Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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A Day of Days

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

A Day of Celebration

The sermon has gotten shorter the longer this service has gone. So as long as it goes, you still should thank me afterwards, because it will only be probably half as long as it is planned. Not kidding. Turn to Psalm 78. It is always God’s goodness and providence when he lines things up. Diane actually read from this without me ever talking with her about this passage. And Jake just mentioned something along the same. And I mean, today is the day of days. It’s a day of celebration, right? God is very good. It’s a day of rejoicing, and recounting history is biblical. And more specifically, recounting the history of God’s people is biblical. But even more precisely, recounting the history of God’s goodness to his creation and to his people is biblical. And that’s what we see here in Psalm 78. We won’t read it all. It’s actually the second longest psalm that we have. And what is it? It’s a history lesson. That’s what it is.

Psalm 78 and Our History

And then he starts with the history lesson.

He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.

(Psalm 78:5–8)

Right there we have three generations, right? Then pick it up in verse 13:

He divided the sea and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like a heap. In the daytime he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a fiery light. He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock and caused waters to flow down like rivers.

(Psalm 78:13–16)

All right, so I mean, the Red Sea. Here we are, history. Jump even further, pick it up in verse 54: “And he brought them to his holy land, to the mountain which his right hand had won. He drove out nations before them; he appointed them for a possession,” and all the way up to David, to basically where the writer who’s writing it knows of the history.

What’s our history? Well, I’ll give it to you very briefly. It was a fledgling group that started on a deck in someone’s backyard. That’s how Liberty started. And then we went to a church. Now, we had to meet on Saturday nights because we were renting from other churches and they met on Sundays. And so the church that we first met in was attached to a Jiffy Lube. So there’s like office buildings attached to this Jiffy Lube. So we still call it the Jiffy Lube Church. And that’s what we still call it today. I can’t even remember the name of the church that we rented from. Sorry, guys. Then we moved to a Foursquare church. I mean, we kept growing. God was good; we kept growing. We moved to a Foursquare church. Then we outgrew that, and the church that was here at the time, O’Fallon Church of the Nazarene right here, their church had kind of gotten smaller. They were kind of looking to reboot and move further west. They wanted—we had a rental agreement with them, and part of that agreement was we basically had like first rights of refusal. So any offer made on the church when they got ready to sell, we got to at least match that offer. And they wanted, I mean, they wanted as much as they could get, understandably, from the building, an amount that we couldn’t afford. Well, as time went on, they kept dropping the price to a point where we could afford it. And God in his goodness—I still remember the meeting. One of the deacons basically said, if every family in this church gives X number of dollars, that will cover the down payment, and we can buy this church. And by God’s grace, we were able to do that. So we purchased this building back in 2002. We were gracious to pay it off just a few short years ago. And this building has done a lot of ministry through Liberty, but it’s also seen a lot of ministry through other organizations that we’ve let use it. The Knights organization, Classical Conversations, Bible Quizzing, and St. Charles Christian Home Educators, and on and on and on and on and on. Much, much, much ministry over the years. I appreciate our deacons’ hearts. They want the building to be used. And so even though it usually falls on them to figure out how to fix it and keep it going, they are great mechanics, so to speak, and do a good job of bringing the rest of us in to help with that.

In the early days, the Lord was faithful, and in these later days, he’s been faithful. There’s been high times and there’s been low times. The storms have come, and by God’s grace, we’ve weathered them. I used to undervalue special days. I know everyone has opinions on different birthdays and Valentine’s Days and things like that. I’m still not real big on Valentine’s Day, but that’s okay. But I used to undervalue special days. And here’s what I realized: when you do that, you’re doing more than undervaluing the event. So think about it, you undervalue the work and you undervalue the sweat and you undervalue the effort and the toil and you undervalue the good thing that God has done. And so really you’re saying, God, that’s really not a big deal. Which is really saying, God, what you’re doing is not a big deal, which isn’t the truth. So we want to make a big deal when God is doing big-deal things, and whatever God is doing, it’s a big deal. So when he blesses, we should acknowledge and celebrate. My dad told me once—he said, I think he told me this on my wedding day, or coming up to it. He said, “May the best day of your past be the worst day of your future.” Took me a second to understand what he was saying. But may the best day of your past be the worst day of your future, meaning like the pinnacle of the past, a glorious thing, may that be the worst in the sense that it doesn’t get any worse than that. It just keeps getting better and better. Now, I think he messed up one time and he was at a wedding and he was trying to say something to that effect to the groom, and he’s like, “I hope this is the worst day of your future.” Okay. So you do need to make sure you phrase it right, okay. I’ve said quite a few times the last few years that Liberty’s best days lie ahead of us. Now that’s not to take anything away from the past.

Sound Doctrine and Right Living

Because of the time, I’ll cut out even more, but I do want to say I think, similar to what Pastor Vaughan says, there’s three things. I actually had like eight things, but I’m going to cut it down to three. And the first one also mentioned was sound doctrine. So we don’t just want to say something on paper, what we believe. You know, we’ve been meeting with the new members we introduced today; they have to read through the membership handbook, right? So we have things on paper. There’s a lot of churches out there that have things on paper. In fact, even some of the liberal churches, you can still go to their websites, and it’s something that you could probably agree with. On paper. On paper. So we want to have sound doctrine, but we want to do more than that. 2 Timothy 4 says, and that’s part of the baton, right?

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

(2 Timothy 4:3–4)

But what will they have? You remember what it says? Itching ears. That’s been happening for 2,000 years. Right? Well, let’s make sure it doesn’t happen here. Sound doctrine. So we have to have it on paper, but then we have to practice it. All right? So, orthodoxy, right teaching, but also what you would call orthopraxy, right living, which is again really what Pastor Vaughan mentioned in loving one another. So in Matthew 3, it says, “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.” They had the right theology, the wrong practice. So we want right thinking. Yes, orthodoxy: say the right thing, think the right things, believe the right things. So we need instruction in the Word, but also right living. The words and the actions match up. So orthopraxy, right practice. We actually do the things that we say we believe. Sound doctrine with it actually producing something in us that is visible. With that, how does that happen? Well, you’re just going to get to hear two of them really today, and really just one, and it’s discipleship.

An Intergenerational Church

And it goes into what Diane alluded to and what Jake said, and what I mentioned at the members’ meeting the other night, is this idea of intergenerational, intergenerational ministry, intergenerational church. The difference between multi-generational is you can have generations present, multi-generation, but that doesn’t mean anything past the fact that they’re present. We want an intergenerational church where there are multi-generations present, but it’s more than that. They’re fellowshiping with one another, they’re ministering to one another. Even James alluded to it, right? Like he’s being poured into, but then he’s pouring into others. So there’s this idea of the generation. So if you take Psalm 78, if you go back to that and think about it, right, you’re getting this history lesson, but then if you go to Judges, just listen to this, and Judges—actually turn there. Yeah, turn there. Judges chapter 2. One of the saddest sections in the Bible. Verse 6, Judges 2:

When Joshua dismissed the people, the people of Israel went each to his inheritance to take possession of the land. And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

(Judges 2:6–10)

The baton from Moses to Joshua, it’s passed on. Does he carry it? Yeah, he does a pretty good job carrying it himself. But look what it says: there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. The gospel can be lost pretty quickly. It only takes a generation or two. So you can have that first generation and they’re passionate and they love the Lord, and then they raise up their kids and they believe, but maybe not passionate. Well, what’s going to happen with that third generation? Are they going to be passionate to pass it on? No. It doesn’t take long. That’s why in 2 Timothy—the life verse of one of the first pastors here along with Pastor Vaughan, Pastor Tim Ward, his life verse, 2 Timothy 2:2:

And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

(2 Timothy 2:2)

Now think about that. It’s going from Paul—“what you have heard from me,” Paul. So, from Paul to Timothy, entrust to faithful men, right, third generation, who will be able to teach others also, fourth generation. We can lose the generation by losing the gospel, but not just our generation, the one to come.

Discipleship of the Family and the Nations

So you have to stop thinking about just your children’s generation. You have to stop doing that. You have to start thinking not just even about your grandchildren’s generation. You really need to think like three generations ahead and more. You’ve got to think past that, just like this verse is talking about. You’re being trained to train others to train others. You know, you’re younger parents, you’re raising your kids, but you’re raising future moms and dads, wives and husbands. You’re raising people that will one day raise your grandchildren. Psalm 71 says, verse 18: “So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.” And then in Psalm 89:1: “I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.”

This means there’s really, I would say, two aspects to this when we’re talking intergenerational and discipleship. There’s two aspects. One, it’s your own family, your own family. And some of you are older here, but that’s the intergenerational part. Maybe your kids don’t go here. They’re grown and they got their own families and they’re going elsewhere. That’s fine. But intergenerationally, you’re still concerned about the next generation here. And that generation here. Intergenerational. What difference can you make here? But there’s that discipleship. But then also parents that are growing up, there’s growing up your kids right here right now. I mean, there’s discipleship of the family. And yes, you might be excited about Jesus, but there is no guarantee, there is no guarantee, apart from God’s mercy, that your kids will grow up to be excited and passionate about Jesus. You need to be on your knees. You should be having family worship regularly. Whatever is important to you, they will see that. If the Word’s important, then they need to see that the Word is important. And just once a week ain’t going to cut it. Coming here, hearing it, that’s good, but they need to hear it from you. They need to see it from you. So that’s important. That’s discipleship.

But then there’s another type of discipleship, and that’s of the nations, the Great Commission, right? So there’s discipleship here, but then there’s discipleship far. And it’s not just go evangelize the nations, it’s go and make what? Disciples. So we’re not just—we’re sending the Cooks, not just to make converts, but we are sending them, and we’ve sent others, and we’ll continue to send more. Sometimes we ourselves go on shorter-term trips, but it’s a discipleship of the nations. We want to say, hey, where’s Liberty going to be? Where are we going to be in 30 years? These are the key things. Here, right with the family, but also making sure that we belong, that we flourish, and then we’re looking out there and we’re going. Opportunities arise and we’re going. Opportunities come and we take them. Why? Because that’s the Great Commission. We’re putting into motion, right, what we’re commanded to do, back to the sound doctrine and living it out, the orthopraxy. But we have to make sure. Listen, the great thing about some churches is it should be able to easily outlive whatever the current pastor is. It’s not about one man. All right? And then there’ll be someone else. And then there’ll be someone else. And someday Justus’s time will come and go. That won’t be for a while, but you never know, right? But if the heart, if the beating heart of the church are these things, then it will be here for generations and generations, for your children’s, children’s, children’s generation, should the Lord tarry. And that starts not just with winging it; it starts with faithfulness. Are you hearing me?

So we serve a good God, and even if God in his infinite wisdom were to have Liberty’s time be very short—I don’t believe that’s true—the universal church will always remain, right? And it will go forward, and the gates of hell will not prevail. So we can be confident knowing that we serve a God who was high and lifted up. He’s there right now in the heavenlies. Seated at the right hand is his Son Jesus, who will one day come back to judge the living and the dead. Amen? Amen. May we persevere until that day. Let’s pray.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank you for your goodness for the last 30 years. Give us 30-plus more years to be made a blessing at Liberty. We pray for the members from long ago who have moved on, God. We pray your blessing upon them. Do your work in their lives. Bring about sanctification, Lord. Let them be blessed, God. We pray for the members here now, that they would continue to grow, that you would continue to use your Word to sanctify us, to wash us in the truth, Lord. We pray for future members that aren’t here yet. Bring them in at the proper time, God. Let them be a blessing to us. Let us be a blessing to them. We pray, Lord, that your name would continue to be lifted up as long as Liberty exists, God, that it would be lifted up in the halls of this church, from this podium and from our voices, all for your glory. Amen.