2020-11-08 Shoulders or Shadows?

A praise report is shared about a kids program called Hope Club, where a new girl came and expressed interest in learning about the Lord. The importance of mentorship is discussed, with examples of Uzziah and Joshua from the Bible. Uzziah had success but became proud and acted corruptly, while Joshua remained humble and was mentored by Moses. The responsibility of the church to mentor the next generation is emphasized, and the importance of pointing people back to God is highlighted. The speaker encourages people to be mentors and have conversations with young people. Just before I start in my actual message, I just wanted to give you guys kind of a praise report update, who likes those, right? So as the NextGen coordinator, the two areas that I primarily oversee is kids and youth. And we have a mid-week kids program called Hope Club, which has been running for, it's relatively new, I'd say a month, month and a half, something like that. Recently, the young adults group, One Accord, had it on their heart to give out these gift bags recently. And with that, they brought to me the idea of what if we included some little invitations for the various kids groups that we have at the church? Hope Club, Engage, and that sort of thing. And just this past Wednesday at Hope Club, we had a brand new little girl come in. And her mom told us that she got the invitation from our little gift bag, and that she's never been to any church ever before, that she's starting to ask questions, that she wants to learn about the Lord. And they said, we think this would be a great place to start. And I said, absolutely, it's a great place to start. Come on in. And so they love the program, plan to be back every week. So that's exciting. So that's something all of us have been able to be a part of. So thank you for your support and prayers and all of the ways that you guys do that. So with that, I do have a whole bunch of these. So I've put them on the table. So on your way out, if you feel so inclined, to grab some little invite cards for the kids and youth groups. Maybe you know somebody, maybe you have a neighbor or whatever that you think would be blessed by that. What age range? So Hope Club is basically ages 5 to 10. And then the Engage is like middle school, high school, that kind of thing. So yeah. The nice thing is, because I've always encouraged people to invite people out and stuff like that. But even the kids say, we want to invite them. But then when they ask us, so what is it? We go, it's a thing that you can come in, and it's fun and stuff. And so this explains everything that it is, right on it, where it is, when it is, all that jazz. So anyways, enough with the commercials. Let's get to the message. Well, good morning, everybody. Today, as Steven mentioned there, that I want to talk a little bit about mentorship. I think mentorship is super valuable. It is something that has helped me through a lot of times in my life. I believe that everyone should have a mentor, no matter how young, no matter how old you are. I believe everyone should have a mentoring relationship, especially those of us in leadership positions for that accountability and everything like that. In fact, I believe it's such an important factor that today, I'm actually wearing my Engage t-shirt. That's the name of our youth group. And I just want to show you, because on the back of our shirts, we write mentor. Because the people who are helping, that's what we're looking for, mentors, right? People who, not people who can necessarily run around and play games, but people who can mentor the next generation. We believe that that's what we want our leaders to be, mentors, right? And I think where this is so important as well is if we're not mentoring those, we can't be so surprised when things don't go the way we think that they should in the next generation. And with that, I wanted to read Romans 10, verse 14, which is, how then can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And I think when we hear preaching, we think of maybe what I'm doing up here, what Pastor Ralph does regularly up here. But I don't think preaching is just speaking from a pulpit, but preaching is a lifestyle. We preach by how we live our life too, right? There's an expression, maybe you've heard it before, where people will say, maybe you're the only Bible that somebody will ever read. Now, we hope that that's not the case, but what we mean by that is that people are watching and they are seeing if we're living up to what we espouse and that's where we can be preaching as well through example, right? So, getting back to that mentorship, I wanna jump into 2 Chronicles, chapter 26. I'll be making some commentary throughout, but it's a big scripture section, but I'll give you a few rests in there to kind of contextualize where we're going with this. But starting at the first verse of 2 Chronicles, chapter 26. Then all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was 16 years old and made him king in place of his father Amziah. He built Eloth and restored it to Judah after the king Amaziah slept with his fathers in death. Uzziah was 16 years old when he became king and he reigned 52 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jechaliah of Jerusalem. He did right in the sight of the Lord in accordance with everything that his father Amaziah had done. He continued to seek God in the days of Zechariah who had understanding through the vision of God. And as long as he sought the Lord, God caused him to prosper. And I want to just stop there for a minute before we continue, just to pull out a few things. Number one, Uzziah was 16 years old when he became king. I want you to think back to when you were 16 years old, or maybe if you're not 16 yet, think where you might be in a few years. Think about when you were 16 and imagine, you know, maybe your maturity levels, your wisdom levels, and now your father's passed on and boom, you're king. What would you do? If you asked me when I was 16, what I would do if I became king, I'd probably institute pizza as the national food or something. But here he was, he was king. And he needed some wisdom, right? Don't we all need a little bit of wisdom? It says though that he did have, that he continued to seek God in the days of Zechariah who had understanding. I did a little bit of research. It's a little bit unclear on who this Zechariah guy is, but it's believed that basically he was a prophet. And Uzziah was getting mentorship from this guy who's getting some wisdom from this guy, which he greatly needed. What I think is so interesting about the language of this chapter is that oftentimes in books like 1 and 2 Chronicles, 1 and 2 Kings, and all this kind of stuff, we hear things like so-and-so did right in the sight of the Lord like their father David. So-and-so did evil in the sight of the Lord like their father Jeroboam, kind of thing, right? And oftentimes they're not referring to his, their actual father, but their great-great-granddaddy who has become a bit of a spiritual father in the way that they walked out their life, right? But there's usually this clear cut that kind of were a terrible king or they were a good king. But this is one of those instances where, depends on what point we're talking about, right? So here he's saying that he had understanding and that God caused him to prosper as long as he sought the Lord. It's a very conditional statement. And I find that very interesting, but let's read on. This kind of just goes into how much success this guy had when he was following the Lord. So we're picking up in verse six here. He went out and made war against the Philistines and broke through the wall of Gath, the wall of Jabnah, and the wall of Ashdod. And he built cities near Ashdod and elsewhere among the Philistines. God helped him against the Philistines and against the Arabs who lived in Gerbal and the Muanites. The Ammonites paid tribute to Uzziah. In other words, they gave him money and his fame spread abroad, even as far as the border of Egypt, for he became very strong. Uzziah also built towers in Jerusalem at the corner gate, the valley gate, and at the corner buttress of the wall and fortified them. He also built towers in the wilderness and dug many cisterns, for he had a great deal of livestock, both in the lowlands and in the plain. He also had farmers and vine dressers in the hill country and in the fertile fields, for he loved the soil. Moreover, Uzziah had an army ready for battle, which went into combat by divisions according to the number of their muster, as recorded by J.L., the scribe of Messiah, the official, under the direction of Hananiah, one of the king's commanders. The total number of the heads of the father's household of the Valley of Men was 2,600. Under their command was an army of 307,500, who could wage war with great power to help the king against the enemy. Moreover, Uzziah prepared shields, spears, helmets, body armor, bows, and sling stones for the entire army. In Jerusalem, he made machines of war invented by skillful men to put on the towers and on the corner battlements for the purpose of shooting arrows and large stones. And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped until he was strong. Now, that's a lot of reading there, a lot of tidbits, fun facts about Uzziah's reign, but the main thing that I wanna pull out of that is that just emphasizes, like, wow, he had all these livestock, he had all these fighting men, he had all these things ready to go, and he had this strength because of how God was blessing him because he was following him, right? And because I believe his mentor, Zechariah, was directing him there, you know, as well. So this is where it takes a turn, in verse 16. But when Uzziah became strong, so God was building him up, right, giving him this success, but then when he got to that point of success, he forgot how he got there. He became so proud of himself and his accomplishments that he acted corruptly and he was unfaithful and sinned against the Lord as God, for he went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. Now, maybe that sounds weird, how is that a bad thing? He wasn't, he wasn't, exactly, he wasn't qualified to do that, right? But he thought he can do anything at this point, right? So then Azariah, the priest, went in after him, and with him 80 priests of the Lord, men of courage. They opposed King Uzziah and said to him, "'It's not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, "'but for the priests, the son of Aaron, "'who have been consecrated to burn incense. "'Get out of the sanctuary, for you have been unfaithful "'and will have no honor from the Lord.'" I admire their honesty. It wouldn't have been easy to stand up to the king and say, hey, you shouldn't be doing that, right? You know, they had seen many records, both inside and outside Israel, where standing up for something like that could have got you killed, right? Then Uzziah, with a censer in his hand to burn incense, was enraged. And while he was enraged with the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead before the priests in the house of the Lord, beside the incense altar. As Azariah, the chief priest, and all the priests looked toward him, behold, he was leprous on his forehead, and they hurried him out of there. And he also hurried to get out because the Lord had stricken him. King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death, and being a leper, he lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord. And his son, Jotham, took charge of the king's household, judging and governing the people of the land. In fact, in the next just couple of verses to summarize there, it basically tells us that this separation carried even to his death, like they actually buried him separate from the other kings as a result of all this, because this is a serious thing, you know? So here we have an example of someone who, he had some mentorship. He didn't really listen to all of it, obviously. He got too big for his britches, as we'd say, and things went south pretty quickly, right? But I wanna jump over to someone else who had mentorship in the Bible here. And we're gonna jump backwards to Exodus chapter 33. And we're going to start, again, that's Exodus chapter 33, starting in verse seven. Now Moses, now Moses was the leader of the people of Israel at this time, this person who was chosen by God to help deliver the people, to guide the people. So this is who we're talking about here. Now Moses used to take his own tent and pitch it outside of the camp, far away from the camp. And he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would arise and stand, each at his tent door, and look at Moses until he entered the tent. Whenever Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would ascend and stand at the doorway of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. Now, for a little bit of context here, the Israelites at this point, they understand the cloud to be representing and showing God's presence, God's guidance, as he had done with them before. So for them to see this, they knew, okay, something's up. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the tent door, all the people would rise and worship, each at his tent door. And so the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face. When Moses returned to the camp, his attendant, Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. And we see other examples in this portion of the Bible where Joshua is with Moses on these pivotal things. And for those of us that know a little bit about this story, we know that Joshua later becomes the next leader of Israel, right? And here he was, you know, it calls him a young man here. In other translations, it calls him his young aid, right? His assistant, right? He was being mentored by Moses, by example, by all of these things, right? So he was going in with him as Moses was talking to God in the presence of God. And Joshua stayed even after Moses left, right? He just stayed in that presence because he wanted to connect to God, right? He saw, you know, that's where they're getting their true leadership from. That's where Moses is getting leadership from. He went to the leader's leader, you know? And it's interesting because we see that Joshua is in fact the one later on who, he's one of the spies that when they're coming to the promised land, Moses sends out 10 spies and like, check it out, guys. And eight of them are all like freaked out. Like there's giants, there's big walls. Let's forget about it. Let's get out of here. Joshua and Caleb, though, were the only ones who were like, no, we can do this. God has got this, right? And why do you think he knew God had got this? Because he was in the presence of God here. He was with his mentor, showing him examples of God coming through, right? And Joshua ultimately was the one, was God's representative who led the people in to the promised land later. Moses didn't even get to go in. So with all of this, I think we see two examples of these young people who went in very different directions, you know? One who even after his mentor was passed away, you know, later we see Joshua in the beginning of Joshua, it's just over and over and over and over. The people, God, all these people basically telling Joshua, be courageous, be strong and courageous. Calm down, you got this, right? And God saying to him that he would be with him the way he was with Moses, you know what I mean? Showing him how he had been with his mentor. But then we see Uzziah, that he didn't recognize where that strength was coming from. Where Joshua right away is recognizing, it's not about Moses, it's about God. So I wanna get connected with God. Whereas Uzziah, he kind of missed that. I'm reading in a little here, but I feel like that's a safe assumption here is that he missed that that strength was from God, the strength that he was experiencing. And he thought he could do it all himself. So I think that as we look at it around us, as we look at the church, as we look at our communities, we look at the world. I think sometimes maybe we look at, let's say you're out in a public place, right? Have you ever been in this situation? You're in a restaurant, you see a little kid, just loud, back talking, this, that, and the other thing. And you think, my goodness, why didn't they raise that kid right, right? We think those kinds of those thoughts, right? And we look at it, we go, okay, that parent is the primary teacher for that child. So we think, okay, how come that person who is responsible for that area of teaching that child didn't do that thing? But it's funny because I think when it comes to spiritual matters, we don't look at the people who are primarily responsible for those teaching things. Now, obviously I do believe parents are a big part of that, but I also believe that as the church, we are supposed to be teaching, mentoring this next generation. I think sometimes we look at our culture, right? And we think, well, how come they do this, that, and the other thing, right? It's like, well, have we taught them? Have we told them, right? I hear lots of, we blame the schools, like, oh, the schools, they made the kids so worldly, but is the spiritual responsibility on them or on us? I think that is on us, you know? I think that there's things that we wait for. You know, we think we're waiting for them to come up to us. You know, I think lots of us might be willing to be mentors, but we're waiting for someone to come to us, and that's very likely not going to happen, right? We've got to go to them, you know? We have to start where people are at, right? We have to start where people are at to be able to reach them and bring them in. I think I'll just give a few just quick examples of people along the way who have been able to mentor me. When I was in Nova Scotia, before I came to here, I rented a room from an older lady at our church, and wonderful, wonderful, wonderful woman of God named Elena, and we would often have these great talks, because she could be very frank. She could just say what she was thinking, what she was feeling, but she had an empathy, too, you know, a strong empathy, and those things don't often go hand-in-hand, frankness and empathy, but it's a wonderful mix to have when you can find those, you know? And I think one of the greatest things that, as I look at the list of people who helped mentor me, one of the greatest things they always did was pointing me back to God, right? I would go visit with these people and say, okay, here's the problem I'm dealing with, you know, this person's doing this, blah, blah, blah, blah, what's your advice? And I wanted, like, okay, do this, this is what you gotta do, Chris, right? But they're like, well, I don't know all the details, but the Holy Spirit does. Maybe you should talk to him first, and then we'll come talk about it, you know? So, I think that that's the key thing, right? As I obviously feel, as a person doing NextGen, right, my biggest heart is to see the young people mentored, you know, and that's why I show you on the shirt that it says mentor, because, you know, I've approached different people at different times to talk about, you know, where maybe they could help with the youth and things like that, and I feel like I'm not often very good at articulating what it is that's needed, right? And I think, you know, people might have, everybody's got their own from their different background, their different experiences, ideas of what it might look like and what might be needed, you know, they might think, like, is it like a rock concert with like some sort of Olympic games going on at the same time, I can't handle that kind of thing? No, it's not, but, and as I've said to people before, you know, people are like, I don't know if I can keep up with kids, they're fast, and these games and things, that's okay, I can't either at my age. So, I'm not a very athletic person, but where there's so much value, where we've seen so much growth is in just being there and having conversations with them, having conversations, mentoring, because they, especially the kids that we have are, they're open, they have questions, they're looking for some guidance where, you know, they know that there's answers in the word, they don't know where to look, right? And they need a tour guide, a tour guide, basically. But, so that discipleship, so if that is something that the Lord is putting on your heart, you know, you can talk to me about that later, but give it some prayer, give it some thought, see if the Lord is tugging on that. But aside from even that, I just wanna encourage us all to look for mentors and look for who we can be mentors to in life, maybe it's not with the kids, maybe you're in your work, there's somebody who's younger than you, that's a colleague, and maybe they're going through a rough time or something like that. Maybe it's, you know, someone in your family, maybe it's, you know, whoever it may be, but look for the people we can mentor. And number two is looking for who we can be in a mentoring relationship with, who we can be learning from, because I think lifelong, we should always be learning more and more. And ultimately, the ultimate mentor that all of us need to be spending a lot of time with is the Holy Spirit, and I think that we need that guidance, right? Especially if we're gonna be mentors to others, we need to give them from a place of being connected with the Holy Spirit, or otherwise, you're just gonna give them our best ideas, our best opinions, which might be fine, but they're not the best that we can give from the Holy Spirit. Yeah, that's about all I have today. So, I think Stephen had a prayer that he wanted to do. Very good, Chris. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.