Raising Resident Aliens

How many of you have heard of the Puritans?

The Puritans were members of a religious reform movement known as Puritanism that arose within the Church of England in the late 16th century. They believed the Church of England was too similar to the Roman Catholic Church and should eliminate ceremonies and practices not rooted in the Bible.

Puritans felt that they had a direct covenant with God to enact these reforms. Under siege from Church and crown, certain groups of Puritans migrated to Northern English colonies in the New World in the 1620s and 1630s, laying the foundation for the religious, intellectual and social order of New England. Aspects of Puritanism have reverberated throughout American life ever since.

In the early decades of the 17th century, some groups of worshipers began to separate themselves from the main body of their local parish church where preaching was inadequate and to engage an energetic “lecturer,” typically a young man with a fresh Cambridge degree, who was a lively speaker and steeped in reform theology. Some congregations went further, declared themselves separated from the national church, and remade themselves into communities of “visible saints,” withdrawn from the English City of Man into a self-proclaimed City of God.

One such faction was a group of separatist believers in the Yorkshire village of Scrooby, who, fearing for their safety, moved to Holland in 1608 and then, in 1620, to the place they called Plymouth in New England. We know them now as the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock.

A decade later, a larger, better-financed group, mostly from East Anglia, migrated to Massachusetts Bay. There, they set up gathered churches on much the same model as the transplanted church at Plymouth (with deacons, preaching elders and, though not right away, a communion restricted to full church members, or “saints”). (https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/puritanism)

Here ‘s the interesting thing. The Puritans, once they were established in New England, they developed an ecclesiastical order that was as rigid and strict as the one they fled in England. There were already the seeds of fragmentation that would eventually lead to division among those who thought slightly different. By the beginning of the 18th century, they had lost influence and there were several offshoots in the new America.

The Puritans wanted to maintain quite a bit about their culture, and they also fell into the same religious trap that they were trying so hard to escape. You see, the longer they were in America, they started to forget what brought them to this new land in the first place, the reasons they were even in that place and time.

Joshua 4:1–7 NIV

1 When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, 2 “Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, 3 and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight.” 4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”

There is an important parallel in this account to our Scripture today. Just like the Puritans started to forget, the people of God continually forgot about the God they served and what he had done for them. In fact, some might go so far as to say that the biggest sin of the people of God was and even is today, forgetting.

In this passage, we see God give Joshua something to help the people to remember and to help them explain and pass on what God had done to their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren.

I heard something recently that I am convinced is true. It takes two generations to not care and three to forget. Here’s an example. How many of you remember World War II? How many of you remember the ways life changed and what was considered important in the days after the war. How many of those lessons and ways of life were intentionally passed down to your children and grandchildren? My guess is probably some, but not as intentionally as you might have intended. Within two generations, the things that we care about as a society and as people change. By three generations, we most often forget what was important to our grandparents and great grandparents.

Joshua was instructed to use these stones as a sign to help them remember when their children ask about what the stones mean.

We want the “good life” for our children, but the many visions of good life may overlap and compete with what it means to be a person committed to Christ. What are we focused on? Are we focused on imitating Christ to our families, whether they live in your house or not? Will your lives be remembered about the follower of Christ you were or because you lived a good life and passed that on to your family? What about to those within our church family?

Here’s an example for you. Daniel and his three young friends probably were taken from Jerusalem in the first wave when Nebuchadnezzar repopulated part of his land. They were invited to eat at the king’s table and given positions of authority. Daniel’s parents likely would have been left behind in Jerusalem. Do you think Daniel’s faith was formed by his parents before the exile or after by someone else? My guess is that he was already a man after God’s own heart before the exile and being split from his family.

Hoosiers illustration:

[about Jimmy Chitwood] Myra Fleener : You know, a basketball hero around here is treated like a god, er, uh, how can he ever find out what he can really do? I don't want this to be the high point of his life. I've seen them, the real sad ones. They sit around the rest of their lives talking about the glory days when they were seventeen years old. Coach Norman Dale : You know, most people would kill... to be treated like a god, just for a few moments.

“Doesn’t everybody want to feel like a god every once in a while?” “Isn’t it sad in a culture when you can become a god by putting a leather ball through an iron hoop? It’s kind of a cheap god.”

I wonder at times if we are more concerned about the “good life” and not so much on the legacy we leave behind. I think that we get in trouble when we focus on our comfort and over time we assimilate to the culture around us because we get more focused on our comfort than our spiritual lives. What kind of legacy does that leave?

Instead, we need to be focused on raising resident aliens. People who are so grounded in their faith and walk with Jesus Christ that they have the practices in their lives that they are not pulled towards assimilating with the culture around us. You’ve heard me say this before, something is influencing and forming us. Is that Scripture and our deepening walk with Christ or something else?

To raise resident aliens, what we need is a particular story, a story that constantly forms them.

Illustration: Family stories we share over and over around the table; biblical stories we share over and over in Sunday school/worship service.

What are the stories we most often remember? What are the ones we share? Are we intentional about sharing the stories of God’s faithfulness and the times he brought us through? Or are we letting those stories go untold so they are forgotten and our grandchildren and that generation never here them.

Everything about us, what we eat, with whom we identify, and how we speak and dream—all of it matters (i.e. Daniel and his friends).

It’s critical that our children and grandchildren, and those we may have influence on in other parts of our lives understand why these stories shape the decisions that we make about how we spend money, spend time (Sabbath), and choose our career and the pursuits of our lives

Joshua: “What is this pile of rocks about? God met us here.” Build altars and ask, “Do you know what this means? God has acted in the past, God is acting now, and God will act in the future.” It takes a whole tribe of people who are trying to live this unique way of life in the world to raise resident aliens. The children of this community are the responsibility of this community

• Joshua: “What is this pile of rocks about? God met us here.” Build altars and ask, “Do you know what this means? God has acted in the past, God is acting now, and God will act in the future.”

It takes a whole tribe of people who are trying to live this unique way of life in the world to raise resident aliens. The children of this community (both physical and spiritual children) are the responsibility of this community. This community needs to be solely focused on living life by the example of Jesus - not distracted by the things of the culture around us - partisan politics, all of the events/things that take our time away from God and our spiritual formation and discipling others, The things we read/watch/participate in.

So what about you? What stories are you telling? Are you sharing the stories of how God was faithful and how God has worked in your life? Or other stories that may be good stories but don’t help people grow as believers? As we close this morning, I want us to take a few moments and consider these questions. We are going to sing, Set a Fire, and I am praying that God would start an unquenchable fire in us that won’t be put out by anything. In fact, I pray that it is such an inferno that it sets others on fire for Jesus Christ!

Sing - Set a Fire