Wisdom from our Past and Hope for our Future

Introduction: Wisely learning from our past informs our future

The Bible is rife with the principle that looking carefully at the past can give great hope for the future

On a particular level, we see statements like:

Deuteronomy 4:9 ESV

9 “Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children—

Deuteronomy 4:9–10 ESV

9 “Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children— 10 how on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me, ‘Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.’

Later, as Moses was getting ready to die, God tasked him with teaching Israel a song to remind them of the covenent they had made with God and to witness against them when they broke it.

On a broad level

Modern English Old Testaments are divided into four parts

Pentateuch - First five books

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy

History

Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Ruth, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther

Prophets

Major Prophets

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Daniel, Ezekiel

Minor Prophets

Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi

Wisdom

Job, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs

The Hebrew Bible had all the same books that we have today in our OT, but they were arranged a little bit differently

Torah - Instruction, Teaching, Law

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy

Nevi’im - Prophets

Former Prophets

Joshua, Judges, Samuel (1 book), Kings (1 book)

Latter Prophets

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel

Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi

Ketuvim - Writings

Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah (one book), Chronicles (1 book)

This is why the Hebrew Bible is called the TaNaK - it’s an acronym for Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim.

Neither of these is “better” than the other, but they help us understand the Hebrew mindset of certain books

What we regard as “history” books were regarded in the TaNaK as “prophets”

The idea was that by looking at their past theologically and correctly, they would see hope for their future

We want to do this today; we want to do a bit of a “state of the union” kind of discussion today where we can look at our past in order to see hope for our future.

Lessons from our Past

Good - Our church has thrived and flourished when we had selfless, unified, courageous faith

This church was planted in 1929 by a group of students from Eugene Bible College, now NCU, who moved over the mountain to begin holding evangelistic meetings

The original church was built on this property, which was purchased in 1932 for $100

It was built with the vision to provide a permanent home for the church in the community

It was built primarily by volunteer labor

This building was built in 1966, again with largely volunteer labor

It was a risky move

It was done with the vision to create a space large enough to accomodate growth, provide room for worship, education, and community events

These things had kingdom vision - by this, I mean that the culture of the church was unified around gospel priorities and kingdom values, not personal preferences, agendas, or desires

Two warnings from our history - two things that will derail the gospel witness and ministry of this church and eat any vision we have for breakfast

Immorality and a lack of accountability

In 1984 our church held a robust planning and vision casting retreat, but it was ineffective. Why?

Devastating cases of unchecked sin in leadership and the community

Culture centered around personal comfort, preferences, agendas and desires - essentially shallow faith

Infamous congregational meeting in the 1980’s where vision for moving the church to accomodate further growth was rejected

The tide was turned by a single person who reportedly said they refused to drive an extra five minutes to church

Throughout the last 20 years, this church has had times and seasons when it started to experience growth, but growth is painful and leads to changes that can be hard

I won’t know everyone

Our comfort will be impeded

Our structures and systems will have to change

Summary of lessons from our history:

We have base our culture around the gospel and the kingdom of Jesus, and the advancement of that kingdom, rather than on any personal convenience, comfort, agenda, or preferences

We have to guard the integrity and faithfulness of our church to Christ

Both of these things require us to have relentless and humble self-awareness

We have to be able to see reality in our own lives and our church as it is and not as we wish it was

This is actually really hard in our culture, because we live in a culture of busy-ness

We rarely take time to just stop and think, reflect, and evaluate our own lives, let alone the life of our church

I challenge you to intentionally budget your time such that you do have time to slow down and just think and reflect

These things also require that we develop transparency and honesty in our church

We need to confess sin to one another

No one wakes up one morning out of the blue and decides to burn down their lives

It is gradual degrees of moving off track

This is very practical because we have to develop a culture of real love and grace in the gospel such that people are safe to share when they have gone off by a degree or two, before they get to the point where they are miles off and feel like they can’t open up anymore

We need to remind each other of the gospel

We have to remind each other that our sins, the ones we confess to each other, are forgiven at the cross and that we are the redeemed by the blood of Jesus

We have to remind each other that our church is ultimately oriented around the gospel, not any one or group of us

We have to have passion and great faith to stand unified for a common purpose for which we will risk much with courage

Wisdom for our present

Good - Let’s keep doing these things!

Our church receives and responds to biblical preaching very well

We love the gospel and the preaching of God’s word

We are willing to set aside our preferences and differences for the sake of the kingdom in submission to the Scriptures

The morale of our church is healthy

We have a sense of excitement and expectation that God is on the move in and through our church

Our passion for gospel ministry and witness is growing

Our faith is growing - we are expectant that God will do great things and we want to follow him in this!

We have a loving and welcoming community

People are warmly welcome in our church

We have a community that loves one another

Warnings - we need to work at these things or watch out for these things

I think we at times struggle to have and/or communicate with genuine self awareness and transparency

This may be that we, as I said, don’t regularly practice the kind of rest that allows us to self evaluate and reflect

Or it may be that we do, but we are afraid to share “too openly” with one another for fear of rejection or judgment

If this is the case, we as a community need to be reminded of the gospel

This is critical because this is how we guard the integrity and faithfulness of our church

Without self awareness and transparent sharing, we have no way to guard against the kind of unchecked sin that devastates a community

Our life groups need to be places where not only is the Bible studied, but sins are confessed, faith is grown, people are prayed over and lives are transformed - if this is honestly true in your life group, GREAT! Keep going. But my suspicion is that this is an area in which we can all grow.

As we grow, we need to be careful that we don’t hinder our own growth

Things that will hinder our growth

But not understanding how we need to change and adapt to handle a larger community

Pastorally - as we grow, we will go beyond my capacity to shepherd and pastor everyone as a single person, and we will have to develop leaders who shepherd and pastor the community

Organizationally - As we grow, we will have to change our organizational structure to accomodate more efficient and effective decision making

The apostles were unable to keep up with the logistic needs of the growing church, and they had to offload this kind of management to godly men who would handle this

Acts 6:1–4 ESV

1 Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. 2 And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. 3 Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. 4 But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

We are seeing this already; our elders are regularly bogged down by business and logistical needs of the church, and we need to work on freeing up the elders’ time in this coming year in order to devote ourselves to the task of shepherding, praying for, teaching and casting vision for our church.

Relationally - as we grow, we grow beyond the capacity for anybody to “know everyone” - realistically, we are already beyond that point.

Sometimes we say we want to grow but we really want to remain small so that we have this tight knit, family feel.

That desire is not wrong, because we ARE the family of God in Christ, and we ought to continue to keep that in mind; however, we also want to see people come to faith in Christ and for the kingdom to grow

Hope for our future

We will orient everything we do around the gospel

Our community life

We want to develop a culture of discipleship

Our programs will be oriented around the consistent effort to announce the good news of Jesus and the life that is in him

We want to obediently live out our faith in Jesus together in transparent community

Our programs

We want to structure, measure and assess all of our programming around the intentional effort to proclaim the gospel

Our resources

We want to steward all of our resources according to unified kingdom values and priorities

Our leaders

We want to raise up leaders who disciple others, lead ministries, shepherd God’s people, and wisely handle the logistical needs of our church

We desire to pursue the kind of visions, dreams and plans that God has for our church

2. We desire to pursue the kind of visions and dreams that God has for our church

We want to refine the structures and documents of our church to provide a streamlined gospel witness

We want to clarify and simplify our statement of faith so that it truly only contains the essentials of our faith that we are willing to die for

We want to adopt a new church covenant to guide the way that our community lives together in our faith in Christ

We want to clarify the roles of elders and deacons so that we function effectively in a biblical and efficient manner

We want to dream dreams again - and honestly, we don’t know where this will take us