives. And I’m not even talking about the physical gifts like the car you got here in today, or the house you came from, I’m am talking about the gifts that are given to you in your life that you don’t notice are there. I’m talking about the fruit of the Spirit. There is no gift more practical, more satisfying to oneself and others than the fruit of the Spirit. You’ll notice that I say “fruit” not “fruits,” and that comes from something that Pastor Reader would always point out. This list of virtues in its entirety is present in the life of a true Christian; they are not multiple choice. We are expected to have all of them, even if we have more of one virtue than another. 

There isn’t a way to cover all of these virtues comprehensively in just a few weeks, so I have selected a few that correspond more or less with the theme of the advent candle for that week. Unfortunately, for this sermon, hope is not on the this list in Galatians, but I think that the one I’ve picked out today is often not talked about, hence the title of sermon, the forgotten virtue of gentleness. 

Faithfulness Himself

You know what made the holidays so special as a kid? The fact that everything was taken care of by someone else! You could sit back and enjoy watching dad cut down the tree (or struggle to figure out which branches went in which order on the artificial tree), you could smell the food your mother was cooking, and best of all looking under the tree on Christmas morning to see the presents that were bought for you! Those memories are wonderful, but some can look at those days as joys long gone by. Oh, those were the days when someone else took care of you, but now that responsibility is all on you and with it the nagging fear that perhaps you won’t be able to pull it off, that disaster is just around the corner. Now the eggnog makes sense. But perhaps that wasn’t your experience of the holidays. Perhaps what makes them painful to remember was the fact that there weren’t people caring for you when there should have been. The responsibilities of life were thrust on you very early, and now life is viewed through the lens of “I got myself this far, so I think I’ll make it the rest of the way.” This sense of self-sufficiency if it isn’t bravado, is simply the lack of realizing how delicate life can be. 
This Psalm has something to say to the both of us. Quite simply the Psalmist is telling us not to trust in people but to trust in God. What made the holidays so carefree when we were children is that we trusted the powerful people in our lives, and when those people were no longer in power, that simple trust has vanished. And in my short time in ministry, I’ve met a few self-sufficient people who suddenly were reminded how delicate they really are and thus lost that confidence. 
This Psalm, I trust, will help you regain that sense of childlike joy of this season, not because you are trusting in a new person (even if that person is yourself) but because you’ve got your eyes on Jesus.