Please turn with me in your Bibles to First Chronicles chapter 1, beginning in verse 1. Again, First Chronicles chapter 1, we will begin reading in verse 1. Adam, Sheth, Enosh, Canaan, Mahaliel, Jared, Hanoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The sons of Japheth, Gomer, and Magog, and Middai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshach, and Tiras, and the sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz, and Riphoth, and Togarmah, and the sons of Javan, Elisha, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodonim, the sons of Ham, Cush, and Mitzrayim, Put, and Canaan, and the sons of Cush, Seba, and Havala, and Sabta, and Ra'ama, and Sabtecha, and the sons of Ra'ama, Sheba, and Dedan. And Cush begat Nimrod. He began to be mighty upon the earth. and Mitraim begat Ludim, and Animim, and Lahabim, and Naphtuhim, and Pathrusim, and Kasluhim, of whom came the Philistines, and Kapturim. and Canaan begat Zidan his firstborn, and Heph, the Jebusite also, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite, and the Hivite, and the Archite, and the Sinite, and the Arvidite, and the Zemorite, and the Hamathite, the sons of Shem, Elam, and Ashur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram, and Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Meshach, And Arphaxad begat Shelah, and Shelah begat Eber. And unto Eber were born two sons, the name of the one was Peleg, because in his days the earth was divided, and his brother's name was Jokdan. And Jokdan begat Almadad and Sheleph, and Hazarmaveth and Jera, Haduram also, and Uzo and Dikla, and Ebal and Abimeael and Sheba, and Uphir and Havilah and Jobab. All these were the sons of Jokdan. Arphaxad, Sheol, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Sereg, Nahor, Terah, Abram. The same is Abraham. We live in an age and a place that is without a past. In some ways, this is true of the entire Western world, so heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and Enlightenment thought. Up until the Enlightenment, we'd have to say that in Western thinking, it was a regard for former generations and their attainments, intellectual, moral, and otherwise. But with the Enlightenment, there was a large loss of regard for former generations and their achievements. So this is true of the entire Western world, but all the more true of America. From close to its beginning, there has been a heavy Enlightenment influence, but this was ever esteemed the new world. from the first formation of itself as a nation. It is, in the grand scheme of world history, a very young nation, not much of a past to speak of. I remember being impressed by this in my first trip to To England you go around town to town and every town has buildings five and six hundred years old. You don't have anything like that in the United States. I remember standing up on a hillside at Whitby and looking down at the graves of monks from the 8th century and to think of monks living and dying on that hillside for the better part of a thousand years was just staggering. We are a young nation, not much of a past to speak of. And there are things about our country that have led to a value for the rugged individualist, the one that is able to stand alone. You think about the first settlers from Europe on this continent. These had to be strong, tough-minded individuals, people that were able to stand on their own and leave behind people, their people, nation, family, even heritage in some measure. And we weren't here for very long before people started moving westward. So what little bit of heritage was retained in the east, people moved away from even that as they pursued property and wealth, security in the west and so on. So, and by security, I don't mean physical safety and so on, but they are looking for property and fortune and to build life on that. So, you have an ethos where the rugged individualist is valued and even romanticized. That has always been part of the American ethos. And in some ways, in recent days, that's been set into hyperdrive, hasn't it? We live in a modern technological age. I have just been amazed at how much the world has changed in the past 20 years. Rewinding 25 years, I didn't even have an email account. The computer really was not a part of my life or my world. That is just 25 years ago. Nothing in the grand scheme of the world. And now my children can scarcely imagine being disconnected from the cell phone. So in this regard, we are much more interested in the present and in the future than we are in the past. And just how different the world was just a few decades ago, even I, who lived a very different kind of life, have trouble remembering what it was like and how we did things in those times past. You might look at just one example of this. with the rise of modern medicine, which is really not a very old science, not a very old methodology, all things considered, but we have only the weakest notions and apprehensions of how things were done before. There was medicine in the world for the whole history of mankind, medicinal techniques, very much like modern ones, some of which had very little value, some of which were tremendously effective and powerful, but almost all of the methods now lost in preference of the newer. And what's really interesting, part of the way that the newer have supplanted the older is by vilifying the old methods and practitioners. So if you were a practitioner of say an older herbal medicine and you are some sort of primitive savage so on, the new has come. You look and you turn to look at education, the effect of this in education and what students are looking for and what they are buying, and so what universities are able to sell, it makes this very evident in higher education. The humanities are really struggling. My local university here, The history department is almost dying. There are so very few who want to pursue anything like a history major. We look around us socially and we see the destruction of historical monuments. There's not just an ignorance of the past, but an antipathy, even a hatred that erupts in violence. there is a reinterpretation of history to suit current agendas. We are told that this reinterpretation is necessary because always history has been written by the victors, not by not by the lowly, the oppressed, and so on. And so history is being reinterpreted, little aware that once again history is being written by the victors. We're not going to be able to get away. If we're going to relativize history in that way, then we're not going to be able to get away from it or escape it ourselves, right? So anyway, the wisdom of the ages, the wisdom of former generations is dismissed. by whatever progressive views and values are currently in the ascendancy. And perhaps to see some of the effect of this, I wonder if we were to conduct some sort of a personal experiment, you might yourself be a person very committed to family, and maybe you come out of a very strong family ethos, but I wonder how many of us could name our great-grandparents, people with whom we did not have an immediate personal acquaintance. And that might show you a little something of how quickly we can lose a sense of history and connection down through the ages. If a few of us can name our great-grandparents, I wonder if there are very many at all those that can name great-great-grandparents and so on. One might hope that the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ would have a much stronger sense of history, a much greater sense of herself down through the ages and generations But I think the Church in the Western world, and maybe even peculiarly in America, has very little awareness of her history. I might say it like this. Among some, there is a hope for another Reformation. a third reformation after the likeness of the first and the second. But a reformation requires a sense of history, right? The church had certain biblical attainments. She had come to a certain She had made certain progress in her understanding of the doctrines of the Bible and their practical implications, the ethics of it all, and the sense of history. We had these attainments, but there has been a declension or a falling away. But we need to return to the attainments and try to advance or make progress upon those. We need to try to understand the Scriptures more exactly. We need to practice the teachings of the Scripture in greater detail. You might even say more comprehensively. we need to be trying to move forward. Backsliding in the scripture, and the word does come up from time to time, is never a good thing, whether it be for an individual or for a people. But instead of reformation, which has got a historical sense, we want rather a restoration. There's a restorationism instead of a reformation mind. So we want to simply wipe out the past 2,000 years as if they had never happened and reconstitute the church immediately upon the scriptures. Now for many, the problematic nature of that might not be immediately evident. And that's a sign of the problem. So if you're sitting there as a Christian person, and if I might say so, Reformation-minded people and Restoration-minded people might be both committed to the Scripture and might both affirm the equal ultimacy, or might equally affirm the ultimacy of the Scripture in matters of doctrine and practice. But one has a historical sense, and one doesn't. And one of those models is actually more biblical than the other, and it might not be the one that you suppose. But at any rate, there's the part of the challenge in front of us, right? And also when it comes to the quest for unity in the body of Christ, almost all of that quest is being conducted laterally. In other words, we want unity in the present generation, not remembering that part of the unity of the body of Christ is unity through time and down through successive generations. And that is an undeniable biblical teaching, right? So the unity of the church is manifested laterally in the current generation, but vertically, if you will, down through the ages, down through time. So it's with these thoughts in mind, and you might even say at this point, we are being deeply challenged by the chronicler and the Bible's use of genealogy. Genealogy reminds us that we have a past, that we are not the first generation to live, but there have been generations before us, and the past matters. we stand on the shoulders of countless generations and we are responsible for the attainments that we have inherited from those preceding generations. You might think of the attainments of former generations, whether they be intellectual, moral, theological, scientific, whatever, they come to us as an inheritance. and we have become both the beneficiaries as well as responsible parties for those attainments. And we are also reminded that unity is something that is to be sought, not just laterally, as I said, but something to be sought through time. So the chronicler in his use of genealogies is going to remind us of these important truths. I think that they all have something very much in common. It's a, they're unified by a certain perspective. as it were. It is a historically minded perspective. So I wanted to take one doctrine this morning from the bare presence of the genealogies and remember something of what we have been doing before getting to the particular purposes of the Chronicler in giving us genealogies. I wanted to look at some general things that genealogies in the Bible do for us. The first we looked at last week In the ocean of humanity, the genealogies help us to find the Messiah. And as we saw, the genealogical interest was present right from the beginning. Upon the first fall of mankind, you have the judgment upon the serpent. And as the serpent is being judged, Adam and Eve are being given hope, gospel hope. So God promised that he would erect an enmity between Eve and the serpent. between her seed and his seed, and that there was one particular one among the offspring of Eve that would crush the head of the serpent, destroy his plans and his purposes, even while he himself received a wounding. As we saw in 1 John 3, that can be none other than our Lord Jesus Christ. But remember that the seed of Eve was also contemplated as being more extensive and at odds with the seed of the serpent. And so immediately, born out of that initial promise, there was a genealogical interest. So you have the seed of the serpent manifesting itself in the line of Cain, Genesis chapter four. the seed of the woman manifesting itself in the line of Seth. These are the ones that share Mama Eve's faith, and that genealogical interest remains unabated. As a matter of fact, part of the interest of 1 John chapter 3 is Genesis 3.15 and the enmity between the two lines still matters, still matters for John. He applies it to his generation, even as we can apply it to our own. Marvel not, brethren, when the world hates you. So this is what we are doing. We're looking at this genealogical interest. We're looking at it in a general way. Maybe next week we'll start to look at some particular points of interest for the chronicler. But I wanted to take a doctrine here that the church is Catholic through all ages as well as places. And I don't suspect that this is probably a new doctrine for you. When I use this language of Catholicity, I don't want you to think of the Roman Catholic Church. I want you to think of Catholic in the sense of transcending boundaries. So the Church is Catholic laterally in the sense that she transcends national ethnic borders and so on. There's a universality to her. But the Church is also Catholic through the ages. She extends through generations and is not divided by those generations. We can mark eras, but the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ transcends those eras and continues to abide through them. And I say that this is probably just a reminder for most of us because I think that this is generally taught as being true. It's easily seen in the Bible, even if we become quite forgetful of it as we do broader theological and even practical thinking. But just to take one text into immediate view, turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 8, beginning in verse 5. The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 8. beginning in verse five. And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worth it that thou shouldest come under my roof, but speak the word only and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this man, go and he goeth, and to another, come and he cometh, and to my servant, do this and he doeth it. When Jesus heard it, he marveled and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you that many shall come from the east and west and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. When Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way, and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour. This text is remarkable. The situation is probably quite well known to you. A centurion has come to the Lord Jesus, a Roman army official, and he is seeking healing for a servant. Jesus says that he will come and heal him. But the centurion, recognizing and understanding the way that authority works, knows that Jesus' physical presence is not necessary. But by faith, seeing who Jesus is and what he can do simply says, all you need to do because of your great authority is speak the word and healing will come. Jesus does end up doing that. But then this leads Jesus to some greater reflections concerning Israel and the Gentiles, that the children of the kingdom, native-born Israelites, would be cast out, but that Gentiles would come from all directions and sit down at that great eschatological feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So you see Jesus drawing an intergenerational connection, as well as an ethnic connection, or well, you might say an ecclesiastical connection between ethnic groups, that the post-apostolic Gentile church would be in union and communion with the ancient Jewish church of former generations and that they would, they dwell together in one church and that they would be the heirs, as it were, of one kingdom. So you see intergenerational union and connectedness being exemplified here. And this is part of what the Chronicler is doing, even doing in the passage that we have just read, chapter one, is the Chronicler is tying his own generation into the people of God throughout time, even from the very beginning. And in giving the genealogies that he gives, what he is recognizing is they are really connected to those former generations. They have a past and that that past matters, has a bearing upon the present and even the teaching of present generations. So I wanted to draw two points of application that really do cut across the grain against the contemporary American mindset. My first application is, Christian, value your inheritance. We are the members of one church that extends all the way to the very beginning of time. We are the seed of Eve, as it were. We share Mama Eve's faith, and we are members of one church with her. We are heirs of the ancient Jewish Church. Obviously, we have received the Hebrew Scriptures and they have become part of our inheritance. We are the heirs of the Apostolic Church. We have a New Testament, the Greek Scriptures. We have become heirs of those as well. And if I might say so, we are also heirs of the post-apostolic church, and it's elements of this history also that we ought to value. Now, this doesn't mean that, you know, church history replaces normative scripture, but the church has done much down through the ages to help us understand and apply the scriptures. Another way of addressing this, and even looking at the difference between a reformation mindset and a restoration mindset, a historical mindset and an ahistorical mindset, The restoration mindset is very much a me and my Bible approach. So if I've got my Bible and the Holy Spirit, then I have everything that I need. Interestingly enough, it's not quite a biblical mindset. It is true that the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice. What I am saying is no denial of sola scriptura. But one of the things that the Scriptures teach, and I would encourage you to go back and review Ephesians chapter 4, is that one of the gifts of the ascended Lord Jesus Christ to His church is the provision of faithful teachers. and that he will continue to provide faithful teachers to help the church understand the scriptures doctrinally and practically until the church comes into the fullness of its maturity and is ready to step into its eternal state. And so in some ways, because of the history that has gone before and the generations after generations of teachers that have gone before and the preaching and teaching of the Old and New Testaments, we stand in a privileged position. We have a rich heritage. You might even, to use the financial analogy, We have inherited a wealthy estate. So we are the heirs of the work that was done at Nicaea and Chalcedon, and we are responsible for that. So, for example, just to use the very famous conflict in the Christian world that led to the Council of Nicaea, from the very beginning, obviously, the Church had the Scriptures and the Church believed that the Scriptures were teaching that Jesus Christ is fully God. They believed that. But then in the midst of that, Arius arises in Alexandria, Egypt. If you associate him with about the year 300, you won't be far off. And he begins to teach that Jesus, that the son is merely a creature, that he is God-like. He's the first of the creatures. and the creature through whom all other things were made, but he is just a creature. Well, the church was then forced to clarify, the challenge forced it to clarify its own understanding from the scriptures. And as the church looked at the scriptures, and it's not my purpose to go through John 1 and Hebrews 1 and so on, it's actually much more extensive than a few proof texts, but The church, to clarify the issue, said, no, we believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is not only fully man, but that he is fully God, and they used a particular term to capture this. He is not heteroousios, of a different substance than the Father. He is not even homoousios, of like substance with the Father. He is homoousios. He is of the same substance with the Father. And after they brought that matter into razor-sharp clarity from the Scriptures, we all become responsible for that achievement or attainment. So if we might look back on some of the fathers who lived before Nicaea who really believed the same substantial doctrine, but perhaps were not as precise or careful in their speech, We look on them certainly with having a lesser degree of responsibility or culpability. But after Nicaea, we have a much greater responsibility. But it's two things. We have a richer inheritance, right? So what the fathers had to fight for and battle through in frequently painful historical circumstances, we're simply heirs. We sit on the sidelines. We get to sit in the bleachers and listen to the discussion, the debate from the Word of God, and simply receive the teaching of the Scriptures hard won by those ancient fathers. So we are the heirs of Nicaea. We are the heirs of the Chalcedonian formulation. How does the full humanity and the full deity of the Lord Jesus in one person, how do those two natures relate to each other? so on. We are the heirs of the medieval dissenters, the Pelicans and the Waldensians, and more recently we are heirs of the Reformation, the articulation of the Solas, and we are also heirs of as English-speaking people in particular, we are the heirs of the First and Second Reformations in the British Isles, the Westminster Standards, and the accomplishment and the achievements of those covenanting generations. So, as I've said, there's a great blessing and a richness of inheritance living post-Nicaea and post-Reformation. It's interesting, history is the great testing ground of ideas and doctrines, doctrinal propositions are raised. Some of the greatest minds in the history of the world have debated and disputed those propositions. And we get to sit on the sidelines, evaluate the arguments in light of the Word of God, arguments derived from the Word of God. We get to see which makes sense with the sum total of biblical teaching and which don't. And so what was hard won by former generations simply becomes our inheritance. So with a wealthy inheritance, there certainly comes wealth, but also greater responsibility. And we are responsible for what has come before us. Consider one ethical maxim from the Lord Jesus Christ, for unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required, and to whom men have committed much of him they will ask the more." Luke 12, 48. So we have been given much by way of inheritance, and so much is required of us. Another perspective on the same truth as Paul tells the Philippian Christians in chapter 3, where to we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule and let us mind the same thing. So doctrinally and practically we are responsible to walk by what has already been attained. I once, in having a conversation with a Christian, had that Christian lament. Well, it's a lot when you look at the body of Christian teaching from the Scripture that has come down to us through the ages. There's a lot to learn. And to this particular Christian on this particular day, it seemed like a heavy burden. But I reminded him that that's kind of a strange thing. Try to imagine being a person who upon the death of a father has inherited many millions of dollars. distributed into many, many kinds and varieties of accounts, as well as a rich portfolio of stocks and bonds and real estate and vehicles and all of those sorts of things. There's a wealthy inheritance there, right? But also a great and extensive responsibility in acting as the curator of this vast inheritance. It is both of those things. It is great wealth and it is great responsibility. But I am thinking that there would probably be very few that would walk away from the inheritance because of the responsibility. I'd rather not have it because I don't want to be responsible for it. Or if we would take the inheritance without responsibility, what happens but that the inheritance ends up being squandered and coming to nothing before too long. So my use here is very simple. As we are reminded by the Chronicler that we stand on the shoulders of preceding generations, we need to value our inheritance. And then finally, we need to take our place in passing that inheritance on to succeeding generations. So first of all, that lays upon us a burden of receiving. the body of teaching, doctrinal and practical, that has come from preceding generations so that we might pass on. So turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm 44, beginning in verse one. Psalm 44, beginning in verse one. We have heard with our ears, O God, Our fathers have told us what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old, how thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand and plantets them, how thou didst afflict the people and cast them out. So here the present generation is confessing before the Lord, as it were, that their fathers had told them of the mighty works of God in preceding generations. And now flip forward to Psalm 78. Psalm 78, beginning in verse 1, you see the responsibility to both receive and pass on, receive and pass on for each generation. Psalm 78, beginning in verse 1, O my people, to the law, incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength. and his wonderful works that he hath done. For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children, that the generation to come might know them, Even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children, that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments, and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with them. So here you get generations receiving the inheritance of past ages, doctrinal and practical, and endeavoring to pass it on to the next generation because there is much to learn in those preceding generations. And part of the commandment that has been delivered to us is to take what has been learned by preceding generations and to pass it on, to have this sense of history, a sense of history that really needs to be restored in our midst. And if I might part with just one word to children, if it is God's commandment to your parents, to teach you the scriptures as those scriptures have been faithfully taught to them, then obviously your reciprocal duty, the implied reciprocal duty on your part, is to faithfully learn. So if it's the parent's job faithfully to teach, then it is your job faithfully to learn so that you might take your place in this generational succession and teach your children after you.