Let's open our Bibles to Luke chapter 1. A little bit of an error in the bulletin. We are not looking at Ecclesiastes chapter 3. Today we are going to look at Luke chapter 1, as well as a number of other passages of scripture. If you're using one of the black Bibles that we have here at the church, you can find this in page 856. Page 856. We are going to be looking at what turns out to be a seasonally appropriate passage. Luke chapter one, starting at verse 46 and reading through verse 55, Mary's song of praise, commonly called the Magnificat, from the first word in Latin, Magnificat. Hear God's word. Luke chapter one, verse 46 through verse 55. And Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on, all generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud and the thoughts of their hearts, and he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever. May the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his word. We are at the tail end of a series on what it means biblically to live a blessed or a blessed life. And we've looked at primarily three passages of scriptures. We're going to touch on these again today. One is Psalm 112, which paints a picture of a righteous man and the work that God does not only in his life and through him, but also for his children and for generation after generation after him. We looked at Job, chapter 29, where Job, this famous great man who was brought to an incredible state of humiliation and suffering, is looking back on his former life and considering the ways that God had blessed him to get a picture of what it means to live a life that God has blessed. And then, of course, we've looked a lot at Proverbs, chapter 31, and the famous portrait of the mighty woman or the excellent wife. And today we're touching on a theme that is in all of those passages and is throughout the scriptures, which is God's blessing that a blessed life is not only blessed for me or for you in our time, in our lifetime, but it's something that God is doing from generation to generation. It's a work that God does from one generation to another and another and another and ultimately to eternity. Now we kind of looked at this over the last couple weeks. We looked at Ecclesiastes chapter 3, famous passage about for everything there is a time and for every purpose under heaven there's a time and a season, a time to be born, a time to die, a time for peace, a time for war, and so on. But today we're going to look at this a little bit more closely. This idea that God's blessing, for it to be truly God's blessing, is not just blessing for a little while, it's blessing from generation to generation. Now, I hope most of you know the story of Mary, where at Christmas time, you may have seen the manger scenes outside some churches. Unless you're purely inundated with the jingle bells and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer end of things, you have some idea that Christmas is about Christ, which is to say it's about Jesus, and specifically it's about the birth of Jesus. More than 2,000 years ago. Jesus was born in a little Backwater part of the Roman Empire to a woman named Mary and as we read the biblical story of Mary and Luke gives us the longest account of this of any of the four Gospels Mary we learn a lot about Mary we learn that she was a young woman and probably a teenager, who was a virgin. She was betrothed, that is, she was engaged. It's a little more than engaged, but she's betrothed to a man named Joseph, but she was not yet wed to him. They had not yet gotten married. She had never been with a man. We also find out that she was a descendant of the famous King David. But at that point, it was almost 1,000 years since King David had sat on the throne in Jerusalem and ruled over the people of God. And the people of God in ancient Israel were waiting for a descendant of David, for a king, a messiah to arise and to rescue them from their enemies and to bring about the kingdom of God. and they were waiting for this and praying for this and arguing over how would this come about and from time to time somebody would pop up and say, hey, that's me. I'm the savior you've been looking for. I'm the son of David. But it had never been true. They were still waiting. Here's Mary. Many people were descendants of David. Mary is just one of them, but she is a descendant of David. But when it comes down to it, although she's a descendant of David, Mary's a poor woman. She's a nobody. And while she's sitting in her room in her house, the angel Gabriel appears to her and speaks famous words. He says, greetings, oh favored one. The Lord is with you. Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and he shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. And so the long-awaited news, when it comes, it doesn't go straight to the palaces or the offices of the governors and kings. It goes to this virgin in a small house somewhere around Nazareth of Galilee. Now, Mary at first is just having a hard time processing this, as anybody would. And finally, after some conversation, she says to the angel straightforwardly in verse 38 of Luke 1, behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. We've looked at living a blessed life from a lot of different angles. And today, we're going to look at what Mary has to say some months later when she goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, himself a miraculous conception and birth, although not a virgin birth as it was with Mary. And when the Holy Spirit works in the womb of Elizabeth, her cousin, so that the baby leaps for joy at the sight of the mother of Jesus, Mary, in response, sings the song that we just read a couple minutes ago. We're going to come back to that in a little bit. Right now, I want to return to the texts that we've been looking at over the last few months. What does Psalm 112 and Proverbs 31 and Job 29, what did they have to say about God's blessing being from generation to generation? Well, first of all, Psalm 112, we'll just walk through these really quickly. In Psalm 112, the focus is on righteousness. Now, righteousness for us just means being good, but in the Bible it's got a little bit more of a focused meaning on kindness and generosity. And Psalm 112 speaks about the blessings that God pours out on those who are righteous. It says in verse 2 that the righteous man's children will be mighty in the land. In other words, there will be blessing on his children. In the same verse, it talks about the generation of the righteous being blessed. And I think that's really interesting because I don't actually think it's necessarily talking about the children of the righteous being blessed in that phrase. It's saying that the generation that is marked by and known by righteousness will be blessed. So we still talk about the World War II generation, and some of us have grandparents who are, or they're almost all gone now, but some of us have grandparents who are of that generation or were of that generation, and they're sometimes known as the greatest generation, because they did an extraordinary thing, fighting an enormously difficult, painful, and bloody war against tyranny all over the world. So we talk about the greatest generation, A generation can also be known as a righteous generation. And some of us have been in churches where there's a memory within that church where people look back and say, yeah, you remember, my grandfather built this. Or my grandmother sewed this. Or the reason that this church exists is that some people stuck their neck out and did something very difficult in starting a church. Or, even better than that, the people of this church built that orphanage, or they built that hospital, and there's a beauty and a glory in being remembered, not just as a righteous person, but as a righteous generation. We read in the next few verses that his righteousness endures forever, that he will never be moved, he will be remembered forever, and that he will also, he will look in triumph on his foes, the people who are his enemies, they're not going to win, the desire of the wicked, we read, will melt away. So the things that wicked people want to do, by contrast, will just be gone, they'll be forgotten. And in summary, Psalm 112, speaking of the blessing of God from generation to generation, says that if you are righteous in this way, truly righteous, not righteous for show so that everybody sees it, but righteous for one audience, which is God, You will get a good name for yourself. You will get a good name for your generation. You will get blessing for your children. And in short, there will be so much winning. Job 29, very brief. Job is reflecting again on the greatest days of his life, days of prosperity, really rich guy, days of family joy and warmth. And before they were all taken from him in a disaster, he had 10 children. Seven sons, three daughters, all of them grown, happy people who were going to each other's house from day to day and feasting together when they were all killed at once. These were days for him of public respect and public influence. When he was known in the public square, he was respected. People listened to him. They trusted his judgment. And he says in verses 18 through 20, then I thought, I shall die in my nest and I shall multiply my days as the sand. My roots spread out to the waters with the dew all night on my branches. My glory fresh with me and my bow ever new in my hand. And tragically, it was not to be that way. It was not to stay that way for Job. But we get that picture that the expectation of a righteous person is that the blessing of God will not just be set up for a big fall, but it will be from generation to generation. Now let's consider for a minute Proverbs 31 and our old friend, that wise and formidable woman of Proverbs 31. We read in Proverbs 31, verse 16, that she goes out and looks at a field. And her plan is to plant a vineyard. She works to turn a field into a vineyard. In other words, the land is clear, but there's nothing of value happening on that land yet. And in a sense, she stands there like the first woman in the Garden of Eden looking out at the unimproved land outside. We read that she works for the long term by caring for her family and her household. And that's found throughout the passage. She feeds them. She clothes them. Now, those of you, and I'm thinking especially of mothers, but not only of mothers, those of you who feed and clothe people a lot may feel frustrated sometimes because you make that meal, or you buy those clothes, or you may even sew those clothes, and the food is gone in 15 minutes. Because the little, we call them in our house, the ravening hordes show up like locusts and devour the food, right? You cook that meal all afternoon, the food is gone in 15 minutes. You buy the clothes, a few months later it seems like the clothes are outgrown. And you may feel like, how is this working for the long term? And yet when you are feeding someone, when you are clothing someone, you are serving an eternal being who is made in the image of God. So next time you're at the stove and someone says, what are you making? You say, the kingdom of God. Now shut up and go set the table. She goes from there, though. She doesn't only attend to her own needs and those of her family. She shows kindness to the poor. In verse 20, we read that she opens her hand to the poor. And this, too, is working for the future. You've got to step back and think about the big picture here. You may be just feeding somebody a meal that feeds them for a day again, but you are working for the future. Now, there's a paradox that shows up in Deuteronomy 15, where God says through Moses to his people Israel, He says, if you keep the Lord's commandments, He's going to bless you so much that there will be no poor among you. And yet about 10 verses later, he says, I want you to continue to take care of the poor because there will never cease to be poor in the land. How do we put those two together? There will be no poor among you and there will never cease to be poor in the land. Well, the right interpretation, I think, is something like this. If a people, if a community, if a society, if a nation, if a village, if a city, if a church obeys the Lord seriously, including doing things like caring for the poor, then the rising tide of God's blessing will lift every boat, and grinding poverty will become more and more rare, such that in this building, those of us who grew up in America, at least, have seldom or never experienced true, deep, grinding poverty. Our grandparents may have. Our great-great-grandparents probably did. Their great-grandparents almost certainly did at some point. But we have seen the blessing of God so thick on us, so heavy on us, that we don't know what it's like, most of us, again, a few of us have experienced real hardship, but most of us don't know what it's like to starve. I think that's partly what's in view here. You shall lend to many nations, the passage goes on to say, but you shall not borrow. And at the same time, poverty is the kind of thing that you can never just declare victory on. You can never say, well, we're done. We took care of it. We fixed it. We made war on poverty. We won the war. We can call it a day. It's like old age. It's just a thing that wants to keep happening, and you will always have to deal with it. So what's the solution to poverty? It's what the Proverbs 31 woman does. It's local and personal and situational. She goes on from there. She serves others through business. It's not exactly relieving poverty. She's selling sashes or belts to the local merchants. So I guess she's making sashes for the sashless. But she's doing righteous and honest business, and that builds a certain kind of healthy community, and righteous acts and honest dealings have a way of snowballing and turning into something big and good. So that you live in a society where people trust each other, and they can do business, and they don't fear for being cheated at every turn. And finally, we read in verse 25 that she laughs at the time to come. because she has prepared herself and her people for those days, both morally and physically. And we looked at this quite a bit early in the series in the sermon, Unafraid of the Future, on October 2nd. And now we get, and we'll just be brief on this and I'll come back to it yet again, to Luke chapter 1 that we read earlier, the Magnificat. I'm going to say something that's going to sound a little weird, especially to our sensitive Protestant ears, who are always very worried about maybe inadvertently worshipping the Virgin Mary. We're not worshipping the Virgin Mary, but I'm going to say something strong about the Virgin Mary. Mary may be the greatest human being in the Bible, barring Jesus himself. She may be the greatest human in the Bible. She says in the passage that we just read, all generations will call me blessed. There should be an echo, those of us who have been dwelling in Proverbs 31 a lot, of verse 28 where we read of the mighty wife, the excellent woman, that her children rise up and call her blessed. It's not just the children of Mary who will call her blessed, but she says with Spirit-inspired confidence, all generations will call me blessed. Why is that? We may object. What did she do that was so great? What did she do? That's the point. She didn't do anything that was so great. It's not what she did. It's what God did through her. because Mary comes on the scene again, effectively, as a nobody. All she did was not refuse the gift that was announced to her, and that's what her soul magnifies the Lord for. She says from now on, all generations will call me blessed, for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name, and his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. She goes on to say that God brings down the proud and the mighty. He lifts up the humble and the poor. And there's echoes here of the song of Hannah in the beginning of 1 Samuel when God gives her a child. And she goes on and she says, He has helped His servant Israel in remembrance of His mercy as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to His offspring forever. What is God's greatest act of intergenerational faithfulness to His people? What is the greatest thing God has ever done to bring His blessing from one generation to other? It's the sending of Jesus Christ. That is the greatest intergenerational blessing that we could receive. And that is what Mary was the first recipient of. Now I want to talk about what it means to live for the sake of this long-term blessing. Because this is a sermon, not just an interesting talk. So we have to have a little bit of practicality to it. And we have to think about what is God calling us to? He sets before us these images of multi-generational blessing. What is He calling us to? How does He call and why does He call us to seek that blessing from generation to generation? Not just seek good things for ourselves, but for our children and our children's children and our children's children's children and their children and so on until I'm going to completely lose track of what I'm saying. What does it look like? Well, I want to say two things. First, everything you have and are is a gift from the hand of God. And seeking God's blessings starts with that realization that everything you have and are is a gift from the hand of God. You didn't get it. You didn't make it. You didn't do anything to deserve it. And while you may have sometimes cooperated with God and obeyed Him, even then, the blessings that He's poured out on you are His free gifts. Your family is a gift. Your wealth is a gift. Your talents are gifts. Your body, no matter what kind of shape it's in, is a gift. Your employments and your hobbies are gifts. Your friends are gifts. Your church is a gift. The forgiveness that you have is something you could never, ever in a million years create. You can't atone for your sin. I can't atone for my sin. Your forgiveness is a gift. Your very life is a gift. God breathes out His Spirit and takes inanimate objects, particles and atoms and molecules, and makes them live. Your salvation is a gift. Jesus, the name Jesus, means Yahshua, the Lord saves. And one of the great themes of the Old Testament and the New Testament alike is that salvation belongs to God. Everything that we have is a gift from the hand of God. Second point, which will take longer. Now, having been given all of these gifts, you get to build something that will outlast you. You get to build something that will outlast you. You get to play in God's sandbox. What does that mean? Well, we are all called to a walk with God, first of all, that is personal and individual and internal, inside of us, right? So it's not enough to just say, I'm a Christian, and call it a day. It's not enough even to be part of a church and just say, well, I'm here. I'm part of this. I'm in the barn, so I must be a cow. To say, I'm in the church, therefore, I must be all set spiritually. You must, and children I am talking to you alongside your parents, you must pray. You must obey God. You must believe yourself, not just trust in your parents' belief. You must walk in step with the Spirit of God. This is your walk that you're being called to. But you know what? None of us stay there. None of us stay purely as individuals. We're not only out to care for our own spiritual walk. We're not only out seeking a relationship with God as individuals. We're not only out seeking God's blessing for ourselves. We're not only trying to build for ourselves. We are called to seek the extension of God's kingdom. meaning God looks at the whole world. And because Jesus is risen and reigning, he says this whole thing belongs to me. And he says to his people, now I've put you somewhere, I've put you in this time, in this place, with this body, and these talents, and these family members, and these problems, and this history, and good and bad, and I want you to lay claim to the place I've put you for the sake of My Kingdom. I want you to say, Jesus is King, and we're going to act like it around here. And it doesn't mean you have to boss other people around and push them around, but it does mean that whatever you have control over, whatever you have the ability to affect, you do it for the sake of the Kingdom and the glory of God. Now, we are all called to walk with God that's individual, but we're also called to extend His kingdom. And I want to make two really simple points about this. First of all, if something is good, if something is good, it should probably continue, right? Now, you may get to the end of your Christmas You may have, I hope you all have fantastic Christmas days. I hope you come to church on Christmas day. I hope you all have a fantastic Christmas day, and I hope at the end of the day, you don't go, that was great, let's never do it again. Now, some part of you might, right, because you're exhausted, because you overate, because somebody caused some trouble at Christmas dinner, whatever. You may say, I hope that part of it doesn't get repeated. You also may say, I am so tired, I'm really glad tomorrow's not Christmas all over again, because I think I might need a year to recover. But if Christmas is good, you want it to come back. If something in your life is good, you want it to repeat, you want it to continue. Now, different people may have to do it after a time. When you were a kid, maybe your grandma made pie, and maybe either your grandma's not around anymore, or maybe she said, you know what, I'm going to retire from pie-making, my pie-making days are over, this is somebody else's job now. So the activity may continue, but the people may change, because you may need somebody else to make the pie. Football continues. It's been going for more than 100 years. People have been playing more or less what we understand as American football. But the guys who were playing 100 years ago aren't playing anymore. In fact, you can't last probably more than a dozen years playing professional football most of the time. Medicine continues through time. These are good things, healing people with medicine, playing football, having Christmas. These are good things. We call them institutions. We call them institutions because an institution is something that takes a good thing and extends it through time. The family is a kind of institution. And it is wise and good to respect institutions. Most of the time, they are doing something that's worth doing. So if something is worth doing, it should continue. But here's the second part. For something good to continue, you have to work at it. For something good to continue, you have to make it happen. You have to do a lot of things about that. This author is one of my favorites. A Christian guy named Andy Crouch wrote this really interesting book called Playing God, Redeeming the Gift of Power. And he talks about institutions as having rules and roles and artifacts and arenas. And rules tell us, for instance, as Christians, how do we live biblically in this time with the challenges that we have? Right? We have things coming at us that our grandparents didn't have. And our grandchildren will have things coming at them that we don't have coming at us. And so every rule, every generation has to think through, how do we live? How do we live faithfully to God now with these specific challenges? Now there's going to be things that are the same, but there's also going to be new applications of those rules. There's roles to figure out. What part do you and I play in the family? My children don't do exactly the same thing I do. And I don't do the exact same thing that they do. What does it mean to play a role? What role do we play in the church? How about our profession and our workplace? Not just the question of how do we play the game, but how do I play the game now? What is God calling me to? Not just the big picture, but the me picture. There are artifacts. There are things you need to do this. We're in... I'll talk about arenas in a second. Here in front of us, there's artifacts. There's a big old Bible here on the pulpit. There's communion wine over here and bread over here. And you dressed up in your clothes to go to church. And you picked up a Bible, most of you, and read it, as I read the Scriptures earlier. These are our artifacts. And then finally, there are arenas. Right? Places where we do these things. Hospitals, classrooms, kitchens, stadiums, garages, factories, sanctuaries, barns. Human beings build places to do things. And that is itself a reflection of God's own creativity. Because at the beginning of time, God created the heavens and the earth to be a temple and a palace and a sanctuary for his own glory. So you have to do those things, you have to figure those things out, but you also have to practice what you're doing, right? So we can't, we do not have the option of buying this fantastic building and working really hard on it and just going, I could really use, let's just take six months off of worship. Aren't we tired, right? Some of us are really tired after all that work. Let's just take half a year off. In fact, let's just go virtual. Why not just go virtual permanently, right? Be a lot easier. You could stay in your pajamas. You just stay home. We're not allowed to do that. Now, there are emergencies. We recognize that. I'm not making a comment about that. But we're not allowed to just say, we've got the institution, but we won't use it. We'll talk about the thing, but we won't do it. We are not allowed to armchair quarterback life. We are called to practice the things that God has given us to do. There's a theologian named Emil Brunner, and I'm going to butcher what he says, but he basically said, the church exists by worship and mission as fire exists by burning. We exist by worshiping God in a gathering like this and by extending the word of Christ to those who don't know him. Carpenters exist by building things out of wood. Scientists do science. Dentists work on teeth. Business people do business. Families eat and worship and love and give and care and live together. We now have a beautiful new arena, and it got a lot more beautiful after a lot of work and expense over the last few weeks. And if you're new with us, welcome to our new floor. That's where we're worshiping right now. We have a beautiful arena. What shall we do with it? Scripture says, whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men. And do it in such a way that God gets the glory. Now, we live in a culture, actually, that doesn't like institutions and doesn't like big things very much. And we live at a time when our institutions have given us a lot of cause to not like them. So that's kind of understandable. But we live in a culture, some people have called it expressive individualism. I know that's a million-dollar SAT-sounding word, but bear with me. Expressive individualism is the mindset, this mindset, I and my experience are the center of everything, okay? And me expressing myself is of first importance. It's all about me. And rules, okay, I might obey some rules, but rules are only good rules if they work for me. Well, if you think about life that way, what's going to wind up eventually is that you wind up playing the game by yourself. Instead of riches that God has given you to use, you wind up with piles of meaningless junk. Instead of arenas for work and action, instead of homes and churches and libraries and workplaces, you wind up with ruins when everybody just looks out for their own good and their own interests. And by the way, God's rules are good for you, but in the short term, they might not feel like it. We are called, whether it's in institutions or as individuals, to labor for that which lasts, to work for the long term, not because we have to, but because we get to. The weight of the world is not on your shoulders, and it is not on mine. You cannot fix your own problems, let alone everybody else's problems, but God can, and in the right time and in the right way, he will. So do the next right thing there is in front of you as well as you can. I want to say just a couple more very brief things about that and skip over some things I was going to say and talk your ear off and get to the punch in a minute. How do we do that? Well, stay grounded, first of all. Reality is annoyingly heavy and specific, and some of us want to walk around thinking great thoughts. Here, I'm confessing. Some of us want to walk around thinking great thoughts and not do very much, right? Or not get our hands dirty. It's tempting to stay in the world of thinking and talking with very little heavy lifting. And some people honestly do become pastors because, as somebody put it a long time ago, it's an indoor job with no heavy lifting. Now, if you've been here the last few weeks, you'll know that pastoring is actually not an indoor job with no heavy lifting. There is some. If you're a person, let me just make this very concrete, if you're a person who thinks all day for your job or who does stuff on a computer all day, Get a hobby. And you don't have to be good at it, but it should be something that puts your hands on something dirty and does work. Going along with that, work for results that are tangible. And nothing, by the way, is more tangible than caring for immortal people. This is an argument, again, for working with your hands, which Paul actually says you should do, you should seek to do, work with your hands, live quiet lives, working with our hands. This is also an argument for working with things that are heavy and earthy at least some of the time. Our first ancestor was a gardener and a farmer, not just a philosopher and a scientist, although he was those things as well. And by the way, money, money is ethereal, and it has always been. Proverbs 23 says something interesting about money. Do not toil to acquire wealth. Be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. So first of all, stay grounded. Second, remember in a time of forgetting. Remember in a time of forgetting. We live in a time where people are forgetting as fast as they can basic things about what it means to be a human. Do not forget those things. Thirdly, maintenance is annoying. Renovation is worse. Building from scratch is worst of all. And what do I mean by that? It is very hard to do things to make sure that an institution, like a church or a family or any other, or a profession, stays OK, right? It's going to mean confronting people sometimes. It's going to mean having arguments about stuff. It's going to mean serving on committees and keeping minutes and all sorts of annoying stuff. It's a real pain in the butt. But if you don't do the maintenance, what starts to happen is that the institution starts to fall apart. And then you have to do renovation. And renovation, take it from me, stinks. And if you don't do renovation and the whole thing just falls apart and crumbles, or you say, ah, this is too far gone, I want to start someplace fresh, let me tell you, as the pastor of a church plant and somebody who used to work in a startup school, that new institutions are really, really, really, really hard. So do the maintenance, so you don't have to do the renovations or the rebuilding. Finally, how do you build something that lasts? How do you build a huge thing, fix a huge problem? How do you look at the world and go, that is wrong, we want to seek to make it right? One bite at a time. one meal at a time, one brick at a time, one nail at a time, break it down and do the next right thing that's in front of you. If there is something big and good that you want to do, that you feel that God has put on your heart to do, ask yourself, what is the smallest step that I can take toward that end and take that step? I want to close by looking again at the big picture. Because there's a problem with working for the long term. There's a problem with working for intergenerational change. And there's a problem with working to fix the grand problems of the world. Actually, there's three problems. The first one is sin. I don't know if you've ever heard about this sin stuff, but it's bad. and it affects all kinds of things. So what we see is over and over again in history and in our own experience, great families that spin out of control because of sin. In fact, we can look back in the Bible. We can see as we look at the great people of the Old Testament, people whose descendants are disappointments, huge disappointments. Adam, Noah, Moses, Aaron, Levi, David. The list goes on. Their descendants did not do very well. and their great families fell and fell. Tim Keller wisely said, you're going to mess up your kids one way or another, because either you're going to have problems and you're going to mess them up in a straightforward way, or you're going to be a fantastic parent, and then they're going to spend the rest of their lives trying to live up to your standard of parenting. Conservative Christians are strong on the goodness of home and family, and that's awesome. But we must not turn a blind eye to the potential for evil that can take place within homes and families as well. Some families are so vile that God just wipes the whole group off the map. That is his prerogative. Sin can ruin this right desire for intergenerational blessing. Now, the history of nations is always marred by sin. And although some of the noble traits of the founding fathers can continue through time, the sins of the past always come back to bite us as well. And of course, we've been talking about institutions here. Well, institutions can be hijacked by the greedy and the deluded. And so in our society right now, we have hospitals that were founded for mercy and charity that are now run for profit at the expense of the patients. We have charities that were founded to do disaster relief, but now pocket 90% of the grants and donations that they receive, which is why, by the way, part of why we're supporting Stormwise Foundation and the Free Will Offering today, because they work to counter that. We have denominations, church denominations that were founded to the glory of God but continue today as zombie churches cared for or led or at least run by unbelieving clergy who know a comfortable job when they see one. We have NGOs that poured medical help and money into places like Goma in DR Congo, and then decided that abortion is essential health care, and refused to help local hospitals unless they will provide abortions, which is a big reason why we have continued to support MMC in Goma, Congo, with our free will offerings. We have professional organizations that were founded to extend and advance civilization that are then turned to ideological purposes that destroy that civilization. And as far as I know, the American Library Association is the latest. So there's the problem of sin, huge problem. Second, there's the problem of human frailty. We can be awesome. We can be beautiful, good people who are seeking the glory of God and the things that we are doing. And yet, like Job, God may decide that it's time for things to change. Men go off even to a small war, and that may be it for their family line. That's why the Mosaic Law had a law that a man did not have to go to war for a year after he was married. Women go to childbirth, and that may be it for them and their babies. Vesuvius or Krakatoa erupts, and tens of thousands of people are gone in minutes. A meteor strikes, a plague spreads like fire, a fire spreads like fire, a tyrant can starve a nation and millions die, and it's happened more than a couple times in the last century. A madman can trigger a war, and the vast technology of death we've created may kill 80 million or more in a few years. If the intergenerational blessing of God depends on human strength, we are all in big trouble. Because humans, at the end of the day, very interesting, but not that tough. But there's a third problem. And that is the problem of who gets the glory when things are going well. You know, Moses really knew how to talk to God. That's one of the things that strikes me sometimes when I read, especially the book of Exodus. Moses knew how to talk to God. You ever have a friend who knows how to talk to people? And you're like, man, that guy's just really good at talking to people. My friend Dave Robeson's really good at talking to people. Moses is really good at talking to God, and here's what I mean. Exodus chapter 32, right after the whole thing with the golden calf, and God has sent Moses down the hill, or down Mount Sinai, and he said, I am done with these people, Moses. I want nothing to do with them. Get out of my way, and I'm going to wipe them off the map because of their sin and the offense that they've rendered to me. And I'm going to take you, Moses, and I'm going to make you into a new nation. And Moses stands before the Lord and prays with Him and pleads with Him. Please don't do that. And you know what he says to God? He says, why should the Egyptians say, with evil intent did He bring them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth? turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people." In other words, Moses brought up God's glory when speaking to God in pleading with Him to do this and not that. And that was the right thing to do because God is unrelentingly jealous for His own glory. Human goodness is poisoned with sin. Human strength is fragile and false. But the biggest problem with us trying to make big things in the world is, above all, that God is jealous for His glory. Let me take a look just briefly at Isaiah chapter 48. You get me out of the pulpit one week, and I go long the next week. I'm sorry. Chapter 48, verse 3, the former things I declared of old. This is the Lord speaking. They went out from my mouth and I announced them. Then suddenly I did them and they came to pass. Because I know that you are obstinate and your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead brass. It's a not very nice way of saying you are hardheaded people. I declared them to you from of old. Before they came to pass, I announced them to you, lest you should say, my idol did them. My carved image and my metal image commanded them. You have heard. Now see all this. And will you not declare it? From this time forth, I announce to you new things, hidden things that you have not known. They are created now, not long ago. Before today, you have never heard of them, lest you should say, behold, I knew them. You have never heard, you have never known them, from of old your ear has not been opened, for I knew that you would surely deal treacherously, and that from before birth you were called a rebel." In other words, God is not very happy with His people here. And then He says this, For my name's sake, I defer my anger. For the sake of my praise, I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver. I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own name's sake, I do it. For how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another. God is jealous for His glory and for the credit of our salvation and blessing. So when He brought His salvation into the world, He did it in such a way that it could only be His. It didn't come through long-term family holiness or national faithfulness bearing good fruit. It didn't come from institutions that were set up wisely and went well. It came from something fundamentally new happening. And that is the coming of the Son of God who was born of a virgin. So when Mary speaks, when Mary sings this song that we read a little while ago, this Magnificat, she speaks not only for herself but for all of faithful Israel. She says that salvation came. We prayed for it, but we didn't accomplish it. We didn't bring it about, and we never dreamed what it would be like. Salvation came. for Israel and for the world to guide our feet into the way of peace, so that kings would shut their mouths and keep silent before God, who is just in judgment, yet perfect in mercy, casting down the great and raising up the humble. And when salvation came into the world, it was not a human accomplishment. We did nothing to make it happen. And all we did was say yes. Amen. So let it be. My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on, all generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. Now here's the line I want to end with, because this is the most important thing that you could ever possibly hear about living a blessed life. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we come into your presence, as we always do, carrying a lot of different things. We're worried about ourselves, we're worried about people that we love, we're worried about the present, we're worried about the future, we're concerned about things coming back from the past to bite us. But when we come to you, we come to the rock that is higher than we are, the one in whose shelter we can rest. And we pray that whatever we are facing, whether it's the question of how do we take the good things that are happening and extend them through time and space so that they continue going, or whether we are facing the wreckage and disaster and challenges and suffering and trouble and quandaries and confusion that are piled up on us right now, Lord, we come to you and we plead that for the sake of your own glory you would show your mercy to those who fear you from generation to generation. We pray that you would continue to do a great work in our time We pray that those who do not call on your name in worship, who do not know you and love you, who do not know the name of Jesus Christ, who do not have faith in Christ, Lord, we pray that you would save them. We pray for those who do call on your name but struggle with sin, and that's all of us, Lord, that you would help us and strengthen us. And we pray, Lord, that in all these things, Your kingdom would be extended and come in earth as it is in heaven. And we pray that your name would be glorified forever and ever. Hear us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.