This is No Time for Nostalgia (August 4, 2024)

The Call to Hear the Sermon All the Way Through

Your Bibles to Genesis chapter 3. Genesis chapter 3 will be in verses 22 through 24 in just a few moments but today we we start a month-long series on local church ministry and mission and during this series I hope to point a way forward for us as we continue our 111 year mission to faithfully worship Christ here and reach this community with the good news of Jesus.

This church has been here for a hundred and eleven years faithfully serving Christ and we want that to continue for another hundred and eleven years and beyond. We often say it around here that we exist to worship God and win glory for King Jesus and so that's what we want to point a way forward in doing and my hope is that through this series that we will be spurred on to love and good deeds in that mission.

Now today's sermon is going to be a little bit different than the normal and so if you're visiting with us what I normally do is I open up the the Bible to the next passage in the book that we're going through.

So most recently this summer and last summer before and next summer Lord willing we've been we're going through the book of Proverbs and so before that we were going through the book of Acts and what we'll do is just turn the page, preach the text, whatever the next passage is we'll go through that next passage.

That's what we normally do here but every so often we'll sprinkle in a topical sermon or a short series of topical sermons where I try to tie together some loose strands in the scriptures and then present a biblical concept based on those strands throughout the scripture and then apply that to our particular context.

That's what I plan to do today. I want to introduce a topic. I want to make a case for that concept from the Bible and then I want to spend the bulk of our time applying it to our church and so it'll just be slightly different than what we normally do.

We'll be in a few different scripture passages rather than just one but we don't make our you know our steady diet is go through a book of the Bible but occasionally we'll go off script on that and do something like we'll do today.

Now before I do that I do have a request for you and that request is I want you to I want you to hear me out all the way through because if you just stop at the at the sermon title that I'll give you in just a minute or the topic that I'll give you in just a minute it's possible you might get your feathers ruffled and I am not intending to ruffle any feathers but if you hear me out especially the section where I try to explicitly say what I do not mean I think we'll be all good and so the request is to hear me out.

But on that subject of ruffling feathers just as a as a little bit of an aside because this is good to say every now and again. I try to speak plainly what the Bible says and then I try to make very specific applications for what the Bible says to our very specific context and our very specific lives.

I think that's good for us because we don't want to just be hearers of the word but we want to be doers of the word too but that means from time to time I'm probably going to ruffle some feathers or step on toes to use a couple of different idioms for that.

So I would encourage you if that's ever the case come talk to me about it. You know sometimes the Bible just steps on our toes and there's not much that I can do about it. It steps on my toes as well and I don't like it but the Bible comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable for an old preacher saying there.

So sometimes there's not much we can do about it. Sometimes I might just get it wrong and or maybe I get it right but I say it wrong and so that happens sometimes. So if that's the case I would love the opportunity to correct myself and you'd be doing me a favor by coming to me.

And then lastly sometimes people just hear what isn't said. That happens too and again I would appreciate the opportunity just to bring clarity there if that's the case. But this is prompted by nothing other than the fact that that phrase ruffle feathers came to me when I was preparing the sermon and so I just want to say if we ever need to talk about something on that let's do that.

I would much rather have conversations with folks about that because the Word of God shapes us and it is good for us. So anyway with that said back to the sermon. I've given this sermon title This Is No Time For Nostalgia.

Why This Is No Time for Nostalgia

And so again I want you to please hear me out because that could sound more negative than I mean it and I hope that we'll be in good agreement by the time we get done. But by this in this time I mean our current cultural moment.

The present time in which we live in which the stakes are high for church and society that this time this time is no time for nostalgia. I want to make the case that that now this time is not a time for that.

Nostalgia being understood in a very specific way I'll get to in a minute and define it. Because nostalgia has the tendency to lull us to sleep and not take the proper actions needed to advance the kingdom of God in our time.

Tell me first say what do I mean by nostalgia? To get there I want to mention an essay I read recently called Against Nostalgia. Now it was a political essay I'm not gonna talk about politics here but the argument has a lot of application to church life.

And so the essay defined nostalgia as simply the belief that the past was better. And just at that level of abstraction I wouldn't argue the point too much. Taking many metrics the past was indeed better than the present.

However he goes on in this essay to talk about a few different subtypes of nostalgia. One of being emotional nostalgia which is made up of sweet and enjoyable memories combined with some sadness for their loss.

Then he talks about political nostalgia. I'm just gonna put it here so I can then translate it to church life. And that is taking the emotional nostalgia translating it into political desires and concluding that the future should be made more or completely like the past.

And that one's frame of action should be structured to make this possible. Now I'm gonna leave the political theory to another venue that's fun to talk about but that's not our purpose here. But I do want to translate that idea and and submit that there is such a thing as ecclesial that is church nostalgia.

Ecclesial nostalgia concludes that the church should be made more or completely like the past and that it's programming should be structured to make this possible. Again I'm gonna get to what I don't mean by that in just a minute so bear with me but first I just want to note that there's some dangers involved with ecclesial nostalgia.

I'll outline that outline those as we go along and there are dangers that threaten our mission together. But first I want to root this idea I want to root a concept in the Bible that we can then apply.

And the concept from the Bible that I want to I want us to see is that sometimes you can't go back. So let's begin in Genesis chapter 3 verses 22 through 24 God's Word says this then the Lord God said behold the man has become like one of us.

Paul's real fast this is so this is Garden of Eden Adam and Eve this is after they have eaten from the tree that God said don't eat from. They specifically disobeyed and this is where we pick up in the story.

Behold the man has become like one of us to no good and evil and now lest he put out his hand and take also the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.

So he drove out the man and he placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. So after the fall God sent Adam and Eve out of the garden in order to guard the tree of life.

He set the cherubim there with the flaming sword in every direction so that they could not come back into the garden and then eat of the tree of life in their fallen estate. This is this is God's discipline to them but it was also God's mercy to spare them from eating of the tree of life in their fallen estate.

The reality was this they could not go back to the garden. They had to go and build a life outside of it because the angel guarded the way. Sometimes you can't go back. Now we keep moving on in Genesis.

We come to Genesis 19 the story of Lot. God was merciful to Lot and an angel brought Lot and his wife out of the city. I'm gonna pick up in Genesis 19 verse 17 and read so it came to pass when they had brought them outside that he said escape for your life.

Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere in the plain. Escape to the mountains lest you be destroyed. That's the instruction to them. We go down to verse 26. But his wife looked back behind him and she became a pillar of salt.

You remember the story. You see God saved Lot and his wife from the wicked city Sodom before its destruction but specifically told them not to look back from where they came. She disobeyed and when she did she died.

She was turned into a pillar of salt because sometimes you can't go back. Moving on in the Bible biblical story we come to numbers 11. This is when the wilderness generation had nostalgia for their time in Egypt and they were complaining.

God had given them manna to eat every day and they were complaining of this manna and they were thinking wistfully of Egypt's fish and cucumbers and melons and leeks and garlic and onions and they complained about it.

God judged them with quail and a plague. Forgetting what lay before them the promised land full of milk and honey a land good land for their possession. Israel longed to go back to Egypt to the land of captivity but God wouldn't allow it because sometimes you can't go back.

Moving on in the New Testament let me read from Philippians chapter 3 verses 13 and 14 where Paul says brethren I do not count myself to have apprehended but one thing I do forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead I press toward the goal for the prize of the upper call of God in Christ Jesus.

So here Paul in this chapter he's presenting his, recounting his credentials as a Pharisee and he says he forgets what lies behind and he strives for what lies ahead in Christ because sometimes you ought not to go back.

So what I want you to see in these Bible passages is that there is a category in the Bible of sometimes you can't go back. So I want you to hold that category in your heads and sometimes the reason you can't go back is because of sin.

Think of the exile. Think of Adam and Eve being exiled from the garden because of their sin looking back to Sodom. Sometimes it's because of new life in Jesus and what God has in store for you like we read about in Philippians chapter 3 with Paul.

But the category is there you can't go back that way it's closed. Time moves forward, time moves in one direction and that direction is forward. And so you have to step out of the garden and start walking east and build a life for yourself and all who will come after you.

Growth and Development in the Kingdom of Heaven

That's one concept. Second concept I want you to see in the Bible is the principle of growth and development. And so we see it in Matthew chapter 13 in the parables of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus says this, the kingdom of heaven is like mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field which indeed is the least of all the seeds but when it is grown is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.

The tiniest of all seeds grows up into the tree that the birds of the air make their nests in. And then he goes on and says another parable he spoke to them. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until it was all leavened.

And so the mustard seed doesn't stay a seed and the mustard tree doesn't stay small but it grows and it develops. And dough with leaven in it doesn't stay the same. It rises and you bake it and it's no longer what it was before.

It's no longer brick dough but it's bread. It develops and it becomes something greater than it was before over time. We see this in the world as well. In the beginning God placed Adam and Eve in the garden and the garden was the only place in the world that was rightly ordered.

The rest of the world was to be tamed and to be put into order by man. But by the end of the Bible the garden becomes a city and all the world is developed and put into order. From Genesis to Revelation we see this principle of growth and development from garden to city, from disorder to order.

And so I want us to keep these two biblical concepts in mind as we go today that sometimes you can't go back and that God's made the world in such a way that things grow and they develop. Now in thinking about the church and this idea of ecclesial nostalgia let me say clearly what I don't mean.

And so I'm not saying that we just need to start from scratch. I'm certainly not saying that we need to chase every current fad. I'm not saying that we just scratch everything and change everything all at once.

In fact I'm not announcing or proposing any changes to anything today. I just want us to wrap our minds around the principle. And I promise you if I ever do want to make significant changes or propose a significant change I wouldn't spring it on you from the pulpit one random Sunday.

There would be a lot of conversations ahead of time on that. I'm not saying that we have a disdain for the past. In fact we are duty bound by the fifth commandment to honor those who came before us. We are to mine the past for the wisdom of our fathers and mothers, learning from them, extracting the best from the past to meet the challenges of the present while building for the future.

Nor am I saying that the past was bad. I'm only saying that conditions change which sometimes means our approach must develop too. And lastly I'm not saying that we are disconnected from what came before us.

We are no more disconnected from our past than a roof is disconnected from the foundation. And so please hear me I'm not saying any of those things. What I am saying is that no one is ever able to relive the past.

It's a chronological impossibility. None of us can go back and relive the past. That way is closed and so what is left for us then is to assess current conditions and then build a thriving future. Now with all that said what's the problem with nostalgia or ecclesial nostalgia?

First I would say that it's a recipe for inaction. It has the tendency to lull us to sleep. So think about it. What if Adam, when he's dismissed from the garden, what if all he did was pine away for his days in the garden?

When he walked in the cool of the day with God himself and every tree except for the one was given to him for food. When his work was not frustrated. When he didn't eat by the sweat of his brow. What if he only looked back wistfully at those days?

You see he couldn't go back, an angel guarded the entrance. But if he had only pined away for the garden he would never have built a world. Or think of the Israelites. If they had gone back to eat fish and cucumbers in Egypt, in a land of captivity, they never would have conquered and taken the promised land and built the kingdom and established the throne of David and his line from which the Messiah came.

You see nostalgia paralyzes us, lulls us to sleep and keeps us from the good works that Christ has prepared beforehand for us to walk in. So the first problem leads to inaction. The second problem is that nostalgia is a recipe for wrong action.

That driven by sentimentality we use ineffective methods and means trying to force a mold that was broken long ago. And so both inaction and wrong action both lead to an undesirable situation. What we want to happen doesn't happen.

We want the church to grow and we want the church to thrive, but it doesn't because we're not taking the right actions for the present time and the current conditions. And at the same time things we don't want to happen, those things are shoved down our throats.

The surrounding culture corrodes, all sorts of indecencies are celebrated and required. And our kids grow up and leave the church and often leave the faith. The third problem with nostalgia is that it leads us to believe that we can just go back to thriving without significant effort or risk.

If we just did what we used to do, everything would just fall into place. Let me ask you, does anything in the world ever just fall into place? Very rarely. Does a student just ace the test with no study?

Did your business that you started, did it just take off without any hard work and sacrifice or without a big risk somewhere along the way? Did you get obedient and well adjusted children without having to put in the work to train them?

Of course the answer is no. God made the world in such a way that generally good things come when people work for them, sacrifice for them, and take risks for them. Those captivated by nostalgia believe the world would just reorient on its own without having to pay a present price, but that's not how God made the world.

And so here's the thing, it's good to have fond memories. I have many fond memories of church growing up. It's good to look on back, to look back on fond memories with gratitude, but the days of Billy Graham filling up the football stadiums, the former preacher who really knew how to shut the corn and fill up to the balcony, and the kids' classes busting at the seams, those things don't just happen again automatically.

There were certain social conditions in those days that helped those days come to fruition and we give thanks for that and we learn from that, but we've got to be honest that conditions have changed. And so if we get sucked into old church programming defaults, I'm going to come and I'm going to hear a good solo, I'm going to attend a Sunday school class and just talk about what the text means to me, we're going to put it on the church sound, we've got a VBS next week, and everybody will come.

The hard reality is that the past programming defaults do not guarantee present fruit. The comforting reality, however, is that our past programming defaults, they were different than the ones that came before.

Meaning that they themselves were developments in growth coming out of a previous era. And so as a collective people, we've done this before. We've grown and developed and shifted and taken risks and sacrificed and seen God do amazing things with it.

The trick for us then is to never think that we've reached the pinnacle and that nothing ever develops from here. The danger of nostalgia is that we think that we've reached the pinnacle sometime in the past and we just need to go back.

But we've seen from scripture sometimes you can't go back. You must go forward and you must go upward. And that requires significant effort, sacrifice, and risk. It requires development and change and often it requires trial and error.

We're not going to get everything right the first time. And every church must ask themselves if they are willing to make that effort, make that sacrifice, and take that risk. Are you? Hypothetically speaking.

If we were to say we're going to restructure how we do Sunday school. Or if we say we're going to think differently about our ministry teams and committees. Or if we grow to the point that we need to hire another staff member but it wasn't a youth director or children's minister.

Again I'm just throwing out normal things in church life. Hypothetically I am not making any proposals. But I'm just wanting some concrete things on the table. Assuming there were sound reasoning for them, would you be willing to make the effort, make the sacrifice, and take the risk?

It's a question each of us needs to answer. Now here's where I want to commend our church. I believe you are. Because I've already seen it. So we have shifted to keeping our kids in the worship service, not doing children's church.

I have a sermon on YouTube about why that is. And it's hard for parents. And we want to say, just as an aside here, we love kids in the service here. We don't mind some noises. We would much rather have noises of children than not have children.

But we've made that shift and you've made that shift as a church. Joyfully. Our Wednesday night program is much different than you've done in the past. And you've joined in it gladly. And the idea of stopping Sunday school for the summer, shifting our worship time 30 minutes earlier and doing a brunch every week after the service is very different than what we've done before.

And yet you've done it. It's been a huge blessing to our church family. And you've done it gladly. And so I want you to know this sermon is not the pastor passive-aggressively chiding his congregation to prob them to change.

But rather it's something that you already do well. And I want to commend you for that. And this sermon rather is I want us to see the biblical concept and reason for that which you already do. And then I want us to have the principle clarified in our minds for the future so that we can, to use the Apostle Paul's words, excel still more.

This is something you already do. And I want us to have the biblical concept and the principle clarified for us as we move in to the future. A fourth problem with nostalgia is that it ignores current conditions, favoring past conditions.

Here's the thing. On many metrics, I said this earlier, on many metrics the past was better than the present. I mean we used to have a proper country. But this can be deceptive. Because while in many ways the past was better, the way there is closed.

It's been said that the past is a foreign country. And none of us have a passport. So we must deal with present conditions. We've talked about this some before, the concept of negative world where the culture operates in an adverse, often hostile relationship with Christianity.

That describes current cultural conditions, does it not? We must deal with the fact of current conditions of broken families and busy families and rootless individuals with a culture with very little shared cultural goods.

Hyper, I can't say the word, politicization. Hyper politics. Polarization. I'll get there. We have to deal with current conditions of a secular age. Where secularism is the default world view of those around us.

And then you have also the reality that many people have been broken and crushed by it. They're disaffected by it and they're searching for the deep answers. We can't ignore these conditions when it comes to our church programming.

But what rather we must operate within them if we are going to be salt and light in our community and reach them with the gospel of Jesus Christ. All the while discipling our own people and building them up in the faith.

And while thinking of current conditions we should also evaluate past actions. Could it be, we should ask ourselves, could it be that some of what we did in the past contributed to current conditions?

Is that possible? We should ask, why did the sexual revolution happen? Why did kids grow up and leave the church and leave the faith? Why did divorce rates skyrocket? How did Christians lose cultural influence?

There's a hundred more questions like that we could ask. And if we don't ask and answer these type of questions we set ourselves up to make similar mistakes in the present and not course correct for the future.

Building a Thriving Future for First Baptist

Now, I want to land the plane of this sermon by making a request and then teasing out the next several weeks of this series on local church ministry and mission. So first the request. Some of you are relatively new to First Baptist.

You have no direct connection to the past of this church. And so you may be predisposed to just go full steam ahead on the future. And the request, if that's you, would be this. Remember that you've joined a people and a place with a rich fruitful past.

And so honor it. Look for the best from it. And as we build for the future be patient. That would be the request to you. And on that subject of honoring and learning from the past, Ron Tweedy had a really good idea that I hope we'll be able to implement soon.

And that is he wants to sit down with those of you especially who have been at this church for decades and record a conversation with you hearing about your time here at First Baptist, stories of God's work and ministry here at First Baptist over the decades.

We want those memories and stories of God's triumph here in Traverse Rest to not be forgotten. And so as we tell the old old story, as the hymn goes, we want to retell our story too. So I hope many of you will be willing to sit down with Ron in the coming months and tell some of those stories that we can preserve for those who come after us.

So that that large section of history of our church is not lost. And then a request for those of you who have been here a while. You remember the good old days, the heydays of this church. And maybe in some ways on some days you wish it were still 1985.

And I understand I was three in 1985. Life was good in 1985. I didn't have a care in the world. And for you, talk about the dangers of nostalgia or talk about change, development, growth. That might make you nervous.

You look around the world and you see how much has changed. You see how much we've lost already. I don't know this, but I'm just guessing you've probably had pastors who have made significant and sudden changes without even consulting you.

And so it might make you nervous. I get it. Here's the request to you. Believe me when I tell you that I honor 1985 and I want the best. I want to extract the best from it. My grandparents were here in 1985, at least one of my aunts and uncles, they were here in 1985 at this church.

There's a lot of faithful ministry being done then, I know. So believe me when I say I want to honor and extract the best from that era or any other era in the church. Believe me when I say we're not going to make First Baptist unrecognizable to you.

Like when you come in here next week, there's not going to be a drum set up here, I promise. The request would be to help us build something that will be around for another 111 years. A faithful and fruitful church that will outlive all of us down to the babies.

Make your sunset years not about holding on to what once was, but passing on what we have and building something truly great for the kingdom of God that thrives into the future. That's the request for you.

And I promise you, as long as I'm your pastor, you will not be cast aside, shut out, unconsulted, and not cared for. I can give you my word on that. The request for all of us is that let's all band together to build something truly great and to win glory for King Jesus through the ministry of First Baptist Church.

I want to give you one example of how changes in conditions could shape changes in programming. And one that I hope shows and demonstrates that changes in programming doesn't only trend towards catering to those who are younger, which is often the case.

And so here's a change in conditions. Many of you are older than you were in 1985. In fact, all of you are older than you were in 1985. But many of you are now in a stage of life where just the conditions are this, you don't feel comfortable driving after dark.

And that makes coming on Wednesday nights difficult, if not impossible. And so this fall, I'd like to start a weekly Wednesday chapel. Twice a month to start with, see how it goes. Trial run for the fall.

But twice a month, have a Wednesday chapel that's open. We start at 11 a .m. Obviously, people that are working, we have a midweek meet up for you. But for those who are retired, those who particularly aren't able to drive at night, would love to get together at 11 a .m. two Wednesdays a month.

Sing a few old time favorite songs together. I'll lead a shortish devotional time in the Word. And then maybe at least on one of those Wednesdays, we have lunch together afterwards. This solves a problem of changing conditions where the problem of driving at night.

It gives our senior saints some time together. It gives me time with those senior saints. And I want to have that time with you. I want to hear from you, to care for you, to pray with you. And so I hope we can start that the second Sunday, excuse me, second Wednesday of September.

We'll give it a trial run throughout the fall and see how it goes. But over the next several weeks, I want to make a case and cast a vision for ministry here at First Baptist. I want us to apply the principles and concepts we've talked about today and apply those to emphases within the church and teaching ministry of the church.

Apply those to church programming and the general life of our church. And we want to do this because we want to win glory for King Jesus. Here's the thing, we can't go back. Our only choice is to move forward.

And so let's go forward with purposeful action to meet the challenges of our day with faith, fortitude, and fruitfulness. Let's pray together. Our Father, we ask that you would give us the wisdom to extract the best from our past, honoring those who came before us, that you would give us courage to meet the present, discipling our people to live well under current conditions, that you would help us to reach out to the community with the good news of Jesus, and give us the ability to build a thriving future of faithful and fruitful ministry here at First Baptist.

We ask you to give us this grace and to help us to go win glory for King Jesus and to worship you rightly. We ask all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen.